Well, okay.. I am a bit behind on my blog postings. In my defense, I have been launching a new product that has occupied my time pretty exclusively for the last two months. Today, it’s done though. Ultimate Guide to Wordpress Plugins was released into the wild. Can I get an *Amen*?

And since it focuses on two major aspects of blogging (search engine optimization and the visitor experience), I figured it would be okay to mention it today, and pull a couple of the plugins right from those pages.

Hopefully, by now you realize that blogging for your business, regardless of what industry you are in, is an effective way to connect with potential clients. Search engine optimization puts you in front of those potential customers, by placing your link in the *search results* when they are looking for something on Google (or Yahoo, MSN, Live, etc).

So, how exactly do you get your blog post to appear in those results?

With Wordpress, you have quite a few options. So many in fact, I can’t do them justice in one blog post. But I will cover a couple of the major one’s, All In One SEO Pack and Robots Meta.

All In One SEO Pack

Beautiful in it’s simplicity, All In One SEO Pack really is steroids for your blog’s SEO. By asking for an additional Title, Description and set of keywords on the Post New screen, it gathers the info necessary to embed into the web page (where only the spiders and super geeks look), the meta tags necessary to help Google place your content with the right keywords.

Getting into the habit of completing these extra fields will take a little time and effort, but the results are worth it. For example, I created a blog post recently to answer a question on what an example signature line for a forum would look like. I created the post, completed the All In One SEO Pack fields and published. 40 minutes later, it was on the first page of Google for the keyword *example signature line*.

They won’t all be that easy, but used consistently, your content will move from the back pages of Google, out into the light of day where folks can find you.

Robots Meta

There’s no easy way to add meta robots tags to WordPress pages, unless of course, when you install Robots Meta. (Remember, I am all about the right tool for the job!) Like All in one SEO Pack, this one add’s some new features to your Post New feature. It allows you to *sculpt* the SEO on your site by telling Google (and others) exactly HOW to distribute the *link juice*.

Here’s an example, having your tags listed in a tag cloud on your main page is great for visitors, but bleeds off some of your ranking, unless you tell the search engines to NOT FOLLOW the links listed there. Robots Meta let’s you setup some basic rules, and also provides a direct way to impact the follow/nofollow rules for each page or post.

Taken together, these two plugins will do a lot for your search engine optimization, but they are just the start. SEO is a process (I think I mentioned that before). It’s an ONGOING process. It’s something you will keep an eye on for as long as you have your blog so start making the process friendly for yourself. Start that by getting the right tool for the job at hand.

Source: Secrets To Web Success
A Blog I co-author with two great bloggers, Dali Burgado and Deontee Gordon. Come back and check it out!

The term search engine optimization (SEO) refers to the process of modifying and marketing a website for top search engine position. It is a set of methodologies aimed at improving the visibility of a website in the organic results obtained when a user surfs the internet for some information. In order to get top search engine position among your competitors, you have to make the search engines like your website. So, go on reading to learn how.

Never do this:

Unfortunately, most of the newbie do this mistake as they think just submitting their website to the search engines would automatically lead to get some how decent website rankings. The truth is website submission associated with website optimization is your right step if you are willing to get the top search engine position and later drive massive traffic to your website.

The alternative way to target decent website rankings is to know the techniques and criteria by which a search engine ranks the websites. Then, implementing these techniques on your website would do the job for you. As an example, keyword density is an important factor to consider receiving a decent rank for your website.

Be Ready to Master Your SEO Trip in 5 Simple Steps:

1. The first significant issue to get top search engine position is to take care of your keyword density. Briefly, your target keyword must be 1-3% of your article text.

2. The proper usage of meta tags is a significant issue to get a decent placement and leads to increase web traffic. Make your description meta tag short, and key word rich. Additionally, include your keywords in the title meta tag.

3. Do not forget to choose a domain name for your website that is short, easy to remember, and well descriptive as well. In addition, avoid this free website hosting accounts as they would never help you to get high website ranking.

4. You want to continually review and evaluate what you have done in the regard of search engine rankings. Because the Internet is ever changing, you will want to make sure that your lucrative efforts keep pace with the most recent strategies.

