First thing’s first.  Before doing anything like reserving a domain or deciding on hosting, you should answer several basic questions:What is your blog going to be about? What is the purpose of your blog? Who do you want to read your blog? Yes, these questions may seem a bit philosophical (“If a blog post is written and no one is around to read it, does it still exist”) but one set of answers can lead you down one road and another set of answers can take your blog in an entirely different direction. The next sections will walk you through the process of answering core questions about your blog in order to formulate your blog’s “mission statement”.  Don’t worry, writing a mission statement for your blog doesn’t have to be a chore and it certainly does not lock you in to a single topic for all eternity, but what it does do is provide you with a framework for writing for your blog and gives your readership some notion of what to expect from your blog.  As an example, let’s create a mission statement for a fictional blog called, Starterblogger.com. 

What is the topic of my blog?

Yes, it is a simple question but you’d be surprised by how many bloggers do not fully answer this question before writing their first blog post.

Online journals verses a blog about a specific topic

At this point, let’s draw a fuzzy distinction between an online journal and a blog.  An online journal is a type of blog that can be thought of as an online version of a personal diary.  It may speak about the personal experience, thoughts, and insights of individual as they go through life.  Online journals are awesome, and the information found on this site can help you to put together an online journal to a certain degree.  But StarterBlogger is mainly concerned with helping you to create topically themed blogs, that is a blog about a specific topic.

Selecting a general blog topic

It is well known that the most successful blogs target a single theme and discuss it from multiple dimensions.  Off the top of my head, I do not know of any successful blogs that discuss completely unrelated topics (i.e business server administration and knitting).  However, choosing a topic does not mean you’re “locked” in to writing about one thing forever. What selecting a topic does is to help you to attract and retain visitors who are interested in hearing what you have to say.  It helps you to formulate articles and to promote your blog in a consistent manner, which puts you on the road to building authority and credibility about your knowledge of the selected topic.  The most respected blogs are based on one or more closely related topics. By now you’re probably thinking about your blog topic.  You have probably chosen a general topic at this point.  Later in this tutorial, you will learn how to select a niche and integrate it into your blog’s mission statement. As a learning example, The general topic of StarterBlogger.com is “blogging”.

Select a subtopic for your blog

General topics are just that, general.  Let’s say your general topic is automobiles.  But the automotive world is so vast, ranging from anything from car repair, car shows, in-car technology to buying and selling a car, customizing your car, and on and on. As your blog’s only writer it will be difficult to create this breadth of content.  This is why you must select a subtopic for your blog.  The subtopics for StarterBlogger “is introduction to blogging” and “how to create a blog”. Notice how StarterBlogger address two closely related subtopics.  You may choose more subtopics under your general topic but they should be related to each other in some clearly connectable way.

Deciding on a niche for your blog

A subtopic describes what your blog is about, a niche describes who your blog is geared toward within that subtopic.  A niche is a distinct segment of a market.  Don’t worry, this is not a business course and we’re not going to start talking about market segmentation, economics or any of the like.  Think of a niche as definable characteristics of your ideal reader.  For example, StarterBlogger falls under the general heading of “blogging”, and the subtopic of “how to create a blog”, however its niche is “new bloggers” because it targets people who want to learn how to blog. Focusing on a niche can help you to cultivate a specific audience for your blog.  One who will be apt to participate in discussions and revisit your blog again and again to check for new content.

What is the purpose of your blog?

Now if you’re going have a blog it’s got to have a purpose.  Not to go too “wise old man” on you, but a blog must have a purpose else it will serve none.  Ask yourself – what need does your blog serves to 1.  you and 2. your readers. StarterBloggers allows me spread my joy of blogging.  It allows people who are interested in learning how to set-up a blog to use a proven methodology.

Creating the mission statement for your blog

A mission statement is a formal short written statement of purpose for your blog.  A blog’s missions statement helps readers understand what the blog is about and what to expect from it.  As an author, the missions statement gives you a goal. The mission statement for StarterBlogger is the following: Starterblogger is a collection of tutorial and articles designed to introduce people to the world of blogging.  It teaches them how to create a blog and gives them a proven method for becoming a successful blogger. This mission statement will govern the content I create.  It will help to ensure that I am faithful to my niche.

