Well you all know that we started the free blog platform @ MyTypes.com to not only help people learn how to blog, but to help them SEO adding content through blogging regulary.  We often read SearchEngineLand.com, along with many other great SEO resources such as iMediaConnection and the blog of SEOBook.com.  We are always impressed by the age old strategy of teaching business people how to blog so that they can SEO their business and easily get top rankings on Google and MSN Live Search.  As we write in our marketing book, we teach people how to blog with the proper keywords.  Because if you learn the simple techniques of blogging and linking with proper anchor texts, you will be able to SEO as well as 90% of the top SEO’s.  So do rush to go buy our marketing book, ok click to go our Marketing book at Amazon.com.

Here is the article from SearchEngineGuide.com a siste site of Search Engine Land on Blogging, enjoy.  Please do visit their site for the full article.

Blogging Workshop - SBM Unleashed

September 23, 2008 Comments

David Wallace

Articles

Mack Collier of The Viral Garden did an excellent presentation yesterday on why businesses should blog. With some background on why blogging matters and how companies are using blogs to spark conversation, this workshop is designed to provide everything you need to know to build a successful blog from selecting your blog software to planning your blog strategy.
 
In this workshop, Mack is going to take us through several tools and resources designed to help blogging. He starts off with Google Blog Search and shows attendees how you can use the service to monitor terms related to your business and/or blog. He also mentions that you can use RSS readers such as Bloglines to monitor buzz related to your blog.
 
Next Mack talks about Twitter Search for monitoring items that are being discussed on Twitter. Could be an even such as this conference, a person, a company, a product or a number of things.
 
Next, Mack talks about the various blogging platforms. He mentions Blogger, TypePad, Movable Type and Wordpress. Most have free versions while they all offer some sort of paid elements/versions as well. There are opportunities to have your blog hosted or to simply download the software and install on your own server. I strongly suggest the latter so that you can have complete control over your blog.
 
I use Movable Type for my SearchRank blog while I use Wordpress for all the other blogs I run. The differences between the two are many but mostly the fact that Movable Type published actual html pages while Wordpress is all database driven. That’s why its crucial when running Wordpress to make sure you back up regularly, whether you do that manually on a schedule or use a plug-in that automatically does it for you.
 
On thing Mack points out as far as the content you publish on your blog is that it is okay to talk about your own products and/or services but to do so with moderation. If all you ever write about is your own wares, your blog is not going to be very interesting and as such not attract many readers.

**link everything else, this free blog is sponsored by the fine folks of our Infrared Heater, marketing book, and Web Site Design St. Louis, VRBO by RentExpert.com, all of which are clients of our SEO services. 

Most of our contact with clients is done through email and phone conversations. This is comfortable for most everyone. Sometimes more functionality is required for that personal touch, or for educational purposes. The following is a list 10 of sites and applications that can be used for that.

1. Skype - it’s easy to use, free to download and has video chat. why not? too bad they don’t have screen sharing functionality

2. DimDim - This is my web conferencing app of choice. compatible with mac and PC. free to use for conferences under 20 users. if thats not enough it’s open source as well, download flavors for linux and windows servers on their sourceforge page

3. WebEx - probably the bast known web conferencing tool, prices start at $39/month for the individual free 14day trial too. This is the corporate choice

4. Vmukti - runs on windows server 2003, and XP  written in c#, also open source. you can check it out on SourceForge.  it also comes in a professional version with hosted options.

5. WebHuddle - Secure java applet no server install. Open Source and free check the demo: WebHuddle demo

6. OpenMeetings - Open Source web conferencing integrates with moodle, see all the information at their Google Code page. there is also a demo here (note: the password = demo username = demo) you can download the code and install it on your server….oh yeah its free!

7. Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro - it took me a while to figure out how much this costs to use.  you’ll need to call adobe for anything beyond their month to month subscription service $375 for their starter pack or $0.32 per user per min.

8. Glance - one click desktop sharing! check out their  news section

9. iVisit - for both for desktop and mobile, track your mobile clients with GPS, take a look at their features page. free for 90 days - fully featured for 7.95 per month with a 1 year subscription

10. Gizmo Project -  similar to skype, give it a try if you have an aversion to skype.
**this free blog is possible due to our clients such as Employee Screening, Employment Screening & Tenant Screening at http://www.interqst.com. Our Internet Marketing book, and web design St. Louis at ArtWorksdesign.com and VRBO by RentExpert.com, and Infrared Heaters the best heaters at Greenisbetter.org.

