If You Are Going To Use a Static Homepage, Hand Code It in WordPress

As most of you probably already know, WordPress is expanding far beyond a blogging platform, towards a complete Content Management System (CMS). In simple words, this means that the WordPress open source software can be used to build virtually any type of website, including blogs, company sites and online stores.

One of the features that WordPress introduced to walk in that direction was the ability to be able to use a static front page. You just need to click on “Settings” and then “Reading,” and select which of your pages should be displayed as the static homepage.

It is a nice feature, but on all my sites where I use a static homepage and WordPress as the CMS I preferred to not use it, and rather to hand code the homepage content directly on the index.php file. Why? Because if you choose to use a specific page as the static front one, you will have a duplicate version of your homepage on another URL.

For example, suppose you put WordPress on your new website that will function as your product store. You then create a page called “Main product page.” WordPress will create the page, and give it a URL like www.yourdomain.com/main-product-page/. If you then select that page to be used as the static front page, that same content will be accessible on the homepage and on the single page URL.

The homepage is the main place that search engine bots will crawl on your website, and if they find an exact copy of that on a secondary URL I suspect it could cause some problems due to duplicate content. It shouldn’t be a big problem, but when it comes to search engine optimization, every small bit helps.

An alternative would be to no-index the single page URL, but I still prefer to hand code the front page on the index.php file.

Did anyway else play with static pages and their optimization before?

Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2008

Today is my birthday, and I decided to give you all a gift that few of you have been highly anticipating for a few months now. My most popular post on this site — probably by far — was last year’s Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2007 compilation. I spent about 3 days (and nights) on it (without sleep) and I was quite happy with the turnout. This year, I began starting to write this compilation in the first week of December. The collection begins with posts that start in January of 2008 and have been collected and shared in the last 12 months. Like last year, I’ve grouped them into different categories and written short descriptions on each post. There’s no order to the posts; I’ve used my bookmarks and a variety of social sites and peer recommendations to create this list. I hope this year’s list surpasses last year’s. Let me know how I did in the comments.

Here’s how this works: In the Internet Marketing Best Posts “series,” I take posts that are typically timeless — they’re not confined to a specific event or news occurrence — they’re valuable for the long haul in terms of Internet Marketing and creative strategy. Hopefully, you’ll see that these posts are still relevant in a few years down the road.

These posts range from beginner to advanced with a greater emphasis on the more intermediate posts. I’d argue that if you’re starting your Internet Marketing business with not much know-how, you should check out the 2007 posts; in fact, most may still find them relevant regardless of the skill level.

New for 2008: If your article is highlighted in this comprehensive post, we have badges for you!? Feel free to link to this post with the top right hand image, which was contributed by David Mihm who specializes in Portland Web Design. Every post is a winner!

Search Engine Optimization (SEO):

• The SEO Success Pyramid: Matt McGee talks about the process of making great websites. He illustrates this in a graphical pyramid. You can even download it but you have to go to his post to get it.
• Online SEO Tools: The Ultimate Collection: At Search Engine Journal, Ann Smarty has compiled a list of the most valuable tools to perform SEO analysis.
• WordPress SEO: Definitive Guide to High Rankings for Your Blog is written by WordPress optimization expert and coder Joost de Valk and gives you some great tips on how to use WordPress in a search engine friendly fashion.
• How Much Money is a Top Google Ranking Worth to Your Business: Aaron Wall discusses the cost of that #1 link backing up the data with some hard research.
• SEO Mastermind Aaron Wall Brings Bad News: In an interview with Entrepreneur magazine, Aaron Wall talks about all things SEO.
• The Web Developers SEO Cheat Sheet: Danny Dover of SEOmoz shares the “mother of all technical SEO cheat sheets.” Nuff said.
• The SEO Guide to Information Architecture: How do you design a website for efficient crawling by search engines? If you don’t have a clue, Adam Audette is here to help.
• What is the Definition of SEO?: Jeremy Schoemaker asked a number of online marketing experts about their definitions of search engine optimization.
• How to be an SEO Service Provider: So you want to provide search engine optimization services? Here’s what you should do so that you can get the best return for your efforts.
• Don’t Sour Your Link Juice by Forgetting Basic SEO: Loren Baker explains that you could have lots of links — and that’s still not enough if you don’t follow basic search engine optimization techniques.
• 4 Reasons Many Big Brands Downplay SEO: Why aren’t all Fortune 500 companies engaging in SEO? Laura Callow tells you why.
• How to Get New Web Sites to Rank Quickly: Aaron Wall discusses some strategies to get high rankings with a brand new site — and we know those are sites that often need to take time to build trust.
• Keyword Density SEO Myths: Hobo SEO asked a bunch of established SEO experts about their opinions on keyword density.
• How You Can Get Your Google Rankings Back: Ever get a search engine ranking penalty? Aviva Directory did and they tell you what you need to do about it and how to address it.
• Content is NOT Always King and SEO is not always bad: Wil Reynolds explains that search engines can’t choose the best content and those pages with great content may not rank so high.
• Ranking as the Original Source for Content You Syndicate: According to Vanessa Fox, you can get the ranking control over that article that some lame blog just ripped off. As for me, I threaten DMCA takedown notices. It usually works.
• The Beginner’s Checklist for Learning SEO: SEOmoz’s Danny talks again about how newbies can get their SEO learn on.
• SEO Guide for Designers: This is especially useful if you code in Flash or like your graphics.
• The Most Powerful SEO Tactic: Simplify, Simplify, Simplify: Eric Enge simplifies (no pun intended) the essentials of SEO.
• Tools of the SEO Trade: There are a lot of tools out there that make search engine optimization simpler.
• Google Double or Indented Listings: Andy Beard shows you how to get an indented listing on Google.

