Archive for the ‘Blog Marketing’ Category
Targeting search engine crawlers vs. human readers on your blog
Saturday, March 13th, 2010
My last post on this blog was a bit out of the ordinary. I’m sure if I had a large subscriber base, I would be getting tons of emails asking what the deal was. I wrote an entire post on one very simple thing: how to check which version of WordPress you are using. That little piece of information is probably not useful for any subscriber base. After all, most WordPress users who happened to be subscribed to my blog either already know which version they are running or don’t have a particular need to find out.
So why did I create the post?
The answer starts with a G and ends with an E. Yup, you guessed it: Google.
Yesterday, while I was tweaking the custom theme I built (which is almost ready) for this site, I had to find out which version of WordPress I was using to determine whether or not a PHP function would work on my blog.
Why your FeedBurner count will never be accurate
Thursday, March 11th, 2010
Nearly a week ago, I redirected all of the feeds on this blog to a FeedBurner feed (which allows me to track and manage my feed) and placed the code (provided by FeedBurner) that displays the feed count into a custom HTML widget in my sidebar.
I was ecstatic to see my feed count rise every day. Every morning, I would wake up and check if the FeedBurner fairy had visited me with more subscribers. I would either throw my arms in the air, gleaming in triumph and success or lull my head down in utter shame and defeat. Even with the addition of one subscriber I felt like I had accomplished something.
Boy was I wrong.
Notes on title rewriting keyword density
Wednesday, March 10th, 2010
I was doing some research for a school assignment today and came across a few news articles that were using some very interesting URLs.
A Fox News Report titled “Global Warming in Last 15 Years Insignificant, U.K.’s Top Climate Scientist Admits,” ended with: global-warming-insignificant-years-admits-uks-climate-scientist
Why was it that several of the words in the title were left out of the URL?
Targeting long tail keywords on your blog
Saturday, March 6th, 2010
Forget targeting individual keywords. That’s right. They matter little if you are serious about getting traffic to your blog from search engines.
For a business website that received 15,000 visitors per month, 8,135 of the visitors (less than 20%) came from keywords that bring only 1 visitor per month. That means that 80% of visitors came from long-tail keywords. And that statistic is not by any means an isolated case.
What you need to know about earning commissions from affiliate links on your blog
Thursday, March 4th, 2010
A brief overview of earning money on your blog through affiliate networks
Wouldn’t it be great if you could get paid a commission for every visitor you send to a third party website that purchases a product on that website?
Enter affiliate marketing. You place a link to a product on your blog and get a percentage of every sale that link is responsible for. All of the payment processing is handled by the affiliate program — including the sales transactions (customer to vendor) and the commission crediting (vendor to affiliate).
How to tell if your blog has been indexed in Google
Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ tigerpixel/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
A good indication of how much respect the almighty Google has for your blog is to check how many pages you have indexed in Google. The more pages you have indexed, ideally, the more chances you have of getting visitors from Google.
The fastest way yo determine how many of your blog’s pages that Google has indexed is by doing a simple Google search with site:yoursite.com
Buying a Domain for Your Blog
Thursday, February 25th, 2010
This post is part of a series called blogging 101.
Buying a domain for the first time is a thrilling experience. A domain is something uniquely yours and it is the chief identifier of your site or brand. Your domain is not only the first element of your website brand that makes an impression on your visitors but is also the most recurring. Your visitors will be forced to recognize your domain every time they type it into their address bar or view their address bar while browsing your site. That is why you should carefully consider the following 3 things when choosing a domain:
Setting up an email subscription form with Google FeedBurner for your site or blog
Wednesday, February 24th, 2010
I thought I would take the time today to elaborate on an easy way to set up an email opt in form for your blog. The advantages of having an email subscription feature on your blog are tremendous.
