There was an interruption of service brought on by a new version of ArticleMS (V2.3), the directory software that I use on the sites. The update broke the script that SYA used to insert articles into the database. Since the version change there have been several tweaks to the new software that have made it difficult to update the script. Submit Your Article found an other way to deliver your articles and I have finally gotten onto the list to receive articles into most of my directories.

There have been some changes to the AMS script, but mostly under the hood. The code base was extensively updated and some things that did not work before now work. The counters on your articles do seem to be working now. In the past the view counter remained at zero even if you had article views. The email system also seems to be working better, but mostly from an administrative viewpoint. I am now getting notifications of events that I was not getting previously.

The other significant news is that I have purchased a domain name for my most general directory, Information Please Articles. I had installed it in sub-domain space when I first set it up. It had been poorly indexed as a sub-domain site and was not of great value to you or to me. Since the move to the .com TDL Google has been indexing the content at a furious pace. When I checked recently there were over 38,000 results shown. In the old sub-domain space the most pages ever indexed was around 2,500. The byline for the directory is ‘A Quality Article Directory‘. The move to its own domain name has been a big step in making this true.

I would like to take this opportunity to remind you to promote your articles. In the top nav bar there is a ‘ShareIt’ button that provides links to the major bookmarking and social media sites. Just mouse over the ‘ShareIt’ button if the icon for your favorite bookmarking or social media site is not directly shown. I have made suggestions about grabbing your author RSS feed and pinging your articles in the past as well, and these are still good and easy ways to promote your articles. All of these methods can improve the indexing of your articles and the associated links. Remember, a link is not a backlink until it is indexed!

Thank You to SYA and to YOU the authors that produce the content.

In the world of SEO there are two sectors. Off page SEO is the building of backlinks and reputation for your site. Article marketing can be an important part of an off page SEO strategy. Participation in blog and forum conversations and social networking and bookmarking can also be parts of a good off page SEO strategy.

For off page SEO to be of maximum benefit good on page SEO is very important. On page SEO is not all that hard, but getting it right can make the difference between a high position on the first page of the search results and being on page 3 or 10 or completely buried. Would you like that number one, two, or three spot on page one? Those are the spots that get over half of all traffic from the search engines.

Keywords and keyword research are an entire subject in themselves. On page SEO should begin with good keyword research. The things that make a good keyword/phrase are a good number of searches that are conducted for the term with not too much competition. The less competition the easier it will be to rank for the keyword, but if nobody searches for the term it does little good to be number one.

The key elements of on page SEO are:

1. The page URL
2. The page title
3. The meta description
4. The html heading tags – primarily the h1 tag
5. The page content

The URL for the home page will be the domain name for the site. There is and advantage from an SEO standpoint to have the site keyword in the domain name. The url for interior pages consists of the domain name and the page.html name at the least. Use the page keyword in the page.html name if possible.

Your page title, description, and content should be written for your human visitors, but the impact for the search engines should be taken into consideration. For the title having the keyword near the beginning will be of value, as will also be the case with the description meta tag. In the content you should have the primary keyword in the opening and closing sentences. In the body you can use variations of a keyword or phrase a few times. After the title and URL the html h1 tag is of great importance. Your page keyword should be in the tagged text, nearer the beginning if possible.

These are the important points for on page SEO. Good on page SEO is of great importance. If the page keyword is not too competitive good on page SEO can put your page in a good position in the SERPs. For more competitive keywords on page SEO is the foundation on which to build your off page SEO strategy.

There it is in a nutshell. I don’t think that it qualifies as even half of an epic post, but there is good information. Small changes on page can make big changes in the search results. Now get out there and optimize your pages!!

My article directories are all in the range of eight months old at this point. This general directory has accepted nearly 30,000 articles in that time. I have a site map script that generates a sitemap for the directories and these have been submitted to Google. In addition, I ping through a number of pinging services offered by Ping-O-Matic whenever I add content to the directories. I also promote my sites through directory submissions and other common means.

The sub-domain site is easy to track because all of the content is part of the article directory. I have alluded to trends that I see there in my previous posts, but have not provided any concrete numbers. The numbers border on embarrassing but I would expect them to be in line with many of the smaller article directories to which your content is submitted. I had not paid close attention to the number of articles indexed before the Panda/farmer update to the Google algorithms. I didn’t check immediately after for a couple of weeks until I came to realize the effect that it might have on my sites.

When I first put up the sitemaps, before the update, there were about 480 titles indexed by Google. I don’t know what the low point was, but when I checked a couple of weeks after the algo update there were on the order of 70 titles in Google’s index. Today, when I checked there were 766 titles listed as indexed. Google is indexing/reindexing content on the article directory sites! This is good news for the article marketing community.

I ran across an interesting post on the subject of the farmer update by a lady known as ThePotPieGirl. I was going to call attention to this post earlier, but all I could get at the time was a 403 Forbidden error. This seems to be a well researched post and has drawn many comments. I think that it is well worth the few minutes that it will take to read this post.

