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A Simple, Yet Effective Way To Increase The Uniqueness Of Your Content

March 3, 2011 By 7 Comments

Today I wanted to record this quick video podcast to illustrate one way I have been insuring my content is as unique as it can be on a regular basis across my blogs.

Like it or not…we are greatly influenced by what we take in on a daily basis. As we go about our day, read other websites and blogs and interact with people, we are taking bits of that information everywhere with us as we go. While this is actually a great thing and a source of where I find most of my ideas (life experience is always the best to pull from), we can jump into a trap in our quest to release unique, relevant content the web.

The Routine That Causes Content Blindness

If your morning started out anything like mine did, you probably go up, took a shower, got dressed, had some coffee and then opened up your feed reader to see what was happening on the web that day. Even if you did this routine at night after your regular job, you probably followed a similar routine…maybe minus the coffee.

Like any blogger, you are following numerous blogs within your given niche, so you started digesting content before you started producing it.

Going back to our theory of taking something with you from every experience and information absorption in your day, you can unconsciously start creating content on your blog that…well…looks a lot like your RSS feed. While it is good to stay on top of trends and write relevant content for your readers, it is increasingly important that you continue to produce unique content that does not look like rehashed, reworded articles that are found on other parts of the web.

By staying on top of the latest news and articles in your niche, you can get into this trap of just being another “me too” instead of a unique source. Readers read blogs to connect with that uniqueness and originality. If you become just a mirror of your RSS feed…you lose that draw and that will lead to growth decline.

My Challenge To Bloggers

As we think and reflect back on how our content digestion affects our content production, I have a challenge to you as a blogger. Just like you need to schedule your time with social media, schedule your content digestion time and keep it away from your content production. The goal is to have a clean slate to work with while you are formulating content ideas, writing articles and recording videos.

Personally, I have been scheduling my RSS feed time to about 2 to 3 times a week and then using Hootsuite to schedule RT’s throughout the remaining days. This not only has drastically affecting my efficiency, but it keeps my mind clear of everyone else’s content while I am producing mine. By staying on top of events several times a week, I am also not missing out on any developing trends on the web.

Have you taken a serious look at how your habits affect your content? How much time are you spending a week scouring the web instead of building your content library?

Simple changes like this one in your daily routine can bring swinging positive results in your business.

Filed Under: Blogging, Content Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Rant Alert: Problogger Generated Content Is Not A Business Strategy!

March 1, 2011 By 10 Comments

Ok…I am really f’in sick and tired of this played out model that some bloggers are trying in attempt to make it to the “big time” without any time investment of their own. And I am calling you out right now to put an end to this crap…because that is what it is…crap.

The process usually goes something like this.

  1. They ask for you to answer some interview questions (I’m cool with that…so I answer them. 9 times out of 10 they are unoriginal and cookie cutter)
  2. They put these questions together into some kind of product that is free or paid (free…ok…paid…questionable but if it is packaged correctly it could work…ie…you put more into than just the interviews and there better be a damn good affiliate program)
  3. They then hound you and tell you how to promote it because they have no traffic or social reach. (wait…what?)

This model sucks. Why on Earth should I do all of the work for your product? Why am I building your list? Why is the only thing you have to provide for all of my work is your “hope” that everyone does exactly what you say without any credibility, to create exposure?

Oh yeah…and they want links back to their site that has a dozen posts and no real content.

For some reason, bloggers that have zero experience in creating successful sites have made the decision to try to piggyback off of the hard work of others and this has happened to me on more than one occasion lately. Does the “I don’t have an original idea so I need to get it from others in order to be successful” model really work? No…because people will just go to the real thing.

What happened to generating quality, unique content? Why is everyone trying to make it in the blogging/make money online niche by just rehashing the thoughts of others? Do you not have any real experience? If you do…why are you using mine?

So do I like doing interviews? Absolutely. It not only gives me a chance to other bloggers but it also gets my ideas out there. I have been interviewed and I have interviewed other bloggers. Do I think I should have to promote your product for you to be successful with nothing in return? No.

Whenever you look to others for help, you should always ask yourself…“am I offering more than what I am asking for?” In business, you are always trying to provide more value than your cost. If you are asking for more than you are giving, you are probably on the wrong track and need to rethink your strategy. In 99.9% of the cases I am talking about here, they are offering nothing and asking for a lot.

Filed Under: Blogging, Generating Cash Tagged With: , ,

Where Bloggers Go Wrong And Why They Are Broke And Penniless

February 24, 2011 By 19 Comments

There is one fundamental reason why 99% of bloggers never make enough money from their blogs to live off of…and it is incredibly simple.

This past week has been an interesting one filled with conversation. After a post about paid subscription models in blogging and how that could change in the future, there was a ton of conversation around paid content online and whether or not it would work within current audiences. Honestly, it created a great conversation that got me thinking about how I want to structure my blogging in the future.

But…it also brought out one very sore thumb in the blogging world that is the reason most bloggers will never make the big time. So where do they go wrong? Like a horse with blinders on…

They are too busy thinking like a blogger instead of like a business owner.

Blogging in itself was built on the foundation of online journaling. There wasn’t any true monetary platform until these online journals started getting traffic that was rising above corporate websites. Through some growing pains, the art of blogging and the world of capitalism figured out how to leverage this traffic into dollars through various forms of advertising and promotion. But…at its heart…most bloggers still think like the bloggers of old. The only difference now is that some of them are at least covering their costs and putting a little bit extra in their pocket at the end of the month.

When I brought up the idea of paid content in blogging, one of the biggest excuses that it wouldn’t work is because big media (magazines, newspapers, etc.) has a lot more resources to hire writers, photographers and other assets to create more value that the individual blogger can not accomplish. While they are true in that on a low level…they are forgetting one key thing that will keep them broke.

What if the paid model opened up the resources to accomplish those things?

