Shaun Low

The All In One Seo Pack is a plugin I highly recommend all WordPress users install on their blog. What this plugin does is allows you to easily edit and control the Title, Meta description, and meta tags for each post you write. This is very useful because WordPrss by default will use your blog tagline as your meta description and keywords. The keywords in your tagline wont have a positive effect on all of the keywords for all of your posts because they won’t describe to the search engines what is found within the content of your posts. You can customize each post on your blog for maximum search engine results.

How To Optimize Your Home Page

The All In One SEO Pack allows you to make your home page title, home page meta description and meta keywords.

-Home Title allows you make your homepage title separate from any other pages on your site. It’s recommended to make your home title include the keywords you are trying to target for your site. As you can tell my home page title tag is “Internet Marketing Online With Shaun Low Dot Com”.

-Home Description allows you to fill out the meta description for your home page. This is what will appear in search engine results for when your home page is being displayed.

-Home Keywords are the meta keywords you want to have included on your home page. These keywords should reflect keywords found within your site. Make sure you include any keywords you want to rank high for in search engines when filling this out.

You can get a good look at how I filled out the information on my home page below:

How To Optimizing Individual Posts

The All In One SEO Pack allows you to optimize each individual post on your website.

-Title allows you to chose the name of each post. As you can see with this post it is called “All In One SEO Pack”. The title tag for this page has been changed to “How To Use The All In One SEO Pack To Optimize Your Website”. The keywords chosen for this title tag is much more descriptive and will allow me to rank better for more search terms relating to the All In One SEO Pack.

-Description is basically the meta description for the post. Whatever you write in this field is what will affect the description search engines will use to describe your website in the search engine results. Make sure that your meta description properly reflects the content found within the post. This is the first thing your readers will see when your site was appears in search engine results. The meta description I used in this post is: “This all in one seo package will help you optimize your wordpress for better search engine results. Really easy to install and use”.

-Keywords are the meta keywords you want to include for the post. All you have to do is make a list of keywords that appropriately reflect the keywords found within the post and enter them in. Use commas to separate each meta keyword and avoid keyword spamming or keyword stuffing. This will hurt your search engine results. The meta keywords used in this post are: “all in one seo pack, seach engine, google, optimize, seo”.

You can see how I filled out the title, description and keywords for this post below:

The All In One SEO Pack is really easy to install and use. It will help you increase your search engine results. Hopefully I covered all aspects of this plugin. If you guys have any questions about it please feel free to ask!

Many websites preform a keyword analysis. A keyword analysis is a check to see what keywords are searched for on the web, (Google and Yahoo). Preforming a keyword analysis can’t be done without the use of a keyword suggestion tool so here is the top 5 keyword suggestion tools known around the web.

#5. iWebTools Keyword Suggestion

All you have to do is enter in the keyword and iWebTools will give you the most popular keywords matching you initial keyword. The keywords that are most relative to the one you entered in are based on the search results from a combination of Google, Yahoo and MSN so I think it’s safe to say this is going to be a fairly accurate estimate. Click here for the iWebTools Keyword Suggestion Tool.

#4. Hit Tail Keyword Suggestion

Hit tail will help you increase your search engine traffic by telling you what keywords to use in your articles. All you have to do is install a small piece of code in your site to track search engine traffic. Hit Tail then analyzes your traffic and then takes out under preforming terms as suggestions. You can sign up for Hit Tail here to begin your keyword analysis.

#3 Overture Keyword Selector Tool

Overture is a keyword suggestion tool that displays the search results for any term. It is completely based on Yahoo’s search engine results so keep in mind this doesn’t include the biggest search engine (Google) and it also doesn’t include MSN. Overture shows the number of times a keyword was searched for in Yahoo for a certain month. According to the term “Shaun” it was searched for 6303 times during the month of January 2007, good thing I’m on the first page for that term . Click here for Overtures Keyword Selector Tool.

#2 Google AdWords Keyword Tool

Google Adwords Keyword tool is very descriptive when it comes to displaying search engine results. It offers us results tailored to any country and any language. You can also choose which data you want to do research for including: Keyword search volume, Cost and ad position estimates, search volume trends, and possible negative keywords. This is by far the best keyword suggestion tool I have seen so far, but the reason it doesn’t rank #1 on this list is because Google fails to display real numbers. The only estimation you can make from the results is a little green bar displaying how often the keyword is searched. You can use Google’s keyword suggestion tool here.

