It’s apparent to me that the majority of Web browsing will soon be done via cell phone rather than desktop, laptop, notebook or ‘pad’ (DISCUSS!). Well however the numbers play out one thing’s for sure…

If your blog isn’t phone friendly you are going to lose a bunch of traffic!

No, you don’t have to fiddle with your site purely for the cell/mobile/smart phone market or even have a .mobi suffix on the end of a domain name. Oh No!

Not when there are WordPress PLUGINS! YAY!

NO! NO! NO! WordPress Mobile Is Real NOW!

BUT: plugins ain’t making it happen!

LET ME EXPLAIN (and offer some options)…

This post was sitting happily in draft mode fo a while and I thought, “Hello!” (I like to greet my thoughts as they arrive into my Frontal Lobe),“That can’t be right, everybody’s banging on about Mobile and WordPress doesn’t have a solution in place already? Weird!”

At the time the WP Touch plugin geezers would no doubt have challenged me to a duel were I to say that their solution is a bit ‘scrappy’ and ‘basic’ – BUT, to be fair, their free and paid solution does offer a kind of ‘fix’ to what is the new Google Manifesto!

Keyword Phrase

I’ve had blogs hacked, I’ve had hosting companies let me down. I’ve installed bad plugins and uploaded dodgy themes and not upgraded WordPress when I should – in fact I’ve done about everything the wrong way before learning the right way! It’s not just down to knowing how to backup WordPress!

So what do I know now that I’ve done it all wrong in the past? here are my tips for maintaining a pretty good secure WordPress site and avoiding the ‘bad stuff’ , and in no particular order.

• When WordPress suggest you update your site only do so immediately if it’s a ‘major’ security update e.g. 3.0 to 3.1 as opposed to a minor fix as in 3.0 to 3.01. Let others see if there’s an issue with a minor update before you do. WordPress will soon let you know!
• Always backup your database before uploading and activating new themes and plugins – that way you just delete the new add ons and revert back to the way you were before if necessary. Better yet – if you have a spare domain ( or even a folder added to your domain e.g. yoursite.com/test-site/ and install a ‘test’ WP Blog there – just remember to ‘hide’ it from the Search Engines via Settings > Privacy in your admin area ( the only time you’ll ever choose that option in my opinion):

• There are a few database backup plugins out there ( and don’t forget you can always back up your databases via your hosting Control Panel too.) such as WP-DB-Backup and WP-DBManager both of which allow you to schedule backups and send them via email ( set up a free Google email account just for those backups is my tip!) or back up to your computer or external hard drive.

Seems a bit crazy to me to save your backup files solely to the server file where your blog sits! Something goes wrong and you lose your site you lose your backups too!

OK but there’s something you need to remember and what a lot of people forget to tell you! Backing up your database is great, do it after every post you make! B U T ….

it includes all your posts, comments, categories and tags – that’s GREAT! – but no photos or images in your posts or pages!

Your logo? Your themes and plugins? Maybe you’ve tweaked the code on your site’s theme and had work done on it?

You’ve uploaded Audio files to your server and incorporated them into your site? Maybe Slideshows or Videos too?

Well, not to put too fine a point on it, you are ‘F@#2-d’ !

There is a solution of course! Simply, whenever you do a regular database backup use your FTP program of choice and download your /uploads/ folder with all your images in. Plus any other folders you might have set up for, maybe. /audio/ or /video/ or whatever – download those too.

Also download your /wp-content/themes/ and /wp-content/plugins folders as well!

And don’t forget your wp-config.php file!

So do you see what I’m saying here? If you are being told, and accepting as gospel, that by simply using a database backup plugin that you are fully covered if something goes badly wrong on your site or server and that you are protecting your site:  ‘against the day’ then…

You are being misled about the best way to Backup WordPress Blogs! That’s just crazy!

…unintentionally no doubt but incomplete information is bad information where I come from! Especially when it involves something as important as a web site that you could lose forever simply through ignorance of the true facts. If you’ve got a nice content rich site starting from scratch just with your textual content having lost all your media, site logo, plugins, theme and tweaks just doesn’t bear thinking about.

