Helping You Rock Out Your Site Like A Rockstar!

When you go to a site and it reads ‘HIATUS’, is it annoying? For me it is and I have heard from quite a few other bloggers that it can be irksome for them too. What is equally annoying is no updates for a while. Come on people… do you care about keeping your visitors?

Usually the reason a person has a hiatus can vary, but usually boils down to the fact that the blogger does not have enough time and blogging is put on the backburner.

There are a couple ways bloggers alert their visitors to when they are having a hiatus.

1. The blogger shuts the site down completely and posts a short note that they are on hiatus and when they will be back.
2. Leave their blog up but do not update for some time.

Both are annoying. Of course, I know that anyone understands that life can get hectic and perhaps blogging is either a chore or just not important. However, from experience, several things can happen during a hiatus.

• 1. Your Page Rank in Google or Alexa could become worse due to not updating.
• 2. Your traffic will decrease.
• 3. You may lose visitors temporarily or permanently. If you are on hiatus often or for extended periods of time, it could be a total turn-off.

To prevent this, totally shutting the site down or lack of inactivity is not a solution. Instead, you should reduce your number of bloggings to at least once a week. A post only takes 5 to 30 minutes, depending on how fast you type, the topic, and if you need to do in-depth research. Four times a month is great. This will keep your site updated enough to keep your visitors coming back.

When you do blog, you do not have to make the blog long and go over every single thing you did. Just highlight some of it.

And because you can schedule posts, you can write posts ahead of time, schedule them during the time you will be gone, and voilà…. your site is still pumping out fresh content.

You could also do guest bloggers, but make sure to make the call for one ahead of time… perhaps a friend or two that is really good in their niche could spare 10 minutes to write a post for your site.

The point is- keep your site active for your visitors and the search engines.

Comment spam is definitely something a lot of bloggers encounter, no matter how few or many people visit. Some are geniune spammers, some are newbies who do not know any better, and some are just plain out of the loop. Yeah, that was not very nice, but hey – it is true.

Obviously if a comment is about selling something not even closely relevant to your site is flat out spam. Comment spam focuses mainly on comments that are not relevant to the blog or may seem like it in a way to get a backlink.

Example: “Your site is nice” by Deidre (who has a url attached to that anchor text to a Viagra site. Name is just random for this example.)

The problem is that regular people also may just leave such comments too. The key is to looking into your posts and making sure that it is relevant. Obviously if someone said “your site is nice” in a blog post such as this, it is not relevant and should not be approved, whereas if the blog post is about the site itself, then the comment would be more appropriate.

Occasionally I have a people leave a comments to smear campaigns toward certain popular and influential people on a post that was unrelated to what they had to say.. Though I am not sure if it was a sock puppet of the real blogger (a person under another pseudonym), it was marked as spam.

It is important to moderate comments to keep the topic on track and make sure your visitors are not confused. In allowing comment spam, you could be deterring potential comments from new or regular visitors because it detracts from the value of your blog.

For the commenter, this is not conducive to their blogging platform, and in the case of WordPress, the content management system picks up the comment as trackback and it has no real value. Taking care of comment spam is as simple as looking through comments and especially through most blog platforms, you can mass delete spam. Even though there are plugins to help weed through spam, there will always be a few that get through, so it is important to keep on top of them.

Of course, there are plugin you can use to reduce spam, but there are some that will slip through those cracks.

What kind of comment spam have you gotten? How do you take care of it? Any interesting comment spam experiences?

I was reading Chris Brogan’s Rules of the Pool article and I really had to reiterate that when you blog, choose what you think is best. Using together Blogging and social media are knocking all the rules of the normal pool we have come to know over the past decade, literally right out of the water. As long as you are not violating any terms of service or doing anything illegally, you can blog and use social networks to your hearts content. Of course, you may offend some, but you will successfully have influenced people.

If you write paid to review/ pay to blog articles every so often, that is great. If your site has a few advertisements on it, great! There is no shame in that. Although I have heard from others their displeasure about paid to review, it really stems from some bloggers have no real content and excessively use the paid to blog system as a reason to blog.

