Before we get to the good stuff, it’s important to touch on some of the issues which negatively impact your SEO and resulting traffic. The following are issues I encounter almost all of the time (and mostly because the blog owner does not realize the following issues).

Negative SEO Issues:

• Make sure you retain the services of a professional web hosting provider. If the server hosting your account is often unavailable, that means Googlebot also cannot access it. The more often this occurs, the less traffic will be referred to you (because your blog will not be as prominent in search results, as it could be).

• Don’t participate in “keyword stuffing” when writing your content. Keyword stuffing is the action of adding keywords to your content, beyond what  in context, renders as reasonable. Excessive repetition of any particular word or phrasing via  content description, title tags, (any other) meta tags and the post content tends to raise a red flag with the search engines. Read what Google has to say about keyword stuffing and if you have suffered a negative as a result, you can resubmit your blog (after fixing the issues first) for consideration.

• Do not link to or exchange links with lower quality spam or splog sites. To be quite blunt, doing this associates (and places) your blog in a bad neighbourhood. Here is a direct quote from Google:

…Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links…

• Don’t duplicate your content or the content of another blog or web site. Distinctive and original, in demand content will serve you best. Copying content from another source, even with permission, is nothing more than a copy. The original site with the original copy will garner search engine traffic – Not the copied content.

Blogs Links and SEO:

In my opinion, an important aspect of improving your blog’s value (to Google as well as readers) is ensuring valuable (high ranking) inbound links point to your blog – and that you in turn link (outbound) to valuable, relevant content. Below are some of the aspects I’d commonly advise and blog (or site) owner.

• Allow your links to develop some age. The older a link is, generally, the more circulated it becomes. Old, well established links are ideal for your blog.

• The popularity of the inbound link also has a positive effect on your ranking. For example, a blog with a PR (Page Rank) of 6 provides more benefit that one that has a PR of 3. But don’t rule out the value of lower PR inbound links. I’d enjoy the value of one or two hundred inbound links from a PR3 blog anytime. So what I’m I suggesting? Consider the value of the inbound links by also examining their PR. One tool I use to accomplish this is a Firefox plugin called SEOQuake. It’s a simple tool that allows you to see the page rank of any site you wish. You get get the plugin directly from Mozilla’s SeoQuake SEO extension page.

• One thing (you may have less control over) is the anchor text of the inbound link. Anchor text is the text used for the link itself and… the text immediately surrounding it. That text should be relevant to the content it is linking too. Anchor text of “Baking” pointing to a page about painting is just not going to work well.

• Again, remember that outbound links are important. According to Google’s official blog “Linking out: Often it’s just applying common sense“.

Your Blog and Your Domain:

Many are not aware that your domain name registration now appears to have an effect on your SEO.  To backtrack, in 2005, Google’s patent application specifically addressed this issue by saying:

“…Domains can be renewed up to a period of 10 years. Valuable (legitimate) domains are often paid for several years in advance, while doorway (illegitimate) domains rarely are used for more than a year. Therefore, the date when a domain expires in the future can be used as a factor in predicting the legitimacy of a domain and, thus, the documents associated therewith…”

• So it is probably a good idea to register your domain name for a longer period (than just 1 or 2 years). Incidentally, you can read United States Patent Application #20050071741. The gist of the pertinent sections of that patent application allude to the following additional issues for domain SEO:

“…the age, or other information, regarding a name server associated with a domain may be used to predict the legitimacy of the domain. A “good” name server may have a mix of different domains from different registrars and have a history of hosting those domains, while a “bad” name server might host mainly pornography or doorway domains, domains with commercial words (a common indicator of spam), or primarily bulk domains from a single registrar, or might be brand new. The newness of a name server might not automatically be a negative factor in determining the legitimacy of the associated domain, but in combination with other factors, such as ones described herein, it could be…”

• This essentially suggests that Name Servers (DNS) hosting your domain record is better contaning  a mix of different domains from different registrars. It appears Google considers this “Good”.

Finally, further advice is to ensure that you keep your domain on focus. For example, if your domain name contains keywords such as trees, weddings, real estate, law, or some other topic; ensure that your content is specific to the subject matter that your domain name suggests. If for example, you plan on launching content that is not directly related to the subject of the domain, then it may be advisable to launch it under a domain name that is more suited to the subject matter.

