Posted by Dr. Pete

It’s a story we hear too often: someone hires a bad SEO, that SEO builds a bunch of spammy links, he/she cashes their check, and then bam – penalty! Whether you got bad advice, “your friend” built those links, or you’ve got the guts to admit you did it yourself, undoing the damage isn’t easy. If you’ve sincerely repented, I’d like to offer you 6 ways to recover and hopefully get back on Google’s Nice list in time for the holidays.

This is a diagram of a theoretical situation that I’ll use throughout the post. Here’s a page that has tipped the balance and has too many bad (B) links – of course, each (B) and (G) could represent 100s or 1000s of links, and the 50/50 split is just for the visual:

Be Sure It’s Links

Before you do anything radical (one of these solutions is last-ditch), make sure it’s bad links that got you into trouble. Separating out a link-based penalty from a devaluation, technical issue, Panda “penalty”, etc. isn’t easy. I created a 10 minute audit a while back, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg. In most cases, Google will only devalue bad links, essentially turning down the volume knob on their ability to pass link-juice. Here are some other potential culprits:

1. You’ve got severe down-time or latency issues.
2. You’re blocking your site (Robots.txt, Meta Robots, etc.).
3. You’ve set up bad canonicals or redirects.
4. Your site has massive duplicate content.
5. You’ve been hacked or hit with malware.

Diagnosing these issues is beyond the scope of this post, but just make sure the links are the problem before you start taking a machete to your site. Let’s assume you’ve done your homework, though, and you know you’ve got link problems…

1. Wait It Out

In some cases, you could just wait it out. Let’s say, for example, that someone launched an SQL injection attack on multiple sites, pointing 1000s of spammy links at you. In many cases, those links will be quickly removed by webmasters, and/or Google will spot the problem. If it’s obvious the links aren’t your fault, Google will often resolve it (if not, see #5).

Even if the links are your responsibility (whether you built them or hired someone who did), links tend to devalue over time. If the problem isn’t too severe and if the penalty is algorithmic, a small percentage of bad links falling off the link graph could tip the balance back in your favor:

That’s not to say that old links have no power, but just that low-value links naturally fall off the link-graph over time. For example, if someone builds a ton of spammy blog comment links to your site, those blog posts will eventually be archived and may even drop out of the index. That cuts both ways – if those links are harming you, their ability to harm will fade over time, too.

2. Cut the Links

Unfortunately, you can’t usually afford to wait. So, why not just remove the bad links?

Well, that’s the obvious solution, but there are two major, practical issues:

(a) What if you can’t?

This is the usual problem. In many cases, you won’t have control over the sites in question or won’t have login credentials (because your SEO didn’t give them to you). You could contact the webmasters, but if you’re talking about 100s of bad links, that’s just not practical. The kind of site that’s easy to spam isn’t typically the kind of site that’s going to hand remove a link, either.

(b) Which links do you cut?

If you thought (a) was annoying, there’s an even bigger problem. What if some of those bad links are actually helping you? Google penalizes links based on patterns, in most cases, and it’s the behavior as a whole that got you into trouble. That doesn’t mean that every spammy link is hurting you. Unfortunately, separating the bad from the merely suspicious is incredibly tough.

For the rest of this post, let’s assume that you’re primarily dealing with (a) – you have a pretty good idea which links are the worst offenders, but you just can’t get access to remove them. Sadly, there’s no way to surgically remove the link from the receiving end (this is actually a bit of an obsession of mine), but you do have a couple of options.

3. Cut the Page

If the links are all (or mostly) targeted at deep, low-value pages, you could pull a disappearing act:

In most cases, you’ll need to remove the page completely (and return a 404). This can neuter the links at the target. In some cases, if the penalty isn’t too severe, you may be able to 301-redirect the page to another, relevant page and shake the bad links loose.

If all of your bad links are hitting a deep page, count yourself lucky. In most cases, the majority of bad links are targeted at a site's home-page (like the majority of any links), so the situation gets a bit uglier.

4. Build Good Links

In some sense, this is the active version of #2. Instead of waiting for bad links to fade, build up more good links to tip the balance back in your favor:

By “good”, I mean relevant, high-authority links – if your link profile is borderline, focus on quality over quantity for a while. Rand has a great post on link valuation that I highly recommend - it’s not nearly as simple as we sometimes try to make it.

This approach is for cases where you may be on the border of a penalty or the penalty isn’t very severe. Fair warning: it will take time. If you can’t afford that time, have been hit hard, or suspect a manual penalty, you may have to resort to one of the next two options…

5. Appeal to Google

If you’ve done your best to address the bad links, but either hit a wall or don’t see your rankings improve, you may have to appeal to Google directly. Specifically, this means filing a reconsideration request through Google Webmaster Tools. Rhea at Outspoken had an excellent post recently on how to file for reconsideration, but a couple of key points:

• Be honest, specific and detailed.
• Show that you’ve made an effort.
• Act like you mean it (better yet: mean it).

If Google determines that your situation is relevant for reconsideration (a process which is probably semi-automated), then it’s going to fall into the hands of a Google employee. They have to review 1000s of these requests, so if you rant, provide no details, or don’t do your homework, they’ll toss your request and move on. No matter how wronged you may feel, suck it up and play nice.

