Skip links

Performancing

Main navigation

Archives for December 2007

The Alexa 100k Rule

by

I have this new rule. If I can’t get a blog into the top 100k of Alexa or at least 2k visitors per day within 6 months, I’m going stop investing time and money in the blog.

Rules like this help you to stay focused and to avoid wishful thinking. Sure, there are going to be exceptions (for example, I’m making $700 per month on a blog that’s not even in the Alexa One Million)….

But the fact is…you need ways of objectively analyzing your web properties and the success of your blog. Maybe you’re rule isn’t as stringent as mine. Maybe it’s more stringent. Whatever the case, we all need to step back and be willing to say goodbye to our “babies” when, despite our best efforts and best intentions, our projects have proven themselves to be failures. Sooner or later, any further investment of time and money is clearly a waste.

It’s the toughest lesson I’ve had to learn. But moving forward in an efficient and profitable way makes it necessary. So 2008 is the year of “Alexa 100k or bust” for Ryan Caldwell’s portfolio.

So what kind of objective standards do you use for deciding whether to cut and run, or stay the course?

Five Things Your Blog Needs To Succeed

by

I’m always surprised when I’m asked to analyze a blog for someone and find that their blog is missing something fundamental. But I really shouldn’t be surprised. Why not?

Well, for one, some of my blogs fall into the same category (Look at the plank in your own eye before criticizing the speck in your neighbors’). But also, not everyone runs a blog as a full time job. Many bloggers are primarily part-time writers, not full-time blog technicians.

But what if I told you that in order to drastically increase your chances to succeed, you need to make sure that at least 5 fundamental things are in place at your blog?

Well, don’t fret. That’s what we at Performancing are here for, after all…to help bloggers succeed. Just make one improvement at a time, and soon you’ll be on your way to success.

In my opinion here are 5 things that all blogs should have:

1. Static, Title-Reinforcing URLS

Instead of the dynamic URLs with meaningless numbers, you should use static URLS with semantically relevant keywords

Bad URL: http://www.yourblog.com?p=123
Good URL: http://www.yourblog.com/ten-things-blogs-should-have/

2. Strong, Descriptive Titles

Instead of generic, pronoun loaded, bland headlines, why not kill two birds with one stone: 1) grab your reader’s attention 2) make sure the search engines know what your article is about.

Bad Title: He Got Sick
Good Title: Jeopardy Host Alex Trebeck Has Minor Heart Attack

Bad Title: What Was She Thinking?
Good Title Jessica Alba Not-So-Hot in Pink Tutu Dress

3. Backlinks from relevant sites

Until you get links from other, relevant sites, your blog sits in isolation from not only the great World Wide Web, but also smaller “niche” networks. Your goal from day one should be to network with and engage other topically relevant sites.

How do you network? Well, for starters, you should spend sometime on other blogs leaving high-quality, insightful comments. You might do the same on some forums.

The worst sin of blogging is to speak a monologue. Get out and network. It’ll make your job a whole lot easier in the end.

4. An attractive, distinctive design

At some point, to really succeed, your blog is going to have to do better than a cookie-cutter theme template. Now I’m not diminishing the role of free, template themes. Afterall, Performancing releases a free WordPress theme each month.

However, you aren’t going to make it into the “big time” without a sleak, customized theme that screams “we care enough to make ourselves look good” (note to Performancing team – > get that redesign done sooner rather than later!)

5. Top-Of-The-Class Content

Most bloggers are under the illusion that they need to write 10 posts a day to be successful. Not so. Especially at the beginning, you are much better off writing a few EXCELLENT articles, rather than a bunch of medicore, rehashed articles.

The goal here is to set yourself apart as an expert. Spend the time you need up front to create a killer resource base. When you’ve developed five or so EXCELLENT resources, then feature them in your sidebar.

