Nor does Google’s announcement mean the end of Feedburner services . . .yet.

But the writing is on the wall.

Feedburner was and still is a lovely free service to bloggers that kept track of your posts, distributes them in the individual feed readers of your subscribers and/or sends the posts to the inboxes of your readers. Some services like Invesp use Feedburner stats in their evaluation of your website.

To entice you to use this service, Feedburner developed an impressive array of services, from keeping track of the number of subscribers who looked at your post to giving you little widgets to display your numbers.

And while Google, the owner of Feedburner since 2009, hasn’t spoken publicly about its strategy for Feedburner, why it is phasing out Adsense for Feedburner or ending the API access to programmers, one can only assume that Feedburner is not making enough money to keep its corporate masters happy.

Fortunately for you, while its the end of the Feedburner world as we know it, there are relatively painless ways to keep the same flow of information to your subscribers, especially if you are a WordPress user.

As Leo Dimilo said in his post

if you are using WordPress, you really don’t need a service. WordPress automatically generates feeds for everything from comments to pages to posts . . .

To make use of WordPress’s built in capabilities you need only look at one of my favorite plug-ins, Jetpack. This perennially useful collection of services for WordPress has a subscription widget in its arsenal. All you need to do is to upload the Jetpack plug-in, and drag it to an appropriate widget space. You can change the text messages of this widget, but unfortunately it is a little plain with no way (except through the php sections of your WordPress template) to insert an image. If you don’t want to fiddle with php then you can put a html widget and place it above the Jetpack widget. Upload a graphic to an image server like Photobucket or Flickr. Then you take the image code and plop it into html widget. If you look to the right hand side of the blog you will see I’ve done just that.

For other people who self host without WordPress, you’ll have to do a little more work, like subscribe and pay for a mail service. Plenty of blogs made lists about these services. You can check out the blog twentytwenty for some suggestions.

Start looking around and making your plans, since Google is not known for giving tons of advance time before it pulls the plug. As for me, it may be the end of the Feedburner world as we know it, but I feel fine.

___________________________________________________________________

Beth Turnage authors Astrology Explored as well as being publisher of Astrology Media Press. Beth is available for private consultations. You can contact Beth at starrynightastro@aol.com.
____________________________________________________________________

Is My Message Getting Across?

Wonder no longer. If you haven’t stumbled across it yet, Klout is a free online service that measures your online social influence. Scaled from 1 to 100, the Klout score measures not just your number of connections (followers) but your influence on them. Drawing from your social media accounts, responses by others to your posts, tweets, retweets, FB likes and comments, Google plus interactions and more, Klout calculates how people respond to you. Klout scores are supplemented with three nominally more specific measures, which Klout calls “true reach,” “amplification,” and “network impact.”

Not that Klout isn’t without its detractors. Wikipedia tells us:

Critics have pointed out that Klout scores are not representative of the influence a person really has, highlighted by Barack Obama, President of the United States, having a lower influence score than a number of bloggers.[11] Other social critics argue that the Klout score devalues authentic online communication and promotes social ranking and stratification by trying to quantify human interaction.[12] Such criticism may become quickly outdated due to the dynamic nature of the moving target “social influence”: a recent update to Klout’s algorithms does now rank the importance of Barack Obama in a way that more reflects our perception.[13]

The site has been criticized for violating the privacy of minors, and for exploiting users for its own profit.[14]

John Scalzi has described the principle behind Klout’s operation as “socially evil” in its exploitation of its users’ status anxiety.[15] Charles Stross has described the service as “the Internet equivalent of herpes,” blogging that his analysis of Klout’s terms and conditions reveals that the company’s business model is illegal in the United Kingdom, where it conflicts with the Data Protection Act 1998; Stross advises readers to delete their Klout accounts and opt out of Klout services.[16]

A social evil? Maybe or maybe not. But as blogger Molly McHugh observed:

First accepting that we are being measured by our social influence was a tough pill to swallow – an accurate one (it’s happening whether we like it or not), but a tough one. And then the idea that a Web app could be the deciding factor in all this proved even more difficult to accept,

What You Can Learn from Klout

Aside from scoring your interactions, you can see from your dashboard your top social interactions. Not only do you see the posts and responses, you see, among other things, who re-tweeted your content. The My Score Summary tab displays which social networks your spread your influence. Klout’s easily accessible interface is a one stop shopping for gathering intel on your activities. With this data you can make decisions on where to put or expand your social networking and promoting energies.

