Press Release Circle » 2009

September 29, 2009

Blogs, WordPress and Google

Filed under: Internet - Websites - SEO — admin @ 6:25 am

Blogs, WordPress and Google
By Scott Van Achte (c) 2009 It’s no secret that a continually updated website with new content being added regularly stands a good chance of doing well in Google. One of the long standing methods to regularly expand a site’s content is through the use of a blog.

While there are numerous platforms to choose from for managing a blog, few can compare with the immense flexibility offered with WordPress, and at a cost of free, the price can’t be beat either.

Google likes fresh new content, and setting up a blog on your site, assuming it is updated often with interesting and relevant material, can be one of the best things you can do to help out your search rankings. The beauty behind WordPress is that there is a wide array of totally free plug-ins you can easily install that will make your blog totally search engine friendly. The following are some basic guidelines and essential plug-ins you should consider when you install your WordPress blog.

Template Design

The first configuration you need to do is work on customizing the design template to match your existing site. I suggest finding a template that matches as closely as possible to the look you are going for then work on tweaking its graphics, colors, and other particulars till you achieve the desired appearance.

Most of your changes will occur in the header.php, footer.php, index.php, and page.php files in the theme editor, however, the theme you install will dictate which files actually need to be updated. You will also need to make some adjustments to your CSS file. These changes all involve working with code and graphics, and are most likely left to a professional.

Once you have your design set up, the rest of the customization is considerably less technical. The following are suggestions that most people can do themselves and you probably will not need an expert to help you here.

Settings

Permalinks
The next thing you need to do is customize your URL’s. You do not want the default post URLs (“pageid=#”) as they are simply not search friendly and you want your default names to have some meaning to them. While you can customize your URL’s with various plug-ins, you may not always think to do this, so be sure to have a default you can live with.

Under the settings tab in your dashboard, clíck on permalinks. Here I suggest choosing one of the settings that includes the post name. Including the month and year is totally optional as it will have little to no impact on your search rankings, but you definitely do want to include the post name.

WWW or no WWW
With WordPress, there is no need to worry about the www vs no www redirects. It is handled for you, but you do need to select which variation you want, and it’s very simple to do. Under “General Settings” you will see two fields; one for “WordPress address” and the other, “Blog address”. Ensure that both these fields include the “www” (or not), whichever you prefer, and that’s it. (I always recommend using the “www” version of your URL as most people linking into your site will use it, and this will help keep a consistency among your site.

Required Plug-ins

There is an almost endless supply of free plug-ins out there that you can add to your site ranging from photo galleries and spam protection, to social media integrators for Twitter, Facebook, Digg, and others. While many of these others will benefit your blog and search rankings, the XML Sitemap, and SEO plug-ins are truly essential.

SEO Plug-in
When setting up your new installation, the first plug-in you need to install is one that will allow for totally customized title, meta description tags, and page URL’s. There are a number of tools that do this ranging from the widely popular “All in One SEO Pack” to a relative newcomer “HeadSpace2“. While I personally have yet to try HeadSpace2, it is high on my líst, as it has been recommended by many industry professionals as the best WordPress SEO plug-in. For any new blog installation I highly recommend this plug-in be installed right away.

XML Sitemap Plug-in
To the best of my knowledge, HeadSpace2 does not have an XML sitemap option, and as such I highly recommend “Google XML Sitemaps” . This plug-in will automatically generate XML sitemaps for you on the fly and submit it to Google every time you add, delete, or update a page or post. This helps ensure that Google has the latest information at all times. It’s a very simple plug-in to install and configure and once setup, you can forget about it and it will do the job for you.

A well optimized site loaded with relevant content can do very well in Google if setup correctly. The power of WordPress can make this process incredibly easy so all you have to worry about is writing those great articles and selling your customers. The plug-ins and functionality of WordPress are endless and when installed correctly can make the optimization of your blog considerably easier, increasing your chances for top rankings.

About The Author
Scott Van Achte is the Senior SEO at StepForth Web Marketing Inc.; based in Victoria, BC, Canada and founded in 1997. You can read more of Scott’s articles and those of the veteran StepForth team at http://news.stepforth.com or contact us at http://www.stepforth.com, Tel – 250-385-1190 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 250-385-1190 end_of_the_skype_highlighting , Toll Free – 877-385-5526 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 877-385-5526 end_of_the_skype_highlighting , Fax – 250-385-1198

Comments Off

September 25, 2009

Webmaster Tool Box

Filed under: Internet - Websites - SEO — admin @ 6:25 am

Webmaster Tool Box

Here is a collection of what we consider “must have” tools for webmasters. These tools will benefit any webmaster, both novices and experts alike. Arm yourself with these tools in order to achieve a more professional online presence.

1. Custom 404 Page

Use a custom 404 page, so that if a user incorrectly types a webpage URL, they will still retain navigational options within your site and be provided alternative solutions. When a domain is correctly entered, but a specific webpage’s URL is entered incorrectly, it is possible to display your custom error page to the visitor. By providing users with a navigational bar and further assistance, rather than leaving them with a generic “page not found” error screen, you can often keep prospective customers on your site by providing them with navigation alternatives.

2. UrlTrends

UrlTrends is a service that shows historical trends, so that webmasters can see how their SEO efforts are affecting websites in the search engines. UrlTrends should be used in conjunction with web-logging software.

UrlTrends – www.urltrends.com

3. Favicon

Polish your website by adding a Favorite Icon. When a “favicon” is available on your site, and the site URL is entered in the user’s web browser URL box, the favicon will be displayed beside the URL. This gives the website a more professional and polished look.

Favicon HTMLKit – www.htmlkit.com

4. Color Matching

Match the primary web colors with those used in your logo. Simply choose a preferred color using the ColorBlender service below, and a 6-color matching palette and blend will be automatically calculated for you.

ColorBlender – www.colorblender.com

5. Online WYSIWYG Editing

Online webpage editing allows for collaboration, so that different users can log in and edit web pages.

