05.15.13
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Penguin 2.0 – what’s in store for SEO this time?


Okay, don’t rip me a new one about the style in the Scribd pdf below.  They’re notes taken from Matt Cutts‘ recent video about what we can expect in the imminent (confirmed) Penguin 2.0 update.

As I was taking these notes, using VideoNot.es, a freeware Drive app created for use with Coursera, I hit upon an unconventional way to adapt blog posts to your own theme.

Switch off your brain to produce natural content

The theory is, if you switch your brain off from adapting the existing content to your site’s theme, your notes will reflect a much more unique article.

Not only unique in content, but a unique perspective.  Think about, these notes will rattle fast and you’ll have to force your knowledge of the niche between your note-taking to keep up with the audio.

You may have keyword density in mind, word count and other factors that generally distract you from the real purpose of the blog.

You’ve got that purpose pegged as: providing answers for your readership’s questions, right?  Yes, the very essence of search, without which there would be only an ocean of self-promotion and how boring would that be?

Once you’ve nailed the ‘purpose’ concept, it shouldn’t take too long before you’re producing top quality content that both Google and, more importantly, your readership loves.

YouTube testing just one of 4 steps in the new curation process

I’m still testing the four components to make sure the results are okay before I pontificate about the process too much.  Any Sherlocks amongst you will have spotted three corners, at least.

And, no, I’m not going to point the fourth out if you’ve not fathomed it yourself.  You’re a hop, skip and a jump away from putting the last piece of the jigsaw together from here, as it is.

So, I’m off to try out the theory for tomorrow’s Car Insurance and Freelance Supermarket articles. I’ll hopefully be brimming with excitement this time tomorrow, providing I’m not up all night here.

Matt Cutts’ video warns of harsh summer ahead for black hats post Penguin 2-point-oh!

Until then, please feel free to skim the Penguin 2.0 update notes, notes which will form the basis of a unique article under normal circumstances.

There’s additional info about what the Google Spam Team has in store over the coming weeks and months. If you’re black-hatting or breaching advertorial guidelines, as Matt says:

it’s going to be a more eventful summer for you

than for the white hat seo guys.

p.s. – just tried Microsoft Windows Movie Maker – the quality of audio is so much better than recording to YouTube direct.  Think I’m going with WMV files, providing there’s no issue getting them up onto YouTube.

Plus, the WMV editorial kit looks a little more intuitive and concise.  Could have a bit of fun with this lot.  Roll over Stan Kubrick…

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04.19.13
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Using Writer and Split Screen to post draft text to your blog (test)


I’d just like to try an experiment with today’s post. I think I’ve found an answer to the age-old problem of being able to type your research/blogging notes into your browser with your research window still open, yet retain the flexibility of the Internet on both sides of the productivity equation.

Are you with me?

For donkeys’, I’ve been looking for writing software that allows you to split the screen in your browser, type directly into the Internet and yet work independently on both halves of the window simultaneously.  Too much too ask?

What Note-writing software is readily available?

Evernote, NoteTab Light and MS OneNote all have their plusses, but none offer the all-in-one package.

Evernote’s confirmed its main purpose is not a text editor and currently has no plans to introduce dual-window viewing/editing.

NoteTab Light’s pretty good, but that all depends on how you are working with nothing but plain text and 100% off-line.

MS OneNote is so versatile and you can keep it on top while you shrink the open window in your browser, but you can sometimes only shrink the window so much.

Also, the fact that you can’t align the content in the window right or left and you can’t stop OneNote scrolling discounts the combinations as 100% productive tools.

Chrome help had to have the answer…didn’t it?

Continue reading →

04.17.13
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Why ride the Business rollercoaster in the cheap seats? Invest and make it fun!


See my take on Scoop.it -in topic: Social Sharing SEO
design hosting conversion

Owning a business can be heaven. Freedom to call your own shots, manage your own risk, live by your values, and spit in the eye of all those nay-sayers

Zebedeerox‘s insight:

There’ll be many bloggers, freelancer copywriters and would-be online entrepreneurs currently either trying to make their mark, decide if the time’s right for them to go for it or evolve their existing business.

Spotting an opportunity is one thing. Having the balls to go for it and make a success of it is another entirely.

Making a go of life under your own steam requires a HUGE leap of faith.

However, you can at least provide yourself with a safety net if you approach your opportunity in the appropriate manner and are prepared for all eventualities.

Strap in – it could be a bumpy ride

There are several ways that you can at least exercise damage limitation and prevent yourself looking amateurish if what you opine is your chance to make a mark eventually turns out to be a dud.

This latest article by Copyblogger underlines the importance of understanding that your business is never always going to run smoothly along the flat.  Where’s the fun in that, anyway?

There are ways to take the edge off the tasks you don’t like doing and subsequently give you the best possible chance of success…if you have the best tools for groundwork, implementation and conversion in the first instance.

Running your own business is not one learning curve. It’s a veritable roller-coaster ride of ups, downs, highs and lows.

Protecting yourself with a sufficient safety harness, strong enough to keep you secure at the trough of sharpest of drops, can be the difference between being thrown out of the carriage or keeping you in the driving seat to let the momentum – and the thrill – carry you on towards the next peak.