Keywords:

One aspect I think most of us are aware of is the issue of keywords. Specifically that we should place appropriate keywords in our document Meta Tags. (What is a keyword meta tag? – You can find out by reading Phil Bradley’s  “Meta tags – what, where, when, why?“). However did you know that the Meta tags for keyword, description and so forth do not have the effect they once did? Quite frankly, in my opinion they are a waste of time, and only useful for smaller search engines or directories, etc. that still use them – Which is why I still use meta tags.

In my opinion the only valuable use of keywords is to place the within your content! The post from Search Engine Watch, “How To Use HTML Meta Tags” says it best with their quote “Meta tags are not a magic solution”.

If you produce valuable content, Google and other search engines will be able to gather all they keyword information without any coded directions (such as meta tags).

SEO Tools for Your Blog:

In order to facilitate better SEO, there are some blog tools (WordPress plugins) that I use (and which you may want to put to good use as well). Two of the best free ones (in my opinion are:

• All in One SEO Pack provides automated (SEO) out of the box. Specifically, it takes care of titles, descriptions, keywords and duplicate content.
• Google XML Sitemaps generates a XML-Sitemap compliant sitemap for your blog. This helps googlebot better crawl your blog. It reduces the crawl time and improves speed.

In conclusion, I’d like to remind everyone who is new to SEO (and blogging). The focus should be to provide quality and in demand content. Having said this, don’t misunderstand me. Quality content is critical (that what readers are looking for) – But quality content isn’t the “key” to blog success. However, this is another topic for another day; which I have touched on in an earlier post Quality Content is Not “The” Key to a Blog Success.

Before I forget, there is one tool I really should mention, it’s the Canonical URL’s plugin. What this does is help resolve the issue of someone visiting your blog using a different URL. This is also common fro individuals who have registered more that one domain, but have them all pointing to one hosting account. Because they are different domains, this could suggest “Duplicate Content” – Not good. To learn a bit more, check out the Google video below:

What issues have you encountered with regards to Blog SEO? What do you do that I didn’t include here? Have a thought? A comment? Let us know below! – Cheers!

1) Create an Action Plan

Much in the same way we create business plans, we should also do the same for successful blog launches. Among the more obvious, some things you’ll need to pay extra attention to are:

Domain name. Is it easy to remember. Does it describe the blog?

Measurable goals. Does your plan include tangible goals that you can measure and evaluate? Does it include contingencies.

Budgeting. Have you evaluated and included all foreseeable expenses? What about a financial buffer – What happens when an unexpected expense occurs?

2) Use Reliable Hosting

Make sure your blog is hosted on a server that you have control over. I can’t stress this point enough. Why is this important? Not only does this effect us directly (if visitors cannot access the site properly) one related aspect it seems is an SEO effect. In March of 2005 Google was issued a patent (Information retrieval based on historical data ) of interesting note is the nameservers (DNS) handling the server on which your blog is hosted. One statement of Google’s treatment of nameserver information is:

“…the age, or other information, regarding a name server associated with a domain may be used to predict the legitimacy of the domain. A “good” name server may have a mix of different domains from different registrars and have a history of hosting those domains, while a “bad” name server might host mainly pornography or doorway domains, domains with commercial words (a common indicator of spam), or primarily bulk domains from a single registrar, or might be brand new. The newness of a name server might not automatically be a negative factor in determining the legitimacy of the associated domain, but in combination with other factors, such as ones described herein, it could be…”

If you control your server, you are able to ensure that your nameserver is not “bad”. In a shared hosting environment you will not be able to ensure this (and other aspects) don’t come back to bite you in the future. While a dedicated server is the best option, it’s not always within each budget. At the very least, I’d suggest using a Virtual Private Server (VPS).

I should also note here, register a domain name that you will use for your blog. Ensure you include the following points in the choice of domain name:

• Make it easy to remember. That way people are more likely to visit you as they don’t have to try to find you.
• Keep it short. Excessively long domain names are such a pain to try and remember, then type into the address bar of a browser. (Who is going to remember a very long name).
• Make it easy to spell (and difficult to spell incorrectly). Easy to spell, equals simple access to your blog.
• Try to ensure it describes your blog, business, product or you (the primary blogger) in some way. This helps with SEO and also gives people some clue as to your blog’s purpose.
• Don’t use hyphens or numbers in the domain name. Is that “2″, “to”, “too”, “two” or “tu”? Is that “4″, “for”, “fore” or “four”? A lot of people forget to type in the hyphen if there is one, I always do and end up at some other site. (I think you get the point).
• If possible, try to obtain a .com name. (.com refers to commercial, .net refers to a network, .org refers to organizations and so on)

3) Include Informative Pages (Such as “About Us”, “Contact”, etc.)

