Dogs Deserve Freedom - A Canine's Advocate on the Net

Dogs Deserve Freedom - A Canine's Advocate on the Net

Blog names are an interesting collection of emotion, identity, whimsy, and sometimes surprise.  My initial reaction to the name of this blog, “Dogs Deserve Freedom” caused me to wonder if this was a dog lover who was on a mission to free every canine held by owners and set them loose to run free.   Well, I got the dog lover part right.

But this fondness for our four legged friends goes way beyond a dog lover.  Emily at Dogs Deserve Freedom is an advocate for not only appropriate, but caring and nurturing treatment of dogs.  She volunteers at her local Humane Society, trains those hard to adopt, and helps others improve dog treatment through a wide variety of informational posts on her blog.  From dog foster homes, to features on “special needs” dogs to simple reminders about the dangers of closed cars on hot days, she consistently serves up important, actionable information for fellow dog lovers… pardon me… advocates!

The snapshot shown here is not the most recent post, but it was when Emily first requested a review.  I remembered the photo of the featured Vizsla and just had to use it.  Based on my exploration of Dogs Deserve Freedom, this picture perfectly describes the love Emily invests and should be considered a runner-up to what appears to be a black lab in the title badge.

“Appears” is the key word.  Granted, I have an older 17 CRT monitor, but I have the brightness on 100% and the badge picture still looks dark.  An improvement may include a simple brightness boost with an image editing program, or maybe changing the lettering to a lighter color – maybe both.  Not only is the possible lab hard to distinguish, the name doesn’t seem to pop out either. (See below for another option for our buddy, the lab.)

The basic Rounders 3 Blogger template is wonderfully simple and a great tool, but it does have limited real estate for gadgets on right side panel.  Here’s a few suggestions to make the best use of the limited space:

  • Create an image similar to the “lab badge” for the Dogs Deserve Freedom header, replacing the solid blue background and moving all the right side gadgets “up” accordingly.  In the header text, place an html tag of <br> in the text where a line break is needed.  Then, the lab’s image can appear on the right side of the header without the text encroaching on the photo.  The William Wilberforce quote could appear there as well.
  • The above suggesion is based on the assumption that due to the gadgets displayed, blog monetization is of interest.  The two with the most potential are Project Wonderful and Adgitize – and they should both be at the top.  The above suggestion frees up valuable space “above the fold” to entice advertisers accordingly.
  • Project Wonderful: By promoting a $.10 ad, that is apparently too rich for many advertisers.  A suggestion would be to not display an amount (Project Wonderful control panel setting) and allow ads with zero cost.  This will prevent the “empty restaurant parking lot” syndrome by showing ads and not “your ad here.”  Then, bidding activity should naturally increase the bids.
  • Animal Blog Roll: This is a very, very comprehensive list of other blogs, but it is devouring very limited and valuable side bar space.  My suggestion would be to pick the 10 blogs that best complement Dogs Deserve Freedom, and call it the “DDF Top 10″ or something similar.  This adds more value to them rather than being part of a 67 blog list (yes, I counted.)  If you really want to publish all 67, call the list the “DDF Top 10+1″ and add a link to a post that you make that has the remaining 57 listed.  Then, the visitor sees your top 10 as well as a full additional library of resources.  Valuable space is saved.
  • With the wide variety of post themes, you may want to consider using “Categories” and showing them near the top.  This way, if someone wants to see all the “Featured Rescue” posts, a single click on that category displays just those posts.  This would require going back and tagging each post with an appropriate category or categories, but the improved result would be very worthwhile.

As indicated in Followers – One Hundred, there are many people who see the same value in Dogs Deserve Freedom as I do.  Add the Google Page Rank of 3 and you have a solid blog, with good traffic, loyal followers and now, a review with some helpful suggestions.  Truly, an Ultimate Blog.

Dave