Posted by Danny Dover

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Chapter 4: Finding SEO Problems

Sections:

• 15 Minute SEO Audit
• 10 Minute Brand Reputation Audit (Not included in this blog post)
• Identifying Search Engine Penalties (Not included in this blog post)

15 Minute SEO Audit

The basics of SEO problem identification can be done in about 15 minutes. When completing this audit I recommend you take notes based on the action items listed in each section. This will help you later when you do a deeper dive of the website. This audit is not comprehensive (See Chapter 9 for a full annotated site audit), but it will help you quickly identify major problems so you can convince your clients that your services are worthwhile and that you should be given a chance to dig deeper. The smart ones reading this section may notice that it builds upon the ideas expressed in Chapter 2. The dumb ones reading this, will think it is Harry Potter. The latter might enjoy it more but the former will end up with better SEO skills.

Prepare Your Browser

Before you start your audit you need to set your browser to act more like the search engine crawlers. This will help you to identify simple crawling errors. In order to do this, you will need to do the following:

Disable cookies in your browser

Switch your user-agent to Googlebot

How Do I Do This and Why Is It Important?

When the search engines crawl the Internet they generally do so with a user-agent string that identifies them (Google is googlebot and Bing is msnbot) and in a way where they don’t accept cookies.

To see how to change your user-agent go to Chapter 3 (Picking the Right SEO Tools) and see user-agent switcher. Setting your user-agent to Googlebot increases your chance of seeing exactly what Google is seeing. It also helps with identifying cloaking issues (Cloaking is the practice of showing one thing to search engines and a different thing to users. This is what sarcastic Googlers call penaltybait. ) In order to do this well, a second pass of the site with your normal user-agent is required to identify difference. That said, this is not the primary goal for this quick run through of the given website.

In addition to doing this you should also disable cookies within your browser. By disabling them, you will be able to uncover crawling issues that relate to preferences you make on the page. One primary example of this is intro pages. Many websites will have you choose your primary language before you can enter their main site. (This is known as an intro page.) If you have cookies enabled and you have previously chosen your preference, the website will not show you this page again. Unfortunately, this will not happen for search engines.

This language tactic is extremely detrimental from a SEO perspective because it means that every link to the primary URL of the website will be diluted because it will need to pass through the intro page. (Remember, the search engines always see that page as they can’t select a language) This is a big problem, because as we noted in Chapter 1, the primary URL (i.e. www.example.com/) is usually the most linked to page on a site.

Homepage

Next, go to the primary URL of the site and pay particular attention to your first impression of the page. Try to be as true to your opinion as possible and don’t over think it. You should be coming from the perspective of the casual browser (This will be made easier because at this point you probably haven’t been paid any money and its a lot easier to be casual when are not locked down with the client) Follow this by doing a quick check of the very basic SEO metrics. In order to complete this step, you will need to do the following:

Notice your first impression and the resulting feeling and trustworthiness you feel about the page

Read the title tag and figure out how it could be improved

See if the URL changed (As in you were redirected from www.example.com/ to www.example.com/lame-keyword-in-URL-trick.html)

Check to see if the URL is canonical

How Do I Do This and Why Is It Important?

The first action item on this list helps you align yourself with potential website users. It is the basis for your entire audit and serves as a foundation for you to build on. You can look at numbers all day, but if you fail to see the website like the user, you will fail as an SEO.

The next step is to read the title tag and identify how it can be improved. This is helpful because changing title tags is both easy (A big exception to this is if your client uses a difficult Content Management System.) and has a relatively large direct impact on rankings.

Next you need to direct your attention to the URL. First of all, make sure there were not redirects that happened. This is important because adding redirects dilutes the amount of link juice that actually makes it to the links on the page.

The last action item is to run a quick check on canonical URLs. The complete list of URL formats to check for is in Chapter 2 (Relearning How You See the Web). Like checking the title tag, this is easy to check and provides a high work/benefit ratio.

Global Navigation

After checking the basics on the homepage, you should direct your attention to the global navigation. This acts as the main canal system for link juice. Specifically, you are going to want to do the following:

Temporarily disable Javascript and reload the page

Make sure the navigation system works and that all links are HTML links

Take note of all of the sections that are linked to

Re-enable Javascript

How Do I Do This and Why Is It Important?

As we discussed in Chapter 2 (Relearning How You See the Web), site architecture is critical for search friendly websites. The global navigation is fundamental to this. Imagine that the website you are viewing is ancient Rome right after the legendary viaduct and canal systems were built. These waterways are exactly like the global navigation that flows link juice around a website. Imagine the impact that a major clog can have on both systems. This is your time to find these clogs.

Your first action item in the section is to disable Javascript. This is helpful because it forces you to see your website from the perspective of a very basic user. It is also a similar perspective to the search engines.

After disabling Javascript, reload the page and see if the global navigation still works. Many times it won’t and it will uncover one of the major reasons the given client is having indexing issues.

Next view source and see if all of the navigational links are true HTML links. Ideally, they should be because they are the only kind that can pass their full link value.

Your next step is to take note of which sections are linked to. Ideally, all of the major sections will be linked in the global navigation. The problem is, you won’t know what all of the major sections are until you are further along in the audit. For now just take note and keep a mental checklist as you browse the website.

Lastly, re-enable Javascript. While this will not be accurate with the search engine perspective, it will make sure that AJAX and Javascript based navigation works for you. Remember, on this quick audit, you are not trying to identify every single issue with the site, instead you are just trying to find the big issues.

Category Pages/Subcategory Pages (If applicable)

After finishing with the homepage and the global navigation, you need to start diving deeper into the website. In the waterway analogy, category and subcategory pages are the forks in the canals. You can make sure they are optimized by doing the following:

Make sure there is enough content on these pages to be useful as a search result alone.

