Tomorrow, from 10am to 2pm, our engineers will be performing routine system maintenance. You know the drill: you won’t be able to log in to your account during these 4 hours, but rest assured that we’ll keep serving ads to your pages and tracking all clicks and impressions in your account.

4 hours for me has become 8. And now the site is back up, but all it does is continuously reload. I can’t even try to log in…

Kind of a bummer…

This morning I woke up and started searching for information about the Wyoming GOP Caucus. I started with regular search, but the results were old, outdated, and some what irrelevant. Clearly the wonderful live search results I experienced Thursday night during the Iowa Caucus were not running things this morning. I then jumped to Google Blog Search and sorted the results by date.

Here is what I was met with.

In my opinion, it couldn’t be more clear these blogs are spam just by viewing the results. And there were tons of these results flooded the results for the past 45 minutes in the “sort by date” SERP’s.

Just for kicks, I clicked on a few to see what they were all about. Much to my surprise, these sploggers are stealing YouTube screenshots for profit. This is what one of the Splogs looked like.

Looks like a normal video post, right? Wrong. The video in the post is actually just an image that links to another page ripping YouTube’s design. None of the links work, and once again, if you click play on the video it just sends you to another page.

Notice the URL of this “YouTube” page.
http://gift-vip.net/videos/?name=wyoming+caucus

Once you click the video, you’re taken to a page that tries to force a file on you. My Linux Ubuntu system wouldn’t have any of it, but some other poor Windows user might not be so lucky.

Now, you might say these splogs aren’t really that many in number… well, apart from the obvious swarm of them hitting the results for Wyoming GOP Caucus, all one needs to do is look at the user profile for the splog mentioned above.

My question is… when you have a blogger profile that has MANY domains that look like this:
http://nhpollnlz65.blogspot.com/2008/01/wyoming-caucus.html
http://drzhivlsb26.blogspot.com/2008/01/wyoming-caucus.html

Wouldn’t it be easy to have some sort of red flag go up? I mean, if that isn’t obvious then I don’t know what is.

Come on Google, if you want the user experience to be solid, then get rid of this junk. It shouldn’t be that difficult.

Most bloggers, without question, will say YES!

It’s probably safe to say that the majority of us (bloggers) are well aware of our traffic sources. Bloggers like to know who is reading, and we like to know how to improve our site so that more readers land on our posts and pages. But the fact remains that just because we know what keywords are being searched to find us doesn’t mean we know what to do after we gain the data.

So what’s next? How do I improve and what do I need to do to help more readers find my blog?

Ahh… the ultimate question. How do we improve our traffic numbers?

I’ve been analyzing a lot of data and numbers over the past few weeks, and I’ve come to realize that even though our main site (ConservaBlogs.com) is considered a “trusted” site, we’re getting far more traffic from “long tail” keywords then from the head (high profile, extremely competitive keywords).

Some would say we’re not yet being trusted with the “big” keywords. I would assert, however, that we’re actually being trusted more than some of the larger, more elite sites. You see, we’re being given traffic from a more diverse pool of keywords and search terms.

My guess is that a similar scenario is playing out for your blog as well. You might get a couple hundred visits a day, but they’re coming from a wide range of keywords that only send a couple of visits per day, per keyword.

Keep that thought in mind. Let’s jump to another side of the topic for a moment.

The BIG keywords

In my opinion, we’re not giving enough credit to the keywords in the “hit tail”. We’re spending an awful lot of time going after the keywords that can send thousands of visits a day. It makes sense at first thought, but we need to consider it might take months to develop a page worthy of such rankings.

If and when we do obtain such a well ranked page, we’re faced with the challenge of getting that traffic to other pages and parts of our blogs. If your page isn’t sticky, or isn’t optimized to catch readers and at least turn them in to subscribers, then the effort could all be in vain.

Unless of course, you’re marketing a specific product and you only need the visitor to click on a link from that one page to hit paydirt. But most bloggers aren’t pimping products. No, we’re just looking for readers… and lot’s of them.

