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Encounter the Yahoo! del.icio.us blocking policy

Follow-Up to Search Engine and Social Media Shenanigans: Yahoo! Blocks Other SEs From Spidering Del.icio.us?

OK, Yahoo! blocks spider from other search engines. Who cares?

How-To create your own copy of your del.icio.us bookmarks

It is as simple as creating a local copy of all your bookmarks stored at del.icio.us. Basically you have two pretty easy possibilities:

Static del.icio.us copy via export
Syncing your del.icio.us feed into an RSS feed aggregator

And maybe somebody has some cool ready made del.icio.us API solutions to offer (I don’t).

Let’s elaborate about the two mentioned possibilities…

Straight forward: Static del.icio.us copy

Del.icio.us offers an export function. Play around with it and create static pages in your webspace. Having static bookmark.html pages is not a bad choice.

Use keywords as filenames.
Take a look at this SEO relevant article: Matt Cutts About Subdomains And Subdirectories

Tip: There used to be some Firefox Add-Ons around which could sync your del.icio.us account with the local bookmarks. The right del.icio.us add-on could help a lot.

Tip II.: Define and subscribe to some del.icio.us add-on and/or tools search feeds. The link list in the article will Desktop Research: Trends 2008 (Bonus: OPML File) help.

Advanced: RSS aggregation of your del.icio.us feed(s)

It is only very little initial work necessary but with the help of a database, an RSS aggregation software and some reblogging tool you can create a synced copy of your future del.icio.us bookmarks.

The important thing is to find solutions which will keep your del.icio.us RSS feed items. A simple subscription tool will only show the actual feed content.

My del.icio.us RSS feed aggregation software tips

My latest Bookmarks (feel free to send me a beer for the great free resource 🙂

del.icio.us … aggregator software
del.icio.us RSS aggregation

The recommended software which I have tested

Gregarius – A Free, Web-based Feed Aggregator To-Do: Is republishing or reblogging possible? Is ist only a reader? … Gregarius is a web-based RSS/RDF/ATOM feed aggregator, designed to run on your web server, allowing you to access your news sources from wherever you want.
reBlog by Eyebeam R&D – RSS aggregation and reblogging software … To install your own reBlog, you will need a server with PHP, MySQL, and Perl CGI scripts.

I am using Gregarius with a pretty straightforward standard installation. Click on the link to see my personal syncronized del.icio.us repository realized via RSS feed import.

I have once installed reBlog once but they have a crazy security concept (if I remember right). It was something about having the admin directory above the user pages without additional login security. I did not get it to work with the standard html security options.

Combination of both or using the del.icio.us API

I can’t help you too much with the combination and esp. not how to bring both solutions together but maybe there are some del.icio.us API gurus around who will write a little program???

How To Make Your Previously Written Content Valuable Once Again

Do you have hundreds or even thousands of articles hiding behind those “previous” buttons on the bottom of your page? I bet that many of you do. They, unfortunately, offer little or no value to your readers. Valuable page views are being lost if you fail to make an honest attempt to promote past content.

Your living in la-la land if you believe that the typical reader is going to take the time to click the previous button on your blog over two or three times. I was once shocked to notice someone go back four pages on my technology blog, but even then I think it was one of my friends. It just doesn’t seem right. I mean, after all, you invested so much time into those articles, and while your blog may be prospering with new readers that are reading what you write today, they are missing out on all your previous hard work. Something must be done about this!

Alright, So How Do We Fix It?

Understandably, if you are running a site that consists of time sensitive issues like current events, news, or even technology, it is not as important to highlight that five paragraph article on why the iPhone will rule the world. On the other hand, if you do have any content that you have written in the past that could be of value to your readers, then you should do your best to make it easy for them to find it. Perhaps, at the very least, your hard work from the past will generate more back links with your newer readers.

There was a good reason you assigned tags and categories to your content (hopefully), and now is the time to explain why. Whether you prefer using tags or categories, these two methods are the primary link to organizing your previous content. They also give you great ways to pull out content as well. Good categorization of your content is crucial. Even if it doesn’t appear that way now, it might come back to haunt you later.

Pages

Using multiple pages that focus on a single or multiple related categories is a relatively easy way to spread your content out. Instead of limiting your readers to the last 10 or so recent blog entries, you could have your site also display the last 10 or so items from a broad set of various categories. News, previews, and reviews pages could be a relatively simple start for adding more value to previous articles. Already your user has access to more content than they did before.