Edit – www.edit.com

6. RSS Feeds

No longer considered to be just a nice addition, RSS feeds are now a “must have” for popular websites! Create RSS feeds for newsletters, press releases, educational articles, product tutorials, new product promotions, or just about any other sort of web content. FeedForAll – www.feedforall.com

7. MaxEmail

MaxEmail’s very affordable Internet fax and voicemail service allows a fax message to be delivered to an email address as a PDF formatted attachment. This allows fax messages to follow you regardless of your location. And, it also eliminates the need for a costly extra telephone line and a dedicated fax machine.

MaxEmail – maxemail.com

8. Royalty-Free Images

Locate stock photos to incorporate into your web design. Use royalty-free stock photography to add professional, high-quality images to your website.

Photo Wizard – www.photo-wizard.net

9. Submit Corner Web Assessment Tools

These web assessment tools help you use search engines to effectively monitor who links to your website, how many links, and who your competitors are. The tools include search indexing, link tracking, and competitor identification.

Submit Corner – www.SubmitCorner.com

10. Ranks.nl

This service assesses keyword density and prominence of a domain. The tool parses keywords and assesses the number of times a keyword occurs, and then discerns the density of the keywords.

Ranks.nl – ranks.nl/tools/spider.html

11. Webmaster Toolkit

The Webmaster Toolkit is a collection of webmaster tools developed to help webmasters with daily webmaster chores. The suite of free tools and resources included continues to grow, and contains something useful for the beginner and the advanced webmaster alike.

Webmaster Toolkit – www.webmaster-toolkit.com

12. HTML Web Templates

Make it clean and professional. Use easy-to-edit HTML web templates for web design.

Web Design – www.webmaster-templates.net or www.webdesign-elements.com

13. TrafficZap

This website includes script, page rank checker, link popularity checker, and more.

TrafficZap – www.trafficzap.com

14. Compete.com

Web Analytics – Stay on top of rivals with site metrics and audience profiles for the top 1,000,000 web domains. Identify rival search marketing strategies to take your SEM and SEO efforts to the next level.

SiteAnalytics – siteanalytics.compete.com

15. Thumbshots

Easily add thumbshot images to your webpages. Integrate website thumbnails by simply copying and pasting HTML code. Additional software is not needed.

Thumbshots – www.thumbshots.org

Use top-notch tools to make web maintenance and management a little easier.

About The Author
Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll software for creating, editing, publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. In addition Sharon manages marketing for RecordForAll audio recording and editing software.

Comments Off

September 23, 2009

Ten Ways To Get Web Traffic Fast – And Free

Filed under: Internet - Websites - SEO — admin @ 6:26 am

Ten Ways To Get Web Traffic Fast – And Free

There are several ways to get website traffic fast and free, and I’m going to share ten niche ways with you.

Article Submission

You don’t need to be an award winning expert on the topic you are writing about – just pick an area that is related to the theme of your website, do a bit of research using a search engine and before you know it you will have more knowledge on that subject than most. Write in a relaxed, straightforward way. And, of course, when you add your details at the end of your article, make certain that you include your web address as well.

URL Submission

This sounds so obvious, yet so many people overlook it. Website URL submission is about getting more links to your website to help your website get ranked high on major search engines, thus getting more visitor traffic by, well, submittíng your website URL to the major search engines. You can buy or subscribe to software that will do this, but it is quite possible to get a good return by submitting manually.

Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is a way for internet users to store, classify, share, search and discover Internet resources that they find useful. Since social bookmarks are saved online, users are able to access them from anywhere – at home, at work or while travelling.

These lists can be accessible to the public by users of a specific network or website. What you need to do first is register with a social bookmarking site which allows you to store and tag bookmarks. Most social bookmarking services allow users to search for bookmarks which are associated with given “tags”, and rank the resources by the number of users which have bookmarked them. This means that other visitors and members of social bookmarking sites can search for resources by topic, category, keyword, tags, or popularity to see what others have saved. As a user, social bookmarking sites let you find useful, informative resources through pages that have been tagged because others have found them to be valuable sources. Voila – more web traffíc. Free.

Forum Posting

Forum posting is a hands down alternative to paid advertising methods. For just a few hours of work every week, you can capture batches of interested leads everyday. The more forums you contribute to, the more you will gain traffic. If you are an active forum poster, you will also get a good feel about the kind of products that are hot on the market.

Please don’t overlook the forum signature or commonly called resource box – it’s a powerful free advertising tool for you. What you must do is edit your forum signature. Basically, a curiosity inducing one-liner and a link to your website is great. Once you have edited and saved your signature, it will appear at the bottom of all your comments in the forum discussions. That means, the more you participate in the discussions in the forums, the more people see your semi-ad written on your signature. I promise, this will encourage people to visit your website, and hopefully buy from you.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing is one of the best ways to get the word out about your website and can be done with very little technical expertise and therefore is easy to start up. If you have a product or service you believe in, visit a site such as Clickbank and open an account. Follow the simple instructions to gain affiliates – and traffic.

Press Releases

It’s a fact that a well-written Press Release can dramatically improve your sales, expose your company to the masses, and greatly enhance the image of your business or products. Publicity is the most cost-effective web traffic building marketing tool there is, and, surprisingly, web traffíc can be generated by ink and paper!

Classified Ads

Again, it’s easy to associate Classified Ads with yesterday’s technology, but they are extremely cheap and a one line product or service description, together with your website, will pay dividends.

Blog Comments

If you are an avid blog follower, you have to include Blog Commenting in your web traffíc arsenal. You will almost always find a “comments” link at the end of each post. Good blog commenters add to the discussion and are known as knowledgeable, informative, friendly and engaged. Join them!

FaceBook

Don’t forget that you can use Facebook to its full potential to attract more visitors to your website. You can get away from just interacting with your school or college friends and start interacting with people within your industry or other industries that you want to get into.

An easy way to do this is to join groups that interest you as well as make friends with people that you want to get to know. Fill out your profile (fully) – the best profile on Facebook is a complete one.

Videos

Finally, why not make a video and post to video sites too! This is not a Warner Bros. effort! Your PC or Mac may well have a webcam, or you can borrow a camcorder or Flip. Write a brief script – lights- camera – action – and upload to YouTube. (Just remember to be sure to link it back to you.)

Well – there you are. Not all of the ten suggestions I’ve outlined may appeal, but if you select three or four, stick with them, and implement them on a regular basis, you will see your web traffíc grow significantly. My best to you.

