Blogging with Cents

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I’ve been learning about SEO much more lately and I have found this is a BIG reason why pagerank is important.  Many will tell you that PR doesn’t matter, screw Google, etc, but the fact is it does matter if you’re a serious blogger trying to make money without a “paid post” blog.   Here are 4 reasons why I think PR matters.

1. The higher pagerank you have, the more likely Google will rank you higher in the search engine results pages.  In other words, how many of you actually go past page 3 when you do a search for something at Google??  Frankly, I don’t even go past 2 unless I’m desperate for a piece of information.  If you want people to find you, you need to have your site show up on the first 2 pages.  Remember, Google ranks each page, not your site as a whole. 
2. Having a high pagerank shows others that you have a large number of quality incoming links, therefore encouraging others to click on those links to get to your site!  Google likes that;)
3. A higher pagerank also creates a “comfort zone” with readers.  I mean that when someone see that you have a high pr, they feel like they can trust what you say  and find the most relevant answers to their questions on your site. 
4. Having a higher pagerank encourages others to link to you, therefore driving traffic to you.  You will gain exposure from this but I highly recommend that you offer a reciprocal link.  Do unto others as you would have them to do you!

I really would focus on gaining traffic more than anything but keep in mind that having good pagerank can make this happen.  They have to be able to find you in the search engines, right?!  Also, you can make a great deal of money from advertisers when you have a nice pagerank so keep that in mind as well. 

Focus on high quality incoming links, quality content, and good keywords and your blog will generate traffic on it’s own!

The best blog posts entice visitors to do something with your post. Your goal is ensure that they’re doing the right thing once they have read the post.

This is your call to action.

Few bloggers get the opportunity to direct their visitors to the next action based on the words in their blog post. But the trick is that every blogger has the key to create action points if you’re formatting your posts correctly.

Not everyone is going to take action. But you need to appeal to people who will by making your post worth doing something with.

So, what exactly do you want them to do? The answer lies within the content of your post. Here are some common action points and how you can get your visitors to take action.

Affiliate Marketing

Your links for affiliate sites should be both hidden and obvious. Visitors should trust that you’re going to lead them to places that are trustworthy and worthy of their time. Taking up your visitor’s time with useless links will harm your reputation.

Make your affiliate links obvious by the anchor text that you use and hidden by using an affiliate link plug-in that makes links appear to go to a different place.

Remember, your visitors are at your blog because they enjoy your writing style, you provide useful information, and they trust your words are on target. Ensuring that your links follow those same rules will produce more clicks and help you gain more trust from your visitors.

Deep Linking

Every niche blogger can write a post today and reference at least one previous post within their blog. This is the act of deep linking. If more bloggers would take the time to research their own blog and remember their posts, fewer people would need the “related posts” plug-in to keep visitors on their blog.

The added benefit to deep linking is that you’re supplying anchor text for search engines to associate your blog posts with. This is a major help with search engine traffic and again, like affiliate marking, helps your visitors to know where they’re going to land once they have clicked.

Social Bookmarking

Vital for a lot of bloggers for good traffic, bookmarking posts should be easy for your visitors and be part of every single post you write. For bloggers this is super easy to do. From the Add Me widget to the various plug-ins for WordPress users.

Ensure that you’re ending all of your posts with links to bookmark the post to networking site of your visitor’s choice. While I’d be more than happy to have all my readers bookmark my posts to StumbleUpon, not all of them will because it’s not their preference. By creating the ability to bookmark to several social networking websites, you’re expanding your reach by just one single visitor.

Ask Questions

Nothing will prompt your visitors to comment on your post faster than asking a question. Pertain to the various interests and styles of your readers in a single blog post. Haven’t you ever found that asking questions will capture attention?

So your comments may become a new topic on their own because you asked a question. Isn’t this a great thing?

Creating a comment community and visitors that actually speak to each other and not just you, the blogger, is interesting and draws in a lot of attention. Ensure that you’re holding that attention by being part of the comments that are taking place on your posts. Even if your visitors love to talk to each other, it is you that they come to the blog for. Make sure you remain present, even in your comments.

