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Want to Be a Guest Writer?

November 26, 2005 by Liz

There’s a new Be a Guest Writer page in the sidebar. Here’s what it says.

Community and Conversation

Successful-Blog is community in conversation. That’s why the header says Successful and Oustanding Bloggers. Bloggers are constantly talking and trading techniques and strategies for how we keep our blogs and our businesses growing. . . . When we find one, it’s hard to keep quiet. We want to know if someone else knows more about it than we do. . . . Imagine the benefits of a community thinking and talking together–a wealth of resources right here. Not to mention the friendships made. –ME Strauss

Want to be a Guest Writer?

Have stories to swap or ideas to add to the conversation?

Is there something you do that works really well?
Have you had a success you’d like to share?
Have you figured out a useful trick or two?
Have you got a tool or tip we don’t know about?
Have you figured out the hard way a pitfall to avoid?
Have you written an article you’d like to submit?
Have other ideas how we might collaborate?

Here’s what you do:

Write your submission in your own words.
E-mail it Liz at lizsun2@gmail.com.
No attachments please. Thanks. Feel free to ask as many questions as you like.

Know that I write and edit for a living and that people which means, I might make minor changes in what you write. It’s the editor’s curse. We can’t help it. You can take heart that professional editors don’t change meaning without talking about it, nor do we make writers look bad in print.

Have a post already written that you think should be here?

Got a post filled with fresh, relevant content that readers here would enjoy? Something that adds to the conversation?

Does your post talk about something that we haven’t covered about yet?
Does it explore a new angle on an old subject?
Do you have a post about a tool or strategy that belongs in the Survival Kit?
Is it a post about your early blogging experiences that might help a new blogger?

Here’s what you do:

Read your post over. Dust it off to make sure it’s still current. Write a brief description and send that description and a link to Liz at lizsun2@gmail.com. Please don’t send the post text. No attachments please. Thanks. You’re welcome to ask questions first if you have any.

Again, that I write and edit for a living and that people which means, I might make minor changes in what you write. It’s the editor’s curse. We can’t help it. You can take heart that professional editors don’t change meaning without talking about it, nor do we make writers look bad in print.

I’m delighted to share the space with a well-voiced article on a topic appropriate for Successful-Blog readers. I’m ooking forward to adding your voice to the Successful-Blog list of Guest Writers.

Most articles appear on the front within days of when I first read them. When will your article be in Successful-Blog?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Thanks to Week 5 SOBs

November 25, 2005 by Liz

Successful and Outstanding Bloggers

Let me introduce the bloggers
who have earned this official badge of achievement,

and the right to call themselves
Successful Blog SOBs.

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They take the conversation to their readers,
contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger.

I thank all of our SOBs for thinking what we say is worth passing on.
Good conversation shared can only improve the blogging community.

Should anyone question this badge’s validity, send him or her directly to me. This award comes with a full “Liz said so” guarantee. It is endorsed by Kings of the Hemispheres, Martin and Michael, and backed by my brothers, Angelo and Pasquale.

Want to become an SOB?

If you’re an SO-Wanna-B, you can see the whole list of SOBs and learn how to be one by visiting the SOB Hall of Fame. Click the link or visit the What IS an SOB?! page in the sidebar.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Leaving a Guy a Place to Stand

November 25, 2005 by Liz

Whenever I give myself room to breathe, everyone around me gets nicer.

It’s an odd thing to write under the masthead Successful Blog. It’s such an opportunity, such an “Okay, Big Shot,” moment. It’s a chance to model best practices, not just write about them.

The writer’s credo is Don’t tell, show. How much closer to that could I get than this?

I can talk about building community by answering comments relentlessly, but it’s so much more powerful when I do it and my readers actually experience how it feels. I can explain how to correct your public mistakes, but again how much greater impact it has when I actually do what I say. If I do this job right, everything I do has the potential to have a tiny positive effect on the blogosphere.

So I share with you my learning curve at the end of one month. I’ve learned.

That people respond positively when you treat them like people who are worth talking to. They pitch in, share ideas, and form a community that’s fun to be part of.
That when someone takes a negative viewpoint, it works better to take the conversation offline.
That the blogosphere doesn’t need me to keep it working right.
That keeping focus on my readers takes care of almost every problem. (Except how I’m going to pay for my son’s college. 🙂 )

In 1972, a friend said to me “You always leave the other guy a place to stand.”

That advice has served me every day since. It works with everyone from 6 to 106. We all need a place to stand–no matter how scary we look. It can be the smallest thing. Here’s a fun read about Giving the Other Guy a Place to Stand that explains what I’m talking about.

If I could choose one best practice to pass on, that would be the one–that everyone in the blogosphere leaves lots more room for the other guy to stand.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

To the Readers of Successful Blog

November 24, 2005 by Liz

It may not seem so when you watch me blog, but I have a big self-conscious streak. I don’t mind people looking at my work, but I get a bit shy when they’re looking at me. It’s been a problem since I was short and small. I have to look past that to write this post. I have something important to say.

Today is November 24. It’s one month since the day I met all of you at Successful Blog.