About The Author
Did you find these suggestions helpful? Is your website making you money? Go to UltraSimpleWebTraffic.com to find out more and claim your free visitor traffic mini course by James Gladwin.

Comments Off

September 22, 2009

Blog Flipping: 10 Important Factors When Selling Your Weblog Or Website

Filed under: Internet - Websites - SEO — admin @ 6:29 am

Blog Flipping: 10 Important Factors When Selling Your Weblog Or Website
By Chuck Crawford (c) 2009
The market for blogs has exploded. Many companies do not want to invest the time in developing a blog in their respective niche, which has given rise to a whole new cottage industry, blog flipping.

Blog flipping is done in a few different ways. Some flippers buy an existing blog that has potential, but is not currently producing. They take that blog and build the traffic and sales up to a level productive enough to reap a profit from their investment, and then sell it.

Or, more common in today’s blog flipping market, is to research a specific niche, develop a domain / blog, and then sell it.

But what does “developed” really mean? It depends on the flipper. So buyers really need to do their homework (read due diligence) before investing in an “established” blog or website. Because “established” is in the eyes of the beholder, and means many different things depending upon who you consult.

In my opinion, established means that the site, or blog, is profitable. Now profitable can be defined very differently for different companies. It doesn’t mean that the site has to be makíng money, though it does help justify the investment when purchasing the blog. It can mean to a prospective company only that the site has traffic that company believes it can convert into sales. Not everyone can convert website traffic in the same way. So there are companies out there looking to buy blogs that have a certain, specific reader demographic that fits their market. However, these types of sales are few and far between. Companies that are buying blogs normally want to see one thing.

Profit.

Not just income, because a blog’s gross monthly income and it’s actual profit margin can be two very different things as well. We’ve all seen the advertisements screaming that you can make ten thousand dollars a month blogging, or with Adsense, or whatever. But the part usually left out is the investment it takes to get that income. Sometimes the cost is far greater than the income, making the blog or website a LOSER.

So what steps should you take to sell your blog if you are a would be website flipper? Here are a few factors your blog or website should have in order to get top dollar:

1. Real Web Property

Your blog needs to be a real web property. What I mean by this is that it needs to be a real domain, on hosting you are paying for. Free hosted blogs are not a viable investment for most companies and corporations. There are exceptions to every rule and I’m sure that there have been a few sales of extremely popular Blogspot blogs, but unless you have a million visitors a month, you’re probably not going to sell a free hosted blog anytime soon. Buy a domain, pay for some hosting, build something that has value.

2. Professional Appearance

Your blog or website needs to have a professional appearance. Custom design is always better, but at the very least, it needs to have a template or layout that fits that blog’s readership or market. If you have poor graphics, even if your blog has monster traffic, you’ll sell it for much less than you could have if you had professional web design. It’s sort of like house flipping or selling a used car. If you can afford it, a fresh coat of paint usually brings the resell value up substantially.

3. Developed Traffic Sources

Potential buyers want to see traffic. Not just any traffic will do for most serious investors. They want to see solid, search engine traffic and a solid bookmarked reader base. StumbleUpon and other social bookmarking websites are awesome traffic sources, no doubt. But when it comes to someone buying your blog, they want to see more than just a few traffic spikes from a front page listing on Digg. They want to see that the traffic is going to keep coming for months and years to come. Without a lot of work if they can get it.

4. Documented Traffic Statistics

It is going to take more than just the summary of “hits” screen capture from your webalizer stats to make the sale. You are going to need at least three months history of actual traffic statistics. Unique visitors, tracking cookie info if you have it, Google Analytics, etc. Numbers, numbers, numbers. Corporations want numbers in order to convince their board of directors that your blog would be a sound investment. Private investors are no different for the most part and they want to know exactly what they are buying when it comes down the actual traffic your blog has.

5. Profit and Loss

Lots of income statistics. If you are looking to sell your blog or website for real money (read more than a few bucks nabbed on EBAY) then you are going to need to show your buyer some stats about money. P&L statements (Profit and Loss) for as far back as you can go will help your buyer make his or her decision. It is one thing to tell a potential buyer what the gross income per month is, it’s a completely different thing to show them exactly what the net income is and how it is obtained each month. Keep good records of your website expenditures and what the income received from those investments are. Include every cost. Website hosting, design, redesign, employee or outsourcing costs, whatever. Include everything and show them the real bottom line.

6. Set a Fair Price

I know you love your site, I love all of mine too. So it’s easy to attach an emotional value to your blog and inflate the price. It’s also really easy to confuse a blog’s actual value with your vision of it’s potential value. What you think the site will make someday and what it’s making now are two very different things. Sorry, but what you think it will make someday has zero value to a would be investor. They only want to know what the net profit is, right now. Yes, you can take some long term income growth statistics and make profit projections, but unless you have these statistics going back a year or more, most buyers are going to dismiss them entirely.

Set a real price. In the bricks and mortar world most companies sell for 2 to 3 years of the total net income. Online, this number is usually cut down to one year. So if your website is netting $300 per month, the actual value of your blog is probably somewhere around $3600. Once again, it’s easy to add an emotional price tag for all the hard work you’ve done to get that blog makíng $300 clams a month, but your sweat equity doesn’t mean much to a buyer.

Neither do website values created with online calculators. These sites are traffic magnets and are built totally to obtain webmaster traffic. If you search long enough and hard enough, you’ll find a website value calculator that comes up with a number you like. It still means nothing to a buyer. It’s not what your site is really worth and should have no bearing whatsoever on your sale price.

To read the rest of Chuck Crawford’s article and the remaining factors he cites for flipping blogs or websites, please click the SiteProNews link below:

About The Author
Chuck Crawford is an established expert in web design, traffic development and website financial analysis. He has been helping people design and develop their internet business since 1995. Visit http://www.business blogs.us/blog/ .

Comments Off

The 5 Minute SEO Site Audit Checklist

Filed under: Internet - Websites - SEO — admin @ 6:28 am

The 5 Minute SEO Site Audit Checklist
By Matt Siltala (c) 2009
From month to month I have the opportunity to present 4 different webinars on different topics related to Internet marketing to brand new online business owners.

