Hello Happy Site Owners! Welcome to the BlogAid Podcast for Dec 4th, 2012. I’m MaAnna and this is the week for the new WordPress 3.5 release. Lots of plugins have been updated because of the new release too. This week’s tips include tips on claiming your expertise and stop comparing yourself to others in your niche, the skinny on the new Bing Webmaster Tools Guide, the double-edged sword of comment spam and what it does to your site rank, how to run your online empire from anywhere, and the most spot on list I’ve ever seen for getting more clients. Listen to the podcast now.
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Featured
Guess what I’m doing tonight? I’m hosting my first webinar. And no, you didn’t miss the invitation. This one is a private party and I’ll tell you why. I’m very excited about launching the new MailChimp Video Course, and I’m launching an affiliate program along with it. You know me, I’m not going to put anything out there until I test it. So, I’m doing this first webinar as a pilot for the affiliate program too and ensuring that we have everything up to muster before making it publicly available. However, I will tell you that the first public webinar will be very, very soon. BlogAid News subscribers will be the first to know about it. So, be sure you’re on the list.
And, if you’re on the list as a member of the BlogAid Video Tutorial Library site, you just got an email with a full year extension on your membership! How ‘bout them apples? I’ve been making a lot of changes to the library and wanted to give a little bump to all the clients who have been so loyal to me and keep coming back for more.
WordPress
Last week the developers announced that the WordPress 3.5 Release Candidate 2 was out. This was likely the last one before the public release tomorrow on the 5th. Be sure to come back here for my post tomorrow with the step-by-step checklist for safely updating your site. In the meantime, you can watch this video from when I took my first look at the Beta. A little has changed since then, but you’ll still want to get a preview of the new media uploader.
WordPress Plugins
Some of the links below are to the plugin developer’s page, but you can find most if not all of these plugins in the WordPress plugins repository.
Recently Updated
You may have noticed a LOT of plugin updates recently. Many of them are just getting ready for the WordPress 3.5 upgrade. So, you can go ahead and update now to ensure your site is ready.
Plugins to Check Out
Hey, you remember last week I told you about Christine Cobb’s post on the Pretty Link Plugin Finally Issues Update? Well, whether you use Pretty Links or not, you’re going to want to read that post if you do affiliate marketing because she has a better way. Cloaking your links is not about hiding them from your readers. It’s about keeping them from being intercepted and stolen so that someone else gets the commission. So, if you want to know more, you really need to read Christine’s post because she fully explains it.
Blog Tips
It’s not likely that you are the only person in your blogging niche. In fact, some topics are overly saturated with blogs. So, it’s easy to find a competitor that makes you feel less than confident about what you offer. Linda Dessau of ContentMasteryGuide.com has a nice guest post on Denise Wakeman’s Build a Better Blog site that will help you combat that titled Business Bloggers, Claim Your Expertise. She talks about ways to bring forward those lightbulb moments in conversations with clients and writing posts that acknowledge your strengths.
SEO Tips
Some say that Google’s not the only search engine worth catering to. Bing is still trying to be a contender. On the Higher Visibility blog, Scott Langdon reports on Bing Publishing Webmaster Guidelines for SEO. Scott also gathered quotes from some high profile SEO thought leaders and basically they laughed it off saying it’s too general to be of any real use and that Bing needs to work harder at providing enough traffic to be seriously considered. So, seems we’re stuck catering to Google for SERPs, like it or not.
Also on Higher Visibility, Amanda DiSilvestro has a nice post why Allowing Comment Spam on Your Website Can Hurt Your Rankings. Yes, it’s a pain to have to go delete it manually, but it’s even worse to let it negatively impact your site twice. First, it devalues your SEO and second, it annoys your readers to have to scroll through junk to follow the conversation or leave their comment. So, to cut down on your manual labor, get and make a donation to Akismet. It provides the big database of spammers that Google checks mentioned in Amanda’s post. Next, get the GASP plugin to use in conjunction with Akismet. If you’re using CommentLuv, it’s built in. Or, get the Bad Behavior plugin and use it in conjunction with Akismet instead of GASP. Either of them will radically cut down on all the false positives Akismet gives you.
And you know what? Spam is not a one way thing. Make sure that you are not leaving comments that could easily be mistaken for spam. You know, generic comments that say things like, “Great tips. Thanks for sharing.” If I don’t know you, and if you don’t have your email address connected to your Gravatar account so I can see your happy face, and your email address looks like you’re just trying to advertise something, I may very well mark you as spam. That will put a notch for you in the Akismet database. You get enough of those, Akismet thinks you’re spam. So, maybe try to type a few extra words into that comment that let’s folks know you actually read the post.
Marketing Tips
Do you offer downloadable guides on your site? I sure do on BlogAid and at least one of them has Ultimate in its title. Matt Beswick has a post on the Expand 2 Web blog about Ultimate Guides – Why They Work To Improve Traffic and Rankings. The things he tells you about them are spot on and they work.
The great thing about the Internet is that you can run your empire from anywhere and that’s just what Connie Ragen Green discusses in her Huge Profits Tiny List podcast interview with Donna Gunter on Authority Marketing for Introverts.
And if you’re going to do something like that, your email list is going to be priceless to you. So, don’t make the mistake of sending too often or when you know everyone else on the planet will be sending too. If you do, you may end up a stat that the nice folks at MailChimp collected over the Thanksgiving holiday citing the high number of unsubscribes due to Cyber Monday and Email Fatigue.
And I’m going to end this week’s tips with the most spot on list I’ve seen. It’s from Kaya Singer on her Awaking Business blog with 10 Things to Help You Get More Clients. Now, you may be thinking it’s all about marketing strategy or how to improve your posts. Not even close. It’s the real stuff that matters most. I have slowly come into doing all 10 and they work, really work. Must read, so go check it out.
Wrap Up
That’s a wrap for this week’s Tips Tuesday podcast. You know you can find this podcast on iTunes, as well as Stitcher, and the Blackberry Podcast. You can also subscribe directly to the RSS via email in the sidebar of the site. Visit BlogAid.net for more tips, tutorials, and free resources to make your site better.
And I’ll see you online!
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Thanks for this spam info especially, MaAnna. I set up some quiet WP blogs for some authors last year and suddenly since November they are getting hit with tons of spam, all of which must be dealt with manually. The worst case, though, is a friend of mine with a very successful blog and forums—her bbPress forums have become taken over by spambot comments, ruining the experience. I’m helping her research how to combat this unfortunate problem.
Glad you found it helpful, Laura. Forums can be a real time suck to moderate, even when they are not hit with bot spam. I hope you’ll stay in contact and let us know what you did to fix it. I’m always happy to credit folks in Tips Tuesday when they send me good info directly too.
Didn’t know this before . Thanks for sharing :D