One of the decisions that bloggers and internet marketers have to make is whether or not they are going to use an article spinner, or actually rewrite articles to provide quality content for websites and backlinks. Some people may read that last sentence in horror and the word “plagiarism” may flash before their eyes. But wait! There’s more…
Learn why rewriting is so critical to online marketing success.
I have written about keywords many times. I have addressed the importance of keywords in achieving a high rank on the search engine results page (SERP), which is in turn the key to targeted traffic. There is another even more important component to search engine rank. Backlinks. Content is important. Link building is even more important.
I am trying to make a decision. It concerns links. Links are good. Links get you a higher search engine rank. I have read that even links to other pages within a blog are at least somewhat helpful. The article I wrote yesterday contained more links than I have ever used before. More important was that the backlinks I made were from anchor words. These are words that someone might use in search engine. They are a variety of keyword. The person I learned the little that I know about the subject, Allyn Hane, stopped by and left a comment telling me that I was doing a good job with the links. I have to tell you that hearing that from someone I consider an authority on the subject was a proud moment for me.
So here’s the decision I an trying to make. I’m wondering if I should go back through all the posts on this blog and put more links in before there are too many. The blog is not quite 2 weeks old now (January 21, 2009 was the first day), and I have been adding content regularly (this is the 20th post), so it’s not quite too large to update the posts with more backlinks. The question is, though, would it really even be worth the effort.
Would I really even be improving whatever ranking I might have?
The most valuable backlinks are from other sites that have a high page rank, and while there is some value in having internal backlinks within a site, they don’t carry nearly the same weight as external backlinks. I am inclined to think that there would be little value gained from inserting a lot internal links.
Would it be worth the hours that would be required?
Because of the lesser value of internal links as compared to those of the external I believe that my hours might be better spent writing new content. And not necessarily new content for this site, although I will try not to slow down on that either, but content for other sites. Writing guest posts for other higher ranked sites is a great way to get more backlinks. While I will continue to put links in my new content here, the hours I have available would be better spent writing guest posts, and trying to ge them published.
As must be obvious from reading this post, I have concluded that it would make no sense spending hours adding internal links to the older posts on this site. It would be better to spend my time adding content here, writing comments on other sites, and most importantly, writing guest posts. In other words, doing the things we all know we must do to improve readership.
I actually knew going in to writing this knowing what the conclusion would be. I wrote this simply to illustrate some of the things bloggers need to consider when they are trying to grow their blogs. I am a rank newbie when it comes to SEO (search engine optimizaton), and if there is one thing I have learned about blogging, it is that if you want to grow a blog or any website, then you must consider placement on the search engines. You can always get some referral traffic doing the usual things that I mentioned before, namely writing comments on other sites, and writing guest posts, but a better source is from the search engines. This is especially true if you plan to monetize your site. Search engines will give you targeted traffic if you optimize your site for the right keywords. I know that I don’t know nearly enough about this subject. Yet. One of the reasons that I am aware of my ignorance was the comment that Allyn Hane of Blogger Illustrated left here yesterday. He said,
“Ray,nice job and thanks for the linkage.
Now you did a nice job with the keyword anchors, and on top of that, you did something else that is really key, and that is “link stacking” or “building links on top of your links”
I plan to do a vid on that here real soon! It is a very important concept.
Keep up the hard work man, you will make it!!!!
AL”
Getting a nice comment like that from Allyn made me feel proud; like I was making progress and was on the right road. It was an affirmation that my efforts were producing something worthwhile. BUT! I had no idea what ‘link stacking”, and “links on top of links” meant. I can promise you that I will be watching Allyn’s site like a hawk. I will also be spending a lot of my time researching SEO. And so should you.
As always, comments are encouraged.
I want to know how long it takes to find your voice as a blogger? By that I mean…let me try this again. How do you decide what your blog is going to be about. And is one blog enough? See, here’s the thing, this blog for instance is about taking a blog from it’s infancy and following its path to becoming a successful popular blog. On this blog, I discuss things like the tools that I use to write it…nuts and bolts stuff; like which text editor I prefer to use and why, or the value and purpose of guest posting…well actually that one was a guest post itself. There, Allyn Hane, I made a backlink to anchor words instead of a name. I thought your post on the subject was brilliant.
Okay, enough of the brown nosing. Nice to get backlinks. They’re what get you on the search engines, and all I did there was give two other blogs a little backlink love (knock off the dirty jokes…jeeeeeez…you guys), but that didn’t help this blog at all. Sometimes, however I feel like discussing other things that I care about that have nothing to do with blogging. It would be nuts to write about them here. The people that come to this blog wouldn’t necessarily have the same interests that I have. So what’s a mother to do? That’s just an expression I use. Being a guy I can hardly be a mother. ( My God! More tasteless jokes?)
