Blogging Vitals - Tips For Blog Traffic and Monetization

How To Unlock & Add Meta Tags In Blogger Posts

noreply@blogger.com (Cold) — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 22:52:00 +0000

How To Unlock & Add Meta Tags In Blogger

The newest update to the popular blogging platform, Blogger, now includes a Blogger Meta Tag Tool. This Meta Tag Tool is a great addition for those of us that use the Blogger platform, because it makes it super quick and easy to add meta tags to both the overall blog and the individual posts we write on Blogger.

Meta Tags

Meta Tags are important because they help to further identify information to the search engines, beyond your posts url, headings, title, and keywords. With the Blogger Meta Tag Tool, we unlock the ability to quickly add meta content tags on an individual post by post basis, as well as a general overall meta tag for our Blogger site. Adding Meta Content Tags will help to increase your page ranking in the search results if you properly use the keywords appopriate to your post.

How to Unlock Meta Tags In Blogger?

It's a pretty simple process to unlock the Blogger Meta Tags. Here's How To Do It:

Go To Your Blog's Blogger "Settings" Tab.
Open the "Search Preferences" Link.
At The Very Top Locate "Meta Tags" Description.
Click Enable
Enter Your Overall General Meta Tag About What Your Site Is About.
You've Also Just Unlocked The Blogger Meta Tool.

Unlocking Blogger's Meta Tools

To Use The Blogger Meta Tool On Individual Posts:

Open An Old Or New Post.
Scan The Right Side "Post Settings" Column.
Locate The Newly Added "Search Description" Box.
Add Meta Content Keywords Here.

Blogger Meta Tool

Do not get your "Search Description" Meta Tags mixed up with the "Labels" or "Tags" section. Labels (or Tags) are for internal custumization of your posts. For example, you may have your labels set up to divide your many blog posts into Categories.

The Meta Tool box is for adding post specific keywords that are directly related to what the post is about as well as what search results you want it to rank for.

For Example: On This Post:

I've Labeled it as "Meta Tags", "SEO", & "Blogger".
I've Meta tagged it as: "Meta Tags, Blogger Meta Tags, How To Add Meta Tags, Help With Meta Tags, & Blogger Meta Tag Tool"

These are more specific keyword search results that I would expect to help drive search engines to this specific post.

I definately recommend unlocking your Blogger Meta Tool and start using the Meta content keywords on each and every post that you do (in addition to the tags and labels you already do). It is also worthwhile to go back and add proper Meta content tags to older posts to help them rank better in search engines. If you have a ton of old posts like me, then just go through and hit your post popular posts or the ones that you really want to rank higher and better with the search engines (sales pages and pillar content - for starters).

Watch Out For Spammers Like @Foldberg1

noreply@blogger.com (Cold) — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 15:05:00 +0000

Watch Out For Spammers Like @Foldberg1

Lame ass Markco the Snake (@Foldberg1 on Twitter) is still up to his dubious and misleading ways. Here you can see him attempting to get a comment through the Comment Moderation over at my site Diablo 3 Gold Tips.

What's fishy about the comment?

He's trying to get the comment approved by including some BS fluff and even has a link to my blog in the comment, or that's how it would appear at a quick glance. Closer investigation shows he has his own site's URL with anchor text that appears to be for my own site.

Nice try @Foldberg1. You are still a scumbag and will not be leeching any of my traffic, so you can stop trying. (I have to remove attempted comments and links like this a few times a month from most of my blogs.)

@Foldberg1

Bloggers Beware: Cloaked Malicious Links As Referrals

noreply@blogger.com (Cold) — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 18:55:00 +0000

Bloggers Beware: Cloaked Links Can Be Malicious

Bloggers Beware of Malicious Link Cloaking

As bloggers, we often get excited when studying the statistics of our blog traffic. We like to find out where our traffic is coming from. One way to identify new traffic sources is to check the Referring URLs. In other words, we are checking what specific sites have been sending traffic to our site.

In the Bloggers Beware image at the top of this post, you can see a sample of some of the sites that have been reffering traffic to one of my blogs. In the above image you can see Referring URLs from:

Reddit.com
Greedy Goblin and Kuja's Gold Mine - Both similar sites within my gaming niche.
2 Cloaked Links that I have outlined in red.

Why would those links be showing up as cloaked links?

Malicious Link Cloaking

Because they are links back to a malicious site. By cloaking the link, the malicious attacker is increasing the odds of you clicking on that link and visiting the malicious site. This also explains the 28 referrals coming from the malicious site. There is no real traffic coming from this cloaked site. A potential attacker is cloaking the links and automating the process of sending false referrals in attempts to get me to click on the malicious links. How do I know they are malicious? I did a internet search for the site url that this cloak re-directs to and sure enough this link re-directs to a malicious code site.

