Posted by Tom_C

This post was inspired by Rand. If I’m honest, I’m not sure how many of my posts aren’t inspired by Rand… Specifically however it was this tweet which set the wheels in motion (if ever so slowly):

As you have probably guessed by now, I was inspired by all of this to apply some of this checklist theory to our SEO projects. The main idea being that while we all know what to do – sometimes we forget to do some of the basics and by having a simple checklist at hand we can make sure we don’t miss anything out. There are obviously lots of different areas of SEO that this would apply to (and other areas – I think it’d work great for PPC) but I’ve chosen to focus on new projects. Below is a checklist that I am in the process of implementing at Distilled for any new SEO project which comes on board. I anticipate that it’s still useful for in-house folks too when launching a new site or project. I welcome your feedback and thoughts on this work in progress!

SEO Project Kickoff Checklist

Is billing set up? – This is useful to ensure that not only is the client in the system and set up for billing but that the project has actually transitioned from sales to operations. It’s also essential to check here that the SEO team knows how much the client is paying.

Is the project in the project management system? – This is a no-brainer (like all the things on the list!) but useful to ensure that you can keep track of the project. In addition it’s important to ensure client contact details are stored there.

Introduce all team members – Ensure anyone within the company who’s working with this client has sat down and knows what everyone else is doing. This is especially important if the client is paying for multiple services such as PPC, Web Development, SEO etc.

Do you know which URL you’re working on? – Often you’ll start work for a company but that business may own many different sections and URLs. Which one are you working on?

What is a conversion? – Whether goal tracking is set up or not in analytics it’s crucial to understand what a conversion is and how much that conversion is worth to the business.

Do you have access to analytics & webmaster central? – SEO without data is like the winter olympics without snow. Ensure you have access to the data from the very start.

Check for irregularities – validating analytics data can be a complete piece of work sometimes, that’s not what I mean here. What I mean here is just a quick sense-check that the site ranks for it’s own name, that analytics data vaguely ties up with rankings, PPC traffic isn’t appearing in analytics as organic etc.

Benchmark current data – The three data points I think it’s useful to benchmark (that you can’t go back and check later) are: 1) Link metrics (my favourite are DA and PA) – it’s useful to store a copy of linkscape somewhere too, 2) A count of indexed pages (yes, I know this is sometimes wildly inaccurate but it’s still worth noting down), 3) A snapshot of rankings for the top 20 keyphrases (full rank tracking/analysis can be set up later in the project).

Has a kickoff meeting with the client been scheduled? – And does the client know who their contact is within the SEO team.

Do you like this post? Yes No

Last week we published a post by Jade Craven which contained a list of 30 bloggers to watch in 2010 from her perspective.

As tends to happen with these kinds of posts – the list caused a lot of discussion!

Not only did people post comments about it and Tweet up a storm – some bloggers even put together alternative lists of bloggers that they are watching in 2010 (see Sherri’s list here for example).

Sherri’s list got me thinking – perhaps it’s time for a mini ProBlogger ‘Group Writing Project’.

My hope is that this little project will not only highlight some great bloggers, but that it’ll help bloggers generate a little link love from one blog to another within niches and also be useful to your readers (and hopefully some of these posts will generate some buzz for your blogs – these types of lists generally do!).

Your Task is to write a ‘Bloggers to Watch’ post on your blog

Jade’s list last week was a list of bloggers that she’s watching (and as a result did have a focus upon a certain type of blogger that she follows) – but my hope is that this little project will generate some lists of bloggers that focus upon all kinds of niches/industries.

• If you’re a craft blogger – write a list of Craft bloggers to watch in 2010.
• If you’re a sports blogger – write a list of sports bloggers to watch in 2010.
• If you’re a political blogger – write a list of political bloggers to watch in 2010.

Your list doesn’t have to be 30 bloggers – it could be 100, 50, 30, 10…. or if you have a small niche even smaller.

Once you’ve created your list…. Tell Us About It

After publishing your list – come back to this post and leave a comment with a link to your new post (please only submit new posts that have been written this year).

Also take some time to surf through the other comments left on this post to see what lists that other readers have created!

I’m looking forward to reading your lists of bloggers to watch!

