Spam by any other name….
Is a spammer stealing your traffic?
For those of you who hate it when I’m in a bad mood, RANT ALERT!
I woke up this morning to find this on my blog:
Hi,
let me first tell you this not spam.i am a real person sitting at a real desk.I am Rajeev Mahadevan from India.I just wanted to tell you that i have found a really easy way to make money online.its free,and easy.i made $142/- in my first week.below’s the link.if you want to make effortless money.
A.W.SURVEYS
First, Rajeev, let me tell you that if you had read any of my blog at all it would have been plain to you that if there’s anything I hate, it is spam.
You seek to justify yourself by telling me that your comment is not spam, so it seems I am going to have to enlighten you about the definition of spam.
How do you think spam gets written other than by real people at real desks? True we might think of them in our mind’s eye shuffling up to a trough in a barn, but the truth is most of them look just like you or I and they do, wait for it, sit at a desk somewhere.
Whether or not you sit at a desk is not a measure of how spammy your comments are. The measure is this:
If your comment contains a self-serving link leading to a site that has NOTHING to do with the contents of the blog post then, yes, you are a spammer, whether you choose to call yourself that or not. You are attempting to steal my traffic. And while you say you are inviting people to ‘make effortless money,’ let me tell you there is no such thing as a ‘free lunch.’ You may not be working for the traffic, but the people who own the blogs you are spamming most certainly did work hard for that traffic. They spent endless hours educating themselves about their subject, they have built up a network of people they know, like and, dare I say it? TRUST online (and yes, who also recognize them by name). Additionally, legitimate bloggers spend hours researching and writing blog posts so that others will want to visit and read.
Which brings me to yet another point: while you’re posting spammy comments on other people’s blogs, you are not finding targeted traffic. Targeted traffic is when you aim for people who are looking for what you have to offer (just so you know).
So someone, somewhere is paying for your traffic (assuming anyone in their right mind would want to click on your link).
Sorry Ranjeev, your spammy comment is in the spam bin where it belongs.
Legitimate Promotion Strategies
But in the spirit of online camaraderie, let me just give you some advice.
Unless you’re planning to give something back, such as a valuable link from your website, a talkup on your blog, or the like, never try to benefit from someone else’s hard work. They’ll resent it.
There are plenty of legitimate ways you can promote your product. I suggest you try one of the many great forums on affiliate marketing for this.
Create a web page to promote your product and drive traffic to that with legitimate comments on other people’s blogs (no need to spam, you still get the link if you take part in their conversation). Create meaningful, mutually beneficial online relationships that will fuel your progress. Heck, shell out and buy some PPC. That’s always a great choice for anyone who doesn’t know what else to do and it needn’t be very expensive.
Guest Posting for Links: Singing for Your Supper
My Big Announcement
It won’t be news to you that one of the best way to get quality backlinks is guest posting for a website with complimentary content to what’s on your website. In reality of course, if you pick your guest posting venues carefully you get a whole lot more out of the deal than just hot backlinks.
If you’re writing for a blog that gets a lot of traffic then some of that traffic will definitely spill over onto your own. You will also gain exposure in your chosen field. If your writing is good you will even be establishing yourself as an expert, and that’s a truly priceless prize.
See Me on Marketing Pilgrim
I’m lucky enough to have just had my first guest post, Getting the Hang of the Twitter Culture accepted over at Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim. This is an important step for a successful blogger, and so exciting for me. Just look at that traffic (oh sorry, if you don’t have the Compete extension for FireFox you won’t be able to see that!). Not to even mention the Google PR of 7. This will make for some highly valuable backlinks. You can be sure that I will put aside time from my frantically busy schedule to write more posts for Andy because it benefits me almost more than it does him.
By the way, if you go over to read my post, please be sure to give us a Stumble or add us to your other favorite bookmarking venue if you like it. You could even Tweet about it on Twitter.
A day in the life of a WordPress-obsessed SEO
I have been offline for a while because my ISP had a technical problem that affected a whole batch of DSL subscribers. FAIL.
Back to Business!
So when I finally got back online I had a whole pile of work to catch up on. I only had three-and-a-half hours sleep last night. But so far today I have installed a WordPress theme, tinkered with two others, and caught up with a whole load of email correspondence.
