Business Blog Boost

I noticed a couple of weeks ago that when I clicked on a category the Ryboe Category Cloud Widget I was using on my travel blog that I was just being taken to the home page of the blog which wasn’t very useful to readers of my blog, when what they wanted was a list of posts in their chosen category. Instead of sorting this out there and then, I put it on a to-do list.

Now there may have been a simple way to rectify this problem with the Ryboe Category Cloud but I went for the easy option and this morning I finally got around to installing the Lee Kelleher Category Cloud plugin.  Within minutes I had a working clickable category cloud. I was able to do some basic customisation e.g. the font size and the minimum number of posts required for the category to appear in the cloud.

It’s really important to rectify problems like this as soon as possible.  It’s hard enough to attract readers to your business blog without annoying them by simple things not working as the readers first reaction may be to click away from your blog if the information they request doesn’t appear right away.

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I reviewed Blogrush a couple of days ago but here’s my update.

Blogrush have sent out 2 emails explaining that they recognise the problems with the service and are working towards rectifying these. In order to get rid of dodgy blogs they are going to manually review existing and new blogs. They are adding more security measures to stop abuses of the system to gain extra credits. They are looking at introducing more categories to increase relevancy.

Future features include a breakdown of activity by post and the option to auto optimise the posts with the highest click through rate. I think it will be really useful to see which titles/subjects are the most popular. You’ll soon be able to choose the colour of your widget so it fits in better with your blog design.

Blogrush stress that you must think carefully about your blog titles in order to increase click through rate. My click through rate is 0% at present so not exactly a stampede of readers?

I’d still recommend that you join Blogrush because it only takes a few minutes to register and it’s all automated after that, so you really have nothing to lose and a great potential gain.

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There’ s a new widget in the right hand margin of my travel blog with links to posts on other travel blogs. I hope that the Blogrush widget will introduce my readers to some other interesting travel blogs. It will also allow me to publicise my travel blog to more readers.

I think it appears to be a great way to get free marketing of your blog because your blog is being showcased to readers who are interested in blogs writing about your topic. There’s always the potential danger of encouraging your readers to click away from your blog. However if your blog contains informative, interesting and entertaining posts readers will come back to you. If readers do find other travel blogs that they like through my blog, it may make them view my blog as an even more useful resource.

If you have a blog it’s free and quick to register with Blogrush. There’s a short video which explains how the system works and as soon as you register, the code is produced and you just have to copy it into a widget. There are videos to help you install the widget if you’re not sure what to do.

Every time my blog is loaded with the widget displayed, I receive a credit for a link to one of my posts to be displayed on a widget on another travel blog. You also earn credits through blogs which have signed up to Blogrush by clicking the “add your blog posts free” link at the bottom of the widget ( a direct referral). You’d need a maths degree to fully understand the credit system but you still receive 1:1 credits for direct referral and a 2nd layer referral. You receive a reducing ratio up to the 10th layer. Blogrush will keep 10% of the headline spaces to sell these to make money from Blogrush.

I feel reassured when I read from the start how a company plans to make money from a free service. I think that if there is profit in it for them it makes them more focused on promotion and getting their systems running smoothly.

My main concern is the quality of the blogs which register. I don’t want to be displaying links to blogs of dubious quality. It is possible to block specific blogs and keywords from appearing in your widget. However it would be very time consuming to monitor carefully.

I’ve also added a widget to this blog but the links are looking slightly dodgy eg get rich quick schemes. I had to choose between either the Business or Marketing category and plumped for Business but I may change to Marketing to give it a try. I suspect that as the network grows more topics will be added to the list as I’d prefer a Business Blogging category.

When all is said and done there’s no point in your blog titles being displayed on other sites unless the link is clicked and the post read. You can increase the chances of this by having eyecatching blog titles.   Once a reader comes to your blog you want to impress them with your dazzling array of well written posts and the attractive layout and design of your blog.

I will be concentrating more of the number of visitors coming to my blog through Postrush rather than the number of impressions.  There’s no point in your title being displayed thousands of times if there are very few clicks through to your blog.

I suppose that the position of the Postrush widget is bound to imfluence the click through rate.  It really has to appear on the first page display in order for readers to notice it.

Please let me know how Blogrush is performing on your blog.

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Wouldn’t it be great if it were possible to write naturally flowing good quality content for your blog/site and be found by web browsers when they typed in a search term. Forget about keywords and trying to insert just the the right number in just the right position in your content.  Well it may happen with “Latent Semantic Indexing” (LSI) where search results are based on context and relevance instead of matching words and phrases.  Searches using keywords are only successful if the blog/site is rich in the appropriate keyword and the searcher types in the correctly spelled appropriate keyword. LSI relies on “natural language”  looking at the relationship between words and phrases in the content to measure the contextual value.

I think LSI would be wonderful for small businesses e.g. my travel business. If I wrote an in depth, well researched guide to a destination in Europe, I’d have a fair chance of coming up high in a search. At present a pretty sketchy basic guide to the same destination, doctored by a Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) expert and the on the blog/site of a large travel company who are biding on the keywords for that destination has a much better chance of being found by a prospective traveller carrying out a search.  Whereas with LSI, I could be rewarded for providing a high quality destination guide and the searcher would be able to easily find my superior guide. So it would be a win-win situation for the hardworking small business and the traveller.

Well, I can dream.  I have a suspicion that the techie experts will be able to find various methods of manipulating LSI.

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I’m wondering if an additional layer of grease is added as you approach the 100,00 mark on the Technorati rankings pole? My travel blog has been sitting just outside the 100,ooo Technorati blog rankings for some time. Today I’ve reached the highest ever Technorati ranking of 101,381. It seems that the higher that you climb in the rankings, the harder it is to move up. In early May my travel blog was siting at around 257,00 with 19 links, another one link took me up 10,000 to a ranking of 247,000. Now when I get another link it only counts for an increase of around 2,000.

Now I don’t think that one should be obsessive about rankings. I try to concentrate on keeping writing quality content for my travel blog. It’s just that every time you log in to a Wordpress blog, the Technorati links come up in the right hand margin, so you do end up seeing them a lot.

I have to say I think I’ve done well to achieve this ranking in under a year. I started my travel blog in late October in 2006. Hopefully the blog will be in the top 100,000 by it’s first birthday. However no room for complacency, I must keep up with the blog slog.

What’s been your experience of climbing the rankings?

Update 14/9/07

Made it into the top 100,000 with 60 links now sitting around 95,000.

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