I’ve entered Daily Blog Tips blogging idol 2. This time the competition is to try and get more subscribers, with voting for most effective strategies.
RSS numbers have been increasing well for Economics Help, I’ve had 40 new subscribers since start of competition (for some reason blog is at bottom of scoreboard, but, I’m sure that will be fixed.
By the way, out of 485 subscribers 300 are via email.
Today I am going to try experiment with a direct email box on the top of the sidebar (rather than just link to an email form). If this increases conversion rate I will let you know.
According to recent research, these are some of the most irritating words/ phrases in English language, at moment. All seem to have an element of condescension. However, with all due respect, I wouldn’t give it too much importance to this research, as I mean, at the end of the day, some people really enjoy using them.
At the end of the day
Fairly Unique
I personally
At this moment in time
With all due respect
Absolutely
It’s a nightmare
Shouldn’t of
24/7
It’s not rocket science
Other pet irritants
Actually,
I mean
Example of How To Be Irritating
At the end of the day, I personally feel that at this moment in time, and with all due to the MPC, that we shouldn’t of cut interest rates. I mean, its’ not rocket science that cutting interesting rates absolutely won’t solve the economic recession. Actually, I think the financial crisis is a complete nightmare, which is fairly unique in the annals of economic history. But, at the end of the day, it’s time we had an integrated response.
When you have written a blog post on a topic. Google that topic.
Go through the top 10, top 20 positions and see whether you can:
Leave a relevant comment to your new post
Contact the blogger / website to let them know about your post.
This is an excellent way to get traffic and links. It works quite often, especially if: Your post is actually good and offers something new.
For example, I wrote a post on a cycling event – Brompton World Championships and then googled the phrase
I wrote to one blogger, to say you might be interested in my pictures. He linked to my blog. (note I didn’t ask him to link to it. I just said he might be interested because there is a close correlation)
On another, I left a comment, first one. This brought quite a bit of traffic.
A few months ago, I set up a gardening blog, with my father – Gardeners Tips. We have done all the right things for a new blog
Got some good links.
Created 300 posts.
Reasonable design and good logo.
Although, it is still a fairly new blog I was a little disappointed with traffic levels, given the number of posts and inbound links. I had a look at the posts, and decided the problem was in the titles chosen. My father had chosen good titles, the kind of titles you would get in a gardening magazine or newspaper, but, they are not optimised for search engines. This is how I changed the titles, to hopefully get more traffic.
Note: The first thing I did was to look in the statistics to see which kind of keywords were bring traffic.
The top 3 were:
21.15% growing sunflowers
growing lupins
growing sweet peas
Straight away, we are given a simple idea. ‘Growing’ and ‘plant name’ make a good combination.
Examples of Old Titles and New titles
Big Cuttings for Big Shrubs – “How To Take Cuttings of Shrubs” I didn’t feel anyone would search the first title, but, people do search questions, how to do something.
Asparagus Cultivation UK Style – “Growing Asparagus in UK” – Generally, it is best to use the most common words. Growing will be more common than cultivation.
A Pair of Decorative Herbs – “Decorative Herbs for The Garden” – The second will be searched more frequently
Apple Rootstock – “Types of Apple Rootstock” – Two words is very difficult to rank for; competition is too intense. Here my choice of the extra word Types was because this is what the post is about. Important to remember, the title should reflect the post!
Weedy Ponds – “Dealing With Weeds in Ponds”
Easy Rhubarb in Yorkshire – “Simple Tips for Growing Rhubarb in Yorkshire”
By now, you probably get the idea of how you can make more search engine friendly titles. You may feel it becomes repeitive. But, also don’t forget, it is good to be descriptive and say exactly what it is about. It will make it more likely people will actually click on the link when they see it in search engine results.
Today is 1st October, and I have noticed an increase in the number of people searching for ‘Christmas gift ideas for…’ and ‘10 Tips for Christmas’ e.t.c.
If you have a blog on fly fishing, why not produce a blog post, ‘Christmas gift ideas for fishing enthusiasts’ For the next 3 months, you have a good chance to get some good seasonal traffic. It is also an opportunity to gain some affiliate sales from Amazon or other dealer.
Actually, it’s pretty hard to think of Christmas ideas for bloggers. But, I guess the new Problogger book would make a good start.
I haven’t posted at Net writing for over 2 weeks. My rather feeble excuse is that I have been distracted by the ongoing financial panic which has gripped stock markets, banks, currencies and even the presidential race.
Because there is so much interest in economics and finance I have been blogging more intensely on my finance and economic blog. Traffic and subscribers have both increased and I have been trying to make the temporary boost in traffic a permanent one.
When your blog niche hits the news there are ways to make sure you can benefit from it.
Choose keywords titles that people are searching.
Don’t try to be a news service, you will get underwhelmed if you are a single blogger.
Don’t just be an echo of what you read in newspapers. Offer your own analysis and try to develop a simple style.
Don’t take things for granted people appreciate simple explanations of what is going on.
