feed hat blog

As bloggers, we put a lot of effort into telling our readers how to do things.

We believe that if we can just give them enough informative content that they’ll subscribe to our blog and never leave. We try to become the best teacher we possibly can, instilling wisdom down into short, usable posts that our readers can put into action right away.

But what if that’s not what they really want?

What if they don’t want a teacher to tell them what to do?

What if all they’re looking for is a warm and understanding person who understands what they’re going through and is willing to love them, no matter what?

Someone like (you guessed it) Mr. Rogers.

Do you care how they feel?

Being a kid can be tough.

Everyone is always telling you to be quiet. No one wants to listen to what you think. Your parents make you go to bed, just when all of the fun is starting.

But not Mr. Rogers.

Fred Rogers made you feel like it was just you and him hanging out. He respected what you thought. He loved you, not because he had to (like your parents), but because he genuinely believed you were special.

After a while, you believed him. You felt special. You came back to the TV, day after day, just so you could feel that way again.

The best bloggers do that too. I read Copyblogger everyday for years before submitting this guest post, and it wasn’t just the information that kept me coming back. It was because, when I was done reading, it made me feel smarter, like I was one of the few people on the web who was truly in the know.

The more I think about it, the more I believe that’s a part of our job. Our job is bloggers isn’t just to inform our readers, but to make them feel special.

And yes, I realize it’s a little hokey, but I think Mr. Rogers can show us how. Listen to some of these quotes:

Lesson: For your audience to love you, first you have to love them. And they have to know it.

You know, I think everybody longs to be loved, and longs to know that he or she is lovable. And, consequently, the greatest thing that we can do is to help somebody know that they’re loved and capable of loving.

How much do you care about your readers? I mean, really care?

Mr. Rogers didn’t just talk to children on television. He also visited them in person. On a regular basis, he would go out into public and ask kids about themselves. He would bend down and look little boys and girls straight in the eyes, so they knew he was fully focused on them. Then they poured their hearts out to him right on the spot.

No, he wasn’t compensated for that time, and neither are we. Most popular bloggers spend inordinate amounts of time reading every comment, responding to every email, and watching what people say on Twitter. None of this has any direct effect on traffic, but what it does is build goodwill. One at a time, your subscribers find out that you really care, and it transforms them from readers into raving fans.

Lesson: Before you can be a leader, first you have to be a neighbor.

Our world hangs like a magnificent jewel in the vastness of space. Every one of us is a part of that jewel. A facet of that jewel. And in the perspective of infinity, our differences are infinitesimal.

Mr. Rogers didn’t pretend to be better than the children who watched his show. He didn’t point out how young and ignorant they were. He didn’t appoint himself as an expert and command them to listen.

Instead, he decided to be their neighbor: someone just like them, who knew what they were going through, and was ready to help in any way he could, not because they were defenseless children, but because that’s what good neighbors do.

The same is true for bloggers. If you really want your audience to listen to you, you need to take the time to tell them your story, pointing out the ways you’re similar to them and inspiring them through your example.

Lesson: Create an environment where it’s okay to be imperfect.

I like you just the way you are.

Most kids are terrified, not just of getting caught with their hand in the cookie jar or their parents finding a bad grade on their report card, but of the possibility that they’ll do something so bad that their family will stop loving them. They believe that love is only for “good” children, and they worry that they don’t deserve it.

This quote was Mr. Rogers’ gentle way of correcting (and comforting) them. Over and over again, he would tell them that, “I like you just the way you are,” not just because it sounded good, but because it was what they needed to hear. They needed to know that love wasn’t conditional, and that they were safe enough around him to make mistakes and learn how to improve.

I believe it’s important for us to create the same environment for our readers. You may not realize it, but lots of your readers are probably intimidated by you, believing that they can never be as good as you are, and they’re afraid to reach out to you for help.

It’s important to remind them that you like them just the way they are. Maybe you don’t have to tell them as often as Mr. Rogers, but take a moment every few weeks to mention how impressed you are with the creative ways they’ve implemented your suggestions and how are honored you are to have them as readers.

It’s a small thing, but it matters.

Lesson: Keep what works, throw out what doesn’t, but always know what and why.

Propel, propel, propel your craft softly down liquid solution. Ecstatically, ecstatically, ecstatically, ecstatically, existence is simply illusion.

Every day, Mr. Rogers honed his craft, paying attention to even the smallest of details.

One time, he asked a fellow actor to say “the dog is going back home” instead of “the dog is going back to his owner.” He didn’t like the word owner because it was too possessive for the children viewers.

He also stuck with what worked. “Won’t you be my neighbor?” wasn’t just the theme song for the show; it was a way to set the tone at the beginning of every episode, getting children ready to listen. And so he repeated it, show after show for years.

It’s our responsibility as bloggers to hone our craft in the same way. You should experiment, not just with headlines or post ideas, but with new openings, new closes, new pictures, and even new words. It’s how you improve.

And at the same time, take a lesson from Fred Rogers and don’t be afraid to repeat what works.

Lesson: Seize your opportunity

When will your opportunity be?

Every day that communicate from the heart, you have a chance to change the world.

