blogsimplified.com

I stumbled across these videos from Andy Wibbel on YouTube. I thought they were were worth remembering, so I’m sharing them here.

Blunder #1: Not owning your own domain name

Blunder #2: Not having a tightly focused niche.

Blunder #3: Too much crap in your columns

Blunder #4: Not measuring traffic and statistics

Blunder #5: Not having email alerts

There is an easier way to upgrade from WordPress 2.6.3 to WordPress 2.6.5. Note that WordPress skipped version 2.6.4 because there was a fake 2.6.4 floating around out there.

From the new WordPress 2.6.5, you can just upload and replace the following files to fix the security issue:

wp-includes/feed.php
wp-includes/version.php

Sending out press releases is a great way to get picked up by news sites and blogs. If you choose sites that link back to you, you can also increase your rankings in Google. But which press release sites should you use? My goal was to separate the contenders from the pretenders.

I combined the Mashable press release distribution list, plus a bunch of other lists, and then did my own Google searches to put together a definitive list of press release distribution sites. Then I checked every site to see that it was actually a press release distribution site. I cut out the sites that were closed down or taken over by spam sites. Here is the mega list.

The sites are ranked by Google Page Rank (higher is better), Compete.com unique monthly users (more is better), and Alexa rank (lower number is better). Please leave a comment if this list was useful, or if you find something that I missed.

Writing and syndicating original articles is one of the best ways to increase your search standings on Google. Not all article submission sites are equal, however. Here are the top 40 article submission sites. I did the work so you don’t have to.

The article submission sites are listed and ranked by Google PageRank, Alexa rank, monthly unique users on Compete.com, and search volume for phrases containing the domain name as determined by the Google keyword tool in Adwords.

I looked through every decent book on Search Engine Optimization, including Search Engine Optimization for Dummies, and a number of the leading sites including SEOmoz.com and SEOBook.com, and a number of articles listing the top article submission sites.

All the lists I could find were terribly out of date. Many of the sites listed on the top SEO sites went to spammy sites that wanted to sell you an ebook or training course. Most of the sites listed in Search Engine Optimization for Dummies, published just a year ago, were simply out of business.

Many blogs and ezines pick up content from the top article sites and republish it. One common question about syndicating your content through article submission sites is the following: Doesn’t this duplicate the article all over the web and thereby reduce search standing?

Syndicating articles does create lots of duplicate content, but if you craft your articles with carefully keyworded links back to your page, then the net effect is that your page should rank higher, and you should gain lots of new backlinks and exposure on the web.

Maybe I will try it with this article and see what happens. First, I will make sure Google indexes the article here on http://blogsimplified.com.

Hopefully this list is useful. Please leave a comment if you find any good sites that I missed.

I found this presentation covering 25 distinct styles of blogging to be insightful and helpful, both in understanding the blogs I come across and also in helping me think about the point of my own blog.

By embedding the ShareThis button from ShareThis.com, you can easily allow your users to post a link to your website on 43 different services, all from one link.

This can be a great way to promote your site, and ShareThis makes it easy. I looked up the list of 43 social sites from ShareThis that allow you to post content. They are not all equal!

If the reason you want to share a link is to generate traffic, I thought it might be helpful to know which sharing sites actually have the most traffic. The list below is a ranking of the sites that you can share to using the ShareThis button. I have ranked the sites by monthly unique users as measured by Compete.com.

I put the sites into three categories: social, blog, and news/mark. Social is for social networks like Facebook and Myspace. Blog is for blogging sites like WordPress and Blogger. News/mark is a combination of social news sites and social bookmarking sites, because these two categories are pretty much the same thing these days.

These are not precise categories because there has been a lot of convergence. Every social networking site allows you to share news and bookmarks. Every bookmarking site wants to generate conversation and become a social network. And every blog allows you to post bookmarks and start a discussion.

Since many of the sites are up and coming, I also included the growth rate. If you thought this list was useful, try sharing it with ShareThis by clicking on the ShareThis icon above.

*Note that Compete.com does not generate results for links within the domain, but only for the entire domain. Traffic from portals like Yahoo, Live, Google, and Ask are not just for the bookmarking sites but are for the entire portal.

YouTube now allows deep linking to videos, or linking to a spot deep within a YouTube video so that when launched, the video starts at the minute and second that you ask it to, rather than at the beginning.

Here is how it works: Simply add #t=1m19s to the end of the YouTube video URL to start the video 1 minute and 19 seconds into the video.

Launch the “Where the Hell is Matt” video at the beginning:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlfKdbWwruY

Launch the “Where the Hell is Matt” video in Zambia, one minute and 19 seconds into it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlfKdbWwruY#t=1m19s

I tried it a bunch of things but it does not seem to work yet for embedded videos from YouTube.

I did, however, figure out how to change the YouTube Embed Code so that it will produce valid XHTML:

YouTube Embed Code Before Changes to Valid XHTML

YouTube Embed Code Before Changes to Valid XHTML

This produces invalid XHTML:

YouTube Standard Embed Code Produces Invalid XHTML

YouTube Embed Code After Changes to Valid XHTML

YouTube Embed Code After Changes to Valid XHTML

Now the Validator passes the test:

Modified YouTube Embed Code Produces Valid XHTML

Here is Scott Gledhill’s excellent presentation, “Is SEO Evil?” from Web Directions South 2007, in Sydney, Australia. With this thought provoking title, Scott Gledhill takes us through the basic ideas of SEO and why it is not an evil black hat method of getting traffic, but rather a basic discipline that every blogger should consciously incorporate into daily practice.

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