BLOG NAME: Noting Athena | photos, drawings, notes

CATEGORY/NICHE: Personal

ABOUT MY BLOG:

My blog serves as an online outlet of self-expression, thus the very personal touch to it. It's a mixture of everything I think I do: I write there, I show my photos, my drawings, the food I eat, stuff I do for school, etc.

I always try to convince myself that my life is not boring at all. I also hope to keep things interesting in my blog so that backtracking it in the future would be a breeze.

Whenever I do a post, I try to make it "very me" by writing on the photos and even drawing on my face when I want to.

ABOUT MYSELF:

I'm Athena, I just turned 20 and a graduate of Bachelor of Fine Arts : Industrial Design from UP Cebu. I'm an aspiring photographer and designer, but I do a lot of other things in my spare time. I like doing self-portraits, reading, taking photos of stuff and people, and doing artsy-fartsy stuff. I love Oreos and the Internet too.

THE INSPIRATION BEHIND MY BLOG AND HOW LONG HAS IT BEEN AROUND:

The inspiration behind my blog has always been the desire to come up with something that I can really say that I've put an effort to. Also, there is this drive that makes me want to
write better, photograph better and see the progress even in my blog's little space.

I named my blog "Noting Athena" because I wanted something easy to remember with my name on it. Apparently, the "noting" part is easy to remember but some people read it as "nothing", which makes me laugh sometimes.

My blog ( notingathena) has been around for five months now. It's still very young since I just started again after being frustrated by the last one I had. I am very happy with this space now, and I hope it will be here to stay.

HOW DID I GET INTO BLOGGING:
I've been blogging since high school, but every time I start a blog, I usually get tired after a few months or so. I either shut them down or just leave them with no more updates. But a few months ago, I felt like I should just blog again because it's nice to have a place to express oneself and interact with fellow bloggers.

MY FAVORITE BLOG POST:

My favorite blog post as of now is The Red Herring at 3/24 because my friends and I had a small photoshoot after being frustrated for not being able to push through with our thesis defense that day. This is quite memorable because the lighting used was LED lights from a lamp I designed.

This post is a bit long, but trust me, it's worth your time reading it.

What Are Rich Snippets

A snippet is a few lines of text that appear under every search result. They are designed to give users a sense for what’s on the page and why it’s relevant to their query. Rich snippets will surely increase your blog's CTR or click through rate. When your blog or website appears at the search engine result page (Google most importantly) and it contains rich snippets mark up like the breadcrumb, star ratings and authorship, it has a much higher chance to be clicked and visited. A report or certain case study said that, a 30% increase in CTR is achieved when rich snippet markup is applied to a certain webpage.

Introduction to Rich Snippets 



A Visual Guide To Rich Snippets


Visual Guide to Rich Snippets on SEOmoz created by BlueGlass Interactive.

Google.Com supports many types of rich snippets that you can use for your blog or website.


Applying a rich snippet to your blog or website is not too difficult, especially when using the Wordpress blog platform. Wordpress has great plugins to enhance your SERP listing when installed. I am using the following plugins for my personal Wordpress based blog RonLeyba.com

RDFa Breadcrumb - provide links back to each previous page the user navigated through to get to the current page or - in hierarchical site structures - the parent pages of the current one. An easy template tag for showing a breadcrumb menu on your site and on google search results with built in RDFa Markup.

GD Star Rating - plugin allows you to set up rating and review system for posts, pages and comments in your blog. You can set many options for displaying the rating stars, and add widgets into the sidebars for displaying top ratings and other statistics generated by the plugin.


How about for blogspot blogs (blogger.com hosted blogs)? Well, I haven't found out any plugins or widgets for that, yet. You can use and try out this free schema markup creator at http://schema-creator.org/ for you to come up with easy to use and copy paste ready rich snippets/mark up codes. The codes can be pasted at your theme's HTML code or via widgets using the HTML/TEXT option.

For the Google authorship (Your Google+ picture appears at the SERP beside your website description along with the number of circles you belong with), no plugin is needed for that. You just have to follow simple guide about author information in search results that Google laid out in here. The Google Authorship feature works for any type of website or with any blog platform.


To test out your rich snippets or data mark up, you can use this http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets . Below is the result of my blog post titled Learning the 5 Types of College Professors when tested at their tool. Notice the author picture, star rating and breadcrumb above it. Nice right?:



Important Note:
There is no guarantee that rich snippet or your structured markup will be shown for your page on actual SERPs. For more information, check this information from Google discussing the reason why your rich snippets are not appearing (it includes troubleshooting as well).


Hope you got something new in this post. It might look like too much for you to consume, but trust me, it's worth your time studying it if you plan to make it big online.

About The Author:

Ron Leyba is a Filipino Blogger And Optimizer. He recently posted about the Basic Yet Overlooked Tweaks That Enable Social Shares To Reach It's Peak here at FilipinoBloggersWorldwide.Com.

Featured blog #7- Meet the blogger behind Enzo's Point - An educator, OFW, a good friend, an "Outstanding School Paper Adviser of the Philippines " and most of all a Loving Son.


Blog Name : Enzo's Point

Category/Niche : Personal

Blog Description : love, life, leisure, lessons and more...

About the Blog:

Enzo's Point is a personal blog that serves as an avenue for expression of Enzo's personal views in life, love, lessons, and other matters significant to him. He also shares his personal experiences in this site hoping to inspire others.