#1 SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool

Thanks to Aaron Wall we have the complete keyword suggestion tool available, not to mention this tool includes real numbers for each term you search! This tool provides monthly data from all of the top 3 search engines, (Google, Yahoo, and MSN) and combines the results into one. It also provides data on search results for each individual search engine separately. It even has all of the features Google Adwords Keywords tool has which saves us a bunch of time. There are more features available on this site so I highly recommend checking it out here to for Aaron Wall’s SEO Book Keyword suggestion tool.

For more information on doing a keyword analysis for your site you might be intereted in some of the following articles:

• Keyword Strategies - The Long Tail by Search Engine Guide

The principle of the Long Tail is the opposite of focusing on the top 10-20 keywords for marketing their sites. The top keyword concept is reinforced by agencies that contract to gain rankings for 10-20 terms, maybe 30. However, when studying the referrals from the search engines and the traffic they generate, those that focus on the top 10-20 terms may be missing the majority of their market.

• How to Find and Target Long Tail Keywords For More Seach Engine Traffic by Dosh Dosh

For the average blogger, the increase in search engine traffic means a bigger audience and possibly more long term profit from the display of on-site or privately arranged advertisements.

• Long Tail Search & Web Analytics by Seach Engine Journal

This same Long Tail theory has been applied to search in that a handful of queries drive a lot of clicks to a site but in reality there are sometimes tens of thousands of other terms which actually convert at a higher rate.

• Identifiying Long Tail Patterns by SEOmoz

Taking advantage of and capturing searches within the long tail has become an important area of focus for search marketers. It certainly has tremendous appeal… typically long tail searches have considerably less if any competition yet often represent searchers who are very far along the purchase path. Seems like the best of both worlds.

• Hitting The Long Tail Keywords by John Chow

Long tail keywords are more targeted because the searcher is entering more information. My chances of signing a search engine user to Kontera is a lot higher if he came from a search on how to make money with Kontera than if he came from a search of make money online. How do we know which long tail keywords to target?

This post should actually be called “The Power Of StumbleUpon”, but anyways the other day I came across this funny joke from Malewail.com. The joke went something like this:

The Good The Bad The Ugly

1. Good: Your wife is pregnant.
Bad: It’s triplets.
Ugly: You had a vasectomy five years ago.

2. Good: Your wife’s not talking to you
Bad: She wants a divorce.
Ugly: She’s a lawyer

3. Good: Your son is finally maturing
Bad: He’s involved with the woman next door
Ugly: So are you

4. Good: Your son studies a lot in his room
Bad: You find several porn movies hidden there
Ugly: You’re in them

5. Good: Your hubby and you agree, no more kids
Bad: You can’t find your birth control pills
Ugly: Your daughter borrowed them

6. Good: Your husband understands fashion
Bad: He’s a cross-dresser
Ugly: He looks better than you

7. Good: You give the “birds and bees:” talk to your daughter
Bad: She keeps interrupting
Ugly: With corrections

8. Good: The postman’s early
Bad: He’s wearing fatigues and carrying a shotgun
Ugly: You gave him nothing for Christmas

9. Good: Your son is dating someone new
Bad: It’s another man
Ugly: He’s your best friend

10. Good: Your daughter got a new job
Bad: As a hooker
Ugly: Your coworkers are her best clients
Way ugly: She makes more money than you do.

Prety funny eh? It actually made me laugh when I was finished reading it. So I thought it deserved a nice little Thumbs Up from my StumbleUpon tool bar. This particular post had 0 comments before I saw it and it was published over 5 days ago. You can check out my comment here (notice how I was the first person to leave comment after the post has already been published for 5 days):

The author of the blog left me a message on MyBlogLog the very next day saying: “thanks for the Stumble it brought me a lot of traffic”. So I went over to the blog and noticed there was over 63 comments…very weird considering there were 0 comments the day before and now there was 63. I guess we’ll never know exactly how much traffic StumbleUpon brought in but you can notice a massive jump in their Alexa Rank just after one day, look at the graph below:

It’s hard to tell from the graph but you can see a very small level of traffic and notice how the blue line shoots up exponentially, (probably all from the StumbleUpon traffic that post generated). The Alexa Rank for Malewail.com is 2,648,493. Malewail.com’s traffic rank for August 27th was 28,830. Much higher than 2,648,493, and I’m guessing the majority of this traffic came from StumbleUpon.

Normal Alexa Rank:

Alexa Rank After Post Submitted To StumbleUpon:

You can clearly see the massive traffic this post brought in just due to the fact that Malewail.com had 63 comments in one day and their Alexa rank jumped through the roof overnight. StumbleUpon can bring you huge traffic over a short period of time just like Digg as long as you write worthy and unique content. High five to Malewail, keep up the good work .

