Why Do You Blog?
July 23, 2008 By: Justin | 10 commentsMost people blog to make money or express themselves, but I’ve noticed that many bloggers lack a defined purpose. Sure they’re blogging to make money, but that is way too vague. Every blog or website you launch should have a specific goal and purpose. So many people trying to make money rush and launch a blog, but in their excitement to make money, they don’t stop to consider the detailed goal. They start pumping out articles 3 to 5 times a week, but after a few months they realize they’re going no where.
You need to have a focus for every blog. Do not purchase a domain or launch a site without having a reason. The reason needs to be more than “for money”. For example, the reason could be “this blog is going to be a small 10 post niche blog that promotes geotargeted Adsense contextual ads for the keywords X, Y, and Z”. I know it seems dumb to need to say that, but it will change the entire process. For that type of blog, the focus needs to be 100% on search traffic, not social. Second, the site needs to not answer the question, because you want them to visit the ad for the answer. You need to set up the site in a way that improves CTR; this means no 125 ad blocks, this means you should got with the basic white background, blue links, black text colors OR go with the dark background, dark text, and bright links colors. Each type of blog defines setup, content, theme, promotion, and monetization.
You need to have a focus or the task quickly becomes overwhelming. Lets say you find a sweet keyword, do not instantly rush out and buy the domain, launch it, and start pumping out content. Before you ever start your site, you should know: all the major keywords, how difficult each one is, know your competition, determine what you’ll need to do to promote it, and estimate a time frame. Then you need to consider how you’re going to monetize it and deal with all that stuff. Get all your information in order BEFORE you start.
So Why Do I Blog on SEO Zombie?
Some might wonder what the goal of this blog is. I don’t really monetize it, but I spend a fair bit of time on it and I’m getting ready to spend a ton of time on it. So this may leave you wondering why?
Most of the work I do with SEO involves promoting my own money making sites. Well this presented a problem for me. People asked me, what do you do for money? Or when I went in for an interview, someone asked to see my sites. Well I’m not going to show them my sites. I needed a flagship, which is the reason I launched SEO Zombie. I created it to rank for my local SEO market, a task I accomplished in about 2 months. So now I am expanding this site. My new goal is to become an authoritative site for SEO with a focus on making money online. Everyone goes after “Make Money Online” and they all have a huge focus on social blogging, which leads people to fail in making money online because people think they should apply flagship promotion methods to their niche sites. My new focus is going to be making money with organically targeted traffic.
I know everyone says the make money niche is not the best money maker, so why am I doing this? Two reasons.
Help People - I’ve known web design for years, but I learned how to make money by digging through tons of information online. I’ve read a lot of good stuff, but I’ve read even more crap. I want to share my knowledge. Blogging allows me to make money part time while going to school. My income isn’t as high as some of the big name guys, but that’s because I do this part time. I go to college full time, so during the school year I do this between classes and at night. I know there are tons of people who would love to have a site that makes a passive income with a few hours of work each week at night and on weekends. It allows me to go to college without needing a set job, which is nice. My schedule is flexible, which is important when you have homework and exams. I’d like to “pay forward” things I’ve learned.
Build Personal Authority - Even if this site makes no money, a flagship has huge benefits. Imagine the leverage people like Shoemoney and John Chow have with affiliate networks. Having a brand like that, allows you to have weight to throw around. Look at Griz for example. He makes a killing with his blogspot blog, but there are people who are hesitant to take him seriously because he doesn’t have some nice shinny social blog. Sadly, having a whole army of niche sites doesn’t seem to impress people as much. (but it will make you money)
Now, don’t take this wrong. I’m not telling you all to go out and launch a big MMO blog. If you want to make money, build your small army of niche sites in non-MMO niches. I’m working on a degree in web design and my future goal is to have a portfolio that is more diverse than niche affiliate sites. This is why I’m targeting such a huge term. This site is a two year long goal, which is how much time I have left till I finish up all my college stuff. I don’t stress that this site doesn’t make me money, because that’s what my army of sites are for. That helps me work on this site as a long term goal without getting discouraged.