So why are we fishing the lake for the handful of mega bass when there are thousands and thousands of easily attainable smaller fish just waiting to be hooked?

Hit Tail Keywords

The hit tail keywords, or the keywords that only send a few visits a day are the link to big traffic success for small or non-elite bloggers.

Think about it… if you’re getting 100 visits a day from 35 different keywords and search terms, then all you need to do is figure out what similar keywords are in the hit tail, and expand your content to include those keywords.

In other words… let’s stop spending so much time going after the big keywords for a page or two, and start spending more time expanding our content to include more hit tail keywords.

I know it sounds silly and perhaps too simplistic at first glance, but keep in mind that ConservaBlogs.com (average of well over 3,000 visits per day) has seen enormous amounts of traffic growth without a single keyword or search phrase that brings in more than 90 visits per day. In fact, most of our keywords only send 10 or less visits per day. BUT, we have a LOT of them!

So how do I know what keywords to use in expanding my content?

Good news! There is now a company that provides a FREE tool for bloggers (paid for big sites) that will track, in real time, your incoming traffic and keywords. Then, the site will suggest keywords to use to expand your hit tail traffic. Also, the site will suggest ways to create new posts and content that will help expand your presence in the hit tail and search engines.

Need to see more? Watch this.

If you’re serious about working on your search engines rankings through organic means, this is a must have tool that you simply cannot afford to pass up.

And in case you’re wondering… I don’t make anything for sending you to HitTail.com. There is no incentive other than the fact that I sincerely believe this will help you do better in the search engines, as well as build a better site for your readers.

What are you waiting for? Join HitTail now!

Obviously, Google likes it when we use image ALT tags, and here Matt Cutts appears suggesting it will help make your site much more search engine friendly.

ScratchBack is an online “tipping” system. It allows you, the publisher, to accept tips and “give back” links or images in return.

You name your price on your tips, and you earn money from every interaction through our easy-to-use automated system. It’s free to sign-up, and you can have a TopSpot widget on your website or blog in minutes.

In other words, as I read it, you “tip” a blogger and in exchange you get a link. AKA… text link selling.

But unlike Text Link Ads, Linkworth, and Pay Per Post, ScratchBack is playing by rules of the Google god.

Do My Links Pass Page Rank?
They do not. Every single link, including the link back to Scratchback, in the TopSpot widget has a “nofollow” hard encoded in them. The code is delivered in Javascript format as well. That means that Google and other search engine spiders “won’t follow” the link. I doesn’t mean your link isn’t clickable, it is.

You cannot remove that code, nor should you attempt to as per the user agreement every publisher and advertiser agree to upon registration. Google has made it perfectly clear that “selling page rank” is not something they believe in. We don’t believe in it either. This system is built for fun. There are plenty of other solutions out there you can use if you want to “pass Google juice”, just not this one. Did you hear that Google?

So yes, it is a form of link selling. No, it’s not going to be looked down on by Google.

I certainly have. In fact, it happened today. I came across a post about Matt Cutts and his comments on subdomains vs. subdirectories that I knew would be a great post over at Search Engine Tattler, but at the time didn’t want to jump in to my admin panel and write the post.

It was at this point that I remembered a Firefox addon I used to use, but for some reason stopped using when I switched from Windows to Linux Ubuntu. The plugin is called ScribeFire, and it’s a MUST have for those of us who post across a plethora of blogs.

The plugin creates an icon in the lower right side of your Firefox browser. When you lick on the icon, it opens up a “post window” where you can post to any blog you maintain. Once you create an account and give Scribefire your login details, the script pulls all of your blog data into the Firefox window. You have your pages, your recent posts, your categories, etc.

You can also add tags, and the editor allows for easy access to basic functions such as links, bold, image, etc.

When you hit publish the script automatically uploads everything to your blog. Basically, you can blog from any webpage you visit!

