Blog To Great

New Life For Your Blog From Old Posts !

BLOG TIPS - As your blog ages and you add more & more qualtiy posts / content you might find yourself losing track of past posts and the trail your blog has left behind .  Check our your Blog Archive, not just to remember the work you've done, but for opportunities to update past posts (with new posts) or to create new ideas.  Use you past posts for new content to continue to inject life in your blog.

I recently visited a blog that I came accross thru a Google search.  It turned out to be an old post from 2008.  As I read it I wasn't very impressed and could tell the info was dated, but I stayed on the blog and when I clicked to read more current posts on the topic, the difference was quite shocking. The newer posts looked considerably more professional,  contained better and current info and you tell that the blogger / writer had grown, yet she hadn't gone to the additional effort to update the blog's archive.  I wondered why, since there was a good chance that after reading the old post I might have just clicked off the blog thinking it was of low value, and not known of the improvements.

Here are a few tips and ideas to help you update your archive-

Google PageRank Updates Seem to Be More Frequent

    Blog Tips - It seems Google has been busy with a PageRank update this week.  I've had reports of bloggers seeing minor changes on some of their blogs.   Once again, there's little to comment on, and at Blog to Great we've decided not to post with a report everytime an update occurs.  But with this update, it seems the PageRank updates are coming more frequently.  The last PageRank update we noted was about six weeks ago and noticed that update from talk on blog forums and blog comments. 

Did you notice the update six weeks ago, or this weeks?  And, does it matter to you and your blog?

Reader and Subscriber Development for a Better Blog

     BLOG TIPS - When you want to grow your blog, no matter if it's is a personal, professional or company blog that you manage, and no matter what your blog's niche, the first thing that comes to your mind is likely to be about increasing traffic or adding subscribers.  As we know, getting more traffic or subscribers is always a good thing, such a blog can never have too many readers.  The more readers, the more possible revenue.  But, to  sustain your traffic you need to understand who the people are that come to your blog.

Time to consolidate your blog efforts into the key tasks that will bring returns.  Some key areas that bloggers need to fully understand involve knowledge of who readers are, how they've found your blog with the cool domain name and how often they're visiting & staying at your blog (how sticky is your blog?). These Metrics,such as time on site, bounce rate, and percentage of return visitors will help you tremendously.  To do all this, you'll need a good system of analytics and your own plan of engagement to maximize your blog's full potential. Lijit and Google Analytics SITE SEARCH are both good tools for internal search data analysis.  And to continue to engage your readers, make your posts interesting, ask questions, solicit commenting and use Twitter .  Make sure you respond to all comments and reply to each e-mail received. 

Thanks to Neil Patel (of QuickSprout.com), see his guest post at WashingtonPost.com.  Questions / comments, your advice?  Feel free to add below, and Blog to Great !

Google Pageranks Updated This Week

     Blog News - Google was expected to update page ranks later this month, January 2009, but the Mountain View, CA team moved it up.  Many Google Pageranks started changing this week, and by now you should already see some update values.  An easy page rank checker can be found at PR Checker.  Take a look to see how your blog did, and comment below on your changes (if any) .  Keep in mind that a page rank is only one of many ways to measure a blog and does not make a blog more valuable or not.  But many folks seem to live and die by page rank, so it's something you should be aware of.

To a great 2009 bloggers !!!!

BLOG BASICS - Know Your Blog's Traffic

   Blog Tips -  You hear a variety of terms in a discussion and calculation of blog traffic. You'll often see statics in terms of daily and monthly unique visitors; some will provides you with more; Pageviews, Hits, etc.   I'm sure you've heard of bloggers who say their blog has had XXX  hits a month. What does that really mean; how big is XXX hits?  Are they claiming they have XXX people visiting their blog in a month?  To help, below is a quick explanation of the common terms, for new bloggers and for anyone unsure of what is meant.

Hits

    Measuring blog traffic by hits also shows a higher number. A hit is as request and is the total number of files loaded when a single blog page is requested from the web server. How are hits calculated?  Think of it this way, a single web page with 20 images is loaded, that’s 20 hits for your blog!  The blog page has 10 photos, that’s another 10 hits.  When you add up the CSS files, Javascript files and all the external files, each time a web page is loaded, it can easily build up more than 50 hits. If you clear cache, reload the page, another 50+ hits again.   Therefore, hits are not used to to determine a blog’s traffic as the info is not really representative of actually activity.

Pageviews

     Pageview is the number of how many times a page is viewed.  When a visitor lands on your main page, that is one pageview.  When that visitor clicks to your About Us page, that’s another pageview. By dividing total pageviews with the number of total unique visitors, you can get a better idea how many pageviews each visitor has generated.  This number helps you determine how long readers are hanging around on your blog, and how "sticky" it is.

