Search Engine Optimization for Blogs - SEO

Search Engine Optimization is something that makes many blogger’s heads spin - I know this because every time I write an SEO article I get comments from bloggers telling me that its too big a topic and that they’d rather just write ‘quality content’.

Whilst I’ll never argue that quality content should be anything but a first priority in blogging, the fact is that there are many millions of pages of great writing languishing around at the bottom of search engines results pages that deserve to be read by many but which rarely see the light of day because their authors have failed to understand that just a few simple tweaks in the writing process could see them ranking considerably higher.

So it’s time for another series - this time on Search Engine Optimization for Blogs!

People often ask me ‘how do I get ranked number one in (((insert favourite search engine here)))?

My answer usually starts with - ‘I don’t really know what I’m talking about….but….’

You see whilst some of my blogs rank very highly on different search engines - I often don’t really know why. Much of what I do is educated guessing and experimentation. I do read a lot of other people’s advice on the topic, but the more I read the more I realize that I’m not alone in my guess work - virtually every article I read is a ‘best guess’ of some kind.

My main advice to people wanting to optimize their blogs for Search Engines is to keep it simple. Start with quality content on a specific topic and then tweak it using the best current advice going around.

When I think about SEO for my blogs I tend to divide the things I focus upon into two parts - offsite and onsite search engine optimization techniques. Offsite techniques are more about what others do on their websites in linking to you, onsite techniques you have more control over as you write.

Off Site SEO Techniques

Off site SEO techniques are as the name suggests factors from outside the site itself (ie from other sites) that impact the blog’s ranking in search engines. Many of these factors are outside the blogger’s control - however they are useful to know. The most obvious and probably most powerful offsite factor are Inbound Links (something I’ve already referred to above).

It is generally agreed that the links that point to a website are one of the most powerful way of climbing Search Engines results pages (in fact many argue it is THE most important factor). - To put it most simply - every link to your site is seen by the search engines as being a vote of confidence in your site.

Ideally Speaking - The best inbound links have three main qualities to them:

1. they are from higher ranked sites than your own
2. they are relevant to the topic you are writing about
3. they link to you using relevant keywords to your page

Whilst you may not have complete control over who links to you these are the types of links that you should be dreaming of.

How to generate quality inbound Links?

Of course whilst most of us know this it doesn’t make getting such links any easier - its in the hands of others in many cases. So how do you get such links?

• Quality Content - There are all kinds of link generating systems out there but in my opinion the best way to get links to your blog is to write quality content that people will want to read. You can solicit links with others or sign up for different link building programs or even buy text links on other sites but the cheapest and probably safest approach is to build inbound links in a natural organic way as others link to your quality content.
• Notify Relevant Bloggers of your content - Whilst I don’t advocate spamming other bloggers and asking for links - I would recommend that if you write a quality post on a topic that you know will interest another blogger that it might be worth shooting them a short and polite email letting them know of your post. Don’t be offended if they don’t link up, but you might just find that they do and that in addition to the direct traffic that the link generates that it helps build your own page rank in the search engines.
• Directories - Another way to generating inbound links is to submit your links to directories. I know of webmasters who swear by the benefits of such a strategy - the first thing that they do when starting a new site is to do the rounds of directories - submitting links to key pages with appropriate keywords in the links. There are loads of directories out there - many of which offer a free submission. Ari Paparo has compiled a list of blog directories that you might want to start with.
• Inter-link your Blogs - Increasingly bloggers are starting or joining blog networks to enjoy the benefits of multiple sites and writers working together. One of the advantages of networks of sites is that they usually link to one another. In doing so you have complete control over how your sites are linked to from multiple domains. It is worth noting that you should be careful with this approach - if all your sites are hosted on the one server many think that Search Engines will work out what you’re doing and the impact will be lessened.
• Buy Links - Many professional web masters have a budget to purchase links from other highly ranked and and relevant sites. Google have been cracking down on sites that use this practice. They can’t catch everyone but some have been caught and seem to have been penalized for doing it.
• Swap Links - Similarly many bloggers swap links with other bloggers. Sometimes this happens pretty naturally (you see someone linking to you so you link back) but in many cases the links are strategic ones and formally arranged between site owners. I get daily requests for such reciprocal links (I rarely act on them). Whilst there is some benefit in such link swapping I would again advise caution here as many SEO experts believe that the search engines have methods for tracking such strategies and devaluing the links. Some try to get around this by doing indirect or triangulated links. ie instead of site A and B doign a direct swap they involve other sites. So A links to C in exchange for D (also owned by C) linking to B (also owned by A) - makes your head hurt doesn’t it!?! There are also a variety of systems around that say they’ll take care of such interlinking for you - I know many who use Digital Point’s Free C0-Op Advertising system. Personally I tend to avoid such schemes and have a policy of linking to sites I think are valuable to my readers. If they link back then so be it.

