Instant Review factors of a Website with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Importance

3 comments
There are millions of websites world wide and the number is increasing day by day with millions. Website reviewing process was started in last decade of previous century. As a marketing and SEO consultant, I have listed a few factors and steps those are being carried out for consulted and getting excellent performance according to our clients.

Instant Review factors of a Website with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Importance


Sadaf Sadiqiue: our only son 2+ Years practicing SEO for web review

Website Review Step 1: On-page factors

1. Search Engine Optimization: "SEO" is the optimization of content within the website, not marketing outside the website. Normally, it is called on-page seo.
2. Google PageRank: PageRank is Google's view of the importance of the page.  Generally, the higher the PageRank the higher the page will show in Search Engine Results.
3. validator.w3.org:  This indicates whether the site meets current Html standards.  Meeting the standards has a positive influence on the SEO of the site.
4. websitegrader: Receive an overall grade 0-100
5. Page Title: It is the #1 keyword area of the page.  The Page Title should be unique for each page, and be keyword rich for the content on that page.
6. Meta Description: Google will cut off anything more than 155(roughly) characters. Try to limit its length to 25-30 words. Also try to use no more than two sentences.  Every page should have a unique Meta Description
7. Perma-links: Perma-links are keywords in the URL of the page.  Keywords in the URL is very important in the SEO of each page.
8. H1, H2, H3 Tags: It is the #2 keyword area of the page.  There should only be one H1 tag on each page.  Try to organize the content of your page by using Heading Titles. To give an idea of how important Heading titles are, think of an H1 Heading Title as being 20 times more important than paragraph text. Think of H2 as being 15 times for important than paragraph text.
9. "Alt" text on image: This is needed to meet Web Standards and for good SEO.  Hover your mouse over images.  If you don't see a small text box displayed, the image does not have Alt text. As "they" say, a picture is worth a 1,000 words, so chose your Alt Text words carefully, and make sure they support the keywords being used to optimize the page.
10. Wiki-izing: When you have a keyword phrase on one page that can be linked to another page.  This improves the SEO for the page you are linking to.  It is important the page you link to is optimized for that phrase that linked to it.
11. Social Networking Icons: This is great for SEO and lets visitors see comments from people other than the owner of the website.
12. Videos Inclusion: Google likes to refer traffic to "Content Rich" pages.  Embedded videos help the page to become Content Rich.  We recommend videos from YouTube.com or Vimeo.com.  Make sure to put keyword phrases in the title or meta description of you videos.
13. Outgoing Links: Too many outgoing links on your website will lower your Google PageRank
14. Flash Websites: 100% flash websites traditionally have extremely poor SEO.  Their content cannot be indexed by Search Engines.  Avoid 100% flash websites, and navigation made from flash.
15. META Keywords: There is no need to add META Keywords to your website.  Google stopped using META Keywords years ago.  Please read this article,  http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-does-not-use-keywords-meta-tag.html
16. RSS feed subscription: It is better to place RSS subscription button with validate syndication.

Website Review Step-2: Design with SEO

A. Homepage layout Management review: 
Make sure only important information is on the homepage.  This is an index page to content within the site, so don't try to educate visitors, just quickly get them to their area of interested. Keep design simple, not cluttered.  The more content you need to display the less  graphical design you need on the page.
1. Use of homepage slideshow: Takes advantage of multiple messages in a very short period of time.
2. Use of images: Good for visitors and SEO.  Try to use images on all pages of the site.
3. Use of videos: Very good for the SEO of the website.  It's OK to use other peoples videos from youtube.com or vimeo.com, as long as you stand behind the message of the video.  Your website visitor is more interested in learning what you stand for .vs you having to be the person in the video.
B. Content Management Review:
1. Homepage call to action: You must tell your visitors what you want them to do, if you expect them to take action.
2. Secondary page call to action: 
3. Simple Navigation: Keeping all menus at the top of the page is the easiest for visitors to navigate. Try to use sub-menus that stay visible when you are in that section of the site.  If you have a need for many menus, you can use drop down menus.
4. Html website: Html websites are more difficult to maintain because you must go to your Webmaster to post content.  A good Content Management System "CMS" like www.site-ninja.com, allows you to easily add and optimize content. 
5. Crumb Menus: usually under the top level menu.  Used to show the visitor where they are in the site; (i.e. Home --> Services --> Service #1).  Crumb menus should be hyper-linked. Putting keywords in menus helps with SEO.
6. Landing Pages: Every Product and Service should have its own page, which is optimized.
7. Testimonials: Testimonials let your visitors hear other people promote you.  It is very important in the visitors decision to buy from you.  Text Testimonials are good.  Audio Testimonial are even better.
8. Blog: For good SEO results, you should have a blog within the domain of your website.  Product and Service pages are generally static.  It's the blog where search engines look for new content.
9. Opt In Emails: Find ways to collect Emails from your visitors.  Offer them something if they will Opt Into your Email list.  Make sure they know they can Opt Out at anytime.  If the visitor sees you are an authority in an area that benefits them, they will be interested in receiving occasional Emails from you.
10. Futurenowinc: Simple utility to see if you talk about yourself more than you customers
11. Abuse words grader: Utility to see if you abuse certain words
12. Content Rich pages: Google considers a page Content Rich if it has 300 words or more.
13. Footer Content: Google likes to see the following in the footer of all pages of your website, a) Terms b) Privacy c) Sitemap

