Today is kind of a fun post to help you get a snapshot of what your website might look like to Google or other search engines.
First, navigate yourself to Wordle, enter your blog URL in the appropriate box, and click “Submit.” Simple as that.
The larger words are the ones that appear more frequently in your blog posts (the website actually reads your RSS feed).
If the Googlebot could see, this might be what your blog would look like to it.
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As promised, here is the second week of full disclosure, showing you my web traffic and proposing what went right or wrong with the tips implemented the previous week.
Well, as you can probably see, traffic has gone down a bit. Total traffic for Week 2 was 459 visitors. Am I concerned? Not particularly.
Well, if by that you mean why is my traffic less than last week, it’s because my Wednesday push at social media for my 6 tips for running a successful blog didn’t do as well as I thought it would.
That’s okay with me though because I had articles tweeted by @problogger, @mattuk, @patrickaltoft, @AndyBeard, and quite a few other promanent bloggers and micro-bloggers this week. I’d rather have 1% of the traffic I get from Digg / reddit if it comes from those guys because they’re going to be the ones sending people that actually care about the content of this blog.
So I’ll keep the content coming, hope that the people who have taken notice of the blog will keep coming back, and I’ll be making my daily rounds across the blogosphere to bring you interesting content for your consideration.
Cheers.
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People tend to ask me a lot on my various blogs whether I mind if they reproduce my posts. Oftentimes this arises when a guest poster asks if they can repost their post on their own personal blog. My gut was to always say yes — especially for guest posters — but it turns out that Google may have a problem with that.
To understand why this is even a policy, you need to understand “scraper sites.” A scraper site is a website which [usually] automatically steals content from sources around the internet in an effort to appear like a legitimate website. You’ve probably noticed these sites in your spam filter as linkbacks to websites saying something completely stupid like:
Josh Auriemma has a new post today about Excited about my cherry twinkies: “So you’re probably asking yourself, ‘what’s the deal with the Google duplicate content penalty anyway? Well let …” Original site here [link to my post]
These sites were a very efficient way to spam search engines back in the day. Enter the duplicate content penalty. Nowadays, Google compares its index for duplicate content in an effort to find people trying to game the system. So you’ve let Jonny Appleseed republish one of your posts, but it’s also on your website. Now Google has to figure out which result to display in the SERPs, because it’s not going to display both. Do you really want to risk it returning Jonny’s website instead of yours? Probably not.
According to Google, best practice is to make Jonny put a link back to my original article. That may indicate to Google that my website should be displayed instead of his. Still, many SEOs (myself included) believe that sites with duplicate content take a penalty in the SERPs. In my opinion, it’s probably not significant, but I suspect that it’s there. As a result, if I’m working to build up a website, I really don’t want duplicate content floating around.
What I usually do if I’ve guest posted somewhere is give a summary, in different words, about the article on my own blog. I’ll then link to the full article on the main website. That way I don’t risk duplicate content with either site.
As always, there aren’t any hard-and-fast rules. Just use your best judgment depending on the situation.
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Whether you’re a seasoned blog veteran or you’re just learning how to write a blog post, there are certain accepted best practices in blogging which, if followed, will help you out. Most people learn to blog by throwing mud at the wall and seeing what sticks. I suggest that you read this post, think about how you can run your blog better, and develop a plan of action regarding how you’re going to improve your blog.
6. Pace YourselfThe biggest problem many bloggers face is that they burn themselves out very quickly. They get this great idea for a blog, spend a ton of time making it, and then the muse leaves them and they’re left with little more than an idea.
It’s perfectly natural to have your creativity visit you in short bursts, but if after careful review of your blog posting history it’s obvious that you make three posts in one day and then go a week or two without posting anything at all, you’re in trouble.
Scheduled posts. I always have my eyes open for blog topics and ideas, but I don’t necessarily always feel like writing the posts. That’s why I have a dedicated file where I store all my post ideas and accompanying URLs for linkbacks. When the muse does hit me, I’ll sit down and write three or four posts and schedule them to publish no more than once per day. Consistency is key. Set a posting schedule and try to stick to it. Hint: no less than one post per week barring vacations, emergencies, etc. or people won’t think you’re serious about your blog.
Oh, and while we’re on the subject of people thinking you’re serious about your blog, run, don’t walk to BlueHost (my provider) and get yourself a server and your own domain. Nothing says you don’t care like a wordpress.com or a blogspot.com account when private hosting and domain name registration is so cheap.
