ProBlogger - Latest Posts

Smart Article Marketing For Fast AND Long Term Blog Traffic Posted: 21 Feb 2009 06:57 AM PST I’m regularly asked by readers whether they should use Article Marketing as a way to build their blogs traffic. My answer is always the same - ‘I’ve never done it, but I’ve heard that others have had some success with article marketing.’ So today when Andrew Hansen offered to write this guest post of his experience of article marketing I thought it’d make an interesting read. Article marketing for traffic is by no means a new concept, but as old as it is there are still great misconceptions about the best way to use it as a tool in creating new targetted visitors to your blog. I was inspired to make this post after I recently checked the traffic stats for an old niche blog that I hadn’t worked on for a number of months. It was a blog that we launched almost solely on the back of article submissions and article traffic and now despite server changes, half the site getting lost, total reindexing and other drama, the traffic to this site from the search engines continues to flow, see below diagram: And primarily from the search engines… Not an enormous amount, but for a site that hasn’t been touched in months and survived all the mentioned havoc, it’s not bad. The big benefit of article marketing is that it allows you to generate both quick traffic and traffic that lasts when done properly. Furthermore it allows you to generate traffic in 3 separate ways that I’ll illustrate in this post. Before we begin, let me clarify that by article marketing, I mean the submission of articles to directories, blogs and websites in order to gain exposure to your website through your author biography links. Article Marketing Traffic Generation Part 1: Just by submitting your article to a directory, you give it the potential to be found by other people interested in your topic, who are searching through that directory. It’s not a lot of traffic but it’s fast and it’s relatively targetted. When we started this site we went on a steady article marketing campaign, submitting a few articles each day to some of the big article directories like ezinearticles.com. I couldn’t get a screenshot for you, but in the first month or two of this site, ezinearticles.com was the number one source of traffic to the blog (where Google now is in the second shot above) pushing more than a thousand visitors a month to the blog, just from that single directory. That’s one of the fast traffic elements. Again it’s not enormous traffic but is is fast and targetted. Just having your articles in the directories can bring you traffic. The point to note though is that this is not the MAIN source of traffic that article submissions can bring… Article Marketing Traffic Part 2: This next kind of traffic is the one that a lot of new blog and online marketers got stuck focusing solely on and that’s "bum marketing" - just another word for submitting an article to a popular directory and trying to have it rank for a long tail keyword. Because article directories like ezinearticles.com are old, strong, authoritative domain names, the content you place on them can outrank content optimized for similar terms that you put up on your own (new) website. So when you submit an article that is keyword optimized for some long tail keyword, that article on the directory can get quickly ranked in the search engines, and the author link can be followed to your website. But this traffic is also only temporary. For more reasons than there are time to list, these pages tend to rank well quickly but drop off quickly too, meaning you see an increase in traffic from the search engines, but it doesn’t last if that’s your only strategy. This happened with the site above too. In the next couple of months we started to see our search traffic creep up to the same level of traffic the article directories were bringing in. Most article marketers will stop there and wonder why their traffic dries up within a month or two. That’s part 2 of getting quick traffic from your article submissions but the 3rd and most important part is yet to come. Article Marketing Traffic Part 3: This is what ensured that I locked in traffic from Google, used article marketing to create an authoritative blog and claim traffic that won’t dry up even if I want it to. From the beginning, with each article we submitted to a directory, we left two links in the author biography. One link was to a post of content on my blog that was related to the article but contained more detail than the article. So I submit an on "exercise balls for fitness" and put a link in the author bio to a post on my site at the URL: http://myblog.com/exercise-ball-workout-tips with the anchor text "exercise ball workout" or some keyword that I want to rank for with that post. The other link in the author biography always went to my blog home page but with a different keyword as the anchor text with every submission. We followed the same submission frequency and guidelines for about 4 months and you can imagine what happened. Our search engine traffic didn’t dry up, but continued to increase. The only thing to note is that it didn’t increase from the articles at ezinearticles.com that were getting found in the search engines, it increased from our own blog posts getting found in the search engines, in many cases outranking the ezinearticle.com submission we made on the very same keyword! From there it took off. The extra search engine exposure caused other bloggers to find us and link to us, all that incoming link value made our domain more authoritative so that all the new content we added was getting indexed and ranked at light speed and pretty soon our traffic had tripled. Another thing to note is that with enough work, our own site now became the big authoritative, strong domain. We didn’t need to submit as many articles to the article directories anymore because it could rank just as well being up on our site. It’s these factors that ensured that we still see traffic despite all the drama that happened with this site and that keeps that traffic flowing today. I hope this gives you an insight into the power of this kind of "triple whammy" article marketing and that it’ll inspire you to start an article marketing campaign of your own. Andrew Hansen has helped thousands of bloggers and aspiring online business owners to discover profitable niche markets, drive quality traffic to their blogs, and turn their traffic streams into cash through his blog at AndrewHansen.name, and his blogging and traffic generation software Firepow. Subscribe to receive updates and learn more about how Andrew can help you make more money online. Tags: Blog Promotion Share This

