Recently, I’ve been on a pursuit to find the best social bookmarking widgets and pulling them all together on this [...]]]> I often see a wide variety of social bookmarking widgets that enable readers to save and share your site. I’ve always wondered where to find some of the cool buttons and badges I’ve came across.

Recently, I’ve been on a pursuit to find the best social bookmarking widgets and pulling them all together on this entry. It’s all about options. For this entry, I chose the all-in-one type badges. It’s all about having options.

2. Addthis – Choose whether you want the bookmarking or the feed button, select your button, type in your feed and grab your button. You can choose whether to have it drop down or not as well.

3. Add to Any – Choose a subscribe or share button, pick your button and type in your URL.

4. BlogBadge – Find your user names and IDs for each of your profiles.

5. Clearspring Launchpad – With Launchpad, you’ll first need to register for a free account. You can modify the widget settings to your liking once you register.

6. Shoutlist Icons - This is another badge, similiar to Blogbadge, which is on Widgetbox. Replace the information with your own, choose how many columns and rows you want and get your widget.

7. Ultimate Social Bookmark – Another Widgetbox badge. It’s a less visually appealing bookmarking tool, but one that could also be very useful.

8. FlashDen Social Bookmark Buttons for Flash – ($5) I didn’t try this out, due to it being $5, but I just wanted to list it as an alternative. It’s a pretty fancy flash badge, but I’ll stick with free.

If you have any other great all-in-one social bookmarking badges or buttons, please do share. I’ll continue to add to the listing.

Before I start to dig into Technorati, I must tell you that I am just getting my start [...]]]> As I stated in my previous entries, Alexa Rankings are not the only system that is taken in consideration when determining the top sites. Many consider Google Rankings and the Technorati Rankings to be just as important.

Before I start to dig into Technorati, I must tell you that I am just getting my start with Technorati and am in no way an expert. Technorati is my latest curiousity. I’ve been using Technorati, but nothing more than really just having a presence on their site and an “Add this to your Favorites” badge on my site.

Technorati Lingo
Technorati – Technorati is kind of like Google for blogs. It’s a search engine that indexes, sorts and categorizes blogs. They currently have over 112 million blogs indexed.

Authority – Authority is a way that Technority measures your site by the number of incoming links. Authority is directly related to your ranking with Technorati. The more links of yours that appear in other blogs Technorati recognizes, the higher your authority and Technorati Ranking will be.

How does it Work?
Technorati looks for tags that the author of each blog places on their sites. The tags help to categorize the search results and the most current results will display first.

How to Get Started

• Join Technorati.
• Add your blog URL to your profile.
• Spend some time adding Tags to your blog. Use spaces, rather than commas to seperate. You can also use tag generator tools, such as Ukion.
• Add the “Add to Technorati Favorites” button to your site.

Tips
Add a Technorati Button - As I mentioned above, add the “Add Technorati to my Favorites” Badge on your site.

Use Technorati Tags in each of your blog posts. According to DetectorPRO, this will help Technorati in indexing your posts. To learn more about the Technorati Tags, continue reading.

Build Your Favorites - When you find blogs you like within Technorati, you can “Favorite Them.” If they have the button displayed on their particular blog, that’s an easy way to add them to your favorites.

If you are interested, we can do a Technorati Favorite Exchange. Click here to add Eazy Cheezy to your Favorites and I’ll add you as well.

Leave Comments – Don’t hesitate to comment on the blogs you like. Many times, if you show you are an interested reader and take the time to leave your comments, the blog author will visit your site as well and sometimes comment. The bigger blogs aren’t as likely to visit and leave comments, due to their high amount of traffic, but leave you link in your signature block and perhaps their other readers will.

Ping Your Blog After Each Post – I use PingMyBlog, but you can also either visit Technorati and manually ping or setup and configure an automatic Ping on your site.

Keep an eye on the “Blog Reactions” – You can see what sites are displaying your links and which keywords are being used. You can find this by clicking on your profile, then your site you added to Technorati. It will display your site, keywords, rankings & authority, latest posts, then you can scroll down to find the “Blog Reactions.”

