Should I set my inner child free?

Quite Out of Character For Me…

After twenty years of freelance consulting I arbitrarily, and quite uncharacteristically decided to accept an offer from a major publisher–a very flattering offer I might add–to go and manage their local publishing operation in the Middle East, which is, as I’m quite sure you know, a major emerging market for many fields these days.

Talk About Diving In Head First!

Although it wasn’t exactly far for me to go–no relocation was necessary–it was a drastic change from my usual pace: not quite working in my pajamas every day, but certainly enjoying the extreme latitude that working from my cozy leather recliner afforded me. Now I must snap out of bed at a respectable hour every morning, slug down a cup of something hot and get myself showered, dressed to face the world, and out of the door in time to negotiate the short drive to the office. I’d almost forgotten what rush-hour traffic was all about, since consultants rarely venture out at those certain hours of the day. They’re at perfect liberty not to!

The Good–And the Not-So-Good!

In some ways working in a brand-new, high-tech, corporate office has been a ball. I often wondered, as an SEO consultant working from home, how I’d get on in a real-live-office after all these years. And no, I’m not going to tell you how long it’s been since my last full-time job. There are some things one should simply to keep to oneself.

Anyway, I found out that I’d do just fine. I admit that I have a huge advantage over many who must battle it out in the corporate jungle every day: my surroundings are pleasant and my co-workers are, for the most part, a delightful bunch.

But I miss my SEO work. I sorely miss writing every day. Writing is an art that, if you have it in you, you just gotta do it. It’s as simple as that. Believe me, non-fiction writing is no less creative than great works of fiction. It takes all the creativity a writer’s got to write well and to entertain an audience.

My marriage is suffering since now our respective schedules keep us totally apart for much of the week. I am no longer at liberty to rush to the aid of any of my adult children should they run into difficulty; something that truly saddens me. Let’s not even begin to mention my dearest friends, who have been so patient while I’m away exploring a world I’d thought I was done with forever.

The real trouble though, is that I miss the unfettered creativity of working as a consultant. Not just that. My inner child is pining. In fact she’s fairly wasting away. I can no longer switch as the mood takes me from serious and focused, to silly and game-for-a-laugh. Some days it’s as much as I can do to prevent Miss Inner Child from romping forth in the corporate setting, linking the laser printer up to the coffee machine, and parachuting gleefully to a damp landing in the fountain on the ground floor…all the while screaming ‘free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, I’m free at last.

So this is what I want to know. What do you think I should do? Do you think I should keep going and anticipate the promotion that’s almost certain after I pull off the next few successful projects? Or should I do what I dream about most nights, and let my inner child escape the bonds of the corporate world? Should I return to my old self-employed stomping ground, despite the fact that it might be difficult to get the SEO gigs coming in at the required pace again? If you leave a comment it’d be great to discuss this wouldn’t it?

Seven great strategies for blogging success!

Bloggers-Make Every Post Count

If you blog, it’s important to write firstly because you just want to. You have something inside you that needs to be said. But in order to have a successful blog there are some parameters that need to be met.

1. Only blog when you ‘ve got something to say (that means no waffle posts–it’ll drag your blog down and detract from your true writing potential)
2. Try and have something to say on a regular basis because it does count. We all fall off the wagon in that department from time to time, but please schedule yourself to write often.
3. To help you have good things to write about, keep a little notebook where you can jot down ideas for blogposts even if you’re shopping, or in the shower, or even (OK don’t try this) climbing a mountain. Catch those ideas–they’re priceless.
4. Determine whether your blog post actually serves a purpose in the scheme of things–does it? Really? If your blog is about software, very few people will be interested in the antics of your cat (unless its a very special cat), so bear that in mind.
5. Read through your blog post to make sure your sentences flow, you’ve said what you meant to say, and there are no typos.
6. If you can’t think of a word to write, look around at some of the great blogs in your niche and become inspired. Looking at hot topics (trending on Twitter, Google, Yahoo and more) is a great way to get an idea.
7. Remember to give your readers added value by linking out thoroughly to other posts on your blog (where relevant of course) and to other good blogs that are also relevant to your subject. This practice is excellent for your readers and also excellent for the crawl-worthiness of your site. Remember this is strategy number seven–and that’s my lucky number (hint, hint).

Choosing the Right WordPress Plugins

It can be difficult to decide just which WordPress plugins you should install. We’re spoiled for choice and that’s for sure. If you’re just starting up with your WordPress blog I suggest you don’t go installing plugins right and left, since you can slow your site and there’s no sense installing plugins you really don’t need.