If you’re looking for link exchange/buying/selling programs you might like to look at systems like:

- Link Adage
- Text Link Ads
- Link Worth

On Site SEO Techniques

Having looked at Off site Search Engine Optimization Techniques I’ll now turn my attention to examining some of the factors you might like to keep in mind as you build your blog - (or Onsite techniques - things you do on your blog that help build a higher ranking). As with all SEO techniques there are many of these and a lot of speculation around all of them so let me touch on as many as I can:

1. Keyword Rich Content - identify a few keywords for your article that you’re hoping will get indexed highly by Google. Don’t pick too many but consider the questions

• How do I want people to find this post in Search Engines?
• What will they type into Google if they want information on the topic you’re writing?
• How would I find information on this topic in the Search Engines?
• What results come up when I do plug these keywords into Google?
• What other keywords are other sites using?

The answer to these questions will give you a hint as to what words you’ll want to see repeated throughout your article a number of times.

These keywords will need to be the most common words used in your article. Use them in some or all of the following ways:

• Keywords in post and page titles
• Keywords in URL of page
• Keywords in outbound links
• Keywords in bold tags (try do it at least once)
• Keywords in heading tags (there is debate over exactly how to use them but it’s generally accepted that h1 tags are important and that h2, h3, h4 etc tags also have an impact. Having said that I’ve seen some pages rank very well in search engines without using heading tags.
• Keywords in image alt tags
• Keywords in the general throughout the text of your post - but especially early on in the first few sentences
• Keywords in meta tags

Of course you can go over the top with keywords in posts and let it destroy your content - but if it fits with what you’ve written tweak it to include the words you are targeting a couple of extra times. Most SEO experts recommend getting your keyword density up to between 5-20% - I think 20% is probably bordering on massacring your content.

One last word of warning and disclaimer on keyword rich content (because I can just hear the comments on this post already) - don’t sacrifice your readers experience of your site just for the sake of SEO. Yes keyword density can be important in climbing the search engine rankings - but more important is that your content and design are user friendly and helpful to readers. There is nothing worse than a site that is stuffed with keywords - these sites come off as cheap, nasty and spammy - don’t fall for the temptation.

2. Themed sites - One of the growing theories of SEO is that you are more likely to rank well if you have a substantial amount of pages on a similar theme. ie a niche topic blog will probably rank higher than a general one that covers many topics. Build a blog with over 200 pages of content on the same theme and you’ll increase your chances of ranking well as SEs will see you as an authority on the topic. The take home advice here is to keep to some kind of a topic/niche/theme for your blog. It is also probably another argument for categories and tagging posts that relate together strongly.

3. Site Design - Search Engines like well laid out, well coded and easily to navigate sites. Make sure your pages validate (I need to work more on this) and that they are viewable on all major browsers. Search Engines don’t tend to like too much Flash, Frames or Java Script in your site - keep it simple and clean and their robots will index your site a lot faster and more accurately. Also try to keep your blog free from dead links (a challenge for those of us with older blogs with big archives).

4. Interlink your Site - The way Search Engines index your blog is to send little robot crawlers to your site to track what you’ve written and follow the links. Make it easier for them to get around your blog by using internal linking wisely. Most SEO experts recommend that you provide some sort of Site Map that means every page on your blog is just a link or two away from every other one. One way to do this for bloggers is to make sure that your category pages are in your sidebars as I do in this blog. Also make sure every page links back to your main page and any other important pages on your site. If you’re writing on a topic you’ve previously written about consider linking to what you’ve written before or use a ‘other relevant posts’ feature at the base of your article. You’ll see in my menus at the top of the page a number of my key categories and articles. One of the impacts of having them highlighted in this way is that they have become some of the most highly ranked pages on ProBlogger simply because they are linked to from every page of this blog.

5. Update regularly - The more you update your blog the more often Search Engines will send their crawlers to your site to index it. This will mean your new articles could appear in the index within days or even hours rather than weeks. This is a natural benefit of blogging - make the most of it!

