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RTB posted:mcsuede summed it up nicely It's also by nature a much more intimate medium and has much higher conversion rates for basically any action, as long as you target. There are so many sophisticated segmenting email services now. GetResponse.com and GetVero.com are the two I've been playing with lately.
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Mar 25, 2013 14:21
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Omits-Bagels: A bit more feedback, took another quick look while watching a progress bar. 1) Add a Read More link instead of the elipsis after excerpts. Why this isn't standard on every theme I have no idea. 2) You need to rel=nofollow and mask your affiliate links ASAP. You also need to have a page with a disclaimer about affiliate links and a privacy policy. Not only does Google look for this information, the FCC requires it by law. 3) Try to lower the number of sitewide links you have in the sidebar in the "article archive" section. Or, at the very least, rel=nofollow all of the links in that section. Personally I'd eliminate that section and move all of that content into the top menu, using child menu items where appropriate. 4) Add more text content above category archives like http://thesavvybackpacker.com/category/travel-tips/. Turn "Money Saving Tips, How To Avoid Scams, Solo Traveler Info & Tons Of Great Advice" into 250-500 words. Every category archive, especially how you use them, is an opportunity to feed Google more contextual information. Co-citation is super important now. 5) Strip /category/ from your URLs in WordPress SEO. There's no reason for it--you're not trying to rank for the phrase category and having /category/ in the URL doesn't provide anything useful to a human. While you're at it Follow, Noindex your Tags, Author, Format taxonomies if you haven't already. 6) Increase the number of excerpts shown on the front page to 15. The default 10 you're showing now means you're running out of post content being shown before you run out of sidebar. That's unattractive and people aren't afraid to scroll. This is in the general WordPress settings under Reading. 7) Add additional calls to action in your footer. Like on Facebook, Click Here for Our Great Content in your Email (list submission form), etc. When people hit the bottom that's another chance to convert them. Right now it's just...empty. 8) After your post content you have doubled up calls for social shares. Ditch one or the other. I recommend using Digg Digg and enabling both the floating bar and buttons after content, ditching whatever you're using now. Async all the buttons in Digg Digg and reduce down to only the networks you want to be active with. For travel, I suggest Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Pinterest. You should be posting all content to a G+ Page (to get it indexed super fast) but whether or not you include the +1 button in your social share options is up to you. The goal is not to overwhelm with choice. ...and said progress bar is almost done, that's all the free advice for this moment. mcsuede fucked around with this message at 04:31 on Mar 26, 2013 |
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Mar 26, 2013 04:23
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MasterControl posted:Mcsuede do you do seo as sideline work? Can we get in touch off the forum or pm? Yes I do, sent you a PM. Anjasa posted:Hey everyone Bounce and time per visit are both extremely unreliable and more importantly, not very important. What's important is revenue. Do you have goal tracking set up in GA so you can segment and calculate what the average value of a stumble is? Beyond that, it's probable that your landing pages aren't designed for converting a stumble well. You should be trying to capture emails from that traffic for list building purposes (and sales down the road). Offer a carrot in exchange for the email, you're a writer so give away the first chapter or write a short ebook of some sort. Social media visits of any kind should be focused on converting that visitor into a more tangible asset (your list). mcsuede fucked around with this message at 04:13 on Apr 1, 2013 |
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Apr 1, 2013 03:53
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snagger posted:So I got an unsolicited pitch from a content placement person. It's definitely #2, they're using sponsored posting as part of a backlink strategy. They don't care about the traffic, only the link and your site authority leaking through to theirs. It's not unusual at all. If you go ahead with it, I would recommend that you set up a different User to post that guest post as so that you don't screw up your Authorship. EDIT: YOU MUST DISCLOSE IF YOU'RE PAID.* I would also make sure the backlink goes to a site that isn't super shady and that the content of the post aligns, at least somewhat, with your niche. Usually the firms that do this type of outreach have already written the content to fit, but it's worth mentioning. If anyone is wanting to dabble in guest blogging, on either end of it, I suggest you check out MyBlogGuest, which is run by Ann Smarty. *Google has updated their standards on guest vs sponsored posts, if you're getting paid for a post Google requires a disclosure that the post is sponsored and "prefers" that any outgoing links are no-followed. This doesn't apply to guest posts, as guest posts are unpaid. The FCC's new disclosure rules may also apply here. mcsuede fucked around with this message at 17:24 on Apr 4, 2013 |
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Apr 2, 2013 16:59
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jabro posted:I'm moving from Hostgator to one of the Goon hosting services in SA-Mart. I figure some of you guys more than likely using one of them so was hoping for some input. The ones I'm looking at is Lithium and Nixihost. Do you use them, know people who use them? Do you like them, hate them, etc? I wouldn't get into reselling until you've fully explored the legal ramifications and have some way of providing 24/7 support.
