Blog & Ping Traffic

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Question: Does pinging more websites increase your blog traffic?

Not really.A  All pinging does is get other websites, search engines and directories to crawl your blog and add your content to their databases faster.A  But pinging them won’t really put you in the top of their search or directory listings.

Unless ofcourse, you are the first one to break a story.A  If you blog about current affairs, many of these websites and search engines that you ping will show your post at the top when people search for the hot news.

Here is the list of all the websites I ping (posted alphabetically):

A http://1470.net/api/ping
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://bblog.com/ping.php
http://bitacoras.net/ping
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC
http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc
http://blogmatcher.com/u.php
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt
http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/
http://ping.amagle.com/
http://ping.bitacoras.com
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc
http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/
http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.myblog.jp
http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://ping.weblogs.se/
http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2
http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/
http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://rpc.newsgator.com/
http://rpc.pingomatic.com
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php
http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b
http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.blogoole.com/ping/
http://www.blogoon.net/ping/
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1
http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php
http://www.blogsnow.com/ping
http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
http://www.mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatter/ping.php
http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud
http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php
http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php
http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2
http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/
http://xmlrpc.blogg.de
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

If you use WordPress to blog, simply go to Options > Writing under your admin panel and update your ping list with the links above. It doesn’t hurt.A  And if you are amongst the first few blogs that publishes a post about a new or unique phrase, you’ll generate a lot of traffic.

Goal: Make 100% of All Web Surfers Use FireFox

I was checking my blog statistics in detail and came upon something that shocked me!

More than 13% of my blog visitors didn’t use the most amazing of all browsers:

FireFox!

So I asked my man Sherief to create a down-and-dirty script that would change that. He came up with a cool javascript code.

1. Just upload the .js file to your server,
2. place a code on your blog pages,
3. and anyone who visits your blog using a non-FireFox browser will see a float ad on the top-right corner of the page that asks them to download FireFox!

And yes, I’m using the Google Adsense FireFox code. So… for every person who clicks on the ad and downloads FireFox, I will earn $1!

I’ll actually get paid in my quest to make 100% of web surfers use FireFox! How cool is that?

I’ve been testing the javascript code since the past week. And have finally decided to make it available for free to everyone. No catch. But because of lack of time, no support will be provided for this script. Don’t worry, its fairly easy to install.

Live Demonstration:

Visit this blog through a non-FireFox browser and you will see the FireFox float ad in action at the top right corner of this page.

Action Summary:

• Download the ff100.zip file and install the script on your blog / website.
• Pass this script to your other blogging friends.

Oh and… This script is beer-ware. If you use it, please consider buying me a beer.

Link Clout # 4

1. How to Find and Target Long Tail Keywords for More Search Engine Traffic - By Maki

2. How To Increase Your Adsense Earnings - by Jane May

3. Decrease Your Page Load Time to Save Traffic - by Mani

Disguising Ads & Full Disclosure

Do you remember those Kevin Trudeau infomercials on TV? Where some one interviews him and he sells his books?

Do you think that there is anyone in the world who saw those ads and thought that it was a real interview? That Kevin didn’t pay for it himself? I doubt it. Yet - did it affect Kevin’s sales? Not one bit.

Ads that look like interviews
work better than
ads that look like ads.

Even if it doesn’t fool people.

The Disguised Ads started gaining traction in the direct response marketing world. When master copywriters like Eugene Schwartz and Ben Suarez and Gary Halbert started writing sales letters and ads that read like newspaper articles. You couldn’t make out the difference between their articles and the real articles in a newspaper. Except that their articles had a call-to-action that asked people to buy something.

These disguised ads worked like gangbusters. But many readers complained. The newspapers shouldn’t deceive their readers by letting them believe that one of their ads is actually an article.

The newspapers listened to their readers. And most of them now add “Advertisement” or some such heading to any disguised sales letter that they run.

But do these “Advertisement” Headings decrease sales?
Not one bit!

The Blog Disclosure Debate

Many bloggers have embraced this disguise-ads-increase-response idea. They publish entire blog posts because some one pays them to do so.

And because of this, there is a huge uproar in the blogosphere.

1. Should bloggers publish disguisded blog posts?
2. If they do publish such paid posts, should they add a disclaimer letting people know that they’ve been paid for that post?

Quite a few bloggers and blog readers are against commercializing their blogs. And disguised-blog-posts is a BIG No-No in their books.

On the other hand, bloggers who already publish disguised blog posts don’t want to add any kind of disclaimer. Because they believe that will reduce their readership and sales.

My opinion?

