How Do You See Blog Comments: ‘Bullshit’ or ‘Democratic’?

I’ve written several articles on the benefits of blog commenting. And I couldn’t resist writing one more. Recently, a lot of debate has been going on as to whether it’s worthwhile to allow commenting on one’s blog.

There are some who think of comments as mere ‘bullshit’. There are others who support commenting as a ‘form of democracy’. Let’s have a look at what MG Siegler (a columnist for TechCrunch) has to say.

“Here’s the thing: while some try to paint comments as a form of democracy, that’s bullshit. 99.9% of comments are bile. I’ve heard the counter arguments about how you need to curate and manage your comments — okay, I’m doing that by not allowing any.”

From the readers’ point of view, commenting provides them with a great feeling of participation. It also creates a sense of belonging, around which the entire concept of blogosphere revolves. On the other hand, listening to people’s views via comments motivates the blogger to work even harder so as to deliver what the former are actually looking for. That’s exactly the reason blog comments are seen as a ‘form of democracy’.

Still, many people would call blog commenting to be nothing more than a waste of time. Let them have their own opinions. Supporters, however, don’t see comments as something worthless or vile. Though, at times, commenting tends to get noisy, you will certainly miss out on a rich experience by turning off comments or not allowing people to share those ‘little tendrils of thought’.

I think permitting readers to comment on your blog is as much democratic as it is for you to freely share your own views by publishing posts.

If Commenting is a ‘Form of Democracy’, It can be Misused
It’s obvious. ‘Power to People’ can be misused. But that’s what rules and policies are made for. Instead of shutting out people from commenting, a serious blogger should find ways to optimize the discourse so that it adds value to the conversation (which is the soul of a blog) that strikes up after a post is published.

It’s simply unacceptable or immoral to deny democratic freedom to others while you’re enjoying it yourself. If you’ve got the freedom to express your opinions publicly by publishing blog posts, you have no right to prevent others from sharing what they think about a particular topic. Not giving people the right to comment is like ‘ruling as a dictator’.

Not Allowing People to Comment is Highly ‘Unsocial’
How can you afford to be unsocial when the entire world is fast turning into a global village? Video chats are creating global classrooms. A new era of interactive advertising is about to begin. Searches are getting social. Regardless of their size, businesses are focusing more on the ‘listening’ part of the customer acquisition process. A blog is one of the best social media tools that you can use. You can never imagine to use a social media tool without being social yourself, can you?

Do you support or detest blog comments? Let us know by casting your vote in the tweet poll below and commenting.

6 Sure Ways to Commit Blog Suicide – Part 2

Last week, I got all teary and vulnerable as I spilled the beans on how I miserably failed with my first blog.

Admitting defeat is the first step in the “12-Steps to Getting Over a Blogging Failure” program. Step 12 is to learn from your mistakes and start all over.

Last week we talked about failing to pick the right niche, do your keyword research, and pick the right domain.

Now let’s move on to the final three reasons I committed my first blog suicide.

4. I Failed to Make My Blog Look Professional

Yes, blog design does matter, especially when your readers have a sea of other blogs to choose from.

Most of your first-time visitors will spend but a few seconds on your blog, deciding whether they should read on or move on.

The last thing you want your blog design to do is to scream out “I am an amateur!” in the face of your audience.

When I say “professional design“, I don’t mean to make it sound like you need to spend an arm and a leg hiring a professional designer, which could run you about $1,500 to $2,000.

No, you don’t need to spend MUCH money on your blog design, but you do need to spend SOME.

Here’s what I recommend you do to take your blog design from lame to polished:

1. Stop using free themes. You don’t want to look like any other blog out there, plus you don’t want to ruin any chances of getting search engine traffic because of poor coding.
2. Get a premium theme. They usually cost under $100, are SEO-ready (some better than others), and are fully customizable, even if you want to do it yourself. I personally use Thesis theme on my blog for those specific reasons.
3. Customize the theme. You’ll have 3 choices here: A. do it yourself – once you have a good theme to work with, it’s not that difficult to make it look custom; B. buy a semi-custom skin – theme skin customizes your out-of-the-box theme and allows you to add personal touches to it; C. Hire someone to do it for you – with premium themes like Thesis, there’s no shortage of freelancers that will be over-joyed to help you.

5. I Failed to Find my Voice

Now that you have a professional and inviting blog design and get your readers to actually scroll down to see more of what you have to offer, you REALLY have to show them what you are made of.

What’s your hook?

How are you different from thousands of other blogs out there?

With my first blog, I tried to write what I THOUGHT my readers wanted to read. I sounded sweet and fluffy and made myself nauseous and ready to throw a white flag pretty quickly.

I made a much better choice when I started Traffic Generation Cafe: I decided to use the voice I ALREADY had.

Be myself – what a novel idea!

Turned out that was exactly what made my blog successful: no fluff, no rose-colored glasses, just plain-looking bulleted posts that contained nothing but actionable advice.

If your blog is voiceless, then you need to find an angle that sets you apart from the rest of the herd NOW.

