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SportsGuy
Staff
Joined: Aug 30, 2002
# Posts: 3597
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Posted: 06/09/2006 07:54 am
OK, I'm going to try to detail my personal blogging experiment to date. This is different from my other thread on Blogging, a paid experiment, mostly because the paid one is still waiting for liftoff and my personal one started about 2 months ago - keep that time-frame in mind.
First off - I LOVE blogging.
I mean, it was a real PITA at first, trying to come up with unique, relevant content every day or two. You had to write the content, find the images, host the images, edit the copy, post it, edit it again, moderate the comments, etc.
A couple of months on, it's more of a process now and just part of my day, so I kind of like it. I've been approved as an official media outlet for the two major auto manufacturers I blog about, so I can directly access and use their own press kits, releases and images - sweet! PLUS, it seems, so far, postings of press releases - same ones everyone else uses, has not resulted in anything resembling duplicate content concerns - I was told this wouldn't be a problem given the nature of press releases and their intended multple uses, but...I just had to see for myself.
I also make use of Google's alert features - news comes to me.
I'd say about 1 in 12 items I post is a scoop for me - I just happen to get it from a North American source and post it prior to the rest of NA waking up (I'm on the East coast). I've also learned that today's news can actually be news from 3 days ago - LOL, seems to be the norm with news sites around the globe. 
I have trackback spam and comment spam - I'm using a free (open-source) program by bblog - so I installed it, I tweaked it, I edit it, I troubleshoot it (thankfully it's pretty reliable) and the bblog community is active and helpful. I'm somewhat draconian in that I don't allow comments very often on my postings, but so goes the battle to control spam.
I looked at paid solutions, but wanted to follow the low-to-no-budget approach and still retain control - unlike Blogger, for example.
Now, want to hear about results?
Well, in two months the readership has gone from 0 to about 130 visits per day - I have not marketed the blog other than submitting it to various blog directories and services like Technorati and FeedBurner. I do have a link from my website to the blog, but that seems to have taken a bit more than a month to be "recognized" by the website users...LOL
Now, I'm not saying this is HUGE or anything, but recall, it's been live a bit over 2 months now, with no real marketing efforts.
Adsense - well, the ads are in place across the top and down one side - not ideal placement for ads, but it's what I've got given the template and NO DESIRE to rebuild my own design to fit the ad requirements. I'm going to start experimenting with ads in the actual posts - either with a story or in their own posts - we'll see how that goes.
Revenue from the ads in the blog space sucks (pennies to a dollar or so a day - the main site averages about $8/day) - plain and simple - given the tiny amount of traffic the blog sees, and the mix of ads shown given the variable content mixture, the actual payment per click is laughable - for now. I've seen this project as incremental and designed to achieve ranking for various search phrases, rather than a direct revenue generator from the gate. A positive note is the CTR generated by the blog traffic is high - so it *appears* that given a good amount of traffic, the blog ads WILL perform better.
Rankings - well, since the "keywords" being targeted are variable and depend on the content being posted, SEO is limited to the most basic keyword research (if any) for a topic, the title is written with this in mind, and the phrase peppered in a couple times. If it's a press release, well, I usually ad-lib a bit of my own thinking either before or after it to include the phrase that few times.
I am planning a couple of self-written, very targeted articles in the future for those busy keywords I want to target - now that the blog is well indexed and seeing some love, so to speak.
For the main phrase the blog targets overall, admittedly a low-volume, yet nicely targeted phrase, the blog now ranks 3rd/4th in Google. As I found out earlier this week, those news items I got posted before others, or even on-par time-wise with others, are starting to rank inside the top twenty for their phrases. Admittedly, in some cases, those phrases were less thought-out than I'd have otherwise liked, but SEO copy-writing and news reporting, I've learned, don't always naturally fit together easily.
Regardless, I'm happy.
The overall point was to see if a blog could obtain decent rankings and develop some search traffic for the domain - the answer is yes. Not news for sure, but I have proven it to myself.
Now, well, I'm addicted to posting to the blog - every morning is a race to see if I can scoop other new sources for the latest items. It's been educational too - ever wonder how a manufacturers media site responds to negative commentary or news - they stay silent. They prefer to post news about only positive items - go figure...LOL
This is a great way to build a community of users - less work than maintaining a posting forum and easier to control as you want to.
I can say the following:
~ bblog blogs can rank well in the results
~ SEO work for blogs can be, IMO, somewhat less involved than for actual webpages
~ it's vital to get listed with a couple of good services/directories
~ press releases used on blogs seem to avoid dupe content penalties (or I haven't been hit yet)
~ You will learn a lot
~ It's LOTS of work - don't think you'll post once a week and be successful - my pace averages about 2 posts every day or two
~ The "Bloglines" spider is an addict...LOL - about 80% more visits from that guy than any other spider - and G is here every day...
