Archive for the Category » Blogging Challenges & Tips «

The TOP 10 keywords for my blog
Posted on Tuesday, November 28th, 2006 by pelf and filed in Blogging Challenges & Tips, Site News

Lorelle's Blogging Challenge Lorelle has a way of making people like me get all addicted to her challenges, though I’m not sure how. Maybe it’s because she ACTUALLY drops by to read what you’ve written, that’s why. Maybe :)

I’m picking up the challenges NOT because I have nothing better to do, but you know what? I really don’t know why I am doing this :) Maybe because it feels good to have something to blog about without having to crack the brain. Yea, maybe that’s why :)

Anyway, there are 2 parts in this “Top 10 keywords for your blog” challenge. The first part is to recall the top 10 keywords that you think describe your blog, and the second part is to “clean up the list so that it realistically lists the top ten keywords found on your blog”. I haven’t done this yet but I have a feeling MY top 10 keywords will not appear as frequently as I would love them to in my blog.

So yea, the keywords that I can recall off the top of my head are (in no particular order):

  1. turtle
  2. terrapin
  3. turtle egg
  4. Kuala Terengganu
  5. hatchling
  6. KUSTEM
  7. Redang
  8. research
  9. volunteer
  10. postcard

*phew* It wasn’t easy and to be frank, I got stuck at the fourth point!

Now, to check how frequent the keywords actually appear in my blog, I count the number of times they appear in my blog posts. Figures in parentheses indicate the percentage of posts which contain that particular keyword.

  1. turtle (26%)
  2. terrapin (13%)
  3. turtle egg (9%)
  4. Kuala Terengganu (6%)
  5. hatchling (10%)
  6. KUSTEM (8%)
  7. Redang (9%)
  8. research (5%)
  9. volunteer (6%)
  10. postcard (21%) < -- this is biased because it appears in the titles

One word. Pathetic. Muahahah.. I don’t seem to be blogging about a certain niche topic although it was one of my initial intentions to do so.

Now let’s move on to the second (and more difficult) part of the challenge – to clean up the top 10 list so that it reflects the top 10 keywords in my blog. This sounds sooo impossible. Idealistically, the top 10 5 keywords to be found in my blog should be:

  1. turtle
  2. terrapin
  3. hatchling
  4. turtle egg
  5. research

But let’s see what are the search terms that direct people to my blog:

I remember mentioning, sometime ago, that I wasn’t very comfortable finding out that people actually googled for MY BLOG. I mean, I think it is perfectly fine for people to look for information in the internet, and to do so, they will need to search for certain keywords BUT I never thought that my name was one of the keywords. And these people obviously knew that I had a blog..

Which begs the next question: Who are these people?

Addendum:
I just realized that this post is one of my badly-written ones. It’s very rigid. And incoherent. Bleh.

Addendum:

Will this information change the way you blog or write? Will you know think more about the keywords you use when you write?

- Lorelle

Oh well.. This “discovery” sure will change the way I write in the future. For one, I would love to write more about turtles and charity and volunteerism because these are what I am truly into :)

I hope that future posts about turtles will serve as a “knowledge platform” for those of you who come to look for them – maybe in the long run, this blog would be able to create, increase and promote awareness on turtle conservation (and any other species that require human intervention to survive), who knows? Any turtle lovers out there?

I will also do my part in making this world a better place to live in. But this, I cannot do alone :) So I will do whatever I can in my capacity to promote charity and volunteerism among the general public <– I know this sounds like a far-fetched idea, but that is really what I have in mind :)) I always feel that we should do whatever we can to help the less fortunate. Remember the saying, “Berat mata memandang, berat lagi bahu yang memikul”??

5 Comments
Blog about what I know
Posted on Thursday, November 23rd, 2006 by pelf and filed in Blogging Challenges & Tips, Personal Stuff

Lorelle's Blogging Challenge One of Lorelle’s earlier blogging challenges was for her readers to “blog about what you know” – what you really know.

“Look deep into your heart and soul and think about all the things you know. You know a lot about a lot of things. But what are you really confident that you know the most about?” … “Think about all that you know and choose the one thing you would arrogantly assume you were the master of. Then write about it.”

Fact is, I am really a master of none. Sad, I know, but that’s the truth :( Or maybe I shall rephrase that and say that I know a lot of things, but most of the things that I know at a particular point of time depends largely on the person I am with. It isn’t very confusing if you were able to digest it part by part, you know.

So for example, when I was with my sister, I used to know a lot of things. But that was because elder sisters were supposed to know everything – from how babies were made to where Donald Duck lived. OK, I may not know where Donald Duck lived, but you get the flow.. Questions that my sister challenged me with were almost always answered, but I guess it wasn’t because I was a very smart sister, but because I was older than her and that “younger sisters always asked st*pid questions.”