Here are some possible ideas:

1.   If you have a great personality already, look no further; just be yourself.

2.   Take complex subjects like search engine ranking optimization (wow, what a mouthful!) or SEO link building and make them sound simple.

3.   Create a multi-author blog and share different views on a controversial subject.

4.   Have a reader-driven blog, where readers ask questions and you answer them in blog posts. In the beginning, you might have to browse other blogs to find questions you could answer or come up with your own.

5.   Create a video-log, communicating with your visitors via videos exclusively. Many readers learn much better from video, but for those who don’t, plus for SEO purposes, I’d publish video transcripts to go with each video.

6. Failing to Choose the Right Blogging Platform

This wasn’t one of my mistakes, but I think it’s important to mention it here since I see so many bloggers take the wrong turn on this one.

It doesn’t take a brainiac to do a quick research on Google and learn that a self-hosted WordPress.org blog is the way to go.

Sure free blogging platforms like Blogger.com, WordPress.com are much easier to set up and don’t cost you a penny.

HOWEVER, consider this:

1. MONEY: free platforms are definitely not huge fans of you trying to make an income off their sites, which means no AdSense, no paid ads, no affiliate links.

If they catch you do anything against their TOS, they’ll shut your blog down in a jiffy without any warning.

2. FUNCTIONALITY: most of the cool internet marketing tools like plugins, themes, and support are for self-hosted blogs only. Without having access to such tools to enhance your blog, you are giving your competitors everything they need to take over your niche.

Marketing Takeaway

My grandmother was right when she said “Learn from other people’s mistakes.”

Did you do it? Of course, not.

But you don’t have to make the same mistakes I made. It’s up to you.

Love it or hate it? Comment to show me that you’re alive!

6 Sure Ways to Commit Blog Suicide

NOT!!!

Since this is my first guest post for Gerald’s blog (thanks for having me here, Gerald, by the way – I am honored!), I somehow find it appropriate to start this post with bragging about myself.

I run a very successful blog that primarily focuses on increasing your website traffic by all (mostly free) means possible: TrafficGenerationCafe.com.

My blog is just over a year old, yet it has achieved a lot of recognition in the internet marketing niche. If you haven’t heard about it, you must be new; let’s quickly fix it by you visiting Traffic Generation Cafe as soon as you finish reading this post.

Now that I opened this post with a good amount of blowing my own trumpet, let me tell you something that not too many people know: TGC wasn’t the first blog I started.

As a matter of fact, my first blog miserably failed. Just goes to show that the path to success is paved with failures, right?

Well, the good thing that came out of all of this is the fact that I learned from my mistakes, avoided them when I created my present blog, which turned out to be a success, and now feel qualified to tell you what I did wrong in the first place, so that you can hopefully learn from my mistakes.

1. I Failed to Pick a Niche

I see it over and over again in the blogosphere – people who blog about everything under the sun.

Result?

Even they don’t know what their blog is about. Where does that leave their readers? Or better yet, Google?

Yes, Google needs to be told what your blog is about in order for it to start ranking you for your chosen keywords. Left alone, it’ll just guess what your niche is and start ranking you for some strange keywords that will never result in targeted SEO traffic.

And your readers? They need a reason to come back to your blog and the best way to do it is to provide them with information that is beneficial to their businesses. However, it’s a bit hard to do when you don’t have a niche.

Here’s another good one: “I am in the internet marketing niche.”

In my book, that falls under “everything under the sun.”

Take, for instance, Gerald’s blog.

Why do I love to come here? Because I can count on finding consistently great information on SEO link building here.

Why do my readers return to my blog again and again? Because they know that they can find everything they need to increase their blog traffic at Traffic Generation Cafe.

My first blog had no niche.

NO NICHE = POOR CONTENT = NO READERSHIP

That was the first reason why my original blog was on its way to blogging suicide the minute I started it.

2. I Failed to Do Keyword Research

This one goes hand in hand with failing to pick a niche.

Just because we THINK something might make a good niche, doesn’t mean that there will be any demand for it.

Did you know that:

1. 90% of keywords will never bring you much traffic?
2. Out of the remaining 10%, 90% will never make you any money?
3. Out of the remaining 10%, 90% are way too competitive to consider for your niche?

I hear this a lot from bloggers giving advice on picking a niche: go with your passion. “You have to love what you do.”

LOVE?

This is not EHarmony; LIKING what you do and making a good income from it is good enough for me.

Picking the right niche starts with a thorough keyword research, period.

And picking the right keywords starts with exploring what your potential target market might be interested in, NOT where your passion lies.

As you can imagine, this topic goes way beyond the scope of the post, but I’ll tell you this: both Gerald and I can’t take a step without Market Samurai as our primary keyword research tool.

Picking up a copy of Market Samurai was the first thing I did when I realized that my first blog was on its last leg.

That’s what helped me to pick “traffic generation” as my niche and turned out to be one of the most profitable decisions I’ve made.

3. I Failed to Pick a Great Domain Name

I know this one will rise some eyebrows, so let me start with an example.

