Traffic

7 Ways to Lose Search Engine Rankings

by Melvin · Jul 24, 2011

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.

Memes Can Make Your Blog Money

by Melvin · Jul 16, 2011

This is a guest post by Jessica Wagner

Anybody who takes their blogging seriously doesn’t need to be told about internet memes and their influence on web culture. In fact, many of the more famous memes found on the web owe their popularity to the relaying nature of links through blogs. But maybe you’ve just started out on your blog writing adventure and aren’t too sure what a meme is. Trust me, you’ve seen one before.

An internet meme is any image, video, phrase, concept, or personality that takes on a cult status online. Typically they’re found on humor sites and forums, where they often originate. One of the most popular meme genres is “LOL Cat”, which is simply a series of photos of cats caught in interesting poses or actions with white font text bordering the image, often conveying a phrase the cat in the picture is “saying”. If you still don’t know what a meme is, search for “lol cat” on Google and spend the next ten minutes laughing.

Now that you’ve gotten your giggles out, consider the ways in which getting familiar with memes can boost visits to your blog. These images and videos are some of the most widely searched for entities on the Internet. Perusing sites where “fresh” memes are being created everyday is a great way to familiarize yourself with the latest laughs. Catch one before it catches on and your blog could be a hotbed for traffic.

Internet memes are becoming their own subject to study. You can research the history of the already established volume of existing memes, and read more about their individual creation by visiting sites that categorize them. KnowYourMeme.com is a great place to start.

So how does a blog make money with memes? Like any other way of making money with a blog, it’s an incredibly elusive feat, but pairing your day-to-day musings up with widely popularly images and videos is a great way to get the ball rolling. You’ll never know until you try.

The added bonus of most memes is that they’re often created anonymously via sites like 4chan.org and reddit.com, and are therefore copyright-free. You can use as many as you want without worrying about being emailed a cease and desist letter.

Blog success is simply a matter of popularity. In order to achieve financial success via blogging, you have to understand that in order to be found, you have to associate yourself with what’s being searched for. For those who don’t take the content of their blogs too seriously, even if they take their blogging itself seriously, nothing could bring more people to visit than making memes your mission. Give it try. You have nothing to lose besides a belly full of laughs and empty space on your blog.

Give Your Blog A Facelift!

by Melvin · Jul 10, 2011

Starting a blog is the simplest part of the process, but where it becomes difficult is holding onto the following that you have built. With so many people out there blogging, it’s hard to stand out from the white noise of the blogosphere. Many times it’s due to no fault of the blogger and more to do with the competition and viewers wanting something fresh and new. If you’ve noticed a lagging readership and a following that’s dwindling, consider giving your blog a facelift.

Reviving Old Posts

You’ve likely put a lot of resources in time and effort into coming up with each post. Though you’ve used them in the past, if the material is relevant, consider going back through your archives and pulling from the wealth of information that you’ve already offered to past readers. If it was a topical posting, then you probably should consider the shelf-life of it, but there’s no reason why good content shouldn’t continue to work for you. You don’t have to repurpose them and try and pass them off as fresh material. Use Tweet Old Posts. It might end up getting you some extra attention from people who didn’t follow you a year or two ago. The idea is to introduce new readers to older work. You might find that re-posting an article will get more traffic than when you were first starting out.

Socializing

We all know the power of social networking and when you put the power of information in the hands of people, it spreads like wildfire. It’s like taking the pulse of a demographic by getting their opinions trough something like a survey. Companies like Survey Head get in touch with people to see how relevant the content is. You want to be relevant to people and you should expose people to you content and allow the to freely react. By allowing readers the tools, on your site, to share your work with others you’re not only connecting to them but also their networks. It all snowballs from there. Tools like the Facebook Like feature are all about sharing information and making easier for people to interact and share content. Encourage readers to use these features and you’ll be amazed at what it will do for you numbers.

Guest Blogging

This approach works very similarly to social network. It is, in fact, a form of networking. Just as Facebook puts you in touch with a greater readership, making connections in the blogosphere could prove most beneficial for your success. You may have an excellent approach and opinion but you should realize that yours isn’t the only one. Consider this as a kind of free PR. By writing on other blogs as a guest, you’re getting your personality out there and connecting to an entirely new network of users that might not have otherwise ever heard about you. You’re trying to sell yourself and neglecting this avenue is a bad choice. You should also be commenting on other blogs. This is not a waste of time. Stay up to date and active in the blogosphere.

Try some of these approaches and try not to get disheartened. If you’ve been contemplating giving up because you’re just not seeing the excuse to keep it going, use some of these devices and see how it works. It might be just the thing you need to revitalize you lagging numbers and get your blog noticed.

