1) Local Keyword List Generator

5minutesite.com offers an incredible local keyword list generator on their website to help you figure out exactly what geographic regions you should be targeting. Enter in your business’zip code, the radius you would like to target, and your keywords, and 5minutesite’s tool will generate a list of all of your keywords paired up with city names and zip codes from anywhere within your radius. This is extremely useful for creating a list to bring into the (also free) Google Keyword Tool to determine which terms are getting searched.

2) Google Places Category Tool

Mike Blumenthal, considered one of the industry’s foremost local SEO experts, has created a nifty tool for making sure that you locate the best categories for you to use when submitting your business to Google Places.  Users simply enter in the keyword they would normally use to describe their niche, and the tool does the rest of the work, showing you related categories and synonyms.  Mike has also expanded the tool to include categories for international versions of Google, and accepts partial string (i.e. search for “dent” to find categories relating to both “dental” and “dentist”).

3) Local Citation Finder

Whitespark’s Local Citation Finder is perhaps the most well-known local SEO tool on the market, but you would be surprised just how many people forget to take advantage of the free version of the tool.  Enter in your geographical information and a keyword, and the tool will come back with a report of valuable citation opportunities for that keyword/locale.  Enter in a competitors’telephone number, and the tool will help you find all of the citations that competitor has (which you can then pursue).  The free version allows up to 3 searches per day, and Pro membership starts at just $20 per month.

4) Local Search Toolkit

The Local Search Toolkit from seOverflow is another amazing tool that is in the same vein as Whitespark’s.  Enter in local keywords that you are targeting and the toolkit will come back with a list of the top local results for that keyword.  From there, you can see a wealth of information about the companies that rank well for these keywords, including the categories they are submitted to, their local citations, how many reviews they have, any videos associated with the account, whether or not they are verified, and their geographical distance from the geographic location, making this one of the most robust free tools on the market.

5) Geo Sitemap Tool

51blocks.com’s free Geo Sitemap Tool is a handy way to generate a KML file for you business’website.  Enter in your business name, address, phone number, and website and the tool automatically generates geo sitemap and XML files for you to upload to your root directory and verify in Google Webmaster Tools.  This helps services like Google Maps, Google Earth, and Google Maps for Mobile understand exactly where your business is.  The page also has information about how to correctly format your business name, address, and place on your website using proper Schema.org markup.  Truly a valuable little tool to help optimize your website for local search.

One of the most unique features of Facebook Commerce is the capacity to tailor your marketing based on the interests of the Facebook user. This means that you can much more successfully target consumers in your demographic which will increase the likelihood of a sale (Read “SEO”). It is all about having the necessary skills to effectively manage your Facebook Commerce campaign and creating compelling content specifically tailored to consumers who are, in most cases, already interested in your product(s).

Adding Facebook Commerce as a friend

When it comes to targeted sales campaigns, it is safe to say that Facebook Commerce will be one of the best friends you will ever have. Needless to say, most users of Facebook will be distracted by the activities of their friends – so, any Facebook Commerce campaign needs to be suitably compelling and visually appealing so as to attract their attention and generate a healthy click through rate and ultimately a conversion.

Finding an agency with extensive knowledge of the social media marketing field and who know what it takes to craft the sort of advertising campaigns on Facebook Commerce that will make a big difference to your sales figures is likely to be one of the most important undertakings that your business can pursue over the next 12 months. After all, with 500+ million users, there’s definitely going to be many potential customers for your products on Facebook.

Different people, different skills

The starting point for all SEOs wanting to build a better relationship with web developers and web designers is to understand that each role focuses on different skills. I have often come across SEOs who think they know best when it comes to coding, web developers who think all requests made by the SEO team are a waste of time and effort and, finally, web designers who think great design and user experience alone are the only elements of a successful website.

In a nutshell, don’t always assume you know best, leave development and design to the experts and, if you have any particular requirements from an SEO point of view, make sure these are explained and agreed at the beginning of the project.

Understanding each other’s areas of competence

Having worked with large teams of developers and designers for a number of years, I have learnt one important lesson: disagreements and misunderstandings are often the result of simply not having a clear idea of what the other teams do. The best way to tackle this from the point of view of an SEO consultant is to organise some SEO training sessions for other teams within the agency or company and invite them to do the same so that you can learn what they do.

