MelvinBlog

A blog that chronicles my journey on online marketing, blogging, social media, technology and life.

SEO

7 Ways to Lose Search Engine Rankings

7 Ways to Lose Search Engine Rankings

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This is guest posted by Jordan Metts who provides SEO services to his clients.

Capable SEO services exercise several tactics for rising in the search rankings, and avoid using techniques that fail to appease search engine spiders like Googlebot. Many tactics can get a site into trouble, and seven of the most egregious are described in this post. Using one or more of these tactics is a guaranteed way to lose rank.

1. Accidentally have meta tags or robots.txt set up so that spiders cannot index your files.

In meta tags, if “robots” is set to content=”noindex”, this disallows spider indexing. Remember that each subdomain requires its own robots.txt file. Having the file in the root directory, but not for its subdomains, means spiders will crawl the subdomains with different rules than those applied to the root directory.

2. Scrape web pages for content and repackage it as your own.

This underhanded practice is one way to get on Google’s bad side in very short order. There are ways to automate most of the process with web scraping software and robots that shoddily rewrite paragraphs, but search engines are coded to find repackaged copy. Googlebot in particular is effective at detecting such pages.

3. Use hidden text on a page or set of pages within a site.

Although human eyes cannot detect text that is the same color as a page background, search engine spiders have proven quite adept at finding hidden text. A more recent method of employing hidden text on a site is by using cascading style sheets to layer text beneath copy. Again, spiders have been coded to look for this method, and penalize pages that use this technique.

4. Generate backlinks too rapidly.

Search engine spiders look for “natural” link building patterns over time. Unnatural patterns like a high spike in low to medium quality backlinks raises red flags for those spiders. An effective SEO strategy seeks to build links naturally, avoiding the ire of Googlebot and other spiders.

5. Sign up with a Free-For-All link farm.

This is closely related to the topic number four. FFA link farms promise “guaranteed leads” and such, offering a few thousand links once a month to its non-paying members. Many offer membership packages for $50 a month or more, sharing thousands of links every single day. As stated earlier, natural link building is key. Even if one decides to pay for links, an idea that does not come highly recommended by most SEO professionals, it is very easy to form an unnatural pattern when generating backlinks.

6. Redirect users to a page without their permission via fast meta refresh.

This technique is part of using what are known as doorway pages. They are also called portal or gateway pages. Users do not care for sites that whisk them to another page abruptly and without warning. This is a guaranteed way to lose traffic from visitors who might have become paying customers or contributing forum members, and Google has frowned on the practice for several years.

7. Let complacency set in.

Search engine optimization is not a one-time fix, but a set of recurring, routine tasks. Thinking a site is optimized once and for all is a mistake that will cost you in the rankings. Like any competitive sport, some of the players in the SEO game may be less than ethical. It requires vigilance to root out unfair competition and to keep a site optimized as search algorithms change, and they change often.

Googlebot and other spiders are the equivalent of Internet law enforcement officers, scouring the Web, punishing offenders. Some malefactors receive stern warnings and continue to evade the law while other suspects are fired upon. The best way to dodge Googlebot’s bullets is by avoiding tactics that could induce its ire.

The “Writing for Search” Experiment

The “Writing for Search” Experiment

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As most of you know, I was never really the type of guy who writes for search engines. If you look at my archives, you could literally see that most of my posts are titled by choice and personal preference, and not really to attract search traffic. Aside from that, I don’t really try to do keyword research and see trends and then make a blog post about it just to get some search visitors. I can say that I do probably set up the basic things on this blog search-wise but I don’t really pay that much attention to it nor do I spend a lot of efforts in it.

Obviously that worked for me ever since. I’m more about building relationships and branding myself so most of the traffic coming from this blog are either referral or direct.  On my other online businesses (affiliate marketing and niche sites), I probably do more SEO but again I know that’s very little as compared to what some other marketers do.