I am not saying this is the answer or the only way to do things, but it illustrates a great point within the blogging world. When you take the money you make online and reinvest it into growth of your business, you are no longer the sole blogger trying to make it. You are applying fundamental business models to your online empire to insure future growth and more money. However, if you are not able to think outside the “blogging box”, you will never get past just being able to pay for your hosting and a night out to dinner a week.

When you look at your blogging, you have to start thinking about growth and future income outside of just affiliate promotions and banner ads. You have to start developing areas of your blog with future growth in mind and not just how you can make an extra 5 bucks today. You have to be open to new ideas and willing to test these ideas.

If you keep thinking like a blogger…you will never be more than a blogger.

Filed Under: Blogging, Generating Cash Tagged With: , , ,

Will Blog Readers Accept A Paid Subscription Magazine Model?

February 22, 2011 By 29 Comments

An interesting article by David Risley titled, “Is Blogging Broken? Is The Future Of Blogging Paid Access?” stirred up some ideas I have had for a long time and generated some conversation sparked by DR and I on Twitter and Facebook. The reality is that this is not a new idea by any means. Several large bloggers including Gary Vaynerchuk have already said it is coming and there are premium, paid sections of many popular sites that produce exclusive content for a price.

The question becomes…can the blogger use this same model and apply it to blog content?

The Blurred Line: Magazines and Blogs

As we move forward with online publishing, the line between blog and online magazine is continuing to get blurred even more than in the past. Magazines are starting to look towards digital delivery and online publishing as their only way to expand business and bloggers are looking outside of traditional blogging to add more value for their readers. I wouldn’t consider Bike198 a blog in the truest definition of the word…it has really become a free online magazine.

Even my favorite magazine, Bike, is delivered to my iPad via Zinio…so where does the line cross between magazines and blogs these days anyway? One side is getting a fee for their content while the other is giving away everything for free.

Bloggers And The Free Concept

Bloggers learned a long time ago that by giving away the farm for free, you are able to grow your audience faster. With more traffic, pageviews and subscribers…you were able to command more money via direct advertising and generate more money with affiliate sales. It is the simple law of numbers…with more targeted eyes you get more money.

However, this has created one big problem within blogging…everything is free.

With the over saturation of bloggers all trying to compete for the same eyes and the readers looking for quality content but hit with an extreme amount of free content, eBooks and other free online hooks…readers have very little in the way of distinction between quality and quantity in their search for online content. In my opinion, bloggers take the “give away the farm” mentality a little bit too much to heart, so with more bloggers entering the market on a daily basis…there is a massive over saturation of content.

What does this do to the blogger?

You become a hamster in a wheel generating massive amount of content and products for free without seeing any real return. You are told it takes a lot of work and to be patient, but the competition out there is so much harder these days that you could literally spend years giving away everything for nothing. Eventually, you give up and look to other forms of income generation as that one obviously didn’t pan out.

So when do you draw the line and jump ship to a paid content model?

Reactions In and Outside of Blogging

Before we jump straight into what I think…lets take a look at a couple of reactions on the web yesterday when I posted the question to Facebook and David and I hit up Twitter.

My Facebook Comment to People Outside of Blogging:

“There have been some interesting rumblings around the blogging world about going to more “magazine style” formats. ie. subscription models. What do you think about monthly, paid subscription models to online content?”

Some of the better responses:

I’ve been wondering when blogs are going to take on a more magazine look/feel as well. I’d be more than happy to pay for content, if its good and does one of two things. Entertains me or makes me some money! Just my two cents.

Nothing personal, but I don’t think I’d pay for blog content. While many (including yours) are very informative for some things, a lot of the content may not apply to me. I think blogs are less viable as a subscription service, as now they are competing with magazines, books, etc, that have a lot more resources to provide content.

Of course, that’s just my opinion, and I’m not a huge blog reader (only 5-10 that I routinely read).

I’ve never been able to get into blogs- either reading or following. This is just a random thought, but I wonder if that applies to a great percentage of people who went through most of their formative years without internet/email. I was a senior in college before I had an email acct, and it was infrequently used at best. (Maybe we were behind the times, but we’re talking early 90′s.) I still prefer a hard copy, old-school magazine for lots of things. Okay, I’m definitely old. :) More randomness: I subscribe to two photography websites that have everything from forums to mini-blogs. I use them mostly for the interaction with other photogs from all over the world. I doubt I’d continue to pay for them if they went to a strictly blog format with no forums and classifieds and stuff. Maybe future generations will pay for blogs without giving it a second thought…?

if they incorporated rich media and it was well organized and flashy like the magazines I would pay for specific ones

I think there’s already a ton of this out there that is similar. For example ESPN has the Insider and many newspapers have online content that is subscriber only. Almost all major magazines deliver substantial free content and many of them put their printed content online for free after awhile.

I think for it to work, the user would have to feel like they are getting some very exclusive, well developed content. It would have to go far beyond the “expert with an opinion” content that most blogs deliver. Even then, I am skeptical that it would work well. I know that I wouldn’t do it. There is too much free content to choose from and that’s not going to change any time soon.

The magazines don’t seem to be doing a terribly good job at it with falling subscriptions and struggles with finding an online model that works. I don’t see loan bloggers who typically put out less than a magazines worth of content a month can take a broken model and find success with it. Where there is a will there is a way I suppose.

Mine and David’s line on Twitter (inside the blogging world):

“Question: What would your reaction be to a high quality blog that switched from free to paid content? (2 to 3 bucks a month)”

@gracejudson: It completely depend on the *relevance* of the content – not just the quality. If I was consistently using the content – maybe.

@ericabiz: You’re way undervaluing it at $2-3/month. I wouldn’t subscribe because I would assume the info isn’t valuable…(when asked if 9-10 dollars would be enough) At least. I pay $30/mo for Doberman Dan’s. And he stopped blogging to do that, too :)

@Murlu: I think when people quite literally tell you they’d pay for what you just publish – you’re on to something :D

@nhangen: they would be a goner.

