In the spotlight in the past week:
- Has indian payday loan company hacked your blog?
- Matt Cutts: common SEO mistakes to watch out for;
- social media upgrades;
- Who wins the race for privacy?
- Ghost of WordPress;
- and more.
At TrafficGenerationCafe.com
Sticky Profit Builder: Traffic Conversion Plugin to Do More With Traffic You Have - The secret to doing more with website traffic you have is convert traffic better. Sticky Profit Builder is the Traffic Conversion Plugin for that.
How to REALLY Create a Popular Blog From Scratch - Every popular blog starts with nothing. What does it really take to make YOUR blog popular? No secrets or silver bullet, just actionable advice.
Kindle Publishing: Your Guide to Getting Responsive Traffic with Kindle - Kindle publishing, Blogging, and Marketing: how to connect the dots to maximize traffic, exposure, and even build email list with Kindle.
Weekly Marketing Skinny: April 27, 2013 - in my previous weekly marketing skinny, we talked about: W3 Total Cache and WP Super Cache vulnerability; User-generated content (blog comments) causes Google manual penalty; Twitter woes; Scam alerts; Government sensors Google; Tax-free online shopping no more; and more.
SEO
Common SEO Mistakes
In his most recent video, Matt Cutts reveals 5 most common (not the most devastating) mistakes webmasters make.
1. Not having a website or having a website that is not crawlable is the biggest mistake he sees.
(not having a website is the common SEO mistake? 
Making the site not crawlable does indeed happen quite a bit, as I mentioned in my search engine ranking optimization post.
2. Not including the right words on the page.
The example Matt gave is: don’t just write, “Mt. Everest Height” but write, “How high is Mt. Everest?” because that is how people search.
3. Don’t think about link building, think about compelling content and marketing.
4. Don’t forget to think about the title and description of your most important pages.
5. Not using webmaster resources and learning about how Google works and what SEO is about.
So, those are Matt’s top five SEO mistakes. Here’s his video:
Social Media
#Hashtags Be Gone
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) — the organization that makes the rules governing college sports — has banned the display of hashtags and social media URLs on football fields.
Apparently, any reference to social media presence is considered to be advertising.
Facebook settles Timelines trademark suit
Facebook and Timelines Inc. have reached a settlement in the trademark case against the social network, according to a document Facebook filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Timelines Inc. operates Timelines.com, a website for people to create and collaborate on historical timelines. The company sued Facebook in September 2011 after it debuted an overhauled profile page it called “timeline.” Timelines Inc. has registered trademarks for “Timelines,” “Timelines.com” and its “Timelines” logo.
(source)
Google bids Meebo goodbye, to focus on Google+
Google bought the popular social sharing bar Meebo less than a year ago. But after June 6, 2013 Meebo will be no more.
Google plans to focus more on Google+, including the recently launched Google+ Sign-In and Google+ plugins instead.
It’s more writing on the wall: Google+ is important and your business needs a presence on it.
New LinkedIn Contacts update
You may be thinking you already have Contacts in your LinkedIn account, but this update is something different.
The new LinkedIn Contacts will let you keep track of your LinkedIn connections and your connections from your address book, calendars and emails — all in one place. There’s a standalone app, too.
Twitter introduces a Mac app
Twitter is rolling out enhancements for Mac users that should make the social network more engaging. Mac App will allow a user to manage multiple accounts, view multiple timelines and use some new keyboard shortcuts.
Upgrade Your Social Media Marketing [SlideShare]
Dan Zarella from HubSpot put together this interesting Slideshare presentation to reflect his findings on social media responses.
Can’t say I agree on all points, but interesting findings just the same.
What’s your take on it?
WordPress
Indian Payday Loan Hack
Has your blog been hacked by an indian payday loan company?
This warning comes from Andy Bailey, creator of CommentLuv.
“I’ve received a number of support tickets recently from users who get the ‘XML document invalid’ warning when they try to comment on CommentLuv sites and always it’s because their site has been hacked to have some invisible links to an Indian payday loan company.”