Website review step-3: Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

SEM is the activity done outside the website, to promote the content within the site, and drive traffic to the site.

1. Introduction review:
The noun, review, means a report on something with the possibility of the writer's opinion (or opinion of a group). If you are to review a website, always know that you are reviewing the website and not the business of the website, although the nature of the business should be mentioned. In this article I explain the paragraphs that are necessary to write when reviewing a website. It is good to know if the website has a database or not. So, it is good for a website to be reviewed by a website designer. Website designer: make sure you do not use terms that are too technical in your review. The review of a website can also be done by an Internet enthusiast. The review is read by the ordinary person.

2. Introduce review:
The introductory paragraph should talk about the purpose of the website. You can always get information for this at the home page of the website. It should be more or less as long as the introduction of this article.

3. Agreement review:
Any decent website has terms of use. You read the terms of use from the website. In this paragraph in your review, you write the pertinent features of the use of the website or the company (organization). All of this should be one or two paragraphs.

4. Presentation of the Web Pages:
Here you say how the web pages present themselves (i.e. styling). You can talk about the layout in non-technical terms. For a good website the layout of all the pages are the same or similar. If there are any illustrative images or videos, you may mention them. You can talk about the overall color. To have a list of colors and their names contact me at, umain30@umain30.com . You can talk about the position of the titles in the pages - not page by page, generalize. Are the titles at the top-middle, top-left, top-right, bold or small? You can say a bit more about the home page here. You can talk about the content of the main pages here. The copyright information and when the site was last modified or published goes into this paragraph, as well. Note: this paragraph can be very subjective. Whatever is the case, you have to talk about the presentation (looks) of the pages in non-technical terms, in this paragraph.

5. Hyperlinks review:
They say the Internet would not exist if it were not for hyperlinks. You talk here about the important hyperlinks - their uses and where they are positioned in the pages - you generalize, you can pay more attention to the home page.

6. How to use the Website:
Use of the site involves the use of hyperlinks and forms. The use of the hyperlinks should have been mentioned in the above paragraph. So in this paragraph you talk about the use of the important Forms, and possibly what links to click to get to the forms. If you know the kind of feedback the user will get from a form you say it - you do not have to talk about confirmation (message sent) feedback unless it is absent. If you know whether it is automatic or manual feedback, you say it. For this paragraph it is good to know whether the site has a database or not. You say what kind of feedback is got from the database; is it stored data or an employee has to reply to a login page or by email. If you know if the reply will come as a web page you say it. If you know if the reply will come as email you say it. If you know when a feedback will come you say it. For this paragraph and the rest of the paragraphs of the review, you can get the information from the site (and nature of site and business) without logging in or contacting a personnel of the site. The aim of a website review is usually to promote a site. However, nothing stops you from writing a review criticizing the site (criticisms will not be assimilated well by the site owner, but nothing stops you from doing so independently).

7. Any Special Feature:
This paragraph is optional. In this paragraph, you talk about any special feature offered by the site. If the site has anything different from other sites, in terms of how the site runs its business or how the site is used, how the site is presented or any special service or good offered, you say it here as a special feature. Some people will prefer to place this paragraph just after the introduction of the review especially if they are reviewing for the Internet. Internet readers usually do not want to read much and many at times they do not read to the bottom of a post or article.

