OVBlogger: Blogging and SEO

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Have you started to notice it? I mean, blogs… web pages… all to the far left of the screen??

It’s making me crazy. Even WordPress has moved their “write post” to the far left, and I feel unbalanced.  Those of you who know me well probably think that already, but hey…

Doesn’t it bother you that you have to turn your head to look left when trying to read something?

I mean, we’ve been indoctrinated with the idea that people like 650 pixels in the middle of the screen. My eyes expect that. Then, some of younz throw a curve ball and thwack! My neck flys west and I’m reading stuff that’s out of kilter.

I hope this isin’t a trend. What marketing firm made a study and decided that we’re better off with 19 inch uber flat-screen monitors that only have half their space taken up? There’s like all this white stuff on the right.

I know, I know… You’re thinking, but my monitor isn’t that wide.

And this could be making you happy.

If so, I heartily apologize for the rant.

But I have to say that it will be a very long time until I’m used to this looking left fad. It’s making me cranky.

Popularity: 65% [?]

Wow. I always wait a little while when WordPress makes sweeping changes to their software. I don’t care how great the programmers are (and WordPress is totally smokin’ awesome), there are going to be bugs. I like to wait until the bugs are worked out.

But…

I have a membership site about learning to blog and Web 2.0 and all kind of cool stuff about blogging, and decided that so as not to confuse my members, I’d better do the upgrade.

Wow.

My favorite feature thus far?

Automatic plugin updating.

OMG… It’s totally awesome. Plugins aren’t hard to upgrade, of course, but they’re time consuming, especially when you have as many as I do. But the newest version of WordPress has a new feature… the automatic upgrade. You click on the link and it downloads, unzips, installs, and reactivates the plugin for you!

Is that cool or what?

I’m in blogger heaven today. Still haven’t checked out all the cool features, but if the automatic plugin installer was the only thing new, I’d still be tooting WordPress’s horn.

Fan-freakin’-tastic!

I love it!

Popularity: 50% [?]

So, if you’re a fan of Jack Humphrey’s like I am, you’ll be subscribed to his Friday Traffic Report.

If you’re not… What are you waiting for?

Jack has a really cool little piece of software called “Utility Poster” coming out and I’m drooling.

Check out his video:

http://tinyurl.com/6qxbu7

Man. I love riffing off other people’s posts. I mean, I don’t do it every day, but when I read something that’s really cool, I love to let my readers know about it. This is one of those times.

This software finds blog posts around the ‘Net with the keywords you give it. I mean it comes back with hundreds of posts! If you optimize for the keyword in your post, whatever that is, and then, use Utility Poster to do the rest, you’re almost guaranteed top ranking for the keyword in a matter of minutes.

Utility Poster isn’t available just yet, but whoa. I’m in line line like one of those crazy people that camps out for rock concert tickets.

Don’t step on me, dude!

Popularity: 74% [?]

Kind of scary, that headline. But no… It’s a good tired and excited, so get your minds right.

Pat has been so quiet for the last couple of weeks because like everyone at Overcome Everything, I’m working my butt off. We’ve been doing Squeezathons, making reports, newsletters, videos, CDs and tons and tons of stuff for the launch of Listbuilding.com tomorrow.

I can’t believe the day has almost arrived!

I remember Tellman talking about it in early February and thinking, well… we have LOTS of time.

But time goes quickly. I’m excited about the whole thing, not because the company stands to make a bunch of money (and that’s always a good thing), but because I know how many people’s lives have been touched by the whole thing. I mean now, more than 300 people have squeeze pages up and running that never did before. That’s a BIG squeeze, eh?

I feel pretty good to know that I had some part in that, but we’ve all been working hard. We’re an incredible team of hard-working people and it’s actually ready to happen! Everyone involved is running like monkeys to get things in order before the big day.

And have you seen the list of teachers for the coaching classes? Holy cow! It’s a who’s who of marketing. All my heroes in one course. wow.

Shawn & Tellman totally went all out on that one. There will be stuff in the course that just can’t be had anywhere else. You need to be on the calls. You need to soak up every bit of this that you can, especially if you’re new to Internet marketing. If you haven’t yet…

WTHeck are you waiting for?