Keep the sessions brief and focus on the elements of SEO which you think are most important to developers and designers so that next time you make a particular request, they will know exactly why and what the benefits for the clients are.

Even better, you can even create reference guides or guidelines so that your colleagues have a document they can quickly refer to if needed.

Great user experience will lead to great conversion rate

The basic goal of any SEO campaign is to increase the volume of traffic to a site, however, without user-friendly design chances are that all the extra visitors you manage to bring in will likely leave the site immediately and not convert.

As much as SEOs like text-heavy pages and optimised internal links, my experience has taught me that designers should always be involved in the conversations regarding on-page SEO: this will ensure that any changes made in order to optimise the website do not affect the user experience which, as a result, will lead to more traffic to pages that generate more leads and sales.

Cooperation is key

There’s a wide range of SEO tasks and projects which could really benefit from the input and help of web developers and designers. As an example, just think of link bait campaigns such as infographics and the development of widgets.

Involving all teams in brainstorming sessions and before major decisions are made can open up a wide range of opportunities, new ideas and also prevent any future complications with any project.

Better cooperation and communication between the SEO team, developers and designers not only will ensure that all work is carried out on a website in a manner that focuses on the best practices of all areas, but ultimately it will also lead to happier clients as they see everything’s being taken into account to achieve online success.

PageRank is a link analysis algorithm, named after Larry Page^[1] and used by the Google Internet search engine, that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of “measuring” its relative importance within the set. The algorithm may be applied to any collection of entities with reciprocal quotations and references. The numerical weight that it assigns to any given element E is referred to as the PageRank of E and denoted by PR(E). – Wikipedia

If that quote from the Wikipedia article about PageRank doesn’t make any sense to you, then this article is for you. (And if you did understand it, I think that this article will benefit you as well – but in a different way. )

In it’s simplest form, Google PageRank is a lot like democracy. Websites are both the candidates AND the voters, and he who gets the most votes wins; in the form of top placements within SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). To put it more simply – if a lot of other sites have a link to your site, you have a good chance of showing up within the top ten results of a Google search. Now, that is a VERY basic way of putting it, and there are a lot of gotcha‘s in there to trip you up – but that is what it all boils down to.

How is PageRank calculated?

PageRank is calculated using a patented algorithm that is constantly being tweaked, so no one can really say for sure how, but there are a lot of good ideas out there about it. What we as webmasters DO know is this – the more sites with relevant content and PageRank that link to your site, and the more relevant sites that your site links out to, the better your site’s PageRank will be. Also, it seems like Google is working on a much more dynamic / live pagerank system – we’ve seen PageRank for a specific site fluctuate up and down a whole point in the matter of a couple weeks, and then back to where it was. Now, remember I said there were some gotcha’s?

So what are some of the gotcha’s with PageRank

PageRank can be manipulated. It used to be VERY easy to do, but Google has consistently improved their algorithm to combat some of the common tactics that people use.

1. Bad links – Years ago – when I first got into SEO, PageRank, and all that jazz – I used to think that bad links were just dead links on your site that didn’t go anywhere. While those should be avoided at all costs, since they effect text to code ratio with no benefit to your site, there is an even more sinister side to bad links than that. You as a webmaster need to be careful what sites your website chooses to link to. If you knowingly link to a bad site that has nothing to do with the gist and content of your site, Google knows this, and will ding your PageRank a little. To follow the political reference – if you vote for a crooked candidate, it makes you look bad. Resolution? Avoid linking to websites that do not offer valuable content that is related to the purpose of your website.

2. Spamdexing – Spamdexing is a complicated subject – and has caused a lot of controversy in the past. There was even a lawsuit about it. It consists of automated “link generation” tools, hidden text, keyword stuffing, cloaking, and page hijacking for the sole purpose of increasing a sites PageRank, among other things. It’s kind of like stuffing the ballot box or rigging the election. You might win, but once you’re found out, it ain’t pretty. Resolution? Don’t do it! Use legitimate methods to build your sites PageRank – the long-term results are MUCH greater than the short-term rewards.