How to tell if your site has been hacked?
You need to view the source of your page while you are logged out and search for indipaydayloans.
If you don’t know how to do it, look up my post about bounce rate; the directions are under “How to find out if that’s your problem” section.
Content Curation
If you are into content curation, you’ll love this post by Nathan Weller at ManageWP.com.
Nathan runs TheAstonishingPost.com - a curated resource for visual artists - and spills the beans on how he managed to dig out, quality-check, and publish his great content.
The Ghost of WordPress
WordPress is no longer “just a blogging platform”.
Ghost is a blogging platform that could become a genuine option for those of us who use WordPress to blog.
It was first announced by WordPress developer extraordinaire, John O’Nolan, back in November 2012. At the time it attracted an enormous amount of interest, but was nothing more than a concept.
But O’Nolan clearly recognized the potential he had in his hands and set about producing a prototype.
Now Ghost is backed by a Kickstarter campaign that has already surpassed its funding target (with 28 days left to go).
You know what that means? Ghost is going to become a reality.
Marketing This and That
Privacy
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has released its third annual “Who’s Got Your Back” privacy scorecard for Internet companies.
Below is the 2013 scorecard.
(source)
Digg’s RSS Reader
Digg has announced that it’s planning to release a beta version of its RSS reader in June.
It’s planning to charge for the final product, though exact pricing isn’t decided at this point.
The Online Retailer with Highest Sales Growth
No, it’s not Amazon.
That honor goes to Urban Outfitters.
According to the Internet Retailer 2013 Top 500 Guide, Urban Outfitters has experienced a 65.2 percent compound annual growth rate in the last decade — putting it atop the rankings of online sales growth.
Bitcoins - Stay Away
Bitcoin is a decentralized (i.e., no single country or organization controls it) digital currency. It was introduced in 2009 by an anonymous hacker, and its use gained a lot of momentum over the last couple of years.
But the exchanges pose potential risk to users, a study finds.
A recent paper by researchers at Southern Methodist and Carnegie Mellon universities (PDF) says that 45 percent of the exchanges fail. The paper also says most close their doors without refunding users’ money.
Thank You
To all of you who mentioned Traffic Generation Café in any share or form in the past week, my whole-hearted THANK YOU.
Traffic Generation Café would NOT be what it is today without you.
Here are just some of the mentions I came across in the past week:
Which Loads Faster? – Compare The Loading Time Of Two Pages Or Websites - Kim Castleberry at Just-Ask-Kim.com analyses how fast her site loads against Traffic Generation Café.
The Top 75 Must-Read Online Marketing Blogs - Kristi Hines at Unbounce.com
7 Steps on Your Journey to Building A Profitable Blog - Ileane Smith at BasicBlogTips.com
Resource Post: The One Smart Secret to Spiking our Blog Traffic - Peter Lapoposky at compellingadverts.com
Why You Should Be Building Relationships Online - Ryan Eisenhower at manifestincome.com
Weekly Roundup: Marketing Goodies & Tools to Simplify Your Life - Eugene Farber at contentstrategyhub.com
Even Justin Bieber Knows Why Your Guest Post Sucks - Kapil at latestcrunchs.com
Expert Interview 007: Branded Content Strategies with Sean Si - Sean Si in his interview with Venchito Tampon at digitalphilippines.net
SEO | My Three Simple Rules for Beginners - Susan at thesavvysolopreneur.com
MYF Approved Weekly: May 3 - Lain Robson at MarketingYourFarm.com
Top 10 Killer Traffic Generation Blog Posts - Ioan Draniciar at lazycashmakingformula.com
Jupiter Jim – Website Design Expert, WordPress Mentor: An Interview - Jupiter Jim in his interview with Maricel Rivera at careermomonline.com
Have I missed your mention? Let me know in the comments!
Want to see your name here? Mention Traffic Generation Café in your next blog post!
To an even better next week,
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