Here’s the deal: http://PatMarcello.ListBuilding.com

Man, this is one of the biggest things in Internet Marketing history!

I feel very blessed to have been part of helping so many people. That’s totally cool.

Popularity: 43% [?]

On my call with SEO, Paul Easton, the other night, someone asked that I send out my personal WordPress plugins list for you. Well, heck, that seemed like a pretty good idea. So… If you’re wondering what plugins I use for my blog and why, here they are:

• Akismet: It’s a spam blocker that comes with all WordPress blogs. You need a WordPress API key to validate it, but that’s free and easy to get. Just follow the instructions. Then, you train Akismet. I mean, it knows most spam right off, but when you’re approving comments (and I encourage you to set your blog so you can do so) you train Akismet for some of the less obvious stuff. There are other spam blockers. Akismet just works fine for most purposes.

• All-in-One SEO Pack: This is a must have for search engine optimization purposes. Because spiders find the title tag and description tag so important to any web page, and since each post you make is considered a page, each post should also have its own title and description. Use your keywords, and this will help your posts to rank in the results pages.

• Blog Metrics: I got this one because Shoemoney thought so highly of it, but it’s not really that important to me. It shows how many posts you’ve made, how many trackbacks you’ve gotten, how many words in your posts, etc. I like Popularity Contest better, and I’ll tell you why in a minute. (See below.)

• Daiko’s Text Widget: This allows you to use PHP code in your sidebar. The normal text widgets don’t often work well for that.

• DoFollow: If you’re approving comments anyway, DoFollow makes sense. It’s a link back to the person’s blog who’s doing the commenting. It’s like a reward for making observations, you know? If you want to encourage commenting, this is great. The default for WordPress is “NoFollow,” which means that the spiders stop at your page and don’t follow it to the commenter’s URL. Spammers might think this is very cool, but with Akismet or another spam blocker working, they don’t get any benefit at all.

• FAQ-Tastic: This allows people to ask questions at your blog. You create question categories, insert a snippet of code, and you have an ASK campaign running for whatever topics you choose. Pretty sweet. Just be sure to add a strong message for spammers or you will get spam questions. Mine says: “Unfortunately your question was not accepted because you didn’t provide enough information. Please try again. But… If you’re a spammer, don’t waste your time or mine. Your “questions” will be deleted without being read. Go away and never come back.” Strong enough, you think? I really hate spammer jerks.

• Google Analyticator: You just plug in your Google Analytics ID and the plugin takes care of putting the Analytics code into your blog for you. Just be sure to set up the campaign at Google so you can check stats on your visitors.

• Google Sitemaps: The easiest way for Google to see every page (post) in your blog.

• Max Blog Press: I have four plugins from there. If you look at the top of my blog, you’ll see a “Stripe Ad,” that you can customize any way you see fit. You can rotate three different text ads, and even weight them so come are shown more than others, if you choose.You can also color them to fit in with the theme of your blog.

The second Max Blog Press plugin is “Unblockable Popup.” If you’re new to my blog, this popup darkens the page and an optin box will slide in. That only happens the first three times someone visits, but you can customize it to work any way you like.

The next plugin from Max Blog Press is “Ping Optimizer.” WordPress blogs automatically ping Ping-o-Matic each time you make a blog post, and that’s from the minute you install it. You don’t have to do anything else. But… if you edit a post, add a picture, or change your post in any way, it will keep pinging the service. If you do it too much, it could be construed as ping spamming and you don’t want that. Ping Optimizer only allows your blog to ping once.

The last Max Blog Press plugin is “Psychic Search.” It gives you some pretty cool information about how people searched to find your blog and other stuff that’s quite useful when planning posts and using the right keywords.

• My Blog Log Widget: You have to be a member of My Blog Log! It gives you some sweet stats, and it’s a pretty cool community of other bloggers. Check it out. And notice the widget on my blog. It shows who’s reading. You can get yours from clicking “Grab This!” on my widget.

• Popularity Contest: Of all the stats plugins, this is my fave. It ranks your posts in order of popularity. It shows you how many trackbacks, pingbacks, and comments your posts have plus a whole bunch of other cool information. See what posts people enjoy, figure out why, and do more of that posting. Know how people are taking in what you write. Pretty awesome.

