Clipmarks | phatmommy's 'blogging' clips

Why You Should Delete Your Blog's Date-Based Archives

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 04:07:50 GMT

clipped by: phatmommy
clipper's remarks: Get rid of those date archives. They're useless and they can cause duplicate content issues which messes up your page rank.

Clip Source: www.blog4seo.com

However lots of bloggers are still falling into a major SEO and usability trap - date based archives. When was the last time you visited a blog and browsed their date based archives?

Date based archives are not just useless from a usability point of view they don't help your SEO either. As well as possible duplicate content issues if you publish full posts in your archives the main issue is that the pages are full of unrelated content. If you group all your posts about the iPhone together on one page Google can see that the page is related to the iPhone and each post will rank higher because of it. When you group 30 posts from January 2006 together on a page Google just sees it as a page of unrelated content.

Tags: wordpress, blogging, page-rank, seo

Turn Your WP Categories into Feeds

Sat, 31 May 2008 13:24:04 GMT

clipped by: phatmommy
clipper's remarks: A little-known feature that could be useful if you use your category feature wisely.

Clip Source: bloggerdesign.com

One nice feature in Wordpress is the ability to have a feed for each category. It’s all built in and up-and-running in all Wordpress blogs as we speak. It’s just not promoted.

To get separate feeds for each category, just load the category page and add /feed/ at the end of the URL. That is if they have permalinks turned on.

A good marketer will want to know how many people are subscribing to each category feed. To do this you’ll need to run over to Feedburner and start burning each category feed. Then put in a 302 redirect to send all feed traffic to the Feedburner feed.

Tags: blogging, wordpress, categories, rss, feeds

Setting a Clear Blog Purpose

Wed, 28 May 2008 12:12:09 GMT

clipped by: phatmommy
clipper's remarks: Without a clear purpose and goals, your blog may flounder.

Clip Source: lorelle.wordpress.com

Without a strong blog purpose, and a plan to fulfill that purpose, a blog soon dies and the blogger is bored or floundering without a path.

Set the Blog Subject Matter:

Blog Editorial Calendar:

Whose Blogging:

Blog Demographics:

Blog Goals:

Clarify Blog Purpose:

Once you have your plan and purpose defined, then the choices you make for promotion, monetization, and good practices will automatically follow suit. The clearer your purpose, the better choices you will make.

Tags: blogging

The REALLY Important FriendFeed Page to Watch

Sun, 18 May 2008 15:40:00 GMT

clipped by: phatmommy
clipper's remarks: FriendFeed is becoming an uber-useful tool for me and Scoble points out just one more great way to use it.

Clip Source: scobleizer.com

There’s one FriendFeed page that is FAR more important: the one where you can see YOUR stuff that I’ve liked and commented on. Why is that more important? Well, it’s where you’ll find a lot of new stuff from other people. It is where I signal to you what I think is important to pay attention to (which is quite a database, if you look at it along with my ego feed, since that includes all sorts of cool stuff I’m seeing come through my Google Reader feed).

If you haven’t figured out yet how to see this page for everyone, just look at this URL:

http://friendfeed.com/scobleizer/discussion (replace “scobleizer” with the name of your favorite person on FriendFeed).

The best way to become a great blogger is demonstrate you listen to other people. FriendFeed is BY FAR the best way to do that.

Tags: friendfeed, rss, lifestream, blogging, commenting

Excellent WordPress SEO Tips

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 04:10:02 GMT

clipped by: phatmommy

Clip Source: www.joostdevalk.nl

Increase search engine traffic to your WordPress blog with one night's work!

1. Improve your titles, meta descriptions, and "more" texts

2. Pick the correct permalink structure and slug

3.1. Breadcrumbs

3.2. Headings

Although most themes for WordPress get this right, make sure your post title is an <h1>, and nothing else.

3.3. Clean up your code

4. Remove duplicate content

Go into your theme and remove all references to other taxonomies. Wipe out the date based archive, and remove the tagging or the categories from single.php, archive.php, index.php and search.php.

4.2 noindex,follow unimportant or dupe pages

4.3 A one author blog? Disable the author archives

5. Interlink related posts

6. Create linkable content!

Tags: wordpress, seo, blogging

Social Media's Favorite Type of Post

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 14:52:02 GMT

clipped by: phatmommy

Clip Source: www.problogger.net

If you’re a regular user of social media, you’ll notice that big lists of resources, tools and articles are consistently popular. In fact, they seem to be social media’s favorite type of blog post.