@christiantjr: my initial question would be “can I get the same quality elsewhere for free?”

As you can see by the responses, they vary all over the map from basically a “hell no” to you are not even charging enough.

The Law of Numbers and Blogging Income

For a long time, the law of numbers has played a drastic affect on blog income. The more numbers you have, the more money you made. However, what if I were to tell you that you could cut your traffic and subscribers down to a 1/4 of what they are now and you will make 5 times the income? My bet…99% of you would not do it because you are conditioned to the free/high traffic model.

When you are looking at going to a paid subscription model, you are basically doing just that. As much as you would like to think that all of your readers are grasping onto your words like the gospel…that just isn’t the truth. If you were to hit the switch to a paid content model today, my guess is that 10 – 25% of your readership would participate and you would lose the rest, but if your income went up 5 fold…it would be worth it. That is when bloggers think like bloggers and not business owners. They would rather keep the large numbers at lower income than lower numbers at higher income.

The scary part…you have to hit the switch on the whole idea before you will know if it will work or not. It takes that leap of faith and testing.

Your Readers Are Already Paying For Content…Why Not Your Blog?

The reality of your situation when you are looking at moving to a paid subscription format is that you are going to have to compete with bloggers that are still giving away quality content for free. That is not going to change, so how do you battle this fierce competition?

It all comes down to the perceived value of the deliverable.

Readers are already paying for content on a daily basis. From eBooks to members only sections of websites, readers are not only paying for content…but they are paying more than you would charge as a subscription! Why is this? The perceived value of eBook content is higher than that of a blog. Every day, I sell eBooks that contain content not found on my blog that helps my readers achieve their goals. Whether it is becoming a better mountain biker or getting in free stuff to review on your blog, that content sells consistently and provides value to my customers.

Switching to a paid subscription model would be no different…except…you would have to change the delivery method. I do not think…at this time…just access to your blog can be a paid for commodity. You would have to change the deliverable of your content to something that is email driven or a PDF magazine that contains your content plus a better design that online publishing can not provide. This way you are giving more value to your customers outside of just hitting the publish button several times a week.

Just like with ESPN and other newspaper websites, you would still need to provide regular, free content on your blog to attract new readers, but the meat and potatoes would be delivered off site to your paid subscribers.

Blogging for free…even if you enjoy the hell out of it…can not live for forever. Eventually life gets in the way and you will have to cut down on your online time unless it is providing a specific value (in this case…money). As blogging continues to grow and adapt, it will have to find a way to generate income outside of the law of numbers game.

Paid subscription models might be the answer, but we will not know until the switch is hit. At that time, will the paid models be able to withstand the competition of free? My personal opinion is that question really comes down to the quality of branding, content and perceived value.

What do you think?

Filed Under: Blogging, Content, Generating Cash Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Rockstar Article Ideas That Generate Search Engine Traffic

February 15, 2011 By 6 Comments

This article is really a follow up to last week’s SEO article on how to get your article on the first page of Google. While that tutorial went through the process I go through to rank well on search engines at a blog level, I felt there was a need to dive a little bit deeper into content generation and planning to show how this affect the routines you go through on a weekly basis with your blog.

Let me preface by saying something very important.

I write blog articles for my readers, not for search engines.

While I know this is a line that has been beat to death over the years, it is an important one to remember as I do not do this every time I hit the publish button. There are topics and conversations that I have written about on my blogs that generate a lot of social or direct traffic that have little to no search engine benefit.

I cover topics, reviews and editorials that my readers want to read first. If I am able to tie in some optimized SEO to compliment those articles to make them perform well in search engine results, that is a bonus not a requirement. Far too often, I see blogs that focus on SEO with every single article…and quite frankly…they are boring.

My SEO Blog Article Cycle

As I was sitting down enjoying a cup of coffee the other day, I started to actually map out my process on the iPad. Here are my notes…

Blog Keyword ResearchTechnology is awesome…I love my paperless life.

Anyways, above is the cycle I go through when looking to generate articles that rocket to the top of search engine results…so let’s take a deeper look at the process.

Step 1: Target Keywords For Your Article

I personally have a list of high traffic keywords I have generated over the years that are all article worthy. If you are starting from scratch, there are two ways you can go about this.

  • The Free Way – If you have a Google account, you have access to the Google Adwords keyword tool. This tool is actually used by Adwords advertisers to help them decide on which search keyword strings they want to target for the link ads. This is a huge asset for you as you can put in a keyword string (an example of mine would be “mountain biking”) and Google will pop out a list of related keywords and how often they are searched within a month. You then use the list of the higher volume searches as your article ideas.
  • The Paid Way – I used to use the Google Adwords keyword tool until I picked up Market Samurai. While the Adwords tool is great, it was missing some information that I felt was necessary to carry out a really planned attack. When I put “mountain biking” Market Samurai, I am able to really narrow things down and find the best solution for my blog by weighing more factors than just search (how many people are paying for links in monthly volume is great for Adsense revenue) and I am able to track specific url performance on a daily basis.

Step 2: Is The Keyword Relevant?

As I mentioned before, I write articles for readers, so while there may be a ton of traffic available for “Schwinn Mountain Bikes”, the reality is that Schwinn is a brand that is carried in Wal-Mart and that is not relevant content for my blog (maybe a humorous article someday).

Once you have your list of possibles, you really need to ask yourself how relevant those keywords are to your audience. A lot of search engine traffic is great…but you want targeted traffic that increases your bottom line. A bunch of Wal-Mart bike purchasers are going to have zero interest in a review of a suspension fork that costs 5 times more than they paid for their bike.

Step 3: No or No Go Point: Traffic vs. Competition

Especially if you have a new blog, you will want to target keywords strings that have viable traffic with low competition. Market Samurai makes that an easy process by actually showing you those stats side by side, but you can also search on Google and take a look at the first page of results. Are you competing against the biggest in your niche or is there room for improvement?

