I spend a certain amount of time traversing the web. I often visit sites of those who leave comments. I look at competitor sites and of course sites that I have helped in the past. One thing that has struck me lately has been the almost reverse blog marketing by many businesses.
By reverse blog marketing I refer to the trend of businesses hiding their blog from view. Generally speaking, its not totally hidden. The link to their blog is just tucked away in amongst some of the links in the footer.
Once I access their blog I start to wonder why. The contents are often good; either entertaining or informative and there is plenty of content available. The blogs are certainly SEO friendly. So why are they tucked away out of site? Is the business ashamed of having a blog. This reverse blog marketing seems a little strange - or is it?
Perhaps these sites want all the SEO benefits of having a blog without having to run a public blog. Sounds reasonable. Blogs can provide a lot benefits to the parent site when it comes to search engine rankings. Blog marketing can occur elsewhere and not on the parent page.
Blogs can be great marketing tools and if your blog is ranking well and attracting customers then it can only benefit your site in the long run if you promote it. Blog marketing starts at home, on your main page. If your blog is going to benefit customers or potential customers then capitalize on it and promote if to the world, don’t hide it.
It can be difficult to generate income from blogs unless your fortunate enough to receive thousands of visitors each week. Many bloggers don’t help themselves as they display ads that are totally unrelated to their niche.
If your blog relates to cars then your visitors are there to read content related to cars. To display ads for baby clothes will not draw much in the way of attention or clicks and since most blogging income comes from pay-per-click - it can be a waste of advertising space.
Pay-per-click advertising will generally only work if the ads are related to the content where they appear. Search engines and most pay-per-click ad agencies use targeted ads by crawling your content and delivering ads relevant to the content found.
Banner advertising however is placed by the blogger. These ads could be time based (by the week or month) or affiliate style ads. They can be lucrative if placed on the right blogs. Affiliate advertisers are not really worried about where their ads are placed. If they produce a sale - good. If not, at least they get exposure. As for blogging income - that may get no benefit at all.
To be able to receive any type of blogging income you need to place ads that are relevant to your niche. A car blog that has an ad for car magazines may do well because it is related.
If your looking for blogging income, be genuine and place ads that relate to your niche and that your readers may find attractive enough to respond to.
Blogs are not all the same and each blog attracts a different audience. If you are going to undertake a blog marketing campaign then you need to be aware of where your audience gathers in numbers.
Many bloggers take a scattergun approach to what they consider to be blog marketing. In effect they are promoting their blog, they are even attracting traffic, however it is the wrong traffic arriving for all the wrong reasons - why? Because they have been looking in all the wrong places.
Promoting your site through Digg or StumbleUpon and similar sites is not blog marketing. These sites may well deliver extra traffic, but they generally don’t deliver more readers. Having said that, don’t write these sites off. They can be good for delivering backlinks and can be good for boosting your visitor statistics if you are trying to sell advertising space.
Effective blog marketing requires more interaction and this interaction should be in places where your audience gathers. Forums can be a great place to start as there are many niche forums around. Myspace and Facebook can also be worthwhile investigating.
For simple yet effective blog marketing you could do no worse than blog directories such as BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog. These sites can provide a combination of forum style interaction along with directory style listings. Being active in either one or both of these sites can lead to some long term increases in readers and subscribers.
Blog marketing is not a difficult activity to undertake. It is simply a matter of targeting the right people in the right places. Use the right message and provide content that is worth reading and your visitors will return time and time again.
Whether you upgrade a plugin, theme or version of blog software such as the recent WordPress 2.6 upgrade, you should check your plugins for any issues.
The recent upgrade of WordPress has resulted in a number of plugins requiring upgrades as well. After upgrading the plugin, it has been noted that some plugins require reconfiguring.
Joost from Yoast.com has reported that several of his plugins, namely Google Analytics Plugin, Robots Meta Plugin and RSS Footer plugin have been updated. However there are still some issues as the upgrade to WordPress 2.6 seems to reset all the settings for these plugins.
As with all upgrades or updates, it is wise to check all parts of your blog to ensure that things are still operating smoothly. Plugins can cause havoc with a blog if there are compatibility issues. In this case the only cause for concern is the information within your settings.
