You may be thinking that once you have your own list, you'll drown in traffic. Unfortunately, this isn't the case.
To get plenty of traffic, you need to:
If you are not well versed in link baiting, you may want to read linkbaiting articles at Cornwall SEO by Lyndon Antcliff and also site-specific articles about Digg and Stumbleupon.
You may want to read an excellent post, explaining how to create linkbait step-by-step at SEOmoz.
If anything, just read these sites
]]>As time passes by, I notice people doing what I thought would be a good idea or already developed sites, right what I was thinking about. This was and is not only amuzing, but also interesting.
For example, I've noticed this phenomenon a while ago and surely enough, Aaron Wall finally writes about sharing your ideas now (with more examples of this lazy bloggers plague).
]]>As time passes by, I notice people doing what I thought would be a good idea or already developed sites, right what I was thinking about. This was and is not only amuzing, but also interesting.
For example, I've noticed this phenomenon a while ago and surely enough, Aaron Wall finally writes about sharing your ideas now (with more examples of this lazy bloggers plague).
It simply means that if you want to gain a larger share in the market, you need to start and act now. Since otherwise, other thoughtful rivals and brilliant minds will come up with the same ideas and benefit from them. And you'll be trailing at the back.
Sometimes, this can be really creepy. Once, I've had an idea and the same day I've seen a newly built website, based on the idea. Other times, I was just thinking of building a worthy post, and bam, someone else does it before me.
Why does this happen?
If you:
you should have a solid understanding of what your customers want and have plenty of neat ideas in your head.
It also means that your rivals, who are doing the same, have them too.
In a SEO Refugee thread (you'll need to register to access members-only subforum), I said that it happens, because "we feel the pulse of the industry", we live it and come up with natural extensions to provide value to our customers.
Generally, the only solution would be to actually do what you want. But, most likely, in order to do that, you'll need to find more time. Here's how:
Another thing you might wonna do is to stop being afraid to do something that will propel your business. While you need to differentiate the fear that prevents you from doing a stupid thing from the fear that holds you back, you should think about it.
When it comes to ideas for blog posts, you really must write now what you want to share with your readers, because otherwise, you won't. Paraphrasing Seth Godin, who said
ideas are easy, doing stuff is hard
I'll say that writing what other people should do is easy, doing things is hard.
So start writing and sharing your ideas with the world (if that's what you want to do, anyway).
As Seth Godin says:
My feeling is that the more often you create and share ideas, the better you get at it.
So, if you've got ideas, let them go. They're probably holding you back from the hard work of actually executing.
Thus, sharing ideas will let you actually do something.
Speaking of which, if you recommend something on your blog, you are more likely to do it to at least the blog and maybe to your other sites. Writing helps you better understand what you know, because you may not be using your own knowledge for yourself.
While there may be more things to hold you back from doing something in real life, there's less things holding you from writing, blogging and sharing your ideas with your audience.
So instead of planning, setting a posting schedule and only fixing yourself to write only one of posts (even if it is superb quality posts), you may want to share your ideas when you have them to:
Aaron Wall should be a good example of writing when he wants to (I think he admitted doing it, at least). Aaron now comes up with plenty of interesting, worthy posts almost daily and I can't stop marveling at his writing productivity. Needless to say, Aaron's blog far more popular than an average SEO blog.
While the reason to have plenty ideas is to work a lot, the concept of writing when you have it still rings true to me.
For example, a post, describing all the ways to improve and write titles, which I have been thinking about for a while, was a hit and is one of the most popular posts on the site.
Another example that I invested a lot of time in is 20+ tips on improving a blog. And it worked wonderfully. I haven't regretted for a second that I have spent hours on these two posts.
When I have a full time job, I run in the morning (2-6am). It turned out I can't make myself run, if I don't have a financial guarantee to afford food and equipment in the long run (literally, too), btw.
In winter, it is mostly fast, short runs, while in summer I tend to run for hours.
As Elizabeth, I also cook, but nothing fancy. It doesn't mean it isn't delicious though.
]]>When I have a full time job, I run in the morning (2-6am). It turned out I can't make myself run, if I don't have a financial guarantee to afford food and equipment in the long run (literally, too), btw.
In winter, it is mostly fast, short runs, while in summer I tend to run for hours.
As Elizabeth, I also cook, but nothing fancy. It doesn't mean it isn't delicious though.
This combo is just fantastic, if you have the patience to cook it (usually, it takes under an hour, or it can take less, if you use two heating elements or put it all into one pan).
