The original post was asking about better ways to have more page navigation with limited top space for buttons or clutter of too many links in the sidebar. I recommend the Angsuman Redirect plugin, and dropdown page buttons at the top, as used in my real estate blog.

Basically, I have extensive dropdown navigation that consists of pages and sub-pages, but they are blank and redirected to WordPress category pages.  Well, as of an hour ago, I have a lot more information courtesy of Page SEO.  The pages that are redirected to categories have some of the highest page ranks!   Not the destination category page, but the blank page that was redirected, so it got the credit for the content on the category page.

So, you shouldn’t be too concerned about redirecting content in relation to SEO.  I never really was, and did all of these redirects to give my visitors a thorough navigation structure without clutter.  I’m glad I did.

Then go right into your other text, but you know the reader definitely read the item of importance.  It’s the wp-note plugin for WordPress, and I use it a lot on this blog.  [important]For more examples and the easy code that you insert to make it happen, look in the Premium Content below the Related Articles…[/important]

Related Articles:

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1. For a simple note, you just enclose the word note in brackets [ ], write the note text, and then enclose /note in brackets [ ] to end it.  [note]I can’t actually type the words in the brackets here, as it will create a note within a note![/note]
2. For an important note, same thing, but with the word “important”  inside the brackets [ ] to begin the note, and “/important” inside the brackets [ ] to end the note.  [important]An important note looks like this….[/important]
3. A tip is green and has a light bulb, and you’re using “tip” and “/tip” inside the brackets.  [tip]A tip looks like this, and you can give them some extra interesting help this way….[/tip]
4. For warnings, just use “warning” and “/warning inside the brackets [ ] to begin and end the note.  [warning]Be careful, finding and using fun WordPress plugins can be addictive….[/warning]
5. Help notes are just as easy, using “help” and “/help” in the brackets.  [help]A help note could be how to do these commands in your text, but omit the “”.  ["note"]note text here["/note"], ["help"]help text here["/help"]

If you blog, and you haven’t been using the Trackback feature, you’re missing a huge opportunity to actually build your own links back to your site from other blogs. WordPress, for one, has a box in the post writing screen where you can enter the URL of a site or blog post about which you’re writing.

Say you read a great blog post somewhere that mentions your area, and you’re a real estate blogger. You like the post, and write one of your own commenting on it, with a link to it in your post. However, you should do one more thing. Enter the URL of their post into the Trackback field in your post screen.

Many blogs will receive that trackback, and without any action on the part of the other blog writer, enter a small excerpt from your post into their comment field with a link back to your post. If they are moderating their comments, they will have to approve it, but they usually do soon.

Trackbacks are a way to interact with other bloggers with material related to yours, or even if it’s just of interest. First, you get a great idea for a post on your blog, then you get the value of an incoming link as well.

Another reality:  it is expensive and rarely worthwhile to pursue content theft for most of us, especially bloggers.  The good news is that there is a great deal of copying of material by those who do not know any better.  It’s a bit like a simple door lock, in that copyright registration will help us to keep honest people honest.  And there is a nice free resource to help you.

MyFreeCopyright.com will take your blog posts from your feed and give them a unique identifier, with dated origination information.  You can display their logo on your page, and it will link back to your protected material on their site, with all protection information.  Some will be deterred just by the logo and visiting the link.  Others, once you locate someone copying your content, can be persuaded to pull it down when you send them a link to the copyright registration of the copied material.

[important]A short video of how it works, and an example from an actual blog, is below as Premium Content:[/important] {+++}

• Adding a disclaimer for legal reasons
• Promoting your RSS feed or Feedblitz newsletter
• Promoting an email subscription to your posts
• Anything you would like to add to every post

There is also some capability to insert advertisements this way.  I haven’t used that function, but if it’s like the other plugin features, I think it will work well for you.

However, what if you want a short single URL for Twitter or some other purpose, and there are several URLs you want in the one?  Using Krunchd, you can enter the addresses and construct a single short URL that will deliver them all.  Thanks to Joseph Ferrara over at Sellsius for bringing this one to my attention.

[important]I just have to give you a wrinkle on this one as Premium Content below…[/important]{+++}

There are a couple of things you can do with this tool that I haven’t seen mentioned anywhere else:

Many forums and blogs only allow you one URL to connect to your identity.  I have a bunch of places on the Web, and several may apply to any forum post or blog comment.  Build a Krunchd URL for all of your domains.  Here’s mine:

http://krunchd.com/JimKimmons

If you regularly send out reference links to customers or clients for a number of sites, you can do it this way.  You can even nest sub-levels to organize them.  In other words, I could have a master link for the main topic, with Krunchd links for sub-topics, and the individual site links under them.