3. Duplicate Content – Duplicate content is a big problem these days. There are content farms galore feeding the same or highly similar articles to autoblogs all over the internet for the sole purpose of increasing their advertising revenue and amount of content on their site. Google is smart enough to know if your site consists of nothing but content scraped from other websites, and will adjust your PageRank accordingly, or simply drop you from search results all together. Resolution? Focus on creating unique, relevant content for your readers that they think is good enough to share or bookmark, and Google will see your site as increasingly more relevant for your topic of choice and reward you accordingly.

If you as a website owner and content creator knowingly participate in these practices, you’ll get what’s (unofficially) called a “Google Slap” where one day you’ll be at the top of results for whatever you are targeting, and the next day you’re nowhere to be found. That is why it is imperative that you play by the rules and do things the right and respectable way.

There are many more facets to PageRank that could be covered, and will be covered in the future here on this blog, but I think you’re starting to get the picture. While relevant, PageRank isn’t the be-all end-all factor when it comes to a successful website. Creating unique, engaging content that interests readers and offers value is what the web and Google is all about. Follow that, and you’re site will get ranked in no time.

Expectations and Prep-work

1. Write about what you know
2. Post as much as you can
3. Don’t get started unless you have the time to finish
4. Don’t do it for the money
5. Blogging should be a hobby, not a frantic attempt for cash
6. The bloggers who succeed are those who know what they’re doing
7. Don’t fall for the John Chow Effect
8. The only secrets to blogging are consistency, and originality
9. Sadly, more posts beats larger posts
10. Focus on content, and the rest will come

Setting Up your Blog
11. Read blogging tips blogs, pretty much anybody on this list is good.
12. Create the essential accounts, twitter, stumble, digg, feedburner, google…
13. A good design is important, but a bad one won’t destroy you.
14. Prepare yourself for a roller coaster of success and failure
15. Use wordpress, not blogger.
16. If you know how to get your own domain
17. Write as many posts while you’re in the mood, because there will be those days…
18. Start networking right away.
19. Read this article
20. Study a little, these topics in this order, CSS, HTML, SEO Traffic Generation, Social Networking, and Social Media.

Essential Plugins (for WordPress)
21. Top Commentator List
22. SEO All in One
23. Not a plugin but use the latest version of WordPress and keep updating.
24. Comment Luv
25. If you’re picky about comments, Keyword Luv
26. I love Social Book Marking
27. Large RSS and Email Subscribe Buttons
28. Akismet! It’s blocked 450,000+ spam comments on here
29. Full Text Feed
30. Google XML Sitemaps

Content
31. Make content your focus at the beginning, not marketing.
32. Set up a recommend/featured posts set up, so that you can advertise your top posts.
33. Write in lists and use pictures
34. Conduct lots of reviews, studies, and polls
35. Use lots of links, to yourself, and to other bloggers
36. If it’s under 500 words don’t post it
37. Humor is ok, as long as you’re still giving them good information
38. Read some stellar posts so that you get an idea on how to do it.
39. Bold and Italicize your keywords, this helps catching the readers eye, and the SE spiders like it.
40. Use spelling and grammar checks

Marketing
41. Comment like crazy
42. Look for free links like Q/A posts, or top commentator lists…
43. If you have good information to share, share is as good information, not as obvious spam, The Secret to Millions Online
44. The best way to get quick links, is through sponsoring a popular contest
45. Learn How to Comment successfully
46. Learn Popular Social Media Sites
47. Email people, and have a contact page.
48. Read and study. Learn from the experts, and other people’s failures.
49. A Failure is better then never even trying. Because then you’ll probably succeed next time.
50. Accept that some posts will do better then others, and market those ones.

SEO
51. Use the SEO All in One tool. I know I already said this, but use it from the beginning, that way you have meta tags, and descriptions on every post.
52. You don’t need to be an expert on SEO to be able to use it, learn the basics and you’ll be fine.
53. Use comments for SEO purposes
54. Use Google Adwords Keyword Tool to choose your keywords
55. If you’re in this for the long run, aim for popular keywords now. It’d be annoyed to have to re-optimize later, for a different keyword.
56. Make your title tag your top keyword, and put that keyword in your meta description and keywords for your homepage.
57. Use beginner and advanced squidoo tips, to bring traffic and Link juice to your site.
58. Google respects powerful sites. Just keep focusing on content , and dont‘ use too much flash, and you won’t be sandboxed.
59. Google isn’t the devil people make it out to be. They’re just scared of it, because they don’t understand it.
60. If you comment enough, then all your posts will be added to google anyway. You don’t need to worry about submitting your posts to it, and don’t’waste your money on those people saying pay them to add your site to search engines.

