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Posted by caseyhen
Earlier this year, jtkaczuk wrote a YOUmoz post about “Using Twitter as a Sitemap”. After reading it I began to think about the power of Twitter and if using Twitter more can help indexation. Many Twitter users will tweet about new post or products on their account hoping to draw attention and links from their followers. What if this process can also help with getting more pages indexed and indexed faster? I was surprised with the results of this quick little experiment that I threw together in a few months.
Experiment Setup
- Twitter Links Only – 48 hours with no internal links and 1 tweet only from the orginal account
- Site Architecture Links Only – No tweets about product or post, only internal links and sitemaps generated
- Both Twitter & Site Architecture Links – Both tweets, internal links, and sitemaps to post or product
Experiment Warning
Experiment Data Summary
- Twitter Only Launch
- GoogleBot averaged its first visit within 78 seconds of the first tweet.
- Tweets with more than 3 RTs were indexed 325% faster, along with 125% more of its products and post indexed than tweets with no RTs.
- Average indexation of the post or product was different depending on number of RTs
- 3 or more RTs had an average indexation time of 8 hours, with 86% indexed.
- 1 or no RTs had an average indexation time of 26 hours, with 69% indexed.
- Internal Links Only Launch
- GoogleBot averaged its first visit within 2.5 hours of the first internal link on the site.
- Average indexation of the post or product was 8.5 hours, with 85% indexed.
- Both Internal Links and Twitter Launch
- GoogleBot averaged its first visit within 82 seconds of being launched.
- Average indexation of the post or product was again different depending of the number of RTs the Twitter updated received.
- 3 or more RTs had an average indexation time of 4.25 hours, with 88% indexed.
- 1 or no RTs had an average indexation time of 5 hours, with 79% indexed.
Experiment Raw Data
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Experiment Conclusion
| | Today I thought it might be fun to do a bit of a fun challenge together that draws on a number of things that I’ve previously taught here on ProBlogger (see below for what these teachings are).
The idea is to publish a post that is a list of 7 links to posts that you and others have written that respond to the following 7 categories. Your links should be to:
- Your first post
- A post you enjoyed writing the most
- A post which had a great discussion
- A post on someone else’s blog that you wish you’d written
- Your most helpful post
- A post with a title that you are proud of
- A post that you wish more people had read
You might like to add a few explanations to different links – for example to talk a little about why you enjoyed writing a post or what you like about the post on another blog that you link to or why you regret the post you regret.
The main aim of doing this challenge is to create a list post that highlights some of the posts in your archives to new readers (a sneeze page), that links out to another blog and that hopefully is a little fun (and not too much work) to do.
If you tag your posts or are going to tweet a link to it – use #7links as a tag to help the meme continue.
I’ll post my own 7 links tomorrow here on ProBlogger – stay tuned!
PS: once you’ve written your 7 link challenge post – link to it in comments below so we can take a look!
Tags: #7links
Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.
Take the 7 Link Challenge Today #7links
I asked this question over on Twitter on the weekend and it was fascinating to hear the answers and see some of the thinking behind what different people do.
I thought I’d run it as a poll and open it up for some wider discussion here on the blog.
I’d love to get your comments on this topic. Why do you do the number of tweets that you do? Why don’t you do more/less? Do you use any tolls/automation to manage it – if so which ones?
Here’s some of the responses to my tweet asking the question:
“I only tweet a link to it once. I’ll tweet a second time if theres something interesting in the comment section.” – JadeCraven
“One. Sometimes two. Three if it really rocks. But I post daily and don’t want my Twitter to be an endless ME ME ME feed.” – CatherineCaine
“I tweet my new blog posts only once…to me, more is spammy, even tho I know not everyone will see it the 1st time…” – QuipsAndTips
“I always tweet a link straight after I post.Then maybe the next day depending on the post time, for those who may have missed it” – CptTremendous
“I space it out over days/times. Maybe btw 5-8 over a weeks time.” – MyMelange
“I usually retweet about three times, one in a.m., one in afternoon, one at night. Covers time zones.” – docudramaqueen
“Depends on importance and global relevance. If really important to me & relevant also to US audience, I may tweet twice in Aus..” – divinewrite
“Once. More than once is spam and makes followers unfollow and complain.” – Shuttlecock
See a full list of the responses to my original tweet here.
Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.
How Many Times Do You Tweet Links to New Blog Posts? [POLL]
Do You Plan Your Blog Posts?