Final Thoughts

With the next post you format for your blog, think of different ways that you can create a call to action with your visitor. Whether it be to visit another area of your site, click on an affiliate link, bookmark your post, or just comment. You can have the blog visitors, traffic, and income revenue that you want if every single post internally focuses on your goals.

Have you tried a call to action on your blog posts? What was the outcome from your visitors?

Katy Castro blogs at I’m Blogging That with topics that include social networking, blog rankings, search engine news, and becoming a better blogger.

Yes, I’m still here!  Although, perhaps not for long.  I have decided to make some changes to lighten my load, as well as give me the time to pursue my real passions.  Now technically, I’m not going anywhere but this blog, well, that’s different story; one that I will talk about more another time. 

You will still be able to read the same stuff I write here, but it will be in a different place and won’t be daily like I was doing before.  Sometimes when you’re getting paid to blog, you tend to write posts just for that reason and not for quality reasons.  While I did try to fit in paid links inconspicuously, I did notice that the quality was diminishing.  I don’t want that because I do care about my name and what my readers think of me. 

With all that said, I sincerely hope that when things do change here, you will continue to follow me.  I adore my commenters and fans and would love to have your support when the ’new’ arrives. 

Just like your home, your blog needs to be organized & cleaned of clutter. It’s easy to let your blog go when you’re focusing on content, forums, and social networking but by maintaining your blog regularly, you’ll help it run more efficiently and stay visually appealing as well.

PLUGINS

• Sort through your plugins and delete all the unneccessary ones.  Just like widgets, plugins can be addicting so you probably have several sitting there collecting dust.
• Analyze the performance of certain plugins.  If they don’t do their job to your expectations, find a new one to replace it.
• Upgrade any that haven’t been already. With WP 2.5, it’s super easy to upgrade now!

WIDGETS (SIDEBARS)

• organize your widgets into sections.  Most people do this with their sponsored ads, you know, up in the right corner?  But for some reason, many people let the rest of their sidebars go.  Some sections to have could be a resource section, blogroll, vote for me badges, etc.
• Get rid of the heavy widgets that bulk up your sidbars.  I see many widgets that show content from other bloggers.  If you’re a personal blogger, that’s fine but if you’re a serious blogger, the last thing you want to do is provide content links that may lead your readers away from your blog.  If a link of sorts is required to have your link at their place, do just that, use a simple text link or button.
• Use recent posts and popular posts.  These 2 widgets can keep your readers on your blog longer.  It also will give them a sense of what you write and what other readers like.
• Move your blogrolls to their own posts/pages.  Blogrolls tend to make a page load slower so I recommend that, if you’re going to have them, put them in their own home.  If you put them in a post, you can always back date them and then provide a text link in the sidebar.

AD MANAGEMENT (OIO-Publisher PLUGIN)

• Use something like OIO-Publisher to manage your ads.  Powerful plugin and super user friendly.
• Take advantage of alternate ad rotation until your ad spots get filled.  There is a place to put the image urls and destination urls so that different ads will rotate until they get filled.  What I love, is that you don’t have to do anything but provide those urls and then after that, the plugin does the rest.  If an advertiser buys a slot, it put their image up for you!  LOVE IT!
• Update your advertise page if needed.  I’ve written a basic advertise page with links to purchase.  Those links are managed through my dashboard via the oio plugin so that I don’t have to go and actually edit my advertise page.  I simply go to my dashboard and change my ad price if I want to.

PROFILE & ABOUT ME PAGE

• Go back over your profile and about me pages and make sure things are still correct.   Over time, some things have probably changed so it’s important to note those changes. 
• Link to your other blogs from your about me page.  I’m really surprised at how many people don’t do this. 

POST CATEGORIES

• For me, a big turn off is 50 categories.  My time is limited and precious at that so spending 5 minutes reading through a million categories is the last thing I want to do.  Try to have 10 or less categories because chances are, I’m only going to read the first 5.
• Keep your categories as relevant as possible.  Example for a personal blog: You have to categories - blogging and blogging tips.  Do you really need them both?  If you write about home, parenting, and relationships; blogging should be a specific enough category to use.  Get rid of the excess and keep it simple.