I will admit it, I simply don’t get Twitter. I think I’m too old (35) to get it so today while guest lecturing a class in business to 25 high school students, all armed with mobile phones, iPhones, Blackberries and most Facebooking during the lecture I asked for a show of hands.

“How many of you have Facebook?” I asked knowingly and was actually surprised when one girl didn’t put up her hand. Even the teacher had it.

“How many of you use YouTube?” I next queried. Everybody again raised their hand.

“How many have seen Plenty of Fish?” I asked. One overly energetic youth volunteered. “How many have seen it but not used it?”, again most hands went up. Finally … I was ready for the big question, the one that would help me bridge the boring business lecture into something awesome, something that would let me tap into the spinal cord of the next generation and finally ask the question that I was dying to ask …

“How many of you have Twitter?”

Silence.

Worse than silence in fact, one girl asked me what was Twitter? It was like I’d asked how many bauds their modem was. Complete, unadulterated, unconnected, uninvolved, uninterested silence.

It was like the room came to a stand still, like there was a traffic accident but a boring one at the front of the room. Even the teacher looked puzzled. I tried to recover, go onto the next part of my prepared speech but then it happened, some kid that looked like he should have been in Fast Times at Ridgemount High spoke up, “I think my mom has Twitter”. This of course caused another student to blurt out that he’d Twittered your mom and of course it set off a chain of more open, more honest but equally confused questions and what Twitter was and why they should care about it.

After I explained Twitter by describing it as a social media micro blogging platform, the looked confused. Then I explained it was like Facebook’s status updates but without the rest, simple a place where you could update your status in short sentences and people could see what you’re up to … this led to the best question about Twitter I think I’ve ever heard from one girl in the class, “So Twitter’s for stalking me?”.

btw, I’m not the first to discover this …

• http://www.cringely.com/2009/06/teens-dont-twitter/
• http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1910425,00.html
• http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/teens-dont-tweet-twitters-growth-not-fueled-by-youth/
• http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aG2UIb23pNQ0
• http://mashable.com/2009/08/05/why-teens-dont-tweet/

First, open your template files such as the footer by loading the footer.php file located in your /wp-content/themes/[theme name]/ folder.

Next, we need to insert a very simple PHP function called date() into your page but before we do that, we need to make sure that we open and close the PHP event. To do this, simply open it using <?php and close it using ?>. The date() function itself requires a formating argument, but luckily we’re not meant to remember them all. They can be found on the PHP date() reference page.

As an example, if you want to show the day of the week that it currently is you could open your website and edit it every day (highly impractical) or you could insert the code <?php echo date(‘l’); ?> into your page. Note that I open the PHP event, place the date() function with the argument ‘l’, indicate the end of a line (;) and then close the PHP event.  Each of these elements are required to properly format the date.

If you would like to show the current year, simply use: <?php echo date(‘Y’); ?> because Y is the symbol for the year. On the other hand, if you’d like to use something more complex, try <?php echo date(‘l jS \of F Y h:i:s A’); ?> which will return something like Monday 8th of August 2005 03:12:46 PM.

Once you’ve saved your footer.php file, simply re-upload it to your server and voila! Now you can set the date using your server and PHP instead of editing files every day! In more practical terms, it is how you can always have an updated copyright notice of your website without having to remember to update it each January.

Why would he give away a MacBook Air?

Actually he could have picked anything to give away but the MacBook Air is sexy, it’s sleek and it’s amazingly cool. It’s also a valuable giveaway which will attract far more interest than say a free pencil but I guess the real question is why … why would a successful blogger like Ashley give away something as valuable as a MacBook? Wouldn’t it cost him a lot?

Yes. Simply put, giving away a MacBook Air will cost him a lot but cost it seems is a funny thing. As long as he gets back more than he give out, is there really a cost? Need that explained a bit more?

The cost to Ashley is fixed, he’s giving away a MacBook Air which according to Apple has a cost of $1499.

Ashley is trading links from websites such as mine to his posting at http://www.upstartblogger.com/link-to-me-and-grab-a-free-macbook-air. Every time I link from my blog to Ashley’s blog it acts as a vote from my website (PageRank 5) to Ashley’s. This does two things:

1. First it reaffirms with Google that UpstartBlogger is a valuable contributor to the Internet which in turn increases his websites position in search engine result pages (SERP’s). This improves his position and ensures his blog appears higher in the results.
2. Secondly, it causes readers just like you to follow my links to his website and in turn be exposed to his advertising which in turn … increases his revenue.

In short, the offer is a calculated risk which all business people can learn from.

If AR+AS is greater than C, it’s not actually costing him anything. So, as long as AR (Advertising Revenue) plus AS (Advertising Savings) is greater than C (Cost) he’s going to make a profit through the placement of ads and the money he saves by not having to buy links to his website.

The website is a fairly easy to use social networking/conversation websites designed to be extremely widget friendly. This gives each individual user the ability to interact with teh website in a completely different way, I really like that feature and to me it makes the website far more about me, which of course is always my personal objective.

