Whether or not you blog, today’s post about Wordpress Plugins will be a interesting read, especially if you have an online website and are perhaps questioning whether or not you in fact do need a blog. Over the past year many changes have happened, as lots of people with web-based businesses have turned to blogging as a way to help promote their online presence. In the online world, you have to be an authority in your niche or you simply won’t be able to compete with search engine results past page 2 or 3.

Are you asking yourself- ‘Do I need a blog?’

Well if you are trying to rank for terms so that your website comes up in search engines then the answer is

YES how can you afford NOT to have one?

Google recommends adding 1 page of content minimum per day. Daily blog posts can help you easily achieve this recommendation. The problem is usually in the quality and length of the posts. Professional competitive websites usually hire content writers who agree to post specific amounts of information on sites at certain times. With a high enough budget, a great site can have several updates (not much unlike a daily newspaper) each day, making its sections worthy of linking to and reading. Nothing beats daily fresh content, provided the topics are on par with the site’s niche and well written and informative.

Blog Software Questions

WordPress is free software that can either be hosted on a server or you can use their system to host your blog. For serious bloggers and professional business websites, my recommendation is to download and install WordPress on your own hosting server rather than use something online. Also having a great domain name for your blog can really help, or it can be in /blog from a main company site.

Why Choose WordPress?

My choice of blogging platform is currently WordPress. Why? Well, there are a lot of people out there who are constantly trying to improve it by writing WordPress Plugins that do the little things that you wish WordPress itself could do.

Often when a Plugin gets widely used, it becomes part of the next version of WordPress. Over the past year I’ve watched this software evolve quite a lot.

I remember just last fall not being able to do things in WordPress that I would complain about, which now are part of my daily blog routine.

Here are Some of the recent great WordPress plugins I’ve been using:

Smart Youtube

: - this Plugin lets you easily insert YouTube videos into posts by simply using a hyperlink formed like this:

httpv ://www.youtube.com/watch?v=somerandomstringfromyoutube

(^ NOTE the v in httpv  which is what makes this plugin work)

In the settings area of the Smarth Youtube plugin you can adjust default Video and Height in Normal Mode or in High Quality Mode. The defaults are 425x344 for normal mode and 480x360 for high quality mode.

Options:

• You can choose to include or not include related videos (Default is to Not include)
• Show Borders and alter the color
• Turn on or off AutoPlay (so the page plays the video automatically when someone arrives at the page without hitting play.

Aerosmith’s Love in an Elevator, demonstrating the use of the Smart Youtube Plugin.

SEO Title Tag Plugin

From Stephan Spencer’s Netconcepts.com firm, this title tag plugin itself has been evolving. In the earlier versions you could title the post you were writing with a title tag that would appear in the <title>title</title> section of code automatically as WordPress didn’t leave that option. Now the plugin has been extended to allow you to retitle multiple posts from a single interface plugin page in the administrative area of WordPress.

WP-Backup

Before I do anything major to the blog, I always back it up first. This plugin allows an easy quick backup, as well as a scheduled backup that will email the contents of the blog to you or place it in a directory on the server automatically depending on how you configure it. For example, when there is a new version of WordPress available and you see that ‘Your WordPress is out of Date’ message, this is a good time to use the WP-Backup Plugin to backup the contents of your blog. Next you will perform the upgrade with the next plugin, InstantUpgrade.

InstantUpgrade

This plugin allows you to upgrade WordPress with one click. It is very handy and saves you the hassled of having to download, transfer files and perform the upgrade. With the frequency of WordPress updates, it has really become a time saver for me. I generally support a large number of WordPress blog installations which all need to be upgraded when the time comes. This saves time. Bottom Line.

