Take More Risks

In February Shoemoney reported on how a few simple changes suggested by Aaron Wall increased his Google traffic tenfold. As much as I enjoyed both Aaron and Shoemoney’s posts on escaping the supplemental index I never thought about implementing any of the advice myself. That was until today! As you can see from the graph below Google searches represent only 16.35% of my overall traffic, with most of my other blogs this figure is well over 60%.

Preparing for action

To take a quote from “Get Your Blog Out Of Google’s Supplemental Result Hell”

Between slightly lower internal PageRank scores (minor issue) and increasingly aggressive duplicate content filters (major issue) and significant duplication from page to page on your site (major issue) much of your site is in Google’s supplemental index.

From this, it seems as though duplicate content is the main contributing factor in going supplemental. So how does this affect Take More Risks? Have a look at the screenshot below taken from Google’s Cache.

In single posts between 200-300 words content is outweighed by all of the crap that appears on the sidebars. It completely dilutes the content sidewide. To quote Seo Book again….

Reduce Sitewide Repetitive Features:

You need to make your page titles and meta descriptions unique on each page.You may also want to resort your code order to put unique content higher in the page content and have duplicated and sitewide template related issues occur later on.

Taking Action

In no particular order here is a list of the amendments I made to the template to resolve the issue.

• Removed the “Hello. I’m Matt, I’m 23 and I enjoy web design, alcohol and buffets.” snippet from the template. This belongs in an “About Me” page.
• Increased the amount of “Related Posts” displayed from 3 to 10. You can set this value in “Options > Related Posts Options” in Wordpress.
• Wrapped each of the duplicate content blocks in a condition which stops the components from appearing on single posts. It’s as simple as checking if is_single() is false. You can exclude them from categories and archives by evaluating is_archive()
• In the archive template each post was originally printed in full with the_content, now it uses the_excerpt(). Ideally I should be printing a unique descrption tag here…

What else needs to be done

• Create unique description tags for each post by adding a new custom description field.
• Convert the Take More Risks text “logo” into a graphic adding relevant keywords to the alt tag (most people searching for Take More Risks won’t be interested in my blog).
• And most importantly……..continue to increase the quality of my posts. Quantity isn’t such an issue if my content attracts citations from authority sites.

Robots.txt and Duplication

Steven Bradley has outlined another technique to escape duplication problems in his post “Problems With Wordpress Posts Going Supplemental”. It involves placing the following code into your robots.txt

User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /*/feed/$
Disallow: /*/feed/rss/$
Disallow: /*/trackback/$

Let me explain, by default, Google indexes both your feed and HTML code. In many cases these files will contain the same information, causing the duplicate content alarm to sound in Googleplex. The code within robots.txt forbids Googlebot from indexing your feed data, reducing the risk of duplicaton occuring.

Results, results, results

Hopefully this will go some way to increasing from Google. I’ll write up a proper update on the results in a month’s time. In the meantime I’ll be investigating other optimization techniques. It would be good to hear about your own experiences with SEO and the Supplemental Index!

Hey everyone,

Just writing to let you all know that I’m taking a bit of time away from the computer tonight to rest my head a little. I had a few cool posts in the pipeline but I guess they’ll have to wait until tomorrow!

I’m gonna read a book and then watch ‘Me, Myself & Irene’ which I haven”t seen before. Here’s hoping that I come back tomorrow feeling more refreshed.

Oh, today was pretty exciting – my last post almost made it to the front page of Digg before it was buried. It beat my previous record of 16 diggs with 41 altogether so far. Thanks to everyone who voted! Also congratulations to Nate for making it to the front page with his article on Matt Mullenweg.

Over and out,

Matt

Sorry for the late update, I was helping my dad install Windows Vista there (which I’m quite impressed with actually!).

Anyway let’s get down to business, yesterday John Chow posted a comphrensive review of Take More Risks which raised some key points that I’ll delve further into later. Now, onto the gravy…

Many of you were interested to know what effect the review would have upon traffic and subscribers. Let’s start with the former.