So bloggers be careful! Be careful when clicking on these types of cloaked links as they can comprimise the security of your site and your computer. This doesn't mean that all cloacked or link shortened links are malicious. You may even see shortened links from links that you may have posted to various social media sites. Links from Twitter (built in link shorteners) and Aweber (if you have it set to post to your Facebook or Twitter) can appear this way as well. See where it starts to get easy to fall into the trap? Don't just think it is safe to start clicking on links in your Referral URLs report without investigating first. Always be smart and safe about what you click or download on the web.

I hope this post saves some other bloggers from the malicious attempts of cloaked Referral URLs.

Use Google Rank Checker To Find Google Page Rank

noreply@blogger.com (Cold) — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 15:03:00 +0000

Blogging Tools:
How To Use The Google Rank Checker To Find Your Google Page Rank

Understanding your Google Page Rank and how Google ranks pages are very important parts of building an internet presense for your website or blog. The higher your Google Page Rank is for your site, the higher up you will appear on Google searches. Appearing higher on the Google Search Engine and the Google Page Rank will result in increased search engine traffic to your site. The higher on the Google search engine results list you are, the more likely your site will be visited by browsers looking for your relevant keyword rich post.

Check Page Rank of your Web site pages instantly:

This page rank checking tool is powered by Page Rank Checker service

With the above tool, you can check your Google Page Rank instantly. Just enter your website's url address into the box and hit "Check PR". Google ranks web pages on a scale from 0 to 10, with 10 being the highest possible. Go ahead and use the tool to check your page rank today.

How To Create A Favicon on Blogger

noreply@blogger.com (Cold) — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 14:08:00 +0000

What Is A Favicon?

The term Favicon is short for favorites icon and is also known as a shortcut icon, website icon, URL icon, or bookmark icon. The Favicon is a tiny image, usually 16x16, that is associated with a specific website. You want to choose a favicon image that easily identifies your website or your brand. Once you have created your favicon image and set up your favicon on your blog or website, then graphical web browsers can start to implement it into your sites design.

Browsers that provide favicon support typically display a page's favicon in the browser's address bar and next to the page's name in a list of bookmarks. Browsers that support a tabbed document interface typically show a page's favicon next to the page's title on the tab, and site-specific browsers use the favicon as a desktop icon.

Favicon Display On Browser Tabs

How To Set Up Your Favicon On Blogger

Blogger has recently added a super easy way to add a favicon to your Blogger blog. All you need to set up a favicon is a square image. You want to select an image that is easily identified as being related to your site. You can choose a portion of your Blogger blogs header, your site's logo, or another identifying image that instantly is associated with your site. The image below shows a blogroll from a fellow blogger's Blogger blog. You can note the top 2 and the last site are Blogger sites that are using a favicon set up through their Blogger site design. The 5th site in the blogroll shows a Blogger blog site that is using the default Blogger orange and white Blogger B logo. That is what your favicon looks like prior to personalizing it to match your site.

Blogger Blogroll With Favicons Displayed

Step By Step Guide To Setting Your Blogger Favicon

1) The first step is to select the image you would like to use. The only requirement is that the image is a square shaped image. The Blogger platform will size the image down to the correct size for the favicon display. The image will be sized down to 16x16 for display on Blogger sites, so you don't need to use a high resolution image.

Blogger Favicon Set Up

2) Once you have your favicon image selected, click on the Dashboard tab in the Blogger interface. First select the Design Tab and then select the Edit Favicon option. You can see the Favicon tab in the design elements option where you add gadgets and restructure your Blogger site's design. See the above image for reference, if you need help locating the favicon editing tab.

Blogger Favicon Custom Upload

3) After clicking the Edit Favicon tab, the above window will pop-up. This is where you upload the custom image you have created for your favicon image. Just click Browse and find the square image file to upload. Save your changes and you are all set. When I did this the first time, the image was displayed as my Favicon on the design panel, but it took a day for the favicon to start showing up around the Blogger blogs and to start appearing in the various browsing tabs.

Setting up your Blogger favicon is pretty easy once you have decided on and created an appropriate matching image. Be sure to set your Blogger favicon up today to give your site a little bonus aesthetically, which also helps to build your brand's image.

Why Haven't You Set Your Favicon Up Yet On Your Blogger Site?
Have You Seen Any Other Benefits To Having A Favicon For Your Site?

Are Your Ads Not Performing?

noreply@blogger.com (Cold) — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 00:14:00 +0000

Advertisements

It doesn't matter if you are running advertisements from Google Adsense, an affiliate network, Amazon, or ads as a e-book affiliate or creator. If you are hosting advertisements on your site, then you want them to perform by converting to sales or clicks so you can earn your commissions. Sometimes your readers will become blind to your ads, so you have to keep them fresh.

Are Your Ads Not Performing?

Try logging onto your site as a visitor. Look at the site as if you were a new reader.

