Coolest Blogs on the internet

Blogging seems to be a major part of SEO these days so I thought I would list my favorite blogs in order of how useful I found them.

1. Wordpress: This is hands-down the best blogging platform on the internet. Pages seem to get listed in Google straight away! If you need a blog, go for a Wordpress blog. Site Popularity in Alexa - 18
   
2. Blogger/Blogspot: Great Blog with plenty of extra features. I found it came up second best compared to Wordpress though. Site Popularity in Alexa - 5
   
3. Tumblr: This would have been number 2, but over the last two years it has become quite slow. Site Popularity in Alexa - 45
   
4. Posterous: Great concept. You can update your blog be sending an email. However, the search engines seem to ignore it. Site Popularity in Alexa - 472
   
5. Live Journal: Good for SEO but a little limited in what you can do with it. Site Popularity in Alexa - 81
   
6. Typepad: Too early to tell. After three days my first post is still not listed in Google, very limited in what you can do. Site Popularity in Alexa - 201
   

Coolest Guy in Melbourne for SEO

Wow! It has been a while since my last post on a two week challenge to become the "Coolest guy in Australia". I managed to crack the first page holding positions 7, 8 and 9, with minimal effort!
I have learned quite a lot from my search engine experiments which has lead me to quite a lot of SEO gigs around Australia.
Unfortunately it hasn't given me much time to blog as often as I would like to, but I love the challenge of taking on a new SEO project and getting results.
I am currently, between other projects, working on promoting three websites for a party planning company in Melbourne. There is a good spread of competition, but I know the odds are in my favour, thanks to a secret weapon I have. Can't give away too much just yet, but once I achieve number one rankings for the clients keywords I will post an update. But for now here are the sites I am working with:

• Melbourne Venues
• Melbourne Function Rooms
• Christmas Party Venues

Can't wait for winter to be over! The Coolest guy on Google, is currently also the Coldest guy on Google! ;)

Re-writing the book of cool!

Well, it's been about a month since my last blog post. I have been busy working with some great clients on improving their online presence.

Thought it was time to do a quick Google search to see if Google has dumped me yet.

In Australia today it is the famous Melbourne Cup, got a place bet with "Crime Scene" who came second. Shame it didn't come in first as it had 40:1 odds!

..... Oh, sorry. Went off track there for a while, but what I was trying to explain was why Google's logo has all of the pretty hats! Now when I first started this experiment, their were no predictive results from Google. That was why I decided to go for these exact keywords. Now it shows 412,000 results.The results speak for themselves. This blog is ranked number one for the search term "Coolest Guy on Google". Coming in second is the Facebook group I set up for the Coolest Guy on Google. And in third place .... yes, me again. My Hubpage for the Coolest Guy on Google.

I believe one of the contributing factors to my success is due to my Twitter account which has a backlink to this blog. For someone who is as anti-social as myself, I have really taken to all forms of social media like a duck to water.

this has probably made me even less sociable, opting to send messages via Facebook rather than visiting them in person.

I am addicted to finding new apps and widgets to expand my social profiles. Do a Google search for "jezhug" and you will see what I mean. 1,700 results at the time of this posting! But they all serve a purpose. Everyone of them has a backlink to this blog or some other site I am promoting.

The "jezhug" Google search is a great back linking example. Why? Because jezhug is not a word. It is simply a unique nickname I picked for myself for internet use. All links with the word "jezhug" were created by me or are byproducts of my excessive internet use!

Any of the sites listed on page one are GOLD! I have set up many links, the good ones rise to the top of the search engines while the weaker ones slowly move down the list.

These page one sites are great backlinks, and if you don't set up profiles at these sites with a link to your own site, then be prepared to hand over your search engine listing spot to to someone that will ;)

Save time with the Coolest internet tools around

I have just discovered http://ping.fm/ - A very powerful tool!

What is ping.fm? It is a feed management tool to allow you to send status updates to multiple sites. This means you can integrate your Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Friendfeed and much more, in one handy location.

Use with caution. There may be some places you don't want to update. For example, this post was a one line update from ping.fm, which prompted me to write a new post ;)

While I am still far off being a ping.fm Jedi master, I can see this site will have some huge benefits to me as I am setting up so many social networking site profiles with little time to send updates to them.

Another favorite time saver I have for Twitter is Twaiter! It is a brilliant way to schedule your tweets. Now I can tweet even in my sleep, reaching followers all around the world.