8. Business Success of the Site:
This paragraph is optional. You will hardly be able to know whether the site is doing good business, unless somehow the site owner gives you an account. You will hardly be able to know if the site is a scammer site, unless you are one of their accomplices. However, if you know if they are doing good business, say so here and say how they are doing it; in this case you should be sure of what you are saying. If you know the number of workers they have, you say it here. As I said, this paragraph is optional. However, if the site is the first of its kind and/or if the business is the first of its kind, you say so in this paragraph or in the "Any Special Feature" paragraph above. In this paragraph you say whether the site has competitors in the country of the site and/or all over the world - you can get this information just by searching the Internet. A small site is considered to have at least 1000 visitors a day; however, you may not be able to know this for the site. So, good business starts from 1000 visitors a day. It is not all the visitors who purchase or consume. In my opinion today, it is about one quarter of the visitors who purchase or consume. So, if you are promoting a site, you have to be very tactful with what you say on visitors. If you are not sure, do not say anything on visitors.

Final views from Author:
In the conclusion you talk a bit about all the paragraphs - say one sentence each for each paragraph without copying any sentence from the paragraphs. You may omit some sentences here, if you think they are not important. If you know anything about the site's future, you say so here. The conclusion must have a hyperlink to the website's home page. If the site is a very big site, then you will have to repeat much or all of the above for any sub-site of the site. In reviewing a site, you typically have one paragraph for each point. You can have more paragraphs for each point if you find that necessary; however, one per point is typical. The headings for the paragraphs in the review can be the ones above or similar. You can never be sure if all what you get from a site is true. You can never be sure for how long the site will exist or when the pages and terms of usage will be modified. So it is good to type an agreement or disclaimer at the end of the review like, "This review has been written to the best of my knowledge at the time of writing." The heading should be Agreement or Disclaimer depending on what exactly you write. Remember, in a review you can also type your opinion in paragraphs.
Read More

Off page SEO and Social Media Marketing Report for consultant

2 comments
Recently I have got an offer from Radius Lab Private Limited for their venture Readnsurf, as they want to develop virtual world much presence for their website.They have 5 websites but only Book and evergreen topic related website (http://readnsurf.com) is given to us for improvement. It is mentioned that we had done on-page seo works for the site previously. That is for why , they have chosen us for off-page seo works. This article (report) carries the tasks list, those are needed to improve for a website visibility in SERP and getting targeted traffic either from search engine or social media. 
Project name: Off page SEO and Social  Media marketing Report
Project charge: $1000 per month [negotiable on basis of work distribution]
Starting Date: 1 April- 2014

Work distribution list:

1). Community Creation in Social Networking Sites:
Major social media websites profile creation and active conversation method with unique method. Such as 
Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google+, Stumbleupon, delicious, diigo, friendfeed, bebo, myspace and a few more. [50+]
Working plan: 10 active members on each and every major social media site.
Indilens group: 8 members
Readnsurf group: 2 Members
2). Content marketing via Blogging
Writing unique content for your website daily minimum 1 for other website and publish 4 article on readnsurf.com like blog posting.
Working plan:
Indilens group: 1 article daily [ minimum 1000 words]
Readnsurf group: 4 articles daily [ minimum 500 words]

3). Forum Postings
Create unique profiles in high valued (PR) forums and go with interactive method minimum 25 real profiles daily and become active by giving replies and asking questions on them. Profile must bear targeted site link. by own or related members. Minimum 10 threads daily from each real account.
Working plan:
Indilens group: 15 working members 
Readnsurf group: 10 working members

4). Search Engine Submission
Submission to the most popular search engine manually [ no auto] minimum 50,000
Working plan:
Indilens group: 40000 manual search engine submission
Readnsurf group: 10000 manual search engine submission

5). Directory Submission
Submission to the topmost quality directories like DMOZ, Yahoo Directory, ZoomInfo, One Mission, Pegasus, etc.Minimum 150 reliable and trust worthy dirctories.
Working plan: 
Indilens group: 120 directories submission
Readnsurf group: 30 directories submission

6). Social Bookmarking
Submission to top social bookmarking in popular bookmarking sites like Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Propeller, etc. Minimum 150 social bookmarking from 15 real and active accounts
Working plan: 
Indilens group: 100 bookmarking via 10 real accounts
Readnsurf group: 50 bookmarking via 10 real accounts

7). Photo Sharing
Publish/share website product pictures and make them public on websites like Flickr, Picasa, Photo Bucket, Picli, etc. Minimum 150 photo sharing daily from 15 real and active accounts
Working plan: 
Indilens group: 100 photo shares from 10 active accounts 
Readnsurf group: 50 photo shares from 10 active accounts 

