Here’s a list of free directories I managed to compile. I was submitting my blog to free directories then I decided to come up with this list and share it with you. Some of the links are directed to the submission page so you just have to fill up the form and hit the sumit button.
In case you’re wondering, submitting your blog to free directories will help boost your Google Page Rank. Submitting your blog to directories (free and paid) can also help drive more traffic to your blog. The list of free directories below includes directories with high Google Page Rank and have fast approval time (exluding DMOZ - sometimes it takes a year to get approved there).
List Of Free Directories
DMOZ - (8)
Jayde - (6)
My Green Corner - (6)
The Living Link - (6)
Can Links - (5)
Search Sight - (5)
Free Website Directory - (5)
Miri Black - (5)
Niche Listings - (5)
Esearch Research - (5)
Master Moz Directory - (5)
Domaining - (5)
Londovor - (5)
The Shoppings - (5)
Ldmstudio Directory - (5)
Directory Dice - (5)
SEO Court - (5)
Publimix Directory - (5)
Arakne Links - (4)
Dir Submission - (4)
Websites Promo Directory - (4)
Environment Page Directory - (4)
Directory Vault - (4)
Little Web Directory - (4)
Directory 365 - (4)
123 Hit Links - (4)
A List Sites - (4)
Sam’s Directory - (4)
Creative Agency - (4)
Prolink Directory - (4)
All Link Directory - (4)
Zunch Directory - (4)
One Mission - (4)
Wiki Web - (4)
Xakami Directory - (4)
Anaximander Directory - (4)
Invo Website Link Collection - (4)
Making Money Library - (4)
474 Directory - (4)
Name Directory - (4)
YHAY Directory - (4)
Ask Bee Directory - (4)
Monster Directory - (4)
PakAd Trader - (4)
Treshella - (4)
Dream Submitting Directory - (4)
Exo Spy Directory - (4)
Nick’s Year Directory - (4)
Name Directory - (4)
Playground-3 Directory (4)
Seek Ways Directory (4)
Adora Directory (4)
New Web Directory (4)
Effective Project (4)
MXDU Directory (4)
SEO Web Directory (4)
Web Directory (3)
Mergi Directory (3)
Ezweb Tools Directory (3)
King Of The Web (3)
Ilushkin Directory (3)
Infignos Directory (3)
Directory Storm (3)
Directory Link (3)
Skype Media (3)
Directory Global (3)
99 Kat Directory (3)
Red Lava Directory (3)
Link Directory (3)
Promoe Lab Directory (3)
The Help Line (3)
Ipsarion Weblinks (3)
Link Directory (3)
Lite Directory (3)
Midsussex Directory (3)
Yet Another Directory (3)
Business Directory (3)
SEO Executive Directory (3)
NC Directory (3)
Trade In Directory (3)
Rank Back Links (3)
K-Links Directory (3)
Directory Mania (3)
Links Premium (3)
100 Best Online (3)
Web Linker Directory (3)
All Sites Sorted (3)
Link Add URL (3)
Elite Web Directory (3)
Web Calibration (3)
Top Dot Directory (3)
Free Web Directory (3)
Back Link Directory (3)
Gray Directory (3)
All URLs Directory (3)
One Big Index (3)
Clarib Web Directory (3)
Site Directory (3)
Link Book Directory (3)
I hope you found this list of free directories helpful. If you have a directory you want to be included in the list, get in touch with me or leave a comment in this post.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Friday, October 24, 2008
Adding Google sitemap to blogger.com blog account
You can now add Google sitemap to your blogger.com account and increase your chances of being indexed in Google search engine result. You can add a Sitemap to your account to give Google more information about the pages in your site to help Google crawl them more effectively.
Step # 1: Login to sitemap account
At the top of screen you will see option to add site. Just paste URL of your blog (for example http://cyberciti.blogspot.com/)
Click on Ok button. Next you will get confirmation message. Your site has been added to your account.
Step # 2: Now you need to verify your ownership of blog to view detailed statistics. Click on verify link. Google offers two methods of verification. You can either upload an HTML file with a name we specify (which is not possible with Google Blogger account), or you can add a META tag to your site’s index file. Adding META tag via template code is possible so just select Add a META tag from drop down menu:
It will generate code for you, copy the meta tag and paste it into your blogger.com template section).
Step # 3: Go to your blogger.com and login to your account. Goto your blog > Click on Template
Paste the META tag code after section:
Click on Save Template changes button
Click on Republish Index only button > Wait for few seconds so that your blog being published successfully.
Step # 4: Now goto sitemap account and click the box that read as follows:
I’ve added the META tag in the home page of http://cyberciti.blogspot.com/. Click on Verify button.
Step # 5: Now your site is added to sitemap account and verification is done. Next you need to add actual sitemap url. Since blogger.com account don’t allow you to create a text file or anything else you need to add your site feed (ATOM xml) file as a site map. Click on add a sitemap link:
Step # 6: You can add a Sitemap to your account to provide Google additional information about about your blog. Google will process your Sitemap and provide information on any errors in the Sitemaps tab as well your sitemap will be downloaded everyday to index your blog fast.
Select type as : Add General Web sitemap
Now you need to add Atom 0.3 feeds. Generally, you would use this format only if your site already has a syndication feed and this is the only way to add sitemap to your blogger.com account.
Paste url of your Atom feed: For example http://cyberciti.blogspot.com/atom.xml and click on Add Web sitemap:
Update: If you are using a new blogger beta system, use http://yourblogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/full as a feed url.
You will get confirmation:
You have added a Sitemap to http://cyberciti.blogspot.com/. Reports may take several hours to update. Thank you for your patience!
And you are done and your blog will be now index very fast (depend upon your posting and content).
Step # 1: Login to sitemap account
At the top of screen you will see option to add site. Just paste URL of your blog (for example http://cyberciti.blogspot.com/)
Click on Ok button. Next you will get confirmation message. Your site has been added to your account.
Step # 2: Now you need to verify your ownership of blog to view detailed statistics. Click on verify link. Google offers two methods of verification. You can either upload an HTML file with a name we specify (which is not possible with Google Blogger account), or you can add a META tag to your site’s index file. Adding META tag via template code is possible so just select Add a META tag from drop down menu:
It will generate code for you, copy the meta tag and paste it into your blogger.com template section).
Step # 3: Go to your blogger.com and login to your account. Goto your blog > Click on Template
Paste the META tag code after section:
Click on Save Template changes button
Click on Republish Index only button > Wait for few seconds so that your blog being published successfully.
Step # 4: Now goto sitemap account and click the box that read as follows:
I’ve added the META tag in the home page of http://cyberciti.blogspot.com/. Click on Verify button.
Step # 5: Now your site is added to sitemap account and verification is done. Next you need to add actual sitemap url. Since blogger.com account don’t allow you to create a text file or anything else you need to add your site feed (ATOM xml) file as a site map. Click on add a sitemap link:
Step # 6: You can add a Sitemap to your account to provide Google additional information about about your blog. Google will process your Sitemap and provide information on any errors in the Sitemaps tab as well your sitemap will be downloaded everyday to index your blog fast.
