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How to Troubleshoot Dropped Search Engine Rankings

By Darren Dunner in Featured

Are you baffled about a recent drop in your search engine rankings? Do you know where to start and get a handle on what the problem might be and how to remedy it? One option to consider is using search engine forums as a resource. They are full of questions from people who have experienced similar situations and are great resources for an answer or two. But let’s say you really want to get to the bottom of the problem and you want to do it yourself. The following are some of the beginning steps StepForth takes when evaluating dropped rankings.

Retrace Your Steps

Write a list of everything that anyone has done to your site within the past 3 weeks. Now look for anything that could have negatively impacted your content, site structure, or the reliability of your URL’s. Once you write down the course of events the answer might pop right out at you. Here are some common situational culprits:

You just moved your website to a different hosting provider: did your site experience much, if any, downtime during the switch over? Quality hosting companies will allow you to setup your site on their servers before the switch takes place so that downtime is minimized if not removed entirely. If a search engine happened to visit your site while it was down there is a small chance your rankings would be negatively affected but it will only happen for a short period. Once the search engine re-indexes your website everything should be back in order.

The structure of your site has permanently changed: did you redirect the traffic from the old URL’s to the new URL’s using a 301 redirect? If not then you should. A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect which tells any visiting search engine to permanently change its index to reflect the new site structure.

How to Troubleshoot Dropped Search Engine Rankings

By Ross Dunn in Featured

Are you baffled about a recent drop in your search engine rankings? Do you know where to start and get a handle on what the problem might be and how to remedy it? One option to consider is using search engine forums as a resource. They are full of questions from people who have experienced similar situations and are great resources for an answer or two. But let’s say you really want to get to the bottom of the problem and you want to do it yourself. The following are some of the beginning steps StepForth takes when evaluating dropped rankings.

Retrace Your Steps

Write a list of everything that anyone has done to your site within the past 3 weeks. Now look for anything that could have negatively impacted your content, site structure, or the reliability of your URL’s. Once you write down the course of events the answer might pop right out at you. Here are some common situational culprits:

• You just moved your website to a different hosting provider: did your site experience much, if any, downtime during the switch over? Quality hosting companies will allow you to setup your site on their servers before the switch takes place so that downtime is minimized if not removed entirely. If a search engine happened to visit your site while it was down there is a small chance your rankings would be negatively affected but it will only happen for a short period. Once the search engine re-indexes your website everything should be back in order.
• The structure of your site has permanently changed: did you redirect the traffic from the old URL’s to the new URL’s using a 301 redirect? If not then you should. A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect which tells any visiting search engine to permanently change its index to reflect the new site structure.
• Contact your hosting company to check if your server has had any downtime recently. In most cases search engines will not drop your rankings if they visit your site and it is offline once; however, if this happens consistently then your rankings can fail. If your hosting company states that downtime has occurred then you have at least one possible answer for your ranking woes. As long as your site is now reliably online and has not been offline for an extended period (days or weeks) the rankings should reappear as your site is re-indexed. There may be a notable drop in rankings but in most cases they will return to pre-incident status.

Check Your Content

Is all of your textual content up to date? It is amazing just how quickly a website’s rankings can drop when someone accidentally overwrites optimized pages with older, non-optimized pages. Check the content and if you find old content just overwrite it with the newer content and wait for the search engines to come back and re-index your website; Google and Yahoo are likely to come back within a week or even a day.

Check Your Server Headers

When a search engine visits your website it must first respond to any commands provided by your server. These commands are often identifiable in the server header. As a result, we like to verify that no incorrect, unusual or unnecessary commands are stashed in the header of your site. We use the free SEO Consultants Check Server Headers Tool to review any headers and take action if required but there are others freely available as well.

Search Engine Webmaster Tool Resources

If you have not already done so I strongly recommend claiming your website on Yahoo Site Explorer, Google Webmaster Central and Live Search Webmaster Center. Each of these fine resources provides extremely useful feedback (from each respective search engine’s perspective) for site owners such as:

• Whether your site is currently banned. If you are, in some cases they will tell you why.
• Notes on any impediments the search engine has experienced when trying to index your website.
• Who is linking to your website.
• Which pages are the most popular on your website.
• Which keywords lead the most traffic to your website.

In addition these free webmaster resources allow you to submit an XML sitemap of your website so that you can ensure no pages are missed when the search engines index your website.

Search Your Site for SPAM

It is possible that your site has been “lucky” enough not to have been penalized until now for certain content transgressions. You see, search engines don’t always catch SPAM right away. In fact, I occasionally find myself shaking my head in disbelief when I see blatantly spamming sites appearing in the top 10 search results. Your site may not be entirely spamming but all it takes is for one transgression to come to light for a search engine to penalize your search engine rankings. What SPAM is and how to identify it is an article unto itself so here are some helpful resources for you to review:

Why RSS May Be The Email Killer - Part 1

By Peter Lenkefi in Featured

According to online statistics from eMarketer, less than 20% of internet users intentionally read content with the aid of an RSS reader.

Indeed, even frequent internet users have no idea what that little orange RSS square represents and certainly don’t realize that there is a big shift brewing in the bowels of online publishing and marketing.

But, that may change more quickly than we all used to think for 3 very potent reasons.

