pelf-ism is contagious

Do you see how I am dressing my blog up for Christmas? Do you notice the twinkling new set of smilies I got for my blog? They’re not ordinary over-the-counter smilies, they’re Santa Smilies and they’re here to remind you that Christmas is just around the corner!

If you like what you see, and would also like them to decorate your blog, get the complete set of Santa Smilies here. The designer, Connie, maintains a turtle-themed blog and designs a lot of other turtle smilies too. Check them out at Schildieproductions!

I think Yvy will LLLOOOVVEEE my Santa Smilies as much as I do

Updated:
I was three-quarter asleep when I posted this at 2am this morning, hence only the screenshot of this sparkling new Christmassy theme. But if you like what you see, head on over to Beng’s. She’s a Filipino and she designs pretty WordPress themes and she’s amazing

I downloaded her Yuletide theme (this one) and for reasons I couldn’t comprehend, my entire blog went hay-wire. I dropped her a comment and jokingly said that her themes hated me, and she got back to me and offered to fix it for me, despite her busy schedule. She is currently taking up some computer courses for some designing competition. Sometimes she blogs in a language I don’t understand, but I assume it’s Tagalog?

By the way, there’s a competition going on at her site. And she calls it PAKUWELA though I have no idea what it means. But the top three prizes are attractive nonetheless, and all you have to do is to answer 5 questions correctly and post them in her comment box before Dec 16th.

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”??