Select type as : Add General Web sitemap
Now you need to add Atom 0.3 feeds. Generally, you would use this format only if your site already has a syndication feed and this is the only way to add sitemap to your blogger.com account.
Paste url of your Atom feed: For example http://cyberciti.blogspot.com/atom.xml and click on Add Web sitemap:
Update: If you are using a new blogger beta system, use http://yourblogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/full as a feed url.
You will get confirmation:
You have added a Sitemap to http://cyberciti.blogspot.com/. Reports may take several hours to update. Thank you for your patience!
And you are done and your blog will be now index very fast (depend upon your posting and content).
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Best Blog Directory And RSS Submission Sites
Best Blog Directory And RSS Submission Sites
*As more and more people get involved with the Internet and as more Web sites, blogs, news services and other online resources continue to grow in number and variety it becomes increasingly important to maintain high visibility and exposure for the content being generated by closely following the major distribution media.
Until now the web was populated by Web sites and other HTML-based content pages, and the main vehicle for reaching content has been the large use of major search engines and directories.
As a rapidly increasing number of content sources, new and old, migrate or add RSS as a key distribution channel, and as more people utilize RSS newsreaders and aggregators to keep themselves informed, the ability to maintain high exposure and visibility is gradually shifted from a complete attention to major search engines and content optimization techniques to an increasing awareness of RSS feed directories and search tools.
If until now the world of content optimization online went under the umbrella of SEO (search engine optimization) and SEM (search engine marketing) from now it exist, at least in principle the opportunity to grow another complementary field tentatively called RSSEM (RSS search engine marketing).
I have been inspired and prompted to do this first by my own need to support skilled change agents and communicators like the ones I personally support (http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp, http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/chris, http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/ivaningrilli) and also by Ari Paparo nice initiative of starting to collect online resources where one could easily submit her new blog/RSS feed.
I have personally tested each one of these services to make sure that they are alive and functioning.
One of the key benefits of this reference list is that it provides all of the submission links directly, so that you don't have to waste any time at all to find these at each destination site. This by itself is a significant effort, especially as a number of sites make it consciously hard to find this info, in order to discourage spam and superficial or automated submissions. In some cases I have been able to dig out valuable emails and contact forms after a lot of searching.
I have not included regional or geographically limited directories or search engines, and have dropped any service that did not look reliable or trustable.
By adding up a good set of new and important resources I have been able to more than double up on Ari's initial list of submission sites while extending the coverage to important global news syndicators. The list is also unique as it offers only english-based global directories and no specialized or niche resources.
Other lists available online and which I have credited are either too superficial and not up-to-date (including many sites that either do not work or are not reliable) or listing many search services and tools which do not rely on manual submission to become aware of new blogs/sites/RSS feeds.
I think that this is a VERY powerful list to use to increase your RSS feed/blog exposure and visibility online. If you organize yourself well, with an Excel spreadsheet and the time to track your process through it, you can do the whole effort in less than a day and you can start to see the results the day after.
The directories to which to submit your RSS feed are listed in chronological order (first up what I have collected first; down bottom, the most recent and newly added ones) and NOT according to any importance order. An exception is made for the first group of RSS search engines and directories listed here below as I initially placed here what appeared to me (over two years ago), the most effective directories to which to submit to. But after ranking n°20 or so the order is not too relevant anymore as I did not have yet any specific criteria to properly rank these many different these resources (until the RSStop55 Premium came about). If you are indeed interested in a properly ranked and sorted version of the RSSTop55 plus a unique set of complementary powerful tactics and resources to further increase your RSS-based content exposure and visibility online, look into the RSSTop55 Premium.
234) FeedBees
http://www.feedbees.com/
FeedBees is an online RSS feed directory, counting more than 100000 feeds where you can submit all of your sites with no registration process, and people can easily monitor all of the changes that you make on your site directly from FeedBees. Feeds can be searched, browsed by category, subcategory and page rank.
Plus, for any submitted feed that comes with Google Adsense within, the service collects the original Google ad code, so that if someone clicks on that ad, all revenue goes to the feed owner.
To post you feed, just provide a URL, select up to three categories and click submit. There is no registration process to go into, and you can submit as many feeds as you want without giving out any personal detail.
Click here to submit your feed to FeedBees.
Posted on September 22, 2008
233) RSSMountain
http://rssmountain.com/rss_directory.php
RSS Mountain is one of the biggest RSS feed directories out there, currently featuring more than 1.2 million feeds listed in more than 30 categories, and still growing. After a free and fast registration, which only asks for your name and email, you can add all of your feeds to the service just by going into the category that best describes your site, click add link, and it will be immediately added to the list.
Feeds can be browsed through the categories, but also searched using the search box on the home page, and you can automatically subscribe to one of the results from the search page.
Choose the best category and then click the add button to submit your feed.
Posted on August 11, 2008
232) FeedSee
http://www.feedsee.com/
FeedSee is a blog directly, which features a very simple and direct interface. The only things you can do are searching and submitting feeds: to search for a feed, you will immediately notice the search box on the home page, where you can type any keyword you want and get all the feeds related to that word.
Else, you can click the submission link and, just by pasting the link, without adding anything else, your site will be included into the directory.
You can submit all the feeds you want, as FeedSee does not require any registration, or name, or email to be used.
Submit your feed to FeedSee.
Posted on July 28, 2008
231) Best Directory
http://www.directorybest.info/
Best Directory is a big RSS feeds directory, that anyone can use to submit his feed without signing up to any service. Feeds are divided in 14 main categories, which are divided in two sub-categories themselves.
If you want to submit your feed, all you need to do is to pick the appropriate category, select the sub-categories in which your feed will best fit, provide a feed link, name, description and email, and finally the submission method:
Free: No registration needed, nothing to pay, but your feed won't be high until it is rated.
Exchange: You can get a higher place, for free, by placing a link to Best Directory on your page.
Featured: Pay $5 to get your feed high ranked for 6 months.
Submit your feed to Best Directory.
Posted on June 9, 2008
230) Blogged
http://www.blogged.com/
Blogged is an online blog directory that you can use to discover and promote interesting blogs
Currently featuring 200,000 blogs, users can use Blogged to discover and explore new blogs, and communicate and interact directly with each other. Blogs are reviewed, rated, and categorized by editors, but anyone with an account can review and rate a blog to help it rise in the rankings. You can browse them by topic, rating, or simply searching for any keyword.
If you want to add your blog to the directory, you will just have to sign up to the service for free, and provide the RSS feed of your site.
Sign up and submit your feed to Blogged.
Posted on May 29, 2008
229) GeekySpeaky
http://www.geekyspeaky.com/links/
GeekySpeaky is a small, growing weblog directory, now counting just more than 200 feeds. Feeds can be searched, browsed by category or latest additions and they can be submitted with three different methods:
Featured links ($40)
Regular links ($25)
Regular links with reciprocal (Free)
Once you are on the submission page, type a name, paste the URL of your feed, make up a description, select a category, provide your name and email, paste the URL containing the page with the reciprocal link, and click continue.