There are advantages to RSS that will compel most, if not all, internet users and content consumers to “learn” to use an RSS reader and start managing RSS subscriptions.

In the same way email eclipsed snail mail for content delivery, RSS will eclipse email as the consumer’s choice for opt-in messaging.

If you are an email marketer, the time for you to get engaged to RSS has come, because, whether you like it or not, the wedding bells will be ringing soon.

Here’s why…

RSS = EMBEDDED VIDEO(and audio)

I recently was asked to help a small business embed video into emails they wanted to send to established clients.

Their vision was clear:

1. Create a quick video email with a webcam, stick it right into their corporate Outlook email with a Youtube style preview.

2. The customer gets the email, clicks the Youtube-looking video preview and the video start playing.

3. No landing page, they wanted everything to happen right there inside the email client, whether it was Outlook, AOL, Gmail, Yahoo or otherwise.

Simple right? Nope…

This is simply not possible with email.

Many brilliant companies have tried various tactics to embed video into email in a way that doesn’t consistently get blocked or stripped by the various email providers.

With email, the best that can be done is mimic the embedded video look by putting a video preview image in the email which opens up the web browser and plays the video there when clicked.

Ironically, even this comes at a significant cost because of the technical knowledge needed to make it happen.

So why is this a less than perfect solution?

Primarily because none of us like to be bounced around, we want to view video instantly, seamlessly.

After all, we have been trained to expect this level of immediacy by seeing it everyday on Google’s “universal search” and countless blogs.

The good news is, embedded video and audio are part and parcel (fundamental elements) of RSS.

Adding video (and audio) that can be instantly viewed by someone receiving an RSS feed is as simple as adding text.

Readers get what they have come to expect and corporations, as well as small businesses, can provide dynamic, highly personal content without paying a coder or webmaster thousands of bucks.

RSS = 100% DELIVERABILITY

I was shocked to see the stats on email deliver ability rates for the typical business. The fact is, even if you have come by a person’s email honestly (that is - you did not buy a bootleg list of emails from some guy in a dark virtual alley) the likelihood of them actually receiving that message from you is 60% or less.

So, let’s say you have a list of 1000 customer emails - which you have worked hard and paid real money to acquire. When you send a message, 400 of them (on average) don’t get it. It either automatically lands in their Spam Folder or gets deleted even before it reaches them.

Even companies like Aweber who make a living sending emails for other people and have intimate agreements with email providers like Gmail, AOL and Yahoo, only get a 90% deliverable rate - on a good day (they claim %99.4 but I use Aweber and when I factor in the whole opt-in and email management process, at least 10% of my emails are undelivered).

RSS is quite different. If someone has opted-in to your RSS “feed”, they will get 100% of your messages. No doubt about it.

This is obviously good for the company but how is this also an advantage for the customer?

Well, have you ever had the frustration of opting-in to something that you were interested in only to find (after searching for a few minutes) that it was buried in your spam box.

Have you ever had to “white list” an email address so that each email that was sent wasn’t immediately deleted?

Doing this takes TIME… the most expensive commodity any one of us owns.

Once consumers realize there is a simpler way to get 100% of what they want, 100% of the time, and 0% of what they don’t want, RSS will start to look like a (pardon the old expression) “no brainer”.

RSS = SPAM-FREE

This may be the “tipping point” that triggers the general masses toward RSS.

Yes, spam is annoying… it takes time to delete… it contains inappropriate messages which make parents steaming mad… and it is the constant burden of corporations and email providers.

Especially due to the last reason, email will not be free forever. You may not have to pay if you send just a few emails to your friends and family each month but if your sending out a significant number of messages… you will pay.

This will be the email manager’s final attempt at curbing the clever spammer.

In fact, email providers are already debating and tweaking a platform similar to cell phone companies where you will have a sending quota.

This will only push spamming into a “higher” art form and challenge the surprisingly intelligent geeks behind this modern phenomenon to new technical heights.

All of this will only serve to highlight the value of RSS even more and compel the average folks into opening up a Google Reader account or using the one they goofed around with more often.

However, before RSS eliminates email as we know it, a few things have to happen…

We will cover this in Part 2 of “Why RSS May Be The Email Killer”.

Author:  Peter Lenkefi publishes social media marketing and blog promotion tips at Web2Center.com.

7 Ways To Build Your Virtual Business Network

By Diane Corriette in Featured

We all have offline social networks, friends from our association, church or group, business networks that include suppliers, customers and other businesses, and now thanks to the power of web 2.0 we are building virtual business networks.

People are coming together from around the world to learn, connect to each other and share their personal and professional life.

Friendships and networks are being made between a person in the USA and India, someone in the UK and Australia. There are no longer any barriers to making international connections and talk to people around the world.

I refer to this type of online connection as a virtual business network and it is particularly important for you to network in this way if you run an internet based business because you will be at home, working alone and will need a place to go when challenges hit, or just to let off some steam.

Below are seven great ways to build your virtual business network to ensure you and the person/people you interact with gain the most benefit:

Remember Its not about numbers. If you think all you need to do is find a social network with a large number of people you may be missing out on some great opportunities to connect inside smaller groups and build more solid relationships.

Large sites are great if you just want to spread your business link around to get people to visit your website but you really should aim for more than this.

