Summary: Matticus, a popular World of Warcraft blogger shares how to start blogging and how to buid a super popular World of Warcraft blog from scratch.

This is a guest post by Matt "Matticus" Low, who runs one of the most successful blogs about massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft, World of Matticus. Matt also runs several other websites around the same subject, including forum and other blogs.

As Matt also writes for WoW.com (a top 500 blog in the world, the new WoW Insider), he's the right man to explain how to build a warcraft blog by telling his story, how he started blogging and how he built a super popular World of Warcraft blog from scratch. Don't let the gaming topic fool you even if you're not even remotely interested in games or WoW, as there's a whole lot to learn for all of us from Matt's advice.

This amazing post emerged when Matt announced his limited Want a Free Guest Post? -offer and I jumped on the opportunity. As my own blogging more and less started by blogging about World of Warcraft, I was intrigued on how he built a successful WoW blog, so I asked if he could share how he ended up building a blog around WoW and how it all has turned out for him...

How to Build a Super Popular Warcraft Blog from Scratch

The holiday season is steadfastly approaching us. In the spirit of giving, I decided to publicly offer myself as a guest poster for any blog provided they get in touch with me with a topic of their choosing. Zemalf, unlike many of the other bloggers, requested that I write about my adventures from the beginning to where I am today.

Hi, my name is Matt. I write a blog about World of Warcraft. Currently, the blog is approaching 5000 subscribers. Every month brings about 130000 visits.

But I didn’t get there overnight. When I got involved with blogging 2 years ago, no one knew who I was or gave a crap about what I did.

How did I get from there to where I am now?

The simple answer is good old fashioned hard work. I’ll go ahead and explain my (what I consider) milestone thoughts. They’re hardly unique. I just took principles that others have developed and adapted them toward my WoW blog.

Laying the foundation

I wanted to start a blog about my time in World of Warcraft. Looking around the WoW blogosphere during the summer of 2007, there wasn’t anything interesting I could find that was relevant to what I did in the game. You see, I play a type of character called a healer (specifically a Priest). Our job is to make sure our allies stay alive so that they can do their job (which is to blow up dragons). There weren’t that many blogs around that dealt with that sort of thing.

When it comes to gaming blogs, there are two essential traits that you have to have if you want to be a somebody.

1. Stand out: For one thing, you better be damn good at what you do. You don’t have to be the greatest, but you need to represent some kind of authority. Do something unique and unheard of. Be an expert at something. If you’re not an expert, then pretend. Fake it until you make it (a strategy that I adopted).
2. Write well: Basic spelling and grammar are aspects that don’t have to be mentioned. Perception is important and one way to develop a solid reputation is by taking care in how you convey information. Not only that, a writer needs to have a solid personality. Be emo. Be angry. Be cheery. Be determined. Whatever you decide to do, don’t be boring.

With blogs at the time, the people behind them were either really good at the game or really excellent writers. It was rare to find bloggers who were an authority and were coherent.

I wanted to get involved with it and I felt I could do a great job. I’ve played the game for a long time and I had the desire to share my knowledge of the game with anyone that was willing to listen. I wanted to help players get better and teach them what I knew. With any luck, maybe I’d learn a thing or two as well from any visitors I receive.

Put in the investment

Many bloggers that start out usually opt for a free blog from Blogger or WordPress.com. The idea here is that if they don’t like it or if they run out of motivation, then there’s no loss and they can just leave their sites abandoned after.

However, I knew I wanted to be in it for the long haul. I wanted to spend at least a year engaging in the craft to see if I had the skills and the drive to do it. But I knew if I didn’t have the risk of losing something, then I would stop caring. So what I did was I created a risk of loss.

In other words, I bought web hosting for about $108 for a whole year. For a first year student in University, a hundred bucks is a pretty significant loss. That’s about 25 lunches. Or 80 cups of coffee. Or 30 bargain bin DVDs. The point is, I deliberately set myself up with a situation where if I decided to give up, I would suffer a loss that mattered to me. I did not want to waste my money.

By going for a yearly subscription, I could go hard for a year and then see if I wanted to renew after that. I had 365 days to see if I could pull off this blogging thing.

I already had the skills at managing websites. I developed my high school’s website for the better part of three years while I was there. I had to come up with content for the front page that was appropriate for people my age and the parents that watched over them. Having an idea of what an audience expects is a useful skill to have and it continues to serve me to this day.

Finding the time

Did I have the discipline to do it? I was already taking a full course load and had my duties to attend to within the game. There’s only a set amount of hours per day. Writing is a habit that needs to be developed early. If you keep putting off blogging, you’re never going to find time to write the posts that you want to do. You have to make time for it.

Identify possible periods during the day where you can do something. A blog post is an idea that you’ve expanded. If you don’t have time to write a post, then do some brainstorming. During breaks in between classes, I’d start writing into my notebook. Sometimes I’d have several hours in between and other times I’d have a mere 10 minutes. Even a single word contributes to the overall post.

Separate yourself from the pack

Seth Godin refers to this as being a purple cow. A purple cow is unique. It’s different. You pass by a farm, you’ll see a bunch of cows that look a lot like each other. But when you see a purple cow, it catches your attention because cows aren’t traditionally purple! In other words, don’t do the same things everyone else is doing.

1. Write often: You don’t have to kill yourself writing 3-4 posts a day. Write often enough that people will come back. Starting out, I set a goal that I would write a post every day for a week. Once I hit that, I would write every day for a whole month. Eventually, I hit a sweet spot where I’d have about 5 posts a week. I couldn’t exceed that without compromising school and other aspects of my life. It was just the right amount. Bloggers at the time wrote whenever they felt like it. Sometimes they would go hard for a few days before disappearing for several weeks and then coming back. There was no consistency. I created an expectation for my readers that there would be something for them to come back to the next day.
2. Be visual: When I read other blogs, I felt distracted. I didn’t feel anything. I’d read for about a paragraph or two before thinking to myself that it was time to move on. Remember, I’m a student. If I wanted to read a wall of text and solve my insomnia, I’d whip out my Sociology textbook and give that a go. There was no emphasis anywhere. There was nothing to break up the monotony of words on my screen. I read enough academic journal articles as is. I was determined to set my blog apart from the rest by including simple emphasis. I’d seed posts with at least an image. Bullet points and numerical lists would be squeezed in. As a reader, I discovered that I was attracted to blog posts that utilized these simple tools and stayed longer. That realization was immediately put to use. If they’re going to navigate away from my blog, it would not be because they were reading a giant wall of text.

Those two factors alone helped set my blog apart from the rest. Again, at the time, WoW bloggers weren’t taking blogging that seriously. Many of them had no idea there were blogs dedicated to blogging. I caught on to Problogger and Copyblogger early on and read as much of their work as I could. I was amazed that not many were utilizing their tried and true techniques for writing and blogging. I figured I had nothing to lose so I took the skills they were teaching and applied it to my blog posts.

Shameless promotion

Many new bloggers feel bad when it comes to the topic of advertising and promoting their work. It’s a taboo feeling, they say. No one likes to brag or toot their own horn for fear of being perceived as cocky or arrogant.

Unfortunately, blogging doesn’t quite work that way. If you don’t vocalize your presence, don’t expect to be seen. If you’re blogging, then there’s a part of you that wants to be read. I don’t know about you, but it’s the readers that have always kept me going. I write so that I can be read. I’m not sure if I’d continue going this strong if I knew I was the only person that read the stuff I wrote. There is a definite relationship between motivation to blog and being read.

As for perception, it’s up to the bloggers to shake off that feeling. There’s nothing wrong with promoting your work as long as you do it the right way. Here’s what I did to make my presence felt:

1. Comment often: Bloggers are thrilled to get comments. Why? Because it validates the fact that someone actually cares enough about what we wrote to respond. I picked out a few of my favourite blogs that were related to the content of my blog (healing or being a Priest). Fill out that comment form and definitely don’t forget to include your blog in the URL. Trust me when I say every blogger will always click on a commenter’s website to see where they come from. It’s been proven that being first when commenting yields positive results (but make sure you actually have something to contribute because “Nice post lol” isn’t going to do wonders for your reputation).
2. Link out: Trackbacks are huge. Blog software has evolved to the point where we can tell what sites link to us. Bloggers want to know which sites are linking to them. Any comments written by me that were too long were converted into lengthy response posts that linked back to the original. The bonus? On most blogs, the trackbacks appear before the comments, which is strong for visibility.
3. Be social: Email other bloggers. Say hi and introduce yourself. Strike up a conversation about something. You’ve heard of networking right? This is it right here. The first regular contributor on my blog came about because she had the guts to email me and say hi. You never know what’s going to happen. The worst thing is that you get blown off. But you don’t have much to lose for trying.