So if you are still wondering whether or not you should be running a blog on your website, then keep reading this blog and our new SEO section which will contain more and more information about Search Engine Optimization and what it can do for your natural organic search results. Just think how many people search Google every day with unique phrases looking for information, ‘YOUR information!’. It is your job if you do SEO to make sure it is properly indexed in Google and ready to rock their browsers with all that mind-blowing content, or at least something useful.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Rockstar SEO

In the wacky world of marketing, much of what matters lies within public opinion. Enormous sums and countless hours are spent by corporations high and low to gain your dollar (and favor), and ultimately it is consumers who determine the fate of the latest trend, whether a luxury sedan, vacation spot, or piece of technology. Add to the mix the widespread use of the Internet, Google as part of the mainstream lexicon, and the buzz surrounding social search, and it is more important than ever for brands to positively influence consumers.

The power of word-of-mouth has brands scrambling to ‘find themselves’

Consider a familiar scenario: you see a movie you love. Afterwards, you share a glowing review with a few friends over dinner. Your friends tell their friends, who tell their coworkers, and so on. In today’s world, however, people are likely to share the same review online, by posting their thoughts on a social networking site like Facebook or Linked In, for their entire network to see. In the case of a positive review, sharing one’s opinion helps the brand. It creates excitement around the release, gives a valuable, albeit fleeting, credibility to the filmmakers, and, may even inspire several people in one’s network to go online, buy a ticket (or several), and head to the theater.

But what if you thought the movie sucked?

The scenarios are a dime-a-dozen. The concept is simple. With the growing consumer reliance on word-of-mouth to make purchase decisions, and more people looking online for cues on everything from career to style, brands are going to battle to craft an image, and paying great attention to how they are seen online, often taking steps to limit and control the avenues available to consumers interested in their wares. Likewise, with more global advertising dollars being spent online, and increasing competition from global manufacturers hawking everything from food to clothes to flat-screen TVs, branding professionals are fine-tuning their approach, and doing everything they can to build a strong relationship with consumers, and their wallets. In the end, the goal is the same – the identification of a brand’s DNA – the unique set of characteristics that give it personality, and the consumer benefits it offers that make its products or services a preferable choice over the competition.

In a competitive market, affiliates boost sales (and brand recognition)

Amidst the corporate contest, affiliate marketers are helping brands compete in a saturated market, boosting sales, building brand recognition, and raking in profits. Affiliates design engaging websites, employ little-known psychological tactics to convert visitors into sales, and grab commissions from parent companies who own the products being sold.

All of this is standard issue, but a big part of the affiliate puzzle is getting traffic to one’s site. Bidding on a parent company’s trademarked name is one way to ensure interested consumers arrive. Bid on trademarks, the consumer gets what they want, and everyone makes a dime. Simple.

Many brands see things differently, however, and the longtime debate on trademark bidding endures.

The argument against trademark bidding

On one hand, a brand is a business. In theory, the corporation responsible for manufacturing a product or selling a service will welcome a sale, whether generated inside a retail store, from the brand’s website, or from the website of an online affiliate. At the same time, consumers rely on keyword searches to find what they need, and a trademarked name is often a brand’s most recognizable symbol, leaving many brand managers weary of aggressive affiliate tactics.

Brand and reputation management are ample concerns; at the heart of the matter, many brands worry they are at risk of dilution, due to marketing efforts that stray from a core, internally managed, vision. While brand management at the expense of additional sales, especially in a competitive market, may sound strange, brand managers maintain protecting the brand will have a more favorable long-term effect on the bottom line.

In a recent interview with Eric Rosen, former consultant at personal branding firm, Peter Montoya, Inc., Eric shed inside light on why some brands seem hyper-focused on control:

“Branding refers to the sum total of activities employed to shape public perception,” explains Rosen, “the total customer experience that ultimately influences how a person feels when they hear a product or company name. Branding is elusive and intangible. It is also the most concrete component of any marketing mix. Lack of control in this arena is like playing eenie-meenie-miney-moe with day trading, and hoping for the best.”

For these reasons and a slew of related others, countless brands have banned affiliate marketers from bidding on their trademarks, arguing such tactics undermine the brand’s efforts to position itself in the minds and wallets of consumers.