First decide what you want to get out of a network and what you can provide in terms of skills and expertise. Once you do that whether that social network has 2 members or 2,000 you will always gain maximum benefit from taking part.

Leverage the skills. What skills will you have that you bring to a group and can share with them? Let them know your expertise and how you can help. Discover what skills other people have and how you can use them to build your business. Most people in a network group are happy to share what they know so make the most of it and also be willing to share what you know.

Give before you take. It is important that you don’t spend all of your time taking and none of your time giving. Give first, share what you know, invite people to ask you questions, volunteer information, tell people about a great resource you found. Give, give and give some more because givers gain!

Provide value before you sell. When you write your blogs or messages for people to read don’t just leave a quick few words with a link to your products/site. Provide value you in your message. If you are commenting on what someone has written let them know why you enjoyed reading it, or whether you agree/disagree and then tell them - if you are interested in that, you may also be interested in this and let them know what you offer.

Establish yourself in a few rather than spread yourself in many. There are more and more online networks available for people to make use of and it is really easy to just keep joining one after another every time you are invited. It’s great to get yourself out on the internet but it’s also a good plan to establish yourself in at least 2 or 3 groups so that people recognize you. What you are looking to do here is build your reputation within the community and help them to get to know, like and trust you.

Take part and be active. If your business network facility allows you to start groups then start one and invite other members to join, don’t just sit back and wait for them to join. If you are able to upload videos find a few on Google that the community may enjoy watching and include them. If the site has a blog include at least two a week that provide value, tips, techniques or a how to type post that will help people do something they may be unable to do. Some of the best blogs will start a discussion or debate so ask a question, or ask for comments, suggestions or ideas to get everyone talking.

Make a commitment and be willing to work at it. Raising your online visibility takes time to achieve and will need regular contributions and a commitment to being around so that regular members get to know you and new members want to connect with you. You will soon find yourself connecting to more and more people and building your virtual social network. As you meet the same members in other networks you will have an instant connection with them and that will help you where ever you are on the internet.

Building a virtual business network provides you with an opportunity to build international friendships as well as profitable business partnerships and joint venture opportunities. You cannot survive online without connecting to other people in the same industry/community and as with all relationship building it takes time but is very rewarding.

I have and continue to connect with people from the USA and when they visit the UK I meet up and show them round!

So take your time, show your expertise and provide value, before you know it people will seek you out and want to connect with you.

Author:  Diane Corriette runs Women Internet Marketers at http://www.women-internet-marketers.com and works towards supporting women to start their own internet based business and/or raise their online visibility so they can be found quicker and more often by the right people. She also provides an opportunity for women to learn, connect and share at her free social network at http://www.womeninternetmarketers.net and provides free internet marketing information through her online magazine at http://www.womeninternetmarketers.tv

10 Powerful Stories To Get More Customers

By Scott Bywater in Featured

Remember, as a child lying in bed and listening to stories? Remember how engaged you were? Remember how you never got bored of them and always wanted to learn more?

Well, there’s a good reason why… and here’s how what you learnt as a young child could help you attract, and keep more customers…

Metaphors and stories have proven to be a powerful way of influencing other people. They are also extremely interesting to your potential customer, and connect with a deeper part of the human psyche.

Here’s 10 of the most powerful types of sales stories you can incorporate into your website ads and sales letters.

1) Introductory Stories: These are stories about who you are, why you’re writing to them, and how you have assisted other people and/or businesses.

This is a perfect way to connect with your target audience and generate rapport. Reveal something personal about yourself within the story, and establish credibility and trust.

2) Stories Which Overcome Fears: Everyone has fears of some type. Identify the greatest fears and concerns your customer has. And then show how other people, just like them, who had the same concerns, overcame them, and discovered there was nothing to worry about.

If you’re selling a health product, the client may be concerned it will not work for them. Tell the story of somebody else who felt the same and where they are now. Perhaps incorporate this structure within one of your testimonials.

This is a classic “Feel, Felt, Found, approach” I understand how you feel. My previous customer used to feel the same way. His experience now is.

3) Ego-Enhancing Stories: This type of story shows how people respect and look up to people who use your services, or own your product.

For example, if you were selling a Mercedes Benz. you could talk about a guy who bought one recently and how his colleagues, family and friends were so impressed.

4) Attention Grabbing Stories: These are used to get people to focus on you, your products and how you can benefit them. They explain why your customer should sit up and listen to you, right now.

Here’s an example from a sales letter from a company called “The Supper Club”.

“How can I get in on this deal?”

The question was posed by a Daily Reckoning reader who was referring to a deal I mentioned. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a stock. It was a private deal. And it was too late to get in anyway.

But it’s why I’m writing you today.

5) Product Information Stories: Don’t just list the features & benefits of your product or service. Tell a story which integrates this information.

6) Improved Productivity Stories: Outline exactly how your services and/or products have assisted companies to increase their profits, become more efficient, increase output and reduce down time.

Tell a before and after story of one of your customers. You’ll never guess how much (other customers) business has changed since they started working with us.

7) Family Togetherness Stories: This type of story demonstrates how your product or services has caused families to come together.

Money Stories: The idea here is to show people how your product or service will save or make money for your customers.

For example, if you’re a mortgage broker, give a case study of a past customer, and how much money they have saved through swapping over to you.