I hope you have had a bite ;)
And to top it off, everything above is vegan (not just vegeterian), so it is suitable for everyone (except for someone not eating vegetables, if there is such a spicies).
On the weekends, when there isn't much to do, I often brush my English (been a while, though), improve my German and learn French. Learning languages is a good pasttime to keep your brain busy (and give you a chance to travel/communicate online easier).
Since I have to tag at least three persons, I'd like to tag:
]]>In order to create something that people would love to buy and use, you need to know your target market. To do this, you can:
]]>In order to create something that people would love to buy and use, you need to know your target market. To do this, you can:
If your idea is hard to duplicate, you can share it with other people, especially, if you have everything necessary for the start available. If not, it may be not a good idea to share it with the experts.
But one of the signs that the idea is worth implementing is if you hear people saying 'I want this, but I can't find it anywhere' or "Wouldn't it be cool, if..". If you see plenty of such mentions related to your idea on the forums, blogs, then you are on the right track.
Ultimately, it boils down knowing the needs and values that run the people and what they need at some point of time.
Knowing the needs and values of the people is absolutely necessary to provide value to them. As people only do or use what is useful for them, you need to provide absolute, astounding and astonishing value for them to pick up your product and share it among their friends.
One of the most precious things on the planet, becides life, is time. You can't control how fast your time runs: you can only control what you do with it. That's why people also enjoy things they can use easily and that work fast.
Becides providing value to your users/visitors/readers, you need to value their time and efforts. That's why you need to provide excellent experience for them by offering a useful and easy to use product.
Most products can be used in many industries, markets and niches. But in those markets, there are many other products competing for the same audience. To start well, you need to start with a very tight niche with little competition.
In this case, you'll be able to
All of the above will get you prepared to the future life of your product and company. It'll teach you how to live in the current market and progress.
Once you have conquered a small niche and have proven that your product is a success, you can expand. But you need to expand smart to keep the image you have earned within your small niche. That's why you can expand to a market, related to your first one.
For example, if you were producing umbrellas for the business ladies, you can expand to the mens business umbrellas market.
If you want, you may not expand, but you'll need to increase the quality of your product, create more offers for your niche and try to improve your business from the inside to create a stable company.
Once the success comes, you still need to keep providing value to your customers, because that's what have earned you their attention. If you increase too quickly, you may lose the product quality and the customers.
Since people need value, you need to focus on explaining why your product is useful for them: show them why they need to spend their time, efforts and money to use your product.
If you want your target audience to take action, you need to explicitly use call to action in marketing. This way, you will not only get a much higher conversion rate and ROI in your marketing (be it offline or online, especially on landing pages), but will help you get a share of your customers' minds, if you also focus on the benefits.
Nowadays, the web is getting more and more active and interactive. You not only just have to socialize on blogs and forums to know what your audience wants, but you want to be a part of the conversation for people to talk about you.
You can always add a social aspect to your marketing, such as:
If you become a part of the community, your product will also become a part of the peoples' lives, and that's what one of your marketing goals is.
Of course, savvy Internet marketing can't be put on one page. While the above rules significantly increase your chances for success online, you may want to subscribe to this blog's feed to stay updated with more tips on successful Internet marketing.
P.S. A fellow forum member of mine is trying to win a MyBlogLog contest. So if you have time, please join his community (the link is on the top-right) and take part in his $1.5k giveaway contest. Thanks.
]]>Lately, it's been noticed that Live.com spams the referrer logs of the websites, claiming that it is only about quality check.
]]>Lately, it's been noticed that Live.com spams the referrer logs of the websites, claiming that it is only about quality check.
But since they check it from only a small range of IP addresses, this can be noticed (which has been by plenty of people) and adjusted to, if someone is already doing cloaking. This is a really small job for black hats, really.
So what is really behind the scheme? Honestly, I don't know.
But for me, it screws my stats, makes me use Google Analytics instead of AwStats to see the top referrer websites and keywords. Why does Microsoft force me to use Google? I don't know, maybe thousands of employees didn't think much about it.
Technically, what I see is a lot of searches for single-phrase words, related to my site, such as 'website', 'links' and so on and they occupy top spots in the keyphrase stats. Obviously, I don't have such rankings, so they are fake.
Really, instead of making me a happy website owner, they add tar in my jar of honey.