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About Las Vegas Travel: Why Do You Love Las Vegas?

Las Vegas Travel In the Spotlight | More Topics |   from Zeke Quezada Last week I found out that plenty of people were not that fond of the Flamingo Hotel. Thanks to all the readers for the comments and reviews. The responses and reviews of the Flamingo were quite remarkable. But, why do people love Las Vegas? I think it has a little to do with the late nights and the cheap alcohol. It could also be the entertainment and that feeling of being an adult in your very own playground.   In the Spotlight Why You Should Love Las Vegas? It is no secret, I love to eat. Las Vegas affords me the opportunity to sample incredible meals from some of the best chefs in the world. I get...read more              More Topics Read some of the Reviews of the Flamingo Las Vegas Nightlife Las Vegas Shows - The Guide to Las Vegas Shows Pictures of the places to see Shopping centers in Las Vegas Save Money in Vegas Spring Break in Las Vegas Why Do You Love It? Share the reason why you love Las Vegas. I will compile the responses and then next week I'll share them with the rest of the readers. Is it the food? The shows? The way tan lines make you feel sexy? Well, maybe not my tan lines. Let everybody know why you love Las Vegas.   The Worst Las Vegas Experience Ever? Is this the worst hotel review ever? Here is the link to the worst hotel review ever and the comments have come both in favor of the hotel and strongly opposed to the Flamingo Las Vegas read more     Sponsored Links   Best Moves in a Bad Economy Save & Invest the Right Way Find out how to beat a bear market, make smart choices, and keep your cool even when the economy is unpredictable. Las Vegas Travel Ads Paris Las Vegas Casino Hotel Vegas Casinos Vegas Hotel Deals Vegas Shows Advertisement     Visit Related About GuideSites: Las Vegas, NV Honeymoons / Romantic Getaways Hotels / Resorts / Inns Casino Gambling Travel with Kids   Search About      Sign up for more free newsletters on favorite topics. You are receiving this newsletter because you subscribed to the About Las Vegas Travel newsletter as lemmetry@GMAIL.COM. If you wish to change or remove your email address, please visit: http://www.about.com/nl/usgs.htm?nl=govegas&e=lemmetry@GMAIL.COM About respects your privacy. Our Privacy Policy. Our Contact Information. 249 West 17th Street New York, NY, 10011 © 2008 About, Inc.