So my new target keyword is…
SEO
Yep, I’m going for the mother load. =P
My group of bloggers I talk to and read already has people dominating the MMO and Internet Marketing niche, but nobody is going for SEO, so I thought it was a good spot for me.
So if you have an empty spot on your blogroll =P
lol, I’d love an SEO link =)
What to Expect?
So here I’ll be sharing my version of MMO, which is heavily focused on gray tinted SEO. I mainly promote affiliate products, BANS, and a few Adsense blogs. I’ve worked in areas that many other blogs consider taboo (adult), so I’m considering sharing some of that knowledge here. Its taboo, so I don’t know if I want the label of a porn marketer, but it does make killer money.
If you guys have any questions, or need help, feel free to leave comments and ask questions. I’ll do my best to help you out.
Filed Under SEO Zombie |
Tagged With Blogging, seozombie, ZEO Zombie
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Justin,
You are ape-shit crazy to try to target SEO…but since I recently started targeting my blog for search engine optimization and you know your stuff, I’ll help you out.
Quick tip: search your site in google and you’ll notice a lot of your links ending up in the supplemental index due to duplicate content. This is b/c you set your all in one seo to stick SEO zombie on the end of your title tags.
Its a nice way to build authority, but its not a good idea for new sites. I’d recommended removing it for at least a month.
MJ
You’re right about the supplemental problem, but I disagree that its due to the titles. The titles are different enough and placing your site name at the end is a common format.
The duplicate content issue seems to be from Google indexing */feed/ and */trackback/
I had the blocked in my robots.txt, but Google seems to be ignoring it. I made some changes to my robots.txt, removed the links pointing to those duplicate pages, and put in a request for their removal from the SERPS.
Went ahead and made some site changes to reduce my site depth. I had been putting it off.
Also, my site isn’t deep linked. This wasn’t a concern at first, because this blog started out targeting a easy keyword. The site didn’t require much deep linking, because I wasn’t trying to rank the posts, just the home page. As I build links to internal pages, it’ll help pull stuff out of sandbox.
I agree, I’m crazy to target SEO, but its a long term goal. It could take me a while, but I’m ok with that.
Are you sure its because of the feed? I ask because one of my newer sites got the same treatment, but when I took the site name out of the title tags all pages were taken out of the supplemental index.
And actually I don’t think targeting SEO is so bad, at the very least you’ll build some authority for seo-related long tails.
Well, I was looking at my index pages and I have about 100+ that were in the format
seozombie.com/post-name/feed/
seozombie.com/post-name/trackback/
I made some changes like I mentioned and request the URLS to be removed from the index.
I’ll wait a bit and see what effect it has, then make adjustments from there.
I check webmaster tools, the only pages showing duplicate titles is my sitemap pages. They don’t report any problems.
Yeah, SEO is a huge goal, but there isn’t any reason for me to not go after it. Its not something I can do overnight, but I’m confident I can rank fairly well.
If you show me how to target SEO I will be able to duplicate that for any of the long-tail keywords I might decide to go for.
Keep up the good work.
This is a new one for me as well. I’ve ranked plenty of long tails and some mid range terms, but this is a huge task.
Justin that was a solid post, it reminded of a point in time, when I first started out.
At that point, MFA sites were the Craze, and I had to design on the right business model.
I decided to go with that Authority site model. One of the major reasons I did was out of pure practicality. I did not know how to both automate and scale. Could not Code basically
At this point in time, my choices are now being validated.
Yeah, I think there is room for both models. Niche sites, MFA, BANS, etc are good money makers, but I personally feel that flagships are needed for long term success (well at least for my business model).
yo justin, discovered this blog not a while ago.. i think i found it from searching for somthing like “my seo empire” or i dunno …
basically our minds i think set to the same targets..i agree aswell about build your own army first, then blog about its failure/success/progress ..
anyway.. good post :P
keep on doin it……. oh yeah
hellknows.
I blog to help people. Besides, it’s fun!