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Create Your Own ‘Bloggers to Watch’ List and Tell Us About It Here

Share This

OK – last year I did an impromptu ProBlogger ‘Christmas office party’ on Christmas Eve. It basically involved me drinking beer and eating some chips sitting in front of a webcam while Twitter followers dropped by to say G’day. We did a bit of Q&A and had some fun for an hour or so.

This year I want to open it up to everyone and give you a little advanced warning.

This year I’m going to do it a little earlier in the day (I’ll swap out beer and chips for coffee and a muffin) and it’ll be on at 9am this coming Thursday Melbourne time.

This will make it:

• 2pm Wednesday in Los Angeles
• 5pm Wednesday in New York
• 10pm Wednesday in London
• 6am Thursday in Singapore
• 3.30am in New Delhi (sorry friends!)

I’ll Tweet out a reminder in the lead up and when we start but it’ll be at the ProBlogger Show channel on Ustream.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

ProBlogger Christmas Eve Party – Save This Date

Share This

This week, on a busier than normal day, I Tweeted that I wish there were more hours in a day (or that there was a pause button so that time could stand still for a bit so I could catch up). The tweet was of course an attempt at humor but the deluge of replies that I received from that Tweet revealed that I’m not the only blogger out there that wishes they had more time.

As I giggled at the responses it struck me that if I’d not posted that message on Twitter about how I wish I’d had more time that I’d probably have had an extra 6 minutes that hour to get the things I needed to get done finished.

While I’m glad I did get on Twitter for those 6 minutes (it gave me a laugh, made me relax and lightened my day a little) I began to think about all the other small little distractions and time suckers we as bloggers face and on a whim (and for a bit of fun) came up with this list of how to be a more productive blogger.

How to be a more productive blogger:

1. Turn off Twitter – 6 minutes an hour
2. Turn off Facebook – 3 minutes an hour
3. Stop checking your Traffic Stats – 2 minutes an hour
4. Stop checking your AdSense Earnings – 2 minutes an hour
5. Stop Tweaking your blog design – 3 minutes an hour
6. Stop checking your Google Page Rank – 1 minute an hour
7. Turn off Email – 5 minutes an hour
8. Log out of your RSS Feed Reader – 2 minutes an hour
9. Stop checking to see if someone Dugg your latest post – 1 minute an hour
10. Stop checking affiliate earnings/e-book sales earnings – 2 minutes an hour
11. Turn off any other Social Media Sites (LinkedIn/StumbleUpon/Plurk/Reddit etc) – 3 minutes an hour
12. Turn of Skype, Gtalk and all other IM services – 4 minutes
13. Stop Reading Blog Tips and Start Blogging – 3 minutes an hour

By my calculations this gives you an extra 37 minutes an hour to do what you need to do. Over an 8 hour work day I’ve just found you a smidgen under 5 hours!

What would you add?

Update: No I’m not really serious. While we could be more productive as bloggers by minimizing a lot of this stuff there can also be a lot of good things come from these activities. I guess it’s about knowing your goals, setting good boundaries and engaging in these kinds of activities to the extent that they help us achieve our goals.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

How to Be A More Productive Blogger [And Add 37 Minutes to Every Hour!]

Share This

Google today announced a new feature that impacts bloggers – a new URL shortener that integrates with Feedburner and a new ’socialize’ feature on Feedburner.

This allows bloggers to use Feedburner to send Tweets out automatically via Feedburner.

Of course most bloggers already have tweets going out to promote new blog posts by using either a plugin or a service like TwitterFeed.

Feedburner give you a number of options – including the ability to tweet out just the title or include some of the body (or only the body), adding hashtags (based upon your category), adding something before or after the title, filtering (to stop some new posts going out) – and limiting how many tweets go out.

Get more help and details on setting up your Feedburner account here.

In many ways it is pretty similar to what a lot of the other alternatives give you for this type of thing – but it is good to be able to have it all managed from one account. I’ll also be interested to see how Google/Feedburner integrate this into their Analysis/metrics (ie to see if they can measure clicks on their URL shortened links accurate – I’m not seeing any mention of this but it would seem like a logical extension).