The trick is to get your name and your blog noticed. Don’t do it in an underhanded way. Do it within the limits of the system. You don’t have to be just another anonymous reader. If you want to get noticed, you need to take some sort of initiative in order to make it happen.

Have a purpose

“Dakara nani?!”

“Sore de...?”

Garr Reynolds explains the Japanese phrases as “So what?!” or “Your point being...?”

Why should readers give a crap about what you’re writing?

Have a message. Have a meaning. Organize thoughts around an idea. Throughout my life, teachers have continually drilled into students that the thesis statement forms the backbone of a paper. Blogging’s no different. If you want to have a jumbled mess of thoughts, don’t let me stop you. Some readers might appreciate that. But blogging is something I wanted to take seriously.

Every time I wrote a post, I would always ask myself “What is the point of this?” If I could not answer that question, then I would temporarily shelve it and come back to it later. Rewrite the post or come at it from a new angle if you have to. The post itself doesn’t have to be relevant for everyone. It just has to be relevant for someone.

If even one person found my post useful, it was worth it.

This doesn’t mean abandon the idea.

Don’t be afraid of sucking

Never throw away ideas. There’s no such thing as a bad one. Even if someone else writes a post idea before you do, find a different approach. You’ll never find success if you’re afraid of failure.

When bloggers come to me for counselling or just to chat, one of the questions I get is how I come up with so many ideas. Figuratively speaking, I have a recycle bin instead of a trash bin. I don’t completely reject anything.

It’s okay to be wrong. We’re all human. We’re not perfect. Mistakes will be made. Learn from them and move on.

Develop thick skin

This is the internet. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. At times, you’re not going to like it. Deal with it and move on.

It’s harsh, yes. But you’re going to face critics that will leave you shaking angrily with the desire to track the suckers down and beat the living crap out of them. I get that urge sometimes. You have to control and rein it in. Let it out in private if you have to. Use a stress ball. Scream loudly in angst.

Accept the fact that not everyone is going to like what you have to say.

Understand that no matter what you do, there’s always going to be some jerk that’s after your guts for no logical reason.

Yeah it’s going to sting and hurt. But the best thing you can do is learn from it.

In the end, criticism is a necessity. Pay attention and listen to what others are saying. Don’t expect to start a blog perfectly. I didn’t and I’m still never going to be completely satisfied with it. It’s up to you to decide what is reasonable and what isn’t. Do what you want with the feedback. Take it into consideration or discard it.

So, Zemalf presented me with a few questions that might be of interest.

What I wished I knew about blogging that I know now

Branding is important. I sort of knew about that early on that’s why I picked a name like World of Matticus. If site or game fell through, at least I could re-tailor it to something else. In hindsight, I should’ve picked a name that was relevant for the game. I was afraid that I was going to lose interest in it. Sadly, it’s too late to re-brand the entire community now. You’ll end up losing readers in the process.

Would I recommend you to blog about games you play?

Gaming is tricky. On the one hand, players like to detail their exploits and accomplishments. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s like having an online diary that anyone can come across. But if you have the desire to carve a name out for yourself, it’s going to take a lot of effort and time. That’s true when deciding to “go pro” with anything.

Be prepared for the day when you get bored of the game and lose interest. Gaming blogs seem to have a high amount of turnover. People lose motivation or decide to stop playing. Once that happens, their blog is finished. If you’re the type of player who beats a game within two weeks, you probably shouldn’t write a dedicated blog about it.

In the end, you should only blog about games if you want to. Don’t feel obligated to do so. I never thought blogging about gaming would be this fun. It’s why I’m still doing it.

This is a guest post by Matt "Matticus" Low.  Make sure you check out Matt's blog at World of Matticus and in the spirit of  commenting often, as Matt suggested, I'd love you to share your thoughts about this post and leave a comment right now.

If you are interested in writing a guest post to Zemalf.com, go ahead and contact me. Check the guest post guidelines for more information.

1. Is Your WordPress Blog Super-Slow (Because of Plugins)?
2. 42 Most Popular Blog Posts About Blogging 2009

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
How to Build a Super Popular Warcraft Blog from Scratch

Summary: Do these 4 things before you start a blog: Choose an awesome design, start developing relationships with bloggers, plan your topics and remember your goals.

This is a guest post by Nicholas Cardot.

So you want to start a blog? That's great. You should. They're fun. They're rewarding. They can be profitable and they're a great way to express your passions to the world. So there you go. You're off to start a blog.

Not so fast. Before you jump in and start publishing article after amazing article on a brand new blog, let me give you some sagely advice to help you really get started on the right foot. If you want more than just your mom to read your articles then you want to take these tips and put them into practice before you start your blog.

1. Choose an awesome design.

People underestimate the power of their blog's design. Site's that are unattractive repel people so incredibly fast regardless if the content is the best in the world. You've got to make it easy on the eyes and enjoyable to navigate. Have a theme or a template picked out before you launch. You don't want to have to switch it around after your readers start coming. Do it before.

2. Start developing relationships with other bloggers.

It's never too early to start developing relationships with fellow bloggers. And believe me, you can't put a price on these types of relationships. You're going to need encouragement, link exchanges and a lot more. Start by commenting on other blogs. Then email some blog authors just to let them know that you appreciate their writings. Build those relationships. They will help to take you to the top.

3. Plan your article topics ahead.

Start making lists of article ideas as early as possible. The larger the list, the better. There will come a time when you won't be able to come up with a topic on the spur of the moment. If you have 15 ideas tucked away for a rainy day then that lack of inspiration won't hold you up more than the few seconds it takes to reach across the desk and retrieve your list.

4. Always remember your goals.

A lot of bloggers start out to help others or express themselves and then they get caught up trying to make money or some other thing. The results are usually that they don't make any money and they completely forget about their original goals. Why do you want to blog? Think about that and then stay with it.

These four tips have helped me to power my website, Site Sketch 101 to where it is today. I've seen amazing growth as a result. You will also.

This is a guest post from Nicholas Cardot. Nick uses his blog Site Sketch 101 to express his passion for helping people learn how to blog with awesome content, brilliant designs and commanding influence.

If you are interested in writing a guest post to Zemalf.com, go ahead and contact me. Check the guest post guidelines for more information.

1. 5 Things Yoda Can Teach You About Blogging

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
4 Things to Do Before You Start a Blog

Technorati's State of the Blogosphere 2009 study showed, bloggers use approximately 3 hours a week commenting on blogs, which is quite substantial. As you are blog commenting "anyway", it is worth it to make the most out of those 3 hours, right? Or if you like, use the strategies to spend less time on commenting and achieve the same or better results.

With this article, you'll be able to take your blog commenting to the next level and make the most out of your blog comments. I'll show you a blog commenting strategy, techniques you can use and a couple of services you can utilize to leverage your blog comments even further.

Blog Commenting Strategy

When I say blog commenting strategy, like any strategy, it's about forming a plan to reach your targets. And the forming a plan requires that you define actions that you can take.

First, define the purpose of blog commenting to you. These can be derived from the 3 reasons presented in the previous blog commenting -post.

• Personal Branding
• Links
• Traffic

In my mind "branding" is the most important one. Just like any of your blog posts, forum posts, videos or podcasts, your blog commenting will be the showcase of YOU. Always have that in mind, and think what does this comment say about me and does it reflect the image I want it to show. Don't over-think it too much thou, as you might be paralyzed and end up not leaving a comment at all.

Which ever you go about this, the best advice I can give is "be yourself". Like with blog posts, there's no need to pretend something you're not. Honesty goes a long way in blog comments too.

With that said, keep your personal branding in mind, but the primary use of "heavy-duty" blog commenting strategy is traffic. To get real results, you can follow the advice below.

In short, there are three factors that affect the results you get from blog commenting. This is especially true for getting traffic and branding yourself, the link is kinda automatic, but that link will of course be "more valuable" if you follow these principles:

• Make quality comments
• Leave early comments (be one of the first ones to comment)
• Leave comments on high-traffic, new posts

The quality of the comment is given; if you provide additional value to the post or the discussion on-going in the comments, the effectiveness of your comments goes up.

Also, as most blogs display the comments in chronological order (the first comment on top, the latest comment on the bottom), early comments are more valuable than the latter ones. Because even people who don't read the comment are very likely to see (and possibly read) the first one or two comments just after the post, you will reach wider audience with early comments.