Do create timeless content amidst the fast changing news. You don’t want to just blog on events which will become outdated soon. Write articles that are timeless whilst using present events as examples.
Do blog. When there is interest capitalise on this. In particular try to encourage people to subscribe by writing a regular writing schedule of excellent content.
When blogging do the most important tasks. For example, at the moment the most important thing is to be writing articles. It is not time for a redesign or leaving comments on other blogs e.t.c.
I write this as something of a slow convert to the importance of RSS subscribers. The reason is that a while back I had gained good traffic levels and a reasonable income without having any RSS subscribers. However, whenever I read articles about blogging, I heard people talk about the importance of RSS subscribers. So slowly I tried focusing more attention on this aspect of blogging.
Why I focus most of my blogging attention on RSS subscribers.
Chasing Google search traffic is a limited business model. What happens if you get a google penalty or you lose rankings?
It is hard to fool Google with artificial links. In this article – quality of links, I mentioned how ‘easy to get links’ are generally not very valuable. The really valuable links are the natural ones from visitors. My feeling is that these natural links are most likely to come from your subscribers. I don’t try to get subscribers just so I can get links. But, if you have hundreds of subscribers, it is likely you will get a lot more natural links than if you have just one (yourself)
RSS subscribers will help vote for you on social bookmarking sites.
RSS subscribers is a sign that people like your blog. This is good for advertisers. It is a sign to Google you are not a spam blog. I wouldn’t be surprised if somehow Google used RSS subscribers in determining rankings. A high subscriber guarantees a certain level of quality. Anyone can try manipulate search rankings but manipulating rss subscribers is much harder.
When we start blogging, we feel like a beggar. We have to work really hard for the smallest amount of traffic and 10cents from Google adsense. But, what keeps us going is the knowledge some bloggers have risen through the ranks from being another anonymous blogger to raking in $1000s a week. These are the evolotionary stages of being a blogger. Maybe you see yourself amongst these different stages
1. What is a blog?
Did anybody read the manual “how to blog” before starting? I doubt it – I didn’t. Most bloggers stumble into blogging without really planning it. In the process we go through alternating periods of excitement and frustration as we learn through our own mistakes.
2. I’m going to do this properly Now.
We leave our free .blogspot domain and finally get a proper domain name, with reliable hosting. We even starting reading other blogs which offer blogging tips. We realise that blogging isn’t as easy as we first imagined, but some bloggers have really made it work for them.
3. Adsense Enthusiasm Stage.
Religiously checking our statistics, we find we have just earnt our first dollar in a day. ! Suddenly our mind jumps into calculation mode. If we can earn 1 dollar from 1 adsense block. If we triple the advertising we can triple our earnings. Then if we increase the number of pages and the number of blogs… well in 6 months we’ll be earning 4 figures a day! In the enthusiasm for adsense dollars, our blog is given 3 really large adsense blocks. To us, these adsense blocks look beautiful because they are going to enable us to retire in 2 years time. The fact this may put off readers conveniently escapes our attention.
4. Blogs spring up like Mushrooms only to fade away.
In our new found enthusiasm, we also start off blogs on every topic we have the slightest interest in. We spend time setting them up, only to realise we do not have time to maintain them properly. Slowly our blogs fall by the wayside, to join the millions of other blogs sharing the same fate.
4. Adsense Reality
What happened? I tripled the amount of adsense ads and now my earnings are going down. Despair sets in – I’m never going to make a living online: 10 hours a day for 50 cents per day. That makes a pretty bad hourly rate, I’d earn more picking sugar cane in Cuba. This stage can often be the end for some bloggers. However, others may be able to get past this stage by being patient and / or the fact they enjoy their blog anyway. A good blogger will learn from his over-enthusiasm; he cuts back on his advertising and concentrates on developing his blog in a sensible / long term fashion.
5. Do anything for that big link.
Our new strategy is to gain readers through commenting on other blogs. We also aspire for that elusive link from an A list blogger, or getting on the front page of Digg. This stage often ends in disappointment; our submissions fly of the new section of digg, before we can even say “digg is so unfair and unjust.” We write to A list bloggers and are bemused as to why they don’t share our enthusiasm for our best article: “top 10 ways to get links” (hint: other people have probably written on this topic already)
Many bloggers are reluctant to spend any money on blogging. There is often a notion that bloggers should be able to do everything and there is no need to spend money. However, if we try to specialise in everything, we spend too long learning how to do things. Yes, a blogger needs to be a jack of all trades, but, there are some things which are better to pay other people to do.
In the beginning of my blogging I designed a lot of my own logos; they weren’t bad, but, they weren’t great. Then I started paying professionals to design a logo. For a relatively modest investment you get a good return.
The visual impact of a blog is important – it says a lot about the standard of your blog; and creates a positive or negative first time impression – depending on how it looks. I do recommend paying for a good logo. This will help your blog stand out from the crowd and draw people to subscribe, bookmark and link to it.
If you’re too tight to pay $50 for a good logo, you will always struggle to become a professional blogger.
