Blogging for Business

Uhh Ohh, another site

Alright, I can't control myself. I've launched another site.

Warning: so far, it's ugly, only one page, and full of typos no doubt!

I'm a pretty serious salt water fly fisherman, and lots of the questions I get from others have to do with fly reels, so why not put the info online?

Nothing fancy or exciting, just some text that answers common questions I get - trying to add value online, and maybe even make a few bucks (I will add ads eventually - no, I think I will now).

It's only one page so far, but I have another 10 mapped out, based on both talking to saltwater fly fishermen and Google keyword research.

True longtail keyword research often has an online AND offline component!

Wii Games - My Kids' Web site

I've helped my kids start a Web site - they actually have a lot of input although I do most of the technical bits and ghostwriting.

Jamie, 9, Amelia, 6, and Stacie, 5, have a new Nintendo Wii. They are pretty excited.

So we started a Web site on Wii game reviews. We've gone through some keyword research together using the Google Keyword Research Tool, and are writing some reviews using long tail keywords.

For example, 1300 people a month Google "Wii Active Life Outdoor Challenge" (exact match, meaning they type in exactly that phrase). Yet there are only 921 pages that have that exact phrase (found by Googling the phrase in quotes - Google tells you how matches there are).

Now of those 921 pages that use that phrase, how many do you think concentrate, i.e. are optimized for, exactly that phrase? Probably very very few -- we didn't research further. Instead we threw up a quick yet hopefully useful review, using both personal experience and that of others to add more value (i.e. we read about 150 other reviews online).

I'm betting we snag some of those 1300 searches a month.

We've added Google AdSense, and may add a few other potential moneymakers like Amazon Affiliate links and ClickBank ebooks. My kids will get to buy new games with any proceeds, and if it's a total flop, I'm sure we'll still make enough after expenses to buy 2-3 games minimum.

What did it cost, other than time? Well, I bought OurWiiGames.com for US$2.19 from a domain name sale at GoDaddy this week, normal price about $10.00, and I already have several hosting accounts so that was a non-issue (it's hosted on BlueHost which I recommend - cheap and good).

Now instead of wondering what I'm doing on the computer all day, well, they have an idea now.

PS: My 6 year old wanted it to be a blog, but quite honestly, her writing weekly might just be a bit too much extra work for me :) (she does write well, and may probably be blogging within a year or two)

YouTube debut and YouTube Turbocharge Advice

YouTube is one way to help turbocharge your blog or Website.

You can simply embed other peoples videos that add value, create playlists, or perhaps best of all, simply and cheaply create your own videos and upload them, using them to raise awareness, drive traffic, blah blah blah.

I've created my first ( non-professional, as in I did it, no camera crew, studio etc.) video to promote a hobby site.

I used the killer advice from Gideon and Yaro - so simple to implement!

7 Killer Tips For Optimizing Your YouTube Videos

Turbocharge yourself online with video - 7 simple killer tips

No question, online video is here and is big - and very easy to do.

My friend Gideon, using video on one of his own YouTube channels, and got like 67,400 views in just 8 weeks!

Think a few of these people would click through to your blog or Web site? Oh yeah!

Check out his:

7 Killer Tips For Optimizing Your YouTube Videos

Gideon does a great job, I learned a lot, and 5 minutes after watching this video, I had already implemented some of his advice.

I started another YouTube channel to promote a specific site (took a couple of minutes and it's free). I've optimized my video, which is dead simple if you follow the instructions, and am well on my way.

More later on how I'm using video (and some videos for you too), but for now
Click here for killer tips on turbocharging your online presence with video

I'm going to go watch it again now and take notes this time - seriously. It's short and easy to watch.

I think I'll be doing a couple of videos a week - they are so simple to do, and free to host on YouTube and many other online video services. I may stick with YouTube or may also place them on others like Viddler and Google video etc.

I suppose I should shoot a video on my results? :)

How To Rapidly Grow Your Blog or Web site Traffic

How do you rapidly grow your blog (or Web site traffic)?

There are some simple techniques that work that I've mentioned several times, including:

Writing great content
Commenting on other blogs
Blogging regularly (at least until you are established)
Participating in blog carnivals
Including your keyword or keyphrase in your blog article

These all work, and work well, but aren't going to skyrocket your traffic and make you an overnight sensation. They are slow and steady techniques that pay off over time.

There are some other techniques, a little more advanced and perhaps time consuming than simply "commenting on other blogs" for example, that can rapidly grow your traffic.

They are NOT rocket science :) I've used many of them myself - they simply work.

Check out this great short video on how to rapidly grow your blog or Web site traffic.

You'll probably find at least a couple of techniques you can start on quickly. There is some work involved - no magic here, but sometimes results may seem magical!