Ensure you have a well written “About Us” page. As ProBlogger points out about such pages “…There’s nothing more of a turn off for a blog that doesn’t go to the effort of making sure all it’s menu items lead to useful information…”. In general, make sure you answer the following questions where applicable:

• How to contact you.
• Who you and/or your blog are.
• What you do and how you do it.
• What are the benefits to readers.
• How readers can join in and contribute.

4) Obtain the Blog Software Platform and Applications

In my opinion, the best platform currently available is WordPress and you can download WordPress the files (for installation to your server) from their site. You will also want to ensure that you’ve obtained the most helpful and productive plugins, which are featured in another post called: 25 Most Beneficial WordPress Plugins.

Additionally, try to budget for a small computer (it can easily be an older second hand PC) and use that exclusively for working on your blog. The next question may revolve around which applications to install on your blogging PC? If so, my post about the Top 15 Software Applications for Windows Bloggers might just be the resource to get you going productively.

Side Note: If you are looking for a robust list of applications my post Top 100 of the Best (Useful) OpenSource Applications (found on my other blog) will give you a VERY good round-up.

5) Create Initial Content

Before launching your blog ensure you have between 5 to 10 posts of great content which you can post. This gives visitors to your new blog something to read and determine if your blog is worthwhile to revisit. It also give search engines a bit of meat and potatoes with which to crawl and index your blog. And of course, provides initial content that you can promote to social sites.

Make sure the content is of high quality. Reposted articles or content (with permission) is just not going to cut it. Why? Well… Why should I read copied (reposted) content on your blog when I can go to the original writer’s blog (or site) to read it?

6) Promote Your Blog Via Social Sites

Ensure to promote (also refered to as “seed” or “seeding”) your best quality content on social sites. Doing so will greatly help in building traffic to your blog. One key is to ensure you are using the best tags (when posting to social sites).

Firefox has a plugin called Kgen, helps you see which keywords are strong each post (or page). Then it becomes a simple matter to use them to help determine relevant tags for social sites.

Of course you’ll want to select the appropriate social sites that have more traffic and less spam. The following are the ones I have used:

Digg has huge traffic and a variety of readers. It used to be technically heavy, but that no longer appears to be the case. However, technical and design subjects and gadgets still have a huge following at Digg. If I’m looking for solutions or blog topics to discuss and bloggers to link to, I may look here.

Reddit has a lower traffic flow and a wide range of subjects, but appears to be mainly political.

StumbleUpon, again has medium traffic and an even more diverse range of interests. You can find some pretty strange things on StumbleUpon.

Delicious has high traffic and appears to have a large technical and design following (like Digg). Again, like Digg, if I’m looking for solutions or blog topics to discuss and blogs to link to, I might look here.

Furl is a lower traffic site, but it’s good because it has a wide range of subjects and visitors. It won’t give me a lot of traffic, but it does not hurt to use Furl in your “mix”.

Newsvine appears primarily polictial in disposition, also providing news related subject. Lower volume.

Sphinn is a lower traffic site appearing to focus on marketing and SEO related subject. Again, it does include other subject matter and appers to have a wide range of visitors.

The bottom of this post has other social networking icons you can use to promote your blog, take a look at them as you may find others of interest.

Also, you may find the post How to Find Readers for Your Blog, will help with some other aspects of building readership.

I should note that there are some other social sites you may want to explore, among them are:

MySpace

Facebook

Twitter (You can follow me on twitter @BloggerSavvy)

7) Submit Your Blog to Directories

Increasing the number of inbound links improves the indexing of your blog (and other SEO related values). Additionally, this increases search engine crawling to your blog.

Three directories that you can use to establish links from trusted sites are:

1. DMOZ Open Directory Project provides free directory listing that is edited by human operators.
2. Aviva Directory is a paid listing service.
3. Yahoo DIrectory is a paid listing. However, they do have a free Yahoo Search Submission.

I’m not suggesting that your path to a successful launch should include the above directories, I’m instead suggesting that they may help. Remember, if your blog has great content and is properly promoted, it will be successful regardless of which directories you list in.

Other directories, search submissions and Feed (RSS) resources that may be of help if you ensure your blog is listed in ones best suited for your subject matter, include:

• FeedBees
• Best Directory
• Blogotion
• ReadBurner
• Blogged
• Best of the Web Blogs
• Bloggernity
• Bloggapedia

Obviously a bit of searching on Google will provide even more results, but these (above) will at least get you going.

