MediaWhiz Blog: Archive

We are excited to announce our very cool affiliate program is ready for your blog! Not only will the affiliate program drive traffic to your individual listing at ReviewMe which will encourage review sales for you but it will also pay you $25 for any referred sale even if the visitor does not purchase a review from your blog.

To get your affiliate badge simply login to the new affiliate page. Here is a preview of what the badge looks like on our Link Building Blog

Remember you can control the price of your reviews, details here.  So jump over to ReviewMe and set up your affiliate badge now!

Are you doing poorly in the search engines? Loren Baker and his crew from Search Engine Journal are doing a weekly site clinic where they give one lucky winner free SEO advice.

A couple of days ago I wrote the post about how to ask bloggers for links. While emailing can be a very effective way to get on a popular blogger’s radar, it is by no means the only way. There are a number of others ways to get these people to notice your content, here are a few of the things that have worked for me.

1. Comments - One of the most effective ways to get a blogger to notice you is to comment on their blog. This is also a great way to get others to find your blog as well. It is important to make sure you leave well thought out comments that actually contribute to the conversation. If you just leave things like "nice post" no one will really pay much attention to you. Leave original, well thought out comments that intelligently add to the conversation.
2. Trackbacks - Bloggers are generally egomaniacs, they like to see who is talking about them and linking to their content. Even if they aren’t egomaniacs a good blogger will always keep track of who is linking to them and talking about their posts. The key here is to contribute to the conversation in the same way that you would with comments. The blogger who you are linking to is just about guaranteed to read your post, this is your chance to "prove your worth" so make the posts really good.
3. Email - We already covered this technique in the last post.
4. Social media sites - Getting your content popular on social media sites like Digg and Delicious is a great way to get noticed. If this happens your content will be in front of thousands of bloggers and the links will come pouring in. Make sure your next few content pieces are extra good because you’ll have a lot of fresh new eyes and good content is the best way to keep them around.

There are millions of blogs on the web these days. Every day it’s getting harder and harder for new blogs to get noticed, follow some of these tips above and you’re sure to be in the fast lane for gaining new readers.

Do you have any other tips that have helped you get found by other bloggers?

There are many ways webmasters are obtaining links these days such as submitting sites to directories. But with new media emerging why just stick to the conventional methods when you can get a little creative?

If you look at the picture above it shows that the site has incoming links from YouTube. The way this works is that if you are one of the
top 5 sites that drives the most traffic to a particular YouTube video, they link back. So the next time you embed YouTube videos into your website, check to see if you got a link back.

Do you know of any other creative ways to pick up a few links?

Emailing popular relevant bloggers can be a great way to pick up some extra links and get your great content noticed when otherwise it might go unnoticed. But it’s important to remember a few simple things when firing off these emails to ensure maximum results.

1. Get to the point - most popular bloggers receive hundreds of emails per day and the last thing they want to do is get a page long email from you giving your life story when a couple lines will do. The longer your email is the less likely you are to get that link. All you need to do is say something along the lines of… "I came across a post on your blog that I really enjoyed. I would appreciate it if you could take a look at this post that I wrote on the same topic and let me know what you think. Thanks and I appreciate your time." It obviously wouldn’t be those exact words but you get the point, short and sweet.
2. Make sure your content rocks - do not email bloggers unless you are absolutely sure that your content is unique and very good. Otherwise you are wasting both your time and theirs. Also make sure you do some research before hand so you know exactly what kind of content the blogger likes.
3. No reciprocal links - bloggers don’t want to trade links with you, so don’t even bother asking. The best you can hope for is that they will review your product, or write a post with a link to your post. If you do end up getting a link on their blog roll consider that icing on the cake, but never ask for it.
4. Once in enough - don’t send more than one email. Just because they didn’t link to that post right away doesnât mean they won’t in the future. Possibly they even added your feed to their reader and it’s possible they will link to your other posts in the future. But if you continue to send them emails they will probably get very annoyed and you can forget ever getting a link.

The main reason it’s important to remember and follow these few simple steps is that you will usually only get one shot. That’s right, if you email them once and fail to impress chances are they will ignore any future emails from you. On the other hand if you do manage to impress them you will probably be on their radar from now on. That means you should put extra care into all of your content from that point forward, keep them reading and they will likely link to more of your posts in the future.

Readers, as you may know in addition to running TLA we also run ReviewMe.com  The reviews completed at RM have been outstanding.  Clients have received: valuable feedback and targeted traffic through direct links back to their website.  Here are a couple of examples of ReviewMe reviews:

Graywolf’s review of SoloSEO

Devlounge’s review of a Ruby on Rails book

We are still offering 50% off reviews for the rest of the month.  Just enter "trial" into the coupon field at checkout. 

