Welcome to the May 10, 2010 edition of The Killfive Carnival for Writers. Being the inaugural edition, it’s a little slim. Please feel free to submit a blog post for next week’s carnival!

Blogging

Axel presents Amazing Blogging Skills posted at axel g.

Alex gives you ten tips to become a better blogger.

Madeleine Begun Kane presents Dear Newbie posted at Mad Kane’s Humor Blog

Madeleine invites you to, “write some verse about blogging. When you’ve posted your poem(s), please return here and add a direct link to your themed poetry, using Mr. Linky. There’s no rush, by the way, because you have until July 18th to post it.”

SEO

Case Ernsting presents The White-Hat Search Engine Optimizers Guide to Article Marketing posted at MetaSpring Blog.

Case explains, “Article Marketing is an important part of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as it drives links to your blog and helps build domain authority. As tempting as it is to implement black hat tactics in this practice, make sure you put on your white hat and avoid scams.”

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of The Killfive Carnival for Writers using ourcarnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on ourblog carnival index page.

Photo credit: beglib http://mrg.bz/j8VdQE

Rose suggests using the following sites:

articledashboard.com
isnare.com
articleblast.com
boazepublishing.biz
articlecity.com
goarticles.com

Has anyone else used this strategy and has it worked for you? Do other readers see those sites as tripe too? Is this more of a link building strategy than a way to attract direct readership?

Tells us what you think!

Write Content Before You Launch

A site that has ample content before it launches will have faster Internet marketing success than a site that builds content over time. Understand that content is right up there with keyword research, site design and social marketing. Ideally, you should have at least a month’s worth of content ready and available. You can launch with four or five posts, but you should have more in the pipeline to keep things moving.

You also need to create content for each page on your site. Go through your site map and create 200 words of text for each page. This will give your designers copy to work with that makes sense instead of the standard “res ipsa loquitor” the site template gives you.

Outsourcing

While you are the most qualified to write content for your site, you can always outsource to ghostwriters and tweak the content to your voice. It is much quicker to spend five minutes adjusting an established piece than to write from scratch. Check freelance job boards like Guru and Elance to find qualified copywriters and ghostwriters to help you out. Or you could just hire me. It’s less expensive than you think.

If you just can’t stand to put your baby in the hands of an outsourced writer, you must set aside one hour of every day with the door closed, phone off and email program closed. Once you get going, you should be able to produce 2-3 pieces of content for your site. When you develop enough content, you can spend some of those days commenting on other related blogs.

If you are a good webmaster (and I know that you are), you want to keep producing more of the content your readers want. You can keep giving them what they want by analyzing the statistics of your current content and writing to the keywords that brought traffic in the first place. Not only does this help you keep readers engaged, it also makes you more findable.

Step One – Tracking

Before you can find anything out, you need analytics tools. For analytics to work, you need to have tracking code installed on your site. Analytics will let you see which keywords brought traffic in and which ones made them hang around a while.

I’ll assume you are using Google Analytics like just about everyone else. If not, go get it installed on your blog and continue what you were doing for at least four weeks before continuing to the next step. You need the tracking code installed and running at least four weeks before the data will be of any use to you.

Step Two – Analyze

Your next step is to run a report called “Top Content” to find out, um… well, what your top content is. Run the report for a block of time, such as 30 days or 90 days. The report will spit a list of links at you showing your most popular pages. Click on each link and get the keywords that drove traffic by going to the drop down menu, clicking “Analyze” and then “Entrance Keywords.”

Step Three – Research

Armed with traffic-driving keyword phrases or keywords, do some research on those keywords to find other angles or new information you can provide to your readers. Put together a piece that references the previously popular article on the topic.

You should also make your existing top pages easier to find by inserting the popular keywords into the popular page titles. Edit the first paragraph of each popular page to include the keyword or keyword phrase. Don’t forget to have viral-friendly tools on your pages like “retweet” buttons or other sharing services.

Step Four – Monitor

Continue to monitor the optimized existing pages and write to related topics. When you see rising numbers, you know you did the job right. After four weeks, start the whole process over again for the new content you have created. See if you can extend your wealth of related content further to draw more traffic and provide more resources for your readers.

Analyzing website performance has a big learning curve. Most of us quickly grasp the importance of unique, frequently updated material, attractive headlines and interacting with users. One aspect of web performance that can be confusing is bounce rates. Let’s take a look at bounce rages and why they are important.

What is a Bounce Rate?

