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Omits-Bagels posted:Yeah, I looked into that. The problem I'm facing is that some Canadians prefer to order from the US site because the prices are sometimes less than the canadian site. And Amazon doesn't operate in Australia so I'd like to tailor those links to an Australian retailer. I'm not sure what to suggest. That plugin (I think anyway) can give you an option that when you mouse-over a link you get the list of all the different sites so you can choose which one you use. You could probably make a template for a link box that has all the different places, you just need to manually change the id's each time you post a new link. Right, I have a few questions. I've been working on a new fitness site at sweatforit dot com which is mainly about profiles of crossfit/athletic/bodybuilder typye people with lots of pictures, going to start doing work on motivational and other posts mainly relating to the gym craze that's currently going on - which I am interested in. I get a lot of traffic from reddit at the moment, but it's not great at converting. I'm mainly using it to get people in, hook them up to the facebook page or twitter. I also see google and some other search engines are slowly picking things up and I'm getting about 10-40 seaches in a day. Are there any suggestions people have for a) Getting in more raw traffic numbers b) Getting people to the facebook page c) Twitter followers d) Increasing search traffic I've been trying to make sure all of my posts have a decent amount of text with lots of keywords i'm going for, using all-in-one seo and cross-posting on twitter/facebook/tumblr.
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Apr 25, 2013 23:30
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the mattness posted:a) Getting in more raw traffic numbers a, b, c and d are all related and can be thought of as an upward spiral of traffic. a and d are basically the same thing: more inflow of people via natural means, which predominantly means search. Steady traffic from Reddit is awesome but also requires fresh content generation, whereas inflow from search can be related to 'evergreen' content, where you write something good once and it continues to draw people in over time. (For example, my Japan blog is evergreen for phrases like "things to do in roppongi" or "free wifi in japan".) b and c are also related, and you can think of these as 'conversions.' Someone comes to your site and is then convinced to follow you on Twitter or FB. You can probably increase this number if you directly attach something free (like an ebook) to the follow. That wall is easier to construct on Facebook than Twitter (it's in FB's Page manager / developer documentation). You might also consider email, which generally does a better job of creating purchases than FB or Twitter does. Use Mailchimp or a comparable provider. If you create followers through b and c, then you'll get more traffic to new posts 'for free,' so one post may yield 100 hits instead of 10-40. That makes you more appealing to Google so you'll rise in SEO ranking, and a and d will start to perform better. Basically, it's all one big positive feedback loop if you can close the loop properly. Consider reading patio11's blog and read like your 'product' is the site itself.
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Apr 27, 2013 12:23
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I am a full-time link builder and I have done work in a big variety of niches. I have never paid more than $150 USD for a good contextual link in a relevant and recent post even when I don't provide any content. On that topic, never ever ask for content if it isn't part of the initial pitch. I tend to just to scrape an article directory, spin something interesting and make it more readable. If anyone is interested, I can talk about how to get more advertising offers & dealing with people like me or just link building/buying in general?
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Apr 28, 2013 16:32
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cartooncart posted:If anyone is interested, I can talk about how to get more advertising offers & dealing with people like me or just link building/buying in general? Totally interested!
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Apr 28, 2013 19:20
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cartooncart posted:I am a full-time link builder and I have done work in a big variety of niches. I have never paid more than $150 USD for a good contextual link in a relevant and recent post even when I don't provide any content. I'm always interested in hearing other people talk about their expertise and how they go about it so go nuts. I'll definitely be reading. I've been slacking on my blogging in general the last couple months and need to get my rear end back on track.
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Apr 28, 2013 19:23
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snagger posted:a, b, c and d are all related and can be thought of as an upward spiral of traffic. Twitter is easy to get ramped up. Just find your competition and start following the people who follow them. Pick 4 competitors and rin down one a week. I go way past that and target specific people and segments, but that's a simple start up. Follows to click to conversions can vary but roundabout 1000 follows gets 200-300 clicks and 10 converts to regulars. Usually 200 follow backs too. Also bear in mind twitter has really cracked down on follow tactics. You'll get suspended if you break around 300 follows in a short period of time. Facebook advertising is what I have gotten into but I'm cheap so it's $1 a day. I've been getting page likes at .09 a like at that price. Previously I was paying a bit more a day and my cost per like was 30-50 cents a like. no clue why it works out that way. Also target the topics. Don't go general. If your a World of warcraft raider then find as close to a subject as you can. It optimizes conversions. my traffic has really picked up from Facebook since I did advertising and $1 a day is nothing really.