If you decide to blog the IPs, you will be out of the Live index. Go figure. Quote from MSNguy from WMW:
The traffic you are seeing is part of a quality check we run on selected pages. While we work on addressing your conerns, we would request that you do not actively block the IP addreses used by this quality check; blocking these IP addresses could prevent your site from being included in the Live Search index.
But what's more, Live botting and crawling increases AdSense impressions, thus lowering the income from running AdSense on your website(s). And in Michael's and in my opinion, intefering with someone's income is unacceptable.
Is Microsoft trying to ruin the AdSense game for Google so others would switch to other contextual advertising schemes? Now that'd be a plot. And a very likely one, even though not the one admitted officially (read Michael's post for more explanation).
We shall see the answers to these questions soon, I guess.
]]>In a Cre8asite Forums thread, a question is raised about the state of the Web and where forums find themselves in it.
And while this is a very good question, it got me thinking. What makes a forum and what makes a social site?
]]>In a Cre8asite Forums thread, a question is raised about the state of the Web and where forums find themselves in it.
And while this is a very good question, it got me thinking. What makes a forum and what makes a social site?
While a forum is open two way communication (compared to one way blogging or social sites, where members can't write anything unless someone [blog or article author] has already written on the topic), surely there are other differences between forums and the social sites?
In my opinion, the difference is the people and how people interact there.
The difference between Cre8asite Forums and Digital Point forums is the people. They make one forum the most populated and polluted one and the other the most tactful and thoughtful. And, ultimately, the people that post there give the newcomers a chance to make their choice, whether they want to stay there or not.
If we take social sites into account, people there can:
While this relation isn't as strong as on the forum or via email, it still allows people to feel alive and useful and spend their time doing something more interesting, than staring at an empty ceiling (or working :) ).
Often, a question is raised about the difference between forums, blogs and social sites. People start naming technologies, such as RSS, AJAX, comments, etc, but no one really mentions the people themselves.
Since all of the sites offer various kinds of communications, various types of people are attracted there (or at least for various reasons).
Alternatively, on any of them, you interact with different people in a different way, thus making your experience unique and uninterchangable.
All in all, I think that's why the launch of Sphinn for the Web building community means a lot (Slashdot tried, but isn't as close, IMHO). Sphinn (or "Spin") has it all:
Sadly, because the discussion isn't very actively encouraged there - or maybe because the people don't participate them eagerly, Sphinn hasn't yet become The place to go to discuss things. But it's getting there.
]]>Do you work as hard as you'd be working for a better pay?
Do you enjoy working as cheap labour?
In essence, I'd think that you should charge yourself fairly, because:
Do you work as hard as you'd be working for a better pay?
Do you enjoy working as cheap labour?
In essence, I'd think that you should charge yourself fairly, because:
Naturally, you'll need to actually do something useful and productive to match the price, but that's the whole point. You should charge high enough to match the value you provide, but not high enough to cheat your customers.
And what's more (bonus reason), if you do all you can for as much as you reasonably cost, your clients should be getting a much more efficient work, which should make them happier and more loyal customers. Who doesn't want to have loyal customers?
More things to read:
P.S. No, I am not abandoning the blog nor changing format largely. I've been busy, but should be back to solid posting soon (along with posting more thoughts than I have been). Stay tuned.
Cheers.
P.P.S. I am sure someone has written about this topic before. Could you please mention the links to posts on the same topic in the comments or via yuri at improvetheweb.com? I'll mention them in this post. Thanks.
]]>Search engines try to view websites like people to better understand what the sites are about, how relevant they are to the search queries, what the intent is behind them and so forth. It means that you need to make the site relevant to your target audience, which will also help the search engines.
To use words naturally, you need to know your audience by:
In terms of making the website relevant to your customers, you need to know their needs, values and what words they use, when thinking and talking about your product
To create the website and pages that your visitors will understand, you also need to place the words where the visitors will see them, such as in the:
If a page has the keyword you are targetting in all of the above points, then the visitor will understand that the page is at least related to it or maybe even about the subject. So will the search engines, which will drive targeted traffic to your website.
Once you know the words you need to use and where to place them, you can get to work:
You simply need to write for the people, about how easily they'll get what they came for and how to get it. The search engines will follow.
You may wonder, "Why should I write for the people, not for the search engines, since they rank the websites?" That's a good question. The thing is, that though the search engines index and rank websites, people choose which website to visit by checking the page title (tag) and the snippet they see underneat (taken from meta description or from the page), so you need to make the page human friendly.
