SEO

SEO Template | Free SEO Friendly Templates

June 18, 2008 By: Justin | 2 Comments

I was working on a non-blog site earlier, so I grabbed a couple of templates off of open source web design, which is an awesome site. Well I selected a couple of good ones and made a couple of tweaks to them to improve their SEO. I thought I’d upload them here to share.

Features of these SEO Templates

  • Unique H1 for each page
  • Sub Headings and Titles are H2
  • Navigation uses H3
  • Clean code, xhtml/css, no tables
  • Content first in the HTML, with the navigation HTML coming last
  • Keyword anchor in footer

Nothing major, but maybe you’ll find them useful for a project.

Bitter Sweet Template

Bitter Sweet Template

Download Bitter Sweet

Shades of Gray Template

Download Shades of Gray

So I hope these free seo templates help with a project or something. If you use BANS (Build A Niche Store), check out our free BANS template called Ice. I plan on putting up more SEO friendly templates in the future.

Filed Under SEO

BloggingZoom, Social Media Spam

June 17, 2008 By: Justin | 6 Comments

I just dropped by BloggingZoom and was a little disgusted by what I found. BloggingZoom is a digg-like social media site for bloggers where bloggers can promote their own content. In the past I have been supportive of this project, but may need to pull back a little on that.

The site is run by two people who I talk about a lot, Court and Vic. Court was the first blogger I came across who wrote about internet marketing. I have a lot of respect for him and his blog got me involved in SEO, but I’m really disappointed in what I’m seeing on BloggingZoom. Here is a post from Court explaining the purpose of BloggingZoom.

I have supported BloggingZoom since its beginning. I even created a Firefox Add On For BloggingZoom. I’m a regular reader of Vic’s and Court’s blog, so I’m not some random blogger being critical.

Ok, so what is the problem?

Well the bloggers taking part in Vic’s competition are spamming the hell out of this site. I’m part of the competition myself and Vic suggested using BZ to promote our posts, but many of the competition bloggers are crippling this site. The entire first two pages are nothing but competition blogs. This spam is flooding the site with useless trend posts. It’s preventing other’s work from getting exposure. Its increasing the number of crap posts legit BZ users have to sort through to find good content. I went on BZ to find some new bloggers who are new to the scene. I wanted to comment on their blogs and increase my networking, but I found nothing but spam!

Look at this screenshot, it does more to explain the problem than I can.

I may be shotting myself in the foot with the competition, but my name is on my competition blog and mass spamming a legit social site is not a practice I want to take part in. Gaming social media is one thing, but this is spammy. This also reduces the quality that BloggingZoom provides.

(I’m sure I’ll get some person jumping on me for being critical. This isn’t an attack, just my expression of shock. Also, since I’m taking part in the competition, I want to set myself apart from this type of promotion. Anyone who reads my blog knows I have no problem with gray/black hat SEO, but I don’t support spamming like this. I openly supported BZ and even provided a tool for the site, so I think its ok if I express my concern about the direction of BZ)

Filed Under Bloggers, Online Success, Social Marketing

Creative Social Marketing with MyBlogLog

By: Justin | Leave a Comment

Over in my sidebar you’ll see a little widget that shows the icons of people who visit who also have a MyBlogLog account. There are multiple ways to market your site using MyBlogLog, but the avatar feature is a useful aspect. You can visit blogs in your niche, drop your icon, and receive traffic from other people clicking your icon. One method of marketing using MyBlogLog is just to browse around sites you know use MyBlogLog.

Well, lets be a little sneaky. Lets speed things up a little =P

I’m not black hat, but I do like creative methods of promotion.

Before we start, I suggest reading my post on Avatar Marketing You’ll want to get an avatar that grabs attention. You want people to click your icon and check out your MyBlogLog page (and hopefully your blog).

So, lets get started.

You’ll need: A MyBlogLog account and a StumbleUpon account. Set up the MyBlogLog account, add in your information, add your sites, and add a few communities. You want your profile to look populated to the people who will be visiting. You don’t want to look like a nobody, so make a few connection on MyBlogLog before you start this.

Make sure you’re logged into MyBlogLog.

The key to this is StumbleUpon. Simply select a tag related to your niche, and start stumbling. This method works better if you’re in a market that uses MyBlogLog, which I am. The SEO and Internet Marketing niche is full of bloggers with this little widget. I Stumble SEO blogs, and the next thing you know, I’m flying through sites with the little widget. Each time I visit one of these blogs, I’m dropping my avatar =P

If you stumble often, you know how easy it is to fly through a large quantity of sites, there is no reason to not take advantage of this. You can easily drop your avatar on hundreds of blogs and expose your blog and brand to thousands of new people. =)

Is This Ethical?

You always have to ask yourself if a marketing method is ethical. Well, it depends. It depends on how you use this. You could download an automation program that clicks the stumble button for you and set it on auto pilot over night while you sleep ;) Well… that’s kind of unethical. But simply stumbling sites you’re already stumbling isn’t. You’re just taking advantage of the MyBlogLog widget. If you do this on a massive scale and automate it, its “spam”, but I often stumble tags related to my interests, there is no reason I can’t drop my avatar while I’m at it. Just don’t get greedy.

Filed Under Social Marketing

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