But is there more to it? Affiliates say ‘yes.’

The argument for trademark bidding

While many brand managers fear affiliates bidding on their company names may direct consumers to sites with inappropriate content, or messaging not in line with the brand’s core concepts, many affiliate marketers feel trademark bidding is key to driving consumer interest.

Specifically, many affiliates point to the vast level of competition online as perfect reasoning for trademark bidding. Scott Elling, Director of Performance Marketing at Wpromote, poses the following question to skeptical brands:

“Would you rather users click affiliate ads after having searched your trademark, or, that users search your trademark and visit a competitor’s site that shows up in the same page of results? It’s your choice. Allowing affiliates to bid on your trademark gives you the upper hand. We’re all on the same team. Why not work together?”

Some parent companies are more flexible than others. Some have creative departments with the manpower to execute an affiliate creative approval process. Still, for every one who is flexible, there are numerous others who are uninterested in compromising, lacking the resources necessary to traffic affiliate creative internally for approval, or, simply too large (and with too much red tape) for most affiliates to navigate.

Are said brands losing out due to inflexible modes of thinking? Wpromote CEO, Mike Mothner, weighs in:

“I think this is a question of online-driven revenue,” says Mothner, “not brand dilution. When we sell HP laptops as an affiliate of Hewlett-Packard, for example, through search advertising related to ‘HP,’ it has no effect on the brand, only a potentially cannibalistic effect on HP’s internal search marketing efforts, and I would argue this is far outweighed by the value of us driving Hewlett-Packard sales, which could easily be lost to a competitor like Best Buy or Dell. The other way I think about it is you may have billions invested in your brand, but when people search ‘HP laptops,’ there are 20 potential results on Google’s first page for users to click, and only 2-3 that Hewlett-Packard controls. The more Hewlett-Packard can do to dominate key real estate, the better. ‘Brand dilution,’ if any, already occurred, simply because there are those 20 results.”

The bottom line

So, who is right? That is a matter technically up for discussion, and, in some cases, legislation, as the debate between brands and affiliates persists. Some affiliates feel concerns regarding brand dilution should be addressed by giving parent companies final approval on affiliate creative, and, theoretically, if brands and affiliates work together, there is no reason an affiliate site should ever stray from a brand’s core objectives. In fact, with online affiliates’ built-in emphasis on performance, affiliate sites fashioned under brand managers’ watchful eyes have a good chance of outperforming those created by parent companies themselves. Unfortunately, many parent companies are not looking to compromise.

In the end, although the proverbial writing may very well be on the wall, it seems we are no closer to a solution. As consumers gain more of the upper hand, however, simply due in part to the sheer number of options they have when it comes time to shop, it may not be long before brands begin to loosen their grip on trademarks, if only to keep consumers engaged.

Wpromote’s SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Division has reached some new highs and started to explode with great rankings and a lot of new clients.

Our feeling is that it is time to:

STAND UP AND FIGHT for your rankings.

The internet is the newest jungle out there and it is bigger then the Amazon, hell even Amazon.com is getting close to the size of its own jungle!

SEARCH                      ENGINE                                    OPTIMIZATION

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SUCCESS STORIES

Plastic Products Manufacturing,  who specializes in the creation of brochure holders and various other plastic products, has been enjoying their rather successful blog management campaign from Wpromote.

A sound proofing expert client, has been displaying #1 Google results for terms such as sound engineered drywall, sound proof plywood, sound engineered drywall, sound engineered ceilings and more.

www.ShreddingHouston.net - On-Site Shred is currently ranking much higher for desired terms, is ranked #1 in GOOGLE for Houston Paper Shredding, Shredding Houston, and Onsite Shredding.

Our Playground and Playsets client has been ranking #1 for the very broad and difficult to target term ‘swings‘.

