The SEO News Blog from Pat Marcello

I’m constantly answering newbie questions at the ListBuilding Club, which is great fun. Helping people to learn how to create an online business is probably the most fun part of being in online business, for me. And as the Project Manager for the LBC, I do lots of training for our members. I can tell you… there are questions that come up over and over and over again.

The biggest one is, “Why do I need a blog, and why can’t I just use a free one?”

I get that. People don’t have a lot of money to spend, especially in this economy. And they want to go the “Free” route every time.  Can’t say I blame them. When you’re making no money yet, online expenses can mount. Yet, the old saw “You have to spend money to make money,” applies online just as it does off. You cannot possibly have a successful online business without breaking a few dollars. You just can’t!

Host Your Own

One expense that is really important is that of self-hosting your blog. I know there are lots of free blog sites like WordPress.com, Blogger, ClearBlogs.com, and Tumblr to name only a few, but guess what? You can’t be commercial at any of those places. Blogger allows you to use AdSense, but that’s about it. The other sites will just shut you down without warning for marketing on your blog–even just posting an affiliate link, and you’ll lose every bit of work you put into it. No recourse, and no, they won’t give it back.

The cheapest and fastest way to have a powerful website is by setting up a WordPress blog. This comes from WordPress.ORG, and it’s open source (=free), search engine friendly software that is also so user friendly, it’s amazing. I’ve used WordPress blogs for years and I haven’t found an equal to them. Oh sure, people swear by Drupal, TypePad, and other platforms, but they’re just not as customizable and marketer friendly, at least in my experience.

So, you have a free WordPress blog. The next step is buying a great domain for it. At GoDaddy, the cost of a domain is currently under $10 a year.  That’s like 3 cents per day for your own domain, 21 cents a week, or 90 cents a month. Cheap! So, decide what your blog will be about and get a domain that includes a keyword for that topic in it. Keep it short, make it a .com, and stay away from dashes or anything hard for people to type into the address bar or remember. If you want to get maximum SEO benefit, register the name for 2 years. This way, Google will look at you as a more serious blogger, and it will be easier for you to rank.

OK… we’re up to 90 cents a month… cool.

Now, you need a place to host the domain and your blog.

The best hosting company I have found online (and I’ve been doing this for almost 6 years, remember) is HostGator.  Don’t get the minimum account because you’ll outgrow that much too fast. Cough up the dough for the “Baby” Gator account, which is only $7.95 a month if you pay for the entire year up front. That would be $95.40. Sweet! But if you can’t afford that, you can go the monthly route, and pay $9.95 a month for your account.

Check this out: For around $11 a month, you now have your own domain, a powerful hosting account, and with Fantastico (which is available at HostGator), you can install a WordPress blog with the push of a button. It will take you all of about 5 minutes to do it.

Your in business, baby!

Where else can you spend $10.85 a month and have a business? Only online!

Other concerns

There are other considerations, like you have to change your nameservers and such, but there is a solution to that, if none of this is making sense. The ListBuilding Club will take you by the hand and walk you through all of this in easy-to-understand videos. Brian Edomondson, my good friend and Chief Video Instructor, is a natural teacher, and he makes it all very easy for you.

Right now, there’s a trial membership going, so jump on over and sign up! I only wish that I had had the option of joining the LBC when I was starting out. It would have cut my learning curve by more than half.

Anyway, blogging is a great way to start out! AND, when the blog is on your hosting account, you can do anything with it you like. Nobody can tell you what content you can have or that you aren’t allowed to advertise. Plus, nobody can shut you down for that. Blogging is really a great way to begin, so don’t wait… get your blogging engines started!

If you read this blog, you know that I think what Jeff Johnson does is pretty interesting. I’ve watched scores of his videos, and have always planned to do something with all that knowledge. He’s a powerhouse of an affiliate marketer, and I need the time to find a niche where I can rule. Time is the enemy in my world. Anyway, I think Jeff is a pretty smart guy.

So, today, I got about 6 emails from him. (I think I’ve joined his list at least a dozen times.)

