The real opportunity with “fresh” content concerns adding new content (new pages) on a regular basis. Adding new pages  provides a number of benefits:  Each new web page added to the website creates a new entry point and a new destination for links from other websites.  Creating topically specific pages with text, images, video or other media provide a better user experience and  gives other websites interesting content to link to.  Of course a quantity of quality links from other relevant websites increases direct traffic and can positively influence search engine visibility, sending even more qualified visitors.

Read the entire article at:
http://www.toprankblog.com/2010/07/seo-telephone-game-fresh-content/

The 10 for 10 Challenge

This does two things. First, it builds inbound links to your site, boosting your SEO and ultimately getting more traffic from search engines. Second, there’s an immediate effect of having the site owner, other readers, and commenters become aware of you, which might lead them to check out your site, using the link in the comment.

This works for both other blogs and for forums. It also works on Facebook and Twitter, but I’m not convinced that it works as effectively there. Maybe you can prove me wrong on that point. There are a lot of people who read this site that have Etsy shops. Their forums are a great place to post.

I want to help you out, my precious readers. I want you to have a direct benefit from reading this blog. So, here’s what I’m going to do.

The Challenge

I’m announcing the “10 for 10 Challenge”.

Post at least 10 comments on other people’s sites for 10 days in a row. That’s a total of at least 100 comments.

Document the number of visitors to your site on the day you start and at the end of the 10th day. That’s 10 full days of visitors.

The Prize

Whoever has the greatest increase in those 10 days will get a promotional article on my site, including an interview with you, a review of your site and your products, and a link in the sidebar on walton.com, (which is great for your SEO.)

The Rules

You need to have Google Analytics installed on your site, or another statistics program that can be verified.

The 10th and final day must be on or before July 12, which is 2 weeks from the day this article is published. That will give you a couple days to get the statistics program installed if you don’t have it already and you can do a little research for where you want to leave comments. If you want to start now and pick the best 10 days to get your maximum number, you can do that too.

Send me a screenshot of the statistics program, show the number of visits for each of 10 days in a row. The site with the greatest increase in the number of visits between the first day and the tenth day will win.

That’s not a percentage, it’s the number. It’s not the number of page views, it’s the number of visits. It’s not just the 10th day either. It’s the first day compared to any other day within 10 days. If you have a bump on the 7th day, then it declines, take the number on the 7th day. We’re looking for the greatest increase.

The actual comments that you leave are not verified. The only thing we’re counting to win is the increase in the number of visits.

Email me with your results. Show me a screenshot. The winner will be determined based solely on my judgement and my decision is final.

The Strategy

The way to make this work is to know your market. Research where they hang out. Search Google for your keyword and the term “forums” to find forums related to your product. Use your keyword and try searching for “best keyword blogs”. You can search for just your keyword, note the top 10 results, and see which are blogs or places that accept comments.

Once you have a good list of places to leave comments, hit them all, every day. See what people are talking about first. Don’t just jumps in with “Please visit my site”. No one cares about that. You need to be helpful. Answer questions. Be an authority. Give solid information. Ask great questions. Be that interesting person at the party that everyone wants to talk to.

The Benefits

If you are not using a stats application now, you should be, and this challenge might push you into doing that. Going through the process of looking for sites to leave comments, then actually leaving them, will get you into a great habit that will SEO your site for the long run.

If you leave 10 comments a day for 10 days, you WILL have more traffic, regardless of this challenge. You may not win this, but you will have more traffic. Everyone who attempts this challenge will have more traffic.

At the end of the day, isn’t that what it’s all about?

On video there’s nothing to hide behind. It’s your verbal stumbles and nervous laughter and futzing with the neckline of your shirt. It’s your face, your wrinkles, the miscombed part in your hair. Your crooked smile and teeth and glasses. Your weird mannerisms. Your messy office.

You’re not doing videos, because video is you.

But let me tell you my secret.

Letting everyone see you naked, in all of your imperfections, is exactly what make video so delicious.

I’m naked in every video I’ve posted online. In all of my dorkyness, everything I would love to improve via diet and exercise and a few intensive sessions with a voice and acting coach. Every bra strap foible, the phone ringing in the background, the fire trucks sirens on the street outside my apartment, the way I keep forgetting my train of thought, the annoying way I play with my hair.

