Welcome Humor Writers!

Due to the overwhelming response to my post this morning on the group regarding blogs and a few marketing tips.

Instead of emailing you all individually with the checklist I will post it here. Please feel free to ask questions if you have any.

1. Customize blog look and feel templates – aka design.
2. Research keywords and develop a glossary – Optimize the blog:
   • Template optimization – RSS subscription options, social bookmark links, HTML code, Unique title tags, URLs, Sitemap
   • Add helper plugins specific to WordPress or MT
   • Create keyword rich categories (reference your keyword glossary)
3. Enable automatic trackback and ping functionality.
4. Create Feedburner Pro account and enable feed tracking.
5. Setup a Google account for Sitemap, validate and prep for future submission.
6. Identify authoritative blogs, web sites and hubs for outbound resource links and blogroll.
7. Format archived posts, related posts.
8. Enable statistics for tracking – Google Analytics, ClickTracks.
9. Submit RSS feed and Blog URL to prominent RSS and Blog directories / search engines.
10. Engage in an ongoing link building campaign.
11. If podcast or video content are available, submit to Podcast and Vlog directories.
12. Submit blog url to paid directories with categories for blogs – Yahoo, BOTW, bCentral, WOW, JoeAnt.
13. Optimize and distribute a press release announcing blog.
14. Request feedback or reviews of your blog in relevant forums, discussion threads. If you have a resourceful post that will help others, point to it.
15. Research and comment on relevant industry related blogs and blogs with significant centers of influence.
16. Post regularly.It’s an authoritative blog, 3-5 times per week, but each post must be unique and high value.
17. Monitor inbound links, traffic, comments and mentions of your blog – Google Alerts, Technorati, Blogpulse, Yahoo News, Ask Blogs and Feeds.
18. Always respond to comments on your blog and if another blog, thank that blogger in the comments of the post.
19. Make contact with related bloggers on AND offline if possible.
20. When making blog posts always cite the source with a link and don’t be afraid to mention popular bloggers by name. Use keywords in the blog post title, in the body of the post and use anchor text when you link to previous posts you’ve made.
21. Use social networking services, forums and discussion threads to connect with other bloggers. If they like your stuff, they will link to you.
22. Remember when web sites were a new concept and the sage advice to print your web address everywhere you print your phone number? The same advice applies for your blog.
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23. Because the blog’s goal is to promote you as an authority, interview other prominent resources / bloggers in your industry. Your own credibility will improve by association.
24. Build out your online networks through services such as MyBlogLog, Twitter and Facebook and leverage them to promote particularly useful content on your blog.
25. Once your blog has 1000 or more subscribers, show your Feedburner badge
26. Host images with Flickr making sure to include an anchor text link in the image description back to the post where the image is used.
27. Use your blog to gain press/media credentials at relevant industry conferences and use the event to create content, connections and increase your knowledge.

12 Step SEO Programs

You may be on your first website. But more likely you’re faced with redesigning a website that isn’t functioning as well as it should.

I see 12 vital decisions involved with developing a website, and I want to explain them with you in mind:
• You’re the owner or marketing director of a small business and know that getting your website to pull its share of the load is vital for success. But your budget is severely limited!
• You’ve just been assigned the task of redoing your company’s website. Congratulations, now you can be blamed if things don’t work well.
• You’ve volunteered to take on your church or organization website and make some sense out of it — without offending the person who built it in the first place.
• This time around you’ve decided to outsource the job, but you have no idea of how to supervise a design company to make sure it does what you need. Good luck!
I want to help. When I built my first website in 1998 at the very beginning of the commercial Web, I didn’t have a clue how to proceed. In those days there was no one to guide me. I’ve made every mistake you can think of — some more than once, I hate to admit.
Since then I’ve built and assisted with dozens of online stores and hundreds of websites for all kinds of businesses and organizations, from mom and pops to major corporations and international organizations. I don’t design websites for others these days, but I actively develop and maintain my own site.
There are twelve critical places in building a website where you must make the right decision, or you’ll have to repeat this task again and again until you get it right. I won’t be talking about how to write HTML; I want to help you with the mindset, the
basic approach. I want to take you by the hand and lead you through the critical decisions. The better you grasp these essential points, the better your website will work and the happier camper you’ll be.

Title Tags- An introduction

This is a great introduction to the title tags, why they help and how to locate them to your benefit.

Title tags are often overlooked by business owners, but not to SEO experts! Please let me know what you think and thanks to Gareth Davies! Be sure and check out his website for more SEO 101 tutorials!

How do you test and measure results?

Testing and measuring for natural search is more difficult than it is for paid search, but it can still be performed well. Most agencies simply track rankings on key phrases. Some even talk about vague metrics such as
visibility and reach.
This is not good enough, in our opinion. We prefer to talk about tangible things like measurable traffic
(visitors) and conversion events (leads, sales, etc.).
SEO efforts must be tied to the specific goals of the website. If a website’s purpose is to generate leads, those leads must be able to be tied back to the specific key phrase and search engine. Similarly, if a website’s purpose
is to generate sales directly, the sales (and their value) must be able to be tied back to the organic listing from which they came.

Keyword Phrases- Organic SEO

- Unlike paid search advertising, where one can focus on thousands of key phrases, natural search requires focusing on a small number of key phrases. Also, with paid search there is no charge unless someone actually clicks on an advertisement, the effort and cost of natural search is expended simply to have the website listing shown. Ideally, the effectiveness of particular key phrases has been measured via a properly configured and managed paid search campaign. This provides both Click Through Rate (CTR) and Conversion Rate (CR) data on a key phrase by key phrase basis. This data can be then married with various metrics indicating the relative competitiveness of key phrases, so that the most important key phrases can be chosen.

Today’s Question (Organic vs. Paid)

Do you prefer to start with paid search or natural search?
There are some major differences between Paid Search and Organic Search. A notable difference is that with
Paid Search, one can (and should) advertise on a wide variety of key phrases (at least in the hundreds) and
track the results of their efforts on a key phrase by key phrase basis. With Organic Search, one should focus on
a small set of well trafficked, effective key phrases.

Organic SEO Myths- Revealed

In a post in 2007- these were revealed as the top 10 SEO Myths. Oddly enough, 9 months later the tides have turned. Stay tuned!

http://searchengineland.com/070830-074852.php

SEO myths get crazier every year. Some are based partially in reality, and others have spread because it’s often difficult to prove what particular SEO action caused a resulting search engine reaction.

For example, you might make a change to something on a page of your site, and a few days later notice that your ranking in Google for a particular keyword phrase has changed. You might naturally assume that your page change is what caused the ranking change. But that’s not necessarily so. There are numerous reasons why your ranking may have changed, and in many cases they actually have nothing to do with anything that you did.

SEO-SiteDesign

This is the beginning of a 5 part series on SEO.

The importance of SEO optimization is often overlooked until its too late. In my 15 years experience with the Internet, the most common problem I see is simply the steps that company’s use after they build a beautiful website, set up email addresses and wait. What are they waiting for? Customers!

The phrase “if you build it they will come” even when spoken in a God like voice, just isn’t true. Read on for part one of my exclusive 5 part series.

Now What?!