Blog about what you know, and perhaps things you are learning, or even things you want to know. Blogging today is more than ever a ‘blog at your own risk’, just like those pools that have a sign that says ‘swim at your own risk.’

I also heard from Jim Turner (Founder of One By One Media) at WordCamp Chicago 2009 a quote that he got from Paul Chaney (social media speaker) that said -

“Publishing something to the Internet is like peeing in the pool.”

It is not easy to remove things from the Internet. The search engines tend to take a while to let things fall into an abyss, so really when you blog, be confident in taking the risk, and be prepared to share your words with others. Be dedicated to blog because you enjoy it, not because you are trying to profit from it.

I remember one gal who had a site (and I will not mention her name, but I can vouch that this really happened in the past few years), and still has it, she would blog a little about her daily life, but she would keep adding in her affilate links for those ‘free’ gimics that you have to sign up for several opportunities just to get a ‘free’ camera or computer.

She constantly plugged them, and when she was not blogging about them, she was also writing paid to blog articles. On top of that, she had her own in house banner advertisements too. It was totally a fail situation. Her site had gotten plenty of traffic when she was not getting so heavily involved in writing to get some kind of compensation. Her content was severely lacking any value to influence anyone. Eventually her blog turned towards being more for commercial gain, she lost a lot of followers and people who would normally comment. In fact, I remember seeing her catch a lot of flack from those same people tired of feeling spammed when visiting.

Clearly, her risk in the end drowned her. What kind of risks have you taken for your blog? How did it work for you?

For those who already know how to harness the power of their site stats and how to adjust their site focus, this article will be a real breeze. For those who are just getting into blogging and finding their way, this might be handy.

Reading your site stats whether you use your StatPress plugin (for WordPress users), Google Analytics, Quantcast, Lijit or some other tool, your stats will tell you quite a few things:

1. How many people come to your site
2. Where your visitors entered your site
3. What your visitors were looking for
4. How long your visitors stayed on your site
5. Where your visitors left your site
6. What areas your visitors stayed longest on

Of course there are more, but the above are just some of the general ones. The goal is to retain some of those visitors and keep them coming back. Whether you apply nifty plugins like the Thank Me Later plugin (for WordPress users), or invite people to subscribe to your RSS feed, have Subscribe to Comments, subscribe to your site’s newsletter, or have a few featured posts that are eyecatching, you are trying to achieve whatever goal you have set for your website. However, the hard work can be seen in your stats.

You can install as many plugins or try as many tricks, but your control over your content is very essential. The rate at which you publish your articles could harm your site. Although you could pump out many articles per day, it may not be ideal if you are the sole owner of the blog. You might run out of topics and into the proverbial ‘Writer’s Block’ also known as Bloggers Block. On the other hand, if the time between your articles leave your visitors feeling like they are pulling teeth just waiting for your next post, you may be hurting your site.

Your stats can help you come up with the perfect formula for your blog to not just regulate, but improve your site statistics. Here are a few pointers to make sense of your stats.

• Always compare your stats on a day-to-day basis. Even this small of time can help you in the long run as you can plan posts to reach more of your visitors since they are more apt to visit at one time of day versus another time.
• Make sure to check what people are searching for on your website. If you do not have it and it is relevant to your website, perhaps you should consider writing about the topic?
• Check how long your visitors are staying and think about ways you could implement tools to increase that time.
• Check your referral links (where your visitors came from) and determine how effective those links have been. If they are from other bloggers, find out if they are recommending you are be an ambassador to your site by thanking them for giving your site a shout out.

What other suggestions would you have for others to help people make sense of their stats? How often do you check your stats?

You blog often and spend time writing quality articles, but feel you are not getting traffic or your blogging seems all for nothing? Has blogging become a chore?

There could be several reasons why you might feed blogging is a tedious chore:

• Creating a post takes too much time
• Lack of motivation
• Discouraged because you do not have any blog comments or socal interactions.
• You have no passion for the topics you chose for your website’s focus.

Each of these are excuses! If you want to succeed as a blogger, you need to keep writing! It might take some time, and engaging people, but the reward is far more worth it.

If it has, then perhaps you need to look at your blog’s focus and plan. Much like most businesses have some type of plan in place, a blog should too. If you are wanting to build a reputable site that has at least decent traffic, you need a blog plan in place.

