I’m a big fan and heavy user of Google Suggest and the Google AdWords Keyword Tool, but am always on the lookout for keyword alternatives. Now introducing: Ubersuggest! They claim to be “Google Suggest on steroids,” so at least they’re exuding quite a bit of confidence.
Ubersuggest is a free keyword generator that uses the information provided by Google, and then expands upon each of your submitted keywords and keyword phrases by combining them with other popular search terms. So, you’re getting longer keyword phrase ideas (or, blog post ideas) based on real user search trends.
Although it’s being especially highlighted for its usefulness in managing pay-per-click (PPC) ad campaigns, it’s also another interesting tool to add to your basic SEO arsenal.
Here’s a blog post I found that describes how Ubersuggest can be used to help with writer’s block. The example used here is based on the popular and overly saturated “how to” model — to see what people are commonly searching for helpful tips on. But, the same step-by-step process can be used to help with other content ideas.
I’m always interested in hearing about new, helpful content and optimization tools, so please share your latest finds in the comments section below or get in touch via social media. I’d love to check them out!
It’s official – Google+ has been opened up to public beta. Go on, go setup your account – you can read this anytime. Login to your Google account, then in the upper left corner click +YourName and it will walk you through the setup process. I was kind of giddy about the process—I’m pretty excited about Google+, it’s just so darn easy to use—it makes sense. The question is, will Google+ outstrip Facebook in popularity?
I’ll be posting as I explore and learn the G+ system. Feel free to share your thoughts with me and join me on Google+ too!
So far, the number one positive feedback I’m hearing is that G+ has excellent privacy features.
My favorite feature is the search functionality. It’s kind of like Twitter meets Facebook in the way that you can do a search for a specific keyword and you’ll get results for anyone who has posted publicly on that topic; then, you can create a Circle using that keyword name and add those interesting Plussers to your Circle. (Users are called Plussers by the way—no longer a “Twit,” now that’s a Plus).
Getting Started:
1. Set up your profile: you can share as little or as much as you feel comfortable sharing. (more…)
Recently Twitter has been adding more features to their core platform. It used to be that in order to share an image you had to use a third party service like twitpic, yfrog, or mobypicture. Now you can share photos inline with the Twitter interface. Similarly, Twitter also announced their own link shortener called t.co. Allegedly more secure and definitely shorter than bit.ly or tinyurl.com. Is it better? Who knows at this point I still like bit.ly for their clean interface and ability to track clicks. But I’m sure going to try it. You should too and tell me what you prefer and why in the comments below.
Holy cow, did Google just add some crazy functionality to Analytics called the Multi-Channel Funnel! In the past if you were running a campaign and had a conversion – the last item clicked was the only one to get any credit. Not the case anymore. Now Analytics can track the entire chain of events that lead up to the sale. I’ll let this handy video explain.
A: When tracking the traffic to your website, you should be aware of your bounce rate, which is literally when a visitor lands on your website and bounces right off.
Typically, you can expect a higher bounce rate if you are running a pay-per-click campaign, or if you are getting a lot of traffic through search engines. Why? Because you cannot control how people conduct a search and you certainly can’t know what people are looking for (not exactly anyway). This is why it’s so important to be very targeted with your blog post titles, title tags, tags, keywords, and description tags—it’s one thing to draw people in, it’s another to (more…)
A: The most effective way to encourage others to share your content is to offer value so that people want to share it with their network: free resources, tips, advice, statistics, etc. But, you also need to make it easy for your audience to share that content. To answer this question, I would like to discuss the Share and Follow WordPress plug-in and offer a few tips that will help get your content out there and gain (more…)
A: In order to gain ranking for specific keywords, you need to add them to your site frequently—as relative content. Let’s say for example that you want to rank for the keyword phrase “healing and transformation.”
Google will scan indexed sites for this term—frequency is a huge part of this. So, the question is: How often does this string of words appear in your site? AND—how much competition do you have?
Now, let’s consider a term that is specific to your brand. For this example, we’ll use the phrase “Sand Spirits Cards” because it appears frequently throughout the site of the person who submitted this question (thank you Pam). The competition for this phrase is very low – so of course her website comes up as number one.
Can we make your site come up for “healing and transformation” simply by optimizing your site for that term? (more…)
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again—connect with your audience. Social media is a great way to do this, but the crux is to figure out how to get quality people to follow you. One of the most effective ways to do this is through blog commenting. Many of my readers are still unsure as to how this can really help establish an author platform.
Okay, let’s reverse the roles as an example: you are a mom who reads mommy blogs to see what fun new products are out there to make your life easier, to get a good laugh, and to be part of an adult conversation now and then. You decide to leave a comment on a post that really strikes a chord with you—you leave a genuine comment and you become part of the conversation. You decide to read what other people have said in the string of comments and you really like what Sally from Cincinnati had to say—so you look her up. Wow, you discover that Sally has a blog too, and she’s right on, you really connect with her and love to read her daily thoughts. So, you tell your friends about her, and you share her site on your Facebook page, and you email the link to your sister because she’s STILL NOT on Facebook….
Remember this: blog commenting works because you bring something to the conversation, not because you say, “hey I wrote a book—check it out.” If your comment is interesting, people will want to know more about you—especially if you offer sound wisdom and offer value in your comments.
Here’s another example: My husband Chad is a photographer and he follows lot’s of photography blogs. He left a blog comment about (more…)
You have less than a second to make a good first impression online. Make your website or blog the best it can be: professional, free of clutter, organized, easy to understand, and available (meaning offer your readers value, and they will come back to you again and again).
