How often to post your blog? [ 3:04 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Today’s question:

How often should one post articles on a business blog?

This is a question with no real answer. You can be very effective posting once a week, once a month or once a day. It depends on a lot of factors.

The more you post the better is generally true. I try to post 3-5 times a week generally on most of my blogs.

The answer realy lies in what you are using the blog to accomplish.

Now I have one that we just do a weekly podcast on that does well at Amplification Marketing. Once a week works well for that one.

Over the past few years some of the blogs I have that were created to support various programs of mine also work well on a weekly update basis.

The key there is that those have a data base that can be advised when the updates are posted. They are used primarily to keep people already involved up to date with what is happening. It is for relationship building with an existing list. Any search engine benefit is a plus but not the primary purpose of the blog.

When you are looking for search engine traffic primarily, the more often you post the better. Caveat – You need to be posting properly and targeting very specific keywords for this to be most effective. (You can listen to the lesson I did on this at niche research or in the post earlier in this blog on profitable blogging.)

The real key is understanding what you are trying to accomplish with your blog and setting a regular schedule. Any of them will work but posting 4 days then skipping a month would not be as effective as posting once a week. Regularity is the key because your readers will come to expect that schedule.

As always your comments and questions are welcomed.

Mike Paetzold

Technorati Tags: blog, post blog

Today’s question:

Could you show us how to setup and use Google Analytics plugin correctly

Rather than do a long drawn out post I put this video up at You Tube.

Your comments and questions are always welcomed.

Mike Paetzold

Technorati Tags: google analytics, google anylticator, wordpress

Plugins [ 2:14 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

With all the changes in WordPress in the last few months the plugins I am using have been changing too. I get quite a few questions so here is a list of the plugins I am currently using for SEO and why.

The biggest change when version 2.3 came in was swapping out SEO Title Tag and Ultimate Tag Warrior to All In One SEO.

All In One SEO – this has replaced SEO Title tags in my repertoire and has some nice added features like custom descriptions and keywords added into your meta tags. The title tag is by far the most important but the others sure can’t hurt.

Google XML Sitemap – Since the major search engines have now agreed on a format for xml sitemaps this is even more powerful than before. You can automate the notification of all of the search engines but you will need to sign up for their various webmaster accounts for best effect.

DoFollow – Since adding this I have seen an increase in comments but it does create the need to moderate your blog tightly. The increase in content and trackbacks offsets the outgoing links to this point.

Now there are lots of other plugins I use but these are the prime plugins for SEO. Some of the others are for incrased traffic, ease of use and even to allow me to podcast easily.

As always your comments and questions are welcomed.

Mike Paetzold

Technorati Tags: plugins, seo

Linking between blog and website [ 4:11 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Today’s question:

I am a member of myccblog and I have my own website in the same niche. How do I attach this blog to my website, and how do I let people know, in the proper way, to go from the website to the blog or from the blog to the website. Also, is this more beneficial to my rank or should they stay separate. Thanks your all you help, I really appreciate all that you are doing for your readers.

You can’t attach the blog to your website as they are on different domains.

The question I have is where is your profitable action?

For example if you are collecting email addresses through a squeeze page on your web site you will want to be linking to that from your blog. If you are selling a product or service you would link to that. (I do recommend collecting the email address first ). Use good anchor text for the links and use a variety of different anchor texts and calls to action.

Lets go a bit deeper and use an example. Because the blog has the rss feed and the ability to ping automatically we will use this as a content and traffic source to send QUALIFIED visitors to the money site.

First you need to have a keyword list that you want to rank for and that are achievable. (This is discussed in the free lesson available at WordPress Lessons.) For this example I am looking for car dealers that are using web services like cars.com to advertise their inventory.

I write an article about a topic of interest to car dealers on my blog and add a signature file to my blog post that links to my squeeze page. I can also use an in post link if it is something that would be of interest to my readers. If I have targeted an achievable keyword I can rank for that topic and it would be of interest to my target market. That draws traffic and the link or signature file sends traffic to the site that actually monetizes.