Today’s consumer, or in your case, client, is one who recognizes that they need your expertise.  If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be on the Internet doing searches on key phrases related to the services you provide.  The vast majority also recognize that there are many of you out there, and they must make a decision as to who to hire to help them with their situation.

A few of them may be captured as customers or clients with a “billboard website.”  That’s a site that has some static pages, each touting your expertise.  One might talk about all of your previous happy clients.  Another might talk about how you solve problems for them because you have years of education and experience.

However, now and in the future, most of these consumers will become the customer or client of a professional who actually illustrated their expertise in ways that convinced the consumer long before they actually needed to make the hiring decision.  This is done with freely-offered information based on their search phrases, and helpful to them in various ways.  It may help them to quantify their problem, or just to recognize that they do indeed need help.

The business will go to those who have provided useful information that clearly displays their knowledge and qualifications.  The fact that they could learn more without sales pressure or consulting costs is why they will gravitate to the professional whose site satisfied their information needs.  That’s why blogging will be the best business-generation tool in your marketing arsenal.

photo credit: zolierdos

Blog for Business

Sit in on any group of professionals, consultants, Realtors or mortgage brokers, and you won’t wait long in a marketing discussion to hear about blogging as a strategy. The question is a whole lot broader than websites, blogging or email marketing.

What they are likely to NOT be discussing is the viewpoint and focus of the customer/client when they search for information on the Internet. Let’s face it, the focus is on what we perceive we need to do to generate business. Sometimes, actually many times, this focus is not on target, as our customers have a different focus. When it comes to the Web, this disparity is huge.

Too many consultants and others in sales, information and training businesses place up “online billboards” to push their qualifications at potential customers. Instead, they should be pulling those customers to them with information they value. That’s what you do with a blog.

• Enhance the display characteristics of your WordPress blog
• Increase the functionality of your blog
• Add features that will appeal to your blog visitors
• Improve the performance of your WordPress blog

These plugins are all over the web, and you can usually do a search for what you want to accomplish and “wordpress plugin” to locate them.  As they are written by third parties, you won’t find them all on one site.  Let’s try an example here to show you what I mean.

1. I want a plugin to display an event calendar or agenda in my WordPress blog.
2. I search on “wordpress plugin event calendar.”
3. Here is the Google search results page.

There are several to check out on that page, and you’ll likely find exactly what you want, and it will usually be absolutely free.  The power and functionality available to you is amazing with plugins and widgets for your WordPress blog.  Again, you can’t use many of them unless you choose to pay and host your blog.

Blogging to Your Target Group

When blogs, or web logs, were brand new, they were almost exclusively personal journals for friends and family to read the musings of someone who liked to write about their experiences and feelings. The fact that, just a few short years later, there are tens of millions of business blogs is a testament to how effective they can be. Let’s look at some reasons why:

1. Their content management and display that is very non-tech user friendly.  The person(s) doing the writing need not worry about how to get it onto the website in the proper format or display.  The blogging software does it for them.
2. The fact that it’s easy to create new text content makes the blog a search engine magnet.  The blog owner can create posts about their services, products, company, or anything else, and this regular content creation brings the search engine robots around to crawl the site more frequently than they do more static websites.
3. Blog posts, at least those done properly, generally address one topic or keyword phrase in each post.  In other words, the content can be focused on a more narrow subject, keeping the post relevant to the key phrase.  This is another search engine friendly technique.
4. WordPress blogs can look like a normal website if desired, with static pages, as well as category and blog post lists.  There is no need to have a long list of posts on your home page if you don’t want that.
5. RSS feeds are standard with your WordPress blog, so every post that you want to go out does so.  It’s like a running press release mechanism.  Those who locate and like your content can subscribe to receive every new post as you write them.
6. The blog allows a business person to showcase their expertise in their profession, writing informative content that their customers want and need.  It’s as simple as taking the questions you get every day from customers and writing a post answering each question individually.  You’ll see that theme here, in that I’m trying to show the value of blogging, particularly with the WordPress platform.
7. In the Internet world, anonymity is prized.  Many want to learn about your business, company, products and services without sales pressure.  They can learn about you from your blog, see that you are competent and contact you when they are ready.

Blogging is ideal for almost anyone in business.  And, it’s particularly effective for those in consulting, legal, real estate, and other professions that provide services.  Read more here to see the why and the how of blogging.