Blogussion » Search Engine Optimization

Why SEO is Getting Fuzzy & What it Means for your Blog

ToMakeALiving — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 04:00:19 +0000

In the early days of the internet, SEO was a science. Put your keywords here, put some links in, submit your site to these directories. And hey presto, you were on the first page of the search engines results pages.

Those days are gone though. Search engine algorithms are getting very clever. No-one out side of Google HQ knows exactly how the rankings are decided and even if you did, a lot of the key criteria are no longer things that you can directly control anyway.

This means that SEO specialists have a much harder time setting out exactly what needs to be done to achieve the best rankings. The notion of a simple formula to achieve top rankings has gone out of the window.

As a result, SEO is becoming increasingly abstract, and the best results are being achieved by those who go about their SEO in a more holistic way. It is becoming less about what keywords you use and more about how your blog/site is received by its users.

How to get your blog to the top of Google

Here is what it comes down to: Google has become successful by offering its users the most helpful and relevant results, it’s not perfect, but it’s pretty good.

Now a days, the real ‘secret’ to SEO is focusing on your users. Build blogs that people will keep returning to, and will keep linking to. You will get far more effective, and higher quality links from people you don’t even know than you will from most of the traditional link building strategies you might learn from some “gurus”.

When you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Google’s primary aim is to find the sites that are the most helpful for its users. You want your site to be in Google’s list of the most helpful sites, and the easiest way to do that is to make sure your site really is helpful. If your users enjoy your site, they will keep coming back again and again and your site will slowly but surely rise up the ranks.

So what’s the upshot?

All of this is really a good thing. There is an awful lot of competition out there, but the search engines are getting very good at finding the sites that offer real value to their visitors. Whatever blog or website you run, you need to be focusing on writing for your readers anyway, but now you get doubly rewarded for your efforts.

It is time to stop thinking about SEO as something separate from the rest of your blog marketing and start thinking about everything – link building, usability, content and reader satisfaction – as one synergistic group. If you make your site usable, helpful and valuable, you will get more sign ups, more links, more traffic and better search results.

Believe it or not, the internet has finally gotten to the point where you are rewarded for building a site for your users, rather than building it for the search engines. We are certainly still in the change over, and there will be a few “black hats” out there clinging on to the old ways, but in the long run it will be the true, user centric bloggers and web masters who win out.

Disclaimer
Just don’t get carried away and leave out the old-fashioned SEO methods all together. The key is to include all the critical factors. If you write great content but don’t get the ball rolling with a few links, no one will ever find you. If you generate hundreds of links but don’t write decent content then you will lose the traffic just as quickly as you get it.

What’s my point?

I guess basically what I’m getting at is this: In the coming months/years we will increasingly find that the things which have the greatest impact on our blogs search engine rankings will be those things that benefit our readers and improve the overall quality of said blogs.

So if you want to rank right at the top, ahead of all the competition, you still need to do those other things that you always have done. But never lose site of what matters the very most… Your users.

Blogging With a Battle Plan: My 3 Phase Marketing Plan

Chris Scott — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 04:00:28 +0000

When I began my blog about blogging, I decided to not make the same mistakes I had in creating previous blogs. I decided to have a concrete marketing plan, one that I would stick to no matter what. After all, most Internet marketing plans are not flawed intrinsically but flawed in the way they are carried out.

Today, I’d like to reveal some of the key concepts of my particular marketing campaign and where I am in that plan. I can honestly say that after 3 months I am right where I intended to be, no where near the top of my niche but slowly gaining ground.

Below is a brief overview of my plan. I’m giving away just enough information as to not show my hand to any would-be copycats.

The Battle Plan

Phase 1: Foundational Content Building

Since I’ve started my blog about blogging in February, I’ve written over 70 posts, which amounts to something like 3 to 5 posts per week. Some weeks, the information just flies out of my brain like a jet stream of free-flowing consciousness. Other weeks, I just can’t get motivated and need to rely on things like Alex’s official “Get Your Ass in Gear or Bad Things Will Happen” list, which is really all the inspiration I need sometimes.

The importance of having a vast archive of information is essential to any blog marketing campaign. Not because people like to crawl your archives (you are the only person who does that) but because your archives serve as a catalyst for permanent, ever-flowing search engine traffic.

Once you have a substantial archive of original information, you can afford credibility from Google. I’ve developed websites for years and, in accordance with what the gurus say, Google uses original content quantity as a primary factor in determining rankings. That means that if you set out to target an individual keyword for Google traffic, you are much more likely to be successful if your landing page is found on a site with a vast number of other pages.

This may seem obvious but many web entrepreneurs set out to sell a product online through a single page site (sometimes called a mini or micro site) and driving traffic solely on the merit of strong link building campaigns.