5. When it comes to website optimization, you need to care about fresh and unique content by adding new articles to your website regularly. This would ping the search engines that your website offers fresh and up to date knowledge which would increase your ranking.

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Source: SEO and Other Snake Oils

In theory the concepts behind Internet marketing might be quite simple, executing effective strategies however, can be extremely difficult.

This can even be tough for those who are quite experienced in the world of Internet marketing. With this in mind, this article will attempt to explain the concept of Internet marketing for beginners and will outline some basic strategies which can help a business owner to launch his own Internet marketing campaign.

We will cover concepts such as:

• Creating a website
• Placing banner ads
• Sending out e-newsletters
• Orchestrating an email marketing campaign
• Optimizing your website for search engines.

One of the most basic steps for starting an Internet marketing campaign is to create a website.

If you don’t have a website or have a poorly designed website you should consider creating or re-designing a website to adequately market your products. If you do not have experience in web design, there are a number of software packages which make it simple for those with no design experience to create a functional website.

However, hiring a web designer is worthwhile because he can work to create a website which is attractive, functional and suitable to your products and series. He can also help you include more advanced features on your website.

Banner ads are another popular option for advertising your business on the Internet. Banner ads are advertisements which typically appear along the top of a website but it may also include smaller ads in other locations. Banner ads typically include graphics and text which entice Internet users to click on the advertisement. Once a user clicks on the ad, they are directed to your website. This type of advertising can be very effective when care is taken to place the advertisements on high traffic websites which attract an audience who may have an interest in your products.

Sending out e-newsletters can also be a part of an effective Internet marketing strategy. E-newsletters are essentially emails which may contain a variety of information including informative articles, useful quizzes, relevant advertising or any other information which is deemed worthwhile for the recipients of the e-newsletter. The importance of these newsletters is that they can be used as marketing tools which are not viewed by the recipients as an advertisement. One way to do this is to incorporate links or other soft sale approaches into the copy of the e-newsletters. However, care should be taken to keep these references minimal so the e-newsletter is not viewed as spam.

Email marketing campaigns can be another successful aspect of an Internet marketing campaign. Email marketing essentially involves sending out emails to a group of individuals who may be interested in your products and services. Care should be taken in sending out these emails to avoid sending emails which are unsolicited and will be viewed as spam. One way to do this is to only send out the emails to users who have requested inclusion on an email mailing list. Another way to do this is to provide value in the emails as opposed to just including advertisements. This can be done by offering relevant advice in your emails and other useful information which may be of interest to the recipients of the email.

Finally, optimizing your website for search engines is a critical aspect of an Internet marketing campaign. Search engines rank websites according to quality and relevance for particular search terms. Many Internet users appreciate the effort by search engines and use these search engines to find the best websites on a particular subject. This means the Internet users are likely to only visit websites which rank well with search engines. Therefore if your website is not high ranking, you are not likely to generate a great deal of traffic from Internet users who use search engines to find relevant websites. Top ranking websites are likely to obtain the most traffic from search engines and all websites falling on the first page of the search engine results will likely enjoy some degree of success in improving their traffic.

Source: The Work At Home Jobs

I get this question a lot, so I thought I would jot down my feelings on the matter, and let you decide for yourself. Of course, we are talking about blogging, the new national pasttime.

There are free hosted options like Blogger.com and Wordpress.com that make getting started almost painless. In fact, I started on Blogger.com. My first How To video was on creating your Blogger.com blog . I went on to create more than 5 blogs on that *platform*.

It wasn’t until I had been blogging for a while and my skills were improving that I realized my blogging desires were exceeding my blogging software (platform) .

Since I had a bit of a readership going, moving to a new platform seemed a good idea at the time. I painstakingly moved each of the posts I had created to the new platform. And then started extending what my blog could do. Within a couple of weeks, I was pushing the envelope again.

At least I thought I was.

Truth was, I hadn’t begun to really tap into the power of Wordpress. What an amazing piece of software that is!

And, by hosting it myself on my own domain, I owned it. No one could tell me what I could and couldn’t do on it. And when I needed the blog to automate some portion of it’s function, I just added a plugin. (For those of you new to blogging, a plugin is a small application that works within Wordpress, to add new features that aren’t built into the blogging software).

