The Best Seo Blogs

Archive for July, 2009

Most of us would agree that WordPress is a great content management system if you only have to deal with a single blog. There is a lot of support, plenty of plug-ins, and the ability to customize the application as you see fit. However, WordPress may not be quite as viable a solution if you want to run several sites at a time.

When you get to that level, it may be time to consider an alternative solution that can handle multiple installations from a single user interface. Further still, you want this single point of access to give you a strong and robust set of features. One such solution is SiteManPro, the software package that acts as the subject of this review. According to the developers, SiteManPro offers a comprehensive system to handle all of your content management and monetization needs.

Managing Blogs and Membership Sites

Just like a self-hosted WordPress application, SiteManPro runs on your own server. This overcomes any concerns for security and privacy that may have otherwise arisen with a third-party hosting solution. SiteManPro also provides you with the full source code, so you can customize the application as needed.

The comprehensive system of SiteManPro is meant to handle every aspect of running a successful website. This includes managing your content, selling digital products, managing your customers, integrating with affiliate systems, and more. The full list of features is remarkably long.

Using SiteManPro, you have your choice of running a free blog or a paid membership site. Both of these can be suited up with custom themes and you can switch between the two options from within the admin panel.

The only difference is that the blog provides readers with free full access, whereas the paid membership site requires a login to access the full text. For the payment processing, this membership software also has the ability to add customers, track refunds, show refund rates, and so on.

Adding New Posts and Pages

As mentioned, you can use this content management tool to handle the blog posts that you have on several domain. These are all listed under the “sites” section of the administrative panel and you can click to add posts and pages from there.

The user interface for adding posts through SiteManPro comes with a series of different fields, but I found that the single column layout is not as user-friendly (and appealing to the eye) than the WordPress dashboard that I’ve come to know and love.

Even so, you have the ability to select the target site, assign categories, set the posting date, provide an SEO-friendly post slug and define the excerpt. The actual content is written used a WYSIWYG HTML editor that looks a lot like MS Word. The interface is the same for pages and you do have the ability to upload new images on the fly.

The Rest of the Admin Picture

You also have to remember that SiteManPro is meant to be a complete business management tool, so it does more than just handle your content. Logging into the admin area, you are immediately shown the dashboard, which provides a snapshot of your income, expenses, customers, suppliers, contacts, and keywords tracked.

The admin area is broken into seven tabs. The home tab shows the dashboard and allows for basic configuration. Beyond that, you have marketing, people, finance, shop, sites, and manage.

Under the “People” tab, for instance, you have the ability to manage your contractors, suppliers, and contacts. Since SiteManPro can be used to sell products too, it’s helpful being able to manage your suppliers from within this same interface. This includes memberships, digital delivery, and CDs/DVDs via Kunaki integration.

Special John Chow dot Com Discount

If you were to purchase this software through the main page, you’d have to pay full price like very other schmuck that came across this solution. However, you’re reading about this on John Chow dot Com, so SiteManPro came up with a special price for John Chow dot Com readers.

Rather than pay the full price of $147 for each 12-month membership, you can use the special link to save $47 off that price, paying just $100 for a year. If you can use this software to make at least $9 a month, you’re coming out ahead… but you want to make more than that.

CLICK HERE FOR A DISCOUNTED SITEMANPRO MEMBERSHIP

Find out what I’m doing right now by following me on Twitter.

This Post Was Brought To You By

Best Credit Card Offers Get up to $250 or even FREE round-trip plane tickets by signing up for hot credit card offers and bank deals!

Go to Source

I used to check my RSS subscriber numbers daily and I used to sweat over those numbers. Did my last blog post work and increase my blog subscribers? What about that guest blog post I had on a popular blog, or what about when I hit the front page of Delicious?

How did it all affect my blog readership? Am I doing it well and is my blog readership growing? I was basically looking for all these answers in my blog RSS readership numbers.

I don’t do this anymore. Now, days can go by between my logins to FeedBurner. It is not that I don’t care about the progress of my blog, it is just that I find RSS subscribers number less relevant to the growth of a blog these days.