Back in 1969, Nixon proposed cuts to PBS, leading the Senate to hold a hearing that would decide the future of the station. And who do you think appeared before them and melted their hearts with words?

Mr. Rogers.

He wasn’t the CEO. He wasn’t a Washington insider. He wasn’t even well-known to the committee. Yet he showed up, spoke from the heart, and transformed some of the toughest, most hardened politicians in the country into raving fans.

It was the opportunity to create change that many of us dream of, and he seized it. But here’s the real question:

When will your opportunity be?

Watch this video, and think about it. Because when it comes, we’ll be counting on you.

About the Author: Karl Staib writes about building stronger relationships and being happy at work: Work Happy Now! If you enjoyed this article, you may like to subscribe to his feed, follow him on Twitter, or read one of his most popular articles: How to Write a Career List.

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The Mr. Rogers Guide to Blogging from the Heart

This is an unofficial extra task for the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Workbook.

Today I spent the morning working on a task that I try to do at least once a month – SEO on individual key posts in my archives.

While it’s important to know and practice the basics principles of SEO in the way you set up your blogs structure and in the writing of your posts – I find it can be very worthwhile periodically going back through key old posts to optimise them even further. I’ve used the following process for a while now and in most cases where I do it I find I’m able to increase my ranking for different posts.

I’m not the world’s best SEO but here’s the process that I use in doing this (I invite you to share yours in comments if you do this type of thing) – I hope you find it useful:

1. Identify Key Posts to Optimize for SEO

Across my active blogs I have 10,000 blog posts so I need to be a little strategic about choosing which blog posts I go back to to give a little SEO attention to.

For me the way that I do this is to dig into my Google Analytics account to work out what posts are already having some success with search traffic – but which could be improved. I generally look for posts that are ranking anywhere from #2 to #10 for their keywords (although sometimes focus upon those which are #1 to strengthen them further).

If a page is already generating some traffic from Google for a keyword but isn’t in the number 1 ranking for the word and increase in ranking should also see an increase in the traffic that the post receives. I’ve seen a variety of studies over the years that show that the #1 ranked result in Google can be getting anywhere from 35-55% of all clicks – the higher you are to the top the better.

Lets look at an example:

I’ve got a page on DPS which ranks #2 (depending where you are) for the term Portrait Photography.

It is a good page to optimise because it’s a relatively good term in the amount of traffic it drives (it’s a term that get a fair bit of searching for in Google) but also because the page is a ‘sneeze page‘ which links to quite a few pages across my photography blog and as a result those who visit that page end up visiting over 7 pages on their visit (the site average is a bit over 2 pages per visit).

The page already generates some healthy traffic (a few thousand visitors a month) so I know if I could get it ranking higher it will generate more.

2. Analyze the Competition

I don’t tend to get this deep into SEO too often but from time to time it can be worthwhile doing a little analysis of what pages that are ranking higher than you for a keyword are doing.

One tool that I use for this (and other keyword analysis) is Market Samurai. It’s a tool I’ve only been using for a little while but it’s very handy. That link is an affiliate link but it does give you a 12 day free trial. I’ve shelled out for the full version as it has been so handy a tool for this type of analysis.

One of the modules in the Market Samurai system (there are quite a few more) is one that does analysis of what competing pages are doing for a keyword. Lets take a look at what it gives us for ‘portrait photography’ as a keyword (click to enlarge).

You can see that the #2 ranking is for my site but it also shows a variety of information for other ranked sites in the top 10. Some of the information given is not overly relevant to me (or at least is out of my control like the first column which looks at the age of the domain) but some of the information is useful in getting a handle on how your page compares to other sites.

Knowing this might help you work out what you need to do to rank higher – or it might also give you an indication of whether you have much chance of ranking for the keyword at all (if the site you’re trying to compete against is way beyond what you can achieve it might be an indication that you want to go and work on another page).

In this example lets compare my page with the #1 ranked page:

• DA – domain age – they have a real advantage here.
• PR – page rank – their page is a 4 and mine is a 3. Something to work on.
• IC – index count (the number of pages indexed on the domain) – they are obviously a lot bigger site. This doesn’t mean I can’t rank for the term but gives an indication that I’m up against a pretty established site.
• BLP – the amount of backlinks pointing at the page. They obviously have more (we’ll do some more analysis of this below).
• BLEG – links from .edu/.gov sites pointing at the page – they have a couple here while I don’t
• DMZ – is the site in the DMOS directory (I don’t page a lot of attention to this but some say it can be a factor)
• YAH – is the site in the Yahoo directory (again, not something that I pay much attention to but some say it can be the difference between getting a higher ranking and not)
• Title – is the keyword/s in the title tags of the post (we both do this)
• URL – is the keyword/s in the URL of the post (I have the advantage here)
• Desc – is the keyword in the meta description tag (not something that I’ve found to impact SEO much but perhaps something to consider with the way your post appears in Google)
• Head – is the keyword/s in a header tag on the page
• CA – The Cache Age (the number of days since Google Cached the page)

In this case – the analysis shows me that I’m up against a pretty heavy hitter. It’s an established site with lots of links pointing both at the domain and the page itself. I’m tempted to settle for just ranking #2 for this page but for the sake of the exercise I’ll push on.