Some blogs have their comments turned around and the most recent comment is shown at the top. With these blogs, commenting early doesn't have similar effect. I wouldn't go as far as being a late commenter on these blogs, but if you want, test that strategy out vs commenting "normally" on that blog.

Older blog posts don't get many comments, thus comments on those blogs are not read that often. Thus, it is more beneficiary to contribute to the comments of new posts. There is nothing wrong in commenting on older posts, and I encourage you to do that if you do have something to add, but if you gonna leave one comment on a blog, leave it at the most recent post.

When you combine quality comments with commenting to new posts early, you'll see better results.

If you want to fine-tune your blog commenting strategy even further, I recommend that you read Caroline Middlebrook's AMAZING Do You Have A Blog Commenting Strategy? -post, written back in 2007 (still very much valid info).

Blog Commenting Action List

• Make a list of blogs you want to concentrate your comments on
  • Choose popular blogs in your niche and related topics
  • Choose blogs with great content and possibly active comment discussions
• Add the blogs you choose to your RSS reader, put them in a ACTION folder in Google Reader for example, and
• Use the list as "hit-list" for early comments
• When a new post is posted to a blog on your hit-list, go and read it, and leave a superb comment
• Prioritize your list based on
  • Popularity of the blog
  • The traffic send from your comments on the blog (click here to get started with Google Analytics, and use that to check incoming traffic sources)
• In your reader, mark the blogs that have "Top Commenter" list/plugin in use
  • By leaving regular comments on these blogs, you might get additional benefit from being in the top commenter list
  • Reaching this kind of list is only secondary target, so don't compromise the quality of your comments just to make the list
• You can also prioritize blogs that have
  • Do-follow links
  • CommentLuv in use
  • Permit keywords in the "name" (e.g. KeywordLuv)

To make this work, make blog commenting a regular activity and utilize your list of blogs and analyze the results, tweak your strategy and continue again. Add new blogs for testing and lower the priority for blogs that don't seem to send you any traffic.

There you go, quick introduction to blog comment strategy you can utilize to drive traffic to your blog. This is perfect for new bloggers as the streams of traffic from your blog comments can give your blog a great kick-start, in addition to getting exposure in the eyes of other bloggers and blog readers.

However, blog commenting is not the most effective traffic building method as it requires constant work, so don't kill yourself with all the work it requires and look into other methods as well, like guest blogging and article marketing.

Before you head out and start testing if blog commenting could work for you as a traffic builder, I'd like to emphasize again that blog comments are for discussion, building relationships and collaboration.

Be a giver, not taker.

Adding Links To the Comment Text

In addition to the blog commenting strategy presented above, this tip is very important if you really want to get an additional boost to the traffic you get from your blog comments, but whatever you do, do not abuse direct linking in comments or you'll be labeled as spammer. And if a blog does not allow links, don't link, it's as simple as that.

But if a blog accepts links to be added in the comments, you should do it when appropriate, but don't do it too often on one blog.

Anyway, the fact is that more people click if your comment has a link in it for more information. Far less readers just click on your name, so here's some thoughts about adding links to the comment text.

General rule: If you're honestly linking because you want to help others with that link, then the link is most likely OK.

Also, forget linking to a promotion or product of your own, or using affiliate link to promote a product. Or at least be super-careful about this, as you're very likely to end up in the SPAM-queue which might hurt/stop your blog commenting right there and then. Keyword linking is often considered spam (using the post title is most likely OK, but to be secure, just use the URL), so be mindful of that as well.

Never link by just adding a comment, "here's a link for more information: <link>" or even worse "buy my stuff! <affiliate link>. You will end up in the spam folder and with many bloggers running AKismet, you'll soon end in spam folder of all blogs. Not good.

But if you write a great comment, perhaps answering a question from a fellow commenter or adding information to the post, it's OK to add a link there back to your site.

You should only do this, if you're a regular commenter on that blog already and even then link sparingly to your own posts. If you're member in online forums, many of them have the same policies --first, you must prove yourself, and no-one likes shameless self-promoter there either, it's the same with blog comments.

Making the Most Out of Blog Commenting

To make the most out of commenting on other blogs, you must:

• get a gravatar (Globally Recognized Avatar)
  • gravatars are those photos you see on blog comments (if the blog has them enabled)
  • when you leave a comment, you use email address and gravatar service will fetch a profile picture based on that address
  • in http://www.gravatar.com/ you can register and save a profile picture for yourself
  • get a good, real photo of yourself, preferably the same you have Twitter profile pic too
• leave meaningful comments and add value to the original post or discussion going on in the comments
  • avoid "nice post" comments, those bring little value to the post and to you
• be aware of the blog comment rules in the blog you're leaving a comment at
  • In general, you should use your real name or nickname
  • Using keywords comes off as spam, so don't do it (unless specifically allowed in that blog)
• never spam
• seriously, just do not spam
• I mean if you spam, you look stupid, and no-one likes to hang out with you and you don't want that, do you?

With these quick tips you should do well. But before I wrap this up, I'll show you couple of services you can use to track your own comments or even share them with others via social media or any way you want.

Utilize the Blog Comment Profiles

As you leave comments on other blogs, it doesn't mean they just stay there.

There are couple of services you should register to "claim" your comments and link your blog comments to your other social media profiles.

To connect your blog commenting to your social media profiles and really make the most out of your blog comments:

• register and update your profile at Disqus
  • Disqus is a commenting system that is growing more and more popular among the bloggers
  • By registering you get better control of your comments on blog that run their comments with Disqus
  • You can use your Gravatar or Twitter picture, or upload a new one
  • You can see my Disqus profile here: http://disqus.com/Zemalf/
• register and claim your comments on BackType
  • BackType tracks all your comments
  • You can set alerts, similarly to Google Alerts, that monitor keywords, like your name and URL in blog comments and notify you if a comment is left with those keywords in it
  • You can leverage your BackType profile page or RSS feed (sadly, Backtype no longer has profiles, it just tracks your comments and you can set alerts.)
  • You can subscribe/follow comments of others
  • Your comments can be followed by others
  • As an example, my BackType profile is was here: http://www.backtype.com/Zemalf
  • As you can see, it can be customized, just like Twitter profile for example
• connect the above services Disqus profile to your FriendFeed
  • This way your friends know when you've left a comment
  • Both BackType and Disqus are is in the FriendFeed services when you check the add/edit there
• connect your Disqus or BackType accounts to Twitter, Facebook and your other social media profiles
  • Both Disqus commenting system and BackType support automatic connection to Twitter
  • When you make a comment, depending on your settings, notice about you leaving a comment can be sent to Twitter automatically
  • Use automatic Tweets and similar services sparingly if you are active commenter

OK, this post might have been a lot to chew on, but I wanted to write this as there's a whole lot of potential in blog commenting that is just waiting for you to unleash.

Think about each and every blog comment as a word sample or a business card you're leaving behind. It will stay there for a long time and what you wrote will have a great impact on what people think of you. Leave great comments and people will think greatly of you.

And great things happen to great people.

Many small streams make a big river in the end.

Do you have some additional blog commenting tips or experiences?

Go ahead and share them with others by leaving a comment!

1. Why Blog Commenting Is So Important?
2. An introduction to Disqus blog commenting system
3. How I Pushed My Blog from PageRank 0 to PR4 in 37 Days

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
Advanced Blog Commenting Tricks

If you're a blogger, you should be leaving comments on other blogs, for all the benefits you get from it. And even if you don't have your own blog, blog commenting is a great way to get more information on the subject you're interested and reading about.

By leaving blog comments, you have a chance to

• say what you think about the subject of the post
• get into discussion with the other readers AND the author
• give and receive additional information on the topic

Think if you could have a conversation with the author of the book you are just reading when a question pops up your mind when reading. Well, if you're reading a blog, you can just ask that question and get it answered! Maybe you disagree with the author? Or have a different point of view on the subject. Perfect! Just remember that disagreeing or debating doesn't mean you have to be a jerk about it.

In addition to being a way for the author and readers to interact, if you're smart, blog commenting is also a great addition in your arsenal of (blog) marketing tools...

The 3 Long-Term Benefits of Blog Commenting

Blog commenting is a great way to begin increasing blog traffic as you can achieve many other, important goals while at it.

Because of this, blog commenting is an essential activity for any blogger, not only as blog promotion tactic, but as a tool to start building your personal brand as well.