How Do You Stack Up?

Klout isn’t especially vocal about measuring one person against another. Nor does it provide segmented demographics, which would be interesting to see. In the FAQ’s tab it does say that the average Klout score is 40. Obama’s Klout score is 99. If you are somewhere between those two numbers you are above average.

And Then There Are Perks

Advertisers contract with Klout to distribute Perks such as giveaways or special discounts in the hopes that recipients promote their products. You can accept or decline a perk. Some things are cool, others not so much but its always worth it to check in to see for what you qualify.

Should You Use Klout?

You may not be copasetic with measuring your social influence. You may not be comfortable with the lack of privacy that Klout implies. But, hey, its an online world out there and we are being measured whether we like it or not. At least with Klout you get to see yourself as the social media world sees you. Isn’t that worth a look?

___________________________________________________________________

Beth Turnage authors Astrology Explored as well as being publisher of Astrology Media Press. Beth is available for private consultations. You can contact Beth at starrynightastro@aol.com.
____________________________________________________________________

But Social Media does not do the entire job to organize what you want to know. Long before social media cropped up as information disseminators, the folks at Netscape created a feed aggregator that individuals could use personally, that would bring content to them as the content was produced. Called at first the RDF site summary, then later RSS, which some people say stands for “really simple syndication” RSS caught on like wildfire sparking competition and no end of controversy as to who owned the RSS concept. Nontheless, RSS continues to play a role in helping readers create their individual news and information streams. If you don’t love your RSS Feed, its time time learn!

What RSS Does for You

The number of your RSS subscribers gives you a piece of information that looking at other web analytics does not. It tells you the number of actual people who finds your content interesting or valuable enough to make part of their regular reading. If you want to know how you stack up compared to other astrology blogs you can go to FeedCompare and punch in your and up to three competing blogs to check out the numbers. This kind of information is also used by other sites as well in gauging how popular your site is. Both Invesp and and Hub Grader use RSS numbers in the ranking of your site. In addition news aggregators such as Astrodispatch and Astrology Blogger use RSS feeds to automatically update your content on their sites.

Its up to you where you want to syndicate your site. Google’s Feedburner is popular, though others are popular too.

When you create your feed, your syndicator should produce a piece of code for you to insert in your website that will lead your loyal reader to the syndication site. Your fan will then choose the “reader” they use to view content and add your site. Nothing is simpler.

Standard RSS Icon

Wikipedia tells us:

In December 2005, the Microsoft Internet Explorer team[18] and Microsoft Outlook team[19] announced on their blogs that they were adopting the feed icon first used in the Mozilla Firefox browser. In February 2006, Opera Software followed suit.[20] This effectively made the orange square with white radio waves the industry standard for RSS and Atom feeds, replacing the large variety of icons and text that had been used previously to identify syndication data.

Around for six plus years, the problem for many bloggers is that the icon for the RSS reader has become so familiar that many people ignore it. If you are a seasoned blogger like me seeing little increase in your RSS numbers, or you just want to start off right, its time to up your game and get a unique design for your RSS invitation. I created the one on top in Photoshop and put it on my Astrology Explored page. In less than a week my RSS subscriptions shot up 25%.

Oh Beth! You Make it Sound So Simple

Some of my astrology blogger friends are web page designers, so they know what I’m talking about. But many of you aren’t photo shoppers. If you want if you use WordPress you can use the RSS Star I created.

a.) Copy this web address:

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7141/6775995869_ed49c1b923_m.jpg

b.) Open the widget with your RSS code. Look for piece of code that says:

c.) insert the web address just after the first ” and before the second ” so it looks like this:

d.) Leave the rest of the code just as it is.

e.) Type in a snappy invitation at in your widget title bar.

You can see how it looks at the top of my right side bar. See, easy! Click on it and you will see it goes right to where your readers can subscribe.

