Welcome back! If you have yet to sign up for the ioV RSS feed perhaps it's because you don't know what the heck that EVEN means! Watch this small video to see all the cool things you can do with "RSS" or if you prefer reading, check out this article and let our feed be the first on your list! Trust me, if you visit more than 2 websites on a regular basis, RSS will make your life easier! You can also find us on Twitter @ioVentures

Watch Video Here: If Shakespeare Could Blog - Blogging Success Video

1. Setting up a WordPress Blog
   1.  Hosting (BlueHost: Fantastico, Simple Scripts)
   2. WordPress Installation & Setup
      1.  Installation
      2. Settings
         1. www
         2. permalink structure /%postname%.html
      3. Plugin Essentials
         1. What are plugins & how can they help me?
            1. Explanation
         2. Uploading your first plugin
            1. Plugin Central - List of Plugins to paste
         3. Setting a Stable base
            1. Publishing
               1. Google Sitemap Plugin
               2. Twitter Tools
            2. SEO Your Site
               1. All-in-One SEO Pack
               2. SEO Friendly Images
               3. SEO Smart Links
               4. Simple Tags
            3. Networking
               1. Social Links
               2. Tell-A-Friend
            4. Usability Features
               1. Featurific
               2. Awesom Dropdown
               3. Favorite Posts
            5. Creating Stick
               1. What Would Seth Godin Do?
               2. Comment Relish – emails a thank you to first time
               3. Subscribe to Comments
               4. Comment Thank You Page
         4. Others
            1. Askimet
               1. Registering for WordPress.com & API
            2. Ohz Dropdown Menu
            3. One Click Plugin
         5. Find more plugins
            1. WordPress.org Plugin Directory
            2. Google Search
      4. Installing Your Template FREE ONES
         1. Finding a Template
            1. WordPress.org Themes
            2. Google Search
         2. Installing & Activating
2. Building Community
   1. Read
      1. Search for your topic of interest
      2. Skim or read 5 a day
      3. Setup Google Reader or iGoogle
   2. Bookmark
      1. Onlywire
      2. Shareaholic Firefox Add-on
      3. AddThis
         1. Digg
         2. StumbleUpon
         3. Twitter
         4. Facebook
   3. Commenton on Blog Posts (links)
   4. Tweet
      1. 3 times a day is solid
         1. 1 blog post (Twitter Post)
         2. 2 links to good resources (in your reading)
         3. 3 Thoughtful replies (TweetDeck - Twitter Search)
   5. (Make New Friends & Connect)
      1. Twitter Search – Tweet Deck
      2. Facebook Groups
      3. Youtube Channels
3. Content, Content, Content
   1. Principles
      1. QUALITY 1.
      2. Engage Your Reader
         1. Ask questions
         2. Respond to User Comments Quickly
      3. Think SEO, at least partially
         1. Categories/Tags
         2. SEO
   2. Push Content
      1. Facebook Notes/Page
      2. Twitter - Twitter Tools
      3. LinkedIn

About ioV

What does ioVentures do you ask? Well, since you asked… ioVentures is passionate about increasing targeted webtraffic through the medium of Search Engine Optimization, Blog Marketing & Video SEO. A couple of things that set us apart from other SEO companies are: We use enhanced SEO techniques (don’t worry, they’re all "white hat") to achieve indented results in Google. Our clustering methods also help our clients receive much more long-tail traffic than traditional landing page targeting can do. One other thing we like to do is rank videos in YouTube searches as well as in regular Google searches.

This workshop was presented by Seth Norwood and Ryan Mendenhall. Feel free to connect with Ryan on twitter @ioVspacemonkee or get official ioV updates @ioVentures.

PRWeb referenced a DMNews article saying that 99.5% of Press Releases aren’t optimized for the web. More and more journalists and others are going online to find news, 73% to be exact according to a May 2008 study from the Pew Internet Trust & American Life Project. SEO is designed to get your news in front of more of those viewers, so let’s take a look what SEO is and how it can help you in your online PR.

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization is part of a wider strategy to draw traffic from search engines called Search Engine Marketing (SEM). Pay-Per-Click (PPC), commonly referred to as paid search advertising is generally the other piece of the SEM pie. But that’s a topic for another day.

SEO consists of four main parts:

1. Researching phrases that your potential clients are using to search for businesses like yours
2. Optimizing your web content to include those keyword phrases
3. Getting keyword-rich links to your site with those phrases
4. Tracking your results

SEO often requires an upfront investment of time and money before solid results appear, but this ongoing process can bring you highly targeted traffic over time. (For a more detailed overview of the SEO process see Search Engine Optimization Training)

How can SEO increase the Value my Press Releases?

