Category: Internet Marketing

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Blog Content Blogs Internet Marketing SEO Small Business Twitter

Bill Boorman Social Media King – SEO Performer, Not So Much

Bill Boorman

Bill BoormanI have a new friend who lives in the UK, Bill Boorman (@BillBoorman). Bill is a recruiter trainer (we have that in common) and a heck of a nice guy.  He mentions me in an article that he just wrote lamenting his poor SEO skills and SERP (search engine results page) ranking.

Bill has a really good number of followers and quite a few first level connections on LinkedIn.  His main issue is that he writes great content (in his opinion as well as others’) on his blog but doesn’t think he is ‘getting found’ by enough readers.  It is a question of traffic… he wants more.

There are lots of ways to increase your traffic.  One of the best ways in my opinion, is to rank well for search terms related to your particular niche.  To do that you can employ a do-it-yourself methodology for you can hire a professional.  My thought is that you should hire a professional.  I have made a pretty good argument for hiring a professional on my business blog: SEO for Hire.  Another good friend of mine Erin Kennedy, a certified professional resume writer, makes a good point in one of her recent blog articles about hiring a professional resume writer… different field, but same principle.

It boils down to this Bill, you can spend a lot of your own productive time trying to get SEO right for your site, or you can hire a pro.  Best choice is the latter.

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Blog Content Blogs Internet Marketing SEO Small Business Twitter

Branding Email – Visual Instructions

HTML Email Signature

I saw a great post on branding your email over on RecruitingBloggers.com.  My friend the Recruiting Animal (@animal on Twitter) runs the site which has a multitude of recruiting based bloggers who contribute there.

This particular article was written by CindyKraft (@CFOCoach), check out her blog here.  Cindy did an excellent job of explaining what needs to be in an email signature.  Seeing the post gave me an idea for writing this post.  See, since I’m a lazy guy I have no compunction whatsoever at ripping off great post ideas and running with them.

After reading Cindy’s post I thought the only way that I might improve upon it would be to add a visual – and perhaps give an explanation of what components I put into my signature.  so here goes:

HTML Email Signature

I send email from Outlook, always in HTML.  That gives me the ability to have live hyperlinks in my email.  The components of my signature are pretty complicated.  First I should pause for a minute to give credit where credit is due.  I stole the idea for the signature from my friend Jim Durbin (@SMHeadHunter) who is heavy duty into social media marketing, thanks Jim.

So here are my components:

  • Logo – contributes to branding.  I do SEO which should get you ‘Seen Online by Everyone’ – this is a visual that will get you to recognize me and my brand.
  • Full Name – hyperlinked to an up-to-date online resume.
  • Title – lets you know who you are dealing with (ego gratification for me ;o)
  • Affiliate Program – hyperlinked to my affiliate program description.  I share the wealth.  YES, I’m in business to make money, but you can earn too!
  • LinkedIn Profile – a quick click and you can connect to more than 15MM people
  • Office Phone – hyperlinked to Jaxtr which can let them call me for free with just a click
  • Website – hyperlinked to my email capture squeeze page

If you don’t know how to do this or you don’t have time, I can put them together for you.  Rates are negotiable (depending upon the size of your staff/number of sigs you need)  Get in touch with me through my business blog at http://WebsitesThatDriveSales.com/blog/

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Blog Content Blogs Information Marketing Internet Marketing SEO Small Business Twitter

Just added ‘Subscribe to Comments’

subscribe-smallI just added a great plug-in to my blog that is designed to encourage conversation among readers. the blog here isn’t only about me, but about my audience as well. In fact it is mostly about my audience. I have other blogs where I provide good and services and do it for money. Here I just give away advice.

Since the idea here is for a free flow of great information, what better way to do that than to encourage commenting? Hope y’all will make use of the new feature.

– Carl

PS – here is the link to the plug-in for your wordpress installation: Subscribe to Comments Now!

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Blogs Information Marketing Internet Marketing Small Business Twitter

Perry Belcher & Google

While I was twittering this morning I happened to see a tweet by Perry Belcher. Perry had posted a link to an article about something funny that happens when you type ‘twitter is’ in Google [you can see the article here: http://mashable.com/2009/08/11/google-twitter-search/]

I thought it was pretty funny. And it gave me an idea. I wanted to see what would happen if it did the same thing only substituting ‘Perry Belcher’ for Twitter. for those of you who don’t know Perry is something of a guru in online marketing, a social media genius, a mentor of mine. I think he is heroic. Like many of us, he’s not perfect.

