Freehits Marketing Ideas

Well been doing more and more blogs with wordpress version 2.0+ and it is still the most flexible and seo prepped blogging platform I have used. I really enjoy the use of tags, conditionals and a standardized css system to style with.

If your blog is wordpress here are 10 things you can do pretty simply to get you blog to rank and appear better in the search results.

1. Turn permalink structure on which utilizes Mod rewrite to create much more search engine appealing url’s. I would suggest using %postname% somwhere in the structure which creates a hyphenated version of the post title. This will make you choice of titles critical to ranking but is a powerful leg up. I would also suggest the optional custom prefix for any keyword that is extremely important to your rankings. You can see the use of the %postname% on our blog here http://blog.freehits.com/05/how-much-for-a-link-on-your-website/ and the use of the optional prefix “web” here: http://blog.freehits.com/web/online-marketing/.

2. Fix your titles, as wordpress puts the blog name in every page, which is overkill and dilutes each page’s specific draw. You can use conditional tags to make it exactly as you want it. I would suggest something like this, it will give you a custom homepage and the page title on all others. This goes in the templates/header.php file at the top over the old title:

if (is_home()) {
?>

?>

3. Latest posts are user and spider friendly. Use this in your sidebar: , it will give you the 10 latest posts with a linebreak.

Google prefers bold over STRONG tags in the code?

This is one of the things implied in a recent batch of google videos put out independetly by Google Engineer Matt Cut|ts. Matt does stress that the difference is so negligable that it should be consider extremely slight, but this is just one of the many myths tackled in this test run of Q & A sessions he put out in his first video ventures. Most on the web appreciate the time he voulanteers to look at some of the questions from webmasters on the inner working of googles natural results.

Check out the videos here.

Smart priving is the new term for the evaluation process that google has implimented to gauge the value of a click to the eyes of the vendor who paid for the ad. In essence it not only takes into account the value of the keyword and what the purchaser bid to get the ad placed, but also the account that is responsible for displaying that ad. This smart pricing model uses an account wide estimate of a publishers conversion efficiency and uses this to determine what that publisher gets paid for that click, and what the ad owner pays. The system is in place to help ad purchasers not be overcharged for what would be perceived as a high cost but low value ad location.

You can read quite a nice article by Jensense here that shows how one poor converting site can lower your entire account value for every non related click.
http://www.jensense.com/archives/2005/10/one_poorly_conv.html

Came across dealing with a site that was a webtemplate for real estate by a company www.@@@@@@.com, well the name isn’t important since most are similar at heart. Most tend to use a php or ASP template and plug in the variables system with alor of framing of other pages and sources of tools.

This new clients website was a complete site in a bag ready to go real estate website solution, which is not always bad, as these prepackaged designs have more functionality than most web designers could ever provide….BUT, you end up with the same coded site as 5,000 other realtors. Many of these prepackaged sites rely on css to create substantial difference between them, which is not part of the spidered code in most assumptions, and you still have the same site to the G, MSN or Y.

This above fact coupled with the fact that the entire site is “framed ASP pages” has made the site very non friendly to search engines. The framing is generally framing of other useful tools and MLS feeds which means sources from other websites, and this in turn creates a situation where your website is 85% duplication from other more prominent places on the web. To make matters less friendly, the URL’s created by this framing are god awful jumbles of id #’s and other peoples URL’s.

I am not against this type of total site solution as many of them have exceptional tracking and newsletter features which can convert at a much better rate than simple high rankings.

In our opinion you really need to find a middle ground and try to meld the prepackaged features into your well seo designed static template. If you do choose one of the major real estate package websites you may find it important to work with a good designer or smart SEO to try and make sure the features do not go wasted, and make sure your site bypasses the many shortcoming of this templated approach.

Other Sources For: real estate websites, real estate seo, seo, search marketing, web design tips

Listen to the discussion with Shoemoney and Mr Boser regarding the use of hyphens as a shortcut to higher rankings or the exact opposite.

The discussion began on concept of branding oneself and learning fromt he mistakes that got your ranking tossed out to better be prepared and educated for doing the right thing for the important sites you may own.

Webguerilla mentions that a discussion he had indicated that a 96% in page quality for all sites above a two hyphens. He had discussed that search engines avoid the simple concept of filtering out the high hyphen websites as they actual provide a hidden service to the engines themselves. Search engines can monitor the high hyphen domains damains in each market as a clear indicator of which mnarkets are under attack of low quality content providers. So instead of cleaning them out, they are likely just penalized in a way that they will never be seen, but they are kept in the indexes as a universal market indicator of the current pollution level in that market.

A smart idea, and perhaps a reason not to brand yourself in such a transparent attempt to manipulate the search engine rankings. Any small advantage you may feel you have gained comes with the fact that your domains is impossible to type from a hearing and will group you wth a very large low quality demographic on the web.

If you really want a keyword rich name, get a great domain you like and build a sombdomain on it with the keywords you find important.

