New Year, New Blog

A new year brings the opportunity to have a little fun and try new things. It allows you to take a look back, laugh at all of last year’s blog silliness, refocus and start anew. And that’s exactly what we’re doing here.

Last year the Bruce Clay, Inc. blog had a great year. We were able to use the blog to bring our own professional insight and opinion regarding search engine optimization in a new way, making valued connections with the other voices in our industry and bringing a little humor to the SEO world with our patent-worthy Friday Recaps.

Looking back we can’t help but notice the evolution that took place. The blog went from taking a news-oriented "did you know" and "he said this" approach, covering strictly Internet marketing and search engine optimization topics to becoming virtual society pages of the search engine optimization industry. We like what we became and miss what we were. We want to have our cake and eat it too, especially all the yummy frosting flowers.

We attribute last year’s evolution to a number of things, but primarily to the transformation that blogging made in general. Last year the uprising of social media affected how we and others blogged. The idea of blogging was focused less on the actual content and more on creating a community. We noticed more bloggers engaging in personal conversations using their blogs as their medium. It was a love fest of bloggers and links.

But we’re sure we don’t have to tell you about all the changes that took place. You already noticed. We know this because we get emails.

To date we’ve received emails that our blog often feels a little unfocused. Sometimes posts are a little too scattered and it’s difficult to determine the theme of our blog. Are we about search engine optimization or are we about stalking ponies (or Luck Dragons)? Are we an Internet marketing company or do we specialize in outing adorable male SEOs? We want you to know that we hear you.

We’re making a commitment to you to give you a more focused Bruce Clay blog. This means more posts dedicated to trusted SEO and search marketing practices and maybe a little less of Lisa’s coy staring. No, that won’t work. She likes her staring. How about the same Lisa PLUS additional SEO news?

We’ve also received emails that people want to know more about the people behind the blog. In response we’ll be adding an About the Bloggers section to help you learn a bit more about Lisa and Susan. We hope this won’t send you running away scared; remember, you asked for it.

Lastly, we want you to know that we heard the loud whispering and downright demanding that we add comments to the blog to give you a place to respond to BC opinion. And we’re going to do just that. Today we open up comments.

When trying to come up with our own comment policy we decided that many of our colleagues have already said what needed to be said, so we wrote ours with inspiration from theirs and added our own Bruce Clay flair. With that, we present you with the Bruce Clay, Inc. blog comment policy, cheerfully adapted from ideas already expressed by Matt, Barry and Lee, with a few of our own for good measure.

  • Links in comments will be nofollow. No one gets spammy credit for this; comment for the joy of contribution.
  • Comments are moderated based on:
    • Comments must be on-topic. Off-topic comments will be pruned. However, you may consider the Friday Recaps your playground to express all your inner search silliness. God knows Lisa does.
    • Comments should add value. One liners or "me too" comments add little to the conversation and we reserve the right to delete them.
    • No personal attacks, profanity, soliciting, or impersonating anyone else.
    • No defamatory or libelous statements.
    • We will not tolerate spamming or commercial promotion of any kind. If you’re linking somewhere, make sure that the value is obvious.
    • Handles and nicknames are fine, but no name keyword stuffing.
    • Relevant links are encouraged; irrelevant links are annoying and are not.
    • No signatures will be allowed. Please leave them off.
    • HTML is enabled but please don’t post images.
    • We reserve the right to edit, delete or moderate any comment at our discretion.
    • On the first night at all SES conferences, you can deliver your comments in person to Lisa at the hotel bar, but only if you buy her a drink first.
  • We’d really like to keep the discussion here focused, so we’d appreciate it greatly if conversations in the comments were kept to a minimum. Our intention is not to turn the blog into a forum. As such, please make this an intelligent rebuttal or support area, and not a rambling conversation. Unless it’s about ponies or cute boys. Then it’s totally okay.

With that, we invite and encourage you to comment often and join in the conversation. We hope you’ll make your presence known. Get going.

Happy New Year, everyone,

Lisa and Susan

Lisa Barone is a writer, content marketer & VP of strategy at Overit Media. She's also a very active Twitterer, much to the dismay of the rest of the world.

See Lisa's author page for links to connect on social media.

Comments (21)
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21 Replies to “New Year, New Blog”

Yea! finally able to communicate with Lisa and Bruce…this blog could use some pics too…seeing faces with names is cool.

Why is the NOFOLLOW being used?
Not all homepages should be categorized as spammy links.
There is nothing wrong with passing link love to readers

OOH OOH! I want to comment, too!

^Uh… was that “on-topic” enough…? :P

Portland — Thanks so much for the kind words! Your check is in the mail, but next time please don’t encourage Susan. It only makes her feel more entitled to add her opinion where it doesn’t belong. Heh.

Thank you thank you thank you for opening up comments! This makes me SO happy. I have enjoyed your blog since day 1 and have always wanted to let Lisa know that she totally cracks me up and Susan’s inserted comments are classic.

As far as the “focus” issue, I think your approach last year is what really made this blog what it is. Life can’t be all work, and we all need a good laugh. Congrats on your successes last year, and I know you’ll keep on kicking a$$ and taking names this year too!

Congratulations and welcome to the wonderful world of two way communications in blogging! Am glad the comments info was helpful. The BC blog rocks!

Purple ponies prance under the mid-day sun. This is indeed a good day.

Congrats on the decision to allow comments :-)
Looking forward to more juicy content in ’07…

Glad to see that you’ve added the “comments” feature, and may I add… it’s about time.

Welcome Back!

I have been waiting to spam this old domain with comments I mean contribute valuable infomation to this community for ages. Congrats on the comments, great move. Now I feel like a part of it, which is super cool.
But please baby please, don’t turn down the Lisa knob. I heart her blogs a lot :-)

Ah, so glad you added the comments! I can’t think of a single Friday recap I didn’t want to comment on. Now, go to full feeds and all will be perfect…

Ah, no nitpicking. This is the number one blog I was waiting for to add comments. I approve :-)

Oh, and if I had to miss the chance to have the first comment, then let me be the first to say:

onlinepokerphenterminegenericviagraringtonescanadianpharmacycheapticketsbarbarastreisand!

Now, now, Andy, our comment policy clearly states that we don’t allow “me too” comments. One more and we may be forced to ban you and remove you from our personal blogrolls. We’re watching you… ;)

You know you’re cool when Matt Cutts comments on your blog. Congratulations and welcome back, btw. I couldn’t take the withdrawal pains much longer!

Yay! Comments! Now it’s a real blog, not one of these fake ones that Michael Arrington recently exposed. :)

Seriously though, I’m really glad that you added comments. :)

Very cool to finally be able to comment – go BC Inc!

Great to see comments enabled here. I’ve wanted to leave some on more than one post in the past, so thanks.

Really enjoy your blogging, Lisa and Susan. Looking forward to more great posts from you two in 2007.

There is nothing wrong with Luck Dragons. Lisa has just never seen The Neverending Story. It’s like she didn’t have a childhood.

We’re working on that Typekey error. Comments are complicated!
Edit: Fixed!

What’s wrong with luck dragons? They scare bullies into trash bins in allies.

Very excited to comment, there were several times where I wanted to. Now I can. ;-)

Also, Typekey error, “The site you’re trying to comment on has not signed up for this feature. Please inform the site owner.”

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