Compared to building websites, blogs are easier, cheaper and faster to build, but does this mean that you should have more than one?

My answer to this is “yes and no.”

A little bit of an ambiguous answer I know, but let me clear up the reasons for my answer …

If you’re an intermediate to advanced marketer who knows how to a) get traffic to your blog and b) monetize your blog by converting more of your visitors into paying customers, then I say you have a solid reason for diversifying into other niche markets and build more blogs – so long as you know how to manage all of them of course.

The problem really comes when you don’t know how to get traffic to your blog, you struggle with keeping it maintained, your blog posts are mediocre and even if people do land on your blog, they hit the back button in seconds … in other words, they escape your blog without even taking note of what you have to say.

This is when I argue that you should think twice before building more blogs unless of course, you really feel that you’re currently blogging in the wrong market, either because your target market are unresponsive to blogs or to finding information online generally or because you just don’t know enough about the subject matter to create an authority blog.  Other than that, this is the strategy I would pursue to get more traffic and monetize your blog before building more of them:

1. Post at least 3 times per week and make those blog posts informative. Infomative could include doing a quality review of a product that you are an affiliate for, giving tips on how to use a particular product and even doing a trackback to someone elses blog post.
2. Ensure your ping list is up together so that you get the maximum benefit from publishing your blog posts.
3. Comment on other people’s blogs – particularly those in your niche. I know my readers may be tiring of hearing this one, but it’s relevant and new bloggers still fail to recognize it as a credible means to getting traffic and links back to your site. If you read comments on other people’s blogs then you should be commenting because you already know the value.
4. Tag your blog posts. Each time you make a post add your keywords as tags at the bottom of your post as well as to your WordPress pages.  This feature is already built into the version 2.7.1 of WordPress and enables your posts to be indexed by services like technorati. Tags are not to be confused with categories and but, if you are using the Related Articles plugin, then tags provide a huge bonus to connecting your readers to similar articles you may have discussed on any give topic.
5. Syndicate your posts. Once your post is pinged and tagged properly, you should syndicate your post, which will enable you to generate some immediate traffic. I used to recommend Web 2.0 Submitter, but this software is now only available to those who sign up to Blog Success.  I can’t say I’m impressed and hope I still get my updates since I purchased this long before Blog Success existed.

There are a myriad of other strategies you can use to bring more traffic to your site but if you focus on these five and perform each task with due diligence and you’ll see your traffic stats increase in a matter of weeks.

Once you’ve perfected or at least use these strategies comfortably, you can apply them to any niche.

Blog Easy,

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It’s true!  StomperNet really are using the StudioPress for their main site.  Way to go Brian!

If you have any interest in Search Engine Optimization at all, you’ve probably heard about StomperNet and their Going Natural videos, The Net Effect, Stomping The Search Engines 2, etc.

I was so curious today because they introduced a video busting the long awaited (for some of us) myth about LSI or, Latent Semantic Indexing.

Anyway, I’m not going to go over the controversies about LSI in this post since I wouldn’t be able to wrap it up so neatly as Leslie Rhode does so you better go watch the video.  That said, I KNOW there will be a lot of people who’s Golden Goose was fattened through their scare tactics regarding LSI who will be calling their teams for emergency strategy sessions tonight as they are forced to put the Golden Goose on a strict diet!

That said StomperNet confessed that they’d preached the LSI concept too and I know because I watched the DVD’s!

I digress … again.

After watching the video and being grateful that I gave very little credence to LSI, I noticed the footer of their blog looked too similar to my own blog.  As I scrolled to the top of the page, it was obvious to me that they were using the Streamline StudioPress theme.

So why was I excited and why blog about it?

There have been a lot of talk about SEO themes lately and whilst I have nothing against using SEO themes (and, in fact for almost three years used what I regard as the best SEO WordPress theme around), and, I certainly think that “do it yourself” bloggers who know very little about what they are doing, might want to stick to a SEO theme, there has to be a reason why StomperNet who apparently has the largest SEO subscription based training site would use StudioPress …

StomperNet Knows SEO and Can Optimize Any WordPress Theme  To Get Maximum Exposure Online

I’m only assuming that’s right by the way, since I have not spoken to anyone at StomperNet.

But my point is that I see people placing so much emphasis on whether a theme is an SEO theme or not that they ignore the important element of what really brings visitors to your site … great marketing and, what keeps visitors on your site and coming back to your site … great content.

I’m sure if there were a theme that looked like toilet paper, StomperNet would get away with using it because people flock to their site because they know how to market and, they have content people want to read.

If StudioPress is good enough for StomperNet, it’s good enough for you too!

You should really be going to check out the StomperNet video now though and, you should also check out the range of StudioPress themes.

Til’ next time,

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I still get a fair few reciprocal linking requests, particularly from companies building backlinks for their clients.

But the question being raised today is …

“Is Recipocal Linking Now Regarded As Spam?”

My blog post about 3 way linking highlighted some of the issues with trading linking, but I it appears Google are not the only ones slapping you for “shady” linking practices … Yahoo! have now jumped on the bandwagon and seem to be treating excessive reciprocal links as spam!

Since abstaining from any activites with any 3 way linking programs, I’ve also either ignored or rejected any offers to those offering to reciprocate or trade links with me. In my opinion, if you’re worth linking to, you’re worth being on my blogroll for everyone to see … so I’m not just trading links to “manipulate” my search engine results.

If you want to get “legitimate” backlinks to your blog you’d be better off putting your efforts in writing quality articles, commenting on other people’s blogs and participating in a couple of social media sites such as Twitter or Facebook for starters.

The caveat here is not to join every social group you’re invited to … You’d never get any work done. The other thing is to provide quality on any social networking site you’ve subscribed to. People will naturally visit your site if you offer good, genuine and unique communications but they’ll smell a rat if you try to manipulate.

The same is true of article marketing.

I truly learnt about trading links the hard way and wished I’d not spent so much time (or actually little time) building links via maniuplative networks because in the end, it did come back to bite me in the butt. I was genuine … in other words, I didn’t know I was involving myself in link manipulation but just like the law, “ignorance is no excuse.”

Read this article about excessive reciprocal links carefully and if you’re not already doing so, build your links naturally if you want to maintain a long-term online business.

Until next time,

Related posts:

1. Is Reciprocal Linking A Thing Of The Past?
2. Is 3 Way Linking Acceptable to Google?
3. Help Me! Which Of The 101 Ways Do I Use To Promote My Blog?

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