Why I’m Sick Of ‘SEO Is Dying’ Posts

Guest Post - Our host is Jessica, In this post Jessica gives her opinion on why SEO is not on the way out.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

Every day it appears some self-appointed ‘expert’ has declared the industry of SEO dead on its knees, this time next year we’ll all be flipping burgers, stacking shelves or asking people if they’d like a copy of The Big Issue. Whilst I don’t have the advantage of having a time machine (some guy with floppy hair wearing a bow tie stole it) I think we really do have to stop with the doom and gloom before it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Why Is SEO always about to die ?

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Adding 3D Social Icons With Rotate Spin Effect To Wordpress And Blogger

This week we gave away a freebie set of 3D Social Icons with names, the social icons set was very popular with almost 500 downloads in 3 days ! At the time of writing I am using these Icons here on Spice Up Your Blog.I have the icons in the sidebar linked to our Social Profiles and Feeds, however I have added a few effects to the icons.The main effect and I have received a lot of comments and Emails on this is Css rotate.With the Css rotate when you place your cursor over each icon they spin 360 degrees, they then spin back 360 when the cursor is removed (Cool eh).I also have a slight opacity hover effect on the icons.So in this post I will show you how to add the icons to your blog, linked to your social profiles and feeds.

Live Demo

Here are the icons is full working order, see what happens when you place your cursor over them ; don't be afraid to click them and follow us.
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Exclusive New Set Of Amazing Free 3D Social Icons With Names

Today we have a Freebie for all Spice Up Your Blog readers.We have designed a fantastic set of social media icons you can use on your website or blog to display your Social Profiles and Feeds.The icons have a 3D high quality design using the logo for the social sites and feeds along with the names across the icons.

One of the things I wanted to do with these icons was have the name of the service on each.While everyone is familiar with the Facebook and Twitter logos I feel some newbies online are often confused by some icons.

Included are icons for Rss Feed, Email Rss, Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest.They are provided in PNG format and in three sizes : 48x48, 64x64 and 128x128 Pixels.

3D Social Icons

Before you download we have some terms.
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How I Used Industry Leaders On Twitter To Spike My Blog Traffic

Guest Post - Our host is Nick Steeves, Here Nick shows us how he has managed to get huge brands promoting his content.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

So you’ve got a blog and you’re picking away at the basics - getting backlinks, optimizing your tags and meta-data and posting to but you’ve yet to see any major spikes in traffic.There are people out there with established audiences which you would love to tap into, but how? These people are bombarded with requests at all hours - how do you get their attention?

Flattery is Your Best Weapon

Everyone loves to share a glowing review about themselves, and thought leaders are no exception.Talking about why someone is successful and how others can emulate them to be successful will get you a much quicker shout-out than simply soliciting one by telling them why you’re so great.

I have done this successfully with a number of large brands on Twitter - most notably DKNY who retweeted me (@GetLocalShopprs) each of the three times I tweeted them over the course of several months.
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Google+ Profile And Picture On Search Results For WordPress And Blogger

Google are working astonishingly hard to push their new(ish) social network Google+.One of the features they have implemented is the option to connect your Google+ Profile to your blog.This will in turn verify you as the author of the blog which has some advantages.Possibly the main advantages is your Google+ profile will be displayed beside your blogs on search results.

If you look at the screenshot below you can see By Paul Crowe with My Google+ profile Picture.Pretty cool and it's easy to do the same for your blog.

Connect Your Google+ Profile To Your Blog

On Wordpress.

Wordpress users can have their Google+ Profile connected to their site using this new plugin.

On Blogger

Blogger do the work for you on this, you just need to use Google+ as your Blogger profile.Check out the video below for further instructions.

Easy as that !

Drop Your Comments And Questions Below.

How To Create A Sustainable Social Media Strategy

Guest Post - Our host is Marcela De Vivo, In this post Marcela has some fresh social media tips and ideas for you.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

After Google's Penguin update, establishing and maintaining an active social media strategy is more important than ever. Since Google uses social media markers as part of their ranking algorithm, being active in social media will not only gain you new followers and visitors, it will also increase your search engine rankings.

The question, however, is how do you create a sustainable social media strategy where by you are adding content to all of your social media channels, while also running a blog, business, taking care of your customers, etc?

Why Use Social Media?

When you use social media to promote your brand and website, you can do so for free or for very little cost in comparison to paying for an advertisement or listing in a newspaper, magazine, or even on a billboard. When you use social media, you are also able to update and share new releases at any time with you fans and the followers of your brand or website.