• It is ok to disguise your ads as posts. But don’t sell your soul to make a quick buck. Make sure the ad is relevant for your readers.
• And remember this rule of thumb: you should have 4 good original posts for every 1 disguised ad. (80% authentic content for every 20% ad-content.)
• And always add a disclaimer to paid posts. They will not harm your sales. But will keep a few readers happy. And prevent a back-lash.

About Ankesh Kothari

• Can’t small talk
• Disorganized
• But gets the things done
• Voracious reader
• Part time writer
• Started his first venture at the age of 15
• Started his first website in May 2002 (Grew it to 530+ subscribers in its first 3 weeks)
• Started his first blog on 10th June , 2004
• Runs multiple blogs, newsletters and websites (but is in the process of closing a few of them)
• Good at solving hard problems
• MBTI personality: INTx
• Tends to write in bullet points sometimes
• Is a vegetarian
• Loves travelling
• Has traveled extensively all over India, North America and Western Europe
• Currently resides in Mumbai, India

Action Summary:

• Let me know a bit more about you by posting a comment

Review: Made To Stick

Question: How to write crackling blog posts so that your readers will pass it on to their friends and link to it from their blogs?

Years ago, I had read “Psychology of Rumor.” It was written in textbook style: dry and boring to read. But the lessons were very interesting. The book analyzed rumours and came up with a few common factors that most rumours shared. It allowed anyone to reverse engineer their messages to make it as viral as rumours.

But not many people could get past the first 20 pages of the book - let alone finish reading it. zzzzzz… It was an extremely boring book written solely for researchers on redbull.

Yesterday, I finished reading “Made To Stick.” The purpose of this book is quite similar to “Psychology of Rumor.” Two brothers - Chip and Dan Heath - researched what makes ideas stickier. What makes some ideas famous? They came up with 6 common themes that super hit ideas share. These 6 themes allow anyone to reverse engineer their ideas and make them more sticky. More pass-able.

But unlike Psychology or Rumor, Made to Stick won’t put people to sleep. Infact, its one of the most un-boring books I’ve ever read. Its choke full with stories and anecdotes. Very well researched. And lays down the ideas in a supremely systematic manner.

Why Should Bloggers Read Made To Stick?

I would recommend each and every blogger to read Made To Stick. Why? Because the book gives you a checklist that you can use to make your blog posts stickier. Make your readers pass on your posts. Link to it. Bookmark it. Blog about it.

How to Make Your Blog Posts Sticky

The book lays down the SUCCESs formula for making your ideas sticky:

1. Simple
2. Unexpected
3. Concrete
4. Credible
5. Emotional
6. Stories

Here is a brief review of the chapters of the book - with blogging applications.

1. Simple. Make your blog posts simple. Just focus on one topic per blog post. And make sure that each of the sentence you write relates back to your core topic.

2. Unexpected. Start off with something very unexpected. Something that

b-r-e-a-k-s
people’s
reading
patterns.

Something that makes people pay attention to your blog post and read it. Some ideas: Post an unusual picture. Start off with an experiment. Involve people with a quiz. Start with a question that your blog post answers.

3. Concrete. Make it easy for people to visualize your ideas and posts. (The exact reason behind calling the PayPal donation plugin - Buy me a beer plugin instead of Donate money plugin.) Use analogies. Parallels. Metaphors. Pictures. Tangible ideas makes it easy for people to understand remember your blog posts.

4. Credible. Make your blog as well as all your posts credible. Give specific details and quote experts to make your post credible. Add testimonials and show the number of people who comment on your blog to make your blog seem credible. Improve your crediblity and people will believe in you - and agree with you more often.

5. Emotional. One of the hardest thing to do is to raise a reaction out of people. One easy trick to touch people’s hearts is writing for one single person. Use a lot of “You” in your blog posts. Use powerful words and phrases instead of weaker overused cliches.

6. Stories. Tell stories and anecdotes to make your point. People will forget theory. But they won’t forget stories that convey the same message as those theories. Stories are a powerful means to make people take action.

Book Score:
Ease of Reading: 9/10
Ideation: 8/10*
Practical Knowledge: 10/10
Worth the Price: 10/10
Overall Score: 9.5/10

* This book doesn’t provide a lot of new ideas.A  But it puts forth the old ideas in a novel and systematic fashion.A 

Usually, I tell people to borrow their books. But this is one book you shouldn’t borrow. But buy. Because you’ll be referring to it again and again. Its one book all writers and blog authors should have in their library.

You can buy the book Made To Stick from Amazon.com

If you have already read the book, do let me know how you liked it.

SEO Strategy for Blogs

Disclosure: I’m a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) klutz. I don’t focus on SEO a lot. Neither do I keep up with the current SEO tricks and tactics. But I was going through my website statistics for last week and found that a whole 4.28% of traffic now comes from search engines! So thought, may be you will find what I do for SEO… mildly helpful.