6. Outbound Links - There is debate over how SEs treat outbound links from your blog. I’m in the camp who believe that relevant outbound links enhance your site’s ranking in search engines. I always link out to quality relevant sites that I think my readers will find useful and have a little anecdotal evidence that seems to support the theory that this is healthy for the way SEs index you (check out Waynes article on the topic for more info). Linking to sites outside your own blog does mean you end up sending traffic away from your blog so you need to count the cost of such a strategy. Note that you should always try to link to reputable and relevant sites to your own page. Also keep in mind that too many outbound could have detrimental impact upon your blog. Like in most things in SEO - moderation is the key.

7. Choose your domain name wisely - there are numerous factors to keep in mind when selecting a domain name. For one you might like to include your keyword in it if possible. Secondly you should do a little research to see if someone else has previously used the domain. This could have both positive and negative impact. If it was a quality site with inbound links you might reap some benefits but if it was a banned spam site you could still be banned from Google for a long time. One service you might want to use to check expired domains is Way Back Machine at Archive.org.

8. Register your Domain for a Lengthy Period - a recent patent by Google indicates that it now looks at the length of your domain’s registration in ranking it. It does this because many spam sites have short registrations and a longer one indicates that you’re building a site with substance and are in it for the long haul.

9. One topic per post - the more tightly focused the theme of a page the better when Search Engines come to rank it. Sometimes you might find yourself writing long posts that end up covering a number of different topics. They might relate loosely but if search engine ranking is what you’re after it could be better to break up your post into smaller more focused pieces.

10. Write optimal length posts - there is some thought going around the Search Engine Optimization community that pages that are too short can get passed over for high rankings. I try to keep posts at least 250 words. Of course there are some posts on my blogs that are shorter, but if I’m writing a post that I want to rank well I try to give it some meatiness in terms of length. On the other hand don’t make it too long either - because in doing so you make it difficult to keep your keyword density up and could end up with a less tightly focused page. Research also shows that longer articles can have a pretty steep drop off rate in readers after the text gets below the ‘fold’ or to the end of the first screen of article .

11. Avoid Duplicate content - Google warns publishers in its guidelines about having the same content on multiple pages. This goes for both multiple pages that you own but also pages that others own. This is because a tactic of spammers is often to reproduce content on many pages and/or to steel content from other sites. There is some debate over what duplicate content does and doesn’t include (for instance many bloggers use ‘free articles’ as content on their blogs - these articles often appear on hundreds and even thousands of other sites around the web and to me could be seen as duplicate content) - my advice is to be very careful about how many places your content appears. I do republish occasional posts (or parts of them) but try not to do this too much and attempt to add elements that are unique on each occasion that the posts are republished).

12. Ping - services like Pingomatic (there are numerous others too) will ping a variety of websites for you to notify them that you’ve updated. In doing so you’ll also be letting search engines know that you’ve updated which will trigger their robots to come visit your blog.

13. Submit your RSS to MyYahoo - submitting your RSS feed to MyYahoo seems to help with getting indexed on Yahoo.

14. Quantities of Content - I always get into trouble when I write about having lots of content - but I think its true that bigger sites tend to rank better than smaller sites - whilst it is possible to rank highly with a small site - it’s probably not the norm.. Search Engines will see your site as more comprehensive the more content you have. You also better your odds of being found in Search Engines if you have more pages. By no means am I saying just to put up random junk content - be careful about this - rather work at building a comprehensive and large site over time.

15. Submit to Search Engines - You can do all the best onsite SEO strategies in the world and still get no where because the Search Engines have not found you to start with. Each search engine has a way of letting it know about your site - submit your URL to be included in the index. Please note that this takes time and perhaps a quicker and more effective way is to get linked to by a site already indexed by the search engine.

You might also like to tryout some of the services around that offer to submit your sites to search engines for you - I’d be wary of paying for this sort of service though. I never have and seem to do ok.

Again I will reinforce - the above techniques come out of my own experience and from the things I’ve learnt from others. I am not an SEO expert but find that if you keep the above in mind you can do reasonably well. Don’t become obsessed by SEO - if you do you run the risk of forgetting about your reader, forgetting to write quality content and you could find yourself getting into some dodgy SEO tactics that could get you banned from the Search Engines You’re trying to get listed in.

I’ll finish here by adding that SEO can take time - so be patient. After 2.5 years of blogging I’ve managed to build my blogs page ranks and SERPs but it did not happen over night. Sometimes it seems that no matter what you do nothing works - it may be that the words you’re wanting to target are actually a heavily targeted segment of the internet (consider changing your approach) - or it may just be that there is some unknowable glitch with the SE you are targeting - its a fickle game and one that I’d recommend you don’t rely on alone. So yes work on your SEO but also consider the many other methods around to find readers for your blog.

Feel free to have your say on the topic of SEO and blogging below - share your comments, experiences and questions for the ProBlogger community to interact with.