When competition is low and traffic is pretty high, it really is a no brainer…get to writing. When traffic is high and competition is high, it doesn’t necessarily mean you shouldn’t cover that topic (could be really relevant and interesting for your readers) but you need to keep your expectations at a reasonable level until your site has established itself as a authority in your niche before you see high rankings.

At this point in the process, I make a decision whether to go with the article idea based off the previous data or to hit up something else.

Step 4: Article Composition and Writing

Now it is time to write the article. For this part of the process, I completely forget about SEO.

Your readers visit your blog to connect with your voice and style. They do not want another bland and boring rendition of popular keywords as you attempt to whore yourself out for search engine traffic. Write your article just as you normally would any other article on your blog. The uniqueness you bring to your content is the most important and you can always go back and adjust the content for search engines.

It is much harder to give life to a boring article than it is to give search engine optimization to an interesting one.

Step 5: The Tech Side Of SEO For Blog Articles

After you are completely happy with your blog article, it is time to go back and make sure everything is in line to perform its best on search engines.

  • Content SEO – I use Scribe on my blogs to make sure my content is properly optimized for search engines. It tells me exactly which keywords I am targeting, how many times I should mention them in the article, how many links I need to have in the article and the best performing tags for that article. It basically takes all of research out for me and makes things a quick and easy process (that has shown results). By keeping keyword density at around 5.5% and under for primary keywords and linking about every 120 words, you are on the right track.
  • Meta Titles and Descriptions – I custom write all of my meta titles and descriptions to insure search engines use my text instead of auto generated ones and to entice clicks on my links on the results list. It really is the only way to see success.

Step 6: Rescan – Writing for Readers and Sharing

As a general rule, search engine topics can be rather bland. To overcome this and create articles my existing readers want to read as well, I inject as much personal opinion on the subject matter as I can to keep things interesting. At this part in the process, I read back over my article to make sure it is still interesting and that I have a defined opinion on the subject. If I do not have an opinion, I usually start over or pick another topic to write on.

If all looks good, I hit the publish button and we are off to the races. At that point, I make sure it hits Twitter, Facebook and my newsletter list to get as many eyes on the article as possible. If I have made it interesting enough, it is shared through social media outlets and linked to in other articles further increasing its weight in search engines.

Step 7: Tracking Progress Over Time

After the dust has settled, I load that specific URL into Market Samurai‘s Rank Tracking Tool to see how progress goes over the coming months. I use this information to tweak the process to get the best results I can for the next article that follows the cycle. If you do not track your results over time, how do you even know you are doing the right thing? You don’t…and you are just flying blind.

Step 8: Repeat The Process

The last thing you really need to do in the process is use the information from the last article to build on the next. Repeat the process by building on the success that you can measure through your tools and feedback from your readers. Comments, emails and other reader interaction is the best litmus test on how your article was received by your audience. You can combine that with the metrics you are gathering on the articles progress in search engines to refine and tune your process for the best success rate.

Above all…remember that you are writing your articles to connect with readers. If you are not accomplishing that…the rest of the process is worthless.

Tools Mentioned In This Article: Market Samurai and Scribe.

Filed Under: Blogging, Tutorials/How To Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

How To Get A New Article On The 1st Page Of Google In 20 Minutes

February 7, 2011 By 24 Comments

Ranking well in search engines and getting indexed is not rocket science…even though many seem to think blog SEO is a black art.

This week, I published a review on Bike198 that got indexed in Google and ranked on the 1st page within 20 minutes of hitting the publish button. Do I have your attention now? Let’s get started…

A Common Misconception In Blog SEO

There is a common misconception within the SEO community. Everyone seems to think that if you just to the technical side of SEO (titles, meta descriptions, etc.)…you will rank well and that’s the end of it. Ever wonder why the same people that spew this crap can’t seem to even get their own sites to rank well?

It’s because they have ignored the biggest contributing factor to SEO.

The greatest asset you have against your competition in regards to ranking well in Google and other search engines is amazing content. I know…you are sick of hearing the crap about “content is king” and how many times you should be posting a week…so let’s break it down into terms that actually make sense and does not have a bunch of tag lines attached that cheapen up the process. Then…we can take a look at the technical side of SEO to make sure you have everything setup correctly to insure greatest possible success…

Let’s Get Your Articles On The 1st Page Of Google

All SEO starts and ends with incredible content. The ultimate goal of Google and other search engines is to have the best content up front for their audience. They are not looking for the best optimized pages or the article that has the most keywords stuffed in it. Their algorithms search out content that is the most valuable to their customers…people like you and me. Think about it this way…if you were to search for “Audi R8 Review” in Bing and the first 5 results were nothing but keyword stuffed pages and then you headed over to Google and the first 5 results were Car and Driver, Auto Weekly and other industry rags…which search engine would you use the next time?

In the search engine world…usage is king. They need their results to be the most valuable to get repeat users. This does not equal subpar content that just seems to have all of the technical stuff in place.

To this day…there are certain things that ultimately decide your fate in search engines that has not changed in years. Most importantly…quality links back to your content. Now, how do you get people to link to what you have to say? You publish articles that are worth linking to! It really is that simple.

So…as you can see…all of the weight is on the content and the value it provides to the reader. As you publish quality content, you get links and clicks that increase your worth to search engines so your content continues to climb.

The Second Part of the Search Engine Equation

Now, all of this is great, but at the end of the day your content has to get spidered. How often your content gets spidered and indexed is a direct result of your publishing schedule. Google and other search engines spider and cache pages on a regular basis, but to save on processing time (which equals money), the search engines keep track of how regularly your site is publishing new content. By doing this, they are able to save money on their end while still picking up your articles.

There really is no secret number to how often you should be publishing articles. On Bike198, I publish four to five articles a week. Due to the consistency of my articles over the course of time, search engines visit my site several times a day, so when a new article goes live…it is picked up quickly.

The key here is to publish articles as regularly as you can while still keeping quality up.

