Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Dale Carnegie Sales Trainers - Make Your Blog Posts Easy To Find With These Two Tips



Here's another post for all of you Dale Carnegie trainers and sales reps using Blogger.



In the last tip we looked at how you could optimize the blog title for your particular business keyphrases.  Next, we're going to take a peek at optimizing the title page of each individual blog post. But before we address how Blogger creates the actual posts titles, you need to verify that your blog is creating separate pages for each of your posts and not just appending your text to a monthly archive page.








Searching Through Dale Carnegie Blogs Reveals Two Different Blogger Structures




While cruising some of the your blogs in Blogger, I noticed that a few were behaving differently from the majority of the others.  Take a look at the following. Click on any screenshot to enlarge:




screenshot Dale Carnegie Sample Blog with no post pages.



This is the Dale Carnegie blog I created on Blogger for the last demo.  We see the Blogger Title at point 1, the actual URL at point 2, and the Blog Title again at point 3.  Everything looks good until we put the mouse over the first link, the post title, “Sales Presentation Tips For Sales People”.






Screenshot Dale Carnegie sample blog revealing the blog structure.



Like we pointed out on the Laptop Security For Sales People blog, putting the mouse over any particular link you are interested in will reveal the destination URL down below in the browser's status bar, as seen at point 4.



Notice what happens when we click the link:




Screenshot Sample Dale Carnegie blog after clicking on the first post title.



Notice how the title has changed in point 1.  Remember that whatever is shown in the browser title bar is reflective of the changes in the Title Tag, one of the the things that the different search engines look at to determine what your page is about. 



Now notice the change in the URL at point 2.  That hash mark (#) indicates a specific place on the page that the browser positions at the top of viewing screen.



The post title at point 3 is the specific location on the page that the URL is pointing to and is now at the top of the page.



And if you look down at point 4, you will see the destination URL of the next blog post that my mouse is hovering over.  Surprisingly, the only difference between the current blog post and the next blog post is the number after the hash (#) mark.



This is important because it means that all of my blog posts on this blog are here on the same page only at different locations.



See what happens when the next link is clicked:




Screenshot Dale Carnegie blog after clicking the second post title.



Now the URL that was in the browser's status bar is now the current URL in the browser's address bar, shown in point 2.



The new blog post title has been moved to the top of the screen view, shown in point 3.



And my mouse is positioned over the next blog post which is revealed in the browser status bar at point 4.



The only thing that hasn't changed is the Title Tag which is revealed in the browser title bar, shown in point 1.



So, what does all of this mean?



If your Blogger blog is behaving like this, then it means you aren't optimizing your post titles and your blog  to be found by the search engines. 



And you aren't optimizing your post titles to leverage your marketable keyphrases that your potential clients are searching for. 



While your main keyphrase, “Dale Carnegie” is still in the title of your blog and prominently visible to the search engines, no other keyphrases ever enter your titles.  These are keyphrases are significant to your overall business, such as sales training or leadership training or communication skills.



So how do you optimize your blog posts to be found on the search engines?




How to Optimize Your Blogger Posts




First open your Blogger dashboard and click the “Settings” link.






Screenshot The Blogger dashboard.



Then click the “Archive” link




The Blogger dashboard after clicking the settings tab.



The screen that comes up controls how blog posts are created in your blog.  With the current structure, posts are grouped according to their creation date and appended to their respective pages.  In this example, each page represents a month and holds all of the posts for that month.  Naturally, the title of the page uses the date in its title. 



Under the section entitled “Enable Post Pages?” changing the value in the drop down box from “No” to “Yes” will give each of your posts individual and unique web pages, each with their unique and individual titles.  This will enable you to optimize each of your posts according to specific keyphrases. 






Screenshot selecting how your blog will archive posts.



Go ahead and change the value to “Yes” and then save the settings.




Screenshot Enabling page posts.






Blogger Posts As Separate Optimized Pages




Now, the main page of our Blogger blog looks like it did before.  The title, the URL and the page title all looks the same as they did in the first screenshot with one exception.



Wen rolling the mouse over the title of the first post, the destination URL looks different as seen in point 4.  There is no hash marks seen in the URL and it actually has some pretty sweet keywords and keyphrases included in its makeup.




Screenshot The title page of our Dale Carnegie Sample blog with posts having separate pages.



