Was just surfing through some blogs today (I know what else is new I always visit blogs) and saw more than one with this basic mistake. Now to set the record straight these were affiliate marketing blogs that have some great pre-sell articles on them but…
The call to action was a nothing more than a bare link. No hyperlink in the post. On a few, to make it stand out even more they were Clickbank links. You know the kind…
People will be more likely to click the middle one and it is really easy to do with WordPress yet quite a few times today I ran across blogs that did the first or the last.
Made me think so I asked myself why? Yes I am old , bald and talk to myself – A LOT sometimes the only intelligent conservation I can get. Guess I spend too much time with the turtles
So it came down to two things.
Laziness – can’t do much for that reason
Not understanding how easy it is to hyperlink
So let walk through how to hyperlink a phrase or name using the WYSIWYG in WordPress.
Highlight the text you want to hyperlink – in the above example “Get Video Cash Explosion”. Highlight the term and click the rope looking thing at the top
When you click that it opens a box where you add the url, how you want it to open and a title..
and click insert.
So that is all you need to do to make your text be a hyperlink of text rather than just add a straight url to the post.
Figured I would take advantage of the things that I am doing that have kept me from posting here. See I am working on outsourcing and have been adding people to my business and this has caused me to have to step back and actually document what I do.
That is one of the reasons that my posting on all of my blogs has been down this week. Yep, sometimes you have to step back to move forward. To do this I have been mind mappping the various processes so they can do exactly what I do. Really should have been doing this for myself before this but a lot of waht I do is automatic for me.
You really should be mindmapping your processes and Discover Free Mind is a great way to discover how to do it.
Back to the main point – I just finished going through and mapping out how I install each blog I add. This way I can just hand it ot my VA and let them put up the blog for me.
Here is a copy of what I created.
So there you have the current list of what I add to my blogs. Now there are a lot of other plugins that I may add for specific purposes but that is a good list of what I currently use.
Hope that helps you and will be back to more normal schedule soon.
Anchor text used properly can help your ranking in the search engines. Linking to your post with the appropriate text makes a difference but somehow people tend to ignore that in forums.
Now a good friend of mine runs a forum and it has a section for New blog ramblings. I have purposely not linked to it because the section is for active members and I don’t want to see a bunch of people go spam it.
The thing is that this a perfect place to highlight your quality content posts, expose them to people that may not find your blog normally and send them to some of your good quality posts. You also create a back link from a very active forum that has some decent PR.
Really an ideal thing and something a lot of the forum member’s miss out on. The key is to not add all your posts but do add the posts that have good content. In this Web 2.0 world giving first and with quality content is important.
Here is the problem I am seeing though. More people are starting to use this and that is great but they are missing the opportunity the forum gives them to create the ideal anchor text for their content.
They either come in and put up a blurb and the direct link to their blog’s home page or the just post the permalink to their blog post. the latter is better because you will be getting internal links and not just a link to your home page but not as powerful as having a link with your keyword phrase as the anchor text.
Most forum use bb code so it would be very easy to use it and make a clickable link (anchor text) with their keyword for the post.
For those not familiar with bb code this is easily done by using the following
[url=http://yourblogpostfullurl]Anchor text[/url]
By doing that and adding the keyword they most want to rank for they are telling the serps exactly what the post is about and the little spiders that go through there will report back and hopefully you will rank better for that specific term.
Yes using forums will deliver direct traffic done the other way but taking a few more moments and alerting the serps to what your post is about is even more powerful.
Take advantage of these opportunities not just in forums but anywhere that you can promote your post and use good anchor text.
As always your questions and comments are welcomed.
Mobile web devices and the numbers of users are exploding. Hey I am old, bald and not always quick to move to the latest technology so my cell phone is still just that a phone but…
When the contract comes up in a couple months I will be. Right now favoring the Storm because Iphone is only ATT and I like Verizon. Not really relevant to this post but yes even old bald guys like me are looking at these much more than a cell phone device.
The big thing for you the reader though is that more and more people are accessing the web through mobile devices. Google and Yahoo have separate bots for mobile compatible sites and are giving those type of sites priority in the search from mobile devices.
As more and more people start accessing the web through these devices having a version that is mobile friendly will become more important. Because of that I have started using Mobile Press plugin and will be looking for a better theme for this new format.
Yes you can have one theme for your blog from a browser and a different one from a mobile device that is designed specifically for those readers. The default that comes with the plugin is ok but will be looking at either creating or locating something a bit unique for my blogs.
Guess I need to push up the time table on switching phones and will be watching the stats carefully to see if I get additional readers by using this plugin.
Will be reporting back in the future but have a feeling this is the future and wanted to let you know about this now.
As always your questions and comments are welcomed.
Mike Paetzold
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One of the reasons I love using a blog rather than a static web site is the ability to interact with your readers. Yesterday I wrote about making sure you upgrade your plugins and 2 of the comments had great questions that need to be addressed.
See the interaction allows me to expand on the questions I did not think of and you get information that answers those questions.