8) Provide Valuable Outbound Links

This actually is a way of encouraging traffic to your blog. I think we are all aware of the value inbound links place on building traffic, so much so, that I suspect many of use negate the effects including useful outbound links to resources. Blog readers (and search engines) like outbound links to tools, information and other resources that are related to the content you are writing. Not to mention the blog your site is linking to, would probably be thankful – Remember this is the “Web”, links are good. Outbound links are a way of offering your readers more valuable content.

In the same frame of thought (sort of)… if possible include free tool on your blog. Try including free trials, free software, etc. Quality is important here! DO NOT offer tacky, useless freebies as they will make your blog look unprofessional. Only offer QUALITY freebies, or none at all.

9) Share Your Comments on Other Blogs and Sites

One particularly good strategy to help boost a successful blog launch is to provide valuable input (comments) on other blogs that are related to or support your blog content in some fashion. Comments are one way of standing out and getting noticed. But let’s step back for a moment…

From time to time a get waves of email messages from blog owners introducing themselves and suggesting (in one manner or another) post collaboration, cross-linking, etc. My honest opinion is that this rarely works. Most of these “things” are accomplished via twittering, instant messaging (IM) , video chats, etc. In my opinion tweeting, IM, etc. are more effective ways of connecting with those in your niche and those who can support it. For email introductions to be more effective, you’d be better prepared if your blog is well established and well known.

10) Communicate and Develop Relationships

I have always found it amusing when people launch their web site or blog and fail to realize that the way they conduct business and client relations online is the same as offline. It seems that so many of us expect that the rules have changed and we’re trying to discover them all over again. STOP! Nothing much has changed. We still need to develop relationships with PEOPLE, just like we do in the physical world. Build relationships with other bloggers in your niche (and blogs that support it).

How do we introduce ourselves? The fastest way I have found is asking for advice or help or providing them with some valuable insight. Make sure you are familiar with their blogs! In other words this is called “Networking”, sound familiar? I thought so. <Smiling here>

11) Be “Lock and Load” Ready

When you notice a sudden surge in traffic levels to your blog, that is the time to post high quality, in demand, well written content. Always have a “draft” ready and waiting to take advantage of such opportunities. I’ve found from experience that you generally have three days or less to take advantage of such a windfall. When one of your posts attract attention (even go viral) that’s when all eyes are on you. That’s when other’s in your community are also giving you their attention. If you provide even more (quality, in demand) content, that provides more motivation for them to visit your blog again and even perhaps link to it.

12) Advertise in Signatures

Never forget the little things, over time they have a big impact. You can further support your blog by ensuring your email, forum post, etc. all include a linkl to your blog. Additionally, include a line or two telling the reader what the blog is about, or how they can benefit by visiting your blog.

13) Be a Gracious Guest

Do you provide high quality content? Is there another blog that you particularly desire traffic from? Then, put your writing skills to good work, be a guest blogger. Submit your (free) quality post to the blog for consideration after you have developed a good relationship or when the blog is asking for article/post submissions. Ensure your professional bio is well written and has a link back to your post. Bio’s are commonly included at the bottom of your post, but I’ve seen some blogs position them above posts.

One caveat… DO NOT submit the same post to other blogs. Each submission must be unique. If you’re considering guest blogging, you’ll gain more insight by reading ProBlogger’s: How to be a Good Guest Blogger.

14) Obtain Effective Feedback

Before actually launching your blog (for that matter even while the blog is live) ask the people around you (other web developers, web designers, bloggers, copywriters, etc.) for feedback. Offer them a sneak peak asking them to provide constructive critisism and pinpoint areas you could improve before launching. Doing so will garner you respect and help build relationships before your blog has even launched.

When you ask people for help, even your blog readers, you’re imparting a sense of ownership to them, in turn that encourages them to help when you need it (and you will). As such they are more likely to refer your blog to others they thing may find it useful or enjoyable, and more likely to provide backlinks to your blog.

All of the above will provide you with a strong, successful launch if you take the time and put in the hard work to complete. Typically a blog launch takes me anywhere from one month to six months depending on the size and scope of the project.

The rewards are well worth the effort – Always!