ScanDigital.com, whose expertise in Photo Scanning and Digital Video Conversion, has been doing extremely well in their highly competitive search space. Things just keep getting better and better for ScanDigital!

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Team SEO News at Wpromote: The addition of several new clients (including some interesting car products and golf pro sites) has necessitated an expansion of our SEO team. To accommodate this necessity, we’ve added some new rockstar writers: Amir, our amazing intern Brett, and the newly helpful John. With Christian holding up the fort for most of our off-site SEO and link building efforts, and my nerdy attention to detail with regards to the on-site implementation and overall direction of our team, the new growth of Wpromote’s SEO division is looking more promising then ever. Though, if you really want to get excited,  you should definitely stay turned to www.wpromote.com/seo.

This, coupled with some upcoming announcements, and soon to be available downloads from the creations of our magnificent programming team makes the future keep looking brighter and brighter here at the best place to work in California (that I know of), Wpromote Inc.

You should watch for us on the big screen while we all watch the Dodgers beat Florida tomorrow night from the stands. Or, just watch the game and support our LA team. Luckily the Dodgers are in a league separate from the Blue Jays, because if they weren’t, there would be some serious problems.

Till next time,

Aaron Kronis - SEO Director at Wpromote Inc.
www.wpromote.com/seo

Photo Courtesy of Cartage.org

I’m sitting in a red colored modern desk chair in ventilated room the size of a California king mattress. There’s a large white plastic desk in front of me that is shaped, after avid inspection, inordinately similar to the orbit of Halley’s Comet. Amongst the four sky blue walls surrounding me rests a television display, to which my once prized but now kind of boring laptop is connected. “The blue room,” as it is most commonly deemed here in the Wpromote office in El Segundo, CA, usually houses those looking to watch The People’s Court while they eat lunch. I’m elated to inform you that I’ve taken the liberty of inhabiting our special and relaxing “blue room” to momentarily separate myself from my friends and co-workers, and write my first addition to the Wpromote Blog.

My name is Brett Dierker. Let me tell you why I’m feeling a little like a communist.

In this addition, I wish not to join my colleagues in their success of informing our readers of the latest and juiciest internet and technology news (this is purely because I don’t feel I’d be able to holistically articulate a current event as well as they have). Instead, I would much rather force upon the reader a glimpse into a train of thought of a Wpromote Intern – a source whose reputability could and should be questioned. What I am set out to do here can be outlined with a question: When I come to work, am I working more for our clients, or more for my co-workers?

Without hesitation, I can say that the major motivating force behind my daily work is how it will be received by my department and co-workers. This, on the surface, is inherently shallow – but I feel like there may be some weight and purpose to working for your co-workers instead of directly for your clients. For clarity’s sake, I leave you with an anecdote.

When I first started to work for Wpromote in the summer of 2007, the first thing I noticed was the very apparent and almost overwhelming sense of camaraderie in the office. It seemed at that time that the various departments, all tightly knitted together (with quite a heavy workload), had little room for error or miscommunication. Our management was quick to accommodate any blips or interpersonal blemishes, because they were keen in their realization that grudges or drama between the few employees of a place that deals with many clients could be incredibly detrimental. Also, there was this uncanny work ethic that was prevalent in everyone, and I honestly couldn’t figure out where they were getting their motivation. I still to this day don’t know why the rest of my co-workers work so hard, but do know from that point on (and still to this day), I’ve received most of my motivation from my aspiration to lighten the load of my friends and co-workers and to make them more comfortable (and enjoyable).

So, say one of my tasks for the day is modifying a client’s meta titles & descriptions. I’m not sitting here stoked out of my mind because that client is going to rank higher in search engine result pages - I’m more stoked that I’ve adequately lifted a portion of the workload from my department. Now, I’m not sure if this is a “bad” thing, but I feel justified arguing for it in following manner: With the utmost sincerity, out of all the clients I’ve indirectly worked for, I’ve never had the pleasure to actually converse with any of them. I could only hope that if I were to actually chat with them, that we could share kind greetings and congratulatory salutations for our respective contributions to each other.