Find and note extraneous links on the page (there shouldn’t be more than 150 links)

Take notes on how to improve the anchor text used for the subcategories/content pages

How Do I Do This and Why Is It Important?

As I mentioned, these pages are the main pathways for the link juice of a website. They help make it so if one page (most often the homepage) gets a lot of links, that the rest of the pages on the website can also get some of the benefit. The first action point requires you to make a judgment call on whether or not the page would be useful as a search result. This goes with my philosophy that every page on a website should be a least a little bit link worthy. (It should pay its own rent, so to speak) Since each page has the inherent ability to collect links, webmasters should put at least a minimal amount of effort into making every page link worthy. There is no problem with someone entering a site (from a search engine result or other third party site) on a category or subcategory page. In fact, it may save them a click. In order to complete this step, identify if this page alone would be useful for someone with a relevant query. Think to yourself:

1. Is there helpful content on the page to provide context?
2. Is there a design element breaking up the monotony of a large list of links?

Take notes on the answers to both of these questions.

The next action item is to identify extraneous links on the page. Remember, from Chapter 2 we discussed that the amount of link value a given link can pass is dependent on the amount of links on the page. To maximize the benefit of these pages, it is important to remove any extraneous links. Going back to our waterway analogy, this type of links are the equivalent “canals to nowhere”. (Built by the Roman ancestors of former Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens)

To complete the last action item of this section, you will need to take notes on how to better optimize the anchor text of the links on this page. Ideally, they should be as specific as possible. This helps the search engines and users identify what the target pages are about.

Content Pages

Now that you have analyzed the homepage and the navigational pages, it is time to audit the meat of the website, the content pages. In order to do this, you will need to complete the following:

Check and note the format of the Title Tags

Check and note the format of the Meta Description

Check and note the format of the URL

Check to see if the content is indexable

Check and note the format of the alt text

Read the content as if you were the one searching for it

How Do I Do This and Why Is It Important?

The first action item is to check the title tags of the given page. This is important because it is both helpful for rankings and it makes up the anchor text used in search engine result. You don’t get link value from these links but they do act as incentives for people to visit your site.

Similarly to the first action item, the second item has to do with a metric that is directly useful for search engines rather than people (they are only indirectly useful for people once they are displayed by search engines.) Check the meta description by viewing source or using the mozBar and make sure it is compelling and contains the relevant keywords at least twice. This inclusion of keywords is useful not for rankings but because matches get bolded in search results.

The next action item is to check the URL for best practice optimization. Just like Danny Devito, URLs should be short, relevant and easy to remember.

The next step is to make sure the content is indexable. To ensure that it, make sure the text is not contained in an image, flash or within a frame. To make sure it is indexed, copy an entire sentence from the content block and search for it within quotes in a search engine. If it shows up, it is indexable.

If there are any images on the page (as there probably should be for users sake) you should make sure that the images have relevant alt text. After running testing on this at SEOmoz, my co-workers and I found that relevant anchor text was highly correlated to high rankings.

Lastly and possibly most importantly, you should take the time to read the content on the page. Read it from the perspective of a user who just got to it from a search engine result. This is important because the content on the page is main purpose for the page existing. As an SEO, it can be easy to become content-blind when doing quick audits. Remember, the content is the primary reason this user came to the page. If it is not helpful, vistors will leave.

Links

Now that you have an idea of how the website is organized it is time to see what the rest of the world thinks about it. To do this, you will need to do the following:

View the amount of total links and the amount of root domains linking to the given domain

View the anchor text distribution of inbound links

How Do I Do This and Why Is It Important?

As you read in Chapter 1 (Understanding Search Engine Optimization), links are incredibly important in the search engine algorithms. Thus, you cannot get a complete view of a website without analyzing its links.

This first action item requires you to get two different metrics about the inbound links to the given domain. Separately, these metrics can be very misleading due to internal links. Together, they provide a fuller picture that makes accounting for internal links possible and thus more accurate. At the time of writing, the best tool to get this data is through SEOmoz’s Open Site Explorer.

The second action item requires you to analyze the relevancy side of links. This is important because it is a large part of search engine algorithms. This was discussed in Chapter 1 (Understanding Search Engine Optimization) and proves as true now as it did when you read it earlier. To get this data, I recommend using Google’s Webmaster Central.

Search Engine Inclusion

Now that you have gathered all the data you can about how the given website exists on the internet, it is time to see what the search engines have done with this information. Choose your favorite search engine (you might need to Google it) and do the following:

Search for the given domain to make sure it isn’t penalized

See roughly how many pages are indexed of the given website

Search three of the most competitive keywords that relate to the given domain

Choose a random content page and search the engines for duplicate content

How Do I Do This and Why Is It Important?

As an SEO, all of your work is completely useless if the search engines don’t react to it. To a less degree this is true for webmasters as well. The above action items will help you identify how the given website is reacted to by the search engines.

The first action item is simple to do but can have dire affects. Simply go to a search engine and search for the exact URL of the homepage of your domain. Assuming it is not brand new, it should appear as the first result. If it doesn’t and it is an established site, it means it has major issues and was probably thrown out of the search engine indices. If this is the case, you need to identify this clearly and as early as possible.

The second action item is also very easy to do. Go to any of the major search engines and use the site command (as defined in Chapter 3) to find roughly all of the pages of a domain that are indexed in the engine. For example, this may look like site:www.example.com. This is important because the difference between the number that gets returned and the number of pages that actually exist on a site says a lot about how healthy a domain is in a search engine. If there are more pages in the index than exist on the page, there is a duplicate content problem. If there are more pages on the actual site than there are in the search engine index, then there is an indexation problem. Either are bad and should be added to your notes.