He was advertising this new SEO-friendly plugin for WordPress. Pat is all eyes.

I went over to his blog and read more about it. What it does is find plugins for you that are important to your blog’s SEO profile, and it tweaks the settings to match Jeff’s. I thought, hmm… I need to check this out, just because — SEO and all.

I downloaded it.

I let the blog install it and activate it from the zip file. No problems.

It was pretty happy with me because I already have most of the plugins Jeff recommends, but there were a couple, like the CAPTCHA code plugin for comments, which I had mused about but never installed, and the Google XML sitemaps. I had the plain Google Sitemaps, but hey… If Jeff wants to give me his settings, I’m going to download the right plugin, eh?

Once I had them all, I told Jeff’s plugin to change the settings, and bingo! I’m 99.96% optimized.

I had to go in and change the number of posts to show setting because he had it at 5. It left a bunch of white space at the bottom of the blog, so I changed it back to 10, hence my not perfect 100%. Oh well… Not changing my theme. Sorry.

The drawback?

Well… You have to agree to allow Jeff’s blog feed to sit at the top of your dashboard. To me, this isn’t a big deal. In fact, it’s kind of a blessing. I read his blog anyway, and now, I can come here and read from here. Nifty.

I’d recommend this plugin to you, especially if you don’t know what plugins or what settings to have to make your blog SEO-friendly. Two caveats…

First, you must be using WordPress 2.7. You should be anyway, but don’t use Jeff’s plugin if you don’t have it running now.

Second, not all plugins work with all themes. If you install it and something goes glitchy, just deactivate the plugin. Or worse, if your blog goes away, just rename your plugins folder and it will come back. then, delete the plugin and you should be back to normal again.

With those two things in mind, it’s a great free tool. I’d check it out: http://budurl.com/jeffj

So, I’ve tried the Facebook ads. They’re pretty cool in terms of placement and presentation, but they produced no results. So, I abandoned them. I’m wondering if any of you have had success. I’d love to hear about it. Leave me a comment and tell me what you think made that happen.

The prediction from eMarketer Daily is that Web 2.0 advertising will rise from $1.175M in 2008 to $1,295M in 2009. Not a huge jump, but it shows how people are getting more excited about placing ads on Web 2.0, but they’re predicting $1.64M in 2013, so a constant rise in advertising in Web 2.0.

But who’s doing it?

On MySpace.com, it’s the big boys. There’s a huge flash ad for the new blockbuster movieTwilight spread across the entire screen. There’s another smaller banner at the bottom for that movie, too. And we have Ashton Kutcher, Don Cheadle, and the World Poker Tour. Not one Internet marketer from our circles. Not one. Inside, we have ads all over the page. I really think that MySpace is getting just the tad spammy, and because it annoys me so, I rarely go back to visit.

I like Facebook 100 times better. The only ads there are the pay-per-click ads and they’re unobtrusive. They don’t smack you in the eyeballs like the MySpace ads do. I mean, it makes you wonder whether you’re at MySpace to socialize or be in a virtual mall lined with nothing but billboards. But MySpace is kind of for the younger generation. Maybe they’re so inured to all of the ads they see day after day that they just don’t notice.

HubPages.com has a couple of banner ads on the front page. Not really annoying because I’m banner blind, I guess. I just don’t see them.  They’re there when you sign in, too, and from companies like AT&T, so I’m guessing that the HubPages owner is making a tidy sum from those banners. I don’t mind. They should be making some money for their service.

Squidoo? No ads at all on the home page. Very classy. We have some advertising on the lenses themselves, but again, not annoying at all. The banners blend in and well… again from big companies. I’d expect nothing less from Seth Godin.

But, what’s the deal with Twitter? I mean, it’s HOT, hot HOT! And they have NO monetization for that service whatsoever. I mean, how many of us could jump right in and give them a pointer or two? Have any of you guru types contacted the people? You’re missing a huge opportunity there!

