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This Week Around The Web

Posted on March 20th, 2010 by Shawn Swisher

I’ve not posted a lot lately because I’ve been up to my eyeballs in offline and online projects, plus its tax time and we all know what that means. Anyway, I came across a few great articles this week that I thought I would pass along:

WordPress SEO: The Only Guide You Need – Glenn over at ViperChill has written a great post on making sure your blog is up to snuff on its SEO.
How to Boost Blog and Website Traffic with Article Marketing – Pat over at Smart Passive Income guides you through the process of using article marketing to boost traffic to your blog.
When Should You Quit a Blog and Move On? – Darren at ProBlogger tells you why and when you might want to pull the plug on a blog, then follows up with a post on 7 Ways to End a Blog.

Enjoy the reading!

Categories Blogging
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Matt Cutts on Effective Organic Link Building

Posted on March 5th, 2010 by Shawn Swisher

There are lots of ways out there to generate links back to your website. Some of them are spammy or blackhat/grayhat type methods such as blog comment spamming, forum spamming, blasting your links all over Twitter or maybe submitting a few hundred bookmarks to various social bookmarking sites. The list could go on and on but we’ve all heard it said time and time again that the absolute best way to get links is to create great content so that others will link back to you in a natural and organic way. Well, here’s a great video I thought I would pass along to you of Matt Cutts explaining several ways to get those elusive organic links.

Categories Traffic and SEO
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Day 5 of 31DBBB: On Second Thought…

Posted on February 17th, 2010 by Shawn Swisher

It’s been approximately 35 days since I started my series on 31 Days to Build a Better Blog and I’m only up to day 5, lol. I began this series of posts as a way to let people follow along with me as I went through 31DBBB (a great ebook from Darren Rowse of Problogger) and hopefully engage in some discussions along the way about the tasks involved. This series has been problematic though. I mentioned back on day 2 that I didn’t want to cross the line into giving away Darren’s information to everyone for free. It’s a great book and very inexpensive so cost shouldn’t be a barrier for people picking up a copy. However, it’s getting more and more apparent that I just can’t continue this series without giving Darren’s work away for free, so I’m choosing to end it now. I’ll still continue on through the course because I think it’s very worthwhile but I just don’t feel right about putting the details of the course here on my blog. If you’ve been following along, I hope you’ll continue on through the course. If you haven’t yet picked up a copy of 31DBBB, be sure and grab one because it’s packed full of some great information on growing your blog. Oh yeah…and it’s cheap too!

Categories Blogging
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Hitler Gets Google Slapped

Posted on February 13th, 2010 by Shawn Swisher

This is absolutely hilarious! Anyone out there who has ever gotten frustrated with Google (hey, who hasn’t) while trying to carve out their piece of success online is going to love this video.

Categories Misc Stuff
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Optimizing Title Tags to Increase Traffic

Posted on February 3rd, 2010 by Shawn Swisher

If your website is ranking well for various keyword phrases but you don’t seem to be getting your expected share of traffic, you might want to take a look at your page title tags. In case you’re wondering, the title tag is not the title of your post. It is the text that appears in the title bar or tab area of your browser window. If you use the All in one SEO plugin, you can set up a default title format or you can insert a specific title when you make your post.

The search engines use the title tag as part of their method of deciding what your page is about, but of course it’s not the only part. They also look at other factors like the content of your page and the anchor text of incoming links. More importantly however, the title tag is the first line of the listing that you see in the search results of Google, Yahoo, Bing and others. This is what the user sees before determining whether or not to click on your listing and proceed to your website. Writing an effective page title can mean the difference between the user clicking on your website or going somewhere else.

How do you write an effective title tag? Just remember that you have to “sell” the click. Often, as webmasters, we try to cram all the keywords we want to rank for inside the page title. Sometimes people write incredibly long and spammy titles that end up looking more like a novel. Let’s look at two examples of possible page titles for a search for “two piece golf balls”.

Golf Balls|Cheap Golf Balls|Discount Golf Balls|Two Piece Golf Balls|Tour Golf Balls

Wow, that one looks a little spammy doesn’t it? There really is no reason for the phrase “golf balls” to show up that many times in the title now is there? It’s just an indication of a webmaster who is trying to cover all the bases and make his page rank for multiple keyword phrases. But let’s get back to the user who has just searched for two piece golf balls. What if this next title showed up just below the previous one?

Tour Approved Two Piece Golf Balls at Discount Prices

Now I don’t know about you, but if I were looking for two piece golf balls and those two results appeared at positions one and two, I would click on the second result first without a doubt. Why? Because it’s easy to read and tells me the website has exactly what I’m looking for. Notice that the second result has the main keyword phrase of golf balls but still includes the secondary keywords of tour, two piece and discount as well. But unlike the first one, it is much easier to read and will be much more likely to result in a clickthrough from someone looking for two piece golf balls.

