Author Archives: Admin

7 Ways To Increase Your PageRank

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Daily Web Ideas recently posted an article about increasing your PageRank. I have written about PageRank before a little bit in my review of Text Link Ads and my post entitled Introduction to Things That Effect Your Page Rank.

They list ideas like writing comments on other blogs, purchasing text link advertisements, exchanging links with related websites, posting on forums, joining a website network, and writing quality content.

While all of these ways are great ways to increase your PageRank, most of them can have some negative side effects, especially as search engines like Google get smarter, so always do research before taking advice seen on any site.

The best tip though, and something that is hidden in plain sight in the Daily Web Ideas post is that networking is your best way to build a site. Connect with people on forums, other blogs, and owners of sites in a similar niche.

Originally posted on July 25, 2007 @ 1:57 am

Guest Blogging to Grow Your Own Blog

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Over on North x East, there is a great post up that talks about the power of guest blogging. I became a problogger thanks to my guest blogging on Darren Rowse’s Laptop blog over two years ago when he went on vacation, so I consider myself a testament to how powerful guest blogging can be.

From the article:

When I first started Zen Habits, I faced this challenge, just like everyone else does. “I’m writing great stuff,” I would say to myself, “but no one is reading it. What do I do?”

I tried guest blogging, and it paid off big time. I now regrettably have to turn down requests to write guest posts elsewhere, just because I’m so busy writing. I wish I didn’t have to, because every time I do, I miss an opportunity, but there’s no question that guest blogging has been a major part of my success.

Found via Problogger.net

Originally posted on July 19, 2007 @ 5:14 pm

Question: Long or Short Blog Posts?

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When you first start out as a blogger, be it pro, or just for fun, you will want to quickly assess your audience, and get a handle on what they are looking for from your site while balancing what your goals are. Some sites do really well with longer, detailed posts while others do great with shorter more succinct posts.

Finding Your Comfort Zone

You have to decide what you will be comfortable with, and really that is probably going to be the strongest deciding factor. Try out a few lengths and time how long it takes you to write out an article.

Will you be able to spend that long each time you write a post for your blog?

If it is too long, try cutting it back. For your first few entries you might want to take time to edit them down so that you use as few words as possible to convey your idea. As you get more experienced at self-editing, you will get faster at it thus creating better posts.

If you realized that your post only took a few minutes to write, and you wanted to create something longer, don’t fret too much, as you will have days where you will have to research a topic before you can write intelligently about it, and on those days, you will be glad you “gave” yourself those extra few minutes, rather than using all your time writing the actual post.

Your Audience’s Expectations

When choosing the length of post you want to aim for, remember that people like consistency. If you chose to write longer, more detailed posts, then your visitors are going to expect that from you, and might not be responsive to the few posts that are short on details and information.

The same goes with shorter posts though. You will attract an audience over time that expects such things from you, and they might not read a post that you spend an hour writing that goes into great detail, and so once you chose to go “short” or “long”, you will want to try to remain as consistent as possible.

Conclusion

It will really be up to you to decide. From my own personal experiences, I would say that shorter posts are easier to read, as most people don’t like reading large blocks of text online, and doing many shorter, more concise posts can actually equalize out the search engine advantage of doing content and keyword rich posts.

Either way, the goal is to continually, and constantly publish new content for your readers.

Originally posted on July 18, 2007 @ 2:22 am

Don’t Get Lost in Web 2.0

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New social sites are popping up every day, and while it is nice to have an account on each one of them, make sure you are not devoting a lot of your time to these sites, as the value is in the contacts you make, not in the sites themselves. They try to hold your attention and fascination for as long as possible by providing all kinds of little things you can do while they plaster advertisements all over the page, hoping you will click on one of them.

Many of the people who use the web constantly are already getting tired of such sites, and aren’t logging into them as much as they used to. I am included in that group. I used Twitter more than almost anyone I knew, but I quickly fell out of love with the site due to constant downtime, and the realization that Twitter was not providing me with anything.

I have accounts on pretty much all the “cool” Web 2.0 sites, but I find instant messaging, e-mail, phone and actually visiting with people to be a much better route of real two way communication. Two way communication is key to having relationships with people, and I don’t believe that Twitter and other such services truly provide that fulfilling experience that we require.

So, remove Twitter from your phone, stop logging into MySpace and Facebook. Focus on building relationships with real people that don’t include hiding behind sites built by third parties whose only focus is to find ways to entice more people to join so they can make even more money.

You will be amazed at how much time, energy and focus you can retake just by divesting yourself of all these time sinks.

Originally posted on July 17, 2007 @ 7:20 pm

Answers.com Experiencing Traffic Drop

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When starting a site on the web, much of your traffic will most likely come from search engines like Google, but that can also be your downfall, as search engines are always changing how they decide to place items in their index.

An interesting case is the recent 28% traffic drop for Answers.com due to some shuffle in Google’s index.

From 901am:

“The major search engines modify their algorithms all the time,” said Bob Rosenschein, CEO. “This change only demonstrates the sound business rationale behind our agreement to purchase Dictionary.com, because it underscores a primary motivation for the deal: to secure a steady source of direct traffic and mitigate our current dependence on search engine algorithms.”

Make sure you diversify your traffic sources or it will dry up due to a quick shift at Google, or one of the other search engines.

Originally posted on August 3, 2007 @ 12:11 am