Based on the response from Wendy Piersall’s Problogger post, I realized that many bloggers want to use a search engine optimized theme but don’t know how to evaluate the code. I also got many requests to review specific themes. Instead of writing “Best themes for SEO” posts forever, it seemed like a better idea to create a site for this, and that’s the basis of WordPress Theme Review.

The site offers thumbnail images of the theme in use, as well as info on whether or not it supports tags and widgets, if there’s a cost, etc., but the main feature is that each theme is assigned an SEO score (out of 100) that helps the average user know how optimized the theme is.

Bottom line, if you’re interested in getting an off-the-shelf theme (which are usually free or inexpensive), you can easily browse the best WordPress themes for SEO purposes and find one that fits your style and will help you in the search engines.

1. Clarify the business goals for your blog
2. Commit to blogging goals for long-term success
3. Why create an “ideal reader”?
4. How to identify your ideal reader

Beyond goals about what you want to get out of blogging, it’s a good idea to set goals for what you’re going to put into your blog.

You can’t force readers to come, or to subscribe, or to buy your product, or to call you for an interview. Those are areas you can influence but ultimately, they’re out of your control.

What you can control, though, are the actions you take to create an online environment that increases the probability of success and influences your readers, potential and existing clients, and the media.

The big benefit your “blogging input goals” will provide is a structure for the consistent small actions that will build a solid base for long-term success. Blogging is like any other type of marketing: if you put serious effort into it only when you’re not getting results, but abandon it when you get busy, you’ll create a feast-or-famine situation, a roller coaster of unpredictable results.

Steady actions result in steady growth, and that’s the goal—steady doesn’t have to mean “plodding.” Everything is accelerated online. You can see results quickly and experience continued success by having a plan and following it.

So what kind of goals should you set? Consider things like:

• How many posts you will write each week
• What day(s) you will write them
• How many blogs you will read (more is not always better!)
• What other kinds of topical information you will consume (magazines, books, etc.) and how often
• How many comments you will leave on other blogs
• How much time you will spend per week on other kinds of promotion (be specific!)

You’ll probably develop a better idea of what these tasks will require when you read my book, but I encourage you to write down your initial goals.

Start on the conservative side; you can always increase later if you want, and it’s much better to consistently meet less-ambitious goals than to be overwhelmed and do nothing. Your goals need to be sustainable to make any difference.

My other advice for input goals: raise your goal only after a couple weeks of exceeding the goal you already have. It’s very common for new bloggers to get caught up in the excitement of blogging and be very prolific—the normal result of thinking about something regularly. But as blogging becomes more routine and other duties press in, it can be surprisingly difficult to maintain the initial pace.

Before you move on to something else, write down your starting goals. It will probably take less than five minutes, so do it now.

1. Clarify the business goals for your blog
2. Commit to blogging goals for long-term success
3. Why create an “ideal reader”?
4. How to identify your ideal reader

Like most things in life, blogging is most effective when you have a target to shoot for. People write blogs for many reasons: passion about a subject; fame; direct income; getting leads for their existing businesses; even just killing time. Often it’s a mix. At first, the goal is usually more a vague feeling than a concrete set of criteria.

For consultants, business goals for blogging need to be specific and focused, and typically might include demonstrating expertise, creating a national platform, educating existing and/or potential clients, gathering leads, and getting early feedback about new ideas.

Most bloggers pick two or three goals like these to focus on. One financial advisor I’ve worked with is using his blog to test-drive ideas, prove he’s an expert on his topic, and make a little direct income from advertising.

Another financial adviser (referred by the first) is using his blog to educate his existing clients with in-depth reports. His blog makes it easier to distribute the information, and that’s its sole purpose.

Your specific goals will determine what kind of progress indicators you monitor, and will also affect your expectations. For instance, the first advisor might be thrilled when he starts to see a thousand visitors a week. The second advisor would be equally thrilled with 30 visitors a week, if they’re the right ones.

Your turn: Business goals for your blog

Take a moment to think about what you want your blog to do for you. Start out with the vague concepts, for example:

• “Make me famous”
• “Get more clients”
• “Launch a national platform”

Then move to how you would know if you reached your goals:

• “Have 1000 regular readers”
• “Get three inquiries a week through the blog”
• “Be contacted at least twice a month for an interview”

Your goals may be very different from the ones above. The key is to find the core thing(s) you want your blog to accomplish, and then define the concrete results you’ll be aiming for.

This post is a draft excerpt of the blogging book I’m writing for consultants and other experts. Click on the link to find out more and sign up for updates.

So now for the $64,000 question. How does you effectively attract people to your blog? How do you actually do this and build up a blog site that will be known to many within a relatively short amount of time?

Today I’m going to talk about a few proven methods that bloggers and online marketers have used with great success. Here’s hoping these can do the same for you!

Article submission websites: Chances are good that you’ve heard of article submission websites before, but if not, you can be forgiven. The majority of bloggers and online marketers have yet to really tap into this activity which can produce some impressive results. In a nutshell, on the internet today there are a number of big websites that want your articles. You might pay a small fee for each article you submit, or it might be free.