Traffic Generation
61. Social Media is awesome, and highly successful. Learn Digg and stumble!
62. Comments bring traffic.
63. Guest posting brings traffic, links, and markets your site. This is one of the best ways to market your site.
64. The Viral Effect can happen to anyone, at any time. Be prepared with either a big enough server or run away from digg, cause it’ll blow.
65. Word of mouth/email is still the best way to get traffic. You need your readers to be telling other people about your site.
66. Use Press Releases, and take advantage of current events to be the first to be writing on your evolving niche.
67. Use forums on your niche to your advantage. And don’t be afraid to ask questions on this.
68. Use your connections to market your site/products.
69. Sell something that’s really good. Spend a while on an Ebook and give some free promotional to start the viral effect rolling, and get the traffic flooding in.
70. Try the new rage, Video Posting

Stat Trackers
71. Alexa and technorati are both awful and misleading, try not to use them when you’re analyzing sites.
72. Though still skewed, siteanalytics is a good way to compare site’s traffic.
73. Use websitegrader to give you useful information about your stats, and site SEO.
74. Get listed in lists like 45n5′s and Winning the Web’s.
75. Use every stat tracker you can find.
76. Every stat tracker will be different, but analytics is the most trusted.
77. Aweber isn’t legit, don’t use it, and people don’t trust it. People use it to try and say they get hundreds of visits a day, but it’s not true.
78. Feedburner is the best feed stats tracker.
79. Use these tools to get untrue and unrealistic monetary values of your site.
80. Understand that visitors are not what makes a blog, but it’s active readers that create a community.

Monetizing
81. Have a creative original 125×125 ad.
82. Have an original site slogan that people will remember.
83. Don’t do it too early.
84. You can always monetize later, but monetizing too early can greatly hurt your site.
85. Ebook sales are awesome, once you have a popular enough blog.
86. Don’t try and sell something you don’t know.
87. Monetizing = Marketing You’ll only sell as much as you can market it.
88. Private ads are the top money makers for most people.
89. Affiliate Marketing can be a huge money maker if you know how to do it.
90. Sponsored Reviews and PPP, programs like that destroy your Page Rank. Be careful what programs you start up.

Extras
91. An About page is not an essential, but you should make one if you can.
92. A Contact Me Page you Need!
93. Advertise pages are more then just for buying advertising. I read all advertise pages just to see what type of stats they have, and which ones they use to get an idea of the blog. If you see them relying too much on illegitimate sources you can realize how important money is to them.
94. Patience and Perseverance are critical to succeeding on the internet. You’ll probably need to wait a while awhile before you will see anytime of monetary success.
95. Use Google Reader to stay informed.
96. Learn twice as much as you write. This way you always stay a step ahead of your readers, and have an inexhaustible amount of posts to write.
97. Don’t let stat results get you depressed. Good content combined with time, will always succeed, eventually…
98. Getting the first 100 subscribers is the hardest. After that, it only gets easier.
99. Have a good archives system set up, so that people can find the posts they’re looking for.
100. People Love Freebies! Give as many freebies as you can.
101. I got this post idea from Thoushallblog’s 101 blogging tips list. Make sure you check out his as well, because he has some great stuff on there, that I didn’t cover.
102. Stay One Step ahead of the other bloggers in your niche.

If you liked this post please subscribe to my RSS or Email feed, for more tips on How to Blog. Please Digg this article if it was helpful for you.

