Go Fish!

I’m learning about backlinks and how absolutely critical they are to your site ranking high in the search engines.  I even hired a specialist to help me with link building.

But it’s really just like fishing.  You look for the best pond, lake or ocean (blog, article or fan page) and you toss out your line (comment on existing posts, or offer to guest blog) and then wait for the fish to bite!  By commenting or guest blogging, you are leaving behind your url or link back to your website, blog, or even your Twitter or Facebook Page.  It’s up to you where you want to drive traffic, but I suggest you drive them back to where they can see what products and services you have to offer them.  (afterall, that’s ultimately what we want, right?)

Of course, I could do the link building myself, (and I do quite a bit) but in my opinion it’s all about leveraging your time and they are the expert, so why not let them do it in less time, while I focus on the things I do best. 

So I’d like to give you an opportunity to create a backlink to your site right now!  Just go to the bottom of this post and make a comment.  Be sure to put in your name, email and complete url (include the http://)  in the boxes below.  Your email will not be visible to anyone, but a link back to your site will definitely be there.  Then search for other blogs and do the same thing.  If you are using WordPress a great plugin is CommentLuv.  This plugin travels around with you and if the blog you comment on has this plugin installed (which I do) it will automatically pick up the title of your last blog post and place it at the bottom of your comment.  Sweet!

So go ahead, give it a try!

And here are some other backlink posts you might find helpful.

Related articles by Zemanta

• 7 Ways to Gain Quality One Way Backlink for your blog (shoutmeloud.com)
• Backlinks Strategies for Getting High Google PageRank (shoutmeloud.com)
• Article Marketing: A Way To Create URL Backlinks (ronmedlin.com)
• What is Autoblogging? (brighthub.com)

If you liked, “Do You Have Any Backlinks?” please share it with your friends by clicking on the buttons below.

I have definitely been in a writer’s funk lately.  Now truthfully, I don’t claim to be the world’s best writer, but at times, I can write a pretty decent blog post or article.  Until recently.  I’m in a slump!

I’ve listened to the all the great internet marketers and have been using some of their ideas about quest bloggers and re-purposing past posts and articles.  And while searching, I found a great article by Chris Garrett, How To Generate Post Ideas When Your Stuck, that I thought might be helpful to you too.

So take a look and I’d love to hear what you do when you need to get your blog moving again.  Just post your comments below.

If you like, What to do to Get Your Blog Moving Again, please share it with your friends by clicking the links below.

So you built your blog or website through your self-hosted WordPress platform.  You’ve paid a designer to make it look great, to optimize it to be found in the top of the search engines, and you have got some great blog posts out there for your visitors to enjoy.  But have you thought about what would happen if you lost it all?  OMG!

There’s no need to fear – BackupBuddy Plugin is here!
(I sound like Mighty Mouse, for those of you old enough to remember Mighty Mouse) 

According to my WordPress guru, this is the only backup plugin available that will totally backup everything on your WordPress site.  There are several options to choose from depending upon how many sites you need to back up.  But well worth the money, especially if you are using WordPress as your website, like I do.  Click the link above to check it out and get your BackupBuddy Plugin* now before you need it!

*affiliate link

If you liked, “Awesome Plugin to Backup your Entire WordPress Site” please consider sharing with your friends by clicking the links below.  Thanks!

This is a quick little blog post, with a big punch!  I have been experimenting with different ways to increase the traffic to my blog recently.  Of course, I have the usual connections to my Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn accounts to drive traffic back to my blog and website.  Those were sending a nice amount of visitors to my site, but one day my friend Nick of Nick’s Traffic Tricks mentioned StumbleUpon as a great way to drive traffic back to your sites.  So I tried it.

I couldn’t believe it!  It was like magic! I had doubled the amount of visitors from the other referring sites with that one little click to StumbleUpon.  So I kept sending my blog posts and occasionally would Stumble one of my static website pages and I continued to get the same incredible results.  I love it!

To take my little experiment a bit further, I am part of a Social Media Tribe, where the members help promote each others events, websites and blogs through social media marketing.  I selected one of my tribe members and Stumbled her blog post.  I checked in on her the next day and that one act provided her with more than 70 new visitors to her blog that day.  Amazing!

Here is a link to some StumbleUpon stats and how it’s now ranking #2 globally just behind Facebook.  Give it try!  Do your own experiment and I’d love to hear back from you on how it worked for you and your sites.

