OVBlogger: Blogging and SEO

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So, if you go to the bottom of each of my posts, you’ll see a cool new device. It’s called the “Social Twist Tell-a-Friend” button.  If you like a post, you can email, blog, Twitter, or tell your friends about it on Facebook. Pretty Sweet. You can get one for your own blog at http://tellafriend.socialtwist.com/

Cool thing is that it will also give you stats. If you’ve been reading my blog for very long, you’ll know that I LOVE stats. So, this very easy to use plugin (all you have to do is upload it to your wp-content/plugins folder and activate it) serves two purposes for me.

The typical chicklets that you see on my blog and everyone else’s don’t allow people to email folks about your incredibly brilliant blog post, either.

Work a peek, even if you aren’t concerned with spreading the social word.

Wait! If you aren’t, you totally should be. Nothing is better than word-of-mouth recommendation.

Oh, and you can use this on websites, too.  It’s worth the time to just check it out. Did I mention that it’s a free app?   The only thing that could make it better is a diamond tiara.

Popularity: 17% [?]

The WordPress folks are at it again. They’re coming up with a new interface that was supposed to be ready on November 10, but they say it will be another two weeks before they can take WP 2.7 out of beta.

Personally, I’m too timid to install the beta version. Bugs, trouble, and I’d be in the basket. I mean, I’m great with doing things once the blog is installed and all, a regular mechanic. But I freak out when things don’t work the way they should, so I’ll just wait.

But it looks like they have redesigned the dashboard again. Lord, how many videos will I have to make to show people the differences? At least 2 that I know of.

Oh well, I’m sure it will be better.

And it apparently has an automatic upgrade option. Well… I love the automatic plugin upgrade. I’m excited to learn of the automatic WordPress upgrade because every frickin’ time I turn around, my version is out of date. Grr. The list of features I read says that upgrades are performed over a secure connection, too. Great!

So, that’s cool.

There is also:

• Bulk editing for  posts
• Sticky posts
• Comment threading
• Comment reply from admin (Like that one, eh?)

And you can vote for your faves over at the WordPress Blog. The most votes so far have been for the new design/layout, so that must be pretty sweet. And next was my favorite, the automatic upgrade.

So, we’ll be waiting guys… 2 weeks is October 24. You rock!

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% [?]

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% [?]

Don’t you just love it when someone comes to your blog and types in “Internesting post”? I mean, it’s nice that they read it–maybe, but I totally doubt that they did, but if they did, nice. But let me ask you why don’t they have anything better to say?

I mean, I get some great comments here. People are totally helpful, start up a discussion, or whatever, and that totally rocks!

But when I see a comment that says, “Interesting post,” I’m SO beyond flattery. LOL I know it’s someone just tyring to get a link back or whatever.

‘Course you’ll notice that I got the smackdown again from Google for having the paid links on my site. I’m a PR 2 again. Big whoop. Page rank means exactly the same thing to me as does “Interesting post.” I totally ignore both of them. The vapid blog comment gets sent right to Akismet.

PLONK!

Am I cranky today or what?

Yes, I am.

Working too hard.

But I have a call coming up tonight. But that should be fun. Some SEO talk: http://easyseotricks.com/paul if you’re interested. This is what I love, so it will be fun. Come on over.

Popularity: 21% [?]

If you’ve been reading my blog for very long, you’ll know that I’m an inveterate theme changer.  I can’t help it. I see something new and shiny and I just run for it. Colors and images totally turn me on.

My whole family are artists, so it’s no wonder, eh? It’s on my side and my husband’s side, too, so my daughter lucked out with the best art genes from both sides. I just like pretty shapes and colors. Oooh… Ahhh… Drool.

So, when I see a theme that just grabs me… I grab it.

The one I have now isn’t quite my cup of tea. It’s OK, you know. Businessy and such, but it’s really not me.

And you probably feel the same way about your theme or that ubiquitious Kubrick theme that everyone starts out with. You don’t have to be stuck with that!

There are a couple of three or four ways to change it.

You can go into your Design tab and mess with the header colors. Just making them a little different is good. And if you’re not very techy, this is a way you can go right away with no tech acumen whatsoever. You can also have headers made by a graphic artist and just swap out the header image, too. That’s pretty easy to do.

But finding and uploading a new theme is just as simple, really.

Go to http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/ and find a new one that you like and that suits your purpose. You can afford to be a little quirkier with a personal blog, or if your niche is a little quirky. For business blogging, think clean and bright. No black. I know this now, as my friends gave me the smackdown about my last <sigh> really favorite theme.

Once you have the theme, extract the files, and upload it via ftp to your blog’s wp-content/themes folder. Once you have done that, it will appear in your Design area. One really cool feature about WordPress 2.6.x is that it allows you to preview the theme before you actually let it go live.

The only thing about changing your theme that you probably won’t like is that some customizations will have to be re-done. Your widgets should still work, unless you’ve gone from a three-column template to a one-column template, but then, it’s only a matter of rearranging. So, that’s cool.