Let’s say you are searching for information on how to increase blog traffic.

You do a Google search and the top two results for it are as follows:

1. “AnaHoffman.com”
2. “TrafficGenerationCafe.com”

Which one would you believe provides the information you are looking for? Which one would you choose over the other?

See my point?

Sure it’s nice to have YourName.com as your domain name: it’s flattering, boosts our egos, and… well, that’s about it.

Does it make you money though?

Unless you are a household name, I strongly suggest that you let your domain name reflect the essence of your niche, your main theme.

Don’t get me wrong; I am not saying you shouldn’t own YourName.com. Quite the contrary, I definitely think you should purchase it.

Just don’t use it as your primary domain, that’s all.

More tips on how to pick a great domain name:

• Make it as short as possible.
• Don’t use words that are easy to misspell.
• Buy a .com domain.
• Use your main keywords in it if you can.
• Make it easy to remember – great for direct traffic.
• Stay away from hyphens and numbers.

Fun and catchy is always a plus; although this guy might’ve overdone it by a cinch – www.the-name-i-wanted-was-already-taken-so-i-used-a-lot-of-dashes.com. Did I mention not to use hyphens?

What to do if you already have a domain name, but don’t think it’s working for your blog?

Change it.

Yes, it’s a pain in the neck.

But if you look at the long-term benefits, they usually far outweigh any short-term hassle this move might cause.

I did it when I killed my first blog.

Instead of creating a brand new blog from scratch, I created Traffic Generation Cafe using my first blog as a foundation. Since it already had some traffic and content, it only made sense.

My friend Jane Sheeba recently did it as well and wrote this great tutorial on how to do it step by step.

Marketing Takeaway

No, I am not short-changing you – just trying to give your attention span a break.

We’ll talk about the other three reasons I committed blogging suicide next week, so stay tuned.

Meanwhile, let me leave you with this: if any of this struck a chord with you, don’t just ignore it.

Don’t just say “It’s too late to change it now.”

It’s never too late. Especially if your business is struggling. One of these changes just might be the push it needs.

Love it or hate it? Comment to show me that you’re alive!

PS I am excited to announce that I am starting a new giveaway for CommentLuv Premium plus a free 30-minute consultation with me. Entering is easy. Just check out my CommentLuv Premium Giveaway post for more details.

The Seven Secret Steps to Irresistible Blog Posts

Go on. Follow these irresistible steps to success...

It’s easy to get hung up on the words you write. As a top blogger, you’d be foolish to not at least consider them. After all, words, sentences and paragraphs are your bread and butter.

But once you’ve worked out what to say and the tone in which to say it, do you take the time to consider the format?

Because if the layout of your copy isn’t readable, nobody’s going to stick around to see what you’ve written. And that renders all your well-chosen words redundant.

So read on and learn the secrets that are going to ensure your target audience is going to read all the way to the end.

The Seven Secret Steps to Irresistible Blog Posts

Master the Art of the Paragraph

We all remember when we’re obliged to start a new paragraph. When you change topic, change time or change place. That’s what your teacher told you at school, so you just keep ploughing on with the same rambling paragraph until you’ve exhausted the topic, run out of time, or moved to sunny Tijuana.

You credulous buffoon. Why on earth did you think your teacher was right?

Here’s the one time you need to change paragraph. Doesn’t matter if time, topic and place are still the same, there’s one point when you need to hit that return key.

When dramatic effect demands it.

A quick, single sentence paragraph is visual shorthand for “this bit is important”. So make use of them when you’re sharing something groundbreaking. And watch as your reader starts to scroll down looking for the next one.

Or for something just as arresting…

Hit ‘em With a Hail of Bullet (Points)

What have great bloggers and successful gangsters got in common? Other than a penchant for whisky cocktails and jaunty hats?

That’s right – they both know how to fire bullet points with deadly accuracy.

Why are bullet points so effective?

• Visually arresting – a bullet point hits you like, well, a bullet between the eyes. You can’t ignore it. You stop and read.
• Clear and concise – it’s impossible to ramble on a bullet point. You’re throwing out pure, distilled information
• Breaks up blocks – people won’t read a wall of text. Liberally scatter your bullets, and your layout remains fresh and interesting.

Stop Skimmers by Sprinkling in Subheadings

Skim readers love subheadings. It’s pretty much all they’ll stop for.

And you want a skim reader to stop, because if they don’t, they’re scrolling all the way to the bottom, off the page and out of your life.

So unleash a few content speedbumps to slow them down. Enticing and enlightening subheadings help your readers to find the content they find most useful or interesting – so they’ll make a bee-line straight for it.

And then they’ll read it.

And if they’ve slowed down long enough to read a whole subsection, they’ve slowed down long enough to write a comment, hammer out a tweet, or buy your eBook.

Not bad for a bit of bolded text.

The Internet Can’t Say No to a Funny Picture

He might be able to write Shakespeare, but he can't format it

By now, the reader’s concentration is beginning to flag. All the typographical tricks are keeping them on the page, but you need to cut them some slack.