You have been the best friends, readers, and colleagues a blogger could hope for. You’ve given me time to adjust to the culture. You’ve shown me the most enthusiastic support. I’m proud to be working with you, learning with you, and doing whatever it is that we do here.

I the readers of Successful Blog.

Thank you. I mean it. Thank you.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

That heart still isn’t big enough.

SEO–Link Checking Tools

November 24, 2005 by Liz

Practical SEO for Every Blogger

Checking Backlinks

Backlinks are an exciting part of watching your blog grow. Each link is a statement, a vote, that moves your blog a bit higher in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Here are some ways for finding out about your links.

Talk Digger
Duncan Riley introduced Fred Giasson’s Talk Digger in an article in the Blog Herald this summer and I’ve been using it since. It’s a quick way to check your links at Bloglines, Blog Pulse, Feedster, Technorati, Ice Rocket, BlogDigger, PubSub, MSN, and Google all at the same time. To quote Talk Digger: Talk Digger is a meta-search engine. It asks major search engines: “Who links that URL?” The results will then be processed and displayed on Talk Digger. This is a free web service developed by Frederick Giasson.

Who Links to Me
Another tool you may have seen around the web is WhoLinkstoMe. Paste the Who Links to Me linking code into your template. Click through the link to check your own or another site’s Google Page Rank, and links found by Who Links to Me, Blogrolling, Google, Yahoo, MSN, Technorati, and Icerocket.

Related Links
Nick Wilson at Performancing had this method to check what Google considers related links. Type in the Google search box: related: yourdomain.com . Then he suggests you review the links to see what kind of sites come up. You would want a strong theme to show through. Your goal would be to answer these questions with a “yes.”

Are most of the sites on same theme or topic as your blog?
Are there some authorities in your niche?

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THIS JUST IN:

Mark Wade of Blog Marketing, Blog Promotion for Newbies offered this addition to our list.

iWEBTOOL Backlink Checker

Ara Pehlivanian of the site of the same name offers this:

You might also want to check out the Firefox extension SEO Links by WebmasterBrain.

These should give you something to do while that turkey’s in the oven.
Happy Holiday if you’re having one. If you’re not, declare one.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

SEO–Positioning Keywords for Readers and Search Engines

November 23, 2005 by Liz

Practical SEO for Every Blogger

Keywords and Writing

You’ve picked a topic and 2-3 keywords that you want to focus on. Time for the writing to begin. To produce quality, relevant content, writers really need to focus on readers. There’s really no getting around that. So I recommend you write your post without a thought of SEO, and save the keyword positioning for the editing stage. Attempting to do both at once is like trying to serve two masters, you won’t do either well.

The Key to Keywords
Don’t pick a key that will open every door on the block, or a key that only you will be able to find. Translation: Avoid key words that are too broad and likely to be in every document. At the other extreme, don’t choose words that only you use. But then, you knew that.

Use keywords naturally. Overuse of keywords is to search engines as overuse of home office deductions is to tax forms–it raises a flag that you might be trying to beat the system. Avoid that. Using too many keywords is not only dangerous, it’s unfair to readers who come to you expecting a post that is well-written prose, worth reading.

Keywords and Formats
Posts come in many sizes and flavors. This section actually gives you two lists in one. It’s a main list of formats your posts might take. You might use it to spark your imagination before you start writing when you’re looking for some variety. Within that list is the information on where your keywords might best be positioned after each kind of post is written.

Post Formats and Keyword Information
Lists. In a list, keywords should be in the title, any list description, and only as necessary in the items.

Q & A or Interview. Use keywords in the questions, and enourage the interviewee to use them in his or her answers–if the interviewee finds they come naturally.

Informational Essay. The title should carry the keywords, if it can. Subheads–h1, h2, h3–should repeat the appropriate keywords for each section. The paragraphs that follow each subhead would naturally use the keywords the section content discusses.

Running text with multiple links. When you offer links with an explanation, it would seem important to the reader that you put the descriptive content before the link. Keywords could be part of that description. There also seems to be no reason that keywords couldn’t be part of the hot-linked text.

Multipage posts with or without the more –> feature. Remember that you need to repeat your keywords again at the beginning of each new page. The spiders see each page as a new article, so to speak.

Graphics, Tables, or Photos with text support. Position keywords in the image description as well as in the appropriatie parts of the text. For the image description, use this tip Gerald McGarry left for us as a comment yesterday.

As far as images go, the accepted way to assign text to them is to add an alt=”description of image” tag to the image. This gives the search engine something to chew on, but more importantly it provides valuable information for blind users who rely on screen reader software.

Five Simple Keyword Rules
Other formats, those intriguing things, that we come up with every day follow the same basic rules as described above. What are those rules?

1. Position keywords after the post is written.
2. Keep the number of keywords limited.
3. Avoid overusing keywords in the document.
4. Position keywords in titles, headers, early in text, and on new pages.
5. Position keywords in graphic descriptions as appropriate.

Some Fun Tools. Play with them. Then put them away. 🙂

Keyword Density Analyzer
Find out what the key words on your blog already are

Overture Keyword Selector Tool

Remember all of the keywords in the world have no relevance on their own. They need quality content. Write for your readers and the rankings will follow. So will the readers.

–ME “Liz” Strauss