Social Media: Generic Strategy:

• 50 Ways to Use Social Media: Jeremiah Owyang shows how you can apply social media to some standard social computing objectives.
• What is the ROI for Social Media?: Jason Falls explores the commonly-discussed (but not easily answered) question about social media.
• Scared of Social Media? You May Already be Pro!: Jill Whalen has been active on forums and online communities for 10 years now. But “social media marketing expert?” She didn’t think she was one.
• Top 10 Reasons Why SEOs Fail on Social Media: This is a practical guide for search engine optimizers and their shortcomings with new media.
• The Limitations of Social Media: Social media may seem to be awesome, but sometimes it just doesn’t work.
• The ABCs of Social Media: For every letter of the alphabet, you have a way to relate a word to social media.
• Social Media Marketing: How to Win Friends and Influence People: Sound like a famous book you’ve read? It is. But you can apply these tactics to social media relationships too.
• A Sample Social Media Toolkit: Chris Brogan talks about some of the ways you can tap into the social media field.
• 50 Steps to Establishing a Consistent Social Media Practice: Great tips all in one single post.? What could be better?
• Social Media Will Change Your Business: This is an update to an old article from BusinessWeek on how blogs have changed your business. Not anymore — it’s about social media (which typically encompasses blogs too).
• How Does a Company Dip its Toes in the Conversation?: If you’re new to social media, how do you engage as a company? Let Valeria Maltoni tell you — she’s that good.
• 7 Videos About Social Media You Need to Watch: Samir Balwani has gathered the best videos on social media so that you can further expand your knowledge.
• What I Want a Social Media Expert to Know: If you are Chris Brogan, you might have specific demands of your social media expert.
• Will the Real Social Media Expert Please Stand Up?: On the other hand, if you are Brian Solis, you need to know what to do as an expert and where to listen to the ongoing conversations.
• Intel Social Media Guidelines: Last month, it was discovered that Intel had pushed its social media guidelines out in the open. You can learn a thing or two from it.
• Starting a Social Media Strategy: Perhaps you’d call this a beginner’s piece — perhaps not — Chris Brogan touches upon considerations for implementing social media strategy.
• Big Brand Social Media Interview: Lee Odden interviews Wells Fargo, Home Depot, UPS, and Graco to get a feel of how they are engaging in the social media playground.
• Best Social Media Advice from this Site: Uh, I’m sorry, I just gave you a lot more reading material from Chris Brogan. Please read it after you’re done with this post. That’s all I ask.
• Towards a More Social Organization: Chris Heuer says that we’re becoming more social, so start realizing the importance of this trend and evolve accordingly.
• How to Measure Social Media ROI for Business: Aaron Uhrmacher explains the factors you must consider to see if your social media campaign has had an impact.
• Social Media ROI: Janet Fouts explains other ways to calculate your ROI on social media.
• A List of Social Media Marketing Examples: Peter Kim has an exhaustive list of companies engaging in social media. Is your company on the list?
• Social Media and Business Marketing Links: Related to Peter Kim’s list above, we see other business uses of social media.
• Biggest Mistakes Made by Social Media Gurus: You can still screw up in social media, but you don’t have to. Some people have lived and learned; read the Mashable post to avoid the same mistakes.
• Online Communities and Their Impact on Business: The key to success is engagement, but Michael Mace says that there are some concepts you need to understand first.
• A Social Media Guide: Steve Spalding writes nearly 8000 words on what he’s learned on social media over the past few years. It’s also available in PDF format.
• How to Measure Success in Your Social Media Marketing: So is ROI for social media really hard to calculate? Here are even more ways to measure ROI on your campaigns.
• Social Media Marketing Guide: Barry Welford at Cre8tive Flow talks about political success in social media marketing and explains how to be good at it for business success.
• How to Change the World Using Social Media: Can you really change the world? “Yes — when you turns to we,” Brian Clark says.
• Involve, Create, Discuss, Promote, Measure: Valeria Maltoni gives you 5 key ideas that you must understand fully for social media success.
• How to Champion Social Media at Work: Own social media at your workplace with some solid tactics presented by Jason Falls.

Social Media: Strategy for Social Sites:

• Building a Popular Social Media Profile: Seven Essential Characteristics: If you plan on being active in the social media space (where voting is a big part of promotion), you have to make sure you’re doing the right things.
• Top 10 Reasons Why Great Content Fails on Social Media: In case you’re still emphasizing submissions on social sites, here’s why your content … uh, appears to suck.
• 7 Social Media Websites and their Impact on SEO explores Mixx, Sphinn, Twitter, Digg, delicious, StumbleUpon, and Reddit and shows the positive and negative impact of using each.
• How NOT to Manipulate Social News: A Sphinn Experience: For those not familiar with social news, gaming is clearly something you can spot if you know what to look for.
• How to Commit Social Media Suicide: Some people don’t get social media.
• The 2008 Social Media Network Analysis Report: Brian Chappell reveals geographic, demographic, and traffic data for a whole lot of social media sites.
• 10 of the Best Alternative Social Media Sites because not everything social media is Digg, Mixx, and Reddit.
• 6 Social Media “No-Brainers” You Shouldn’t Forget: Social media tips and tricks that aren’t always on the mind.
• How to Promote Yourself on Social Sites Without Actually “Promoting Yourself”: David Wallace presents a practical way of becoming a social media rockstar.
• The ‘El Farol’ Problem in Social News: Muhammad Saleem explains that the community is happy when social news submissions occur in moderation. Not excess. I suppose most things do very well in moderation.
• SEO Explained for Small Business Owners: If you work in a small business and the articles above scared you, then read this one instead.
• The 10 Commandments of the Social Web: Building a social network? At the minimum, you need to follow some rules, according to Nick O’Neill.
• Social Media Marketing ROI: Metrics and Analysis: If you promote content on social networks, you should have some metrics in place to see how effective your campaign was. Here’s a guide to start with.
• Are You a Super Influencer?: Given social sites, there are new influencers in town. Make way.
• How to Get Started in Social Media: There are so many sites out there, so Shana Albert explains how she got involved and the sites you can use for both business and personal purposes.
• How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media: Beth Kanter interviews a nonprofit employee to see how he has found success with social media for awareness.
• Free Online Resources for Finding Missing Persons Through Social Media: This is a bit different but still very important as I’ve read about some amazing stories about how people use social sites to reunite old families.? The bottom line is that social sites are great for marketing a lost person and hoping that they can be found again.

