Who's linking to your blog? Who's linking to similar sites? Is a blog worth plugging to?

[Tags: interactive pr, pr, SEO]. Those are three of the questions which Blogpulse, a blog monitoring service, answers pretty well. The profiles page allows you to enter a URL and find out who is linking to a certain blog, how often the blog posts, and what sources the blog itself cites. You can also use it to search the blogosphere in general on keywords. Nice.

Oh, and I've also noticed the clever Trends feature, which highlights current trends in the blogosphere.

PR meets the WWW

[Tags: interactive pr, pr]. This latest addition to my RSS feeds comes via the usual circuitous routes of the web (a colleague's site was mentioned on it, and she emailed me) - PR meets the WWW contains just what you'd expect from such a title - lots of useful updates about PR movements involving new media. Read.

Get Flash Sites Ranked in Search Engines

[Tags: interactive pr, pr, flash, SEO]. Here's a succinct and useful article about making sure your Flash site doesn't get overlooked by search engines. Apart from the sensible advice not to use Flash if SEO is your primary aim, the tips include:

• Splitting your Flash 'site' into different movies which are then placed on separate, optimised, pages.
• Not using redirection scripts or splash pages
• Having a HTML version of the site and monitoring user preferences - do they prefer not to use Flash?

keyword tools: Google Trends launches

[Tags: interactive pr, pr, SEO]. A new tool from Google (according to Boagworld), Google Trends "allows you to track the searches on a particular keyword." How does it work?

"You go along to Google Trends and carry out a search in the same way as
you would on the Google homepage. However instead of being returned a set of
results you get a graph showing the search volume on your phrase. It is also
possible to compare multiple search phases on the same graph by separating them
with a comma when searching.

"The graph produced shows the peaks and troughs of search activity and this
can be compared with site stats to explain fluctuation in traffic to your site.
Google even overlay related news stories in an attempt to explain what may have
caused the peak in interest on a particular search term."

The article concludes that Google Trends: "has potential to be a useful tool for the hardcore marketer [but] has yet to fulfil that potential. If you fall into that category then you are better off sticking with Wordtracker that provides much more specific information on search terms.."

Teaching Online Journalism: What lies ahead for online news?

In Teaching Online Journalism: What lies ahead for online news? Mindy McAdams summarises the results of a call from WSJ.com for users' ideas for the perfect news site 10 years from now.

"Here's what they said they want:
Reliable filters to compensate for information overload.

Mobile options for news and information. To go along with that, they want new mobile devices that have more memory storage, bigger
screens, and better options for input.

Customized aggregators -- that's not what WSJ.com called it, but a user wrote:
Instead of having to duplicate my holdings all over the Web so I can get customized news from various sources, I
would login to my secure [brokerage] account and there I would find, alongside my portfolio, links to WSJ news and articles.
Less interference from advertising. People come to a site to get particular stuff, and they see the obtrusive ads as obstacles in their path.
User-based selection of top news.
Apparently, many of the WSJ.com users think they would make better gatekeepers than the paid editors. One user wrote:
Instead of traditional news bureaus, a sophisticated network of freelancers, some with no journalistic experience, will act as correspondents, filing stories from computers inside their homes from around the world. The news will be more in depth, and news will be covered much faster.
Context and depth in news reporting. This does not mean "more long text stories" but rather "efficient ways to look up background information
if I want it."

More audio and more video -- tagged and searchable. "

Online PR survey

[Tags: interactive pr, pr]. There's a weighty survey available over at Glide Technologies all about Online PR - specifically, online press rooms, what approaches journalists prefer, the role of websites, and more.

Web and New Media: Giant Mouse squeaks about this blog

[Tags: web design, new media]. Had an interesting email today from Iain at GiantMouse.co.uk, who's very nicely reviewed this blog and thereby given me ample reason to return the favour. Despite my initial suspicions that this was a form of link farming, it turns out that GiantMouse.co.uk looks like being quite a useful resource for the budding web designer, with very clear and simple articles on subjects from improving your Google ranking to working out how much a site will cost. Well worth exploring.

Google Search Engine Optimization Pitfalls

[Tags: interactive pr, pr, SEO]. Brief but useful article from SEO News which emphasises the importance of things like avoiding javascript, Flash and frames; and the need to validate your code and include site maps.