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.

“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.

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!

4 Steps to Increase Your Blog Traffic Beyond 1,000 Daily Page Views

One of the most common complaints that I hear from bloggers is the fact that no matter how hard they try, they can’t grow their blogs past 100 or so daily page vies. Those early days are indeed the hardest, because you need to put hard work in without the certainty of achieving results.

If you are in that same situation, here is a simple strategy that will certainly increase your blog traffic and make you break the 1,000 daily page views mark. In fact, the strategy could be used even if your are already over that number but have reached a traffic plateau lately.

Just make sure to execute the 4 steps as planned and to spend the two hours and a half every day (obviously if you have more time available you can expand the time spent on each of the four steps proportionally).


First Step: Killer Articles (1 hour per day)

Spend one hour brainstorming, researching and writing killer articles (also called linkbaits, pillar articles and so on).

Notice that your goal is to release one killer article every week. If that is not possible aim for one every 15 days. So the one hour that you will spend every day will be dedicated to the same piece. In other words, expect killers articles to take from 5 up to 10 hours of work.

If you are not familiar with the term, a killer article is nothing more than a long and structured article that has the goal of delivering a huge amount of value to potential visitors. If you have a web design blog, for example, you could write an article with “100 Free Resources for Designers”. Here are some ideas for killer articles:

* create a giant list of resources,
* write a detailed tutorial teaching people how to do something,
* find a solution for a common problem in your niche and write about it, or
* write a deep analysis on a topic where people have only talked superficially

When visitors come across your killer article, you want them to have the following reaction: “Holy crap! This is awesome. I better bookmark it. Heck, I better even mention this on my site and on my Twitter account, to let my readers and friends know about it.”


Second Step: Networking (30 minutes per day)

Networking is essential, especially when you are just getting started. The 30 minutes that you will dedicate to it every day could be split among:

* commenting on other blogs in your niche,
* linking to the posts of bloggers in your niche, and
* interacting with the bloggers in your niche via email, IM or Twitter.

Remember that your goal is to build genuine relationships, so don’t approach people just because you think they can help to promote your blog. Approach them because you respect their work and because you think the two of you could grow together.


Third Step: Promotion (30 minutes per day)

The first activity here is the promotion of your killer articles. Whenever you publish one of them, you should push it in any way you can. Examples include:

* letting the people in your network know about it (don’t beg for a link though),
* letting bloggers and webmasters in relevant niches know about it,
* getting some friends to submit the article to social bookmarking sites,
* getting some friends to Twitter the article, and
* posting about the article in online forums and/or newsgroups.

If there is time left, spend it with search engine optimization, social media marketing and activities to promote your blog as whole. Those can range from keyword research to promoting your blog on Facebook and guest blogging.


Fourth Step: Normal Posts (30 minutes per day)

Just like a man does not live by bread alone, a blog does not live by killer articles alone. Normal posts are the ones that you will publish routinely in your blog, between the killer articles. For example, you could publish a killer article every Monday and normal posts from Tuesday through Friday. Here are some ideas for normal posts:

* a post linking to an article on another blog and containing your opinion about it
* a post informing your readers about a news in your niche
* a post asking a question to your readers and aiming to initiate a discussion
* a post highlighting a new resource or trick that you discovered and that would be useful to your readers

While killers articles are essential to promote your blog and bring new readers aboard, normal posts are the ones that will create diversity in your content and keep your readers engaged.

Great 101 Blog Tips I learned in 2006

1. if you are not, start blogging today
2. write about something that you love
3. if you are serious about blogging buy your own domain
4. make sure your domain name is equal to your blog name
5. use a short and easy to remember name
6. use Wordpress
7. use Wordpress plugins
8. blog with consistency
9. write at least 5 posts a week
10. proofread
11. proofread one more time
12. interact with other bloggers
13. leave meaningful comments
14. leave funny comments
15. leave the first comment
16. backup your blog
17. get rid of the sidebar calendar
18. choose your niche wisely, not too big and not too small
19. participate in online forums
20. put a link on your signature
21. use blog carnivals
22. content is king
23. customize your blog template
24. use trackbacks
25. simplicity is the way to go
26. leverage social bookmarks
27. consider joining a blog network
28. write “Top 10″ lists
29. use tags
30. use pings
31. write “How to” articles
32. make your posts scannable
33. list your blog on directories
34. ask questions to your readers
35. use Feedburner
36. use sense of humor
37. be generous
38. encourage readers to subscribe
39. have some spare posts for emergencies
40. encourage readers to digg your posts
41. put an RSS subscription icon on every single page
42. use “series”of posts
43. return comments
44. return links
45. use readable fonts
46. gather .edu and .gov backlinks
47. break long posts in more parts
48. experiment with different revenue sources
49. write “pillar articles“
50. use Google Analytics
51. study those numbers
52. use email interviews
53. be yourself
54. avoid duplicate content
55. use an RSS reader
56. read as many blogs as possible
57. focus on timeless content
58. have an “About” page
59. have a picture of yourself on the “About” page
60. crate your own “Advertise Here” page
61. use meta tags wisely
62. learn the basics of SEO
63. use pictures whenever possible
64. create value for your readers
65. place ads wisely
66. be patient
67. consider getting a co-blogger
68. submit your articles to directories
69. share what has worked for you
70. share what has not worked for you
71. read Problogger.net
72. do not clutter your sidebar with icons
73. get rid of looooong blogrolls
74. experiment with Google Adsense
75. experiment with Text-Link-Ads
76. link to other blogs as often as possible
77. make it easy for visitors to contact you
78. use titles effectively
79. offer email subscriptions
80. always answer to questions
81. always answer to comments
82. use Technorati
83. enable subscription to comments
84. offer useful tools or resources
85. write with a personal touch
86. become an expert in your niche
87. do not rely on “linking posts”
88. always give your opinion
89. use simple colors
90. participate in blogging projects
91. get to know other bloggers personally
92. list your best articles
93. have a voice
94. organize your categories
95. talk directly to your readers
96. make your URL structure efficient
97. put functional links on your footer
98. mention your sources or references
99. do monthly roundups
100. consider adding podcasts
101. create a “101 list”

