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EatonWeb: A Blog Directory That Matters

For the last several months I, and several others, have been developing what we consider to be a Blog Directory That Matters. It is called EatonWeb. And submissions are free;-)

In our view, the reason that directory submission has fallen so out of favor among SEO types is simple: too many directories are just sophisticated link farms and the links don’t carry much, if any, value. Most directories don’t exist for any other reason than to pass link juice and collect submission fees.

Our goal with EatonWeb was to make a directory that provided valuable information to the blog owner as well as blog buyers and blog advertisers.

To meet this goal we sat down and came up with a list of over 20 factors that we believe are indicators of blog quality. Then we went about creating an algorithm to measure these qualities and determine a blog’s strength. But we didn’t stop there.

In our view, a blog’s strength is not its only virtue. We also set out to measure a blog’s dynamic momentum over time. Healthy blogs should either maintain or grow their measured strength over time.

The cool thing about EatonWeb is that it organizes blog categories by strength and momentum. This is great information to have on several levels. For one, it provides blog owners with weekly feedback on their blog’s progress, and allows a blog owner to set concrete goals. Additionally, it gives blog buyers, sellers and advertisers detailed information to help evaluate the overall value of a blog.

By separating out strength and momentum, EatonWeb also provides the “little guy” a chance to stand out in the Momentum section of the directory. Whereas it might be difficult to compete on the level of pure strength, the little guy has more room for growth.

It’s our hope that EatonWeb will prove to be one of the most important blog directories on the Internet, right along with Best of the Web, Blog Flux and Blog Catalog.

The good news is that we’re not done with EatonWeb. We’re going to work daily to improve our measurements and add new features designed to help bloggers and SEOers acquire valuable information and valuable links.

So what are you waiting for? Submit your blog to EatonWeb today!

Pssssssssssss … in case you had any doubts about the SEO strength of EatonWeb, do a Google search for College Startup (my other blog) and look at the fifth listing down. Better yet, do a search on Jack of All Blogs and look at the second full listing. Impressive, eh? Still wondering if you should submit?

The Benefits & Pitfalls Of Wikis

There’s been a lot of talk in the blogosphere and among the SEO crowd lately about the dominance of Wikipedia.

I blog in a number of niches, and it’s startling to see how many different types of search Wikipedia entries rank highly in. On one hand, this scares the hell out of me, but on the other, it makes me wonder why wiki technology hasn’t caught on in the mainstream.

Let’s face it, wikis have got their advantages:

Targetted anchor text: People link to wiki entries with the exact keyword, used in context in a sentence. This applies to inbound links as well as internal linking between articles in the wiki.
Deep links: deep linking spreads PageRank out across the site, rather than concentrating it on the homepage.
Massive quantities of inbound links from different source (Wikipedia has around 70 million inbound links)
On-site optimization makes the best use of headings and titles.
Interlinking between articles that goes on within Wikipedia creates awesome keyword relevance within the site.
User generated content means you won’t be doing all the writing yourself.

With all of those benefits, I can’t understand why there aren’t more wiki-type websites.

Let’s face it, the must be niches crying out for an authority site which bloggers and industry experts could help to build. It shouldn’t be too difficult to create your wiki, build some basic content on it, then invite bloggers and notable experts to particpate in the community.

It seems like such a simple formula (but we all know how much hard work might be involved). Why aren’t there more mainstream wikis then?

Fear factor: Let’s face it, wikis are a whole new world. They’ve got their own language, and are completely different to any content management system you’ve met before. Anyone can edit any page? Scary.
No mainstream acceptance: Look at how much we all love to write about blogging! Blogging about blogging with wee breaks to check our stats and then it’s back to blogging again! That level of evangelism is missing where wiki technology is concerned.
Does It Work With AdSense? It’s oh-so-easy to monetize a blog. But adverts on wikis don’t seem appropriate, do they? Run AdSense on a wiki and you risk devaluing your content. Perhaps most of us stop there – what’s the point if you can’t make money?
Harder to moderate? You’ve heard the stories of egomaniacal flame wars between Wikipedia moderators? Probably most people could live without the headaches, but others might put in the work to create the ultimate resource for their niche.

Has anyone taken the plunge with Wikis? Care to share your experiences?