Note: Market Samurai also gives you the opportunity to dig deeper into competing sites and can give you a breakdown of the actual links pointing at a page. I won’t do the analysis here (it might be deeper than where people are at) but what I found was that in the case of my competition on this one is that the competing site had a lot of forwarded links pointing at it. I’m not sure what was going on with it but it seems that the majority of the links pointing at my competition are from forwarded domains and not actual live pages. This gives me a little hope so I’ll push on with optimising the page.

3. On Page Optimization

The above competitive analysis might give you a few hints as where to begin in optimizing your page. For example if you’ve not got your keywords in ‘title tags’ or ‘header tags’ – you’ll want to fix that. If your keyword is not in the URL, that’s another thing to consider. Those three tweaks alone could have a fairly significant change (I’ve seen changing title tags to include keywords as increasing rankings significantly).

Once you’ve done that you might want to also look at some smaller tweaks that could play a part. Using keywords in bold, using keywords in alt tags on images etc. These are probably not going to have a major impact but could help a little.

Ultimately if you want to rank for a particular keyword – you need to be using that keyword on your page in key spots (titles, headings, URL). Don’t stuff your page full of the keyword (and whatever you do keep your content useful and readable to readers) but a few tweaks might help.

4. Off Page Optimization

You might find that with some on page optmization that your post is already increasing its rankings – particularly if the keyword you’re looking at is not highly competitive. However at times it can be worth looking at ways of generating some extra links to your page as the number and type of links are important in determining how a page ranks in search engines.

I don’t tend to do much of this type of SEO as I find my site tends to get a nice number of links pretty naturally from other sites but I know those who are more into SEO will work hard on some of the following:

• analysing where the competition is getting their links and looking for opportunities to get links there too – for example if a link is coming to your competitor from a forum discussion or blog comment you might also have an opportunity to leave a quality comment there with your own link.
• links from other blogs you own (particularly one on a relevant topic) link to your page from it
• internal links – this is something I do do – basically its about interlinking your posts. While internal links don’t count as much as an external link they can help a little.
• pitching links to other blogs – if you have a relationship with other blogs in your niche try pitching a link of the page that you’re optimizing to those bloggers.
• sharing links in social media – most social media sites like Twitter and Facebook put no-follow tags on links so they don’t count directly for SEO but I find that an occasional push of an older post on social media sites can lead to indirect links from other bloggers. I also suspect that search engines are paying more attention to what links are being shared in social media sites so getting your links into them (without spamming) could be useful if you have a network of people who will pass them onto their own networks.

Note: the generation of links can be a fairly ‘black hat’ game at times. It can also be pretty addictive and become an obsession. I personally would prefer to spend my time producing quality content than spending my days asking for links. Do be a little careful with link building – not only can it be a time suck but if you engage in tactics that Google sees as against their Terms of Service (buying links for example) you could also be jeopardizing your sites ranking in their index.

Further Reading on SEO

• 8 First Step SEO Tips for Bloggers

Do you ever go back and optimize individual posts on your blog for SEO? If so – I’d love to hear your approach to it. This is the way I do it but I’m certain that there will be many other approaches that others take.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Optimize a Single Post On Your Blog for SEO

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Optimize a Single Post On Your Blog for SEO

Judging by the number of readers who downloaded Jonathan Volk’s guide to affiliate marketing, I say there is a ton of people wanting to know more about Pay Per Click and search engine marketing. While there is a ton of money to be made from using PPC to send traffic to affiliate offers, there’s also a ton of money to be made by running the PPC campaigns for large companies and individuals. This is where Ian Lopuch of PPC Ian comes in. If you’re looking for a PPC career, his blog is a good place to start.

Who Is PPC Ian?

Ian Lopuch is the go to guy in corporate Silicon Valley when it comes to pay per click search engine marketing. When it comes to pay per click as a career path, Ian says there’s nobody more knowledgeable, accomplished, and well known than him. The goal with PPC Ian is to impart his knowledge on you.

My greatest sense of accomplishment comes from mentoring others and I sincerely hope to boost your personal career in PPC with my no-nonsense tips and strategies. Beyond tactical PPC, my goal is to detail “the game” and how to win it (and by winning I mean making as much money as possible, getting promoted rapidly, and building up fame around your own name). In this article, I’ll discuss my unique story, why I decided to launch PPC Ian, and how PPC Ian differs from other blogs in the space.

Ian doesn’t know this but our paths had crossed before. He got his search engine marketing career started at NexTag. I had a business relationship with NexTag during the time he worked there. NexTag is one of the biggest PPC and media buyers in the business. In fact, NexTag claims they’re the Internet’s biggest media buyer. It was a great place for Ian to learn how things really work in the PPC and SEM world. Since then, Ian has worked for dozens of companies and clients and is currently the Director of SEM at a large public company.

Want a Career as a PPC Professional?

