The Blogging Tips meme that I’ve started is spreading like wildfire (like Brown Baron said).

While adding the links from the pingbacks and trackbacks that I’ve gotten, I noticed that there were quite a few careless bloggers out there that didn’t care to check and double check their links!

I fixed the links for them on my meme post, but when bloggers get tagged, they copy it directly from their blogger friend, and not usually from the starting post (if they even know it).

Here were some of the mistakes I found:

1. Missing the http:// header on the link. This links back to the original blogger’s blog. (e.g. The link “neonscent.com” coming from the URL http://www.neonscent.com will turn into the link http://www.neonscent.com/neonscent.com.)
2. Manually inserting the URL but for getting to actually link. This doesn’t count as an incoming link, and the main point of memes is to increase incoming links! (e.g. Incorrect: http://www.neonscent.com; Correct: http://www.neonscent.com)
3. Including the “-” hyphen in their link. This also doesn’t count as an incoming link; the link would go to “hyphen URL” which would display an error page, unless you linked to the right page but with the wrong anchor text. (e.g. Incorrect: -http://www.neonscent.com; Correct: -http://www.neonscent.com)
4. Linking pattern change. This might or might not be a mistake (I didn’t correct it anyhow), but some bloggers didn’t follow the linking pattern and wrote their blog name for the anchor text instead of the URL. (e.g. NeonScent instead of http://www.neonscent.com) This makes your link stand out, but doesn’t do much good to your blog; who knows what readers might think?
5. Not following instructions. This is basically the most important thing in memes beside getting more incoming links. In my Blogging Tips meme, some people didn’t read the instructions or misunderstood, but anyhow, some bloggers starred their own post or erased other blogger’s stars. A big mistake.

Smart bloggers read here:

There was one blogger that added a title=”" tag to their link. That can be defined as “smart” or “evil”, or maybe it wasn’t intended. (I hope you chose smart!) Hover over this link to read This Link. Besides getting some words when hovered over, search engines also take the text in the title into consideration, so that can also be like anchor text. It can be done by using this link:

<a href=”URL” title=”Title”>Anchor text</a>

Conclusion

Memes are a lot of fun, especially if you start them. You get link backs, get to know more bloggers, and have fun doing the meme. The first few bloggers of the Blogging Tips meme have got 30 links already and counting. *Remember to double and triple check your links!

Also, I know that I haven’t covered all of the meme issues, but if you have a common one that I missed, don’t hesitate to leave a comment and let me know about it!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 25th, 2007| Category: Blog Promotion, Blogging Tips, Writing | Comment | Trackback