Any “rate” is by definition a percentage. “Bounce rate” represents the percentage of visitors who arrive at your landing page, then leave without interacting or clicking on another page within your site. You can find bounce rates through your analytics tool. Most web masters use Google Analytics for this.

The Google definition of a bounce rate is “the percentage of single-page visits (i.e. visits in which the person left your site from the entrance page). Bounce rate is a measure of visit quality and a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance (landing) pages aren’t relevant to your visitors. You can minimize Bounce Rates by tailoring landing pages to each keyword and ad that you run. Landing pages should provide the information and services that were promised in the ad copy.”

Why You Should Fix Bounce Rates

So a low bounce rate means you are attracting visitors who are looking for what you have to offer. Put yourself in the place of a visitor who finds what they were looking for on the first try. How much more likely is that person to recommend your site to others? It seems logical that a low bounce rate will help spread the word about your site and that you are doing a good job with inbound marketing. If your bounce rate is over 60%, something is wrong with the way you are attracting visitors.

How to Reduce Bounce Rates

The main aspects of your site that must be addressed to reduce bounce rates include page titles, engaging graphics, loading time and site navigation. In order to optimize these aspects you also need to understand testing.

Page Titles

The page title is the phrase shown in the tab of your browser when you visit a page. Because most of us are on WordPress, I’ll use this program as an example. Depending on the template you use, the page title may show the title of your blog and then list the name of the post, or it can list the post name first. You will want your carefully crafted post title to be used by the search engine, so edit your template to show the post title first.

To do this, you must edit the header.php file. For newbies, I recommend copying and pasting your header.php file to a text document before editing so you can always revert to the old file if you mess it up too badly. Here’s what it looks like:

<title><?php bloginfo('name'); ?> <?php if 	
( is_single() ) { ?> » Blog Archive <?php } ?> 	
<?php wp_title(); ?></title>	

Just switch it around to look like this:

<title><?php wp_title(' '); ?><?php if	
(wp_title(' ', false)) { echo '--'; } ?><?	
php bloginfo('name'); ?></title>

Making Headlines

There’s no point to editing your page title unless your headline makes visitors want to click on the title and then continue reading your post. Copyblogger does a better job of educating about headlines than I ever will, so I’ll just refer you to the following articles:

How to Write Magnetic Headlines
13 Emotion-Based Headlines That Work
Writing Headlines That Get Results

Catching Attention

It may not seem obvious to you when you are browsing a website, but a good photo catches attention. Bounce rates drop significantly when photos, videos and screen shots are used. You can get images free at several sites. Read this post for more info.

Reduce Loading Time

If your page takes too long to load, few visitors will stick around to wait. You should also know that Google tests your page load time too when determining what to show in search results. If you are serious about your website, make sure you get a dedicated IP so that your page is not sharing resources with others, slowing it down. You should also examine the number of elements on the page that might be causing problems for you.

This site will really open your eyes as to how the graphics, widgets and other page elements are slowing down load times! Don’t give too much attention to the times listed, since it talks about every single element loaded on the page. Most users can get to where they are going before the page is fully loaded. According to the report, by reducing page elements, I could increase my time by 9.6 seconds. I’ll be working on that later today!

Improved Navigation

It is important to take a step back from your site navigation and put yourself in the position of a new user. For instance, it seemed obvious to me that the “job hunting” link would lead to links for new telecommute writing job listings: not so much to other visitors. That is why I am adding a link in a prominent spot for those coming to find job postings, since that is my number one visitor attraction.

Once you begin tweaking your site for bounce rates, you’ll find more visitors come, stay and enjoy. This may mean a dramatic improvement in subscribers, advertising revenue and many other little ways you monetize your site.

If you do not use images in your writing, you can ignore this. Being a writer, I miss some obvious SEO stuff sometimes. This one came across my desk today from Website Magazine. This is why I love the publication so much. They don’t assume you know anything. The mix of articles works for advanced administrators and beginners…but I digress.

The point is, I had no idea I could improve my SERP (Search Engine Results Placement) by using “alt” and “title” tags on images. This helps me at places like Xomba where I post twice a month and must add an image. Some other sites like Bukisa will let you do this as well. I guess what you don’t know can hurt you.

You should use only the “alt” tag if your photo does not link to any other page. When the photo links to another page, you can use “alt” and “title”. This way, you can get another search phrase or two into the article. This is great when you are unsure of the best keywords and want to use a few related keywords or long-tail keyword phrases.

