A blog with potential

I don't post to this site much, and don't get much readership. I kind of use it as storage place to keep relevant links I want to save. I need to start using it more as a vehicle to seriously bring myself up to speed on Search Engine Optimization issues and monetization of blogs.

I use tags on my google ads to tell me what blogs are generating any revenue.

I took a look at one of my blogs, Diet and Sugar. The focus is mostly on the intertwine between food and diabetes. I have diabetes so the topic is one of personal interest.

This blog doesn't get a lot of traffic, but what traffic it does get looks promising. It has a google ad click thru rate of 14%. I pretty much consider anything over 1% as good. So I consider 14% excellent. It's revenue per 1000 exposures is $27. The problem is that it takes a really long time to get 1,000 visitors.

I need to figure out how to raise the profile/interest of this blog. It looks like it might be able to turn into a rent payer.

Five ways for your blog to attract attention

A blog is more than a webpage and it's more than a collection of webpages. Blogs have a social content, a successful blog doesn't just attract search engine traffic, it also attracts readers. In fact, the way to attract search engine traffic to your blog is to attract readers first. If you attract the readers, if you give the readers what they want, then the search engines will find you.

There are millions of blogs, probably hundreds of blogs just in your small niche. You have to call attention to yourself to be noticed in that wilderness. Here's a few ways to do that.

1. Have a voice. Have a clear, discernible bias. A voice will attract readers who share your bias. They'll tend to agree with your positions and will spread the word about your brilliant thoughts.

2. Read your competitors. Link to them from your site. Leave comments on their posts on their sites. Don't pimp your own site when you leave comments, readers will find you.

3. Encourage comments. Reader comments are free content for you and they are strong indications to other readers that your blog is popular. Don't engage in heavy-handed moderation of your comments. Keep the spam out, but let the critics in.

4. Use titles and tags. Search engines like descriptive titles, they like descriptive keywords in anchor tags in references to other sites, and they like tags based on common terms used by other blogs. Cooperate and pay attention to your titles and tags.

5. Use analysis tools. Use analytics to track which pages or posts attract attention. Replicate those topics. Use keyword services to identify search keywords relevant to your topics that are in common use by users of search engines. Target those keywords.


Related link:
The Bloggers Guide to SEO
The basics of SEO

Carnivals

erase racism carnival (keywords: racism, antioppression, antiracism, justice) A carnival dedicated to ending racism, White Supremacy, and unearned privilege

Write to publish

I have a habit of writing short thoughts on random pieces of paper.

Then, later, sometimes years later, I'll go through a pile of old pieces of paper and try to figure out what I was thinking.

The title of this post is a phrase that was on one of those pieces of paper.

I'm not sure what it means. But I think it means something.

If it does mean something (and I'm not 100% sure it does) then it probably has some kind of application to blog writing.

If nothing else it got a blog post written.

A family of blogs

I have a bunch of blogs. Too many. One of the reasons I have many blogs instead of posting a whole lot on one blog is that the search engines like sites that have a core theme. They tend to rank you higher within a search topic if you have posts that stay on that topic. Of course they also rank you higher for frequent updates, so there's a limit to who spread out you should be.

Some of my blogs are

American Tradition
Off Topic Rant
Diet and Sugar

Road to the 2008 World Series of Poker
Playing no limit poker
New Poker
Poker Culture
Math and Poker
Search Engines and Blogs

Poker keywords

Here's a list of of poker related keywords and their adwords cost estimates (based on both value and volume).

poker $12,130.00
online poker $2,780.00
party poker $1,080.00
holdem poker $330.00
poker stars $320.00
internet poker $190.00
poker tournament $110.00
online poker tournaments $50.00
las vegas poker $50.00
poker blog $40.00
stud poker $20.00
poker books $20.00
atlantic city poker $9.00
poker cheating $7.00
ultimate bet $3.00
new york poker $3.00
internet poker tournaments $3.00
poker cruises $2.00
california poker $2.00
poker math $1.00
oklahoma poker $1.00
nolimit poker no data
nolimit holdem no data
missisippi poker no data
7card stud no data

Note: The keyword "poker", by itself, has huge volume and is next to impossible to get good search placement with that term.

I'm going to add a post tag of "poker" to my mathandpoker.com blog and see if that gets any search engine placement. That blog gets pretty good placement for some terms, such as "poker math".

Here's an excel list of the words

Here's a similar list from another blog.