Browsing articles from "August, 2010"

Little Things Bloggers Crave And Most Never Get

Aug 5, 2010 // by Andrew Rondeau // blogging, SEO Blog // 79 Comments

This is a guest post from Andrew Rondeau. It is part of The “Bad Ass” SEO Guest Blogging Contest.

There is a huge amount of blogging advice available to all of us if we are willing to search and put the effort into finding it but…

…When it comes to blogging, have you ever had the feeling that you are completely out of your depth?

Sometimes, running a blog can feel like swimming for the first time.

You start out all enthusiastic and then just as you think you’ve nailed the first few strokes, you start to sink.

Getting set up with WordPress and taking the plunge to write your first blog post is exhilarating. You get to pick your theme, your images and you launch your very own voice out in the big wide world.

If you’re lucky you may even attract some comments.

You are on a roll (blog roll?!) and you are fired up with enthusiasm.

Then you have to do it again and again and again.

After a few weeks, the beauty of it fades.

You may have packed in your ‘real’ job and made the jump to full time blogging. The money isn’t coming in.

You are getting nagged by your spouse who doesn’t understand how much time you are putting in to your new business venture, and why you aren’t seeing immediate results.

You wake up early every day and spend up to twelve hours at your desk hammering away, developing your free product and writing posts, commenting on other blogs and joining forums.

You don’t know which way to turn.

You do some research to try and sort things out.

You find yourself wading through a myriad different offers.

Link optimization.

Keyword analysis.

Blog design.

SEO.

Plugins.

Getting Traffic.

List building.

Article writing.

Social Bookmarking.

Selling, relationship building, affiliates, joint ventures, squeeze pages, add-ons, widgets, backups, security, copywriting, gadgets, hard drives, online storage, software, hardware, shareware, malware, outsourcing, making videos, creating products, membership sites…

It’s tough, isn’t it?

You begin to wonder why you got in to this whole business of working for yourself.

People aren’t reading your blog. You haven’t made any money yet.

You’re tired.

Someone offers you the chance to go and visit them abroad, and you turn them down because you’re scared of leaving your new business venture for just a moment, in case the dream opportunity comes along and your services are finally acknowledged as the superb thing they are.

You’re fed up.

You’re working longer hours than you ever did when someone employed you.

You sleep less, because all the stress of what you are going through plays itself over and over in your mind, you get stomach upsets because you can’t chill out, and every minute you spend away from your business feels wasted, as if you are messing about relaxing instead of making your job work.

Those around you can’t understand your situation, they think that working for yourself should be easy, you’ve got what you always wanted, right?

You should be able to choose what you do, when. You should be sitting back and relaxing, watching the money pour in, because you are now your own boss and everything has changed.

Right? Riiiight!

You and I both know that this isn’t the case. You wonder what the answer is.

How do you reach the dream?

The one involving sun-loungers, lay-ins, leisurely checking of emails?

Is there a solution?

Is it better to go back to paid work for a company, or stick with your blogging business?

I believe there is a solution but it takes several months of hard work, determination AND following a plan of action that is proven to work:

1. Get your head right. Tell yourself this is going to take a few months of hard work as there is no ‘silver bullet’ to making money on-line but your hard work will be rewarded.

And you can only do a certain number of activities at one time – you can’t do it all!

2. Research. Spent time researching to choose a niche that sells on-line and perform some keyword research to ensure people are searching to overcome problems in the niche.

3. Set up your WordPress blog. Get the domain, install wordpress, optimize it for SEO, add all the ‘must- have’ plugins required and improve the security of your blog.

4. Blog design. Get a theme and design your blog with your customer in mind.

5. Learn how to write brilliant blog posts (for SEO and your customers) and publish them for maximum Google Luv!

6. Create a free product and start building your own customer list.

7. Drive traffic via commenting, back-linking, blog carnivals, guest posting, social bookmarking, article marketing

8. Start to build relationships with your customers.

9. Get into affiliate marketing.

10. Start creating and selling your own products.

11. Outsource.

You want to create daily, weekly and month plans of the tasks you want to complete. You will feel less overwhelmed and in control if you can see what you want to accomplish today, this week.

You aim is to make progress in your on-line business every day. Whether that’s by writing an incredible blog post or driving more traffic or developing your product.

What’s your plan for today, this week, this month?

Why You Should Blog Drunk

Aug 4, 2010 // by Jennifer Van Iderstyne // blogging, Contests, SEO Blog // 17 Comments

This blog post was originally part of a different contest, but since apparently someone got drunk and deleted it, we’re giving it a second chance in The “Bad Ass” SEO Guest Blogging Contest. Enjoy!