Mini-sites can be great for selling products through referral and affiliate traffic (traffic from other sites) or for social media campaigns (e.g.: Matt Inman’s army of comic mini sites including Things Bears Love) but are comparatively less effective than content rich sites for attracting organic search engine traffic. Because of the nature of blogging, my guess is that most bloggers are looking to get traffic by building content-rich sites.

The definition of a content-rich site

At what point is a blog considered content-rich in the eyes of search engines? That’s a matter that is very much up for debate among web developers. Some gurus say 100 pages is enough. I’ve decided half that number, primarily because a majority of my first few dozen posts are long (over 600 words).

Phase 2: Short-tail Keyword Targeting

After about 50 posts or so, I decided to move into phase two and target short-tail keywords (logical search terms) to establish credibility with Google and get that initial flow of traffic. I use all ree methods of link-building which includes but is not limited to: commenting on do-follow blogs, link exchanges and article marketing.

Manual link-building is a tedious task and the fruits of your labor are not seen until many months later, if ever seen at all. The best and most powerful links are natural links or those that come from other websites voluntarily. Ironically, you can’t get natural links until you first have unnatural links – or links created as a direct result of your efforts.

If you think people like Chris Brogan still spend time manually building links by submitting to article directories, commenting on other blogs and asking for reciprocal links, think again.

Chris Brogan has put his time into manual link building, and is now enjoying the benefits of a constant stream of natural links. All Brogan has to do is provide the content. Now, the quantity of natural links Brogan receives is only variable to the quality of his content. That’s where I want to be in three years. First I’ve got to put my hard time in.

You can replace the name “Chris Brogan” with the name of any big-time blogger. All big-time bloggers have one thing in common: they worked extremely hard to get to where they are now. If you thought Internet marketing was going to be easy money, get out now.

So far, I’ve successfully targeted two major keywords in my niche and ranked 1st in Google for both of them. Along with passively targeted long-tail keyword traffic, the two targeted short-tail keywords have given me roughly 200 daily visitors and an Alexa ranking close to 200K. That’s quite an achievement for me. Soon I will be moving on to phase three, which I will briefly explain below.

Phase 3: Extroverted Marketing

The two previous phases in my plan were somewhat introverted. I needed to build an enormous stockpile of content for MY site. I needed to build links to MY site. Phase three involves something a bit counter-intuitive: building quality content for OTHER PEOPLE’S sites.

Rather than only offering something of value on my own site, I will soon focus my marketing efforts on bringing value to other sites in my niche. On the Internet, very few things are accomplished alone; through the use of guest blogging, I can grow my blog by providing a service to other bloggers.

Guest posting is not for everyone. It requires strong copyediting skills and a tenacity that will not dimmer when posts are rejected or never looked at. Writing is my forte so I am very excited to soon be moving into phase 3 of my plan.

There is a large base of make money on the Internet, blog tips and SEO blogs authored by non-English speakers that have found enormous success by relying on marketing tactics that require no writing ability whatsoever. This is because search engines don’t know the difference between good copy and bad. People do know the difference. If you plan on guest posting you really ought to learn how to use a semi-colon first.

That’s MY Plan…

Now that I have given a brief outline of my blog marketing plan and where I am in it, I’d like to hear what some of the Blogussion readers have as a plan and where they are in it.

Do you even have a marketing plan? Do you consider yourself on track with it? What parts of your marketing campaign need to be amended?

5 Things You Can Stop Worrying About Right Now

Alex — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 04:00:56 +0000

Blogging is not something that “stands still,” it is always changing. Trends, strategies and beliefs are always shifting and how you stay up to date with it is your decision.

But some people are never really “alerted” to these developments in the blogosphere. Because there are already quite a large number of things to worry about on your blog, it’s probably best that you try to cut that number down as much as possible. If you’re worrying about trends and strategies that aren’t really important to your blog anymore, you will be wasting a lot of much-needed time for nothing.

I took a moment and tried to remember back to the days where this blog started, and even at past blogging ventures. I tried to remember things I worried about back in 2007 and 2008 when I really first started blogging, and how irrelevant they are now in 2010.

You don’t worry about any of the following now, right?

1. Google PageRank

I think this is the biggest thing that most bloggers and webmasters in general have stopped worrying about. I remember the days where everyone would be trying to build as many back links as possible for the sake of having a higher PageRank. At one point in time, you could use PageRank as a selling point for a domain name. Now? Not so much.

The only thing you can gain nowadays from a high PageRank is bragging rights. My buddy Rob and I were talking about the PageRank of our blogs a few weeks ago, and we both rank 4. I would like to see Blogussion hit 5 as a ranking (just to rub it in his face), but I won’t be spending even a minute trying to do it, or a second worrying about it.

Why do you think PageRank has lost its value? What was once a defining factor of a “successful website” has now been deemed virtually useless. What happened?