Read the entire article at:
http://www.lauraroeder.com/2010/05/let-them-see-you-naked-on-video/

We watched the new Food Network Star TV show on Sunday. They picked a bunch of people that might be good for TV, then make a TV show about giving them challenges, and eliminating them one by one, until they get down to the one person they will give their own TV show on the Food Network. Everyone wants to be a star.

It was great to see all these fresh faces, trying to do a promo to a camera. I mocked and laughed as they stumbled and got nervous in front of the camera. I love watching reality TV, just to judge people, and to feel better about myself, while they fail.

Then I decided that I could do way better in front of a camera than they did. I’d make my own video for this blog. Ha!

Videos can help bring more traffic to your site. The technology is easy. That hard part is getting in front of the camera.

Here’s my first video blog post. Wow. Way harder than it looks.

Mock away. (Please tell me if you have problems playing the video.)

You can watch it on YouTube here.

At the end, I ask you to leave a comment and tell me what the most valuable thing I ever did for you was. I told you to ask your customers what their needs, wants and desires are, so I figured I better ask you that same thing.

The tribe has spoken. Please leave a comment. Thanks.

If you have an account with ezinearticles.com, and you are using WordPress, then you should be using this plug in to create more content. Good stuff here!

With the introduction of our new EzineArticles WordPress Plugin, experienced WordPress users will be able to submit their WordPress posts and blog entries right to EzineArticles.com!

Read the entire article at:
http://blog.ezinearticles.com/2010/03/articles-directly-from-wordpress.html

Click Here
For The ''walton.com''
Facebook Fan Page!

I listened to a seminar recently about the advantages of having a Facebook fan page for your business. It’s a place to interact with people and allow them to interact with each other. You can build your own little community around your business.

It allows you to update every one who “likes” you. You can send messages to everyone, which you cannot do as with a personal profile. Because it’s based on your business, people who join it have essentially raised their hand and said “I’m interested in your business. Tell me more.”, so you don’t have to feel funny about trying to sell stuff to your friends.

It should be a party, not an Amway meeting. People should feel free to hang out and talk to each other. You should have chips out and some music playing to make it more comfortable for everyone. Be a good host.

That’s what I am trying to do.

Please check out out my Fan Page for “walton.com” at www.facebook.com/waltoncom. I have a bunch of my personal friends there now, but if more SEO, small business, and Etsy people show up, that will make things more interesting for all of us.

If you’re not sure about Facebook fan pages, or how they could help your business, you can play with this one and see what they do.

I hope that by seeing there are other people just like you, dealing with the same questions and issues, that we can work together to help make us all more successful. If you feel like you’re out in the cold, all alone, come on in and meet some interesting people.

I’d love for you to stop by and see what’s happening. Leave a comment. Meet a new friend. Hang out.

Please click here or on the icon, then click the “like” button when you get there.

I’ll see you there! Thanks for stopping by.

Etsy published the “Etsy Guide to SEO”.

SEO is generally divided into “on site” factors and “off site” factors. In their book, they detail the things that you can do to your Etsy shop and products pages, all of them “on site”.

What they don’t tell you about are the “off site” techniques. “Off site” is everything that is not on your site. It generally refers to building links from other sites to your site, which is the biggest factor in SEO.

They only devote one page to link building ideas and only one paragraph to any task that is not on the Etsy site. They want to keep all of your attention focused on their Etsy site and not necessarily the absolute best ways to get traffic.

Let’s gaze off into the distance and see if we can build some inbound links another way, without anything to do with Etsy.

Before you do anything else, you need to define your keywords. I’ve written a few posts about that and cover it in the SEO book.

• Before You Do ANYTHING Else…
• Small Business SEO – Sea Glass Jewelry- Keywords and Competition
• Sell Handmade Stuff On The Internet – SEO, Part One

When you have your keywords picked, we’re going to create a new website, for FREE, and build a bunch of links ourselves. It’s way easier than you think. Really. Watch closely.

Pick your top 3 keywords.

You’re going to create a new web site for FREE. It will have some limitations, so you can’t do everything that you might want to do, but it will do enough to make this technique work and it’s free.