Lessons from an SEO Contest

Without further ado:

Don’t be content with your rank, changes happen fast – You’re number one in the search results for “fake petunias” today, with your competitors nowhere in sight…but tomorrow they’ll overtake you. We learned this the hard way when our first contest entry grabbed 1st place in Google, only to end up in 5th weeks later. Even more painful was the second entry – from 2nd to 11th.

Don’t go overboard with the keyword density – There has been much talk and debate as to what is the right keyword density for each of the three big engines (Google, Yahoo, and MSN). It is all right – imperative, actually – to conduct keyword research and inject keyphrases into your articles, but don’t be too generous in dishing them out. If the blog content sounds inhuman already – “Fake petunias can be bought at fake petunia shops by people who love fake petunias” – then you’ve probably gone overboard with the keywords.

Here’s good advice from Pholpher’s Perf post: “Don't spam by stuffing your posts with too many keywords. Three to four times should be enough for blog posts between 400-500 words.”

Don’t forget the images – Inserting images and adding alt and title attributes to your posts can give you an SEO advantage.

Link exchanges still matter – One contestant diligently did the rounds of the Philippine blogosphere (IMO one of the friendliest and link exchange-hungriest blogospheres around)…and he placed high in the results.

Feed scrapers pay the price – One of our contest observations was that most blogs filled with duplicate content (mostly feed scrapers) languished in the SERPs. The same was true for blogs that relied on article directory content, though those that had a good balance between unoriginal and original content did fairly well.

Releasing a Wordpress theme can do wonders – Especially if it becomes popular! Getting a free PR 5 or so link from Wordpress is simply too good to pass up (not to mention the links from blogs using your theme). Once you’ve crafted a great theme, changing the colors and releasing them as spin-off themes can net you more links. With this tactic, one contestant who entered the competition quite late shot up blazingly fast through the rankings and finished among the Top 5 (if my memory serves me right).

Watch out for hackers – Hackers a.k.a. your competitors? Possible. It happened to us. Don’t let your efforts go for naught; always run regular backups so you can bounce back with a vengeance, and bounce back fast.

Google’s the easiest, Yahoo the middle guy, MSN the hard-to-get – It’s my opinion that Google is the easiest search engine for a new blog/domain to break into. Barely a week with scant content and we were already there. On the other hand, it took us a month or so to appear on Yahoo. As for MSN, well, our entries didn’t appear even after three months.

* * *

Of course, there's a big difference between an SEO contest and a ‘rivalry’ among blogs in the same niche: the former has a deadline. The latter just goes on and on until the warriors fall one by one by the wayside. Just like in every business, ensuring that your blog outperforms its rivals in the search engine wars requires perpetual vigilance, research, and experimentation.

How To Make Your Blog Sticky

One of the areas I feel most blogs fail at, is the concept of community. I know that's an odd statement, as blogs are all about conversation, but most blogs seem to entirely miss the point of the "on site" community.

Sure you link to other blogs, and talk to other bloggers in your niche, sure you have comments enabled -- in fact, in terms of distributed community blogs work really, really well. In terms of on site community however, they fail miserably for the most part. And it's largely down to the blogger himself.

There are a few practical things you can do to foster your on site community, and trust me when I say that allthough the people that make up your community are mostly worthless in terms of monetization, they can be a core part of your blogs success. And with them, you can create something that goes way beyond the "one guy talking" approach many blogs take.

10 Ways to Make Your Blog Sticky

Here's my list of top 10 things you can do to foster a sense of community among your readers.

1. Design for Repeat Visits

Forget all those stupid bells and whistles, useless navigation and other such "novelties". When you design your blog, bear in mind that you want people to visit your site several times a week, or maybe several times a day. Use lots of white space, easy color schemes, large(ish) text and clear headlines and links.

Hint: Stupid mapping gimmicks are not sticky, they're annoying.

2. Keep Advertising Minimal for Repeats

I wrote about time sensitive adsense last week. Try and extend the idea to showing less ads for logged in users -- these people are NOT the ones that will click your ads, so make life easy for them.

3. Provide a Recent Posts List

And don't just provide it, promote it!. It allows users to track ongoing conversations much like you would in a forum. This is KEY to getting people to converse on your site. The idea of "comments" is good, but the idea of "conversations" is better, and by facilitating that, a post you publish today, could still be active weeks from now.

Often the value of our blogs is not in the original post, it's in the conversation.