Early last year, I got curious about writing for search. I was thinking why do people desperately do that. Are they just THAT stupid? or maybe I’m being too harsh. So one day I wrote a test post on a topic that’s trending (I wouldn’t say the topic) and after about 4 days I have seen some traffic with that certain test post. It isn’t ever massive, just about 30 a day but its fascinating because it gets that amount super consistently day by day. Just in case you’re wondering, I did that experiment using my personal blog.

Anyway back to the traffic, the blog gets very little to no traffic since its just a normal personal site but when I did do that test post I started getting 20-40 uniques a day for like up to now (2+ months) which I thought was amazing since I never really did anything after posting that.

writing for search

I didn’t try generating traffic for that, all I did was wrote a rubbish article on a trending topic and then published it. There’s no maintenance whatsoever too.

Writing for search is something that I loathe and feel that I don’t need to do and obviously I have proven that with this blog and some of my other sites. But that certain test has given me some pretty good ideas on my next upcoming experiments. Am I going to write for search now? Definitely no! An increased focus on search? Maybe.

I know a lot of you here search-optimize your blogs more than I do so what do you think?

5 Clever Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Blog…

5 Clever Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Blog…

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In this blog, I probably have given a lot of tips already on driving more traffic to your blog and you could see all of them simply by checking out my traffic and blog marketing sections.

So in this blog post I would like to share to you some *clever tips on driving more and more traffic to your blog. These are tips that are uncommon and on whether they are blackhat/shady or not, its up to you. 🙂

1. Setting referral traffic source as your site.

I’m not sure if this is something that a lot of bloggers and webmasters know but basically you can set your site as a referrer for all sites that you visit.

The way you do that is through your browser. In Firefox you can simply just download this plugin called RefControl. What this does is simply just allow you to set the referring URL either for all sites that you visit or for a specific site.

The good thing about this is that the traffic that you will get can potentially be a repeat traffic(recurring) since you’re letting real people (not bots) see your site/blog. And the best part is that there’s literally no work involved. If you’re like me who loves to read stuffs online, then thats it.

2. Link baiting in forums

Couple of months back I wrote this really definitive guide on how  you can drive traffic to your blog using forums. It was well-received by a lot of people and you may want to check that out.

So with link baiting in forums, I’m not really referring to you creating a new thread with some controversial topic and then linking back to your own blog. That’s actually an idea forum members usually frown into. Link baiting in forums is simply just posting a thread that you know a lot of people can relate into.

So as you can see in the image above, I just simply created a thread that I know a lot of people would be interested to engage in. I didn’t even put a link explicitly to my blog and as you could realize, this forum thread reached more than 5 pages and a lot of replies from the forum members. Obviously it drove a lot of traffic back to my blog through the signature links and the header itself.

The interesting thing is that the thread was created May last year and people are still replying up to today which brings up the thread above.

3. Talking about making money online

I don’t know what’s the reason behind it but obviously if you make a certain post targeted to making money online or maybe a tip about it, people generally respond positively to it.

Not so long ago, I wrote this post about how MelvinBlog makes its money and up to know its one of the highest viewed page/post in this blog. It’s even viewed more than the recent post on “making money isn’t hard, its just a lot of hard work” which I thought was the best post I have ever produced.

Of course you may not want to talk about making money if you don’t have an experience with it yourself or lack the knowledge about it.

4.  By Joining Guest Blogging contests

Its kind of like odd to include it here right? I have joined a lot of guest blogging contests this year and have talked alot about it too but the truth I think is that it simply just drives you traffic without you really realizing it.

Most people join these contest not to find new readers, nor drive traffic but to win a cash prize and I think that cash serves as an incentive for us bloggers to work harder in driving more and more exposure to our articles. So little do we realize that in trying to win it, we’re unexpectedly driving more and more new readers to our site.