By leaving comments to other blogs, you will

1. make yourself known among other bloggers and blog readers
2. get links to your blog
3. drive traffic to your blog

1 Make Other Bloggers and Blog Readers Aware of You

Primary purpose of blog commenting is to make others aware of you and get to know other bloggers and blog readers.

• Find and identify the most popular blogs and websites in your topic area
• Look at your reading list (RSS) and start leaving comments on the blogs you like the most
• Choose 3-5 blogs to concentrate on, some but not all should be "big blogs" in your niche
• Start leaving regular comments on those blogs (and make it regular activity for yourself, a habit if you will)
• Always leave comments on blogs outside your "focus area" too, but at minimum, do the above

This is priceless and blog commenting is the easiest way to do it. Perhaps you want to make a guest post to a big blog one day. How do you even get in contact if that blogger doesn't know who you are? Do you think you'd have a better chance getting your guest post published if you're leaving regular, value-adding comments to that blog?

Sounds simple, right? All you have to do is to leave a comment to a blog which is run by a blogger you possibly want to have collaboration in the future. Most bloggers read each and every comment on their blog, and if your comments are interesting, show who you are and add great content to the blog, there's a great chance that you'll get noticed by that blogger. And it's also likely you'll be recognized when you do make contact.

And in addition to that blogger seeing you, your comments will be exposed to all the readers of that blog, long after you've actually left that comment.

2 Get Links To Your Blog

This is secondary purpose of leaving blog comments, so it's more of a bonus to the first purpose, getting familiar with other bloggers and blog readers.

Most blogs use no-follow links on their comments, which means blog commenting is not an effective link building method, but we're not doing blog commenting for that reason, so it doesn't matter. And with that said, these things still add up. It is still a link and that link leads to your site.

One (no-follow) link might not do much for the search engine optimization, but if you leave 5 comments a week, which is not that much, in two years you have 500 links incoming to your site. Leave 3 blog comments a day and you'll have about thousand links incoming in a year. Follow or not, others can see what your site is and possibly even click through.

There are blogs that specifically use "do-follow" links on their blog, but often these blogs are not in the "high-end" of their industry or niche, as combined with high-traffic, do-follow links on comments equals too much spam to handle. If a blog is using CommentLuv, you'll also get a link to your latest blog post, using the title of that post. More importantly than just the link, this titled link has a great potential to drive traffic to your blog, but more about in the next section.

3 Drive Traffic To Your Blog

Somewhere between getting a link to your blog and making yourself known among the blogosphere is the potential traffic to your blog from your comments.

And again,these things add up. By leaving regular, great comments on other blogs, over time you have build tons of small streams driving highly-targeted traffic to your blog.

Think about it.

You are most likely leaving comments on blogs that are in the same niche or topic-area of your own blog, or on blogs that cover a topic you are very much interested in.

So who is most likely to click through and come to check out your site?

It's most likely gonna be either, (a) the blogger of that blog or (b) a fellow reader who is interested in the same things as you are, right? Both perfect visitors for your blog, I'd say :)

Wouldn't it be wonderful to get people who are interested in the same things you are visit your blog?

You might not get a lot of traffic this way, but think of the traffic as a bonus, as each visitor is "extra" for you. And those extras add up. If you have great content on your blog, there's a great chance to get a new reader to your blog that way.

Do note that, the quality of your comments has a HUGE impact on whether or not you get traffic or not. By leaving a great comment, readers might be interested to find out what else you have to say and visit your blog. Also, always utilize CommentLuv on the blog, if the blog is using that, as you'll get a link to your latest post with the title of that post, which is perfect for getting attention to your latest post from other blogs.

Blog Commenting Is What Makes Blogs So Special

I love blog commenting. It's what makes blogging and blogosphere what it is. In fact, I believe that a website can't even be called blog if the comments are disabled or not there at all.

I've used blog commenting successfully to get traffic to my blog, I've built some back links with it, I've enjoyed great discussions and exchanged ideas with other bloggers and readers, and I even increased my blog PageRank partly because of blog commenting.

Not bad for something so much fun, eh?

Yeah, blogging is about collaboration, sharing experiences and knowledge through blog posts and comments.

It's a beautiful thing really.

Oh, and speaking of blog comments, why don't you leave one here right now!

1. Advanced Blog Commenting Tricks
2. An introduction to Disqus blog commenting system
3. How I Pushed My Blog from PageRank 0 to PR4 in 37 Days

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
Why Blog Commenting Is So Important?

Worry you not, the whole post in Yodish is not. But the Jedi Master Guide to Blogging, it still is.

Read this, and learn to blog like Yoda, you will.

What If A Blogger, Yoda Was?

Well first, looking at the millions of blogs in the blogosphere, Yoda would say:

Begun, the Clone War has.

Second, Yoda would start a personal development blog where people could learn how to get rid their fears and get in tune with the Force, live in harmony with everything around us and that kind of Jedi talk.

Third, -- .. OK, I don't know if Yoda would even blog or would Yoda just showcase the Jedi Council how to do tweet by using the Force, but for this posts sake, let's just assume Yoda would blog...

and here's how I think Yoda would make any blog a success...

1 Create Content, You Must First

Size matters not, ... Look at me. Judge me by size, do you?

By writing great content Yoda would gain an audience who wouldn't judge the blog by it's size. Soon, Yoda's blog would be huge, well, because it would be Yoda's blog, right? Yoda's blog could not be judged by it's size, but what it's made of instead.

Yoda's blog would appear small and humble at start, but that wouldn't be the case for long. Yoda would run the blog as it was huge, thinking no less of the blog. The blog would be filled with great, valuable content from the start.

And this is how you should look at your blog and the blogs you read too, what's in it. That's how all blogs start before they grow an audience and start gaining attraction via social proof, creating great content...

Being a true Jedi Master and mentor, Yoda would look for in helping the readers who visit the blog. Yoda would create valuable content and help the readers.

• Yoda's posts would appeal to the needs and desires of people.
• Yoda would create how-to posts and lists, as those kind of posts are easily digested and highly valued among the readers.
• Yoda would take a specific challenges and problems people have and provide the answers to those with great content.

2 Fear You Must Not

Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.

Yoda would not have fear. Yoda would not think the blog can't make it or that he can't make it work. By facing the fears and banishing them, Yoda would succeed and go on to create the best blog possible and make it a successful one.

Named must your fear be before banish it you can.

If you're afraid that you are not good enough, you have to do something about that. You have to recognize the fears you have and face them, banish them.

Our biggest fears are what prevent us the most on making progress and succeeding in anything.

[Luke:] What's in there? [Yoda:] Only what you take with you.

If you find yourself thinking negative thoughts about something before you even start, think why your having those thoughts -- what I am afraid on this? This is how Yoda coaches Luke on his journey to become a Jedi knight.

Look your fear into the eye and make it go away.

3 Impossible, Nothing Is

[Luke:] I can’t believe it. [Yoda:] That is why you fail.

Yoda would make a killing with the blog. Yoda would know that he can create a blog that will be a success. He would not have fear of failure, because Yoda would know that he can achieve anything and everything.

Like facing your fears, you have to believe in what your doing. If you believe you will have 100 hundred subscribers more this month, you will. If you believe to make money from your blog you will.

If you think you can't, you won't.

4 Do or Do Not... There Is No Try

Nothing Yoda believes he can do, would happen unless Yoda would take action. And action he would take. Yoda would not think that he'll try this and that. Yoda would do it.

And that's how you can build your own successful blog, business or anything you want, taking action towards the goals you believe in and want to happen.

First you know and believe you can do it (because you know you can do anything if you just do it), then you would make it happen.

Thinking you can't? There must be something you're afraid to do then. Banish it.

Like in life, in blogging, there is not try, only doing.

• Do not try to start a blog, START it.
• Do not think if you should try to write about something, WRITE it.
• Do not try to promote your blog, PROMOTE it.
• Do not try to make money from blogging, MAKE it.

You have the direction, you believe it, you know you can do it -- now start the journey by taking the first step and make it happen.

5 Use The Force

For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes. Even between the land and the ship.

Yoda would not Jedi mind trick the blog into success, that wouldn't be the right thing to do.

In Star Wars, the Force is the mystical power that makes the Jedis as powerful as they are. On Internet, using the Force is sensing everything around you and making it work for you. This energy Yoda would harness into power.

The Force is everywhere, in the other blogs, other bloggers, social networking sites, search engines and so on. Use them and make them work for you. No Jedi mind tricks, but making the most of what's around.