Anyway, I’m seeing these numbers and they’re looking pretty good, but we’re talking major companies coming in and making money with Web 2.0. I’m really hoping they won’t come in and overwhelm the sites and make a carnival-like atmosphere like they did at MySpace.

Of course, I’m into advertising and all things marketing, but there’s a delicate balance, isn’t there? We all hate email spammers, so there’s a line that we all, marketer and non-marketer alike don’t like crossed.

When the ads come in to pollute the sociability of Web 2.0 — bad news, and the predictions for big ad revenues? Out the window.

I say keep Web 2.0 sociable. Keep too many ads out and people reaching out to people in. That’s the part that makes Web 2.0 special.

Vacations are great, aren’t they? I mean, you get some downtime. You do stuff you can’t do when you’re working, like take a nap in the middle of the day. Very sweet. I did that twice.

Vacations also good for reading. I love to read, and read at least two or three books at a time.

While I was off last week, I read a book for the second time. I don’t often do that. T. Harv Eker and Frank Herbert are two of the few authors I’ve reread over time. But I’ve just added Roy H. Williams to that short list when I reread his The Wizard of Ads. It’s an awesome book, and one that Tellman turned me on to.

In it, Williams talks about advertising, about getting under the surface to find the real stuff, and he teaches you in surreptitious ways. That sneaky guy. When he sells you something, you won’t even know it.  His series of autobiographical anecdotes are interesting and endearing. And, he’s fun. I really love that book.

You see, he doesn’t really talk much about the down and dirty of where to put your deck copy and how many bullets a long-copy sales letter should have; he shows you things in a way that you will remember. He tells you stories.

I had a comment about my “frivolous” style today, and I’ll agree that my style is a tad fanciful. I’m a little wackier than the average serious businessperson and I write some stuff the way I do because I’m slowly moving into that realm of life. Any story will do.

But aside from the now and then serious banter, rather than bore an audience, I’d prefer to be like Roy H. Williams. I like to have fun, and if you’re not having fun with me, well… you’re missing my point.

And that’s OK…

You may totally hate my style, think I’m a twit, and run far, far away. That’s cool. You aren’t one of my people. You don’t get me. And to tell the truth, I probably wouldn’t get you, either.

Oh, well.

But if you enjoy learning and not even noticing that you are, I’m suggesting here that you try The Wizard of Ads. Even if you don’t learn anything, I know you’ll enjoy it.

I was just over at Darren Rowse’s blog — ProBlogger — and learned something so simple that it’s just freakin’ stupid that I and most people I know, didn’t think of it sooner. You can see his video post at

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/03/21/how-to-promote-yourself-and-your-blog-at-a-conference/

But… here’s the soup simple deal:

You know how conference badges are usually kind of lame? They have your name and sometimes your picture (not usually), but there’s often a bit of white space real estate you can put to good use. So, just shove your business card in there. Or, draw a cartoon. Or, whatever. You want people to notice it and start a conversation.

‘Course that’s never been my problem. I’ll walk up to anyone and just start talking. I’ve met some of the coolest people that way, and you know, some of these conference relationships can be really great. You’ll probably see these folks again or maybe even do business with them. That’s why going to offline conferences is such a big deal. If you aren’t doing it, you’re missing some very cool times.

Darren suggests putting the name of your blog and its URL on your conference badge, which is great for us serious bloggers, but you can really put a URL for anything in there, no?

I mean, think about it. If you’re an affiliate marketer, how about a curiosity arousing redirect for an affiliate link? Why not?

Make it something really cool so that people will ask you about it. Be creative!

http://mysite.com/kiss_me

http://mysite.com/eat_dirt

http://mysite.com/available

Oh, whatever. So, for my Blogging4Boomers site, I could have like:

http://bloggingforboomers.com/even_old_people_do_it

Yeah.

Think I’d get some inquisitors? Heck yeah. ‘Specially since in comparison to all these youngsters online, I’m one of the old ones. LOL

But that’s the ticket for today, people. USE that conference badge for something other than getting in.

Thanks for the great idea, Darren! Can’t wait until the next conference…

JVAlert in June.

I’m planning ahead.