And, yes, when you’re on the way up, up and up, the landscape does take on a new, very different perspective.

You must learn that, to get to the end of the ride and enjoy it to its potential, you have to let go some time.  You cannot possibly get the maximum thrill when you’re bogged down with worrying about safety at every turn.

Yes, even when you’re upside down a quarter of a mile in the air, Blackpool Beach is where the sky’s supposed to be and where there were donkeys a moment ago now lies the great blue yonder and fluffy clouds.

That’s where outsourcing comes in (chug, chug, chug, chug, chug…and we’re out of the rollercoaster analogy, now, for those of you scared of heights).

If you are going to grow as a business person, you have to be prepared to invest in your business.

By finding qualified, like-minded professionals you have the opportunity to turn your investment in them full circle into an investment in your business.

And, yes, if they’re good enough, why not bring them along for the ride, too!?  Reap what you sow, and all that malarkey.

If you’re hoping to get into any sort of business that involves making a splash online using professional, quality content and you’ve not stumbled across Brian Clark and the Copyblogger team yet, head on over there, now.

The particular article linked through the header (above) is by Sonia Simone and outlines what you need to do to be accepted as a serious entity online.

If now’s the time to start taking your online presence seriously, investing in you and building your brand, there are few better places to start your education than Copyblogger.

See the full article by Sonia Simone on www.copyblogger.com

04.08.13
by

SEO Pricing Models 2013: 5 Ways to Price Your SEO Services


See on Scoop.it – abs workout solutions

Zebedeerox‘s insight:

Cracking article on Fat Joe looking at what to charge for #seoservices.

 

As #freelance copywriters or #contractors, we all have an idea of our rate.

 

However, as #seo becomes part and parcel (the box, the wrapping and pretty much anything you want to to put inside your package) of copywriting services, it can be a bugger to know what to charge.

 

This article throws caution to the wind, appraising the ‘gold, silver and bronze’ route to pricing #seomarketing packages amongst others.

 

Conversely, if you’re an SEO company who has an idea on what it expects to pay for different levels of copywriting:

1 – spun, BMR-type articles (just you dare!)

2a – 400-500 word manually spun articles, written with a simple nod to SEO

2b – 400-500 word manually spun articles that apply the latest SEO content techniques and tailored to your theme

3 – 1,000 word articles to spec 2a or 2b

4 – 2,000 word, white-paper-esque articles to spec 2a or 2b

 

…it would be awesome to have your input here to build up a price model for SEO content articles.

 

The reason I’ve segregated between 2a & 2b is because lots of webmasters are giving up on pleasing Google and adopting #ppcadvertising or social media integration as their main sources of traffic.

 

As freelancers, it’s often difficult to persuade clients that paying for the best copywriting quality is worth it (great article on Search Engine Land recently about 2-years post-penguin and how crappy articles were still managing to rank: http://searchengineland.com/google-panda-two-years-later-5-questions-with-hubpages-ceo-paul-edmondson-149767).

 

If there was a resource that contractors could point potential clients to with what they could expect for their dollar, our quotes would be less of a shock.

 

By more accurately budgeting for better results, SEO would get a better name, delivering only the finest quality and (hopefully) the best SERPs and the scam merchants (dodgy SEOs & article spinners) would soon be relegated to also-rans.

 

I suppose that’s me thinking idealistically, again.

 

But hey – both sectors in the SEO world want our reputations upheld (if not improved) and to be paid what we’re worth without having to convince clients that we’re L’Oreal. 

 

Am I asking too much?

 

And does this resource already exist, but lies buried so far beneath pages of dodgy SEO and copywriting that it’s unavailable for public and commercial consumption?

 

Look forward to your input, guys and gals…

See on www.fatjoe.co.uk

03.09.13
by

Showcase your business on LinkedIn with BrandYouBrilliant


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See on Scoop.it – UK Golf

#Golf Drive: LinkedIn The Clubhouse, UK Tour 2013 Guest Post by Kay @ Brand You Brilliant #LinkedIn #socialmedia Source: golfdrive.tumblr.com via Jason on Pinterest Who wants to host a “LinkedIn Th…

Zebedeerox‘s insight:

Whilst there’s probably some truth in the rumour that golf is yet to get to grips wholeheartedly with social media, LinkedIn members would argue the contrary.

There are some notable exceptions, of course; The Bleacher Report‘s golf columnists excel at optimising their content for social channels.

Thinking about it – as I was prompted to do by a guest post on It Drives Like A Golf, yesterday – let’s temper that first statement about LinkedIn.

While the members in the golfing fraternity may argue the toss, it seems that there are a lot more professionals in the niche who’d like to be able to get involved, but can’t.

They either haven’t the social-savvy virtues or world-wide-web wherewithall to create a relevant following or create enough of a ripple to make spending time on LinkedIn worth their while or don’t want to admit those shortcomings.

Why else would they not use one of the most prolific networking sites on the planet to make new contacts or suss out new opportunities?

