Unless you’re writing a blog as a personal journal, there is little point in laboring over your blog posts if you don’t have any readers. The most difficult aspect of blogging when you’re just starting out is learning how to attract readers – and then if you’re hoping to earn income from your efforts the challenges get even bigger!

Since many bloggers are using their blogs to attract internet traffic and hopefully send them on to their website (where products or services are actually sold), this article will give you ideas for leveraging the power of your blog as an inexpensive, but effective marketing medium.

Are You Unintentionally Anonymous?

I can’t even begin to tell you how many bloggers set up their blogs and forget to include a way for readers to contact them. I regularly want to contact blog owners who write great content with questions or comments – and can’t because they haven’t included any method for contacting them! My guess is the majority of the bloggers without contact information don’t even realize they’re inaccessible – so make sure you aren’t unintentionally anonymous!

This is especially important if you are looking to generate income from the blog at some point. Don’t hide behind your blog as some anonymous writer – the blog is meant to develop relationships and trust with your readers and you can’t do that if you don’t include an email address, ability to post comments, or other method of contacting you. You might get requests for joint ventures and invitations to online events that would help you get additional exposure and readers to your blog if people are able to contact you, too.

Make Use of Free Article Marketing Resources

As a blogger, you’re used to putting words to paper. Use that skill to bring new traffic to your blog. You can write additional articles on topics your blog already covers, and submit them to article directories like EzineArticles.com, iSnare.com, or GoArticles.com. These sites publish your articles with your author byline information, which should include a link back to your site.

Other website owners and newsletter publishers regularly visit article directories to pick up articles for their publications. They are allowed to re-print the content you submit to article directories on their own sites and in newsletters, as long as they include your author byline and link. Each time your articles are republished, you’ll have a new link pointing to your blog. You can gain new readers through people who click on your link to learn more; and also through the boost all of these incoming links give you in the search engine listings.

You’ll gain the best results with article marketing if you do it on a consistent basis. Try writing an article once a week and posting to several article directory sites, and monitoring your blog traffic for several months to see if it’s increasing.

Become a Carnival-Goer

There are “blog carnivals” on just about every topic imaginable. Blog carnivals give bloggers another method of receiving quality incoming links to their blog. You submit your own blog posts to the carnivals that are hosted by websites on related topics as your own site; and if they publish your link, you’ll receive readers and additional incoming links for SEO purposes.

If you blog about personal finance topics for example, you would submit a link to your recent article to the host of a personal finance “carnival”. If the host likes your article, he or she would include it in their carnival post, which is basically a compilation of links to many blog posts from several different blogs.

You won’t see big results overnight by participating in blog carnivals, but if done consistently, you’ll probably notice improved positioning in the search engines, and an increase in traffic from the readers of the carnivals. It costs nothing but your time to submit. For a directory of different carnivals, you can visit www.blogcarnival.com.

Write a Guest Post for Another Blog or Newsletter

Writing a guest post is the same as writing an article for your own blog, except that it will be published somewhere else. If there are other blogs that focus on similar topics as your own, consider contacting the blog owner to ask them if they’d publish an article you write for them, along with an author’s byline and a link back to your own blog.

As with the other methods discussed in this article, you’ll gain additional incoming links to your site, and the possibility of new readers who click the link to learn more about you after reading your post.

Marketing does not have to cost an arm and a leg in order to generate results. Most marketing methods will be effective if they are done consistently. Make sure you measure and monitor the results of any marketing methods you attempt, to know whether or not they are worth the time and effort.

Debbie Dragon, guesting for ClubBlogger, is a freelance writer providing articles for Trace Media - a New York seo company specializing in getting websites up, and making sure they perform to their full potential.

Hi guys.

This is a follow-up to “Link-Juice And Pagerank“, posted at the start of last month.

Some ClubBloggers have gotten a little excited about geography.  And understandably so.

Why and how does the main Google site serve-up particular results for one user in the UK, one user in the US and one user in Italy?

Most of those who spend a lot of time on SEO will get this.  Others who don’t may struggle.  Those in the last bracket who have done a little work on the topic, and particularly those who’ve used AdWords, will get a little caught-up in obsessing about IP addresses.