Do you have other great secret weapons to drive traffic?  Share them with us on the comments section below.

If you enjoyed, “Using StumbleUpon to Increase Site Traffic” please share it with your friends by clicking the links below and Stumble this post for me!

Writing has always been a popular means of expression. The advent of internet use has seen the evolution of writing from traditional pen and paper diaries to online journals or blogs. Because it is people maintained and mostly written in first person, a blog’s content is varied and diverse. Subjects may range from the absurd to the factual, and commentaries, opinions and observations on different activities, industries and mainly everything under the sun can be shared through this medium. A blog’s power and energy comes from interaction among its publishers and readers through comments and feedbacks given.

The release of automated publishing software has skyrocketed the popularity of blogging and catapulted it to the frontline as a valuable source of information because it simplifies and accelerates the process of publishing entries online. One of the most widely used blog publishing applications is WordPress, an open source software that is free to use.

WordPress is user-friendly and can be easily installed without any need for mind-boggling configuration or other technical nitty-gritties. One key feature of WordPress is its template or theme system. It can be edited, customized and personalized by simply moving or switching widgets thus eliminating the need for editing html codes.

Another practical feature of WordPress is its integrated link management. To drive traffic to your site, it is important to have it optimized in order to improve its ranking in search engine results.  What exactly is a search-engine friendly site and how is it done? The smart use of keywords will improve your site’s visibility and make it more accessible to your targeted audience. Luckily, you need not go through the daunting task of overhauling your whole website because WordPress allows every single page on your blog to be indexed. Taking time to make minor tweaks can go a long way in streamlining your site and helping it get the attention that it deserves. Don’t overlook the simple stuff like titles, description and text or content. To make your site search-engine friendly, read on and consider the following tips:

Blog Title. Adjust your title format so that the actual title of your post or article is displayed before your blog’s name or title. To catch a reader’s attention, make it short, sweet and simple. Writing a good description for your page gives the search engine and its users an overview of what your site is about before they actually visit it. Here is a great, free, resource to analyze your titles for emotionally connecting with your audience. http://www.aminstitute.com/headline/

Meta Descriptions. Take advantage of WordPress’ All In One SEO plug-in to type in keyword-rich titles plus matching description for your entries. Make your site description unique and relevant to the content of the page. Similar to blog titles, meta description tags are designed to provide a brief description of your site’s content. This will be used by search engines and directories for indexing.

Rewriting URL’s with permalinks. Updating and customizing the permalink structure on web URLs and making it more comprehensive enables your site to become more user-friendly and search-engine friendly. Tags can either be date and name based, numeric, or fully customized by the user.

Using breadcrumbs. Breadcrumb navigation helps give people a perspective on where they are on your site. It can be added using a variety of plug-ins such as WordPress Breadcrumbs, Yoast Breadcrumbs and so on.

Generating a sitemap. If your site has lots of pages, site maps are a quick and easy way to help users browse the contents of your site. Several plug-ins and functions can be incorporated to the template of your choice.

Use proper keywords when naming photos and images. Again, we cannot stress how important keywords are. To be search-engine smart, you have to consider everything. For example, by renaming a photo of a weeping willow tree as “weeping willow” rather than just 0001.jpg, it gets a better chance of being displayed on the search engine’s photo search results.

Avoid content duplication. Weed out duplicate content on multiple pages by using the Robots Meta plug-in.

Link to related posts. Link building is an important part of the SEO equation. Keep in mind that you should only link to sites that are relevant and complementary to your own. Spamming is a definite no-no.

To achieve presence online, you need to have an edge over the others. This comes with careful planning, excellent presentation and valuable content. SEO is just one way of gaining momentum.  To stay ahead of the game it helps if you know your niche, keep realistic goals, become adequately informed and exercise best practices. One of those best practices is to comment relevant blogs, which gives you a link back to your site.  So go ahead, let me know what you think of this post in the comment section below!

Oh and by the way, on Thursday June 3rd at 7 pm eastern, I’m hosting none-other than The WordPress Chick, Kim Doyal in my Social Media “T” Room.  Click here Social Media “T” Room for more details and to register.  The teleseminar is free, so join us!

If you liked Do You Want to Know Why Search Engines Love WordPress?

Share it with your friends by clicking the links below.

If you use WordPress as a blogging application or for your website, then chances are you already know how powerful, yet simple this platform is. Many popular blogs these days are built using WordPress, and the availability of widgets and plug-ins to customize each site is almost limitless.

