Comments on: Blog SEO: Are You Ready To Get More Loyal Readers?

By: Scott Frangos

Scott Frangos — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 23:26:56 +0000

Hi Vivien…

Thanks for the reply. The article I wrote about SPHERE is here: http://webhelpermagazine.com/?p=236

http://webhelpermagazine.com/?p=236

Not sure if HTML works in your comments, so gave it twice, once as URL, once with link code.

Best regards -
Scott

By: Vivien

Vivien — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 23:19:08 +0000

Hi Scott, glad you liked Simonne’s article. I did try Sphere once, but it didn’t have time to explore further. Somehow I don’t see your name linked to any site. I think that if you do link your name to the related article, you should mention about it in your comment, otherwise, I know I don’t always check others URL when reading comments on other blogs.

By: Scott Frangos

Scott Frangos — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 02:05:48 +0000

Hello -
Thanks for an excellent set of tips on Blog SEO. I’ve read quite a few, but found a couple of new ideas in your post. Have you tried “Sphere” as a “conversational intersection” for blog posts? It is like the meta equivalent of internal linking. I have linked directly to an overview post/article about it (my “website” link), which leads me to a final question. In comments (like these) is it best to link to your main page, do you think, or directly to a related post (as I have done)?

Yours, Scott

By: Stephen Cronin

Stephen Cronin — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 00:55:21 +0000

Vivien, actually, I’m not sure which category would be used if there were more than one category assigned to the post… Very good question though.

By: Vivien

Vivien — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 15:14:16 +0000

A very valid point, Stephen. I personally have renamed several categories on my blog. And also, sometimes I assign my posts under more than one category. How would that /category/ slug work in such a case, which category would it pick?

Tim, thanks for shedding more light on splogs.

Simonne, your “splogs” were not splogs at all (I was very surprised to hear that you had splogs yourself, but now that you’ve clarified, what you had were more like Tumblelogs). I too often get links from those splogs, which I mark as spam (often Akismet automatically marks them as spam).

By: Simonne

Simonne — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 19:15:51 +0000

Stephen and Tim, thank you for your comments.

Stephen, you are right, that is a potential danger. Although I liked the idea of changing my blog’s permalinks (and use redirects from the old structure to the new one), I had to give up, because nothing worked for me.

Tim, you have a lot of useful articles. Thanks for the details about splogs. I sometimes see them linking to some of my articles, especially when I use certain words (which are probably good for AdSense).

By: Tim Nash

Tim Nash — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 17:59:35 +0000

Thanks for linking to my article, I’m glad it was useful :)

To answer the question about splogs, they are nearly always automated so a single ” owner” can have literally thousands of splogs each with 100s of scraped posts even if just a tiny percentage rank in Google and other engines they will get a steady stream of traffic and some will inevitably click the ads

By automating the process the “owner” can move on to his or her next project and just leave the splogs churning out junk. I’m afraid it can be a lucrative business model for those wishing to engage in such things

By: Simonne

Simonne — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 06:44:55 +0000

I believe in a few weeks you’ll already rank better for thought provoking questions ;)

As of splogs, I suppose they make them to earn money. I made several to see if it is possible, and my conclusion is that if you don’t use something to automate the process (which I did not), they won’t bring you almost anything. I didn’t steal the content, I just took it from free articles sites, or I wrote it myself sometimes (which makes me a lousy splogger).

And my definition of splog is maybe too broad. I meant “niche blogs” ;)

By: Stephen Cronin

Stephen Cronin — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 02:48:40 +0000

Wow, a lot of great advice here, all in one spot as you say. I do want to point out one potential problem with the permalink suggestion however. You should be careful about using category in permalinks for a couple of reasons:

If your blog is newish, you may need to tweak your category structure. Each time you change a category, it will break your permalinks.

If you accidently post using the wrong category, changing it to correct category will break the permalinks created by your pings.

The post linked to above tells you how to redirect posts when you change your permalink structure (so your permalink aren’t broken). I haven’t tried that when changing a category name (rather than the permalink structure) but there should be someway to redirect that as well. However, you might need to do this more often that you’d like! It’s probably better to just avoid using category in the permalink.

By: Vivien

Vivien — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 23:26:20 +0000

Simonne, a.k.a Violeta, thanks so much for your great guest appearance on this blog. I’ll be definitely trying out your tips and will let you know how those changes would affect my ranking for certain keywords. I also loved your idea of replacing “Please leave your comments here” with “Thought provoking comments”.

Btw, Simonne, I’ve never had a splog, and I’m always wondering why do people have splogs. Do you know why? How much money do they make with those splogs online, with a stolen content?

David, glad you liked the post. Yes, it’s always nice to have all quick points in one post that’s easy to read and follow up with.