Posted by Suzzicks

So here is the deal: Traditional websites frequently rank in mobile search results – especially if you are searching from a SmartPhone. What you may not realize is that the converse is also true – mobile pages can rank well in traditional search. This is quite an interesting phenomenon, and something that we need to address strategically.

All One Index Soon?

Why does this happen?

Well, Google has said that they really don’t want to index two versions of the web – one mobile and one traditional. Even though they do have different mobile-specific bots, they want those their bots all to feed into one index. Hmmmm….Is it just an interesting coincidence that they just launched the multi-format site mapping in Google, where you can combine all the different types of sitemaps that we previously had to submit separately? Possibly. At least it that could indicate a shift away from multiple indexes.

Did anyone notice that this shift happened pretty soon after Caffeine, as did the re-launch of Google Images, and some significant changes in Google Places?

Hmmmm…..It seems that Google might be moving away from having multiple indexes that must be queried for different types of content – like mobile, local, images, news, etc. to a ‘one index’ solution that has different types of ‘indexing attributes’ instead. That would actually do lots of things that Caffeine has done, like speed up searches (only need to query one index), and allow them to algorithmically prioritize things by freshness more effectively….

Different Indexes for Smart Phones and Feature Phones

But I have gone astray – We were talking about ‘mobile’. We can’t know for sure if there are different mobile indexes. There definitely was a separate mobile index in the beginning of Google’s ‘mobile’ search– you could always tell because the results were SO bad! Even in the past two years, I have seen mobile search results that were way off base – For example, the top result for a search on ‘subway sandwiches’ was a Gawker article for a long time; then Subway.com, and then m.subway.com. I just checked, and they have somewhat sorted that one out on smart phone searches, but it you still get weird results for feature phone search (shown below)! About 18 months ago Google changed the location of their mobile engine from m.Google.com to Google.com/m, and it did seem that the ‘/m’ feature phone search results were a bit better than they had been, but who knows!

As I have mentioned, there are different mobile search engine crawlers that are evaluating your website as if it was being rendered on a mobile phone. These mobile bots actually have both generic and specific user agent strings that will spoof actual phone handset models in order to understand how the website would render and function on the different phones. While they don’t do a great job, Google actually does try to only provide you with mobile search results that will actually work well on your particular handset – What that means is that there are slight variations on search results from phone to phone.

There are some simple ways to check what I am now describing as ‘mobile indexing attributes.’ I always start mobile rankings research by doing a normal search from my traditional computer. We know more about the traditional algorithm, so that sets my baseline for comparison. From there, I will do the same search from Google.com/m to see the differences. In most cases, the websites that are included in the traditional search results will be included in the SmartPhone search results – but sometimes in a slightly different order.

You don’t have to have tons of different phones to get a sense for what is going on in mobile search. There are a couple quick tips and tricks to help you do this all from the web. The first thing to know, is that you can do searches from your computer directly from Google.com/m. The results you get will be generic ‘SmartPhone’ search results. From that page, you can move on to see the results for the same query on feature phones by simply scrolling to the bottom of the page and changing the drop-down that says ‘web’ to say ‘mobile,’ and hit ‘search.’ The next set of results will be the generic FeaturePhone results. Search operators like ‘site:’ and ‘link:’ work in these versions of Google, and will return different results than they would in traditional search – a good indication to me that they are still using separate indexes.

Mobile-Friendly Signals for the Search Engines

The best way to indicate to the search engines that your page is mobile-ready, (beyond including the ‘no-transform’ tag, which will be discussed more in another post called What is Mobile Search Engine Transcoding? which should be live next week), is to provide the search engines pages that will work well on mobile phones. Handheld stylesheets can be included on any page on your site. If you don’t have mobile-specific pages, you can use these stylesheets to tell mobile browsers how you would like your existing pages to look when they are displayed on a mobile phone. These are especially good if you would like to change the order that your content appear in when it is displayed on a mobile phone. They should also be used to prevent the need for left-to right scrolling when your site is displayed on a mobile phone.

If you have mobile specific pages, you should set up user-agent detection on your site to ensure that, regardless of which pages rank (mobile or traditional) that users are presented with the appropriate version of the page, based on the device that they are using to access the page. If they are on a mobile phone, they should automatically be sent to the mobile version of a page – even if it is the traditional page that actually ranked in search engines. Conversely, if they are on a traditional computer,  and happen to click on a mobile version of a page, they should be automatically be sent to the version of the page that is meant for traditional-computer viewing.

Last, include a page-to-page link in the upper left hand corner of each page that allows people to move between the mobile and traditional versions of the pages, if they can’t find what they are looking for, or need to over-ride the user-agent detection and redirection. The upper left-hand corner is the ideal location for this link, because it is always the first thing that people will be able to see, even if there is a mobile rendering problem with the site. If something is wrong with the way the page looks on someone’s phone, you don’t want to make them search all over for the button to fix it!

You should still crate the handheld stylesheet for your mobile-specific pages and traditional pages as well, just in case something goes wrong. They are a good signal to the search engines that the pages should be ranked in mobile search results.

Mobile Usability Options:

1. Mobile/Traditional Hybrid Pages Only: One set of pages that has two or more style sheets – One for traditional web rendering, usually called ‘screen,’ and one (or more) for mobile web rendering, usually called ‘handheld.’ An important note is that the iPhone will automatically pull the ‘screen’ stylesheet, unless you give other instructions. Since looking at a traditional website on an iPhone is really not a great user experience, I recommend creating a specific stylesheet that can be pulled by the iPhone. You can get very granular with this, and create separate style sheets for all different kinds of phones. You would then simply have them called in based on the screen size of the device that they target.
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2. Traditional Pages for Computer and Mobile Pages for all Phones: Two sets of pages – one to be shown on traditional computers and one to be shown on mobile phones. The file structure of the mobile pages should be an exact replica of the traditional pages, with the addition of the ‘.m’ or ‘/m’. User-agent detection and redirection should deliver feature phone users and smart phone users to the mobile pages automatically if they click on a link to a traditional page.

