Now, I've watched both videos and personally, I'm not interested in promoting some "look good" videos … Who cares!  Quite frankly, I don't expect home made videos from someone like John Reese.

But, what I am really interested in my readers and my subscribers taking note of, is the content. 

It is simply fantastic and full of useful tips that you can not only implement immediately, but that you SHOULD be using right now when marketing your online business.

Basically, unless you have more traffic, more clients and more money than you can handle, I would suggest that you don't be lazy and go and check out the new Traffic Secrets preview videos right now!

Yes, after a series of these videos John is going to try and sell you something, but you don't have to buy!  John makes this clear in the videos.

For years, I have been listening to my success mentors talk about the fact that if you want to be successful, you have to do what successful people do.  Well, John really has brought this concept to the Internet and, shows you "how" to copy your competitors who are successful online.

In the first video, John gives some excellent tips for getting more traffic to your site and, I have to say, I could not believe why I hadn't thought of some of the tips he recommended because they are so elementary.

In the second video however, John reveals a secret that EVERY blogger and website owner needs to understand if they want to get more traffic … the easy way.

I learnt this the hard way and only started doing this about a year ago.  It has made a significant difference to my business particularly over the past few months. 

There are few and I mean few people online who will encourage this marketing model but only last night, before I even knew these videos were coming, I highlighted to a potential client that this model (the one John Reese will reveal) is what makes The Interenet Marketing Center of MarketingTips.com, StomperNet.com and many SiteSell owner sites get higher search engine listings for their most competitive keywords. 

And, don't presume you know what this model is because if you did, you would be blogging more regularly and, if you did, you wouldn't be creating mini sites for every product you decide to sell or promote!

I'm not meaning to sound rough and harsh but I do know that some people are so lazy!  And if they're not lazy, they just decide not to bother finding out what works online and continue doing the the same old things despite the fact that they're getting no results and no satisfaction from their repeated no-results actions.

So, my final word on this is that I know only those who want to know the real secrets to getting traffic online will go check out John Reese's Traffic Secrets preview videos right now.

I hope that's you because I genuinely want you to be successful.

Dare to do something different today,

Some marketers have even gone as far as saying that your site will be deindexed so there is a wave of fear sweeping the Internet right now and of course there are those capitalizing on this fear!

But, what's the real scoop on Duplicate Content?

What I will say is that "There is No Duplicate Content Curse … Period!

Being penalized by the search engines for having duplicate content on your site is a myth, it's a lie and an outright blatant excuse for some marketers to make money from you! 

You can still get traffic from duplicate content on your blog but what certainly isn't acceptable is using mirror sites, i.e. having two identical sites with identical content to try and trick the search engines.

Having a mirror site does not even have to be deliberate as in the case of Brad Fallon of My Wedding Favors whose webmasters copied the entire content of his wedding favors site during some maitenance initiative and inadvertently hosted it on a server where the search engines could get access. 

Brad's site was deindexed and it took him about a year to make up with Google again … another clear indicator that even if a mirror site is created, it doesn't have to stay in a black hole forever.  If this happens to you, you better have a good arguement for the search engines though as well as another plan of action to get traffic to your site whilst your site is in limbo.

So, as they say on the kiddies programs … "do NOT try this at home!"

Okay, you're still skeptical and you want proof that if you use duplicate content on your site, the search engines are not going to sting you?

Well, here's a snippet from Google Webmaster Central Blog about duplicate content:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/06/duplicate-content-summit-at-smx.html

Notice what it says below the red line …

"If duplicate pages are detected, one version will be returned in the search results to ensure variety for searchers." 

First off, this means that it isn't a good idea to take a load of Private Label Rights (PLR) content and post them onto your site because Google is looking for uniqueness.

So how does Google determine which article is unique if there are duplicate copies of the same article?

It used to be said that the search results would show the article that Google indexed first, but in his report, Search Engine Myths Exposed, Jonathan Leger explains that there are primarily two things that determine which version of the duplicate article Google will choose …

They are links to the page and title tag.

Sadly, that free report linked to above is no longer available and I was deeply disappointed when I sent the details of this report to my readers and very few downloaded it.  Why was I so disappointed?  Because I was a subscriber to a $800 per month membership site which was great, but in my view did not bust these myths as well as Jonathan's free report did.

Anyway, I digress!

What Google are looking for are links from the page that matches the search query typed in by the searcher and, if it finds no links with that search term, it will look for pages that whose title matches the query.

In other words, if you have a page that has many "good quality" links coming into it from other sites with the search term in the anchor text, you have a very good chance of ranking well in the search engines.  It also means that if there are no anchor text links to the page, but the article that wrote on your blog and then submitted to the article directories contains the search term in the title, you could dominate the top 10, 20, 30 positions in the search engines with that one article despite the fact that the search engines have indicated that they want to serve up variety.

Why would they do this?  Because your article was the most relevant to the term searched for.

Marketers have also claimed that it's the article that is indexed first by the search engines that wins.  Jonathan Leger refutes this argument and has proved that the page with the most links wins!  

If you really want to know more about the duplicate content filters and, I think you should be interested since knowing how it works can take out the "slog" of posting unique content on you blog, I highly recommend that you check out the posts Jonathan Leger has on his site about duplicate content.

I hope you'll also check out Jonathan's Share a Post software and find out how to ethically use duplicate content on your site as well as get traffic from some of the great articles in its repository.

In the first video, he was asked by Jonathan, "what gets you angry" and to which Will Smith replied, "big fat liars" which reminded me of why so many newbies on the Internet are skeptical of purchasing new products.  Because in the past and and even now, there are some big fat liars who will sell you anything based on hype and make out that anyone can do it and in fact, you can make millions from your 4th room, wearing only your PJ's. 

And yes, I know of many Internet Marketers who built million dollar businesses from their bedroom so, I'm not dismissing the fact that this is true and, I understand people's skepticism about purchasing products from "snake oil" marketers but, on the other hand, in video two, Will tells the story of how he made a load of money and then lost it all when the IRS came and claimed all he had, including his home.

After he lost it all, he borrowed some cash from a friend and moved to LA where he hung around outside The Pauley Pavilion where the big names gathered for three months until one evening, he had a converstion with a man, that would change his life … he gave him the part for the Fresh Prince of Bel Aire.

