OVBlogger: Blogging and SEO

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Are you into using video yet? If not, and you’re well on your way with blogging, it’s time!

There are several reasons. First, you don’t have to make your own videos. Finding a video in your niche and adding it to your blog is a great way to add content and not have to think too much about it. Here’s how to embed video in your blog, if you grab it from YouTube, for example.

1. You go to the video page, and on the right hand side, as the video is playing, you’ll see a line of code in a box, and above it says, “Embed.” So, copy that code and put it into a plain text editor like Notepad (Don’t use Word. It does creepy stuff when you try to translate to HTML.)
2. Go to your WordPress blog dashboard.
3. Click on the Write tab
4. Give your entry a headline and write whatever introduction you want for the video into the blank.
5. Above the writing pane, you’ll see a tab that says “Code.” Click on it.
6. Under the introduction you just wrote, type in <center><embed>
7. Paste in the code you copied at YouTube.
8. Directly after it, type in </embed></center>
9. Go back to the writing pane and click “Save and continue editing.”
10. When the page refreshes, you won’t see the video in the writing pane, so DON’T FREAK OUT!
11. Click on Preview
12. You’ll see that the video is indeed working and you can give just a little shout of victory!

Adding video is very cool and easy to do, and there are plenty of sites to get it from–Google Video, Blip TV, Daily Motion, and so on. Just look for the embed code for the video and do what I mentioned above.

If you make your own videos, it’s not that different to get it into your blog, you just have to store the video on your own server, create your own code, and embed a player. It’s much easier to upload to a video directory site and let them do all the work, plus save space on your hosting account.

But if doing all that is beyond your realm of expertise, you can actually buy a product called “Video Web Wizard,” which I have used in the past, and it will do all the dirty work of embedding the video in a web page for you. It’s really inexpensive and works very well. It comes from Keith Gilbert, who’s like 18 years old. Wow! Wish I’d have started that young. But then, Tim Linden of StartXchange (the best traffic exchange on the planet) started when he was 15. All these Wunderkind. I think it’s awesome. Anyway…

If you use Camtasia, you can produce the video as a web page. The current Camtasia version is Camtasia 5, but you can get Camtasia 3 free at this blog:

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2007/11/22/techsmith-offers-free-camtasia-studio-download/

Lemme tell ya, Camtasia is the Bomb! If you’re going to buy it, however, it’s about $300 for the current version. I bit the bullet because video is where the Web is heading.

Then, when you’re done creating and editing your video, you can spend hours and hours uploading it to a gazillion different video sites. If you want a great way to do it and only upload the video once, you need to check out Traffic Geyser. It will upload the video for you to many different sites.

A new place, Tube Mogul, will allow you to upload to several sites free, but it has nowhere near the power of Traffic Geyser. Then, you can supplement by adding to sites that Tube Mogul doesn’t have by going to Jack Humphrey’s Friday Traffic Report and checking out his list of 50 video sites. Great post. Great blog. If you’re not a subscriber, well… You aren’t thinking straight.

But here’s the deal… People want to turn their computers into televisions, and with the speed of broadband and the fact that the majority of people have high speed connections now, it’s possible. And guess what? I bought Camtasia about 6 months ago and already made the money back and then some. So…

Get into video. Seriously. If you don’t, you’ll be left behind.

Popularity: 46% [?]

Have you seen Don Crowther’s Stomper video about Web 2.0?

If you’re not convinced that social bookmarking and networking is important, that it’s not a significant change in the DNA of the Web, then you need to watch this…

http://www.stompernet.net/goingnatural2/

I love it!

Man, not only can you learn about Web 2.0, but a lot about making videos that people want to watch. These are the best videos I’ve ever seen online.

It could be that I lead a sheltered life, but I don’t think so. This is the kind of quality we see inside StomperNet and the type of quality information. Man, I wish I had an affiliate link. Andy, you reading this?

Popularity: 34% [?]

I’m a computerphile, or I wouldn’t be here typing to you right now. I mean, I really, really love them. I love them so much that I’ve actually had my own desktop system since 1986. Yep. It was a Compaq (when Compaq wasn’t owned by HP), and it had an amber screen. Everything was DOS. Pre-Windows, people. It lasted 10 years.

Then, came Windows.

Over the years, I figure I’ve replaced my desktop computer on an average of one every 18 months. It has nothing to do with Windows, but it’s just an indication of how fast the technology progresses and that they just don’t build ‘em like they used to.

I had an IBM Aptiva for my second computer with a 1.2 G hard drive. I thought that was pretty cool. How could I ever fill that up? LOL How times have changed. Now, my thumb drive is 2G, right?

Then, I had a ProGen. Yes, it was touted in PC Magazine as the best computer for the money at that time. SUCKED! In fact, ProGen computers sucked so much that the company went out of business. When my motherboard failed, I was in deep doo-doo.