Also, it is humans who pay your bills, and you need to make sure that visitors actually convert to customers and you can only do that with human and value focused approach. Remember: the search engines follow how humans view and value websites, not the other way around.
But simply having the words your visitors know and can relate to doesn't end what you can do to help them find what they want on your website. You can also use:
In essence, you need to use the words to inspire people action that interests them and where you can assist them. Of course, you need to have the udnerlying offers, technologies and content to make this possible, but this is another topic altogether.
Generally, the whole optimization thing is about making it easy for people to find what they want. If you provide what people want and make it easy to find it on your website, you've got a conversion or even a sale. Using words that your customers use is just one of the tactics to make this happen.
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]]>For example, for any client, you'd probably advise:
For example, for any client, you'd probably advise:
But do you actually apply these techniques for your own work or business? How much time do you spend:
For instance, while I always aim to find ways to provide value to the client, such as examining every situation and case and applying the principle there, I don't obviously spend enough time on my site. I really should be writing and posting more.
I'd say that if you are a pretty busy person, your website hasn't been drastically improved for weeks, months or maybe years.
A very good example would be a website of Ammon Johns. It's been only recently redesigned and while it only has masterpiece content, the amount of articles is very modest and probably hasn't increased for weeks/months.
Sorry to out you, Ammon, but I think it shows how good an Internet marketer you are that you are always working for the people (I think that's a good excuse I can use about my site, too :p). By the way, Ammon won't be writing a blog. You can always find him at Cre8asite Forums, though.
To give credit to Ammon, though, his site does rank high for web marketing and web promotion. Not to mention local searches. I think that's an outstanding achievement, since the work has been done elsewhere (or so it seems to me).
So, in essence, when it comes to SEO, I'd gather that
is always limited by the amount of time you spend on your customers. And the site can get really, really overgrown with vines and other ilk of the past design eras.
So, apart from the initial question,
Thank you for answering.
]]>Lately, as my Stumble Upon account grows, I begin to sense responsibility for stuff I thumbs up and review, because it is seen by the people from the Web industry.
Lately, as my Stumble Upon account grows, I begin to sense responsibility for stuff I thumbs up and review, because it is seen by the people from the Web industry.
As I thumbs up stories mostly related to Web building, I add those people to friends that share similar interests with me. If I start stumbling my client's sites, related to widget building, construction or maybe network security, my social friends won't be interested in it.
Worse, if the piece I stumble/digg is below average, I might lose the friends, authority and trust within social networks.
So it leads to important questions I have yet to give a final answer to:
Tell me what you think, please (Thanks!)
I'd also like to hear from:
So, I wanted to buy a Seth Godin's book, The Bootstrapper's Bible: Volume 1 (Amazon fails to ship to me, so I'd eventually buy Seth's other books for a paperback price, if he had them in a digital format, too). For such a price, lower than any e-book I know - and of much greater value, I thought this was worth having.
(Btw, if you haven't read Seth's free e-book "Unleashing the Ideavirus", you must, ought to, have to and are absolutely obliged to read it. It is about why ideas rule the world and how you can make them spread for your benefit.
You can also find his other free e-books, including a free Bootstrapping Guide Manifesto (PDF, 1.2 Mb), in his lens. Thanks, Seth.)
But back to the story.
The button on the right, aptly named "Buy now with 1-Click®", was convincing enough.
So, I clicked and a window appeared, asking for registering or logging in (Bad) (why not do it using the info I use in buying the book, anyway?).
The form had my email address entered and simply wanted my password (Good - they remembered me and my email address).
The next window wanted my payment method, name, credit card number and card expiration date. So far so good, but it wasn't the entire "1-Click®" purchase, though.
After clicking continue, I was hoping to get my e-book. Not so fast. It wanted my new billing information, prompting for no country, but absolutely requiring me to select a state (from the US states) (Bad)
When I did, it needed a zipcode, matching a state. Fun. Luckily, I remembered a 95001 zip code for California (CA), so I went through this hurdle, too. What would happen to some foreigner not familiar with the zipcodes of the US states I don't know (a lost sale, maybe?).
After clicking "Continue" for the 4th time (apart from clicking on the "Buy now" button), I got the following message:
All Amazon Digital transactions are completed with 1-Click® to provide you with a quick and easy purchase process.
Your e-Document purchase will be completed when you click "Continue" and your credit card will be charged. Your purchase will be available for you to download immediately.