The website allows you to interact with a community of bloggers through the widgets, you basically decide which information you’d like to share and your account is updated with  the latest blog posts from your friends as well as emails and a ton of other stuff.

There’s a daily news section with an extensive amount of information crawled from around the web as well as breaking news and the ability to discuss or participate in the news community, through an active discussion board.

thoughts.com is a fairly interactive community with some really though provoking and thoughtful personal web blogs, with the vast majority of content generated by an active community of users. People on thought.com seem (for the most part) to subscribe to the companies “one love policy” which helps encourage like minded people to interact in a positive way.

Thanks for sharing these Chris! I have a question about getting links from high PR site. In fact, I’m doing a new link building by register in high PR site (PR4-PR7) and insert my link in the profile that points to my blog, so the profile page will be PR0 or no PR at all. In this case, is this type of link increases the blog ranking for the keyword since it’s just a PR0 page links to the blog (Even though people said that is a PR4-PR7 site link to the blog)?

Regards,
Lee

What Lee’s asking about is the value of linking from a low PageRank page on a high PageRank website and if that has any value at all but before I answer, I want to explain that concept to some people who may not be aware of the difference.

PageRank, as we’ve discussed before is a rank (0-10) which Google assigns every indexed webpage and website on the planet. Every time a page links to another page, it deducts a portion of it’s own PageRank and gives it to the receiving page. If it links to 10 pages from a single page, it transfers 1/10th of its PageRank value to each of the 10 links.

Now, a page may appear in the Google Tool bar as a PR0, even if it’s on a PR5 website but that’s an error or more specifically a flaw in the update routines but one that is well enough known that it doesn’t impact SEO value transfers within Google. The reason is simple, if my website hosts a page which is linked to from other pages on my website and my website has a PR value of 5, all pages which are links and interlinked must also by default have an assumed PR value of 5. In lay mens terms? If the domain your posting to has a PR value, all the pages interlinked on that website have the same PR value.

So to answer Lee’s question, if the website you’re posting your link on has a high PR ranking don’t worry so much about the rank of an individual page. Instead worry if people who are visiting that page are likely to find value in your website being listed there!

Remember, if you have a question I’d love to answer it for you!

Hey,

Saw your post in the forums and I was hoping you could help me out with a few questions that I have…

• How do you find related blogs?
• Do you write your site’s link as the signature when posting a comment on such blogs? (I’ve been looking for blogs that have the slot for your website’s url but have come only across one that was set up that way)
• Wouldn’t that be considered spamming?
• Should I try to stay away from sites that have a worst ranking then mine on Alexa or do all links back help?

Thanks,
Bella

Hi Bella, thanks for asking!

You can find related blogs using Google’s blog search function, it’s found under the “More” tab on Google or at http://blogsearch.google.com/. If for example you’re hoping to improve your ranking with Denver models, search Google for that phrase and you’ll see 92,000+ blogs appear but you’ll want to play with the keywords until you find the right combination to return the best results for you.

Many of these blogs will have a comment form at the bottom of the page and on these forms you will see a space for your name, email, website and comment. Now you have to be careful, some web masters such as myself frown on “keyword spam” which is when you replace your name with keywords such as “Denver Model”, so instead I always suggest people using their name in addition to the keywords they’d like to leave. For example, I will always delete people using “Denver Model” but look the other way for “Bella, the Denver Model” or “Bella a model from Denver”. I appreciate self promotion is part of the game, but not at the cost of my site’s reputation.

On that point, I will also point out that 75% of people surveyed prefer the Ben & Jerry’s brand vs. Häagen-Dazs yet … 75% of people surveyed prefer Häagen-Dazs ice cream. Why? Because as people, we like people … so website owners and other surfers are far more likely to “connect” to you if you’re a person rather than a keyword.

There is a fine line between blog spam and self promotion. I tend to think of it as the same line men often cross in a bar, keep it genuine and nobody gets hurt but when your comments are fake, false or generic … web site owners will reject you. Instead of leaving generic comments which will get flags as SPAM, only leave comments which add to the texture of the article or benefit the website owner. You’ll be surprised how quickly your comments get you traffic when you’re helping others in a positive way.

Commenting on websites with a lower PageRank value will not hurt your website, in fact each successful link regardless of where it comes from is either positive or neutral, but never negative. This is because Google knows that you can not control who links to you, so they don’t punish you for poor incoming links.

That said … the higher the PageRank of a link coming to you the better.

For example, if you can get a link from Model Mayhem (5) to your website it’s better than a PR 1, but a link from Apple (9) is better still. There’s a complex math formula that is used … way to complex for me to explain or even understand but basically, in the simplest terms possible assume that every PR point is worth double the value before it so … a link from a PR1 is worth 1 point while a PR2 is 2, a PR3 is 4, PR4 is 8, PR5 is 16, PR6 is 32, PR7 is 64, PR8 is 128, PR9 is 256 … OK, so that scale is completely made up but it holds some analytical water and more to the point, it reinforced that incoming links from high ranking sites is better but lower ranking sites are not worse.

