Working at Home on the Internet

The (Brief) Blogger’s Guide to Getting Links

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Guest Writer: Lara Kulpa from Anubis Marketing

So if you’re a good little RSS follower, you might notice that there are tons of people who talk all the time about linking. Linking out, getting links, sharing links, spreading links… it can get overwhelming and sound like it’s a ton of work, when in reality, all you need to do is remember a few things all the time. You know your alphabet offhand, don’t you? Human beings are creatures of habit, and when we do things over and over again, the same way, it becomes second nature where we don’t have to think any more.

Basically, regardless of the way you try to get links, it’s really simple to keep the following in mind:

• Don’t be annoying. In other words, if you decide to send a comment or an email to another blogger tipping them off to your latest post, don’t fill the email with things like, “Please link to this? I’m really trying hard 2 get noticed and ur blog is SOOOO kewl and u have TONz of readers and u shud share this wit dem so that I can get TONNNNzez of readers 2. C’mon, U no u want 2 linkorz 2 mii! Itz relly good stuff I wrote, and evry1 will think ur cool for linkng to meee! PUHLEEEEZ!?!?!!!!!1?!!?” Okay, so that was a little extreme, but you get my drift. Yes, I’ve received link requests like this in the past, and they not only get the “big red X” but they likely get made fun of on my site.

  This also means that you can’t beg for links right on your site, unless you do it creatively, and only occassionally. Seems a trend of late is to offer a chance at some sort of “cool” gadget in return for writing a review or otherwise linking to a page or site. Again, it’s creative and unobtrusive.

• Write link-worthy content. Yep, this one still eludes many bloggers. No one’s really going to care enough about the photo you took of your cat eating your tuna sandwich to link to you. But let’s just say you happen upon a certain fast food chain and after taking a bite of your grilled chicken sandwich, you find it to be raw inside. Well then my dear, you’re practically guaranteed a few dozen links (or more) for this one! Provided of course that you take pictures of said raw chicken sandwich - WITH the bite removed and spit out upon your napkin - along with a detailed story of how it grossed you out.
• Submit yourself to directories, or find a marketing firm to handle it for you. I have a couple posts on this sort of thing, but the bottom line is pay for what you can afford and get what you don’t have to pay for - but ONLY if it’s relevant and related to your niche. There’s a few things you need to check for, like whether or not the link is a direct link or a cgi redirect (scripted cloaking of your link - gives you NO link juice at all), and making sure that there’s no “nofollow” tag.
• Explore other bloggers’ sites, and COMMENT! - I know for a fact that I have a minimum of 30 people subscribed to one of my sites via feedburner at this very moment. I also have many other RSS subscribers using some other method, and a handful of email subscribers to the same site. All said, there’s likely over 150 people getting my content every day for that one particular site, yet I get probably 2-3 comments a week, if that. I have sites that get less, and many that get more, but the bottom line is that there are a few niches out there where I KNOW I’m not the only one blogging on it (if I were, I’d be rich!) yet people aren’t sharing their sites with me. I’d love to see others who are interested in the same things I am! And I’d likely link to them too, if only I knew where they were.
• Offer your readers someTHING to link to. Be it a report you wrote, a cutting edge article, photos of an event, a referral link, free tools, anything! Just give them a reason - they’ll take you up on it.

So there you have it - a few things you need to think about when trying to get more links to your site. They’re everyday things - nothing major, but all little things that could add up to a mess of relevant incoming links to your site. The more links you get, the more the search engines take notice. The more that happens, the more readers you get. And it circles around over and over again until you become one heckuva popular blogger!

~ Lara Kulpa

(Joe should be returning to his regular posting schedule tomorrow. I know that all your warm wishes and prayers were awe-inspiring to him, and I’m positive that sometimes when you don’t know how much you need it, the best support can and does come from “strangers”.)

March 27th, 2007 at 05:30am | Posted by Joe | Guest Writer's Articles, Linking | 4 reader remarks | Print This Post

Two WordPress Plugins That Will Greatly Improve Your Home Business Marketing Effectiveness

Guest Writer: Chris Cree

I am a huge fan of effective communication. Growing up my father told me over and over that clear communication skills, that ability to share an idea in a way that passes on what you see in your minds eye to your intended audience, is one of the critical keys to success in life. Dad helped me understand that even the most stunningly brilliant idea can loose most of its shine when it isn’t communicated effectively to its target audience.

A desire to learn those communication skills is the primary reason I chose a business major in school instead of going into one of the engineering disciplines that the guidance counselors said I was best suited for.