So throw in an illustration or two.

Preferably one that backs up your points – and don’t forget to add an amusing caption, just to re-enforce your message. Because long after they’ve forgotten the exact wording of your advice, they’ll remember that the funny monkey told them just how to keep people reading.

Beef Up Arguments With Block Quotes

By now, you’re coming around to my way of thinking. You’re plotting sublime subheaders, and coming up with cunning captions.

But something’s nagging at the back of your mind. Wouldn’t this post be truly, completely irresistible if you could just see a second opinion?

Block quotes are a great way of providing a second opinion. As they’re generally from another authority on your subject of choice, they carry weight.

And because they’re visually interesting, they fulfill the same role as bullets points and subheaders – they force the reader to slow down and pay attention!

Mr603 – Outspoken Member of the Twitterati

Yeah. That’ll just about cover it.

Think About Your Font

What font is your blog written in?

I can say with some certainty that you’re probably not going to have a clue. Which is frankly ridiculous if you want to create a truly irresistible post.

The art of font creation is a huge subject that I don’t have space to get into here. But prove the power of the font to yourself. Copy this post into a word processor.

Now set the font to Comic Sans or Vivaldi.

I think that proves my point. Don’t you?

 Avoiding Irritations

Follow the six secret steps, and you’ll have framed your content in an absolutely irresistible way. But don’t rest on your laurels yet, dear blogger.

Because you’ve still got a final chance to throw it all away. By irritating your readers and driving them from your site, never to return.

Irritating blog quirks could fill a whole post to themselves, but there are two content killers that you’ll need to avoid at all costs:

1. Pop Ups: I know you want your reader to sign up to your mailing list. But please don’t hurl a pop-up at them after they’ve just started to read. It’ll break their concentration and raise their hackles. Just don’t take the risk.
2. Pagination: We’ve all got mouse wheels. So don’t split your post into seven chapters across seven pages. Because a blog reader will scroll for miles and miles to read your content. Just don’t expect them to click.

So there you have it. The seven secret steps to making your blog’s content truly irresistible. You don’t need to use all seven techniques in everything you post, but keep all of these techniques in your locker, and you’ll find your audience to be far more responsive.

And who can blame them? You’re totally irresistible.

Is your Blog a Kick Ass Guide?

This is a guest post from Jeevan Jacob John. It is part of The 2nd annual “Bad Ass” SEO Guest Blogging Contest.

What is your Ultimate goal, as blogger who blogs about blogging (or something that is associated with blogging)? Or, what should be your goal?

If you ask me, I would tell you that the goal should be to guide your visitors in the right path. Most visitors of a marketing blog are looking for marketing tips that they can apply to their blog. They are looking to you, as a guide. They are expecting you to help them to “walk” in the right path.

Hi, My name is Jeevan Jacob John and in this blog post, we will talk about long term goal(s) – for your blog – and  some analogies to get you started

Let me ask you….

When you visit a new place (for sight seeing), you would need someone to guide you, right?

Same is true for blogosphere. When a person is new to the field, he is like a tourist. He needs someone to guide him to the right path (to success). He may later decide to settle on (start blogging), following your (as a guide) advise. So, your mission is to guide your visitor through the right path. Give them honest reviews. Be honest about what you say in your blog. Tell them the shortcuts (in the case of blogging, specific techniques to manage a blog).

A successful blogger is the one who guides his visitors through the right path.

Let me give another example:-

Bloggers are like teachers. The best teachers are the ones who are able to teach, effectively. Teachers use different techniques to get their students’ attention (or to encourage students to listen and take action). Like teachers, bloggers should also use different techniques to get the visitor’s attention and “make them” read your post

 So, Is your Blog a Kick Ass Guide?

Are you a successful guide?

Is your blogging success in guiding your visitors? The best option to answer this question to is ask your readers itself. Have a poll. Now, if you don’t want to do that, there is another option for you. You could just look at your traffic analytics and compare the bounce rates of your visitors (new vs returning) (Note: Thanks to Ana Hoffman of Trafficgenerationcafe.com for this idea). There are many elements (from design to content) that determine your blog’s success as a guide. Let’s take a brief look at all those elements:-

Post Content

• Do you have an indicator (At the beginning of the post) that specifically tells your reader what the post is about? Yes, traditionally titles have been the indicators of the topic. But, it is always better to go a step ahead and describe what your post is going to be about.

You could add your own style to the indicator. For me, I use “In this blog post, we are doing to discuss about…” format. Adding a call to action is also a good thing to do (helps your reader to make the best choice, to read or to not read).

• Do you specifically highlight the main parts of your post? I don’t do this a whole lot of time, but I think, it would be really great if you highlight the steps that your readers needs to take (like post takeaway etc.)

I like to read the post take-away/bulleye/conclusion because it usually tells me what the post is about (in a deeper sense) and what I need to do (it especially helps when I don’t really have time to read the entire post).

• The standard rule of dividing your post into different paragraphs.
• Using different techniques like call to action to get your reader’s attention.