Don’t worry, we’re not talking about corporate espionage here. Hopefully you’ve figured out where your potential readers are already going to get their content. If not, try searching Technorati for blogs similar to yours. Once you’ve identified the successful blogs in your general area of interest, you need to do three things:
After reading Tip 5 above, you’re probably wondering why bloggers are so willing to help you out. Well, it’s because your blog isn’t going to be a replacement for theirs. If anything, it will be a complement. How do I know? Because if your blog is exactly like another, more famous blog, it’s essentially doomed to fail. They’ve got more readers, more experience, and probably a better reputation in the relevant community, so how do you compete with that? Well, you essentially compete by not competing. You make your blog into a variation on a theme.
What do I mean by that? Well, take ProBlogger for instance. I don’t see myself as competing with Darren because while his blog is geared towards generating great blog advice, mine is geared towards learning to build a blog from scratch. While the difference may seem subtle and there is certainly some overlapping interests, that’s the kind of edge that you need to play around with in order to set yourself apart from similar blogs. Your personality can compensate a lot for a similar blog premise, but you really are going to sit down and ponder exactly what you want to do in your future blog space.
If your blog is new, don’t worry about reinventing yourself, either! I promise that if you find a good niche to fit into, you’ll be able to replace those 20 loyal readers in no time.
3. Promote, Promote, PromoteMany people suffer from the Wayne’s World 2 “If You Build It, They Will Come” Syndrome. Unfortunately, even if you have the best content in the world, if they can’t find you, they can’t come. So you have to get your content out there somehow.
As suggested by Tip 5, guest posting and commenting on established blogs is a good way to put yourself out there in general. You can also try advertising, which is quick traffic but only good traffic if you target the right keywords. In my opinion though, the best way to drive up relevant traffic to your blog is to write a really killer blog post and then bring it to the attention of the heavy hitters in your field.
For instance, I recently wrote a post about turning a firefox plugin into a personalized ad targeting program. I knew when I wrote it that it was a good post, and I legitimately suspected that it would be of interest to readers of the top blogs. I began sending off emails through the contact forms of those blogs with a message along the lines of, “Hi, I just wrote a post about X that I believe will be of interest to your users because Y. I hope that you will pass it along if you find it relevant and interesting. Thanks.” Simple as that, and before long, I had hundreds of hits from multiple sources and my URL was tweeted by @problogger and some other big hitters in the blogging and seo industry. Remember, these guys need content too, and when they’re handed good content on a silver platter, why not pass it along?
Never underestimate the power of asking nicely in conjunction with good content.
2. Respond to Comments or Suffer the ConsequencesWhen you’re at the point where I am with this blog, you really need to address the vast majority of your comments. There’s not really a good excuse not to do it.
The fact is that the vast majority of people who read your content will never post, so ignoring the people who take the time to interact with you essentially makes them out to be the creepy guy on the train who talks to himself until he falls asleep in your lap. You don’t want to make a loyal reader feel that way, do you? I didn’t think so.
By showing readers that you actually take the time to read their thoughts as well, you’re encouraging more comments and therefore strengthening your bond with your readers while sparking interaction. Win/win/win as Michael Scott would say.
1. Choose Your Words CarefullyEven if you think SEO is lightyears beyond you and you never want to think about it, consider the following personal example: my second post to this blog was a light-hearted post about one of my suits and how someone had told me that the buttons looked like a certain infamous symbol used by a certain oppressive German regime had been carved into them. Why am I dancing around those words? Because Google decided that they were the most important part of my blog for a while, and I was receiving some traffic from people who I imagine were not excited to be here.
If you won’t follow my advice and plan your keywords, at least think about what NOT to say on your blog: especially in your subject, title tag, or url slug. Worst case scenario, you get a ton of traffic from people who have no interest in your blog at all, and none from the people who are actually looking for your content.
When you’re at the point that you know what you’re going to blog about next but haven’t written your blog post yet, ask yourself this question: “how would people look for this information on Google?” If someone were to search for an article like this one, I might expect the following queries:
Now that I know how I would find my own post were I looking for it, I can try to work those types of keywords into my post to help Google return relevant results to my future readers.
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I hope that you’ve found these tips useful. Obviously more than six tips belong on this list, but I had to make it somewhat digestible.
Did you recognize any problems with your blog while reading this post? Do you have a plan of action for how to fix those problems now? I’d love to hear about it. I’ll even do my best to help if I can.
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