Check the screen shot below AND then read on to get some explanation.

perry belcher in google

You see in the list a few ‘peculiar’ listings. As it happens Perry got in a scrape. More than a few people have tried exploit his hardship by publicly slamming him. I think it is compeltely undeserved. You can check out Perry’s explanation in a video that he made on the subject: Perry Belcher Explains

I’ve gotten a ton of great information from Perry. I can vouch for him interms of knowledge. As far as character, he appears to be as genuine as they come. I’m glad to be associated with him. Check out his "Get Money from Google" which is top notch.

 

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Blog Content Blogs Internet Marketing SEO

How To Improve Your Blog – Do Follow Plugin

Welcome Twitter & Facebook Friends!

saynotonofollowGlad you guys are here! I’ve been doing the blogging thing for a number of years now, and even though I’m just a passable writer, I’ve managed to put into practice some tricks that have made my blogs pretty successful. I’ve also taught a number of my clients these same tricks which have helped their blogs and websites get highly ranked in the major search engines.

Most SEO guys will tell you that one of the most powerful elements of ‘importance’ to search engines is links that point back to your site. This links and their anchor text is what accounts for your site being indexed and ranked for the keywords in the anchor text. The more links pointing to your site with anchor text that consists of keyword phrases that you are targeting, the better.

This is what makes blogs such a great thing. You can get links pointing back to your site almost at will, if you know how to do it. There are really three main ways:

  • Commenting – writing comments on other people’s blogs, using your keyword text as the ‘name’ and the page your are targeting as the ‘website’
  • Linking – putting links in your blog post so that your will get a trackback from their blog to yours.
  • Blogroll – getting on their blogroll.

Now what most people don’t know is that the first two are generally a waste of time (at least as far as search engines and indexing go) for 95% of all blogs.  That is because the blogs are using ‘no-follow’.  So the hyperlinks that are pointing to your site, that you so carefully, lovingly, and laboriously added to your list of related blogs by commenting and linking from your posts are nothing but a big waste of time.

“Why are most blogs ‘nofollow’ anyway?” you might be asking.  Good question.  Peole thought it would be a good way to fight comment spam by the comment spambots.  What they forgot about what what the web is about in the first place… people helping one another and linking back and forth. There are better ways to fight comment spam than punishing bloggers who take the time to post thoughtfully on your articles.

That’s why I put together a little training video for people.  Totally free, it shows you how to add a neat tool to your browser that will help you detect if a blog is using ‘no follow’ of if the blog owner has been smart enough to use the Do Follow plugin.  Plus I show you how to install the Do Follow plugin on your own site.

Watch the video here

After you watch the video I’d like for you to do three things for me (well really do them for yourself)

  1. Install the Quirk SearchStatus toolbar in your browser
  2. Install the Do Follow plugin for your blog (sorry if you are on WordPress.com or Blogger you should get a self-hosted blog)
  3. Come back here and comment with your URL telling people that you now “Follow”

Here is a list of some blogs from various fields that you might find helpful to post to, all of which use Do Follow

Hope you have found this to be helpful.

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Blog Content Blogs Information Marketing Internet Marketing SEO

7 Reasons You Shouldn’t Have a Website

That’s what I said, you shouldn’t have a website.

You should have a blog instead.

Now that you’ve found a web host for your business / marketing website you have just one question – “What the heck do I put up on my website?” My very best suggestion is is that you put up a blog and not a regular website, at least at first. I would suggest that you use WordPress as your blog software. Here are my 7 reasons you shouldn’t have a website but should use a blog for your website: [read more at my other website]

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Blog Content Blogs Internet Marketing SEO

How to Write a GREAT Blog Post Title

This is a subject that many people are interested in but few understand.

There are two goals that you want to accomplish with your title.

First, you want it to be search engine friendly and be something that will be displayed in a lot of searches.
Second, and perhaps most important, you want the title to encourage people to click and read YOUR post as opposed to the other links that are presented in the search.

Check out this handful of articles to get some great ideas for blog titles from some of the best blogs.

John Chow has a good article about writing great blog titles:  How To Write a Good Blog Title for High Website Traffic

Ten formulas for great titles from copyblogger: 10 Sure-Fire Headline Formulas That Work

5 tips for writing great blog titles: 5 Tips For Developing Great Post Titles for Your Blog

A list of 33 ways to write a great headline:  33 Foolproof Headline Strategies

Hope you find these ideas helpful.  Remember a title that doesn’t get clicked doesn’t bring you any readers.