Twitter:

• Twitter Wrote his Column For Me: Clearly, this post itself demonstrates the power of Twitter and the collective.
• 7 Tips for New Twitter Users: Shel Israel talks about how you (as a new Twitter user) should use the service for maximum gain.
• 17 Ways You Can Use Twitter: A Guide for Beginners, Marketers, and Business Owners: People are raving about Twitter, but are they using it to its fullest?
• How to Get Customer Service via Twitter: Which companies are listening, and should you join the conversation? If you’re new to the area, you can check out how to start following what pople are saying.
• How to Use Twitter to Grow Your Business: This recent post on Copyblogger quotes how many businesses has found success with the microblogging service.
• How to Use Twitter to Build Brand Integrity: These are some solid tips for Twitter users to follow in order to add value to the conversation.
• Why Twitter Matters: BusinessWeek cites examples of why the microblogging website is a must-use for everyone.
• 50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business: Chris Brogan covers a lot of ground with this piece.
• The Evolution of Brands on Twitter: Jeremiah Owyang explains how you can evolve your brand using Twitter.
• Getting Intimate (with Customers) on Twitter: Some companies really get it. And they profit. Are you one of them?
• Twitter Goes Mainstream: More and more people are using it. Are you?
• How to Build Community on Twitter: If you want more followers, take some solid advice from Sarah Evans.
• How to Pick Up Followers on Twitter: Guy Kawasaki adds to the list of how you can get more followers on Twitter.
• Building an Effective Business Profile on Twitter: Michael Gray’s guest post on Twitip is golden.? He suggests personalization, professionalism, and humor, among other tips and tricks.
• Twitter Tools for Community and Communications Professionals: Brian Solis is constantly updating this post which includes great tools to make your Twitter experience a much more pleasurable one.
• How to Become a Twitter Rockstar: Now that you’re armed with tools and have the Twitter basics down pat, how do you use Twitter to your advantage?? David Brown explains it all.

Sphinn:

• Beginner’s Guide to Sphinn: Surely there are some of you out there who have never used Sphinn before, but if you are remotely interested in this post, you can imagine that half of the posts I put here were also submitted to Sphinn.? That said, join up and read this Problogger post for some rules of engagement.
• Top 10 Signs You’re Spamming Sphinn gives you more insights into how to use social news sites properly.
• Crappy MP3 Sites, Comment Spamming & Enough Already: Danny Sullivan rants about how there are “search marketers” trying to manipulate Sphinn (and other social news sites). He explores examples and shows how hard it is to be a moderator of a site like this. Hey, I hear you.
• An Analysis of Sphinn: 175 Homepage Homeruns Dissected: This post shows you what people are loving on Sphinn.? It also somewhat correlates to the categories on this post since some topics just happen to be a lot more popular than others.

LinkedIn:

• Why LinkedIn is the One Social Network I Couldn’t Work Without: Jennifer Laycock explains why she hearts LinkedIn.
• Make Your LinkedIn Profile Work for You: Having a LinkedIn profile is one thing. Having a solid LinkedIn profile is a different story.
• Business Uses for LinkedIn: LinkedIn is very powerful, but how do you use it? Valeria Maltoni explains that it’s about community, connections, and more.
• How to Get the Most out of LinkedIn: Mashable’s guest writer Brian Wallace explains how LinkedIn can be used as a valuable tool.
• Elements of a Good LinkedIn Recommendation: If you’re recommending someone on LinkedIn, strive for quality, not quantity.
• 100+ Smart Ways to Use LinkedIn: Just in case the articles above didn’t suffice, this one has many more in-depth articles on making LinkedIn work for you.
• How to Use LinkedIn Jake Swearingen of BNET says that you need to create a good profile, build your network, get the most from your connections, and then manage your network.
• Successful Networking Tips for LinkedIn and Facebook: Loren Baker shows that LinkedIn and Facebook aren’t so different and building your network is key.

Digg:

• How to Level the Playing Field with Digg: While I personally don’t like Digg anymore and find that it’s useless for marketers, Skellie think it’s still valuable. (I’d argue “rarely” nowadays.)
• How I Became a Digg Power User with a 75% Popular Ratio: I got banned in October from Digg with a 67% popular ratio and 278 front page stories and offered very similar tips in 2007, but some people still want to use Digg for this kind of thing.? Personally, I think Digg will ban you when you get popular.? The guy who wrote this blog post speaks from the same kind of experience.

Wikipedia:

• Using Wikipedia to Reveal Web Traffic Data: Jonathan Hochman writes a piece on how, when using Wikipedia, you can find out about how much traffic a top search ranking will send.
• How to Overthrow a Wikipedia Result: This is a good tactic but you should use it in moderation!? Don’t get caught!
• Wikipedia 101 for Marketing: The awesome Todd Defren explains how you can use Wikipedia to market your business.? But as many of you who have attended SEO conferences know, don’t do it from your company IP address or face the banhammer.
• 3 Awesome Wikipedia Tools and How they Could be Useful: I’ve never really known of any real good Wikipedia tools except for WikiScanner until this post (and this post doesn’t even talk about that IP scanner program).? ? So there you have it — 4 tools for your Wikipedia enjoyment.
• What to do When Your Company Wikipedia Page Goes Bad: The problem with editing your own company page when you work for the company is that there are moderation issues and biases.? So what can you do once someone adds bad content to that page?? Jessica Bowman tells you how to make the nasties “fade into the background.”