The reason I bring this up is because no matter what the topic I am presenting on, I usually get asked the same question by completely different random people. They are all wanting me to “look at their site” and give them a “quick, what do you think?”.

These people are wanting to know if their site is ready to “go live” (although I never really understand why people ask that question) but for these people, and this post – I have come up with what I’d like to call “The 5 Minute SEO Site Audit Checklist”. If you have a brand new site, and haven’t done any kind of SEO before, this will be a great list of reminders that will set you off on the right foot.

1. URL canonicalization and 301 re-dirs. One of the first things I look for on any domain I am giving a health check on is the URL canonicalization. In My Opinion it does not matter if you pick proper URL canonicalization pointing to the www’s or non-www’s, but you need to pick one and stick to it. I personally always choose the www’s because more people (from my experience) tend to link to you with the full URL. So you need to get into your .htaccess file and make a few edits. Any variation of the homepage URL needs to be done this way too – for example you need to have the /index.php also re-direct to the main URL (however you have it set up) Bottom line here, you need to make sure all variations of your URL point to the same way you set it up.

Any extension of your URL like:

• http://www.example.com/index.php
• http://www.example.com/index.htm
• http://www.example.com/default.html
• http://www.example.com/default.php
• http://www.example.com/anything (that goes to homepage)

All need to be pointed to the main – http://www.example.com (without any extensions). You also need to make sure that you don’t have any dev links that need to be 301-ed to their new addresses so you don’t have any bad or dead links on the site. You can handle all these changes via the .htaccess file. Here is a little more in depth look into 301 re-directs via a post I did on it a few months back.

Here’s the code:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourdomain.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

(Make sure your Apache installation has mod_rewrite enabled.)

As long as your Apache installation has mod_rewrite enabled then you should be able to use this fix on almost any host.2. Unique Title Tags and Meta Data. I will go to Google and run a site: command and see all of the pages that are indexed just to make sure that there are no duplicate content issues and that all pages seem to be individual and unique with their own title tags and meta data. If your site is not right – all results that come back will look exactly the same, and if the title and data that comes back is all the same – you have a problem!

3. Search Engine Friendly. Check to make sure the CMS you are using is search engine friendly. Are your URLs search engine friendly? Are you using keywords in the naming structure of your URLs or just automatically created jibberish by the builder? Are you able to include header tags? Alt Tags?

4. Has the site been submitted to Google Webmaster Central? By submitting your site to Google you are able to get your whole site indexed properly on Google, and they are able to show you any errors your site may have. There are so many tools that are offered here that you need to become aware of, but for the sake of “The 5 Minute SEO Site Audit” I just want to make sure the site has been submitted.

5. Check for Duplicate Content. If you are selling products and are using a supplier with their descriptions and info, I am going to make sure there is no duplicate content issues. If you are using the same content that 1,000 other people are using, there might be a problem. I would always suggest making sure you do everything you can to make sure that you have no duplicate content of any kind on your site.

In Conclusion: Again, this is just a quick “What I would do” SEO Audit checklist of what I look for when “checking out” brand new sites. These are a few of the steps that I would recommend anyone new to Internet business and SEO should check out before really thinking they are ready to make money with their website. I know this info may seem basic to a lot of us that have been doing it “forever”, but you woul be surprised how many people still do the simple things wrong!
About The Author
Matt Siltala has been working with Internet business owners since 1999 to help them increase their conversion rate and truly become successful. Matt got started in the field by working with a small radio station in Arizona and posting to his own personal blog . From there, Matt has become an expert in the field of SEO and internet marketing, all while building his own internet marketing company, Dream Systems Media.

Comments Off

September 17, 2009

20 Best Blog Post Ideas for Small Business Blogging

Filed under: Internet - Websites - SEO — admin @ 4:00 am

20 Best Blog Post Ideas for Small Business Blogging
By Donna Gunter (c) 2009

“So, what do I blog about each time?” is a question I often get from clients. To keep your blog active and healthy, I recommend blogging at least 3 times per week. However, that notion is overwhelming for many. Even though you may be an expert in a topic, your mind may go completely blank when it comes time to blog, and then at other times when you’re not blogging, your idea cup runneth over.

The primary thing to remember is that blog posts don’t have to be long and complicated. You’re not writing an article, a report or a thesis. Many times a blog post is only a paragraph consisting of a few sentences that contain your thoughts about something. Now, doesn’t that sound easier than composing a 600-word post each time you sit down to blog?

Here are 20 ideas you can use to help you create a blog post when you’re stuck for an idea:

1. Current events. Can you link what you do in your business to a current event? Open up your daily newspaper or your RSS news reader and see what’s happening in the world, your country, your state, or your city. Give your opinion about the event and a solution, if you have it, and relate that to your business if you can.

2. Trends in your industry. I read constantly and subscribe to more industry publications than I have time to review. However, there are a handful that I do regularly read, and it’s to those that I look to for what the trends seem to be. When you blog about the trend, put your unique perspective on it, or write a rebuttal post, disagreeing with the relevance of the trend.

3. Get personal. Tell a story about what’s happening in your life or in your business that would be useful or instructive for your readers. Chronicle both your highs and lows, your wins and your struggles. One key to successful blogging is getting personal with your readers. The more “real” you are with your readers, the better your reader gets to know you and begins to like and trust you. You become a “real, live” human being to them who faces similar issues that they face.

4. Top 10. Most of my writing is in the form of a Top 10 list because it’s an easy way for me to outline the points I want to make and then go back and fill in the details for each point. In this case, each of your points for a topic can become an individual blog post, and when all the points are complete, you can compile the full list for an article for your ezine or website.

5. Frequently asked questions. If you’ve been in business for awhile, you know the questions that clients and prospective clients ask you to answer over and over again. Instead of repeatedly responding to the same questions, write a series of blog posts that answer your target market’s most frequently asked questions.

6. How you helped a client solve a problem. Clients hire you to solve a specific problem they’re having, whether they do that when they buy your service or your product. List 3-5 most recent problems that you have helped your clients solve. Create a post that talks about the problem and the solution you provided (either with your client’s permission, or by making it generic enough to hide the client’s identity) that becomes a learning experience for your readers.

