Both free and paid themes are tested, and ranked Gold, Silver, or Bronze. ThemeGrade provides a handy search function that allows you to look for themes according to free or paid, structure, category and ranking. Finally, you can gain insight into how well a theme may work, before you invest time installing and configuring it for your site.

Popular Premium Themes

ThemeGrade regularly features several popular premium theme companies: ElegantThemes, WooThemes, StudioPress, and more. Since I use ElegantThemes myself, I find it gratifying that most of them receive pretty high grades (although none have yet scored 100%). You can join ElegantThemes for only $19.99 a year, which grants you use of all of the themes and access to the support forum. It’s a great deal. The themes are strikingly attractive, many themes are designed to fulfill the primary function of various types of sites (design portfolio, video, photography, business, etc.), and new themes are continually added to the mix at a prolific rate. Should you win the ThemeGrade contest, definitely consider the one-year ElegantThemes membership for your prize!

However, since I already belong to ElegantThemes, should I be a contest winner, I’d love to try out “Optimize” from WooThemes. It looks perfect for featuring products, with a video player right in the header. The site slogan and description fit neatly to the right. Nicely done!

Enter to Win Contest

Now it’s your turn to study the premium WordPress themes offered as prizes. Go to ThemeGrade to link to them, as well as to learn more about the contest. You’ll need to write a post and follow a few simple rules. Have fun, and the best of luck!

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SITS stands for The Secret is in the Sauce, where the  ”secret to success is support.” It’s a very simple idea, executed with panache. Here’s how it works:

1. Embed the Sitstahood badge in your sidebar. (See the girlie badge to the right.) It alerts other SITS Girls “that you love comments, and that you will visit bloggers who comment on your blog!”
2. Comment a lot. Go to Sitstahood every day, if possible, to comment on the daily post. This means you showed up for Roll Call. Then follow the 3 links for the Featured Blogger and leave comments. Featured Bloggers are selected from the Roll Call, so that only active SITS Girls are featured.
3. Supply links to your 3 best posts to be considered for Featured Blogger.
4. Follow Sitsahood (RSS feed, Facebook, Twitter, Google Friend Connect). Does that seem like a lot? Well, it’s all part of networking.
5. Subscribe to Sits Girls email so you remember to make your daily visit and follow through on commenting.

I don’t know how long Sitstahood has been operating, but it has a Google PageRank of 5 and an Alexa Traffic Rank of 107,486 (21,346 US). Not a bad back link to have. I’m joining right now.

How easy is it to be a Featured Blogger? I don’t know. If you’re a SITS Girl, comment here and let me know your experience. Remember, the secret to blogging success is mutual support.

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Numbers First, Keywords Second

Usually you need to think of a keyword first. You enter it into a keyword search tool to see if it has potential. You’re then looking for numbers for how often people search the term and how many page results make up the competition. My experience is usually…nope…zip…shoot, I thought that’d be a good one…fuddy duddy…. Until I run out of ideas.

With Gimme a Niche!, you instead first set the desired numbers for search volume and search results. When you run the program, you get keywords that fit within the ranges you selected for volume and results. All of the keywords you get should have high search demand compared to low volume of page results.

Search that Keyword

There is a handy Google search box at the bottom of the tool. Use it to check page results. I did notice some inaccuracy with the search volume and page results for a keyword or two. For instance the keyword “rottweiler puppies for sale” said it “gets 2300 monthly searches, and returns 0 search results.” Upon testing the search, there were actually 979,000 Google page results.

Be suspicious of a keyword that says there are “0 search results.” It’s obviously a glitch. However, most of the keywords I randomly selected to test with a Google search resulted in a number of page results close to what the tool stated.

Gimme a Niche! Jogs New Ideas

Not all of the keywords that come up are so hot. Most of them are brand names or names of a business location. But if you keep clicking on the “Gimme a Keyword!” button, you will discover keywords that jog your thinking.