Talking about the easy process after 4-5 clicks seems like an attempt to make fun of me. Don't make fun of your customers (please, Amazon). (To be fair, the same message does appear when you do have the "1-Click®" option enabled, after clicking on it).
While the usefulness of the above passage is disputable (I'd say that in order to reduce the amount of clicks, this step must have been spotlessly eliminated), I had to click the "Continue" button for the 5th time of 1 promised by the luring button. (Bad, yet again)
And, being pumped up during the buying/ordering/hacking process and that passage, I get the following message:
We could not process your order because of geographical restrictions on the product which you were attempting to purchase. Please refer to the terms of use for this product to determine the geographical restrictions.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.
Sorry, Amazon. Five clicks instead of one I can forgive (and Yoda speak I too can), but not letting me download an e-book, is out of place. You've just lost my loyalty and joined the ranks of "Will use as the last choice only" companies that I appear to have now. (Need I repeat myself?)
Here's what is wrong:
So, if you want to be better than Amazon, remember this:
As you can see, this list is pretty general what people say you can do to improve your shopping cart, so putting things into practice should clearly help you reduce cart abandonment rate.
]]>Though I've had the data for this post for a while, I wanted to share it along with the results of the landing page contest that ran at SEOmoz. It turned out that my page was filtered, because "it got filtered out in the process."
At any rate, I want to share my experience from another project and some knowledge with you.
Earlier, I was working on optimizing Google AdWords performance to increase software download conversions. After I had tweaked the landing page, split the ad group in two and rewritten the ads, the conversions from search ads have more than doubled. So I thought I'd share the case with you.
]]>Though I've had the data for this post for a while, I wanted to share it along with the results of the landing page contest that ran at SEOmoz. It turned out that my page was filtered, because "it got filtered out in the process."
At any rate, I want to share my experience from another project and some knowledge with you.
Earlier, I was working on optimizing Google AdWords performance to increase software download conversions. After I had tweaked the landing page, split the ad group in two and rewritten the ads, the conversions from search ads have more than doubled. So I thought I'd share the case with you.
Below you'll find a table, where the data is presented (the numbers are real, that's why the subject/client/page isn't identified). The data was gathered during two weeks (one week one group, another two groups). Below the table, you'll find details on what was changed and comments on the results.
Enjoy.
| Clicks | CTR | Conversion Rate |
Conversions | Cost per Conversion |
Average CPC | Cost | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Before | Search | 1022 | 2.84% | 15.85% | 162 | $1.30 | $0.21 | $210.49 | |
| Content | 1567 | 0.14% | 8.58% | 129 | $0.48 | $0.04 | $51.36 | ||
| Total | 2589 | 0.23% | 11.24% | 291 | $0.94 | $0.11 | $261.86 | ||
| After | Ad Group 1 | Search | 612 | 3.12% | 31.86% | 195 | $0.64 | $0.20 | $124.33 |
| Content | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | ||
| Ad Group 2 | Search | 489 | 4.13% | 40.90% | 200 | $0.46 | $0.20 | $91.00 | |
| Content | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | ||
| Total | 1101 | 3.60% | 35.88% | 395 | $0.54 | $0.20 | $215.33 | ||
| Difference | Search | +79 (+7.7%) |
+0.76% (+26.76%) |
+20.03% (+126%) |
+233 (+162.35%) |
-0.66 (-50.77%) |
-$0.01 (-5%) |
+$4.84 (+2.3%) |
|
| Content | -1567 (-100%) |
-0.14% (-100%) |
-8.58% (-100%) |
-129 (-100%) |
-$0.48 (-100%) |
-$0.04 (-100%) |
-$51.36 (-100%) |
||
| Total | -1488 (-57.47%) |
+3.37% (+1465.22%) |
+24.64% (+219.21%) |
+104 (+35.74%) |
-$0.40 (-42.55%) |
+$0.09 (+81.81%) |
-$46.53 (-17.77%) |
||
| Clicks | CTR | Conversion Rate |
Conversions | Cost per Conversion |
Av. CPC | Cost | |||
(the increase percentage did not include the initial 100%. Thus, +20 from 100 is +20%, not +120%)
So, to me, this means that the generally known tips to increase conversions and reduce costs work:
Read more about increasing AdWords conversions and reducing costs.
However, here's the thing.
The amount of attempted orders stayed the same or even dropped by a small margin (less than 10%).