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Apr 29, 2013 05:18
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MasterControl posted:Facebook advertising is what I have gotten into but I'm cheap so it's $1 a day. I've been getting page likes at .09 a like at that price. Previously I was paying a bit more a day and my cost per like was 30-50 cents a like. no clue why it works out that way. Also target the topics. Don't go general. If your a World of warcraft raider then find as close to a subject as you can. It optimizes conversions. my traffic has really picked up from Facebook since I did advertising and $1 a day is nothing really. Ooooo, I'd love to learn more about this. What lowers the cost per like? Better targeting? Just setting the budget at $1 a day and off you go?
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Apr 29, 2013 05:37
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I don't know, sorry. The campaigns are virtually the same (I'm targeting women now instead of both). When I started the other campaign it was at 1$ too and had similar numbers. Only when I upped the budget to a whopping 10$ did it start to fly up in cost per like. Maybe it's because of cpm? I haven't hit 1000 impressions in a single day (but overall have) yet but I would guess Facebook accounts for that incrementally.
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Apr 29, 2013 19:21
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This is going to be a long post. Hopefully, it makes sense. Link Theory I'm not going to lie. I flirt with black hat & spam, but I'm also very paranoid when it comes to algorithm & manual penalties. I strongly believe that you need to accept that link building is and should be considered a sketchy and risky activity. I try to simulate "white hat" link earning. I focus more on simulating natural processes than building an unnatural amount of links in a short period. The first step to any campaign is studying the biggest and most reputable sites in the niche I need to work in. I mainly look at their backlink profiles and recent history. It's pretty easy to classify links into three types. A link profile is kind of like a t-bone steak. You have the fat which is spammy links like directories, squidoo lenses, hubpages, ..., the bone which are the huge authority sites like BBC & Mashable and the meat which is everything in between. I know that it's impossible for me to get links on the huge sites with such a small budget and spammy links can be more trouble than their worth. In any case, I try to replicate the meaty links for my clients. For example, if I see most good sites in a niche get around 15 to 16 new links from new domains a month, I'll try to get 20 or so. I still get a positive impact from this because new content is always created with my link. I have never gotten a link on an old page. If I'm having trouble, I may get a link on a page that is a few months old but it's rare. I only resort to crappy links if I do not begin to see enough of an impact or competition is still using that technique exclusively. In both cases, I'll ensure that I don't do it as much as the competitor. On a side note, I do pay strong attention to making sure my anchor text is a mix between branded/non-branded. I also make sure I have a good balance between home vs. sub-pages vs. deep links. I tend to just use my instincts for the percentages and often let the author choose his own anchor text. If it's really bad, I'll tell them to change it. In Practice I use a lot of automation tools for researching/prospecting but I essentially take the top 50 Google, Yahoo, Bing results / find lists of niche blogs / use Xenu to get list of profiles for forum users / etc. I'll use SEOGadget to grab the emails / contact pages and I send emails to everybody without even verifying their site. The only check I do is to make sure they weren't classified as spammy, PR is ok and their isn't too much discrepancy between PR and DA. You might think that this is super spammy. I'd just like to say out of 200 websites, I may only get 100 emails and I usually get maybe 10 replies and 10 error messages. I rarely get "gently caress off messages" because I'm legitimately giving people money. Once I get replies, I'll do a basic check of the site to make sure it's relevant to the niche, isn't crappy, doesn't look like it will be getting penalised soon, doesn't talk about SEO/Advertising too much, etc. If all is good, I'll pitch an idea, mention news, etc. If they are chill, I'll build a relationship and use them for other clients. If I don't think I'd be proud to show it to my client, I won't get the link. I tend to apologize/offer tips to people I refuse. Sometimes this gets me "gently caress you, my seo guy said it is good to comment as car repair washington on an autoblog selling ipods." How To Attract People Like Me - Have a nice site that doesn't talk to much about ads/SEO/etc. - Post frequently - Have your email easily accessible on your home page, about page, or contact page. I have only used contact boxes for one client in a really SEO savy niche. For Those Who Want To Do This Concentrate on making good content first. There is nothing harder than trying to link to a site that only sells products, unless you want to pay $$$. If you actually have good content, you might get lucky or get away with a anonymous guest post...
