Advanced Blogging And Why I Use Blogger - The Rasputin Effect

Now being a professional blogger carries with it some sort of responsibility to your readers.
No I don't mean You Lot, the people who read these ramblings are either Enlightened, Inquisitive or Insane.... So Which one are You?

What I meant was in my professional blogging capacity, mostly in the world of Insurance and Finance, if you want to be top of Google for your chosen blog keyword (check out insurance blog) you not only have to provide original quality content on a regular basis, but you also have to act the part, and more importantly look the part, to attract the attentions of other professional bloggers who collectively could improve your profile.(through links!)

Now I always use Blogger for blogging and in a moment I will tell you exactly why and explain what I call the 'Rasputin Effect', which is the sole reason that I would always chose this platform over a more functional alternative such as Wordpress.

However using Blogger as a platform does have it's downsides, and I'm not talking about the lack of bolt-ons for which Wordpress has a plethora; there are enough basic functional widgets available on Blogger for all but the most socially active.

I also disagree that a Wordpress site is better for SEO.
If you understand even basic HTML you can edit a Blogger template for on page SEO. Wisely using hyperlinks and keywords in the Blogger structural setup will also optimise your blog for SE ranking advantage.
It may be easier to SEO a blog in Wordpress but truth is it is not better!

No, the biggest downside is this.....
When I get invites from other top blogging professional for links, posts requests etc etc....... I always feel that my Blogger blog is rather like turning up for a business meeting in the City of London, having just rolled out of the surf on Perranporth beach or getting invited to a 'Black Tie Do' in the Hamptons with BO in attendance and turning up in a yellow 'gypsy' cab and in a pair of old rippped Levi's....

Lets face it Blogger ain't 'pretty'.

So why do I use it?

THE RASPUTIN EFFECT

For those of you who don't know their history I suggest you read about Rasputin on Wiki.
For those of you who do, you'd agree that Rasputin was a scruffy b**tard too!



So now you know the history you will see that Google is the Tsar, Blogger is the Tsarina and your scruffy Blogger blog is Rasputin.
You have the full attention of the Tsarina and The Tsar who likes to rewards his loyal subjects in the rankings! This is a competitive advantage.

But didn't Rasputin end up dead in the River Neva?
Don't Blogger blogs get zapped?

Yes and Yes!

But it took a lot to kill Rasputin and even after the cyanide, .33's, the knifings and the beatings and being chucked into -50 degrees of flowing water, some say....

He still had air in his lungs....

The solution to the threat of falling out at Court is found by holding your blog on it's own generic domain, preferbly of the most logical keyword that describes it's contents. This way you control the content distribution and can build up link love for the domain, whilst at the same time benefiting from all the built in distribution elements that come with Blogger to the Google court - such as Feedburner for example!

Remember though - It was also the social media mob who finally killed the Tsar and his family in Екатеринбу́рг and were also behind the scenes in the demise of Rasputin a year earlier.

To be Rasputin and hold such a high authority at Court, you do need to produce QUALITY! on a regular basis, avoid the threats and maybe use a little 'Magick'.

This is the bottom line, however it is served up!


Beat The System

How to be a Successful Author at Ezine Articles

Everything you need to know about being a successful author at ezine articles.com

If you're a Twitter user who doesn't follow @EzineArticles, you're missing a lot of great EzineArticles information and training!

The following is a list of (30) assorted author tips, insider info, fun facts and reminders we tweeted in the month of October. Any one of these could have been just the tool you needed to turbocharge your article marketing efforts.

Just CLICK on any of the "ReTweet This" links to auto-populate your Twitter status field. Then just edit for length and retweet to your heart's content!

