Do a Google search for click here. What you’ll find is around 1.7 billion (yes billion) instances in Google’s database where website owners have used “click here” as linked text on their website. Let me guess, that includes you, right?

But click here is seldom the best option for linked text. Take a look at these two examples:

To find out more about how I can help you grow your business, click here.

or

Find out more about how I can help you grow your business.

Which link tells you, as the site’s visitor, where you’ll go when you click the link? Isn’t it clearer in the second example that the link will lead you to how I can help you grow your business?

This may seem like splitting hairs a bit. But really, it’s not. There are a number of reasons to use descriptive linked text rather than click here. Here’s a few:

• Clarity – Descriptive linked text makes it much clearer where the link will you while click here basically just offers the command – click here. There’s no real clarity of why you’d click here or where you’ll end up.
• Scannable – If you scan most website pages, the links will stand out. They’re usually colored and styled differently than the text around them. So when you use descriptive linked text your visitors can scan your page for where they’d like to go next. Click here simply doesn’t offer the same advantage.
• SEO – If you care the least bit about search engine optimization, and you should, adding keywords in the links is one method of optimizing your text for search engines. Think about the 1.7 billion instances on websites that are using click here. Is that really what they’re hoping to rank for?
• Usability – As a big fan of the ‘don’t make me think’ principle of website design, I don’t want my users to have to interpret, guess or consider where my links will lead them. And that’s exactly what click here does – forces my visitors to think.
• Accessibility – Remember, not all your visitors will be using beautiful, graphics browsers to view your site. Some will use braille, aural or text browsers. Think about how visitors that are blind or have reading disabilities will use your site. Asking them to ‘click here’ gives them no idea where they’re going to end up.
• Readability – Isn’t it simply nicer to read content where the links have been crafted into the content rather than breaking it up with the old click here?
• Printability - More people print out your web pages than you might realize. Click here just doesn’t mean anything on a printed page and often breaks up the flow of text.

That said, you can use whatever linking strategies you like. Sometimes you can get higher response rates by directing people to click on a link. I suggest, however, not making a habit out of it. Use terms like ‘click to continue’ or ‘read on’ sparingly and only when you really need too. Otherwise, let your visitors know where they’re heading when then select a link.

So, how are you using click here. And what’s your overall in content link strategy?

(note: image from ovizo0n on Flickr,  some rights reserved)

Want to know what Web 3.0 is going to be about?

So did an audience member at the Seoul Digital Forum back in May when he asked Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt to define Web 3.0. Schmidt’s first response was that Web 2.0 is nothing more than “a marketing term” – which I partly agree with. I think Web 2.0 used in the mass media to create hype is a marketing term. But when I consider Web 2.0 from a user’s perspective (gotta watch this video as well), I can honestly see the difference from the web of yesteryear.

But Web 3.0 already. My oh my!

Schmidt gave a great answer, which you can watch in the video below. What his answer boils down too is much easier application building along with much more robust access to data. And, of course, that data will be stored in ‘the cloud.’

Take a look at the 2 minute video and tell me what you think…

[youtube T0QJmmdw3b0]

Well, he’s been part of the team that has been redesigning Google Analytics. You can read about the whole new experience with Google Analytics to get an idea of what’s changing. Or read a great overview from Avinash Kaushik. Avainash has a ton of screen shots of the new interface, highlighting a number of new features. Last thing, take a tour of Google Analytics new features and design – definitely worth watching.

Of course reading this in Jeffrey’s blog this morning, I jumped right over to my Analytics account to see the updates. I was a bit saddened to see the same interface. I soon learned that the updates will happen to everyone’s current Google Analytics accounts over the next few weeks.

All I can tell you is the changes look incredible. As do some of the new features. Can’t wait until my account is updated.

Are you using Google Analytics? Do you find it to be useful?

Thanks to Jeffrey Veen for use of the new Google Analytics screen shot.

UPDATE: I’ve found a bunch of others who have done reviews of the new Google Analytics.

• First Look: Google Analytics Launches New Interface and Reporting
• Google Analytics Gets A Pretty Reporting Interface
• Google Analytics Relaunches with a Simplified Interface
• Google Analytics Gets An Upgrade
• Google Analytics Gets A Beautiful New Interface
• New Version of Google Analytics
• Google Analytics Redesigns
• Google Analytics Relaunches
• Hurray, A New Version of Google Analytics
• A New Version of Google Analytics Released
• Google Analytics Relaunched
• Google Upgrades and Re-launches Analytics

What is popuri.us? It’s a single site where you can check a number of your blog’s rankings and popularity stats, including:

• Google Pagerank – Google Pagerank and the Prediction Tool
• Alexa Rank
• Compete Rank
• Quantcast Rank
• Google Backlinks
• Yahoo! Backlinks
• Live Search Backlinks
• Technorati inbound links
• del.icio.us bookmarks
• Bloglines subscribers

I used it and it ranked everything accurately as I know it. If nothing else, I got a bunch of information about the popularity of my blog with a simple click. Not bad. Useful to some degree.