Note: On a little side note, I am participating in Blog Engage contest. Please read, comment and tweet my article on how to drive consistent traffic to your blog. 😉

5. Taking advantage of your newsletter/email list

Most people now know that having a list is essential in blogging yet STILL believe it or not, most bloggers still don’t have one. What do we do now? Simple, take advantage of the fact that we have a list! Having your own email list has several advantages. You could a).connect with people who are interested in the niche that your are into b). drive them to your blog, get them to read your content c). cultivate that relationship that could eventually enable you to sell and push some products to them.

I know some people would find it quite an investment to pay $20 a month for an email marketing tool like Aweber but I think its really really a major investment. I think Aweber still has this $1 for 1st month promo. If you’re interested, take advantage of it now and see if its for you or not.

So, those are my  5 clever tips that could help you drive more traffic to your blog and more importantly, this is a traffic that converts (as a reader, as a customer). If you have some questions or would like to share some other tips, please comment on the comment form below.

Can you Really Depend on SEO for Your Site?

Can you Really Depend on SEO for Your Site?

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Search engine optimization is one overrated thing. And I know its not just me who thinks it this way. But even with that fact, I still have a lot of respect for the top SEO guys like Aaron Wall, Danny Sullivan and some other ones. They’re the guys whom I think have the most extensive and updated knowledge about the topic that’s why I keep on following them.

Anyway back to the topic. I know a lot of newcomers in the business or even the experienced ones rely too much on search engines. I mean, the time that they allot in planning and strategizing for SEO is just too much. Now this leads us to the question, “Can you really depend on your SEO tactics for the profitability of your site?”. I’m sure we will all have mixed takes about it.

As most of you know, I guest post a lot these days and I wrote an article over the cool folks at Sem-group which is all about SEO, SEM and Social media. In that post I discussed a lot about how they’re connected and how SEM and social media play vital role in giving the site the initial boost. Here’s an excerpt:

When building a website or any online-based project, you want to build SEO in it from the get-go. You want to optimize it for those key terms that you’re looking into from the start. I know you’re saying, “how can you do that, you don’t even have content yet?” Yes, you’re right but what I mean is that with every websites you can already set up things from the start that would give you a dramatic effect later on. Let me explain.For example, if I’m building a site based on a WordPress platform, I can start fine-tuning the site’s search goals by doing the necessary things like adding an All in One SEO pack, canonicalizing the domain, setting up the meta descriptions properly and creating a robots.txt (and many more of course). You see, these are the things that you can already do from the start yet it doesn’t take that much to do those. On the flip side, it may not yield that much results for the first few months but its future benefits would be enormous for sure.

Search Engine Optimization isn’t a short-term goal in the first place right? Organic rankings is something that can be achieved over time and if you’re getting lots of traffic from search engines then you know what I’m talking about.

Again you can visit my post about SEO, SEM and Social media and feel free to add your insights about it too. I know people have various opinions about this topic and Im willing to take criticisms for it.

It’s a Contest, Help me Win it!

Yes, the article I’ve written above is a contest entry. Sem-Group.net was lucky enough to gather over $2000 of prizes at stake and as all of you know, I love joining contests.  Here are the cold-blooded prizes and their sponsors:

$200 Prize Sponsors

$150 Prize Sponsors

$100 Prize Sponsors

$50 Prize Sponsors

Other prizes: Non-Cash Sponsors

  • Hostgator.com is offering a 1 year Business Web Hosting plan. Includes toll free phone number and SSL, a $179.40 value.
  • David Harry is offering a full years membership at SEO Training Dojo, a value of $250.
  • Link-Assistant.Com is offering SEO tools – SEO PowerSuite Enterprise (max. functionality license) $599 worth with a life-time LIVE! plan subscription.
  • Special thanks to the contest media partner My Blog Guest, the free guest post exchange community by  Ann Smarty where users meet to exchange guest posts and network.