EzineArticles Tips and Training Snippets:

• A trap to avoid: Making the focus of your articles about what you are AGAINST. Instead, argue your points about what you are FOR & why. [ReTweet This]
  
• Resource Box Tip: Never pretend or say that a self-serving link is not your own when in fact it is. Build TRUST, not deception. [ReTweet This]
  
• Tip: Excessive HTML in your article body makes it hard for publishers to use, meaning you and your links get less circulation. [ReTweet This]
  
• Punctuation Tip: Reach the period sooner before later. Don't drone on and fail to close your thought. [ReTweet This]
  
• Article Writing Tip: Make connections with your readers by envisioning yourself speaking directly to them. [ReTweet This]
  
• Article Body is where you GIVE; Resource Box is where you TAKE. [This is one of our core tenants.] [ReTweet This]

EzineArticles Fun Facts:

• Fact: 6484 articles were Scheduled for future release in the month of Sept by our Premium members. [ReTweet This]
  
• Website Magazine's Top 50 Websites for 'Net Professionals named EzineArticles #18! http://is.gd/4zvYk Cool! :] [ReTweet This]
  
• No surprise here: 19% of all problem articles not accepted are in the 250-299 word count range. 41% are under 399 words. [ReTweet This]
  
• "Mavis Beacon" is an excellent example of an unreal person that is used as an exclusive image to represent the brand in the market. [ReTweet This]
  
• EzineArticles members submit an avg of 2+ articles in their article submission session. Smart, because it leverages their time. [ReTweet This]
  
• 46.8 percent of EzineArticles members use FIREFOX for their browser! Wow. Best reason to use FireFox? Built-in SPELL CHECK! :) [ReTweet This]

EzineArticles Inside Information:

• Clickbank Affiliates: We've never allowed clickbank URL's in the past and now we're auto-rejecting at the front door. [ReTweet This]
  
• We've significantly tightened up our anti-derivative content filters last week. Yesterday alone 741 articles rejected at the front door. [ReTweet This]
  
• How big should your Resource Box be? Between 7-15 percent of your article body in terms of word count and line length. [ReTweet This]
  
• Want a reason to keep your self-serving links in the Resource Box and not the Article Body? Links in article body are set to NOFOLLOW. [ReTweet This]
  
• We disagree with using iStockphoto for fake/pen author names. Reason: Because the photos aren't exclusive to your name. [ReTweet This]
  
• We're not automatically declining articles with locations in the title; but article body needs to deliver specific locale info. [ReTweet This]

Motivational Moments:

• "Being a published author is a big, fat billboard that says, I'm SMART!" - Arielle Ford [via @LisaDSparks] [ReTweet This]
  
• Figure out what your readers want, then think about what they need. Find the balance between the two, and watch your readership grow. [ReTweet This]
  
• Enthusiasm is contagious. Market a product/service you're passionate about, and chances are others will become excited about it too! [ReTweet This]
  
• Only EXTREMELY rare expert authors can write high value 250-400 word articles. The rest of us deliver value in the 400-800+ word count range. [ReTweet This]
  
• Always know your purpose for writing each article. This will keep your content focused, concise, and easier for readers to understand. [ReTweet This]
  
• Quality trumps Quantity. If your articles are failing to deliver, slow down, start over and allow yourself another perspective. [ReTweet This]

Misc. Words of Wisdom:

• Blogging and article marketing are natural partners. Both present info, articles just do it in a non-promotional, more formal way. [ReTweet This]
  
• 1 of the biggest advantages of article marketing is getting targeted traffic. You miss out on that if your links don't match your articles! [ReTweet This]
  
• Have your checked your ARTICLE DIAGNOSTIC CENTER lately for dead links that need fixing? Fix 'em and get your FREE traffic back! :) [ReTweet This]
  
• Looking for fresh content? Try mentoring a newbie! You'll be surprised at how much you learn and a new perspective is fertile soil for ideas. [ReTweet This]
  
• Derivative = Spun or re-hashed content that is NOT unique as it delivers the same information only re-worded. This adds NO value. [ReTweet This]
  
• Want to improve your readers trust in you, your articles, and your expertise? ADD AN AUTHOR PHOTO to your profile. :-) [ReTweet This]

Have you got a Twitter question? Post it here to get some answers: http://blog.EzineArticles.com/2009/11/article-writing-tweets-to-retweet.html

Hope you found that useful - EzineArticles.com is the Rolls Royce of article sites and it's worth taking some time writing and submitting and offering good quality content if you want to get it indexed high in Google!

Tip- Just like EzineArticles do in the main body of the article, I've made all the links to them rel="nofollow".