Accomplishing this in WordPress can be somewhat tricky. Maria’s Guides has a great tutorial on how to create category specific archive pages. This is probably the best option if you do not want to bother with the other methods available. Once this is set up, everything will be automated as long as you manage your categories correctly.

Lists

If you check out a site like ProBlogger, you will notice that, even on the very front page, the site manages to promote content from years ago with the “Best of Problogger” section. You might not need to be so fancy with how it is done, but if you do, try checking out jQuery if your looking to do something similar to the tabbed interface. It does have the advantage of making great use of little space.

It doesn’t have to be that complicated though. Something simple like listing 10 to 20 of your past favorite articles from a few categories would be better than nothing at all. It is a great way to give your readers something to do other than reading your most recent entries.

Plugins

Alex King has a great plugin called Popularity Contest. It will allow you to keep track of all the views on your content, and with a little bit of code, you can extract information about the most popular posts. This will allow you to generate lists that display your most popular content. Many sites tend to do this, and maybe you should too.

If you want to make displaying lists of previous content easier, you could also check out Alex King’s Articles plugin. Most of the functionality can be done without a plugin, but this could make the task much easier.

Examples

The best way to learn is by example, so here are a few blogs to take notes from:

ProBlogger – the homepage and archives page are excellent for showing off the site’s previous content. The ajax tabbed interface also allows much more content to be displayed in the same amount of space.
ArsTechnica – separates past content with tabs on top; the “Ars Journals” section on the right also helps to show off additional content.
Smashing Magazine – exactly what I was talking about before — the site properly highlights its best content from the past, even if in a simplistic manner.
TreeHugger – in addition to featuring an amazingly unique design, the sidebars of the site are full of quality content from the past.
A List Apart – while putting together an archive like this might be significantly more effort, it would unquestionably be worth it if you have that much valuable content.
Zen Habits – features excellent use of previously popular content on the bottom of the page.

If you can be consistent with featuring your previous content, it really adds value to site. Readers might be, for example, more inclined to visit the site instead of only reading via content feeds.

Hopefully some of those sites will inspire you to spend some time and feature your hard work. If you have an article that you spent hours on that maybe didn’t get enough appreciation, it should be on the front page. Most of us don’t do this, and I will raise my hand and admit that I am one of those people. Fortunately, after joining Performancing, I have been thinking of new ways to improve my blogs.

This is a step in the right direction.

If you have a unique way of displaying your previous content, please let us know in the comments section. I would also be glad to help anyone that needs an opinion on how to make their previous content useful; just fire me a private message.

My experiences with a local niche blog

Follow-Up to Interview With Local Niche Blogger Terri Chadick

I am running a local blog myself and I can only say that it is monetizing very well. Loads of people told me that I should cover subjects ‘nationwide’ but I always reclined. ‘All business is local’ is still true and Google gives a lot of authority to good content on local blogs. Checking the incoming search engine traffic shows huge amounts of local keywords combined with general search topics.

Let’s get more specific about local content and monetization options for a local blog…

Local Content

A local blog is easy to maintain because many events are repeating ones. Monetizing repeating content is an easy task.
Date driven repeating content also makes it easy to maintain an editorial calendar for your local blog.

It is a must to create a ‘Google My Map’

As it is absolutely easy to publish a personal Google map on your local blog I can only recommend to have one or more personal Google maps.

If you look at the included map in this street party announcement you will see many little icons. Every icon points to another localized article, some even contain a photo. Readers love that service inside the articles.

I have no idea if a personal is good for SEO or could be even used for selling ads. Does somebody know if Google allows Ads in personal maps?

Use your imagination to create more specific personal maps for different activities, businesses, events, etc.

More advantages of a local blog

I get a lot of inbound calls asking for services, etc.
Link selling is absolutely easy
I get local job offers (CMS consulting, website building, PR)

Re: Any tips for local blogs on competing in the search engines against the big content portals

Just network with other local blogs. A good local link exchange network is the guarantee for success. Link out, quote local sources and have a nice link database either i.e on del.icio.us or inside your CMS. I have both but I love to include my RSS feeds from del.icio.us as you can see for the keyword ‘Hamburg’ on my homepage in the sidebar.

And make sure to be listed in link directories which cover cities and regions.

Re: Monetization options for a local blog.

Write articles about a specific spot, road, branch or event. Wait for the success on the search engines and promote the rankings to potential advertisers. 103bees is my tool of choice to collect the incoming search engine traffic data.