Impressions  

Impression is basically a marketing term, and used in increments of of 1000.  It shows you how many times a element (image, text, video) is on a web page. If an ad network pays you $3/CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions), it means you get paid $3 when the banner appears 1000 times to viewers on your blog page.

Visits / Unique Visitors

     Visits are the number of unique visitors to your blog/site.   It's the number of different people (different IPs) that visit your blog page in any given period.  The number of visits, or unique visitors is the essential number that you are concerned with.  That # reflects the true traffic of a blog or site. All your efforts to promote and market your blog are to increase this number.

How to be increase the traffic is an ongoing process, and with different techniques BtG will help you.

Tips to Make Readers Stay on Your Blog !

     BLOG TIPS- Since we have been discussing blog analytics recently and the new Yahoo Web Analytics program, another great blog stat that you should track is the bounce rate of your blog.  You should check the rate on your blog regularly to verify that your blog is "sticky" and that readers actually hang around for awhile and read several of your pages, ads and great posts.  But, what is a bounce rate?

Your bounce rate is basically the percentage of readers that come to a page on your blog and leave immediately after reading it.  The lower the bounce rate, the BETTER !  Your goal is to have an extremely low bounce rate which means that readers stop frequently at different points on your blog and are viewing more than one article or more than one page every time they visit. 

That's great to know, but how do you lower the bounce rate for your blog? My ideas-

• Link to your other pages and posts often (when appropriate)!  You'll notice that at the start of this post, there's a link on the "Yahoo Web Analytics" phrase to my prior post on Yahoo's unveiling of their new program.
• Note that the best spot to link is really towards the end of the post.  Ending with a relevant link at the bottom of your post, you're improving the chances that the reader will continue on.  Naturally, your posts have to be interesting and of value, so that the reader does get to the end! 
• You can also divide long posts with the "READ MORE Below..." function.  This will lower the bounce rate but is not really the purpose of decreasing the rate.  You don't just want a low %, you want readers to find more & more interesting material and content to view.
• Encourage your readers to communicate with you -- comments, questions, etc.  Start a dialog so they will return.
• Use terms and phrases in your posts to move the reader to action!  Your reader needs to be motivated to "click here", "read this", etc.
• Design your blog attractively in order to keep the reader engaged with different areas of the page. (We'll discuss more thoroughly in another post, see keep stopping by!)   

So, as always with blogging, work hard to keep your blog fresh, interesting, attractive and compelling.  If you give your readers information easily, they will reward you with future visits!

Bounce low, and Blog To Great !

Yahoo Unveils NEW Yahoo Web Analytics

                                       

     BLOG TIPS- This week, Yahoo announced the re-branding of its IndexTools as Yahoo WebAnalytics  (beta).  Currently only an enterprise product, the move brings it closer to being a consumer and small business tool, although it's not available to everyone yet.  Yahoo bought IndexTools in April of this year and quickly made it a free service.  It does promise to have a considerable advantage over Google Analytics, as data is updated within a few minutes of user activity, while at Google, stats usually take about 24 hours.   Both products feature colorful, easy-to-read charts and graphics for data reporting, deep tie-ins with each company's ad services.  Yahoo's will also include a single sign-on feature so you can access the rest of the Yahoo tools without having to re-enter your credentials . According to a post on Yahoo's Blog the updated version of the service is already out to advertisers and third-party application developers, with Yahoo Small Business users (and us bloggers) to follow. The post says:

Blog Metrics That Are Easy and Meaningful

  Blogging Tips-  Understanding the metrics of your blog is key to continued blog success (and growth).  It's all about measuring your blog's activity and there are a great many different variables for you to look at.  Let's today review how to find out what the top search engines are capturing about your page info. If you post to your blog regularly (every day is best), then you should be verifying that your new posts are beng indexed promptly. It's simple to check both Google and Yahoo for this.  And, if you find your pages are not being indexed properly, you can take action to correct.  To check how many pages are indexed in Google, do the following;

Blog Trackers to Improve Your Blog - Which One to Use?

   Blogging Tips-  A recent review of the top blog Trackers shows how bloggers can use these to great advantage.   To create a really successful blog, it's important that you understand where your blog traffic comes from and what your readers do when they visit your blog.  This is a great tip for your blog to help you understand more.  Fortunately for bloggers, there are a number of tools available to help you analyze the metrics of your blog.  On Wednesday, Google released an updated front page to their Google Blog Search. It's once again put blog tracking center-stage.  See CNET's full report and study on trackers, here.  Let us know which one (or two) you regular use and how.  Don't just track, Blog to Great !!!