I might like them but I don't like my sites leaking my lovely link juice BACK to Web 2.0 properties

Beat The System

Does Website Size Affect Ranking? Of course it does!

Google Central has issued an interesting video from Matt Cutts asking whether size of a website, number of pages affects Authority in Google.

Mr Cutts says with a wry smile ( he's not lying - he's just ignorant!) at the end of the video that the answer is no!



But here's why the answer is so obviously yes.

Authority is determined by Google by Pagerank which is basically Kansky's theory of nodal magnitude in action (a wisdom of crowds method of determinining rank).

It's not just about the number of links to a page that determines the authority of a page (and here's the IMPORTANT BIT)... for A KEYWORD....

But the accumulated link score of the pages linking ......for Each Keyword!

So Pagerank means nothing until it is chunked and broken down and applied to each individual set of keywords

Nobody sells a one keyword product!

There are usually hundreds of qualifiers that produce long tails for every product

Every one of these long tailed keywords should have it's own optimized page!

Therefore size DOES matter!

(and there is always the matter of the value of internal links counting as well!)

The more pages optimised for each individual keyword the wider your traffic funnel - The bigger the book the more knowledge and the more authority on the subject is given or attributed to the author - It's the same on the web - simple as that.

Website Size DOES matter - ask any girl!

Now I do have one page websites that top google for some pretty competitive keywords ( I should rephrase that to Keyword) but here is why...

1. The one page websites are as old as google itself
2. The websites are 2 word generic .com domain names with no hyphens
3. Each site (single page) has hundreds or thousands of backlinks to it for the keyword (domain name)
4. The Sites (page) are regularly refreshed with new content in the form of RSS feeds!

Beat The System

Killer Press Release Tactics for Internet Marketing

Understanding Press Releases for Internet Marketing

Press Releases are an essential piece of kit for an Internet Marketer, and if you do not include a PR campaign as part of your marketing system and Internet Marketing mix, your competitiors will have an big edge on you.
PR's are excellent for establishing immediate credibility with Google and the Search engines.

PR’s are great for getting your message out to many syndicated websites through RSS feeds. They are especially good for building up long term backlinks and getting lots of links from highly ranked authority sites.

Contributions should be written in a journalistic style and the copy should be about something new or an interesting development. The content can be about anything.

PRWeb.com – paid press releases vary in price from $80 to $200 per release. The more expensive releases offer keyword hyperlinks with additional social bookmarking and media services.
Allows Geo-targetted distribution and is the Daddy of online PR much respected by the Search Engines(SEs.

TIP - Be sure to include the full URL path to get the benefit of a hyperlink e.g http://www.the-system.org

TIP - Max of three hyperlinks per PR which should be between 500 and 800 words. The first hyperlink you put in will be the one displayed with the Press Release unless you change sidebar options.

PRlog.org – Same process as the above paid version, human edited, free PR. Takes a little time and does not have the RSS distribution channels the paid version has. However worth the effort if done frequently and good for keeping costs down.

For continual Buzz you really need to release a minimum of 1 PR every month. If you want to hit it hard, you will need to do one interesting paid release every week and a few free ones. Be sure to include Technorati Keyword tags in the release and some images if possible

Press releases are also a backdoor into Google News results that appear in Universal Search. PR's are an essential part of conversation domination, the more Universal Search results that show up - the further down the rank your competitors are pushed!


Beat The System

The Dawn of the Marketron - The New Media Model Army of Expert Authority

Authors and Authority - think about that connection for a moment!

Cyberteers, Marketrons call them what you want!

They are out there and this is no episode of Dr Who or The X-Files

My last post about aliases got me thinking.

Probably a third of the authors, experts, and web personalities are made up personas. Yep they don't exist!

My take on it is this.

The art of the Internet Marketer is to promote websites to positions of authority.
One quite accepted method of doing this is to create information silos.

Another quick method is to promote yourself into a position of authority for a particular subject (set of keywords!).

The problem is this. Information and knowledge is 'silo'd as well and an expert in his field is just that - in his field!