If you have a relitively new site (under a year), be prepared to not rank incredibly well for at least a year. It takes time to build up links and search engines tend to hold you down for awhile until they figure out if you are credible or not. There are exceptions to that rule, but generally it is pretty accurate.

So you have great content…it is getting published consistently…you are starting to get links…let’s take a look at the tech side of the equation…

The Technical Side Of SEO For Blogs

There are a couple of tools that I mention here that I personally use (and many that I paid for). While these free and paid options are my picks that I have personally tested, there are other options out there that probably work pretty well.

First, if you are not using Firebug and Yoast’s Firefox plugin that turns off personalized search…you need to start to immediately. Firebug will allow you to see your webpage code and Yoast’s Firefox plugin allows you to see how you are ranking in Google with the personalized search turned off. In case you didn’t already know…you will probably rank really well when signed into GMail or any other Google app due to the fact that it pays attention to where you visit the most. You need to see where you rank with those options turned off.

General Good Practice Article SEO

There are several things you should be doing with the publish of every article on your blog.

  • Interlinking Your Articles – On every article you publish, you should be linking up past articles within your content when it is relevant. This is a great way to get search engines to follow those links and keep old articles fresh. It also exposes your readership to articles they may have not seen in the past that they can then share and link to. M
  • Manually Entering In Meta Information – Did you know that the automatic meta description function of SEO plugins like All In One SEO basically just pick up the first 160 characters of your article? Knowing that…how many times have you started your articles with that in mind? How boring would the beginning of all of your articles be if you did it on all of them? For this reason…you should be manually writing all of your titles and meta descriptions regardless of which SEO plugin you use for WordPress. I have had the best luck recently with Yoast’s new SEO plugin for WordPress. It actually lets me see how my article will look in Google on the draft page before I hit publish. It also does a lot of other things that are just good practice.
  • Create Attention Grabbing Headlines – There is a natural want to make bland titles that have the specific keywords for good rankings. However, if your title is so boring that no one clicks on it, you will start to move down the rankings. You need to write relevant, attention grabbing headlines that invite clicks. As you get more clicks…you will move up.
  • Create Easy To Read Articles – To appeal to the widest audience, you should be writing about at a middle school to lower high school level. You should also be using your H1, H2, H3 tags to create headlines that have relevant keywords and break up the article into understandable chunks. Search engines weight these lines heavier to get an idea of what it is you are talking about and it helps your readers digest the content.
  • Keyword Density – In the old days, you could stuff a bunch of keywords in the footer of a site the same color of the background and rank well. The days have changed and the search engines are much smarter. Remember…they are looking for quality content. Personally, I use Scribe to tell me how I am doing on keyword density and general SEO on my articles. It has served me well so far and most of my Bike198 articles hit the first page pretty quickly. I am sure there are other free options out there…but the consistency and quality has shown results for me as I do not want to read through articles and start counting words and links.
  • Encourage Social Media Sharing – Find out what your users are sharing with and encourage it by placing share buttons at the top and bottom of your articles. No matter what…have at least Facebook and Twitter (if your audience actually uses it). Search engines are starting to look at how many times you are linked up in social media outlets to find out what people are reading. By encouraging this behavior, you are not only getting more eyes in front of your content…but you are going to rank well.
  • Research Long Tail Keywords - Unless you are already the leader in your niche, you are not going to rank well for your one or two keyword combinations. To rank well in the early going, you need to research long tail keyword combos (3 to 6 word strings) that you can have better success with. As you build up credible results in those strings, you will naturally start ranking better for the higher competing keywords. I use Market Samurai to do all of my research for content based long tail keywords. It has been a fantastic tool that gives me solid results.
  • Watch Your Searches – Within Google Analytics, you should be watching two things that will give you article ideas that you can rank well for. The first, the keywords your readers are using that are making them land on your pages and…the second, what they are searching for on your site through the site search box (you can set this up easily in analytics and they even tell you how). If you are not have not written anything on these terms…you should be.
Good Practice Blog SEO

While those are great things to do in your articles…what should you be doing on your blog?

  • Speed Things Up – Recently, Google introduced page load speed into their search algorithm. The downside to that…most blogger’s websites are incredibly slow. Install W3 Total Cache and use it. It will help your pages load faster by caching your site on your server. The #1 main reason that a lot of blogs load slowly outside of caching is images. Your images on your blog should be no bigger than 1024 pixels on the long end and no more than 130k at the highest. There are blogs I visit on a daily basis that are loading several MB of images on a single article. If it takes more than 10 seconds to load that article…it will get pushed down to the bottom. Check the sizes of your images before posting.
  • Clean Up Your Sidebar and Plugins – I have said this about a million times, but only put things in your sidebar that 75% of your users actually need. Your floating tag cloud (while you think it looks cool) only distracts from your content, causes your pages to load slower and messes up your code. You have to resist the urge to install every single plugin you find as it drastically alters your blog negatively and you ultimately do not need it.
  • Double Check Your Blog’s Code – There has been a recent trend of including SEO within themes and theme frameworks. I hate this idea. If you want to change themes in the future all of the work you did to make sure your meta information was correct goes out the window. With some themes, if you use a plugin for SEO, you get duplicate meta tags in your code. This is a bad thing. Use Firebug to make sure you do not have duplicated meta descriptions and meta tags. If you do…remove them from your theme or find someone who can.
  • General Search Engine Maintenance – Make sure you have a sitemap plugin installed (like XML Sitepmaps) and submit those sitemaps to the search engines. You also need to need to sign up for a Google Webmaster account and watch your page load speed and errors. Any of those concerns should be fixed immediately.
  • “NoFollow” Any Irrelevant Pages – Do you really want  your admin links or date archives to carry pagerank or would you rather have that filtered to the homepage? That’s what I thought…so why are you letting search engines follow these links and…worst yet…index these pages? Date based archives are nothing but duplicate content of the homepage and you are discounting yourself if you are letting them be archived. How many times have you search for content that was published in June of 2009? I use the Yoast SEO plugin to accomplish this task as well…
  • Avoid Duplicate Content Between Tags and Categories – Do not use the same terms in your tags as your categories. You end up duplicating archives that way. Think of your categories as top level terms and tags secondary terms.
  • Have A Memorable Brand and Logo – By having a unique and memorable brand, you are able to stay at the forefront of readers minds and increase the likelihood that they will come back to your content. If you have a boring, keyword stuffed, bland brand name and an even worse logo, all of the work you do to separate yourself from the spammers. While it is nice to have keywords within your domain name, the fact that it is interesting and memorable is far more important.
  • Get Reliable, Fast Hosting – While the attractive prices of some of the shared hosting services out there is attractive, if your site is slow loading or down…search engines aren’t going to have much to do with you. About the best deal I have found out there is HostGator for beginning bloggers. I use a much more expensive option…but it is faster and more reliable with extreme backups. Use what is in your budget but make sure they are credible.