Clicking a post title link that talks about communication provides a different kind of post page:






Screenshot Dale Carnegie sample blog with a separate page for the blog post.



In point 1, we see that the the phrase included in the Title tags now actually includes keyphrases that are relevant to the post topic.   Not only that, but the URL in point 2 also has some very useful keyphrases. 



The title of the blog hasn't changed as seen in point 3. However, the title of the post seen in point 4, is now included in some other vital points in our blog structure.



So here are your next two tips:




  1. Change the way your Blogger blog sets up its posts pages and you'll increase your search engine exposure by increasing the number of Title Tags that the search engines can find.



  2. Include your keyphrases in your post titles and you'll start attracting more of the people looking for your specialized topics.





Incidentally, setting your posts up as separate pages also gives you some measure of control over your other meta tags as well.  We'll take a look at that in a later post.



That’s all for this post.  In the next post we'll take a deeper look at the post titles.



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Good Hunting!


Thursday, August 19, 2010

Identify Phishing And Spam Email Easily And Quickly

So you just received an urgent email telling you that you need to verify your Chase Account information. 

Is it a legitimate request or is it an online phishing scammer trying to gain access to your online account information? 

Is there a definitive method that you can use to distinguish legitimate email requests from online phishing scams?

Take a peek at this (simply click on a photo to expand it):

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Blogger Title Optimization Tip For Dale Carnegie Sales Consultants



Making Your Blogger Blog Easy To Find





As a Dale Carnegie Instructor or sales consultant updating a blog on Blogger, when we push that "publish" button and post our ideas on our blog, one of our objectives is to have someone on the Web read it and make use of the information we are providing. 


  • As trainers, we publish our posts so that our participants can have access to additional ideas and explanations on what we covered in a particular session.



  • As sales consultants selling to a particular group of clients, we want to display how some of our other clients in a similar industry have gained specific benefits from some of the training programs that we offer.



  • And as a franchise owner , we probably want to highlight some of the additional benefits of a new program that we are offering, like a one-day seminar on cold calling.








Whatever reason we are putting our thoughts out there on the Web, one thing is certain—we have a certain audience in mind when we created the post. And typically this audience is a group of people that we’ve done business with in the past.  They know us, they’ve received email from us, or they received a phone call from us.  They know wd exist and they know about our blog.



However, there is another audience that you can get our information to, and unfortunately, there’s a little more research and tweaking that needs to be done on Blogger before you can reach them. 



These are the people that don’t know about you, they don’t know that you exist, and they’ve never heard a peep from you, ever.  They’ve never received a phone call from you,  never received an email from you, and they have never received any type of direct mail pieces from you.



But they get on one of the search engines every day and they search for topics regarding “Sales Training”, or “Leadership Training” or sometimes even, “Dale Carnegie Training”.





Factors That Impact Your Search Engine Visibility




When your clients go online and initiate their search for something like “Dale Carnegie Training”, typically they will turn to Google for assistance.  They will type in something like “Dale Carnegie Training” or  “Dale Carnegie Training in Cleveland” or “Dale Carnegie Training for sales people” and tell Google to go off and find all of the pages dealing with the subject of their particular search.   These phrases are referred to as the keywords or keyphrases.



Now, no one knows for certain what factors are at play in Google’s algorithm except the people that work at Google. However there is a mountain of empirical data suggesting that certain things need to be on your pages to make them relevant for a particular search.



So, if someone is on their laptop and types “Dale Carnegie Training” into the Google search engine, the Google search engine will run off with the keyphrase, check it’s database of indexed pages, and see which pages are relevant for the term “Dale Carnegie Training”.  It will then rank the results in order of importance before displaying the results to the end user.



What kinds of things does the Google Search Engine consider relevent when culling though its indexed database in search of pages that reference Dale Carnegie Training?  Well, things like how many times the term “Dale Carnegie Training” is referenced in the body of the page.  How close to the top of the page “Dale Carnegie Training” occurs.  The number of other pages that link to the page.



And if “Dale Carnegie Training” is in the title of the page.



