Blog Feed on Forum Profile

A lot of you that regularly visit niche traffic sale are members of a bunch of internet marketing and other forums. And a lot of the time, people sign up to forums to take advantage of the signature link.

Again my regular readers know that this is not the best way to use forums to increase traffic. But I wanted to tell you an often overlooked and pretty effective method of getting links to your blog posts.

Before I go into it, getting links to your blog posts and signature links should not be your primary reason for joining forums. The primary reason for joining forums is to

• Build your reputation
• Learn from others in your niche
• Find out up to date information on your niche
• Exchange ideas

There are a lot of forums on virtually every niche online. And I am a member and regular participant in a bunch of forums

If you look in your profile page of whatever forums you are participating in, there often is a slot for you to insert your blog feed.

If you enter your blog feed here, a link to your latest post appears under your user name for every contribution you make on the forum

You must have seen them on the forums

On some forums these links have a do follow link to the particular post

So if you are a member of 20 forums and have your blog feed on those forums associated with your profile, that's a possible 20 instant backlinks, if you are active in those forums

You must remember to ping your posts.

Now I know some people are worried that if they post their blog feeds on the forum profile, competitors on the forums could steal their ideas.

But this is really not a big deal. The potential increase in traffic as a result of good SERPs position far out weighs any risk of your posts being copied.

Another bonus of this is some people actually click through on the latest blog link and visit your blog. If your content is useful, you may have a new follower.

So go to the forums you participate in and see if there is the facility to add your blog feed to your forum profile

Easy Directory Submissions For Backlinks

Was doing some analysis of the backlinks to one of my websites a few days ago and cam across a few interesting links
They were directory listings, do follow and some had PR as well.

Now if you are a regular reader of this blog you will know that using directories to build links is not something I focus on so much any more. There are more effective ways of getting do follow high PR backlinks

Anyway I scrambled around to find how I had submitted that particular site to the directories. I have only a few methods I use, so it was not too difficult to track down

Before I tell you what tool I used to submit these links, there is something you need to know.
Getting the maximum ROI of time invested is key on this niche affiliate marketing business. You really can not spend too much time on activities that may or may not yield results. For me, manual directory submissions is one of those activities.

By all means submit to DMOZ manually. But for other directories, a semi automated submitter is key, in my opinion.
Semi automated because it gives you the option of varying your anchor text and altering your description. That way you don't end up with a ton of backlinks all saying the same thing.

So back to my research.

I found that the links in question were links I had submitted with a web-based semi automated directory submitter called easy submits. I'll confess these were links I submitted while watching TV so not very effort intensive. And they were submitted months ago.

But hey, I have the do follow, some PR backlinks to show for the 'effort'

The site again is easysubmits.com

How To Validate Embedded You Tube Videos

For many of us, Youtube has been a gold mine for getting videos for our websites and blogs.

And Youtube has been very helpful by providing an embed code
All you have to do is grab the embed code of the relevant Youtube video and paste it in the relevant area of your sites or blogs html code and Hey presto, you have video on your site

Problem is it causes problems with your website's validation

What is website validation and why does this matter

Standardization

The code for websites, HTML or XHTML, must follow a certain standard which is set by W3 consortium. Your website code needs to be compliant with this standard.
You could argue that some browsers can correct for these errors but not all can. What you want is for your HTML code to be universally understood and interpretable

Search Engine Optimization

We all know that backlinks are a major component of search engine optimization. But on page factors play an important role. If the search engine spiders have difficulty interpreting part of your code, it could have major implications for how they handle the relevance of the related content

Page Loading Speed

Poor HTML coding could adversely affect the speed with which your website loads. And no-one hangs around waiting for a slow page to load. Also there are rumours that Google will soon update it's algorithm to include speed of loading as a factor. Now while this rumour is not verified, I think doing everything that you can to help your webpage or blog's performance in the search engines is not a bad idea.

So enough on validation and why you should validate your site. We will go into more details of this in another post

For now, back to the Youtube issue.

If you embed Youtube videos as is on your webpages, the code just does not validate

To check for the validity of your code use the W3 schools HTML validator
Just type in the URL of the page that contains a Youtube video and the result speaks volumes

But using Youtube videos is great. It has certainly helped increase the traffic to some of my websites

So how can you embed Youtube videos into your websites without corrupting your code

I use a free web based script and it works a treat
The script is at flash embed code validifier
Works for other embed sites as well

Till next time

Unique Method Of Getting Do Follow Backlinks To Your Niche Websites

So to continue with or backlinks theme I thought I would go over how to get do follow backlinks to your site

Now this method I cannot take credit for. But it certainly does work.