Learn What Writing About Practical Matters Has in Store for You

by Melvin · Jun 11, 2011

This is a guest post written by Laurence Mitchel

Let’s face it; we’re all either trying to be the next Perez Hilton or the founders of a tech-focused version of The Huffington Post. Even if our pursuits aren’t exactly to relay the latest rumors or break the most recent news story, when we blog we tend to focus on subjects that we know to be exciting and culturally relevant. The only problem with that is it produces an echo chamber blistered from the amount of repetitious information that trickles its away down through Internet popularity. You might have a wholly unique perspective on the Arab Spring but that won’t do much but add on to the millions of emitted opinions on the issue that make their way online, many of which come from people directly involved. It’s hard to compete with that no matter what you have to say.

Sometimes all it takes is re-looking at the relevancy of certain things in our own lives to realize there’s actually a lot more we could be talking about that we actually can provide some authority on. Successful blogs derive their success from the writer’s authority on a particular issue. Even if you’re just a Californian gossip queen, if you can talk about celebrities in a way most others can’t, that’s how you net a massive following. Since the seemingly exciting topics have already been taken, new bloggers should consider less dynamic and more practical topics to write about.

Topics like how to choose the right sealing wax for your car might seem boring, but not when you consider the fact that there are surely a few thousand people at least who would read what you had to say on the subject if you knew what you were talking about. You might even be the only person online who projects any level of expertise on the subject and collect all the potential readership. A storage blog, as completely uninteresting as that may sound, is above al practical. People commit personal property to long term storage all the time and are probably dying to get some layperson’s opinion on the best way going about it. You’d really be surprised how some of these off-center topics catch on with the right readers.

Everybody is an expert at something. I happen to be pretty good at doing everything I can to work the least amount. That’s a blog topic that could last me months right there. Maybe you’re a former dry cleaner or medical coder, and being laid off has actually given you the opportunity to turn that talent around and use it as a means to sound off free worthwhile advice. Who knows you could be initiating a movement. Just think: “how to store dry cleaning long term – part one”.

Sounds really practical isn’t it? What do you think?

The “Writing for Search” Experiment

by Melvin · Feb 19, 2011

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.

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?

Maintaining Your Blog When You’re Busy

by Melvin · Feb 10, 2011

Hard times, they always come don’t they? Imagine, you worked your butts off pretty hard for 6+ months to get steady traffic. You really dedicated your effort to make sure there’s growth in your blog and all of a sudden you learned that you’re going to be busy for the next few months, thus you can only spend so little time for your blog.

Think about this, things online move rapidly. Spending 2 months to promote a blog and get traffic would only take 1 week of full absence to have that traffic diminish. With that in mind, we’re in big trouble. But of course like anything else, there are smart fixes and solutions for that and in this blog post I aim to talk about those things.

Write in one sitting

If you’re really busy, there’s a good chance that you can still have a day or two where you can write some blog posts. Believe its more than enough.

The way I do it most of the times is write my blog posts in one sitting. So basically you could pick your most productive day, in most cases, its every Monday, and then sit down and don’t do anything other than write blog entries. You would be surprised how many high quality articles you can pump out in that day.

For me I usually do it every morning mostly in my home office (anyone can call their room their office 😉 ) and spend almost 6 hours in writing articles. I can then come up with 5-8 blog articles that I can now set on queue. The important thing here is that you have the continuity of content which will definitely help with consistent traffic and awareness around the blogosphere.

Utilize Social Media accounts

In the event that you cannot really go out and market your blog through commenting or other things, you can simply just utilize your social media accounts such as Twitter, Facebook and etc.

Most people can access this through their mobile phones so just a simple tweet maybe every three hours can do wonders. Social media is still a hot commodity when it comes to traffic generation and if you have good following on social sites then there’s a good chance you can benefit from it a lot by doing it consistently.

Make things Structured and Automated

One thing that I learned a lot ever since having a job is making things automated and structured. Of course before, I thought I was very structured but I know I improved a lot.

Here are some of the things that you can automate so you no longer need to do it manually.

Automate your tweets – This can be done in various ways. You can signup to a service known as twitterfeed. What it does is simply just automatically tweet your latest post published so there’s no need to do it manually. Another is by utilizing this plugin called as Tweet Your Old Post. This brilliant plugin simply just tweets any random posts of yours in a certain time interval and the beauty about this is that you can have control on types of posts that you want to publish. Let’s say you just want to continually publish your top posts. What you can do is filter it using your categories so that you can eliminate your personal posts from being tweeted.
Structure your newsletter series – Just like in posting blog posts, you can actually do your newsletter of one week or 2 in one sitting. In my experience, the best way to do it is every Sunday since you are much more relaxed to write a series of newsletters.
Manage your Ad Inventory with Ease – There are times that you wouldn’t notice there are advertisers looking to advertise on your site. The best way to manage your ad with ease is to use a third-party advertising platform and in my case, I highly recommend using OIO Publisher. OIO automates everything, from setting up banner spaces to accepting payments and even sending out stats. Those things can be done easily with OIO.