Are you listening and reading now …

He stood outside The Pauley Pavilion, LA, for THREE MONTHS!  He would just speak to these guys and then through association, he landed himself a major part in an American Sitcom.

He didn't give up, he was persistent and determined to win, because he knew what he wanted.

Sadly, these are some of the attributes or characteristics that are often missing when people begin marketing online.  Whilst skeptics of the "Get Rich Quick" schemes, they still have a misconception that they can make a lot of money in little time with little effort and, with very little or no money.

And I'm being transparent with you now, I promoted my own workshop using the marketing spiel of building a business with very little money and for all of the delegates, I built them a blog but, not one of them did anything with it!

They still had the "build a site" mentality instead of a marketing mindset which acknowledges that the blog is only the tool to help you achieve what you want to achieve online.

And, I actually don't agree that anyone can start an online business either … okay to an extent I do … anyone can start, but it takes a particular breed to finish!!

Putting up a blog or website isn't and never will be Internet Marketing.  Promoting and marketing the services, affiliate products or whatever you blog about IS marketing.

So be honest with yourself now, how many programs have you purchased, got half way through and abandoned because in your view it didn't work?

Do you think if Will Smith had given up even after the eighth week he would have been the star of the Fresh Prince of Bel Aire, played Ali or stared in Men in Black?

Will Smith knew what he wanted and he wasn't going to stop until he got it. 

Now the question is ….

Do You Know What You Want?

Because, if you don't know what you want, you'll just keep jumping on the wave of whatever new phenominon hits the web instead of focusing on your dream.

Mike Filsaime, Internet Marketer, wrote a report about a year ago which really was the turning point in my life.  He talked about being on your boat going to Tahiti which, is your dream destination but each time another boat passes by, the skipper suggests that some other island is the most fantastic place to be so you change course and head for this new lsland.  Five years later, you die on the boat, never having accomplished your dream and never having reached any of the Islands because you kept changing the course of your destination and direction. 

After reading Mike's report, I stopped that day and took stock of my life … what did I want?  Was I following my dream of someone elses?  What did success mean to me and, how did it differ from those of some of my mentors?

I had met so many Internet Marketers in previous years who boasted about their big house, big cars (pleural) and big boat and for a start, the big boat just does not entice me … I'm happy to be passenger on someone elses boat!  I don't want to live in a huge house (though I'll be happy to own one) and, I'd be overly satisfied with one big car … so long as it's a Merc!

My point is though, you cannot measure your success by what someone else wants or needs because it will throw you off course.  So, the first thing you have to do is be truthful to yourself about what your deep rooted desires are.  If you're not mad on taking exoctic holidays, don't feel guility.  If like me, you'd be very happy being a passenger on another person's boat, don't feel guilty.  Focus on what you want to accomplish, what you want to achieve and not only will it be easier to focus, marketing will become much easier and, it will be easier to achieve your goals.

As Jim Rohn said, "the bigger the reason why, the easier the how."  Purpose brings persistences and persistence gets results.

Whatever you do, be like Will Smith.  Be persistent in the pursuit of your dreams and never give up.

Until next time,

Go check out the video below I made for you to help you get the most out of the WP 2.5 text editor …

I complained enough about the new WordPress 2.5 text editor in my blog post about the pesky little bullets not lining up, but I was ready to have to do a 30 part series on this text editor because of all the things it didn't do or because it just felt buggy.

Now, I know that the users of the standard WordPress theme probably thought this was the best addition to WP 2.5, but for those of us using the Semiologic theme, this was a definate relegation.

Anyway, some searching around and I found the link to a plugin that is used in conjunction to the text editor and since I've uploaded and activated the plugin, I have to say … I'm happy!!

Well, I do have an opinion but I will preface it with this …

"You have to feel comfortable with your writing style or else, the fake you will show up somewhere in your dealings with your corporate clients."

My attitude is very much that the very reason large organisations like IBM, Microsoft etc jumped onto the blogging bandwagon was because they wanted to humanise their interactions with their potential customers.

Now, I appreciate that they are dealing with people on a business to consumer level, so many will argue that there is good reason for them not using long protracted sentences, but my arguement is that "individuals" in organisations are reading your blog posts, NOT the corporation.

When clients who are working on a business to business level ask me about their writing style, I usually send them over to Tom Peter's blog so they can take a look at the topics he writes about, how he writes and, to check out some of the photos he has on his site.  At the time of writing this blog post, he has some "groovy" pictures in the header.

Recently when I directed one of my clients to Tom Peters site to check out his writing style, their immediate response was "he's Tom Peters for goodness sakes!"

But in my view, that's the whole point … his blog is readable, executives can go muse his blog posts without feeling they're preparing for their 5-year plan review meeting and, he gets booked.

I mentioned the success of one of my clients blog in a previous post and he doesn't use corporate speak in his blog posts, but still he gets booked.

And, I know from personal experience that if the executives at the company I was employed some years ago were to receive some of the blog posts I see some business bloggers publishing, it would end up in the bin and I'm talking about the largest UK car insurer at the time … no small company.

I'm not suggesting you exclude elegance in your blog posts, but the truth is (and I pray none of the executive from my previous company are reading this right now), if you give your blog post to a 12 year old and they struggle to understand what on earth you're talking about, your blog posts will go over the heads of 50% plus of those in the boardroom.

Oops!  There, I've said it! 

It's not that they're thick but not all of them had the privilege of attending Oxford or Cambridge University or, fell in love with the dictionary.  Most of them were promoted because they got results and it doesn't require a literary degree to do that.

So, this is my two pennies worth but hey, I'd love to hear from you if you were rejected by a corporate company for not writing intellectually enough, in your blogs.

I'm going to give you the link to watch the video he created at the end of this post so ensure you read it to the end.

You see, the Internet is on the change … again, and this time it isn't about algorithms or keywords, it's about the way people search the Internet for information …

Welcome Visual Search Engines

Now, rather than just bringing up text each time you search for information online, "Search Me" will actually show up text, images and video in their search results.

Now, this may not seem that important, but according to Person Education Inc, 65% of the population are visual learners meaning that they are more comfortable with either being shown or seeing pictures to help them learn and for you the blogger or website author, it means that 65% of the population when given a choice, will "check you out" (or your site :-)), based on looks.

