Blog Content Provider .com

Andy Beal recently appeared on ABC News to promote his new book about reputation management. One of the things that he suggests for reputation management is a blog. We couldn’t agree more.

In fact, a blog is one of the most important reputation management tools you can have. The daily posts will keep your name in front of search engines and humans for a long time. Every blog post is counted as a separate web page in the search engines and since search engines index web pages, not websites, every time you post a new blog post you are essentially adding one more page to the search engines’ indexes. That’s one more hurdle for those trying to destroy your reputation.

The best reputation management is a pre-emptive strike. If you spend a little bit of time every day doing something online that will get your name and/or company name in the search engines then that will go a long way to combating negative information submitted by someone else. There is no guarantee, of course, that negative information won’t rise to the top, but you can reduce the chances of that happening by having your very own blog. In fact, we recommend a personal blog as well as a company blog. Both can go a long way to combating negative, reputation-damaging information online.

While Blog Content Provider paved the way into business blog ghostwriting, there are other services up and coming. We welcome them. It keeps us on our toes. But we’ve also noticed that most of these companies charge more than we do. Recently, a competitor engaged in a spam tactic that I think you all should know about.

Trackbacking is a legitimate practice that involves linking to another blog and the post from which you link appears as a comment on that other blog. Examples of this practice abound. But there are ways to game trackbacking and scam unsuspecting bloggers into approving an illegitimate trackback that is nothing more than spam.

It happened this way for us: On our Mortgage and Real Estate Blog I recently found a trackback that needed an admin approval (I highly recommend that you set your blog settings to require approval before all comments go live). You should also visit every site by a commenter or trackbacker to ensure the site is good. If the site itself doesn’t meet your approval then don’t approve the comment or trackback. I always do this.

When I visited the trackbacking site by clicking on the URL provided, I perused the blog post of the company feigning a legitimate trackback. The problem was that there was no link in the blog post leading back to our blog. In other words, they programmed their blog software to make it appear as if they were trackbacking to our blog, but the link wasn’t there. It was hidden. That way, the search engines see it, but human visitors do not, cutting off all traffic from their blog to ours. If I’d approved the trackback then the relationship between their blog and ours would have been one sided. They would have benefited from our traffic, but we would not have benefited from theirs.

This is called cloaking. It’s a practice that all of the search engines frown upon. It’s also a widespread practice by devious webmasters who try to gain an advantage in ways that are unfair. If your blogging company engages in this practice then I highly recommend that you drop them immediately and use a company that engages in legitimate and search engine approved tactics.

This trackbacker operating under the veneer of legitimate practices was a blog ghostwriting competitor trying to target real estate agents with their services. Beware of these types of spamming operations. They will hurt your business more than help it.

Spammers used to just pick up your articles at article directories and slap them on a Blogspot blog with AdSense. Or they’d use WordPress and trackback to your blog in hopes that you’d approve the trackback and send traffic to click on their ads. Now they’re getting even more clever than that.

I recently found an article I wrote on a plain blog, no ads. The spammer included by author resource box with all links intact. So far, so good. But I noticed that right in the middle of the article, throughout the article, the spammer inserted nonrelevant sentences with nonrelevant links pointing to other web pages that contained their AdSense ads. How clever.

I’m sure this is in violation of Google AdSense guidelines. I know it’s in violation of article directory guidelines and search engine guidelines. If this happens to you, report the offending website to each search engine and to Google AdSense. It’s a small measure, but one that might go a long way to clean up unwanted spam.

Online marketing is about finding a niche and building on it. You could say harping on it. Blog Content Provider has been showing businesses how to capitalize on niches for over two years now. As many online marketers are talking about the increasing difficulty of marketing online, we’re talking about how increasingly easy it is becoming. It is easy - if you know how.

The problem with most companies is they don’t know how. Company after company come to us to start a blog only to find out that there is a power play between the management and the marketing department. The fact is, most company marketing departments are not successful at marketing their company’s website online. They may be great at traditional marketing, but online marketing isn’t traditional marketing.

