After all, if you’re linking to one of your own sites, you want any PageRank to pass along to your own site, you need to be especially careful when you’re choosing a URL shortener so that this does in fact occur.

This has been a question in many SEO’s minds for quite some time.  Before Google started indexing sites like Twitter, it really wasn’t all that big of a deal.  But now that Twitter, as well as many other sites like them are getting indexed more and more frequently, it’s important that if a page does follow a link that the shortener that was used passes along that PageRank.

That said, it should be noted that Twitter does not follow links – therefore the PageRank theory is null and void in this case but this does not mean that other services like Twitter don’t employ the same tactic.  I use them as an example only because it’s one of the more well-known micro-blogging platforms online.  As a matter of fact, there are many, many places where you would employ the use of a URL shortener and when you do, you want to make certain that you are getting any and all PageRank passed on to you.

Most URL shorteners are pretty good at this and do it the correct way by using a 301 redirect.  In case you’re still unsure which one to use, in the video below Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Web Spam team specifically says that shorteners such as bit.ly and goo.gl do in fact employ a 301 redirect.

Here’s the question that came into Matt and his answer on the topic:

First off, rich snippets are a way to showcase certain things about your business.  If you run a website that shows recipes you can use rich snippets to display that recipe.  Additionally, you can also use these snippets to show reviews of your business, products your business has, and even events that you may be holding.

Now sometimes this can be a little confusing because there are multiple ways to refer to this kind of content that you add to your site.  The actual content itself is called a “rich snippet” but the code that’s used to format this content is referred to as “microdata“, “microformats” or even “RDFa” (and if you have a recipe you want to showcase, then you would use the hRecipe microformat).

The best way to understand these snippets is to simply show you.  Here’s a screen shot of an organic search result after doing a search for restaurants in Chicago.  Note the reviews shown in the organic listings.

These rich snippets also include breadcrumbs, prices, and more.  And remember, these rich snippets are data that show up within the organic listings.  This is important because typical organic search results are often very similar.  There’s a blue link that will take you to the page of the site that’s listed, a brief description of the page, and the web page’s URL.  That’s about it.  But with rich snippets, you can take this so much further and make your listing stand out from the rest of the listings.

It’s important to note that just because you’re using these snippets on your web pages does not mean that you will rank higher in the search results nor does it mean that Google will automatically start showing these snippets but they do say that they’ll check your site for these snippets when they come to pay a visit.

Now although the name might sound a little intimidating, all it really takes is some basic knowledge of HTML in order to implement these snippets onto your own site.  And you can choose whichever format you prefer, the microdata, microformat or RDFa.

Once you’ve picked one of these for your own site, you can also use Google’s Rich Snippets testing tool to see how your site may appear in the search results with this data.  Google also offers a way to tell them that you have this data available on your site.

Although it might sound a little confusing right now, visiting any one of the above sites will show you examples of rich snippet data.  The bottom line is, if you have any of the following located on your site:

• Reviews
• People (Think LinkedIn)
• Products
• Recipes
• or Events

You’ll want to strongly consider adding rich snippets to your site if anything, to make certain that you stand out in those search results.

What I did find interesting, and something that I liked very much was that it allows you to filter the keywords by:

• Ad Share
• Competition
• Local Monthly Searches
• Global Monthly Searches
• Estimated Average CPC and
• Search Share

Here’s the video in its entirety.  Enjoy!

[table id=3 /]

Spam is there in our email, and in our blog comments.  But thankfully, we can control our email – marking something as spam (note this is not the same thing as marking something as *spam* if you simply didn’t feel like reading today) and we as site owners, especially those who have blogs, can moderate the comments so that you don’t get those nasty Viagra links everyone just loves *chuckles*.

But, with the Google SideWiki … drumroll please…you CAN’T control what spammy comments are made even though it appears as though it resides on your own site!

Let me explain…

If you have the new Google toolbar installed, you will have an option in that toolbar called “SideWiki”.  If you click on that SideWiki button, a window to your left will open up and you can then leave any kind of comment you wish in that box.

Now, granted, you have to sign into your Google account to leave a comment in a site’s SideWiki area but anyone and their brother can sign up for a Google account.  Big deal.

Once you’re signed in, you can then leave a comment on that website (and note, it does not have to be a blog.  It can be any website whatsoever.)  And those comments can be good, bad, indifferent, nonsense, jokes, whatever.