Question: What have you done to increase your RSS readership?
_________________________________________________________________

Beth Turnage authors Astrology Explored as well as being publisher of Astrology Media Press. Beth is available for private consultations. You can contact Beth at starrynightastro@aol.com.
____________________________________________________________________

Those for non-astrologers that are a little lost with the first paragraph, Mercury is the planet of communication. It rules anything that has to do with communications, including the written word and computer code. Two to three times a year Mercury appears to travel backward in its orbit when the Earth overtakes speedy Mercury’s position in the solar system. During this time, all sorts of communications go wonky, email messages disappear, travel gets delayed, cars breakdown and computers go caput. Astrologers breathe a sign of relief when Mercury goes direct again, but we also know that we aren’t out of the woods yet. Only until Mercury the point in the zodiac where it originally turned backward on its course, when it is out of the shadow period, is communications harmony restored in the heavens.

So it was when 3.3 was released on the very day Mercury went direct, but still in the shadow period astrology bloggers everywhere who use WordPress drew in a sharp intake of breath. Jeffrey Kishner advised us in our astrology bloggers facebook group:

WordPress 3.3 upgrade is available today, right when Mercury stations direct. This is a conspiracy by Matt Mullenweg to destroy your blog. OK I’m kidding, but I think it would be wise to wait a few days, do some testing, before you hit “update.”

Chris Brennan added that we should back up our databases.

Of course, me being a rash Aquarian didn’t take Jeffrey seriously and dashed off:

I updated Astrology Explored and it works just fine. But then again I bought my new used car when Mercury stationed, so I’m waiting for the shoe to drop on that one.

But in the end I encountered a small glitch which I’ll tell you about in a minute but other people weren’t so lucky.

Paul at ineedhelpwithwordpress.com reported that the plug-ins WP SEO Pix and Popup Domination didn’t play welll with the new version of wordpress.

Others reported problems with the Visual and HTML tabs disappearing or just plain problems with upgrading through the admin panel.

Moderator Ipstenu at WordPress.Org Support printed this master list of plugins with problems:

* Reports on twitter that the Postie plugin breaks 3.3 admin.

* Popup Domination (a plugin NOT available on the WordPress repository) is breaking 3.3. There is an update, but as this is a premium (i.e. you buy it) plugin, you’re not going to get a lot of support here.

* IntenseDebate is showing a miss-match of comments pending.

* Count Per Day breaks the Media Uploader.

* Advanced Access Manager causes a white screen of death.

* TubePress interferes with drag’n'drop in the Admin area.

* White Label CMS breaks image insertion.

* All In One SEO reported to lose all custom menu label tags.

http://wordpress.org/support/topic/menu-label-issue-in-wp33-upgrade

* Improved Page Permalinks reported to cause newly published Pages to produce 404s.

* Ad blocker plugins may conflict with the visual editor.

* Viperbar may become de-enabled and lose all settings.

http://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-viperbar-plug-in-deactivateds-itself-and-loses-data-on-upgrade-to-wp-33

* Google XML Sitemaps 4.0Beta7 has blank line

http://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-google-xml-sitemaps-beta-7-broken-on-wordpress-33?replies=1

* WordPress MU Domain Mapping doesn’t let you change settings. The dev version fixes this.

* WordPress MU Sitewide Tags Plugin also has issues, please try the dev version of that plugin too.

And reports these theme conflicts:

WooThemes framework breaks the upload/insert media link. Per their site, refreshing your cache will fix this (props Drew!)

Atuhualpa has some issues with plugins that use the updated jQuery (reported Dec 10th)

For a more complete list check out his trouble shootings posts at wordpress.org.

The Code Ninjas at WordPress recommend as first fixes:

- flushing any caching plugins you might be running, as well as server and/or browser caches.

- deactivating all plugins (yes, all) to see if this resolves the problem. If this works, re-activate the plugins one by one until you find the problematic plugin(s). If you can’t get into your admin dashboard, try resetting the plugins folder by FTP or PhpMyAdmin. Sometimes, an apparently inactive plugin can still cause problems. Also remember to deactivate any plugins in the mu-plugins folder. The easiest way is to rename that folder to mu-plugins-old

- switching to the Twenty Eleven theme to rule out any theme-specific problems. If you can’t log in to change themes, you can remove the theme folders via FTP so the only one is twentyeleven. That will force your site to use it.

- manually upgrading. When all else fails, download a fresh copy of the latest.zip file of 3.3 (top right on this page) to your computer, and use that to copy up. You may need to delete the wp-admin and wp-includes folders on your server. Read the Manual Update directions first!