So, what are you going to do about it?

Keep on doing what you are doing and ‘fingers crossed’? Yep! That’ll do it :-)

No, you have 2 choices use my free FTP method above or learn how to clone your blog ( database PLUS all the other stuff I mentioned above) in just a couple of clicks and a few minutes downloading or uploading time. WATCH AND LEARN….

But first let me ask you this. If you had to re-instate your WordPress site ( from SCRATCH!) even on a new hosting account. Not just the Backup WordPress info but all your content, imagery, plugins, themes EVERYTHING! A carbon copy of your original site!

COULD YOU DO IT?

Well if not, why not? Don’t you think it would be somewhat cool if you could? Check this out!

• Find out more about WP-Twin

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Ever get the feeling somebody’s trying to sell you some ‘Product Launch’ software or application. or a WordPress Launch Theme? Either that or the ‘Last WordPress Theme You’ll Ever Need’!

Man, I sure do! 3 new releases this month alone and that’s not including Kajabi!

If you, like me, have been swamped by the amount of ‘launches’ in the Internet Marketing sphere this year I can assure you that it’s going to be twenty times worse/better (?) in 2011!

Now I can’t comment on how Good, Bad or Ugly the actual ‘products‘ will be – well actually I can – My Prediction for 2011: most likely they will be, as they always have been, 90% re-hashed crap and a load of BS about loopholes and secrets, magic potions and never before discovered sources of traffic!

.Does anybody fall for this nonsense anymore?

I guess they do!

What I can tell you however is that next year a whole  lot of BAD launches are going to be a whole lot slicker!

In the past it was only the wealthy Guru marketers who could afford to invest in designers and video makers etc. to turn their launch interfaces into things of beauty with all over WOW-factor loveliness, well that’s not the case anymore folks!

If you’ve got a COOL product to market next year check some of these options out  and, if you haven’t, watch anyway and scroll down to the comments as I might have an idea….

First let’s start with an online service already tested by some of the aforementioned ‘gurus‘….

KAJABI

Set up by Andy Jenkins of Stompernet and Video Boss fame this one ain’t cheap – starting at $99.00 per month for one project and triple that for multiple launches – but it’s big selling point over and above the slick format/look, great ‘bells and whistles’ and tons of stuff you can do in the ‘back office’ is the claim that their servers can handle any size launch (none of that, “Demand was such that our servers melted!” excuse when a launch crashes). Your launch goes super nova? They ramp up the server space and bandwidth exponentially as required – simples!

So Kajabi offers all those 3+ teaser, free content style pre-launch videos which take the visitor into the Sales Funnel via the integrated ‘optin-box’ , auto-responders, fancy Facebook comments + plus ‘Tweet This’ social media integration, and, come ‘Launch Day’, the various Upsells, Downsells and Residual Membership aspects that nearly all the BIG launches have these days. The ‘coming soon’ videos – all that stuff. It is impressive…

My issue is the monthly fee, for us lesser mortals, and having all my content and members hosted ‘somewhere else’! Plus I hear on the grapevine there have been a few reported ‘bugs’ since the big launch which they hopefully have sorted out by now. I also hear that they may have some up and coming online competition from a service called ‘Upflame‘ which hints at being a similar platform and also looks very slick indeed. But let’s not forget that with Kajabi you are getting a fully contained membership site application for your buyers ‘built in’.

But I’m a small time, down town guy…

So good news then, for an old cheapskate/bootstrapper and WordPress die-hard like me, is that a couple of WordPress themes have come out this month that appear to do most, if not all (discuss), of what Kajabi says it can do with the added bonus of one price, one time for one site. Or a higher price, one time, for multiple sites. And of course, being WordPress hosted on our servers the risk of launch day crashes… ( we should be so lucky!)