Failing to check, and the RSS Footer plugin is a good example, could prove to be embarrassing. If you use the footer to promote products, offer free downloands or just link to special pages, unless you subscribe to your own posts you would never know they were missing (do you subscribe to your own posts as a check that everything is running smoothly?).
Most blog SEO articles concentrate on the on-page or on-site SEO activities that can be undertaken to increase rankings and visitors. There are off-site activities that can also help.
One of the best tools for off-site blog SEO is Google’s very own Blog Search. You can use Blog Search to find other blogs that are ranking for the keywords you are using. Before going any further, there is a downside to using Blog Search. Don’t expect to enter a keyword and find a nice listing of blogs that rank for that search term. Blog search will often return web pages that are not from blogs so you will need to do a little filtering.
Find blogs with posts that are on similar topics to your own and work them. By working them I mean link to them where it will benefit your reader and comment on their posts.
There are two blog SEO effects of commenting. Comments can often (not always with auto nofollow of many comments) provide links to your pages. If you comment on enough blogs with comments that are meaningful and add to the conversation, you will find that other readers will come to recognise your name. They will get curious and follow back to your blog. If they like what they see they will start to comment on your posts and perhaps even link back. Visitors and Links - that is exactly what blog SEO is all about.
Commenting can be one of the most powerful off-site blog SEO strategies avaiable. The effect of commenting can far outweigh social marketing or social bookmarking especially if you do a time comparison on the two strategies.
There are literally thousands of blog plugins available for WordPress and the temptation is often there to install one because it is ‘nice’. However every blog plugin you install adds just a little more to the load time of your blog.
For efficiency, you should only the plugins that you really need. That then raises the question, which blog plugins do you really need?
Talk to 100 bloggers and you will get 100 different answers. Blog plugins should be installed based on your needs. Their are two considerations - what is good for your reader and what is good for your blog. My top blog plugins include:
Akismet - Spam is always a problem. At least with Akismet you have some help
All In One SEO Pack - Almost every thing you need to help with your blogs SEO
Google XML Sitemaps - Create a sitemap and submit to the search engines
Related Posts - Help your readers find previous posts related to the current one
WP Super Cache - Creates a cached version of your blogs pages for faster loading.
There are many others that could be considered essential, some like the automatic upgrade blog plugin are useful for upgrades but otherwise take up unnecessary space.
What blog plugins would you include in your ‘must have’ list and why?
Google recently blogged about the first anniversary of their current Google Analytics Interface. If you use Google Analytics as part of your blog metrics regime then it may be worth reading.
Google Analytics is getting better, however they are still not recoding a lot of visitors so tracking and reporting is still not an exact science.
The current interface is an improvement on the old one particularly the visiualizations. As the blog posts states:
You can now view many reports by hour or day and graph data by day, week, or month. You can also graph two metrics against each other over time—we call it multi-line graphing. So, for example, you can compare the number of visitors vs. bounce rates for a certain week, or see whether visitors who come to a website through AdWords spend more or less time on your site than visitors overall.
The internal site search is also an important blog metrics assessment particularly if you are using a pay-per-click advertising campaign.
Google is blowing its own trumpet more and more these days as it tightens its grip on the number one search engine spot. As a blog metrics tool Google Analytics has it’s place, however it is not the only blog metrics tool out there and it often better to run two or even three to get a real idea of what is happening to your traffic as the arrive and leave your sites.
WordPress 2.6 has been released almost a month ahead of schedule. The latest release is not a major overhaul and has not addressed some of the issues that many had called for following the release of version 2.5 - it does however have a few nice changes.
For blogs with multiple authors, the latest release allows for the tracking of changes made to content. Other changes include a toolbar feature that will allow you to insert content directly into a post. Compatible sites include Flock, FriendFeed, Facebook, Tumblr, and Delicious.
Other changes include:
- Word count! Never guess how many words are in your post anymore.
- Image captions, so you can add sweet captions like Political Ticker does under your images.
- Bulk management of plugins.
- A completely revamped image control to allow for easier inserting, floating, and resizing. It’s now fully integrated with the WYSIWYG.
- Drag-and-drop reordering of Galleries.
- Plugin update notification bubble.
- Customizable default avatars.
- You can now upload media when in full-screen mode.