   Always include links between the mobile site and the traditional site in the upper left hand corner of the page. Both sets of pages should have a handheld stylesheet to control mobile rendering – This is in case the user-agent detection and redirection fails, or if the user clicks the link to see the traditional site from their mobile phone.
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3. Mobile/Traditional Hybrid Pages for Traditional and SmartPhone, Mobile Specific Pages for Feature Phones: Two sets of pages; one set of pages that are the mobile/traditional hybrid pages that use separate external stylesheets to be rendered on traditional computer screens and smart phones. The second set of pages are mobile specific pages, hosted on an ‘m.’ or a ‘/m’. The file structure should be an exact replica of the traditional file structure, with the addition of the ‘m’ or ‘/m’. User-agent detection and redirection delivers feature phone users here automatically if they click on a link to a traditional page while they are on a feature phone.

   Always include links between the mobile site and the traditional site in the upper left hand corner of the page. Both sets of pages should have a handheld stylesheet to control mobile rendering – This is in case the user-agent detection and redirection fails, or if the user clicks the link to see the traditional site from their mobile phone.
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4. Traditional Pages for Computers, Graphical Mobile Pages for Smart Phones, Text Mobile Pages for Feature Phones: Three sets of pages. Traditional pages for traditional computers, touch-optimized pages for smart phones with touch screens, and mobile-optimized pages for feature phones and smart phones without touch screens. User-agent detection and redirection delivers users with touch screens to the touch-screen pages if they click on a link while they are on a touch-screen phone. User-agent detection and redirection delivers users on feature phones and smart phones that don’t have a touch-screen to the mobile-optimized pages if they click on a link while they are on one of those types of phones. In this scenario, you will need two mobile-specific subdomains or subdirectories. I recommend using ‘touch.’ or /’touch’ for the touch-screen pages, and ‘m.’ or /m’ for the mobile-optimized pages.

   Always include links between the mobile site and the traditional site in the upper left hand corner of the page. All sets of pages should have a handheld stylesheet to control mobile rendering – This is in case the user-agent detection and redirection fails, or if the user clicks the link to see the traditional site from their mobile phone. User-agent detection and redirection should also be in-place to automatically deliver people on traditional computers who click on either version of the mobile pages to the traditional version of the page instead. It can also be used to send FeaturePhone or SmartPhone users to the version of the site that is best suited for their phone.

 

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Over the last few months I’ve been sharing a monthly breakdown of where my income comes from in the hope of illustrating some of the methods bloggers might like to look at when making money from blogging (see previous months linked to below).

The month of July was the second month in a row where eBooks were the biggest money maker for me. Here’s a pie chart showing the percentage breakdowns.

Before I say much more let me show you how the different income streams have tracked over the last 4 months (note I’ve expanded ’speaking’ to be ’speaking and events’ to include the ProBlogger Training Day (which wasn’t a massive earner as we kept the price down – but because it’s something I’d like to try again). I have also added a ‘total’ line to this chart to track total income.

A few comments:

• Obviously there was a big eBook spike in June as we launched a photography eBook that month. July was down on the launch month but still very healthy – partly because of a few specials that I ran in July (I did a ‘Christmas in July’ special as well as offering a few communities a discount on the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog workbook).
• AdSense was also pretty good last month – there’s no real explanation for this as traffic was steady. I can only guess that some advertisers were involved in a bit of a bidding war on Digital Photography School which drove prices up a little.
• Affiliate programs were quite down – that can be explained simply by me not doing as many promotions in July – mainly because there were not too many product launches in my niches (for some reason they always seem to come out at once).
• Direct Ad Sales are on the rise and you’ll see this continue to grow next month as I’ve been working with a direct ad sales rep who is now selling ads for my sites which has already led to some new clients.
• Over all it was a good month. While not as spectacular as July it was up on the previous two months significantly.
• Continuity Programs – a few people have asked what they are. In short – they’re membership sites – ProBlogger.com and The Third Tribe.

August is shaping up to be an interesting month. Later this week I’ll be launching a product here on ProBlogger (at a fairly inexpensive price point) which will be interesting to track. I’ve also participated in a couple of affiliate launches and have seen some interesting direct ad sales. I’m not quite sure whether it’ll be as good as July but am working toward it.

How was July for you?

If you’re interested in the previous months breakdowns they’re at:

• How I make money blogging: April
• How I make money blogging: May
• How I make money blogging: June

This Post is from: ProBlogger Blog Tips.

How I Make Money Blogging: Income Split for July 2010

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Posted by randfish

The team at SEOmoz has been hard at work this week, smoothing out a lot of the initial bumps we’ve seen with our beta launch of the new web app. We anticipated the app would be popular, but I don’t think any of us were prepared for just how many keywords needed rank checking/grading and pages needed crawling/error-checking. Our queue to fetch rankings/crawl URLs had a backup of multiple tens of thousands of requests all week, and the dev team’s been slogging away on parallelization, separation of queing stages and other fixes.

Our next big release is scheduled for August 25 (possibly the 26th depending on how repairs go) and we’re all crazy excited (and more than a little nervous, sleep deprived and caffeinated). Feel free to start marking your calendars; I know we have

But, today, I’m here to talk about (and ask about ) the future of the web app. We’ve got a nearly endless list of features & functionality we’re hoping to add to the web app in the weeks and months to come, and we need your help in priotizing what  YOU care about. To start, I’ll share two lists – the first is our "quick hit" list of items we’re planning to address in the next 2-3 weeks (some will even be in time for our "big" launch on August 25th). The second is some larger concepts we’ve been noodling around with that may take a few months to get in. With both, we’re hoping you’ll give your $0.02 and help us prioritize which items to concentrate on.

Quick Hits List

#1 – Printable Reports (DOC & PDF)

We’ve heard from a lot of users already that they’d like the ability to export the crawl diagnostic reports, on-page summaries and report cards and ranking data into DOC or PDF files to be integrated into internal or client reporting. Luckily, this is a feature that’s early on our roadmap, possibly as soon as September.

#2 – On-Page Optimization Interface Tweaks

The on-page analysis section has already garnered a lot of kind words and hopefully helped many of you improve your targeting for some easy rankings wins. However, there’s a few tweaks that folks have suggested to help make it more usable, including removing the "fix" level of difficulty label on elements that are already completed and offering a way to re-order the recommendations to show those that are incomplete at the top.