Whilst I maintain that you can still make good money with an ugly blog, you really have to consider that given a choice many people will choose to visit your blog to get to the important information in it, based on "what catches their eye."

My husband is always laughing at me because I rarely watch the news or read the newspaper … I'm happy with the headlines and, I certainly don't want my mind and my day to be filled with the prevailing bad news transmitted by the media.

Anyway, after we take our daughter to School, we sometimes go for coffee at our local supermarket coffee shop and, they have a newspaper stand with all of the days newspapers and, as I go by I skim the newspapers front page.  And guess which ones always get my attention … yep, the ones with the picture that tells the story with a clear headline telling me what the story is about.

This is why my husband laughs because even before I read the first two lines or the story, from the picture alone, I'll ask him "is this the story about xyz?"  

Now I'm not suggesting that your blog is covered with pictures but there are elements of the design that you need to consider including:

• the professional look of the header and other graphics
• the layout of your blog
• the navigation of your blog which should be clear and make your blog easy to navigate
• some indication, above the fold that will tell the reader what the blog is about

In addtion to all of this, the reader can now see a snippet of the content on your site and if it's filled with links, and looks like you're desperate to sell them something, you'll more than likely "turn them off."

I think you'll understand more about why these are important when you watch the video on Visual Search Engines at http://www.mysmallbizu.com/content/view/1554/328/

And, if you're looking for a professionally designed blog, take a look at some of the client blogs I've built which, always get big compliments from their readers.  You may find fancier looking blogs elsewhere, but these are professional looking, they are easy to navigate and, I encourage my clients to focus on giving the BEST information in their blogs!

Best,

Your research gives you too many options … use Blogger.com or a WordPress.com to set up a free blog hosting account, use MySpace or one of the other social networking sites to set up your blog or, create your own blog using your own hosting account and domain name.

I've created several blog posts on those options and, I've created a quickstart guide to help you start blogging today and, you can download your free copy here.

In terms of which platform to use, I personally advise against using free hosted solutions such as blogger.com or WordPress.com if you are building a business blog because there is nothing like "owning your blog."  Do something that violates the terms and services of these hosted sites, and they'll delete your blog leaving you with no chance of reinstatement … all your effort and hard work gone.

My personal preference for starting a blog is to use WordPress because it's the most popular, is used by many of the top Internet Marketers and has a myriad of plugins you can use to give your blog more functionality.

If you want to get started with your blog today though, my suggestion is that you download the Jumpstart Blogging free guide which gives you step-by-step instructions on how to set up a WordPress blog and, you'll get some tips on how to market and promote your blog too.

In the long-term, you'll be pleased you chose to own your blog at the outset because moving from one blog platform to another can be done, but it's not always plain sailing and no one wants to build up traffic and credibility and then have to start again on another blog platform.

My motto is "start right and it will save you fixing later."

Leave me a comment if you get stuck and could do with a little help!

To Your Online Success,

In short, the answer is "YES, YES and YES!"

There seems to be a myth going around right now amongst some webmasters that keywords are dead and using them on your webpage could hurt your ranking. But, I want to set the record straight …

If you don't use keywords in your title tag, description and on page, you're going to find those "clicks" harder to get.

What is deemed dead with regards to keywords are meta keywords which, we bloggers don't have to concern ourselves with since meta keywords are not a standard aspect of the blog architecture.

Basically, the meta keyword tag for those that may not be familiar with the term is a way to insert text into HTML pages making the text invisible when the page is viewed with a browser. Some search engines read the content of the tag and associates the words contained within the tag with the web page's body copy.

From my own research, the saga about their validity has stretched back as far as 1998 … maybe earlier.

But, my point about webmasters making generalistic views about keywords being dead is that there are a few aspects that need to considered when trying to rank high in the search engines and in my view, comments such as "meta keywords could hurt your ranking" has to be taken into consideration with a whole host of other issues that could hurt your ranking more …

• It's my understanding that some of the other search engines besides Google still rely on meta keywords to index pages and so my advice is to use no more than three keywords on each of your html pages.
• Don't keyword stuff, either in your title, meta keywords (if building html pages) or, in the body of your web page. If anything, this is what will get you penalized by the search engines. At this point, I also suggest you go check out Google's Webmaster Guidelines as well as their page on keyword stuffing.
• Do theme the content on your site. I think this has a major impact on your overall ranking and so, the "flea market" sites are out the window! Flea market meaning that you promote and talk about every and anything on your site! You need to give it a theme such as "dog breeding" or, "hair braiding."
• Whether you are a blogger or using html pages to build your site, ensure your title isn't the name of your blog unless it has the keyword in it. The title is the very first thing the spiders see when they come to visit your site so make it easy for them! So, ensure you have the relevant keywords in the title of your site. No one who doesn't know you online are looking for FredsGraphic.com but, they are looking for a "web designer" or "website developer.
• If you are a blogger, do make use of tags in your blog posts. Tags are a way to categorize your blog posts and certainly helps you get found by those browsing and searching online.

In essence, when writing the content of both your web pages and your blogs, always ask yourself how the way you have constructed the page is going to help searchers find you online.

The search engines want to provide searchers with pages that are most relevant to the terms they typed in search box and naturally, you want your page to be in the top 10 or top 20 search listings.

Use your keywords wisely and there will be no reason to be penalized by any of the search engines.

I take the view that my blog is like my "shop front" and I like things to look neat and tidy. 

Now, before WordPress 2.5, I and the other Semiologic Pro users were blessed with a WYSIWYG editor that the developer, Denis de Bernardy customised and, I loved it.  The new text editor that comes with WordPress 2.5 is okay but in my view, it's feels like we've been relegated to a 3rd division WYSIWYG editor …

There's no table icon, no highlight, no font size change and no font style change and what's worse, they have so say streamlined the HTML coding but in my view, it's a headache!  Changes to the HTML code just don't always stick and the text editor seems to have a mind of it's own.

I've worked out how to make some of the changes but on one of my blogs, I put the entire page HTML code in "Notepad" (not Wordpad) and each time I want to make a change, I simply update the Notepad document and copy and paste the code into the text editor.

I know … fine if you know and understand HTML!