Search engines use a secret algorithm, a set of rule-based actions, to determine the most relevant webpages (or other content) to return in response to a search query. Generally, the higher you rank in the search results for these terms, the more traffic you’ll attract to your website.

Search engine optimization or SEO is about getting your website to the top ranks in search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing for specific keyword phrases related to your nonprofit’s services, events, issues, etc. In other words, the goal of SEO is to align your website with the search engine’s algorithm as best as possible in order to increase the probability of your site appearing in the search results for pertinent keyword searches. Top rankings can be accomplished by changing the structure, code, and content of your website in ways that facilitate search engines in discovering all the pages on your site and give it a clearer understanding of what your website is all about. SEO also seeks to increase the number of other sites linking to your website as this is an important factor search engines use in determining your rankings for keywords. Lastly, SEO is a long term online marketing strategy and it may take several weeks to see the payoff, but the return-on-investment can be very high. Below is an example of SEO at work for Amnesty International for the keyword “arms trade”.

SEO is designed to increase the volume and quality of organic traffic coming into your website.

The Opportunity for Nonprofits:

Search engines do not charge a fee to list your website among organic search results, so this is a great opportunity for nonprofit organizations to expand their reach online.

Many search engines incorporate images, videos, press releases, books and shopping feeds in their search results which may represent a tremendous opportunity to create an engaging user experience for your nonprofit within the search engine results.

How to get started:

1. Identify keywords that are related to your nonprofit using the Google Keyword Tool.

2. Assign a keyword to each page on your website. You will optimize the page for this keyword.

3. Add the keyword to the title tag, meta description tag, meta keyword tag, header tag, alt attributes, main site navigation, and URL to its respective allocated page when feasible, being careful not to overdo it and sacrifice user experience.

4. As best as possible, incorporate each keyword into the main body of content of its assigned webpage. The main page content should have between 300 – 500 words of copy.

5. Ask partners, donors, and members to link from their website to your nonprofit site using the keywords you selected as link text. Identify blogs, forums, and website directories and install links to your site using your keywords as link text according to any stated guidelines. In some cases, you may want to send a friendly email to the owner of related websites politely requesting a link to your site.

Are You A Nonprofit Organizations Who Wants To Know More About Internet Marketing?

The proceeding was an excerpt from A Nonprofit’s Guide to Internet Marketing: Cost-Effective Opportunities to Accelerate Online Marketing Success for Your Nonprofit.  This is my FREE 15-page guide designed to help nonprofit organizations activate or to accelerate their online marketing efforts.  Download it instantly by clicking the button below.

If you have any questions about the content of this document, please feel free to comment to this post and I reply there.  If you are looking to retain my services for any of the online marketing programs mentioned, please use this form to contact me.

A blog is a type of website.  Because a blog is a website, you will need to sign up for a website hosting service such as 1&1 Internet or www.GoDaddy.com .  Website hosting is an internet connected computer (also called server) that allows your website to be accessed from the World Wide Web.  If it helps, think of the World Wide Web as a television cable network and your hosting service as the production studio for a new TV show.  Your server is the environment in which you will produce your website.

The Difference Between Hosted and Self-Hosted Blog Hosting Solutions

Now that we have learned what blog hosting is, next we are going to discuss the difference between the types of blog hosting solutions.  Hosting is generally divided into two groups:

1. Self hosted blog.  In a self-hosted set-up, you control the hosting environment.  Building on the analogy of the TV studio, the productions studio is owned or leased directly to you – you are the one on the lease.  I HIGHLY RECOMMENDS SELF-HOSTING YOUR BLOG.  Some common characteristics of self-hosted blog solutions include:
   • You pay a fee for hosting, usually monthly
   • You are responsible for customizing server configurations, installing a content management system, upgrading applications, etc.
   • There are no restrictions preventing you from advertising on your blog and the only ads that appear on your website are of your choosing.
2. Hosted blog.  In a hosted blog set-up, someone else in the primary leaser, renter, or owner of the hosting service and they allow others to use it under specific conditions.  In many ways a hosted solution can be compared to borrowing or renting a production studio from a friend for a day.  Some common characteristics of hosted blog solutions include:
   • Hosting is usually free
   • Fast and easy set-up, including preinstalled software.
   • A preinstalled content management system or blog platform
   • Your blog is usually placed in a sub-domain or directory on a domain owned by someone else
   • Guidelines preventing advertising or ads from a third party are inserted on your website as part of your service agreement

Which Hosting Solution Should You Choose?

Here’s how to decide if a hosted or self hosted solution is right for your blog.

When to choose a self-hosted solution

Pick a self-hosted blogging solution if you want greater control of your blog.  If you plan to incorporate advertisements into your blog or participate in affiliate marketing programs.  Additionally, if you are already tech savvy or desire to develop a better understanding of the Internet, a self-hosted package is the way to go.

When to choose a hosted solution

Selected a hosted blogging solution if you want a no hassle, plug-and-play blogging experience.  You’re intention is just blogging for the sake of blogging, without any intentions to monetize your blog.

  You’ve decided what your blog is about and you’ve written your blog’s mission statement.  Now it’s time for the fun part – reserving a domain name (also called website name) for your blog.  A domain name is the address of your website on the World Wide Web.  It’s how users will find your website.  For example, digitalsapien.com is the domain name for this website. 
“Reserving a domain name” refers to the process of declaring your ownership of a website domain name through a domain registrar such as 1&1 Internet or www.GoDaddy.com .  It’s actually a relatively simple and cheap ($7 – $15) process to reserve your own domain name depending on the domain registrar and top-level domain (TLD) name you select (we’ll discuss TLDs later).  For the lowest affordable rates, we strongly recommend using 1&1 Internet or www.GoDaddy.com to register your domain.

Why is picking the right domain name for your blog important?

Not only does a domain name tell users how to access your blog, but a domain name give your website an identity and helps you to establish a brand on the Web.  Your domain name will have an impact on your blog’s search engine optimization strategy, the implications of which we will discuss later.  Lastly, a competitive domain name can have value.  It’s not uncommon to hear domain names being sold at auction for $5000.  So it’s in your best interest to spend a little time thinking about the domain name for your blog.

What is a top-level domain name?

Digitalsapien.com is the domain name of this website.  The “.com” in this example is referred to as the “top-level domain” (TLD).  Common top-level domain names include .com, .net, .us, .org, .info, .biz, .name.  Please note: that yourwebsite.com and yourwebsite.org are two completely different website names and will require two different registrations.

Top-level domain names can give some indication about who owns the website or what the site is about.  Here are some common TLDs for blogs and their traditional usage.

You will have to select both a combination of a domain name and a top-level domain name for your website.  If you’re feeling overwhelmed, don’t be.  You’re already half way through your crash course in domain name registration for blogs.

Blog domain name ideas

There are many pointers to go about selecting a domain name for your website.  Here are a few of the most popular ways:

Here are some more tips for selecting a domain name:

• Avoid using dashes in your domain name.  For example, you should reserve financeblog.com over finance-blog.com when possible.  This is a preference, not a hard and fast rule.
• Avoid registering domains that are more than 5 words long as they tend to be less memorable to users.  For example, thisdomainiswaytoolengthy.com isn’t the best choice.
• Use keywords in your domain name when possible.
• Registering a .biz top-level domain name is not recommended.
• Big companies are protective of their trademark, so avoid registering domain names that sound like another companies website name.  For example, do not register ebayy.com.

Search engine optimization (SEO) considerations for domain name selection

  Search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo are able to read the keywords in website domain names.  Many use keywords in domain names in order to rank websites relevant to a user’s search.  Search engines also use domain names to as cues to understand the topic of the site.  Again, this helps them to present better results to their searchers.  Therefore, incorporating keywords into your domain name can benefit your search engine rankings, help you to attract people who are interested in your blog topic, as well as your search engine referred traffic.