The next action item is a quick exercise to see how well the given website is optimized. To get an idea of this, simply search for 3 of the most competitive terms that you think the given website would reasonably rank for. You can speed this process up by using one of the third party rank trackers that are available. (Refer back to Chapter 3)

The final action item is to do a quick search for duplicate content. This can be accomplished by going to a random indexed content page on the given website and search for either the title tag (in quotes) or the first sentence of the content page (also in quotes). If there is more than one result from the given domain, then it has duplicate content problems. This is bad because it is forcing the website to compete against itself for rankings. In doing so, it forces the search engine to decide which page is more valuable. This decision making process is something that is best avoided because it is difficult to predict the outcome.

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Recently while on a beach vacation my family was out on the street having ice-cream when we came across two street performers/buskers.

The first one was set up 15 meters to one side of the ice-cream shop we were visiting. He had a guitar and had his guitar case open in front of him to collect the loose change of those walking by. He was pretty good and we stopped to listen to him for a moment or two before walking on and leaving $1-$2 in change in his case.

After buying our ice-cream we noticed another performer a little further down the street. This guy was something of a one man band with honky tonk guitar, harmonica, bells on one foot and a homemade kick drum/box on the other. He too had a case out for donations/tips but also was doing something that in my estimation pulled in at least 10 times the money that the other performer was making – he had two CDs for sale.

You could get one of his CDs for $15 and both for $25.

Not only was this guy pulling in tips like the other guy – but every 10 or so people to approach him was buying at least one of his CDs.

In the 15 minutes that we stopped to listen to this guy (our kids were fascinated by his act and caused quite a commotion by doing an impromptu dancing concert on the sidewalk in front of him drawing a big crowd) I saw him sell 8 CDs. He was obviously pulling in some decent money in comparison to busker #1.

Having a CD to sell was great for revenue but interestingly it seemed to also play a part in his overall act. People seemed to take him a bit more seriously than the other guy – I heard at least a few people comment to one another about the fact that he was obviously serious if he’d recorded a CD – it gave him credibility as well as giving him a talking point when chatting with people.

The Power of Having your own Products

As I tucked my boys into bed that night and my 3 year old insisted in sleeping with his new ‘honky tonk one man band CD’ (yep, we bought one too) next to his bed it struck me just how powerful having a product to sell can be.

As bloggers trying to make a few dollars from our online activity many of us get stuck thinking about making money by slapping ads on our blogs – but in doing so perhaps we’re doing the equivalent of busking for tips (not the perfect illustration I know). I know I’ve fallen into that trap myself over the years but in working to develop products to sell I’ve seen a variety of benefits including:

1. Revenue – obviously selling a product (whether it be a book, ebook, membership site, consulting, coaching etc) has the potential to make you money. The cool thing about it is that you’re not splitting revenue with an ad network or someone whose product you’re promoting with an affiliate promotion – but it’s all yours.
2. Credibility/Authority – I discovered the power of having something of my own to sell when we launched the ProBlogger book. Suddenly people not only referred to me as a blogger – but an author. While a hard cover book does carry weight in some circles more than an ebook – any quality product gives you another thing to list as the creator of in your CV/bio and can lend weight to your authority and credibility.
3. Opportunities – Within 24 hours of releasing my photography E-book recently I had two publishers contacting me asking if we’d be interested in having them publish it as a real hard cover book. 2 weeks after launch I’ve spoken to more photographers and photography site owners about possible collaborations than I can count. When you have a product of some kind people in your industry and niche tend to take notice. It shows others in your industry that you’re serious and able to produce more than just a blog and it shows you’ve got initiative. People are attracted to that and all kinds of opportunities can emerge.
4. Deepen Relationships with Readers – when someone buys something from you once there’s an increased likelihood that they’ll buy something else from you at some point in the future – IF you keep in relationship with them. Keeping a list of those who’ve purchased something from you opens up future profitable interactions. While it’s great to have an email list of readers – it’s a pretty powerful thing to have an email list of people who are proven ‘buyers’ of products in your niche.
5. Lengthens Relationships with Readers – three weeks after our holiday has ended my son is still talking about the honky tonk performer. He’s been listening to the CD and every time that happens the experience he had a few weeks back is reinforced. Just yesterday I had an email from someone who bought 31 Days to Build a Better Blog who told me that they had the e-book on their computer’s desktop. She told me that every time she did another of the daily exercises she also was reminded to also check out the latest posts on the blog – something she might not have done otherwise. That e-book is drawing visitors back to my blog on a regular basis.
6. Accelerated Learning – regular readers of ProBlogger will remember that last week I revealed some of the lessons that I’ve learned in the last few weeks while launching a Photography E-book. I shared 8 lessons in that post but the reality is that while it was the most profitable week I’ve had as a blogger it was also the week that I’ve learned the most about internet marketing in the last 7 years. I’ve read a lot about how to launch products online, I’ve talked to a lot of people who have done it and I’ve viewed a lot of case studies of successful launches – but there’s nothing like DOING something to learn how to do it. The theory and past conversations and case studies are helpful – but on the job training is the best. Developing and launching a product will teach you so much about many aspects of blogging, business and yourself – it’s the kind of experience money can’t buy.
7. Traffic – This morning I was digging around on my photography site’s stats. Before I logged in I expected to find that traffic had been a little down on the previous month as a result of launching the ebook over the last two weeks (because I’ve been a little distracted and posted less posts than normal) and as a result of the normal Thanksgiving lull in traffic. However I was surprised to see traffic was up by about 9% over the last 30 days as compared to the 30 days before that. You can see the chart below but the 9% rise was almost completely a result of the days after the launch. As I dug further into the stats I realized that launching the e-book meant more of our regular readers hit the site to check it out but that it also created a buzz around the web as other sites linked up and as people passed on word of the launch via Twitter. Similarly – RSS and newsletter subscribers went up by more than normal in the last two weeks – launching the product has found us new readers.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

The Importance of Having Your Own Product to Sell

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In the last 15 minutes I’ve had 3 people ask me pretty much the same question:

“Why promote an RSS feed where you share the full posts of your blog when it means people don’t read your blog?”