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Apr 30, 2013 04:27
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cartooncart posted:This is going to be a long post. Hopefully, it makes sense. How much do you pay for links? I'm trying to find ways to monetize my site. I'm not in love with the idea of selling links but I also have to pay for my wife's student loans... my site is thesavvybackpacker.com Additionally, how much do your services run?
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Apr 30, 2013 05:48
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Okay, I need some help. I've been reviewing a TON of products lately and I'm gearing up to do a week where I do nothing but post a different review each day. That catch is that I've gotten all of the product manufacturers to agree to let me give away their product with the review. What's the best way to do a give-away? I know that I could always do a "subscribe to the blog via email and be entered!" but I'd like to take the opportunity to increase Facebook likes and twitter follows as well as push traffic to the product's website. Obviously if a company gets a lot of pageviews/purchases it opens it up to me being able to ask them about advertising on my site, so that's really the most important part, but I get most of my traffic from social media so getting my follow/like number up is also super important. Any ideas on how to run this thing and accomplish everything I want to do?
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May 1, 2013 01:11
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They get an entry into the contest for every like or follow they do for your blog and the product manufacture. So if they like and follow you and the manufacturer they get 4 entries into the contest.
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May 1, 2013 01:24
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jabro posted:They get an entry into the contest for every like or follow they do for your blog and the product manufacture. So if they like and follow you and the manufacturer they get 4 entries into the contest. How do you even track that?
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May 1, 2013 03:00
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invision posted:Okay, I need some help. http://www.rafflecopter.com/
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May 1, 2013 03:01
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jabro posted:They get an entry into the contest for every like or follow they do for your blog and the product manufacture. So if they like and follow you and the manufacturer they get 4 entries into the contest. How would you track the follows of the company? That seems like a lot of work in any case. Why don't you just fake the referral traffic to their site? Omits-Bagels posted:How much do you pay for links? I'm trying to find ways to monetize my site. I'm not in love with the idea of selling links but I also have to pay for my wife's student loans... my site is thesavvybackpacker.com The price varies for niche but it tends to hover around $100 to $150 for travel blogs. I work for an agency so I get a salary. I do know that getting 4 to 8 links can take up to 20 hours if I'm not lucky and have used up all my connections for that client. I'm still debating how much I would charge for it, because before I knew how much people paid for SEO, I was charging only a few dollars per hour more than cheap third word labor. I/m incredibly lucky that the agency recruited me! I think it baiting link buyers might be hard for your site because you have a great targeted niche. If I were you, I would try doing a few of these things. 1) Your site has a lot of good content, but you don't seem to target keywords that companies or people like me will use to find websites. For a client in the travel niche, I might look for "keyword he wants to rank on" + blog and use ubersuggest for inspiration. Begin focusing more on keywords that you think companies want, including branded keywords. The goal isn't to rank first but to at least be present in the top 50. Seriously, I'm guessing this is the only reason why companies deal with review sites, etc. I avoid them like the plague. (In fact a lady today tried to convince me that her site that only features reviews, coupons, and obvious advertorials was not just a crappy spam site.) Niches I have done that could be useful for you are winter coats (Canada Goose), cameras, shoes, etc. 2) Test out services like business2blogger and the likes. I haven't had much success with this one and a few others because a lot of the people there are spam. However, I also had no real budget to play with when I tested them out. There are other sites like that but I haven't really played around with them too much, because my current method is good so far. If anyone does contact you, or you make friends on those sites, be sure to not be a dick. Also, email them once in a while to see what types of contracts they are working on. Helping them out will mean they remember you first when they have something good for you. Don't add a page saying you advertise, sell links, etc. 3) Fix your contact page / put an email someplace on your site. This may attract spam, but you'll also get people trying to "guest post" and buy links. I've used Scrapbox, GSA Email Spider and SEOGadget for contact finding, and if your email isn't on either your home page, about page, contact page or whois information, chances are I won't find it and won't contact you. 4) I have no idea if this one will work, but you may want to start connecting with agency SEOs and trying to get the attention of companies that are active bloggers. 