FeedBurner integration with pMetrics
You should be seeing a new yet familiar icon in the pMetrics tab bar. We have just released a module that lets you access your FeedBurner stats from within our service. This requires you to be running your site’s feed through FeedBurner (and you’d have to be pretty much insane not to be doing that already). You’ll also need to enter in your FeedBurner URI on your site management page, which you can access from your pMetrics user homepage. Only basic data is available from FeedBurner’s API unless you are subscribed to their premium service. Performancing has a premium subscription with FeedBurner, so you can see the full range of stats available by playing with the demo account on pMetrics. Enjoy!
5 Ways To Diversify Your Links
It’s obvious from the latest Page Rank update that Google is strongly buffering the effect of certain kinds of links. What kind of links? That’s a complex question, but I think I can answer it with two words: undiversified links.
The key to linkbuilding in 2007 is diversification. Below I explain five ways to diversify your links moving forward.
1. Stop pointing incoming links to your homepage
Let me set the record straight. At this point in time, if you focus 80% of your linkbuilding into non-homepages of your site, you’re going to get a lot more bang for your buck. After the last PageRank update, I had the intuition that Google was severely buffering the PageRank of sites that had an inordinate ratio of links going into the home page as opposed to those going into sub-pages. It’s much harder to manipulate deep linkage than homepage linkage, and Google has noticed this. The majority of my linkbuilding efforts (whether TLA, social voting, linkbait, whatever) are now aimed at pushing pagerank into the domain through the backdoor.
I can’t emphasize this enough. Even if you only pick 2 or 3 subpages of your domain to focus your linkbuilding efforts, you’ll get much more bang for your buck. The evidence is pointing to Google considering and weighting *whole domains* as units of measurement as opposed to single pages. Now more than ever, by building into subpages, you are helping your entire domain. The good news is that PageRank seems to flow a whole lot better throughout a site when you bring it in the backdoor.
2. Diversify the location of your links
Stop putting all your links in sitewide sidebars and footers. If you run a WordPress blog, consider doing targeted sidebar links per category as opposed to site wide. Also, consider throwing links around in old posts. Post level links are the most powerful, but take the most work. Text Link Ads now offers the chance to buy links at the post level, and I think it’s a great idea.
If you’re savvy enough with CSS it might help to change the semantics of your stylesheet div sections. Instead of “footer” you might use “the-end-is-near” … instead of “sidebar”, you might use “we-recommend” … and instead of “entry” you might use “juicy”
The most important thing is to diversify the location of your links. Sitewide is fine, but only if complimented by a nice dose of post-level links.
3. Diversify your anchor text
The worst thing you can do at this point for linkbuilding is get five sitewide links, all pointed at the homepage, all with the same anchor text. That’s a recipe for severely diluting the value of the links you acquire.
Instead, you might get three links into your homepage with anchor text like “Widgets for Wingnuts” , “The Best Widgets” and “Professional Widgets” and then get two links into each category of your site with variations on the category like “Sports Widgets” and “Widgets for Athletes.” Doing something systematic like this is a recipe for successfully avoiding the Google Link Buffer.
4. Get article level links from strong sites
Promote your site at places like Digg, Netscape and Reddit. Right now, I have a little secret in this regard that I discovered by being patient. Nothing mind blowing, but it works. I’m willing to share the “secret” with anyone who sends me a private message.
Pssssssst…another secret….Performancing is a strong site that rewards good content with free article level links. Give it a six month try and you’re golden.
5. Comment at other blogs
There’s good reason to believe that comment level links with the no-follow directive still pass linkjuice. But that’s not the reason to comment at other blogs. The real reason is to get noticed, and to get linked to from other participants who think you’re one of the cool kids. If you have useful things to say, you’ll gain respect and respect almost always turns into free links.
One of the best places to start off with your commenting career is at the Link Nazi’s Blog. Lots of people take him seriously, and lots of the cool cats make posts over there. Friends tell me that a single quality comment can yield your site dozens of respectful glances.
“Hot Topic” Blogging, The News Cycle and You
Those of us who are primarily political bloggers tend to find that we get buried in blog feeds from time to time. We try to keep up on the latest topics, find blogs that are watching those topics, add their feeds to our readers and promptly forget why they’re there. In fact, before long our feed readers become a prison rather than the tools they’re supposed to be.
But if you want to keep up with things, you’re going to need to use feeds to do it. Does this necessarily mean getting crushed with too much information? No, it doesn’t, and I’d like to use this post to suggest some time-saving ways of getting your information.
Those of you who use Bloglines may have encountered their new “Playlists” feature. This is hugely beneficial for quick sweeps of information. By creating new playlists, you can see all the most recent headlines for all the feeds in that list at a glance, thereby eliminating the need to click through every single feed looking for what you need.
But of course, relying on other people’s blogs to be informed isn’t always a good option. After all, even if they’re informed on your topic, they may not always talk about things you need to know. No sense wading through someone’s reality when you don’t have to. As a solution to this, there is the little-discussed set of tools from Google, their news and blog search feeds. If you search for a topic on either of these two sections of Google and look to the left, you will see links to get the RSS or Atom feed. That’s not just any old feed, that’s basically a custom feed of your search terms! Any new blog posts or news items (respectively) that fit the criteria of your search will immediately become available to your new feed. Of course, you may need to fiddle with your search terms to get what you want, but with patience you can get a laser-sharp search going and be straight on top of the whole issue!