I believe there are something like 1384 plugins available for Wordpress as of the end of 2007. I won’t even guess at the number of plugins available now. Let’s just say, it’s a lot .

There are probably more reasons than what I am listing here, and if you think of others, I would love to hear them so drop a comment on this post.

To Host, Or Not To Host

• Hosting it yourself, you get a more professional appearance since you choose the domain name . Free hosted sites add a suffix to your blog name. www.MLMSurvivalGuide.com is easier to remember than www.MLMSurvialGuide.Wordpress.com, don’t you think?
• Hosting it yourself, you aren’t limited to a type or number of advertising methods. Funding your blogging hobby definitely beats doing it for nothing.
• Hosting it yourself, you can add additional elements to your *site*, like forums or discussion groups
• Hosting it yourself, you can re-purpose your domain to include capture pages, sales pages, .
• Hosting it yourself, you can choose whether or not to upgrade to the *latest version*. Sometime, being on the bleeding edge of things isn’t a good thing.
• Hosting it yourself, you have complete control. And for us *Control-Freaks*, that’s a great thing.

I bet you can guess which direction I chose.

Now, getting a hosting account and buying a domain may seem hard, but seriously, it’s pretty easy. And though I have used a number of different hosting companies over the years, the one I am on now has proven time and again just how helpful they can be.

The control panel is clear and easy to understand. It’s even well organized.

They have a 24/7 live chat feature so if it’s 2am and you run into a problem or have a question, there is a real live person ready to help.

I particulary love the unlimited domains, unlimited storage space and unlimited bandwidth you get with your hosting account. So, whether you have one blog, or 100… it’s just one price.

So, if you are getting ready to start your first or fiftyth blog, considering hosting it yourself . It’s a decision you will look back on with pride. And check out the company I use and have loved for more than 3 years now. IX Web Hosting *rocks* in my book.

You have probably heard the term (more than once) during the course of your online education, but if you haven’t grasped the complete concept, let me help you out.

First, a definition to get us on the same page:

A *Mastermind* is peer group of people like you for shared ideas, accountability and opportunity discussion to improve your personal and/or company success.

If the value isn’t readily apparent to you, then read that definition again. In fact, read it a few more times.

I belong to a couple of good mastermind groups in my chosen *genre* of Internet/Affiliate/Network Marketing, and I can tell you with no hesitation that the *hour(s)* spent with each group are some of the best hours of the work week.

When a group of like minded folks get together and start talking about what’s working for them, or what to avoid, you have an opportunity to supercharge the time you do spend doing something, or even more important, what NOT to spend your time on.

I won’t go into some of the troubles of building the right mastermind group, those should be obvious, but I will tell you it is worth the effort . Keep your ears open to the people you come in contact with… and ask yourself, could this person add something to the group? Watch their activities and actions, listen to what they say and how they say it. If you think it might be a good fit, ask them.

In addition to reducing your *learning curve* or knowing what to avoid, is another benefit that was recently made very obvious to me. You see, one of the members of a group I belong to ran into a little trouble , personal trouble. The mastermind group did something amazing. They pooled their resources, talents, PLR, techniques and time to help her out.

The result was nothing less than mind-blowing.

In just a few short day’s… these people, by pooling time, tasks and talents, where able to put together a website and an amazing *package* for sale, with all the proceeds going towards the one in need. Now, it might not be enough given the gravity of her situation (you can read more about that here ), but watching a group of people from all over the US come together like this has been inspiring, to say the least.

It also points to another benefit of masterminding. Being able to help someone because they deserve it. No one deserves what happened to her and her family, but seeing the mastermind group come together like this has gone a long way in restoring my flagging faith in the inherent kindness of mankind.

I hope that you got something out of this overview of a mastermind, but I also hope you will take 5 minutes to head over to the MakeLemonade.info site and see what we have put together for you. The cost is small, the benefits are enormous, both to you and the one that needs it.

I would love for you to come back here and leave some feedback for those that come after you. We could all use a little help now and then.

Tags: mastermind , benefits of mastermind , what is mastermind , helping someone out