I've been keeping Dave Doolin busy by leaving blog comments on his blog, as all of my blog comments went to his SPAM queue. Dave was awesome enough to notify me about that, so I figured my comments were being marked as SPAM by Akismet, the default SPAM filter of WordPress which is also used in other sites and platforms.

I realized that it was indeed so, I was being blocked by Akismet, which effectively means my comments automatically went into the spam queue on all blogs and other sites protecting themselves from SPAM with Akismet. Not good.

I leave a lot of blog comments, but I know I'm not a spammer, even that I use some advanced blog commenting tricks, I always leave blog comments that carry some value.

Luckily, getting out of the Akismet trap was easy (I'll show you how to do that too).

How to check if Akismet marks your comment as SPAM (for whatever reason)

Are your blog comments not appearing when you leave them on blogs?

This can happen for two reasons

• Blog's comments are moderated, or
• your comment gets picked by the spam filter of that blog.

(different commenting systems handle comments differently, so you might not see anything right away, even that things are OK, or the comment is just being moderated, approved by the admin.)

If you see your comment right away, with a text "your comment is being moderated", that's normal. However, if your blog comments are not appearing at all, there's a chance you've been caught in the Akismet SPAM queue by mistake.

There is no way to absolutely make sure you are blocked by Akismet. Thus, the only way is to contact Akismet Support as instructed below and ask them to check it for you.

The Akismet test blog no longer exists, because it was against WordPress.com service policy.

I created a "Akismet test blog" on WordPress.com, because I didn't know it was against their policy. That blog is now deleted, and no one should create a blog in WordPress.com just to test Akismet ,or as they said it:

Akismet test blogs or facilities not run by WordPress.com staff are forbidden on our service. -WordPress.com Support

How to get off the Akismet "hot list"

Akismet thinks you are spammer.

No worries, these things happen.

Here's how to get your name cleared...

To get off the Akismet hot list, go to Akismet.com contact page and send a message - and choose purpose of the support message: I think Akismet is catching my comments by mistake.

1. Go to http://akismet.com/contact/
2. Choose Purpose: "I think Akismet is catching my comments by mistake"
3. Give the URL of your blog and your email address so they can de-spam you.
4. (put the email and URL in the "message", even if you add them to the contact details)

Naturally, the above works only if one is legit and not really a spammer. I think their logs show why one has been marked as SPAM by Akismet, so dumb-ass comment spammers are out of luck (which is just awesome).

It might take a while, days or even a week, depending on how much Akismet support has stuff to do, but eventually you'll get a mail if they managed to fix the issue, and if it all works out, your comments are no longer blocked and marked as spam by Akismet.

For me it took about a week to get the answer from the support (that they fixed the issue) and after that my blog comments were no longer blocked. High five to Akismet support for great work.

Summary

Even if you're using blog commenting the right way, your blog comments can be mistakenly marked as spam by Akismet.

If this happens, go to Akismet.com contact page and tell them you've been marked as spam by mistake. Tell them the email and URL you think are blocked by Akismet and they will help you out.

Change log:

• Jun 2, 2010: Added the screenshot of Akismet support contact form
• Jun 27, 2010: Created a simple Akismet test blog
• Aug 29, 2010: Deleted the test blog as it was against WordPress.com policy. Edited the post accordingly.

References:

• "I'm blocked in Akismet!" - WordPress.com forums
• Akismet FAQ
• Akismet.com contact form

1. How to leave comments on a blog
2. How to get more blog comments and discussion
3. Disqus LOOPHOLE for SPAM Comments in WordPress

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
How to stop your blog comments from being blocked by Akismet

Summary: Don't try to please everyone. If you do, you will please no-one. Focus, narrow-down and do less. With smaller audience, you get larger results.

Do not try to please everyone (at once)

Do you know why Amazon has divided it's website into clear categories and sub-stores? Because people who are (right now) looking for the latest music and mp3's, don't give a rats ass about the bestselling business books this week. (as a side note, if they do care, Amazon's cool recommendation system will show it to them, but it will not show what they don't like and need).

The same principle applies to EVERYTHING you do. Being the generalist, the Swiss-Army Knife of skills and knowledge does not mean you have to do everything you can. Instead:

• Highlight the things you are best at.
• Sell, write, offer the things you can be the best in the world in.

This is part of the hedgehog concept. The hedgehog concept is one of the seven characteristics of companies that went from Good to Great, an amazing book by Jim Collins (Amazon.com link).

The essence of a Hedgehog Concept is to attain piercing clarity about how to produce the best long-term results, and then exercising the relentless discipline to say, "No thank you" to opportunities that fail the hedgehog test. - Jim Collins, Good to Great and the Social Sectors

Specific problems, specific solutions

For bloggers, this means choosing a sub-sub-sub-(...)-topic. Then focus on becoming the number one in that, very narrow, topic. You might be thinking: "but there are only 100 people interested in that, and with wider topic, I get more traffic."

Bullshit.

Stop running blind with a shot gun and get a laser instead. It's way cooler and far more accurate. Plus it'll be easier when you know a bit what you're aiming for.

It is possible to go after wider topics, BUT you will have to do this one step at a time. And even with the large audience, you will be (or at least should be) doing different things on the different segments of that audience. Larger audience means more work, possibly more money, but it's not guaranteed you will do better when you go big and grow.

And with that, think if you even need and want to grow into more generic topic in your niche. If you are doing well in the tiny (sub-)niche you're in, do you really need to grow? Why not settle for less? I'm with 37signals on this one. When you have found your narrow topic, don't feel pressured to grow. Grow your profits, your subscribers, customer satisfaction instead. Grow your product portfolio (while remaining true to your passion, skills and knowledge - your expertise).

Get one, and others will follow

Don't try to please everyone. You will find it easier to attract audience this way:

• With laser-targeted posts to specific issues, you get traffic, because there are people looking for that exact information.
• With traffic, you will get an initial audience and readership for your blog.
• With audience who like your content (because it helped them with their specific problem), you get exposure (because they are likely to share content that helped them).
• With exposure, others will follow (who will then, hopefully, find your content useful as well).

What is your strategy? Are you focusing down enough?

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
Try to please everyone and you will please no-one

Summary: Being a freelance writer can be awesome, but you need know how to bid for projects and get freelance writing jobs on a regular basis. Here are some tips for that

This is a guest post by Anna Miller.

Being a successful freelancer means you're able to secure assignments on a regular basis; in short, the busier you are, the more money you make. There are both pros and cons to being a freelance writer, and the biggest advantage is that you are your own boss. On the downside of course is the fact that you don't earn a regular salary.

But then again, you could turn this around to your advantage by earning much more than you would at a full-time position with an organization. To do this however, you need to know how to bid for writing projects and get clients on a regular basis, and to this end, here are a few tips to help you along:

Build up a solid portfolio

Prospective clients are going to want to see stuff that you're already written when they're considering hiring you for their writing projects, so if you're just starting out and have no samples to provide, start your own blog where people can see for themselves just how well you write and how erudite you really are. A writer's portfolio is easy to create in this day and age because of the Internet – blogs and social network pages are free, so take advantage of them and build your collection of sample articles (preferably in the niche you want to work in) right away.

There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to cover letters

Don't send out the same cover letter to all your clients; instead write different ones according to the projects you're bidding on. When you customize your cover letters and also choose sample articles (to send) that are relevant to the assignment, clients know that you mean business and are dedicated to detail, qualities they admire in a writer.

Be willing to provide samples

Instead of being offended when clients ask for further writing samples, be willing to write one test article on a topic of their choice. They generally want to test the waters and see if you're as capable as you claim to be and also ensure that you're not the plagiarising kind. Don't take it personally – all clients run this check before hiring writers for the first time.

Don't go dirt cheap

When you lower your asking rate according to the client's wishes, you're also giving them the impression that you're desperate for this job and that you'll do anything to get it. This makes them start wondering about the quality of work you're going to produce. So while it's ok to bargain a little, be wary of agreeing to all of the client's terms when it comes to payment. Don't short-sell yourself even if you're desperate for work.

Maintain quality

And finally, the best way to find more work is to do quality work on the assignments that you already have. The best testimonials are those that come from satisfied clients – they not only give you work on a continuous basis, they also make it easier for others to hire you when they praise your work and say they're satisfied with its quality and your professionalism.

This guest post is contributed by Anna Miller, who writes on the topic of online degree. She welcomes your comments at her email id: anna.miller009@gmail.com

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. Getting Started with Writing and Marketing eBooks

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
How to Bid For Writing Projects When You’re a Freelancer

Summary: Disqus is an external blog commenting system, giving blogs a way to have a common commenting platform with features for both the blog readers and the bloggers

What is Disqus?

Disqus is a blog commenting system, an external service used in blogs to offer a versatile, yet easy to use platform for both the readers and the bloggers to make blog commenting better experience for everyone.

Disqus integrates to all major blogging platforms, including some free hosted platforms, like Tumblr.com and Blogger, and self-hosted CMS systems like WordPress, Drupal and Joomla, just to name the most popular ones. It offers a chance to moderate comments on a blog via external service, and a place for the blog commenters to track and manage their own comments with ease.

Disqus consists of two parts, one if for the bloggers and the other is for the blog readers, or the blog commenters actually. The comment and moderation system for bloggers is the Disqus Comments. And the blog comment aggregation and social profile for blog commenters is called Disqus Profile.

Disqus Comments, like most free services, it is far from perfect. Disqus has some decent perks, which has made it a favorite for many bloggers. In combination with the single-login, autosharing to Twitter and Facebook, claiming and editing one's own comments with of Disqus Profile, Disqus is a powerful combination, which can benefit both the blogger(s) and the commenters.

To Disqus or Not to Disqus?

• Some bloggers like Disqus, some don't.
• Some blog commenters like it (most do), some don't.

Who's right? What should you do? Let me help you with that (or confuse you even more)...

Disqus for Blog commenters

If you comment on blogs that use Disqus, go and create your Disqus Profile now. Don't ask, just do it, if you haven't yet. Just create your profile before an username you want is taken.

Single-login, never enter your name, email and URL again. Share comments automatically to Twitter and Facebook. Claim and edit your comments. Nuff said.

Disqus for Bloggers

If you're running a blog on a free platform, which is supported by Disqus and you get and want comments on your blog:

• Disqus will give you a better blog commenting system
• Add Disqus to your blog immediately.

Disqus - The Bad (and little bit of Ugly too)

If you're running a self-hosted blog, here's what you lose:

• All other comment plugins that spice up the comments. On WordPress, bye-bye CommentLuv, KeywordLuv, Thank me later, Comment Relish and many others. Note that some plugins, like Subscribe to comments for example, have their functionality replicated to Disqus
• Most spam protecting plugins apart from AKismet, which is integrated into Disqus
• Easy formatting of comments via CSS (since Disqus elements and css-classes are horribly documented)
• W3C validity. Disqus will make your blog code non-valid HTML. If you care about validity, like I do, this makes you cry.
• Speed. Disqus is an external service, so it might slow your site down

Disqus - The Good

On the other hand, here's what you get:

• Speed. Yes, it might speed up your blog too, depending on the current comment system (however, slowing down is more likely outcome)
• Easy Twitter and Facebook connect for comments (commenters can login with their Twitter or Facebook account and share their comments on those services = potential exposure & traffic for you). This is something that requires quite a bit of tweaking and tech-knowledge or use of other addons / plugins to accomplish.
• Threaded comments. Love'em. (Amazingly, not many blogging platforms support this!)
• Automatic "Subscribe to comments" functionality. Commenters can get notified about new comments (and you as a blogger can too)
• The "Like-button". With Disqus, readers can hit "Like" on any comment. These votes are visible to everyone
• Spam protection. Disqus catches spam reasonably well, especially when integrated with AKismet, especially compared to the free services. With self-hosted platforms, extra SPAM protection is lost thou.
• Reader moderation. For comments that get through the SPAM filter, any reader can "flag" a comment as inapproriate. Depending on settings, enough flags hide the comment from view (and you can go and mark it as spam if you like too)

The list of benefits and cool features is long (I'm sure there are even more), but the weight of the things you lose makes it very close to even (depending on things you value).

• Quick & easy vs. technical & slower setup.
• Dependance on external system and their settings vs. full customizability and control.

Disqus is the quickest and easiest way to get solid blog commenting system. Without Disqus, you're depending on the blogging platform, theme/template designer, addons/plugins, yours or someone elses technical knowledge to configure them all, to get all the pieces in place and working.

Conclusion

As said, for free blogging platforms, like Tumblr and Blogger, it's a no-brainer - Disqus will make those blogs and commenting system better (and good blog commenting systems is the first step to get more blog comments).

On WordPress, there are some bugs, like showing weird number of comments on a post (there's a fix, but Disqus doesn't bother putting it in their WordPress plugin). (My mistake. The number of comments bug is easily fixed from the Disqus options. As Joel pointed out on the comments below: "go to Disqus in WordPress (under Comments) and then top right click Advanced Options, the option to fix it is there.")

With self-hosted blogs, losing the possibility to use pretty much all other blog commenting plugins is a major pain. The W3C validity is the other. Speed is the third; Disqus uses loads of inline javascripts and other crap which is hard to optimize. For these reasons, I'm very likely to stop using Disqus very soon.

On the other hand, Disqus is amazing for blog commenters. The single login (login once and never enter name, email and URL for blog comments again), automatic sharing and replying to Twitter, and all the good stuff that made me fall in love with Disqus as a blog commenter. And as a result, I wanted my readers to get those cool benefits as well. With this in mind, I should continue using Disqus.

I'm torn.

Disqus Love / Disqus Hate Debate

• Do you like Disqus?
• Do you run Disqus on your blog?
  • If you don't, why not?
  • If you do, why?

1. Disqus LOOPHOLE for SPAM Comments in WordPress
2. Advanced Blog Commenting Tricks
3. Why Blog Commenting Is So Important?

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
An introduction to Disqus blog commenting system

Summary: 20 essential Drupal modules. Good choices for improving Drupal SEO, admin interface, managing internal mailing lists, easy contact forms and much more.

This is a guest post by Tom Walker.

Web content management doesn’t get much better than it is with Drupal, the popular open source knowledge sharing and collaboration tool. Here are 20 essential Drupal modules that will help you take your Drupal implementation to the next level.

1. Admin Menu: Wouldn’t it be nice to have all your administrative areas accessible from one convenient menu, rather than having to make three to six clicks to get where you want? Admin Menu saves you time, making everything you need just a click away.
2. Google Analytics: It’s hard to know what’s going on with a Web site without Google’s free analytical tools. This module instantly equips your site for monitoring users, pages, downloads and more.
3. Global Redirect: Manage content duplication, 301 redirects, and URL validation with this small, but powerful module.
4. Rules: This flexible conditional module let’s you construct custom redirections, send emails, create custom flows and more, all from a user friendly interface.
5. Webform: Easily implement feedback forms, surveys and more with Webform. This powerful module can even be used as the front of a support ticket system. Visitor input is saved into a database table and statistics and simple reporting are performed through the module’s interface.
6. SEO Checklist: SEO checklist presents administrators with a checklist for best SEO practices, helping you to make sure that your site has maximum exposure.
7. Embedded Media Field: Easily create fields for video, image, and audio files, making multimedia enabled sites a cinch.
8. CAPTCHA: You know how important CAPTCHA can be in controlling traffic from spammers and bots, so it’s good to know there’s a Drupal module that can easily add CAPTCHA to your site. Additionally, there is a CAPTCHA pack that includes extra CAPTCHA types.
9. Privatemsg: Add a touch of social media to your Drupal-powered site with Privatemsg, a module that allows users to message each other from within the system. The module includes the ability to search messages, block users, and send message notifications via email.
10. Panels: Quickly create custom layouts using a drag and drop interface. Panels makes it easy to create landing pages, node pages, and other functions, while enabling integration with other systems.
11. Custom Breadcrumbs: If a breadcrumb path back to home isn’t enough for your site, use Custom Breadcrumbs to set parameters for any kind of node. The latest version allows you to include PHP snips as part of the breadcrumb title and path.
12. Simplenews: This module makes it easy to develop and maintain mailing lists while managing registered and unregistered users.
13. Ubercart: Make Drupal your e-commerce platform by installing the Ubercart module. This is the most popular add on for online stores. With hundreds of addons for the module itself, site owners get a lot of power and flexibility.
14. Voting API and Fivestar: Give site visitors a way to easily rate your content. This not only helps webmasters decide what content to emphasize, it also guides users to the best content on the site.
15. Calendar: Offer your visitors full calendar functionality allowing users to view by month, day, and year formats. New functionality allows users to post videos in a date on the calendar, among other powerful features. Also requires Views and Date API.
16. CCK: Design your own content fields using this powerful module.
17. Protected Node: Build in secure node functionality using this module. When installed, every attempt to access a protected node will redirect users to a password authentication before the user is allowed to load the page or download content.
18. Menu Block: Display more menu items in deeper hierarchy using this module. MenuBlock enables the construction of custom menu trees that go well beyond Drupal’s basic functionality.
19. Search Config: Choose from several options for search implementation and define what nodes you want indexed using this powerful module.
20. Printer, e-mail and PDF versions: Give users the ability to print content from your site with ease. Often screen formatting isn’t printer friendly, so visitors will appreciate the convenient flexibility of getting a print format view of your page. The ability to convert to email or PDF format helps users share your content with others.