Pie-Graph showing Traffic Sources for BlogClout.com/blog. Image from Google Analytics.

4 SEO Steps I Focus on:

1. Having Good Title Pages
Many blogs have their page Titles in the following format:

[Blog Name] - [Blog Post Title]

Which doesn’t make good sense. For the search engines as well for website visitors. When people bookmark your page, your post title will often be cut off. And people won’t know what they’ve bookmarked after a couple of weeks. Make it easier on people. Always use the following format for all your blog post Title Pages.

[Blog Post Title] - [Blog Name]

I also make sure that the Title of the blog posts have relevant keywords: words that people might search for.

2. Making Sure All the Blog Posts & Pages are Crawled by Search Engines
How will the search engines send you traffic if they haven’t even indexed your blog properly? It is essential to make sure all your blog posts and content is crawled by the search engine bots. So how do you do that?

You create a “sitemap” for your blog - a xml page that has links to all the blog posts and pages on your domain name.

• WordPress users can use this plugin to automate the creation of these sitemaps: Google Sitemap Generator for WordPress
   
• For blogs on other platforms, you could try using this Online XML Sitemap Generato. (Note: I haven’t used this online tool. So am not sure how good it is.)

Another minor thing I do is tend to link to old blog posts from new ones. I’m not sure if this helps search engine rankings (probably letting search engines know that the old posts are still relevant today). But it surely helps in increasing my page views.

3. Focusing on Creating Good “Linkable” Content
The more blogs and websites that link to you, the higher your search engine rankings will be. So focusing on creating excellent content that others would be happy to link to is the key to search engine success.

Before starting to post regularly on this blog, I made a goal.

Create atleast one “super blog post” every 2 weeks.

Note: content does not only mean articles. One of the most linked blog post on my blog is the Buy Me a Beer plugin post.

Here are a few other ideas for creating excellent linkable content.

4. Focusing on the Long Tail of Keywords
Out of the 139 visitors from search engines this blog received last week, the first most popular search term is searched 13 times. But the second most popular search term is searched only 3 times.

Most people found this blog through search engines using keywords and phrases that no one else used.

So how to find the long tail of keywords and phrases?

i. Find out what blog posts are most popular on your blog (Use a web analyzing tool. I rely on Google Analytics.)

ii. Pick up key phrases from that post. Take help from the keyword list that your web analyzing tool provides you with - the terms people have used till now to find your blog.

iii. Write more blog posts on those key phrases.

iv. Use a tool like Good Keywords to find related keywords to your top phrases. And write blog posts using those phrases too.

Alternatively, you can sign up for a service like HitTail and add a code to your blog. And let them find a list of relevant long tail keywords for you automatically.

SEO Things I *don’t* focus on:

• Meta data.
• Asking people to link using specific key words.
• Giving a hoot to page ranks and SEO mumbo-jumbo.
• Creating link farms, asking for reciprocal link exchanges, or paying for links on high page rank websites.

Further Reading:

As I said, I’m a SEO klutz. If you really want to focus on SEO, then you may find these links helpful:

• Google’s Guide to increasing your search engine ranking
   
• SEO Book Blog by Aaron Wall (Aaron has also written a superb book on SEO. You may want to buy that if you are really serious about increasing your blog traffic through search engines.)

Action Summary:
(My SEO Strategy in 2 sentences:)

1. Create good valuable “linkable” content
2. Make it easy for the search engines to find the content

Do you have any easy SEO trick to share? Please add your tip to the comments.

Quote: Blog Mastery

I have about 7 half baked blog posts ready. But haven’t had time to polish and publish them. Have been extremely busy since the past couple of days. So I’ll just publish a powerful quote for today:

“I believe the true road to preeminent success in any line is to make yourself master in that line. I have no faith in the policy of scattering one’s resources, and in my experience I have rarely if ever met a man who achieved preeminence in money making.. certainly never one in manufacturing.. who was interested in many concerns.”
- Andrew Carnegie

Action Summary:

• Focus in just one field.

Co-Opetition

Here is an article I wrote for another business oriented website. It is fairly long, but quite interesting. And the lessons are relevant to blogging too…

Co-Opetition = persuading your competition to co-operate with you for mutual benefit.

1.

Michael Winicki is a successful serial entrepreneur. He finds promising products that aren’t selling well, creates a marketing plan for them and sells them for a hefty profit.

As paradoxical as it sounds, one thing Michael learnt over the years is: if the product has no competitor, the product won’t sell well.

If Michael comes across a product that is very innovative, but finds that there is no competition selling something similar, he drops the product in a jiffy. 99 times out of 100, lack of competitors is a sign of a lack of market.

2.

“Nothing stirs the heart more than a healthy dose of competition.”