Traffic

Last week my blog received on average 50 visits a day. Yesterday it received a (comparitively) whopping 406 uniques! Today a further 626 visits have been recorded, totalling 1000 direct referrals from John’s blog in a 26 hour period.

Now 1000 visits may not seem overly impressive, but the level of visitor participation has been phenomenonal. You’ve all submitted 50 comments within 26 hours. Wahey!

Subscribers

Before the “John Chow Effect”the blog had 2 subscribers, that figure has since quadrupled to 8. I’m about to hit the big time here folks!

Conclusions

Whilst it was cool to receive the influx of traffic and the additional subscribers, both paled in comparison to the great advice given by John and his visitors.

I’ll share just a few of the wise words posted over on the review page. You should read it if you haven’t already, it’s quite inspiring!

Second, Matt could document how his blog goes from his current state, to a blog that has direction. In fact, that could be the theme of his blog.

Wouldn’t that be a good idea? Throw up a random blog, pay for ads, and have people come back to your site to read on what you did to use the exposure for gaining MORE exposure by Mr Stockshaker

Mr Stockshaker has hit the nail in the head in a big way. Exposing the path of transformation from failure to success is a fantastic idea! It’s an avenue I’m going to explore in the next month or two. It will give the blog some desperately needed coherency. I could even change my blog’s branding to reflect this.

“You say you are going to be a millionaire soon. The “soon” part I don’t like. To me, soon is the same as someday. I recommend you put a date on when you will achieve millionaire status. Saying soon just makes it a dream. Putting a date on it makes it a goal. I challenge you to change your “I’m going to be a millionaire soon” to “I’m going to be a millionaire on [enter date]” and put that on your blog. It will be a daily reminder on how little time you have left and help drive you forward” by John

I knew in the back of my mind that the millionaire comment wasn’t for real. John’s right in that I’ll never make it if I keep envisaging success in the future. I should be focusing on each individual step on the road to success, rather than staring blindly at an illusion. The problem is I don’t have a road at the minute! I’m finding it really difficult creating a coherent plan. Where should it end? How will I know it’s the end?

Here are the steps I have so far.

• I want to move to the mainland by June 2008. I would like to buy a house in the region of $400,000, which would require me to be making at least $80,000 a year for it to be affordable.
• By July 2007 I want to be earning $400 a week, which is my current full-time salary.

Hmm…I’ve just thought of something and I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before. I should publish part of my plan on a static page on the blog instead of making scattered posts everytime I want to add something to it! It would erradicate the need for at least 2 of the overlapping post categories as well. Bingo!

And finally

The big question! Would I recommend John’s service? Yes definitely. I’ll keep this as short as possible by summarising the key points.

• John offers open constructive criticism on your website. The commentators take it to another level by questioning parts of John’s argument, pitching in their own opinions.
• The review has provided a continuing swarm of targeted traffic.
• Many of the visitors have expressed interest in becoming regular readers over here. Fantastic!
• John kept my review at the top of his blog for over 12 hours – which I thought was really cool.
• I now realise that I need a little more discipline in order to achieve success. Repeat after me! Focus is key. Focus is key.

If you want to kickstart your blog, I honestly can’t see a better way to invest $125. Be quick though, the half price offer ends in March!

