The SEO News Blog with Pat Marcello

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:

http://www.wprecipes.com/wordpress-plugin-protect-your-blog-from-malicious-url-requests

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:

• Go to the above address and copy the plugin code from WPRecipes.com here: http://www.wprecipes.com/wordpress-plugin-protect-your-blog-from-malicious-url-requests

• 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 »

So, do you ever check your dashboard news when you open the admin area of your blog? I do. There’s interesting stuff there… new plugins, new themes, and if you’re using Analytics, your stats now. I love that!

Today, I noticed a new plugin you might enjoy. It’s one that allows you to show your popular posts, and it adds visitor counts to your single posts page (where you go when you hit the title to a post).  Why is it important?

If you’re getting a number of viewers on certain posts, and other folks come to read your blog, they might enjoy the same posts as others are interested in reading. When they find information they like, guess what? They’re more likely to subscribe or come back.

Anyway, an interesting plugin. I just added it so for me today, it’s showing only one post. I’m anxious to see how well it works and whether it’s worth having, but something tells me it’s a keeper. continue reading »

Today, I’m proudly showing my new blog address/theme, etc. to my friend, Brian Edmondson, and he says, “Looks great in Firefox, but something’s wrong in IE. I can only see the header.”

Grrrr…. What’s the deal? I tried changing to Kubrick theme (the blue & white default), and nada… Same thing.

Enter WordPress’s support blog. It’s really a great resource, and it can solve just about any issue you may be having with your blog from installation to (in this case) disappearance. So, I’m sure it’s IE, right? And I type in “IE Problems,” and sure enough, I find that others have had this same problem, too. To my rescue, there’s a post from a moderator named Jeremy Clark.

If you see anything that says <!--[if gte mso 9]> you’re going to lose your blog. It comes from posting from Microsoft Word, which I didn’t. I know better. Copying and pasting from Word, no matter what you’re doing — whether it’s writing in your blog, posting an article at Ezine Articles, or sending a message from an autoresponder — you’re going to have problems. continue reading »

You may not be thinking about this, and I admit that I haven’t been either. Yes, it’s true. I’ve been forgetting that people read blogs on mobile devices — iPhones, Kindles, etc. and we really need to consider how our subscribers are accessing our blogs.  More than 20 million people are using mobile devices for blog reading nowadays and it’s just rude not to accommodate their needs. So, if you’re one of my mobile subscribers, mea maxima culpa. So sorry.

But…

You’re in good shape now!

I just added the plugin for WordPress called appropriately, “WordPress Mobile Pack,” right from my blog, and now, it’s all ready to go mobile. It was simple, and the results (I hope) on the other end will be stellar. I think I’ll have to subscribe from my Kindle just to see the results.

I don’t have a clue what the thing does, really. I’m only soooo techno-geek, you know. When it comes to stuff like this, I’m a luddite. So, my advice is just to get the plugin and install it. You’ll be making your mobile subscribers MUCH happier than they are now.

Technorati Tags: blogging, mobile devices, wordpress plugins

This is a test.

Seriously. I juts added ScribeFire Blog Editor to Firefox. I’ve been hesitating doing this because I’m right at home with my blog. I use Fast Dial as my homepage, so it’s really easy to get to. One click on my Fast Dial page or one click in my lower toolbar… what’s the diff, eh?

But I’m hearing all kinds of great things about this add-on, and there are times when I’m at a web page and want to blog about it, but think… I’ll get to it later and never do. Maybe this will stop that arrested intent blogging.

Here are some cool features:

• You can preview the post in your blog template or just in the Scribefire template. Kind of cool, but I rarely preview my posts. I hit send very quick and then, am glad that I have MaxBlog Press’s Ping Optimizer installed so that edits don’t matter to the blog directories since they’re only pinged once.
• It shows you the last several posts you have made in the “Entries” tab.
• You can select which category you want the post to fall into.
• It allows you to add TrackBack URLs, which I think is kind of redundant for WordPress, which does that automatically.
• Allows you to add images.
• Has a special button for YouTube video additions
• Will find related articles for you with Zemanta (notice the links at the end of this post leading to other articles), which is kind of cool
• You can make money with in-text links from InLinks.com
• You can bookmark at Propeller, Facebook, Digg, Fark, StumbleUpon, and Newsvine from the “promote” tab.

continue reading »

God, don’t people get it? I mean, they buy this spammy software that tells them they can “advertise” on a bazillion blogs out there at the push of a button. All they have to do is write some inane, generic comment, and send it out.