To get around this it is necessary to create multiple personas.
In other words experteeism is silo'd!

here's how you do it

Get a name that hasn't been taken at Twitter, Facebook, Myspace etc etc - Grab those web 2.0 properties.
Invent a personal profile and stick to it.
Invent a glossy career in your chosen profession
List all your keywords as interests
Get a picture of yourself or a mate or someone from the public who is not famous and looks like they might be an expert in that field!

Write articles and post away in the buzz belt to your hearts content. Post RSS feeds from all your content and twitter etc to a personal blog and web 2.0 properties. Bookmark and ping all your posts and tweets!

Soon your new marketron will be the worlds leading expert in his field. Yummy yummy keyword rich link juice will be at your disposal!!


Beat The System

Killer Article Marketing Tactics

Articles are just as an important element of the marketing system as any other element, and if you want to be No.1 on Google for your chosen keywords then you have to engage seriously in the art of article marketing.
They are a method of publishing your content with embedded links on an authority site, which gives you loads of High value links juice.

There are two types of article directory :
1. The article authority site.
Those with very strict rules of submission, quality guidelines and human intervention. Silo'd organised quality google food!

2. FFA article directories
Large containers of generally poorer quality content, often spammy with categories unorganised.

My advice to you is only submit articles to the first type. Dont spin or reuse content and keep quality in mind at all times.

TIP - Place two keyword links in the author resource box. one to the homepage url and one deeplink to the subject landing page. Vary your resource box per article!

There are only three places that you really need to worry about -
EzineArticles, GoArticles and Articlesbase.

Ezine is Zeus and all your superior material should be posted here!
God likes articles that are between 500 and 800 words long and contain quality, content written with authority!
Always let God know first!

The other two have excellent RSS distribution and you will find your article reappearing on other article sites, usually complete with your backlinks!

Getting authority, most views, author status etc then becomes just a matter of syndication and republishing! All these sites provide RSS feeds for the articles!

Tip: Promote yourself as an author as well by taking the RSS feeds for your author profile and republishing these! (i've got an army of made up people at the top of G**g for their names!! (wisdom of crowds my arse! tee hee!)).

Beat The System

What is Search Engine Buzz? - Links to Infinity and Beyond

Buzz - Light Years Ahead!

OR

How to create links to Infinity and Beyond

Internet Marketing is all about creating buzz! Hive Noise! Becoming the talk of the town is the ultimate goal of The System!
Buzz is ongoing......
Buzz is about continuity, as soon as the noise stops so does the publicity!

Web 2.0 is surrounded by something I call the 'buzz belt'

It consists predominantly of places to make noise.

In particular noise with embedded backlinks.

A lot of people might consider buzz as spam or black hat - to those I say, it's what Google Wants, It's what everone else is doing, If you don't you are dead in the water, getting ranked these days IS about he who can shout the loudest and have the most backlinks - Forget what any of these so called marketing Gurus try tell you otherwise ! -

Getting high ranks on Google is partly, perhaps even largely, about getting keyword rich links through continual self promotion - full stop period...

Buzz belt

1. Twitter - Global real time noise!
2. Blogs - Personal noise! Blogger blogs are the ultimate tool for making noise in the Buzz belt!
3. Social Bookmarking - Like Dog posting - Doing what dogs like to do on lamp posts!
4. Commenting - Making more noise all over the place, either personal or informational
5. Social Network Comments - Niche and personal noise

All web 2.0 properties will create a certain amount of buzz, but some more than others. For example I don't consider articles or PR releases etc to be part of the buzz belt, these properties are more valuable as viral static high ranking long term links.

Buzz needs to be done on an ongoing continual basis, preferably without spikes, although these will inevitably occur when you release content. Buzz content can re-used and repackaged for extra link juice and more buzz squeezed out of the content even long after the first noise has gone quiet!

Beat The System

Death of the Newspaper - Arise Sir RSS - The Birth of Peoples Journalism

In case you haven't noticed there's not so much rubbish on your doormat these days!
Thanks to the green revolution of paper free news - The Internet! - our letterboxes are far less full of spam and junk, whether they are local FreeAds style newspapers or national celebrity milking rags, like the British Gutterpress.

Hurrah! Bye bye bad old media with your introverted political claptrap and stories about nobodies being outed for doing the things that 'everyone' does! ....

Hello world!

