Why you need a Google Plus profile and how to make the most of it

Are you a beginning blogger just starting out? A young (year to two years blogging) or casual blogger vying to get traffic and attention? A seasoned blogger with traffic, attention, and some money rolling in? If you are one of the mentioned, do you want to know why you need a Google Plus profile and how to make the most of it? If so, keep reading…

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How to format a blog post – Common mistakes new bloggers make

Over the past two months on Google+, I’ve been meeting lots of new people, and many of them new bloggers.   I always enjoy heading over to these new blogs to take a look, read over their content and try to add an encouraging comment.

While visiting all of these new blogs, I started seeing some common mistakes new bloggers were making, especially related to post formatting.

When I first started blogging, I really struggled with how to best format a blog post, and it took me more than a year to determine the format that worked optimally for my blog and readers.  Post formatting is something I still adjust on a frequent basis.  Again, always new things to learn.

Interested in learning how you can help retain people on your blog, entice them to read your article, and make them a subscriber?  The small little tips I share below can really make a huge difference in your blog.
How to format a blog post

Use Sub-headings

This is a big one.  I was visiting a blog the other day, and the article was just one big long stream of text with very little white space, and no logical breakup of the content.  Using sub-headings provides a visual break in your post, allows the reader to skim over the content, and has an SEO benefit.  Google gives priority to text in sub-headings – use them.

The line above that says “Use Sub-headings” is itself a sub-heading as are the other common blogging mistakes listed here.  See how it’s easy to skim over the article and know all of the common mistakes without having to fully read the article?  This is really helpful for the reader.

Sub-headings are generally <H2>, <H3> or <H4> tags.  If you’re using Thesis (affiliate linklike I am, your sub-headings should be <H3>s.  To determine which one to use for your theme, see what heading level your article title is.  Then use the next level down.

Using the wrong sub-heading can hurt you your SEO optimization a little, so make sure you are using the right one.  Google likes things well organized and hierarchical.

Use lots of white space

This is actually more of a recent trend, and one I probably started using a little late.  I always wrote my article more like a book using longer paragraphs.  That’s also how my generation was taught to write.  Not so with digital content.

People are busy and when they pull up an article and it’s wall to wall text from top to bottom, they perceive the article as being bigger than it really is and leave.  Putting more white space in your article creates a perception that it’s not as large and overwhelming.

Additional white space also makes the article easier to read and skim.

See the trend on skimming?  Really important in today’s web.  Most of your visitors will not read your whole article, most of them will skim it.  They’ll read the parts of interest to them, and ignore the rest.  Breaking your text into smaller “chunks” allows your readers to quick find and digest each chunk and move on.

Oh, and if you don’t use paragraphs, please use them.  Nothing will drive a visitor away faster than a wall of text.

Don’t use light on dark color

I know, black text on a white background is boring.  I agree, I really do.  But you know what?  Black text on a white background is highly effective.

Blogs are met to be read, and anything done that makes it difficult for your visitors to read your blog, hurts your blog.  Make it easy, and use black text on a white background.   Spend some time looking at the biggest blogs on the web and you’ll see the same pattern.  One the blogs I’ve been reading for years and still love to read is Copyblogger.  Hands down, they win my vote for best site design.  What do they use?  Black on white.

Which one do you think is easier to read?

Light text on dark background

Be different in your header, your sidebar, your footer, the graphics that you use in your content, but don’t be different with the colors you use for your copy.

Use a larger font than you think you should

Again, we want people to read our blogs.  Focusing on making our blogs easy to read and skim, you’ll want to use a larger font.  Many fonts used in content on blogs are too small.  I know, some of you are young and have no problems seeing it.  Well, for geezers like me, it hurts my eyes and gives me a headache to read a large article when the font is too small.

Yes, I can increase it using my browser settings, but most of the people that visit your site don’t know how to do that.

I’ll say it again: Make things easy on your readers.

Don’t use script type fonts

Script fonts are cool, but they’re hard to read.  Sometimes really hard to read.  I generally won’t read an article that uses a strong script font because by the time I’m half way through, my head hurts.  Seriously.

Which one do you think is easier to read?

Script font

Just say no to script based fonts.

Keep it simple

This one might generate a little controversy, but I recommend targeting a high-school or middle-school reading level.  Use anything higher and you might begin to use words that people don’t know.  This  results in them not understanding your article.  Even worse, they might leave to go look the word up, and not come back.