Understanding Your Brand and Audience

Before you begin implementing a social media strategy for your website and company, you should first take time to understand your target audience and its age range and demographic to help you with reaching them as efficiently as possible. This will also help you to stay relevant.

Updating Consistently While Staying Relevant

Updating all of the social media sites and pages you have created to represent your website and brand is recommended daily to keep the consistent updates happening, allowing you to easily reach an audience regardless of the time of day. Also, staying relevant is important so researching your industry frequently for new discoveries, advances, and even trends can help you to draw in more page views from links clicked on and shared using social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter.

How to Draw in New Visitors to Your Website and Brand

You can draw in and attract new visitors to your site and brand's pages online by featuring eye-catching titles and information along with sales, and even giveaways or contests, depending on the type of budget you have and the services or products you have to offer. Ask your followers and fans to help by sharing the links you post with their own family and friends to get more genuinely interested click-through links when the links have been shared with someone personally, helping to grow your site.

A Sustainable Example Schedule

Most small business owners only have 1-2 hours a day to dedicate to social media marketing. Below are a few ideas for how to organize your schedule:

Day 1: Spend time on Google News and other News sites researching what's happening in the world related to your industry. As you are reading and researching, write down notes and ideas, and bookmark relevant articles. By the end of this time period you should have a nice database of topics.

Day 2: Write as many tweets, FB wall posts, and Google + posts as you can, with links to their relevant sources. Then use a tool such as TweetDeck to schedule them so they will be "dripped" into your social channels slowly over the coming days.

Day 3: Write 4-5 articles for your blog. Post and schedule them on your blog so they will be posted one at a time over the following few days.

Day 4: Write 4-5 articles for other industry sites or blogs. Send them out to sites that accept guest blogs so you can increase your links to your site.

Day 5: Write 4-5 articles and distribute to web 2.0 sites such as Wikia and Ehow. Make sure you link your articles with other articles on other profiles written by you.

The following week, you can follow the same strategy, but sending/distributing the content to other sources so you are not sending content to the same sites over and over again.

By the end of the month you would've successfully created new content for your own blog, social media channels, as well as increased your authority and popularity by getting published on other blogs and web 2.0 sites.

By Guest Author -Marcela De Vivo has been in the Internet marketing industry for 12 years. Currently she works with Process Moisture Sensors Inc. and blogs about life and SEO at MarcelaDeVivo.com

Add Pinterst And Other Bookmarking Buttons To Images In Your Blogger Posts

On Spice Up Your Blog I have tutorials for lots of Social Bookmarking gadgets.We have posts showing how to add Social Bookmarking gadgets at the top of your posts, below your posts, scrolling beside your posts and in fixed positions.These are of course for readers to bookmark the content in your posts.But with so many Blogs having a focus on Images how about having the bookmarking icons appear on the actual images you have on your blog ?

People love to share images and the success of Pinterest has served to confirm this point.So in this post I have a tutorial to add social bookmarking icons from AddThis to your images, the icons will only appear when readers hover over the image and they appear with an overlay.

The buttons we are adding to the images are for Twitter, Facebook, Print, Pinterest, Google + and the Add This button which will cover all other services.

Check out the demo below then follow the tutorial.
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Yes, Your Blog Should Be Using Pinterest

Guest Post - Our host is Samantha Peters, Here she tells us why Bloggers should be using Pinterest.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

Your blog may have an obscure theme, or you may be carefully targeting a very specific niche. You may be a seasoned blogger, or you may be new to writing and managing your own blog. Your blogging goals may be purely personal, or you may blog for a living. No matter what your approach or your goals, pictures make your blog more appealing. Pinterest makes it more visible.

While many bloggers are oblivious to such interests as search engine traffic and monetization strategies, the reality is that many have become aware of the potential to blog for money. Others have recognized that they can build a following for a business or cause through the use of a blog. If your goal in blogging is to have your blog read, then Pinterest is a tool that you should be using.

Popularity

One of the main reasons you need to use Pinterest in tandem with your blog is that it is popular. Most of the world is familiar with the rapid growth of Facebook. Pinterest is moving rapidly in that same vein, gaining traction as a unique source of social networking. Pinterest works in similar ways by allowing friends and acquaintances to follow each other. It also gives the images shared a lot of exposure through organizational methods.

