Wow, I’ve been at this a relatively short time, but with the support of John Chow, I’ve been getting a great boost in hits the past few days due to his “Showing some community love” post. I just wanted to give thanks and hope everyone enjoys my posts. So, let’s get to this.
The final part in my series on John Chow’s Top Blogging Mistakes, I will take a look at the last 4 mistakes that most new bloggers make:
Mistake #7 – Not Giving a Full Feed RSS
There are two sides to the argument whether or not you should provide your full blog entries for your blog posts. One side tells you that you need to tease your RSS readers by giving them just a little taste of your blog so that you can get them to come visit your site in order to best monetize your content and to also improve your traffic stats. The other side which I subscribe to is that you provide your entire blog entry into your RSS Feeds, so that your readers can get what they originally signed up for – fast, easy access to your blog’s content. I agree that by providing a short tease in your RSS feed, you will probably increase your chances of monetizing your content, but I feel this is a real short-sighted way of looking at it and in a way, sort of shows that you don’t trust your content to get visitors to come visit your site.
I also wanted to point out that Douglass Karr of Indianapolis, Indiana has created a great wordpress plugin called PostPost that makes it extremely easy for you to monetize your RSS Feeds. The plugin gives you the option to add advertisements or what not before your post, after your post, before your feed loads or after your feed loads. I’ve tested and as you may have noticed, I am running it right now on the bottom of my posts and feeds and it seems to be working great. I’m predicting that this is going to crack a lot of Top 10 WordPress Plugins soon, including my upcoming one.
Mistake #8 – Not Reaching out to Other Bloggers
This is the one mistake that most new bloggers make. Remember, the biggest reason Google and other search engines emphasized the importance of links between sites is to help with the verification process. By exchanging links between two sites, it shows the search engines that the content on each site has enough quality to justify a link exchange. Thus, the more links a site has exchanged with other sites, the more search engines believe the quality of it’s contents, thereby increasing the rankings in search results.
So, with that little bit of Internet 101, the best thing for all bloggers to do is to think of ways to reach out to their readers and other bloggers by using one of the best tools given to the human race – friendly social skills! I hate to use John Chow’s blog as an example again, but there’s a reason he has been one of the fastest growing blogs on the internet. Here’s some of the things he does to reach out to other bloggers and readers:
- Participates in the Comments Sections of his Posts
- Keep to his word by offering a link exchange program based on Reviews
- Reward Frequent Visitors to site with the very valuable links
- Incorporating Contests where his prizes range from TV Tuners to Ink Pens
So, put on your happy hat and start some dialogue with your visitors, starting with me =)
Mistake #9 – Writing for Google instead of People
A lot of SEO books and classes will tell you that keyword density is the key to ranking a blog post faster, but what happens when you get those readers and they never come back to your blog? Well, that’s exactly what’s going to happen if you don’t write like a person who’s not trying to sell something to someone (that someone is Google if you needed to know). Repeating a word over and over and over and over and over again just gets really annoying, don’t you agree? (That was annoying just writing that out). Just focus on writing about the topic at hand and if you have competent writing skills, then your keyword density will take care of itself.
Mistake #10 – Not Reading John Chow dot com
Well . . . . duh!
In case you missed it, here’s A Closer Look
Part 1 & Part 2
Hannes Johnson 11.48 am on 28.07.2007 Permalink
Cool blogs
Thanks for the mention – you just got 5 entries in my contest 
Contest Blogger sounds like a great idea – I will definitely send him a submission next time I have a contest and I will probably check the blog out regularly because we all love a good contest, right?
By the way – The prize in my contest is a website review on my blog and $25 – but if you don’t want the cash (or if you don’t have a PayPal account) I will give you a featured link for 2 months. Maybe I should have explained that a little better in the post…
So, it’s either A) Review + $25 or B) Review + PR4 link
Leo 6.36 pm on 28.07.2007 Permalink
Thanks for the mention! I’m a B-lister myself but it’s all for fun anyways, my mom tells me I’m on her A-list
Eric 6.48 pm on 28.07.2007 Permalink
Contest Blogger rocks – trying to set up your own blogging contest is a study in futility. Trust me – I have tried. Next step – work with Contest Blogger and see if I can make it work this time around.
Philomena Ojikutu 9.46 pm on 28.07.2007 Permalink
Gary,
This is good coverage. Very informative and also resourcefully selecting the most fertile blogs of the week, thank you for I have benefited from them.
seo training 12.27 am on 29.07.2007 Permalink
i checked out contestblogger and hannes both of them are quite cool.
i think you really really have to be lucky to win hannes’ contest
Francesco | Guadagnare 1.04 pm on 29.07.2007 Permalink
Hey guys, It is funny to see how many bloggers are around on a Sunday!!!
Mr. Lee thanks for the nice suggestions, I will be spending the whole night checking out the blogs you mentioned in your post.
Thanks
Francesco
Guadagnare con NuoviBusiness
Gary Lee 10.26 am on 30.07.2007 Permalink
sorry about that hannes . . i should have been more clear . . . i’m glad I could have been of some help!
Gary Lee 10.27 am on 30.07.2007 Permalink
with the amount of trains you’re getting on . . . i seriously think you’ll be an A-Lister in no time!
Gary Lee 10.31 am on 30.07.2007 Permalink
luckier than my iPhone contest? =)
Hannes Johnson 11.50 am on 30.07.2007 Permalink
Well, right now there are 28 entries in the contest. So, if you favorite and comment + post about this in your blog you’ll have a 6/34 chance of winning (which is about 18%).
So you don’t have to be that lucky… But like they say, you don’t win if you don’t have a ticket
Saman Sadeghi 7.49 am on 31.07.2007 Permalink
That’s funny, you mom told me that too!
Leo 1.23 am on 02.08.2007 Permalink
That’s the other A, Saman . . . A as in azzhole
Saman Sadeghi 10.38 pm on 02.08.2007 Permalink
But she don’t me she loves me!
I feel used…
cooliojones 12.34 pm on 06.08.2007 Permalink
Yeah, you’re right. Sunday and weekends in general are not that good from what I have seen in the blogosphere.
Saman Sadeghi 10.10 pm on 06.08.2007 Permalink
The weekend are fairly slow, people spend time with their families…
I’m actually surprised at how much traffic I get on the weekends! It’s a lot more then I expect (but I’m on then, so there you go).
MDB 10.35 pm on 07.08.2007 Permalink
Thanks for the links. I am thinking of starting a contest, so the one to contest blogger is great.