Remember, the Force is dangerous if used the wrong way, so don't get tempted by the dark side. The Force is to be used for good and that's what Yoda would teach you to do. Trust your feelings.

Much To Learn, You Still Have

Know that you don't know much. Accept that and you will do good. Every day you learn something and you can apply that into what you do.

Believe in yourself, fear not, take action and make things happen for yourself. That's what Yoda would do if Yoda was a blogger...

May the Force be with you.

1. 4 Things to Do Before You Start a Blog

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
5 Things Yoda Can Teach You About Blogging

I'm talking about all the crap people keep adding to their blogs sidebars, headers and footers. Just take a look at this blog right now, horrible!

Are you struggling with the fact that your blogs readers are not finding what they are looking for? Or do the have hard time navigating through the web site you are visiting. Is it hard for you to see what's on the page because of the flashing banners that are all over the place?

Or are you constantly bugged by pop-ups on a web page? Is it because of design? No. OK, sometimes the designer forgot to take her medicine and put everything that she knew into one website. And adding everything is not good. The power is in limiting the options user has to take.

But most of the time the designer does a great job in creating perfect, clean design and everything is good for a day or a week. Then those who control what actually goes to the blog mess it up. The sidebar gets the 11th widget or 5th animated banner is added to the header. Soon, even the admins can't look at the front page, but they still keep adding more things to it, and they never get around cleaning it up..

Bad Webmaster, No Twinkie!

There are tons of web pages that start out the smart way, keeping the blog or website simple and clean. But over time they keep adding more content and elements to their pages, while forgetting to remove the old ones. In the end, the page is so full of colors, banners, links and flashy advertisement, that no-one wants to go to that site anymore. Something a simple cleanup would prevent.

Of course, we have clear evidence that badly designed, cluttered website can do well. Just take a look at MySpace. Man, that site is awful. But I guess when there's nothing better that people know about, they keep on using it..

But maybe, just maybe, there's a better way..

Beauty in Simplicity

Why a simple design and website is better than a messy one:

• After the initial design, it is easier to maintain
• It looks clean and professional
• Less noise there is, more likely the visitor will find what really matters

Let's say you have a nice web design done for you, or brand new WordPress theme installed and in use. Don't go wasting that nice design by filling your blog and sidebar with all kinds of advertisements, link lists and everything in between.

Limited number of colors

Don't throw a rainbow to my face please. You can achieve so much with just a few colors. Look at eBay or Google. The most basic colors and just a couple of them. Simple, beautiful and clean.

Using small number of colors doesn't mean the site has to be all grey, black and white. And you don't to use the basic blue or the standard green. But choose the colors you like, choose a couple of more, and go with those. With only a small number of colors in the design, the additional colors can be used to highlight the content you want your visitors to concentrate on.

Clutter-free sidebar

As Darren Rowse says in the ProBlogger video, don't let your blog become like Darren's sock drawer!

Think hard, do you really need all that stuff in the sidebar of your blog? Or if not in sidebar, in the footer, navigation menu, etc. First, you must know what you are trying to achieve with your blog, website or individual page.

If the goal is to make a sale, everything on the page that distracts the reader is bad. Some of the best squeeze pages I've seen, only have a couple of elements in them - for example: one video, opt-in form or "buy now" button, and HUGE arrow pointing on that form or button. Nothing else.

If the goal of your blog is to share information with your readers, the focus should be on readability, clear navigation and making related content visible. If you want people to sign-up for your mailing list, but there is so much stuff on the page that it's actually hard to even see the opt-in form, how about cleaning it up and make the one thing you want your readers to focus, stand out.

I know I've been guilty of adding all kinds of "cool" widgets to my sidebar, only to take them out after couple of weeks because they're distracting the overall experience, increase the loading times for the readers and also, increase the load of the server in the background.

No animated banners.

First of all, I'll tell you a "secret", banners are not that great for marketing. The click-through ratios suck big time. And animated banners are not better at all.

Maybe some brainiac did the research and figured that if I make this banner flashy, people will click on it because it gets their attention. Yeah! Clicking on it trying to make it disappear! Now that I think of it, the reason someone "invented" animation in to the banners is that there was so much clutter on the web pages that something had to be done - when there's 1 million and one things on the sight, it's really hard to spot that one, unless it's somehow highlighted - it's sad that it didn't cross one's mind to remove the clutter instead..

Seriously, NO animated banners.

I'm leaving your site if it looks like a strobe light to me. Does the banner designer think I'll be more likely to click on it? If something, I'm resizing my browser window to take them of my sight if I really want to read or see what's in the page.

Banners are so 1990s. And even back then, they sucked. Banners are good for branding and getting your name, your business or your product out there. If you want your brand to be "irritates the hell out me", make the banner animated. Otherwise, think carefully if the banner really has to rotate different texts or be animated. As a side note, using stylish Flash in the banners or making it animated with a PURPOSE is a different thing. But that doesn't mean a web designer or a blogger should put 10 of those things on the page.

If you want your blog look like a Xmas tree, go ahead, and if you insist on using animated banners and adding them to your site, use one and make it the one in the different "zone" than the others, perhaps under the fold. Just one. That 125x125 advertisement block on your block should be animation-free. Always.

No pop-ups.

OK, in all honesty, I can tolerate all the animated banners (it's called banner blindness), but fling a pop-up on my screen and I'm closing it in 0.1 seconds (if the automatic pop-up blocker didn't catch it yet). 0.2 seconds later, I'm out of your site.

Again, in some cases pop-up will increase the sign-ups for the mailing list or boost the conversions, sometimes a lot. Sad, but true. But that doesn't mean I like them. If you are forced to use a pop-up to get people to sign-up for your list or buy a product, maybe there's something fundamentally wrong in your design or you have cluttered the site so bad that people don't even see that opt-int form anymore - consider re-designing the whole thing instead. Maybe you could direct the focus with better means.

Beauty in Simplicity

I'm in the process of redesigning this blog (again), and I'm keeping these things in mind. It might still look butt-ugly, but there definitely won't be any pop-ups or animated banners in here. But now, be a good webmaster and keep your blog clean of clutter. Go and clean your blog from the unneeded clutter!

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
Why Most Blogs Look Butt-Ugly!

This post is the second part of the Keyword Research and Search Engine Optimization tutorial series. Read the part 1: Keyword Research.

You have done your Keyword Research, and now you should utilize that information. You can use the keywords in your advertising campaign and the text links in those, and you can start optimizing your blog or spesific blog post for the keywords you found. Thus, you enter the world of Search Engine Optimization, SEO. The main purpose of SEO is to get Search Engine Traffic, which can be seen as a free way to driving traffic to your blog after it's done once.

Let's see what you can do with the list of keywords you have..

From Keyword Research Into Search Engine Optimization

You can use the information you found on the keywords and phrases to do optimization of your blog posts or articles in your website. To summarize, you would include the best search phrases and keywords you've found in your article, with the best being high search volume and low competition, as that is a great starting point. This is called Search Engine Optimization, SEO.

With SEO, you would try to optimize the text for specific terms, keywords and phrases you want (the ones you found by doing keyword research). You must first consider your readers and keep the text natural. Second, pay attention to the total number of keyword occurrences on a page versus total number of words, known as Keyword Density. Most experts agree that 4-8% should be the maximum keyword density, but the specific percentage is not important at start, just remember to avoid going too far and fill the page with certain keyword.

Simple Search Engine Optimization for a Blog Post

First, do keyword research and try to find the best keywords and phrases for your post. If your post answers a certain question or offers a solution to a specific problem. Start by thinking what phrases would you use if you would have the same problem, use the keyword search tools to find the related terms, refine the terms until you find a list of keywords and phrases that you could use in your article.

Then if you want, check the competition for those words by looking how many results search engine finds for the exact match of the search terms, by using quotes around the terms, e.g. "how to fix my car". Choose the best keywords and phrases from your list, pick 1-12 and go with those. Take 1-3 of the keywords and phrases as main words, try to use them as the title and headers in addition to the text, and use the rest in the article text, but not in the headers or title.

Keep the list of keywords you have, and re-use the keywords in different posts and articles you write. Target different keywords in different blog posts and link to the other articles by using the main phrase or keyword of the target article.

Basic SEO principles for writing a blog post or article:

• Write your post naturally first, without thinking about keywords or SEO
• After the text is nearly done, read it through and see if you can replace some words or phrases with the keywords you found
  • warning! don't go overboard and fill the whole text with the keywords, as this is known as keyword stuffing
  • You might get penalized by search engines for keyword stuffing, and most of all, you'll drive away YOUR READERS.
• Use the good keyword phrases you found as headers in the text if applicable (using H1, H2, H3 html tags)
• Use the best keyword phrase you found in the title of your post (at the top, H1 tag).