Rather than write another post on the topic I thought I’d simply share a previous post where I address it:

Are RSS Subscribers Worthwhile if they Don’t Visit Your Blog?

Also check out 10 Sure-Fire Ways to Get RSS Readers Visiting Your Blog.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Why Promote an RSS Feed if it Keeps People from Visiting Your Blog?

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Here I am – sitting in my local cafe where I’d come to spend the morning working on my blog using my mobile broadband modem…. which today decides not to work.

Arrrghhh!

I spent 15 minutes trying to connect…. 5 minutes complaining about it on Twitter…. another 10 minutes trying to get it working…. 3 minutes grumbling to the waitress….

And then I decided that I had better do something productive.

But what can you do to improve your blog when you don’t have internet access? Here’s a few ideas:

1. Brainstorm Post Ideas – one of the things I enjoy doing in these moments is coming up with ideas for new posts. I usually do it with a little mind mapping on a notebook that I usually have with me.
2. Design an Editorial Calendar – Once you have your list of possible ideas to write posts about – slot some of the best ones into a calendar for your next week (or month) of posting. Add to it some other tasks that you want to achieve in the coming days and weeks (promotional activities etc).
3. Write Posts – while it can be handy to have access to the web while writing posts to help you with research writing posts while offline forces you to have more original thoughts and not rely upon things you’ve previously written or the ideas of others. I particularly find setting myself the challenge to start writing a ’series’ of posts a good idea in times where I know I’ll be without internet for an extended period of time.
4. Strategic Thinking and Review – spend some time doing a little strategic thinking about your blog. How has it been going? Who’s been reading it lately? What types of reactions are you getting from readers? How are your energy levels as a blogger? What opportunities are their in your niche at present? Don’t just ‘review’ and ‘reflect’ – as part of this construct a ‘to do list’ of things you need to achieve once you get back online.
5. Write a Guest Post – guest posting on someone else’s blog in your niche is a great way to grow your profile and find new readers. So take some time out while you’re offline to write a post for someone else’s blog. Alternatively write a helpful tutorial or opinion piece for a forum in your niche so you can post it when you’re back online.
6. Clear your Inbox – depending upon your email system you may be able to spend some time clearing up your inbox. I use Gmail and can work in offline mode get a lot done in that mode.
7. Write a ‘Report’ for your Readers – why not take a little time to write some kind of a free report or bonus article for your readers. One great way to incentivize people to signup for your RSS feed or newsletter is to give them something for free for doing so. Choose a topic that you get a lot of questions about or that is a good beginner topic in your niche and write an extended and helpful article on the topic. Put it into a pdf so when you can get back online you can add it to your blog.
8. Record a Podcast or Video – one of the main reasons that people resist creating video or podcasts for their blogs is a lack of time. Recording or editing these kinds of media can take time and effort. So now that you’ve got some time on your hands get going, video and audio can add new depth to your blog and add a personal touch.
9. Come Up with Poll Topics – coming up with new polls are another thing that I find myself putting off on my blog. I’m not sure why but it’s a task that often slips my mind or that I struggle with coming up with questions for. Put aside 15 minutes and come up with as many questions for future polls as you can. Save them somewhere so you’ll have a ready supply over the coming weeks and months.
10. Design a Competition – Competitions are a great way of creating buzz on and around your blog. They can deepen reader engagement and help find new readers for your blog – but they take time to come up with. Take some time to plan one for your blog. It need not be a big one with a massive prize, even a simple competition with a cheap prize and a low requirement for entry (like leaving a comment on a post) can work well.
11. Write up some Interview Questions – interviewing someone in your niche is something that takes a fair bit of work – spend some time identifying someone that you’d like to interview on your blog and construct a list of questions that you’d ask them.
12. Take a Break – perhaps the universe is trying to tell you something by conspiring to bring your internet down. Why not go with the offline thing and go for a walk, play with your kids, take your better half out for a coffee, have a sleep, read a book….. your blog will still be there when your internet is working again.

Of course the above activities can all be done whether you have internet access or not – however many of them are things we put off for ‘one day’ and never get around to.

While having your internet go down can be frustrating – the key is to snap yourself out of the frustration and to do something productive and worthwhile with the time. Don’t just sit there trying to connect for hour after hour – get something done.

What activities do you do when you don’t have access to the internet?

PS: My internet is still down but I’ve managed to be productive. I’ve written 3 posts (including this one), planned 4 more, edited a post from one of my writers on DPS, answered 30 or so emails and am now going for a walk.

PS2: Spookily, just as I was about to shutdown my computer…. the internet came back!

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

How to Improve Your Blog When You Have No Internet Access

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In the last task of our 31 Days to Build a Better Blog challenge I encouraged bloggers to set up a plan for the next steps in their blog. As an example I set up a hypothetical Blogging Calendar with an activity for each day of the next month. Here it is again (click to enlarge):

The calendar was only ever supposed to be a hypothetical one (although a few bloggers have adopted it) but one of the pieces of feedback I had from numerous bloggers was that they felt they’d never be able to keep up with the type of posting frequency that they saw outlined on that plan.

How Often Should You Post to Your Blog?

The question of blog posting frequency is one that I see bloggers grappling with a lot. I’ve written a couple of pages on the topic in the ProBlogger book but let me touch on it again here.

