Savvy Affiliate

Day 13 of The 100 Days To Webpage Excellence Guide

After you have created your website and written a couple of posts, it is time to start improving the site’s design.  One of the first things that you should focus on when you are improving your website is how long it takes to load.  A slow webpage can annoy your visitors, and it can also be a sign that your server won’t be able to handle a surge in hits.

The first thing that you can do to speed up your website is to make sure that you are running the wordpress plugin WP-Cache.  Wp-Cache is an extremely efficient system of storing your posts on wordpress so that they don’t have to be reloaded from the server each time someone visits.  In some cases, it can speed your site up by an order of magnitude or more.

So say that you’ve installed wp-cache, but your site is still loading slowly, how can you figure out what is holding it back?   Well this is actually extremely simple, if you are running Firefox.   Firefox has an extension called firebug which is extremely useful for a webpage designer, one of the functions, the one we care about today, shows you how long it takes to load each element of a webpage.

Looking at SavvyAffiliate.com using Firebug

I had 255 Kb which loaded in 1.89 seconds.  (I’m using a cable service for my ISP)   If I decided that my site was too slow, I could look and see what was holding it up.  Answer, several largish Image files from the post break out blogging.   I won’t be too worried about those since they will naturally be pushed off my blog front page with another couple of posts.  I don’t see anything too troubling on SavvyAffiliate, but I wouldn’t as I have already gone through and fixed some trouble spots.

 Now lets look at a site whihc I suspect hasn’t tried to optimize for speed.  StepenFung.net, who I choose at random from my list of reviewme peers.

This site is in trouble in terms of loading speed.  It takes an incredible 1 and 1/2 minutes to load!  It makes me feel like I’m back in 1998 dialing up AOL on my 28K modem.  Some of the slow loading could be due to a slow server, another large part of it is due to a huge page.  His site is at least 1.6 MB.  He should strive to cut that down, but what should he cut?

 Luckily firebug shows the file size of each object.  Although not all the objects are on the screen (after all there were 120 of them) one which sticks out is the Func_033.js, some javascript programming running intellitxt.  It is 29 KB and took a 1.2 seconds to load, almost as much time as my entire site took to load.  He also appears to be running a lot of images and services off of other pages.  This can slow down your site dramatically as you have to contact numerous servers to load the webpage.

But you don’t really fcare too much about stephen fung (Unless you are him, in which case, How bout a reciprocal link?), and neither do I.

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The Best Way To Get Traffic to Your Site Is To Go Where The People Are

One of the quickest ways to get a large traffic increase for you site is to become a guest blogger on a popular website.  If you are guest blogging, then you can either throw up a biography of yourself, or include links to your own pages, helping to drive the visitors to your blog.  However not all guest blogging opportunties are created equal. Some sites are much better to submit content to than others.  If you are going to take the time to write articles and give them away, you want access to as many readers as possible. 

Almost all bloggers are hungry for content.  Every single blogger faces the prospect of needing new content every day to keep his visitors coming back.  Many bloggers are open to the idea of guest bloggers if you can deliver quality to them.   So next time you have a killer idea, try writing it up and sending it off to another popular site in order to drive your traffic, it could be well worth your time.

Who should I submit my work to?  Almost every niche has a list of the Top bloggers in that niche.  Find that niche and think about what site your article would work best on.  Have any of the bloggers asked for submissions?  Does the tone of the article fit the bloggers persona?   Daily blog tips has recently come out with a handy list of the Top 25 Blogging Blogs.  When I am looking to submit some work a I will go there.  Although I would like to post on Problogger, I have no past relationship with him and it is unlikely that he will post my articles.  (Not that it hurts to ask)    I have never seen John Chow post guest articles, so that might be out also.   However I know Lorelle has read this blog before, because she was kind enough to comment.  If I have a post that is up her alley I may shop it to her.  Additionally, Daily blog tips has asked for submissions, so they are a great candidate for guest blogging.

Is it better to go for paid posts?  Or post to get traffic?  I would much rather post on a site with strong traffic, for free, than be paid to post on some one else’s blog which wasn’t going to drive people to my own site.    The going price of blog posts is relatively low, only $10-$30.  I think that for that price, it is much better to work on my own blog.  To me, the lifetime value of a blog post can be in the triple digits, and my blog is just starting out.  The bottom line is, I would rather work for myself than someone else.  Being paid to post is too much like working a job, but guest posting to drive traffic is more like expanding my brand.