The call to actions, that are in the beginning of the post, serve only one purpose: to get your readers started. You need to use various techniques, in the middle of the posts to keep your readers on the page and to follow along.

• Use examples and analogies to explain your post (like I did at the beginning of this post).

It makes the post interesting and easy to understand.

• After you have done with the post, tell me what to do next (Share, comment etc.). You could personalize the call-to-actions to make it unique and interesting.

Layout

• Add a navigation bar to your blog (category bar). It will help your readers to browse through the topics and find what they want.
• The traditional rule of having a Search bar.
• Do you highlight your best posts? Yes, create a page in which you highlight the best posts you have written so far (it doesn’t have to be the ones with most comments/shares). Highlight the posts that you think are the best. Link to them.

A map will only be useful (to a tourist) if it highlights the important places of the city. Likewise, your blog needs to highlight the best posts you have written.

• Link to your guest posts. Add a separate page in which you can show off your reputation, as a writer, in various sites. This helps the reader to classify your blog in their reading list.
• When it comes to overall design of your blog, you need to use “eye-pleasing” colors. You also need to make your blog user-friendly (less clutter, more speed, better colors).

When it comes to list subscription, people tend to subscribe to lists that they find useful (in other words, to lists that are owned by successful blogs – guides). So, viewing your blog from a “Guide” perspective, helps you to become a better blogger.

What else does a Guide do?

• A Guide is also polite to his clients. His as a blogger, you need to be polite when commenting, contacting, messaging etc. [to] your visitors.

 Conclusion

What are things are you thinking about right now? Would you mind to share it with us? Did you like the post? If so, what did you? What can I improve on?

Let me know of all your comments and thoughts about this approach on blogging. Thank you! Don’t forget to share because this post is part of the guest blogging contest

 Image Edited. Original Image : Credited to the author.

Bad Ass SEO Guest Blogging Contest Update

This post is meant to simply update you on a couple of things regarding the contest. However if you are interested in participating in this contest please be sure to read the official Bad Ass SEO Guest Blogging contest post for complete details on rules etc.

The first change is the due date to submit your post. This has been changed to October 12, 2011. We did this because last week was pretty much spent generating sponsors and awareness and we really didn’t get any contest entries last week.

OK now for the awesome news. Since we had such great sponsorship participation we are able to offer some really nice prizes. We have structures this in such a manner that if you really kick ass, you can really WIN BIG. But even if you do really well you can still win some nice loot and other non cash SEO related prizes.

With no further ado… here’s what you can win!

• 1st place: $1000. Cash + a Lifetime “PREMIUM membership” to MyBlogGuest.com
• 2nd place: $500. Cash + a full years membership at The SEO training Dojo.
• 3rd Place: $350. cash + Link-Assistant.Com SEO PowerSuite Enterprise (max. functionality license)
• 4th Place: $250. cash + 3 month subscription to SEMRush.com
• 5th place: $175. cash + 3 month subscription to Raven Internet marketing tools
• 6th Place: $100. cash
• 7th place: $75. cash
• 8th place: $50. cash
• 9th place: $50. cash

Keep in mind these numbers could get bigger depending on how many new sponsors we get, however they won’t get any smaller!

Now check out all the kick ass sponsors that made all these prizes possible!

Contest Media Partner

$500 Sponsors

RankPop.com Affordable SEO

$300 Sponsors

Daniel McGonagle Link Building

SEO-Peace.com Professional link building SEO Company

$150 Sponsors

Hesham Zebida Thesis Skins

$100 Sponsors

Scott Bradley Simple Weight Loss Tips For Entrepreneurs

Milan Matchev Health Directory

Jacob Share JobMob Job Search Tips

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Ileane Smith Blogging Tips

Search Engine Marketing Group

John Britsios www.SEOWorkers.com

Magento Developer

Doc Sheldon’s Clinic Critical Thinking for the Discerning SEO

$50 Sponsors

Vertical Measures Internet Marketing Services

Whitney Michael Segura Greenhouses for Sale

Butch Segura Wholesale Greenhouses by EarthCare

Whitney “WeedyP” Segura Internet Marketing Blog by Whitney Segura

Ernest Segura Greenhouse Supplies @ OurCrazyDeals.com

Raxa Design Houston Internet marketing

Ana Hoffman – Traffic Generation Cafe Web Traffic

James Brown James Brown

Anwar Barake Wholesale Herbal Incense

Understand Technology with TechFume

The Tech Blog TechnoZeast

Wilderness Aware Rafting Colorado White Water Rafting

Sales Nexus online CRM

SEO Prize Sponsors

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

Lifetime membership to: My Blog Guest. MyBlogGuest.com is the free guest post exchange community where users meet to exchange guest posts and network.

Link-Assistant.Com SEO PowerSuite Enterprise (max. functionality license) SEO tools

SEMrush.com – the best tool to spy on your competitors ($210 value) www.semrush.com

3 month Pro subscription to Raven Internet Marketing Tools ($297 value) Raven Internet Marketing Tools

That’s all the contest updates for now. If there is anything significant worth knowing at any point in the contest I will be posting additional updates to keep everyone informed.

