Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

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Why people should stop being snarky at Bing’s link disavow tool Posted: 05 Jul 2012 07:00 AM PDT Last week Bing announced their new link disavow tool available in their Bing Webmaster Central, and SEOs immediately got snarky about how and why Bing could possibly need a tool such as this, especially when SEOs were all squirming with delight over the mere possibility that Google might come out with an identical tool, as Matt Cutts hinted at a couple of weeks ago. Yes, we know in the bigger scheme of things that Bing doesn’t matter nearly as much as Google when it comes to driving traffic to your sites.  But once upon a time, Google didn’t matter nearly as much as the search engines back in their early days did either, and look at the immense power Google is rocking it out with these days.  Yes, Microsoft is huge, but Bing is still like their annoying little brother that just keeps tagging along.  But all the sharp minded SEOs are taking note that Bing’s market share is slowly but steadily taking teeny tiny dents out of Google’s market share. So Bing launched this awesome tool last week that will allow webmasters to essentially say “hey, we don’t know where those links pointing to our site are, we want nothing to do with them, so please pretend they don’t exist”.  Pretty cool tool in this day and age where Google has been penalizing sites with suspected paid or otherwise iffy back link profiles – however, it was Bing that launched the tool and not Google.  So while Bing did something great for the webmaster community, it didn’t take long for all kinds of bitchy comments targeting Bing’s new tool to start.  It seemed to begin first with a Search Engine Land news story. Now, doesn’t that title scream of a Rand Fishkin link bait title circa 2005?  Since Vanessa Fox is an ex-Googler, it isn’t surprising she came out with a blog post making a not so subtle jabs at Bing, but more so when she does it on the Search Engine Land platform.  She built Webmaster Central at Google, so yes, I can see her being someone defensive that Bing launched a cool new tool before her former baby, especially one that webmasters have been begging for.  It’s funny how SEL has long had a love/hate relationship with Google, despite the fact that Matt Cutts is usually the keynote speaker at SMX (and it ironically being at SMX Advanced where Matt first hinted at the possibility of offering such a tool).  But it just seemed to be very heavy  on the “Bing sucks” bias to many readers. Vanessa’s article continues on with thinly veiled insults where she goes far out of her way to paint Bing in a pretty negative light, pulling out old blog posts and comments to show Bing’s contradictory stance (but hello, Google has it’s own contradictory posts too, which of course she didn’t happen to mention).  Ready to dig into her version of events?  You can read her blog post here here. And to put it into perspective, their competitor Search Engine Watch did a similar story, but just the facts and quotes from Duane Forrester. Then of course after the blog post came the obligatory tweet (which was retweeted numerous times). Now Search Engine Land and Vanessa Fox were far from the only ones who did it, it just happens she was the one who wrote a particularly critical look at it before most others did, and the one everyone was retweeting. And that seemed to give people permission to do their own digs at Bing for launching a link disavow tool too, when really, they shouldn’t be bitter at Bing for doing it first, they should be pissed at Google for not doing it.. At least some of them were pretty clever!  But I degress. What people are missing is the real point of the whole thing.  Really, Bing did the biggest favor it could to SEOs, aside from making them look ahead of the game compared to Google.  Because now Google is going to have to come up with a response to that, because do they really want Bing to have the tool that all SEOs are stomping their feet to get?  Bing got a huge amount of mileage out of the story, and who knows, they might have heard Matt Cutts talk about the fact Google was considering offering the same tool and thought “Damn, we should do this first”, and while Google was pondering the ramifications of it (which could be significant depending on how it is rolled out, because of how spammers could manipulate it for their own good), Bing just went ahead and did it (and to be honest, I am surprised they did!) While not many SEOs will actually sit down and use the tool for more than testing (unless they have been hit by Google’s penalties), I do hope Bing releases the numbers of how many links were disavowed or how many people are using it, the numbers could be surprising.   Bing won’t necessarily get more market share out of this per se, however, it did go a hell of a long way towards providing good will and happy feelings to the non-snarky webmasters. What should Bing do next?  The best possible thing Bing can do right now is get the right people on board and continue building those dream tools that all the Google minded SEOs want, because it not only gets more people using the Bing Webmaster Central but it also puts Google on the defensive to answer with their own tool, or explain why they won’t offer it, but Google has so far been mum on the issue since Bing’s launch. In other words, game on! Looking for an SEO service that won’t get you banned?