• Text Link Ads Widget: Hmm… I won’t recommend this for anyone who’s working to get Page Rank. You see, Google hates paid linking. I think it’s a bunch of crap, and won’t take my widget down, even though Google bounced me from a PR5 to a PR2, just for having it. I get paid a little bit for each link, and it’s not the money… it’s the principle. I don’t like it that Google wants to tell me what I can and can’t have on a blog that I own. So, don’t expect to see me with a high PR blog. PR doesn’t mean doodly squat anyway. What matters the most to me are my readers. Plus, I feel pretty loyal to an advertiser who’s been on my blog for more than a year.

• What Would Seth Godin Do?: This plugin tells new visitors to subscribe to your feed, right at the top of your feed and your regular blog posting. It appears as many or as few times as you’d like it to.

• WordPress Database Backup: Uber important. I found that out when some jerk highjacked my blog last year and wiped out EVERY single post I’d made over a 2 year period. It hurt, but not much. I’m on a totally different path now than I was way back then, so my posts are now reflecting that. But… I won’t be caught unawares again because this plugin sends me a backup file once a week. Pffft!!! Take that hacking jerk. I should have been doing this all along, but it’s one of those things you think about and then, never seem to get around to doing. Don’t learn the hard way like I did.

• WP Plug IM: This is the little widget you see at the top of every post in my blog. Plug IM is a social bookmarking site just for Internet marketers. I really like it when it’s working properly, which is sketchy. I have to say that the widget wasn’t developed by PlugIM, and that’s undoubtedly part of the problem, but like, PlugIM dudes… I hope you’re working on this.

That’s it! Whew! I hope this has been helpful. With the exception of MaxBlogPress plugins, you can get the others at http://WordPress.org/extend

The other thing I was asked to provide from the call the other night were URLs that Paul had given out. If you’re a member of Blogging4Boomers (you only need to optin to the calls in this case, not become a member of the site, though I wish you would. I think there’s way more value than the price there, and if you’re into Internet marketing, I’m cutting many of the corners for you.), you get a page with the replays of ALL the calls I’ve done with the teleseminar participants and also the Q&A sessions I do with my members twice a month.

Tons and tons of value–no charge.

So, if you haven’t opted in and want to hear these calls… go to http://Blogging4Boomers.com . I know you probably don’t want to give your name & email address to ONE MORE PERSON, but hey… you will see that this time, it’s worth it.

But here are those URLs we talked about on the call, too:

http://xml-sitemaps.com for building sitemaps for your website.

http://domainsbot.com for looking up domains and getting cooler suggestions.

GTrends.com for learning about marketing trends. (This is a plugin to be used with WordTracker, the paid keyword discovery tool.)

And we talked about surveys. Pauls’ had just gone offline, but here are a couple I use:

Survey Gizmo at http://surveygizmo.com

Survey Monkey at http://surveymonkey.com

ASK Database at http://askdatabase.com

The first two are free, the third is a paid service, but all are great for knowing what your customers what.

Hope this is helpful. If you have comments, suggestions for other plugins not listed here… GREAT! Tell me what they are and why. I’m listening!

Popularity: 89% [?]

So, today, I had the first two hours of Squeezathon on the phone and the lines were lit up. I didn’t stop talking for two hours! It was awesome! Over the past couple of days we helped 250+ people to get their squeeze pages up and running. (That we know about.) Feels very good, indeed.

But I had one call that disturbed me, and thought I’d blog about it so that maybe it can help someone else.

One man had a page that is #1 on Google, and he was hesitant to put a squeeze page on his website as the front door. Now, any smart marketer knows that the squeeze page always, always, always goes first, right? Well, that’s a little hidden secret that a lot of people just don’t understand. Every single thing you do online should be geared toward list building.

So, I asked how much traffic he was getting from Google. He told me 30K hits in the past three months. Not too shabby, not at all.

But I looked at his stats. He had a 4 million + Alexa ranking. Hmm… That didn’t compute. I think his stats were pretty far off.

Knowing that, I asked what his keyword was. I won’t type it in here because I don’t want anyone to realize who this person was. My intention isn’t to embarrass anyone. So, let’s just say it was a really obscure keyword. In fact, when I checked it on SEOBook, there were NO results whatsoever for it.

