WordPress SEO

The Definitive Guide To Higher Rankings For Your Blog

I started writing my beginner's guide to WordPress SEO a while back, and have since done a load of posts on the subject, an article in the Search Marketing Standard, newsletters, and presentations. It's time to let all the info of all these different articles fall into one big piece: the final guide to WordPress SEO.
Note: this article hasn't been updated yet since the beta release of my WordPress SEO plugin, but that plugin does cover a lot of the stuff needed below, so do check it out! When that plugin goes into a more stable development mode, this article will of course be updated.
If you're more of a visual type, try this WordPress SEO video. It's an hour long presentation I gave at A4UExpo London, that covers most of what's in here too. If you'd rather have me figure out what you should be doing, feel free to order a full site analysis by yours truly.
As search, SEO, and the WordPress platform evolve I will keep this article up to date with best practices. If you don't have the time to do this kind of optimization yourself, consider hiring us to do it, check out our WordPress consulting services.
As I take quite a holistic view on SEO, this guide will cover quite a lot, check out the table of contents for some quick jumping around.

1. Basic technical optimization

Out of the box, WordPress is a pretty well optimized system, and does a far better job at allowing every single page to be indexed than every other CMS I have used. But there's a few things you should do to make it a lot easier still to work with.

1.1. Permalinks

The first thing to change is your permalink structure. In WordPress 2.5, you'll find this page under Settings -> Permalinks. The default permalink is
?p=, but I prefer to use either /post-name/ or /category/post-name/. For the first option, you change the "custom" setting into /%postname%/:

To include the category, you change it to /%category%/%postname%/.
Once you've done that, you'll want to install the Redirection plugin, and make sure that under Manage -> Redirection -> Options, making sure both URL Monitoring select boxes are set to "Modified posts". Now you can change those permalinks to perfectly SEO'd permalinks without having to do anything else, or worry about the search engine consequences.
WWW vs non-WWW
Another good thing to configure now you're on that screen anyway is the Root domain: Add WWW / Strip WWW one. Make a choice, and set it here, don't enable both, some search engines still can't handle that. And enable the redirect index.php/index.html one too, it won't hurt you, and might even do your WordPress SEO some good.
URL stopwords
The last thing you'll want to do about your permalinks to increase your WordPress SEO, is install the SEO Slugs plugin, this will automatically remove stop words from your slugs once you save a post, so you won't get those ugly long URL's when you do a sentence style post title.

Optimize your Titles for SEO

By default, the title for your blog posts is "Blog title » Blog Archive » Keyword rich post title". For your WordPress blog to get the traffic it deserves, this should be the other way around, for two reasons:

• Search engines put more weight on the early words, so if your keywords are near the start of the page title you are more likely to rank well.
• People scanning result pages see the early words first. If your keywords are at the start of your listing your page is more likely to get clicked on.

For more info on how to craft good titles for your posts, see this excellent article and video by Aaron Wall: Google & SEO Friendly Page Titles. I prefer to do this with HeadSpace, as that makes it very very easy. You should check your header.php though, and make sure that the code for wp_title(); contains two quotes, so it looks like this: wp_title('');. This makes sure you have absolute control over the title and don't have any annoying separator in there.
After that, go into the HeadSpace settings, and make them look something like this for your posts and pages:

For the other pages, I have the following settings:

• Posts / Pages: %%title%% - Blog Title
• Categories: %%category%% Archives %%page%% - Blog Title
• Tags: %%tag%% Archives %%page%% - Blog Title
• Archives: Blog Archives %%page%% - Blog Title

With HeadSpace, you can also write optimized titles for each post specifically, overriding the settings here. This way you have absolute control over your titles, and can make sure your WordPress titles are actually helping your SEO.

1.3. Optimize your Descriptions

Give each category a decent description, and use HeadSpace to add that description to the meta description, by adding %%category_description%% in the Description field. After that, write a description for each post or page that you actually want to rank with. The descriptions has one very important function: enticing people to click, so make sure it states what's in the page they're clicking towards, and that it gets their attention.
Automated descriptions
In my opinion, auto generating descriptions is a load of bull, most plugins pick the first sentence, which might be an introductory sentence which has hardly anything to do with the subject, or another sentence with a keyword in it, which might be completely wrong to pick as description. Thus, the only well written description is a hand written one, and if you're thinking of auto generating the meta description, you might as well not do anything and let the search engine control the snippet... If you don't use the meta description, the search engine will find the keyword searched for in your document, and automatically pick a string around that, which gives you a bolded word or two in the results page.
Auto generating a snippet is a "shortcut", and there are no real shortcuts in (WordPress) SEO (none that work anyway).

1.4. Optimize the More text

Another neat featuer of HeadSpace is that you can use it to optimize the more text, so if you use a more tag on the frontpage, you can replace the default "Read more" link with something meaningful for every post. It's small things like that that make your WordPress SEO the best.

1.5. Image Optimization

An often overlooked part of WordPress SEO is how you handle your images. By doing stuff like writing good alt tags for images and thinking of how you name the files, you can get yourself a bit of extra traffic from the different image search engines. Next to that, you're helping out your lesser able readers who check out your site in a screen reader, to make sense of what's otherwise hidden to them.
You should of course be writing good titles and alt tags for each and every image, however, if you don't have the time for that, there is a plugin that can help you. The plugin is called SEO Friendly Images, and it can automatically add the title of the post and or the image name to the image's alt and title tag:

2. Template Optimization

2.1. Breadcrumbs

You'll want to add breadcrumbs to your single posts and pages. Breadcrumbs are the links, usually above the title post, that look like "Home > Articles > WordPress SEO". They are good for two things:

• They allow your users to easily navigate your site.
• They allow search engines to determine the structure of your site more easily.

These breadcrumbs should link back to the homepage, and the category the post is in. If the post is in multiple categories it should pick one. For that to work, adapt single.php and page.php in your theme, and use my breadcrumb plugin.

2.2. Headings

Although most themes for WordPress get this right, make sure your post title is an

, and nothing else. Your blog's name should only be an

on your frontpage, and on single, post, and category pages, it should be no more than an

.
These are easy to edit in the post.php and page.php templates. To learn more about why proper headings are important read this article on Semantic HTML and SEO.

2.3. Clean up your code

All that javascript and CSS you might have in your template files, move that to external javascripts and css files, and keep your templates clean, as they're not doing your WordPress SEO any good. This makes sure your users can cache those files on first load, and search engines don't have to download them most of the time.

2.4. Aim for speed

A very important factor in how many pages a search engine will spider on your blog each day, is how speedy your blog loads. You can do two things to increase the speed of your WordPress.

1. Optimize the template to do as small an amount of database calls as necessary. I've highlighted how to do this in my post about speeding up WordPress.
2. Install a caching plugin. I highly recommend WP-Super-Cache, which is a bit of work to set up, but that should make your blog an awful lot faster.

Also, be aware that underpaying for hosting, is not wise. If you actually want to succeed with your link-bait actions, and want your blog to sustain high loads, go for a good hosting package. I've recently switched to VPS.net myself, and they've proven to be better than anything I've ever seen in hosting, if you want to know more be sure to read my article about WordPress hosting.

2.5. Rethink that Sidebar

Do you really need to link out to all your buddies in your blogroll site wide? Or is it perhaps wiser to just do that on your front page? Google and other search engines these days heavily discount site wide links, so you're not really doing your friends any more favor by giving them that site wide link, nor are you helping yourself: you're allowing your visitors to get out of your site everywhere, when you actually want them to browse around a bit.
The same goes for the search engines: on single post pages, these links aren't necessarily related to the topic at hand, and thus aren't helping you at all. Thus: get rid of them. There are probably more widgets like these that only make sense on the homepage, and others that you'd only want on sub pages.
Some day you will probably be able to change this from inside WordPress, right now it forces you to either use two sidebars, one on the homepage and one on sub pages, or write specific plugins.

3. Advanced WordPress SEO and Duplicate Content

Once you've done all the basic stuff, you'll find that the rest of the problems amount to one simple thing: duplicate content. Loads of it in fact. Out of the box, WordPress comes with a few different types of taxonomy:

1. date based
2. category based
3. tag based

Next to that, it seems to think you actually need to be able to click on from page to page starting at the frontpage, way back to the first post you ever did. Last but not least, each author has his own archive too, under /author//, resulting in completely duplicate content on single author blogs.
In essence that means that, worst case scenario, a post is available on 5 pages outside of the single page where it should be available. We're going to get rid of all those duplicate content pools, by still allowing them to be spidered, but not indexed, and fixing the pagination issues that come with these things.

3.1. Noindex, follow archive pages

Install my robots meta plugin, and make sure the settings prevent indexing of all archive pages, like this:

Now the search engine will follow all the links on these archive pages, but it won't show those pages in the index. Not everybody will agree on this policy, and others will tell you to just show a snippet of each post on the archive page. That'll also work, but in my opinion completely throwing them out is better.

3.2. Disable unnecessary archives

If your blog is a one author blog, or you don't think you need author archives, use the robots-meta plugin to disable the author archives. Also, if you don't think you need a date based archive: disable it. Even if you're not using these archives in your template, someone might link to them and thus break your WordPress SEO...

3.3. Pagination

Thirdly, you'll want to make sure that if a bot goes to a category page, it can reach all underlying pages without any trouble. Otherwise, if you have a lot of posts in a category, a bot might have to go back 10 pages before being able to find the link to one of your awesome earlier posts...
There's an easy fix. Jaimie Sirovich wrote Pagerfix, a plugin that helps you make your pagination look like this:

To reach that, install that plugin, and change this section in f.i. your index.php:

Into this:

Do that in your index.php, your archives.php, and all other archive templates you might have.

3.4. Nofollowing unnecessary links

Another easy step to increase your WordPress SEO is to stop linking to your login and registration pages from each and every page on your blog. The same goes for your RSS feeds, your subscribe by e-mail link, etc. Robots Meta has an option to nofollow all your login and registration links. You'll probably have to go into your RSS links and nofollow those by hand. If you're using the meta widget, you might want to enable the option in robots meta to replace that with one that has nofollowed links.

4. A site structure for high rankings

Blogs are spidered so easily due to their structure of categories, tags etc.: all articles are well linked, and usually the markup is nice and clean. However, all this comes at a price: your ranking strength is diluted. They're diluted by one simple thing: comments.