If you’re a PR company, give an example of how you helped one company get out of a rut.

If you’re an accountant, reflect on how you helped a specific customer save thousands of dollars on tax last year, because you’re up to date on all the tax changes.

9) Security Stories: This is a prime example of how you would go about selling an insurance policy. Tell a story about how your products have allowed your customers to sleep safely, and with peace of mind.

This could be used in the insurance industry, alarms, people selling trusts, pest and termite controllers, safe cars like Volvos, or any industry where people buy to feel more secure.

At the same time, it could be used for anybody who helps people to make more money, or ensures reliability. For instance, a marketing company could explain how safe one of their clients feels about their business with all the extra income being generated.

10) Closing Stories: Stories can be used here to close the sale and sum up all the benefits you have to offer.

What stories could you use to promote your business?

Author:  Scott Bywater is well known for getting results as a professional direct mail copywriter. And also the author of Cash-Flow Advertising. To get a free subscription to his “Copywriting Selling Secrets” newsletter where you’ll discover the truth about why most ads and sales letters don’t work (And how to make yours different) scamper over to his web site at http://www.copywritingthatsells.com.au

Combining Email Marketing with Other Types of Marketing

By Anne Ahira in Featured

Whether you choose to do your marketing online or offline, one thing does not change. This is the concept that no single marketing strategy will be as effective as a combination of two or more marketing strategies. This does not mean it is necessary for you to implement every known marketing strategy to promote your business but rather it implies that it is worthwhile to market from a few different perspectives to help you achieve your business related goals. This article will examine the importance of combining email marketing with other types of marketing to create a successful; multi tiered marketing strategy and will also offer some advice on managing more than one marketing strategy at once.

As the old saying goes, “Two heads are better than one,” and this is certainly true when it comes to marketing. You may enjoy a great deal of success with email marketing but this does not mean you should not try other types of online marketing such as website creation, participation in industry related message boards, placing banner ads, orchestrating an affiliate marketing campaign and generating inbound links to your website. While it is possible that not all of these strategies will be effective for your business, you are likely to find at least one other option which complements your email marketing and helps you to achieve your business related goals.

Alternately you may even wish to combine your email marketing campaign with more traditional marketing strategies such as radio ads, television ads and the print media. Just because these types of advertising do not take place online, does not mean they will not be able to help you generate more business. In fact advertising both online and offline can allow you to reach a larger target audience. This is because you will likely reach Internet users around the world but can also reach potential customers who do not utilize the Internet for purchasing or researching products or services similar to the ones you offer.

Popular marketing strategies to combine with email marketing include banner ads and message board participation. These are all online activities and each one individually is fairly simple. However, in combination these simple activities can create a powerful statement. You may send out emails offering useful information about your products or services, purchase banner ad space on websites which may be of interest to your potential customers and participate in industry related message boards where you can earn the respect and pique the interest of potential customers. Even if your potential customers are not currently in need of the products and services you offer, seeing your business name so often can have a branding effect. Branding is essentially a process in which consumers see a company name so often that they are more likely to select a product from this company when they are in need of an item the company offers.

If you are planning to combine multiple forms of advertising, you should be aware that this can make it difficult for you to evaluate the effectiveness of each marketing strategy. This is especially true of the marketing strategies are implemented concurrently. When you are only using one type of marketing strategy, you can generally attribute increases in sales or website traffic to changes in the marketing strategy. However, when more than one type of marketing strategy is in effect, determining which strategy is producing the desired effect can be quite difficult. This situation can be handled by not making changes to more than one marketing strategy at a time. This will help to pinpoint which changes produce an increase in sales or website traffic. It can also help you to determine when changes to your marketing strategy have a detrimental effect on your sales and website traffic. However, if you are having difficulty determining which marketing strategy is most effective you can consider asking customers to answer survey questions and provide information such as how they learned about the products or services your business offers.

Author:  Anne Ahira Marketing Guru of My 1st Internet Guru. Anne offers a plethora of inside marketing information and step by step guides to make your online ventures more successful.

20 Practical SEO Tips to Super-Charge Your WordPress Blog!

By John Lamansky in Featured

First and foremost: make sure you’re not inadvertently telling the search engines to go away! Believe it or not, some WordPress installations block the search engine bots by default.

From your admin panel, go to Options > Privacy and make sure it’s set to “I would like my blog to be visible to everyone.”

Bonus Tip #1 - Are Comments Enabled?

Some WordPress users restrict comments to registered users, or disable them entirely. While this may be appropriate in some situations, in most cases comments are a very beneficial factor, and a defining mark, of a blog.

Comments engage your readers, help you get more “fresh content” SEO brownie points, and give search engines another reason to come back frequently.

Here’s how to fully enable comments:

1. Login to the WordPress administration center
2. Click “Options” on the menu bar
3. Is “Users must be registered and logged in to comment” checked? If so, consider unchecking it.
4. Click “Discussion” on the submenu bar
5. Make sure the following are checked: “Allow people to post comments on the article” and “Allow link notifications from other Weblogs (pingbacks and trackbacks.)”

WordPress SEO Tip #19 – Does Your Blog Have a Topic?

Some of us would prefer to have a blog where we talk about anything that comes to mind: cars, movies, photosynthesis, dust mites, you name it.