Tom Walker is a blogger (who prefers WordPress) and designer based in the UK. He works as an editor for an online supplier of HP 343 inks and other print media supplies. Much of his time is spend administering their blog, CreativeCloud.

Antti's notes: Drupal, like WP, can be extended by the users. WordPress has plugins, Drupal has modules. If you are running site with Drupal, I'd love to hear your thoughts about this list of Drupal modules. What modules are the most important for your Drupal site?

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. The most essential .htaccess rules for blogs

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
20 Essential Drupal Modules

Summary: We can learn a lot from successful blogs like Mashable and TechCrunch. In this post we look into the importance of choosing a narrow niche and staying focused.

TechCrunch and Mashable are among the top 10 blogs in the world. They are also (supposedly) among the most profitable websites in the world. These two sites are not competing directly, but they do have similar demographics, so it makes sense to look at these two sites together..

Little bit of background

In May 2009, (according to Compete.com stats) Pete Cashmore's Mashable.com went past Michael Arrington's TechCrunch.com in number of unique visitors (At that point, and until this day, TC still prevailed in total number of visits, which goes on to show they have more loyal readership than Mashable to begin with).

I just read enewsz.com story on how Mashable.com is losing their visitors after the 2010 January redesign. Naturally, I had to dig in to see what really happened. This isn't as much as a news story as this is case study of two giant blogs, out of pure interest to see if there is something to learn here (hint: there is).

I have personally stopped following both these sites actively, and rely on my friends sharing the most important news via Twitter or Buzz. Both sites, while posting awesome content, post way too much for me to keep up with it (with all I've written about increasing productivity and fighting information overflow, I'm sure you know what I mean). But there is no denying that these two sites are among the top dogs when it comes to delivering tech news.

It has been brought to my attention that the traffic stats for Mashable are off for March 2010. Pete Cashmore, the founder of Mashable, pointed out in the blog comments that the Compete stats are off for March 2010 (e.g. FriendFeed). Thus, I have updated this post, keeping the focus on choosing a blog topic, editing all the parts affected by speculation that Mashable traffic had dropped on March.

Mashable vs. TechCrunch statistics

Before we go into statistics, tiny disclaimer here, because these stats from the various services are estimates and not based on real stats (which only the owners and admins of the sites see).

Compete.com has been proven relatively accurate to show odd spikes and fluctuations, especially for March 2010, Alexa has its limitations too and Technorati isn't exactly the top jewel when it comes to quality of service. But I go with what I got, and here are the stats from Compete.com, Alexa and Technorati for both Mashable.com and TechCrunch.com:

See how the compete.com stats look now:

• Traffic comparison of Mashable and TechCrunch at Compete.com

See the Alexa stats yourself:

• TechCrunch traffic stats at Alexa
• Mashable traffic stats at Alexa

Technorati Top 100 blogs list:

• Top 25 blogs on Technorati Top 100 list

Putting the statistics together, we see that:

• Compete.com shows that TechCrunch has leaped in Unique Visits, Mashable is going down
• Technorati shows Mashable going down in ranking, supporting the Compete.com stats
• Alexa shows the two going head to head

Even that Alexa is a joke (TM), we can be relatively sure that Mashable traffic is indeed going down and Compete stats are off for March 2010 (as Pete Cashmore pointed out in the comments), we can see that the two sites are very close to each other when it comes to traffic.

Mashable, still going strong?

Enewsz.com speculated that Mashable is taking a dive in traffic because they

• redesigned the blog, and
• started adding more "Internet culture stuff", instead of pure "tech news"

Enewsz.com thinks that Mashable is no longer pure "tech news" site, if it ever was. It seems that them starting to feature more "hot celebrity" and trendy stories, in addition to their more popular tech news, and enewsz.com figured that was alienating a part of their core audience.

Update: Since there has not been actual "traffic dip" for Mashable, we can't say whether or not their traffic has either decreased, stayed the same or increased because of the slight changes on their site.

TC, you old chap, how are you doing?

• TechCrunch is going strong.
• Their traffic is going up, no matter how much some people don't seem to like Michael Arrington (the founder).
• TC has continued their proven path as "Tech News and VC business chatter".

With TC sticking to their topic, it's leading the battle of these two giants, especially on number of visits.

If it's working, don't fix it?

Is Mashable actually adding more stuff? I don't know, I haven't actively followed the site this year... For a moment, I thought I was part of the traffic dip! I could see the headlines already: "Antti stops tweeting for Mashable, Mashable traffic goes down"...

*snap* back to the topic...

Unlike Enewsz.com claimed in their post, Mashable *does* offer categorized feeds to their readers, so people can get the news they want instead of all the stories.

But is it really necessary to add more and more topics to the site in the first place? I've had hard time following these two sites already, since they just post too much for me, which just gets worse if there are "offtopic" posts in between.

Lessons learned

In a recent (guest) post at Daily Blog Tips, blogging lessons from TechCrunch and Masbable, Adesoji Adegbulu (@adesojiadegbulu on Twitter), covered 8 lessons that all bloggers can learn from these two very successful blogs.

In addition to lessons like simplify things, fill a vacuum with your blog and lots of content, the post also highlighted the importance of transparency, building a community around the blog and being persistent. Mashable and TechCrunch really were built on those principles, and they've done it really well.

Interestingly the first two lessons in the DBT post are

• Narrow your niche but make sure it is not too small.
• Stay focused on your niche no matter what.

I agree with these lessons 100%, and I think that these lessons are among the most important guidelines for blogs.

TechCrunch and Mashable always had the single purpose of bringing you tech news and served visitors who had common interest. But is Mashable now drifting away from it now? Is this why we're seeing Mashable traffic taking a dive?

Is there a thin line between "focused enough" and "too broad"? Or can a site keep adding more and more related topics?

Choose a narrow niche and stay (laser-) focused on it.

All top blogs have relatively narrow niche and/or target audience. A focused site will CRUSH site that goes far and wide.

• Focused niche site is the ONLY way to go.
• This is particularly important when you have something to sell.

People coming to a site expect to find posts from certain topic from the site. Visitors interested in that specific topic are more likely to buy related products. With the information overflow we are all facing every day, seeing "offtopic" posts will make us leave.

There is a growing need for more focused sources of information, so we don't have to filter the content ourselves.

We as individuals can be Jack of All Trades and do very well, but when it comes to websites, choosing a narrow niche seems to work the best.

Your turn

• Do you read TechCrunch and/or Mashable?
• Has Mashable noticiably changed since January?
• Do you think a website is better when it's tightly focused to a specific topic?

1. Web Site Traffic Analysis – Lessons for Blog Promotion

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
Choosing a blog topic – Lessons from Mashable vs TechCrunch

Summary: Content is one of the cornerstones of blogging. This guest post by Corry Cummings presents 4 tips for building an income stream by blogging and creating content

No matter how much you think your blogging lifestyle is a hobby, most serious bloggers will, at some point, be faced with the decision of whether or not to monetize it. It may be a while before it is something that you can turn into a career.

However, seeing a nice check coming your way every month for enjoying your passion can be a great incentive. For all blogs, the income stream has to start with the content. So, here are 4 tips to turn your blog into an income stream with content.

1. Quality over Quantity

Sure, it can be great to see 500 blog posts on your web site after only a few months worth of work. However, never sacrifice quality in order to push the quantity. It is much more effective to spend the time creating 5 very well crafted posts per week than it is to rush through 50 just to get your blog started.

Your readers come to your blog because they trust your information more than any other source. Don't let them down. It could take you many late nights of juggling blogging with your normal job before you get your first member.

However, if your content quality does not dip, you can secure site traffic much faster than you could as a volume writer. You may need to consider hiring a company that offers article writing services if you need to put up a significant amount of volume. This will insure that the quality will stay in tact.

2. What Came First - The Affiliate or the Content

Don't fall into the temptation to create content simply to secure an affiliate relationship. Few visitors will come to a hockey equipment blog and end up making a deposit at an online casino.

Choose topics that make sense to your blog and look for affiliates later. Although it might be tempting to set up your blog to make money right away, remember that many of your early posts will be buried by future posts anyway.

Use your first few months of content to establish a strong readership through content quality. Worry about the income stream when you have enough members to justify it.

3. Link Building

As your blog begins to grow and you gain more readers, you will likely begin using content once again to get some back links to your blog or web site. By exchanging well written pieces of content with other bloggers or web sites, you can turn your blog into an income stream with content by trading links with your fellow bloggers.

In fact, you may need to write as many as 50 guest blog posts before you begin seeing increased traffic to your web site. Still, such content is one of the fastest and easiest ways to secure links and increased traffic. The person featuring the post gets some free content and you get some links from a large reader base back to your blog or site.

4. Stick to the Subject

It can be tempting to hop on your blog and write about something that has been on your mind. However, treat your blog as your business. Once you have chosen a subject, write only about that subject.

If you want a place to unload your personal rants or feelings, there are multiple venues for that. If you have another idea for a topic, start another blog.

By making sure that you always write on the subject in your blog, you can ensure that your readers will trust your source for their informational needs.

This is a guest post by Corry Cummings, who runs Content Customs. Content Customs is a site specializing in content creation for businesses and individuals websites.

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. 3 Tips for Writing Effective Link Bait Content
2. Is Content Really King?
3. How To Add Category and Tag Based Advertising and Content to Your Blog

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
4 Tips to Turn Your Blog into an Income Stream with Content

Summary: Adding a blog to Technorati blog directory can help with SEO and has other benefits as well. This post shows how to add and claim your blog on Technorati

I have claimed my blog on Technorati before. Several months ago I noticed that all authority for my blog had disappeared. I tried to update my blog, but eventually the whole blog disappeared from their directory. Now I'm adding my blog in Technorati again.

Technorati service has not been very good lately, and each blogger should add and claim their blog there. Technorati top-lists are an authority in the blogosphere and having blog added to their directory is good for blog SEO.

How to claim a blog on Technorati

1. Add a blog to Technorati

• First create an account if you don't have one yet.
• Then add a new blog, fill in the details, blog name, descriptions, tags, etc.

2. Add the claim code to a blog post

• After adding the blog, Technorati sends a mail with the claim code, like this:
  • PFQCYZG385BX
• Add the code to a blog post that is the RSS feed
  • e.g. make a new blog and add only the code
  • delete the post afterwards

3. Verify your claim token

• After publishing the blog post with the claim token, make sure that post is visible in the RSS feed
• go to http://technorati.com/account
• click on the Check Claim for your new blog
• click on Verify Claim Token

The blog should be verified and claimed as soon as Technorati bots visit your blog (this might be anything from hours to days)

Troubleshooting

You might see a message like this after trying to verify the claim token:

Unfortunately, we encountered a problem reading your blog. Our engineers are investigating and we will update your claim status as soon as we are able.

Chances are nothing will happen to your claim unless you make a support ticket at the Technorati support forums at Get Satisfaction, so do that (this is what I had to do).

Advanced: How to allow TechnoratiBot access

Before you even start the claim, make sure the TechnoratiBot can visit your blog. This is advanced stuff, and unless you have edited your robots.txt this should not be an issue. However, if you have restricted bot-access to your blog, add this to the robots.txt to ensure free access for TechnoratiBot:

# Technorati
User-agent: TechnoratiBot/8.1
Disallow:
Allow: /

This is only needed if you are restricting bot-access somehow. If you are unsure, do this only if you get notification on Technorati that their bot has been blocked. For more advice and troubleshooting, check the Technorati Blog Claiming FAQ and the Technorati support forums at Get Satisfaction.

Conclusion

Technorati claim can be a painful process, but in theory it is relatively simple. I'm not happy with their service and quality lately, but I think each blog should be added and claimed on Technorati.

So go ahead and create an account on Technorati, or login to your existing account and ensure your blog is visible on your profile. If it's not, proceed with the claim, adding claim code to a blog post and verifying the claim to get the SEO benefits of this one-shot task.

1. Claiming a Blog In Technorati and Cleaning Up The W3C Markup

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
Yet another Technorati claim

Summary: Lot of the things that go into blogging mean very little. Dropping those things is the key to lazy blogging - doing less by working smarter, not harder

I'm lazy. And publishing a new blog post 2-5 times a week, let alone every day, is a lot of work. These two things don't match very well. Blogging, as it's traditionally seen, is not good for lazy people.

But happily, I found and created a solution for myself: Lazy Man's Guide to Blogging - achieving more by doing less. Or if I'm honest, doing less, probably achieving less too. OK, OK... doing less is the key there, your results and mileage may wary.

Less posts, more content

When I started blogging, I didn't want to create another job for myself. But that's how it feels occasionally, since active blogging is doing something (nearly) every day on your blog. It might be just couple of hours, but it's still couple of hours of work. For me - that stops now.

I no longer feel the need to publish a blog post every other day, once a day or even once a week. I will not publish empty shells on this blog just to "keep the blog fresh". I will write posts I really want to write, not posts I have to write. I'd much rather put out one article that really makes a difference than ten that live a day and then die.

I don't always feel like writing and working on my blog. If I don't feel like writing anything, I really don't want to write - and I don't. And you can do the same - writing, crafting and publishing blog posts just because you think you have to publish something can stop now.

Do not do things, just because you must do them. Do them because you want to. Do them because they bring in positive results. This goes for writing blogs posts and all the other work you do on your blog.

Most of the things you do mean nothing

If you can't figure out why you are doing something, and verify it is worth the effort, don't do it. That's the **** people do. Call it the 80/20 principle or whatnot, but it's time to cut the fat from what you do NOW. It's time for me, and you, to look at what we're doing, and stop doing things that don't result in something good.

If you're making a living from your blog, your blog posts have a bigger purpose. Your blog posts feed you and your family. If writing one more post every day brings more money, makes you happier and keeps your business running, then you should do that. BUT think if there's something else you could be doing instead, don't do something just because you've done it for the last year or two - think carefully what matters the most.

If writing a blog post every day makes you happy, do it. If writing a blog post every hour makes you happier, do it. BUT do not write on your blog just because someone said you should write every day, or even every week. Each and every of your blog posts should have a purpose.

Each and every thing you do should make a difference. If doing something achieves nothing, why do it? Stop doing things that mean nothing. And if you're not sure of the results of doing something, stop that too.

Do only what matters the most

I am no longer doing ten things. I'm doing one, and I'm doing it really well. I'm putting my everything to that one thing, and I will stop wasting my time on the 9 other things, whatever they are. I will no longer write 10 blog posts just because I have to, I write one because I want to instead (or I don't even write that, and that's OK too).

For me, this means focusing my time on the things I do, and enjoy the time I save. It means planning things and making strategic moves instead of running headlong to the nearest wall and occasionally break through. It means working smarter, not harder.

Warning. Do not fill the time you save by not doing stupid **** with more stupid ****. That's stupid. Instead - enjoy the free time. Enjoy life, procrastinate a bit!

Do less, create more

Doing less is awesome way of working and living. I recommend that you try it. If you don't feel like doing anything, don't. Just don't fall into apathy :) This lazy blogging concept is my way of avoiding that apathy, giving a name to my procrastination.

So for your own sake, don't listen to me. Get away from here before it's too late. And do some stuff. Maybe you are like that, you like to do stuff, a lot of stuff, I am like that sometimes.

Sometimes you feel like doing more, and that's OK, these things come and go in phases, at least for me. If you're really smart, you can make the most out the time you feel like doing more by preparing for the time you want to do less.

Afterword

Hmm - I gotta work on this concept of lazy blogging a bit, I kinda like how this turned out, but right now I'm too lazy to polish it :)

Waste some time and leave a comment, OK? It's not like you have anything better and more useful to do anyway...

Tell me, what will happen if you don't write for your blog today? Or you don't write to it this week?

1. How to Take Your Blogging to the Next Level
2. How To Properly Take Time Off From Blogging

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
Lazy blogging – the art of doing less

Pre-Writing Challenge

Group of blog writers has committed to the challenge of pre-writing two weeks worth of blog posts, and getting them ready to be published, on top of their normal writing/posting schedule. All this in the span of 1 month. - Carlos Velez

I've been toying with the idea of blog post buffer for a while. It all started with how to take a vacation from blogging and continued on my posterous with this post buffer -post, where I came up with the term blog post buffer.

Blog post buffer is a concept where blogger writes posts beforehand and schedules them to a post queue instead of publishing them as they are finished. This creates "a buffer of posts", which creates flexibility to blogging and makes taking breaks from blogging, like vacations, easier.

One day I read a post about pre-writing at Website In a Weekend, written by Carlos Velez (Pre-Writing, Part 1 and Part 2), which talked about similar concept; writing content beforehand.