However, whilst the IP address (which most of you know is one of the vertebrae in the backbone of the ‘net) does play a part, here (particularly with country-specific domains such as .co.uk), it is by far from being the only element. And you really do need to know more than that to properly optimize your blog/page.

Before we get to those other elements, let’s dwell a while longer on the top-level domain. In particularly, on “.com” domains.

Above, we mention the UK and Italy as geographic areas aside from the US. Well, quite a lot of people don’t realise that a “.com” domain hosted in the UK will typically be seen by Google as a UK site. Yes, you guessed it, a “.com” in Italy, an Italian site. This is despite the “.com” universal domain extension.

So, lesson number one here is that, depending on what geographical audience you wish to target, and this really is at the heart of top-level targeted traffic, then look to host locally to your audience.

Lesson number two is that the location of your inbound links (yes, we all know how much Google loves those) is also very important to the issue of geographical audience.  In a similar manner to “get hosted in the jurisdiction you wish to target”, you should get your link juice from the target geographical area.  Yes, it really does matter.

So, you say:  ”c’mon CB, my site’s international, not linked to UK, USA, Italy, Luxembourg”.  Well, fine.  A lot are (you’re not unusual:) ).  In that case, your links should be balanced, geographically.  Yes, it’s all about relevance, at least in the eyes of Google.  Is your site relevant to that Italian searcher?  Or that guy in London?

There are other lessons to learn whilst on the topic of geography, but we won’t obsess about those in detail, here.  They do, however, deserve a passing mention…..  We have seen some poor SEO operators advise on translation of a site into another language (e.g., you started in the US, you now want to target Turkey, too, and want a language-friendly Turkish site) but they forget translation of important elements like meta titles in the code, for example.  C’mon guys.  Get a grip.

We’ll come back to this overall topic again, as we’ve been asked to (and of course we always do what we’re told) but also mainly because it’s objectively really important.

Before dashing, we can’t over-estimate the importance of using Google’s Webmaster Tools properly.  Have a look and let us have your comments, thoughts, moanings if you have any.

Well, this is new.  For us, anyway!

A bunch of people have emailed ClubBlogger over the last year (increasingly over the last few months) to ask if they could suggest topics or even write guest articles. Up ’til now, we’ve not moved on this, because there are, after all, only 27 hours in a day.

Ok.  ’Nuff said.  If you want to write, write!  The gauntlet is now, formally, laid down (back into the deep language again, sorry - it’s the new coffee).

It might just be a new topic that you want to kick around.  Something you’d like to share with the community.  It might be something related to something you do and want to through it out there.  It might be something you already write about but want our guys to check it out.

It’s up to you. We have a couple of new guys on board already.

What we won’t do is just accept random stuff. It has to be useful and relevant to our community - it goes without saying.  You don’t think you can hit that hurdle, look somewhere else.  But we are excited about this and will work on it with you… who needs time to eat, anyway?

Just to be clear: this isn’t just asking for more comments. It’s a chance to join a new community of writers. We have a certain ‘twist’ We’re only interested in speaking with a few select people about this right now.

If you’d like to mull over a couple of ideas or try to kick things off, do it here. You may be new to blogging. You may be new to business. It’s a jungle out there. Or, indeed, you may have lived in the jungle for years and know all of the animals on a first name basis. Either way, let’s chop it up.

There’s a concept called “friendtors” in the Valley in California. Not mentors, but similar. You get it. And no-one sits in the “receiving seat” very long… they quickly become those sharing the information and putting the arm round the shoulder of others. The web world, particularly the blogosphere, is fast as it gets in this respect. It’s why it’s as lovely as it is

Speak soon. cb

To state the reasonably obvious, the usefulness of information about blogging which you find on the ‘net is depends whether you’re a newcomer or an old hand. But you know what: most of the core principles remain the bedrock of your blog from when you learn the ropes to when you’re rolling-out your 10th/20th/100th site.

How to create a blog and then a blog that lasts is more pertinent. In this article, we get our hands dirty.