So most people would tell you that blogging under the influence is like drunk texting everyone you know at 3am to tell them you’re at the IHOP to get your short stack on. Not many people are gonna advocate topping off an evening of Irish car-bombs with an unbridled WordPress rant. Sure it SEEMS appropriate to explore your mommy issues or publish the tale of an ex who still won’t return your calls or your Weezer CD. But the light of day is looming. And like any kind of drunken communication, you’re likely to wake up nauseous; half from your hangover and half from the realization that your cyber humiliation is irrevocable.

But, this post is called why you SHOULD blog drunk. Am I really about to encourage you all to engage in BWI? Well based on certain criteria, I say it’s not a bad idea. My inspiration comes from one of my favorite drinking jokes; the one that explains the various phases of drunkenness. Oh, you’ve probably hear it. It’s this one. According to this, there are 5 Stages of drunkenness. All together, they make for a pretty good night out and if used properly, they can also help make you a great blogger.

Stage 1: Smart.

The formula says that when you’re drunk you know everything. A person in the “smart” phase of drunk is confident in their mastery of every subject known to man. Well a good blogger doesn’t need to be omniscient, but a little mastery of your niche is helpful. This does not mean to blog like you know what you’re talking about if you’re actually an idiot. If what you are contributing to your subject area is as valuable as an arm pit noise, here’s a hint; people are going to catch on. Well, the people who aren’t dumber than you anyway.

That doesn’t mean that you are relegated to blogging on subjects you are already an expert on. There is something human, honest and even inspirational about following a blogger as they study, and learn something new.

What it does mean, is that the age-old writers credo “Write what you know” is true for bloggers too. Before you start writing about anything be smart on the subject first, and be smart in choosing your topic. Or if the first 2 ships have already sailed, well, then it’s never too late to get smart on your topic.

Stage 2: Good Looking

This isn’t about physical beauty, this is about a mentality. Someone in the Good Looking stage of drunk BELIEVES themselves to be the most attractive person in the room. Reality is not a factor in this belief. Feeling attractive makes you believe that people are interested in you, and want to hear what you have to say. That assumption can even help you get the digits of a girl you thought was way out of your league two vodka tonics ago. In blog world, it can help you get a following you never believed you could have. Most people will tell you that hotness is 90% confidence. If you’re Smart on your blog topic then be confident that people are into you.

Stage 3: Rich

If you’re ACTUALLY rich you’re probably too busy picking out new rims for your Maserati to care about where you stand in Technorati. Being drunk Rich means betting Günter, the 300 pound biker, a Grand that you can take him in arm wrestling. Or buying that entire Bachelorette party a round of cosmos because you like their falic little straws.

Blogging like you’re Rich means blogging like you don’t care if it ever makes you rich. People who start a blog because they think it’s a quick route to early retirement are due for a reality check. Or a bitch slap. Or both. According to these numbers, 72% of people report NO income from their blogs, but 61% of people report blogging to supplement their income. Um, I’m no good at math but that seems off. If only 28% of people are reporting an income from their blogs… then a lot of people are either liars…or screwed.

Even if you are making money with your blog in order to have a really good one, it’s most effective to write like you AREN’T. Huh? Listen, writing once a week about the virtues of Pay Day Loans or the dangers of Mesothelioma is a dead give away that your wallet is more engaged in the blog than your heart. Whether you are running ads, affiliate programs, writing reviews or however you are monetizing your blog, the key is to keep the content authentic. Writing like you don’t care about the money is the best way to ensure that everything you put out is high quality work that you can be proud of. Coincidentally, that’s the same kind of content that can help you make better money.

Stage 4: Invincible

This level of drunk is where you can easily break a toe kicking an insubordinate dartboard, or Günter, without noticing. Nothing hurts, and you can’t BE hurt. To apply this concept to blogging it means… well it means pretty much exactly the same thing. Courage is a part of blogging I’ve struggled with myself; fear is something that affects most bloggers at some time or another. Fear of backlash, fear of retribution, fear of mockery or hell just a fear of being called wrong. But in order to be truly successful as a blogger you have to get past the fear. No one achieves greatness by playing it safe. If you blog long enough and build a big enough following as a blogger, then the fact is that, yes you will say something stupid, yes, you will piss someone off and yes, people will make fun of you and hate you. Once you accept that inevitability, once you can convince yourself that sticks and stones may break your bones, but trolls can never hurt you, you’ll be fine. When you are true to yourself, and write what you truly think and feel without that fear, you are blogging like you’re invincible.