Here is an example of how to do it:

When you add a photo, WordPress gives you the option of adding a title, caption and description. This is the code it produces when you fill out the Title and Caption fields (Caption field also adds alt text automatically):

[caption id="attachment_641" align="alignleft"
 width="225" caption="alt text"]
<img src="http://www.killfive.com/wp-content/
uploads/2009/09/example-photo-225x300.jpg"alt=
"alt text" title="title text" width="225" height="300" 
class="size-medium wp-image-641" />[/caption]

If you don’t want a caption, just delete

 [caption id="attachment_641" align="alignleft"
& width="225" caption="alt text"] and [/caption]

If you are adding a photo elsewhere, you only need to add two tags to get the same effect without the “add image” application to help you. In that case, here is the standard code that just adds an image, without changing its size or other attributes:

<img src="http://location of image.com">

To change the size, do a little math to be sure you are scaling each attribute by the same rate and add the size tags like so:

<img src="http://location of image.com" 
height="height in pixels" width="width in pixels">

You can add other attributes as well to change the position or horizontal and vertical space around the images as well. For now, let’s keep to the most common and get back to the reason I’m writing in the first place, alt & text tags. Simply add them to the end of the code, just before the last “>” symbol. You only need a single space between each tag/command.

<img src="http://location of image.com" 
height="height in pixels" width="width in pixels"
alt="alt text" title="title text">

A Practical Lesson in the Importance of Keyword Research

If you want to earn up-front payments from Associated Content, it is vital that you do a little keyword research in advance. Here is a practical lesson I learned before I figured out how to use Google’s Keyword Research tool.

Topical Subject

With the coming of Mother’s Day, I knew that it would be good to write something related to mom. Because many people have rocky relationships with Mom, I decided to do a piece about the importance and benefits of forgiving your mother for her neglect or lack of mothering skills.

The Article

The article I wrote was called “How to Forgive Your Mother”. Initially, I received the following rejection:

Thank you for this submission. AC gets most of its traffic from search queries; while this content is unique, it does not qualify for a higher Upfront Payment offer because it does not match something a Web user would search for online.

Keyword Research

This happened before I knew how to research keywords at Google. I did come across a freelance project that asked for a document with the keyword, “childhood trauma”. If someone was willing to pay for an article with this keyword, it made sense that AC would probably pay me for it too. I changed the title to “Childhood Trauma and Forgiving Your Mother”. I dispersed the keyword “childhood trauma”; in three places in the article, including one title heading, then resubmitted the piece to AC.

Results

This time AC offered me an upfront payment of $2.86 with no problems for the same article, only using a better keyword. Not the max $4 you can get, but not bad. Now that I know about the Google Keyword Research tool, I can go on over research keywords. In searching “childhood trauma,” the most popular keywords in this niche are:

• neglect
• child neglect
• neglected
• neglect abuse
• nurturing
• child abuse neglect
• neglect and abuse
• child abuse and neglect
• neglected children
• neglecting
• childhood trauma

My selection of “childhood trauma” was not a bad choice, but I just stumbled onto it by chance. I probably would have done even better had I included “Neglect” in the title. I wanted to share this practical lesson in the importance of keyword research with you. The same content with essentially the same information will not be successful if you use the wrong words to attract readers.

Welcome to the new KillFive. Why the change you may ask? Well, there are a few things motivating me. You may recall the EcomXpo a week or two back. I learned so much there that I came to realize the mix of techniques on this blog made little sense.

Those looking to establish writing or blogging skills are not really into PTC or Affiliate Marketing. Because writing is such a big part of what I do, I decided to keep writing topics here and transition the others to new sites.

The PTC Project

Those who like to follow PTC are welcome to join me at www.ReliablePTC.com where you can continue to follow our PTC work, get updates and read scam alerts. I’ll be posting payouts as usual and keeping you up-to-date on this constantly changing market.

Adventures in Affiliate Marketing

Those following Adventures in Affiliate Marketing can join me at www.bzguide.com where I will be continuing with the project. I have chosen a URL and an affiliate management service but I am still working on gathering content for the site. As before, I will post every detail of what actions were taken to set up the affiliate program and what the results were.

New Telecommute Writing Job Listings

The rest of you should benefit from the new daily job postings. These are personally inspected by me before they are posted and I try to limit the selection to the best-paying gigs. On the “Extra Buck or Two” sites, the pay is not as good but the sites provide regular, dependable work. They are especially good for those just starting out with writing.