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May 6, 2013 21:52
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Moniker posted:He wants to host some friends and family, not become Go Daddy. All the more reason to cover his rear end. I've hosted at Lithium, and yes they're a good shared host as long as the sites are pretty lightweight, but that's a universal truth for shared. mcsuede fucked around with this message at 01:48 on May 7, 2013 |
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May 7, 2013 01:42
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Don't get bogged down in the structure of your blog (plugins, etc.), generating content is the most important part of a blog and as said above, proving the ROI is the most important part of keeping your job. Do you have access to analytics? Email marketing is a different beast, the two are very much their own specialties but have overlap. Here are some resources of the top of my head, I have thousands in my evernote and I'll try to post more later when I have a moment. http://thinktraffic.net/ http://mailchimp.com/resources/ http://www.problogger.net/archives/category/business-blogging/
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May 9, 2013 16:35
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Stealthgerbil posted:Even if it doesn't get a huge amount of traffic, I will still end up using it as a cheese tasting log. However its great to know that it could be decently trafficked blog. Also since I tend to buy at least one decent midrange or better cheese each week, it would definitely be updated fairly often. I decided on https://www.cheesejourney.com as my domain. It sounds like it fits what I want the site to be about. Great domain. Here's a cheese blog that I loving love (YES I AM FROM WISCONSIN Y DID U ASK?). http://cheeseunderground.blogspot.com/ This site is great because the content is great, not because it's done well or marketed well. You can build a really fantastic site around a food topic in a journal style, I have some friends that have been doing so for years on an ancient blogspot blog and just kill it with traffic and opportunities. They completely own their metro for every food related search and it's just a side project for fun.
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May 16, 2013 14:35
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Make sure to: a) write posts that are more than 300 words, 500-800 are ideal. b) use lots of really big, really lovely images. use the following formula: -rename the filename to something contextual "hennings-gold-medal-chipotle-cheddar-cheese.jpg" -put in both title and alt descriptions -use http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ewww-image-optimizer/ -set the wordpress default for image to 'file', not 'attachment page' http://wordpress.org/support/topic/make-image-attachments-default-link-to-original-image -use a lightbox (i like http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/jquery-colorbox/) OR use something like: http://codecanyon.net/item/social-image-hover-for-wordpress/2270775 -share every image in pinterest (pin it from your blog post, so you get the backlink), also consider using instagram and 500px (find a workflow you like) (and of course every post shared to g+/fb/twitter) c) don't be afraid to link out to other awesome cheese resources in your posts, and don't nofollow those links. It'll increase your co-citation which is part of the quality metrics. d) use the brandname on the cheeses you're discussing like crazy, there are always lots of long-tail brand keyword searches
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May 16, 2013 22:24
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cartooncart posted:I fear that this could lead to over optimization! I didn't say name them all KEYWORD-KEYWORD-KEYWORD, Alt=KEYWORDKEYWORDKEYWORDKEYWORDKEYWORD title=KEYWORDKEYWORDKEYWORDKEYWORD did I? Contextually naming files, using titles and alts is proper markup and recommended by big G themselves for accessibility reasons. Not sure if you intended to include EWWW in that quote but all it does is losslessly compress your images to best practices (as recommended by Google's pagespeed scoring system). People get confused as to what 'over optimization means'. Over optimization penalties hit sites that stuff keywords and use the same keyword anchor text on every backlink/internal link, not sites that follow proper markup designed to make web browsing better for humans (titles and alts...) and do so contextually. mcsuede fucked around with this message at 19:17 on May 17, 2013 |
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May 17, 2013 19:11
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Stealthgerbil posted:Thats some awesome advice, thanks In general, yes. Lots of bloggers just use and credit images or buy stock images, but for a cheese blog, I'd take your own shots. That way you're totally in the clear and can do whatever you want with them, promotionally (500px & flickr come to mind as places this matters). Softbox your flash to get a nice even light on your shots and use a gray card to make color balancing really fast.