Does your site look cluttered?
Are you running too many ads?
Do you ads compliment your site's colors and design?
Are your most important ads placed above the fold?

Try to minimize the number of ads that are placed on each page of your website. Sometimes less is more. Having too many choices on each page can create a chaotic and unorganized feel to your site. People don't like to return to cluttered, scattered, sloppy sites. They like easy to follow, easy to read, easy on the eyes sites.

If your ads aren't performing try some of these options.

Change the colors or the Images.
Replace some ads with fresh ads altogether.
Change the location or the pages that each ad appears on.
Try a newer advertising option, like AdClickMedia or Chitika.
Change the size of your ads. The 3 best are usually 728x90 leaderboard, 300x250 banner and 160x600 skyscraper.
Trying blending your ads colors with your site's colors.
Set up an ad rotation to check which version of your ads perform better.

Reinvesting Your Google Adsense Profits

noreply@blogger.com (Cold) — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 17:58:00 +0000

Try AWeber's Email Marketing Tool Risk-Free

Blog Monetization

If you are reading this blog entry, then profiting from your blog or website probably is one of the goals of your site. One source of monetizing your blog comes from the AdSense Ads that you can display on your site. Whether you are using Google's AdSense or another affiliate network like AdClickMedia, you probably have some monthly income coming in from these advertising networks. What do you do with those profits? Do you spend it or re-invest it into your site or new ways to make a profit?

Another great option for monetization, other than the Pay Per Click advertisements, of your site is to get involved with affiliate marketing. You can sell others products and get a commission for the sale. This is a great second step to making money on your blog or website. Creating your own product or e-book to sell is also a great tactic as you get to promote your own creation. You can also create an affiliate program for others to sell your product just like you have been selling the products of others.

If you really want to start making real life money, then you really need to consider another form of delivery - email marketing.

E-Mail Marketing With AWeber

The use of an email marketing and autoresponding service is awesome! I love AWeber's email marketing tools. Check out the AWeber site and see what they have to offer. The email marketing strategy works with the other 2 sources of monetization to increase the benefits, conversions, and profits. Setting up your AWeber account to automatically send broadcasts of your blog posts to the inboxes of subscribers will help increase your traffic and number of readers. You also can set follow-up messages that trigger at certain time intervals. This allows for the easy delivery of recommended products and extra advertising to occasionally be sent to the subscribers. You will see much more sales of affiliate products and also increase add revenue since you can ad your adcode to the mailings that are sent to each subscriber. This will also increase the daily exposure and the clickrate as you have a new source to add the ads to your newsletter or daily broadcasts.

I can't afford $19 a month!

When figuring out if using AWeber's email marketing program will be affordable, you can look at it how I did. You can pay for AWeber's services without coming out of pocket at all as long as you are making money with your ads and affiliate guide sales. AWeber is $19 a month (First month is only $1). As long as you are already making over that amount from ads, then you can simple choose to re-invest that ad money.

If you make over $19 a month in advertising, then you can set up a direct deposit to a bank account. You can also ad the AWeber services to draw from the same account. That way your monthly checks get deposited into the account and Aweber draws from your advertising funds that you already earned. This way you can justify joining and spending on the AWeber email marketing program. You can also have your affiliate guide sales deposited within the same bank account.

So instead of blowing that advertising revenue, how about re-investing it into your site to make even more money. Since using AWeber, my sites monetization has exploded. Won't you join AWeber too?

One tip I would give is that if you start to use AWeber and a newsletter / blog broadcast / auto-responder mailing list, then be sure to add an identifier tracking note to any affiliate links or referrals from within the newsletter mailings themselves. This way you can easily track how many of your sales are coming from newsletter refferals versus off of your site.

Since tracking what sales come from where, I can safely report that the newsletter has more than paid for itself each and every month that I have been using it.

Blogger Buzz: What’s New With Blogger

noreply@blogger.com (Cold) — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 19:25:00 +0000

Blogger Buzz: What’s New With Blogger

Be sure to check out the new changes coming to Blogger, if you also use the blogspot platform.

Advantages of Automailer Newsletters

noreply@blogger.com (Cold) — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 22:31:00 +0000

Try AWeber's Email Marketing Tool Risk-Free

AWeber Email Marketing
I signed up for the AWeber E-Mail Marketing Software to start an email newsletter for my main site. AWeber is the host of an amazing email autoresponding service that you can use to improve your website. You can do all sorts of great things with AWeber's software and automailing capabilities.

What is an autoresponder?

An email autoresponder is a program that sends emails for you. You create the emails and Aweber sends them out for you based on all the specifications that you tailor to best feed your customers. When used in combination with a Sign-Up Form, these 2 features alone are a great asset to your website or business. Aweber lets you create a Sign-Up Form for your newsletter from tons of pre-built templates. You can use the software to create a weekly or monthly newsletter. If you are a blogger, you can set your Blog posts to automatically be mailed to the inboxes of your subscribers.

