BlogUpper

   According Problogger Research Google is the #1 source of traffic for most blogs. Over 48% visitors find blog using Google search. Social media gives only 15% of traffic and it depends on viral success, quality posts, and little bit of luck.

  Backlinks, website structure, internal links, and content plays the biggest role to rank well on Google. At the same time you shouldn’t contectrate on PageRank or META tags (but keep it in mind).

  I would like to share simple actions which you can apply to your blog using Google Webmaster Tools.

  Actions on Google Webmaster tools:

1.  Sign up with Google Webmaster tools and verify your blog.
2.  Visit link Tools - Set Preferred Domain. Pick url you wish to display on Google. This action will help to reduce url canonization problem which was explained by Matt Cutts last year in his blog. 
3.  Visit “Enhanced Image Search” option and click button to enable it. Simple procedure could increase traffic through Google Image Search.
4.  Remove URL’s function could help to disable pages with duplicate content from appearance in search. The same thing you can do in your robots.txt file, this function was made by Google development team to help people who doesn’t know how to use robots.txt file.
5.  Submit Sitemap. Google provide complete instructions to set up sitemap for your blog. You can also find several plugins for WordPress which can create sitemap for you. 
6.  Pages with extarnal links option will show you other sites which link to your blog. The most important is to see deep links to your blog. Small amount of deep links could affect search engine rankings. 

Where to get link? The same question I see over and over again when I visit my favorite forums and communities for webmasters. Here we go:

Old fashion way:

• Directory submission. Today there are not a lot of quality directories which still accept links. Try to avoid directories which approve low quality websites or banned by Google.
• Blog directories. Rules about quality directories applied to niche directories as well.
• Article submission. Write a simple article and submit it in article sites. EzineArticles is a leading network where you can submit.
• Link exchange. By exchanging links make sure person gives you quality link back from related website. Poor links and unlimited exchanging could hurt your site rankings and lower trust from search engines. Don’t spam people offering link exchange.
• Participate in forums and message boards. Contribute good posts. Put your link in signature and profile page.
• Submit your blog in DMOZ and Lii. Submit your blog only after you wrote many posts and gain some authority. DMOZ link could be copied by other webmasters and placed on their sites. There are many networks which copy entire DMOZ index on their site. Google directory 100% based on DMOZ listings.
• Create link to us page. Make it simple to copy and paste HTML code. It is not the fastest way to build links, but you can get some.
• Create exchange link page. Ask people to put your link on their website in exchange for your link. Link back only quality websites which gave you quality link. It is even better if you create reciprocal directory, there are some great reciprocal directory pluginsfor Wordpress users.
• Local and regional directories. Don’t forget the place where you live. There are bunch local sites which will give you friendly link.

Socialize:

• Blogroll exchange. It is the best way create homepage links from other related blogs. Exchange your links only with similar blogs.
• Link other blogs from your posts.
• Comment on other blogs. Don’t spam! Give good comments using your own name. Don’t stuff your keywords in the name field.
• Join popular social networks for bloggers. MyBlogLog, BlogCatalog, Blogoria, Technoratiis the places where bloggers looking for ideas, friendship, and visibility.
• Ask your friends… your friends use LiveJournal, MySpace, FaceBook, LinkedIn etc. Some of them got personal blogs or simple websites.

Using social and media sites:

• Submit your own posts. There is nothing wrong if you submit your own post on Digg, Mixx, or Delicious. Just make sure that you are submitting quality link. Also, review terms and conditions to find if network allow submissions of your own posts. Sites like NewsVine or StumbleUpon do not appreciate self submissions.
• Social Bookmark Buttons. Use widgets, buttons, and links which allow to share post with social media sites.
• Bookmark and share posts from other blogs. If you gave your dugg to other blogger he could find it and give the same to you.
• Profile link. Most social sites have option to link blog or a website from profile. It is important to be active on social site to make sure that Google and other search engines find page with your information.
• Buttons from sidebar. Some good directories and networks link your blog only if you place their button in the sidebar. Check popular blogs to see if they use any buttons and place the same on your site.
• Share your knowledge. Use wiki sites, forums, and information sharing networks.