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May 17, 2013 19:18
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Revol posted:I'm having a difficult time finding subject matter for a blog, for several reasons. The first is obvious, I need to find something that is going to be fertile for exploitation. But when I struggle with that, I then struggle with the other problem: finding other subjects that I can tackle personally. Pat is starting up Niche Site Duel 2.0 right now, if you want to get in on it. The original Duel is rather out of date now in the post-animals seo world.
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Jun 20, 2013 17:13
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Facebook is for engagement, forums are much better for seo. I'd keep the forums going if you can. Keep everything on the same domain. There are many more ways than adsense to monetize a blog, the best is affiliate marketing. Adsense can be great but until you've got a good quality score and great traffic it isn't the key to riches.
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Jul 29, 2013 16:48
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the posted:When I got my degree in Film Criticism, basically a degree in how to write critically about film, I thought, "This is it, I can make it doing this as a job." The only way to make it work without a huge team of people would be to find a super specific film niche that isn't being written about much yet has really great search volume. Good luck, do your keyword reserach. You could, however, monetize it by using your blog as a personal branding and authority tool, to sell your writing to media outlets / get more traditional employment opportunities.
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Aug 7, 2013 03:42
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Omits-Bagels posted:Does anyone have tips for improving my adsense revenue? My site isn't really "optimized" so I'm sure I could be making a little more from adsense. Adsense revenue is largely a factor traffic, but you can also multivariate test different adsense blocks to figure out what really works. Test things like: Turning on or off particular advertisers Changing Text Ad colors Running only Banner or Only Text blocks You should also multivariate test ad location. Typically the best spots are right after the title and right before the comments. The third location is typically embedded (float right) within the first content paragraph, but not everyone likes that location as it's pretty obtrusive. On most of my sites I put the third ad in the sidebar, but so that it's aligned with the first line of actual content. However what works for you should be tested, not assumed.
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Aug 14, 2013 17:15
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Zero Gravitas posted:Im wondering if theres a website or easy way to do the following: There are a bunch of services to automate this process. http://www.rafflecopter.com/ ( http://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/run-giveaway-wordpress-rafflecopter/ ) http://contestdomination.com/ http://corp.wishpond.com/social-sweepstakes/ https://www.punchtab.com/ https://promosimple.com/ However, you can also do it yourself with careful campaign tagging. https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033867?hl=en
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Aug 15, 2013 15:01
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Omits-Bagels posted:I just happened to run across something that said Amazon will be dropping affiliates in Missouri at the end of the month... which is where my main bank accounts are. Amazon accounts for about 90% of my blogs' income. Luckily I just moved states for school so I switched my amazon payment to my local bank but this sucks. Some monetization sites that may come in handy: clickbank.com shareasale.com cj.com skimlinks.com linksynergy.com As for closer 'adsense replacements': http://www.adpushup.com/blog/google-adsense-alternatives-top-11/
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Aug 15, 2013 15:04
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Omits-Bagels posted:Is there a way I can automate this so I don't have to go through each page and change the ads? Manage your ad inventory with a system like ad injector, ad rotator, oio publisher, etc.
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Aug 15, 2013 15:05
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Whenever you install something like that you want to check for js/jquery or caching issues, it's almost always one or the other. Check out AdRotate if Ad Injection doesn't work out for you. I personally don't use a management plugin, I manage it all by hand using php and js (you can do so much with wordpress conditionals), but it can be a pain while you're learning and if a plugin meets your needs it sure simplifies your mental overhead.
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Aug 19, 2013 04:42
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Zero Gravitas posted:Something has struck me about certain interest of mine and I was thinking of starting another site (yes, I know). It's a mess, use long tail pro or raven or moz or something instead.
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Sep 7, 2013 16:49
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^^^^^^^^ Good roundup.Kenny Rogers posted:Google is going to have to walk a delicate line between doing what they think is best, and alienating business (and the SEO professionals that serve every industry) to the point that Google stops being the 'go-to' location for ad spend. Actually this likely has the opposite effect. You get raw search keyword data from AdWords clicks and this isn't changing. Most larger SEO agencies were already running test AdWords campaigns to find targetable keywords, now this practice will become much more common. Aggregate your content into traffic buckets, target each bucket with an AdWords test campain, find the profitable keywords, refocus content. What does this mean for Google? A lot more AdWords revenue. Will there be additional winners from this change? Yes, my early guesses are HitTail and SEMrush.