In the comments section of pre-writing part 2 Carlos "challenged" me to with an "accountability agreement" that we both would write posts like this (creating two weeks worth of content beforehand), and follow-up on each other to see how it's going and motivated each other. With that, the idea sprang forth. I wrote my 2 weeks worth of blog posts -post.

Carlos took it a step further and the pre-writing challenge was born...

For further information about the challenge, check the Pre-Writing Challenge Main Page by Carlos Velez at Conscious Me.

Participants, Pre-Writing Challenge #1, 2010

• Carlos Velez - Conscious Me
• Aaron Pogue - Unstressed Syllables
• Justin Matthews - Catharsis of the Bogue
• Dustin Evenson - Professor Budget
• Megan Potter - Limitless Living
• Amanda Farough - Violet Mind
• Bert Padilla - Cebu Tech Blogger
• (me) Antti Kokkonen - Zemalf.com
• Deacon - Fine Art Woodblock Printmaking
• Eleanor Edwards - Give A Brick
• Ralph Carlson - Ralph Carlson Blog

Read author / participant bios, goals and updates from Pre-Writing Challenge Main Page.

Pre-Writing Challenge Updates

Carlos has been posting updates for the challenge, you can find them here:

• Pre-Writing Challenge Update: Week 1

My challenge updates...

The challenge started on February 19th and ends on March 21st 2010.

I'm doing most of my writing on the weekends, as I planned, which is awesome - I have a lot more time on the weekdays to do other stuff, like marketing, commenting and product creation.

I have a lot more draft posts than I did before the challenge started. But best of all, those a legit drafts, with plenty of content and not just headlines like I used to do before.

Week 1

At the moment I'm publishing every other day, which makes the target for the challenge (two weeks worth of content) 7-8 posts. On the first weekend I got 5 articles going and finished two of them.

For the second week I worked on my content strategy, and decided to push for a full series of posts about SEO (search engine optimization). I have the content outline drafted, and it looks like I might end up with more than the 8 posts I originally planned, but we'll see.

Week 2

In addition to having 6 nearly done posts on drafts, I have 3 posts ready to be published at the moment, so I'm well on my way to the target of 8 posts I set myself.

Week 3

Week 3 has just started. During the week I'll be planning and outlining the content, and writing again on the next weekend.

Special video message from Darren Rowse

Check what Darren Rowse (of ProBlogger.net fame) had to say when Carlos' sent him a message about the pre-writing challenge...

Can't see the video? Watch it on photobucket: Darren Rowse's special message for all pre-writers out there.

Thoughts, Tips, etc

This style of writing (writing all the posts for the week on one go during the weekend) has boosted my productivity (writing one post creates idea for 2 more, etc.). I use a lot less time per post, but still produce better posts (in my own opinion at least).

And since I have the time on the week to do other things, if I don't have any other things, I can plan and write even more content, which is great.

Even that the challenge is not even half-way yet, I recommend everyone to try this: write several blog posts on one go. If you don't like it, that's OK, but at least try, because the results can be great.

Discussion

Have you written content on one go? Have you set yourself a blog post buffer?

Are you in the pre-writing challenge, or are you otherwise working on writing more content than usual, for a info product, maybe? How's it going for you?

p.s. On March 3rd 2010 this blog passed 300 subscribers for the first time, how awesome is that? If you haven't subscribed yet, here's your chance - subscribe via RSS or email.

1. Blog post buffer – Pre-writing and scheduling posts
2. WordPress Speed Challenge – Make your WordPress blog faster!
3. How to Bid For Writing Projects When You’re a Freelancer

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
Pre-writing challenge updates

Either case, you should add some sort of tracking to your blog or website from day 1 (or day zero to be exact). There are many ways to handle tracking traffic stats for your blog or website, but Google Analytics is the most popular one, it's free and relatively simple to use.

In this simple Google Analytics tutorial, I'll show you how to set up Google Analytics account to track your website traffic, visitors and other statistics. This is true beginner's stuff, step-by-step style...

1. Set up a Google Account

If you have a Google Account already, move on to the next step. If you don't have an account yet, go create yourself one right now. You'll get GMail access (the best and only email you ever need), Google Docs, YouTube and all the other Google services with that same account.

Start by going to GMail signup (you can get Google Account with any mail, but using GMail is just too convenient to pass here.) and move from there.

2. Setup Google Analytics

If you are new to Google Analytics, first step is to sign up using your Google Account.

Sign up to Google Analytics using your Google Account. (If you have already created Google Analytics account, just click on the Access Analytics -button.)

1. Go to the Google Analytics official website.
2. Click the sign-up on the right hand side and
3. Sign-in using your Google Account.
4. Sign-up for Google Analytics account

Sign in to Google Analytics with your Google Account (if you're logged in to Google, just enter your password)

Sign up for Google Analytics account (just click on the button on the next screen)

Now you have setup a Google Analytics account. Inside Analytics, you can have multiple Analytics accounts, and in each of those, you can have multiple website profiles. And inside those website profiles, you can have multiple sites (if you want).

If you just signed up for a new Analytics account, you'll be moved directly into creating your first website profile.

3. Set Up a Website Profile inside Analytics

Now that you have Google Analytics account, you're gonna setup a new website account. This is where we create Google Analytics tracking code, which will be placed into your website.

Signup for new website account inside the Google Analytics by entering the website and account name

1. Fill in the website details and the account name
2. Fill in your contact details
3. Accept the Terms and Service

Enter your name and country or territory

Accept the Google Analytics Terms of Service

4. Get the Google Analytics Tracking Code

Once you create the account and website profile, you'll get the Google Analytics tracking code.

You can copy the code and paste it to any web page you have or inside your blogs theme- or template-file.

Copy the Google Analytics tracking code and paste it into a web page you want to track.

Or if you are using a plugin or an addon, you probably just want the property ID (for example: UA-1231231-1)

This is the Google Analytics property ID. You need it for the Google Analytics for WordPress -plugin for example.

If you're adding Google Analytics to a WordPress blog via the Google Analytics for WordPress -plugin, you need to add the property ID to the plugin settings. Or you can copy the whole tracking code into the footer.php if you want.

I recommend to use the Google Analytics for WordPress -plugin, if you need the additional features like not tracking your own visits, automatically tracking outgoing links and other advanced features.

I dropped the plugin from my recommended WordPress plugins -list, since I'm using the optimized asynchronous Analytics snippet now, but the plugin is still the easiest, and thus the best option for beginners, to add analytics to a WordPress blog.

Summary

• Inside Google Analytics you can have multiple accounts (with your one Google Account). In the accounts, you can have multiple website profiles and in those profiles you can track multiple sites (or just one if you like).
• Setting up Google Analytics account is free. Setting tracking up is one of the first steps you should do when creating your first website, e.g starting a blog, and Analytics makes it quick and easy.
• In addition to your own blogs, you can use Analytics on all sites you have access to the source files or can otherwise add javascript to the page (many free services don't allow this).

After setting the tracking, I recommend you only check the statistics once a week (or even once a month) and then analyze your traffic, top traffic pages, what keywords bring your traffic, what kind of visitors you get, etc.

I hope you found this tutorial helpful, and if you have any questions, leave your comments below or contact me if you don't want to ask your questions in public. Enjoy your Analytics (but not too much, statistics can be addictive) and here's hoping you'll have plenty of traffic to analyze in there.

1. Adding Google Analytics to Your WordPress Blog
2. Track Outgoing Links with Google Analytics
3. Optimized Google Analytics asynchronous tracking code

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
How to set up Google Analytics

If you are looking to encourage interaction between the readers, a bit like in forums, you need to encourage comments and replies as well. The number of comments in itself doesn't do anything. The purpose of this post is not only to get more blog comments, but to get the right kind of blog comments.

Introduction

This article was born when Cheryl (from That Girl is Funny) approached me to write a guest post for the BlogCatalog community blog. I wrote a post there called “how to turn blog comments into discussion”. The post answered the question Cheryl had in mind: How do some bloggers manage to get a conversation going with comments - almost like it's a forum? I have trouble enough getting people to leave comments. Is there something magical to do to get people talking to each other instead of at me?

In that article I listed three things that blog needs to encourage discussion in the blog comments:

1. Blog (comment) setup that supports effective discussion
2. Blog posts that ask for reader input
3. Community that encourages discussion and sharing opinions

If the blog setup is not in order, getting blog comments is a lot harder. Ironically, the BlogCatalog Community blog’s commenting system wasn’t exactly “discussion friendly”. I only realized this after the post was published. Their blog commenting system has two major obstacles for good discussion:

1. Blog commenting requires a login
2. They don’t have threaded comments.

Most blogs have open comments and don’t require login, but not too many blogs have threaded comments enabled, so it’s a common “problem”. I’ve been running Disqus comments in this blog for a while now, and even that Disqus has its own flaws, it’s a great system to support discussion (which its name cleverly states).

But anyway, I feel that much was left unsaid on the guest post and I got some additional ideas from the blog comments that were left on the post despite the forced login, so I wanted to make even better post about the same subject.

I took the three things I listed on the guest post (blog setup, asking for comments and building a community) and expanded it into more detail, ending up with 15 tips on how to get more blog comments and how to turn blog comments into discussion.

Turning blog comments into discussion

Getting more blog comments and turning comments into discussion is more likely to happen with couple of key settings in the blogging platform in place, and more importantly by leading by example, replying to comments, and use couple of "techniques" on your blog posts and comments to increase the chances of others leaving comments.

Getting more comments to your blog and driving the discussion is somewhat tied to the blog platform you run on. Some blogging platforms support key settings by default, some require addons or plugins.

If you are using blogging platforms, where you can't do much in this regard, check if external blog commenting systems like Disqus or IntenseDebate for example could help. If not, concentrate on the posts and comments themselves.

So first, we'll take a look at the 3 important settings you need to check and enable if needed. And then we move on to blog comment strategies and the best practices you can use on individual blog posts and comments.

1. Enable threaded comments

Using threaded comments means that it is possible to REPLY directly to another comment and see if a comment is a reply to a previous comment. Without threaded comments, you can never have true discussion on the blog comments, or at least it will be enormously more difficult. Without threaded comments, the only way to reply to someone is to leave a comment and start it with @name or something.

The possibility to reply directly to other comments, and not just add your reply to the end of the other comments is the most important setting to drive discussion. Without this, even starting a discussion is hard, let alone to keep it going.

In WordPress, you can turn the threaded comments on by going to the Settings >> Discussion and enable the option under “Other comment settings”.

The theme you are using must support threads, but as the feature has been available for years, all new and up-to-date themes should have the support built-in. Turning on the threaded comments does not “convert” the old comments to threads, since the reply-option is only available when it’s on.

Enable threaded (nested) comments X levels deep, where the X means how deep the threads go, a bit like you would make a list with several sub lists. Because of this, it is immediately visible which comment the other comment is a reply to, or is it a new comment.

• First level
  • Second level
    • Third level
      • Fourth level
        • Fifth level
      • Another comment on fourth level
  • Another comment on second level
    • 3rd level
    • Still 3rd level
• Back in the first
• Etc.

If your blogging platform does not support threaded comments directly (many don't), you can look into external blog commenting system, like Disqus or IntenseDebate. Disqus, which I use, supports all major blogging platforms like Blogger, Drupal, Tumblr and (self-hosted) WordPress.

2. Show the number of comments

Make sure the number of comments is clearly visible. The large number acts as social proof. Showing the number of comments is something your theme or template has to do.

In many blogging platforms it is a default, but in case your blog theme does not show the number of comments or you think it should show them more clearly, consider getting a new theme or tweaking your existing one. (update: to customize WP theme yourself, check the intructions on how to show number of comments on WordPress.)

Also, when there are no comments, instead of "0 comments", blogging template or theme should display call to action, like

• "Start the discussion!" or
• "Be the first to comment!"

As mentioned in the beginning, I think the number of comments is not as important as the quality of the comments, but seeing that others have left comments as well is one of the best ways to encourage comments and thus, discussion.

3. Offer a way to subscribe to comments

To keep the discussion going you need to offer a way for people to subscribe to comments. This means giving the commenter an opportunity to get notified about new comments left on the post she commented on, the direct replies to her comment(s) or both.

This email notification will make people return to your blog, read the new comments and possibly leave additional comments themselves. Threaded comments, combined with the possibility to subscribe to comments not only increase the number of blog comments, but also increase blog traffic.

4. Have a clear comment policy

To keep the discussion going and moderate the blog comments, you need to have a blog comment policy. On this policy you can state the rules and tell that those who don't follow the rules will get their blog comments deleted and marked as spam.

Your comment policy should state at least if it is OK to

• use keywords on the "name" (e.g. do you allow "keywords", "websitename", "name@website", "name@keywords" or just "name" or something in between)
• add links on the comment text (e.g. OK when the link is useful)
• be rude and/or spam (e.g. don't be rude and do not spam)

As an example, let me share you how I created my comment policy and why it is like it is...

My comment policy

Blog comment policy doesn't have to be complicated. As an example, I have two comment rules here on my blog:

• Be excellent to each other
• Use your real name

I general, I don’t like link dropping, where people insert their own URL to the blog comments, so that’s included in there as well, but that’s about it. I like to see commenters to use a real name and I've been very strict about it (unless someone connects with Twitter, as many have some kind of nicknames as usernames there).

(update / clarification after discussion about my comment policy: using "name@website" is fine, I just like to see the name there, and if you want to add your website, that's cool)

In general, I like to see less anonymity and more transparency and honesty online, or like I said on Twitter the other day: “If you do not want / "can't" use your real name when you do something online, why you do it at all?”

For me, it is all about genuine discussions and real people. I much prefer talking to Bob, Mary and Jane than to "insert your ad-filled niche blog name here" saying "nice post!" - I prefer answering the questions from people who actually read my blog post and seeing what they have to say.

Your blog comment policy might be something totally different from mine, and that is OK, it's your blog after all. I just wanted to share my views; how I formed my comment policy, based on what kind of blog comments I like to see and what kind of "web behaviour" I want to encourage.

5. Fight the spam

If your blog comments are filled with spam, the real comments and discussion will disappear into the mass, that is, if someone even wants to leave a blog comment in the first place with all the spam around.

Whatever blogging platform you use, enable anti-spam features, addons and plugins. For WordPress, Akismet is must and WP-SpamFree Anti-Spam is great addition. It doesn’t matter what system you use, but do use the means you got.

Even with the best anti-spam systems, some blog comments will always get through that are spam. And then you have to moderate. You must check all the comments, delete and mark as spam the ones that are against your blog comment policy and move on.

This is the reason why you need to have a clear comment policy, so you can delete blog comments without too much thinking. For example, if you say “use your real name” and someone doesn’t, you can remove the comment.

One additional way to moderate blog comments is to approve first time comments manually.

This means that when someone leaves their first comment, you must approve it before it appears. When the same person leaves a second comment, it appears automatically. In WordPress, you can find the option in the Settings >> Discussions (the same place where you can enable threaded comments).

6. Tell your readers how to comment

For most bloggers, blog commenting is like second nature. But for many blog readers, it’s not. Not everyone knows how to leave blog comments; some don’t even know what blog comments are and why you are asking for them.

Do one of these on your blog if you think your readers might need instructions on how to comment:

• Write a post about how to comment on your blog (and link to it when needed)
• Add simple instructions to the posts you want comments in
• Link to another blog with good instructions on how to leave blog comments

7. Add call to action at the bottom of each of your posts

The single best way to get more meaningful blog comments is to ask for comments. If you end your blog post with a question or ask for your readers’ opinion, they are much more likely to leave a blog comment. Thus, keep your posts open ended and ask questions.

At the end of your blog posts, always encourage comments, or even ask a question. Like these that Darren Rowse presented on Problogger.net post, 7 Questions to Ask on Your Blog to Get More Reader Engagement:

• What do you think?
• How do you feel?
• What will you do?
• What is your opinion?
• What is your story?
• What is your experience or example?
• What have you been working on?

8. Reply to as many comments as you can

Make people feel it's worth their time to comment. Reply to comments people leave on your blog, especially if you spot that someone left their first comment on the blog.

People like that attention, and since they have already taken the time to comment already shows that they are somewhat interested in what you say, replying to their comment increases the chances of making them a regular reader (and commenter!).

Others reading your blog and the comments see that you are replying to comments as well. Replying to comments is the key to discussion and you have to lead by example and reply to the comments to encourage others to reply as well.

As an additional bonus, most blog platforms and themes count your own comments to the total number and since you show the number of comments (as of tip#2); your own comments will increase the number.

Like with blog commenting in general, replying to comments works better if you add something to the discussions and not just thank for the comment. If nothing else, ask a question from the commenter, which leads us to the next tip...

9. Ask questions in your comment replies

When you have threaded comments enabled and you can reply directly to a comment, and that person gets notification for that reply, she is very likely to read that reply (because it is in her inbox). With that reply, you show personal attention to her, which in itself is great...

But what if your reply has a question for the commenter? You show interest to her ideas, and it's next to impossible for her not to respond (taken that she opted-in to the notification). Thus, similarly to adding questions and calls to action to the end of the blog posts, you can ask questions in your replies as well.