So, back to the excuses. What can you do to stop these excuses? Well, it might take going back to the basics with your blog’s plan.

Your blog plan should include at least these basics:

• The focus of your site. This includes the topics you will write about, any products or services.
• The design and structure of your website. This is what you will use for your site’s functioning in relation to design and development. This might mean if you choose to solely have a blog on WordPress or a total static site, or perhaps choose another content management system.
• How you will reach your audience. You will want to think about whether you want to connect your website to social network sites, do social bookmarking, or even ad marketing.

Your first blog plan for your site can include your plans for monetization, in the case you will solely depend on advertisements, paid posts, and other revenue making tools. However, it should not be put in place from the beginning. Making money on your blog from the first day should not be your goal. You can always make money with traffic, but plastering your site with ads off the bat is a big clue that your focus is not on providing unique and quality content.

It should be reaching out and engaging with people. With integrating your site to post to social network sites like Twitter and Facebook, as well as submitting those articles to social bookmarking sites like Digg and StumbleUpon, you are literally putting out your content to the masses. If you already talk to people online, then they may be open to reading your blog posts.

Now, if you do not have any connections… come on… starting engaging. Unless you spam someone or come off as rude, connecting with people is not hard. Be prepared to listen. As a blogger and person in general, you can learn a lot, and even find topics to fuel your blog.

So, stop thinking of blogging as a chore! Get writing, engage, and have fun!

You have probably read product or service reviews online. I know I have. You also have spotted fake ones or perhaps ones that just really make little to no sense. A lot of people rely on reviews from both blogs and other review sites to determine if a product or service is well worth the money.

There are reasons why people do fake reviews:

• They were paid by someone else to do it.
• They want to make money through paid to post programs.
• They want to make money through affiliate advertising.

Do I have to list more? As you can see, it all boils down to making money.

However, it does more than make someone money. Fake reviews on sites or blogs:

• Have little regard to their own readers and do not care to provide honest reviews.
• Have little regard to actually working with companies to feature a worthwhile product.

You basically lied while earning money. The economy might not be that great, but when people have money to spend, they will spend it on products and services that they can trust.

And what happens if your readers call you out on a fake review? Retracting your post seems really unprofessional and pretty much a turn off for readers. Remember, that article could be deleted, but how many places did that article get pinged? How long does that article stay in the search engines? How about- how long will it take for you to regain your reader’s trust?

That is what you should be focusing on.

What can you do to avoid writing a bad review that might be construed as fake on your blog?

Well, the obvious would be to write a real honest review. Try the product or service first or do not attempt to write about it at all. If there is any pay involved, or affiliate programs attached, Without focusing on that, make be thorough and try to cover as much as you can like: product description, first thoughts, expectations, end result of product or service’s use, and final thoughts.

It might take a little more time to blog a real review, but in the end, you are letting your readers know where their money is best spent. Being helpful = #win!

What is the purpose of an RSS feed? That is one of many questions I get from people on a daily basis. I decided I would share. First, you have to understand what it is before I go onto explaining how you can use your RSS feed to your advantage.

According to Wikipedia, an RSS feed is:

RSS (most commonly translated as “Really Simple Syndication”) is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format.

The format is really simple (exactly part of its definition.) In fact, you can view my own rss feed here at Blondish.net and see for yourself. You will be able to subscribe to these feeds too. One way you can subscribe is to plug the feeds you into your Google Reader. You can simply click on the title of the feed on one side and it appears in a window for your to reading convenience.

However, here are a few things to help you with your blog when harnessing the power of RSS feeds:

• You can use your social networking places and spread the news about your blog and ask those who like your blog to subscribe to your feed. The feed is something that your reader can choose to come back and not forget about after some time.
• You can make money with your RSS feed. There are programs out there that will allow you to add text links or advertisements to your feed so you can make a little money.
• You can hold subscription drives. RSS feeds are free to subscribe to. In fact, Chris Brogan holds them on occasion, and encourages others to hold them too. These subscription drives could pull in more readers who are curious about your content. You can also take this time to ask your audience on what they would like to see on your site so they may come back again and again.
• You can encourage your readers to make comments on your blog through your feed too! This is a great way to keep your blog’s conversation rolling!