If the idea of being a Pay Per Click professional appeals to you, then you’ll want to download PPC Ian’s eBook featuring his Top 5 PPC Career Tips. The eBook is free and can be downloaded at the PPC Ian home page. More PPC and SEM career advice can be found at the PPC Ian blog. Some of the more interesting posts include:

• Quality Score: SEO Tips For PPC Landing Pages
• PPC Versus SEO Careers
• Buying Domains on Sedo
• 5 Great PPC Campaign Initiatives
• Breaking Up The Pay Per Click Grind
• Pay Per Click Automation
• Search Marketing Interview Tips
• PPC Ian Interviewed By Jonathan Volk

As good as the blog posts are, the real gem of Ian’s work is in his free book. The five tips he gave were stuff I never though of and would really help me if I choose to pursue a career as a PPC professional. Even if that is not your career choice, the ebook is still worth downloading because the information can be extended into other areas.

Just as I was finishing up this review, Ian posted a video introducing himself. It’s clear to me that Ian understands branding just as well as he understands PPC marketing. And he’s a Mac user to boot. I’ll be adding PPC Ian to my RSS reader.

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!

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How To Become a PPC Professional with PPC Ian

It may be possible that governmental web sites are at least as important, and in some cases more important that most of the other web sites online. They can provide information on when and where to vote, when and where laws are being made, when and where you can access elected and appointed officials, and information about possibly a large number of services that goverment may provide, from trash pickup and some utility services to police and fire and rescue information.

Sometimes you just really need to know how to get to City Hall, or to the Courthouse steps.

In many instances, a local government web site can provide a doorway into the history of a community, access to building codes and zoning laws, address and contact data for City Hall and other agencies, and other information that governs our lives. Being able to find that information can be very important.

On a personal note, I really enjoy exploring local history, and learning about local towns on the Web before visiting them in person. My interest has led to a project where I’m trying to find the web sites for different cities, counties, towns, and other area web sites in Virginia.

Ironically, as I started this project, I experienced a problem with my own Town’s website that has inspired me to catalog some of the bad practices that local government sites have followed, to help them fix some of the mistakes that they are making that make them less effective than they could be. I’m also looking forward to identifying some of the best practices that I see on local goverment web sites, and pointing them out so that other sites might learn from them.

Choose a Domain, and Stick to It

My town is a historical crossroads in the North-Western part of Virginia, close enough to Washington DC that some residents commute to the Nation’s Capital, and far enough away so that it still retains a fairly agricultural nature, with horse pastures, wineries, and farmland surrounding small suburban areas. It is located in a piedmont region, that is a set of foothills that separate the lower tidewater lands closer to the Atlantic Ocean from more mountainous terrain.

George Washington was a property owner in the area, and in his teens an early surveyor of property lines in the county. John Marshall grew up nearby, and became possibly the most important Supreme Court Justice of the United States, championing a “separate but equal” role of the Courts in US government. During the Civil War, the Town changed hands between the North and South a total of 67 times, and was described by the nickname “The Debatable Land.”

The town took its current name, Warrenton, exactly 200 years ago this year when it was incorporated, and is the County Seat of Fauquier County, home to court houses, and city and county government offices. It’s a small town that takes pride in its agricultural surroundings and the lack of industrial and developmental growth seen in areas to the northeast. But, it’s not foreign to the online world, and local government is increasingly using the Web to communicate with citizens of the region.

I recently tried to pay my water bill online through my Town’s web pages. The utility bill didn’t list the URL for my Town, so I searched at Google, found it, and clicked on a link to the site. Once there I saw an image with the text “MyTown click to login.” I had already registered with the site previously – it wasn’t the first time that I had paid my bill online.

I tried to login, believing that I had remembered my username and password correctly, and was given a screen that looked like I had successfully logged in. I clicked upon a link that would let me pay my bill, and was redirected back to a login screen. I tried logging in again, and received the same result. Undeterred, I tried again – and received the same result.

Uncertain about why I couldn’t get to the payment page, I clicked on a link to reset my password. I waited for an email, and in a short period of time received one that allowed me to change that password. I tried again, and still couldn’t pay my bill. I found a phone number on the site, and called. And got a message that the person I wanted to talk to was away from her desk. I left a message, and my call was returned within half an hour.

I was told that the problem I was experiencing was because I was trying to use the “.com” version of the Town’s web site, and that I needed to login from the “.gov” version of the site. I was tempted to ask at that point why there were two versions of the web site, but realized that the person I was talking to probably didn’t know.

I did ask if there was someone I could talk to about the problem I experienced, and was told that my best bet was to talk to the City Manager. I decided that I would write this blog post before I took that step, and then send a link to my City Manager, along with some information on how to use a redirect to point any other domains to just one working version of the site.

Why is there more than one version of the Town’s web site? The .com version of the site was ranking well in Google, and the .gov site wasn’t showing at all – likely filtered out of Google’s search results since it contained the same information as the other domain.

When I talked to the person who helped me, the problem was identified as me mistakenly using the wrong website. The problem was actually that there were at least two websites, and one didn’t work correctly. It’s a problem that shouldn’t have existed. The Town should have chosen one web address for the site that works, and redirected any other URLs for the site to that version. The URL for the site should have also been listed on the Town’s bill.

Because there were at least two sites, and because the correct one wasn’t listed on the bill, I ended up spending almost an hour paying a $14 bill, and wasted the time of someone at the Town who had to call me back to help me pay my bill.