- Remote publishing via XML-RPC and APP is now secure (off) by default, but you can turn it on easily through the options screen.
- Full SSL support in the core, and the ability to force SSL for security.
- You can now have many thousands of pages or categories with no interface issues.
- Ability to move your
wp-config file and wp-content directories to a custom location, for “clean” SVN checkouts.
- Select a range of checkboxes with “shift-click.”
- You can toggle between the Flash uploader and the classic one.
- A number of proactive security enhancements, including cookies and database interactions.
- Stronger better faster versions of TinyMCE, jQuery, and jQuery UI.
- Version 2.6 fixes approximately 194 bugs.
Updating is quick and smooth with no problems. One of the smarter aids is the plugin balloon that lets you know when plugins need upgrading. Plugins generally require upgrading due to security issues or bugs so it always a good idea to upgrade them as soon as possible.
WordPress 2.6 continues to grow and evolve - is it getting better!
Some blog owners go overboard and submit their sites to as many blog directories as possible in the shortest time possible. Not only that, they use the same text in every submission. This result is that the main search engines look at these links coming back as unnatural and treat them accordingly.
The key to successfully submitting your site to blog directories is to take it slowly and to do it smartly. Use different text in each of the submissions and only submit to a couple of directories every couple of days. Where possible, rather than using your index file as the URL, use a URL that you want to promote and write the accompanying submission text using keywords related to that page.
Free blog directories are the best particularly since Google has started to frown on paid directory listings. Whilst DoFollow makes for a more valuable link, a link is a link. Selecting sites with a good PageRank also helps. Below is a list of possible sites with their PageRanks.
http://www.dmoz.org/ 8
http://www.la-ma.org/ 6
http://www.mxdu.com/ 6
http://www.jayde.com/ 6
http://www.mygreencorner.com/ 6
http://www.ghinmeca.com/ 5
http://directory.classifieds1000.com/ 5
http://www.concensus.org/ 5
http://www.directorydice.com/ 5
http://www.domaining.in/ 5
http://www.freewebsitedirectory.com/ 5
http://www.illumirate.com/ 5
http://www.info-listings.com/ 5
http://www.publimix.net/ 5
http://searchsight.com/Directory.htm 5
http://www.uc33.com/ 5
http://www.amray.com/ 4
http://www.a1webdirectory.org/ 4
http://www.boshuda.com 4
http://www.businesspagesupdate.co.uk/ 4
DMOZ always gets listed first in these lists, however it can take many months before your site is actually listed. Check each site prior to listing and be sure it suits your genre and has suitable categories to match your site. Blog directories are good sources of valuable links. Don’t however rely on them solely for inbound links.
Sometimes one of the most difficult tasks is to generate comments on your blog. You may ask why are comments necessary? The number of comments on your blog can be indication of the quality of your blog content. Poor content and you may not receive too many comments.
There is also talk in some circles that search engines will include the social popularity of content when ranking for search results. This may include using comments on blogs to measure the popularity of the blog content.
Comments ultimatelty are a conversation tool. There are one way of interacting with your visitors. If you can generate conversations on a regular basis then you will steadily increase your return visitor numbers. Here a couple of tips to help generate comments.
- Make the occasional error:
When writing semi-authoritative posts, don’t be afraid to make the occasional mistake. For example, if you are talking about SEO, one of your tips may be to ‘fill your content with keywords - search engines will consider it spam’. You will get a few comments about the error. Give it a day then go in and make the correction (in this case it needed the words ‘don’t fill’.
- Use controversy:
Being controversial will almost always generate comments. Be careful when using this as you don’t want to irritate people. However, if you were to write that ‘Obama should not be President’, and have a reasonable argument, I am sure you will generate quite a few comments.
- Ask questions:
Asking questions can often lead to a good range of comments from readers. Many of the top bloggers now use this on a regular basis, often weekly. It is also the ‘easy’ post to write. Instead of thinking up new content, write a short piece setting up the question and publish - good for a Friday night or lazy Sunday. If you have a good reader base, you will get comments back. For better results, don’t reveal your opinion. The comments can be used down the track to generate fresh content.
These are three simple tips which, if applied to your blog content, may see a jump in the comments and the interaction with your readers. How do you generate comments?