Ultimately, the Panda/farmer update is about quality. It does seem to me that farmer can have a dual meaning in regard to article marketing. When man first transitioned from the hunter/gatherer culture to the producer culture he had to learn how to farm efficiently. He soon learned that for crops to do well he need to cultivate the crops rather than just throwing the seeds into the wind and hoping for the best. This meant saving the best quality seeds for the new crops and planting in places where the seeds had a good chance to grow and flourish. It also meant caring for the crops from planting to harvest by making sure that there was enough water and reducing competition for the real crops.

The analogy that I see to article marketing would indicate that you need to start with a quality article that gives the reader some good information on your subject. An article is not a sales letter. Then, if you want the article to bare maximum fruit, a little nurturing along the way would be a good plan. This would include building some second tier links to your articles through bookmarking, pinging, and submitting your author RSS feed to the feed sites. Writing the article is the first step. Going the extra mile to improve the chances that your article is indexed should be worth a few minutes of your time. Submitting your author RSS feed to some feed sites is a one time effort. Pinging that feed through a service like Ping-O-Matic takes only a few seconds once it is set up. Bookmarking your URLs may take a couple of minutes, but could be stronger than the feed options. I have included a +share button on your article pages to facilitate bookmarking your articles.

Thank you for your content and I wish you all great success in your endeavors.

The research indicated that it was certain classes of content that Google took exception with. Unfortunately many of the big article directories were saturated with this content and suffered big time. She had observed that Squidoo was not affected to the extent that many of the major article directories were affected. She had used Squidoo and knew that they had clamped down on certain subject matter in 2009. They made me mad enough to delete my account at that time by first rejecting a new lens and about a week later complaining about my only lens that drew any traffic. I followed all their links and found nothing that should condemn either of those lenses. They were checking by software and I think their algo left something to be desired, but their offer for appeal said that I should expect to wait at least 30 days, so I voted with my feet. It does appear that their decision was right even if their algo was not crafted as well as it could have been.

Now onward to some brighter news. I have one article directory, my biggest, that is relatively easy to track. It is the sub-domain directory at informationplease.heresthesite.com. I accept content only from SYA for all my directories, and IPA is set up to accept all categories from SYA. I have made a few suggestions both through the ‘Article Accepted’ emails and through this blog about ways to enhance the effectiveness of your article marketing efforts.

I did a search this afternoon in Google for informationplease.heresthesite.com. I found over 13,000 returns on the search (this site is only about six months old). Some of these are due to my promotional efforts, but the majority of them are due to your efforts! Thank You! Weather you are following my suggestions or just doing what you know needs to be done, it is working.

Since the update I have been keeping an eye on this site via webmaster tools. Pages are being indexed on a daily basis. I have the site rss feed on several directories and I ping the feed  to a number of rss aggregators whenever I update the site via Ping-O-Matic.

I have suggested bookmarking your articles and have added a +share button to the pages on the sites. Many of the returns in the search results were from bookmarks you have placed. I suggested grabbing your author rss feed and submitting it to the rss submitter at IMTalk.org. Weather that free tool was used or via some other means, I saw that some had taken advantage of the option.

Over all I am impressed with the progress and optimistic for the future. I do believe that these things are more important than ever. To those of you who have been promoting your articles I say Thank You and keep up the good work. To those of you that haven’t gotten around to promoting your articles I say there is no time like the present to get started. A few minutes of your time may improve the value of your article marketing efforts.

The SuperCharged Bookmarking Service, a paid service, at the IMTalk site is getting rave reviews. The developer has expanded the network so that you now have the option to include 50 bookmarking sites. People are seeing their pages propelled toward the top of the search results pages after using this tool. The tool is designed with a dirp feed so that the links appear naturally and some are reporting significant gains when the program is only half way through its course. Check out the Forum Thread or take a look at the SuperCharged Bookmarks page for details. This is a private network put together by a savvy internet marketer.

What had caused me to think that there was a problem was the sudden appearance of an editor box for AiO-SEO that I had not noticed in the past. It has space for post title, description, and keywords, all of which are blank. I did not realize that this was an editor box and thought that it indicated a problem.

This evening I made a post on a blog that I had updated. Everything went smooth. I checked the source code finally and found that the title, description, and keywords were there in the head section as they should be. I then went to other blogs and checked source code and again found no problems. But whenever I updated to 3.1 the editor box showed up.

I went to a blog that had not been updated and noticed that the layout was different. I looked further and found that the editor box was there, it was just so far below the fold that I had not noticed it in the past. With the update WP cleaned up the UI and moved the default position for the AiO editor above the fold on my monitor. All-in-One-SEO was not broken by the WP update, so there was no need for an update at this time.

I am now sounding the ‘All Clear’ as far as the WP update is concerned. I am about half way through the process (I have lots of blogs). As soon as I finish this post I will go and complete that task. Then I may come back and write up the saga of the scrambled database.