Well, each time I come across one of those pesky little issues, I'll let you know about it and, since I've just had to tackle one, I thought I'd create the first of the blog post series …

This one relates to those pesky bullets that just won't line up!!

I don't want my bullets to look all sqashed up as though I have to pay for each pixel space on my blog post … I want my reader to see some white space around each bullet point so it doesn't look like this:

• bullet one
• bullet two
• bullet three

So, in times past, with the old WYSIWYG editor, you could simply go to the end of each bullet, hold down the shift key and press enter … not any more.

So what about going to the html code and adding <p> … nope, doesn't always work.

But I want my bullets to look like this:

• bullet one 
• bullet two 
• bullet three 

So, what did I do?

Okay, here is the original code:

 <ul>
 <li>bullet one</li>
 <li>bullet two</li>
 <li>bullet three</li>
</ul>

And by just adding </span> at the end of each bullet like so:

<ul>
 <li>bullet one</li></span>
 <li>bullet two</li></span>
 <li>bullet three</li></span>
</ul>

you get an extra line space between each bullet.

You do have to be in "code view" to make these changes - i.e. you have to select the HTML tab on the text editor so you expose the source code.  If you're not at all familiar with HTML, I would suggest finding some tutorials online before you tackle this … I have actually written a HTML Code Guide For Bloggers but not published it yet … I know, gotta get my skates on!

Anyway, one more thing, generally when you make changes in code view by clicking on the html tab of the text editor, click save before switching back to the visual tab … the editor has a habit of doing strange things and you may find your code messed up.

Hope this little tip saves you from tearing your hair out!

There is one problem though …

You can't utilize all 101 ways and if you try to, you're going to crash and burn and your blog won't make you a dime.

Bear with me, I'm going to rant, but I'm also going to give you some sweet tips to get more traffic to your blog! Fair? Okay, read on with your eyes WIDE open!

If you've been on the Internet for any length of time, you'll remember the "blogging and pinging," the "tagging and pinging," "trackbacks," "pingpacks," etc. Whilst these strategies are not obselete, you could literally add 101 new ways to market and promote your blog nowadays and by marketing and promoting, I mean getting noticed so you get lots of traffic to your blog.

But, here's problem number 2 …

The Foundation of Blogging Seems To Have Been Lost In All The Noise Of Social Media, Video Blogging, Podcasting, More Sophisticated Blog Designs Etc, and New Bloggers In Particular Fail To Give Their Blog A Solid Foundation

Now, I am not saying that these methods should be ignored but if as a bloggers you are going to build authority with your site, if you want to be known as the expert in your field and if you want to attract new business and sell more products and services, you are going to have to get one thing right …

… You are going to have to learn "how" to blog!

I get people telling me that they want to know more about designing and building blogs and, whilst I appreciate that us mentors have been promoting the "sack your designer" thing, there is a fine line between knowing all that there is to know about blog building and making your blog sell for you!

It's about going back to the principles outlined in Timothy Ferriss' Four Hour Work Week' … You have to strengthen your strengths and where at all possible, outsource the rest.

I make money building blogs and consulting with entrepreneurs, independent professionals and small business owners and for the most part, there are tell-tale signs in who is going to create a successful business with their blog and who will struggle to get any recognition.

The success stories come from those like Gavin Ingham who is willing to focus on marketing and those who struggle tend to focus too much on blog design … and not just any old blog design, the worst one …

DIY blog design!

In other words, they want to be able to do it all themselves no matter how in depth the coding and whether they even know anything about HTML or PHP.

Yes, blog design is important, but if you don't blog, no matter how pretty your blog is, no matter how much time you spend sprucing it up, no one will even know your blog exists.

Basically, you gotta walk before you can run and many of the things that bloggers think they "need" right now, will do nothing to help them attract traffic even if they spent thousands per month on pay-per-click advertising.

Let's face it, what are people going to see when they visit your blog …

"Welcome to my new blog?"

I personally didn't even try to monetize my blog until I was blogging for months but that was out of personal choice but you can't have five blog posts and expect to make a shed load of money with AdSense or from affiliate marketing and, you do need to give people good solid content to encourage them to keep coming back or to make a purchase from your site.

Anyway, less of my rant, here are my Top Ten Tips for getting more traffic to your blog "quick time." And, I'm not even going to mention that you should not be spending hours designing when you should be promoting …

In terms of ease, here they are:

Tip #1: Ensure your ping services are set up correctly and up to date BEFORE you even write your first blog post and, ensure your very first blog post says more than "welcome."  Give the spiders enough "flies" to get their attention and your human visitors a reason to want to return even if your blog only has one post on it.

You will find the list of ping services in WordPress 2.5.1 by going to "settings" and then "writing,"  otherwise, it will be "options," writing if you are using an older version of WordPress.  If pinging is a new term to you but you want to understand more about how it works, see this great article about pinging to get top search engine rankings.  

Tip #2:  Set up your permalinks so the search engine spiders recognise you.  The default permalink set by WordPress (http://www.yourdomain.com/?p=123) will do very little for your search engine ranking if anything at all.  The search engines don't understand what "?p=123" means and is useless for enabling anyone to find your keyword loaded blog posts.  

I personally use the permalink structure http://www.mydomain.com/%postname%/ although I have seen very successful bloggers such as Pro Blogger using the date and name based structure.  You can go check out my previous post on permalink structures for more details. 

Tip #3:  Write keyword specific blog posts.  I know this might sound obvious but it's amazing how many times I harp on about this and then I visit people's sites and it has no structure, no keywords and then they ask why their blog isn't being indexed by the search engines.   

This is where I could go off on the deep end again about ignoring basic search engine optimization techniques in favor of social marketing, podcasting, video marketing etc.  Whichever method you use, you're going to have to learn some basic SEO and apply it to your blog posts … period! :-)  

In particular, you want the keyword in the title of your post, preferably in the first sentence of your blog post and, throughout the blog post without making it look like spam - i.e. you don't want to write your keyword every other sentence.  You want the keywords to appear as natural as possible and, if you can anchor text a couple of your keywords, all the better.

If it would appear unnatural to your readers if you had the keywords in the title and first line of your blog post, use the All In One SEO Pack plugin for WordPress.  Just type that into Google and you'll find it.