6. Find a New Home

If all else fails, and you’ve really burned your home to the ground and salted the earth around it, you may have to move:

Of course, you could just buy a new domain, move the site, and start over, but then you’ll lose all of your inbound links and off-page ranking factors, at least until you can rebuild some of them. The other option is to 301-redirect to a new domain. It’s not risk-free, but in many cases a site-to-site redirect does seem to neuter bad links. Of course, it will very likely also devalue some of your good links.

I’d recommend the 301-redirect if the bad links are old and spammy. In other words, if you engaged in low-value tactics in the past but have moved on, a 301 to a new domain may very well lift the penalty. If you’ve got a ton of paid links or you’ve obviously built an active link farm (that’s still in play), you may find the penalty comes back and all your efforts were pointless.

A Modest Proposal

I’d like to end this by making a suggestion to Google. Sometimes, people inherit a bad situation (like a former SEO’s black-hat tactics) or are targeted with bad links maliciously. Currently, there is no mechanism to remove a link from the target side. If you point a link at me, I can’t say: “No, I don’t want it.” Search engines understand this and adjust for it to a point, but I really believe that there should be an equivalent of nofollow for the receiving end of a link.

Of course, a link-based attribute is impossible from the receiving end, and a page-based directive (like Meta Robots) is probably impractical. My proposal is to create a new Robots.txt directive called “Disconnect”. I imagine it looking something like this:

Essentially, this would tell search engines to block any links to the target site coming from “www.badsite.com” and not consider them as part of the link-graph. I’d also recommend a wild-card version to cover all sub-domains:

Is this computationally possible, given the way Google and Bing process the link-graph? I honestly don’t know. I believe, though, that the Robots.txt level would probably be the easiest to implement and would cover most cases I’ve encountered.

While I recognize that Google and Bing treat bad links with wide latitude and recognize that site owners can’t fully control incoming links, I’ve seen too many cases at this point of people who have been harmed by links they don’t have control over (sometimes, through no fault of their own). If links are going to continue to be the primary currency of ranking (and that is debatable), then I think it’s time the search engines gave us a way to cut links from both ends.

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SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

Tags: from, Links, Recover, Ways

Posted by richardbaxterseo

And so it ends. By the time this post goes live, Yahoo Site Explorer will be gone. Let’s take a moment to silently reflect on the passing of a once great SEO tool.

Thankfully, there are a heap of Yahoo Site Explorer alternatives, with arguably more powerful features available than Y!SE ever had. Today, we’re going to take some fresh link data from your favourite link information mining tool of choice and supplement the hell out of it with even more data. Yey – let’s build a better Yahoo Site Explorer replacement.

A Special Thank You

This (long overdue) post wouldn’t be possible without the assistance of one of the SEO industry’s most unsung heroes – Niels Bosma. He’s the genius behind SEO Tools for Excel, which has opened up another level of SEO data analysis for Excel geeks all over the globe.

I’ve written about Niel’s amazing work over at SEOgadget before, so check out these links for a primer on the basics or an introduction on how to find lost links and get SEOmoz API data into Excel. When you’re done, we’re good to take it to the next level.

Here's the finished product, click the image for a massive, full screen image of this awe-inspiring spreadheet.

#1 – How Many Likes, Google+’s and Tweets Were Received to My Linking URL?

Let’s start nice and easy with a count of the number of Likes, Google+’s and Tweets received by a URL. What’s not to love about a page that received a lot of social love? These two queries will churn happily through your link data until you’ve got more social than you can shake a stick at.

Retrieve the Google+ count for a URL:

=GooglePlusCount()

Get the number of Tweets to a URL:

=TwitterCount()

Get the number of Facebook Likes to a URL:

=FaceBookLikes()

#2 – Are My Links Live and Accessible to Search Engines?

When you’re looking at link data, you’re looking at an internet that has been and gone. At least, you’re looking into the past – and we all know that link decay is an everyday part of the evolution of the internet. To take a super accurate snapshot of your link data, you really need to know if your link is still live.

On that note, check out this clever little formula:

=IF(XPathOnUrl(C2,"//a[contains(@href,'seogadget.co.uk')]")="","NOT FOUND","FOUND")

Translated, it means, “If you found a href link on this page with seogadget.co.uk in all or part of the href, say ‘FOUND’. If the response to that query was a blank cell, say ‘NOT FOUND’.” So you know, the SEO tools XPathOnUrl function returns nothing when no result is found.

#3 – Did Google Even Cache that Link?

In his post on automating SEO, Russ pointed out that not all of your backlinks may have been indexed by Google, and that you should identify them and link to them to get them discovered. That’s a very nice idea Russ! Russ’s solution was excellent, but required some fancy scripting work.

Assuming you’re not tracking new referrers with snazzy custom filters in Google Analytics, here’s an easy way to do it with Linkstant and the =HttpStatus function.

First, grab all of the new referring URLs. I do that with Scraper for Chrome. Export the URLs and then in a new Excel tab, put this URL in to cell A1:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?gcx=w&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=cache:

A cache: request will respond with a 404 if the URL is not cached. So, a simple concatenate, followed by a "=HTTPstatus" will give you a list of URLs that Google has cached.

This is probably not the best way, but it works just the way you'd expect it to, most of the time:

=CONCATENATE($ A$ 1,[@URL])

Where $ A$ 1 is our cache request URL.