Off line you can integrate all of your marketing efforts seamlessly under one department. Online, it is better to segregate your efforts into niches. A television campaign that highlights the benefits of doing business with your company can work wonders, but you are better off online targeting each division of your company to the target market that is interested in that doing business with that niche. If you market your company this way then you could end up with 50 or 100 blogs in addition to 50 or 100 separate websites - one for each division of your company. That OK. You’ll be much more effective that way.

You don’t have to set up all 50 of your websites and blogs in one day. Start with one. When you see the results you’ll be amazed and you’ll share your success story with other department heads. We know. We’ve seen it many times. I’m sure we’ll see it again.

In a forum the other day I had an interesting conversation with a couple of marketers. They believe somehow that content isn’t king. In fact, one of them went so far as to say that links are king. But if you try to build links to a web page with no content then Google is going to have a hey-day with you. My view is that links are just another form of content - off-page content.

Links are important, but on-page content should always be your starting point. Some people think that quantity of content is what makes or breaks your site or blog. Not true. Quality of content is far more important. But quantity does help. Especially on a blog.

Google will only rank one page on a website for a particular key phrase. Which blog post do you want that to be? Preferably, it will be your blog’s index page. But you won’t get your index page ranked highly on Google for popular key phrases without targeting that key phrase consistently over time. We’ve proven that you can do this. Yes, it takes time. And the more competition you have for your key phrase, the longer it will take.

At Blog Content Provider, we don’t discourage alternate ways of driving traffic and making money. But we do encourage using the search engines to take advantage of the natural, free ways you can rank your pages. Consistent daily blogging is one of those ways. We’ve done it time and time again, and we’ll keep doing it as long as it works.

Audio blogging hasn’t caught on yet, but it will. It’s just a matter of time. All it requires is a microphone, which is built into most laptops now, and the software to record your voice. Audacity is a free software that can take care of that for you. With WordPress and its podcast plugin, you can have your very own audio blog.

To create an audio blog all you need to do is set up WordPress the way you would an ordinary blog and install PodPress, the plugin. Download Audacity then take an article that you’ve written and record yourself reading the article. You should also be able to find some free music that won’t require permission or a copyright notice to use as an and opening and closing theme. After you’ve got your podcast edited to your satisfaction, upload it through PodPress and write a description of 50-100 words to give the search spiders something to feed on. Otherwise, they won’t know your podcast is there. Save and publish and you now have an audio blog post. That simple.

Need a blog consultant?

You set up a blog for your business, but you don’t see any visible signs of it making you money. Could it be that it is earning its keep, but you just don’t see it? Here are some ways you can make money on your blog without promoting the competition:

• Search Engine Optimization - SEO is a form of payment. Whether you are increasing your page saturation with the search engines or driving up your PageRank with links, you are indeed paying yourself with SEO benefits. By capturing key phrases in the search engines for your important keywords, you are keeping your blog in the limelight for years. Keep blogging and benefits will be there. Just remember, SEO is payment.
• Sell Advertising - But not to your competition. If you look around on your blog you will likely find some real estate that is just sitting there not earning a dime. Maybe you sell that space to a partner, supplier, or other industry player that doesn’t compete with you directly.
• Pay Per Click Advertising - It can be Google AdSense, Yahoo! Search Marketing, or one of the other PPC providers such as AdBrite. Contextual advertising is here to stay. Instead of selling ad space to industry players, just put up some ads that will pay you by the click. This is less lucrative, but easier to set up and less work. But make sure that this isn’t the main focus of your blog. You still want to drive traffic to your website and close sales.
• Affiliate Programs - Join a few affiliate programs and place affiliate ads on your blog. Again, these shouldn’t be your primary focus, but it doesn’t hurt to capture exit traffic and make money on them. They’re leaving anyway, right? Why not capture them as they leave?
• Sell A Digital Product - Create an e-book or a podcast and sell it through your blog. This can be an additional offering that you make through your blog posts and in your sidebar.
• Promote Your E-zine or Newsletter - If you publish a newsletter or e-zine, place your opt-in box prominently on your blog. Then you can use your e-zine to sell and promote your products, services, and affiliates. This is highly effective.