The 2nd Annual Bad Ass SEO Guest Blogging Contest Is Here!

It’s time for the 2nd Annual Bad Ass SEO Guest Blogging Contest!

This year’s Donkeys Behaving Badly event is being held In partnership with Blogengage.com. If you would like a free Blogengage account (normally $29.99 but free for contestants, simply email admin@blogengage dot com with your desired username: and e-mail and your contest entry URL and Brian will hook you up with a FREE account) so you’ll be able to reply to comments you receive (see contest rules below). Blogengage will automatically syndicate your contest entries into the Blog Engage community and their portfolio of social media websites such as Blog Serp, Top Blogged, RSS Leak, Blogger Ink, Tag Serp and Blogger Tag.

Also all contest entries will be automatically submitted to blokube.com Blokube is another up and coming social voting community for bloggers and it’s free to join, so go ahead and register on blokube.com if you want to keep up with your submission there. Keep in mind social engagement at both blokube and blogengage will count towards your social engagement score. Again social engagement is a metric we use to settle any tie breakers in this contest.

What is the Bad Ass SEO Guest Blogging Contest?

It’s that time of the year when the donkey starts misbehaving. All joking aside, the contest is (now) an annual contest for SEOs and Internet marketers to showcase their awesome guest blogging skills.

The contest will start today (9/12/11) and last until October 12th, 2011. Acceptable guest post topics include anything related to SEO, Internet marketing or social media Uses of Facebook etc. Although we may extend the publishing duration of the contest to get all the entries published, we will stop accepting entries 30 days from today. Email your contest entries to gweber at sem-group.net, please include any images you would like to use as well as any image credit (if applicable)

What’s In It for Me?

• Cold Hard Cash
• Very Cool SEO Related Prizes
• Increased Exposure for Your Content
• The Potential for More RSS Subscribers
• Networking with Other Like Minded Individuals
• Did I Mention Cash?

What Exactly Can I Win?

• 1st place: $1000. Cash + a Lifetime “PREMIUM membership” to MyBlogGuest.com
• 2nd place: $500. Cash + a full years membership at The SEO training Dojo.
• 3rd Place: $350. cash + Link-Assistant.Com SEO PowerSuite Enterprise (max. functionality license)
• 4th Place: $250. cash + 3 month subscription to SEMRush.com
• 5th place: $175. cash + 3 month subscription to Raven Internet marketing tools
• 6th Place: $100. cash
• 7th place: $75. cash
• 8th place: $50. cash
• 9th place: $50. cash

Now check out all the awesome sponsors that made all these prizes possible!

Contest Media Partner

$500 Sponsors

RankPop.com Affordable SEO

$300 Sponsors

Daniel McGonagle Link Building

SEO-Peace.com Professional link building SEO Company

$150 Sponsors

Hesham Zebida Thesis Skins

$100 Sponsors

Scott Bradley Simple Weight Loss Tips For Entrepreneurs

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SEO Prize Sponsors

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

Lifetime membership to: My Blog Guest. MyBlogGuest.com is the free guest post exchange community where users meet to exchange guest posts and network.

Link-Assistant.Com SEO PowerSuite Enterprise (max. functionality license) SEO tools

SEMrush.com – the best tool to spy on your competitors ($210 value) www.semrush.com

3 month Pro subscription to Raven Internet Marketing Tools ($297 value) Raven Internet Marketing Tools

What are the Rules?

• Register for a SEM Group user account so you can submit your post for review. Please fill out all of your profile information. 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 on this blog, there is no need to reregister. If you’re in this situation but aren’t sure about your login, just send me an email and I’ll let you know your existing login information.
• You must submit your post by October 12th, 2011.
• Your post must be original content that you personally wrote.
• You must have a paypal account (as that is how we will be paying the winners cash)
• 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. Click here for a pre-formatted text document of the contest sponsors. It’s ok if you hotlink the image from my server.

Post Guidelines

• Guest posts must be at least 500 words. While they can be as reasonably long as you’d like, please don’t write a book! Please take a moment to review our guest posting guidelines
• You can have as many links as you wish in the body of your content (Please keep this within reason). However, please limit links to your projects or websites to your bio. No affiliate links!
• Your bio must have a Gravatar. Please use a picture of yourself, as opposed to a logo.
• Keep your post relevant to the overall theme of this blog. SEO, link building, Internet marketing, PPC, social media and blogging tips are all acceptable topics.

How Can I Win?