Why Did Your Last Blog Post Fail? 13 Questions to Ask

Have you ever had a blog post that you put a lot of time, energy and thought into - that completely flopped?

Nobody comments on it, nobody bookmarks it on Digg, nobody tweets a link to it…. it’s almost like it was never written.

If so - here’s a few questions to ask yourself about the post to help you learn why it might have failed and to help you improve for next time:

1. could the title have been improved?
2. did the opening lines of this post draw readers in to read more?
3. could I have added an image to give the post a visual point of interest?
4. could I have added a question to draw readers into discussing the post?
5. was the topic relevant to my readers?
6. did I promote the post to other bloggers or my network?
7. did I publish this post at the right time (of day or the week)?
8. could I have called my readers to perform some kind of action?
9. was this post useful - did it fulfill a need or solve a problem for readers?
10. did the post have sufficient depth? - could it have been more interesting with examples, illustrations, opinions, stories, quotes etc?
11. was this post unique or just a rehash of what others are writing?
12. did the formatting of this post help readers to read it easily?
13. was the post concise or could it have been too long winded?

Of course it is also worth saying that sometimes posts just don’t have the success we hope they will and that there’s no real reason for it. Conversely other posts which we don’t think will really work can soar like eagles!

That’s the way the cookie crumbles some days!

Further Reading: Many of the above questions are fleshed out with tips on how to make them a reality in my series

How to Build Credibility

How do you rate when it comes to credibility? But more importantly, how do you go about getting credibility if you don’t have any or not much of it? Important question for bloggers - Andrew Rondeau from We Build Your Blog shares some tips on building credibility as a blogger.

There are some interesting theories around this topic. One such exponent of a theory is Graham Jones who writes about the credibility pyramid.

pyramid.gif

This pyramid is made up of four key elements.

1. Knowledge (10%) - At the bottom of the pyramid is a band of knowledge. Although this only represents 10% of a credibility score, it is nevertheless the foundation. If you don’t know what you are talking about, you have no credibility no matter what else you might bring to the mix.

Focus (15%) - The next level up according to Mr Jones is focus which constitutes 15% of the total score. Focus describes the process wherein people do not deviate or go off at tangents. This is when we come across people who seem to be single minded in their opinions, approach and knowledge.

This does not mean that you need to bombard other people with huge amounts of details and information in order to be considered credible. It is more the clarity and enthusiasm as well as the consistency of the information that is being presented that allows people to assess the credibility factor.

In some instances it is even possible that providing far too much information can undermine the credibility score. Perhaps this is where the popularity of the ‘elevator speech’ comes into play. You have two minutes to present your information. You have to be focused and only provide the most important points.

3. Enthusiasm (25%) - The next component on this pyramid of credibility is enthusiasm. This has an allocation of 25% which is fairly high. We probably call this passion more often than not. We view enthusiastic people as being far more credible than those who are not.

Perhaps it is because we feel that if the person can’t be enthusiastic about their own topic then he can’t be believing in his own words. Of course this can be unfair. There are some people who are too shy to speak up never mind appear enthusiastic.

4. Care and Concern (50%) - Possibly the most surprising component of credibility is the top part of this pyramid. It shows that 50% of your credibility is associated with your care and concern. If you show that you care about your audience you will be able to gather up half of the score towards a strong credibility rating.

This means that when building up your online credibility you have to show a huge amount of caring and concern for the interests and well-being of your audience. No matter what you are trying to do online, whether build a blog, communicate with readers, sell a product or even just hold a conversation on a social media platform such as Twitter or Facebook, if you care for your audience you build credibility.

