Blogged Out | http://www.blogged-out.com Blog Promotion, Marketing and Optimisation Tips Fri, 04 Apr 2008 22:26:54 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 en Google rankings for Blogged Out + the future http://www.blogged-out.com/2008/04/02/google-rankings-for-blogged-out/ http://www.blogged-out.com/2008/04/02/google-rankings-for-blogged-out/#comments Wed, 02 Apr 2008 19:47:10 +0000 ScottB http://www.blogged-out.com/2008/04/02/hehe/ We just moved past Problogger for “blog promotion tips” on Google! ;)  Were 2nd place until now.  Not a big deal really (not much traffic to be had for the term) - more of an ego ranking! ;)

ADDED: And back down to number 2 lol!  Damn that Google update - dammit to hell! ;)

Also serves as an excellent example that PageRank / size of site doesn’t really matter when it comes to individual key phrase rankings.

Currently sitting at number 11 for “blog promotion” - that’ll be the next one for us!

I also just wanted to add some details about what the plan is for Blogged Out over the next few months:

  • New theme - I’m getting some new themes designed for other blogs and Blogged Out is on the list.  I love the logo Darren did so that will be staying and the theme won’t change too much because I think it works well, but there are a couple of areas in the theme I’d like to round off a little bit.
  • Stats and figures - I’ve made a few SEO related changes over the past 6 months - still waiting for some to “filter in” (get reindexed and factored into rankings), but I want to continue Darren’s approach of disclosing stats and figures - I think it’s great for those new to blogging and Internet marketing to have practical examples.  Should be over the next month or two.
  • Guide to Wordpress SEO - this is a big piece of work that I’ve been doing for a while - basically it will be everything you need to know about optimising Wordpress.  May take a while to complete though as I do have loads on just now.

If anyone has suggestions for features or topics they would like included in the site, please let me know. :)

Scott

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]]> http://www.blogged-out.com/2008/04/02/google-rankings-for-blogged-out/feed/ Don’t be a link Scrooge! Linking to other blogs can benefit you more than you think http://www.blogged-out.com/2008/03/27/dont-be-a-link-scrooge-linking-to-other-blogs-can-benefit-you-more-than-you-think/ http://www.blogged-out.com/2008/03/27/dont-be-a-link-scrooge-linking-to-other-blogs-can-benefit-you-more-than-you-think/#comments Thu, 27 Mar 2008 15:43:37 +0000 ScottB http://www.blogged-out.com/2008/03/27/dont-be-a-link-scrooge-linking-to-other-blogs-can-benefit-you-more-than-you-think/ I remember when I was starting out in SEO (back in the days that link exchanges were still a great way to build links) and on the suggestion that we include a links page on our site to host the reciprocal links, my boss replied, “I don’t want to link to other sites - I don’t want people to leave our site”…

Even back then, that was nuts.  Typical old school business mentality of hording customers and essentially trapping them in the sales process.  But these days, linking out generously can be a great way of getting your blog known to other bloggers in your market - that exposure is invaluable.

Let’s look at the process:

  1. You write a good post on whatever subject area you happen to be blogging about.
  2. You link out to related articles - perhaps your post is discussing one in particularly (possibly offering an alternative opinion on a subject) or you simply just want to list some useful resources for your visitors.
  3. People click through your links.
  4. The other bloggers find out about your post (specifically) and your site (in general) through their referral stats.
  5. Some may link back immediately (in response to your post), add you to their blog roll or just remember your site and possibly link to you in the future.

That last part is key.  How could you possibly replicate this result through traditional marketing techniques?

It would be hard - you’d need to target other bloggers specifically and come up with a non offensive way of approaching them and then implement your plan without being too pushy.  Why go through all that when a couple of links work just as well?

The art of blogging may involve marketing, but other bloggers in your niche are not your competitors

As long as you and your fellow bloggers cover your niche well with some individual slants on your subject, there’s no reason to have any worries about linking out to them.

Yes, that link will benefit them in terms of traffic, exposure and SEO.  Yes, you will get very little direct benefit from linking out.  Yes, it may not have any impact at all - they might not link back to you.

But it is a free and easy way for you to expand your marketing activities in a “clean” way - without risk.

You won’t lose blog readers because you have informed them about a similar blog (if you do, then that’s down to the quality of your blog).  You won’t suffer in terms of SEO (a few external links here and there don’t make much of a difference - there’s even theories that it will help in some cases).  There are only positives here.