Categories and information allow those searching for something particular on the site to find suitable images from a variety of sources. The attraction seems to be more influential among female users of the platform.

The Power of a Picture

 Making your blog compatible with Pinterest involves using photos on your site. The more interesting the images, the better. Try to select images that are interesting and unusual as they are more likely to be liked, pinned and repinned. A picture really is worth a thousand words in this case because that picture may be the device that attracts a new reader now or in the future.
Easy Sharing

Pinterest has facilitated one of the easiest sharing venues on the Internet. Your post being pinned by a reader leads to your image being on display for the Pinterest community. Your reader's friends and followers have access to your image and related comments that have been posted. They have the opportunity to like that image or to further share it. The process is quick.

Unique Descriptions 

When you write a blog post, you select tags or labels that describe your post to search engines and searchers. When your post is shared on Pinterest, it is defined by the interest of your reader. As your post’s image is repinned, it may be described from a new perspective. It may be organized according to a different purpose.

The keyword research you have done in order to optimize your post may be effective in attracting search engine visitors, but your readers sharing your post on Pinterest are mining all sorts of traffic in their unique interpretations of your image and its uses.

Return Visitors 

Bookmarking a site can be easy to do but difficult to manage. Using Pinterest boards, though, your readers can add your posts for later reading. The image pinned to a board provides a direct link back to your blog. As the image is repinned, it provides additional links. These aren’t of value in search results, but they may be of value in attracting traffic in the future through searches within Pinterest.

Pinterest results are beginning to frequent the first page returns of search engines for a variety of search terms. As you grow your blog, it’s important to make Pinterest a part of your blogging activity. Create a Pinterest button on your site that makes it easy for a reader to share your posts. Additionally, create your own Pinterest account so that you can share your posts. Your sharing will be more focused on images and brief descriptions, and your networking within the Pinterest community will facilitate further sharing.

By Guest Author -This Guest Post is written by Samantha Peters, an avid blogger who helps provide tips on how to be successful to fellow bloggers. Sam relies on the services of BrainHost.com for all her web hosting needs.

Let Readers Share Your Blog Posts To Mobile Phones Via Text Message

We all have buttons to share our blogs on the main social networks, readers can easily Tweet, Like and pin posts to their followers.However MoShare has taken a differant angle to sharing content, MoShare is a Mobile Sharing service which allows users to send online content to their friends Mobile Phones.When you add the MoShare button to your blog readers can click the button add their Cell phone / Mobile Phone number, the number of friends they want to send the content to and send.With MoShare you can share Images, Videos and of course Blog Posts via text and it works with all types of devices.

Below I will show you how to add the MoShare button to Wordpress, Blogger and Tumblr blogs.First take a look at the videos below for more on How It Works and Information for publishers.

What Is MoShare

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5 Tips for Success With Pinterest

Guest Post - Our host is John Reynolds, John has some tips for Bloggers using Pinterest.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

Pinterest is quickly growing as a social network. The site is designed line an online pin board for the user. While it may have some perception as a craft, recipe, fashion, and vacation site, it is rapidly becoming much more. The site can make for a useful marketing tool for those who understand how to use it.

Below are just five tips for success with Pinterest:
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Neat Triangle Design Social And Rss Icon Gadget For Blogger And Wordpress

I know we all like to have a unique look to our blogs and some unique icons to display our social profiles and feeds.So here I have a Subscribe and Follow section for your blog using a neat set of triangle social icons.You can add the icons with links to your feed and profiles to your sidebar on Blogger and Wordpress.

The icons are from Design Cauldron and look fantastic,Included in the gadget we have the code for are icons for your Rss Feed, Email Feed, Facebook, Twitter, Google +, Pinterest And YouTube.You can easily remove any of the icons if your not on one or more of the sites.

Below you can see the icons (All connected to our profiles so you can use them to connect with Spice Up Your Blog if your not already), further below that you can follow the link to see them live on a demo blog.

Add Trinagnle Social Icons Gadget To Your Blog

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Subscribe And Follow Icons Gadget Using Sprite Effect For Blogger

A friend had asked me for help implementing some social icons using a sprite technique she had seen a tutorial for on Rob Cubbon's blog.I came to her aid and the result was great and using sprites has some advantages.By using a sprite image we can easily display the icons in black and white they then change to color on hover.Also we only use one image instead of 14 which helps with the load speed of your blog.It worked so well I decided to provide the tutorial for all our readers.Once added to your Blogger sidebar it will display icons for Google +, Your Rss Feed, Email Feed, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.

