Business Blogger

While I was setting up my twitter account today I thought it would be a good idea to head over to Blog Catalog and see if any of my contacts were doing the twitter thing.

While I was there I noticed that they have started to nofollow all blog links. Before it was the feeds that they nofollowed, which is understandable, in my opinion. Then they moved to redirects on the feeds. Now your blog URL is completely nofollowed. WTF? I thought this network was built by bloggers for bloggers? Maybe it’s just me but are you that page rank greedy that you have to nofollow all the blogs in your network, trying to reroute the PR? Of course I’m just speculating here, but I’m pretty sure I’m right.

As my way of saying thanks to Blog Catalog I will now take down their widget from my front page so that I don’t mistakenly pass any PR to anyone I don’t trust. I instead will just have it posted on my Blog Catalog page which was an earlier post on how I dropped Blog Rush for Blog Catalog. What to do now?

Many people know that I provide a link to those that comment on my blog. Those that provide more comments on this business blog than the other readers automatically get a link to their site on the front page and every other page for that matter. Unfortunately I have come to the revelation that this just doesn’t work any more. I don’t know what has happened recently that has driven so many spammers to start commenting on this blog, but it has forced me to take away the top comments section, until further notice.

I have put too much time and effort to give away a front page link to a spammer for the short time that it goes unnoticed. On top of this it makes my blog (that happens to be business related) pretty irrelevant if I have a link to a crap site (not business related) from my front page. I don’t have enough time to sit here and monitor every spam comment that I get and I expect most of you feel the same. It’s too time consuming, so thanks internet spammers for ruining the fun.

So, apologies go out to those that actually provided valuable comments. I may decide to link to those in future posts instead of using the front page links. Anyhow, that’s my rant for the day, goodbye to the top commentators plugin.

Oh, if any of you have not read the post on blog rss promotion you should definitely jump over and do so. It’s a very valuable post that provides many free resources. Until next time.

What happens to Google’s Golden Goose when it gets caught playing with Google fire (buying links). I don’t know but let’s find out. Let’s see what actually happens. Here is proof that Business.com is buying links. Not linking out here, so they don’t remove them with lightning quickness. I’m sure you can go to Forbes.com right now and check for yourself.

The Golden Goose gets caught!

So what happens now, do they get a slap on the hand, do they get their page rank reduced, or do they get kicked out of the index completely like John Chow?

Yes it’s true Google has changed their logo, um, errrrrrr, what? Don’t ask me why, I thought the other one was just fine. See for yourself here at Google.gov.cn. Apparently they’ve gone into the textile business and merged with Datang Sock of China?

Apparently they lost their domain name to the Chinese? I couldn’t tell you one way or the other, just thought this was a little interesting to say the least.

What’s next for Google in China? It’s probably because they have Baidu-inc resting on their server and pointed to Google.com!

Well it’s officially time to remove the blog rush widget from the site. I think it’s nice to have streaming content on the site, although I think people have already become “blog rush blind.” It’s not that they owe me a ton of traffic or anything, don’t get me wrong, it’s just that the traffic they do owe me comes in once a week, one visitor at a time. How many visits do I give to other blogs? I would rather just write about things I see going on in the blogosphere rather that have a widget dictate that at this point in time. As I said I think it’s just “blog rush blindness” that’s killing the conversion rates. I would be interested to see what other guys like Shoemoney have to say about it considering they have a ton more traffic to work with.

Anyhow, goodbye Blog Rush - Hello Blog Calatog.

By the way, if you are a member of Blog Catalog and post this little widget on your site, your site moves up in the rankings there. They have a healthy amount of traffic and also a great group of people to network with. I will keep you updated as to whether or not it works out better than Blog Rush did.

Business blogs are very powerful resources if used properly. The internet is seeing a rapid growth in the number of blogs that turn up every day, each one with a different purpose. This means that the powerful bloggers are only going to get more powerful and if you want to become that influential blogger you have to differentiate yourself from the crowd. What sets you apart from the crowd? There are so many blogs out there, producing a ton of content. The problem is content is not always what sets you apart from the crowd. It can, but with so many trusted blogs out there you have a long uphill battle. Trust is what sets you apart from the others. Getting people to trust you and what you have to say is key to your success as a blogger. Without it you have no readers to blog for.

The power of the blog can be stunning, as I have recently seen with the wave of blog redesigns. The first blog I noticed with a sharp redesign was ProBlogger. Yesterday I stopped by John Chow’s blog to see that he too had redesigned his blog. Today, I go over to the Shoemoney blog to see that he too has started a redesign of his blog. Is this coincidence or is it the power of the blog. Darren Rowse may have started a redesign phenomenon here. It’s not that everyone has decided to be like Darren, it’s just that he has that trust factor and an influence over the way people think.

