Pair of Mockingjay

Here is a great pair of matching tattoos with the Mockingjay design.  The element of this tattoo that really stands out to me is the decorative frame around the central design.  Looks great.

(from http://inkah.tumblr.com/)

 Mockingjay with a quote

This one is a bit bigger than the previous and includes the quote, “May the odds be ever in your favor”, often spoken by people involved in the Games from The Capital.

(from http://www.minx.com.au)

The golden Mockingjay pin

Another nice Mockingjay logo in gold that looks to be about 3 inches across.  I really like the color, especially since most tattoos tend to be darker.  Looks very much like what you would expect the pin given to Katniss Everdeen would look like.  This one is sure to get attention.

(from http://www.wildsoundmovies.com/)

Mockingjay in a dream

One of the most creative designs I have seen, here is the Mockingjay design incorporated into a Native American dreamcatcher with what appears to be the quote, “She had no idea the effect she can have on people”, a quote spoken by Peeta Mellark, one of the central characters in the story.  The use of gold for the Mockingjay looks like the pin that Katniss Everdeen is given as a token from her district to wear in the games.

(from http://weheartit.com/)

Deathly Mockingjay

This last design is not a tattoo that I could find, but the design is so good, I had to include it.  It could aptly be named the Deathly Mockingjay, due to the combination of the Mockingjay and Deathly Hallows from Harry Potter.

(from http://alwaysadaydreamer.tumblr.com/)

If you liked any of these designs, please use the links and let the owners know.  Thanks

Thanks for reading Tattoo Design – The Hunger Games and Mockingjay. I would appreciate your comments and feedback on this post, so please let me know what you think. If you like the post, please share it with your friends. If you want to read more, subscribe to the RSS feed. Have a great day.

Have you read these posts?

1. Tattoo Design – The Deathly Hallows

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•  #13 - My personal blog, BlueCapra.com, no picture??? (down 8 places from last week at #5)
• #23 - My Google+ profile with picture (down 14 spot from last week at #9)
• #25 - @bookwormlaser on Twitter ( down 2 spots from last week at #23)
• #27 – The About page on BlueCapra.com, no picture  (down 3 spots from last week at #24)
• #31 - My profile on Vimeo - check out my video series Can You Etch It (down 6 place from last week at #25)

No Picture???

Last week, I discovered that my picture was no longer showing up in the results.  I expect this is due to a change in the structure of the site, altering my permalink structure to remove the year and adding 301 redirect in my htaccess file.  If this does not make any sense to you, don’t worry.  Basically, I changed the address to all my posts.  In doing that, I needed to tell Google that the old links should point to the new locations (via a 301 redirect).  You do this by putting a line of code in the htaccess file on your webserver.  For more information, check out this Wikipedia article on URL redirection.

I made the changes more than a week ago but it seems that Google is either still mad or hasn’t crawled the pages yet.  To make sure you have your rel=Author tag and everything setup correctly, you can use Google’s Rich Snippets Testing Tool.  You can see the results of my test at the top of the page.  Everything appears to be right, but still no picture.  This week I am going to do a little more digging to see what is going on with that.

Image Search

A check at Google Images showed my picture at #1 again and a total of 11 occurrences in the top 100 images.  Showing up 1st in the image results has never been that important to me, but the result is more backlinks.  I even found a few sites where some of the picture I have taken were reposted.  I guess I need to start taking pictures again…

Cornering the market – from Google to Bing

Last week, I started to check Bing in addition to Google due to the percentage of the US searches being performed on Google, Bing, and Yahoo (which is powered by Bing technology).  Here are the top 3 Bing results (there were only 3 in the top 100):

• #2 – My LinkedIn profile (no change from last week at #2)
• #20 - @alanreeves on Twitter (down 1 from last week at #19)
• #24 - The About page on BlueCapra.com  (up 29 spots from last week at #53)
• #34 - My personal blog, BlueCapra.com
• #56 - @bookwormlaser on Twitter

Strategies for 1st

This week I commented on 7 posts as well as publishing 5 posts and a handful of pictures.  I have been looking at ways to find more links and came across an older post that wrote about different directory submissions that resulted in links.  I signed up for a handful of accounts and will be checking the links later in the week to see if any of them have popped up.

