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Archives for November 2007

How Do You Handle Negative Comments?

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This weekend I didn’t take my own advice and I’ve been doing damage control ever since. I’m not going to go into all the details, but suffice it to say, it doesn’t pay to respond to negative feedback or feed the trolls.

Let me explain.

Not everyone is going to like what you write. The majority of them will tastefully rebut and you can carry on an intelligent discussion among the members of your community. If you go ahead and respond to the people who are looking for a fight, it will only hurt your reputation and spill over into your community. Don’t do it.

Here’s how to handle the trolls:

  1. Ignore them – Let them say what they want and then ignore them. Do not respond, no matter how many times they insult you. You can’t reason with them.
  2. Delete their comments – When it comes to comments you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. If you let nasty comments stand, it makes your community uncomfortable. If you delete them you’re accused of stifling free speech. The bottom line: It’s your blog and your community, cater to them, not the trolls.
  3. Moderate comments – If the trolls are bringing friends and they’re piling it on, moderate your comments. This doesn’t have to go on forever, just until the furor dies down.

Must.Not.Engage

Here’s the thing. The people who are really negative are doing so for a reason. They’re trying to provoke a response. The more you give into it, the more you respond, the more it will continue. No matter how much it kills you not to set matters straight, don’t give in. Even if you’re right, don’t give in.

Your community comes first

When your blog becomes a battle zone your regulars will leave for neutral territory. They’re not visiting your blog for the drama, (well, most of them aren’t). They’re visiting for the advice and the atmosphere. Do the right thing and think of them first.

Is this the Secret to Success?

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In the introduction thread of my forum ever-vigilant moderator Jen pulled out a quote from new member Humor Blogging which instantly inspired me:

That’s why I started this site. Something I wanted to exist simply didn’t seem to exist. I couldn’t find it, so I created it.

Could this short quote hold the key to success?

Too many people seem to create solutions waiting for a problem, particularly techies. How many times do people invent something then try to find a market for it. How much easier is it to find an unserved need and fill it?

How To Use Site Statistics Effectively

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Site statistics play a critical role in my online business. But you might be surprised by the sorts of things that I pay attention to.

Most new Internet professionals focus on a few data points such as hits, pageviews or unique visitors. While those data points are fine, they are what I refer to as “passive stats” – they don’t give you much in terms of actionable steps that you can take to improve your site’s success. Plus, passive stats are too easy to manipulate and artificially inflate.

Instead of focusing on passive stats, you should focus on active stats. Here’s how.

1. Monitor traffic sources

You should constantly be looking at your referral logs to see which sites are driving traffic to your site. As you experiment with various marketing and promotion techniques, you can quickly learn which are working and which aren’t. Which blogs are worth commenting at? Well, the ones that actually send good traffic to your site. As you learn the types of marketing actions that result in targeted traffic, you can optimize the time you spend marketing.

2. Monitor total search referrals

My primary goal for all of my sites is to increase overall search referrals. As I wrote in a previous post, there is really only one site statistical graph that matters: growth in search referrals. Search referrals will almost alway be your number one source of traffic, and the nice thing is that search traffic is perhaps the most sustainable and growable source of traffic you could ever have (alongside site branding).

If you keep your eye on the total number of visitors to your site that came by searching on a major search engine like Google, you’ll be more likely to take actions to increase this statistic.

3. Monitor your site traffic in real time

Some website statistics programs like pMetrics allow you to monitor your site traffic in real time…LIVE! Real time traffic allows you to pick up on emerging search trends and take action to stay ahead of the crowd. As soon as you notice an emerging trend, you can capitalize by reinforcing your content.

For some specific tips on how you can use live blog stats to make more money from your blog, check out the article Making Money With pMetrics.

4. Monitor your keyphrase referrals

Use your site statistics program to analyze the keywords that people used to find your site. Why is this important? Because it tells you what your readers want and allows you to reverse engineer these keywords into new articles that meet your readers’ needs.

Additionally, if you have some well-performing search terms, consider strengthening them to show up even higher.

Conclusion

It’s time to move beyond Web 1.0 site statistics analysis. With the development of newer site stats applications, you can now get much more actionable information. Instead of being a passive observer of stats, become an active participant. Take action today to increase your search engine traffic in the most effective ways.

Freelance Writers: The One Skill That Will Set You Apart

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Over the last few years I’ve hired many, many writers. More often than not, when making the final decision, I have to make the tough choice between several very talented writers.

So what’s the single biggest differentiating factor I use in choosing a writer?

Social Media Marketing Experience

Do you have an account at Digg? Reddit? StumbleUpon? Propeller?

If not, chances are that you’re at a disadvantage in the freelance writing job market. And chances are that you’ll be competing against someone who has this experience.

So why does a blog owner like me prefer writers who can help promote their own stories? Well, for a number of reasons. First, it shows an added level of investment and commitment to the job (i.e. it’s not just writing for writing’s sake). Second, social media is all about diversity of numbers. The more people involved in the promotion of a story, the better it’s chances of success. Third, it helps shape a writing environment in which articles are gradually shaped to fit the interests of the readership.

