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.

We all know that “Content is King,” but if your content can’t be found, it won’t be a help to anyone. But be honest with yourself, do you really want to spend hours on end on SEO? Don’t worry – you won’t have to if just let these plugins go to work for you while you focus on the main thing, and that’s content.

1. The Thesis Theme- Yah, yah, yah I know it’s not a plugin, but if your serious about SEO you’ll look into the Thesis Theme. The Masters have run head to head testing against other WordPress themes, and Joomla sites in the several niches, and there is absolutely no comparison. All other factors being equal, Thesis will trounce a basic WordPress or Joomla installation when it comes to SEO. The secret is how it divides the code related to content, and design so search engines see clean, indexable code.

2. Google XML Sitemaps – This plugin will generate a XML sitemap for Google, Bing, Yahoo and Ask.com which allows to index your posts faster my favorite part is the fact that it pings each service when new content is added. This is a definite must have for those serious about SEO make sure to sign up with Google Webmaster, Yahoo Site Explorer, and Bing Webmaster Center to tell these services the location of your sitemap.

3. HeadSpace2 – This plugin allows you granular control over meta-data, such as tags, titles, descriptions, etc. You can also use this to add specific JavaScript and CSS to pages for various analytics software. Headspace automatically suggests tags for your posts and allows you to create custom titles and descriptions that can improve your page ranking and indexability. (This WILL conflict with All in One SEOd and Meta Robots.)

4. Redirection – For any number of reasons you sometimes need to move a page from one spot on your blog to another, but if not done correctly you risk losing that pages status in search results.  The Redirection plugin saves you time and headaches with 301 redirects, it captures a log of 404 errors so you can work on correcting them, and sets up an RSS feed for errors.

5. All in One SEO Pack – One of the most popular plugins of all time for WordPress, this plugin SEO swiss army knife from helping choose the best post title and keywords, to helping you avoid duplicate content and more. If your running Thesis this may be a little redundant as it handles alot of the same features. (This WILL conflict with Meta Robots and Headspace.)

6. Automatic SEO Links – Ever looked up from Wikipedia and realize you’ve been reading for like an hour that is because of their thorough interlinking between articles. Interlinking has two benefits it will spread link juice deeper into your site, and also it will make your site more sticky as users more easily can find key content. Automatic SEO Links allows you to choose a word or phrase for automatic linking, both internal and external, set anchor text, and choose if it should be “nofollow” or not.  One of the best features of this plugin is that it will only do this for the first occurrence of a word in a post so you don’t look like your just spamming.

7. SEO Slugs – Using your entire post title as the slug for an article can make web addresses to long and throw useless keywords into the mix .  The SEO Slugs plugin strips out all of the common, unnecessary words from the permalink to save you time.

8. Nofollow Case by Case – Because of the democratic nature of the web thanks to Google every vote (backlink) from other pages moves you up the ranks. Because of this system the Masters are big fans of DoFollow comments – it’s the blogospheres version of kissing babies. Take care of people and they will take care of you. This plugin removes the “nofollow” attribute from your comments, allowing you to share some linkluv which will encourage commenting. It can also nofollow specific comments on a case by case basis. (Hence the name.)

9. SEO friendly and HTML valid subheadings – Some themes for WordPress will confuse your sub-header tags based on the page they are to be displayed on, but this plugin will automatically reset them to make them more SEO friendly by moving them down one spot in the hierarchical tree.  In other words, h2 becomes h3, h3 becomes h4 and so on.

10. SEO Friendly Images – I have found many essential sites while using images search. Images can be an untapped source of traffic as people search for images on your niche, and this plugin helps you with making sure that you have “alt” and “title” tags on all of your images so that the search engines can properly index them.

11. Meta Robots WordPress plugin – A quick, and easy solution for adding robot metadata to any page of your choice on your blog.  You can use it to make a variety of links nofollows such as: front page links, search pages, author and dated archives,  your login page. (This WILL conflict with AIO and Headspace.)

12. SEO No Duplicate WordPress Plugin – If you must have duplicate content on your site for some reason, SEO No Duplicate allows you to select which version of a post the search engines should index while ignoring the others.

13. SEO Blogroll – If you worry that the people you link to in your blogroll are feeding off of your PageRank?  With SEO Blogroll you can make separate sections for various groupings of links, with an unlimited number in each, and all of them will receive the “nofollow” attribute.

14. SEO for Paged Comments – With the introduction of paged comments in WordPress 2.7, there was a potential problem with search engines thinking you had duplicate content as the post would appear on each page.  This plugin aims to take care of this issue for you until the folks at WordPress change things up.