StumbleUpon:

• The Idiot’s Guide to StumbleUpon: Tim Nash, an active StumbleUpon expert, has offered some strategies on using the social discovery tool.
• How to Write Posts that Set StumbleUpon on Fire: Skellie utilizes real-life experience with the social discovery site to show you how you can get a whoosh of good traffic.
• 28 Tips to Make You a StumbleUpon Superstar: I personally love StumbleUpon — a lot. And you should too when you apply these tactics.

Fark:

• Definitive Guide to Fark and Getting Mass Traffic: One of the lesser tapped social media sites among search marketers is Fark. But not for Glen Allsopp, who reviews it here.

Facebook:

• Ten Things You Didn’t Know About Facebook: Guy Kawasaki is right — you probably don’t know some of these things (like #7)!
• Facebook Insider’s Guide to Viral Marketing: This article on docstoc has good tips if you’re looking to market on Facebook.
• 5 Reasons Why Whole Foods Gets Facebook: Businesses can make a difference on Facebook. Whole Foods did.
• Facebook Ads 101: How to Set Up and Track Facebook Ads: While people like free Facebook advertising, there are wonderfully targeted ads that may even be more effective.? Now you can understand how to leverage them.
• 5 Tips for Promoting Your Business Page on Facebook: If you created a business page on Facebook and actually want people to know about it, you might want to make sure it’s one that people actually are interested in joining.
• Facebook for Those Over 40: How do you explain Facebook to a group of folks who find this technology a little daunting?? We’re so involved in social media today that we may lose sight of the beginner explanation.
• 3 New Ways to Target Your Audience with Facebook Pages: Did you know that you are able to restrict access to Facebook pages by demographic information?? I didn’t.? But doing this can ensure that you get the right kinds of users.
• The 25 Most Popular Pages on Facebook: There’s nothing truly eye-opening about this discovery, but you can learn a thing or two about the power of marketing that has made some of these individuals so popular.
• Facebook Pages and Local Search Engine Optimization: Andrew Shotland offers a little-known tip on how you can possibly find prospects via Facebook through search.
• Facebook vs. LinkedIn: Which is Better for Business? In a 7-page article, ComputerWorld assesses the pros and cons of both.

delicious:

• 6 Ways to Make Life Easier with delicious: How many of you actually use delicious as a search engine? Maybe you should.
• How to Analyze Your Site with Delicious: Ann Smarty dissects the various parts of delicious.com and shows you how you can learn more about your website.

Flickr:

• How to Market on Flickr: While Flickr itself isn’t seen as a community that you would market to, you can find out how to become a respected community member AND market your services as well.
• An Insider’s Guide to Marketing on Flickr: Rohit Bhargava gives some very detailed tips on how you can use Flickr to successfully market products.

FriendFeed:

• FriendFeed Can Disrupt Search and Reshape Advertising: Steve Rubel offers his initial impressions of FriendFeed.
• 25 Different Uses for FriendFeed: FriendFeed power users Michael Fruchter and Louis Gray team up (well, Mike posted the guest post on Louis’s blog) to share some tips on how you can get the most out of this service.? As an FYI, I LOVE FriendFeed (and as another FYI, I said the same about Twitter in 2007 and everyone joined up in 2008.? Just sayin’).? By the way, Louis has a ton of great posts on FriendFeed on his blog and this isn’t the only one.

Blogging:

• The Most Important Difference Between Websites and Blogs: Tad switched his website over to a blog. He reflects on why this was a smart move.
• 10 Ways to Improve Blog Traffic in 30 Minutes or Less gives you some lesser-known (or implemented) strategies to bring you (possibly) more blog visitors.
• You’re Not Just a Writer, You’re the Editor-in-Chief: Dosh Dosh explains that your approach toward blogging needs to be more than just of a freelance nature.
• What Suggestions Would You Offer a Beginning Blogger?: You need to “learn to” do a few things as a blogger. Bill Slawski explains what they are.
• Practical Guide to Starting a Corporate Blog: Jason Falls discusses the steps you need to take before you actually launch that much-needed corporate blog.
• How to Start a Professional Blog: 10 Tips for New Bloggers: Andrew Chen gives some detailed insights on how your new blog can take off.
• 10 Commandments of Business Blogging: If you want to be taken seriously as a business blogger, there are some rules you need to follow.
• Does Blogging Really Work? Here’s the Proof: Mack Collier uses the examples of Dell Hell and Stormhoek to show that blogging is a powerful marketing tool for both the positive and the negative.
• 27 Secrets to Linking Like a Master Networker: This post shows how you can network via blogging.
• 45 Ways to Power Up Your Blog: Here are small things you can implement to make your blog a little more appealing to your audience and search engines.
• How Much Do Top Tier Bloggers and Social Media Consultants Get Paid? We Asked Them!: Marshall Kirkpatrick, you didn’t ask me!
• How to Blog Design Style Guide goes into detail about blog design, from the header to the content area to the comments.
• 3 Phases of Flagship Blog Growth or How to Fall in Love with Blogging: Tad explains that perseverance is important to keep your blog going strong.
• How to Get Piles of Links, Subscribers, and Comments: Skellie explains the ways you can use your blog for awareness and then some.
• The Ultimate Guide to a Wildly Sticky Successful and Outstanding Blog: Liz Strauss takes a bunch of great blogging guides and puts them all together for this tool for serious bloggers.
• 27 Resources fr Evaluating Blogging ROI: Is blogging working for you? You can check against the experts to find out.
• A Sample Blogging Workflow: From the goals of blogging to the tools you should use, Chris nails it.
• 21 Ways to Make Your Blog or Website Sticky: Yes, this is from Darren Rowse at Problogger. Yes, it’s about blogs. It’s also about websites. Read it whether or not you have a blog as it has some great tips on keeping your visitors hooked.
• Ariana Huffington Shares 4 Secrets of Creating a Successful Blog: Learn from someone who knows. HuffPo is a very popular blog.
• Case Study: The Launch of a New Blog: A serious blogger from Traffikd shows how his third blog fared after it launched.
• Why Start a Blog and 25 Tips to Make it Work: A very in-depth article on why you should create a blog and engage in blogging.
• The Sweeney Todd Guide to Blogging Sonia Simone equates characteristics of Sweeney Todd to blogging, marketing, and communication.? An example: Sweeney Todd improvised to get multiple streams of income; bloggers can strategize to get different sources for readers.
• Is Your Blog Going for the Gold? This article discusses the pros and cons of blogging for businesses.? One of the main cons, of course, is the fact that you may be starting a blog with no brand recognition whatsoever.? That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try, though.

