SEO Dance

Newspaper, radio, and television aren’t the only media outlets anymore. Many people turn to the Internet to find out news and events. Incorporating news relevant to your website can not only be a service to your readers but can land you in more topical search results.

When writing a news story, you will have a source for your news be it press release or another news story. First read the story and possibly find a couple of different stories on it or different angles. Next write your story that is 100% your words. Although it is perfectly acceptable in most case to reprint press releases, if there is duplicate content on your website, that page is likely to wind up in Google’s supplemental index. It won’t show up in search results since another source already has the same content.

News gathering is a skill all in itself. You can search popular niche sites similar to yours for their news feed or conduct a broader news search through Yahoo!, Google, or a news organization’s website. A service like the News Room will allow you to find news stories and video, then mesh those into your website. Best of all with the News Room is the chance to earn money through page impressions of the story. So, finding news relevant to your website could potentially mean a bigger interest in the news and might mean a little money in your pocket.

When writing news, write to the upside down pyramid style. This means write the important information first, then rank the other news and write accordingly. This is how newspaper articles are written so that editors who need space can cut the last paragraph(s) of a story without hurting the overall message.

Writing news stories can add interest to your readers and land you in more search results. Whatever the topic of the day is in your niche, write about it. People will be searching for it and wanting to learn more.

Taking part in a meme can be a great way to get your blog out there in front of new visitors. A meme is a themed post that bloggers post about one their web page. They then add their link to the meme originator. Once you’ve added your link, be sure to visit as many participating blogs as possible and leave a comment. Here are a couple of very popular memes that can be tailored to fit almost any blog.

Wordless Wednesday is one of the easiest memes around. Just share a photo or video on your blog then add your link. Wordless Wednesday has hundreds of participants each week. They even have a thread for “early birds” that is posted on Tuesday. So get your links in early for the most visitors. Make sure you have permission to post the photo or video if it isn’t yours.

Photo Hunters is another easy meme that is done on Saturdays. Find a photo that fits the week’s theme and post away. There is a graphic that you can add to your post to direct your visitors to the home of Photo Hunters. Just like with any media content, be certain that you can publish it on your site.

Those are a couple of the more generic ones that can fit on any blog. There are some memes that deal with subjects like cooking, gardening, and writing that can be used on blogs. Bloggers can create their own meme or support a meme by adding a Mr. Linky widget to their post. A lot of memes are listed here, so find one of interest to learn more. If you have an idea for a meme, Mr. Linky is an easy way for visitors to add their link to the meme roll.

A meme can be a lot of fun to do and also increase traffic to your blog. A meme that fits well to your blog will gain return visitors as those taking part in a weightloss meme will be more interested in reading a dieting or fitness blog. Be sure when taking part in a meme to visit as many other participants as possible and leave comments especially on blogs similar to your topic.

A meme is a great traffic boost for the day. Plus it can be fun to visit and comment on other blogs.

meme, meme list

It was only a matter of time that a service like Buy Blog Comments would hit the market. Through Buy Blog Comments, you can buy blog comments on blogs that do not use the no follow tag.

Ever since I had read about the removal of no follow from comment tags, I thought how long will it be before it is exploited? A lot of blog platforms put the no follow tag on links in comments. No follow was developed by Google and basically is a way to mark untrustworthy links. Since a lot of bloggers receive a lot of spam comments, this is a way to keep those links from actually counting towards PageRank.

Since comment spam filters have been developed and bloggers can turn on comment moderation, many are deciding to turn off the no follow from their comments. The idea is to encourage people to comment since they will be gaining a link back to their website. It’s a win-win situation since the blogger may receive more comments and visitors receive a Google “vote” when it comes to PageRank.

A service like Buying Blog Comments is a bad idea. Spam comments will not be tolerated in the blogging community especially on blogs that do follow. My advice is that if you want blog comments, take a few hours a week and search Blog Catalog or Technorati for blogs of interest, then comment on post. A personal, insightful comment will not only help with PageRank on do follow blogs but will possibly earn you more traffic.

nofollow, spam comments

Part of keeping a blog is regularly updating it with new content. Some days this can be a hard task. Maybe there is nothing going on that is blog-worthy for your niche website. Regular visitors will be looking for new content, so it’s important to update each day if possible.

It seems like I think of my best ideas away from the computer. By the time I get back to my computer the great idea is gone. To try and catch some of those ideas, I’ve begun to keep an idea notebook. It’s small enough for me to carry it everywhere. The notebook works best for me since I can quickly jot down my ideas. I just picked up a 50 cent composition notebook and keep a list of ideas for each week. Usually it is enough for me to write down a few words for me to remember the post idea. This method works for me, but there are other ways to keep up those ideas running around in your head.

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Writing an ebook may either sound fun or completely intimidating but having an ebook can help to build your traffic and web credibility. Offering a free ebook is good because most people like free stuff and are more willing to take the offer.

To write an ebook, start with what you have already written. Chances are that you already have the makings of an ebook right there in your archived posts. Start to go through those old posts, categorize them into possible chapters, and update/follow up on any outdated information. Next all you need to do is fill in the gaps for your ebook, leaving you a lot less to write since most of the ebook is already compiled. Using your existing content will help you gain a direction for your ebook and also help to compile the majority of it in an afternoon or a few days.

