Damien at the Speed of Life – DATSOL

In effort to make my blogs as attractive as possible to sponsored post clients and advertisers, I’ve been wading through some SEO optimizer posts today. Some really good advice came from this one I found by searching blog seo and it’s a good one:

3. Use your secondary keywords in the body of your post

If you want to get listed for secondary keywords use them infrequently in the body of your post and pepper your blog titles or links with them appropriately.

Don’t overdo this or your posts will end up sounding unnatural and spammy to readers.
4. Use your keywords in the anchor text of links

Keyword in links have more importance than simple text.

Use your primary and secondary keywords in the anchor text of links when linking to other blog posts or to other pages on your main site.

Link keywords where they naturally appear in the body text, but again, don’t overdo it, or you’ll end up with spammy looking pages.
5. Make sure search engines can spider your blog easily

Set up your blog so that the side navigation bar is present on all pages.

Make sure your archives and previous posts are accessible from all pages of your blog so they get spidered easily.

I think the best seo strategy will come about after attending a sales training course. After all, aren’t we really just selling our blogs? Finding the tools that help me do that is what my seo research consists of.

There are lots of tools that will show the keyword denisity of the index but I need one that will suggest keywords based on a larger selection of posts. Still looking.

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my FEED Thanks for visiting!

Blog Stats from February 1 to March 1, 2009
This is a monthly feature here where I measure my 3 blogs’ progress. My goal with this series is to provide 100% transparency. You can browse current and past entries in the CAN… category. First I list the CAN data for each blog. Then I reflect with a few notes.

Legend
C = Circulation, or backlinks
A = Analytics, or number of visitors
N = Net, or the amount of money earned by the blog

Circulation (# of Google backlinks)
Postcards from the Funny Farm: 174
Damien at the Speed of Life: 32
Dynamite Lesson Plan: 40
The Damien Riley Podcast: 0

Analytics (# of visits last 30 days)
Postcards from the Funny Farm: 6,659
Damien at the Speed of Life: 532
Dynamite Lesson Plan: 540
The Damien Riley Podcast: 302

Net
Postcards from the Funny Farm: $64.66
Damien at the Speed of Life: $24.00
Dynamite Lesson Plan: $8.05
The Damien Riley Podcast: 0

TOTAL: $106.84

Notes: Stats this month are pretty flat.  I like to see Postcards at 10-15,000 visitors a month and it was way below that.  The main reason for this is because a human only has enough energy in a day.  As I have taken on the weekly podcast and committed to a schedule of posting through the blogs throughout the week, I have taken away some of that energy from Postcards.  For what I do, that’s not the end of the world.  I am making money through Text-Link-Ads and sponsored posts on three blogs.  For me (and my kids who get ice cream off my PayPal card) I’d rather share the energy across multiple blogs.  I feel good about my posts and the energy that I am broadcasting through the podcast.  The backlinks are holding, 2 blogs went up, one went down and the podcast remains at zero.

If you have any good ideas on getting backlinks, do tell.  Advertisers do look at that criteria.

No goals this month other than to keep my posting schedule and do the usual stuff I have been doing for months. As always, I want to be open to your questions and comments through this series. If you think of something you want explained, think of this blog as my wireless alarm The comment box is waiting for you. You’ve seen my results and read my notes, what do you have to say? Is there something I missed you’d like to discuss? How were your CAN results last month?

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my FEED Thanks for visiting!

In addition to posting my blog stats each week with tips, I also offer paid services in blog building, coaching, and freelance writing. To hire me visit my freelancing site. Let me explain how I review blogs. First, the acronym:

C: circulation (or Google backlinks)
A: analytics (# of visitors last month)
N: net Amount of dollars made on all blogs combined.

Now the review formula: I have put it in the form of a 3 question quiz.