Set, Forget and Test Your Search Engine Optimization

Much of the technical side of blog SEO is a set and forget process…or at least just a maintenance checklist before you publish an article. The hard part of SEO is the actual work…the content. Without content that people actually want to read and spread…you are just applying technical SEO to junk…and junk will not perform well.

When I consult companies on their SEO, the first thing we look at is content and how we can attract new customers while increasing their relevant indexed pages in search engines. In the blogging world…you should not treat your blog any differently than that. SEO is not a black art…it is just one that many people don’t understand because they get stuck on the technical side of things instead of focusing on creating content that people actually want to read.

When you do this…over time…over and over again…results come. There is no secret key or black magic trick. Just solid foundations with quality content and that will never change.

Products Mentioned In This Article:

Filed Under: Blogging, Tutorials/How To Tagged With: , , , ,

How I Use Flickr To Grow Community On My Blogs

January 31, 2011 By 10 Comments

Flickr is the #1 photo sharing website on the planet and if you are in a niche that is really into taking pictures…you are missing out on a HUGE community building tool if you are not taping into this valuable resource. When done correctly, a Flickr group for your blog can do the following:

  • Create a larger community atmosphere around your blog.
  • Increase traffic and new visitors to your content.
  • Create new, engaging content for your readers automatically.

In the mountain biking world, pictures are used as a way to share our experiences on the trail with riders all over the world. With the group function on Flickr, we can tap into the community aspect of biking through images outside of your conventional online forums. Building community on your blog is not an easy thing to get started, so it is up to you to find outlets like Flickr that you can bring into your content that your readers can contribute to easily and efficiently. Luckily for bloggers, there are some tools we can use to tap into this community and grow our blogs while making our readers feel like they are actually apart of something bigger instead of a site that they just read articles on from time to time.

How I Use Flickr Groups To Grow My Blog

If you are in a community that already shares a lot of images on Facebook or Flickr, this is a pretty easy way to get people more involved with your site. If your niche market is not big into taking pictures, it can be harder to get involvement…but it is not impossible.

When your readers share their images on Flickr, they are looking to share their experiences online. The #1 problem most Flickr users face is getting image views. They do not have a blog to draw traffic to their images and…at best…they have some Facebook friends they might be interested in what they have posted. Ideally, they would like to share their images with other people in their passion…and that is where you step in as the blogger and provide that audience.

Step 1: Setup Your Flickr Group

As I mentioned before, Flickr groups are a way for Flickr users to share their images with other Flickr users. There are groups for everything from the city you live in to the camera you use. Flickr makes it incredibly easy to add your uploaded images to groups within your profile page and it is probably one of the most used features on the site.

The first step for the blogger in this process is to create a Flickr group for your niche site. In my case, I created the Bike198 Flickr group so my readers could add their images to the group. As you can see on the page, I added a little note about how these images show up on the website so you can gain more exposure to your images. While that gives new users an idea on where they will see their images displayed, it also covers your ass by being up front and honest about how you will be using their images which will be copyrighted in many cases. By submitting their images to the group, they are agreeing to let you link and preview them on your site.

Also, I like to limit the amount of images the members can submit a day to 2 or 3 to keep variety in the stream (done within your group admin). I do not want readers thinking it is a waste of time to include their pictures because of a couple of users completely flooding the pipeline.

Once you have setup your Flickr group, you will want to add your own images that relate to your niche to get it populated a little bit.

Step 2: Get The Images Live On Your Site

The next step in the process is to get your group’s images live on your site. I do this by installing the FlickrRSS plugin for WordPress. It makes displaying your images in the sidebar like you see below incredibly easy and it has some other options as well. All you have to do is enter in your Flickr group number (which the plugin helps you find) and then put the widget in your sidebar. I even edited the CSS within the plugin to make it match the site a little bit better.

Bike198 Flickr Group Displayed On Site

Step 3: Get Your Readers Using The Flickr Group

Like with most things in blogging, just setting up the tools is not enough. Now you must promote your new feature to get your readers to actually use it. Just as you would promote your Facebook fan page, email your newsletter to let them know it is live (don’t forget to include links to the Flickr group), write an article on your blog, tell the fans of your Facebook fan page, Tweet it out on Twitter, hold contests for the editors choice submitted photo, etc.

You can also invite images to your group through Flickr from users that have zero clue about your blog. This is a very powerful feature that can populate your group in the early stages and bring more visitors to your content. Again, you are providing an audience to photographers that want more targeted eyes. By providing that value, you are filling that need.

Once you have users submitting their photographs to your group, it will start to grow and the images should come in on autopilot.

Step 4: Create Content Around Images

Your readers are going to be very visual by nature. They like bold headlines, descriptive pictures and bullet points to engage with content. Your Flickr group is creating content that your readers will like to see.