15. SEO Tag Cloud Widget – Tag clouds can be a unique way for website visitors to visualize your blogs theme unfortunately they are notoriously unreadable by search engines. The SEO tag cloud widget changes all that, your tag cloud will be converted to SEO friendly HTML markup that can be indexed.

Bonus! Permalinks Moved Permanently This plugin is great for if you ever change the permalink structure of your blog. If a 404 is detected, it will take the last part of the post slug, and search your current posts for that same slug. If it finds a match, it will do a 301 redirect from the old link to the new. We used to use a custom permalink structure, /%category%/%postname%/, for our blog here but decided to remove the %category% part. I found that we were getting more 404′s than before (using Redirection) and we needed a way to get this done more effectively. Permalinks moved Permanently did what we needed. (Don added this. I tried to get him to stick with just 15, but NOOOOO. So this ones for free. lol)

One more thing, this list was inspired by Nick over at SiteSketch101. Check him out if you’re interested in learning how to blog.

1. Be Reasonable
Every heard the phrase shoot for the moon? Well don’t. Like I said earlier, when you set goals, and don’t do them, it can make blogging incredibly depressing. Set goals that are possible to obtain, that way you won’t get frustrated if you can’t. And every time you can check off a goal, it’s such a great feeling.

2. Be Consistent
In any goal you decide, consistency is going to be the key that gets you there. Working at it continually is the only way you’re going to accomplish your goals.

3. Set up Daily Reminders
Maybe you should start posting sticky notes at your computer, or some place you frequently visit. Especially if it’s something that will take a lot of work to do, let me assure you, you will try and fine ways to get out of it.

4. Set up Accountability
Get your blogging friends to help you, with emails or text reminders. Not only will this build your relationship, you’ll be able to remember, and maybe actually get them done!

5. Get your blog readers into it
A lot of bloggers use their blogs to keep them accountable. If you start getting comments and emails to do it, you’ll have a much higher chance of succeeding. Also it bands your readers into more of a community. It gives them a cause to work together on.

6. Take Baby Steps
When your goals is x amount of money, or x amount of subscribers. And that “X” is a large number, don’t try and do it in a month. You’ll just get frustrated. If it’s feasible then fine, but if it’s not, don’t get frustrated by trying to do the impossible. Split your goals up into daily or weekly activities that are obtainable.

7. Stretch but don’t Break
Don’t push your self to hard at first. Ease into your struggles, then once you pick up steam it’ll be much easier.

8. Take time to Rejoice in Success
It’s not all about just getting to the next goal. Take time to celebrate when you accomplish something you set out to do. If you got your 1000 Twitter follower, then great – take the time to be happy.

9. Track your Results
Keep track of how you’re doing so that you can be motivated to keep going. And you can see as you progress. Start a Microsoft Word or Excel file, and update it as you progress. (If you happen to still be using a Windows machine – otherwise use Pages or Numbers from Apple. )

10. Check back on your Progress
If you are constantly looking forward, then you’ll never accomplish anything. Looking back at what you’ve accomplished can give you that push to keep going. Don’t get to ambitious, that you lose sight of what you’ve already done.

11. Strategize
You can’t accomplish anything without a plan. Make sure you have a clear strategy for how to accomplish your goals. Have a plan as specific and in depth as you can make it, and stick to it.

12. Have Clear Goals
If you don’t know exactly what you’re trying to accomplish, then you’ll never be able to do it. If you’re trying to get 100ish visitors a day as a goal, 100ish isn’t a number. You’ll get to 80 and think, “hmm this is kind of 100ish.” Make clear goals, so that you can have clear accomplishments.

13. Don’t Undercut Yourself
Don’t allow yourself to settle for “100ish.” Make a clear goal, and stick to it. Don’t settle for anything less then what your goals are. But make sure it’s a feasible goal, otherwise you’ll just get frustrated.

14. Refrain from reading Other People’s Goals
Don’t let other people’s goals bog you down. Your goals are just that, your goals, and other people’s don’t matter. It’s great if they can accomplish them, but if you think about them you’ll just get distracted and jealous.

15. Learn from your Mistakes
Maybe you didn’t do all of yours from last year, that’s ok, just learn from what went wrong. Don’t let them go to waste, let them be learning blocks for you to move forward. Throw together a blog post reviewing your past years goals, like we did here. Take a long hard look, and reevaluate.