I chose my Linux (Ubuntu) based blog, selecting the statistics for a full year (July 17, 2007 to July 17, 2008 – Since it I didn’t start promoting it until July) and was rather surprised by a couple things. I assumed that Google would still be the prime traffic source. I also assumed that all the links from other (non-blog, “traditional” sites) sites would rank high. I was surprised in both cases. I personally found it interesting to note that you get a good statistical perspective on a day-to-day basis, but you’ll get a more accurate view if you stand back and look at the big picture over a longer time period. Here are the results below:

As you can see above, Social Media sites took the lead (just a tich ahead of Google). I also found it significant that inbound traffic from other blogs had a clear lead over inbound traffic from “traditional” (static) web sites. Equally surprising was how I saw that Google outperformed inbound search engine traffic by a massive lead.

The specific driving force within the Social Media (36.41% traffic), without question was StumbleUpon, which championed a massive lead of social media based traffic at 85.56%. Just look at the Social Media results breakdown below:

One thing I found interesting to note is some users of StumbleUpon shared some of the post links they saw in Reddit and Digg. So… while some posts that went viral, Digg and Reddit produced traffic spikes, they were only significant for a short time period. Instead, social media sites  (primarily StumbleUpon) saved those “traffic spiked” posts and subsequently that blog enjoyed long term, year round traffic.

What did I learn from our discussion and an examination of the blog statistics? Among several things, below are some of the points that were more predominant.

• There’s a lot of discussion about to benefits or lack thereof, with regards to using sites that can provide instant massive traffic volume (such as Digg). While sites such as Digg may provide short term spikes (for the average blog). Visitors to sites such can and will share your post link with others. As such, don’t discount the power of sites such as Digg. Short term effect, but a long term social effect.
• Google still loves me. Humour aside, SEO or the lack thereof can have a large effect on traffic form search engines – I think we know that. More to the point however, I noticed that the posts that are heavily shared on social sites have a much higher page rank than those which don’t, appearing higher in search results. It seems to me therefore, to continue providing quality content that is of value to the “community”.
• Continue to participate in blogging and other dynamic platforms. Convert the remainder of my old-fashioned static site to dynamic packages (blogging, CMS, etc.)  Why? When you post a blog, it pings site update services (such as pingomatic). Static (“traditional”) sites don’t do that. Each time a post is published RSS readers obtain the updates, automatically. These are things that help drive repeat visits (subscribers). Many of which might be adding your posts to various social sites.

While I’m fairly sure many blog sites may follow the general pattern I’ve seen with my traffic sources. I don’t think they will all follow the pattern established in the social media site rankings. This is mainly an issue of blog character, readership, blogsphere area and so forth. Not all blogs are in the same neighbourhood and have the same types of readers. For example a blog that focuses on internet marketing, I would assume might have more traffic from Sphinn, for example.

All too often, I find business owners (and site owners) oblivious to the power that dynamic sites can bring them, and how they are better able to make use of social media sites. In other cases, business owners simply don’t believe what they are being told as they appear not to have a good grasp of how the Internet really works and how their potential market really uses it.  My previous post “Why Every Business Can Benefit Form a Blog” for example, shows that a UK survey indicates “…66% of businesses believe that blogs are becoming more influential as an information source…” While this number is UK based, I assume it may be similar in other geographic regions and , more importantly, will to grow!

It will be interesting to see how the trends change over time. Perhaps one of the upcomming issues that search engines will need to address even further than they are now, is the inherent appeal of sites (such as blogs) that are better equipped to address the needs of site visitors. What new tools will be available to blogs desiring visibility in a growing webscape? As the video in my prior post (link at the top) suggested, we’ll need to rethink ourselves.

• Top 100 of the Best (Useful) OpenSource Applications.
• Why I Quit Windows and Switched to Linux.
• Why is Linux Faster than Windows?

I enjoyed the traffic those posts provided (and still provide to this day) as they helped my blog grow. I think they were popular because they provided a valuable resource as well as elicited fair bit of discussion, as some of the posts and resulting comments were very outspoken and opinionated. One of the above posts (Why I Quit Windows and Switched to Linux) was a very personal story describing some of my career experiences and how they effected my professional life and thoughts.

Imagine my surprise when I found another blog with the identical content on it. So much so, that the author who scraped my content claimed it as his own! At that time I had more than enough technical knowledge to initiate actions that would catch-out scrapers, but I’d not yet fully experienced some of the nitty-gritty administrative aspects such as contacting the hosting providers, filing DMCA notices et al.

For that matter, why would this be an important issue? Why should bloggers (or any web site owner for that matter) take actions to mitigate such issues? Well a few good reasons immediately come to mind:

1. It’s annoying. A blogger puts a fair bit of work into his or her post, only to find it copied elsewhere and used to earn revenue (usually via advertising) for the content thief.



