I suspect that when Google came up with Google Alerts they knew they had a cool tool that people could use to keep track of subjects they were following and wanted the latest news on those subjects coming to them in their email inbox.

People have used Google Alerts for following things like Nascar, the musician Pink, Soccer, their favorite WWE wrestler, you name it.

But, many people have found other clever uses for it as well, as it is a very powerful tool whe it comes to staying on top of who is saying what about whom and where it was said.

Recently, one of my members shared they way they use Google Alerts with me for this very purpose, and I found it worked so well that I would now like to pass it on to you.

Google Alerts searches the Google archives for any given search term, and if it finds it, sends an email to you with the link to where it found the search term, and a summary of the text where it was found. This is very handy for someone that is either particularly vain, or someone that has a vested interest in what is said about them, or even about their product.

Doing this kind of search manually would be agonizing, as you would always get the same results, and they would not be based on the most current occurences of your keywords.

So, if you go to Google Alerts and

1. type your name  or your product name or even your Twitter username (which looks like @rondavies);
2. for “Type” select “Comprehensive”;
3. for “How Often” select “once a day”; and
4. enter your email address where asked.

You will receive any new occurences of that search term (your full name or product name) as they come into the Google archive system.

This means that if someone says something nice about you on blog XYZ.com, (or heaven forbid, not so nice), and Google spiders thier normal update for that blog and finds your name, you will be notified by email within the day.

Then you can either thank them, or spank them I suppose, depending on the nature of the comment or post where your name or product name were found #;>)

Another very cool, very easy to use tool from my little toolbox.

Have a great day!

If you’re one of the WordPress users that has upgraded to WP 2.7, or one of those smart people that have installed the “Wassup” plugin for WordPress, you may be wondering what the “wp-cron.php” file is about that keeps popping up in your stats. Don’t worry, it’s nothing nasty, just the WordPress blog engine executing a few commands and updates based on date and time.

Below is a link to download the WordPress Cron Demo plugin. It demonstrates how the WordPress Cron feature can be used to accomplish a number of things.

Taking control of your WP Cron processes (Cron just means “chronoligical” or “time-based”) can help free up resources in your WP install and your web server.

Installation & use:

1. Download Cron Demo v1.0 and extract to a local folder.
2. Upload extracted contents to wp-content/plugins folder and activate from plugins tab in WordPress admin panel.
3. Go to the “Options� administration menu

Plugins Page

[tag]Cron Demo, Plugin, WordPress Plugin, Cron, WordPress Cron[/tag]

Traffic is a battle that every blogger, or for that matter, every site owner has to struggle with.

The “old style” approaches like exchanging links with other site owners, becoming active in related forums and discussions may seem a little obvious, but the truth is the basics seem to be where so many of us get derailed.

Far too many bloggers chase software to generate traffic for them, in an endless pursuit of some sort of traffic “lottery” when in fact if they spent the same amount of time just covering the basics of quality content in even 4 or 5 articles each week, plus networking with sites of similar nature, their traffic would grow in a far more stable and renewable manner.

Visitors love quality content, and will refer others to your site to share that quality content.

I guess the long and the short of it is that SEO is important, but “VO”, or Visitor Optimization is more important, at least imho. If visitors like your site, they return to it frequently. The truth about seo in my experience has been that if visitors like your content, so does Google, and both of these translate directly into traffic gains.

To step back even further from the forest so to speak, it is important to put a little thought into what exactly it is that you want the traffic for. Web visitors for the sake of themselves is all but completely pointless. So what is it that you want these visitors to do? There needs to be a clear call to action or some sort of well defined process or step you want the visitor to take. Some examples might be are;

1. subscribe to your newsletter;
2. subscribe to your RSS feed;
3. purchase a product from you; end
4. some other action.

So to nutshell this, exploring the traditional methods and more creative approaches to traffic generation is important, but equally important is what you are going to do with the visitors once you get them to your site.

Conversion is really what this is about. Traffic means little without some sort of desirable outcome.

Regards,

Ron Davies

I have been asked about this a few times, so I am going to try and clear the air as best I can.

For some time, a number of clever web 2 marketers have been sneaking “External Links” in over at Wikipedia in categories related to their keywords.

Ok. I can sense a few blank faces so I will explain…

Google ranks your site based largely on the authority and quality of the sites that link to you. This means that if WordPress.com links to you, and Google does consider WordPress.com to be an authority site, that value is passed on to your site when Google ranks you, and when they determine your Google Pagerank.

Since Wikipedia is clearly seen by Google as an authority site on literally thousands of subjects, getting a link from wiki to your site would be a good thing, no? Let’s explore this a little more deeply…

Many of the Wikipedia category pages and result pages are ranked by Google as PR 5 or even 6 in some cases. A free PR 5 or PR 6 link to your site certainly wouldn’t hurt would it?

But wait…before you knock yourself out chasing links from Wikipedia you should keep one thing in mind…

Wikipedia uses strictly “nofollow” links.

Now, this does not mean that a link from wiki to your site is not a good thing, it just means that Google does not credit your site with any of the “good stuff” that would normally have been carried to your site if Wikipedia was NOT “nofollow”, that’s all.

IMHO, a link from them must have more value than no link at all, mustn’t it?

If this kind of pursuit interests you, have a look at the video below where I linked a Wikipedia PR6 page to my affiliate program directory site called “WhichAffiliate.com”

Cheers,

Ron

[tag]Affiliate Program Directory,Blank Faces,Clever Web,Comotion,Free Pr,Good Stuff,google,Google Pagerank,Imho,marketers,pagerank,Pr6,Web Marketers,Wiki,wikipedia,Wikki[/tag]

Just did a complete go-through of the affiliate program presented by StoreStacker.com. Pretty sad, flimsy, and overpriced to say the least.

They make tall claims like “multiply search engine rankings” and “increase authority”. Well, search engine rankings have nothing to do with outgoing feed, particularly javascript which is, in fact, penalized by Google, not embraced. As far as authority, well, this is established primarily by inbound links, not the stuff you have on your site.

Sure, they tell you it only costs $1. Then you get the surporise when you go to process your payment – The way they catch you is to charge you $1 up front and then..get this…$221 in two weeks time. yep, $221!

What do you get? Mostly items that are free elsewhere:

• Clickbank products feed – this you could get free at http://www.freeclickbankmall.com
  
• YouTube feed- sadly this is about the worst paying feed on the planet. Worse ROI than even the Amazon affiliate program, which until the Youtube one WAS the worst roi. We have actually sent over 300,000 click to amazon, now these are clicks by people going to buy books, and saw…drum roll please….$1.98. Incredible!
• ebay – this has always been free since its inception anyway – why would you pay for it??
• Overstock – converts at about 1/280,000 % – nobody we know has ever continued promoting Overstock for more than a week or two until they saw how badly it performs.

Note that NONE of these programs do any follow up sales carrying your embedded linking, so forget about seeing conversions in the future if the sale doesn’t occur on the first visit.

Another flash in the pan I suppose, though the ad copy is slick and the site does look great. This would equate to one of those old western towns, where the buildings looked huge from the front, but were mostly fake when you looked at the side.

What you seek is the iceburg of affiliate systems- one where what you see is a fraction of what you get, not the other way around.

My recommendation on this would be to leave it alone, keep the $221, and hand pick a few items on ClickBank marketplace. If it is training you seek, look at 1stPromotion Pro2 or ProfitMart.

Cheers,

Ron

[tag]storestacker reviewed,pro2,clickbank,ebay,affiliate marketing, storestacker.com,youtube feed,amazon[/tag]