Earn-by-blog

It’s been all over the SEO-student rumor mill for weeks now, and has finally made it into my Inbox - in droves.

The new get-traffic-quick scheme for search engine results has arrived - flooding ping notification sites with update announcements, even though your blog hasn’t been updated.

The question is does this- or some variation of it work? If not, where did this idea come from?

Okay, bad news first.

Pinging sites like Yahoo and Syndic8 every half-hour for several days or weeks, to notify of updates when they haven’t been made, does nothing but clog up the system.

It’s called spam-pinging and it has been around since 2002.

If you haven’t updated your blog, or you’re pinging updates of a site that isn’t even a blog (or RSS feed, where applicable), in the long run it’s just going to make it harder to get listed at these sites.

In the short run, you could get yourself banned from sites like Yahoo, though it isn’t officially their policy to drop sites for spam-pinging.

Yet.

True, not all sites that have recently updated lists you can ping to be on are set up to block pings of sites that aren’t updated. But they’ve found ways to block certain sites and users before - it’s only a matter of time.

So even in the unlikely event that you could find some way to make this work temporarily, you’d just be setting yourself up to be dropped, in as little as a day in some cases.

So if this method doesn’t work, why are there tools available to help you flood these directories?

Well, let’s look at the situation logically.

Until the middle of 2004, certain adult web properties were able to create several bogus blog sites - in particular, blogspot.com. They’d found that the links leading back to them from those sites helped their page rank in Google, as well as their search results placement.

Although Google got wise to them and closed this loophole by fall of this past year, several legitimate blog sites have found that they continue to enjoy high rankings for some keywords that are easier to get.

Some people erroneously assume that it’s because their updates appear on Weblogs.com and/or in Blogger’s Most Recently Updated pages several times a day.

Having noticed that occasionally, they would get spidered around the same time they posted, they realized that there was a correlation between pinging and better search engine listings.

And they’re not completely wrong - there is a parallel. But a parallel is not a cause. It’s just one facet of the relationship between blogs and getting better results in Yahoo, Google and MSN.

Their frequency of updates had something to do with their rankings, yes. But it is not what guarantees they get spidered - and if the blog isn’t set up to take advantage of the visit from the search engine spiders, they don’t get listed.

To begin to have an understanding of how to get similar results for your site, you have to look at the bigger picture. Spam-pinging isn’t going to do it, and as I’ve said in other articles, there are other ethical, faster, simpler ways to do this.

So what is this bigger picture?

First of all, blogs have a natural tendency to rank higher in search engines because they

Have well-structured site architecture Make use of anchor text linking Are well linked, Are frequently updated, and, Are focused tightly around a narrow theme, among other things.

Couple this with the ease of being able to get one-way links from several sites favored by the search engines, and you have two-thirds of the formula for a well-ranked blog.

However, just because these sites appear on publicly displayed ping notification lists and other sites that keep abreast of blog updates, this doesn’t mean that you can get away with pinging them without updating your site.

It also doesn’t mean that sites that have authentically updated and sent pings will appear in Google, Yahoo or MSN simply from being frequently updated.

The good news is, you don’t need to deluge the ping sites to get noticed. Doing so is often a waste of time, and may be a harmful one.

Your best bet for now is to continue to achieve your natural search engine position through blogging, basic search engine optimization, and a common sense approach to frequent updates.

And yes, by the way, there IS an ethical way to get into search engines and achieve high rankings with a blog, but it’s not a matter of volume.

It’s more a matter of timing, supply and demand. But explaining that process takes a level of detail and an amount of space not available here.

It’s inevitable. Everyone hits the wall. Whether you’ve been blogging ten weeks, ten minutes, or ten months, eventually you’ll find yourself with absolutely nothing to say.

Or so you think.

So what in the world do you do when you’re stumped?

1- Talk about what you’ve already talked about

Pick a topic you’ve gone over before and give it some spin.