When Alexander - prince of Macedonia - was young, his father King Philip started looking for the best private tutor who could mold Alexander into a smart adult. Philip found Aristotle.

But Aristotle refused to teach Alexander alone. Refusing a lucrative offer from the king? That had never been done before!

But Aristotle remained firm: he would teach young Alexander only if Philip would find a few other students the age of Alexander who could study and compete with him. Aristotle knew that without competition, Alexander wouldn’t become all he could be.

Ptolemy and Selecus both studied with Alexander and became his best generals and trusted advisors. And they went on to create the Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt and Seleucid dynasty in Asia after Alexander’s untimely death.

Alexander wouldn’t have become Alexander the Great without Ptolemy and Selecus.

3.

“One big hurricane is more noteworthy than a 100 small ones!”

Burger King followed a unique strategy when they started. Their strategy was: open up stores in close proximity to McDonalds. By opening shop close to McDonalds, they could attract people who were already going to a fast food joint to come visit them.

McDonalds were first worried about Burger King cannibalizing their sales. But they soon found that they need not worry at all. Burger King did attract customers who would have otherwise gone to McDonalds. But because Burger King and McDonalds were close together now, the combination attracted way more people to drive over to them!

People in the diamond industry in Antwerpen, London and Bombay have stumbled on this power of market gravity too. They found that by opening offices and shops next to each other, they would be eating up each others sales. But they would also attract more customers by being situated together than they would on their own. And all of their profits would increase together.

4.

“Divided we grow. United we grow more.”

Tony Pereira has a problem. He is the owner of a software publishing company. But his company only produces software for a very small market: the people that use IBM’s OS/2 computer operating system.

Because his target market is small, and his company is tiny too - most stores don’t provide any shelf space to showcase and sell Tony’s products.

What could he do? Tony came up with an idea. He formed the OS/2 Vendor Council.

He got two dozen other developers to come together under the council and jointly persuade retailers to carry OS/2 software.

Each company on its own was considered tiny to pay any attention to. But together, they held a lot of clout.

The two dozen vendors cooperated and created brochures that showcased all of their products. They also launched a joint advertising campaign in national magazines. They persuaded IBM to help fund the advertising.

And persuaded the retailers to carry their products on their shelves - and in return, they would add the retailer’s names to the national ads.

The council also developed a merchandising program to make it easy for the retailers to promote their products in the store - by providing them with flyers and in-store displays.

The joint effort paid off and everyone who joined the council noticed a significant increase in their sales!

5.

Gordon Currie is a web designer. When he first started on his own, he didn’t have very many clients. Nor did he have a lot of money to advertise and attract clients. So he did something un-imaginable. He contacted his competitors!

Gordon searched for other web designing companies and sent them a short email asking them to consider him for overflow work. Many companies did have more work than they could handle and did pass on their work to Gordon too!

6.

“One man’s trash is another’s treasure.”

Another entrepreneur - Richard Gottschneider - co-operated with his competition to grow his business too. Richard ran a real estate consulting firm. He actively sought out joint ventures with his competition.

He would approach a competitor and ask them if they could sell him their old and dead leads. And if they wanted, he would pass on his dead leads to them.Richard also ran a newsletter that talked about his new projects and shared relevant news. Richard initially mailed this newsletter only to his clients. But he soon started mailing it to 50 of his competitors too. The first two mailings he sent out to his competitors resulted in 2 new jobs and several new leads!

Richard soon grew his consultancy to $1.5 million a year - and a bulk of his leads came from his competitors!

Action Summary:

• Don’t be afraid of your competition. Co-operate with them to grow both of your businesses.

• Send them leads that didn’t pan for you, and ask them to send you their leads that didn’t work out for them.

• Band together with your competitors to form a huge cartel that has more power than any one of you alone would have.

Question: How will you use co-opetition to grow your blog traffic?A  Click to post your answer.

Budget Blog Marketing

Question: If all you have is $100 - how would you market your blog?

Step 1: I would do exactly what I already did to promote this blog: get a “goodie” developed that people can link to.A  (I asked my programmer to create the “Buy me a Beer” WordPress plugin.A  It took him less than a day to create the plugin.)

Some Goodie Ideas for You:A 

• A cool plugin.
• A a_?Top 10a_? link-bait article.
• A viral quiz.
• A widget generator.
• An online game.
• A meme.
• A comprehensive report.

The trick is to connect your goodie with your blog topic and the audience you intend to attract.

Step 2: I would then contact a few blogs and tell them about my goodie.

Important note: A-list bloggers won’t link to your blog.A  But they will link to your goodie!

Related Answers:

• Read Maki’s 4 budget marketing tips
• 7 experts share their budget website marketing tips