Don't force a question in every reply, but when you genuinely have a question in mind for the commenter, put it in your comment (for example, if you are not sure what the commenter meant, tell what you think and ask "did I understand you correctly?".

10. Have a discussion day on your blog

Write posts that specifically call for discussion. Start having a regular discussion day on your blog, e.g. Friday rant, Saturday discussion or similar. On these days, you would post a blog post with only short introduction from you to be the topic of the discussion, with specific questions and call to action to start the discussion.

• Since the post is specifically asking for comments, and does only that, people are more likely to comment.
• Add to the discussion by replying to people's comments with additional questions and ideas.
• Keeping the discussion going and making it a regular event on the blog is a great way to begin building a community around your blog.

11. Use surveys and polls to drive the discussion

As Rich Hill pointed out in his comment on the BlogCatalog post, using a poll seems to inspire many additional comments. People tend to click on a poll more easily than leave a comment, and when they do, seeing the results might encourage them to say something in the comments as well.

You can use this tip together with the discussion day, adding a poll about the topic of the day, or taking the previous days poll as the topic of today. If the poll system you use allows customization, you could even test adding a question like “do you have a comment about the results?” when the guest sees the poll results.

12. Write posts that are controversial

This works on your normal blog posts and the discussion days. Write about something that divides people, and possibly have strong opinion on. The key in this is your opinion and then asking for your readers’ opinions.

For example, you can introduce two alternatives and tell what you think of them (or even leave your own opinion out of it). Then just ask what your readers think, or which of the two alternatives they prefer.

Each niche has something like this. "PC vs. Mac", "Cat persons vs. Dog persons", “DoFollow vs. nofollow” (for example, check the discussion here, when HotBlogTips removed DoFollow from their site) and similar "duels" where people are often passionately on one side. However, don't let this kind of discussion to fall into trash talk and bashing.

One way of controversy is being completely honest, speak your mind and show who you are - your guests want to know who you are, no matter what you think. Give them what they want. Or write an angry blog post or rant if you feel like it, don’t be scared.

13. Form a group of blogging buddies and comment on each other’s blogs

If you don't have much blog traffic yet or the people who are reading your blog are not commenting much, find fellow bloggers in the same situation and become discussion starters on each other’s blogs.

You can start this yourself by becoming a regular commenter on the blogs you read and connecting with fellow bloggers through forums and Twitter for example.

When you find a group of like-minded bloggers

• start leaving blog comments on each other’s blogs,
• reply to each other’s comments, and
• reply to comments left by the readers (who are not in your "group").

You don't have to do this for every post, but it works particularly well for the discussion days. Add questions to those replies to carry the discussion on. When others see the discussion, with replies to comments, they are more likely to join. If you have just 2-3 other bloggers adding to the discussion, your other readers see that and it might encourage them to add to the discussion.

14. Break news

This is not for all bloggers, but if you end up writing a news-breaking blog post about a big event in your niche, you are very likely to have active discussion on that post.

Of course you need to have some traffic already and your post needs to get attention, but if that is in order, make sure it’s easy for the people to comment on that post and share their views.

You can utilize the tips above to make the most out of an event, and include polls and ask questions about what people think, etc.

15. Pay attention to what works and do more of that

This last tip works for various things and turning blog comments into discussions is no different. What works on my blog might not work on your blog. Perhaps your guests love polls and debate, but you don’t get many comments on the discussion days. So drop discussion days, and add more polls.

Just like analyzing and tracking your blog traffic, you can learn a lot by looking at what happens in your blog. If you are adding questions to your posts, what questions seem to get the most answers? Was there something special about the post? Do you receive more comments on the short posts or the long ones?

Further reading

In case you are interested in reading even more on the subject, you might want to look into these great posts:

• Smart Passive Income: Tricks to Get More Comments On Your Blog by Pat Flynn
• Problogger.net: 10 Techniques to Get More Comments on Your Blog by Darren Rowse
• Copyblogger: Confessions of a Comment Addict by Johnny B. Truant
• Performancing: 10 Tips for Attracting More Comments by Chris Garrett

Discussion

Getting discussion going on your blog is not easy, and it requires other people. But these tips will encourage blog comments and help you to start building the discussion culture on your blog.

But now I’d to hear about your thoughts on blog commenting and how you get discussions going on your blog? Do you use any tips I listed here, or do you have some other tactics others could try too?

On a post like this it goes without saying, but I say it anyway: comments are more than welcome and encouraged, so tell me what do you think?

p.s. If you have any questions you would like to get answered, contact me and ask anything. I will answer your questions via email and write a post like this sharing the tips with others as well (if that is OK with you). Or you can ask me to answer your question(s) as a guest post, like Cheryl did.

1. How to leave comments on a blog
2. How to stop your blog comments from being blocked by Akismet
3. Replacing “No comments” with “Leave a comment” in WordPress

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
How to get more blog comments and discussion

Blog commenting is a great way for everyone on the blog to discuss and share thoughts together. This kind of interaction can add great value to the blog, making it more of a community than just a website.

To start blog commenting yourself, here's an introduction to blog comments, explaining what blog comments are and how to leave comments on a blog yourself...

How to leave a blog comment

There are a lot of blogging platforms available. Some of the most populars are WordPress, Blogger (aka blogspot), Tumblr and Typepad. All these offer hosted blogging (some are available for self-hosted blogs as well, like WordPress.org).

The different blogging systems might have different way to accepting comments, but the principle is the same: You enter your name, write your comment and submit the comment.

Here's what the blog comment form looks like on WordPress.com (the look varies based on the design, but the fields are more and less the same):

Leaving a comment on a blog is easy as 1-2-3:

1. Enter your name and email
2. Write your comment
3. Submit the comment
   

In most blogs, it is mandatory to enter your email address. And as an optional step, it is often possible to enter your website URL (e.g. a blog address) to the comment as well. In most blogging platforms, your name will be linking to your website URL.

Blog commenting basics

The name and the email are often mandatory fields to fill. If you have left a comment on a blog before, it is possible that these have been saved locally to your computer and you don't need to fill them every time. Other fields are optional and might not even be available.

The name is needed because the blogger and other readers need to know who left the comment. Some blogging platforms allow anonymous blog comments, but I recommend that you always use your real name, either the first name or full name if you like. Do not enter your website name or any "keywords" in the name-field, unless specifically allowed on that blog.

The email is mandatory in most blogs, but not all. The email is needed to ensure that the comment is left by real person. The email is not used for anything else but this verification, unless you optionally subscribe to comments (to get notified about new comments via email). The blogger, or other admins of the blog, can see the email, but that's all. Behind the scenes, the email is also used to fetch an image of you, if the blog is using them and if you have set a gravatar for yourself.

The website URL is optional. If you do have a website, ALWAYS add the URL to the field. This way others who read your blog have the possibility to find more about what you do by clicking on the link. If you don't have any website to link to, go make one right now. At minimum, have a page that tells who you are, what you do and how people can get in touch with you.

The comment text is where you write what you have to say. In theory, you can say and write anything you want. However, if you don't stay within the blog comment rules (not all blogs have blog commenting policy, but most should have), your comment will not be approved by the blogger, it can be marked as spam and deleted from the blog.

Blog commenting and SPAM

There are rules in blog commenting that you must follow. The blogger is using quite a bit of time to keep the blog comments free of spam. There are great anti-spam tools for most blogging platforms, which automatically filter out spam comments.

The spam comments are often left by automated scripts ("bots"), in attempt to get a link back to a site. This is why you, as a real person, need to stand out from the "bots" and not spam:

• Follow the general netiquette principles
  • Don't "YELL" (use all capital letters)
  • Keep the comment on topic with the blog post you are commenting on
  • Don't be rude
• Don't add unnecessary URL links to the text

What to say in blog comments?

Blog commenting is an amazing opportunity to

• share your opinion,
• ask questions,
• thank the author and
• discuss the topic of the post
• (and also get a link, and maybe even some traffic to your own blog)

Use it well, and you will understand what makes blogging so special. Think of it like reading a great book and be able to thank the author about the experience, ask the writer questions if you didn't understand something or agree/disagree with what you just read.

Summary

To leave comments on a blog

1. find the blog comment form
   • find a link, or
   • scroll towards the bottom of the individual blog post
2. add your name to the form
   • add your email (if needed)
   • add your website URL (optional)
3. write your comment
4. submit

Blog commenting is an excellent way to network with other bloggers and blog readers. At its best, blog comments turn into discussion and add great value to the blog community. To make the most out of blog commenting, you should add something to the post, either by adding your opinion, additional information, questions or something between those lines.

You can also build links with blog commenting and get traffic via blog comments, but you must not spam when you do this. To get the most results out of it, there are some advanced blog commenting tricks you can use.

But now that you know how to leave blog comments, you should try it out and leave comment on this blog... On this blog, I'm using a blog commenting system called Disqus, give it a try and leave your blog comment below.

1. How to stop your blog comments from being blocked by Akismet
2. Replacing “No comments” with “Leave a comment” in WordPress
3. How to get more blog comments and discussion

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
How to leave comments on a blog

Or are you planning a vacation and don't want to leave your blog stranded without fresh content? There is an excellent way to add flexibility to your blogging and it's called blog post buffer and to get it going, you need pre-writing.

Contents of This Post

Since there are several parts in this post (all on this page thou), here are the quick links:

• Why Blog Post Buffer is Good for You? (Motivation)
• What is a Blog Post Buffer? (Definition)
• What is Pre-Writing?
• Getting Started
• The Pre-Writing Challenge
• Summary

You can come up here on the "table of contents" by hitting links like this:
^Up

Motivation

This concept can be a great help for a beginning blogger. I know for a fact, that when you start your blog, you will be VERY EXCITED and write blog post after another. You only have couple of readers and even they can't keep up with all the content you put up.

Then after a month or two, you don't feel like blogging so much. You're burned out (I hope it doesn't happen, I'm just saying it can, and this is one of the reasons people stop blogging before they even get really started). You have put 100 articles out in 3 months and now you don't know what to do.

What if you would have only published 3 posts a week (just an example), concentrating on networking with other bloggers, engaging in the social media and marketing your blog - and putting all the additional posts you write to the "queue"?

After three months, you would have published 39 posts (in 13 weeks which is pretty close to 3 months). You would have 61 posts (!!) in the blog post buffer, which would mean about 20 weeks worth of content for your blog.

What if, for the next 20 weeks (that's a looong time, isn't it?) you could do ONLY blog promotion? ONLY getting to know other bloggers, visiting forums and getting blog traffic? All this while your blog would get fresh content without you touching the blog, because you created and scheduled it weeks before.

And just think if you would go, and polish one of those blog posts each week, and improve it even further, putting all your energy into one of the three articles going out that week (which you could do, because you wouldn't HAVE TO write anything else).

...of course, if you can keep up with the regular posting you have done, putting up a post or two every day even after the first 3-6 months, that's awesome. But I'm speaking from experience, it is possible, or even likely, that you "hit a wall" at some point and it's good to have "savings" in form of extra blog posts when that happens.

I wish I had done this when I started. After putting a lot of effort into the blog, I had to take a break at some point, I just couldn't keep up with the tempo I had started. I had to "abandon" blogging for weeks, and without the buffer no new posts for my blog :(

If I had hold on to some of the blog posts I put out in the first three months like I described above, I could have build myself a blog post buffer with 3-4 weeks worth of blog posts and I am sure, I would have been able to keep up more consistent blogging like that.

However, the concept of blog post buffer is not just for beginning bloggers, as established bloggers can start doing and benefit from this, as you'll learn as you read on...

^Up

What is Blog Post Buffer?

a means or device used as a cushion against the shock of fluctuations in business or financial activity - (one definition of) buffer, Webster

In order to have "cushion" against the shock of fluctuations in your blog writing output, you need a buffer, a blog post buffer.

A blog post buffer is a queue of blog posts, where a blogger puts new blog posts instead of publishing them right away. All content is created beforehand, pre-written if you will, freeing up time from daily blog management to other tasks, like interacting with the readers and marketing.

Blog post buffer helps a blogger to take break from blogging, a vacation for example, while still maintaining the regular posting schedule. This can be done by taking advantage of scheduling options in many blogging platforms, making the blog put out new content automatically based on the dates and times set by the blogger.

Filling the buffer means writing more articles than you publish each week. Choose a posting schedule, 6 posts or 3 posts a week, or any amount of posts per week/month you are sure to keep up (if it's one post a week, then it's one post a week, you can always up the count as needed), and stick with that. The publish the same amount of content each week. Put the "extra" posts to the buffer. In the end, there's nothing more to it.

^Up

What is Pre-Writing?

Pre-writing means starting and maintaining a blog post buffer (Not to be confused with prewriting, the first part of writing process). In short, it is about writing content before you actually put it on the blog vs. "normal" blog writing where you hit publish the second you finish the post.

You can read more about pre-writing from these posts (1 from me, 2 from Carlos Velez):

• Pre-Write 2 Weeks Worth of Blog Posts
• Pre-Writing Is Your Friend - With Benefits (Part 1)
• Pre-Writing Is Your Friend - With Benefits (Part 2)

^Up

Getting Started

Once you have pre-writing going, you have two (or more) weeks worth of content in the queue, you can just keep you regular blogging rhythm and keep the buffer alive. The hard part is getting started, since you need to get that post buffer filled.

Start putting one article a week on hold from this day on. Do this either by

• writing one extra article a week, or
• posting one less article a week than usual

With this, you will have a full buffer in 2x weeks (two times the x), where x is the amount of posts you publish each week. If you usually publish 5 posts a week, you'll have full buffer in 10 weeks.

If you usually post 3 posts a week, you'll have full buffer in 6 weeks. And if you get the flow on, and happen to write more articles one week, don't publish them right away, add them to the buffer!

Or if you're into having some crunch time, set yourself a deadline to fill the buffer, e.g. a month and fill the buffer on that time, while keeping your normal posting frequency.

If you regularly post 3 times a week, that means you need to write 6 posts to the buffer WHILE doing your regular posts. If you want to create a 2 weeks worth of blog posts in a month, you'd be writing about 12 posts as usual plus the additional 6, for a total of 18 posts in a month.

Or you can cut the posting frequncy to just 2 posts a week, and put the one post towards the buffer, with 8 posts going to the blog as usual and 6 posts to the buffer, you would only need to write 2 "extra" posts during the month. Very doable, right?

^Up

The Pre-Writing Challenge

To get make this official and gather all of us who want to do this together, Carlos Velez from Conscious Me started the Pre-Writing Challenge, where those who want to start pre-writing help and support each other.

And there's a chance to get some backlinks and traffic as well, but I think the focus is on collaboration and having fun...

You can read more about the pre-writing challenge here:

• Pre-Writing Challenge Main Page
• About the Pre-Writing Challenge
• Pre-Writing Challenge Forum

I'm participating on the challenge. I will create at least two weeks worth of content to this blog during the next month. I've updated my progress and notes to this post: Pre-Writing Challenge Updates.

For me, this means creating most, if not all, content during the weekends, so I can concentrate on other activities like networking and marketing during the week (in addition to my day job that is).

There are others on this already, and with the support from each other, finishing the challenge will be much easier! And after finishing the challenge, there will be a lot more flexibility to blog content creation than before.Visit Pre-Writing Challenge Main Page for more info and to see who else is doing this right now.

^Up

Who's in?

Go ahead and join the challenge with me. Or if you don't wish to make it "official", start writing one extra article each week, put it on hold (resist the urge to put it out), wait until you have two weeks worth of those posts on hold and you have your blog post buffer!

p.s. Make sure to subscribe to this blog via RSS or email to get the free updates to your favorite reader or inbox. You can also follow me 140 characters at a time via Twitter at http://twitter.com/akokkonen.

1. Pre-writing challenge updates
2. How To Properly Take Time Off From Blogging
3. How to Write SEO Friendly Blog Posts

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
Blog post buffer – Pre-writing and scheduling posts

This time the questions and answers are related to building niche sites, and more accurately search engine optimization, SEO, and choosing the right domain name.

Preface

These questions came from Ravi who had several questions about choosing domain names for niche sites. I didn't get a site to link to (at least yet), but the questions were good. I hope you find the answers useful :)

Choosing a domain name is important for any blog and website, but it's even more important if you are planning to drive traffic through search engines to the site, using optimize the site for one main keyword phrase and couple of related phrases. In such a case, it's very beneficial to choose a domain name that matches the main keyword phrase exactly.

Question: Can I Add a Word to Keyworded Domain Name?

Ravi asked: "Do you think that part of the domain name can be in a longer name or should the entire domain name be keyword only?"

In other words, the question is: if I have found that "blue widgets" is a great keyword phrase (enough search volume, not too much competition), is it OK to get a domain like bluewidgetsblog.com (adding blog to the end), bluewidgetsstore.com or similar if the bluewidgets.com (and .net/.org) is taken?

Answer: Avoid if possible

It's OK to add a word, but always try to find exact domain name if possible (.com .net or .org).

So I'd always choose a domain with just the keyword phrase. Adding a word to the end, like site or blog is OK. It won't be "perfect", just OK. When going for very targeted niche and using SEO as main source of traffic, the exact keyword in the domain is essential.

