Wingnut SEO

So you go to your favorite social media site, you try and be active, you try to get your stories to the front page, but it rarely happens because no one knows who you are… you are not a power user, you don’t know how to write catchy titles… Hell, you don’t know the first thing about using social media effectively… and even if you do know how you just don’t have the time it takes to become well known.

You know that social media can give you a ton of traffic overnight but YOU just can’t do it. What do you do then? Make friends of course!

From my own experience the social site power users are generally very friendly, all it takes is a little time to get to know them. Then when you do write that killer article you direct their attention to it and if they like it - since they are power users and like submitting things - they just might submit your article/page/what-have-you.

Depending on the reputation/relationship you build with these power users - you can even go so far as ASKING them for a submit. This tactic can work but I generally don’t like doing it, it always feels like begging. I have done this before, today actually, but it is a rare thing for me to do. I’d rather just show people great content that they feel should be submitted.

How do you go about building a friendship with these power users? There are several ways that I like to use:

• Be their friend on the social site - vote for their submits and comment on submits
• Joining their MyBlogLog community and saying hello
• Following them on twitter, being friendly and making a connection with them
• Reading their blogs, subscribe to the RSS feeds, and make intelligent comments or ask questions
• Get their contact info (generally found in their social profiles) and send them an instant message a friendly hello, how’s it going, love your blog (insert question about them here)

Sure there are a ton more ways but the above are some that have worked very well for me. It just goes to show you that a little bit of time spent being nice/friendly can go a long way.

I you aren’t signed up and in for MyBlogLog, you should be. I know, I know being involved in another social network is a pain AND they force you to sign up for some kind of Yahoo! crap? What is this? Communist Russia?!

Well here is the deal. If you do any Stumbleing or just random surfing or have a lot of blogs in your reader and actually go to the sites… it’s important to be signed up/in with MyBlogLog. Why? Because if you look about halfway down my page, right above that crazy ad, you’ll see “My recent readers.” Want your picture there? Log into MyBlogLog and it shows up… and it shows up on every site you visit that has that nifty app.

I have received many message from people who found my site because they saw my picture on their blog log readers list and/or were happy that I was stopping by their blogs. Not only this, if you use that cool Lijit Wijit Search up there in the top right corner, you can add people to be part of your community - making that search all that more trustworthy. Plus it’s just kind of cool to leave your digital mark on every site you surf through

So as my fame grows I get named more and this time with 74 other awesome SEO/SEM/Social Media/Blogging people - This time I was called an “Internet Marketing Guru (on Twitter)”

So check it out - I follow most of the people listed, but added a few thanks to the great list by Brian Chappell. Thanks for the mention and everyone should check it out.

And if you don’t already you should FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER!

The title of this entry comes from my analytics. It actually made me laugh when I saw it, I tried to find where I rank for this but I was not in the top 50 listings so I gave up. Reguardless, it asks a solid question.

Do you have to know how to write good well to blog?

The resounding answer is no. Look at all of the blogs out there. I’d venture to say that well over 94% of them are not worth the digital paper they are written on. The writing is poor and actual content is even worse or they are just scraper sites that are scraping crappy blogs.

So to you, whomever found my site with this long tail search, no you don’t have to write good to blog… you just have to be able to write well if you want readers

It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything (he says as he declares RSS bankruptcy after a long holiday and can finally breath again.)

Here I am sitting in front of a computer after a long break, staring at the screen trying to figure out what I’m doing. What great posts did I miss? What sites can’t I live without? What book marks should I get rid of? What the hell has the SEM world done in the last year - how it is going to change in the next 12 months? What sites should I be parking for 2008?

I look forward to the year ahead - but at the same time it is terrifying. Looking at the mountain of work that sits in front of me… praying one of my hair-brained web ideas that I have been half-cooking will go huge and I can just sit and do nothing… except maybe two chicks at the same time.

To make things less scary one needs a plan. My plan for this new year is in the works - It involves actually following through on great ideas that I am too lazy to do anything about.

Take things one day at a time - do what you love - and the rest will all fall into place.

Happy New Years everyone - I promise to write something less personal with more useful information next time - And hopefully a couple of the bad links I put in will become real pages very soon.

Now with twice the annoyance of Google ads! Net Audio Ads - The Pay Per Play ones - are coming and you can sign up for them and start getting money in February.

So Pay-Per-Play ads are geared up to bombard the web and all the pages you visit with 5 second audio ads. Greeeeeat. The sad thing is, it’s probably going to catch on. They say they pay out (up-to) $28 CPM… meaning for 1000 page views you get 28 buck-o-roos for people listening to these clips (that they claim will be relevant to the content on the page). Thing about them, you don’t need clicks - just plays - so it’s intriguing.

But wait, there’s more! It’s also totally a Pyramid scheme you get people to sign up for these Net Audio PPP Ads and you make 5% of what the advertiser spends on ads on their site… and 5% of what advertisers spend on the people they refer sites. Or some nonsense like that. It is only a 3 tiered system, so not a perfect pyramid but still… it will make people refer their asses off.