How about Yahoo!Pipes? Ever heard of them? Well, here’s a great way to mash up a bunch of individual feeds into one, thereby eliminating the need for feed after feed of information. With a bit of practice and creativity, you could potentially search all the major news or blog search services at once and have all that information plugged into a new feed for your reader!
These are just a few creative suggestions to boost your productivity and hone your research to make you a more on-point blogger. What other ways have you found to make managing all that blogosphere more manageable?
5 Ways To Make Performancing Work For You
I was going to title this article “5 Ways to Use Performancing Selfishly” but decided to avoid the negative connotation. Still, at the end of the day, every one of us is looking for ways to improve our little corner of the webernets, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Performancing exists for the sake of “helping bloggers succeed”. Enabling high-octane performance in high-octane bloggers. That’s all well and good, but you may be wondering what in particular Performancing has to offer and how you can use Performancing to take your blog to the next level.
1. Performancing as leverage: A free PR 5 user profile and PR 5 blog
My good friend Raj Dash has been a steady contributor to the Performancing community. By staying actively involved, and making regular posts, his user profile has a natural PR 5 as does his Performancing blog. Raj shares useful information with the Performancing community and gets naturally rewarded for doing so.
If you notice, Raj is able to link out to several of his websites from his user profile page, and if relevant, he can also link out from his blog entries.
The key to Raj’s success at Performancing is consistent, steady and useful contributions to the community. We all trust what Raj says. We pay attention to his articles. Each one shows up on the front page.
Not everyone will get a free PR 5 profile and blog, but those who consistently contribute useful information should be able to do so quite easily. And I don’t know about Raj, but I see traffic flow from my Performancing pages to my other blogs on a regular basis.
2. Establish yourself as an authority
The road to success on the web goes down one road: establishing yourself as an expert/authority. This is no joke. One great thing about the web is that it’s an equalizer. If you can perform, you’ll be noticed. Whether it’s YouTube and MySpace for aspiring musicians and entertainers, or Performancing for aspiring bloggeres, here’s your chance to prove that you’ve got what it takes.
Performancing has an open blog format. If the editors like what you’ve got to say, you’re blog entry gets on the front page. This gets your name in front of thousands of people…people with power…people who could give you the gig you’ve been looking for.
Oh, and did I mention that if we like your stuff, you get promoted to the front page which has a PR 7, which will boost your Performancing profile’s Page Rank…. (see 1. above)
3. Get free blog analysis
The Performancing community can provide you with blog valuations, tips on improving the usability of your blog, suggestions for layout and design and more. Just ask a question in one of our forums and expect an answer within hours, not days (we’ll try!).
This coming week we’ll be restarting the “reboot your blog” program. Each week we’ll pick one blog to provide thorough design, usability and SEO suggestions.
Of course there’s also pMetrics for blog stat-analysis. pMetrics will give you the tools for identifying where your traffic is coming from, how to improve your content, and whether your traffic building programs are working.
4. Monetize with Performancing
We currently have 3 primary ways to directly monetize through Performancing. First, you can get AdSense revenue from the blog and forum posts you make on this site. Second, if your article is promoted to the front page, you make $10. Third, receive referral fees for our pMetrics premium package. In addition to these three methods, we’ll be offering several new monetization options, including theme and plugin development contests.
5. Use our community resources
Is it time for a new blog design? Check out Performancing’s free WordPress themes. New themes will be released on a regular basis. Want to sell a blog? Try out our Blogs for Sale forum. Need help promoting an article? Try out our forum dedicated to free article promotion.
PR 7 Blog For Sale – Have Laptop, Will Travel
Have Laptop, Will Travel
Tech, software and general geekery
PR7 with solid PR6 categories
Over 1000 uniques per day and a solid stream of Google searches
Auction ends May 4th @ 9pm Eastern
BIN: $19,000
With my new responsibilities at Performancing, and my inability to find a good, consistent writer, I’m putting the premier blog Have Laptop, Will Travel up for sale. I reserve the right to cancel the auction if I’m not happy with the final bid.
The Performancing Top 20
You may have noticed “The Performancing Top 20″ over in the right sidebar. Each day we’re ranking the top 20 premium pMetrics blogs according to site visitors and listing them, along with page rank passing links. That’s one more great reason to become a pMetrics premium subscriber.
Worried that you won’t crack the top 20? Just do a little site promotion, write a few articles for Performancing (along with some links to your blog), and market your blog like a pro. The more you promote, the more you’ll see visitors, and the more likely you’ll get some link love from Performancing!
By cracking the top 20, your blog will receive a free, one-way PR 7 link. A killer incentive for a killer product;-)
Blog Valuation
There don’t seem to be any forum rules banning people from asking for a ‘valuation’ of their blog(s), so I’ll kick things off.
http://www.techzi.net/
Started last July – Almost 1,000 unique articles. Multiple backlinks from ProBlogger.net, etc.