4.1. Pages instead of posts

You've probably noticed by now, or you're seeing now, that this WordPress SEO post is actually... not a post. It's a page. Why? Well for several reasons. First of all, this article needed to be a "daughter"-page of my WordPress page, to be in the correct place on this blog. Secondly, to rank for the term [WordPress SEO], this article has to have the right keyword density. And that's where things go wrong. Comments destroy your carefully constructed keyword density.
That's why I decided to make my most important articles into pages. That way, you can easily update them and do a new post about what you've changed.

4.2. New wine in an old bottle

If a post on your blog becomes incredibly popular and starts to rank for a nice keyword, like mine did for WordPress SEO, you could do the following:

• create a new page with updated and improved content
• change the slug of the old post to post-name-original
• publish the new page under the old post's URL, or redirect the old post's URL to the new URL
• send an e-mail to everyone who linked to your old post that you've updated and improved on your old post
• wait for the links to come in, again;
• rank even higher for your desired term as you've now got:
  • more control over the keyword density
  • even more links pointing at the article
  • the ability to keep updating the article as you see fit to improve on it's content and ranking

Some among you will say: I could have 301 redirected the old post to the new one with the same effect. True. Except: you'd lose the comments on the old post, which is in my opinion a sign of disrespect to people who took the time to comment, and 301 redirects take quite a bit of time sometimes. Of course you should treat this technique with care, and not abuse it to rank other products, but I think it can be done in everyone's benefit. For instance this article: if you came here through a social media site like Sphinn, expecting an article about WordPress SEO, that's exactly what you got!

4.3. Linking to related posts

One way of getting search engines to get to your older content a bit easier, thus increasing your WordPress SEO capabilites a LOT, is by using a related posts plugin. These plugins search through your posts database to find posts with the same subject, and add links to these posts.
There's a load of these available, but I just use the one that comes with the Simple Tags plugin, as I've found that the easiest and best one so far.

5. Conversion optimization

Get those readers to subscribe!

A lot of bloggers still think that because their blog is a blog, they don't have to optimize anything. Wrong. To get people to link to you, they have to read your blog. And what do you think is easier: getting someone who is already visiting your blog to visit regularly and then link to your blog, or getting someone who visits your blog for the first time to link to your blog immediately? Right.
That's why conversion optimization is so vitally important to bloggers as well: they need to learn how to test their call to actions on their blog so that more people will subscribe, either by e-mail or by RSS. (Ow btw, if you haven't subscribed to this blog yet, do it now!)
One of the things I've found to be very important, and more bloggers seem to have found this, is that a BIG RSS subscribe button is very important, as is offering a way to subscribe by e-mail. I even offer daily and weekly e-mail subscribe options, using aweber (aff), and have found that people tend to really like those options too.
Another thing to be very aware of is when people might want to subscribe to your blog. If they've just finished reading an article of yours, and really liked it, that would be the ideal time to reach them, right? That's why more and more people are adding lines like this to the end of their posts: "Liked this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!"
Another great time to get people to subscribe is when people have just commented on your blog for the first time, for which purpose I use my own comment redirect plugin. Which leads me to the next major aspect of WordPress SEO:

6. Comment optimization

Get those readers involved

Comments are one of the most important aspects of blogs. As Wikipedia states:

The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs.

Comments are not only nice because people tell you how special you are, or that you made a mistake, or whatever else they have to tell you. Most of all they're nice, because they show engagement. And engagement is one of the most important factors of getting people to link to you: they show you they care, and they open the conversation, now all you have to do is respond, and you're building a relationship!

6.1. How you get people to comment

The easiest way of getting people to do anything is: ask them to do it. Write in an engaging style, and then ask your blog's readers for an opinion, their take on the story etc.
Another important things is your comment links. Is your comment link "No comments »"? Or is it "No Comments yet, your thoughts are welcome »"? Feel the difference? You can change this by opening your index.php template, search for comments_popup_link() and changing the texts within that function.

6.2. Bond with your commenters

Another thing to do is thank people when they've commented on your weblog. Not every time, because that get's annoying, but doing it the first time is a very good idea.
Justin Shattuck thought the same, and created the Comment Relish plugin which sends an email after someone has made his first comment. This email is a message you can enter yourself, with for instance your feed URL, and in my case, a newsletter subscribe URL, etc. Note that some people think this is spam, and that laws in several countries might prohibit the use of this. I can't tell you, because I'm not a lawyer.
Another option, which is a bit less obtrusive / spammy, is to install my comment redirect plugin. This plugin allows you to redirect people who have made their first comment to a specific "thank you" page.

6.3. Keeping people in the conversation

Now that people have joined the conversation on your blog, you should make sure they stay in the conversation. That's why you should install the subscribe to comments plugin, that allows people to subscribe to a comment thread just like they would in a forum, and sends them an e-mail on each new comment. This way, you can keep the conversation going, and maybe your readers will be giving you new angles for new posts.

7. Off site blog SEO

If you've followed all of the above WordPress SEO advice, you've got a big chance of becoming successfull, both as a blogger and in the search engines. Now the last step sounds easy, but isn't. Go out there, and talk to people online.

7.1 Follow your commenters

There's been a movement on the web for a while now that's called the "You comment - I follow". They want you to remove the nofollow tag off of your comments to "reward" your visitors. Now I do agree, but... That get's you a whole lot of spam once your WordPress blog turns into a well ranked blog... What I do advocate though, is that you actually follow your visitors! Go to their websites, and leave a comment on one of their articles, a good, insightful comment, so they respect you even more.
If you think that's a lot of work, do realize that, on average, about 1% of your visitors will actually leave a comment. That's a group of people you have to take care of!

7.2. Use Twitter

Twitter is a cool form of micro-blogging / chatting / whatever you want to call it. Almost all the "cool" people are on there, and they read their tweets more often than they read their e-mail, if you even knew how to reach them through e-mail.
To boot, if you use WordTwit or Twitter Tools, all of your posts can be announced on Twitter, which will usually get you quite a few early readers! People will feel even more happy to comment on Twitter, which might get you into an extra conversation or two.

7.3. Find related blogs, and work them

If you want to rank for certain keywords, go into Google Blogsearch, and see which blogs rank in the top 10 for those keywords. Read those blogs, start posting insightful comments, follow up on their posts by doing a post on your own blog and link back to them: communicate! The only way to get the links you'll need to rank is to be a part of the community.

8. Conclusions on WordPress SEO

This guide gives you a lot of stuff you can do on your blog. It goes from technical tips, to conversion tips, to content tips, to conversation tips, and a whole lot in between. There's a catch though: if you want to rank for highly competitive terms, you'll have to actually do most of it.
If you want to keep updated on the latest news about WordPress, and hear more tips as I come up with them, then subscribe to my WordPress mailing-list right now. If you need help implementing all the tips in this article, or want me to review whether you've done a good job implementing it all, order a full site analysis!

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9 Important Blogging Tips For College Students

Blogging is a culture in most developed countries like USA and UK. But in developing countries like India, very few people know about blogging and WordPress. As the time is passing, more and more people came to know about it. It is getting more famous among students.
There are some college students (most of them from engineering college) who spend day and night to fulfill their blogging dreams. Unfortunately, most students do not attend their classes and spend their precious time in researching and writing articles. This habit ultimately effect their overall academic performance.

Image: Extra Ketchup

Here are few tips for them to maintain a balance between College and blogging:

 

1. Attend Your Classes

It is true that blogging gives lots of fame and money, but you should accept the fact that degree is most precious thing for any student. Companies judge you by your academic performance, not from your blogging experience. So never ignore your studies. Attend all the classes and maintain a good percentage.

 

2. Make A Proper Schedule

Make a time table and decide the time which suits you for blogging. Don’t do research and blogging whole night. It affects your schedule. Try to complete your work and go to bed before midnight.  Take at least 8:00 hours of sleep.

 

3. How much time you should devote

It totally depends on your college timing. If your college ends up at 5:00 p.m then you have 7 hours for blogging and studies. Try to create a balance between these two work. Both work are necessary. Stick with your schedule.

 

4. Tell everyone about your blog

Try to tell everyone about your work. Don’t become a suspicious guy among your friends. Give your blog address to your friends and ask them to read your blog and leave comments.

 

5. Part  time job

In college many students join call centers and various part time job. But blogging is a favorite part time work and it pays more than any other part time job. Try to catch some web publisher and show your writing skills to them. You can easily get work if you are efficient writer.

 

6. Attend Meetings in Your City

Try to catch some famous people of your field. Attend blog camps, blogger’s meet and Tweetup organized by various bloggers in your city. Register for these events and catch big fishes of your field and discuss them about blogging. You can also ask for help regarding any subject.

 

7. Organize Blog classes in your college

If you are an established blogger then you can organize blog camps for other students of your college. You can take permission for the classes from your head of department of director of your college.

 

8. Impress your friends

Blogging is an immediate source of fame for any student. You can become famous among your friends by showing your blogging skill. Try to research for different articles on your niche and write about them on your blog. Try to solve various technical problems of your friends through your blog.

 

9. Read blogs related to your branch

If you are a student of Computer science then you can read blogs related to your study. Lifehacker and Howtogeek are very well-known blog for computer users. Similarly you can read Howstuffworks, Techcrunch and Mashable for knowledge of various startup companies and Social Media.
These are the basic tips for college students. Are you a college student who love blogging. Do you follow any one of the above mentioned tips. Kindly leave a comment.

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Improve WordPress SEO Optimization

Search Engines love blogs and they really love WordPress blogs. That’s because it was designed to catch their attention through good SEO. I want you to understand what WordPress does so well that helps it rank highly in search engines and then I am going to show you how to improve on this to really help boost your blogs SERPs rankings.

I am assuming you have basic knowledge of SEO and its techniques, if you don’t, I suggest you check out Stomping The Search Engines 2 by the folks over at StomperNet for an excllent SEO education. It will teach you everything you need to know, to create and implement a good SEO strategy for your blog and help you increase traffic as a result. Best of all you can get it for $1, Click Here to Get Your Copy.


