Shaun Low

WordTracker recently announced the launch of a new free Firefox extension that aids you in doing keyword research while blogging. The keyword tool works with any publishing software, and helps you ensure you work selected keywords into the content. The tool sits to the left of the browser window, and as you type, it will search your post and does an analysis of the text in your content to see if any of the phrases appear.
Read the rest of this entry »

There are a lot of people that will tell you that you need a blog because it’ll perform better in search engines and gain more traffic. This is not completely false, but it’s not exactly true either.

Blogs tend to perform better because of the abundance of content. Blogs empower users to create content in a way that is easy and fun. By doing so, users are creating content on a daily, or weekly, basis.

More content means more traffic and links. This is more for search engines to index, more for users to link to, and more to share with their friends and co-workers.

Read the rest of this entry »

When people think of reactions from blogs, they normally think of negative reviews or inspiring stories.

Comments aren’t usually high up on the list of monitoring and watching what’s being said online.

Yet they should be, as a recent post by David Henderson and the subsequent conversation in the comments section show.

I won’t go too much into the actual blog post or the comments, as they’re both recommended reads and will give you a far clearer view of who may be in the right or wrong. What the post does highlight is that a blog comment can go even further than a blog post at painting an individual or company in a less than flattering light.

Read the rest of this entry »

It is no real secret that a well written topical blog can significantly help out your website – so why aren’t you doing it?

The most common reasons I hear for not starting a blog involve a lack of time to write posts, and limited ideas to write about, but taking that extra time to get some useful content out there can do wonders for your search rankings among other things.

An established blog that is updated regularly gets spidered by Google often, and increases the chances of new search rankings considerably. I have seen multiple situations where regularly updated blogs wind up ranking #1 in Google for relevant phrases literally within a couple hours of posting. It usually takes a well established website and blog to make this happen, but there is big potential if you do things the right way.

Read the rest of this entry »

With the multitude of functions that blogging platforms are currently being appropriated for (especially WordPress software), is blogging in danger of losing its identity.

It’s no surprise that blogs are highly optimized for search engines, tend to be the weapon of choice for linkbait campaigns and are usually the chosen weapon when a single individual (or marketer) decides to take on an airline, supermarket chain, or budget airline.

Add to that the fact that affiliate marketers are also employing it’s flexible architecture to construct landing pages, opt-in forms, affiliate content sites, shopping/shopping comparison sites, coupon sites, customer loyalty sites (plus the occasional or maybe not so occasional affiliate cookie stuffing site) and you’d realize that it’s not just a diarying platform anymore.

Read the rest of this entry »

With so many people deciding to start blogging, one of the first questions they ask is, “Where should it go?” I get that question all the time, but especially from those savvy in organic search marketing, because they are concerned about the links coming into the blog counting for improved search rankings. Should they be?

I say no. Not everyone agrees with me, and they might be smarter than me, but here’s my reasoning.

Read the rest of this entry »

A couple of days ago, I wrote about Fake-Twitter and concerns of how it could be misused. As a (partial) result, the site received an official takedown notice from Twitter and I received some of the most heated and angry comments ever from a post.

That’s cool. People have opinions and sometimes these opinions are strong, and the comment section is where these opinions are allowed to be expressed.

It’s one of the reasons that I have an open comment policy. Some people emailed me asking why I was allowing the comments to stay when a lot were personal and derogatory. Simple - I believe in free speech and the right to air grievances. Of course my post wasn’t going to be popular with everyone and the comments bore that out.

But, as I say, that’s people’s prerogative and I won’t stifle that. Where I will (and did) draw the line is when you attack my readers and others leaving comments. If you have a gripe with me, fine, take that out on me - I’m big enough and ugly enough to take the heat.

But the community that are sharing their views? If you attack them with vitriol and over-the-top abuse, I will delete your comment. I think that’s fair.

Speaking of community, that’s one thing that was a positive result of the post, no matter what “side” you were on.

Although it led to some pretty personal comments against me, the response from the Tumblr community in particular was actually pretty cool to see. These are the friends of one of the guys who came up with the whole Fake-Twitter idea.

When it became clear that “one of their own” was involved, they quickly got together and started posting humorous parodies of me on Tumblr, along with their comments on the post itself.

While I may not be a fan of the personal attack over reasoned argument, it can’t be denied that the community spirit that I believe in and encourage was present. For that, I congratulate them.

We may not always agree on everything; we may not always agree on most things. But one thing we can agree on is that community and support is the way forward - isn’t it?

Comments

We’ve talked about the benefits of owning your own blog, but what if you’ve already got a blog someplace else and want to move it to your own, hosted, WordPress blog? You can do that.

WordPress offers a number of easy import options for most major free or paid blogging platforms out there. This makes it easy to move away from other software to your own, hosted, WordPress blog.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you are a web surfer looking for new blogs here are a few trigger points that can help you determine if a blog is worth reading or not. If you are a blogger, generating content, use this list as an audit to help ensure your blog is attracting visitors, not turning them away.

Design - The blog design is the visitors first impression. Is it well designed or is there to much clutter? Is it a custom design or a basic template? The blog design is very important, much like how the way one dresses can impact how others perceive them even before talking to them.

Read the rest of this entry »

Is there such a thing as the “perfect blog post”? Probably not. Certainly I’ve seen great blog posts over the years, and I have even been lucky enough to have more than my share of blog posts that ended up being popular. I have news for you, though: a blog post does not have to “go viral” on some social network in order to be the “perfect blog post”. In this blog post, I’m going to tell you exactly how to write the perfect blog post. And you don’t to be an incredible writer to do it.

Read the rest of this entry »