Does Search Engine Optimization Make a Difference?

Earlier today I had a debate via instant messaging with another blogger who told me that Search Engine Optimization doesn’t make any difference any more. They argued that you just need to provide good content and search engine rankings look after themselves.

While I see where the blogger comes from and I agree to a point that search rankings look after themselves when you build a useful blog - I’m also convinced that knowing some basic SEO and implementing it on a site can have a significant impact.

Want proof?

Check out this chart:

search-engine-optimization-makes-a-difference.png

What you’re looking at above is the search engine referred traffic over the last two months on my digital photography forum. The blue line is the last month and the green line is the month before that.

You can see quite clearly that around 25th June something happened to change the amount of search engine traffic arriving on the forum.

What happened? I simply installed a plugin called VBSEO. It’s a plugin for VBulletin (the platform I use to run the forum) that simply makes the forum more search engine friendly. It does quite a few things including changing the url structure of the forum to include keywords rather than numbers.

Here’s when the plugin was installed:

search-engine-optimization-makes-a-difference-1.png

Within a day or two we noticed search engine traffic increasing. In the period you see above search traffic is 35.98% higher than in the last month than the proceeding one (that includes the first half of the month when the difference wasn’t massive). In fact over the last week search traffic has been up by 69.66%!

Now it is worth saying that Vbulletin is not well set up for SEO in its default form (in fact it’s pretty bad) and that most blogging platforms are better optimized in their default form - however I think it’s pretty clear from the above graph that SEO does have an impact.

Further Reading: check out our Search Engine Optimization Tips for Bloggers for more specific details on how to optimize a blog for search engines.

What You Do With Your Blogs Over the Weekend [RESULTS]

Over the last few days I asked the question of - what do you do with your blog on the weekend? There were a lot of great responses so I asked Lara Kulpa to compile the results for me.

Everyone answered in their own way but she managed to make some sense of it and came up with the following categories of what people do with their blogs on the weekend.

The numbers signify how many people said that they did that strategy and they are ranked from most common responses to least common:

* I write extra posts for the week ahead, work on planning and goals, or do other marketing work for my blog - 54
* I take a couple of days off (or most of my weekend days) for family and fun or other household chores - 20
* I write/post 6 or 7 days a week no matter what - 20
* I write “lighter” posts like link lists or reviews - 18
* I post less because people are not online as much - 15
* I work another full time job during the week and use weekends for catching up on my blogging - 14
* No strategy, or I post whenever I have time or an idea, even if that means weekends - 11
* I post more to try to keep traffic levels up - 9

So there you have it - most people seem to publish posts that they’ve pre-written.

AFFILIATE MARKETING IT IS`EASY????

It seems that more readers are asking this question than I previously thought.

In a recent poll here on ProBlogger I asked readers whether they’d done any affiliate marketing on their blogs. The results revealed that:

* 29% of readers regularly do it
* 24% occasionally do it
* 27% have never done affiliate marketing on their blogs
* 6% used to do it but don’t any more
* 14% don’t know what affiliate marketing is

There’s some interesting results there but it was the last category (of bloggers not knowing what affiliate marketing is) that I wanted to write this post for with the hope of answering the question. It’s pretty basic and quite beginner focused but for the 14% of you who don’t know what affiliate marketing is - here’s a brief introduction.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Perhaps the simplest way to explain affiliate marketing is that it is a way of making money online whereby you as a publisher are rewarded for helping a business by promoting their product, service or site.

There are a number of forms of these types of promotions but in most cases they involve you as a publisher earning a commission when someone follows a link on your blog to another site where they then buy something.

Other variations on this are where you earn an amount for referring a visitor who takes some kind of action - for example when they sign up for something and give an email address, where they complete a survey, where they leave a name and address etc.

Commissions are often a percentage of a sale but can also be a fixed amount per conversion.

Conversions are generally tracked when the publisher (you) uses a link with a code only being used by you embedded into it that enables the advertiser to track where conversions come from (usually by cookies). Other times an advertiser might give a publisher a ‘coupon code’ for their readers to use that helps to track conversions.

* Advertisers often prefer affiliate marketing as a way to promote their products because they know they’ll only need to pay for the advertising when there’s a conversion. I knew when I started this affiliate program that while I’d earn less for each sale that having a network of affiliates promoting it would almost certainly increase overall sales levels.
* Publishers often prefer affiliate marketing because if they find a product that is relevant to their niche that earnings can go well in excess of any cost per click or cost per impression advertising campaign.

