Archive for the ‘Blogging’ Category

Guest posting –writing an article for someone else's blog – can be a very effective way of establishing yourself as an expert in your field, and helping to market your business. Posts can seamlessly incorporate keywords to benefit the blogger's SEO efforts, and they often generate industry discussion, get shared on social networks such as FaceBook, re-tweeted (RT) on Twitter, and linked to from other blogs. Continue reading

Have you ever had the feeling that there is something you should have done but just couldn't remember what? Horrible isn't it and it can eat away at you for days and days. Maybe it's remembering a loved one's birthday or visiting the doctor. Important things that you don't want to miss. Continue reading

If you are from Wales or speak Welsh, you may like to read our Welsh translation of Aaron Wall’s great SEO Blogger’s guide. Here it is: Continue reading

I am feeling a little guilty of late as I haven't made many posts for a while, so I thought I would post an arrangement of links that you may find useful and have recently found their way on my bookmark list (not all new):

• Stepping Stones of User Conversions.
• 6 Steps to Creating a Perfect Landing Page.
• 10 Tips for Product Landing Pages.
• If You Build it, Links will Come.
• SEO, Meets SMM.
• Web Broswer Stats - I.E. 6 is still top dog (just), although you will see F.F. is snapping at its heels.
• Web Developer's Handbook - lots of cool tools.
• Google Hot Trends - only for the US at the moment - it is kind of a mashup of Google Zeitgeist and Google Trends.

Tag "“ I'm it. I have been tagged by Karl Ribas to give a little insight into why I blog. I see no reason not to, so here goes:

• Researching, Learning & Archiving Notes "“ I am of the same mindset of Karl in that I too get a lot out from writing posts. I don't know if it's the influence of schooling, but I feel that when I get something down on paper and structure a topic in my own words, I then know that I really understand a subject and can demonstrate this to others. I also like the fact that you can add your own tuppence worth to the table.

• Blogging is the new C.V. - Adam Darowskie sees 'the blog as being the new resume' and I have to agree. It provides a great way of letting your clients and prospects know who you are. Apart from showcasing your business, it also demonstrates a real passion for what you do.

• New Friends & New Ventures Opportunities "“ blogging enables you to meet like minded people in your area of expertise and interest "“ worldwide! You can bounce ideas of each other, plan new ventures together or just have a good old chin-wag about whatever is on your mind.

• Link Love & Rankings "“ a blog is a great way to market your business and rank organically. Many SEO folks will agree that links are the currency on the web and it's always rewarding when people like your content and link to you.

• Improvement of Communication Skills "“ story telling and writing has never been a real strength of mine, although through reading other blogs and spending time thinking about what the reader wants and not (always) what I want to tell, I am now in a stronger position to communicate written words compared to when I started 8 months ago.

Right, that's me done "“ here's tagging to 5 un-expecting souls! Keith Bond Kevin Gibbons Lyndon Antcliff Drew Meyers Leo Babauta

As of Friday 16^th of Feb, Google is now reporting the number of subscribers a publisher has acquired through Google Reader and Google Personalized Homepage. Joe's Sem Blog subscribers stats: I was shocked to see the number of subscribers for this blog had doubled and thought it must be a glitch. It appears not, with Feedburner also reporting and justifying the increase. Fellow bloggers have seen insanely amounts of increased subscribers. It is nice ego boost, although I think a reality check is in order as the number of subscribers does not represent the click-through rates and subsequent traffic that a blog receives. I am also a little suspicious as to the accuracy of the count of subscribers - but hey, who am I to judge? More news at TechCrunch and Wordpress.

Lee Odden has supplied the search community with an awesome list of search marketing blogs. Over 250 in fact! As great as the list is, I was a little bewildered as where best to start - there are the usual household names, but also heaps of cool new ones.

You could load them all into your favourite RSS reader, use a social bookmarking site or even create a custom search engine to plough through all the news. A custom search engine, isn't that what Google does anyway you might ask?

Well sort of, although I think it holds value as the list has been filtered (customised) under the careful eye of Lee & co. Plus acronyms such as SEM, SMM & SMO are not that well represented for search marketing in search engines, eeek!

Search All Search Marketing Blogs

Google Custom Search

Loren Baker over at Search Engine Journal has been taking votes for the best Search Marketing Blog in various categories. The votes are in and congratulations to all the winners! This gave me the idea to categorise Lee's Search Marketing blogs into custom search engines using Google Co-op. So here goes:

Category list can be found here.

Link Building

Google Custom Search

SMM/SMM

Google Custom Search

SEO

Google Custom Search

Black Hat SEO

Google Custom Search

SEM

Google Custom Search

Paid Search

Google Custom Search

Blog Marketing & PR

Google Custom Search

Web Design & Analytics

Google Custom Search

Search (Engine) News

Google Custom Search

Miscellaneous Search Marketing

Google Custom Search

For simplicity I have limited each blog to only one category. Maybe I will expand it later on. These categories are my interpretation of Lee's descriptions and also some of my own judgments. With over 250 blogs and the quick nature that I put the search engines together, I am sure that a few blogs may have fallen into the wrong areas (or even worse, completely omitted). So I apologise in advance if this is the case and to those that I have put into the miscellaneous list - they are all important, but time was the real issue!

Please let me know if I missed any blogs or if I am way off the mark and I will happily add or move them.

I hope this is of some use to someone, even if it's just for a couple of playful minutes. As always, feedback welcomed.

I am very pleased that Lee from the Top Rank Online Marketing Blog has considered this blog as a must read search marketing blog. To be up there with so many talented bloggers in the industry gives me great pleasure and well done Lee for noticing my blog so quickly. Thanks!

Wikipedia or Wikia are following suite with Google, by offering lots of cool free online ools. Although Wikia's collection are very different and the ads tools allows advertises to keep 100% of the Ad Revenue.

Wikia , the commercial branch of Wikipedia, has launched a range of free tools for bloggers and publishers that want to build collaborative features into their sites.

The service, called OpenServing, will offer free software, content and hosting to its subscribers, who can also keep all of the advertising revenues they generate from the apps they develop. E-consultancy blurb

I am sure we will here lots more about this in due course, but doesn't it look exciting!