Now, most people will (hopefully) adhere to that unspoken rule to be “an adult” online and actually leave helpful comments – even if some are bad, there is such a thing as constructive criticism.  But it’s the “others” that you, as a website owner should be concerned with.

You see, you, as a site owner have absolutely no control over what shows up in that Sidewiki.  (is your mouth hanging open in astonishment yet?)

Scary isn’t it?

Anyone, anywhere, at any point in time now has the ability to make comments on your website and you, as the site owner, have no say in what’s there.

There’s no place in Google where you can choose to opt-out of having this SideWiki show up on your site, and for those who are less familiar with how the SideWiki works, your typical website visitor will most certainly believe that you chose to have those comments there, good, bad or indifferent.

You can report a Sidewiki comment to Google, but this doesn’t mean that they’ll rush right out and remove it for you…frankly I think that Google is getting too big for it’s britches and for some reason believes that IT knows better than the site owners themselves.

Say, that reminds me of something…oh yeah, the Borg.

So, all that said, here’s a somewhat bright side (kind of).

In the Google Webmaster Help forum, there is a link to a JavaScript file which states that using the file will block those who try to use Sidewiki on your site.

BE WARNED!  I have not used this file – I don’t know if it works or not, and I also have no idea of any SEO implications it might have.  But it’s there, if you decide to use it.

Since it blocks those who try to use SideWiki on your site, this will hold true for both good and bad comments – so use it at your own risk.

If I get ballsy enough, I’ll toss it in on one of my sites to see if it makes a difference at all for SEO purposes – but, in the event that you already have good rankings on a site, I wouldn’t go using it.

Hopefully, Google will come to their senses and allow website owners to moderate the commentary there themselves, or, better yet, do away with it all-together.

Anyhow, there you go.  Have a great day!

During this talk (which runs around 45 minutes), Matt revealed some very interesting facts and ideas about SEO which I found…well…enlightening as I’m sure you will too.

If you do have the time to watch the entire video for yourself (like I said it runs about 45 minutes); see my notes below the video which gives you plenty of highlights.

In the video Matt States:

• WordPress takes care of 80-90% of the mechanics of SEO. [@3:30]
  • Mechanics = “how crawlable a website is.”
• Plugins Matt uses: [@4:15]
  • Askimet
  • Cookies for Comments
    • Spam prevention.
  • Enforce www. Preference
    • What you prefer (canonical).
  • FeedBurner FeedSmith
  • WP Super Cache
• “We crawl roughly in order of PageRank.  The more PR you have the faster you’re likely to be found, the deeper we’ll crawl, the more often we’ll visit.” [@5:40]
  • PageRank = the number of people that link to you and how important those links are.  (basic SEO).
  • Example:  A web page has a PR of 9 and has three outlinks (links heading out and away from the website) then each of those outlinks gets 3.
  • PageRank starts to “evaporate” each time it goes across a link.
  • Getting backlinks:  You want people to know you and you want them to be reputable.
• Blog posts need to be on-topic and you want to be reputable. [@9:40]
  • How to do this:
    • If you don’t love it, don’t write about it.
      • Write often, write every day.
    • What am I good at doing?
    • What do I have to say?
• Keywords [@12:05]
  • Think about all the different ways someone can describe something. Put those into your blog post naturally.
  • Jargon mis-match:  Translate [jargon] into regular language.
    • what are titles you could type that are “normal”.
  • Use Google Keyword Tool.
  • If you don’t have [a specific word] on your site you probably aren’t going to rank.
• Custom Structure on URLs “/%postname%/ [@19:15]
• Google looks at over 200 things [when determining where to rank you]
  • Things in the title
  • Things in the URL
  • Things that are highlighted like H1 tags and stuff like that.
  • Be sure you put the keywords in the title in some way.
  • Power Tip:  Use variations between the post title itself and within the URL itself [the permalink].  Not spam.  One or two variants.  Use them as separate opportunities to put keywords in.  Now you can rank for both variations of the keywords.
• Use categories that are also good keywords.
• Keywords in URL paths:  example.com/my-keywords
  • Dashes are best
  • Next best is underscores
  • No spaces is worst.
• If you’ve already done your site should you change things?
  • No.
• Don’t overdo [on page SEO]
  • After you mention a term two or three times Google knows what your post is about.
• Gaining a reputation [@25:24]
  • Be interesting. Funny, alternative opinions.
  • Update often.
  • Apply Katamari Philosophy.
    • Start small.  Start in a niche that you can do well.
    • Build up, build up, build up.  Get there gradually.
  • Ways to Get Links [@30:14 in the video]
    • Provide a useful service.
    • Do original research or reporting. Huge!
    • Give great information.
    • Find a creative niche.  One good idea can carry you so, so far.
    • Write some code.  Open source.
    • Live blogging!  Blogging as it happens.
    • Make lists.  People love lists.
    • Create controversy.  Too often sometimes can’t work well.
    • Meet folks on Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed
• Should you do a podcast?
  • Recommends videos over podcasts.
  • Videos tend to rank relatively well on Google.
• Tools you should know about [@35:55]
  • Webmaster console at http://Google.com/webmasters/
  • Google Analytics
  • FeedBurner:  MyBrand for free feeds.mattcutts.com instead of feeds.feedburner.com.
  • Google website optimizer
  • Custom Search Engine: free site search
  • AdSense
    • Use these tags to mark out the meat of your blog post so that AdSense will only target what’s contained in the tags: (highly recommended)
      • <!–google_ad_section_start–>
      • <!– google_ad_section_end –>
• Google Analytics Tip [@38:12]
  • Click Settings -> top landing pages and will tell you which blog posts get the most visitors.
  • Bounces tell you how often people come to your page and then leave.
  • Simple trick:  Show related posts.
• What NOT to do [@40:19]
  • Avoid paid posts.
• Keep your WordPress updated!
• Power Tip: [@43:57]
  • Add an .htaccess to your /wp-admin
    • This says only these two IP addresses are allowed to use the wp-admin.
    • Search for “protect wp-admin”.  Also on Matt’s blog.
• In WP core 2.8 you don’t have to worry about the rel=canonical tags.  Already included. [@44:50]