FriendFeed adding their subscribers to FeedBurner

Some weeks ago FriendFeed decided to add subscribers you have on their service to FeedBurner, so now all your FriendFeed subscribers are added on top of your RSS subscribers, which resulted in some very inflated numbers. I went from some 1500+ RSS subscribers to some 3000+ that same day.

It just shows how weak that metric was in the first place when it is so easy to add services to it. Just imagine if Twitter or some other application does the same thing.

It looks good to have these larger blog subscriber numbers, but it is fake as your Twitter followers or your FriendFeed friends are not subscribed to your blog the same way as someone who did it via a newsreader is.

Popularity of Google Reader

I used to read my feeds via a desktop based client, but some months ago I switched to Google Reader. It is so much easier and faster compared to desktop RSS newsreaders, and it is in a cloud in a browser wherever I go without having to download and install the software.

Google Reader has recently moved more into the social media territory. You can now “like” RSS articles and you can “share” them with your friends. So if I share an article in my Google Reader it will also show up in yours when you do your reading. See the blogging articles I shared recently.

I subscribe to several people via Google Reader and it is a very good experience. Someone like Louis Gray is very well connected and shares tons of interesting articles daily.

And this doesn’t only go for people. If you subscribe to RSS feeds of sites like Digg.com, Delicious.com or TweetMeme.com, you do get the most popular articles around the web.

All these subscriptions make me very well connected and informed, even though I am not subscribed to all the blogs that I end up reading regularly and I do not show in their RSS subscriber numbers.

Conclusion

So on one hand we have the inflated RSS subscriber numbers because of tools like FriendFeed, and on the other hand we have a completely new way of reading RSS feeds via social media and friend shares. All in all, there needs to be a better way of tracking the RSS readership than the current one. Maybe by page view as it is done with blog posts? I hope someone is working on a solution.

The alternative would be to go back to showing partial RSS feed and force people to click over to your blog to view the full article. Or let visitors subscribe to the email newsletter for the full articles. Doing this you would be able to get a more correct number of the readers of your content.

Image by Hamed

See more:

1. How To Setup Your Own Blog RSS News Feed
2. 3 Simple Ways To Monetize Your Blog RSS News Feed
3. Reader Comment: Implementing blogging tips
4. Two simple tips to recover unverified email subscribers
5. Offer more options to subscribe to your blog content

My Twitter Marketing E-Book is out now. Everything you need to know to succeed on Twitter. Check all the details and get your copy here now!

Go to Source

This is a guest post by Brandon Mendelson. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

“The Wrestler” is the ultimate back stage pass to the world of professional wrestling. A world of big characters and more mayhem than we can ever hope to encounter in our lives. But the world of professional wrestling also holds the greatest marketing lessons, all of which can be applied to your blog.

1. Don’t live in the past.

Randy “The Ram” Robinson’s entire existence is stuck in the 80’s. Past success is not, on its own, an indicator of future success. Do not get lazy relying on past success to benefit your blog in the future.

2. Use what you have.

“The Wrestler” was produced for under six million dollars and shot, in part, on a hand-held camera by director Darren Aronofsky. Sometimes, you don’t have resources beyond what is in front of you. Make the most out of everything you have and find free alternatives when possible.

Example: Why buy Adobe Photoshop for $700 when you can download GIMP and learn how to use it for free?

Remember: There are no longer any excuses for mediocrity. If you can’t do something well, learn to use what you have and use these tools better than anyone else.

3. Don’t spend money on your blog until you make money.

Randy does not make a lot of money, but he spends what he has on drugs and strippers. His finances are so bad, when we’re first introduced to him we find Randy locked out of his trailer due to late rent. Save your money and don’t spend any of it until you start to make some.

Starting a blog should only cost you $20 for a domain registration for two years and nothing more until you prove you are generating a profit and have a sizable audience. Only then should you make the upgrade.

Use Google Adsense until you have enough traffic and data to charge for advertising. It’s free.

Use Amazon Affiliate links gently, and only for products you would recommend to generate additional income. It is also free.