Next, use this function to get the http status of the URL:

=HttpStatus([@Column1])

Grabbing the HTTP status of your URL list will give you a list of results like this:

#4 – Get Search Volume Data for Your Inbound Anchor Text

An interesting way to identify links that might be a little above the radar, penalty-potential wise is to look at the search volume for the inbound anchor text used in the link. I mean, if you’ve got a lot of massively overcooked, highly competitive anchors from PageRank 0 sites, you’ve got a problem.

If you’ve got an Adwords API key, then it’s a piece of cake to use the Adwords API Extension for Excel – simply take a copy of all anchor text in the data, copy it to a separate table, de-duplicate it and run this array formula:

=arrayGetAdWordStats(KW,"EXACT","GB","WEB")

Then, do a VLOOKUP back in your main table and you’ll have search volumes for every anchor text used in your inbound links.

#5 – Extract the Domain From the Linked to URL

In my link data I really like to know if there are any potential problems with the domain I’m getting links from. PageRank 0 links, with extremely competitive anchor text could spell trouble, or at least some less than savvy link purchases. We're spending a lot of our time lately cleaning up this sort of thing, and this method makes it a whole lot easier.

Check out this formula as a very simple way to extract the characters up to, but not including the first trailing slash in a URL (assumes there's a "http://" at the beginning of the URL):

=MID([@URL],8,FIND("/",[@URL],8)-8)

If some of your links are from homepages (which often they are), simply add this extension to display the full URL, should there be no trailing slash in the URL:

=IFERROR(MID([@URL],8,FIND("/",[@URL],8)-8),MID([@URL],8,LEN([@URL])))

#6 – Get PageRank for the Linking URL and Domain

Yes, you heard that right. The old school link auditor in me can’t shy away from the fact that while PageRank is pretty useless as an overall proxy to rankings, it will come in handy if you’re trying to get a sense of the overall quality of the backlinks of a website. Like I mentioned above, a lot of PageRank 0 links from cruddy sites, with highly competitive inbound anchor text might be something you should make yourself aware of.

Here’s how:

=GooglePageRank()

What Could You Build?

There are a few more tricks left that you should go and explore in SEO Tools. I also happen to know there’s an SEO Tools v3.0 coming very soon, and it will kick ass! Though I’m really grateful for Yahoo Site Explorer, I’m not going to miss it. It’s sort of like an Overture Keyword Tool situation. When that disappeared, there was outrage, now, silence.

Have fun rolling your own tools and, as always I'd love to hear how you're getting on! – follow SEOgadget on Google+

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SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

Tags: cool, Data, Explorer, Open, Site, Supplement, Ways

Yesterday I wrote a post titled Introduction to Autoresponders. It recommended them as a tool that bloggers should consider as a means of driving traffic, deepening reader engagement, and increasing profits. I also showed how to set up an autoresponder sequence of emails in just a few easy steps using Aweber’s service.

Today I want to suggest a number of practical strategies for actually using autoresponders alongside your blog.

Some of these I’ve used with success myself, and some are based upon the experience of other blogging friends. It should also be said that you could combine some of the following ideas into a single autoresponder sequence (more on this below).

1. Free mini-course

Set up a sequence of emails that walks readers through the teaching around some aspect of your niche. This is what I did when developing an early version of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog.

Back then 31DBBB wasn’t an ebook—it was a series of 31 emails that readers signed up for. Each day, readers received an email with some teaching and a task to do. This later evolved into the ebook with extra content.

2. Paid course or product

Numerous bloggers have set up autoresponders as central parts of paid products or courses. One of the best examples of this is Chris Guillebeau’s 365-part autoresponder, which forms part of a product. Chris’s product took a mammoth amount of work, but was hugely successful with those who bought it, and as a result, it would have been a very profitable endeavor.

3. Introduce readers to your archives

One of the challenges that many bloggers face is that new readers to your blog don’t ever see your old posts sitting in your archives. So why not showcase the best of your older posts by putting them together into an autoresponder sequence? Perhaps you could send one “classic” post per week. In doing so, you’ll be constantly driving readers to your archives for as long as new people keep signing up.

Another alternative is to do a compilation email on a particular theme. For example, on our photography blog autoresponder, one email that goes out in our sequence lists ten posts from our archives all on the theme of composition. It shoots readers deep into the site, and we often get emails from readers thanking us for it.

4. Affiliate promotions

Is there a product in your niche that you highly recommend your readers buy, and which has an affiliate program attached to it? You can easily add an affiliate promotion into your auto responder sequence. I recently put such a promotion into my photography blog’s autoresponder, and it has already driven thousands of dollars in sales (and will continue to do so). You can read about this concept more here.

5. Relaunch your own product every day

For those of you who have an ebook or some other kind of product that you’ve previously launched, building a mini-promotion of that product into an autoresponder sequence is a must. In our photography email list, we give new subscribers a discount on our portrait photography ebook 7 days after they join the list. That offer drives sales every single day.

6. Upselling

This is another one for those with your own products to sell. The idea is that when someone buys one of your products, you then follow up the purchase with an offer for a second product.The second product could be another of yours, or it could be an affiliate promotion.

For example, when people buy our travel photography ebook, they get an email a couple of weeks later with a discount offer on another travel photography ebook by the same author. The ebooks make good companions, the author is now familiar to readers, and as a result, these emails convert pretty well.

7. Showcase what you do

If you have an offline business that you’re promoting, use your an autoresponder sequence to showcase what you do. I know of one photographer who has a sequence of emails that goes to all clients (and potential clients that he meets to give quotes to). This sequence simply sends out an email every month with a couple of photos from another client shoot, and the story behind it. In sending these emails, he’s showing off the photography he does and positioning himself as a known photographer for them time when those who receive the emails are next looking to hire someone.

