Five Great Places to Find Your Next Blog Post Title

Do you struggle to come up with titles for your blog posts?

You might not be short of topic ideas … but somehow, the actual titles end up sounding boring and bland.

Here are six great places to find the title for your next blog post:

1. Other Blogs

Now, I’m definitely not suggesting that you should steal another blogger’s title … but you can definitely use one of their titles as a template.

This often works well with blogs outside your own niche (as then their title can’t work for you without some changes). 

Do You Know Your Visitors? 5 Points to Consider

Yes this is the question of the day for you. Do you know your visitors? Do you know what exactly they are looking for in your blog? Do you know if you are writing articles for an advanced user or for a beginner?

You will always encounter situations when the post which you consider good is not appreciated by your readers and simple posts which you never gave importance to, becomes popular among your readers. That is why it is important to understand the psyche of the majority of your visitors and write accordingly.

1. Analyze Comments

This could be the first step in this process. Once in a while, lets say once every two weeks or in a month, sit and analyze the comments made by readers on your different posts. Also check the comments on the popular and most commented posts. Try and understand that what exactly in the post, the readers are appreciating. This will give you a good idea about your regular visitors.

6 Ways to Speed Up Your Site

The load time of websites is one of the most important factors affecting its usability; most Internet users will just skip a site altogether if it fails to load within a couple of seconds. Below you will find the summary of the “Speed Up Your Site” series. Those are simple yet effective ways to make sure that your website is running fast. You can click on each point to read the article with comments from the readers.

1. Optimize Images: always use the “Save for the web” feature included on image editing software. Images represent the heavier load on virtually any website so make sure you are optimizing them. Alternatively you can also turn to an online image optimizer. 

The Blog Post Checklist: Use Before Hitting “Publish”

How many times have you published a post, only to find out you forgot to proofread and that many typos slipped through? What about when the links you included are broken, when you used the wrong keywords, or when you forgot to optimize the post title?

As you can see, there are many things one should check before hitting the “Publish” button, and most of us forget about them. That is why I decided to create “The Blog Post Checklist,” with a list of things you should check before publishing your post. You’ll find it useful especially for those long, linkbait type articles you publish once in a while (what I call “killer articles“).

50 Simple Ways to Gain RSS Subscribers

Most bloggers love their RSS readers. Not only that, but they also love to gain new RSS readers. It is such a joy when you wake up one day and see that your Feedburner count jumped by 200 or 300, right?

Blog Project: 30 Traffic Generation Tips

First of all a big “thank you” for every one who participated. As I said before the number of entries surprised me (and the quality as well, I will definitely apply some of those tips myself).

Now, without further delay, the 30 Traffic Generation Tips:

1. Sridhar Katakam

Keep track of blogs and leave comments on them. A good way to keep the conversation going is to install a MyBlogLog widget and visit the blog of people visiting your site.

4 Steps to Increase Your Blog Traffic

One of the most common complaints that I hear from bloggers is the fact that no matter how hard they try, they can’t grow their blogs past 100 or so daily page vies. Those early days are indeed the hardest, because you need to put hard work in without the certainty of achieving results.

If you are in that same situation, here is a simple strategy that will certainly increase your blog traffic and make you break the 1,000 daily page views mark. In fact, the strategy could be used even if your are already over that number but have reached a traffic plateau lately.

Just make sure to execute the 4 steps as planned and to spend the two hours and a half every day (obviously if you have more time available you can expand the time spent on each of the four steps proportionally).

43 Web Design Mistakes You Should Avoid

There are several lists of web design mistakes around the Internet. Most of them, however, are the “Most common” or “Top 10 mistakes.” Every time I crossed one of those lists I would think to myself: “Come on, there must be more than 10 mistakes…”. Then I decided to write down all the web design mistakes that would come into my head; within half an hour I had over thirty of them listed. Afterwards I did some research around the web and the list grew to 43 points.

The next step was to write a short description for each one, and the result is the collection of mistakes that you will find below. Some of the points are common sense, others are quite polemic. Most of them apply to any website though, whether we talk about a business entity or a blog. Enjoy!

1. The user must know what the site is about in seconds: attention is one the most valuable currencies on the Internet. If a visitor can not figure what your site is about in a couple of seconds, he will probably just go somewhere else. Your site must communicate why I should spend my time there, and FAST!

28 Ways to Make Money with Your Website

There are several lists with “ways to make money with a website” on the Internet, but none of them seem to be complete. That is why I decided to create this one. If you know a method that is not listed below, just let us know and we’ll update it.

