seobridges.com

If there are two things you like, it’s free and it’s lists. Blogs with lists of free stuff always get the most views. I try to write my blogs in list or bullet point format as much as possible, but I don’t list free resources (i.e. other sites) as much as I once did. If I list a social media or related start-up and that start-up goes under or is acquired by a larger company, I am left with a broken link. And that’s not good for SEO.

Recently, someone contacted me about trying their site and writing a review. Someone else asked me to review their book on social media marketing, which I will post within the next week or two (e-mail erick @ seobridges . com if you’d like me to review your book, site, or product).

I stopped focusing on posting lists of free resources because while it is great for my initial SEO because it attracts visitor, it is potentially bad for my overall SEO because those sites may cease to exist or the URL may change.

While I may post the occasional review of a social media or social media related site, which has been around for a while, that’s not my focus. My focus is to help you understand the principles of SEO and social media marketing. Yes, I will continue to give you tools, when it’s appropriate; but understanding those principles will prove of higher value to you over time.

What do you find most valuable about my blog?

Stay social my friends!

Erick

Google consists of 1,980,000,000 pages. Here are their top ten tools:

Google Realtime – Find out what’s going on in real time.

Google Trends – Find out what keywords are trending, compare them to other keywords, and see how people are searching them.

Google Squared – Type in a topic. Google will return a list of related topics from top resources in boxes. Deselect sources you don’t want, click “Add to this square,” and get information from the most reliable sources.

Quick Search Box – This downloads onto your computer and allows you to search your computer or the internet for any topic you want.

Website optimizer – Set up an experiment, and get suggestions to optimize your website.

Search insights – Set up your search terms; filter how, when, and in what region you want to search; click search and see how people search for your given terms.  You can also localize it.

Keyword Tool – What you once knew as SKTool is now their Adwords tool.  Enter a website, a few search terms, click search, and find top related Google keywords.

Youtube Insights for Audiences – Set up the gender, age range, and region you want to search according to, and click search.  Then, see what categories their searching in and searching the most, along with which keywords they’re using, and the videos they’re watching.

Business offers – This brings the idea of social couponing to your website.  You run it; Google markets it.

Submit Your Content – Tell Google what kind of content you offer, and they will help you get it to your target audience.

Stay social my friends,

Erick

I thought about discontinuing my five week series about Mac free and open source software, but I decided to continue on with the series in spite of the dwindling interest.  I made that simple “business decision” for one reason, I am a man of my word.  Or at least I try to be.

So, here we go.  This week, I am going to keep it simple, and tell you about a couple of software programs that anyone can find a use for.  Both of them are simple, so let’s go:

TaskMate

It’s so simple to figure out that there aren’t even any video training tutorials about it.  Well, none that I or Google can find.  TaskMate will not allow you to do many of things iCal will; though, it’s not meant to.  TaskMate is a to-do list on your desktop, which will help you to remember your daily schedule, whether you write Web content, engage in Social Media Marketing, or do something completely different.

Download Instructions

1. Click on this blue link: TaskMate
2. When your default browser opens the TaskMate home page, Click the big, grey “Download Now” button.
3. It should download to your Applications folder, so go there and open it.

Using TaskMate

1. After TaskMate opens, click on the “+” sign to add task, and the “—“ sign to delete them.
2. After you delete items, if you want to review them at a later time, click on the icon of the square with the arrow in the middle.  A slide out folder will appear, revealing those tasks you completed.  You can clear those or keep them.
3. There are some simple preferences you can set either by clicking on the crankshaft icon in the TaskMate window or by going to preferences in the menu bar.  There aren’t many preferences you can set, but I encourage you to take a look at them.

Lumina

Okay, so this is similar to TaskMate, in that it will help you to stay on task, but there is more to iClockr by Lumina than TaskMate.  So, if you want something more than a virtual to-do list, iClockr might be just the thing you need.

Download

1. Click on this blue link: Lumina
2. When your default browser opens the Kedisoft home page, Click the grey “Download” button in the upper right hand corner.
3. It should download to your Applications folder, so go there and open it.

Using iClockr

I think it’s useful when used in conjunction with TaskMate.  Let’s say you have 25 tasks listed on TaskMate, 20 of those are chores that can wait (i.e. I have to wash my dog, who is starting to give me dirty looks because he stinks).  I just stay down wind of him.

Let’s say you are optimizing five websites.  You need to keep them organized.  You need to dedicate a certain amount of time to each task with those projects.  With TaskMate, you can keep a general list.  With iClockr you can organize those tasks within projects.

Setting Projects, Tasks, and Time

1. Projects refer to your clients, cases, or other; tasks refer to those immediate things within your projects you need to get done to complete the project.
2. To set up a project, click on the Project tab.
3. Set up your project by clicking on the “+” sign at the bottom of the window that appears.
4. If you want to keep profile information about your various clients, such as contact information, you can do so by clicking “Open Customers” above the “+” button.
5. After you’re done setting your various projects, click “Done” in the lower, right corner.  If you set multiple projects, you will see one of them appear in your original window.  Next to that one, you will see an Up and a Down arrow indicating that you can switch between the project you had set up.
6. To set up tasks, click on the “Tasks” tab, set them up with the “+” icon, and click “Done” when your done.  Note: whichever project you selected in the main window is the project those tasks you set up will default to.
7. Click back to your main window, select the project you want to work on, select the task within that project you want to get done.
8. Click “Start Timer” to start the timer and “stop Timer” to stop it.  iClockr will record  and add up your time
9. At the bottom of the main window, you will notice the word Today with an Up and Down arrow.  Click that to change to yesterday, last week, etc.  The time on your chosen task will change to reflect how much you spent on the project you selected above.
10. If you forgot to set the timer, or forgot to turn it off, you can also add or delete time.  All of this will help you to not only stay on task, but to charge your clients the right amount at the end of the month.

