Blog Content Provider .com

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.

Chris McElroy made a plug for BrowseRank on yesterday’s SEO Service Provider blog. Like many people in the search business, I believe that search is ready for a major innovation, but I’m not altogether sure that BrowseRank is the answer. At least, not the complete answer.

In the early days, before the Web went commercial, web pages were ranked according to how many academics thought the page was important. It made sense to do it this way because the Internet was largely a research tool for universities and the military-industrial complex. Since the majority of users were academics, more weight was placed on what academics considered weighty or important.

The second wave of what search engines considered trustworthy came when Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page invented BackRub, a tool that analyzed backlinks and use that information to rank web pages. This was a huge innovation. It was based on the previous incarnation mentioned above, but expanded on that to include links from non-academic websites. Shortly after, the Web was Google-ized and that algorithmic innovation became the norm for most search engines. New innovations that have been tried since then have tried to counter the importance of backlinks, but those innovations - every one of them - have failed to catch on popularly.

The State Of Search Today
The problem today is that many webmasters have learned to manipulate search results through uncanny backlink practices. Plus, the more-than-10-year-old algorithmic interpretation of results has made the Web a bit of a wild west due to an unprecedented increase in the number of web pages to be ranked, and a huge volume of link data to analyze, as well as a wide variety of types of websites and intent with regard to user interaction. Google’s algorithms tend to favor older sites with a lot of backlinks. That’s a problem because many newer sites are worthy of trust and recognition, but there is something to be said for longevity. So where is the balance?

The answer is, there isn’t any. Blogs and other temporal information can achieve high rankings on a short-term basis, but to achieve long-term success you’ll need to optimize your blog completely, not just each individual post. Still, there is a huge difference between the nature of a blog and the nature of a static website. So too there are huge differences between the nature of social sites like Facebook and MySpace and sites like Amazon and eBay where users may just show up, make a purchase, and leave.

Why BrowseRank Will Hurt Blogs
On the surface, BrowseRank seems like a good idea. The problem is it will tilt the weight of trust and reliability to sites where users are encouraged to remain for a long time. That doesn’t include blogs.

It is a statistical conclusion that blog readers typically read one post then they are gone. The bounce rate for blogs is very high. Many social bookmarking sites have the same problem as many bookmarkers will show up just to submit a story then leave. That this wasn’t the original purpose for bookmarking sites is irrelevant. The point is, that’s what users do. Should the sites be penalized because users don’t stick around long enough to make them more credible and “trustworthy”?

This phenomenon, of course, wouldn’t apply to Facebook or MySpace since users of those sites tend to stick around longer and use the tools available - creating applications, making friends, approving friends requests, etc. But what about auction sites and consumer sites where users just show up and buy something then leave? With BrowseRank, those sites might penalized and consumer review sites could end up ranking higher than consumer purchase sites for the same search term. Consumer blog sites would fall to the bottom.

While PageRank has its problems, I can see that BrowseRank will also have its issues. Those issues include, but are not limited to, favoritism of one type of site over another, the ease of gaming the results, and lack of human analysis since algorithms will do most of the work. Those are the same issues we have now with PageRank, but the difference will be that the problems will tilt the balance of favor from one type of site to another. Instead of older sites being favored as with PageRank, sites with lower bounce rates would be favored, but a low bounce rate is not always a bad thing.

Is There A Middle Ground Between
PageRank And BrowseRank?
I favor a combination of backlink analysis with on-site user behavior analysis. I do not necessarily mean the length of time that users remain on a site. There are other factors that are important for judging user behavior. For instance, do users tend to click internal site links or site exit links such as AdSense and display ads? If an algorithm favored the former then that might kill all those Made For AdSense sites that showcase useless keyword-stuffed content. On the other hand, it would also kill legitimate sites where the owners did a poor job of optimizing the content to encourage users to stick around longer instead of clicking the sidebar AdSense ads. That might be a good way to encourage better content.