So, and in reverse order of Clive’s Blog Briefing lusciousness…

#2 JVPRESS THEME

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Here’s the sample launch, using JVPress, that I mention in the video above  – one of many launches I’m sure that used JVPress to promote their products. Know of others? Please add in the Comments area so we can all help each other make the right choice ( well that’s the plan!)…

#1 OPTIMIZEPRESS

I’m having great fun playing with this – got a sample Squeeze page in progress here so far http://www.webdelegation.com (nothing great I know but it’s a start!) – and while the multiple choices at first seem somewhat daunting the video tutorials walk you through them. It is a learning curve first time around though. Here’s the login page: http://www.webdelegation.com/login/ get in touch for a demo password to see work in progress inside the theme.

Plus here’s a couple of launches in progress a time of writing using OptimizePress:

http://www.iunstoppable.com/
http://www.videoconversionformula.com/plv1-blackbelt

Pretty impressive stuff right? I suggest you sign up for them to watch their launch as it happens ( and NO, before you ask, I have no affiliate connection with them) – just sign up, as I have, to watch and learn from the way they use the theme!

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LET’S BE CLEAR HERE – If  you want to integrate a membership site into any WordPress theme you are going to have to invest in either WishList Member or DAP (Digital Access Pass) the only two I would recommend as of today. That applies to any WordPress them you use. All I’m trying to say in the video above is that Optimizepress seems to me to have this really well integrated with pre-formatted membership pages.

Don’t get confused with the other recent release that’s just come out (seems it was ‘rushed’ somewhat to catch the ‘launch a wordpress sales theme’ wave) which is AUTHORITYPRO. while it’s a nice Squeeze page/Review style WordPress theme it does not offer what OptimizePress and JVPress do and I can’t see how they can justify the $197 price tag for a multiple site license!!!

Ditto SQUEEZE THEME – great for smart Squeeze or Sales pages but not for offering all the amazing options and stuff that my two reviewed sites above do.

My Launch Theme Conclusion?

If your product is seriously cool and your launch is going to be promoted by heavy hitting JV partners with massive lists and consequently pull in tens of thousands of optins, thousands of sales and make you as rich as Andy Jenkins and the others in the San Diego Guru Club then by all means check out Kajabi.

If you want a Squeeze Page, Sales Funnel, Membership site integration and all that other cool stuff and be able to host it all yourself and so retain 100% control ( AND have membership site integration built in?) I’m most impressed with OPTIMIZEPRESS and their level of Support and ongoing upgrades – it’s apparent that they are constantly adding new cool features and the training is excellent. JVPress is certainly similar and not to be sniffed at but, buck for buck, I get more bangs from the OPTIMIZEPRESS theme.

Here Endeth the Launch Theme Review!

LAUNCH THEME OPTIONS:

• Kajabi
  

• JVPress

• OptimizePress
  

  CLIVE RECOMMENDS: The OptimizePress Theme!
  “Price, Admin Options and Support knocks the others out of the ring! This one just ticks all my boxes and will be a long term partnership I reckon.”

Have a look at these others by all means but they didn’t float my boat I’m afraid:

• AuthorityPro
• Squeeze Page Pro

Which of the above options have been in touch with me to give me updates, new training tutorials?
Only one, and Big Time too! Massive follow up info….

OptimizePress

I am SO impressed with this theme and it’s ongoing support that the others I mention should really just curl up in a dark corner somewhere and try and workout where they went wrong!

The simple fact is that we have NO idea how many potential affiliate commissions we are losing out on if we just link to the site we are promoting using a standard affiliate link.

I think it sucks that all our hard work promoting something can get hijacked! Don’t you?

But all is not lost! There are a number of steps you we can take to make sure that we get our just rewards!

Let me clarify what I’m talking about here…

Let’s say you have a post in your blog where you want to recommend a product, physical or digital it doesn’t matter. When you link to that product, and how you link to it, will determine if your visitors click thru to that product and – hopefully – buy it. Why would they not? It’s a great product that you have endorsed right?

OK, here’s the problem!