2. Negativity

I remember back when I created my first blog that receiving negative comments, or hearing people disagree with what I wrote about was the end of the world. Controversy was the last thing I wanted to write about, and negativity was one of my biggest fears. I think I feared it because I didn’t know how much it could help me.

I used to think that negativity and disagreement were problems, but it’s actually pure positivity and agreement that were the actual problems. When you write an article that everyone agrees with, one of the two things probably happened:

You wrote about a dead-obvious subject that has been overly talked about in your niche.
You didn’t add a unique point of view to the subject you talked about.

When I see disagreement within the comment section here, I also see success. It shows that people actually read my article, and actually took time to analyze what I said and write out an opposing opinion. That’s a lot better than seeing those comments where all anyone says is “I agree, nice post!”

3. Aggressive Competition

Is it just me, or are bloggers in the same niche actually nice to each other? Maybe I just don’t know any mean bloggers, but it seems to me that we would much rather help our “competition” than slam them nowadays.

I remember reading SEO articles that warned you not to stuff your meta tags with keywords as a blogger in your niche would report you to Google and get your site penalized. I just can’t imagine any of my friends (and most of them are in the same niche as me) doing that to me. But I don’t see myself keyword stuffing either.

Yes, competition still serves a purpose: to inspire you to keep doing good. But, your “competitors” also help you a lot too. They link back to your articles, they include you in their Blogroll, retweet you on Twitter and even want to connect with you on a more personal level. That isn’t what I remember first starting out.

4. Content Thieves

Alright, so they still bring up some worry to many of us. But nothing nearly as bad it was even a few years ago.

Content thieves (aka scrapers) are people who take your content, oftentimes word for word, and publish it to their own blog. Most do it out of ignorance and think it’s okay, and some just think they are sneaky and that it’s actually helping their site.

When content gets stolen, it becomes duplicate content, and duplicate content causes a bunch of negative effects to your SEO. So why do I think content thieves aren’t anything to worry about?

Luckily, things have changed a little. Most of the time when you contact the owner of the blog (the person who stole your content), and ask them to remove what they have stolen, they will listen. Some just need to hear you ask them to remove it, some need a warning, but there are also the few who won’t take it down. In my experience, I have never been declined when asking someone to take down what they have stolen, so some of these people do actually have a conscience.

I can’t back this up entirely, but I believe search engines have also gotten smarter when it comes to duplicate content and can often determine a scraper from a legitimate source. So, if the site that has stolen your site seems spammy, I wouldn’t worry even the slightest bit about penalization in the search engines.

5. Simple Marketing

It’s become extremely easy to carry out even the simplest marketing techniques. So there is no excuse for you to not bring in even a few readers to your blog.

Marketing has literally become as easy as signing up for a Twitter account, following a few people and tweeting. It has become as easy as leaving a comment on a blog. Those are just simple techniques, yes, but many forms marketing has become such an easy task with the web becoming a better place for bloggers.

What’s there to worry about?

I think my blogging life has become a little easier since I stopped worrying about the things I talked about above. They all were pretty important things to me when I first started, but are now trivial and meaningless to me.

So, what are some things you have stopped worrying about? I find that the more experiences you get with your blog, the fewer things you worry about believe it or not. What are your current fears and woes? I’m sure we can talk about them all day.

SEO: Is it Really Worth all the Fuss? – Weekend Debate

Alex — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 05:00:14 +0000

I have been talking a lot about SEO (search engine optimization) over this past week on Blogussion. I started the week off with an article about good headline writing techniques, and ended it talking about optimizing content for search engines.

With all of the discussions those two posts generated about search engine optimization, it left me with some interesting insight about what others think about SEO. From the comments I read, I came up with the following impressions about what some of you think about SEO:

Many of you do worry about SEO, and took the tips I wrote about into consideration for your own optimization practices.
Some reactions were, to my surprise, confusion. There were many people who didn’t understand even some of the basic concepts I was explaining, or were just hearing about them for the first time.
And the most interesting reaction I heard was someone telling me how they didn’t worry about SEO on their blog.

I was more surprised by the second and third reactions than I was the first. I never would have imagined that some bloggers would actually spend little to no time at all worrying about search engines, considering I do spend time on it.

I’m glad there are such diverse opinions about the topic here, as it leads me to ask you this question:

Is SEO worth spending time on?

I know I have spent a lot of time on the optimization of my blog. I spend at least 15-20 minutes per post just on fine-tuning every article I write on Blogussion to maximize its effectiveness in the search engines.

But I have to wonder, am I just overdoing it? Am I spending too much time worrying about the optimization of my content and even my whole blog in general?

You tell me:

I bought the Thesis framework, a theme created with SEO as one of its strongest features.
I pay a monthly fee for a plugin that checks the optimization of my blog articles.
I spend time (like I said, 15-20 minutes) making sure I use the right keywords in my articles and headlines.
I try to link back to past articles on my blog as much as possible.
I try to make content as easily accessible to search engines as it is my human readers.
I like to keep a tab on what keywords my blog is being found for in search engines.

