Blogging contests are great because it gives you chance to win money. And when money is on the line you will probably create better content Even if you don’t win, you get a couple of solid links out of the whole experience, and if you do win you just got paid to link build for yourself. Not a bad deal.

$500 Guest Blogging Competition At Blog Engage is by: MyWebTronics

If you are a blogger yourself, chances are, you share the same goal mentioned above. However, with the blogosphere becoming more and more crowded and with search engines becoming stricter by the day, how do you attract visitors to read, interact and share you blog? Below are some tips you can use to increase traffic to your blog.

Create a compelling and updated content. With Google becoming more vigilant about post quality, frequently updating your blog with relevant and compelling content is the first step you can take in order to widen your blog’s readership. Remember that what you write is what will keep your audience coming back for more. As such, you need to write posts that readers find interesting and can provide solutions to key issues. Nevertheless, discussing the latest topics will also give your blog a good impression, since audience will know that it is up to date.

Consider your post frequency and timing. Aside from posting relevant content, you also need to give emphasis on the frequency and timing of your posts. As mentioned earlier, search engines such as Google prefer to see fresh content on websites. Hence, the more frequently you update your posts, the quicker your ranking and traffic grow. You also have to be consistent about your timing. That is, when making a post, make sure that you publish them at a time that suits majority of your audience so that they would be able to see your content.

Be on the radar of search engines. Reports have shown that about 80% of people find blogs and other websites via search engines. That said, it is important to make your blog posts SEO-friendly. Of course, there are numerous ways how you can optimize your blog and it pays to know your way around these strategies. Always keep keywords in mind when you write titles and paragraphs and include tags and meta descriptions for your content. You might also want to learn how to submit a sitemap for your blog in major search engines so as to ensure that your pages will be indexed properly. And if you are using SEO-friendly platforms for your blog, optimizing your content would become easy as there are numerous tools available at your disposal. Take note, however, that seeing the results of search engine optimization does not happen overnight so you need to take the time to learn the ropes and apply the strategies properly to make your efforts worthwhile.

Learn to engage. Commenting is one of the best means to get in touch with your blog readers in a more a personal level. By responding to the comments left on your blog, you are showing your readers that you value their insights, which in turn invites them to engage in a conversation with you. It would also be wise to leave comments on other people’s blog, but make sure that you add value to their posts. Doing so will let the blogger and his or her audience know that you have the expertise, which in turn will encourage them to know more about you and read your posts.

Showcase your expertise via guest posting and allow other bloggers to do guest posts for you. Guest posting is one definitive way to inform other people who are not aware of your blog. It is also a great means to earn new links and references back to your site, which in turn will drive your blog on top of search engine rankings. Of course, when writing guest posts for others, make sure that you create something that has never been shared before. Nonetheless, accept other people to contribute their own piece on your website, as this would allow for a better working relationship.

Get Social. In this day and age, being in social networking sites is a must for businesses. Hence, it is in your best interest to be in the platforms frequented by your target audience. Register a personal account in Facebok, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn and start sharing your content over these platforms. Of course, it also pays to connect with other users who share the same interest as your and add value to their work by engaging in discussions. Over time, you will be able to build the number of your fans and followers, who in turn will help spread the word about your blog.

Article by Robert Kirk who is a writer and SEO Consultant for RFK Print Solutions who are also an SEO Company based in Central Scotland they supply a range of SEO services, website design and full range of printing services such as business cards, flyers, leaflets etc.

Simple Ways to Grow Your Blog Readership is by: MyWebTronics

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Easily Turn Off Google Personalization Results is by: MyWebTronics

W3 Total cache was installed and did not seem to be helping. The settings were fine so I turned to the plugins.

Plugins for WordPress are amazing. The problem comes when many of the plugins work everytime a page is loaded. So I went through and deactivated many of the unnecessary plugins within WordPress which helped considerably. I also enabled GZIP compression. The combination of the two changes lowered load time by about 10 seconds.

The site was tested by pingdom tools.

Slow Site? Deactivate WordPress Plugins is by: MyWebTronics

Open up your .htaccess file and paste the following at the bottom:

<ifModule mod_deflate.c>
<filesMatch "\.(js|css)$">
SetOutputFilter DEFLATE
</filesMatch>
</ifModule>
 

Run the test at Google again and see if GZIP is enabled.