Before I go into the details of how you can find websites with do follow attribute on their outgoing links, lets take some time to review the more commonly used methods

Article Directories

Still a very good method of generating backlinks. Article marketing can be effort and time intensive but the links are under your control and the possibility for syndication is an added bonus.

By this I mean if other webmasters copy your article from the directory and post it on their web pages, they are obliged to include your link. Meaning more than one backlink from one article.

The added bonus, if your article gets syndicated, is you get IP diversity for the links i.e links from different websites on different servers per article. As long as your article is of such quality that people will want it on their sites.

I still think using ezinearticles to generate backlinks is a good strategy for generating backlinks I still recommend ezinearticles for this and you can read all about the nitty gritty of using this directory at ezinearticles and your niche website

Blog commenting

This one I am a little luke warm about. For a few reasons.

Your links are totally under the control of the blog's webmaster. He can decide to delete all comments or suddenly change from do follow to no follow attribute on his links or all other manner of behaviour that makes the links 'not so reliable'

Also there are not many high PR blogs out there that are willing to give out do follow links in their comments. Most of them have been sniffed out by spammers and have become no follow as a result of spamming.
So this means that a lot of the blogs you'll uncover will be of lower PR and although better than no links at all you'll need a ton of these links to make an impression on your own sites SERPs position.

Having said that, there are some really good tips on these posts how to find do follow backlinks and No and Do follow link finder

Forum participation

Some forums allow you to have a link in your signature and although the majority of the forums are no follow, there is still a healthy number of forums that have do follow attribute in their signature links. I am sure you have come across those forum posts that have a list of forums with do follow in their backlinks. And we all scurry to join and add our precious backlinks only to find one of the following

• You need 100 or 250 or some other number of posts before your signature can be displayed
  

• Or It's a paying forum...Ouch

• Or the forums are so overrun with spam that they either go to no follow or ban people at the drop of a hat.

There are still some forums out there that have been steady with the do follow attribute on outgoing links. Some useful affiliate marketing forums has more information on this

And we could go on and on

But I have recently been using a method that helps you

• Find sites with do follow outbound links

• Shows you how to find sites with IP diversity [very important]

• Teaches you how to create backlinks that actually do count

• Gives you a list of about 500 of these sites to get you going

You can learn more about this method at really serious backlinks

Does this method work. Well for the websites I have used it on, I have had an increase in my SERPs after just a couple of weeks.

Banish No Follow Links Find Do follow Backlinks

Specifically searching for sites that allow do follow links is something that I am little uneasy about talking about, certainly sharing tips about how to find do follow sites is something that I tend to do with a bit of concern.

Simply because of the share number of people who just spam these sites

But amongst us are ethical bloggers and webmasters and this post on finding do follow sites is for you

Please, please, please do not spam the sites you find using this technique

Make sure you add comments that are useful content and add to the conversation started in the blog or forum.

Before I tell you the method I am here to share today, a little explanation on why I search for the do follow attribute on links to my sites

Generally I tend to comment on blog posts that are relevant to me. I usually do not bother with if the blogs in question are do follow or no follow, call me stupid but I don't

The simple reason for this is most of the blogs and forums are low PR and there are better ways of getting high PR do follow links to your sites.

But I was curious to know which of my blog comments were generating the greatest amount of traffic to my sites. Hence my getting the software I will tell you about.

Funny enough the sites that generate the largest amount of direct traffic to my web pages are the no follow blogs. Go figure!
My explanation for this is people who visit these forums or blogs and bother to read the comments are mainly interested in the content rather than in dropping a spammy link.

Anyway so how can you generate do follow links to your website

This method requires you to use FireFox as your web browser. Click Firefox to download and install

FireFox as you all know is an open source web browser that is very versatile. The main advantage of FireFox is the plethora of plug ins available

One such plug in is the no do follow plug in.
Once you have installed FireFox, go to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5687 and download the plug in. it takes a few seconds to install.

