Archives for February 2008The Ultimate Question: Full Feeds vs Summary Feeds.What do You Have: Full or Summary? It isn’t surprising that this is on the minds of many bloggers and readers. What should a blog have? Full feeds or summary feeds? Is there one which could be more rewarding than the other? Personally, I have gone both ways and have seen the differences in the two; I wish to share a bit of information which might help you decide. Summary Feeds: When I browse through RSS feeds, I look at a few things. I most definitely look at the title of the RSS article itself, but I also skim through the content. Unless I catch something within that first (and only) paragraph in the summary feed, I tend to just move along. So pretty much if your title or your first paragraph in the summary feed do not catch my attention, I move on. It is at that point though, if it catches my attention, whether or not I decide to actually bother clicking through and leaving my comfortable RSS feed reader. I personally think that Summary feeds do not have great appeal; I mean, if you write gold and present it in your first paragraph, it will catch my attention. In most cases, most bloggers leave the juicy parts in the middle and end. So if your first few sentences do not ’scream’ gold or “diamond in the rough”, I will just go to my next one. Full RSS Feeds. I know a lot of my readers in the past have had the same outlook when they requested full feed RSS feeds over summary ones. Though many of you may think that it may force you to lose out on some click throughs, I find it better this way. If you provide quality content and actually try to keep your reader base, why force them to go to a website when they can enjoy your posts through their RSS reader. I know, perhaps, that is what separates me from a lot of other bloggers who have nothing better to do than poison their blog with posts about “I made $## after ## days”. What it comes Down to: I thank all the RSS subscribers who take the time to comment on a daily basis, I know a few of you do this and you are great for it. The way I think of it, I am not blogging for ‘profit’ … I am blogging to convey a message to all current bloggers, future bloggers, and webmasters alike. Personally, RSS readers are just that! They subscribe to your blog because of valuable content that they wish to read. So you miss out on a click through to your site, so what? You wont be able to raise your ad space an extra 3 cents for the next month (oh well?). I don’t think that RSS readers value your ads splattered all over your site, which means that there is probably no real value in you using a summary feed anyway. I know, it is a harsh way of looking at it, but it is true. The Final Question for you: Do you want to be noticed, or do you want to be visited? Do you want to stand out? Do you want to have something meaningful to say or would you want your page numbers to go up? Do you want to gain followers or get RSS readers annoyed by skimming through boring introductions. You will gain a lot more benefits if you use full feeds over summary feeds; lets put it this way, would you buy a book or bother going to the book store if you only read an introduction to the book without knowing the name or the details? How to gain Visibility through Article MarketingThough perhaps not as vibrant any more with how saturated it has become in certain niches, article marketing still stands, without a doubt, to be one of the more effective ways to freely advertise on the internet. If you do not know much about this form of marketing then I suggest that you really try to learn because it has multiple advantages and benefits when it comes to traffic generation and back links. I sound like a Broken Record, but “Content is King”: The first thing you should realize, is that content is your diamond in the rough on the internet. The more quality articles you can write to article directories, the more visibility (and money if your selling a product) that you will make. It is that simple really. If anything, you should not be spending a dime on ads but rather taking an 30 minutes out of your day to write an article and another hour to create variations of it (if thats your thing), and submit to multiple sites. Why Articles over Ads you ask? How long does your normal ad last in the memories of the visitors? Not like, because most people do not like ads. How long do articles last in article directories? Well, most last forever. I am Credible! Believe Me! …. Please? The more articles you submit all over the web, the more exposure and credibility you will get. It is a sad way to think about it, but it is true. People in your niche will start to see your website on other websites and article directories and they ‘might’ dub you an expert in your field. Unless of course, you are spitting out pure lies, “I am a noob that earns $3,000 a month in my first month of blogging”. There are two lies in that statement I hear “Search Engine Optimization”: Guess what? Instead of plummeting your hard earned cash and giving it to click bombers or accidental clicks and watch your money go into a spiral of oblivion, why not invest in some quality articles. What this will do is it will also help your site get higher ranks in search engines. Whenever you write on article on most article directories, you have a profile and you have to edit your bio with an anchor text/link pointing back at your site. This will count as a back link, or at least some visibility for you, which should definitely help you raise your rank a bit. However, with this in mind, you will bring more customers to your humble website, blog, or product landing page. Will Article Marketing die in the future? Nope. That simple. The fact is that the internet has millions of articles in many shapes and forms. Just be sure to write and submit articles once in a while, if not a few times a week.
Spend a bit of time rewording each article so you do not get pegged for Identical Content, as that might hinder your search engine rankings. The more articles you write and submit, the more visibility you will have. (That should be pretty basic stuff there).