1. I think we can all agree that the 50 sites in 50 days campaign was an absolute disaster. Most of the sites created during that period are lying completely stagnant and it’s proving hard to sell them on for anything over $50. My advice now would be to concentrate on developing one or two sites that capture your interest and increase your revenue that way. If you’re just starting out and you don’t have any websites in your network, buy an established one off Digitalpoint.
2. At times I’ve been afraid to try new formats out like forums or wikis. Back in September I was absolute bored with webmastering because I thought it only entailed static websites and blogs. If you feel uninspired visit similar sites within your niche and gather new ideas from what they’re doing.
3. I regret not seeing all of my sites as assets. Everything you create is worth something and by adding content to it you’re inflating it’s value on the spot. It’s important not to see all of your inactive websites as failures, but as stock in your account which you can later trade.
4. I should have rid my portfolio of all of the “deadwood” at an early date. Think of this way, if you can sell two websites for $50 each, you can reinvest that money into developing a minisite on an extremely focused topic.
5. It’s my aim to be more adventurous in the coming months with trading. It’s important to keep your eyes open and your ears to the ground at all times because you don’t know when the next opportunity is coming around the corner. These things have a habit of trampling right over on your ass if you’re not careful.
6. I now realize that I should be running my development efforts as a business by keeping financial records. How am I meant to gauge how successful I am if I don’t have accounts? This is crucial I believe to achieve to success as it makes goalsetting that much easier and envisaging the bigger picture is a doddle.
7. Letting past failures interfere too much with my thinking was a mistake. If I struggled to complete a website I wouldn’t let myself move on and develop more websites until the other one was finished – even if I had no intention of completing it. You can put failure to bed now by focusing entirely on the present and creating something which excites both you and your visitors.
8. I should have recognised that “goofy sites” were my speciality from the start. Y’see, I struggle to write seriously and always feel the need to take the piss of something and for some reason or another I thought it was impossible to monetise fun sites, which couldn’t be further from the truth. I mean my biggest seller was emohairstyles.info which was a complete pisstake created in 2 hours and it went for $1000. $500 isn’t a bad hourly rate at all.
9. I created emohairstyles.info and punkhairstyles.info which were both popular in their own right but I stopped there for one reason or another. I should have created similarly themed websites like gothhairstyles.info, raphairstyles.info. In other words if you find an easy way to make money, replicate it over and over until you’re making big bucks.
10. I’m completely paranoid about grammar and spelling. I understand they are both important but I think they can be restrictive. I’ve deleted whole paragraphs at a time from my blog simply because I thought they read ackwardly, yet they were actually enlightening one way or another. Take Shoemoney’s lead and write in a way that’s comfortable for you. Remember : all grammar nazis are 45-year-old spinsters with 5 cats who often live on their own in a shabby apartment block in Kentucky. These are the same type of people who’d throw you out of bed for mispronouncing “fuck me!” during sex.

Can you write about the subject at hand with ease?

Instead of rushing in and acquiring the domain name straight away you should try writing 2 or 3 500 word articles on the topic beforehand.

If writing the articles is a chore, you might want to consider building a site around another niche that you enjoy. Pay attention to you intuition as there is nothing more disheartening than wasting money on domains that you’ll never use.

If you are having problems creating content but are still interested in having a site in that niche, it might be worthwhile hiring a copywriter from either Rentacoder or Digitalpoint. Be aware that you’ll normally get what you pay for with copywriters. I recommend investing at least $15 for a 500 word article, that way you stand a better chance of attracting a decent writer.

Decide upon the site’s format

Gone are the days that the static website ruled supreme (thank God!). You should tailor the site’s format to the way that you work best, not to what’s the latest craze.

Consider how much time you are willing to devote to the project before typing a word. For example, if you aren’t looking to update your website on a regular basis it might be worth creating a static site which links to a blog on a sub-domain.

You could concentrate on developing a strong backbone of static content which is supplemented with blog entries. As John Chow mentioned in 10 Blogging Mistakes To Avoid it’s important to create a blog update schedule which you adhere to.

If you can’t update your blog consistently, you could try disguising your blog as static pages by removing the code which displays the time and comments. The advantage of this is first time visitors won’t be put off by the fact you haven’t updated the blog in months!

With that said, you should keep your readers informed about any changes to your update schedule. If you’re going on holiday or just wanting to spend more time with your family at the weekend, just say so!

If you’re still having difficulty deciding upon a format, visit competing sites in your niche and try adapting their style to the way you work. It might take a few tries to find your format but persist!