And I am constantly learning improvements in my communications. In fact, just this past week I was reminded that the words we choose to use make a difference.

Home Based Communications

For those of us who work at home on the internet those communication skills are paramount. When we are restricted to a text only environment we loose so much ability to convey meaning through non-verbal cues.

That is one of the reasons why blogging is such an effective promotion tool for our businesses. The very nature of the ongoing dialog of blogging helps us refine our message and compensate for those potential shortcomings in the medium.

For many of us our blogs are the only marketing we are currently doing for our businesses. So we have to do everything we can to make them as effective as possible.

Give Search Engines a Hand

There are two WordPress plugins that can really help improve the ability for the various search engines to find our content and present it to our potential audience. And if the search engines are returning our content higher, then we have a much better opportunity to communicate with our intended audience.

Ultimate Tag Warrior - Tagging is a simple way to get relevant key words highlighted in your posts, making it easier for the search engines to find them. (If tagging is something new to you, here is a quick tag explanation.) Ultimate Tag Warrior is tremendously powerful, hugely flexible, and simple to use. It will add a field beneath the area where you type in the text of your post where you simply add a comma separated list of tags. Then when you hit “Publish” your post is tagged with your relevant keywords. Then you can use those key words yourself to arrange all of your wonderfully useful content in new and exciting ways for your readers.

(One note: If you are using WordPress version 2.1.2 you should download the plugin from this location so that you won’t have compatibility issues.)

Tags in the Head - Ultimate Tag Warrior is a tremendous way to organize your blog’s information. But in order to truly see some big gains in Search Engine Optimization (and get our message in front of the right people) we want to add this plugin. Tags in the Head will automatically fill in much of the traditional meta data that the SEO folks work so hard to get right for web sites.

Using these two plugins in tandem will greatly improve our ability to get our message in front of the right folks. And talking to the right people is a huge hurdle crossed on our way to effectively communicating our message!

Bonus Tool

As a bonus I’ll share a tool I use to measure the effectiveness of the blogs I set up. HubSpot has a Web Site Grader that will give you a wealth of information about any URL you input. It can give you a pretty good general idea as to how effective your blog is from a marketing perspective.

Chris Cree is a writer and career operations professional who helps businesses fuel growth through blogging in his SuccessCREEations consulting practice.

March 24th, 2007 at 06:29am | Posted by Joe | Guest Writer's Articles | 5 reader remarks | Print This Post

This Community Is Our Community

Covering for Joe Haukes, this is Carolyn Manning:

Today it feels like I’m at an old-fashioned barn raising; as if I’m giving part of me to my neighbor.

When Joe asked me to do a guest post here, my first thought was “Wow!” Well, it was the first such request and it’s very special.

We talked about different topics, his favorite being our community. Why not? It’s as wonderful and as unique a community as we could ever hope to envelope us.

What we all have is an unusual bond; it’s more unusual because, contrary to traditional neighborhood or work alliances, we’ve managed to build something that revels in human feeling. It’s not superficial. Don’t tell me you don’t have that “wow!” feeling whenever a fellow blogger emails you or calls you or links to you. (Disclaimer: maybe my experience with offline communities hasn’t been good; maybe I’m prejudiced toward the blogging community, without giving full chance to others. No offence intended.)

Somewhere, in a comment, I wrote something to the effect that we, as bloggers, as the reporters of our time, are an historic group. We live together, no matter the miles apart Rosa Say, Talking Story (the distance between Pennsylvania and Hawaii); we understand each other, no matter the cultural or language barriers Klearchos Kapoutsis, Klearchos Guide to the Galaxy (the difference between Engish and Greek); we respect and love each other simply because we want to respect and love each other SOBCon07 (no difference at all).

Last week, Sharon Sarmiento Nomadic web workers follow in Hemingway’s footsteps at 901am, where she talked about the early 20th century days in Paris when Hemmingway, Fitzgerald, et al, were known as the ‘Lost Generation’. In reply, Robert Bruce, Knife Gun Pen, made mention that those of us working with words on blogs today are known as the ‘Mediocre Generation’.

Nothing against Robert Bruce (or the source of his comment), but the care and affection, the love and positive interaction we have with each other is anything but mediocre. We are the equivalent to the farmers helping to build the barns of their neighbors. The only difference is that our neighborhood has been expanded and we’re building internet careers.

My feeling about this community parallels that of most of you. And, you just wait. In a hundred years, they’ll call us historic.

March 22nd, 2007 at 05:57am | Posted by Joe | Guest Writer's Articles | 14 reader remarks | Print This Post