Marketing meets networking

That’s all it is.  Linking out to other blogs begins the (online) networking process - it’s basically a hat tip to your counterparts that can in many cases begin your relationship with them.  Why aren’t you aiming to always begin your relationships like this (on a positive note)?

This very simple process increase the chances of your blog accumulating natural links over time (links given freely and naturally, as opposed to artificial links like directories).  This isn’t a one off process - you don’t simply give x amount of time and expect y volumes of return.  You should be doing this all the time and if you are then over time you will see an increasing return on your generosity.  People will link to you more, which in turn means more exposure on more sites and better rankings - which in turn means more links, more readers, more subscribers - and so on.

Basically, the point of this post is - don’t be a link Scrooge!  You can’t prevent people leaving your site - but you can make an effort to ensure that process is smooth and benefits you in some way.

Scott

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]]> http://www.blogged-out.com/2008/03/27/dont-be-a-link-scrooge-linking-to-other-blogs-can-benefit-you-more-than-you-think/feed/ How to use Wordpress as a membership directory http://www.blogged-out.com/2008/03/18/how-to-use-wordpress-as-a-membership-directory/ http://www.blogged-out.com/2008/03/18/how-to-use-wordpress-as-a-membership-directory/#comments Tue, 18 Mar 2008 07:41:15 +0000 ScottB http://www.blogged-out.com/2008/03/18/how-to-use-wordpress-as-a-membership-directory/ Here’s a great post from WPDesigner on using WP as a membership directory.  It’s a fairly easy step by step guide to the process, which also outlines the plugins you need to use.

Just thought I’d drop that one here seeing I hadn’t posted in a while. :)  Normal service resumed soon!

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]]> http://www.blogged-out.com/2008/03/18/how-to-use-wordpress-as-a-membership-directory/feed/ Blogging your Way to the Top of the Search Engines http://www.blogged-out.com/2008/03/04/blogging-your-way-to-the-top-of-the-search-engines/ http://www.blogged-out.com/2008/03/04/blogging-your-way-to-the-top-of-the-search-engines/#comments Tue, 04 Mar 2008 18:21:49 +0000 ScottB http://www.blogged-out.com/2008/03/04/blogging-your-way-to-the-top-of-the-search-engines/ Content is king.  I’m sure you have heard this concept, it is plastered all over webmaster boards.  The reason why content has been, is and will be king when it comes to search engine optimization is that people are attracted to it, they type specific keywords on the search engines in order to find information relevant to their search.  Providing fresh and unique content is a great method to improve your on-page search engine optimization, however people go about it the wrong way.


When we say “fresh and unique content” we are not referring to fresh and unique content for the search engine spiders, we are talking about content which is fresh and unique for human visitors.  Some webmasters have the idea that the more content the grab from other websites the more money they will make with advertisements, this is completely wrong since they are creating duplicate content which is penalized by the search engines.

Tech savvy webmasters have come up with the idea of spinning articles.  The idea behind this method is to grab an article and replace the words with synonyms, needless to say this method doesn’t work well either, why you may ask? - Simple, even if search engine spiders index this content as unique, when actual human readers land on this site they will see that the entire content is rubbish, nothing makes sense and they will not return to such site.  So you see publishing spun content is a very easy way to kill a blog.

Blogging platforms such as Wordpress have been optimized for the search engines, they are coded on flawless PHP so the only thing missing is the quality content a blogger can provide.  Once you have determined your blog niche, it is time to write and publish your thoughts about it, don’t start a blog about a topic you don’t know or are not interested in, it will reflect in your blog posts and visitors will notice it right away.

Remember to keep you blog updated, this means making a blog entry every other day on topics which are relevant to the site’s subject, use key phrases as often as possible to improve your keyword density but don’t over-do-it, remember that the most important thing is the information being provided, not how high you can go as far as keyword density.  Blogs which provide catchy or interesting posts are very likely to get great attention and search engine rankings due to the fact that blogging platforms have been built to be social tools which can spread your thoughts quite fast, the key of it all is to produce quality content thinking on your readers instead of the search engine spiders.