What it necessary, I think, is a way to analyze the intended nature of a site and give weight to factors that are important to that nature. For instance, what is important for a successful blog is completely different than what is important for a successful static website. Perhaps one could be judged by the number of backlinks while the other is judged by the length of time users remain on the site. But if that static website is a consumer site where users are likely to show up and buy something then leave then perhaps it would be judged by another set of criteria entirely. This is somewhat what Google already does. Since Google analyzes over 150 search factors for any website on any given day, there is always a chance that a particular site is judged by what it does successfully AND by what it does half-heartedly or not successfully at all. It is the aggregate of the algorithmic analysis that is important, not the specific criteria.

I think we can all give kudos to MSN for attempting to take search in a new direction. MSN is certainly in a better position to challenge Google’s dominance than a new startup. The problem is that BrowseRank, in it’s current form, is incomplete. MSN could be on the right track, but before they commit to BrowseRank, they’ll need to put more thought into the nature of websites and the purpose for interaction in the first place.

A lot of people have high hopes for their AdSense blogs. Too high, actually. But that doesn’t mean you can’t make money on AdSense with your blog. I have one blog that only gets about 1/10th the clicks as other properties I own, but the income is double. How is that, you say?

No. 1, you have to choose a keyword niche that is profitable. Do your research. Find out what topics are clicked on the most and what keywords offer the highest payouts on AdSense.

But there is one other thing that you can do to increase your AdSense blog’s ROI and click through rate, no matter what the payout is on the clicks. This one thing can increase your CTR by 100%. It’s just a simple tweak and all you have to do is make this one change to your template’s CSS or php file and you’re in business.

What’s the tweak? The color of your in-text links. I’m not talking about your AdSense links. I’m assuming you know how to optimize your AdSense ads. I’m talking about your blog post links. If you don’t use links in your blog posts, that’s even better. Why tempt your readers to click a link that won’t make you money? But what if you do use links in your blog? Make sure those links don’t show up in blue like normal links. That will tempt people to click those links and they won’t click your ads. Instead, change your CSS file to make links appear the same color as your other text. That will make internal post links indistinguishable from surrounding text and you’ll get more clicks on your AdSense ads.

Need a blog ghostwriter?

Everyone needs validation, right? Well, ghostwriter Crystal Smith recently gave me mine. She said the same thing that I’ve been saying for a couple of years now, since I started writing online. And it’s almost word for word. Here are a few snippets of brilliance from Crystal’s article on blogging and article writing:

Firms that specialize in online marketing will tell you that search engine ranking is of critical importance. To compete in your industry you need to rank well on Google and, to a lesser extent, on Yahoo and MSN.

OK, so it’s not genius level. It’s a repeat of what you’ve heard a million times. It never hurts to hear it again, does it? The fact is, search engine rankings are the most important measurements of online success and have the potential to drive your business to the highest levels of achievement. It’s getting there that is the battle.

There are two keys to ranking high - optimized content and link popularity.

Once again, two things that drive your rankings. Need I repeat them? Sure: optimized content and link popularity.

The main factors involved in optimizing content are keyword relevance and volume. Keywords are the terms used by people searching the Web. If your site is particularly relevant to the keyword term, it has a better chance of ranking well in the search engine results.

Keywords are a double-edged sword. On the one hand, if you mismanage them you could get a reputation as a spammer. On the other, you’ll be limp and ineffective. Proficient optimization requires the proper use of keywords throughout your content such that your writing appears natural but has the effect of feeding search engine spiders with the necessary food to elevate your web pages in the rankings.

To gauge whether your site is relevant to a keyword term, search engines need to see a lot of content. Pages should be between 400 and 500 words long.

There is no optimal length for web pages or blog posts, but you don’t want them too small. Anything less than 400 words in today’s competitive market is too small. Feed the spiders!

You should have a page for each keyword term you want to rank for, and the keyword phrase should appear about 2% of the time on that page. But you have to avoid spamming, that is, having the keyword just appear for no apparent reason. Keywords have to be used in context.