Turn GZIP Compression On In Shared Hosting is by: MyWebTronics

Beyond the rainbow

Yes it’s true that getting SEO right can help you to achieve sales nirvana, or something like that, but is SEO the Alpha and the Omega of internet marketing?  Probably not; approaching SEO with a little, preferably quite a lot, of perspective is absolutely essential.  As with any other sales or marketing technique SEO is nothing more than one tool amongst many to help you achieve exposure for your website.  SEO is a technique to get the attention of search engines but many SEO copywriters get so caught up in the moment that they forget what is lurking at the end of the SEO rainbow.  Unfortunately, at the end of that particular rainbow are just a bunch of boring old human beings.  Worse still, human beings are somewhat more complex than algorithms.

Do algorithms rule the world?

Possibly more than we realise, however, apart from the curious exception of the incident over the “Making of a Fly” robots rarely buy anything at all.  They do trade on the financial markets and have been known to cause the odd hiccup or two in that field.  “The Making of a Fly” incident is a good example of how algorithms should not be left entirely to themselves and illustrates that humans are necessary part of the virtual world.  “The Making of a Fly” is a fascinating read, studying the genetic makeup of this simple life form, from egg to adult. An Amazon algorithm was so taken with the subject that it forgot its day job setting prices and went to war with itself, bidding so furiously that the price reached a staggering £14.3 million.  It’s a good book, but not that good.  Why the robot wanted to study the subject should be a worry in itself, however, an Amazon technician stepped in and saved the day, bringing the price right back down to an affordable level for us simple non-electronic life forms.  SEO is a field that attempts to understand the ‘mind’ of these robots but understanding that behind every good algorithm is a potential good customer is crucial.

Appealing to both worlds

SEO copywriting is a fine balance between attracting the attention of those ever changing (and slightly mad) algorithms that control whether or not your website will appear on the first page of a search engine results and remembering that once the robot has given you top marks, real people have to as well.  This is where finding the right SEO copywriters can make all the difference.  An experienced agency with staff that understands the needs of SEO but can also produce copywriting that gets human attention is crucial.  It’s a fine balancing act to get right for any copywriting services provider and not one that all writers understand.  This is the main reason that hiring a writer – of which there are apparently 7 billion – can have its pitfalls.  Great writers and great copywriters may be able to produce engaging copy which will make your hot cakes sell like, well, hot cakes, but in order to get your hot cake stall noticed by robots you’ll need to find a writer and SEO expert who can appeal to both audiences.  There are very definitely not 7 billion of those.  This is where using an experienced SEO copywriting agency comes in.  Not only do they provide writers who have been tried and tested for their basic abilities and creativity, but they can offer writers with knowledge of how to get that elusive, fickle and capricious robotic attention too.

Apple Copywriting provides copywriting services that market to humans and robots, which can be useful unless you sell books like “The Making of a Fly”.

SEO For Humans is by: MyWebTronics

Having keyword data is extremely important to your site’s growth, especially if you are measuring conversion data. After all, know what keywords are actually converting can have a huge impact on your bottom line especially if you run an ecommerce site. We can talk more about conversions later, but that is not the point of this post.

The fact is that Google is a business, and Google is going to do what is best for them even if it hurts your business. So, as my grandma would say, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket”.

If the recent change demonstrates anything, it demonstrates that Google cannot be trusted and you should have multiple streams of traffic and revenue. Its time to stop being one dimensional when it comes to traffic. So if Google really messes your site up or stops sending traffic you can live without them.

Again, not the point of this post, but worth saying.

Data Sampling

Data sampling is used in many cases to create snapshots of data. It stands to reason that if 25% of your data is missing, it may resemble the other 75% of your data. Brick and mortar retailers as well as the old fashioned catalog companies have had to rely on this method to determine what advertising is working and what is not working. How?

• Focus groups
• Coupons
• Questionnaires
• Tested Advertising Methods is an excellent book that explains this process in more detail for traditional retailers that is easily translated to an online company

I don’t want to give you a lesson in statistics, mainly because it will show just how little I know of the subject But, basically you can segment your traffic into different categories and make assumptions on the 25% of traffic you can’t see.

For our example you could simply say that you want to divide your keywords into three categories:

1. Head keywords: more than 100 visits per month
2. Fat middle keywords: 11 – 99 visits per month
3. Long tail keywords: 1 – 10 visits per month

You can define your keywords anyway you please, but the point is that you can still make an educated guess as to your hidden keywords by segmenting this traffic.