2. It can impact your web hosting cost if you have a busy site. Remember, most hosting accounts have a monthly bandwidth allowance. Exceed the monthly bandwidth and the blog owner incurs extra cost. But wait!… How did scrapers cause my cost to increase? Simply put, they copied the text content onto their blogs and linked the images (in that content) from my blog. This resulted in the text being duplicated on their site and the images being stored on my hosting account. When a web browser viewed the content on their page, it was pulling the images (for that content) from my hosting account, for which I had to pay the bandwidth.



3. It can reduce your Google (SEO) ranking. How does that happen? When Google finds content, it tries to determine if the content is original (not copied from another site) and proceeds to provide it with page ranking data. It is conceivable that content can be copied and receive a page rank (and inclusion in Google search results), without the original blog article being yet found by Google. If it get’s found by Google later, how can you ensure that your original becomes noted as the original post? Don’t misunderstand me, search engines like Google do try to remove duplicate content, but it becomes difficult when your original content becomes listed as the duplicate.

One important issue I realized is that you cannot be overly emotional about such actions. When trying to fix such issues, you need to work with various parties such as Google DMCA, Hosting Providers, etc. Sending them flippant or angry letters is not going to get you the help you need. Remember, large organizations and businesses deal with such issues daily and they are not impressed with theatrics. You need to have these people on your side. Remaining calm, assertive and professional goes a long way to getting support (as does courtesy).

Let’s define a couple things before we move on…

• A scraper is someone who copies your content and places it on another site, without your permission. In essence this is theft of your intellectual property.
• A hotlinker is someone who displays your images on another site, and uses the coding on their page is such a way so as to pull the image that is stored on your server (hosting account), for display on another page. As I mentioned earlier, this is tantamount to bandwidth theft.

I’m often asked how I discover that my content has been scraped or hotlinked. There are several tools that when used on a regular basis, can help you reduce the amount of content thieves.

Review your web statistics.

All good hosting accounts have built in web statistics. In my opinion AWStats ranks highly. AWStats has a feature that displays “Links from an external page (other web sites except search engines)”

The display will show you the URL of the page linking to you as well as the number of hits to your page. It will also tell you how many page loads (of your pages) that URL initiates. For example if another site URL causes 10 hits on my site, then there should also be 10 page loads. If not something’s up. Take a look at the image below (clicking on the image will show you the large version).

AWStats hotlinker example

What you’re seeing in the edited image above, is that another site has displayed something (from my site) 1645 times but never actually sent a visitor to my site. In other words my content (an image in this case) was shown on another site, but no page visits (referals) were ever recorded coming from that site. I visited the URL in question, and sure enough, the site was hotlinking to one of my images.

Use online services.

One service I’ve experimented with is Copyscape. They are a site that provides a service which scans other web sites, providing you with the URL of copied content. In my case I found scraped content (stolen from my other blog) during the writing of this very post. That is… one of my original blog posts, was found via Copyscape to be duplicated verbatum on another web site in another country. They were using it to sell their advertising space and also had hot linked to all my images. While they did include a link to my original post and did list my URL as the “Original link”, they did so without permission and were using my complete work for their own profit.

A Google search will provide you with a plethora of other sites that provide such services, I’m only mentioning Copyscape as one good example. To further take advantage of such tools, its most advantageous to include a very unique sentence in any given post and search for it in Google (that’s often a very quick method to catch sites that copy your valuable content).

Once you’ve been able to isolate a specific URL that has hotlinked and/or scraped content, what can you do about it?

Here’s how the process should work:

1. Find and isolate a specific URL that is using your content.
2. Evaluate the need to take action. Are they still sending you traffic or referrals in some fashion? The bottom line question you could ask yourself is “Does their copied content really do my blog enough harm that I have no option but to follow through?” If you’ve answered yes, action is the next step.
3. Take action.

But wait! What actions are there? Can I really protect myself from a scraper or hotlinker in another country?

Before moving into they types of actions (tools) you can use to protect your content, it’s important to keep one salient point in mind:

If you have some content that is so important, private or valuable, etc. and you do not want other people to copy it, then DO NOT POST IT ON THE INTERNET. If you post something of excessive value on the Internet, no measure of copyright protection is going to prevent an individual from accessing it and copying it. But (there’s always a “but”), there are ways you can impede the profitability and earning power of copied content and in some cases injecting your own revenue generating systems into content copied from your site.

So what kinds of actions can we take?