But, more than likely, the situation above is not going to happen. In good stead, I share kind greetings and congratulatory salutations with my various bosses & friends. I mean, is it so uncommon to want work for the people you see every day, to accomplish the collective goal of company growth? Over the past two years working with Wpromote, like it or not, I’ve learned that the best way to do business is to show strength of character not primarily to clients, but to your fellow employees instead. This place doesn’t run solely because of one person. With the type work we do, the assignments we get, there’s no room for just one hot shot. It runs because we feed off of each other’s work ethic, and want to prove to each other that we all have something substantive and novel to contribute. The product is absolutely phenomenal.

It’s refreshing to, every once in a while, analyze why you do some of the things you spend so much of your day doing. I’ve found that there are few occurrences more terrifying than getting lost in complacency and monotony, and I feel comfortable saying that I’m ever so lucky to work in an environment that fosters the contrary of such.

Until next time,

In an article printed on June 13, 2008 regarding the agency backlash to the proposed outsourcing of Yahoo ads to Google, Michael Mothner, President, CEO and all-around head honcho of Wpromote, was quoted in the online edition. Mothner mentioned the frightening potential repercussions of a partnership between the Internet’s biggest two search players:

Michael Mothner, who runs a search-marketing firm called Wpromote, said the deal was “really scary from an advertiser’s perspective, knowing that we need Google, and if they decided to raise their prices or assess other fees, they have a lot of power now.” He added: “Even though Yahoo would be a separate entity, outsourcing search is essentially giving the keys to Google. From an advertiser’s perspective, it’s really scary how much it resembles a powerful monopoly over search ads.

We here at Wpromote are very concerned with the search landscape, which seems to remain in constant flux. The only consistency with the search marketing environment seems to be inconsistency itself. Mothner’s comments will hopefully elucidate the risks of a Google/Yahoo partnership to some of the right people. Kudos to Mike for his high-profile quotation; let’s hope that this is just the first of many such opportunities for the company.

Some say that the economy is making it difficult to keep employees in the office, layoffs becoming a common theme in big companies across the nation. Well, here at Wpromote, we are definitely having trouble keeping employees around, but it has nothing to do with the recession and everything to do with good old fashioned bad luck. Whether it’s bangs and bruises or bacteria and viruses, it’s been a tough month for the good people working at Wpromote.

The first member of the Disabled List is Gina Perry. Our normally good-natured account executive was taken out of commission for a good part of last week due to a pretty severe knee injury. Instead of spending the week analyzing data, adjusting bid and managing paid search accounts, she had to go under the knife to repair some of the damage done to her knee by a rare skiing mishap. Gina is normally the master of the moguls, which is why it is so rare to see this Colorado-born speedster face down in the snow. I maintain that it must have been one of those genetically-mutated jumping trees that got into her way as she was navigating the slopes because, knowing Gina, there’s no way she just turned wrong and messed up her knee… no way!

Moving on to our next DL resident, we need go no further than the next office, where VP of Sales, Michael Stone continues his brutal battle with conjunctivitis, better known to some as “Pink Eye.” No one is positive how Stone ended up with this cur, but we assume he picked it up from one of the many orphans he was rescuing from any of a number of burning buildings he was saving this past weekend. Talk about “no good deed goes unpunished!” That poor guy can’t catch a break. Luckily, Stone only missed a single day due to his illness. You’ve got to respect a guy who cares about his work so much that he’s willing to put the eye comfort of his colleagues at risk in order to make it into the office!