One of my clients chose a really great WordPress theme over at Revolution. Very nice theme, although a little complicated to set up–much more so than regular WordPress themes.
I may decide to use one of those themes on here, they’re so professional-looking. We shall have to see if I even have time to get around to that any time soon.
The blog is taking over!
Interestingly I have had a number of clients recently who want WordPress installed on their main website. They have heard good things about it’s flexibility and the fact that in general, the search engines love it. It certainly makes it easier if a number of people need to upload content to a website. I love it and always encourage anyone who wants to install WordPress.
WordPress Makes Search Engine Optimization and Pleasing Visitors Easy
The major advantage in using WordPress is the fact that it becomes really simple to add new content to your site on a regular basis. This alone will make the search egnines, and Google in particular, love you to bits. More to the point, if there’s plenty of interesting information on your website your visitors will love you too.
Connect With Your Audience
Increasingly the Internet is being seen as the global village predicted by Marshall McLuhan. Our networks extend over continents, professional domains, social milieus, generations and just about every other demographic you can think of. So whenever we want to achieve anything we automatically have access to a wide selection of people whose input can be highly valuable to us and dramatically impact our level of success.
Over the past week I’ve called on some of my Internet friends for their wisdom and expertise, while I was setting up this blog. As usual, they were unstinting in their generosity, both with time and nuggets of hard-won (and when you pay for it, expensive) specialized consulting knowledge.
Twitter is fabulous and it’s my networking tool of choice. Leaves most of the others standing–including FaceBook for me. But I digress as usual.
I’ve asked my Twitter network for advice on my design and color scheme, how to import the posts from my old blog, help with troubleshooting feed problems (Feedburner was jettisoned as a result) and a host of other stuff. I’m sure I’ve driven them nuts–I’m thoroughly sick of the subject myself at the moment–but they were all patient. So they deserve a big mention.
Top of the list is Mich D, who is quietly brilliant, working away in the shadows. He wrote a guest post for me on Blackhat SMO tricks. I think you’ll agree there’s lots of valuable information here as well as some fresh and unique perspectives. He said he loved the design, and that while it was pink, it wasn’t “fluffy.” I took that as an approval. Mich gave me the most fundamental help when I told him I was having trouble importing posts from one MySQL database to another. Why bother? He asked. You can import blog posts, even across platforms, through your WordPress Admin interface, and I did, and it worked beautifully. Thanks Mich!
In case you’re having he same problem, in the WordPress Admin panel for your old blog, select Manage Posts and click on Export from the options on the dashboard. Save the resulting WordPress file to your hard drive. Then go to the WordPress Admin for your new site, select Manage Posts and then select Import. Browse for and upload your saved file, and voila, you’re done. But don’t forget to do 301 redirects for your posts or you’ll have duplicate content issues big-time.
Kimberley Bock made me feel more comfortable with my choice of color scheme. I say ‘more comfortable’ not because I had doubts about what I like but because a couple of my other friends had mentioned that they weren’t 100 percent comfortable with my choice. You could say I was suffering a confidence crisis.
In particular, Richard Dewick, AKA Makaman, had strong reservations about my choice of color. He also reminded me to follow my own advice and make the font a readable size, which I did. He also reminded me about posting my Twitter feed to my blog, which I haven’t had time for yet. But I will. Richard also hated my logo. I don’t think he’ll like the new version either, but it’s the best I can do for now. Whaddya say Richard?
Ultimately I felt my choice of WordPress theme was totally vindicated by Chris Garrett who said:
You have to connect “you” to your target audience, if pink fits both, forget what random internet folks say
I totally agree with this. A small thing like your color scheme could put off a small minority of visitors, but overall I think it’s true to say that if a reader senses that you’re not holding back, and that you’re communicating who you are at a basic level, with no artificially-set parameters, they’ll respect you more for it. And I’ve never been one to try and impress, so this concept suits me fine. 
It’s not that I take a devil-may-care attitude. More that I like to communicate honestly, including who i really am.
But Chris got me thinking about how to really connect with your audience. What’s the secret? Obviously your theme and choice of colors is going to be a superficial first-glance thing. But there has to be more to it than that. What are blog readers really looking for?