I can keep going, but those are the main things I think about when I focus in on SEO.

Let’s Debate

I am curious now about your SEO practices. How often do you take the time to try to rank well in those search engines? Do you think that search engine traffic is even the traffic source to fully focus on? I want to know every thought on your mind about SEO, and I want to have a debate with you.

Because I think good SEO is very important to a blog.

I don’t think I would have spent so much time (or money) on it if I didn’t think it wasn’t important to a blog. I am very curious to hear what your thoughts are on the topic, however.

Enjoy your weekend!

Blog Content Optimization Made Easier…Much Easier

Alex — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 04:00:33 +0000

When it comes to writing content, you have a lot of things you need to take into consideration before publishing that final draft onto your blog. The one thing you need to consider before publishing anything is whether or not your article is ready to be seen by many people.

There are a lot of ways an article can bring in traffic. It can be from social media websites, a mention on another blog, link directories, newsletters, etc. However, there is one method of driving traffic to a blog that is pretty difficult to wrap your head around.

Search engine traffic.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a tricky subject to say the least, but it’s a method that can bring thousands of visitors to your blog easily. Do you know what the only thing you need to do to achieve SEO greatness is? Keep writing blog content.

When it comes down to it, all that truly matters for good SEO is good content. It’s not about writing content that humans will enjoy for SEO, it’s about writing content that search engines will enjoy (but don’t get me wrong, always put the humans first).

Because of the confusion that this topic causes, there are many bloggers out there who simply do not understand how SEO works. With that lack of understanding, many ignore it, and many approach it the wrong way. Lucky for us (yes, I consider myself a pretty dumb SEO’er), there are people who understand how search engines work and are nice enough to help us dumb-dumbs rank better within the search engines.

For you today, I have a list with three of the absolute best tools there are out there for making SEO seem almost easy and effortless. I use all three of them here on Blogussion, and so far I have been pretty pleased with the results of each.

1. The Thesis Theme for WordPress

You guys are probably tired of hearing about it, but Thesis has had such a huge impact on the SEO of my blog that I can’t help but mention it anytime I bring up search engines!

I won’t go over the millions of things Thesis does to help your SEO, but I will tell you the one feature that is particularly useful to your content.

One of the coolest things that Thesis has to offer are the extra options it adds into the post screen section of your blog. You can add a custom title tag, meta descriptions and post tags to match the content of your article. Those three things have an impact on how well your content can rank in the search engines, and Thesis makes dealing with those important things easy.

Buy the Thesis theme →

A simpler alternative

If you don’t own Thesis (what are you, crazy?), you’re still in luck. There are plugins out there that have the same features Thesis does to your post screen to help you better your SEO for articles. There is a plugin for WordPress called All in One SEO which is a must have plugin for any WordPress user not on Thesis (as Thesis eliminates the need for All in One SEO).

2. Scribe SEO

I have just recently started using Scribe SEO to optimize my articles, but I have to tell you – it is one of the most useful services I have signed up for in a long time.

Scribe basically acts as your very own SEO instructor. It analyzes your content, and grades you on the optimization of your article. It then works with you, generating a list of things you can do to improve your article for the search engines until you have a “perfect SEO score.”

What a post with a perfect grade will appear as after review by Scribe

Scribe checks the obvious things like your post title, meta descriptions and post tags. But the cool thing is it even looks over the minor details of your post that can affect your SEO.

Did you know, for instance, that a good SEO practice is to add at least 1-2 hyperlinks towards the beginning of your article? I didn’t, but Scribe has taught me little tricks like that, and so much more.

The only thing is, Scribe is a paid service. There are monthly subscriptions, but it is well worth the money to have a tool that will help you with the SEO of your articles as much as Scribe does. I will write a more detailed review of Scribe later, because I just flat-out love this service.

Like any good service, there is a free trial for Scribe available if you would rather try it out before you buy it.

Useful Scribe Links:

3. Insights Interlinking Plugin

Insights is a totally free plugin that helps you do one thing: interlink. Interlinking blog posts is a technique that helps older articles on your blog with a few main things:

Drive traffic back to your older articles.
Helps search engines get to your older content and increase PageRank, index them (if for some odd reason they were never indexed), etc.
If you choose a specific set of keywords to link back to that article, those links will help you rank for those chosen keywords in search engines.

Interlinking without any tools to guide you can be tricky if you have a lot of posts on your blog. We can’t remember every single article we write on our blog to interlink, so that’s where Insights comes in.

The plugin adds a new menu to your post screen that has a search bar in it. With this search bar, you can type in keywords of posts you want to find so you can interlink to in your current article. Not only that, you can search Google and many other sources right from your admin panel.

This plugin makes interlinking a breeze, and I recommend it to every single one of you reading this article.