So what are the benefits, and what do you have to do? First of all, Don’t submit any article that aren’t quality. You don’t want your name on something that isn’t good work.  Another thing you DON’T want to do is submit duplicate content, especially stuff you haven’t written. This is bad for your article, and just bad all-around. So don’t just copy other’s material. One useful technique that I’ve found and utilized when I don’t have the time or I don’t want to take the effort to write an article from scratch is this: Find an article that looks good, read it over and make sure it has some good content. Then you cut and paste the article into Google Translator, and translate it into German (you don’t have to do German, I’ve just made a habit of using it because I’ve found it goes back into English smoothest). Once you’ve got it in German, copy it again, and translate it back to English. Go through the article and clean it up, because translator doesn’t always do a great job of going into smooth English.

Make sure that in all your articles you link back to your site, preferably with a hypertext link. If the article site doesn’t accept HTML, then just paste in your URL. This will ensure you get at the least a quality one-way link back to your site. And as any competent Internet Marketer knows, quality one way links are what paves the road to number one Google listings.

1. Don’t Go Off Topic

I don’t care if that’s what you’re thinking about at the moment, you can’t suddenly starting writing about cars, or posting music videos, if your blog is about How to Blog and SEO. You confuse your readers, and distract potential subscribers, because you aren’t giving them what they expected. Doing this can have a very drastic effect on your readers, even people who are fans of your site. And just because people liked it once, doesn’t give you license to do it again. Just stay to your niche, and target readers who want what you’re giving. If you jump around too much it’s very hard to get, and keep, a consistent reader base.

2. Don’t Ramble

I realize you’re struggling with what to write, but if you don’t have enough ideas to write about, don’t try and make up for it by talking a lot. Less words is always better! Bloggers want it short, quick, and too the point. So don’t get distracted with minor points, and stick to your topic.

3. Don’t Rant

Forget about John Chow, ok and Carlocab, ok and lot’s of other popular bloggers as well. Just because some people have had success ranting doesn’t mean you can. It’s very difficult to make people care about your rants, because you need to be somebody first. Very few people rant their way to success. But when you have success, then you’re allowed to rant though I wouldn’t recommend it… A post is supposed to be an informative article like a newspaper article. Decide before you create your blog if you’re going to make it into a ranting blog, or a information sharing blog, and then stick to it. Don’t try and mix the two.

4. Don’t Bring your Issues Into It

I’m sorry you’re really struggling with something, or annoyed with somebody, but to be perfectly honest, We Don’t Care. I’m sorry you’re hurt, but I’ve got my own life to live. That sounds harsh but if you want to keep your readers, then just follow my advice. If you want to Rant or Complain, then make a political opinion blog, or a personal journal blog. And then say whatever you want, but don’t bring your life struggles into an information blog, because people just get turned off.

5. Don’t Settle for Small Unoriginal Posts

If you’ve got nothing to say, then don’t waste our and your time trying to say it. Stop trying to write, and go figure out an idea, and then come back and write it. If your post is under 300 words or if it doesn’t state any new thing new or original, then it’s probably not worth posting. Be strict with what you post, you will see results.

6. Don’t Pitch Old News

If you’re writing a post that has already been made popular by some one else, then don’t try and jump on the success band wagon. Not only will you probably fall on your face, but you look dumb trying to sell somebody else’s idea. You’ll lost all your credibility, and people will not want to read your site.

I’m assembled these ideas into a Bullet List post for you to follow. Print it out and make a sticky note, and put it next to your computer or something. They will keep you from making your bad day even worse, by losing your visitors from your blog.

1. Stay to your Niche

2. Stay to your Post Topic

3. Keep your head

4. Don’t let feelings shape your posting

5. Don’t waste the Readers time with uninformed Posts

6. Don’t try to sell Old Information

A squidoo lens is a great SEO and traffic building tool, but it’s probably more powerful than it looks at first glance. If you write an aritlce make a lens, link to your site, and then leave it, you are not using squidoo to it’s full potential. You are missing out on a powerful and authoritative one-way link from a high-ranking website. Yeah, I know, sounds a bit propaganda-ish, but there is a lot of truth in what I just said. Let’s take a look.

A squidoo lens should be considered a whole webpage of it’s own. Believe it or not, squidoo lenses get high rankings in Google. If you play your cards right, you can ramp up the authority of your squidoo lens in Google, and then pass that authority on to your site with a link. So how do you build up the authority of your lens?