Bing recently released their SEO Toolkit (currently still in beta) and I took some time to run through the toolkit to see what kinds of information it gave me.

The first thing you should know is installing it is less than a breeze.

First, you need to be using a PC – no surprise there.

In order to install the toolkit, you need to jump through a bunch of hoops first.

1. You need a PC running Vista, Windows Server, Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2. It won’t work on XP (which is a shame).  Most of you reading this (if you’re not using a Mac) will have Windows Vista on your computer.
2. If you do have Windows Vista, you need to be sure that youalso have installed Windows Vista SP1 (service pack 1) or higher. Most of you will also already have this if your computer updates itself regularly.
3. You also need IIS 7 running on your computer. Unless you’ve worked on a server team, the typical webmaster probably won’t understand what this means (huge problem!). Click here to view the Microsoft installation guide and get IIS 7.
   UPDATE: Note that on the Microsoft site – this link points to a topic that is “No Longer Available”.  After checking Microsoft’s own post about this installation guide, I receive the same message.  Hopefully they’ll have it fixed soon.
4. Next, you need to enable IIS 7 before you can install the SEO Toolkit. To do this…
   1. Click Start.
   2. Click Control Panel.
   3. Click Programs.
   4. Select “Turn Windows features on or off”.
   5. When the window opens, select the “Internet Information Services” check box.
   6. Click the plus sign (+) to expand the directory (they call them nodes), expand “world wide web services” and then expand “Application Development Features”.  Finally, check the box next to .net Extensibility.
   7. Click “OK” and then wait…a long time…while your computer updates.

Now, you next have to determine if you’re running a 32-bit or 64-bit version of Windows.

(By now, I’ll bet that a vast majority of people have already said “This is WAY too much trouble – forget it!).  And I wouldn’t blame you.  As much as Microsoft search has evolved, it seems that the rest of the company has not.

To do this…

1. Click Start
2. Right click “Computer” and then choose “Properties”
3. In the “system group” the System Type will tell you what kind you’re running; 32-bit or 64-bit.
4. FINALLY, install the right version.  (Note that these links will download the SEO Toolkit to your computer – they’re directly from Microsoft. If you’d rather view the Microsoft page itself, click here.):
   1. IIS SEO Toolkit for 32-bit Windows
   2. IIS SEO Toolkit for 64-bit Windows
5. NOW, you’re ready to install and use the SEO Toolkit (and it’s probably time for a quick break).  I don’t know about you but my head hurts!

Once you have the SEO Toolkit installed, you’ll need to open the program.  But like most programs that you install, where you expect to see them in your Start menu, this one’s a little tricky.

