The Hobby Webmaster Blog

I have been working for a couple of days on a face lift for the old Pennies for Wink site. I have just uploaded and tested the first phase of this face lift. There is a new look, I hope a bit more interesting, to the home page. I added several catalog pages and a directory to those pages, as well as left nav access to the pages. I redid my top and bottom navigation bars as well and added some pages that are long overdue.

I still need a ton of content for this site. I have an articles section that is completely unpopulated. I will write some articles and look for some good, relevant ones to reprint. I do see search engine traffic to some of the reprint articles on the Mixing Live Sound site. Original content is much to be preferred, but I am not always inspired to write. Of course, the site will need some promotion as well as content if there is to be any significant amount of traffic.

The domain name is not one that will be easy to promote. There needs to be some focus for a website and it is best if the domain name contains a keyword that is related to the site theme. I purchased this domain name before I became aware of how things work. I do have a few good domain names, more by accident than design. It would be nice if I could get this site to work well enough to pay its rent, at least. The education is worth something.

So, stop by the site and check out the changes. Leave me a comment or a suggestion as to the progress or direction that the site should go. There are comment boxes on the pages and there is a blog associated with the site. I have installed the KeywordLuv plug-in along with a do follow plug-in. There is a post about the update there. You could leave your comment on the main site or go to the blog to leave your comment.

I am adding a number of pages to the Pennies for Wink site. It had needed some love, and now it is getting it. I have been specking Amazon store pages for addition to the site. Of course catalog pages particularly enclosed in Iframes do not add any value to the site in the way of content. I will be adding a content page for every catalog page at the very least. I am also putting up a directory page with a small blurb about each of the catalog pages so that there will be a little text connecting to each of the pages until I get the articles in order.

As I have mentioned (somewhere), I installed the KeywordLuv and Do Follow plug-ins on the Pennies for Wink Save a Penny Blog. These plug-ins allow commenters on the blog to get a keyword backlink for their site. This encourages thoughtful comments on the blog posts. Of course that means that I need to make some posts worthy of a comment so that they have something on which to hang a quality comment.

I now have three blogs with the KeywordLuv plug-in active. These blogs also have a do follow plug-in installed. That means that a commenter can have a keyword link to his site that is a do follow link. The search engines will follow the link and find the site. You will get credit for a backlink which may help in your search engine results position.

I have now had one comment by a user that understood how to work with a blog and the plug-in. The display does, in fact, work as it is advertised. There was not really any doubt, but I have now seen it in action on one of my blogs.

The Save a Penny blog on the Pennies for Wink site is where this action took place. The commenter left a relevant comment to the post to which it was attached. I approved the comment and it is now live. The commenter has a live do follow keyword link for his time. Thanks!

If you want to build some back links check out the blogs at Before You Buy a Website, Selling On Your Website, or Pennies for Wink. Those are the three that have the needed plug-ins installed. I ask that you leave a comment that is relevant to the post on which you comment. I don’t want comment spam or links to bad neighborhoods, but I will reward a thoughtful comment from one with a quality site with a backlink.

I have begun to lavish a bit of attention on the Pennies for Wink site. (I could certainly use a few pennies about now.) This site has only had a couple of pages and a couple of stores, but no real content. I will be trying to think of what I could do as far as content is concerned. I will add the usual suspects as far as auxiliary pages are concerned, but I need to provide the site with a focus and build some content around that focus.

I did add the KeywordLuv and Do Follow plug-ins to the blog earlier. I will try to provide a post worthy of comment from time to time so that people can reasonably take advantage of the opportunity. KeywordLuv alters the way that a name is displayed so that there is a natural appearing keyword link to the commenter’s site, and the do follow plug makes the link do follow so that the link may be considered a backlink by the search engines. I have seen it said that Google checks no follow links, but I would not depend on that as a fact. Other search engines probably do not count the links even if Google does, but Google does nearly own the market.

This blog is not set up with the plug-ins, but it is a regular stop on the comment spammers tour. I put up the scoreboard at the bottom of the right column so you can see how many attempts there have been.

I will post when the update is complete and live. Feel free to swing by and leave me a suggestion as to where you think that I should go with the site. There are comment boxes on the pages of the site, or you can go to the blog and get some KeywordLuv!!