5) This tip might be focused on only one of my prospecting techniques, but create a lot of "keyword" boards with a few pins in each pointing to your site. I don't know how popular it is, but it's one of the favorite of the less blackhat people where I work. DISCLAIMER: I have never really been on the opposite end of the stick, and I have never needed to buy links for a website that focuses on European travel. I also don't know how many link buyers are as bitchy about websites as I am. http://www.offerpop.com/ is free if you don't got many likes. I enjoyed playing around with it. cartooncart fucked around with this message at 04:35 on May 1, 2013 |
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May 1, 2013 03:03
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cartooncart posted:good info Wow, thanks. I'll read over this advice and see what I can do.
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May 2, 2013 03:07
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This might help you guys out some: I have 1500 facebook likes, and have averaged ~552 people "reached" per post for the past month. I posted a story yesterday and spent $10 on the promote button, and it's reached 2715 people and gained me close to 100 page likes, and has sent me about 500 viewers to my site from the post since around 10pm last night. That's a 5x increase. Pretty decent deal if you have something important that you'd like to drive readers to, or if you want a cheapish way to grab some facebook page likes.
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May 3, 2013 02:34
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Nice! 100 likes for 10$ is about what im paying for my ad too now. just so you know reach is good but the "people talking about" is a better indicator of activity as it measures people liking or talking on your specific posts. Additionally You can try to keep that number high by posting interesting pictures and keeping post text short. Also use link shortners. Look up NBC sports cycling on how not to use Facebook and then look up e! or esquire for good examples
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May 3, 2013 06:05
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This seems like the best place to ask - I have some articles that I wrote for a client who then backed out. The articles are mostly on insurance with a few on credit cards. It's a long shot, but I figured someone here might want them. The correct thing to do is set up an SAMart thread and then link it here, right?
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May 3, 2013 10:41
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SuBeCo posted:This seems like the best place to ask - I have some articles that I wrote for a client who then backed out. The articles are mostly on insurance with a few on credit cards. It's a long shot, but I figured someone here might want them. The correct thing to do is set up an SAMart thread and then link it here, right? You could do that, but there's always constant-content.com, I would recommend them. Have sold a few articles there before, and quality stuff sells for good money.
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May 3, 2013 13:28
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I'm thinking about that, but there's the 35% cut on sales and the incredibly irritating "your article has been rejected for subjective misplacement of a comma" issue. I mean, I get a bit stroppy when I see "wary" spelled as "weary" or chronic misuse of hyphens, but there is a limit. I might try here first and if I don't get any bites put them up over there.
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May 3, 2013 13:51
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I've bought articles on textbroker too you can try there. Edit: they're 30% too it seems. FCKGW fucked around with this message at 15:31 on May 3, 2013 |
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May 3, 2013 15:29
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Textbroker only does articles that are written in response to specific requests. As far as I know they don't take pre-written articles, unless I'm mistaken. In any case, I made a thread and put up my whole catalogue. Articles cover insurance, energy, personal finance, coffee, mobile phones and credit cards. Let's see how this goes. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3547535
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May 3, 2013 21:11
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I'm moving from Hostgator to one of the Goon hosting services in SA-Mart. I figure some of you guys more than likely using one of them so was hoping for some input. The ones I'm looking at is Lithium and Nixihost. Do you use them, know people who use them? Do you like them, hate them, etc? I'm leaning towards a reseller account hoping to cover my hosting, domain, and WHOIS bills for the year. I'm not planning nothing big. Throw up a web site, some banners on some of my appropriate sites for it, and maybe host family and friends' sites if they want for a few bucks/year. I suck at names so if anyone has any ideas for a semi-professional name that sounds cool with some form of the word "Host" and has an open .com I'd love you for a couple of minutes and throw happy thoughts your way.