The way I see it, there’s really only one answer. More blogs. Right now I just have this one, but yesterday I had a sort of an epiphany. Or to put it more simply, a light bulb went on in my head. As usual, I was hitting foam rubber golf balls in the backyard when it suddenly occurred to me that I needed more outlets for my voice, and that the “blog-log” name might just right for its present purpose as stated above, plus another one. It could become the center of a group of blogs. Blogs owned and written by yours truly. A sort of a holding company. Many bloggers have more than one voice, and I’m going to become one of them. I’m still developing just how I want to implement the idea, but when I have it all figured out, you’ll be the first to know.
Having more blogs also is a solution to another problem I’ve written about before. What to do when you don’t have any ideas about what to write. It’s called writer’s block. With more blogs, a writer (me) would have more subjects to choose from. Sometimes the way to get past having nothing to say, is to find something else to talk about.
So there you have it. My answer to the original question, “Is one blog enough?”. For me, the answer is, “no.” For others one just might be perfect.
As always, comments are encouraged.
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How To #2 – Effective Promotion
Here’s number 2 in my series of “how to” articles for bloggers.
What should you know about effective promotion of your blog? You are probably already familiar with the usual litany of blogging. Write posts, comment on other blogs , and guest post. But is there more that you could be doing? Funny you should ask. Now let’s talk a little about what you could be doing to promote your blog more effectively. (Here’s a little freebie piece of advice. Make sure you hit “save draft”, and not the “publish” button when you’re writing in the wordpress editor. heh)
New Posts
This one is not really promotion, but you need to add fresh content to your blog regularly. It doesn’t have to be an every day thing, but try to update, and add new articles on a fairly regular basis. Think about it. How many times are you going to keep coming back to aq blog if the content never seems to change.
Comments on other blogs
This is always on everyone’s list of promotional activities. There’s a reason for that, of course. It works! As has been said already a hundred times, this does not mean making meaningless noises abut how helpful this post is. Leave something with a little meat on it (Sorry vegetarians, but if God didn’t want us to eat animals, then why did he make them out of meat? I’m sorry about that. I couldn’t help myself. It’s one of the funniest things I ever saw. As a public service, here’s the truth. The China Study proves that meat really is not very good for you. The consumption of animal protein leads to all kinds of health problems. End of health lesson.) As I was saying before I so rudely interrupted myself, when you leave comments, be sure you are contributing to the conversation, and not just leaving noise. The point of the exercise is two-fold. One, you want the backlink, which is important to traffic. More backlinks = higher rank on the search engines = more traffic (=more money if you are monetized). Two, you want to leave a comment that has valuable content and is so well-written that readers feel that they just have to go see what your blog is all about.
Guest posting
Guest posting, like commenting has two purposes. One is the backlink, and two is to gain readers. Always check the blog you want to submit a guest post to for any rules or guidelines that they want guest posters to abide by or follow. Since you’re trying to generate more backlinks, and traffic with your guest post, and you are using another bloggers site to do it, you owe them your very best work. Your article will reflect on them as well as you. Make sure you show them the respect and gratitude they deserve by offering only your best writing.
Build Links
There are a number of ways to get links. Blog carnivals, where a number of bloggers with a similar interest get together and list there latest offerings can be effective. Get your blog listed in directories. Find forums and take an active part in them.
Social media
Twitter and Facebook are changing the internet. They should be an important part of your campaign to get people to be aware of your site. Create accounts and talk.
SEO
Before I go I should probably mention something about SEO or search engine optimization. In the comments and guest posting sections I briefly touched on backlinks. They are the principal criteria for ranking. There are different levels of backlinks. The more authoritative the source of the backlink, the more weight it carries. You also should be aware of keywords. Keywords are not just single words either. They are the words and phrases people put into search engines. The higher your page ranks in the search engines for any particular term, the more likely it is that people will click on the link to your page. This is especially critical if your site has something to sell. This one does not…yet. It also helps your site to link to your own articles within your site, so don’t overlook that source of links. I find it helpful to go through my posts after they are written to inspect them for keywords to use as tags, and to look for any terms I may have used that are well-suited to use for links.
Conclusion
The basic concept is simple. You want your blog’s name to appear in as many places as you can possibly find. The more places on the internet it shows up on, the more people will see it. See, effective promotion isn’t that hard.
If you enjoyed what you read here please send a link and share it with others, and as always comments are encouraged.