RM just released a feature allowing our bloggers to set their own pricing and we are launching a very* cool affiliate program this coming week.  I will say I have gotten very interested in taking RM to the next level and there will be many new features in the coming weeks so stay tuned.  If you have any suggestions for improving the service please let me know below in the comments, thx!

We are going to start featuring some of the reviews completed through our service. Our bloggers are doing an outstanding job and we need to start showing off their work! Here are a couple I ran into that are exactly what we are trying to do here.

Graywolf’s review of SoloSEO

Devlounge’s review of a Ruby on Rails book

Great work!

Traffic, traffic, traffic! There is nothing wrong with getting more traffic to your website, but why spend thousands of dollars on advertising if you can’t even convert your current visitors? It seems that websites are spending an arm and leg on advertising before they even fix their design to make the most out their current traffic; here are 5 of the most common ways to improve your design.

1. Call out to your visitors - if you are going to sell a product or a service make sure you make it easy for people to purchase from you. Have your phone number above the fold and some sort of call to action. This could be  a message saying "call now" or a "buy it now" button. Whatever your call to action is, make sure it stands out and can be easily found. If your product pages are long and require visitors to scroll a lot, make sure you also place a call to action at the bottom of your site.
2. Think big - Make sure the font size you use on your website is big enough so that it is easy to read. If visitors can’t read anything on your website, how do you expect them to purchase anything or "convert"? Although this sounds really obvious, look around the web there are thousands if not tens of thousands of web sites that use tiny text.
3. There’s no quick and easy way - when you are building a website you need to take time and plan out the site architecture or else it will turn out to be confusing. It is like building a house you don’t see builders starting to build without creating blueprints. With your site make sure people can find important sections with ease because you don’t want people to have to search around too much or else they will leave. Make sure you have some of the basic elements that make it easy for visitors to find what they are looking for such as a search box and a sitemap. The last thing you want a visitor to have to do is click around 20 times before they can find what they are looking for.
4. No man is an island - don’t leave your visitors stranded, help them find what they are looking for. The cool little features you want on your website such as flash headers and audio intros is not what it is all about, it is all about what your visitors want. They are the ones that are going to be
   paying your bills, so listen to them or else they will not feed you. Do whatever you have to do to keep them happy or expect them to turn to your competition before you know it.
5. The proof is in the pudding - the biggest mistake that webmasters make is doing what they think is best. You are never going to know how to maximize your design without testing it. No one gets it right the first time, so use products like Google Analytics to figure out what works best. If you do this well, you will be able to maximize your conversion rate.

Design is one of those areas might seem really easy to figure out, but it is actually fairly complex. Small things such as the color of a website can affect the overall meaning and message. Every little thing can make an impact so it is important to take some time to try and make the most out of the traffic you already have before you try to get more traffic to your site. If you are interested in maximizing your design, I recommend checking out a few of these resources.

Web Design & Usability Guidelines - An in-depth online book that covers all aspects of usability.

IxDG Resource Library - A collection of information on interaction design.

The Meaning of Color in Web Design - The affect colors have on visitors when marketing products through the Internet.

Adaptive Path - Leading design firm that specializes in conversion oriented design.

Jesse James Garrett - More resources on conversion oriented design.

Ten deadly sins of web design - A list of 10 mistakes that web designers should watch out for.

Readers, we will be co-hosting a night out for bloggers and friends of TLA March 28th in NYC!  Darren Rowse of ProBlogger will be in visiting all the way from Austrailia to co host!  Final location and time to be announced as we nail it all down.  So what LBB readers can make it?

The question that we all want the answer to is; "How do I rank at the top of the search engines for keywords that are relevant to my site?" For years SEOs have debated back and forth about what it takes to rank at the top of the search engines. I used to ask myself this same question for many years and spent many sleepless nights trying to figure out the answer. Well, one day it just dawned on me, the simple answer is, build the best site for your niche (Yes, I said niche, donât go too broad or you won’t rank at all (for awhile)).

It’s common sense I know; the search engines are in the business of providing the most relevant results to their users. So naturally they want to rank the most relevant sites at the top of their results.

With that being said, the answer sounds really easy. If you build the best, most relevant site then eventually you should rank #1 right? It’s not always that easy but generally the answer is yes. You still have the build it and they WON’T come syndrome but if you can get the word out about your site then the day will come when you get to the top.

I know it’s easier said then done, and yes being #1 still requires the fundamentals of SEO even if you do have the best content for your niche. But if you put those fundamentals in place eventually the search engines will come around and find you and give you the treatment you deserve. The secret is that you really do need to be the best though, which isnât always the same as you thinking you are the best.

Just focus on being good and the world will spread. Be that "purple cow" and will people will talk about your site, have them create buzz for you which will equate to good links, rankings, and success.