1. The number of your Google backlinks is between: (tip: to get this number, type link:http://url into a Google search)

A. zero or unknown
B. 1 – 100
C. 101 – 200
D. 201 – 300
E. 301 – 400
F. 401 or higher

2. Your visitor count last month was between:

A. zero – 500
B. 500 – 15,000
C. 15,001 – 25,000
D. 25,001 – 35,000
E. 35,001 – 45,000
F. 45,001 or higher

3. The amount of money you made blogging on all your blogs combined:

A. zero – 100 dollars
B. 100 – 200 dollars
C. 201 – 300 dollars
D. 301 – 400 dollars
E. 401 – 500 dollars
F. 501 dollars or higher

Where A=0, B=1, C=2 and so on up to F=5 respectively, add up the total value of the three letters in your answers: ie; B,C,D would equal 1+2+3=6 Then divide by the total possible(15) to get your can percentage: 6/15= 40%

Then assign your percentage a CAN Blog rating based on this scale:

0 – 16%=CAN0
17 – 33%=CAN1
34 – 50%=CAN2
51 – 67%=CAN3
68 – 84%=CAN4
85 – 100%=CAN5

The example score of 40% is between 34 -50% so it earns a

After I show your CAN “grades,” I give you a few minor yet valuable notes on what I liked and what you might work on to improve your CAN rating.

Thanks for previewing my rating system. I recommend setting your own goals for your blog. These parameters work for me but certainly they are not universal. Since I started using them I have seen stats as skinny as as if it took a double dose of Solo Slim turn much fatter. If interested you can follow my own blogs’ CAN BLOG RATING progress.

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my FEED Thanks for visiting!

Blog Stats from January 21 to February 21, 2009
This is usually a monthly feature here where I measure my 3 blogs’ progress. This is a special mid-month post. My goal with this series is to provide 100% transparency. You can browse current and past entries in the CAN… category. First I list the CAN data for each blog. Then I reflect with a few notes.

Legend
C = Circulation, or backlinks
A = Analytics, or number of visitors
N = Net, or the amount of money earned by the blog

Circulation (# of Google backlinks)
Postcards from the Funny Farm: 166
Damien at the Speed of Life: 51
Dynamite Lesson Plan: 34
The Damien Riley Podcast: 0

Analytics (# of visits last 30 days)
Postcards from the Funny Farm: 9,233
Damien at the Speed of Life: 572
Dynamite Lesson Plan: 451
The Damien Riley Podcast: 217

Net
Postcards from the Funny Farm: $54.66
Damien at the Speed of Life: $8.05
Dynamite Lesson Plan: $19.00
The Damien Riley Podcast: 0

TOTAL: $93.01 (First thing I wanna do is go our and buy an electric blanket for each of my kids -and then one for my wife and I, it is cold!

Notes: This has been a skinny month in some ways.  In other ways it has been solid and productive.  I have put Entrecard back on all four blogs.  I am curious to see the effect on traffic.  Please note this particular post is only a mid month report.  These are usually published only once a month.  I’ll publish another CAN post after March 1st.

As always, I want to be open to your questions and comments through this series. The comment box is waiting for you. You’ve seen my results and read my notes, what do you have to say? Is there something I missed you’d like to discuss? How were your CAN results last month?

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my FEED Thanks for visiting!

This is just an example of what a 100% transparency rank system might look like. The key is working to increase these three excellent indicators of blog value. Google Page Rank, in my opinion, should not be the sole basis on determining value, yet currently for many advertisers: it is.

My method or strategy is a self-blog rating system to set and measure goals with. Let me explain it: First, the acronym:

C: circulation (or Google backlinks)
A: analytics (# of visitors)
N: net (dollars earned by the blog)

Now the rating formula:  I have put it in the form of a 3 question quiz.

1. The number of your Google backlinks is between: (tip: to get this number, type link:http://url into a Google search)

A. zero or unknown
B. 1 – 100
C. 101 – 200
D. 201 – 300
E. 301 – 400
F. 401 or higher

2. Your visitor count last month was between:

A. zero – 500
B. 500 – 15,000
C. 15,001 – 25,000
D. 25,001 – 35,000
E. 35,001 – 45,000
F. 45,001 or higher

3. The amount of money your blog earned last month was between:

A. zero – 100 dollars
B. 101 – 200 dollars
C. 201 – 300 dollars
D. 301 – 400 dollars
E. 401 – 500 dollars
F. 500 or higher

Where A=0, B=1, C=2 and so on up to F=5 respectively, add up the total value of the three letters in your answers: ie; B,C,D would equal 1+2+3=6  Then divide by the total possible(15) to get your can percentage:  6/15= 40%

Then assign your percentage a CAN Blog rating based on this scale:

0 – 16%=CAN0
17 – 33%=CAN1
34 – 50%=CAN2
51 – 67%=CAN3
68 – 84%=CAN4
85 – 100%=CAN5

The example score of 40% is between 34 -50% so it earns a

Thanks for previewing my rating system.  I recommend setting your own goals for your blog. These parameters work for me but certainly they are not universal. If interested you can follow my blogs’ CAN BLOG RATING progress.