8. Tips

Another offline business that I heard of recently who uses an auto responder sequence is a butcher who collects email addresses from customers with the promise of sending them recipes for the meat that they’re buying. He gets their permission to email them and at the end of every day he sends each person that he sold meat to a recipe for the meat that they bought (he has a range of recipes for the different meats and tailors this first email to customers’ purchases).

Once the first email is sent the customer gets weekly emails (via an auto responder) for other recipes and tips for cooking with meat.

The butcher reported a sharp upswing in repeat business from the strategy—again, he was putting his name out there in front of people through his emails, building his brand, deepening personal relationships, and giving those subscribed a reason to keep coming back to him.

Multiple autoresponders, or one with mixed objectives?

The above array of uses for autoresponders is certainly not an exhaustive list. I’d love to hear how else you use them below.

It is also worth mentioning that some bloggers have multiple autoresponders running at once, while some mix a number of the points I mentioned above into the same autoresponder sequence. Personally, I do a bit of both.

At Digital Photography School I have a number of single-purpose autoresponders running in category #6 (upselling), where if someone buys an ebook they get a followup email/s with further recommendations.

However, my main autoresponder sequence on dPS is a real mix of the above, plus it also mixes in weekly newsletters, which are sent manually each week in addition to the automated emails. The sequence looks like this:

I’ve written more on how I combine a mix of weekly newsletters and autoresponders here.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

8 Ways to Use Autoresponders to Drive Traffic and Increase Your Blogging Income

ProBlogger Blog Tips

Tags: Autoresponders, Blogging, Drive, Income, Increase, Traffic, Ways

This guest post is by Marelisa Fábrega of the Abundance Blog at Marelisa Online.

If you keep telling yourself that you’re going to start blogging on a regular basis, and that intention has failed to materialize, it’s highly probable that procrastination is the culprit. My favorite definition of procrastination is the one provided by Timothy Pychyl, Ph.D., creator of the popular web site procrastination.ca, so I quote it often. Here it is:

“Procrastination is the needless, often irrational, voluntary delay of an intended task.”

That is, you intend to write a blog post, but you go off and start doing something else which is not as important to you, and which doesn’t need to get done right away. Below you’ll find ten surefire ways to overcome blogging procrastination, so that you can achieve your goal of blogging on a regular basis.

1. Make blogging a priority and schedule it

If you keep telling yourself that you’re not blogging on a regular basis because you simply don’t have the time to do so, ask yourself if blogging is a priority for you. If it’s not, then you should seriously consider giving up your blog. After all, your time is being occupied by other things that are more important to you than blogging.

Image copyright galexa – Fotolia.com

On the other hand, if blogging is a priority for you, then you need to make time for it. The way in which you make time for blogging is by giving it a time slot in your schedule. There’s a huge difference between the following two statements:

• I will write a blog post this week.
• I will sit down to write a blog post on Tuesday, at 10:00 a.m.

The first statement is a vague intention, while the second statement is a strong commitment. Which of the two do you think is more likely to render the result of a published post on your blog?

2. Create a list of all the reasons why you blog

When you have powerful reasons for doing something, you’re much more likely to overcome inertia and procrastination, and get moving. Ask yourself: “Why is it important to me to update my blog on a regular basis?”

• Do you want your blog to become the definitive source for quality information in your niche?
• Do you blog in order to attract potential clients to your business?
• Do you blog to help others achieve a particular goal, such as to lose weight or get their finances in order?
• Do you blog in order to create an additional source of income so that you can save up to travel around the world?

Hang up your list in plain sight. Then, when you’re thinking of turning on the television instead of working on a blog post, look at your list. Allow your reasons “why” to fuel your motivation, so that you get to work on your blog post instead of giving in to the lure of the couch and the TV set.

3. Blog about a topic that you’re passionate about

As Piers Steel, Ph.D. explains in his book, The Procrastination Equation: How to Stop Putting Things off and Start Getting Stuff Done, the more valuable a task is, the less likely you are to procrastinate on it. A task’s value is determined by two different factors:

• The first factor is how much you enjoy performing the task itself.
• The second factor is the external reward that you expect to receive if you perform the task.

When you blog about a topic that you’re interested in, it’s very likely that you’ll enjoy the process of writing. That is, writing blog posts will become a rewarding activity in and of itself. This makes blogging a valuable task, so you’ll be much more likely to engage in it.

4. Increase the external reward

As I explained in the previous point, the bigger the reward that you expect to receive for performing a particular task, the more valuable that task is, and the more likely it is that you’ll do it. Therefore, you need to ask yourself how you can make the task of blogging more rewarding.

The reward that most bloggers seek is to have their posts read by a large audience. So set up a strategy to make it more likely that others will read what you write. Here are some examples:

• Optimize your posts for the search engines so that what you write is more likely to be found by your target audience.
• Tweet your posts and share them on other social media, such as Facebook and Google+.
• Each time that you publish a blog post, visit from five to ten popular blogs and leave comments which add value to the conversation so that others are likely to click back to your blog.

5. Keep a notebook with you at all times to jot down ideas

When asked what was the most frightening thing he had ever encountered, novelist Ernest Hemingway said, “A blank sheet of paper.” A lot of people share this same fear, and they procrastinate on getting to work on a new blog post in order to avoid the prospect of staring at a blank screen, without knowing what to write about.

