Beyond Hooks One of the reasons that we have placed as much emphasis on hooks as we did is that bloggers who do not use them can never expect to use the more sophisticated blogging techniques. It's much like learning to add. If you can't add and don't understand addition, you can never learn to multiply, and multiplication is so much more powerful than addition.
Before we move completely beyond hooks, we need to remind bloggers that it is almost more important to know when NOT to use hooks as it is to know how to use them.
For example, a few days ago we were describing our most popular post and how google was treating it. If you go back and read that post, you will notice that we were very careful not to state the laptop judge's name, only his initials. Those who were interested enough in looking were being asked to discover his name via a link.
This blog will never again use the laptop judge's name because to do so would walk all over that google search. Instead of being directed to the blog entry that we carefully constructed, the reader would be directed to the newest entry. That is why we used the judge's initials.
Likewise, this Sunday, we will be writing an essay on the lawyer who received the questionnaire about which we wrote yesterday. You will note if you scroll down that we never mentioned her name in that post. Once again, we were thinking of hooks. The Sunday post will be as truthful and as effective as we can make it, and we want it searchable under that lawyer's name and other ways.
If we had mentioned her name in yesterday's essay, we would have had to wait two or three weeks, or more before doing the essay to avoid the chance that Google would ignore it.
The next technique we will discuss is the Google Bomb. The Democrats are very adept at using it, and their bombs are quite nasty, to the point of being stomach turning. Republicans can borrow the technique without the need to go into the gutter.
The idea behind a Google Bomb is to find some technique that will move a specific search item upward in the search results. Google allows search engine users to vote without telling them that they are voting.
There are two ways to move a result up that we know of:
1) When a search term is used and the results entice a google user to click on the item, the result gets a "vote." Enticement is what the game is all about, which is why we are emphasizing the construction of the best search engine hooks possible-the subject's name followed by a provocative phrase or short sentence.
2) The more insidious way to vote a result upward is to have associates create links using the name. Assume that this blog wrote an essay on Senator John Doe and wanted the essay to be planted close enough to John Doe that it would always be on the first page. We could then get a few of our blogging friends to link to that essay using "John Doe" as the link phrase. Everyone would have to use the same link phrase and link to the article we wanted promoted.
Of course, the more well known a political figure is, the harder it is to plant a bomb. Harder, but not impossible. For example, (this hasn't been done to our knowledge, but we didn't check) someone could write an essay about Bill Clinton's sexual escapades and ask friends to link to it using the link phrase "sexual predator." That way, whenever someone googled those two words, the essay on Clinton would always come up and it might come up first. How embarrassing!
Those who would like to see some real google bombs should google the word "Santorum." The gay community so hated the former Senator that they planted a disgusting bomb and made it so strong that it ranked above the campaign blog site. George Bush has some interesting Bombs planted against him, as well. There are likely others.
Again, we are not proposing tasteless bombs be planted, but if the blogs begin to work together, we can plant truthful bombs that will hurt Democrats even more than the disgusting stuff they have used.
At some future point we are probably going to pick essays that damage Democrats and suggest a few promotional links for other bloggers to use. We may even create the link and allow readers with blogs to insert them into a sentence of their own choosing.
On March 25th, we admired Best Destiny's collection of links in his Around the Colorado Sphere post. If we could get bloggers to do a once a week post similar to that one, but with predetermined link word choices, we could make ourselves formidable.
Just something to think about.
A new blog. Last evening we discovered Junction Daily Blog. The author claims to be non partisan but we think Republicans will like his writing. He does a lot of original reporting and his analysis is passable.
The reshuffle. About April 1, we will slightly modify the order in which blogs are listed on the sweep. That order, with the exception of one blog which uses HTML and gets placed randomly, is driven by the reverse order of their appearance on our computer favorites list. We were originally going to randomize the order, but that proved too hard.
Two blogs that write regularly and thus deserve a higher billing are going to be placed at the bottom of our favorites list. They will find that to be a good thing. We will try to do this every month, so if your blog gets left out this month and you write regularly, expect to move up, slightly displacing this month's selectees.
Face the State We're not sure exactly what it is yet, so we're not sure how it will be handled. Make no mistake, though, we are quite happy to note its appearance.