I suspect that I’m not the only person who has experienced this problem.

Seriously, Pick a Domain and Stick to It

In collecting links to local government web sites, I searched for “virginia city web sites” on Google. The search results started off with a number of links to individual cities, some directory type sites that listed links to city sites, and an official page from the Commonwealth of Virginia listing Virginia Counties, Cities, and Towns.

The Commonwealth list made me wonder if there was really a need for me to collect addresses for local web sites. At least I wondered that until I started visiting some of the City sites and noticed that a number of the links brought me to old versions of City sites, or 404 “not found” pages.

How did I know that they were older versions?

They said so at the tops of their pages, and included a link to the “new” versions of their sites. Rather than using a permanent redirect to point to the new versions of their sites, they told me instead that their sites had “moved,” and I should update my bookmarks.

When they decided to change the web addresses for their sites, I guess the easiest way for them to let people know was to include some text at the tops of their pages that they had moved. Or to just remove the old site completely. Redirecting traffic to the new versions of the site would lead people directly to their new pages, but it was a step that many didn’t take.

A good practice when you change the address of your pages is to identify links to the old versions and change the links that you have control over to the new address. If there are some important links to your site, from sources such as the Commonwealth of Virginia’s web site, it doesn’t hurt to contact them and let them know about the new address as well. It’s a little like contacting the Post Office when you move to a new home.

Searching at the major search engines for new addresses for some of the missing towns hasn’t been very effective in leading me to the new addresses for their sites. Fortunately, some of the commercial directories that list towns and cities in Virginia do have some updated addresses, though they also list some old addresses for some local government sites as well.

Is this Really the Official Site?

When I visited some town sites, I wondered whether those pages were actually from the governments of the towns listed. Some towns used .com or .us top level domains instead of .gov. Some looked more like commercial sites linking to businesses in their communities rather than sites from the governments of those communities. Perhaps there should be some official registry of local government web sites, and some kind of “trust” seal that they could display identifying them as being official government sites.

On the Virginia Commonwealth page I linked to above is the following message:

Any community which does not currently have information included in this area easily can participate; simply send an e-mail request to webmaster@virginiainteractive.org and include the URL of any or all relevant sites with community information.

I think it’s great that the Commonwealth site allows local governments to “participate,” and list their sites. I’m wondering if it would be a better approach to require those local goverments to register an official URL when they put their sites online, and to provide an update when they change their address.

I’m also wondering why I don’t see town web sites listed in Google Maps when I search for towns in there. Perhaps Google is running into some of the same problems I am in associating town web sites with those towns. I may have to make a Google My maps map in the future listing the local government web sites that I find on a map of Virginia.

Conclusion

At this point, my research is still in the stage where I’m trying to find every local Virginia goverment web site that I can.

That research has been hindered by the fact that some of the sites have more than one domain name, others have new domains that are hard to find, some are just hard to find possibly because of a lack of links to them from anywhere else on the Web, and some are difficult to identify as official local government web sites once I do find them.

I’ve been reading a number of papers and pages and sites that provide best practices for government sites, as well as a number of others that identify some of the best of the government sites. I’ll likely be sharing many of those in future posts. I’ve created an SEO for Government category on this site to make it easier to find past and future posts involving government web sites. Some of those approaches could benefit sites of all kinds, and not just government pages.

One of the practices that appears in many recommendations is for a site to provide an easy way to contact the people who run it, so that they can make suggestions for improvements and changes, a way to share those suggestions with other visitors, and a place for feedback on the changes to be published. It would be nice to see more local government sites providing such opportunities.

I’m also interested in hearing from others about their local government web sites – the things they do right as well as the things that they do wrong. Please let me know in the comments below, or use my contact form. Thanks.

When I found a to-die-for pizzeria hiding in plain sight across the street from my apartment building, it was bittersweet. Obviously, first-class New York style pizza in my backyard is a total win. But at the same time, I was bummed that Tony’s Pizza wasn’t showing up on the online search radar.

Just last week Paula was lamenting the loss of a printer in the area that had closed its doors. For years the company relied on word-of mouth advertising, which flourished thanks to friendly staff and competitive prices. Unfortunately, the company had some serious SEO issues — they’d claimed no local listings and had an all-Flash site. For all they were doing right in the store, the boat couldn’t stay afloat during last year’s economic storm.

And here’s another one. This morning Susan sent out this tweet:

She’d run across an artist’s work online and, interested in buying her work, she searched for the artist’s site. But being a patron of the arts wasn’t in the cards for Susan today, as she hit a wall when the artist’s pretty site was also pretty unusable.

…Another one bites the dust.

Okay, so you get why I become frustrated watching awesome small businesses folding due to a lack of understanding. But here’s where we take it to another level. I had my understanding of Internet marketing objectives taken to an exciting new place on today’s episode of SEM Synergy. From the show:

Susan: It used to just be […] if the content was right, it was the best answer. Now it’s, if the content is right and other people agree that it’s right, you know, links, then it was the best answer. Now it’s, if the content’s right but everybody else has the right content too, and everybody else has links too, so are you going to give it to them as fast as possible, which is where site speed comes in. Are you going to give it to them when they’re on the go, which is where mobile comes in. Are you going to give it to them in multiple ways so that different kinds of learners can learn it, which is where engagement objects come in. It’s becoming more complicated in the areas of attack, but the core is still are you delivering the best answer.

