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The following SEO Optimization post was submitted by Linda Bustos fromElastic Path.
Smart bloggers often use keyword research tools to brainstorm “long tail” opportunities and keyword niches. These keywords are then worked into blog post titles, image attributes, headings and body copy as part of an SEO strategy, knowing that this “low hanging fruit” can drive some very valuable traffic.
While this is a great strategy, it’s not without its downsides. Keyword research tools are often expensive, the data can be unreliable or too general to reflect your readership. If you use Google Analytics, you’re sitting on a very valuable keyword research tool that’s free, accurate and can tell you so much about your readers.
I’d like to share a “hack” with you - how you can use Google Analytics to identify your most valuable keyword referrals, and how you can re-optimize your posts to raise your rank and drive more traffic for these keywords.
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These plugins were tested ok on v2.5 beta. Without any major surprises, they should be working fine when v2.5 gold is released.
Announcement
- “Different message for different roles/users” feature fixed
- Removed TinyMCE (appears more troublesome than helpful based on feedback)
Pre-Publish Reminder
- Reminder List shows up in correct places
- Move to a folder structure
YouTube Comments
- Suppress errors/warnings; enable script to continue fetching comments instead of dieing
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This post on generating blogging ideas was contributed by Graham Jones from grahamjones.co.uk.
Most bloggers give up after a short while; even though there are millions of blogs online, few are updated regularly and most have been abandoned. The difference between success and failure in blogging is often down to persistence. But, when I speak at meetings about blogging, people often come up to me afterwards and say “Ah, yes, that’s all very well, but I run out of ideas after a while, so I can’t blog regularly”. So, how can you be sure of coming up with a constant stream of blogging ideas? How can you be certain that when you open your blogging software you will always have something to write?
If you think about your daily newspaper it does not have a choice. The number of pages is set by the amount of advertising space they sell. Each day, though, has varying amounts of news - some days, very little happens. But it would be no good the journalists filling up the first few pages and then printing a notice on all the others saying “if we’d been able to think of anything to write we would have put it here”. No matter how little is going on around them and no matter how much space they have to fill, newspapers simply have to fill the space allocated to them - plus they simply MUST do it before a specified time. The only way they can achieve this is to have a system.
Develop a blogging planning system
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This seems like a really subtle thing but it's something that I've tried to do and that is establish a personal brand and maintain it throughout all of my online activities.
Maintaining a personal brand using your own name or alias can actually be easier than maintaining a corporate brand, especially when it comes to social networks or blog comments. Using a company name within blog comments or setting up Facebook groups for a company often has that "spammy" feel to it. You look like your trolling for links instead of being an unbiased contributor to the conversation.
I've been lucky in that my last name, Snook, is relatively unique and memorable. Ironically, as a teenager and with my desire to fit in with the crowd, I didn't want that uniqueness. I even thought changing my last name might be an option. Luckily, I didn't make that mistake and have finally in recent times come to embrace the name. I've been slowly expanding on that to the point where people just call me "Snook" (or Snookums, affectionately). And that's a good place to be.
Here's a quick list of things you can do to help maintain your personal brand online:
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Over the past week I’ve shared
five strategies that I’d use to promote my blog if I were starting from scratch again today.
We started off by looking at how the majority of your efforts need to be focused upon Readers You Don’t Already Have (obvious but important) and then looked at the five strategies of:
- Guest Posting
- Networking
- Advertising
- Social Media
- Viral Content
Together I believe that these five strategies pursued together would give a new blog a good start (note: pursuing just one of them might have some impact but together they are more effective).
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While hunting down some groovy looking
WordPress themes I came across
Milo’s site and was pleasantly surprised. Milo is a graphic designer based in Munich, Germany and she has created some 100
WordPress themes that are available for download on her site.
Milo is a master at flash and many of her themes look rather groovy. They are certainly less conventional than most of the free WordPress themes we see on the market and would suit an artist perfectly. While her themes are all available for show, none of the demo links actually seem to work. From what I have seen, there is no other way to demo the themes than to see them on the sample page.
I kept going round and round until eventually I just gave up. Below is a screen shot of the sample page where
all the themes are listed. If you click on it, it will lead you to the same page.
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Bridget Cary wrote an article for the
Miami Herald detailing many aspects of professional individuals making use of web based technology to promote themselves. There are a number of quotes that emphasise the need to do this on a quality basis.
“Recruiters say having a professional online presence is becoming more crucial. Vital bits of information on candidates are found through Internet searches as the market shifts to passive recruitment, and Google searches as background checks have become common in the hiring process.
Paper and electronic resumes are not extinct, but they are only the beginning. Getting a job offer may depend on social network profiles, personal Web sites, blogs and YouTube videos. It’s about your online footprint and the management of your personal brand.”
We agree entirely with this, not everyone is able to create their own web presence though. To make a start take try some of the following;
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A recent article on
ERE.net a recent article by
Kevin Wheeler (President and Founder of Global Learning Resources, Inc) discusses why it is important for recruiters to use social networking sites like LinkedIn to reach candidates on behalf of their clients.
Professional recruiters, corporate employers are all using social networking sites to market themselves and connect with talented individuals that may at some time be a future employee. Large multinationals have developed their own company pages on LinkedIn and Facebook to present their brand as an employer of choice.
You can use the same technology to promote yourself as an employee of choice, not convinced? Read on.
(more…) Read more
Themes
All themes should work fine in Wordpress 2.5
Plugins
Feedburner SiteStats
Working fine.
Announcement
Working fine, except for the feature “Different message for different roles/users”.
Pre-Publish Reminder
Broken, reminders showing up in the wrong places due to new admin interface
YouTube Comments
Broken, unable to fetch any comments
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Did you realise that today is
International Women’s Day?
I’ll be celebrating by hosting a panel on the subject of
“Women in Technology” and a session about using social media to create, publish and market your book at Creative Camp, taking place in Kilkenny.
I’ve also been invited by
Frank Fullard, CEO of the Mayo County Enterprise Board to facilitate a workshop for female business leaders in celebration of International Women’s Day 2008.
The event will take place at
Knockranny House Hotel, Westport on Tuesday 11 March 2008 starting at 7pm with refreshments and networking at the end of the workshop at 10pm.
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