Click here to grow your traffic and then let me know what you think. Leave a comment or drop me an email.

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

Is Google or computers in general making us stupid?

Certainly the way we deal with information, the way we read, and our expectations have changed. Spelling is no longer very important at all.

Is it true that "as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence?"

Fascinating article, although long-winded as we nowadays tend to read it bits and bites, in The Atlantic by Nicholas Carr: Is Google Making Us Stupid.

Thanks to Morty Schiller for the heads up!

Madison Avenue Blues

You might need to know a little bit about advertising to get everything, but just like the jokes in Bugs Bunny you missed as a kid, it doesn't detract from this makeover of Don McLean's American Pie about media and advertising.

Review: Blogging to the Bank 3.0

Did Rob Benwell really make over 1 million dollars with his simple techniques outlined in www.bloggingtothebank.com ?

I have no idea, but I use many of Rob's techniques, such as keyword research to pick niche areas, optimizing for the search engines AND humans, building emali lists like this one, and monitizing by selling ads, using Google Adsense, and promoting affiliate (commission based) products.
For example, that's my plan with www.ChampagnePoodle.com, a site (not a blog) I just started.

These techniques work.

However, what Rob preaches differs from what I promote for blogging. It's just a different yet equally valid model.

I've always emphasized using blogs to showcase and promote your career or business. That's my primary focus.

Rob teaches you a formula that's worked for him to build blogs in small niche areas and then make money from them. You might build 10-20 or more blogs over the course of several years, and
no, you don't spend lots of time writing content for each. You might even outsource the writing (and he does) of some of the content.

This is a FORMULA - it's step1/step2/step3/step4/etc. then repeat for the next blog. I find it fascinating, but probably couldn't follow the steps over and over and over, even though I use many of his techniques.

This is not an approach you would use for your professional or business blog, although there are valuable techniques you can adopt successfully

Blogging to The Bank is a short ebook. There isn't a lot of handholding. If you're a total newbie, like if you need help reading your email, this is not for you. It could use a good proofread, although the grammatical and spelling errors don't detract from the information.

Should you buy it? That depends. Most of you will learn a lot from this ebook, and you'll probably read the whole thing as it's short - no time or words wasted here.

If making money online techniques interest you, and you are actually going to take some action, then yes, it's probably worthwhile.

Blogging to the Bank 3.0 has lots of fans. People ask me about it a lot, hence this review.

And I just checked - I made $18.34 last night while I slept using Robs techniques! No bull!

Click Here for More Info

How to Promote Yourself With Blog Comments and More, Part II

How to Promote Yourself With Blog Comments, Part I - click here

Here's part two of how to promote yourself, your blog, your Website, your charity, your sleazy underworld pursuits, or anything else using blog comments.

I'm just giving you the tools -- please play nicely now!

How do you make search engines jump up and down in excitement about how cool you or whatever you're promoting is, whether it's a charity or even something sleazy?

As I said last week, "blog comments are awesome. They let you enter someone else's Internet real estate and leave public statements, which can make you look smart, drive traffic to your blog or Web site, and make Google and the other search engines jump up and down in excitement about how cool you are too."

Did you know that most traffic on the Internet is driven by the search engines, especially by Google, which is #1 by a long shot?

That's why search engine positioning, where you show up in the search engine results, really matters a lot.

For example, my new Web site flyrodstripedbass.com, is getting over 80 visitors a day JUST FROM GOOGLE. And the visitors are sticking around and reading several pages because they like the content (good content is very important, but you know that right?).

We can't go into all the reasons right now as to why Google digs my new site, but one primary reason is because it has a lot of links to it from other Web sites and blogs. Google and the other search engines take each link as a "vote of confidence" -- if it's worth linking to, it must be valuable they reason.

Well, there are lots of ways to get links, including leaving blog comments, buying links (called "text link advertising"), registering with directories, etc.

But let's step back - the search engines:

IGNORE MOST LINKS FROM BLOG COMMENTS!

You see, there are two types of links.

Ordinary links, called "do follow links" and
No follow links, which search engines ignore

Most blog comments utilize no follow links, in part to combat comment spam.

All intelligent blog comments are valuable, because readers may see them and follow them to your blog or Web site.

Unfortunately, all do follow blog comments, even comment spam, are valuable as the search engines take them as a vote of confidence. That's why we see comments like "wrerw effwefwe ewewffew" left by "Cheap Vaigra."

This causes a link to be made with the anchor text (the clickable part) of "Cheap Viagra" and if the comment is left on a "do follow" blog, the search engines not only take the link as a vote of confidence for the cheap Viagra site, but they also use the anchor text to help figure out what's important about the linked to site.