With my consulting business I travel to conferences around the country and have the pleasure of meeting many new people on a regular basis. This gives me the opportunity to make a good first impression, over, and over again. Consequently, when I travel, I like to look and feel my best. When I speak, I always wear a suit, makeup, designer shoes and I stand up tall and speak clearly—my friends wouldn’t even recognize me. When you look good, you feel good, and people are more likely to trust you.
It’s true. We do judge a book by its cover. When we meet someone for the first time (more…)
Q: I have a WordPress website, but it’s old and needs a new look, do I have to start over?
A: This is the beauty of WordPress sites, we can give your site a facelift at any time and you won’t lose any content. Here’s how it works: Your site has a theme with style sheets that dictates how the site looks, we can create and apply a new theme and new style sheets so your site is brand new to your audience, but has the same content and works the same for you. We can also turn a regular html site into a WordPress site. With WordPress, getting a new look is much like redecorating your house. We can recover the furniture and hang new curtains, or we can totally refurbish with new floors, baseboards, a fresh coat of paint and new furniture—but, we never have to rebuild the house.
WP-DB-Backup: This plug-in is a must have for all WordPress users! It gives you the ability to backup your database content (meaning your blog posts and page content). You can automate this backup to occur as frequently as you think is necessary. We typically recommend setting it to backup weekly. You can also choose to download this file to your computer.
FYI: This does not backup your images or your theme, for this reason, it’s a good idea to have a full site backup, which does include your theme, images and all other content that gets stored on your server (we recommend that you backup your physical site at least monthly, unless you have not made any changes in that time period), this is done from your C-Panel or through an FTP client.
Revision Control: This little plug-in allows you to control how many revisions get stored to your database. I for one tend to noodle with a post over and over until I finally feel it’s ready to go live and then I still end up making edits—this means that I can often have up to 20 different versions of one post. This is cool because you can revert to an older version at any time. But what is not cool is that all these versions take up valuable space and can slow down your site’s load time. Revision Control allows you to set the number of stored revisions for both posts and pages, so for example: you could set it to save only the last 5 post versions, and 10 page versions.
WP Super Cache: Speaking of load time. This plug-in can help speed up your site’s load time. It basically caches your site’s content and then pulls up each page as html so your server doesn’t have to work so hard to load php code and images every time someone views a page in your site.
FYI: If you are making changes to your site and yet you keep seeing the old version. Don’t panic—it could be that your page has been cached and is pulling up the old data. To make sure those changes were really made, you might need to clear the cache. You can access Super Cache from your Dashboard, under Settings, from there, click “Delete Cache,” about half way down the page.
I like WordPress Version 3.1, not because it works so much better (most things you won’t even notice because they run under the hood, if you will), but because I can now access my Dashboard from the front-end of my site (as long as I am logged in). So, let’s say for example you are viewing your website’s home page (what your readers see), you will have edit capabilities to this page, and the ability to add a new post or page, and manage comments from tabs now located in the upper left side of your screen. Cool. Not to mention the fact that keeping your WordPress site updated will protect you from potential hackers. And that’s really cool!
The coolest new feature is the internal linking capability. Let’s say you are writing a post in your blog and you would like to link to an older post where you reference the same subject; before 3.1 you would have had to remember when you posted it, what it was called, and find that link (time consuming and maybe not worth your effort).
With WordPress 3.1 you can now highlight the keywords you want to use as your link and click the (more…)
In the last six months we have experienced a wave of hackers getting into our custom WordPress author websites. The problem is that hackers have realized how popular WordPress sites are (internationally); as a result, many of them focus on finding weaknesses and hacking into thousands (gosh maybe millions) of sites. Less work—more payout. The good news is that we are more diligent in our efforts to make you aware of the importance of keeping your site updated. Why? Because while the bad programmers are working to get in, the good WordPress programmers are working to keep them out. The bad news is that updating your site can cause errors due to conflicts with custom php code and plug-ins. Stay with me.
You can very easily click the Please Update Now link from your WordPress Dashboard. And it will update, but what can also happen is that your blog can quit working, your theme can get wiped out, your plug-ins could stop working, and your blog could be rendered useless. It could also work seamlessly. So, how do you know what yours will do? Well, you don’t. Each site is unique to this equation. That is why it is so important to back up your website and your database content.
At Monkey C Media we do a complete backup of your site so we are ready for any hiccups, and after each update we do a physical check to ensure that everything works properly.
At the risk of boring you to pieces, here’s an example: (more…)
Take a look at this video and tell me you can’t use this. Tall Tweets is a service that creates multiple tweets out of long posts. But don’t overuse it you’ll alienate some followers.
Build Your Platform through Blog Commenting
Wednesday, May 4th, 2011I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again—connect with your audience. Social media is a great way to do this, but the crux is to figure out how to get quality people to follow you. One of the most effective ways to do this is through blog commenting. Many of my readers are still unsure as to how this can really help establish an author platform.
Okay, let’s reverse the roles as an example: you are a mom who reads mommy blogs to see what fun new products are out there to make your life easier, to get a good laugh, and to be part of an adult conversation now and then. You decide to leave a comment on a post that really strikes a chord with you—you leave a genuine comment and you become part of the conversation. You decide to read what other people have said in the string of comments and you really like what Sally from Cincinnati had to say—so you look her up. Wow, you discover that Sally has a blog too, and she’s right on, you really connect with her and love to read her daily thoughts. So, you tell your friends about her, and you share her site on your Facebook page, and you email the link to your sister because she’s STILL NOT on Facebook….
Remember this: blog commenting works because you bring something to the conversation, not because you say, “hey I wrote a book—check it out.” If your comment is interesting, people will want to know more about you—especially if you offer sound wisdom and offer value in your comments.
Here’s another example: My husband Chad is a photographer and he follows lot’s of photography blogs. He left a blog comment about (more…)
Tags: blog commenting, Internet Marketing, SEO, social media
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