Try a new angle, like playing devil’s advocate. For example, if you are a search engine journalist, and last week your position was that most mainstream sites need Google traffic to survive, try proving your point from the “con” perspective, instead of the “pro” position.

There are dozens of ways to write about the same thing. By putting your point another way, you might give someone in your audience what a client of mine referred to as an “Ah-ha!” moment. That’s when they realize the true value of the items for sale at your site to them and their business.

2- Talk about what someone else is talking about

If you want to have a popular blog, find other bloggers in similar areas, and talk about what they said in their posts. Friendly debate can often spark the soap-opera like drama that will have both your audiences visiting both blogs to see what “the other fella” had to say.

As an added bonus, if both of you are using Trackback in your blogs, you’ve got yourself a mini-link party that other people who are speaking on similar topics will want to join..

3- Have yourself a good rant

The intimate nature and voice of blogs lends itself well to the opinionated, angry ramble. But as a professional, don’t let yourself get too unfocused, and remember to back up your opinion with facts.

4- Feature someone, something or somewhere

I like to call mine “of the Day”.

As I zip around the Net conducting my business and research, if my attention is called to a resource or tool that my audience might find useful, I hit my blog bookmarklet and save that bad boy for later.

Then when I get too busy for a full blown tip, I’ll crown the resource, feed, tool, download or freebie the featured “Deal of the Day”, changing the word deal to something else more appropriate as needed.

After a while, my audience started to look for it as a feature, as opposed to being upset at the interruption in my mad, mad rambles.

5- Let someone else talk for a change

Invite a guest blogger, or post an article that offers free reprint rights, the same way you would in a newsletter. Of course you want to leave the resource box intact, or let the guest promote their site, which brings me to the most common complaint about this tactic.

“But I don’t want to send people away from my site.”

Guess what? You’ll never believe what I found out. Ready?

In a recent startling discovery, I’ve found that 100% of my visitors eventually turn off their computers or take otherwise drastic measures that cause them to leave my site. Apparently this is beyond prevention, though you can stall them for hours sometimes with good content.

Of course you don’t want to send them on their way prematurely, but if you’re a good blogger, and have done what you can to make sure they sign up to your blog email updates or site feed, they’ll be back. Just be sure that you’re giving them a good enough reason.

In the meantime, since they’re going to leave anyway, it might as well be somewhere that gives you some direct or in-direct benefit.

So there you have enough material for five more days.

Happy Blogging!

The new hot commodity is a blog for your small business so you’ve decided you must have one.everyone who hears about blogging decidesto use Blogging for their Business,

Before you begin think about it long term. Where do you think the blog is headed? What is the objective? Do you want it to be found by the search engines for specific terms? How often will you post? Who will the audience be? What will it look like a year from now? Five years from now?

If you think you may have this blog for a long time, consider hosting it with your own domain name. Blogger provides you with a free domain name (name.blogspot.com), or the option of ftp to your own domain.

If, at some point in time in the future you want to move the blog and you’ve been using the blogspot name, you won’t be able to take it with you. This means that all of the people who have your blog in their reader will “lose” you. It also means that you’ll have to start from ground zero with the search engines.

Do some digging before you jump. A couple of good networks where you can get some education are:

- Blogging for Business
Make sure you sign up for the “Blogging for Marketers” email course. Priya has loaded the course with good blog information (and it costs you nothing).

- Blogger Forum
The Blogger Forum is very welcoming to newbies. Browse around and just by looking at previous posts, you can learn a ton. they also have a section on blog platforms which talks about the different options available.

Once you’re ready to go, what are you going to write about? Make sure you’ve brainstormed ideas so you don’t run into the inevitable writer’s block. You can always start with what you’ve written before.

Do you have a newsletter? Look through your archive and “refresh” some of those old topics as a blog posting. How about your website?

Do you have content you can turn into a blog topic? Do you participate in online forums or discussion lists? Find some advice you gave to someone there and turn it into a blog post.

This should get you started. Remember that small business blogging is a long term activity. Be ready.