If you are not making money on your blog using these tools in a year, see #6

4. If people believe in you, they will work with you.

Bruce Springsteen, Axel Rose, and Mickey Rourke reportedly did not receive any compensation for the film. They loved the script, they understood the limitations the production had and they still contributed.

If you have a great product or blog people believe in, they will work with you. So don’t be afraid to ask everyone, in a careful fashion, to participate in your project. The worst anyone can tell you is no (or ignore you).

5. Don’t wait for a break. Make one.

The Ram works his butt off every weekend at lightly packed gymnasiums in the hope of a return to glory. By punishing himself and not playing the politics, Randy barely creates an opportunity for there to be a break. Your break won’t just happen. You must create opportunity to generate and seize the break when you see it.

Reminder: Play the politics, but play it your way. If you don’t like a product, person, or news outlet, be constructive in your criticism and not present it as an attack. Online, you can’t afford to be the one burning bridges.

6. Know your limits.

The Ram knows he is physically breaking down and continues to wrestle. If your project begins to degenerate with little measurable return over time, cut it, and start a new one.

The average success cycle for a blog is one year to generate revenue, not necessarily profit, and two years to become reputable and profitable.

7. Some products don’t go stale …

Although “The Wrestler” never touches on this trend, the past several years in professional wrestling have seen older wrestlers appear prominently on current wrestling shows.

While you cannot live in the past, value can still be found in older products. The WWE itself is a a great example of an old product that continues to operate successfully and improve with time.

The trick is to follow Mel Brook’s advice and always tweak your project. As Malcom Gladwell mentions in “The Tipping Point”, sometimes the smallest change leads to the biggest results.

8. … Other products do.

You can only go to the well so often without tweaking. An aging wrestler past his prime, who has not changed his “gimmick” (product marketing), will grow boring. “The Ram” puts on the same show that he has for twenty years. No changes.

Sometimes a product or project needs to go away for to be missed enough to demand it again (see: Hulk Hogan), other times the product / project simply belonged in the previous era and does not fit in the new one.

Just ask one of my favorite wrestlers, Bob Backlund.

9. Know your material.

Rourke is believable in his portrayal as a wrestler and the movie provides an accurate look at the behind the scenes activity of pro wrestling. If you are going to create a project in a field with established norms, literature, or other source material, learn and master the material before jumping in.

Remember: As Seth Godin pointed out after a meeting at Wal-Mart headquarters: You Can’t Out-Amazon Amazon”

10. You don’t need the best to tell the best story. No more excuses.

There’s always an excuse.Don’t make one. In The Wrestler’s case, Nicholas Cage was the studio’s pick for the role.

Cage is one of Hollywood’s most bankable actors. Darren Afronsky wanted Mickey Rourke, who has not had a hit for many years, and the studio was so wary of his casting that they reduced the budget of the film.

Although who (or what product) is better can be subjective, the point is you don’t need what others consider better to get the job done and done well.

With unlimited (and mostly) free resources available to you, there are no more excuses for a bad blog.

Brandon Mendelson is one of the most followed people on Twitter, @BJMendelson, and is the project manager for A Million High Fives. This Summer, he will set out to high five one million Twitter users and volunteer with them at their local homeless shelters. Details on A Million High Fives can be found here.

10 Blogging Tips I Learned From “The Wrestler”

Go to Source

Just been watching Dragons Den and listening to the guys from Servicing Stop getting £100,000 investment (if I remember correctly) from Deborah Meaden in return for a 30% stake in the business.

It seems like a good idea but they are missing a big trick with their search engine marketing – the site is optimised (see the footer links) for things like Ford Service but there are no geographical pages!

They need to set up pages targeting “car service Leeds” in the natural search results and work with each garage to register with Google Local / Maps to get listed in those results too. There is so much local search volume around this industry that the potential is huge – I’ve worked on a friends garage site before and even a couple of good rankings in one small town can drive a steady stream of business. Multiply that across hundreds of locations and the potential is huge.

Search volume for servicing cars and models is small but if they can rank for the geographical modifiers across every town in the UK the site could drive thousands of leads every single day.

From the BBC overview (video highlights available too):

Essex brothers Oliver and Toby step into the Den with a spanner mascot who they hope will not put a spanner in their works.