There’s no ‘Rules’ when it comes to Post Frequency

Every blog is different and will be able to sustain different levels of posting. A variety of factors come into play (including):

• Bloggers Available Time and Energy – depending upon your situation you might only have 15 minutes a day to blog or could have hours up your sleeve.
• Style and Length of Writing – if the majority of your posts are ‘link posts’ where you’re linking to breaking news with short posts then you can probably get through more posts per day than a blog with more in depth original thought type articles.
• Topic – blogs on topics with lots of breaking news or wide scopes of topics will need to post more frequently to be taken seriously as a source of information on those topics.
• Reader Demographics and Thirst for Content – some blogs seem to attract readers who either have a thirst for a lot or a little content each day. Readers can burn out on too much content – watch out for their reaction to you upping your post frequency.
• Source of Traffic – some blogs get the vast majority of traffic from search engines while others are much more about building loyal readers. Those with loyal readers will probably need to consider post frequency more than those with search traffic as if they post too much they run the risk of alienating readers. On the flip side, if your blog is largely visited by search engine readers a higher rate of posting can work in your favor as each post creates a new entry point into your blog.
• Reader Participation – if you have a blog with a high rate of reader participation (eg. in comments) then you may find that as you increase your rate of posting that the amount of reader interaction decreases as readers have less time to interact before content falls off the front page.

My main advice on posting frequency is to be consistent and keep the quality of your posts as high as possible.

There are successful blogs who post 20 times a day and others that are lucky to post 20 times a year – any level of post CAN work.

The problems tend to occur for bloggers when they either

1. change their frequency (by either suddenly upping their frequency drastically or disappearing completely)
2. or when the posting frequency begins to impact the quality of the posts

Develop a rhythm of posting that readers will become accustomed to and that you are able to sustain. If that means you post 10 useful posts a day and readers love what you’re doing then that’s fantastic. If that means you post one high quality and thought provoking post a week that gives readers something meaty to think about then that’s great too.

Further Reading: What is the Ideal Post Frequency for a Blog?

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Be Consistent and Useful – Thoughts on How Often to Publish on Your Blog

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Today your task in the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog is one that should help you think a little strategically about where you spend time online building your online profile.

One of the ways that many successful blogs build a readership and profile is by spending significant time and energy building up a presence on other websites. Whether this be forums, social bookmarking sites (like Digg or StumbleUpon), social messaging sites (like Twitter), other blogs or any other type of site – time invested in other websites can be a great way to build your own brand.

However…. spending time on other sites can also be a complete waste of time.

A trap that I see many bloggers falling into (and have fallen into myself) is sinking significant time into building a presence on sites without having really thought through two things:

1. Whether it’s the right site to build a presence on
2. What their strategy and purpose is for being on the site

Perhaps I’m describing myself more than you here – but many of us as bloggers tend to DRIFT around the web from site to site without any real direction or purpose.

20 minutes onTwitter, 5 minutes on MySpace, 20 minutes reading other blogs on Google Reader, 30 minutes checking out photos of friends on Facebook, 20 minutes checking out the latest threads on our favorite forums, back to Twitter for 20 minutes, 15 minutes following links we found on Digg……..

It’s easy to get to the end of the day and wonder what it was that we really achieved. We aimlessly drift around the web and have very little to show for the time we spend.

Can you relate?

It is a pity that so many of us struggle with this problem because spending time on other websites has the potential to really build our blogs…. however for so many people it can end up being largely a waste of time.

Your Task Today

Today your task is to do something that some of us (yes I’m talking to myself here) will find difficult. Depending upon our personality type it could feel a little too rigid – however I ask that you humor me and see where the exercise takes you.

1. How Much Time Do You Have?

Work out how much time you have each day (or week) for spending time on other websites to build the profile of your blog. Remember that you need to also have put aside significant time to spend on your own blog (writing, interacting with readers etc).

2. Describe Your Desired Reader

Spend 10-15 minutes describing the type of person that you want to read your blog. For some of you this will include very specific things like demographics (age, gender, location) but for others of you it will be less specific. Your potential readers might be defined more as ‘beginner photographers’ or ‘people interested in learning the latest patch working techniques’ (ie a description based more upon people’s needs or behaviors).

3. Ask yourself this Question

“Where are my potential readers gathering online?” This is a key question be asking yourself regularly. If your goal is to build your blog you need to know what type of people you want to attract and to be on the look out for other sites where this type of people are gathering.

Of course this question is not easy to answer and it can take a lot of time to identify these types of sites. Let me give you some examples of how I’ve answered this question:

• Flickr – for me a site dedicated to photo sharing was an obvious place for me to have a presence when starting my photography site.
• Lifehacker – a blog with an audience with a techie interest but that was all about helping people with ‘hacks’ or tips. A logical place for me with all three of my blogs which hare ‘tips’ related blogs.
• Twitter – until recently Twitter has been mainly used by social media buffs – it’s a logical place for me to have a presence for ProBlogger and especially TwiTip.
• Forums – when launching ProBlogger I spent a lot of time on webmaster related forums like DigitalPoint and Webmaster World. When starting out with my photography blog I spent time on a lot of photography forums.
• Blogs – I still hang out on a lot of blogs related to my niches but particularly in the early days of my photography blog I was a daily commenter and occasionally guest poster on quite a few.
• StumbleUpon - image based posts tend to do really well on StumbleUpon – as a result it was a logical place for me to build a presence for my photography blog.

These were some of the places that related to my own blogs – for your niche/topic it’ll probably look quite different. Perhaps there are other social media sites (for example Facebook often has strong ‘groups’ on different topics or LinkedIn might be a more appropriate place to interact) or other types of sites that seem to attract your kinds of readers.