So what does the no do follow plug in do

When you launch any page that has backlinks on it in FireFox, right click your mouse to get a drop down menu. Select no do follow and all the links on the page are highlighted. Do follow links in blue and no follow in pink

So before you post your comment you can quickly and easily find out if the website supports do follow links in it's comments...At the click of the mouse literally

This method can help you find blogs that have do follow in outgoing links but again, please use this ethically

Social Networking Does Work

So I am certain that you have seen several posts extolling the virtues of social networking. And you are probably thinking
'Oh No! Not another post on how to use social networking sites'

Well I am not going to do that, i.e. point out all those obvious and rehashed tips that every other blog master has published

Instead I want to share with you a pleasant and profitable experience I recently had

First you should know that I have blogs that are mainly business blogs for example this one... and then I have blogs that are purely for my entertainment

The entertainment blogs are in areas that I find interesting. Hobbies so to speak

Anyway on one of my hobby blogs I wrote about a popular TV show. It's a show I like and hey I had something to say!

It's funny when you are writing without monetization in mind, the content can turn out pretty good

Anyway a few days later I noticed I had about 700 hits and rising. Thought it was a glitch in my traffic analysis. Usually the blog only gets about 50 uniques a day if that

More traffic analysis later and the answer is revealed. A big personality on Facebook had put a link to my post on their account!!

One link and a few days later has resulted in a few thousand uniques to the blog

Who says social networking doesn't work

The irony is, I hadn't done any of the networking. Go figure

About The New FTC regulations And Affiliate Marketers

As niche marketers or affiliate marketers, we have all heard about the new FTC regulations and have seen all the doom and gloom emails about how they can affect our business

For those of you who are totally unaware, the Federal trade commission has revised it's guidelines regarding endorsements and testimonials.

So how does this affect us as affiliate marketers

• Disclosure: As an affiliate marketer, there must be a disclosure included on every page stating your relationship to the product and that you get a commission for sales secured
• Accuracy: You are responsible for checking out the product and making sure that as far as your level of expertise, it does what it claims to do
• False Testimonials: that's self explanatory really
• Corroboration: In promoting a product it is the usual outcome of using the product that you can comment on not unusual outcomes [All those make $10000 overnight training courses suddenly spring to mind] You may be required to provide proof of such claims.

So those are the main things I have picked up so far

The question is does this really affect you as a niche marketer or affiliate marketer.

Well it really does depend on how you have conducted your business so far.

If you have followed the principles in this blog, you have no reason to worry. We have already covered promoting only products that you truly believe in.

We have also talked in some posts about how buying and using the product is the best way to get a feel of whether the product works and also allows you to promote the product with enthusiasm.

We have mentioned that having a disclaimer or disclosure on your site is crucial. Albeit it was with regards to AdSense but seems all forms of advertising apply

So perhaps there is not much cause for alarm for the ethical marketer

I'd advice though that you all take a look at the new guidelines and make sure that you've crossed all your T's and dotted all your I's

Adsense Can Be So Unpredictable

Regarding adsense and niche websites, the majority of us niche marketers know the basics

You add content that is keyword rich and niche focused.

Get the keywords on your pages right, put them in those oh-so crucial spots in your content and you'll get ads relevant to your content

But sometimes this can be so unpredictable.

While browsing today I came across a blog on niche marketing. The content was not great but it was okay as niche marketing blogs go. You could tell it was a newbie blog with rehashed content but we won't hold this against him or her

Anyway the website name was business something or the other. But all the google ads displayed were on the keyword 'bus'
Ouch!

Why am I telling you this? Because a closer look at the pages shows where he went wrong

Adsense really can be unpredictable when you blindly follow what people tell you without testing things out for yourself.

Keyword stuffing and trying to tell the code what ads to display on your pages is all well and good [actually it's not and doesn't work]. But if you right naturally on the topic you wish to communicate to your readers, the relevant keywords will appear naturally in your content and the adsense code will have no difficulty displaying ads that are relevant to your content

And having said that I'll probably get adsense ads on this post that are totally out of sync with the words on this page

Never mind, the lesson is still valid :)

Email Headlines That Really Bug Me

So instead of getting really irritated when I get a bunch of emails with these headlines, I thought I'd put it out there and see what you guys think

So here are some of the email headlines that really get my goat

Thank you, here's your download

Not a problem if I had signed up for the download. I suppose the sender hopes that we are not keeping track of what we sign up for. Usually contains a product that you do have to sign up for

You've made a commission

Again, not a problem if it really is about a commission you have made. But it usually is not. You open the email and it reads 'Imagine if you could get hundreds of emails like this...Blah, blah' I have noticed that these ones tend to come from safe list users. That's me done with safe lists

{first name} ...

