How crucial is making a daily post to the overall success of your blog?

In the past, my goal was to post a new blog each and every day. If not a minimum of 5 days each week.

Sometimes that is very difficult.

I like to put up content that is going to bring some kind of value, but some days it felt like I was just blogging about anything and everything just to put up that daily post. And of course one of the ‘golden’ rules of a successful blog is Quality Content.

Read the rest of this entry »

blog success, Blogging, daily posts, game plan, rss, traffic, unique visitors

Blogging Zoom is the newest social networking site. It is aimed specifically at blogs and gives bloggers a chance to showcase their original material. BZ does not penalize you for submitting your own material, but it does need to be your original content. It is community based so that the more you participate in blogging zoom by taking time to read the other posts, commenting them and zooming them, the more you’ll get noticed yourself.

Blog Rush has been around since mid-September. It was the great new idea from John Reese to bring more traffic to your blog. By displaying the Blog Rush Widget proudly (and in a top position) on your own blog, you are able to participate in this traffic method. Blog Rush works on a credit basis, and so each time your page is loaded (or someone in your networks) that entitles you a credit. Your work is shown in the blog rush widget of other blogs, and the more credits you have, the more often it is shown. This method requires very little to no work.

As long as you display the widget above the fold and in a good position on your blog, you are suppose to receive traffic from it. The “Phase 2″ update of BlogRush promised to get rid of the spammers and bring even more traffic for the little guy.

I have been involved with Blog Rush from day one, and started using Blogging zoom when it was only a few days old.

What have I found?

So far my vote has to go with Blogging Zoom. I’ve been using it for approximately one week and have received more traffic to Home with Heather from it than I have from Blog Rush, in half the time this month.

Blogging Zoom is going to take some time for you to use. Just like with any other social network… you have to network. That means to take time to meet other bloggers, make friends, zoom posts and the whole bit. So far it seems to be a great community. Maybe because it’s new, but I’m seeing more traffic from it than Blog Rush, Plugim, Sphinn or Digg.

As for Blog Rush? I think it was a great idea. But what I see happening is that the A-list bloggers are being displayed in the widget waaayy more than the little guy. It was suppose to be for the little guy. It takes up a huge amount of prime real estate on my blog. John says you need to show the widget above the fold for best results, or at least in the highest position you can manage. I’ve done that from day one as well.

Now don’t get me wrong, I do get some traffic from the widget and I guess that it is good exposure for Home with Heather. I’m just not sure it’s worth the price of that placement on my blog. I plan to leave it up through the end of the year and monitor the results from both traffic methods before I make a decision.

Who gets your vote for bringing traffic? Is it Blog Rush, Blogging Zoom or someone else. And I’m not talking about SU, they are in a class of their own and deserve a post of their own,

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Expect the Best,

blog promotion, Blog Rush, blog traffic, blogging zoom, social media, Social Networking, traffic, web promotion

Last weekend was the big Google Page Rank shuffle.  Many are screaming out against it.  It seems that some of the major players got a major Google bitch slap.

Google is trying to make it fair for everyone to compete.  What they are most concerned with is people gaming the system.  So many people (and I’m not talking about the major players now) don’t like to play fair.

Let’s take a look at this by way of example…

Blogger ‘A’ - Just a regular Joe (or Heather as it were ) goes about her business blogging everyday trying to provide quality content.  Trying to get links back to her site by way of reciporical reviews, blog rolls, comments, article marketing… you know using the very white hat methods.   A blog like that could remain low in PR and therefore low in the SERP’s (search engine results pages).

Blogger ‘B’ comes along and tries to game the system to get ahead faster.  He buys a bunch of back links, gets even more links from link farms, gets in with a “bad neighborhood” and doesn’t bother putting out quality stuff.  His blog is really spammy and nobody likes it anyway, but they are all sent there through these back links.  And because he has 4 or 5 times as many backlinks as Blogger ‘A’, he lands up higher in the SERP’s.

Google doesn’t like that - neither does the average reader.  I hate spammy blogs.

So Google tries to get tough with them and really crack down.  They want to make it fair.  But what there is a whole other group of Bloggers.  We will call them Blogger ‘C’ that is a mixture of hard work, great content and not quite perfect methods of obtaining links.  These often end up being the major players.  They have refined their blogging skills to have the best of both worlds, up until this most recent round of PR shuffle.  Thus the major bitch slap.

