Website vs Blog Part 2 [ 3:07 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Wasn’t planning this to be a two part item but did get the following comment.

Would you be kind enough to elaborate as to what is the difference between the two – blog v/s website when it comes to marketing and search engine optimization. Thanks.

That tells me that I did not go into enough detail so I will address the marketing and search engine factors today.

Google likes fresh content and a constant flow of new information. Now this can be done with both a blog and a static web page. The blog is easier to update but you can get the same result with either if you keep adding new content to your site or blog.

The real advantage for the blog versus the static web site is the built in RSS feed. This allows people to get your information and updates through their favorite feed reader. If you have upgraded to the IE 7 browser you will notice that it will read feeds automatically.

Now that doesn’t mean that you can’t add a feed to a static website but it does take quite a bit of extra effort.

The other advantage is the automatic pinging of all of the RSS directories that you can create and automate with a blog easily.

Again, you can actually add this to a static web page but it is very cumbersome and takes a lot more effort to achieve the same result so most people will not follow through and do that where as if it is automated you do it every time you post.

For more information on using a blog for your business check out my new free course Any One Can Blog.

Now in my best Mission Impossible tone – As always your comments and questions are welcomed. If you don’t ask I can’t answer and your computer will self destruct in 10 seconds… (Not really).

Technorati Tags: blog-vs-website

Website vs Blog [ 2:21 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

First an apology to anyone that tried to survey form. I had sent out an e-mail asking people to submit questions and there was a problem with the form. It is now fixed.

Here is today’s question.

I have to admit that I do not know exactly the difference between a website and a blog.I think that the blog is more personal. Is for a blog also necessary to pay for a domain or a registration?

There are a couple of differences between a static website and a blog. The blog is much easier to update and does not require FTP or uploading to cpanel to change.

The blog also has an RSS feed built into it. This allows people to get your feed and know what is happening on your blog at their convenience.

For the second part of the question, you can have a blog without having a domain registered to you. There are services like blogger and WordPress.com that walleye you to have a free blog or their domain.

I recommend that you host your own blog or your own domain. The reason for that is that it takes work to develop traffic to blogs and I would prefer to be coming to a site that I own rather than a site to someone else owns.

As always, your comments are welcome. If you tried to enter a question in the survey form earlier this week please try again. Now that I have questions, look for more regular postings.

Technorati Tags: website-vs-blog

Returnig visitors part 3 [ 3:07 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is the second post in a series that is talking about a blog post I found over at the about.com blog.

They highlighted four ways to improve this. We have discussed the first two and today we will finish the last two.

The first is to write in a friendly engaging style. Keep it short and keep it personal.

Writing for the web (in most areas) is personal. Make it fun to read. Obviously sometimes you are covering a technical topic. I do it all the time here.

I do try to keep it interesting and approach it in a style that won’t have your eyes quickly glazing over. Don’t succeed all the time but that is my intention.

The last item the article discussed may be the most important to me.

Respond to your comments.

A blog is (or at least should be) a conversation. If you write well enough to generate comments keep it going by responding.

Whether you agree or disagree with me I try to respond to miost comments. Now this blog is a little bit different in that I do ask for specific questions and those I tend not to respond to in the post but…

I do create a post to answer the question in detail.

So a final review of the 4 items to help keep visitors coming back.

1. Create an Eye-Pleasing Design
2. Create Catchy Titles and Great Opening Paragraphs
3. Friendly Engaging Content
4. Respond to comments

Try these 4 and see if they don’t help to increase the number of returning visitors.

As always you can leave your questions about WordPress and blogging in general or if you agree or disagree in the comments box below.

Technorati Tags: about.com, return-visitors

Keep your readers part 2 [ 0:01 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is the second post in a series that is talking about a blog post I found over at the about.com blog.

They highlighted four very important items. The first was creating an eye pleasing design. Today we will talk about creating headlines and your opening paragraph.

The problem most people have when creating headlines is that they are too worried about the search engines. If they would write for the reader, instead of worrying about the search engines. Their readership would increase.

Catching the reader’s attention with your headline is extremely important to keep them coming back. This way people will want to read what you’re writing.

There are a variety of plug-ins that you can use to make your title tags not match yourr headlines and allow you to satisfy both your reader and the search engines.