Tip #4:  Give People the option to be updated via RSS.  RSS is growing in popularity and is a great way to spread the word about a new blog.  If you're using WordPress to promote your blog, your RSS feed is created automatically which will allow publishers to syndicate or distribute your content.  

RSS makes your content easy to find by the search engines which means that it will be easier for them to index therefore easier for your blog pages to get ranked.

However, because RSS feeds are automatically created on most blog platforms, it can be ignored as a powerful means to get your message out there.  So, ensure you have a link for people to sign up to your RSS feed on every page of your blog, pereferably with an icon to draw people's eyes to it so they can sign up to receive automatic updates via RSS. 

The best places to put your RSS link is in the header, sidebar or under the header … basically where it will be automatically displayed on every post and page.

Tip #5:  Submit your blog to blog directories.  Blog directories are orgainzed in categories and are much like web directories or ezine directories where you can go to find sites that relate to your particular interest.  Signing up to them is usually quick (less than 5 minutes) and more importantly it's free to list with most directories. 

Listing your blog in blog directories will also help your blog get higher rankings with the search engines, because your blog link will be added to more websites which will get you more sites linking back to your blog. 

For the top 55 RSS and feed directories, check out Robin Good's site at http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/

Tip #6:  Comment on other people's blogs.  If you use something like Comment Kahuna, this makes it easier for you to find blogs that you can comment on as well as find blogs that don't utilize the "no follow" tag which, will enable you to build some quality backlinks to your blog. 

If you leave a comment, make it worthwhile.  Always ask yourself "how" you want people to react when they read your comment. 

This should be a lesson to those who rant on other people's blogs without providing any substance to their rant and certainly without offering an alternative.  Other readers will just think you're full of sour grapes and won't want to come near your blog even if you have the best product or service on the market.

Tip #7:  Provide good quality product testimonials.  If you've recently purchased a product and you have a genuine testimonial to give, send it to the product owner because you never know where your testimonial might end up. 

I admit, this wasn't a deliberate strategy to get incoming links to my site, but I know that some of my comments have ended up on good authority sites and, one occasion one of my readers told me that he had found the link to my site from a testimonail that I had written about a new membership site software that was being promoted.  I didn't even know the testimonial was on the site.   

If you do give testimonials, ensure they say more than "great product."  Tell the owner of the product how it has saved you time, money, effort or how and why this is the solution you'd been waiting for.

It does go without saying that your testimonials should be genuine and not fabricated.  You could get people emailing you for an update on how you're getting on with the product and your integrity is in knowing that you can provide honest feedback.     

Tip #8:  Add an opt-in box to your blog.  This is very similar to tip number 4 but you want to be able to capture names and addresses of your visitors so that you can keep them updated with great information, new products etc.

My personal recommendation is Aweber although I know some Internet Marketers are combining thier RSS subscriptions with their database subscriptions via Feedblitz which is Feedburner's email newsletter management system.

Tip #9:  Subscribe to Social Bookmarking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Furl etc.

Joining and participating in (the operative word being participate) in social networking is certainly a way of networking as well as getting some free traffic and backlinks to your blog.  One word of caution with social networking sites is that it can become a full time job making them work for you if you don't focus. 

My suggestion is that you sign up to one or two, get some results and then sign up to another two until you're familiar with them.  You have to decide whether you will go wide or deep and it's my view that spreading yourself too thinly across all the social networking platforms won't get you nearly as much benefit as really working a few.  

Tip #10: Add podcasts and videos.  Like social networking, podcasts and video blogging will get you free traffic and some bonus backlinks.  If you want a few tips on video blogging see my video blogging quick tips post. 

If you feel this is a techie's strategy for promoting your blog, let me clear that myth up …

"It has never been easier to add audio and video to your blogs." 

The quickest and easiest way to get started is to open an account with Audio Acrobat.  You can record both video and audio there and then add the recordings along with the players to your blog.  They also provide free training on a regular basis so you don't have to feel as though you're tackling this method of blog promotion in isolation.

In conclusion … I hope you've gained some insight from this post about how to promote your blog and just by being diligent in implementing the first five strategies will keep traffic coming to your blog on a consistent basis.

To Your Business Blogging Success!

Like this post? Publish It On Your Own Blog

I personally spent about 2 hours this morning uploading and customising a client's blog using a free SEO WordPress theme only to find that once I'd done, the sidebars were not showing up on post pages, only the pages themselves.

I contacted the owner of the software - and, we're not talking about a one man band here - and, this is the response I received …

"Mr X loves to help, that's why he has always given away such great content for free.

But Mr X  is no longer able to offer personal assistance with using the new seo blog software or answer your personal questions.

We hope that you understand that response has been overwhelming and he's trying his best to catch up with his own workload at this time.

However, he is still willing to help you:

He will be hosting a series of live call-in days for his emails subscribers and he's willing to  answer your questions at that time.

Plus he plans on issuing periodic upgrades to the seo software and the free training material so keep your eye out for those emails.

In meantime he has posted a series of Frequently Asked Questions
(FAQS) and their answers on his blog at : (blog address here)"

Now, the owner isn't completly dismissive of the issues people might experience but in order to get answers to your technical queries, you'd have to wait for the live Q&A calls and who knows when these might be.

Of course, the best option for me is to hire someone who knows more about coding than I do, but no one is more familiar with a theme than the theme developer.

I must admit though, when customising the theme, I was tempted on many occasions to go back to Semiologic because all of the "one click" customisation changes I just take for granted when using the Semiologic software, I had to hard code with WordPress theme I was using.

With a little searching, I did find the answer to the issue and the sidebars are now coming up just fine.

I'm not sure whether it's the norm not to provide support with free themes and perhaps as I said earlier, I'm spoilt because of the technical support Dennis de Bernardy provides for Semiologic via his forum but I'd love your thoughts and feedback.

In terms of your online marketing efforts, what have you done to make sure that the search engines recognize you and your target market can find you?

If you have no idea what I'm talking about or, if the answer is "nothing," then sadly, that's exactly what you will be receiving when it comes to free web site traffic.

People who do business on the web are realizing that despite the fact that you can purchase traffic though Pay-Per-Clicks advertising, there is a great deal of benefit to attracting the attention of the search engines, from whom you can gain good quality, free, targeted traffic.