Unfortunately it you can’t find anything unique to add to the niche then your website is destined to be minimally successful. Instead, brainstorm entirely new ways of presenting your information! Let’s say that you are running a Dream Dictionary website and you are considering two options

1 ) You could generate a bunch of static pages about Dream Symbols….

2 ) Or you could create a facility which allows your users to incorporate their own interpretations into the site.

Since much has already been written about Dream Symbols, your content would have to be exceptional to be noticed. Adopting the latter approach would add something different to the area – thanks to the unique perspective of each dreamer!

In Missed Opportunities with PayPerPost I toyed with the idea of creating an opportunity which required the blogger to write a negative review about my blog. Sure enough, last Sunday I set this into action and it has to be one of the best decisions I’ve made so far. The criticism itself was worth treble the $100 I spent on the opportunity!

Anyway here’s what I’ve gathered the following so far from the reviews.

• The font is far too small on the page.
• The index page seems to go on forever (I’ve since reduced the number of posts that appear on the front to 5 from 10).
• Far too many categories (this was before I shaved 20 or so categories from the list).
• My posts are poorly organised (I think this related to categorisation as well).
• My attempts at “humor” dilutes the content.
• The design itself is lifeless, boring and generic. It isn’t distinctive or even remotely interesting.
• The content is “inconsequential”.

I’ve taken a good few of these suggestions on board and it’s my aim to work towards improving the blog in the highlighted areas.

As well as the criticism, the “buzz” generated by idea has resulted in an additional 5 or so backlinks from other bloggers.

The reviews definitely added something for the bloggers themselves too by highlighting errors that are common throughout the community. As I’ve mentioned before, I think Paid Posts will flourish as long as they starting adding more value to both parties. Overly positive reviews serve only to bolster the ego of the person who created the opportunity. They also tend to breed distrust throughout the readership. Think about it this way – why should people believe anything you say if you continually whore out your blog with fake sounding reviews?

To summarise – I can’t recommend this approach enough. It was hard to take the influx of criticism to begin with but since then I’ve realised that each piece of criticism has provided me with the basis to make improvements to the site.

As I mentioned in this post, I’ve been reviewing the blog’s category structure as it’s currently unmanageable. The thought of changing the category settings on over 220 posts was terrifying. At least it was so until I came across the Batch Categories Wordpress plugin. Let me demonstrate why it’s so effective.

Two of my new categories are “Blogging” and “SEO”. For the purpose of the example I’ll be moving prospective posts into the SEO category.

(continue reading…)

If you’re new to blogging you’re probably gagging to be noticed by the blogsphere. There aren’t many better ways to achieve this than through creating a great piece of link bait, after all you stand the chance of receiving thousands of visitors in a day to your blog! This is where it gets problematic, you spend a few hours writing an article that’s intended to be linkbait, submit it to the social bookmarking sites and it gets absolutely no response.

(continue reading…)

Do they say or mean anything? Are header images even necessary? The only reason I’m asking this is because they are everywhere! I’m interested in how they relate to the writer’s ambition and blogging style. Is there really even a connection there?

I’ll start by referring to my own header, which is of a dark wintery street on Belfast. When I selected it, I didn’t think “oh I must have a dour image of my homeland to depress my visitors!”. I picked it because I liked the color of the sky in the background.

(continue reading…)

I’ve been experiencing trouble trying to keep all of my posts categorised recently. There are so many categories that it’s hard to know what exactly to file a post under.

So how many’s too many? I guess you have to take it on a blog by blog basis. Take More Risks is 5 months old and has just over 220 posts, I hardly think it’s deserving of over 30 categories. It seems as if I’m diluting my link authority by focusing on such a broad range of topics. It’d be beneficial to either remove all of my categories altogether or define broader types and move the posts to there. Topics like PHP, Javascript and Web Design might fall under “Technology” or something similar.

(continue reading…)