OVBlogger: Blogging and SEO

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You know, I have always been a big Blog Rush promoter. I thought it might be a great way for people to get traffic to their websites, and I’ve gotten my share. I built up a good network there and had tons of points to keep my stuff moving across the widgets all the time.

But, with few exceptions, people just didn’t click on the links in the widget. You needed to have a pretty outrageous title for people to notice, but well… even that didn’t produce more than double-digit clicks. I have to admit that I never even noticed what was in there on my own blog. It’s kind of like “banner blindness” only its “widget blindness.”

So…

I’m thinking, Bummer. You can read the whole story at http://BlogRush.com . It’s over. You can’t get past that page to any stats or anything.

So, John Reese (@johnreese) Twittered that sad fact yesterday and sent us to his blog, which told people to remove their widgets and stuff. That’s why you’ll no longer see the blue widget in my sidebar.

Thanks for the memories, John.

Oh, wait…

I remember that he shut down another site like that. Opportunity.com, I believe. That was a few years back. I was a member there, too, in my very newbie days online. That was about 5 years ago this month.

And you know what? Good for John Reese! He doesn’t allow sites that just limp along and don’t work. He just shuts ‘em down. It’s a smart business move. Why keep paying people to maintain a site that’s just a money suck and isn’t benefiting anyone very much?

Business is business, and this really is no big deal.

Bye, Bye Blog Rush.

There will be something bigger and better coming along… I have no doubt.

Popularity: 18% [?]

So, if you read my blog, you know that I’m loving everything Web 2.0, right? I mean, it’s fun, it’s fascinating… what’s not to like?

Last week, I downloaded the Bend the Web toolbar for Firefox, and whoa. Very, very cool. Howie Schwartz & Jack Humphrey teamed up on that one, and it rocks!  If you don’t use Firefox, I think there’s another version, but you should check it out.

What it does is list all the Web 2.0 stuff that’s out there. There are bookmarks for bookmarking, bookmarks for networking sites, Conent sites, and video. It also has an email alerter and a radio built right in and you can get to the programs you use a lot on it. You even get to pick them! Great toolbar, guys!

So, anyway, to Zimbio, right?

I’m checking out the content sites today and I wasn’t familiar with Zimbio at all. But wow! I can see where it can be uber powerful. Every time I make a blog post, Zimbio will pick it up and decide what Wiki it should go into. It’s immediately syndicated, providing of course, that it meets the criteria of one of their Wikis. Internet marketing? No problemo. The post I did yesterday went up in WordPress. Not too shabby. Check it out: http://www.zimbio.com/WordPress/articles/441/Blogging+Mother+Lode?add=True

And if you liked it, give it some Zimbio love in the form of the Kudo Surf! (It’s in the article’s right-hand sidebar under my picture.)

In fact, set up your own Zimbio account. It’s free, and I can see that it’s going to be lots of help. Sure, sure, it’s dupe content, but you have to consider that it’s exposure. I figure that the more exposure you get online, the better off you are.

Tomorrow, I’m planning to further my exploration.  There are three or four other content sites I never heard of in the toolbar, and well… Bob’s yer uncle.

Was my uncle until he died. Good old Uncle Bob. He was fun, too. Dang.

Popularity: 26% [?]

So, I’m searching for stuff today and I come across “WORDPRESS GOD: 300+ Tools for Running Your WordPress Blog.” It’s from August 2007, so duh… why I never saw this, I’m not certain.

But… wow.

Another Mashable killer post!

You can find every useful plugin in their list from AjaxWP, which adds Ajax to your blog to make it faster to Zen a pretty cool theme. However, this was written before the WP 2.5 overhaul, so you’d have to make sure that some of these are still up to date. In fact, some of the links are broken now, but there’s still a TON of cool info.

Some of the plugins here,  I never knew existed! (If you want to see a video about installing plugins that I made, you can go to: http://easyseotricks.com)

Here are some other cool plugins and such from that same Mashable article:

WP Polls - Add a poll to your posts or your sidebar. I have to tell you, too, that there’s a site called Micropoll where you can add  as many polls as you want for free. This might be the alternative for the techno-phobic or for those of you using a hosted solution like WordPress.com or Blogger.

Google MapSearch Widget - Lets people search Google Maps right from your blog. Good for marketers in the travel niche or anything local.

WP Movie Ratings - Rate movies with a click.  This is pretty specific to people in the entertainment niche, but still cool. Did I hear Andy Duncan saying, “Cool,”?

WP No-Sh*t - Allows filtering of nasty words in comments.