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May 6, 2013 20:18
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I have been with Lithium for two years and I have to say, they are absolutely amazing. They went above and beyond so many times that I can't even believe they actually even make money.
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May 6, 2013 21:32
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jabro posted:I'm moving from Hostgator to one of the Goon hosting services in SA-Mart. I figure some of you guys more than likely using one of them so was hoping for some input. The ones I'm looking at is Lithium and Nixihost. Do you use them, know people who use them? Do you like them, hate them, etc? I wouldn't get into reselling until you've fully explored the legal ramifications and have some way of providing 24/7 support.
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May 6, 2013 21:52
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mcsuede posted:I wouldn't get into reselling until you've fully explored the legal ramifications and have some way of providing 24/7 support. He wants to host some friends and family, not become Go Daddy.
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May 6, 2013 22:02
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Moniker posted:He wants to host some friends and family, not become Go Daddy. All the more reason to cover his rear end. I've hosted at Lithium, and yes they're a good shared host as long as the sites are pretty lightweight, but that's a universal truth for shared. mcsuede fucked around with this message at 01:48 on May 7, 2013 |
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May 7, 2013 01:42
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edit: An updated post of blogs would be nice! I'd be able to help some of SA bloggers make some money once in a while.
cartooncart fucked around with this message at 21:44 on May 7, 2013 |
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May 7, 2013 15:53
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As of 3 months ago, I've started a copywriting job at a food website (imagine if Domino's Pizza had a blog) and one of my main responsibilities is to update their blog. I don't have any real experience blogging - I've got a reasonable grasp on SEO, but that's it. It's time to get my poo poo together. The main thing that's occurred to me is that I've got this great platform and I don't know how to make the best use of it. Simply put, I don't know what to focus on at this stage. Traffic? Stable readership? Trying to cram my own name and face down my reader's throats? The problem is that we're a service website, and the blog is kind of tucked away (and I don't have the authority to change that - I tried). We have a Facebook page and a Twitter account, but that's for the company as a whole. Facebook fans give a pretty lukewarm response to blog content compared to funny pictures of cats, meaning the person in charge of our social media isn't going to start posting everything I write. I've made a few small changes to the blog itself - better sharing plugins, an authorship box to link to my personal social media accounts, but that's it. I haven't been given any real direction from my employers - as far as they're concerned, so long as I keep the blog updated they're happy. My biggest source of traffic is the company's newsletter - we send one out every week with features and blog content. Average pageviews are around 3000 for a successful post, and about 250-500 for a mediocre one. Our pagerank/pageauthority/whatever is crazy high, so we're actually quite competitive when it comes to broader search terms. I can put out on a post on quite broad cuisine types and we can rank quite highly. So, what's the best way to proceed? Enough time has passed for me to find my feet at this job (my first grown up graduate job, woo), so I think it's about time I started making positive changes.
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May 8, 2013 19:18
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Beaumont posted:As of 3 months ago, I've started a copywriting job at a food website (imagine if Domino's Pizza had a blog) and one of my main responsibilities is to update their blog. I don't have any real experience blogging - I've got a reasonable grasp on SEO, but that's it. It's time to get my poo poo together. Well, it certainly sounds like the wind is at your back. I imagine you'd look good to superiors if you were able to raise overall pageviews or improve a business outcome, which means: -More newsletter subscribers: in blog posts, encourage users to sign up and demonstrate the benefits of doing so. If subscribers go up, pageviews per post will go up too. -More posts on highly-searched cuisine types: make a list of different cuisines, using Google Keyword Tool to create a large list of high-traffic search keywords for you to blog about. Ideally you'd like more search traffic than email, because email has to be written every week but one popular article pulls in traffic forever. -Related to that, do an SEO audit with the help of Yoast. Even if you're doing a good job on a per-post level, there are sitewide changes that can be made to improve performance. -More of a certain business outcome (example: if you were Domino's Pizza, clickthroughs to order online)
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May 8, 2013 21:38
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snagger posted:
If you're able to bring more money to the company and prove it, these are ultimately the only things that matters. I'd focus less on SEO and more on learning what makes your readers act.