Conclusion

Many of you have probably heard these tips before. If you have…then great. But over 90% of the blogs that I analyze are missing one or more of these features. More often than not, a blog is just a collection of short 200-500 word posts that do absolutely nothing to distinguish the blog from all the others in its niche. More often than not, a blog does not feature its best content for everyone to see. More often than not, new bloggers use terrible URL structure and make-me-cringe headlines. More often than not, a blog has a terrible link portfolio.

So how’s your blog? Do you have these five fundamental things in place? If not, then stop your daily routine for a few weeks and make sure you get the foundation of your blog in proper order.

If you’d like Performancing to not only get your blog’s foundation in place, but to have it built into a mansion, then consider using one of our Blog Management Services.

Get Interviewed By Performancing

by

One of the best ways to gain friends, get exposure and perform your networking duties for the week is to get interviewed by other bloggers.

Since Performancing is all about helping bloggers succeed, we’re going to help you get exposure for your blog by offering you the chance to get interviewed by Performancing.

All you have to do is leave the URL to your blog in our comment section. And if we like your blog enough, we’ll ask you for an interview. It’s that simple.

How I Created My Most Popular Post

by

Recently I created a post that has brought me approximately three thousand visitors so far. StumbleUpon can take most of the credit I suppose but it could not have done it without me! In fact SU could not do anything at all if it wasn’t for all of us guys and girls out here working day and night to provide it with material.

How did I put together a popular post?

I went to a nearby park to take some photos. I go there fairly often and always go down by the bear enclosure to see what is happening there. Usually the two bears who live there are off somewhere and you are lucky to get a glimpse of them. But today was different. They both came down and started playing with each other right in front of us. It was an exciting moment and I must have taken two hundred photos of them

One of those photos really caught my eye. Because one of the bears was demonstrating his manual dexterity with a stick. He was enjoying that thing a great deal and one of the photos I took showed him holding it with his two paws and gazing off in the distance.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS AT WORK

I knew that I had to create a story of some sort to go with this photo. And the first thing I thought of was to give the bear a personality of some sort like Yogi the bear or Smokey the bear. And that was the lightbulb moment. What if this bear wanted to BE like Smokey or Yogi? What if he was posing just the way he imagined one of them would do? I could easily see Smokey or Yogi walking around with a walking stick.

The rest was easy. I imagined that I brought a poster of Yogi and Smokey down to the enclosure and put it up on the inside like fans do at football games. The bear would see it and come running down the hill. He would pick up a stick and pose. He was emulating his heroes.

It seemed pretty funny to me and I was gratified to see that others found it entertaining. But it had all come about because the bear had picked up a stick and sat back with it.

You never know how it is going to go when you depend on moments like this. But you have to be ready when something does happen. And that’s what I am starting to learn. Be ready for the bear.

10 Cool Things You Can Do With Performancing Metrics

by

Performancing Metrics

I use Google analytics to track my blog stats. But since I’ve been more involved with Performancing and I like the community here, I decided to check out Performancing Metrics (PMetrics). I installed it on one of my blogs. I’ve been playing around with it for the last couple of days. It’s a good stats program especially if you want to see the activities of your visitors more closely.

Candy Addict shared a post about using PMetrics to find out email information. Here are 10 other cool things you can do with this interesting application.

1. Track the actions of individual visitors.

One of the things that I liked about Performancing Metrics over Google Analytics is the real time individual tracking of PMetrics. This feature is called Spy. Check it out at work for Performancing.

You can follow someone by their IP address as they click through your site. This is great if you’ve made navigation changes. For example, if you just changed your blog home page to a static page, you can see right away how people are navigating your new home page.

Not only does PMetrics track the actions of individual visitors in real time, it keeps an archive of the their actions based on their IP address. You can see which people come to your site on a regular basis, which ones come just one time, and which ones come sporadically. I like to look at the people that come on a regular basis and see which pages they are visiting.

2. Track traffic for specific outbound links.

Many people track the traffic from incoming links, but sometimes it’s helpful to track the traffic you send out through your outbound links. PMetrics does this well. This might helpful to show advertisers that you are able to send traffic to them.