My feeling is that since monetization is difficult with wikis, there must be other motivations to run one. The reason I cite monetization is that I feel moderating a wiki would be a tremendous amount of work, and the moderation team would deserve some reward for maintaining and upholding the wiki.

Using Your Blogroll to Manage Text Ads

If you’re a web code expert (or even novice) you can probably handle hard coding in sponsored links in your blog’s sidebar. But many people are unaware that you can manage text ads via your WordPress administration panel. It’s a small tweak/hack, but once you have it in place, adding and removing sponsored text ads will be a breeze from then on.

The first thing you’ll want to do is log into your WordPress administration panel. Click on “Manage” in the top-level navigation, then click on “Categories” in the sub-navigation. This is where you need to add a new category. For the purposes of this article, we’ll call it “Ads”.

After you add the new category, take a look in the list and find the Category ID (that will be located in the far left column). Once you have the category ID, we can move on to…

…The blogroll. Click on the “Blogroll” link in the primary navigation bar of your WordPress admin panel. Click “Add Link” in the sub-navigation.

Now you should have a form to fill in. Essentially, you’ll want make the “Name” the actual text you want to appear in your sidebar (the anchor text). After that, fill in the URL you want to link to. Go ahead and leave the “description” field empty.

Just before you submit the form, take a look to your far right. There, you’ll see a list of categories (probably only “Blogroll” and “Ads”). Uncheck the “Blogroll” category and check the “Ads” category. NOW you can submit the form.

Here comes the tricky part (depending on whether or not you like to edit WordPress theme files). Open your sidebar.php (or whatever your sidebar file is called) and create a new space. For the purposes of this article, I’ll use a standard widgetized sidebar format for my new list. You’ll basically want to add this (or something similar):

<li>
<h2>Sponsored Links</h2>
<ul>
<?php get_links(8, ‘<li>’, ‘</li>’, ‘ – ‘); ?>
</ul>
</li>

I’m not going to go into the explanation of this Template Tag, so for more information on that, go here.

I will, however, explain the “8” inside the parenthesis. The “8” represents the category ID we want to be displayed. Remember back when I told you to locate the category ID of the new category you added? That’s what will go where the “8” is in my code, so replace the “8” with the category ID you have.

The output will be a list of links that you place in that category. This gives you a quick and easy way to manage sponsored links, or any kind of link really.

Be sure to check out all the other cool things you can do with the get_links template tag. Use you imagination and you can come up with anything!

Happy Coding!

Blog Reboot #5: PaulTan.org

Site: Paul Tan’s Auto Blog
Owner: Paul Tan

Paul says:

I would like to nominate my site – paultan.org

It’s mostly about the automotive industry for both the South East Asian region and international news. There’s some test drive reports now and then. I previously switched to a three column layout but that only lasted 2 days because ad CTR dropped drastically. So it’s back to the old 2-column layout. Used to be PR6, but dropped to PR5 about 2-3 updates ago.

Paul’s site is a different beast from the blog reboots we’ve done so far – it’s a well-established blog with high traffic (regularly in the top 3 pMetrics premium blogs – see the list in the sidebar on the right) and has widespread media recognition.

PaulTan.org is an established brand, and as such we’re dealing with different problems than those that we encounter with newer blogs.

Paul’s talked about upgrading the site design (to make it more flexible and ad-friendly) but there are a couple of things that I think paultan.org can improve on, such as:

How to leverage his authority status to drive more traffic to his site
How to use his site to generate more revenue
Setting long-term goals and looking at different ways that Paul can expand his site

But before we get started on this list, Paul deserves a mention for hitting a few key aspects of pro blogging right on the head:

One, look at how focused his blog is – he has picked a lucrative niche (cars) in a market where there’s space to grow (South East Asia). In all of my previous reboots I’ve talked about establishing blog focus, and Paul has that down perfectly. It’s one of the main reasons why his site is such a success.

Two, he’s put in a lot of time into his work – Paul’s been blogging for 3 years on paultan.org. From personal experience, it takes anywhere from 6 months to an year to establish your site in your niche and another year (or two) to breakthrough as a market leader. It differs from case to case, but another thing to learn from Paul’s site is that in blogging, like in any other business, you have to put in a lot of time and effort.