When it is apparent that your link is an ‘affiliate’ link some visitors will attempt to bypass it. It’s not that they’ll necessarily be able to purchase the product at a lower price it’s simply that they do not want you to make a commission from their purchase.

Human Nature I’m afraid! God Bless ‘em – every one!

So, in its most simple form, if you type – #1 ” I recommend the WordPress Mix Theme” or #2 ” I recommend the WordPress Mix theme get it here: http://wpremix.com/?hop=htmlsafe ” chances are that you’ll get more commissions from Link #1 than Link #2 right? BUT you’ll note that both links are going to the same place ( i.e. link #2) when you hover your cursor over either link and see the link destination in the ‘status bar’  – bottom left of your browser window.

I personally don’t worry about this – if somebody is determined to do me out of my commission fair enough. If they can find a way to bypass my affiliate link, sign up as an affiliate themselves, and get the product/program cheaper by doing so well that’s up to them! I have no issues with anybody doing that, although I’d rather they didn’t and…

…this doesn’t mean I’m going to make it easy for them to do that! :-)

Here’s some affiliate cloaking stuff I do either via my hosting account options or plugins  etc. See what you think and let me know in the comments section what might work for you best. None of this is ‘naughty‘ in any way – except, possibly, where I mention i-frames ( all will be revealed later).

Affiliate Link Cloaking method #1 -

• Use a Redirect via your Hosting account – how this works is you sign into your hosting account and create a re-direct within your domain. See the video below to see how I do that in one hosting account….

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Affiliate Link Cloaking method #2 -

• Take this a stage further! What would be cool would be that when our visitors arrive at the site which will earn us our commissions it’s not apparent that it’s an affiliate link – make sense? Here’s how to do that with a free plugin that has recently been released by Sean McAlister  of JV Press ( see below all training videos for all the relevant links).

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Affiliate Link Cloaking method #3 -

• Use a built in, paid, WordPress Plugin – like ‘Ninja Affiliate‘ – to do that funky i-frame stuff ( as seen in the above video) but also control, and TRACK, every affiliate link throughout your whole site AND have the option to ‘link’ certain keywords or phrases within your site to go, when clicked, to your affiliate programs.

This is very, very cool. Text links within content, I have found, get more clicks than fancy banner ads!

I like Ninja Affiliate as it’s what I first used and can find my way around its admin area easily. However I have noticed with recent Firefox browser upgrades ( my preferred browser) I do come across the occasional issue. I’d really appreciate your experience on this if it’s effected you in any way.

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LINK HIDING SUMMARY:

The BIG difference between the various link cloaking options above is this:

When your client clicks through via your cloaked affiliate link what do they see on the other side?

Don’t get me wrong! Some affiliate programs will automatically disguise/hide your link – God luv ‘em! But most don’t. Think about addressing this!

Links to Products and Stuff Mentioned:

• Hosting Redirect – visit your own hosting company Control Panel – it’s pretty generic stuff ( i.e. same for most hosting services) and will help you disguise affiliate links on your site site – but not OFF site.
• JVPress GoPages Plugin (free) - if you can’t find the download page to get the plugin let me know in the comments below.
• Ninja Affiliate Plugin – these guys are smart, my affiliate link:  http://17259cx6zdqdmu0d-bya18eh40.hop.clickbank.net/ when clicked on ( try it!) does not appear in the address box of the browser window. This refers to what I said earlier – some Clickbank vendors know what they are about and help their affiliates so they do not have to jump through the hoops required in hiding their affiliate links – but most do not! Hence this post :-D

When reporting on innovations in the WordPress (self-hosted naturally!) Blogosphere every now and then something comes along that makes me go, “Wooh HOO!“…

…and write a post with way too many exclamation marks in it!!!

It doesn’t happen often because, let’s face it, cool WordPress stuff comes along all the time, it’s easy to take it for granted.

The guys that create great plugins and themes – free or paid for – and WordPress itself, constantly evolving, and we upgrade (for free folks don’t forget!) and I think to myself, “What a Wonderful WordPress” (sorry Satchmo!)