Keep in mind that you’re not just looking for other sites with your exact same niche/topic. For example, Lifehacker is not a blog about photography but it has a readership that overlaps with the type of people I want to read my photography blog. The Webmaster forums were not forums about blogging specifically – but they had a user group which would have had a % of people who operate blogs.

So don’t just identify sites in your own niche – look at related topics and whether there might be some kind of overlap between the readers that they have and what you’re looking to attract.

As I mention above – learning where your potential readers gather online is a long term search – but try to come up with at least a couple for the purpose of this activity.

4. What Opportunities are there to Build a Presence?

Once you’ve identified at least a couple of places that your potential readers are already gathering spend some time looking at what opportunities you might have on these sites to build your own blog’s profile.

The opportunities will again vary quite a bit from site to site. Some of them we’ve touched on earlier in the 31DBBB challenge and include:

I. Guest Posts – if it is a blog do they accept guest posts? Some blogs actively seek contributors (look for ‘write for us’ pages) while others don’t advertise it but do use reader contributions.

If you’re accepted as a guest poster pay particular attention to what types of posts work well on the site you’re writing for. Look at comment numbers and try to find out what types of articles might have done well previously on social media sites. Quite often the blogger will be willing to help you and give you examples of what has previously worked on their blog.

II. Submit Tips/News – similarly – some blogs rely heavily upon readers for story ideas and will give credit for the source. For example in the early days of my photography blog I was regularly emailing Engadget and Gizmodo when new cameras were released. I’d send them not only the news of new cameras but images that they could use. They didn’t always use my stories and link back but when they did it was a boost both to traffic, profile and SEO.

Quite a few blogs have links in their navigation areas inviting these types of tips and ideas for stories so don’t be afraid to use them.

III. Leaving Super Useful Comments – if there’s no way to share tips or write guest posts the comments section of another blog is a place that you can really build a profile. Don’t just leave quick pointless comments – go to some effort. I was speaking with one blogger recently whose strategy was to leave at least one post length comment on another blog each day.

By ‘post length’ comment they meant that they aimed to write at least one in depth comment of 500 words or more every day on another blog in their niche. The comment would extend the ideas in the posts they were commenting upon, share examples that made the posts deeper, added resources etc (not just with links back to their own blog. The strategy was to add comments that were attention grabbing by their usefulness.

The result was that the blogger was regularly asked by other bloggers to guest blog on their blog and that other readers began to visit their blog even though they rarely linked to it in their comments.

This same strategy can be used in forums. Start a new thread that is a tutorial or highly useful resources – people will want to know more about you if you do (more on this strategy of using Forums to promote your blog here).

IV. Making Connections/Building Your Network – if the site you’ve identified is more of a social networking or social bookmarking site then one strategy you’ll want to work on is making connections with others on the site. Set up an account and start making ‘friends’. Pay particular interest to making friends with other active users and people with shared interests.

It can also be well worth identifying key players or influential members on the site. Watch how they operate and look for opportunities to build relationships with them.

The key is to be a genuine participant on the site. To add value, to become a key member of the community. As you do this opportunities will arise that will allow you to promote yourself and your blog a little more.

V. Profile pages – Does the site have an opportunity to set up a profile page or have any ability to promote yourself in any way? On most social media sites and forums there is the ability to say something about yourself, share a link back to your blog, customize your presence with an avatar and/or background image and nominate some keywords as tags.

Try to keep your brand consistent across the different sites that you are building a presence on where you can. Also think about using a ‘landing page’ as the page that you link to rather than just the front page of your blog (read more on how I do this with a Twitter Landing Page).

VI. Signatures – If it’s a forum (or some other community site) you might have an opportunity to add a signature. My only tip with this is that sometimes less is more. Long, flashing or bright signatures can look quite spammy – so go for something tasteful and descriptive.

Other opportunities to promote your work exist on other sites. For example on Facebook you can promote your blog using a variety of applications that allow you to pull in your latest posts or list your blogs. See what other bloggers are doing and test to see if their strategies work for you too.

VII. Advertising – this won’t be for everyone but many sites will have opportunities to engage their readers with advertising. While this might sound very expensive there are quite a few sites that allow you to start ad campaigns that are quite affordable and with a small budget.

For example social media sites likeMySpace (disclosure: they are currently an advertiser on ProBlogger), StumbleUpon and Facebook all have advertising options that allow you to target specific demographics and even people with certain interests. They all allow you to set up campaigns with quite small budgets too.

Other types of sites might not have quite the same sort of ad opportunities but might be open to other types of advertising. If it’s another blog of a similar size to yours you might even approach the bloggers to do an ad swap – you put an ad on their blog and they put an ad on yours.

Further Reading: Run a StumbleUpon Campaign on your Blog (from the last 31DBBB challenge)

VIII. Volunteer to Help – if it’s a forum site that you’re wanting to spend time on there are often opportunities to help out by becoming a moderator. Most sites won’t take you on as a moderator straight away but contribute genuinely over time and there may be opportunity in this area. While you don’t want to abuse the privilege it – moderation status gives you a certain level of authority and profile on a forum.

5. Plan a Strategy

OK – so you’ve identified some sites where your potential readers are gathering, you’ve assessed some of the opportunities that exist to build your profile on these sites – the task now is to think a little strategically about what you’re going to do on these sites.

Don’t feel you need to have a highly developed plan or strategy – but jot down some of the following:

• How much time will you spend there? (prioritize which sites you want to spend more time on than others)
• What times of the week would be best to be active on this site? (sites have their own rhythms and some will be more active on some days/times than others).
• What types of things am I going to do on this site (which of the opportunities that you’ve identified in step #4 will you pursue?)
• Set yourself some goals. Again – they need not be highly formal but could include things like getting a guest post published, becoming a moderator, posting X number of comments a week, getting to know the owner of the site etc.

