I spent quite a few hours submitting this blog to the following blog directories and websites. Here’s the list so far:
StumbleUpon.com
Signed up and became a member, then gave my own site a review. Should I do more?
Zimbio.com
This one looks interesting, will have to go back and look further into later.
Zmeta.net
There was no indication that anything really happened after pressing submit.
Randomwebsite.com
This is a fun website to try out, but it’s a manual link approval so I am not sure anything will ever happen. I hope so.
Blogcatalog.com
Signed up, submitted and received approval. Placed a reciprocal link for them on this blog. I will change this to a small blogcatalog image another day.
Google Blog Search
Why didn’t I do this first?
Wilsdomain.com
I did this one last evening…don’t remember anything worth speaking of.
DMEGs.com
Blog-Directory.org
BlogRankings.com
Submitted these ones yesterday as well….not listed yet…gave them all reciprocal links. (Update 2009/01/15) Removed the link to blog-directory.org…just realized that it has updated any blogs for a long long time and the directory content is full of sites that I do not want to be included in.
BlogHints.com
BlogHub.com
These two wasted alot of my time and I still didn’t get my submission complete. I’ll give them another chance on another day.
As a blog owner, you should know which search engines are used the most so you can decide how much time and worry to spend on each one. According to the table below (plucked from Hitwise.com), Google is way ahead of all the others but is less than 3/4 of the total.
Looking at these stats, I would place Google as first priority, Yahoo as second priority, then I would lump MSN and Ask.com with other sites not listed here such as Metacrawler, Webcrawler, Dogpile and IxQuick. The reality is that if you please Google and Yahoo….sooner or later the other search engines will list your website anyways.
Well that was quick, after only a few hours of starting this website, Google has taken a snapshot of our homepage and indexed it. This is a good start. The search term “online marketing diary” shows us ranking #4. That’s all fine except that it would be much better to be #4 for “online marketing” as that is a much more popular search term.
If you are wondering how I know that "online marketing" is more popular than “online marketing dairy”, the tool I used is from Google called Google Insights.
Google Insights shows comparisons on the popularity of search terms. The search term “online marketing diary” does not even show up in their database but “online marketing” certainly does.
While on Google Insights I noticed that the search term “internet marketing” was actually more popular than “online marketing” so I am going to rename the blog description (again!) to include these words….somehow. I will leave “online marketing” in the title however.
This is exciting, isn’t it!!
Strong time management is a skill that will often be the difference between success or failure. Proper time management provides you with the opportunity to create a schedule that works for you, not for others. It gives you more time, reduces stress, provides motivation and helps prevent avoidance.
I keep things simple and use Excel to track my time spent on all my projects. You may think that keeping a time log is not worth your effort if you are not being paid by the hour but trust me on this one…..keeping a log will help you in one way or another sooner or later. Here is what I use for time tracking.
Download Excel / Zip file or pdf file
Although very basic, it really works well. Here is an example of an excel scheduler that I use. Again, very simple and doesn’t cause alot of wasted time playing with software.
Download Excel / Zip file or pdf file
An objective of most bloggers is to attract visitors and then to monetize the stream of visitors into an income. Setting and managing realistic goals or milestones are very important. Expecting unrealistic results will cause disappointment and end in another deadbeat blog. Even if you do have realistic expectations it is useful to measure the success of your project with a Measure of Performance (MOP) tracker. We have developed a simple, handy excel spreadsheet that can help with this.
Download Excel / Zip file or pdf file
In large businesses, the most well managed projects are the ones that are measured and evaluated most often. For most global competitors, measuring or tracking once a month is not good enough these days….measuring daily is more common…and in some cases… hourly. In my opinion a startup blog that measures weekly or monthly makes the most sense. The file I made is based on monthly results, as our blog grows we may one day change it to weekly.
Changing the standard Wordpress theme is very easy to do. There are many websites that offer a variety of themes for free. Here are the basics steps to change your theme;
Choose and download a theme - Save this file somewhere on your computer such as your desktop.
Unzip the files - Can be dragged and dropped onto your desktop as well.
Upload files - FTP the complete folder to your wp-content/themes directory. If you go back into your blog administration area, click on Appearance to see the themes you added and select whatever one you choose.
The nice feature of Wordpress 2.7 is that you can quickly and easily change the theme at any time. Note that any modified files will need to be manually updated such as footer.php or sidebar.php files with tracking or advertising code inside it.
Tip: Choose a theme before adding tracking or advertising code!
In order to measure your success you will need to know how many people are visiting your website. The most common way to do this is to use Google Analytics tracking code. Here are a few steps;
Sign up for a Google Analytics Account - If you already have a Google related account then you may be able to add Google Analytics with your existing account so that you do not have to login seperatly all the time.
Once you are signed up with Google Analytics, it will offer you a code to place onto your website.
Place this code on your blog web files - You need to open up a file called footer.php with Notepad, Dreamweaver, Word or some text editor. This file is found in the applicable themes folder which is in the wp-content folder. The footer.php file will have grey italic wording letting you know where the Google Analytics code should be placed. Copy and paste the code into this file, save it and then upload this file.
You can verify that the file has been added by going to your blog homepage and selecting view / page source in the Firefox browswer or view / source with Internet Explorer browser.
Note that every time you change your blog theme you would need to add this code to the footer.php file as the footer.php file is replaced for ever theme used.
Another way to confirm that you have added your code properly is to log into your Google Analytics account and check to see if it is collecting traffic data.
I am going to make a few assumptions on where you, as a reader, are at, in terms of web savy. Making assumptions is dangerous business but I have to start somewhere. Here is what you should have so far:
a registered domain name - yourblogname.com or .net or whatever extension you can get. Many .com domain names are taken already so you will have to work a little harder for these. I use netfirms.com to check for available domain names but there are many other places. Since I am from Canada I have the option of .ca domain extensions as well.
a host for your website - a host is a company that will allow you to place your website on their computers so that your website is available to everyone on the internet. There are thousands of hosting providers online. I personally use NetFirms.ca due to thier good pricing, support and functionality.
a concept to market - Your blog should have a specific subject or theme, preferrably a subject that you have alot of knowledge of already or have a passion for.
a blog already setup - Wordpress.org is the place to go to find all the software you need to get your blog online. I installed version 2.7 of Wordpress and everything looks good so far. Another alternative is to use a blogging service such as blogspot.com in which you would not need your own registered domain or host. The downside is that you don’t own your url and you loose some control of your functionality and design.
the ability to ftp files to your website - File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is the term used to describe the method of sending or updating files onto the internet.
Follow me as I grow and market this blog while commenting on how I do it.
I aim to sift through the abundance of information online and in print, test it on this website , and then let you know if it was worth spending time on.
I welcome any feedback or suggestions you may have.
Sincerely,
Denton Woods