8). Video marketing
publish/share  product videos, expert opinions, and reviews of product and make them public in YouTube, Metacafe, Dailymotion, etc. Share minimum 1 video daily in 10 video sharing websites by moderating (little changing title and description) on each and every website for same video.  
Working plan:
Indilens group: 20 videos per month 
Readnsurf group: 10 videos per month 

9). Business Reviews
Write reviews about others businesses in major business review sites like RateitAll, Shvoong, Kaboodle, Stylefeeder, etc. Minimum  1 review daily for the targeted website.
Working plan:
Indilens group: 20 reviews per month
Readnsurf group: 10 reviews per month 

10). Local Listings & Yellow Pages[free classified]
Make website local search engines friendly by submitting local listing to avoid huge competition . Submitting  website to Google Local, Maps, Yahoo Local, Yellow Pages, Superpages, Hotfrog, etc
Working plan:
Indilens group: submission 5 daily 
Readnsurf group: Submission 2 daily 

11). Article marketing (Submission)
Writing unique article  and submit them to popular article sites like Ezine, Go Articles, Now Public, Buzzle, etc.
Working plan:
Indilens group: 20 articles submission per month 
Readnsurf group: 10 articles submission per month

12). Press Release Promotion
PR submission in popular PR websites like 1888pressrelease, Open PR, PR Leap, etc. This will help you to publish site in Google News.
Working plan:
Indilens group: 20 PR submission per month 
Readnsurf group: 10 PR submission per month 

13. Question-Answers submission
Minimum 10 real profiles and participate in Answers by asking and answering relevant questions and placing a link to targeted website in the source section such Yahoo Answers, Cha-Cha, Answer Bag, etc. Minimum 15 question daily from each accounts 
Working plan:
Indilens group: 10 questions(replies) daily 
Readnsurf group: 5 questions (replies daily)

14). Document (PDF files) Sharing
Sharing minimum 1 PDF files to high rank websites with information brochures, and slides in Google Docs, Slide Share, etc. This will help you brand your website. Minimum `1 PDF submission daily. 
Working plan:
Indilens group: 20 PDF submission per month 
Readnsurf group: 10 PDF submission per month 

15) CSS, W3C & RSS Directories Submission
submitting targeted website to CSS and W3C website directories and submitting website to RSS feed directories.
Working plan:
Indilens group:
Readnsurf group:

16). App Development
Developing app with interactive and innovative widget/gadget application and submit to play store and itune store. Minimum 2 mobile apps
Working plan:
Indilens group: 2 apps are created 
Readnsurf group: must submit created apps by paying sums 
.
17. Geo target orientation
Each and every marketing strategy must look after the geo target, such location, age , gender, custom etc.
Working plan:
Indilens group: 15 marketing strategies 
Readnsurf group: 5 marketing strategies 

18. Remove unnatural links.
It is tough job but have to do manually or automatically
Working plan:
Indilens group: Finding unnatural links and report to webmaster(s)
Readnsurf group: Remove all reported unnatural links via webmasters tools or by contacting the concern websites owners. 

19.). Social and PPC Ad Campaign
Go for social ads and PPC ad campaign with targeted keywords
Working plan:
Indilens group: Google adwords and Facebook social ads planning and creation 
Readnsurf group: executed created ad strategies 

20. Observation and monitoring
All the marketing strategies have to monitor manually and do the appropriate correction and future planning. 
Working plan:
Indilens group: Auto monitoring and report submission 
Readnsurf group: Manual monitoring and valuation.  

Note :
  1. Full project charges $1000 per month [negotiable on basis of work distribution]
  2. if take direct part from readnsurf on this project , least 3 persons, must be dedicated and ready to  work for 16 hours daily according with our directions.
  3. Must corporate ON PAGE correction in due time as requires
  4. Unique and regular content update on targeted site [ at least 5 daily]
  5. If you have any question or doubt, contact at marketing@indilens.com 

With Regards
Main Uddin
CEO, Indilens.com 
Read More

20 Evergreen lessons on Make Money Blogging from motivational speaker

Leave a Comment
You know everyone thinks we’re fools, right? To most of the world, blogging is a joke. It isn’t a career. It isn’t a way to make money. It isn’t a tool for changing the world. It’s a hobby, a diversion, a fad that’ll come and go. Sure, you can start a blog, but don’t count on it to take you anywhere. That’s just silly.