Short Version of the Keyword Research and SEO Tutorial:

• look for natural search phrases that you think people use
• use keyword search tools to determine the best keywords
• refine and find the best phrases using the search tools
• write your text for the readers
• see if there is room for the keywords you found
• use the phrases as headlines and title if they fit naturally

Targeting these kind of keywords and phrases gets you going and targeting the high competition keywords comes later, as when shooting for the high competition keywords, the importance of keywords and phrases go down and the importance of popularity of your site goes up (simplifying the matter).

The basic SEO is quite simple as explained in this tutorial, but there's huge amount of information available on the subject if you want to know more, and all you have to do is search for it. Whatever you find first in the search engine is probably good, as SEO related terms are the most competitive keywords..

This post ends my two part post series that uncovered the basics of keyword research and search engine optimization. Read the part 1: Keyword Research.

1. Keyword Research Tutorial
2. How To Find Good Keywords For Your Blog
3. HTML for Bloggers: What Every Blogger Needs To Know about HTML

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
Search Engine Optimization Tutorial

This post starts my two-part Keyword Research and Search Engine Optimization tutorial series.

Discover the black magic of keyword research and search engine optimization and start driving traffic to your blog! I'll tell you a secret: it's not magic, it's definitely not black magic and it's a lot simpler than you think, if you haven't looked into it before. Keyword research is kind of science, but don't be afraid, the first steps are as easy as using a search engine.

Read on and I'll show you the basics of keyword research and get you started!

What is Keyword Research?

With keyword research, we're trying to find and research actual search terms people enter into the search engines when conducting a search.

When you type something to a search engines, like Google, you are searching by using keywords, for example you might search "cute kitten pictures" - cute, kitten and pictures all being keywords that the search engine tries to find from websites to determine whether or not the web page is relevant to your search. Using a complicated process, the search engine determines which of the web pages it knows, is the most relevant for you and shows it as number one result.

Keyword research is done to find the keyword popularity for relevant keywords with a purpose of identifying the best keywords to target for high search engine rankings.

Keyword / Key Phrase: The word or phrase that a user enters into a search engine, used in searches trying to find a specific target.

Keyword Density: The more times that a given word, words or phrases appears on your page (within reason), the more weight that word is assigned by the search engine when that word matches a keyword search done by a search engine user.

Search engine. A web search engine examines websites on the Internet in order to provide a catalog of information contained on those websites. There are two primary types of search engines: search engines and search directories. Search engines, such as Google, send out robots or spiders to index your website, after which your site is evaluated and cataloged in the search engine. With directories, such as Mahalo, Yahoo and LookSmart, human editors review most websites material and catalog it in the directory.

How Keyword Research Can Help Your Blog or Website?

When you write your own content to a web page or a blog, the words in the text you write are crawled by the search engines and stored into their database. For your site to be found from a search engine it answers the "question" the searcher "asks" with the search phrase she uses. What this means to you, is that if you're trying to answer a certain question, problem or just deliver news, and you think "how would I search to find this kind of information?" - you have found the essence of keyword research! When you combine the (key)words you think that people are searching for and target your text on that, you're forming phrases.

As you start using tools to determine if your assumptions are correct or not, you will try to find the what people are actually using to search - which is through phrases (you don't find very relevant results by just searching "cat" if your looking for "kitten pictures", right?). If you have created a post about cute kitten pictures, you could check how often people search for using these phrases:

• "cute kitten"
• "cute kittens"
• "cute kitten pictures"
• "kitten pictures"
• "kitten pics
• "cat pics"
• "cute cat"
• "cute cat pictures"
• "cat pictures"

Google is the most important search engine, so it makes sense to concentrate on that at the start. To do keyword research on Google, head to the Google Keyword Tool.

The keyword tool looks like this:

Google Keyword Tool

You will ad the keywords you want to search for in the text field ("Enter one keyword or phrase per line: "), enter the CAPTCHA (the weird looking letters are used to stop automated scripts to abuse the system) and hit "get keyword ideas".

And you'll get results for the keywords and phrases you entered and additional, related keyword ideas..

Google Keyword Research Results

Google Keyword Tool and Keyword Ideas

Here we see that on average, 5400 searches are made monthly for the phrase "cute kitten pictures".

After finding the approximate search volumes, the other thing you can consider is how many sites the search engine finds with that term, to check "the competition" if you will.

Search Engine Results for Chosen Keywords

One target of keyword research is to find the best keywords for your article, blog post, or the whole website or blog. One strategy in this is to target High Search Volume - Low Competition keywords. Which means that a lot of people search with those keywords and phrases (over 1000 searches a month is "a lot" in this context), but there are not too many websites that pop-up in the search engine with that exact term. The difference between a keyword, phrase and exact match is very important..

For example, at the time of writing this, Google finds:

• 736,000,000 pages for keyword cat
• 24,500,000 pages for keyword kitten
• 12,200,000 pages for keywords kitten pictures
• 6,470,000 pages for keywords cute kitten pictures

..that's a lot of pages, right?

So it would be very hard to get your content into the top results, so people would find it. Just think how often you go beyond the first page of search results - not very often right?

With Search Engine Optimization (SEO), we try to get our pages on the FIRST page. Against millions of pages it is not impossible, but it is very difficult. So we're better of trying a different route at the beginning, and shoot for the exact matches and search for the phrases by placing quotes (e.g. "cute kitten pictures") on the keywords we're using, as most search engines value the exact match very high, so a page with exact match to the search term has higher chance to end up on top.

Let's see how many results we get phrasing the keywords we used in the above example:

• 83,600 for a phrase "kitten pictures"
• 15,100 for a phrase "cute kitten pictures"

..sound a LOT more achievable right? Competing against 15000 pages is actually really easy, compared to competing with millions of pages.

If we look at the search volume we found from Google Keyword Tool for "cute kitten pictures", we see that it was 5400. So on average, 5400 searches are made monthly for "cute kitten pictures" and there's only 15000+ pages that are exact match for that term, which makes this a great search term for your to "target" with your cat blog. Note that this example is actually a bit tricky as it includes "pictures" and we didn't take a look at the image results, but still provides you an example of what keyword research is about.

I hope you found this tutorial useful. If you have any questions, use the comments below and speak your mind.

This is the part 1 of 2 in my Keyword Research and Search Engine Optimization tutorial series. Read the part 2 about Search Engine Optimization now.

1. Search Engine Optimization Tutorial
2. How To Find Good Keywords For Your Blog
3. Quick and Easy Market Research Using Google and Twitter

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
Keyword Research Tutorial

1. One to take the notes whenever they come to mind,
2. second to organize those ideas and brainstorm more and
3. third to get all those ideas, plans and words out "on paper".
4. I use the fourth one to set reminders and todo-lists for myself and
5. all this is scheduled to calendar using the fifth one.

Yes, I love Google (and I'm not ashamed to admit it) and all the tools they offer for free, but who can blame me, as the tools they provide are the best out there and they're available anywhere you have a Internet connection. Read on to find out more about these tools..

1. Evernote

Evernote could be described as a note taking tool, but after you get used to using it, it's so much more. . There's still room for the good'ol pen and paper (you do carry that moleskine notebook with you, don't you?), but Evernote can be used on your phone, desktop and web and what you "capture" with it is synchronized to all the platforms. Evernote is available as a free service and premium, if you need more serious (e.g. secure) storage for your materials.

Find out more and download Evernote from the official page: http://www.evernote.com

Alternatives for Evernote: Pen and paper, text editor. Google Notebook

2. Freemind

I'm sure you're familiar with Mindmaps (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_map)?

I love'em, I like to get ideas out of my head by doing a brain-dump and put everything that comes to mind to the map and then organize it. I use the same method to save article ideas, article content, long-term plans, business strategy, etc. Pretty much everything can be planned with mindmaps, especially at the early brainstorm-stage when it's important to get all the ideas out uncensored.

And there's a great Open Source mindmap tool to use on any platform (it's Java based, so it'll work on Linux, Mac and Windows). The tool is called Freemind. Forget buying any of the commercial mindmapping tools before you've tried Freemind. Get it, try it and keep track of all the things that bounce up and down in your head otherwise..