Let’s say a person goes to Google and searches for “blogs about cars” and there are two (there are really millions, but for this example we will say two) possible websites to return as the top result.  The domain for one website is carblogs.com and the other potential website is airportcarrentals.com – both competing for the #1 position on Google.  All things being equal otherwise, carblogs.com is more likely to be in the #1 position than airportcarrentals.com because the keywords in it’s domain more closely mirrors the user’s search query.

Go ahead and reserve a blog domain name!

Take a few minutes and generate a list of possible domain names for your blog.  Done?  Good!  Now use the domain availability tool below to see if the domain names on your list are available.  Don’t get discouraged if the domain name for your blog has already been reserved, there’s still plenty of really good domain names still left.  Use this super handy tool to register a domain name for your website.

Now that you’ve started writing for your blog, it’s important to continue updating and posting new content on a regular basis. This is easier said than done, though. Let’s face it; writing good blog posts isn’t easy. There is a lot of effort that goes into picking a good topic and producing a few hundred words of well-written, useful content that your readers will be interested in. Even if you can find the time each day to write a blog post, it can be difficult to find the inspiration. Often, the best content is produced when you have a good idea and are in the proper mood to write, and many writers tend to produce content in bursts – several blog posts over a few days or even hours, and then longer periods with less production.

Be realistic

However, even if your production can be erratic with periods of higher and lower output, that doesn’t mean your blog updates should be. It’s important that you continue to add new content to your blog on a regular basis, rather than in spurts with dry periods in between. You want to give your readers a reason to check back regularly. If you have long periods where there is no new content, readers who visit your site several times in a row with no new updates may lose interest and start visiting your site less often. Additionally, regular updates are helpful for search engines. Search engines generally like fresh content, and by updating on a regular schedule, search engines will learn when to visit your site and will index your new content faster. The best way to resolve the differences between your production schedule and the need to add new content to your site is to create a publishing schedule for your blog. By planning out in advance when you want new posts to be published, you can write content in advance during your creative periods but still keep up a steady, regular blog update schedule. There are several factors to take into consideration when creating a publishing schedule for your blog.

How much content can you create?

Most importantly, how much content can you create? There’s not much point to creating a publishing schedule if the schedule doesn’t match the real pace of content creation. It’s all well and good to say that you will post every day, but if you have a difficult time keeping pace, you will inevitably start falling behind. On the other side, if you are a prolific writer, you might simply have too much to say to limit yourself to just one or two updates a week. Match your publishing schedule to your production schedule.

Think about when your readers want to read your blog

When do your readers read your content? By looking at your traffic data, you can determine when people tend to visit your site. Early on in your blog’s lifetime, you might not have enough traffic to see any real trends, but over time this data will be valuable. Depending on the topic of your blog and the types of visitors you attract, your visitor traffic patterns might vary significantly. For example, Travel content tends to get more traffic on Fridays, when people are planning for weekend trips. New video game releases typically happen on Tuesdays, so a blog about gaming can expect to see additional traffic for content around new games during the middle of the week. Tailor your publishing schedule to when your readers are looking for your content.

What’s on the horizon?

What items are upcoming that you want to write about? Developing an editorial calendar can be an extremely helpful part of your publishing schedule. By determining what you want to write about in advance, you can help make sure that you don’t miss a story about important topics, and help overcome the problem of sitting down to write a blog post but not knowing what to blog about. Create an editorial calendar for at least major items.