You can check out a live demo below, the icons are at the top of the sidebar and credit goes to Rob Cubbon, make sure to check out his site.As we are using a sprite unless you create a new sprite image you cant add extra icons.

Add Css Sprite Social Icons To Your Blog

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5 Tricks to Sync Up And Maximize Your Social Media Efforts

Guest Post - Today's host is Virginia Cunningham who looks at ways to save time looking after your social media accounts.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

Updating every social media site where you have an account can be a tedious task. One way to alleviate this is to sync your social media accounts together. This will allow you to post to one site and then have it forwarded to one or more social network sites that are linked together.
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How A Blogger Can Benefit From Pinterest

Guest Post - Today's host is Sam Peters who looks at how you can use Pinterest to help your Blogging efforts.Want to get involved ? See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

When it comes to gaining traffic for your blog or website today, social media is key, and few are more influential than that new kid on the block, Pinterest. Pinterest has grown from an unknown site-sharing website to a networking blockbuster in a very short amount of time, and savvy bloggers are taking advantage of its popularity and a variety of benefits that they can have by becoming a member of Pinterest.

Building a Fan Base

Whether your blog is monetized or you simply do it for the simple pleasure of sharing your views, your main goal will always be increasing traffic to your site. The more readers you have, the more publicity you'll get, which will increase your readership even more. Using Pinterest is a great way to do this.
Whether you have a financial blog or a fun crafting site with instructions on recycling sweaters, you'll find fans of your subject on Pinterest. Do a search for people with your same interests and follow them. Some of them will follow you back. Pin your post on argyle pillows and people searching for your subject will link to it, causing any number of people to check out your blog.

Finding Topics

Everyone who writes a blog has a dry spell once in a while, when inspiration doesn't come and they have a hard time finding a topic to write about. Spend a few minutes clicking through some boards and you'll find dozens of new ideas to spark blog posts. Use the Pinterest boards as a starting point when searching for new material, and you'll tie your blog posts into subjects a lot of people are talking about.

Gauging Interest

Every blog has posts that seem to hit a high note with its readers as well as those that hardly anyone shares or comments on. If you're looking for posts that create a discussion and social media sharing, look through Pinterest to find out what the hot topics of the day are. Don't just stay in your area of interest -- look through other topics that have nothing to do with your subject.

If you find a hot button subject that people are pinning across the site, you've probably got a good topic for your next blog post, as long as you put your own spin on it. If they're talking about it on Pinterest, they'll probably talk about it on your site, as well.

Pinterest is one of the hottest social media platforms known today, and will only continue to grow in popularity as the months continue on. So if you are a blogger and are serious about increasing your online visibility and readership, then you need to not only be on Pinterest but utilizing it as part of your regular social media strategy.

By Guest Author -Sam Peters is a blogger focusing on personal finance. She specializes in teaching people interesting in getting a credit card how to do so without falling in to credit pitfalls, and also business owners how to find the best business credit cards offers that will benefits their interests and business.

Five Tools For Managing Your Social Media Accounts

Guest Post - Today's host is Elle-Rose who looks at some of the tools you can use to manage your Social profiles.Want to get involved ? See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

Managing all your social media accounts is something which can be pretty time consuming – if you’re not doing it properly. Updating regular posts is something which takes time to adjust to and work at - but something that your blog or business can really benefit from greatly. Investing your time and effort in social media is something totally worthwhile – and something much easier once you’re using the right tools and equipment to help you out.

Don’t feel scared or intimidated about using online tools to help manage your social media – it can help save you time and it can also mean you efforts are being recorded properly too. After all, time and effort saved in one part of your marketing efforts – is time and effort you can use somewhere else.

So here are 5 great tools you can easily sign up to online – they are easily to navigate too, so you don’t need to worry about being overwhelmed by new technology. Let us know what you think of these tools, and feel free to comment below is there are any you’d like to add.

1)Shortstack (www.shortstack.com) This is a great service that aids businesses to design and build a better looking Facebook page and customise it with various things such as videos and contests. The service is mainly free (they won’t charge for pages that have up to 2,000 likes). Beyond that, a tiered pricing system kicks in, but it’s very reasonable.

2)Buffer (www.bufferapp.com) is a brilliant way to schedule your social media activity and tweets. The website and tools lets you distribute you’re statuses and tweets throughout the day (at times you can choose and coordinate). The basic package is free – but if you want to add more accounts or schedule tweets for longer periods of time, you’ll need to upgrade. The tool is great as it lets you be sure that fresh social content is getting to your audience daily.

