There has been a lot of progress in this blog project, and I have started to earn money on a regular basis. This actually made me a bit lazy and I went a couple of months without updates on gho.no, and this blog has been hanging for six months both because of lazyness and because of a turbulent real life (I use that excuse often now, I know!).

Anyways, here’s what I have learned – some of this is repetition of my previous posts but most importantly you will see my exact results and use that to get your blog or website further. I got very little response on my free blog hosting post, all though I host my girlfriends blog now, at least someone picked up on it!

My Status

This image is my weekly visitors graph from Google Analytics.
I now have between 100 and 200 unique readers per day on my Networking With Cisco blog. My ‘crowd’ seems to be filled with a lot of people that surf the web at work, because in weekends I only have between 50 and 100 unique readers, but in return the ones who find their way on a Sunday read a bit longer. (Maybe preparing for work?)

The image is my Google FeedBurner stats.
My feed has had on average 31 subscribers the past half year, all though it has become some more lately after I started socializing on Twitter more actively.

My PageRank has now climbed to 2 from non-existing, which is pretty good. I have written about how to get a higher PageRank before.

So How Did I Make It That Far?
I had a lot of progress when I was very active and wrote a lot of content for the site, you must focus on what the reader wants to read about. I think my writing has become better in time, and that my posts has become more informative and exciting to read – but I can’t say that for a fact. But like everything, writing will also improve as you practice it.

By staying active in the blogosphere, follow me on Twitter if you want to keep in touch with what I am currently doing. I can say this much; There is an exciting project which is soon to be complete that you can take part in using.

One of the things I am doing now is analyzing keywords, trying to find keywords which are searched a lot but with few competitor sites. This often means a lot of research to get the information right, but it will be rewarding to see a bunch of search engine users dump in on your site and finding exactly what they need!

Now I want to know how your blogging progress is going, please leave a comment or trackback when you respond.

Tags: adsense, analytics, blog, blog statistics, blog stats, content, google, money, pagerank, traffic

My pagerank went from unranked to 1, a nice surprise in the morning.

So, what happened? Which steps did I take to up my PR in less than a month?

Lots of content
I have been writing a lot of content, trying to keep my blogs updated.
This seems to help some with attracting the google bot to my sites.
I do not know if the uniqueness of content matters, if anyone else knows, let me know.

Backlinks
I have been active in forums, it is very important to have backlinks to get your PR higher up.
This is probably what counts the most in the whole Google algorithm.
An effective way to get links is to comment on high PR blog posts.
But please, do only comment on content you are genuinely interested in… This is not an advice about to spam every blog you come across, just instead of not commenting – do it when you like the content or have something to add!

This takes a lot of time, and is what I have been spending the most time on doing.
I do not love spammers, and have probably just made around 10-15 comments with a backlink in a month.

To look at this from another point of view, you gotta find some blog post that is worth your comment!

On the fun side, I can see a lot of new Google traffic!

Tags: google, pagerank

Be honest, have you ever thought about this?
Have you ever felt like you are talking to a wall or to yourself?
I guess this is how a lot of bloggers feel right now, just like I do.

Lately I’ve been feeling a bit like this, and the blogging apathy can really get to me.

I was wondering how to get through this period, and I have been turning to other bloggers to see what they did in their early posts of their blog. So maybe I could learn a thing or two, and now I am sharing this with you!

Motivations
Maybe you should ask yourself about what your motivations were when you started out blogging.
The motivations can be different, but are still as valid today as the day you started, here are some examples:
“I want to make a living blogging.”
“I want to share my knowledge.”
“Wants to build a name for myself.”

People are result seekers
We are raised to believe in results, from trial and failure.
If something does not work out the way we wanted to, we are relatively quick to give up on it.

The problem with the web is that you see the effects of what you did one month ago today, or even 3 months ago.

Building Google PageRank will not happen overnight, even if your site is full of valueable quality content.

You still have the Google sandbox that your website will stay in for a long period of time before Google will start sending you real traffic.

The word of mouth also takes time, if you tell it to 10 people, you are not guaranteed that they will tell it to 20 more, and they will tell it to 40 more… Those 10 might tell it to 5 people, who tell it to 3 people – then out of those 3 maybe one tells it to 2 people where one of them loves it so much it tells it to his 200 users, which then tells it to 50 again.

It will take a long time before your site is recognized with this kind of marketing.

Motivational speech
What I am trying to say here is to keep on it, be persistant and change techniques and one day you will hit the spot with someone and when that day comes, you will not understand the days when you wanted to give up.

Try to be lucky!
I am very fond of saying ‘Try to be lucky’, and by that I don’t mean buying lucky stones or anything.
What I mean about ‘Try to be lucky’ is to be out there, at least have the possibility to become lucky!

If you are sitting at home dreaming, noone will know, if you are out there – someone might find you!

Tags: blogging, blogging for money, google, motivation, pagerank, sandbox, try to be lucky

Google is a very important source of traffic, what are the immediate ways to improve your google ranking?

1. Content, content, content, content
It is important to add quality content to your blog, there are several ways to achieve this goal.
You can buy articles from ghost writers, which can be an idea if you are lazy.
I believe in writing good and helpfull articles, then I read through them like if I was the reader and see if there is something I wouldn’t understand.

2. Get linked
Getting backlinks will immediately boost your pagerank, google uses pagerank to determine your placement in search results.
I touched this subject in my previous post (Get readers for your blog), but you can also post articles to article sites like ezinearticles.com, GoArticles, SearchWarp.
You then get to say a few words in the resource box, which you obviously would use to promote your website.

Another way to get linked is to register at forums related to your blog niche and provide help and quality forum posts, where you can include your blog URL in the signature. This will eventually bring you traffic and frequent readers.

3. Comment on blogs
Comment on other blogs that writes about your subject, be humble and don’t spam other blogs with comments like «nice» or «that’s right». Don’t comment on articles that does not interest you, just join the conversation, it will bring your reputation up and it will also provide you with backlinks!

A sidenote on the link building, it is not usual for a new site to pop up with a thousand backlinks within a month. So buying links may not be any wise at all, it is your choice!

“Don’t be evil!”

Tags: google, pagerank

Getting indexed by Google is always important, and is also very important for attracting visitors. Search engine traffic is usually good, because I know where I go when I want to read about something.

To see if you are indexed by google, you can use my little tool Google index checker.

I will develop more webmaster tools when I see the need for them myself, no more useless tools!

Wordpress and permalinks
Using permalinks is usually a good idea, I converted the blog over to using permalinks. I then realized that I am already indexed at some places with my old blog urls! OH NO!

How to fix?

Permalink Redirect ensures that pages and entries are always accessed via the permalink. Otherwise, a 301 redirect will be issued. A 301 redirect keeps your visitors and the search engines happy!

That will keep your visitors using your permalinks!

Tags: google, permalinks, webmaster tools