• Write a promotional post about the contest to help spread the word in the blogosphere.
• Add Sponsors’ links to your promotional post. The sponsors are the ones making the cash prizes possible, so please show them some love!
• Your contest submission will be judged first and foremost on the quality and style of your content. Usefulness etc
• A high value is placed on the number and quality of comments you receive on your guest post. Be sure to interact with and respond to your commentators, because this will help you win in the event of a tie breaker. Keep in mind that ambiguous and/or spammy comments will not help you.
• Spread the word about your post through all of your social media channels (Twitter, Facebook, Sphinn etc). A high value will be placed on your entry’s number of Tweets and overall social media promotion.This will help you win in the event of a tiebreaker! (We had about 3 tie breakers last year so social engagement REALLY can help you win. Also keep in mind the social engagement (comments, tweets etc) for your post on Blogengage also count towards your overall social engagement score!
• Keep in mind that the sooner you submit your post, the more time you’ll have to promote it. The contest early bird will likely get the worm!
• Feel free to use the donkey image in your post.

Special Thanks

A few of my friends, who are also sponsors, went WAY above and beyond to help me promote this contest:

Ann Smarty, Ana Hoffman, David Harry, Brian Belfitt – These friends all helped out by mentioning the contest in their newsletters, putting contest banners on their sites/blogs and allowing me to write blog posts about the contest on their web properties. I REALLY appreciate you guys & gals!

If you have any questions about the contest feel free to contact me directly. I’m searchengineguy on skype and thegman on Blogengage and of course @the_gman on Twitter. You can also email me at gweber@sem-group.net

Release the donkey! Let the games begin!

Which Seinfeld Character Are You When You Blog?

After all of these years, I still challenge anyone and everyone to find a show that can trump Seinfeld in overall awesomeness. Smart, funny, easy to connect with and understand—Seinfeld is everything you wish your blog was. That said, I got to thinking about the characters on the show and what they’d be like as bloggers. Here are a few of the best and the worst. Which one best describes you?

• Jerry—Sure every Seinfeld character was funny in his own way. And honestly, I don’t think Jerry was the funniest character at all. However, funny was (and still is) his business and he has a knack for taking mundane topics and talking about them in a way that they haven’t yet been addressed. Of course, this sometimes led him to get hung up on issues that didn’t really matter, but let’s call that a minor character flaw. Overall, I’m thinking Jerry would make quite the blogger.
• George—Liar. Self-loather. Sloth. Largely unemployed. Completely unlikable. Yet he’s probably the most adored Seinfeld character amongst diehard fans. A George Costanza blogger would be one who BS’s his way through just about everything. He’s a good writer, but can we really trust anything he says? Whatever it takes to get someone to buy a product or click an ad.
• Kramer—Some bloggers just write about the strangest things they can come up with. Except they aren’t “trying too hard.” They’re just downright quirky. A Kramer blogger is a fun but not so deep read. And chances are, he’s going to get super lucky and win a blog contest.
• Newman—Completely unlikable, yet irreplaceable. Newman makes his sole mission to instigate at every turn. As a blogger, he would garner a large audience by pissing people off. People would love to hate and comment nonstop.
• The Soup Nazi—Some bloggers just have no patience for those who don’t share their opinions. This blogger either heavily moderate their comments or else he constantly get in fights in them. But his words command your attention, so you keep reading his blog. And if the Soup Nazi was a forum moderator, you’d be watching your every word because you’d get banned.
•  David Puddy—Let’s face it—Puddy was stupid. If he was a blogger, bottom line he’d suck. If you’re a Puddy blogger, you might have a few fans like Elaine who like you for, well, some reason or another. But do yourself a favor and quit.  Disclaimer: When I say Puddy is stupid, I don’t mean I don’t like his character. He was hilarious. Just dumb in a typical paint-my-body-and-go-to-a-football-game kind of way.
• The Maestro—Was there ever a Seinfeld character more pretentious than this guy? Remember how he insisted that everyone call him the Maestro, even Elaine? The Maestro made everyone around him feel like they weren’t as good as him. And who likes that guy? Certainly not blog readers.

I’d like to think I’m a Jerry blogger. But sometimes I can come off as a Maestro blogger. Which one are you? And what Seinfeld characters should I have included here that I didn’t? Tell me all about it in the comments.

Surviving the Blogging Hangover

So we talked about BWI (for those just no joining us, that’s “blogging while intoxicated”)—but what about what follows? You know, the blogging hangover.

Everyone’s experienced it. You wake up early in the morning and force yourself out of bed. You wince as you plop down in front of your computer and turn on the screen. Forced to shield your eyes from the piercing light, you groan as you face the reality—what the hell are you going to write about this morning? And furthermore, how the hell are you going to get rid of this pounding headache?

Yep, you have it. After a night of overindulging in BWI bliss and having the best post of your life, you’re facing the blogging hangover. Now what?