ProBlogger - Latest Posts

Seven Expert Tips For Outstanding Web Writing Posted: 20 Feb 2009 09:17 AM PST Today Ali from Ali Adventures (and other blogs) shares some tips on writing for the web. You're an experienced blogger. You know all the basics: you've read all about writing useful and unique content, and all your posts use subheadings, thoughtfully bolded text and bullet-pointed lists to be as reader-friendly as possible. But could you be doing more? I spent two years working in an IT company, with overall charge of documentation, and these are some of my top tips for outstanding articles that deliver a brilliant experience for your readers. In a world of Stumbles, Digging and Tweets, the few seconds after a reader arrives on your blog are vital, and the first post they see must provide a great reading experience. 1. Set Line Spacing to At Least 130% (1.3em, 16pt) One of the most irritating mistakes on a blog – and one of the easiest to fix – is having lines of text that are too cramped up. Small clear text is fine, but scrunched-together lines make your posts look heavy and uninviting. Check your blog's stylesheet and look for a section (probably in "post" or "entry") which specifies the default line-height in posts on your blog. It should look something like this: .entry { font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.65em; } If your lines are too cramped, change the "line-height" to a higher value. It'll be an em (like mine), a percentage or a pt value (like font size). You can find out more on the W3Schools line-height page, or convert between em, percentages, pixels (px) and points (pt) at http://pxtoem.com/www.pxtoem.com. 2. Offer a Printer Friendly Version of Posts With longer posts, or a series of post, it's nice to provide a printer-friendly or downloadable version. One simple way to do this is to compile the post(s) into a pdf, and offer a downloadable link. (You can use software such as pdf995 to create pdfs for free.) Think about which posts readers might want to print: perhaps detailed instructions, or posts which require a lot of concentration when reading. Another ways of doing this is to install a plugin such as WP-Print that automatically generates a printer friendly version. A lot of big sites (such as newspapers' websites) offer a "print this page" button, so it could make your blog seem more "pro" to a reader. 3. Mix Lists and Paragraphs Bullet-pointed lists are great for getting your message across quickly and clearly. But if your whole article consists of lists, readers are likely to feel as though you've just written an outline and presented it as a complete post. A lot of lists can also make the text look "choppy" on the page, as the reader's eyes will skip from one to the next. Try having a few short lists, then a couple of full paragraphs. The variety both in the writing style and in the visual look on the screen will help keep the reader's attention – increasing the chances that they'll read right to the end of your posts. 4. Use On-Page Anchors If you've written a long post with several subsections, it's worth putting links at the top so the reader can navigate around the post easily. These are called "anchors", and you can find out full details here. To use an anchor in your post, switch to the HTML view, and put the following near the top of the post, where you want the list of links (the "myanchor" text can be anything you want, but it should be preceded by a hash symbol): <a href="#myanchor">Jump straight to an anchor</a> Then, wrap these tags around the heading of the relevant section. (Note that this time, "myanchor" does not have a hash symbol.) <a name="myanchor">Section heading</a> Using anchors is particularly important if some of your post might not be relevant to everyone reading; for example, if you've written a list of "Online resources for designers, writers and programmers", it would make sense to save your readers from wearing out their scroll wheel. You could give links at the top like this: Resources for designers Resources for writers Resources for programmers 5. Use Links Generously As well as using links in places where they're considered "necessary" (linking back to previous posts of yours on the topic, acknowledging the source of images, linking to blogs you're quoting from), try thinking of links as gifts to your readers. One of my blogging friends, Sid Savara, wrote recently in an email to me: I try to link not just as a source, but for sort of “Easter Eggs.” That is, each link in my article can lead someone down a whole new rabbit hole. This is exactly the right attitude. Readers who feel delighted by the richness of your posts, and who have found extra resources through your links, are likely to come back to your blog for more. 6. Use the Title Tag for Links If you put a title tag in your link, readers can get extra information about the link when they hover over it. This is especially useful if you're linking words in the middle of a sentence to a different blog post, as the post often won't have the same title as the linking word. You can set the title to anything you want. It's often useful to give the title of the post or page you're linking to, along with the name of the blog it's on (if it's not your own one). If you've set the link to open in a new window, it's helpful to mention this in the title tag too. To add the title to a link using a visual editor, click to edit the link, and look for an option called "Title". To add a title in HTML code, add it like this: <a href=”http://www.problogger.net” title="ProBlogger site"> 7. Create a Style Guide The IT company I worked for had a "style guy" that covered everything from how titles were capitalised to how "alt" tags should be used on images (for accessibility purposes). Your writing will look more polished and professional if you're consistent: for example, do you use single or double quotes? Do you capitalise words like "Government" and "Senate"? Do you write "website" or "web site"? It's worth creating a simple style guide for your own blog. This doesn't need to be a huge task – you can just add to it as you go along. If you have guest posters, or if you employ writers to work for you, you could give them your style guide and ask them to keep to your house style – to make sure that posts are consistent. Do you have a tip for writing outstanding content that wows readers by being easy-to-read and looking professional? Share it in the comments! About the Author: Ali is a freelance blogger and writes for a number of popular blogs (see her current list here). If you’d like to hire her, drop her an email at ali@aliventures.com. Tags: Writing Content Share This