What’s needed for me to win

To help me win the contest, simply visit the post above, share your opinion by commenting and retweet it. The more comments and retweets the more chances of me winning. As you can see right now, I’m in the last place as far as both are concern but that would change if you help me out. 😀

Again here’s the post: http://sem-group.net/search-engine-optimization-blog/sem-seo-social-media-and-their-connection-to-each-other/ feel free to check it out!

What Type Of Blog Post Can Get You the Most Traffic?

What Type Of Blog Post Can Get You the Most Traffic?

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This is the question that I got from a good friend couple of weeks back. I was about to post it last Monday but I got super busy. Anyways back to the topic. So you’re feeling good to write something you think would crush the blogosphere right? You sit down and wrote it, published it and boom, not much traffic. Where do I get wrong, maybe you’re asking.

Anyways first I’d like to answer the question first on what is the best day to post a good article? The answer (I know you’ll be disappointed) is it depends. Mostly and from my experience the best day is either Monday or Tuesday. This is when I mostly post my “pillar articles” as what Yaro Starak calls it. I was also inferred that Friday and Saturday are good days as well but as I’ve said it depends on the behavior of your readers.

So what type of blog post can get the most traffic? Here’s a list based on my own experience as well as some research. No particular order:

Personal posts

I talked about this in my post about personal posts and voyeurism. Again the reason why this type of post gets so much traffic is because people are always interested to know private things about the author and also add the fact that literally everyone can participate in this type of conversation. Once in a while, it’s nice to let our readers know that ‘hey Im human too and I screw up sometimes’ Here are some examples:

“How To” Type of Posts

Arguably and obviously the best way to get it done during high traffic days. “How to” posts are basically like definitive guides wherein you write an article with a minimum or longer than 1000 words. The reason it works well is obvious, it gets people to read more. And if you do this write, you will not only get a lot of traffic, you will also get a lot of links from other blogs in the blogosphere.

I have done a couple of this post in the past few years but this year I’m trying to do it more and more to provide the best value for my readers. Here’s my portfolio of my own how to posts:

Resource Guide

This is another type of post that seems to rake in instant traffic to a blog. Here in this blog, you really will not find that much but I know for most blogs this is usually there main driver of traffic for their sites. The reason this works so well is because people see it as handy, meaning something that they can bookmark or use for future use. And besides people love lists so no wonder why it does well. Ex:

Interviews With Other Bloggers

Actually this goes well specifically for interviewing high profile bloggers in your niche but for this I would like to use bloggers as a general example. This type of post can attract so much traffic mainly because most bloggers, if not all, love talking about themselves on where they’re up to lately! Instead of just you spreading the word, they help you spread the word and if they’re big enough, let alone their massive number of readers do the job for you. Examples:

Contest Posts

Contest posts are the type of posts that can get it done pretty quick. For obvious reasons, contest posts can very much get massive traffic, comments and attention in just a span of an hour. The cons though is that the long term effect and benefit of it is non-existing since people don’t need to read if it’s already done. In short, it’s time-sensitive. Examples:

Controversial Posts

Controversial posts can get an equally massive traction around if done properly. However, never ever do it for the sake of being controversial. Know what I mean? When you expose something or rant on someone, make sure you back up it up with facts, not just speculations. There’s a good chance that the traffic you will get can only do harm for you if you don’t do it correctly.

My favorite guy in doing is a dude named NickyCakes. Nick has been exposing and calling out on people especially if he thinks they suck. The good thing is he always backs it up with facts. But the one thing that you have to keep in mind when doing controversial posts is that you have to be ready for everything, regardless of you’re doing it right or you’re doing it wrong.

Linkbait Posts

Linkbait type of posts kind of like included in each and every type I mentioned above but the reason I had it seperately is because there are some bloggers out there who use compelling headlines alone to get massive traction.

I’m sure you’ve read intriguing titled posts wherein the content doesn’t really fall into the other type of posts I mentioned above. A good example of this are the April fools posts wherein it’s intriguing and that alone get so many people to read their stuffs.