Do I think it’s fair that the major players were taken down like that?

Nope - I certainly don’t. 

But I do think something needs to be done about those spammy blogs.  Google just needs to try a bit harder to smack the right blogs.

With I’m sure Zillions of blogs floating around now, they do need to do something to level the playing field.

Obviously there is more to it than just that little example, and I could get into a bunch of stuff about giving out links on sponsored posts, interlinking in “bad neighborhoods”, when we should use no follow and when we shouldn’t.  But you know what?  Many great writers have already covered this and explained it very well.  Andy Beard, Grizzly, Ian Fernando, and Maki from Dosh Dosh just to name a few

At this point, I’m please with my increase to a PR4.  I actually thought that this would happen during the last update, but better late than never I guess.

With all the controversy, fuss and muss going around about Page Rank right now, many say it’s not worth anything anyway.  Perhaps this is true too.  But it’s worth something to me.   I guess it will always be something and as part of being online, we’re just gonna have to learn to roll with it.

Expect the Best,

google, google bitch slap, page rank, PR, SERPs, traffic, Web 2.0

After a few sleepless nights and much hard work, John Reese and his team over at Income.com have released the new BlogRush widget. It has only been live for a few hours.

There is such a buzz going on about BlogRush. You’d be wise to click on the links and get in as fast as you can.

Basically how it works is that each time a page of your blog loads, you get a syndication credit for that. For each credit you get, your blog will be shown in the widget on somebody else’s blog (that is relevant to yours).

So If your blog page is loaded 1000 times in one day. Your blog will be shown in the widget on other blogs 1000 times in one day. But that is not the best part. If you get readers wanting to be part of the “Great Blog Rush” (that’s just fun to say ) and they sign up through the widget on your blog. You will also get a syndication credit for every time their blog is shown.

This will bring you HUGE leverage and awesome targeted traffic. And the referrals go down 10 generations deep. John has a video on the site that explains it all beautifully.

I loaded my widget as soon as my eyes popped open this morning. This is very exciting news. Click on the widget in my sidebar to go and get yourself signed up (please), or go check out the video first.

I’m not kidding you when I say I think this will be part of Internet History. Look at John’s track record of the past, and like he says on his blog… he knows the bigger picture of what is coming from Income.com. We don’t… but we will soon.

Expect the Best,

blog promotion, Blog Rush, Blogging, blogrush, free traffic, income.com, john reese, leverage, Syndication, traffic

A friend and fellow blogger, YC from Internet Marketing Mind - Make Money Online has included me in a viral linking test. He is tracking his technorati ranking to see what will happen to it over the course of the next two weeks after participating in this experiment.

I am of the mind that one can NEVER have enough links pointing toward your blog and so I’m going along with the experiment. My tech ranking this morning is at 27 972. We shall see what happens to it over the next 2 weeks.

You should play along too. It’s really quite simple. Just follow these four easy steps.

1.) Copy and paste the entire matrix of “ViralTags” below in a post on your blog, about the same topic.

2.) Substitute the Host Tag and one of the “ViralTags” in the matrix with your anchor text of choice containing your blog’s URL. Please keep anchor text to a maximum of 4 words to keep the matrix size manageable.

3.) When you get a ping back from someone that has your link in one of their “ViralTags”, practice good karma by copying his/her Host Tag’s anchor text (automatically the associated link will also be copied) and paste it over one of your “ViralTags” below.

4.) Encourage and invite your readers to do the same and soon this will grow virally.