WordPress Comes With Many SEO Friendly Features Right Out the Box

1. The overall layout of the code is generally very SEO friendly, because it allows the spiders to crawl the content of a page before crawling the side bar. This allows the most important part of the page to be crawled first, thus given it more weight. Since your target keywords are in the content, it is more likely that your page will rank better for those keywords.
2.  When a new post is created, WordPress automatically sets the link to the post as the title of the post. Because the two most important on page SEO Factors are page title and link anchor text, it by default will boost your post’s search engine rankings, as long as you include your target keywords in the title.
3. WordPress comes with SEO friendly URLs called permalinks, which can be turned on in the WordPress settings. These permalinks can be customized to include your main keywords which helps to raise your rankings by having the keyword in the URL.
4. Tag pages allow you to group content by relevant tags, which gives your site more internal linking power through the creation of new pages and also allows you to create relevant pages around targeted keywords. Hopefully driving in more traffic and long tail keyword traffic.

So What Can Be Done To Improve This Already Good Search Engine Optimization Strategy
There are some very easy modifications you can make that will really help your blogs SEO friendliness.

Make sure your Home link does not just say “Home”
Studies have shown that Google puts the highest amount of importance to the first link it finds on a page. For most WordPress themes, that is the “Home” link. Basic SEO theory tells us that the anchor text of your internal links is very important. So if you want your blog to rank for say “Gardening” you would want the home link for your site to say “Gardening” or at the very least include the keyword in the anchor text to your home page.

Some themes have this feature built in already by using the header text as the home link, but in more advance themes that use a logo in place of the header, this functionality is lost or becomes less effective. Many theme designers try and alleviate the problem is through the use of the image Alt=” ” tag. This allows you to add a description to the image, it is unclear if this help with SEO or not, but it is a good idea to have it in place just in case.

Another way to solve this problem is by placing a row of your most important links above the header so that the search engines will spider those first before moving do the page, and you can include a “Home” link with what ever anchor text you want.

Make Sure The Pages You Don’t Want Indexed, Don’t get Indexed

Do you have an “About Us” or “Contact Us” page that you really don’t need stealing PR from your other content pages. The best way to do this is by using the rel=”nofollow” tag for those links to the pages.
Due to the dynamic nature of WordPress this can be a little tricky, because you may not want all of your pages to not be indexed, adding the “nofollow” tag to the dynamic URL in the code just won’t do.
You can use the META Robots (no-index, no-archive, ect) tag however to accomplish the same goal.
Fortunately, there is a plugin that allows you to customize the META setting for individual pages, categories, and even posts, it’s called HeadSpace2. It is a bit more advanced then the All In One SEO plug in that everyone recommends and takes a little bit to get use to, but it’s worth the effort, because you get much more control over your sites SEO structure.


Make Sure You Include Your Target Keywords in the Category and Tag Pages Navigation Links


This can be a bit tricky because you want your sites navigation to be human friendly first and spider friendly as well.  The best way to do this is to not go overboard with keyword stuffing, make sure your make navigation easy to understand by humans first and use your keywords only where it makes sense to do so.
If you use the HeadSpace2 plug in you can set the category description and the title of the category pages. So you can have a category called “Men’s Fitness” and set the title of the page to optimize for the longer tail phrase “Ways for a Man to Improve Fitness” for example.
This allows you to keep your navigation short and simple and keep your category pages titles descriptive and help your target the long tail as well.


Make Sure Your Ads are “NoFollow”
Ads are a common place where people forget to make the links “nofollow”. If you have a theme with ad space built in, check the code and make sure the links all have the rel=”nofollow” tag. Other wise you will lose a lot of “link juice” over your entire site.
If you use an external plug in do the same thing, and make sure all external links are nofollow.
These simple modifications will help to improve your sites internal link structure, preserve its Page Rank by keeping the followed external links to only the pages that you deem worthy, and keep the PR spread across only the most important pages of your blog.
If you implement these WordPress SEO Strategies, you will greatly increase your blogs chances of being ranked  highly in the search engines for your target keywords and you should see an increase in traffic as a result.
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7 Facebook Apps Every Blogger Must Have

Facebook is one of the most popular Social Networks and quickly becoming a an interaction hub for great many people I personally know and work with. What have started as a college students network have grown into one of the most useful tools you can have for communication and for locating new people with similar to you interests.
But while standalone Facebook portal provides you with plenty options – its interactivity and usefulness factor greatly multiplied through the usage of the Apps provided by other developers. In fact as a blogger you have a superb way to promote your content on Facebook and get yourself additional audience…
More Traffic! Could You Use Some?
In this post I’ll discuss 7 Facebook Apps Every Blogger Must Have.

Application chosen for this post are based on my personal view of their usefulness and my personal usage, so be sure to experiment as nothing should be taken for granted!

Notes

Notes is a superb application and one of the absolutely MUST have if you write to a blog or two And here is the reason why:

1. It allows you to basically subscribe to your own RSS Feed and will automatically import it to your profile each time a new post was made!
2. Every time a new post imported as Note – all your friends will get a notification that a new status update is made on your profile – increase your branding!

See image below:

Blog Networks

Blog Networks application allows you to claim your own blog and have it appear within the main Blog Networks interface. But how and where you will appear directly depends on your popularity!
More people subscribe to your blog – more popular it is seen and higher position you can get. Subscribing to blogs is very simple and it ads them to your profile. See image below and if you like my blog - Subscribe To My Blog!

Blogvote

Blogvote is a very simple application that does one thing – allows people to vote on blogs. Obviously your blog popularity will be determined by the score and probably number of votes. I can’s say for 100% because as you can see in image below – number of votes on my blog is pathetically small. So – do vote, good or bad, either way appreciated!

Twitter

Twitter application is great in one perspective – it ties very popular micro-blog network that is currently all the rage and allows you to post status update directly from Twitter. Basically – every time you make an update in Twitter – it will be imported as your new status in Facebook and also gives you an opportunity to post directly from Facebook to the Twitter.
See images below:

Friend Feed

Friend Feed is a swiss army knife of the the aggregation. Once you have setup your profile under the Friend Feed service properly – you can aggregate your actions and content from multiple sources into one location. And facebook app allows you t import all of that into your Facebook Profile!
Better yet, it allows you to see all the actions of your friends! In one single location, as long as they took the time to configure their profile. This is an app that will become the future of social interaction!
Talk about visibility! See image below:

Ping.fm

Ping.fm application allows you to do actions such as status update from Ping.fm application. This one is a MUST for every WordPress blogger and I have already explained why and how in my post on social influence and will not be repeating myself.
All I can add here is that by not using this service you are loosing out!

SubmbleUpon

And last but by no means least is StumbleUpon app. Every action you take via Stumble Upon bar is posted to your Facebook profile and shared with your friends! As you can see below – many of my own friends using this tool and falling behind is simply not an option.
StumbleUpon has a potential of generating to your blog massive amounts of traffic when you don’t abuse the system and Facebook app simplifies the process! Feel free to become my friend by clicking the image below:

Conclusion

As I have stated in the beginning of this post – it is not mean to be an All Inclusive list of the Facebook Applications but rather those that help you as a blogger to get traffic and recognition and have proven to work for me – in one way or another.
And that reason is what makes them in my opinion 7 Facebook Apps Every Blogger Must Have
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How To Get More Traffic To Your Blog

Today I’m continuing with answers to the questions presented to me by my customers and readers. And question we will work with today is equally important to the blogs of every size because it deals with most important aspect that determines blog success – Targeted Traffic!

In the image above you can actually see the less common variant of problem from a blogger who already gets decent amount of visitors and simply need to expand and continue with the growth. Overcoming traffic plateau is EXTREMELY important as each and everyone of us will have to deal with it, at one point or another…

How To Overcome Traffic Plateau And Get More Targeted Traffic?

First I want to say – Congratulations!
If you are facing same “problem” as a customer who submitted question above – you have managed to achieve already more then many blogs ever will. 1800 unique visitors per day is nothing to sneeze on and quite an accomplishment! In fact in some niches it might be close to maximum of what you will see, unless you start taking more direction actions…

Step 1 – Evaluate Where Most Of Your Current Traffic Coming From

This will be the most important step as we need to know exactly What Works for you right now! And in order to get this done – we need some form of Stats Tracking implemented that provides us with fairly detailed information.
I personally prefer and teach my Expert WordPress customers how to integrate Google Analytics, as it is free, easy to add to your blog (just insert their javascript before the closing tag in footer.php) and provides decent level of stats.
If you haven’t been using Google Stats before – you need about a month worth of stats to get more or less accurate picture on where most of your visitors are coming from. Once you identify your traffic sources – move to step 2

Step 2 – Isolate 3 Traffic Sources And Identify What Promotion Associated With It

Time is precious and for us to increase amount of visitors coming to your blog we need to identify which of your promotional efforts or perhaps SEO strategies work right now and concentrate more effort on it.
Implement Rinse And Repeat Strategy!
If something is already working for your blog it only makes sense to do more of the same to get even more traffic. Couple examples could be:

• Search Engines show up as major traffic source but when you look at what content brings most of the traffic you find that you have many posts deliver a bit of traffic each but combined create a large Volume!
  Conclusion – Your SEO Efforts work and each post properly optimized for search engines delivers traffic even though only just a bit each post individually.
  Action Plan – Do a long tale keyword research, write more posts optimized for ranking for long tale ranking.
• eZineArticles.com shows as one of the biggest Direct Referrals.
  Conclusion – your article marketing works as designed and article directory delivers you not only the traffic you need but also new loyal readers and blog subscribers.
  Action Plan – Continue your article marketing efforts and simply increase number of articles you submit. If you simply double the number of submitted articles you should effectively double the number of new visitors from that source.

And same principal can be applied to ANY traffic source. All you have to do is Identify The Source, Associate Promotional Effort Responsible for it, Rinse and Repeat but increase intensity!
In my personal experience 80/20 rule applies perfectly to the traffic driving strategies – 20% of your efforts will deliver 80% of your traffic and in this portion I simply ask that you identify what 20% of your Traffic Driving Effort produce results, cut out the other 80% and then…

Double Your “Proven To Work” Efforts – Double Your Traffic!

