My Blog's 1 Month Birthday

Happy Bloggy Birthday:

Most bloggers won't celebrate a one month blogaversary, but you don't see that stopping me.  I am proud of the blog that I have accomplished this far and am hopeful for the one year birthday of my blog.  I just want to toot my own horn a little bit and show you what some hard work and dedication to getting more free blog traffic can do.

What I have accomplished with my blog in one month:
~ Over 216 unique visitors.  (free traffic my friends)
~ Eight Blog Readers through RSS or Email
~ Twitter followers = 69
~ Indexed in Google
~ Traffic Rank in US: 296,959 - better than some older blogs.
~ Technorati: Authority 130
~ Yahoo BackLinks: 178

Not a bad job for just one month, but that is just my 2 cents.  I am impressed with the amount of free backlinks coming in from Yahoo, it must have been the articles that I have posted.  Things are looking up and now I have some results to compare to next months findings.  For the most part everything should continue to go up, at least that is what I am trying to accomplish here anyway.

SEO Optimize Pillar Posts for Blog Traffic

How to SEO Optimize your Pillar Posts for Maximum Traffic

When you write a blog post more specifically a pillar blog post, you need to make sure it is optimized for the search engines.  First off a Pillar Post is a major post that your visitors will be coming to view.  If you would like an example of a Pillar Post you can find one on my blog if you Click Here.  The Pillar Post is a post that you think is well written or gives great value, etc.

To make sure your blog is SEO optimized you need to know what your key words are, or at least some key words that you think you should use.  Maybe your blog is about work at home moms, and you are writing a post on wahm scams.

Find the keywords:
1. Go to the Google AdWords Keyword Tool.  (Free)
2. Enter your keyword or phrase into the form. (work at home mom scam)
3. Enter the captcha letters and submit.
4. Check the list of keywords for other phrases you can work into your article.

Here are just a few of the keywords for the phrase: work at home mom scam.
online work at home
work from home scams
internet work at home
work at home for moms
legitimate work at home jobs
work at home
making money at home
work from home for free
work at home scams

The Free Google AdWords Keyword Tool also shows you how many people are searching for those words monthly.  In all there were a total of 199 keyword phrases that popped up when I put my original keyword phrase into the blog tool. You need to pick a few of the most searched keywords and make sure you try to work them into your blog post in a natural way.

You don't want to fill up you pillar blog posts with keywords and make it difficult for visitors to read.  If you repeat your key words over and over again you will essentially be keyword spamming which is a bad thing and Google and its little spider bots will punish your search engine ranking for spamming the keywords.  The goal is to optimize for the search engines, not to stuff full of keywords.

Occasionally you will be writing a blog tutorial and you will need to repeat your keywords to show your readers exactly what you mean.  For the most part though, you don't want to over use your main keywords.  That is why the adwords tool comes in very handy so you can have other phrases you can use in your blog posts.

If you want to know more about SEO you can read more of what I wrote in this post:  How to use SEO to Drive Traffic to Your Blog

I am not the best at writing with SEO in mind, sometimes you just write for your reader to get your points across and not for the search engine bots.  If you work on SEO are mindful of your key words and make good use of the tool you can optimize your blog posts so more traffic will find its way to your blog.

Want Lots of Free Blog Traffic? Use Entrecard

Free Blog Traffic with Entrecard

You may notice the little widget in my sidebar that has a little bar that says Get One or Drop.  Well this is one way you can get a bunch of free blog traffic.  I just signed up with them yesterday as part of my 31 Day's of Free Blog Traffic Challenge.  

 

This is my Entrecard "card" one that I will use to advertise on other sites.  I know it needs some work but I thought it wasn't too awful for just throwing something up there.  I made a new advert card - the one on the right.  I think it is better in some ways and also harder to read?  It will have to do for now.

So I "dropped" in on 100 blogs last night and then another 100 blogs today.  I will say that it is very time consuming to do all one-hundred, but I will continue this rate for the full 31 days to see what kind of results I can get.  From these blog views I have gotten 24 visitors that I had also visited, and I expect this to continue to rise every day.  I have also gotten one comment and suggestion.  So far I am impressed and hooked, but we will see how it all turns out.

I was not sure about signing up for this Entrecard at first or not, I thought it might be considered black hat.  It may be somewhere in the gray area, because this is not targeted traffic and ultimately that is what you want coming to your blog.  When you start a new blog as I have you are some what desperate for any blog visitors so you are willing to go out there and try some interesting things. 

I have read a bit about Entrecard on some other blog's and here is what I have learned (not sure if any of it is true or not).  John Chow used to use Entrecard, so if it was good enough for him then it is good enough for me.  Google and the other search engines may lower my page rank because of the high bounce rate or the blog traffic from Entrecard visitors.  Many of the site visitors will just click on the "drop box" then immediately leave.