Chris

If you have a question about SEO, why not ask me? I’m always happy to answer your questions and look forward to hearing from people!

Want to learn more about Bella’s website? Visit her at http://www.BellaValentine.com.

[source lang="html"]<meta name="generator" content="WordPress <?php bloginfo(‘version’); ?>" /> <!– leave this for stats –>[/source]

Unfortunately, this isn’t just good for stats … it’s great for hackers because it tells then exactly what version of WordPress you’re using which allows them to search the net for hacks specific to your version of WordPress. Unfortunately, as of version 2.5 the people at WordPress don’t simply allow you to remove this piece of code from your theme and forcibly “inject” the damning meta tag into your theme using the wp_head(); function which is required to make WordPress work.

There is luckily a fix, but it requires users to edit yet another file in their template directory. To truly remove the code, you’ll need to open the functions.php file and add the code:

[source lang="php"]remove_action(‘wp_head’, ‘wp_generator’); [/source]

Autoblogging is the process of automating blog’s for your business, while some in the industry make be critical of the process there are actually a number of cases where autoblogging makes perfect sense such as a news relay services, real estate agents or even recipe or automotive websites. At it’s most basic level, autoblogging is about taking common repetitive tasks and making them easier for website owners.

For example, a real estate website could automatically pull postings from their local MLS listing service and create effective web posts on a realtors blog about each properly by listing information and pictures for visitors, this type of auto blogging is fairly common in the industry and saves agents countless hours of copy and pasting listing details from other websites.

Let’s take a look at how to run an effective auto blogging package, it takes a little experience and technical knowledge but these may be easily overcome by hiring web professionals such as myself for the more complicated parts of the process.

Install WordPress

Step one of course is to install WordPress, a great and flexible blogging package which happens to be free. You can download WordPress directly and install it on your web host of if you’re less technical you can setup your hosting with BlueHost and use their automated process to easily install WordPress with a quick click of your mouse.

Install Appropriate Plugins

Plugins are add ons to WordPress, they’re like super powered steroids that make WordPress do extra stuff. In this case, you’ll need to download and install FeedWordPress to make WordPress import RSS feeds from around the Internet.

What’s an RSS feed? Well simply put, it’s geek speak. RSS feeds are used to let one computer or software program talk to another, basically it’s a specially formated file that tells one website about the content of another website. You’ll need to use it to automatically pull content from one website to display on other.

Now, to make sure you’re really cutting down on your workload, there are a few more plugins that you’ll need. See, FeedWordPress will fetch thousands of posts … some are duplicates and many need proper keywords etc. so lets add a couple awesome plugins to make your life a little easier.

WP Auto Tagger will add keywords to each post automatically, this helps cut down the work you’ll have to do to each post.

Delete Duplicate Posts is a quick way to make sure you don’t have duplicate posts in your database.

Setup Your Feeds

Now that you have your blog setup and running, you’ll need to add feeds from popular sources to automatically populate your blog. For example, you may wish to add a feed from Google for blog posts featuring my name. To do this, let’s search Google Blog for Christopher Ross and take a look at the results. On the left hand column, we see a link for RSS. This link offers us the ability to copy and paste the link http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch_feeds?hl=en&client=safari&oe=UTF-8&um=1&q=%22Christopher+Ross%22&ie=utf-8&num=10&output=rss into FeedWordPress. Once this is done, your website will scan the blogshere on a schedule, looking for all new posts about Christopher Ross. You can do the same with Google News, to ensure you always know what’s happening.

Manage Posts

When you setup FeedWordPress it asks if you’d like posts to be held for moderation or posted, it’s best to always hold posts for moderation while you’re getting used to the system and make notes of things you need to delete or edit before they go live.

Advance WordPress users will also be able to build special functions into their websites to automate complex parts of the process. For example, I use the CRON services on BlueHost to automatically run a series of scripts on many websites, which scans newly added posts for content, URL’s and items to skip or delete. If you don’t have access to CRON services, the WordPress plugin U-Cron will do a similar service for you.

Common Corrections

My scripts for example, run a simple WordPress function every 15 minutes:

[source lang="php"]$wpdb->query("UPDATE `www_greatchefs_com`.`wp_posts` SET `post_date` = ‘".date(‘Y-m-d H:i:s’)."’,
`post_date_gmt` = ‘".date(‘Y-m-d H:i:s’)."’,
`post_modified` = ‘".date(‘Y-m-d H:i:s’)."’,
`post_modified_gmt` = ‘".date(‘Y-m-d H:i:s’)."’ WHERE `post_date` < ‘2000-01-01 00:00:00′;
");
[/source]

This simple script scans the WordPress database for any post with a date prior to January 1st, 2000 and automatically changes it to the current date. This saves me hours of manually updating posts and makes posting to client websites dramatically faster.