4. Answer Your Comments!

It's an astonishing thing to have to say, but man, the amount of times i've commented on a blog, only to go back (i tag my off-site conversations as replies) and find that the author hasn't even bothered to answer me, or aknowledge my comment in any way, is staggering. If you want people to talk to each other on your blog, you need to be part of the conversation.

5. Use the Right Language

It's a small thing, but an important one I feel. Instead of talking about I, talk about We. Instead of talking about me, and you, talk about US. With me?

You need to give your readers a sense of ownership.

6. Post Frequently

And not just frequently, set a pattern and maintain it. If you plan on posting a few times a day, then post at similar times every day. It helps readers get a sense of momentum from your site, and gives them an indication of how often they should be returning or checking their RSS.

7. Private Message System

Either put in a private message system on your blog, to allow members to communicate amongst themselves, or make a link to a form to email other members without giving away their email addresses.

8. Allow Member Posts

Either on a pre moderated acceptance basis or by inviting members to email you their news -- give credit for submissions, and encourage those submissions.

9. Include Members in Decisions

And no, i don't mean that you need to make site decisions via committee, I often say in these types of posts that i'll most likely do my own thing anyway, but would appreciate some input on the subject. Including members in decisions about the site again fosters a sense of both community and ownership.

10. Don Neglect the Distributed Community

Dont ignore other blogs in your niche. It's a mindset thing, but by not viewing similarly themed blogs as competition, but as friends, and linking to them generously, you'll find it easier to keep your own members happy. Chances are they visit other blogs in your niche anyway, make it easy for them.

Any More Ideas for Making Blogs Sticky?

I've only listed 10 things there, there are undoubtably more ways in which we can foster a sense of community amongs our readers. Do tell us your thoughts in general, and specifically, what works for you.

How to Use MyBlogLog to Succesfully Build Massive Blog or Website Traffic

MyBlogLog is an extremely important tool for getting a blog off the ground and for building exposure to your site. Many people don’t realize how powerful it really is! This post will help you get a jump start in building traffic to your blog / website, and will also help you find new, interesting sites you never knew about before.

How to Set Up MyBlogLog on Your Blog or Website

1. Create an account with MyBlogLog. This hould take less than a minute. All you’ll need is to pick out your username, email, password, and the URL of your blog. Once you’ve created an account, be sure to upload an image of yourself as your avatar. Photos are just more personal and make things a bit more inviting.
   
   
2. To bring more interest to your profile, or simply to help users get to know a bit about you, be sure to fill out some personal information in your profile. Again, it really just helps people to connect with you.
3. You will then want to claim your blog or website. To do this, you’ll need to place a snippet of code that MBL provides you within your blog’s template. Now, when you look at your profile page, you’ll see your website.
   

   Both you and your website now have “communities.” Personally, you have the ability to add friends and chat with them. People must join your website’s community, but they can also chat with you through the site’s community.

4. The last major technical step in getting going is installing the MyBlogLog Widget on your blog or website. If you look in your personal profile, you’ll see a link underneath your website’s community “Get Widgets.” The one you are concerned with is the “Recent Readers” widget. This allows you and your other readers to see who has been on your site recently. Layout the widget to your liking and add it to your blog’s sidebar.

Congratulations! You’re Ready.
Here’s where the traffic building begins!

8 Steps To Successfully Building Blog Traffic Using MyBlogLog

1. Make sure you are logged into MyBlogLog. This seems obvious, but if you’re not signed in, then people on the site can’t see you when you’re surfing around.
2. Surf your favorite blogs! Start visiting the sites you’d normally visit and see if they have MyBlogLog widget installed. If they do, click on the View Reader Community link at the bottom. This will bring you to their website’s community.
3. Join the communty and also add the user as a friend/contact. This shows the user in both their personal profile and their website’s community profile that you are interested. It also gives you more exposure so others can find you more easily.
   

   (Note: When you add a user as a friend, you are sent back to your profile, not that user’s. I think this is a glaring problem with the site, as I then have to go back to the blog - to the community - to the user to find their profile again. I hope Eric and others at MBL consider changing this. It will just make things that much easier for users)

4. This is one of the most important steps: Leave a comment on either their personal profile or their website’s community profile. Make sure it is not simply “Nice site” or “Great Blog.” Be sure to leave a relevant comment so the user can tell that you’ve actually visited their site.

   As a result of your comment, the odds are that the user will go and visit your profile (by clicking on your avatar). They will then see your blog / websites and if they have any curiousity in the topic, will check them out. You’ve just exposed your site to another new person!