Well right now I am not concerned about my page rank because I don't even have one yet.  The problem of having some of the free blog traffic just clicking in and then right back out, well maybe a few will leave comments.  I might even get a small percentage of  loyal readers out of  the whole thing.

If your blog needs to get some free traffic you might consider trying out Entrecard.  You may not like the widget that must be displayed but once your blog gets approved I think you can move it down lower on the page, which may help your blog visitors see more of your blog and stick around to read something.

Why Your Blog Will Fail

Why Your Blog is Destined to Fail

Many people start blogs every day and the majority will never even reach the minimum $100 Google payout.  It is easy to start a blog, but it is not as easy to actually make money from blogging.

Reasons Blogs Fail:

• The blogger never made goals for their blog.
• The blog just does not get enough traffic to make money.
• Just posting is not enough.
• Inaction on the bloggers part.

I want to liken a brand new blog to a new restaurant in a big city.  If you opened up a new restaurant (not a franchise) you would make sure that you advertised as much as possible right at the grand opening so everyone would know about the new place.

At first you might see a trickle of customers but there is potential.  If your restaurant is appealing and the food is great and the service is good you will get free word of mouth advertising.  So you do lots of advertising at first and build up a good following and let your regulars use word of mouth and they will advertise for you.

The same thing must happen with a new blog.  The internet is a vast city with new blogs opening on every corner.  You must advertise to get people to visit your blog.  Then once you get a following your regulars will use word of mouth or link love to advertise for you.  If you have a funny post or important post they just want to share with friends or maybe they will bookmark you for many others to see.   They might make a post about your blog and put up a link for others to go check you out.

The restaurant is a pretty good analogy for blogging.  If you don't advertise in the beginning no one will come.  Likewise if your blog sucks or there is no real content people will quickly move on to the next one that came up in the search engine for your key words.

You have bloggers like Yaro Starak and Darren Rowse and they are the McDonald's of restaurants.  Which means that if they wanted to they would never have to advertise again.  Because all of their loyal fans and followers are doing the advertising for them.

How to use SEO to Drive Traffic to Your Blog

How to SEO your Blog

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a tool that bloggers use to drive targeted traffic to their blogs.  Then the blog owners use the SEO targeted search traffic to make more money blogging.

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the use of certain key words used in blog posts, blog titles, etc.  When the key words are searched for hopefully your blog will show up on the search engine and will bring lots of free traffic along with it.

For example my blog is a money making blog and I want to use certain key words about making money online.  Now those previous key words are very competitive key words and even if I use them strategically or optimize my blog, it will be difficult to show up on Google's front page for those key words.  Fortunately for me there are some other key words that are still searched a ton and I can use SEO to drive free search engine traffic my way.

Everyone who wants to get traffic uses SEO, some use it well and some don't.  There are some bloggers who will keyword spam which is very bad and the search engines will rank you lower for applying that tactic.  It is suggested that you only use your key words every 100 words.

If you have many popular key words you are focusing on, then you can use them all and weave them naturally into your text.  Sometimes though when you are writing about a topic you will use the keywords more than you would actually like, but it is necessary to get your points across.

There are a few specific places you will want to always try to use your keywords in or around.

• The Title
• First Paragraph
• Last Paragraph
• Bold Headlines

Now there are some who will tell you that SEO is dead, but it is not.  The reality is that Google changed the way they rank sites, they no longer only use SEO.  What they are now doing is something called LSI or Latent Semantic Indexing.

What is LSI?  It is a very complicated mathematical calculation.  What you need to know about LSI  is that you not only have to use keywords and SEO or keyword placement but now you have to make sure that the other words on the page are closely related to your keywords.

For Example: Today's keyword might be SEO so I am also using the words search engines, Google search, keywords, LSI, traffic, etc.    See how all of those words are related to one another, so now this little money making blog post has some SEO and some LSI all working together to make an informative article.

If you would like to learn the best Keywords for your blog's niche you can use Google's Adwords Keyword Tool.

If you need more help with SEO and keywords you might like a program like:  Insider Search Engine Optimization Secrets.

Top 10 Ways to Get People to Stay on Your Money Making Blog Longer

Top 10 Ways to Get People to Stay on Your Blog

If you have set up your blog with some posts and widgets and you are attempting to make money online with your blog you want them to stick around as long as possible or at least until you have convinced them to buy something.

You have blog traffic so you know people are coming to your site, but you have a high bounce rate - they don't stick around for long.  So the real question is, How to get visitors to stay on your blog?  There are several different tactics that you can use to get people to get stuck on your site or to have a sticky site.  Follow along with the top ten ways below.