3)Postling (www.postling.com) was intended for small business users in mind and delivers easy-to-use tools, alerts and understandings that will help you get the most out of social media marketing and let you make the most out of your business. Postling lets you publish to all of the major social media sites, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, WordPress, Tumblr and Flickr and schedule your posts in advance. It also pulls comments from all of your social media sites into one place which saves a lot of time and effort for responding.

4)TweetDeck (www.tweetdeck.com), This tool is now owned by twitter and is a fantastic way to manage multiple twitter accounts. It takes the form of a “dashboard” from which you can manage a variety of social media accounts all together in one place. It allows you to monitor and manage unlimited accounts, schedule tweets to suit your audience and filter content to focus on what matters to you the most – it’s the kind of thing you’ll wonder how you ever lived without.

5)HootSuite (www.hootsuite.com) This website and tool is very similar to TweetDeck and lets you manage all of your social media accounts on a single dashboard. This is a good solution if more than one person at your business posts to your social media accounts.

By Guest Author -Elle-Rose is a medical writer and social media manager for XXPress PCR.

Fixed Scrolling Social Bookmarking Bar Beside Posts For Blogger

The most requested tutorial over the last few months has been for the scrolling share buttons that sit alongside posts and scroll down the page with the reader.This gadget is popular on all the top blogs and really does help increase the number of times your posts get shared on Twitter, Facebook and other social networks.Using jQuery we attach a bar to the side of your blog posts with bookmarking buttons, as the page scrolls the bar neatly follows giving readers the option to share at any time.The gadget I have been using for the past few months and I share with you today has the following options : Twitter Share, Facebook Like, Stumble Upon, Google+, Pinterest Pin It and a Rss Feed Icon.Wordpress users can try out the Wordpress Share Bar listed in this post.

Video Tutorial - For extra help at the end of the post I have a video tutorial displaying the steps.

At the moment this gadget is in use here so you should be able to see it, you can also see another demo below.



As this is an advanced gadget there are 9 steps to add it to your blog so more than ever its important to back up your template first in case of mistakes, then take your time and you should have no problems.

Add The Sticky Scroll Bar To Blogger

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7 Ways To Get More People To Share Your Blog Posts

Guest Post By Diana Maria.Want to get involved ? See how you can become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

As an active member of various social media platforms, you would be searching effective ways to get consistent and referral traffic for your posts. Viral marketing is the way to go if you want to measure the success of your posts. But getting people to share your posts can often become a cumbersome task. One needs to get rocking on the engagement strategies amongst the followers and fan group. To gain more insight and to learn tricks of the trade, continue to read below.
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Vintage Style Rss Subscribe And Social Follow Icons Gadget For Blogger And Wordpress

I recently came across a set of icons i thought would be perfect for a Subscribe and Follow section on blogs.The icons have a vintage design and we have icons that will link to your Rss Feed, Email Rss Feed, Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus.Just for a little extra style i added a very simple opacity effect on hover.You can download the full set of Vintage Social Icons if you would like to add more profiles.

For Blogger i have a Easy One Click add to blog link and Wordpress users can simply add the code to a text widget on their sidebar.Take a look at the demo below.
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Vintage Style Rss Subscribe And Social Follow Icons Gadget For Blogger And Wordpress

I recently came across a set of icons i thought would be perfect for a Subscribe and Follow section on blogs.The icons have a vintage design and we have icons that will link to your Rss Feed, Email Rss Feed, Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus.Just for a little extra style i added a very simple opacity effect on hover.You can download the full set of Vintage Social Icons if you would like to add more profiles.

For Blogger i have a Easy One Click add to blog link and Wordpress users can simply add the code to a text widget on their sidebar.Take a look at the demo below.
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Pinterest Pin It Buttons And Follow Buttons For Blogger And WordPress

In the last post guest author Christine Kane told us Why Pinterest Is The Best New Way To Promote Your Blog.With that in mind it makes sense to make it as easy as possible for visitors to your blog to Follow your pins and Pin your content.So in this post i have some cool Pinterest follow icons and pin it buttons that will work on Blogger blogs, I say this as the buttons from the Pinterest Goodies page will not work on Blogger.You can also use a very useful Wordpress Plugin to have the Pin It Button on Your WP Blog.
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