5. Wash, Rinse, Repeat! After a while, you’ll have targeted all the sites that you are a fan of. Don’t fret, you have much more work ahead!
6. Now that you’ve gone and let your favorite sites know about your interest, it is time to start finding new sites. There are a many ways to do this:
   

   How to find New Websites of Interest

   a) Visit your favorite site’s community pages and look at who else is commenting. Visit their site / blog and return to step 2.
   b) Visit your favorite site’s community pages and look at who else is a member. Visit their site / blog and return to step 2.
   c) Return to your personal profile page and see who “Viewed this Page Recently.” Visit their site / blog and return to step 2.
   d) Go to the “My Admirers” section of your profile. Visit their site / blog and return to step 2.
   e) See who is leaving you comments on your personal community profile or your site’s community. Visit their site / blog and return to step 2.
   f) Visit the profiles of other users you’ve found and see what communities they are a part of. Odds are they will likely be related to their interests. You now have a slew of other communities and sites to visit.

7. Watch the traffic begin! You’ll start to notice traffic slowly start to come from MyBlogLog. Keep people interested by continung to write quality posts.
8. Set aside some time every day to expand your MyBlogLog contacts, visit new sites, comment, and get yourself out there. Remember, every time you visit another site with the MBL Recent Readers widget, you have another opportunity for exposure for yourself. The more you’re seen around, the more likely people will want to connect with you.

Don’t forget that in addition to using MyBlogLog for traffic that there are other important methods. Commenting on other, related blogs with thoughtful messages is hugely important. This should also become a part of your daily routine.

In case you’d like to start somewhere, you can do so with me!
My Personal Profile: ImSnowy (my username)
This Blog’s Profile: Pro Blogger Guide

How to Make Your Blog Rank Well in Google’s Blog Search Engine

Google’s Blog Search is a blog search engine that indexes your blog posts by crawling XML feeds instead of the actual blog html page. The Blog Search includes all blogs which publishes a site feed: If your blog is not included in the Blog Search, you might want to ping them.

I’ve gotten some traffic from Google’s blog search but I haven’t thought too much about it until I saw a link on Conversion Rater which sent me to an article about search result rankings.

Apparently a new patent application from Google reveals the positive and negative factors which determine how Google Blog Search ranks search results. Bill Slawski at SEO By the Sea goes into greater detail on each factor in his excellent post.

Google’s blog search shows results in responses to searchers queries based upon a combination of relevance scores and quality scores… In addition to a relevance score, the search engine looks at a quality score.

A new patent application from Google discusses possible positive and negative factors that might go into that quality scores that might be used by Google Blog Search, and provides some explanations for each of those factors.

Here is the list of positive and negative factors which determine how you rank in Google’s blog search.

Positive Factors

• Links from blogrolls (especially from high-quality blogrolls or blogrolls of “trusted bloggers”)
• Links from other sources (mail, chats)
• Using tags to categorize a post
• PageRank
• The number of feed subscriptions (from feed readers)
• Clicks in search results

Negative Factors

• Posts added at a predictable time
• Different content between the site and the feed
• The amount of duplicate content
• Using words/n-grams that appear frequently in spam blogs
• Posts that have identical size
• Linking to a single web page
• A large number of ads
• The location of ads (”the presence of ads in the recent posts part of a blog”)

The Blogosphere is Rigged

Jessica Guynn poses the question:

Why is this supposedly democratic medium recreating real-world inequality? A blogarchy has emerged from the Internet equivalent of an "American Idol" popularity contest. This elite clique of bloggers -- the so-called A-listers who get checked out more often than Lindsay Lohan -- attract the largest online audience. All those eyeballs can deliver cachet, cash and the coveted contract for a blook (a book based on a blog).

Jessica goes on to discuss inequality in the blogosphere where it seems that 1% is getting 99% of the traffic. But she goes too far when she whines that most of the A-listers are men.

She seems to have forgotten that the Huffington Post, Ann Althouse, the Wonkette et al are blogs run by women A-listers. So I don't want to turn this into a pissing match between the sexes.

Trust me when I say there are a whole lot of male bloggers that are in the same boat. No matter how hard they try and tweak their sites they just can't seem to crack the barrier.

But the truth of the matter is there is a disproportionate amount of traffic going to only a privileged few that have eked out there own network hierarchy within the blogosphere.

And so, a complex social phenomenon becomes purely mathematical: The more links pointing to you -- especially from big-time bloggers -- the more readers you will have (according to the method of judging blog popularity by number of links)... talk about creating a powerful, self-reinforcing and very exclusive network.

The Blogosphere is Rigged

Unfortunately this sort of BS becomes self-perpetuating when blog search sites such as the Truth Laid Bear, Technorati, and Sphere et al reinforce the a-list mentality with their stupid juvenile ratings. Even Google's Blog Search has a "Sort by Relevance" filter which is the default setting.