This is a monthly feature here where I measure my 3 blogs’ progress. My goal with this series is to provide 100% transparency. You can browse current and past entries in the CAN… category.  First I list the CAN data for each blog.  Then I reflect with a few notes.

Legend:
C = Circulation, or backlinks
A = Analytics, or number of visitors and feed subscribers
N = Net, or the amount of money earned by the blog

1. Postcards from the Funny Farm, a psychology and inspiration blog

Circulation
Google Backlinks: 224
Yahoo! Backlinks: 6,884

Analytics
from 12-01-08 to 12-31-08
Visitors: 11,531
Page Views: 15,536
Feed Subscribers:  110

Net
$68.50

2. Damien at the Speed of Life, my online diary

Circulation
Google Backlinks: 36
Yahoo! Backlinks: 272

Analytics
from 12-01-08 to 12-31-08
Visitors: 603
Page Views: 1,520
Feed Subscribers: 17

Net
$30

3. Dynamite Lesson Plan, a teaching blog
Circulation
Google Backlinks: 224
Yahoo! Backlinks: 6,884

Analytics
from 12-01-08 to 12-31-08
Visitors: 217
Page Views: 503
Feed Subscribers:  14

Net
$25.01

NOTES: December was a great month for traffic.  I had close to 12,000 visitors which is a record by about 5,000 visitors.  So what happened?  Well, my static “Crazy Quotes” page has gained the 5th place on a Google search of those 2 terms.  I have been getting 300-500 hits on that page a day!  This has really helped the normal traffic and boosted the totals immensely.  A special post or page can carry your blog without a need for traffic driving methods.

You may recall last month I decided I was done with empty clicker traffic such as Entrecard.  It hurt me at first but very soon my other methods far surpassed Entrecard.  I just feel that the quality of blogs there is not high and most people who came to my sites just clicked for their points and took off like a bat out of hell.  I chose to work with Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks a little more.  You will see attractive buttons in all three sidevars linking to my profiles on the social networks I am working with.  Please add me to your lists!

My net suffered this month because I didn’t bother much with it.  I decided to put my mental health above straining over sponsored posts.  I did make a nice chunk of change without trying hard at all.

Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t note my recent Google PageRank increase on all three blogs.  They used to be 1, 0, 0 and last night after the roll through, they became 2, 2, 2. This will enable me to get more paying posts and potentially more advertisers.  I am a very happy camper as you all know I have been working very hard to bring my PageRank values up.  Still though, I believe the future is going to be based on 100% pure transparency of stats and not on any dictator of value like PageRank.  That’s the reason I will continue to post CAN stats on all my blogs through 2009.

As always, I want to be open to your questions and comments through this series.  The comment box is waiting for you.  You’ve seen my results read my notes, what do you have to say? Is there something I missed you’d like to discuss?  How were your CAN results last month?

This is a monthly feature here at my personal blog where I measure my blogs’ progress toward goals. You can browse current and past entries in the CAN… category. CAN stands for:

Circulation: Incoming links.
Analytics: # of visitors (Measured in the graph above)
Net: Money made and key takeaways. (Because money isn’t everything.)

