Why I don’t rank on Google for Blog Headers …

Posted on January 3, 2010 by Blog Header Guy

For whatever reason, Google dropped my PR to 1 after I thought I was doing pretty good with a PR2 after only three months. So, I had a friend do an SE optimization evaluation on the blogheaderguy.com site and you know what I learned?

He says that I say b**g he**der too often and that's probably what's keeping me on page two of Google SERP's and the lowering of my PR. Apparently, I need to have more articles that don't actually say bl*g h**d*rs, even though my site is all about bl*g he*d*r design.

It's a good thing I don't care. :)   I was just curious about what I did wrong.

But maybe he's right, I should tone down all that chatter about bl*g h**d*rs and talk about tiger woods or angelina jolie or their love child. Yeah, you heard it first on bl*ghead**guy.com and Brad is pissed.

Back to the search engine thing, I've actually been doing what I call "dancing with the googly bear" and can find my site anywhere from #1 to #14 for the term blog header and out of 23,000,000 pages I think that's pretty darn good.

Oh well, I may have gone overboard with the asterisks and it may have a negative impact on my future page rankings if the googlebot figures out my code. :)

Just something to keep losing sleep over.

Watch for my new ebook "The Blog Header Guy Conspiracy".

 

Till next time,

Roy

 

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Dressing up a logo for a new custom blog header design.

Posted on January 1, 2010 by Blog Header Guy

A friend from the Local Biz Builders forum has used me to do several blog headers this past year for her clients. Because I've had some real fun with her projects and she's a joy to work with, I asked her if I could showcase this project.

Last week she asked me to do a header that had what I thought was a pretty tired logo with boring clipart and some crazy font that was probably trendy when it was done.

As an old signguy, I lived and breathed lettering and the illumination of the letters for almost thirty years and I have strong opinions on what looks right, but I was also a little hesitant to say anything.

I mean why rock the boat, just do the header and go on to the next one.

I did a quick layout and decided I could freshen up the logo with some new graphics and type face changes. I needed something to write about, so I suggested that I tweak the artwork and offered to do the logo changes for the header for free.

I liked the overall layout, I just didn't care for the treatment of the typefaces or the clipart. This is the before image.

easydaylogo-b4-400

I wanted to keep the logo kind of the same so I started with the sun.

I liked the radial gradient for the yellow, but thought I should do something with the red.

sun-300

Next I wanted to mess with the "easy day" copy. I kinda like welding letters together that overlap unless it makes them less legible. In this case I used a Bodoni clone and gave the letters a little dimension.

easyday-300

Now it was time to tackle the clipart. I have several GB of vector art that I've collected over the years and spent a few hours sorting through them looking for something I could use. The dolphin was easy, the marlin was a little elusive. Kind of like fishing for them. :)

eddolphmar

Now we're talking. I chose a bold serif font for the rest of the copy and this is what I came up with.

easydaylogo-575

Well, that does it for this article. What do you think of the changes I made to this?

edclogo-sidebyside

Till next time.

Roy

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Posted in Blog Header Designs, Custom Blog Headers, Logo Design | Tagged , | 7 Comments

Mule Tied Greetings to All the Fans of Blog Header Guy. :)

Posted on December 25, 2009 by Blog Header Guy

Wow another year has blown by.

Looking around, we all know it's been a tough year for a lot of people. Not exactly the change we were hoping for.

In the spirit of the holiday season, I just wanted to offer up my sincere wish that the next year finds us a nation that is strong in kindness and mighty in our desire to help one another.

Do what you can to help, its not hard if we take the focus off ourselves and what's ours.

muletied2009

I'm looking forward to the new year, how about you?

Roy

 

PS. Watch for the new site layout coming soon, going for a less cluttered look with more tutorials and site makeovers.

Posted in Blog Header Designs | 3 Comments

Blog Header Design Makeover- Blogger Header Design

Posted on December 4, 2009 by Blog Header Guy

You know how when you're surfing the net and you come across a blog header where you say.."hey, a little tweak and I could make this site look great."

Really? You don't do that? Oh.

Well, sometimes I can't help myself. :)

Blog Header Guy Makeover- Curly Girl's Crochet etc.

It's time for another of my guerrilla blog header makeovers. Since I don't I don't really have much to say, I'll keep this one short and sweet.

Stumbling my way around blogcatalog.com I visited a site where the owner does some really cool crocheting. I'm not into crochet, not that it isn't manly to do it, but I love seeing creative people do what they love to do. And Sonya clearly loves to crochet.

She actually crochets little dolls using a Japanese technique known as amigurumi. It's really cool to see what she can do with some yarn.

curlygirl-b4

I can appreciate the minimalist style of the Minima blogger template and have written about it before. I just thought I could make an improvement by adding some personality.

4099567880 5a17bec2cc o

 

I got the idea for this blog header redesign from this button Sonya has on her site. I wanted to maintain some design continuity using the Curlz typeface and floral elements.

 

curlygirl-575

Well, there it is. I think it brings her blog header to life, but what do you think?

I just sent her a message and can't wait to hear what she thinks, but I've learned that sometimes the response is not always what I imagine. :)

Your comments are appreciated.

Roy

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Posted in Blog Header Makeover, Custom Blog Headers | Tagged , , , | 14 Comments

The Blog Header Guy Ripoff…Spam Blogger Stole My Content!