7. Interview an expert. What people do you know and admire in your industry? If you admire them, chances are that members of your target market do, as well. Contact them for a short email or recorded interview and ask them 3-5 questions that you’d like to hear them answer about their lives, their businesses, industry trends, or how to solve a particular problem. Publish the interviews as blog posts, adding audio and graphics if you have them.

8. Solicit and answer questions. Ask your ezine subscribers or blog readers to ask you their most pressing question related to what you do. I do this and get questions for 1-2 blog posts per week, and it helps me stay in touch with the needs of my readers, as well.

9. Review something. Read a good book lately related to your industry? Just purchased a product to help you solve a problem? Reviews aren’t limited to the critics at the New York Times. Blog about your experience with a product, book, or service, highlighting both the high points and low points, and whether you would recommend that others use or purchase it.

10. Read other blogs. Go to Google’s Blog Search or Technorati and find other blogs related to your industry or your target market. Add those to your blog reader and take an hour or two each week to read the posts on those blogs. Do you agree or disagree with the post? Have another point of view? Think the blogger was on target but you want to expand on her point of view? Reading other blogs is a great way to generate ideas for your own blog.

11. Keep an idea file. Sometimes a blogging idea or concept will strike you when you don’t need (or want) to blog. Begin a blog idea file by creating a document or spreadsheet to track your ideas and thoughts. If you’re in the zone, go ahead and write the post, and then you can post it to your blog on a day when the idea well is dry.

12. Create a tutorial. There’s always something you can tell your target market how to do. Create a written, audio, or video tutorial of the process as your blog post. Depending on the complexity of the tasks, the tutorial may need to created in multiple parts, like Part 1, Part 2, etc., which would make for multiple posts to your blog.

13. Share a positive/negative email. I often share exceptionally positive or negative emails I receive from people (without names to protect their identity as appropriate) either to celebrate kudos I’ve received or to demonstrate how I responded to a particularly nasty or upsetting comment. I get the most mileage out of the negative emails, and I often ask for feedback about how my readers might respond to the situation.

14. Take a tour. Take a self-made in-person or virtual tour of something useful to your readers. For example, if you’re a dating coach, tour the top 5 online dating sites and report your experiences as a client in each. If you’re a restaurant consultant, visit 3 local restaurants and evaluate what’s often overlooked in staff training based on your experience as a customer.

15. Write about a Twitter or Facebook update. You only get 140 characters in Twitter to write about something. If you need more space, or want to respond in greater length to someone’s Tweet or Facebook status update, do so in your blog. Thought-provoking questions are often asked on Twitter, and the answers may inspire you to blog.

16. Create a “Best of” list. What are the top 7 blogs to read in your industry? How about the top 5 people to watch? What about the 10 most useful online tools you use? Nothing attracts attention on a blog quicker than a list, so create one yourself or ask your readers to help you in the process.

17. Report from an event. Attending a professional trade show, conference, or networking event? You can report live about your experiences at the event on your blog. Talk about the workshops your attended, the vendors you met, the speaker you heard — the sky’s the limit!

18. Debunk a myth. Each industry is plagued with myths and fallacies about success/failure or what does/doesn’t work that the industry professionals would like to see vanquished once and for all. Use your blog to debunk some of the most common myths/preconceptions/notions in your industry and set the record straight.

19. Talk to newbies. Picture yourself as a newbie in your industry once again. What do you know now that you didn’t know then? What questions did you ask? What knowledge do you have that you think everyone knows? Getting back to the basics can help bring all of your blog readers up to speed.

20. Write about a client conversation. Many times I’m inspired to blog as an expansion or continuation of a conversation I had with a client. The blog post focuses on a topic of the conversation, not the conversation itself. Typically the strategy/idea/technique you’ve discussed with one client will benefit your blog readers as well.

This is just the tip of a very large iceberg of ideas for posts to your blog. Take a look around your life, your business, conversations with clients and colleagues, and what’s happening in the world around you. You’ll soon begin to see more potential for blog posts than you ever thought possible!

About The Author
Internet Marketing Strategist and Boomer Biz Coach Donna Gunter helps baby boomers create profitable online retirement businesses that they love by demystifying and simplifying the tools and strategies needed to market and grow their businesses online. To claim your FR*EE gift, TurboCharge Your Online Marketing Toolkit, visit her site at OnlineBizU.com . Ask Donna an Internet Marketing question at AskDonnaGunter.com .

Comments Off

September 15, 2009

Real-Time Search – 5 Reasons Why

Filed under: Internet - Websites - SEO — admin @ 7:02 am

Real-Time Search – 5 Reasons Why
By Ben Behrouzi (c) 2009
If you don’t understand why the Real Time Web is huge, you will soon.

Thanks to micro-blogging sites like Twitter, a constant stream of human-posted content has infiltrated the Web. This growing infiltration has created a bottoms up approach to content creation that via the progressive support of rapidly developing applications has and will continue to empower every individual to co-create what is deemed as “important” on the Web. The Real Time Web serves as both the database that informs us of what is happening right “Now” and the human touch to the content that will compete with the traditional algorithms for what is deemed as “valuable” content to us all.

Its challenges lie in the filtration and mass integration of both the content and the act of sharing to the Real Time Web. There remain major aspects of the Web that have not yet integrated “searching” and “sharing” of the Real Time Web, including traditional search. But as filtration and integration progress the Web will take the form of a living breathing database.

Here are 5 reasons why Real Time Search will help the Real Time movement change the Web and your experience forever.

1. The “Now” Factor

We saw it with Michael Jackson’s passing. We saw it with the Iran Protests and we see it more and more everyday — the Real Time web provides us with what is happening right “Now” and with vivid detail from around the globe. “We” is driving the “Now” factor.

2. We Become Co-Creators

The Real-Time web offers us the ability to become co-creators in not only content but also in what is deemed important. Why? Because we decide what is worth sharing, discussing and having opinions on. This behavior serves as a natural selection of valuable content. Certainly the current web allows for creation of content, but what is deemed as important/valuable is mostly left up to a few individuals, organizations and a bunch of robots. The Real-Time web, once fully integrated, will change that.