Now you still left about 60% of promotional efforts left unused after you cut out what is not working and doubling what does. So lets put this effort into…

Step 3 – Finding New Sources

While strategy above should help you overcome the traffic plateau and effectively get a lot more of visitors, it is based on idea of simply taking advantage of what already works and ignoring the fact that these sources might have their own limits.
Reality is – if you don’t branch out and continue to search for new sources of traffic – you will eventually hit the plateau again. Unique Visitors number might be a lot higher but problem will still be same – luck of growth.
You simply must continue to grow, don’t settle on any single strategy and when you find one that works – add it to your 20% of the “working efforts” and continue to search for new ones. This will obviously be different for each blogger as it will be determined but what you currently do that works. Here are some of the more common:

• SEO
• Article Marketing
• Social Marketing
• Forum Marketing
• Video Marketing
• Blog Marketing
• Link building
• Your own strategy here…

You get the point!
And here is what I have found other bloggers say about Traffic Plateau and How to Overcome It:

• Darren Rowse in 6 Reasons Your Blog Traffic Might Be Declining [And What to Do About It] stated: “While we all want to see our traffic rise the reality is that every blog has days, weeks and even months where traffic levels out or even decreases. This can be quite distressing for bloggers who have big hopes and dreams for their blogs.”
• Tibi Puiu in Get Your Blog Moving: Break The Plateau! writes – “And just like life a blog will pass through several stages of existence from birth, to its moment of climax, to its inevitable death. During its lifetime, if it’s long enough of course, a blog will fluctuate numerous times on up-down scales and ever so often you’ll find that for a limited time it doesn’t go up, nor does it go down, but just stagnates. This is called a plateau.”
• Daniel Scocco in 4 Steps to Increase Your Blog Traffic shares – “Just make sure to execute the 4 steps as planned and to spend the two hours and a half every day (obviously if you have more time available you can expand the time spent on each of the four steps proportionally)”

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10 Ways to Convert Your Blog Visitors Into Dedicated Readers

Do you want your blog to grow, increase your readership and subscriber numbers, have your content constantly spread, and make more money? Then you need to convert your blog visitors into dedicated readers.

Visitors are those that stop by your blog, skim through an article or two, and then leave – never to return. Boo. They’re of no use.
But dedicated readers regularly read your blog, spread your articles, leave high-quality comments, and buy your products. Yay! More of these, please.
Your mission is to convert your blog visitors into dedicated readers.
What good is 1,000 visitors a day if most of them don’t return? Traffic figures alone might make you feel good, but it doesn’t get you any desired results.
It’s all about quality over quantity. 100 dedicated readers beats out 1,000 passer-by visitors.
Here are 10 ways to convert your blog visitors into dedicated readers:


1. Be Yourself
This is slap-in-the-forehead common sense. But some bloggers try to be someone they’re not just because that type of personality is successful.
Just be yourself. Not only is it easy when you don’t have to force an unnatural persona, but you’ll have a 100% genuine and desirable voice.
On my blog Lifebeat, I’m completely myself. And it’s so easy not having to worry about projecting a certain image. I just write how I talk. Very relaxed and informal. I keep it simple and to-the-point. I inject jokes and music references. I constantly share personal examples. And since I’m a huge anime fan, all my articles have anime images rather than Flickr or iStock Photo ones.
Are you funny? Be funny. Serious? Be serious. Angry? Be angry.
Just be yourself.


2. Put the Reader Experience First
What makes you return to a restaurant? Chances are it’s not just the food but the experience.
Great articles alone aren’t enough. You also need a great reader experience. If you want visitors to convert into dedicated readers, you need a website people want to regularly return to.
That means don’t do anything on your blog that’ll compromise the reader experience. Translation: don’t annoy your visitors.

Common offenders: too many popups, ads, social bookmarking buttons, and subscribe links.
Just look at some of the most successful blogs: Daily Blog Tips, Problogger, Copyblogger and so on. No popups, and very light ads, social bookmarking buttons, and subscribe links.
I designed Lifebeat to put the reader experience first. Very clean, very simple, and the content is at the forefront. There’s no popups, no ads, no anything that would detract from enjoying reading one of my articles.
If someone really wants to subscribe or share your article on Twitter, they’ll do it. Don’t annoy and turn them away, losing what could’ve become a dedicated reader.

3. Focus on Benefits to the Reader, Not Your Features
If you want dedicated readers, your blog should focus on what the benefit is to the visitor. Not just your thoughts and ideas but value to a visitor.
Answer the “so what” question for new visitors: what’s in it for them? Why should they care?
Instead of putting the spotlight on what features my blog has, I focus on the benefit to visitors: helping you maximize your life. Ideas and strategies to help you do more of what you love and are passionate about. Not only do I state it in the About page and anywhere else, but that’s the focus I have for each article I write: how can I help and provide value to you, the reader.
Visitors care what you can do for them (benefits), not what thoughts and ideas you have (features). Focus on benefits, not features.


4. Write for Humans, Not Search Engines
Who reads your blog? People. So write for them.
Some bloggers make the mistake of writing articles solely based on highly-searched keywords. That results in nothing-new, unremarkable traffic bait. They might get search engine traffic, but very few visitors will be converted into readers.
The best search engine optimization is amazing content. Not website tweaks. Not a WordPress plugin. Not meta whozawhutsit. But amazing content.
If people like your articles, they’ll share it on social media, blogs, email, and even word of mouth. You’ll get higher-quality links, too, since it’s interested people linking to you. And, as Daniel here or Darren of Problogger and Brian of Copyblogger will tell you, high-quality backlinks are the ultimate SEO.
Now, optimizing for search engines can help with search traffic. And if you find a keyword phrase that happens to fit what you were going to write about anyway, go ahead and use it.
I don’t consider searched keywords when writing an article. Only once I have an idea down, I’d use the Google keywords tool to see if there’s a wording for the topic that people use most often. If not, I don’t worry about it at all. I never once let keywords dictate what I’ll write.
But put your message first – don’t compromise it. Make search engine considerations a distant second to writing what you have to say.
Write for people first, optimize for search engine traffic later.


5. Be Consistent
Choose a posting schedule and stick to it no matter what. Build a cache of articles or schedule your posts if needed.
I clearly state that I post a new article on Lifebeat every Monday and Thursday. I’ve stuck to that schedule ever since I started and haven’t missed a day yet.
Consistent readers need consistent updates to return to. Provide it for them.
They’ll know when to expect a new article, just like how people regularly check in to their favorite webcomics and news sites on certain days.


6. Make It Easy for Visitors to Subscribe
The more you have to work to get something, the less likely you’ll take the time to get it. Right? Don’t even try to deny it. That’s why iTunes is killing it in music sales: it couldn’t be easier to find and download a tune.
Be like iTunes on your blog. Make it clear and simple for visitors to be able to subscribe via email and RSS feed. Remove as many doors for your visitors as possible.

A visitor who subscribes is much more likely to convert into a dedicated reader. This is because your visitors can read your latest articles from the convenience of their email inbox or RSS feed reader. Your stuff is sent to them, so even after they forget about your blog they’ll still get your new articles, increasing the chance of them reading regularly (and maybe even sharing or buying your stuff).
Putting an RSS and mail icon in a sidebar isn’t enough. Make the subscribe option on your blog as non-cryptic and easy as possible.
Only a small percentage of your visitors will actually know what what an RSS or mail icon mean. Spell it out for the rest of your visitors, including why they should subscribe (it saves them time and energy because new content is delivered directly to them).
And people love free stuff, so don’t forget to mention that visitors can subscribe for free. Magazine subscriptions still have some thinking that subscribing to anything means paying.
I have a simple design on Lifebeat, so the subscribe buttons are in plain sight and clearly marked. I also explain in a short sentence what it means to subscribe and why a visitor should do it… and of course I mention that it’s free.


7. Be Remarkable
Be unique. Be great. Amplify yourself.
Don’t try to be the best in some field where you could never dominate. Instead, do what Seth Godin says: create your own category and dominate it. Analyze and figure out your unique traits, then crank them up to a 10.
People aren’t going to be interested in yet another productivity, personal finance, time management, self improvement, or whatever blog that says nothing new. Use #3 (Be Yourself) and amplify your unique traits.
I’m a writer, electronic musician, and adventurer who’s following his unconventional passion in life via non-conforming means. I never followed societal rules and found my own way. I also have child-like curiosity, not limiting myself to how I “should” act – an eternal kid in an adult’s world. I combine all of those traits and more into what I hope is an always-improving remarkable voice that can offer something interesting, something fresh, something game-changing and disruptive.
Would you return to a blog that bores you or doesn’t excite you? Of course not. So be interesting to read, and visitors will start converting into dedicated readers.


8. Talk With Your Visitors
It really is that simple: talk with your visitors. Reply to their comments and emails, send thank-you notes if they leave a comment or subscribe, or whatever else.
Use what works best for you (and doesn’t compromise your personal style – remember, be yourself). Email, comments, Twitter, whatever. But use at least one method of communication, so that visitors can form a relationship with you and feel like they’re reading from someone they know (or know that they can contact, at least).
I’ve never been comfortable on social networks and instant messenger, but blog comments and email have been natural for me. So I focus on posting and responding to comments and sending and replying to emails as my forms of communication with my visitors and readers. I also try to regularly send out thank-you emails.
People regularly return to something that they’ve formed a relationship or connection with. Think about it: you care way more about what your friends are doing than strangers.


9. Be Unconventional
Say something new that gets people thinking, motivated, and/or take action.
If you piss them off, that’s great too – there’s no such thing as bad publicity, and controversy gets visitors interested (just ask Seth Godin, Tim Ferriss, or Steve Pavlina).
I’m constantly pushing myself to get out of my comfort zone and become even less self-conscious by writing about unconventional topics (or at least an unconventional perspective on something). Heck, even I would get bored of my own writing if I played it safe.
If your article is no different from the latest blurbs that day, your visitors will treat it at such: a quick skim-through and then move on.
Get visitors thinking and talking and you increase the chance of them coming back for more (and maybe even bringing some friends along).


10. Have Fun
A blog isn’t a cubicle job, so just have fun.
People want to enjoy what they consume. If you have fun writing an article, chances are people will have fun reading it. And people tend to return and consume more of what’s fun and enjoyable.
I have so much fun writing and making music on Lifebeat it should be illegal. Like, I’ll be writing an article or creating a new tune or mix, and an alarm will sound. Woo woo woo! It’s the fun alarm: someone’s having way too much fun.
Have fun, and your blog will be fun – and visitors will start converting into dedicated readers.