Make sure you provide appropriate copyright notifications within every page of your blog. If you intend to permit your content to be shared, Creative Commons provides a great copyright tool wherein you can specify how your content is shared. You’ll find that tool at Creative Commons. You can select your jurisdiction in a drop down menu on the upper right side of the home page.

Is the copied content being served by Google Adsense? If so, you can issue an infringement notice at Digital Millennium Copyright Act – Google AdSense. I’ve found the best method is to fax the notice to the number they provide. In practice, I’ve found that it takes a few days for this to work through their system. However, they have always acted professionally, responsible and have indeed taken action.

As a side note: If you are looking for notification templates you can use, take a look at Copyright Law and SEO Part 3 (Sample DMCA Notifications, in HTML and MS Word Format), found on the McAnerin International web site.

Personally, I’ve experienced an excessive number of blogs copying content to Blogger.com based blogs. If you review their Blogger Content Policy, you’ll also find that notifications are to be sent to Google at Digital Millennium Copyright Act – Blogger. Again, I’ve found the response to be incredibly fast and Blogger.com is very quick (in my experience) to remove the violating content.

Many scrapers capture and repost your content by tapping into the RSS feed of your blog.

Side note: If you’re not very familiar with RSS feeds, Commoncraft has a great video, RSS in Plain English.

The fact that they are simply capturing and re-posting your RSS feeds may be indicative of an automated system (with little human intervention), where the scraper may not necessarily read your copied content. If that’s the case, you could try embedding a link back to your blog. There’s a great WordPress plugin that will automatically do just that: RSS Footer. (One helpful thing is the RSS Link Tagger for Google Analytics, which helps with the tracking of non-adwords advertising campaigns. If you log into Google Analytics and go to your created campaign and view the traffic sources information you’ll garner more information).

Try earning a bit of revenue from your stolen feed content. If you’re a Google Adsense publisher, try the “AdSense for Feeds” option within your “Adsense Setup”. Additionally, the RSS Footer plugin above, I think can also be used to embed advertising content from any other affiliates or advertisers you subscribe to.

For those who are a little stronger at coding issues, you may want to try out a great little WordPress plugin called “From RSS?“, where, as their site says: “…do something extra for your RSS subscribers, you might want to give them a little bit of extra content, or simply leave out some annoying footer about subscribing to the RSS feed. This plugin facilitates that…”

You can of course Report a Spam Result to Google which they use to help “…maintain the quality of Google search results.”

Finally another tactic that’s available is to report the site to the hosting company. There must be a ton of resources to help isolate who is the ultimate network provider (for the server that hosts the offending web site), of which I primarily use two:

• Whois lookup and Domain name search and
• Netcraft’s Search Web by Domain.

Using the domaintools.com site, I can see which DNS servers are managing the domain (ostensibly indicating who’s hosting it). And with Netcraft’s tools, I can determine who owns the IP address block that the website and server is one, thereby opening another venue of recourse.

In conclusion, I’d like to remind everyone of on salient issue. There may always be hotlinkers and scrapers of our content. I don’t think anyone can stop all of them, as doing so would in all likelihood prevent legitimate visitors from viewing your content, instead the primary objective of this post was simply to impart the concept of DETERENCE, so as to reduce such activities.

I’m taking a couple months reprieve from the seminar track as I’ve a fair bit of work to catch up on. Doing so also presents me with the time to develop my seminar track for the next year “Blogging to Grow Your Business”. While developing the content (and bouncing ideas off some of my seminar regulars) on of them challenged a chapter I working on. In particular was the issue that the success of a blog (for that matter a web site too), was NOT incumbent solely on quality, in-demand content. Several others also voiced similar issues, and it occurred to me that we’re comparing apples and oranges.

Most would agree that in the most basic terms we can appreciate that search engines find quality content attractive, thereby directing more traffic to the page containing such content. That may have been a more realistic perception for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) but certainly not in today’s Social Web! Your online presence very much follows the general rules within the tangible world. Think about it… When I meet a prospective client in a brick & mortar environment, I need to be just as personable and professional as I am in my online blogging and web development environment.

The value and importance of networking does not end when we include online solutions (such as blogs) to grow our businesses. It’s the networking we do that in part that helps to ensure our blogs success. You could have all the content in the world, but are you really going to grow traffic if nobody knows about it?

Is it realistic to expect your sole source of traffic to be search engines? Of course not! The days of “Build it and they will come”, are long gone.

Needless to say, there were a flurry of email messages, so much so that I thought I’d post some answers.

First, lets break the issues down to the “features” and “benefits” issue. One of my mantras has always been:

“Benefits Sell, Features Don’t“

Think about it for a moment, all blogs have content -That’s a feature!