How Not to Suck as an SEO Posted: 05 Jul 2012 06:45 AM PDT For every one kick ass SEO in the industry, there are three or four horrendously awful SEOs and at least a dozen wannabe SEOs.  While horrendously awful tend to burn their bridges in the industry (and get sites penalized) before they make it, wannabe SEOs can tend to make something of themselves if they work their asses off, which will again separate the wheat from the chaffe in the SEO world.  Wanting to put the time and effort into being a good SEO?  Here are some things you should do to NOT suck as an SEO. Fact Check Unless you have been in the industry for several years, are constantly reading on the topic, and pretty much eat, sleep and breathe SEO, take the time to fact check everything before you post or tweet.   You want to amaze people with your brilliance not cause people to question it because you said something as fact that is false or were spouting out outdated information.  After all, there was a time when it was considered a fairly safe practice to buy links, provided they weren’t from link farms or spammy sites.  So make sure your facts are coming from trustworthy sources (link to ppl to follow on twitter) and current.  If you can’t find a date on a blog post (like many do these days, to combat the appearance that some content is stale) find a second source. Not a Jack of All Trades Don’t be afraid to admit something is out of your expertise. Not all of us can be amazing writers or amazing link builders.  Some are stronger technically while others are strong designers.  Not everyone can be a jack of all trades in this industry, which is why many of us work with teams instead.  If something isn’t your strong suit, suggest someone to your client that would be better suited to that particular aspect of their needs.  It is better to have the client think you are awesome in your strong areas than for them to think you are only mediocre because your writing skills or your design skills were pretty lacklustre. Take time to smell the roses If you are looking at your analytics for less than five minutes a day, you are doing it wrong.  Period.  Whatever flavor of analytics you are using (although Google Analytics does offer a pretty awesome and comprehensive free analytics program) you can find out immense things about your visitors.  Do you know what percentage of your traffic is from mobile devices?  If not, you better look and see if you are missing the boat on offering a mobile-friendly website.  What is your top landing page after your index page?  What social media sends the most traffic?  What forums have been linking to your site this week?  What pages in your top ten have a higher than average bounce rate and what can you do to fix that? Know your keywords It is all fine and dandy to ranking number one for a 5 word keyword phrase, but if only one person searches for that a month, why does it matter?  Make sure you are focusing on the keywords that can bring you in the most traffic and the most conversions because bragging to anyone about your #1 ranking for an obscure keyword combination will make you look like a clueless idiot. Bigger picture tools Especially if you are learning or not quite “an old hat” at SEO yet, tools can be your new best friend.  There are plenty of tools out there, if you know them and can find them, that are designed to give SEOs an advantage either in time or scope.  They can help you see the bigger picture of all kinds of data, then as you get more experienced you can drill down to what things are most important for each specific client or website.  And then don’t forget to use the tools.  We have all signed up for some cool tool and then barely used it for whatever reason. Network Sure you might be writing the most brilliant blog posts of the year on your personal SEO blog.  But if you only have three people reading it, chances are almost certain that anyone who really matters in the industry will never see it.  So follow – and more importantly, interact – with people on Twitter.  Guest blog at one of the many industry blogs that take guest posts.  Pitch for conferences, even the smaller ones that might not have as many pitches.  You want to do whatever you can to get your name out there and noticed, but get noticed in a good way of course!  Which brings me to my next point. My bad We all screw up occasionally.  Fortunately, some of us do it with only a couple people knowing, while others will screw up so royally that it will generate hundreds or thousands of tweets about it.  If you screw up, particularly in a humiliating way that results in people calling you out and talking about it, fess up.  Whether you are saying “my bad”, or have to release a full fledged apology on your blog, do it and do it quick.  The worst thing you can do is fuck up and then be not willing to admit it, because people will remember. So if you are stuck in that wannabe or “no quite an expert” SEO rut, consider adding things things to your daily “to do” list.  Send out a guest blog proposal every day; make a point of @reply an industry expert daily; add a few new SEO blogs to your RSS reader; sign up for a new tool every week, even if it is just a free trial – and then use it.  For every expert SEO you see, you can pretty much guarantee they did their time in the trenches doing all these things while building their reputation and client base. Now, ready, set, GO!  And don’t suck Trying to increase your Google rank that is like no other?