If you have done this right, an interesting thing will start to happen. You will attract some incredible photography from your niche that you are going to want to feature. Every now and then (about every 2 weeks), I put together an article of some of my favorite new images submitted to the group. I resize them to fit the page (decreases page load speed and makes it so you are not sharing their high res images) and link their Flickr profile page below each image.

Flickr Photo Sharing Article

Doing this not only creates engaging content on my blog, but it also provides additional exposure for the photographers while promoting my Flickr group.

After that…rinse and repeat. The Bike198 Flickr group has become a nice asset to my blog by creating more user interaction with high quality content that is done automatically. In the blogging world…that is the trifecta.

Balloon Image by luvi

Filed Under: Blogging, Social Media, Tutorials/How To Tagged With: , , , ,

10 Things You Need To Know About WordPress

January 27, 2011 By 7 Comments

The following article is a guest post from Matthew Polo (his details at the end of this article). To submit a guest post to Blogging Labs, hit us up and we’ll get the ball rolling.

If you are ready to launch a WordPress blog and join millions around the world, there are some things you should know while your getting started.

1. Your WordPress Blog Does Not Have To Be On Hosted WordPress

You can use WordPress anywhere. This means that you don’t have to have a .WordPress.com blog, ie your blog doesn’t have to be your-blog.WordPress.com but can be your-blog.com. WordPress can host your blog for you or you can get your own hosting at a different company. Another useful feature is the ability to import or export blog contents to and from WordPress. This will allow you to keep a personal archive off line.

2. There Are No Contracts

Because its free you don’t have to commit to anything. You can leave anytime and WordPress will give you a complete xml download of all your posts and comments, so you can pack up and move your blog if you want

3. You Need A Plan…. And A Name

It is always a good idea to plan something before you do it. Develop a blog plan about why you are creating a blog, including the purpose, the target audience and the level of commitment to maintenance you envision. Try to conduct some market research on blogs that are similar and not similar to your vision and don’t limit yourself to only looking at WordPress blogs. Research some names for your blog that are consistent with your vision. Investigate the “About” sections of other blogs to see why they started as well as how well they are going after how long. This research could tell you roughly how your blog is going to go, but in no way is it a guarantee that your blog will succeed.

You should also decide whether you want to use an existing email account or specifically create one for blogging. I like to create new emails for each site and manage them all through GMail rather than use my personal one. It helps to stop people spamming me personally as well as separates my work and personal life and if I ever want to sell the blog I can give away the email address and be sure that I don’t keep getting blog related emails after I sold it.

4. Knowledge is Key and Keep an Open Mind

It is always a good idea to keep an open mind when it comes to your blogs development. Try to explore each WordPress feature fully before initiating full scale blog development. Getting to know each of the features and how to use them effectively will help your blog run smoothly. For instance, you can blog through email and mobile texting, and allow people to subscribe to your blog with alerts for blog activity. You can also create a Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed to allow subscribers to view a summary and updates of your blog content anywhere on the web. These are simple things to set up, but if you don’t get in there and learn how to set them up your blog won’t work as well as it could.

5. WordPress Is Free. But There Is Some Stuff You Have To Pay For

The great thing about WordPress is that it is absolutely free, which is great if you want to give blogging a go because it won’t cost you a penny. However, there are some features that WordPress offer that will cost you a bit of dough. You can check out the paid features at http://en.WordPress.com/products/ but before you go “gun ho” on all the paid features I suggest giving the free version a good thorough go. There are plenty of plugins that you can download that will let your WordPress blog do anything, so I suggest giving them a go first.

6. One Account..More Than One Blog

Another good feature of WordPress is that you can manage more than one blog from the one account. This means that you won’t have to login to each one as you work on them.

7. You Should Subscribe To Other Blogs

You can subscribe to other blogs on WordPress easily. Reviewing other blogs to discover what others are blogging about, how they blog, blog layout, naming, content categories and tags not only will help you get a sense of what you can do with WordPress but will also get you out into the blogging community. Some good places to check out other blogs, topics and titles is through Technorati, Mashable and blog directories as well as check out other blogs blog rolls. You should activate social media buttons on your blog as well as follow other blogs through social media sites. This will keep you in the loop as well as help you get followers on your own social media pages.

8. Pingbacks Are Helpful

Pingbacks will alert others if you link to their website or blog, and will in turn alert you if another blog has linked to you. You can also allow their citations to show on your blog. An easy way to get back-links to your blog is to post articles with links to your blog in one of the free article directories, like top ranked ones Articlesbase and Ezinearticles. Although it won’t impact your blog massively. It is still a good idea to do it as it will start getting your blog out there as well as let the search engines see your blog.

9. Check Your Default Settings

WordPress has default settings that although help you avoid a long and boring set up process isn’t always what you want. For example comments are allowed for each post without prior approval by default, this means that people can write anything they want. You can pre screen all blog post comments before they post or you can turn off comments but I wouldn’t suggest it. The default for blog postings is public viewing. You can create a top level private view or create private viewing by post, allowing just yourself, friends or people with a code that you create. You can also create viewership ratings for content per each blog.

10. Submitting Your Blog To Directories Will Help Get Your Blog Out There

Although blog directories like Blogexplosion, Technorati, OnTopList, Blogdirectory, Blog Web Directory, and others found via Wikipedia and Alexa.com won’t make a massive impact on how many people will see your blog it will still help it get out there, which isn’t a bad thing.

Maintaining your own blog can be a very rewarding thing, so get in there and have a go. After all its free, whats the worst that could happen?

Matthew writes about personal finances for an impartial Australian credit card comparison website where people can find balance transfer credit card offers that reduce interest payments and help them get out of debt faster.

Filed Under: Blogging, Tutorials/How To Tagged With: , , , , ,

How To Use Shortcodes To Draw More Attention To Your Blog Content

January 24, 2011 By 6 Comments

Like it or not, your readers have ADD. In a world where instant gratification and the complete lack of in depth attention to details plagues the general public, it is our job as the blogger to capture attention and keep it long enough to get our point across with our content. I bet right now you are looking for ways to scan this article to see if you can get the relevant information quickly to see if it will help your blogging. By using attention grabbing elements in your content like bold headlines, catchy titles and other style elements, you are able to keep your readers on your pages longer by interacting not only with words…but visually.