My little problem was that I couldn’t update my posts after publishing. After swearing, I got to work finding documentation and found others had the problem too. For me however, the fix was a simple as updating my Jetpack plug-in which includes a proofreader. Others have not been so lucky.

As we wait for the Coding Ninjas to work out the bugs this astrologer has a little piece of advice:

Ask the astrologers when is a good time to put out a new release!

Image published under a Creative Commons license from Flickr.

__________________________________________________________________

Beth Turnage authors Astrology Explored as well as being publisher of Astrology Media Press. Beth is available for private consultations. You can contact Beth at starrynightastro@aol.com.
____________________________________________________________________

Of course AE has taken some hits since 451 Press shuttered. I created Astrology Media Press on the now defunct BlogsMu platform before I finally took the plunge into self hosting my modest astrology network. All that moving around, losing content and links took its toll. Where once proud Astrology Explored was the 6th ranking blog on Invesp, now it is only 65th. And once Jamie Darkstar decided to use only Alexa rankings for his Best Astrology Blogs page I dropped off that radar all together.

So being the competitive sort, and not the kind of the person to stay down for the count I decided today to get serious about my Alexa rank.

What is the Alexa Rank?

For those that don’t know Wikipedia tells us this about Alexa:

Alexa ranks sites based on tracking information of users of its Alexa Toolbar for Internet Explorer and Firefox and from their extension for Chrome.

There is some controversy over how representative Alexa’s user base is of typical Internet behavior,[17] especially for less trafficked sites.[15] In 2007 Michael Arrington provided a few examples of relative Alexa ranking known to contradict data from comScore, including ranking YouTube ahead of Google.[18]

On April 16, 2008, many users reported dramatic shifts in their Alexa rankings. Alexa confirmed this later in the day with an announcement that they had released the new Alexa ranking system, claiming that they now take into account more data sources “beyond Alexa Toolbar users”.[19]

Based on page views, whether or not you agree with how Alexa tracks web pages, it still is one measurement of how well your blog is doing in the blog-o-sphere.

Here is one blogger’s recommendations increasing Alexa rank:

1. Download a Alexa Toolbar;Download Alexa toolbar for your browser and Set your website or blog as a home page in your browser. You can also encourage your friends to install alexa toolbar and make your site as a homepage.This will increase your page views and will also give good ranking to your site.

2. Put an Alexa rank widget on your blog or site.
Each click by visitor in widget will be counted as visit.

3.Get your blog listed in any high PR directories.
Your site should have backlinks from high PR sites,forums. Post your site links in high PR do follow forums.

Counting your own page views seems like cheating to me, so no, I’m not going to do that. However, I’m all for installing a widget. Nothing is simpler. But wait, there’s a catch. You need to claim your blog before you collect your Alexa widget and this is a little bit of a headache.

What to do? (Instructions and illustrations follow)

Alexa gives you several ways to claim your blog, but they all involve installing their verification code for your blog somewhere on your website. The simplest way is to put the verification code in a comment, but that didn’t work for me, so I was instructed to install the verification code in my template.

Not being a programmer, and knowing just enough html to be dangerous, though not necessarily effective, this last instruction caused beads of sweat to form on my brow much like the time I had to replace the power board on my old Mac.

So after reading the Alex faqs on installing this code, I opened my template in my WordPress theme and went to the section marked header and looked down the code until I saw the head tag and scrolled down until I saw the /head tag. I put the little piece of code between the /script tag and the /head tag so not as to disturb any of the script, like so.

I then hit the “Verify Blog” button and received this happy little message:

Yes. The rest was just adding following the prompts, adding some info to my “profile” and gathering and placing the Alexa widget. See, that was easy, wasn’t it?

As for having getting your blog listed on high PR sites, that is a post for another day.

Alexa illustration courtesy of a Creative Coomons license issued thi by user dallco_photo on Photobucket

__________________________________________________________________

Beth Turnage authors Astrology Explored as well as being publisher of Astrology Media Press. Beth is available for private consultations. You can contact Beth at starrynightastro@aol.com.
____________________________________________________________________

“This spam blog is now *stealing my traffic.* It’s one thing to steal content (which I know is just plain wrong) but when I search for the above keywords, the spam blog is #2 in the results for *my blog post* and I’m not even on the front page! ”

Spam blogs, the brazen hussies of the internet, have no shame in printing every word of your post as their own. These nasty little things are the curse and bane of every internet writer, but more so for astrology bloggers since our niche is small and it takes ever so much work to get our posts noticed.

