Hi Jeremy,
Do let me know what time on Monday is good to talk, please.
Tasks accomplished this week:
1. Published four more posts on the site. Two in the deals category, one in the Asus category, and one in the Acer category. The Asus and Acer posts are based on the keyword research with WT.
2. Posted an update to my Facebook page about the deals.
3. Set up the links page and wrote to each of the sites requesting reciprocal links. One already linked back: http://netbook-evangelist.com/ .
4. Looked at back links on the sites that I contacted and applied to several directories. Accepted in to at least two.
Questions:
1. The links page always puts something as a "menu" at the bottom of the page. I changed it to the main navigation, but I don't really like having any menu down there. Any idea how to fix this?
2. As we get more into Q4, traffic becomes imperative. Do you recommend starting a ppc campaign at some point?
Hope to catch you soon,
me
Friday, October 22, 2010
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Of balances between link building tasks and content building and WTF with WordPress
After reading in the partners forum that some folks are seeing spikes in traffic, I figure I'd better do something besides the web 2.0 profiles and posting in forums and no-follow ezine article links.
One of our tasks had been to make a list of top sites in our niche: forums, blogs, companies, etc.. So I started there and got the basics of my links page started. Then I wrote to each site the good old "Hi, I've posted a link to your site, I'd love a link back."
Then look at the backlinks to THOSE sites and see if I can get some of them, also. Two directory submissions, plus check on a submission from about a month ago. Oh, good, that one is in.
Then on to post some content and get all flustered about the Word Press side bars again. I hate them.
Since I got the site theme, I cannot get the sidebars to do what I want when I want. At some point I settled for one side bar for all pages, but then that got tweeked out again. The default side bar never shows in categories that have no defined sidebar. So I have to go in and define every single category side bar to have a side bar that isn't WP default.
So I found yet another subcategory that isn't pulling the default menu and I have to go put in menu widgets. Well, I also realized that product reviews are in one category, and the related products are in another. Can't have product specific menus in the review category, since all other reviews are in that category.... and this is what it's been like for months now.
On the good news side, I did have a first sale. Still hoping Q4 can recover the year's costs.
One of our tasks had been to make a list of top sites in our niche: forums, blogs, companies, etc.. So I started there and got the basics of my links page started. Then I wrote to each site the good old "Hi, I've posted a link to your site, I'd love a link back."
Then look at the backlinks to THOSE sites and see if I can get some of them, also. Two directory submissions, plus check on a submission from about a month ago. Oh, good, that one is in.
Then on to post some content and get all flustered about the Word Press side bars again. I hate them.
Since I got the site theme, I cannot get the sidebars to do what I want when I want. At some point I settled for one side bar for all pages, but then that got tweeked out again. The default side bar never shows in categories that have no defined sidebar. So I have to go in and define every single category side bar to have a side bar that isn't WP default.
So I found yet another subcategory that isn't pulling the default menu and I have to go put in menu widgets. Well, I also realized that product reviews are in one category, and the related products are in another. Can't have product specific menus in the review category, since all other reviews are in that category.... and this is what it's been like for months now.
On the good news side, I did have a first sale. Still hoping Q4 can recover the year's costs.
Friday, October 15, 2010
Update 15 October, 2010
Hi Jeremy,
Sorry I haven't been in touch much. I had the holidays to deal with among other things.
Tasks accomplished recently:
1. I did make single blogger sites for each of the models with keyword based domain names, linked them together and then linked to them from my Squidoo page. Within two weeks Google had shut down three of them for triggering the spam filter. So I removed the remaining ones immediately as well as the links from Squidoo. I see that domain squatting is not simple, and I don't think it's really my goal to learn how to do it.
2. Traffic on the site is still low. The webmaster tool in Google is showing more of the profile back links, as well as the ezine article links and such. I aggregated my profile URL's into an RSS feed, and went ahead and linked to that from my blog. Currently there are only 50 profiles, but the majority of the other sites that I checked on Knowem.com have little or nothing to offer. I subscribed to the newsletter mentioned in the forums, Paulie Ciara's Backlink newsletter, and try to choose one of those each week to add.
3. I am working on a downloadable ebook like I had in my wireframe. Mostly I am cutting and pasting information from my site so that it's not hugely time consuming. I signed up for the Netbook Buyers Guide ebook from NetbookReviews.com, and they do a nice set of follow up emails afterwards as well.
4. I made a Facebook Page.
Questions:
1. I started the clustered posts, but I need to solve the menu problem for me to even easily navigate the site. What day would work for you this week for a Skype session?
2. I'm not too keen on signing up for a paid newsletter service before there's traffic to the site. I set up a mailing list in the Cpanel, but I am not totally familiar with the settings in cPanel, as I use different hosting. What are your suggestions for being able to capture email address for two or three brief follow up emails to folks who download my ebook?
Hope all is well after that fire!
Best,
me
Sorry I haven't been in touch much. I had the holidays to deal with among other things.
Tasks accomplished recently:
1. I did make single blogger sites for each of the models with keyword based domain names, linked them together and then linked to them from my Squidoo page. Within two weeks Google had shut down three of them for triggering the spam filter. So I removed the remaining ones immediately as well as the links from Squidoo. I see that domain squatting is not simple, and I don't think it's really my goal to learn how to do it.
2. Traffic on the site is still low. The webmaster tool in Google is showing more of the profile back links, as well as the ezine article links and such. I aggregated my profile URL's into an RSS feed, and went ahead and linked to that from my blog. Currently there are only 50 profiles, but the majority of the other sites that I checked on Knowem.com have little or nothing to offer. I subscribed to the newsletter mentioned in the forums, Paulie Ciara's Backlink newsletter, and try to choose one of those each week to add.
3. I am working on a downloadable ebook like I had in my wireframe. Mostly I am cutting and pasting information from my site so that it's not hugely time consuming. I signed up for the Netbook Buyers Guide ebook from NetbookReviews.com, and they do a nice set of follow up emails afterwards as well.
4. I made a Facebook Page.
Questions:
1. I started the clustered posts, but I need to solve the menu problem for me to even easily navigate the site. What day would work for you this week for a Skype session?
2. I'm not too keen on signing up for a paid newsletter service before there's traffic to the site. I set up a mailing list in the Cpanel, but I am not totally familiar with the settings in cPanel, as I use different hosting. What are your suggestions for being able to capture email address for two or three brief follow up emails to folks who download my ebook?
Hope all is well after that fire!
Best,
me
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Q4 2010 is here
I had a lot of personal holiday time last month, continuing frustration with menu trouble on the site with no time to schedule for a session with Jeremy to solve it, and using too much time on building profiles.
Hopefully I'll get the menu problem worked out this week. I am not happy having to deal with website issues, as it always saps my interest in content production. I have a lot of content to get written.
The link to my RSS feed for web2.0 profiles: http://rss.icerocket.com/xmlfeed?id=144499 . Not sure it's more than a huge waste of time. Good for branding if you are building a brandable site, I suppose.
Here's hoping everyone's Q4 goes well. "I'm dreaming of a black Xmas!".
Hopefully I'll get the menu problem worked out this week. I am not happy having to deal with website issues, as it always saps my interest in content production. I have a lot of content to get written.
The link to my RSS feed for web2.0 profiles: http://rss.icerocket.com/xmlfeed?id=144499 . Not sure it's more than a huge waste of time. Good for branding if you are building a brandable site, I suppose.
Here's hoping everyone's Q4 goes well. "I'm dreaming of a black Xmas!".
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