Keep in mind that the primary purpose of your business blog is to drive traffic to your website to close the sale. Anything else you do may run the risk of diminishing that goal. It is usually best to limit the exit holes on your blog and focus on driving traffic where it will be most effective in closing sales. But it’s your blog.

When it comes to commercial blogging, there is more than one way to skin the mountain lion. Here are a few types of blogs that others have set up in the past:

• Made For AdSense - A Made For AdSense blog is a blog that you set up specifically to showcase AdSense ads. The content is there to attract organic search visitors for specific keywords and doesn’t really have to be that great. In fact, most of these blogs do not have good content at all because the owners really want their visitors to click the ads.
• Affiliate Blogs - An affiliate blog is set up to specifically promote one or more affiliate programs. You do want the content on these blogs to great content. You are not really selling the products that you are affiliates for. You are pre-selling. Your goal is to spark an interest in the product and drive traffic to the affiliate program’s website. When a visitor from your blog makes a purchase then you are paid a commission because your link has your own special affiliate ID code embedded in it.
• Onsite Company Blog - Your ownsite company blog is designed to be the face and voice of your company. You want good, solid content on this blog because every post is a separate web page that gives organic searchers a chance to find your company. Great for SEO, these blogs add fresh, daily content to your existing static website and that invites the search engine spiders to your site to crawl it more often.
• Offsite Promotional Blog - This type of blog is similar to a company blog, but it has a standalone web address. You definitely want to update this blog every day and add fresh content daily. Best used as a link building tool, the offsite promotional blog is very effective in driving traffic to individual pages on your company website. Through each blog post and through sidebar links, you can drive traffic right to where you want it to go.
• Product Promotions Blog - This type of blog is designed to promote one specific product or suite of products. You want the blog to have a name associated with the product that you are promoting. It can be “sponsored” by your company or be disassociated with your company, but its main goal is to promote the one product or family of products that you wish to promote. It can be on your company’s static website or have its own standalone web address.
• Industry Dialogue Blog - The Industry Dialogue Blog is designed to address important topics within your industry. The focus can be on your competitors, partners, and/or suppliers, or it can be on the industry itself. You can encourage dialogue within your industry or simply use the blog as a platform for addressing important topics within the industry.
• Customer Service Blog - A customer service blog is usually a part of your company’s website, but it doesn’t need to be. It’s primary focus is on delivery timely news on aspects related to your customers. It should communicate items of interest that any customer or prospect would be interested in and be used to provide better service and to solicit feedback on your service from your customers.
• Department Blog - Sometimes you have a department head who wants to address issues related to his department. In today’s complex, global business environment, you may have people within your department in different geographic regions who need to receive the same information. You can communicate that information through a department blog.

A blog can be used for any purpose, really. The important thing is that you communicate with the right audience in the right way. Need help setting up your blog? Just let us know.

If you’ve been blogging and bookmarking for any time at all you’ve likely heard that social media traffic receives a high bounce rate. I have seen that in some cases, but I recently checked my traffic at some of the social media sites that I frequent and I’ve found that just the opposite is true. The following statistics represent traffic from popular social media sites within the last month for a blog that I write for poetry, a popular blog within that niche.

Reddit = 20% bounce rate
Delicious = 25% bounce rate
Furl = 26.67% bounce rate
StumbleUpon = 36.62% bounce rate
LitMixx = 50% bounce rate
Mixx = 57.14% bounce rate

All of these bounce rates are well below the average for blogs, which tend to have high bounce rates by nature. Most blogs are around 80% bounce rate due to people just reading one post and moving on. It’s interesting to note that my bounce rate from Technorati and BlogCatalog are both considerably higher - 71.43% at each site. Likewise, at forums targeted specifically to the poetry niche market, I have higher bounce rates (75% at one), and my bounce rate from other poetry blogs are also high, some of them reaching to 75% or 80%. What gives?