 Maximize Your Blog Visitors
Maximize your blog visitors by converting them into dedicated readers using these 10 ways.
Your blog to grow, your readership and subscriber numbers will increase, your content will be constantly spread, and you’ll make more money from more products sold. Now who doesn’t want all that?
Have these 10 ways helped you convert your blog visitors into dedicated readers? What other ways have worked for you?
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Powerful Ways To Make Money With Your Blog

Every single day over 8,000 people start a new Internet business and it is said 90% of them fail / never really take off! There are a lot of reasons why a business fails but in the end it comes down to one main thing – it isn’t making money!
It doesn’t matter if you get 100,000 visitors a day, if you can’t monetize your site, then you will lose money and fail like most other people. Most Internet Marketers suggest you put up adverts on your site to make money. OK, that appears an easy option, but if you don’t have much traffic you will fail to sell the advertising and frankly in my experience there are many better ways to make money.
So today I have decided to go through some of my own sites and also some my favorite bookmarks and show you how and why some sites (even with the same traffic) make a lot more money than other sites in their niche. And, I’m not just talking about an extra $1000 a month – in many cases it is significantly more.

Why Typical Blog Monetization Doesn’t Work

The main reason it doesn’t work is because you can only make so much. If you only have 8 advertising spots on your site, that will Net you a total of $600 at an average of $75 per spot. Truth is that in many cases unless you have significant traffic you will struggle to get even $75 per spot.
Now if you use some of the monetization techniques I will cover below, instead of making say $600 for the month you could make $3000 or even more! (I estimate you need around 20000 visitors per month in most niches to achieve this) Banner advertising to some degree isn’t scalable and therefore isn’t a good long term solution. That said, if you are ‘lazy” (as I sometimes am) then the one good thing about banner advertising is it’s guaranteed money most of the time, provided you can keep selling those spots!
But to give you some comparison, if I had decided to go with only offering banner advertising when I launched IncomeDiary, I would of been lucky to earn $300 from advertisers in the first month, instead of the $5000 that I did.

Selling eBooks

This is something that has been increasingly more popular over the last couple years for a bunch of reasons. The main reason obviously is money, selling an eBook to your readers is easier then selling someone else’s product because your readers know who you are, what your about and you should have a good track record for offering good content. One of the big benefits of launching an eBook on your blog is traffic. I have seen blog’s traffic saw once they launch an eBook because they set up an affiliate program, so even if they don’t buy your eBook, they still look around your blog and can make you money in other ways and the best thing, you don’t have to pay the affiliate for it.

How To Sell eBooks On Your Blog

On some levels, most blogs do the whole selling an eBook thing completely wrong. Having a eBook on your blog will mean a lot of leakage because they can go off in a million different directions such as check out your about page, past posts, advertisers etc. Typically sales page give you the option to either buy the eBook or leave the website which keeps the buyer more concentrated as they won’t get distracted by other things on your blog. Here are a few rules I would encourage you to abide by:

• Have an affiliate program (via E-Junkie)
• Offer Testimonials from people who have read your eBook. Including names, website URL’s, country and picture will help reinforce the fact that these are real people giving real opinions on your eBook.
• Offer a sample page or chapter so potential buyers can get a good feel for who you are and what you have to offer.
• Have a eCover to symbolize some physical value to the product. I recommend either Minisite Studios or searching for someone on Digital Point webmaster forums.

 

Membership Websites

I have seen a lot of blog adding membership areas to their blogs recently, probably because of the demand for even better content and the fact that it’s so easy to set up. Think about it, would you be happy paying $10 a month (or even $100) to have access to content that will change your life or business in some way, of course you would! The real benefit of having a membership website over a eBook is that with a membership website, you don’t just bill them once but you bill them every month. Let me show you the maths then you will get really excited:
Option 1: Sell 1 eBook a day at $40, that will be $1200. Now say you do the same next month, you will make $1200 this month as well. Say you do this for a whole year, you will make $14,600!
Option 2: Sell 1 Membership Website a day for $40, that will be $1200. Now say you do the same next month, you will bring in $1200 of additional membership but you will also have the recurring revenue from last month, making it $2400 that month. Say you do this for a whole year, you will make $105,600! I will leave you to pick which one sounds best to you.
One small thing I should note about my maths above, some people will obviously cancel there membership, the amount of people who cancel depends on the value you provide them. For those who have already went with Option 1, don’t worry, here is what I would do; take your eBook that you are selling for $40 and charge $1 for it, you will now probably sell 20 or 30 copies a day instead of one. Now when they order, add them to a membership program for $39 a month and give them the first 30 days to try it for FREE. This approach will get a lot more people buying and convert more people into staying for your recurring program. For those of you think this is to much work, you could simple change your eBook into a membership program by time releasing the content.
I always find inspiration the best way to start something new on my site, so here are my favourite membership websites that have been added to blogs.
If you would like to know more about recurring revenue and building membership websites, check out the great interview I did with Ryan Lee! He also has just released the videos and audios from his continuity seminar earlier in the year, I went to it and it honestly made a big difference to my online business and I don’t even have my own continuity program (YET!)

 

How To Add A Membership Website To Your Blog

From my research and recommendations from a lot of friends, there are 2 main ways to go about setting up your own membership website for wordpress. Them being:

1. Wishlist Member – Very customizable plugin with lots of features to make your membership website stand out from the crowd! (My personal recommendation)
2. aMember with Wordpress Plugin – Gives a simple yet effective membership area allowing users to download and see files easily.

FREE eBooks and eCourses

As I mentioned in a past post, building your list is one of the most important things to do and the best way to attract people to sign up for your list is to offer them something for FREE! Now the benefit of having a good mailing list is, so that you can email out about new content and promotions which could make you more money. I know some people that have such great lists, that when they email out promoting a new online course, they can bring in as much as $300,000! Not bad for writing a few emails. Now this is great but sending emails can become a bit of a pain and some readers will be turned off by them. What I have done is built a really strong eCourse and eBooks sharing lots of great secrets, tips and tools on how I make money online and then monetized it with affiliate links. Now this took me around 2 days to write (partly because I’m dyslexic and writing isn’t my forty) but since then it’s made me tens of thousands of dollars with no additional effort. My advise to you is to create a eBook or course that you could sell and then give it away for free and make your money through affiliate commissions. Remember to check out my past post on making money with email marketing to make sure you approach it using my no leakage rule.

 

Adding an eBook/Course to your Website:

Adding your eBook to your website can be done in a variety of ways, personally I recommend my funnel system to work the best. This is how it works:

• Offer a sign up on your blog for a FREE eBook. I highly recommend using Aweber for your auto-responder as it’s what I use and most other Internet marketers. The best way to draw attract to your opt-in box is by placing a eCover of your eBook, this also gives it some physical value.
• Once they sign up for your eBook or Course, send them to a thank you page where you promote a few of your best selling affiliate programs. Also give them a personal thank you and remind them to check there emails and confirm that they want to be on the list.
• Now automatically dispatch an email using your auto-responder with your first email from your eCourse or a link to your eBook.
• Now build in several follow up emails promoting content on your blog and affiliate offers.

 

Web Directories

This method isn’t so common but looking from the examples I could find online, it is one of the most profitable! FreelanceSwitch has one of my favorite examples of a web directory, how it works is web designers who need work can pay monthly to have themselves listed in there web designers directory so people who are looking for web designers, can browse the directory and pick there favorite. What’s great about this approach is they have made the deal even better for web designers, they have included access to the website job board, where they can apply for jobs that are posted which has allowed them to make it free for people to submit jobs.

 

How To Add A Web Directory To Your Blog

Although there are dozens of free web directory plugins for Wordpress, not many let you charge people to submit links to them. The first directory I created was for WebDesignDev which was a directory of all the resources web designers and developers would need such as hosting, scripts, domains, coding etc. I allowed people to submit for free but gave a premium option which for a price they would be posted at the top of the directory with a special border and made to stand out from the crowd. The software I used was PHPLinkDirectory which seems to be bringing out more and more Wordpress friendly additions to it’s software and would be my pick for anyone trying to achieve a successful directory.

Job Board

The great thing about offering a job board is that it’s offering a needed service to your users. Take for example you are visiting a web design blog because you wanted someone to design your blog. Now this blog has a job board and it was free for you submit a job, that’s a great additional service the blog is providing. But where is the money you are probably asking, what you do is you charge the designers who are looking to do the work, possibly a $50 monthly charge to reply to any design jobs. For any designer looking for work, this is a no brainer because these are the best leads you can get, people who are saying they want to give you work. This really is a no brainer and something I really am thinking about adding to IncomeDiary as it will solve the problem of people looking to hire people and the problem that WebDesignDev is over flowing with web designers looking for work.

 

How To Add A Job Board To Your Blog

There are two main Wordpress plugins that will allow you to add a Job Board to your blog, those being WPJobBoard and JobPress. Pricing strategy is most important here, either deciding to charge people to post job or to reply to jobs. Personally I think charging people to post jobs works best because then you can focus on getting people to respond to work, which will be easier when its FREE for them although it seems it seems to be a mixed opinion between bloggers on which way is best to charge.

Done For You

Done for you is something new I’m working on but have seen some really great examples of some very clever Internet entrepreneurs using it. “Done For You” is basically a service you offer on your blog that is all done for you, one great example is Done For You Meal Plans, something that I have seen very popular in the fitness niche. So if you want to lose weight you need to create a meal plan but the problem is, you got to spend days researching to make sure you get it right and then put it together. Instead fitness marketers put together the plan for you at a price. Now a lot of the time they can use the same plan for a lot of people so the work is minimal or they could even outsource it to someone else for the fraction of the price.

 

How To Add A Done For You Section To Your Blog

This is one of easiest things to do, find a problem, supply the solution, bill them! All you need to do now is create a page on your blog with your offer, add a PayPal link to purchase and then outsource the work at a very small fraction of the price paid.

 

Affiliate Marketing

All of IncomeDiary’s income comes from affiliate commissions and I’m getting quite good at it, this has actually be my best month ever online by far! Now the best advise I could give you is testing, work as hard as you can to test everything possible. So IncomeDiary has been online for around 6 months and I have a lot of really popular content driving good traffic to affiliate offers but I knew I could do better so what I did was I used Google Analytics to find out which pages got the most visits and then used CrazyEgg to see what parts of a post are seen more and which links they clicked.  To a surprise, my most popular page in two days had no clicks on my affiliate links so what I did was included a green stop sign (something tested by Internet marketers) and I added it to the paragraph with my links. Over night I got a few clicks, although it wasn’t many, comparing it to zero, it meant a big difference.