One aspect of optimization that many inexperienced Web writers miss is the semantic language aspect. Search engines now have the ability to analyze your content and make judgments about it regarding context. Synonyms and synonymous phrases can work wonders. It makes your content look natural and less contrived. Filling your content with keywords just to rank higher will likely not achieve the goal. I do believe in optimal keyword densities, but I would not go less than 2% on any page. Going higher depends on your content, the level of competition, the specific keyword phrase you are targeting, and your ability as a writer to achieve the necessary results.

The best way to manage the keyword ratio is to write well. Don’t just try to fill space.

Didn’t I just say that?

If there are lots of links pointing to your site, you are seen as an expert in your chosen field. As people figure out the tricks of keyword optimization, inbound links are becoming increasingly important to good search engine rankings.

People don’t realize it, but all you have to do is write good content and you’ll be linked to. If you don’t have other bloggers within your niche linking to your blog after three months then you are probably not writing good enough content.

Content for this blog post was taken from an article by Crystal Smith: Crystal Smith is a professional writer who specializes in search-engine-optimized Web site copy, article writing and blog posts. Writing samples and more information are available at http://www.tigerlilymedia.ca

Want to know more about blog optimization techniques and how to use your blog as a pre-sales tool with SEO benefits? Contact Blog Content Provider today.

When it comes to business blogging, or commercial blogging, it’s not the same thing as personal blogging or blogging to make money. You are blogging to make money, but you are not trying to squeeze out revenue from your blog. You are using your blog as a marketing tool to lead people to your website so that you can close the sale and make money on your products and services. Your blog is the lead generator; your website is the salesman.

So what does your lead generation blog need in order to do its job well? Here are the three absolutely essential ingredients to make sure your company blog stands out and drives traffic to your website:

1. Quality, original content - Every day. We’re not talking about private label rights or recycled eye candy. Graphics are nice, but content is better. Eat a meal and not just a snack! Take your company talking points and turn them into a blog by getting into a real conversation with your customers about their needs and your desire to fill a niche within the marketplace. It all starts with quality, original content.
2. Links - You need to link to your website. Not just the home page either. I’m talking about real links to every page that is important on your website. And your links need to be in the body of your blog posts as well as in your sidebar blogroll. Take your important keywords and turn them into anchor text and link to each page on your website using the appropriate anchor text.
3. The right template - It can be custom-made, but it doesn’t have to be. An off-the-shelf template works just as well as long as it is SEOd properly. Your blog template needs to be crawlable so making sure that the code in your template makes it easy for the search engines to find what they need is absolutely essential. Your blog template must be able to attract a reader’s eye quickly and not drive them away, so attractiveness is important but even an ugly template with the right SEO will get you the traffic you are looking for. When it comes to getting ranked in the search engines, SEO is far more important than being pretty.

These are the three most essential elements to a successful company blog. Other things are nice, but without these three things going for you, you might as well hang it up. Everything else is gravy.

The secret is out: Trackbacks make great links. And it’s a really simple thing. Someone writes a blog post that you like and you respond on your own blog. If you use WordPress, you can copy the permalink of the blog post that you are responding to in the trackback field below the Write Post field. Your blog post will appear as a comment on the other blogger’s software Admin panel. They can approve or reject it. If they approve your trackback then your blog post will appear as a comment on their blog post, giving you a reciprocal link. If they reject your comment then you will be providing their blog with a one-way link and no reciprocal link love. Should you ever do that?

You bet. Keep in mind that one-way links are more valuable than reciprocal links, especially from relevant sites. It is considered tacky to reject trackbacks just because you want that highly coveted one-way back link. The content that appears in your comments is important too, for several reasons. But that doesn’t mean you should approve every trackback. There are times when you’d want to say “No” to that trackback. When are they?