Blogging Hangover Cures

• Rehydrate—Anyone who has ever drank too much knows that the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning is get a big glass of water (or as I like to do, stick my head under the faucet). Well, similarly, when you’re dealing with that blogging hangover, you need to rehydrate. In this case, that means you need to pull up your favorite blogs and pour through them. The more you refill yourself with good content, the more likely you are to suddenly have a great idea for your next post.
• Eat something greasy—The only good thing about a hangover is it gives you a great excuse to eat something terrible for you. What’s better than that giant, greasy burger to calm your twisted, churning stomach? So what does this mean for blogging hangover cures? Same thing. Take a break and go get something to eat! Give your mind a minute to clear and give your brain some fuel. It’s much harder to think of a topic for your next post if your stomach is growling. Your brain just can’t focus.
• Pour yourself another—As a last resort, or just for the true alcoholic, if all else fails you can always hit the bottle again. Another drink the day after will quench that hangover in no time. Of course it will also lead to BWI again. But hey, if the BWI leads to another hilarious, engaging post…does it really matter?
• Go back to bed—If all else fails, give up and go back to bed. Look, sometimes your hangover just isn’t going away until you sleep all the way through it. And sometimes, no matter what you do and how hard you stare at your screen, you just aren’t going to come up with anything good. If you continue to sit there, the only thing that will come of it is a really crappy post. Do yourself a favor and go sleep it off. Try again tomorrow. 

I’m writing this at 5 AM. So glad I’m not dealing with a blogging hangover today. But then again, I wasn’t engaging in BWI last night. I try to keep that to the weekend as much as possible so I can get up early and get to work.

What about you guys? Anyone suffering from a blogging hangover? How do you guys handle it?

Buzzed Blogging is Drunk Blogging (How to Write a Blog Post That People Will Remember)

I have a confession to make. I have an ice cold Shiner Bohemian Black Lager sitting next to me as I type this. Sure it’s no Shiner Bock, which happens to be my favorite beer in the world, but it’s a pretty solid beer—Shiner’s #2 selling beer, to be exact. But anyway, I’m drinking this beer as I blog in remembrance of a post I read a year ago, “Why You Should Blog Drunk.” It was part of The “Bad Ass” SEO Guest Blogging Contest. In fact, it was posted on this very blog.

If you go back and read the post, it wasn’t actually advocating drunken blogging. Instead, it was a metaphor for how the no B.S. in-your-face-who-cares-what-you-think attitude you get after two too many drinks would serve you well as you blog.

But what can I say? I tend to take things quite literally. Excuse me a minute while I go grab another beer.

An Idea That Sticks with You

However, the fact that I’m actually drinking as I blog about a post based on drinking and blogging isn’t really the main theme here (albeit it is certainly an interesting little side thread).
What I’d really like to focus on here is why I still remember that post a year later. And I bet I’m not the only one that remembers it.

Now I haven’t actually spoken to Gerald about how much traffic that post got, but it did get well over 100 tweets. So I’m going to guess it was pretty successful. The question is—why? What did Jennifer Van Iderstyne, the author of the post, do to make it so memorable?

To be honest with you, I haven’t really thought it out yet. But as soon as I get another beer I’m going to dive into it and figure it all out. Excuse me for a second.

Why “Why You Should Blog Drunk” Was Such an Awesome Post

Okay, where was I? Oh yes, what was so good about that post… okay let’s start from the beginning:

• The Title Caught My Attention There are lots of good titles out there. And it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the catchier the title, the more people will want to read it. But in this case, the title isn’t just catchy. It’s different. And not only is it different, but the whole “Why You SHOULD Blog Drunk Thing” made me think Wow, how in the world are they going to argue in favor of this?! See, if the title had been “Why You Should NOT Blog Drunk,” then I wouldn’t have been as intrigued. Of course you shouldn’t blog drunk. Any rational human being would agree. Instead, she took the opposite of the obvious answer and made it work. That’s skillzzz.
• The Metaphor Wasn’t Forced or Trite Metaphors are hit or miss. And when it comes to blogging, a field that is flooded with a few really good writers, a lot of decent or average writers, and a BLEEP LOAD of really terrible writers…well let’s just say you get a lot of crappy metaphors. And these crappy metaphors can be broken into two categories. Either they are really forced and try to compare two things that are absolutely not related (I’m trying to write a post comparing the Houston Texans to copywriting on my personal blog but haven’t figured out how to avoid this pitfall yet). Or the metaphor will be so overused that I want to kill myself halfway through the post. Example? Eh, don’t want to call anyone out. You know what I mean.  But this post… comparing blogging to drinking. Wow. And not just the act of drinking, but the mindsets you run through as you progress through a drunken night. I’m serious—it’s genius.
• It gave me something I could use that I hadn’t already read or thought about How often do you feel like you’re reading the same old crap over and over and over. Seriously, go to one of those sites like SERPd.com and come back and try and tell me that half the stuff isn’t just the same BLEEP, different BLEEPhole. Hey, even I myself am guilty of this. You are too. After all, it’s difficult to come up with completely original themes every time you blog.

But those posts we all do from time to time that don’t really offer anything new—they don’t resonate with people. They don’t stick with you. They’re just filler to meet a quota. You know, getting that link you want so bad.

Don’t shout me down because I’m telling the truth.

How Would You Grade This Post?

Okay, I’d say that about covers it. Now let’s take what I’ve determined makes a sticky post and apply it to what I just wrote. Did I succeed in creating a memorable post? Or did I feed you the same ol’ BLEEP?

Comment and let me know while I go grab another Shiner.