It seems that a small percentage of your credibility is knowledge, add to that focus and enthusiasm and you only have half of what makes up your credibility. The other half is all about caring and concern for the other person’s well-being.

That could almost sound right.

31 Days to Building a Better Blog Challenge (1)

Your task for this first day of the 31 Days to Building a Better Blog Challenge is to email a new reader of your blog.

Create a great impression upon a brand new readers to your blog by choosing a commenter that is new and emailing them to thank them for their comment.

It might not sound like the most profound tip but I’ll let you in on a secret - this is one of the main strategies I used to build up ProBlogger’s audience a couple of years ago.

What I found is that when you do it the chances of the readers that you email coming back to your blog again increases significantly. Get them to come back to your blog once and you increase the chances of them coming back again… and again….

So email a reader now, thank them for commenting and tell them that you’re looking forward to further interactions.

Make sure you include a link back to your blog so they know who you are and make the email relevant to their comment (ie answer a question they asked or add to their comment in some way). While there are some tools out there that do this automatically for you - the more personal you can make it the better.

This simple tip takes just a moment to do but can create a loyal long time reader. Do it at least once a day (or set yourself a higher target) and you’ll build your blog consistently over time.
Is this Tip Not SPECTACULAR Enough For You?

Last time I shared this tip with a fellow blogger they rolled their eyes at me and told me that they didn’t want to find just one more reader for their blog - they wanted hundreds or thousands.

This blogger failed to realize two things:

1. Loyal Readers Spread the Word - I’ve found that in many cases a single reader quickly becomes numerous loyal readers because they like to spread the word. They do this through their own blogs, word of mouth and social networking sites etc.

2. Loyal Readers Build Page Views - One loyal reader can potentially view your blog hundreds (if not thousands) of times. A daily visit from that reader for a year brings an extra 365 page views to your blog. Gain an extra loyal reader every day for a full year and the numbers start to add up.

While there’s nothing wrong with attracting thousands of new readers to your blog quickly - the majority of times they’ll come and go very quickly. Build loyal readers one by one on a daily basis and can be a lot more fruitful in the long run.

NEW IN BLOG??? WHAT IS BLOG??

There are a number of ways I could answer this question ranging from the broad to the highly technical.This is several people opinion about what is blog:

A weblog is a hierarchy of text, images, media objects and data, arranged chronologically, that can be viewed in an HTML browser (source) http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/whatMakesAWeblogAWeblog

From “Web log.” A blog is basically a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is “blogging” and someone who keeps a blog is a “blogger (source)

http://www.computersprintersrepairshouston.com/glossary_of_terms.html

A weblog is kind of a continual tour, with a human guide who you get to know. There are many guides to choose from, each develops an audience, and there’s also comraderie and politics between the people who run weblogs, they point to each other, in all kinds of structures, graphs, loops, etc (source)

http://newhome.weblogs.com/historyOfWeblogs

A blog is basically a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is “blogging” and someone who keeps a blog is a “blogger.” Blogs are typically updated daily using software that allows people with little or no technical background to update and maintain the blog. Postings on a blog are almost always arranged in cronological order with the most recent additions featured most prominantly (source)

http://www.matisse.net/files/glossary.html

A blog is a website in which items are posted on a regular basis and displayed in reverse chronological order. The term blog is a shortened form of weblog or web log. Authoring a blog, maintaining a blog or adding an article to an existing blog is called “blogging”. Individual articles on a blog are called “blog posts,” “posts” or “entries”. A person who posts these entries is called a “blogger”. A blog comprises text, hypertext, images, and links (to other web pages and to video, audio and other files). Blogs use a conversational style of documentation. Often blogs focus on a particular “area of interest”, such as Washington, D.C.’s political goings-on. Some blogs discuss personal experiences (source)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog


SO WHAT IS A BLOG?????

Iam here put it as simply as possible - a blog is a type of website that is usually arranged in chronological order from the most recent ‘post’ (or entry) at the top of the main page to the older entries towards the bottom.

Blogs are usually (but not always) written by one person and are updated pretty regularly. Blogs are often (but not always) written on a particular topic - there are blogs on virtually any topic you can think of. From photography, to spirituality, to recipes, to personal diaries to hobbies - blogging has as many applications and varieties as you can imagine. Whole blog communities have sprung up around some of these topics putting people into contact with each other in relationships where they can learn, share ideas, make friends with and even do business with people with similar interests from around the world.

(Rearranged from various source)

Iam a new blogger. Iam also learn how to make a good blog, how to write as a good blogger. So lets join this blog and give your comment, we share information about blog here. I think if we have a motivation as a blogger, we can do it.


BE A BLOGGER IS ONE OF ALL MY DREAM…..