Think beyond your blog

What else is happening around your schedule? Blogs don’t exist in an isolated environment. Keep track of other news and events in your field. It’s easy to write a great blog post but have it lost when some other big event drowns it out and takes precedence. Breaking news and big events attract attention by their very nature, so don’t compete with them unless your post is about that news and those events. It would be a shame to write a great piece on an iPhone app the same week as Apple’s annual developer conference and have your blog post completely drowned out by news on the conference. Publish your content when it has a chance to be heard. Finally, be flexible. A publishing schedule is there to make it easier for you to keep your blog fresh and add new content on a consistent basis. If you have a lot to say in a particular week, or if you have breaking news that you want to report, go ahead and write a blog post about it. Ultimately, you’re writing your blog to make your voice heard and provide content for your users. Don’t force yourself to slow down just to adhere to your schedule – your schedule should be a baseline, not a straitjacket.

  Today, we are going to discuss search engine optimizations or SEO.  We’ll briefly cover what it is and why your blog needs it.  This post is only an introduction to SEO, we’ll get into more advanced techniques in subsequent posts.

What is search engine optimization?

To understand search engine optimization, one must first understand what a search engine is.  Chances are, you found this blog by typing “seo sem ecommerce” into the Google search bar.  Hopefully, Digitalsapien.com was one of the top results for this search.  You then clicked on the search engine listing and found yourself here.  Google is a search engine.  Search engines are tools that find and index documents (usually web pages, but may also include PDFs, images, etc) on the World Wide Web in order to help a user locate the information they are looking for.  Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Ask are four of the word’s best known search engines. In brief, search engine optimization is a branch of online search marketing in which marketers attempt to influence the factors that search engines (such as Google and Yahoo) use to rank results in response to a user’s search query in order to drive targeted traffic to their website.  In order words, the goal of search engine optimization is to get a website as close to top of the Google results as possible for a relevant body of keywords.  Because it is a discipline within marketing, search engine optimization is both an art and science.  Search engine optimization is not to be confused with paid search advertising (also called PPC, pay-per-click).  Paid search advertising is exactly as it sounds – website marketers pay search engine to post an for a keyword in the search results.  We may address paid search advertising and how to use it to market your blog at a later date. The graphic below shows how Google displays paid advertisements and natural (or “organic”) search listings.

Search Engine Optimization and Blogs

Blogs are a type of website.  As search engines are a huge source of free traffic, generally all website (including blogs) should employ at least the bare minimal SEO tactics.  For many, “natural search referred traffic” (traffic that comes from a search engine’s natural results, not it’s paid advertisements) will provide the largest source of traffic to their blog.

Building a Keyword Strategy

Since search engines depend on users to type in keyword phrases, the backbone of an effective search engine optimization campaign is a well-developed keyword strategy.  You should start by brainstorming a body of keywords that aptly describe your blog topic. For example, let’s say you just set up a blog about making homemade ice cream.  Now it’s time to build your keyword list.  You undoubtedly want your website to rank highly in the SERPs (search engine result page) for the search phrase “making homemade ice cream”, but there are tons of related terms you may want your website to appear for in the search engines.  Here are some keywords you may want your blog about making homemade ice cream to rank for:

• “make homemade ice cream”
• “homemade ice cream”
• “homemade vanilla ice cream”
• “homemade vanilla ice cream recipe”
• “how do you make homemade ice cream”
• “how do you make ice cream at home”
• “how to make homemade ice cream”
• “make homeade ice cream (*note the common misspelling)”
• “making homemade ice cream”

Of course you want to select keywords that searchers actually use to search for the information you offer on your blog.  The Google Keyword Tool is a great free keyword discovery application.  The Google Keyword Tool aids you in in finding new keywords by:

1. Scanning your websites and suggesting a body of appropriate keywords
2. Multiplying your list of keywords quickly by recommending other related keywords
3. Offering estimated search frequencies

I’d highly recommend conducting a round of keyword research using the Google Keyword Discovery Tool and assembling a list of 20 – 50 keyword phrases related to the topic of you website.