1. Download all keywords into a csv file for the chosen time period. You may have to make multiple downloads. Thanks again Google.
2. Take out the traffic numbers for the “Not Provided” traffic
3. Use Excel’s table options to segment your traffic totals by category
4. Determine each segments percentage vs. the total traffic (without the “Not Provided” traffic)

So, if head keywords make up 40% of your traffic for the visible keywords, they probably make up 40% of the traffic for the “Not Provided” keywords. Get it?

You may have this make up:

• Head: 17%
• Middle: 33%
• Long tail: 50%

You can assume your “Not Provided” keywords have a similar make up. That’s fine and dandy, but I see a real issue here. The fact that long tail makes up most of the traffic and by definition may only be sending a few visitors each month. So, there may be long tail traffic hidden in your “Not Provided” keywords.

NOT PROVIDED + LONG TAIL = MISSED OPPORTUNITIES

So, how can you make sure you are not missing out on these opportunities? Your history may help…

Your historical data is extremely valuable

Since you can’t get some of your new data, your historical data becomes a ton more valuable. Why? Because you can create a snapshot of where your site stands compared to past history and improve on that position. This is something you should be doing anyway, but just in case your not, here you go.

We are going to focus on low hanging fruit and new opportunities. The first thing you want to do is pull all of the long tail data out of Google for an extended period of time. For example, all searches that have sent 120 visits or less for an entire year. Once you have that data in a spreadsheet, tedious work begins. Here is how I do it, ready for another <ol>?

1. Pull all keywords out of Google Analytics for the past 12 months containing all keywords. Have to combine spreadsheets typically to get them all into one.
2. Filter out all keywords that do not meet the criteria (sent more than 120 visitors in the entire year)
3. Create a separate category in the table for search rankings. Run your favorite rank tracking software and determine the current ranking of all keywords.

The keywords that currently appear on the first page but do not appear in your last months keyword data probably means its a part of the elite “Not Provided” keywords. You can really use this data to pick off some low hanging fruit if you like by the way

Landing pages

Even though Google hides the keywords, they don’t hide the landing pages. So, if you click on the “Not Provided” keyword and select Landing Pages  as the secondary section you can see where your “Not Provided” traffic is going.

You can do a little backwards investigating and look at the keywords for each landing page that are provided and create a profile for each page of keywords that are sending traffic.

I like to look at all of those keywords that are sending traffic and run them through a rank tracking script. Basically, I am looking for keywords that are on the bottom of the first page, or the top of the second one, since those keywords are going to provide spotty traffic and can easily be improved.

Rank Tracking

I actually don’t didn’t spend a ton of time running rank tracker reports. Actually, I hardly ever did for my own sites and would only occasionally do them for my clients. Since we can’t see all of our traffic the only real option is to see our ranking for as many keyword variation’s as possible.

What about Google Webmaster Tools? Do you really trust that? If so, more power to you. I don’t, I prefer my own ranking reports that depend on the good favor of Google.

I will write a post in the near future explaining how to scrape Google’s search results as many times as you want. Well, as long as you have access to multiple IP addresses.

In conjunction with wordtracker, wordstream, or SEMrush you could get great data just from ranking reports. I actually have started seeing some really great opportunities when I was just relying on Google Analytics.

(Keywords Not Provided): How To Improve Your Keyword Data is by: MyWebTronics

Store view vs. Website

• A Website is an entirely new Ecommerce store that uses the same instance of Magento. All orders are still processed in the same backend, but each store is unique.
• A store view is a different way of viewing a part of your store or a specific category. For example, you may create a Spanish Store View, English Store View, and French Store View. Got it?

Create new Website instance and store view

1. In the back end, navigate to System -> Manage Stores

2.Click the “Create Website” button in the top right of the page

3. Fill in the name and code and click save. The code is the alpha numeric identifier you give your store

4. Click the “Create Store” button at the top right. Select your new website from the drop down and the root category you want to use for the store. Save.

5. Click the “Create View” button at the top right. Make sure to select the Website and Store you want the view to appear in as well as give it a unique identifier, such as newstore-english.

6. Go to Configuration -> General Tab -> Web

Once you have followed these steps, you will now need to move on to actually viewing your new store and beginning development.