The second point they made was on the opening paragraph. If you’ve called a reader’s attention with your headline, you now need to hook them into reading the rest of your article.

If you don’t take the time to make the your first paragraph interesting, your reader will not continue to read. If they don’t read your posts, they won’t come back.

Get these first two parts correct and you will find that more people will return to your blog.

As always, your comments are welcome to any of you have any questions on WordPress or blogging in general, please ask them in the comments.

Technorati Tags: blog-readers, headline, opening-paragraph

Do your keep people returning to your blog? [ 2:42 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Found a great blog post on the about.com blog. The discussion is about how to make a good impression with your blog.

I really feel that this is the key to building your regular visitors. They highlighted 4 very important items.

Here is my take on the first one. I will cover the other 3 in future posts.

1. “Create an eye pleasing design”

They talk about having a nice clean look. With a number of blogs that have viewed there are 2 major items that can work against you. The theme and the amount and placement of advertising.

Nothing worse to me than to go to a blog that is barely readable. Some of the themes with dark backgrounds and light lettering are just too hard for an Old Bald Guy to read. If ti hurts me to read, guess what happens? I go away and your content could be great but I’ll never know and surely won’t come back.

Ad placement can kill you. If all I see is banners and flashing signs I am gone. If I want to see that I’ll go to the Vegas strip where there can be all kinds of lights, bells and whistles.

It is okay to advertise but keep your content the highlight of the blog. Make it easy for me to read. Do this and I’ll also notice the ads and may click on what interests me but make sure I want to read your content first.

Just an Old bald Guy’s opinion and I would love to hear yours.

Technorati Tags: about.com, ad-placement, blog-design

I just reopened WordPress Lessons.

If you are looking for special coaching on using WordPress blogs for your marketing this will probably be the last course this year.

===> WordPress Lessons

I will show you the proper way to:

• set up your blog
• monetize it
• generate traffic for it
• and you get direct access to me

Here is what past students have said:

“If you are wanting to set up a profitable blog then Mike’s Word Press Lessons are a must. Mike helped me set up my blog and I am amazed with the results. I can post on almost any topic and reach top 10 in google within hours. I have also been able to double my optin list and income utilizing his strategies.
Thank You Mike!!! ”

Jack sShafer
hitpiratemarketing.com

“I’m so glad I found Mike’s program. He has given us detailed access to insider information on how to monetize our blogs that I would have never found out otherwise. He even provided all the tools and talked us through how to use them., His friendly and accessible style, and the fact that we can actually talk with him directly on the calls/webinars and by email/forums made his seminar especially enjoyable and productive. Without his help, I would have never dared to even try to get a blog up, and now I’ve got one up and running, and I’m working on several additional ones.”.

Elisabeth Kuhn
myfavoriteselfhelpstuff.com

Class size is limited to 20 people and 3 of those spots have been filled from the waiting list.

This will start on October 17th and the last time it sold out in 6 days. It will close on October 13th regardless of the number of students.

===> WordPress Lessons

If you are serious about using the power of blogs in your marketing this is for you.

The power of blogs is that I still get paid every day for work I did 3, 6, 9 months ago.

===> WordPress Lessons

Technorati Tags: Mike-Paetzold, WordPress-Lessons

WordPress 2.3 Revisited [ 1:55 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

If you days ago I reviewed WordPress 2.3. At that time there were a few plug-ins that weren’t working for it.

Since then though the Google Site Map plug-in has been updated. The new version seems to work fine with WordPress 2.3.

The Ultimate Tag Warrior plug-in still shows that it is not compatible with version 2.3. I have been looking for alternatives for it and have found the All-In One-SEO plug-in.

In limited testing this seems to replace both the SEO Title Tag plug-in and the Ultimate Tag Warrior for me.

Because of this I can now use WordPress 2.3 in a limited basis, but I am not recommending the use it for all of your existing blogs.

Until I finish my testing. I won’t know for sure if this is a viable alternative, but at this point it looks like it may be.

On another note, if I have not answered your question, please resubmit it. I believe that I have caught up with all the questions that were left in comments and/or the survey, but it is possible that I am old and bald and may have missed one.

Either way I could use more questions so if you would leave a comment or click on the survey form above I would appreciate it.

Technorati Tags: All-in-one-seo, google-site-map-generator, wordpress-2.3