Adding Keywords To Your Blog

You’ve completed your initial keyword research, so what’s next?  Next you want to do the following:

• Place 1 – 2 of your keywords in the title tag (<title>) of your blog posts
• Use 1 at least 1 keyword in the URL of each of your pages
• Use 1 – 2 keywords in the header tags (<h1> – <h6>) of your blog posts
• Sprinkle your keywords throughout the copy of your post, being careful to maintain the readability of your entry.
• Use 2 – 3 keywords in your Meta Description tag to create an inviting search engine listing
• Use 1 – 2 keywords in the Alt Attribute for important images featured on your blog
• For keywords used in the copy of your blog post, link them to other blog posts you have already written – just make sure the keyword you are using as anchor text is appropriate to the post your are linking to.  As a loose guideline, create one in-copy for each 150 – 200 words in your post.
  • For example, if your post is 600 words long, create 3 – 4 in-copy links to other posts on your website using keywords as anchor text.

Adding keywords to your blog content and to these HTML elements helps search engines determine what your blog is about.  Once a search engine associates your blog with a targeted body of keyword phrases, it is more likely to present your blog on the search engine result page when a person incorporates them in a Google (or other search engine) search query.

On-site Factors and Off-site SEO Factors

Search engine optimization involves more than simply adding keywords to page copy and source code.  There are is a rather lengthy list of additional factors that search engines consider.  Early, I mentioned factors that influence search results.  These factors can be divided into two categories: on-page and off-page.  We’ll address how to optimize for specific on-site and off-site factors in later posts, but for now here’s a high level overview:

On-site SEO Factors

On-site SEO factors are those criteria on your website that you, as the website administrator, have direct control over.  On-site SEO factors consists of things like content, how your pages are linked together, keyword usage, and server codes.

Off-site SEO Factors

Conversely, off-site factors are things that influence your search engine rankings that you cannot control directly.  Off-site factors include things such as external links to your website, characteristics of your competition’s website, and the behavior of the searcher.

SEO Resources

If you would like to learn more about search engine optimization, here are some resources to check out:

• Google Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide (pdf)
• Google Webmaster Guidelines
• Google Webmaster Central Blog
• Google Basics – How Google Works
• SEO Fast Start
• SEO Book by Aaron Wall
• SEOMoz

Download the Internet Marketing Guide for Nonprofits in PDF format

Today, as an accompaniment to the start of New England’s GiveCamp weekend in which I will be participating, I am releasing A Nonprofit’s Guide to Internet Marketing: Cost-Effective Opportunities to Accelerate Online Marketing Success for Your Nonprofit. This is a 15-page guide designed to help nonprofit organizations activate or to accelerate their online marketing efforts. The Nonprofit’s Guide to Internet Marketing contains information about:

• Why nonprofits should consider Internet marketing and how it can help to expand membership rolls, event participation, donation collection, and to increase awareness
• A brief overview of the main disciplines within online marketing and how nonprofits cans get started, including search engine optimization (SEO), paid search marketing (pay-per-click) , and social media marketing (SMM)
• Specific programs offered by companies like Google and Flickr to assist nonprofits in marketing online
• Additional opportunities within emarketing and a brief look at how to implement each grassroots style
• Guidelines for vetting and working with online marketing agencies

The guide is totally free, but if you like it kindly donate to any of the charities that will be present at New England GiveCamp. Here’s the list of nonprofits scheduled to attend the event.

Also, if you know a nonprofit or charity that can use this guide, please feel free to share a copy of it with them or refer them to this site.

If you have any questions about the content of this document, please feel free to comment to this post and I reply there. If you are looking to retain my services for any of the online marketing programs mentioned, please use this form to contact me.

If you are an Amazon Affiliate using Associate-O-Matic (commonly abbreviated AOM) – You Need This FREE Script

Associate-O-Matic is without a doubt one of the best Amazon affiliate store creation platforms available.  And After you factor in the price of it – $99 to start plus $20 yearly license renewal – then it beats all other competitors hands down.  Despite this, the AOM has a few search engine optimization (SEO) issues that I, as a professional SEO, find extremely difficult to overlook.

