This post is part of a weekly series, Fetching Friday, featuring the best posts of the week in blogging, making money online, SEO, and social media on kikolani.com.
The Resources Mashup
Here are some of the best articles I have stumbled upon, retweeted on @kikolani, and read in RSS subscriptions this week.
Blogging / Writing
- 9 Habits Of Extraordinary Blogs – Every single one of the top multi-million pageview blogs and blogzines out there have these characteristics without fail.
- 10 Common Business Blogging Saboteurs and How To Overcome Them
- How To Organize a Messy Sidebar For Better User Experience – The sidebar is prime real estate of your blog and it displays on most of your blog’s pages. Make it relevant and useful for your visitors while making it work for you and your goals.
- How to Know Which Plugins are Killing Your Site’s Performance – How to use the developer tools available in Google Chrome, to work out which components of your blog are causing you issues.
- Writers, Unleash Your Inner Honey Badger – It’s hard to keep plugging away, sending queries, making cold calls, updating your website. Sometimes you just want to crawl into bed and just stay there. But don’t! Do this instead.
Business / Career
- 45 Awesome Posts on A/B, Multivariate, and Usability Testing – Learn more about A/B testing, multivariate testing, and usability testing for copy, design, landing pages, PPC, and much more.
- Proving Trust on the Web – For those of us who’ve been deep in the trenches of online marketing for years, the question of who to trust may seem inane.
- 8 Small Business Social Media Tips From the Pros – Small business social media marketing: hot tips from the pros on how small businesses can use social media to get more clients.
- Beware of Fancy Formulas and Slick Shortcuts – Sometimes, you get advice from an expert that embarrasses you because you should have known better. It may be great advice once you are ready for it!
- The Most Common Business Blogging and SEO Mistake in the World – Most business blogs are suffering from one major mistake, a mistake that kills SEO and future traffic.
Personal Development / Productivity
- 17 Unproductive Habits to Let Go – Our daily life is full of unproductive habits and rituals that we execute – whether on a conscious or unconscious level. This makes us less efficient and productive than we could potentially be.
- 14 Inspiring Life and Business Lessons From Richard Branson – 14 incredible life and business lessons that will inspire you.
- The 5 Absolute Worst Months to Start Getting Things Done – Here are the 5 absolute worst months to start using David Allen’s Getting Things Done – or GTD – methodology.
- 7 Success Secrets That 99% of People Don’t Know or Use – Some people seem to have it all; great relationships, love, friendship, money and success in every venture they go into. So what makes these people different?
- Musings from Australia: Luck Has Nothing to Do with Dreams – The inspiration from this post was not just by luck. It came straight from the wind and the sound of the waves crashing against these rocks.
Search Engines / SEO / Analytics
- How To Use UTM Parameters In Google Analytics 5 – If you want to get down to specifics about your traffic, you need to start using UTM parameters for custom campaigns in Google Analytics 5.
- How to Increase Your Google Website Traffic by 30.01% – Looking to improve your Google website traffic? One trick you can try is to re-optimize each blog post and get backlinks to them. The author shows how he did this and got an 30% increase in search engine traffic.
- Eric Ward Answers 10 Questions on BizDev Link Building – Helping stretch the mind of link builders into thinking more deeply about link building and its importance to business.
- The Number 1 Mistake New SEO Consultants Make – Hoping that people can learn from the mistakes myself and my colleagues often see new SEO consultants make when entering the industry, the author recently asked a group of successful search engine marketing folks what is the number one mistake they have seen new consultants make in SEO.
- Google Admits ‘Organic Results’ Are Filler To Pump Deceptive Ads at Consumers – Those who coddled Google & gave Google the benefit of the doubt now have egg on their face, and the industry as a whole is poorer for their poor judgement & lack of stewardship.
Social Media / Social Networking
- What is Pinterest & Why You Should Optimize For It – Learn about Pinterest, how it works, and why you should optimize your website for Pinterest users in mind.
- LinkedIn for Business – Building Your Professional Brand & Traffic – What you should be doing on LinkedIn to build your professional brand and authority.
- Answers to 31 Social Media Questions You’re Too Shy to Ask – Learn the answers to 31 social media questions you were too embarrassed to ask on Google+, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
- How to Create a Jaw Dropping Social Media Strategy in 5 Steps – Like most marketing plans, social media channels need to go through the following five goals in order to produce the kind of results that are truly profitable.
- How Ideas Spread with Social Media – Is your social media marketing based on social media myths or scientifically grounded methods? Find out in Dan Zarrella’s Hierarchy of Contagiousness.
Photo of the Week
This week’s top photo came from the snowy Grand Canyon this past weekend. It may have been only 0 degrees, but it was worth it to come back with such beautiful images!
Be sure to check out my photography blog for more photos and follow me @kristihines for my photography tweets or become a fan of Photostry on Facebook!
Wonderful World
A feel good song with beautiful nature imagery!