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Day 12 of The 100 Days To Webpage Excellence Guide

Eventually, one thing that every webmaster must focus on is increasing his rankings in the search engines.  A new site will likely get most of its traffic from direct referrals from other sites.  A mature site however will get the vast majority of its traffic, over 75%, directly from search engines.  As far as search engines go, the one that you really care about is Google.  Google has over 55% market share of worldwide searches.  Its two closest competitors, Yahoo and MSN, take 22% and 9% respectively.

So for a webmaster just starting out, what do they most need to know about Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?  Well below are some SEO basics, later on we’ll go into more detail, but extra detail is mainly just tips and tricks on to how to do these better.

1) Search Engines Rank Sites by incoming links - Its no secret that the main way Google ranks web pages is by who is linking to a specific site, and what keywords they use to link to it.  A link to a site is considered a vote for that site in Google’s eyes.   Get more incoming links and you will get more votes.  Google takes the anchor text of the link and uses that and the surrounding text to determine what they site being linked to is about, and what keywords it should rank for.  This inspired the Google bomb, an attempt to rank highly for a specific keyword by getting tons of backlinks for that phrase.

2) Some votes count more than others - Although no one knows exactly how Google weights each links, it is well known that links from highly ranked sites count a lot more than links from other low ranked sites.  This is why links on high ranked sites are in demand, and can sell for 100’s of dollars a month, whereas links on low ranked sites are worth very little.

3) You can rank for a specific phrase by using a Keyword frequently, and getting people to link to you with that phrase - When you are doing search engine optimization, you want to pick specific keyword targets, and you want to be #1 for those targets.  You can rise in the rankings for a specific keyword by using it frequently in your post, in your post titles, and in your meta information.  More importantly is getting people to link to you with that keyword.  Perhaps no one is taking this to a greater extreme than John Chow, who is on a binge trying to get links with the Anchor text “Make money online”

4) Ranking is only half the battle, the next step is getting users to click on your site -  Even when you appear highly in the search engine rankings, you still have to convince the searchers to come to your site.  You can do this with targeted page titles and targeted site post descriptions.  Some people don’t take the time to write excerpts for their posts.  That is a mistake.  Writing a concise excerpt for your post is one of the easiest ways to get more search engine hits.  Posts I write excerpts for generally get 50% more Google hits than posts I skip doing this.  Additionally there are loads of wordpress plugins which are designed to help you optimize your search engine rankings.  The one I prefer is All in one seo pack.

5) Be prepared to get hits for things you never though of - Although targeted keywords are great, and will be your top referrals, by far the majority of your Google traffic will come from long tail keywords.  These long tail keywords are phrases you might never have thought of, or even tried to rank for.  In fact they could very well be unique phrases that no one has searched for before, or is likely to again.  The trick to having a strong long tail keyword ranking is to mix up your content.  If you use many different keywords, and write lots of different content, then there is a lot of combinations which will hit your site.  Some of those combinations will inevitably drive users to your page, where you can turn them to dollars.

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Sometimes you will read posts telling you to use blog relative links instead of absolute links, this is a very bad idea

Relative links are links to another post in relation to the current page.  so if I wanted to link to another page in the same directory I would link like <a href=”file”>   if I wanted to go out a directory I would use <a href=”../file”>   But you should never use relative links in your blog!   The reason for this is that many feeds don’t interpret relative links correctly.  Although some feed readers are smart enough to process them, by no means do all the feed readers get it right.

If you use relative links, your subscribers will get an error when they try to click in.  The solution of course is to use absolute links whenever you link to another post, (i.e. <a href = “http:www.yoursite.com/yourpost”> )   But absolute links can present another problem, they can cause you to put pingbacks on your own site.

So how can you use absolute links and avoid self pingbacks?  Well, like everything having to do with wordpress, the answer is a plugin.    And what is that plugin called?  Yes, you guessed it, No Self Pings.  Upload it and your self pinging days are over, which is a huge boon if you write series of posts, as often self pings can start to overwhelm the legitimate ones.

