OVBlogger: Blogging and SEO

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Do you know what a very big secret is to getting traffic to your blog on a regular basis?

It’s so simple, you probably haven’t thought about it.

In fact, you may be a pretty casual blogger. You do it when the spirit moves you, right? Or when you have time.

Well…

I’m here to tell you that one HUGE factor in getting traffic to your blog is by posting every single day.

Argh! You think. Easier said than done. What do I write? How will I find the time?

There are two ways you can post to your blog every day and not feel too pinched.

When it comes to the writing of posts, that can be pretty simple. You can read something online and write a post about that. I love to do that. When I find something that’s pretty cool or interesting in my niche, I love to tell people about it. Those are easy posts to make because someone has already given me the material.

Or, you can take a PLR product and break it down into articles that you rewrite. Don’t just slap up the stuff without rewriting first, or it probably won’t do you much good with the search engines. PLR products are sold to tons of customers who may all be using the stuff verbatim. Don’t do it. You’re just tossing out duplicate content.

You can also someone to write blog posts for you. That’s the easiest way yet.

So, let’s say you have content and no time. That’s simple, too.

In WordPress, right in the “Publish Status” box, there’s a phrase that says, “Publish immediately.” And beside it, a link that says, “edit.” When you click that, you can set your post to publish at any time of the day or night on any day of the week, month, or year. It’s really sweet.

So, like you have 5 articles and you have a weekend or a block of time  you’ve scheduled in for blog posting. Post all of the articles at once, and set them to go out whenever you like.

In my mind, that would be 5 days, back to back.

Here are the facts…

In April, I had 50% more visitors to my blog because I posted every day. I decided to slow it down a bit in May to see what would happen.

People forget you. People unsub because you’re not adding new content fast enough. There are all kinds of reasons.

Just keep posting, every day, though, and you’ll see an enormous difference in the traffic to your blog, your opt-in numbers, and even your sales.

Come on… It’s really not that tough. Tomorrow, I’ll give you a few more ideas for posting content…

Stay tuned.

Popularity: 47% [?]

I was over at Blogosphere News today and see that we’re getting yet another upgrade to WordPress–version 2.6, which is due out in August. The changes are interesting, but not sure how awesome. They’re integrating with Google Gears and making it harder to lose posts if your browser crashes and such. I mean, those things are interesting, but…  it may be a developer dream. Since I’m not one of those, I’ll withhold judgment until I see the results.

You can check out the post at BlogHerald.com

I also watched a video today that was pretty interesting from Michael Gray of GrayWolf’s SEO Blog

He says that it’s best to make your blog super simple for the GoogleBot. Well, we knew that, but here’s something I never thought of. (And Duh… shame on me.) Michael says that when you’re choosing a category for your post, it’s best to keep it in ONE category, not two or three or the “very bright for a 5-year-old” GoogleBot may think that you have dupe content on your blog.

Well…

We all know that’s bad.

I’m going back and changing the posts that I just had to add categories to for my readers’ sake.

But, then, who needs readers?

I mean, I want to be a good SEO person and do all the right SEO stuff and make the Google ghods love me, but hey…

The audience is really what matters, eh?

From here on, I may try to keep my categories singular.

And then again, maybe not.

Popularity: 31% [?]

There’s a really huge giveaway happening now. Reed Floren, one of my Facebook buddies, and a featured speaker in my telseminar series (He’s speaking on May 29), is running it, and more than 1,700 marketers have added gifts.

Pretty sweet.

To get them, just go to http://easyseotricks/IMG and sign up at zero cost.

I like giveaways because they help me build my list of subscribers, and nothing is more important than list building. It’s the single most important thing you should be working on, no matter what you’re doing. If you don’t have a product to giveaway, it’s time to create one!

I have been using my 7 Secrets to Writing Killer Articles, and if you go to that site, you can see that I normally sell for $37. Good gift, huh? And that’s just one of the gifts you can get. There are over 1,700 of them.  It will take days to decide what you want.

It’s like having a key to Neiman-Marcus, and being told you can go in after hours and take home anything you want without charge. Shopping Nirvana.

For Internet Marketers, this giveaway is even better. The more you learn, the better your business will be. Take advantage of getting this stuff free or you’ll be paying for it down the road.

Popularity: 43% [?]

Don’t you agree? I mean Weblog. No wonder we call these incredible journals BLOGS. It sounds better. It’s more friendly. People want to read blogs, but weblogs?