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“New Blogger? Create a Viral Post in 5 Simple Steps!” plus 1 more

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New Blogger? Create a Viral Post in 5 Simple Steps! Posted: 04 Jul 2012 01:07 PM PDT This guest post is by Greg Digneo of Cloud Marketing Labs. Admit it: you think I'm nuts. There's no way a new blogger can write a viral blog post with five simple steps! Well, as the saying goes: "I said it was simple, but it ain't easy." In fact, it will take a lot of work, but it can be done. The myth of the viral post There isn't a blogger alive who hasn't dreamed of writing that perfect blog post that will be read by thousands of people. You spend time researching a trending topic.  You relentlessly pursue the perfect headline.  And you pour your heart into creating epic content. Raise your hand if you've done this and have not created a viral blog post. Writing about a trending topic, creating a perfect headline, and writing epic content are vital to having a post that goes viral. But you are missing one thing: relationships. In order for a post to go viral, it needs to be seen by the right people. What is a viral post? Before we get into how to build these relationships, I want to first share with you my definition of a viral post. Math geeks will tell you that a post goes viral when the viral coefficient is greater than one. But for the rest of us, a viral post for a new blogger is when one of your posts gets read and shared exponentially more than the others.  It's as simple as that. Below are the steps you can use to create a viral blog post. Step 1: Find a topic There are two key ingredients that make a successful topic. First, the topic should be one that's trending.  If you are a blogger, there is almost no chance that a "Twitter" topic will be successful.  It's been done. However, the topic Pinterest will generate more interest. It's a new social media company, and bloggers and marketers are still trying to figure out ways to leverage it. To find a trending topic, read blogs in your niche and take note of which topics are getting the most comments, shares, and links.This will give you a good indication of what your audience wants to read and share with their social media following. The second ingredient to a successful topic is the ability to write five unique posts on the topic. For instance, you might write one post called "3 Steps to Drive Traffic with Pintrest," and another post called "10 Companies Profiting from Pintrest." But make sure you can write five posts, each taking a different angle on the topic you’ve chosen. Step 2: Find four blogs to submit guest posts to Once you have your topic, find four blogs to submit guest posts to. ProBlogger has a lot of advice on successfully submitting guest posts to popular blogs. For this process to work correctly, ensure that the blogs you are submitting your guest posts to have large Twitter followings. Step 3: Time your posts The most effective way to guest post is to write multiple posts that go live around the same time.  That will give your audience the impression that you are everywhere. To do this correctly, prepare to schedule your posts to go live in about 60 days’ time. Some of the more popular blogs receive a lot of submissions and have a large queue of posts they have to publish before they get to yours. But as long as you plan ahead, most bloggers and content managers will work with you to publish your post on the day you request. Step 4:  Publish a post on your own blog By now, you have written five blog posts and four have gone live on popular blogs. That leaves one post for you to publish on your own blog. Publish this post two or three days after your final guest post has gone live. Step 5: Email bloggers Before you email the bloggers you've submitted guest posts to, check to see how well your post did relative to those around it. If it got a comparable number of shares, comments, and links, then you’re good to go. Here’s the exact message that I write to bloggers. Hey (Popular blogger), I wanted to let you know that I created a follow up post to the one that went live on (date the post went live) that I think your readers will enjoy. Pinterest is a hot topic these days and I couldn't possibly provide all of the information in one post. I would love to know what you think. Regards, Greg The goal here is to get the bloggers to tweet your post, but you’ll notice that in this email I didn't ask for the tweet. There is a chance that the post won't resonate with the blogger’s audience. If that's the case, you don't want to ruin the relationship and ask for a commitment they are not willing to fulfill. The bottom line The truth is you might have to guest post two or three times on a blog in order to build the kind of relationship you’ll need to have that popular blogger tweet your link. And if even you follow this process, there’s no way to guarantee that the post will go viral. However, getting your content seen by top influencers does give you a fighting chance. Like I said, it is a simple five step process, but it's not easy to execute. Most of you are going to read this post, file it away somewhere and go about your business.  And that's fine. I do that all the time. But there are a few of you who know deep down that your content deserves to get read on a consistent basis. You know that your content is as good as, if not better than, the influencers in your niche. You just need your big break. Do yourself a favor.  Stop waiting for someone to hand you your break, and go grab it. The world needs to hear what you have to say. So, what are you waiting for? Get your content seen.  Like right now! Greg Digneo is the founder of Cloud Marketing Labs which works with B2B companies who want to generate more online sales leads.  You can download his free ebook which shows you how to generate 100 sales leads in 30 days. Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger New Blogger? Create a Viral Post in 5 Simple Steps!