Think of it this way.  If you were to go to the public library (yes, Amazon hasn’t chased them all away) and search for books dealing with “Dale Carnegie”, you would consider a book entitled “Dale Carnegie’s 30 Human Relations Principles”, or “Dale Carnegie’s Effective Speaking Strategy” to be highly relevant.  However, you would consider a book entitled, “Great Public Speakers of the Early 20th Century” or “Giants in the Field of Professional Development” as less relevant to your search, even if there are some references to Dale Carnegie  inside the book.  The Google search engine will do something similar.




How To Make Your Blogger Blog Friendlier To The Search Engines




So here is your first tip.




If you want your blog to rank high for a keyword or keyphrase pertaining to your business, put the keyword or keyphrase in the title of your blog.  In your case, if you want your blog to be relevant in searches for “Dale Carnegie”, put “Dale Carnegie” in your blog title.



Now do you absolutely need “Dale Carnegie” in the title?  Well, you don’t have to put it in.  But the keyword or keyphrase that you select should reflect the general topic and theme of your blog.



So if you were to create a blog that dealt specifically with the sales process, having the keyphrase, “Sales Strategy”,  “Sales Tactics”,  “Sales Cold Calling”, or “Sales Objections” might be the beginning of a useful set of keyphrase for you and one of those will be the start of a great title for your blog.



So how do you modify the title of your Blogger blog to contain your theme oriented keyphrase?



Glad you asked!



Check it out:




The Blogger Dashboard.





In this first frame, we see the standard Blogger dashboard when you log into your account and the number of Blogger blogs that you have control over.  Here, I’ve created two test blogs, one specifically for all of you crazy Dale Carnegie Trainers and sales consultants to illustrate the point.




A Blogger blog showing all of the places in the browser where you can find the title.



And here we see what the blog actually looks like.  There are a couple of points to note here.  When someone pulls up your web page or your blog, they will see the title reflected in (1) the browser title bar, (3) the current working tab, (5) the actual title on the blog, and (4) the taskbar menu button.  The URL located in the address bar (2) is the actual web address of your blog.  If you were in a hurry, like I was, then you probably created a blog with a URL that is the same or pretty similar to the title of your blog.  This is ok unless you got in the game late and your title and URL are not reflective of the theme of your blog.




Back to the Blogger Dashboard to get to the settings page.



So head back over to the Blogger dashboard and hit the “settings” link.  You are about to make a modification.




The basic settings page in Blogger where you can change the title.



When you hit the “settings”  link, the first section that comes up is the “basic” settings, which is good because this is where you want to make your change. The section that deals with the Title of your blog is the second entry. As you can see, the title of this blog is entered as “Dale Carnegie of Cleveland”.  I’m going to change it to “Dale Carnegie of Akron”:




Modifying the Title of your Blogger Blog to reflect the theme.



And hit the save button down below to save the change.



Now, refreshing the blog page yields:




How Changing The Title of your Blogger Blog is reflected in the browser.



Notice how the title of the blog has changed in (1) the browser title bar, (3) the active tab, (4) the taskbar button, although you can’t see it because it extends off of the button, and (5) the actual title of the blog.  Also notice that the actual URL or web address of the blog (2) did not change. Like it or not, the web address you picked when you set up your blog is going to hang with you. But don’t worry. There plenty of other things to change that will help you in our quest to increase your blog’s visibility.



All of the changes you’ve seen in the browser depends on something in your blog called the title tag, which is also what Google looks for to determine your blog’s relevance to the phrase being searched.  So if you want your blog to be relevant to Google when it begins to search for “Dale Carnegie Training”, putting this phrase in the title of your blog is the way to get it into the title tag of your blog and noticed by the search engines..



Now, will this make you immediately pop up on the first page of the search engine results pages?  Probably not.  There are a number of factors that Google uses to determine relevancy and we’ve only looked at one of those factors.  But like I said, it’s a good start.



One more thing.  Going back to the Blogger dashboard and looking at the basic section where we modified the blog title.  You’ll see two drop down boxes:




The settings page where you can insure your blog is crawled by the search engines.



These settings essentially allow your blog to be found in the Blogger blog roll and tell the search engines that you want them to index your blog. 



If you make these “no”, your current clients can still find your blog because they know your blog address.  It’s all of the other people, the ones that don’t know you exist but are searching for “sales training” or “leadership training” who won’t find you because you told the search engines not to consider your blog when the do their indexing. 



So, seriously, you want these to be “yes”.



That’s it for now.  Stay tuned for additional tips as they become available.



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