Cara Lumen | Sing a Deeper Song

Sing a Deeper Song

SEO

A Natural Way to Link to Others

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by Cara Lumen

Links are important in blogging. They add to your SEO rankings. You want to include internal links to articles you have posted and external links to other bloggers. Internal links are easy; you know what you’ve written. Hopefully you have written your Cornerstone Content and can refer back to that. But I wasn’t certain what to do about external links until I read this article from Dan Schawbel 5 Personal Branding Tips to Help you Gate Jump.  He has some great ideas for reaching out to others but the one I jumped on was his suggestion that we “Create linkfests on your blog that link to some of the best articles you read that week in your niche.” What a great idea! I’m forever reading posts that inspire and motivate me. It’s easy enough to start a collection of links with a short descriptive sentence and turn them into a once a week post. Dan continues, “This is a great way to aggregate good content in a central place on your blog. Just put the title of the article and then link to the original blog post to give credit to the author. Your link will notify the blog author and they will usually make their way to your blog to see who linked. You will be providing awesome content and also be driving the powerful personal brands in your space to your blog.”

Can you see how easy this is to do and why I got so excited when I read it. The Search Engines will love it – as will the bloggers you link to.

I found the post from Dan because my friend and fellow Book Yourself Solid Coach Lou Bortone, The Online Video Guy  tweeted it. So not only has Lou added to his expert status as a go-to-guy, he has given me valuable content and an idea – that I should tweet my article finds too. I now add interesting article links and resources to my Passionately on Purpose Emagazine and will start adding them to my resource page. I have Lou on Google Buzz and get all his tweets. He sends 20 or more a day linking to things he thinks will be of interest to his community.

Don’t you love it when one idea jumps out at you and you know that it just jumped to the top of your “I’m doing this today” list!

© 2010 Cara Lumen

How the Thesis Theme for WordPress Will Set You Free

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by Cara Lumen

winner_0The Thesis Theme for WordPress by Chris Pearson is a bit like magic. It turns you into a credible web site and blog designer by its very existence. It gets you out the blogging door fast with exactly what you need to start getting noticed immediately.

You can easily Design your site like a pro!

Thesis is a search engine optimized HTML + CSS + PHP framework for WordPress that does all the complex work for you. It has an innovative options panel that lets you customize your blog or website like a professional. You don’t have to know coding you just get to point and click!

Change your design at will

Thesis takes the “scary part” out of making design and optimization changes on your site. For instance, with Thesis you can change from two columns to three columns with a one click. You can change the look and feel of your blog/web site by making simple selections in the options panel. Thesis is easy to customize. The basic Thesis Theme design is clean, professional and extre¬¬mely versatile.

Developers and designers are busy developing additional themes for Thesis. I particularly love the themes designed by Bill Stillwell at Thesis Styles  They are elegant and strategically designed.

Thesis does the hard part – it optimizes!!!

One of the major reasons the Thesis Theme is so valuable is that it is set up to optimize every page and every post easily and effectively. You just type in the keywords and metatags and Thesis puts them where they need to go to attract the search engines.

You can track your statistics three or four ways which allows you to see what’s working and do more of that. If you’re after search engine traffic, (aren’t we all) you’ll be fast out of the gate with the Thesis Theme. It offers you airtight optimization and frees you to focus on your content.

You will be part of the thriving Thesis Community 

Thesis has real live people ready to help when you have questions. When you purchase a Thesis theme, you have a lifetime subscription to the theme. You can login any time and download the latest updated version. That will easily keep your website up-to-date and on the digital edge of an internet presence. With Thesis, you’re not buying a great WordPress theme, you’re joining an amazing community that continually supports and improves on that theme.

Ready, Set, Blog

At Magnetic Blog Builders  we recommend Thesis to our clients. Our Ready Set Blog Package begins with coaching sessions from me. Together we define your focus, your niche, work on your brand, develop your marketing plan and start your editorial calendar. Nancy Hendrickson is my partner in Magnetic Blog Builders and she will set up your blog or web site for you  and she even does some keyword research for you to get you moving in the right direction. We personalize your plug-ins to fit your marketing strategies. I teach you how to optimize each post and page and at the end of four weeks you are well on your way to attracting the people you are meant to serve. And with the Thesis theme you are in the driver’s seat when it comes to adding pages, changing content, and optimizing your site. It gives you the independence and freedom to do your thing!

Are you serious about your web strategy?

Using WordPress with a Thesis theme is actually a small investment. It gets you off the ground fast, it has all the difficult optimization part done for you and you can change your design with the flick of a mouse. Think professional, think optimized, think ease of use and check out the Thesis Theme and set yourself up like a pro!

Whether you want a flexible web site, a well optimized blog or a combination, the Thesis theme is the platform for serious blogging professionals.

© 2010 Cara Lumen