Submit your feed to GeekySpeaky.
Posted on March 31, 2008
228) ReadBurner
http://www.readburner.com/
ReadBurner is a free online service that aggregates items that are shared on Google Reader.
This works by constantly updating RSS feeds of currently several hundred linkblogs: whenever an item is on multiple feeds, which means it has been shared by multiple people, it is automatically included. r.
Shared items are divided into Popular, Upcoming, Most Recent, Popular This Week and Popular All Time categories.
Adding a link to the service is really simple: without even registering, you just have to copy and paste into a box your public RSS feed of your Google Reader shared items.
To submit your feed to Readbuner by pasting it into the box
Posted on March 10, 2008
227) Blogotion
http://www.freewebs.com/blogotion/
Blogotion is an online blog directory which aims to list high quality blogs. The people behind the directory review blogs prior to accepting them into the index to keep spammers and scrapers out.
Popular blogs lists the top ten. Browse blogs by categories or check out the recommended blog of the month that appears on the home page below the categories.
Blogotion provides a short overview of blogs.
To submit your feed to Blogotion, complete and submit the short form.
Posted on February 21, 2008
226) A1 Web Links
http://blogit.a1weblinks.net/
A1 Web Links is a free blog directory that features more than 700 feeds, divided in 24 main categories, where anyone can submit her own RSS feed for free. Without even registering to the service, you can pick between three types of URL submission:
Featured links: if you pick this option, your blog will be shown on the top of the page. Costs $9.95.
Regular links your link will be normally added in the directory. Costs $5.95
Regular links with reciprocal: same as the regular links option, with the only difference that this one is free, and requires you to put a link to the directory on your own web-site
After you have picked which option suits you best, you'll just have to provide your blog's information, your name and email, and click submit.
Submit your blog to A1 Web Links.
Posted on January 21, 2008
225) RSSHugger
http://www.rsshugger.com/
RssHugger is a weblog directory that basically combines Technorati, rss directories, and search engine optimization into one. If you own a blog, you can get your own page on rssHugger for 10 years by giving an honest review of the site on your blog. If you want to join rssHugger but do not want to review our site, you can pay a one time review fee of $20. This fee, allows the site's authors to keep out a lot of the spam/useless blogs.
RssHugger features a featured blog on the home page, Top100 page, a "random blog" page that, as the name suggest, shows up one blog of the directory, and a search page, that lets you browse into the feeds.
Sign-up and submit your blog to RssHugger.
*As more and more people get involved with the Internet and as more Web sites, blogs, news services and other online resources continue to grow in number and variety it becomes increasingly important to maintain high visibility and exposure for the content being generated by closely following the major distribution media.
Until now the web was populated by Web sites and other HTML-based content pages, and the main vehicle for reaching content has been the large use of major search engines and directories.
As a rapidly increasing number of content sources, new and old, migrate or add RSS as a key distribution channel, and as more people utilize RSS newsreaders and aggregators to keep themselves informed, the ability to maintain high exposure and visibility is gradually shifted from a complete attention to major search engines and content optimization techniques to an increasing awareness of RSS feed directories and search tools.
If until now the world of content optimization online went under the umbrella of SEO (search engine optimization) and SEM (search engine marketing) from now it exist, at least in principle the opportunity to grow another complementary field tentatively called RSSEM (RSS search engine marketing).
I have been inspired and prompted to do this first by my own need to support skilled change agents and communicators like the ones I personally support (http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp, http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/chris, http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/ivaningrilli) and also by Ari Paparo nice initiative of starting to collect online resources where one could easily submit her new blog/RSS feed.
I have personally tested each one of these services to make sure that they are alive and functioning.
One of the key benefits of this reference list is that it provides all of the submission links directly, so that you don't have to waste any time at all to find these at each destination site. This by itself is a significant effort, especially as a number of sites make it consciously hard to find this info, in order to discourage spam and superficial or automated submissions. In some cases I have been able to dig out valuable emails and contact forms after a lot of searching.
I have not included regional or geographically limited directories or search engines, and have dropped any service that did not look reliable or trustable.
By adding up a good set of new and important resources I have been able to more than double up on Ari's initial list of submission sites while extending the coverage to important global news syndicators. The list is also unique as it offers only english-based global directories and no specialized or niche resources.
Other lists available online and which I have credited are either too superficial and not up-to-date (including many sites that either do not work or are not reliable) or listing many search services and tools which do not rely on manual submission to become aware of new blogs/sites/RSS feeds.
I think that this is a VERY powerful list to use to increase your RSS feed/blog exposure and visibility online. If you organize yourself well, with an Excel spreadsheet and the time to track your process through it, you can do the whole effort in less than a day and you can start to see the results the day after.
The directories to which to submit your RSS feed are listed in chronological order (first up what I have collected first; down bottom, the most recent and newly added ones) and NOT according to any importance order. An exception is made for the first group of RSS search engines and directories listed here below as I initially placed here what appeared to me (over two years ago), the most effective directories to which to submit to. But after ranking n°20 or so the order is not too relevant anymore as I did not have yet any specific criteria to properly rank these many different these resources (until the RSStop55 Premium came about). If you are indeed interested in a properly ranked and sorted version of the RSSTop55 plus a unique set of complementary powerful tactics and resources to further increase your RSS-based content exposure and visibility online, look into the RSSTop55 Premium.
234) FeedBees
http://www.feedbees.com/
FeedBees is an online RSS feed directory, counting more than 100000 feeds where you can submit all of your sites with no registration process, and people can easily monitor all of the changes that you make on your site directly from FeedBees. Feeds can be searched, browsed by category, subcategory and page rank.
Plus, for any submitted feed that comes with Google Adsense within, the service collects the original Google ad code, so that if someone clicks on that ad, all revenue goes to the feed owner.
To post you feed, just provide a URL, select up to three categories and click submit. There is no registration process to go into, and you can submit as many feeds as you want without giving out any personal detail.
Click here to submit your feed to FeedBees.
Posted on September 22, 2008
233) RSSMountain
http://rssmountain.com/rss_directory.php
RSS Mountain is one of the biggest RSS feed directories out there, currently featuring more than 1.2 million feeds listed in more than 30 categories, and still growing. After a free and fast registration, which only asks for your name and email, you can add all of your feeds to the service just by going into the category that best describes your site, click add link, and it will be immediately added to the list.
Feeds can be browsed through the categories, but also searched using the search box on the home page, and you can automatically subscribe to one of the results from the search page.
Choose the best category and then click the add button to submit your feed.
Posted on August 11, 2008
232) FeedSee
http://www.feedsee.com/
FeedSee is a blog directly, which features a very simple and direct interface. The only things you can do are searching and submitting feeds: to search for a feed, you will immediately notice the search box on the home page, where you can type any keyword you want and get all the feeds related to that word.
Else, you can click the submission link and, just by pasting the link, without adding anything else, your site will be included into the directory.
You can submit all the feeds you want, as FeedSee does not require any registration, or name, or email to be used.
Submit your feed to FeedSee.