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Oct 2, 2013 14:39
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Kenny Rogers posted:Yeah, after reading that roundup in depth, it seems likely that it's going to weed out people who are more or less at the "hobbyist" level (like more than a few people in this here thread, unfortunately) and require you to up your game - and to an extent, your stakes, in that it will make more sense for you to spend $50-100 on an testing campaign for AdWords in an attempt to optimize your site with known good data to successfully get that back over time. Keyword research isn't going away, just the ability to easily see what phrases searchers are using to find your content. As long as you're spending good time on the research phase, and writing content with as much long-tail and semantically related content as possible, you don't have a lot to worry about. You can watch your landing page traffic to see what's working and what's not (you should only be targeting one phrase per page). You can then also group your landing pages into 'content buckets' and see which content is driving more traffic, to refocus your overall targeting. More sophisticated methods are really only needed at the agency level. If you want something to replace the GA keyword reports, I suggest a combination of HitTail and plugins to monitor your internal search like Relevanssi.
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Oct 3, 2013 15:34
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Kenny Rogers posted:What's missing in the equation now (that I can see) is to be in a position much like I find myself in at the moment, where I'm in the "early research" phase - With the securification of search phrases, it seems that I'm losing the ability to just go to the tool and drop 50 ideas on it and get a baseline whether it's even worth it or not to invest the time to take it to the level you were talking about... That tool is called the Keyword Planner (formerly Keyword Tool) and is located in Adwords, available for free--though I prefer to use Long Tail Pro combined with Moz Keyword Research.
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Oct 4, 2013 16:17
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There's no good AND free alternative. Either use the Jetpack plugin or start paying MailChimp or another vendor.
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Nov 4, 2013 22:07
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Google does care* but the larger issue is do you want a name that's brandable or one that's discoverable. Most markets are so saturated now that brandable makes more sense, as you'll be using other techniques to drive long-tail traffic. *Cares in the following ways: relevance correlation (hummingbird, LSI) keyword closer to url root gives small boost, but domain.com/%postname%/ accomplishes this almost as well as an EMD. EMD (exact match domains) are not worth a giant boost as they used to be, which is what you're referencing, due to more of a reliance on semantic search and quality/authority signals. mcsuede fucked around with this message at 16:48 on Nov 8, 2013 |
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Nov 8, 2013 16:44
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KetTarma posted:Does it help me in any way if people visit my site, read articles, but do not click anything? If so, how? Work on your conversions. Every article, every page should have several calls to action, typically the best of these is to get an email subscription. You may need bait. Look into something like OptinSkin for easy CTA creation. Mailchimp is free for a low subscriber amount. Also work on giving new visitors opportunities to engage further with your content. On blogs I really think a sidebar with a Start Here or New Here? section with your best articles linked works well, as does an "About the Author" section with a headshot, brief bio, social links. Humanize the site, people like people (also author bio under article along with CTA). And of course, related posts under every article. You can even get fancy using Hellobar and other such engagement tools to drive those visitors to sub to email or social or to a landing page about the site, with links to best articles, etc. Do not, however, cover your site with display ads unless they're really profitable. Not only will it drop your quality score, it turns new visitors off. You can slowly ramp up display ads as the site ages and the audience/traffic solidifies. mcsuede fucked around with this message at 16:59 on Jan 16, 2014 |
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Jan 16, 2014 16:56
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samglover posted:New to the thread, but hey, it's how I make my living: Lawyerist.com, a blog about law practice. Nice site, have you tried a/b testing left vs right sidebar on posts? Love the plain language footer. I'm a bit curious why you're running Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator Plugin for WordPress when you're already running WordPress SEO by Yoast, which includes a very robust sitemap function.
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Feb 28, 2014 00:51
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Don't write blind, learn how to do keyword research and write to keywords. Don't drop money on banner advertising for traffic reasons.
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Mar 1, 2014 23:59
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My advice is you're entering possibly the most competitive blog space and need to be prepared to dedicate a significant chunk of your life to it and building your personal "guru" brand in order to have a shot at monetization. The way those sites make money is by cultivating a personality following and then continually hitting them with affiliate links to the latest gee whiz tool they need for whatever compelling reason. If your end goal is money, you should consider a less competitive niche unless you're really good at the hype game.
