Yesterday I wrote about curating content into your WordPress blog with the “Press This” boolmarklet tool. I’ve been having some trouble using the tool in WordPress and getting mostly 404 errors when I click the button. This doesn’t always happen, but does maybe 90% of the time, and it’s the same in all browsers. To find a solution I started with my Hostgator message board and soon found this fix. [watch the video]

Here’s a solution I found as a work around. I hope this gets changed in some fashion so that it works a little better for me. Since I’m no coder I have no clue how to figure out where the problem is so I’ll just do this and keep swimming.

Alright. Look out world. I’m about to become a blogging machine. I’ll be posting far more content here and hope to climb the learning curve very quickly. It seems simple enought, doesn’t it?

WordPress Press This 404 error fix – YouTube.

Phil Hill gave a great song-and-dance presentation about curating content with WordPress tool “Press This”. As a pretty sharp WordPress guy I felt like a totally bozo when I realized what I’d been missing. No more, as I am fully on board with this idea. You’ll get the gist of it here in his blog post and video.

Enjoy, and go uses this in your blog.

How Do I Create Curated Content For My WordPress Blog?

Curating content is a great way to boost the effectiveness of your newsletters.

If you have a WordPress blog you can be up and running as a content curator in no time.

Once the content is in your blog, you’re a small step away from being able to add these same articles to a newsletter or social media campaign. [...]

Read Full Article, How Do I Create Curated Content For My WordPress Blog? | FlashIssue.

Google’s “cache” is an advanced search operator – and just one of many that are offered. Just watch how quick, easy, and helpful it can be.

If you have not started on building and recording your top keyword list then this may be the perfect place to start. For mor on SEO you’d be smart to listen th ethe audio from this previous post on the topic of SEO in the real world.

There are bound to be more of these coming so look for them.

This will be my topic at tonight’s Atlanta Bloggers Meetup.

Here’s the slide show that I’ll be using. I hope it brings you some value.

use .jpg – smallest size for speed!
filenames = good keywords
adjust pxl size to best fit
use alt tags
use descriptions
use titles
use clear images
we like faces

Image Data give SEO value to blog posts

This image example includes a title – alt data – description and a caption – can you find the data in the post or the source code?

Could I have improved this image further?

this is a test and example to be used in the talk I will give at Atlanta Bloggers Meetup on Wed eve.

My Presentation Outline for April MeetUp

Photos

If you want to improve your blog posts start thinking more about the media. I’m talking photos, graphics, charts, slide shows, audio and video. The more media included the more interesting your posts will appear and the more people will be drawn to your content.

As a special added bonus, the search engines are going to value your posts higher as well, if you get the tags right.

Atlanta Bloggers MeetUp, March 2012

Ok, the photo here is a bit rough, but it is from the event. I took it with my iThing in a darkish room and it’s fine for this. You’re not always going have, or need, a high quality photograph. Use the smart phone or other small camera you’ve got in your pocket. It’s great for blog posts.

The photo here is edited, using Gimp. This is no bonus for SEO but may help you enhance your message, an more polished in the eyes of some humans.

Gimp is a free, open-sourced graphic editor similar to Photoshop. I use Gimp every day and love it. Join me in one of my Gimp workshops or tutorials if you’d like to learn this great program.

Often you will be writing about something that you don’t have any personal pictures from. In this case I find the CC photos on Flickrr [Creative Commons] a superb option. There are millions of photos and graphics there that are available under special license. You can usually find something very suitable without having to spend anything. You’ll keep your blog legit too when you don’t steal graphics from other sources.

The plugin I’m using here is new to me but I am loving it. It finds the art for you and handle the licensing credit for you. Go get PhotoDropper and see how easy this is.

Atlanta Bloggers Meetup from 2011

Alt Tags for images

Always use keyword named media files, Enter ALT Tags and descriptions for all media in your blog – check out your actual status with the tool below.

H Tag And Alt Tag Checker

Powered by SEOConsult.com

WordPress Editing Note:

editing the alt tags in published posts requires editing each post. When you change the fields in the media manager it has no affect on published post, but does make the change on any future posts using that image. Adding alt tags for your main keywords can have a big impact on search results and traffic so it is perhaps worth the trouble.

Audio files

In March the Meetup topic was SEO and was presented by Jenny Munn. The content has great value and I have the mp3 recording posted here. If you want to start with the basics of SEO you should download this 1 hour long mp3 audio file now, as I may remove it later.

Atlanta Bloggers March presentation on SEO by Jenny Munn [1hr mp3 audio]

Video; The Main Event!

YouTube – It’s the place to start

Video will be the biggest portion of my presentation at Atlanta Bloggers Meetup in April, as it’s the primary communication tool here in the digital age. In my opinion video is no longer optional for bloggers but is a necessary feature for good blog health and continued success.

