Well I got side tracked (must come from being old and bald) from expanding on the topics that Nicole Dean brought up while guest blogging at Mike Paetzold Recommends last month. Then again it may be I got side tracked with the Keyword Call and getting the preparation done for the WordPress SEO Call next Wednesday. (Make sure you get signed up – hint, hint).

One of the ways to find topics for content is using your stats and Nicole gave some good ones but missed my favorite – MyBlogLog.

What I like about MyBlogLog is they will give me the search phrase and the search engine for my visitors. You can often mine this information and by paying attention to exactly how they found you.

There is a section of my traffic for today on this blog. Most of these topics show up quite regularly. A few of the topics that show quite regularly from this list are

• How to add Aweber form to your blog
• Anything about Google trends, insights and WonderWheel (Not on the list today but shows quite frequently)
• Anything about linking your blog to your website or making your blog look like your website

Going through the full list each day will give you a lot of different ideas and it is especially important when you see Google showing keyword searches that you have not targeted.

If you see traffic coming to a page that mentions a keyword phrase that is a very small part of the whole post and it happens more than once then those are a perfect topic to target as there must be no real competition for that term and Google is hard pressed to find a more relevant page.

Those topics can be golden and though most don’t get huge volumes of traffic you are likely to get the lions share of what is there and it will come consistently.

Make sure you have signed up for the free WordPress SEO Call next Wednesday at 7 pm.

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably.

Technorati Tags: blog stats, find content, mybloglog, Nicole Dean

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This will be the end of the series on getting the most from MyBlogLog and there is a caveat on this particular topic. This is not to spam others and send out your pitches. This is for networking with others and building relationships. Because you can misuse this I almost did not address this topic. Nuff said I hope .

You can message people in your contact list easily and it never hurts to welcome new contacts. Click on their profile and you can leave a message. This can be a great way to welcome them and thank them for following you.

Don’t use this as a promotion of your stuff or sites. Check out their profile and comment on what they are doing if it is complimentary to what you do. Now my blog is about WordPress and if what they are doing is about tattoos there is not any synergy there. That is not someone that you will want to be cross commenting with regularly. If it isn’t a fit you may just want to leave a quick thank you for following.

Rarely does anyone do this including me but when I have it tends to help me find people that are active on my blog and I tend to be an active participant on theirs. The key is for it to be a win win.

It is all about finding like minded complimentary people and the more of those you find and interact with the better for both of you.

Hope you have found this series helpful and welcome your comments.

Mike Paetzold

Technorati Tags: blog commenting, mybloglog, networking

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MyBlogLog can be a great way to do research on quite a few things including…

• Your social interaction
• Your community interactions
• What’s hot
• Blog traffic research
• Topic research

One of the things I really like is checking my own usage of social sites. On your home page you can see what you have bookmarked, blogs you have commented on, your latest blog posts, videos you have added and anything else that has changed on any of the sites you have added to your profile.

Just click the new with then the me radio button. As you can see in the image it is showing a comment I made, a bookmark, a blog post and a tweet on Twitter. There is also an RSS subscription for this which would allow me to add the feed into my reader. Not something I would do for myself (I usually know what I have done – not always but most of the time ) but I do use it for some of the other information.

The big thing I look for on this is how much of what I am doing is with others. After all social networks work best when you are sharing not just your stuff but others also. It is a reminder to me if I start becoming a me networker and not a networker.

Now if you change to view new in my neighborhood you will see what activities your community has and what they are posting, tweeting and bookmarking etc. This can be valuable to see new topics that are generating activity within your tribe. This is the one that I have added to my reader as I check the reader more often than I check in at MyBlogLog.

Clicking on Hot In MyCommunities will give you the top posts that people are viewing and what is going on in the community.

Just another way to see what is popular within the areas you have shown interest.

Blog traffic research we touched upon in the previous post on setting up your tracking. This information lets you know what is working and what is not so you can work on improving your traffic and how you serve your community.

Finally there is topic research. Stick your topic in the search bar and you can get results like below. I just added tattoos to test.

This has brought back a list of 73 people who have blogged on the subject and a listing of 160 different blogs. This will take a bit of time but some digging on a topic can help you find others you may want to follow on that topic and blogs that you may want to read and comment on.

This can be a great way to find these types of resources if you are going into a new niche. Now a caveat it will take a bit of time and effort to sort out the garbage from the worthwhile but if you add 10 potential places to comment and start a conversation it can be worth the effort.