Contact local ad agencies who publish ads in local newspapers. Create a nice landing page for advertisers which is a big to-do item for me 🙂

CMS software for local blogs

I am using Textpattern for my site. IMO Textpattern is superior to WordPress because it allows to structure content in sections. Textpattern is great for a single domain.
Right now I am playing around with Pivot for a multi-site, multi-domain concept. Publishing one article in different layouts to as many sites as you want is priceless. Just select all the wanted categories and the article appears on every site where the single category is listed. This way you can spread more general news to as many local blogs as you like.
The big gun in this multi-site, multi-domain game with added powerful community features is definitely Drupal. If you have a strong server and if you are willing to learn the Drupal way of doing things then Drupal is the right thing. But be warned: I love the small and fast solutions. Drupal takes time and will eat resources!

Resume

The world is small. I can only second Terris opinions about ‘targeted traffic’, ‘offline ways to publicize your site’ and the ‘long term goals’. Good interview.

The Story of the ProBlogger – Darren Rowse Interview

This weekend I interviewed THE ProBlogger, Darren Rowse. We talked about:

Becoming a 7-figure blogger – by mistake
Pre-Teen Glamor Photography Vendor
Starting a million dollar empire on a credit card – The b5media story
Tips for beginner ProBloggers
Darren’s big news
And more

Listen to the interview after the jump!

Darren Rowse Interview

If you want to put it on your Mp3 player or burn it you can download it here

The Blogger’s Guide To Building Your Own ‘Advertise Here’ Page

The advertisement page on your blog should serve two purposes: it should attract any potential advertiser with relevant information like site statistics, and it should provide contact information, prices, and other related information. For those of you with the do-it-yourself mentality, this guide will be right up your alley.

Attracting Advertisers

The first thing that you should consider doing is writing a summary of your site’s functions for the first introductory paragraph. If your site offers additional services — more than what what would be obvious — than this is a great opportunity to inform advertisers of them. This is also great for quickly informing advertisers that are scouring the web for opportunities and do not feel like investigating deep into your entire site. In the end, it is a way to give your site a professional review.

While constructing your advertising page, your goal should be to highlight everything that is great about your blog. This means using statistics to your advantage. Impressive daily, weekly, or monthly visitor statistics are always something to highlight. However, never mention statistics or information that would make your blog appear less worthy to an advertiser.

Depending on the size and success of your blog, there are various things to consider pointing out on your advertising page:

Traffic statistics (e.g. daily, monthly, yearly averages)
Number of clicks on advertisements
Number of subscribers to content feeds
Numbers from PageRank, Alexa, Technorati, etc.
Number of posts on average per day, week, or month
Contributors to your blog
Testimonials from other renowned sites and companies
Companies/websites that have previously advertised with your site
Prestigious companies or sites that have recognized your site’s content
How long your site has existed (if a significant time)
Any awards your blog has received
Demographics of your readers

There is much more that could be added to that list, but essentially, anything that can make your blog appear valuable is up for consideration. You should be creative with the information that you display. Try to think like a salesperson. You are selling your product, so do your best to do exactly that.

Be honest with the information you are sharing. Mentioning statistics from the past is fine, but stating that your blog is currently receiving an average of 500 daily visitors when it only receives 50 is not a wise decision — your credibility is much more valuable.

Finally, do not go overboard. You need to display relevant information about your site, but do not make it a difficult task to read through your advertising page. Display the most prominent statistics and information about your site, and be done with it.

Pricing Your Inventory

There are several ways to actually set up how you are going to price your inventory. One way to approach this would be to publicly list your prices for each advertising spot (just as Performancing does). Alternatively, you could negotiate with each advertiser privately, and this could improve the chances of making a deal. Yet another way would be to design or employ a system that handles everything for you.

If your blog is relatively new and has few or no advertisers, you should make it your goal to sell most, if not all, of your inventory at any price. Why? Well, doing this will make your site appear more valuable and likely entice new advertisers. Many might be hesitant to advertise with a site that currently has little to no inventory sold; there would obviously be a reason for this.

The correct pricing of your inventory is also crucial. Overcharge, and you risk having advertisers pass without much, if any, consideration. Undercharge, and you risk not being able to pay the bills. Until you are consistently making money and having advertisers flocking to work with you, it is generally a better idea to charge less.

Finally, be sure to clearly display the terms of any deal on your advertising page. You do not want to leave the terms of the deal up for interpretation by a court of law, right? If you are negotiating a deal privately, be sure to make the details clear and keep any discussions about them. It is better to be safe than sorry.