The great thing about the feeds are that all you have to do is blog and it will be published not just to your website, but your feed page too. It can drive traffic to your site on days you did not do much to promote your blog, and possibly bring back old viewers you have not seen in some time.

Do you have an RSS feed? If so, what do you do to harness its power? If not, have you ever considered putting one on your site?

You may have read a few times that you have to blog frequently. The problem is… how frequently should you blog? And why should you blog frequently? Who should be blogging frequently?

One specific answer for all bloggers does not cut it. There are so many different niche and even more so, different types of blogs, and individuals. Not everyone can attest to being a professional blogger who has quit their day job and have all the time in the world to do what they want, including blogging. Even professional bloggers are not pumping out content in mass amounts all on their lonesome.

Who Should be Blogging Frequently?

You should blog regularly no matter who you are or what you write about on your site. At least once a week is good and keeps the search engines interested in crawling your site.

The problem is that you encounter a couple things: whether you have the time to blog, or keeping up with your competition. If you want to blog and be up to date, you are going to have to make the time to do it. If you can at least blog once a week and only spend a maximum of one hour (depending on the length of your post and how well you can type), you should be fine.

Why Should You Blog Frequently?

There are a couple reasons why you should blog frequently. For one, it does keep the search engines crawling your site for more information. However, the biggest thing- for your audience (your readers and followers, and maybe even your clients.) If you are not sending out any updates, what is going to keep them on your site?

The design can only entertain your readers for a short bit, and if they already read the older posts, what is left? With millions upon millions of blogs alone, other sites that have been updated, might be far more enticing.

The Internet changes, technology changes, just about everything in life changes. If your niche has some pretty important news and you have an opinion about it, that is more reason to be blogging frequently and making sure that your readers are filled in on the most recent news.

How Frequently Should You Blog?

In order to determine how frequently you should blog, there are some factors to think of:

• How fast paced is your niche? (is there a lot of news or not a lot of news)
• How much time do you have to blog, or how much have you set aside to blog?
• How ambitious are you about your site’s success?

Some niche, might be so small and the news for it is not a lot. That might be great for some as it can be manageable.

Some bloggers write on the fly. Some bloggers schedule a time to blog. Find what is a comfortable fit for you and blog. You might even want to jot down some prompts and notes for each before sitting to write a post. It might make the process faster. However, if you want to blog and be up to date, you cannot make excuses. Like the Nike saying- “Just Do It!”

In the case you are aiming high for the success of your blog, you might adopt a far more frequent routine like once a day, three times a week or five times. If you do more than once a day, great… especially if you are the primary author.

However, do not overdo it. Pace yourself and schedule posts to publish based on the pattern in times your visitors come by to comment on your website. Yep! You have heard it! If you look through your comments for your site, and notice the time, you can market your articles more efficiently. Your regular readers can be a big clue on why they may miss commenting at one post versus another… and this is without looking at third party stat programs!

If you have a strong following that leaves comments, try to keep them in mind when it comes to blogging. If they cannot read your work every day, and you are publishing too frequently, you might have articles that do not get the attention they need.

Also, you can put out a survey or poll for your visitors to fill out so you know:

• How often they visit your site
• What brings them back to your site
• What topics they are interested in
• What topics that have not been covered that they would like to see in particular
• How easy is it to use the site (poor usability can be a deterrent)
• When do they like to visit the site
• If the site improved more, would they visit more often
• Any suggestions for better site usability?

Does Being a Frequent Blogger Lead to Success?

So, I had to ask this question…. does blogging frequently lead to success? The answer: Not all the time.

There are so many factors into what it takes to have a successful blog and much of it rests on how you market your site. You can publish as much content, slap as much handy dandy search optimization tricks, and have traffic from the search engines, but the people who stick around the longest are the ones you connected with out on the social networks or in person.

You ultimately have the keys to drive your blog towards success, stay in park, or crash and burn. Some successful bloggers only blog once a week. Others a couple times a day.

How often do you blog? Do you make a schedule to blog or write on the fly?