This email probably has some useful information in it. But it looks sloppy and unprofessional. You'd think that anyone taking their business serious would take the time to format their emails properly

This is the most important email I've ever sent

It's usually full of c..p and a major promo. This one usually triggers the unsubscribe button for me

I need your shipping address...

Why? I didn't subscribe to anything from you mate!!


He stuck his hand in gasoline....

Honestly I have never bothered opening emails with this headline although for a while there, it seemed a very frequently used headline. Anyone reading this post who has actually read the emails should please enlighten us with it's content

Can I help you get leads to your business

Again nothing wrong with this apart from the fact that you KNOW you never subscribed for his emails in the first place. Begs the question. 'Where is he getting the leads from?

Till next time

Affiliate Marketing Money for Nothing

When I first went into affiliate marketing, I had difficulty getting my head round the concept of not having any products in my warehouse and still making money. Money for nothing?

Because that's what affiliate marketing is. You tell people about a product you like. They go and buy that product, mention to the vendors that you suggested it and presto! the merchants pay you a commission. And it's sometimes up to half the value of the product. Shock horror

Pretty freaky but it made sense

So I looked around for affiliate programs for a couple of things I really like. Things I rave to my friends about.

One was my laptop. I loved my laptop. I could go on for hours talking about the reasons why this one laptop is the best on the market.

Anyway after a few minutes searching for an affiliate program for my particular brand and then a further few hours of website building and.... I was an affiliate marketer for my particular brand of laptop. Still promoting it.

The upside is I can go on and on to my hearts content about the merits of this product. And the people reading my content are actually interested in what I am saying. No more eyes glazing over from my audience

And you get a pay check!!

So perhaps affiliate marketing is not exactly money for nothing. But it certainly is a great way of earning a living

High Ticket Affiliate Products Versus Inexpensive Products

High ticket affiliate products were a no-go area for me when I was a newbie affiliate marketer. I, like a lot of other affiliate marketing beginners, thought they would just be too difficult to promote and therefore stayed with the low cost products.

It's easier to get someone to spend $7 than $1500 right?

Wrong or so I found out.

High ticket vs Low ticket affiliate product refunds

Imagine you were out shopping and came across a low cost item which you are not sure if you want or not. To make things easier on yourself you buy it. After all it's only $7 and there is not much point in standing there trying to decide. You get home and decide you do not really want this product after all. Most people would reach for the receipt and packaging and make a mental note to take it with them next time they go to that store.

Now imagine that product is an info product that you bought on line with a 30 or 60 day guarantee. [Sounds familiar?]

How easy would it be to click the button to get your refund?

Take the same person who is about to buy a $1500 product. Most of us do not shell out that kind of money without due thought, a lot more thought, discussions and thought again. This means that by the time the high ticket item is purchased, the buyer is absolutely certain that he wants it. Less risk of refunds

High ticket vs low tag affiliate product clientele

The market for high ticket affiliate products is totally different from the customers who will buy the low price stuff.

You have to find each market and access it over and over again.

But the amount of work required for either market really does not vary based on the tag on the product you are promoting.

It's back to basics again here. It takes targeted traffic and a good presell, whatever the price tag of the product you are promoting as an affiliate

High price tag versus inexpensive affiliate products commissions

Generally but not always, high ticket affiliate products give a 15 to 30% commission to their affiliates. And the low priced items especially digital products could offer a commission of 50 to 75%

Please remember I said not always, there definitely are exceptions to this

And affiliates could be put off by the low percent commission payout of high ticket products. But take this real life example

Product ~ $2400 Commission ~ £350
Product ~$60 Commission ~ $45

Which sale do you think made my day?

I am not saying go after high price affiliate products exclusively. That would be bad advice.

But I am saying that affiliate marketers, especially newbie affiliate marketers should not be afraid to include high price tag affiliate products in their promotions.

As I got a little more experience in affiliate marketing, I decided to mix things up a little. So I promote some high price tag items and also some of the lower priced products.

And for me this has worked out well

Keyword Research Over-rated And Over-loved

Every single affiliate marketing guru will tell you keyword research is crucial...And it is but is keyword research over-rated and over-loved?

