There are two main reasons why you should implement this practice:

1. Blog ideas.  Let’s face is.  There’s not much original content on the web.  By reading other peoples’ blogs, hopefully you’ll be inspired to write material for your own blog.  If you’re focusing on successful blogs, you’ll probably get a better idea of what you should be doing to improve your own site as well.

2. Networking.  The more you comment on a blog, the more the blog author will recognize you.  Especially if you find one of those blogs with a lot of traffic but not a whole lot of comments (they exist — trust me).  Sometimes it’s appropriate to explicitly call attention to one of your posts, but most of the time it’s not.  In general, you need to settle for the vast majority of blogs that let you put a linkback url with your name.

The idea is that if you can organically convince a prominent blogger to start checking our your blog by injecting some intelligent dialogue, there’s a decent chance of them taking notice and hopefully putting their readers on notice of your good content as well.  On my law blog, I almost always check our the URLs of my commenters — particularly if the comments are intelligent.

As an aside, please don’t be one of those people that makes a good comment only to link to something completely unrelated with unrelated anchor text.  As a blog administrator, those drive me insane (and I’ve heard the same from others).

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I agree to a certain extent, but if you have killer viral content, you’ll build a following even if your URL is along the lines of IIlIlIIIlIlIIIlIlIIIIlIlIIl.wordpress.com.¹  Still, don’t assume that you’re the exception to the rule or you could end up very unhappy with the result.

So let’s say you’ve decided that you want your own domain.  What’s next?  Well, you have two options:

1.  Shared Web Hosting

You can go with this cheap solution, which I do, and get a cheap, shared server.  My pick of this category is BlueHost, which runs all of my servers off the same account.  Benefits include no bandwidth restrictions, their servers/bandwidth is capable of surviving diggs/reddits/stumbles without much of a problem, one-click installation of most popular software packages (including WordPress), good customer service, and it’s cheap.  I pay about $140 per year for 4 blogs.

Here’s the major downside.  I mentioned that I run 4 servers off one account, right?  Well, there are over 100 people running their blogs on the same server.  While the blog performance only suffers minimally, the real danger is from Google.  Here are some things to consider:

• If one of these domains is a spam domain and marked by Google as such, you could find yourself having difficulty getting indexed since Google assumes you’re somehow affiliated.
• For similar reasons, if you run multiple blogs, you’re going to get less of an effect from linking your high PageRank blogs to your new blogs on the same server.

However, I’m a fairly good example that good results can be had even using the cheap solution.  While you can’t normally check prior to subscribing (though maybe you can if you get a nice chat rep) if you have the domain name of a website on the same server, you can use this tool to find other domains on the same server.

2.  Run A Dedicated Server

Here’s the more expensive, but all-around better route.  You’ll have way more control over your servers by using a dedicated server, and none of the drawbacks illustrated above.  You also tend to get much better hardware with dedicated servers, thus resulting in quicker load times and hopefully less maintenance.

While I haven’t used a dedicated server in a while, one service that I always hear mentioned by pro bloggers is InMotion — no setup fees, nice hardware, allegedly good customer service, and ~$40/month sounds like a good deal to me.

If InMotion isn’t your thing, here’s a post from cnet discussing their picks for dedicated servers.

In the end, whichever way you decide to go is probably a step up from your current situation if you’re “leasing” domain space right now.

1. See, e.g., http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/

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1.  When you link to yourself on external websites, you’ll be much better off; and
2.  The more this knowledge gets circulated, the better off we’ll all be.

So here’s the deal: many laypeople when linking to external sites will do something like this:  “Josh Auriemma is basically the coolest person I know.  Check out this new article about visualizing your website phrases and keywords!”  So what’s wrong with that?

Well, to some extent it is helpful: if that were posted to an external website with some spare PageRank, it would be giving me a decent linkback.  Google is *sort of* smart and so it’ll look around the link and realize that it probably has something to do with visualizing keywords and phrases, but because of where the link was placed, the Googlebot is going to think that it has more to do with the phrase “this new article.”  You can probably already see how this can be a problem.

So the moral of the story is that you should always explain the target website in the link text (anchor text) instead of linking with a meaningless phrase like “click here.”

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Did not click on the link.

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First, navigate yourself to Wordle, enter your blog URL in the appropriate box, and click “Submit.”  Simple as that.

The larger words are the ones that appear more frequently in your blog posts (the website actually reads your RSS feed).