Promotion of RSS Feed.

• Feed submission in media networks. Submitting your feed on media sites you let them to distribute information from your blog to readers. They always link your blog as a source.
• Use ping services. Ping services will send your feed to multiple media sites. Many blog platforms already have automatic ping which you should activate.
• Submit RSS feed to networks you already use. Check networks you already use. Many of them offer to submit RSS feeds and make them visible from profile pages. For example, I love v7n forums and Sphinn network and I added my RSS Feeds there.
• Create visible links (buttons) to subscribe for your feed. I recommend to switch custom feed to FeedBurner.

Follow competitors:

• Use backlink checking tools. Backlink checker will help you to find who link your competitors. In most cases you can place your link in the same place.
• Google your competitor. Type name, nick name, or url of related websites / blogs on Google. It will show you where your competitor participate (communities, forums, social networks) to increase visibility.

Content:

• Write content for readers. It is the biggest mistake when you write content for search engines only.
• Eye catching titles. Here some examples for you: 100 ways to save money, The most stupid ads, Google hates America!… Good titlescould bring more backlinks.
• Link other blogs. I feel like I am repeating myself but you have to link other bloggers.

Contribute and help others.

• Guest post on other blogs. Offer other bloggers a post which you can write for them. Be serious and offer only good and unique post. Your link could be added in information about author.
• Writing feedbacks and testimonials. Take a look on services you use to see if they have testemonials page. Contribute your feedback.

For business blogs:

• Allow your employees to blog.
• Bet on your clients and customers. Make sure to inform everyone you work with that you have a blog.

 How to have a yard sale, create successful blog, or even get laid. HowCast provide unique videos and articles which will make you smile and improve your knowledge.

 I found extremely funny video called “How to get laid” which made me laugh, realize that I am not a total looser, and helped me to find HowCast network where i gonna stick with for a while.

 By joining HowCast you are able to contribute content, share videos, and give suggestions. Member profiles could include links to other social sites you use, information about your blogs and online activity.

 I visit about 15-20 blogs every day and I always look on promotional tactics blogger use, slogans, popularity, and structure. I would say that about 70% blogs have typical mistakes which exist on most other blogs.

1.  Unfriendly URL’s. How many times people should tell that friendly url is 50% of success. I still see links which look like www.domain.com/blog/id=4127560125. Your url should be like: www.domain.com/blog/my-personal-post/.
2.  RSS feed doesn’t exist or there is no link for people to subscribe.
3.  Mess in RSS Feeds after switching to FeedBurner. Most bloggers forget to change custom feed links to FeedBurner link. It is realy painful to see FeedBurner buttons on the same page where custom feed linked from browser window, header, footer, sidebar etc…
4.  Robots.txt file doesn’t exist. To improve Google rankings and avoid duplicate content you should remove from Google pages you don’t want to index. With robots.txt file it is the easiest way to do it. You should defentely remove from indexing your feed pages, trackback pages, admin pages.
5.  Keyword stuffing. For more than a decade Google, Yahoo, MSN… developers work to improve search results and avoid appearance of spam websites. Don’t think that after a week of blogging experience you can cheat search engine spiders writing articles like “Viagra: buy viagra and find cheap viagra from the best viagra store which offer viagra to their customers.”.
6.  Sponsored post. Most people in blogosphere hate sponsored posts but if you got money for review you don’t have to put “sponsored post” sign right on top. Just shut your mouth, make it look like regular post, keep your sponsor happy, and avoid Google penalty for paid link.
7.  Hundereds internal links. Don’t leave links to 50 archive pages, 150 categories, 50 blogroll friends, 100 recent posts etc from your sidebar. Large amount of links confuse search engine crawlers, search engines will be not abloe to locate the most important pages on your blog. PageRank will be not spreaded around your blog as well. Imagine that Google is a waterfall which visit your homepage and after flow through your links… more links you have - less power each page recieves.
8.  Weak description in META tags. Keyword stuffing, repeating description on all pages, and sily slogans affect search engine positions with visitor click rate. Find your own blog on search engine and check what other people see before they click your blog.
9.  Hundereds buttons to social networking sites. Visiting your site people are not going to click all your buttons to social sites. Just leave buttons to the most important social sites like Digg, Delicious, StubmbleUpon…
10.  Lack of content. Give a little description to your picture or video post. Don’t leave many short posts. Google doesn’t like to see empty pages with little content…