However, there are five that I would recommend for everyone:

1. WP Super-Cache
2. Feedburner FeedSmith Plugin for WordPress
3. G-Lock Double Opt-in Widget
4. WP Cumulus Flash Tag Cloud
5. Enhanced WordPress Contact Form

WP Super-cache for Speed

WP Super-cache plugin is essential because it speeds the load time of your site. It actually lightens the load on your server. If your site gets heavy traffic, and if you’re hoping for an appearance on Digg’s front page, or to go viral on Twitter, then you need this if you want to try and avert a server crash from the traffic spike.

Feedburner FeedSmith Plugin for WordPress

Failing to provide a convenient way for visitors to subscribe to your RSS feed is a serious mistake. Feedburner has its advantages and disadvantages but it does allow subscribers to choose how they will receive your feed. You will obviously need to create an account with FeedBurner for this too.

G-Lock Double-Optin Widget

The G-Lock signup form allows you to collect your readers’ emails so that you can use them in the future: the first rule of internet marketing is get connected with your visitors so you can forge a relationship.

WP Cumulus Flash Tag Cloud

You might wonder, when i’ve just finished telling you how you shouldn’t be gung-ho with the plugins, why I’m telling you to install a flash tag cloud. But WP Cumulus isn’t just any old flash tag cloud. I find it one of the most useful widgets of all for the sidebar. First, it reassures visitors that they are in the right place by displaying all your keywords–both the main ones and the long-tail, and it makes it easy for them to find what they’re looking for with a click.

But I have found another use for it. You know how when you’re writing a post it’s difficult to make sure you’re including links to all your relevant past blog posts? Well this tag cloud makes that so easy. You simply click on related keywords and you get a list of all the blog posts that use the keyword. Now tell me that’s not useful to you!

Enhanced WordPress Contact Form

It is vital that visitors to your site have a safe, reliable way to contact you. Nothing drives away business more effectively than failing to give your readers a way to connect. Joost de Valk’s contact form allows you to control its appearance through CSS (don’t worry he shows you how). You can also alter/add fields, and it even allows you track where the visitors are coming from and if from a search engine, what keywords they used. This neat little form also prevents spam, which I’m sure you’ll be relived to hear.

This is a follow-on post for my post on the Rise of the Blog as a Business Gateway over at SEOscoop.

If you read the post and the comments you will see that Glenn over at Divinewrite raised so many good points that I realized I’d left out some important information.

More About WordPress and SEO

I can’t find any decent usability studies, but there’s a ton of information all over the web that talks about WordPress’s SEO-friendly setup. There are a couple of hitches: duplicate content is one but you can largely cut that out by disabling the content preview (excerpt) pane if your blog is set up like that, so that the whole post is featured on the front page instead of only a part of it. If you’d like more on how to make your WordPress setup more friendly, you can’t do better than The Definitive Guide to Higher Rankings for Your Blog.

The most obvious example I can think of for how successful a blog can be for business is my own. My main business website has been Wellwrittenwords since 2002.

My Blogging for Business Experiment

As late as 2006 I decided to experiment with blogging for business after seeing how blog posts were doing so well for my clients. I didn’t want this associated with my main site in case it didn’t work out, so I bought (in retrospect) a terrible domain name: marketmou.com and set up the blog as a sub-domain. Within months I had a PR of 4. Meanwhile, due to changes in Google’s algorithms, my Wellwrittenwords.com site lost page rank from 4 to 3.

Traffic rose steadily with Marketmou and despite long periods of inactivity and things not going the way I wanted, I continued to get good traffic and increased incoming links with practically no effort.

Getting my Google Page Rank Back

So a few months back I decided that I’d been torturing myself long enough. The marketmou domain name was now annoying me to the point of insanity. So after careful consideration I took the decision to cannibalize it and import the posts to my Wellwrittenwords site. I simply don’t have time to keep them both going and my main site was suffering: a stupid situation since Wellwrittenwords has the domain age that is so coveted. Yes, you get SEO points from Google just for having an aged domain.

Within weeks I had my PR of 4 back on Wellwrittenwords. When I post I am often at the top of Page 1 of Google for a search on the relevant keyphrases. To take an example from this week, please Google ‘SEO self regulation.’ It was the first time I had mentioned that phrase on my site (so the Google authority attribute was not from some previous post) and the same day, March 11, I was at the top of Page 1 on Google.

Now, if you will, take a look at my post of March 12: Failproof FaceBook Strategies for Growing Your Business. Google the phrase. Now Google FaceBook Strategies for Growing Your Business. See what I mean?

