About Make My Blog Successful
Have you ever wished for an experienced guide to this topsy-turvy, constantly changing thing we call the World Wide Web?
Someone who has “been there, done that” and then “bought the T-shirt factory” too boot?
I tell my clients that “I’m covered with scars from the 3rd degree burns of my experimentation. I got burned so you don’t have to.”
If you’re using an HTML style web site and doing “everything” right and are still frustrated with the results…. allow me to share my story.
I’d like to say that I was a blog pioneer, but I wasn’t. In December of 1994, I purchased a home computer and within 8 weeks had taught myself HTML, the “language” of the web. I began posting pages and it wasn’t long before foreword thinking business owners in the community heard that I could make web pages and before you knew it, my hobby became my “business”. (A shift I would later refer to as a “perfectly enjoyable hobby gone horribly awry!”)
So while I can honestly say that I was a “web pioneer” I wish I could say that I “saw” the explosive growth of blogging coming and ran to the front of that parade. After all, Weblogs first appeared on the scene back in 2000.
I didn’t.
I was literally FORCED into my own blogging experience when I hired a coach to help me “remove the blocks” and get my first book published. Because of his vision, I moved beyond my comfort zone and into the new age of Web 2.0.
I published my first book, Beyond the Niche: Essential Tools You Need to Create Marketing Messages that Deliver Results in December 2006. Unfortunately, I began writing the book more than a year earlier in March 2005. By March 2006, I began to recognize that the book was NEVER going to happen if I didn’t clear some “emotional clutter” that kept getting in my way.
I chose to hire a long time coaching client to get me moving forward on my book project. During one of our sessions, he suggested that I launch a blog to help build “buzz” for the book.
My response: “UGH! Blogs are for people who DO NOT KNOW how to code in HTML!”
Was that a pompous and arrogant response? Yes, but unfortunately I still see evidence of that thinking in other “web pioneers” like myself.
My protests were in vain. He was relentless (that’s what a coach is supposed to do) and wouldn’t let me off the hook. Despite the fact that I had a perfectly good HTML web site waiting to promote my book (Find My Niche.com), I followed my coach’s advice (for which I was paying). I purchased a domain name and launched Beyond Niche Marketing to promote my book about 6 months before it was published.
During this time, I continued to write articles and attempt to build incoming links to the HTML web site to prepare it for my book’s publication. Meanwhile, I began posting blog entries on my blog. It’s important for you to know that, at the time, I didn’t “believe” in blogs. I was pretty sure that most of the “hype” around them was, well…. just that… hype. So, I spent the next few months giving less than equal attention to my blog and my HTML web site. I focused most of my energy on building links and writing keyword dense articles for the HTML web site and spent relatively less time on my blog.
It took my new blog 9 months to emerge from the Google Sandbox, which fortunately just happened to be just shortly after my book was published. When it emerged, I was amazed to see that my blog was ranked #9 in Google for the keyword term “niche marketing guru”. WOW! That got my attention!
I began spending more time on my blog than I did on my HTML site.
Then, approximately 5 months after the blog was included in Google’s index, I analyzed the log files for the HTML site and the blog site. I was STUNNED at what I saw. The blog site was getting 10X+ the number of unique visitors the HTML site got.
VISITORS!!! Not hits… UNIQUE VISITORS!
Not only did I get MORE visitors….those visitors also tend to return time and time again. Maybe there was some truth behind the “blog hype” after all!
So I began doing some analysis. Here are a few of the reasons the blog site is SO much more popular than the HTML site:
- It’s so easy to add a post (a.k.a. FRESH CONTENT) that I do it more often there than I do the HTML site.
Even though I was spending a lot less TIME on the blog, the time I was spending was MUCH more productive.
It might take me 2 hours to write an article, edit it and then add it to the HTML site. Meanwhile, I could create 6 blog posts in that same period of time. - More content = more opportunities to appear in searches
Again, if it takes 2 hours to add a page to an HTML site but only 20 minutes to add an article to my blog… guess which one will grow faster. - Blogs make it easy to trade links with other blog site owners (increasing PR and authority of the site).
One thing I noticed IMMEDIATELY with the blog is it notified me when others were linking to my site. I could return the favor. Later, when I converted my main business web site to a blog, I felt guilty seeing all the incoming links to it that I hadn’t known or acknowledged! - The plug ins available through Word Press make the site very attractive to the search engines.
The ability to automatically generate an XML site map is a definite PLUS for the blog site! Other plug ins also help to increase the Search Engine friendliness of a blog!
The thing is, looking back the development/promotion of HTML site, I worked HARD to get the PR up to 3. HARD! Meanwhile, the rise of the blog site to a PR 4 was positively EFFORTLESS in comparison.
Thus my “conversion” from an HTML web developer to a blog FANATIC was complete.
J. Paul Getty once said, “In times of rapid change, experience could be your worst enemy.”
This is especially true when it comes to the wild and wonderful world wide web!
I’ve tried carrying my “message” about blogs to other web developers with whom I’ve worked and have been met with overwhelming resistance. This is probably why the J. Paul Getty quote caught my eye the other day. I too was resistant to change…. and in this case, my extensive experience was in a position to be my worst enemy to the promotion of my book. However, once again, I ventured out to blaze a fresh new trail and now I’m encouraging you to learn from my mistakes.