Download Freemind from Sourceforge: http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Download

Alternatives for Freemind: Pen and paper, many commercial (read: non-free) mindmapping software (e.g. Mindjet MindManager, iMindMap, etc.) , MindMeister (Web Application, Free).

Special alternative: XMind. XMind seems like very strong alternative for Freemind, but I haven't used it yet and can't include it on this list. It seems to combines personal mind mapping with team/collaborative brainstorming, so the concept is appealing to me, but I gotta take a closer look at it before I replace my Freemind usage with this (if I do that is)

3. Google Docs

If you're using GMail for all your mails like you should, you already have a Google Account. This means you can start using Google Docs right away. I use Google Docs to store all my documents, blog post ideas, article drafts, worksheets, statistics, etc. The list could go on and on. Just think of it as supercharged Word/Excel combined into one, with ability to share the documents with anyone to share the workload and you don't even need your own computer for it:

• Mobility: You can write your posts (or anything you want) on any "Net cafe" around the world
  • I still recommend carrying your own laptop, but you don't have to, with Google Docs
• Outsourcing: How about getting the articles, posts and market researches you outsource to your virtual assistants straight to the Google Docs? Or how about writing that collaborate article that you're working with another blogger together, seeing the changes other one did straight away?
• Ease of Use: There's everything you need in Google Docs. If you need that eBook just right, you might want to do the final work on a different tool, but getting all the words out there first and then pass it on, great. So no, it's not Word or Excel functionality-wise, but for just getting the text written, it's perfect.
• It's Free. Go check Google Docs out, it's free like most Google Services: http://docs.google.com/

Alternatives for Google Docs: Any text editor + Any spreadsheet program, MS Word, MS Excel

4. Remember the Milk

Remember the Milk is *the* ToDo list tool, task manager and note taking all built into one, multi-platform service. You can use via Web or iPhone/iPod Touch/Blackberry/etc and RtM even integrates with Twitter! You can control your tasks in many ways, organize them to lists, schedule them, get RtM to send you reminders or the whole thing integrates to your GMail and Google Calendar. There are thousand and more good things I could say about Remember the Milk, but I think it's better you check it out yourself..

Find out more and sign-up for the free service: http://www.rememberthemilk.com/

Alternatives for Remember the Milk: Pen and Paper (yeah, tech probably won't reach the usability and efficiency of this method), any text editor and plain text, Todoist, MS Outlook, Toodledo and Jott (voice-to-text).

5. Google Calendar

Google Calendar has been the calendar tool / software to beat since 2006, and for me, there's no better alternative yet and I don't believe there won't be in the near future. It's shareable like most other Google apps, it's very fast and reliable and it's available anywhere, so what more can you wish for?

As recommended in the Problogger.net eBook 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, I'm in the process in creating "editorial calendar" for my blog and Google Calendar is the perfect tool for that too. In short, I use Google Calendar to schedule my blogging and personal life. As GCal is available anywhere and it works nicely with GMail and Remember the Milk, it's a no-brainer for me.

Alternatives for Google Calendar: Rainlendar, Thunderbird with the Lightning calendar extension (but to be honest, who uses desktop mail anymore, apart from the corporations forced to use MS Outlook?), iCal (built-in Mac OS, good alternative if you're a Mac-user as it works smoothly with other Mac apps and there's iPhone/iPod Touch version available which can be synced with iCal).

5 Free Tools to Organize Your Ideas and Blog Posts

• Taking notes, capturing the moment: Evernote
  
• Mindmapping: Freemind
• Article and Post Writing: Google Docs
• ToDo List and Getting Things Done: Remember the Milk
• Calendar and Scheduling: Google Calendar

What Tools You Use to Organize Your Business and Personal Life?

For many years already, my source for finding out all kinds of cool tools and tips how to use them, has been Lifehacker.com. Their "Hive Five" poll and survey is great collaborative series, gathering the best tools people use and recommend. To get into it yourself and find a tool for pretty much anything you need to get done, check the latest Best of the Best Hive Mind list: Best of the Best: Hive Five Winners, March through June 2009.

What do you think of the list? Leave a comment and share you're tips on "getting organized".

1. Top 27 Most Popular Free WordPress Themes
2. Top 7 Michael Jackson Songs and Lessons for Bloggers
3. What Everybody Ought to Know About Google Webmaster Tools

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
Top 5 Free Tools to Organize Your Ideas and Blog Posts

7 Lessons for Bloggers (inspired by Michael Jackson)

• Beat It (Ask for help and offer yours to others.)
• Bad (Strive for being number one. The Best.)
• Billie Jean (Develop your own, personal style and let it show in your blogging.)
• Thriller (Consider adding video to your blog.)
• Smooth Criminal (Go cross-media, think printed publications, press releases, video, audio through podcasts.)
• Heal the World (“Heal the World”, post by post.)
• You Are Not Alone (Don’t be selfish, think about others and share the love.)

Beat It

The lyrics of Beat It are about defeat and courage, which is a life lesson on it's own, but what makes this song special, is the distinctive over-driven guitar solo that Eddie Van Halen added to the song. And that's what you should do, ask or hire expert help to do things you cannot do yourself or someone else can do better, whether it'd be writing, technical things or marketing. One example to do this is guest blogging. Enhance your blog by asking for guest bloggers to write to your blog, or offer to write guest post for someone else's blog. Guest posting has benefits everyone involved, including the traffic and exposure the guest blogger gets from the other blog and the blog gets great content with little effort.

The lesson for bloggers: Ask for help and offer yours to others. Ask for guest bloggers to write in your blog and ask to write guest posts to other blogs yourself. Remember that to write a guest post yourself, you don't have to be as good on writing as E. Van Halen is with guitar, to have a great chance to offer your expertise to wider audience via guest blogging, as long as you provide great, unique content that fits the other blog's topic.

Bad

'I'm bad, you're bad, who's bad, who's the best?'

Like in the streets, which the song is about, in the blogosphere you should try to be the best in whatever you do. When you're strong and good, you're Bad. When you're bad, good things will happen to you and you will succeed.

The lesson for bloggers: Strive for being number one. The Best.

Billie Jean

Billie Jean is a dance-pop R&B song by American recording artist Michael Jackson. It was written by Jackson and produced by Quincy Jones for the singer's sixth solo album, Thriller (1982). The song's lyrics refer to a real-life experience, in which a mentally insane female fan claimed that Jackson fathered one of her twins

It's unlikely that a blogger will become a super-celebrity because of blogging, at least to the degree Michael experienced, but it's not unheard of. So the day when you receive weird fan-mail or someone gets too interested in your personal life, you should have the mindset and tools to handle such behaviour. On a lighter note, the song has very distinctive bass line and Michael's well known vocal hiccups. And this is what you should incorporate in your blogging, personal touch to make it stand out.

The lesson for bloggers: Develop your own, personal style and let it show in your blogging..

Thriller

Michael Jackson's Thriller is a 13-minute music video for the song of the same name released on December 2, 1983 and directed by John Landis who also co-wrote the screenplay with Jackson. The mini-film music video was broadcast on MTV three weeks before Christmas 1983. It was the most expensive video of its time, costing US$500,000, and Guinness World Records listed it in 2006 as the "most successful music video", selling over 9 million units.

Thriller, while begin a great song, is on my list because of the massive, groundbreaking video. The 13-minute video gained massive publicity for Michael, the song and the album. I believe the reason for the commercial success of the whole Thriller album (still one of the most sold albums) was largely built on the foundation of using music videos as promotional tools.

The lesson for bloggers: If your blog, website or business isn't pulling the attention you want, consider adding video to your repertoire!

Smooth Criminal

Both the style of the clip and the clothes and mannerisms Jackson portrayed in the music video of Smooth Criminal and the short film Moonwalker, were reused in the arcade, the Sega Master System, the Sega Mega Drive and the Sega Game Gear adaptations of Moonwalker. The song itself serves as the soundtrack for the first stage, in a mobster nightclub, in all versions of the game.

Smooth Criminal was the centerpiece of the shortfilm "Moonwalker", which later was adapted as a game. Perfect example of cross-media production, which is something to consider for us bloggers too. I'm not saying you should go on and turn your life, blog or something, into a arcade game, but consider taking the most out the media available for us.

The lesson for bloggers: Think printed publications, press releases, video, audio through podcasts, etc.

Heal The World

In a 2001 Internet chat with fans, Jackson said Heal the World is the song he is most proud to have created. He also created the Heal the World Foundation, a charitable organization which was designed to improve the lives of children. The organization was also meant to teach said children about how to help others.