Additional Tips For Sealing The Deal

Consider this a bonus section — I will be covering all of these and more with details in a later article, but for now, here are a few creative ideas for convincing advertisers that it will be money well spent:

Offer a special deal with the stipulation that if the company/website sticks with you for a certain number of months, a free month of advertising will be given. (useful for securing long-term deals)
Take a percentage off for early adopters, and maintain it throughout the advertising period (e.g. 10% off as long as the partnership continues)
Offer to write a certain number of posts about the site or company advertising on your blog
Offer the opportunity to have an advertiser post on your blog
Offer the opportunity for an advertiser to sponsor a contest or giveaway

I must remind everyone to disclose the proper information if you are being compensated for writing about a company or its products. Again, your reputation and credibility are much more valuable than a few bucks.

If you have any additional tips or resources for setting up and maintaining your own personal advertising program on a blog, let everyone know about them below.

Monitoring Multiple Niches With a Personal Dashboard: Joining a Niche Conversation, Pt 7

Now that you know how to monitor a single blogging niche with a personal dashboard, and how to use Yahoo Pipes to get the latest post from each of a list of blog feeds (that is, monitor the feeds of a set of blogs), you can now combine the two efforts to monitor multiple niches in a single dashboard. (Before proceeding, please read the two posts linked to above, else this post may not make sense.)

The process is simple. Do the following for each niche you want to monitor:

Create a CSV format list of blog feeds for a niche you want to monitor. The feeds you chose will be from the top blogs in the niche.
Save the list into a new .csv file.
Upload the CSV file to your webserver and keep track of the URL.
For a given niche, run Pipe 2b Ver 4, listed in the comments of the advanced feed mashup post. Use the URL from step 3. The result is a list of headlines, one per feed, with each headline linking to the source URL.
Look for the “More options” link on the Pipe page, above the results list and at far right. When you click on it, you’ll see that the first option is “Get as RSS”. Right click that option and save the link location. Save this URL somewhere. (Let’s call it the “mashed niche feed”, for easy reference.)

We’re using the same Pipe for each niche. (Just remember to change the feed list URL before running the Pipe each time.) However, when the parameter values change, the dynamic URL for the mashed niche feed changes too.

Once you’ve run this Pipe for each niche that you’re monitoring, you basically have X new feeds – where X is the number of niches being monitored. Now, you can build a personal dashboard using Netvibes, Sprout Builder or a Popurls clone, as described in the personal dashboard post.

Voila. You have an easy way to monitor the freshest post from each of the top blogs (as defined by you) in multiple niches. Which makes it easier for you to blog multiple niches.

This process can also be used to produce HTML badges for blog networks. If you have a network with several blogs in several channels, you can produce one “feed tile” per channel. You would run the Pipe for a list of blog feeds for a given channel, then use the resulting dynamic RSS feed in the dashboard to produce the feed tile.

As usual, if you have any questions about the techniques or tools used in this post, please ask. I apologize that I don’t yet have a sample multi-niche dashboard as this is something I’m still working on. (That is, deciding which niches I’d like to monitor.)

Authority Link Snowballing

In the past week I had two drastically different articles make the front page of Digg, with drastically different results.

The first one resulted in authority link snowballing, the second one did not.

Why?

Well, the first article was amazing, the second article was mediocre. The first article was written to attract attention, the second one wasn’t even written to get on Digg (it happened accidentally because a Digg poweruser just decided to submit some random opinion article).

What is authority link snowballing

I’m assuming that everyone knows the concept of snowballing. It’s the idea that a snowball gets bigger and faster the longer it rolls down a hill.

Well, if you’ve ever written a really good article, and it’s gotten a bit of exposure on a really popular blog, then you know what I’m talking about.

First, a major blog or website links to your article. Then, all the smaller blogs who use the bigger blog as a reference, link to both your article and the bigger blog’s article about your article (usually in the form of a Hat Tip or a Via).

If you monitor this dynamic in real-time with pMetrics you’ll see a cascading effect develop. First the major blogs, then some medium sized blogs who reference the major blogs, then the smaller blogs who reference both the medium sized blogs and the major blogs. Pretty soon you’ve got this sweet set of authority level backlinks.

But getting on the front page of Digg is not enough. Your article has to be good and interesting. And you have to be lucky enough to get picked up by a major news source. It doesn’t happen all the time, but when it does happen, it can be massively rewarding.

Want help developing an article that will receive the snowballing effect? Let Performancing Services help.

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