If you look closely at this blog post I have done just that. While answering your question I was able to link out to my coaching site and at the same time give you quality information if you decide to sign up through the opt in form there for the free lesson.

To summarize I usually use the blog to draw in and qualify those that will be interested in my offers. It is much easier to get the blog to rank highly in the serps so they get more traffic. There I can start the relationship and qualification before sending them to the places that will be my ultimate monetization. The other thing is thta iof you are using multiple formats to draw in people (like Squidoo, Hub Pages, free blogs, Yahoo Answers, etc) you can generate multiple links from a variety of sources toward your money page which will lift that in the serps too.

As always your comments and questions are welcomed.

Mike Paetzold

Technorati Tags: blog, link, linking, website

Pinging [ 3:41 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

A few similar questions have come in:

Do you use Submit Em Now in place of or in addition to UP Smart Update Pinger? What are the advantages / disadvantages to using each?

I want to know more about RSS feeds to and from my blog. I have a blog at ccblog. Also, with my ccblog, can I use different services to ping it or is it already done automatically?

First lets address SubmitEm Now – This is a plugin for Firefox. It is used to submit your RSS feed to the various RSS directories. It saves you time by allowing you to fill in a form and then use that information at each of the sites without having to retype it each time. It is not part of your blog.

Now the Smart Update Pinger plugin is part of your blog. It’s purpose is to keep you from over pinging. It checks to see if a specific post has been pinged before and if it haves does not ping it again.

This overcomes a problem if you are editing posts. For example – I don’t know why but quite often I will type ofr instead of for. I usually don’t catch it until after I publish the post. If I did not use the plugin then when I hit the edit button to fix it the post would ping again. Keep pinging quickly back to back and your feed will be dropped as a spammer.

Now the pinging is done automatically by the WordPress software. You can and should add additional ping services to your ping list. You can add to your ping list by using settings (options if you are not using v2.5) – writing. At the bottom of the page you will see a box where you can add these sources and click the update button.

You can also find a link to a complete list of ping services in the text above the box.

Hopefully this sheds some light on the differences but if not your questions and comments are welcomed.

Mike Paetzold

Technorati Tags: ping, pinging, rss, rss directories, rss feed

Todays question:

How to put Youtube videos on the blog

There are a few ways to do this. One of the easiest is to use a plugin called Viper Video. If you install that and activate it you will have a You Tuibe button on your writing area. Click that and add the url of the video in the pop up and it will do the code to add it to the page for you.

The second choice is to copy the embed code directly from You Tube.

To insert this where you want it you will need to be in the code portion of the editor. For me this isn’t a problem because I always turn the WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) off but then I started blogging on the old p-machine software so I never used a WYSIWYG.

You will just copy and paste the embed code into your post where you want it to appear.

The third way is if you use Blog Desk. Of late that has been my choice for posting to my blogs as it allows me to work on my desk top and load the results directly up to my blog.

If you are using Blog Desk you will just add the embed code from You Tube into the add html feature and it does all the hard work.

All of these ways will work and you need to decide which fits how you post to your blog.

As always your questions and comments are welcomed.

Mike Paetzold

Technorati Tags: blog desk, viper video, you tube

Well the class was good on Saturday and the replay is available. Now it is time to get back to answering questions.

Here is todays:

Can WordPress software be downloaded, installed and used on a Mac?

WordPress software needs to be hosted on line. You need to have it on a hosting account with a domain you own.

Mac, PC doesn’t come into the equation.

You need to have a unix hosting with php and a mysql data base.

There are numerous providers that can allow you to do this at a cost of $10 a month or less. Most of them will give you a discount if you can afford to pay for a year up front and then you can find hosting for less than a $100 for the year.

Hopefully this will help explain what you need.