There are many ways to set up your Magento stores. Sub domains, parked domains, sub-directories and addon domains. I will be using the Sub-directory method for the domain because it suits my needs. However, there is a great tutorial for the other types here.

Adding Magento to a sub-directory

No, you could do this for an addon domain, but you will need to take additional steps. I am actually creating this additional Website in order to develop a new theme on a live site. Here we go.

1. Create a new directory for your store

2. Put a copy of your main stores index.php and .htaccess in the directory

3. Find the following line (around line 45)

$mageFilename = 'app/Mage.php';

4. Change the line of code so index.php can find Mage.php.

$mageFilename = '../app/Mage.php';

5. Search for the following line of code in index.php: Mage::run($mageRunCode, $mageRunType);

6. Directly above that line of code add the new store code:


$mageRunCode = 'your_store_name';
$mageRunType = 'website';


So, all of the code will look like this together:


$mageRunCode = 'your_store_code';
$mageRunType = 'website';
Mage::run($mageRunCode, $mageRunType);


Now, navigate to your sub-directory and you should see your store. If you get an error message, post it in the comments and maybe we can figure it out.

How To Set Up Multiple Websites In Magento is by: MyWebTronics

Image by Webster

5 Ways To Overcome Writer’s Block is by: MyWebTronics

Mobile phones and other such devices that do not provide access to the internet are something of a rarity these days to say the very least. In fact, is would probably be fair to say that the technology most carry is quite simply leaps and bounds ahead of most to be found back at the home or office, having become as essentially a part of life for many of us as the air we breathe. Subsequently, the devices we carry have transcended a range of barriers to become out most important tools for the location of products, services and endless other amenities across the board. While searches using Google and other such giants used to be the practice for casual browsing on the home sofas of the world, we need now do little more than reach into our pockets anywhere we might happen to be in order to accomplish the same.

Needless to say therefore, potential for high search engine rankings to boost business by way of last-minute clients who may just happen to stumble upon a business they never knew existed is, quite frankly enormous. Furthermore, as there is currently no separate system of indexation used by Google et al for the ranking of search results that come in from mobile devices, there really are no additional or convoluted procedures any business need follow to profit from mobile search engine SEO.

However, there is something of a notable issue (as there always seems to be!) which is the fact that a quite staggering array of websites of across the board remain almost entirely incompatible with various devices. As such, it really matters not how highly the results rank in the mobile searches, if the subsequent site cannot be read or navigated by the user. Sadly, it seems that there is currently no hard and fast quick-fix solution to the problem, as the way in which devices from different manufactures operate is so inherently different. As such, the general consensus across the industry has been that the only sure-fire way of establishing compatibility is to actually get hold of all the best-selling devices on the market and manually testing them out. Laborious and less than ideal perhaps, but capable of offering a level of otherwise unattainable certainty.

Of course, there is always the option of creating a second mobile-specific version of the site, though it has to be said that with the current capabilities of mobile browsers, such watered-down versions of the original seldom prove favorable.

With the advent of tablet PCs and the ever increasingly diverse range of multi-function e-readers used the world over, it seems almost a certainty that mobile searches conducted via mobile carriers or Wi-Fi hotspots are only going to increase over time, perhaps surpassing traditional fixed-address based searches and so on across the board. As such, concentrating on SEO practices and fully mobile compatible sites could prove the most valuable strategy for any local business looking to hugely boost interest.

It is also essentially important to bear in mind that while Google does indeed not currently have a separate search results ranking systems for mobile devices that they are using differently, they do indeed have such a system in place. Though it currently operates in an identical manner to the standard search system, it can only be assumed that the presence of the second mobile system indicates their intention to eventually introduce an alternative rankings system for mobile searches. Should this prove to be the case, it is highly unlikely that any websites of any background that were not fully compatible with mobile devices would feature even remotely prominently in the results, with top spots going to those offering the very best sites from the view of the mobile browser.

Of course, there is currently no specific indication as to the future intentions of Google or any of the other major search engines in relation to mobile search indexation, though chances would certainly seem a natural evolution as some stage. Either way, ensuring a site is fully compatible for mobile browsing is a sure-fire way of immediately increasing appeal, therefore the fact that doing so could also be making it largely future-proof at the same time is quite the additional bonus indeed.

Article provided (at no cost) by Leigh Moeben on behalf of a leading recliner sectionals retailer.

Mobile Technology Increasing SEO Value Exponentially is by: MyWebTronics