Bloggers Guide to SEO
First I have to say that I am by no means a SEO expert, but I do know blogging. Improving your blog for search engines has never been easier for bloggers. It just takes a little bit of work. In the last month we’ve received 1,400 visitors from Google alone.
What Exactly is SEO?
When I first started blogging, I didn’t even know what SEO was.
SEO is short for Search Engine Optimization. It is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a website from search engines.
The better your website is prepared and “optimized” for search engines, the more traffic you should get. Here is how you can improve your blog and start using basic SEO methods to improve your rankings.
Change the URL Permalink Structure
It’s important for your blogs URL to include at least the post title. Basic WordPress default settings give your blog, example, “yourblog.com/p=1”. This not only hurts your SEO, but makes your blog look unprofessional. You can customize your post URLs to have whatever you like.
To change the settings, go to your Options tab in the WordPress dashboard. Then select permalinks. To have your post link just have the post title, go to custom and enter /%postname%/.
I recommend to do this very early with your blog. By changing the URL structure, your blog will need to be re-indexed for the right URLs. If I changed my permalink structure now, people searching my blog would get errors because the URL for each post would be different.
Install the All In One SEO WordPress Plugin
This is an essential (and easy) WordPress plugin for any blog. This plugin allows you to perform basic important SEO techniques with your blog. You can change the title and description to whatever you want. This is what the search engines will see. You can also tag your post with keywords which is also very important for search engines.
If you haven’t downloaded the All in One SEO plugin, you can do so here.
Blog Your Key Term
Pick relevant key terms for your blog and use them. The obvious best way to start ranking for the key terms you select (at least longtail) is to blog about them. Make sure to include the key terms in your title, post and tags.
My post, 10 Quick Blogging Tips, helped me start ranking for “blogging tips” and other key phrases similar to that.
Build Links With Your Key Terms
To get better rankings for your key terms you need to promote it. I’ve had bloggers link to this blog with keywords like blogging tips and blogging tools. I’ve used this technique for link exchanges and leaving comments.
Of course the alternative is to buy links. However this can be costly. You also don’t want to go and get 1,000 links within the same key term in one day. This could ultimately ban you from search engines, or for that particular term. SEO can be a slow process, but rewarding.
Comment on Blogs – Do Follow / Top Comments
Commenting on blogs can not only drive traffic and subscribers to your blog, it can also help with basic SEO.
By commenting on blogs with “do follow” or a top commenter list, you can build easy links with whatever key term you chose. This is how I gained better rankings for key terms like increase website traffic and blogging tips.
An important rule here is to NOT SPAM. All the comments I left were on-topic and provided value to the article and comment section.
Courtney Tuttle has the infamous Do-Follow List where you can find tons of blogs that give you SEO juice. There are over 200 websites/blogs that are now on the “D List”.
How have you incorporated basic SEO into your blog?
Spending Money in the Blogosphere: Articles or Advertising?
My marketing budget generally isn’t that big, yet. The money I make goes into living, bills, etc. However I have purchased reviews, banners and links in the past.
Where Should You Invest Your Money?
This is a classic chicken and the egg theory that many bloggers have debated about. Some argue that with the right content, readers will come. Some argue that without marketing you can’t get readers. Some argue both are equally important.
Many bloggers have started selling articles for easy revenue. The more people selling, the cheaper you can buy articles for. You don’t even need to be a writer, to be a blogger, you can get someone to do that for you.
With that dilemma, which should you purchase?
Articles
In the Bloggeries Forum, Bobby is selling his articles for $3-$5 dollars. By choosing the right topic and SEO, you can not only hope and expect your post will get social media traffic, it will also get traffic from search engines.
I get paid to write articles for different blogs and it’s a nice gig. The best thing you can do is get it to be steady. For a particular blog I make over $100 a month, so I can see why this is appealing to bloggers.
Advertising
Buying advertising and links can be cheap fill, unless you renew. The traffic you get sometimes only lasts so long. However, you can also convert that traffic into readers if you advertise on the right blog. We just (finally) added an advertising page with many great options.
Given that argument, I am interested to test out purchasing articles. This not only will save me time for other things, its another fresh perspective.
What would you rather buy, an article or advertising?