Google has some strong words about spam blogging:

Spam blogs cause various problems, beyond simply wasting a few seconds of your time when you happen to come across one. They can clog up search engines, making it difficult to find real content on the subjects that interest you. They may scrape content from other sites on the web, using other people’s writing to make it look as though they have useful information of their own. And if an automated system is creating spam posts at an extremely high rate, it can impact the speed and quality of the service for other, legitimate users.

Needless to say, Google does not approve of spam bloggers but their response, “report it and we’ll get to it when we can” hardly makes anyone feel better.

Fortunately there are steps you can take to stop the spam blogger from stealing your content.

1.) Look up the host provider for the spam blogger. You can do this by going to any domain name seller like Godaddy, type in the domain name of the spam blogger, and follow the link to the WHOIS database. Even if the spam blogger has paid to mask his or her name and contact information the domain nameserver will be listed. If need be do an internet search of the domain name server and it should take you right to the hosting provider.

2.) File a DMCA complaint with the host provider. Wikipedia explains:

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent measures (commonly known as digital rights management or DRM) that control access to copyrighted works. It also criminalizes the act of circumventing an access control, whether or not there is actual infringement of copyright itself. In addition, the DMCA heightens the penalties for copyright infringement on the Internet.

Below is the DMCA complaint I filed with the spam blogger’s host provider when I had this problem. Note that I have removed the offending spam bloggers URL, but this information needs to be filed with your complaint.

To whom it may concern:

As required under Sections 512(c)(3) and 512(d)(3) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (17 U.S.C. §§512(c)(3) and 512(d)(3)), I hereby give notification of possible copyright infringement.

1. The original copyrighted material is listed at the URL(s) below:

The astrology of finance: Bank of America to go bankrupt?

http://astrologyexplored.net/home/?p=2876

Astrological Society of Connecticut Lecture: Neptune in Pisces–From Collective to Personal Meaning

http://astrologyexplored.net/home/?p=2784

Learning Traditional Astrology at the AFA

http://astrologyexplored.net/home/?p=2861

Astrology and Mythology: Eros–Beauty and the Beast

http://astrologyexplored.net/home/?p=2714

2. The following URL(s) are infringing upon this copyright:

The astrology of finance: Bank of America to go bankrupt?
spam blogger/the-astrology-of-finance-ban…
IP Address
Astrological Society of Connecticut Lecture: Neptune in Pisces–From Collective to Personal Meaning
spam blogger/astrological-society-of-conne…
IP Address
Learning Traditional Astrology at the AFA
spam blogger/learning-traditional-astrolo…
IP Address
Astrology and Mythology: Eros–Beauty and the Beast
spam blogger/astrology-and-mythology-eros…
IP Address

Each of these articles were reprinted in their entirety without my permission on the URL listed above.

Additional Information:

Theseworks are whole and original with me predating the publication on the website.

I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described above as allegedly infringing is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law. I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

Please expeditiously remove or disable all access to the infringing material listed above. Should you require any further information regarding this matter, please contact me at the address, telephone number or email address indicated below:

Digitally Signed,
Beth Riggott-Turnage

October 16, 2011

Home Address
Town, Zip
Phone Number
starrynightastro@aol.com

This seems like a lot of work, but actually since the spammer used automation to post my work, the link was automatically sent to my Word Press comment section. I copy and pasted the spammer’s info into an Excel worksheet then matched the spammers URL’s to mine. From there it was another easy copy and past into the DMCA complaint.

Within 48 hours I received notification from the host provider that their client took down the work and there has been no problems since.

Disclaimer: This work is not intended to substitute for legal advice. As with anything, if you have legal questions you should consult a qualified professional.

Image courtesy of laurelrusswurm’s Creative Commons license as detailed by Flickr.

__________________________________________________________________

Beth Turnage authors Astrology Explored as well as being publisher of Astrology Media Press. Beth is available for private consultations. You can contact Beth at starrynightastro@aol.com.
____________________________________________________________________

courtesy of Flickr user floeschie

Fortunately, there are tools available to help bring awareness to your blog.