If you read our Marketing book, you know the power of blogs.  But as most of you probably know that blogging on a regular basis a great way to add content to your websites and blog.  And some of you SEO pros know that blogging on a regular basis especially with the proper use of keywords the best SEO tool you will have.  When I started to blog back in 2003 I knew that it was a great thing to do, but I had no idea how big blogging would become.  Now blogs are as popular as major journalists, and blogging is the essential part of Internet Marketing 2.0.  Social networking and social marketing have also taken of with MySpace and Facebook and a million other sites.  But, I still think there is nothing link blogging on a regular basis to help you get your message out and promote your message to unknown prospects.  For some of you who have not bought our marketing book, Here are some of our best blogs on blogging, over the last 1 1/2 years:

Blog versus a website, who wins?

Posted by: admin on Thursday, 27th Sep, 2007

Do you photo? Jazz up your blogs:

Posted by: admin on Wednesday, 26th Sep, 2007

How To Beat Blogger’s Block #5: Folksonomy Is Your Friend

Posted by: Blogging Coach on Monday, 13th Aug, 2007

Writing Tips For Bloggers: Embrace Your Passions

Posted by: Blogging Coach on Friday, 10th Aug, 2007

Writing Tips For Bloggers: Appeal To The Senses With Vivid Language

Posted by: Blogging Coach on Thursday, 9th Aug, 2007

Writing Tips For Bloggers: Do The Introduction Last

Posted by: Blogging Coach on Wednesday, 8th Aug, 2007

Writing Tips For Bloggers: Active Voice Versus Passive Voice

Posted by: Blogging Coach on Tuesday, 7th Aug, 2007

Writing Tips for Bloggers: The Building Blocks of Language

Posted by: Blogging Coach on Monday, 6th Aug, 2007

Brevity Is A Blogging Virtue

Posted by: Blogging Coach on Friday, 3rd Aug, 2007

Look Outside Your Niche For Inspiration: Go Off-Topic

Posted by: Blogging Coach on Thursday, 2nd Aug, 2007

This free blog is sponsored by our Infrared heater sales at GreenIsBetter.org, the best energy saving heaters in the world. 

But, I am happy this time, the SEO blog templates blog get it’s PR 5 rank back, Yippee, boy I missed it and sure do love having it back.  I wish the front page of MyTypes.com our Free Blog PR 5 would come back.  Maybe some day, but till then, our Web Design blog we wrote a couple of days ago:

Our web designer does SEO for us..

September 25th, 2008 at 10:52 am by Admin in blogs

Not, Web Design companies don’t traditionally do SEO or Internet marketing.  Ok, well the big one’s do, and they are usually not very good at it, especially SEO.  I guess they could be, if they read our Marketing book or the SEOBook?  They should and good one’s probably do optimized your pages to make sure they are indexed by the search engines.  We work with a lot of good web design folks, and have a partnerhsip with a good one, one of the best web design St. Louis firms, Art Works Design.com.  SEO is a must if you are going to looking to do any Internet marketing, and you should definitly look at reading our marketing book, before you do that.  We cover all aspects of SEO, but our Internet Marketing book is super easy to use.

Another great resource that you will see for SEO is our Wordpress SEO free blog templates site.   So if you want to SEO your web design St. Louis style, learn the basics you should know about.  Buy our Internet Marketing Book, or read our SEO blog, and definitly read the article below from iMediaConnection.  They are a great resource at http://iMediaconnection.com

Here is the excerpt:

Published: September 24, 2008

SEO on a shoestring

By Claudia Bruemmer

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Introduction

Many small businesses do not rank high enough in the search engine results pages (SERPs) to be found. Yet, more than 70 percent of internet users start off with a search engine before they buy a product or service. To put this in perspective, there are 157 million active internet users in the U.S., and 127 million of them are active search engine users, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. Can you really afford not to be exposed to such a massive audience?