It's usually better to move on until you find "perfect" domain and pass the "OK" ones. But in the end any domain name CAN work, so adding a word doesn't mean you are doomed to fail.

Q: Should I always get the "perfect" domain name?

Ravi asked: "Do you think the lack of a perfect domain name can be overcome with good content (in terms of search) or do you really recommend moving on?"

A: In short, yes

If I'm about to build a niche site, I usually look until I find a good keyword phrase (with good search volume, not too much competition) where I can get domain name with the exact phrase with the three "main" extensions:

• .com
• .net
• .org

and then go with that. If the exact domain name is not available I usually move on and try to find something else.

If you're building a more long term blog, e.g. your "main blog", the domain name is not that important (SEO-wise) and the good (UNIQUE!) content is always important. You can make a blog work with any domain name, but good domain name will help both search engines and the visitors find the site faster if it has the "perfect" keywords in it.

Q: What do you think about domain names with hyphens?

Ravi asked: "how do you feel about hyphens in domain names?"

In other words, is it OK to have a domain like buy-blue-widgets.com (if buybluewidgets.com is taken)?

A: I'd stay away from them

For the hyphens in domain name, I don't like them. One hyphen maybe (in two worded domain), but not otherwise. I'd find another domain. Although I haven't tested and tried them, so not sure if they work or not, I just don't like them :)

Q: Doing SEO consulting?

Lastly, Ravi asked: "Are you doing SEO consulting for clients?"

A: Yes.

As a part of my consulting and blog coaching services, search engine optimization is definitely part of it. But to be honest, I just haven't thought about it as doing SEO consulting per se, as I assist clients with wide variety of topics. With SEO, I'll be helping others with that in the future as well, and continue being a humble student and scholar of the art :)

Summary

These answers apply to choosing any domain name, but in particular when choosing a domain name for a niche site. For such a site, the main source of traffic will be the search engines. And a site which is optimized for one good keyword phrase and just a couple of related phrases, with the main keyword phrase preferably being the domain name.

• Always choose a domain with one of the three "main" extensions
  • .com
  • .net
  • .org
• The more exotic extensions like .me, .biz and .us might work, but I've stayed away from them
  • the exception here being the national extensions if you're building a local site
• Get a domain name with the exact words in your main keyword phrase
  • e.g. for "green widgets", take domain "greenwidgets.com" (or .net/.org)
• Avoid adding words to the domain and try to find another phrase instead
  • e.g. don't go for "greenwidgetssite.com"
• The same goes for hyphens (-) in the domain name, avoid using hyphens and try to find another phrase instead

If "all" the domains are taken, go back to keyword research and find good keyword phrases. If the competition is high and/or the domain names you'd like are taken, go for the longer tail, for example look for three word keyword phrases and domains instead of one and two words.

If you're interested in improving your blogs SEO beyond domain name, I suggest you take a look at the two-part SEO series I wrote recently. Check the blog SEO -post first, and then the other one about writing SEO friendly blog posts. For reliable domain name registration services and cheap domain names, check my resources-page for domain registration links.

Thanks Ravi for asking great questions, I hope you make it work with the domain name you found in the end :) And for the rest of you, I hope the answers helped you as well. If you have more questions, go ahead and ask me...

Do You Have a Question for Me?

You can ask me anything you want. If the question is related to the topics I usually write about, like blogging, WordPress, SEO, Internet marketing, geek stuff, it's always better. But like said, anything goes.

I answer every question and at least let you know if I can't answer the question. Feel free to leave your questions to the comments to any post you have a question about, or use the contact form to ask the question.

I'll answer your questions via email first and if it's OK to you, I'll share the question and answer with the other readers as well here on the blog.

I'll always link to your website and chosen social network profile (e.g. Twitter) if your question is chosen for the blog. You can send your question through the contact form here on my blog and you can also ask me questions at Mahalo via http://bit.ly/askantti

1. How To Find Good Keywords For Your Blog
2. How to Make Your Blog SEO Friendly
3. Top 7 image optimization tips for SEO and site speed

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
How To Choose a Domain Name for a Niche Site [Q&A]

On earlier post, I told about MailChimp and how you can start a mailing list, up to 2000 subscribers and 12000 monthly mails - completely free (if you want to update to paid service, you can at any point, but you never have to if 2000 subscribers is enough for you). Originally, I had information about Google Friend Connect on that same post, but now I split'em up, as it works much better this way.

So, if bananas is not your thing, you can go set up a Google Friend Connect and start building your community right out of the gates, also for free - more about that below. Or you can get both! And even if you already have a mailing list and autoresponder system up and running, you can still check Google Friend Connect out if you could use some of the features.

Google Friend Connect

You can go for the free option with Google Friend Connect and use that to deliver email newsletters to your readers. No, it's not an autoresponder system, like AWeber, but it IS a mailing list - FREE mailing list.

And as a bonus, the Google Friend Connect has other features like creating interest polls for your readers, something you might want to do anyway. There are several gadgets available, like ratings and reviews, recommendations, targeted content for your readers, and others which you can use to get your readers involved with the blog. It even connects to the comment systems in WordPress, Drupal and phpBB.

However, Google Friend Connect cannot replace a service like MailChimp or Aweber, because the Friend Connect is not an autoresponder system, so you do have to send out the newsletters manually as an broadcast to current subscribers, and the new subscribers won't get the same sequence of emails as those who joined earlier, so it's not suitable for setting up a eCourse delivered via mail for example.

How to Add the Google Friend Connect

• Go to Google Friend Connect
  • If you have or start a free blog at Blogger, your site is automatically included in the Friend Connect, so you can go in there right now and check your settings.
• Sign in with your Google account
• Look for a green plus icon and text: Add new site
• Hit it
• Fill in the "Tell us about your website"
  • Website name
  • Website URL
  • Language for the Widgets
• Hit Continue
• Your site has been added.

You can then create a Members -widget for your blog if you want (you can find mine on my "connect with me" -page, because unfortunately the full widget is bit of a slow loader for my taste).

If you want to see how Google Friend Connect looks like for a user, go to my "Connect with Antti" -page, and click the Friend Connect widget there. While at it make sure you select the checkbox to "sign up for our newsletter", in case I happen to send stuff in there (I rarely do, as I did this as a test).

1. How to Write an About page in 8 Simple Steps
2. How To Connect Your Social Media Profiles
3. How to set up Google Analytics

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
Create a Simple Newsletter with Google Friend Connect

Discover how to write SEO friendly blog posts that will drive free traffic to your site for years to come - Simple guidelines you can easily apply to all blogs

Would you spend 1-2 minutes more on a blog post that will be online for years, to drastically improve the chances of that post bringing you free traffic from the search engines without you lifting a finger? If you do, read on. If you think SEO is hard and there's something fishy about it, don't read this and others will get your traffic.

Still here? Good.

The previous post covered foundation for blog SEO, the blog and theme setup. This post will go into the every day on-page SEO and how to write posts that will rank high in the search engines.

It is much simpler than you think it is. There are two things that go into writing a SEO friendly blog post:

• The first part is writing a unique, original post that has some value, whether it helps a reader solve a problem or gives them great information on a subject, makes them laugh or whatever.
• The second part, SEO if you will, is helping the search engines to put your post in front of people who are looking for that exact information.

SEO Writing for Beginners

Good writing begins with the title. It continues on to getting the attentions of the reader with great first paragraph. And the rest of the post follows through delivering what the headline and first paragraph promised. The whole text is easy to read and the same things are not repeated too much.

Search engine optimization of your posts is not any different. With these three things, you don't even have to think you're doing any "optimization", you're just writing great content. The only exception is if you decide to find good keywords and include specific keyword phrase in this, but apart from that, you'll be golden with these:

1. write a magnetic headline for your post
   • include the main keyword phrase for the page into the title (if in any way plausible)
   • when you have proper settings on your theme and plugins, the headline will automatically be your title tag
   • if you do this alone, you've done most of the SEO you have to do - everything else is optional
2. continue the message of the headline in the beginning of your article
   • first paragraph, and the first 50-100 words
   • in addition to your headline, the beginning of the post has to capture the attention of the reader
   • make sure the keyword phrase you're targeting is included in the beginning
3. be careful with your keyword use and number of repetitions
   • don't repeat the same words or phrase too many times
   • in addition to title tag and the headline, main keyword phrase should only be "repeated" 2-3 times, not much more. Once in first paragraph, second time in the last paragraph is good, and perhaps once more in the rest of the text.
   • write naturally, make the text readable.

With the above and the settings covered in the blog SEO -post, you have done most of your on-page SEO. Keep in mind that you are writing for the readers first and search engines second; the headline and beginning of the article are important for both. SEO and writing good copy goes hand in hand in this.

95% (absolute guess) of the bloggers don't pay any attention to their post headlines and titles. You do this and you're already ahead. Do a keyword research that takes 1 minute and include the best keyword phrase in the title and you've done more than 99% of the bloggers out there (again, just a number I made up with no facts backing it up).

Advanced SEO Writing and Tweaks

One part of writing online is linking, so you should learn to do it well and often. It is important to both link and link with relevant keywords as the anchor text. The anchor text is the text which is linked and those words have the highest effect on search engine rankings, especially with links going from site to another (external linking).

To help your readers find additional information and/or check your sources and references, you should do plenty of both internal and external linking. Link out to the sources and references you used, and link to your own posts with related or further information. An online page with no or very few links is unnatural, and search engines will ignore such pages and not rank them high.

Link with good keyphrases related to the post your writing AND the page you are linking to, and always link to sources which search engines see as an authority and trustworthy website. Example: see how I linked on the previous sentence to Wikipedia with anchor text "search engines".

• linking out: always link out to trusted sources of information as references
  • when you link out to a website which the search engine sees as reliable source of information, an authority site, you will gain a part of that trust when you link to them
• link out a lot
  • link to other bloggers
  • link to Wikipedia, Google, Yahoo, big news sites, etc.
  • link to pages which already rank high for the related terms
• internal linking: link back to your own posts
  • use good anchor text on all the links, especially the internal ones

Link to RELATED information, pages you used as references and pages with further information. Your link to the pages is a vote for that page WITH for the keywords in the anchor text. For example, as this post is about writing SEO friendly posts, I'm linking out to other pages about SEO and writing, both internally or externally.

Why? Because online, linking is the natural thing to do.

This helps the search engine understand what the post is about (because you're referencing to all those pages, in addition to what is on post itself). And more importantly, the links will help your readers find more information about related subject if they want to. I like to think that what's good for the people, is good for the search engines as well.

• anchor texts in links
  • always use relevant keywords when linking
  • even when you "link out", the anchor text affects your on-page SEO
  • internal links on your posts are more important than external links (you linking out to other sites)
  • the anchor text is even more important for the "receiving end", whether it's your own internal page or another website
  • always link with keywords, and don't put the link to "click" or "here".

You should also use sub-headlines when applicable and possibly use related keywords in them.

• Sub-headlines, <h2>-<h6>
  • For individual post, you'll be using the headline tags between H2 and onwards
  • the post headline is already H1 when you have a SEO friendly theme
  • Include the main keyphrase in the first 1 or 2 subheadlines if it fits in naturally

You should highlight certain words with bolding and italics. This has very little to do with search engines, so use it to make your text more readable and scannable, making it easier for your readers to scan through the text and still get the most important parts.

• <b> or <strong> -tags (bolding) & <i> or <em> (italics)
  • Little significance for SEO, so use these to highlight the important parts of the text for your readers

From these three, anchor texts in links are the most important thing to do (and linking in general). Using sub-headlines and highlighting is a bonus, which you should do if it will make your text easier to read. Bolding and italics have very small effect on the search engine rankings, but it's so small that you don't have to pay attention to it (SEO-wise).

Additional SEO Tweaks to Your Posts

If you want to do a little bit more, it is worth it to develop a SEO routine to make these part of your SEO-process as well, as it doesn't take too much time and most does affect the readability as well:

• manually edit the post permalink (also called "slug")
  • The URL of a document should be as descriptive and brief as possible.
    • shorten the URL, removing all the a's, and's and the's from the permalink
    • set the post permalink as the main keyword phrase for that article
  • e.g. for this post, instead of the default "writing-seo-friendly-blog-posts", I set the permalink as "seo-friendly-posts".
• Add ALT-texts for images
  • Always add Alt-text to each and every image
  • You could even install a plugin like SEO friendly images to automate this.
  • Optional: Add descriptive title-attribute to the img-tag.
• Use clear image file-names
  • Small thing to do when setting images for your blog
  • Instead of uploading images with file name "picture12478.jpg", upload then as "keyword-phrase.jpg"
    • similarly as you edited the permalink url, rename the files before uploading it to the blog

Alt-text is also a requirement for web standards, which makes it even more important. And the alt-texts and image file-names can potentially bring your traffic from the image searches, so this is very important for photobloggers, but every blogger can benefit from. More images and photos you have on your blog and better you optimize the alt-texts and image file-names, more traffic you will get from the image searches.

Meta Description and Keywords for SEO

In addition to writing a good title and content for your post, there's one more thing you need to do. Editing the "meta information" search engines read. With some themes, or plugins, you'll be able to manually edit the meta keywords and description. If your blogging software allows this, you should edit the meta description. Meta keywords you can (and should) safely ignore.

Meta keywords are unnecessary for SEO purposes today, but for historic reasons people still keep updating them "just in case". You don't have to do this. Do not waste one second to meta keywords.

Even if your SEO plugin like All in One SEO Pack has the option to manually enter keywords - don't - you'll be only giving away the keyphrases you're trying to optimize. Let you competition at least work a bit to figure those things out.

While meta description isn't important for search ranking, it is very important because this is the description the users sees in the search engine result pages, along with your title, if the searched keywords or phrase is in the description. This is important, because keywords are bolded on the search engine result pages (SERP), if they match the search query.

Thus, even that it doesn't have any, or very little, effect on the actual ranking, the description is ESSENTIAL in capturing the attention of the potential visitor, by providing enough information about the page in question, for the user to clickthrough to your page.

Your attention-grabbing description should not be no longer than 150-160 characters (so it'll so nicely in all the SERPs). Make it benefit-driven, and it'll double as a good intro / excerpt for the post.

Conclusion

In short, with SEO, you're helping search engines to index your great content better and thus, helping people find the answers they're looking for. Over time, you will start seeing the benefits, even if this is all the SEO you do:

• Choose one keyphrase you optimize the post for.
• Optimize your main headlines (H1) and title tags.
• Write an attention-grabbing, benefit-driven meta description manually for each post
• Don't waste time on meta keywords
• Use keywords in the anchor texts and do plenty of internal and external linking
• Write naturally. People first, search engines second.
• Don't repeat the keyphrase on the content, 2-3 times is enough:
  • Use the keyphrase in 1-2 subheadlines (not all), depending the length of the post
  • Put the main keyphrase in the beginning and the end of your blog posts
• Manually set the permalink for each post
• Use ALT-attribute in all images

The next step is the off-page SEO. As you have optimized your titles, you have already started, because your titles are most often used as anchor text when linking back to you, which is the most important factor for search engine rankings. Now with your homebase organized (on-page SEO), it's time to begin building trust, getting links and climbing on the search engine rankings.

This ends the two-part on-page SEO series. The first part was about blog SEO; blog setup, configuration and SEO friendly themes. This post showed what to do when adding new content, whether it's images or new blog posts.

1. How to Make Your Blog SEO Friendly
2. Top 7 image optimization tips for SEO and site speed
3. Blog post buffer – Pre-writing and scheduling posts

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
How to Write SEO Friendly Blog Posts

SEO, or search engine optimization, consists of two parts; on-page and off-page SEO.

• The on-page search engine ranking factors are the things on your blog and on your pages.
• The off-page factors are the things outside your domain, e.g. links back to your site.

Because the on-page SEO is fully in your own hands, that is where you should focus first. The on-page SEO helps the off-page SEO as well, but we'll come back to that on later parts of this Blog SEO -series.

You'll learn the most important things for this one-time BLOG SEO on this post. The second part of on-page SEO is the continuous optimization, writing SEO friendly blog posts. The next post on the series, will cover that.

The on-page SEO on your blog is two-fold as well. The first part is the blog setup (domain name, blog configuration and plugins) and blog theme or template. In short, the things you only need to do and set once. When the setup is done, the blogging software and the theme takes care of most on-page factors of the blog.

BLOG SEO: Domain Name

First part of blog setup, and an important on-page factor for a blog, or any website, is the domain name and registering one. The domain name should contain relevant keyword phrase or keywords for your blog. For focused niche site, trying to rank for spesific keyword phrase, you pretty much must have the keyword phrase in the domain.

For a more longer term blogging, and your main blog, whatever it is, will over time rank for many different phrases and the importance of the domain name, SEO-wise, will go down. So if you already have a blog, and the domain name is not particularly good for SEO, don't worry, a non-keyworded domain can do well too, just take a look at Mashable.com for example, or one Zemalf.com :)

Anyway, here are the guidelines for choosing a blog name (that's good for SEO).