28 Ways to Make Money with Your Website
AWT Blog Tips

Top 25 Celebrity Blogs

It is time to cover another niche on our Top 25 series. Celebrity blogs are among the most popular on the Internet. People just love gossip. As a result, they tend to receive a lot of traffic, and to be very profitable.

I would guess that the lower blogs on our list earn at least $5,000 monthly, while the top ones should be over the $50,000 monthly figure.

Keep in mind that the Top 25 takes into consideration only objective factors. The maximum score is 40, and the details about our algorithm can be found below the list.

Top 25 SEO Blogs

I love rankings, what can I say. After I published the “Top 25 Blogs About Blogging” list I thought that someone would replicate it for the SEO sphere. But no one did, so here we go again.

This list was made using pretty much the same algorithm (only small modifications were made, mainly due to the fact that SEO blogs are more popular). Once again the list should be useful because it is based on objective factors. There are many “Top SEO Blogs” lists around the web, but most of them are based on the preferences of the author.

The Top 25 SEO Blogs list, instead, ranks the blogs according to their Google Pagerank, Alexa rank, number of Bloglines subscribers and Technorati authority. Each factor has a score from 0 to 10, and the maximum score for each blog is 40. Details about the algorithm can be found below the table.

Top 25 Blogs About Blogging

The “Top 25 Blogs About Blogging” list ranks blogs according to their Google Pagerank, Alexa rank, number of Bloglines subscribers and Technorati authority.

Each of the four factors range from 0 to 10, where 10 is the best score. The maximum total score for each blog, therefore, is 40. There will be monthly updates. Below the table you will find the details about the algorithm (check also the Top 25 SEO Blogs).

What Is Bounce Rate?

Today I was going to write about why new websites can display very misleading bounce rates, but I realized I had never covered the bounce rate concept before, so I’ll stick to the basics today, and expand on the topic over the coming weeks.

If you already know the term, consider this post a refresher.

What Is Bounce Rate?

Bounce rate is a very important metric for website owners. It basically tells you what percentage of your visitors are “bouncing” away after landing on your site (e.g., they just visit one page and leave before clicking on to a second page inside your site). A bounce can occur for several reasons, including:

20 SEO Terms You Should Know

If you have a website or blog, or if you work with anything related to the Internet, you’ll certainly need to know a bit about search engine optimization (SEO). A good way to get started is to familiarize yourself with the most common terms of the trade, and below you’ll find 20 of them. (For those who already know SEO, consider this post as a refresher!).

1. SEM

Stands for Search Engine Marketing, and as the name implies it involves marketing services or products via search engines. SEM is divided into two main pillars: SEO and PPC. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it is the practice of optimizing websites to make their pages appear in the organic search results. PPC stands for Pay-Per-Click, and it is the practice of purchasing clicks from search engines. The clicks come from sponsored listings in the search results.

How to choose a blog name

There are three simple rules to follow when choosing a blog name

 

1) It must describe your blog

It is probable that lots of people will see a link to your blog before having the chance to actually read it (in search engines, for instance). Guess what, if just by looking at the name they can figure what the blog is about they will be more likely to visit it.

Top 10 Tips to Sell Your Website or Blog on Flippa

If you are planning to buy or sell a website, you probably already heard about Flippa. It is the largest online marketplace for websites. Most people who list a website for sale there, however, end up selling it for peanuts (e.g., $100), or not selling at all.

How come? Most of the times the seller didn’t do his homework. If you want to maximize your chances of selling (and your profit), the 10 tips below will help you.

1. Make Sure Your Website Is Making Money

This is the most important factor. If you want to sell a website successfully, it must be making money. Even if your site has a huge traffic, listing it before monetizing that traffic would be a bad decision. You would be able to sell it, but the money you would get would be far below the real value of the site.

If your website is making $50 or less per month, forget about selling it now. Try to improve your traffic, increase your revenues to at least $300 per month, make the revenues stable, and then list it. If the $300 are coming from Google AdSense, for example, you could sell the site for as much as $8,000. Obviously, the more you can grow your revenue before selling, the better. The $300 is just a ball park figure.

Remember that you’ll need to show proof of revenue, and that most buyers will calculate the revenues as the average of the past four or six months.

2. Make Sure You Have Google Analytics Data

Most serious buyers will want to see your Google Analytics data before making an official offer. They will use this to verify your traffic levels, and to make sure the pattern is compatible with the revenues you are claiming.