Custom Smilies - For those of you that just love those little faces.

Gravatar - Lets users select an avatar to put next to their comments.

WP Plugins Tracker - Makes sure that all your plugins are up to date, but guess what? WordPress does this for you now. You don’t need it. See what I mean? Not all of the stuff is up to date. There’s a spell checker there, too, which WordPress now does, too. So, pfffttt…

One caveat: I have no idea how these plugins work, as I’ve not tried any of them myself, so use them at your own risk.

But go over to Mashable and check out that post, anyway. Many of the plugins have been updated for WordPress 2.5+ when you go to the sites, and then, some not. So be careful if you’re not super tech savvy.

But if you are… Have fun!

Popularity: 24% [?]

Man, I totally felt sorry for Ryan Deiss yesterday when his servers crashed almost as soon as his launch for Continuity Blueprint began. If you watch the video, it was about the load balance on the servers. He was in contact with the hosting company before the launch and planned out everything, except… CRASH!

Then, they got the servers up, but they couldn’t get the payment processor server to work for FOUR hours!

What helped was that he was able to embed his UStream broadcast in his home page. And out of 851 shows on Ustream, his was number 1. Something about people watching a train wreck?

Poor Ryan was on almost five hours answering questions.

You can still get in at Continuity Blueprint, and Ryan is offering a special training about using UStream TV to boot. Call it an unannounced bonus.

Makes you glad you’re an affiliate marketer in a way. As an affiliate, you don’t have to worry too much about all that. It’s someone else’s system, you just tell your list about the great stuff they have to offer and get money. How simple is that?

I’ve been on the inside of big launches, and they’re insane. Lots of fun, but really, really stressful for everyone in the company. Guess what? We’re about to do it again. Stay tuned.

Popularity: 18% [?]

• @bonkus Oh goooooddddd… Then, you can help me. #
• @MichaelDWalker Rob Zombie? I though I was weird! Living Dead Girl… one of my faves. I have a teenager. What can I say? #
• @FasterWebmaster Whoa, man… You totally do. Great Jack Skellington! #
• @FasterWebmaster Oh, come on, big guy… You can do it! #
• @rossgoldberg Little hard to trace on an Etch a Sketch, isn’t it? I mean, that’s skill, baby. #
• @EdwardMoore I blogged about you today! #
• @EdwardMoore You’re my Twitter guru. #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

Popularity: 17% [?]

What’s your Twitter Grade? Mine is 94. That’s up from 87 a few days ago.

Some folks really find this fascinating. To me, it’s just plain fun. Twitter is all about having a good time and keeping up with your friends.  But the grade measures your “influence,” or so it says at Mashable.

So, what can you do to become part of the Twitter Elite? (the top Tweeple in the Twitterverse)

According to Simon Salt over at Mashable, it’s a matter of 4 things:

1. Reach or how many people see your message. Today, I have 415. Seems like a lot to some, but it’s really not that many. I know people who have thousands.
2. Velocity or how quickly people follow you (I think. There’s some crazy terminology there that doesn’t quite click for me: “Velocity measures the average of first order followers and second order followers added on a daily basis since you started your account.” So, yeah… Whatever that means.
3. Social Capital or how important are your followers? Hmm… I have some cool ones that started way back when Twitter was only chirping, like Alex Mandossian, John Reese, Andy Jenkins, Ed Dale, and a whole bunch of other people. Yes, Tellman, too, but he’s really not a big on Twitter. Too busy. So, all these folks with much bigger follower lists help.
4. Centralization, which also has to do with your followers. A small following with several big names isn’t as valuable as a very large following with fewer big names by percentage.  It hurts those small, big name lists more when one of the big names bails out. (I think.)

Its hard to understand what all that stuff means, but to me, it just means follow tons of people!

Edward Moore, who’s becoming quite the Twitter expert, showed me the benefit (and ethics) of following everyone who follows me. To me, it was ACK! I just don’t have the time to listen to 400 people all Tweeting at the same time. However, it’s only polite, as Edward pointed out. (And of course, he’s right.) And you get more followers by doing that. People look at other people’s follow lists to see who they want to follow, right?

He also gave me a tool to make it easier: Tweet Deck, which you can pick up at http://TweetDeck.com. It helps to separate out lists of people you want to hear from all day, and people you want to hear from when you have more time. Of course, you want to hear from all of them! But if I just Twittered around all day, I’d never get my work done and I’d get fired!