After my scripts have tested for and corrected the majority of minor, common issues I automatically move the post from Pending to Draft which indicates the post is ready for me to review and if I want, post it live.

Approval

The final step of auto blogging and one that I believe is often overlooked is the final approval of an article. Personally, I believe it is critical that people (not machines) do a final scan of each article being posted and ensure it is accurate, maybe this isn’t true auto blogging but it’s impossible for robots to ensure everything is right so a quick scan of the article will ensure that you’re sharing the right information with your target audience.

Who is Auto Blogging Right For?

There are a lot of industries that autoblogging simply wouldn’t work for. For example, I would never want to automate my website here to scan for WordPress articles but I do believe that scanning trusted data sources and automatically processing listings for car dealerships, financial reports, real estate, news services, syndicated news etc. is a wonderful use of RSS and auto blogging technology.

Shameless self promotion – If you’re thinking about automating your online presence, why not give me a call or drop me an email and I can help you make the best choices for your blog.

Easy Technorati Tags for WordPress

I’ve added a new menu and improved instructions for how to include the Technorati tags in your blog posts.

Easy Popular Posts

There’s a new admin menu for the plugin, and I’ve fixed an error in the documentation which incorrectly labeled echo as an option.

Easy Random Posts

There’s a new admin menu for the plugin, and I’ve fixed an error in the documentation which incorrectly labeled echo as an option.

Easy Scheduled Posts

There’s a new admin menu for the plugin, and I’ve fixed an error in the documentation which incorrectly labeled echo as an option. I’ve also added a new option to the function which allows you to control wether to link to the scheduled post or not.

All four plugins are available for free download and are compatible with WordPress 2.0.x -> 2.7.1, if you have any questions please feel free to drop me a line.

First, I’m getting slammed with keyword spammers. These are people who constantly post comments using names like “Car Sales” and “Dog Treats” in hopes of generating back links from my website to theirs. In theory I don’t really mind but this week it’s become a significant issue so I’ve elected to deactivate the plugin for a while to see if it helps calm the keyword spam a little.

My second reason for deactivating the plugin is that I’m getting ready to make a few significant changes around the site. A lot of you may have noticed that my blog’s changed looks significantly over the past several months. This wasn’t an accident, I’ve been trying different design elements and marketing combinations to determine what designs and content works best for me. After a long period of experimentation, I’ve finally determined what I need from thisismyurl.com and so I’ve started programming a new theme in earnest to help build a better online presence.

What does nofollow mean?

When a person creates a link from one website to another, it’s voting for the second site and telling Google that site A believes site B to be of equal or greater value to the web. That’s great for people like me who post links to other websites because it helps Google know which websites I have faith in but the problem comes in that when people post comments on websites, they can promote their own content regardless of how I feel about it.  That’s where the nofollow tag comes in. In effect, it tells Google that while I’m willing to link to the other site I don’t want to ‘vote’ for it.

The process of voting for a website gets more complicated when you take PageRank into account. Effectively, when I ‘vote’ for a website, I’m telling Google that I trust the website enough that I’m willing to stake my reputation (my PageRank) on the content of their website and that Google should transfer part of my reputation to them. Again, this is wonderful for websites that I truly support and read but not good at all for websites that I don’t actually read or support (such as those people who keyword bomb my site).

Is my website now only nofollow?

Not at all, in fact I believe my decision to turn off the fantastic LinkLove plugin will be beneficial to all my regular readers because it’ll cut down on spam comments but more importantly it’ll give me the time I need to start really focusing on helping others build their online reputations by reviewing and promoting websites I love to read.

If you’d still like a free, nofollow dofollow quality link from thisismyurl.com to your website there are a few easy ways to earn it:

1. Invite me to be a guest writer on your website. Boy do I love writing and this can be a win-win for you! With the new design almost finished, I’ve included a special area for posting links to articles I’ve written around the web. These are prime, dofollow quality links that will be used to help promote websites I love to work with.
2. Offer to be a guest writer on my website. I know it might not always seem like it but I do appreciate that I don’t know everything, so why not help me out? Contribute an article to the website and earn a strong link back to your site.
3. Send me a Pingback by posting a link to my content on your website. Next time you’re writing an article, why not take a look to see if there’s anything here on thisismyurl.com that you could use to support your article? Pingbacks happen when your blog posts a story with a link to a story on my website and will always appear nofollow free.
4. Sponsor the site by placing a 125×125px banner on the site, it’s a great way to help show your support as well as increase links back to your website.
5. Do something amazing on your website and tell me about it on Twitter. When I retweet it’ll appear here on the site as well as travel out to over 1,000 followers.