How I Run a Successful Blog Without Writing a Word Posted: 04 Jul 2012 07:06 AM PDT This guest post is by Ashkan of iPhoneAppCafe.com. I started iPhoneAppCafe.com back in 2010 with the aim of making it a profitable blog—a goal that I eventually achieved. However, after my first blogging venture, one thing became clear to me: writing is not actually my greatest strength. I have always had lots of ideas and I recognize a good article when I see it. But when it comes to actually writing one, it often takes me far too long, and time is something that I can't really spare because of my day job and other commitments. So, here was my challenge: how could I approach the blog with a more businesslike attitude and employ the right team to help with the content? That's when it occurred to me that I could start a multi-writer blog. If I focused on what I was good at, which is the design, development, and optimization of the blog (I manage ecommerce projects for a day job), then all I had to do was find writers who would write about what they are passionate about. They wouldn’t have to worry about the other boring jobs that go along with creating a successful site, such as how to setup a blog, publish content and promote it, and so on. In 2010, the iPhone was still fairly new and everybody was talking about apps, with hundreds of new ones filling up the App Store every month. There wasn't too much competition from the likes of Android to worry about either! iPhoneAppCafe's promise was to share each app's experience and help iPhone users discover great new apps. How did I get writers for my blog? This bit was pretty simple: I placed a number of ads on a local classified website and also on the ProBlogger job board. To my delight, what I found was that there are many iPhone enthusiasts who would happily rate and review their favourite apps for next to nothing. I even managed to get a number of people to write for free! In addition to the standard app reviews, I also came up with ideas for a number of good top-10 lists and delegated the writing to the most suitable contributors.  Some of the lists got shared on social media and did really well in terms of traffic; even today, some of the best ones still get top ranking in Google and generate lots of traffic. 5 keys to a successful multi-writer blog Hiring authors is the first step, but there are five key elements you’ll need to work on if your multi-author blog is to be a success. 1. A popular subject Blogging about a topically popular subject will enable you to find passionate writers. In my case iPhone and apps were very popular at the time I launched the blog and still continue to be topical and talked about. 2. An appealing job ad Create an appealing ad and communicate your vision in a way that involves and includes your contributors. Here are two of the ads I used. Get Free iPhone Apps By Writing For iPhoneAppCafe If you love your iPhone and enjoy reviewing apps, then why not apply to join our team of contributors?  You will receive promotional codes for free apps and get the opportunity for your reviews to be featured on one of the foremost iPhone app websites on the Internet! To apply, simply send us a short (200-300 word) review of any iPhone app, along with a star ranking, the name of the developer, the latest release date, the price and an image caption, (all of which are available from the iTunes store) and a picture or screen shot of the app.  Those who get through will join the iPhoneAppCafe team and will receive free apps, a showcase for their writing and the opportunity to advance to paid article writing! Get Paid For Writing About Apps You Love Do you have a certain passion in life?  Can you write enthusiastically about that passion?  Could you use some extra pocket money?  Most importantly, do you have an iPhone?! If the answer to all of these questions is yes, then we want to hear from you!  There are a few openings in the team at iPhoneAppCafe.com for talented writers who can write reviews of apps that are relevant to what they love.  For example, if you are a teacher then you could write about apps that help educate children; if you are a whiz in the kitchen, then you may want to write about cooking apps. We are looking for contributors from different walks of life, in particular: Sports people Health and fitness enthusiasts Food critics Photographers Entrepreneurs If you are interested in earning money to write about what you love, then simply send us a short (200-300 word) review of one of your favourite iPhone app, along with a star ranking and a picture or screen shot of the app.  Those who get through will join the iPhoneAppCafe team and will receive free apps to review, a showcase for your writing skills and, best of all, you'll get paid £10-£15 to write top 5 and top 10 lists! 3. Create author profiles Allow each contributor to have a profile containing their contact details. This will encourage graduates and those just starting out to write for free for you in the interest of building up their profiles and CVs. We have had writers who wrote for free and used their profile on our blog to get writing jobs in the tech industry. 4. Select a topic that benefits from multiple viewpoints As an example, I had a musician writing about his favorite music apps, and a keen globetrotter writing about good travel apps. This goes hand in hand with our blog's community aspect and the sharing of mutual and individual experiences. 5. Share behind-the-scenes info Keep your writers engaged by sharing website statistics and traffic figures with them. You can also create traffic-related incentives—something that I experimented with, which gave mixed results. There were certainly times when I felt the traffic-related bonuses motivated the writers to spend more time in sharing and bookmarking the articles. What’s your story? These are the basic strategies I’ve used to build a successful blog without writing a word. What’s your story? Do you run a multi-author blog—or write for one? Share your experiences and tips with us. Ashkan is the founder of iPhoneAppCafe.com, a community blog dedicated to reviewing and sharing the best iPhone apps. He started the blog in 2010 and got it to 5000 visitors a day within 9 months. He shares his experience on Twitter: @AshkanTalk. Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger How I Run a Successful Blog Without Writing a Word

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