• keyword(s) in your domain name
  • if possible, have a keyword rich domain name
  • try to get short domain name
    • a short and catchy domain name can be better than a keyword rich one
    • the domain name can be long for niche sites
  • niche sites must have the keyword phrase in the domain name
    • for very focused niche blogs, the main keyword phrase is what will drive the traffic, and most of the blog will be optimized for that keyword phrase and closely related terms
• naming your blog
  • name of your blog actually goes into blog settings and it's displayed by the theme or template, but the domain name is often the blog name as well
  • your blog name and domain name are your brands, so think how you want to be seen online

If you're setting up a free blog, your blogs name will be sub-domain and you should use good keywords in it, even that the sub-domains don't have nearly the weight of the root domain, it still matters.

BLOG SEO: Installing the Blog

If you are setting up a self-hosted blog, you have to install the blogging software. This post won't go into detail on the actual install, but for SEO, there's one thing you need to know: Unless you have a site up already and you're adding a blog, never set up your blog in separate directory, e.g. example.com/blog/. If you're not sure, just install everything to the root, you'll save yourself lot of trouble in the future.

If you do decide to install the blogging software in separate directory, but want the blog to be at the root, configure the blog root to be at domain root. For example, you can install WordPress in its own directory, like example.com/wordpress/ but your front page is actually at example.com. You could in theory install the blog to a "keyworded" directory, but that is not necessary with the best blogging software, like WordPress, as the directory can be "faked" with the permalink structure if needed.

BLOG SEO: Settings

When you have the domain and you have installed your blog, it's time to configure it. You only need to do these once and the blogging software, theme or plugins take care of the rest and you can focus on the content. Some parts of the following are WordPress-spesific, but similar principles apply to other blogging software as well.

• Make sure the search engines can index your site
  • If you want, you can wait until you're ready to "launch" your site,
  • but for a new blog, just enable it right away
  • in WordPress, it's in the Settings >> Privacy
• add your blog name to the settings
  • of the domain name as well
• add the description of your blog to the settings
  • this is also your blogs tagline
  • not always displayed on the blog (although it should be)
  • put main keyword phrase in the description, especially if your blog name is not keyword rich.
• use the best permalink structure for SEO
  • not /?p=123 pages, but SEO-friendly links instead,
    • e.g. /important-keywords/ or /***/keyword-phrase
  • I recommend /%post_id%/%postname%/ for WordPress permalinks.
• install and activate a SEO friendly theme
  • proper headline tags for different pages
  • title tags customized for different types of posts and pages

Free blogs allow you to change the theme, so choose a SEO friendly theme from choices you have. Or tweak the theme a bit if that's possible with the service and ensure the title tags and headline tags are set properly (for example, the default templates in Blogger.com are absolutely horrible for SEO by default).

Note that most free blogs don't allow you to modify the permalink structure, so you can skip that (WordPress.com does allow editing). And overall, your choices are limited by the provider. With self-hosted blog, you'll have all the control (not to speak it will be your domain getting ranked, not theirs).

BLOG SEO: WordPress Plugins

Even if you have high quality theme, I recommend you use plugins to assist with SEO, and this is the one I recommend and use on all my blogs, just because they work so well and make things convenient.

All in One SEO Pack

• sets front page description as you like
• takes care of title tags for all the pages
• automatically generate meta keywords and descriptions
  • allows editing these for every post too

In addition to All in One SEO Pack, for more advanced blog SEO:

Robots Meta

• ensures you're not blocking search engines totally with the privacy setting
• helps to focus the attention of the search engines where they you want them to focus,
  • e.g. on individual pages instead of front page, on front page instead of the subpages, etc.
• Robots Meta helps setting up nofollow and noindex definitions for different pages, for example:
  • Index and try to rank with category-pages, but not tag-pages, or vice versa
  • Nofollow all outgoing links on the front page
  • Automatically nofollow links to the comment inside your blog
• set the meta tag verifications for Google Webmaster Tools, and
• manage your .htaccess rules and robots.txt from the Dashboard

If you need instructions, check my essential WordPress plugins -post.

UPDATE: There's a new plugin called WordPress SEO, which can take over any of the popular SEO plugins, like All in One SEO Pack, HeadSpace2 and PlatinumSEO, AND it also includes all the functionality of other SEO-boosting "Yoast plugins" like Robots Meta, RSS Footer and breadcrumbs. It is currently in beta, and I'm testing it to ensure it works well. So far, it's looking good, so keep an eye out for that one when it comes out of the beta-testing.

BLOG SEO: Theme and Templates

To identify whether your blog and theme is SEO friendly take a look at the HTML code of your

• Front page
• Individual post
• Individual page
• Archives, e.g. category-page

And look for the title tag, the H1 tag and the other headline tags.

On the homepage, pay attention to whether the blog name or description has the H1-tag. The H1-tag should be on blog name or description, depending which has the more relevant keywords. On individual posts, pages and archive-pages, the H1-tags should be on the post/page/archive -headline. Blog name and description can be in DIV-tag for example.

Your blog is not SEO friendly if

• the title tag on an individual page is something like: "Blog name: Post title"
  • The post title should be at the beginning of the title tag
  • It should be "Post title - Blog name", "Post title | Blog name" or similar
• the H1 headline tag is on your blog name or description in all those pages
  • H1 headline tag should be on the post-/page-title on individual pages, and
  • on the blog name or description only on the front page
• there is more than one H1 tag on one post or page
  • Make sure there is only one H1 tag. Under the one H1 headline, you'll have a hierarchy of H2 and H3 tags as subheadlines, and possibly H4-H6, but usually H2-H3 is enough.

The theme is good for SEO, if the title tags are set properly and on front page, H1 is the blog name or description and individual post headlines are H2. In the best themes for Blog SEO, the sidebar headlines are not higher than H4-tagged, if that (as you rarely have the keywords you want to optimize for in the sidebar titles).

The higher the element is in the HTML code, more important it is for SEO. For example, things in the footer don't matter as much as the top of the page (in HTML, as that's what search engine reads). Also the sidebar is often below the actual content in the HTML, even that it's displayed on the side.

Any clutter above the H1 tag hurts SEO. Text above the main headline tag will dilute the effect of the headline tag and the beginning of the post. However, search engines learn to ignore the menus and other repetitive elements, but don't avoid adding lot of text in elements over the headline and post.

I don't go into details here, but the theme should also be complient with W3C standards and use validated CSS (mine is messed at the moment, mostly because of using Disqus, grrr).

The loading time will become more and more important for search engine optimization, so keep that in mind as well, so use caching and set the essential .htaccess rules. Your blog should not be cluttered with "cool features" that slow it down and you shouldn't ruin it by filling your sidebar with all kinds of widgets and bright lights. On WordPress, only use the must-have plugins.

BLOG SEO: The HTML Tags

To understand the above and what makes blog theme SEO friendly, here's further explanation about the title tag and the different headline tags. For more information about the HTML tags, take a look at HTML for bloggers.

• title tag
  • the most important on-page factor for SEO
  • title tag is what you see on the top of the browser window
  • the theme or template (or a plugin) should modify the title tag based on the page
    • front page example: "blog name | tagline" or "tagline | blog name"
    • single posts and pages: "post title | blog name"
      • not "blog name: title"
  • In WordPress, All in One SEO Pack or similar plugin takes care of the title tag by using the headline as title tag, and you'll also have the option to use a different title tag than the headline.
    • Some themes are readily optimized, some are not.
    • e.g. if your the title tag for a blog post is "blog name: post headline" your theme is not optimized.
• H1 headline tag
  • second most important on-page factor
  • only one H1 per page
  • Homepage: H1 headline tag should be on the blog name OR description/tagline
    • the other element can be in div-tag, using css or "blog-description"
    • the headline and description are formatted via css-classes to ensure they look the same, whether displayed with H1-tag or div-tag
  • Single posts and pages: H1-tag is on the post headline for single posts and pages
    • blog name and tagline can both be in div-tags
  • Archive pages: H1 headline should be on the the category-, tag- and similar headline.
    • again, blog name and tagline in div-tags
• H2-H6 headline tags
  • little significance, but help both your readers and search engines via proper structure
  • post headlines on the front page should be in H2
    • not H1, which is reserved for the blog name or tagline
  • theme should have elements that don't matter much with H4-H6 headline tags, or no headline tags at all
    • e.g. sidebar headlines could be H5, or no headline tag at all

Updates / Version History

• 2010-01-13: Post Published
• 2010-11-03: Added note about the new WordPress SEO -plugin, currently in beta-test.

Conclusion

All this might sound a bit complicated, but in the end it really isn't, as you only need to set these once, and if you have a good, SEO-friendly theme, you don't have to do much. All you have to do is check if the theme is good for SEO or not, as now you know how, and if it isn't find a new one, tweak it yourself or ask a developer to make change it.

Apart from the theme, you now know that the domain name and permalink affect SEO, you know that the permalink structure should be have keywords in it, not (just) numbers, if you can go and change it. You now to add the relevant keywords in the blogs name if possible, and also in the description (tagline).

The most important on-page factors are covered by the blogging software itself and properly designed theme. In fact, a normal user doesn't even have to understand SEO, as the blog and the theme do most of the job automatically. This is one of the reasons search engines love blogs.

Now that you know quite a bit about how to make your blog SEO friendly, you need to be familiar with keyword research to make the most of it, so you might be interested in reading how to find good keywords for your blog.

This was the first part of the series. On the next part, I'll cover the second part of the on-page SEO, writing SEO friendly blog posts. You'll then learn more about the headlines, links, anchor texts and how to write in a way that search engines will rank your posts high.

p.s. If you have any questions about SEO, feel free to ask them on the comments below, or just tell me what you thought about this post.

1. How to Write SEO Friendly Blog Posts
2. Tagline – The 10 Words That Make or Break Your Blog
3. Top 7 image optimization tips for SEO and site speed

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
How to Make Your Blog SEO Friendly

Summary: 31DBBB gives clear step-by-step instructions on how to improve a blog and become a better blogger in 31 days. A must-have book for all bloggers. Rating: 4.5/5

31 Days to Build a Better Blog is an eBook that gives a clear step-by-step instructions on how to improve a blog and how to become a better blogger. Awesome resource for new and established bloggers alike. You can buy the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog -eBook from Problogger.net for $19.95 $29.99 USD.

A twenty-dollar downloadable eBook that changed the way I blog forever

When I started blogging I didn't have a clue on what is a good blog and how to make my blog better. I fumbled for 4 years with my gaming blog, never seeing much success. At the end of May 2009, I started this blog. I moved the old blog to this domain and started blogging for real.

At the beginning, I didn't really know what I was doing, I was reading a lot blogs, tons of how-to’s and tried to learn as much as I could. I did learn a lot, but I was having hard time deciding what I actually should do with the limited time I had. There were so many good tips that I got paralyzed. I faced an information overflow.

After working a while with the new blog, I saw that Darren Rowse of Problogger.net released an eBook called 31 Days to Build a Better Blog (31DBBB). I bought it the day it was released and started doing what the book told me. The clear structure of the book not only showed how to do things, but why and when too.

I felt I was making progress, which was important for my motivation at the time. I was putting effort to the things that really mattered and my traffic started improving. I've shared my blog traffic stats from 2009 with you and the real time stats from this blog are publicly available, so you can see how I took this blog to 4800 visits a month on July 2009 (second full month after I started), using what I learned from the 31DBBB workbook.

Traffic for the first 72 days of my blog. I had traffic from the start because I moved an old blog to this domain, but the traffic increase from June to July was based on hard work, following the advice I got from the book.

Did all that happen because of this eBook? No. I did a lot of work for it. I knew what to do, because of the tasks given in the book. And I learned a lot about blogging and walked away with a better blog, just as the book promised.

I later moved the gaming content back to the old blog and traffic for this blog dropped for a moment, I even took a short break from blogging, but I've continued to use the 31DBBB as the road map for improving this blog. I've read more books and taken blogging courses since then, but the foundation for my blogging came from this book.

Blog Like an Expert in 31 Days

With the help and step-by-step instructions from the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog book, I now had a blog with traffic and readers, something I couldn't do in 4 years with my first blog.

Here's how you can change your blog for the better too: buy the 31DBBB eBook, take 31 days, do these tasks, and drastically improve your blog and its performance. You'll learn the best practises for blogging; get clear instructions on what to do, why that will make your blog better, and how to do it.

If you want to read more about what the eBook itself, read the rest of my in-depth 31DBBB review below, or head out to Problogger.net and get it right away.

What is 31 Days to Build a Better Blog?

31 Days to Build a Better Blog (31DBBB) is a downloadable eBook, created to help bloggers to make their blogs better and become better bloggers in the process.

Originally 31DBBB was a 31+ posts series where participants took one action each day to make their blogs better. Thousands of new and experienced bloggers alike have taken the challenge and enjoyed great results afterwards.

The 31DBBB "event" itself has taken place on 2005, 2007 and 2009, and the 31 DBBB -workbook was published on 2009, combining all the posts in the series into an eBook.

Even that the original posts are available for free at Problogger.net, the 31DBBB eBook sold nearly 20000 copies in less than 6 months, and has continued to sell well.

The daily tasks have been improved and polished for the book giving more information than the original blog posts, to keep it up to date and give more value for those who decide to take the step and buy it. And it's easy for you to print it out and have it next to you when doing the tasks.

How 31DBBB Works?

On each of the 31 days, the workbook

• gives a task for that day
• explains why it's important to do that task
• tips on how to do the task
• additional notes and extra bonus tips for the task

This format works well, as it gives clear action to do. The 31DBBB workbook takes you step-by-step through the tasks and it is easy to see why the book is so popular.

There's no fluff, just pure content.

• The tasks are easy to understand.
• The tasks are easy to implement because the book tells you EXACTLY what you need to do.
• The tasks make sense, because the book explains clearly why the task at hand will make your blog better.

In short, each day or task is formatted like this:

• DO THIS - TODAY - WHY - Here is HOW you do it.

31DBBB Workbook Will Help You

• Improving the focus of your blog
  • Writing an elevator pitch for your blog
  • Analyzing a top blog in your niche
• Creating better content
  • Come up with 10 post ideas
  • Writing a list post
  • Writing a link post
  • Writing an opinion post
  • Writing a review post
• Keeping your blog fresh
  • Creating an editorial calendar
  • Updating a key page on your blog
  • Interlinking your old blog posts
  • Breathing life into an old post
  • Hunting for dead links
• Building a community to your blog
  • Paying special attention to a reader
  • Calling your readers to action
  • Solving a problem your reader has
• Promoting your blog
  • Joining a forum and participating
  • Promoting a blog post
  • Leaving blog comments on other blogs
  • Boosting your blog's profile and readership

And more, like building relationships with other bloggers, monitoring your blog statistics and planning the next steps for your blog.

This book won’t show you how to start a blog, how to install and configure plugins and widgets, or how to choose a blog topic. If you already have a blog, you’ve written couple of posts, the book is great. It won’t show you how to build a blog; it will show you how to build a better blog.

How to Use 31DBBB Workbook

Even that the book is called "31 Days" to build a better blog, it could also be called 31 tasks that will improve your blog. You can use the book as the original 31DBBB was, doing one task a day, or do the tasks at your own pace. Or just read the book and make your own way to incorporate these tasks into your blogging schedule.

If you choose to go through the book in 31 days, you can then start again, making it a monthly habit. During the next cycles you can skip some tasks if you have already done it, or check if you can improve what you've already done related to that task.

I suggest you take the book and go through it once, doing one task each day and see how it feels. I'm sure you'll see great results and can then decide whether to turn the tasks into a monthly habit. Or you might notice certain tasks working exceptionally well for you and you can put more effort into that.

How to Buy the 31DBBB Workbook

As it is a downloadable eBook, you can be reading the book right after you order. Darren sells the workbook through E-junkie.com, which uses PayPal to process the payments - You don't need a PayPal account, if you don't have one, you can pay with credit card too.

You don't necessarily need a PayPal account, but for the future, you might as well open one while at it. The payment at PayPal is secure, and your purchase is backed-up by Darren's money back guarantee, if you for some reason are not satisfied after a month.

1. Go to the official 31DBBB -page at Problogger.net, check the full information and click on the "Add to Cart" there. Or you can buy the eBook from E-Junkie right now:

• New window will open and
• take you to the E-Junkie.com shopping cart where you can finalize the order.

2. The E-Junkie shopping cart looks like this:

3. Check the order

• the 31DBBB workbook should be there and the amount is automatically set at one.
• change the amount if you're ordering several

4. Click on the PayPal icon for checkout

5. You'll be taken to the PayPal for the payment:

On PayPal, either login to your account and proceed as instructed, or you can pay with credit card (and bank account on some countries) even if you don't have PayPal account.

6. After payment, you'll be taken back to Darren's site and you will receive an email with the link so you can download your eBook.

Download the eBook and you're done. Now you can read the book on your computer, or print it out, put it in a nice binder and start taking action.