If you want targeted traffic from the search engines however, you have to harness the power of link building.

In fact, I'm going to tell you a little story …

Back in November 2007, the PageRank on my blog increased from 5 to 6 and naturally, I was overexcited. A few weeks later though, my blog was back down to a PageRank 5 again.

Now, I know there are all sorts of reasons for the PageRank increasing and then suddenly changing again in a short period of time but I was convinced that there had to have been something I did to lose my PR 6.

Well, after about 4 weeks, I found the problem …

I am registered with Jonathan Leger's 3 Way Links program and since I was one of the early adopters, I had 250 links pointing to my site just from sites with the 3WayLinks.net system alone and what happened was that I moved my blog and forgot to set up the resources page which displays all of the links and my account was suspended …

250 backlinks wiped in a day!

It's no wonder my PageRank went down. Google must have thought I was up to no good. I then discovered weeks after this that at the same time, my BlogRush account was suspended because again, I'd forgotten to set up the widget on my blog.

And yes, I expect to receive some comments telling me that losing the incoming links to my blog had nothing to do with anything, but I have tracked the time period and I'm confidently sure that losing 250 back links to my blog wouldn't go unnoticed by Google for long.

So why are backlinks or incoming links important to your blog or website anyway?

When determining the ranking of your site, the search engines are really only interested in how popular your site is. This popularity is determined by how many sites are linking to you without you linking back to them.

So, by working on good link building you'll be able to get to the top of the search engine's list because of the "assumed" popularity of your site. It also means that you can rank highly for a keyword term that doesn't even appear anywhere on your blog or web site.

If you don't believe me, go to Google and type in the term "click here." You'll notice that Adobe.com is ranked #1 on Google for this search term and yet the term "click here" doesn't appear anywhere on that page.

Why is this?

Everyone and anyone has a link from their website to the Adobe website explaining that the document the reader or purchaser is about to download is in PDF format and to be able to read the document, they will be required to "click here" and go to Adobe.com to download the free version of their Adobe Reader.

Because of the huge number of links going to Adobe.com, the search engines consider it to be a popular website and has given it more weighting or higher ranking than any other site trying to rank for the term "click here."

In truth, who would want to rank for the search term "click here" but I use this example to get my point across.

How to you get your links on other people's websites?

In my view, if you're a blogger, the first thing you want to do is provide top quality content on your own site and then provide top quality blog comments on other people's blogs. You can make the task of finding and commenting on other peoplel's blogs much easier these days by using Comment Kahuna.

You then need to consider submitting good quality articles to articles directories.

You've seen sites like Ezinearticles.com and associatedcontent.com and you will notice that on many of the articles, there is a cleverly placed URL at the bottom.

Every article that you post to these article directories is one more link leading back to your site, and what's more, other people can post the articles they find at the article directories on their blogs or, publish them to their ezine … including yours.

A word of caution when it comes to link building though … avoid using services that promise to broker link exchanges between you and other webmasters. Too often, this can lead to the search engines deciding that you are link spamming and it will penalize you by dropping your ranking which could be more damaging than if you'd done no link building at all.

This is not to say, however, that search engine optimization services are a bad idea. In fact, for many people who do not have the time or the energy to put into link building, outsourcing to an SEO company can be well worth the fees that they will charge in terms of the Return on Investment.

If you do intend outsourcing your search engine marketing though, look for a company that has a good reputation and that come highly recommended. Ask for references, and if necessary, ask to speak to a few of their previous clients. If they're good, they will be excited to put you in touch with those they've achieved good results for … in other words, don't shy away from being bold and asking. You want to ensure your money is going to be well spent.

Article marketing isn't the only way to build links back to your website but it's a great place to start if you have done little or no link building before. Other options include videos, podcasts and, blogging and if you have the inclination to do it, you can approach other webmasters direct and ask them to link back to your site. However, more often than not, they will not do so unless you reciprocate by linking back to them in return which isn't as effective nowadays.

For more information on reciprocal linking, see my blog post entitled "Is Reciprocal Linking A Thing of The Past?"

One thing is for certain, link building as a means to getting higher search engine rankings isn't going to go away any time soon so if you want to get found online, it's time to start building.

I only began using Wordpress in Feb 2006 but to me, WordPress looks like the most major overhaul to date of the entire backend and, it was delayed for about three months because of the number of additional features the developers wanted to add.

If you've not upgraded yet or, you're new to WordPress, you may not be familiar with the new user interface which now has a very light blue and grey color scheme. Under the user tab, you can now change the color scheme with one click to suit your preferred style.

However, the aim of this blog post really isn't to give you a nice little overview of the new WordPress interface, but mainly to highlight that in my view, the new WordPress gave some indication of the direction of the Internet …

What do I mean?

When I started blogging in 2006, just to change the style of the font, you had to edit the code which, is way too technical for most people online. The first and only theme I use for my blogs, Semiologic, released a version many months later that would enable you to change the font with one click but WordPress themselves haven't reached that level of sophistication yet. They have however changed the text editor to include some neat features to easily add audio, video.

Basically, with every change, WordPress puts the power of blogging into more and more people's hands giving them less and less excuse not to blog.

They haven't arrived yet, I was still a little shocked to note that whilst you can change the color of the header with one click, with all the talk about having a unique looking blog, WordPress still does not have a built in option to upload a new header with the click of the mouse.

Maybe I'm just spoilt having been used to Semiologic all these years, but I still think this and some basic elements like changing the font is something WordPress should consider for the future.

That said, I still think it's worth upgrading but cannot stress that if you have a developer specific theme like Semiologic that you should WAIT until they have upgraded their theme to be compatible with WordPress 2.5.1 - the current version.

Don't go crying to mommy if you take the chance and your blog breaks because, I can assure you, break it will!

Also, unless you are tech savvy, I would hold off upgrading until all the bugs are ironed out in both WordpPress and your developer's theme. I have spent the past two weeks upgrading all of my blogs, but it really has eaten up chunks of my time … especially when the feed broke because there was a conflict with one of the plugins.

Still shying away from blogging?

Go and download my Jumpstart Blogging guide which will show you the easiest way to set up your blog … step-by-step.