Here are a few of the things you can do with AWeber to help grow your site or business.

Create e-mail newsletters.
Create e-mailed coupons.
Create other scheduled mailings.
Create multi-day auto-mailed courses or guides.
Auto-post your site's blog feed to Twitter and Facebook.

So that sounds fine and all, but how will that help my site?

Primarily you can use the software to increase traffic to your site and increase your sales conversions. Increasing traffic will make you more advertising dollars and affiliate sales.

By utilizing the sign-up forms and email auto-responders effectively you can:

Capture new visitors who may bounce and never come back.
Increase traffic to your site.
Increase sales of your products or affiliate products.
Build your brand awareness.
Drive readers back to older posts.
Increase your PPC advertising income.

Although readers can simply sign up for your RSS feeds to receive your posts, a very large part of your audience doesn't understand RSS or feed readers. They do however understand how an e-mail newsletter works. Think of how many visitors come to your site one time, read what they were after and then leave. With a sign-up form, you can get them to join and receive your mailings daily. You then include links back to your site within the daily mailings and you are converting those previously bouncing readers into long term readers. Add in a Google Adsense ad and you are now reaching each newsletter member with a potential revenue source daily. Now imagine a mailing about your special product or an affiliate product that you promote. Starting to see the power of this?

Scheduled Auto-Responses

Here is one of the Aweber tools that I love, timed auto-responses. You pre-craft each e-mail item and set an interval for when you want it to be mailed out. You can also select what times of day that you would like your mailings to be delivered so that helps to increase the chances of your mailings being opened.

Example of what you can do with the mail scheduling.

Day 1: Thanks - After someone signs up a Thank You letter is sent. In this letter you can talk about yourself, your site, or your businessUse this letter to ask the readers to add your return address to their safe list. Provide them some links to areas of your site and explain the features there.
Daily: Blog Posts - Have those daily posts appear in their inbox. This is very useful for readers who can't access your site from work, but do have email access.
Days 2-5: Incentive Course - Offering something free will increase your sign-up rate. In this example we are sending a 4 part course on a specific topic, with one part delivered each day.
Day 10: Coupon - 10 Days after intial sign-up, they will receive a coupon for a product or affiliate item. Convert some readers into customers.
Day 30: Recap - On day 30 we are sending them a message re-thanking them for being a subscriber. We also include more links to vital areas or posts on the site to drive them back to the webpage.
Other Ideas: A Monthly Recap, A Best of The Year Review, Subscriber only contests or content, etc.

Not everyone is going to sign-up on the same day. So if you are sending a coupon to drive sales on Day 10. If people are joining your newsletter daily, then you will have daily coupons going out to a handful of readers everyday because every day is somone's 10th day. Once you get everything set up, you don't have to worry about it as Aweber takes care of the rest. I hope you are seeing the great benefits that an e-mail marketing program can provide.

I am absolutely loving the potential of the AWeber Email Marketing System. It is sooooooo powerful and worth every penny. It's only $1 for the first month and then $19/ month after that.

Anyone else having a great experience with an auto-responder email system?

Hosting A Smooth Blogging Carnival

noreply@blogger.com (Cold) — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 16:34:00 +0000

Blogging Carnivals

Blogging Carnivals are an excellent tool for gathering readers from an already established site's readership base. They are also an excellent tool for the host in gathering content, quality links, and in building trust and respect among your readers. So it is big win-win endeavor. If you are the host of a monthly blogging carnival, be sure to provide your participating bloggers with the oppurtunity to succeed in your blogging carnival.

Tips For Helping Your Blogging Carnival Run Smoothly

Announce Your Monthly Topic Early - It is important to give your participating bloggers, ample time to construct a quality post for inclusion into your monthly blogging carnivals. I like to give almost a full month for my participants to develop their posts. Announcing the topic early has a ton of advantages. The earlier you set the topic the more likely that other bloggers will have time to work up a post for your carnival. If you wait until a week before the carnival goes live, then you risk lack of participation due to lack of time. Also by announcing a week out, you are forcing a lot of posts within your niche on the same topic to appear around the same time. This can lead to many of those posts being skipped as they are "just another one of those carnival entry posts". If you announce your topic early, the featured articles can appear throughout your blogging niche for the entire month and prevent a bunch of similar topics going live all across your blog roll simultaneously.
Make Your Topic Focused, But Open - Pick a topic that has multiple avenues for discussion. If you pick a would you A or B type topic, then chances are you are going to have a ton of repeated information across all the participating blogs. This is poor planning without thinking of the reading experience for visitors.
Make Your Link Requirements Fool-Proof - Growing your carnival is much easier, if all participants are linking back to your carnival page. Some carnivals use an image, while others use text links to promote the carnival on the participants' sites. If you require linking, be sure to post the code for the proper linking so that it can be simply copied and pasted into the article. This will save you having to double check each entry and ask for corrections. Make it easy for your bloggers to add your code.
Remind Potential Participants - Some bloggers are very busy and will forget about the approaching deadline for submission. Be sure to send out friendly reminders as well as tweet reminders with a link to the current topic to your followers. We are all busy and tend to forget things. A gentle reminder can help to increase your participation as well as build trust that you genuinely want others to participate.