You can either just offer the ebook for download or tell readers they can get the free ebook by subscribing to your newsletter. This way when they receive a newsletter they will be reminded of your blog or website. It’s a nice way to promote your newsletter and give your readers something in return.

Create your ebook in your word processor of choice, then convert it to a .PDF. If your word processor doesn’t support .pdf, then try using PDFOnline.com that will convert your file for free. An ebook can not only showcase what your website or blog is all about, but can give your readers a free gift for visiting your site.

writing an ebook, ebook

It’s a fairly common practice among bloggers to swap links on their respective blogrolls. Some blogrolls consist of many links that it almost becomes a distraction. When I run across a nice, long blogroll I’m not inclined to click on any of the links to check them out. While links are always good, there should be a balance in link promotion and blog style.

A lot of bloggers have taken to moving their blogrolls to a separate page since over 100 links on any page is just plain overkill and could potentially hurt a blog in terms of SEO. If those blogroll links are on a separate page, then the main blog page can be less cluttered and more appealing.

Since the blogroll is still a huge list, add a description to each link so that visitors will know if the website is something they might find interesting. Links are nice but also having relevant links to your blog are more appealing to visitors and will mean more clicks for those on your blogroll. Isn’t that the purpose of the blogroll anyway? To be a showcase of websites that you find worthy of sharing?

I’m all for link swapping and gaining more exposure. It’s a balance, though, to gain links to your blog while also making sure to add value for your readership.

blogroll

HitTail is a free service that makes it easy to track your long tail search results. When your website is displayed in a search result, HitTail records the information where it can immediately reviewed.

HitTail shows real-time search hits, so there’s no waiting period to find out exactly which search results your web pages are popping up in. Long tail search results are phrases that might not be as popular search terms as shorter keywords but can still drive traffic to a website. HitTail will help you see which long tail search results are already in place in your website.

It’s amazing to see some of the long tail search results. Some users type in quite a few words in a search result but doing so hopefully returns the exact results they are looking for. A search for “free download of Nanny Mania” is much more specific than just simply “Nanny Mania.”

It’s interesting to see just what keywords your posts or webpages will turn up in. It’s a fun tool that gives some very useful information. We all know the importance of search engine traffic. With HitTail it’s easy to find out the search engine results, and since you can reproduce the search you can see exactly where you webpage falls in the results list.

HitTail is one of my favorite SEO tools and can provide a lot of useful information. You can upgrade your HitTail plan, but the basic free service is worth checking out.

HitTail, SEO, search engine results

I spent the holiday trying to get some things accomplished on my blogs that I’ve just been putting off. I updated a few affiliate banners and tweaked a few templates. I was hoping to get more done but we did go to the movies and then spent the evening at our neighbors’ house. Since it feels more like a holiday week, I’ve decided to make a to do list and work to bang out other small projects the rest of the week.

Set Goals. There is one program I want to include on one of my blogs but to qualify I need more traffic. So, for the month of July I’m going to work on building traffic for this one blog. It seems I have a spike in traffic when I do any sort of traffic building effort whether it is taking part in a forum discussion or leaving comments on blogs. This month I plan to have a daily goal of comments left and track my efforts.

Reading articles later. I have a bad habit of finding great articles and making the mistake of not reading them at that moment. I will bookmark to read later. The problem is later never comes. It’ll be weeks before I think about a particular article again. So, if something piques my interest enough to click on it, I plan to read it at that moment.

Updating old Posts. I’ve become quite the spell checker in the past few months. I can’t say I spell checked every single time before then, so I’m committed to going back to all my old posts and checking them for errors and updates. It will take a while since there are over 800 posts but at least I can get started this week.

By making my SEO to do list, it will help me to keep on track and make the most of my time online. In a few weeks hopefully I will see some results from my efforts.

Holiday traffic on the nation’s highways might be a bear but on the web it might be a different story. Since a lot of people will be out enjoying the day off from work, surfing the Internet might not be on the schedule. News will still happen and thousands of websites will be updated, and it is still important to add fresh content to your site as often as possible. It could be a lighter day for new content for websites and blogs. Since today will be a slower news day and possibly slower web traffic, it’s a great day to do some SEO housekeeping to your website.

There are probably a few projects that you have been meaning to do when it comes to SEO. It might be to finally add those meta tags or to work in a keyword into some web pages. Whatever the task is, today is a perfect day to ease off of the content and work on optimizing your website.

It might be that you have wanted to find a niche forum and join it. Being an active member of a forum is not only fun but can help to gain readership. Taking part in social networking can also help gain traffic.

SEO, website optimizing

I was looking to buy a product, so a Google search turned up a relevant page. After clicking on it, I had to wonder how current it was. I was close to just clicking the back button and trying a different link so I couldn’t believe that such an archaic looking website was actually updated material.