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]]> http://www.blogged-out.com/2008/03/04/blogging-your-way-to-the-top-of-the-search-engines/feed/ Insight into the SEO industry http://www.blogged-out.com/2008/02/07/insight-into-the-seo-industry/ http://www.blogged-out.com/2008/02/07/insight-into-the-seo-industry/#comments Thu, 07 Feb 2008 18:04:38 +0000 ScottB http://www.blogged-out.com/2008/02/07/insight-into-the-seo-industry/ I wrote an article yesterday partly about my experience working with Bigmouthmedia who are a large UK based SEO agency.  It’s not entirely relevant to blogging as such, but some of the subsequent comments from other ex-employees and details of the hostile takeover make an interesting read.

Full post is here:  BigMouthMedia - all talk or deserved success?

Scott

(Also whatcha think about the new design for Fused Nation?)

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]]> http://www.blogged-out.com/2008/02/07/insight-into-the-seo-industry/feed/ Deciding whether or not a blog is really what you need http://www.blogged-out.com/2008/01/14/deciding-whether-or-not-a-blog-is-really-what-you-need/ http://www.blogged-out.com/2008/01/14/deciding-whether-or-not-a-blog-is-really-what-you-need/#comments Mon, 14 Jan 2008 15:51:08 +0000 ScottB http://www.blogged-out.com/2008/01/14/deciding-whether-or-not-a-blog-is-really-what-you-need/ I’ve spent a little time recently thinking about how I can improve on my various blogs and I thought I’d share some of the ideas I came up with based on my own network and checking out some other people’s blogs.  The core issue I was thinking about was whether or not each individual site should really be a blog and not a news site / forum / whatever.

Feel free to reply with your own ideas or any comments you may have.

1. Is a blog really right for you?

I see a lot of people (me included) setting up blogs because it is easy.  Realistically, what you are trying to achieve with your site may not necessarily be compatible with running it in a blog format.  Wordpress and other types of blog software makes it easy for non tech people to quickly and cheaply setup a website - perhaps you should think about what you are trying to achieve before settling on the blog approach?

2.  Using an “out of the box” blog for SEO

Blogs aren’t great for SEO, despite the explosion of blogs in the SEO industry.  The blog is that out of the box, you still need to make a lot of modifications in order to “optimise” your blog.  These include:

  • Title tag and Meta tag modifications
  • Blocking category and / or archives to minimise duplicate content

On top of these, there are some other issues.

The format in which a blog presents information and archives it over time can be bad for SEO.  New posts receive a good boost in terms of SEO because they are linked to from your homepage.  But over time they are pushed a few pages back - the result is lower PageRank (or “link weight”) passed to those pages.

Google particularly looks at the rate of link growth to pages over time - Wordpress and most other types of blog software create a rate of negative link growth to pages over time.  This may suggest to search engines that the page is getting less important or popular so it will rank worse.  You may notice this effect in play if you write a new post that brings in good traffic for a while, but a few months down the line - nothing.

Another issue (or at least, a theory) is that commonly used blog types can be easy to spot by search engines.  As such it may be easy for them to treat the content differently - as blogs can be very news focused, search engines may make a concerted effort to deprioritise old blog content (as it is deemed to be less relevant a few months later).

3.  Blog software makes it difficult for users to find old posts

Your blog basically creates a chronological list of posts usually organised by category.  If I come to your blog I’m not going to spend time looking around - I’ll check a few recent posts and base my decision to comment or come back on that.

Do you have gold dust posts from last year that are still relevant today?  Then the chances are you are getting as much value from that as you should be.

4.  RSS feeds are useful for repeat visits

A fairly obvious one here.  Are you promoting your RSS feed adequately?  Don’t make me look around for it!

5.  Monetising blogs can be a pain

Again another obvious one for experienced bloggers.  Adsense conversion rates can be pretty poor - without some template modifications it can be a problem to position your ad blocks effectively.

Other forms of advertising can be equally problematic.  The only real options for bloggers are direct advertiser agreements (e.g. banner ads, which you then need to add to the site manually) or paid links (easier to implement, but run inhereit risks of being penalised by search engines).

Are you promoting your own services effectively?  If you have no services, then why not create an area of your site where others can pay to promote their own services?

6.  Maintaining a good supply of new content

It can be tough to keep posting new posts.  What seemed like a good idea when you started out can turn into a headache if you can’t keep up with new ideas for content.  If you commit to writing x posts a week, then your users expect that - any change to that rate of publishing can lose you visitors.