Whatever you think of these reasons, the fact is that all freelance writers should add “social media marketing” to their resume. It makes a huge difference to me, and I assume it makes a huge difference to other site owners too.

Have You Weaned Your Blog From AdSense Yet?

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Chris, along with many other bloggers, are strongly against AdSense. To be fair to Google (and staying away from some silly reasons to hate AdSense), it’s not so much AdSense that’s a problem rather than the way you need to use it to get maximum revenue from it.

If you, like Chris, do not want to turn your blog into an ad clicking machine, then you’ve probably explored alternatives to Google AdSense. At this point, 2 things happen to 99% of the people looking for alternatives to AdSense:

One, they find out that the alternatives don’t pay as much in their niche.

Two, they realise that the alternatives are not as easy to implement – whether because of more work required on your part (affiliate / own products) or because of ad network requirements (minimum monthly pageviews, etc).

While Google AdSense has been a good friend to me on Soccerlens, In the last few months I’ve made a move away from it. Here’s what I’ve learned so far:

  • CPM ad deals push you to aiming for pageviews / new visitors – which, in some niches, means that people spam news aggregators and social media sites (not to mention search engines) in an effort to build their pageviews count. In the football niche, it’s NewsNow that bears the brunt of this spam.

    In my view, this just replaces the need to grab clicks with the need to boost your pageviews – in both cases, there is space for abuse.

  • Affiliate products work best on a product-oriented blog – it is best to setup a separate blog for affiliate products if your main interest in news or how-to stuff.

  • Paid reviews and text links are a good, short-term way for increasing revenue, but they can hurt you in Google. Once again, going after this stream of revenue forces you to run after Page Rank, which is a whole different can of worms.

    Sometimes people sell reviews / links based on their blog’s search rankings – once again, this *may* cause problems if not done discreetly.

  • Consulting is an excellent way to make money off your blog (directly / indirectly), although it takes time to build up your reputation.

    Tip: If you’re running a successful niche blog, you can offer consulting in that niche to other businesses looking to set up websites / blogs.

Currently Soccerlens has 5-6 different income streams, I’ll list them here in order of revenue:

1) Google AdSense
2) YardBarker (CPM-based sports ad network)
3) Direct Ads
4) Affiliate Programs
5) Vibrant Media
6) Adconion

AdSense, YardBarker and direct ads bring in 90% of the site’s income, and bring in roughly the same amount of money each.

If I had been relying on just one ad network, I would have been earning roughly 1/3rd of what I’m earning now. So, lesson #1, diversify your income.

Also, I spend only a couple of hours a day on the site at this point, partially because I’ve outsourced a lot of work and also because of the work I’ve put in building search rankings and courting guest bloggers in the last 18 months or so.

If I was using just one income stream, be it direct ads, a CPM network or AdSense, I’d have to put a lot more time / money into the site to make the same amount of money. For example, I’d need 3 times my current monthly pageviews to earn the same via CPM ads.

Soccerlens is not AdSense-free, but neither is it living solely off AdSense. Through diversification, I’ve not only made more money from the site but I’ve also managed to reduce the time spent working on the site.

So, have you weaned you blog from AdSense yet? What alternatives are you using, and what lessons have you learned?

Onpage SEO: 7 Tips That Are Easy to Implement

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Sure, offpage SEO (aka link building) is more important than onpage SEO. However, don’t neglect the onpage elements. They’re easier to implement. Also, you have total control in onpage SEO whereas in link building, you’re hoping that through your efforts other people will link to you.

1. Keywords, keywords, keywords

Use Google’s keyword tool and type in some search terms that relate to your blog.

For example, let’s pretend you have a Hawaii travel blog. I typed in “hawaii travel”. Here are some of the terms I got back:

  • hawaii hotels
  • hawaii travel guide
  • hawaii travel packages
  • maui hawaii travel
  • adventure travel hawaii
  • hawaii honeymoon travel
  • hawaii resorts
  • honolulu travel
  • nonstop travel hawaii

Take those keywords and write posts about them. Keyword research is doing market research. You’ll find out what people are searching for and you can write posts to match their search terms.

You’ll be using keywords for the rest of tips so do some keyword research before moving on.

2. Title tags

Insert your keywords in the title tags. If possible, add more than one keyword in the tags. The closer a keyword is to the beginning of the tag, the better you’ll rank for that keyword.

The title tag is what shows up on the search engine results pages (SERPs). Write a descriptive title and you’ll get more clickthroughs.

Don’t make your title tags too long. Google will only show the first 70 characters on the SERPs.

Another reason to include keywords is because they are bolded on the SERPs. The bold text will increase your clickthroughs.

Each of your title tags should be unique. For example, if your have a tech blog, don’t use “Tech Links” as your title for your link posts. Instead, vary it. Try different titles like:

Tech Links: Including iPhone Craziness and New Facebook Ads
Tech Links: Airline Software, Urban Robots, Solar Panels, and More

3. Internal Linking

Point more links to your best content. The more links pointing to a page, the better it will rank.