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May 8, 2013 22:32
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Don't get bogged down in the structure of your blog (plugins, etc.), generating content is the most important part of a blog and as said above, proving the ROI is the most important part of keeping your job. Do you have access to analytics? Email marketing is a different beast, the two are very much their own specialties but have overlap. Here are some resources of the top of my head, I have thousands in my evernote and I'll try to post more later when I have a moment. http://thinktraffic.net/ http://mailchimp.com/resources/ http://www.problogger.net/archives/category/business-blogging/
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May 9, 2013 16:35
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I am thinking of making a blog about cheese since I do eat a lot of good cheese and it would be nice to keep track of it in a format that other people can view. Plus I want to make my own cheese and make posts about it and I think it would be a cool and fun idea for a blog. Does this sound like a decent idea for a blog?
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May 15, 2013 19:51
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Stealthgerbil posted:I am thinking of making a blog about cheese since I do eat a lot of good cheese and it would be nice to keep track of it in a format that other people can view. Plus I want to make my own cheese and make posts about it and I think it would be a cool and fun idea for a blog. Does this sound like a decent idea for a blog? With just a quick glance it looks like there's a few cheese blogs out there already but many haven't been updated in a while. I say give it a shot.
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May 15, 2013 20:00
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Stealthgerbil posted:I am thinking of making a blog about cheese since I do eat a lot of good cheese and it would be nice to keep track of it in a format that other people can view. Plus I want to make my own cheese and make posts about it and I think it would be a cool and fun idea for a blog. Does this sound like a decent idea for a blog? Here is some keywords with competition and search numbers for making cheese from a quick look on the Google Keyword Tool. The potential is there. code:
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May 15, 2013 20:07
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Even if it doesn't get a huge amount of traffic, I will still end up using it as a cheese tasting log. However its great to know that it could be decently trafficked blog. Also since I tend to buy at least one decent midrange or better cheese each week, it would definitely be updated fairly often. I decided on https://www.cheesejourney.com as my domain. It sounds like it fits what I want the site to be about.
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May 15, 2013 20:58
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Wow so had my first encounter with a current version WP bug. Mass update for all of my plugins caused my site to get stuck in maintenance mode. Had to delete the maintenance page from the file server to make things go back to normal. Bless you Google for your crowd-sourced wisdom.
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May 15, 2013 22:43
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Stealthgerbil posted:Even if it doesn't get a huge amount of traffic, I will still end up using it as a cheese tasting log. However its great to know that it could be decently trafficked blog. Also since I tend to buy at least one decent midrange or better cheese each week, it would definitely be updated fairly often. I decided on https://www.cheesejourney.com as my domain. It sounds like it fits what I want the site to be about. Great domain. Here's a cheese blog that I loving love (YES I AM FROM WISCONSIN Y DID U ASK?). http://cheeseunderground.blogspot.com/ This site is great because the content is great, not because it's done well or marketed well. You can build a really fantastic site around a food topic in a journal style, I have some friends that have been doing so for years on an ancient blogspot blog and just kill it with traffic and opportunities. They completely own their metro for every food related search and it's just a side project for fun.
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May 16, 2013 14:35
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I'm glad you like my domain name. I thought it would symbolize how the site will be about my experiences tasting different kinds of cheese. Also I didn't want to sound like an authority on cheese because I am still a newbie. I also bought mealjourney.com as well which I may just make a blog about the food I eat. Also I am checking out that cheese blog along with some other highly ranking ones and I have some good ideas now. The hard part is just finding time to take pictures and type up everything.
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May 16, 2013 21:30
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