The A-listers bank on the gullibility of blogging newbies who don't know any better. After all, we just want to belong don't we? So we hang around the A-lister's like a pack of stray dogs at the corner store hoping they will throw us a bone or two (i.e. links).

Search Filters:

We can't even install a news reader today without a ready-made A-list, and a perusal of the search engines (I call them search filters) will quickly point us in their direction.

So where does that leave the rest of the 99%? On the outside looking in that's where. Like I said before, the Blogosphere has turned into one big frat party. And here I thought I left jerks like that back in school. What a crock. Feh!

More Signal, Less Noise:

These blogarchy types subscribe to the theory of "More Signal, Less Noise". Meaning -- YOU are the noise.

Sure, some of the blogarchy deserve to be there. There's no questioning that. BUT I can find better blog writers any day of the week than most of these so-called A-listers.

So here is a dirty little secret for all of you not yet in the know. The blogosphere has been rigged. The majority of the A-listers only got where they are because they have high profile jobs, are members of elite blog networks they have created, or were linked to by other A-listers that they sucked up to. It is a self-serving megalomaniac gang of social climbers that there ever was.

So what can you do about it?

Well for one thing you can stop blogrolling these A-list nincompoops. Don't give them any of your link love. If you still have a morbid curiosity and want them within easy reach then just bookmark them. But whatever you do DO NOT give them apagerank boost by linking to them in your blog.

Start your own blogroll with bloggers who have a similar focus. Visit them often and link to their posts. Comment on their posts and create your own cosmos support group. That's a good start.

How to Make Enemies and Increase your Blog Traffic?

In my opinion contrarian blogging is one of the few legitimate methods of link baiting. There are many a blogger who have made a nice career for themselves by being contrarian, and one of the most well known bloggers out there is Jeff Jarvis of Buzzmachine.

Contrarian blogging is a terrific way to break out from the pack and rise to the top of an already overcrowded blogosphere. Or like my friend Darren Rowse said, putting a "fresh" spin on a story can pay big dividends and bring in more traffic to your blog.

Some prudish types will tell us that to be contrarian as akin to being "snarky". Although it is true that some contrarians can be (snarky), it is only just one method of being a contrarian.

It is really just about offering a different point of view than the rest of the sheep crowd to attract visitors to your blog. How you go about doing that is strictly up to you and a matter of personal style.

Or as my other friend Wayne Hurlbert also says:

Think about this idea for a moment. When following the crowd, you are always behind, by definition. It's impossible to become an industry leader when travelling in the competition's dust. Fad followers are already several steps behind.

Think about it this way. When everyone is competing for the same market, and very often with virtually identical products and services, entire market segments are left almost untouched. A contrarian would happily find and fill those profitable business niches.

This Should Not be Attempted by the Faint of Heart:

One method of getting noticed is by critiquing the a-listers, which is something the Bloke is well known for. (Some might try to put the Bloke into the snarky category but apparently they don't understand my tongue-in-cheek sense of humor... i.e. swoosh, it went right over their pointy heads :).

Of course by doing so you always run the risk of being flamed and called a cynic like I was the other day by an anonymous commenter who didn't happen to get it, dubbing me the "Blog Cop" (now who is being snarky).

Side Note: (Er... that's spelled Blog Bloke btw, but I like "Blog Cop" and since it was written by an anonymous writer I'm claiming the trademark :). (A-listers are also notorious for their huge egos and lacking in a sense of humor). Oh well.

Writing Contrarian Titles:

It perks your natural tendency to want to read more don't you think. Nobody wants to just read the same old same old. They are looking for a different opinion so contrarian titles are just the thing to outsmart the competition and bring in more traffic.

Blog Tip: A lot of bloggers make the mistake of copying and pasting the same title of a post that they want to comment on. That's a big mistake and the perfect way to make your post disappear amongst the rest of the crowd.

By the way, did you notice the contrarian tongue-in-cheek irony in the header of this post? That should bring in some curiosity readers.

Writer Beware:

But just make sure that you write something intelligent and on topic. There is nothing more aggravating than being sucked into clicking on a link that wastes my time and doesn't deliver what it promised.

A lot of spammers do that hoping you will click on their ads. I won't be returning to that blog again so don't be doing that or risk getting on the Bloke's bad side.