Keeping Your Special Visitors

noreply@blogger.com (Cold) — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 22:07:00 +0000

Special Visitors

Two of the best ways to get new visitors to your site are from guest posting and participating in blogging carnivals. Guest posting allows you to get new visitors from an already establish site. The trust they lend when hosting your post helps to send readers to your site as a vote of approval for you. After all, they are hosting your post which is a form of promotion.

Blogging carnivals tend to be very popular sources of many viewpoints on a shared topic. Many times these readers will visit your site and view your carnival submitted post. If they enjoyed your content for the blogging carnival, there next step may be to review your current post or look at interesting topics in your archives. Either way you want to keep those special visitors coming back. You want to convert them into new regular readers and not just a one time visitor that bounces right out of your site after reading your original entry.

How To Keep Them

There are a few things that you can do to help your rate of converting those new special visitors into regular readers or subscribers. After they become subscribers or regular readers, there are much better chances that you can convert them to customers, if your goal is to market a product of your own or to promote affiliate products.

Here are a few strategies to help convert special visitors into subscribers or regular readers.

Make sure you have a top quality post on days that blogging carnivals are released.
Have a high quality post on the day your guest post airs on another site.
Have an area that showcases your most popular posts so favorite posts can be easily found.
Have your newsletter or subscribing option listed above the fold so it is easily seen.
Use deep internal links within your submitted carnival and guest post entries.

Anyone have any other strategies for converting your special guests to regular readers?

The 7 Types of Social Media Sites

noreply@blogger.com (Cold) — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 14:01:00 +0000

Social Media

Social media is a hot topic these days, but did you know there are more types of sites than just Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter? Myspace just fired almost half of their staff and is changing to be less of a social media site and more of an entertainment launch pad. Facebook and Twitter are growing, but there are other types of social media sites out there.

The Seven Types Of Social Media Sites

Social Networks (Facebook, Myspace)
Blogs (Blogger, Wordpress)
Bookmarking Sites (Delicious, Ma.gnolia, StumbleUpon)
Microblogging Sites (Twitter, Plurk)
Media Sharing Sites (YouTube, Flickr)
Popularity Sites (Digg, Reddit)
Aggregators (Flock, FriendFeed, Streamy)

All seven of these categories are important to explore because the are all connected with each other. Social media has the potential to spread a message farther and faster than any other vehicle. You can use multiple types of social media sites to spread the message about your product or your company. Knowing which sites are the current trends or hot spots is a big advantage in getting your message out, building your brand, and capitalizing off of marketing efforts. The more types of sites you are familiar with and using, the better your chances of getting a good spreading sneeze response to your message.

Are you exploring more than one of the seven types of social media?

The Social Media Sneeze Principal

noreply@blogger.com (Cold) — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 17:41:00 +0000

Social Media Sharing

The Social Media Sneeze Principal

The most important thing to understand about the nature of social media is The Sneeze Principle. The various types of social media allow a visitor to read an article or blog post, watch a video, or see some other form of content. That visitor can then "Sneeze" or somehow indicate what he thinks of the content by leaving a comment, bookmarking the site, clicking on a Fan Box or a Like box, or any other form of social media sharing.

That is the Sneeze Effect. When one visitor sneezes, otehr see that sneeze. Others will then go and look at that same content. They may also sneeze and spread it to their circle of friends or followers, who in turn could sneeze again sending it even father. Every view has the opportunity to sneeze and share the message with others. A great post can be far more than you can reach alone, thanks to social media and its sneezing effects.

So be sure to have easy and highly visible access to popular social media platforms. If you look at the top of my page, under the header, you can see the row of buttons. This makes sharing or sneezing the posts or site easy for everyone to spread.

Sneeze Factor / Viral Effect in Action

You do have buttons for your readers to sneeze don't you?

Blogger Code To Swap Default Title Order

noreply@blogger.com (Cold) — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 14:01:00 +0000

Swapping The Title Order

If you are using Blogger as your free blogging service, then there is a simple quick fix that you can do to better improve the search engine optimization for each of your post pages. When creating your url address of your individual post pages, Blogger puts your title at the end of the page address. Ideally you want the title to be keyword rich and placed at the front on the page address. This will provide better results when your topic is searched for. To swap this default setting around open your layout and click on edit html.