3. Track downloads.

Have an audio product in mp3 format or an ebook in pdf format? What about a WordPress theme in a zip file? PMetrics can keep track of the number of downloads your file gets.

4. Export your stats to Excel.

PMetrics allows you to take your data and export it in a format Excel can read. This helps if you want to keep a hardcopy report of your stats. If you’re giving a presentation about your site, you can hand out the Excel reports to the people seeing your presentation.

5. Keep up with your stats through your feedreader.

If you use your feedreader a lot, you can use PMetrics to deliver your stats through RSS. PMetrics has four feeds you can use. There are feeds that report general traffic numbers, individual visitor information, search term referrals, and incoming links.

6. Track your Feedburner stats.

If you’re anything like me, you watch your RSS subscriber numbers like a hawk. PMetrics is integrated with feedburner, so you can check your feedburner stats on PMetrics. You don’t have to go to FeedBurner.com anymore. Also, PMetrics keeps track of the views and clickthroughs of your RSS subscribers.

7. Find out how visitors searching with different keywords interact with your site.

On the searches tab, click on the keywords. For each keyword, you’ll get a list of visitors that used that keyword to find your site. Different keywords send different types of traffic. For example, you can see which keywords lead to more page views. PMetrics shows the number of actions each visitor does on your site. These actions are oftentimes different page views. Also, PMetrics shows how much time each visitor spent on your site.

8. Compare visitor activity from different referring domains.

When you click the actions tab, you’ll come to a page with a filter button on the right. The button looks like a small magnifying glass. You can use this button to filter different criteria like country, language, and web browser. Also, you can filter based on referring domain.

This filter is great for comparing traffic between domains. For example, if you get a link from a popular site, you can see how the visitors from that site navigate through your blog. Different sites have different audiences. You can compare the audiences through PMetrics. For example, try comparing the traffic sent by different social voting sites like Digg and StumbleUpon. Find out which social voting site sends more pageviews per visitor. Find out which site sends a good percentage of traffic that become subscribers.

9. Check your rankings for the search terms sending you traffic.

This uses the filter I talked about in the previous point. Filter all the traffic that comes from Google.com (or another search engine). You’ll get a list of visitors and the keywords they used to find your site. Click the arrow icon for the keywords that seem like they would be searched often. This will take you to the search engine results page (SERP) for that keyword. On the SERP, you can check to see if your ranking page actually fits the keyword. Also, if you’re not ranked #1, you can do a couple things to make your page rank better.

10. Show off your stats. 🙂

Whether you want to brag or you want a friend to help you interpret your stats, it’s as easy as setting your PMetrics to be public instead of private and then giving your friend the link to your PMetrics account. He’ll be able to see your stats. Also, the public setting is perfect if you’re selling advertising or if you’re selling your blog. For example, if you selling your blog on Performancing’s Blogs For Sale page, leave a link to your PMetrics account so prospective buyers check out your stats.

Bonus: Track custom data.

This takes some technical knowledge, but you can add a piece of code to your site to track specific data. You can track data like cookies and ad campaigns. Also, you can give a name for a particular IP address and easily identify that person without having to remember their IP address number.

Conclusion

Thank you to Ryan and Char for giving me ideas for this article. What cool things have you done with PMetrics?

Check out PMetrics for free for 21 days. Also, try the demo out.

Interesting email information gained from pMetrics

by

Performancing Metrics (aka pMetrics) Gives you an amazing amount of detail about the visitors to your site. In some cases, it’s the same data you get from other packages, but it’s easier to get to and understand in pMetrics. In other cases, it’s the kind of data you don’t get elsewhere (easily).