We’re also working on ways, in the longer term, to help make this page shorter and the information more quickly digestable. Look for some interface experiments coming soon.

#3 – Adding Issues to Crawl Diagnostics

We currently track 20 unique crawl issues (split between errors, warnings and notices). Some other items we’ve considered tracking include:

• Use of meta noarchive (notice)
• Pages with display: none in their CSS (notice)
• Pages lacking analytics tracking code (warning)
• Pages that return any response code outside those we already track – 200, 301/2, 40x, 50x (error)
• Pages that redirect through more than two chains (warning)
• Pages that serve a meta refresh (notice)
• Pages that redirect with javascript (warning)

If you have additional items you’d like to see in the crawl diagnostics, please let us know!

#4 -"Ignorable" Crawl Issues

Some of our members have noted that they’d like to be able to "ignore" an issue and have it exist only in an "archived" issues section. We think this is a great idea, as there can be times when we catch a 404, duplicate content, robots blocking, etc. and it’s not a problem for your site but an intentional move. When this happens, it can be frustrating to see the continued error/warning message, so an archiving system might be ideal.

We’re still working on the concept of how to implement, but an "ingore all issues of this type" and a specific "ignore this issue for this URL" are currently on the roster.

#5 – Bulk Keyword Import System

Today, it can be a bit frustrating to add more than 5-10 keywords and labels at a time. We’d like to build a system that lets you upload a CSV or paste in rows with lable data included in a consistent format to make bulk insertion and labeling easier.

Big Ideas for the Future

Although we’ve amassed literally hundreds of ideas for upgrading and adding to the web app’s featureset, we’re really excited about a few key ones that have many mini-features inside. These include:

A) Integration with Google Analytics

One of the projects we’re most excited about is integrating with Google Analytics (and later, other packages like Webtrends and Omniture). You can see some of our early ideas below in wireframe format (these ARE NOT finished designs by any means, just illustrations I made in Flash).

We’re keen on the idea of having some stacked are graphs to help you see when traffic from different sources vary, and help to measure indexation via the chart below. Splitting out social traffic by using a set of referrers (ReadWriteWeb does a good breakdown of sources) to filter also struck us as being a great feature.

From there, we’re also bullish on including data about specific keywords alongside rankings, keyword difficulty scores and estimates from Google AdWords:

With this data, we think we can calculate some cool metrics around the potential opportunity of a given keyword, though this will, obviously, require some testing and refinement.

B) Crawl Depth Analysis

We’ve long wanted a way to visualize a site’s internal link structure and know how depth of pages from the homepage might actually be influencing crawling, rankings and traffic. With the custom crawl & crawl diagnostics system, we believe we can architect this into the web app’s dataset (though it’s unfortunately non-trivial to do so). You can see a very early wireframe below:

This is one of our more ambitious projects, but we’d love your thoughts about whether it would be valuable/useful for your campaigns.

C) XML Sitemaps Builder

Building an XML Sitemap can be a pain, even with some of the specialized software out there (though we at SEOmoz are big fans of John Mueller’s GSiteCrawler). Since the web app is already crawling your site’s pages, it only makes sense that we could construct an XML sitemap, plug into Google Webmaster Tools’ API and help you verify the sitemap and make custom tweaks based on what you want to include or exclude.

D) Keyword Research System

A relatively obvious next step would be the addition of a keyword research tool. We’d like integrate the functionality of the keyword difficulty tool’s analysis along with data from Google’s AdWords API. This might help you choose which keywords are most likely to produce value for your site and deserve some content/targeting in SEO.

E) Historical Link Analysis

One feature we hear demand for all the time is historical link information. We’ve actually got the data already stored from previous indices, but in testing retrieval, we’ve found that numbers can really bounce around due to the massive amount of noise in the "not-so-awesome" parts of the web (spammy sites, scrapers, etc). Thus, we’re looking into ways to scrub the data a bit before building this system (possibly by using our metrics to have the option of showing only mozRank 2-3+ pages that link, which tend to be relatively high quality). This work may take us into November or later, but we’ve got our fingers crossed that it can be in the web app by year’s end.

The wireframes above are just some initial concepts. We’d also really like to be able to show you pages/sites that were linking to you in a previous index but aren’t any longer or those that are newly linking, too.

F) Social Media / Link Monitoring System

Finally, we’ve got a project to turn some of the early work from Blogscape and our Social Media Monitoring prototype into a more robust, fully functional system. Our goal here is to provide a list of all the pages, tweets, blog posts and links that your site acquires in a more real-time type environment. So many of us are constantly doing Google Blog searches and Twitter searches and looking at our referrers via analytics that we thought it would be great to combine all that data in a single repository so you can keep up to date on what the web is saying about you (and, more relevantly, how important each of those sources are).

We’re still at the nascent beginnings of this work, but hope to have some wireframes to show in the not-too-far-out future – possibly in the next feedback request post.

Just for fun, I thought I’d include a poll regarding these "big" ideas and see which you’re most excited about:

Which of the “Big” Ideas for the Web App are You Most Excited About?online surveys

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With our next big launch just 9 days away (yikes!), we’re all working hard to make the web app and the many other pieces that are releasing better, faster and more stable. However, we’d love your opinions and will certainly use that feedback to improve, if not next week then in the future.

Also – as we move forward, we’ve decided to be more open about our product development and roadmap (as part of our commitment to being TAGFEE), so you can expect a post every few weeks or so detailing some of our ideas and asking for your thoughts on what to build next and how to improve.

p.s. If you haven’t tried the web app beta yet, give it a spin – it’s PRO-only, and some sections are a little slow, but by building a campaign now, you’ll have more historical data and trends to compare over time as the app improves.

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Posted by jennita

This week I pretty much have two things on my mind: beta launch and conferences. Since Rand will be covering the beta launch later today (wheeeeee) I thought I’d focus on the conferences. Along with preparing for our own PRO Seminar later this month, we’ve been discussing the various conferences we’ll be attending and speaking at over the next few months. Personally I’m getting excited for SES San Francisco next week. With the change of venue and being a part of Connected Marketing Week it’s going to be a great event. It also got me thinking about how attendees and speakers can use going to the conference as a link building exercise.