Find the following code (Control F brings up a page search box)

<title><data:blog.title/></title>

and replace with:

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>
<title><data:blog.pageName/> - <data:blog.title/></title>
<b:else/>
<title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title>
</b:if>

Then save the changes to your template. Your page titles should now start with your keywords instead of ending with them. This is not a retroactive change so old posts will still be archived from the old settings. Therefore doing this as soon as possible is highly recommended. I just learned this trick yesterday and I really wish I would have known from the beginning of my blogging career.

7 Reasons To Showcase Popular Posts

noreply@blogger.com (Cold) — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 14:01:00 +0000

Showcase Your Popular Posts

You can showcase your most popular posts with a widget. There are many reasons why you should use this option on your blog. The widget ranks your posts based on page views, so your content that is the most read is easily available for others to read. You can set up to show up to 10 posts as the most popular. Your most viewed pages are probably your best posts and should be easily available for new visitors. Be sure to place this showcase of your content above the fold on your landing page.

Reasons To Show Your Top Posts

Your most popular posts are usually your best content. You should show it off.
New readers will appreciate the consolidation of posts and it gives those new readers a great list of articles to read to get the feel of your site and your writing style.
Showcasing your top content can lead to more subscriptions to your feed reader or newsletter.
Once you have identified your most read posts, you know what kind of posts your readers are looking for. You can better target posts for your audience.
Your page views and time on site will increase, while your bounce rate also decreases.
You are providing a list of content that has a better chance to be linked from others sites.
Having identified some of your most commonly viewed posts, you can go back and add affiliate advertising links or purchase options on those high traffic pages.

I use a popular posts list on all my sites. Do you? Can you think of any other benefits from showcasing your popular content?

How To Build An Image Link

noreply@blogger.com (Cold) — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 14:01:00 +0000

Linking An Image To A Page

Here is the basic code for creating a link to a page from an image. It is very similar to creating a text link, except that we are going to use an image instead of anchor text.

First make sure to either upload you image to your directory and copy the url location of the hosting site or find the url of the image online that you want to use.

Don't put a space between the 2 sets of code because some browsers will place a small box after them image, which looks odd.

<a href="Enter the URL of the page to link HERE"><img src="Enter your image link here"/></a>

Twitter Link Shorteners

noreply@blogger.com (Cold) — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 15:01:00 +0000

Twitter

When using the microblogging site Twitter, each tweet you send is only allowed to be a maximum of characters. Often you will want to send text along with your link. Many times you will be linking to a page that has a long url and sometimes the link alone will be longer than the allowed 140 characters. Therefore, you must find a way to shorten you link in order to allow for the link to be included with a short description and hashtags.

Twitter Link Shorteners

There are multiple sites that provide link shortening services. You can view a large compiled link shortener list over at searchengineland.com. I prefer to use Bit.ly as my preferred link shortener. It is rather easy to use. Just copy and paste the link into the main box and it will shorten your link down to less than 14 characters. You can also use this same page to track the clicks of any links shortened with Bit.ly. Be sure to check it out, if you are in search of a link shortening service.

Shameless Self Promotion

noreply@blogger.com (Cold) — Sat, 08 Jan 2011 14:01:00 +0000

I wanted to share with you an excellent article that I read over at Disciplinary Action. This is a blog that is within my main site's gaming niche, which focuses on World of Warcraft normally. This post has some references to other Warcraft blogs, but all of the content is an excellent guide to promoting yourself and your site through the various channels of commenting, forums, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

It is an excellent post and is well worth the read. Check it out and see if you are using these same tactics. I know I already am. Are you shamelessly promoting yourself?

Shameless Self Promotion: A Guide To Driving Traffic To Your Blog

What Is Your Daily Routine?

noreply@blogger.com (Cold) — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 14:01:00 +0000

Get Into A Routine

As humans we are creatures of habit. We tend to like to stick to pre-established routines and straying from that routine can cause unwanted stress. Having a routine helps to keep you focused and in tune with your work. Conversely, not having a routine or set pattern can lead to chaos, missed deadlines, and panic.

Sticking to a routine can help you build your blogging consistency and is also a great way to stay on track towards meeting the goals you have set.

My Daily Routine

Log onto my blogs and check to make sure that they posted without issue.
Check the traffic to the blogs from the day before.
Check referral data to find any incoming links from fellow bloggers.
Read any comments that I have not already seen.
Reply to comments as needed.
View all the blog posts of blogs in my blogroll.
Leave relevant comments on these blogs and any links to similar posts I have written.
Send out a Twitter tweet on new posts 3 times a day. Auto-tweet in morning when posts go live, then manually in the afternoon and evening (to reach more foreign traffic). Follow me at @SSmith0911
Research and work up new posts as needed and set to auto-post.
Engage comments left throughout the rest of the day.
Submit excellent cornerstone posts to article marketing sites as needed.
Comment on forums on relevant topics leaving links as appropriate.
Make sure to have a pad of paper in my back pocket throughout the day for making notes and saving post ideas.