In and of itself, such a blogging style isn’t wrong; however, you can leave search engines clueless as to what your blog’s about and thus for what search queries your blog should appear. And some of your readers might get annoyed in the process as well.

WordPress SEO Tip #18 – Ensure URL Canonicalization

If your blog posts are accessible from more than one URL, you could end up with:

• Search engines confused as to which URL to display in the SERPs.
• PageRank split between multiple pages.
• Duplicate content penalties.

Starting with version 2.3, WordPress takes care of this and makes sure your content is accessible from only one place. So if you use an older version, either upgrade to the latest version of WordPress, or install the Permalink Redirect plugin.

WordPress SEO Tip #17 – Check for Valid XHTML

Most code errors are minor, but the more serious ones can cause content misinterpretation by search engines, lower rankings, and rendering errors.

WordPress itself produces valid code, but errors can crop up from two other common sources:

• Poorly written plugins or themes
• User-created coding errors (in the blog posts themselves, or through theme customizations)

First check your site for errors. If an error is found, look at the surrounding content to determine the source of the error.

If a plugin is the culprit, fix it if you’re good at that sort of thing (the beauty of open source!), or send a quick email to the plugin developer and let him or her know.

WordPress SEO Tip #16 - Don’t Leech Link Juice!

One characteristic of WordPress blogs is the sidebar, which is typically present on every single page. Do you really need to be passing link juice from every single one of your pages to every single one of those links? If the answer is no, consider adding rel=”nofollow” to the less important ones.

WordPress SEO Tip #15 – Use Images in Your Posts

Not only do they increase visitor attention and retention, they give you an opportunity to use keyword-rich “alt” attributes, “title” attributes, and filenames. Plus it’ll give your blog visibility in image search engines.

WordPress SEO Tip #14 – Does Your Theme Use Header Tags Correctly?

• The blog title, or your main keyword should be in an <h1> tag.
• If your subtitle is keyword-rich, you can put it in an <h2>; otherwise I recommend putting it in a non-header tag like <div>.
• The post titles should go in <h2> tags.
• Sidebar section titles should be <h3> tag or non-header.

Unfortunately, some themes (including the WordPress Default Theme) put the sidebar section titles in <h2> tags. Although this makes sense from a strict structural point of view, it also gives irrelevant sidebar headers (”Categories,” “Archives,” “Meta,” etc.) equal weight with your SEO-important post titles.

To sum it up: Use a theme that utilizes header-tags properly, or try fixing the theme you have.

WordPress SEO Tip #13 – Use Pinging

A ping is a “this site has new content” notification that invites bots to visit your blog.

WordPress pings one website called Ping-o-matic by default, which in turn pings others. You can also add additional services by going to Options > Writing in the admin panel. (For example, the pinging URL for Google Blog Search is http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2)

Another Bonus Tip: Once a post is published, WordPress issues pings whenever the post is edited. Try to cut down on after-publishing edits to avoid being considered a ping spammer.

WordPress SEO Tip #12 – Install the Google XML Sitemaps Generator Plugin

XML Sitemaps are search-engine-friendly directories of your blog’s posts and other pages intended to help search engines spider your site. Though pioneered by Google, they’re supported by Yahoo, MSN, and Ask.com as well.

The Google XML Sitemaps Generator for WordPress makes creation of these sitemaps easy and automatic. It also lets the engines know when you post new content.

WordPress SEO Tip #11 – Avoid Sponsored Themes

There was a debate in the WordPress community not too long ago on the topic of sponsered themes. These themes include paid links (usually in the footer) than can suck PageRank and possibly result in a Google paid links penalty.

Stick with WordPress theme directories that don’t include sponsored themes, like the WordPress Theme Viewer.

Bonus Tip #2 – Write Right Post Titles

SEO isn’t everything: once you’re high in the SERPs, you need action words to prompt clickthroughs.

Put keywords in your title if at all possible, but not if it’ll compromise the click-trigger action title.

WordPress SEO Tip #10 – Use Traditional SEO Techniques

A WordPress blog is a website too, so the traditional SEO techniques still apply:

• Use important keywords in the title and throughout the post, but don’t overdo it.
• Bold your keywords when it makes sense.
• Develop links to your blog.

WordPress SEO Tip #9 – Use the Power of the Slug

Ever wondered what the “Post Slug” on the “Write” page was? It’s the text that goes in the URL when you have “Pretty Permalinks” enabled (see tip #2).

By default the slug is a “sanitized” version of the post title. However, if your title is overly long or keyword-sparse, you can change the slug through the Post Slug box.

Yet Another Bonus Tip: The SEO Slugs plugin can take out common words like “you,” “is,” etc. out of the slug for you automatically.

WordPress SEO Tip #8 – Use Timestamping to Stagger Fresh Content

Search engines and visitors love fresh blog content on a steady, regular basis. But for a lot of us, creativity comes irregularly: 10 post ideas one week, none the next.

Enter timestamping. When writing a post, click the plus sign next to “Post Timestamp.” Set a date and time, and the post will publish by itself whenever you specify.

Search engines will keep coming back, and visitors won’t be inundated with a ton of new posts all at once.

Hint: If you’ve timestamped a post, don’t click the Publish button, since that’ll publish your post immediately regardless of your timestamp. Instead, select “Published” under “Post Status” and click the Save button.