On Being Anti-Social:

Of course you also run the risk of being shunned as anti-social which on the face of it appears to run against the grain of social networks. But are social networks really all that social? Mike Sanders quotes Nicholas Carr who makes a good point:

The blogosphere's a seductive place - it's easy to get caught up in it - and there's lots of interesting thoughts and opinions bouncing around amid the general clatter. But does it really provide a good way of becoming informed? Experiencing the blogosphere feels a lot like intellectual hydroplaning - skimming along the surface of many ideas, rarely going deep. It's impressionistic, not contemplative. Fun? Sure. Invigorating? Absolutely. Socratic? I'm not convinced. Preferable to the old world? It's nice to think so.

For all the self-important talk about social networks, couldn't a case be made that the blogosphere, and the internet in general, is basically an anti-social place, a fantasy of community crowded with isolated egos pretending to connect?

Well said.

So contrarian blogging can be an effective way to increase your blog traffic and pagerank. But it doesn't come without its risks either, so if that doesn't suit your fancy there is always grovelling.

How To “Announce” A Blog

Day One Blogging

On the day your blog is born you will have no readers. As I’ve written previously, if you are famous or pull off a publicity stunt you can quickly gain a readership. A few well timed joint ventures with established bloggers or website owners, or a massive email newsletter blast promoting your new blog can do the trick. These are the powerful answers for establishing a big audience quickly but are only available to those with money or connections or fame. If you don’t have any of those, well, you need to have one thing - patience.

The Pre-Launch Checklist

At the start of class two in Blog Traffic School I have something I call a Pre-Launch Checklist. The checklist is important because it ensures you are ready to get out there and promote your blog. It includes things like -

Pre-Launch Checklist
• Write at least five pillar articles, the more you have the better.
• Make sure your new visitors can easily find your pillar content by creating an articles page or linking to your top content on your blog front page.
• If you aim to use your name for personal branding make sure the title of your blog includes your name.
• Make sure your contact information is available.

Little tips like this mean that when you do finally announce your blog you aren’t wasting energy. Your new traffic will A) Stay around and come back, and B) Spread the word for you. Without completing a good pre-launch most new visitors to your site will click away within 30 seconds, never to be seen again.

Baby Steps

The simple fact is there isn’t a magic formula for getting traffic quickly to a blog. You need to start promoting your blog by leaving comments on other blogs, forming relationships with other bloggers, producing viral-word-of-mouth-spreading content pillars and community cohesion. When all these initiatives combine over time, only then do you gain solid and sustainable traffic.

Advice For All New Bloggers

One of the problems new bloggers of today face is the hype generated by established successful blogs. You read stories about bloggers earning thousands of dollars per day, with hundreds of thousands of visitors, huge exposure and big profits. Bloggers enter the blogosphere chasing big goals. Once their blog is set up and they have made their first few posts they stop and wonder why nothing is happening. The impatient bloggers head out looking for quick fixes - methods that promise huge amounts of traffic in a few days or weeks.

The reality is you have to pay your dues for success online just as much as you do in the real world. Nearly all big time bloggers have a history of hard and consistent work, only as a snapshot in time *after* something great has been built does it look easy.

If you just launched a blog and you want traffic I have the following advice for you -

Tips For Brand New Bloggers
1. Focus on your content, don’t worry about the traffic.
2. Start commenting on similar blogs.
3. Start building relationships with other bloggers.
4. Link to other blogs with trackbacks.
5. Be prepared to work long and hard before big traffic comes.

Should You Pay For Blog Announcing Services?

A final word before I end this post - don’t bother with blog/website announcement services. Most of these promise to submit your blog and/or RSS feed to thousands of directories online, increasing your backlinks and traffic. Many of these services use automated software that submits your blog URL and RSS feed to directories. Most of these directories are useless and carry very little weight in the search engines. You will get very little, if any direct traffic from these directories and it won’t do much for your search engine rankings either.

Remember, if it was that easy wouldn’t everyone do it and wouldn’t everyone have hugely popular sites as a result? Don’t trust the hype - only quality and value are rewarded in the blogosphere.

How to boost a new blogs traffic

Yaro has a good post on how to announce a blog for brand new bloggers. His advices are solid and I recommend you to read it if you are new to blogging.

The main tips he gives are

• Write at least five pillar articles, the more you have the better
• Make sure your new visitors can easily find your pillar content by creating an articles page or linking to your top content on your blogs front page, like I have done at my Top Posts page
• If you aim to use your name for personal branding make sure the title of your blog includes your name
• Make sure your contact information is available
• Focus on your content, don’t worry about the traffic
• Start commenting on similar blogs
• Start building relationships with other bloggers
• Link to other blogs with trackbacks
• Be prepared to work long and hard before big traffic comes.