A randomly ordered list of our top 50 points would serve some some. But we’re a little serious about this, so have gone for a “chronological thought map”, to the extent possible. Read it, absorb it, if you like it, bookmark it, digg it, stumble it, carrier pigeon it

OK LET’s DO IT - HERE ARE POINTS 1 TO 10:

1. For most of you, use Wordpress. Just use it! No, we don’t make money from selling it Quite simply, having wide experience of the well-known platforms (including the hell, let’s just code our own blog on a site from scratch :(), it’s the best in our experience. Obviously there are tools for ‘big corporate’ blogs/intranets - we understand that and it’s out of the scope of this particular post.  Learn how to use Wordpress before really getting into this whole thing.  If you don’t, and you skip to, say, point 50(!) of this 50 point list - you’ll wish you hadn’t.

2. Plan your blog in multiple stages. Brainstorm it before you dive in. Use a tool like NovaMind. It has really been the bedrock of many planning stages for us.

3. Sanity check over a decent period (at least 7 days from your final planning stage). What do we mean? Well, would you read and use the damn thing? Is it just for you? Does it add value for others? Is it easy to use?  How often will you write? What will it actually do?  Obvious?…  apparently not to 95% of bloggers.

4. Choose a topic which inspires you or, at least in some way, will get you out of bed in the morning.  If you find this concept difficult to understand or find it otherwise obtuse, don’t proceed. Do something else and don’t waste your time.

5. Brainstorm your own domain name (don’t use Wordpress-etc. provided hosting) and buy it, associating it with your own hosting plan.  Preferably buy it for at least 5 years (there is an SEO reason, here - contained in another post on ClubBlogger; but also a self-motivational reason). You need your own image, a profile a presence.  Many will scream - “are you serious? this is small time for me and why would I do that now?”  Hmmm.  We wholeheartedly disagree: reach for the stars and you might hit the moon.  Do it properly from the “G” of “GO”.

6. Keep it simple.  At least to start.  Find a good, clean, simple Wordpress template and do everything simply.  Really.

7. Understand SEO - now. It is not geeky. It is not nonsense. It will help to keep your blog breathing. You don’t want the damn thing in the E.R. before its first birthday  Unless you are an amazingly interesting person about whom everyone wants to read, or you have a runaway phenomenon blog, this topic, along with some others, is key in how you think about your blog content and structure from this point going forward. That’s if you want anyone to read it, of course

8. Partially linked to point 7: dig into and understand the various plug-ins in Wordpress (e.g., the various SEO plugins) which will help you build your blog without you worrying about those after the event. Get all the help you can from the Wordpress community without having spent hours thinking “how the hell do I do that” beforehand.  Wordpress is a great tool: the plugins make it awesome.

9. Ascertain, early and via a good hard think with a cold towel on your head, whether you want to make money from your blog. It’s not an obvious question and, when it has been asked, it has no obvious answer. If you do, figure out how. If it’s AdSense that is your big plan, crunch the numbers, understanding the traffic needs and the AdSense figures/system before you carry on (ClubBlogger’s various AdSense posts are here). Seriously, work it out - drill down. If you want to make money from this baby, it’s a business. Write a business plan (even a basic one). Keep the plan handy and read it at least once a week.

10. Read lots of other blogs.  Really get in there.  Topic relevant or not, do it.  Learn from the mistakes and developments of others.  That’s just life.  The only people who’ve never failed are those who never tried.

OK, guys, well they’re points 1 to 10.  The next chronological ten will follow very soon, taking you into the “really get started” phase and much further beyond.

Speak soon.

You know you want it. But how?

There are many, many ways to get traffic on the internet.  But unless it’s targeted and relevant, it’s usually of little use.  Your blog, just as any website, needs targeted traffic.

The great thing about blogs is that they can, if properly structured and written, “self-target”.  Remembering the basics of blog traffic which we’ve written about before, we focus on the deeper and most important principles of this topic.

To Pay Or Not To Pay

There are a variety of ways you can pay to attract targeted visitors through a variety of services.  We pick up on some of these, below.

Like everything else, you need to consider your ROI (Return On Investment) carefully.  Whilst you may get the traffic, will it ‘convert’ and so is it useful.  It depends entirely what you want to achieve.  For example: are you interested in achieving sales or, perhaps, just interested in providing good, widely-read content.

Look at your endgame and work “backwards”.  It will quite quickly become apparent whether or not spending your budget on targeted traffic is worth it, even if it is viable.