This one is free and I've been using it for the past couple of days and, I'm hooked.

Also, because it works on a Technorati tagging basis, your most important keywords will be picked up.

Here's an article from the blog sharing site, giving you more information about Jonathan's new software.

Enjoy and use!

*****************

Yesterday, I got an invitation for beta testing on a blog post syndication service called Share A Post. The invitation was from Jonathan Leger, one of the top SEO and Internet Marketing Expert, and also the mastermind behind GistWeb - one of my favorite web application for brainstorming content producing.

Share A Post basically lets you do 2 things, here’s a direct quote from Jon’s announcement :

1) You can submit your WordPress blogs and allow other users to

post the content of your posts to their own blogs (while also

linking back to your original blog post).

This is GREAT for getting tons of ..

Source: Search Engine Optimization

Well, today I came across a blog post which I felt explained Technorati Tags very well.

I know that when I started using Technorati tags in my blog posts, I wanted a few basic questions answered that seemed so hard to find even on Technorati itself.  Questions like "how to tag posts," "how many tags could be used in one blog post" and, "how to determine which words to tag."

Whilst the post written in Feb 2005, it's still very relevant today and whilst also quite long, there are no excuses for you not knowing the benefits of tagging Technorati in your blog posts.

The best thing to do is go take a look at this  introductory guide to "tags" yourself.

However, before you go ahead and make a video blog, there are a few tips I'd like to offer that will allow you to create a good video that individuals actually want to watch … one that will keep your blog interesting and informative: 

Tip #1: Try to keep your video blog entries short and punchy.  In most cases you will want to make your video last 4-5 minutes although, if you feel that you have much more to say than in this short time span, you can either create a longer video or, create a sequel to your first blog. 

And, it really does depend on the content.  If you're creating your blog for entertainment factor then 3 minutes in my view is long enough.  If you're educating then you want to be able to give more meat and in this case, longer videos are justifiable. 

Tip #2: Make the video interesting and give it some structure i.e. a reason for the video, the meat of the video and conclude with getting them to take action where necessary but at least let them know why you felt it necessary to put the video together.  This is the art of good business blogging.

Tip #3: Eliminate background noise.  It goes without saying that having a dog barking in the background, or a baby screeming does not create a good listening environment which could, cause some listeners to tune out and leave your blog. 

Also, if you're recording outside and it's windy, put a sock on it.  I mean the microphone of course. :-)  If you're using a hand held microphone a professioinal sock (like the fluffy ones you see the newsreaders using) is great for cutting down on wind noise.  If you don't have one of those, try using one of your own socks.  And yes, I am serious.

If you're using a lapel microphone at least stand in a position where the wind isn't rushing across the microphone, it may not be perfect, but it's better than nothing. 

Tip #4: Get a little closer.  Having the microphone so far away from you so your listeners can hardly hear is as bad as distracting background noise.  I personally use a wired lapel microphone that I paid about £30 ($60) for and the wire is is about 8 ft long, long enough for me not to have my face up against the lens of the video camera.

Tip #5: Don't stand too far away from the camera.  This really does depend on the purpose of the video and the equipment you're using.  I have seen some great videos of late, especially those created by Alex Mandossian, where he's walking in the park with his kids in the background but for an infomercial video, you may only want your viewers to see from your chest up.

My suggestion with this one is to experiment until it feels comfortable to you and you're sure your viewers will be comfortable too.

Tip #6: Use good lighting.  Don't sit in front of a window that has the sun shining through it because the video will be very dark.  

Tip #7: Use a Flip Camcorder … you will have to worry less about lighting and you'll have your video blog up in no time at all.  It's so easy to use, our 6 year old daughter uses it.

I look forward to hearing that you've taken the plunge and started adding video to your blogs.

The logic behind what he says is inescapable, really. And it's ancient wisdom, but something that a lot of us forget, with the consequence we may not make as much money as we could - and should.

I won't repeat his full post here because you can read it at his blog. But I will mention one small part of what he says that is very valuable.

So start thinking how you can at least start doing some test marketing to a smaller targeted audience. Set up a separate web site and special offers if you have to.

Excellent advice. You'll never know whether you can make more money by focusing on a smaller group of customers, until you try it. Setting up a test site sounds like a sensible precaution to me.

Source: Sublime Products

This is the response I usually get from my clients when I suggest that they need to link their blog to Technorati.

But, if you have a blog, or you are thinking of adding one to an existing website, Technorati, the largest blog search engine is definately a site you'll want to romance with.  This specialized search engine is devoted entirely to searching through blogs, and lately, it has started to seriously compete with search engine giants such as Google and Yahoo. 

So, What Does Technorati Do?

Essentially, Technorati can index your blogs, whether they are about cooking, financing, engineering or entertainment.  The name itself is based on a joining of the words technology and literati, the later referring to a group of critical intellectuals (I didn't feature in the latter group!).  By tagging Technorati throughout your post e.g. this post is about commercial financing, you'll keep your posts at or near the top of the list at Technorati.  And, to simplify this process, you can use a plugin called Tagalize It which makes tagging throughout your blog posts a really simple task.

I'm sure your next question is how can Technorati benefit my business?

At the most basic, you'll find that Technorati is one more way to let the people looking for your service find you.  When people search using Technorati, they are searching for information that has a personal bent to it, and has a presentation that they find easy to read.  In other words, people who search Technorati are looking for good information, and if they can find you and you can provide that information they are looking for, you will be one giant step closer to getting a customer, client or subscriber.

In terms of optimizing your blog for Technorati, be aware that the first and best thing that you can do is to tag your entries as I've explained earlier.  If you haven't done this yet for your older entries, take the time to go back and tag them.  Although this can be time consuming if you're working through a long backlog, you'll find that it will pay off once the hits start coming in.  While you shouldn't go overboard, you'll find that you can use several tags on a single blog entry to help people find what they are looking for.  For instance, if you have a cooking blog, an Italian recipe could easily have the tags, “Italian,” “vegetarian,” and “mozzarella.” 

Although Technocrati has been criticized for not taking into account the 56 million blogs on MySpace, you'll find that it can still be quite useful to you and has some attractive search engine benefits particularly when you get ranked at or near the top.  

