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So You Want Search Engine Traffic, Huh?

Over the past week, I have taken one of my sites, and performed a pretty simple experiment. Like most bloggers, my main question when starting my blog was “How can I get traffic to it?”

I’m sure all bloggers ask this when they begin their blog. We want to be heard, or in this case read, so we strive to get people to our blog. Obviously there’s the well-known saying “content is king”. I agree, but wanted to test the waters on another theory I had brewing.

I’ve experienced some really good success getting search engine traffic from Google, mainly with my sites that are using WordPress. I will admit my themes have some degree of coding that is geared to be friendly to search engines, but this theory that kept begging me to explore finally was confirmed this past week.

Here’s what I did.

I took a handful of 3 or 4 word searches that I wanted to target. I created a post, with those 3 or 4 words as the first ones in the blog title. Then I wrote a fairly short (meaning 3 to 4 paragraph) post, making sure I repeated those words in order at least once in a paragraph.

The results.

Every search I went after I landed on the first page of Google within a few days. I can’t guarantee results, but I can share the success I had with my site. Best of luck, and leave comments with your experiments!

What Are You Trying to Say to Me?

I’m blogging at a reasonable speed. The thoughts are coming down the blogging pike blissfully. I’m making point after point, like a basketball player. I’m in the zone. I should be in the Blogger 500 on Blogger TV.

Then I go and ruin all. I stop to read what I wrote. Blogger TV, yeah. The horror channel, maybe. I could play the character with a schizoform discorder and the severe ADD.

The problem is that the words I wrote so well and so quickly, for some reason they all don’t belong in the same piece. What kind of mess have I made here? It looks like the Blogger 500 has had a horrible 3-blog-post wreck.

I have four sentences there that work perfectly well. Three sentences there that make a beautiful point with clarity. Those two sentences next are genuinely clever. Each set of thoughts just belongs on its own.

How did this happen? It happens quite often when I write without deciding first what I’m writing about.

It sounds simple, doesn’t it? Know my point. Know my message. Know what I want to say, before I hit the keys.

It works for everybody that way. It’s the same as “If you don’t know where you’re going, you won’t get there.”

When I trained writers, it was a usual thing. About once a month, a writer would come to my office, plop in a chair, and throw his or her hands in the air, saying, “I’m sorry I tried for days and I can’t write this piece.”

My answer would always be, “What do you want to say?”

Then we’d talk to find the point the writer wanted to make. The piece would be done within the next hour.

Ah, that’s the point I want to make here.

It’s easier to write, faster to blog, simpler to get a message across, if we take time before we start, to figure out that one thing we want to say.

Liz Strauss

Keeping Things Simple With Blog Promotion

A few weeks ago, I wrote an article entitled 5 Steps to Jumpstart Your Website.

I was subsequently criticized for stating the obvious.

But the truth of the matter is that most bloggers don’t have the time or resources to implement 90% of the advice that you see in the “30 Effective Ways to Promote Your Blog” type articles. Fact of the matter is that 90% of those tips turn out to not really be that effective (or at least not for a simpleton like me).

This got me thinking. There’s a real need here. Or maybe it already exists and I just don’t know about it. But, the average blogger could really benefit from someone or some resource whose primary aim, rather than the creation of lots and lots of content, was to whittle down all the advice that’s out there into the simple rules that actually work for the average blogger, especially the beginning blogger.

In other words, if you’re like me, and you really only have 2-5 promotional methods and 2-5 ad monetization methods, what are they? How would you advise the new blogger to spend her precious time? Certainly not by wading through dozens upon dozens of “107 Keys to link building” articles.

You can take a look at my article above regarding site promotion. It’s about all I do for most of my sites, and for the time it involves, the payoff is tangible.

I know of one thing I’d add to the list that I’m not doing: participation in the comments section of similar sites.

Why Use Article Directories?

Fact: you need backlinks to your blog/ site, but link exchanges have little value PR-wise (pagerank). So what can you do instead?

Here are a few ideas in brief:

Syndication through guest blogging.
Syndication by having a blog conversation with other bloggers, which Liz Strauss talks about and does a lot on her Successful-Blog.
Inducement to link with flagship or viral content.
Article directories, which generate a sort of viral backlinking phenomena.

Let’s focus on item #4. What are article directories and why do you want to use them? Firstly, article directories are a repository of articles contributed to by writers/bloggers. Rules vary by directory, but let’s assume that you have to be a member to access other writers’ articles. An article directory then lets you republish other writers’ articles, provided you follow the rules and include the necessary backlinks.

So if you have an archive of articles that meet the submission quality and rules of a good article directory, make them work for you. You might find other people publishing your work and thus linking to your website/ blog, building up your backlinks. Here are a few points to keep in mind (I use ezinearticles.com, so the details are geared to their rules).