For instance, when “Preparation H for wrinkles” popped up, I smiled. (I’ve always wondered if that was true.) Why not buy a tube? Give it a fair trial (find a suitable subject, as I certainly have no wrinkles…ha, ha). Do a lit review and…voilà! Create a website on the topic.

Google Adwords Keyword Tool confirmed that search and results numbers for “Prep…H…” fit in the range of a potentially good keyword niche. I wondered, what other health-related topics might be fodder for niche sites that search engines favor?

Therein lies the greatest strength of Gimme a Keyword. It helps you think outside the box when your cognitive wheels are stuck in a rut.

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For example, I want to attract traffic to my niche blog, àlaFurBabies, which is about pets. So I created a sub-niche Squidoo lens about a popular dog breed, the Bichon Frise, that links back to àlaFurBabies.

Theory Behind Traffic Driving with Mini-Blogs

In theory, A sub-niche mini-blog that reaches a narrow (but avid) audience will rank higher in search engine results because there is less competition. In my example, there are fewer sites devoted to “Bichon Frise” than there are for “Pets.” My Bichon mini-blog still needs to compete for search engine results (there’s always that caveat), but among far fewer competing sites.

The mini-blog that ranks is in position to link interested visitors to the main website. You can create numerous mini-blogs on different topics that all relate to the main website topic, thereby driving targeted traffic to the main site from many sources that you control. Remember, regardless of the competitive standing of your mini-blogs, they are providing topic-related back links to your main site.

Is this traffic-building method effective? I don’t know. I’m experimenting! Undoubtedly, there are many factors involved.

Creating Back Links

With a mini-blog you create a back link for your main site, improving search engine results. Because the back link from the mini-blog is topic-related to your main site, it’s a more valuable link in the estimation of search engines.

In addition, your mini-blog has a different IP address from your main blog. This is important for those of you who have a paid hosting service that allows you to have several blogs, and who might be considering linking from one to another. If all your blogs on the hosting service have a shared IP address, the back links are less impressive to search engines.

By the way, don’t link from your main site to the mini-blog. Cross-linking looks like swapped links to search engines, and reduces the credence they give your back link. Just use your mini-blog to link to your main site, and leave it at that.

More Blogs to Manage

What are the drawbacks with this method? First, you need to create and maintain another blog. Secondly, you now have two blogs to which you’re trying to drive traffic. (Sounds crazy, heh?) If you create multiple mini-blogs, there is even more work to manage.

What’s the up-side? Mini-blogs are relatively fast and easy to set up. Nor do they require rigorous maintenance.

With time being a precious commodity, how frequently should you update a mini-blog? At the beginning you must update often, so that search engines will notice it. Once the back link to your main site is established, you can ease up a bit. TIP: Choose a mini-blog topic that is easy for you to update!

Belong to a Blogging Community

Once you create a mini-blog, such as a Squidoo lens, you belong to a blogging community. The more involved you are, the more attention you can attract to your site. There are always interesting benefits in community, but it does require more of your time and energy to contribute in a meaningfully way.

Many Choices for Mini-Blogging

If you like the idea of mini-blogging, Squidoo is good place to begin. There is a helpful “Health” assessment system that alerts you to pitfalls as you create a lens. You can click the “Health” tab, for instance, to see if the tags you entered for your lens are search engine friendly or if they need to be improved.

But there are plenty of others to check out: Tumblr, Posterous, HubPages, and Vox, to name a few. Each try to offer something unique. Tumblr has a tremendous array of themes from which to choose. Several allow you to post via email. A lot of them let you share in advertising revenue.

Some people create hundreds of HubPages and Squidoo lens. Find the super bloggers at these services and study them. Aside from the benefit of creating back links and driving traffic to your main site, reportedly there is money to make on the mini-blogs themselves from advertising!

Are You Into Mini-Blogging?

If you’re already into mini-blogs, what has been your experience? Do you utilize them to direct traffic to another site? Which services do you use? Have you earned advertising revenue? What’s your best mini-blogging tip?

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