1. Click the Start icon on your Windows Vista computer.
2. In the Start Search box, type “IIS”.
3. IIS manager should pop up in the window. I suggest that you move this to your desktop in an easier-to-find location.
4. Double click the program.
5. Once it loads in the main menu section scroll down to “Search Engine Optimization” and double click on “Site Analysis”.
6. Next, on the right, click “New Analysis”.
7. Give it a name.
8. Enter in the URL of your website and make your additional choices from here (which aren’t many).
9. Finally click “OK”.

Now the program will traverse your website and find issues (if any) that relate to SEO (as Bing sees it).

There’s various categories that Bing looks at such as SEO, Content, Standards and Performance.

Now, while this was a hassle to install it does give you a great deal of on-page SEO information.

For instance it found multiple spots where I had missed giving an image an alt tag attribute.

It also found a few spots where my description was too long and where I had a few broken hyperlinks – many of these attributed to a bookmarking service that I had included on my web pages.

If you double-click on any of the pages that had issues within the SEO Toolkit, you’ll get a very detailed analysis of that web page (this is definitely a plus).  Things like:

• A Word Analysis which shows you…
  • The counts for any specific word or phrase up to three word phrases.
  • The character count on the page.
  • The links referenced on the page along with their anchor text.
  • The links pointing TO the page.
  • The links coming FROM the page.
    • As well as what the linking status is, is it OK or not found, the linking title, the linked URL the type of link and the anchor text.  All invaluable information to have.

Now, all this being said, I will tell you of one very large (and frustrating) issue that I had.  After I ran through the steps and set up everything exactly as explained, I could NOT get to any of my websites that I had set up in the SEO Toolkit.

I could get anywhere else (so I knew it wasn’t my internet connection) but just not to my own sites.  Obviously very frustrating.

Now, my husband who is a VoIP engineer and who works with this kind of thing on a daily basis couldn’t even figure out what the issue was.  And we together tried multiple things…all to no avail.

Until…for the heck of it, I unplugged my DSL modem, plugged it back in and all was fine (Occam’s Razor).  So in the event you follow through this process, and have the same issues, just try rebooting your modem.  I can’t guarantee it will work for you, but it worked for me.  (You’ve just received a 5-hour-time-saving tip).

All in all, I think that the SEO Toolkit provides great information, so long as you’re willing to put up with the installation of it.  And best of all it’s free!

View this walkthrough at Bing (complete with screenshots) by clicking here.

Everyone who runs a website has at one point or another worried about whether or not their site is being silently penalized in the search engines for having duplicate content.

Just to be sure everyone’s on the same page let’s first define what duplicate content REALLY is.

When you have two pages that are identical to one another on your own website, this is considered duplicate content.  And chances are you likely have duplicate content but you just don’t know it.

Here’s why that would happen…

Let’s say that you have a website located at http://www.Example.com.

You create a new web page on your site and have a few people link to that page.

• Person #1 links to you using http://www.Example.com.
• Person #2 links to you using http://Example.com (notice the lack of the “www”).
• Person #3 links to you using http://www.Example.com/ (notice the trailing slash).
• And Person #4 links to you using http://www.Example.com/index.html (notice the “index.html).

To YOU and to the people visiting your site, this is all the same page.

To the SEARCH ENGINES however, these are all different URLs. Surprised?

So as far as the search engines are concerned you have 4 pages on your site that all contain the same exact content – hence, the duplicate content issue.

You see, search engines can’t tell that these are the same URLs (I’m shaking my head as I say that because it’s still beyond me), but, the fact remains, that this is in fact, very true.

So how do you fix this issue?  Well, thankfully, there’s a few ways to fix this issue.

1. When you link internally, that is, link to other pages within your own website, consistently use the same URL.  ALWAYS use http://www.Example.com or http://Example.com -whichever one is your preferred way of linking, choose one and stick with it.
2. Additionally you can also use a 301 redirect to point to your preferred way of linking to your URL.  For example, if you prefer http://www.Example.com then set up a 301 redirect on http://Example.com, http://www.Example.com/, http://www.Example.com/index.html, etc.  (I’ve listed below the most common ways people would link to your site).
3. Within your Google webmaster tools area you can TELL Google what you’re preferred way of linking is.
4. Be sure that when you submit a sitemap for your website that within that sitemap, all of the URLs are using your preferred way of linking.