Get exposure.
If you actively post on a certain topic, your author profile and some articles in that category stay high on the directory’s front page, driving additional traffic to your site.
Revise your work.
I never submit exactly the same article I’ve written for my site. I rewrite it, and remove all links from the first 2-3 paragraphs (not allowed, by the rules of most article directories). Some sites only allow links in the last paragraph and in your author’s resource box. Articles should be informative. Opinion pieces are unlikely to be republished. Most directories will have a human editor look at and approve your work. The more articles you submit, the faster you’ll probably be approved. (Don’t let that cause you to slip into poor writing.)
Revise your title.
Good titles help decide how often you’ll get viewed and/or republished. Most directories give good examples. I suggest you also follow Brian Clark’s advice at Copyblogger for great headlines.
Refine your bio.
You author resource box can have your mini bio (customizable per article) and 3 promotional links. Usually you are not allowed affiliate links anywhere in article.
Count your words.
Ezinearticles.com has a 250 word minimum but suggest 450-750 words.
Ease of republishing.
If the directory’s republish panel is easy to use, it increases the chances of your work being republished.
Duplicate content.
If you’ve rewritten your archive article, you don’t have to worry too much about dupe content. Some directories allow republishers to add an intro and extro around your article, but not to rewrite. The dupe content issue, at least in Google’s search engine is more a matter of whether you’ll get any visible ranking in the SERPs. Getting your revised article republished all over the place should not affect the ranking of your original article. As well, your site will have all those backlinks.
Copyright issues.
Republishers must include your copyright/resource info. They don’t always, however.

So if you’re not convinced article directories are for you, what are your plans for linkbuilding to your blog?

Blog Reboot: 6 Pillars of a Successful Blog

One of the comments in the Reboot my Blog post talks about the need to have a checklist for blog review and evaluation.

I think that’s a great idea, so I’m going to try to build a basic framework for blog evaluation here, and if you have anything to add / improve upon, please let me know in the comments.

The Basic Idea Behind Blog Reboots

In many cases, people need help in tweaking their blogs rather than full-blown makeovers.

In other situations bloggers need guidance or a couple of nudges in the right direction instead of hands-on training.

This is not a paid review, so you can’t expect detailed how-to advice. However, we will try to fit as much info as possible into the time we spent reviewing your blog (30 minutes to an hour). That’s the equivalent of hundreds of dollars of professional consulting, so please follow the instructions 🙂

What can you expect out of getting your blog reviewed like this?

You’re told what you already know, but don’t work on – you KNOW you need a better design, to write more flagship content, to get links from trusted sources, to get your basic blog SEO right, etc.

You learn how to do it – when it comes to monetization, blogging strategies and SEO, there is a LOT of valuable information available for free online. All you need is to be pointed in the right direction.

1. Focus

A look at your target market and audience. If you focus on the wrong niche (not profitable, no demand, too broad, too narrow, etc), your blog will be at a severe disadvantage from the start. This will be based on the blog’s contents as well as what the blog owner says about their site when they submit it for review.

In most cases people write on topics that are too broad for their current reach and resources. Tightening your focus and improving content quality can go a long way towards building a loyal readership.

2. Design

The Internet is a visual medium and you have very little time to attract first-time visitors to stick around at your blog. But that’s only part of the problem. The other part is conveying the trust and authority (and reinforcing it on a regular basis) through your blog’s design. If you’re using the default Kubrick theme for your WP install, chances are you haven’t thought much about design.

There are many small things that go into making a quality design, one that attracts readers, conveys authority and emotionally communicates the blog’s central theme to the reader on a subconscious level.

Heavy, but necessary.

3. Content

Content is an abused term, so I’m going to use ‘information’ instead. A blog post is a source of input – it’s information that will immediately be evaluated by the reader as being useful / interesting or not.

How interesting is your blog?
How useful is it?
Is it shareable?
Is it actionable (Can I implement this right now)? Daily Blog Tips is the perfect example of ‘actionable’ information.
Is it ‘timeless’? See Chris G’s Flagship Content post for a better discussion on this.

4. SEO

Search Engine Optimization is good for you, and as much as people might say that it’s a subset of marketing or ‘not necessary’ if you do your ‘blogging’ right, the fact remains that it IS a specialised skill and understanding how it impacts your blog traffic and success is very important.

Topics that should be discussed in this section:

search engine visibility
search engine friendliness
on-site optimization
link building

And plenty more…

5. Monetization

Perhaps the most common question on blogging is – “how do you make money from it?”

There are a number of ways, and the straightforward answer is that ‘it depends’ on what your blog is about.

A gadget / tech blog does better with Chitika (and even AdSense) than a blog on ‘learning spanish’. AdSense works well IF used properly, but it’s still ‘webmaster welfare’. Paid ads have a lot of stigma attached to them because of the Google / no-follow debate, but they are an option more and more blogs should be looking at. Affiliate marketing is there but is misunderstood and considered ‘too hard’ (it’s not).

Plenty of options available, and the underlying idea is to diversify your income while also maximising it.

6. Marketing

Have you heard the one about the tree falling in the forest but making no sound because ‘no one heard it’?

Your Blog’s existence is meaningless unless people KNOW about it. What should you be looking at:

Blog networking (who do you know in your niche? who reads your blog? who SHOULD be reading your blog?) – your peers are your best audience

Social Media Marketing – a fancy term that tells you to leverage online tools and communities for word-of-mouth marketing of your blog and its contents.