The fact is that you can’t afford to miss all the potential opportunities. While many small businesses don’t have a huge marketing budget, that’s no reason for a lack of search engine visibility. Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the top-performing tactics in online marketing and outperforms traditional media like TV, radio and print. You can save money by doing the work yourself, but it’s also wise to hire consultants for some vital tasks like SEO copywriting, analytics and conducting the SEO review.

This article will show you how, on a small budget, you can use SEO to drive more business to your site from people who never even heard of you before you became visible in the SERPs. We will review the SEO techniques that result in high rankings, increased conversions, and improved marketing ROI.

This free blog is sponsored by the Green Heaters from GreenIsBetter.org, VRBO by RentExpert, and web site design St. Louis, don’t fear to check out Internet Marketing book if you want to increase your SEO and Internet Marketing skills.

Check out our Icon Pack! with 46 different Icons and 10 different back grounds, you can create over 400 combinations. please download use and enjoy for commercial and non-commercial uses.

MyTypes Blogging Platform

**this free blog is possible due to our clients such as Employee Screening, Employment Screening & Tenant Screening at http://www.interqst.com. Our Internet Marketing book, and web design St. Louis at ArtWorksdesign.com and VRBO by RentExpert.com, and Infrared Heaters the best heaters at Greenisbetter.org.

Rarely am I surprised by the CPC of a keyword, as I am the case with “Insurance” and “insurance quotes” and “life Insurance” keywords. Wow upwords of $30 a CPC. Google is only going to get more expensive. So it’s even more imperative that people spend in SEO and other types of advertising to get the targeted traffic. The thing is Google has a monopoly on search, and it’s not it’s fault that companies are willing to pay up to $30/click. All Google does is set auction environment, that more demand creates the price. So dear life insurance, insurance, and insurance quotes website owners/marketers, simply don’t bid over $10 and you will all collectively win. If you are patient, you will all save each other lots of money in your campaigns. But undoubtedly, someone will want to be #1, and you will again compete and over pay.

So what is a “life Insurance” or “insurance Quote” website owner to do? First thing first, advertise on MSN, and MS Live Search through the AdCenter platform, this will help you reduce your total cost per acquisition as MS is a lot cheaper, it also has decent traffic. Do the same with Yahoo too, I am from Seattle so I am going to favor MSN. For competitive and powerful keyword such as “life insurance” and “insurance quotes” you have to a multi-tier strategy of advertising on content sites, on display ad networks, and other online marketing channels well as offline. Why?

Research has shown that the mix of media, especially interactive media such as video tends to impact the buying decision a great deal. And for expensive keywords such as “life Insurance” and “insurance quotes” it’s important that the mix of media extends your rearch. Which will help with conversion rates, and than you can bid smaller amounts for lower position, and your brand will get recognized even more and you will save in overall CPC price.

The mix of media also increase exposure of ad to users, and repetition as we all know is the grand father of recall, which is the father of brand recognition, which is the power behind a brand credibility and ultimately leads to increase conversion and marketing effectiveness. We certainly, should learn our lessons from the insurance industry which pays too much for the keywords “life insurance” and “Insurance Quotes“. So don’t just take my word for it, read some of the research about the power of display and search advertising, and how both work well together, and do searches on mixed media and overall campaign optimization and effectiveness.

Now that I have done this analysis and finally added a topic of display advertising, been thinking about it too long. I have to thank the insurance industry for it’s “life insurance” and “insurance quotes“, both over priced keywords on Google. I watch a lot of television on the weekends as football is fun for me to follow. And, I can’t tell you how sick I am of the life Insurance, Auto Insurance, and Insurance quotes businesses. All State, Geico, Progressive, AIG, ING, HSBC, Mass Mutual, Northwest Mutual, give me a break, this company that company, you are all the same. Oh Yeah, I didn’t add State Farm to the mix, I actually am a beneficiary of a life insurance policy from State Farm, my Dad died over 19 years ago, and thank god my family had Life insurance. So folks, if you have kids or if you are any age over 18, you can never be too young or too old to buy life insurance.