As with every week, I am searching for tips and hints that will help on my journey to be 1st on Google.  Most of the techniques involving backlinks tend to be slow, with is painfully obvious since this is the 16th week update.  Nevertheless, I am still pressing on.

Summary

I’ve been able to make a good amount of progress so far, going from #93 on 1-25-12 to #3 on 3-11-12 even though I have slipped to #13. I have learned a lot about improving search ranking and I have made a lot of mistakes, but this is a learning process.  I hope to make significant progress by next week and regain my past progress.  Stay tuned to see if next week is the week I reach the 1st spot on Google and Bing.  If you have any suggestions to get me there, leave a comment and let me know.

Thanks for reading 1st on Google – Week 16. I would appreciate your comments and feedback on this post, so please let me know what you think. If you like the post, please share it with your friends. If you want to read more, subscribe to the RSS feed. Have a great day.

Have you read these posts?

1. 1st on Google – Week 15 Update
2. 1st on Google – Week 14 Update
3. 1st on Google – Week 12 update

BlueCapra - Ideas, concepts, and laser engraving

WordPress Popular Posts

WordPress Popular Posts is a free WordPress plugin, created by Héctor Cabrera, that identifies and links to your most popular posts and pages.  This list appears as a widget that can be placed in one of the appropriate areas on your site (this list on this site is in the right sidebar near the top).  Having a list of your popular posts and pages gives the reader an opportunity to explore some of your best work.

Settings

There are very few settings for the WordPress Popular Posts Posts plugin.  What settings there are can be accessed through the widget.  Here is a run down of your options (you can see a screen shot of my setting to the right):

• Title
• Number of Posts
• Time Range – used to control how the list is generated, from displaying the most popular posts of all time to the last 24 hours
• Sort post by – this drop down lets you control what criteria is used to generate the list; comments, total views, or average daily views
• Include Pages – check if you want your pages, not just posts, included in the list
• Shorten title output – check if you have really long titles and want to display only a certain length
• Display post excerpts – check to display a small piece of your post in the list with you specifying the length of the excerpt
• Exclude categories – check if you don’t want posts under specific categories listed
• Display post thumbnail – used to display an image from your post in the list
• Display comment count – check this if you want the number of comments listed by each post
• Display views – check this if you want to display the number of times the page or post has been viewed
• Display author – check to display the author of the post.  Not very useful on a one author site, but may be handy on larger sites
• Display date – check to display the publish date for each post
• Use custom HTML markup – when checked, it allows for more control, using HTML and CSS, of the list display
• Use content formatting tags – check to change the order of the different parts of each listing.  Say you want to display the number of views, the author, then the title, here is where you do that

But wait, there’s more…

If you are like me, you are always looking for more data, especially when it comes to your site.  WordPress Popular Posts can help you again.  Head up to the Dashboard section of your WordPress admin page (the top section on the left).  There, you will find the stats page with your top 10 most popular posts, organized by the time range.  Curious to see what posts have been most popular today, last week, last month, or of all time?  There is an app…. er… uh… button for that.  Select the time range you want and there is your list.

One major benefit of this stat page is being able to see the number of views for each post.  Granted, the information is not as intricate as Google Analytics, but I have found it very helpful, especially when comparing new posts to existing content.  It also helps you see themes in your posts that resonate better with readers.

Overall, WordPress Popular Posts is a great plugin to add to your site.  Not only does it help readers find some of your best content, it helps you know what your readers are viewing.  By breaking down the data by different time frames, you can understand how readers are consuming your content and how to provide them with the best you can offer

Are you using a popular post plugin?  Leave me a comment and let me know which one

Thanks for reading My WordPress How-to: WordPress Popular Posts. I would appreciate your comments and feedback on this post, so please let me know what you think. If you like the post, please share it with your friends. If you want to read more, subscribe to the RSS feed. Have a great day.

Have you read these posts?

1. My WordPress How-to: YARPP – Yet Another Related Post Plugin
2. My WordPress How-to: Google Analytics for WordPress
3. My WordPress How-to: Learning Shortcodes

BlueCapra - Ideas, concepts, and laser engraving