BUT in this instance it’s an application that has solved ALL my backup issues…

I’m talking about an application here that is something I’ve been praying for for years! I’ve had sites hacked in the past and while that was a total disaster when it happened ( more than once and here’s a post about that nightmare) it became even worse when a CLIENT’S site was hacked, brought down or just plain scuppered!

Having to explain to a client that,

“Sorry, I can’t  fix your blog – I have the database backup so we can cobble together something for you. Did you keep a copy of your logo image by the way? It was on my old laptop that blew up so I don’t have it now.

Did you save the photos you included in your old posts? I know it’s a drag, as you have over 300 posts with lots of images,  but you’ll need to go to each post and upload those images again. I didn’t, obviously, keep copies of your imagery.

Those special code tweaks I made to your theme I’m afraid will no longer be in place as we’ve resorted to the default theme. Ditto re plugins – can you remember what plugins we used?”

OK it never got that bad, but it could have, and I worried about it constantly – so much so that I instigated the ‘alternative’ procedures listed further below.

and then, AND THEN? Came…

WP TWIN !!!

So here’s a video run through by Jason Fladlien ( the guy with the MOST annoying laugh on the WWW :-) which shows just how simple this is:

….back and rested…

THINK OF THE BENEFITS:

• Sure back up your database, with a good plugin, every time you post BUT backup everything, media uploads, themes, plugins, theme tweaks EVERYTHING with WP Twin!
• I now do this for all my clients sites because I know that if their site is hacked, blows up ( suicide blogger?) or the hosting company goes bankrupt I can simply import the saved file into a brand new WordPress install on another hosting company! DONE! CLONED SITE IN SITU! Sorry about the excess of exclamations marks but !!!
• So that leads us to something else: Knowing that I can now easily move a BIG, complicated, edited and tweaked, WordPress blog with loads of posts, pages, categories, images, plugins and media uploads from one hosting company to another in literally minutes is just a dream come true for me, a guy who creates, sells and flips blogs every day and has a client base to whom I like to offer state of the art backup services. Mega Exclamation Mark $ :-)

I simply cannot recommend WP TWIN highly enough!

ALTERNATIVES TO CLONING YOUR BLOG with WP TWIN

• Using your database backup plugin of choice save your database in a Zip File to somewhere safe ( external hard drive wherever).
• Using FTP ( Filezilla, whatever) download your wp.config.php file + Theme folder, Plugin Folder, Media ‘Uploads’ folder and maybe your ‘Audio’ or ‘Slideshow’ folders – NONE of this stuff is in your database folks! It HAS to be done over and above your database backups.
• Create a new blog, maybe on a new host – work out how to import the old database.
• Then upload all the media folders and wp-config file
• I’ve probably forgotten something so..
• Pay for a WP programmer to do all this for you.

Or use WP Twin

eerm, that’s it :-)

NO IT’S NOT! Check THIS out…

Let’s say you have a favorite WordPress theme and plugins PLUS you’ve tweaked your blog to just the way you like it – maybe with security techniques like those used in WordPress Defender ( great tutorials on securing a site from hackers) maybe Privacy Policy pages etc. all that stuff that’s boring to do over and over?

Create a template (without any posts or real content) and, when you want to create a NEW blog with all your favorite themes, plugins and settings already sorted and embedded just use WP TWIN this is great and a massive time saver in my world I have to say!

ADDENDUM!

I’ve just been on, and recorded, a Webinar with Jason where he goes into more detail about why we all need this funky software and you can see some online, real time usage of the software – also some ideas as to how to make money with it. That’s personally of little interest to me – I’m simply sold on the security/backup issues

SO if the post above has got you interested and you want some more info and access to the manic laughter I mentioned earlier :-) feel free! But, as I say it’s a trifle long – 40 minutes, even with my editing – so download it if you want to view later ( see download link in the video toolbar).

Here’s another thought: if you use the WordPress Defender security tips, tweaks and plugins on a site I see no reason why you could not do the same on a template site for all your new blog installs – so security would be built in.