Why Affiliate Marketing Can Work Well on Blogs

Affiliate marketing isn’t the only way to make money from blogs and it won’t suit every blog/blogger (more on this below) but there are a few reasons why it can be profitable in our medium. Perhaps the biggest of these reasons is that affiliate marketing seems to work best when there’s a relationship with trust between the publisher and their readership.

I’ve found that as this trust deepens that readers are more likely to follow the recommendations that a blogger makes.

Of course this can also be a negative with affiliate marketing - promote the wrong product and trust can be broken (more on this below).
Affiliate Marketing - Easy Money?

While affiliate marketing can be incredibly lucrative it is important to know that affiliate marketing is not easy money. Most people who try it make very little as it relies upon numerous factors including:

* traffic (high traffic helps a lot)
* finding relevant products
* finding quality products
* building trust with your readers
* having a readership who is in a ‘buying mood’
* you being able to write good sales copy (and more)

There’s also some risk associated with affiliate marketing in that if you push too hard or promote products of a low quality you can actually burn readers and hurt your reputation and brand.

It’s also worth noting that affiliate marketing doesn’t work on all blogs. Some blogs are on topics where it is hard to find products to promote - other blogs attract audiences who are not in a buying frame of mind and for other blogs it just doesn’t fit with the blogger’s style or approach.

Tomorrow I want to continue the focus upon affiliate marketing with another post - this one on how to find affiliate products to promote.

“How do I find affiliate products to promote on my blog?”

Last week I spoke with a small group of bloggers here in Melbourne over a coffee. One of the topics that a number of them were interested in talking about was affiliate marketing. They were struggling with the advertising as a model to make money from their blogs and wanted to branch out and experiment with affiliate promotions on their blog.

However wanting to get into affiliate marketing and actually doing it are two different things. There are a number of challenges to overcome first.

One of these challenges is finding the right product to promoted.

Choosing the right products to promote in affiliate promotions is crucial for a number of reasons - the two main ones being:

1. Relevant Products are Key - if your blog draws an audience centered around a particular topic or demographic you’re unlikely to be able to sell products that have no relevancy to your blog’s topic.

2. The Quality of Products can Impact Your Long Term Brand - promote low quality products and you could be hurting your brand. Readers remember who they heard about products from and their trust of you and your blog will be increased or decreased by what you recommend to them.

So - choosing the right affiliate product is crucial. It not only impacts conversions and profitability but it impacts your brand and relationships with readers.
How to Find the Right Affiliate Product to Promote

A few tips and thoughts on finding affiliate programs to promote come to mind:

1. Google It - this one isn’t rocket science but it does work. If you have a Beauty Product blog google “Beauty Products Affiliate Program”. Insert your main keywords into that search and you may just find products that are relevant to your niche.
2. Look at Your Competition - what products are other people promoting in your niche. Quite often a quick glance down the sidebar of another successful blog in your niche to see what products and services they are promoting will reveal affiliate products you could promote to (and it could also point you to some relevant advertisers to promote).
3. Check out AdSense Ads - many of the AdSense ads appearing besides Google search results, on other blogs and even on your own blog are likely to be products with affiliate programs attached. Don’t click the ads on your own blog but checking out what the ads promote can reveal all kinds of potential affiliate partners. The same thing is true with other types of advertising. For example I was recently surfing on Facebook and saw an ad relevant for my blog - on clicking it I found a new product with an affiliate program that I’d not heard of before.
4. Approach Potential Affiliate Partners - this one might not work if you’re a new blog with small traffic but as your blog grows you might find yourself in a position to approach the makers of a product or service to see if they’d start some kind of affiliate program for you. I’ve done this a couple of times over the last year and it has been great. The best part of it is that you get a head start on your competition for the promotion as you’re likely to be the only person promoting it.
5. Search Affiliate networks - lastly there are quite a few affiliate networks around that list many affiliate programs. Most of these have search functions to allow you to type in keywords and find promotions relevant to your niche. Check out MarketLeverage, Clickbank, Commission Junction, PepperJam Network (disclaimer, MarketLeverage sponsors ProBlogger) and many more.
6. Search Online Stores for Products - many online stores like Amazon have affiliate programs attached to them. In general the comissions are not massive (for example Amazon’s range from as low as 4% up to 15% depending upon the type of product and how much you sell) - I guess they have narrower profit margins) - but stores like this have a massive range of products and can be a good place to start while you build traffic and find other programs.

9 First Step Goals for New Bloggers

New bloggers would do well to spend more time thinking about their ‘first steps’ than just the big picture dreams and goals that they have..

