After making that post, I quickly discovered that I may have given myself a challenge with a few obstacles. You see, I do quite a bit of reading at work. Most blogs and such are blocked by filters. However, I can still browse just about anything via RSS in my google reader (note: if you want me to be able to read your blog regularly, please offer a FULL FEED). The problem is, it makes it a little difficult to comment, when I can’t visit the blog itself.

My solution is, to use the “Shared Items” button at the bottom of each post in my reader.

Then, via a plugin called Recommended Reading I can post links to the stories I choose to share, in a widget down there at the bottom right of my footer … go ahead, scoll down and look

The thing is, there’s only room for about six stories, so depending on how much I’m reading, the link may only be there for a day or two; and sometimes even less. So, what I’m also going to do, it make a nice little weekly post with most permanent links to all the stories I’ve shared during the previous 6 or 7 days … along with a short note sharing why liked it.

Just starting out, I don’t think I’ll ever be quite as organized with this feature as Kristi’s Fetching Friday posts … but I do hope that the sort of articles I find interesting, also prove to be useful to You … my readers.

Ok, so without further ado, here are some of the stories that I found interesting enough to share during the week (or maybe going back a bit further since this is the first one) that ended December 4th 2009:

• 6 Things They Mean When They Say They Have No Money – This one is from IttyBiz. If you haven’t read Naomi Dunsford’s blog yet, you’re definitely missing out … lol, although if you’re easily offended by “4-letter language”, fair warning that it may not be your cup of tea. This particular post should be of interest to anyone who sells stuff (that would be most of us).
• 35+ Photo Editing Tutorials for Photoshop – I’ve been following the Vandelay Design for about 2 years now, and I gotta tell you, this blog has the ultimate in great list posts when it comes to web design, and photography techniques.
• The Thankful Box – I just started following Mocha Dad as part of my effort to be more sociable … and one of the first posts I read was his touching Thanksgiving story about a little tradition his family has instituted.
• The Last Thing You Want to Do is Date Your Wife – And this is the second post I read on (Mocha Dad) Fred’s site. Some very good ideas here about how to keep the romance alive, for all of us old married types.
• Fetching Friday – 90 Links in the Biggest Weekly Resources Mashup – I think the name pretty much says it all there. I always, and I mean always, find something useful and interesting in Kristi’s weekly resource posts.
• My Cyber Cabin in the Woods – Another one of my new friends, Heather, compares blogging to a form of escapism … while at the same time, offering up some tips on how to keep the foundation of your own little cyber cabin strong.
• My Blog Epiphany: Is Your Marketing Sticky or Scummy? – Another one of those posts who’s title pretty much says it all. JPratt’s blog is one where I probably should (and will be making an effort to) share more often, because almost every post is a wealth of good information.
• Giving Your Blog That Christmas Feel – My buddy Sire has given his blog a nice Christmasy makeover for the holidays. And even better, he offers up some nice, easy to follow tips about how he did it; for those adventurous types who might want to do a little theme hacking on their own sites.
• Passive Income – Leaving Australia – the Practicalities – Lissie is moving from Australia to New Zealand and offers up some tips keeping your home business running during a move.
• 5 Bad Reasons to Quit Blogging – Kristi again, with a blog post that really could have been titled “Never give up, never give up, never give up” … but I suspect hers will play better on stumbleupon, and I’m no expert copywriter
• My Little Texas Cheerleader – My daughter Jaiden in the Texas cheerleader outfit that Ana bought her … lol, and I don’t even want to know what she paid for it … but it is cute.
• Oes tsetnoc – actually I shared SY’s post about Pay It Forward SEO, but since I already wrote about, and linked to that up above, I figured I’d use this slot to put in a plug for SEO Contest spelled backwards – Oes tsetnoc … check it out, and help spread the word.
• My Snippets: WordPress Plugin – I just shared this one earlier today. It’s a new plugin by Justin Tadlock that takes the widget logic concept, and goes one step further. I haven’t had a chance to play with it yet, but I can already imagine that it’s going to let me do pretty cool thing … especially when it comes to optimizing ads on niche sites.

Ok, well that about wraps it up for this week. I know that I missed a few friends, but I’m just getting back in the grove … rest assured Your post will be showing up this space over the next few weeks.

I hope you find this helpful.

Feedback and suggestions appreciated and encouraged … People who read this post might also enjoy:

• My favorite posts You probably didnt already read this week
• Todd Shares The Good Stuff – 12/11/09
• Linking to some new friends from MyBlogLog
• Dilbert Blog A New Favorite In My Google Reader
• Don’t Be An INVISIBLE Reader

However, for people I already know, and/or those who have over time, left quality comments (ie: contributed to my blog), I DO want to give them those good keyword anchored links … ideally from indexed and ranked pages.

In the past, I’ve tried using plug-ins such as Lucia’s Linky Love, which only removes “nofollow” after a certain amount of posts. In theory, this sounds like it should be a good solution. However, in practice, all it really means is that the “hit and run” commenters will leave 3-5 quick and easy 1 or 2 sentence comments, instead of just one.

Good news … I think I’ve finally found a solution.

It’s a plug-in called SEO Super Comments

Obviously, given the title of the plug-in, there are some pretty cool benefits to me in using this code. Each and every comment is now it’s own page. And for most commenters, their name links to that page … not their website (they do however get a dofollow link from the individual comment page). What this means is that if you have alot of people leaving good comments, it’s quite possible to get a lot more pages indexed by the search engines (read the plug-in page linked above for details).

The feature that I like the best though, is on the SEO Super Comments options page. There is a place where I can go in and input urls that I want to be “dofollow” right from the post (the one most likely to eventually have PR). In other words I can choose exactly which of my friends should get keyword anchored followed links. And since the majority of the comment links will now lead to internal pages, those few followed outbound links could potentially be much more valuable than they otherwise might have been. (even when all those other links had rel=nofollow”, they were still outbound, and with google’s recent change in how they calculate outbound PR they diluted the “good” links).

Right now, I’ve only put a couple of urls in there. I’m sure I’ve left a few of my friends out … but it wasn’t on purpose.

To be honest, as busy as I am lately, probably the best way to bring any oversight to my attention, and have your site added to my “personal” dofollow list, is to go ahead and leave some good quality comments on my posts …

Todd

People who read this post might also enjoy:

• Are You Over Using NoFollow?
• Do You Promote Your Comments?
• Gail Gardner from Growmap.com Tries to BlackList Me
• How Many Of Your Followers Actually Know Like And Trust You?
• Todd’s Weekly Reader 12-04-09