Viral Marketing:

• The Top 10 Viral Marketing Campaigns of All Time: Patrick Altoft reviews the most popular YouTube videos and explains why they rock.
• Hard (but Important) Lessons About Viral Marketing: Having realistic expectations is important so that you don’t fail at your viral marketing campaign.
• The Viral Marketing Glossary: Dan Zarrella gives definitions for a bunch of terms related to viral marketing.
• What is Viral Marketing?: Seth Godin’s post from the last day of 2008 is the reason why I held publication of this post till 2009.? He explains viral marketing and then shows a case study of how it works.

Link Building:

• Link Building: A Complete Walkthrough: Many of you may be reading this and have no idea about link building at all. That’s where Saad Kamal’s in-depth introductory guide comes in.
• The Fundamentals of Link Building: Adam Audette also gives you some in-depth but beginner information into the art of link building.
• 11 Experts on Link Development Speak Out: Rae Hoffman has gathered some great authorities in the area of link building and asked them several questions about sources, strategy, and more.
• Link Building Secrets Revealed by Top Linking Experts: In this article, twelve link experts talk about lesser known strategies. The report is also available in PDF format.
• The 30 Easiest Was to Get Links and Exposure suggests some strategies to get more links to your website.
• Link Building Strategies: 69 Solid Tactics for 2009 tells you even more ways to get links to your site.
• 30 Ways to Get Links Naturally and Stop Link Building: On the other hand, if link building is too time consuming, you may want to think of other strategies.
• A Linkbuilding Method So Effective I Can’t Believe It’s Not Blackhat: The basic premise is that you should find pages/sites that used to offer a service and no longer do. The fill that void.
• Where Do You Start Your Link Marketing Campaign?: Wiep Knol discusses some strategies on where you can think of gaining some new links.
• 6 Sure-Fire Tactics to Re-Ignite Your Linkbait: You wrote something awesome. It sucked on your targeted social media site. Now what?
• How Getting a Link is Like Picking Up a Woman: Link building is not much different than flirting. Really.
• There’s No Such Thing as a Worthless Link: …because they all end up pointing to your site, right? But Deb Mastaler shows that there’s more.
• Get In Touch With Your Inner Link Self: Finding out where your customers go and targeting those areas is a golden way to get links.
• The Definitive List of Link Building Techniques in 2008: Jeff Quipp gathered every single link building tip he could find.
• Link Exchanges: It’s Not the Size of the PR, but How You Use it: Not everyone likes link exchanges (raises hand), but then again, I’m a blogger who gets 384824 link exchange emails a week.? However, there are legitimate non-blog websites that get a lot.? The question: how do you research sites for link exchanges?? David Leonhardt offers solid strategies on how to choose sites for link building and link exchanges.
• The Ultimate Guide to Internal Linking and Part 2: In two posts, Pete Wailes uses some PageRank formula to guide you through an internal linking strategy and then brings quantum theory into it.? Yes, really.

Reputation Management:

• Dealing with “Impossible” Online Reputation Challenges: Brett Borders goes through the various problems relating to reputation management and lets you know if they’re solvable — or not.
• Five Steps for Recovering from an Online Reputation Crisis: Two different events, two different responses. You need to handle your reputation issue appropriately.
• 12 Reputations Every Company Should Monitor Online: When you are a public facing company, reputation management issues can come at you at all different sides. Make sure you have your bases covered.
• How to Remove Negative Posts and Links: From asking to suing, you have a way to [usually] remove those bad search results.
• How to Bury Negative Online Mentions of You: Search Engine Watch covers some intermediate-level strategies on how to deal with a reputation management crisis.
• The M&Ms of Online Reputation Management: We’re not talking candy here.? Actually, we’re talking M&M&M&M: monitor, manage, measure, and mediate.
• Digital Reputation Management with SEO, Social Media, and PR: Taking a proactive approach toward ORM (online reputation management) is important.? This post touches upon the surface and unfortunately Lee Odden discussed the rest in person at a conference.
• Reputation Management: Because You’re Worth It: In a lighthearted post, a female working for a search engine marketing agency explains how reputation management is like a beauty emergency.
• Treat Me Mean, I Need the Reputation Tom Critchlow shows you what negative reputation looks like.
• Online Reputation Management: What Goes Around May Be Total Crap: Kim Krause Berg talks about the ethics of reputation management and then some.
• Pre-emptive Reputation Management Comes of Age: Don’t fret about reputation managment.? Tackle it before it becomes a problem with preemptive reputation management.? ? The ideas Jeff Quipp presents in his article are really clever.
• Reputation Crisis Management: 8 SEO Triage Tips: Marty Weintraub says that reputation management isn’t much different than SEO.
• Reputation Management Tips from Around the Web: Many search marketing experts weigh in on one very important reputation management tip.
• Online Reputation Management for the Small Business Owner Providing high quality service will avoid the reputation management issues you could encounter.? If you get a negative review but provide great service thereafter, the newer positive reviews will mitigate the negative review.
• Ten Tactics that Could Save Your Online Reputation: Perhaps you’re not in an online reputation crisis yet.? Maybe you’ll never have to be if you read these tactics.
• Your Seven-Step Online Reputation Crisis Plan: If you already have a problem on your hands, now you need to create a strategy.? In seven steps, you can successfully avoid the crisis.? ? Here’s how.
• Reputation Management and Defending Your Brand: This is a good beginner article for smaller businesses and gives some solid tips on how your local business can be more visible in a positive way.
• Online Reputation Management is Hot — But is it Ethical? Some companies discuss their failures due to a reputation management issue.? Others talk about how they are helping address the issue.
• Online Reputation Management for Individuals: We’ve talked about business reputation management, but you can still lose your job using social media channels and lose out on good opportunities.? Don’t forget that your personal brand is still something you may want to protect.

