thoughts out !oud

a Christian’s news, views, opinions and occasional poetry …

Thoughts out !oud and the middle eastern Oud

Posted by Mathew | 28 August 08

I have felt that I need to blog an apology to the many, many enthusiasts who are scouring the internet for information about the Middle Eastern instrument, the Oud (a guitar-like instrument, pronounced ud, I believe), and who are ending up at my blog: Thoughts out !oud.

Monitoring the free blogging stats tool for my blog I have noticed with interest that my blog is ranking reasonably well in searches for the Oud, turning up in search strings such as: Oud, Oud for sale, Ouds for sale Sydney, thinking out oud, Oud built, stand for Oud, out Oud, Oud Cartoons, playing the Oud, all about the Oud, Oud poetry, etc. It became obvious to me that, so far as Google and other search engines are concerned, Thoughts out !oud is recognised as Thoughts out oud. No exclaimation mark.

So there’s a tip for your young blogging players out there … think of how search engines read the text in your blog’s title and also consider what terms people potentially will be searching for!

I plead my ignorance … I had no idea what an Oud was until recently and when I titled my blog I was only trying to be clever! Why call it Thoughts out loud! when replacing the lowercase letter L in ‘loud’ with the exclaimation mark (!), so that it reads ‘!oud’, gives me a slightly more original visual effect? Hey, I save a character space and I look clever! … or so I thought :)

An Oud, for those of you not in the know, is one of the more popular instruments used in the Middle East. It is a short, stubby stringed-instrument and is played mostly while resting the base on your lap with the arm running across your body, very much like a guitar. In Greece, it is known as the outi - and it reminds me of something that the greek mythology Satyrs would play, or what you would see in Saturday Disney’s Young Hercules cartoon show.

If you have come here to find out information about the Oud, I’m terribly sorry. While I don’t have anything to really offer you on that front, I would hope that there is something here that may challenge or be of interest to you on this blog regardless. Stick around, have a read and if you feel inclined, leave a reply.

Either way, happy Ouding and thanks for dropping by (albeit accidentally)!

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