Keep In Mind: This method is not JUST for traffic purposes, either. Article Marketing can be a very powerful tool to make you money online, as well. If you set it up right you can make a lot of money by just submitting articles all over the internet. However, for the sake and purpose of this post, I use traffic as that is what this blog is all about. To gain traffic; To Gain Visibility; To Gain Presence; To Gain Success. *Gasp* Blogging has Never been Easier!Sometimes, lets face it. There are times when updating and blogging can be a burden. It happens to the best of us. I, myself, have had a few gaps here and there myself where I do not post anything that is very useful, if useful at all. (I am not afraid to admit it). There are a bunch of things you can do to make your blogging life so much easier (much easier). If you are having writers block, or something that I usually get often, random ‘brain-farts’, then this would be a great post for you. Niche Subscribing Subscribe to RSS feeds. You heard it here first… probably not, but that is okay. You can get some pretty neat ideas from reading RSS feeds regularly. I know you may not find it useful to read your competitions posts, but it can help you out a lot. It is a good way to stay updated on the current news and the buzz your competition is trying to make. Though, I guess it makes sense; subscribe to feeds within your niche and you are set! Write. Write. Write. If you find that you will be pressed for time with not much time at all for posts, then write a few extra posts up prior to the dates. This is a great idea for all those bloggers who have a hectic schedule. If you find yourself with some free time, write up a few extra posts and set it so that they will be published later. (or just publish them on the day you want them to be published, with only one click). Write some decent Reviews. Whether it be for an ebook, a website, a magazine, or just a product; write something useful and eye-catching. In the process, why not write about something you are an affiliate with, and try your luck to see if it can bring you any money ;). Of course, it would probably only work if the product is related to your niche, but you can always try. Don’t cloud your whole blog with product reviews, in hopes to get money. a 3:1 or if your risky, a 2:1 ratio is advised for that. The Latest Buzz. This is pretty easy to understand. If you write a really good post about something that just happened, then it can bring you some nice traffic flow (as well as some comments). Just grab snippets of news stories off sites like Google (news) and use them as inspiration, or use the articles and credit the author or link a part of the post to their site. Long into Short. This is something I need to try and do a bit more. (Ie: with my XP tweaks post). Turn one blog post into a few smaller posts. Nothing fancy. A lot of bloggers find it easy to just drone on about practically nothing (like I do, at times). This is also a good way to build up some nice suspense for the blog. What you should try to get out of this Post: There are multiple ways for you to make your blogging life much easier. These are only a few suggestions. Why not look through some article websites on your niche and see what you can find there? (try to ensure that its at least somewhat updated, don’t start talking about something that was a buzz 3 years ago in a post that is meant for today). It will require you to do a bit of research, but it works! You can improve Your Search Engine Rankings, too!For a low price of $4.95, you can increase your search engine rankings using these 1834 ‘easy’ mind-numbing steps! hmph. How about we just give you some free tips and call it a day? I think that would be best. There are countless things you can do to improve your SEO to any blog (or website) with very little effort. Most people just do not do it. What most webmasters do not realize is that these easy 10 second fixes can end up bringing them more visibility to their blog or website. The Pages Address Bar/Url Structure: Instead of having a .com/?p=830828, why not try something different and less annoying to read, both for viewers and search engines? If you run a wordpress blog, you can automatically change the way permalinks show up. When I first changed from numbers to actual words, I saw some major improvements over a span of a few days. Note: You should be careful while doing this, as if you change the way that permalinks show up, you might effect your back links in a negative way. For all of you Wordpress users, there is a plugin that you can get which is located right here, titled Advanced Permalinks. What this does is allow for multiple formats so you can make the transition slowly, but with every new updated post it can be converted automatically. Keyword Density: There is that dreaded term again, but it is not so bad. Try to focus on specific keywords on each page from time to time. If the article makes sense, then an optimum keyword density is usually set to be anywhere between 5-7%. There was an article written about this ages ago (at least it feels like it), “Keyword Density: The Feared Term of SEO” . All in One SEO: Wordpress Plugin I hate to be a preacher, but I will do it anyway. This plugin is great and I have been using it for about a month or so and I have seen some pretty awesome results. I am on the first page for a good number of my posts and it constantly grabs me a bit of traffic. Check out this plugin at the wordpress plugin site, here. Site Maps can be your Best Friend Who would have thought that a site map could increase your visibility?! It is true. Thinkblogger has a sitemap which is dynamically recreated every time someone comments, trackbacks one of the posts here or when I create a new post or page. It is a pretty nifty feature, I must add. The plugin can be found here, “Google XML Sitemaps“. Don’t just spit out a bunch of paragraphs of just text. During this fine internet age, we like things organized. Use keywords in your headings to emphasize what you are trying to convey and make sure that the content is readable and attractive to both readers and search engines. Overall: Though this may not serve as much of a Ranking tip as more so a general tip. Keep in mind, you have to have a bit of fun from time to time or you will drive yourself crazy. You also have to keep in mind that you do this for you and your readers. You should not write a blog for the money of it. Whatever your niche is, you are there to share your experiences, your information, and your writing style; you are there to make yourself known and have people learn from you. Don’t ever lose sight of that. | |
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(Content, Content, Content?).