I feel that way about making money online here at thisismyurl.com, which is why I don’t believe asking for donations is the right way to go when it comes from receiving support from people who read my blog. In fact, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that I think most bloggers feel that way. So how can you say thanks to somebody for a blog post you’ve really enjoyed? Here’s a few ways that I can think of off the top of my head:

Support their sponsors

One of the easiest ways to say thanks for a job well done is to simply take a couple seconds and look at who’s buying ads on your favorite blogs and if there’s something being marketing which interests you, click through to check it out. The act of clicking an affiliate link doesn’t put money in your bloggers pocket but it does reinforce with the affiliate company that the blog has pushed traffic to their website and this act alone is valuable to both the blogger and the advertiser.

Support their commenters

One of my favorite ways to support a blog is to read their comments and click through to supportive, helpful commentators. Again, this doesn’t make the blog owner any money but what it does do is prove to the person who left the comment that the time they spent leaving a comment was well received. I get to learn a lot from a lot of great bloggers this way but it also helps encourage people to leave helpful comments which is the best way to support a blog.

Tweet about them

People blog for a number of reasons but regardless of why a blogger takes the time to write posts on the web, telling your followers on Twitter is a great way to help encourage them to continue writing great comments. You can also Digg them or list them on Stumble Upon if you’ve really enjoyed their content.

By ads on their website

A lot of bloggers sell ads on the side of their sites, why not help them out by promoting your own products and services?

Post a link to their story on another website

If you enjoy reading something on one blog and think it could help support and article on another, why not take a few minutes and share the link there? I often post supportive, helpful links in the comments of a blog to help the owner know about other great blogs. It helps both blogs become stronger, better and more co-operative!

Send money

If there’s no other way for you to say thanks, sending the blogger a couple dollars to help keep them infused with coffee is always nice. 

Support their plugins and themes

If your favorite blogger writes plugins or themes for something like WordPress, take a few minutes and download it, comment on it or rate it on the public directories. A lot of bloggers get significant portions of their traffic directly from these directories and your supporting their plugins helps build visitors to their websites.

Leave comments

I can never stress enough how much a great comment encourages a blog owner. If you’ve taken the time to read a blog post and found it helpful, spending just a couple seconds to leave a thank you note and encourage the blogger to continue writing is a great way to say thanks. If you can add to the conversation, correct a glitch or improve the bloggers understanding of the subject matter … all the better!

Post a link to their blog

The holy grail of compliments to a blogger? Posting a link to their content! If you run a website of your own and find something a blogger has written to be helpful, post a link and tell your visitors why you liked what you read. It’s amazing how much this helps a blogger build a bigger audience and how easy it is to do.

To install the theme, simply download the ZIP file and uncompress it before uploading the resulting /coming-soon/ directory to your web server.

Why build it?

Actually it’s a funny thing, I’ve written before that sometimes when you write a blog you need to review your Analytics (The Vomitorium and Data Mining) and looking over my numbers today, I’ve seen a steep climb in the number of people searching for a template like this.

The Coming Soon! theme offers users the ability to quickly add a page while still allowing you to track the vital statistics and add plugins such as Google Analytics or keyword tools. The theme makes full use of the header and footer functions, without displaying any actual website content. 

Customizing the Theme

This theme is a bare bones WordPress theme. In fact it doesn’t even make use of the Loop so if you’d like to customize it by adding a graphic or changing the text, simply open the index.php file and add basic HTML within the <div> tags.

1. Keep your website as simple and clean as possible. Remember your goal is to communicate with clients and funnel them into your business.
2. Analytics only matter if you care about them. How many people come to your website is irrelevant, what matters is how many reach your goal
3. Understand the basics of HTML. You can’t race a sports car if you don’t understand the basics of how an engine works, know your vehicle.
4. Web traffic is people not statistics, stop trying to collect them like trading cards and respect the people who take time to come visit you
5. Provide value to people and help them share your value with their friends, try make every word you type add to the community, not hurt it 
6. Learn how to use PRWeb, FriendFeed, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, RSS and Google properly if you want to reach the masses.
7. Give your time to local charities and share your story on the web, encourage others in your area to be benevolent and watch traffic climb
8. It’s OK to be wrong. In fact being wrong is completely amazing, I’ve learnt more from being wrong than I ever managed to learn in school
9. Take the time to be interesting in your marketing and on your website, people will not follow or subscribe to you if you’re dull.
10. The most successful websites in the world are free but they make millions. Learn to master advertising venues and you’ll be rich forever.
11. Stop trying to build websites for Google, start trying to build websites for people who want to open their wallets to you, it’s common sense
12. Websites need to be kept fresh and updated, don’t just add a blog to your website instead blog as a way of communicating with your customers
13. My father always told me to measure twice, cut once. Avoid the most obvious mistakes but taking some time and thinking before you jump. 
14. Help people keep in touch with you by adding a link to your Twitter, Facebook page, RSS and email subscriptions on every page of your site
15. If you can learn what motivates people and learn how to take away the pain they feel you’ll no longer need to market to them to sell to them
16. Find out who the power players in your industry are and spend time watching everything they do online. when you get it, do it too.
17. Don’t try to win a web popularity contest, unless you have Megan Fox’s body, the charm of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates money,  you’ll lose.
18. Don’t just subscribe to marketing blogs that you believe in, there is more than right answer on the web, learn to follow many paths
19. Develop a realistic series of goals and work very hard to reach them. If you don’t see the results you hoped for, reevaluate and try harder
20. Share in your marketing success by helping others build their businesses. Linking to great content is the best way to build your own.
21. Educate your consumer and use the power of social media make your client base smarter, so that they understand the value of your business
22. A website is a work in progress, you don’t have to wait until its perfect to launch a new website you just have to know that it will grow
23. Share as much with the world as you possibly can and ask for nothing in return, what starts as a  visit often turns into a lifelong client.
24. Be honest in everything you do online. The web has a long memory so remember the best way to not get caught being underhanded is to not be
25. Don’t hire people who tell you they’re good on the web, hire people who are proven on the web … otherwise you’re investing in failures.