3. Humans vs Machines

Have you ever clicked on blue links that lead you to a piece of content dating back to a year ago? Search results lose relevancy each day due to the amount of new content hitting the internet. Spiders, web crawlers and engines decide what content is relevant via algorithms and those results can be manipulated via intelligently structured content (SEO). Real-time search enables users to receive information via conversations and people instead of machines. Take a look at your web results today. Would you rather receive cold content determined by algorithms or what the crowd and people value as good and bad?

4. Facebook Factor

With over 300 million users creating and wrapping themselves around content, once Facebook opens up its search API to the web what do you think will happen? Better yet do you think there is value in being able to search a database of 300 million users’ opinions and experiences? Searching Facebook may be the factor that tips the overall experience of the web into one that is very different than today. Facebook may be the tipping point to where bottoms up (sharing & contributing) will go head to head with tops down (crawling & optimizing).

5. A New Breed of Search Engines

If there existed a search engine that was capable of aggregating and rendering results based on what was shared, peoples opinions and conversations, would you be interested in that search engine? If you knew that there were 6 conversations that provided a fantastic account of a design firm you were considering would that be more valuable to you than the top 3 links on your current search engine results? Would you have more value for SEO based search results or human conversation driven results? How about both? Real-Time search, once developed, will render a new breed of search engines that will capture this new value the New Web has to offer.

At the moment, Real Time Search is only in its infancy, as is the Real Time web. Twitter and the like are simply representations of a big movement that will continue to occur with the creation of more similar services, more adoption of those services and more integration of those services.

What is clear is that our daily use of the Real Time Web’s driving platforms — Twitter, Facebook and the like — is unprecedented. The Internet is no longer simply just a disconnected 3rd party container of tops down aggregation, “We” is now part of its determination. And, search as we know it will soon change to accommodate, thereby delivering a completely different experience of the Web.

About The Author
Ben Behrouzi has over 12 years in building and managing startups, building management teams, developing core technology infrastructure and leading product design and architecture. http://www.leapfish.com

Comments Off

7 Words That Will Make Your Website Worth Viewing

Filed under: Internet - Websites - SEO — admin @ 4:01 am

7 Words That Will Make Your Website Worth Viewing
By Jerry Bader (c) 2009

Seven. It’s just a number like any other, but it does seem to come up on a fairly regular basis. There’s the Seven Wonders of the World, The Seven Deadly Sins, and the Seven Dwarfs: Happy, Sneezy, Sleepy, Bashful, Doc, Dopey, and my personal favorite, Grumpy.

Phone numbers are seven digits, and they say the optimum brand name should be no more than seven letters long. Seven it seems is a magical number, as the average human brain can only grasp seven things at a time. Interesting, my wife says I’ve got trouble with two, never mind seven, but that’s another story.

So I’ve been thinking, what are the seven most important words associated with Web-marketing. I’ll give you a hint: Search, Engine, and Optimization don’t make the cut.

So what words do make the líst? What are the seven words that will make your website worth viewing?

Words Can Move You

By someone’s count there are 171,476 entries in the Oxford English Dictionary, plus another 47,156 words that have fallen out of favor. This of course doesn’t count the 9,500 additional permutations, that don’t deserve their own special attention.

Fifty percent of these words are nouns, twenty-five percent are adjectives, and 14.285% are verbs, with the rest made up of all those other things, the purpose of which most of us have long since forgotten.

Others may find fault with these numbers, but no matter what the total, it’s a lot of words. Of the several hundred thousand words to choose from, the average person recognizes less than ten percent, while the average teenager seems to only be able to handle about half that amount; of course that doesn’t count slang, instant messaging jargon, or the ever-popular four-letter variety.

Why the heck are there so many words if we all refuse to use them. I mean why waste all those perfectly good words on English teachers and college professors. By the way, they say swearing is the refuge of the feeble-minded, people who can’t express themselves in a more articulate manner, but to be honest, I really don’t give a damn.

Here’s the thing, words have meaning and impact, and they provide the emotional context of our communications, to which we can add subtlety and nuance through their delivery by means of tone, cadence, and gesture.

So as important as words are, the way they are delivered is even more important.

What Website Design Is Really About

The other day I was listening to a local all-news radio station. It is mostly rip-and-read wire service stuff that they repeat over-and-over like some kind of psychological torture, but they do provide traffic reports on a nauseatingly regular basis. You only have to wait ten minutes until they repeat everything, so if you want to hear what traffic snafus to avoid just wait a few minutes; but here’s the problem: the announcers talk so fast that no matter how hard you concentrate, you can’t quite get the particular information you need; and if you’re driving, you have other things to consider, like the idiot in the Hummer who just cut you off.

None of these guys ever uses a period, let alone a semicolon or comma. Either they have very small bladders and are under pressure to finish quickly, or they’re late for their afternoon pilates class. They seem so intent on rushing to the commercials that they don’t ever deliver the content in an appropriate manner. And your website just might have the same problem.

Too much information is as bad as not enough. Information overkill leads to information anxiety, buyer’s remorse, reduced satisfaction, unattainable expectations, and purchase-decision paralysis.

Website owners have been told that visitors won’t wait for anything, that they are impatient, and you’ve got to get to the point fast, make the pitch and close the deal; well that just isn’t going to work with any sophisticated product or service.

Your website presentation needs to slow people down so they hear what you have to say, and you have to say something worth hearing.

Website design is about more than layout, markup language, and technical wizardry. Website design is about communication, it’s about turning advertising into content, and content into an experience that viewers will remember.

Seven Words To Remember

1. Communication
People are always asking us what’s wrong with their websites, and the answer in the vast majority of cases can be summed-up in a quote from the movie, “Cool Hand Luke” (1967): “what we have here is a failure to communicate.” Communication is the key to success, and that doesn’t just apply to your website, it applies to almost everything you do both inside and outside your business-life.

If your website isn’t communicating on both a rational and emotional level, if it doesn’t provide the psychological and emotional context of your marketing message, then exactly what is it doing?

2. Audience
I can’t think of too many people who actually like being sold. In fact, sometimes customers get so irritated by sales tactics that they end up not buying the thing they came specifically to your website to purchase.