I’m a fan of putting your best posts on the sidebar. Chris Pearson’s blog is a good example of this type of sidebar. What about the category pages? Are your category pages really that important? Do you want them to rank? I would move them to another page.

Use links in your blog posts to guide your readers to your best content. It takes some creativity and thought to link from a blog post to another, but it’s worth it.

When linking between blog posts, use keywords in your anchor text. However, don’t overdo the same keyword. Instead, use many related terms and synonyms. For example, if you want a page to rank for “hawaii travel”, link to it using related search terms that you find through keyword research. Here are some related terms from Google’s keyword tool:

hawaiian travel
travel to hawaii
hawaii travel destinations
hawaii travel info
hawaii travel information
hawaii travel tips
hawaii vacations
hawaii flights

4. Meta Description Tag

Write a unique description in the meta description tag for each of your pages. The description often shows up on the SERPs. Google cuts off the description at 155 characters.

Write a descriptive description to get more clickthroughs. Include keywords in the tag because they are bolded on the SERPs like the keywords in the title tag.

If you’re using WordPress, check out this plugin. (Thanks, Markus.) The plugin makes it easy to add a unique meta description to each of your pages.

5. Body Text

Insert your primary keyword(s) in the opening paragraph. This encourages the search engine visitor to continue reading. Insert related keywords (that you find in your keyword research) throughout the post. This keeps you from keyword spamming. Also, you’ll rank for more search terms.

6. Use Images and Alt Tags

Not only do images make your blog look better, they allow you to rank on image search engines. Go to sxc.hu for free images. Make sure to look at the terms. Some photographers require notification and attribution of credit if you use their pictures. If this is the case, link back to the photo page.

Use relevant keywords in the image alt tags.

7. Readability

Most important rule: Don’t sacrifice readability. If a keyword doesn’t sound right, don’t use it. If a link doesn’t fit a post, remove it. You’re writing for humans not search bots.

Conclusion

Onpage SEO is often forgotten by many bloggers. However, by following the above simple tips, you’ll build a good foundation for getting search traffic for months and years to come.

Thanks to Ahmed, ChrisG, DavidG, and Char for their input towards this post.

What are some other easy-to-implement onpage SEO tips?

Plan Now for 2008

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Bloggers don’t generally follow editorial calendars, but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t. Many of us wait until it’s too late to blog about products, seasonal topics or trends. Rather than wait for the last minute,plan ahead and organize an editorial calendar. Here are a few tips for getting ahead of the game in 2008:

Start researching trends now. Find out what the hot products and topics will be for 2008 and start writing about them NOW. And continue to write about them. By the time everyone else jumps on the bandwagon you’ll already have made it to the tops of the search engines and you might even be considered an expert thanks to your early analysis.

Any interesting holidays or events befitting your niche? Research the history, traditions and ideas behind the event and plan a series. Start writing now, but use your timestamp feature to post closer to D-Day.

Research your stats. What days and months have the higher traffic? Try writing your best posts on the days with the most traffic and perhaps drop a linkbait or two at times when traffic is needed the most.

Will you be away from your blog? Will you be unavailable for blogging due to vacation, family events, or other matters? Blog now, post later.

Plan weekly features. Plan weekly features for your blog, maybe an interview Monday, product reviews on Tuesday, a tutorial Wednesday, and so on. The good thing about this is that you don’t run out of ideas.

Write more than one post at a time. Rather than post on the fly, try taking some time out to write several posts and adjust your time stamp for each post accordingly.

I like editorial calendars because they help keep me focused and prevent me from getting bloggers block. If I know I have to post a certain thing each day of the week, it’s easier for me to plan ahead.

Did you know many bloggers have no idea what they’ll blog about each day? They make it up on the fly. By preparing as much as you can in advance, you only stand to gain traffic and better your reputation.

Do You Enjoy Your Blogs Company?

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I have been trying to figure out why some bloggers do not participate in their own comment area.

Today I posted over at Blog Herald saying one of the things I like about Performancing is the bloggers like and support each other. I think there may be something related between the two ideas, see what you think?

On the one hand, most people say it is about time. Yes, answering comments does take time. But consider this, we all do stuff that takes time but we make time because we get something out of it. Why is it ok to drop commenting but ok to spend the same time on Twitter?

I do post on other blogs other than my own that do not provide emails when someone comments so I get caught up and distracted with other business. For this I need a better system to remind me of where I have posted and what about so I can go back and check comments. If I make this mistake myself then I guess I really ought to forgive others 😉

On your own primary blog though I think there has to be an element that if you are not motivated to answer your own comments then there is a problem. Perhaps you are not interested in what your readers have to say? Is the topic becoming boring for you? Do you only see profit in blogging, nothing more?

If this is the case then there are a couple of solutions:
1) Make friends with your readers. If you see commenters as friends you are less likely to ignore them
2) Re-invigorate your interest in your niche, even if that means drifting your topic focus towards areas that still hold your fascination

I’m interested in hearing your thoughts on this. Am I off base here? Please do share your thoughts in the comments …