I’d also like to note that my bounce rate at Digg is 100%, but I’ve only had one visit from Digg in the last month (I’ve concluded that Digg is not a good place for bookmarking my poetry site).

Traffic Figures Unveiled
Before moving on, I’d like to point out what my traffic numbers at these sites are (you’ll see that some of them are quite low):

Reddit = 5
Delicious = 8
Furl = 15
StumbleUpon = 822
LitMixx = 2
Mixx = 7

You could argue that the sampling from most of these sites is too small to be really analyze the data effectively, but I disagree. One would expect that the higher the traffic number from any traffic source would increase the bounce right, but that hasn’t been the case at StumbleUpon. In fact, I’ve historically received high traffic numbers from the StumbleUpon community. But I’ve seen my bounce rate get lower and lower. I think that’s very significant.

LitMixx is a new social community that I started within the Mixx umbrella. It’s focus of course is on literary bookmarking - poetry, fiction, journalism, nonfiction, etc. It’s only about a week-and-a-half old so the data is very fresh and I don’t have a full month of data to analyze, but what I do have is significant, particularly since there are only 6 members in the community right now. I’ve only just started promoting it.

My big surprises are with Reddit and Furl. I really did not expect to get as much traffic from Furl as from other sources such as Delicious and Mixx. I consider those communities much more interested in arts and literary topics. I guess not. But Reddit is the real surprise because it’s mostly a news site and if I got any traffic from it at all I’d be happy. What I sense from these numbers is that Reddit users will only click a link to visit a site if they’re really interested in the topic, but if they click on a link and read the material then they are more likely to stick around if they like something. Reddit users, in other words, are more conscientious. I’m going to have to do more experimenting with Reddit.

Critical Factors For Social Bloggers
I believe my lowering bounce rate at StumbleUpon can be credited to just one thing: Consistency. I have been a consistent poetry blogger for almost a year now. And during that 11 months I have Stumbled blog posts on a regular basis. I have attracted the following of several of my friends who vote on and comment on many of the posts. Even people who are not regular readers of poetry blogs like my blog because

• It’s attractive
• I write interesting posts
• Though I write on literary topics, I do not write “stuffy” literati stuff that is over the average layperson’s head
• I write every day, but only Stumble posts occasionally (in other words, I don’t spam them)

I think these are critical factors. If you have an attractive blog with interesting writing then you’ll attract more followers. Social media users in particular care about the writing style of your blog posts. I’m talking about people are interested in more than just “share yours and I’ll share mine.” I’m talking about people who care about real content that is interesting, lively, and well written. The StumbleUpon community is largely made of people who are there because they like the interaction with other people who care about good content. The same with the Mixx community; that’s why I’m excited about the new literary community I’ve created in LitMixx. I’m anxious to see how well it does.

New Visits And Average Time On Site
A study of the new visitors and the time they spend on my blog is just as interesting as the traffic and the bounce rate are. Consider these numbers:

Reddit = 0% new, 5:21 average time on site
Delicious = 12.51% new, 2:56 average time on site
Furl = 6.67% new, 9:04 average time on site
StumbleUpon = 90.39% new, 1:23 average time on site
LitMixx = 100% new, 1:52 average time on site
Mixx = 28.57% new, 6:20 average time on site

Again, I’m surprised by Reddit. All five of my visitors from that site within the last month had visited the blog before. Either they are subscribers (which I have no way of knowing), or they are friends of mine from another social site, or they have visited the site before from a link saved to Reddit. Whichever the case, they spent a lot of time on the site. Only one of them bounced (left the blog without sticking around to read more than one post) and the average pages the five visited was 3.0. Incredible!