Some potential issues are:

1. If you don’t have direct control over the webhost that administers your files, you’ll have to have someone else place that 301 redirect on the URLs you want.
2. A lot of free web hosts don’t let you create a 301 redirect.
3. Session IDs on a website can create a huge duplicate content issue.  Since each page may be accessed with a different session ID in the URL, that page may be indexed multiple times; even though it’s the same page.

Now if all else fails and you simply can’t implement a 301 redirect to your preferred way of linking, then consider placing the canonical link element on the individual page.

In the head of the individual web page you’d place the following:

<head>
<link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.Example.com/page.html” />
</head>

Note the trailing slash after “page.html”.  This is very important to include.

The bottom line is, using the canonical link element on your website is EXTREMELY beneficial to you.  But first and foremost, use the methods listed in the first four items at the top and if those fail, then use the canonical link element.

This information has summarized what Matt Cutts said in his 20-minute presentation; but if you want more information, here’s a few more places you can check out:

• The Matt Cutts video.
• The blog post at Google webmaster central.
• Yahoo’s blog post.
• Microsoft

And, as promised, here’s a list of URLs that are all different in the search engines eyes and that might cause duplicate content issues:

• www.Example.com
• Example.com
• www.Example.com/
• example.com/
• www.example.com/index.html
• example.com/index.html
• www.example.com/Home.aspx
• example.com/Home.aspx

So the business owner asks around and eventually finds a website designer (usually a friend or a friend of a friend) that can make their site “look like that awesomely cool site”.  It gets done, the designer gets paid, and quicker than you can say “awesomely cool” their site rankings start a free fall in the search engines that seems to have no end in sight.

Unfortunately, this is a scenario that is repeated over and over again online multiple times a day.

Typically these “awesomely cool” sites are created in Flash or have dynamically generated scripts that run the entire website without an ounce of text to be found.  While it might look great, there’s no doubt about that, the search engines have no idea what to do with it.

The bottom line is, if there isn’t text to be found, the search engines will pass you over.

This does not mean that you should nuke every last one of your images, videos, JavaScript or Flash items on your website…it just means that you need to separate the important stuff; the stuff you want the search engines to find, from the stuff that looks “neat”.

An easy way to do this is to ask yourself  ”Do I want the search engines to find X?” with “X” being a web page, a description, a price, a product, etc.

If the answer is yes, and X is located within an image, within a video, Flash or JavaScript, then you need to be sure it’s also in text somewhere on your page.

Now, this is not to say that you can’t use things like images, videos, or even Flash – as a matter of fact, they do make your web page more appealing; but it should not be the sole item on the page.  Even if you have details about your business for example within an image and “real” people can read it, the search engines cannot…which means that you’re web site will struggle.

Here’s some tips to follow:

• Whenever you use an image on your page, give it a description using the images <alt> attribute.
• Don’t use script to generate navigational links.  Stick to basic text-based navigation and you’ll be just fine.

If you’re concerned that your site might not be friendly to the search engines, you can use a free online tool called a Lynx emulator.

Just visit http://www.yellowpipe.com/yis/tools/lynx/lynx_viewer.php and enter in the URL of the web page you want to check.  Ideally you want to see keywords, lots of text, relevant topical information, etc.

You DO NOT want to see something like “This page requires the use of Flash…get the latest version at…” or something along those lines.  You want to be able to look at the results of the Lynx viewer and know, without a doubt, what that web page is talking about as well as see important keywords for that page.

So the bottom line is, as “awesomely cool” that website is that you stumbled across, you can rest assured that they’re probably not getting the rankings they want in the search engines.  You can keep things pretty and play it smart at the same time.

If you’re trying to establish yourself online, you might have found that locating content to use on your own website is difficult. There are PLR (Private Label Rights) products that you can buy and even full PLR memberships that you can purchase that will give you access to content to use at your discretion, but in many cases, not all mind you, they’re not typically of the best quality.

Aside from PLR products, you can always write the content for yourself which is very time-consuming or you can hire someone to do it for you; the higher the cost of the writer, generally, the better kind of content that you’ll get.

Now, while I will always advocate doing most of the work yourself, or at least having people who are trained by you do the work, even with PLR content, I also understand that writing day after day can suck away a lot of your time, when you can be using that time to create your own products or advertise your business or products your affiliated with.

That’s where a new Google Advanced search feature can work well for you in finding content to use as well as pull double-duty by generating links back to your site.

Here’s how it works.

First, visit Google.com. But before you search on anything click the link to the right of the search box entitled “Advanced Search”.