Speaking of trust, it can go the other way too. I did notice that as soon as John Chow started pushing to rank for “make money online” that ProBlogger started to back away from the term, even removing the term from his meta title. Was it because John Chow knows SEO? It is a well known fact that he used several techniques to improve his Google ranking, only to be later knocked out of the top by Google due to “manipulation.” I have noticed recently that ProBlogger has restarted the campaign to rank for the term “make money online.” Is this because John, a well known user of SEO techniques, is out of the game? John Chow may have just made his position of influence large enough to keep ProBlogger out of the game at the time. The thing is with a little tweaking Darren could have beat out John for that number one spot.

The power of the blog can work in many ways. Sometimes it’s content and sometimes it’s faking it till you make it. Is your blog an influence on others? Are there any more redesigns I’ve missed?

1. Not commenting on other blogs. This is one way to attract readers to your blog that you may not have considered. It’s not exactly what I would call a “great” way to conjure up a load of traffic but it has the possibility to give you targeted visits that you may never have seen otherwise. This being said, if you don’t already comment on blogs that are related to yours then you should give it a try.

2. Not joining blog communities. Blog communities are good for bloggers. Even if your blog is related to an off the wall topic, getting active in the major blog communities can provide you a way to reach potential readers. On top of this, blog communities can lead to relationship building as well as generate branding exposure.

3. Not getting your RSS feed out there. Your RSS feed on your blog is perhaps one of the best tools you have as a blogger. There are plenty of ways to promote your RSS feed along with plenty of blog readers that love a good feed. I love a good feed and I like to be able to scan tons of blogs at the same time, saving me some time in the process. If your title catches a readers eye your bound to get a visit.

4. Not using your own domain name. This is possibly one of the worst things a blogger can do. The fact is, blogs are hard work, especially if you’re not a writer by nature. If you’re going to put that much time and effort into something you should be full owner with rights to do whatever you feel necessary with your blog, including advertising, if you so choose.

5. Not keeping a posting consistency. This is something that can get the best of us. Keeping a posting schedule of at least two to three times a week even gets tough with a tight schedule. Updating frequently is important, so be sure to keep a tight schedule and make time for blog.

What does this post have to do with circus poodles? We’ll get to that later. The points that I really want to talk about here are blogging and the comments that readers post on blogs. Blogging for me is a hobby of sorts, something that I do because I enjoy blogging and the relationships that it can build. I also enjoy the business side, sharing business ideas with others, the providing and sharing of information, etc.

The point that I’m trying to make here is that blogging itself is a natural exchange of ideas and information between individuals with similar interests. Should it be left to that natural state or should it be altered? Some bloggers, especially those that do it from a profit standpoint are very concerned with what’s on their blog. You can comment on some blogs, go back the next day, only to see that your comment has been altered or removed. This can be a little frustrating from a commenter standpoint, considering you have put time and thought into what you had to say. Would you feel ripped off if your spam free comment was deleted from a post or would you be able to understand the situation that the blogger is in?

I personally feel that blogging should be left in it’s natural state, comments and all. I am one sided on this mostly because I think that blogging is not the best way to make money online. For those of you that feel the other way I understand that blogging is your livelihood and that comments can have an impact on rankings, optimization, etc. I just really want to know how others feel on this topic.

To show the readers here how comments can have an impact on your blog and your blog rankings, do a search for circus poodles on Google. If you look closely, this blog happens to be near the top of the search results. Thanks to Charles over at Open Source Marketer I now rank quite well for the search term circus poodles, it’s too bad I don’t breed them on the side.

Well it’s been almost 3 months (I couldn’t wait) since this blog started churning out internet business content for our readers. It doesn’t seem like it’s been that long at all. Anyhow, I thought that we would celebrate by putting some of the older posts here that some of the new folks might be interested in reading. Let’s start with my first post ever, and how fitting it is, that this post is about starting a business blog. The name of my first post was Five Reasons To Start A Business Blog. I think these are all great reasons to start a business blog. My efforts are starting to bear fruit.

The second post I want to let all of the new folks read is Blogging Basics For Business. This post discusses using a blog as a business tool which I think can be very rewarding. On top of that, starting a blog has never been easier. The last post I want to talk about here is called Brand Your Domain. This post is what I call very good advice. If you read any posts before starting your business blog this should be one of them, not being overly proud here, just providing good solid business advice.

I just got so excited about blogging for a whole three months that I had to post some relevant content. I’m sure there will be more posts like this one when the time is right. For now, try to enjoy these posts. Hopefully they will provide you with some information and knowledge, and possibly even help someone along the way.