Still doubt that WordPress–or blogging–is the reason? Remember that pages on a static site take days at least to get indexed. The quickest I’ve ever hit page 1 of Google for content on a new page of a static site is a week. With my blog it’s consistently hours.

Permanent Text on Your Blog’s Front Page

As for Glenn’s point about putting a blurb on your site’s main page: there are so many ways to achieve this with a blog. You can easily modify a WordPress template to include a text box in the main content column right under the header. In fact I do it for all the blogs I work on. Sometimes it’s just to urge people to sign up for the RSS feed, but often there is other information there too. Also you can insert any text you like into the widgets in the side bar. No problem at all inserting any text you want to show up on a permanent basis. It is also possible to add a page to your blog (with some templates–not all) that is static so that the blog posts show up on a secondary page.

I don’t think the goods and services come off as an afterthought on a blog at all. Rather, you can demonstrate to your clients that you really do know about all the goods and services you’re offering. This is often reassuring to potential clients, not to mention that it gives them a chance to interact with you in an informal way before they purchase.

There I rest my case. If it’s not convincing enough I’m content. We bloggers are stealing the show–ssshhh.

M

ake no mistake: those unflattering words can damage your business, reduce conversion rates and cause existing clients to look elsewhere. Here is a collection of effective strategies employed by professionals to make those nasty pages go away.

Before we get into technicalities, I’d like to mention three things not-to-do. First of all, don’t panic. The Web is not a static place and nothing is un-doable. Second, don’t even think of retaliating. This can only end badly and you’re far better occupied creating positive content for yourself. Last, don’t bother asking someone who has posted bad things about you on the Net to take it down. It’s 99 percent certain they won’t: save your dignity and show them what’s what with the following:

Strategies for reputation management:

1. It’s not just a matter of getting positive pages to rank above the reputation management challenges. It is a matter of pushing those bad pages so far down in the search results that even avid searchers won’t see them.
2. The first step is to create a complete list of keywords/phrases that might possibly be used to search for your service, or that might turn up the unfavorable material, including the company name as this is probably targeted too, and target those in web pages that you will optimize and promote for good ranking.
3. Arrange for posts on other people’s blogs that have good ranking: an active blog can have posts indexed immediately and will often show up in a search same day. If this is not something you can arrange, then contact a professional blogger.
4. Skillfully crafted content on your own website can do more than anything else to push down unfavorable web pages in a search. If you can’t do it yourself, then tell your story to a professional SEO copywriter, and let them take that load off your shoulders.
5. Create social media profiles: in particular LinkedIn profiles can come high in a search quite quickly for your keywords. Also, Twitter home pages rank well and quickly.
6. Create a Naymz profile: particularly good for ranking results.
7. Social media activity can significantly boost the ranking of your chosen pages with a strategic campaign of linking back to them in posts and articles. Open a number of social media accounts such as FaceBook, Bebo and even MySpace.
8. In particular the use of Stumbleupon to boost client’s pages so they climb above unwanted results.
9. Create a Flickr account and post photos of company, employees, company parties, products, and anything else positive that will utilize relevant keywords.
10. Create a Wiki on WetPaint
11. Create multiple pages on sites like Squidoo and WetPaint (which is my first choice these days).
12. Submit a series of press releases announcing worthy events in your business or niche, and, or developments in your career for example. Don’t forget to use relevant keywords.
13. Create a podcast or video interview–can be with you or an industry leader–post it to your website and a number of other sites such as YouTube.com. An interesting video (if things are bad you might even doing one addressing the claims of your accusers) can create a tremendous amount of buzz in a very short time. Here’s a video about creating podcasts.
14. Get on Yahoo Answers and create some relevant buzz there.
15. Start a blog if you don’t already have one and publish as many posts as you can with well-written, useful content targeting keywords that will compete with the undesirable pages. If you don’t have time then pay someone to blog for you.
16. Add a sub-domain to your main website and launch a PPC campaign targeting all the relevant keywords for this site.
17. Write articles and have them posted to other websites. Even better, have your satisfied customers mention you on a blogs and websites using your keywords if you can arrange that.

There are other strategies, but this is a manageable number that will get you results. Importantly, they aren’t too difficult to arrange. There is one other thing you should work towards: There must be some reason why another person posted unflattering material about you or your business to the Web. Get to the bottom of it. Find out exactly why and make sure that no one else finds grounds to reflect you in an unfavorable light online or off. Be the best you can be and treat people well and the Internet will be great to you.