If the Googlebot could see, this might be what your blog would look like to it.

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Well, as you can probably see, traffic has gone down a bit.  Total traffic for Week 2 was 459 visitors.  Am I concerned?  Not particularly.  

What Did I Do Wrong?

Well, if by that you mean why is my traffic less than last week, it’s because my Wednesday push at social media for my 6 tips for running a successful blog didn’t do as well as I thought it would. 

That’s okay with me though because I had articles tweeted by @problogger, @mattuk, @patrickaltoft, @AndyBeard, and quite a few other promanent bloggers and micro-bloggers this week.  I’d rather have 1% of the traffic I get from Digg / reddit if it comes from those guys because they’re going to be the ones sending people that actually care about the content of this blog. 

So I’ll keep the content coming, hope that the people who have taken notice of the blog will keep coming back, and I’ll be making my daily rounds across the blogosphere to bring you interesting content for your consideration.

Cheers.

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To understand why this is even a policy, you need to understand “scraper sites.”  A scraper site is a website which [usually] automatically steals content from sources around the internet in an effort to appear like a legitimate website.  You’ve probably noticed these sites in your spam filter as linkbacks to websites saying something completely stupid like:

Josh Auriemma has a new post today about Excited about my cherry twinkies:  “So you’re probably asking yourself, ‘what’s the deal with the Google duplicate content penalty anyway? Well let …”  Original site here [link to my post]

These sites were a very efficient way to spam search engines back in the day.  Enter the duplicate content penalty.  Nowadays, Google compares its index for duplicate content in an effort to find people trying to game the system.  So you’ve let Jonny Appleseed republish one of your posts, but it’s also on your website.  Now Google has to figure out which result to display in the SERPs, because it’s not going to display both.  Do you really want to risk it returning Jonny’s website instead of yours?  Probably not.

According to Google, best practice is to make Jonny put a link back to my original article.  That may indicate to Google that my website should be displayed instead of his.  Still, many SEOs (myself included) believe that sites with duplicate content take a penalty in the SERPs.  In my opinion, it’s probably not significant, but I suspect that it’s there.  As a result, if I’m working to build up a website, I really don’t want duplicate content floating around.

What I usually do if I’ve guest posted somewhere is give a summary, in different words, about the article on my own blog.  I’ll then link to the full article on the main website.  That way I don’t risk duplicate content with either site.

As always, there aren’t any hard-and-fast rules.  Just use your best judgment depending on the situation.

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6. Pace Yourself

The biggest problem many bloggers face is that they burn themselves out very quickly.  They get this great idea for a blog, spend a ton of time making it, and then the muse leaves them and they’re left with little more than an idea.

It’s perfectly natural to have your creativity visit you in short bursts, but if after careful review of your blog posting history it’s obvious that you make three posts in one day and then go a week or two without posting anything at all, you’re in trouble.

Solution

Scheduled posts.  I always have my eyes open for blog topics and ideas, but I don’t necessarily always feel like writing the posts.  That’s why I have a dedicated file where I store all my post ideas and accompanying URLs for linkbacks.  When the muse does hit me, I’ll sit down and write three or four posts and schedule them to publish no more than once per day.  Consistency is key.  Set a posting schedule and try to stick to it.  Hint: no less than one post per week barring vacations, emergencies, etc. or people won’t think you’re serious about your blog.

Oh, and while we’re on the subject of people thinking you’re serious about your blog, run, don’t walk to BlueHost (my provider) and get yourself a server and your own domain.  Nothing says you don’t care like a wordpress.com or a blogspot.com account when private hosting and domain name registration is so cheap.

5. Scope Out Your Competition

Don’t worry, we’re not talking about corporate espionage here.  Hopefully you’ve figured out where your potential readers are already going to get their content.  If not, try searching Technorati for blogs similar to yours.  Once you’ve identified the successful blogs in your general area of interest, you need to do three things:

1. Figure out what they’re doing right.  Chances are they’re already following all the advice contained within this post.  See if they’re doing anything special though.  Are they offering deals or contests?  Do they liveblog relevant events?  If you can’t figure out what they’re doing right, consider sending them an email complementing their blog and asking why they think it’s so successful.  Most bloggers enjoy talking to aspiring bloggers in my experience.  Don’t hope for a response from someone the likes of Darren Rowse of ProBlogger, for instance, but if you aim for some middle-of-the-road blogs, you’ll probably get a bite if your email is sincere.
2. Start contributing to their blog via comments.  Don’t leave stupid comments or try to post quickly in the hopes of being “first.”  Add good, substantive content and you will be rewarded.  When people see your comments and recognize you as intelligent or an authority, they’ll probably click on your url.  Additionally, if you consistently add useful comments, you may begin to develop a relationship with the blog’s author, which will only help you.
3. Consider writing a guest blog post.  The idea here is that you get to have your name and hopefully a link to your blog on an established blog in your area of interest.  The hope is that it will drive some relevant traffic your way.  Check out this recent post on ProBlogger about how not to write a guest post.