What might be more useful is the popuri.us widget that can display live stats on your blog. I’m probably not going to use it just because I don’t want to add any clutter to my blog. But it could useful for others.

But I’ve always wondered if Google is always the best option.

Well Phil Bradley has compiled a list of what he calls Finding What You Need With The Best Search Engines. I’ve looked over the list and found the usuals like Google, Yahoo! Search and MSN Live Search for keyword searches.

But there’s some other gems in the list. Like using Encarta and Answers.com for facts searching or GooFresh for new additions to Google. KartOO, of course, gives some beautiful, visual search results (try it if you haven’t) and can be fun to use. I’d never seen Quintura before, but I can see its usefulness. It displays search results with a tag could of similar search keywords.

There’s lots of good stuff on his list. Much you’ve probably seen but some I’m sure you haven’t. So take a look, and let me know what gems you find.

By the way, he plans to continue updating this list on a regular basis. Maybe this is a resource to bookmark.

Well, Andy Beard started the campaign to get people to remove nofollow. And I, and number of other bloggers have picked it up.

Now Andy has found a post that explains how to remove nofollow from Movable Type. Take a look.

With the post on removing nofollow from Blogger, that leaves us to work on TypePad. Mike Sansone and I thought we had a solution for TypePad, but it hasn’t tested through with credited link backs in Google or Technorati. He’s still working on it.

So please, pass the word to Movable Type users. And, in general, keep passing the word about removing nofollow from your comments. And join the growing list of members in the Do Follow Community on BUMPzee.

A few days ago, Randa Clay had the great idea of creating a badge. Great idea, I thought. Why didn’t I think of that? Well, the great thing is, she has.

What does nofollow do?
What it was supposed to do is greatly reduce comment spam. We all know that didn’t work. What it does do is tell Google bots, and other search engines bots, not to follow links in your comments. That means, when someone posts a comment, they get no Google Juice. I don’t feel that’s right. It’s sort of like thanking your clients by cutting off their hand (okay, maybe not that extreme).

Why should we remove it?
First, it doesn’t work to reduce comment spam. Or if it does, it’s quite minimal. Second, by removing it, you reward your commenters with link love. And link love is good. I’m all for spreading as much link love as I can.

Why the U Comment, I Follow Badge?
It’s one way to let your readers know that when they leave comments, they’re going to get link love. Sure, you can write a few post about it and even remind readers from time to time. But many will not see it. But the badge, that stays and your readers can see it.

More and more bloggers are removing nofollow every day. So what are you waiting for? Hop on over to Randa’s blog and get yourself a nofollow badge.

And if you still have nofollow on your comments, take it off, learn how. Using WordPress plugins, it’s easy. I’ve even found how to do it in TypePad – it’s just a bit complicated and would one long post. You can also remove it Blogger and Movable Type.

Let me know when you’ve removed nofollow from your comments. If you need help, let me know. And please, keep spreading the word.

As a blogger, or website owner in general, you want links coming back to your site/blog. Links to your site is one of the major ways to increase your Google ranking. That’s why in the blogosphere, link love is high currency.

If you knew that, then you likely think that each comment you leave on a blog would give you more links to your site or blog. Most often, though, this is not the case. Most blogware has a little piece of code it attaches to outgoing links from comments called a ‘nofollow.’ What does nofollow do, well, it tells Google bots not to follow links off your blog. Hence, no link love and no Google Juice.

So really, nofollow sucks. So bloggers like Ben Yoskovitz, Wendy Piersall, Chris Cree, Andy Beard and Chris Garrett have all seen the light. As has Robert Scoble. Well, I have too. So no more nofollow on dmiracle.com.

This means now that every time you leave a comment on my blog, you’ll get a little more link love to yours. You’ve helped make my blog successful, so it’s the least I can do for you.
Want to join the party? Here are some resources for removing the nofollow attribute from your blog comments.

• Andy Beard has a the definitive resource for nofollow plugins for WordPress.
• Semiologic’s Dofollow is probably the most used plugin for WordPress. Easy install, by the way.
• You can also read Dougal Campbell’s piece on the nofollow.
• MovableType users can check out this post.