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ProBlogger - Latest Posts

Ninja Affiliate Plugin for WordPress - Special Price for ProBlogger Readers Posted: 20 Feb 2009 03:16 AM PST I’m about to head out the door for a 10 day vacation but before I do I want to pass on a special offer exclusive to ProBlogger readers (that I’ve just had offered to us) for a cool product that those of you who run affiliate programs on your blog might want to check out. It is a WordPress plugin called Ninja Affiliate and you can have it for a third off the normal price. I know some of you use this one already but I’ve only had the opportunity to check it out more recently and I have been quite impressed by it. In short it is a management tool that allows you to manage all of the affiliate links on your blog. This product has a lot of features built in including: Easy Affiliate Link Management - You can easily give each affiliate link an easy-to-remember name. Flexible Link Management - Accepts every affiliate link format out there, so you don’t have to waste time with various affiliate marketing tools.. Create Professional Redirect Links - Use professional looking redirect links that let your prospects know you’re a pro marketer.. Manage Links by Groups - Too many affiliate links? Ninja Affiliate allows you to easily create different groups to manage your links.. Prevent “Affiliate Theft” - Cloak your affiliate links to prevent link theft and affiliate sabotage. No one will ever steal your hard-earned commissions again.. Insert Affiliate Links Directly - Add your affiliate links directly for your Wordpress blog editor - you’ll never have to hunt for links again.. Transform Keywords to Links - Automatically turn keywords in your blog to affiliate links. You can set a limit too, so your posts don’t look like a spam blog! Advanced Display Options - Ninja Affiliate allows you to display any text you want in your web browser’s status bar.. Use “No-Follow” Links - Control your link juice and escape punishment from Big Daddy Google with ninja precision. In fact, you can control your links any way you want to. There is a lot more information on the sales page (the videos will show you how to use it and give you a good feel for whether it is for you) for the product and I’m not going to rehash it all here - except to say that I wish I’d had something like this when I started promoting affiliate products. The special offer for ProBlogger readers… is this - $30 off the plugin. It’s normally $97 and until midnight on 28th February it’s $67 - a third off. You can install it on as many WP blogs as you own. You have 8 weeks to test it and see if it is right for you and then they offer a money back guarantee. To get the discount you need to buy it from this special page that they’ve set up for ProBlogger readers. PS: While I’m gone on my break…. ProBlogger will continue to have some great content. I have a few guest posts from some great bloggers already scheduled as well as a 10 part series of posts that I wrote over the last few weeks on ‘how to take your blog to the next level‘ - a series especially for bloggers who have moved past their launch phase and are wanting to step it up. Share This

AdSense Lets You Change Your Font in Ad Units Posted: 19 Feb 2009 05:25 PM PST AdSense have just announced a new feature that many of us have been asking for for a while - the ability to change fonts in ad units. While there’s not an extensive choice of fonts (they allow Arial, Times, and Verdana font faces) it is better than nothing and allows publishers to tweak the way their ads look to fit with the design of their sites. Find out how to access the new fonts via the official AdSense Blog. Share This