Analytics:

• 8 Awesome Google Analytics Hacks, Tips, and Tricks offers tips on how to get more out of Google Analytics rather than what comes out of the box. Note: Some programming may be required!
• The Huge Collection of Google Analytics Tips: In case the previous link wasn’t enough for you, get tracking of your outgoing links, links to banner ads, downloads, and more.
• How to Use Bounce Rate as a Metric to Improve Your Website Performance: A lot of people ignore bounce rate. Maybe you shouldn’t.
• 8 Stupid Things Webmasters Do to Mess Up Their Analytics: Google Analytics isn’t that accurate after all. Find out if you’re being impacted.
• How to Analyze and Improve the Bounce Rate for Your Website: Dosh Dosh gives insights into the hated bounce rate and then suggests strategies on how to reduce that percentage.
• Context is King Baby! Go Get Your Own: Avinash Kaushik argues that the single most important missing ingredient in understanding your analytics is the context you can place around the analytics data you’re provided with.
• Using Stats and Goal Tracking for Your Blog: Want analytics for your blog?? Michael Gray gives some tips on how you can get some.? And yes, you should.

Personal Branding:

• Resumes are for Sh!t: The 4 Things You Really Need: Want to build your personal brand? Dave McClure says you need LinkedIn, a blog, keywords, and social media.
• How to Get Noticed: Jeremiah Owyang offers tactics for becoming noticed in this space.
• Seth Godin: Profile of a Marketing Guru: How’d Seth Godin score his own action figure? Read this.
• Gary Vaynerchuk’s Keynote at Web 2.0 Expo NY: Sure, while this is a video (!) and I still emphasize articles in my yearly post, I actually attended this 15 minute keynote, and it’s a real morale booster. Watch it. It’s worth it.
• Why You Need to Care More About Your Personal Brand: Mitch Joel explains why personal branding is important.
• We Are in a Recession, so Build Your Brand on the Internet Now: It’s a perfect time to build your Internet presence.? This Internet Marketing firm did it for their clients by establishing its presence on multiple channels.? Find out which ones they used (and feel free to just use this as a starting point — there are more channels to leverage!).
• Personal Branding: What a Difference a Year Makes: Dan Perry was nobody in 2007.? (No offense, Dan!)? But in 2008, he became somebody according to Google.? What were his takeaways?

Local Search:

• Local Search Ranking Factors collects advice from 20 experts in the area of local search marekting on a variety of ranking factors.
• Local SEOs Share Geolocation Tips from Around the World: The Distilled guys who are in the UK ask several SEOs around the world about how to optimize for search engines.
• The Mother of All SMX Local/Mobile Recaps: David Mihm attended a conference and shared the top takeaways. The post provides very valuable information even though it’s a conference summary!
• Local vs. Traditional SEO: Why Citation is the New Link This is a very detailed post explaining some new discoveries about local SEO.? Links aren’t that important in local SEO, and David explains why.
• Website Optimization for Telephone Leads: Surely there are companies out there that get a lot of leads via phone.? If your phone number is prominently displayed on your website, you will likely get a lot of good leads. (I’d add that it’d be a smart idea to get a number specific for web-only inquiries to ensure that the lead came from there.)
• Free Local Marketing Options that Bring Real Traffic: Mat Siltala takes a look at easy local search tweaks you can use that will bring some valuable traffic.? The sites he mentions are high-trafficked ones, and if you cover your bases, you can benefit from a gift that keeps on giving.
• How to Create Effecitve Local Business Landing Pages Are you missing any of these essential elements from your landing pages?

Content Development:

• The Secret to Compelling Content: Anna Bourland describes how you should organize your website and create a hook that drives your visitors to perform a desired action.
• How to Have a Constant Flow of Content Ideas: Sometimes, getting that idea in your mind is the hardest obstacle. Here’s some help.
• Writing Killer Headlines: Top 20 Viagra SPAM Email Subject Lines: I feel like my email subscribers just got this email blocked due to this actual post, but it’s a REALLY good read, so I had to include it.
• Link Bait Ideas: Lyndon Antcliff gives some strategy into creating the ultimate piece of content.
• 12 Tips on Creating Content for Social Media: Let’s face it, people are talking social media nowadays. It’s time to create content that works.
• The 5-Step POWER Copywriting Method: Want to be persuasive and rock? Follow some guidelines.
• 5 Great Marketing Lists and What You Can Learn from Each One: Make a list. Profit. Rohit Bhargava explains the benefits of 5 popular lists.
• How to Maximize Current Events for Social Media: The 10e20 blog shows what you can do with current events to create compelling content.
• How to Write an Article in 20 Minutes: Let me put it this way: this article did NOT take 20 minutes to write.
• Writing Content that Works for a Living: The key takeaways of this article are to make it simple and do it right.

Web Development:

• 50 Questions to Evaluate the Quality of Your Website: Explore questions of accessibility, navigation, design, content, security, and more with this checklist.
• The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist, Period: Stoney deGeyter breaks down the intricacies of web design into easy-to-digest categories with this exhaustive but awesome checklist.
• I Can Make Your Site Run 10 Times Faster: Site not running fast enough? Search engine spiders and visitors may not appreciate it. Mike Peters tells you what you can do to get that needed boost.
• 101 Five-Minute Fixes to Incrementally Improve Your Website is a great checklist on usability, writing, and design, and refers to 101 more articles just in case this list of posts wasn’t enough.
• A Design is Finished When: Twenty-three designers offer their insights on when your website design is complete and you can take it the next level.
• Let’s Talk Landing Pages: Rebecca Kelley at SEOmoz shares some really great tips on how to make the most out of your landing pages.
• Website Checklist: Getting to the Close: Peter da Vanzo outlines the steps for beginner web designers to get visitors to perform a desired action.