Other Sources For: domaining, domain names, domains, buying domains, seo, marketing, search engines, search marketing, seo tips, seo advice, sem advice

Read today eBays expansion into blog and wiki like behaviors. I am hopeful that eBay tries to surpass their past customer services issues. Anyone that has dealt with eBay on a large scale as I have knows they are perhaps the biggest online company today online that puts almost no effort into customer service. While this is my opinion, and they did try to turn it around about a year ago, any professional eBay seller knows it to be fact.

From:
http://auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y06/m06/i02/s03

“eBay will be introducing eBay Blogs, another way to give sellers an opportunity to market themselves, as well as an eBay Community Wiki. eBay is holding sessions on the new tools at the upcoming eBay Live conference in Las Vegas June 13 - 15.

The session called “It’s not About Me, it’s eBay Blogs!” shows conference attendees how they can use eBay Blogs to write about the things they sell and build their networks. Another session, called “Wiki 101 - An Overview of the eBay Community Wiki,” defines Wikis in general, looks at Wiki implementation on other sites, and discusses Wiki features eBay provides to the Community. eBay has already created a discussion board devoted to eBay Blogs, though it’s not yet available on its main list of discussion boards.

eBay is also using blogs and wikis internally. eBay just changed its newsletter “The Chatter” to a blog format available at http://ebaychatter.typepad.com/the_chatter, and the eBay Developers Program has had a blog for some time (http://ebaydeveloper.typepad.com/dev/). Both blogs use SixApart’s Typepad blogging platform.

The eBay Developers ”

 By launching blogs and wikis, eBay is taking a big step to push into the social circle concept and the new wave of disquising “marketing” as “community”.

 1) The purpose of TrackBack is to let a site know that you are referencing them on your on site.
2) The TrackBack URL is different than the regular permanent link URL.
3) TrackBacks are fun.  You should use them.

basically It’s a method of reciprocating links and encourages interlinking of related topics on blogs.

In learning to see any smart tips I could find I did find this on one of my favorite sources Aaron Wall’s Site. Aaron was commenting on Trackback search and news he recveived about automated software to do exactly that. The software is basicly a spam tool as it inserts a link in your trackback section through automated process. This tool disquises its automated nature by quoting, commenting or placing psuedo-research from your posts.

Funny point is that Aaron doesnt appear to have a trackback feature on his post, one I could have ethically used right here.

http://www.seobook.com/archives/001000.shtml#start_comments

Some resources on stopping Trackback spam and trackback abuse:

For Trackback Plugin For Wordpress:
http://seclab.cs.rice.edu/proj/trackback/trackback-validator-plugin/

A complete and insightful resource on stopping trackback related issues in typepad:

http://www.emilyrobbins.com/how-to-blog/fighting-trackback-spam-wordpress-beats-typepad-by-a-mile-288.htm

 

Other Sources For: trackback tools, trackback abuse, trackback url, Aaron Wall, Emily Robbins, typepad trackback, wordpress trackback

 Top 25 most influential authorities on the topic of business

Came across this when trying to better determine some of the underlying reasons for the authority rank order on Technorati.

basically while still learning this system of theirs from scratch seems very much tied t othe preachings of google and the weight of a link vote. It even has the hinting of somethin similar to PR as sites grow in passable weight as they themselves increase in inbound votes from others links.

Other Sources For: technorati ranking, blog traffic, top blogs

Reading today about rel=nofollow and how the general feeling s that it has not accomplished anything in the way of fighting comment spa|m|mers as it had bn advertsed.

Here is the thread that ot me thinking about tracking it on my sites and if it is really eting honored by spiders?

For those who dont know (you should), rel=nofollow is an attribute added to the link in the html code as such

http://www.freehits.com/” rel=”nofollow”>Freehits the intention of this tag is to let the search engines know that ths s a link plaed by a visitor or just not a link your ste endorses, and thusly not to endorse it as a “link vote” for the site it connects to.

I spent this morning loving wordpress the more I looked at the uses for the loop and conditional tags and just about ever other preset flag choice they have laid out for the hacky php lover. Wordpress is pushed as a very seo friendly design to begin with, but the options they leave for even more improvment based on SEO tastes is endless. I thought about 20 no-brainers I use or need to use more, and put the simplest 10 here. The complete info I am publishing on some article sites and the ful version on this site is in the topic section of the main site here

http://www.freehits.com/topics-Wordpressseoforyourblogpart1-39.html

1. Turn permalink structure on – duh, but which to choose.

2. Fix your titles.

3. Latest posts are user and spider friendly

4. Permalink title mouseover should be exact

5. Rel=”nofollow” tags on the links and admin related links.

6. Enhance your permalinks and post title section for better conversion.

7. Use the conditional variables to create better use of advertising and promotion space.

8. Anti-content blindness gets readers to look longer.

9. Hot searches links can get more pages index than you already have.

10. Condtional Tags in alt can help as well.

 

Ths is really a brief and not too indepth look at the incredible amount that can be done with optimizing wordpress, with the additional use of rewrite and tag related plugins wordpress is reallly a powerful tool and self optimizing system.

 

here are the best theme sources to get you strating laying out your blog:

 

Alexking.org

 

Wordpress theme watch and here from the source of over 800 current wordpress blog themes.