You can lessen this fear if you keep a list of possible blog topics that you can choose from. And that’s where your notebook comes in. Write down any potential blogging topics that pop into your head as you go about your day. Ideas can be triggered by anything:

• a question a client asks you
• a comment your two-year old makes as she trying to get out of eating her vegetables
• a slogan you read on a billboard
• an article you read on another blog during a coffee break.

Inspiration is fleeting, so make sure that you carry an idea capture tool with you at all times. Then, when it’s time to work on a blog post, you have a well of ideas to choose from.

6. Break it down into smaller pieces

The bigger a task seems, the more likely it is that you’ll look for ways to avoid it. The way in which you make a big task look less threatening is by breaking it down into tiny bite-size pieces, or subtasks. It’s even better if you can assign a specific amount of time to each subtask. Here’s an example:

• Spend 40 minutes researching an article on the relationship between humor and creativity.
• Spend 15 minutes creating an outline for the blog post.
• Spend 25 minutes developing the first idea.
• Spend 25 minutes developing the second idea.
• Spend 25 minutes developing the third idea.
• Spend 25 minutes writing the introduction, the conclusion, and a catchy title.
• Spend 15 minutes editing the blog post.
• Spend 15 minutes formatting the blog post and adding an image.

7. Create a blogging checklist

If a task lacks structure, we’re more likely to procrastinate on it. When we know exactly what to do next, we’re less likely to procrastinate. Therefore, it’s a great idea to create a checklist of everything that you need to do in order to get a blog post published. Then, when it’s time to work on a blog post, you can just work your way down the checklist.

8. Use the Swiss Cheese Method

Stop telling yourself that you can’t write a blog post unless you have a large chunk of time available. If you only have periods of about 20 minutes scattered throughout your week, put that time to good use. Make holes in the task of writing a blog post by working on it during small pockets of time, on a consistent basis. Soon, by writing a little here and there, you’ll have a published blog post.

9. Create a ritual

One way to make sure that you sit down to write your blog post at the scheduled time is to create a ritual that signals to your brain that it’s blogging time. Your ritual can be anything: light a candle, put on classical music, say a little prayer, or get yourself a cup of tea—whatever helps. Your lizard brain is much more likely to cooperate if you train it to recognize a certain series of actions as a firm command that it’s time to get to work.

10. Create accountability

We’re much more likely to keep promises that we make to others than we are to keep promises that we make to ourselves. Use that fact to your advantage and bolster your willpower by relying on others to hold you accountable. Here are two ways to create accountability:

• Put an “About” widget on your blog’s sidebar and make a commitment to your readers about how often you’ll be posting on your blog.
• Join a group of other bloggers and agree to hold each other accountable.

Conclusion

The good news is that there are many ways to overcome blogging procrastination. Get started by applying these ten surefire ways to overcome blogging procrastination presented above. How do you overcome blogging procrastination? Please share in the comments below.

Marelisa Fábrega blogs about creativity, productivity, and getting the most out of life over at Abundance Blog at Marelisa Online. She’s the author of the ebooks “How to Live Your Best Life – The Essential Guide for Creating and Achieving Your Life List”, and “Make It Happen! A Workbook for Overcoming Procrastination and Getting the Right Things Done”.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

10 Surefire Ways to Overcome Blogging Procrastination

ProBlogger Blog Tips

Tags: Blogging, Overcome, Procrastination, SureFire, Ways

Just because you build it doesn’t mean they will come. Actually, they probably won’t come.

In addition to creating a quality site, you also have to dedicate time to driving traffic from a variety of sources.

In chapter seven of Extra Money Answer, my free online book for getting started as an affiliate, I go through my eleven key sources for driving traffic to affiliate sites.

• Site Scrapers and Syndicators
• NetworkedBlogs on Facebook
• Twitter Tools
• AWeber RSS to Email
• YouTube Descriptions
• Meetup.com Perks
• LinkedIn Applications
• Paper.li
• Flickr Links
• StumbleUpon
• Podcasting
• Facebook Ads

These are in no particular order, and I didn’t include organic traffic from Google, Yahoo, etc., as I would encourage you to focus on creating quality content, and the search engines will find you.

If you’re new to affiliate marketing, learn how to make money onlinestep-by-step with Extra Money Answer.

Affiliate Marketing Blog

Tags: Drive, Sites, Traffic, Ways

As we said a few weeks ago when we launched a completely rebuilt, streamlined authoring and editing experience, we’re in the process of bringing you a much improved and modernized Blogger. The next phase of these updates starts today with seven new ways to display your blog, called Dynamic Views.

Built with the latest in web technology (AJAX, HTML5 and CSS3), Dynamic Views is a unique browsing experience that will inspire your readers to explore your blog in new ways. The interactive layouts make it easier for readers to enjoy and discover your posts, loading 40 percent faster than traditional templates and bringing older entries to the surface so they seem fresh again.

Dynamic Views is much more than just new templates. With just a couple clicks, you’ll get infinite scrolling (say goodbye to the “Older posts” link), images that load as you browse, integrated search, sorting by date, label and author, lightbox-style posts for easy viewing, keyboard shortcuts for quickly flipping through posts, and one-click sharing to Google+ and other social sites on every post.