Free Traffic

Well, there is such a thing as a free lunch on the internet  :)

No, we don’t mean the slick products which promise the earth and don’t deliver.  We mean focusing on properly optimizing your website and letting the search engines, particularly Google, deliver your targeted traffic.

Think back to all we’ve discussed before:  good quality, relevant information is what people want.  Or good quality, effective services which are relevant to their need.  Or good quality, relevant goods.  There’s a theme, here In many ways, the “new economy” on the ‘net is exactly the same as the old one: you deliver properly, well and on-time and you succeed.  You “over-deliver” (providing more than expected, perhaps before expected) and you produce repeat visitors/customers.

It’s not rocket science, but it’s missed time and time again and only a (very) small minority put this into practice.  If you don’t believe us, or you just don’t fully understand where we’re coming from, there are few better than Ken Evoy on this topic. And when it comes to building websites, and blogs, which get real, targeted, visitors, Ken talks about strategies he and his many associates employ to do just that. Whilst he does offer good quality tools to do it (don’t click on this link if you’re after ‘get rich quick’ - he doesn’t even go there, quite rightly), he also gives a really great lesson on targeted traffic and getting to the point.

Paid Traffic

Be careful.  There are a plethora of ‘wonder services’ out there which just don’t cut it.  They are often over-priced.  Worse, they can damage your rankings.

But there are some decent products and there is some good advice if you look and think carefully.  It takes time and experience to work through this - there is no immediate advice on offer.

Whatever happens, don’t risk your relationship with the search engines.  They are your lifeline for traffic: don’t let anyone tell you otherwise!

It is worth looking at directories and forums as a way of finding like-minded individuals who want a particular service or type of information.  Makes sense, doesn’t it.  And, generally, they don’t charge more than nominal fees.  We won’t provide particular recommendations, but take a look.

Speak soon.

What is Adsense and where did it come from?

Google advertising represents a massive slice of the Internet’s global revenue base; the AdSense Software contributes a large percentage to Google’s annual multi-billion dollar turnover.

There was real confusion in the early days of the internet as to how a search engine, or other business, would sensibly make money from (”monetize”) traffic and, particularly, allow third party advertisers of a range of sizes to get their ads onto the web and for others to make money from displaying them.  The real genius of AdSense was to link the advertisers and the advertising ‘hosts’ (websites displaying AdSense adverts), using its amazing Google search engine as the platform to pull both sides together.  Google advertising was born.

In one relatively simple (in hindsight!) step, Google completely revolutionized the ad market on the internet and gave substance to the “click-through” advertising market. It was bold and innovative. It was the start of a multi-billion dollar cash cow. A revolution

How Does it Work?

Users sign up their websites for affiliation with Google.  When approved, every site which displays AdSense ads is given special code to place targeted adverts on the website.  The adverts are specifically targeted to the CONTENT of the website.  Crucial to Google’s model of delivering relevance.

As well as delivering real relevance, the holy grail for every internet user, this approach saved Google from the hassle, web page space and administration associated with managing banner adverts.  Sweet, indeed.

In its absolute essence, AdSense is a software program by virtue of which Google will pay you for targeting/directing the users of your website to another website.  Advertising in its simplest, neatest, sense.

• A “click through” occurs when a visitor clicks on a hyperlink which links to an advert.
• The AdSense code used by Google now offers those who display AdSense code an assortment of methods of displaying ads: from text links to graphic links, banner ads to video ads (each having a hyperlink in-built automatically by the AdSense code).
• Those who display AdSense put these ‘boxes’ in appropriate places on their websites. They get clicked. Click = cash for the site owner displaying the relevant, useful ads.  Win, win.

But How Does This Link to AdWords?

What determines the amount paid by the AdWords advertiser is how much the AdWords advertiser is prepared to pay for each click.  The more you pay, the better placed the ads, the more often they’ll be displayed, the more clicks…you get it!  There’s real competition for ‘hot’ keywords.

There is a correlation between how much an AdWords advertiser has paid to display their ad and how much an AdSense click delivers.  AdWords advertisers can pay a few cents per click right up to $10 or more. You can see, therefore, that the displayer of AdSense can take a ’slice’ of an expensive ad or a relatively cheap one and the more traffic you receive will increase the possibility of a click and a click through fee into the AdSense account.