Here’s an example of a piece of some interesting information I gleaned from pMetrics. I run a candy blog and many times when we review a product, I have a contact with the company already and I email them when we write about one of their products (you do this every time you mention or review a product on your site don’t you?). Recently, we reviewed a product and I had no contact with the company so I went to their site (let’s call it abc-company-xyz.com) and found a generic contact form (no actual email address), so I filled it out letting them know we had reviewed their product.

The next day, I’m looking at pMetric’s Top Referers for the day and I see a link from mail.abc-company-xyz.com and when I click on the pMetrics link, it shows me the full link is
http://mail.abc-company-xyz.com/exchange/sue.smith/Inbox/Candy+Addict+review+of+our+product.EML?Cmd=open – what do I get from this? My email got routed to someone named Sue Smith (name changed) and she can more than likely be contacted at [email protected] – I now have an email address for someone inside the company and I can email her directly now.

Another example of email-related info I get from pMetrics: I can see what links to my site that people are emailing. How? On the Top Referers page in pMetrics I see various links from webmail sites like by102w.bay102.mail.live.com, us.f820.mail.yahoo.com, webmail1.webmail.aol.com, etc. Click on the link and you will see the visitor’s info then click on the actions link and the first action (their arrival on your site) is the link that was sent in an email to them.

To see even more, change the url in the browser on the page that says “Visitors from us.f820.mail.yahoo.com” and remove the beginning subdomains (us.f820 in this case) so the URL just has mail.yahoo.com in it and you will see all emailed links that were clicked from Yahoo mail.

You should realize that this doesn’t show you every link to your site that was emailed – only the ones that were actually clicked in a webmail application.

Matt Cutts About Subdomains And Subdirectories

by

The old and ongoing discussion ‘Subdomain vs. Subdirectory’ reaches a new step.
Google has changed the policy against showing multiple subdomains on one SERP.

Nice input for all the Subdomain vs. Subdirectory discussions.

This definition made my day:

Just as a reminder, in a URL such as subdomain.example.com/subdirectory/ , the subdomain is “subdomain” and the subdirectory is “subdirectory” (also sometimes called a folder).

Thanks, Matt for this bullet proof definition. Even the Mac guys can understand it 🙂

Head over to the article Subdomains and subdirectories and see how the big SEO guys are positioning their diplomatic questions in the comments.

Should you choose a Subdomain or a Subdirectory? Some aspects:

Subdomain

  • Subdomains are great for building different sites for totally different content.
  • Subdomains allow testing new sites without affecting other content SEO wise.
  • Subdomains allow to separate successful content to a new site with a specialized structure.
  • Handling subdomains always means more administrative effort if you are using a platform which can’t handle subdomains.
  • Handling subdomains can become a hassle if you don’t have full access to your web server. I.e. automatic creation of subdomains will be difficult.
  • Switching from a subdomain to a real domain means in most hosting environments just some mouse clicks.

I love subdomains but it always takes some time, motivation and effort until I realize a new subdomain.

Subdirectories

  • Testing in subdirectories can have very creepy side effects on the rest of the website.
  • Subdirectories are easy to administrate. From the .htaccess, robot.txt to file organization point of view subdirectory bring great website overview on file level.
  • Subdirectories offer no misunderstanding where root is. A little edit action at the address line always brings the reader back to home.
  • Subdirectories will pop up nicely in your address line history.

Subdirectories are the easy way to go with related content for one website!

Painful Example: My News Kiosk

Using the RSS aggregator Gregarius I realized my personal local web news stand: News.Sankt-Georg.Info. My experience was pretty spectacular traffic wise:

  • Having the aggregator in a sub-directory made my whole traffic drop 80%. Oops. I didn’t dig too much into the possible reasons. I watched the lower traffic for a week with some pain and then decided to use a subdomain.
  • Having the aggregator in a subdomain brought back the old traffic level over night. I knew that lesson before but was too lazy to realize the test in a subdomain. Lesson learned!
  • Having the aggregator in a subdomain now means that the aggregator is creating its own incoming SE traffic. The news kiosk is running by itself and gives me a nice opportunity to link to collected feeds from my homepage i.e. the collected d.i.u bookmarks.

