Tag Archives: linking

How I Write Blog Posts

Lately I’ve been seeing a rash of posts on blogs that are telling people how to write blogs. Of course, I have my own blogging tips, which I hope some folks have checked out here and there, but what I’m seeing are the same tips over and over from other people.

Let’s face this fact; just how many times do you want to read “first come up with a keyword rich topic, then write a keyword rich article on your niche?” No matter how many times you read that and how many ways someone tries to write it, nothing is different. How different is reading “write in your niche so that people will find you on search engines?”

I’m not saying it’s not true; I’m just saying it’s boring seeing the same thing over and over. And I’m not saying what I’m about to write is any better than what you’ve seen someone else say. But it will be different, and I’m thinking that’s my little niche. Let’s begin.

Believe it or not, the longest part of my blogging is trying to figure out what I want to write about. For someone like me, that doesn’t often take long. For this blog, since I pretty much write about what I feel like, it doesn’t usually take me longer than a couple of minutes. The same for my business blog, because I know my topic there. For my finance blog, it takes a little longer. I usually scour the news to see what feels like it might be interesting enough for me to expound upon, then I’m ready to go.

The next step, if needed, is the research. For instance, when I wrote my post the other day on my 13 favorite singers, that one took a long time to put together because I had to first list my singers, go find the videos for each of them, and then find the product links for each artist. For the last post, 34 questions, I had to actually answer the questions first. I could have answered them once I started writing, but I had some formatting I wanted to do so I answered them before I posted everything. For my finance blog, research is always essential, because I don’t want to use only one news source to write those articles from.

Next it’s time to either start writing or paste certain things into the writing area. When I’m writing, I go into my zone and just write, and I don’t usually stop until I’ve finished the article. That’s why it doesn’t take me all that long to write. If I have an opinion on something, my mind just puts things in the order I want to talk about them in and I go for it. Kind of my own Mozart thing going on. If I’m just pasting something, most of my work is already done.

Now it’s time for my internal linking. I don’t have full recall of every article I’ve written, but obviously I know my topics. So I go back through my topics to search for articles I’ve previously written on a topic. The internal linking serves two purposes One, it helps my site show off previous material that I’m hoping someone might be interested enough in to want to check it out. Two, at least on my finance blog, it helps with the SEO in reinforcing topics I write about there. This blog does okay in the search engines, but it probably will never get its PR back, which means probably only my affiliate advertising will ever be here, whereas that blog has a high PR, does okay on Alexa, and if I can increase the visits a bit more it’ll be prime property for financial advertisements.

Next is something I don’t always do, but I will check for it. Since everyone says text advertising is supposed to be so great, I go back through my words to see if there’s anything I said that can link to a product. Then I go looking for a product that I can link to and add that link, with the new blue lines.

The next to the last piece is trying to decide what I’m going to highlight at the bottom of each post. Will it be a product? Will it be just a banner ad of some sort? I certainly have plenty of stuff to choose from, so that usually doesn’t take much time either.

And now, the final pieces of the puzzle. I go to All-in-one-SEO and I write something in the description box on what the piece is about. I type in my keywords. Then I go up and type in my tags for the post, which is something I just started a few weeks ago. I select the overall category for the post. The last thing depends on if I’m posting the article immediately or on a delayed basis. If I’m delaying the post, I set the schedule for when I want it to post. Sometimes I write my posts a couple of weeks in advance, so that works great.

And there you go. Now, it takes me less than 5 minutes to write a post, but all the other stuff I add on is what builds up the time. It may eventually take me 10 to 20 minutes to fully complete a post, but that’s okay because the possible rewards for the extra stuff are worth it if you ask me.

Now, whether you fully agree or not, wasn’t that better than the cookie cutter posts you see all the time? 🙂
 

Linking To Your Tags

Earlier today I was checking out one of the many blogs that I follow called Online Social Networking. I’m not sure where I originally met Larry online, but we started our blogs around the same time.

I was reading this one particular post, which was pretty good, but that’s not what caught my eye. For the first time, I noticed that Larry has a lot of links in each post. I’d never really paid much attention to it, though I’d clicked on a link from time to time, but tonight it really drew my attention. I decided to hover over some of them, and what I discovered has lit something in my mind.

Before I tell you what, let me mention these couple of things. Larry’s blog has a PR of 4; as I always say, I don’t overly care about page rank, but it’s a number so we’ll use it for the moment. He has an Alexa rank of 52,170. He has 703 RSS subscribers. He doesn’t write as often as I do, his posts aren’t as long as some of my posts are, and he has very little in the way of marketing items.

What he does have, though are those links. And what I noticed today was that many of those links aren’t just internal links, but are links to his tags.

As I’ve said, I’m relatively new to tags. I’ve done more tagging on my finance blog than I’ve ever done here. I have categories here, but not as many tags. Still, I could recognize the importance of the internal linking even more than I have up to this point. I link to much of my content when I think about it. However, there’s nothing wrong with doing some of that internal linking to either tags or categories. As a matter of fact, that’s one of the smartest things I’ve ever seen, and I wish I had thought of it before now.

Of course, I don’t think that’s the only reason his blog is ranked better than mine. He sticks to his one particular topic, which is pretty much anything that has to do with social networking and social media, while I kind of dabble in, well, pretty much whatever I want to dabble in. But one of those things we all need to remember with our blogging is internal linking and SEO, and this is one brilliant step that I’m going to start doing, just as I hope to start tagging some of my missives a little bit more also.

Oh, I still won’t have PR for awhile, but I’ve been wondering if there might be ways to increase my Alexa rank, since they still like me, and this might be the next step in helping to put me over. Also, something else I’m going to start doing is paying more attention to other articles I’m reading on other blogs, and if something fits an old post of mine, I’m going to link to it. Anchor links are important to do, even if the content isn’t on your own site. And other people deserve some love also, as I got this week from Kristi’s Fetching Friday post.