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Google Add Socialize Feature to Feedburner – Tweet Your New Blog Posts from Feedburner

Share This

Although Twitter’s homepage gets a tremendous amount of traffic, it hardly compares to daily amount of queries its API receives. According to Alexander Barbara, the founder of EasyTweets, www.Twitter.com got around 86.5 million pageviews last month, but the API gets hundreds of millions of queries each day. In addition, Twitter did an analysis and found that the majority of tweets posted come from the API instead of the website.

Many people do not realize that it is actually the API that allows them to do multiple tasks such as managing lists, following others, pulling profile data, and managing accounts and reputations. The good news is that Twitter is continuing to improve and perfect the API. For this reason, Barbara expects even more from Twitter’s API in the coming months.

Twitter is already adding functionalities that would make threading conversations easier. Also, they recently added geolocation features which display where a tweet originated and includes geotagging. What’s more, Twitter is starting location-based trends that show top trends on a localized basis.

Barbara said Twitter has embraced the development community by allowing it to build upon their platform. They have even incorporated some of the applications directly into their homepage. He said that by embracing third party developers, Twitter has not only enhanced the overall platform that the company is based upon, but it has also added value for everyone.

What do you think is next for Twitter’s API?

Has someone ever posted a picture of you online that you wish wasn’t there? Since nearly everyone has a smartphone, it is so easy to post a photo to Facebook or Flickr instantaneously. But how could that image affect you in 5 years?

Some cases are harmless, but there are other situations that could have a lasting impact on individuals. WebProNews spoke with Wayne Sutton of OurHashtag who gave some tips for preventing social media from coming back to haunt you.

Social media etiquette is still a gray area online. Some people act differently online than they do offline and vice versa. Sutton said that he personally tries to be the same person online that he is offline.

He went on to say that individuals should establish a presence online that adequately represents them offline as well. It is also important to remember that even a simple tweet could hurt yourself, your brand, and potentially, others.

Sutton offers this simple, but wise advice: “Think about what you’re posting before you post it.”

By Johnny B. Truant

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that affiliate marketing is the easiest way to make money online. You don’t have to create a product or develop a service, you don’t need huge amounts of focused traffic the way you do with AdSense, (I started using AdSense a year ago and just recently passed the $100 minimum payout), and you don’t need to do a ton of advertising or SEO to make it work.

All you really need is an audience to whom you can refer products and services.

Of course, the above statement is true in the same way it’s true that you only need food, water, and shelter to live. It’s technically accurate — but personally, I’d like to have Netflix and a few Twix bars, too.

I made around $20,000 in my first six months from affiliate marketing, and the following are a six tips I’ve found that will take you from bare bones to a legit affiliate income.

1. Establish trust

Technically, you can make a few bucks here and there even by tossing out links to people who don’t know and/or like you. I think of these as “cookie toss” sales, because most affiliate setups dictate that each time a person clicks on an affiliate link, that affiliate’s cookie (which identifies the customer as “belonging” to that affiliate) overwrites any previous cookies on the customer’s computer. If you’re on Twitter during a launch and toss out a bunch of affiliate links for the product that everyone is promoting, there’s a chance that your link will be the last link someone uses before buying. You didn’t really refer the sale; you lucked into it.

A far better way to go is to actually have some credibility with your readers, audience, and peers. If you have a blog, work on building bulletproof trust with your readers. If you’re on Twitter, tweet with some integrity, and be a real person rather than a selling drone. If your people like and respect you, they will believe you when you say a product or service is worth buying.

2. Promote only products you honestly believe in

Don’t be a shill. Once you start promoting as an affiliate, you’ll quickly discover how many things are out there to promote. If you hop on every one, your people will turn away because they’re always being sold to. Worse, they won’t believe that your recommendations have any merit because you’ll recommend anything. There are plenty of good things out there, so be a true “raving fan” of a product you like rather than a hawker.

3. Don’t promise the moon (i.e. tell the truth)

No product or service is perfect, so don’t pretend it is. There is a strong tendency (especially in online marketing) to oversell. Everybody’s course will triple your income in two days; every program is guaranteed to whiten your teeth and wax your new Ferrari while filling your hot tub with supermodels. People are smarter than to believe the BS, so don’t feed it to them. (And as a bonus, if you tell the truth, you’ll sleep better at night.)