Contest Roundup: March 30th
Today we have only the big blog contests. Below a collection of the hugest on line competitions you have ever seen, there’s no reasons to hesitate.
Etienne Teo
Prizes for $5641 from Etienne! Cash, blog reviews, advertising space, WordPress themes, entrecard credits, take a look at the site for full list. To enter you have to write about it, linking to the contest post and to all the sponsors.
Ends on April 13th.
Winning the Web
Gyutae is offering a total of $14,575 in cash and prizes, not only cash but also internet marketing-related products and services. That’s incredible! There will be at least 100 winners and to participate you have to perform some simple actions: sign up for the free Winning the Web mailing list, subscribe to the Winning the Web RSS feed and collect entries by doing other tasks (explained in random post during the contest period). Remember: you have to sign-up to certain sponsors to be eligible to win some prizes. Even BAYB is a sponsor!
Ends on April 2nd.
The University Kid
Jason has more than $2000 worth of stuff for you. From hard cash to blog consulting and much more. Gain your points to enter: leave comments, subscribe through RSS, blog about the contest. Simple and easy.
Ends on April 5th.
If you’re looking for blog contests, if you want to promote your own competition, don’t forget to visit About Blog Contests!
Comment Friday for March 28th
I just got back from a game of mini-golf. On the ride I realized I had to write up Comment Friday! I’ve got a big to-do list around here so let’s get started.
If this is your first Comment Friday we give one lucky person a free weekly blogroll spot as our “blog of the week“. Along with that we are also giving that winner 200 entrecard credits.
With our recent social media articles, I thought it would be an excellent Comment Friday topic. I want to know, what is your best experience with social media? Whether it is a meaningful comment, a bunch of participation, votes, or loads of traffic. I want to know! Happy Friday.
Adding FeedFlares To Your Blog
I stress to any new blogger and any blogger in general, that social media and networking is important. If your post can be popular on certain social media websites it can be very beneficial. We’ve just giving you the basic rules for social media and three new social media sites for bloggers. Now, to publicize!
What is a FeedFlare?
Along with using social media I believe it is important to burn your feed through Feedburner. This allows you to track and monitor your rss feed subscribers. One of the best features of Feedburner is adding FeedFlares to your blog and it’s feed.
A FeedFlare gives your subscribers easy ways to email, tag, share, and act on the content you publish by including social media sites. FeedFlares place a simple footer at the bottom of each article that helps you distribute, inform and create a community around your content.
This basically allows your blog posts to be easily submitted to different social media sites. We use our feed flares for stumbleupon, sphinn, and delicious.
Choose Your FeedFlares
Under the optimize tab in your Feedburner feed account you can select and add different social media sites as your FeedFlares.
I would of course recommend Stumbleupon, Sphinn, Digg, Delicious, and Mixx. However, you can add whichever sites that appeal to you and your blog.
How To Add FeedFlares
After you choose which FeedFlares to use, its easy after that. Simply select which place you want your FeedFlare to appear. If you select feed, Feedburner will automatically put it at the footer of your feed for you.
If you select “site” then you must install a code on your blog for your FeedFlares to be shown. The code is easy to install, we’ve chosen to put it at the end of every post.
Do you use FeedFlares? If so, which ones? If you don’t use them, why not?
Linkshare Affiliate Network
LinkShare
is another good affiliate network that I frequently use. Linkshare reminds me of Commission Junction, they have similar affiliates to promote. It’s surprising that I haven’t seen many bloggers use and promote Linkshare.
Using Linkshare
LinkShare is a pretty basic affiliate network with tons of different affiliates to promote. The reason I joined was that there was so many big companies you can promote, like Target, Toys R Us, Walmart, Office Depot and more.
A huge plus for me using Linkshare has been the “private offers” I’ve received. Several of the affiliate programs offer incentive to those who are promoting their product or service. Netflix has opted me into special programs where I make more per lead. SpySweeper has a contest going on for affiliates who increase their sales by a certain amount.
Some of the affiliates have been very hands on with those promoting them and it’s definitely a huge plus for me.
Linkshare Tips
Another great attraction is there is no minimum you need to get paid. However, this means some checks may be a little small. They don’t offer paypal.
