Category: Marketing

Blog Comments

How to Promote Your Site With Blog Comments

Any blogger reading right now has no doubt bristled like an angry cat at the headline. Blog comments promoting a site immediately suggests comment spam. Well, that’s just what we’re saying: don’t spam! But anybody with a blog that allows comments has seen comments that work, which contribute to the discussion, and then the URL in the comment is tolerated.

The basic method is that you search Technoratti or Google BlogSearch to find blogs in your topic space or niche. Then go there and hopefully leave a comment that won’t get deleted, with a link back to your site.

The important thing is that you make participating in that blog’s community your first priority. Helpfully point out a mistake, add a note and a link pointing out some other aspect of the subject of the post, answer a question posed by another commenter, or even just mention that you also covered another view of this topic on your own blog.

One important strategy that is often overlooked: the sites that already link to you! Whenever a blogger links your site as a reference and you notice some traffic coming from it, go there and leave a comment thanking them for the link… and also fill in your site’s URL in the appropriate field. There, now you have two links, from a site that likes you already! You can also add a link back on your own site, thanking the blogger for mentioning you and pointing your readers to that site for commentary on your subject.

This is how the blogosphere builds friendships.

The important thing is to be a good web citizen above all else. Spam your link to irrelevant sites, or worse yet, hire a third-world freelancer to do it, and you’re heading for trouble and ill will all around. Further tips on blog comment marketing here.

Google AdSense

Analyzing the Latest Most Profitable Google AdSense Words

Handy little list for all users of Google AdSense, this is a list of some AdSense keywords, and this is the list of the highest-paying AdSense keywords.

Talk about any of these subjects on a blog with a Google ad in the sidebar, get the listed dollar amount every time somebody clicks the ad.

Well, as the site explains elsewhere, it’s not that simple! You have to have original content, be a site in good standing, etc. You can’t just post the list and expect it to do anything.

We ran some data-crunching on the list just to see what the top-ten most expensive words are by frequency:

118 mesothelioma
71 attorney
62 removal
62 hair
52 lawyer
44 laser
43 insurance
43 google
42 life
42 hosting

Clearly, our new word for the day is “mesothelioma“, a cancer commonly caused by asbestos. Construction workers and others exposed to asbestos the world over are suing the pants off their former employers, and lawyers apparently consider it money in the bank. This is no laughing matter; asbestos is nasty stuff and mesothelioma’s primary symptom is shortness of breath.

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Web Designer

Designers And Marketers Are One and the Same

An excellent point raised over at Bokardo, which reminds us of a fact we sometimes lose sight of: that designers are marketers. Especially in web design, that’s a controversial point. Sure, the “tech geeks” who spend their days slinging pixels and hacking AJAX code tend to bristle a little at the marketing types, who breeze by in their suits and ties and golf tans on their way to another power lunch, but we have to acknowledge that the product of our work is the first thing every potential customer sees.

The thing that makes the boundary between web design and marketing so distinct is the kind of people each profession attracts. Marketers – the people who work in ‘sales’ – are a different breed. They’re social, talkative, interactive, open, friendly, and persuasive. Web designers, on the other hand, spend all of their time working with machines and designing abstract things like software and graphics on them. So they’re likely to be introverted, intellectual, solitary, analytical, and strong on communications but weak on personality skills.