 Stumpedia - new human powered search engine is trying to occupy niche where ChaCha failed. It is new concept of social site which include site submission, Digg style ranking system, communication between users, and point system for active members. Stumpedia doesn’t use crawlers or RSS feed readers. 

 Stumpeida provide feed to show what people searched and contributed. Another feature is instant answers function where visitors can get answers for any question. Instant answers made as a chat between active members where everyone can contribute an answer.

 Reaction from in Blogosphere:

 New social search engine received lot of positive feedback from top blogs including: TechCrunch, SearchRank, Orangeinks, or SlyMarketing.

 Spam problems: Some spammers found Stumpedia as a great tool to submit their links. Stumpedia CEO Luis Pereira reply about spam:

Presently we’re leaving it up to the community to handle spam submissions by voting down irrelevant results. We’re also monitoring activity and are prepared to take action if spam becomes a problem. Banning people that spam, removing spammy results, etc, are all options we are open to.

 Good thing about Stumpedia:

 Community is alive! There are a lot of active members who submit quality websites, report spam submissions, and build friendship with other members. Almost 2000 people already joined Stumpedia and page with points shows over 80 members with more than 20 credits. Instant answer feature got many active members as well who are willing to help with any question which was submitted. In fact, we got 4 replies right away for our question about JFK date of birth. 

Reading blogs, bookmarking favorite posts, activity in social media, and commenting could benefit your own blog as well as good writing and promotion. Activity in blogosphere is one of the most important part of blog marketing.

Getting traffic reading other blogs:

1. Create accounts on MyBlogLog and BlogCatalog, submit your blog, create good avatar which people can recognise and remember.
2. You should be always logged in to your MyBlogLog and BlogCatalog accounts. This networks will be able to track blogs you read and show your avatar to blog owners and visitors through widgets on a website and profile pages. Many blog owners and visitors check recent visitors and click links to their blogs.

Commenting in other blogs:

Good behaviour and quality comments could increase amount of visitors. To increase visibility and recognition I would recommend to use your real name or company official name all the time. Avoid spammy names which target your keywords.

Darren Rowse of ProBlogger made a research to find how often people click links in comments. His video shows click rate for comment links. It shows real power of commenting on other blogs.

Using Gravatar and Sezwho for your avatar.

Example of Gravatar Image next to your comment.

Gravatar and Sezwho is a networks which provide useful tools and plugins for blog platforms. It gives a blogger opportunity to show avatars of readers who comment on their blogs. Popularity of this networks grow really fast and it is important to upload your avatar there.

Bookmark other blogs to promote your own.

Most bloggers keep Digg, StumbleUpon, Mixx, Delicious etc buttons on their blog. If they placed this buttons on the pages they want people to click them! So, what are you waiting for? Click it!!!

By adding someone page to social site you give a blogger a sign that you like his / her writings. Blog owner will recognize your submission and most likely visit your blog to see who you are. You can get extra visit, submission of your post in social media site, or friendly post with link to your site.

* Picture source: Widgets Lab

We asked active bloggers a simple question: How many blogs do you have?

105 bloggers responded leaving their answers on v7n network. Simple graph shows us that 27/105 bloggers have only 1 blog and it is enough for them. 17 people have 2 blogs… 14 people run 12 and more blogs to promote different products and services. Some people keep over 12 weblogs to sell them later or they actually buy blogs making money with advertising programs*.

Here opinion people gave together with survey answer:

Good blog need regular updates and I don’t have much time to handle many blogs. - Amit Verma from India.

I wonder how people can have 30 blogs and still have time to update them all… - Fabian van Luyn from Holland.