With an email subscription program, you can:
- Automatically send followers updates of your blog which will of course create more traffic
- Let your followers know about major site changes
- Send your followers special offers (if they opt in)
A huge mistake Internet marketers make after creating their first successful website is to not have an email subscription form. In the world of Internet marketing, email contacts are everything. They are your lifeline into a world of opportunities. You need a way to get in contact with your base; and it doesn’t matter how excellent you believe your site is, sometimes people just lose interest, forget your address or lose your site bookmark. Sometimes, they just need a prod — email notifications are an ideal way to do that.
Submitting your blog to directories
Monday, February 22nd, 2010
Today I submitted Blogtap to a number of directories including: bloggapedia.com, blogcatalog.com and blogarama.com. I just did a simple Google search for blog directories and submitted my blog to the directories listed in the top three results.
There really are only two reasons why you would want to submit your blog to a directory.
Choosing a name for your blog
Friday, February 19th, 2010
Never take the decision of naming your blog lightly. You might some day regret it — especially if you are looking to reach a large audience or to earn money from your blog.
The concept you need to understand the most when naming a blog is the marketing concept of branding. Your brand is your everything. Even if you don’t believe you have a definitive brand, visitors begin forming a mental image of your brand the second they first access your blog’s frontpage.
In the blogging world, your brand is heavily affected by the name you choose. Your logo, design and domain will also heavily affect your brand image but I will not go into those three brand elements in this post.
When it comes to naming your blog, the most important thing to consider is what topic your blog will be limited to (if any). This blog is obviously about blogging so, naturally, the title (Blogtap) is representative of that. If I ever wanted to blog about other topics (such as tennis) on Blogtap, I would not be committing to my brand very well and I would most likely be doing damage to my brand.
All blogs that are not personal blogs gravitate around a particular topic or niche. It is this way because of how the Internet works. Sure, you could create a blog about tennis and blogging. But the odds of finding readers that enjoy both tennis and blogging are very rare. So, if you want to reach a large audience, you should be careful about which topics your blog gravitates towards. That doesn’t mean you should always be broad and impersonal; it only means your blog should have an underlying theme that readers can relate to.
I chose blogging because that is one thing I am passionate about. If you choose what you are passionate about, everything else (like the business and marketing aspect) will fall into place.
How to add meta tags to your blog’s front page and posts in WordPress
Thursday, February 18th, 2010
Meta tags like the description and keywords tags are what search engines use to identify the content of a page on your site. The description tag is the most important meta tag because it is displayed to search engine users on result pages. For example, when I search the term ‘blog’ in Google, the first result looks like this:
The text that reads: “Blogger is a free blog publishing tool from Google for easily sharing your thoughts with the world. Blogger makes it simple to post text, photos and video …” is actually the meta description tag for Google Blogger’s frontpage.
7 sure-fire ways to get traffic to your blog using Digg
Wednesday, February 17th, 2010
So, you just made a blog and now you are looking for people to read it. Problem is — you’re fat, uneducated, poor and friendless. Who’s gonna’ read your blog?
Well, if you know how to use Digg correctly, one of your wee little blog posts just might end up on 10,000 computer screens all across America one day. With a little luck of course.
The first thing you need to know about Digg is that it was not designed for people to market their own websites with. Digg was designed to be a social news network which allows people to share or Digg pages they have an interest in on the web. The ideal Digg user is someone who uses Digg because it allows them a better web surfing experience.
Digg works like a voting system. Someone finds an article, blog post or picture they enjoy, so they submit it to Digg. At the submission screen they are asked for a title, URL (address), category (Digg has 8 main ones) and description. Sounds like a lot of fields to complete but many times the fields are filled in automatically if the Digger is using a Digg toolbar or browser add-on like this one.
After a content item is submitted to Digg, it gets passed off to other users. If those users Digg it, the item becomes more progressively exposed to other Digg users; then, if the Digg count reaches a certain threshold, the content item is featured on Digg’s frontpage. If you ever do make it to Digg’s G-L-O-R-I-O-U-S homepage, you really should throw yourself a party — as it is quite an accomplishment.
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