I have been rather quiet here on MyMarketer. It’s not that I have given up on blogging or all the beauty that goes along with it. Rather I have my head somewhere else.

Back in November my wife introduced me to an amazing website—Pinterest. Unless you live under a rock you have heard of Pinterest. If not, you can check out my collection of tutorials that shares anything you want to know about Pinterest.

If you look at the footer of MyMarketer you will notice something you might not have seen before—three miniature articles. The articles you will find focus on three areas: blog content, general web marketing, and search marketing. The titles of the articles are: Tips on Creating Great Content, How To Do Web Marketing Better, and Top Search Marketing Mistakes.

These are not your typical blog articles, but rather seriously condensed posts that are roughly 130 to 150 words and use about 20 lines of space. I call these mini articles Footer Seeds, and as far as I am aware this technique isn’t really being used in the blogosphere.

I decided to create these Footer Seeds for several reasons. First, I needed something to place in my footer. In the previous design I placed my social media efforts down at the bottom, and after I redesigned MyMarketer I moved my social media spots up to the sidebar. The new design focuses much more on the importance of social media and I felt it was pertinent for visitors to easily know where else to find me on the Internet (which wouldn’t have been achieved in the footer).

After five years of blogging on anything and everything related to the Internet, MyMarketer has undergone a new focus and look. The focus is geared around my philosophy of how to be successful with web marketing.

Over the last decade I have seen, and have been guilty of participating in, many get quick or get rich marketing campaigns. It is a rare day that one, if any, have succeeded to bring the desired results to those who participated in them.

However, contrast these glitzy empty marketing strategies, with the marketing principles surrounding the laws of the harvest. Time and time again I have seen people climb to the top of their game and achieve their marketing goals by following the first law of the harvest: You Reap What You Sow.

A little while ago my friend, Reina, asked about my thoughts concerning the recent change in the FTC advertising guidelines. I have a strong opinion on why I feel the FTC is meddling with bloggers (and other web entities). Below is my answer to her question. It may come across a bit as conspiracy theory, but I don’t believe I am wrong (I guess conspiracy theorists usually believe they are right).

REINA: So today is slow at work so I was going back through all my emails at work and found an article about changes in FTC guides regarding web endorsements. I’m curious if you’ve heard about this, if so, what your thoughts are on it, and also how it has affected blogging and advertising. Have you noticed a difference? Is this sort of thing enforceable or will it be online business as usual? The article made me think of you. Just curious what your thoughts are. Here’s the article.

podcast_cr If you ask any of my friends I am passionate about blogging. I even have a vanity license plate that says “Blogger.” So, I admit I am a bit of a fanatic.

However, being the fanatic blogger that I am, I also get the priviledge of being annoyed by certain elements of blogging that probably doesn’t bother the majority of the blogosphere.

My biggest gripe deals with the podcasting element of blogging. I build a lot of blogs and there really isn’t a good free theme for either video or audio. Not to mention that the audio podcast plugins are not that great.

identy-theft I still have several blogs that are on WordPress 2.6.1. Recently, I received the following notification from my host:

“Please note that versions of WordPress older than 2.6.5 have known vulnerabilities and can be potentially exploited to deface your website (or any under the same user account), send spam, run phishing scams, or similarly detrimental (and possibly illegal) activity.”

“The current version of WordPress (available at wordpress.org or via DreamHost’s One-Click feature) is 2.7. It is important that you update WordPress as soon as possible to secure your sites. If these are old or unused copies of WordPress, please remove them from the server or move them out of the active domain directory.”

spam When I first started blogging my friend Janet helped setup my blog. One thing she did for me was to create my wordpress comment blacklist. I really appreciated this, because it is never fun to have to write all the filthy words that you can think of. However, over the years, I had to add to her list and create more words that she didn’t think of. I also added spam websites that were found on other comment blacklists.

All this effort has given me a list of 300+ words and sites that don’t ever make it to my blog. I thought I would pass on Janet’s kindness and offer you my list to download. One thing to know about WordPress’s Comment Blacklist is that it will match your blacklisted words inside other words. So, if you put “sex” on the list it will also block “sexy.” Since, I never want to discourage my readers in expressing how sexy they find my writing I don’t add that word to my black list =).