I’m looking for resources to remove nofollow from TypePad and Blogger, if it’s possible. Know of any?

So, how do you feel knowing that all your comments (beginning yesterday) will now be full-on link love?�

What I’ve done is identified a number of topics that I want my blog to focus on. I then search for those topics in Google Blog Search. Once the search results come up, I subscribe to the RSS feed for that specific search. Now each time I update my feeds, I get an update of the most recent and relevant results of from a search for that topic.

This may not seem like such a big deal. But think of it this way…if I want to seach for 10 topics each day to write about, I would need to go to Google Blog Search, search for each topic, read through the results, click on interesting links to read about the post and then somehow capture the link for that post for future use. And, I’d have to do that 9 more times to search 10 topics.

By subscribing to the search results in my feed reader, I can see the results of 10 topics, with titles and links, all from my feed reader – all at once. No need to search each time. All I have to do is find the topic titles that most interest me. This is a HUGE time saver.

What makes this even more powerful is that most of the other blog search engines offer the same search subscription feature. So you can not only do with with Google, but with Technorati, BlogPulse, IceRocket, Feedster or your own favorite blog search engine. So now you can track multiple topics from multiple search engines – all in one place.

I can’t even begin to tell you how this has changed my blogging.

How do you find topics to write about?

But the place that it made the most impact was on my Technorati ranking. Every day I watched my ranking in Technorati change; and change a lot. Some days I’d jump 30,000 positions. It was amazing. And for a few weeks, I was quite excited. As of today, my ranking is somewhere around 26,000 – a long way from where I began four short weeks ago at 1,618,000.

At first, I didn’t put together that my jump in rankings had anything to do with the 2000 Bloggers. Every day I was writing posts and commenting on a number of other blogs. I figured my ranking was due to my efforts. Until one day early last week I looked more closely at who was linking to me. To my surprise, the great majority, more than 75%, were from the 2000 Bloggers.

That got me to thinking…what’s the point of joining a meme like the 2000 Bloggers? Sure, I got some traffic and my Technorati rank increased dramatically. But what did I really gain? My rank in Technorati is obviously inflated. So what good is it as it’s not representative of my true position in the blogosphere.

Then I read Tony Hung’s “’2000 Bloggers’ is Over – An Exercise in Link ‘Building’ At Its Most Useless and Pathetic. Tony writes that 2000 Bloggers is actually ‘over’ due to pressure from Technorati. He goes on to say:

What’s the big deal? It inflates your link “worth” so to speak. As Webomatic mentions — its basically a linkfarm in new clothes. Imagine you’re a new blog with a few dozen inbound links, and then you’re flooded with almost 2000 of them. Bongo bonanza! People use Technorati for all kinds of things — tracking buzz, is one of them. They also use it as a metric, to measure a blog’s “worth” or “influence” given how many inbound links its got. 2000 new inbound links? Artificial inflation of your Technorati ranking … or, at least, in theory, as Technorati has new algorithms for this kind of thing.

When I first heard of 2000 Bloggers, it felt a little funny to me. But I did it anyhow, not really knowing about linkfarming. In hindsight, and being honest, I’d probably do it again. I did gain a bit from it in experience more than benefit. Though in the future I probably won’t join anything like this again.

You see, I want my blog to do my work. I want to offer content that’s engaging, informative and really helps my readers. Ultimately, that’s my goal and what I want my blgo to be known for. Rankings, while important, certainly don’t mean as much as getting my blog in front of those that I can help. So I don’t want to inflate my standing. Nor do I want to waste time, energy or thought on such pursuits. I’ve learned with this one.

I agree with how Tony closes his post:

…at the end of the day some of the most important metrics for “influence” *aren’t* the absolute number of inbound links a site has. Its what those links *do* for you.

If they’re not leading to increased traffic or increased recognition on behalf of the linking blog, then it doesn’t count for squat.

Its that simple.

So let the 2000 bloggers artificially increase their Technorati ranking. …I suspect it’ll mean very little to the numbers most bloggers are interested in – or even, the effect it will have on their own relative importance to their own corner of the blogosphere.

Well said, Tony. My feelings exactly.

For more, read Jeremiah’s I Don’t Deserve This Technorati Rank. And Instabloke is going as far as calling for a boycott of Technorati
I want to know what you think of the 2000 Bloggers. Do you feel you gained from it? What about your Technorati ranking…do you feel it’s inflated? Do you care? One way or another, let me hear about.