Posts Tagged ‘Blog’

Turning SPAM Comments into Conversation Starters

Monday, May 24th, 2010

Lately I have been getting a ton of comments on my blog, and they seem like great comments, but sadly they are not—they are SPAM.  Here’s how to weed out the SPAM from legitimate comments and how to use them to your advantage.

An example of a SPAM comment goes something like this:  “This is really excellent weblog posting and really helpful i really appreciate the research you put into it.”  Seems nice enough right?  So, how do I tell it’s SPAM?

Here’s what to look for:

  1. As  you read the comment look for proper grammar, it doesn’t have to be perfect, but some mistakes are just not typical of English speaking persons.
  2. Check for a legitimate email address, many SPAM comments come from a .ymail.com account.
  3. Take a close look at the URL they included – it will often look like this:  http://  powercashonline.com/casino-hot-deals-blog-marketing/ – people are typically hoping to get a back-link to their own blogs – this type of back linking is considered SPAM by Google.
  4. Do they have a real name?  Or do they use a company, or partial name with several numbers?  This is a huge red flag.

You can SPAM, or trash this comment, or if you are looking to gain more comments, you can edit and keep the comment.  Clean up the grammar and delete the URL they included, then you will have a nice comment on your blog, which is helpful in creating a conversation among your  readers. It’s kind of like the wall flower syndrome, sometimes people are afraid to be the fist person to dance.

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Blogging Demystified – Why Blogging Drives Traffic

Tuesday, May 11th, 2010

Articles about Blogging are for the most part boring.  It’s the same story over and over: you should be blogging—blogging drives traffic—blogging is a great marketing tool….  And yet, most bloggers quit after a few weeks, or worse yet, never get started.

There are a slew of reasons people have for not blogging:  I don’t have time. It doesn’t seem to be doing my site any good—no one reads my blogs?  I don’t know what to blog about.

The truth is, blogging does help drive traffic, blogging will build your audience, and it will establish your name in the marketplace!  The trick is this: you have to be patient and consistent.  You won’t see results right away, in fact, it can take up to a year before your blog builds a steady and loyal following—but it will, and that’s the exciting part.

Admittedly, when you first start blogging, it may seem like you are stuck on a desert island pontificating to the palm trees.  Persevere!!  Those smoke signals will reach your market eventually, and here’s the best part: even if no one reads your blogs, search engine spiders do.  Here’s how it works: the more you blog, the more relevant content (and keywords) you have for crawlers to index.

Let’s say for example you are trying to increase your ranking for the term “kids and guns.”  Google will rank your site for this term if it appears in your site frequently and it is relevant to the other content of your site. The best way to ensure relevance for this term is to blog about it frequently—don’t overdo it though, always blog as if you are speaking directly to your audience, saying the same thing over and over is boring.  Even if you don’t think you have an audience now, you will.  With this example, after a few months of blogging, your site might start to appear in the search engines for “kids and guns,” and slowly people will start to find you, read your blog, and tell others about you.  If your content is relevant to this topic, readers might subscribe to your RSS feed or book mark your blog.

You see, it’s not really about how many people are commenting on your blog—although it’s certainly nice to get feedback. In the beginning, it’s about creating content!  You know that saying, if you build it they will come?  Well, this is true, but you have to upkeep your blog by adding new content a minimum of once a week—otherwise the cobwebs will build up and no one will ever visit your blog—believe it or not, Internet spiders and crawlers don’t like cobwebs (bad Internet humor).

Chances are, if your inspired your readers will be too.

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Blogger Discontinues FTP Publishing

Friday, May 7th, 2010

For many years I have recommended that authors host their blogs on their own servers. I have several reasons for this way of thinking. Firstly, as authors, we are attempting to drive traffic to our websites, to draw in our audience, and to make the sale. Placement within the search engines is an important step in this process. However, the only way to gain placement is to be ranked for keywords that your potential audience is searching for. See, this is how they find you, which is way more effective than standing on a street corner shouting the merits of your wares.

A blog ensures that you have fresh, relevant content posted to your site frequently. This is important because the search engine bots and spiders are out their scanning websites for, you guessed it: fresh, relevant content. If you have a stale website then not only will your audience lose interest, so will the spiders. The blog is the perfect author-marketing tool, and there are so many good platforms to choose from: WordPress, Blogger…rrr, well, until now.

This new fact is important.

Blogger has discontinued FTP Publishing. This means that (more…)