Keyword research is supposed to help you discover those keywords in your niche that have a lot of demand and a under supplied to. You optimize posts for those keywords and monetize your pages and 'hey presto' you are laughing all the way to the bank.

The theory is sound and I have done my fair share of keyword research. Still do.

But there are a few glitches in this theory

Keyword research tools. Accuracy
The tools currently available give you an estimate of the keyword searches done. I personally use google keyword suggestion tool. Not for accuracy but more for trends. However I am still searching for that keyword tool that gives you the actual numbers of searches done for any term or phrase

How many keywords can you really research
For most niches there are different kinds of keywords. And in each subgroup are a lot of individual keyword phrases that can be monetized. In the really lucrative niches, these keywords can be endless in number. Just try doing keyword research for 'laptops'. You could be drilling down for days. So from the point of view of numbers and using your limited resource, time; judiciously exhaustive keyword research may not be the best way forwards. I am not saying don't do keyword research! Quite the opposite I am saying do effective keyword research

Time investment
Let's face it. Most of us affiliate marketers work alone. So you are probably invested in generating content, getting back links, participating in forums, social networking and all the other things it takes to run a business as an affiliate marketer. And there are only 24 hours in a day. So where on earth are you going to find the time to research the 201 keywords relevant to your niche. It's just ludicrous.

Unpredictable ranking
Finally let's imagine you did go out and do all that extensive and in depth niche research. And found all those amazing keywords that are going to make you a millionaire overnight. The next task is build your content rich web pages and try to get them to rank in the search engines, especially the big G for the keyword term. Problem is with all the other things you are doing.. oh and the keyword research you are performing for your next project, you just cannot make enough time to dedicate to Search engine optimization so that you page appears in the number one position.Certainly not for the 201 or whatever number of keywords it is you discovered

So what am I saying?

Is keyword research a bad thing?

No!!

But there is a better way of going about it than the general ebooks tell us

In a future post discover better keyword research methods

About the make money online niche

A lot of newbies find out about affiliate marketing and run out and build their own affiliate marketing site. And the most popular niche among newbies is... make money online

And you can understand the excitement they feel on finding this wonderful new business and the challenge of affiliate marketing. Heaven knows I was really excited when I got into affiliate marketing.

And the make money online niche is profitable and exciting and has a lot going for it. It's one of my niches

But for a newbie, a non marketing niche should be a serious consideration. And there are lots of untapped potentially profitable niches out there.

The reason for encouraging newbies to go into niches other than the affiliate marketing niche or make money online niche is simple

There are people who have been marketing online for many years and whose level of expertise is way beyond that of newbie. And a lot of them are into the affiliate marketing or make money online niche.

As a newbie, you really need to learn the basics and learn them well if you have any hope of competing with these guys.

The time investment and skill required is a huge obstacle for the newbie to overcome before they can expect to make any money in the make money online niche

But if you are into another not so competitive niche, chances of making some money are higher. It is earnings that keep you motivated.

Once you are making a significant amount of money in other niches, then you are in a position of authority i.e. you know what works and have made it work.
It is then that you should start your own 'make money online' website or blog.

Had to write this post because a lot of comments in the forums are from disappointed newbies in affiliate marketing. You click on their signature link and it takes you to a website or blog in the make money online niche.

No wonder they think affiliate marketing does not work

Page rank versus SERPs position

So which is more important to a niche marketing webmaster. Page rank or search engine results page position

Every so often in the forums people post about losing page rank, or how to get a higher PR or why their PR is still zero or 1

And my standard answer is 'How is the site doing in the SERPs?'

You see page rank is important. After all it is the measure of how important or relevant your website is. But PR does not automatically mean traffic. And for those of us into affiliate marketing via niche sites, it's traffic that is crucial to our business.

By all means, if you are planning to sell a website, then the PR is crucial. And flipping websites is a thriving business online.

Or if you want to sell links from your webpages, then again the PR is vitally important. Selling a link from a PR 7 page will get you more than from a PR 3 page in the same niche

But for those of us who are niche marketers, it's search engine resuts page [SERPS] position that really matters.

When someone searches for a certain phrase in Google or Yahoo or Bing, they tend to view the first few websites in the results returned. It is here that you want your website to be listed. Your position in the SERPs. That's what you need to focus on.