Posted on July 28, 2008
231) Best Directory
http://www.directorybest.info/
Best Directory is a big RSS feeds directory, that anyone can use to submit his feed without signing up to any service. Feeds are divided in 14 main categories, which are divided in two sub-categories themselves.
If you want to submit your feed, all you need to do is to pick the appropriate category, select the sub-categories in which your feed will best fit, provide a feed link, name, description and email, and finally the submission method:
Free: No registration needed, nothing to pay, but your feed won't be high until it is rated.
Exchange: You can get a higher place, for free, by placing a link to Best Directory on your page.
Featured: Pay $5 to get your feed high ranked for 6 months.
Submit your feed to Best Directory.
Posted on June 9, 2008
230) Blogged
http://www.blogged.com/
Blogged is an online blog directory that you can use to discover and promote interesting blogs
Currently featuring 200,000 blogs, users can use Blogged to discover and explore new blogs, and communicate and interact directly with each other. Blogs are reviewed, rated, and categorized by editors, but anyone with an account can review and rate a blog to help it rise in the rankings. You can browse them by topic, rating, or simply searching for any keyword.
If you want to add your blog to the directory, you will just have to sign up to the service for free, and provide the RSS feed of your site.
Sign up and submit your feed to Blogged.
Posted on May 29, 2008
229) GeekySpeaky
http://www.geekyspeaky.com/links/
GeekySpeaky is a small, growing weblog directory, now counting just more than 200 feeds. Feeds can be searched, browsed by category or latest additions and they can be submitted with three different methods:
Featured links ($40)
Regular links ($25)
Regular links with reciprocal (Free)
Once you are on the submission page, type a name, paste the URL of your feed, make up a description, select a category, provide your name and email, paste the URL containing the page with the reciprocal link, and click continue.
Submit your feed to GeekySpeaky.
Posted on March 31, 2008
228) ReadBurner
http://www.readburner.com/
ReadBurner is a free online service that aggregates items that are shared on Google Reader.
This works by constantly updating RSS feeds of currently several hundred linkblogs: whenever an item is on multiple feeds, which means it has been shared by multiple people, it is automatically included. r.
Shared items are divided into Popular, Upcoming, Most Recent, Popular This Week and Popular All Time categories.
Adding a link to the service is really simple: without even registering, you just have to copy and paste into a box your public RSS feed of your Google Reader shared items.
To submit your feed to Readbuner by pasting it into the box
Posted on March 10, 2008
227) Blogotion
http://www.freewebs.com/blogotion/
Blogotion is an online blog directory which aims to list high quality blogs. The people behind the directory review blogs prior to accepting them into the index to keep spammers and scrapers out.
Popular blogs lists the top ten. Browse blogs by categories or check out the recommended blog of the month that appears on the home page below the categories.
Blogotion provides a short overview of blogs.
To submit your feed to Blogotion, complete and submit the short form.
Posted on February 21, 2008
226) A1 Web Links
http://blogit.a1weblinks.net/
A1 Web Links is a free blog directory that features more than 700 feeds, divided in 24 main categories, where anyone can submit her own RSS feed for free. Without even registering to the service, you can pick between three types of URL submission:
Featured links: if you pick this option, your blog will be shown on the top of the page. Costs $9.95.
Regular links your link will be normally added in the directory. Costs $5.95
Regular links with reciprocal: same as the regular links option, with the only difference that this one is free, and requires you to put a link to the directory on your own web-site
After you have picked which option suits you best, you'll just have to provide your blog's information, your name and email, and click submit.
Submit your blog to A1 Web Links.
Posted on January 21, 2008
225) RSSHugger
http://www.rsshugger.com/
RssHugger is a weblog directory that basically combines Technorati, rss directories, and search engine optimization into one. If you own a blog, you can get your own page on rssHugger for 10 years by giving an honest review of the site on your blog. If you want to join rssHugger but do not want to review our site, you can pay a one time review fee of $20. This fee, allows the site's authors to keep out a lot of the spam/useless blogs.
RssHugger features a featured blog on the home page, Top100 page, a "random blog" page that, as the name suggest, shows up one blog of the directory, and a search page, that lets you browse into the feeds.
Sign-up and submit your blog to RssHugger.
8 Blog Seo Tips From Seo consultants
8 Blog Seo Tips From Seo consultants
Blogging software is really a simple Content Management System (CMS) that easily adds new pages and integrates them into your site's navigational structure and linkage.
Blogs and blog posts are naturally search engine friendly because they are text-rich, link-rich, frequently-updated webpages that use stylesheets or CSS, and have very little extraneous HTML.
Optimizing a blog is very similar to optimizing a website, and optimizing a blog post similar to optimizing a web page.
But depending on the blogging service or software you use, the results may look somewhat different.
If you follow some simple rules for search engine optimization, your blog can rank much higher than static website pages in the search engine results pages.
Here are the most important rules to follow to get your posts listed for keywords of your choice.
1. Use your primary keyword in your blog domain
Whether you purchase a separate domain (recommended) for your blog, or host it on a blogging service or a subdomain of your own site, try to ensure that your URL contains the primary keyword you want to optimize for.
For example, if you want your blog to get found for the keyword "rss" get a domain with the keyword "rss", or use the keyword in a subdomain as in
http://ebizwhiz-publishing.com/rssnews
Getting a domain name with your own name might make for good branding, especially if yours is a personal blog.
But if you're doing it for business and want the targeted traffic to flow your way, keywords in the domain or subdomain are a move in the right direction.
2. Use your primary key phrase in your blog header tags and the title of your posts
If your primary key phrase is "business blogging" make sure that the word business, or blogging, or both, appear in your blog headers (the H1 or H2 tags) as well as the title of each of your posts.
Most blogging software will take the keywords in your post title and put them into the file name of the permalink posts it creates.
For example, if you have a blog on Blogger and title your post "Search Engine Optimization For Blogs", Blogger will automatically create a page with your post and name the file "search-engine-optimization-for-blogs.html" or something similar.
With other server-side software like Wordpress and Movable Type, you may require the mod_rewrite command to save the title of your entries as a permalink.
3. Use your secondary keywords in the body of your post
If you want to get listed for secondary keywords use them infrequently in the body of your post and pepper your blog titles or links with them appropriately.
Don't overdo this or your posts will end up sounding unnatural and spammy to readers.
4. Use your keywords in the anchor text of links
Keyword in links have more importance than simple text.
Use your primary and secondary keywords in the anchor text of links when linking to other blog posts or to other pages on your main site.
Link keywords where they naturally appear in the body text, but again, don't overdo it, or you'll end up with spammy looking pages.
5. Make sure search engines can spider your blog easily
Set up your blog so that the side navigation bar is present on all pages.
Make sure your archives and previous posts are accessible from all pages of your blog so they get spidered easily.
6. Get backlinks from other blogs or websites
Links pointing to your blog or posts are essential to build pagerank and make your blog rank higher in the search engine listings.
I've seen many people recommend Blogrolling as one method of building links to your blog.