Sticking to this routine daily does pay off in the long run, as I am engaging my comments and leaving comments on other blogs and forums to help drive new traffic to my sites.

Do you have a routine that you follow daily?

Email Marketing and AWeber

noreply@blogger.com (Cold) — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 14:01:00 +0000

Marketing With Email

Email marketing is a great way to increase your ability to earn from your site. The #1 recommended email marketing company online is AWeber Communications. This one is recommended by a ton of successful bloggers and business owners including Darren Rowse of ProBlogger, author of ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income.

Marketing With Email Helps

Increase Sales Conversions
Generate Repeat Sales
Turn Web Users Into Offline Purchasers
Promote Affiliate Products
Create Newsletters
Up-Sell and Cross Sell Products
Gain Feedback From Customers
Build Your Brand Identity

AWeber allows you to set up some great automailers as well. You can set these up to promote affiliate products over time at set intervals. So you can have many time delayed promotional pitches mixed in with daily RSS feeds, weekly newsletters, insider tips, or anything else you can imagine. After you build your subscriber base, you can continue to have many more oppurtunities to convert sales. Best thing is you can pre-set when certain mailers go out with AWeber's automailers. The oppurtunities to bring your readers together within your mailing lists are only available, if you get an email marketing campaign underway.

AWeber is the best bang for your buck as it is only $19 a month and the first month is only $1 to try this great program out.

Above The Fold

noreply@blogger.com (Cold) — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 14:01:00 +0000

Above The Fold

What does "above the fold" mean? "The fold" is the lowest edge of a webpage viewable before scrolling down. So everything that is in plain view on the landing page is considered "above the fold". This fold can vary depending on what device the web page is viewed on and is also effected by things out of your control, like the viewer's browsing toolbar set-up.

You want to try to place certain things above the fold. Anything that is displayed "above the fold" is going to be part of the initial impression of any new visitors to your site. Use this space above the fold wisely. Be sure that your site. Certain things should always be above the fold. Your page title, header, navigation tabs, subscriber links, contact info, and the title of your current post should all be visible above the fold. If you are a blogger, having easy links to some flagship articles or most popular posts above the the fold can help to increase your visitor's time on your site. If you are selling something, you definately want your product, store, or shopping cart to be easily found above the fold.

Any advertising you place above the fold will have a much better chance of being clicked than those listed below the fold and down the page. Depending on what type of site you have will determine what is most important to place above the fold.

Stop and take a moment to view your page and what is above the fold. Do new readers understand what your page is about without having to scroll down the page? Do you have your most prominent items and articles placed above the fold or are they hidden down the page? Think of all the information above the fold as highlighting your site, with a few advertisements mixed in. Anything that is linking to another site or blog can go below the fold as you want to highlight your site above the fold.

Why You Should Promote With Business Cards

noreply@blogger.com (Cold) — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 14:01:00 +0000

Why You Should Promote With Business Cards

Business cards are a valuable tool for any business, but have you ever thought of creating business cards for your blog or web site? Business cards are a nice tool to help grow your site and to lead more readers towards your products or advertising.

I am in the process of designing business cards for my main sites. Often times I am verbally giving my website out or scribbling the url on a piece of paper to hand to someone. How unprofessional is that? Having a nice business card with my site info to hand out would look MUCH more professional than a scribbled piece of paper.

Another reason I want to create a business card is to put my amazon affiliate information on the flip side. Many times I mention the Amazon affiliate program to friends and co-workers in hopes of earning affiliate commissions from people that I know that are already using Amazon for purchases. Having a business card with a direct link address or instructions for navigating to my affiliate link is more professional and easier for the recipient. Plus a business card is more likely to be kept than a scribbled note.

Another use I will have for business cards is when I am out doing some parking lot flyering at conventions within my niche. I can hit all the cars with flyers, then go inside the convention and hand out business cards in person.

After looking all over for the best deals on business cards, I can report the best value is with Vistaprint. This is where I will be getting my business cards once I finish my design.

Save up to 80% on custom printed products at Vistaprint. Order today!

Redirecting Feed Readers Back To Your Site

noreply@blogger.com (Cold) — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 14:01:00 +0000

Feed Syndication

Feeds are a great way to spread your ideas and posts throughout the blogosphere and the internet. There is also a downside to publishing feeds. If you have good content, then it will sure by syndicated. When someone is syndicating every one of your posts along with similar niche feed syndications, there can exist a very useful site for readers within your niche. The feed syndicating hubs may be posting your entire article on their site and reading the traffic benefits of all your hard work! So how do you direct traffic back to your site from these syndication hubs?