When considering the SEO benefits your Press Release can have, there are two areas you must consider: The ranking potential of your website AND the ranking potential of press release itself.

A well structured press release can rank well in the news search engines, stays visible longer to those searching news engines and if it’s not time sensitive you can even rank in the normal search engine results with a little link building effort. But, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. To optimize a press release here are some guidelines:

• Include keyword phrases in the title of the release. On many sites the press releases end up on, the title of the release becomes the title tag of the page, this is one of the most important factors in helping a page rank well.
• Include the keyword throughout the release, but especially in the first paragraph.
• If you include headings, naturally try include keywords there.

Helping a Press Release to reach a wider audience via SEO optimization is smart. However, with a little coordination with your search engine marketing company or team, every press release is also a chance to help your website rank better. Know the following items:

• Target keywords & keyword clusters
• Target pages (urls) on site
• Current search rankings for those keywords

Each release should include two to three keyword-rich links to different pages on your site. Each page on your site should be optimized to rank well for a handful of specific, related keyword phrases, a cluster. The keyword phrases you use to link to those pages should be the same keywords for which they are optimized. This combination of onsite optimization for specific phrases and related offsite links pointing to that page help it rank well for those phrases.

With these pieces of data in hand, you are armed with the information necessary to help your press release bring in traffic AND to contribute to your site’s overall search engine rankings.

What Online PR Tools Are Best?

Recently TopSEOs.com listed the top ten PR sites (Thanks @NewspaperGrl). A the top of their list was PRWeb.com, a site designed to help you specifically optimize your PR for SEO to get the largest reach possible. PRWeb & others have tools to help you know how many people saw your press release. In addition to this you should also be monitoring your own site’s stats to see how people are arriving on your site. You can tell this through your site’s referral statistics.

How Do I Assess the Effectiveness of My PR?

Every Press Release should have a call to action in it, an offer or a special discount. This doesn’t have to be the main focus of the release, but make sure to give the viewer something to act on. If this is in place, it’s one of the most important measures of effectiveness that you can monitor.

Other measures include views of the release, successful interviews from local or national news outlets as well as website traffic.

The Wrap-up: A Case for SEO in PR

As was stated at the outset of this article, a large majority of Press Releases go out every day and are NOT optimized for visibility on the web, let alone to help a company’s search engine rankings. With a little effort, you can drive targeted traffic to your website with the help of online Press Releases.

I hope these thoughts were helpful. If you have any questions, I’d love to write more on this topic, just leave a comment or shoot me an email and I’ll get back with you with an answer. Call me too if you’d like us to come present to your company and share with you how we could help you increase traffic & sales. Follow me on Twitter @ioVspaceMonkee or get our latest blog posts and free workshop announcements @ioVentures

Who knew that simply commenting on blogs would be a great source of traffic to your site and in some cases good for seo value and creating backlinks to your site.

Now that you know this, it is time to really dig in and understand blog commenting and how to use it effectively.  If you follow these steps that are layed out for you, you will start to see traffic and a boost in your organic search rankings.

1. Finding Related Blogs

This is important and not important at the same time.  There is a phrase in the SEO world that says, "a link is a link".  However, if you are commenting on blogs that are related to your niche or industry, you are much more likely to receive qualified buyers coming to your website to buy your products or services.  You can also comment on just about any blog and receive traffic, but they are not pre-qualified buyers.  Having a nice mix of both related and non-related blogs to comment on is a good idea.  You can find industry related blogs by doing a search on Technorati.

2. Using The Proper "Name" When Filling Out The Name Field

This will make or break your blog commenting efforts.  Using the proper name will not only help you with SEO link value, but it will help readers of that particular blog know what your website is about.  You will want to use your keywords that you are trying to rank for when selecting your name.  In addition to that, you will want to select the appropriate page of your website that is related to your keyword to use as your URL>  For example, if my website was about Blackberry Cell Phones, I would do the following…

• Name: Blackberry Cell Phones / URL: www.blackberry.com
• Name: Blackberry Bold / URL: http://www.blackberry.com/blackberrybold
• Name: Blackberry Storm / URL: http://www.blackberry.com/blackberrystorm

3. Don’t Spam Comment

This should be common sense, but for most people it is not.  They just want to rip out blog comments like nobodies business.  This is not how to blog comment!  You need to take time to read the post that you are going to comment on and then in the most professional manner, make an educated comment that adds value to the post and adds value to any readers to read your comment.  If you get lazy, even once, your comment could be marked as spam, reported to Askimet, and your comments will never see the light of day on any blog currently using the Askimet plugin.

Remember, you are a guest on other people’s blogs.  Don’t do anything that would make them mad or that would make them not like you.  You want to become friends with them, add value to their blog, and respectifully take their faithful readers and turn them into your customers.