Last evening I stopped by their forum. There was a post about the problem, but it was marked as still waiting admin moderation. This could mean that the team is very busy scratching their heads and trying to figure out how to fix what WordPress broke. Of course, it could also mean that they are on a skiing holiday.

If you don’t post more than once or twice a day to your WP blog you should probably go ahead with the update. WordPress updates generally have some security enhancements as well as bug fixes. If you use AiO-SEO expect a few minutes extra per post to handle the work that is usually automated.

I had done the update on two of the blogs to which I post a good bit of content. Actually only one of those is very active, the other only draws one or two articles a day on average. It takes three to five minutes extra per post for me to prepare these articles for publication. With a higher post count this extra time can add up. I am glad that I caught this before I updated some blogs that are even busier.

I will keep you informed of the situation through this blog, so check back for the latest information.

The update appears to break the popular AllInOneSEO plugin. All in one is not able to pull the title, description, or keywords from the new update. I am sure that there will be an update from All in One soon.

My advice is to hold off on this WP update until the All in One update is available if you use that plugin. All in One typically produces an update within 24 hours if there are problems. Just check to be sure that there is an AiO update available before doing the WP update. I will post a quick note when it is published.

Click on the link in the verification email and you will be taken to your profile page on the site. There is probably a space for a website address there. Fill in any information that you want.

In the nav bar there is a submit new story link. Copy the link to your article from the article accepted email and paste it into the box on the submit new story page and click the continue button.

The script will pull some information from the site. You can edit the title or description. You should add some keywords in the tags box and select a category. Then continue with the preview and submit buttons.

Once you have registered it will only take a minute to submit your bookmarks in the future. Please consider checking the upcoming stories and vote by clicking on a star for any titles that you find interesting. The script counts the votes and moves the stories to the front page when they get a few votes.

Bonus Tip: If you add the I Found It! site to your favorites once registered it will only take a minute to bookmark your articles. A bookmark is a second tier link that can help your article, and your links,  get indexed.

As soon as there are a few members and some content to show I will begin to promote the site to help it get indexed. I will be adding links to some of my other sites and pages, but some article bookmarks and some members voting on the listings would help. I am including a link in my ‘article approved’ emails to facilitate bookmarking your articles directly.

Copy the article url from your email and click on the link to I Found It – Here’sTheSite. Just login or register for your account. (Note to Self: Register an user account so that I know about the registration process.) When you are logged in paste the article url in the box on the first screen. The software will pull your page title and description from your site, but you may edit those if you wish. For your articles you may want to use something similar to your article summary. Fill in the reCaptcha code and click  the ‘Preview and Submit’ button. You will be taken to a page with your formatted submission and a ‘Submit’ button. Click the submit button and that job is finished.

Your submission will appear on the ‘Upcoming News’ page. While you are on the site please check the upcoming stories page. If any of the articles catch your eye please enter a vote for them. When an article receives a few votes it is moved to the ‘Published News’ page, the home page of the site. The links on the upcoming stories page are NoFollow but the links on the published news page should be DoFollow links. According to the developer it is set up this way to discourage spammers. I will be checking as soon as stories begin to hit the front page and make adjustments as necessary to insure that your links can become do follow. (Don’t tell anybody, but I may vote up a couple of my submissions so that there is something on the home page. I would rather that you take care of that, though.)

As I write this the only category is ‘News’. I will add categories for articles, blog posts, and an I Found It category for other pages. These may or may not be done by the time that you read this  post. If you have any suggestions for other good categories please leave a comment to this post. (Right now comments are open for two weeks from the post date, if it seems important I will relax that rule.)

One other suggestion that I would like to advance is that you send a link to your lists or publish a link to the site somewhere. Traffic to the site (and links) will help everybody! If you have loyal followers you could suggest that they register and vote on your submissions. The site link is: http://www.heresthesite.com/

The buttons look like this:

They are displayed in the nav bar at the top of the page after the RSS link. I  had originally thought to put them on the article pages, but a forum I visit has them in the nav bar and so I thought, why not? If a visitor arrives at the home page they should see the buttons on their initial scan of the page and know where to find them. If they arrive directly to an article I think that they should also see them.

There are four direct access buttons that appear to be somewhat random, but FaceBook and Myspace have shown up in all cases that I have noticed. If you mouse over the + button or the word share a dropdown box opens with the most popular options directly available. If you click on the more button a pop-up opens with a full list of bookmarking sites, over 300 choices. This is the service from AddThis.com. If you have a site and would like to add a share button they have several options from which to choose.

The buttons make it very easy to social bookmark a page. The social bookmarking sites get crawled very often. Bookmarking an article is a good way to improve the chances that the article (and your links) get indexed. When you get an ‘article approved’ email I suggest that you take a minute to visit the article and place a bookmark or two.

PS: I use this article script in places on several of my sites. I have set the bookmark buttons at the top of the left nav column on some of those sites. If you have a minute check out the page on the PC App Store site and tell me if you think that location is better or if you like the way it is done in the nav bar better. Thanks!!