Now this is what I call off-site promotion! Here’s a little trick most people probably don’t use to promote their site, but if used properly, video games can be highly effective in bringing traffic to your site. This technique can be applied to basically any online video game.

Counter Strike

Counter Strike is the biggest first person shooter game for computer to this date. Thanks to a program called Steam we can get Counter Strike delivered to our computers without us even having to get off our asses. All you need is a credit card and you can have Counter Strike installed on your computer in a matter of minutes. In 2004 Game Spy statistics showed over 85,000 players simultaneously playing CS at any point and time. In 2006 Steam regularly shows over 200,000 players playing. Steam also says that these 200,000 players accumulate over 6.177 billion minutes of playing time each month as of February 2007. The numbers show that this game has heavy traffic and it can be really easy to brand your site by playing this video game with your name set as the same name of the site you are promoting. People are curious and will find out what site you are advertising as your CS name. If you want to play this game you can download it here.

World Of Warcraft

Perhaps the game of all games, World Of Warcraft has quickly grown to one of the worlds most popular video games. This game is classified as a MMORPG, aka Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. On July 24th 2007 Blizzard announces that the World Of Warcraft user base passed the 9 million mark world wide. North America constitutes 2 million of the 9 million world wide players. There are 1.5 million players in Europe, and China takes the lead with over 3.5 million players. With the shear amounts of numbers you can easily tell how popular this game is, it should be easy to brand your website just by playing this game. Tell all of your online friends about this site, make your characters name as your website, and do whatever it takes to spread the news about your site.

StarCraft

StarCraft was the number one selling PC game for 1998 which sold over 9.5 million copies world wide. According to Wikipedia, Blizzards Battle.net online gameplay service grew over 800% after the release of StarCraft in 1998. StarCraft is still one of the worlds most popular games of all time. The idea is simple, play the game, set your name and/or clan to the site you are promoting, and play away! Play as much as you can, win games, be annoying, spam your site do whatever it takes to get your name out in the StarCraft world so curious gamers will figure out what you are all about.

Halo 2 and Halo 3

Halo 2 is a massive online first person shooter video game. It has been easily Xbox Live’s biggest online video game. According to Bungie, at the time of me writing this post Halo 2 has logged over 450,000 unique Halo 2 players within the past 24 hours and over 800,000 matches have been logged. Also according to Wikipedia there has been over 8 million copies of this game sold world wide. Get an Xbox Live account, make your gamer tag the name of your website, and start playing Halo!

Diablo 1 and Diablo 2

The Diablo series (including Diablo 1 and 2) in combination has sold over over 17 million copies. Blizzard was impressed with the success of this game. It received great ratings from all of the critics. This game was also awarded the fastest selling computer game ever sold, it sold over 1 million copies within the first 2 weeks of this games release. All you need to do is start playing this game, start promoting your site the same I explained for the other games, and watch the traffic roll in!

Daily Moolah Dot Com is holding a nice little contest I came across today. They are offering a free SEO Book which is published by a well-known search engine expert, Aaron Wall. This book is very popular around the internet world and is very useful for all webmasters, bloggers, and internet gurus. I have always wanted to read this book but never wanted to pay for it, so this contest is perfect for me. The book currently sells for $79 but apparently it’s worth every penny.

The contest, held by Daily Moolah, offers a few ways to get your name in the draw for the prize. You can:

-Stumble or Digg the post for 1 entry.

-Subscribe to the Daily Moolah’s feed for 2 entries.

-Mention the contest in a post on your own blog for 3 entries.

-Write a review 100 word review about Daily Moolah for 5 entries.

I get 6 entries into this contest because I stumbled his post, dugg the post, subscribed to his feed, and mentioned the contest in this post. This book is really worth the time to read so I highly suggest all of you head over to Daily Moolah and sign up for the contest here.

Here is a sweet 3 minute clip of some Halo 3 action online. The guy who got this video had special beta testing privileges so he managed to capture some real footage of what Halo 3 will be like to play online before it has even been released to the public. This game should be one of the best online console games released to date. Here is the video:

The new theme is up but not complete yet! As you can tell there are some more things we have to touch up on the site before it is totally done but hopefully it should be 100% complete in the next day. Anyways here is this weeks Posts of Interest hope you all enjoy!

-Me And My Drum has a nice review of SponsoredReviews.com. The article covers the good and bad aspects sponsoredreviews.com. Check out that post here.

-Seoaware brings us 5 Tips on How to Make Non-Affiliate Money From Your Blog

-John, the author at site fever, just recently released a 22 page, downloadable article on Blog Traffic made easy. I highly reccomend checking out this free offer.