SEO Restriction & Associate-O-Matic

As far as I am concerned, the biggest of AOM’s SEO restrictions are that it does not allow users to assign specify title and Meta tags to any site pages.  What AOM does provide is a programmatic solution which allows a user to create template based Meta tags.  Many ecommerce site with thousands of SKU’s use formulaic Meta tags, which in many cases is the only real way to ensure that each page has its own unique title and Meta tag.  But because Meta tag automation is formulated, the output of these pages is limited.  So if you want to optimize the title tag of an individual page for a single competitive regimen term, then automated tagging solutions may not get the job done.  This is the problem that I kept running into with AOM.

Plus, between all the category pages, numerous shorting options, and tons of URL parameters AOM creates a lot of duplicated pages on your site.  Yes, AOM does allow the user to add the nofollow link attribute to prevent the search engines from assigning search equity to duplicated pages, but generally using the nofollow link attribute in this manner is deprecated.   There are much better ways of doing this – namely by using the “no index, no follow” and canonical Meta tags.  My script enables you to specify a canonical URL and to block spiders from crawling duplicate pages within AOM.

The FREE Associate-O-Matic Meta Tag Script

Faced with these problems, I decided to create an AOM add-on script that would give me some closure as an SEO purist.  This script essentially replaces the content within the tag with your own data for any AOM page that you specify.  You can see the script in action here.  Here are some of the features of The Free Associate-O-Matic Meta Tag Script:

• Specify Title and Meta Tags for ANY AOM page!
• Easy installation.  Just change few settings in the script, FTP it to your site and toggle one setting in the AOM console and you’re up in running.
• Gets the job done in the easiest way possible. No database required.  Written in PHP and very easy to customize if you desire.
• Lazy man technical support.  Ask a question in the comment section of the post and I’ll provide an answer when I can.
• Free.  No charge for something that can dramatically boost Google traffic to your Associate-O-Matic Amazon Affiliate website.

Installation

1.  Click here to download the FREE Associate-O-Matic Meta Tag Script script.

2.  Open the file called get_meta.php with a text editor like Textpad.

3.  Under where it says, “” place any links to external files that you may need.  I have added some placeholders already for you.  This might include externally referenced JavaScript files and CSS files.

4.  FTP the file called get_meta.php to the root directory of your site.

5.  Go to the Admin console in Associate-O-Matic.  Make your way to Settings –>Site.  Once here, populate the Site Header field with “get_meta.php”, then click “Save All Settings”.  AOM will now check to see if you have specified Meta data for a URL before creating the page.

6.  Open and edit the metatags.txt file in a text editor.  This is the file where you will assign unique Meta Data to any page on your site.

7.  For each URL you wish to customize the Meta data for, you must supply 5 pieces of information – title tag, description meta tag, keyword meta tag, canonical meta tag, and robots meta tag.  You must use a pipe (“|”) to separate each field in the format:

*URL of page to change|Your Title Tag|Your Meta Keyword Tag|Your Meta Description Tag|Your Canonical Tag|Robots Index Tag

IMPORTANT:

*Use relative URLs to specify the page you want to add custom Meta information to.
*All data pertaining to a URL should go on the same line.  Start a new line for each URL.

Example:

shop.php|Home Office Supplies, Office Furniture, Office Computers – TheHomeOfficeDepot.com|home office furniture desk, office supplies, home office furniture, wholesale office supplies|The HomeOffice Depot is a one stop source for discount office supplies, office electronics, & office furniture for the homeoffice so you can get work done|http://www.thehomeofficedepot.com/|index, follow

8. Save the changes to metatags.txt and upload it to the root directory of your site.

9. Go to the URL you specified custom data for and test it out.

This Script Is Link-ware

This script is free, but if you like it please shoot me back a link.  Also, feel free to tell others about it in any place online that discuss Associate-O-Matic, The Amazon Affiliate Program, and creating dynamic Meta data.

Here’s a questions from my friend Diana at Ustandout.com, a great site that offers social media and internet marketing tips.  She had just migrated her blog from an IIS server to a Linux box.  In doing so, she had to change the URL structure of her site, which caused an important inbound link to Ustandout.com to break.