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Conventional wisdom states that A blog Is built through work and slowly building up readers, conventional wisdom may be wrong.

Actually that is not entirely true.  Conventional wisdom is correct that it takes daily work to create a great blog.  It is correct that it takes time to build a decent readership.  But what you don’t hear often, is that once you have established your readership base, you can break out, and your visitors can increase dramatically practically overnight.

As an example we’ll look at how four of the “A List” bloggers got started, Problogger Darren Rowse, John Chow, Steve Pavlina, and Shoemoney’s Jeremy Schoemaker.

Looking up the Alexa stats on each of them, and panning back in time to where they got started gives a great demonstration of where they broke out.

Alexa Rankings for Problogger

Problogger started out strong, and within the first 6 month had an Alexa traffic reach of .02.  (For comparison Savvy Affiliate has a current reach, May 2007, of .002 )  However for the next 6 months, the end of 2005 through the beginning of 2006, Problogger’s traffic reach went stagnant.   Then he had his breakout.  Overnight his daily reach more than doubled, took a bit of a dip, and then surged ahead.   We can see this pattern repeat time and again with the other bloggers

Alexa Ranks for John Chow

John’s surge in traffic may be the most dramatic of any I examined.  He was hovering around .005, not too different than your average PR 4 blog, and his traffic shot up overnight.  I’m told that this was due through judicious use of an AdWords campaign on sites such as Problogger, but am saving investigating causes of breakouts for my next article.

Looking at ShoeMoney, you can see a more gradual surge, but still a clear breakout pattern

Shoe spent 6 months hovering at a daily reach of .01, and then in the span of the next 6 months increased his traffic by a factor of 10.  Although that has dropped off slightly, Shoemoney is still a strong force in the blogging community.

Finally Steve Pavlina has a blog which might be the most profitable of any yet listed  (He reports 40K/month earnings).    Did he get there through a steady increase in readership?  Nope, once again he plateaued and managed to break out in a surge

Although the exact reasons behind each surge will be examined later, there are several conclusions one can draw from looking at these charts

1) The right content / marketing can drive a surge of visitors - Clearly all of these bloggers benefited from either viral content of some kind, or smart, aggressive marketing.  I personally read each blog and know that they are all well written, spawn lots of content, and have interesting/unique personalities.  However without the idea / marketing that they did to generate their surge of visitors they may not be considered “A List” bloggers today.  (Although I would argue if they had missed one opportunity, they would create another for themselves)

2) Sites need a base traffic level before they can surge - In each of these cases, all four sites had moderately strong traffic ( ~.01 Daily Reach) before they surged.  They each seemed to reach their initial traffic levels through sustained growth.  The fact that they had a base traffic enabled their surge.  The moderate daily reach would be essential to get traffic due to viral blog links.  If their initial traffic was too low, no matter how exciting a blog post they wrote, not enough bloggers would see it to drive a surge.  The bottom line, if your site is still very low on the traffic scale ( < 200 uniques per day ) you should focus on growing your site through common SEO and content generation techniques, rather than trying to break out.

3) A surge needs to be sustained - In each case, after the initial spike in traffic, there a downswing in visitors.  However the reason that you know each blogger know, the reason that they are “A List” bloggers, is that they were able to sustain their visitors and keep them coming back.  It would do a site no good to have only 1 good article.  Readers would come, perhaps even subscribe, but would stop coming back when no more gold was forthcoming.  After you get a surge in visitors is the most important time to write quality content!  If you ever see a spike in readership, that is when you need to put out your best work.  Spend extra time writing more articles and making each interesting.  Take time away from your SEO tasks and your site design to sustain your visitors.  Once you have gotten each hooked on the site you can go back to a more normal routine.  Until then, you must treat each as valuable and work hard to retain them.

Any thoughts on how you might attempt to kick your blog out of a rut?  Would a viral article or an intelligent, aggressive marketing campaign work better?

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Some Bloggers Are Outsourcing for Success, Are You?

With the recent release of the 4 hour workweek by Tim Ferriss, the blogosphere has been buzzing with the idea of outsourcing work. 

Tim Says

“Outsourcing is no longer just for Fortune 500 companies.  Small and mid-sized firms, as well as busy professionals, can outsource their work to increase their productivity and free time for more important commitments. It’s time for the world to take advantage of this revolution.”