-Becky over at Preblogging provides us with a simple trick on how to get alexa to update your thumbnail.

-Thanks to Blogging Tune we can now display relevant ads on our Google Adsense. Check out the full post here.

-Random Jabber has an interesting article on Why Social Networking Traffic sucks.

-Daily Moolah wrote a great article on How NOT To Get Banned By Digg.

-R3fresh offers us Ten Tips for Starting a Blog.

-Elizabeth Rose explains how to Sell Text Links on Ebay. Great article if your interested in makeing more money online.

-Blue Jar offers the complete Insiders Guide To Hosting: BackUps. Check it out very informative!

Also a special thanks to Brown Baron and Gnomy Newt who helped me to get my comments working again!

Link exchanges are a great way to gain exposure to your site and it helps build relationships with other bloggers. The best way to maximize the chances of you getting a link exchange is to send a professionally designed e-mail to the site you are attempting to get a link exchange with. Here are few brief rules to abide by when creating this e-mail.

#1 Spelling and grammer. Think of it this way, your e-mail reflects your ability to write and shows how much you care for your site. If your e-mail is stuffed with incorrect spelling and grammer you can expect the person to not even visit your site to see if you are worthy of a link exchange, they will just delete the e-mail.

#2 Don’t explain what a link exchange is. Don’t include in your e-mail the definition of a link exchange and the benefits of it. Anybody who runs a website should know site already know what a link exchange is and they also know the benefits of it. So don’t explain the basics of a link exchange, get to the point of your e-mail and why you think they should participate in a link exchange with you.

# 3 Make sure your site is related. If you run a sports site and you ask for a link exchange with a IT website expect a quick decline. Make sure your site is relevant before you shoot off that e-mail. Get to know the site and ensure that it will be beneficial for both sides to participate in the link exchange.

# 4 Provide stats about your site. Including the obvious information like your URL, your name, and a brief description of your site should be included in the e-mail as long as any stats that might spark the interest of the webmasters of the site you are trying to link exchange with. You can include your Alexa Rank, your Google Page Rank, RSS Subcriptions, Technorati Rank, average daily visitors and page views. There are more stats you can provide about your site but these are the most important and obvious ones. The more info you provide the higher your chances the other site will participate.

# 5 Write your e-mail on a personal level. Many established websites provide information about the author(s) behind the site or the employees behind the site. Do a little research and find out who owns and operates the site. Once you find out the real names of the people behind the site address your e-mail to the real names of the people. “Dear: Mr. Smith” will look much better than “Dear Webmaster”, this creates a personal connection between you and the webmaster and will greatly increase your chances of getting accepted for the link exchange.

# 6 Ensure the link exchange is worth it for you. Some webmasters will agree to a link exchange provided they can insert their link wherever they want. Some web masters will exploit this opportunity and stick your little link buried deep into their website. This won’t get your site any exposure and the page your link is sitting on is going to have a low page rank. Remember this is your link exchange request and if it doesn’t bring any value to the table then opt out of the deal and find someone who will help you.

When you ping your site you notify blog directories and blog search engines that you have updated your blog. The more sites that you ping the better the chances you will get traffic from those sites. Below is a list of sites you can use to ping your blog everytime you update it.

There are a lot of pinging services out there and taking the time to individually ping each site would take hours. You can include a list of pinging services you want to have notified everytime you update your blog which is found in your “Options” tab in WordPress. Nate Whitehill has a step-by-step guide explaining how to include these pinging services in your WordPress options, check out the guide here. Follow Nate’s guide, include my list when you get to Step # 4 and you will never have to ping again!

http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://ping.weblogs.se/
http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2
http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/
http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://rpc.newsgator.com/
http://rpc.pingomatic.com
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php
http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b
http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.blogoole.com/ping/
http://www.blogoon.net/ping/
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1
http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php
http://www.blogsnow.com/ping
http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
http://www.mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatter/ping.php
http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud
http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php
http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php
http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2
http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/
http://xmlrpc.blogg.de
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://1470.net/api/ping
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://bblog.com/ping.php
http://bitacoras.net/ping
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC
http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc
http://blogmatcher.com/u.php
http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt
http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/

After falling victim to having an entire article of mine being copied word for word and claimed as someone else’s content I thought it was time to make a little copyright page of my own. You can find the copyright page at the top of this site. It’s not very complicated, only a few guidelines to follow but I think it is necessary. Included in the copyrright page are a few commenting policies. So far I haven’t had any comment spams or anything but a few other blogs have a comment policy so I decided to make one for myself.

I wrote an article dedicated to copyright infringement and how it affects bloggers, if you missed that feel free to check it out here.