About yourself/blogger:

Lorenzo Caballes, Jr. has worked as a teacher for six years in the Philippines before he decided to move to Thailand in 2010. He graduated at the Philippine Normal University (Agusan Campus) with a degree of Bachelor of Science in Secondary Education Major in English. While teaching in the Philippines, he was very active in campus journalism and was awarded as an Outstanding School Paper Adviser of the Philippines during the National Schools Press Conference in February 2010.

Aside from watching movies, he also spends his free time reading, surfing the internet, and blogging. He blogs about his travels at TripZone, his latest entertainment finds in The MAGIC in Me and his personal thoughts and experiences in his Enzo's Point.

What inspires this blog:

Enzo thinks he is a very passionate and very expressive person. This blog site came out to be his best friend whom he can share his thoughts with. When his mind is overflowing with thoughts and no one is available to
listen to him, this is where he pours out all his emotions.

How did you get into blogging:

Enzo has always loved writing. He admitted he is not an exceptional writer but he always has a heart to write. Enzo's Point was born when he came to Thailand two years ago. He met two passionate bloggers - Ms. Janet Luison and Mr. John Patrick Benliro who inspired him to blog thus came his first blog site. Since then, he has had several other blog sites but Enzo's Point will always remain as his first love and will always be his home.

What is your favorite blog post and why?

Her Footnote to Youth. This is an article I wrote inspired by a person so close and dear to me. The story got me carried away that it got me sobbing after I finished writing it. I am hoping it somehow would serve as a lesson to the young girls who are right now blinded with passion.

VOTING IS OFFICIALLY CLOSED  AS OF 7/1/12  12:34 am.(Phils. time)

The Logo Design submission is over and it is  time to publish the submitted entries. We received 11  beautiful designs for the contest. We would like to thank all of the participants who took time and effort to join the competition.

The participants got already one personal vote on their own design.
Anonymous commenters are not counted as a vote.
Rules and guidelines for Logo design entry, check  here

Here are the entries posted for you to vote. Please post the number of your chosen logo and the reason why? Best commenter will receive cash prize too. Let us vote for the best entry. Wish you all the best of luck.

Featured Blog #6


Blog Name : Fit and Fashion Mom
Category/Niche :  Beauty, Fashion and Entertainment

Rhymes...Rhymes...Rhymes..., my title seems poetic isn't it?  What I have for you in this article are simple tips and tweaks that you can do with your social media sharing buttons and icons that can surely make an impact to your blog/website's social  "shareabality" and reach.

This post is actually inspired by you, my fellow Filipino bloggers. As a member of numerous groups on Facebook that gear towards leveraging social community and engagement, I have seen numerous blogs that are quite awesome with jaw dropping photos that are really worth sharing within the community. But the problem is, your social sharing buttons are not appealing and visible enough for your readers (like me) to share your contents within their circle of friends and community. Meaning to say, I wanted to share your post, article or content, but your own social sharing buttons won't allow me to!.

Image  Credit: When People Share On Social Media

The Problems (that makes your reader or user not to share your worth sharing blogpost).

Problem 1). When I click the twitter button, it brings me to the twitter sharing page where the only thing I see is the URL of the blogpost. No title. No text. No info where the post came from or who wrote it the least.

Problem 2). I can't find the social sharing buttons/icons. I am confused!

Problem 3). Too much and too many social sharing buttons. I am confused!

The Tweaks (that will surely shoot up your social shareablity along with bringing fresh traffic and earnings as well).

Solution For Problem 1). Customize your twitter sharing button. Some plugins come with their own customized code that you should edit and tweak to cater your blog. Some of them need to have your personal website url and your very own twitter name at the code. Be sure to check them or look at the plugin/widget's documentation to properly know how to set them up.

Solution For Problem 2). Keep your social sharing buttons/icons prominently placed or located at your blog where it can be seen at first glance. Either place the button under the post title, at the side (scrolling or floating) or at the end of the post. This is much better than placing them within 2 clicks such as using plugins that hide it from the naked eye. For example, if you are using a plugin that uses a button that will display all of your social sharing buttons only if its clicked. Furthermore, it is best to have a call to action close to your buttons that says "Share This Article To Your Friends and Foes" or something like that.

Solution For Problem 3). Keep it simple as much as possible, one to two SETS of social sharing buttons are enough. But having 3 or more are a bit too much. Need no more explanation here.

For sure some of you will say, "that's basic enough and it's a COMMON SENSE sort of thing!" But always remember the saying "Common sense is not common nowadays". Thanks for reading. Hope you find this article worth sharing!

About The Author:

Ron Leyba is a Filipino Blogger And Optimizer. He loves Filipino chicken recipes and his all time favorite is the world famous Chicken adobo.

The controversial split decision  maybe unfair on Manny Pacquio's part  but was one of  the best thing  that ever  happened for boxing. Everybody was expecting Pacquiao to win  over Bradley but it was the other way around. What just had happened create different reactions to  Filipino people.  As expected,  the verdict  made the people talked more  about it  when the  fight ended.

We are having a new Logo design Contest for the group . All the FBW members are invited to join. The chosen design would be the official group logo. To make it easy and clear for all the participants, here are the rules.

Featured blog #5



Blog Name: Filipino Blogger on New Media | Jerome Ibuyan
Category/Niche: Blogging and Social Media

I am happy to let you know that in such a short period of time, Filipino Bloggers Worldwide is now at  PR 1 and with an Alexa Ranking of 349,397. Here are the Top 5 most viewed posts for the month of May.

The 20-year-old cellist from Rhode Island, Olivia Culpo, beat 50 contestants and was crowned Miss USA 2012 held at Las Vegas. The beauty, brains and talented beauty Queen will compete in the Miss Universe pageant in December.