I always find it funny when people use big fancy words – I just don’t get the point of it, unless they are trying to impress people with their vocabulary.

You should target your site for the majority of web visitors.  This gives your blog the most exposure and largest audience.  If you write at a college level reading level, you’re turning people away.

If you’re ok with that, than by all means continue.

Use bullets

Google likes bullets and so do your readers.  Not too many mind you, but a reasonable amount.  Using bullets also makes your article easier to read, skim and follow.  Use bullets for short lists.  Using bullets makes your articles easier to read, easier to write, more skimmable and improves your SEO.

Avoid using bullets for items that require longer explanations.  I’ve made this mistake before, and find that using Sub-headings is more effective and readable.  Using  bullets for large amounts of text actually ends up making it harder to read, and takes away from the advantage of using bullets in the first place.

Use images

When was the last time you read  magazine that didn’t have images alongside the text?  Think of your blog as an electronic magazine.  Everyone of your posts should use images or visuals to help bring the points home.  Images will also often entice a visitor to read an article that wouldn’t normally read.  Why?  Because the image draws them in.  With all of the free images for your blog available, there really isn’t a good excuse for not have outstanding and high quality images in your blog articles.

I suggest having at least two images.  One early on in your content so the visitor sees the introductory article text AND the initial image.  Then, and midway down or towards the end of the article, having another.

There really isn’t any right or wrong size or shape, just develop your own unique style and people will associate it with your brand.

Use 3 main sections

The first part of your article should tell the visitor what you’re going to tell them.  An executive summary if you will.  Keep it to one or two paragraphs and be concise. The last sentence should be somewhat of a teaser to make them keep reading.

The middle sections should be the “guts” of your article, the real valuable stuff.

The last section, and generally the last paragraph or two should tell the visitor what you told them (a summary) and then leave them a few things to think about.  I like to end with questions, as it encourages people leaving comments.  Speaking of questions…

How about you?

What mistakes have you seen bloggers making? Disagree with anything I touched on above?  What would you add or remove from the list?  Add a comment!

Photo Credit: plindberg

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Using Google Analytics for your blog – Traffic Sources

This is part 2 of a series I’m writing called Using Google Analytics for your blog.   If you missed the first part, which discussed what Google Analytics is and went over the Google Analytics Audience Overview section,  please head over and give it a read.   This article will dive into the next section, Google Analytics – Traffic Sources where we’re learn how to find out who is sending you traffic.

Remember, this series will touch on the basic information from each section of Google Analytics.  The article is not intended as a deep dive into all of the underlying detail that Analytics provides.  As I stated in first part of this series, doing a full deep dive would take a large eBook.  This article and the others in the series will focus more on basic information you’ll use on a frequent basis.

Google Analytics Part 2

Traffic Sources

The next section in your left hand menu (after Audience Overview) is Traffic Sources.  Clicking on Traffic Sources will, by default, show the Overview sub-section.  Your screen should look similar to this:

Google Analytics Traffic Sources

Click for larger image

The traffic sources overview page provides you with an overview of the sources of your traffic.  I know, you’re thinking – Well gee thanks Captain Obvious…let me explain…

Day to day, visitors arrive on your website.  Some of them go straight to your blog using your URL or domain name.  Most of them more likely come from other sites  such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, social media, and blogs that link to you.  The Traffic Sources overview page will show you where these visitors come from.  Let’s look at the data provided on the main screen first, then we’ll dive into some of the other sections that you’ll find useful.

The graph at the top of the page is the same as the graph in the Audience Overview.  By default it shows your Visits.  You can also adjust the graph to view other information.   I seldom ever change this.  You can also adjust the date range in the upper right corner.  By default the last 30 days are shown.

Below the graph is a summary of how many people visited your site along with a pie chart showing the breakdown of traffic sources by search traffic, referral traffic, direct traffic and campaigns.

Search Traffic – Shows the percentage of your traffic that arrived from search engines.  Just below the percentage is the actual count.  From my screenshot, my search traffic accounted for about 52% of my overall traffic.  There really isn’t any “good” or “bad” number here.  Good and bad are relevant based on how you are targeting your traffic.  Generally though, you want this number to be fairly high, and greater than 50%.  Why?  Search engine visitors are the visitors that generally click on ads.  If you’re trying to earn income, especially using Adsense, search engine visitors are the primary type of traffic you want.