Anyone can easily acquire a few links by sponsoring the event, but I wanted to come up with some creative ways to gain links without actually paying anything. Ok, well without paying for anything more than the cost of attending the event. Let’s get started!

1. Speak at the event

Speaking on a panel is one of the easiest ways to get a link directly from a conference. Unfortunately it’s also probably the most difficult for most people. Not everyone gets excited about standing up in front of a room full of fellow internet marketers and speaking. But if you’re the type who loves what you do, has great advice, experience and/or examples on a specific topic and doesn’t mind speaking in public, then it’s time to get rolling! There are tons of conferences (seminars, trainings, etc.) from big to small, international to local that you could speak at. Find the one that’s right for you and reap the rewards from the links.

Ok, so where do the links come from? First, you’ll normally get a link from the actual conference itself where they list their speakers. You’ll also get links from people who write about the session you speak on. For example, Lisa Barone always links to the speaker’s website in her liveblogging coverage. Here’s one of many examples.

Simply by speaking at the event puts your name and company out there to the masses and gives them a reason to write about you. But perhaps speaking isn’t your calling, let’s see where else you can gain a link or two.

2. Liveblog or Livetweet

There are a number of benefits of live blogging, such as adding great content to your site and hopefully increasing your SEO value. But don’t forget that many conferences will link to liveblog coverage of their event. Booyah! Now… don’t get me wrong, live blogging is NOT easy. It can be a gruesome task where you spend the entire day typing, making sure you catch as much of the sessions as absolutely possible and still find time to eat and use the restroom. I personally attempted it once, but we can all see how well that went over (hint: I haven’t done it again). Hats off to all those amazing livebloggers out there who do it time and time again at all the major conferences!

 
Some of the amazing livebloggers you’ll see at conferences: Lisa Barone, Richard Baxter, Barry Schwartz, Virginia Nussey

If you’re new to liveblogging or tweeting you might want to start small like with a local meetup. With a smaller venue, liveblogging isn’t such a daunting task if you only have one or two sessions and speakers to cover. Plus not as many people are covering the small events, so the competition isn’t fierce.

Another alternative to liveblogging is livetweeting. While you’ll probably only get links to your Twitter account via retweets and Twitter roundup posts, you will probably get more followers who could in turn link to you at some point. Ok, so this may not be a direct link, but the idea of a future link is good enough for me.
In both liveblogging and tweeting, you have to be able to type and type quickly. If that isn’t your thing, and you just like to attend the conference, take notes and learn in your own way, there’s another tip that will earn you a few links. Bring bloggers food, drinks, a power cord, whatever! If you see that a liveblogger tweets about being thirsty, bring him/her a bottle of water. How much do you want to bet that you’ll get a link in that post (or maybe from Twitter) from that blogger? I’d say that’s a high likelihood.

In general if you bring someone of the Linkerati something nice, you might get a link out of it. Last year I roomed with Keri Morgret at SES San Jose and she brought triple chocolate muffins to the room!! Now if that doesn’t deserve a link from SEOmoz, I don’t know what does. Just sayin.

3. Take Photos and/or Video

This is a super fun way to not only get some sweet links but think about how many people you’ll meet. It’s the easiest way to network at a conference because pretty much all SEOs want their photo taken. But the key is, after you take the photos, be sure to publish them! Write a post and link to the people in the pictures or post them on your Facebook page and get more "likes" to your page.

Dana Lookadoo is probably THE BEST at taking great photos throughout the conference and then publishing them right away. She’s received several links from the SEOmoz blog for taking photos we used and then linked back to her. In fact, all the photos of the livebloggers from above Dana, took at various conferences (thanks for the great photos again!). 

4. Get involved!

Whether the conference is large like an SMX or just a small meetup, everyone loves volunteers to help. This is also a great tip to getting a free pass to an event. Sure you have to put in a little work and help out, but in the end you’ll learn a lot and will probably get a link or a thank you on Twitter. Earlier this year I helped Michelle Robbins at SMX West and got a great thank you from her after the fact via Twitter.

Just think of the possibilities here. If you can donate a little of your time, you can easily get a link or two out of it.

5. Do something crazy

Seriously, not even kidding here. If you do something out there, something a little different than the norm that people can get excited about, then they’re going to write about it! Off the top of my head I can think of three different instances at conferences where people did things just a bit crazy, and the story went completely viral! I’m talking shaving your head, winning a pony and bigwatah. I won’t go into all the details about these events but let’s quickly look at a few Google searches.

A search for "bigwatah" shows 4 posts talking about the event that happened at SMX East in 2008 plus tons of photos. Then a search for "evan fishkin shave head" (tee hee hee) shows at least 10 posts and 3 videos of Matt Cutts shaving Evan Fishkins head at Pubcon 2009.

That’s just the tip of the iceburg. I’m pretty sure much crazier things have and could happen. As long as you don’t hurt anyone in the process, I say get a little crazy!

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Whew! That’s a lot of linkbuilding that can happen in just a couple days time. As you head out to a conference this summer or fall, think about ways to not only gain knowledge but also to create a few backlinks. Remember that many of the people who will link to you who are at a conference are probably SEOs themselves. Which means they probably (not always, but probably) have a fairly decent authority site to send you some juicy links (dang. did I just say "juicy links" I hate when people say that). I’d love to hear some of your ideas or ways you’ve been able to build a link or two while attending a conference.

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Each week I see multiple products launched targeting bloggers wanting to improve their blogs. I’ve tested many of them in my time and the reality is that most don’t deliver what they promise and I don’t promote them. However from time to time – some hit the mark and present unique and helpful information that delivers real value.

This week there were two of these such products that hit the market. Both are quite different in their focus but both are from experts in their field and will help bloggers improve two important aspects of their blogs:

1. Jon Morrow’s Apprentice Program for Guest Bloggers

Jon is someone who has built a career for himself as a copywriter and blogger using Guest Posting. He’s been a guest poster here on ProBlogger numerous times and is a regular on blogs such as CopyBlogger.

Over the last week or so he’s release a series of great videos (here and here are two) on the topic of guest blogging and this week launched a comprehensive program that literally guarantees to get you a guest post on a high profile blog (if you don’t you’ll get your money back).

