How To Use Ultimate Tag Warrior For Your Blog

I’ve been playing around a lot with my blog. Tinkering here and there after I put the kids to bed. Always trying to improve it’s “buzzability”

Finally, I found this great article or rather primer for how to use (in plain ole’ english) the Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin for Wordpress blogs.

You can find it here: http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2007/02/19/ultimate-tag-warrior-wordpress-plugin-for-dummies/

It might be a good idea to bookmark this one ladies and gentlemen - because this plugin is not for the faint of heart. But it’s amazing once you fully understand what it does and what it CAN do for your blog.

wordpress, wordpress plugin

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How To Start Your Own Advice Column

I have recently received several email inquiries on how to start an advice column. Based on these various letters, I am assuming that these readers have read my advice column "Ask GirlShrink" and want to create a similar question and answer (Q&A) model for their own column(s). So this is the deal. In order to create a regularly produced column, you need questions from people interested in your topic and your expertise. For this, you need to establish a few things first… Your Expertise — What is it that you are knowledgeable about? What can you answer questions on? And how do you show others that you know what you are talking about? If you are giving advice on a very general topic (such as I do), then make sure you give your column a twist — some flavor:) Write in your own unique voice. Your Visibility — There are two reasons why someone will follow your column - because your writing is exceptionally clever OR because you have made yourself visible to your target market. They have heard of you. They remember something you wrote before. Or just remember your name. You can of course begin to easily present yourself as the expert on your topic through a series of marketing tactics (one of my favorites is of course article marketing:), and establishing a website and subscriber list. Regular Communication – Once you have a list and you begin communicating to them regularly through regular emails or your newsletter - they will begin trusting you and then asking for your help. This is a very important step or you will always be talking to "new" people and never start building a base of loyal fans. And what you want are loyal readers. Can you begin writing your advice column without all this in place first? Well, you could based on what you "think" your clients need answers on. But that would be writing more like a work of fiction or a well-written FAQ page:) And the key to a really great advice column - one that gets syndicated - is to generate authentic content. I mean there are just some questions that people send in which I couldn’t make up if I tried! So authentic content over contrived wins every time in my book:)

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Here I Go Again!

Did I say - watch where you blog? Please stop laughing so loudly:) Okay, I have seen the light. I realize that I have all these fun web 2.0 things I want to incorporate in my blog, and that wordpress is the only platform that can truly accommodate me. (Thanks Elizabeth

So here I am. I have hosted the newest version of wordpress on my own server and so far so good. I have big plans for my blog, so I hope you enjoy.

**Update** I’m setting up a lot of the tools etc. for the affiliate program for my soon-to-be-released Article Marketing Tutorial & Dashboard (How To Boost Your Income With Articles). I’ll let you know when it’s ready to go - so you can get signed up early and start “peppering” your list.

wordpress

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Domain Name Age Matters

If you have a great idea for a website, an infoproduct, a membership site — whatever it is…it is a great idea to lock in the domain name you have in mind for it.

Even if you haven’t made a final decision about the name, or haven’t even thought about when you possibly get to developing your great idea — that’ s okay. Lock In The Name!

1. Domain names are getting scarce. Especially with the .com extension. So if you have an idea for one, lock it in and if you don’t use it, you can always try to sell it.

2. How long you have had a domain matters to the search engines, especially our favorite - Google:) So if you buy your domain this year and don’t use it until 2 years from now (something Mike Filisaime did with Butterfly Marketing), when you finally do develop it, Google will look at your site favorably (better pagerank) because it has already “existed” for two years. Google likes old sites.

3. Which leads me to my next point. If you can buy an OLD domain name for your new site or product and it doesn’t cost a ridiculous amount of money (these things can always be negotiated), buy it. Same prinicple. Better to have an old name than a new one.

4. Finally, you can invest in domain for under $10 bucks a year. You spend more than that on latte’s for the week! So, this is this type of business investment that I like…inexpensive:)

There are dozens of domain hosting companies on the web. And now most web hosting companies offer a free domain name when you sign up for a new account. These are my recommendations:

• I use bluehost.com for my webhosting. I use them because I can host unlimited sites with them AND because they have 24-hour telephone customer service which is fabulous. I also have a few names registered with them as well. But not all of them because I think it’s best to keep the two seperate in case something happens with one company or the other.
• I use godaddy.com for my webhosting, but I must warn you that some biz owners have complained about how godaddy has shut their site down for “spam” without an investigation etc. And then they were stuck for days without their domain name. Which leads me to…
• If you think you run the type of site where it’s possible you may be reported as a spammer OR you just don’t want to take the chance…try namecheap.com. This site has been recommended by internet veterans who have “made the switch”. I don’t know…maybe I will too when I get around to it.

domain names, pagerank, search engines, web hosting companies

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Sitemeter Vs. Google Analytics

I have been using sitemeter’s free and premium site tracking service for years.