My family got saved by it, my Mom would have had a terrible terrible time raising 3 kids, if we did not have a life insurance policy by State Farm, thank you State Farm. A lot of people just forget or don’t think about it, now imagine if something happens to you in an accident, and your kids are left with nothing but bills, and no life insurance policy. Do yourself a favor, get a life insurance policy. I don’t sell life insurance, I am speaking from experience, my family would have quite possibly become homeless, if my dad had not bought life insurance a few years before he passed away in 1989. **There is a disclaimer, we do SEO, and we are testing the  of an Life Insurance website, so that is why all the links for the keyword Life Insurance are going to a particular site. I really had no idea, that I felt so strongly about life insurance, but a fathers death can get you a little emotional. Especially if you and your siblings were all teenagers, and your mom and your family were immigrants to a country.

What is the sure fire way to promote your business? Well, easy answer is to buy our marketing book, or to read our free blogs as often as you can, or to create a blog and blog often with a proper keyword strategy.

But on a more serious point, I say it’s to link up with strategic businesses that can help you get targeted traffic. I have always said SEO is slow, SEM is fast but expensive and strategic partnerships can pay off huge, if they benefit both partis. So go do a business development deal, share a revenue stream, and help each other promote your blog or business. What you thought, i was going to talk about link building for SEO and getting you to rank high? Sorry, already done that a few times, see the links to our previous blog posts on SEO and power of link aggregation for link popularity.

Here are our previous blog posts on and link building to promote your business, yes we have more strategies in our marketing book, do you think we are promoting it too much, well not really, just here this blog, and on all of our blogging pages.   It is the greatest Internet Marketing book of all time:-), well may be not, but a good one.

Demystifing SEO link building, from iMediaConnection.com

Posted by: admin on Saturday, 6th Sep, 2008

Ethical SEO way of getting thousands of Link in a week, PressReleases but how?

Posted by: admin on Wednesday, 27th Feb, 2008

How To Beat Blogger’s Block #5: Folksonomy Is Your Friend

Posted by: Blogging Coach on Monday, 13th Aug, 2007

Rome Wasn’t Built In A Day, And Neither Is A Fantastic Blog

Posted by: Blogging Coach on Tuesday, 31st Jul, 2007

Don’t Blog In A Vacuum

Posted by: Blogging Coach on Tuesday, 24th Jul, 2007

Three Things to Do Before You Click Publish (and One Thing to Do After)

Posted by: Blogging Coach on Tuesday, 3rd Jul, 2007

SEO for Bloggers: Off-Site SEO and the Social Media (Part 5 of 6)

Posted by: Blogging Coach on Wednesday, 27th Jun, 2007

SEO For Bloggers: Link Baiting For Fun and Profit (Part 3 of 6)

Posted by: Blogging Coach on Tuesday, 26th Jun, 2007

SEO For Bloggers: Link Building and Link Popularity (Part 2 of 6)

**this free blog is possible due to our clients such as blogging at MyTypes.com, Free blog and Internet Marketing book, and web design St. Louis at ArtWorksdesign.com and VRBO by RentExpert.com, and Infrared Heaters the best heaters at Greenisbetter.org.

I rankings for the keyword “SEO” have fallen from #11-#14 to #33 this week.  Same with our other Major Keywords “Free Blog” from #8 to #11, “Create a blog” from #6 to #11.  How can this be, I thought we wrote a marketing book on SEO and power of blogs?  It bothers me a lot, because we claim to be SEO Experts, but has our traffic fallen dramatically or at all? 

The answer to that question is no, but I am sure for those keywords it has dropped.  One of MyTypes SEO and Free blog clients RentExpert.com went back to #4 for “VRBO” so that is good news.  But, one of the other clients “Website Design St. Louis” provider Artworksdesign.com dropped to #14 from #6 for the keywords “web site design St. Louis“.  What bothers me most is not our rankings, well for “Free Blog” and “Create a blog” do bother me, and actually so does “Wordpress SEO“.  But other keywords, i can deal with.  So back to what can we do about it.  Blog, silly blog.  It’s not Drill baby drill, it’s blog baby blog.  If you don’t write on your content, your traffic will drop, so will your SEO rankings.  Do check out this and all of our tips in our Marketing book, and keep up on my new Internet Marketing 2.0 free blog on Wordpress.com.

We have been looking at “Web Design” stuff lately and wanted to share this article from Imediaconnection:  http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/20565.asp

Here is a quick summary, but go to the link above to read the full thing and check out the pictures of these great websites too:

Published: September 17, 2008

10 killer websites worth watching

By Nanette Marcus

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Introduction

A quality website is more than just a pretty homepage. But what exactly does it take to keep consumers coming back for more?