Something to important and yet to simple; oy! 😀

Secrets of the Millionaire Mind
by T. Harv Eker



Top Three Do’s And Don’ts

Earlier in the week I was reading a Tim Bossie’s blog, with his article titled 60 Quick Dos And Don’ts For Online Advertising. This is a great list, and I hope everyone goes over and absorbs this entire list, as it pertains to online advertising, affiliate marketing, internet marketing, MLM marketing, network marketing, email marketing,… well, you catch my drift.

Anyway, I decided that, out of this great list, I’d say what I felt were the three top do’s that he mentions, and then what I feel are the three top don’ts on his list. By the way, I’m not sure if that’s how and where one would put the “s” after “don’t”, but I did search on the internet and it seems this is how other people are doing it, so I’m going that route.

First, let’s do the don’ts first (wow, that looks weird, doesn’t it?), to get those out of the way:

1. Don’t comment on blogs with “Great Blog!” and leave it at that. It’s comments like that which makes it harder these days to determine what’s spam and what’s not. As you know, I hate spam, but I’ve also talked about how it’s getting sneakier and smarter these days. Our friend Peter talks often about people who drop by and leave lots of one line comments just to move up the lists of those people who have top commentator listings, like mine over there on the right (and look who’s at the top). Whether or not it’s truly spam, it looks like spam, and it’s disingenuous to the person who’s writing the blog.

2. Don’t limit yourself to just one advertising method. Y’all see all the things that I test here, then tell you about, but I know I still have a lot of methods that I’ve yet to try. There is no one way that will work for everyone; man, I’ve proven that! If you’re not making $500,000 a year, you probably need to change something around, keep tweaking, and keep learning. Yeah, I know that’s a super lofty goal, and most of us would be happier with a lot less than that from blogging, or from our websites, or from any other internet marketing in general, but I like to dream big.

3. Don’t get discouraged if you don’t see overnight millions. Let’s face this fact; there are a lot of dead blogs and websites out there. A good number of those folks tried to make money online and failed. Some of those people participated in programs like Jeff Paul’s Internet Millions or Stores Online programs.

Think about it this way; just how many blogs are there out here that consider themselves “Make Money Blogging” blogs? Folks, in one way or another I’ve been at this for four years, and it’s not until this past year when I’ve actually started making any money at all. I feel it’s because of things I’ve learned since I started writing this blog. Obviously, it’s a long process. The best part about all of it is that it doesn’t cost a lot to try these things out, and to stick with it just a little bit longer. As Jesse Jackson used to say, “Never give up; never stop trying; keep hope alive.”

And now, the do’s:

1. Be persistent in continuing to learn advertising and marketing. Now that’s really what this blog is all about. I try to learn more and more about affiliate and internet marketing, and as our friend Steve says, I tend to process a lot of information.

Unfortunately, there’s also a lot of information that I probably don’t put into practice for one reason or another, so I’m not making the kind of money I should be making. That doesn’t mean I’m not always learning. If things so well, we’re going to get some specific questions answered from a big time internet marketer soon, which I think would help everyone out.

Still, you see me testing things and telling you about them; you see me sharing my stats; you see me sharing websites I find; and you see me sharing ebooks I’ve obtained here and there, free ebooks that I’m allowed to share with you. And I try to write something different than what everyone else is writing.

You saw my rant on this idea of massive traffic; well, since I wrote that, in Twitter, I’ve probably seen at least 20 new posts that have said the same exact thing as everyone else. Is there something new? I don’t know. But I do know that there’s always something new to learn, a different perspective, a different tactic, and I’m going to continue trying to learn more and more; I hope you keep coming back to learn, and to teach me some things.

2. Comment, Comment, Comment on other blogs in your niche. Actually, I want to extend this one further to say comment any place where you feel you can make a contribution in some fashion. I actually do understand the tactic of commenting only on blogs that fit your niche, in that it presupposes those people will see your comment, figure you’re some kind of authority, and decide to come by.

But I’ve had more fun and met some great people on blogs that have nothing to do with my niche; heck, do I have a niche anyway? I write three blogs, and this is probably the only one that doesn’t really have a niche, as much as a concentration. I have varied interests, so I comment on blogs every and anywhere. And I try to offer something with each comment, even if it’s only two lines. There’s a lot of great stuff out there; take the time to look at it, then comment on it, and finally,…

3. Spread some link love in your own articles and blog posts. Well, that’s what started this article to begin with, isn’t it, acknowledging the great job Tim did in writing his post, then expanding on a few points of it for my blog. For those of you who say there’s never anything to write about, you’re just not trying.

If I look at any five blogs, I can find something to write about, and probably get 500 words out of it. I’m a genuinely curious person, and I haven’t even brought up my interest in psychology, the universe, quantum physics, poker (well, I have talked about poker), history, music, and the like. But I’ve shared tons of links with y’all, even on this post; have you noticed that not all the links here are to this blog? Well, I’ve also done a lot of internal linking within my own blog, as well as this post. Internal linking is important to your own SEO (oh yeah, I’ve talked about that also), and it gives those who might like what you have to say more pages to explore if they like even a little bit of what you’ve written. Last night, for instance, I liked this one blog so much that I read 10 of his posts, though I only commented on one of them; I wish I could remember right now who it was, because I’d share it with you.

But there you go, my top three of each category. All that, and if you go to Tim’s blog, there are 54 more gems for you to absorb. Who could ask for more than that? Oh yeah, lots of links on this one, aren’t there? Well, I wanted to do something special for post #399; I hope you enjoy some of them; take care, and enjoy your Saturday.