Here’s what Matt Cutts (the Google Spokesperson) has to say about that:
So, does your page rank matter? No, as I mentioned in an earlier post, the links on your page are all “no follow,” so it doesn’t help a hoot to be on someone’s page with a PR10. That’s too bad. Twitter could be sending lots of link love, but as that encourages spamming, I guess it’s better than it doesn’t. Dam-ned spammers ruin the Internet for everyone.
Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night wondering how successful bloggers get to be successful? Well, probably not, but I’ll bet you wonder in the daytime. Everyone wants to know how to make money from blogging and people like Jeremy Shoemaker, Darrell Rowse, and Brian Clark have certainly proven that it can be done.
What sets them apart?
Them.
Their personalities. Their ability to connect with their audience with their writer’s “voice.”
Do you have a voice? Or, are you stiff and just posting factual articles to your blog with little editorial comment or personality? If that’s the case, you’ll probably get some readers, but overall people will be bored. They want to know you. They want to know what you know about your niche, and they (above all) want to be entertained. continue reading »
There’s a simple new plugin for your WordPress blog that will block malicious URL Requests. It’s simple to install, but you will have to do it the old fashioned way from the plugin site. Here’s where to find the article on the plugin and how to do it here:
I’m guessing that if you read my blog, you’re pretty savvy about adding plugins, but since WordPress has given us the ability to add them right from our blogs for the past several months, you may not know how to handle this. Here’s all you need to do:
Open a text editor like Notepad, TextPad or WordPad and paste it into a blank document. (Mac users you know what your text editor is; sorry I don’t.) continue reading »
Ning came out with a new app that will make your social network hum like a bee hive — Facebook integration. It will allow your network members at Ning to add their content to Facebook very easily, thus introducing your Ning network to all of their Facebook connections. That could be pretty sweet, especially if your Ning network is very active.
I just added the app to the Blogging4Boomers Ning network, and it’s a breeze. If you’re the Ning administrator, you just log in and go to Manage. You’ll quickly see a Facebook icon, and when you click on it, Facebook comes up. You fill in some basic information and you’re good to go!
A little while back Ning allowed administrators to connect to Twitter, as well.
Tying all of your content together through several social networks can be very powerful. You can Tweet something from your Ning site that invites your Twitter followers, people who may never have known about your social site at Ning, too.
Set up a social site for your niche at Ning. It’s free, and easy, and if your niche is one where there’s a lot of activity, you could come away with a pretty powerful social vehicle for traffic. The Blogging4Boomers Ning site was set up as a kind of forum for my members there, but anyone can join. You can see and join us at http://blogging4boomers.ning.com/
Knowing what Google thinks is what SEOs spend most of their time trying to figure out. And it’s an inexact science at best. But sometimes… just sometimes, Google TELLS us what it’s thinking, which is good. Knowing what to expect always makes things better, eh?
So, a little while back, Google started adding Twitter Tweets to the search results. Everyone wondered how those would be indexed and ranked, and there was a lot of speculation about how things would end up, where they’d be placed, and so on. A couple of months ago, Amit Singhal, Google’s real time search guru guy (which Tweets, blog posts, video, Facebook, and other avenues of communication that are immediate in nature) told us how this works, and so… nobody needs to wonder. How cool is that?
PPC (pay-per-click) advertising is something I’ve been dabbling in for about five years now, but it’s also something that I’ve taken time to try and understand. I’ve learned from Perry Marshall. I’ve learned from Anik Singal and Amit Mehta. I learned from Simon Leung, and I’ve learned from Glenn Livingstone. All great teachers. Heck, I even learned some tricks from Frank Kern, who loves to “Screw Google.”
But I’m definintely NOT a ninja. I’ve been able to break even, and have made it work for me in terms of building my list. I’ve found some keywords that kill for SEO and I’m using them on Yahoo. I can exponentially raise the number of optins I’m getting with the amount of spending that I do every day. So… that’s cool. Yet, I’d never call myself a PPC expert.
Most people hear the horror stories of people signing up for AdWords, not knowing what they’re doing, and coming away with a bill for thousands of dollars. So, many folks shy away. In fact, they may tell you you’re totally and completely insane for even considering PPC. Well.. perhaps. I’m the jump in and figure it out along the way type, but I learned early on to set my daily spending limit which takes the scare out of doing PPC and getting that huge bill. continue reading »
Ha… I didn’t invent that work, a couple of guys from Google named Avinash Kaushik and Nick Mihailovski did. In this video they answer some really good questions from users of Google Analytics. I’ll bet you learn something!
I was over at Google Reader checking out the newest SEO posts, and came across one that tickled me. It’s from Kay Dinsdale and entitled, “So, You want to be an SEO?” Kay, I feel your pain and loved your post. Put me in mind of SEO Myths and Bullsh*t’s post of last week, talking about submitting sites to search engines. (See SEO Myths and Bullsh*t) Sheesh. So much crap floating around out there that it’s no wonder people become confused.
Kay’s post rants about SEO forums where people come in posing as SEOs, and asking questions like, “What’s an H1 tag?” or “What’s a backlink?” Seriously. I mean, if you don’t know those things… you need to study WAY more, my friends.
When I first started studying SEO (and can you ever learn it all, really, eh?), I started with Web CEO’s online “university.” There’s some darned good training in there, and if you go through it all, you’ll come away with a very basic understanding of SEO. That much is really not rocket science. continue reading »