Varying traffic – 10,000+ uniques a month.
Google Pagerank – Very strong PR5
Alexa Rank – 50,000ish
Then…
http://www.carzi.com/
Started only recently.
Rapidly growing traffic – 150ish uniques daily.
Google Pagerank – PR4 (We just launched before update!)
Alexa Rank – Don’t even ask – evidently car fans don’t use the toolbar. 
Then…
http://www.zimedia.net/
Launched alongside CarZi.
Zi Media Network includes both TechZi and CarZi, aswell as future branding opportunities.
Please note: I am NOT interested in selling – just want a rough idea of selling price. Maybe even a mock bid-out to see what you’d pay? Again – I stress I’m not selling.
Creating Visual Content For Your Blog
No doubt with the new Google PR rollout, there’ll be some laughing and some crying. If you fall into the latter category because your ranking dropped, it might be because you didn’t maintain your site. Thing is, it’s tough to come up with fresh content all the time. Even the most prolific of us can’t always maintain the productivity. Sure, you can fire off a bit of content every day, but if it doesn’t inspire you, it’s probably not your best work. However, there are numerous web tools – many of them free – that you can use to add a bit of life to your website or weblog, almost regardless of topic.
The one I’m focusing on lately is SplashCast, which I think is brilliant. It’s skinless, so it fits in very nicely on any web page. You can use any of the dozen or so size configurations or specify your own. Each slide or frame of a SplashCast can have documents, images or video. How’s that for versatility? I’ve been using the tool like mad, and now you can too. I’ve set up a new splashcasting tutorial at Tubetorial on how to create your own Internet music TV channel, and have also given an example Pearl Jam Splashcast (embedded below). Of course, you can use the same method to produce any kind of SplashCast on pretty much any topic. And word from SplashCast Media is that new features are being rolled out very soon.
So get to it. Don’t let your blog stagnate. Create a SplashCast or something similar. Most humans are visually stimulated. While there are still purists who want the web to only have text, the rest of us like visual content. It’s now easier than ever, and getting involved like this might just spark your interest back into writing. And if you don’t have any of your own content, you can always borrow some from Flickr or YouTube until you do.
Lo and Behold, Big G’s Page Rank Change Is Rolling Out
Maybe I’m more obsessed with Google PR (PageRank) than most, due to being a math and stats (and computer) geek and needing to measure everything. Sure, PR is not an accurate measure of your site’s worth, but it is a measure nonetheless, which for some ad networks helps determine how much you’ll earn. And love it or hate, it just changed. Or is changing. Right now. If you haven’t seen the change, you probably should over the next few days.
Only moments ago, I checked one of my sites that’s too new to have made the last rollout in, what was it, late January or early Feburary? So lucky for me, it went from PR0 to PR4. Which really is meaningless because traffic is still transient. I haven’t posted even once per week regularly, despite my promise on the site. Anyway, until I do get consistent traffic, I have no plans on monetizing it. I’m taking a wholly different approach this time, unlike most of my other sites. [I'm talking about my personal site, which will never have contextual ads, but may have other types in the future, after it hits PR5.]
Still, my experience over the past two years is as follows. Take any keyword phrase and search for it. Usually, but not always, the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) listings will have higher PR pages at the top. That means, since most people are lazy and don’t check past the first page of SERPs, more traffic goes to the first ten pages listed.
The unfortunate thing about this new PR rollout, at least to myself and a friend, is that his PR5 tech site just dropped to PR4. (According to the two tools I’ve found to be most accurate. Other tools show a mix of 4 and 5, though they used to show all 5.) I had intended on buying it in a few days, but the change likely means both a strong drop in traffic and revenue. He let the site sit dormant for too many months after he left the United States.
Which means any zomblogs (zombie blogs) out there are probably losing rank if they are not at least gaining new backlinks. This may mean that Google has decided to implement some important algorithm changes – such as the momentum metric Ryan Caldwell suggested.
So, if you have a site and have let it slide, you may want to quickly find someone to write casually, before the next PR rollout. If you can’t pay, maybe guest-write on their side. Or you could sell your site at Performancing’s Blogs for Sale section. You should be seeing a few of mine for sale soon, as well as few job listings.
Note: If you want to check your PR, you could use Data Center Watch [via SmartWealthyRich], but i find it’s inaccurate. I prefer Aaron Wall’s SEO for Firefox plugin, which embeds results into Google and Yahoo’s SERPs, or Search Status for Firefox.
Review pMetrics on your blog and get 12 months free
The first 100 bloggers to provide an honest review of pMetrics on their blogs will receive pMetrics premium free for 12 months.
Requirements:
- At least 250 words (if a video review, then this condition does not apply).
- At least one link (though we’d love more).
Conditions:
Post a comment on this thread with a link to your review of pMetrics (link must stay up for at least 12 months). We will then credit your Performancing username with 12 months of pMetrics premium for free. The first 100 members to post a review, as ordered by the comments in this thread, will receive the free offer. If your review is received within 6 hours of the 100th review, we will still honor the offer.
