Drive Traffic To Your New Blog [Podcast]

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The show notes for this episode are published on my main blog Basic Blog Tips. 

I felt so passionate about this topic as I was writing the post I decided to record it for the podcast too. 

I hope you enjoy this episode and you'll notice that I am being more proactive about asking for reviews and ratings for the show in iTunes. Please open iTunes and leave a review. 

Ms. Ileane Speaks in iTunes

I want you to be totally honest and let me know what you think of the content and tips I provide. If you're not sure how to leave a review in iTunes,

Finding The Best Guest Bloggers for Your Blog

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Get The Best Guest Authors for Your Blog

In the past 3 years I have served as the host to over 150 guest bloggers. I opened up the blog to guests as a way to give back to the blogging community. Many new bloggers, as well as seasoned blogging veterans, get the opportunity to promote themselves and expose their writing to a new audience. 

The other benefit for guest posting (and hosting) on Basic Blog Tips is that it helps to strengthen and grow the community. The guests feel a deeper connection to the blog and they interact and engage with one another in a familiar place. 

The Down Side To Hosting Guests Authors

As with everything in life you have to take the good with the bad and there is a down side to offering guest posting on a popular blog. One of the biggest challenges I faced was that my inbox would be flooded with requests on a daily basis. 

If you have the standard contact form on your blog, most of these request will come from "link builders" who have no idea what your blog is about or what your readers are interested in. These random requests will come in from hired writers who only have one goal and that is to get links for their clients. 

In the podcast and in the presentation slide posted below you'll discover how I avoid that problem and keep those requests from over-taking my inbox.

5 Tips For Finding The Best Guest Bloggers from Ileane Smith

My 5 Tips for Vetting Guest Bloggers

1. Require a Human Gravatar

2. Verify the Google+ Profile

3. Get Samples of Previous Guest Posts

4. Set up contributor accounts in WordPress

5. Reward Your Guests

Best Ways To Reward Guest Bloggers

Give your guests access to their own profile and display it in a bio box. The good thing is, because you already vetting your guest carefully, there is no need to worry about them adding "questionable" links in their bio. This will also help you in the long run - as your guests build their Author Rank, your blog will build Publisher Rank.

Install Premium plugins so that your guests will get exposed to plugins they might not have on their own blogs. I recommend having SEOPressor Version 5 and CommentLuv Premium. 

Support the post by submitting to blogging communities and directories. This will send traffic to your blog as well as your guest's blogs. When your guest logs into Google Analytics or Webmaster Tools sees all the referral traffic coming from your site, they will be sure to submit more posts and they will save their best content to post on your blog.

Bonus Tip!

Install the SpeakPipe widget and take down the standard contact form.

If you are new to blogging and the concept of accepting guest posters, start off by inviting your friends to do a guest post. This will help you get your feet wet in the process.

The Ultimate Guide to Do Follow or No Follow Links on Your Blog

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Do you give do follow or no follow links on your blog? 

What does that mean and how does it impact your blog's page rank? In this episode of the podcast I go into some detail on this topic. 

Do Follow links are an indication that a webmaster or blogger endorses the site that they are linking to. This sends a signal to the search engines (like Google) that the link is valuable and there is some page rank or "link juice" that will flow from the site to the site that it's linking to. 

Surprising, the majority of the links on the internet are Do Follow!

CLICK HERE TO TWEET THIS POST!

In around 2005, Google introduced the No Follow attribute which basically means that even though one site is linking to another, there is no endorsement and no page rank flows to the other site. The link essentially drops out of the link graph.

However, this does not mean that getting a NoFollow link is the end of the world. 

PEOPLE will still click on the link and the link can still send traffic to your site.

To illustrate Google's views on Do Follow and No Follow link attributes I put together a playlist from the Google Webmaster Help YouTube Channel. Watch Matt Cutts responds to questions from webmasters about links. 

Sites mentioned in this episode:

Hot Blog Tips
+Brian D. Hawkins 
+Sheryl Loch 
+Mitch Mitchell 
+Andy Bailey 
+Matt Cutts 
Disqus
Livefyre

Want to know how to find Do Follow blogs to comment on? Find out where to find them and how to know if ANY blog is using Do Follow or No Follow. 

For more tips subscribe to my email list and click here for:

The Ultimate Do Follow Cheat Sheet Guide

The Ultimate Do Follow Cheat Sheet Guide from Ileane Smith

Claim Your Blog on Technorati in 2013

Technorati was the #5 traffic Source for Basic Blog Tips in 2012

In this episode I encourage bloggers to register their blog's in the Technorati blog directory. Currently over 1.3 million blogs are listed and the submission process is simple to do.

A review of the 2012 traffic stats for Basic Blog Tips, my primary blog, shows that because of the directory listing, Technorati became the #5 source of referral traffic for the entire year. 

The benefit of getting visitors from Technorati is that the traffic is highly targeted and engaged. Many of the visitors ended up subscribing to my email list, following me on Twitter or Facebook and subscribing to my YouTube Channel. 