Question:

“Originally, my blog was hosted on my dad’s IIS server, and the links all read http://ustandout.com/index.php/blog-post-name. After transferring the blog to a linux server, we created an .htaccess file to redirect all http://ustandout.com/index.php/blog-post-name to http://ustandout.com/blog-post-name.

Over the weekend, I transferred my U Stand Out blog from my dad’s server to my own GoDaddy-hosted linux server (I figured it was time to take control of my own hosting, haha). The .htaccess file is still there. However, external sites linking to my blog via the original link (/index.php/blog-post-name) no longer work.

As an example, Mashable was linking to one of my blog posts: http://ustandout.com/twitter/free-twitter-badges, but their link reads http://ustandout.com/index.php/twitter/free-twitter-badges, so it doesn’t work. I was getting tons of traffic from this one mention, and now I’m not.

So I know you have experience with redirects, and I just don’t know enough about this kind of thing to research and find a solution (trust me, I’ve tried, and I broke my whole site for a while haha). Do you have any idea how I can make /index.php/blog-post-name redirect to /blog-post? Any help would be much appreciated, but if you’re too busy to think about this I understand!!

Diana”

My Reply:

“Diana, As far as your question goes – here are my thoughts:

If I’m understanding you correctly, it seems like you implemented a general redirect rule using regular expressions in your .htaccess file that only works for a specific URL format. It only redirects all http://ustandout.com/index.php/blog-post-name to http://ustandout.com/blog-post-name.

The link from Mashable also links to you /twitter/ directory which doesn’t seem to be covered by your existing 301 redirect rules. I’d recommend creating a custom 301 redirect rules that works specifically on the URL that is linked to from Mashable. In other words, try adding this:

redirect 301 /index.php/twitter/free-twitter-badges http://ustandout.com/index.php/twitter/free-twitter-badges

But assuming this works, it doesn’t solve your problem site-wide. So, if you send my your .htaccess file maybe I can take a look at it.

Be well,
Everett”

Follow Up

Diana added the line of code to her .htaccess file and it solved the problem.  Issue resolved.

Have A Questions?

If anyone out there has any questions, SEO-related or otherwise, please shoot me a line and I will do my best to help you.

Do you think graduates of online marketing degree programs have an advantage in the job market?  I’ve seen a number of internet marketing related degree programs pop up in the past few years – some better than others.  The newest one – and from what I can tell the one with the curriculum that appears to best prepare students for the real world – is the Online Marketing Program offered by the University of San Francisco .  Also, as an honorable mention, Full Sail University offers a degree in Internet marketing that seems to be fairly well designed.  I’m not endorsing any of these programs – just offering an opinion.

I think it’s time for career-minded internet marketers to distinguish themselves by their academic credentials from those who “just do internet marketing".  This is not to say that someone who studied traditional marketing in college isn’t prepared for a career in online marketing.  Let’s be clear – I don’t mean that at all.  However, I do believe establishing online marketing as a rigorous academic program that prepares students for real world conditions is a necessary step toward greater solidification of the legitimacy of our industry. The online marketing industry has matured passed the point where being "self-taught" is acceptable and on-the-job training is sufficient.  Every other business discipline has its own recognized academic major – accountants earn degrees in accounting, human resources professionals study human resource management, operation managers study business logistics.

Of course, some areas in Internet marketing simply aren’t mature enough or don’t warrant a full degree program.  For example, the masters degree in social media marketing offered by Birmingham City University makes me scratch my head… hard.  What this university is calling a degree program could simply be condensed to a semester long course. But if executed correctly,  I think it’s a start in the right direction toward achieving greater independence and recognition for our industry.

Not demanding our own sphere of academia after a certain period of time is dangerous.  It unnecessarily exposes the online marketing field to hacks and frauds which in turn gives us all a bad name.  This is already a huge problem in the field of search engine optimization and one beginning to emerge in social media marketing where anyone can just declare themselves an expert and potential clients can’t distinguish the the good from the bad.  Practicing web marketers should not resist the “schooling of online marketing” – this is what needs to happen and it will be better for us all in the long run.