Go to http://www.wordpress.com and follow their instructions, using the top three keywords as your user ID. If your keywords are “handmade glass jewelry”, then create the site as “handmadeglassjewelry”.

That will give you a site with a domain name of “handmadeglassjewelry.wordpress.com”. You get SEO value for having the keywords in the domain name, even if it’s got the “wordpress.com” in there too.

They have some instructions there about how to create posts and pages, so when you figure out how to write a new post, write a new post about one of your products. Use all of the keywords that you can think of when describing it. Put in a photo. Write naturally, like you were writing so that I could read it. I have some WordPress Tutorial Videos that might be helpful.

Put in a link to your product page on Etsy. In the “edit” page, put in the name of your product and select that text. There’s a “link” button at the top. Click that. Copy and paste in the URL to your product page. Insert that into the copy on the page. You’ve just created a link to your product page.

Write a new post for every one of your products. Write naturally, but use your keywords. Put a link, or maybe two, from each post to each product page.

When you are done, you’ll have a web site, with your main keywords in the domain name, and links to every one of your product pages.

As you publish new products on Etsy, write a new post for each one on your web site. As your products sell, leave the posts and links. The search traffic will build up over time.

If you start to love this stuff, write other posts about the subject of your products, and not your products specifically. Your site will get some SEO just from the related content. Your site gives your Etsy shop a bunch of SEO.

As your SEO rankings start to build and you start see some results, consider creating your very own site that you fully control, instead of the wordpress.com free version. You’ll be able to do more things with it and you will have complete control over it.

**cough** I can build one for you… **cough**.

The more pages you have on a site, the more links you have, and the more links you can point at your Etsy shop, and the more search traffic you’ll get from the search engines.

There are many other SEO things that you can do, but this is free, easy, and effective. Call it the “low hanging fruit”.

Feel the power.

Victoria standing next to some ''art'' found on Jalama Beach

Now, counterbalance “she’s nice” against the image of managing a large department in a huge corporation. To survive in the huge corporate world, you need to be a cutthroat political animal, right?

I once mentioned to her that she wasn’t political. She disagreed. She said that she was VERY political. She told me that she had helped so many people and done so many nice things for so many people, because she was nice. She just wanted to help.

She also knew that if she ever needed anything, she knew the right people in the right places that would do anything for her because she helped them in the past.

Did I mention that she’s also very smart?

I read this post below and had to link. This seems to be a recurring theme among blogs that I read and friends that I have.

The people who are successful in life are the people who give. Love is the key to success.

This is not a feel good, bubble gum philosophy. Love is a very political act. You want something? Give it away and you’ll be overwhelmed with what you get back.

“How can I get more for myself?” The more in question varies: interest, customers, website traffic, subscribers, money, whatever—but it always relates to an increase in focus on the individual.

There’s nothing wrong with any of those things. I’d like more too. But motivations can be interesting predictors of success. The more that we want tends to come along when we give more, but when we give because we want to receive, it doesn’t always turn out so well.

If it sounds complicated, it’s not. Here’s the secret:

Some singers want the audience to love them. I love the audience.
-Luciano Pavarotti

Read the entire article at:
http://chrisguillebeau.com/3×5/luciano-pavarottis-secret-for-online-success/

My wife looking for sea glass on a recent trip to Jalama Beach

If you read “The Care And Feeding Of Search Engines, A Simple Guide To SEO“, you know that there are many, many things that you can do to increase your search engine optimization and get more traffic.

The very easiest way to get traffic is to comment on other people’s blogs and leave a link to your site. They usually link your name to your site. Don’t be obnoxious about it. Don’t oversell yourself or be rude, but leaving a link is common and acceptable.

The other benefit of commenting on other people’s blogs is that they usually read your comments. If you are witty and relevant enough, they might even come check out your site. If you have great content on your site, (and you do, right?), then they might even become a fan of yours. Maybe they become a friend. Poof! A relationship is born.

The hard part of commenting on other people’s site is that it takes time. You don’t see results right away.

I nagged coached Deborah, my wife’s friend with the sea glass jewelry site, to leave comments. (Did you notice that? I linked to her again. Darn, she’s good.) Her attitude was “Yeah. Yeah. Whatever…” but I kept after her. She tried hard, but it was difficult to keep up the energy when the results don’t come quickly.