 

How To Monetize Your Blog Using Affiliate Marketing

A couple tips that I really recommend you take advantage of when doing affiliate marketing are, ask for a better commission rate and also ask for a coupon code to give your readers a discount. Doing these two things will greatly increase your success at making money online with affiliate marketing because you will be able to convert more readers with a coupon code and with a higher payout then other affiliates, you will be able to invest more to get more conversions. The most important thing is how you display your affiliate links, there are a few different ways to offer affiliate links on your website, the ones I suggest are:

• Comparison charts, this way you make the reader choose which one is the best choice. This works really well because you give them all the options and which ever one they take, you collect a commission on.
• Recommendations, this converts better for me because the reader gets to see you using the product in action and so know you are not promoting it just to make money but because it actually works!

Simply linking to an affiliate link and hoping people will buy it isn’t enough!






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The Ultimate Guide To Building a Successful Blog | Your 30 Day Plan!

Fast Start Blogging Success

Today I wanted to present my own personal plan for Blogging Success – a plan that could be followed and executed in as little as 30 days and one that, new, intermediate and even experienced bloggers can get value out of it. This is pretty well the complete system I used to create IncomeDiary.com.

Special Note: I am calling this a 30 Day Plan and all the steps can be completed in 30 days – but of course if your preference is to take things slower and take longer over it, that is possible also.
My Goal here is to help as many people as possible make their first dollars online in 30 Days or less and remember:

The longer you’re not taking action, the more money you’re losing

I should also say that the ORDER of Tasks is only a suggestion – this is the order that I would suggest but if you are an experienced blogger you may well have accomplished some of the days tasks already.
Additionally this is a post I intend to update on a regular basis. I might even create a book out of this post at some later date. You will note that with some topics I have gone into more detail than others, simply because I had not covered those topics in much detail before. My main goal here is to go beyond what appears on the Blogging eCourse so topics covered on the eCourse will get for the moment slightly less attention here.
I also encourage you to keep with The Plan – for some of you there will be a lot of new material here, stuff you have never come across before even, but a curious mind is a great help with learning and the more you learn about blogging, the more you will make online
This has been a great post to put together, a sort of MASSIVE TOP LIST in some ways. Please don’t be overawed with the amount of tasks – the important thing is to complete the tasks and even if it took you 30 weeks rather than 30 days you will ultimately be a far better blogger for it.
Also in particular note my Day 17 Contest and my offer to all of you who comment on this post before 15th June 2010.
I am also fully aware that sometimes new bloggers think they cannot replicate my success or that of other Pro-Bloggers – but really it is never to late to start. Indeed in some ways today is a better time to start than ever because there is more help available than ever and also remember what I have done with IncomeDiary.com has been accomplished in just over 12 months. Oh, and at the risk of repeating myself – if a 21 year old, dyslexic, college dropout like me can do it — why not you?
UPDATE: Since creating this post, 1000’s of people have taken part and enjoyed the guide, however so people have asked for more. I highly recommend you check out Become a Blogger which has all the tutorials and videos you will need to set up your blog, monetize it and then drive traffic to it. The program was created by Yaro Starak and Gideon Shalwick who I both know and was able to organize a $1 trial for all IncomeDiary readers so that you can try it with practically no risk!

Let me know your thought and comments on this post — and of course your questions about any specific days task. As I said, I will be expanding on this post so your feedback will be a huge help in that respect.
To Our Success
Michael
PS: Before you start, you may want to briefly read my Blogging Start Up Mistakes.

Blog Your Way To Success – 30 Day Plan

Day 1: Getting Your Blog Online

It’s real simple, all you need to do to get your blog online is to buy your domain name, your web hosting, connect them together and then install your blog. If you have not already done so – you should also get my 7 Day Blogging eCourse

I personally recommend you:

Buy your domain from GoDaddy for $8.99/year and you can receive a 10% discount when you use the coupon code: cjcsave10
Buy your webhosting from HostGator for $4.99/month and you can get your first month for 1cent when you use the coupon code: Retireat21
Once you have done this, login to your GoDaddy account and update your nameservers with the ones HostGator gives you. After this all you need to do is the 10 second Wordpress install from your hosting CPanel – as detailed in this Post

Day 2: Editing Your Theme Preferences

Once you have installed your blog you need to choose and install your theme. I personally use and highly recommend Woothemes.com. Choose the theme of your choice and then to install it, log in to your Wordpress Admin and on the sidebar you should see a tab called appearance, then click Add New Theme. Once there, go to the top and click Upload, find your theme file and click Install Now. To set it as your theme, go to Themes and activate it.
If like me you’re using Woothemes then you should now see a button at the bottom of the Admin sidebar with the name of your Theme. Here you are able to play around with all the options of your theme, add advertisers, choose the size of images, featured posts and more. As well as this, you need to go to the Widgets page which is also under Appearance and drag the widgets you want to use for your blog.
Another thing I suggest you do is go down to settings and click discussion and tick the box, Enable threaded comments – this will allow readers to reply to specific comments. Another way to improve the look of your comments is to have a picture of you next to your comment, you can see that I do this on my blog. Most themes come with this already installed, however every user has to set their picture themselves at Gravatar. Once you have set it up, it will update all past comments on every blog with your picture and will include it in any future ones.

Day 3: Customizing Your Blog Design

I have used dozens of designers in the past, a lot come and go and it can be really hard to keep just one. However for those of you who don’t know where to get designers, here’s what I would do.
I would start by visiting TalkFreelance, which is a design forum, they have a few good designers looking for work, click here to see those people. If that didn’t work, I would try other forums such as Sitepoint, Digitalpoint and WarriorForum.
If it was just a header or logo change I needed, I would probably opt for a design competition, either at http://99designs.com or http://logomyway.com where you can sometimes get over 500 entries for your contest.

Day 4: Adding Logos, Favicons and further customizing your theme

OK, so you have had a designer create a logo for you or you have made one yourself. If you are using Woothemes then this next bit is quite easy. Just click on the name of your theme in the LH menu of your Admin area and you should see [Theme] Options. The screenshot below is from my RetireAt21.com site where I use the the Headlines theme from Woothemes

Editing a Wootheme to add Logo etc

What is a FAVICON ? — check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Favicon
Again this is a topic that we could make into a much bigger topic — but we are taking little steps here, you can learn more and improve more another day.
You can also of course get a designer to do this work for you – see Day 3 above

Day 5: Installing Plugins and Other Edits

Every blog needs a selection of Wordpress plugins to make it run more smoovely, the ones I use are below, but there are 1000’s to choose from at Wordpress.org

• Podcasting Plugin which allows me to add a player to blog posts so people can play our audio interviews.
• WP-ContactForm which is basically a contact form and really simply Plugin that works perfectly. For anyone who has tried to create a contact form on a normal website, you will realize just how hard it can be.
• Comment Notifier which is basically an RSS feed for comments, alerting people who subscribe when there are new comments.
• All in One SEO Pack which basically makes optimizing your blog for search engines really easy.

And if you not already done so – get yourself an AWeber account. Having an Aweber is essential when you start building your email list

Day 6: Creating Your Contact and About Page

These are two pages most people forget about but when I checked my stats, these two pages get some of the most traffic. People want to hear your story and what your blog is about, make sure to provide them with the information they are looking for. Secondly with your contact page you want to remember to include a contact form, a possible email, postal address and any social sites you are on. I have an office address as I didn’t want to put my home address up on the site. This proved to be a smart move because I often get sent free things companies and letters from readers.
I have two About Me pages and you can check them out here:
http://www.incomediary.com/about
http://www.incomediary.com/make-money-online-my-personal-story-how-i-created-incomediary-com
To add a page to your blog, go to Pages >> Add New. Once there it is really simple, just add the title of the page, for example “Contact Us” and then put the page details. For those of you who downloaded the contact page plugin I suggested, you can add a form by putting in the code:

Day 7: Styling Blog Posts

There is again much we could cover here — most people use the Visual Editor to create their posts and it works very well but I suggest you look at the code occasionally under the HTML editor.
You don’t need to know every bit of HTML code but knowing a few bits of code gives you a better understanding of web-pages and also of Search Engine Optimization.
A very simple option you can go with is to use H Tags for Headings / Important sections in your blog post. For SEO reasons I won’t explain in detail here it is also handy if you include some of your important keywords within those Tags.
See Screenshot below for example of how I used H2 Tag in this post:

HTML Editor In Wordpress

This is H1 Heading

/

This is H2 Heading

/

This is H3 Heading

Initially I suggest you just do a dummy post and play around with it – trying different styles and previewing it to see what you like. The great thing about Wordpress is that you can save a draft and preview your changes
Note: I am only going into the simplest of stuff here – but it will I hope inspire you to find out more. (To be curious and learn even more)
If you fancy becoming a bit of an HTML Nerd (not essential) they you will find lots of simple code you can use on this Cheat Sheet
Also check out my Blog Post here for some of the more advanced styling options you may like to consider adding to your blog down the line:
http://www.incomediary.com/make-your-blog-stand-out-from-the-crowd

Day 8: No Leakage Rule

This is something I speak about a lot, in particular in one of my most recent posts ( http://www.incomediary.com/how-i-made-5000-in-the-first-month-with-a-brand-new-blog ). In simple terms, you don’t link out of your site unless it a commission earning link. i.e – you don’t have a blogroll, you have no advertisers and when you do link to someone, it should be an affiliate link. You then focus on funneling them to the pages that convert highest for you such as your squeeze page/optin box and affiliate posts, this way they either clicked to close their browser or they make you money.
Typically when you link to someone else, such as your advertisers and “friends/blogroll” they are competitors.
OK, I am simplifying things a lot here. I am not a fan of selling advertising on this site because when I do that I am accepting a ‘guaranteed’ but relatively low amount from an advertiser when if I did my job correctly I could earn far more on an affiliate commission offer.
That said, as I will mention later you may wish to consider selling advertising (as I do on RetireAt21.com) – but I personally think it limits your earning potential.

Day 9: Finding Affiliate Programs That Work

There are 1000’s of make money online products that I could promote but to make any money from it you have to pick a product that offers great value and converts well. Firstly I wouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket, I would choose at least two, preferably one low price point of around $30 and one higher at around $200.
There isn’t any sole place to find products, my top tip is to find products you like and then visit there site and scroll to the bottom, and usually they will have a link saying affiliates with details on how you promote them. A lot of the products I promote come from ClickBank and Commission Junction (CJ) which is basically a marketplace of affiliate programs.
So once you find your product, what makes it convert well? If we knew that, we would all be a lot more well of, however from my experience this is what works for me:

• $1 Trial Offers
• New Products – being the first to promote a new product or service gives you a HUGE advantage.
• A well known brand – most people in America have heard of the GoDaddy adverts, because of that, they by far out pull any other domain registrar I promote.
• The Best Product – I promote loads of theme companies but WooThemes converts the best because they are simply the best.
• Proof It Works – When it comes to the eBooks I promote, the sales page with a real bank cheque in completely destroys the other sales pages.

