by Jennifer Laycock

A round up of what Jennifer read and found interesting today on the web. From how Google ranks sites to writing effective blog posts to Twitter Zombie attacks, check out half a dozen posts Jen thought you need to read.

• Looking to beef up the impact of your blog? Problogger shares "Nine Signs of an Effective Blog Post" today and at least six of them are worth reading. (I kid, I kid...) Make sure you read all the way to number nine as it's my favorite of the bunch. (Then come back here and take note that I followed number nine and gave you an action item.)






• There's a lot of buzz today over Google's "transparency" because of a new post on the Google Blog by Amit Singhal, the Google Fellow who heads up the Google Rankings team. It's an interesting post, but I raise my eyebrows at anything from Google that continues to claim there's no manual editing going on over there.






• Ever feel like Wikipedia seems to show up more often than not in search results over at Google? (That's cause they do.) Michael Gray takes a look at this phenomenon and breaks down several examples of why Wikipedia shouldn't be seen as the all-encompassing first class resource Google seems to view it as.






• Amber over at PPC Hero notes Google is now offering up real numbers in their keyword tool. While Google will still offer up the green bar showing search volume, they'll also give you the actual number of searches over the past month and the average monthly search volume over the past year.






• Anita Campbell points to a new paper out of Harvard Business School and asks if It's Time to Chuck the Long Tail Theory. (Before you freak out, it's not.) Anita does a nice job rebuffing the Harvard paper and explaining that now, more than ever...the long tail allows small businesses a true chance to compete online.






• And just because you need a little laugh in your life now and then...check out this great "Twitter Timeline During a Zombie Attack" post put together last night in the week hours of the morning.

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