This means that just tweaking the landing page and the ads won't help you sell if the intermediate conversion isn't a sale, but it will help people to go the conversion path.
To sell, you need to have all the information a customer might need on the website and an easy way to order the product, coupled with things that increase trust, such as customer testimonials, trust signs (there are many for various industries) and so on.
Increasing intermediate conversions may not help you with sales, if you don't make it easy and convenient to learn about your product and buy from you.
However, if your conversion is what you need and the visitors can get it from the page (free book download, for example), then even just landing page and ad optimization work like a charm.
Read the tips to improve AdWords conversions and costs from Search Engine Journal.
]]>Paid Links: Michael Gray and Rand Fishkin
Rand and Michael discuss Google's policy on paid links, how Google uses fear, uncertainty and doubt, why there are some questions left still and what webmasters are supposed to do.
]]>Paid Links: Michael Gray and Rand Fishkin
Rand and Michael discuss Google's policy on paid links, how Google uses fear, uncertainty and doubt, why there are some questions left still and what webmasters are supposed to do.
Also contains an indirect proof that Matt said that (something like) "nofollow is an option for the webmasters, not a requirement" during the session.
User Contributed Content in Retail: Matt McGee
How retail can use user contributed content on their websites and in marketing and why it is important.
Patricia Hursh dwells upon things to remember about local search, such as:
Lee Odden on corporate, large scale SEO techniques.
Interview with Matt Bailey on website usability: how it relates to search, why it is important.
Todd Malicoat on social marketing and linkbait.
An interview with Vanessa Fox about Vanessa Fox: what she's been up to, how differently people treat her now, why she went to Zillow from Google and stuff.
Opinions on the Conference: Kim Krause Berg and Bill Slawski
Kim and Bill are interviewed about the conference, about the forums and so forth.
There are more 2007 San Jose SES videos from WPN, too.
Enjoy.
P.S. You can reduce the video quality to speed up the loading.
P.P.S. If you are an RSS reader, you might wonna click on the links to the videos, if you can't view them in the reader.
P.P.P.S. Posting might be light in this week or two (or three), as I try to take a vacation from the computer, but you can check these blogs and forums for interesting stuff:
]]>Most beginner bloggers think that blogging is easy. It is, on the surface. However, you may want to know that:
Most beginner bloggers think that blogging is easy. It is, on the surface. However, you may want to know that:
But most importantly, the more you put in your blog in terms of time and efforts, the better it becomes and the more popular it becomes with time. If you just sit and wait, it won't help :)
So be patient and work hard to become successful.
To actually provide value to your readers, you need to know what you are talking about. For that, you can either learn things yourself or, if you are already a professional, provide absolutely useful tips for your readers.
Being in the expert in your field, you are likely to know
If you don't, you'd rather learn all the points above before writing. All this will help you create better and more useful content for your audience.
Whatever you do, the time will pass anyway. So if you want to achieve something, you gotta do it now, not later.
If you are slow, you may as well forget the interesting idea you had and you'll become overrun with the new issues before you can write about it.
If anything, save an idea or a post draft for future use.
If you want plenty of unique, quality content for your blog to get visitors and links to get more visitors, you need to start now and write a lot.
You don't have to publish often, but you need to write often to use your time effectively and create better posts. In my experience, writing a post for at least two days increases its quality a lot. A week is better.
As you write a lot and jot dow your ideas, you will sometimes find that you don't have more thoughts to add to the post. Save it, but don't publish it. Saving drafts is useful, because:
As you can see, carefully organizing your writing and publishing schedule can help you not only produce better, more useful posts, but to provide a consitent flow of reading material for your readers.
Simply linking to a news story makes little sense, if the Web is already buzzing about it. You'll provide greater value to your readers, if you write about something that no one has written about.
Of course, if you think that some subject is not well covered, you can build an awesome resource (hopefully, timeless) to attract a large number of visitors.
The quantity doesn't necessarily come from the number of posts, but from their size. Well-researched posts, resource lists and so on are a good start.
Admittedly, post formatting becomes ultimately important here, so you need to use short sentences/paragraphs, lists and subheadings to make things easy to read.
I find that a well researched, thoughtful (and useful) post is much more interesting to the public. It also gets much more traffic and links, but that's another story.
Interchanging concise posts with large posts will give:
This will help your readers read what you have written, bookmark, share or link to your posts.
For example, posts that:
tend to do good with the people, because they can be easily absorbed and shared.