Pick great resources

Don’t sacrifice quality for a big headline.

Don’t recommend anything you haven’t read/tried/explored yourself.

The headline is probably the most important part of your resource list. Headlines for these types of posts tend to be most effective when they include a number. When it comes to numbers, bigger numbers are not always better. Certain formulas (like 100, 101, and so on) can seem gimmicky to web users who see them often. If your target audience is tech-savvy they are likely to be quite jaded by over-used headline formulas.

Readers are not interested in the list itself, but in what it has the potential to do for them.

Tags: blogging, social media

Why Blog Commenting is Important

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 02:50:58 GMT

clipped by: phatmommy
clipper's remarks: Good general overview of the importance of blog commenting.

Clip Source: www.beginnerblogging.com

When launching a blog one of the key components to the effort is interacting with other blogs in your given niche. You can write all the content you want, but with seven million blogs you’re going to need to get out and communicate in order for people to find you.

One key method for doing that is commenting.

Here are some key benefits to blog commenting:

The ability to share your opinion and develop yourself as a niche expert.

Commenting shows you’re going to be active in a community and willing to offer up thoughts.

The authors of the sites on which you comment will be intrigued and oftentimes visit your site to see what you’re all about. Thus, your readership has a chance to grow.

If you’re one of the first to comment on a very popular post, other readers will follow the link to your site and see who was on top of the latest popular story.

Tags: blogging, social networking, blog traffic

Guide to Networking With Bloggers

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 01:54:14 GMT

clipped by: phatmommy
clipper's remarks: Excellent tips to keep in mind for blogging and life.

Clip Source: www.problogger.net

Here is a list of everything you need to be a successful networker. Remember, bloggers are all people, just like you. With that said, this is not just a guide for networking with bloggers, but with people as a whole.

Have the best intentions.

Respect their time.

Be genuine with them.

Give more than you take.

Keep them at eye level.

Have unshakable confidence, and ask.

Be presentable on search.

Treat them the way they want to be treated.

The Tools

Comment on their blog.

Trackback conversations.

The short e-mail.

Skype it or cell it.

Networking events.

Other tools.

Tags: blogging, social networking, marketing

Increase Sociability Plugin

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 00:04:39 GMT

clipped by: phatmommy
clipper's remarks: Nice idea for a plugin, and you can edit the text that shows. Sweet.

Clip Source: www.preblogging.com

Basically what happens is it checks the refer (what page the visitor is coming from) and if it matches either Digg.com or StumbleUpon.com then it will simply welcome the user and ask them to give you a positive vote if they like the page.

The plugin only serves as a reminder to help people to either digg or stumble your post. It is still up to the user to click that icon to give you the vote. Increase Sociability is just a smart way to increase your traffic from social media sites, and ultimately to increase your visitors/sales/revenue !

Tags: blog traffic, social networking, blogging, social bookmarking

5 Steps to Better Social Media Marketing

Fri, 18 Jan 2008 08:16:02 GMT

clipped by: phatmommy

Clip Source: www.dailyblogtips.com

If you want to be more effective with driving traffic to your website or blog with social media, here are five steps that are sure to improve your results.

One of the first things you will need to do is find a few sites that will work well for you. Of course the larger sites like Digg and StumbleUpon are popular choices because of the large traffic volumes that they send. But if you are looking for sites that can send high quality traffic, first look for niche-specific social media sites.

If you hope to ever become a true authority on social media, you’ll have to implement consistent use.

find a topic that is of particular interest to your readers and present it in a way that also appeals to social media users. For example, social media users like lists, breaking news, photos, controversy, and informative topics.

4. Networking and Helping Others

5. Conversion

Tags: blogging, social networking, marketing

10 Tips for More Productive Blogging

Fri, 18 Jan 2008 05:16:42 GMT

clipped by: phatmommy
clipper's remarks: Good ideas for time management in general.

Clip Source: www.dailyblogtips.com

Many bloggers, myself included, struggle to balance the needs of this hobby with the needs of our loved ones. Being productive can make that task a little bit easier.