Their pitch is for a nationwide car servicing network doesn’t stall however as they report a year one turnover of £1.5m based on their ability to undercut main dealers by between 30 and 50%.

Not getting the rankings you want? Hire us for Search engine optimisation

Servicing Stop.co.uk on Dragons Den

Go to Source

Microsoft and Yahoo are joining forces in an effort to compete with Google in the search wars. Yahoo algorithmic results will be powered by the Microsoft / Bing algorithm and the paid results will be powered by AdCenter.

The announcement is good news because it’s clear that the two companies can’t compete with Google by themselves. I doubt it will make much difference in the UK because Yahoo has a very small market share as shown in the Hitwise data below.

The only drawback is that rollout is expected within 24 months following regulatory approval by which time Twitter or Facebook will probably have more search volume.

• Microsoft will acquire an exclusive 10 year license to Yahoo!’s core search technologies, and Microsoft will have the ability to integrate Yahoo! search technologies into its existing web search platforms;
• Microsoft’s Bing will be the exclusive algorithmic search and paid search platform for Yahoo! sites. Yahoo! will continue to use its technology and data in other areas of its business such as enhancing display advertising technology.
• Yahoo! will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers. Self-serve advertising for both companies will be fulfilled by Microsoft’s AdCenter platform, and prices for all search ads will continue to be set by AdCenter’s automated auction process.
• Each company will maintain its own separate display advertising business and sales force.
• Yahoo! will innovate and “own” the user experience on Yahoo! properties, including the user experience for search, even though it will be powered by Microsoft technology.
• Microsoft will compensate Yahoo! through a revenue sharing agreement on traffic generated on Yahoo!’s network of both owned and operated (O&O) and affiliate sites.
• Microsoft will pay traffic acquisition costs (TAC) to Yahoo! at an initial rate of 88% of search revenue generated on Yahoo!’s O&O sites during the first 5 years of the agreement.
• Yahoo! will continue to syndicate its existing search affiliate partnerships.
• Microsoft will guarantee Yahoo!’s O&O revenue per search (RPS) in each country for the first 18 months following initial implementation in that country.
• At full implementation (expected to occur within 24 months following regulatory approval), Yahoo! estimates, based on current levels of revenue and current operating expenses, that this agreement will provide a benefit to annual GAAP operating income of approximately $500 million and capital expenditure savings of approximately $200 million. Yahoo! also estimates that this agreement will provide a benefit to annual operating cash flow of approximately $275 million.
• The agreement protects consumer privacy by limiting the data shared between the companies to the minimum necessary to operate and improve the combined search platform, and restricts the use of search data shared between the companies. The agreement maintains the industry-leading privacy practices that each company follows today.

Not getting the rankings you want? Hire us for Search engine optimisation

Microsoft to power Yahoo search

Go to Source

Lots of people think that the SEO industry has an image problem but here in the UK we don’t really see it that way. I meet with clients all the time who have had a bad experience with a particular SEO company in the past but they always blame the company, not the industry.

Nobody I’ve ever met in the UK has described what we do in a negative light while in the US everybody seems to paint SEO’s as scammers.

There are two types of people who make a lot of money in this industry, ones that are very good at SEO and work in a small team on their own projects and the others who have managed to take their SEO skills to the corporate level.

Just because you are great at SEO doesn’t mean you are great at the business side of things. Watching the “top 51 search marketers” insulting a potential client with a six figure monthly budget and then being celebrated on the worlds biggest SEO blog made every SEO in the UK cringe while most in the US thought it was very funny.

What does that tell you?

Not getting the rankings you want? Hire us for Search engine optimisation

Why the UK SEO industry doesn’t have an image problem

Go to Source

If you were born before the 1980s, you probably grew up listening to mixtapes, not browsing the Web. But does the fact that you weren’t born in the digital era make you a less of a digital citizen and more of a digital tourist?

This question has long existed in academia and is now surfacing in our professional and personal lives.

In 2001, scholar Marc Prensky coined the term Digital Natives to describe people born into the digital age and indigenous to new networked technologies. Digital Immigrants, on the other hand, he categorized as people who had to adopt these technologies.