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Mar 18, 2014 04:10
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Writing for keywords: First, find a topic through keyword research. Don't bother to write if there's no volume (unless it's supporting content designed to flesh out an evergreen piece). Second, write the thing. Ignore the keywords. Third, go back through and insert the keywords, related keywords, synonyms, etc. Try not to repeat yourself much. Keyword density is a myth. Make sure it's human readable at all times. Humans > Robots. Get the main head keyword in the title and H1 and above the fold. After that, synonyms are great. Don't worry about it overmuch. You can run it through scribe if you want help from a keyword robot until you get your legs under you. What's most important after writing the thing and basic inclusion? PROMOTION. That's where you'll make or break your efforts.
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Mar 29, 2014 21:55
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An easy way to jump into selling your own ad slots is buysellads.com. There's still some management, but it's better than being completely on your own. You should also pay someone (real money) for an audit of your site, just a few minutes on there and I'm seeing a ton of correctable on-page seo issues.
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Apr 5, 2014 20:21
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Moniker posted:Well the question is that the top ten sites on Google are just Youtube links and photos and stuff. In regards to back links, I suggest reading warrior forum or black hat world. Take it with a grain of salt but you'll slowly pick up on what you need to do in order to build some back links. These are the exact worst places to start. Start here.
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Apr 27, 2014 19:32
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snagger posted:Most of the big blogs just watch Reddit, Hacker News and social media feeds for their stories nowadays. They seem to be getting along just fine with it. Just link to the original source (not the news aggregator) and you have an easy stream of posts. No need to ask authors' permission. Buzzsumo is another great resource for content curation, and of course Pinterest RSS feeds (create feeds from topic searches) remain very useful.
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May 6, 2014 14:13
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Since the topic of themes keeps coming up, there are only two shops I completely trust. http://studiopress.com and http://woothemes.com This is because both platforms have been audited by people I trust, are proven performers, and properly fallback on WordPress SEO when it's detected instead of trying to force their own theme-specific nonsense. I do use themes from other shops, but those are the two I use most frequently and if I pay someone to custom develop I have them do so for Genesis.
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May 14, 2014 02:23
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Moniker posted:Here's a video about Facebook ads and why you shouldn't buy them. This video is great because it scared people off FB PPC and the CPC there remains a complete steal. The truth is the guy's methodology was nonsense and there's a ton of money to be made on FB ads if you know how to target.
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Sep 10, 2014 15:53
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KetTarma posted:I just bought a few dollars of Facebook advertising for my page. I set it to US only and targeted people that were interested in various engineering topics. What's a 'few dollars'? If you haven't figured out targeting yet don't spend any more money. Learn how to create personas, 'jobs to be done' profiles, and how to identify and group cohorts. Use the FB custom audiences to create targeted audiences against each of your personas, 'jobs to be done' profiles, etc. and upload any email lists you already have. Create look-alikes and test those as well. Don't even look at likes, it's meaningless. You should be tracking conversions using FB pixels if you're in ecommerce or campaign traffic in GA if you were just after visits (using URL tagging).
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Dec 5, 2014 15:43
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Pierce and Pierce posted:I've had a few articles find their way to StumbleUpon on their own and it's real real lovely traffic. Less than $1 CPM. 6500 hits for $4.99 in Adsense earnings. If you're going to go the paid traffic route I wouldn't make them an option unless you just like seeing your stats counter spin. This is spot on. Paid Discovery traffic is real traffic, but it's not sticky unless your site fits certain niches. It's definitely not a paid acquisition channel and almost no paid acquisition channels are going to pay you back via adsense anyway. You need your average conversion to be a lot higher than adsense typically returns for paid acquisition to be worthwhile. It makes sense in ecommerce (with good margins) or high profit affiliate, that's about it.
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Feb 1, 2015 16:52
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http://sumome.com/ is the correct answer for free. OptinMonster is solid as LeadBoxes (by LeadPages) in the paid arena. At the really high end you're looking at solutions like Bounce Exchange.
mcsuede fucked around with this message at 01:09 on May 30, 2015 |
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May 30, 2015 00:55
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Royal Jeans posted:Quick Tip: I started using Coschedule's headline analyzer a few months back and the results have been pretty awesome. Any titles I have with a score of 75 or above get a ton more action than the norm. Coschedule is an awesome tool, but if you want to get really serious about optimizing your posts look into http://www.inboundwriter.com/.
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Sep 19, 2015 16:13
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