I believe standard fee for instigating all of the WP-Defender video tutorials is around $100! So big saving there if you build new blogs regularly!

Synchronicity is a great thing isn’t it? Weird too! I’d been thinking about blog audio for a while now and thought a post was kind of overdue when, all of a sudden, some new options came to my attention.

Hmmm, thinks I – maybe a post showing the options is in order here…

Essentially what happened was that I got informed, via two separate sources, about two new blog audio embedding applications on the same day – and this all tied in with my trying to create an online audio for a pal ‘down under’ – but more on that later – first things first…

If, like me, you have a ‘face for radio’ (but do I? See the video on this post).

But if you are not as ‘comely’ as me and you have decided that you want to post audios on your blog – or even become a blog audio only type person here are some of your options for embedding audio on a blog:

[N.B.For Audio Recording and Editing options see Addendum below this post]

1) Plugins

The only audio plugin I recommend is the fab Audio Player Plugin – this requires you setting up a folder in your hosting account – best is yourdomain.com/audio and upload your .mp3 files there ( yep only MP3 files – no .wav’s or crap like that) and then link to them using code in your posts like this:

or, more likely, this:

and you’ll end up, all being well, with something like this:

2) Embed via Podcast Sites

On investigation I discovered this was a good way to waste a lot of time! While there are loads of podcast sites out there to which you can upload your audio files for SEO purposes it’s a bugger to embed a player into your blog so I wouldn’t bother. AND, even if you do find a podcast site that makes it easy, your audio will sit on their servers and so you will be vulnerable to potential advertising/bandwidth/ “send us your money!” issues.

3) I Like Easy Video Player

Because it does Audio too as below.

Lot’s of different Audio Player formats to choose from and you can, as I do, upload your videos and audios to Amazon’s Cloud Storage ( costs literally pennies!) so come the day your blog and amazing podcasts are featured on Oprah and the world beats a path to your blog it won’t explode!

BUT: One of the issues with embedding audios into a WordPress blog using Easy Video Player is that you want to post the ‘embed’ code when in HTML mode in your WordPress post’s text box. If you switch to Visual mode at any stage this will break the embed code so be sure to save the embed code, in a text .doc, while writing and editing your post for easy reference should you inadvertently forget that – I often do!

TIP: If you are going to be adding lots of audio/video embed code to your posts it’s a good idea to turn off the Visual editor via: Users > Your Profile via your Dashboard left hand navigation bar.

4) Blog Radio

I came across BlogTalkRadio.com some time ago and, if you are thinking about having a regular ‘radio style’ show on your blog ( and on the BlogTalk Radio site they are very cool looking gizmo/players)…

5) Posting ‘snippets’ of Audio on your Blog via an online application

Two funky online applications I came across  recently, which are just for a bit of fun I’d suggest:

Vocaroo.com – simply record yourself and, when done, email the audio file to somebody or embed on your site as in…

Conclusion:

While the online apps above are a bit of fun and podcasts can be great for ‘spreading’ the (spoken) word I’m a great believer in being in control of your own destiny ( and files) so Option #1 – The Audio Player plugin and Option #3 – Easy Video Player (ready for the day when you get famous and takes care of your video stuff too!) are the best as you are in total control of your content.

Plus with either of those you could have an online radio show on your blog. But BlogTalk radio does have a neat setup which easily allows visitors/listeners to access previous shows and subscribe for new ones.

P.S. Re those rather nice ‘Butler’ audios featured in some of the audios above they come from my ‘alarm clock’ available from the nice people at:

http://www.voco.uk.com/

This, I know, has been a long post so maybe you should now have a little sleep… sleep… sleep…

ADDENDUM

As for recording/editing software and microphones: I did use the free open source software from Audacity which is fine, as it’s free, if you are just getting started.

I have also used Propaganda for quite some time now ( I’ve even bought it twice, when an old version was lost in a computer crash!). It’s about $47 but there is a free trial version – however you get ‘audio’ overlays on your free recordings with that i.e. randomly placed ads for the product.