Posted on December 1, 2009 by Blog Header Guy

I know it may not be obvious so you may not believe this, but I put a ton of work into writing the posts on this site. Imagine my surprise to find my article on "How to Customize Your WordPress Header." displayed prominently on a site registered to a Pakistan ISP.

This site basically copied the entire article including my images (which they didn't even rename) and removed anything that mentioned blogheaderguy.com or me and then posted it on their blog as their own content.

I had noticed someone accessing my images folder earlier in the week, which I shut down, but apprently this was the guy.

Needless to say, I could not believe my eyes and I literally went ballistic. Its not like I could go to Pakistan and pummel this guy. What was I going to do? I need to make a plan.

I have a copyright infringement letter from my signguy days that I modified to address the theft of my blog content and posted it in every comment box I could find on his blog.

Then, I sent an email to his contact address demanding immediate withdrawal of my copyrighted content, which was initially ignored.

What else could I do?

I found him on blogcatalog.com and posted my demand there in 300 words, no less. My original demand with proof was over 1500 words.

Since this person was profiting from my content, I decided to contact his advertisers. Most advertisers frown on splogs (spam blogs) and don't allow stolen content from its publishers. I sent them letters.

Their response was immediate and asked for exact addresses for proof, which I provided.

I found an awesome article on DevTopics.com entitled, Splogs: Spam Blogs and Stolen Content. You'll want to bookmark this article. Because if this should ever happen to you, it has very specific course of action to take.

I was working on filing my DMCA complaint, when I received an email from the content thief that simply read, "Ok, ok, ok."

My content was removed and all was right with the world. Well, the Blog Header Guy world anyway.

A friend asked me how I ever found out about this in the first place. can you believe they signed up for my free blog header drawing.

Just between you and me, there's not a chance in %$#@ that'll ever happen.

Roy

Posted in Blog Headers | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Christmas Blog Header Package from my Holiday Niche Blog Header Collection

Posted on November 24, 2009 by Blog Header Guy

I've had a number of folks download my free christmas blog headers and had quite a few ask about getting more without the text.

So, being the blog header guy, I put together a package of seven holiday blog headers (960px x 200px) that I'm offering for only $10 as a holiday gift to my readers.

Christmas Blog Header Collection

Santa Blog Header

santa-575

Santa In From the Cold

santarss

Antique Santa & Teddy Bear

santabear

Antique Christmas Card on Grunge Wallpaper

antiquecard

Snowman Church Scene

snowchurch

Snowy Trees and Christmas Presents

xmas

More Abstract Christmas Header

redflake

*Bonus* Snowmen Group Shot Header

snowdudes

Don't be alarmed by the watermark, it's a very small safeguard to minimize the free usage of these blog headers, and won't be on the finished images.

So, there you have it. No sales pitch other than, here are some custom designed blog headers for only $10.

 

Customize your Christmas Blog Header

And if you want me to customize one of these christmas headers for you, my $17.00 offer still stands.

 

 

 

Have a Great Holiday… I know I will.

Posted in Blog Header Designs, Niche Header Pack | Tagged , | Leave a comment

A Christmas Blog Header Tutorial Complete with Free Christmas Headers

Posted on November 18, 2009 by Blog Header Guy

Christmas Blog Headers?? Before Thanksgiving? I know, right?

One thing about getting older is you can remember things like when Thanksgiving wasn't just the day before the start of the Christmas shopping season. So, I realize this post about Christmas blog headers is probably way ahead of the curve.

But I did a little research and I found there are people out there searching for some headers for the holiday season already, so I thought I'd put together a little tutorial so you can make your own, if you are so inclined.

Lets get started.

I know red and gold are pretty standard colors for Christmas and this design might look good in red too. (I'll check it out after I finish writing this.) But, I'm going to go with a blue blend to start my blog header.

blueblend575

I need some snow speckles in the background, so I took a scan of white paint splatter that I flicked onto a black background using an old toothbrush.

blacksplatter

I inverted the image and made a photoshop brush of the speckles and randomly painted snow on the background.

bb-speckles575

That looked pretty cool and I thought that making photoshop brushes of snowflakes might be a cool thing to waste an afternoon playing around with. After several hours and only one or two that I really liked, I set out trying to find some already done.

I found a whole collection of them on webresourcesdepot.com site.

bb-sp-sno575

Now its snowing like crazy, so we'd be outside building a snowman right? And of course, since it's Christmas and all, we'd stack presents around him? …What? …We don't do that? I call Artistic License!

christmas-stack-575

And how about a Happy Holidays or something?

christmas-hh-575

Okay, there you go a Christmas Blog Header.

Just so you know, I think Thanksgiving is a way better holiday than Christmas, not the whole pilgrim thing, but remembering to be thankful is something we seem to have lost.

Free Christmas Blog Headers

And so, following the the whole holiday theme, what better way to show my Thankfulness than to give away some free Christmas Header designs. Just click on them and it should open in a new window and then you can right click to save them to your computer.

christmas-hh-575

snowchurch575

xmas575

Christmas Header Special

If you want me to customize one of these headers for you, I'll put your info in any of the three header styles for $17.

 

I get lots of compliments about that hat. :)

Roy

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Posted in Custom Blog Headers | Tagged , , , | 12 Comments