AstroDispatch

The generous-of-spirit Elsa runs AstroDispatch, a popular aggregator of astrology blog posts, articles and videos. This site is an excellent source of traffic. Elsa acts as an editor, so there’s no guarantee your blog will be included, or maybe your blog will be included but she won’t include every new blog post you publish. (I can’t speak for her, but this is what I’ve observed.)

My advice: Link to both ElsaElsa and AstroDispatch on your blogroll, then visit her Contact page. (1) Tell her you’ve linked to her. (2) Ask for your blog to be considered, and include your blog’s RSS feed. (If you have a WordPress blog, it’s just your URL followed by /feed.)

Reddit for Astrologyblogs

Chris Brennan of The Horoscopic Astrology Blog just this week created an Astrology Blogs channel on Reddit. You can submit your own posts (or your readers can do that for you), and Redditers (?) can vote links up or down in popularity.

You can promote this group with a widget or button, and if you have a self-hosted WordPress blog, message him and he can probably help you out with a button customized for the Astrology Blogs group.

Other Directories

• Astrology TopListed will rank your blog if you include their widget on your site.
• Astrology Blog List is a glorified RSS reader including select blogs, run by Julie Rimmer. I don’t know if she responds to requests for inclusion, or if she curates based on her tastes.
• Astrology AllTop is another glorified RSS aggregator, but part of a much larger ecosystem. You can submit a site.
• Astrology Thoughts also includes blogs, and you can submit yours.
• Best Astrology Blogs is a good source of traffic but only if your blog is popular enough (according to Alexa) to be included.
• And let’s not forget Astrology Blogger, another aggregator hosted by none other than Beth Turnage, the hostess of this here blog!

Comment below: What did I leave out?

About the Author

Jeffrey Kishner is publisher of Sasstrology.

Changes to How You Share Content in Notes
You currently automatically import content from your website or blog into your Facebook notes. Starting November 22nd, this feature will no longer be available, although you’ll still be able to write individual notes. The best way to share content from your website is to post links on your Wall. Learn more about notes.

Now that is an inconvenience! I loved how Networked Blogs would automatically post to whatever page I set up. This allowed me to post content from all my blogs at once on three separate pages, my personal page, and Astrology Explored and Astrology Media Press. Then happily the posts would move along to Twitter.

You can take away my email notifications, you can chuck my application notifications but please Mark Zuckerberg don’t take away the my auto posts. I have some choice words for you, its just that they aren’t fit for a family audience. Expect a zinging email. I’m telling you if you don’t let me aggregate I’m going to be aggravated!

Image courtesy of Franco Bouly’s Creative Commons license as detailed by Flickr.

__________________________________________________________________

Beth Turnage authors Astrology Explored as well as being publisher of Astrology Media Press. Beth is available for private consultations. You can contact Beth at starrynightastro@aol.com.
____________________________________________________________________

Before you get your knickers in a bunch, it may surprise you to know that Google is asking the same thing each and every time someone runs a search on a topic. And the reason for this is that Google has changed the parameters of the search algorithm–again.

But lets backtrack and take a look at the recent changes Google has made to its search algorithm.

In June of 2010, Google announced the new algorithm changes which they dubbed the “Caffeine Search Index”. This how Google explained it:

Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches than our last index, and it’s the largest collection of web content we’ve offered. Whether it’s a news story, a blog or a forum post, you can now find links to relevant content much sooner after it is published than was possible ever before. . . With Caffeine, we analyze the web in small portions and update our search index on a continuous basis, globally. As we find new pages, or new information on existing pages, we can add these straight to the index. That means you can find fresher information than ever before—no matter when or where it was published.

But in addition to this change, Google, not content with the results of their Caffeinated changes tweaked the algorithm even more, this time decided to blunt the force of the traditional sword of SEO strategy: keywords. In a bid to increase the Google Adwords program, Google changed the algorithm to read only those keywords that it deemed to be of commercial value.

And then like a schoolgirl unable to decide what to wear on a hot date, Google decided to tweak the algorithm even more to include the amount of social engagement a post generated. This took the form of measuring Facebook likes and links to other social media (except strangely not Twitter).

The result of these game changes was that smaller blogs and websites lost ground. Bloggers, like some of my friends at the Facebook group called Astrology Bloggers were taken by surprise by the changes as the amount of Google search traffic and number of hits dropped.