Recently I decided to take a look at Google’s site-tracking script, Google Analytics (Urchin).

While I had no problems with sitemeter, I love my free Gmail so much — I thought it only common sense to at least take a look at what Google had to offer in other areas.

For those of you who don’t know me…I HATED split-testing and tracking my websites. Now, I am like a junky. I can’t wait to see those new stats. Can’t wait to see what marketing tactics are working and which ones aren’t.

Google’s tool had a really cool interface. Much easier to navigate than sitemeter’s — but you know what? Google is still “gathering data” on my site. It says that I installed the code correctly but still…no data. Still - just gathering.

I have never had any installation issues with sitememter’s javascript code. (they also have html code) So I’m sticking with sitemeter.

I’ll give Google one more try, just so I can at least see how it works in comparison with sitemeter…but if I can’t get it to work — then why am I working so hard to try it?

sitemeter, testing

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Best Kept Sales-Conversion Secret Revealed!

I’m so excited today! One of my sites which sells my relationship repair tutorial titled: Relationship 911! Seven Steps For Saving Your Relationship has really improved it’s sales conversion rate just over the last couple of days.

You know why? Well there is a little known secret out there that even many of the “guru’s” fail to implement in their businesses. What is it?

Well - humor me for a minute.

Think about when you visit a major retail site such as: www.Zappos.com (I bought all my pairs of UGGS there about 2 years back. Great website!) They have certain images or seals on their site which add credibility and build a sense of trust.

There are several seals shown throughout the site including one to the Better Business Bureau and BizRate. Other types of “trust seals” would include things like UPS or FEDEX logos. Credit card logos. Etc.

Remember that when you have a visitor on your site — your main focus should be to build a relationship with him or her. Nothing does this more than when you piggyback off of other “trusted” symbols on the web.

That’s why I have started implementing this type of “trust seal” on my websites as well. And after I tweaked and tested my first site (aboutmyrelationship.com) with my new seal from Honeste, I have definitely seen results! Results that go cha-ching!

Not to mention that buyers are protected because of all the extra privacy and legal forms I had to add to my site in order to be in compliance with Honeste Online.

Sites like your Better Business Bureau and Truste are expensive. Really expensive. But they can charge those prices because the “big boys” have already tested the effectiveness of their order pages with and without “trust seals”. They know that they need to have them for a better conversion rate.

In order for smaller businesses like ours to compete - I know of an affordable alternative. You know the one I mentioned before - Honeste Online.

Check it out and let me know what you think. Some major players on the web have joined and started using these seals and have said that they have seem similar results. Sweet! Feel free to take a look at the Honeste Online seal on my website
www.AboutMyRelationship.com (It’s at the bottom of the page.)

credibility, sales, visibility

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Watch Where You Blog!

THIS POST IS OUTDATED…I HAVE SINCE MOVED BACK TO WORDPRESS HOSTED ON MY OWN SERVER:)

Hey everyone. As you see, I have moved my business blog over to Blogger, where the rest of my blogs are because I was suddenly shut down by wordpress.com. Something they didn’t like about my last social networking post on LinkedIn. We don’t face that type of content censorship over here at Blogger — which is why I’ve “come home”.

Honestly, when it comes to blogging — it’s most important that you have an interface that’s easy to work with, posts that get indexed fast (and of course they do at blogger!), AND that you post regularly.

You can get into the whole blogger, wordpress, typepad debate if you like…but I suggest you choose an option that will give you the most control over your content. So while hosting a “wordpress” blog on my own server would have been the most ideal situation — I would have had full control over my content. Wordpress.com has left a bad taste in my mouth. So I pass.

Plus, you can host blogger on your own server if you like and write to your heart’s content — unless of course its ridiculously offensive. No webhost, bloghost etc. will put up with that.

The reason why I have chosen to go with blogger.com is that it’s the easiest to use out of all the interfaces and I rather have the link of my blog on another server pointing back to my home site — instead of me hosting the site. It’s better for PR ranking purposes.

So the moral of this story — watch where you blog so you don’t have to worry so much about WHAT you blog.

If you would like to get started with some “grown-up” social networking, you can start by joining me at Linked In.

If you haven’t started your own blog yet — why not? You can do it for free here and don’t worry — I will be posting many more tips and tidbits on how to BLOG WITHOUT FEAR:) in the weeks to come.

blogger, linkedin, wordpress

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