First, Twitter suggests that you change set your Twitter handle/username and your listed/display name to something other than your real name. This way, if your handle/username is SuchAH0tB10tcH, and your real name is Andrea Jones, you won’t have to worry about a search for one name turning up results for the other.

If privacy is truly a concern for you, keep your tweets out of search engine results by making your Twitter account protected. However, if you go from public to private, all tweets posted prior to going to a protected status will be available in search engines (Twitter’s own search engine included) will be available until caches are dumped and search indexes are refreshed.

Twitter has more tips for keeping your tweets out of search engines here.

1. Heavy template. This is a little subjective, but generall\y a heavy template means one that takes up a lot of space without necessarily providing a lot of content to make up for the amount of space that it takes up. Also related to this: the amount of content that exists above the fold.
2. Duplicate content. This is such an obvious DO NOT DO THIS EVER statement that it shouldn’t even take up space here, but nevertheless: duplicate content is a very big SEO content sin. Don’t do it. EVER.
3. Redundant articles. Almost as bad as duplicate content is redundant articles. Redudant articles are very common with content farms, and the last thing you want to do is throw up any signals indicating that you may have anything in common with one of these, right?
4. Poor ad-to-content ratio. You should always have a lot more content than ads. While I completely understand the temptation to monetenize as much of your blog space as possible, you should do your best to devote the majority of your blog’s layout to quality content, and complementing content that is not sponsored.
5. Auto-generated content. Minimal upkeep is always tempting, but you should always do your best to update your website organically, with your own content that is made by you – or by co-authors. Auto-generated content looks bad to both human visitors and search engines.

It’s amazing to think about just how many things I’ve discovered via blogs. I wonder how many things people have discovered because of me? I don’t mean that in an uppity sort of way or anything, I’m not suggesting that I Am Just That Awesome, but seriously: I’ve been blogging for over a decade, on multiple blogs. What are the chances that I’ve inspired someone to buy something, try something, do something?

The nice thing about blog giveaways is that a lot of times they’re group sponsored, meaning that anywhere from 10 to 30 bloggers get together to host the giveaway and cough up the funds for the prize, and in many instances, a lot of the same bloggers get together to host these giveaways. So in many cases, I’ve already followed a lot of the social media accounts and have already subscribed to the newsletters, so entering the giveaway is a very quick process – just click, click, click, and I’m done.

Do you enter blog giveaways? Have you ever won anything? (For the record, I’ve won a few things, including a $500 Kmart gift card and an iPod Touch, so yes, blog giveaways are worth entering because you can win!)

I’ve dealt with annoying headaches here and there, and over the past year I’ve had some sinus headaches, as well as headaches brought on by barometer changes, but I never dealt with headaches like these. Ugh. These are persistent bastards, and it really seems like the weather changes — which we’ve had a lot of over the past few months — have been triggering them left and right. I can’t even focus on something as simple as checking out a PalmFanStore.com for hunter ceiling fans for my husband (he’ll randomly text me with these requests) when a migraine like this hits. And what sucks is while the medication provides relief, it also knocks me out, or if it doesn’t put me to sleep, it definitely makes me feel woozy and listless enough — like a wrung-out dishrag — that I’m still not up for much of anything.

I’m really looking forward to summer: not just for flip-flops, neon nail polish, and swimming, but for migraine relief!

Enter to win: CIS KitchenAid Artisan Mixer Giveaway

Don’t even get me started on the shitty font choices, the lack of contrast between link colors and background colors, the overuse of widgets, and the lack of an easily-found email address or even an annoying, pretentious contact form.

But still…I love blogging in general. And for the most part, I love bloggers.

But when I’m asked why I started blogging, I falter before answering. Why? I like to talk. I like to write out my thoughts. I like to state my opinions. I like to see my words on paper. And thanks to technology, I can do all of that and connect with others to get their thoughts on anything I happen to talk about, with ease.

What I do not like, however, is the troll. There are many types of trolls. More than anything, I don’t like people who are contrary for the sake of being contrary. I don’t like commenters who come around for no other purpose than to leave a negative comment, to start crap, or to stir the pot. These types of people serve no purpose other than to agitate others and provide sick amusement for themselves.

Fortunately, these types of people are few and far between, and when they have come around, forcing all of their comments into moderation (and then deleting them periodically) seems to discourage them pretty quickly.

I suppose I’ll have to sing along in my head instead.