Bradley Spencer Interview Pt. 1

I’m doing a two-part interview series with Columbus, Ohio based WordPress SEO & Affiliate Marketing buff Bradley Spencer. I have “known” Bradley approaching two years now. I reached out to him as part of my personal branding social and SEO marketing strategy and we have been exchanging content and sharing trade secrets since then.

Here is part one of the two part series, I hope you find this Q & A informative!

Alex: What are the most common mistakes people make with their WP blog?

Brad: I think you can break this up into 2 parts, the Technical side and the Content side.

From a content perspective, I think Bloggers should focus on having at least one call-to-action that is really prominent on their site. If you are blogging for a cause then make sure that it’s easy for your readers to get involved. If you are selling something, make sure it’s easy to buy that thing. Basically, if someone likes your blog, make it easy for them to take the next step… whatever that is.

From a technical perspective, I think it’s important to have a fast-loading and clean site. The devil is in the details and the almost subconscious smoothness and planned out user experience in a good site is what keeps people coming back (in my humble opinion). So I suggest taking a look over your site and making sure that it’s very user friendly. Have some friends use it and give you feedback. It’s tough to hear but very helpful.

Alex: What has been the best lead source for you for WordPress & SEO clients — SEO? SMM? PPC? Email Marketing?

Brad: I’ve only done SEO, so that has been the best for me.

I have a growing email list, but I can never think of anything to write to the email subscribers so it’s just a stagnant list. Because of the extra step required in email marketing, I think it’s a burden for a lot of people. I can personally empathize with that.

PPC always struck me as something that needed more babysitting than I wanted to do. When I started working in this field I wanted to live on a Sailboat and work remotely, so anything that required daily check-ins wasn’t an option. Although I still am no where near living the sailboat life, I still try to avoid business models that require that much intervention.

I’ve never done much Social Media Marketing. Because in my company I am the brand, it might be hard to say whether SMM is a good investment. By that I mean it would be tough for me to measure what effect my social media presence has on my business. Currently another project I’m working on has started a Facebook and twitter which will be less personal and easier to track its effects. I’m interested to see how they come back.

Alex: What do you think about Google Instant?

Brad: As a user, I don’t like it much. It feels jumpy and like someone trying to finish my thought.

However, the Google I know has tested it and likely has a good reason (or long term plan) for implementing it.

For webmasters who want to rank better, I think the rules are still the same. I wrote about the Effects of CTR on your site’s rankings in 2008 and I still think it’s very important… maybe even more so now with Instant Search.

Check back in the next couple weeks for part 2. Special thanks to @thatbradleyguy

WP Plugins: Must Have WordPress Plugins

WordPress is an incredibly powerful content management system largely due to wp plugins. There are literally thousands of wp plugins out there that can transform the most basic of blogs to powerful, automated, and SEO friendly Google Ranking machines. I have been involved in the installation and setup of over 240 wordpress blogs and have tried almost every plugin out there. Here is a list of the wp plugins I absolutely HAVE to have on all sites I work on. If you are looking for the best WordPress SEO plugins look no further.

All in One SEO Pack
Get found by Google!

The All in One SEO Pack is one of the most important wp plugins in my arsenal. You have complete control over all major SEO attributes including the TITLE, Meta keywords and description on a page and post basis, and the ability to ‘noindex’ certain pages to avoid duplicate content penalties inherent with wordpress. This is a pretty advanced tutorial and for the most part requires some experience with basic SEO functions and practices. With that being said, there is an excellent wp plugin video tutorial for the All in One SEO Pack. Click this link for the video tutorial.

Post Plugin Library
Does Nothing but Everything at the Same Time

This plugin does nothing on it’s own, however, it provides the library of essential routines for Post Plugins such as Similar Posts, Recent Posts, and Recent Comments. I highly recommend that everyone download and install the Post Plugin Library wp plugin and try out the Post plugins – they are awesome!

Google XML Sitemaps
Communicate with Search Engine Robots

This plugin automatically creates an XML based sitemap. This format is supported by Ask.com, Google, YAHOO, and MSN Search as a means of creating a full list of content. This helps search engines index your site and find content to be indexed. Creating sitemaps can be an arduous task and this plugin really saves a lot of time and effort while being extremely effective and easy to use.

Dean’s Permalinks Migration
Search Engine Friendly URLs

This wp plugin is the absolute best thing in the world. The All in One SEO Pack allows you to completely control the URL structure of all the pages and posts you want, however, categories and other tag pages can have problematic results. For example, SiteName.com/Post_Title/ is much better than SiteName.com/id=45/ from an SEO perspective and this plugin accounts for that. It is quite simple to implement and highly effective.

No Self Pings
If you link to your own content…

This wp plugin is an absolute necessity for people who want to link to their own content frequently. We all know how annoying it can be when you link to your contact page or a post on your site and you are notified via email and wordpress that someone has “tracked back” a post of yours when in reality it was just you. Well no more, this wp plugin requires you upload and activate and you’re on your way to linking without tracking back on your own site!

WP-Email Plugin
You’ll be surprised how many people use it!

This wp plugin is from one of the best wp plugin creators in the world in my opinion – Lester Chan. With over 1,000,000 total wordpress plugin downloads, Lester has created some of the most remarkable plugins we have seen. This plugin allows users to email interesting articles or pages to friends. I wasn’t expecting anyone to really use it but decided to give it a shot because why not? Well to my surprise I was getting a bunch of people emailing friends and family about articles. Click here for a full list of Leter’s wp plugins.

Related Posts
Similar content links & more…

This plugin is absolutely great! It will display similar, relevant posts related to the topic in question. The best part is you are then a part of the “Related Posts” network and your links will be included on similar pages and posts. You can choose the anchor text and backlinks to your site which really can turn this related posts wp plugin into an SEO goldmine!

MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer
Future posts not a problem ANYMORE…

WordPress is great. You can set future posts and have them post at a designated time you choose which really helps you with google because you are updated everyday right? WRONG! Unfortunately by default wordpress will automatically ping search engine robots of the scheduled content the day it is posted, even if you do not have it scheduled to be published until later. Max Blog Press has create a wp plugin called the Ping Optimizer which sees to it that you are safe from this problem inherent to wordpress by not allowing the site to ping search engine robots until you decide the post is live.

MaxBlogPress Ninja Affiliate
The best WP Plugin for last…

This is the best wp plugin out there – especially if you have hundreds of pages of content and want to turn specific keywords into affiliate URLs. The reason I listed the best wp plugin last is because, unfortunately, this plugin costs money- $97 to be exact. Do I think the plugin is worth the money? I think it can go either way but yes, I believe it to be a sound investment. It cloaks links and automatically turns keywords you specify into aff. URLs – how much better can you get than that!?

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Welcome!

This is the first site I have created with the specific intention of helping others as compared to making myself money. It is crazy to think about how far I have come in so many facets of being a successful internet marketer and webmaster over the past 18 months. It took me 19 days to make my first sale and I will never forget the sense of accomplishment I felt. All of my hard work- the hours and hours of sleepless nights spent lurking forums and blogs trying to figure this internet game out, was validated with that first sale. From there a sale every couple of weeks turned into a couple of sales a week which turned into daily sales and so on. Why was my success fast-tracked online? Because of the people that I have been fortunate enough to work with have shared their secrets, and now after 2 years of silence, I’m sharing mine with the world.

“This is the first site I have created with the specific intention of helping others as compared to making myself money.”

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