1. Write more than you publish.

2. Turn off auto-notifiers.

3. Check email less, deal with more.

4. Write multiple posts when you’re feeling creative.

5. Use your feed reader as an all-purpose inbox.

6. Process different tasks in batches.

8. Keep a reserve of post ideas.

9. Spend less time reading feeds.

10. Sketch out your posts before filling in the detail.

Sometimes we spend so much time trying to decide what we should do that nothing at all gets done.

7. Develop a ‘To Post’ list.

Tags: blogging, productivity

Find the Perfect Name for Your Blog

Thu, 27 Dec 2007 02:48:56 GMT

clipped by: phatmommy

Clip Source: www.blogherald.com

Finding a good name for your site can be very difficult.

Here are some ways to find a memorable name that will stand out from the crowd:

1. Be unique - Make up a word (like Dooce), leave out a vowel (like Flickr), or deliberately misspell a word (like Pownce). Your name can work well, especially if it’s not an extremely common name, but only use it if you’re not planning on selling the site in the future.

2. Be amusing - I ran across a Jewish scholar’s blog called the “Velveteen Rabbi” some time ago, and I have never forgotten the name. Use a play on words to put a smile on the face of visitors and they’re more likely to find you again.

3. Be odd - Sounds like strange advice maybe, but the goal here is to be memorable. Defective Yeti is an extremely odd name for a site, but you’re unlikely to forget it quickly.

4. Hack a domain name

del.icio.us and blo.gs are good examples of hacked domain names.

Tags: optional. separate by commas., blogging

Mind Mapping Generates New Post Ideas

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 01:02:29 GMT

clipped by: phatmommy

Clip Source: www.problogger.net

Remember last post where I suggested how you could extend a post in numerous ways including by answering a question that a reader asked about it in comments, taking an opposite view point, writing an opinion piece, doing a followup ‘how to’ etc.

Get a whiteboard, piece of paper, note book, tablet pc or something else to write on (there are also various mind mapping tools and software options out there - but I find a pen and paper can work just fine) and draw five circles across the middle of the page. In each circle write the titles of the last five posts on your blog (if you want to do this more comprehensively go back further and do it with more posts).

Now take each post in turn and spend a few minutes brainstorming on ways that the post could be extended. For each idea draw a line out from the circle, draw a square (or use a different color) and write the idea inside of it.

Tags: blogging, ideas

Is RSS Bad News for Blog Advertising?

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 02:15:28 GMT

clipped by: phatmommy
clipper's remarks: Some real opportunity here for advertisers to come up with a way to capitalize on RSS.

Clip Source: markevanstech.com

Here’s an interesting scenario: what if RSS readers become more ubiquitous?

What if people who read political, gossip, entertainment, automotive, health, sports and science blogs start doing so through RSS readers as opposed to visiting a blog. How would that affect blog-vertising if, at best, all a reader sees is a small ad in your RSS feed? Would these ads generate enough revenue to make blogs viable economically? The answer, I think, is no.

Still, I do believe RSS is moving into the mainstream at a rapid clip as services such as Google Reader make it easier than ever to read and subscribe to a variety of content. At the same time, content producers are embracing RSS as a distribution vehicle.

This means blogs and advertisers using blogs will need to quickly adapt because the landscape is changing as we speak - and read.

Tags: advertising, blogging, rss

Clipmarks | phatmommy's 'blogging' clips

Why You Should Delete Your Blog's Date-Based Archives

Turn Your WP Categories into Feeds

Setting a Clear Blog Purpose

The REALLY Important FriendFeed Page to Watch

Excellent WordPress SEO Tips

Increase search engine traffic to your WordPress blog with one night's work!

1. Improve your titles, meta descriptions, and "more" texts

2. Pick the correct permalink structure and slug

3.1. Breadcrumbs

3.2. Headings

3.3. Clean up your code

4. Remove duplicate content

4.2 noindex,follow unimportant or dupe pages

4.3 A one author blog? Disable the author archives

5. Interlink related posts

6. Create linkable content!

Social Media's Favorite Type of Post

Similar Posts in Your Feed

Why Blog Commenting is Important

Guide to Networking With Bloggers

The Tools

Increase Sociability Plugin

5 Steps to Better Social Media Marketing

10 Tips for More Productive Blogging

Find the Perfect Name for Your Blog

Mind Mapping Generates New Post Ideas

Is RSS Bad News for Blog Advertising?