We’ll come back to this soon.  Enjoy experimenting.

It’s a question many ask, several find the answer to, only a very few do anything about: “How Do I Start A Business Blog”?

Don’t just dash into this. You need to cross a deep river. It’s a cold river. And it’s a fast-running river. But there really are amazing treasures in the jungle beyond: personal fulfillment, development and, yes, money. Lots of it, should you really wish (yes, we’ve been taking a couple of the literary excitement tablets! :))

But money should never be the pure motivation for doing anything, in our view. It should be a by-product (yes, not a bad by-product, but one all the same) of a great business. Some make look upon this with scorn, but it’s a view we share with many successful businesses/business models.

Objectives

Business blogging may be there to promote an existing business; it may be there to be a business in itself. The biggest tip of all is to learn from the community of existing bloggers. There are literally millions of them out there, with hundreds of millions of hours of experience.  Learn from the community, not just the experts (by the way, often the every day community members are, by a long way, more ‘expert’ that some of the ‘experts’).

Is Blogging a “fad”?

No (I guess you’d expect us to say that, right?)  Seriously, though, no.  It may (and is) develop(ing), but those who said it was dead were/are wrong.  Just type ‘blog’ into Google and see the hits in many many different forms.  It’s as powerful as some of the best and most established forms of communication on the web.

And it’s growing. Just take a look at some recent stats to understand that growth… Technorati’s “State of the Blogosphere” is about the best out there.

Quoting from this publication:

“Blogs are Pervasive and Part of Our Daily Lives
There have been a number of studies aimed at understanding the size of the Blogosphere, yielding widely disparate estimates of both the number of blogs and blog readership. All studies agree, however, that blogs are a global phenomenon that has hit the mainstream.

The numbers vary but agree that blogs are here to stay…”

Will you become a millionaire?

The stories about amazing riches from blogging are just that: stories. But there are, indeed, a few tried and very well tested methods which can make $000s of dollars a month for business bloggers. For every single one of those promised “thousands of dollars”, there’s a guide written by a guru. Well, there are gurus and gurus!

Some guides are genuinely worth the money. Others are not. Like everything in life, you pay your money and take your choice!  But give yourself the weapons for the fight and, even more importantly, understand the fight.

Even those who make money the ultimate goal and like their Ferraris (Rob Benwell, for example!!) understand the real guts of business and don’t lose sight of that.  Never lose sight of it either!

5 Top Tips On Information Guides (part of a life raft to help with that river!):

-1 Don’t believe anything you read until you’ve read it not once, not twice, but FIVE times. Preferably separated by healthy doses of coffee and broken by a walk to the park. Seriously.

-2 Even then, don’t take out the credit card until you’ve read it again. And then a couple more times.

-3 Research the author of the guide and know your topic inside out, upside down.  Look at independent recommendations.

-4 Give yourself the ‘cold towel treatment’: “is this really helpful”? Does it REALLY do what it says “on the tin”?

-5 Plan. Plan. Plan. Plan a little more.

There are no quick fixes in life: helpful assistance is great, and essential as stellar marketing/finance gurus like Alvin Phang do show.  However, you must do it for yourself.  And you must do it - no-one else can.  Be guided, but you’re at the steering wheel.

-6 (I said 5, right? well, it’s a good topic…)  ENJOY YOURSELF

Rob Benwell’s

Core Tips on Business Blogging

The Search Engines (see- capital S, capital E - true reverence :))  know how to separate the good from the bad. Google is, frankly, the King of this with its relevance algorithms.

This is fundamental, as there is a lot of trash out there. Some try to beat the system. However, 90 or so percent of the time, Google will serve up the most relevant information requested in its search box.

Most of the general population have, in the last few years, missed that the Yellow Pages (and equivalents) are dead. Fact. Linked (heavily to this) is that Google redefined “search”.

Blogs  and  “new” information have taken over. Yes, you guessed it: business owners are, and really, really, should, use this to their  advantage.