(1) Well, how do you build authority to any site? In fact, what’s the point of having a squidoo lens in the first place? That’s right, links. So, just like any site (which is how you should treat your squidoo lens) that you’re trying to get to rank well in search engines and in general, you get links. It really doesn’t matter how, but link-building is a great way to build authority to your lens. You might try submitting to a few site directories, or linking from a blogger you created for that purpose.

(2) Another great way to build authority, as always, is with social media. And, as always, it comes with a double bonus: links AND traffic. Bookmarking is probably one of the best ways to get authority to your site in Google’s eyes. A few words that should help spark your memory… digg, del.icio.us, sphinn, reddit, stumbleupon, and all that other good stuff. Just bookmark your article (this is where having a good article comes in handy, because the better the content, the more likely it is that people will like it. The more likely that people will like it, the more likely they are to bookmark it, and then you get all the goodies… i.e. traffic and links).

So now you’re working to get your squidoo lens to rank number one in Google, and you’re trying to pass it as much authority as you can. Here are some more features of squidoo you can utilize if you want to drill down and really stretch squidoo to its full potential.

(3) Another good thing to do is add more relevant tags to your lens. Squidoo has you create 3 initial tags, but you can add more later, up to 40 in fact. These can be multiple word phrases, or individual keywords. Take advantage of this. When you create tags, it gets some internal linking going around the squidoo server, and Google loves links, including internal linking. Essentially, that means this for you:

lots of tags = happy Google

A good equation if you ask me. If you already have a lens, just go to your dashboard, go to the ‘My Lenses’tab, and click the ‘Edit’button. Once the page has loaded, you should see a sidebar pop up on the right, with your text modules, introduction modules, and RSS modules on the left. In the sidebar on the right there should be a ‘Tags’option. Click the orange edit button directly to the left, and then add some relevant tags.

So, that does it for this post. If you poke around on squidoo for a while, you’re bound to turn up a lot of interesting info; it’s actually quite a nice little site, besides its uses for the internet marketer and blogger. Feel free to ask any questions you might have about the post, or topics raised by the post, I’d be happy to try to answer as best I can.

How To Blog With Passion and Power: Site Sketch 101- Nick Cardot is a personal friend and an amazingly talented blogger. His blog Sitesketch 101 is becoming one of the most authoritative site for information on how to blog.

Robin Good’s How to Blog Guide- Robin Good is a great marketer, blogger, and all around internet entrepreneur. This page is definitely one of the authority documents on how to blog.

Steve Pavlina’s How To Make Money On Your Blog- Steve Pavlina is a productivity guru, and life coach who is also a great blogger. His approach to blogging is very much focused on providing amazing content.

Write to Done- Write to Done is authored by Leo Babauta a genuine internet Cinderella story of blogging and life transformation. Write to done is focused on the lessons learned from developing some of the internets most successful blogs

Seth’s Blog: How to get traffic for your blog- Seth Godin is one of Internets premiere marketers this guide on how to get traffic to your blog is an essential read as you learn ho to blog.

How to Build a High-Traffic Blog Without Killing Yourself- From the author of The Four Hour Workweek Tim Ferris has hacks and shortcuts for all kinds of things including blogging. if your serious about blogging you need to check out this site.

Copyblogger- This blog is mostly focused on the writing aspects of blogging. Now matter how effective of a wordsmith you are we can all you some copy tips.

Blog Tips to Help You Make Money Blogging- Darren Rowse is one of the Rockstars of the blogging world he is Definitely a great place to start to learn blogging.

Remarkablogger- Michael Martine explains how to make money with your blog.

So I started thinking about that, 7%, that’s not very much, what do the other 93% do? I mean if they’re looking around for almost two minutes, is that just reading time? You must also remember this includes all of my traffic. So lots of 0 seconds visits from search engines and social media sites, so the actual amount of readers time will be much higher. So after realizing a very tiny percentage of my readers commented, I was curious about who commented. After analyzing my comments, I realized, a very large percentage of my commentators are by other bloggers in this same niche. Just take a look at my top commentators, they’re almost all sites about SEO, Social Media, Blogging Tips, or Making Money Online. And this has always been that way for my site. The commentators have always been related bloggers. And I started thinking, is this the same on other blogs? Every site I look at it’s the same thing. Bloggers from the same niche commenting on each other. And after hearing about John Chow’s study on why bloggers comment, and seeing an overwhelming percentage of them comment for the purpose of getting traffic back to their site, I’m becoming skeptical. So I checked another site in the same niche. Almost every other blogging tips or MMO site I visited, the top commentators are all bloggers from the same niche. Now not only is it the same niche, but as I looked I realized, it’s the same people as well. There are about 50 MMO or HTB bloggers, who comment on each other’s site.