In the end I came to the following conclusions:
Connecting with your audience is all about being who you really are. It’s about being willing to take the risks associated with sharing your innermost thoughts about what you do and how you think. You may leave yourself vulnerable to the piranhas that live online, but you’ll also make contact with a solid readership base who are looking for authenticity. You’ll also make genuine friends. The Real Thing is impossible to fake and it’s priceless.
So in the coming months you can look forward to some hard-hitting opinion, state-of-the-art SEO information, and tips on how to get your blog or website off the ground. Most of all though, you can look forward to my blog as an honest expression of who I am.
My Final WordPress Template Choice
It has been a hectic few days. However, I finally decided to go with the theme you now see. It’s called Optimism and it’s by–well they already have a link at the bottom!
I’ve also got my contact form up-and-running and I’ve written a cursory About page. For sure there is a lot left to do but I am functional.
I’m still working on importing the posts from my other blog so that I can setup the redirects. Haven’t had time to look into that properly yet. Comments and suggestions are always welcome. Meanwhile enjoy this music that I feel goes with the theme. 03-enchantment
17 Habits of Highly Popular Bloggers
I researched this list to motivate myself as much as anything else. No matter how long you’ve been blogging there’s always room for improvement. To improve my own blogging skills I’ve looked to outstanding bloggers for inspiration. You’ll find a list at the bottom of this post.
- Successful bloggers are truthful: you can be confident that a little research won’t turn up gaping holes in their testimony.
- They passionately adore their subject. This is a must. Your passion must also ignite your reader’s passion. Never try and blog about something you don’t love.
- They are ambitious. Building a popular blog takes a lot of work and determination. Long hours spent writing and long hours spent learning the craft of blogging.
- Their writing is conversational and easy-to-read. While most readerships are forgiving of the odd typo, copy that is riddled with spelling mistakes and missing words is just as off-putting as writing that doesn’t speak to the reader. Spend a little time perfecting your writing style. Examine the writing style of bloggers you find most interesting to read. Your byword should be ‘proofread.’
- They make their blog look nice.There’s no excuse not to do this. Now you can get literally hundreds of nice-looking templates if you use a platform like WordPress. It’s easy and free, so pick one that will appeal to your target niche. Also, don’t forget to dig out an interesting picture or photo to accompany your blog posts. It’s well known that pictures make your posts a lot more attractive to a lot more people.
- They blog regularly. This is quite possibly the most difficult thing of all to achieve. Blogging is a long-term commitment, and when you have eager readers and sponsors (advertisers) depending on you, you can’t just take a holiday whenever it pleases you.
- Their posts are of more-or-less uniform quality. Research and care leave traces. There’s a huge difference to the reader between an article that has been lovingly crafted and a few paragraphs hurriedly strung together. This is another difficult habit to nail down. Sometimes you just don’t feel like blogging. I’ve found that it’s better to just leave a gap in your blogs rather than post any old junk. A good trick is to always have three or four draft posts ready to be dusted off and posted if you’re pushed for time, or just plain don’t feel like it.
- Bloggers are, almost without exception, nice people. Even if they thrive on controversy, they’re not mean or insulting. To take this point a little further, the most popular bloggers are the nicest ones, like Darren Rowse of Problogger, or Maki of DoshDosh.
- They love to learn. Blogging is a craft that needs to be learned. It takes a great deal of experimentation and reading to get to the point where you’re gaining readers on a daily basis and making your way into people’s RSS readers. To get you started in the right direction, consume this list by Problogger.
- Successful bloggers network. Having a circle of others who know their subject and who are prepared to give opinions and otherwise help out is an invaluable aid to the blogging process. Their favorite haunts are sites like Digg, Del.icio.us, twitter, FaceBook, FriendFeed and others.
- They are heavily into social media and social networking for the potential extra exposure. See list in bullet above.
- The more popular a blog becomes, the more you’ll notice that the blogger is frequently seen in SEO circles. There are even a number of notable bloggers whose opinions on SEO are widely respected. Search engine optimization is essential for your blogging success, and the most important part of optimizing your blog is getting inbound links. You can do this by having great content that others want to link to, and by commenting on other good blogs. Don’t forget linking between your blog posts for legitimate links too. Beyond that, here are some great tips for optimizing your blog from Search Engine Land, and another from Pronet Advertising.
- Successful bloggers give their readers information that is not just interesting–it has to be useful too. If you can help your readers out in their daily work or lives they’ll be back again and again.