These days before promoting any offer I always check out the Sales Page – I have come across some great products with lousy sales pages that have ended up earning me very little. Ask yourself – would this sales page convince me? If it doesn’t convince you then it is unlikely it will convince your readers.

Day 10: Creating Your First Affiliate Post

Affiliate posts are really just like this one, you provide great information on something and at the same endorse a product that you use and know that works. A lot of my income these days comes from blog posts that were created months ago. When you first start out you may not see much point in doing a promotion just to make a few bucks here and there – but I promise you after not too long at all, these amounts add up!
Today I want you to create a post with Affiliate links. Here is how I did mine:

1. Find a product you are promoting that out performs anything else, in my case it’s Market Me Tweet which allows users to easily build a HUGE twitter following.
2. Write a post on how you use the product to benefit you.
3. Softly promote the product and give alternatives, this way if they don’t buy the one you suggest, hopefully they will go for another you mention instead of going else where to find one.
4. Keep referring back to this post when ever someone asks you about Twitter or when you mention Twitter in another post.

I bet you didn’t think it was that simple? It really is, so many people think there is some secret to making money blogging but all you have to do is monetize value.

Day 11: Adding Recommended Products / Becoming an Affiliate

OK this is related to Day 9, but I thought I’d include some additional resources, especially if you are struggling to find affiliate offers to promote.
You know I am amazed the number of people who have started a blog with the idea of making money from it – without fully researching just how they are going to make that money.
Don’t start a blog for fun and profit (as opposed to a fun only blog) unless you have first considered how you will monetize the site.
I cannot possibly know everyone’s Niche but I am going to make a few suggestions that will at the very least get most people started with affiliate marketing.

Clickbank.com
Amazon.com
Ebay.com
Google Adsense

I like Clickbank a lot because the commissions are decent — 50% in normal and even 75% is possible. Additionally you can create your own product to sell on Clickbank and have the Clickbank army of affiliates promote for you.
Note — the only one I give serious consideration to these days is CLICKBANK but if you are in a Niche where you get a large number of visitors but are finding it difficult to monetize the GOOGLE ADSENSE is well worth considering
Of course it is much better if you have your own unique product to offer or you can find more specific offers for your niche. The more specific the offer the better the conversion, so it is worth while searching out some Special Products to recommend.
Another Note: Only promote products you believe in and would genuinely buy yourself. I regularly turn down affiliate offers just because I don’t like the product being offered.

Day 12: Add An Advertising Spot To Your Blog

Most of the time I like to promote affiliate products because I have a better opportunity of making more money, however sometimes it’s good to have guaranteed money. All WooThemes come complete with an advert manager that makes it easy to add/edit/delete advertisers. I suggest that until you find paying advertisers, you promote affiliate products in these Ad Spots and leave one spot for a banner saying Advertise Here. You can see an example of how I do this at RetireAt21.com (Of course it is better still if you are sold out and don’t need to have an “Advertise Here’ banner displaying.

Advertise Now - RetireAt21.com

TIP: When looking for affiliates adverting banners, I use Google Images and search affiliate product name, followed by 125 x 125, so for example Bloggingtothebank 125 x 125. This usually brings up a great selection of banners.
Another thing you want to do is add a advertise page which you link your banner to and in the header of your site. I would highly recommend copying my advertise page on Retireat21, it has worked very well for me.

Day 13: Creating a Affiliate Comparison Page

This is a technique I see nearly no one doing and has proven to work well for me. The first time I tried it was on Retireat21, I was earning around $1000 a month at the time just from banner adverts, adding this page doubled my income over night. The idea behind it is really simple, for whatever niche you are in, you have tried and tested lots of products, for me it was Wordpress themes, domains, hosting and the list continues. Now telling your readers just to go buy these and take your word for it, typically isn’t good enough. What I did was compared them to the other products in a table, so they could see clearly which offer to go for but even if they didn’t pick the one I recommend, I would still make money from the other product they went for instead. Check out one of my comparison pages here: http://www.incomediary.com/blogging-resources

Day 14: Adding Your Funnel System / building your mailing list

This is covered very nicely in other posts and it is such a huge topic I would be doing a disservice by only skimming over it here – so please check out the following post: Making Money with Email Marketing and an Autoresponder Series
and this Video:

On Youtube

• Subscribe
• Other Videos
• My Youtube Guide

My Biggest Tip Here: sign up for the AWeber and get their email marketing software to help you automate email follow up / newsletter delivery.

Day 15: Promoting a Product Launch

Once your funnel system is up and you’re getting optins, you now have another way of monetizing apart from the auto-responder. Sometimes when I see a product I like and think it’s provides value, then I will email my list, mentioning why they should buy it. This is a value of thousands of dollars every time I send it out, so say you just did it once a week, that’s an extra $4000 of monthly income. I would also like to point out that you don’t need a huge list, it’s the quality of the list.

Day 16: Create a Blog Post Plan

What I did when I started this site was put together as many post ideas as I could and then picked all the best ones. I still do this, usually on a flight when I can’t do anything else but it’s vital because it gives you enough work to do for at least the next 3 months.
For those who are thinking it, yes I did come up with this post on a flight

Day 17: Have a Blog Launch Contest

Setting Up A Contest – The Basics
To get the most interest and interaction keep the following in mind;
a) Simple Tasks (eg commenting) get the best response
b) As few rules as possible – but do make sure to have rules
c) The deadline to end the contest should not be too far in the future – no more than one month (but no less than a week)
d) Don’t just announce it on the blog – email your list, tweet it, Facebook it, get friends to mention it etc
e) Finally and MOST IMPORTANTLY — make your contest EXCITING – with strong copy and excitement and value that will encourage people to get involved.
When I first launched RetireAt21.com back in 2007 I ran a launch contest to build up Buzz and awareness for the site – it cost me and my sponsors a little money but it was well worth it.
But it does not have to cost very much at all – you can find sponsors or you can put some simple prizes for example your Top Commenter (Simple prizes – e.g. Amazon.com vouchers)
If funds are limited a contest need not cost you more than $100 in Total Price Fund – but if you can attract some good sponsorship the perceived value can be $1000’s
For more Competition ideas — Check out this Contest Ideas Post by Liz Strauss at Successfuf-Blog.com
Some of Liz’s ideas that I like for competition ideas are:

If they made a movie of my blog, it would be called ____ and ___ would play the main characters.
The theme song of this blog should be ____.
The official rock band of this blog should be ____.

Something Important – you can if you wish have launched your Blog before launching the Blog Launch Contest. Indeed, I would actually recommend that, as hopefully if you have been doing all the other things I have been suggesting, you will already have some following and traffic.
In other words launch a Beta Version of the blog first and then follow that up in a Full Launch and a Launch Contest.
More Help:
Darren Rowse over at Problogger.net has written an excellent article on How To Run A Blog Competition – well worth checking out for additional ideas.
TOP TIP
You can run a contest anytime – it doesn’t just have to be at Launch. For example if you are doing a BIG POST or a series of posts you can for example offer some sort of prize or bonus to everyone who makes a comment on your post. And the more comments you get the more interaction you have and the quicker you build up a sense of community.
Indeed – I am planning to shortly convert this Blog Post into a PDF report – adding some additional resources and information and I shall Offer everyone who comments on this post before 15th June 2010 – a copy of my new report as soon as it becomes available – Blogging To Success – The 30 Day Plan, just for commenting.

Day 18: Requesting Interviews

When I first got started this was my main way of getting noticed by other bloggers. I conducted 100’s of interviews at RetireAt21.com – mainly just using email. Later I moved to recording calls over Skype and Video (always getting the recordings transcribed – which is very important for good search engine content)
I get a lot of people asking me about interviewing and worrying that the people they request interviews of may refuse. Well everyone you don’t ask is going to refuse – that is for sure. It is a numbers game – once you land your first big interviews it becomes much easier to get more interviews. I discuss interviews in some detail along with Tips for creating great blog content in the video below:

On Youtube

• Subscribe
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• My Youtube Guide

Also well worth checking out is another post over at ProBlogger.net:
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/06/11/how-to-land-big-interviews-when-your-blog-is-still-small/

Day 19: Conducting Your Interviews

I have conducted 100’s of interviews and the key to a successful interview is asking the right questions. Make sure you do your research before you ask the questions and if you are doing it over the phone or Skype, make sure you leave room to ask questions depending on the responses you get back from the interviewee.

Day 20: Optimizing Your Blog For Search Engines

Another BIG Subject, worthy of an extended post. Such an important subject that all I am going to do here is FOCUS on one element of it, which is the importance of using the most search engine friendly TITLE (Title Tag) you can for your blog post.
The Title Tag of your web-page or blog post is what you see at the very top of Your Browser and also almost always what the search engine uses to display and rang your page in its search result. See example of a search for ‘young entrepreneur’ below to see how the Top Results each include the Key Term searched for in the TITLE. Indeed I would go as far as to say it is almost impossible to rank TOPS for a significant keyword without that Keyword appearing in you Title.

In Wordpress the Title of your Blog Post is usually also the TITLE TAG. There are ways around this for example by installing the All in One SEO Pack which allows the TITLE of your post to be different from that which is displayed at the top of the Browser (as the Title Tag).
This is a good thing if for example you want to use a Fun / Catchy Title for the blog post (which doesn’t include many keywords) but want to have a powerful TITLE TAG that includes KEYWORDS.
Now, I know this is confusing – so I am going to stop now – put simply it is best you remember to use KEYWORDS and likely search terms your visitors may use to find you when deciding to name (Title) your blog post – unless you have installed the All in One SEO Pack
Also highly recommended on this deep subject (and allow yourself sometime to read and understand) is this excellent at Yoast.com
Wordpress SEO

Day 21: Create Your First Top List

It’s no big secret that I love creating top lists, they just bring so damn much traffic, I can’t resist. Today I want you to create one of your own, here are a few suggestions:

• Top Earning Women in Sport
• 10 Reasons It’s Great To Be a Guy
• 30 Most Influential People In Design
• Top 30 Golf Blogs

You will notice that all of these examples could be used in any niche and if for some reason you don’t think it will work, then post below and I will give you a example of one for your niche.
Lists work because 1) They get visitors attention, 2) They are easy to scan, 3) Easy to read, 4) very easy to understand and above all EASY TO REMEMBER and pass on / re-tweet to friends.