Too many people have read the Blog Commenting Blueprint and are taking advantage of it. But commenting is starting to lose it’s innocence as a result. All of these bloggers are subscribed to each others sites, and the top commentators on each other’s sites. So if a majority of commentators are commenting for their own selfish purposes, I wonder how many legit commentators there are? I’m considering removing all comment plugins, because if people are visiting my site and commenting only for the purpose of trying to help out their own site, what purpose am I serving? I always get excited when I have a comment without a url attached, because that means they weren’t doing it for their own benefit, but rather were doing it to actually comment their opinion. Now I’m almost happy only 7% of my readers are commenting, because that means only 7% of my readers are potentially trying to take advantage of the situation. 93% are just reading, and learning. I hope that as time goes on, either that 7% will continue to go down, or the 93% will start to comment, but their blogs will be completely unrelated, or they won’t even have blogs at all. I wonder if they removed the url box for comments, would that completely remove all greed from the commenting situation. Now take what you want from this rant, I’m just saying what I think for once, without buttering it up. I know I said not to rant, but I’ve never done it before, and I’m curious to see the reaction.

There are a couple things you should think about before jumping into Digg. Realize that this is a social bookmarking site, and people will Digg things just because they are “cool.” If you’re selling something or monetizing your site, chances are that if you get to the first page on Digg and get a traffic spike, the visitors are just going to glance around quickly and then leave. They are there to look, not necessarily to convert into customers or click ads. That being said, who doesn’t like traffic spikes? I mean hey, they make you feel like you’re doing something, right? And of course, getting spread virally through Digg may be just the thing you’re looking for… publicity.

1. Signing Up
The first step, as with pretty much any social site around, is to set up an account. This is a simple ordeal with Digg. Just look at the top lefthand corner of the Digg homepage, and you should see a ‘Join Digg’button. Click through and fill out the info. Alternatively, you can sign up with your Facebook account, because Digg has integrated Facebook Connect with their site log in and registration.

2. Digging A Webpage
This is also pretty simple. If you are signed into your account, look at the top of the page, and you’ll see a bar with a couple options, the second-to-last being ‘Submit New’. Click on this option.

You should now be on a page where you submit the URL of the article or site you want to Digg. To make sure I get the correct URL, I usually like to open up the page in a new tab and copy/paste the URL into the box. But it’s quite fine if you want to type it out as well.

The rest is pretty simple. If your article or webpage has not already been submitted to Digg, it will open up a new page. Here you enter in a Title and Description. You choose a thumbnail icon. You choose the category which your article will be under. And Last, you type in one of those really annoying ‘Are you human?’things (one of the ones that’s even more annoying because it’s not words, and it’s case-sensitive). All that is pretty self-explanatory I think. No images needed here.

3. Some Thoughts and Notes on Digg
Like I said before, you probably aren’t going to get highly targeted traffic if you’re article gets a lot of Diggs and makes it to the front page. But there are a couple of other really good benefits from achieving such.

(1) Publicity. Just getting people familiar with you and your site. If you can somehow get people talking about your site, that’s good. The more known you are the better. And hey, you might just get some readers for your blog. This is a great way to get a whole bunch of people to read a really good blog post you wrote.

(2) Blog traffic and links. A lot of times, people will write blog posts about things that get onto the first page of Digg. They might review the site, or just randomly write what comes across their mind, or if the article is interesting enough, they might just want to tell the people who read their blog about it. This works two goods for you. It will give you free one-way links (always good), and it might even get you direct traffic from the blog.