20 Evergreen lessons on Make Money Blogging from motivational speaker 



Try telling your family or friends or coworkers you want to quit your job and make money blogging. They’ll smile politely and ask, “Does anybody really make money from that?” Yes, they want you to have dreams. Yes, they want you to chase them. Yes, they want you to succeed.

But they also want you to be “realistic.”

If you really want to improve your life, you should get an advanced degree, write a book, or even start your own business, not hang all your hopes and dreams on some stupid little blog. There’s no money in it.

Or is there? I’m hesitant to say this, but…

How Much your blog Earning per month ?

In January and February, we cleared over $100,000 per month in sales. The verdict is still out on March, but if we didn’t make it, we should be close enough.

How?

Well, I’ll tell you. Not because I want to brag (well, maybe a little), but because most of the advice out there about monetizing your blog is complete crap.

For instance, do you see any ads on this site?

No? How about e-books for sale?

None of those either, huh? In fact, you might be hard-pressed to find anything for sale at all.

There’s a reason why.

Over the past six years, I’ve had the good fortune to work with some of the smartest bloggers on the planet. I worked with Brian Clark as he built Copyblogger to a multimillion dollar brand. Neil Patel and Hiten Shah also hired me to help them launch the KISSmetrics blog, and while they’re not big on publishing revenue numbers, they did recently close a $7 million venture capital round.

Combined, I wouldn’t be surprised if both blogs have earned more than $50 million. In comparison, the $100,000 per month I’ve managed to generate is a pittance.

But everyone has to start somewhere, right?

The reason this blog has made so much money so fast is I learned from the best, and then when I left, I kept learning. Every day, I crunch numbers, read books, talk to experts, and spend at least 30 minutes in silence, staring into the distance, doing nothing but thinking.

It’s paid off. If you’ll take some of these lessons to heart, it’ll pay off for you too.

Because here’s the thing:
You’re Not a Fool. You Can Make Money Blogging.

So, you want to make a living teaching other people what you know? Nothing wrong with that.

Professors do it. So do public speakers and best-selling authors.

Hell, consulting is a $415 billion industry, and what are all those consultants doing?

Getting paid to teach. Blogging is no different. It’s just the same old models with some rocket fuel thrown in, courtesy of social media.

In fact, we might as well call that the first lesson:

Lesson #1: You’re Not Just a Blogger

You’re an expert, a teacher, a mentor, maybe even an entrepreneur. Your blog is simply a launchpad for all those things.

Look around, and you’ll find nearly all “bloggers” who make a decent income have books, courses, a side career as a keynote speaker, or even software. That’s how they make money. Their blog is just the “freebie” they give away to attract customers or clients.

Lesson #2: Don’t Sell Advertising

Selling ads is attractive, because it’s passive income, but you can usually make 3-10X more money using the same “ad space” to sell your own products and services or even promote an affiliate product.

Pat Flynn, for example, makes about $50,000 a month in commissions from promoting Bluehost.

Here at BBT, we mostly promote our own products, but we’re also in the process of creating affiliate sales funnels for LeadPages and Stablehost, both of which offer hefty commissions (and are great products too!)

Lesson #3: Build the Funnel in Reverse

We’ve all experienced sales funnels.

A company entices you with a freebie, then they offer you something cheap but irresistible, and then they gradually sweet talk you into buying more and more expensive stuff. It’s a tried and true marketing tactic, and you should absolutely build a sales funnel for your blog.

What you might not know is you should build it in reverse.

A lot of bloggers launch a cheap e-book as their first product, and then they get frustrated when they don’t make much money. Here’s why: the real profit is at the end of the funnel, not the beginning.

Selling e-books is fine and dandy if you have half a dozen more expensive products to offer your customer afterwards, but it’s downright silly if you don’t. You’re much better off creating and selling the expensive product first, and then gradually create cheaper and cheaper products.

When you do have some less expensive products to sell, you can offer those to new people first, safe in the knowledge that you have something more profitable up your sleeve to sell them later.

Here at BBT, our products cost $9,997, $997, and $591. We’re working our way down the funnel in reverse, releasing the most expensive products first and then gradually getting cheaper and cheaper. It’s been much, much more profitable this way.

Lesson #4: There’s No Such Thing As a “Cheap” Market

“But Jon,” I can hear you spluttering. “I can’t sell a $10,000 product! My customers don’t have that much money.”