So how can one choose the right plug-ins to install, without overdoing it and have your site suffer from plug-in overkill? As with most things, less is more.  I consulted with my friend and colleague Cyndi Papia of WordPress Guru and owner of Office To-Go to share her top WordPress Plugins with you.  And if you can only have a few plug-ins for your site, here’s Cyndi’s top picks to help you out.

1. Akismet – you’ll want something to stop SPAM comments from flooding your blog, so a SPAM filter is crucial to any site. Aksimet, developed by the WordPress folks themselves, is free for non-commercial users (and inexpensive for businesses – only $5 per month) and will help weed out those nasty bots and spammers looking to proliferate your comments sections is nonsensical words and trackback links.
2. All in One SEO pack – making your site easy to find to your audience is number one priority if you want it to thrive. This plug-in allows you to edit Title, Meta description, and meta tags for each of your entries – allowing search engines to look through your site more efficiently, using the keywords that your viewers are using to look for your blog.
3. Google XML Sitemaps – on the Internet, there’s no denying that Google is king of the search engines – if you’re not ranked on Google, you can forget about people finding your blog. This plug-in builds an XML sitemap just for search engines (including Yahoo! Ask.com and Bing), allowing them to index your site easily and retrieve it faster. Another bonus component? It notifies the search engines each time you put in a new blog post.
4. AddToAny: Share/Bookmark/Email Button – let people share your content trough email or on over 100 sites (including Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz, Digg, Delicious) right from your blog. This nifty little plug-in can be added to any smart menu for better customization and intergration.
5. WPDB Manager – You back-up your data on your hard drive, so why not your site? Just because your site is not on a physical drive in your home, doesn’t mean it’s 100% safe. Server errors, accidents or even malicious hackers can easily wipe away your entire blog.  This plug in backs up your databases automatically onto a server, via email or download it manually.

Of course, these are just the plug-ins to get you started when you begin building your blog. You’ll find a lot more out there, whether you’re focused on design, functionality or security – there’s a plug-in that’ll meet your every need.

If you liked, Top 5 Essential WordPress Plug-ins

please share it with your friends by clicking the links below.

Gone are the days when posting a blog was considered new and different.  It seems like any idiot with a keyboard is now writing a daily blog about his love of Britney Spears or the consistency of his bowel movements.  With all the noise on the internet, it’s certainly difficult not only to create a blog that is new and interesting, but to bring in the readership that will allow you to market yourself effectively to advertisers looking to invest.  So how can you get the traffic you want on your site and keep them coming back for more?  Simple…keep it relevant.

Now, this is a fairly vague notion.  You’re probably asking yourself what, exactly, this marketing buzzword means and how it applies to you.  In laymen’s terms, you want to create a blog that encompasses a topic that is interesting not only to you, but to a large audience.  Maybe you can write a new article every day about the fascinating life of the African Dung Beetle you keep in a jar by your bed, but who will read it?  So relevancy means, first and foremost, writing about a topic that is current and widespread.  I hate to say it, but the more mainstream your blog is, the better.  Take for example the current trend towards websites that focus on celebrities sightings.  In tough economic times, it’s not uncommon for people to seek escape by going to the movies or to find comfort in the consumption of stories that outline the woes of others (namely, down-trodden celebrities).  So these blogs are both entertaining and timely.

Secondly, keeping it relevant means mixing it up.  To do this, you need to find inspiration from outside sources, and I don’t mean your dad (although I have to admit, “S*** My Dad Says” is hilarious, if not very topical).  Keep abreast of current events, as any news story can trigger a topic that relates to your blog.  You can also try to incorporate ideas from sources such as film, literature, and music.  Even practicing other types of writing can inspire you to do something different with your blog, so keep up with your other creative pursuits.  Who knows, listening to Billboard’s Top 10 or working on your memoirs could spark an idea for your next blog post.  It’s important not to overlook any media outlet as a possible source for your writing.

Finally, don’t phone it in.  If you’re having trouble writing a daily blog, maybe it’s time to consider cutting back on your posts.  If you’ve begun to notice some repetition in your articles, there’s a good chance your readers have caught on as well, and this does not bode well for their faithful return to your site.  To ensure incoming traffic, you have to keep it interesting, and this may require a bigger time commitment or the incorporation of guest posts to spice it up.  Don’t hesitate to do whatever is necessary to keep your readers coming back, even if it means relinquishing some of the daily duties.  In the long run, you want to keep your readers interested, entertained, and even involved.  This will guarantee that you reach your goals when it comes to promoting your ideas and earning the revenue needed to keep your blog in business.