If it works… could be some good money in it… especially if you live in the blog-o-sphere and know a lot of people with scraper and spam sites who get a lot of traffic and are able to get them to sign up… Wait a second, I live in the blog-o-sphere and know a lot of spammy-spammersons. Hey guys, help your old friend Wingnut out and sign up for these pay per play - net audio ads here.

Finally someone else has said it.  I mean I have been shouting this from the rooftops for a while now but I never thought I’d be taken seriously.   No longer will I sit alone at the lunch table crying silently into my milk carton.

Now that I’m totally justified by calling myself famous I’d like to turn your attention to a cause that I feel very connected to.  One that, through the past decade and a half, has helped Ethiopian babies or something.  It’s called the Columbo award (better known as The Rubber Chicken.) This award, my friends, is pretty much just voting for your favorite blogger in a popularity contest style rampage.

Just click 5 for my post “Want Traffic?  Rank for High Traffic keywords“  and 1 for everyone else.  Who are these guys anyway?  They clearly are not as famous as me.  If you’d like to read the others the list is as follows

• We Add Words to AdWords… Google Subtracts them
• Why eBay and Wikipedia rule Google’s SERPs
• SEOs home alone - Google’s nightmare
• 13 Things to Do When Your Loved One is Away at Conferences
• SEO High School Confidential - Premiere Edition!
• The Sphinn Awards - Part I & -Part II.
• Top 21 Signs You Need a Break From SEO (2007 version)
• 10 Signs That You May Be a Blog Addict
• The SEO’s Guide to Beginners
• The Internet Marketer’s Nightmare
• Mission Accomplished — Top Ranking in Google
• Google Interiors - the day my house became searchable

Thanks to everyone for reading :)  Also, these writers above are pretty great and it’s an honor to be mentioned with them.

If you want to read more about the Rubber Chicken Award head on over to Mike Blumenthal’s great site.

If you are like me you are subscribed to about 500 blogs and skim them over fully reading about 100 every day.  Then you go on vacation and it all goes to hell.  It gets to the point where you either have to declare blog bankruptcy and hope you didn’t miss anything important or that if you did someone else writes a recap of the best blogs you missed over Christmas…(I might do that later if someone else doesn’t first… kind of hoping they will)

Anyway, here are some tips to help you keep up with your daily blogs when you’re spending quality time with family and friends and don’t want to seem anti-social.

• First of all buy a smart phone (if you don’t have one and are in the internet world you’re silly - ask for one for Christmas - The new sprint Centro is only $99) and set up your RSS reader on it
• Now that you have this portable reader use it every free chance you get - while Grandma is talking, in between drink orders while at the bar with friends, and don’t forget bathroom breaks… it’s way better than a newspaper.
• If you’re watching the football games Halftime and timeouts are great for checking your feeds… You can even get really into them and shout out loud just be sure to insert your favorite team’s name in there so people think you’re just checking out the scores, or your fantasy football points.
• Finally get your Twitter feed going on your new fancy phone - follow a bunch of the bloggers you read - they clearly don’t have lives and are writing tips how to keep up and posting them on twitter when they finish.

And there you have it.  4 easy ways to keep up over Christmas without making people hate you and think you’re anti social.

Merry Christmas and Happy holidays everyone

I was looking over my analytics today and noticed that a large portion of my traffic is coming from places that don’t use English as their primary language.

I don’t know how accurate this information is but it got me thinking… if they are finding me though stumble or digg or elsewhere what happens if they don’t speak English very well/at all?

So I did what anyone who values ALL of their traffic SHOULD do and went out and found an “auto-translation” plugin. If you don’t see it, scroll down a little it’s underneath MyBlogLog Reader list in the sidebar (while your there take a second and join my community.)

I speak a little Spanish so from what I can tell it looks like it works fairly well.

It’s pretty cool. I found it over at carlosquiles.com that was directly linked from the WordPress plugin page.

If anyone of you out there speak a different language - I’d love to have some feedback on how well it actually translates - thanks in advance for any input.

I really appreciate all of the support. Thanks for stopping by to everyone and a very special thank you to my international readers.

I’m not nearly one of the “cool kids.” I’ll be the first to admit that. However I am starting to see some actual traffic to my site and people submitting my stuff to all those fun social networks that I love so much (to the point of dreaming about them, but I won’t bore you with that.)

Now don’t get me wrong this is awesome - I couldn’t be more happy/excited/giddy about it - and anyone who does it you are the coolest people I could ever imagine. That said, however, it has changed the entire dynamic of my blog - how I’ll write in the future and how I will promote my own work.

Why does this change? Before, I could time my submits, submit only where I wanted, or have time to ask someone bigger than myself to submit and bring in way more traffic than the post should. I could also write up pretty much anything, not submit it anywhere, and know no one saw it.

So thank you to everyone who is stopping by and thinking my work is good enough to submit to your favorite social media pages. I really appreciate it, you guys are great.