Holtz Communications + Technology

Search Engine Journal offers tips for optimizing your blog for search engines. The tips (which are explained in detail in the article) include:

• Use your primary keyword in your blog domain
• Use your primary key phrase in your blog header tags and the title of your posts
• Use your secondary keywords in the body of your post
• Use your keywords in the anchor text…

As we praise the virtues, benefits and potential of blogging, we need to balance our enthusiasm with a certain amount of skepticism. Wide-eyed zeal without caution can lead down a dangerous path. Consider how willing readers were to accept two political blogs in South Dakota at face value. CBS News is reporting that the blogs were written by paid advisers…

Frank Barnako of CBS Marketwatch reports that Blogads, the company that sells ads for placement on blogs, is getting its ads onto as many as 100 blogs daily, compared to 10 or 20 a few months ago. According to Blogads founder Henry Copeland, quoted in BusinessWeek Online, “More money (will flow to) more (blog) authors as smart advertisers bypass publishers and pay…

Whenever I talk about blogs or social networking to people who haven’t quite yet caught up, it’s likely I’ll hear the same comment: “How is this different from message boards?” I’ve been able to stumble through explanations, but Lee Lefever has posted an articulate and intelligent analysis of the differences over at CommonCraft. There are five, according to Lefever:

• Use of the member profile
• Identity without…

If you’re looking at implementing RSS for more than just aggregation of blogs, take a look at David Berlind’s column at ZDNet. Berlind sees huge potential for RSS, noting that it’s the closest most people ever get to XML.

Given RSS’ momentum, it could very well turn into the primary method by which all data (structured or unstructured) gets pumped—regardless of whether the application is just to…

iVillage.com, the women’s online community, has hosted message boards for a decade where women have exchanged financial tales. The company plans to launch blogs within six months, recognizing first that blogs are a natural extension of message boards, and second because readers increasingly are turning to blogs for financial advice.

An article from Dow Jones Newswires appearing in the Chicago Tribune (subscription…