Those don’t work, people!

They suck.

Blogs have spam filters and I know that every bogus comment I get from these brilliant schemes gets nuked into oblivion. They never make it to my blog. So, stop wasting my time and yours.

And stop tracking back to me from your spammy blogs that you never tend, too. I don’t create MY content for You, you lazy person. Go get your own. Learn to write. Pay a writer. Use videos. Whatever. Just stop trying to create a blog that I and a bunch of other legitimate bloggers have written for you.

If you want to use my content, please write something about it. It doesn’t have to be glowing. You can write that I’m full of it.  At least if you write something that makes sense and then, refer to my blog, I’ll love you for it.  Well, unless your blog is about porn or gambling. I wouldn’t be loving you for that much. But really, all bloggers want are relevent trackbacks and comments. Is that too much to ask?

OK… rant mode off for now.

But seriously, don’t waste your money. You’re more than welcome to comment honestly. I ‘ll give you the link, and it won’t be a “nofollow,” either. My links are leaded, brothers and sistahs! But when you use these crappy tools, you’re just pissing people off… me, for instance.

Stop it!

Oh, and Happy Halloween… Think I’ll be a witch.

No costume necessary.

Just when we get used to WordPress 2.8, the developers over at WordPress are already working to release WP 2.9. I think that’s neat-o, but for the casual blog user, it may mean upgrades they don’t want to make and plugins that aren’t compatible. These changes often put normal folks into a tizzy.

But, I’m not normal. I was excited when I saw that they were working on a new version! They made some stellar changes in the past two major upgrades, and so, I can’t wait to see the newest release, though I can’t say when that will happen.

Here are some of the new features coming:

Trash Status: You can move pages and other stuff to a trash bin, much like the recycle before permanently deleting. Interesting, but not killer.

rel=canonical for single pages (the page you get to when you click on the title or your “permalink” page): Cool… Gives the search spiders a clear view of what’s going on.

The ability to select “Allow My Blog to Appear in Search Engines” during installation. Well… who wouldn’t want their blog in the SERPs? Some, I’m guessing, and for those folks this is cool. This will block all your pages from spider view. continue reading »

I had a question today over at the ListBuilding Club Discussion Forum about shortening long posts. You know, so that only a portion of them appear on your front page?

Some of the folks in the forum gave various answers, but the discussion was focusing on changing the theme. So, it occurred to me that folks don’t really know how simple this is. In fact, I’ve been writing some longer posts (like yesterday’s) and it just never occurs to me to use the tools I have at hand. Duh. But I did it for illustration purposes.

All you have to do is use the comment <!–more–> where you want to break your post off. It’s really that simple. But, you have to do it in the HTML tab or it won’t work.

If you’re in WordPress, it’s even simpler than that… continue reading »

People often tell me, “I can’t blog. I don’t know what to write about.” And I always go into my spiel about how people don’t have to write to blog. You can talk and have an audio blog. You can make videos to blog, and so on.  Though that’s some help for the reluctant, it doesn’t totally solve the problem.

There’s still the question of, “What do I write about?” or make a video about, etc.

You can get around this. There are all kinds of things you can do and some are easier than others.

How about running a survey for your list? It’s really easy to set one up at Survey Monkey, and it’s free! Just ask them, “What’s your single biggest question about…” whatever your niche is. When they answer, you’ll have all sorts of things to write about.

You can go to a forum for your niche and look at the problems people are talking about. Write about those problems and your take on them.

Or, you can join Skribit, and without doing a thing, except adding a widget to your sidebar, let your readers suggest topics for you. It’s free to join, and you can make a suggestion. Check out the widget in my sidebar. It’s simple to add and much easier than setting up a survey.

But will people use it? The answer remains to be seen, but it would really help me to know what you like me to write about.

I enjoy writing news, like what’s going on with SEO and WordPress. Readers seem to  enjoy those posts, too, but let me know. I’m really happy to write about things when I know people are excited to read them.

Now,  you have a voice! Let me hear it.