Now I have to admit that the inspiration for today’s post came from an absolutely wonderful post called 65 Bite-Sized Web Marketing Tips by Adam Singer and he deserves a lot of credit for my basic philosophy around here. Adam’s linked to a lot of brilliant articles and some that I couldn’t have gotten started with include:

• 5 Things I’ve Learned as an Internet Marketer (that translate everywhere in life)
• 30 Traffic Generation Tips
• 10 Obvious Strategies To Ruthlessly Acquire Users

Usage

To use the Easy Technorati Tags for WordPress plugin, simply download and install onto your WordPress website. You can then add it to your theme by inserting the code <?php echo timu_technorati_tags() ;?> to your blog theme files or to a sidebar widget.

Output

The tag generates a comma separated list of tags complete with Technorati links. I choose to return it as a value rather than write it directly so that if you’d like to make changes or process the results, you can do it easy.

You can download the plugin directly from the WordPress Plugin Directory. Don’t forget to rate the plugin if you’ve enjoyed it.

How You Can Help

I love developing plugins for WordPress and do my best to always keep them free but of course it take a lot of time and effort to build these plugins so if you’d like to say thanks, the best way is to take a few moments and write about the plugin on your own website, include a link to my website from your posts or download and rate the plugin on the official plugin directory.

Support forums are now online! If you have any questions, please visit http://forums.thisismyurl.com.

I follow five simple rules that I believe helped me build a successful website, five rules that everybody can follow.

1. I posted simple, honest content. Most the content on my website is designed for people with little technical expertise who need to solve a problem. This is an easy way to generate traffic, find a problem and help people solve it.
2. I posted content often. While I was building my website traffic I often posted content twice a day to help establish new visitors, then once I knew people had taken the time to read my posts I began posting less frequently but with more focus on content.
3. I posted what people wanted. I spend a lot of time looking at the stats for my website and I know what articles people read and which are worthless. The articles people read inspire me to write more (better) content on similar subjects while the less popular posts are reviewed and improved.
4. I posted different kinds of content. When I started out I made a lot of mistakes (and still do) but by testing different content styles, I’ve learnt the proper length for many posts and how to make them more readable for the audience.
5. I posted what I knew about. Instead of trying to chase trends or break news stories, I posted content designed to help business owners make better websites, a lot of it is still pretty technical but it’s getting more ‘people’ friendly everyday.

What I’ve learnt over the past five months is that people love free stuff. My post popular page by far is Fundraising Thermometer Plugin for Wordpress a free plugin for WordPress designed to help charities display their current fundraising level. My second most popular post is another WordPress plugin called WordPress Plugin to automatically update the copyright notice., a simple post to allow the display of copyright details on a post. Other popular posts on my blog have been:

1. How to center content with CSS and HTML
2. No More Frames Plugin for WordPress
3. Code Free Pong
4. How to make awesome 3d icons in Adobe Fireworks
5. How to create a reflective website image in Photoshop

As a website owner, the best way for you to increase your website traffic is to understand what people want and give it to them. This might sound like common sense logic but often times we as business owners (because my website really is a business) forget that serving content is about the reader, not the writer.

Happy five months of reading my website, I look forward to another great month writing.

I think my problem ‘getting’ Twitter is that to me it’s a bunch of noise distracting me from my daily objectives. I already have an Instant Message client running as well as Skype, Facebook, an iPhone, iChat and my office phones. Not including my email, RSS subscriptions and usernet group updates … I guess in truth I just don’t understand the need for another source of chatter. 

Please don’t get me wrong, I’m sure there’s got to be a purpose to it … I just don’t get it.  I don’t think I’m alone either.

Biz Stone (Twitter) was on The Colbert Report last night and even he seemed unable to truly explain what the purpose of the popular social networking tool is. Jeremy Lichtman Lichtman has a point where he states there’s a high ‘noise to signal’ ratio, so maybe my issue with Twitter is the same issue I had as a kid when my uncle tried to get me to listen to the old Ham radio … maybe Twitter users are the modern, Internet version of dorky middle aged men talking to each other in closets?