WordPress SEO Tip #7 – Use Tags for Free Keyword Boosts

WordPress 2.3 and above include a tags feature that lets you assign keywords to your blog posts. Once you start using them, then since each tag gets its own webpage, you’ll be generating a ton of your own themed, keyword-oriented internal backlink pages.

WordPress SEO Tip #6 – Integrate Social Media

Adding social media links/buttons like the ones above makes it easy for visitors to promote your quality content (hint, hint). Social media is a great way to build links naturally as well as drive targeted site traffic.

• Share This is a very popular “social media all-in-one” plugin.
• If you’re a FeedBurner user, you can use FeedFlare to add action links, including social media ones, to the bottom of your posts.

Lots of social media sites provide code you can use to generate buttons like those above. Grab your own code from:

• Digg
• Sphinn
• StumbleUpon
• Mixx
• Scoop

WordPress SEO Tip #5 – Implement Deep-Linking

Here are several great ways to implement deep-linking on your WordPress blog:

• Within your posts, link to other posts on your blog and use important keywords in the anchor text.
• Install the Similar Posts plugin, which inserts a list of related posts you’ve written to the bottom of each of your blog posts. This process will create aged deep links and increase visitor retention.
• Display your most popular posts in your sidebar using the Popularity Contest plugin. Gives your most popular posts tons of internal links, and helps your visitors find your best content.

WordPress SEO Tip #4 – Make Scrapers Work to Your Advantage

Most of us would probably be upset if someone used scraping (automated content stealing) to publish our laboriously-written posts as his or her own.

But with a little work, you can make the scrapers work for you, not against you.

Here’s how to do it, courtesy of EarnersBlog.com:

If you use Wordpress it’s very easy to take full advantage of these sites linking to you, all you need to do is create links back to your content within your feed.

What you’ll need for this:

• Cave Monkey’s Full Text Feed Plugin
• Solo Technologies Add Related Posts to your Feed Plugin

These plugins simply show your entire post in your feed & also add some related posts in your feed only (which will also increase the amount of people in your feed reading more than 1 post).
Now, everytime anyone scrapes your blog via your RSS feed & republishes it they’ll be deep linking to 5 or more of your existing posts. Bingo.

WordPress SEO Tip #3 – Install the All-in-One SEO Plugin

Like the name implies, this plugin covers a lot of the bases.

• Puts the blog name after the post title, giving your keyword-rich titles more prominence.
• Allows you to override title and meta tags on your homepage as well as your individual posts.
• Lets you add “noindex” to your category and/or tag pages to avoid duplicate content.
• And more.

A must-have for serious WordPress SEO.

WordPress SEO Tip #2 – Use “Pretty Permalinks”

Sure, you may already use Pretty Permalinks, but are you using the best possible permalink structure?

For those of who don’t use Pretty Permalinks, it’s a must-do for WordPress SEO. Permalinks, in essence, are the URLs of your WordPress blog posts. “Pretty Permalinks” put slugs (which should contain keywords — see tip #9) in your URLs instead of the default numbers.

To enable or change them, first login, then go to Options > Permalinks.

The two options you do not want are “Default” and “Numeric.” Here are my suggestions for picking a “pretty” permalink structure:

• Date and Name Based: The problem with this is that your posts are several extra directories deep, which can decrease relevence in some search engines. However, such a permalink structure can nevertheless be desireable if your blog is news-oriented or date-sensitive.
• Post Name Only: If your blog covers one topic that has no subtopics (which, though possible, is unlikely), select “Custom” and type /%postname%/
• Category Based: If your blog covers multiple topics, implement category-based URLs. (You have to look into the Codex to find information on category-based URLs, so many WordPress users probably don’t realize that this option exists!) To implement it, select “Custom” and type /%category%/%postname%/

WordPress SEO Tip #1 – WordPress Secret: Use Category-Based Permalinks for SEO Siloing

Here’s the big finale. Problem is, this tip is so important (and lengthy) that it really merits its own post.

Here’s a teaser: it entails implementing the powerful siloing technique on your WordPress blog through a combination of plugins, settings, and strategies.

Conclusion

Okay, so it was actually more like 23+ tips instead of 20. I certainly hope you gleaned a useful strategy or two in your quest for WordPress search engine optimization. If you enjoyed this post, please social it, email it, link it, or leave a comment!

Author:  WordPress Expert John Lamansky, who we managed to extract from the lab just long enough for him to compose this brilliant WordPress Top 20 SEO Guide. Article Source: SEO Design Solutions

Why People Fail In Affiliate Marketing

By Tod Dale in Featured

Nowadays, almost everybody buys online - shopping for groceries, clothes, sports equipment, houses, solicitors - you can now get everything you need without leaving your desk.

Accordingly, the practice of Affiliate Marketing has mushroomed in popularity, and now represents a widespread means of earning a full-time income via the internet. Affiliate marketing partnerships have three beneficiaries - the customer who receives the goods for which he was searching; the trader who has sold it to him; and the webmaster who introduced them to each other.

The very popularity of affiliate marketing has, though, led to the demise of many marketers; only the best succeed. The weak fall to the wayside. That’s business.

So, let’s analyze why so many people who try to enter into affiliate marketing programs fail; which will help us avoid the pitfalls ourselves.