Technorati is "set-it-and-forget-it"

Sign up for an account with Technorati and the process of claiming your blog is pretty straight forward. Enter the title, description and RSS feed for the blog and Technorati will provide you with a claim code. 

The claim code needs to appear inside of a blog post, and this is Technorati's way of verifying that you are the owner or administrator of the site. I recommend adding the code to an existing blog post (versus publishing a post just for the purpose of the claim). You'll receive an email once your site is verified and basically that's it! That is all you need to do in order to complete the procedure - "set-it-and-forget-it".

I first noticed the increase in traffic and back links when I was monitoring my blog's progress in Google Webmaster Tools. And at the end of 2012 I received an Annual Traffic Report from WordPress.com. I recorded a video to demonstrate the wealth of information provided in:

WordPress Stats from the JetPack Plugin

Don't think that Technorati is just for small blogs, even the high traffic blogs are taking advantage of being listed in this powerful blog directory. The Huffington Post, Mashable, The Verge, and many other leading blogs have claimed their listing and so should you!

Here's a screenshot of the top five blogs!

Did you claim your blog with Technorati yet? Let me know in the comments below!

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My Tools, Tips and Strategies for Google+ Success

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Google+ is the social networking platform that can't be ignored. With over 100 million active users and a growing list of the benefits it's time for you to jump in and take advantage with these tools, tips and strategies for success.

Google has integrated their Google + social networking platform with most of their other free internet tools. Similar to Facebook, you can have a profile in addition to a business page on the platform. I recommend using a Gmail account to establish your profile and preferably the same account you use to access Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools.

Google+ and YouTube Account Integration

YouTube can be even more deeply integrated with Google + and by can connecting the two accounts from your YouTube account settings. Click on the Advanced settings link to access the authorization area.

Fill out your Google + profile and tagline. In the introduction area you can include the hyperlinks to key areas of your blog or website.

Google+ Tagline and the Circle Count Extension

In the Other Profiles section, add links to all of your social networks like Facebook, Twitter, About, Podcasts, etc. 

The Contributors section is critical to your Google Authorship and Author Rank. These are two exciting features that Google introduced to increase the number of clicks we can get from our listing on the search engine results page or SERP. It's important to link to any site that we are guest posting for or contributing other content to. 

Google + Communities & Resources Mentioned 

+Martin Brossman's
Podcasting and Technology Resources Google+ Community

WallFlux - RSS Feed Generator for Facebook Groups

CircleCount Extension

HootSuite Hootlet

Viral Heat

Add +Ileane Smith to circles on Google+

Add +Basic Blog Tips to circles on Google+

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Why You Should Start a Second Blog on Blogger

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WordPress is the #1 blogging platform of choice for many bloggers including myself. But in this episode I'll share with you, why I chose Blogger as the platform for the Ms. Ileane Speaks Podcast blog.

Question - Is it time for you to start a SECOND blog?

When it was time for me to find a home for this podcast I had to decide where I would host the blog. Since I already have a thriving and successful, self-hosted WordPress blog, I didn't want to add the podcast to that site because of branding issues. After all this podcast is Ms. Ileane Speaks and my WordPress blog is Basic Blog Tips and the two brands don't mesh together seamlessly. 

After careful consideration I decided to use Google's Blogger platform and in this episode I talk about my reasons for coming to this conclusion. Here's what I discuss:

Why I'm Using Google's Blogger Platform for this Podcast's Blog

1. Visibility on Google (Google+ was shut down)

2. Libsyn's "On Publish" podcasting feature works with Blogger which I first heard about from +Ray Ortega in an interview on The Podcasters Studio with +Rob Walch 

3. Blogger's built in mobile template

4. Drag and Drop layout customization

5. Google Analytics integration

6. Social Sharing options without plugins

7. Uploading images from Smart Phones

8. Consistent "Up time" and no plugin conflicts with platform updates

9. It's FREE!

All in all, I think that anyone who is addicted to blogging like I am should consider starting a second (or ancillary) blog with Google's Blogger platform.

Will you consider starting a second blog in 2020?

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5 Ways to Grow Your Email List With YouTube Videos

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Building an email list is an important task for any blogger or webmaster. In this episode we explore 5 ways you can use YouTube Videos to get email subscribers for your newsletter.

Grow Your List With YouTube

Over the last few months several people have subscribed to my email list after watching one of my YouTube video tutorials. 

Here are 5 methods I used to grow my list:

• Add a link in each video description to my optin form
• Ask - I simply ask people to subscribe
• SlideShare Pro users can upload videos and capture leads
• LeadPlayer Plugin for WordPress
• Viewbix - is by far the most effective tool for growing my email list with YouTube Videos.

Additional resources mentioned in today's show:

Join my Email List
AWeber Email Marketing

LeadPlayer Review by VidiSEO

A Marketer's Guide to SlideShare

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My All Time Favorite Tip for Getting Blog Traffic

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In this episode I talk about how you can get more blog traffic by paying attention to the information found in Google Analytics.

Getting Traffic

We always communicate with our readers on blog comments, Twitter, Facebook and even through email responses to our newsletters. Even though these readers are extremely important and they represent our core group of followers, there is another group that we need to listen to as well.