You can extend this step by actually planning out what an average day or week will look like for you as you go about your blogging. I know of a few bloggers who’ve gone as far as setting up a spreadsheet with each day and the hours on that day outlined. They then block out times for each day for certain activities. They fill up their most productive times of day with the most important activities (like writing content on their own blog) and then set aside time each day/week for spending time on other sites.

While this type of schedule might not work for everyone – I personally have used it at times where I’ve felt particularly ‘aimless’ with my time. Even doing it for a week or two can help you to develop more healthy habits online.

6. Analyze Your Current Activity

The last step in this task is to take a little tie to analyze what you’re currently doing with your time online.

• What sites do you spend time on already?
• Do these sites actually help to build your profile or could you be more effectively use your time elsewhere?
• Are you being effective with the time you spend on these sites?

I did some analysis on this 12 or so months ago. At the time I was sinking a lot of time into two main social media sites – Twitter and Plurk. While I enjoyed both I realized that it was Twitter that was a more effective place for me to be interacting. While I’d become a top 10 user on Plurk it wasn’t really as effective use of time for me so I decided to stop interacting there and focus my energies upon Twitter.

Note: I’m not arguing that everything you do online has to be productive and building your profile. Some of you use Twitter more as a social thing than to build your blogs and that is legitimate – however it is worth asking yourself the question and doing a little analysis of your online habits.

Lastly – Keep Balance

My last words of advice are to not become obsessed with building your profile on other people’s sites. I’ve seen a number of bloggers spend so much time building their presence on sites like Twitter that they fail to actually build up and develop their own blogs. Identify key sites to spend time on – but put your own blog at the top of the list and set aside as much (if not more) time for working specifically upon it.

6 Posts for Suggested Further Reading:

• Home Bases and Outposts – How I use Social Media in My Blogging – a post that outlines how I use social media sites as satellites around my blogs rather than the main activity. It’s about keeping perspective on why you’re using these other sites – to build your own home base.
• 10 Ways to Find Readers for Your Blog by Leveraging Other Online Presence – really what we’re talking about here in this post is building a presence on other people’s sites that you can leverage to build your own profile. This post shares 10 tips (some of which we’ve touched on above) for doing this.
• Using Social Media Sites to Grow Your Blog’s Traffic – a series of posts on social media marketing for bloggers.
• Grow Your Blog’s Readership By Targeting Readers – a similar process to the one I’ve outline above.
• Feeling Overwhelmed by Social Media? Here are 5 Tips for You – sometimes it feels like there is so much opportunity in the social media space – here are some tips on getting focused and making what you do count.
• 4 Social Media Marketing Tips for Bloggers [VIDEO]

Feel free to discuss here in the comments, or over at the forum post for this task.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Develop a Plan to Boost Your Blog’s Profile and Readership Online [Day 29 31DBBB]

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If you’ve got 15 minutes to spare today (and want to hear a couple of Aussies talking blogging) check out this quick podcast of an interview that I did this week with Clayton Bjelan on the morning show local Melbourne radio station – Light FM.

In it I talk a little about my story of going Pro and give a few quick tips on building a successful blog.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Quick Podcast Interview on Blogging

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“Leave comments on other blogs.”

If there’s one piece of advice for building traffic to a blog that is given to new bloggers more than any other it is about leaving comments on other blogs.

Today your task in the 31 Days to Build a Better blog is to do just that – spend 10-15 minutes reading and interacting on other blogs on your topic (or surrounding topics).

The benefits of commenting on others blogs:

• You’ll be getting to know what other bloggers in your niche are doing
• You’ll hopefully read some great content that could spark ideas for your own blog
• You’ll be reaching out to another blogger in your niche (often comments are the start of fruitful relationships
• You’ll be creating a small doorway back to your own blog for the readers of that blog
• You’ll be building your own profile in your niche – it’s a chance to show your expertise, knowledge and understanding of the topic.

Warning!

It should go without saying but just having moderated the comments on my own blogs I suspect it needs to be said a day – DON’T BE A COMMENT SPAMMER!

More than that – DON’T LOOK LIKE A COMMENT SPAMMER!

I add that second warning because I come across a lot of bloggers who try to leave comments on other blogs in a way that they think is genuine – but that looks very spammy. Their comments more often than not get them on blacklists of comment spam filters.

The rule of thumb that I advise when leaving comments on other people’s blogs is simple – add value.

A comment that simply says ‘great post’ and that then has a link signature back to your own blog adds little if any value to the blog. It looks spammy. The only visitors you’ll get back to your blog are people wanting to know who the spammer is!

• Keep comments on topic
• Let your comment show that you’ve read the post
• Say what you like or don’t like about the post
• Add an example or another point that the blogger might have missed
• If you put a link back to your own blog in the comment try to make it a relevant one that adds to the post and will be useful to those who follow it.
• Ask a relevant and insightful question

Comments are Mini Resumes - Every comment you leave is like a mini resume for you and your blog (read more about that in the last point of Lorelle’s post on comments here).

Comments can Hurt Your Brand - On the flip side – every comment you write can potentially hurt your reputation and brand as a blogger. Here are 10 Ways that comments can actually do more harm than good to the brand of your blog.

Further Reading: I wrote a comment back in 2007 (which I think is still relevant today) with 11 Tips for Getting Your Comments Noticed on a Popular Blog.

Your task today is to find blogs on a similar or related topic to yours and to spend 10-15 minutes interacting on them in a genuine and useful way. Let us know how you go below (with a comment of course)!