One of the main reasons affiliate marketing ventures fail is simply because of lack of preparation - by both the trader and the affiliate. A trader needs to carefully consider who to use as an affiliate, matching his needs closely with their own. Too many companies adopt the approach of simply going for numbers - signing up as many affiliates as they can with little regard for quality.

Similarly, as an affiliate, you need to match yourself with appropriate traders. Make certain that your interests and enthusiasms are captured in the trader’s products so that you can genuinely promote them. Do your research on the company, its products and history and don’t just jump in because they offer you 40% commission every time you make a sale.

You can receive a wealth of vital information from the many affiliate forums or articles on the web. You can try to identify those products that are most likely to have a ‘high conversion rate’ and consequently earn you more money.

Some websites, of failed affiliate marketers, were disaster zones - examples of ‘how not to produce your own web site’ abound! Don’t let that happen to you.

First of all, choose an effective domain name; one that is appropriate for your products and is sure to be identified by search engines. This might sound glaringly obvious but the choice of name is of paramount significance. It doesn’t matter how good your site is; if the customer doesn’t ever get to see it, it doesn’t matter.

Design your website with 100% professionalism. Your design, your layout, your ads, your content are all equally important and need to be geared towards holding the sustained interest of your reader. Don’t cram it so full of pretty graphics and images that the visitor gets quickly lost.

Those sites that thrive, tend to be content-rich, using key words and quality information to give customers the information they are looking for in an attractive, eye-catching way. Your website is the means by which you will make your money, so develop it appropriately.

Arguably, the most crucial aspect of the affiliate marketing program is advertising. You cannot hope to succeed in persuading visitors who are looking at your site to click onto that of your partner, unless you are creative and effective with your advertising techniques.

Creating potent ads is not easy, and will entail time and hard work. But put yourself in the position of a potential customer; you are far more likely to be attracted by a vibrant, original and thoughtful marketing strategy - so that’s what you must aim to provide.

Many affiliate marketers fail because, with their “get rich quick” attitude they lose sight of longer term goals. You must, to make a prolonged success of affiliate marketing, and to develop it as a career, make sure that you learn it from A to Z, from top to bottom.

Keep updating your knowledge base - be it in advertising, web page design or search engine optimization. Keep improving your knowledge about the demands of customers and vagaries of traders. You cannot stand still in marketing. If you stand still, others will overtake you. The only way to stay successful is to keep learning.

Finally, many would-be affiliate marketers fail simply because they give up too quickly. They are enticed by the thought of making their million and sign enthusiastically for their first program. When that doesn’t work they perhaps sign for another one and go through the same ‘Teach Yourself Affiliate Marketing’ cut and paste process again; with the same results.

Don’t expect to be the new Donald Trump next week. Work at developing your skills and applying good business sense and, who knows, you might be able to give him a run for his money one day!

Author:  Tod Dale is a top marketer who specializes in creating six figure incomes for home business entrepreneurs. To learn more about him, visit his website at
http://integritywealthsystem.com/

Email Marketing Mistakes

By Anne Ahira in Featured

Many business owners who opt to try email marketing make the mistake of believing any type of email marketing is beneficial. This is simply not true; there are a number of mistakes business owners can make when they organize an email marketing campaign. Examples of these types of mistakes may include allowing promotional materials to be tagged as spam, not following up with promotional emails, not being prepared for an influx of customers after an email marketing effort and not marketing specifically to the target audience.

We will begin our discussion on email marketing mistakes with spam. Spam is a problem which is reaching endemic proportions. Each day Internet users are bombarded with spam from around the world. This may include a host of unsolicited emails which are promoting products or services the recipients may or may not be interested in purchasing. A critical mistake business owners can make in email marketing is to issue emails which are likely to be construed to be spam. This may result in the emails never reaching the recipient or the emails being deleted, without being read, by the recipient. Avoiding the potential of falling into the spam category is not very difficult. It basically involves ensuring your promotional emails contain more useful copy than blatant advertising. This will make it more likely for your emails to be taken seriously.

Another email marketing mistake often made is failure to follow up on promotional emails. Sending out emails to interested parties can be very beneficial but it is even more beneficial to contact these email recipients by other methods such as mail or telephone to answer any questions they may have and offer any additional information they may require. This type of follow up can be much more effective than simply sending an email and allowing it to fall into the abyss of an overcrowded email inbox.

Business owners may also run into the mistake of not preparing themselves for an influx of customers after an email marketing effort. The express purpose of email marketing is to generate increased interest in your products or services. Therefore it is critical for business owners to anticipate an increase in business and be prepared to accommodate this increased demand for products and services. This is important because potential customers who have to wait for products or services may seek out your competitors who are better prepared to provide them with products or services immediately.

Finally a critical mistake made by business owners is to not tailor an email marketing campaign to their specific target audience. This can be a problem because it may result in the email marketing being less effective. Business owners typically make this mistake because they fall into the trap of believing that it is more important to reach a large audience than it is to reach a target audience. You may blindly send your email marketing materials to millions of recipients and only generate a few leads. However, you could send the same email marketing materials to a smaller group of only a thousand recipients who all have an interest in your products and services and will likely generate more leads from this smaller email distribution list. It is not only important to send your message to members of your target audience but to also tailor your message to suit this audience. Creating an email message which will appeal to a variety of individuals is not as important as creating a message which will appeal to members of your target audience.