Three, he uses images regularly in his posts – one of the most frequently ignored tips in blogging is the usage of images. You might find it hard in some niches to find the right image for each post, but trust me, it pays off in the long run. Visual cues set the tone for your post and the right images have an indirect impact on retaining regular readers.

Four, he’s considered an expert and a media-recognised authority in his field – and this comes from a combination of his passion for cars and his dedication to his blog.

Overall, I think Paul’s done a fantastic job with his blog and hopefully we can help him increase his traffic and revenue numbers.

Site Design

Paul says:

The site has been using the same layout for ages. I’d like to be able to switch to a layout that can fit more ads without being obtrusive. I tried once, but CTR on Adsense dropped like crazy. I did the theme change myself. I also adjusted the width, but not perfect. Sometimes the sidebar drops below the left content!

First, I’d suggest a width of atleast 900px (or 950px) to give your site breathing room. You can still use a 2-col theme in this resolution (Perf is a good example) but you can also use a 3-col theme. Out of personal preference I’d suggest sticking with a 2-col theme.

To make it work on your current theme, you have to edit your style.css file of your current theme. I looked through it and if you want to do it yourself, you’ll have to change the ‘width’ values for these elements: wrapper, content and sidebar. Exact values will depend on padding between the content and sidebar elements, but here are some test values you can use:

wrapper: 900px (currently 750 px)
content: 600px (currently 480 px)
sidebar: 220px (currently 190px)

This configuration gives you a bigger content area to work with. You can also push the sidebar to 270 and the content to 550 and use the extra space in the sidebar for double-panel blog ads like the ones SEJ and MarketingPilgrim use.

This should work, and won’t send your sidebar south either. Just make sure you edit ALL ‘width’ values for the content / sidebar elements appropriately.

The thing is that your sidebar has plenty of styles, so you’ll have to adjust them appropriately as well. As a rule of thumb, just added x pixels to the previous width (where x is the number of pixels you’re adding to the main sidebar width) will work.

And if you have any troubles, let me know here.

Apart from site width, there were a few other suggestions I had in mind:

Use horizontal navigation at the top of your site – makes it easier for users and also helps with SEO (in helping Google identify distinct sections of your site, so they can point searchers to them – see this search and then the navigation menu of the site in question)

Promote your feed as high up the sidebar as possible – see how I’ve done it at SL – maybe put it right below the search box? This should definitely help boost your feed subscriptions.

Re-jig your sidebar / site layout to make important content / ads as prominent as possible and above the fold where possible. Don’t sacrifice something as key as search / feeds for this though. Moving navigation from the sidebar to the top menu will give you more space.

The gauge in your site banner – on the right – if you make the needle point to the right instead of the left, it looks better, more ‘revved up’. Just a gut feeling there, you’ll know better if you had both versions in front of you.

Traffic

Paul’s already got a handle on the search engines, and he’s done well with building a regular readership. However, according to him he rarely gets his site on digg, and I think that’s one avenue that he can / should explore. It will probably require Paul to move outside the South East Asian niche and tackle broader topics, but cars, images, stats and lists make a dynamite combination and it’s hard NOT to get such posts dugg.

My suggestions – Paul should read up on the linkbaiting material referenced here, here and here (the last 3 blog reboots) and then work on 1 linkbait per week (or 2, if he has the time for it). Link baiting, like blogging, takes time and a series of link baits spread over a period of several weeks will help increase backlinks, regular traffic and as a knock-on effect, media exposure.

What else? Since Paul’s an authority himself, I’d suggest that he targets authority sites from other niches. Some examples:

web design blogs (a list of the best designed car blogs?)
business / finance bloggers
political bloggers (how is the car industry related to politics in south east asia?)
marketing bloggers (best car ads)

This will get him high-trust links from outside his niche, which will build up his overall site authority and increase his search engine rankings.

And at this stage, some old school SEO targeting niche keyword research and writing targeted posts for those terms will help as well – with an established site getting first page rankings in Google for most 3-word search terms is relatively easy.

Revenue

Paul makes more money from his blog in 1 month than most people do from blogging in 1 year – however most of that income is from AdSense and as a result there are still plenty of opportunities for Paul to make more money from his site.