Top 10 Ways to Keep 'Em Around the Blog:

1. Content is King - Give them good blog content and they will stick around to soak it up.
2. They enjoy your sense of humor, so laugh it up.
3. You're Lucky and they just happen to like your personality.
4. They can identify with what you are trying to accomplish.
5. Blog about something controversial.
6. Your blog is inviting and easy to navigate.
7. You don't try to sell them something every 5 seconds.
8. They think you are successful and they want to be successful just like you.
9. Ask questions or take a poll.
10. They like Top 10 Lists. 

Okay, now that you know, what will you do?  Are you going to run on over to your blog and implement these ideas?  Or will you say that is nice and just let all of the traffic come and stay on My Blogging Fortune's blog?  HuH?

Now is the time to take what you have learned and put it into practice.  I have done at least half of these top ten items, maybe more if I have any personality or sense of humor at all.   So hop to it and go make some money with your blog and keep those visitors on your blog longer.

Day 10 of My Blogging Challenge - Update

I have accomplished so much in just a week and a half for this blog.  I have looked back towards my past failures and successes and realized that when I set goals I reach them. I once wanted to be an eBay Powerseller and I reached that goal.  There have been other goals that I have set for myself and I have reached them.

I now realize why my previous attempt at becoming an affiliate marketer failed.  I did not know how to write for the Internet or how to write in a niche with targeted SEO.  Now after a year of freelance writing I understand this process much better.

You can learn from my mistakes and you can figure all of this out - the information is out there and hopefully most of it will be on my blog.

My Blogging Challenge News - Day 10

•  Indexed in Google!

•  Google Adsense Money - Only some spare change but boy was I excited!  I did a little dance because some angel came to my blog.  I know that one click does not make me rich or even indicate the success of my blog, but it made me feel vindicated and gave me incentive to keep on keeping on. 

• I am one-fourth of the way to my 100th blog post goal.  Using the double posting each day to reach this goal faster and to fill my blog out with useful content.

• Working on a free giveaway with email sign up - this is the point where I have failed before, I now know that to get where I want to go and to reach my money making goals - this step is all important to reaching those goals.

My blog is still considered a baby a newborn really.  This blog even though it is in infancy it is doing well, I think.  Indexed and already has made a tiny profit!

My Blogging Fortune Just Got Indexed in Google

Just one week after starting the money making blog My Blogging Fortune and it was  Indexed in Google this morning.

I have been checking Google everyday since I started my blogging challenge and it had not indexed yet.  Now some of the links that I had posted and bookmarks were showing up but not my blogs URL.   My blogs URL is:  http://cashblogmoney.blogspot.com/ and it finally showed up.  

This means that my new blog posts should get indexed also.  If I use the correct key words for my blog such as making money online with a blog, then people searching those words should find something about my blog and hopefully be compelled enough to come and visit and learn something.

I was very excited to find out that all my hard work that I had done last week actually worked.  I had been getting a little discouraged because it was taking so long to get my blog indexed.  I normally don't care too much but this blog I want to succeed and quickly so getting visitors and indexed in the search engine is a great advantage.

I was worried that it would get stuck because I was reading how it took some money making blogs anywhere from 3 to 6 months to get indexed.  So right there I am way ahead of the game.  This way I won't give up and I can use the extra time to post to my blog and build up readers and some other things that I have planned.  

So if you want to make money online with a blog like me just follow along and see just what I will do next to get more money from my blog!

How to Get Search Engines to Find Your Blog

Maybe you have been blogging for a while and you don't have that many visitors, comments or sales from your blog.  You want to get your blog noticed so you can make more money and you want the big three search engines to frequently update and highly rank your blog.

Getting the big 3 (Yahoo, Google and Bing) to notice your blog may not be all that easy. One thing the search engines are looking for is content.  Are you posting valuable content?  If you are blogging a few words here and there and put up blurbs and updates that is great.  To make your blog posts more valuable you need to post longer content.  Every week you need to post something targeted to your blogs audience with keywords that are related to your blog.

My blog named My Blogging Fortune is about making money with your blog.  So when I write a blog post I try to include the following words: Make money, making money, blog for cash and so on.  When you use your key words, making money, and other related words, profit and sales, you are alerting the search engines that you are contributing to the online community.

You may have heard of SEO or search engine optimization well that is another story, but it has its place in your blog.  You need key words and words related to your blogs key words to get noticed.  I am not talking about keyword spamming because the search engines will rank your site lower for that kind of thing.

How to Get Search Engines to Find Your Blog:
Try writing a blog post that reminds you of an article you would read.
Make it related to your blog.
Strategically add key words.
Length is important - aim for somewhere between 200 - 300 words.

I also suggest:
Submitting your blog to  BlogCarnavals
Submit an article to GoArticles


You can do it and you will get more readers for your effort and more readers translates into a money making blog, which is what we are after.

FYI - This blog post had over 300 words and it only took 15 minutes or less.