You will need an autoresponder system to market with email We recommend www.Automatic-Responder.com for sending your email.

Author:  Anne Ahira Marketing Guru of My 1st Internet Guru. Anne offers a plethora of inside marketing information and step by step guides to make your online ventures more successful.

All Search Engines Love Spiders: How Meta Commands Can Help You Love Them Too

By Scott Buresh in Featured

Nearly all search engines utilize spiders (which are also known by their original name, robots) to go out and scour the web looking for web pages. These search engine spiders then bring the data back to be indexed by the engine.

Since roughly 1996, individual meta commands have existed that can be used on individual web pages to modify how these search engine spiders behave. The most useful of these commands are fairly universal and respected by almost all search engines. What follows is a list of some of the more popular spider commands and instances in which you might want to use them.

<meta name=”robots” content=”index”>

This meta command is one of the most common ones used – and it is also the least necessary. It tells search engine spiders to come on in and put the page in their index. However, all search engines do this by default anyway. Basically, if you want to put it in there for fun, be my guest, but this command is not giving you any special treatment. All search engines are going to index your page, unless you specifically tell them otherwise.

<meta name=”robots” content=”follow”>

The follow command is different from the index command. It basically requests that the search engine spiders follow the links that are on a particular page. Again, however, this piece of code is completely unnecessary because all search engines are going to follow the links on a page, unless otherwise directed.

<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex”>

The noindex command, the opposite of the index command, tells search engine spiders not to index the content of a page. It’s important to note however that search engine spiders will still follow the links on a page that uses only this command.

When not used for legitimate purposes, this tag can be dangerous because it can put you at risk for penalization by most, if not all search engines. This is because you can use a noindex tag to hide pages with multiple links that you don’t want visitors to see but that you do want all search engines to index.

There are however some legitimate uses for the noindex command. For example, if you have a dynamic site and you’ve created static pages to replace some of your dynamic pages, which can make them easier for search engine spiders to access, you could put a noindex tag on the dynamic version.

As Google mentions in its Webmaster Help Center:

“Consider creating static copies of dynamic pages. Although the Google index includes dynamic pages, they comprise a small portion of our index. If you suspect that your dynamically generated pages (such as URLs containing question marks) are causing problems for our crawler, you might create static copies of these pages.”

In cases like these, it is acceptable to use the “no index” command on the dynamic version of the page, so that your content will not be treated as duplicate. You are not tricking all search engines, you’re just redirecting them.

<meta name=”robots” content=”nofollow”>

This tag tells search engine spiders that it’s OK to go ahead and index a page and list it but that they shouldn’t follow any of the links that are on the page. This can be useful if, for example, you had some partners that requested a link on your site that you felt obligated to give, but you wanted to hold onto as much Page Rank as possible. Now this is of course between you and your own personal god, but you would be able to in effect have a partners page, add the nofollow attribute to the meta tags, and basically not pass on any of your Page Rank to any of the sites to which you are linking. The nofollow command in effect tells all search engines that this is the end of the line.

<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex,nofollow”>

Obviously, noindex and nofollow are powerful tags – and in combination, they can make a page and the subsequent pages to which it links invisible to nearly all search engines.  This combination command tells search engine spiders, “Do not read this page; do not follow any of the links on this page; do not include this page in your index.”

This command has its beneficial uses. For example, it can be placed on pages on a site that have duplicate content for legitimate reasons. A website might have both a page for the United States and a page for England that cover the same product with exactly the same content. However, nearly all search engines would see this as duplicate content and could devalue both pages. So placing this command on one of them means that search engine spiders will walk on by and you won’t be penalized.

<meta name=”robots” content=”noarchive”>

Finally, almost all search engines today, including Google and Yahoo, offer a cached version of a site alongside its listing that provides a snapshot of what the page used to look like. The noarchive tag, therefore, is available to be used in circumstances where there is content on your website that is of a timely nature and therefore that you might not necessarily want search engine spiders to cache for people to have access to moving forward.

For example, a business might run a one-time special that has a ridiculously low price to drum up some business while things are slow. The business will want to be able to shut that sale down as soon as sales are back up to a solid level. However, it is conceivable that someone could click on the cached version of the business’s site, see the old deal that was out there, and insist on getting it for themselves. By using the noarchive tag, you are telling search engine spiders, in effect, “This page is subject to frequent changes, and I don’t want my visitors to have access to some of this content at a later time.”

Conclusion

The commands discussed above are just a few of the ones in existence, and new ones are being added frequently. While nearly all search engines support these commands, there are still some that don’t.  The ones in this article, however, are fairly universally understood by search engine spiders, no matter from where they originate. As more universal commands are introduced, I will write about them in future articles.

Author:  Scott Buresh is the CEO of Medium Blue, which was recently named the number one search engine optimization company in the world by PromotionWorld.  Scott has contributed content to many publications including Building Your Business with Google For Dummies (Wiley, 2004), MarketingProfs, ZDNet, WebProNews, DarwinMag, SiteProNews, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide.  Medium Blue serves local and national clients, including Boston Scientific, DS Waters, and Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. Visit MediumBlue.com to request a custom SEO guarantee based on your goals and your data.