And if that doesn’t describe most bloggers in a nutshell then nothing will.

I am tempted to order Tim’s book and see all that he has to say about outsourcing.  However just reading reviews of his book has made me think of things that I would like to outsource on this blog, letting me free up time to expand

1) Blog Design - I have no desire to learn how to create a Wordpress Theme and take the hours or dozens of hours necessary to design a perfect blog page.  That is why this theme is a old Daily Blog Tips theme which they were giving away.  However sooner or later I will want to move this blog into a theme that is recognizably, and brandable, Savvy Affiliate.  When it is time to do that, what is a better use of my time?  Learning to create a theme in order to do it once?  Or hiring another blogger to create a theme for me?  Clearly the most productive thing I can do is outsource, spend some money to save a lot of time

2) Trouble Shooting - Every site runs into technical trouble every now and then.  Some things I can handle, most things I can figure out after a Google search or two.  However these bugs can cost a lot of time. Once this site grows and is starting to make some money, it will be well worth it to me to pay some college student to trouble shoot my blog whenever it has technical bugs, instead of taking the hour or more necessary to figure out the bug and rectify it myself.

3) Comment Moderation - Although this site is still growing, I can easily see comment moderation becoming an onerous burden.  Even with Akismet installed, I still need to go through and verify that the spam comments are spam.  (I’m told http:Bl, project honeypot can help with this, I haven’t tried it yet) When the site gets larger I’ll need to take the time to make sure verified users aren’t abusing the comments.  I like responding to my readers at present, but  if the site grows too large I may forgo that in order to free up time to write content.  In that case outsourcing the comment moderation would be a great thing to do.

4) Content Writing - I would love to get contributing bloggers writing on this site.  Although I would still continue writing, it would be nice to have other people generating content.  This would greatly increase the total number of pages indexed in the search engines, driving up the search traffic.  Additionally it would put another point of view on the site, broadening Savvy Affiliate’s personality and potentially making it more interesting.

5) Social Bookmarking - I currently spend a fair amount of time now Digging and Stumble-ing posts, both mine and other bloggers.  I do it for mine in order to make my post more visible, and self promote.  I do it for other bloggers both because I enjoyed that particular post and would like to share it as well as the hope that they would reciprocate for my site.  I wouldn’t mind hiring someone to do some promotion work on my blog and kick start it much more than I have been able to.  Of course, by the time Savvy Affiliate is generating enough cash flow to make that worthwhile, there is a good chance my readers would be bookmarking posts themselves.

6) Finding Plugins / Upgrades - Which plugins are the best?  Which give the most competitive edge and make you the most productive?  Although every site has a list of the best plugins, there are new ones being released all the time.  It would be nice to have a side by side analysis of all the plugins with similar functions, much as I shop for gadgets or airfare.   However this might not be something best outsourced, it might just be a good idea of a webpage another webmaster could create.  I would frequent it, and I know others would as well.

So what sort of thing would you be tempted to outsource?  What tasks tie up your time without being very productive?

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Since my first Review of John Chow didn’t quite seem to take (I’m still waiting for my backlink, and although i know he’s backlinked, I don’t think that he is 12 posts backlogged) I’ll give it a go with another shot.

The reason for this post is that if you do a review of John Chow with the anchor text Make Money Online pointing at his homepage, he will give you a link back to your site.  Not too shabby when you consider he is a PR 6 page.

So without further ado, here goes

John Chow is the most widely read blogging blogger on the internet.  He has recently moved past Problogger to snatch the title.  If for no other reason this should make you check out his site, so that you know what is going on in the blogosphere.

But there are many reasons you should read his site.  In fact his site is popular because you should read it, not the other way around.

1) He is very clever - He has some evil ways of getting links and making money on his site that I would never have thought of.  Once he suggests them it is obvious how valuable those tactics are.  Read his page for a while and you will find yourself thinking of strategies that you would have never thought of before

2) He started out just like you - John started his site just over 18 months ago.  Since then it has taken off.  Take note of what he does and you could very well figure out how to make your own site rocket to the top

3) He is super aggressive at pursuing SEO - It is refreshing to read a blogger who is so openly aggressive about making money and improving his traffic.  Some bloggers seem very blase about that.   They are more interested in their message than their money.  This may be true, and more power to them if it is, but it is still nice to read a blogger who doesn’t mind being labeled Evil from time to time.