But if you’ve added any social networking buttons, as I have AddThis, for example, they’ll have to be re-done. Kontera is something else you’ll have to reload into the template. But if you haven’t done any of this stuff… you’re probably good to go.

I know WordPress just keeps making things better and better and they totally rock! But here’s something for my wishlist: When someone chooses a new theme, can’t you magically just make it appear on my blog without having to make all those customizations all over again?

That would be sweet!

Popularity: 26% [?]

clipped from wordpress.org Stefan Esser recently warned developers of the dangers of SQL Column Truncation and the weakness of mt_rand().  With his help we worked around these problems and are now releasing WordPress 2.6.2.  If you allow open registration on your blog, you should definitely upgrade.  With open registration enabled, it is possible in WordPress versions 2.6.1 and earlier to craft a username such that it will allow resetting another user’s password to a randomly generated password.  The randomly generated password is not disclosed to the attacker, so this problem by itself is annoying but not a security exploit.  However, this attack coupled with a weakness in the random number seeding in mt_rand() could be used to predict the randomly generated password.  Stefan Esser will release details of the complete attack shortly.  The attack is difficult to accomplish,  but its mere possibility means we recommend upgrading to 2.6.2.

Hmm… That means what if you don’t have passwords? Probably not much, but I’ll still upgrade to be safe.

What’s that they say about better safe than sorry? I’ve been hacked before and it’s totally no fun. That’s why it looks as if I just started blogging last year. Not so. I’ve been blogging since Blogger first opened. That was a while back.

But I also lost 2 years of posts from this blog when the (*)(&^(*& hacker did his worst. That totally hurt. It was my own fault for not having regular backups.

If you don’t have the plugin “WordPress Database Backup” go get it now at:
http://www.ilfilosofo.com/blog/wp-db-backup

Can save you from a world of hurt.

Popularity: 36% [?]

In my travels, I’ve become involved with tons and tons of video. I mean, we use video in The ListBuilding Club. I use video in my own site, Blogging4Boomers.com and with various other projects. I really enjoy it and we just bought a Mino Flip Cam. It totally rocks! It’s so simple that anyone can use it. Point and make a video.

Where I find issue is with distribution. I mean I like Tube Mogul a lot. It’s a free distribution service, but it only sends out videos, no podcasts, and no social bookmarks, either. But it has better stats than other services.

We’ve been using Traffic Geyser and when I say “we” I mean, me personally and Overcome Everything. We use it for all of the videos we send out (and that’s a LOT of videos). It’s a great way to submit not just the video but the podcast, a blog entry, and the social bookmarking is included. It’s $97 a month, but you can get a $1 trial.

However, I’m finding that some of my descriptions aren’t getting through, so no option is perfect.

But…

My friend, Cyndi Parker, has just opened a site called Easy Push Button Traffic. It’s the same price as Traffic Geyser, and it not only distributes video and podcasts, it also distributes articles and press releases. How cool is that?

If the software works as well as the affiliate manager does, it’s sweet! It’s probably the best affiliate area I’ve seen. Lots of tools, all well organized, and I know Cyndi. She’s a very cool lady.

Anyway, it’s an alternative to Traffic Geyser, which I also enjoy. I encourage you to check them both out and see which one is right for you.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Whoa. Really, really cool stuff going on over at WordPress.org. They’ve released WordPress 2.6 with some totally sweet options.

Here’s a quick rundown:

• Preview past post revisions.
  WP 2.6 lets you see what you’ve done before and even compare revisions to see which is best very easily.
• New Press This! button allows you to post from wherever you are online
  Snatch snippets of other blog posts, pictures, and get them onto your blog. (With proper crediting, of course.)
• See your theme before you actually change it.
  A new preview window allows you to see what a theme will look like with your content before you hit the change button.
• Get your word count!
  This is totally something I can use. Find out how many words are in each post you make.
• Give your pictures captions
  Let people know what your picture is about.

And there are more features that are new, like bulk dealing with plugins and such. Really, really sweet. Check it all out here: http://wordpress.org/development/2008/07/wordpress-26-tyner/

I love WordPress! Don’t you?

Fantastico doesn’t have it yet, though, and I’m lazy. I’ll wait. That way, the bugs might be worked out of the new software before I use it. Love that WordPress.

Popularity: 55% [?]

So, today’s the last day of this awesome conference and I’m totally looking forward to it. First up is Simon Leung, who’s really brilliant. Think we’ll learn something? Hmm… No doubt.

And then, one of the nicest people online and off, Mike Morgan. I finally get to meet him, which was totally cool. I’m so looking forward to the call we’re doing together on June 19 at 8 p.m. EDT. You won’t want to miss that one. He has something very special for my listeners. If you haven’t yet signed up for the teleseminar calls, you can get in under the wire for this one at Blogging4Boomers.com

Anyway, it’s always hard to stop being in conference mode, and get back to the real world, but hey…

I’m looking forward to that, too.

That’s how it is when you love what you do, eh?

Popularity: 27% [?]