So this gives you 5 different ways you can use MyBlogLog for research but understand that being active in more communities, having all of your social sites in your profile and being active make this more powerful. It is case where the more effort you put in the more valuable the results you will get from it.

As always your input and any tricks you care to share that have been overlooked are appreciated.

Mike Paetzold

 

 5 ways to use MyBlogLog for research [5:23m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Technorati Tags: blog comments, blogs, mybloglog, niche research, social interaction, social networks, twitter

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This is the next section in the MyBlogLog series to help you get the most from this service. Hopefully you have followed the steps in the previous post and taken the time to add in the services you already use and create your profile. If not check it out now and start there.

First we will add a widget to the sidebar so we can see who is visiting.

Now the widget that shows who visits is next. You need to know what size your sidebar is and you have quite a few options.

You can personalize this to a wide variety of styles but you need to make sure that you make it smaller in width than your sidebar or you will have problems.

Check your style sheet for your themes for the width of your sidebar and also look to see if there are padding parameters. Quite often it is 5px so if your sidebar is 200 px wide the largest you could make the widget would be 190px to not mess up how your theme displays.

Once you have designed your widget you will get a piece of code which you need to copy to your clipboard. Log in to your dashboard and add a text widget to your sidebar (drag it ot the proper position then click edit.

This will open up the text widget and you can copy and paste in the code there. Add a title if you wish it to show on your sidebar with one. (I usually do not do that but to each their own. If you have header graphics in your sidebar you may want to for the separation.)

Make sure to click the done button AND to save the changes to your sidebar. (Forget this step and then you will be like me scratching your head when you go look to figure out why it does not show .

That is all it will take to get your widget in your sidebar. If you don’t like the way it is displaying go back and start again with the widget design.

Tracking is one of the things I really love about MyBlogLog. You can see exactly how people find you, what they view and where they click to leave. Think this can give you some great information?

It displays in 3 columns and shows all of the above. You can also see what is hot on other blogs in your communities. This is where the interaction can be very valuable and will be discussed in more detail when we talk about using MyBlogLog for research.

Now to fully use the tracking you need to upgrade but at $25 for the year it is a no brainer (that is per blog not account if like me you have more than one blog.)

Now you need to add a piece of code into your theme for the tracking to work if you have not added a the widget. They have decent tutorials and as each theme is different it is very hard to have a single answer. The key is like most tracking codes it needs to show between the body tags in your theme.

Finally if you have upgraded you can run a variety of reports from your tracking stats. This is really powerful for helping you to see what is working, which posts are the most popular and where people are clicking.

Checking this weekly allows me to find topics that are drawing the most traffic and which posts (especially presell posts) are working and getting people to click through to a sales page. This makes adding popular content or complimentary content on similar topics that people have already told you they are interested in.

This should give you a bit more to get done now in getting the most out of your usage of MyBlogLog. Your comments drive this series so let me know what you like or don’t like or anything that has been skipped. Once I get enough comments then the next session will be posted on using MyBlogLog for research.

Mike Paetzold

 

 MyBlogLog - adding widget and trackiong [4:58m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Technorati Tags: mybloglog, MyBlogLog tracking, MyBlogLog widget, sidebarwidget, theme, tracking, widget, wordpress

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The first thing you want to make sure of when using MyBlogLog is to fill out your profile completely especially with a picture or avatar. This picture or avatar will show up on any blog that you visit and will start to brand you or your business.

Take the time to add the services you already use like You Tube, Facebook, Twitter, and many more. Integrating these will be helpful when you are back checking yourself. Something that will be addressed in a future post under using MyBlogLog for research.

Now how much contact information you decide to make available is a personal choice and each of those items can be displayed to everyone, just your contacts or nobody.

One of the things I do like to set is to auto join communities. Mine is set to 10 visits so if you are a member and I visit your blog 10 times then MyBlogLog will automatically add me to your community. This will become very important when we discuss using this for research.

Fill out your bio and again you can decide who it will be displayed to.

Add in your blog/s. It is a relatively simple process. Next time we will discuss setting up the tracking and adding widgets to your blog but if you have never used MyBlogLog this is enough for one post.

The more information and the more personal you make your page the better it will perform for you. This is about networking with others and building a tribe that wants your information.

Doing this properly does take a bit of time and effort but it will pay off to do it right the first time.

Your comments keep this series going so let me know what you think about the information and if you have anything you have done that would help others or an item that I skipped in this process.

