Creative Storefront» John Muldoon

SEO Smart Links Plugin

John Muldoon — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 20:33:17 +0000

This is a handy plugin for the internet marketing crowd. It does a number of things very well, but my favorite feature is the ability to universally turn a given word on your blog or website into a link to a specific page. This is really great for SEO and for affiliate marketers. The fundamental benefit is the same for each; you’re passing your audience to someplace that should be contextually relevant to them.
In the SEO world, you’re also passing authority and PageRank for a keyword which becomes the anchor text of your link. For affiliate marketers, you can write a really useful post about website hosting, for example, and every time you mention one of your smart link keywords, it can turn into your affiliate link to Go Daddy. Maybe you were planning to create those links anyway, this just saves you time. Just as an example.
You also have the ability to set a maximum number of smart links to be generated on a given page or post. This is good because none of us wants to be spammy or mess up our users’ experience. I set the limit on this page to 3 links, so even though all of these are among my smart link words, the plugin stops linking them after the third: go daddy, domain, domains, domain name, hosting.

I’m using this on a client’s website to link certain technical keywords contained in their copy to a glossary page which defines those words. This is a real help in terms of user experience for sites which may be unable to avoid technical or complicated language.

In all, a great plugin that can really help streamline and accelerate your content-driven internet marketing business. Throw the developer a bone, I’m sure he could use a cup of coffee.

Link to SEO Smart Links Plugin.

How to install Google Analytics on your self-hosted WordPress Site (video tutorial)

John Muldoon — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 02:02:13 +0000

I thought I’d try my hand at making a video tutorial. This first-pass is a little rough, but I think the point comes across. It’s something many of you already know how to do: installing Google Analytics in your WordPress blog.

I know there are a ton of Google Analytics plugins for WordPress, but the one I like is called “Google Analytics for Wordpress” by Joost de Valk (who has a number of other excellent plugins. I like how well it handles tracking clicks to downloads and external links, and how you can select not to track your own activity when you’re logged in as an administrator.

Hat tip to the Capture Fox plugin for Firefox for making an excellent FF plugin for screecast videos.

Here’s the How-To (hit Fullscreen to enjoy all the delicious goodness):

WordPress Wednesday Recap, plus “What are we doing here?”

John Muldoon — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 01:39:15 +0000

Hi All,

I just wanted to say, again, how much I enjoyed today’s meeting. I think this is a really bright and talented group of people with potential for great synergy and collaboration. And blog posts (hint/note to self).

Those of you I met for the first time: Laurie, Sibylle, Michael & Laura, it was a real pleasure meeting you. Bradley and Tim, good to see you as always. I’m glad we could all get “out of the building”, too. For everyone else, I think a recap of some of the important things might be valuable. I’ll start one here, through I’m sure I’ll miss something. Feel free to add in the comments or your own post.

Here are some things I learned:

1. We’re not 100% sure what we want out of this group, but we agree that meeting is worthwhile. We also agree that the more we interact, whether in-person or on this website, we’re increasingly likely to organically create value for ourselves, each other and the group as a whole.

2. We should all try to post to the blog. Bradley’s qualifying criteria of “anything anyone in this group would find interesting” is great.

3. We’re a mix of specialists and generalists, but there’s a lot of overlap around “making websites, making websites better, internet marketing, clever programming, general marketing, design.”

4. Don’t Make Me Think and The Designer’s Guide to Marketing & Pricing are both “the best book in the world”. I’m happy there are two bests because I got “free super saver shipping”—thanks Tim and Sibylle. I think posts about good books/articles/whatever are good, especially when we include our experiences implementing the ideas therein. My favorite is The E-Myth, I’ll write a post about it.

5. We should all try to post to the blog.

6. I learned a bit more about what everyone does. I think that’s a really important part of this whole thing. It’s probably worth each of us posting a “What I Do” post, or an About Me page/post on the site. What does everyone think about that?

7. We’re equally interested in (external) Client Fulfillment topics and (internal) Business/Management topics.

Anyway, I’m cutting this short because I have to run. Thanks again, everyone.

When others post on this site, let’s make an extra effort to comment if we have feedback. That should accelerate the group’s evolution. I’m looking forward to hearing what everyone thinks.

Cheers,

John