The most recent addition to the Wpromote DL is likely the mightiest of Wpromote’s many champions. David Stelle, one of the best salesmen this side of the Mississippi and a foremost expert in the field of PPC, was recently rear-ended on the 405. Luckily, Dave’s car took the majority of the impact and Dave was left with only bruises, aches, pains and some serious soreness. He’s back in the office after only a couple of days at home, though, which suggests that he will likely survive to make more than a few more sales. When you’re carved out of marble and wrought iron like Dave, these kinds of things don’t tend to bother you too much. Had it been me in the car… well, let’s just say I’d be dictating this blog from the comfort of a full body cast from the ICU. With Dave’s Wolverine-like healing powers, though, he’ll probably be back to form before we notice how ugly that hat looks with his Wpromote shirt!

We wish you well, o warriors of Wpromote. Whereas everyone else is worrying about the mortgage crisis, the recession and the dwindling economies, we’d prefer it if you guys just kept your reddish eyes opened for oncoming cars and trees. Keep on fighting, guys; if you can stand working with a guy like me, then nothing can keep you down for long!

If you want to know more about SMX here is a link to their SMX News Feed.

I had a great time the past two days learning more about Social Media and meeting a lot of cool people. This is a much smaller community then most people think. This is likely because some of these larger conferences (like Webmaster World / Pubcon in Las Vegas) attract a lot of ‘wannabes’ who are on the outside of this industry and are often trying to figure out how to grow their own business without hiring a search marketing firm.

What’s nice about SMX is that most attendees are Search Marketers & SEOs or somehow much more closely related to the industry then some of the larger conferences. For example there weren’t guys there who are all about their online auto sites.

Some of the things I learned about more than I had expected to are listed below

1. I even learned more about the strength of lists in blog posts and on Digg.

2. I won’t make a list now, I was just practicing

Yahoo Answers

So, I’ve learned that Yahoo! Answers is a really great place to get traffic from. All you really need to do is know your own industry, then create a profile and start answering questions from the categories that relate to your site (or your client’s site). The longer you are on the site (by answering questions and participating) you will be rewarded with more abilities. I really like this model, just like SeoMOZ allows you to have ‘do follow’ links after you have reached a certain level of participation.

The important thing to understand here is that as you can gain credibility in Yahoo! on your topic, also be sure to give credit to your page. If your answers are voted ‘best answer’ then you receive points that give you more credibility in the community and increase the link love to your sites.

The help section also encourages you to simply ‘Ask’ your question if they don’t help you out with what you need either!

When answering questions, it is encouraged to site your sources, in which you would be best to put something like the following:

Source:
Aaron Kronis / Wpromote
http://www.wpromote.com

After 4 days, the ‘answering’ of posted questions ceases and everything goes into ‘vote’ mode. Most people don’t really care about the questions, they are just looking for answers so you can go in and simply vote for your own answer as the best - your competition will be with the others who answered and want the ‘10 points‘.

Yahoo has a ’scoring’ system where you start with 100 points and after 250 you can then start to click ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down’ on questions, for example along with more options like being able to ’star’ a question more times then just 10 in one day. You get 2 points for answering, 10 for best answer and -5 to ask a question.

Extra special: from SMX - > Another sneaky tip for all you bloggers and SEO folks out there: In Yahoo! Answers, on the profile below the avatar you will see 3 tabs: Answer, Discover and Vote. Click on vote, look for your own questions and vote on them. Most people don’t remember or know how to do this.

Wikipedia:
It has come to my attention after SMX that the large community of Wikipedia can be an excellent resource for helping out your clients with their link-building efforts. If you find a very old picture on Wikipedia and your client has the same thing for sale and has updated photos that are ‘not going to have licensing issues surrounding their use’ - basically amateur photos - then you may be able to get them into Wikipedia.

This would be you helping Wikipedia grow its image database with newer fresher and more up to date images. You would give up the ‘rights’ to the images, but in exchange for a link when it is referenced on Wikipedia. I’m still researching the numbers on this, however it is amazing how many links you can actually get from this if your image is accepted.

Start learning about this at The Wikimedia Foundation, which consists of volunteers who edit “The World’s largest free online encyclopedia”.

Until next week,

Team SEO