No two blogs are the same, so you can choose from seven different views that display text and photos differently. For example, if you have lots of photos on your blog, you may prefer Flipcard or Snapshot. If your blog is more text-heavy, then Classic, Sidebar (what you’re seeing now on Blogger Buzz) or Timeslide may be preferable. Here’s a quick description of each of the new views, along with links to some of our favorite blogs where you can check each of them out in action.

• Classic (Gmail): A modern twist on a traditional template, with infinite scrolling and images that load as you go
• Flipcard (M loves M) – Your photos are tiled across the page and flip to reveal the post title
• Magazine (Advanced Style) – A clean, elegant editorial style layout 
• Mosaic (Crosby’s Kitchen) – A mosaic mix of different sized images and text
• Sidebar (Blogger Buzz Blog) – An email inbox-like view with a reading page for quick scrolling and browsing
• Snapshot (Canelle et Vanille) – An interactive pinboard of your posts 
• Timeslide (The Bleary-Eyed Father) – A horizontal view of your posts by time period

Enter the name of your favorite Blogger blog below and click Preview to check it out with Dynamic Views.

Adding a Dynamic View to your blog is as easy as changing your template. Log in to Blogger, click on the Template tab on your dashboard, and select whichever view you want to set as your default. Note that readers can still choose to navigate your blog in a different view by selecting from the pulldown in the upper left of the screen.

If you want to add your own touch to any of these new views, you can upload a header image and customize the background colors. We’ll be adding more ways to customize Dynamic Views in the coming weeks.

We hope you enjoy the latest update to Blogger, and that, as always, you tell us what you think by completing this short survey.

Note: In addition to Blogger Buzz, several other official Google blogs will be featuring Dynamic Views through the weeks and months ahead, including the Gmail Blog, LatLong Blog and Docs Blog. We’re excited to bring Dynamic Views into the fold and we’ll be looking at how to incorporate this new technology across Google’s blog network in the long term.

(Cross-posted from Blogger Buzz)

Update 7:31pm: We’ve added back a working link to submit your feedback.
Update 6:00pm: Earlier today, this post included a link to a feedback form. We do value your feedback and want to know what you think of this update; we’ll have a feedback link up again soon.

Posted by Antin Harasymiv, Software Engineer

The Official Google Blog

Tags: Blog, Dynamic, Seven, Share, Views, Ways, World

In the realm of content strategy and SEO, there is nary a website launch that isn’t marred by the occasional squabble over which is a priority. Putting emotions and disciplines aside, we all know content and SEO are equally important. Obviously they are so equally important that one doesn’t exist without the other.

So, how does one ensure that the proverbial arguments over content and SEO don’t come between a successful and strategic website launch?

As a content strategist and copywriter, I have learned to understand and embrace SEO, though it has taken me some time to make it part of my own strategy from the beginning. Thankfully, I have had the experience of working collaboratively with some great search engine marketers on several successful website projects.

What we’ve come to realize is the answer lies in defining processes that help content strategists, copywriters, user experience designers and SEOs find common ground from the get go. Come to find we all kind of want the same thing – effective content that drives traffic and increases leads.

The following are some elements that have worked for our agency. Adding them to your own internal processes might help improve the relationship between your SEO and content strategy a little more with each website. And they are likely to positively impact your conversions in the long run.

1- Get buy-in from all disciplines involved early on.

For me, this is the most important part of any project. No copywriter wants to be thrown an empty website design and asked to fill it in, just as no SEO wants to be handed a website full of content that doesn’t align with what people are actually searching for. All this leads to is making people feel like their work is unimportant.

When all team members truly understand the goals and the strategy behind a project, they just do their jobs better and they work together more effectively. It’s amazing how much more energetic and supportive a project can feel when everyone is rallied around it from the beginning. Taking personal interest in a project’s success can only happen when people feel like they’re a part of it.

2- Create a keyword map alongside the sitemap.

Before the UX designer has completed a sitemap or a copywriter has written a single word of content, the SEO should be consulted. Aligned with the goals of the project, the SEO should focus on how keywords can be used to help push those goals. For example, if a lawnmower company wants to focus on the eco-friendly push mower market, the SEO should be advising on keyword strategy around landing pages that is informed by his or her keyword research. Is there opportunity to capture that market based on keyword volumes?

Of course, there is a lot of overlap between content strategy and SEO but the SEO will have an idea based on keyword research whether or not there should be an eco-friendly mowing section or simply a landing page with keyword content about push mowers. At the end of the day, intense keyword research should guide the site map just as much as UX and content strategy do.

3- Make sure everyone agrees on a goal for each page.

One of the first things I learned about SEO as a content strategist was that it’s important to give the user a page that most closely represents what it is they are searching for. Having a keyword strategy that is focused on giving the user exactly what they want is important. It’s even more important to make sure the pages that contain that information are focused on converting them in that same visit.

This means the content strategist and the SEO have to work closely to make sure the content is designed to funnel each user to a specific calls to action related to their search. Determining what the common goal is for each page helps the SEO and the person writing the content once again work together from the beginning to make sure search behavior and calls to action anticipating that behavior are cohesive.

4- Exercise all your options for keyword usage.

If you’ve planned well from the beginning, the body copy of each page will closely align with the keywords you’re targeting. We all know it’s a lot easier to use keyword variations naturally when they’re relevant to what you’re writing about.

There is, however, a limit to how frequently you can use keywords in the body if you want to keep your copy clear and punchy. Work with your SEO to balance keyword usage in the body and in other, more out of the way areas like titles, headlines, photo captions, in the sidebar, etc. This will give you more room to keep your copy sounding natural while ensuring all the relevant variations make it on the page.