I often use shorthand in referring to my blogs:
Psych Blog: Postcards from the Funny Farm
Personal Blog: Damien at the Speed of Life
Teaching Blog: Dynamite Lesson Plan
Podcast: Damien Riley’s Podcast

Below are my CAN results for the time span of 11-26-08 to 11-27-08:
___

Psych Blog:

C – 18

A – 10,099

N – $68.50

Personal Blog:

C – 22

A – 564

N – $30

Teaching Blog:

C – 7

A – 251

N – $25.01
—

Notes: December marked the time I broke the 10,000 monthly visitors mark with my psych blog.  This extremely exciting for me since I have been working on traffic for that blog for 2 years.  I noticed a chunk of that traffic comes from my Crazy Quotes static page.   This teaches me that a dedicated page with search friendly tags and description can lift a blog’s analytics considerably.  For this reason I will continue to put quotes about being crazy and other psychology stuff on that page.  An interesting question is this: “Is there a better way to monetize just that page?”  If any mmol seo types out there have a suggestion I’d appreciate it.  My blog domain has a Google PageRank of 1/10 and yet that quotes page has a 2!  Go figure.  I am quite hopeful in the next PR rollout my blog will increase notably.  I have set most paid links to nofollow when it is ok with the paying advertiser.  That affected a lot of links so we’ll see how much if at all my PR improves.

Another thing I learned in December is that Google weighs inbound links against the number of outgoing links.  If you have a lot of inbound links on a regular basis, that helps your rank.  If you have a lot of outgoing links however that negates the effect of your inbound links.  You can check your inbound links at any time on Google by entering site:(your url) and doing a search.  I don’t know a way to check ones outgoing links but I’d like to find out.  You will find I am linking out less and less and using nofollow on all links unless I want to give a special site link juice.

I have really been slacking in my guest blogging.  I want to do more of that this year.  The best ones for me are the “regular gigs.”  I have two of those and then several open invitations if I get an idea.  The first one is: It Might be Love which is owned by Chelle.  She has become a great friend in this blogging business and I really appreciate her blog concept.  The other is the FuelmyBlog blog.  I am fortunate enough to manage their monthly and sometimes biweekly blog carnival.  Kevin and Sylvie are a couple of really gracious people.  Apart from those two, I want to make myself available to bloggers out there.  If you ask me to guest blog, you will get a great post of 300 words or more with pictures and a solid inbound link from my blog.  Let me know if you are interested.

Now, the last thing: “Analytics.”  How I achieved that 10,099 number is the mystery of the universe.  I’d like to think it was due to my amazing writing.  I think we all know that isn’t the reason.  Traffic is the result of strategic activity.  I have been working really hard this month to test and set in place a traffic generating plan for 2009 and I think I have actually done it!  Here is a bullet list of the items I will use to drive traffic in 2009 (not in any order):

• Stumbleupon networking (by far the best)
• Other social media
• Specific Social Networking: Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Wordpress.com, Blogger, Technorati, FriendFeed, Ping.fm, Last.fm, flickr, LinkedIn, and YouTube
• Blog Directories: MyBlogLog and Blog Catalog
• BlogCarnival.com
• Maintain organic Google Reader Feed Subscriptions and commenting often
• Keep to a weekly posting schedule as a minimum for posting to all three blogs
• Continuing to experiment with my Podcast.

I will publish the official numbers in 6 days when December is officially over but I hope you enjoyed these results.  You might say, the future’s so bright, I gotta wear bamboo shades. If you’d like to follow my journey in 2009, I encourage you to subscribe via FEED or EMAIL.

The title is a line from “O Holy Night,” my favorite Christmas song. I thought it a fitting way to start looking at my yearly blog stats which I am so very thankful for this Christmas.  Merry Christmas if you are one of the first readers!

I’ve learned more each day as this past year has whizzed by. I’ve learned how to be better dad, to meet my goals more efficiently at work, and last but not least: I’ve learned key strategies to be a better blogger. As I sat down to outline this post as I always do, I realized I could never fit all I’ve learned about blogging in one post. Better yet, I decided to craft it into a series of post. If you tune in each day until New Years Day 2009 (or when I run out of ideas) you will get all my blog tips, free of charge. If you are tuning in after the series is finished, I hope you find the set to be helpful to you in creating, maintaining, and enjoying a valuable blog.

Looking Back

Last year, I embarked upon a blog journey of the acronym C.A.N. The letters stood for the three goals I measured each month:

Circulation (inbound links)
Analytics (visitors)
Net (Income)

I made goals each month and reported them to you. You can find the last several months C.A.N. results here. This was a very efficient way to measure my own progress. Here is a chart showing how my three blogs Fared in traffic the past 4 months:

I think the smartest thing I have done this past year is to monitor progress toward goals through my monthly CAN post on my personal blog. My hope is that my lower two blogs will rise in their analytics and come close to my psych blog.