Even if you weren’t born in the digital era, there are things you can do to become a digital citizen. Here are a few of them: 



Find Your Voice and Speak Up

The first step you should make in the digital world is finding your voice. Reconcile your different offline identities and make a decision on how you want to present yourself online. Are you an independent publisher, local hotel owner or a social media rookie? What is the most efficient way to reach your target audience based on your specific industry?



“Just because someone is a ‘native’ (i.e. born somewhere) does not really mean that they’re necessarily going to understand or align with the cultures and values,” said Dharmesh Shah, HubSpot’s co-founder and CTO. You, however, have already accumulated certain cultures and values. Now is the time to voice them.

Contribute Value Whenever Possible

Your knowledge base and online reputation often correspond to the value you offer. No matter whether you were born in 1967 or in 1990, if you share remarkable content, you will be recognized by the community. “What we have learned as a society is that when a system is open, it attracts people who are passionate and will contribute value,” said Dharmesh.

So, pursue your industry-specific interest and contribute to, for instance, art forums, marketing webinars and healthcare blogs.

Don’t Hide Your Digital Accent

Don’t view your traditional approaches to the Web as necessarily disadvantageous. Maybe you still print out documents to edit them with a red pen. Maybe you still call your colleagues to inquire whether they received your email. These are all examples that Marc Prensky listed as Digital Immigrant accents.

Yet these accents are indicative of your culture. They connect you with like-minded people and facilitate an entire generation’s transition to a more digital world. And sometimes they quite legitimately challenge the Natives’ fixed assumptions about the Web.

Interact with the Online Community

Constant interactions with the community help you stay on target and up-to-date with latest trends. By actively participating in conversations, you are immersing yourself in the digital culture and soaking up valuable information.

 Not coincidentally did Monster’s founder Jeff Taylor create a community site for generation Boomers. It was spurred by the demand for conversations with like-minded people. Such interactions progress your thinking and help you generate better ideas.

Lastly, if you were born prior to the digital era, you remain the Digital Natives’s only connection to oldschool phunk. Make sure you preserve it!

Webinar: Advanced Business Blogging

Learn how to build your business blog into an inbound marketing machine. Download the free webinar to learn how to create a thriving blog.

Become a Fan on Facebook Get inside info and advance notice of HubSpot’s free marketing webinars, ebooks and more. Click here –>

Go to Source

by Sage Lewis

Microsoft and Yahoo are partnering to take on the master… Google. This is the beginning of the end for Yahoo. But it’s good news for searchers and ultimately might be just what Yahoo and Microsoft need to get into the search engine game.

Check out our small business news site.

Go to Source

Amid all the speculation this week, it’s official that Microsoft and Yahoo! have made a deal:  ”Microsoft will now power Yahoo! search while Yahoo! will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers.”

The Search Marketing Industry news sites have covered this completely and a joint web site has been setup my Microsoft Yahoo. I also took a little time to listen in on the investor relations conference call with Steve Ballmer of Microsoft and Carol Bartz of Yahoo! and live tweeted some of the Q and A:

MSFT YAHOO conf call Q: Why no display ad component to the deal? Bartz: To keep the deal straightforward as possible

MSFT YAHOO conf call Q: Why no up-front fee to Yahoo? Bartz: Big cash payment up front doesn’t help Yahoo ongoing operating costs

MSFT YAHOO conf call Q: What impact on jobs? Bartz: Many Yahoos w/be asked to work @ Microsoft, work elsewhere @ Yahoo, some redundancy

MSFT YAHOO conf call Q: How much does deal affect areas where MSFT & YHOO compete? Ballmer: Innovate & need privacy disclosures

MSFT YAHOO conf call Q: What does it mean for MSFT to license Yahoo search? Why not all Bing? Ballmer: We can benefit from Yahoo search tech

MSFT YAHOO conf call Q: Examples of innovation from deal? Ballmer: UI, algos for search relevance, scale provides feedback loop to innovate

MSFT YAHOO conf call Q: Why is this deal better than last year’s? Bartz: Current deal is longer term, more of a partnership, skin in game

MSFT YAHOO conf call Q: Why is this deal better than last year’s? Ballmer: This deal is not better, it’s different.