Solving the problem is merely a question of altering your perspective; the average buyer is predisposed to dismiss and ignore high-pressure tactics, and meaningless sales pitches. So instead of treating customers like customers, try treating them like an audience. Audiences want to be engaged, enlightened, and entertained. And that is the most effective way to make a sales impact.

3. Focus
All too often websites inundate their Web audiences with facts, figures, statistics, and an endless líst of features, benefits, options, and whatever else the sales department can think of throwing in. All that stuff just confuses people.

Focus your message on the most important elements of what you have to say. If your website can embed that singular idea in an audience’s mind, then it has done its job.

4. Language
The words used, and how they are put together provides meaning; they inform personality; they provide mental sound bites; and they make whatever you are saying, worth remembering.

Language is one of the critical elements of ‘voice’, the ability to convey personality; and writing without a ‘voice’ is instantly forgettable.

5. Performance
Even the most articulate prose can be lost in a befuddled delivery. Communication is more than words; it’s a combination of language, style, personality, and performance.

Things are rarely what they seem. Even our memories are a stylized version of what we’ve actually experienced. Creating a memorable impression is about managing the viewer experience, and providing the right verbal and non-verbal cues that make what is being said memorable.

6. Personality
Every business has a personality. The first problem is, few medium-sized companies ever attempt to manage that persona, and as a consequence, the buying public forms its own opinion. And that opinion is often not the way you want to be regarded.

The second problem is companies either don’t have a firm grasp of who they really are, or they know, and they are afraid to promote it. If your company’s identity isn’t worth promoting, it is time to think why that is, and change it. The bottom line is, a company without a personality is a company without an image, and that makes you instantly forgettable.

7. Psychology
The most important feature you can provide your audience is psychological fulfillment, not deep discounts, fast service, or more bells and whistles.

The real reason people buy stuff is that it makes them feel something. Cosmetics make women feel attractive or sexy, while cars make men feel they’ve achieved some level of status. Even services make people feel important, as in “I’ve got a guy, who does that for me.” Finding the psychological hot spot in your marketing, and promoting the hell out of it consistently and continually should be your primary marketing goal. All those features and benefits are merely the excuse for a purchase, not the reason.

The Web Is Fast Becoming A Video Environment

Websites are not just marketing collateral; they are not just digital brochures. They are a new presentation medium that requires specialized communication skills, and knowledge of how best to use the medium.

You may be a great salesperson, and nobody knows your business like you do. You may even be skilled at delivering speeches at conventions and seminars, but performing effectively in front of a camera is a whole different ball game, and for most people, it’s way out of their comfort zone, let alone their skill level.

The same old methods that used to work won’t work any more. You’re no longer competing with just the company down the street; you’re competing with the entire world.

Web-businesses may not ever actually meet their customers face-to-face, or even talk to them on the phone, so it is imperative that they use marketing presentation methods that deliver an experience worth remembering.
About The Author
Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design firm that specializes in Web-audio and Web-video. Visit MRPwebmedia.com, 136Words.com and SonicPersonality.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com or telephone (905) 764-1246 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (905) 764-1246 end_of_the_skype_highlighting

Comments Off

September 13, 2009

Evaluating Facebook for Your Business

Filed under: Internet - Websites - SEO — admin @ 6:24 am

Evaluating Facebook for Your Business
By Tinu AbayomiPaul (c) 2009
Social media is here to stay. There. I said it. It will be around in some form for years to come. Do you really see Facebook, Twitter and Web videos going somewhere?

Or do you just see them evolving and becoming part of a larger system the same way business blogs did? Great. Then we can start figuring out how to use social media to our benefit.

Now that we’re past this issue of whether we are in love with MySpace, LinkedIn, Facebook, Ning, etc., and we realize that we’re focusing on whether these tools are useful or not, (not on whether or not they give us the warm fuzzies), there’s still a fundamental question. This goes for whether you’re using Facebook pages, Facebook ads, or a regular Facebook profile.

How do you know if sites like Facebook are for YOU? How can you tell if a social networking site can help YOUR company?

It boils down to three things.

1- Are There Enough People on the Site in Your Interest Area for it to Be Worth Your While?

You have to think about business connections too, not just clients.

You can connect with people who send you business. Think about what the value of a new client is too, whether you think you can get one out of 100, and how long it takes. When people come to your profile, are they visiting your site? If not, is your profile set up correctly?

Experiment. There are several very subtle things you can do that maximize your exposure, not just daily clicks through to your site.

To find out if there are enough people on Facebook who need your plumbing services, search for home improvement groups. Check your regional network and look on the Marketplace page. See if you can find people in your local area to befriend who would need your services – but for heaven’s sake, don’t be aggressive in your promotíon.

Instead, create a Facebook page, run an ad, or have the type of networking conversations where “so, what do you do?” will naturally come up. And you can take it from there.

Networking at Facebook can be like hanging out at a neighborhood mixer. Yeah, you might want to mention that you’re a handyman, or that you work at the bank, and give someone your card, but you don’t want to turn those first few getting-to-know-you conversations into a sales pitch.

Let them know who you are, what you do, and after a few conversations, send them a no-strings coupon for them or a friend “just in case you ever need it buddy” and go on being friends.

They’ll remember you if you keep in touch, and are a nice enough guy.

2- Does your company have an RSS-capable site that updates frequently?

If it does, a profile on Facebook gives you another place to share your RSS link. You can import your blog posts going forward, or summaries. There are also applications like NetworkedBlogs that will help your blog posts get exposure from interested readers.

3- Do you already have clients, friends, associates, whose signal you can isolate, or whose noise you can penetrate, using Facebook?

This has to be the most underestimated use of Facebook. My first month at Facebook I had direct interactions with ten influential people I admire. Some of them I look up to for personal reasons, others are greats in some aspect of search, the internet or technology. One actually sent me a client.

Instead of installing hundreds of applications and super-poking someone or posting spam to their Super Wall, you can be the smart person who sends a letter and gets a response, the one who sends a private message and is sent a gift in return, or just get the wonderful feeling of having a world famous personality you admire not only acknowledge you, but contact you directly.

One of the greatest things about Facebook is how it can help cement relationships between you and people you know but didn’t think you had much in common with. You know how sometimes, you want to write to say hello to someone, but at the same time, you don’t want to waste their time?