That’s what I use

Those are the three amazing tools I use here to prepare my articles for a run in the search engines. Even though two of them are paid for, they will pay off for you immensely with proper use. If a 16-year-old kid can afford them, I’m sure you can too.

Are there any SEO tools you use in particular? There are more that I have found, but I chose to limit this article to just these three major ones. But I would love to hear what you guys use to optimize your content.

Don’t Let SEO Kill Your Content!

Stacey — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 23:43:22 +0000

This is a guest post by Stacey Cavanagh of Tecmark SEO Manchester.

SEO is the trend of the moment in the online business communities. And quite rightly so, if you ask me. Given how the internet has entirely revolutionised the way we use our recreational time and conduct business, any serious company can hardly ignore SEO now. But there’s a whole community of people becoming disillusioned with SEO. Bad SEO, to be quite specific.

Badly carried out SEO has a habit of essentially polluting content on the internet and it’s quite understandable that people will become frustrated with that. After all, nobody gets any joy from a website full of copycat, badly written and over keyword stuffed content that provides the end-user with nothing other than a headache!

But SEO does not have to kill your content. In fact, quite the opposite. Good SEO goes hand in hand with good content. Here’s how to make sure your SEO and content enhance one another.

1. Write for HUMANS!

As much as we want to ‘impress’ the Google crawlers, concentrating too much on keyword craziness will kill your content. Yes, by all means, use your keyword in your content. But all the crawlers need to know is what your content is about. They’re pretty bright, the Google bots. Say something to them a few times and they get that this is your topic. Say it too many times, however, and they get a little bit peeved with your repetitiveness and your human readers get miffed as well. Resulting in what? A spam penalty, potential bad press and a whole host of readers who will not be returning to your site. Ask yourself, before you post something on your website, ‘Would I want to read this?’ If the answer to that is ‘no,’ don’t post. What isn’t good enough for you is not good enough for your readers either. Your audience is fundamentally people.

2. Keep it unique!

This is something that cannot possibly be emphasised enough. Why would someone come to your site to read something they could go and check out on any of a million others? By the same token, why would a search engine choose your content page to display for a certain keyword when exactly the same topic is featured on a million other sites? In keeping your content unique, you give your readers something they simply cannot get elsewhere and you avoid duplicate content. People are happy. Crawlers are happy.

3. Avoid Pretentious Language!

Perhaps this is just a personal gripe of mine, but I hate over complicated language on blogs and websites. Your audience wants information or entertainment. Nobody wants to have to pull a dictionary out just to get through a paragraph of your latest article. A website should be a source of accessible, high quality information. It needn’t be as linguistically complex as an episode of Dawson’s Creek! It’s great that you have such an expansive vocabulary, but filling your content full of long words doesn’t impress people who simply want information quickly and easily. And in terms of SEO, think about what people actually search for. People tend to search in basic, straightforward language. If someone is searching for information on good books, they’re probably more likely to search for ‘good books’ than for ‘tremendous manuscripts’. Keep is simple.

4. Keep it concise

Yes, for SEO benefit plenty of content is a good thing. But this isn’t to say that you should make 1000 words out of a two point piece of information. Get to the point concisely and informatively. Nobody wants to read four paragraphs of irrelevant tosh before they find out what the point in your article is. In doing this, you’ll lose a good number of readers before they even know what your point is. If your article is relevant and concise, you will find that your relevant keywords fit naturally into it. This makes for much better content. Keywords that look out-of-place and ruin the flow of an article make for very uncomfortable reading.

5. The human touch

Computers can generate articles in bulk in seconds these days. So why even bother getting a human to write one? Simply because of the human touch. A computer cannot recreate a personable voice. For most websites, a human voice to the article works well and adds an extra layer to the content. While a ‘human touch’ might not directly affect your search engine rankings, it can make the difference between people returning to your website and not bothering! This, again, relates back to bearing in mind that your audience is human!

These are just 5 ways in which you can ensure that SEO doesn’t kill your content. Is there anything worse than nonsensical websites that just repeat a stupid phrase over and over for the benefit of a bot? What’s the point in getting a website to the top of the search engines for your relevant keywords if, once people are on the site, they want to leave immediately? Any SEO campaign with poor quality content is simply a waste of time.

Bio

Stacey Cavanagh is an online marketer working for Tecmark Systems Ltd, a digital media agency in the North West of England. http://www.tecmark.co.uk

Quick Tip from the Editor: Here are 4 SEO Things to Always Do Before Publishing Your Post -
1. Choose a major keyword or phrase for your article.
2. Include the Keyword in your Post Title and Slug/Url.
3. Include the Keyword in your Meta Keywords and Post Tags.
4. Include the Keyword at least 2-3 times in your post and always in your anchor text to the article.

Little Known Ways Darren Rowse Makes Money Blogging

Seth — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 04:01:08 +0000

Before Darren Rowse became “the Problogger” we all know as the face of the Blogging tips world, he was a full-time blogger earning a six-figure income.