You want to get your webpages to appear in position 1, 2 or 3 of the SERPs for a bunch of keywords relevant to your content. It takes on page SEO. It takes getting relevant content. It takes having the lots of unique content. But when you get there, then the traffic does come flooding in.

My Dwindling Obsession with Do follow backlinks

Any webmaster wanting traffic is involved in getting do follow backlinks to their sites. At least they should be.

And do follow backlinks are crucial if you want to rank well in the search engine results pages for your niche terms

So we go commenting on other people's blogs and seeking out forums to participate in especially targeting those with do follow attribute

But something has been niggling at the back of my mind about this

I tend to comment on blogs that have posts that I am interested in. And posts to which I have something useful to add. No follow or not. So over time I have accumulated a bunch of backlinks to my different sites.

Now the niggling thought is this.

Apart from search engine traffic, the greatest source of traffic to my sites have been from links on no follow sites or blogs.

I know which sites do follow using this software

I think the message is get your required quota of do follow backlinks. But participating in sites with no follow attribute also has it's rewards

In Niche Marketing Quantity Matters Also

Everyone is banging on about the quality of blog posts.

And I'll confess, I have done my fair bit of this also.

There really is no doubt that the quality of your website content, be it blog post or website content is crucial.

That really goes without saying.

But there is quantity as well and a lot of people are leaving this one out

Quantity matters
Quantity matters to your search engine optimization
Quantity matters to retaining return visitors
Quantity matters to the reach of your website
Quantity matters to the amount of revenue you can make from your site

I'll give you an example.
If you think about it, the blogs that tend to do extremely well in the search engines post several times a day. Some of the posts are rather dull. But hey! it's useful content to someone.

Again think about this.
How often do you go back to a blog that hasn't had a new blog post in a couple of weeks? For me the answer is 'Not very often!'
Life is too short and a lot of us are impatient to get our next tip or bit of news.
So we tend to gravitate towards sites or blogs that have something new every time we visit

And another thought.

More posts = More keywords

The more posts or content you have, the more keywords and keyword phrases you can compete for in the search engines.
Lets take the extreme example of wikipedia. There is a wiki page for virtually every search term worth ranking for.
I am not saying make your blog or website the new wikipedia.
But I am saying with frequently updated content and frequent posting, you can cover a lot of search terms related to your niche

Now do not misunderstand the thrust of this post.

Quality does matter and the aim should be to write posts that have genuine, valuable information.

But quantity is something that can help get a lot of momentum for your website or blog pretty quickly

My Big Adsense Awakening

Adsense and making a significant income online are a pipe dream. At least that's what I thought when I first started on this internet marketing or niche marketing business path

Like a lot of my niche marketing colleagues, it was a good adsense day when I made $2 in that day

'WOW'
Not really the fast track to financial freedom :(

And like a lot of people out there still seem to believe, if what we read in the forums is anywhere near the truth, I thought the people who make a significant income with adsense must belong to some secret club where they share the real secrets about making money with adsense

And you may snigger but the concept of adsense secrets has been used as a marketing gimmick [successful] by many a marketer

I knew I didn't have a chance of getting into any inner circle of adsense insiders, if they did exist

So I focussed on what I know and urge you if you are reading this to do the same

I focussed on content and traffic. I really knuckled down and worked hard on my sites.

Be it search engine optimization, social networking, forum participation... I was there.

I worked hard.... very hard

And you know I slowly noticed an increase in my adsense revenue.

At first it was sporadic good days, and then things evolved into sporadic bad days. I hope you can tell the difference

And so I had my huge adsense awakening. The information you need to make a success of this is all there. The tools you need to make adsense work for you, most of you probably already have

All you need to do is focus on your content, learn how to generate traffic for the long term. Work hard and adsense will pay you

What To Do With Long Blog Posts

So what does one do when the idea you are trying to get across just will not fit into 450 words.

There are a few options

Break it up

You can break up your posts into a series. You'll notice on this blog there are a few posts that are actually one topic broken into a few posts. If you do this you have two options in formatting a title for each post

Numerical. This is when all the posts in the series have the same title but are numbered i.e. part 1, part 2, etc. I have done this on niche traffic sale [this blog] and some of my other blogs. But there is a better way.