You might reject a trackback for the following reasons:

• The comment is from a known spam site - If you know that a particular site is a known spam site, even if their trackback seems legitimate, then you might not want to approve their trackback comment.
• The trackback itself appears to be a form of spam and not really a true comment - Sometimes legitimate bloggers are guilty of spam too. It might be inadvertent or blatant. Either way, you have readers to protect.
• You are being linked to from a site whose mission and purpose you don’t agree with entirely - You have to be careful with this one. Just because you don’t agree with what they are doing doesn’t mean that everyone will disagree or that their business model is a bad one. But if it is obvious that what the blogger is doing is unethical or illegal then you shouldn’t promote it.
• The site is a non-relevant site and you don’t want to lose your blog readers to a non-relevant site - Sometimes you’ll get a link from a non-relevant site and you just don’t want to lose your visitors to that site.
• The blogger linking to you links to you too often - Some bloggers just overdo a good thing.
• The trackback is inconsistent with your comment policy - If you have a comment policy and a trackback blatantly is in violation, don’t make an exception just because it’s a trackback.
• The trackback is from a site that exists primarily for advertising - If the only content on a blog or website linking to you is advertising, other than content that you created, then don’t link back to them; this is just like spam.
• The site is a malware or warez site - Don’t send your readers anywhere you wouldn’t want to go.

These may not be the only reasons you’d want to reject a trackback comment, but these are good reasons not to keep those trackback comments alive on your site. You have readers to protect, so protect them. And protect your own reputation as well.

It is my responsibility at Blog Content Provider to ensure that bloggers are trained properly on blog optimization techniques and helping our customers achieve the results they are looking for from their blogs. One of my newest bloggers asked me recently what keyword density I want to see in my blog posts. It’s a question that one will see frequently in forums, though I admit I don’t get it as much any more. But some new bloggers still wonder about keyword density. My response is always the same.

In my view, keyword density is a poor measure of SEO success. It doesn’t really get you anywhere and the reason is because all of the search engines have a multitude of factors that they take in and consider when it comes to ranking websites for keyword positioning. You can’t rely on one factor alone and keyword density relies too heavily upon the use of keywords within your blog posts. An overly aggressive tendency to focus on keywords could lead to spammy behavior and, well, that won’t help you any - particularly when the search engines now use semantic technology to determine whether content is useful or not.

No one knows for sure what the most important ranking factors are, but through trial and error, many SEOs have discovered that some things are better than others. As a general rule, the following factors are some of the ranking factors that search engines consider when deciding where you should rank for your keywords:

• Keyword usage in your blog post title
• Keyword position within your blog post title
• Subheads with h1, h2, or h3 tags in conjunction with keyword usage
• Keyword anchor text usage
• Overall keyword usage within your blog post content
• Title attributes within your links
• Photo optimization practices like alt tags and surrounding text
• Relevant inbound links
• Quality of inbound links to your blog’s index page as well as each individual blog post
• Outbound links in your sidebar
• Dofollow vs. nofollow tags and destination pages of your blog post links, sidebar links, and comment links

In all, the search engines analyze over 200, or close to 300, ranking factors. Too much emphasis on any one or handful of these could lead to a reputation as a spammer or ineffective SEO. That’s why I try to teach my bloggers to think for themselves and to understand how their content is being read by and analyzed by the search engines for ranking purposes. Blog marketing is a long-term strategy that can result in your blog achieving high rankings for you keywords over time, but it isn’t an overnight success mission. Don’t treat it that way. Consistency, persistence, and flexibility are key characteristics to develop if you want to be a successful blogger.

Learn more about blog optimization from the blog optimization experts.

Do you write articles and submit them to article directories. What does your resource box look like? There are two issues that often strike me as being a waste of the resource box.

The first of these is the “who are you” aspect. I have read your article, liked it and now I want to know about you. Your resource box is the perfect place to tell me about you. With a little more knowledge about you, I may decide yo check out other articles that you havr written.

Issue number two.  The links in your resource box send me to your affiliate page or to a page where the article I have just read is located. Why? I want to read more of what you to have to offer, not see your affiliates and why send me back to the article I have just read.

Your resource box is the perfect place to tell me why I should read more of what you have written. If I have just read an article on grooming cats, tell me about your history with cats. If you have been a cat breeder for 20 years - tell me. If you have a cat site or blog - tell me. That is what the resource box is all about.