Bradley: And then the social media aspect, which is are you ready to talk about this subject with the people who want this information? Are you going to be authoritative, are you going to stand on your principles and really think about what the questions are asking?

My response (paraphrased): Whoa. You just turned on my light bulb! I see how the puzzle pieces fit together. Does everybody know about this?

No, everybody does not know, so let’s not keep this info all to ourselves. Spread the wealth. Tell your family dentist. Tell your cousin who owns a book store. Tell the organic avocado farmer you visit at the weekly farmers’ market. Send them this blog post. Send them to the Google Local Business Center. Say something! Spread the word!

Thanks to today’s guest Des Odell, director of Bruce Clay Australia, for spreading the word on the podcast. Check out Bruce Clay Australia to learn more about the SEO training classes coming up in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane and to read the recently released SEO Factors & Trends Report. Plus, be sure to check out BCAU’s newsletter article on the the state of the Australian search market!

Turning On the Lights — SEM Synergy Extras was originally published on BruceClay.com, an SEO services company.

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Turning On the Lights — SEM Synergy Extras

As you know I’m a big fan of the Wordpress platform. Although it’s not the most optimal platform, there’s no question that it makes it easier to run a website. I was recently asked by Brian Clark of CopyBlogger to test a new service/plugin for Wordpress, one that was designed to help you do a better job of optimizing your posts.

Scribe SEO is plugin that works with Wordpress to analyze your posts, give you information about them, and make suggestions about improving your post from an SEO Perspective. If you’re using Thesis, the plugin interfaces without a hitch. While I haven’t tried it, I understand it also works with the Hybrid and Headway themes as well. If you aren’t using either of those themes, that’s fine. You’ll just need the All in One SEO plugin. So here’s what Scribe SEO does …

Your post is ready to be analyzed by ScribeSEO

Once you’ve finished writing your post, the plugin checks to make sure you’ve written an optimized version of your title in the custom title field. Want the title to be the same? That’s OK, but you’ll have to copy/paste it down below. It then checks to see if you’ve written a meta description. Yes, I know the meta description is not a part of the ranking algo, but your meta description is what appears under your page title in the SERP’s and writing a click-enticing meta description is good thing. If you don’t think Google is using click tracking data, you might want to reconsider. Last, it checks to see if you’ve got content for the post. Once everything is set you’ll see three green arrows like in the screen shot to the right and the analyze button will “turn on.” Hit the button and the process will start. For this write-up, I’ll show data from an old post.

Before we dive in, let’s do a common sense review. Just because a computer program tells you to do something doesn’t mean you should turn off your brain and blindly do it; use some common sense. Sometimes you’ll do something “wrong” on purpose. If you are breaking the rules intentionally and are fully aware of what you are doing and why, feel free to ignore the suggestions. Remember that just because Google and your GPS tell you to go a certain way doesn’t always mean it’s the right way to go. Always use your noodle.

Ok, so here’s a sample of the information you’ll get back from Scribe SEO:

The tool gives you an overall score, a breakdown on keywords, suggestions for tuning your focus into/out of keywords, and a SERP preview. The last tab gives you some general overall SEO guidelines to keep in mind. Are there other tools out there that can give you this information? Absolutely. But can they give it to you right in your dashboard, before you publish, and  without a lot of copying and pasting? Nope.

Here’s where you need to use your brain a little. You don’t need to strive to get a 100% on every post. Technically your posts might be better but honestly I don’t think they’d be as valuable or have as much personality. Having an article that is 100% optimized but is boring is never as good as a slightly less optimized article that’s interesting to read. However (he says, looking squarely in the direction of you bloggers out there) ignoring keyword focus in favor lyrical prose isn’t the answer either. What you need to do is strike a balance, and that’s where Scribe SEO comes in. Write an interesting post/article THEN use Scribe SEO to make sure your article is targeting the right words and sending the right signals to the search engines. This is especially helpful if you are outsourcing your content creation to someone who isn’t an SEO.

Scribe SEO is a paid service. You’re allowed to set it up on as many websites you want. Then, depending on the level you choose, you get a certain number of evaluation runs. For $27 a month you’ll get 30 evaluations, for $47 a month you’ll get 120 evaluations, and for $97 you’ll get 300 evaluations. However as part of the introductory offer you can get the full 300 evaluations for only $27 a month (but the offer ends Feb 19th so you better hurry).

Is it worth the price? If you’re using CPM based advertising and you can generate higher rankings and more traffic then the answer is yes. Running Adsense or an affiliate website/blog? Again if this tool can help you write posts that rank better, drive more traffic, and get you more clicks or conversions, then the answer is again yes it’s absolutely worth it.

Bonus Tip: Do you have old posts that you expected a little more out of? Use this tool to go back, re-evaluate, and tweak things a bit to improve them.