Note that these numbers only reflect a modest number of bookmarks at each site. For instance, since July 9, I’ve bookmarked at each of the above sites this many times:

Reddit = 2
Delicious = 4
Furl = 3
StumbleUpon = 3
Mixx = 4

While these numbers represent how many times my poetry blog has been knowingly saved at these sites by myself or someone else, they do not represent how much time I’ve spent voting for other sites submitted by others or making friends and networking. The time I spend at StumbleUpon on those activities is far more than what it is at any of the others, though this may change since the start of LitMixx.

StumbleUpon, I’m convinced, is the best place to go if you want new visitors to your website, but be prepared for those visitors not sticking around very long. I see StumbleUpon as much like sending out a direct mail piece. You might send out a lot of mailers and get just a meager response. But from those who do respond, if your content is solid then you’ll see some fabulous results. That’s been my experience.

Looking at the bounce rate of the poetry-related forums and blogs that I comment on, I’d say that the small amount of traffic that I get from those is due to the trust that other bloggers have with their readers. But the high bounce rate can be attributed to a higher degree of discrimination with regard to tastes among those who have a higher interest in the topic. In other words, poets tend to know more about what they like and don’t like with regard to poetic commentary whereas non-poets who read about literary topics may enjoy reading an in-depth analysis of a topic even if they are not as familiar with it because they’ll have less to disagree with.

Conclusions
Bottom line conclusion: I think social media bookmarking works if you do it consistently long-term. Most people still only bookmark their content occasionally. I bookmark my content somewhere every day, though I don’t bookmark it at the same place everyday (and I think that is vitally important). Another thing that makes a big difference is the number of friends you make at the social sites you frequent. At those sites where you have fewer friends, you’ll likely get less traffic and higher bounce rates. At those sites where you have more (and more loyal) friends, you are more likely to get more traffic and lower bounce rates.

These results may reflect what literary blogs are capable of, but one other aspect to consider in bookmarking is making sure you approach the right target. Where you bookmark makes a huge difference. Diggers have less interest in poetry, for instance, than Mixxers and Stumblers. They have a greater interest, however, in technical topics. And I’d always consider that.

The latest trend in blog marketing is guest blogging. It’s really nothing new. Newspapers, magazines, websites, and publications of all kinds have featured guest writers for hundreds of years. Now, you can promote your own website and blog through someone else’s by becoming a guest blogger. Here’s how:

• Read a lot of blogs in your niche - Subscribe to every blog within your niche that you can find. At the very least, read the top 10 or 20.
• Take note of the latest trends - Know what people are interested in.
• Comment on blogs - Become a commenter, but not an annoying one. Don’t just comment for the sake of commenting. But when a topic comes up that piques your interest, comment on that blog post. This will give bloggers an idea of who you are so that when you express an interest in being a guest blogger then they will already be familiar with you.
• Respond to queries - Many blog owners who plan to use guest bloggers will run a notice on their own blogs first. It makes sense to start with your own readers. When you see a notice asking for guest bloggers, toss in your name.
• Be courteous and professional - Always be nice. You’re on someone else’s property.
• Don’t wait - Don’t wait for an invitation. If you have something to say and you’ve already been a regular reader for some time who has left comments and participated in the community, send a short, friendly query to the blog owner asking if they use guest bloggers. Don’t be pushy. After sending the e-mail, sit back and wait. A blog owner may be on vacation or be busy and can’t get back to you in a few days. Be patient and your answer will come. Be prepared for “No” and don’t be disappointed if you are told “No.” The blogger may decide to use guest bloggers in the future and you could be their first choice.

Many blog owners use guest bloggers. Usually, you’ll get an author bio and a link back to your own blog, a real meaningful benefit that often leads to new readers, more traffic, and higher conversions.

Interested in guest blogging for Blog Content Provider? Send an e-mail to allen at articlecontentprovider dot com. You might also ask about guest blogging opportunities for the Article Marketing Blog.