Again, people will want to see data going back to six months at least. If you are planning to sell your website, therefore, it would be wise to install Google Analytics on it at least six months before the sale.

3. Work On Your Trust Rating

Each member on Flippa has a trust rating, and most buyers will check it before placing their bids. In other words, the higher your trust rating, the higher the chances of selling your website.

As a result you should take all the actions that will improve your trust rating (e.g., connect your Flippa account with Facebook and LinkedIn, verify your phone number and so on).

4. Set The Auction Length for 7 Days

In my opinion seven days is the optimal length for an auction on Flippa. With that length of time you are sure that most buyers will see your auction (e.g., those who log during the week and those who log during weekends), yet you’ll create a sense of urgency on those who are interested.

Many people set the auction length for 30 days, and their auctions become dead as a consequence. Many interested buyers will refrain from bidding because there is plenty of time to go, others yet will see the auction once and then completely forget about it, for the same reason.

5. Set A Low Reserve / High Minimum Bid

If you set a low reserve price your auction will display the following message: “Bidding open and reserve has been met!” bright green color. This is a big encouragement for potential buyers, and it stimulates them to bid.

And don’t worry about the site selling for less than what you think it is worth. You can always set a high minimum bid. Apart from protecting you from low bids this strategy will also filter the non-serious buyers out.

6. Set A Reasonable BIN Price

The “Buy It Now” price is there for a reason. It should allow a buyer who is very interested in your website to avoid a bidding war and to buy the website paying what you think it is worth.

The problem is that most sellers have an unrealistic idea about the value of their websites, and hence they set crazy BIN prices. This is a put off for potential buyers, because it signals you have no idea about what you are doing.

Ask some friends what they think your website is worth, and then set a reasonable BIN price for it.

7. Don’t Hype Your Description

The more hype you put in your description, the more people will think you are desperate to sell and that your website is not a solid one. Examples of remarks you should avoid include: “Huge potential!”, “A lifetime opportunity!”, “My loss is your gain!”.

Secondly, don’t hypothesize what the website could be earning. Some people list websites that are making $10 per month currently, and they go on saying: “This website has the potential to make $4,000 per month easily!”. If you knew this for sure you wouldn’t be selling the site for such a low price….

8. Answer to Every Comment

Even if you write a crystal clear description people will still have questions, and they’ll ask them through the comment section. It is important to answer to every single comment, as this will not only encourage these commenters to place a bid, but it will also improve the overall credibility of your auction.

Second, do not delete a comment unless you have a very good reason to do so. Deleted comments are red flags on Flippa, because usually they come from sellers trying to hide something on their websites.

9. Have A Plausible Reason for Selling

One of the first things people will ask you is why you are selling. If there is no plausible reason, they’ll rightly assume that the website is going down hill, and that you want to get rid of it before it becomes worthless.

In fact it would be a good idea to include the reason for selling the description of the auction itself.
10. Invite Qualified Buyers

If you want to get more bids on your auction, you can invite qualified buyers directly. First of all browse through the marketplace looking for websites that are similar to yours (either open or won auctions).

Once you find one, browse through the comments, and try to find users with a high trust rating that were asking questions about the auction. These are qualified buyers, and you can send them a message inviting them to view your own auction.

Bonus Tip: Keep Your Auction On The Homepage

When creating your listing, the most important upgrade you can get is the “Listing Featured on the Front Page” one. It costs $29, but it will give your auction a lot of visibility, because most buyers browse the Flippa front page first.

You can purchase this upgrade a second time, too, once your auction slipped to the second page. This would be a good idea if after the first two or three days you have still not received some qualified bids.

Top 25 Web Design Blogs

The Top 25 Blogs is becoming a trademark around here. We have already created the Top 25 Blogs About Blogging and the Top 25 SEO Blogs. Now it is time to cover the web design niche. I have a lot of fun compiling these lists because it allows me to discover a bunch of new blogs, most of them with excellent content. It is also interesting to see how the different blogs on a specific niche perform under the parameters. Once again we based the analysis on Google’s Pagerank, Alexa rank, Bloglines subscribers and Technorati authority. The details about the algorithm can be found below the table.