Yep! in case you haven't noticed - and there are many 'local' niche papers that will survive the current ' transformation' in information (news) delivery...

The old 'bastions' of news, those deciders of what we want to hear! the free press, the fourth estate - are going bust!

Bye Bye! the death of another hierarchical structure should not be mourned! it is a move towards wisdom of crowds! More better diversified information of size!

Here's an interesting view from Two old farts who have lost their Industry - The old press - journalism

Bow down all ye and gaze upon the New News of the World in AWE - Shock and AWE!

RSS will provide people with their choice of news from their trusted authorities.

Similarly RSS will be used to construct websites of authority and distribute - syndicate to be more precise, content to other hubs worldwide!

RSS is the lifeblood of content driven marketing and the Social Web!

Now what's the fuss about those old 33rpm's

Through the pain barrier with the King of Content

EzineArticles.com were kind enough to send us ythis email which we think is worth redistributing here.
Ezinearticles.com is arguably the most important of all the article directories, it's only failure being it's Rss distribtion services are fairly non existant

This new article template is the perfect cure for your ideal customer's pain.

This template is based on the concept of pain. More specifically, the pain your ideal customers may experience and the pain reliever you can provide. Two simple questions form the backbone of this template:

1. What are some PAIN points that your ideal customers experience?


2. What are some STRENGTHS/BENEFITS your company delivers to remove or prevent those pain points?

Let's imagine you're going to write an article using this template. The article is targeted at small business owners who are curious about article marketing. Some pain points you might consider addressing would be:

• Pain of losing a competitive advantage


• Pain of not having traffic


• Pain of not being recognized


• Pain of not knowing how to get your articles & message out to the market


• Pain of not wanting to screw up when trying the article marketing process


• Etc...

You'd want to pick only (1) pain point for each article. For this particular example, let's say you pick the first one, "Pain of losing a competitive advantage." With that in mind, you then identify the specific ingredients (strengths/benefits) of article marketing that would help relieve this particular pain. Some ingredients (strengths/benefits) might include:

• Worldwide exposure of your articles, and hence your products or services


• Scalable marketing


• Combined benefits of increased website traffic and improved credibility


• Zero up-front cash investment


• Highly targeted

The next step is to build your article around the pain point and the prescribed pain reliever ingredients. Each of the ingredients is explained in terms of how it can help alleviate the reader's particular pain.

The article wraps up by summarizing how your suggested pain reliever has many of the ingredients necessary to cure your reader's pain. Then of course your Resource Box gives them a link to obtaining your suggested pain reliever. In the case of this example, that link would probably be http://EzineArticles.com/submit/ or perhaps to the EzineArticles home page.

In a nutshell, the Pain Points article template works like this:

1. Choose (1) pain point of your ideal customer.


2. In the first paragraph or two clearly describe the target niche and identify with their specific pain point.


3. The next paragraph introduces your particular brand of pain reliever and an overview of the ingredients (strengths/benefits) that pertain directly to the reader's pain.


4. In the following paragraphs, these ingredients are explained in-depth in terms of how each can help alleviate the reader's particular pain.


5. Before closing the article, be sure to give an example or two of how others have gotten relief from their pain by following this prescription.


6. The closing paragraphs pull all of the ingredients back together to reinforce your pain reliever as the right one.


7. Finally, it's important that your Resource Box provides the reader access to your suggested solution for their pain.

At the risk of totally overdoing our medicine metaphor... this particular article template should be an easy pill to swallow. It's targeted, fairly simple to understand and it shows empathy for your niche customers. Best of all, this one template can provide many, many articles. How many is only limited to the number of pain points you can identify.

Set a goal for yourself to write at least (5) articles this week using this template. Then leave a comment here about what you discovered along the way:
http://blog.EzineArticles.com/2009/06/pain-points-article-template.html

How to channel Ezine link juice to your moneysite

Publishing articles on ezinearticles.com seems to be the rage for marketers of every niche and product out there.

but how do you stand out from the crowd and get extra link love from the host?

Well, the answer is actually staring you in the face like most things on the Internet.

Let's take a look at one of my favourite niches and one of the most competitive in the world! (

Car Insurance!!


Scroll down to the bottom of the page and you will see the MOST PUBLISHED articles section .