If you would like your site reviewed by Savvy Affiliate, contact me at  SavvyAffiliate [at no spam] gmail [dot] com.   Popular sites like John’s I will review for a backlink.  Less popular sites I would be interested in doing a review trade with.   If you are a porn site or some kind of scammer, no need to apply.

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Day 11 of The 100 Days To Webpage Excellence Guide

Writing a post on your blog every day is important in order to keep the traffic up and attract new visitors.  However it can be extremely difficult to come up with a new idea to write about every day, especially if you want that idea to be a good one.  Instead of trying to think up something new everyday, take one great idea and expand it into a series of posts.  A series of posts can be great for you as a blogger, since they can be much easier to write than many disparate posts, and they can be good for readers as the readers know what they will be seeing the next day.

So what makes a good series of posts, and how can you write one?   A good topic for a series of posts should be several things, interesting, have many areas to cover, and in demand.  Clearly you need to pick a topic which your visitors want to read about, and one that will keep them interested.  A topic you can write about in detail is essential if you expect to actually be able to create a series.

What are some tips on creating a good series?  Although writing a blog series is as simple as writing several posts and linking them together, writing a great series requires a little more work.  Here are some things you should work on as you write your series.

1) Write the series in one sitting - By writing all the articles of your blog series at one time, and then spreading them out using the Wordpress timestamp features, you can ensure that they all get written.  Although having a series can be great for attracting readers, stopping your series halfway can anger people, and having a post hanging over your head every night can be a lot of pressure.  By writing your series all at once, and then posting, you can ensure that you don’t start until all the posts are written.  Additionally, by writing the series at one time you can make sure that you don’t lose your train of thought during the posts.  It can be awful to start a series and sit down the next day and not understand what you were going to write about, or why you thought it was interesting.

2) Interlink the series - Chances are you will have new visitors who aren’t reading your site daily.  They will stumble onto one post in your series and find it interesting.  If you don’t link to any of the other posts in the series, they won’t even know those posts exist, and may very well leave your site.  By linking up your series you can turn a on off visitor into a multipage reader, and perhaps even a subscriber.

3) Make the progression natural- A good series should flow from one post to the next.  For instance if you were writing about how to win a poker tournament, a good series might be How to play when you first sit down, How to play on the second day, how to play at the final table, and how to win a heads up battle.  Each naturally ties into the other, and leads your visitors to follow your series in order, and to read them all.   If you post series doesn’t tie together neatly, your visitor might not feel obligated to read them all, costing you page views.

4) Spend time on the title - Although it is very important to write a great title for regular blog posts, it is even more important to do so for series.  The title of your series will span all of your posts, and a crappy one can doom the series to failure before you even begin.  Spend some time in order to make sure that the title accurately describes what the series is about, as well as intrigues your visitors into reading your series.

5) Invite comments - When you introduce your series, ask your readers if there is anything they would like you to cover.  It could make a great addition to tag onto the end of your series, or it could inspire you go to back and improve one of the posts that are in the series already.

So do you tend to write single posts or posts in a series?  Which one has generated a better response from your readers?

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Here are some recent posts that you may have missed, but that you probably want to check out

• How To Prevent Running Out Of Steam - by Lifehack  If you are blogger you have probably experience bloggers block.  All of a sudden you lose interest in running your site or lose new ideas on what to post.  Lifehacker has solutions to these common problems
• Branding Your Blog - By Lifehack  Developing your blog into a brand is essential for long term success.  You need people to think, I can’t miss a single post from this blog.  Here are some tips on how to identify your brand, and to build it
• 101 Essential Blogging Resources - By Blogtrepreneur.  If it was alphabetical, it would be an A-Z list, and then some.  As it is it is a great categorized research of all things blogs.
• Get Traffic From Digg Comments - By SEOmoz.  Instead of trying to get your own stories to the front page of Digg, you can try looking up upcoming stories and commenting on them, tagging a link to your site in the comments.
• Can Your URL Structure Hurt Your Search Engine Rankings? - By Art of Money.  An analysis on whether using a very common Wordpress file structure can actually hurt your search engine rankings.

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