What Are Shortcodes?

Shortcodes have come about in recent WordPress themes to help bloggers style their content in an easy to digest manner without having to know any coding. Before, the designer would have to build in certain styling aspects into the CSS of the theme and then the blogger would have to know how to call that css within an article without calling out any complex code (typcially RSS feeds break on some code and WordPress won’t actually recognize it within an article).

A [highlight color="yellow"]shortcode[/highlight] is a WordPress-specific code that lets you do nifty things with very little effort. Shortcodes can embed files or create objects that would normally require lots of complicated, ugly code in just one line. Shortcode = shortcut.

So what do you end up with? When you type something that looks like this (note the brackets around the text)…

[onehalf] Testing out shortcodes with 1/2 columns. [/onehalf] [onehalf last="last"] Hey look! Another 1/2 column! [/onehalf]

That ends up looking like this on your article. (Note: The following code was generated via a plugin you are about to see below and is not apart of the stock WordPress install or with my current theme.)

[one_half] Testing out shortcodes with 1/2 columns. [/one_half] [one_half last="last"] Hey look! Another 1/2 column! [/one_half]

By using brackets that call CSS elements in your code, you are able to simplify the process and use a predetermined library of functions to call out whatever you want to in your article. Basically, you are drastically simplifying the process of making your content easier to read while being able to grab more attention to elements that you deem important.

The Problem For The Blogger (You)

While shortcodes are an incredible way to create more engaging content, up until this point…most themes did not come with a library of shortcodes for you to choose from. Recently, themes from WooThemes and Theme Forest have started integrating shortcodes into their themes to give bloggers more options within their content. While this is great, it also runs into a unique problem for the blogger down the road. What if you want to change your theme to a different brand or custom option? All of the shortcodes that you setup within your content will become obsolete and your readers will see the brackets instead of the styling on all old articles!

One of the reasons I push WordPress so much for bloggers is the extensive ability to install plugins to enhance the WordPress experience. When you go to change how your site looks on the screen, your plugins go with your site as you update the look. The guys over at WPSwitch came up with an awesome plugin that makes your life much easier with shortcodes. With over 100 of different options, looks and tables, you are able to make columns, insert alerts, make picture slideshows and a whole host of other options to make your content more engaging. The best part…it operates independent of your theme via a plugin so you do not have to worry about transferring your shortcode styling when you change themes in the future. It is all integrated and ready to go once you hit the activate link.

To show you how easy this plugin is to use, I have put together this short screencast to show you how The Shortcode Kid plugin for WordPress operates.

If you are looking for an easy way to create more engaging content on your blog, I highly recommend the use of The Shortcode Kid plugin. It makes life much easier to create and manage shortcodes within your content and by using a plugin…you insure that the shortcodes will be compatible across future design needs. At $40.00 for the plugin, it is a premium option, but it adds a lot of value to your blog (future updates and additions to the plugin are free when you purchase).

Check out the rest of the shortcode options and pricing by clicking here.

Filed Under: Plugins, Reviews, Tutorials/How To Tagged With: , , , ,

Successful, Profitable Blogging Is Not Rocket Science [mapped]

January 17, 2011 By 5 Comments

Successful, Profitable Blogging

So I was just sitting back the other day thinking about what actually makes a blog successful from a monetary standpoint. There are a lot of blogs that have traffic, subscribers and plenty of Facebook fans, but they barely make enough to cover the bills because they are expecting the money to come from non-monetized resources (or at least ones that do not monetize well).

I created this mind map to show you exactly how I look at my blogs from a monetary and business view. It basically starts from the bottom and works up, so let’s run through it.

As with any business, your leads are your most valuable asset. When you funnel quality, qualified leads into your blog, you are creating an asset that has the ability make money on a higher percentage than the shotgun affect of trying to get as many as you can at once. This is done by utilizing several sources, and it is up to your testing to see which one works out best for you. By creating quality, relevant content on and off your blog, you attract readers (leads) to your site. You also bring them in from various social media outlets as you continue to try to grow your blog.

The biggest problem I see with most blogs looking to make a dime online is they stop there. They expect this traffic to make money on its own and continue to spin their wheels trying to make ends meet.

It is up to you, as the blogger to capture these quality leads in a format that is conducive to generating income. As you can see from the green area of the mindmap, there are several ways to capture these quality leads that come onto your blog. A lot of bloggers try to strictly rely on rss through feed reader and email to satisfy their lead capture needs, but from personal experience in multiple niches, I can tell you that the #1 converter for quality leads is a newsletter (I use Aweber) and a lightbox hover like PopUp Domination to capture those leads.

Captured My Quality Leads…Now What?

Again, you are not done once you hit this stage in the process. A large number of quality leads is great, but if you do nothing with them…they are just costing you money and you are still spinning your wheels.

By providing quality products, recommending quality products and implementing other monetization techniques…you can keep the quality high on your blog and generate revenue off of it at the same time.

There is no right or wrong answer to this part of the equation, but I can tell you from experience that the monetization methods that the most effort typically yeild the biggest returns. When you take the time to create a product or membership site that your readers actually need to solve their problem, you are going to see higher revenues off of lower quantities. If you create an in-depth product review with pictures, video and text and post it on your blog and email it to your newsletter subscribers, you will get higher sales conversions. If you plan on throwing up Google Adsense and affiliate banners, you can guess which way that is going to go….pennies…

As you can see, this is not rocket science. It is up to you as the blogger to provide quality that attracts leads to your blog, capture those leads and then convert them to dollars.

You can click on the image above and share it with whoever you would like, just don’t edit the image at all. We are all in this together!

Filed Under: Blogging, Generating Cash, Tutorials/How To Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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