I like Propaganda’s interface (see screenshot below) but I did find that my first version ‘crashed’ quite often – so far this hasn’t happened with my second purchase so was most likely the computer ( the one that died on me that I mentioned earlier) that caused the problem

Re microphones I just use one of those headset with microphone attached type thingamajigs – mine’s the Plantronics DSP-500 USB Headset from Amazon as I found desk microphones, to my cost, would pick up too much extraneous noise ( hard drives whirring, bird song, snoring dogs etc.)

Sure I’d love one of those ‘boom’ DJ style mic’s – it’s on my Christmas Wish list! See Amazon widget below…

Anyone who’s had a good look around the Blog Briefing site knows that I have a lot of time for software designer Jonathan Leger’s applications such as The Best Spinner that I talk about in another ‘adding content’ post.

Jon’s great at creating applications that ‘intuitively’ help web site owners and marketers create new, fresh and original content FAST! without being grey or black hat and I’m really liking this new software that I’ve been playing with for the last week ( I’ve scheduled this post so it coincides with Jon’s official release of the product on July 12th).

The thing is that your blog needs to have what I call ‘Pillar Posts’ – really well thought out and researched posts that are of major benefit to your visitors and subscribers, these posts are the foundation and main components of your site. I hope I have a few of those here, although they tend to be videos and post content combined in my case.

Adding a post such as that can be hard work, once a week is kind of do-able!

BUT, at the same time you need a fast way to add more original content ( maybe daily in the early days of your blog, or at least twice a week once you’re established) that is still good stuff but that requires less work. That’s where Instant Article Factory comes into play.

First off let’s have Jon run it by you and in video #2 I’ll have a go :-)

OK, pretty cool right? Now here’s me using it for an ‘Infidelity’ site I own and need to add content to, over and above my well thought out and researched articles… bear in mind this is my first time using the app. so feel free to jump ahead over my meanderings!

If you are in this game/biz for the long term then that is the best way forward for sure!

Links mentioned in this post:

• Instant Article Factory
• The Best Spinner
• Ezine Articles
  

Let’s take a step back for a minute and analyze how we find Keyword Phrases to target, optimize our content for, get ‘traffic’ which, if we’ve got it right, will equal sales – “YAY!” ( but is this the ONLY way?)

At the risk of flying into the face of all that’s holy me say NO!

The perceived wisdom has always started with the Google External Keywords Tool – originally created by Google for their Adwords customers but now the most recommended ‘starting point’ for free keyword research.

Then we have the paid for research tools that  essentially access Google’s free tool and extrapolate information from it better than Google does – which is great! I’m talking about tools I love and use everyday like Market Samurai and Keyword Blueprint.

So Let’s Be Clear: If you are using any of these tools, free or paid, then you are WAY ahead of most people trying to monetize a site for affiliate revenue, Adsense revenue or any of the other myriad ways most of us look at monetizing a WordPress Blog (self-hosted naturally!)

Let’s look into this a bit ‘sideways’ and see what Google are doing ( always a good idea right?) plus whatever the big ‘G’ is doing will eventually be followed ‘toot sweet’ by Yahoo and Bing!

The thing is that what Google are saying in their External Keyword Tool ( to the likes of you and I) and what they are actually suggesting to their visitors i.e. their principal audience – ain’t necessarily the same! Wooh, interesting!

So let’s have a look at this new Keyword Research Plan shall we?

Check this video out:

What do you think? A pretty cheap and cheerful way to find what search phrases you should be possibly concentrating on writing new posts for your blog perhaps?

If you are starting a blog from scratch around a certain topic I would suggest that this is a great way to decide what your ‘Categories’ are going to be within your blog and you’ve got some good ideas for a few ‘pillar’ posts too. Maybe even make them ‘pages’ rather than posts – something I will expand upon at a later date.

Google will no doubt appreciate the fact that your site’s structure kind of imitates their breakdown of Search information in there Wonder Wheel etc. – or maybe I’m being to Googlish here ?