Or when you think about some great author or celebrity you admire, and what you’d say to them if you could meet them? Maybe you just want to compliment a more famous colleague and not sound like a dork.

Facebook can help with this when it functions as an automatic ice-breaker, facilitating an intial contact between you and someone you wish you had more reason to interact with, then another, and another, until you become friends who call each other on the phone and plan to visit or meet at conferences.

Those are the reasons. It’s not a matter of time because you can block all the nuisance requests and there are ways around the irritating app requests.

It’s not a matter of just traffic because first, you can set up a profile in 15 minutes to automatically send you traffic and you don’t have to mess with it again if you like. Or you can go in and meet people every day and it can be a major traffic source.

And it’s not a matter of whether you can get anything out of it – it’s more a matter of whether you’re willing and whether the available traffic is targeted to your topic. It’s not for everyone, because let’s face it, not everyone wants to do the work, or even use Facebook that way.

And that’s okay! For some people, it’s a nice little escape, like a mental, online Starbucks. For some it’s a bother, and the pain of learning a new way to do things isn’t worth the time. I don’t mean that sarcastically – if you’re functioning as a CEO, you may not want to focus on Facebook.

With a little research, you can find out what kind of role it will play in your life.
About The Author
Confused about how to get clients, joint venture partners or more blog traffic from Facebook without violating their terms with traditional online marketíng techniques? Go to http://freetraffictip.com/1-facebook to learn the advanced secrets of Facebook Marketing.

Comments Off

September 12, 2009

How Many Links Does It Take to Get to the Middle of Google Page One?

Filed under: Internet - Websites - SEO — admin @ 7:02 am

How Many Links Does It Take to Get to the Middle of Google Page One?
By Bill Platt (c) 2009 911 Reputation Management
Everyday it seems, people are asking me about the optimum number of inbound links they need to acquire for their website in order to rank well in Google.

My answer is going to seem a little flip, but it is the honest, best answer.

Answer: You need more inbound links – of equal or higher quality – than what your competitors have.

When people wonder how many inbound links they need to acquire to rank in the Top 4 of Google’s search results or even the Top 10 of Google’s SERPs, they are generally hoping that someone will be able to give them a numeric answer, so that they know whether they can afford to undertake the process or not.

I understand the WHY of the question, but there is no canned answer that will work for everyone. Remember, your competitor may be asking the same question and undertaking the same processes as you are, trying to accomplish the same goal.

You can’t truly begin to understand the answer to this question, until you have taken the time to do an Inbound Link Comparison Analysis of all of your competitors in the Top 10 spots of Google’s SERPs.

• You need to look at the Top 10 listings in Google for a particular keyword.

• You need to do backlink checks for all ten URLs in Google’s search listings, and you need to check those numbers across a variety of sources, including Google, Yahoo and any other tool you can find to do a check. (Google and Yahoo both tend to understate the actual link counts. While Yahoo will show you more than what Google does, they also show a number of “no consequence” links in their results.)

• You need to look at the quality of a few of the pages that provide links to the URLs in the search results.

This is not an easy process to undertake. I have done it before, but the best you can hope for is a “snapshot” of what is out there, and therefore, what you need to accomplish.

Note: If Wikipedia turns up in your search query, few people with small budgets will ever be able to dislodge Wikipedia in the search results. What they make up for in a small number of inbound links, they more than make up for with links from dozens or hundreds of PR4, PR5 and PR6 pages. Wikipedia is the king of Internal Linking, and they use that to a great degree to rank extraordinarily high in Google’s search listings.

Your analysis should seek to uncover how many links a page has to it.

As a general rule of thumb, Google will show you less than 1% of the existing number of links for a web page. Yahoo will sometimes show closer to the existing number of links for a web page, but they will not show you the highest quality of those links.

So, as you strive to gain a “snapshot” picture of the playing field, you want to take Google’s Inbound Links number and multiply that by at least 100. Then you want to take Yahoo’s Inbound Links number and multiply that by at least 20, then cut the number in half to acknowledge the number of worthless crap links they have in their database. Once you have achieved these two numbers, then I tend to call the truth “somewhere in the middle”.

With your “somewhere in the middle” number in hand, you then need to look at the quality of links to a few of those search listings, to get an idea of whether those links exist on higher quality pages or simply junk pages.

If those links are on junk pages, then the goal could be achieved by just working the numbers. But if there are a lot of high PageRank pages in the mix, then whatever number is in your hand, should be multiplied, perhaps 3-fold, to overcome the quality of pages that link to your competitors.

If you get the idea that my simple formula leads to a complicated answer, then you are right.

All of the numbers that I have included in my sample formula are based on rough speculation, as the “snapshot” offers you your best hope of understanding the challenge in front of you.

While the number of inbound links may be relatively easy to determine, the link quality is a factor that is really hard to pin down.

• If you determine that you only need 300 inbound links to rank with the big boys, you may be right.

• Your 300 inbound links number should also be quantified against the number of links that Google will count worthy, so you may need 1200 links to get 300 links that Google will deem worthy. This calculation depends more on the “quality of your content”, rather than the “quantity of your content”.

• When all is said and done and your 300 Google-worthy links have not yet put you on page one, then you know that the quality of the links pointing at your competitors is greater than the quality of the links pointing to you.

If you were hoping for an easy answer, I am sorry that I could not help you with that.

But with this explanation of the challenge, you may be better prepared to answer the big question, the question that is really on your mind:

Are my hopes of achieving good rankings in Google within my reach?

I tend to throw “worry” to the wind and just start working. I don’t worry if I can afford to do it or not. I simply start doing, and I know that in one month, one year or five, I will have built enough value in my website that my competitors are going to be the ones who are trying to figure out if they can unseat me!

About The Author
Bill Platt has provided SEO services since 2004. In 2009, he transformed his SEO service, into one that helps people defeat negative search results in Google. By improving the rank of positive website reviews in the search results, negative search listings begin to disappear from the public eye. If you would like to learn more about how Bill’s Reputation Management SEO service can help your business, visit: 911reputation.com. Bill has also owned thePhantomWriters.com since 2001.

Comments Off

Older Posts »