Jon’s course is a mix of video, private forum, Q&A calls and one on one interaction with Jon.

Guest blogging is a technique many bloggers have used to launch their blogs to great things and Jon’s the perfect person to talk you through how to do it. Sign up Today Here.

2. Gideon Shalwick’s Rapid Video Blogging

Gideon Shalwick has also taken his blogging to the next level by being prolific at one aspect of online discipline – VIDEO. He too has released a series of great videos this week that talk you through different aspects of using video to make money online (check them out here, here and here – they are free and whether you buy the course or not offer great insights) and today launched a great product – Rapid Video Blogging.

Gideon’s course is massive and comprehensive. It includes 125 instructional videos and transcripts/audio version as well as a heap of great tools and resources including videos with great video bloggers, live interactive sessions for Q&A.

Video is an incredibly dynamic medium and mastering it is something many bloggers need to learn – check out Rapid Video Blogging for more information on just how to do that.

Which one is for You?

Both of these resources come from experts in their fields and will present different value to different bloggers. Neither are super cheap entry level products (you’re getting a heap of content with both) and so you’ll want to consider your needs carefully and view some of the free videos that the guys have produced – but if you’ve been thinking about how to take your blogging up a notch lately and want to make an investment into your learning – do give them both consideration.

They both do come with money back satisfaction guarantees and both Jon and Gideon are people I trust to honour that promise.

I’m looking forward to hearing how you enjoy these courses and seeing how they help you improve your blogs.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

2 Products Worth Considering to Improve Your Blog Today

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One of the biggest challenges for a new bloggers starting out in an established niche is to find a way to stand out from the crowd and find their first readers. Without existing profile and/or credibility – getting those first readers can be very tough.

To combat this a few years back a number of bloggers started to use ‘Guest Blogging’ as a technique to launch their blogs and grow their brands to new audiences. This technique launched many bloggers to prominence – including Leo Babauta, Brian Clark, Chris Garrett, Skellie, Jon Morrow (all of whom have guest posted on ProBlogger) and many many more.

Much has been written on the topic of how to use guest posting but one of the best resources that I’ve seen lately has been produced by Jon Morrow. He’s just released the first in a series of videos (#aff) on the topic and they are well worth watching.

I’ve seen the complete set of videos for myself and they are easy to watch, actionable and inspiring.

Jon himself has used guest blogging with great success – including this fantastic post on speech recognition for bloggers here on ProBlogger which helped many.

Jon’s first video is completely free (no opt in required) and is well worth watching. His future videos require an opt in but you’ll get a feel for whether they’re right for you from the first one. I watched them all and they’re excellent.

Do yourself a favour and set aside some time today to watch these videos.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

How to Use Guest Blogging to Grow Your Blog Exponentially

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“How do you know which projects to go with and which to leave behind?”

This is a question I’ve been asked almost every time I’ve spoken at events recently so I thought I’d jot down a few thought on the process that I find myself going through when looking at opportunities to expand my business with new projects.

Of course I’m over simplifying it a little with this diagram – but it’ll illustrate the basics of how I work.

I should also say that this isn’t really a process that I specifically take myself through each time I launch a new project – rather its something I’ve noticed myself doing naturally as I look back on previous projects. Let me say a little about each step.

Idea – For me – idea generation is the easiest part of the process. I have them every day and have a long list of potential projects that I’d one day like to take through this process fully and explore.

I find that the more I start things the more ideas come naturally as you see how readers are using your site, as they ask for advice, as you observe trends in your industry and as you receive and answer questions from others exploring your topic.

The other thing that I find is that as your blog grows you start to get pitched ideas from others. As you become seen as a credible and authoritative source of information and as someone with influence – people want to align themselves with you and explore partnerships.

The keys with this stage is to have a way of capturing the ideas, to not rush in to do every idea that comes along but to be willing to take the best ideas and explore them.

Test – The temptation when you get what you think is a great idea is to just go out and do it. I’ve seen a number of friends move from having a great idea into investing (sometimes quite a bit of money) in developing that idea within hours. In some cases this might pay off – but in my experience most ‘ideas’ could do with some testing before moving into the development stage.

There are many ways to test an idea – here are some that I’ve done:

• Ask someone – whether it be a trusted friend, your partner, a reader, another blogger – bouncing your ideas off others can be very valuable. Getting another person’s perspective will often help you filter out the crazy ideas and add depth to the good ones.
• Write a Blog Post – it may not always be appropriate to completely spell out your idea publicly (once they’re out there you never know who might take your idea) but a blog post can be used to test whether there is a need for your idea to fulfil, can be used to gather data from readers responses on how your idea could help them most or could just be a good place for you to think out loud and get a little perspective.
• Tweet it – I often test ideas with my Twitter followers. Again, you probably don’t want to spell out your idea in too much detail but use your social networks to test the things you’re thinking about.
• Do a Survey or Poll – this is one of my favourite things to do and something I’ve done regularly over the years. If you’re not sure whether your current readership or network will respond to your idea – test it by running a survey with a small group of them. For example I recently released a travel photography eBook with my photography site. Before commissioning it I did a quick survey with 1000 of my readers to see what topics they’d like more written about. One of the topics I suggested was Travel Photography – the response was that over half my readers said that they wanted more information on that topic – I then went ahead with it.

Testing need not be a long or involved process. A blog post, tweet or survey could all be put together in 24 hours. For us entrepreneurial types 24 hours might seem like an eternity – however the information you gain by doing it could either improve your idea significantly or show you when your idea is not something worth pursuing (which could save you a lot of time and money).

Tweak – Once you’ve done a little testing you’re in a position to tweak your idea. This might actually be culling it all together or it could be about making big or small improvements.

Ultimately your ‘testing’ is about putting your idea ‘out there’ to some degree and your ‘tweaking’ is about taking on board the feedback that you get and making improvements to the idea so that if you do take it to a full launch that it is the best it can be.

Sometimes the ‘test’ to ‘tweak’ stage can be a bit of a cycle before you launch and something that you need to do numerous times to get to launch. In fact sometimes the ‘test’ and ‘tweak’ approach continues after launch as well as you continue to try new ideas and gather feedback to continue to improve what you’re doing.