Okay, that’s it for this week.  Sorry, no vids.  Just download them and go.  Also, just for clarification, there are no PC versions to these two programs.  At least none that I can find.  There may be similar programs out there, but they’re neither TaskMate nor iClockr.  Oh, and yes there’s a Windows download called “TaskMate,” but it’s a different type of program.

See you next week for the finale.

Erick

This is the third blog in my series about blogging and micro-blogging, which is a great way to boost you social media marketing campaign.  Again, this week’s software offers a free version, but it is not open source.  Though, Yammer can provide open source script that runs within firewalls and will sync a LDAP or Active Directory server with Yammer.

Since we are interested in the free version, let’s look at that version of Yammer.  Yammer’s free micro-blogging platform includes the ability to share files and create groups, mailing list integration, SMS integration, desktop/iPhone/Blackberry apps, and of course the ability to suspend former employees.  If you want to know what the silver and gold packages include, read about them here.

Yammer works much like Twitter; though, there are some features Yammer offers that Twitter does not.  Yammer users can set up RSS feeds, set ups those apps, or integrate with SMS.  Honestly, without signing up, I don’t know if Yammer will automatically shorten URL’s; though, there is a paperclip right below the message bog where users can attach files.  I’m also not sure if that’s just for pics or Word and other files.  But it’s there.  Whatever types of files you can attach, it’s much easier than having to go through your list of contacts and finding e-mail addresses.  Oh and just like Twitter users can follow and unfollow people, set up or join groups, view a tag directory, view a file directory, and do so much more.

Okay, so there’s more.  But that more costs a little something.  Since I only blog about free and open source software, I am going to let you review the perks of the silver and gold versions.  Depending on which version you want, it’s only $3 or $5 per user per month, and you can add clients with either of those versions.  All in all, the ROI might be well worth it.

Oh yeah, for anyone who hasn’t noticed that social media marketing is going mobile, here’s a link to Yammer’s apps.  And, of course, you can always be assured that no matter how long a person locks themselves in the lavatory, Yammer always has your security in mind.  And they’ll never charge for extra bags.

So, I found some more great CMS to talk about; but, as I said last week, I’m over that.  So, I am going to wait a while before I talk about CMS again.  Over the next three weeks, I am going to talk about boosting your social media marketing by implementing blogging and microblogging.  I am only going to do one site a week.  For this week, I am going to talk about an open source blogging platform called LifeType.  Then, I will do microblogging platforms the two weeks after that.  If I can find more OS blogging and microblogging platforms, and I am sure they’re out there, I will write about two or three a week.  Now, onto LifeType.

Of course, LifeType includes various cool features, so I will cover some of my favorites.  It is a WYSIWYG program (What You See Is What You Get), which is cool for people like me who only have enough knowledge of html to interpret the SEO value of someone’s Website.  After that, my html knowledge ends at being able to hold a somewhat intelligent conversation about it with my computer programmer friends.  Speaking of which, this is a great time to tell you that if you want me to help you with any SEO projects, I would be more than happy to work with you.  Now, let’s move right along to some other great features.

For those who have been blogging for a while, you know those spammers are always so generous with their comments.  Kudos to my buddy Mike for setting up my WordPress blog so I wouldn’t need to deal with that.  LifeType comes with a built-in anti-spam filter.  And it is also includes comment moderation, captchas, and trackback validation.  The nice thing about LifeType is that it locates the trackback URL of blogs you read.  Okay, so here’s a feature you will want to know about.  LifeType includes Mobile blogging (Moblogging).  This way you can offer low bandwidth versions of your site for cell phones.  Check out their other great features.

For the programmers out there, here are some nifty things about LifeType you will want to know.  It is based on XHTML 1.0.  You can also create customized URLs, which we should all know is important for SEO.  And LifeType is based on a model control viewer framework.  If you want to know about more of their great features, read about them here.

For those who want to know more about LifeType, you should know that they offer plenty of Plugins, Templates, and more.  If you would like to see what you’re getting from LifeType before you download it, you can view their snapshots.  Before you do any downloading, you can read more about them, peruse their FAQ section, join their forums, or just jump right in and start downloading.

Okay, so that’s it for this week.  BTW, if you have an open source project you think I might want to blog about, comment here or send me an e-mail.  For those open source projects who have started following me on Twitter, you’re awesome and I thank you for the follows.  I look at every profile and through every site I come across, but if you send me an e-mail I am more apt to write a blog about you quicker.

Okay, so I will talk about a couple of microblogging platforms next week and the week after that.  I’ll search around for some more, but that’s the schedule for now.   Statusnet will not be one of those; however, I did blog about them.  And I have some other projects on the burner I’ll keep you updated about.

For those who want to follow me, check me out on Twitter or Facebook.

Be well,

Erick