BlogRolling is a one-stop linklist manager for your blog or journal. But all this service actually does is give you a bit of javascript code that "calls" the links.
As far as search engine rankings go, this method of linking is of little use, because spiders can't read external javascript code.
Instead I recommend that you focus your linking efforts on the methods here.
Submitting to Blog Search Engines and Directories:
Submitting your blog and RSS feed to blog search engines and directories is essential for getting high-quality links back to your blog.
Here is the best list I've found of places to submit your feed or blog.
Best Blog Directory And RSS Submission Sites
Link Exchanges:
Many similarly-themed blogs are often willing to exchange links with other blogs and form richly interlinked networks or communities. Link exchanges with other blogs are easy to implement with most blogging software.
Trackbacks:
You can also get links back to your blog using trackbacks. One of the disadvantages of using Blogger is that it does not automatically create trackback urls that others can use to link back to your posts.
Haloscan is a free service that will automatically add comments and trackbacks to your Blogger blog.
But if trackbacks are an important component of your linking strategy, I would advise using another software or system that adds this feature automatically.
Comments:
You can also get back links to your blog by posting legitimate comments in response to posts on other blogs.
7. Update frequently
There's no better food for search engine spiders than fresh content.
Post and update your blog frequently using all the rules outlined above and there's no reason why your blog will not get you top rankings in a short period of time.
8. Stay put
Once you create your blog, try to stick to the same domain and blog host or system for as long as you continue to publish.
You could end up losing a lot of your traffic, your readers and all your search engine listings if you decide to move.
For more ways of building traffic to your blog, read the article "How To Build Traffic To Your Blog."
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
21 Blogging tips
A considerable portion of my consulting time has recently revolved around the optmization of corporate blogs (or the addition of blogs to revamped sites). As usual, I find a pattern emerging in the strategies that need attention and the pitfalls that must be avoided. So, rather than charging $400 an hour to give advice on the subject, I thought it would be valuable to share many of the most common pieces of advice here on the blog (business part of Rand fights with open source Rand, but loses, as usual).
Choose the Right Blog Software (or Custom Build)
The right blog CMS makes a big difference. If you want to set yourself apart, I recommend creating a custom blog solution - one that can be completely customized to your users. In most cases, WordPress, Blogger, MovableType or Typepad will suffice, but building from scratch allows you to be very creative with functionality and formatting. The best CMS is something that's easy for the writer(s) to use and brings together the features that allow the blog to flourish. Think about how you want comments, archiving, sub-pages, categorization, multiple feeds and user accounts to operate in order to narrow down your choices. OpenSourceCMS is a very good tool to help you select a software if you go that route.
-
Host Your Blog Directly on Your Domain
Hosting your blog on a different domain from your primary site is one of the worst mistakes you can make. A blog on your domain can attract links, attention, publicity, trust and search rankings - by keeping the blog on a separate domain, you shoot yourself in the foot. From worst to best, your options are - Hosted (on a solution like Blogspot or Wordpress), on a unique domain (at least you can 301 it in the future), on a subdomain (these can be treated as unique from the primary domain by the engines) and as a sub-section of the primary domain (in a subfolder or page - this is the best solution).
-
Write Title Tags with Two Audiences in Mind
First and foremost, you're writing a title tag for the people who will visit your site or have a subscription to your feed. Title tags that are short, snappy, on-topic and catchy are imperative. You also want to think about search engines when you title your posts, since the engines can help to drive traffic to your blog. A great way to do this is to write the post and the title first, then run a few searches at Overture, WordTracker & KeywordDiscovery to see if there is a phrasing or ordering that can better help you to target "searched for" terms.
-
Participate at Related Forums & Blogs
Whatever industry or niche you're in, there are bloggers, forums and an online community that's already active. Depending on the specificity of your focus, you may need to think one or two levels broader than your own content to find a large community, but with the size of the participatory web today, even the highly specialized content areas receive attention. A great way to find out who these people are is to use Technorati to conduct searches, then sort by number of links (authority). Del.icio.us tags are also very useful in this process, as are straight searches at the engines (Ask.com's blog search in particular is of very good quality).
-
Tag Your Content
Technorati is the first place that you should be tagging posts. I actually recommend having the tags right on your page, pointing to the Technorati searches that you're targeting. There are other good places to ping - del.icio.us and Flickr being the two most obvious (the only other one is Blogmarks, which is much smaller). Tagging content can also be valuable to help give you a "bump" towards getting traffic from big sites like Reddit, Digg & StumbleUpon (which requires that you download the toolbar, but trust me - it's worth it). You DO NOT want to submit every post to these sites, but that one out of twenty (see tactic #18) is worth your while.
-
Launch Without Comments (and Add Them Later)
There's something sad about a blog with 0 comments on every post. It feels dead, empty and unpopular. Luckily, there's an easy solution - don't offer the ability to post comments on the blog and no one will know that you only get 20 uniques a day. Once you're upwards of 100 RSS subscribers and/or 750 unique visitors per day, you can open up the comments and see light activity. Comments are often how tech-savvy new visitors judge the popularity of a site (and thus, its worth), so play to your strengths and keep your obscurity private.
-
Don't Jump on the Bandwagon
Some memes are worthy of being talked about by every blogger in the space, but most aren't. Just because there's huge news in your industry or niche DOES NOT mean you need to be covering it, or even mentioning it (though it can be valuable to link to it as an aside, just to integrate a shared experience into your unique content). Many of the best blogs online DO talk about the big trends - this is because they're already popular, established and are counted on to be a source of news for the community. If you're launching a new blog, you need to show people in your space that you can offer something unique, different and valuable - not just the same story from your point of view. This is less important in spaces where there are very few bloggers and little online coverage and much more in spaces that are overwhelmed with blogs (like search, or anything else tech-related).
-
Link Intelligently
When you link out in your blog posts, use convention where applicable and creativity when warranted, but be aware of how the links you serve are part of the content you provide. Not every issue you discuss or site you mention needs a link, but there's a fine line between overlinking and underlinking. The best advice I can give is to think of the post from the standpoint of a relatively uninformed reader. If you mention Wikipedia, everyone is familar and no link is required. If you mention a specific page at Wikipedia, a link is necessary and important. Also, be aware that quoting other bloggers or online sources (or even discussing their ideas) without linking to them is considered bad etitquette and can earn you scorn that could cost you links from those sources in the future. It's almost always better to be over-generous with links than under-generous. And link condoms? Only use them when you're linking to something you find truly distasteful or have serious apprehension about.
-
Invite Guest Bloggers
Asking a well known personality in your niche to contribute a short blog on their subject of expertise is a great way to grow the value and reach of your blog. You not only flatter the person by acknowedging their celebrity, you nearly guarantee yourself a link or at least an association with a brand that can earn you readers. Just be sure that you really are getting a quality post from someone that's as close to universally popular and admired as possible (unless you want to start playing the drama linkbait game, which I personally abhor). If you're already somewhat popular, it can often be valuable to look outside your space and bring in guest authors who have a very unique angle or subject matter to help spice up your focus. One note about guest bloggers - make sure they agree to have their work edited by you before it's posted. A disagreement on this subject after the fact can have negative ramifications.