Affiliate Marketing:

• Five Effective Copywriting Tactics for Affiliate Marketing: Want to sell your affiliate offers? At the minimum, make sure you follow these tactics.
• Jonathan Volk Interview: If you don’t know Jonathan Volk, meet this kid through this interview, because he’s in his early 20s and is making 6 figures a month.
• Three Killer Content Strategies for Building Affiliate Marketing Assets: Brian Clark gives even more affiliate marketing tips.
• Only Wanting the “Thrill of the Chase”: Why do most affiliate marketers fail?? Because they have an initial rush of motivation but then get annoyed at the hard work required, according to affiliate marketing mastermind Rae Hoffman.
• Managing Risk: Legal Issues for Merchants and Affiliate Marketers Affiliate marketing is not a risk-free endeavor, so be sure you are aware of all the risks before you take the plunge.
• The Diary of a PPC Newbie and Why You Should Expand: As you’ll see, this article isn’t really about Pay-Per-Click.? ? It’s how you can use PPC and affiliate marketing to make some money.? Don’t you want to do that by now?
• 81 Useful Affiliate Marketing Resources: If you’re ready to start with affiliate marketing, here are some tools that can make your life easier.
• Making Money Online with Local Affiliate Programs: This great post by Jeremy Schoemaker was suggested by @ronhekier and gives some great advice on how you can make ends meet especially if you just got laid off during the recession.

Domains and Domaining:

• How to Pick a Kickass Domain Name: Lisa Barone gives solid tips on choosing the domain name that’s perfect for your company.
• On Domain Names, Size and Quality DO Matter: Daniel Scocco looks at the top 250 domains on Alexa and shows how the most popular sites actually all have very powerful domain names.
• How to Find Available Domain Names: With the Google AdWords tool and a bulk whois checker, you may be able to get some great SEO-friendly domain names.
• 2018: A Domaining Odyssey: Experts weigh in on the future of domaining in this article.
• How to (Really) Make Money with Domain Names: Finding a good domain name is half the battle.? Once you’re done with that, there are some good strategies you can use to make money with them.? One key is defensible traffic.

AdWords/PPC:

• Eight Keyword Research Mistakes that are Costing You Money: You may be spending lots on Google AdWords, but are you spending smartly? Christine Churchill gives you some points to review.
• Marketing Lessons Learned from Pay-Per-Click Analytics shows what you can learn about general marketing from reviewing your PPC analytics.
• Landing Page Optimization: 5 Elements that can Impact Conversion Rates: While this could fit in this blog post’s “web development” category, it is a better match for giving you the biggest bang for your buck if you engage in pay-per-click marketing.
• How I Optimize My PPC Campaigns: Harrison Gevirtz, a teenage genius and CEO of a company, teaches us tactics that made him successful in a guest post on Shoemoney.com.
• PPC Spend Should be More than SEO: John W. Ellis explains the correlation between Pay-Per-Click and Search Engine Optimization but still contends that your PPC budget should exceed your SEO budget.
• 7 Ways to Save Money During a PPC Campaign: Saad Kamal offers practical tips on how to reduce your Google AdWords or Yahoo Search Marketing ad spend.

Internet Marketing:

• The Internet Marketing List: 59 Things You Should Be Doing But Probably Aren’t: Ian Lurie presents what you may want to put into a checklist — things you should be doing on your website and that you may have ignored.
• How I Turned My Mediocre Website into a Million Dollar Business: Erica Douglass speaks from experience. The bottom line: customers deserve great value.
• Colorize Your Brand: How Color Builds Your Brand: Ann Smarty presents “color in business” theory and shows its application to Internet technology.
• Firefox 3 Shows How a Good Landing Page Can Convert Seven Million Visitors a Day: Test, retest, and enjoy the benefits.
• The Digital Rules of Engagement: If you’re going to engage, make sure you know what you’re doing. This AdWeek article ties in well with social media, but it has some other important concepts that caused me to put it in the Internet Marketing category instead.
• The Internet Marketing Handbook: SEOmoz has compiled a huge list of almost 100 tools and resources. Sweet!
• 14 Must-Have Resources to Launch a Small Business: How many people have you spoken to who say they want to start a business but don’t know how?? Maybe you should point them to this checklist.? (It’ll help if they know exactly what kind of business they’re looking to start, though!)
• The “Poochie” Effect: While I love social media, one-way advertising is still practiced by many companies. In this post, you’ll consider the questions that you need to have answered before you engage on an advertising campaign.

General Marketing:

• Top Experts Dish with their Best Kept Marketing Secrets: Some of the most brilliant experts provide their one best marketing secret.
• 38 Things I Wish I Knew When I started in Marketing offers some advice that I kind of still don’t apply myself.
• Tell Us Your Most Outrageously Creative Money-Saving or Business Growth Tip: Anita Campbell delivers again by gathering expert quotes and offering some brilliant insights into what they’ve done to take their businesses to the next level.
• What Do You Know?: Seth Godin’s list that is 3 years old (and counting) never grows old. Yes, this is a reprint from 2008 with some newer tips.
• The Essentials of Guerrilla Marketing: Jay Conrad Levinson shares concepts that will make your business rock.
• 8 Strategies for Successful Realtions with Clients: Since social media is within the scope of Internet Marketing and is a lot about customer service, client relations should follow. If you have good relationships from the outset, you may avoid those reputation management crises and more.
• How to Deliver the Perfect Client Pitch: Client acquisition is all the rage, but are you actually getting new clients?? If not, perhaps you need to adjust your pitch.
• Why Clients Won’t Buy: The Hierarchy of Choice: You could be an awesome salesperson but your customers still won’t necessarily buy from you. Find out why.

