Blog Content Provider .com

Excuse that last post, please. I was trying out a new tool. It’s called Clipmarks.

I wanted to try out a new blogging tool to see if it was better than my current method of uploading and using photos in blogs. I have three methods that I use primarily. The first method, which is frowned upon by many bloggers, is the hot linking method. If I see a photo or image I want to use then I copy and paste the URL of the image into WordPress and link back to the source (I always give attribution). I use this method sparingly, but it has come in handy at times when I wanted to give a visual presentation for the concept I was discussing.

My Unusual Photo Use Methods

Another method for using images, one that is more preferable, is to take a screen shot of the website or image I want and upload it to WordPress as an image. This is obviously a better way, but it takes more time. And, in order to do this you have to alter the htaccess of the blog that you are blogging to or you can’t upload the image. Some of the blogs that I contribute to have not been configured to make that happen. So I have a third way to use photos for those blogs.

Instead of uploading directly into WordPress, I upload the photo to my Flickr account. Then I hot link the photo from Flickr. This is not the most preferable way to use photos because Flickr, while an excellent photo sharing website, is a third-party source and resizes all the photos to the same size. Still, this method has saved my life a few times.

I wanted to try a new service that I thought might be helpful and could potentially replace those last two methods of working with photos in WordPress. I went into it open minded, but not expecting too much. You’ll be delighted to know that I’m not too disappointed.

Clipmarks Just Doesn’t Make The Grade

Clipmarks is a service that allows you to clip certain sections of a web page and share those web pages with your friends. You can also use the service to clip images or parts of web pages to blogs that you write. That was what I wanted to use the service for. Only, my first attempt at using it (this morning) didn’t turn out so well.

The service is relatively easy to use, but I don’t recommend it for blogging. You saw the way the image looked. There is another limitation to the service as well. It will only copy up to 1,000 characters. That’s not much. Since I have a tendency to screen shot entire web pages and reduce them in size, that wouldn’t work for me at all. So you can see my disappointment in Clipmarks as a blogging tool.

It’s not that Clipmarks isn’t a useful tool at all, but as a blogging tool for clipping parts of websites and using them within your blog, I do not recommend it for that at all. So a big thumbs up to Zuggu and a sideways thumb slanted downward for Clipmarks. I doubt that I’ll be using it much after today.

When it comes to blog optimization, there is more to it than simply putting keywords into your content. In fact, keywords are a small part of the optimization process. Other elements that play a part in blog optimization include:

• Your blog template
• The software or platform you use
• Title of your blog posts
• h2 and h3 tags
• Employment of lists
• Graphics and alt tags
• Title attributes
• Anchor text
• Internal linking between blog posts
• Use of linkbait
• Categories and tags

To truly optimize your blog posts, you need to think about more than just keywords. Successful bloggers learn to use keywords in a natural manner while encouraging links, trackbacks, and comments in the midst of creating useful blog content and a variety of technoques that end with creative blog optimization.

Well they launched the new DMOZ blog but it remains to be seen whether it will be just a pr deal or if it will actually have useful information about getting your websites and blogs entered into DMOZ the same year you submit them.

So far, it appears that the AOL staff has been fairly well welcomed into the blogosphere. (I really do hate that word). The comments have been pretty tame so far.

Maybe everyone is afraid of being delisted altogether if they are too rough on the staff. I really really hope this is the first step toward DMOZ interacting with the public and becoming more transparent in the way they review sites and input description.

I’ll wait and see.

For those of you who thought DMOZ was dead (including me), check this out. They’ve got a frickin’ blog.

This may be just a feeble attempt to rescue DMOZs relevance, or it might be a prop by Google execs. Then too, it could be a legitimate attempt by DMOZ to maintain its historic reputation as a directory.

Personally, I think most directories are not necessary. Yahoo!, obviously, is an exception. But what makes Yahoo! the exception is the fact that it owns a search engine (Inktomi) and offers other services that are of benefit to webmasters all over the world. DMOZ does not own a search engine nor does it have anything to offer webmasters other than a free listing in a high PR directory. But as the Web grows in all directions, that particular benefit gets less and less valuable.

Why Directories Are History

The reason I say that is because you can build links, thousands of highly valuable links, in the time that it takes you to get listed in DMOZ using your own blog and some article marketing. It used to be that you would put up a website and the first thing you’d do is list it in DMOZ. You’d be listed in a couple of weeks and DMOZs high PR would benefit you a lot more quickly. Then the search engines would crawl your website and you’d get those high search engine positions that everyone coveted. That’s not the way the web works any more.

