On Problogger guest blogger, Jeff from BuzzMyBlog- My Adventure in Internet Marketing writes an article that is funny, informative and heartbreaking at the same time. It is a that will appeals to both new and seasoned bloggers alike. Understanding the Blog Lifecycle To Prevent Common Downfalls documents the life cycle- or ups and down of a blog as it goes through its growing pains. he chronicle some of the typical pitfalls that most bloggers make when they dive into blogging in a serious way.
I particularly enjoyed this line:
To prove to the world that they have seen the light, they vow to focus on quality content and avoid time consuming gimmicks. Traffic decreases further.
Traffic decreases further. How many times I have written a 100+ masterpiece convinced it will turn the blogosphere on its head… and then a week later see that 3 people saw it :-).
Oh the PAIN!
Jeff has some good, solid advice, You can easlily see he has been at the game for a while. He serves up the usual advice- content is king, have a blog schedule, etc however his suggestions also have some meat on them and his article is unusually well written and comes with lots of snazzy graphs. A thoroughly enjoyable read.
Jeff has some great ideas for linkbait and increasing loyal readership- including his own Weekly Buzz promotion, where you can get a Free Ad Spot on BuzzMyBlog.com.
You can read more from him on his own blog and I encourage you BuzzMyBlog and follow him on Twitter . Remember its not who follows you- but who you follow!
If you are working at building your blog traffic you have to have a solid understanding of how people are finding you. You can use that information to develop content, generate more traffic and make more money. There are many tools that try and take the pain out of analytics for you. One tool is HitTail which not only reports your top search terms goes one step further and predicts what terms people will use to find you.
Analytics are fantastic for coming up with ideas. When I am stuck for blog post idea and realize then playing Peggle endlessly is just avoidance I will often do is turn to my analytics. When you look at your stats using analytics program like like Google Analytics, webstats or MyBlogLog ( I use Clicktracks ) you will start to see patterns. You can use those patterns build a better site.
If you are blogging for money then you will find that a handful of your posts make you the most money. With a closer look at your revenue you find that while some post make you a lot of money they do not make up ALL of your income stream.
It is also true when you look at your stats that you may have a handful of keywords that are always at the top. These are your prime keywords- you rank well in search engines and you may even think they are the bread and butter of your site. You could be wrong.
Look at your earnings. If you have you are an Adsense publisher you probably have a page or post or blog that does really really well. The shining star of your blog revenue. I suspect the amount still only accounts for less than half of your total blog income. I have a blog that outpaces all my other sites- however my other blogs combined still make more money than that one blog.
The same will be true with your keywords. You will have terms that bring about 20% of your traffic. You may focus a lot of time and energy on those terms. If you run an AdWords campaign you may be dumping all your money into those terms - however- its the other 80 percent you should be looking at. You will get more traffic for less effort and/or less money.
Do not bend over backwards chasing after the hard keywords- go after the ones that are easy. If you write blog posts using keywords that are based on user behavior and current content and you may get more traffic and make more money.
I have been using HitTail from Connors Communications for about a year on all my blogs. They have both a free version and a pro version. For most users the free version is more than adequate. You get search results for your site in real time and find out which keywords people use to find your website. Based on the keywords people are using right now to find your site- it will suggest what other keywords you could be using. I found this to be extremely useful.
How To Use HitTail
You need to put a script in your pages. You can add manually in your body tags or use plugin to do it for you.
When you login you can look at multiple blogs and various windows. At a glance I can see my top performing keywords in graph form. It will tell you what percentage of searches come from your top 10 keywords and what come from long tail search. All of my blogs have a split of about 20/80. Interestingly my worst blog is 10/90 split and my best is a 25/75.
It will also show you search hits from major search engines and what keywords strings were used and most valuable information for me has been suggestions which give suggested keywords based on current search results. Admittedly some of the string are odd , however often there is a little gem of an idea or a combination that works very well.
The best ideas for your blog posts I believe still come from instinct- watching news or seeing trends and writing about what you know or what your are working on. The best advice I ever heard about writing a blog came from Greg Jarboe- he talked about a blog in terms of a news source. That you need to brand yourself as an expert in your field and become the “news hub” for that niche. Wonderful advice. Using your expertise along with stat tools can be a powerful combination.
Writing for search engines is a a slippery slope and getting tangled in keywords can cause more problems than it solves. NOT looking at your keywords and seeing what keywords are performing is a huge mistake. You must use the information you have stored in your logs to build your traffic and to make your blog more profitable.
Want to pick up some great blogging tips quickly? Shoemney is runnng a series on his blog. The most recent post in the make money blogging series latest is Q&A Round 5 - The Answers
He accepts 50 questions from site visitors and locks the thread.. then he answers them . Some terrific info and solutions to problems you may not know you have. I am totally loving this series. I hope he keeps it up. A little gem of an idea from marketing great.e.g.
One of my sites (http://WinScrabble.com) has proven difficult for me to promote through my normal methods.
It’s a site to help people cheat at Scrabble, by taking their letters and generating valid words for them. Once I hook a user, they tend to convert to long-term, direct traffic easily, but the problem is there is a very strong incentive for them to not share the site with their friends. So, word of mouth is next to nil.
Can you think of any way that I could motivate people to share that site with others? Going with 100% CPC advertising has felt like an uphill battle, so far.
ShoeMoney: Well aslong as you can grow and make a profit then pour on the CPC. Eventually your site will not just be the hush hush it will be the bare minimum if people want to compete.
I am good at a lot of things- i am even GREAT at a handful of stuff ( I kick ass in Rock Band!) and have several niche blogs where I have successfully branded myself as an expert in some obscure and not-so obscure fields. One thing I would never have the cajones to do it to pass myself off as any kind of expert in graphics or logo design.
I am for ANYTHING that will take mystery and pain out of designing a business logo or graphic. I just wrote a post about an image editor Picnik that really is designed for people like me.
I will often see post in blog about designing you own logo and been a bit hopeful.. only to read it and then feel a cloud enter my brain when they start to use terms like “layers” and “gradient tools”.. and I go back to my logo free life. So I was dubious when I stopped by and checked out Anita Campbell’s posts on Small Business Trends starting with Help, My Logo is So 1999!
The article series wasn’t what I thought- it is not another DIY logo tutorial . Anita describes the process she goes through in creating a new logo using the HP service Logoworks who claim to design a high quality design starting at 99.00. A great price and an option worth giving serious consideration. ( Note- yes I KNOW I am logo free- it has been in the works for months now and been a difficult process - read my brother-in-law the graphics designer is now doing it…..)
Anita takes some of the mystery out of creating a business logo and her logo series is a must read if you are considering getting a professionally designed logo for your site or blog. There article is well written and has unusualy good insight into the process. The post comments also contain good info so take a peek.
Win a FREE Logo Package
Anita also is having a random draw to win a Gold logo package worth $399 from HP, visit her site and comment on which of her logos you like best for a chance to win.