I took a chance anyway and bought my item. I did get confirmation, so now I know that the site is not a ghost town but there are actually people working at it. My experience made me think of the whole concept of Web 2.0 and how more websites are taking advantage of current technologies. Visiting this site today was a throwback to early websites that used a lot of color and flashy graphics because they could. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.

What works in terms of SEO six months ago may be a practice that is no longer effective. Something better has probably come along to replace it. Checking keyword and keyword density in content as well as analyzing web stats can be a great way to learn if your current keywords bring in traffic or if a different SEO approach should be implemented. Just like a fresh look is in order for websites every once in a while so are the SEO practices of a website.

SEO, Web 2.0

Stat Counter is one of my favorite free tools. With Stat Counter, I can not only keep up with traffic to my blog but learn a little bit about visitors.

Stat Counter breaks down hits to your website into page loads, unique visitors, first time visitors, and returning visitors. Results are presented in a graph format, so it’s easy to visually see which days, weeks, or months generated more traffic. It’s good to know if you have a stellar day so you can examine what was different or might have driven traffic that day.

I have Stat Counter on several of my websites and it helps to know how much traffic I receive because sometimes raw stats can be a bit confusing. It’s nice to have it presented in a pretty and uncluttered format.

Promoting and marketing your website are important aspects of building traffic and search engine optimization. When planning an SEO campaign, explore the many options that are out there to promote your website and decide which ones to explore. Writing articles can be one way to “get the word out” about your website.

There are hundreds of article submission websites to choose from. Content management systems like Article Dashboard make it relatively simple for anyone to create their own article submission website, so there have been many article sites that have popped up in recent years.

Webmasters or those just interested in finding articles on a particular subject can visit article submission sites and either browse or search for articles to find what they are looking for. If a webmaster finds an article that he would like to put on his site, then he is free to do so as long as he follows the guidelines that usually consist on not changing the article in any way. Articles will have a small blurb at the end about the author that can be a great spot for writers to promote their website.

While there are many article submission sites, I would stick with ones that have been around for a while. Ezinearticles.com is one article submission website that not only has a good PageRank but has a lot of brand recognition with some webmasters. E-Articles is another article submission site with decent PageRank and shows how many users are browsing articles.

Using article submission websites can be a great way to promote your website to get the word out and drive traffic. Writing articles can be time consuming but can be worth the trouble. People who read your articles and want more will definitely come to your website. Converting those readers to visitors will take compelling content and an offer of more information on the same subject if they visit your website.

Good writing and good information will help to bring in new visitors to your website through article submission websites.

article submission, content writing

A lot of bloggers seem to do most of the blogging during the week and take the weekend off. While I agree we all need a break from work, a new blog post on a Saturday, Sunday or both can help build traffic.

It makes sense that more people spend some of their weekend playing on the computer. For many, visiting blogs is relaxing and fun. If your blog has new content posted that day, it seems fresher than posts that are just one day old. I recently had a weekend where I was actually caught up on offline activities and was able to make a few posts to my blogs. I not only saw better stats but actually had comments on the posts. I learned something that weekend and that is to always stride to post at least once a weekend.

Even if you don’t want to blog on the weekend, do an extra post and adjust the timestamp to go live on the weekend. Check your stats to see if the extra effort is worth it.

One of the benefits to paid blogging that some paid companies boast is that it can increase traffic to your blog. Does paid blogging increase traffic?

Paid blogging can help to gain exposure to blog through your blog possibly showing up in different search results. Because paid blogging opportunities might have you blogging about something that you normally don’t talk about, it can open up your blog to now be a part of search results of those new keywords.

Becoming a part of the paid blogging community can help to gain exposure for your blog. Other bloggers are willing to do link exchanges and will usually check out other paid bloggers’ blogs. Forums are a good way to find other paid bloggers and also to do blog searches for the same opportunities that you have taken. Bloggers are also very forthcoming with what helped build up their traffic.

Paid blogging might increase your traffic or it might not. It seems to increase traffic over proven ways that really have nothing to do with the paid posts. Being a part of a community forum, visiting other blogs, and taking part in link exchanges are all steps you can take without doing paid posts. Do paid posts actually drive traffic? Probably just as much as any other blog post on your blog.

Another way to make money with your blog is through contextual advertising. This system works through a third party and usually involves adding code to your blog. The system scans your content for keywords, then makes those keywords links to vendors who have bought that keyword from them.

Contextual advertising blends into the flow of your blog. No need to blog about a product or a service, just blog as normal and let the contextual ads fall where they may. Contextual ads usually stand out on a page by being double underlined. Sometimes a rollover the words will create a box that has a snapshot of the website or products related to the word. It just depends on the contextual program as to which one appears.

With contextual advertising programs, a blog must meet certain criteria and have high traffic. It only makes sense about traffic since the more visitors a site has, the more likely someone will find the ad interesting. Some contextual ad companies have begun to offer a hybrid program where you link to a keyword in your blog post. The blog post can be on any topic as long as the keyword with link is listed in the post.

Contextual ads can fit into blogs nice and easy. Some readers may possibly be turned off from advertising on a blog. Ultimately it is up to the blogger to decide which, if any, venues to making money with their blog is right for them.