If you have any words to add to the list let me know. Happy spam fighting. ~Paul

Today I was asked to provide a quick tutorial on how to incorporate SEO Copywriting into a blog post. It’s amazing the journey I have traveled just in the last year on this subject. A year ago, I would have heavily emphasized on keyword density, LSI, and pyramid writing. Now, I am a firm believer that SEO Copywriting follows more the traditional route of good writing. If you have a solid article that is centered on a couple of your keywords you will be fine. However, there are a couple more tips that will help you do better in the search engines. There are definitely more than just these seven, but these tips are the top ones on my list. Hope they help. ~Paul W.

7 SEO Writing Tips

1. Post Title: Just like your Page Title Tag your Post Title is very important. Have your title compelling but be sure to add your the keyword you are focusing on into the title. If your theme is optimized correctly with H1 and H2 tags than you will see these posts pick up traffic in the search engines quicker. Interesting note, I have found that the closer I have my keyword to the beginning of the title the better I do in the search engines.
2. Post Permalink: Underneath the post title is where you can edit the actual URL of the post, also know as the permalink. I personally edit the url to only have the keyword I am focusing on. This technique works really well in Yahoo. With Yahoo exact keyword matches still help you move up in the rankings (I’ve seen people snag top 10 rankings doing this method). So, if your keyword is “Physician Jobs,” and your title is “Physician Jobs – The Truth Behind The Stethoscope!” you would want your url to be: http://blogname.com/physician-jobs. Important Note: Be sure that your overall blog permalink settings are correct. Go to Settings—>Permalinks and select any of the settings that show “sample post” in the example. I personally use the custom setting and just put in /%postname%/, but having the date or month before this setting is just fine.
3. Content: Within your content you want to sprinkle the keywords you are focusing on throughout the text. There really is no magic number to how often you should use the keyword. A good rule thumb is to have the keyword in every paragraph. If that is not possible, don’t sweat it. However, do try to have the keyword at least four to five times in a 500 word post (roughly one keyword per 100 words).
4. Anchored Text: The visible, hyperlinked text on a web page is considered anchored text. It’s often underlined and/or a different color than the rest of the copy. It’s important to have your keyword at least once as an anchored text in your post. It doesn’t hurt to have multiple anchored texts of the same keyword. However, make sure that the anchored text doesn’t point to the same web page.
5. Tags: Tags refer to micro-categories for the blog. This is a great place to add misspellings and other variations of the keyword. I personally haven’t dived into tagging but I have friends who have seen great success making sure they tag every post (learn more about my beliefs on tags).
6. Categories: I mainly use the categories for focusing on the overall keywords of the blog. Categories offer the search bots a plethora of keyword rich content centered around specific categories. You can always add categories that are not focused around your keywords but always be sure to add your post to at least one keyword category.
7. Page Title & Post Description : I am a big fan of the HeadSpace plugin. Once you install this plugin you find under the visual editor in each of your posts a field called HeadSpace, which has a page title and description. The Page Title should just have your keyword; whereas, I use the Description by copying two two sentences from my post (that have my keyword) and inserting in. These are incredibly important since this is what you will find in the search engines. Note: A lot of other bloggers use the All In One SEO plugin. This will work as well. I just started with HeadSpace and have never had reason to leave.

Related Posts:

• How To Keep Your Blog Alive
• The gFTC (Google Federal Trade Commission)
• The Gift of My Comment Blacklist
• How I Make Money Blogging
• Where My Blogging is Going

Last year I was I asked to speak on business blogging for a Northern Utah chamber of commerce. I was later interviewed by their local newspaper and they did an article on the presentation.

It is interesting reading the article a year later. My thoughts have not changed on how important blogging is to businesses. I feel like I am on a mission to change people’s perspectives of blogging. Most people believe that blogging is online journaling. Over the last several years I have seen how blogging (particularly WordPress) has transformed the internet.

Today on Twitter I came across my friend Ash Buckle’s new blog called: Reason To Blog. The purpose of his blog is to show how blogging can be used successfully to create, brand, and increase website traffic. I tip my hat to Ash for creating an insightful blog. I am always on the hunt for great examples to show people how blogging can be a powerful business tool.

In 2005 I heard Paul Allen (the lesser) state that he believed Benjamin Franklin would be a blogger if he lived in our time. Over the years as I have become more enchanted with the blogosphere I have come to believe this more and more.

At the age of 15 “Ben” wrote under the pen name of “Mrs. Silence Dogood,” who Ben painted, through his words, as an opinionated middle-aged widow. The letters were published in his brother’s newspaper, the New England Courant, and became a subject of conversation throughout the town.