My response: you’re 98% right. Unless you’re selling exclusively to multimillionaires, the vast majority of your customer base won’t be able to afford premium products, but what’s interesting is it doesn’t matter. Often times, you can make more money selling to the 2% than you can to the entire 98% combined.

For instance, our $10,000 product is a year-long coaching program for writers – a group that’s not exactly known for their wealth, but I always fill all 10 spots within minutes of opening the program. Here’s why: I notify 40,000 writers about it. 2% of 40,000 is 800 people who might possibly buy a product in that price range. By only accepting 10, I’m creating a situation of extreme scarcity.

You can do the same thing, even if your list is much smaller. If you have 100 subscribers, chances are two of them might be willing to buy premium products or services from you, and those two will often pay you more money than the other 98 combined.

Lesson #5: By Charging Premium Prices, You Can Offer Premium Service

Feel guilty about charging that much money? You shouldn’t.

By charging premium prices, you can offer premium service, doing everything possible to help your customers get results. For example, with my coaching program, I get on the phone with students every week, review their homework, answer their questions, look at their blog, and guide them through every step of the process.

Could I put that same information in a $7 e-book? Sure, but I couldn’t give anyone one-on-one help at that price, and that’s what people who buy premium products and services are paying for.

Lesson #6: Deliberately Delay the Sale

Another big shift in thinking: rather than trying to push everyone to buy your products upfront, smart bloggers delay the sale.

I first heard this idea from Rand Fishkin over at Moz. They offer their blog readers a free trial to their Analytics and SEO software, but after studying the behavior of their customers, they noticed something interesting: people who read several blog posts before signing up for a free trial stayed customers for two or three times longer than people who didn’t.

I’ve noticed the same thing with our customers. Instead of immediately clobbering readers with sales pitches, it’s much better to give them some content first and build trust before you begin talking about your products and services. Yes, you’ll make less money in the short term, but the long-term profits go through the roof.

Lesson #7: You Are the Bottleneck

Without a doubt, time is our biggest problem as bloggers. Not only are we expected to publish a continuous stream of content on our blogs, but we also have to deal with technical issues, read books and articles about our field, create new products to sell, answer questions from readers… the list goes on and on. The further into it you go, the more clear it becomes that you can’t do everything.

So, what’s the answer?

Believe it or not, I found answers from studying manufacturing processes. If one machine is working slower than others in a plant, it can literally cost the company tens of thousands of dollars per hour. To make sure it never happens, smart plant managers are willing to spend any amount of money to eliminate bottlenecks. They have an unlimited budget, because the cost of eliminating the bottleneck never comes anywhere close to the cost of the bottleneck itself.

The same is true for us, except the solutions are often different. Instead of buying a new machine, for example, we might purchase a new type of software that automates some of our business, or we might hire a virtual assistant or programmer. It can be expensive, yes, but it’s worthwhile if it saves you enough time, because then you can dedicate that time to higher value activities.

Lesson #8: Measure The Value of Everything You Do

What are those higher value activities, exactly?

Well, it depends on your goal. If your goal is to increase traffic, for example, start measuring the visitors per hour invested. Let’s say you invest three hours in writing a post, and it brings you 100 visitors, and you invest five hours in writing a guest post that brings you 500 visitors. The first activity has an hourly rate of 33 visitors per hour. The second activity has an hourly rate of 100 visitors per hour. Guest posting, therefore, is a better use of your time than writing content on your own blog.

Granted, it’s a short-term perspective, not taking into account long-term gains, but it’s still extremely useful to start measuring your time this way. Not just for traffic, but also for subscriber growth and revenue.

Lesson #9: In the Beginning, Creating Content for Your Own Blog Is Silly

I tried to sneak this one under lesson #8, but I think it’s important enough to get its own number, even if it does get me labeled a heretic and burned at the stake. Because here’s the deal:

In the beginning, your blog is like an empty classroom. Standing in front and giving a lecture is silly, because sure, it might make you feel important, but there’s nobody listening. You’re all alone, and you can come up with the smartest, most entertaining lecture in the history of mankind, but it won’t matter, because no one else heard it.

When you first start out, writing content for your own blog is one of the least efficient ways of building your audience. You’re far better off serving a little time as a “guest lecturer” first. In other words, write guest posts for someone else’s audience, impress the hell out of them, and siphon off a portion of their readership for your own.