Is this tool for everyone? No. However, if you are looking for a native tool to help finely tune your posts, then yes, this tool can help you. If you feel that your writing is stronger then your SEO knowledge, then yes, this tool will definitely help you. If you use writers with varying degrees of SEO expertise, this tool will absolutely help you bring everything up to par.

If you fit into any of the above scenarios, give Scribe SEO a try and publish posts that are better optimized. Don’t forget: it’s only $27 for the highest level until February 19th.

UPDATE: to answer the question, if you join at the $27 price now you’re locked in, and it won’t go up as long as you stay subscribed.

Disclosure: I was given beta access to this tool and the above post does contain affiliate links. However I’m comfortable recommending this tool since I have tested it on several commercial websites I run and have been satisfied with the results.

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This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

Use Scribe SEO to Optimize Your Wordpress Posts

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Use Scribe SEO to Optimize Your Wordpress Posts

Guest post by Nicholas Cardot from Site Sketch 101.

When I was a child I often traveled to magical faraway lands, explored daring new worlds, violently clashed swords with famous pirates, adventured with a talking mouse named Ralph, and traveled through the very fabric of time itself.

I’ve raced around the world in 80 days. I’ve been lost deep in a Missouri cave with a mischievous friend. I’ve ridden the rails with unforgettable boxcar children.

Needless to say, I had an eventful childhood.

Time after time, a well written novel would carry me thousands of miles away from the miserable, battered home that so prominently characterized my difficult childhood. Often I would sit captivated for hours simply allowing my imagination to run amok through an engaging book.

Exciting stories that were written so descriptively that I could experience every detail would draw me in and make me feel like I was actually living the story. I could smell the thick burning sulfur of a volcano that was on the delicate verge of eruption. I could feel the bitter-cold wind sending chills through my aching body.

The authors of novels and children’s books know that they have to be vivid, descriptive and exciting to keep the attention of their target audience. Cold, empty facts won’t entrance a reader like descriptive battles in Middle Earth will.

Yet somehow as we grow up and pass into the mature bliss of adulthood, we seem to forget all about those swash-buckling, time-traveling adventures that we were so excited to experience as kids. The stuffy essays of our college years seem to have sucked the life out of our writing and now we’ve all become drones to the mind-numbing drivel that plagues so much of the writing you find online.

I understand that most online authors are not aspiring novelists. Many of you are working hard to build your online reputation as highly acclaimed informational experts in your respective fields. Your purpose is to provide facts or instructions as you work to build the authority of your blog or website. You’re not an entertainer. You’re an educator or salesperson.

Even if that does ring true for you, you’re sadly selling yourself short if you think that you don’t need to develop the bold and creative side of your writing. The man or woman who can deliver valuable information that is wrapped in powerful, engaging prose will quickly rise far above his or her peers.

It really doesn’t matter what the purpose of your writing might be. You can take these important lessons from a novel and quickly develop yourself into the author that people want to read.

1. Make frequent use of bold adjectives and adverbs to add a descriptive flare to your writing.
2. Use humor and sarcasm to entertain and engage with your audience.
3. Tell vivid stories to give your readers a truly memorable way to digest your information.
4. Lead your audience into using all of their emotions: anger, passion, happiness and others.

Incorporate a creative flare into your writing and you’ll be amazed at the results. You’ll retain substantially more readers at your blog. You’ll make more sales of your products. You’ll connect with more people than you ever have.

Make use of everything you enjoyed as a child in order to get your readers to not only understand what you’re writing about but also to feel like they’re actually experiencing it. Take this challenge and let it fuel you to take your writing to a whole new level.

Where are you going to take your readers today?

Nick uses his blog Site Sketch 101 to express his passion for helping people learn how to blog with awesome content, brilliant designs and commanding influence.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Take Your Readers on a Journey They’ll Never Forget

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Take Your Readers on a Journey They’ll Never Forget

Google has long been an advocate of “build great content”; however, in reality, it’s turning into “build great content … and if we like it we’ll take it from you, put it on our pages, and deprive you of that traffic. Without compensation.” Strong accusations, sure, but I’m willing to step up to the plate, put my money where my mouth is, and show you how it’s being done.

Let’s say you live in the Miami area or are thinking of taking a vacation there. You might want to bring your family to the Miami Seaquarium, and it might be a good idea to find out exactly where they are and what hours they are open. So what do you do? Fire up your browser, head on over to Google, and search for [seaquarium miami]. You should get a result that’s something like this:

So what’s the problem? First of all, Google gives away the hours right in the SERP. There’s no need for the people to visit the website. While I don’t know for a fact that traffic growth is a success metric for the Miami Seaquarium, I think it’s a safe assumption. By denying the Miami Seaquarium that traffic they deny them the opportunity to upsell visitors to the upcoming aquarium programs. Now Googlers might counter by saying that it’s all about “providing a better user experience.” Maybe at the next conference I’ll improve the movie going experience of some Googlers by telling them the surprise ending of the latest movie before they see it. I mean, I saved them money and two hours of their time, right? That’s gotta be a better user experience.