5- Budget more time for content.

You can rank awesome in the search engines all you want but if the content on your website isn’t clear and focused on getting the user to actually do something there, it’s a complete waste. Your bounce rate will reflect that. Very often content is one of the most under-budgeted pieces of a project.

When you are realistic about how much time it takes to write engaging, thoughtful content that is also strategic and aligned with the goals of a website, more consideration can be given to SEO. Quality content is not cheap or quick. Be honest with your client and budget project time appropriately.

6- Strategize a plan for ongoing SEO.

Fresh content, linkbuilding, social media and outreach can all have a huge impact on search engine rankings. When you formulate a plan for ongoing tactics to boost your search engine ranking, you don’t have to overly obsess about the foundational content on your website. Having a baseline plan for the content on the website is great, but that will only get your website so far in the search engines. An ongoing SEO strategy is key to consistently driving traffic and building a stronger website that will rank better and better over the long run.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

6 Ways Content Strategists Can Get Along with SEOs from the Beginning

Search Engine Journal

Tags: Along, content, from, SEOs, Strategists, the Beginning, Ways

This guest post is by Ali Luke of Aliventures.

Are your blog posts working well, or leaving readers unsatisfied? Is your About page enticing, or confusing? Does your Hire Me page do a great job of selling your services, or is it too bland?

Often, the only feedback that you have comes in the form of numbers. Maybe readers aren’t spending long on your blog. Maybe you rarely get comments. Maybe no one’s ever hired you.

The problem is, it’s hard to tell why. Without any feedback from readers, you don’t know what you’re doing wrong.

Honest, constructive feedback isn’t the same as a comment saying “great post!” Good feedback:

• tells you exactly what’s working, and what isn’t
• offers suggestions on how to fix any problems
• encourages you to make the most of your strengths.

Perhaps you’re reading this and thinking no one will give me any feedback. I don’t have any readers yet. Or maybe your blog isn’t even online—you’re struggling away with your posts and pages, trying to get your core content together before you launch.

Don’t give up. I’m going to give you six easy ways to get feedback.

Six ways to get feedback

1. Look at your current comments

If you’ve received any comments on your blog, look at the following.

• Which posts have the most comments? These will, in some way, have struck a chord with the reader.
• Are there any suggestions that you can use for future posts? Sometimes, commenters will tell you exactly what they’d like to read. Other times, they’ll mention what they’re struggling with—and you can use that as the basis for a post.
• Did any posts get negative or confused comments? If a reader leaves a comment to say that they didn’t understand, you might want to take another look at that post and make sure it’s clear.

2. Ask around on Twitter or Facebook

If your blog is new, you might well have a bigger following on Twitter, Facebook, or other social networks. Try asking there for feedback: post a link to a particular post or page and explain that you’d welcome any constructive criticism.

You’ll be surprised at how generous your friends—and even complete strangers!—can be. Don’t discount the opinions of non-bloggers, either; they might not “get” the technology, but they’re likely to be representative of your general audience.

3. Find a blogging partner

Some bloggers like to swap posts with one another. If you’ve got any blogging friends, ask around and see if anyone would be interested. A blogging partner can do a lot more than just read your posts, too—check out Find a Blog Buddy [Day 15 - 31DBBB].

If you don’t know a single blogger yet, try looking in the comments sections of relevant blogs (ProBlogger might be a good place to start). Find someone who seems to be at a similar stage to you, and drop them an email.

4. Post a message in a forum

When I’ve been looking for feedback, often on sales pages, I’ve posted in the Third Tribe forum. I’ve always had great responses from other members, with plenty of insightful feedback. When you put out a request like this, it’s often helpful to specify what particular areas you want feedback on. You might ask questions like these:

• Was my About page clear?
• Did it encourage you to read on?
• Is there anything you think I should add?

If you’re not currently a member of any blogging or business-related forums, you might want to take a look at ProBlogger’s own community site: ProBlogger.Community.

5. Join a blogging-related course

Many ecourses will include some element of interaction—that might be live calls with the tutors, or forums where you can easily interact with other members. There’ll often be a chance to ask questions and get specific feedback.

Even if it’s a big course without any individual instruction from tutors, you’ll find that other members are very willing to help out. People taking an ecourse are often more engaged (and at a slightly further stage) than your general audience on Twitter or Facebook.

6. Hire a writing coach

For really in-depth, expert feedback, look for a writing or blogging coach. They’ll work with you to help you shape and polish up your content, and a good coach will be careful to preserve your own voice and style.

Coaching is definitely an investment, but many bloggers find it a very worthwhile one. That applies even if you have a strong writing background. One of my own coaching clients, Prime Sarmiento, is an experienced journalist. She wrote about the benefits of getting coaching in a guest post for Men with Pens: Why Hiring a Writing Coach Can Help You Build Your Business.

The review

So, you’ve found someone willing to give you feedback. What should you ask them to look at?

I think there are several key areas where you’ll want to make sure your writing (and formatting of posts) is as good as it can be.

Your cornerstone content

If you’re creating a series of posts as cornerstone or pillar content—posts that readers will go back to again and again—then you want them to be as good as possible.

It’s worth asking someone to read through the whole series, so that they can help you both with the small details (like typos and clunky sentences) and the big picture (making sure that all the posts fit together well).