4. Variations on a Theme

After reading Tip 5 above, you’re probably wondering why bloggers are so willing to help you out.  Well, it’s because your blog isn’t going to be a replacement for theirs.  If anything, it will be a complement.  How do I know?  Because if your blog is exactly like another, more famous blog, it’s essentially doomed to fail.  They’ve got more readers, more experience, and probably a better reputation in the relevant community, so how do you compete with that?  Well, you essentially compete by not competing.  You make your blog into a variation on a theme.

What do I mean by that?  Well, take ProBlogger for instance.  I don’t see myself as competing with Darren because while his blog is geared towards generating great blog advice, mine is geared towards learning to build a blog from scratch.  While the difference may seem subtle and there is certainly some overlapping interests, that’s the kind of edge that you need to play around with in order to set yourself apart from similar blogs.  Your personality can compensate a lot for a similar blog premise, but you really are going to sit down and ponder exactly what you want to do in your future blog space.

If your blog is new, don’t worry about reinventing yourself, either!  I promise that if you find a good niche to fit into, you’ll be able to replace those 20 loyal readers in no time.

3. Promote, Promote, Promote

Many people suffer from the Wayne’s World 2 “If You Build It, They Will Come” Syndrome.  Unfortunately, even if you have the best content in the world, if they can’t find you, they can’t come.  So you have to get your content out there somehow.

As suggested by Tip 5, guest posting and commenting on established blogs is a good way to put yourself out there in general.  You can also try advertising, which is quick traffic but only good traffic if you target the right keywords.  In my opinion though, the best way to drive up relevant traffic to your blog is to write a really killer blog post and then bring it to the attention of the heavy hitters in your field.

For instance, I recently wrote a post about turning a firefox plugin into a personalized ad targeting program.  I knew when I wrote it that it was a good post, and I legitimately suspected that it would be of interest to readers of the top blogs.  I began sending off emails through the contact forms of those blogs with a message along the lines of, “Hi, I just wrote a post about X that I believe will be of interest to your users because Y.  I hope that you will pass it along if you find it relevant and interesting.  Thanks.”  Simple as that, and before long, I had hundreds of hits from multiple sources and my URL was tweeted by @problogger and some other big hitters in the blogging and seo industry.  Remember, these guys need content too, and when they’re handed good content on a silver platter, why not pass it along?

Never underestimate the power of asking nicely in conjunction with good content.

2. Respond to Comments or Suffer the Consequences

When you’re at the point where I am with this blog, you really need to address the vast majority of your comments.  There’s not really a good excuse not to do it.

The fact is that the vast majority of people who read your content will never post, so ignoring the people who take the time to interact with you essentially makes them out to be the creepy guy on the train who talks to himself until he falls asleep in your lap.  You don’t want to make a loyal reader feel that way, do you?  I didn’t think so.

By showing readers that you actually take the time to read their thoughts as well, you’re encouraging more comments and therefore strengthening your bond with your readers while sparking interaction.  Win/win/win as Michael Scott would say.

1. Choose Your Words Carefully

Even if you think SEO is lightyears beyond you and you never want to think about it, consider the following personal example: my second post to this blog was a light-hearted post about one of my suits and how someone had told me that the buttons looked like a certain infamous symbol used by a certain oppressive German regime had been carved into them.  Why am I dancing around those words?  Because Google decided that they were the most important part of my blog for a while, and I was receiving some traffic from people who I imagine were not excited to be here.

If you won’t follow my advice and plan your keywords, at least think about what NOT to say on your blog: especially in your subject, title tag, or url slug.  Worst case scenario, you get a ton of traffic from people who have no interest in your blog at all, and none from the people who are actually looking for your content.