Turn Feed Readers Into Traffic

Contact the admin of the hub site and ask them to truncate your posts to only show a summary with a "Continue Reading" link back to the original post on your site.
Contact the hub admin and ask to lock comments and add a note: Please Leave Comments On Author's Site.
Change your feed settings to only show summary posts that link back to the original article. I tend not to do this as it limits the number of people who can read your full feed at work.
Add a note to all of your feeds that asks for comments to be placed on the original site. *See Below.
Include internal links in your daily posts.

Adding A Note To Your Feedburner Feed*

Adding a note to all of your feeds is easy. This example shows how to set up your note in Feedburner.

1. Open Your Feedburner Account and Select Your Site's Feed
2. Choose The Optimize Tab Up Top.

3. Select the BrowserFriendly Tab In The Left Column. Activite Browser Friendly If Needed.
4. Scroll Down The Page.

5. Click the Personal Message [ ] to Enable.
6. Add Your Comment As Your Personal Message (Shown Above).
7. Click Save.

Hopefully this will help redirect some of the viewers of your syndicated feed back to your site, where they can become subscribers, commentors, buyers, and advertisement clickers.

Deep Linking and Summary Posts

noreply@blogger.com (Cold) — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 14:31:00 +0000

Crunch Time

So here I sit starting this entry 5 minutes before it would normally go live. It's not that I don't Pre-Write and Auto Queue Posts, but sometimes unforseen circumstances do happen. Sometimes you will still end up trying to crank a post out the night or morning before it goes live. It is a great idea to have extra guest posts waiting in the wing for days such as these. Trying to be consistent with post times and days is important, but occasionally you may be facing crunch-time. Just relax and don't force out a poor quality post.

Summary Posts

Summary posts can come in handy, if you are down to crunch time or are facing a mean case of bloggage. Bloggage is the term bloggers use to describe writer's block. A summary post is also great way to wrap up a week or month. Summary posts are pretty easy to write and can help you meet your deadline, while working out that case of bloggage.

Some things you can summarize in a post

The 5 or 10 most popular topics for the month.
Your favorites posts of the week, year, or month.
Top favorites reads on your blogroll.
Top comments from the month or week's comment section.
Summarize any recent products you may have purchased within your niche. Be sure to include your affilliate marketing links if you are an affiliate of that product or service.
Summarize top selling items for a given range of dates.
Guest posts you have written on other sites work very well as a quick summary and helps your readers find places to read your content outside of your home domain.

Deep Linking

If you are writing a summary post or article about information on your own site, then it is a great time to also practice deep linking. Deep linking is the practice of linking some of your posts with other posts or links on your site. Notice how I have been creating internal links this entire post? I am deep linking by having this post contain links to other posts that also contain links. This is just one way to help build relevance and increase your page rankings of both your site and your individual posts.

Deep linking helps to:

Build Relevance With Search Engines
Increase Page Rank
Increase Visitor Time On Site
Lower Bounce Rate
Increase Chance of Ad Clicks
Increase Page Views
Get Traffic Back to Your Site From Feeds and Syndications of Your Posts
Easily Provide Relevant Content

So the next time you have a mean case of bloggage or are down to crunch time, try writing a great summary post containing some great deep links.

Anyone else have any great ideas for summary posts?

Copyblogger's Top 10 Blogs For Writers

noreply@blogger.com (Cold) — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 14:01:00 +0000

Top 10 Blogs for Writers 2010

The Top 10 Blogs for Writers contest is always fun to watch, and a great way to add some new favorites to your own list of must-read blogs.

The winners are a talented and creative bunch, with lots of strong fiction blogs appearing on the list. Congratulations to all the finalists and winners!

Storyfix by Larry Brooks, with invaluable tips on how to get your manuscript to “better than perfect” so you can snag that book contract.
Men with Pens by James Chartrand for comprehensive advice on writing, blogging, and business.
Make a Living Writing, a new blog by Carol Tice, gives frank advice to writers about what it really takes to make a living in this business.
Cats Eye Writer by Judy Dunn, about social media copywriting, branding, and how to get more visitors coming to your blog.
The Renegade Writer by Linda Formichelli and Diana Burrell gives the real scoop on why the usual advice for freelance writers is B.S. (and what you should do instead)
Writer Unboxed, a popular multi-author blog on the craft and business of genre fiction, with advice on agents, editors, and of course writing.
Wordplay by K.M. Weiland helps writers become authors by giving insightful advice in a down-to-earth, friendly style her readers love.
The Creative Penn by Joanna Penn offers solid writing advice from her personal experience. Readers call her podcast interviews with authors “as addictive as potato chips.”
Victoria Mixon is both a professional writer and editor, and she brings her breadth of experience to the art and craft of writing fiction.
Courage to Create by Ollin Morales is a passionate, personal blog about one writer’s journey as he writes his first novel.

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I wanted to pass along this great post that I was clued into via Twitter. This is an excellent article that originally appear at CopyBlogger.com : Top 10 Blogs For Writers 2010. These are some great sites to learn from and add to your blogroll, RSS, or daily read. -Cold