The only way to understand what this "silent" group of readers is trying to tell us is by looking at our tracking statistics. There are a lot of different software programs we can use to do tracking but I recommend using Google Analytics.

Analytics Integration with Webmaster Tools

Google Analytics can be integrated with so many other Google products and primarily I go into detail about the integration with Google Webmaster Tools. You can learn more about Google Webmaster Tools in a previous episode of the podcast and you can find watch this video tof find out how to make the connection between the two accounts.

How to Connect Google Webmaster Tools to Google Analytics 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVWtKoMA1gY

Once you connect the two account the Search Engine Optimization reports will help you find which posts on your blog are getting the most traffic from Google. This is really helpful for you determine how effective you are at getting search traffic for the terms you are going after. On the other hand, you'll also gain insights on what you might be doing wrong! But once you have that information you can put a positive spin in this by creating more content that people like. 

I share two examples of this from posts on my Basic Blog Tips blog and how I was able to turn this into a successful traffic generation tool for my blog.

Google Analytics and FeedBurner Integration

It's also a wonderful idea to allow FeedBurner to integrate with Google Analytics. I give an excellent example of how Justin Young from Major Money Tips http://www.majormoneytips.com/how-to-use-google-reader-find-and-share-content-553/ put this to good use on his blog.

This is how you can really listen to your readers and develop  more of the content they want to read about and more importantly, you can provide them with the content that they are searching for. This will help you get more traffic but also help your readers by giving them information that addresses a problem they are trying to solve or fulfills a need that they have. Eventually these "silent" readers will become part of you core group of commenters, followers and subscribers.

Happy blogging!

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Become an Authority Online with Scoopit

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In this episode I discuss how content curation can help you establish yourself as an online authority without writing your own content on a blog or website.

Curating Content with Scoop.it 

“Scoop.it is a FREE publishing-by-curation platform. We provide a service making curation a simple and new form of expression on the Web. Thus, you can easily create your online magazine. We want everyone to be a publisher and be heard everywhere. “

My first contact with Scoop.it was when I saw a Tweet from +Anise Smith. She curates content about QR codes. I was impressed with the layout and format of the online magazine she created on Scoop.it http://www.scoop.it/t/anisesmith-qr-codes.

Scoop.it is similar to Pinterest where the spotlight is on the image however you can include more text and add your own take. 

Scoop.it is now integrated with Bufferapp which extends the social sharing capabilities to include:

Twitter
Facebook pages and Profiles
LinkedIn and LinkedIn groups
Pinterest
Google +
Tumblr
App.net
StumbleUpon
Blogger 
WordPress

My Scoop.it topic boards are:

• Basic Blog Tips – Helping You Build a Better Blog
• YouTube Tips and Tutorials – Anything to help you succeed on YouTube (by far my most popular topic)
• Podcasts – Tips for creating effective podcasts and podcasting services and equipment
• STEM Advocate – Science, Technology, Engineering and Math
• Blogging Contests – the hottest blogging contests around

Another great Scoop.it user to check out for Social Media News is Gerrit Bes

My podcast board has all the top news and stories about podcasting and the top podcasters.

Podcasts on Scoop.it

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10 Point Check List For Blog Promotion

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I call this the:

Blog Promotion Manifesto

Use this ten point blog promotion checklist to promote your pillar content on the internet.

You wrote a great post - Whats next?
In this episode you'll learn:

• How to drive traffic to the post
• How to get the post shared
• How to grow your network

#1: Choose a catchy "sharable" headline - What's a Shareable Headline? A shareable headline get attention? It also needs to be around 120 characters so that it fits easily into a retweet!

#2: Share the post on social networks, blogging communities and webmaster forums 
For Twitter use: JustRetweet and Viral Content Bee
For Facebook use: Social Buzz Club
Forums and Communities to join:

• Blog Engage 
• Triberr
• BizSugar 

#3: Add a link to the post in social networking profiles instead of your home page

#4. Blog Commenting - Leave "valuable" comments on CommentLuv enabled blogs. Here's some tips for leaving good comments that get approved:

• Offer good advice
• Share your take
• Ask a question

#5: Publish related content on your blog. Case studies are just one option!

#6: Guest Post on authority blogs that help build your Google "Author Rank". In order to do this, you must be sure the host blog provides you with an author bio box so you can get your Google Authorship!

#7: Reproduce your content as a video, presentation or podcast! Get creative - Check out the slides and video for this post below.

#8: Conduct interviews with bloggers who have expertise on the subject of your blog post.

#9: Build links to your post with content curation platforms like Scoop.it, Paper.li or Storify

#10: Send an email to your newsletter subscribers
Don't miss an episode - subscribe to my podcast The Anchor Show

If you are new to blogging be sure to check out Blogging Tips 101 and to get free tips and resources to help you build a better blog and expand your audience! http://BasicBlogTips.com/email

The Blog Promotion Manifesto:
Your 10 Point Check List for Blog Post Promotion from Ileane Smith

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