Your About page

Did you know that your About page is probably the most-read page on your blog after your home page? (Check your Google Analytics if you’re not convinced!) It make sense—new readers will often read a blog post or two, then click on “About” to find out who you are and what the blog’s purpose is.

A great About page can turn a casual visitor into a subscriber. A poor About page might lose you that visitor completely. About pages are really tough to write, so it’s definitely worth getting feedback and even some help with the drafting.

Your Services or Hire Me page

If you’ve got any services (or products) for sale, you want to make sure that your sales page does a great job of drawing potential customers in. That means, at a minimum, being totally clear about what you do and who you work with.

I’ve read lots of incoherent and confusing sales pages—and even decent sales pages often don’t sell the blogger as well as they should. You should always get feedback on a sales page, to make sure that your offer is totally clear.

Your next steps

Pick one page or post on your blog, and find someone who can give you feedback on it. That might be a friend, a forum member, a coach … the important thing is that you get a second opinion. Ideally, it should be someone who understands your audience (even if they’re not part of that audience themselves).

And if you’re not sure who to ask, why not pop a comment below? You might just find a new blogging friend…

Ali Luke is a writer and writing coach, and author of The Blogger’s Guides series of ebooks. She has a weekly newsletter for writers and bloggers, and has just released a mini-ebook How to Find Time for Your Writing –click here and sign up for her newsletter to get your free copy.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Six Ways to Get Feedback On Your Posts and Pages (And Why You Need To)

ProBlogger Blog Tips

Tags: Feedback, Need, Pages, Posts, Ways

Posted by Jason Stinnett @ Internet Exposure

This post was originally in YOUmoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author’s views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

As you may have heard, Google recently launched a new feature called Search by Image. While experimenting with the feature, I identified three scenarios where search by image has a distinct advantage over traditional approaches for finding link opportunities.

First, some background. To explain it simply, you can now use images (either a URL of an image, or one you upload) as your search term. The goal is to point you to websites that are related to and/or contain information about the image. More background can be found at the Google blog.

1. Get Background on Industry Influencers and Linkerati

As Rand often discusses, identifying people’s interests and using them to create connections are a great way to get on influential people’s radar. If done right, this will also result in exposure and links.

Some of the most influential people in the SEO space are also the best at personal branding. Ross Hudgens recently wrote a YOUmoz post on how to make your brand more consistent on and offline. Ross is someone who I’ve been reading and been influenced by a lot lately, and he’s also very consistent about using the same picture of himself, so I figured I’d use him for our first example.

When I tested the new Google Search By Image feature using his profile picture, I found many of the image results are attached to comments Ross has left:

Searching by Image, I quickly learned that Ross is active on several blogs about personal philosophy and self improvement. This is something I could use to connect with him on in the future.

Search By Image offers a distinct advantage because it provides a more filtered and targeted result set than simply wading through the backlink profile on RossHudgens.com.  

2. Identify Link Opportunities by Searching for Popular Guest Posters  

In the SEO community, Ann Smarty is the person who is the most synonymous with guest posting. Not just because of her site MyBlogGuest.com, but also because she’s a prolific guest poster herself. Ann has many projects she promotes in addition to My Blog Guest, including ViralMom.com and SexySocialMedia.com.

Ann’s also someone who’s great at maintaining a consistent personal brand, so this makes searching by her profile image a great place to look for guest post opportunities:

This screenshot shows a couple different blogs that Ann has guest posted on that we could investigate and potentially approach about guest blogging there as well. And that’s just scratching the surface!

Since Ann has multiple websites she promotes, Search by Image again provides an advantage over wading through backlink profiles because it allows us to find guest post opportunities that link to different sites.

3. Find Coverage That Didn’t Result in a Link

Another way you can use Search By Image is to mine for press coverage and participation in offline activities that didn’t result in a link. Searching by brand logos and "stock" CEO photos are a great way to find pages where a company or employee is getting highlighted.

For this example, I looked at the Fortune 500 and tried to pick a company in an industry that didn’t seem too social or internet savvy, but would probably have a traditional PR presence. I went with Caterpillar and discovered the current CEO is Douglas Oberhelman. A quick (traditional) image search showed one photo that appeared again and again, so I figured that would be the best one to use to Search By Image.

My search resulted in a number of places that an SEO at Caterpillar could ask to get a link from. The two I pointed out above are places Mr. Oberhelman has spoken, which should be on the easier side to get links from given the existing relationship. In fact, the page that highlights him as conference chair has "www.caterpillar.com" with blue text and underlined, but it isn’t a working link!

Search by Image has a distinct advantage over other research tools because it can identify significant coverage of your client or company that doesn’t already include a link.

Bonus reason #4: Visually Similar Images Results Can Be Pretty Funny  

Humor is always a nice way to break up a day of research: 

No wonder this feature isn’t already part of Open Site Explorer!

All jokes aside, give these techniques a try and let me know what you find in the comments. You can also give me a shout at the Internet Exposure blog or via our Twitter at @iexposure.

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SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

Tags: Building, Google's, Image, Link, Search, Ways

You probably know that you need to put in a lot of work to build your brand online. But there are a few simple steps you can take that will raise awareness and help promote your brand almost automatically. These three set it and forget it techniques only involve using the right tools correctly….

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Search Engine Optimization, Google Optimization – RSS Feeds

Tags: Awareness, Brand, Online, Raise, Three, Ways