Is your blog firing on all cylinders?

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Here’s  6  WordPress plugins you should have in your toolbox to ensure maximum performance.

TweetMeme Button

Getting your blog retweeted is great. So why not make it even easier for your readers to do so. Don’t rely on just the tweet stream; let your blog visitors become a distribution channel as well.

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You’ll quickly see how may times your story has been retweeted with the built in counter. Quickly adjust its placement, icon size and the name of the twitter profile being retweeted. That’s my TweetMeme button at the beginning of this post. Go ahead. Click it.

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Within a couple of clicks your Google compliant XML-Sitemap is complete. Notify ASK.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO once you create or edit a page. The search engines like it when you notify them of current content changes; keeping them happy with your new XML sitemap coundn’t be easier.

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Give your images the correct ALT and TITLE attributes per your custom settings. Your posts will also be W3C/xHTML valid; doing so helps with a key element of the search engine optimization process.  This plugin provides a description of your images and also helps when users search for specific images.

SEO Slugs

This plugin helps your SEO efforts by eliminating unnecessary words such as ‘a’, ‘the’, ‘in’ from within your post slugs. Simply install and let it do the rest.

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Another great tool to get your posts linked to social bookmarking sites and in your RSS feed. One of the better tools with 99 different social sites to choose from.

All In One SEO Pack

The best one stop shop in the blogosphere for effecting your blog’s titles, descriptions and keywords.

Affect your blog post titles by including your most specific key word phrases. Create specific, descriptive descriptions to help provide even more information to search engine users when you’re found in the results. Accurate descriptions help drive qualified visitors interested in your content by providing them with a quick detailed overview of the post they’re about to click on. Control specific keywords, within the keyword text box and select auto-detected keywords and/or add your own custom KW’s.

Which other plugins are you using to improve your blog’s performance?

Here’s 7 sites that are easy to set up, easy to use and best of all, the search engines play nice with them:

1. Google Knol.

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   (short for knowledge) Create a bio and simply share your knowledge. About anything. This a great place to create an expanded profile and link to your sites.

2. Live Journal. This is one of the Internet’s original blogging/journal sites (dating back to 1999) Simple control features, nice templates to customize your appearance and its social networking features make this is a long-standing favorite.  Originally created by Brad Fitzpatrick.
3. Ning. Ning is the most expansive on the list as its actually a community platform – you can easily design and create your own social network using Ning’s template driven platform. Netscape founder Marc Andreesen started Ning to let users create their own networks based around specific interests.
4. Squidoo. This is a fun, easy to use, interactive set of pages called lenses.  Squidoo gets a lot of traffic and plenty of features for users to enjoy: RSS feeds, images, videos, links  – plus you can even earn $$ for your content and/or contribute to charity. Another great contribution from Seth Godin.
5. Tumblr. One of my personal favorites. David Karp whipped up this micro-blogging platform in 2007. Use the stock designs or add your own custom themes; use it for blogging, pics, videos, links and audio files. Follow others & people can follow your tumbleblog to build your own community.
6. PitchEngine. Perfect for your press release content.  Created by Jason Kintzler as a new school method of publishing Social Media Releases. (press releases on steroids.) Add links, tags, images and videos to build a powerful press release.
7. PollDaddy. High Anxiety film Supercross rip Not necessarily creating new content, rather, letting the new content come to you in the form of online polls. Great for feedback and learning more about – well, anything. Especially useful for creating new content based on poll results.

Not using any of these? Make your own 7 day challenge and you’ll have a whole new level of content sites created within a week.

What are some of your favorite sites?

One of my new friends and contacts from Raleigh, Kipp Bodnar, invited me to share some ideas with the Raleigh Social Media Breakfast today. (Thanks Kipp – great time!)

Here’s a quick overview of the items we discussed for your reference. The Raleigh SMB is now of my regular stops when I’m in town each month; I recommend it to anyone with an online presence – stop out and meet some extraordinary people.

Today’s discussion talked about creating a plan and using tools effectively to reach help reach your goal.  Don’t just be online – be effective. Check out some of the ideas we talked about…

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Blogs: Wendy and Lucy video Download and install the Worpdpress plugin “SEO All-In-One Pack” to efficiently – and effectively – utilize your page titles, descriptions and keywords.  Combine these efforts with your keyword analysis and you’ll begin targeting content towards what your visitors are searching for – or even identify new areas of opportunities.

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Facebook: Add the Networked Blogs application to your personal or professional pages. Add your URL’s to the Networked Blogs profile page. The profile links on this page are ‘follow’ links – meaning Facebook will pass along the link juice from this page to your site. (link juice= page rank strength)

LinkedIn: Similar to Facebook – your LinkedIn profile page uses ‘follow’ links in the three spots reserved for your websites. Use them effectively by using your keywords in the link title as well.

YouTube: In your description box, the first 27 spaces are reserved for visible display – use those spots for your site’s URL. The shorter the URL the better as more of it will be seen. Youtube’s algorithm is  (relatively) easier to manage than other sites. Your video’s placement and strength can be affected by managing (not gaming – managing!) your titles, descriptions, tags, # of views and ratings.

Tumblr: Tumblr pages are still an underutilized property that offer so many opportunities within the micro-blogging niche. I use Tumblr for my twitter interviews; they don’t use ‘nofollow’ links and its a great way to build links to your main properties and also into your tumblr blog.

Social media releases were also mentioned – see my post on SMR’s for my thoughts. (I love ‘em)

A few other topics we didn’t get into, because I didn’t want it to turn into a twitter-discussion and/or off-track: twitter search, interviews and product reviews.

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Twitter search is exploding; increase your chances to be found within twitter search by using the hash tag (#) with trending keywords.  Interviews and product reviews are also great ways to build relationships while creating opportunities for relevant keyword links.

Use your tools to the fullest to build your brand, drive traffic and convert your key metrics.

If I can create a successful social media strategy within an unlikely market segment such as the used car market – you should have decent odds within your niche as well!

Share your efficiency tips and SEO secrets…

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