Day 22: Create an Educational Post

It surprises me how many people – who claim to be experts in their niche, who seem reluctant to share what they know in real depth. It is almost like they want to be recognized as an EXPERT but they don’t want to share their KNOWLEDGE.
Folks that is not how this blogging thing works. Today, more than ever you must first GIVE in order to RECEIVE.
Failure to SHARE is in my opinion an example of Poverty Consciousness. I have people who ask me for advice about blogging openly saying they don’t want to let out the really good stuff in public. If you are in a niche where there is little FREE Info you may get away with that – and you can charge for what you know, but really those types of niches are becoming fewer and fewer.
Imagine where I’d be today if I had not been prepared to share what I know?
If you check IncomeDiary.com over you will see that a high number of my posts are EDUCATIONAL / HOW TO posts. But the interesting thing I have found is that the more info I put out there the more requests I get for speaking, workshops, private coaching and mentoring.
Think of your Educational Post as a SALES TOOL – a way to connect with potential clients who will in turn buy your more in-depth services because they are impressed with what you are giving away.
Check out some of my educational posts:
www.incomediary.com/my-6-figure-blog-content-strategy
www.incomediary.com/unusual-cheeky-and-fun-ways-to-get-inspiration-for-your-blog-posts
In summary – to be considered a real expert and an authority in your niche you have to demonstrate what you know. That is what Educational Posts are about.
What do you know? What problems can you help people solve? Answer those questions and you have an educational post.
And of course your educational posts can earn you affiliate commissions as well – as well as providing a useful service to your readers.

Day 23: Getting the most out of a blog post

Today I want you to ‘rest’ for a few moments and think about “How do I get the most out of a Blog Post?”
The obvious answer for some would be how do I place more affiliate links in the post – or find associated related resources (and products) that I can recommend to my reader.
Well, that would only be part of the answer because I would like to challenge you to think like THE VISITOR.
How could the visitor get more out of your post? How can you improve your post for your visitors benefit? That really should be the only question you ask, because when you do that,the rest (including additional products to promote) will take care of itself.
How can you deliver your reader more value?

Day 24: Driving Traffic From Twitter

There is no real logic in having this under day 24 – because of course if you have been following my videos such as 1000 Visitors A Day – Blog Traffic Secrets you will know how important I consider Twitter. So consider this a reminder – especially if you have been neglecting Twitter recently.
Check out my specific Twitter Post at
http://www.incomediary.com/twitter-tips-and-tricks-to-drive-traffic-to-your-sites and make sure to BUY MarketMeTweet (essential for TWITTER)
Talking of Twitter and email lists and such things I just got the following message from Mark – a long time subscriber:

I’ve been subscribed to one of your lists now for ages, probably going on 2 years I reckon, and I’ll be honest, I never really paid much attention to your emails. Anyway… recently I’ve been tuning in a bit more (glad I did too!) and I’ve actually started my own blog now! – One of the videos you did on Traffic seemed to completely simplify the process – I’ve just got hold of that Tweet Adder software, and I’m already getting a load of followers and it’s day 1. LOL!

Mark proves a great point here – one I have been aware of for sometime – People don’t always act straight away, even when it appears in their best interest to. The important thing is that Mark has now taken action and I am sure you will find many of your own subscribers are similar.

Day 25: Creating Posts Search Engines Will Find

OK, on Day 20 we went over Optimizing Your Blog For Search Engines (SEO) but this is such an important subject that it deserves your attention on at least 2 days out of this 30 Day Plan. Actually you should be thinking SEO all the time with every blog post you write.
Anyway – here is some additional help via Nathan Rice – well worth a read
http://www.nathanrice.net/blog/ultimate-guide-to-wordpress-seo-optimized-heading-tags
I will admit that I am a little concerned that not all that I am covering in this 30 Days is being understood by everyone, especially with regards to SEO so I encourage you to email me Your Questions. I cannot promise to answer every question individually but your feedback will be used to improve on this Guide, the PDF Report and the book I may eventually write.

Day 26: Making Your Blog More “Sticky”

If you have been blogging for a while you are bound to have heard the terms’ “Make your blog sticky”
But what does sticky mean? Well for me it means the following:

a) Producing content that interests and intrigues my visitors so that they ’stick around’ to see more of what I have to offer
and
b) Most importantly having strategies to bring those visitors back.

It is often said that you only have one chance to make a good impression – and I am afraid the same is also true on a website.
It is difficult for us as website owners to view our websites as a NEW VISITOR – but it is something I regularly try to do. Pick and page on your website and ask yourself: What is intriguing about this webpage? What makes me want to click on the links and navigate the site? How are visitors able to interact with you? (Opt-in, join mailing list, subscribe to RSS etc)
Making your website sticky is perhaps one of the biggest and most important topics in blogging and I do at a later date plan to do an extended post on this topic.
For now I will just highlight a few key points:
1) Have multiple ways for people to connect with you – by offering free reports, Tips of The Week, RSS subscribe options etc. This is vital if you don’t want that first time visitor to become a one time only visitor.
These days I get a lot of traffic from the search engines – often taking visitors to posts I wrote some time ago. If I am to connect with these visitors and get them to STICK around so they see more of what I have to offer then there needs to be multiple ways to connect – and not just some obscure subscribe link hidden away at the bottom of the page.
Have a look at my current design to see the ways I encourage people to connect with me.

Encourage Your Visitors To Connect With You

2) Make your website interactive – encourage comments, have competitions, polls etc
3) Have and ANGLE and be YOURSELF – add personality to your website by being authentic and genuine and caring. OK, for some of us we may have to ‘exaggerate’
Today we don’t have to be PERFECT in order to be considered an AUTHORITY or a GURU — I actually make a big point of some of my limitations and it appears people like what I say all the more for it.
I present myself as being a:

Dyslexic,Young Entrepreneur, Internet Marketer, Adventurer and Blogger who invites you to start making an additional income online today, full-time or part-time

Day 27: Connecting With Readers
Readers like to feel special! They like to be recognized and remembered. When I visited Gary Vaynerchuk in New York he showed me that when people commented on his blog, he would sometimes personally reply to their comment via email, thanking them for reading and reached out to them. Gary is also very good I have discovered in responding to comments in other blog posts that feature him.
To be honest – I don’t know were he gets the time – but then he hustles more than just about anyone else I know.
You can bet your dollar that if you had that experience with the author of a great blog that you would return often and would make sure to comment again.
We don’t always get the time to respond and I struggle myself from time to time, but responding to blog comments is one of the best ways I have found to connect more directly with my readership.

Day 28: Connecting With Other Bloggers

Not sure why this appears as a Day 28 task – because frankly it is so easy to do.
Many bloggers live a lonely existence working at home – but online I find most of them are very sociable, welcoming email and interaction.
We have already mentioned interviews. That is my favorite way to connect with bloggers I don’t already know in person.
Even just dropping an email to say ‘Hi, I enjoyed your site’ along with a quick comment is a nice way to start the conversation going. But please don’t draft up some ’standard email’ that you shoot of to everyone – it is so obvious and I get them all the time (and they get deleted) – make your email stand out. Use clever subject lines (‘Hi’ is not a clever subject line). Explain what you liked about their site.
You can later follow up with an interview request if you wish. But first concentrate on building a relationship.
Chances are very high that is you interview someone they will blog about it or they will Re-Tweet about it. Or if you have become friends they will mention you in posts, link to your content (and you vice versa)
If you have a product to sell then they chances are good you can JV together / they can become an affiliate for you (and again vice versa)
TOP TIPS:
a) Sometimes people at the very top of their niche are difficult to connect with directly (harder for them to see what is in it for them) An alternative approach is to just write and say how much you enjoy their work and ask if there is anyway you can assist them? (Explain your talents, how you are just getting started etc)
And if it is practical for you – there is always the option of offering to work for free – just so you can learn and develop your own skills
b) Don’t forget FORUMS – great place to connect with other website owners and bloggers. Forums are also great places for getting ideas for future blog posts etc

Day 29: Perform Blog Testing

Testing is vital to the success I have had. When I first started online I admit I didn’t give it much thought but these days I am always looking for ways to tweak things.
It is such a huge subject and again one I will return to that for now I am just going to give you a couple of resources to check out
a) CrazyEgg.com – This is my friend Neil Patel’s website and it offers a very simple and easy way to find out where people click. Check out a Demo here — https://www.crazyegg.com/demo#overlay
If you know where people click then you are better placed to decide where to place your most valuable content / opt-ins
b) Install Google Analytics
Google Analytics gives you rich insights into your website traffic and marketing effectiveness.
Testing is vital to the success I have had, before testing I wasn’t making half of what I make today.

Day 30: Edit Your Blog Depending On The Results From Testing

If you are using products like Google Analytics and CrazyEgg.com you will have discovered lots of information about your blog which will allow you improve it even further.
To give you a quick example I noticed recently in Google Analytics that I was appearing on the second page of Google search results for a fairly decent keyword and knowing what I know about SEO and using All in One SEO PackI have tweaked my TITLE Tag so that I can further on my search result. (Not yet on page 1 but I am hopeful)
Below is an excellent video which compliments the last two days in particular. Testing can appear boring and it can even be quite frustrating at times – but it is what separates the amateurs from the professionals in my opinion.

On Youtube

• Subscribe
• Other Videos
• My Youtube Guide

Blogging can be as simple or as complicated as you wish to make it. Much of what I have explained over these 30 tasks will appear complicated to some but I should emphasis that thanks to the power of WORDPRESS as long as you are a decent writer and have worthwhile information to share there is an excellent chance you can achieve much success without even implementing 50% of what I have explained here.
That said – clearly somethings are more important than others so I will leave you with some homework – 5 Topics that will make a huge difference to your online success:

Top Lists, Twitter, Search Engine Optimisation (Especially your choice of Title Tag), Installing Google Analytics and Interviews

Congratulations – You Have Made It To The End Of Day 30!

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