Mike Paetzold

 

 Setting up MyBlogLog [2:31m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Technorati Tags: mybloglog, MyBlogLog setup, setting up MyBlogLog, using MyBlogLog

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This will be the start of a series on MyBlogLog (maybe see the end of the post). Most of the people that I talk to whether on the monthly Blog Talk Radio show, in various forums and conference rooms know about it but are probably only scratching the surface on what is there.

Usually they join just for the shiny object – the sidebar widget you can add to your blog that shows who is visiting and allows you to show others when you have visited. Just look to the right on this blog and if you are logged in at MyBlogLog your avatar will be there and I can see who is visiting.

Anyone can click the avatar and go see more about you at MyBlogLog.

There is a lot more to the service though than just the widgets.

It can be used for…

• Tracking what is happening
• Creating interaction with others
• Research what is hot in your area
• A portal for all of your social interaction

So the first part here if you are not using MyBlogLog is go sign up and get an account. Make sure to fill out your profile, add your picture or what you use for an avatar (very important this is what will brand you as you visit others blogs) add in the tracking code and widget to your blog.

Join my community

Then if I get enough comments I will continue the series and get into some of the real power of using MyBlogLog. So if you are interested in this topic your comments will decide if it continues.

Mike Paetzold

 

 MyBlogLog - are you using it? [1:58m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Technorati Tags: mybloglog, research, social networks, widgets

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MyBlogLog is a social site for bloggers. Started originally as a straight social site they have continued to add more items to it. You can join it free.

Now how do you get traffic from MyBlogLog?

MyBlogLog allows you to add a widget to your blog that will let you see who is visiting your blog that belongs to MyBlogLog. More importantly you will show up on other blogs showing the widget that you visit. These link to your MyBlogLog page and allow people to find out more about you and the blog/s you have.

You can add others as contacts through MyBlogLog just as you can add friends at Facebook or MySpace. It is another way to connect with others.

The real power though is that you can add your other social sites to MyBlogLog. Sites like Facebook, Stumble Upon, Digg, Furl, Twitter, YouTube, etc.

The nice things is that each of these creates links that Google finds that go back to your various blog/s from these social sites.

Here is an example by just looking quickly at my profile this am. The following links were created and do get indexed because they show up in my Google Alerts all the time.

• 4 Stumbles I made yesterday
• A comment I made on someone else’s blog
• A new video I added at YouTube
• 5 Twitter conversations
• Feed of my latest blog posts
• Latest updates at Facebook

So just by using MyBlogLog all of the other things I do to create backlinks gets amplified automatically. That is the real power of MyBlogLog.

I can also look and see the latest things that all of my contacts have done too. (So add me as a contact so we can interact.)

You get to network with others and create extra links on autopilot. Definitely worth the time to set it up once to help you generate more traffic.

There is one more thing about MyBlogLog though. If you upgrade they provide you with some excellent tracking of what is happening on your blogs. You will be able to see how people found your blog, which pages they viewed and what links they clicked.

Free members get to see the top 10 but paying the $25 a year lets you see all of the stats available to you. Truly invaluable information to help you improve your blog’s performance.

There are other similar type sites like Blog Catalog but noen that are as powerful as MyBlogLog.

As always your questions and comments are welcomed.

Mike Paetzold

Technorati Tags: blog traffic, commenting, linking, mybloglog, traffic

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So far this week we have run through the first four steps to having a profitable blog. With the exception of the very first step this is the step that gets ignored by most people.

Yes people will set up their blogs properly, post them and generate traffic. Unfortunately they never do research first for profitability and they don’t test and track what is working.

One of the plugins that I had as a must have was the Google Analyticator. This allows you to have the code for Google Analytics on your blog.

You need to check this and see exactly where your traffic is coming from. This tells you what of the things you are doing is working so you can do more of it. Just as important you can see what isn’t working so you can fix it.

If you find three blogs that every time you comment you get a traffic spike do you think it might be a good idea to comment there as often as possible with out spamming?

My Blog Log also has a tracking service that will cost you $25 a year but you can see everything that is being clicked on your blog. You can see 10 for free so when starting you don’t have to pay initially.

There are numerous other pieces of software that can help you analyze your web stats but if you aren’t tracking what is happening and which posts are getting people to take the action you want it is very hard to improve your results.

Test and track your reslts and watch how much you can improve your results.

As always your comments and questions are appreciated.

Mike Paetzold

Saturday at 2pm edt I will have a free teleseminar on Step One that will expand what has been offered here. You can call in or listen on the web. Details are available at Profitable Blogging – Step One.

Technorati Tags: google analytics, mybloglog, tracking

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