I only have 1 and can barely keep up with that one. How does anyone find time to maintain more than 1 blog?! - Amy Sue from United States.

It does not matter how many blogs you have. It matters how many are properly managed. - Cricket Walker from United States.

Having lots of blogs may lead to lack of quality… - Athanasios P. from Greece.

* - we did not accepted answers from spammers and sploggers.

I have tried both ways to represent feeds on different blogs I manage. There are many opinions about showing full post or brief summary in RSS feeds, blogger Stoney deGeyter support full preview in his article for Search Engine Guide. ProBlogger has several posts discussing full and partial RSS preview: The latest full vs. partial feed debate, Do you use full or partial feed poll, full and partial feeds test case and more. I would like to disagree with Stoney deGeyter point of view because summary worked better for me and my clients.

Why summary in RSS Feeds are better:

1. Onsite duplicate content issues. Search engine spiders crawl RSS Feeds the same way like they crawl regular pages. For Google it looks like duplicate content on your main, category, archive, and feed pages as well. It is possible to hide RSS Feed pages from bot eye (nofollow tags or disallow in robots.txt) but it is impossible if blog registered with FeedBurner.
2. Duplicate content on other sites. There are thousands news aggregators which collect posts from RSS Feeds. They find blogs automatically or when blogger use ping services. Full preview will create duplicate post on news networks. Your original post page could appear in Google supplemental (omitted) results when some news aggregator will be ranked as author.
3. Visitors who read news sites news sites. Media sites show posts on their pages providing link to original source. Giving away whole post trough full preview of RSS Feeds you let visitors read your entire post on news network without visiting your blog (most people never click links in signature). Showing post summary in RSS Feeds you create automatic listings on in news aggregators with preview of your post. People will click “read more” link to read full post on your blog.
4. Content thief. Sploggers (spammers who copy someone else content on their blogs without permission) use software to steal content from RSS Feeds. They are interested in blogs with full feed preview avoiding summary feeds. Your content could appear on splogs (spam blogs) compeeteng against you for top positions in search engines. Also, links to your blog will be hosted on sites which sell illegal products, spam people, or banned by Google. With RSS Feed summary blog owner protected more against content thief’s.

Guest post is a great technique for bloggers to increase visibility, get valuable link, share opinion, and build relationships with other bloggers. Publishing your post on blog with many readers is more productive than writing articles or submitting press releases. Appearance on popular weblog could bring you more visitors and build authority in blogosphere.

Regular post on article website or press release could appear far away from homepage without reaching readers. Guest post with your name as an author will appear on a homepage for a while and will reach hundereds of thousands readers instantly.

By publishing on another blog you benefit blog owner with valuable content, fresh ideas, save his time, provide searchable content, and bring more readers.

Rules to suggest guest post:

1. Write unique article with valuable content.
2. Suggest your an article for your favorite / famous bloggers who publish related topics.
3. Contact blogger directly (email, contact form, letter) and ask if he will accept your post.

By contributing a guest post you should show your respect the owner of the blog. Most likely you will try to contact a person who is more successful in blogosphere than you. Don’t try to be a smart ass thinking that blogger will accept anything from you…

You should:

1. Write a post the same way like you would write for your own site / blog.
2. Benefit as much knowledge as you can.
3. Link only your homepage using your own name as anchor.

Successful blogger is not stupid!

1. Don’t write an article which can benefit only you and your business.
2. Don’t promote your own products and services.
3. Don’t stuff post with bunch links to your site.
4. Don’t try to link your pages with products or services.
5. Don’t try to provide your old posts which was published somewhere else.
6. Don’t try to submit regular press release.
7. Don’t write unrelated posts.
8. Don’t provide poor content which you don’t need for your own blog.
9. One article for one blog! Don’t suggest the same article to hundreds bloggers.

Following simple steps you could gain more power as a writer, build connections, and reach top bloggers.

 My frend and fellow blogger David Meerman Scott belived that it is impossible to find market where buyers aren’t online. Today he took his words back because he finally found market which doesn’t have online customers. He recorded a video which you can see on YouTube.