When it comes to links. Send me to a page that has something worth reading. If you have affiliates you want to promote, by all means put the banners in the side bar or within the content. The page you send me to should be a related article, after cat grooming, perhaps clipping their nails. Either that or to a page that has a summary of the articles you have written so I can pick and choose where I want to go.

The resource box is the perfect place to complete the ’sale’ to your reader to get them to your website. You just need to provide the right information to ‘close’ that sale. On many article directories, the resource box can also act to feed link juice back to your pages so by choosing your link page carefully yo can help to increase the rankings of that page.

Your resource box is single biggest asset you have outside the article itself. Maximize to your benefit and you will be surprised with the results. Use it poorly and you might just as well not bothered to submit the article in the first place.

Would you recognize a spam link if you saw it? They’re not that hard to notice really. I can spot one from a mile away.

Typically, bloggers who write blogs for popular search terms will receive an e-mail that goes something like this:

Hi,

Thanks for replying. I am interested in permanent placement of paragraphs on specific pages of your website. Paragraphs will be custom written and according to the content of your site.

So, I can offer you: USD 15 for each of the following pages.

This is a verbatim message I received from a spam link buyer for a website that I personally own. Below these paragraphs were a set of links to the pages this link buyer wanted to place his links on followed by, in case I couldn’t do the math, a total that he would pay for those links. I found it interesting that three of those links were for pages that I wouldn’t consider selling links for under any circumstances no matter what the price - I figured that would be obvious by the content.

1. The first page was to my e-zine opt-in page. Now why would any idiot sell links on a page where he wants to take opt-ins for his newsletter? That would defeat the entire purpose for that page. And the spam link buyer wanted his links on that page permanently. Yeah, I’m a moron. NOT!
2. The second page was a sales letter for a book that I wrote. This is a no-brainer. What used car salesman is going to take $50 to tell every customer he meets, “Go across the street; they sell more cars than we do?” Again, do I have Stupid written all over my website? Nope. Hit the next guy, Chump!
3. The third page the spam link buyer wanted me to pimp out was to a book review page. This is a page I use to write book reviews for books I like. After I praise or trash the book, I tell my readers where they can go to purchase the book. Obviously, the desired result is that they will purchase the books. Though I don’t make any money on some of them, there are books that I review where I get a commission from each sale because I’m a member of an affiliate program. Why would I lead potential customers to another website for a one-time sale?

Because this brave spam link buyer was batting .500, which isn’t bad for a major leaguer, I decided to offer him the courtesy of a response. So I told him under what circumstances I’d consider selling a link. (I really have no problem selling links, but I HAVE A BIG PROBLEM with selling spam links, as you will soon see).

My response to the Mr. Spam Link Buyer went like this:

William,

I appreciate your offer, but there are several problems with the way you have presented this. No. 1, links on three of those pages are not for sell at all. A careful review of the (Page 1), (Page 2), and (Page 3) pages will show that it would be counterproductive for me to sell links on those pages.

Secondly, I believe I could sell links on my website for much more than $15 permanent placement. It is likely that I could get $5-$10 per month per page on those pages for the right website. Then you would have to be clear about what the benefits are that you are paying for. If you are looking for PageRank transference, it is out of the question. Links would have to be nofollow links. The traffic alone would be worth it to you.

Thirdly, the links on your pages look spammy (he had the nerve to include examples of what he was talking about with his paid link scheme). I won’t involve myself in that at all. I don’t encourage more than one link per paragraph in most online content and I only link out from my website if there is a clear value to my visitors in me doing so. I would have to evaluate the content on the pages you want to link to in order to see if it would provide any value to my readers.

Finally, I would feel more comfortable with the arrangement if you provided me your anchor text and let me write the content. If I like the pages you are linking to then I will write the content to encourage my visitors to link to your site. If I don’t like it then the deal is off. I won’t recommend something just to make a dollar. I have over 20 years writing experience including academic writing, journalism, sales material, and I currently work full-time as an Internet marketer, blog ghostwriter, article writer, and SEO content writer so I can back up what I say.

