I have been collecting keywords lately. Lots of keywords. Keywords that will be used to create niche sites. There’s a really great tool that helps me to check how hard it is to rank on Google for any given keyword, or keyword phrase (also know as long-tailed keywords). What is this miraculous tool you may ask? It’s an add-on for the Firefox browser called SEO for Firefox.
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Blogging, Internet Marketing, and More
Internet Success Continued
Monday, April 5th, 2010 | 3 Comments
In the last article I covered a little about keyword analysis. Here’s a bit more. To review, I started with the necessity of picking a niche if your interest is internet marketing. I had a thought. If you have ever spent some time reading about how to make a successful blog, you have found the advice to pick a niche. And the usual reason given is so that you will be able to maintain your passion and be inspired to keep on writing. Well that sounds nice and idealistic, but there’s a significantly better reason.
The Key To Internet Marketing Success
Saturday, April 3rd, 2010 | 2 Comments
For those who are paying attention, yes I got the irons I was bidding on. If that didn’t make any sense to you, then go and read the last blog post. For today, I thought it might be helpful to talk about choosing niches.
For sites that are devoted to internet marketing, niches are carefully researched for their profit potential. For others, their passion for a given subject means that their niche chooses them. For one it’s a purely technical, emotionless choice, for the other it’s no choice at all.
Since the sites that are passion driven are not really a matter of choice, I’ll write about the other kind. The coldly calculated kind. The internet marketing kind. For those who don’t know, here are the steps that are followed in choosing a niche market.
Thoughts On A New Website
Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010 | 5 Comments
I know, I know. It’s been awhile since my last post. I intended to go back to posting more often, but then I got distracted. You know what they say about intentions…you don’t? Okay then, I’ll tell you. The road to hell is paved with good intentions…just ask Tiger…heh. So anyway, there I was intending to go back to posting every day, when I suddenly realized that I was just writing the same stuff everyone else does. I just found it hard to go back and keep regurgitating the crap everyone has read a hundred times all over the internet.
How To #1 – Effective Writing
Friday, February 19th, 2010 | 7 Comments
This is the inaugural article of a new series of “how to” articles I am going to publish here. Since all bloggers have one thing in common, and that’s writing, this seemed like the perfect place to start. So, without further ado:
What’s the point?
What exactly is the purpose of your writing? Understand what you are trying to accomplish, and write toward that goal. Are you informing your readers about something new? Are you going to teach them? Have a clear goal in mind as you write, and lead your reader to your conclusion.
Choosing a topic
Keep in mind why your readers are there. You are writing for them. What do they care about? Don’t write about what your readers have shown they are not interested in. I have written in previous posts on my blog that I have decided to lay off the keyword articles. The readers have spoken (or rather they have not spoken) and I have listened. Fewer comments=lesser interest. Instead focus on what your readers have shown to be their interest. In my blog’s case, I have noticed interest in the articles I have written about the tools and mechanics of blogging. Thus, the birth of this new series of articles.
Get organized- A Little Secret
The ideas that you are conveying to your readers should flow in a logical order. Use an outline if that’s what it takes. I’ll let you in on a little secret. When I write these posts, the very first thing I do is list the points that I want to write about. Then it’s a fairly simple matter of expanding on each of the points that I have listed. After proofreading them it’s a simple matter to rearrange the order if necessary too. Just a little cut and paste. It makes writing simpler, and it’s a big help in staying on point.
Simplicity is a good thing
Simple, plain language works. Use it. Don’t practice using the biggest words you can find in the dictionary or thesaurus to impress your readers. You’ll impress them alright, but not in a good way. Readers want a simple clear message. They don’t need you to point out that they don’t have the largest vocabulary on the planet. Keep in mind that your are writing to convey information and not to impress.
This is the web
Remember that you’re writing for the web. I mentioned this for a reason. It’s unlike writing for any other media. This is the place where the reader can instantly go to another source of information with just the click of a mouse button if they get bored. You must be interesting. You must hold your reader’s interest or they can instantly leave your pearls of wisdom, thus turning them into pearls of… well…something else.
Look for more articles in my new “how to” series in the very near future
Free Resources For Learning About Keywords
Saturday, February 6th, 2010 | 2 Comments
It’s a rainy day here in southern California…go figure. I have a plan for today. Today I am going to spend my time learning how to do keyword research. I have been writing about the importance of keywords a lot lately. I am a total convert to the idea that in order to use your blog to make money, you absolutely have to learn what the internet marketing experts know. “Oh, the horror…he’s talking about that horrible money thing again. Why can’t he just be satisfied with being a pure blogger? He’s going to the dark side. He wants to become …wait for it…an Internet Marketer.” Is that what you were just thinking? If it is, then you are right…sort of. There is no need to choose. There is a third alternative. You can be a blogger concerned with writing great, well-written, quality content, and be an internet marketer who uses their blogging talent to provide for yourself or your family. I will admit to being a newbie at this, but I am learning quickly.
Just a sec…more coffee. Okay, that’s better. I plan to spend a lot of time visiting the sites of internet marketing wizards. I am going to read through older posts on several sites. There is a whole internet out there just full of free information. SO here’s a short list I have compiled of some of the sites I’ll be taking a look at today. There’s a reason the link is not the site name. For backlink purposes, I have learned (from Allyn Hane) that it’s better to link to anchor text. Not that Yaro needs much in the way of ranking assistance, but I think it’s good practice, and it’s the right thing to do. If you’re going to the trouble of making a link anyway, why not do it the way that will benefit the recipient of your link love the most, right?