That’s what we did here at BBT, and it resulted in the most successful blog launch in history: 13,000 email subscribers in 60 days, before I even wrote a single blog post. We had nothing but a coming soon page and an invitation to join our email list. Sounds strange, but I can promise you it’s vastly more efficient.

You don’t have to wait until you get to 13,000 subscribers to start, but I’d advise accumulating at least a few hundred. That way, you have an audience to share your content when you start publishing posts.

Lesson #10: Don’t Waste Time on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc.

Here’s another shocker: you know your dream of building up a huge following on Facebook or Twitter and then using it to promote your blog? Well, it’s a dumb idea. Out of everything we’ve tested, building our own social media accounts produced the lowest visitor per hour figure. In other words, it’s quite possibly the worst way you can spend your time.

Does that mean having followers in those places is useless?

No. Facebook is nice because you can advertise to your followers. Google+ can help boost your search engine rankings. Even with those benefits though, it shouldn’t be near the top of your list for things to do. In my opinion, you shouldn’t think about them at all until you hit 10,000 subscribers, and then outsource the management of them to someone else. You can use your time more efficiently in other places, such as:

Lesson #11: Webinars Kick Butt

If you’ve been on our list for long, you know that we do a lot of webinars. Here’s why: on average, each webinar generates $40,000 per hour invested. It’s by far the most profitable thing I do. Nothing else even comes close. If you’re wondering how on earth we make that much money, all you have to do is attend one of our webinars to find out. Everything we do is on display, and you can study it, free of charge.

Interestingly, webinars are also the most effective way to build our subscriber base. When doing webinars for other people, we average 500 new email subscribers per hour invested. It’s not uncommon to gain 1,000-2,000 email subscribers from a single webinar. If we’re promoting a product, we usually make at least $10,000 too.

Translation: webinars kick butt.

Lesson #12: Longer Content Gets More Traffic

You know what else works? Long content.

It might seem strange, but on average, longer content gets much more traffic than shorter content. Not just for us, but for our students too, regardless of the niche, and here’s a post where SEO expert Neil Patel came to the same conclusion. The sweet spot seems to be about 2,000–3,000 words per post. That’s why posts here on BBT are much longer than your average blog.

Granted, content of that length also takes longer to produce, but if you measure the visitors per hour invested, longer content still wins by a mile. Assuming you’re promoting it, of course.

Lesson #13: Promote The Crap Out of Your Content

The problem is almost no one promotes their content enough. And by “promotion,” I’m not talking about sharing your own posts on Twitter and Facebook. I’m talking aboutblogger outreach – the process of building relationships with influencers and asking them to share your work.

At a minimum, you should spend just as much time on outreach as you do creating your own content. So, if you’re spending 10 hours a week writing blog posts, you should be spending 10 hours a week on outreach too.

Can’t do that? Then scale back how much content you’re creating. Spend five hours on writing blog posts and five hours on outreach. You’ll get better results.

Lesson #14: Ignore SEO for the First Year

Let’s get one thing straight: I’m not against SEO. Far from it. We now get tons of traffic from Google. I just think most bloggers focus on it way too early.

Again, it all comes down to time. When your blog is new, the most efficient uses of your time fall into three broad categories: building relationships with influencers (including guest blogging), creating content worth linking to, and selling your products and services. If you do those three things well, not only will your blog gain traffic and prominence, but you’ll also start getting search traffic without doing anything.

And then you can focus on other things that matter more, such as…

Lesson #15: Your Email List Is More Important Than Anything Else

In analytics, there is a principle called “the one metric that matters” (OMTM). The idea is that you find a single number that accurately predicts the success or failure of your project.

In the case of blogging, that number is the size of your email list. (Not RSS, mind you – it’s dying a slow but certain death.) In my experience, your email list is the most accurate predictor of how much money you’ll make.

Here at BBT, we make about three dollars per subscriber per month – an impressive feat, due mostly to our skill with marketing. The number isn’t important, though. The point is that I can accurately predict our sales based on the number of subscribers. So can you.

If you’re new to this, I would strive for one dollar per subscriber per month in sales. In other words, an email list of 1,000 subscribers should result in at least $1,000 per month in sales, 10,000 subscribers would result in $10,000 per month in sales, and so on.

The more subscribers you get, the more money you make. Granted, your relationship with your subscribers and the quality of your products or services and dozens of other factors still matter, but to drive revenue, focus on email list growth. To make money blogging, it’s absolutely essential.

Lesson #16: Start Selling from Day One

How long should you wait before you begin selling? 1,000 subscribers? 10,000 subscribers? More?