- For the most part, successful blogs deal with a niche–a specific part of a subject. There are a few examples of blogs that deal with a wide range of subjects though. One I love is Lifehacker.
- They are prepared to spend literally hours a day to post, network and improve their blog. I would say that two-three hours a day is the minimum you’ll get by on if you want a remarkably successful blog. Just being honest here, for all those who think they can get by on twenty minutes a day!
- The most successful blogs are those that form a community. Good bloggers are good community leaders, and for many blogs this is key. Over to Guy Kawasaki for more on building a community.
- Create dialog with other top bloggers. It’s no coincidence that all the top blogs regularly refer to posts on other blogs, and even engage in conversation with other bloggers through their posts. This takes the concept of community building to a higher level and provides readerships with further resources that will be useful to them.
Bloggers I find Outstanding
(In no particular order)
- Darren Rowse of Problogger
- Maki of DoshDosh
- Chiropractic of Planet Chiropractic
- Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz
- Dave Taylor of Ask Dave Taylor
- Brian Clark of Copyblogger
- Michael Gray of Wolf Howl
- Rae Hoffman of SugarRae
- Lyndon Antcliff of Cornwall SEO
- Chris Garrett of ChrisG.com
- Lee Odden of Top Rank Blog
- Hugh MacLeod of Gaping Void
- Naomi Dunford of IttyBiz
Don’t miss the twitter migration…
Ever noticed how sometimes a few straggling birdies get left behind each year when all the others are migrating to better climates? Chances are those that get left behind end up not making it at all.
I hate to be a drama queen (not known for it), but if you are stubborn about not getting involved with twitter, you might just find yourself wishing you’d joined the rest of the flock, especially if you work online.
I know there are a number of online personalities who, like me in the beginning, see twitter as just one more social-media drain on our time, but I’m happy to admit that I was wrong on that score. I’m now a self-confessed twitter-holic.
The twitter world is fast developing into a hub for the various industries. All you need do to ensure permanent access to professional opinions, great company, and breaking news, is open an account and search for all the people in your industry you wish you had access to. You’ll probably be surprised how many are already on twitter. Join as many communities you want, and you’re all set.
Remember though, that if you want to use twitter for family and friends too, you’d be better off opening more than one account so that your professional associates can’t end up reading your family small talk.
Like many others in the SEO industry in particular, I’ve discovered that twitter is wonderful for keeping me in touch with what’s going on. We’re even privy to breaking news as it’s actually breaking, and I love hearing about stuff before anyone else does!
There are a number of twitter clients designed to help you get the most of your micro-blogging experience. Instead of exhausting (and boring) myself, I’m going to send you over to this brilliant list. That should be plenty to keep you going for a while. My favorite (and the only one I use) is Twhirl. It’s easy, non-intrusive, meaning I can work while I’m using it, and it seems to have few bugs. In the bargain, you can log onto multiple accounts and read them all from the same tiny window. Brilliant.
My one pet peeve with Twhirl, however, was that it opened links in IE instead of FireFox, which is my default browser. I tweeted about it a couple of times but no one answered my cries for help. Then yesterday Andy Beard encountered the same problem, so my eyes were glued to his tweets until he came up with an answer, which I knew he would. So it is with full credit going to Andy that I present to you the solution here! I’m so happy that now when I click on a link in a tweet, it comes up in FireFox. I HATE IE!
Just in case any twitter people get to read this, one thing both twitter and Twhirl are lacking is an efficient search mechanism. If you just know you saw a tweet about something important a few days ago, you can’t find it in search (well not reliably). You need to go back through all the tweets, which can be an extreme headache, particularly if you’re pushed for time which we all are.
But I love twitter, and even the attractions of FriendFeed can’t lure me away, well not for now anyway.
So what do I mean by ‘don’t miss the twitter migration?’ It seems to me that at some point they’ll probably have to change the rules for twitter, when it gets too big to manage in its present format. Maybe there will come a time when you can’t just decide to ‘follow’ any person of your choice. For me this is a totally valid reason to get in now before things do change (of course, then again they might not). And then there’s always the fact that some pretty impressive individuals are still willing to follow you back. Once they’ve got upwards of 10,000 followers that’s unlikely to be the case.
Oh, and if you love the little birdie with attitude featured in the twitter logo, you’ll be impressed to know that it’s the work of another twitter-holic, non other than cartoonist Hugh MacLeod of Gaping Void.