Launch – With a mixture of fear and excitement you gradually move your idea forward towards launch.

I can’t tell you exactly how to launch a product or service because it’ll vary hugely from situation to situation – however what I have found is that if you’ve gone through the test and tweak process well that you’ll end up launching something that is not only a better quality product or service – but you’ll hopefully have ended up with some ideas on how to market and launch that product.

For example as part of the launch of the travel photography ebook I mentioned earlier a survey I did found that many readers had regrets around previous photography that they’d done when traveling. This gave us a hint as to how to market it (which you’ll see on the sales page).

You’ll also find that if some of your testing/tweaking has been done in public (ie your readers know you’re developing an idea towards launching something) you’ll hopefully have also created some nice pre-launch buzz to assist with your launch.

Some examples

As mentioned earlier – I’m certainly over simplifying things a little here – nothing is quite as simple or easy as I’m making it sound. However I do find that this cycle is pretty typical of the things I’ve done. Let me give some examples.

31 Days to Build a Better Blog

The 31 Days to Build a Better Blog workbook that I currently sell from ProBlogger did not start out as an eBook. In fact it started 3 (or was it 4?) years ago as a series of 31 blog posts. The initial idea was to take my readers through a month of activities to improve their blogs. The first year was very basic.

That first ‘test’ of the idea revealed that people loved the idea of doing a project like this together. It also showed me that some of the activities that I did connected better than others.

I then ran it again two years later with improvements. I added a forum area, started an autoresponder email list to help participants keep on track and changed around some of the activities. Again I learned a lot. I also began to gather feedback from participants that they wanted it as a workbook.

I tested that idea with a survey and found that a good percentage of my readers would be willing to pay for such an eBook so I had it developed (with extra content, design etc).

WIth all this testing and tweaking done I was pretty much certain that I’d not only cover the costs I put into the development of the eBook but make a healthy profit from it on launch (which is how it has happened).

In essences 31DBBB has been through 3-4 different ‘test’ and ‘tweak’ cycles to get it to its current form (and I’m currently testing and tweaking it again and hope to offer a live version of the course later this year).

ProBlogger Live Event

The 31DBBB example above is one that has taken years to go through. Another more recent example is the ProBlogger live training day that I’m running in Melbourne. This is an example of a much speedier process.

The idea came 2 weeks ago.

I tested it with a quick email to two friends (Chris and Shayne) who both added their own ideas into the mix but reacted very positively.

I then tested it with a blog post asking for expressions of interest by inviting people to sign up for more information.

I then followed up those who responded to that call by inviting them to do a survey on their situation and needs as bloggers. Around 50% of people did the survey which gave me some amazing data. The survey revealed the topics we should cover on the day, helped us work out what styles of presentation we should do in the event and also told us that there was much more interest in the event than we’d previously thought (ie we needed a bigger venue).

All of this was before we’d booked a venue, decided on a schedule for the day or even committed to running the event.

Then came the launch – we knew approximately how many would come, what they wanted from such a day and how to cater for them. As a result we’ve had no problem pretty much selling it out.

TwiTip

This same process was how I launched TwiTip (my twitter tips blog).

The idea for a blog about Twitter had been something I’d pondered for a while before launching it. I decided to test whether people would be interested in reading tutorials about Twitter before launching by posting some posts here on ProBlogger – Twitter Tips for Bloggers.

These posts were very popular and got a lot of interaction.

As I began to plan the blog I started surveying my Twitter followers on the type of needs that they had and the questions that they’d asked themselves when they first started. In doing so I began to gather ideas for future posts but also began to see what categories I should have on the new blog.

I launched Twitip with a fairly ’soft launch’. It was on basic hosting and on a fairly simple theme (I used Thesis). I could have invested into a custom design from day 1 but wanted to test the topic before spending too much on it – so went with a solid premium theme but one that wasn’t going to break the bank.

It was actually around a year before I fully launched the site with a full custom theme.

I could go on and on giving personal examples

The more I think about it the more I realize that virtually every time I’ve launched a new blog, product or service that I’ve been through this type of process. Perhaps it’s partly because I’m something of a cautious person and like to test before I fully commit – but I think it’s also a fairly solid approach.

I’ve seen so many people launch businesses that have not been thought through enough that I just think a little extra time to do some testing would be well spent.

What about you – do you go through similar processes? What would you add or subtract from the process above?

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

How to Take an Idea to Launch in 4 Steps

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Have you ever felt completely overwhelmed by some element of your online business?

Image by Stephan Poff

I’ve felt that way many times, both in the early days and even now. For me it usually comes when I’m working on a new venture or expanding something that I’m already doing into something bigger. For example:

• When I started my first blog and had no idea how to make decisions about blog platforms, didn’t know where I’d find readers, or if they’d like me when they found me, felt inadequate in making my blog look good, worried what other bloggers might think of me writing about topics that they wrote about etc.
• When I did redesigns of my blogs (numerous occassions). Not knowing who to hire to design them, feeling confused about how to best lay them out etc.
• When I decided to launch my first eBook – unsure if people who buy it, overwhelmed by the task of writing it, at a loss as to how to put it together technically, confused as to how to promote and deliver it.

The list could go on – you could say that I’m a repeat offender when it comes to feeling overwhelmed and panicking about projects!

Having said that – I’ve also got a history of working through the overwhelming feelings and getting stuff done (at least most of the time). I think the key is not to let the feelings overwhelm you but to work through them. Here’s how I do it:

1. Focus upon the things you can control

One of the factors that used to hold me back was that I would spend a lot of time worrying about factors that I had little or no control over rather than focusing upon the things I could control.

Of course this is not just applicable to blogging – we all can fall into the temptation about spending a lot of energy worrying about things that we have no ultimate control over. It is easy to do but the reality is that focusing upon things we can’t really control takes a lot of time and energy away from doing the things we can control.

So if I’m feeling overwhelmed by a project now I will (after a little panic) make a list of the things that are stopping me or worrying me about the project and then identify things on the list that I have some control over and those that I don’t have control over – I’ll then put aside or delete the external worries so that I can focus on things I can do!