-
Eschew Advertising (Until You're Popular)
I hate AdSense on blogs. Usually, I ignore it, but I also cast a sharp eye towards the quality of the posts and professionalism of the content when I see AdSense. That's not to say that contextual advertising can't work well in some blogs, but it needs to be well integrated into the design and layout to help defer criticism. Don't get me wrong - it's unfair to judge a blog by its cover (or, in this case, its ads), but spend a lot of time surfing blogs and you'll have the same impression - low quality blogs run AdSense and many high quality ones don't. I always recommend that whether personal or professional, you wait until your blog has achieved a level of success before you start advertising. Ads, whether they're sponsorships, banners, contextual or other, tend to have a direct, negative impact on the number of readers who subscribe, add to favorites and link - you definitely don't want that limitation while you're still trying to get established.
-
Go Beyond Text in Your Posts
Blogs that contain nothing but line after line of text are more difficult to read and less consistently interesting than those that offer images, interactive elements, the occassional multimedia content and some clever charts & graphs. Even if you're having a tough time with non-text content, think about how you can format the text using blockquotes, indentation, bulllet points, etc. to create a more visually appealing and digestable block of content.
-
Cover Topics that Need Attention
In every niche, there are certain topics and questions that are frequently asked or pondered, but rarely have definitive answers. While this recommendation applies to nearly every content-based site, it's particularly easy to leverage with a blog. If everyone in the online Nascar forums is wondering about the components and cost of an average Nascar vehicle - give it to them. If the online stock trading industry is rife with questions about the best performing stocks after a terrorist threat, your path is clear. Spend the time and effort to research, document and deliver and you're virtually guaranteed link-worthy content that will attract new visitors and subscribers.
-
Pay Attention to Your Analytics
Visitor tracking software can tell you which posts your audience likes best, which ones don't get viewed and how the search engines are delivering traffic. Use these clues to react and improve your strategies. Feedburner is great for RSS and I'm a personal fan of Indextools. Consider adding action tracking to your blog, so you can see what sources of traffic are bringing the best quality visitors (in terms of time spent on the site, # of page views, etc). I particularly like having the "register" link tagged for analytics so I can see what percentage of visitors from each source is interested enough to want to leave a comment or create an account.
-
Use a Human Voice
Charisma is a valuable quality, both online and off. Through a blog, it's most often judged by the voice you present to your users. People like empathy, compassion, authority and honesty. Keep these in the forefront of your mind when writing and you'll be in a good position to succeed. It's also critical that you maintain a level of humility in your blogging and stick to your roots. When users start to feel that a blog is taking itself too seriously or losing the characteristics that made it unique, they start to seek new places for content. We've certainly made mistakes (even recently) that have cost us some fans - be cautious to control not only what you say, but how you say it. Lastly - if there's a hot button issue that has you posting emotionally, temper it by letting the post sit in draft mode for an hour or two, re-reading it and considering any revisions. With the advent of feeds, once you publish, there's no going back.
-
Archive Effectively
The best archives are carefully organized into subjects and date ranges. For search traffic (particularly long tail terms), it can be best to offer the full content of every post in a category on the archive pages, but from a usability standpoint, just linking to each post is far better (possibly with a very short snippet). Balance these two issues and make the decision based on your goals. A last note on archiving - pagination in blogging can be harmful to search traffic, rather than beneficial (as you provide constantly changing, duplicate content pages). Pagination is great for users who scroll to the bottom and want to see more, though, so consider putting a "noindex" in the meta tag or in the robots.txt file to keep spiders where they belong - in the well-organized archive system.
-
Implement Smart URLs
The best URL structure for blogs is, in my opinion, as short as possible while still containing enough information to make an educated guess about the content you'll find on the page. I don't like the 10 hyphen, lengthy blog titles that are the byproduct of many CMS plugins, but they are certainly better than any dynamic parameters in the URL. Yes - I know I'm not walking the talk here, and hopefully it's something we can fix in the near future. To those who say that one dynamic parameter in the URL doesn't hurt, I'd take issue - just re-writing a ?ID=450 to /450 has improved search traffic considerably on several blogs we've worked with.
-
Reveal as Much as Possible
The blogosphere is in love with the idea of an open source world on the web. Sharing vast stores of what might ordinarily be considered private information is the rule, rather than the exception. If you can offer content that's usually private - trade secrets, pricing, contract issues, and even the occassional harmless rumor, your blog can benefit. Make a decision about what's off-limits and how far you can go and then push right up to that limit in order to see the best possible effects. Your community will reward you with links and traffic.
-
Only One Post in Twenty Can Be Linkbait
Not every post is worthy of making it to the top of Digg, Del.icio.us/popular or even a mention at some other blogs in your space. Trying to over-market every post you write will result in pushback and ultimately lead to negative opinions about your efforts. The less popular your blog is, the harder it will be to build excitement around a post, but the process of linkbait has always been trial and error - build, test, refine and re-build. Keep creating great ideas and bolstering them with lots of solid, everyday content and you'll eventually be big enough to where one out of every 20-40 posts really does become linkbait.
-
Make Effective Use of High Traffic Days
If you do have linkbait, whether by design or by accident, make sure to capitalize. When you hit the front page of Digg, Reddit, Boing Boing, or, on a smaller scale, attract a couple hundred visitors from a bigger blog or site in your space, you need to put your best foot forward. Make sure to follow up on a high traffic time period with 2-3 high quality posts that show off your skills as a writer, your depth of understanding and let visitors know that this is content they should be sticking around to see more of. Nothing kills the potential linkbait "bump" faster than a blog whose content doesn't update for 48 hours after they've received a huge influx of visitors.
-
Create Expectations and Fulfill Them
When you're writing for your audience, your content focus, post timing and areas of interest will all become associated with your personal style. If you vary widely from that style, you risk alienating folks who've come to know you and rely on you for specific data. Thus, if you build a blog around the idea of being an analytical expert in your field, don't ignore the latest release of industry figures only to chat about an emotional issue - deliver what your readers expect of you and crunch the numbers. This applies equally well to post frequency - if your blog regularly churns out 2 posts a day, having two weeks with only 4 posts is going to have an adverse impact on traffic. That's not to say you can't take a vacation, but you need to schedule it wisely and be prepared to lose RSS subscribers and regulars. It's not fair, but it's the truth. We lose visitors every time I attend an SES conference and drop to one post every two days (note - guest bloggers and time-release posts can help here, too).
-
Build a Brand
Possibly one of the most important aspects of all in blogging is brand-building. As Zefrank noted, to be a great brand, you need to be a brand that people want to associate themselves with and a brand that people feel they derive value from being a member. Exclusivity, insider jokes, emails with regulars, the occassional cat post and references to your previous experiences can be offputting for new readers, but they're solid gold for keeping your loyal base feeling good about their brand experience with you. Be careful to stick to your brand - once you have a definition that people like and are comfortable with, it's very hard to break that mold without severe repercussions. If you're building a new blog, or building a low-traffic one, I highly recommend writing down the goals of your brand and the attributes of its identity to help remind you as you write.