A Secret to Writing Posts that Go Viral on Twitter Posted: 19 Feb 2009 06:18 AM PST There are many reasons that a blog post might get spread widely through ‘ReTweets’ (when one person passes on the tweet of another) but one fairly obvious, yet often overlooked one, has to do with the length of your blog post title. Yesterday on TwiTip I published a post with a formula for getting ReTweeted on twitter. You can read the full thing for yourself but the author of the post (@louisedoherty) proposed that to increase the chances of one of your tweets being ReTweeted that you need to keep your own tweet shorter than the 140 characters allowed by Twitter so that the person can include other information (your username, the @ symbol and the letters RT). I’ve seen the wisdom of theory of Louise many times in my own use of Twitter. If I tweet something that is the maximum of 140 characters it make it more tricky for followers to retweet - they either have to change my tweet or don’t do it. OK - so this applies to bloggers how? Twitter can send you a lot of traffic if a link to one of your posts gets spread around via ReTweeting. Just look at the Top 100 Retweeted Links on Twitter at the moment - as I write this the top one has been passed on 331 times which means it is a link that could have been viewed on Twitter by many thousands of people. To help the ReTweet thing along a little keep your titles short. They don’t need to be 3 words long - but keep in mind that when someone is going to tweet a link to your post that they will usually include: 1. The title of your post 2. A URL (often shortened using tinyurl or some other shortening service which means it’ll be anything from 20 to 26 characters) They may also want to include a comment about your link. That’s not all you want to think about - you then should consider that for the link to be ReTweeted it will include all of the above information plus: 1. The username of the person being retweeted with the @ symbol (usually 5-12 characters) 2. The letters RT and sometimes a : as well as a space after it (3-4 characters) You can see that the number of characters is starting to add up so shorter Titles can definitely help. Lets workshop it: The title of this post is ‘A Secret to Writing Posts that Go Viral on Twitter ‘ - that’s 52 characters (with space at end) Lets say that the URL is shortened with Twurl - that’s 22 characters Lets say that the person tweeting it adds the words ‘Reading: ‘ at the start of the tweet (9 characters with space) and ‘ - cool post’ at the end (12 characters with spaces). So far the original tweet is 95 characters long. And would look like: ‘Reading: A Secret to Writing Posts that Go Viral on Twitter http://twurl.nl/qejpzq - Cool Post’ Lets just say it was @chrisbrogan who made the above tweet. As Chris has a lot of great followers at least one of them is bound to retweet it. At the very least their retweet would read: ‘RT: @chrisbrogan Reading: A Secret to Writing Posts that Go Viral on Twitter http://twurl.nl/qejpzq - Cool Post’ We’re still under the limit of 140 and with 29 characters to spare could have added a few words to our title. This is not something that I would spend a lot of time on and I would not compromise my titles too much to get them down in character length - however as someone who has seen significant traffic from Twitter over the last 6 months it is definitely a factor that I keep in the back of my mind as I blog. PS: another reason to keep titles down in length is that Google has a cut off of 70 characters when it displays page titles in search results. A title over 70 characters gets chopped off mid title which could decrease the chances of someone clicking it. I’m told that other search engines cut off titles at as little as 65 characters so perhaps that is a better cut off point. Tags: Writing Content Share This

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About Entrepreneurs: Success? Failure? Just Bounce!

Entrepreneurs In the Spotlight | More Topics |   from Scott Allen A lot of people will try to tell you that failure is a learning experience, but author Barry Moltz, in his book, Bounce!, says that sometimes it just stiks. Sometimes you will fail, in spite of your best efforts. It's an inevitable part of entrepreneurship. But how you learn to deal with it will determine your future success. This week I've got an exclusive excerpt from Moltz's book, plus an interview in which he shares some of his unconventional wisdom and humor.   In the Spotlight Failure Makes Choices - An Excerpt from Since 80 percent of all new businesses fail within five years, you might as well learn to handle it. In fact, if you can start building this mind - set before you fail the first time, you'll be ahead of the game.              More Topics Famous Entrepreneurs Entrepreneurs in Action - Case Studies, Success Stories and General Resources for Entrepreneurs Becoming an Entrepreneur Business Ideas & Business Opportunities Choosing a Business to Start Business Ideas on a Budget An Interview with Barry Moltz Barry Moltz, author of Bounce! and You Need to Be a Little Crazy: The Truth About Starting and Growing Your Own Business, shares his outlook on success and failure.   Swinging for the Fences: Risk, Reward, and Entrepreneurship Are you a Hank Aaron or a Ty Cobb? A Barry Bonds or a Hugh Duffy? Do you consistently get on base or do you swing for the fences? The answer will tell you a lot about whether entrepreneurship is right for you, and if so, what style will best suit you. Understanding your attitude towards risk and reward is essential for a happy life as an entrepreneur.     Sponsored Links   Best Moves in a Bad Economy Save & Invest the Right Way Find out how to beat a bear market, make smart choices, and keep your cool even when the economy is unpredictable. Entrepreneurs Ads Entrepreneur Story Entrepreneur Stories Entrepreneur Article Entrepreneur Idea Entrepreneur Blog Advertisement     Visit Related About GuideSites: Small Business Information Small Business: Canada Marketing Inventors Online Business / Hosting   Search About      Sign up for more free newsletters on favorite topics. You are receiving this newsletter because you subscribed to the About Entrepreneurs newsletter as lemmetry@GMAIL.COM. If you wish to change or remove your email address, please visit: http://www.about.com/nl/usgs.htm?nl=entrepreneurs&e=lemmetry@GMAIL.COM About respects your privacy. Our Privacy Policy. Our Contact Information. 249 West 17th Street New York, NY, 10011 © 2008 About, Inc.