Today we are going to talk about how he earned a full-time income from blogging before he became the famous blogging authority.

Darren Rowse “Problogger”

No matter your opinion of Darren Rowse as the most influential blogger in the blog tips niche, everyone must admit he is the branded authority for this topic. When Darren’s name is attached to something it does two things, succeeds and sells. He is a trusted authority for any new blogger and an old friend to many advanced bloggers.

His blog’s range from the ultimate in blogging tips to cool tutorials and Twitter news. Here are the profiles of his most well-known projects and blogs. These blogs are all created since 2005 and surprisingly all of them but Problogger.net have been created after Darren made six-figures.

When Problogger.net (Darren’s signature blog) was launched in 2005 it was not more than 9 months before Darren became a legitimate problogger who made six figures – $XXX,XXX. The article where Darren announces this monumental event can be read here - Darren Hits Six-Figures

Here are the profiles of Darren’s most well known blogs:

Problogger.net

Since 2005, Darren’s most influential blog has provided important tips and topical news to encourage and educate bloggers. As the face of Darren’s brand online, Problogger has become more than an income stream and far more as a resume for Darren’s authority as the problogger. - Problogger.net
Pageviews per day: 27,975 / Total Pageviews: 29,649,731 (in 5 years)

Digital Photography School

Started in 2006, Darren’s fun and tutorial rich photography blog has excelled at driving traffic and getting lots of subscribers. In addition to the tutorials and blog posts, digital photography school is unique because of its interactive forum community. - Digital Photography School
Subscribers: 345,030 / Alexa Rank: 7,156

Twitip

A recent addition to Darren’s arsenal, Twitip features awesome articles on how to use Twitter to drive traffic to your blogs and sites or how to use Twitter as a stand alone social media platform for networking. The blog just had a recent redesign and is looking good and getting more content posted every day - Twitip
Alexa Rank: 17,112 / Subscribers: 33,183 / Twitter: 81,102

Problogger.com

Problogger readers have long begged for a chance to have a forum on Darren’s blogging tips blog. After having a very successful mini series to make bloggers better, Darren decided to give it a try. So far the project has been a success with lots of posts, active members, and a full-time moderator – Problogger.com
Members: 2,080 / Total Posts: 15,000+

The most important point in this article is this…. Darren became a six-figure blogger before his books, before Problogger had more than 700 subscribers, and before his widely popular TwiTips and Digital Photography School blogs. Darren was a Problogger from other blogs.

Those blogs and his strategy are what we are going to explore today. Too often bloggers try to emulate Darren’s strategy by creating a huge tips blog and becoming an authority on one site. While this may work, Darren’s trusted strategy.. because it obviously worked is far better. First lets look at his income sources at the time of his six-figure income.

Note: Problogger.net was very small at the time, comments were low, and traffic was no where near its current milestones. Its important to understand this was 5 years ago and the other major blogs I listed above did not exist.

Six Figure Blogging

Darren’s income can be traced [with a bit of investigative journalism] back to a variety of blogs coming from 2 major domain names. The two domains are breakingnewsblog.com and livingroom.org. If you go to the main page of either domain you can see very basic graphics, limited text and no monetization. So how did he do it?

The key was each of these domains had many sub-domains. Each sub-domain was very targeted to specific topics like digital cameras, printers, camera phones, and even unmanned aerial vehicles. The blogs were then very keyword specific and advertising inundated. The blogs brought in lots of search engine traffic and if you look at them today they are still bringing more traffic then 80% of other blogs even though many have not been updated for years.

Does this sound not only interesting but weird? Yes the blogs are not pretty, the designs are generally bad, and some are not even on wordpress (oh no!), but this gives us a great example of making money online. Here’s a visual for how Darren was doing it:

Darren’s Strategy

The 3 major pillars in Darren’s strategy that I can tell from looking at the blogs and review some of their statistical information are these:

1. Keyword Rich Content – Articles on site about printers, robotics, or other random topics are both specific and targeted. Post topics are very detailed and the reviews are precisely what both search engines and users would look for on the subject. The keywords are also linked throughout the site to each other and all of his sub-domains are linked in the footers of his blogs, making his blogs search engine optimized (SEO).

What You Should Do

The visualization helps us to realize to make six-figures it is much more realistic if there are multiple sources of income coming in from a variety of monetization methods. What this means to you is that if you want to be a six-figure blogger or even just a full-time blogger for that matter you should diversify your income and learn from a Problogger.

I would start now by getting yourself a blog if you don’t have one [if you need help contact us and we'll help] and then get writing. Start producing as much content as you can for your blog and when you start to see search engine traffic coming into your blog then begin another blog and do the same. As you build traffic on one blog and start earning money on it, find a writer for the blog and start to pay them for content and regular posting. Then all you have to do is write a post a week [based on the topic] and adminster the blog.