One thing about blogging that can really get you on a blogging high is comments and feedback that readers leave. Comments are great, they make you feel like you did your job, or at least accomplished something you set out to accomplish. Lots of the readers that stop by this blog are bloggers, the others are internet junkies like myself. I want to go out of my way to thank those readers at a time when I feel it’s necessary and I think it’s necessary. Recently I wrote a post on blog promotion that several bloggers themselves took advantage of. Thanks for the great comments, I’m happy you enjoyed the post.

There are a few blogs I think you should visit because they showed up at my blog, commented and were part of the fun. Let’s start with Brown Baron, second is John Bennett, followed by Leonid Shalimov, then Danielle, Martin Reed, Narendra.S.V, Wendy and let’s not forget the Blog Bloke. I spent a ton of time getting this post together so the love is much appreciated, especially the love that Brown Baron hands out, the very best kind, the link kind.

I’m so busy right now that I don’t get a lot of time to tool around on different sites and blogs. In fact the only surfing I’ve been doing lately is blogs that link to mine (hint, hint) and other bloggers that throw in some great comments here and there. Bloggers love comments and links and I’m just trying to support my fellow bloggers. Speaking of busy I guess I better get back to working on my other projects. Until next time. Thanks again and be sure to spread the link love.

Since we all like promoting our blogs and since this is a business blog that discusses blogging and related business topics, I figured that I would throw out a few blog promotion links for fun. These links will help you promote your blog and save you time. If you need to promote your RSS feed quickly, this is the list for you. This is not meant to be the definitive list of ways to promote your feed, but it just may be the quickest list you’ll ever go through. With thirty new ways to promote your blog and RSS feed, your blog is bound to find some new readers.

These blog promotion tools are organized by Alexa rankings. Other than that, there is no particular rhyme or reason to the order. You may wish to submit to most or all of these, considering there are a few fast burners hidden in the mix. The submissions only take about a minute each. Set up a notepad page with your blog information ready to cut and paste for fast submission.

1. http://help.yahoo.com/fast/help/us/my/cgi_rss_submission

Alexa Rank: 1

2. http://www.plazoo.com/addrss.asp

Alexa Rank: 40,580

3. http://www.feeds4all.com/NewFeed.aspx

Alexa Rank: 48,749

4. http://www.2rss.com/

Alexa Rank: 50,796

5. http://www.fybersearch.com/add-url.php

Alexa Rank: 54,519

6. http://www.findory.com/submit-blog/

Alexa Rank: 61,095

7. http://www.globeofblogs.com/register.php

Alexa Rank: 65,804

8. http://www.genwi.com/register.aspx

Alexa Rank: 75,273

9. http://www.lsblogs.com/howtosubmit.php

Alexa Rank: 78,713

10. http://www.rss-network.com/submitrss.php

Alexa Rank: 83,583

11. http://feeds2read.net/Suggest-A-Feed

Alexa Rank: 84,085

12. http://www.weblogalot.com/Ping/

Alexa Rank: 84,877

13. http://www.strategicboard.com/addblog.php

Alexa Rank: 97,925

14. http://www.bloogz.com/man_en/add_your_url.php

Alexa Rank: 125,179

15. http://www.feedbomb.com/

Alexa Rank: 130,031

16. http://www.feed24.com/?c=add

Alexa Rank: 147,956

17. http://www.postami.com/rss.finder/submit_feed.php

Alexa Rank: 180,324

18. http://www.daytimenews.com/submit-rss-feed.aspx

Alexa Rank: 188,880

19. http://www.feedbase.net/Add.php

Alexa Rank: 194,134

20. http://gnoos.com.au/submitFeed.jsp

Alexa Rank: 199,628

21. http://reader.rocketinfo.com/desktop/AddRSSFeed.jsp

Alexa Rank: 207,126

22. http://www.mobispine.com/

Alexa Rank: 208,377

23. http://www.goldenfeed.com/AddFeed.aspx

Alexa Rank: 215,543

24. http://www.feedsee.com/submit.html

Alexa Rank: 218,364

25. http://www.feedmap.net/BlogMap/submit.aspx

Alexa Rank: 219,460

26. http://www.search4rss.com/?add=default

Alexa Rank: 221,653

27. http://www.sarthak.net/blogz/add.php

Alexa Rank: 237,560

28. http://www.octora.com/add_rss.php

Alexa Rank: 241,047

29. http://www.feed-directory.com/addfeed

Alexa Rank: 274,917

30. http://www.blogbunch.com/suggest/

Alexa Rank: 276,090

Congratulations, your thirty minutes is up and you just submitted your blog for promotion on thirty different sites. I hope you enjoyed this post. I’m sure the extra traffic you get as a result of your efforts will be well worth the time spent.