You can set up your tweet and choose to schedule it daily, weekly, monthly, yearly at any time you want!

These are both sites that would have great benefits to business and they are both absolutely free! Check them out today.

How to make money online WITHOUT a website!

Coolest & easiest ways to make cash online (Without having to resort to surveys and get rich quick schemes!)

Yes. You can have a massive online portfolio without even owning a domain name! How? I hear you ask. There are many sites that allow you to submit content and make money from ads around the content.

I recently heard a great story from a fellow Internet Marketer who had a website that usually made him a few dollars every day from Google Adsense revenue. You can imagine his surprise when one day he logged in and found he had made over $1,000 in one day!

Why? Well, even he didn't know at first. Did Google make a mistake?

After a bit of research, he found out that one of his articles had the word "Star Wars" in it, and Yahoo had indexed his website at number one for the natural term "Star Wars". The new Star Wars movie was released and everyone flocked to his site in search of Star Wars merchandise and left via a Google Ad offering what the visitors came for!

I should point out, this guy is quite successful and has many online sources of income. You could have that too!

The best way I would recommend for you to start making money is not to look for how other people make their money online. Also, never look to make fast money. Ask yourself, "What interests me?". Everyone has a hobby or passion that separates them from the rest. If you can provide good information topics you are passionate about, then you will get visitors.

Blogging for Bucks
Blogging can be one of the best ways to make money online without a website. Why? people want to hear what real people have to say on things. For example, you have a blog post on two different televisions, pointing out all the pros and cons of both models. At the bottom of your blog post maybe you have a Google Ad or an Amazon widget advertising both models of televisions and how much someone could save by buying them online.

Does this sound easy enough? Well here are two of the best free online blogging sites around.

Blogger or Blogspot is owned by Google (No suprises there!) and is one of the most simple platforms for expressing your opinion online. It has a monetize tab up the top allowing you to set the position of the Google Adsense Ads on your page or you can add widgets to create extra sources of income such as Kontera Ads or an Amazon widget! The Amazon widget is great for bloggers as you can make commissions from products you don't own, selling anything from books to bicycles! Check out Blogspot.

Wordpress is the entrepreneurs choice for blogging. You can set up a free blog through wordpress.com or if you want to jump straight into the deep end you can buy a domain name, a hosting plan and download Wordpress at wordpress.org. If you are new to all this I would start with a free one. Wordpress has many great plugins and themes to add your own personal touches to your blog. Check out Wordpress.

Ok, so you have the blog started. It is time to up the ante!

Become a publisher
If the heading didn't scare you off, you are ready to be published. I'm not talking about writing a whole book, just a small article about something that interest you. Maybe its Scrap booking or deep sea diving! Whatever drives you, I can tell you there are other people right now looking to learn more about it! The more diverse the subject, the better chance you have of ranking highly in the search engines.

Don't despair if their are thousands of pages on your favorite topic, you can always niche it.
E.g. A Google search on photography - 259,000,000 for photography
But by adding landscape I get much less results - 16,700,000 for landscape photography

Still a scary number, but a much greater chance of making some impact in the search engines. Each post could add a different niche to your topic so you can get more visitors looking for unique content to read.

You could submit a great short article then at the bottom of the article you tell them they can find more information at your blog and give them the link!

There are two fantastic article sites that I use that also allow you to make cash from the ads around your content:

Hubpages is my personal favorite from a marketing point of view (as my previous posts suggest). It is very easy to use, has some great ways to monetize your article and Google loves it! Think carefully about your title and you could have a page one hit in Google in no time at all. Check out Hubpages.

Squidoo, like Hubpages has a huuuuge following. Plenty of ways to make money and is also very user friendly. Not as user friendly as hubpages, but is possibly more popular. Check out Squidoo.

Some key features of both of these cool sites are Amazon, Google Adsense and Ebay integration. The Ebay option is great if you say sell items on Ebay such as beads. You then put up an article about how to make a nice handmade necklace and when the reader gets to the bottom of the article they see all the items they need to make the item - directly from your Ebay listings!

For greater success, use both sites and re-spin the article to make them unique. Google may index them both highly so you can have your own spin off article your own competition.

Coolest and easiest way to get good Google rankings

Getting on search engines can take a lot of time. In the past it could take years to get indexed on Google. Google's theory was that, in the waiting time it would give the site owner the chance to increase the quality and quantity of information on the site! Waiting is now a thing of the past with the introduction of Sitemaps.

