Virginia Breeze

, originally uploaded by Davidlind.

When we were up in Washington I was impressed by the bridges we passed through on our way to the zoo. Some of them are quite grand. This one had a shiny orange/red interior.

I don’t know if this photo is any good or not. But I like it. So here it is.

Also. . .I wrote in a recent post HERE about a different strategy to increase readership involving increasing Page Rank by internal post linking.

Example:   Bernie has written some very encouraging things today here at VB.  You can see in the comments here that he feels this photo is alright.  I appreciate that very much because I really didn’t have a clue.  I just “thought” it looked interesting.

I’m going to add some NextGen stuff about bridges we saw as we drove along this route.  One of them I think is really cool.  Can you tell which one?

I went over to Bernie’s to see what he was doing and he also is fooling around with bridges!  What a coincidence!   So here is the Link to Bernie’s Bridge.  . .

http://sindianavisions.wordpress.com/2008/10/17/madison-indiana-sunset/

If we are going to be successful bloggers  (and I believe we are going to succeed) we need to try new things and find new ways to grow.

I guarantee you that this post will be gathering readers who will shoot over to Bernies Bridge long after a StumbleUpon link has fizzled out. I feel like we were seduced by SU in the early stages of our blogging experiences.   “It’s all about Plastic” as Mr. Robinson used to say.  (But Mrs Robinson had a different story).   Don’t get me wrong.  I like SU a lot.  But I understand now why it’s not really there to promote individual blogs.  It promotes cool posts.  Growing a blog requires a helping hand from Google.

Because links like these help to increase PR and Google is a LOT bigger than StumbleUpon.  See?

[Show as slideshow]

This is going to be a short post just to say that I don’t think Google is penalizing my blog for anything I have said.  Because, basically, I haven’t said anything.

Wait.  Alright I have said some things.  But none of them would cause concern or should cause concern to anybody.   I run this bad neighborhood software once in awhile and it tells me if there are words or phrases that should cause concern.

For instance if you are a monk who likes to blog and you write about those things people put in their mouths when they are sick.  You know what I mean.  They come in different shapes and sizes. And you have to go to a medical person who writes a note on a piece of paper for you.  And you give this paper to someone else at the store up the street.

So he is concerned about seniors and children being able to get these things whatever they may be.

And so forth.   Well bad neighborhood tells me that this wonderful monk may be a sp……  sp…….. a lunch meat expert.

And so I am not going to worry about lunch meat. Unless you cook it with a Teflon frying pan.  Then you might have a problem.

But I have learned a couple of interesting things.  You can go to Google Webmaster Tools and do all this cool stuff to your blog.  And you don’t have to be a webmaster.

You probably won’t kill your blog either.  Because I didn’t kill mine.

You can ask someone to look at your blog and tell you if they see anything happening that might cause you to be penalized.  There are friendly people not with Google who will do this.  And sometimes Google employees do interact in this place.

It’s like going to Loch Ness and maybe seeing Nessy.   It’s pretty cool.

I also learned that Page Rank actually changes frequently but they don’t put the change anywhere you might see it. Like on your toolbar.  Because they want to make the point that page rank is not so important and there are actually about two hundred other things that are important.

And none of them are on your toolbar.  In fact none of them are anywhere that I can see.  Except maybe some of them are at the aforementioned Google Webmaster Tool area.

I have actually had a nice time being without Google for the past few days.  It has changed my perspective on blogging.  I am more concerned with content now although I was always concerned about it.

It’s just that now if I look at the stats and see a friend has come by it makes me very happy.  Even if he or she didn’t leave a comment.   This is what stats are for now.

My number crunching days are over.  Just in time too.  Because we are going to the beach next week.  That means lots of surfers, a few pretty girls, sand and the hot sun beating down on my chrome domium.

You can’t crunch anything under those circumstances.  It’s just not possible.

So everything works out well in the end.