Next, enter in a keyword or keyword phrase at the top of the list just under the heading “Find web pages that have…”  I suggest that if you’re locating content for use on your own site that you only enter in one keyword or keyword phrase related to the content you want to locate.  When you use this search feature and you have multiple keywords in this area, the search will only pull back sites that contain ALL of these keywords.

Additionally you can also use the second option of “this exact wording or phrase” which will find the entire phrase in any web page or you can also use the third option of “one or more of these words:” where you can specify a variety of keywords and keyword phrases.

To make the job simpler for you, I would just use the first suggestion, and only search for one keyword or keyword phrase.  If you’re using a keyword phrase, just place that phrase in quotes in the first search box.

Next, click the plus sign next to “Date, usage rights, numeric range and more.”  And then narrow down your choices from what’s listed.  The most important point here is the “usage rights” link.  This allows you to filter content that allows you to do a variety of things with the content (and where all of the magic happens).

You have 5 options from this list.  Here’s what they are and what they mean:

1. Not Filtered – Exactly what it means.  The content you get using this search is not filtered in any way.  Not recommended if you’re attempting to locate content to use on your own site.
2. Free to use or share – These pages are labeled “public domain” or carry a license that allows you to copy or redistribute its content, as long as the content remains unchanged.
3. Free to use or share, even commercially – The same as “free to use or share” but for commercial sites.  So if you have a website that sells products, information or services, this is the option you want.  Note that this does NOT allow you to modify the content.
4. Free to use, share or modify – This search will only pull back those web pages that are labeled with a license that allows you to copy, modify or redistribute in ways specified in the license.
5. Free to use, share or modify, even commercially.  The same as “free to use, share or modify” but for commercial sites.  When you’re looking to reuse content on your own site that you can re-word as you wish, this is the option you want.

Once you’ve entered in the terms you’re interested in and chosen a license, click search and Google will return to you a list of websites that have these criteria.

The one thing I recommend is to double-check the license itself.   The way that Google is able to determine this kind of content is by using the “Creative Commons” filters. So once you’re at a web page that seems to have some content you’d like to use yourself, check for the “creative commons” license on the page.  When you click on the license link, you’ll get more details about the license.  The site may require you to link back to them in exchange for you using their content which can help boost their incoming links.

At this point you have to consider at least one thing – whether or not you want to link back to the site that has the content you want to use.

What this means to you in this instance, is to consider if it’s worthwhile to link out to the site whose content you want to use.  If you don’t feel comfortable having the link on your web page then keep on looking through the search results that Google gave you to see if there’s a site that doesn’t require a link back to them.  While few and far between, this little bit of extra work can mean a great deal of fantastically free content for you.

If you believe that the site will be a good resource for your site visitors, then by all means, link back to them.  If you question it in the least bit, it’s best to refine your keywords and find a better resource.

On the flip side of this coin…you might be wondering “Well, if this is how THESE sites are getting incoming links, how can I get one way links to my OWN site?”

Glad you asked!  Here’s how to do that:

Visit http://creativecommons.org/choose/ and license your own work.  You can also visit a website that is also using the license, click on the Creative Commons link or icon, and then scroll down the page that you’re taken to on the Creative commons site which lists the details of that sites license.  If you’d like to use the same kind of license that the site owner is using, click the link that says “Use this license for your own work”.

My suggestion to you when making use of the Creative Commons license is to be careful what you’re licensing. If you only want to license a single blog post that you made (and it’s entirely your own work), then only place the license on that blog post and choose “text” from your list of choices at http://creativecommons.org/choose/ .

If you license your entire blog, then this allows all of the content on your blog to be used by anyone depending upon the license you chose to use.

The reason that choosing text, audio, video, image, or interactive when specifying your license at Creative Commons is because this allows your license to only be used on your text, or your audio, or your video, etc., not the entire blog as a whole.

Secondly, be absolutely 100% certain that it is your OWN work you’re granting a license for.

Using a Creative Commons license will help you generate links for your site because others will find that they can use your work as content for their own sites and, if you’ve specified in the license that they have to link back to you, can generate lots of relevant links back to your own web pages.

So the bottom line is, when you’re looking to find content to use on your own site, use the advanced search feature in Google to find those sites that allow you to use and modify their work.  Ideally you’d like to find that content that doesn’t require a link back to their site, but, as I said, these are few and far between.  Just keep in mind that if you do want to use someone else’s content, and they require a link back, be sure it’s a site you do in fact want to link back to.