This Years BUM Award: Joost de Valk
Back in the day, companies would come up with awards and then give these awards to certain websites. The whole purpose of the award was to stroke the ego of the website and to build links to the company giving the award out. I have decided that if I were to create my own imaginary award I would call it: Blogger Unknown to Many or BUM.
Not just anyone would receive my BUM award—for there certainly are many unknown bloggers out there. No the BUM Award would have to go to the blogger who: 1) actually really was an expert in his/her field (not just a self-proclaimed guru) 2) provided stellar content, amazing value, and knew what he/she was talking about, and 3) no matter how good their blog was or how knowledgeable they really were—the vast majority would still have no idea who they were.
The blogger I would give the BUM Award to this year is Joost de Valk, who blogs over at yoast.com. If you are a die hard blogger (particularly on wordpress) than you probably think I am crazy to believe that Joost deserves the BUM Award. A lot of the well known wordpress plugins are either developed by Joost or maintained by him. He also is one of the most advanced Internet marketers out there. His combination of programming knowledge and SEO is far superior than most bloggers on the web.
However, that’s the problem, only the really die hard bloggers know about Joost. Surprisingly, most common day bloggers are too busy paying attention to the likes of John Chow, Jeremy Schoemaker, Aaron Wall, Darren Rowse, and Daniel Scocco, to just name a few, than to even take the time to look around at other bloggers like Joost.
So, for the many unfortunate souls out there who have not had the opportunity to meet Joost de Valk, let me introduce him by way of his content. I cannot think of better way of proving my point—that Joost well deserves the BUM award—then by having you read a few his posts listed below, scratch your head and wonder why you haven’t heard of this guy before now. So, if you get a moment from gawking at the superstar bloggers I recommend checking out Joost, you won’t be sorry that you did! -Paul W.
P.S. If you don’t think Joost should have the BUM Award sign-up for his RSS feed and prove me wrong 
Some of my favorite posts from Joost:
- WordPress SEO – This for me is has become my seo bible for wordpress. I actually have some future posts scheduled that will go more in depth with this post.
- Your homepage: your blogs showcase – I haven’t done this with MyMarketer but with most of my other wordpress projects I believe strongly in making your homepage your showcase page.
- Measuring SEO: why rankings are worthless
- PageRank Sculpting with nofollow, the final words – Good quote from Matt Cutts and definitely appropriate on showing how much you should focus on PR Sculpting.
- The difference between being on top of and ahead of your (SEO) game
- PageRank sculpting: my view
- Custom WordPress database error pages – I have been planning on trying this for 2.7.1. I am fairly sure it will work, I’ll let you know.
- A Dutch discussion on paid links
- SEO for Newspapers – I actually sent this to my sister when she was a part of the web Interactive team for the Rocky Mountain News. Too bad they didn’t follow the advice.
- Move your WordPress blog to a new domain in 10 steps!
- Free competitor statistics!
- WordPress SEO Video – This is a little long but definitely worth the watch.
Some of my favorite tools from Joost
- Disable personalized search with this search plugin
- WordPress Plugin Repository – I actually have this embedded in my firefox toolbar. It is without doubt the best way to find wordpress plugins (now if we can have a theme search…hint…hint )
- Google Analytics for WordPress – This is probably the most used Google Analytics plugin. I don’t use it any more for personal reasons but I still would recommend it.
- Blog Metrics
- RSS Footer – A great way to fight spammers!