So when it comes to starting a blog:

• Some of the things I can control include things like coming up with topics to write about, registering a domain, researching and choosing a blog platform etc
• Some of the things I don’t have ultimate control over are things like what other bloggers will think about me, whether people will like what I write etc

Of course I might be able to influence the outcomes of some of these external worries – but in the end they’re ultimately in the hands of others so are not my #1 priority. I generally will put them lower on my list of things to think about and get started on things I can do.

2. Break it down into bite sized tasks

The key for me to get things done and not become paralysed by overwhelming projects is to break them down into smaller tasks that I can achieve.

For example writing the ProBlogger book was a daunting thing to be asked to do by Wiley. In fact other publishers had previously asked and I’d always put it off because it was too big. But once Chris and I started breaking it down it became much more achievable. We started with an outline which in itself became a list of smaller tasks to do. I then broke each of the chapters I had to write into smaller sections and tasks until they were bite sized enough for me to feel I could achieve.

I once spoke with an Hawaii Ironman who told me that this is how he got through his events. He had three larger segments of the day (swimming, running and bike riding) and then he’d further break the day into kilometre segments. In his planning and on race day he wouldn’t think about the whole day – but he’d be constantly asking himself what he needed to achieve to complete the the next kilometre.

If it’s helpful put the tasks you identify into some kind of timeline so that you can see the order of what needs to be achieved and so that you can tick them off as you go.

3. Talk to others

A trap that I often fall into when faced with massive projects is allowing myself to wallow in my own desperation and fear of the things that I need to achieve. Perhaps it is my introverted personality – but I tend to take on the burdens that I face alone and don’t naturally share them.

However I know that when I do externalise what I’m feeling that it helps a lot. Even if I simply verbalise the feeling to my wife who has no real comprehension of what I’m doing – just the act of speaking the problems can somehow put them in perspective.

Similarly (and even better) – seeking out people who have already done what you’re trying to achieve to hear how they did it can be helpful. I remember when writing the ProBlogger book seeking out 3 other authors to get their advice on how they wrote their books. They all gave different answers but helped me to shape my own approach to it.

Also consider not only talking with others but collaborating with them. It may be that part of the problem you face is simply not having the skills to do the task at hand so partnering with someone else (or at the least outsourcing to them) might be a good solution.

4. Start

There comes a time when you just need to roll up your sleeves and start working. You can dream and worry about a project forever and never do anything – the key is to start.

Start with one of those bite sized bits that you identified earlier. Choose something you know you can achieve and that will lead you naturally to the next bite sized bit. You’ll find that once you start knocking off tasks that momentum will build and that it’ll get easier to keep things moving – the hardest part is often taking the first step.

How do you tackle overwhelming tasks?

The above is how I approach it – but I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences too. What overwhelming projects have you worked on and how did you get them done?

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

How to Get Things Done When You’re Feeling Overwhelmed

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In The Myth Of Great Content Marketing Itself, Darren said that:

The reality is that many blogs produce quality content that doesn’t get read. The reason isn’t that the blog’s not worth reading – but in many cases it’s because nobody knows to go read it.

Later, he said:

Letting your content market itself DOES work IF you already have an audience to help with that process by spreading word of it through word of mouth. YOU need to be the one who starts the process.

It’s time to hustle and get word out about your content.

I agree. Most of the apparent success you see on a blog is based on what happens outside of content creation. The main secret to kicking arse online is knowing the right people.

Yes, I’m talking about the networking.

How Networking Leads To Blog Success

Image by Sudhamshu

Do you ever see posts with high profile commenters and tonnes of retweets that seems to echo around the blogosphere? All that happened off the blog. The connections were made months before a favour was asked. The person had provided enough value for the person to not even considering saying no to a request for help.

I recently wrote a post taking readers step by step through my networking methods. This guest post will take you through specific observations that helped me garner the attention of the big guns – and keep it.

Be A Filter. Be Seen.

I owe the discovery of this concept to Dave Navarro at The Launch Coach

“the busier and more successful someone is, the more they rely on people they trust to filter decisions for them.  They don’t have the time to take in an process all the pros and cons of some new unknown quantity, so they simply look to their “influencers” - the people who already have established trust with them – for recommendations. “

Positioning yourself as a filter is a great way to get on the radars of awesome people.

I became a filter by accident and it’s a role that I’ve embraced. I’m known as the person that hooks people up. I did one consulting call and was interviewed for two paid programs in the past week. In all three cases, I asked the person is there was anyone I could connect them too.

This doesn’t have to be a bad thing. In many cases, it means getting them featured on a certain blog. They get publicity. The blogger gets quality content. I get the happiness from making awesomeness happen.

The key to being a indispensible filter is being so darn useful that the A-listers clamor to get to know you. However, before you can get to know them they have to know who you are.

So – how do you get to know them?

Meet them on their turf and go where they are most comfortable. This is where they will me most receptive to your attempts at connection.

For many people, this is Twitter. For others, it may be a uStream or an interview. Be where they are, and without being spammy show how intelligent and helpful you are. In some cases, they’ll get to know you and ask to take the conversation elsewhere.

Taking the conversation off that platform

Image by Moriza

Take the conversation to phone

It’s weird, but hearing someone’s voice encourages them to be more emotionally involved. They are more likely to remember you and be willing to help you out down the track.

I know this because I’ve Skyped a lot of my blogging friends. It’s hard, especially when you are introverted. It has lots of awesome networking opportunities. You can pick up little pieces of information to leverage later, such as birthdays and children. You can also bond over accents or similar work.

For most people, this means talking to them on Skype. You can also talk to them via conference call products or by a regular phone.

Take it to email

I try and funnel most conversations to email. This makes it a lot easier to form a connection and figure out how you can help each other. I have one email for most people and a separate email for those I have a preexisting relationship with. This means that I can give a priority to those I am willing to help out.

This may not be practical for some of the bigger names. They generally get so many emails that yours will get lost. In these cases, it’s worth getting to know the person that filters their email if you definitely need their attention.

Meeting in real life

In most cases, this is unlikely to happen. That’s just the way the internet works. There is often too much hassle involved in meeting up unless you live physically close to them. I have three main ways I meet people:

• If a social media friend will be in the same city as you, casually offer to meetup. I got to meet Yaro Starak and Melinda Brennan this way.
• I also to conferences that my friends will be attending. This means we get to hang out during the sessions and can make additional connections with some of their friends.
• My other method is tweetups. I limit the ones I attend because they can be tiring but they are an awesome place to develop new friendship circles.