~ Now that I've "established" the blog, it's time to tackle the grass-roots marketing that'll bring the links
~ I have not done any link building to date save for the blog directory submissions and services (about 8 - 10 of them)
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Hopefully this post will serve to answer some questions for the folks new to blogging and search marketing. It's not going to cover everything, nor was I trying to. I simply wanted to share my experiences to date and express my opinion that this does work, it works relatively quickly and, odd as it sounds, can be addictively fun to maintain.
Now, for some housekeeping notes:
1 - I am not a database technician
2 - I am not a sysadmin
3 - I am not THE MAN to turn to for help - I'm just a guy trying some things and noting the results
4 - If you want more info on bblog. please Google for them
5 - ...if you're inclined to PM me for urgent help with your blog, I charge $100 USD per hour - prepaid.
6 - I cannot offer anyone help on getting their blogs set up - sorry. It's one thing to muck up my own database, but I won't do it to others.
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SportsGuy
Staff
Joined: Aug 30, 2002
# Posts: 3597
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Posted: 06/20/2006 05:15 am
Just a follow-on update of sorts.
Right now the blog is ranking mostly on the first two SERP pages for three terms I'm after.
That's right - three terms. Well four, as I'll explain...
The blog's focus has broadened slightly - still all one topic, just three manufacturers now.
Let's look at some history:
Phrase one I went after: "manufacturer # 1 blog" (actual keyword hidden to protect the innocent. ).
For this one the blog ranked inside the top 20 within about 4 weeks, then slid into the top 5 - 7 results after that.
About 10 days ago I decided to broaden the coverage offered on the blog, so included mnaufacturers # 2 & # 3.
So now we're chasing the following phrases - all with one blog, one title on the main page, etc.:
manufacturer # 1 blog
manufacturer # 1 news (changed from blog)
manufacturer # 2 news
manufacturer # 3 news
Things are still settling out, I think, but here's the latest anyway:
For manufacturer # 1 blog, the blog holds 5 of the top 10 spots in Google between the actual URL and blog directory & feed references.
For manufacturer # 1 news we're sitting inside the top 10 with feed references and inside the top 20 with an actual URL.
For manufacturer # 2 news we're inside the top 30 with an actual URL and inside the top 40 (nothing to brag on here, obviously) with a feed reference.
For manufacturer # 3 news we're inside the top 20 with both the actual URL and a feed reference.
OK, the main points are that getting the blog to change direction and rank for new phrases is fairly simple and quick it seems. This is a real bonus for search optimizers - though hardly news in our world.
Feed references (feedburner, etc.) actually get ranked and stay ranked for a while for you. Not that I actually did anything other than use keyword rich text when describing the blog when I signed up for the feed services. Thought not a direct click back to the blog, these listings are a good way to gain some exposure for the fact that the blog exists.
Overall I'm happy so far with the performance of this blog. It's ranked higher, faster than the website managed for similar phrases (though the site's only focus is manufacturer # 1 phrases).
...and just to be clear about this, I'm not posting this to brag, etc. I'm posting this to share real world results for other users who may consider the same path.
Rather than read someone post, "I heard that...", I'm actually telling you about my real-world experience. Not saying you'll duplicate it - heck you could do better - but it's real, not something "I heard"...
Building a website takes time and effort. Building & maintaining a blog takes time and effort. So far both have paid off for me, but the blog is definitely the "darling".
Search traffic is climbing for the blog itself, too. Since it's new-ish, the jumps are still nicely into the double digits each month (30% or so increases). The numbers themselves are still pretty modest, though. The point here is those rankings are developing traffic - which is spinning the ads - which are getting clicked on and generating revenue.
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SportsGuy
Staff
Joined: Aug 30, 2002
# Posts: 3597
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Posted: 07/26/2006 07:47 am
Another update:
I'm just over 3 months into this little experiement and here's what I'm seeing:
1 - blog articles are ranking very well (top 10 usually) for their focused topics - obviously the mor eniche, the better, but this is what article excel at - in a couple of cases, I outrank the official site(s) for the topic.
2 - overall traffic and individual article readership is up about 125% from month 2 to month 3 - always nice to see growth. 
3 - ad revenue from the blog itself is still relatively small when compared against the revenue generated by the main website
4 - Internet Explorer and Firefox liek to show the blog in slightly different ways, which for me means that anyone seeing it in IE (most folks) see the nav stacked on top of the ads (driving them lower on the page, and making them less effective). Those seeing it through FF, though, see the ads sandwiched between the nav and blog articles (which showed a nice uptick in click percentages for that particular ad unit - I suspect this would be higher if I could get IE to play nice).
Now, the only real changes I've made recently were to include a list of links across the very top of the blog's main page and to expand the listed categories under which I file articles.
The list of links across the header point back to specific topics on the website - we'll see if folks are finding the blog through searches, then using these links to cruise over to the website now.
The categories target specific related keywords - the goal being that the URL created for the category will get indexed and help with pages ranking well for the keywords targeted.
Additionally, Google seems to have cleaned up my multiple listings for certain phrases. overall traffic is up, but this is due to more articles ranking well for more topics. I don't mind losing multipe spots for one search if I can expand inbound volume under multiple searches for many topics.
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