16. Don’t Let Failures Demoralize You
Just because you failed on your goals, doesn’t mean you’re a failure. Not fulfilling a goal is not that big a deal, as long as you worked your hardest on it. If you did your best and failed, then it wasn’t a good goal. Learn from your past goals to make new ones.

17. Set Goals that Empower you
Don’t set pointless goals. Every goal should be empowering you and igniting your passion. They may be difficult like losing weight or something, but let it ignite your passion to be muscular.

18. Critically Analyze your Goals
Make sure all of them have a clear purpose, and are something that is really worth it. If you’re going to spend so much time and energy on it make sure it’s worth the time you’re taking.

19. Romanticize about when they’re Accomplished
This is another way to keep you motivated. Keeping thinking about how incredible, and how awesome it will be when you reach that point. Never lose sight of the goal you’re striving for, and how great it will be.

20. Work at one Goal at a Time
Don’t try and pay off to many debts at once, or you’ll just end up keeping all of them. Knock them off one at a time. Some goals will probably be collective ones, so you can work on several. But if you are at a loss for time, then pick one, and gradually check them off.

Update: For those of you who have read this far – you can enjoy the benefits of this great link – Robs Web Tips offers another great post (with a little more content) about online success. Enjoy!

Now don’t forget to get on my top commentator list as well, being new, it is also relatively empty.

PageRank 7

http://www.marketingpilgrim.com

http://onemansblog.com

PageRank 6

http://www.shoemoney.com/

PageRank 5

http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/

http://www.bluehatseo.com

http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/

http://www.blueverse.com/

http://elitebydesign.com/

http://themelib.com/ Inner Pages Only

http://techie-buzz.com/

http://www.quicksprout.com/

PageRank 4

http://vocino.com

http://pixelheadonline.com/blog/

http://www.m3nghua.com

http://www.jonlee.ca

http://chenpn.com

http://www.bontb.com

http://www.jdavidmacor.com

http://ahkong.net/

http://www.balkhis.com/

http://theuniversitykid.com/

http://www.sueblimely.com/

http://zacjohnson.com/

http://www.pureblogging.com/

http://optempo.com/

http://www.imbloggingthat.com/

http://uberaffiliate.com/

http://imiseasy.com

http://www.caroline-middlebrook.com/blog/

http://www.catswhocode.com/blog/

http://www.bloganything.net/

http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/

PageRank 3

http://www.riceblogger.com

http://merapuland.com/

http://www.johnchow.com

http://www.jennyhow.com

http://www.adesblog.com

http://www.ededition.com

http://blog.butterflymedia.ro

http://www.bloganything.net/

http://webgrrrl.net

http://www.sabahan.com

http://the-reflector.com

http://www.blogtrepreneur.com

http://baklaako.com

http://www.andrewooi.com/

http://bloggingawaydebt.com

http://founderscafe.com

http://www.bloganything.net

http://www.connectedinternet.co.uk

http://jakeldaily.com

http://uniongraphite.com

http://tallfreak.com

http://www.lifeiscolourful.com/

http://www.dailyseoblog.com/

http://otooo.com/

http://www.jonathanvolk.com/

http://entrecard.com/blog/

http://thoushallblog.com/

http://www.standoutblogger.com/

http://norhafidz.com/

http://linkersblog.com/

http://www.jonlee.ca/

http://pixelheadonline.com/blog/

http://www.wpthemedesigner.com/

http://theblogentrepreneur.com/

http://www.lighteningsblogworld.com/

http://www.peterleehc.com/blog/

http://www.derek-ang.com/

http://www.niharsworld.com/

http://www.datmoney.com/

http://www.oneyearmillionaire.net/

http://www.datmoney.com/

http://www.domainstructure.com/

http://www.benbarden.com/

http://www.michaelaulia.com/blogs/

http://www.bookmarkbliss.com/

http://www.creadiv.com/

http://www.jennyhow.com/

PageRank 2

http://www.terencechang.com

http://bloggervenue.com/

http://www.benjaminpatton.com/

http://dablogger.com/

http://www.enkayblog.com/

http://www.netstrife.com/

http://slyvisions.com/

http://www.adesblog.com/

http://bloggingexperiment.com/

http://www.ryanjparker.net/

http://pimpmypagerank.com/

http://www.netbusinessblog.com/

http://linkmoney.org/

http://desmondblog.com/

http://www.romandock.com/

http://honestknowledge.com/warriorblog/

http://www.mastersofseo.com

http://www.dotcomdud.com/

None

http://www.azikuri.com/

http://www.niggybuzz.com

http://azwanhadzree.com

http://mrbadak.com

http://www.everydayweekender.com

http://www.papajoneh.com

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