Stage 5: Invisible

When you’re an invisible drunk, you have the freedom to do whatever you want because, what the hell, it’s not like anybody can see you! Or you’ve just has so many Long Island Iced Teas that the concept of “shame” eludes you at this point. Invisibility in blogging, at least to me, is two fold.

First an invisible blogger is transparent. Reputable bloggers have been talking about the importance of transparency in blogging for years. It’s not new. The idea is simply to be honest about who you are, your motivation for blogging and the intent of your blog. If you run ads and try to hide them you look super shady and people won’t feel like they can trust you. And in case you’ve been busy re-directing Ring Tone sites to Porn sites, let me fill you in; trust is a huge factor online. In cyber-world it’s way too easy to scam and be scammed. People worry about liars, hijackers and spam pretty much with every click. So everyone has grown increasingly wary and cautious online. For bloggers that translates to, be honest and you’re good; lie and get caught… yeah you’re pretty much done.

The second part of invisible blogging involves getting out of your own way. It’s really easy to develop an ego when you acquire a following. People start thinking “Wow, all these people are reading what I have to say, I must be awesome…and rich and smart AND good looking! You know what, you may be… and even if the blog is about your personal stories and experiences, the blog really shouldn’t be about YOU. It should be about the message. And, of course the people who take the time to read and comment on it. That’s why it’s important to make yourself, and your ego, invisible on your blog. Take pride in your work but check that pride at the publish button. Learn to accept constructive criticism and for god’s sake, interact with the people who care enough about your point of view to weigh in on it. You are not the pied piper of subscribers so learn to become invisible on your blog so that the content can take center stage.

Buzzed Yet?

Ok so if you were hoping for a blog that endorsed doing keg stands before sitting down at your computer, I’m sorry to disappoint. But if you can manage apply the 5 stages of drunkenness to your blog, you might find yourself a little tipsy on the joy of blogging. And who knows, you might even be able to get away with a little pre-blog pre-gaming, I mean after all your Smart enough to know when you had too many…right?

3 Tips for Effective ‘Link Luv’

Aug 3, 2010 // by John Landells // link building, SEO Blog // 47 Comments

This is a guest post from John Landells. It is part of The “Bad Ass” SEO Guest Blogging Contest.

As Internet Marketers, one of the things that we’re constantly looking for is how we can get targeted traffic for the lowest cost. By now, I’m sure you realise that the single most effective way of doing this is by investing the time and effort in generating good organic search engine rankings. In other words, you can get on page one of Google by paying a fortune through AdWords, or you can instead choose to invest the time and do it properly!

In this article, I’d like to share with you 3 tips that I’ve found to be extremely effective in getting ‘link luv’ (backlinks) to my site with only a small time investment.

Articles

You’re probably familiar with this already. Articles are still an extremely effective method for getting link luv to your site and building your authority within the search engines. However, there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it. The wrong way is to over-use your keywords throughout your whole article, making it difficult to read, then uploading that one piece to as many article sites as you can find.

In my opinion, a far better technique is to aim to use your primary keyword phrase just 5 times – once in the title, once in the opening sentence, once in the middle, once in the opening sentence of the last paragraph, and a final time in the resource box. Additionally, I try to make the keywords in the resource box into a clickable link, if possible as well as providing a straight URL for my site as this really helps in SEO terms.

Once the article’s ready for submission, I like to use a quality service such as SubmitYourArticle as my distribution method, as it offers powerful technology that guides you through producing many variations of your original article, without the readability challenges that is normally inherent in traditional ‘spinning’ technology. As a bonus, it’s also the only service that I’ve found that includes EzineArticles in its submission list!

Social Media

Social Media sites are becoming more and more powerful in terms of generating good quality backlinks to your sites. I’m not just talking about Twitter and Facebook – I’m referring more to sites like Squidoo, HubPages, Scribd and SlideShare. I link to build pages using all of these services which link back to my primary sites, then I use the micro-blogging platforms (Twitter, Facebook, etc) as well as the free blogging platforms (such as Blogger.com) to build links to social pages. This creates significantly more depth which again, adds to the authority of your primary site.

On top of this, I use bookmarking services such as Digg, Delicious and StumbleUpon to drive more traffic (and potentially backlinks) to both my main site and my social media pages. However, when using this strategy it’s vitally important that you only add one or two of your own URL’s at a time and then add five to seven links to other good sites that you find in-between. If you don’t do this, then people who look at your accounts will see that you’re only using them for self-promotion and may tend to discount the credibility of any links you post.

Video Marketing

Video is now becoming my preferred method of marketing online. Not only is it more engaging to the people who watch them, videos are also loved by the search engines. In fact, it’s common today to see clips of videos included in Googles search results on page one!