Referral Traffic – This is traffic coming from other sites outside of search engines.  This traffic is the result of people clicking on links and arriving at your site.  I’ll show you how to figure out exactly which sites below.  This would also be where your email list traffic would be included.

Direct Traffic – This traffic comes from people directly navigating to your website, either from a bookmark in their browser or by typing your blog’s URL directly into their browser.

To the right of the summary data is a list of keywords that people used in search engines to arrive at your site.  If you’re like me, a large percentage will fall up under “not provided”.  You can read about why your keywords are hidden in David Kutcher’s article A “not proivided’ tip from your analytics.

In the screenshot, I hid my keywords – I apologize for that.  Unfortunately this is the internet, and you can’t trust everyone.  I know most of you are honest and straight up, but I’ve just worked too hard to rank well for some of these, and don’t want to risk someone trying to out rank me.  Hope you understand.

The summary information is good of course, but there really isn’t a whole you can do with it.  The good stuff is down in the details a bit.

Traffic Sources>>Sources

Under the Traffic Sources menu is another menu named Sources.  Click to open it, and then click on All Traffic.

All Traffic will show you, in order of Visits, who your top traffic sources were from for the time period selected.   I use this frequently to see if any large sites have linked to me, to see how many click throughs I’m getting from guest posts I’ve done, and also to see which social media platforms are doing well for me, and which ones are not.  This is one of the Google Analytics screens I check at least once daily.

Here’s a screenshot of my Sources page:

Google Analytics Sources

Click for larger image

The Pages/Visit metric I discussed in the first article in this series was for your whole site.  On this page though, we’re seeing these numbers broken out by referrer.  This allows you to see how “sticky” traffic is from each of the referrers listed.  For example, looking at mine, I see the pages/view for Google+ and other blogs that refer to me have higher numbers, where searches from Google have lower numbers.  Google users are typically looking for an answer, they get it and move on.  Where links from guest post articles often involve people browsing my site and spending more time.  If you’ll note, the bounce rates reflect the same.

Also interesting is Pinterest.  I received a really nice burst of traffic from PInterest, primary from my How to Build up Your Blog article, but the bounce rate is high.  I’m going to give myself a little homework assignment to research if that’s common, and if not look at some additional changes I can make to make Pinterest visitors a little more sticky.  I’ve already taken one shot at this, but obviously need to improve a little more.

Sources>>Direct

The direct sub-menu will show you the pages people visited directly.  Generally this is because people have bookmarked your content.  These articles are typically “evergreen” content articles, and frequently some of your “best stuff”.  Which is why people bookmarked it.  For earning money, these are articles that you would typically want to tweak to either include ads or affiliate offers where applicable.

I don’t typically use the Search page or Referrals page much as the information I need is on the overview page.

Traffic Sources >> Search Engine Optimization

This page will provide you with more detailed information about the queries users are putting into Google.  Clicking on the Queries menu will show you a list of keyword queries people are using to arrive at your site.  While this is interesting information, I personally seldom use it.  I prefer to use Google’s Webmaster tools as they provide you with much better and more comprehensive information.

The Landing Pages menu shows you the pages from your site that visitors arrive on most frequently when coming from search engines.   I use this page to determine which of my blog posts I need to focus on making “sticky”.

The strategy here is to use this data to determine which pages visitors land on, then update and edit those pages so that visitors have lots of more content options to click on.  You can give them more options by editing your article text to include additional links, adding “Other pages you might like” options and adding widgets to the sidebar to feature more content.

The Geographical Summary menu will show you what countries your search traffic is coming from.  Good information, but again not something I’ve found a need for just yet.

Traffic Sources >> Social Media

The Social Media Overview section provides you access to metrics on your social media traffic.  Here’s a screen shot from my Analytics:

Google Analytics Social Media

Click for larger image

The graph is really more focused on conversions – meaning social traffic that lead to people making purchases or clicking ads on your site.  Conversations are calculated using Google Analytics goals.  I won’t go into the details of goals, but at a high level goals allow you to keep track of when people visit certain pages on your site.  I have goals set-up, which is why I’m showing some conversations, but not dollar amounts.

The main data that you’ll be interested in on this page is in the lower right hand side.  This will show you the number of visits you received from social media, and the percentage of overall site visits that social media accounted for.  As you can see here on Side Income Blogging, over the past 30 days, Pinterest was first, Google+ second, and Facebook a far third.