But things do change. And roles reversed. Now that we’ve grown up a little, I have turned into the st*pid sister my sister once was. She has grown into a fine lady and she knows how babies are made and that Donald Duck does not exist in real life. As time passes by, I have turned from a know-it-all sister to a know-nothing sister.

Likewise, whenever I am with my friends who all of a sudden seem very concerned about what my research is all about and how it is going, I morph into a “turtle expert” – a “river terrapin expert” in this case as I am still not very comfortable bragging about being the expert *winks* Because surprisingly, little facts like how the river terrapins have four front claws and five hind claws compared to five front and hind claws in most other terrapins amuse my friends. And little explainations on how turtles, terrapins and tortoises are classified somehow rendered me a master in my own field of study.

But whenever I am with my Supervisor or other REAL turtle experts, I am more often than not tongue-tied. Like what happened during the one-week river terrapin workshop that we hosted last year. Scientists, researchers as well as foreign post-graduate students participated in the workshop and for once ever since I started working on the river terrapins, that I felt I was the st*pid one. I felt I was the one who needed a h*ll lot of studying and reading up to do. There were times I felt that I wasn’t fit to be in that group. I felt I knew nothing.

I digress.

Anyway, if I had to “blog about what I know”, it would be about turtles, about conservation, about volunteerism, and about charity. Because these are what I truly care about.

4 Comments
Changing the world in 30 seconds
Posted on Wednesday, November 22nd, 2006 by pelf and filed in Blogging Challenges & Tips, Charity, Conservation & Environment

Lorelle's Blogging Challenge Lorelle on WordPress is one of the blogs that I silently read without ever leaving a comment or a trackback. No matter how tempted I was. And I have no idea why. I always made a mental note that I will work on the challenges that she puts forth every week or so, but I never had the time to do so.

So to those of you who have recently complained of the lack of blog ideas, allow me to introduce to you Lorelle’s Blogging Challenges, if you have not already heard of it :) In Lorelle’s own words:

Each week, give or take, I will be posting a new blogging challenge for all you bloggers. They will range from writing about a specific subject or topic to cleaning up your blog and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques. Some will be just plain fun and giggles, and others will rock your world so hard your brain will slosh.

So.. I am going to start with this week’s Blog Challenge – to list 30 things that a normal human being can do in 30 seconds that will change the world.

  1. Smile, even to a stranger. Never underestimate the power of your smile.
  2. Sweep and clean your house compound. Imagine a million people doing this.
  3. Make sure you dump your rubbish bags into the bin, not outside the bin.
  4. Before taking out the trash, make sure the bag is tightly tied.
  5. Refuse plastic bags when you shop for groceries. I read somewhere that we use enough plastic wrap to wrap all of Texas every year!
  6. Refuse polystyrene foam boxes. Bring your own lunch box.
  7. Recycle papers by printing on both sides. Recycling each tonne of paper saves 17 trees and 7000 gallons of water!! And did you know that every year enough paper is thrown away to make a 12′ wall from New York to California??!!
  8. Recycle envelopes instead of throwing them away.
  9. Shut the tap when brushing your teeth or washing your face.
  10. Switch off the lights, fans and air-conds when nobody’s in the room or office.
  11. Pick up the pieces of paper you see on the floor in your office eventhough they are “outside your area.”
  12. Call a friend whom you have not seen for a while and tell her you missed her.
  13. Bring a box of chocolates and share it with your colleages. And the cleaning lady who vacuums your office.
  14. Send a short email to your high school friends asking them how they were doing lately.
  15. Surprise your sister with a gift the next time you go shopping.
  16. Water your plants instead of allowing them to dry in the air-conditioned office.
  17. Buy your neighbour’s son an ice cream.
  18. Call your aunt or uncle who lives in another town.
  19. Call your grandparents.
  20. Send an SMS to a friend you’ve not heard from recently.
  21. Speak nicely to the Customer Care Consultant the next time you call TM to complain about your Streamyx connection.
  22. Write a short email to a blogger and tell him/her how much you have learned from his/her blog or how much you enjoyed reading it.
  23. Clear your own table after eating at KFC or McD. If the Westerners can do it, why can’t we?
  24. Say “Hello, Good Morning” to your colleagues first thing in the morning when you see them in the office.
  25. Give away your old shoes or clothes to the cleaning ladies.
  26. Say “Thank you, I appreciate it” to anybody who has just done you a favour. No matter how small that favour is.
  27. Write and send a postcard to a random friend.
  28. Buy your other half a surprise gift. This you can do while shopping for other stuff.
  29. Say “Have a nice day, everybody” before you leave the office.
  30. Separately dispose of your aluminium cans and recycle them. Or give them away to the cleaning ladies so that they can recycle them. I have read somewhere that the recycling of one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a TV for 3 hours and that enough aluminum is thrown away to rebuild our commercial air fleet 4 times every year!

Boy, was THAT fun! *smiles*

3 Comments

Pages (19)« First...«1516171819