#1	A List Apart	8	10	10	10	38
#2	Smashing Magazine	6	10	10	10	36
#3	456 Berea Street	7	8	10	8	33
#4	Meyer Web	8	7	9	7	31
#5	Simple Bits	7	7	10	6	30
#6	Pearsonified	7	6	7	10	30
#7	Tutorial Blog	5	8	7	8	28
#8	CSS Beauty	7	8	7	5	27
#9	Snook.ca	7	7	7	6	27
#10	Bartelme Design	7	6	9	4	26
#11	The Man in Blue	7	5	10	3	25
#12	Andy Budd	8	3	10	4	25
#13	Particle Tree	6	6	8	5	25
#14	Warpspire	7	4	3	10	24
#15	Brian Gardner	6	7	1	10	24
#16	Sitepoint Design Blog	6	10	4	4	24
#17	The Undersigned	7	3	3	10	23
#18	Bitt Box	5	7	5	6	23
#19	Fadtastic	5	3	5	10	23
#20	Colour Lovers	0	9	5	8	14
#21	David Airey	4	7	3	8	22
#22	Design Meltdown	5	6	7	4	22
#23	Clagnut	7	3	8	3	21
#24	Dev Lounge	6	6	4	5	21
#25	Smiley Cat	6	4	7	3	20

Blogs considered: The list considers only blogs that have a high percentage of web design related content.

Google Pagerank (0 to 10): The actual Pagerank was used on the algorithm.

Alexa Rank (0 to 10): Ranges were determined based on the Alexa Rank (i.e., 150k and up, 150k-100k, 100k-75k, 75k-50k) and each range was assigned a number (1 to 10).

Bloglines Subscribers (0 to 10): Subscriber ranges were determined (i.e., 1-50, 50-100, 100-150, 150-200) and each range was assigned a number (1 to 10).

Technorati Authority (0 to 10): Ranges were determined based on Technorati’s Authority rank (i.e., 1-100, 100-200, 200-400,400-600) and each range was assigned a number (1 to 10).

Top 25 Series

Top 25 Blogs About Blogging
Top 25 SEO Blogs
Top 25 Web Design Blogs
Top 25 Celebrity Blogs

Best WordPress Plugins: sig2feed

The sig2feed plugin is a very useful yet not that popular WordPress plugin. It basically allows you to add a custom message to your feed, possibly including a copyright message and a link back to your homepage, to your archives or to any other specific page of your blog.

This feature is very useful because it will discourage sploggers from stealing your feed and it will also increase your page views if people click on the link you will place on the footer of your feed. There are other plugins out there providing the customization of the feed (check Better Feed for instance) but sig2feed was the most user-friendly I could find, check it out.

Optimal Title Tag for WordPress

Some time ago I wrote a post titled “Keep your Title Tags short and pertinent“ outlining the best practices for Title tags. Most blogging platforms come with a standard Title tag structure that places the blog name and post title on single post pages. Suppose you have the “ABC Blog” and you just published a post called “Top 10 Firefox extensions”. In that case your Title tag for that single page would be “ABC Blog – Top 10 Firefox extensions”.

This Title structure is good but not optimal. The best possible Title tag for a single blog post is the title of the post alone. The name of the blog will increase the number of keywords (reducing the value of each one) and it might not be related to the post content at all.

Below you will find the code that I use for my Title tag. This code will display the blog name on the home page, the post title on single post pages and the blog name plus category name for category pages.

<title><?php if (is_home () ) { bloginfo(‘name’); }
elseif ( is_category() ) { single_cat_title(); echo ' - ' ; bloginfo(‘name’); }
elseif (is_single() ) { single_post_title();}
elseif (is_page() ) { single_post_title();}
else { wp_title(‘’,true); } ?></title>

RSS Footer WordPress Plugin

I confess that I am a bit cranky when it comes to WordPress plugins. I use as few as possible (to not compromise my WP install), and I also tend to like some old school plugins that were released years ago. My plugin of choice for adding a link to my RSS feed, for instance, was the sig2feed one. I started using it early in 2006!

Recently, however, more people started scraping Daily Blog Tips, so I felt that it was necessary to add not only a link back to the blog, but also a link back to the original post. This should help Google to identify my original articles more easily and quickly.

When I tried to use sig2feed for this purpose, however, I found that it was not capable of (not without a good deal of PHP tweaking at least), so I decided to find a new RSS feed footer.

RSS Footer is the name of the plugin created by Joost de Valk, and it gets the job done perfectly. Basically it allows you to insert any message or link on the footer of your feeds, and it also comes with a check box that you simply need to tick if you want a link back to the original article.

If you have people scraping your RSS feed, give this plugin a try.