Yesterday while chatting with a brand new bloggers who had some very lofty goals for this blogging I reflected back to him that I felt that in addition to the big dreams he had that I wondered if he might also benefit from having some realistic goals for the short term.

Here’s a list of 9 first step type goals that I suggested to him that might be a good place to start:

1. Publish 10 Posts
2. Getting your first comment from someone you don’t know
3. Get your first link from another blog
4. Build your readership up to more than 20 readers a day
5. Hit a level of 20 RSS subscribers
6. Getting your blog indexed in Google
7. Get your blog earning $1 a week (update: only if making money from your blog is one of your goals - it’s not for everyone
8. First guest post on another blog
9. Having someone (not you or your mum) tweet about your blog

Note: Others goals might include goals more to do with setting up your blog including those related to design, platforms, setting up metrics/stats etc.

To someone who has been blogging for a while these kinds of goals might seem rather small and insignificant - but for a new blogger they’d be where I would start.

For new bloggers these goals might also seem a little insignificant also (in fact the blogger I was talking to told me I was thinking too small and dismissed my idea) - however I’d argue that to get to your big dreams there is a lot of steps in between - many of which might not be glamorous or as fun to think about. However sometimes it’s helpful to visualize the very next steps that you need to take in order to move towards your goals.

Tangent: I once had opportunity to meet a guy who had travelled the world climbing some of the highest mountains. When I said to him that it must be an exciting thing to do he told me that there are moments of exhilaration and excitement but that the reality is that much of what he does when climbing a mountain is pretty boring. It’s one foot in front of another type activity through foothills, carrying a heavy pack and not feeling like you’re making much progress. Of course once you make it to the top or conquer challenges along the path you have moments of excitement but it all starts with setting out from base camp and with the goal of getting to a point where the climb starts in earnest.

Once you’ve achieved these first goals start to increase them. You might want to double the numbers for the next step (although for different bloggers the numbers will no doubt be different) - then double them again and so forth.

What other ‘first step’ goals would you suggest to a new blogger just starting out? If you’re a new blogger what are your first goals?

Responding to Blogging Criticism

Thanks to Robert for linking up to ProBlogger.net while I slept last night. It’s always nice to get a positive link from a larger blogger who sends an influx of new readers into your blog.

It’s been an interesting week here at ProBlogger for this reason - after the exposure I had in the Aussie Press and a few link ups from bigger bloggers I’ve ridden the roller coaster ride of publicity. With it comes some amazing opportunities but also a few hard knocks.

I’ve been on the receiving end of a few critiques of my blogging style this week - some of which have been quite valid and helpful - others of which have been quite scathing and verging on personal attacks (and of course quite a few of these are anonymous as per usual).

So what is my response to an ‘unfair critique’? Firstly I’d say don’t ignore it - I like to see every critique/threat/attack as an opportunity to better your blog and to win over more readers. How do you do that? Over the past couple of years I’ve developed the following type of process in responding to them:

1. Take a deep breath and give yourself a little space from the criticism - One of the worst things you can do when getting a critical comment or email is to respond in the moment out of the anger, fear, confusion and hurt that you might feel as a result. Go for a walk around the block, have a coffee, ring a friend or just take a few minutes to cool down before responding. At times I’ve even left responding until the next day when I’m thinking clearer.

2. Listen to the criticism - This is not easy and I’m still learning to do it - but recently I’ve decided to actually attempt to give my critics a chance to teach me something. Perhaps they haven’t communicated it as subtly as they could, perhaps they’ve overreacted and taken it to a personal attack level - but maybe behind their rudeness and generalizations is a point - a point that can improve your blogging. A wise person once told me that behind the emotion of anger is often the feeling of fear. And behind the feeling of fear is sometimes the fact that you’ve heard something that cuts close to the truth. Does the critic have something to teach you?

3. Respond with grace - I learned the power of a graceful reply to a stinging comment or email a couple of years ago when my personal blog came under fire from a very unreasonable troll who started a widespread campaign to discredit my name. Instead of reacting out of anger and hurt I took the approach of thanking him every time for his comments and reacting in the most civilized and generous nature that I could. This had a number of results. Firstly it took the sting out of his attack - people don’t like to attack people who don’t react. Secondly it made him look very stupid and small. Thirdly my readers admired my approach incredibly. I had many comments and posts on their blogs noting how gracious I’d been. It really made an impression on them. I’ve also had instances where in responding in this way that the person who has attacked me has done a real turn around and has ended up apologizing for being so aggressive. One or two have become loyal readers and good friends.