There’s not much return in it because people are gonna either find it nice or they would get pissed off and it could result to a high percentage of visitors just bouncing off.

Conclusion

Those are the different types of posts that can potentially get the most traffic. So far I think I’ve done most of them and this blog post is more from my experience in blogging.

Also when considering on publishing on any of these posts make sure to spend an ample amount of time and work on them carefully. As I’ve said a lot of times already, it could completely go the other way and more likely just harm your blog if not done correctly.

That’s it for now, how about you do you have any types of guest post that works the most for you? or maybe you would want to share your own reason why some of them work so well?

Image credit to: http://hermawanputra.files.wordpress.com

Can You Still Get Traffic By Being Active In Big Blogs?

Can You Still Get Traffic By Being Active In Big Blogs?

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Before, one of the most effective ways to get your new blog noticed is to comment on as many number of big blogs as possible. Back then it’s not just effective, it’s almost considered as a standard. You are basically going to be considered fool if you’re not utilizing this free traffic technique.

But like anything, as time rolls out quickly, things change so drastically. The once so popular blog commenting on big blogs has somehow declined. Not that people aren’t commenting anymore but these days, you’d rather see bloggers do a guest post, run a contest, focus on writing a series post or do more productive stuffs than by being active in their favorite top blogs.

It’s Not as Effective as What It Used To Be

There are really a ton of other things that aren’t as effective as they used to before. One good example is link exchanges. 5-10 years back, it was like the only method that webmasters use both to drive traffic and increase their rankings in the search engines. That’s why people always say that the pace of an online business is much quicker than the real world ones. This day what you’re using may be still effective, the next day you’re not guaranteed it is still gonna work.

As for being active on top blogs, here are some of the reasons that I see why it has somehow declined as not as good as what it used to be.

  • Poor Quality of Traffic – It doesn’t take a lot to see that most bloggers who comment on those sites do it for the lone sake of commenting. I don’t know but I’m really puzzled why bloggers like Chow allow comments such as “thanks for this interesting post” as it doesn’t really add anything. Most of these bloggers were inferred that they need to comment on 200 blogs a day so they do it as fast as they could.
  • Happy-go trigger audience – This one relates to the first factor. The good reason why no one will notice your comment is because 98% of bloggers don’t really read comments of other people. They just comment and then leave, comment and then leave. Oftentimes they don’t even recognize who have written the posts. For instance everytime I do a guest post, most commenters would comment and not even think the post was a guest writeup by another blogger and not the author.
  • Saturation – its plain common sense. Why does one thing work so well before than today? Because before, the method isn’t abused, its used by a reasonable no.of bloggers. But now that everyone uses it, its really hard to see a return.

</end of rant> Anyways as I was writing this post, I just thought it would be interesting to share with you a little case study on what interacting with big blogs bring to the table for me.

For the past month i have been really trying to become active lurker reader on some of the big blogs in our niche. I had observed what ZK has been doing and basically I gave myself a go. And here’s what I found out (in last months period):

From John Chow’s blog

johnchow trafficFrom Shoemoney’s blog

shoemoney trafficFrom Carl Ocab’s blog

carlocab traffic

And from DailyBlogTips

dailyblogtips trafficIt wasn’t ever massive but it’s a good proof that by being active on other people’s blogs you can still reap some traffic. It would also be interesting to see how different blogs have different visitors and behaviors. For instance Shoemoney’s blog, returned a bounce rate of 39% which is pretty good considering that all audience came from just reading my comment and then clicking my link.

John Chow has sent me the most no.but its hard to determine it since I’ve done a couple of guest post on that site as well. As expected it returned a higher bounce rate since most of the blog’s readers are trigger go-lucky ones.

Carl Ocab’s blog sent me a pretty nice stat to play with. His blog was like in hiatus for three months and to receive that no.of traffic and bounce rate is pretty amazing. DBT on the other hand, had the least new visits % . This means that most of the readers of that site also read my blog as well.