How do I do it?

Super simple actually, when you write a new post you can set the scheduled date for publication by clicking the Edit button located beside the publish immediately text in your Publish dialog box.

Holding content back for a later date is a great way to publish a successful blog because it allows you to write effective content while you’re available to do so but still allows you to control how often you publish content.

Another interesting use of this technique is for people who are looking to run an events calendar. By it’s nature, WordPress won’t allow you to display scheduled posts but there’s a way to do it which would allow you to publish only scheduled content:

[source lang='php']
$ScheduledEvents = new WP_Query();
$ScheduledEvents->query(‘post_status=future&order=ASC’);
[/source]

The post_status=future query allows you to create a new loop and display only future events, which would be perfect for bands or other blogs looking to display a list of upcoming events. More on that another time, thanks for reading.

a circular movement of water, counter to a main current, causing a small whirlpool.

By definition the web is a fluid medium, it ebbs and flows like a river. In fact, when I formed my first web development company I pondered a wide variety of names and first settled on Eddy as my company name. Eddy is both a persons name (informal for Edward) and also a circular movement of water, counter to a main current, causing a small whirlpool. Exactly what I wanted my company to do. To be honest, the company was ready to be launched, we had brochures designed, logos ready and then one night at dinner I was speaking to my wife about the launch when my five year old son asked “Do I know Eddy?”.

That stopped me dead in my tracks and made me take a step back. I stayed up late that night looking at the company and realized that I had been too close to the problem, I’d become blind to the obvious and my attention was so focussed on the details that I’d not looked at the larger picture. The old expression “you can’t see the forest for the trees” came to mind but in this case, it wasn’t just about some vague concept it was about money. Eddy died that night but Rodonic was born.

Rodonic web design services, Ottawa

Rodonic was a funny company name, it was intentionally designed to mean nothing. In fact, when Rodonic was launched there was no other uses of the word in the Google database. That was great for branding and helped ensure the company was a success.

Where with Eddy I focussed only on my desires for branding, Rodonic was all about others. The name, selected in part for its vagueness was a perfect software company name. We tested the name to ensure it could work with various titles such as Rodonic WordPress, Rodonic DRAW, etc. and it stacked up as well as Corel, Microsoft or Adobe (I was young and had big dreams). What it lacked however was a passionate team behind it and eventually the business closed.

Why Redesign thisismyurl.com?

Just like Eddy, I was so close to the old design that I’d forgotten to check if the visiting public could find things easily on the website and just like Rodonic sometimes you have to take a deep breath and accept that  changes are needed. The top navigation of the old design had bugged me for some time but more importantly, I had to ask myself what the purpose of my website is (remember, that’s one of the ways to make a successful website). This is what I came up with:

1. Provide quality, informative posts related to the space between design and technology.
2. Provide easy access to downloads.
3. Inform the public about my technical and creative skills.

Oddly, my website structure of the old site was too cluttered and confusing for most people to find my most popular WordPress plugins easily. So I took a bit of time and redesigned the layout. Some of the new features of the site are just to show off but others are designed to make using the website much easier to use.

Automatic highlighting of key posts

Key posts are now highlighted

One of the big improvements to the website is for navigation and highlighting of critical posts. Throughout the website downloads are now automatically highlighted in the listings with icons to represent the categories they belong to. So far, I’ve highlighted:

1. Free downloads
2. WordPress downloads (as well as Plugins and Themes)
3. osCommerce downloads
4. Macintosh downloads
5. Windows downloads

Automated content additions 

To further assist users to find key content such as downloads, I’ve added an automated piece of text at the bottom of key articles, designed to help users find other related downloads much faster. 

These new additions to each page are found on all pages that share a common category. For example, if a post is included in the Free downloads category, a paragraph and link to free downloads is included on the bottom of each post. The text is automatically applied from a central repository and increased the displayed count as I add downloads to the specific category.

Improved header

By far the biggest addition to the website is a new, cleaner header. The new header is designed to show the key navigation and highlight sub navigation quickly.

I’ve used standard CSS layers to highlight the active page as well as to focus attention on mouseover states. The key advantage over previous designs is that I can now help surfers find downloads and blog posts much faster.

Ongoing changes

There’s a lot more to come over the next few weeks, and as always I would love to hear back from you so if you’re having a problem finding content on my site, confused by navigation or just want to say hi, I’d love to hear from you. – Chris

Make Your Content Accessible

Use the SEO Checker I built to see what Google can see. This tool will also help you understand what visually impaired people in your community can see … they make up almost 10% of the population, so can you really afford to only appeal to 90% of the market? 

Use Valid xHTML Markup

xHTML is the language web pages should be built in. If you write your page in sloppy code, it’ll be harder for web browsers to display it properly so just like a Word document, you have to save it in the right format for your audience to read it.