Get your site or blog high rankings in Google

What is a Sitemap?

A sitemap is a file (XML) that lists all of your website pages including the priority of the page. If your site is changed you can update your sitemap then let the major search engines know that it has been changed, rather than waiting for the next Googlebot to check which could take months.

You would be interested to know that this technology is quite easy to implement yourself!

Step One: Create your Sitemap

There are many free sites (providing you have less than 500 pages to be indexed) that will generate a sitemap for you. The one we will use today is at http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ once there follow the four simple steps to generate your new sitemap! After it has been generated simply save it to your computer, upload the file to your web server and move on to step two.

Step Two: Create a Webmaster account with Google, MSN and Yahoo

The major search engines have tools for webmasters to allow them to add sitemaps and notify the search engine if any changes have been made. Below is links to sign up to these search engines as a webmaster.

Google: http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

Google, being by far the most popular search engine has some of the coolest tools for webmasters, allowing you to submit your sitemap and explore possible issues with site pages. It also has a nifty feature to show you what keywords rank high in Google for your site.

Bing: http://www.bing.com/webmaster

Bing (formally MSN) may not be as feature rich as Google in the way of features, but it is still a very popular search engine. We can all use more traffic, right?

Yahoo: https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/

Yahoo is very similar to Bing's webmaster tools. However in terms of checking what backlinks you have pointing to your site, Yahoo's Site Explorer dominates, picking up many that Google just doesn't display!

Once the account has been activated, simply navigate to the feed or sitemap area and point to where your sitemap is located. E.g. www.mysite.com.au/sitemap.xml

Step Three: Watch your traffic Increase

With more pages indexed, you should notice more visitors coming your way. If not, maybe you need to add a bit more content.

If your site sells a product, try to use selling keywords in your content. E.g. if you are selling laptops, people looking to buy one may not type into Google, "information about laptops" but they may type "laptop prices". By putting yourself in the place of your visitors you will get a much better conversion of visitors to customers and improve your bounce rate. I will explain a bit more on Search engine optimization in a future post.

Step Four: Repeat

If your site changes dramatically, repeat the steps. If your site has a few typo's, fix them then repeat. There is nothing worse than submitting your site with typo's and finding out visitors can't find your site due to misspelled keywords.

Sometimes commonly misspelled words can work in your favor, getting traffic that you would not have normally got. This strategy could be used if you have heavy competition for certain keywords, but otherwise should not be used.

Creating Quality backlinks

It has been almost a month since my last post. In the last day or so Google has completely flicked me from the top of the list for the natural search term "Coolest Guy on Google".

So, who is the coolest guy on Google?

Still me! Two of my back links set up to get greater rankings have taken first and second place. One is a hubpage article explaining my bizarre journey to become the "Coolest Guy on Google" and the other one is a Facebook fan club I set up for the "Coolest Guy on Google".

The only reason I set them up was to get quality back links leading to my site. Now, the number one listing I had was the http://jezhug.blogspot.com/ address not the http://coolestguyongoogle.com/ domain name, which currently is just forwarding though Godaddy to the blogspot blog.

I have no doubt that when I finally finish my free content and get my new site up I will be straight to the top of the list with the large quality of backlinks I have set up.

So how do you find good quality back links? I have a secret that I want to let you in on.

Hubpages is an excellent source for awesome back links regardless of your sites content. Allow me to demonstrate...
I do a Google search and put in my keywords, e.g. "coolest guy on google" followed by "site:hubpages.com". This brings up the best Google ranked hubpages on your keywords.

I am a hubpage member, but for this exercise you don't need to be, in fact make sure you are logged out if you are a member.

Scroll down to the bottom and put in the link you wish to promote, then some flattering comment, as below.
After posting you should be able to refresh the page and see your comment. Your name will be hyper linked with the back link to your site. Some Hubbers set their comments to be moderated for approval first, so I find nice comments are your best option rather than slagging off their article! The end result ...
There you go. It has two major benefits, it makes someone feel great about the article they have worked hard to create and has given you one very high quality back link. Google loves Hubpages! How else would it have it taken my number one position (temporarily!).

I usually repeat this for the first couple of Google result pages to get the maximum amount of free quality back links. And I did it all without having to request for them or have one of those ugly link exchange banners at the bottom of my site.

Oh, I know it says under the part where you submit your comment not to use it to promote sites, but I promise not to tell if you don't. ;)