The other menu items below Social allow you to drive into further detail about traffic from your social media visits:

Network Referrals

Similar to earlier pages we looked at, this page shows you more detail about your social media visits.  The graph shows you a comparison of your social media traffic to your overall traffic.  The table below shows you detail on Visits, Pageviews, how long the visitor was on your site and how many pages they viewed per visit.   This is actually a pretty interesting section as it gives you some good data on how sticky your social media traffic is by social media site.  You can use this data to determine where and how to spend your social media efforts.

Landing Pages

The Landing Pages section shows you what pages visitors from social media arrived on, again with information on pages/visit and duration.  You can use this page to determine which of your pages was most popular on social media.  Knowing which pages did well, allows you to create similar or complementary content that should also do well on social media.

Conversions

I mentioned conversions above, and primarily this section is intended to capture monetary earnings from conversions resulting from social media traffic.  I personally don’t use this section currently.

Plugins

This page is used to track specific actions that occur and are specific to social media.  For example, on Google+ it would be +1s, on Facebook Likes, etc.  By default, Google Analytics will track your Google+ activity automatically.  For other social media sites, you’ll have to make some changes to your default Analytics scripts.  I personally don’t track this level of data but if you’re interested, you can read up on how to add additional social media plugins on the analytics help page.

Visitor Flow

This is another page I personally don’t use much, but definitely has a high cool factor πŸ™‚  On this page, you can see, by social media site, the path that your visitors navigate through on your site.  The flow graph even shows how many people went from page to page so you can see how many dropped off your site, and how many didn’t.  Like I said, really cool, but not something I’ve found highly useful just yet.

Wrapping Up

That wraps up the Traffic Sources section of Google Analytics.  As you’re probably beginning to see, Google Analytics tracks an enormous amount of data and most of it you probably won’t use frequently, at least if you’re like me.

Next in the series we’ll discuss the Content section, then I’ll wrap up this series with some very specific tips and strategies for how to pull out some valuable information about your site from Google Analytics.

Analytics is a really powerful tool for improving your site, and I hope you’re finding this overview information helpful!

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Month 5 Update – 300 Visitors Per Day and $450 per Month

Well it was another record month for my Authority Website case study site (My Case Study Website URL is Now Hidden) with over 100% growth in both visitors and income! This income report will break down exactly what I did over the month to achieve these earnings and what I plan to do next month to keep this going!

I have achieved over 100% traffic growth in the last 2 months! Last month I was thrilled to report that I crossed the 100 visitor per day mark – well this month I was getting over 300 visitors per day! (more…)

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Feedburner Email Subscribe to MailChimp – Why I switched

I’ve been reading articles for years from various internet marketing gurus about the importance of email list building.  The consistant message I have always heard was: “The money is in the list“.

On my first blog, while I had a mailing list, I didn’t use it effectively.  I only used the blog email list to deliver my latest posts via email to subscribers.  When I started this blog, one of my goals was to more effectively use my email list and provide my subscribers with unique value and content just for them.

Three years later, I still haven’t done that, but that will change very soon.  Preparing for that change, I elected to move off of Feedburner.  I’ll explain why below, but if you’re using Feedburner, migrating to another service is something you should be doing as well.

Why I switched from Feedburner to MailChimp

Feedburner email subscribe

Given I was a “noob” to email list building, I started off using the same email list service I used on my first blog, Feedburner.  Calling Feedburner an email list service is probably a bit of a stretch, but it does get the basics done.  I even recommended Feedburner as a good starting point for list building in my Start a Money Making Blog series.

The great thing about the Feedburner’s email subscription service is that it’s simple to set-up and easy to manage.  Feedburner is perfect for someone starting out and learning.  As your list grows and you learn more about how to effectively use your email list, the limitations of Feedburner become apparent.  The turning point for me was wanting to be able to send out a monthly newsletter that would summarize my articles for the month and include exclusive email only content.  I also wanted to be able to immediately share special offers with my subscribers as they became available.

Feedburner, while great for automatically emailing your latest updates from your RSS feed, was not a good fit for doing anything beyond that.  The other big concern I have with Feedburner is it’s future.  There is a great deal of concern across the web on whether or not Google will continue supporting Feedburner.  Google had a significant Feedburner outage a few months back and it took them days to get it resolved.  Additionally, the Feedburner interface hasn’t been touched in a long time.  These are all signs that Google isn’t giving it much attention to  Feedburner, and most likely won’t.