04/12/10
Time for a little reader discussion – this one inspired by a Tweet by @JessVanDen who asked:
“do you have a regular posting structure, or just post things as you think of them/find them. i.e. regular features or not?”
I’d like to widen the topic slightly and see if readers do any kind of planning of blog posts ahead of time – or whether they just blog as they sit down each day to blog?
My Answer – I try to do a bit of both each week – I look at the week ahead most Mondays and put together a bit of a plan of attack for the week – but I also tend to swap things around during the week as inspiration hits. Sometimes I’ll add extra posts into the schedule and on other occasions I might swap the plan around and post things in a different order.
What about you – do you plan your blog posts ahead of time?
Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.
I think most people worked out that my last post (ProBlogger Acquired by Google) was an April Fools Joke – however I wanted to make sure.
It was an April Fools joke!
It’s been two years since my last April Fools Day prank – last time (in 2008) I issued a press release announcing that I was starting a new company – Pay Per Tweet. Of course back then the idea of sponsored Tweets had not happened and it caused some outrage – all I can say is that I hope this year’s prank comes true too! 
The idea for this year’s joke started with a dream – a real dream where Google actually did buy ProBlogger for a new blogging platform for professional bloggers. I tweeted the dream and it got such a good reception (including from a few people who work at Google/Blogger) that I filed it away as an idea for April Fools Day.
Yesterday I decided to go for it and wrote the press release announcing the acquisition. I even went so far as to register a domain for my next business venture – FoolsMedia.com and setup a twitter account for it (funnily enough that Twitter account is already getting followers and is featured on at least a couple of Twitter lists).
Of course running an April Fools Day post on your blog has some benefits and risks.
On the negative side – some people fall for it, and fall for it hard. Today I’ve had a lot of emails, DMs, comments and even a few phone calls congratulating me on the ‘acquisition’ (and a few accusing me of selling out). I even took a call from a family member (who was very happy for me) and another from a reporter (who wanted to run a story of me selling my blog). I’ve had to follow up with a few people to make sure that they realized it was a joke – although I have to say most got it.
On the up side – the joke was a lot of fun, caused a nice ‘buzz’, was retweeted a lot (actually I think most people who were fooled were on Twitter where people just saw the headline and started RT’ing like crazy without reading the post) and even got a few incoming links from other sites who pointed it out.
A big thanks to a few people for making this possible. Firstly to Google/Blogger for their inactive part in it (although guys…. if you ever want to buy a blog about blogging…. you know where I am), secondly to Lara who had to moderate the comments when my last post went up… and lastly to everyone who read and responded to the post (whether you were fooled or not) – thanks for playing.
Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.
Google Aquisition of ProBlogger – April Fools Day Recap
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):
The book’s main point is simple: no matter how expert you may be, well-designed check lists can improve outcomes – freakonomics
been shown to increase safety, save lives and make millions. Atul Gawande is a surgeon and has worked hard to get checklists implemented in the medical profession to help save lives. He’s written a book about these checklists called The Checklist Manifesto (Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk). If you want to read more about these fascinating checklists and their incredible power I suggest you check out the FT link above or click here to read this New Yorker article written by Atul Gawande himself. Also, be sure to check out a sample from one of the medical checklists.
That said, this is the internet age – why should we be forced to read anything at all when we can instead get all the knowledge we need through a short and catch video clip? Well, here’s the short and catchy video clip of John Stewart’s interview with Atul Gawande on The Daily Show (sorry, only available to US viewers I’m afraid – c’mon guys get your act together. I can watch the show in the UK, why can’t I watch clips online from the UK?):
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Atul Gawande | ||||
| www.thedailyshow.com | ||||
|
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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
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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.
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
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
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:
- Turn off Twitter – 6 minutes an hour
- Turn off Facebook – 3 minutes an hour
- Stop checking your Traffic Stats – 2 minutes an hour
- Stop checking your AdSense Earnings – 2 minutes an hour
- Stop Tweaking your blog design – 3 minutes an hour
- Stop checking your Google Page Rank – 1 minute an hour
- Turn off Email – 5 minutes an hour
- Log out of your RSS Feed Reader – 2 minutes an hour
- Stop checking to see if someone Dugg your latest post – 1 minute an hour
- Stop checking affiliate earnings/e-book sales earnings – 2 minutes an hour
- Turn off any other Social Media Sites (LinkedIn/StumbleUpon/Plurk/Reddit etc) – 3 minutes an hour
- Turn of Skype, Gtalk and all other IM services – 4 minutes
- 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!]
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