There are options though:

  • Think outside the box for new ideas for content (e.g. check your referrls and see what people have arrived at the site looking for).
  • Use 3rd party content writers (there a few firms out there that do good rates on quality articles).
  • Look for guest posters.
  • Consider expanding the remit of your site - perhaps your subject area is too narrow as it is?
  • Expand the type of content you deliver - move from personal opinion to industry news, humour, insight, interviews and so on.

7.  Looking good

It’s rare to find a Wordpress theme that looks good and hasn’t been used on a million other blogs!  I’m in the process of having my own themes designed just now for that very reason.

If your technical skills and graphic design skills aren’t that great then you can find a decent WP theme designer for relatively cheap (trying posting the job on webmaster forums to find some people).  While $150 may be more than you want to spend on your blog, keep in mind if you do want to get serious about your site then looking good is an excellent place to start.

A good looking site is more likely to get regular readers and links from other sites.

So there are my thoughts on the matter.  Just a few of things that I’ve been mulling over in my mind lately. :)  Anyone here thought about moving from a blog format to something else?  I’d be interested to hear any experiences you’ve had.

Scott

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]]> http://www.blogged-out.com/2008/01/14/deciding-whether-or-not-a-blog-is-really-what-you-need/feed/ Some sales copywriting sins http://www.blogged-out.com/2008/01/09/some-sales-copywriting-sins/ http://www.blogged-out.com/2008/01/09/some-sales-copywriting-sins/#comments Wed, 09 Jan 2008 14:58:02 +0000 ScottB http://www.blogged-out.com/2008/01/09/some-sales-copywriting-sins/ Just a quick cross post to Fused Nation.  I wrote this post today that focuses on some of the sins made by SEOs writing copy for their agency or consultancy sites, but I think there are some good general points in there for anyone writing sales copy.

Scott

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]]> http://www.blogged-out.com/2008/01/09/some-sales-copywriting-sins/feed/ Right - that’s 2007 done with - what now? http://www.blogged-out.com/2008/01/07/right-thats-2007-done-with-what-now/ http://www.blogged-out.com/2008/01/07/right-thats-2007-done-with-what-now/#comments Mon, 07 Jan 2008 16:20:50 +0000 ScottB http://www.blogged-out.com/2008/01/07/right-thats-2007-done-with-what-now/ I’m conscious I haven’t been posting nearly as much as intended for which I apologise for - just been insanely busy with setting up some new sites and doing some consultancy work.

I’ll be speaking to an agency this week about hiring someone to write a few blog posts for Blogged Out and some of my other blogs (kinda hard to find decent copywriters these days) which should keep the action going.  But on top of that I do want to bring my own “flavour” to the blog as well - I have a few topics I’m working on, but I thought it was worth putting the feelers out and seeing if anyone has anything they’d particularly like me to post about?  Answers on a postcard… :)

Cheers

Scott

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]]> http://www.blogged-out.com/2008/01/07/right-thats-2007-done-with-what-now/feed/ My take on in-house link building http://www.blogged-out.com/2007/12/06/my-take-on-in-house-link-building/ http://www.blogged-out.com/2007/12/06/my-take-on-in-house-link-building/#comments Wed, 05 Dec 2007 23:55:03 +0000 ScottB http://www.blogged-out.com/2007/12/06/my-take-on-in-house-link-building/ Not a full post here, but I thought I’d point out an article I wrote on my SEO blog which has sparked a few comments - feel free to pop along and chip in. :)

Scott

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]]> http://www.blogged-out.com/2007/12/06/my-take-on-in-house-link-building/feed/ Roundup of some decent blog related posts over the past few months http://www.blogged-out.com/2007/11/30/roundup-of-some-decent-blog-related-posts-over-the-past-few-months/ http://www.blogged-out.com/2007/11/30/roundup-of-some-decent-blog-related-posts-over-the-past-few-months/#comments Fri, 30 Nov 2007 07:33:05 +0000 ScottB http://www.blogged-out.com/2007/11/30/roundup-of-some-decent-blog-related-posts-over-the-past-few-months/ I don’t really like summary type posts, but I had intended starting off my takeover of Blogged Out with a decent summary post so here it is.  Basically, a list of other articles, blog posts and discussions that have grabbed my attention over the past few months.

Stuff for newbies

General Blogging Tips

Marketing your blog

Technical Tips

Blogging Insight & News

Copywriting

Feel free to reply with links to any articles / posts that you think would be useful on this list - I might keep a permanent link to this post somewhere on the blog navigation if there’s enough response. :)

Cheers

Scott

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