Importance of this

Why am I telling you all of this? You may probably have been scratching your head on whats the importance of this. Two things, first is I love playing with stats. I spend a lot of my  free time with Analytics and analyzing my logs and second is that stats can help you a lot in terms of improving the usability of your blog and eventually driving more traffic. As an old adage says,”the number will always speak for itself”. I’m a huge advocate of that.

So to conclude, yes we can still get good traffic from being an active commentator on those big blogs. But it just does not gonna happen right away, you have to be creative and make sure you’re adding good value to the community and not just being spammy. After all, we’re not just concerned about the quantity, we’re all after the quality as well.

How Landing Page Can Increase your Blog Traffic

How Landing Page Can Increase your Blog Traffic

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It still continues to surprise me how a lot of people still DO NOT use a landing page for their blog. A landing page is just basically a page where you send majority of your new visitors. This is a crucial page because by letting them stay in that page, you’re persuading them to subscribe to your blog and become a loyal reader. Here’s an overview from my Analytics on how my landing page is faring:

You can notice that people who enter my blog through that page are less likely to bounce that quick. Because my best posts are showcased there, they oftentimes continue to read my post rather than just leave away. As of this writing, my blog’s landing page is located at /welcome. In that page you can see that I introduced first what my blog is all about, then presented them the best posts in each category and lastly offered them to subscribe to my RSS.

A lot of well-known bloggers do use a landing page for their blogs and that’s because they know the power of it. If this one is new to you, then let me present the benefits of using one:

  • Lets new readers read on your blog more – The bounce rate of a new user is usually in the range of 70%-100%. If you have a landing page, a new user would stay on your blog more, read more of your stuffs, potentially increasing the chance of that user to become a loyal reader in the future.
  • Increase subscribers – The no.1 point leads to this point. Since using this method I have seen a great jump on my rss subscribers. Consider this, would you subscribe on a blog where you have read the best posts of it, or on a blog where all you’ve read are the recent posts?
  • Increase your expertise – Since your best posts are showcased in your landing page, it gives your expertise and credibility a huge boost. Because of your good content, people will start to have that perception that you are a credible person in your niche, hence would keep them for the long haul.

But how do I do a landing page? Contrary to the belief that only sales pages and static websites can have a landing page, each and every blog should have one. Because of the overcrowded content in the internet, a lot of people have become used to what I call “skimming mentality”, where people just read a bit and then go away.

Landing page is a good tool to keep people on your site longer hence reaping the benefits I mentioned above. Anyways there are two ways on how you can your landing page and I would discuss both of them right now.

Traditional Landing Page

The traditional landing page involves creating a dedicated page showcasing the best stuffs in your blog (you can look at mine to see the pattern).  In that page usually contains the ff; a short description of your blog, why people need to subscribe to your blog, your best posts, and another for them to subscribe.

You can actually even alter and just use your creativity depending on what you are offering to the market. For example, I have a free eBook I am giving away so I would definitely add that to my landing page. You can name that page depending on your taste, just make sure the name is something relevant to accommodating new readers (mine’s title is /welcome).

Home Page as a Landing Page

The evolution of blog’s home pages from the standard chronological layout type from the magazine-style has also its reason. That is to make the blog more enticing to readers. Unlike the old layouts, magazine-style themes showcase more than just the recent posts. It gives emphasis to a lot of things, making good use of every space without looking too much cluttered.

Using a magazine-style template automatically makes use of the home page as a landing page itself.  We’ve seen big blogs like John Chow, Problogger and many more switch to that layout. Because of that, readers would not just focus on the recent post but most likely they will focus on the blog as a whole.

Conclusion

Using a landing page for your blog is imperative. As I’ve said, it continues to amaze me how a lot of bloggers still don’t do it. Thus far, I don’t see any disadvantages of having one and if you don’t have one right now, I highly suggest you to do your one now.

I would be interested to see your own blog’s landing page and would like to hear your thoughts about it.