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Leave Comments on Other Blogs [Day 20 - 31DBBB]

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Your task today in the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog challenge is to join a forum that relates to the topic of your blog (or, if you’ve already joined one to spend 10-15 minutes participating in it).

One of the questions I always get new bloggers to ask when it comes to finding readers for their blog is ‘where are your potential readers already gathering online?‘ One of the places I encourage them to go looking for those potential readers is on forums on related topics to your blog.

Forums are fantastic places for bloggers to participate for a number of reasons:

1. Profile Building – put consistent time into a large forum on your topic and you can build a significant profile in your niche. I’ve seen it happen in my own photography forum numerous times where people have produced such value and shown off their expertise that they’ve actually developed fans among other forum users.

2. Driving Traffic – create value and become a useful resource in a forum and people will want to know more about who you are and what you do via your signature and or profile page. You’ll also sometimes have opportunity to share some relevant links to things you’ve written.

3. Understanding Your Niche – the hidden benefit of joining a forum that many don’t talk about is that for a new blogger a forum can actually be a fertile ground for gathering ideas and understanding the needs of potential blog readers. Go to any forum and you’ll begin to see the same questions being asked over and over again. The questions actually annoy some regular forum members but you as a blogger should be taking note of such questions and writing posts that answer them because they are usually signals of problems and needs that people have on those topics. I know if I’m ever in need of a topic to write about on my blogs that forums are one of the first places that I go looking for topics.

Spend some time today searching for forums in your niche. Once you find them, join up and start participating. The key is to spend time being as useful as possible to the forum. Your main activity should NOT be leaving links to your blog but answering questions, making connections and generally being as useful as you can to other members of the forum.

Here are two posts on building a blog with Forum Traffic that you Should Read:

I could say a lot more about building your blog up by participating in forums – but we’ve covered the topic a few times on ProBlogger previously. Check out these two posts:

• Build Your Blog With Forum Traffic - a post where Skellie suggests 4 strategies on this topic.
• How to Use Forums to Drive Hundreds of Thousands of Readers to Your Blog – a story from an anonymous reader who built a successful blog using this technique.

Note: if you can’t find a forum on your exact topic look for them on related topics. If you can’t find any at all, perhaps it is a signal that you should start one at some point. Forums can actually be great additions to blogs.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Join a Forum and Start Participating [Day 9 - 31DBBB]

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You task today in the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog challenge is to spend some time on a successful blog in your niche.

The purpose of this task is not to promote yourself on the blog – but rather to spend time watching, listening and observing how the blog operates with the goal of letting what you learn help shape your own blogging strategy.

There is a lot that a blogger can learn about spending time on other blogs (particularly those who are doing well). You can pick up all manner of ideas, strategies and tips both things that they do well that you might like to emulate but also things that they’re missing that could help you to differentiate yourself.

Here’s how I suggest you go about today’s task:

1. Identify a successful blog in your niche

You might already know of these sorts of blogs or you might need to do a little research.

If you’re not sure which one to choose head to Technorati’s top 100 blogs or Google Blog search and attempt to find a blog that is doing well on your topic. If you can’t find one that is exactly on your topic don’t stress too much – choosing a blog on a related topic will work too.

2. Take 15 minutes to do some analysis of the blog in some of the following areas

Content:

• What topics are they covering?
• What topics are they ignoring?
• What voice/style do they post in?
• How often are they posting?
• What level are they pitching their posts at (beginners, advanced etc)

Reader Engagement:

• What topics generate most conversation?
• What styles of posts seem to connect with readers best?
• What questions are readers asking in comments?
• What complaints do you see readers making in comments?
• What tools/mediums is the site using (eg: are they using Twitter, forums etc)

Design:

• What first impression does their design give?
• What have they done well? What have they done poorly?
• What Options do they give readers to subscribe?

Monetization:
if you’re attempting to make money from your blog this will be relevant as it will give you hints as to how you might make money:

• what advertisers are targeting this blog?
• what type of affiliate programs are they promoting?

Traffic:
You might also like to head to a site like Alexa or Compete to do some analysis of the blogs traffic levels. Is it growing, plateuing or shrinking. Alexa also gives some stats (not always accurate) on page views, time on site, sites linking in, bounce rate, where the audience is from (geographically), where people go on the site etc.

SEO:
If you have some competence in SEO you might like to check out how they’re doing in some of these areas:

• Who is linking to this blog? (use the link:www.blogurl.com command in Google to find out)
• What does their source code reveal about how they’ve set up their site
• f they have an open or unlocked stats package what can you learn from their stats? What pages are popular? Where does their incoming traffic come from?

Really the numbers of questions you could be asking is limitless but what you’re attempting to do with this exercise is to identify what is working well on the other site and what opportunities there might be to position your blog in ‘gaps’ that the blog is leaving.

When you do this type of analysis with a number of blogs in your niche you should begin to see some patterns emerging. Things that consistently work on blogs in your niche and things that perhaps you could do that nobody else is doing.

Two quick words of warning:

1. Don’t become Obsessed with what other Bloggers are Doing
A trap some bloggers fall into is spending so much time watching their ‘competitors’ that they spend less time actually building something of value of their own. This analysis is useful to do every now and again – but don’t let it become something that you do at the expense of other core activities on your own blog.

2. Don’t Copy – Be Unique
Another trap I see some bloggers doing is virtually replicating every aspect of another blog. While there’s a lot we can learn from others and lessons we can take from what others are doing – if you simply copy everything another blog does you don’t differentiate yourself and give potential readers no real reason to read you instead of others.

How did you go with your Analysis?

As usual – feel free to share what you learned from this task in comments below.

Join the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Challenge

It’s never too late to join the 31 Day challenge. New people are joining and starting the process every day. To learn more about what it is and how to join check out our 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Information Page.

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