Promoting a business blog is a much a different game than that of promoting a standard business related site. When promoting a site or product that offers a service, the site gets to speak for itself. If you have a quality product you’ll have an easier time with promotion. This rule applies to most any business.

You need to remember that your blog is the product, this is important when it comes to getting that long lasting traffic to your blog. Offer a product (you) on your blog that gives the reader what they want. No pressure here at all. The only goal here is to build your blog traffic. A few questions that you need to answer:

• What can you offer the reader that no one else knows?
• Can you offer the reader something they don’t always get at their other stops?
• Why did you start a blog in the first place?

These are questions you need to answer honestly. If you have nothing to offer then maybe a blog isn’t for you. If you don’t have answers to these questions, more importantly, maybe you should be asking yourself a few personal questions about your choice to write a blog. A blog is essentially a business entity in itself, offering a service or product to your customers. What product does your blog have to offer its readers?

If there is one thing that bloggers shouldn’t forget about when it comes to their blog, it’s SEO and blog optimization. Most bloggers don’t think that it’s really that big of a deal, especially when they’re first starting out. The problem with that train of thought is you’re not thinking long term strategy. You have to think about blog optimization now before you lose that valuable search engine traffic later.

You need to have long term strategy with any goal in life, even blogging. You’re not in it just for the short term, or you wouldn’t be blogging at all. You want people to be able to find your blog now and in the future. When this business blog first started it got absolutely no traffic at all from the search engines. Now that I’ve got a few posts under my belt, I’ve started to notice the search engine traffic trickle in. Nothing glamorous by any means but traffic nonetheless. This just means that the search engines are starting to take notice and realize that this blog has quality content.

I’ve found a blog plugin that focuses on blog optimization and SEO, not to mention it helps the search engines find that quality content you provide. The plugin is called the all in one SEO pack. This looks to be a pretty nice plugin for you to add to your collection, if you don’t already have it. There are several different options you can activate and deactivate. I won’t go into too much detail here, as there is a help page for you here if you need any clarification on the plugin capabilities. SEO can be a tricky game but this plugin will get you on your way to hassle free blog optimization.

This is one of those subjects that needs to be addressed by giving it the correct attention. Blog traffic exchanges are tools that can be used to gain extreme amounts of traffic, right? These tools can get traffic to your website, but they’re not as efficient as they may seem. There are better ways to get traffic to your blog.

The hardest part of starting a blog is getting those return visitors to your website. Return visitors are your most valuable asset. The first thing you must do is find the right visitors and find out what works best for your blog. How do you find those right visitors? One of the tactics you might use is to join some blog communities. You might also try to visit small to medium sized blogs that are similar to yours and provide comments, fostering discussion in their community. By doing this you could get the attention of other readers, not to mention the attention of the blog owner who just might take notice of a new readers blog.

Blog traffic exchanges don’t send you the targeted traffic that you need, unless you like visitors that will never return. A traffic exchange is nothing but a bunch of people wondering aimlessly through a traffic exchange trying to click on as many sites as possible in order to get the same type of visits back. Are those the type of visitors you want? Your time will be better spent trying to connect with bloggers through blog communities. The only thing a blog traffic exchange is good for is possibly putting a spike in your Alexa ranking and that doesn’t prove anything.

RSS feeds are huge in the blogging world. RSS is an easy way for people to look at your blog and quickly size you up. Your feed reader numbers are considered a status symbol. These readers are your bread and butter, the ones that will take a quick look at your feed to see if they like what you have to say. If they like your post they might drop by, or even better, they blog about you. Lot’s of feed subscribers happen to be bloggers. Since we are busy people and need to digest information quickly, feed readers are our friends.

Since RSS Feeds and XML are so important it only makes sense that you would make it easy on those that wish to subscribe. Before I implemented this change I had my RSS feed set to forward to my FeedBurner page. FeedBurner is a great tool and has worked well, and I will continue to use them, but I’m here to make it as easy as possible on my readers. If I can keep just one more reader by making it a little bit easier then I’ve achieved feed success.

Do you make it easy on your readers? I found the perfect chicklet creator that will help you do it with ease. This tool gives you the option to choose the buttons you want to put on your blog. I chose to apply most of the buttons that were available, you can choose which buttons you think will work best for your blog. You have the choice between the default buttons or a drop down menu. I went with the later to save space.

This is the easiest way to optimize your blog for those important busy readers. It doesn’t take much effort to make it easy for your readers to subscribe. You just might enjoy the results.