Know what? Forget all that grading stuff. Who cares? Have fun. Enjoy the camaraderie that you don’t normally get sitting alone typing away, and just Tweet as it suits you.

Trying to keep up with the Twitter Elite is just too much to bear.

Popularity: 30% [?]

• @kylebattis Mega Stars at Tournament Games. It’s addictive. #
• @andyduncan Have a great call, guys! I’m on the LBC Website Spotlight call right now, just for gold members. Helping some folks with sites #
• @barefoot_exec Oh sure… Now it’s all Kyle, Kyle, Kyle. Get my card? Thanks so much for the Starbuck’s! You’re much too kind. #
• Internet connection keeps going out. I think this modem has seen better days. Poor thing. 5 years and gazillions of bytes of data. #
• @TheoBaskind Congrats, Theo! I say that I have a magic PayPal account. Every time money goes out, money comes in. Don’t you love this biz? #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

Popularity: 15% [?]

OK… here’s another great question from the SEOmoz.org SEO test:

“What’s the best way to maximize the frequency with which your site/page is crawled by the search engines?”

No brainer, right?

Or, is it?

Your choices included two that might be correct, but there is only ONE right answer.

All good SEOs know that the BEST #1 Way to get the spiders to come more often is by adding new content frequently. What does “frequently” mean? Well… it can mean every day.

I’ve written here before that the best thing to do with a blog is to write in it every single day, which is tough. But you have to remember that not every post has to be written. You can post audio, video, articles, reviews, pictures, and whatever is relevent to your niche, and it doesn’t always have to be yours.  Relevence is very, very important, and using other people’s material from the public domain, YouTube, or even article directories is OK, if you do it the right way.

One of the other answers to the test was to turn up the crawl frequency in Google Webmaster tools. Well… it seems right, huh? But when you think about it, that will only help you to get the spiders to your site quicker, if they feel like abiding by your wishes. I guarantee that if you don’t provide fresh spider food often, they won’t.

Content.

Content.

More content.

It’s always about the content online, so if you’re in business, that’s what you need to remember. It’s all about what you create (or have others create for you) that really matters. Get your stuff out there, get noticed by the spiders, and keep doing more of it.

Search engines love NOTHING more than fresh content for their searchers.

And your business needs all the traffic those little buggers can provide.

Popularity: 22% [?]

Thanks to @evajmah (Eva J. Mah of Nexus Exchange) on Twitter, I found this awesome resource for blogging and copywriting and social marketing and more. It’s on CopyBlogger’s blog, which is a great one to subscribe to, by the way. Here’s the link: http://www.copyblogger.com/10-cool-links/ Very sweet.

It starts off with a link to John Carlton’s copywriting case studies, moves to ProBlogger’s social marketing outline, and then, there’s SEOmoz’s “The Internet Marketing Handbook.” Very cool. Why haven’t I seen this before? I need more surf time, really. Tons of incredibly cool tools on that page from keyword selection to social marketing resources. Wa-hoo! Really great page.

There’s also an awesome article about the power of color in marketing at the Direct Creative Blog: http://www.directcreative.com/blog/2008/08/26/the-power-of-color-in-direct-marketing/ You probably never thought about these things.

Anyway, just a heads up. You’re going to love it!

Popularity: 31% [?]

So, I’m currently on the telephone with Verizon. I’ve been uploading a lot of video and whatnot, and let me tell you, the upload time is ridiculous for anything over five minutes with their fastest DSL.

I can’t take it anymore!

But what I’ve been told by an IT company owner, who is also a neighbor, is NOT to allow Verizon to take the copper wire out of my home. If you do, you can never go back to regular phone service. Nope, nope. Can’t do that. I spend half my life on the telephone in meetings, conferences, and doing teleseminars, and I need clear, reliable phone service.

Today, I was on Skype with someone and every five minutes, it stopped working and he had to call me back. Talk about frustration! That’s VOIP. I defiitely don’t want that for my phone service!

So, now, I have to find out if I can keep my copper wire if I go over to FIOS. Well… I know I can. My neighbor did it, and his condo is IDENTICAL to mine. Makes no sense to me at all. I have to have a technician come out and tell me yes or no before I even place an order. Argh.

It’s been one of those frustrating days. Mars must be in retrograde or something like that, whatever that means. Ha! I guess I’ll either have to a) stop making video (won’t happen) OR I have to find another solution.

Cable. But they want to do the same thing to me.

They all need to stop messing with people that.

Only people who never use their phones for business are in like Flynn.

Who was Flynn, anyway?

Popularity: 22% [?]