First, I suggest experimenting with more AdSense options and placement. For single posts, I’d recommend adding a rectangle ad (300×250 or the bigger version) at the top of the post, right-aligned (look at SL for how I’ve done this). This method requires you to have a wide content area, especially if you use images in every post, but it can easily be managed. With that in place you could remove the single ad mid-post, keep the left-aligned block at the end of posts and add a skyscraper in the sidebar (in place of the navigation, perhaps).

Apart from AdSense, I see that you’ve also implemented Kontera – it would be interesting to know how well it’s doing for you.

Right now PaulTan.org is at a par (in terms of traffic) with sites like SEJ and Performancing – and as a result I think you can attract paid sponsors / advertising, something that we talked about earlier in the site redesign section.

How to make this work?

Prepare a document (.pdf) that gives site traffic stats, audience demographics, potential ad placements (images work best) and ad costs.

For an example of such a page, check out SEJ’s advertising page (thanks Loren, for your hard work 😛 )

Once you have this page ready, you will need to scope out potential advertisers and approach them yourself – alternatively you can work through a proxy.

I wouldn’t recommend selling TLA ads or the sort – it’s a nice bump in earnings but is nothing compared to what you can get with direct advertising deals.

Products / Reports

Paul does test drive reports from time to time (here’s the latest) and the value provided in these reports is extraordinary.

I would suggest that Paul look at ways to create paid-for resources where he provides more detailed reviews and perhaps offer the test drive reports for a fee? At a nominal fee of $7, readers would not feel that they are overpaying and at the same time will get something valuable. With proper promotion of your test drive reports, you can easily add substantially to your site’s revenues.

I would also look into syndicating the test drive reports (including images) to car magazines / media – online and offline.

General Thoughts

There are a few ideas that I didn’t have time to discuss above – I’ve listed them below:

Invest in a new theme – you can afford it and more importantly, it will help your site fit in more into its authority role.

Hire someone to work with you on doing a detailed, hands-on blog reboot for paultan.org. Your site and niche have a lot of potential and guided, personalised professional advice will go a long way towards helping you achieve it.

Start a weekly newsletter – see how Darren Rowse does it. The idea is that a) some people are still more comfortable with weekly email digests and b) a list of subscribers can be used for email marketing later on.

Hire people to write for you – especially for those articles that you’ll be writing for SE purposes (the keyword-specific posts I talked about earlier).

Write on authority blogs and relate that industry to cars – for example, you can easily share blogging tips here at Perf and how your niche responds to advertising in posts, what type of search type-in traffic you get, etc. This will not only gain you a new audience but also get you good links 😉 You can similar things at other niche blogs.

Think of expanding to new sites – for example, how about a site that caters to bikers? I’m sure you have had ideas for spinning off sections of your site into independent blogs – if not, it’s time to start thinking.
However, don’t hamstring your current site by splitting your time between two sites – if you have the extra time put that into your main site and hire someone to manage / write for the new site (you can write their occasionally).

More topics – such as car safety – can also be explored (and they will help you for bringing in links as well as new readers).

Instead of putting your monthly archives in the sidebar, put your category list instead. Those areas are a more relevant fit for search engines and for readers. You can create a separate archives page that lists monthly archives for simplicity.

Think of ways you can leverage your status as ‘the’ authority in Malaysia on buying cars and how you can use that to sell leads, create products, etc.

That’s it for today – I hope this helps you Paul, and if you need more help, let me know.

Social Meta Voting (SMV) – Looking for 10 Good Testers

Sometime in August or September, Performancing will be implementing an SMV system for members. Right now, I have a very rough prototype up here:

http://nudger.org/

I’m looking for about 10 individuals to help me test this system out over the summer. You’ll be able to submit up to three articles per day and you’ll be expected to vote on other stories.

One condition of participating is that you will not only submit articles, but also vote on the stories of others. Because of this, I’ll need for you to send me your Digg, Netscape and Reddit user profiles.

If you’re interested in working on this project with me, please send a PM via Performancing.

How To Reach Major Bloggers In Your Niche

Liz Strauss has a fabulous article over at the Blog Herald entitled The Two Webs: Information or Relationships? I recommend that all Performancing members read it and savor it.