The internet business blog, Yaro Starak’s Entrepeneur’s-Journey.
If you haven’t heard of Yaro Starak, then you are probably new to the idea of trying to make money from the internet. He has wonderful skills at marketing, and he wants to share them with you. He also would like to be paid for some of the more advanced information, but then who doesn’t? There is a ton of free information available from this site.
Where I first learned a bit about backlinks and anchor text. Blogger Illustrated.net
Allyn Hane hangs his blogging hat at this site. He likes to make instructional videos. You should watch them. As I mentioned above, Al’s is the site where I first became aware of using keywords properly. I still have barely scratched the surface, but You need to start somewhere, and this is a pretty good somewhere.
Blog tips to help you make money blogging. That’s the html title of probably the most sucessful blog about blogging in the whole internet. Problogger.net
I think everyone in the blogging world knows about problogger Darren Rowse. He is the man who taught us about the potential of blogging and marketing. You could spend days, weeks or maybe even months learning all that Darren has to offer at his site. It’s huge.
How to Make Money Online for Beginners
This is Grizzly’s blogspot blog that can teach you how to make a comfortable living online. It takes some work to go through the articles, but this is probably the ultimate free way to learn how to use keywords to make money online. This site also proves that it is possible to make money with a free blog. It’s a blogspot blog for crying out loud…No fancy Thesis theme…just a blogspot blog worked by an expert. This one is a goldmine for the prospectors that are willing to do the digging and benefit from the internet goldrush.
Those are just four of the sites I’ll visit today. Not so much to learn about keywords really, but more about HOW they are used on successful blogs. Except for Al’s Blogger Illustrated, that’s a good place to learn the about part. So that’s how I’m going to spend my day this rainy Saturday. I’d rather be playing golf, but the sun will be back in a day or two, and at least there’s no snow.
As always, comments are encouraged.
Blogging For Birdies
Thursday, February 4th, 2010 | No Comments
Blogging is like… Yes, it’s an analogy article. I am going to compare blogging to playing golf. I love golf. I love blogging. What could be better than combining them?
Originally I was going to title this article, “Fore!!!” Then I thought, “In terms of keywords, that would not make sense. Who’s going to search for the term ‘fore?’” So I’ll come back to the title after I’ve written it, and I see where my thoughts take me. So let’s get on down to the tee box, shall we?
Tee It Up
Here we are, at the tee. It’s a long par 5 with a dogleg to the right. There’s water up the left side and trees along the right. The caddy hands you your driver. The caddy, in case you’re curious is your muse. The driver is the idea which she just placed within your mind. (My muse is a she. Don’t ask me how I know this, I just do.) Now you have an idea for a new article. Now remember, there are hazards on both sides of the fairway so you need to swing in control. Don’t try to kill it. Figure out from past articles and the responses to them what interests your readers. My blog is about blogging, so I’m not going to write about cars, for instance. That might be considered a duck hook into the water. The readers who come to you for information on blogging are not there for car articles, they are there for blogging articles, so let’s just try to keep the ball in the fairway, shall we? Okay, so now we’ve hit a nice drive up the fairway and we’ve managed to hit it just through the corner and out into the middle of the fairway. Nice shot! I said it was a long par 5, and there’s just no way we can make in two. So let’s play a layup and try to get in good position for the next shot. Today we’re playing safe. Maybe when the blog is older and has a large following, we’ll try the heroic go-for-the-green-in-two shot. But not just yet. Today we’re going to play safe and try to make a good score.
The Layup Shot
The water is still on the left and there are still the trees along the right. We’re hitting a layup shot, so the prime consideration is where do we want to put the ball in order to give us the best position for our next shot. We can see that the pin is on the left side of the green, but there’s a sand bunker in the front of the green on that side. Clearly, the best position to shoot for that pin is from the right side, to avoid having to fly the ball over the sand. If we come up a bit short, from the right side we’ll still be on the green and not shooting from the sand. In terms of blogging, we have come up with a good idea that relates to the purpose of our blog, and now we must write toward the purpose of the article. Once you have the idea for your article, you want to remember the focus of the article. Don’t allow yourself to start in one direction and then go off in another. If you’re writing about the plugin you just installed in your wordpress blog, then talk about that plugin. Don’t go off on a tangent and start talking about your widgets. Save your widgets for another article and stay on topic with your plugin. On a tangent here (heh) don’t you think blogging has some silly vocabulary?
The Approach
Okay, we’ve made our layup shot and now we’re safely on the right side of the fairway with a good look at the pin. It’s just a wedge shot now. We’re closing in on the end of the article now. This is no time to lose control and send the ball over the green. In the article we’ve made our case so to speak. We’ve given facts and reasons, and now we’re heading for our conclusion. But first, let’s take another look at what we’ve written thus far. Did we include all the points we wanted to make? Are they in the order that makes the most sense? Then nice shot. We’re tight to the pin and left with just a tap-in for birdie.
The Putt
With all our facts checked and in the right order. It’s time for our conclusion. The whole point of the article. State your conclusion clearly. Don’t get all wordy and try to add words just to make the article longer. That just gets boring. Just tap it in, make your point, and head for the nineteenth hole. (That’s the bar or lounge in case you weren’t sure.) Well played, my friend. Well played.
AS always, comments are encouraged
Backlinks Are Good
Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010 | 4 Comments
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.
Considerations
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.
Conclusion
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.
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.