A blog that shows you how to save money or save time (for example), and thereby reach more people – Those are Benefits!

Which brings to mind the salient question (I think) all business owners should be asking themselves:

“What benefits can a blog provide my business?”

or

“If content is simply a feature and not the primary element of blog success, what’s in it for me?”

Subsequently this leads to some of the immediate questions that arose in our discussions, questions that I strongly feel are of the most basic surface benefits and do not really grasp the deeper concepts (which I’ll raise towards the end of this post).

• Where do I get traffic (readers)?
• Where do I get inbound links?
• How do I become visible? and so on…

It’s important for any business owner contemplating a blog to remember some of the basic aspects of business (and blogging) promotion:

• Design/Branding.
• Titles/Content.
• Interaction/Personality.
• SEO/Structure.
• Promotion/Marketing.

An aesthetically pleasing blog environment is one “surface” cornerstone. You could call it your packaging or “branding”. Your branding broadcasts a lot about you and your business. Blog branding directly reflects your business. If it looks horrible, that’s the message your sending to readers.

Titles are critical. Newspapers are masters at this. Think about it, when you look at a book, magazine or newspaper, the title is probably one of the first things you read. If the title captures interest, then readers will dig deeper into your content. Titles should try to include a call to action.

Interaction has always been a successful strategy. Using a blog to educate, inform, guide, demonstrate and so forth… is much the way successful business owners promote their operations. The same holds true in the virtual environment. Interaction shows that somebody is there to serve your clients.

SEO, if search engines know where your content is, what your most important content is and how to access it, this (among other SEO facets) goes a long way to helping search engine users (remember the focus should be on the people) find your most valuable content. The easier your blog is to navigate, the more likely readers can find the content they are looking for.

Promotion and marketing have always been important. Every business that has a blog is able to join the crowd. But, how do you get noticed in a crowd? You don’t. It’s important to bring to fruition the most important aspects that make your blog stand out and get noticed. Nobody is going to give you leadership, you have to earn it.

As I suggested, these are (in my opinion) some of the most common questions, the answers of which don’t really address the deeper aspects. Aspects that show us that it’s no longer content that’s the key to success, but rather a related web of elements.

In my experience, there are four intangible elements that contribute enormously to a blogs success. And arguably may be considered some of the most important elements!

1. Luck/Karma.
2. Charisma/Leadership.
3. Confidence/Trust.
4. Professionalism/Genuine.

Luck/Karma.

I kid you not! My other blog had several posts go viral. In one case (shortly after I launched the blog) it was sheer luck that a reader posted the link on Digg and that the Digg community moved the post to the front page. That truly was luck. (Update: I’ll blog about this later, but another aspect of good luck was during the launch of this blog, I lost all my content – But Google cache and Live cache returned copies to me).

But can we control luck? Can we make it work to our advantage? I think we can. While this could easily be a separate discussion altogether, I’d still suggest that one way to illicit good luck is to communicate effectively. Tell everyone what you need, plan your goals towards your desires, be optimistic and relax, doing so will allow you to approach any setbacks with a positive attitude. In turn this will help you to turn lemons into lemonade (as your mentality will already be in a positive zone).

Charisma/Leadership.

Participate in your community. Be the mover and shaker. Earn leadership through your insight and wisdom. Don’t micro-manage, rather stand back and look at the whole picture. Connect the people around you into a community and empower their participation. Your blog can be among the best tools to this end.

Confidence/Trust.

When you blog about a topic, mean what you say and follow through. Be genuine in your relations with readers. Always be professional. If you’re writing a controversial post, do so in a positive fashion, comments written with negative or combative language, do not build confidence in you or trust in your blog. Invite guests to contribute content to your blog, doing so goes a long way to building trust and ensuring confidence.

Professionalism/Genuine.

Impart your knowledge in a positive manner. It’s not what you know, but how you express it that helps build your blog success. I am by no stretch of the imagination an expert in online business promotion, network engineering, web development/coding or even Linux blogging. But I’ve had years of training and/or experience in these areas. In particular, my linux blog has taught me that some of the most valuable content on occasion comes from my readers!

Finally, I’d like to clarify again, I’m not suggesting that the value of content has fallen by the way side. Rather that more blogs are savvy to the issue of quality content. Therefore an area that can further a blog’s success is to focus on empowering the four intangeable elements to your fullest potential. Doing so, in my opinion, is one step towards becomming bloggersavvy!