I decided I didn’t want to risk it.  Given my additional needs and the questionable future of Feedburner, I started looking at other options.  Fortunately, I discovered two much better options very quickly and migrated to one of them.

Finding a more robust email service

Within minutes of searching and reading a few articles, you’ll begin to see one name mentioned above most others, AWeber.  AWeber is an outstanding email and list building service and AWeber has established themselves as the premiere provider.  I spent a great deal of time reading over their services, and even signed up for their special “1 month for a $1 offer” (affiliate link) to try it out.  AWeber was great.  They offer outstanding quality of service, and more options than I could probably ever learn.

But, I didn’t go with AWeber.  Why?  Well, as I’ve mentioned on here before, I’m a bit frugal.  I don’t earn a great deal of income from this blog yet and until I do, I don’t like spending money (confession – even when I do make lots of money, I don’t like spending it).  AWeber is a great service, but it costs $19/month or $228/year.  AWeber absolutely seemed well worth it, if you have the money, I don’t right now.

I continued my search.  Another list building service that I consistently saw being mentioned and talked about was MailChimp.  The great thing about MailChimp (other than their completely epic site design) is that for email lists under 2000 subscribers and if you send less than 12,000 emails per months, their service is free.  The word free has this unique ability to completely capture my attention, and thus I signed up for MailChimp to try it out.

MailChimp email

Saying I was impressed would be an understatement.  MailChimp is incredibly easy to use and their site design is probably one of the better ones I’ve seen.  They also slip in some pretty funny jokes and puns throughout the user interface, which is hilarious and fun.

Using their “wizards” I quickly created a few new campaigns, lists and played around with their email designer and available templates.  They have lots of prebuilt templates and customizing them or even creating your own email template from scratch is really pretty simple.  They also many pre-built sign-up forms as well that can be easily placed on your blog.  When you sign-up, they also send you an email series that walks you right through the process of getting started with MailChimp and using their service.  I found these really helpful.

MailChimp seemed to have all the basics that I needed.   I figured there was really nothing for me to lose.  MailChimp (affiliate link) was certainly better and far more flexible than Feedburner.  I signed up for MailChimp, and for those of you that subscribe via email, you probably noticed the format change in December.  Heh, you also might have noticed a few glitches I had as well….but we won’t dwell on those πŸ˜‰

Shameless promotion time – If you aren’t currently an email, subscriber – I’d encourage you to sign up!  Again, I’ll be offering some exclusive content, including a new eBook I’m working to email subscribers only.  You can sign-up easily just under my picture in the upper right.  Yes, the homely looking picture…

MailChimp vs AWeber

I don’t want to mislead you, I am in no way an expert on either product just yet.  I am getting to know MailChimp pretty well, but still have lots to learn.  AWeber I have used and I am familiar with it, but I don’t know all of the ins and outs.   But, given what I do know at this point, I thought it might help to compare AWeber to MailChimp for you – just to give you a basis for making the decision that’s right for you.

MailChimp:

  • Free for less than 2,000 subscribers and if you send less than 12,000 emails a month.
  • The form and email designers in MailChimp is better and provides more flexibility
  • Live chat or Email support only
  • Really nice and well designed user interface.
  • For those of you using affiliate marketing, MailChimp gives you credit on your account for each signup.

AWeber

  • Cost is $1 for the first month, then $19/month after
  • More comprehensive email tracking
  • 24/7 phone support
  • For those of you using affiliate marketing, AWeber has a great affiliate program that pays 30% of each sale, plus 30% of ongoing payments.

One item I’d like to address: There is a false rumor floating around in the internet that MailChimp doesn’t allow affiliate marketing.  This is simply not true.

In any case, both services are flat out awesome and provide great quality of service, support and flexibility.  The features and money you have available should drive you to which decision is better for you.

You can sign-up for MailChimp here and AWeber here.  Both of these are affiliate links – hope that’s ok.  If not, no problem: You can find MailChimp here, and AWeber here.

If you followed my Start a Money Making Blog series, and you’re currently using Feedburner – In an upcoming article, I’ll walk you through how to migrate from Feedburner to MailChimp.  Don’t worry, moving over is really easy and I learned a few tricks (the hardway) that will really help you out.

For those already using an email service: What are you using and why?  Add a comment!

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