Translate Your Content

thisismyurl.com is available in 20 languages, 40% of my traffic comes from outside the US and Canada and is viewed in a language other than English using a free online translation service, I know it’s flawed but it’s the best I can offer and people learn from my postings.

Understand Keywords

Keywords are the heart and soul of the Internet, they’re like fresh pasta in Italian cooking or eye shadow to drag queens … if you don’t understand the value and application of keywords, get off the Internet.

Build Relationships with Other Websites

Almost half my traffic comes from Google, the other half? Came from other websites and referrals from great people that I taught something to and in turn taught me a lot.

Add a Google Sitemap

Google want’s nothing more than to know about you, it’s the companies only goal in the universe, so help them to help you.

Help People

Speaking of helping, help people. When you see a website with an error or run into a problem on a site, let them know. If you can fix a glitch, tell them how … I’ve picked up countless readers and sources of inspiration by simply being supportive.

Use Analytics

Back to Google for a second, they have a tool called Google Analytics. It’s free, it’s powerful and it’ll help you understand your audience.

Join Social Networking Sites

Websites like LinkedIn and Facebook are powerful tools to help people. Helping people leads to trust, trust leads to prospects and prospects lead to clients.

Add Fresh Content

Ask yourself, why do people come back to your boring old stale content? They don’t. If you ran a restaurant you’d have daily specials right? Well I think running a restaurant is easier than running a website, so make sure you have fresh content served daily.

Know Who’s Better Than You

There are a lot of web sites out there that are better than me:

• Andy
• Chris
• Ben
• Ashley
• Yan
• Heck, even Lorelle is pretty awesome.

Know who’s better than you and read them every day. The best way to learn is to know you need to learn. (btw, if you didn’t make the list don’t be sad I have hundreds of sites I read every week, these are just the first ones I though of)

Respond to Criticism

There’s a lot of things that I write on my blog that are not as well researched as they could be, and when I’m corrected I love it. You’ll notice if you pan through my comments that I don’t remove the negative … in fact I relish them. If people take the time to point out your flaws, thank them and you’ll grow.

Write Good Content

The best way to build traffic to your website? Make people want to come back. It’s harder to get new visitors than to keep your old ones.

Be Timely

Write about things that you know will be timely but don’t chase trends, it’s not relevant what others are writing about … only what your readers are reading about.

Get to Know Yourself

The past five months of blogging have taught me a lot about myself, I look back at some of the early pieces I wrote and know that I’ve changed. That’s part of what blogging is, it’s about growing not only as a business but also as a person and learning new things.

Make your Title Tag Valuable

Your title tag is a critical piece of the organic marketing puzzle, if you don’t understand how or why to use it properly … excuse my french but vous êtes vissé. 

Add an RSS Feed

I don’t care what type of business you are … if you can add an RSS feed to your web site do it! Let people know what you’re up to if they want to know. Same goes for Twitter, use it to exploit your interests.

Give Stuff Away For Free

I love giving things away for free. I have website templates, plugins and artwork people can download for free as well as over 600 pages of advice here on my website. Guess what? It cost me nothing and it put me on Alexa’s radar without having to do anything complicated.

Respect Your Audience

There’s only one thing more important then you on your website, your audience. Take time to get to know them and help them.

Know Your Goals

Why do you own a website? You’d be surprised how many people have no idea why they want to run a website … it’s a little sad really.

Use a Content Manager

Websites that are build on a content management system (I use WordPress) make it easier for people to update their websites. Websites that are updated more often get more traffic.

Read Matt’s Articles

Matt Cutts is Google. Actually he’s not but he’s the face of Google, the man who talks to all of us and tells us what Google is thinking, explains what they’re up to and helps lowly web masters to interact better. His job … to help the public make the most of Google, so why don’t you read his blog?

Join Forums

Forums are a great place to generate free traffic to your blog. They help you build relationships with other bloggers, build respect in the community and get into endless conversations about topics that interest you.

Comment on Other Websites

One of the most overlooked methods for building traffic to your website is to simply comment on other peoples websites. Remember my point about helping others? Point out flaws or add to the conversation and you’ll be generating great traffic back to your website.

Analyze and Adapt

Finally … the most important point … look at your analytics often and improve your website to help your audience make the most of your content.

One of the sources that I do turn to when I need link building experts is Vertical Measures. They run a pretty informative blog on seo link building so it’s no surprise that I have their site as part of my own personal RSS feed, recently they’ve completed a few great articles which should be able to help most small business owners:

• Yes, Meta Tags ARE Important!
• Brands In Search Results, Matt Cutts Sheds Some Light (a piece about Matt Cutts tutorials)
• A Powerful Reason to get Ranked on Google!

Hiring a link building company is just like hiring a search engine optimization firm, you need to take the time to understand what they’re going to do for you and also to discover that many of the top improvement strategies are things you can easily do yourself if you’re facing a limited budget.