If you want your people to understand what you are writing, you need to use the simplest language you can write in. This will help people read and understand the article, so they could share it.
Online, people can't see each other and they can only trust by what they read. If you address your readers as you address friends, they will become to know you better and start trusting you, which will turn them into more loyal readers.
Title is the first thing your readers read and it may be the only thing, if the title isn't compelling enough. Stick to the title writing formulas to craft mind-blowing headlines.
Though some may say that you need to write for the search engines to get search engine ranking, this is largely false.
You can write as you want, for the people, because:
If you want your posts to be read to the end, you not only need to write for your readers, but format the text in short paragraphs, sentences, bullet lists and subheadings.
You want your readers to read all the posts on your blog. For this, you need to link to the posts from the one you are writing now: it will not only get you more readership, but will also help your blog to rank well with the search engines (use call to action and relevant words in the link text).
If you link to
you not only show a broader perspective to your readers and help them understand your point of view from the linked to articles, but you also provide them with quality content they can read.
Once your audience starts reading the posts, articles or visiting sites you link to, the people will be grateful for more useful information and websites.
Though people often read blogs for fun or entertainment, mostly, they have a problem to solve. Identify the problem and help your readers solve it. That's how your posts will become useful.
By reading related blogs, you will find:
All this will help you provide better content, have more people to share or bounce off your ideas.
As you read blogs, you'll find more people that write about what interests you and your readers. You can talk about the subject in the post comments and most likely, the blog author will come to your blog and comment, too.
If your content is good enough, these blog owners will link to you, too.
By doing all of the above, you get noticed among the people in your industry and establish your authority. This will
Since visibility and authority is your most valuable asset (along with trust), you can later build something more useful and interesting on it, using your readership to promote/test/improve your new venture.
If you want your ideas and posts to spread, you may want to have the following in mind:
No one "sends" an idea unless:
they understand it they want it to spread they believe that spreading it will enhance their power (reputation, income, friendships) or their peace of mind the effort necessary to send the idea is less than the benefits No one "gets" an idea unless:
the first impression demands further investigation they already understand the foundation ideas necessary to get the new idea they trust or respect the sender enough to invest the time
So, basically, besides having useful posts, you may want to make it really easy to share your stories.
Additionally, you can use various social bookmarking buttons, like the ones you see under this post, to remind people to bookmark the post and share it with others on the sites they frequent. Needless to say, the sites need to be targeted at your audience (such as Sphinn for Internet marketers, for example).
If you want to:
then you need to take part in the social sites that match your blog topic. For example, for bloggers (Internet marketers, SEOs, web designers, usability professionals, etc), you can try:
One social network I particularly like is StumbleUpon. It rocks, because:
As you take part in the social networks, more and more people, whose interests match yours and the topic of your blog, start visiting your blog. They may very well add your posts to the social networks, because they like it and know you from the social site (you are online friends, remember?)
Note: participating in social networks, because it is fun, is vastly different from submitting all of your stories to the site. The best way to socialize is to contribute useful posts and articles that you find around the web.
If you truly think that your post is worth sharing (you should get the feeling about a great post, if not, improve it), you may want to
Note: this only works if your post is astounding, like the post about the titles linked to above. Only do what you feel right, otherwise you'll ruin your reputation by spamming your friends, industry experts and social sites.
For example, if you have a post about blogging, you can catch the train with the 31 Days Group Writing Project (that only runs in August) at ProBlogger and submit your post to the project.
How easily your readers read and navigate around your blog can really help your visitors read your posts. For example, you can:
Your site may have other interesting features to keep your readers happy:
Knowing all the important moments in mind will help you start building a greater blog from the beginning, bringing you well deserved readers, recognition and, possibly, profit.
]]>Here's yet another thing you can do in a couple of minutes to help search engines index your site better, so you could get more traffic within a week or two by 5-15%.
- "What?"
- "Ca-no-ni-ca-lization/canon-ica-lization/canonic-a-liz-ation issues."
Here's yet another thing you can do in a couple of minutes to help search engines index your site better, so you could get more traffic within a week or two by 5-15%.
- "What?"
- "Ca-no-ni-ca-lization/canon-ica-lization/canonic-a-liz-ation issues."
It is when your website can be accessed with www and without www in front of it (such as improvetheweb.com and www.improvetheweb.com) and you, the visitors and the search engines are not redirected to only one version.
To the visitors, this doesn't matter a lot, unless they prefer to identify website addresses with 'www' or without (there are pros and cons of either approach).