Many people are sadly put off from producing videos as they believe it’s a complicated process requiring expensive equipment. This could not be further from the truth! If you’re just starting out, you can use services such as Animoto to produce a great 30-second promotional video which looks awesome and has a great backing track for free. Pay them just a few dollars and you can produce something much longer and really drive home your call to action.

Once you have your video, you need to distribute it. I use a paid for service called Traffic Geyser, which can generate hundreds of backlinks for me for each video that I submit. It’s not cheap, but I believe it to be a solid investment in my business. However, if you’re on a budget, TubeMogul offers a video distribution service for free which is well worth checking out.

Whichever service you use, it’s important to use the service well. The most important aspect from a search engine marketing perspective is to include your full site URL (including the http://) as the first thing in the video description. On most video sharing sites, this will be automatically translated into a clickable link giving you valuable link luv back to your site. Also make sure you include your keywords in both the video title and the video tags.

Of all the things that I do to develop my Internet Marketing business, these 3 strategies are the ones that I find most effective in building link luv. Give them a try, see how they work for you and please share your experiences in the comments.

For more Internet Marketing tips, please check out my blog, Internet Marketing with John.

The Bad Ass SEO Guest Blogging Contest

Aug 2, 2010 // by Gerald Weber // blogging, pay per click, SEO Blog, Social Media // 36 Comments

Yes, you read correctly, it’s time for The Bad Ass SEO Guest Blogging Contest. For the next month, I’ll be accepting guest posts right here on my blog. As you can see below, the top guest bloggers are eligible to receive cash prizes (current pot is $2100.) cash and there are a couple non-cash prizes.

To clarify, you don’t have to actually be a bad ass SEO (although it wouldn’t hurt) to enter the contest. The general theme is SEO and the contest itself is bad ass since we have several generous sponsors that put up cash and a few other prizes.

What is the Bad Ass SEO Guest Blogging Contest? Blogging is always fun, but it’s even more fun when there is cold hard cash involved. Starting today (August 2nd) until September 2nd, you can submit guest posts to my blog. I’m pretty flexible as far as acceptable topics as long as they fit within the general theme of this blog. So, anything from SEO to blogging to social media will do.

How long does the contest last? The contest starts today August 2nd and ends September 2nd You must submit your post between these dates in order to be eligible to win. The winners will be announced 15 days after the contest ends. This will allow us ample time to publish any remaining posts and to judge all contest entries.

What can you win? Take a look at all the sponsors, cash and other prizes!

$200. Prize Sponsors

Daniel McGonagle Link Building

BestTravelWebsites.com Best Travel Sites

ArrangeYourVacation.com Vacation Rentals

$150 Prize Sponsors

Candy Store

$100 Prize Sponsors

Alisa Bowman Marriage Advice

Internet Marketing Services

SEO Software

SEO Ottawa

Virtual Assistants

Hesham Zebida Thesis Skins

Gerald Weber Houston SEO

Toni J Young Network Marketing Training

Quillcards Distinctive Ecards by Quillcards

Ghostwriter Dad Ghostwriting services

$50 Prize Sponsors

Whitney Segura Whitney Segura’s Internet Marketing Blog

James Brown James Brown

Raxa Design Houston web design

Eric Brantner Freelance Copywriter

The Servant Media Houston Business Development

Ana Hoffman, Traffic Generation Cafe Increasing Targeted Website Traffic

The Lane Real Estate Team Kennewick Homes

Other prizes: Non-Cash Sponsors

Hostgator.com 1 year Business Hosting plan. Includes toll free phone number and SSL $179.40 value Business Web Hosting

David Harry A full years membership at SEO Dojo, a value of $250.SEO Training Dojo

Link-Assistant.Com SEO PowerSuite Enterprise (max. functionality license) $599 worth with a life-time Live! Plan subscription. SEO tools

Special thanks to the contest media partner: My Blog Guest. MyBlogGuest.com is the free guest post exchange community where users meet to exchange guest posts and network.

What are the rules?

Register for a user account with SEM Group so you can submit your post for review. Please fill out all of your profile information and if you don’t have a Gravatar please get one. You may have up to 3 links in your bio.

If you have already published a guest post here in the past there is no need to register. If this is the case and you aren’t sure about your login just send me an email and I’ll let you know your login credentials.

You must submit your post by September 2nd 2010
Your article must be original content, and it must be written by you.

On the day your post is published, you must write a post on your blog about the contest that contains a link to the official contest post and links to all of the sponsors. A You can get the code to link to all of the sponsors here