Basically what happens is you write a useful article and at the bottom of that article, you include a blurb about yourself—who you are, what you do, your business name (if applicable) and of course, the all-important contact details—which at a minimum include your URL. You submit this article to an article submission website, and then other people will visit that site looking for articles to publish on their websites, ezines or in their newsletters.

If they see your article and like what they read, they can then publish it for free or cheaply on their website, ezine or in their newsletter with your full blurb and URL. That is the condition! In other words, this is exposure for you, and when you consider the fact that in many cases, these content-searchers have huge subscriber lists of their own, that exposure can be HUGE!

PRWeb: This is a fabulous website that can generate traffic for your blog fast! PRWeb is a website where you can distribute your press release online. It will be delivered to thousands of editors and people with an interest in your topic area around the world. All you need is a really interesting, compelling story and a press release written to PRWeb standards and you can see traffic as a result within 48 hours. Your press release stays online as well, so you can attract traffic even a year or two from the original submission date. Submitting a release will cost you anywhere from about $40 US—$300 US, but the results can really be incredible!

Blog and forum posting: This is an obvious one that you’re probably using right now. If not, it’s easy to get started and it won’t cost you a cent! Do a search on the web to find other blogs and forums that in some way compliment the blog you operate. Frequent those blogs and forums that attract the same sorts of people you want visiting your blog, and start commenting.

Be sure to post only genuinely useful posts, and whatever you do, do not “sell” your site to attract visitors. This not only annoys the owners of the blog or forum, but it also annoys the other readers. By posting useful comments, you win friends on these websites, and they will in turn be curious to explore your link, which brings them straight to your blog.

Pay-Per-Click: This is probably the quickest way you can attract traffic to your blog site, but it will cost you money (in case you didn’t guess that from the name). The beauty with pay-per-click advertising such those offered by Google Adwords and Yahoo! is that you can set your budget per day and cost per click. You can also change your pay-per-click ads and keywords whenever you want so you can test for the best results.

Those are just a few methods you can implement to attract people to your blog site. Proactivity is the key here, so develop your own marketing campaign using these methods and do it consistently—the hard work will pay off!

How To Make A ‘One-Wave’ Presentation

By Sean D’Souza

Your brain is like a surfer on the waves.
When the surfer sees a big wave coming, he rides that wave.
And then he zigs and zags to keep his balance, as the wave rushes madly to shore.

But right after the ’surfer’s wave’ is another wave.

And another.

And dozens of others.

But the surfer can only ride one wave, right?

Right. And that’s why your presentation is so confusing.
That’s why you put your audience to sleep. That’s why your audience can’t sum up in one word or phrase what you just said.

You’re getting the audience to ride too many waves

You know what I’m talking about. Because you’ve experienced a pathetic presentation before.

You’ve sat in the audience, while some super-dope has about two hundred and fifty seven points on his PowerPoint slide.

Then that super-dope proceeds to explain all those points.
Forcing you to ride two hundred and fifty seven waves.

Two hundred and fifty seven waves make your brain very, very tired. As in, ‘you are feeling sleepy. You are falling asleep.’

But you don’t have to be a super-dope. Just being a dope will do.

Just five points in a presentation are like trying to get an audience to ride five waves back to back.
Just five points can make the brains in your audience go into shutdown mode.

So what’s the secret to keeping audiences awake?

One point.

One wave.

If you’re going to talk about a topic like marketing, you’re covering too many waves. If you’re going to talk about a topic like house-building, you’re covering too many waves. If you’re going to talk about the state of the economy, you’re covering pretty much the ocean.

Instead talk about a sub-section of marketing, house-building, and the economy.

Talk about a narrower topic such as: Attracting customers.
Then slash that topic down even further, to say: Attracting Customers by Creating Brochures.

And go slash, choppity-chop even further down, to say: Attracting Customers With Powerful Brochure Headlines.

Then ride that wave to the shore.
Attack that ‘wave’ from different angles, as a surfer would zig and zag.

Learn from your newspaper, magazine and TV News

If you switch on your TV to the 6pm news, you’ll notice the ‘One Wave’ concept. The anchor newsreader will announce the topic: e.g. The price of petrol. From that moment on, the story about the price of petrol is driven home from all possible angles in a space of about 3-5 minutes.

And notice how the wave stays on topic. Because when the price of petrol goes up, so does jet fuel. And diesel.

But no, the TV report will cover those topics in another segment; on another day; maybe next month. They don’t try to cover every industry that’s affected by petrol. They’ll only cover one angle like how the price of petrol is affecting families. Or taxi cab owners.

And then once they’ve completed that wave, they move onto the next big story. And of course, this is where your presentation is slightly different. You see, the news needs to consist of various segments as it chugs along. You don’t need to do the same.

You can take one itty-bitty topic, and drive it home from various angles. And leave the rest of the related topics for another presentation; another day.