Increasing your readership – your readers are also your sales force. Are they sharing your posts and talking about your work online?

Strategies for increasing blog visibility

Blog Reboot

I’ll be using the above framework for future blog reboot sessions (the first one is probably going to be on Wednesday (7th March), so keep an eye out for that).

What do you guys think about this list? Have I missed out on anything?

Are you making this mistake with your new blog?

We talk a lot about success in blogging – success in making money, in building communities, etc.

But where there’s the possibility for success, there’s also a possibility for failure.

And when you’ve invested your own hard-earned money into a particular project, it can be very painful to watch it go south.

Today I want to about how, if you are not careful, you can completely ruin a blog that you have just bought and instead of turning it into a profit-machine, you end up making it a liability.

If you want some advice on buying websites, please read Raj’s tips on buying websites for profit and SEO and my post on buying old websites.

Let’s say you buy a website that has a thriving community, good search engine rankings, under-monetized and a great brand to work with. You find out that the owner wants to sell, you get to him first, negotiate, bada bing bada bang, you own the site by next week.

And then your troubles start.

Did you plan for:

Maintaining the community by following the same style as that of the previous blogger(s)?

Changing as few things as possible (design, monetization, seo) in the beginning and to introduce them ‘slowly’?

Spending plenty of time blogging on the new site to help your audience learn about you and trust you?

Bring in new bloggers and ensure regular posting if you couldn’t manage it yourself?

The fact that you might need to ‘bail out’ (and thus would need buyers to offload the website) if things don’t work out for you?

Giving lots of time, introducing changes (very) gradually), having a contingency plan – these three items should be on top of your to-do list for any blog that you plan on buying.

A new blog is like a new website – you need to put in the time to make it successful, whether it is monetization, or design or SEO or more content.

Hand in hand with this is the assumption that you need to know where to spend that extra time too – just blogging all the time or promoting the site all the time can’t cut it.

Are you giving your new blog plenty of time? For that matter, what about the one you just bought, or the one you’ve had for ages but hasn’t gone anywhere?

If things don’t work out, you should always have a backup plan.

Blink Your Blog to See What a First Time Visitor Does

Long posts or short posts, I’m sure you’ve encountered the question. Longer means more content to reed the spiders and the deep readers. Shorter means casual readers are more likely to stay longer and read deeper.

Readers, those readers, unlike spiders, can’t be configured to do what we think they are supposed to.

When readers glance or glimpse our blog page, we’ve got a blink to draw them in. A blink isn’t long enough to read, or even sample, the content. A blink is exactly that – a blink. We’re talking a matter of seconds.

Being Blind to the Old

If we’ve been with a blog for more than two weeks, unless we’re in a redesign, we’re used to how it looks. Our brain filters out what is no longer new, so that we can concentrate the changes in our blog environment that are useful to us.

This filtering is critical to survival. It keeps us from being over-stimulated by everyday information that would be disruptive –- it’s counter-productive to be as impressed with our template or our new cotton sweater as we were the moment we first saw it. If we were, we would constantly be being bombarded by information — never able to sort the old from the new.

Unfortunately that also means that we quickly become blind to how the things we see every day actually look.

Blink Test Your Blog

So how do you get a fresh look at your blog? Do a blink test. That’s what I call it. Read all of the directions below before you do the blink test. That’s so that you can concentrate on noticing where your eye goes and what your reactions are.

Open your blog fully on your computer in front of you.
Look away at the ceiling or a neutral color wall –- white is the best if you’ve got it. Try to look for 2 or 3 minutes so that you’re completely clearing your mind of any “cached” images.
When you look back at the screen notice where your eyes go, and notice how easy or hard it is to draw your eyes elsewhere.

Where did your eyes go? Most folks will find that their eyes went to some visual element. Often that element is the big orange feed button. It’s good that people notice your feed, but is it really what you want them to remember most?

I would think the visually strongest pull on your blog should be your blog’s title. Now, don’t necessarily make your feed button smaller, but rather make your title visually more prominent.

Using the blink test. Find the 3 strongest visuals on your blog. Make sure that they are in order that supports your goals. Next Week, I’ll be showing you a blog on which we did just what I’m talking about.

Meanwhile if you blink your blog and have questions, c’mon let’s talk.

Liz Strauss

How Do You Deal With A Stolen Design

Update: Thanks for all the advice. This has been resolved painlessly.

I’ve had a big dilema this week. Someone ripped off a design I paid dearly for. They said they did it in admiration. But my investment has basically been watered down by the theft. That’s what it is plain and simple. As probloggers we shouldn’t have to deal with this. But alas we do.

This stuff has been happening so often these days I have no way to stay on top of it. In this case I’ve been laid back and haven’t ripped into the person. In days past I would have.

But I’m stumped neither I,nor the designer are happy about it. And yet the person who ripped us off doesn’t seem to understand what they’ve done.

Maybe because I’m so into design I can’t understand it. But what compels people to take CSS modify it slightly and claim it as their own without attribution?

Maybe if I could understand the psychology of it, then it would help. But I merely can’t and probably will never understand.

I need some advice. How should I proceed next? I’m still not happy after conversations, emails, and the like.

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