Then, I bought an HP, and let me tell you, I will NEVER buy anything else ever again. The computer that I have now is 3-1/2 years old. It’s my 3rd HP, and I love it. I know it’s going to blow soon, and I can’t process videos on it or watch Camtasia videos on it because it’s just too danged old. (Camtasia videos sound like there are Martians in my system.) Luckily, I have an HP laptop that I bought last February, and I love it.

And I’ve sold at least 5 desktops and 2 laptops to my friends and relatives because I love HP so much. And they are just as happy. The cool thing about HP is that if you get wiped out for whatever reason, they give you a disk that puts your system right back to where you started. I’ve had to do that a couple of times, and boy… was I glad I had that disk.

But this old desktop is showing signs of wear. I had to take it apart again today, just to dust inside because my fans were going wanky every minute. Now, it’s quiet again.

I love my old friend. This old nag has been through 4 books with me. It’s been through the start and growing success of my online business. I don’t want to part with it.

And yet…

I have another HP in the corner of my eye. I figure it’s only a matter of time.

And I don’t want to do it.

Oh… OK… You twisted my arm.

I’ll give this one to the husband. He doesn’t need anything more than a computer that gets Google.

Popularity: 19% [?]

So, I just love messing around in Web 2.0. I have accounts at Facebook (which has turned out to be pretty beneficial for business, BTW), MySpace, and all the social bookmarking sites like Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, and PlugIM (for Internet Marketers only). And they’re all fun, especially Twitter, which is mindless sillies.

I found a new site today on GotoWeb2.0 today, too. You can see my “hyplet” over on the right-hand side. It’s pretty cool. Like an electronic business card. You just stick it wherever you like, into emails, on letters, whatever. Very cool.

I tried to download the Firefox extension, though, and for some reason it’s not working. Bummer. It would allow me to plug it in anywhere. I’ll have to spend more time with that and figure it out.

Anyway, you can get your own at http://hypelet.com Check it out!

But also check out GotoWeb2.0. There are tons of free fun things on there, and some very useful utilities. For example, I picked up a mail archiving program. If you’ve ever tried to save your email to a CD or another place, you know how difficult it can be to remember where the damned .mbx files are. I can never remember.

Well…

MailStore.com gives you a free program that helps you to save email without having to find the files. Very need.

If you have some time and you’re just surfing around, you have to do some messing with Web 2.0 It’s the way to the future online!

Popularity: 22% [?]

Here’s a new video I made about installing plugins for WordPress for beginning bloggers…

Popularity: 28% [?]

If you’re not a subscriber of McAfee, you probably don’t see the little green, grey, and red icons that appear next to your website in Google’s search results pages.

Green means you’re a good site.

Grey means they haven’t a clue about your site.

Red means you are a bad site or connected to a bad site.

Well…

We were getting about 1,000 unique organic hits per week for one of the Overcome Everything sites, and like a stone, it plummeted on the page and in hits. When I checked the site out on Google, I saw the BLASTED red X. It really threw me.

I mean, the site is an ADD site, and it’s a PR5. Quality site. No nastiness.

So, I clicked on the X, and found that we’re being penalized because we use HyperTracker.com for tracking links. Well…

That’s just crap.

We had to remove all the links from HyperTracker and are waiting to get our green X back.

If I were HyperTracker, I think I’d sue. McAfee is losing customers for HyperTracker, and their service isn’t 100% but it’s pretty good. Now, we fear to use it at all for the bad connotation. Will Google eventually see that red X, too, and say that our site is in a “bad neighborhood” and lower our page rank and lose our first page position, as well? Better not happen.

As an SEO, I think it totally sucks. McAfee is targeting the wrong sites and I plan to write them a long letter explaining how they’re mucking things up. I’ve been a customer since I’ve been online, and that’s 12 years now, and I’m thinking of switching services.

I hear the free virus scans are good.

Popularity: 30% [?]

Happy New Year! I hope you had a lovely relaxing day with friends and/or family. I know I did, but tomrrow, back to business.

Some people freeze up when they hear “SEO,” well I’m here to say there’s nothing to be afraid of. You can do a few easy things to your website without learning all the deep dark secrets (which are really strong common sense) of the world of search.

The first thing you can do is to change your <title> tag in your META tag section. If it’s not the first tag after your <head> tag, get it up there. Then, make it your keywords. Forget the name of your website. That won’t make search engines interested at all, unless your website title it keyword rich, of course. But even if it is, you’re still better off using your keywords like this “keyword phrase 1 - keyword phrase 2 - keyword phrase 3.” Works like a charm.

You can also spruce up your META description. Remember that search engines stop when they see words like “a, the, or, for, an… ” and so on. Use your keywords and try to avoid those stop words. It’s a bit challenging, but it can be done. For example, here’s my title tag for OVMarketing:

This is my description:
“SEO consultant blogger, Pat Marcello’s focus: Internet marketing SEO”

Punctuation helps. It’s not what I’d write in a book, but it’s workable.

And so…

Make those two simple changes and they’ll give your website a boost.

Popularity: 22% [?]