Big Bang List – You can take part in a social activity by adding your link to DetectorPRO’s list Big Bang List. There are many other great tips at DetectorPRO’s Technorati Tips.

Widgets & Tools
Technorati Widgets
Manual or Auto Technorati Ping Setup

Other Great Resources
Technorati Blog
Technorati 2008 State of Blogosphere
User Tips

Have you used Technorati? If so, what are your thoughts? Do you have any other tips for using Technorati? As always, I’d love to hear your input.

What is Twitter?
Social networking service [...]]]> I have heard all the craze about Twitter lately, but prior to this entry and researching it, I didn’t really known what it was or why it was getting so popular. I decided this has to be the next topic I dive into, learn about and share.

What is Twitter?
Social networking service that enables you to keep “hyper-connected” with your friends, family, co-workers, etc are currently doing. You can always know what your friends are currently doing.

Establishing My Account
Upon registering, one of the very first questions I was asked (even before I could set up my profile) is “what are you doing?” I later learned that this is the most important question with Twitter. You are always telling people what you are doing, thinking, etc.

I found that you can go to great lengths to update people who are following you. You can set up SMS, which is text messaging your site to update “what you are doing.” You also have the capability to receive updates via SMS. Twitter doesn’t charge for this service, but I’d watch the amount of texts if you are on a limited plan.

You can also setup a “nudge” (SMS Reminder) if you haven’t updated your Twitter in 24 hours.

The profile setup was very simple to complete. Now I’m ready to search for friends. You can search by “Name” or “Location.”

Viewing Profiles
Since I have a new account, I wanted to find a Twitter user who is well established and see what their page would look like. I think I found the perfect user. This user is following 1,999 users and being followed by 1,484. She’s given a total of 1,854 updates.

Upon accessing this user’s page, I had a few observations; the home page starts on the “Updates” tab of your page. The other tab is “Favorites.” “What are you doing” updates are at the top of the page and seem to serve as your page header. Directly beneath, your recent “updates” are displayed. You can type, text, etc to provide updates. This particular user just told us that “She doesn’t HEART sinus headaches” 7 minutes ago.

Your twitter page also displays the number of people you are “following,” ‘followed by” and the number of “updates.” You can click on each of these links to see the entire listing.

The other tab for the Twitter page is “Favorites.” When I clicked on favorites, I noticed really the only difference is the updates switched to what looks to be a “Top 5″ friends listing.

Now that I’ve seen an overview of how Twitter users update their page and provide updates to their followers, I wanted to look a littler deeper into Twitter.

I found a very helpful Twitter Blog, that’s definitely worth a look.

The downloads section of Twitter have a variety of downloads you can choose from.

Browser Specific Tools
Twitteroo (Internet Explorer) – Update your status from your PC. This tool enables you to update your Twitter status from your desktop, get Twitter notifications & sound notifications for new tweets, clickable links for your messages, you can view your friends timelines, etc.

Twitterific (MAC OS) – ($14.99) This application lets you read and publish “tweets.” It features a scrolling list of the latest “tweets” from your friends or the public listing. You can customize the way the list displays. You can also get this tool for your iPhone and iPod Touch.

Twitbin (Firefox) - This tool is a Firefox extension, which allows you send and receive twitter messages from your Firefox Browser.

Search Twitter
Twitter Search
Real-time Tweet Search

Tools & Widgets
Twitterfeed – Get an RSS or Atom Feed from your blog to Twitter.

Twittervision – This is a real-time geographic visualization of posts to Twitter. As new posts are made, it moves the map to that user’s post, showing the comment and their picture.

WidSets (Mobile) – (Free) Lets you update your friends over mobile by automatically sending updates each time you update your “What are you doing” section.

Opera Widgets (Opera Browser) – This is a page full of widgets specific to the Opera Browser.

Spaz (MAC, Windows, Linux) – (Free) Spaz is an open source desktop twitter client that has a very slick design. It allows you to send and receive tweets from your desktop.

Twitter Gadgets by Google – (Free) Lets you read and update your Twitter from your desktop.