See that review and link to “more information”? Click either of those and, instead of being taken to the Miami Seaqurium website, you’re taken to the Google map listing page. Google stole the information they wanted from the Miami Seaqurium, hijacked the traffic for themselves, and put them on a page with contextual advertising that puts more money in Google ’s pockets. The only person that gets a better user experience out of that is someone whose paycheck directly results from that advertising. Really this is nothing more than a scraper adsense website designed to hijack traffic away from place it should be going. Because Google controls the SERP’s they make sure they are at the top, guaranteeing clicks, traffic, and revenue from that page.

This is almost the exact behavior I described in my debate with Danny Sullivan a few weeks ago on Sphinn. I stand by my position that giving Google the copyright to the information for free right out of the gate is the same as giving them permission to steal and develop a money making operation based on your labors without giving you any of the action.

Want another example of Google stealing? Sure, here we go …

Let’s say I decide I want to go to nice steakhouse for dinner. I know there’s a Bryant & Cooper here on Long Island. I wonder if it’s still any good, so I type in [bryant & cooper steakhouse long island reviews]. Here’s what I get:

So it’s got four out of five stars based on 48 reviews. That’s pretty good. I can call and make reservation right away and my mission is accomplished.

So what’s my beef here (pun intended)? Another long-standing Google suggestion is to build a website, service, or product that people want to use and place value on. This is what’s called a Point of Differentiation or POD. One way to do that is with user-submitted reviews. I wonder where Google got those 48 reviews? Let’s  check it out.

Let’s see…there are some reviews from Google, but the majority are from Zagat and CitySearch. Let’s review. Google says build great content and a service people want to use, which Zagat and CitySearch did. Then Google went and stole that content from them and put some adsense advertising next to it. If we go back to the original SERP and scroll down a bit … yep, we’ll find Zagat and CitySearch. Google hijacked that traffic, and those two sites got nothing to show for it.

What you need to do is ask yourself a question. Do you think Google is going to use less information or are they going to take more? Are they going to decide they can better serve the customers in your market by stealing your best content and putting it on their servers, where they collect the ad revenue, while they kick you to the curb faster than a no-good, two-timing, philandering spouse? Do you feel confident betting against the all-consuming data borg? Well do ya, punk?

The problem is that, as SEO’s, we’re the canaries in coal mine. We’ll notice trouble before it happens. Probably a few of us are going to have our websites killed by Google before the main stream press and Government notices. But the sooner we see the truth for what it is and stop burying our heads in the sand, the sooner something will happen to change it.

You may have friends who work for Google, but Google is not your friend. Google is like the feudal lord who grows rich off of the peons, serfs, and indentured servants who labor in the fields. No matter how hard you work you will always serve your digital master.

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This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

Is Google Stealing Your Content and Hijacking Your Traffic

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Is Google Stealing Your Content and Hijacking Your Traffic

Late last week Google announced it was graduating social search from beta and making it active for everyone. I got a heads up from Barry Wise of KnowEm a day later, and we spent some time talking about what this meant for marketers. I thought I’d share some of our conversation with you.If you have a Google profile (like I do) and have any websites associated with your profile, when you are logged into that profile, your SERP’s may be affected by this new change. Google opted everyone in by default, so there’s no way to turn it off (other than by signing out or using anonymous browsing). Google has decided to ignore the “&pws=0″ parameter flag that they ignore for personalized search, a decision I really hope they consider changing.

Google is looking at the profiles associated with you and crawling who you are friends or associated with. Google uses that information combined with XFN tagging to decide what other results to show with your results. IMHO this is what the caffeine update is really all about. It’s about associating  social information and real time social activity with your searches and incorporating this information to hopefully produce a better result.

To show you how different the results can be, here are three different sample keywords from two different people:

[Michael Gray]

[Las Vegas]

[las Vegas Hotels]

Depending on how much overlap there is between your social graph (ie the people you “friend” on social websites) you may have similar or completely different results. It’s highly unlikely that two people will have identical results, unless they work at the same company and have similar social graph (an unintended consequence that will flummox search agencies to be sure).

I’ve said this many times in the past: Google considers personalized search part of their POD, and it’s a strategic goal for them from the top down. Like it or no,t it’s something you’re going to have to come to terms with. People are getting different personalized results and now they have the possibility of getting two additional personalized results based upon what their friends are doing/saying online.

In my opinion if you aren’t involved in social media at this point you are putting yourself at a competitive disadvantage. You’re missing out on the opportunity to get yourself a SERP listing at the lower part of the page. To be honest I haven’t seen enough searches to know whether,  if you have an organic listing above, you might be locked out of a second listing below. However if you get a lot of social engagements that get talked about, shared, or retweeted by other people, that will definitely show up, giving you a second slot.

If you’ve been sitting on the fence waiting to get involved in social media now is the time. However this sword has a double edged aspect. To get the most out of your efforts you’ll need to get involved and stay involved. Making a few half-hearted attempts isn’t going to bring you any results. Getting involved in social media may not be easy, but neither is balancing one one leg when you’re 8 months pregnant while performing wudang double sword maneuvers. But both can be done if you make it a priority and commit to making it work for you.

photo credit: dizznbonn

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This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

Google’s Social Search – Affecting a SERP Near You

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Google’s Social Search – Affecting a SERP Near You