4. Try dialogue - This week I saw a post written about me that made me very angry. It seemed to make some real generalizations about my approach to blogging and without asking me made some assumptions that I didn’t think were fair. At first I ignored my own advice above and reacted in a pretty emotional kind of way - defending myself (in the comments of their blog) and pointing out weaknesses in the other blogger’s argument. After a few comments bouncing back and forth between us I began to realize we were getting no where and decided that instead of flaming each other it might be more productive if we tried listening to each others points of view. I admitted that he was right on something and told him I’d take it on board - he then did the same thing. The dialogue actually got more productive and I actually came away from it feeling I’d learnt something from him.

5. Let it go - Sometimes you can give yourself space, you can listen to the criticism, you can respond with grace and attempt dialogue but no matter what you do the other person will not back down and continues to be totally unreasonable. These situations can be very difficult - you just get angrier and angrier - your day becomes filled with checking their blog and writing long emotional emails, comments and posts defending yourself etc. In such situations I always ask myself if the argument is actually a productive one - is it life giving to me and those who are watching on, or is it actually destructive? It’s worth being aware that your regular readers can actually become quite disillusioned by such arguments. There comes a point where you just need to disengage and let it go.

This can be hard - such interactions can be like a scab over a wound that you just can’t stop picking (eeeew - sorry for that image - I can’t believe I used it). The way I do ‘let go’ is to ban myself from the blog concerned. I have a few blogs that I refuse to look at - simply because I know they will trigger an angry and destructive reaction from me. I just don’t go there.

Ok - I know some of you now think I’m a freak and are plotting ways to test if I’m really as reasonable and calm as this process looks (I can picture the hate mail already :-) !) Let me just say that sometimes I’m good at this - other times I get as caught up in the emotion of being attacked as much as anyone. Perhaps I’ve also been on the other side of things also and have been unreasonable to someone else. Such interactions happen to all bloggers at some point and we all do things both badly and well in such interactions. I guess as I look over the past couple of years of blogging I want to learn from situations like these and grow as a blogger. Hopefully out of such times we can grow and become a little more mature in our blogging.

So how do you respond to criticism? What advice would you give?

Think it : The Right Mindset to Make Money With a Blog

Most people who launch a blog hoping to make some money along the way start with the following path in mind:

1. Launch the blog
2. Write good content
3. Put banner ads and AdSense on the blog
4. Make money

While this strategy can work (and it does for some people), it is not the only one, nor the most profitable one. In other words, if your plan is based exclusively on these four steps, you will be limiting the income potential of your blog significantly.

In this email I will briefly share my story, and explain how sometimes it is more effective to make money thanks to your blog, as opposed to with it.

I started building websites and blogs back in 2005. Initially as a hobby, but after a while I realized that the Internet had an enormous potential, and eventually I quit my job to work full time with my online projects. In 2006 I launched DailyBlogTips.com, with the goal of sharing the tips and tricks that I was learning along the way. I was not planning to make money directly with that blog, but once the traffic picked up, I figured that loading some banner ads here and there couldn't hurt.
After two years or so I was already making more money with the advertising on the blog than with my prior full time job. It was enough to live by, therefore, but somehow I felt that I should try a different route.

The blog had given me some authority on my niche, a loyal audience, and a network of contacts composed of many influencers. Still I was hardly leveraging those things.

That is when I realized that I wanted to build a business rather than make money exclusively with advertising on my blogs. I polished the idea and worked on the project for around six months, and in January of 2009 I launched OnlineProfits.com, which is an online marketing and business training program. I opted to have a low profile launch initially and keep the program open for only five days. Still in that time frame we got over 200 members, which was above my initial expectations.

I am sure that the success of that launch came thanks to my blog. As I mentioned before, the blog gave me credibility, an instant influx of prospects (i.e., the readers), and relationships with people who made a difference on the project (i.e., the mentors and the joint venture partners).

The takeway message is: do not limit your blog to a source of advertising money. This is the wrong mindset. A blog is much more than that. It is your interface with the Internet (and consequently with the world). You can use your blog to:


1. make friends
2. build your audience
3. establish your expertise and authority
4. experiment with ideas
5. find partners, and so on

And the interesting thing is that you don't even need to know what you want to do in the future. If you manage to build a popular and authoritative blog in your niche, you will be able to leverage it for any type of project, whether we are talking about launching a product, publishing a book or landing a dream job.

Blog on!