A Copy And Paste List Of Update Services For Wordpress Blog Pings

December 29th, 2009

We always set up our client Wordpres blogs with an advanced set of extended features and plugins, including updating their list of ‘Update Services’ in the ‘Settings > Writings’ administration panel. Since it always defaults to just one (http://rpc.pingomatic.com) as an example, and the longer list that Wordpress recommends is on a different web site (they do conveniently let you click through to it), we got tired of clicking through and made this list for ourselves (and you!) to copy and paste into that section.  So simply to make it easy for you to set up your ‘Update Services’, here is the list for you to copy and paste:

http://rpc.pingomatic.com

http://api.feedster.com/ping

http://api.moreover.com/RPC2

http://api.moreover.com/ping

http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2

http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping

http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2

http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php

http://www.blogsnow.com/ping

http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi

http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc

http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php

http://ping.blo.gs/

http://ping.feedburner.com

http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php

http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://www.feedsubmitter.com

http://blo.gs/ping.php

http://www.pingerati.net

http://www.pingmyblog.com

http://geourl.org/ping

http://ipings.com

http://www.weblogalot.com/ping

  • Share/Bookmark

How To Create A Press Release

November 23rd, 2009

Writing content for your web site and creating press releases to help market and drive traffic to your web site are no doubt tasks that hurt.  The emotional pain most people bring to writing has been a major road block to the success of many clients.  And I am constantly bombarded with the question, in various forms, “What do I do now?”.  Sadly, even the lure of waves of economic success doesn’t release these sad ships from their unproductive moorings.

Well, since our internal mantra is “Educate. Inspire. Execute.”, we are always in pursuit of tools that can help our clients pursue their own business dreams.  to that end James Betesh, our resident Search Engine Marketing guru, came across the web site of Evan Carmichael and his Press Release Builder. Take action and use it today to educate and inspire you to execute!

  • Share/Bookmark

Architecturally map your site and force all of your web personnel to stick to it

October 15th, 2009

What do we mean by this? Your site is nothing short of a set of containers into which you throw stuff. You may have containers inside of containers, but eventually you get down the the stuff that everyone has: Things. Whether your things are informational articles or products to sell or both, you must provide your readers with a clear and concise navigational paradigm to get them to these items. This is your navigation or architecture.

This navigational heirarchy is not just important for your readers and customers. It is important that you get this right for the search engines as well. When you decide upon your navigational architecture, i.e. the names that you will give your containers and what you will put in them, you are specifically detailing for the search engines as well as your customers what your target keywords are. And if you are using a Content Management System like our SwinginSarah CMS, your URLs are finely tuned to take advantage of the keyword density and positive SEO aspects of having those names in your URL. They are the titles and keywords in your meta tags, and should be the focus of the content and text that appears on that page.

While it is difficult to get this perfect from the get-go (or perhaps ever – we submit that you should consider this a work in progress at all times…), you can do a wonderful job of getting close by doing just a few simple things:

1. Check out the competition. While we definitely do not follow the rule “If everyone else is doing it, it must work”, we do not shy away from learning from others and appropriating where necessary. Often times there is no sense in re-inventing the wheel. If Wal-Mart carries it on their web site, take a look. Also, by defining who your competitors are and trying to understand what they are doing, you will be one step closer to dominating them online.

2. If you have it, use your common sense. Often we will see a client try to stuff products into categories all over their web site, when they clearly won’t do the same in their brick-and-mortar store. A coffee table book on beautiful fences surely belongs in your book department, but probably does not belong in your fence post category – which should specifically contain your fence posts.

3. Use the tools at your disposal. Tools readily available to you to do keyword research include the Google Keyword Tool, Wordtracker.com, and your own POS system (what buying departments do you have set up already?)

4. Lastly, it is important to finalize your architecture and force your content manager to stick with the program. We have seen more than one client’s web site head off into the un-navigable due to the inability of their content manager to manage their own organizational skills. Eventually, their inability to maintain and manage the containers they were given led to a site with too many containers, unwieldy navigation, confusing links and lists and a whole host of other problems that reduced their site to a veritable mess.

  • Share/Bookmark

The Designer Disconnect

September 23rd, 2009

I was reminded today as I received an email with ‘IMHO advice’ (In-My-Humble-Opinion) from a local designer of how much of a disconnect there can be between what a designer thinks is correct for a web site and what actually works. He voiced concerns about changes that, unknown to him, have resulted in a doubling of the goldandgems.com conversion rate and thousands of dollars in sales every month. His IMHO advice was that the site looked cheapened, less elegant and would result in less sales.

Like I ask my clients all the time, would you like someone’s opinion, or a verifiable strategy that will make money? The designer in question had something invested in the design to which he was referring, as he had in fact designed the first iteration. As is the case with most designs, they get modified slightly over time and it looks a bit different than originally planned. Yet…

There is a reason for the changes. His original design did not attempt to address the web site’s (and business’) credibility an any other way than beauty. But the truth is, and this is known and provable fact, customers validate a web site very rapidly. And the faster you answer the question “Why buy from me?”, the more likely you are to make a sale.

With that in mind, we suggested and implemented icons using a different designer at the client’s request, and pop ups that answered those questions (you can see them yourself at goldandgems.com).

The result: An instantaneous, measurable and substantial increase in conversion of traffic. If given the option between an IMHO designer and results, I know which I would choose.

  • Share/Bookmark

Popular Article Directories To Submit To

August 23rd, 2009

I cannot remember where I first came a cross this list of article submission sites.  But I share it here for anyone to use.  These are all places where you can take your interesting content and publish it online, in the hope that someone else will pick it up and publish it on their own relevant web site and link back to yours.  Over time you can use this technique to gain an immense amount of ‘link juice’, respectability and traffic from the search engines.

http://www.goarticles.com

http://www.ezinearticles.com/

http://www.articlecity.com/

http://www.certificate.net/wwio/

http://www.amazines.com/

http://www.articledashboard.com/

http://www.article-directory.net/

http://www.submityourarticle.com/articles/

http://www.magportal.com/

http://www.isnare.com/

http://pubs.acs.org/hotartcl/

http://www.article-hangout.com/

http://www.webarticles.com/

http://www.articlecube.com/

http://articles4content.com/

http://www.article-buzz.com/

http://www.free-articles-zone.com/

http://www.newarticlesonline.com/

http://www.articletogo.com/

http://www.articleworld.net/

http://www.impactarticles.com/

http://www.articlealley.com/

http://www.directorygold.com/

http://dir.salon.com/

http://www.articlefever.com/

http://www.content-articles.com/

http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com/marketing-article-directory.html

http://www.niche-article-directory.com/

http://www.jogena.com/articles/articleform.htm

http://news.collectors.org/

http://article-niche.com/

http://blogtelecast.com

http://superpublisher.com/

http://www.articlecentral.com

http://www.article-directory.net

http://www.article-emporium.com

http://www.ebooksnbytes.com

http://www.ideamarketers.com

http://www.internethomebusinessarticles.com

http://www.site-reference.com

http://www.stickysauce.com

  • Share/Bookmark