Nope. Start selling from day one. Here’s why:

One of the biggest factors affecting the speed of your growth is who you can hire to help you. Because you’re the bottleneck, remember? So you want to hire a virtual assistant and someone to handle all of the technical details as soon as you possibly can, but of course, that requires money. Hence the need to start selling immediately.

Now, a caveat: don’t turn your blog into a gigantic sales pitch. Nobody likes that. You should, however, be offering something your audience wants and needs. Don’t push them on it, but do make it available, and do remind them from time to time that they can purchase it.

Lesson #17: Your Product Ideas Suck

You probably have all kinds of ideas for things you can sell, right? E-books, courses, maybe an iPhone app? Or a service?

Well, here’s the bad news:

More than likely, your ideas for products suck. The good news is you’re not alone in this position. Everyone’s ideas for products suck, including mine. Here’s why:

We all tend to create products we can see people need, but they’re not aware of it yet. We think if we show them the magnitude of their problem we can convince them to buy our product or service to solve it.

If you’re Steve Jobs, you can do that, but I have more bad news for you: you’re not Steve Jobs. You’re a beginning marketer, and as a beginner, you should only be selling products that solve problems your customer already knows they have. If you have to convince them the problem exists, you’ve already lost the battle.

Lesson #18: Surveys Are Dangerous

So, how do you find what problems exist in the mind of your customer? Traditionally, the answer is a survey, but I’ll warn you: surveys are dangerous. Ask the wrong question, and you’ll get an extremely misleading answer. Use that answer to guide your venture, and you can waste years of your life, not to mention possibly going bankrupt.

If you’re a beginner, I recommend asking one and only one question: “what’s your biggest frustration with <topic> right now?” So, in my case, it would be “what’s your biggest frustration with blogging right now?” That’s it. Nothing more. Look for patterns in the answers you receive, and you’ll learn a ton about what products or services you need to create.

Lesson #19: Start with Services, Then Expand into Products

Once you find a common problem, start offering a service where you solve the problem for your audience. The reason is simple: you can start offering the service immediately. You don’t have to create a product first. You’ll also learn more about the problem as you attempt to solve it yourself.

When I started, for example, I worked as a blog traffic specialist. I was contracted with a few different advertising agencies, and every time they wanted to increase the traffic for a client’s blog, they called me. I didn’t just advise them. I did the work myself, redesigning the site, creating the content, everything.

It taught me a ton about what worked and what didn’t. It was also immediate revenue. The first month I offered my services, I made something like $5,000.

After working for more than a year as a traffic specialist, I felt I really understood the problem and how to solve it, so I created my first product: a course located atguestblogging.com. The first month, it generated something like $30,000 in sales, and now it brings in more than $250,000 per year.

It’s a wonderful product, but here’s the thing: I don’t think I could’ve created it if I hadn’t worked as a service provider first. I wouldn’t have had the knowledge or the money. Keep that in mind when you’re deciding what to offer first.

Lesson #20: Teach Others What You Learned

Now, we come to the reason for this post.

Why on earth would the CEO of the company (me) work for hours to write a post like this, sharing all our secrets? It’s closing in on 4,000 words, for God sakes!

Simple:

It’s my responsibility. If people are ever going to respect blogging as a legitimate business model, those of us who are successful have to speak up and share what we’ve learned. None of us works in a vacuum. The only way we can advance our field as a whole is to collectively share what we’ve learned.

And it is a field. There are thousands of people around the world making a living from blogging. The problem is, there’s not a repository, a central community where we can all talk and learn from each other. Over the next few months, that’s something we’re going to change.

In the meantime, could you do me a favor?

Share this post. Not just so it’ll get me traffic, but so other people can see that you really can earn a legitimate income from blogging. Maybe reading this will even help them do it.

After all, isn’t that what we’re here to do? Help people?

In the end, that’s what I love most about blogging: every article we publish, every course we create, every coaching call we do can change somebody’s life. Maybe not always in a big way, but we touch thousands upon thousands of people, and we make their lives just a little bit better. We inform them, we inspire them, we give them the roadmap for achieving their dreams.

And the best part? We get paid for it. It’s our job. I just wish more people knew it was a viable career. Let’s change that, shall we?

Guest Author:

Jon Morrow is the founder and CEO of Boost Blog Traffic, Inc with 10 years of successful marketing experience. 

Read More
Next PostNewer Posts Previous PostOlder Posts Home