Moving Forward

Since this date last year and now, 12-24-08, I’ve earned a total of: $2,137 blogging. If you are interested how I made that chunk of change, here are the sources, in order of highest earnings:

Pay Per Post
PayU2Blog

Review Me
Buy Blog Reviews
Private Ads (Random people who’ve asked to advertise on my blog)
Text Link Ads

I made the majority of this past year’s income when my highest PR was a 4/10. A few months ago, Google reduced me to a 1/10 and much of my opportunities to make money disappeared. This is the irony of Google’s PageRank system: They penalize you for posting sponsored posts and yet the ones who sponsor you pull away when Google penalizes you. There is a solution but it is quite cumbersome: add the tag rel=”nofollow” to any paid link. I’ve been diligent at doing this, not only with paid links but also with links that are irrelvant. I have heard this can affect PageRank as well.

What’s an honest blogger to do?

The secret then, to what I hope is my future success is to always be relevant when linking (ie; no blogrolls, random “link love” posts), always write valuable posts with excellent content (paid or not), rel=”nofollow” ads and sponsored posts when the buyer allows it (note: does all nofollow), and measure my progress toward goals on my personal blog. Finally, as I said earlier, I hope to bring the analytics of my teaching blog and this blog, my personal blog, up to the region on the chart where the psych blog is. If I pull that off in 2009, I will feel I’ve truly accomplished something.

I have many other strategies I am playing with to hopefully put a plasma big screen on the tv stand. In future posts in this series I will discuss social media and networking along with personal habits like scheduling times to post and future time stamping posts. I’ll also be taking YOUR QUESTIONS.  I hope you’ll “tune in.”

I measure my 3 blogs’ progress toward goals. You can browse current and past entries in the CAN… category.

CAN stands for:
Circulation: Incoming links.
Analytics: # of visitors
Net: Money made or key takeaways. (Because money isn’t everything.)

I often use shorthand in referring to my blogs:
PFTFF: Postcards from the Funny Farm
DATSOL: Damien at the Speed of Life
DLP: Dynamite Lesson Plan

Here are my goals for October 2008:

PFTFF:
C – 5
A – 3000
N – $70

DATSOL:
C – 4
A – 700
N – $10

DLP:
C – 3
A – 500
N – $10

—

Note: A conservative yet challenging set of numbers.  Watch how I do in October.  Why not subscribe and watch it in real time? -or-

This is a monthly feature at Damien at the Speed of Life where I measure my 3 blogs’ progress toward goals. You can browse current and past entries in the CAN… category.
CAN stands for:
Circulation: Incoming links.
Analytics: # of visitors
Net: Money made or key takeaways. (Because money isn’t everything.)

I often use shorthand in referring to my blogs:
PFTFF: Postcards from the Funny Farm
DATSOL: Damien at the Speed of Life
DLP: Dynamite Lesson Plan

Below are my results.  I invite your comments on this topic.

___

PFTFF:

C – 15/20

A – 4325/4000

N – $335/$400

DATSOL:

C – 7/10

A – 540/1140

N – $27/$50

DLP:

C – 4/3

A – 465/500

N – $29.63/$40

—

My Notes:

As you can see I met most my blogging goals across the board.  But the blues came in a few days ago like a storm over a pirate ship.

I’ve learned with life as with blogging that most things are not worth letting them get me down.  But I am down folks.  Thanks to some “weeding” I did in the way Google views my site, specifically with the canonical www, Google saw fit to knock PFTFF from a strong PR4 down to a miserable PR1.  *sigh* Google is just calibrating the change but I could have avoided this ding and that gets me the deepest.  It will last about 6 months.

I am still strong in my spirits and not into blaming Google this time.  I’m back on the “CAN” system full force  since I can’t rely on Google’s PR1 to dictate my worth to the blogosphere.  I made just as much money when I was a PR0 it was just a heck of a lot more laborious finding the work.  But as I noted above, money isn’t everything.  Respect is important too.  Watch for my October goals in another post.