If you want to start somewhere, follow me on twitter!
No-Cost Blog Tools You’ll Love
Just recently we’ve seen a number of new applications appear on the web to help online business, and in particular bloggers.
In my last couple of posts you heard about how important it is to track your web stats, and a few carefully considered suggestions from me. I promised to let you know about a new tracking program I just discovered called GoingUp. Well, the verdict’s in: I LOVE IT! Trust me, you should try this one. I’m using the free version which tells me just about everything I want to know about where my traffic is coming from, how much, and what they look at when they arrive at my blog. Heck, this free program even has heat maps, which as you know can be vital to successful online marketing.
Now the next tool is going to please you if you’ve ever wanted to post some information in PDF form on your blog or website. This absolutely beautiful little gadget from Issuu not only does the job efficiently, it makes your web page look so impressive. You can see it in action here in my copywriting secrets post on my other blog. I’m sure you’ll want to start using Issuu yourself right away, and when you’ve seen for yourself how great it is, please go and vote for it in the SXSW awards.
Many bloggers are getting a bit jaded about commenting because so many blog owners don’t realize that they’re depriving commenters from that all-important link goody by not changing WordPress’s default no-follow arrangement. If you’d like to encourage your visitors to leave comments (you should-they’re the life-blood of a blog), then check out the several so-called link-love plugins offered for WordPress users. I use Lucia’s Linky Love do-follow plugin. Don’t forget to adjust the plugin settings to give link goodness after a certain number of visits–3 seems to be optimal.
Well, I think that should be enough to be going on with for now. Please remember to comment (yes, you’ll get link goodness), and I’d also really appreciate a stumble. Thanks.
Does Your Blog Stand Out From the Crowd?
if your blog is typical it’s nice–clean lines, easy to understand navigation, and useful content. But it doesn’t do much to distinguish itself from the millions of other blogs out there.
If you want to really stand out from the crowd, you have to get some kind of a buzz going. The ways to do this are:
- Write about something outrageous before anyone else does (like Britney shaving her head for example)
- Write something so useful that millions of people will want to bookmark it and link to it
- Offer readers something for free that will keep them coming back for more. Examples of this might be software, such as how much is your blog worth, or an offer to do something for a reader–something they’d find really useful. The sky’s the limit really–the point is you gotta offer them something they really want.
One important thing: a blog is only as important as its comments, so encourage people. Ask them to comment, and give them link love. Make sure they realize that you don’t employ no-follow. So many people are doing that these days and it doesn’t make sense when you’re trying to establish a blog. WordPress actually has a plugin called LinkLove which I employ to help in this direction.Try and get a few good incoming links. I got a good .edu link, and I’ve been trying to find the wonderful little blog post that helped me to do that. when I track it down I’ll pass it on to you.
Try and get people to favorite you on Technorati too. That can really make a difference. Make sure you include your little icons so readers can write you up to Digg, Delicous and all the others.
News of Good Things to Come–and Blogrush
I’ve been quiet lately. So much to do, suffering from overwhelm! One of these days I’m going to have to give in and hire an assistant so I can take care of the really important stuff like family and SEO. Lol.
I’ve been holding out on you all: Coming up is a fabulous interview with Rand Fishkin, as a follow up to the interview I published a couple of months back. Stand by to be impressed!
Before I rush off to take care of some errands, let me tell you about an exciting source of free traffic for your blog. Blogrush is a free service that is already being used by a lot of successful bloggers and even SEO people. They had some issues with the usual spammers and jerks, so they’ve taken the time to rebuild their operation to allow only sincere and honest bloggers to take part. So if you’re a spammer, do yourself a favor and don’t bother to click on that link!
I really admire founder John Reese for his determination to keep Blogrush free of Internet lowlife and I sincerely wish him well in this attempt.
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SEO Buzz for Your Business- Learning SEO Secrets December 19, 2008 Patricia Skinner
- A Glance Back–and a Glance Forward December 17, 2008 Patricia Skinner
- Spam by any other name…. December 13, 2008 Patricia Skinner
- Discipline, Your Passion and Your Business December 3, 2008 Patricia Skinner
- 17 Reasons Why You Need to Grab Your Space on Twitter November 26, 2008 Patricia Skinner
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