It was no good idea to test the news aggregator in a subdirectory!

Lessons learned

  • Always use a subdomain for website testing
  • If a website flies well in a subdomain you should consider a unique domain for it.
  • Only use subdirectories to structure pretty related content.

Some Software Solutions

  • LifeType is able to automatically create subdomains if your server configuration allows it. If not, LifeType uses subdirectories to create a multi-blog environment. Bad idea (see above)!
  • My preferred Blog-CMS is Textpattern. TXP is not capable of handling subdomains. But compared to WordPress it is capable of a very good subdirectory handling through sections. Textpattern is absolutely my choice if I need a fast and smart Blog-CMS solution on shared hosting.
  • If your hosting offers enough performance it is always a good idea to throw a deeper look at the Drupal feature set. In our context: Multi-lingual Content, Multi-Site Deployment, Sub-sites / Roots

How do you handle the ‘Subdomain vs. Subdirectory’ issue?

How Many Americans Read Blogs?

by

The intelligent folks over at Pew Internet have the latest data on American reading habits in general and blogs specifically. I think it’s interesting enough to pass along in case you don’t hang out at PewInternet.org.

I first reported in Sling Words on American reading habits in 2005. Here’s what the stats from the American Library Association, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Pew Internet & American Life Project said then:

2005 Stats

  • Number of libraries in the US: 117,859
  • American adults who read a newspaper each weekday in 2003: 54%
  • Americans 16 and older who read at or below a 5th grade level: 20%
  • U. S. Rank among 150 nations in literacy: 49th
  • American adults who read novels or short stories in 2003: 45 %
  • American adults who read a play in 2003: 4%
  • American internet users who read blogs: 27%
  • American internet users who do not know what a blog is: 62%.

I was blown away by these statistics. Why? Because it’s always shocking to see such bad news in black and white, and the decline of literacy in this country is very bad news. Reading skill and reading activity are benchmarks for measuring literacy. It’s scary to see this continue to drop.

Since I’m a heavy Internet and Blog user, I tend to forget that not everyone is. In fact, just two years ago, only 27% of American internet users even read blogs. The number who didn’t even know what a blog was? 62%. That’s amazing.

Things change, or do they?

Now we’re at the end of 2007. Has that situation changed appreciably?

According to A Typology of Information and Communication Technology Users by John Horrigan on May 6, 2007, available at the Pew Internet site, “half of all American adults are only occasional users of modern information gadgetry, while 8% are avid participants in all that digital life has to offer.”

Two years doesn’t seem to have brought about much change. Trust me on this: that 8% who are wired in? Bet most of them are below the age of thirty. Remember, I’m talking general population, not us who make a living doing this.

Bloggers

When it comes to blogging, a July 19, 2006, report by Amanda Lenhart and Susannah Fox pulled data from a national phone survey of bloggers. Their report finds that most people who maintain blogs are focused on describing their personal experiences to a relatively small audience of readers.

Apparently, they didn’t phone any of us because we’d have given them a different perspective. So, again, we’re talking general population here, but I think it’s important to realize what the masses are doing because we’d like some of them to drop by our blogs since many of us have them monetized. Right?

The popular free blogging platforms make it easy for anyone to set up a blog and post to it. This convenience makes blogs appealing to people who would probably never have written something creative in their entire lives without it. Outside of an English composition class. With a voice that can be heard around the world though, this new group of writers is empowered to create and to share.

For better or worse

The survey found that most bloggers are focused entirely on describing their personal experiences with a very small number covering specific niche information areas like politics, the media, government, technology, or other special interest. I always think of it as the “contemplating your navel” style of blogging.

I’ll bottom line it for you: Blogging brings new voices, but is it a voice you really want to hear?

If you’re just getting into blogging, either for yourself or a client, keep that question foremost in your mind. You always want to be able to answer it with a resounding yes!