The handful of networkers on LinkedIn who’ve took the bull by the horns and created golf-oriented groups seem to be having it all their own way.

Should ‘social’ networking really work like that?  Kay Hebbourn (and I) don’t think so.

Within those groups, it always seem to be the group instigators or self-confessed salesmen and marketers who attract the greatest following, spark the greatest reaction and command the discussion threads.

Kay’s company, BrandYouBrilliant, has spent years working in the social media sphere, one of their strategic areas of concentration being the golfing fraternity.

This year, BrandYouBrilliant is going on a UK Tour and will be passing a clubhouse near you.  Well, hopefully.

Kay and her merry band have identified the very real need for more golfers to get involved in the networking aspect of LinkedIn.  No great Sherlock skills needed there.

A lot of the action that used to take place on the greens and fairways of the UK’s golf courses is now taking place online, meaning essential opinions are not being considered.

Perhaps even more worryingly, golf club memberships and 19th hole activity are suffering terribly as the golf course is no longer the place for networking it once was.

What’s exceptional about BrandYouBrilliant’s Tour is that it will not only teach the virtues of getting the most from LinkedIn, but by having clubhouses host the stages of the 2013 Tour, it’s bringing much interest – and revenue – back to the golf clubs themselves.

BrandYouBrilliant has put together a fantastic itinerary for the package they’re offering for their world tour of UK clubhouses, all highlighted in Kay’s guest post through the article attached to this here Scoop.

If you have anything to do with running a golf club or are in any way associated with the golfing industry and you feel you need to develop your social media acumen, then I urge you to speak to BrandYouBrilliant.

Her training, as it says on the relevant page on her website, will teach you:

How to grow your network, get new leads and make sales on LinkedIn.

It’s a course that genuinely will pay for itself.

If you’d rather deal with a familiar face than contact Kay unannounced, please feel free to e-mail me first to make the introductions: darrelldoo@zebedeerox.com with the subject “Brand me brilliant”

Use this e-mail, too, if you’d like to join my expanding network on LinkedIn or discuss guest-posting on It Drives Like a Golf as Kay did, no problem.  Full instructions for guest posting are on the submission page, here: http://golfdrive.tumblr.com/submit

If, on the other hand, you’ve no such hang-ups, you can contact Kay direct on 01229 588414 and just say to Kay, “Jay said ‘Hey!’”

Have a great weekend; I look forward to hearing from you.

Jason D.

See on getthetwatson.wordpress.com

This UML diagram describes the domain of Linke...

UML diagram describes LinkedIn domain social networking system. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

03.02.13
by

Infographic: Get More Out Of Google


Shared from Social Sharing SEO on: Scoop.it

Posted 11/23/11 in

Zebedeerox‘s insight:

What keyboard shortcuts do you use – or even know exist – when you’re browsing in Chrome?

Know how to isolate specific text in amongst a sea of trawling content?  Now you can.

The attached infographic was designed with students in mind, but as ever-developing scholarly types ourselves, it’s a great little cheat-sheet for freelancers, too.

It’s perhaps even more beneficial for freelancers whose product is of a digital content nature.  Not only will it help speed up (re)search, but also add a string to your bow that you can pontificate about to potential clients.

If you’re researching background material, for example, rather than keep mousing up to the address bar, thus distracting your fingers from the keyboard, you can hit CTRL+L and  your cursor will go straight there.

That’s a new one on me and will – over a lifetime of blogging yet to come – doubtless save hours of repositioning, let alone help prevent RSI.

Once you’re in the address bar, were you aware that you could actually type in a mathematical problem (using basic functions & parantheses) and the answer will appear in your browser?

This will save freelancers hours.

Rather than loading your calculator every time you need to work out your bid based on how many dollars per 100 words you charge, you can CTRL+L to get yourself into the address bar, then type in the relevant calculation, e.g.: (5,400/100)*6.

The example above will calculate your bid for a 5,400-word project @ $6/100 words.  Remarkable.

And don’t you just hate it when you have to search a topic that could mean two different sets of SERPs?  And sod’s law states that the most popular results never collerate to the subject you’re researching.

Yesterday, I bid on a job for a ‘subs for bust content website’.  I’d got the gist of what ‘subs’ entailed, but wanted clarification.  What came up?

Baguettes, substitutes for sports teams and u-boats.

In this Google infographic, there are handy tips showing how you can have more control over what’s delivered in the SERPs, based on different instructions you give to the search engine.

That’s one across the bows of Google, who are trying to rebrand your keywords as you type, displaying results that have more ads potency, rather than relevant results to your subject.

Read more about that, here: Google keywords rebranding

Not only does the ‘Get more from Google’ infographic highlight the best practises for Google Search (wouldn’t it be great if people knew how to search properly, let alone use their keyboard to surf more efficiently?), it also concludes with a few scholarly tips about article creation, similarly constructive for the freelance blogger.

Okay – I’ve said enough.  I’ll let the HackCollege.com infographic tell you the rest.

If you know any search-struggling students or frustrated freelance-furrowers, be sure to share this infographic with them, won’t you?

Thanks for listening, Zeb. x

See on www.stumbleupon.com

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