Now Google is upping the ante one more time with its latest improvement, that of assuming you want the most recent post on a topic.

Given the incredibly fast pace at which information moves in today’s world, the most recent information can be from the last week, day or even minute, and depending on the search terms, the algorithm needs to be able to figure out if a result from a week ago about a TV show is recent, or if a result from a week ago about breaking news is too old.

So what does this mean for us astrology bloggers? It means we all need to post more frequently if we want to get our message across. It means we need to write more often on topics that are in the news, and it means that if we want our evergreen posts to be seen we need to do a better job of deep linking them in our “fresher” pieces of work.

So what are you waiting for? Get fresh!

Photo published under a Creative Commons license as displayed by Flickr.

__________________________________________________________________

Beth Turnage authors Astrology Explored as well as being publisher of Astrology Media Press. Beth is available for private consultations. You can contact Beth at starrynightastro@aol.com.
____________________________________________________________________

In the ancient world astrology was woven in the warp and woof of daily lives. Moon and Sun cycles were studied for times as to when to plant and when to harvest. There was no questions about the efficacy of astrology. It was proven every day. But modern people have moved away from the patterns of agriculture and astrology faced stormy waters during the Age of Enlightenment when people realized that the earth moved around the sun and not vice versa. This caused a crisis of faith in astrology and eventually its practice was stripped of its role in society.

Fast forward to after a wonderful keynote address by James H. Holden. M. A. FAFA at the American Federation of Astrologers’ 2011 conference. An attendee asked Mr. Holden if he thought astrology could be made mainstream. He said no, that in essence we lacked credibility in scientific circles, and though misguided that those circles might be, its not likely we would overcome those hurdles.

This is certainly is how many of us experience astrology, and I’ll grant that for many, many years, our access to shape public opinion was limited. The access given was through the narrow lens traditional news media, and often that lens was distorted for the purpose of “sexing up” a story. (We all remember the latest round of the “thirteenth sign” story.) But with the advent of Social Media, we have the possibility of many people circumventing traditional avenues, so this hurdle shouldn’t be so great.

So what’s holding us up?

I see a few things happening. And in my opinion a lot has to do with us.

First the perception that science doesn’t take us seriously isn’t quite true anymore. Scientific studies are being done quite frequently that show a correlation between what happens in the heavens reflect what happens on the earth. Recently as study done at Vanderbilt University demonstrated that the season in which one is born has a concrete effect on personality. While not a study of astrologer per se, science keeps bumping against results that mirror what we’ve been saying about astrology all along. In fact current objections to astrology does not a have a scientific basis at all, but is part of a well orchestrated attempt by one organization to promote their “rationalist” agenda. While we do have some prejudices to overcome, they are more on the order of hill rather than a mountain.

Second many of us have to change how we think about ourselves as astrologers and our contribution to the world. How many of you don’t use your real name when you post a piece? Why is that? Are you afraid of being “outed” to the world? My point is, if we can’t bring ourselves to own what it is we do in public, how do we expect the world at large to take us seriously?

Third, most of us are not making use of the power of social media. So many of the working astrologers I associate with are doggedly slow at attempting social media. Many astrological organizations are just dipping their toe in the waters and not fully utilizing the tools at hand. For instance, and forgive me AFA, at the eve of or even in the early hours of this major conference not a tweet, or a single photograph of the event is on the AFA Facebook page. In fact, the only wall post is by Chris Brennan, a presenter at the conference.

But, AFA, just to show you you aren’t being singled out, my home organization the Astrological Society of Connecticut was very slow to adopt social media. We just got our Facebook page last year though we’ve been in business 39 years and Facebook public for the past 6 years.

Pluto in Capricorn is about breaking down old structures. Traditional news media is on its ear trying to figure out how to survive in world were a tweet can get a message out faster then they can. The Aquarian Age is here, folks and its time we step up to the plate. Yes, it takes time to build your followers, it takes work to engage them and creativity to keep them. But there is no better time than now. The more voices that speak the louder the message is. Use your social media tools to make astrology mainstream!

Image courtesy of Some_Communications by Creative Commons license as detailed by Flickr.

__________________________________________________________________

Beth Turnage authors Astrology Explored as well as being publisher of Astrology Media Press. Beth is available for private consultations. You can contact Beth at starrynightastro@aol.com.
____________________________________________________________________