Exercise

When you’re at the point that you know what you’re going to blog about next but haven’t written your blog post yet, ask yourself this question: “how would people look for this information on Google?”  If someone were to search for an article like this one, I might expect the following queries:

• blog advice
• useful blog tips
• how do I get my blog popular?
• start blogging

Now that I know how I would find my own post were I looking for it, I can try to work those types of keywords into my post to help Google return relevant results to my future readers.

—-

I hope that you’ve found these tips useful.  Obviously more than six tips belong on this list, but I had to make it somewhat digestible.

Did you recognize any problems with your blog while reading this post?  Do you have a plan of action for how to fix those problems now?  I’d love to hear about it.  I’ll even do my best to help if I can.

Share and Enjoy:

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I read an article on ProBlogger a few days ago recommending StumbleUpon as a cheap source of traffic.  The cool thing about StumbleUpon is that users come right to your page, so you don’t have to worry about an advertisement or anything.  They’re actually there!  The bad thing about StumbleUpon is the keyword system.  Being poor and cautious, I put $5 into my StumbleUpon ad account, and I signed one of my posts up for the SEO category.  After 12 hours or so, I had 3 hits.  Too slow, I thought to myself.  Maybe I should sign the same post up for the “blog” category.  After getting my campaign approved, it took around 2 minutes for me to think to myself, “Wait, maybe people in the blog category aren’t interested in the content of that post.”  That was an epiphany that would have been slightly more useful a few minutes prior because by that point, the entirety of my $5 was used up with seemingly no payoff.

So the moral of the story is: advertising can be relatively cheap traffic, but make sure you’re marketing to the right audience.  I think many of us newbies have a gut feeling to target the maximum number of people as possible when we should really be striving for relevance with respect to visitors.  Apparently I should have stayed within the SEO category.

Live and learn.

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This is something of an advanced subject for this blog,¹ but I had to get it out into the blog world since I’m kicking myself for not realizing it sooner.

So I run a blog read primarily by law students and it’s been difficult to figure out how to monetize it.  What do law students need to buy?  Highlighters, maybe.  Maybe some textbooks, but I don’t know that I want to be a one-stop-shop for textbooks.

A while back I wrote a post that had little to do with the subject of the website and more to do with one of my hobbies.  The post was linked by Kotaku and some other major gaming blogs, and that post soon became the #1 search result for several very popular Google searches relating to the game.

That was 6 months ago and while the blog traffic from Google and those other blogs isn’t what it used to be, I still pull in a good 500 hits per day just on those keywords.  I had never taken advantage of the traffic until today when I had an epiphany.

Why Don’t I Sell Stuff Through WP Greet Box?

I wasn’t sure if WP Greet Box could be used in such a way, I actually just installed it last night, but I knew that the box got past adblock and was in a great place to greet my readers.  After some tweaking, everyone coming to my website with the game’s name in the slug (including Google searches) was greeted with a personalized message asking them to buy the game’s expansion through my Amazon Affiliate link if they hadn’t yet purchased it.  In 6 months, I never sold a single game through my affiliate banner on my sidebar, and tonight I’ve already sold 2 games.

I bet you want to get started, right?  The first step is to install WP Greet Box on your WordPress blog.  Now let’s say that you’re selling widgets, and you’ve already been linked from joshauriemma.com/check-out-this-widget-site, and you’re also starting to get some Google traffic about widgets. 

First, go into your WordPress admin panel and click on WP Greet Box.  At the next screen, click on “Add new greeting message” and add something along the lines of the following:

Things to note:  in the Referrer URL box I’ve placed the URL that I know to be sending me business for widgets, and in the Greeting message, I’ve personally greeted them and pointed them towards my affiliate link for widgets.  Now when someone comes to your webpage from the link here at joshauriemma.com, they’ll see the following message above the blog post:

Because Adblock doesn’t block the WP Green Box, you can see how this would be extraordinarily useful.

The solution to targeting Google visitors is a little bit hacky right now.  You need to deactivate the standard Google greet, and create greets for your keyword targets.  For instance, if I want to target all Google searches containing the term “widget” I would create a new greet where the Referrer URL was set to “*widget*”.  The nice thing about this is that even if I’m linked in the future from a URL with the word “widget” in the slug, I’ll already have this greeting in place to target them with my widget affiliate link.

I look forward to hearing how you’ve put this suggestion to use on your own website!

1. Meaning that at this point on this blog I haven’t built up enough traffic for this to matter.  At the point where I have, I imagine these types of posts will become more frequent.

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