The basic gist of the article is that there are two webs: one structural, the other relational. The structural web is the one that a person considers when doing an analytical measurement (e.g. total links, etc.). Unlike the structural web, the relational web is the one that consists of human relationships.

Human relationships can sometimes be represented by the structural web, and algorithms rely on this sort of representation, but the structural web isn’t good at differentiating structural aspects that indicate true human relationship, as opposed to manipulated structure.

The take home point of the article for me was this: those of us who are ultra-analytical tend to place excessive value in the structural web to the neglect of the relational web. We are prone to doing whatever we can to manipulate the structural web (e.g. buying and selling links), while ignoring the reason the structural web acquired value in the first place.

So why does the structural web have value? Because of the way it has been used to measure human relationships and human interests.

Ok, So what…

Well, after several years on the web, it’s my view that you can ultimately achieve more success at the structural level by focusing on the relational level. Sure, focusing on the structural level is easier on the surface, but in the end, I think it takes more work, more man hours, and is a self-perpetuating monster (buy more links to sell more links).

What can you do

Here’s my tip. Get the attention of high profile bloggers in your niche. That should be your number one focus for the first 12 months of blogging on a site. Screw the SERPS. Screw Google. Screw Yahoo. Screw Live. Well, not really, but don’t pay attention to them. Really. Ignore them altogether.

Instead, make it your only priority for one full year to do whatever it takes to get the attention of at least one high profile blogger in your niche. Spend the 10 hours each week you would have otherwise spent on artificial linkbuilding to 1) write good articles and 2) make insightful comments on blogs in your niche.

A Recipe For Success

Focus all your energy on the following:

1. Write good original articles
2. Link out to other blogs in your niche in *every* post
3. Write articles that provide commentary or opinion on articles from other blogs (include link)
4. Comment your ass off at 3-5 other blogs in your niche (but make the comments snappy and good).
5. Once a month, write a great article that deserves to be emailed to a *great* blogger or two in your niche for critical feedback (what do you think of this article?) – Then send the email(s).

I think that with these 5 steps, you’ll locate yourself definitively within the web of online relationships, and become much more successful than with mindless SEO. Sure, mindless SEO gets you a few visits here and there, but unless you are one of the best there’s a terrible ceiling for what you can achieve by trying to do everything within the structural web.

In fact, even the best SEOs have gotten there, in my view, by networking and getting the right friends at the right time, and this can only happen in the relational web.

So here’s to 2007 becoming the year of relationship building and networking! And here’s to your success!

Full Time Celebrity Blogger Wanted

I’m looking for a celebrity blogger who’s interested in the potential of eventually doing celebrity blogging as a full time career. In other words, the ideal candidate is someone who is passionate about celebrity culture, and loves being immersed in it.

The blogger should be familiar with WordPress, especially working with images.

The blog in question is Celebrity Cowboy.

At this point in time, I’m offering a scaled salary:

$100 for 3+ short posts per day
$200 for 6+ short posts per day
$300 + 25% profit share for 9+ short posts per day
$400 + 25% profit share for 12+ short posts per day
$500 + 50% profit share for 15+ short posts per day

English should be the blogger’s first language. We are mostly interested in a blogger who wants to take the last option and has a sincere interest in running a celebrity blog *full time* as a career. This is not a position for a part time blogger with little interest in celebrity culture.

I have strong evidence that 15+ posts per day, combined with heavy promotion, will quickly lead to a site that can generate enough money to support a moderate, full time salary. However, part of the success depends on the effort, attitude and ability of the writer. That is why we are offering a profit share and not a flat salary. We want the blogger to have invested interest in the success of the site.

For more information, please contact me at [email protected]

May 2007 Payouts – Referrals and Writing

May 2007 is behind us and the time has come to payout for our pMetrics referrals and front page articles. We were excited to see that several pMetrics affiliates got to our payout levels in just the first full month of the program! Great job. Keep the great work.

Until we come up with a better tracking system, I’m going to request that all members who had articles promoted to the front page in May send me an invoice via private message. Please include 1) article title and 2) article link in the private message.

Thanks again, and I hope that we get to pay even more of our members next month!

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