If you want to go really nuts with this principle, you can take the contrarian’s approach like I did when I promoted a course by pointing out its foibles and the fact that you may well totally fail online. (By the way, I ended up being the top-selling affiliate for that course.)

5. Disclose your affiliate relationships

This really isn’t a bonus item anymore, actually. The Federal Trade Commission is now saying that bloggers must disclose that they will make money if people buy through their affiliate links.

The good news is that disclosure can be a good thing if you’ve established trust already. Loyal readers won’t care that you’ll benefit if they believe that your praise of the product is honest, or if they were planning to buy anyway.

6. Offer bonuses

This is a great one. Recently, I offered to give my $297 Zero to Business program to anyone who used my affiliate links to buy Copyblogger’s Teaching Sells course, which I honestly think is spectacular. Because my course added almost $300 in value to their purchase, customers loved it. And because the commission for Teaching Sells exceeded the price of Z2B, I loved it.

I think the biggest, simplest key to affiliate marketing is honesty and integrity. If you lie, yes, you may make sales — but those people who were lied to will never buy through you again. If on the other hand you build relationships and tell the truth, affiliate marketing results in a natural synergy. You refer people to good products that they will enjoy and benefit from. When they buy, you benefit, too. And when they benefit, they come back to thank you from the referral. In all likelihood, they’ll trust your future recommendations in the future — and then everyone benefits again.

Hey, it beats a plain old “food, shelter, and water” existence, right?

——–

Johnny B. Truant writes about online business, turkeys, and occasionally SpongeBob SquarePants’ pet snail at JohnnyBTruant.com. He invites cool folks to join his laid-back Jam Sessions call series and to connect with him on Twitter @johnnybtruant.

Tags: affiliate marketing

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Six Ways To Make More Money As An Affiliate

Share This

Posted by Tom_C

Here’s a directly actionable tip that any large brand should probably start doing right now. In fact most people should already have started doing it. Hopefully after reading this post they will. Take a look at these two searches:

Promo Codes (US keyphrase:)

Voucher Codes (UK keyphrase)

Out of all those brand searches across both the UK and the US not a single brand ranks number 1 for their own brand keyphrase.

Yes, I was shocked too. In fact, not many of them rank on the first page of results for that query.

What to do about it?

Sure, you might be wondering how you rank for that phrase – after all you don’t want to give away free codes do you? Well why not? Create a page that offers your users a chance to get a promo/voucher code in some way. The most obvious I can think of is to offer a promo code if you sign up to an email newsletter, but if that’s too easy perhaps offering a promo code to every 5th email newsletter signup…. Or offer a promo code to anyone who fills out a feedback form…… Or offer a promo code to anyone who links to you ok I’ve gone too far!

You get the idea, if you have any sort of codes then give your users a way of getting them and make a page that can rank for that juicy branded search term. Here’s a perfect example of the kind of page I’m talking about:

Do you like this post? Yes No

Over the next week (potentially the next week and a half) ProBlogger will be in ‘guest blogging mode’.

Tomorrow morning I’m heading into a local hospital for a small procedure on my wrist which will leave my left hand out of action for a week or two.

It’s not carpal tunnel or RSI (I’m told it’s nothing to do with typing all day every day) and it’s unlikely to be anything serious. I’ll attempt to write a fuller post at some point on my personal blog about the experience.

As a result I’ve invited a small group of bloggers to take over the reins here at ProBlogger over the coming week and a bit.

Their posts will be a mixture of normal guest posts on assorted topics as well as a few ‘interviews’ with successful bloggers who have unpacked one post on their blog that has had huge traffic (telling us how it happened and what they learned through the experience).

Apart from tomorrow and possibly Tuesday I’ll be hovering (one handed) in the background, particularly on Twitter and I might even pop in for a live video streaming post during the week.

Lara will also be here moderating comments and looking after any potential problems so if you need anything urgent shoot her a Tweet.

So if I don’t see you around in the mean time – I’ll hopefully see you again in 7-10 days! Have a great week!

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

A Quick Note about the Next Week at ProBlogger

Share This

Newer Posts »