Best of Techipedia 2008
I typically don’t put posts from my blog in the “Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2008″ list, but this year, since I’ve grown a considerable number of subscribers, I’ve decided to give new users the opportunity to read the two best posts without feeling that they need to dig through the archives.? Of course, if you don’t mind reading the other posts I’ve written, by all means, go ahead.? There’s some good stuff there that I’m not highlighting here (including two on FriendFeed, which is a great content discovery and community building tool which simply doesn’t get much love).

• The Ultimate Social Media Etiquette (or Netiquette) Handbook: My most popular post of December 2008 was about social media etiquette and goes through a variety of social sites to suggest what should and shouldn’t be done.? The comment discussion is great as well.
• What Traits Define a Social Media Marketer?: Experts on social media marketing weigh in on the essential characteristics of the ideal social media marketing guru.

Corpvox WordPress Theme Released

All right guys, it has been a while since we released a WordPress theme. I will try to stick with the schedule this year, releasing a new one every month. Corpvox is the January one. It is a very clean and simple theme, ideal for someone wanting to have a minimum number of elements on his blog.

Here are the features of the theme:

• RSS and Email Subscriptions: The theme comes with two icons on the header that can be used to offer RSS subscriptions via RSS and email.
• Gravatars Enabled: The comments section of the theme already comes with support for Gravatars.
• Search Engine Optimization: All the title and meta tags are already optimized for search engines. Secondly, the category and archive pages will only display post excerpts to avoid duplicate content penalties.

Given the theme layout it should also be very easy to create a logo and integrate it into the header. If you have any suggestions or find any problems while using it let us know.

• View a preview of Corpvox
• Download Corpvox
  (Direct link)

List of Ping Services

Ping services allow you to automatically notify blog directories and search engines that your blog has been updated. The bigger your ping list the higher the chances of receiving traffic from those sources, so check out the list below and include it on your blog (Wordpress users can modify their ping list on the Control Panel, then Options, then Writing).

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://1470.net/api/ping
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://bblog.com/ping.php
http://bitacoras.net/ping
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC
http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc
http://blogmatcher.com/u.php
http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt
http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/
http://ping.amagle.com/
http://ping.bitacoras.com
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc
http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/
http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.myblog.jp
http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://ping.weblogs.se/
http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2
http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/
http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://rpc.newsgator.com/
http://rpc.pingomatic.com
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php
http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b
http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.blogoole.com/ping/
http://www.blogoon.net/ping/
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1
http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php
http://www.blogsnow.com/ping
http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
http://www.mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatter/ping.php
http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud
http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php
http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php
http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2
http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/
http://xmlrpc.blogg.de
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

Is WordPress the Top Blogging Platform?

I think for quite awhile now the self-hosted version of WordPress has been considered by most to be the dominant blogging platform, but up until recently it was purely speculation.

Last Friday, Royal Pingdom did some research and published the top blogging platforms based upon the Technorati Top 100 list. As you’d expect, WordPress took first place with 27 of the Top 100 blogs (5 more were hosted on WordPress.com). Of the self-hosted blogs, Movable Type is in second place with 12 blogs.

For your reference, here are the 27 WordPress blogs (links are included on the original post):

• Perez Hilton
• Problogger
• Chris Brogan
• Zen Habits
• Copyblogger
• Think Progress
• VentureBeat
• SlashFilm
• Global Voices Online
• The Caucus Blog - NYTimes
• Bits Blog - NYTimes
• Freakonomics - NYTimes
• Pajamas Media
• Just Jared
• Smitten Kitchen
• Hot Air
• Neatorama
• TechCrunch
• Smashing Magazine
• Washington Wire - WSJ
• Michelle Malkin
• Daily Blog Tips
• Yanko Design
• Mashable
• Roy Tanck’s weblog
• CrunchGear
• Delicious:days

It is nice to see the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and New York Times (NY Times) both listed here. It would be interesting if this study is done every year to see trends. I would imagine WordPress will be over 50% of the Technorati Top 100 list within a few years as some of those blogs switch away from Typepad, move their WordPress.com blog to self-hosted, etc.

AntiSpam Bee: A Possible Akismet Competitor?

Akismet has long been accepted as the most popular spam fighting WordPress plugin, closely followed by both Bad Behavior (which can be used along with Akismet) and of course Spam Karma 2. However, one interesting WordPress plugin I recently came across is the AntiSpam Bee plugin, which was designed by the author specifically to be a competitor with Akismet.

The interesting thing is that this WordPress plugin actually replaces the comments field completely, making it so spammers can’t find it. Some other listed features:

• Quick & Dirty: activate, done!
• Spam may be marked or deleted immediately
• Saves no data in the database, accordingly no connection
• WordPress 2.7 ready: Design and as well as technical
• Very, very fast execution
• No need to adjust any templates
• Clean up after uninstall the plugin
• Anonymous and independent

Has anyone tried this WordPress plugin yet? I’d love to some first-hand experiences from people using it.

Download here: AntiSpam Bee

Feedburner Moving Feeds Over to Google.com

A few months ago I switched my Feedburner account over to Google in order to try out their AdSense for feeds program (not on the WP Hacks feed, but only on a few sites I run that convert well with AdSense). At the time, doing so was strictly voluntary. According to a few reports I’ve been reading around the blogosphere the past couple days, it looks like everyone who hasn’t already moved their feeds to Google will be prompted to do so in the very near future.

Is this a good thing? I suppose there are some advantages to having your feeds on your Google account. So far the only problem I’ve run into since making the switch to Google’s Feedburner is the Feedcount WordPress plugin I was using, which no longer works with the new setup. I went in and hacked the plugin code a bit to try to get it work, but it still wasn’t working with the new setup.

Anyone else having any problems since switching your Feedburner account to Google?