Online Marketing Blog

While doing some research for a presentation, I was checking out the WordPress.com site on “types of blogs” looking for creative ways to categorize them. And what did I come upon, but this page which separates blogs types into two overall categories of “popular” and “banned”. Guess where SEO blogs fall? Sigh.

Even our dear WordPress which so many search engine optimization professionals sincerely love and prefer as a blogging platform, is misinformed or at least, subject to making sweeping generalizations. This is the “banned” category:

And here are some examples of blogs that are banned from WordPress.com (all of these fall under the general heading of “spam blogs”, or splogs, and we will be deleted as soon as we find them or they get reported):

It seems that every week I find a new and exciting WordPress plugins. There are literally hundreds out there and many that are still un-discovered.

I thought I’d take the time to post my 5 favorite blog plugins in hopes that you might find some useful ones. I’d also like to hear your top five so I can discover some new favorites.

Thomas’ Top 5 WordPress Plugins ~ In No Particular Order

Optimal Title
- This re-arranges your blogs title page to be [post name ] – [blog name] which is good for SEO.

Headspace2
- Automatically create blog post descriptions. Or write your own.

Live Search
- Update your search box to show results as the user types.

A few days ago, 901am.com got the scoop that Blogsmith was going to be released to the public early in 2007. It’s aimed at taking on blogging sites like WordPress.com, Blogger and TypePad. Details are still sketchy, but Blogsmith already has a good start.

Blogsmith is is owned by AOL / Time Warner and it powers some of the largest blogs on the net including Engadget, TV Squad, Download Squad and my favorite TUAW. With Blogsmith powering these blogs, they’ve had time to work out the bugs, optimize the code and make sure that everything runs at peek permanence for tons of visitors. Even with all that testing though, giving any service to the general public will render issues.

With so many blogs being created every day, it’s a mystery to many bloggers how to make their blog stand out. There are many types of blogs or purposes for blogs and a certain number of tactics are applicable to just about all of them.Some companies choose to hire a blog consultant, but others like to try things internally. For those “DIY” companies and individuals interested in practical tips for marketing and optimizing a business blog, try out the following list of blog marketing and optimization tips:

1. Decide on a stand alone domain name www.myblog.com or directory of existing site www.mysite.com/blog. Sub domain is also an option blog.mysite.com. Avoid hosted services that do not allow you to use your own domain name!

This week we’ve released the first version of two WordPress plugins. One for the Feed Subscription Button Maker and one for the Social Bookmark Tool.

If you have WordPress, these two plugins work quite well and are easy to integrate. I’m still working on figuring out how to get an options page in the WordPress admin area itself, however that’s not stopping me from releasing the first versions.

Both have been tested in WordPress 2.x and work great. The Social Bookmark Tool plugin works in WordPress 1.5 also but the Feed Subscription Button Maker (aka Chicklet Creator) plugin does not at this time. If there is an interest in 1.5 support, let me know.

All suggestions and comments are welcome.

Thanks
Thomas

We’ve upgraded to WordPress 2!

Not that you can tell on the outside, which you shouldn’t, but I’ve upgraded the Online Marketing Blog software to WordPress 2.

Most changes have happened under the hood and on the admin side. However, all the changes should make the blog pages load faster and better.

I’ve also upgraded the plugins for maximum spam protection and other various features.

If you come across any issues, let me know in the comments below.

Thanks Thomas