My 1,000th post

[Robert Paulson]

Even though I’ve been visiting webmaster and more recently SEO forums for a few years, I still am not sure I belong handing out any advice to anyone about SEO. So when you read my 1,000th post, consider it as being from a guy who’s made plenty of mistakes and is trying to help others avoid some of the same ones I’ve made. Don’t consider it as me pretending to be a voice of authority. ‘Cuz I’m not it.

Ok, here we go….

On blogging:

1) When deciding on a topic and the “voice” you’ll use when you blog on that topic, know your own strengths and weaknesses, and the lay of the land in the niche you’re in. For example, if you want to blog about the St. Louis Cardinals and there really aren’t any blogs out there that dig into the stats and what they might mean for the future of the team, blog on that. If there are loads of blogs that drone on about stats, blog on something different about the team. Blog about the athlete’s rides. Or their homes. Or their wives. Whatever. Be different.
2) People have said it before and I’ve seen the proof: Google loves Wordpress.
3) Timing is everything. I never realized how important it can be until I heard something on the radio in the morning, blogged about it in the afternoon, and by the next day was already receiving traffic for related searches. Since then I’ve lucked into other timely posts that have really been nice for getting traffic.
4) Link to your competition. It went against my dyed in the wool old school business sense, to freely link to those in my same space, competing for the same readers, but I tried listening to the geekerati and linked to them when they had something interesting or newsworthy to say on their blogs. It paid off, either in return links, or with an expanded network of people that I could learn from.
5) If you can, be funny. If you can’t be funny, be smart. If you can’t be smart, do something else (know your strengths).
6) Be your own editor. I like to let new entries sit for 12-24 hours before I publish them, because reading them later always shows flaws in style, flow and/or grammar that once repaired make a more smooth. Turn it out too quickly and you risk sounding unprofessional. Then again, you might be a really good writer.

On general stuff:

1) Rand Fishkin is really good at baiting. Baiting for links and baiting for discussion. So good they ought to call it “Fishbaiting”. His gift? Playing one side against another. I notice he often plays one side against another; “Joe said Sally was a moron. I’m not so sure Sally isn’t the smart one. What do you think?” So often I’d find myself in a reaction mode, quickly clicking a reply button to fire off a response, only to stop and wonder – why am I so worked up about this? Oh, he did a great job of getting both sides to an argument mentally engaged and maybe a bit angry. Brilliant. More people ought to use that if they can.
2) If you run a contextual ad program like AdSense or YPN, unless you’ve tested ad layouts simultaneously in the same positions over a period of time (use some rotating ad software like OpenAds), you really don’t know what ads perform and what ads don’t. Don’t assume the pretty ads work the best. You might be richer by trying to win ugly.
3) Give of yourself in communities – volunteer to help someone else, or be a guinea pig. Or volunteer to test something on a site. You might learn something, and it helps to build a network of friends, who in time may confide in you things that will bump you to the next level.
4) Set aside some time, knuckle down, and go get those backlinks. Send letters. Make phonecalls. If the links are of value, they’re worth some effort.
5) Write good content. I know, who hasn’t said that one before? Sometimes all it takes is 60-90 minutes of research for lower competition KW phrases and good onpage SEO for an article, and you own that KW phrase for at least the next 12 months.
6) Forums are emmer effing hard to grow and monetize. If you’re considering it, stop right now and consider something else. If I knew then what I know now, I’d have taken a different route than to try to build a small fortune from a forum.
7) Wikipedia has the potential to eat everyone’s lunch with it’s ever-increasing popularity. So if you have outgoing links to encyclopedic sources in your pages, link to anyone except Wikipedia wherever possible.
8) If you’re afraid of using Google Analytics for fear of Google finding out too much about your sites, offer to build free sites for those in your same genre. Maintain FTP control of them and use G analytics on those sites. You can learn without jeopardizing your own stuff. And someone else gets a site for free. Everyone wins.
9) Keep track of the steps you followed to build your sites, or the links you chased after. It’ll give you a roadmap for future site builds.
10) Watch other SEO’s to learn how to SEO.
11) Watch other designers to learn how to design.
12) Watch other coders to learn how to code.
13) Check your domain’s history before you register.

Only listen to half of what I say (you pick which half).

[dazzlindonna]

bah, i gotta spread rep, but that was very much rep worthy. niiiiiice.

[eKstreme]

Great post Rob! Congrats on your 1K, and thanks for all your posts here.

Pierre

[okguyjames]

Really good stuff RP!

[rmccarley]

10-12 are especially great points. I like encouraging newbies to do well and I learn a lot through their efforts... often stuff I had just forgotten about.

[earlpearl]

Very insightfull comments RP, and clever ideas, also. Excellent post.

Now I gotta reread randfish's commentary with your insights in mind...and see how effective that is. What a great comment.

Dave

[skitzzo]

Timing really is everything. It is frustrating at times to write a post a day,month, year too early, then someone else writes something VERY similar later on and gets a lot more attention with it.

Fantastic post RP!

[eCopt]

Sweet, nice rundown and congrats on your post count number.

[Robert Paulson]

@EP, I can't believe the number of times I've read his stuff and thought how smart he was for positioning things the way he did. He brings both sides to the table, stirs the pot a bit, but then extracts himself at the end so that he doesn't polarize half the audience for/against him.

@Skittz, As with a lot of things, it sometimes takes a 2x4 to the face for me to realize something. On the timing issue, the first time that positive result happened to me, it was like the dinger home run sound effect on the Dan Patrick radio show (for those of you who listen - for those who don't, it's Gilbert Gottfried shouting out that single word). DING!

Thanks for all the kind words - this was my first-ever milestone post. I look forward to seeing how much smarter I'll be when I reach 5,000!

[bigdoug]

I bookmarked this post.............it rules. I will digg it to see what happens.


Big D