I would be like reading the Star Trek Captain’s Log. Boring. I mean, when you see the adventures of everything going on out in space as they occur, pretty exciting, right? But if you had to sit and read what Archer, Kirk, Picard, Cisco, and Janeway had to write, would you be as excited?

I mean, think about it. They wouldn’t be able to give you the nuances. No exclamations. No backstory. It would just be LOG. Boring.

Blog is actually kind of an upchuck of words, when you think about it. You b-b-b-blooogggg. Yuck.

Why not CyberProse? Internet Musings? Or how about Interstellar Exposition? There, that one has some class.

So, remember…

Next time you want to bore people with some stupid story about what you ate for breakfast, you’re writing an Interstellar Exposition.

No, huh?

Well… Still beats the hell out of Weblog. Blech!

Popularity: 29% [?]

I’ve been living under a bushel basket for the past few months due to the ListBuilding.com launch.  And as I do when I”m busy, I’ll see a piece of mail that I have to read, but… I have no time. So, I flag that puppy in Outlook and wait until I have a down day to go through the messages. I had built up more than 100.

Gawd!

But there’s a message that I always read, and that’s the one that comes in on Fridays or Mondays from Jack Humphrey’s Friday Traffic Report. You know I’m a huge fan and that I’ve mentioned Jack before here, but whoa. He comes across with some of the coolest and most exciting information that (like I’ve said before)… If you aren’t subscribed, what the hell are you waiting for?

Today, work’s a little light for the first time in a while, so I’m going through my stuff and came across a message from Jack from waaaaayyyy back in January. Oh, sure. Tons of people have already seen it and put this great information to task already, but well, I’ve been painfully slow to get things done for myself. I’m running a membership site and a teleseminar series at Blogging4Boomers.com, too, remember. Right?

OK, no excuse.

Here’s the deal: HubPages. Do you know what they are?

HubPages is a Web 2.0 site where you can build “hubs,” which are sort of like Squidoo lenses. You add text modules, video modules, Amazon modules, etc. And just generally build a hub around a topic. It’s totally fun. I have one over there about cats. In fact, I’m a cat junkie and have several Web 2.0 sites about cats and a couple of blogs and whatever.

So, back to my story.

I find this message in my Inbox from Jack that says “Get More Traffic to Your HubPages.”  I’m all for that! And whoa. Very cool. I find not one but 7 Hubs all about getting traffic to your hub. Pretty neat. I’m certainly going to take some of that advice. Instinctively, I think I already have some of that going from my SEO background, but I don’t care what stage Hub Meister you are, you’ll find some information to turn you on.

The first Hub by Mark Knowles–”How I Got My Hub to Be on Google’s First Page“– is really great.  Mark gives you a virtual recipe of making it happen. We’ll be adding that cool advice to our own Hubs (and Tellman’s).

But all of the Hubs in that blog post are totally cool, and you should definitely check Jack’s post and every single one of those Hubs out…

Popularity: 44% [?]

Do you Twitter?

I don’t mean, do you chirp like a bird or talk inanely until your lips fall off? I mean, do you belong to Twitter?

Well…

Why not? It seems kind of silly to be “following” the activity of people, but I follow some pretty cool people, like Brad Fallon and his “Free Line Report” and Paul Colligan, podcasting journalist. So, when I go to Twitter, I can see just what’s up.

I get a Twitter from Brad daily, and if you’re interested in Web 2.0, the Free Line report is pretty cool. Takes just a minute to watch and keeps you up on the 2.0 news.

Paul Colligan posts to Twitter about a gazillion times a day. I try to stop by the stuff I’m really into, and keep the other stuff for later. There are just so many hours in the day!

I keep one open for education, usually first thing in the morning. It’s a “Tellman” thing. He says, “One hour of education; one hour of implementation.” It really works, and because of that bit of encouragement, I learn something new about our online world of glittery gems at least once per day.

But anyway, Twitter is so cool that some guy named James Buck, a graduate student in journalism from the University of California-Berkeley was arrested last month in Mahalla, Egypt while covering an anti-government protest. He just had enough time to Twitter “arrested” and his Twitter followers both here and in Egypt contacted the U. S. consulate to help him. How cool is that? James was freed and his one-word “Tweet” of “Free” was the next message he sent along. CNN even reported on it.

So, see? Twitter is useful.

And with folks following you and reading your blog and such, and some signing up for your list, it’s the best of all worlds.

Plus, it’s the quickest micro-blog on the planet.

Who doesn’t need more time?

Popularity: 39% [?]

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: 45% [?]

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: 36% [?]

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: 63% [?]

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: 64% [?]