Quick question, Mike – if the automatic update fails, does it just stop the current plugin from functioning, or can it disturb the blog installation itself? Is it important or superfluous to back up an installation just before trying to automatically install a plugin update?
Got another question for you Mike,
What if everything goes just fine with the upgrade, but once the upgrade is done you have conflicts with another plugin or the plugin just stops working with the theme you have?
How do you recover from this?
I realize that you could just un-install and re-install the old version back assuming you still have it available, but what if there is a lot of configuring that you have done with the plug-in. Do you lose all of that?
First lets address backups. You should be backing up your blog regularly. It is not necessary to do it before you upgrade a plugin because the backup process will only effect the plugin itself. It shuts off the plugin, downloads the latest version then installs it and turns it back on. If something goes wrong it has not altered any files other than that plugin.
The question really is should you back up the old plugin first? For me the answer is no. There is either an update or a security flaw or there would not be an upgrade. Worst case is I go grab the plugin and install it manually if there is a problem.
Now to the problem of what if this creates a conflict. That can and may happen and can be a royal pain in the you know what. The odds are against it but it is possible.
At that point I would have to test to see which items are conflicting. First I would try the default theme as a test. I use the default theme because that is what most plugins are tested against. If that solves the problem you know that it is the theme. Not very likely but an easy test so I would do that first. Then you have a choice of how important your plugin is versus how important your theme choice is to you.
If that was not the problem then I would start de-activating the other plugins to find out where the conflict is. Once you have isolated the two that are conflicting you have a choice to make. Which one to keep?
As there are probably a minimum of three choices of other plugins to do what any particular plugin does see what is available to replace one of the problem plugins and which features are most important to you.
Finally as to the configuration question. If you have done the configuration through the dashboard then it is saved in the data base and you will not lose anything. (The upgrade process for a plugin does not touch the data base.)
If you have edited the plugin itself (rare for most people) then I probably would not be upgrading it to begin with. I would be looking at the specs to see what was changed and any notes on why and then make a decision on it. If you are doing this type of thing you are probably already competent in the coding and would download the new one and see what changed and edit it before adding it. This probably does not apply to 1% (and that may be a high estimate) of my readers.
Again I do appreciate the interaction and the questions so feel free to continue to contribute.
This is a topic that is often overlooked. One of the nice things with the newer versions of WordPress is that each time you log in you will see a notice if there are plugins that are out of date.
When you see this when logging in just click on plugins and on the plugin page you will see a note below that will have a link you can click.
When you click that it will take you to a page where you enter the ftp information for your site and submit. Then it will go find and re-activate the latest version of the plugin.
It is important that you don’t skip these updates. The plugins are updated by the author either because there is a glitch of some kind or a security problem. WordPress has made this extremely easy with the latest versions so take the few minutes to keep your plugins updated each time you log in and see the notice.
As always your questions and comments are welcomed.
Mike Paetzold
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Here is the replay from last night’s call. There were lots of good questions and hopefully good answers.
Special thanks to Steve Roye for co-hosting with me. You can check out his site at http://realfirststeps.com and see what he is doing with a slightly different model.
Got an email today that reminded me of something I do at times but don’t mention often enough here. Rarely do I take the time to take the extra step that she did.
This person put up a great link bait post. Really should talk about that here more often as it is a great way to help build back links to your blog.
A link bait post is something that people will want to link to because of the content. This example is probably one of the easier ways to do it as it is a list of resources on a hot topic.
Now here are a few of the things Kelly did right. The email came to an addy used on my mailing list for this blog that I don’t normally use for other things. Makes her part of my tribe and me more likely to share.
She picked a popular topic but when you go read her post she kept the intro on topic to her audience – college students and people that are looking for colleges.
If she sent the same type of email to other people that have posted about Twitter she will probably get even more people linking back to her list. Some of my readers that find the post valuable may link to it from their blogs. All of us that do are providing a valuable resource to our readers so it is easy to do.
Consider how you can use this on your blog to give people a reason to link to you.
As always your questions and comments are welcomed.
Mike Paetzold
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Okay I am a dunce and forgot to add the BTR show into the Week In Review on Mike Paetzold Recommends this week. That usually starts the questions coming so I need a bit of help here.
Tomorrow night is the monthly Q and A Session where you can ask your questions about WordPress and blogging and I will try to answer them. This month I even have my good friend Steve Roye (check out his comedy blog) back to keep me from answering anything in techie mode.
Please leave your questions below in the comments and plan to attend tomorrow evening.
Remember that you can call in and talk directly or listen from the web and ask your questions in the chat window. Here are the details.
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Yesterday I picked up a new follower – my local newspaper. More and more the press and others are getting involved in social media. Now I don’t live in a major metropolitan area and the local paper is not covering a major metropolitan area. Most of our big towns the average person not from this area would not recognize.
The major news outlets have long had a presence on Twitter. Fox News has been using it for quite some time (but then again Rupert Murdoch owns them). Twitter is growing by leaps and bounds at this point.
At the very least you should have an account and be watching how people are using it. More tips in the video below.
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sometimes the only intelligent conservation I can get. Guess I spend too much time with the turtles 