Digsby – Digsby is a very unique widget. It is an IM Client that you can use to chatvwith all your friends on AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Facebook, Google Talk, and Jabber with one simple to manage buddy list.

Digsby is also an email notification tool that alerts you of your new email. You can manage all your e-mail accounts from Digsby. It lets you delete, report spam, etc with just one click.

It can also be used for social networking. It can alert you of events like new messages and gives you a live Newsfeed of what your friends from Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and LinkedIn are up to.

In addition to these features, you can also add a Digsby Widget to your Blog. You can customize the colors, themes and size.

There are many more tools available, such as Blogo, Twhirl, and a large quantity of other Apps at Twitter Fan Twiki.

Twitter Tips
ProBlogger’s 35 Twitter Tips from 35 Twitter Users
Twitter Fan Twiki
How to use Twitter – Tips for Bloggers
25 Twitter Tips for College Students
Ultimate Twitter How To Guide & 100 Secrets

Do you currently use Twitter? What do you think the advantage of Twitter is? Do you have any widgets or tools that you currently use? As always, I’d love to hear from you.

(You’re welcome to reprint [...]]]> About a week ago, I provided an overview of the Alexa Rankings and Tips. The tips I posted are the same tips I used on October 3rd. Alexa updates their rankings approximately once a week. Here are the steps I’ve taken to improve my rankings, as well as my results.

(You’re welcome to reprint this entry on your website as long as you don’t modify this article and you include a link to Eazy Cheezy)

What I did to Increase my Rankings:
1. I downloaded the Alexa Toolbar and have visited my website each day, after installing it.

2. I posted the Alexa Rankings and Tips, which I used and hoped you will too

3. I added a Alexa Widget at the bottom of my page, which shows my traffic rankings and links in. Also, if you click on this widget on my page, you can see many more details about my site or yours if you add it to your page. A few examples are site overview, traffic details, related links, sites linking in and even a wayback machine to see what your site looked like in the past.

4. I posted an article covering the Top 100 Alexa Rated SItes.

5. I had my site listed on DMOZ, which is the largest human edited directory on the web and co-branded with hundreds of thousands of sites. It can take up to 5 months for it to be added after you submit your site.

Note: I had previously already submitted my site to several search engines, prior to taking the steps listed in this entry.

6. I’ve made atleast 1 entry each day since installing the Alexa toolbar. I try to accomplish atleast 2 entries a day.

7. I ping all the directories I submitted my blog to after each entry to ensure my updates are published. This is a great free tool that pings up to 69 sites in one swoop.
(Thanks again for letting me know about this Steve)

8. I set my blog to my home page.

9. I’ve previously added buttons such as Digg, Stumbled Upon, and a Social Bookmarking Button and have also registered and added a button to Technorati.

10. I have made it common practice to include my Blog Address in my signature block of my e-mail and message boards I post on. I also registered on another message forum, Digitalpoint, which is an awesome source of information. You can’t add your blog address to your signature block until you post atleast 10 times and have been a member for a week, but it’s an awesome source of info.

A Few Tips I didn’t Use
1. After reading about the URL redirect in the tips I found in many articles, I found out that redirects no longer work with Alexa.

2. I have not taken an advertisement out on ExactSeek.com, mainly because I didn’t want to pay a few dollars each month. This is supposed help your rankings by being ranked on ExactSeek.

Downloads
Alexa Toolbar for Internet Explorer
Alexa Toolbar for Firefox
Search Extension for Firefox & Mozilla – Shows Google Rank, Alexa Rank, Alexa incoming/outgoing links & related links.
Alexa Traffic Widgets

My Results So Far
Ranking on October 3nd 7,061,154
Ranking on October 3rd 4,130,697
Ranking on October 7th 3,098,288

Alexa Overview – Quick Overview, Tips and Downloads
Alexa’s Top 100 Global Sites

If you think this post is informative, feel free to Digg or Stumbled Upon this entry. You can also share it with any other social networking tools you use to help share this information. Many thanks for reading Eazy Cheezy.

Have you installed the Alexa Toolbar and followed any of these tips? I’d love to hear what kind of results you have had.