I haven’t tried ScribeFire with blogger, typepad, or wordpress.com, but it works like a charm on all of my hosted Wordpress blogs. If you need the ability to QUICKLY blog from any page you’re viewing, this is an excellent solution and it might be just what the e-doctor ordered.

The contest brings nothing new to the table in regards to the idea realm, but it does beg the question… is this the new pay per post? I mean, in the past you might have had a $1,500 budget to buy text links within blog posts via the many online providers. But considering the fact that Google started it’s offensive strike on link sellers, wouldn’t it make since to just hold a contest and give the $1,500 away as a prize?

The UK online discount vouchers site MyVoucherCodes, which offers British shoppers access to codes and promotions to save them money when shopping, is enticing bloggers to write reviews or create a video in a competition which could see the winner scoop a holiday or £3,000 (about $1,500)

Mark Pearson, MD of the site, is perfectly open about the free promotion that this contest could generate for his site. “Not only will the prize be the perfect trip to paradise for one lucky winner, but it also means that we continue in our campaign to help shoppers get the best deals and discounts by raising our profile across the UK and in particular search engines”.

Whatever the incentive for writing about a particular site, these are surely the best links — potentially of decent quality and embedded inside a variety of unique blog posts. That is, until such a time as Google has an “altruism meter” and can spot the motivation behind writing about a particular web site!

Those wishing to enter can either write a review of the site, either on their blog or a social networking site, or they can make a video “doing something silly to promote the site”. The competition closes on 12th January 2008.

Isn’t this sort of thing kind of like saying “we’re going to buy links, just not directly”?

Curious…

The Organic Listings forum was moderated by Danny Sullivan. The panelists were Mike Grehan, Mark Rosenberg, and Erica Schmidt.

During the Q&A part of the forum someone took the mic and asked about problems his company, Shoplocal.com, was having with product pages that were only good and relevant for a short period of time. This wasn’t so much a question as it was a revelation in one of Google’s struggles to bring timely and relevant information when it comes to search strings related to direct products.

Basically, ShopLocal.com will compare product sales on a local level. For example, if you’re looking for an ipod in Chicago, the site might give you the latest deal from both Best Buy and Circuit City. The problem is, once the deal ends the page remains online and the search engines continue indexing it as if the content never changed.

The keywords Danny Sullivan used to bring up a page on Shoplocal are “chicago ipod”. Sure enough, a shoplocal page came up as the #1 result. But, this page is no longer relevant or useful because the product on sale is no longer on sale and has vanished from the page.

One can certainly argue that chicago ipod is a healthy search term. In fact, I’ve searched for similar keywords myself. So, wouldn’t Google want the user to find timely and relevant information in the #1 spot on the SERP? I mean, I usually get peeved when I click on a result only to find that “this product is no longer available” or “this page has moved”.

Why then does Google continue to rank product pages on shopping sites so high when it is so obvious the content fluctuates? And for the record, this particular product page had changed quite some time ago. Google had plenty of time to re-evaluate the pages’ relevance.

What up with that?

The panel was moderated by Danny Sullivan, Editor-In-Chief for SearchEngineLand.com. The participants included Amanda Watlington, Vivek Pathak, Jeremy Clem, Manager, Natural Search, and Trevor Foucher of Google.

During the Q&A section of the forum, someone in the audience asked an off topic question about flash websites and flash files. The question was asked along the lines of “when will Google start doing a better job of indexing flash content?”

You get the point…

Anyway, Danny Sullivan chimed in right off the bat and said matter of fact “it will NEVER happen”. Sullivan went on to say that flash files are extremely unfriendly to search engines, something most of us already knew but loved to hear re-enforced, and that anyone using them was clearly heading in the wrong direction.

When Sullivan went to pull the forum back on topic, Trevor Foucher of Google jumped in with “plus, a lot of users can’t see flash, so we feel it isn’t user friendly either”. Which says to me that Google doesn’t like flash and will likely look down on it when it comes to grading a pages’ content for the SERP’s.

Can we put this to rest once and for all?

Enough with the flash hysteria.

-Eric Odom