My thoughts: Awesome book for any blogger

I bought the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog workbook when it was published and I think it is the best investment I have made as a blogger. For less than $20 it has improved my blogging and blogs tremendously and more than any other book or resource I’ve read about blogging.

Following the 31DBBB tasks gave this blog a flying start with thousands of visitors after just two months and the same advice keeps improving all my blogs today.

With that, I am proud to recommend it to you (and use my affiliate link). 31DBBB is more than worth what it costed (I bought it with $19.95, now the price is $29.99 USD), and I'd been happy to pay more if it would've costed more (but it didn't, so it was a steal).

I think each and every blogger, new or old, should go through the 31 days / tasks and improve their blogs and blogging skills in the process. Even if you don't go through the book over 31 days and just read it, you will enjoy better blogging results and understand what it takes to build a great blog.

When you take what you learn, either following the book step by step or on your own, taking action, you will have a better blog. Start here: 31 Days to Build a Better Blog.

Summary

Rating

Head out and buy your here: 31 Days to Build a Better Blog -eBook

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the book, and how it has helped your blog. So if you've already bought the book or decide to buy it now, join the discussion below!

1. Beyond Blogging Review: A great book about successful bloggers
2. Beginner’s Guide to Twitter Review: Good info for new users
3. 8 Free eBooks That Have Helped Me a Lot

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
31DBBB Review: A must-have book for all bloggers

Total Visitors per Traffic Source

Since this blog was launched on 20th of May 2009, my blog has got total of 18610 visits. Based on Google Analytics, my traffic sources were as follows:

• Search Engines 10956 (58.87%)
• Direct Traffic 3783 (20.33%)
• Referring Sites 3,692 (19.84%)
• Other 179 (0.96%)

Here's the breakdown based on my own analysis (direct traffic via bookmarks or RSS feeds is not included):

Blog commenting and being active in social media sites has other benefits, but search engines CRUSH the other two on pure traffic volume:

• 662 visits via my blog comments, from which 486 were unique. 291 of all the visitors stayed on site (didn't bounce).
• 1588 visits via social networks. 952 unique visitors and 400 didn't bounce.
• 10955 visits from the search engines. 8698 unique visitors. 2569 read more than one page.

These are just my numbers, but if one would shoot for sheer traffic volume, e.g. for a niche site, it would be OK to forget social media and blog commenting as a way to gain traffic and only use them to build couple of links and then put all effort and focus on SEO.

Blog Commenting Traffic

I received most blog commenting traffic from Problogger.net, Entrepreneurs Journey, Daily Blog Tips, the Copyblogger and JohnChow.com. Those were also the sites I probably commented the most.

Traffic-wise, two of my blog comments in stand out: the one on this post at Problogger and the other on this post at Entrepreneurs Journey, with the two delivering several hundreds of visitors combined, which goes on to prove that my advanced blog commenting strategy worked.

The first comment was a spot on addition to the original post with an in-comment link to additional info here on my blog and the latter, in addition to being a valuable comment, benefited from being the first comment for that post.

For effective blog commenting:

• Comment to add to the discussion first, everything else is a bonus
• Spam comments will not send you any traffic, so forget it
• Be among the first ones to comment (if the comments are displayed with the oldest on top)
• Leave meaningful and value-adding comments
• Use your real name
• Always adopt to the blog comment rules of the blog
• Link back to your site from the comment text only if it is really relevant, and if the comment policy allows such links. Make sure the comment itself is beneficial even without the link, which is for additional information.

Social Media Traffic

The sites I counted as social media traffic were: Twitter, Digg, Reddit, Stumbleupon, Blogengage, Delicious and Facebook + a whole load of tiny streams of traffic from other social networking sites. This is somewhat limited view on "social media", as blogs, video sites, forums and all can be considered to be social media, but this is what I used this time. Here's my breakdown of the traffic (as requested by Phaoloo at Ask Zemalf -post.):

• Twitter: 913
• Digg: 185
• Reddit: 180
• StumbleUpon: 154
• BlogEngage: 72
• Delicious: 35
• Facebook: 32

From the social networks, I'm most active on Twitter. BlogEngage has been great source for the couple of months I've used it. Facebook I've kept for for friends and family I know well, which explains the relatively small numbers from that (vs. Twitter for example).

Time Spent on Site

The visitors from blog commenting and social media did spend more time on site than the ones from the search engines, with blog commenting being the clear winner.

When someone spends more time on your blog, e.g. actually reads the whole post, views multiple pages, leaves a comment, the blog is doing better. And the likelihood of that visitor subscribing increases.

Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is a term used in web site traffic analysis. It essentially represents the percentage of initial visitors to a site who only read the one page they land on and "bounce" away to a different site, rather than continue on to other pages within the same site. The formula used to calculate bounce rate is: Bounce Rate: Total Number of Visits Viewing One Page / Total Number of Visits. - Wikipedia

My blogs average bounce rate for the studied time period was 73,93%, which is horrible, and I didn't go into deeper analysis why it's so high at this time. The bounce rates for the different traffic sources were:

• Blog commenting: 56,04%
• Social media: 74,81%
• Search engines: 76,55%

Conclusion

• Search engines (and SEO) is SUPERIOR on traffic volume
• Social media is great way to build relationships, but traffic-wise it might be disappointing
• Blog commenting is OUTSTANDING in terms of gaining laser-targeted traffic in addition to other benefits, like getting exposure on other blogs and forming relationships with other bloggers

Even that search engines ruled bringing in the majority of the traffic and in the end social media is more of a relationship building than traffic building method, the analysis also showed that blog commenting is outstanding when it comes to keeping the new visitors:

• The bounce rate for the traffic that came via blog commenting is 25% lower than the traffic from social networks and the search engines.
• The time spent on site is 20-30% higher for blog commenting traffic than for the social media sites and the search engines.

Unfortunately I didn't have advanced blog tracking in place, e.g. how many RSS subscribers my blog received from these three sources. And one must consider how much to invest on the efforts. I did spend way more time on blog commenting and social media than I did for search engines.

However, I'm guessing that the subscription rate is higher for blog commenting than for the other sources. And new visitors from social media are more likely to follow me on Twitter for example. If someone has had sophisticated tracking in place, it would be really interesting to see proof of this, so please, leave a comment if you do.

Also note that there are many great ways to increase blog traffic I didn't utilize during 2009 to full extend:

• Guest posting (writing posts to other blogs than yours) is the most important one and reportedly the best way to get referral traffic, in addition to getting incoming links
• Podcasting and video have the potential to deliver traffic in thousands, even millions, and your regular readers will appreciate non-text content as well.
• Being active in related forums is huge for some bloggers
• Article marketing is similar to guest posting, giving you exposure outside your blog and providing links for SEO and some traffic as well

Discussion

Now that you've seen my data and analysis, it's time to continue this on the comments:

• What is your experience or example on effectiveness of different blog promotion techniques and traffic sources?

1. How to Increase Blog Traffic
2. Choosing a blog topic – Lessons from Mashable vs TechCrunch
3. How To Choose a Domain Name for a Niche Site [Q&A]

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
Web Site Traffic Analysis – Lessons for Blog Promotion

The people who responded this question were gathered from various blogging forums and via Twitter. The results might not be "statistically significant", but that wasn't the purpose here, as we do have the mother of all blogging surveys, state of the blogosphere giving detailed data about blogging right now.

The data does show what the 40+ bloggers who answered the survey think about various aspects of blogging, including why they blog, how they promote their blogs, what kind of promotions has worked and what hasn't. And the advice given in the two open questions near the end gave some great advice for beginning bloggers.

10 Picks from the Blogging Survey

The detailed results are included in this post too, but here the most interesting results I hand-picked from the data.

1. The number#1 advice for beginning bloggers:
   • Follow your passion, keep going and never give up.
2. 89% blog because they like writing
3. Nearly 80% blog to make some money
4. Bloggers very rarely promote their blogs via press releases (My analysis, not a direct data)
5. Nearly all bloggers promote their blogs via Twitter
6. Only 13% promote their blog via Digg often or very often
7. Blog commenting, forums and guest blogging are the best (and/or most used) blog promotions methods (in addition to the social networks)
8. 85% of the bloggers blog about personal experiences
9. 97% blog to provide information
10. 70% blog about their interests or hobbies

What Advice Would You Give to a New Blogger Just Starting Out?

At the end of the survey, I asked couple of open ended questions, the first one being "If you would give one advice to a new blogger just starting out, what that advice would be?", and here's what people answered:

• Be yourself.
• Relax and enjoy the ride
• Persist, persist
• If you blog in English, learn how to use the English language correctly!
• Just keep doing what you like. If you feel passionated, but when you first start out, and you make no money on it. Don't worry, it will come overtime.
• Post post post .. on a singular topic
• Hang in there and don't be discouraged. Be consistent. You are not in competition with anyone but yourself.
• Connect and engage with other bloggers
• Choose a niche where you have something unique to contribute and that you have passion for, and get started
• Follow your Passion
• Don't give up!
• Plan on doing it for the long term.
• Get a mentor to help you understand the nuances of the blogging world.
• Post consistently, no matter what!
• Keep going!
• Take a blogging course before making any commitments.
• Do your homework first. Don't start blogging blindly. Have a purpose
• Focus on creating great content.
• Be authentic. Don't try to write about things you cannot truly relate to. Don't try too hard, just be yourself.

What Would You Do Differently If You Would Start Blogging Now?

I asked: "If you would not blogging already, would you start now and what would you do differently this time?", and here's what the bloggers had to say...

• Would have started a long time ago.
• I would concentrate on building a community
• I would have liked to have had Become a Blogger, so I could get a better foundation. Now I am going back and fixing certain things. But this doesn't mean I should not have started
• I may or may not do things differently though. I prefer to be me, and that comes out naturally through what I do. I wouldn't do it any different. ;)
• Get a killer blog site from the beginning. Implement opt-in with Aweber from day 1
• I would pick a specific niche and stick to one topic.
• I would start now but I would be more careful about a domain name, I would spend more time researching my blog subject(s) and I would take a blogging course first.
• I would have started sooner and I would have done more research before posting my first article.
• Focus on creating great content and building subscribers
• Build email list
• Choose niche market more wisely as to something I would really enjoy writing about.

Blogging Survey Results

Here are the detailed results from the survey. I didn't include all the hard data, but combined the most relevant answers.

Demographics

• 43 responses
• 60% males, 40% females
• 43% were 34 years old or younger

I've been blogging for...

• 33,3% Less than 1 year
• 23,8% 1-2 years
• 28,6% 3-5 years
• 0% 10 years or more

My annual income from blogging is...

• 86% Less than $30k
  • 69% Less than $1k
• 10% More than $30,000
• The rest would rather not tell

I mostly blog about...

• 22,5% Arts/culture
• 65% Business
• 47,5% Creative Work
• 37,5% Education/academics
• 22,5% Entertainment
• 40% Family/friends
• 70% Interest/hobbies
• 85% Personal experience
• 7,5% Politics/politicians
• 25% Sports
• 62,5% Technology/science

I rarely or never blog about...

• 77,5% Arts/culture
• 35% Business
• 52,5% Creative Work
• 62,5% Education/academics
• 77,5% Entertainment
• 60% Family/friends
• 30% Interest/hobbies
• 15% Personal experience
• 92,5% Politics/politicians
• 75% Sports
• 37,5% Technology/science

I blog...

• 21% because blogging is my main source of income
• 62% because I can access it wherever I am
• 62% because I can publish at any time
• 89% because I like writing
• 18% because it helps pass the time
• 53% because it is easy to update
• 32% to document my life
• 68% to feel like I am part of a community
• 53% to keep a record of what I learn
• 24% to keep in touch with my family/friends
• 41% to keep track of what I am doing
• 79% to make some money
• 77% to meet new people
• 71% to practice my writing
• 82% to present information on my interests
• 97% to provide information
• 65% to refine my thinking
• 97% to share information useful to other people
• 77% to show my personality
• 62% to tell others about myself
• 6% when I have nothing better to do

Blog Promotions Methods

Ranked from best to worst (whether or not bloggers who answered the survey use the method in question probably affects the ranking, thus the ones on the top of the list are the blog promotions methods used the most)

1. Blog Commenting
2. Forums
3. Guest Blogging
4. Video
5. RSS Feed Submissions
6. Article Marketing
7. Podcasting (audio)
8. Blog Directories
9. Teleconference/Webinar
10. Press Releases

Social Networks: I promote my blog via

• Twitter
  • 77% Often or very often
  • 19% Sometimes or rarely
  • 4% Never
• Facebook
  • 65% Often or very often
  • 26% Sometimes or rarely
  • 9% Never
• StumbleUpon
  • 20% Often or very often
  • 55% Sometimes or rarely
  • 25% Never
• Digg
  • 13% Often or very often
  • 55% Sometimes or rarely
  • 32% Never
• Delicious
  • 3% Often or very often
  • 65% Sometimes or rarely
  • 32% Never

What I Learned from this Blogging Survey

Apart from the answers provided above, I personally learned a lot from making surveys and I'll be feeling lot more confident in the future when doing more surveys. If you haven't done a survey before, I recommend you do it right away, to get a feel of making surveys as you'll learn a ton about getting feedback from those who answer the survey in addition to the actual survey results.

• Getting people to answer a survey is hard, especially if you don't have your own mailing list
• If you don't have a mailing list, ask people to answer the survey via Twitter, Facebook and Forums (or that's what I did at least)
• When making a survey, keep the questions simple and quick to answer
• Everyone should make a practise survey and test different kinds of questions to learn what works and what doesn't
• Always include open questions too (at the end), you'll get a lot out of the open comments and answers

Thank you for everyone who answered the survey. If you have anything to add, e.g. your advice for beginning bloggers or just a comment about the results and the survey, feel free to add your input through the comments.

1. 100 Bloggers Survey
2. How to Take Your Blogging to the Next Level
3. 42 Most Popular Blog Posts About Blogging 2009

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
Blogging Survey Results

Summary: Beyond Blogging is a well written book with inspiring stories and actionable items for bloggers who want to take their blogging to the next level. Rating: 3/5

The book is available as print version (paperback, $22), Kindle-edition ($22) and downloadable eBook that comes with an additional workbook ($47). Check the book out, get the free chapter and find other good stuff at the official site: beyondbloggingproject.com.

Beyond Blogging - The Secrets to Blogging Success, Volume 1

Beyond Blogging - The Secrets to Blogging Success (Volume 1) consists of interviews, stories and case-studies of 15 A-list bloggers, revealing the strategies and work these people have put into their blogs, effectively making their blogging a solid foundation for profitable business.

I think it's a great book with inspiring stories and the hard work these bloggers have put into their blogs shines through. The writers, Nathan Hangen and Mike Cliffe -Jones have done a great job on finding all the bloggers (each with their own story, each with their own unique abilities), picking their brains and putting it all into this book.

15 Interviews and Case-Studies

From the Beyond Blogging you can learn

• How Gary Vaynerchuk took his passion for wines online, turned a family wine store into a multimillion business and eventually became one of the most influential figures in the online world.
• How Pete Cashmore built Mashable into the top 10 blog in the world it is now, potentially making it one of the most profitable websites in the world.
• How Darren Rowse established himself as “the” Problogger, becoming the most well known source of information for bloggers around the world

And 12 similar stories and lessons more from the likes of Chris Guillebeau, Chris Brogan, Chris Garrett, Penelope Trunk, David Risley, John Chow, Shama Kabani, Michael Dunlop, Jonathan Fields, iJustine (Justine Ezarik), Steve Pavlina and Brian Clark.

Beyond Blogging goes through this impressive list of the blogging superstars and gives us a look deep into the hearts of their blogs and businesses. We’ll learn how these bloggers started their blogs, how they have come where there are now and how they have not only built successful blogs, but also how they turned blogging into business, effectively making money doing the things they are most passionate about.

The authors of the book, Nathan Hangen and Mike Cliffe Jones (also known as MikeCJ), have done a good job capturing the stories, the personalities, their individual strengths and weaknesses, and their blogging advice into the pages of this book. The book is well written and easy to read, filled with useful information for anyone interested in blogging and/or online business.

What else is in the book

Reading the book and learning what drives these people and how they focused that drive into blogging and business was an inspiring read for me. The burning passion for what they do is what all these 15 bloggers have in common, and the book does a good work delivering that passion to the readers.

It also shows how much work these bloggers have put into their blogs. It's not like they "just made it". All bloggers have worked day and night on their blogs. They all found their passion and have went all the way with it.

That is what makes this book a great read; it is not your typical blogging guide or "how-to" manual, as the core of the book is the people, the bloggers, and their stories. With the book, we can get 15 behind the scenes documentaries into the blogs and businesses of these successful bloggers.

This opportunity alone makes the book worth reading, as if you want to be successful, find someone who has achieved the results you want and copy what they do and you’ll achieve the same results. Tony Robbins has been quoted to say something like that, and he’s right, you’ll just have to know what and how to "copy".

To assist in this, and help the readers in building their own blogging business, the last 40 pages of the 200+ pages, pull together the lessons learned from the interviews and case-studies to form the a 5 step blogging blueprint.

