Happy Thanksgiving for you guys that celebrate it (I know it was yesterday…). Another set of questions and answers is live.
If you want to ask a question you just need to leave a comment below with it.
1. James asks:
I run a podcast via a blog. I just started moving into video and I am now concerned that I have to many images, too many icons, and too many videos on the blog. Is there a chance I’ve overcrowded my blog?
I took a brief look on your blog and it does not look overcrowded to me. I think expanding beyond articles is interesting, especially if you have the time and skills to make cool podcasts and video posts. Very few bloggers do that, so it can become a unique selling proposition too.
The only thing that I would make sure is that your navigation clearly separates the three things. For example, you could have 3 main navigation tabs, one for “Blog”, one for “Podcats” and one for “Videos.” That one a visitor could reach the part of your site that he likes quickly and effortlessly.
2. Satish asks:
Is there a way to build automated link exchange system?
Ex:- If A and B exchange link.
A’s link on B’s website will be there until B’s link remains on A’s website.I would like to do link exchange with some people, but I can’t keep monitoring whether they remove my link at any time, it should be handled automatically. Th
First of all I recommend exchanging links only with relevant websites, and for the purpose of adding value to the user experience and not to manipulate Google’s rankings.
If you follow that route, therefore, you would find yourself partnering with a handful of websites at most. On that case it becomes easy to monitor them once a month (even if you have 10 sites to check it will take 5 minutes).
The only scenario where you would need an automatic system is where you trade links with dozens or hundreds of sites, but this is something that might get you in trouble in the end so I would avoid.
Finally, I am not aware of any automatic system, but it should be possible to build one with PHP.
3. Transcriptionist asks:
What should be the optimal bounce rate? What is the minimum bounce rate that you think can be achieved? What were the bounce rates at the beginning of your blogs and what are the numbers now? How much did you target for your blogs at their inception, and have you been able to achieve it and if yes, how?
Apart from your own experiments and results in this regard and compelling content, what are other tips and techniques that you would suggest to bring the bounce rate down? Elaborate every little aspect in detail by dedicating a separate post for this topic please, as we all know the significance of controlling bounce rates arises from user behavioral tracking by major search engines and its subsequent effects on SERPs.
An optimal bounce rate is below 15%, but keep it in mind it is very hard to achieve that. The minimum that you could have without needing to spend a huge amount of time and energy on the tweaking process is probably around 25% is 30%.
I am not sure what my bounce rates were on the beginning of my blogs were because I didn’t use to check on them. Even today I don’t check bounce rates that often or for the blog as whole. Usually I just work with bounce rates on commercial projects, sales and landing pages.
As for optimizing sites for low bounce rates, I am working on a long and structured article on the topic. It will be part of my next project, so stay tuned for that.
4. Rick asks:
What’s your take on having a companion newsletter for your blog? (You don’t seem to offer one so perhaps that speaks volumes.) People swear by it, but I’m trying to understand why you wouldn’t just put all your content on the blog and skip the newsletter.
If you have the time available I think that having a newsletter to complement your blog is a great idea. Internet marketers swear by email lists because they are the most responsive channel you have, and it has been proven time and time again.
Additionally, I find that a newsletter allow you to build a closer relationship with some of your readers, because an email is more personal than a blog post.
Why not just put all the content on the blog? Well, because some of the content that will be suitable for your newsletter will not be suitable for the blog and vice versa. Suppose you want to give people a sneak peek into your latest project. A blog post would broadcast it beyond your control, while with the newsletter you could be sure about how many people would get to known your news, how they could share or act upon it and so on.
5. Ad Pr New York asks:
What are the best traffic stats to use?
Looking for one that is full featured and accurate.
Detailed referrers and demographics are important
Google Analytics is definitely the most robust and feature rich web analytics program out there. It is also free, so you can’t go wrong by giving it a try.
Sometimes it will report underestimated traffic numbers, but the difference will be small, and much more realistic than the rest of the trackers out there that always over estimate numbers.
6. Simon asks:
1) How do I block an IP address that is spamming my blog frequently and consistently with useless comments and links to non-Google approved sites? It seems like there is some bot auto-posting spam comments.
2) Is there a way that in the page navigation of a blog we can make a link to an outside page? Would this be done through altering the header.php to include another link or through the manage pages section in admin?
1) You can block his name internally on WordPress. Just go to “Settings,” then “Discussion,” and you will find a blacklist box there. Alternatively you can also block his IP with a .htaccess file if your server runs on Apache. You just need to insert the following code on the .htaccess file (changing the IP address obviously):
order allow,deny
deny from 200.20.2.1
allow from all
2) Yes you can do this. Basically you would need to delete the code that calls the page links automatically from WordPress and add the links manually. Once you have that you can add a link to whatever site you wish.
7. Netpreneur asks:
I have a plan to make a blog with forum inside, what are characteristics of content for blog and forum?
The blog content will be generated by you (or by other authors that you will hire), while the forum content will be generated by the members. You might be present and active on the forum, but unless many other people are too, it will become a ghost forum.
What I recommend is to work first on the blog, make it popular and build a community around it. Once you have that accomplished, then you launch the forum to support the lateral discussions that might arise from the blog posts.
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