And because of the lack of answers while I was running the Profitable Blog series here is a flow chart of another question

Can you give a flow chart or something for the following please? I have downloaded a special WordPress type plugin. Can you describe all the tiny steps from the folder in My Documents to the point where it is sitting in the WordPress folder in my Blog back office, please.

You need to look at the readme.txt file because sometimes it is just a single php file that needs to be uploaded and other times it is the whole folder.

WordPress Lessons is still accepting applications and we are back to answering questions.

As always your questions and comments are welcomed.

Mike Paetzold

Technorati Tags: plugin steps, using mac

Today at 2pm we will have the free class on niche research.

Click here to see the ime in your area.

You can call in or listen from the web. Full details below.

EVENT: Profitable Blogging – Step One
DATE & TIME: Saturday, April 19th at 2:00pm Eastern
FORMAT: Simulcast! (Attend via Phone or Webcast — it’s your choice)
TO ATTEND THIS EVENT, CLICK THIS LINK NOW…

Please make sure to download and print out the notesheet prior to the class.

Hope to see you there.

Mike Paetzold

Technorati Tags: blog, blogging, teleclass

So far this week we have run through the first four steps to having a profitable blog. With the exception of the very first step this is the step that gets ignored by most people.

Yes people will set up their blogs properly, post them and generate traffic. Unfortunately they never do research first for profitability and they don’t test and track what is working.

One of the plugins that I had as a must have was the Google Analyticator. This allows you to have the code for Google Analytics on your blog.

You need to check this and see exactly where your traffic is coming from. This tells you what of the things you are doing is working so you can do more of it. Just as important you can see what isn’t working so you can fix it.

If you find three blogs that every time you comment you get a traffic spike do you think it might be a good idea to comment there as often as possible with out spamming?

My Blog Log also has a tracking service that will cost you $25 a year but you can see everything that is being clicked on your blog. You can see 10 for free so when starting you don’t have to pay initially.

There are numerous other pieces of software that can help you analyze your web stats but if you aren’t tracking what is happening and which posts are getting people to take the action you want it is very hard to improve your results.

Test and track your reslts and watch how much you can improve your results.

As always your comments and questions are appreciated.

Mike Paetzold

Saturday at 2pm edt I will have a free teleseminar on Step One that will expand what has been offered here. You can call in or listen on the web. Details are available at Profitable Blogging – Step One.

Technorati Tags: google analytics, mybloglog, tracking

Today is day 4 of the 5 steps to a profitable blog. We have already covered finding your niche, setting up your blog and how to post your blog. Today we will work on generating visitors.

The first thing I do with any new blog is to submit my feed to as many RSS directories as I can. To do this I use a FireFox plugin called Submit Em Now. It is easy to use and the payback for the hour or so of effort is huge as it is one time effort.

Start bookmarking your posts to various bookmarking sites. I use a service called OnlyWire which allows me to bookmark once and have it submitted to various services.

Now while on the subject of bookmarking make sure that you bookmark other sites too. If all you ever bookmark is your own sites you stand the chance of losing your account at some sites. Bookmarking is supposed to help others find quality information. When you find it bookmark it.

Comment on blog posts. This allows you to generate not only links back to your site if they allow do follow it allows you to get traffic from others if…

Here is the big if on commenting on blog posts. Take part in the conversation. Add value to the blog where you comment. Don’t just go in and say “I agree” or “I like your post”.

If you like it say why and what it has done for you. If you don’t agree make a cogent argument for why you feel the way you do. Now that adds value.

A couple more items that will help you generate traffic. Submit articles to the directories especially two part articles where part one goes in the directory and part two is on your blog.

Use your blog link in forums where you are active. Note don’t spam forums to get your link in any more than you spam blog comments.

For more details on generating blog traffic check out 15 Minute Blog Traffic.

As always your comments and questions are welcomed.

Mike Paetzold

Saturday at 2pm edt I will have a free teleseminar on Step One that will expand what has been offered here. You can call in or listen on the web. Details are available at Profitable Blogging – Step One.

Technorati Tags: blog commenting, onlywire, rss directories, traffic