The blueprint doesn't go into details of how to do something (e.g. setup a blog, etc.), but it focuses on "what to do" instead. The blueprint goes through the planning, strategy and execution on how to take your blogging to the next level, first building a platform for the success and going all the way to having something to sell to earn a respectable income.

The key in the blueprint, and the whole book, is to treat your blogging as a business and acting accordingly. It takes strategic planning and hard work to go beyond blogging, and without knowing where to start and what to do the whole process might be overwhelming, but the step-by-step plan breaks this into bite-sized chunks that you can start implementing right now.

With the electronic version of the book, you also get an extra Beyond Blogging workbook, which walks through the 5-step process with instructions and questions, giving good actionable steps to take.

How this book can help you

If you are interested in making a living online, perhaps planning to build an Internet business, from scratch or taking your existing offline business and unleash it to the World Wide Web, reading the book will help you get started on the right track, following others who have successfully done it already.

For those already into blogging, this is a perfect opportunity to learn from the masters. The path to blogging success has not been explained to this detail before, through the stories and examples from the people behind and front of their blogs, making a living through blogging and the platform they’ve built for their businesses and themselves with it.

As said, Beyond Blogging is not your typical blogging guide, even on the blogging blueprint part. This book won’t teach you how to blog on the technical level, how to setup a blog and all that, but it does give you a lot of information on blogging as way to make a living.

The book won’t tell you exactly what you must do, but it helps you to find your own voice, your own passion and gives you a push to the right direction with it. If you are looking for the shortcuts, the bright shiny objects that will turn everything into gold, this book is not it. But it will help you realize that the closest thing to a silver bullet to success is what you see in the mirror.

Reading the book is just a beginning. It will not do the hard work for you (it is, just a book after all), but it will give you clear understanding on what it takes to make it and lays down the path for you to follow. Where that path takes you, is up to you and you alone. When you’re ready to take the first step and begin walking that path, this book will be a great guide for you.

Is the book any good?

In order to write the review in time for the release, I received a free review copy of the Beyond Blogging from Mike and Nathan. I liked the book and was ready to recommend it to you. But since I liked what I saw on the review copy, I went and purchased the final copy when the doors were open.

After buying the eBook myself, and re-reading it, I felt ready to finish the review and have no problem using my affiliate link to recommend it. I think it's a good value for 47 dollars that gives you the downloadable electronic book and the workbook.

The print version, which is on sale for $22, was not available back then I bought the eBook, but for you - I'd say the value is even better on that one. The workbook is great, but I think $25 is too much just for the workbook, when the book is available for $22.

Anyway, the book gave me a lot of information, including the 5-step roadmap and the workbook to walk me through it. If I don't put it into action, I got to read a good book with inspiring stories, but not much else happens.

It takes a lot of hard work the "6-figure blogging success" to become reality. If you are ready put in the work and effort it takes to make it big, this is the book you want to read and I can recommend the book to you. Without taking action, it's "just" an awesome book and a great read.

At minimum you’ll get a entertaining book sharing the stories of successful bloggers, but also an opportunity to take what you learn and start working with the blueprint to build your own business and take your blogging to the next level.

So is Beyond Blogging -book worth a read? I think it is. Check the book out, get the free chapter and find other good stuff at the official site: beyondbloggingproject.com.

Summary

Rating

To get your own copy of the Beyond Blogging -book, visit the official site at beyondbloggingproject.com now.

p.s. If you would like to promote the book yourself, here's the affiliate info.

1. 31DBBB Review: A must-have book for all bloggers
2. How to Take Your Blogging to the Next Level
3. 100 Bloggers Survey

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
Beyond Blogging Review: A great book about successful bloggers

Some visitors might subscribe to your blog via RSS, and maybe leave a blog comment that they enjoyed the post. You write your next blog post, and the cycle begins again. But what then?

What Happens Next?

What happens when your blog has 100 subscribers? What happens when you have 500?

For many blogs, the answer is… nothing.

Apart from writing the next post. And the next. And the one after that.

If you are blogging for fun, to share your thoughts with others, this might be enough.

But will you have the motivation to keep going if there is no bigger purpose?

Probably not.

This is why millions of blogs that are started each year, end up closing doors when the blogger loses motivation.

To keep going, you need to go beyond blogging. You need to think about blogging as a business.

Take Your Passion and Go Beyond Blogging

What if you could earn a living by doing the things you enjoy the most, doing the things you are most passionate about?

Going beyond blogging means taking that passion and turning it into a way to make a living.

To earn money, you need to sell something. Whether its products or services, you have to offer something for sale. When you are offering something for sale, you have a business.

This can be anything from selling advertising on your blog, directly or through contextual advertising, promoting affiliate products or selling your own products and services.

When you think about your blog as a business, each blog post gets a purpose. Each blog post now promotes your business, and has the potential to earn you money.

And the reason why you want to earn money is the key.

For some the money is the purpose. For others, money is just a way to support the purpose, the lifestyle of your dreams.

When blogging becomes a way to support your ultimate lifestyle, you will have no trouble finding motivation.

It’s a different mindset, but this is what the most successful bloggers do. They have taken their passion and turned it into a profitable business.

It’s time for all of us to take that step too and change the way we think about blogging.

2010 and Beyond

There’s a new eBook, called Beyond Blogging, sharing the ins and outs behind 15 top-notch bloggers and their businesses, how they are doing what they doing and how they make hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars every year.

I have gotten to know both the authors of the Beyond Blogging –eBook, MikeCJ and Nathan Hangen, through Twitter and their blogs.

Nathan was recently featured in a blog post by David Risley, a problogger featured in the eBook, when David listed 4 bloggers doing it right. I couldn’t agree more.

And Mike, a published author and professional blogger himself, is doing equally good job helping people to get started on Twitter, giving valuable advice about blogging and about making money blogging. Mike is the kind of fellow who keeps it real, without all the hype.

With these two authoring the eBook, after buying the eBook myself and reading it, I'm proud to recommend it to you (and use my affiliate link). Now that the eBook is available for everyone, I've also written a full review of Beyond Blogging, so you might want to check that out too.

To give you just an example about the things to come and where blogging is going, check out the free report called 2010 and Beyond – The Truth about Blogging in the Next Decade.

I read the '2010 and Beyond' PDF the morning it was released and it was the driving force for me to write this post. The 15-page report is free, quick and easy read and I hope it will be as inspirational to you as it was to me.

Go and download the free report now.

1. Beyond Blogging Review: A great book about successful bloggers
2. Lazy blogging – the art of doing less
3. Blogging Survey Results

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
How to Take Your Blogging to the Next Level

Many English natives take so many things for granted, that I wanted to share some of the challenges we "foreigners" phase online, running our blogs and building our presence in the social media.

I also talk about the different choices a non-native English speaking people have to make online, whether it's how we use social media or run our Internet businesses.

If you are a native English-speaker, you don't have to do any of this, you just go with it. But many who are not, struggle with certain things that everyone should understand.

Especially those who coach and give advice online need to understand that not everyone of us live in the US or UK, not all of us have the obvious choice to start blogging in English and many have hard time deciding should they do their updates on Facebook in English or their own language.

I wrote this article to both raise awareness about this fact and also to help those who are not native English speakers to decide whether they should "go English" or stick to their mother tongue.

Being a Non-Native English Speaker Online

I'm an alien,
I'm a legal alien;
I'm a Non-Englishman in the net.
Whoa
I'm an alien,
I'm a legal alien;
I'm an Non-Englishman in the net.

In social networks, like Twitter or Facebook, non-native English speakers have to decide whether or not they go with multiple languages or do they stick with one.

Being a non-native English speaker, living in a country where majority of the people know English, but it's not an official language by any means, decisions on the language to use must be made when we go online.

Let me give you a little background about me and where I'm coming from.

I'm a blogger. I'm from Finland, so Finnish is my native language. I speak and write English fluently (or I think I do).

I blog mainly in English, but I do have blogs in Finnish as well.

I'm using my personal Facebook profile to follow my friends and family, in Finnish. I have a couple of non-Finnish friends there that have little to no clue about most of my updates.

On Twitter, I'm using English, apart from very rare updates in Finnish. If I'd use Finnish more, the majority of my followers wouldn't understand what I say, so it wouldn't make much sense to fill their feed with characters their computers would struggle displaying and only a handful of people would understand.

These were all choices I had to make. I had to choose whether or not to go with English on this blog. I had to choose to keep my Facebook in Finnish, not English.

Blogging in English. Or Not?

For blogging, I made the choice because I want to reach a wide, global audience, but also because using English makes things a lot easier in many ways.

Let's take different blog promotions tactics for example, like article marketing or social networking.

The major article directories only accept articles in English. Again, the non-English websites have to find other means for promotion or use less authoritative services instead.

Many social bookmarking sites don't accept submissions in a "foreign" languages and non-English blogs have to rely on smaller, not widely used, social networking sites to promote their sites.

Also, search engines have hard time understanding these "foreign" languages. Getting a non-English site properly indexed and optimized properly for search engines is hard. It is a lot harder than optimizing English sites for search engines.

It's like this for the minor languages, like Finnish which I have the most experience in. It's hard to do keyword research for example, when you're only getting enough data for single keywords. When more specific phrases show no statistics or search volume – you’re out of luck.

Think of it like getting your blog indexed and ranked high for "money", because that is the only word you get statistics for. For related keywords and phrases, you would be guessing and build upon experience, not tools.

I assume it's a lot easier with more widely used non-English languages, but this is my experience.

As the potential traffic is much smaller and I'd have to work twice as hard to get it, it made my choice very easy.

Your mileage may vary.

Localization?

Another interesting aspect is localization. Whether or not to do it, and how to do it. Should you first build your blog, business and products in English? And then translate or localize them later. Or should you do it the other way around?

This depends on the main language you choose, based on the target market you have.

But remember, if you do localization or translations, you have to do them well. Just like non-native English blogger needs to write proper English (which I hopefully manage already), turning your English eBook into Spanish yourself, when you've learned your Spanish by watching telemundos is probably a bad idea.

Either way, first concentrate on getting it right in one language. Worry about translations and such later, and get a professional to do them.

The same goes for moving from another language to English.

Lost in Translation

For global businesses, the first language of choice is always English, all other languages are localization.

The larger companies offer their services in multiple languages, as for some languages, like Spanish, Chinese or even French, there are plenty of people who understand and speak the language and it makes sense to offer services in these languages.

But for tiny countries and languages like Finland and Finnish, the maximum audience we can reach is really limited. Businesses offering local services in Finland go with Finnish of course, but for global businesses there's very little ROI from localizing to non-major languages.

As a result, many services try localization through automated translations.

And fail miserably.

In Finland, large majority of the people speak English, some say that even more than our secondary language, Swedish. Because of this, the Finnish are used to use global services and use mainly English online.

Now I speak for myself, but for non-local businesses, I want to use them in English. I want to see what others are seeing, not some poorly translated and localized offering.

It annoys me to run into sites that are perfect in English, but based on location recognition, the site decides that I need the site in my own language.

The automatic translations are posted to various humour / "fail" sites, which probably isn't the desired outcome of their translation work.

In short, forced translations are bad. Let the visitor, reader or customer CHOOSE what language she wants to use.

Even Google gets it wrong.

The search engine tries to deliver localized results even if I most of the time want to do a global search.

I have to use Firefox addons to keep Google from redirecting me to the Finnish mirror to be able to use the global search.

Some services give me so badly translated user interface in Finnish, that I'm having hard time finding how to switch the language.

Choices

So what do you do as a non-native English speaker when you want to make it online?

Perhaps you're just getting started, considering to start a blog, and on your way to become more active in the social networks.

Maybe you want to start an Internet business. Or start promoting your existing business online.

It comes down to what are you trying to achieve and what market or niche you choose to focus on. Only a handful of languages are spoken around the world, even to a small degree, namely Spanish and of course English. Other languages are more local.

In most cases, the market potential is a lot bigger when choosing English, as it is the most global language. In small countries, and small languages, the market is local.

• If you want a global audience and market potential, choose English.
• If you want more focused market, choose some other language.

As I mentioned earlier, there are some things that will be harder if you don't choose English, but on the other hand the competition might be much less fierce in the non-English markets.

So, you have to make choices...

• Go local or target global, international market?
• Should you use both languages, perhaps even run two different sites around the same topic?
• Will you use social networks in English, or your mother tongue, or both?
• Should you have separate accounts for your own language and another for English?
• Do you keep Facebook for personal contacts, family and friends, in your native language like I did?

You have to make these choices, depending on your goals.

• If you're targeting a global audience, choose English, for everything; the blog, social networks.
• If your topic or business is local, go with the local language.

Do note that in the Internet, local means everyone speaking that language, so the "local" market is a whole different thing in China for example, than it is in Finland for example.

Getting Better

If you end up choosing to go with English, you got to get good with it.

Choosing whether you blog and use social networks in English or some other language is one thing, but for some, it's also a matter of learning English, getting better at writing in English and so on.

If you feel uncomfortable with your English skills, but would like to start a blog in English, I recommend that you start reading a lot of blogs (in English).

Start reading books and magazines in English. Watch TV without subtitles or with English audio if you usually watch them dubbed.

And start writing! And write a lot. You don't have to publish them at this point, but write, write and then write some more. Start a practice blog in a free service and write your thoughts about things you're interested in. Get connected with native speakers and ask for their feedback.

If you're basic English skills need improvement, consider enrolling into an English class either online or offline.

While you're improving your English skills, you can start blogging in your native language, to get the feel for blogging.

Engage in conversations in the social networks and forums, again in English, to practice your English even more.

Keep doing this. Read, write, practice, have conversations.

That's what I've been doing. I read, write and talk in English whenever possible. I keep writing in English and improve my skills constantly. That's the only way to make it, as a non-native English speaker, writer and a blogger.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and I hope you enjoyed the read. And thank you to Johan (@maresjohan on Twitter) from for asking the question and suggesting this topic in the "ask Zemalf" post.

Do you have similar experiences like me?

Do you have a non-English blog? What have been the biggest challenges for you?

I'd be very interested in hearing your opinion on this so please, join the discussion on the comments below.

1. Blogging Survey Results

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
Blogging as a Non-Native English Speaker

I entered this contest with an SEO article and in the end my post was awarded the "silver medal" in the contest, the 2nd place, which was a great honor, as the competition was touch. As the winners were decided based on reader feedback in form of re-tweets, blog comments and votes at BlogEngage.com, I own the thank to all of you who supported me and my post on the contest!

The Famous Bloggers Club hosted a blog article competition, a Famous Bloggers Contest. The contest was named Best of the Best and the participants were to write and submit their contest articles to the their blog.

The articles were given points based on the votes at BlogEngage,  re-tweets and comments on the published post.

The contest was sponsored by these individuals and businesses:

• DailyBlogTips
• BlogEngage
• ElegantThemes
• StudioPress
• IBlogZone
• Twitfever
• My Life Thinking
• Jena Isle’s Random Thoughts
• Zebida World
• Happy Making
• Anne On Life
• How to Make Money Online
• Press75
• Jaypee Online
• Free PSP Wallpapers

The prizes included cash prizes, WordPress themes, advertisement spots on different blogs, etc. The value of the prizes in the contest exceeded $1200 already.

I'm entered the competition and this post was a part of the entry process and a chance for me to inform you about the upcoming guest post beforehand. (and now that the contest is finished, tell about the results)

I encourage all of you bloggers to enter this kind of competitions as well if you get the chance, it's a great opportunity to get a guest post published and as a bonus, there's possibility to win some cool prizes.

Guest Posting with Benefits

Guest posting alone is a great way to get exposure outside your own blog and contests like this are even better. You'll get a little extra exposure because there are other bloggers involved and you get a chance to get connected with new bloggers you might now otherwise engage with.

And of course, there are great prizes on the competitions, like free themes, advertising spots for a month, etc. - so it's like writing a guest post but with extra benefits. For me, this competition was not so much about the prizes, but the chance to participate in the fun and give back to the blogosphere, and also get some extra exposure for my own blog, just like with "normal" guest posts.

Here's the link to my guest post for the contest:

13 Essential On-Page SEO Tips for Blogs

To find out more about the contest (now closed), check the Famous Bloggers Contest page.

2nd Place on Famous Bloggers Club Contest

My guest post was awarded the 2nd place in the contest! Check the Famous Bloggers Club Contest 2010 results to see the other winners. Thank you for everyone for great support on the contest, for the re-tweets, comments on the post and votes at BlogEngage.com.

I feel honored to get such a recognizition and as this is the first award/honor to Zemalf.com, it feels even greater. The silver podium was a great ending for the year 2009, but I feel it's just a starting point. I'm working on to make 2010 a great year and I will put even more effort on writing more quality articles.

Once more, thank you and here's to all of you and I wish you the ultimate success on 2010 and beyond!

1. My New Design Enters the Best WordPress Design 2009 Contest!
2. Top 7 Michael Jackson Songs and Lessons for Bloggers
3. 100 Bloggers Survey

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:
Achievement: Second Place on Famous Bloggers Club Contest