The Amazing 5 Minute Blog Review | Jenny Blake – Life After College

September 28, 2009 · 11 comments

Jenny Blake – Life After College | www.lifeaftercollege.org

This week I review the “often imitated but never duplicated” Jenny Blake and her blog, Life After College. Jenny is wanting to clean house a bit (aren’t we all?) – While her content is top-notch, I do offer a few pieces of advice that might help her achieve that “next level”.

The Takeaways:

Brand yourself: The header is a great place to start. Amazing content is the number one way to get people to remember and want more from your blog. Jenny already has this down cold. The next step is all about the visuals. By creating a custom header with a more difinitive “Life After College” logo, Jenny will concrete her brand image that much more in the minds of her readers.

Widgetize the Sidebar: Jenny expressed that she would love to have a tabbed widget to better organize her sidebar content. This can easily be done using the “Tabbed Widget” plug-in for WordPress found HERE.

Limit Your Keywords: Jenny works at Google, so I felt almost stupid questioning her skills when it comes to meta-data. But, from my experience, and after researching around the web, you don’t want to OVERLOAD your meta-data keywords for your pages and posts. This actually confuses search engines a bit, forcing them to crawl through more irrelevant data. Pick the 5-10 keywords/phrases that describe that SPECIFIC page. Live by the mantra that less really can be more.

Use http://su.pr to share links. I use StumbleUpon’s bookmarking service to share links (new posts, etc) – this allows for more viral spreading of your articles without having to put in any real effort.

Kudos to Jenny for letting me put this review together. It was a pleasure and I hope this information provided some takeaways for everyone out there. As always, if you have any questions or comments, feel free to share them below!

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Interested in a review of your blog? Contact me via email: mncheuvront@gmail.com for a 100% FREE consultation.

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http://www.lifeaftercollege.org/ Jenny Blake
Matt – just wanted to say thanks again for putting this together for me. Worth it’s weight in gold!
Funny thing about the meta keywords – I actually did those 4+ years ago (pre-Google) when it was just a static website. Haven’t really bothered with them since, but you’ve given me motivation to finally clean them up. Thanks so much for the great widget suggestion and everything else you highlighted too – awesome!
It’s so helpful to have a second pair of eyes, especially from someone so passionate about this space and with such helpful, actionable ideas – I highly recommend it to all the other bloggers out there!
http://www.lifeaftercollege.org Jenny Blake
Matt – just wanted to say thanks again for putting this together for me. Worth it’s weight in gold!
Funny thing about the meta keywords – I actually did those 4+ years ago (pre-Google) when it was just a static website. Haven’t really bothered with them since, but you’ve given me motivation to finally clean them up. Thanks so much for the great widget suggestion and everything else you highlighted too – awesome!
It’s so helpful to have a second pair of eyes, especially from someone so passionate about this space and with such helpful, actionable ideas – I highly recommend it to all the other bloggers out there!
http://www.timjahn.com/blog Tim Jahn
Jenny probably already knows this, but Google officially announced last week that they don’t utilize meta keywords when their search bots crawl. So no worries there!

http://www.lifewithoutpants.com/ Matt Cheuvront
Interesting Tim – You learn something new everyday. So then, what is the value, if any, in meta keyword data? Are they now completely obsolete?

http://www.timjahn.com/blog Tim Jahn
Jenny probably already knows this, but Google officially announced last week that they don’t utilize meta keywords when their search bots crawl. So no worries there!

http://www.lifewithoutpants.com Matt Cheuvront
Interesting Tim – You learn something new everyday. So then, what is the value, if any, in meta keyword data? Are they now completely obsolete?

http://www.lifeaftercollege.org/ Jenny Blake
Hah – you guys would be surprised about all the things I DON’T know despite working at Google. Sometimes I just get lost in my own little world of Training & Career Development
But Tim – thanks for the heads up! Maybe I don’t need to go back and clean up those keywords after all…except that I’m a code snob (or used to be at least) and don’t want it looking sloppy.
http://www.lifeaftercollege.org Jenny Blake
Hah – you guys would be surprised about all the things I DON’T know despite working at Google. Sometimes I just get lost in my own little world of Training & Career Development
But Tim – thanks for the heads up! Maybe I don’t need to go back and clean up those keywords after all…except that I’m a code snob (or used to be at least) and don’t want it looking sloppy.
http://www.thrillingheroics.com/ Cody McKibben
Great video series idea Matt! Yeah, Matt Cutts at Google just came out recently and put all the confusion to rest, and in fact the Google Search Engine DOES NOT use meta keywords in their algorithms AT ALL, right now. See Matt Cutts’ video here on the Google Webmaster Central blog. That doesn’t mean they won’t weigh them again some point down the line in the future. And as for other search engines I’m not sure.
Either way, the biggest focus should go on other meta data: your title, description, and even on-page emphasized elements like strong, em tags, and subheaders. That’s where your on-page SEO is these days.
http://www.thrillingheroics.com Cody McKibben
Great video series idea Matt! Yeah, Matt Cutts at Google just came out recently and put all the confusion to rest, and in fact the Google Search Engine DOES NOT use meta keywords in their algorithms AT ALL, right now. See Matt Cutts’ video here on the Google Webmaster Central blog. That doesn’t mean they won’t weigh them again some point down the line in the future. And as for other search engines I’m not sure.
Either way, the biggest focus should go on other meta data: your title, description, and even on-page emphasized elements like strong, em tags, and subheaders. That’s where your on-page SEO is these days.
http://www.ejconsultingllc.com latisha
Not big on this type of thing, but I spotted and picked this up yesterday. As I just graduated last year it has already proved very useful. A new book called “You Have A College Degree, Now What?” http://www.amazon.com/You-Have-College-Degree-W…