Best of luck to all you bloggers out there. It's an increasingly crowded field to play in, but these strategies should help to give you an edge over the competition. As always, if you've got additions or disagreements, I'd love to hear them.
Choose the Right Blog Software (or Custom Build)
The right blog CMS makes a big difference. If you want to set yourself apart, I recommend creating a custom blog solution - one that can be completely customized to your users. In most cases, WordPress, Blogger, MovableType or Typepad will suffice, but building from scratch allows you to be very creative with functionality and formatting. The best CMS is something that's easy for the writer(s) to use and brings together the features that allow the blog to flourish. Think about how you want comments, archiving, sub-pages, categorization, multiple feeds and user accounts to operate in order to narrow down your choices. OpenSourceCMS is a very good tool to help you select a software if you go that route.
-
Host Your Blog Directly on Your Domain
Hosting your blog on a different domain from your primary site is one of the worst mistakes you can make. A blog on your domain can attract links, attention, publicity, trust and search rankings - by keeping the blog on a separate domain, you shoot yourself in the foot. From worst to best, your options are - Hosted (on a solution like Blogspot or Wordpress), on a unique domain (at least you can 301 it in the future), on a subdomain (these can be treated as unique from the primary domain by the engines) and as a sub-section of the primary domain (in a subfolder or page - this is the best solution).
-
Write Title Tags with Two Audiences in Mind
First and foremost, you're writing a title tag for the people who will visit your site or have a subscription to your feed. Title tags that are short, snappy, on-topic and catchy are imperative. You also want to think about search engines when you title your posts, since the engines can help to drive traffic to your blog. A great way to do this is to write the post and the title first, then run a few searches at Overture, WordTracker & KeywordDiscovery to see if there is a phrasing or ordering that can better help you to target "searched for" terms.
-
Participate at Related Forums & Blogs
Whatever industry or niche you're in, there are bloggers, forums and an online community that's already active. Depending on the specificity of your focus, you may need to think one or two levels broader than your own content to find a large community, but with the size of the participatory web today, even the highly specialized content areas receive attention. A great way to find out who these people are is to use Technorati to conduct searches, then sort by number of links (authority). Del.icio.us tags are also very useful in this process, as are straight searches at the engines (Ask.com's blog search in particular is of very good quality).
-
Tag Your Content
Technorati is the first place that you should be tagging posts. I actually recommend having the tags right on your page, pointing to the Technorati searches that you're targeting. There are other good places to ping - del.icio.us and Flickr being the two most obvious (the only other one is Blogmarks, which is much smaller). Tagging content can also be valuable to help give you a "bump" towards getting traffic from big sites like Reddit, Digg & StumbleUpon (which requires that you download the toolbar, but trust me - it's worth it). You DO NOT want to submit every post to these sites, but that one out of twenty (see tactic #18) is worth your while.
-
Launch Without Comments (and Add Them Later)
There's something sad about a blog with 0 comments on every post. It feels dead, empty and unpopular. Luckily, there's an easy solution - don't offer the ability to post comments on the blog and no one will know that you only get 20 uniques a day. Once you're upwards of 100 RSS subscribers and/or 750 unique visitors per day, you can open up the comments and see light activity. Comments are often how tech-savvy new visitors judge the popularity of a site (and thus, its worth), so play to your strengths and keep your obscurity private.
-
Don't Jump on the Bandwagon
Some memes are worthy of being talked about by every blogger in the space, but most aren't. Just because there's huge news in your industry or niche DOES NOT mean you need to be covering it, or even mentioning it (though it can be valuable to link to it as an aside, just to integrate a shared experience into your unique content). Many of the best blogs online DO talk about the big trends - this is because they're already popular, established and are counted on to be a source of news for the community. If you're launching a new blog, you need to show people in your space that you can offer something unique, different and valuable - not just the same story from your point of view. This is less important in spaces where there are very few bloggers and little online coverage and much more in spaces that are overwhelmed with blogs (like search, or anything else tech-related).
-
Link Intelligently
When you link out in your blog posts, use convention where applicable and creativity when warranted, but be aware of how the links you serve are part of the content you provide. Not every issue you discuss or site you mention needs a link, but there's a fine line between overlinking and underlinking. The best advice I can give is to think of the post from the standpoint of a relatively uninformed reader. If you mention Wikipedia, everyone is familar and no link is required. If you mention a specific page at Wikipedia, a link is necessary and important. Also, be aware that quoting other bloggers or online sources (or even discussing their ideas) without linking to them is considered bad etitquette and can earn you scorn that could cost you links from those sources in the future. It's almost always better to be over-generous with links than under-generous. And link condoms? Only use them when you're linking to something you find truly distasteful or have serious apprehension about.
-
Invite Guest Bloggers
Asking a well known personality in your niche to contribute a short blog on their subject of expertise is a great way to grow the value and reach of your blog. You not only flatter the person by acknowedging their celebrity, you nearly guarantee yourself a link or at least an association with a brand that can earn you readers. Just be sure that you really are getting a quality post from someone that's as close to universally popular and admired as possible (unless you want to start playing the drama linkbait game, which I personally abhor). If you're already somewhat popular, it can often be valuable to look outside your space and bring in guest authors who have a very unique angle or subject matter to help spice up your focus. One note about guest bloggers - make sure they agree to have their work edited by you before it's posted. A disagreement on this subject after the fact can have negative ramifications.
-
Eschew Advertising (Until You're Popular)
I hate AdSense on blogs. Usually, I ignore it, but I also cast a sharp eye towards the quality of the posts and professionalism of the content when I see AdSense. That's not to say that contextual advertising can't work well in some blogs, but it needs to be well integrated into the design and layout to help defer criticism. Don't get me wrong - it's unfair to judge a blog by its cover (or, in this case, its ads), but spend a lot of time surfing blogs and you'll have the same impression - low quality blogs run AdSense and many high quality ones don't. I always recommend that whether personal or professional, you wait until your blog has achieved a level of success before you start advertising. Ads, whether they're sponsorships, banners, contextual or other, tend to have a direct, negative impact on the number of readers who subscribe, add to favorites and link - you definitely don't want that limitation while you're still trying to get established.
-
Go Beyond Text in Your Posts
Blogs that contain nothing but line after line of text are more difficult to read and less consistently interesting than those that offer images, interactive elements, the occassional multimedia content and some clever charts & graphs. Even if you're having a tough time with non-text content, think about how you can format the text using blockquotes, indentation, bulllet points, etc. to create a more visually appealing and digestable block of content.
-
Cover Topics that Need Attention
In every niche, there are certain topics and questions that are frequently asked or pondered, but rarely have definitive answers. While this recommendation applies to nearly every content-based site, it's particularly easy to leverage with a blog. If everyone in the online Nascar forums is wondering about the components and cost of an average Nascar vehicle - give it to them. If the online stock trading industry is rife with questions about the best performing stocks after a terrorist threat, your path is clear. Spend the time and effort to research, document and deliver and you're virtually guaranteed link-worthy content that will attract new visitors and subscribers.