For new Linkshare users I recommend starting at the Consumer and Affiliate promotions in your dashboard. There are a list of all the affiliates that are doing special promotions. Start there and make your rounds!
There are over 500 “online retailers” available to you on Linkshare, so don’t be shy. Start applying to any affiliate that looks interesting to you.
Apply to lots of affiliates in your niche. I’ve been declined by several affiliates that I definitely could of promoted and made money with. However they won’t always approve you. Have a back-up plan!
LinkShare. does have an affiliate program that pays $1.50 per person that you refer. It’s not much, however as I’ve mention I haven’t seen many bloggers promote it, so you could make a little on referrals.
3 Social Media Websites Good for Bloggers
Some social media websites, like Digg, are becoming increasingly difficult for bloggers to have their articles go popular. I have been using alternatives which have worked fine for us. Now that you know the basic rules for social media sites you can be successful on any social media website. Here are three that you may not know about, that are perfect for bloggers.
Post On Fire
Post on Fire is a new one that I have started using. At first it’s always difficult to start using new sites like this, because essentially you need people to vote for you. The plus however is that you don’t need an account to vote, so you can have your visitors vote for you. It only takes 5 votes for your story to go popular.They have the basic categories, business, blogging, health and technology. There is something for everyone.
Blog Engage
Blog Engage is a social media website that I found on the bloggeries forum. However, this one needs a little work. The owner is pretty hands on with the website, but it needs some adjustments. The last post to go popular was 4 days ago. It takes 7 votes to go popular and obviously not many are getting that many votes.However this social media site is a little more complete. It has a blog as well as a forum. With some small adjustments this website can be a great place to promote your blog posts.
Blogging Zoom
Blogging Zoom is the most popular of the three. I’ve actually already written about Blogging Zoom: BloggingZoom Burning Bloggers. Yes, it was a bit negative. A while after this post, Vic actually apologized, unbanned us, reinstated my account, and asked me to come back. So everyone deserves a second chance, right? I’ve actually just installed the Blogging Zoom WordPress Plugin that adds a Blogging Zoom button to your post (that you can get here).
Blogging Zoom is a little harder to have your post go popular. It looks like it takes 15 zooms to go popular. It’s a little confusing as there are posts from 30 days ago on the front page. However, it’s a plus that you don’t need an account to vote on the post.
Have you used any of these social media websites? If so, how was your experience?
Don’t forget to vote for this article at PostonFire, Blog Engage, and Blogging Zoom!
6 Rules for Social Media Websites
With Delores’ recent trouble with Sphinn, I thought I’d write a quick guideline to follow for social media and social bookmarking sites. Here are six basic rules and tips for a successful social media user account.
Always Read Their Rules
Each social media website will have a different set of rules. This is a given, but sometimes I am guilty of not following this one. However, the most important rules you’ll generally find in more than one place.Pay special attention to the “rules” on the post submit page. These are most important.
Have a Profile Picture
A common thought on user profiles without pictures is that they are “spammers”. I like to keep the same picture on all of my profiles. This not only helps users recognize me, but hopefully also vote for my articles. If they liked what I submitted before, they should again.
Make “Friends”
After uploading my profile picture and updating other information, I start adding friends. Usually it’s people that I recognize. Sometimes I just add people who are voting on and submitting similar content.
Stay On-Topic
Don’t submit your posts in the wrong categories. If it’s being submitted in a certain category, make sure it’s that category.
By not following this rule it will only force moderators to adjust or remove your post. This can lead to getting banned.
Don’t Create Multiple Accounts
Many social media websites don’t allow you to have more than one account. So don’t do it. If you do, don’t link them together with the same homepage. And don’t name them similar, example, profile1, profile2, profile3, etc.
Don’t “Spam” / Submit Good Content
Social media users want quality articles to read, especially on the main page. Even some of my posts that have hit the front page haven’t received the best responses. It’s all up to opinion however. Digg users are by far the hardest and most likely to “bash” your article.
I strongly recommend NOT submitting each of your posts to the same site. It can do more harm than good.
All in all, it’s pretty easy to have a good user account standing on any social media site. Let’s recap. Read the rules, put a picture on your profile, add friends, stay on topic, create only one account, and don’t spam!