Scroll down to the bottom again and you will see the first article example in it's most published position.

Now I've told you all this it will probably change, but the principle is the same for any article in those sections


Most Published

How did it get there?

simple.......

1. It's quality information but it actually gets all these extra ezine pages pointing to it because it is the most published article in that section.

Why is it the most published?

Because we have syndicated it across hundreds of web 2.0 properties that are on theme!

Most visited

You'll also see that you can get the same result or double if its the same article by being in the most viewed article section.

how do you get this?

Well this one is not so easy, short of getting all you mates to read it!

But thanks to some tactics from one of our followers at http://www.twitter.com/paulmoran we found @listwarrior who tweets links to his ezinearticles.

easy huh!

Furthermore, by syndicating your articles across the web you are not only going to be the most published, but are also naturally going to rank in the most viewed category as more people have more doorways to find you.
You are also empowering your article within ezines, by empowering ezines itself, because you are passing lots of linkjuice back to it from the sites where it is syndicated to a node at ezines that you have some control over.

Get publishing! and Beat The System

RSS for SEO

It's really simple syndication but it really seems to scare people away! An RSS file is just an XML file available for copying.



RSS is an integral part of Search Engine Marketing these days and it is imperative that you have feeds from your website or content you've created for web 2.0 properties.

RSS allows others out there, good and bad, to grab your content for their own purposes.

RSS allows and encourages and some advanced techniques for viral spread, so it is imperative that you have links back to your money pages in the first sentence or two of the RSS feed as this is often the only part of the feed displayed.

More importantly RSS allows you to create new web 2.0 properties, and therefore new authority links! without having to rewrite and redistribute the content each time it changes, and without incurring Google duplicate content penalties!

More about how to really take advantage of RSS in the mewmbers section soon!



Beat The System

GoCompare.com Google's Ghost Dance

Didn't if feel good - even for a few days, that one of the big Adwords and TV campaign money payers got a good Google slapping - Not!

see http://www.insuranceblog.co.uk - Go Compare Elsewhere!

If you analyse the hundreds of comments and blogs on the subject out there, there are possibly two lessons to learn from this mini whirlwind of SEO furore.

There is no content distribution (paid or otherwise) slap!

When a site as big as GoCompare.com changes it's structure in a large way it's rankings are affected for a few days.

OR

Google was playing games to see your reaction!

I'm not going to cancel all those poor paying affiliate schemes I set up last week in the hope of earning a few quid by ranking high for their keyword (not), but a few savvy SEO'rs made a big storm in a teacup over a small event and a few lucky ones picked up all that juicy keyword traffic for a few days!

So Who'se Next?

My money is on the moneysupermarket - they've got to either rebrand or get a mini slap sooner or later.....see you at the top of Google!

I was drawn by the Sirens of Titan - The Birth of Ice-Nine Marketing

The ultimate model of connectivity using topolocial reasoning to define the shape and structure of the Internet is Ice-Nine.

Check out Ice-nine theory at Wikipedia. ice nine theory

This is the same ultimate virality model that the system uses........


Ice Nine Marketing Revealed - the top secret google can opener!

Ice Nine Marketing is dendronitic or tree structured in the mechanisms it uses to deliver the content to nodes at deep levels within the Internet. The content that it delivers can be anything that can be transmitted under http protocols.

Ice nine structures or entities such as video distribution platforms, are always of the one to many relationship. Viruses can spread rapidly through a population - so can good content!
The concepts of Ice-Nine Marketing are confusing to the unitiated however it can at this point be described (to all you non subscribers reading this) as a series of initial triggers that deliver or push content to a selection of pre-determined nodes, Web 2.0 properties.
These nodes act as feeding stations and from this point onwards your content is grabbed in an attraction, many to one relationship.
Jack up the process and you create and ice9 situation that rips open google and dominates all the search results with backlinks that people have chosen to put out there for you!
There are Ice Nine accelerator tools that speed the content distribution process.

Remember the expression - you are going to hear a lot about Ice9 Marketing and content distribution. If you don't you must retire!

If you understand every word of this then you will be a very rich and viral person. All will be explained in the members area of The System - sign up today!