-
Pay Attention to Your Analytics
Visitor tracking software can tell you which posts your audience likes best, which ones don't get viewed and how the search engines are delivering traffic. Use these clues to react and improve your strategies. Feedburner is great for RSS and I'm a personal fan of Indextools. Consider adding action tracking to your blog, so you can see what sources of traffic are bringing the best quality visitors (in terms of time spent on the site, # of page views, etc). I particularly like having the "register" link tagged for analytics so I can see what percentage of visitors from each source is interested enough to want to leave a comment or create an account.
-
Use a Human Voice
Charisma is a valuable quality, both online and off. Through a blog, it's most often judged by the voice you present to your users. People like empathy, compassion, authority and honesty. Keep these in the forefront of your mind when writing and you'll be in a good position to succeed. It's also critical that you maintain a level of humility in your blogging and stick to your roots. When users start to feel that a blog is taking itself too seriously or losing the characteristics that made it unique, they start to seek new places for content. We've certainly made mistakes (even recently) that have cost us some fans - be cautious to control not only what you say, but how you say it. Lastly - if there's a hot button issue that has you posting emotionally, temper it by letting the post sit in draft mode for an hour or two, re-reading it and considering any revisions. With the advent of feeds, once you publish, there's no going back.
-
Archive Effectively
The best archives are carefully organized into subjects and date ranges. For search traffic (particularly long tail terms), it can be best to offer the full content of every post in a category on the archive pages, but from a usability standpoint, just linking to each post is far better (possibly with a very short snippet). Balance these two issues and make the decision based on your goals. A last note on archiving - pagination in blogging can be harmful to search traffic, rather than beneficial (as you provide constantly changing, duplicate content pages). Pagination is great for users who scroll to the bottom and want to see more, though, so consider putting a "noindex" in the meta tag or in the robots.txt file to keep spiders where they belong - in the well-organized archive system.
-
Implement Smart URLs
The best URL structure for blogs is, in my opinion, as short as possible while still containing enough information to make an educated guess about the content you'll find on the page. I don't like the 10 hyphen, lengthy blog titles that are the byproduct of many CMS plugins, but they are certainly better than any dynamic parameters in the URL. Yes - I know I'm not walking the talk here, and hopefully it's something we can fix in the near future. To those who say that one dynamic parameter in the URL doesn't hurt, I'd take issue - just re-writing a ?ID=450 to /450 has improved search traffic considerably on several blogs we've worked with.
-
Reveal as Much as Possible
The blogosphere is in love with the idea of an open source world on the web. Sharing vast stores of what might ordinarily be considered private information is the rule, rather than the exception. If you can offer content that's usually private - trade secrets, pricing, contract issues, and even the occassional harmless rumor, your blog can benefit. Make a decision about what's off-limits and how far you can go and then push right up to that limit in order to see the best possible effects. Your community will reward you with links and traffic.
-
Only One Post in Twenty Can Be Linkbait
Not every post is worthy of making it to the top of Digg, Del.icio.us/popular or even a mention at some other blogs in your space. Trying to over-market every post you write will result in pushback and ultimately lead to negative opinions about your efforts. The less popular your blog is, the harder it will be to build excitement around a post, but the process of linkbait has always been trial and error - build, test, refine and re-build. Keep creating great ideas and bolstering them with lots of solid, everyday content and you'll eventually be big enough to where one out of every 20-40 posts really does become linkbait.
-
Make Effective Use of High Traffic Days
If you do have linkbait, whether by design or by accident, make sure to capitalize. When you hit the front page of Digg, Reddit, Boing Boing, or, on a smaller scale, attract a couple hundred visitors from a bigger blog or site in your space, you need to put your best foot forward. Make sure to follow up on a high traffic time period with 2-3 high quality posts that show off your skills as a writer, your depth of understanding and let visitors know that this is content they should be sticking around to see more of. Nothing kills the potential linkbait "bump" faster than a blog whose content doesn't update for 48 hours after they've received a huge influx of visitors.
-
Create Expectations and Fulfill Them
When you're writing for your audience, your content focus, post timing and areas of interest will all become associated with your personal style. If you vary widely from that style, you risk alienating folks who've come to know you and rely on you for specific data. Thus, if you build a blog around the idea of being an analytical expert in your field, don't ignore the latest release of industry figures only to chat about an emotional issue - deliver what your readers expect of you and crunch the numbers. This applies equally well to post frequency - if your blog regularly churns out 2 posts a day, having two weeks with only 4 posts is going to have an adverse impact on traffic. That's not to say you can't take a vacation, but you need to schedule it wisely and be prepared to lose RSS subscribers and regulars. It's not fair, but it's the truth. We lose visitors every time I attend an SES conference and drop to one post every two days (note - guest bloggers and time-release posts can help here, too).
-
Build a Brand
Possibly one of the most important aspects of all in blogging is brand-building. As Zefrank noted, to be a great brand, you need to be a brand that people want to associate themselves with and a brand that people feel they derive value from being a member. Exclusivity, insider jokes, emails with regulars, the occassional cat post and references to your previous experiences can be offputting for new readers, but they're solid gold for keeping your loyal base feeling good about their brand experience with you. Be careful to stick to your brand - once you have a definition that people like and are comfortable with, it's very hard to break that mold without severe repercussions. If you're building a new blog, or building a low-traffic one, I highly recommend writing down the goals of your brand and the attributes of its identity to help remind you as you write.
Best of luck to all you bloggers out there. It's an increasingly crowded field to play in, but these strategies should help to give you an edge over the competition. As always, if you've got additions or disagreements, I'd love to hear them.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
7 steps for between posts adsense
To put and show AdSense ads units between posts in Blogger template is very easy, in fact, users not even need to know any HTML code programming knowledge. Just follow step-by-step instructions at the below guide.
- Sign into Blogger account.
- At Blogger Dashboard, click on Settings link listed behind “Manage” for the blog that you want to enable to show AdSense ads between posts.
- Click on Template tab, and then click on Page Elements sub-tab if it hasn’t been already selected
- On the lower right corner of “Blog Posts” widget, click on Edit link.
- A “Configure Blog Posts” web page will be loaded, select and tick the check box for Show Ads Between Posts setting under “Select Items” section.
- Once “Show Ads Between Posts” option is selected, a “Configure Inline Ads” configuration options section will appear. Here, users can set how often the ads will appear, i.e. to show and display ads after every 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 posts up to maximum of 3 ads on a web page due to AdSense program policies. You can also choose your prefer ad format for AdSense for Content or Link Units (for ads between posts, rectangle or large rectangle is recommended), and customize the colors of background, border, text, title and URL.
- Click on SAVE CHANGES button when done.
Monday, September 22, 2008
for new bloggers
add your site to directorys like:
www.spicypage.com
www.mybloglog.com
www.blogcatalog.com
www.bloggapedia.com
www.blogarama.com
www.spicypage.com
www.mybloglog.com
www.blogcatalog.com
www.bloggapedia.com
www.blogarama.com
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