Today with blog pitching for link building and awareness you just can’t say straight what you are actually up to: a link back to your site. Even if you are approaching bloggers with an awesome unique resource that is most likely to appeal to them and that clearly deserves a link back, you should carefully mind your language.
Bloggers and webmasters are so often pitched with link request that unless you pick up words carefully, you risk to trigger an immediate reaction:
- as soon as a blogger sees a “familiar” phrase (”review this site“), he deletes the message;
- as soon as a blogger sees a “familiar” word (”link back“), he wants to earn money (and thus you miss the free link opportunity).
To avoid these, I usually take advantage of “link building euphemisms” (the term invented by me :) ).
Euphemism is a word play technique that stands for intentionally using a word or phrase with a softer, more polite tone over one with a harsher tone.
[Read more →]
As a WordPress enthusiast, guru, and lover, I use plugins every single day and am constantly researching new plugins — even creating plugins.
These are the top 11 plugins that I’m in love with. Check them out and see if they’re a great fit for you. [Read more →]
Google AdWords is rolling a new tool that would let AdWords members identify which keywords their potential customers are searching for and to help them identify which keywords they should advetise on and which keywords are relevant to their landing pages. This new AdWords tool is called the Search-based keyword tool.
[Read more →]
Usability (as well as accessibility) is a too broad topic to be discussed in one post of course. Besides, I am no professional web designer or usability professional to offer any expert advice on that. Still I’ve come across a couple of fun and useful tools that should be shared at SEJ:
1. Five Second Test - run a quick free page usability poll:
- make a screenshot of a web page you want to test;
- upload it to Five Second Test site and grab the link of your test;
- spread the link (via social media, for example): people will be offered to look at your screenshot for 5 seconds and then write down 5 things they managed to remember;
- receive service email messages with the people’s answers;
- collect the messages and then organize the data to define most outstanding (easier to remember) elements of the web page.
[Read more →]
With the holiday season just around the corner, it still isn’t too late to tweak and optimize a dedicated holiday search marketing campaign. The fourth quarter of the year is essentially a ‘party season’ of sorts for those that have marketed products online, and even with consumer spending on the down trend this year, Christmas will still account for a large percentage of North American affiliate earnings. Here are five actionable tips to ramp up your promotional efforts ranging from e-commerce optimization, link building, local search, and pay per click marketing:
- Shopping Cart Optimization - The holiday season presents a great opportunity to optimize shopping carts for SEO, and this is the proverbial ‘low hanging fruit’ if you’re using a commercial shopping cart, or a well known one such as zen-cart. Common things to avoid include:
- Multiple session ID’s
- Unnecessary depth in directory structure
- Duplicate content through product archives
- Sitewide changes by SEO plugins - These will cause a short term dip in rankings that you really don’t want!
- Link Building & Organic SEO - Ideally, you should have crossed your half way mark in building links for the holiday season. While low level link building such as blog commenting and directory submissions provide good passive SEO, more active efforts such include:
- Paid links - Directly bought, or through sponsorships and partners.
- Widgets & Quizzes- Incorporate pop culture and symbols of the holiday season in to build links.
- Good Ol’ Link bait - Nothing new here. Get viral, and spread the season’s cheer on social networks.
[Read more →]
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