The issue is that for the search engines, both versions are two different versions of the website, because the search engines index URLs, not websites as a whole.
As the search engines see two websites, the number of pages with the same content doubles. As your visitors link to either of the versions randomly, both of them will have average amount of links.
Of course, the search engines will show one of the versions, but they will only count links that point to one of the versions, to which a specific page belongs to.
For example, if the page is http://improvetheweb.com/overdeliver, the search engines will count links that point to this page - most likely from the http://improvetheweb.com domain and sites that linked to that URL.
For the search engines to take into account all the links that point to your website (such as http://www.improvetheweb.com and http://improvetheweb.com), you need to redirect visitors and the search engines from one version to another.
Thus, the search engines won't be taking into account all your naturally acquired links and won't be showing your pages high in the SERPs as they rightfully deserve.
By redirect the search engines to only one version of the site, we confirm their suspicion that we only have only one version of the website (not two different sites with similar content).
This way, they treat links to both www and non-www versions as links to one website and thus, which ever version you redirect to, gets a boost of incoming link value from the redirected version.
That's why you'll get more visitors from the search engines, which will lead to more customers, links and profit within a week or two (Google, others may be slower) by 10-15% (the speed relates to how fast the search engines react to the redirect and whether the version you redirect to is fully indexed).
If the version you are redirecting to is not indexed for one reason or another (except outright ban), you'll need to wait while Google and other SEs index the site and start taking all links into account.
This may take a week more or longer, depending on how large your site is. In this case, and if the version you are redirecting from is stronger (has more links), you may notice a slight drop of traffic, which will later return to normal and start increasing.
Even though the search engines tell us only to do what is right for the visitors and want us to ask ourselves "would I do it if the search engines didn't exist?", this particular improvement is designed to specifically help the search engines understand how our website works, also bringing more search engine visitors to the website.
Naturally, you need to only have one version by redirecting one of the site versions to another.
If you want a shorter domain and your customers will be able to memorize and identify your address with the web, then you can go without www.
However, if you want to make it clear that the address belongs to the Web, use the www version.
Opinions split on which one to use, really.
To redirect from one version to another, you either need to edit your httpd.conf file, if you use a dedicated server, or update your .htaccess file in the root of the domain.
Ron Carnell suggests using two blocks in the httpd.conf file:
‹VirtualHost 192.xxx.xxx.xxx>
ServerName domain.com
DocumentRoot /home/domain/www
‹/VirtualHost>
‹VirtualHost 192.xxx.xxx.xxx>
ServerName www.domain.com
Redirect 301 / http://domain.com/
‹/VirtualHost>
Basically, you only need to insert the correctly tweaked code in the corresponding part of your httpd.conf file (make sure you back it up first).
Please note that if you go this route, you'll need to tweak both parts, if one of the details changes.
If you are not familiar with the terminology and the whole process of fiddling with the Apache server, you'd rather designate this to your web admin.
If you read what Ron Carnell has said about this issue (you really should), you'll gain more insight why and how this is done.
But if you don't control the server, you can use the three lines of code:
How to redirect to www from non-www version:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourdomain\.com [nc]
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]
(replace yourdomain.com with your domain)
How to redirect from www version to non-www version:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^yourdomain\.com [nc]
RewriteRule (.*) http://yourdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]
(replace yourdomain.com with your domain)
Note: using .htaccess adds overhead to the server, since it'll be processed on every request to the server. However, large websites are bound to use dedicated servers, so it is pretty smooth here.
The .htaccess file is a file named .htaccess in the root of your domain. It has various directives used to tweak server performance. You can edit it, insert the corresponding three lines of code at the top of it (change yourdomain.com to your domain) and upload it back to the server.
To test this, you'll need to refresh the page in the browser. If everything loads fine and you can go from one version to another by entering the redirected URL, it works.
If you get a 503 error, you need to make sure you have inserted the code correctly. If you can't do this after repeated attempts, remove your edition to let the server work again and contact a professional.
You can also read a mod_rewrite manual from Apache about redirecting with .htaccess.
Frankly, it amazes how many sites I see often that don't redirect to only one of the versions, thus leaving plenty of money on the table. The thing is, the amount of money doesn't matter, because it takes a couple of minutes of work to implement the changes by the web developer.
And the funniest thing is that depending on the site total traffic, the profit increase can be very noticeable, comparable to general marketing activities, such as increase of conversions, promotions, etc.
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