Now, you build a website and add a blog. You do a little social marketing and get other bloggers to link to yours. This isn’t necessarily done to gain PR, but to gain traffic to your blog. Then you start a PPC campaign and an article marketing campaign and start driving targeted traffic to your website and your blog. Because you blog every day and you attract free links from cool people who own websites with high PR, you can get your website crawled by the search engines long before you get listed in DMOZ. Since it takes about six months to get listed in DMOZ (that’s if the gods are smiling at you), you can achieve a PR 3 or 4 by the time you get listed and while that one link might still benefit you it is more likely that you’ve got so many other great links going for you due to all of your marketing efforts, that one single link isn’t going to tip the scales in your favor by much.

I say it’s a good thing that DMOZ has a blog. But they showed up a little late for the party and now all the pretty girls are gone. Besides, I can’t even trackback to it. What good is that?

If you are using google adsense in your blog, uploading the adsense deluxe wordpress plugin might be a great option for you.

Rather than having your adsense appear at the top and bottom or in the sidebar of your blog is okay, but much less effective than having the adsense appear in the middle of each blog post you make.

After uploading it and activating the adsense deluxe plugin, go to options and you will see an adsense deluxe tab.

You install your google adsense code into the appropriate box and save it as your default. If you also use yahoo publisher or have other adsense accounts or channels, you can set up more than one adsense account inside your adsense deluxe plugin.

When you are making a post, in some versions of wordpress, you may have to “save and continue editing” each time you post before you hit publish, then the adsense deluxe toolbar will appear above your text box.

Simply put your cursor where you want the adsense to appear in your post and choose the adsense account you wish to use from the dropdown. Then hit publish and adsense should appear where you wanted it.

Easy to use and increases your clickthrus. I recommend it!

Social bookmarking has become quite popular in recent years. The idea is to keep tabs on information you find interesting and to share that with others. It works best if you build a large network of people who share similar interests. Here are a few tips to help you do that more effectively through del.icio.us:

1. Bookmark something every day – Don’t just do it haphazardly. To be effective in social bookmarking you have to be consistent. If you haven’t used your account in two or three months people will notice and they won’t add you to their network.
2. Add the one-click add-on to your browser – Whether you use Firefox or Internet Explorer, you can add an extension to your browser that allows you to add bookmarks with just one click without having to sign in to your account. This is a major time saver.
3. Don’t just bookmark your own websites – Most people will tell you not to bookmark your own sites at all. I think it’s OK to do this as long as that’s not all you bookmark. You can even tell people that a certain bookmark is your own website by making that note in the comments field. But if you bookmark other people’s stuff – news, blogs, websites you find interesting, and anything that you like – more often than you bookmark your own stuff then you’ll make a lot more friends.
4. Add at least one new friend every day – When you bookmark an item, del.icio.us will tell you how many other people have bookmarked the same item. Click on that link and you can see their comments. Find a comment by a user that you like? Visit their bookmarks page and take a look at their bookmarks. If they have several bookmarks that you like then you’ve found a good friend. At the top of the page, click where it says “add to your network.”
5. Delete people from your network who do not reciprocate – There might be instances where you’ll ignore this advice, but on the whole you want people in your network who are active users. An active user is someone who adds friends to their network. Give them a week or two to return the favor and if they don’t then drop them.
6. Be prolific in the use of tags – Use lots of tags. The more the better. Of course, they should be relevant to the item you are tagging. If you bookmark an item that discusses collecting seashells by the seashore, for instance, then you can tag it with the following tags: collecting, sea, seashell, seashore, beach, beach combing; and if the article is about a specific beach or location then add the geographic tags as well: Florida, Jacksonville, etc.
7. Spend 15-20 minutes per day bookmarking and networking – It doesn’t take long to build a solid network of active users and a good list of bookmarks. If you bookmark five items per day and add two friends to your network every day then after one month you will have 150 bookmarks and sixty friends. This is easy to do in 15 minutes.

Social bookmarking is a useful tool. Now that del.icio.us is owned by Yahoo it is pretty certain that the social site will stick around awhile. By adding links to your favorite sites you encourage others to share their interests with you. This builds link popularity and drives traffic to your favorite websites. Furthermore, if you don’t already have an account, setting one up takes all of five minutes.

If you desire more exposure for your business, I strongly encourage the use of del.icio.us. Scratch the backs of others and they’ll scratch yours.

Caveat: Increase your own blog’s exposure by using bookmarking sites to promote your blog posts. Blog Content Provider can do this for you. Ask us how.

Professional Management for Business Blogs
Business Blogging
SEO, Content, and Link Building Strategies that work

by Chris McElroy aka NameCritic

Many people turn to a blog content provider because they just don’t know how to get the most out of their blogs. Many others - probably with some overlap - choose to have a blog content provider take over the writing and management of their blog because they have trouble coming up with daily content.

When you hire a professional blogger to write and manage your blog, concerns about writer’s block tend to fade away. But how do professional bloggers get their ideas? How do they keep content that’s relevant and fresh posted on your blog each and every day all month long?

