Increase Your Google Juice
May 14, 2008
- there isn’t much competition targeting the same keyword/market
- or your blog has become an authority in your niche
Hitting The Right Keyword
May 5, 2008
Read more
Why You Must be the First, in Google’s Search Results at Least!
May 2, 2008
April 2008 Most Popular Articles
May 1, 2008
- Let’s Follow Each Other on Twitter, Shall We?: After reading about it virtually on every single website on the web, a couple of weeks ago I decided to give Twitter a try. I must say that, contrary to what many people claim to, I did not get addicted to it.
- Embracing the Status of Part-Time Blogger: 5 Practical Tips: I’m sure you read a lot about pro blogging and what it takes to earn a full-time income from your blog. This is a common topic among active bloggers and there are plenty of great articles that cover various aspects of the subject. With the huge amount of focus that is given to becoming a pro blogger, I think that becoming a successful and profitable part-time blogger is often overlooked. Earning a reasonable amount of money on a part-time basis is actually more desirable than most people realize.
- May 1st RSS Awareness Day: Get Involved: What is the takeaway message? Only a very small percentage of the Internet population is aware of the RSS format and its benefits.
- Killer Domains: My First eBook is Available Now: If you tried to find some good domain names lately you know how disappointing the experience can be. It feels like all the marketable domains are already gone. And the problem is that the success of your website starts with the domain name.
- 7 Reasons Why You Might Never Be Productive: Are you disappointed with the fact that, no matter how hard you try, you can never seem to get things done in a productive manner? If so, then acting now is the way to go because you can rest assured that things will not exactly get better if you just stand there and wait for a miracle. As a blogger, being productive is definitely a must if you are serious about long-term success and living in denial is simply not an option.
- Open Discussion: What Do You Think of Internet Marketers? (aka the long sales page gurus): The same cannot be said about people that resort to the long sales pages, though. If you navigate around the web you will notice that there is a great deal of controversy around these practices.
- The Best Sources of Content for WordPress Users: If you’re looking for technical documentation or support, the codex and forums are usually the first place to look. However, I would like to share some blogs and websites that provide a good amount of WP-related content that I think you will appreciate. Whether you are a theme designer/developer or a blogger who is looking to get more out of WordPress, visit some of these sites and see for yourself.
- Website Traffic Series Part 3: Leave Comments on Other Blogs: On the first part of this series we talked about how you can generate traffic to your website by getting it featured on Web Design and CSS galleries. On the second part we talked about Blog Carnivals. Today we will cover another basic yet effective strategy: leaving comments on other blogs.
- Make Sure Your WordPress is Not Hacked: Lately there there seems to be a hacking spree around old versions of WordPress. Most of the times the hacker will edit your theme files to insert spam links. One of my older and non-active blogs got that problem, and I had several friends complaining to me about it as well when chatting over IM.
Partner: MakeUseOf.com Amazing Websites and Tools you Never Knew About Read more
Branding Yourself With The “Guru Theme”
April 30, 2008
Blogs are a great way to make money online. However, sometimes the money is made not from direct methods like Google Adsense or affiliate marketing.
Sometimes, all you need a blog for is to grow your personal brand as a guru or an expert and the money comes in many, many other ways.
I’m releasing the theme I use for my work-at-home blog as The Guru Theme so you can use it on your blog too. I basically created space for a bigger blog header, which is necessary if you want to band yourself well.
This simple theme is perfect if: Read more
What Time of the Day is Best to Post to Your Blog
April 28, 2008
LeftTheBox asks “Hey Darren I know you post daily but do you try to post at a certain time each day?”
I certainly do! I not only set myself minimum post numbers each day but I’ve taken it a little further and narrowed down some daily posting windows that I aim for.
Really it comes down to a bit of research and experimentation to work out when the best time to post is (and I suspect it’ll vary from blog to blog depending upon where their audience is situation and even depending upon topic).
For me I attempt to have a fresh post go up on my blog in the morning US time. Here at ProBlogger my audience is fairly global but the majority of readers are in the Americas so I attempt to have something fresh for them for when they get to work, check their feeds over a morning coffee etc. I then also attempt to post something for the end of the day (US time). Then on days that I post a 3rd post per day (it’s usually more of a ‘newsy’ post) I attempt to put that up about 8 hours after the 2nd one just so that posts are evenly spread through the day.
Read more
How to Choose a Niche Topic for Your Blog
April 26, 2008
@jonathanguinn asks: “I am new to internet marketing and am struggling to find my niche. Maybe some pointers about that would be helpful.”
There are many factors to consider when choosing a niche. I’ve written about many of them in this post - but for me a lot of it comes back to choosing something that you know about, that you feel you can say something useful and interesting on - ie what are YOU about?.
After that I’d take a good hard look at tools like Google Trends where you can track the popularity of different search terms over time to see if they’ve been trending up or down. Ideally you want to find a popular niche that’s growing so that you can position yourself for the future growth.
Other factors of course come into play including the number of other blogs and websites on a topic already (ie competition), whether the topic has monetization streams (if you’re doing it for money) etc - but you can read more aobut them in my post on choosing a niche for your blog.
Read more
How to Build Your Blog’s Readership
April 25, 2008
@jeremyjacks asks - How did you get to be a big blogger? And what should I do to get more site hits?” also - @JoshAnstey asks - “whats the best way to build blog exposure?”
I’m not sure I’m famous outside of a very small segment of the internet - but the growth I’ve had on my blogs has come over a long period of time and I would say that one of the ’secrets’ to growing a blog readership is to stick at it and work hard for a sustained period of time. I’ve been blogging 5 and a half years now and have worked a lot of hours in that time.
Outside of hard work (and a bit of luck) there are many techniques you can use to grow readership to a blog. I’ve summarised some of the many articles I’ve written on the topic here on my How to Find Readers for your Blog page. Also check out my 6 part series on How I’d Promote My Blog if I was Starting Out Again. I really believe that the topics covered in that of guest posting (on relevant blogs in your niche), networking, viral content, advertising and social media are a great place to start.
Also - get on Twitter (I know you’re on it Jeremy and Josh but others should) because it’s a pretty hot spot at the moment when it comes on online activity and I think the potential to drive a lot of traffic from there is still only just being realized. It’s a space that is still in it’s early days of development so get in early (even though it’s been a year or two since it launched) and position yourself for the future.
Read more
Is it Worth Getting Local Domain Names for a Blog?
April 25, 2008
@PopularWealth asks - “I’d like to see geo-domain blogging addressed since you ask Darren. I think geo domains, and “local” sites are getting hot again”
I’m no expert on this topic but I do think that there is something to it well worth exploring from my own personal experience. My first domain was LivingRoom which is a .au (Australian) domain.
I blogged heavily on this domain for a number of years and it got a lot of incoming links in the early days of running it and as a result began to rise in it’s search engine authority. What I found was that despite blogging in some very competitive niches (including Digital Cameras) on that domain it got quite a lot of traffic to it from Google. The traffic didn’t come from the global Google but Google.com.au (the Aussie localized version). For a while there the traffic was quite massive (although less so these days as I’ve let the blogs slip to focus more on my main blogs).
Read more
Open Discussion: What Do You Think of Internet Marketers? (aka the long sales page gurus)
April 21, 2008