(3) SEO. If you get popular within a major social site like Digg, it is a HUGE boost to your search engine rankings. All the internal links and stuff that go on inside of these giant social sites… search engine heaven. This is another great reason to do social sites like Digg, because they will greatly increase your authority in the search engines. And everyone knows that good search engine rankings are a one-way ticket to more traffic.

I think that about does it for Digg… Oh, one last thing.

4. Adding a ‘Digg This’Button to Your Blog Post or Website
You can also add a ‘Digg This’button that makes it easy to Digg your article if a user is signed into Digg when they view your site. (If they are not logged in, they will be directed to do so before they can Digg.) This will GREATLY increase the number of people who Digg your stuff (if any do it in the first place), because not many people want to spend a whole minute to go out of their way and Digg an article. A button at the bottom of the post makes it easy for them, and your chances of getting a Digg will go up greatly.

You have a few options when it comes to how to insert a Digg Button on your site. You can use the Digg Digg WordPress Plugin, the Digg It WordPress Plugin, or by bypassing the plugin path all together and coding it yourself. (A good writeup on how to do that can be found here at The Code Central.)

Enjoy!

Blog Catalog combines great discussions, with great groups, and a large enough amount of people. The one downside, is it’s incredibly addicting nature. Hours can be spent on blogcatalog, but hey it’s for your website right? so you have an excuse.

There are three components to the site. Number one discussions, That’s where people will post new questions, and most importantly offers they have. If you follow it semi regularly, you can win prizes such as links, and entrecard credits, and also gain friends and help out another blogger. Also read the discussions that relate to your blog, i’ve found answers to many of my questions on this site. Also feel free to ask your own question if you don’t see the one your looking for.

The second component is Groups. On the blogcatalog.com home page you will see at the bottom a list of the top groups. I would join all of them. The same if not more people use groups over discussions so make sure to follow these as well. It will list for you new comments so you don’t have to keep checking every group. After you have joined all the most popular groups, I would spend extra time viewing the stumble group, and technorati group. They have been the most helpful for me. If you have a digg, stumble, or technorati, or all of them then these groups will be extremely helpful. Look for free links, those come up every now and then, and join the daily stumble discussion and post your link, but make sure you return the favor otherwise you will make many angry people in the group.

The third component, is friends. Friends are key because they will visit your site, and you can send them broadcasts if you have questions or are offering something. I would start by posting a few discussions saying “let me comment on your blog.” Or let me see your blog. You’ll get up to 100 comments with people’s links so don’t get overwhelmed but work your way through them, and make sure you do it. People usually return the favor and visit your blog, and as I said in my last post, this comment will also give you a free link.

So if you do all this then you’ll have friends, the ability to have your questions answered, get traffic, and get all the things you need to have a successful blog.

1. Design your twitter page- Take the time to fill out you bio and website on Twitter, and upload a decent headshot or icon so people can see that you are a real person, and decide to follow you. Also consider making a custom background to better convey info about yourself.

2. Wefollow- Wefollow.com is a directory of twitter users list yourself under the appropriate categories so like minded people can find you.

3. Hash Tags- Use has tags which look like this: #yourkeyword to describe what your tweet is about people track these and will follow you.

4. Comment, ReTweet, Reply- Engage people in conversation using questions, comments, and retweets if you are interesting real people will follow.

5. Advertise your Twitter- Put your twitter profile on all of your social media profiles, websites, and also in your signatures on forums, and emails to gain more followers.

6. Hoot Suite- Hootsuite is an online application that is like a head up display for your twitter accounts. The best feature as far as followers go is prescheduling tweets if you have a regular stream of tweets followers will increase, and your current followers can be more engaged.

7. Mr. Tweet- Mr. Tweet lets you follow or recommend users based on your interests and niche you can follow up to 50 a day.

8. Twitter Match- Twittermatch.com follow users based on your chosen keywords and often they will follow you back

9. Buzzom- Buzzom.com lets you grow your followers based on your interests and flush those who aren’t following you back. After you have used these other steps to follow hundreds or thousands of people give them about 3-5 days to see if they will follow back and flush the non followers.

10. The Twit Cleaner- After using these other steps to dramatically grow your following use TheTwitCleaner.com to show you who is just a spammer, inactive or otherwise uninterested in what you have to say. The best part is it will unfollow them in mass for free.