Leave a couple million comments like this using automated spamming software and some of them will be do follow and your site promoting cheap (and probably fake) Viagra will get more search engine traffic, you'll sell more cheap vaigra, and perhaps live long and prosper, although I hope you die a early death in prison you miserable spammer!

I'm assuming my readers are good people and we're just looking at mechanics here.
Of course they can be used for good as well as evil.

So, "do follow" comments, actually any "do follow" links are very valuable, especially if you can use keywords as your name, the anchor text.

So, how do you find "do follow" blogs? Several ways:
(most spammers don't get this -- don't tell them!)

There are do follow blog search engines, for example
http://dofollow.thegermz.com/
You can use the Firefox browser with the following plugin which highlights links
depending on their follow status
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5687
Red is no follow, blue is do follow
You could just look at the underlying HTML code!

There is one other method I suggest, but it costs $5 a month
(pretty cheap, huh?).

Easy Backlink Builder sends you 30 easy to get do follow links back to your site each month. They're not all blogs, but they all let you build do follow links back to whatever you're promoting, as long as you're nice, leave good comments, don't spam, follow sites terms of service, etc.

Let's look at two real (and ethical) Examples

#1) I have a Website on fly fishing, www.flyrodstripedbass.com

Now I do make some money from this site, but it primarily exists because I LOVE to fly fish, especially for Striped Bass.

I left comments on do follow fishing blogs to help build the sites importance to the search engines and get more traffic from them.

Actually I used Easy Backlink Builder as part of my strategy to help find places to (politely and respectfully) drop back links.

Hey, it's a fishing site, and I'm a fanatical fisherman. Leaving comments on fishing and related blogs makes perfect sense.

#2) "Bob Smith" (not his real name) has a common name. He has no Web site or blog of his own, but does use LinkedIn and considers his LinkedIn profile to be his home on the Internet.

If you Googled Bob, his LinkedIn profile showed up on page 7 of the search engine results. Everything else was some other Bob Smith.

Bob created a couple of backlinks to his profile, primarily using do follow blog comments (as well as leaving plenty of no follow blog comments), each week. Now, a few months out, if you Google Bob Smith he's THE NUMBER ONE RESULT!

So, Bob left a very few thoughtful comments each week, and he went from essentially unfindable to extremely findable!

Now as an aside, not all links are created equal. Links from important and related sites are worth more than links from obscure and unrelated sites, but pretty much all links matter.

Disclaimer: If you try Easy Backlink Builder I get enough money to buy a cup of coffee -- but not one of the expensive froufrou coffee drinks at Starbucks :)

SO:

Build backlinks, but be nice!
Bloggers don't need to be too concerned as bloggers naturally link to each other -- but "manually" creating a few links can and does make a big difference
Many big companies including Fortune 500s spend a lot of effort building backlinks

OK, so why would someone have a "do follow" blog and how do you do it?
Stand by for part III!

How to Promote Yourself With Blog Comments, Part I

How to promote yourself, your blog, your Website, your charity, your sleazy underworld pursuits, or anything else using blog comments - a quick two part series.

I'm just giving you the tools -- please play nicely now!

Blog comments are awesome. They let you enter someone else's Internet real estate and leave public statements, which can make you look smart, drive traffic to your blog or Web site, and make Google and the other search engines jump up and down in excitement about how cool you are too. Oh, and the bloggers wll be happy to if you leave good comments.

First, some basics. Most blogs allow you to leave comments.

You type in your comment, your name, an email (never displayed), along with a URL (something like www.teddemop.com ).

The URL can be to your blog or Web site if you have one, or very simply point to your LinkedIn Profile (every professional should be in LinkedIn - it's complimentary).

The comment may be immediately displayed or it may be "moderated," meaning the blog owner wants to make sure your comment is OK before it gets published.

If you leave an intelligent and thoughtful comment, even if it disagrees with the blogger, some readers may click on your link and come find out more about you. Also, assuming you're using your full name, for example "Ted Demopoulos" instead of "Ted", the search engines will index your comments and associate them with your name. When people look you up online using the search engines, some of these comments will show up and hopefully make you look smart - at least if you leave intelligent comments!

There are plenty of ways to find appropriate blogs in your professional or other area of interest. High on the list is using the blog search engines like Technorati or Google Blog Search. Once you've found appropriate blogs, look at their blog rolls, lists of similar blogs in their sidebars, and you may find some more appropriate blogs.

Part II, "how to make Google and the other search engines jump up and down in excitement about how cool you or whatever you're promoting is, whether it's a charity, random commercial Web site like www.womanshairlossadvice.com, or even something sleazy (use your imagination here).

Part II, How to promote Yourself with Blog Comments and more - click here