Guest post by Sarah of Maxi Dress Mania.

On the net, people are always looking for better and more effective ways to market. As social media is reaching new heights, blog marketing is becoming the hottest thing on the net today. Blogs, short for web logs, are like online journals. They are generally personal and are written like dairies at times. Professionals also use blogs sometimes to showcase their talent or hobbies online. Popular blogs have thousands of loyal followers making them a very powerful marketing tool as well.

Today, many online sellers and service providers try to reach out to customers through blogs. Popular blogs are the online equivalent of a railway station, with regular readers passing by its pages every day. Putting an ad on a popular blog can be as effective as putting up a sign in a railway station.

Professionals who are struggling to establish their business online often launch blogs and use it to show case their talents and build up a following that translates into buyers. This is also a type of blog marketing.

Blogs help sellers relate to the customer on a personal level. It is like inviting the buyer into your house, entertaining him and then asking him to buy what he likes. The seller can use a blog to interact with its customers, get their opinions on products or services, sharing success stories and plans.

By now you must have noticed I keep mentioning “popular blogs”. Eventually, all that I mentioned above hinges on the blog being popular and having a regular high traffic and page rank. Therein lies the tricks of actual blog marketing i.e. marketing your blog.

From design to content, from keywords to links, there are numerous ways to increase the popularity of a blog. Ask any new blogger and you will realize it is extremely hard to make a blog popular. Writing articulately and about interesting topics does not necessarily bring readers flocking to a blog. How often it is updated and how relevant or interesting the content is are just as important to a blog’s popularity.

The internet is full of tips and advice on how to market blogs. But most of these are common knowledge and basic steps towards marketing. They don’t really achieve more than may be getting you a few loyal readers. Unfortunately, a few loyal readers do not translate to higher page rank or increased online sales.

Wouldn’t it be a relief if someone were to provide step-by-step instructions, especially focused on marketing your blog? If the tried and tested methods of popularizing a blog were being taught to you by people who have done it themselves? Well, you can get all that and more at The Blog Marketing Tips, Tools and Tactics mini-course. This intensive 8-course 2-week program provided by VAClassroom.com is designed to be simple and practical, and includes video lessons, PowerPoint presentation templates and supplementary resources to make it easy for the technically challenged as well.

And right now this course is being offered for a one time low fee of just $147 $97! For more details click here.

Also, you can check out my friend, Denise Wakeman of The Blog Squad’s 5 Critical Tactics for Business Blogging.  This is a free audio program to help boost your online business through blogging.  And grab a copy of her Get The Best Out of Your Blog Free Video Course.

Was this blog post helpful?  Please share it with your friends by clicking the links to the left or below.

That’s my goal…to make money on auto-pilot.  So I made a great business decision to attend the Niche Affiliate Markeing System workshop in Atlanta.  I’m actually at the workshop sending this post because it’s been an amazing workshop so far!

Yesterday was a jam-packed day with Lynn Terry and Jeff Herring helping us to get started with Affiliate Marketing and understanding how to profit from it.

They shared these steps to beginning which are:

• Get an Idea
• Register a Domain Name
• See if there’s a need for what you want to offer by checking what people are searching.  You can use a free tool call http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com.
• Once your keyword research is complete, (based on your results) build your site with WordPress and then begin to promote your long-tail keywords (that you identified with your freekeywords tool).  Using sites like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and social bookmarking.

We also wrote an article (which I’ll post later on EzineArticles.com) to prove that “content is everywhere.”  Questions, answers, interviews, reviews; all of these areas can produce content.

Tomorrow  the instructors will be building a product for us to market and sell through our “Affiliate” link and the title is Strategies 4 Social Marketing.  This is going to be a great session, so stay tuned.  (I’ll try to send you the link later today to purchase this product)

Stay tuned…more from NAMS3 to come.

I just found this and thought you’d like it:

Free Interview Download

Chris Garrett (a high profile blogger) was interviewed on how he has developed several membership sites using WordPress.

The whole interview is available for free.

I figured you would like to listen

Enjoy!

P.S Not sure if/when it will be taken down but right now you can download the whole interview from this site:

Free Interview Download