We asked brand marketers to share one of the sites they’re most proud of, along with one they wish they’d done. They highlight some of the tricks of the trade and what catches their critical eyes. They point out what’s unusual and effective about each site and how it fits into and complements the overall brand strategy, in addition to how the site could be improved.

Find out what your brand could learn from these 10 sites.

I just started an Internet Marketing blog on Wordpress.com mainly to see what new features and blog templates Wordpress offers now days.  As some of you know, we are promoting our Internet Marketing book, and want this to be a successful book on How to Blog, and leverage the power of blogs for SEO, Search, and social marketing.  Pretty soon, we will also offer a tutorial on How to Blog, if you want to partake, visit that site, and ask to be a contributor to that site. 

So we have not covered the traditional Internet Advertising much in our Marketing book or in this SEO blog.  Inherently we just focused on SEO, and little on SEM (which is Search Engine Marketing–which includes Pay Per Click internet Advertising), so we do cover a little of Internet Advertising.  But there is this huge part called Display Advertising, and it’s been making way to small businesses.  So I will start to write a little bit more about Display Advertising in our blogs and will cover a chapter of it in our Internet Marketing book.   But basically display advertising is anything other than on search page results.  So all of the sponsors of content buttons and banner ads, those are your traditional display ads.

As you know we talk a lot about blogs, free blogs and create a blog tools, because we created a blogging community at MyTypes.com main page.  Attached is an an Excerpt of an article form Imediaconnection.com, Here is the text.  The link is below it, but to be frank I am shocked by how small advertising is for blogs, and blogging site.  It will get bigger, but for now blogs are not really considered full fledged journalists, and the new media just doesn’t get the dollars the traditional media does.  See article excerpt below and follow link:  Navigate the blogsophere’s biggest Ad Networks. 

“Millions of consumers read blogs, including your target audience. Make the most of this growing marketing opportunity with the right niche ad network.

If there’s one buzzword that has spread like wildfire through the entire media business in the last five years, it is blogs.

Universal McCann’s global “Power to the People” Social Media Tracker study says that “blogs are a mainstream media worldwide and as a collective rival any traditional media,” with 73 percent of respondents saying they have read a blog.

The majority of the 184 million blogs worldwide are of the personal nature, according to Universal McCann’s study, and a recent eMarketer report states that there are 25 million bloggers in the U.S. alone.

The eMarketer study says that 67 percent of the U.S. online population — 104 million people — reads blogs, showing that blogging has become a truly mass media. The number of blog readers will continue to grow to 145 million by 2012.

The growth in readership reflects the consumer’s desire to participate with information, not just consume it. Younger consumers especially seek edgier and more personal sources of content than what is offered by the formal approach of mass media.

While blog readership has exploded, advertising investment represented only 1.34 percent of online spending in 2007, and eMarketer estimates it will grow to 1.46 percent by 2012.  According to that estimate, U.S. blog advertising will increase from $283 million in 2007 to $746 million in 2012.

Today, corporate marketers are asking “do we need a corporate blog?” and “how do we participate in the conversation?” Look at any major media brand’s website, and you will almost always find featured blogs as a way to update the brand’s online persona.

As marketers become increasingly interested in participating in the conversation of the blogosphere and pro actively focusing their customer service efforts on what is being said about the brand online, a number of blog advertising networks have emerged. These networks offer marketers scale and control in advertising on blogs and social media sites, and have succeeded by quickly growing revenues in recent years.

The following is an overview of major blog networks including BlogAds, Gawker Media, Technorati, Federated Media, Google, Forbes’ Business Blog Network and Izea, owner of two blog advertising services: SocialSpark and Pay Per Post.”

Thanks for all of your support, and don’t be afraid to buy our Marketing book, and if you want us to high light your content, we will be more than willing to help you.  We also want to support some of our SEO clients such as for VRBO: RentExpert.com, Web Design St. Louis: ArtWorksDesign.com, marketing book: by MyTypes.com, and Free Blog: MyTypes.com.  We will soon be launching a how to blog software tutorials, look out for those coming out this fall.