We should always pay attention to the world we live in, and keep helping others. Even if I don't have plans or means to literally heal the world, in a way this is one of the reasons why I blog. I share my experiences and knowledge by passing on the information to benefit as many people as possible. If my blog or information helps just one individual at a time, I have accomplished enough.

The lesson for bloggers:: "Healing the World", post by post.

You Are Not Alone

You Are Not Alone, released in August 1995, is the second single from Michael Jackson's album HIStory. The R&B ballad was officially written by R. Kelly in response to difficult times in his personal life. He then forwarded a bare demo tape to Jackson, who liked the song and decided to co-produce it with Kelly.

The song itself is a song about love and isolation, but the lesson to pull from this is the song's name. Whatever you do, remember that there are others around you.

The lesson for bloggers: Don't be selfish, think about others and share the love.

1. Top 10 Bloggers to Follow on Twitter
2. Top 5 Free Tools to Organize Your Ideas and Blog Posts
3. 4 Internet Business Lessons I Have Learned from the World Championships in Athletics

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
Top 7 Michael Jackson Songs and Lessons for Bloggers

PageRank 4 in One Month

On June 23rd 2009, Google updated their PageRank statuses and my PR jumped to 4!

What a glorious day. Yay me!

I am not an SEO expert or a professional blogger, but using all the free information out there and just a couple simple strategies all this was way easier than I thought. I probably wouldn't have even noticed, unless at DailyBlogTips.com's Daniel Scocco had made a post about the Google PageRank update yesterday.

Actually I still believe it's all a mistake, and I will be back at PageRank 0 when someone notices..

But now, let's backtrack to 19th of May 2009 and what I have done since.

The Initial Steps for the Blog Kick-Start

I had two blog in blogspot, PageRank 0, couple of incoming links, so not much for blog that was there since late 2005 and another just couple of months old. The blogs were random ramblings about the games I love and played (World of Warcraft, Eve Online and Poker).

The foundation I had from these old blogs could have affected the results I achieved during the last month, but I doubt that they had big impact in the end. For my traffic the impact was clear, as the some posts of the old blog were ranked high in Google, but the PageRank was still at zero with only a couple of incoming links, if any.

Anyway, I wanted to start a real blog, instead of the occasional and random posting to a Blogger blog which I couldn't do all the things I wanted. So it was time for own domain and WordPress!

• I registered my own domain name on 20th of May 2009
• I started a WordPress blog on the same day. The installation with the one-click install was super easy and I didn't read any guides about it.
• I installed and configured this WordPress blog to support great Search Engine Optimization using the optimal permalink structure and the best, essential plugins for WordPress. The settings and plugins I used at the start are described in these two articles:
  • WordPress Settings for Every Blog
  • the most essential WordPress plugins

On May 21st, I imported my two blogspot blogs to WordPress. Here's how you can do it too, if you have a blog in Blogger: Blogspot Blog Migration to WordPress and  Blogger WordPress Import Anyone Can Do

• I re-directed all the traffic that the blogspot blogs to the new blog and created a guide for it.
• I planned the category structure for the new blog and I used couple of hours to re-categorize and re-tagging the imported blog posts.

New Blog, New Beginning

I decided to blog about things I do, so the blog topic evolved into blogging, WordPress, Internet marketing, affiliate marketing and related topics.

The blog's name was clear, it was Zemalf, my online nickname, which later evolved into @Zemalf, inspired my Twitter usage. Blog's tag line formed into "Technology Alchemist’s Trek in the Blogosphere". There's more about this "Technology Alchemy" and my background in my About -page.

On May 23rd, I started writing about what I had done in this, now shiny and new WordPress blog, with topics varying from Social Media, WordPress tips, Plugins, various How-To guides, Internet and Affiliate marketing and even one gaming FAQ I had forgotten to the "drawer".

Between May 23rd and June 23rd 2009, my PageRank has gone from zero (PR0) to four (PR4)

Did it come easy? Sort of. Did I work hard for it? You bet.

The Content is King in Blogosphere

In the last 30 days, I wrote 36 posts with average of 1303 words per post. In total I wrote 46892 words in all those posts. Plus there's 2-3 posts made on the one day not counted on that.

In total, the blog has 125 posts at the time I'm writing this (so this will be 126th) with 85410 words in them (blog stats are from Blog Metrics -plugin btw).

As you can see I've written more in the last 31 days than I wrote to my old blogspot blogs in 3 years :) And I write long posts, I'd prefer something in the 500-700 word range, but somehow I always end up doing these 1000+ monsters..

Here are some of the "highlights" from the last 31 days:

Blogging Guides and WordPress Tips

• WordPress Settings for Every Blog
• the most essential WordPress plugins
• How To Add Google Custom Search to Your Blog
• Installing OpenX ad server for Your Blog(s)
• WordPress Theme Design – Copying, Stealing or Tribute?
• Is Your WordPress Blog Super-Slow (Because of Plugins)?
• Bulk Edit Posts, Categories and Tags on Your WordPress Blog

Internet and Affiliate Marketing 101

• Affiliate Marketing Explained
• How To Join Your First Affiliate Program
• Learn from the Internet Marketer Masters for Free
• 7+2 eBooks To Boost Your Online Success Through The Roof!

Twitter and Social Media

• Top 10 Bloggers to Follow on Twitter
• Commodore 64 Custom Background for Twitter Profile

So I wrote a lot and I wrote some more. I don't go and judge if the posts and articles are any good, but I wrote each and every day during the last 31 days. I didn't publish every day, but I was planning or writing the posts on a daily basis.

Blog Commenting and Back-links to Build a Solid Foundation

Search engine rankings and PageRank and getting traffic rely on solid back-links. I don't have that many for my blog yet. Most of my back-links come from the blog comments I leave every day and from my own links from social network profiles.

Note that I didn't do all the commenting to build traffic or get back-links, I just did what I always do, interact with the wonderful blogging community via blog comments.

I love blog commenting and I don't like to leave comments with "Thanks, Great Post" type of contents. Instead I like to say what I think or add something to the post I'm commenting on - if I don't have anything meaningful to say, I usually don't say anything and go on to the next post on my RSS.

I read about 20-40 RSS Feeds - some I read daily, some I check once a week. The blogs and topics I follow are closely related to what I write about at any given time, as I want to read about things I'm interested in (of course), just like I want to write about things I'm into.

If I read a interesting post from the feed, I jump to the blog and leave a comment if I feel like I have something to say. If I don't, it's on to the next post.

During the last 31 days I made about 40-60 blog comments, I don't know the exact number as I wasn't tracking them apart from some which I subscribed to replies for. In case you are interested in what I've been saying, you can see my Comments by Zemalf in backtype.com and IntenseDebate - Zemalf (not much there as not too many blogs I read use it and I registered only recently when I tested in on my blog).

Social Networking and the Power of the Profiles

In addition to writing a lot and daily/frequent commenting, I added my new site to all my social bookmarking profiles (MyBlogLog, Twitter, Digg, Technorati and StumbleUpon to name the most important ones) and joined a couple more.

If you want to visit and follow/friend me, here are the links:

• Zemalf @StumbleUpon
• Zemalf on Twitter
• Zemalf on Digg
• Zemalf on Technorati
• Zemalf on MyBlogLog

Does PageRank of 4 Gain a Lot of Traffic?

To be honest, I have no idea at this point.

But I can say that you can get to PageRank 4 without much traffic :)

At this point this blog of mine isn't that popular and I receive something between 40 to 130 daily visitors. But all that aside, I'm quite proud of the PageRank I got now and it provides a great foundation for me and this blog to push onwards and continue this trek in the blogosphere.

For the Love of Blogging and Everything In It

I hope this post has inspired you and showed you that you don't need magic tricks or by-the-book SEO or even "keyword planning" to get ranked in the search engines (or "PageRanked" at least). Search Engine Optimization and clear search engine strategy and all the help (especially the magic tricks), but average blogger can do all this without investing money into it.

Of course, getting professional help and SEO experts to assist you, you can have even bigger results, but as your average geek can do it in a month, just imagine what you can do in a year!

Here's to all of you and thanks for all who have supported me on this effort!

p.s. since the mid-2009 and PageRank 4, my PageRank has jumped up and down. Here you can see the current PageRank for Zemalf.com (Homepage)

1. Why Blog Commenting Is So Important?
2. Bulk Edit Posts, Categories and Tags on Your WordPress Blog
3. Advanced Blog Commenting Tricks

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
How I Pushed My Blog from PageRank 0 to PR4 in 37 Days