Notice I am using no camera to make this video – Sometimes Animoto and other video creation sites can be extremely effective.

Now one of my favorite things about video is that you don’t have to make your own. Other people create excellent video and allow you to share it via embed codes. The following lesson is useful to show you this can be a great strategy, and the content of video SEO is very high value.

Part of SEO for videos is simple, and I’ll be talking about this at the meetup. Then we get to XML video Sitemaps. That where I’ll be leaving it up to you to research if you’re interested. The muck gets deep and few everyday bloggers want to get into this.

This video, from SEOMoz, is hosted by Wistia, a good paid video hosting solution. This can be a good choice for commercial or high traffic sites

SEOmoz – SEO Software

Slide Share – “secret sauce”

Video is not the only helpful media

Slide shares can be really helpful in keeping visitors interest and telling your story. My advice is to add any slide share presentations you make to your blog. If you’re making presentations in the real world than re-purpose that material again via sites like slideshare.net extend the value of your work. It very little extra trouble to get a much bigger bang for your buck.

This is the presentation that I’ll be giving to Atlanta Bloggers. It’s a Google Doc file and is being developed ‘live’. Frequent changes may occur. If you see this before the meetup on April 4th then it’s surely not complete.

OK – for some reason this google doc pres may be causing display errors so im removing it to test—

heres a link to view the presentation

Come join the meetup and learn a little to improve your efforts, plus have a really good time. We generally have about 50 bloggers that range widely in experience and topics so there’s always something for everybody.

Learn and join here at Atlanta Bloggers Meetup page

See you there!

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I like to read but I really like to look a pictures and watch videos. Sound familiar? This is the way of human behavior, for the most part.

Give them what they want. Sure, you may be an excellent writer, with talent for creating mental pictures, but most of us are just goof-balls who’d rather be spoon fed the pictures in the first place.

One Picture Does It

Today I’ve discovered PhotoDropper, a WordPress Plugin. This goodie will do all the heavy searching and proper crediting for you with just 4 mouse click. I am trying it out here for the first time and I am already liking what I see.

I’ll be using it more and more here until I get the real hang of it and may write more about it later. I imagine that I’ll add this to other blogs as well and will surely include it in my upcoming talk to the Atlanta Bloggers Meetup group in April. Met us there if you are in the area.

Atlanta has a large and active Meetup community, and one of the most successful is known as Atlanta Bloggers. Most of the folks involved are WordPress users but the group us officially platform agnostic. There are other blog options I guess, but I wouldn’t know.

Tonight we met at Atlanta’s Park Tavern which was a change of venue. The place was a nice setting but I am not so sure it’s going to become a permanent home. Time will tell and the location is not very relevant for this discussion.

This is a great group and I’ve enjoyed participating for a couple of years now. If you’re a blogger, or want to be, then this is one of the best places to spend some quality time.

Jenny Munn, who was also a presenter at the recent Atlanta WordCamp, delivered another great talk about SEO an the state of things in 2012.

As I will talk about video and YouTube next month I thought I’d post this video I made tonight as an example. I used my ipod touch and quickly snapped a few shots and uploaded this to the site Animoto.com The video is generated automatically and is dead simple. Anyone can make video like this.

Now this video is a bit rough (low quality) for some of you and that’s ok. I know you can produce a better piece of work than this but the point is made. Video is helpful for human and search-bot love, and it can be really easy to do.

Make some video and send me a link.

Cut.

Afew posts ago I

It seems like this Facebook thing is working out pretty good, and will be sticking around for a while. While we’re all too late to invent the social network, we can create our own smaller version within our own niches using WordPress. By adding BuddyPress to your hosted WordPress package you have everything you need to start your own self-hosted and WordPress-powered social network!

WordCamp Atlanta featured a presentation by David Carroll and Adam Weart introducing the social marketing uses of BuddyPress. Wow! This is really some awesome stuff. One little problem for me is the time I’ve got to develop and learn a new trick. Ok, so I’ll just take it slow and get something going.

There’s a sample site these guys installed in about 15 minutes and you can see for yourself how it looks and works right outta the box. Its at – http://bpdemo.websocially.com/

I was very excited about trying BuddyPress out for myself. But, having a moment of rational thought, I decided to take it slow. I tend to rush to new toys and forget that I’ve got actual work to do, and I get behind on my responsibilities. So for now, I’m just fooling around with the test site linked above, and surfing the real world running examples that I find online. One I like, because the owner is reportedly making money, is EventSpeak.com – There are plenty of examples around so surf for yourself.

If you have any good advice or real world examples to point me to please speak up. My main project in mind for BP would ma a city site for the small Atlanta area city of Avondale Estates. Seems like a perfect use, so I’ll put a little heat to it and see what happens. This is how Zuckerberg started, isn’t it?

Go Team!