What’s the big lesson?

You can have a No. 1 ranking in Google, but if nobody is searching for that keyword, it DOESN’T MATTER. I mean, I can have the #1 spot for “raccoon clothes,” but it’s not going to bring my little tailor shop any hits, you know? People have to be actively searching for your keywords or your ranking, no matter how high it is just doesn’t matter. Not a hoot.

Do some keyword research before deciding what keywords to target. If the keyword has been searched for at least 10,000 times in a month, it’s probably a pretty good keyword. I mean, you might have stronger keywords in the list that pops up, but you also have to determine how competitive they are. You don’t want to try to compete for a keyword like “pets” for example because the competition is too high. Find something lower on the list, and something pretty specific, too.

Here’s an example:

If you search chairs, you’re going to have tons of competition.

If you look further down the list, you might find “office chairs.” Well, that might still be too competitive.

But what about “leather office chairs”? That’s a bit narrower.

But what if you used “black leather office chairs”? That’s a long-tail keyword that might get some very targeted traffic to your website and if you’re selling black leather office chairs, your chance of converting your visitor, who is looking for such a specific item, to a sale just  skyrocket.

So, two things to take away:

1. If you’re using a keyword nobody is searching for, you can be #1 on the page at Google, but it won’t do you any good.

2. Never try to compete for the most competitive keywords. Choose specific long-tail phrases and not only get more traffic, make more sales, as well.

How ’bout that?

Popularity: 61% [?]

OK, so we’re on the phone answering questions for ListBuilding.com

If you haven’t opted in go over now and do it! You’re missing tons of great information. F-R-E-E

We’ll be on from noon - 8 tonight and 9 -noon tomorrow, answering any questions you might have about getting up your first squeeze page.

I’m on the phone now. Was on this morning, will be on from 9 - 11 tomorrow morning.

Come TALK to me, folks! Get over to Lisbuilding.com and be part of the action!

I’m waitin’ for ya.

Popularity: 45% [?]

So, have you been over to ListBuilding.com yet? No? Well…

You’re missing a sh*tload of great content. Shawn Casey, Tellman, and the whole OE team has been hard at work for the past few weeks creating all this stuff. You’ll find some basic tech stuff, mindset stuff, free reports, case studies of how well it’s working for other people, and even a gun.

GASP!

Yes, a gun.

OK… so some people hate guns, and are complaining that they have no place in Internet marketing or anywhere else. They’re sending comments and hate mail. I guess it’s OK for the criminals to have guns and people in danger should just wait like sitting ducks to be killed or maimed or whatever.

Brilliant!

But that’s not my point. (And not necessarily the views of the company. Personal views here, folks.)

My point is that there’s a whole lot of great, great stuff at ListBuilding.com and if you aren’t registered to get in on it, you’re nuts or lazy or both. So, go right now and watch that video that caused all the trouble.

ListBuilding.com

Your comments are welcome. Here, there, and everywhere.

Popularity: 55% [?]

Well… all good plans and such…

Tonight was to be my big call with Stephen Pierce… the one I’ve been looking forward to for months. But, fate intervened.

Something important came up.

The woman I work with in his office decided to have a baby. Well, the baby decided to be born, which is great! All my best goes out to her and her child.

However, the call tonight has to be postponed until another time.

Bummer.

But a big yay on the baby front!

I’ll keep you posted on the new date and time.

Popularity: 44% [?]

So, I just love getting mail from Stephen Pierce, don’t you? I mean, his blog is not just fun, it’s totally useful. He gives such great information–”No Fluff, No Filler” stuff. And I just have to totally stop whatever it is I’m doing and go and listen.

In today’s dtAlpha Talkback, he has an actual recording of Napoleon Hill, talking about the principle of… Well, you’ll just have to go and check it out here: http://www.dtalpha.com/talkback/?p=64

And you’ll have to come and listen to my call with Stephen tomorrow night. I’m totally stoked! It’s going to be great because Stephen is going to talk about the power of podcasting in his blog as it relates to business.

If you want in on the call, go to http://Blogging4Boomers.com and sign up. The calls are free.

And I hope to hear your voice tomorrow night at 8 p.m. EST!

Popularity: 54% [?]