Every time you reach this point of success then start a new blog. The writer you hire will continue to produce content for your blog while you build up the content on a new site. This way you do not have to spend any money you do not have. Over time the writer will put so much content on your blog you will not only be paying for their services but you will start making a profit. After you have built up a few blogs with lots of content, its time to ramp up the monetization.

To monetize you can check out some of these tips for making money blogging, or just find a great way to make money from your niche topic. The possibilities are endless and the financial investment is minimal. If you are willing to put the time into your blogs you can be a six-figure blogger too, just like Darren Rowse!

7 Lucky SEO Tools for Your Blog

Seth — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 19:33:39 +0000

Most traffic for highly successful blogs comes from search engines like Google or Bing. Search engine visitors are more likely to buy products, click on advertisements, and sign up to newsletters. The question is then, how do bloggers get search engine traffic?

Search engine optimization or SEO is how to take your blog from a low traffic site to an optimized high traffic blog. The key is to follow some important search engine rules, use some of the webs most valuable tools, and work on making your content friendly to both search engines and human readers. I have put together a few of my favorite tools and tips for better seo below.

Guide to SEO

In our recent production of the Planning to Earning Guide for bloggers, we created a section of the guide that is completely dedicated to search engine optimization. We have articles about the basics of seo, choosing the right keywords, url canonicalization, and even the holy trinity of seo. Make sure to see all 13 articles on SEO in our Guide to SEO.

Keyword Position Tool

If you are curious about how your current seo is doing or you have made some recent seo adjustments and are looking for ways to check if they worked, just check out the Keyword Position Tool. With this seo tool you will be able to check a specific keyword with a specific url to find the search engine position for the url. This is useful to check both for yourself and your competition to see how to improve your positioning and whether you are moving up on the list or down.

Link Popularity

Another important element in seo optimization is link analysis. Bloggers need to know how many links they have for a given url or address and what the quality of the links are. To do this you can use a Link Popularity Tool. It is quick and easy, just put in your url and find out. Again this is a great tool to improve your own blog or to understand your competition for specific keywords. If you are in the 9th spot for a keyword, check out the 6,7, and 8th spots to see what it will take to overpass them.

Meta Analyzer

A meta analyzer looks at the meta description and keywords of either your blog or another blog based upon the url you input. The best way to use this tool is to check out other blogs you are competing with to see how they are getting traffic and what keywords they are using. Meta Analyzer Tool

Keyword Difficulty

Know whether your competition for a certain keyword will be difficult or if you will be able to become the top url for the search engines. Do this by using the Keyword Difficulty Checker. Use it and the tool will give you a percentage of difficulty. The higher the precentage the more difficult it will be to achieve success on the keyword.

W3C Validation

Blogussion has an article to describe more about W3C Validation and give instructions on why it it is important. The main thing is that if your site is not up to the standards set by W3C then search engines will be less favorable to you. So get your blog up to standard by checking your site with this official Validation Tool.

Bad Neighborhood Link

A bad neighborhood is a link in which your blog is being associated with spam or other indecent sites on the internet. Not only is this not helpful to your blog but it actually damages your blogs reputation with search engines. Use the Bad Neighborhood Tool to see if you are being negatively effected. Note, each bad link should be evaluated as the tool is not as subjective.

Conclusion

Getting lucky with search engines all depends on your ability to maximize the good content on your blog and minimize any problems that may arise from w3c validation or bad neighbors. So go use the tools and read up on how to become better at SEO.

4 Top SEO-Blogs & Their Priceless Resources Pt. 3

Janith — Wed, 13 May 2009 19:50:41 +0000

In today’s post, we bring together the third installment in the “4 Top SEO Blogs & Their Priceless Resources” series. Just like in Pt.1 and Pt.II, in Part III – we explore yet another diverse and resourceful website, that’s just overflowing with information.

Most of their resources are for paid users – but every now and then; they dish out some very useful information for free on their blog. You might recognize them from the quite large, yet outstandingly iconic header…

SEOBook is in my opinion, is your one-stop SEO resource. Why? It has a constantly updated blog, a friendly community within its forums and even extra paid-content, for those that want to stretch the mile.

They explore everything from utilizing Twitter to Search Engine Marketing to even more philosophical debates; like do you master the obvious? It’s absolutely compulsory for any serious web-master to follow them as a resourceful blog and to be kept updated on the latest SEO stuff.

SEOBook

Which Form of Advertising is More Efficient & Effective?

If you’ve read Alex’s relatively recent post on How he Realized Banner Ads are Harmful to our Community you will know how important it is to pick the proper form of advertising. Different blogs respond differently, to different forms. Even though the most common type is the 125×125 Ad blocks, they were quite the disaster for us.