Note: OIO Publisher usually costs $47 but if you sign up under my link, you can get a $10 off and instead get it for $37

Seek for outside help

In an event where you feel you really need outside help, you can simply just hire freelancers out there to do things for you. My buddy Carl Ocab, noticeably has done this extensively as he has almost moved away from posting articles on his blog.

Contrary to what most people think, its actually not that expensive. You can simply do a contract that would pay a freelancer on a per article basis so you don’t need to shed a lot of money for something that is not done daily.

You can also hire virtual assistants that can oversee minor operations on your blog such as publishing blog posts, deleting spam comments, answering emails and maintaining small things. Hiring someone can be really really helpful especially if you want to maintain consistency in your blog.

There ya go! Those are the 4 things that you can do to be able to maintain your blog even when you don’t have time to do it on a daily basis. Strategic blogging involves being wise enough in facing certain problems mentioned above. If you can make yourself involved lesser than ever while still reaping the same benefits, then you’re doing it right.

Key Ingredients of a Likeable Blog

by Melvin · Jan 30, 2011

Not so many people can create a blog and be a blogger that gets a lot of people to read his blog. That being said its much harder for someone to create a blog and be a blogger that people would like and would love to read to for a long time.

I know that of course, I’m a lurker. In my free times, I do a lot of blog hopping and try to see what the blogosphere is talking about. Some blogs are good and I like them a lot while some are good, yet I don’t feel like I ever want to get associated with them. And that’s the truth, needless to say.

There seems to be some key substance or ingredients that make a blog or the blogger that’s behind it likeable for people and for this post I’d like to share them to you based on my own experience. If you find that I’m missing something in the list, feel free to let me know it through the contact form. Anyhow here’s the list:

1. The blog loads smoothly and quickly

Let’s face it, blogs these days are plastered with ads. Look at you’re blog, look at my blog, look at this blog. But the truth is that it does not mean that your blog has to look cluttered, the truth is that there’s a lot of ways still to make a blog presentable and look uncluttered. And that is by making sure your blog loads smoothly and quickly.

There’s nothing worse than craving to find information only to wait for days and days before that info loads (of course “days” is a hyperbole description). I experienced that too and it took me a while to realize that my blog was loading slow enough for people to actually just move away and bounce from my site.

2. The author cares to reply to comments

These days, it can quite be hard to drive and attract traffic to your site especially if you’re just starting out. There’s just so much to read and there’s a chance that someone is always better than you, writes better content and knows more. So how do we counter that as a smaller blogger? Well the simple answer is to interact better to our audience.

As obvious these days, blogs that get loyal audience are the blogs that care about their readers. For my own perspective, I always feel appreciated everytime someone takes some time to reply to my comments and thats the reality about it. You may not be able to reply to all comments or may not be able to do it in a timely manner. But what’s important is to at least show you interact with them.

3. It’s easy to connect to them

Blogging is often associated to social media simply because they’re really connected to each other. You see, I have a blog but because I have a blog, I also use Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Stumbleupon or whatever. What makes a blogger approachable and easy to connect to is when he/she shares his/her information publicly to his readers. When connecting to him/her is easy.

4. When the blogger is nice and transparent

By saying nice, I don’t mean angelic or religious in some way or another. What I mean is that the blogger is nice and a true person. Here’s the thing, I myself is a big advocate of criticizing someone and in my blog I always voice out if some things or tools suck and that’s because its who I am.

I wrote a post not so long ago entitled, “its not about making controversy, it’s about being me” and in that I emphasized the importance of being yourself and not faking it. Although I also covered the consequences that one could face by being so transparent. Blogging is a human to human connection and I haven’t seen anyone succeeded who’s pretending to be someone else.

5. They reward their readers once in a while

This is a big reason for most readers and audience why they have to stay. Not all bloggers do this and I’m not talking about rewarding someone by giving him cash or gadgets. What I’m talking about is the simple things like commenting back on the blog, or giving a mention or link love. How about a simple retweet or a stumble? Those things are really small yet they mean a lot especially for your readers.

Those are the 5 things that I think makes a blog and its blogger likeable . They are definitely simple things but the effects can be dramatic especially for the growth of the community of your blog.

Did you notice I haven’t even included writing good content? Yes, writing superb articles will always be a factor for one’s success but good writers and informational blogs aren’t really always likeable, you know what I mean? People read for two things, first is to find information and second is to connect and if you’re just going to write good blog entries then I’m not sure that’s enough for you to be successful.

I just named 5 here because I know you have other things in your mind too. So what are the other key ingredients of a likeable blog that you think I missed out?