Blogging Questions Answers 28
Time for Blogging Questions & Answers. The questions on this post are coming from edition 24, so if you asked one on edition 25, 26 or 27, just hold tight until I arrive to yours. If you posted one before batch 24 and have not seen an answer yet let me know because I might have missed it.
1. Fimldr asks:
What do you do (if anything) if Google keeps highlighting one of your minor, less interesting posts for other people’s Google searches? I wrote a post about a relatively obscure horror film, and for some reason, I’ve gotten way more Google-related hits from that than from anything else.
Search engine traffic can be unpredictable. Sometimes your targeted and structured posts will draw no organic traffic at all, and other times a post where you had no great expectations whatsoever and that took 10 minutes to write will bring an avalanche of traffic.
The latter case is not a problem, since getting good traffic for a post that you didn’t expect much from is always a pleasant surprise right?
The former, however, is a symptom of poor search engine optimization.
If your targeted and structured articles (also called pillar content) are not ranking well for their keywords and not bringing decent traffic, it could be related to one (or more) of the following causes:
- the overall trust of the domain is low (i.e. few backlinks and low pagerank on your domain)
- the individual trust of the article is low (i.e. few backlinks pointing to the article itself)
- highly competitive topic (i.e. there are too many authority sites competing for that term)
- poor on-page optimization (the basic SEO factors like the title tag or H1 tags on your page are missing or not optimized)
- duplicate content issues (i.e. your article can be found on other places, either on your website on on external ones)
So make a quick check-up to see where the problem might be coming from. Usually it is a matter of targeting highly competitive keywords. If that is the case with you, I would re-do my keyword research and aim for less competitive terms first. Once you have conquered them, move up on the ladder.
Finally, be patient. As long as you are putting quality content out there and promoting it to make sure people will know about it, the links will come and so will the organic traffic.
2. Rick asks:
I’ve been studying the web ecosystem for a while now and there’s still one thing I can’t figure out. I have google alerts out on various keywords, and often I’ll get pointers to ‘junk’ sites (scraped or garbage content on default wordpress themes, for example). When these sites have ads on them, I understand the motivation. But I see many of these sites with no ads, and I’m trying to understand what purpose they serve (I’m assuming there’s some black hat purpose).
Here are some of the potential purposes that come to my mind:
1. The guy will eventually put the ads. For now he is just testing the niche to see if it brings any traffic. If that s the case, soon enough he will be loading it with his AdSense units.
2. The guy just wants to get his domain name indexed by Google and possibly gain some PageRank. Somethings the mere fact of the domain being indexed can improve its value for a potential buyer.
3. The guy wants to create a small network of websites to reap the link juice afterward. Suppose he has a big site about toys. He would then create mini scraper sites about geek toys, kids toys, adult toys, and so on, and once those mini sites acquired some Pagerank, he would make them point to his main site with highly targeted URLs and optimized anchor text.
4. The guy has no clue about what he is doing and just want to have a “website.”
3. Bugjee asks:
Which is the best Related Posts WordPress Plugin?
I think that the most complete and reliable one is the Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (this is a link to my review).
4. Greg asks:
Daniel, I have a question about trademark infringement pertaining to domain addresses and website names. If there is a website with a particular name and domain address, and I create a website with the same name and domain address except that I add the prefix “the” in front of it, would I face any trademark infringement issues? Take AutoBlog.com for example. If I were to register TheAutoBlog.com and name my website The Auto Blog, would I face any legal issues from AutoBlog.com?
First of all keep in mind that trademarks are given by use and not by registration. That is, a specific company or individual does not need to register its trademark to be protected, it just needs to be using it.
I am pretty sure I could claim that Daily Blog Tips is my trademark for example, even without an official registration with the U.S. Patents and Trademarks Office (scrapers, take notice!).
That being said, the prefix thing is a tricky question. Here is a quote from the Trademarks office website:
” After an application is filed, the assigned examining attorney will search the USPTO records to determine if a conflict, i.e., a likelihood of confusion, exists between the mark in the application and another mark that is registered or pending in the USPTO.”
So the key thing here is “likelihood of confusion.”
If your name, using the prefix, will have a likelihood of confusion with the existing name, and I would avoid it, because it could bring you legal problems down the road.
The problem is determining if there is likelihood of confusion or not, I know. It is something subjective after all.
I think that between TheAutoBlog.com and AutoBlog.com there is a likelihood of confusion, so I would not register it. You could just pick another prefix and be safe though. For example ProAutoBlog would already be sufficiently different to protect you.
5. Transcriptionist asks:
I couldn’t find an XML sitemap in your blog. Do you have one? If no, why are you reluctant to include an XML sitemap?
I don’t have an XML sitemap on most of my websites. Google only recommends webmasters to use it, but it is not compulsory. Many SEOs (and I include myself here) believe that if your website link structure is functional and optimized, Google will crawl your site in the same way whether you use a sitemap or not.
You need to remember that Google is in the business of collecting information and providing it back to its users in a logical and reliable way. It is in its best interests therefore to crawl your website and to find if your content could be useful to its search users.
I believe sitemaps can be used for websites that are having crawling problems, or that have changed their link structure recently. In all other cases I don’t think having a sitemap is necessary or beneficial.
6. Richard asks:
Is there a place, site, whatever, containing definitions of technical, or other, blogging terms (alt text, etc.)? Thank you.
I wrote the Bloggers Glossary a while ago. While it is not exhaustive, I should give you a good start. There are over 40 terms there I believe.
7. SlamBlogger asks:
How do you feel about Facebook Connect? After it launches, would creating profiles for users on your own site be pointless?
I think that Facebook Connect is a good initiative. It has the potential to become pervasive on the web, especially because they are securing partnerships with some popular services like Digg and Six Apart.
But, it is too early to tell if they will manage to become the de facto web authentication system. I think it is a good idea to wait and see how it will develop, and just implement anything on your site or blog only when you see a real trend going on.
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Blogging Questions & Answers 28
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Blogging Questions Answers 28
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