Alternatively, if you want to work something out for my (deleted) blog at (deleted) then I might be more amenable to that. The price would be less there because it doesn’t have the same level of traffic as the website. But some of the same demands would be in place (though I’ll be more flexible in certain ways). Again, if I like your content then I can
offer you other benefits. But if I wouldn’t freely link to your content without you paying for it then I likely wouldn’t link to it if you do pay. That’s how I see paid link value and if you are still interested then let me know what pages you want me to link to and your anchor text then we’ll go from there.

I thought that was pretty straightforward and doggone clear. Mr. Spam Link Buyer, however, didn’t respond to any of the points. Instead, he simply responded

Hi,

Thanks for your reply. I can adjust the travel keyword link vacations with informative and non spammy links, if you think you can go ahead with this just let me know.

In other words, he wanted to put travel links on my non-travel related website. Why?

The idea behind paid links is to get additional traffic and inbound links with PageRank value (though Google frowns on the practice for the purpose of PR value). I think traffic value is a lot better than PR value even if you have a PR of 8 or 9. If your PR is that high then you probably have lots of traffic as well. But that’s why I won’t sell links for PR. I will sell them for traffic. But that is a digression.

In order to make paid links work to their best advantage for you and for your customer, the links should be to a site that is relevant in terms of content. In other words, travel sites should link to travel sites, real estate sites to real estate sites, etc. Why put travel links on your real estate site? Unless the travel site you are linking to is local to you and provides real benefit to your website visitors it just doesn’t make sense.

If a reader can go to your website and tell a marked difference in the tone, voice, quality of writing, and subject matter from one paragraph to another on the same page then you have a credibility problem. How much is it worth to you to ruin your credibility? Well, that’s what spam links do for you.

Sunday, Blog Content Provider talked a little bit about link strategy among network blogs. I want to elaborate a little more on that subject today. Specifically, I’ll quote a paragraph from our post that day:

Circle jerks, where you have blog a link to blog b that links to blog c that links to blog d and blog d links to blog a won’t work anymore either.

At one time, that was a popular linking strategy. I wouldn’t try it today. The circle jerk strategy came about as a way to circumvent Google’s reciprocal link algorithm. Because reciprocal links are not considered as valuable as one-way links, webmasters invented the the three-way link. Site A links to Site B, which links to Site C. Over time, that got a little more complicated and soon you had circle jerks that consisted of 15 or 20 sites. Well, Google has figured out the game and changed its algorithms to stop that from happening. Surprised?

Don’t be. It’s not the first time and it likely won’t be the last. But there is another type of funky link strategy that you don’t want to try any more and it’s for the same reason. Let’s make it simply by taking six websites lettered from A to F and I’ll illustrate the web-structured link pattern.

• Site A links to Sites B, D, and F
• Site B links to Sites C and E
• Site C links to Sites A, D, and F
• Site D links to Sites B and E
• Site E links to Site A
• Site F links to Sites B, D, and E

Let’s further complicate this by saying that none of the sites are related to each other in content or subject matter. The only thing holding them together is that they are owned by the same person or group of persons. You might as well just get rid of all of these links because they won’t help you, and they might even hurt you in the long run.

The reason is because Google is placing even more importance on relevance with its latest (re: last week) PageRank update. Over the last few months, I’ve noticed fewer and fewer links from some blogs that I own and that are a part of NameCritic’s network were being counted in my link popularity numbers from Google. I became suspicious at the beginning of the summer when I saw links that before were counted and then weren’t. My suspicions proved correct. Google was discounting these links from non-relevant sites with higher PR on the basis of their non-relevance.

What that means on a practical level is that you should link your blog only to other relevant blogs with similar content, or your own website. The practice of linking blogs that are owned by the same person or network of persons isn’t going to be allowed. That means it’s time to get creative, and I mean really creative, with your link patterns.