So, what’s the way around this? Well SEOBook has a couple of techniques but Customer Recommendations seems to be the most actively promoted. If you did not get what I just said – that’s okay; you have to read the post first

I Wish I Knew Then What I Know Now

How many times have you heard someone say this? Quite often, I would presume. We all have a starting point, a point where we know nothing about a specific point – and eventually with time; we learn about it. This is obviously a natural process, but more often than not – we try to do something we aren’t quite totally sure about yet.

In this case, it’s marketing and growing your business. Now it’s not possible to know everything but we should know a fair bit before even attempting to venture out on our own. When we don’t, we usually are confronted with problems that we can’t solve.

This is why I love such posts where webmasters, internet marketers or even everyday bloggers go over their mistakes and their solutions to them; because we can all learn from it.

Brand Considerations When Choosing Domain Name

When you choose a domain for new blog or site, it’s absolutely critical that you have a rough idea where you want to go with it. It’s no good registering “www.books.com” for $0.99 and then realizing you want to blog about your new PlayStation 3 games. So, in this post – about considering your brand name – they go over some of the basic things you will need to consider. Undoubtedly, it will help you picking a proper and useful domain name.

When Alex and I first started with this blog (Now titled Blogussion) we had couple of sessions where we discussed possible names for the blog. Something that was unique but more importantly; it was brand-able. It’s not the easiest thing in the world, because the possibilities are just limitless – but end of the day; you need to pick one.

KaBOOOOM!

Just like the previous posts in this series, I’m only able to go through just a couple of the posts/guides each respective blog provides. They have much, much more goodies and you can check them out over at SEOBook.

Stay tuned for Part 4 – where we explore the wonders of SEOChat!

4 Top SEO-Blogs & Their Priceless Resources Pt. 2

Janith — Mon, 11 May 2009 19:40:41 +0000

It has been a long time coming, in fact nearly 3 weeks – since I wrote the first installment of “4 Top SEO-Blogs and Their Priceless Resources.” If you missed it, in the first installment – I went over several key resources from SearchEngineWatch.

In Pt. 2, I’ll be taking a look over at SEOmoz. Quite frankly, I’m pretty excited about this one because it just has loads and loads of good solid information. Especially their extremely detailed guides on some aspects of Search Engine Optimization. Hopefully, they’ll help you and do some good for your blog – one way or another!

SEOmoz is managed by a team of 18-dedicated writers, that all have specific strengths in Search Engine Optimization. It’s definitely one of the most effect sources of information for any internet marketer out there.

It doesn’t matter if you are a seasoned professional or a complete new-comer; SEOmoz will always have something for everyone to learn from.

They have been online for as long as I can remember and since Day 1 (looking at their archives) they have produced some really good content. Almost every aspect of Search Engine Optimization has been explored, and all of it – in terms us non-experts can understand.

So, let’s take a look at some of their most critically acclaimed content – shall we?

SEOmoz

Beginner’s Checklist for SEO

In this article, Danny Dover puts together one of the most useful check-lists for any new web-masters. Starting from the very beginning of learning the basic WYSIWYG System to installing your Google Analytics’ codes to tracking your site’s performance. It’s a handy little check-list to keep by your side, when launching your first few blogs/websites.

By following Danny’s simple steps, you can assure yourself that you are in fact – covering all the basic requirements of launching a successful blog. Sometimes, in the rush of things or when we are clouded by the excitement of launching a new website – we tend to forget the basics or omit a step.

These can prove to be quite critical and you might find yourself in trouble later down the track. So, just to be sure – keep this check-list by your side when you launch your first few blogs.

Search Engine Rank Factors

Contributed to by over 40 SEO Experts, including the likes of Jeremy Schoemaker, Joost de Valk , Elisabeth Osmeloski and many more big-names – Search Engine Rank Factors V2 is the most comprehensive SEO Guide on the internet.

No questions ask, personally I think this guide has more information than 90% of the “SEO Blogs” out there on the internet. Everything you need to know about SEO – from the basic requirements to the advanced techniques to even the techniques you should be avoiding.

It’s a must read for every SEO activist or blogger that is interested in reaching the higher SERPs. It’s quite a lengthy read, and might take a few days even to take in all the information but it’s definitely worth it.

Web Developer’s SEO Cheat Sheet

I found this resource from SEOmoz to be quite useful, because every now and then we all forget things – but this little cheat sheet can do you wonders. In brief, it quickly explains some of the most common terms that bubble up in Search Engine Optimization practices.

Everything from your header-tags to your .htaccess coding to even a quick note on URL Canonicalization. It’s one of those things that you should have bookmarked – because when the time comes you’ll just kick yourself in the bum because something so simple can easily make you waste hours researching for.

These are just three of the articles that SEOmoz offers and there’s too many good articles for me to omit. Therefore, I’ll let you browse their archives and search their content – hopefully you can gain from their mountain of knowledge.

Stay tuned for Part 3 – where we explore the wonders of SEOBook!