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About Fetching Friday
Kikolani covers blog marketing and blogging tips for personal, professional, and business bloggers to succeed in search and social media marketing. Kristi Hines is a 
Thanks for including another one of my posts Kristi. I really appreciate that!
And I just left a comment about your photo over on your photo blog. Really good pic!
John Soares @ Freelance Writing recently posted Writers, Unleash Your Inner Honey Badger!
Kristi,
Once again thank you for including one of my posts in your fabulous list. As always, it looks like great company, the articles I read already I know are good and I’m looking forward to reading a few of the others!
Have a great weekend!
Steve
Steve@Affiliate Marketing Tips recently posted 4 Christmas *Goodies* for ANY Internet Marketer
Hi Kristi,
Another great list. Thank you for including the “blogging saboteurs” post this week! I love the picture and the other post I was drawn is the one about ‘social media questions you’re too shy to ask” by hubspot. Great idea for a post..
Tom Treanor recently posted Enchantment: 10 Ways Guy Kawasaki Used Mind Control To Get Me To Buy His Book…
Oh I made it again. I love this, makes me feel so proud of myself
Thank you and I can see a few posts I want to check out. I always find some really cool stuff to bookmark after reading these Fridays
Brankica@Best book recently posted 31 Amazing Christmas Gifts for Your Favorite Blogger
Hey Kristi,
Nice list, as always. I really like the Marcus post about “Blogging & SEO mistake”.
Have a great weekend.
Dev recently posted How to Add A Mashable Style Social Media Box to WordPress
Another great compilation by you Kristi. Check out our site if you wish to enter a theme giveaway by Colorlabs. Contest ends at 19th Dec.
Ricardus @WordPress Hosting recently posted Christmas and Winter Sales Promotion for WordPress Hosting by WPWebHost
Hi Kristi,
Another great list as always… I have never not taken at least one amazing article away from this list…
I know you probably don’t take submissions but I’d love for you check my site out http://www.RyanHanley.com where I talk about Business Blogging and Content Marketing (and Insurance which is my business). I’m relatively new to the scene but if you see anything that you think is worthwhile it would be an honor to be included.
Thank you!
Ryan H.
Ryan Hanley@Business Blogging recently posted 7 Reasons Your Small Business Needs a Business Blog – Part I
I see a fault with the the blog post about organizing a messy sidebar. Remember that as of 2007, making a link ‘nofollow’ doesn’t mean that you can sculpt pagerank with it. You’re not voting for the linked-to site, but your other links won’t get more link juice. That link will still decrease the value of other links on your page (as pagerank going to each linked page is distributed among all links, not just dofollowed links).
Matt Cutts wrote an article on this and I have a picture somewhere in one of my blog articles. It just gives you something to think about in addition to that article
Hi,
Nice Post thanks for sharing i am really waiting for this kind of post where SEO and Social Media info available for how we can get good PR for our site.
sam @ goa carnival recently posted Goa Carnival 2012
Kristi,
Awesome list and I’m honored to be included … thank you
Cheers,
Timo
Timo Kiander@online business productivity recently posted Weekly Productivity Tip #17: Block your time the right way
Hi Kristi!
You’ve got such an amazing fetching-friday post. It’s awesome to read from here as always. I hope I can read more interesting facts and articles here in this very cool and fabulous site! Happy Holidays!
Hi Kristi,
Thanks for lots of interesting weekend reading, I look forward to reading SEO articles, also for the Stunning winterphoto.
Kristi,
Those are absolutely stunning photos. You’ve got quite the trade for taking photos. I can already sense some stock photo credibility in your work. Do you think you might pursue this or already doing it?
Until next time, adieu and all the best!
Ryan recently posted How to Avoid Debt Before Christmas, Give More for Less
Hi Kristi,
I thought the article by Rand Fishkin on proving trust on the web was a really good one. So many people simply focus on driving traffic to their website or blog but don’t think about what is going to happen once users arrive. If you have a site that users distrust then you will be fighting an uphill battle.
Kristi,
Very nice.. Thank you so much for sharing this to us!
It perfectly shows shows how beautiful nature is. I wish I could see those with my own eyes.
Can’t wait next Friday!
John Knights@Designers Websites recently posted How to choose a web design firm in the UK?
Hi Kristi,
Thanks a lot for sharing those great resources. I recently had some performance problems with my blog and the tips provided in the “How to Know Which Plugins are Killing Your Site’s Performance ” post helped me to solve most of the problems.
Thanks a lot
Robert
Robert@Free SEO Tools recently posted WP Syndicator Review – WP Syndicator Bonus
So many great resources thank you!
Pete Goumas recently posted Testclear Coupon & Review
As usual, it is just awesome and cool. I like the photo so much as I am looking forward to have some snow in my area. The post about the life lesson from Richard Branson is just cool. I like this person a lot and I admire his desire to live and to create and to be active all the time.
That was quite a bit of reading material that you posted! I’m about 3/4 of the way through it (I’m up to your social media / networking section). I know I better hurry and finish before your next post. Thank you for such a good list!!