The Web Authority

This has just happened to a prospect, and I wanted to share the situation in case you ever come across it. First the prospect is using WordPress for their blog. They had recently moved to a new web host and mentioned to me that when you clicked the blog post title of any posts on their blog their browser returned a blank Internet Explorer page.

I have seen this before where a Word character such as a long dash or an ampersand has not set well with the version of MySQL on the hosting server and then the post needs to be deleted and totally reentered to make the title be clickable, but that was not the case with this client. The title of the posts were simply not clickable.

What ended up happening was that the client had to actually reenter all the blog posts on their blog after they had upgraded to a new version of WordPress. I am not sure if this was due to an issue on the MySQL server, the blog template, or as I suspect the permalink settings that were not updated to match the database when the blog was moved, but it was a very thorny problem.

If you have seen this and have a recommendation for other readers on what you have done to repair this issue on your own blog, just leave a comment below.

Wow, Reddit is tough! If they don’t like your content or you don’t get enough article views, just plan on getting your account closed, all your links dropped, and your user account banned. All without letting you know anything short of “we don’t like the quality of the content you are linking to.” In my case, the content was in real estate!

What I have found is that Reddit will not like you if you are using their service to create backlinks to content that although may be unique is not catchy, trendy, or from their view point newsworthy.

Although Reddit has a Google PageRank of 8 and does allow dofollow links, be very careful what you ad. You can identify if they are targeting to drop you by the note that says you are adding too many links when you are simply adding three links a week. Additionally they will display a note you are adding links too fast add this link in one hour. Hey, the last time I added a link was Monday and it is now Wednesday, how is that too fast?

Well enough on my rant on Reddit. Just be cautious what you add is your very best quality and you may want to consider not using this service for clients where you can’t control content.

Effective September 15th AdWords is changing who can be emailed reports. In fact after that date AdWords won’t even be emailing you a report, rather will email you a link to view the report online.

For me this has totally wreaked havoc in the way I do reporting. I have an assistant who does reports for me. She takes the Excel data and pastes it into a letter where I have noted important comments about an account monthly. Previously she was emailed a zip file by AdWords on the first of every month.

Now I will have to add her as a read only user on every AdWords account so that she will be able to now manually and repetitively login and download a report. Worse yet is that there is no real column control on the report as there was before which means that adjusting the columns in Excel becomes a task that must be done for each report for each client.

Man, I hate this change! I have tried inviting her to my My Client Center, but that does not give the report access she needs, so I will now need to add her to each individual account. I understand the security issues involved but AdWords should have polled professionals such as myself before making this seriously bad change!

Web authority with search engines is built based on authoritative content that is unique and informative. The content you create for an authority site should not only clearly and transparently detail your services, but should provide more in-depth informational content on topics that dovetail with your service offerings.

Search engines reward large content-rich websites with organic search placement. This depth of content is not built over night, but should be considered a work in progress with new pages added on a monthly basis. For new websites we recommend that a client start with a minimum of 25 pages of content and immediately start blogging three days a week on site launch.

Over time as your website grows, you naturally establish authority on your selected topic as you build keyword density. For many websites, in a year or less, they will start to see good organic improvement. Continue that process for years and your website can grow to over several thousand pages of interesting unique informational content that is targeted around your service offerings. Not only does this make a better website for readers, but search engines reward these sites with better organic placement.

Social bookmarking can be time consuming, but if you break adding your links down into manageable posting chunks you can receive the link benefits with less effort. I like www.SocialPoster.com for my posting help.

First, I prepare my links and descriptions in Notepad. Make sure to turn off word wrap to prevent posting spacing issues.

Second, make sure before you start that you have logged into all your accounts and set your login cookies.

Third, copy and paste your posting information from Notepad into the SocialPoster interface. Tick off the social bookmarking sites you will be using and then click “Start Posting”.

No submissions are automatic, but for some sites, SocialPoster will autofill your submission allowing you to work more quickly. You may only have to enter the tags or a description instead of the full link submission.

P.S. Social Poster has not paid me for this blog post. I just think that their free online application is a real help and wanted to share it with you.

Social bookmarking is a great way to easily start building one way inbound links to your website. There are a few things that I have found out that I wanted to share with you from my use of social bookmarking over the last several months.

1. Don’t waste time using automated software or services. All the sites have worked to defeat the use of any automated entries with catchpas and other scripting techniques including even sensing the time and quality of your submissions.
2. Don’t add all your bookmarks on one day. I space mine out on a Monday, Wednesday, and Friday schedule with one link per service per day.
3. Use your top pages or blog posts that are on viral newsworthy topics to generate incoming traffic.
4. The sites that generate the most traffic for me are Reddit and Stumble Upon. I use others, but in my referrer logs these are the most active services that send me website traffic in addition to links.

One more tip I use SocialPoster.com to make this labor intensive process of adding bookmarks a wee bit easier.

Social bookmarking is still a new service for us, but we are finding that for link generation it does have value and is less expensive for the client than article marketing.

Social bookmarking is a new smart way to create inbound links to your content, but is it worth the time and effort? So far based on client studies it appears to be a very workable approach. However it is labor intensive.

Here are a few client results from the Google Webmaster control panel after just 30 days of social bookmarking three pages a week.

Client A
inbound links before: 5,099
inbound links after: 5,107

Client B
inbound links before: 9,964
inbound links after: 10,162

Although this is not a super fast way to grow links, clearly it is growing links nicely over time. But the link growth depends on the topic and quality of content. Client B’s site appears to be growing faster as the quality of content is more newsworthy and is of better quality when compared to Client A’s.

I have found that the social bookmarking sites have worked very hard to defeat automated entries and so our links are all generated manually which is labor intensive. However social bookmarking can be done by any site owner with a bit of extra time. I find the benefits in the short term are measurable and easier and more efficient than contacting website owners asking for a one way inbound link or even a reciprocal link.

If you are interested in our social bookmarking program, I invite you to visit our social bookmarking services page for pricing and more information.

Let’s say you own a fairly new business, where should you spend your time and money to generate sales – social networking or pay per click?

I feel that social networking is an excellent way to connect with prospects and engage clients. I love Twitter, Facebook, and blogging, but will these avenues generate immediate sales for a new business? I have to say from my personal experience using all these tools that although they are important for immediate sale generation, these tools can simply not compete with the power of sales generation that Google AdWords provides.

Does this mean you shouldn’t be involved in social media? No, not at all, but I feel that for new startups of a business that wants a return of immediate sales from their monetary investment that pay per click using Google AdWords is a better investment. I feel that social media involvement is key for positioning, search engine placement, customer engagement, and overall web authority, but this is most important for established businesses.

Startups typically have a short fuse – you have to generate some business quickly in order to stay in business. The more business you generate the more you can invest in your web presence. Here’s where social media involvement for the typical startup may simply be too far sighted. Although these are important things in which to invest your time, they may not return placement and sales for six months to a year or longer. These social avenues may not generate sales at all, they may help with authority and organic placement.

So if your need as a new business is to generate sales and you have a limited budget, I recommend investing in pay per click specifically using Google AdWords to get the jump start that you need. Then later as you are more established and have more cash to invest in growing your web presence consider blogging, Facebook and Twitter.

Find out about our Google AdWords services and pricing to see if we would be a good match for your needs.