This is the real, dynamic power  of blogs.  Providing personal, topic-focused or “whatever else” information. Google  is passionate about new, fresh information.  Without it, most websites are crawled and logged poorly by Google et al: they provide old, irrelevant and unhelpful information. Also, despite massive advances in technology, the Google spiders (robots) are relevant simple guys: they like to crawl fresh, plain, relevant text.  Flash, images, etc, etc, really screw up the party.  Really, really remember this (ok, yes, you can submit xml sitemaps, etc, nowadays but let’s get real).

We’re not advocating completely textual pages - we don’t have them.  But don’t go nuts with the video!
Generally, webmasters have to push people to websites.  Most website traffic, is usually  direct hits. Pushed  traffic. People who already know the name of your company and know what people have for lunch on Fridays.  The information these websites provide usually does not attract the search robots.

You can pull people  to a blog. It can attract readers organically. Most blog traffic usually comes in organically. Readers find  your blog, not the other way around.  That’s the KEY difference for us.  Period.

Look out for Part II, guys.

Well, we’ve had a few notes about this. Some of them, er, less than polite.

Some think it’s an attempt at world domination. But we think that’s been done already and it’s a handy portal.

Google Blog Search is Google’s attempt to collate worldwide blogs on various topics. You may have used it - it may have passed you by completely. It doesn’t matter, as here we take a look.

Did you say you’d missed it?  Well that’s bad, if you’re a serious blogger.  Way back now, it passed Technorati in visits.  That alone makes it a heavyweight, pretty much like all of Google’s body parts

Recently, the G boys and girls released a major blog search update (isn’t it great when we’re all grateful when THEY develop THEIR business?)  If you’re into your algorithms and chats with techie folks, take a look here.

Usefully (yes, really usefully), the Blog Search results contains results for their baby (Blogger) plus results for WordPress, Joomla and for a range of other platforms in a range of other languages. Yes, world domination! But, seriously, a good attempt at unification of blog knowledge.

Google Blog Search also reads links on web pages. But not “just” for indexation of pages, for assimilation of blog information. Clever, eh? So, if you wake up on a Monday and search for “pink tree blogs” (presumably a heavy night the night before?) then it will list all blogs pushing out content on that topic. ClubBlogger’s hoping there aren’t many

The Blog Search is worth getting to know. Well.  This is simply an introductory piece and we’ll come back to it.

As always, comments welcome!

The verdict is out: they’re guilty.

After a battle with the might of the media industry, Pirate Bay has suffered a major blow. But, interestingly, the Swedish Court which delivered the ruling earlier today has not said Pirate Bay must be closed-down.

Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde were each found guilty today of infringing copyright law and each of them has been sentenced to a year in jail, plus a multi-million (30m) Kronor fine will be shared between them.

ClubBlogger will return to this one, later. It could have massive implications for the future of media on the ‘net.

When ClubBlogger received an email from a member, recently, about “Automatic Blog Content”, we viewed it with great scepticism.

And, to be honest, we’re still sceptical.   The whole point about a good blog is that it provides good, original, content.  It’s just not possible to automate that - or is it?

No!  But it is possible to supplement good, well written content with a feed of good ‘automatic’ content.  What is meant by this?  Well, it’s kind of like an auto-pilot on an airplane not replacing the pilot - but assisting him/her.

We thought it was worth taking a look.

One product (of many) which has been brought onto our radar is “CaRP”.  No, this isn’t a fishing post  CaRP takes two of the most powerful elements on the internet, RSS and HTML, and melds them together. Sounds cute? Well, it just may be.

We all need to get real, here. Content is king - and that’s what readers want. Readers do NOT want nonsense generated by a computer. They want good content generated and tailored by a good author. So it is and so shall it be. But do users also want to see good content generated from a good RSS feed? It really feels that way and tests of CaRP have shown that. Yes, we took out a few of the ClubBlogger dollars!

RSS is powerful. No doubt (see the link, above, to a previous ClubBlogger post). It’s hardly news to those experienced ClubBloggers. But only some of you will have used it this way.

We thought it was worth a shot and will work further with it. With a ‘wet towel’ on the head to ensure you keep grounded and sensible (it’s easy to get carried away with this thing!) you may want to delve into the powerful world of RSS to HTML and try this. Or you may know a colleague or a friend who might.

There are several other tools worth looking at in this area. Scripts are reasonably readily available to buy and use.

Enjoy experimenting. But really, really, keep in mind that good content will drive this thing.