Just remember that the page title tag is actually an advertisement. It’s like a billboard telling searchers what they will find on your site. You want them to click on that title and come to your website so they can see all your wonderful content and hopefully generate some revenue during their visit. So if your traffic isn’t quite up to par, examine your title tags and imagine yourself as the searcher. Are you selling the click, or could you be driving traffic away?

Categories Traffic and SEO
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Day 4 of 31DBBB: Watch Somebody Do It Right

Posted on January 31st, 2010 by Shawn Swisher

I’ve now finished day 4 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. At the rate I’m going it will likely take me 31 weeks instead of 31 days to complete the course. But that’s ok, I said from the beginning I wasn’t on any strict schedule. My main goal is simply completing it. Day four’s task was to analyze a top blog in your niche. I’m going to briefly point out two blogs that I have in my feedreader and list a few things I like about each one.

First on the list is Viper Chill, written by a young blogger who goes by Glenn. Viper Chill covers multiple blogging and marketing topics with the goal of teaching you how to make money online. Most of the posts are geared toward the blogger who has yet to make any significant income online, which probably includes most of the bloggers out there. Viper Chill has a very interactive readership. Just scanning through the posts on the home page at the moment, I see a low comment count of 27 and a high comment count of 95. Obviously, he’s creating content that lots of people like and want to discuss further. Currently, his Feedburner stats show a readership of 3,777.

The most interesting thing to me is his posting schedule. In December, he posted only four posts and with today being the last day of January, he has only six for the month. That’s a much lower frequency than most bloggers aim for but if you take a look at his posts, you’ll see what I believe is the main reason for his success. These posts are often massive and always filled with great content. Personally, I just don’t agree with bloggers who put a numerical goal for post frequency. I would rather not read a post unless there is some serious value behind it and Viper Chill fills that need for me. Read More→

Categories Blogging
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Day 3 of 31DBBB: Time to Be a Pitchman!

Posted on January 25th, 2010 by Shawn Swisher

I’m now through with day 3 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. Darren lists 11 different ways to promote a blog post and I used a few different ones on my post from day 2. Specifically I used social messaging, social bookmarking and internal links. Oh, and I also got another blogger to link to it so that makes four I guess. As far as short-term traffic goes from this promotion, I’m seeing minimal results so I guess I’m a poor salesman. However, building links is a long-term process so I’m not concerned. If you had any significant traffic bursts from your blog promotion methods in day 3, let me know.

Up next: Day 4 – Watch Somebody Do It Right

Categories Blogging
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7 Ways You Can Profit from Your Blog

Posted on January 21st, 2010 by Shawn Swisher

Whether you’re new to blogging or you’ve been at it awhile but haven’t seen the money roll in yet, you’ll want to check out How to REALLY Profit From Your Blog, a great post by Pat Flynn over at Smart Passive Income. I know you’ve probably seen these “make money online” posts all over the web and most of them are just a way to drive affiliate sales, but this one is real. Pat lays out several ways for anyone to earn an income from their blog. These aren’t get rich quick schemes. They are real ways to make money online. I use one of the ways here at Ninja Blog Setup (providing a service) and two of his other recommendations are on my list for future expansion later in the year. If you aren’t happy with the financial results of your blog, don’t miss Pat’s post.

Categories Blogging
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Day 2 of 31DBBB: Making a List and Checking it Twice

Posted on January 19th, 2010 by Shawn Swisher

I’ve made it through day 2 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, but before I talk about today’s task, let me say that I’m trying not to cross a line that I shouldn’t cross as I document myself going through 31DBBB. I don’t want this series of posts to be a free giveaway of Darren’s ebook. However, I do want it to be something people can follow along with after they have already purchased 31DBBB. After re-reading my post from day 1, I feel I went a little too far, so from this point on I will try to speak about the results of my daily tasks without giving away the actual content of Darren’s course. If you haven’t yet picked up a copy of 31DBBB, go grab it now. It’s very reasonably priced…less than the average book at Barnes & Noble.

Ok, with that said, today’s task is about list posts. Darren gives us eight great reasons why list posts are powerful for bloggers and describes three different types of list posts we can incorporate into our blogs. I chose to do the “post as a list” type and published it as my most recent post before this one. It’s titled 10 Free WordPress Themes That Look Like They Cost Money.

Let me know what you think. Also, feel free to post a link to your list post in the comments below!

Next up: Day 3 – Time to be a Pitchman!

Categories Blogging
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10 Free WP Themes That Look Like They Cost Money

Posted on January 19th, 2010 by Shawn Swisher

If you’ve been looking for a free WordPress theme to spice up your blog but just can’t find one that doesn’t look cheap, check out these 10 great WP themes. You may find one that gives you that custom look without having to pay one cent!