Feel free to comment below regarding your definition…

SEOpressor and the Scribe plugins? Forget about it! Here’s the thing, there are people with a certain mindset that like a To Do list – and yes, I’m one of them!

But why would I pay somebody to write my To Do list for me? Writing the list is half the fun!

First let’s be clear! As far as I’m concerned Daniel Tan’s SEOpressor plugin for WordPress is very similar to the Scribe WordPress SEO plugin by Brian Clarke of CopyBlogger – a heavy hitter in the Pro Blogger community.

The difference is purely in the details and the payment options as far as I can see and that Scribe integrates with popular SEO plugins like All-In-One-SEO for WordPress ( which unlike these 2 is both free and ‘must have!).

As I recall Scribe is a monthly payment  between $17 and  $97 per month depending on number of sites and posts ( I signed up and let it lapse once I realized it wasn’t for me) and SEOpressor is a one site or multi-site option one time payment.

SEOpressor is a heck of a lot cheaper at $37 for one site – I think the unlimited site license is an extra $47 (I didn’t get it!)

I like to ‘tick’ boxes as much as the next person when I’ve done something and enjoy seeing any ‘To Do’ list get smaller as a result and that’s where these two (separate) plugins can seem appealing to an anally retentive person such as I.  ( BTW I’ve never really understood that ‘anally retentive’ phrase – it should mean constipated if taken literally shouldn’t it?)

Essentially what these plugins do is analyze your posts ( retrospectively too once either one is installed) and then, depending on what ‘search term’ you are suggesting the post is optimized for gives you a percentage mark on how well you’ve done so far and suggestions how to improve.

This can become addictive – can I get a 60% to an 80% approval rate up to an 85%? Is 100% achievable?

And THIS is when the  SEOpressor and Scribe plugins becomes a bit silly, if you let them!

Bloggers like me will spend valuable time trying to boost their ‘score’ on individual posts rather than just adding new content!

Now the argument is that this is worth doing because, after all, they are only telling you what Google wants to see in a post to rank your new post higher and, OK, that kind of makes sense right?

The ‘recommendations’ each suggest in your dashboard are probably different enough to avoid lawsuits but to me it’s like packets of pre-grated Parmesan versus pre-grated Gran Pardino – both tasty italian cheeses that add flavor when liberally sprinkled over a bowl of pasta, but not much difference taste-wise when bought pre-grated…

Personally I prefer to grate my own fresh parmesan and avoid the packaged stuff!

In other words I prefer to optimize my posts via good on site SEO myself and not rely on generic, one size fits all, SEO advice aimed at the mass market.

I’ve already had 2 emails heavily promoting the SEOpressor plugin arrive in my Inbox today telling me that it’s a ‘must have‘, ‘mandatory‘ bit of kit!  It’s already very popular on Clickbank it seems with a ‘gravity’ of 190 ( which means it’s selling well).

Here’s a little video of my SEOpressor walk-thru ( yes folks I actually DO try these things out for you!). Enlarge video for full screen lusciousness via the icon in the player toolbar.

In my view you need to be able to write a blog post and automatically know, second nature as it were, what you need to do to make it Search Engine friendly – IT’S NOT ROCKET SCIENCE!

SEOpressor versus Scribe WordPress plugins…

PS: In spite of my  heavy duty SEO of my using that H1 tag above I do realize that this post is unlikely to rank high in Google, let’s say for the search term “seopressor versus scribe wordpress plugin” and I’m not aiming for that but it will be interesting to come back to in a couple of months to see.

PPS: Do you find it refreshing to read a review suggesting that you do NOT buy something?

Addendum June/2011

OOH,OOH! WAIT! I take that back!

Jason and Will have just brought out a very funky plugin that does the same as SEOPressor ( morein my opinion in that you can set your own parameters for the SEO you wish to obtain! Rather than accepting somebody else’s ‘rules’). It’s about a quarter of the price of SEOPressor! Thank you VERY much!

Find out more about Jason’s cheap plugin that’s better than the expensive ones HERE!