How to be incredibly useful.

Image by thebittenword.com

Know what they need before they know they need it

Imagine. You are craving an ice cream. You don’t have the time to go and buy the ice cream but then someone offers one because they instinctively know that it could help you right then. Now, imagine that you could help people find solutions that could save or earn them thousands of dollars. They’d be pretty darn grateful, right?

That’s what I do and it’s how you can get a lot of the big guns to view you as a peer in a short period of time.

To succeed at this you have to be good at reading between the lines. You have to:

• Be able to see when they are hinting towards needing help such as them tweeting about feeling sick.
• Know what type of person/product they like being referred to.
• Know about the various solutions that they haven’t heard of. This can require a lot of research.

It’s hard work but you eventually develop processes so it requires very little time. One you reach a tipping point most of the people come to you on a referral basis.

Connect them to people that profoundly change things for them

I know I changed Dave Navarro’s career when I reviewed How To Launch The **** Out Of Your Ebook on this blog. That connection has led to so many opportunities and experiences for me.

When you do something amazing, the person will be grateful for a long, long time. People still thank me for mentioning the in the 30 Bloggers To Watch post. And, when I recently needed help, they all rallied around to support me because I’d done so much for them previously.

You don’t have to help in a huge way. Sometimes, it can be a small favour that spurs a person on. Ideas include:

• Get a review copy of an information product on their behalf
• Review their product on a popular blog
• Highlight them in front of an influencer
• Connect them with people with complementary skills

Givers get. Simple.

I help you build your influence at jadecraven.com. If you want to know whats hot in the blogosphere before it goes mainstream, check out my How to Network Fast Course. People come to me whenever they want their stuff to be shared and I only share the best with my readers.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

The Unmissable Secret of Long Term Blogging Success.

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Posted by randfish

Many of our keen members observed that late last week, Linkscape’s index updated (this is actually our 27th index update since starting the project in 2008). This means new link data in Open Site Explorer and Linkscape Classic, as well as new metric data via the mozbar and in our API.

Index 27 Statistics

For those who are interested, you can follow the Linkscape index update calendar on our API Wiki (as you can see, this update was about a week early).

Although we’ve now crawled many hundreds of billions of pages since launch, we only serve our uber-freshest index. Historical data is something we want to do soon – more on that later. This latest index’s stats feature:

• Pages – 40,152,060,523
• Subdomains – 284,336,725
• Root Domains – 91,539,345
• Links – 420,049,105,986
• % of Nofollowed Links – 2.02%
• % of Nofollows on Internal Links – 58.7%
• % of Nofollows on External Links – 41.3%
• % of Pages w/ Rel Canonical – 4.3%

These numbers continue the trend we’ve been seeing for some time where internal nofollow usage is declining slightly while rel canonical is down a bit in this index but up substantially over the start of the year (this likely has more to do with our crawl selection than with sites actually removing canonical URL tags.

Comparing Metrics from Index to Index

One of the biggest requests we get is the ability to track historical information about your metrics from Linkscape. We know this is really important to everyone and we want to make this happen soon, but have some technical and practical challenges to overcome. The biggest of which is that what we crawl changes substantively with each index, both due to our improvements in what to crawl (and what to ignore) and with the web’s massive changes each month (60%+ of pages we fetched 6 months ago are no longer in existence!).

For now, the best advice I can give is to measure yourself against competitors and colleagues rather than against your metrics last month or last year. If you’re improving against the competition, chances are good that your overall footprint is increasing at a higher rate than theirs. You might even "lose" links in a raw count from the index, but actually have improved simply because a few hundred spam/scraper websites weren’t crawled this time around, or we’ve done better canonicalization with URLs than last round or your link rotated out of the top of a popular RSS feed many sites were reproducing.

Measuring against other sites in your niche is a great way to compare from index to index

If you’ve got more questions about comparisons and index modifications over time, feel free to ask in the comments and we’ll try to dive in. For those who are interested, our current thinking around providing historical tracking is to give multiple number sets like – # of links from mR 3+ pages, # of links from mR 1-3 pages, etc. to help show how many "important" links you’re gaining/losing – these fluctuate much less from index to index and may be better benchmarking tools.

Integration with Conductor’s Searchlight Software

SEOmoz is proud to be powering Conductor’s new Searchlight software. I got to take a demo of their toolset 2 weeks ago (anyone can request one here) and was very impressed. See for yourself with a few exclusive screenshots I’ve wrangled up:

And at the bottom of the series is Seth Besmertnik, Conductor’s CEO, during the launch event (note the unbuttoned top button of his shirt with the tie; this indicates Seth is a professional, but he’s still a startup guy at heart). Searchlight already has some impressive customers including Monster.com, Care.com, Siemens, Travelocity, Progressive and more. I think many in the SEO field will agree that moving further into software is a smart move for the Conductor team, and the toolset certainly looks promising.

Conductor’s also releasing some cool free research data on seasonality (request form here). Couldn’t resist sharing a screenshot below of the sample Excel workbook they developed:

mmm… prepopulated

SEOmoz’s Linkscape index currently powers the link data section of Searchlight via our API and we’re looking forward to helping many other providers of search software in the future. We’re also integrated with Hubspot’s Grader.com and EightFoldLogic‘s (formerly Enquisite) Linker, so if you’re seeking to build an app and need link data, you can sign up for free API access and get in touch if/when you need more data.

The Link Juice App for iPhone

We’re also very excited about the popular and growing iPhone app – LinkJuice. They’ve just recently updated the software with a few recommendations straight from Danny Dover and me!

The LinkJuice folks have promised an Android version is on its way soon, and since that’s my phone of choice, I can’t wait!

If you’ve got an app, software piece or website that’s powered by Linkscape, please do drop us a line so we can include it. I’ve been excited to see folks using it for research – like Sean’s recent YOUmoz post on PageRank correlations – as well as in many less public research works.

Oh, and if you somehow missed the announcement, go check out the new Beginner’s Guide to SEO! It’s totally free and Danny’s done a great job with it.

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