==== Copy and Paste below this line ====

Host Tag: Home with Heather - Helping Newbies with Straight Talk

Internet Marketing Mind - CHESSNOID - Escape Job Hell - A camera and a mac - Offbeat Auction -Chicken’s Life -Any Apples - Ryan Shamus - Terence Chang - Rich Minx - Slyvisions - E-Revenue Select - Misdo Club - Digital Lost Boys - CyberSurge - Technically Easy - The Dragon Project - I Am Facing Millions - E-World Vu - Hiding-N-Public - Webd360 - Techie Zone - The Insane Writer - Olympic Blogger - Norwegian Photo Blog - The King Kong Blog - Bamboo Nation - Mobile Phone Geek - Boogie Mum - Miri Guy - Everything Finance Blog - Net Monetization - Groovy Vegetarian - Etienne Teo - Omicra - Komirad - Pro Blog Design - Fashion Style Trend - Marketing Land - Marketing Deviant - Blogging Tips - Rammel Firdaus - Don Biz Blogger - Groovy Entrepreneur - Mr. Baconpants - The Daily Fuzz - Forex Trading Blog - Zr5 - Cariboo Ponderer - Utah SEO - Queen City Hoops - Blogging Bits - Demp.se/y - Scraps of Mind - High Fivez - Poewar - Blogging Expertise - Oil Offshore Marine - Smart Not Cheap - I Hate Your Job - Vegan Momma - Lillie Ammann - Life Snippets - My New Hustle - Mouseki - Chill Technology - Blogging Mix - A Blog About Nothing - Untwisted Vortex - Jaycees Desires - Muffin 53 - Skittles’ Place - The Buzz Queen - A Little Piece Of Me - Comedy Plus - Adsense Tips - SEO: Project - The Money Blog - Blog About Interesting Stuff - Internet Blog Branding - Blogspot - Search Engine Optimization - Blogging Tips, SEO Guide : Blog Instructor - Blog, Blogger and Blogging - Blog About Networking - Blog Monetization - Blogspot - Blogger, Blog and Blogging - Blogging and Marketing - Blog For Bloggers - The Blogger’s Haven - Business Logic - Content, Connection, Continuity - One Man’s Goal - Mottekaero Mister Donuts - Maiylah’s Snippets - A Blog about Nothing - I Do Things so you don’t have to - Boston Brat - The Coffee House - DCR Blogs - The Last Page On The Net - The Tech Record - I Should Have Bred Iguanas… - How I Will Be Rich - Mother’s Home! - Stopover - Your Website Profit -The Zen Art of Software Build & Release - It’s Write Now - staticthinkbox - A Lil Sumptin Sumptin - Crisp Networks - Derrich.com - Environmental Economics - Flowers Blog - Graphic Identity - Healthia Cynthia - Instructor Blog - Jonathan Phillips - King’s Blog - Lady’s Confessions - Missylicious - One Dollar Man - Quest For Fair Trial - Rob Sellen - Scribble On The Wall - Western Standard Blog - Youth Blog - Zealous Blog - Internet Marketing Mind : Money Making Scoop - SiteFever - Home with Heather - Why Money Matters - Grow Rich Along With Me - Viral Tag - Viral Tag - Viral Tag

Join in the fun. Really, what if it works? Actually I have participated in these things before and they have helped to a degree. It just takes a minute, copy, paste, add your name and see what happens.

I’ll let you know in two weeks.

Expect the Best,

link love, backlinks, getting links, link building, Link Building, Link Love, matrix, traffic, viral linking

On August 31st, I posted “The Plan“. That is to see my RSS Subscribers double or better during the month of September.

Last Friday I believe that my counter was saying 58 subscribers to this blog. Subscriptions will always fluctuate up and down a few and that was the case this week. Yesterday the count was showing to be up to 74 but this morning is down again to 63.

That’s OK, it’s a start. I also don’t want to live or die by a counter. As long as you put out relevant information that is of interest to readers, the blog size will naturally increase.

Here are a few things that can be done in order to keep readers coming back:

Read the rest of this entry »

are you in, blog promotion, free traffic, getting more readers, rss, September challenge, subscribers, traffic, Web 2.0, weekly update

SquidWho is the new “front door” to the outrageously popular Squidoo (see: Pardon Me? SquidWhat… SquidWho). I really like what Seth had to say as to why he launched SquidWho, everyone is notable for something. If they’re notable to you, go and make a lens on them.

How can this cool new tool be used to help you increase?

Squidwho is really still just in it’s infancy. Over the coming months, if it’s anything like Squidoo, it will go viral and gain momentum in a huge way.

Read the rest of this entry »

branding, gorgeous friend, seth godin, Social Networking, Squidoo, squidwho, traffic, Web 2.0, web promotion