She checks the number of inbound links to her site using Site Explorer, a tool I discuss in the book.

I got this email from her recently.

We’ll today I’m officially over a thousand. Am I supposed to put this in a diary of something? I remember in late October when you were on me about having 46…It was drudgery to even think about posting comments, etc. Now it’s the 1st thing I do for work every morning. Thanks for the push.

-Deborah

It warms my little heart. Yes, she went from 46 inbound links to over a thousand. It took her 5 months. She achieved it. Along the way, she’s made new friends and her site is better known to the community.

I’m so proud.

You want more traffic?
Build more links to your site!

What will happen to the way search algorithms score links is already happening. The Google algo has become much more elegant and advanced, devaluing staggering amount of links that shouldn’t count, and placing more emphasis on trusted links. And the trust and juice given by those links is then verified by elements like user data, domain age, and other relatively hard-to-spoof factors.

But please, don’t fool yourself. Links that should count are still the key to rankings (in Google, at least — and MSN and Yahoo! are only a few short years behind). In that spirit, Aaron and I have created our 101 Ways to Build (and Not Build) Links. (Yeah, it just so happened that there were exactly 101!)

Oh, and mad props to our inspiration, 131 Legitimate Link Building Strategies, one of the original authority documents on link building. It was just getting a bit rusty, that’s all (“Host your own Web Ring”?). Anyway, enjoy the update.

Read the entire article at:
http://www.seobook.com/archives/001792.shtml

The web site is the truck of the tree, the thing that holds it all together, the thing that you hang everything else on, the things that everything else grows out of. Which metaphor do you like the best there?

After you get your keywords, before all that other stuff I wrote about for SEO, you need to get a domain name and build yourself a web site. This is not a definitive post on how to do this, but more of an overview of the process.

Here’s what I wrote:

This will all boil down to “keywords”. You need to decide what keywords you want to be found for. The more general the keyword, the more results will match it, which means more competition for that keyword. You want to be as specific as you possibly can, to narrow the results enough that you can beat your competition, but wide enough that you can actually get some traffic. It’s a balancing act.

Read the entire article at:
http://www.waltonwebdesigner.com/2010/02/14/sell-handmade-stuff-on-the-internet-seo-part-one.html

The web site is the trunk of the tree, the thing that holds it all together, the thing that you hang everything else on, the things that everything else grows out of. Which metaphor do you like the best there?

Don’t use dashes. I’m not sure why, but no one likes them and Google will give you points off for them. I guess that spammers liked using them and they got a bad reputation.

There’s a link in my right sidebar that will take you to a page that will allow you to check if a domain name is available or not.

Domain Name Look Up

The steps to building a web site are:

1. Register a domain name.
I suggest GoDaddy for domain name registration. (NOT for web hosting!) Check on to make sure the domain name you want is available at the page above, then go here to register it. You have to point the domain name at the web host server to make it all work. Again, the details of how to do this are beyond the scope of this article.

2. Rent some web hosting space.
This is the subject of much debate, but I like PowWeb. There are many web hosts out there and they have pretty much become a commodity. I also host sites and if you want us to host your site, we have better customer support than the big guys.

3. Install your web site.

Under that number 3, I’m going to tell you that using WordPress is the absolute best way to build a web site today. I’ve been building them since 1994, for large companies and small. Today, I only use WordPress.

Steps to using WordPress:

1. Install WordPress.
Usually the web host has an option to do this for you with a click of a button. There are many “how to” guides out there for this. If you read this post and ask me to do it for you, I’ll do it for free. No strings. Just mention the secret word “penguins” in your email. (My personal addiction.)

2. Pick a “Theme”.
There are a bunch of free themes and some “premium” themes that cost money. If you want a custom theme, I can build you one. This topic has more depth to it than I can address here, but pick a theme and install it.

3. Write pages.
Create the static pages that you want on your web site. These will be the normal “contact us”, “about us”, and other stuff that stays the same.

4. Write posts.
You need to blog. Yes, you do. I’ll talk more about what to say and why later, but for now, make sure this is set up.

That is a quick overview of how to set up a web site. I have 15 years of experience to pour out into a long, rambling post about the details of each step, but I’ll save that for another day. Today, you should just know that this is the overview of steps you need to take.