There are a number of ways. The following five, however, speak to the most common ways in which bloggers approach client blogs.

1. They do some research. In part, this entails reading the content of your business’ website to get a feel for the products and services that you offer. They look at posts that have been made in the past and they take a look at your industry.

By taking the time to understand your company, your products and services, the way you look at your industry and your business goals, a professional blogger can create a database of topics to explore in your blog.

2. Blog content providers read other blogs on the same topic as the one they are writing. For example, if your blog is about travel, the professional blogger will look at similar sites to see what’s being talked about. Same is true whether you are a real estate agent, a hotel manager, a chef or a race car driver.

By reading similar blogs, your blog content provider can help to engage in conversations with others interested in the subject and even create links to boost your blog’s popularity.

3. Blog content providers can take a look at your products and services and offer suggestions for putting them to good use. Do you offer a marketing service? If so, your blogger can create content based on ways in which that service can be used.

Sometimes, drawing more customers is simply a matter of providing alternative uses for products and services - uses that you may not see because of your connection to the project.

4. Blog content providers can work with you to create feature content. Feature pieces have long been the mainstay of journalism; people want to hear personal stories and experiences. By profiling one of your customers, working with customer testimonials or offering product reviews of helpful software or even websites, professional blogger can help you to engage with your customers or clients.

You may be reading this article thinking that these are things that you could do on your own. You may be wondering why you need a blog content producer working on your team. “Can’t I just do this myself,” you may ask.

The truth is that, yes, you can do all of these things on your own. However, often your time will be fractured by phone calls, customer questions and other parts of doing business. A blog content provider, on the other hand, will be committed to creating fresh content that draws readers; the right blog content provider will also be able to create content that attracts search engine crawlers as well.

As a result, your blog will receive increased notice and increased readership and you are likely to experience a surge of interest in the products and services that your company offers. Is a blog content provider a good investment? The right blogger is.

Do you use a signature link on your blogs? You should.

There are several reasons why you want to use a signature link, or two or three, like the one below:

• One, it brands your blog
• Secondly, you can also build up your link popularity using your signature links alone
• Signature links are great for driving traffic to specific web pages of your website or a particular website that you own
• Since signature links can include your important keywords, you are optimizing your blog posts with your signature links

The Many Variations Of Signature Links

There are plenty of ways you can use signature links. If you own several blogs, for instance, you can plug each of your blogs in your signature link. Or if you have several related websites then you can drive traffic to each of them with your signature links. There are various ways you can get creative as well. Here are some sample signature links for you to check out:

• Search Engine Optimization Journal - Highly creative with use of contextual links, banner ads, and an e-mail sign up form
• World Class Poetry Blog - Excellent use of a photo for branding and selective anchor text linking
• Assistant For Real Estate Blog - Effective use of name and phone number for branding
• Free Software Review Blog - Does a great job of promoting several websites at once

How you use your signature links is not as important as having one. Making sure that you brand your blog is an important marketing strategy that should be under every bloggers consideration. You can refine the use of it later. It’s important to start signing your blog posts today.

Professional Management for Business Blogs
Business Blogging
SEO, Content, and Link Building Strategies that work

This chart shows the erratic link popularity of the News and Media Blog. This blog is a blog written by me for NameCritic. I will tell you in a minute why I’m showing you this, but first I want to define link popularity.

Link popularity is the rating the search engines give you for your inbound links. Whenever an inbound link is created for your website - that is, when another website links to you - then the search engines count that toward your link popularity. Your total link popularity is a cumulative of all of the link popularity from each of the search engines.

Fluctuation in your link popularity is natural. Older links will disappear after a period of time. That’s why it is important to always work on building links. Another thing that affects link popularity are changes in search engine algorithms. Whenever the search engines change the criteria for counting links, any older links that do not meet the new criteria will be discounted so if you have a lot of those types of links then you’ll see a drop in link popularity.

How Link Popularity Is Counted

Take a look at the chart and you’ll see the last drop in link popularity for the News and Media Blog. It isn’t as sharp as the one before it. That one took the plunge. But the curious thing about this drop is that it took place right at the time we decided to start posting to the blog every other day instead of our usual every day posting pattern. It’s interesting that this event caused our link popularity to slip. I think, rather, that it caused our link popularity to slow down some, but it shouldn’t have caused our link popularity to fall off since link popularity measures links you have built up, not those that you will build in the future.

Nevertheless, drop nothwithstanding, you want to post to your blog every day. It not only affects your link popularity - and the link popularity of any sites you link to from your blog - but it also affects your search engine saturation. But that’s a different blog post.

Professional Management for Business Blogs
Business Blogging
SEO, Content, and Link Building Stategies that work