This single wave presentation isn’t solely beneficial for the audience

It’s good for you as well. If you try to cram too much into a topic, you’re often scattered; unfocused and frustrated. But when you’ve got to cover a narrow angle, you know exactly what to look for, and where to find it. You can go deep instead of wide.

And thereby save yourself a lot of time, effort and hassle.

Just like I did with this article…

Notice how the article started out with just one concept of how the brain assimilates (and rejects information). Notice how it used just one analogy—that of waves. Notice how the article brought in angles like super-dope, and narrowing down your topic, and how newspapers, magazines, and the 6pm news covers just one wave at a time.

The focus and clarity of the wave concept enabled me to put this article together in an extremely short time. If it were a presentation, I’d be able to explain the same points with little or no hassle. And of course, the audience (that’s you) would get the wave concept, as you have already done so.

So, if you want to get your audience to remember what you’ve said. If you really want to get your point across. If you don’t want the wonderful, memorable title of super-dope…

Ride one wave.

©2001-2005 Psychotactics Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
Wouldn’t you love to stumble upon a secret library of small business ideas? Find simple, yet electrifying ideas, on copywriting, public speaking, marketing strategies, sales conversion, psychological tactics and branding. Head down to http://www.psychotactics.com today and judge for yourself.

How can you apply this to your blog posts?

The post was specifically about the tool WebCEO, but at the end, Guillaume opened up the discussion with this question:

Anyone have a better/faster system to accomplish most of those tasks / tedious reports?

Even though the post itself didn’t deeply interest me (I’ve played with WebCEO before and already have an opinion), that question did and I clicked through to see the comments. Sure enough, people were weighing in on a wide variety of products and services. One that caught my eye particularly was about a new site called SoloSEO. I’m a big fan of web-based software, so I signed up for their mailing list, and yesterday I received an email saying the system is up and running.

I promptly signed up for a free trial account, and they gave me extra incentive to try it out by bribing me to write a review about it. I’ve tinkered around a bit and generally like what I’m seeing. Here are some observations, both positive and negative.

What can it do for you?

Like all search engine optimization (SEO) tools, the idea here is to get more visitors to your blog by creating a blog that the search engines want to send people to. A good chunk of the strategy here is in choosing keywords that accurately describe your content and using them judiciously (like in your post titles).

To do a good job, it’s important to pick good keywords (ones people are actually looking for!) and then also track how well you’re doing with them—both how often you’re using them and whether you’re part of the results the search engines display for those words. SoloSEO offers a range of tools designed to help you pick good keywords and then track them.

How well does it work?

My impression at this point is that there are a few kinks to work out, but the tool generally works well.

One of the strongest parts of SoloSEO seems to be the tools to help you pick good keywords. They’ve taken some of the best-known tools in the SEO industry and put them together in an easy-to-use page. You can have their tool scan different pages of your site and recommend keywords based on what you’ve already written about (this is great for a blogger who’s written at least a few posts but is just learning about SEO).

All of these tools don’t work together quite as well as I was hoping, though. I decided to run a report to see where this site ranked for the various keywords SoloSEO recommended. However, the report tool asked me to type in a list of up to ten keywords I wanted to check on. I found that pretty odd, considering I’d saved a list of its recommendations; I expected to be able to choose from them rather than type things in.

Interestingly, a lot of the tools are built to use your site’s “Sitemap XML” feature. Most bloggers aren’t taking advantage of this feature yet, but this requirement is good motivation to do something that you should already be doing (if you have a sitemap set up, you’ll show up better in Google and other search engines). The upshot is that, just by getting your blog ready for the SoloSEO tools, you’re actually likely to have better results.

The tool seems to be targeted at people who have a rudimentary understanding of search engine optimization, but are not experts. They have provided some explanatory text, but mostly it seems like the site is designed for exploration—click here, click there, “I wonder what this does?”.

There is a “Learn” button, and I kind of expected that to take me to detailed information and instructions about the page I was viewing, but it actually leads to a list of good resources to learn more about SEO. Helpful, but perhaps a little unintuitive because of its location.

Overall, I think SoloSEO is a good tool for bloggers getting started with search engine optimization, but they have some things to work on. However, they’ve shown (by the fact that they have a blog, and also because they’re looking for honest reviews) that they’re interested in feedback, so I’m very hopeful that they will take advice and suggestions seriously. If they do, they could have a truly fantastic product.

Is it a good value?

Like most of the time that question is brought up, the answer is “it depends.” The introductory cost is currently $29/month. If you’re strictly a hobbyist, or are using a free Blogger or WordPress blog, this is probably not the tool for you (I’d recommend the excellent and free Sitening tools instead). If you’re a hardcore SEO user, you’ll probably find the tool a little too lightweight for your needs.

However, if you’re in SoloSEO’s target market—starting to be interested in search engine optimization, willing to invest a little money into your site/blog because you expect to make money from it—I’d absolutely recommend signing up for the free trial and taking it for a spin. Plan to spend a few hours just testing it out; if you haven’t looked seriously at this kind of thing before, just the trial will definitely be worth your time.

I’m interested to hear from those of you who do try it; what do you think?