Unique titles. This method is excellent for optimizing for a bunch of long tail keywords. Each blog post in the series should have a title that is unique to it and competes for a different long tail keyword phrase from other posts in the series. Because you are going after long tail keyword phrases, there is less competition and the chances of each post doing well and therefore getting search engine traffic, is much higher

Page Layout
If you really must include all that content in one post then you should consider laying out the post so it is easy to read. You want you readers to be able to scan your article easily, get the major points you are trying to make, skip from one concept to another without working too hard

To achieve this, you could use white space, bullets and subheadings.

Subheadings are particularly important again because of the all important SEO. Subheadings have emphasis on them. They are areas where the search engine spiders expect your important themes to be. So include your keywords in your subheadings if this does not ruin the reading experience of your blog's visitors

Ideal Length Of A Blog Post

So what is the ideal length of a blog post?
I see this question asked time and again in the forums.

The simple answer is ideally 250 to 450 words.

...Because...

Readership

Today's Internet user has so many options that he or she is impatient to get on to the next thing. The next website, or blog. Check email. Hang out on Facebook. Or is it twitter? So when they land on your blog and there is a lengthy post on some topic or the other, they move on.

Focus

There really is nothing more irritating than starting to read a blog post which is supposed to be about a certain topic and then find the post goes around the houses instead of just getting to the point. Or worse still, goes off topic completely.

Knowing that you have only 250 to 450 words in which to get your point across helps you focus your content. package your points in a clear succinct and effective form. This gets rid of all the rambling and makes each and every sentence valuable to your reader. Meaning... You get there attention

Search engine optimization

Now this one is debatable but a lot of SEO 'experts' advice 300 to 450 words is ideal for SEO. Certainly we know that low content is not ideal for SEO. It makes sense that with a few words on a page there will be issues like word count to code ratio. And also how often can you include your keywords in a 50 word post?

But sometimes you really cannot cover a topic in a blog post that is 450 words long. Especially if you want to write a pillar article that really exhaustively goes over all aspects of a topic.

So what do you do then?

We'll cover this in a future post. :)

How To Post Useful Blog Comments And Get Them Accepted

Posting comments on blogs can help generate traffic to your website or blog directly or indirectly if done properly.

By direct traffic I mean a reader of your comment clicks on your link and goes to your website or blog

By indirect traffic we are talking about the SEO benefit of the backlinks to your site or blog in your blog comment if the link is 'do follow'.

We all know this. It's blog commenting 101

But to have any effect, you need for the owner of the blog which you are commenting on to accept and publish your comment.

Gone are the days when comments were posted automatically.

Now there are antispam plug ins, e.g. askimet, and heavy comment moderation going on so you have to be savvy about this

So, to maximize your comments chances of being posted' keep the following in mind each time you post a blog comment

Relevance

Your comment must be relevant to the content of the post your are commenting on. It should directly address something in the post that the author has opened the door to.

Useful

Some bloggers like their egos massaged a little and those bloggers will allow a lot of 'great post on commenting' type comments. But these bloggers are few and far between.

The majority of us want comments that add to the content of our post. It could be an extra tip, a genuine question or even disagreement with the post content.

In allowing our visitors to make comments on our blogs, our main aim is to generate more content on our pages. Relevant useful content.

Links

Most comments boxes allow you to enter a user name, email address and URL.

The URL is automatically linked to the user name if the comment is accepted.

A lot of bloggers get irritated when in the body of the comment another link is dropped. Some will automatically reject your comment just on that bases.

I am not saying don't do it. But if you are thinking about dropping another link in your comment's content, look at the other comments already published on the blog to see if any contains additional links

User name

Because of the automatic association of username and URL, a lot of us like to use our keywords
as our user name.

Some blogs actually encourage this and usually have a little icon saying keyword luv.

However some blogs use plug ins to filter out 'scam' comments. And some of these plugins will reject any user names that contain certain keywords. So, again, look at the previous comments accepted in the blog to see if this may apply

Read the post

In our rush to get as many backlinks as possible, we sometimes do not read the blog post before commenting.

I recently put a post on this blog on generating sitemaps. The post went through everything from generating the sitemap to submitting it to Google's webmaster tools.

Someone tried to post a comment asking how they could generate a site map and submit it to Google. Oh and he or she had his URL included twice in his comment. Hey?

Needless to say that comment was rejected.

When posting, show evidence in your comment that you have actually taken the time to read the article you are commenting on