Some have expressed concerns that some of the “Extra Buck or Two” sites may be scams. I’d like to state right here that I personally use Conjecture, Textbroker, eCopywriters, Helium and Associated Content. I can attest to these being legitimate sites.

I have done some research and cannot find anything to suggest that there is anything sketchy about Examiner, Demand Studios or Suite101. I believe all of these are good and legitimate ways to earn from your writing. If you have any information to the contrary, please share it!

Hopefully, you will learn enough about blogging, freelance writing, SEO, job hunting and code to turn your lay-off into a new career, just as I did. Good luck and please send in your comments or suggestions.

Cleaning up the Net, Social Media and Affiliate Marketing Strategies

The EcomExpo covered topics pertinent to all types of internet marketers. Among the most interesting presentations were those covering the use of social media, ways FTC enforcement will change the Internet experience, and the best ways to earn honest, long-term Internet success. These are not the run of the mill articles being churned up by your Google alerts. They are well worth the time and effort of even the most experienced Internet professionals.

To access these presentations you will need to log in or register here. Presentations are found at the aptly named Presentation Pavilion; you will need IE, Safari or Firefox to view.

Cleaning up the Net

“Dirty Little Secrets: Taking The Lid Off Affiliate Marketing And Assessing What Creates Value” is a panel discussion with question and answer session featuring experts in Internet marketing like Jay Weintraub, Steven Richter, Todd Malicoat, and John Reel. This discussion will open your eyes to the reason Internet success strategies must be long term. It is no longer simply an academic or philosophical question if marketers should take the long view rather than trying to make a quick buck. Now the FTC is getting involved. Remember that blog entry about the FTC striking back at scams? Well, Operation Shortchange is also going after black hat marketers. These are the people that get you to buy their stuff through trickery and deception. The concern is that these rules can affect those of us trying to make a legitimate living online. It is important we all understand these principles to avoid being pitched out with the scum when the FTC starts cleaning up!

How to Make Social Media Work

All we can say is Wow, Wow, Wow!!! Joe Pulizzi did an incredible job with his presentation, “Social Media Steroids: Spread Your Content, Grow Your Business.” He provided specific tips and examples to help us understand why and how social media helps to increase searchablilty and therefore marketability for websites. He stresses that content is king and if you do not have good content, all the social marketing in the world will do you no good. Take the time to watch this presentation and you will be completely rethinking your website’s strategy (as we are now)!

Affiliate Shops

The exhibit that piqued our interest the most was the presentation, “Create Dynamic Shopping With Unique Content And Generate Organic Growth And Profit Every day,” by Jessie Jones, taught us how to use the site where you can easily create an Internet store with multiple affiliate accounts. The site creates a script you can place anywhere on your existing website. We are on a free trial with this company now as part of our Affiliate Marketing Adventures project. We will be researching other similar sites over the next 30 days to see if we put our money in the right pocket. Popshop was exceptionally easy to use. Here is the page we created when trying it out. We could not believe how easy it was to set up using Mozilla’s free website editor, Kompozer.

Other presentations that we found useful were:

Drive More, Cost-effective Transactions Using RSS-Powered E-commerce, by Rok Hrastnik
How Your Personality And Twitter Can Help You Increase Traffic And Sales In Under 30 Days, by Rohit Bhargava

We were a little disappointed by “Leveraging The Power Of Search And Merchandising For Personalized Landing Page Optimization” by Juan Ribero. It may well have been an excellent presentation, but there were sound and technical issues that made the presentation difficult to follow. It’s too bad, we were very interested in what Juan had to say.

We tried JetSpinner after reading a few forum posts that made it look encouraging. After joining, you simply fill out a quick page that allows the program to use a bot software to register you at hundreds of article directory sites. This allows you to spin articles and get them posted in hundreds of places, resulting in more backlinks for your site and higher search engine ranking.

Ease of Use

We loved the idea and gave it a try. The interface was a little confusing, but after watching the web tutorial, we were enlightened. Unfortunately, the link for this tutorial was only shown to us after filling out our information (which we of course had done incorrectly). So we went back and re-did the form.

Results

The day after signing up for JetSpinner, you will feel immensely popular. You will receive hundreds of emails from the sites that the software signed you up for. The problem is that you then have to go back and click the activation links for all of these accounts. While it is easier than doing all the work yourself, we found that many of the activation links did not work. After about 100 tries with the different emails, we decided it was not worth our effort. We are going to try another site.

The Final Word

We are not sure about JetSpinner. It did not work for us, but might work for you. We are going back to the drawing board on this one.