Until next time,

Using contributing authors on your blog is a sure way of easing the burden from you in terms of the time it takes to research, write and post your blog but, there are a few major pitfalls that you'll want to avoid so that you still control your blog and not your contributors.

What actually prompted me to write this post was the fact that I'd received an email from Feedblitz this morning showing that I'd updated my blog and so I was a little shocked knowing that I did nothing on it over the weekend. 

After I calmed down and realised that no one had hacked into my site, I was semi okay with the posts but on closer inspection, I saw red!

Here's what happened …

I submitted my blog to a service that allowed people to automatically post unique content to my blog on a regular basis.  And, since it wasn't compulsory to keep my blog in the system, I gave it a try.  First off, I didn't even get confirmation that my blog had been accepted into the system which is why I thought I'd been hacked when I received an email from Feedblitz indicating that I'd updated my blog.

My real contentions with this system which, you may have recognised has remained nameless, are these:

Too Many Promotions

Of the four blog posts that appeared on my blog, every single one of them was an obvious promotion of someone elses product.  Do I object to using promotions on your blog?  No, but where possible, I like to stick to a ratio of 4 or 5 to 1, meaning that if I do promote someone elses products it's only after I've given you some solid "how to" information that you can use and which, won't cost you a penny.

Duplicate Promotions

There is only one thing worse than too many promotions … having duplicate promotions on the same day!  One contributing author wrote two blogs posts about the same promotion (albeit both articles had a different spin) and, both articles were posted to my blog on the same day.   

Crappy Promotions 

Whilst not a word wildly accepted in my British culture as coming from a Christian lady, a) I know it's wildly accpeted in the US from whence comes most of my readers and b) I can't think of a better word that describes what I want to say here. :-) 

One promotion was for a free report that consisted of one page (about six small paragraphs), in the form of a sales letter and, which told you NOTHING about what you might find inside the actual product being offered, except for the fact that the creator makes almost half a million dollars per year using this method and, that it was about listbuilding.

I mean … come on!  I'm used to meaty reports or teleseminars and webinars where guys promoting their products give you the meat and the potatoes, making you want more of what you've just been hearing.  The report was so poor, that I had to conclude that the final product couldn't be any good either and so that post had to go.

I did love the promotion about Dan Kennedy's product though but I personally want to check it out myself and then I may do a blog post on it thereafter since I have a policy that I do not promote products I have not personally reviewed or used … Period! 

I admit that part of me felt relieved that my blog was being updated so frequently, but I had to ask the question, "at what cost?" 

Consequently, I have removed all four blog postings from trishjones.com and from now on, I will stick to writing the posts myself or, get some articles written for me that I can inject with my own personality and my own views before I post them to my blog.

If you do allow other bloggers to contribute articles to your blog, I would only do so on the basis that you vet the posts before they are submitted and, I would personally insist that they provide your readers with good quality information they can use.

Apologies to those of you who had received the Feedblitz update today, clicked on the links only to find an empty page.  I'm sure I'll get your vote of confidence that you want quality information, not quantity selling.

To Your Online Success,

Sure some of the top Internet Marketer's used this strategy in days gone by, but if you try to import these names into Aweber, 1Shopping Cart or any of the other online subscription databases there will be trouble and from experience, these lists are unresponsive.  In other words, they're likely to buy nothing from you and they could even report you for spamming them!

So what if you are about to launch a product and you don't
have a list and want to generate some cash fast.

I was personally in this situation last year. 

I set up a membership site showing people how to set up and sell their products and services with their blog and whilst I did have a list, it wasn't very big so, I decided I had to make the best choice that would a) get people to my site fast and b) build my list in the process …

Joint Venture Marketing!

I had heard Internet Marketers talking about Joint Ventures and how great it was for co creating or promoting a new or relaunched product, but you know what I thought … 

Who would want to partner with me?  And why would any of the top Internet Marketers want to promote my product to their list anyway?

WRONG QUESTIONS!

The question I should have been asking was "how can I get joint venture partners to work with me."

And, thanks to Marc Goldman, Shawn Casey and Marlon Sanders who explained in laymans terms (simple enough for me to understand!) that partnering with even the best online marketer began only with "knowing how to approach a prospective joint venture partner," I soon lost that fear of approaching people to become an affiliate or Joint Venture parther on the grounds that I wasn't good enough.

After all, I believed in my product and so the question I had to ask is "why wouldn't they want to promote my program."

To cut a long story short, it was Christmas 2007 and I wanted to promote my new site and generate some extra cash.  I didn't have much time to create YouTube videos, podcasts, articles, web PR (though I did use this very powerful method too) and so I contacted three potential Joint Venture partners and asked them whether they would be willing to promote my new membership site as an affiliate.

Just to give an example of one success, I sent an email about 2:00am in the morning to one of the top Internet Marketers online (I live in the UK for those of you who may not be aware) and I woke up the next morning to all these emails that read … "you have a new subscriber …" 

You have no idea what confidence that gave me, but in that day alone, and from just one joint venture letter that I sent out and one short email giving some information about my product, I raised around $800 (about £400 UK pounds). 

Not too shabby in my view considering this prospect had no idea the email was coming and, barely knew me.

If you want to learn how to do successful joint ventures though, I'm really not the person to learn from! :-)  I only did what I was instructed to do!  But, if you want to learn for FREE from the guy who started the buzz around joint venture marketing, then I highly recommend that head on over Joint Venture University and let Marc Goldman tell you how you can get access to his joint venture success secrets and like I said .. it's free although there is an upgrade option IF you want to take advantage of Marc's offer.

Don't turn your nose up at this free content though, just because it's free.  There is no skimping on content in the free members area and there certainly is enough in there for you to replicate what I did just a few months back.

When you've signed up for your free account, come back and report to me … really.  I want your feedback on what you think about the content at Joint Venture University.

To Your Online Success,

Well, I want to share with you my little experience with purchasing a new mobile phone last weekend and, help you not to make the same mistake!

Basically, I have been a faithful customer with Orange in the UK for about 15 years now and during this period I had three mobile phones with them including my mums and my husbands.  

Anyway, in the last month or so, my mobile phone contract ended and I wasn't sure what I wanted to do so I didn't hurry to upgrade.  But, last Saturday, I decided it was time for an upgrade and, in terms of personality types, I'm the