Archive for December, 2006

It’s no secret that the more focused you blog is on a Niche the better search engine results you’ll have.

Search engines pride themselves on finding useful pages and websites about a users keywords. Search Engines want to give their users the best possible result in the shortest amount of time. Of course, having a person on the other side will be the best possible solution but not very time or cost-effective.

So search engines rely on computers to do their dirty work. A very simple and easy to understand why, solution to finding a good website is to make sure that the website is about what the user is searching for. If the page found by the search engine is on a website related to the topic of the keywords, that site will be given more weight in searches.

This is why Niche Blogs, or blogs that focus on one topic, do better in the search results. Sure you can have a blog all about sports and if you fill it with tons of articles on every single sport out there you’ll get some good weight in the search engines. But that would take you a lot of time and we’re all about blogging in the least amount of time. Therefor having a blog on one specific subject will provide you with better search engine results quicker.

Take for instance the sports blog I just used as an example. Having that same blog broken down in to 3 focused blogs, focusing one on say Golf, the next on Soccer, and the third on Baseball will give you a better chance at higher search engine results.

Stick to a Niche and gain better results faster. Simple as that. There are many other factors when search engines decide their results rankings but having a focused site is definitely one of them.

I started into the world of blogging with my personal blog ErikVossman.com. It was supposed to be all about my goals and how I’m going to accomplish them. It’s slowly departing from a strictly goals oriented site to one about all the wacky things I find for myself to do and is trying to adopt the name Why Rest?

But alas, I’ve learned so much from blogging at that single blog for over a year. I’ve started a network, interacted with others, and figured out how to blog for a year without really increasing your traffic. What a blast.

But in all seriousness, I’ve learned a tremendous amount blogging about my own experiences that I would have otherwise not been able to do. Having a personal blog allows you to blog about anything and get away with it. You can stray off topic because it’s you own blog. Who cares what people think about it.

That’s kinda the line that Darren Rowse has written about over at his post Comments (0)  | Posted in Uncategorized    

Are you looking to get content up and get it fast. You can use the Autoblog Plugin from Elliott Back to quickly publish content.

The plugin, for wordpress blogs, can be used for good and for evil. This plugin, already mentioned by the author himself, can be used to setup spam blogs, and set them up fast. All you have to do is turn the plugin in on, setup a few parameters, and bam, your posting excerpts or full articles using someone else’s content.

Now if you’re going to be using this for good, you may only want to take excerpts from a few select blogs and post them every so often, not every day, like the auotblog plugin was made for. This would require you to turn on and turn off the plugin but would save you from having to explain to other bloggers why you’re using their content and not writing original stuff.

Overall, I would only use this if you’re desperate. Snagging someone else’s content automatically is a lot different than reporting with quick posts what the blogosphere is doing. Some people will get furious once they realize you’re taking their content and not sending traffic. You’ll need to tread carefully when utilizing this tool.