May 19, 2013

Niche Blogs are More Like by Search Engines

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.

Personal Blogs Do Rock Darren

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 Filed Under: Uncategorized

Automatically Post to your Blog

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.

Build Up Posts When You’re on a Writing Kick

If you’re like me your blog writing probably goes in waves. Some days you’ll write three posts, some days or groups of days you’ll write nothing. It’s called a writers block, and it’s nothing new. One of the biggest keys to good blogging, and good part-time blogging is regular posting.

You need to publish something new all the time. People these days get bored easy. They bounce from television show to television show, activity to activity and most important from blog to blog. You don’t want them to bounce from your blog to the next just because you missed a day of content now do you.

So here’s what you do to keep them staying. When you’re in the blogging mood and you want to write a lot, write a lot. Write all you can and write as many posts as you can. Start as many posts you can and try like hell to finish them all. If you leave the posts unfinished you might not come back to them. So write, link and finish your posts. Then save them to post on your blog another day. You should build enough all at once so you can post everyday.
You be able to build your readership faster and keep them as your readers longer because you post every single day.

Now one of the downfalls to posting a lot all at once and saving your posts to publish for another day is that you may fall behind and have a few days of several posts, and then nothing for a week again. So you need to get into a routine. You need write a lot, then publish, write a lot, then publish then write some more. You can’t let your publishing catch up to your posts.

Top 10 Signs You Might Be a Stat Junkie

I’ve written before about ways to more efficiently check certain stats but how do you know if you are a stat junkie and check too often to begin with? Well I’ve compiled a somewhat commical list below to help you discern whether you are or not. You’ll never be a successful part-time blogger if you check your stats too much.

10. Your Google Adsense “Last Login” timer never reads more than 30 minutes.
9. You can tell me right now who your top referring link is.
8. You know the IP address of your last visitor.
7. You’ve worn out the S, I, T, E, M, and R keys on your keyboard.
6. You’ve worn out the S, I, T, E, M, and R keys on your friends keyboard.
5. You can tell me how much you’ve earned from Google Adsense already today.
4. You’ve written about your best stat day on your blog, in the last 5 days
3. You know your best commentor by their Host Name
2. You don’t know your social security number but if anyone asks your unique visitors for the year, you’ve got that covered.

And the number one way you can tell if you’re a stat junkie.

1. You haven’t blogged in days because your still trying to figure out why so many visitors are coming from Reston, Virgina.

 Enjoy the top 10 reasons and feel free to share them with anyone. By the way, I was only able to compile this list because I am guilty of all of them.

Stick To Your Niche and You’ll Build your Traffic

Most successful blogs are about a niche, a specific topic. People go to those particular blogs to find out about one subject and that’s what keeps them coming back. They know they’ll be able to find information about blogging, or movies, or whatever the blog is about. Most of the time, if the blogger writes consistantly, they’ll also provide the reader with the newest information for that particular topic.

If that’s what some of the best bloggers do why aren’t you? Are you blogging about everything under the sun but hoping that you’ll keep to your subject? That isn’t the way to build traffic and build your readership. For one thing search engines will rank you higher if you have more and a higher percentage of keywords related to your niche. If you write about anything that dilutes your keyword percentage and essentially puts you lower in the search engine rankings. Something you don’t want.

Keeping on topic and forming your sentences and thoughts into a way that supports the overall theme or niche of your blog will allow you to more easily build your traffic and readership. People will want to come back because they know what they’ll find and they’ll know that they’ll get the most recent infromation from that niche.

Link Around Your Blog to Increase Pageviews and Backlinks

Over the past month or so I’ve been trying to link more within my blogs. I run Blogtown Press and with that many blogs I have to write a lot. Which leaves little time for promoting my posts and getting links elsewhere.

So what I’ve been doing, and noticing that it helps, is linking around. After all, websites are stores of information and if your blog is a narrow enough niche your readers will most likely want more information than what they came for. Why hide it then. Link around and allow your users to read more of your posts and increase your pageviews and increase the potential for your readers to read something worth linking to.
An added bonus of these links within your blog is that you create more links for search engine spiders, those little creatures that help Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft know that you exist, to see more of your pages more often. You’ll also start seeing an increase in the Google Link results for your pages.

Although most think that having these types of links don’t rank as high as an outside link, every little bit counts as you try and build your content and links on your way to higher Google search ranking. There are of course more ways to get outside links but inside links will help too. (See now wasn’t that easy)

What is SEO Anyway?

What is that SEO mean anyway? It means Search Engine Optimization and its all the rage.

See, each search engine compiles it’s search results differently using algorithms, wizards, and little gnomes to rank pages all across the internet. Knowing how they do it and then tailoring your pages to their algorithms and gnomes liking is one of the biggest battles a webmaster can go through. Staying up to date it seems like is a full-time job and there are even blogs, lots of them, devoted to following Search Engine Optimization, for all the different search engines.

Really there are three search engines where if you follow your stats you can see that the bulk of your traffic comes from, or at least your search traffic anyhow. Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Each of them have slightly different ways of “indexing” your blog. Indexing is essentially putting all of your web pages into their system so people can search your content. Once they finally index your pages, they rank them for different keywords and keyword combinations.

Your job as a part-time blogger is to follow how they rank your pages and optimize your blog for that. As a part-time blogger that’s a tough thing to keep up with day to day. Like we said, it’s a full-time bloggers job, many of them.

We’ll be giving you tips here and there but the biggest thing you can do is get links and stick to keywords. Following those tips will help you optimize without knowing you’re doing it.

Some of the Best SEO Resources

SEO can be a full-time job and following the world of Search Engine algorithms can keep your head spinning. We’ve compiled a list below of some of the best SEO Blogs and Watch Groups out there so you can bookmark one and let them do the work for you. You don’t want to waste your time as a part-time blogger figuring out what works best to get readers from search engines, you want to spend your time blogging and that’s it.

1. Problogger SEO Category
2. SEO Today
3. SEO Book
4. Yaro’s SEO Category
5. SEO MEMO

These are some good sites to keep you up-to-date with the SEO world and what works. If I had to choose one it would be Problogger SEO Category. It’s the best out there and will always be current. Keep that one on a must read. Feel free to add yours to the list via the comments. I’ll keep adding as you do.

Why Content Matters

If you’re strapped on time but want a top blog that everyone reads here’s one thing that can help you gain blogosphere fame, Build up content.

Launching a blog or even promoting a blog or blogs with little or no content may create some initial buzz, but you won’t get any return or regular readers. You’ll get some people stopping by initially, and then nothing. You’ll go back to your three or four unique visitors per day and be frustrated as to why that is. It’s content. Unless you’re putting up pictures of half naked women all over your blog you won’t get people coming back.

You have to build up content.

What I suggest first is to just blog for your friends. Start putting up content, tell your friends about it and put up some more. Having a few readers will be enough to keep you going through the initial phase of building content. Then as you have a good base of articles, maybe 30 or 40 spanned over a month, start stock piling. With just 30 or 40 minutes a day, rather than 15 or 20 minutes you can write two articles. Save one, (I suggest the non-time-sensative one you save), and post the other.

Once you have about 30 articles saved, you can then launch a blog to the masses. The time you spend promoting your blog will be well spent, and you’ll always have something new for the readers to read with your stockpiled articles, and you’ll have your content from your month or two of content building blogging. People will see that your blog is serious and ready to stick around and will for one thing keep you in their blog roll and for another, keep you around their regular reads.

I’ll say again, don’t launch or promote without content up, more than 30 articles, and content waiting in the wings, more than 30 preferrably. It’s like insurance in case you get bored, then your launch won’t be for nothing.