Last MSFT YAHOO conf call Q from @dannysullivan: What happens to Yahoo news, directory, paid inclusion, Delicious? Bartz: Decide on paid inclusion later. Ballmer: Yahoo has full flexibility & how that pans out is up to Yahoo

Danny Sullivan live blogged the call with a lot more detail.

Other coverage of the Microsoft Yahoo deal:

• Search Engine Watch - It’s Official: Microsoft and Yahoo! Finally Strike Search Deal
• Search Engine Land - It’s Finally Official, Microsoft & Yahoo Make A Deal, Yahoo Gives Up On Search

            Subscribe to this Feed

© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. |
It’s a Deal: Q&A from Microsoft Yahoo! Call |
No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

Go to Source

It’s likely you’ve heard plenty about search engine optimization but what about “Digital Asset Optimization”?

Many companies that have applied basic SEO principles to standard web site content see substantial benefits. Adding new content and attracting links help maintain search marketing performance but is that all you can do to be competitive with SEO? No.

A natural progression of SEO is a holistic approach that considers all of a company’s searchable assets that can be keyword optimized and promoted online. Standard optimization of content in the form of web page SEO is a starting point that can be extended to various media types that are increasingly prominent in both standard search as well as media specific search such as images, video (see below for 5 video DAO tips) and audio. Digital Asset Optimization (DAO) can be applied to various document/file formats such as RSS, MS Office, Flash, PDF, etc as well.

In the screenshot above from Google on the search query, “social media”, you can see images, video and news results are incorporated into standard search results. All are opportunities for optimization.

Search Engine Optimization is challenging enough for organizations rich with digital assets. An effort to optimize and promote those assets to bots can be both challenging and rewarding.  Digital Asset Optimization is how we describe for clients what new opportunities there are to enable their customers to pull themselves via search to client content.

Companies that are not rich in digital assets can leverage the variety of assets offline and online that they DO have for improved search marketing benefit. A common example is the repurposing of offline content and digital media for online marketing purposes.

For example, tradeshow or training videos used offline could be remixed & edited to provide online content in the form of online video, images and text. Each media type can be optimized for standard search such as Google or Bing, as well as promoted on distinct media sites such as YouTube and Flickr.

In particular, a video offers multiple media optimization opportunities:

1. Videos hosted with services such as Vimeo or YouTube can be optimized
2. Videos hosted with 3rd party services can be embedded into any web page, blog post or within a press release on services like PRWeb (if appropriate)
3. Screen shots of key moments in the video can be hosted on image sharing sites with links back to the actual video
4. Show notes can accompany the embdeded video to provide users and search engines with context and explanation of the video (using relevant keywords)
5. A separate article made up of a transcription of the video can be posted on or off site as a promotion for the embedded video page

The fundamental premise for good SEO or DAO or whatever you want to call optimizing content is that “If it can be searched on, it can be optimzed”.

“Searchability” implies an asset is crawled by a bot and subsequently available for sorting within search results when consumers perform queries. As such, each type of searchable content presents an opportunity for optimization and improved visibility.

The benefits of a more holistic optimization and marketing approach can be extended beyond content used to attract leads and sales. There other types of search that can drive or benefit business including customer service related content, job listings and news content. Each has it’s own audience to consider and therefore, a different context for optimization.

Making it easier for search engines to do find, index and sort content will bring benefits to most companies who make the effort to do so in the form of increased sales, recruiting, and news coverage as well as lower customer support costs. That is the new opportunity this year and next for corporate content optimization efforts.

Developing an interdepartmental process for matching up the various digital assets with corresponding channels of promotion gives companies with minimal content resources additional online marketing opportunities. It also gives companies that produce substantial content an overwhelming competitive advantage. They key to any successful SEO or DAO effort is developing the proper strategy, implementation and management to reaching business goals.

Is your company’s SEO effort focused on web pages or do you optimize and track search performance for other digital assets as well?

            Subscribe to this Feed

© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. |
What is Digital Asset Optimization? |
No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

Go to Source