Travel Blog Promotion Blog

Travel Blog Promotion Blog

This is a guest post from Ash

Article marketing is one of the most debated techniques when it comes to search engine optimization. Although Google and other search engines want everybody to believe that article marketing is a complete waste of time, many tests have proven that they are actually helpful in ranking a website, regardless of its theme. Article marketing is thus an extremely useful technique for promoting a travel website, but like all SEO techniques, there are some important points to consider.

Travel Blog Promotion Blog

If your blog is starting to get well known, you will get lots of comment spam. People just dropping links into your comments to their sites, without adding anything to the conversation. This takes up your time deleted and moderating the comments, makes you mad means you have to put hurdles in between you and those genuine commentors who will add value to your blog.

Most people just get mad.

I don´t, I do something different. I get links. I get more traffic. How? Well, first lets look at the types of comment spam and how it comes about.

1. Company or website has heard he needs backlings to his site to get traffic and links, and has paid some charlatan money to "get me some links!". They have probably gone for the cheapest option, one of those packages from digital point, and are currently waiting for a huge influx of traffic that will never come.
2. Some blackhatter has stuck up a junk MFA site (Made For Adsense) and uses automated tools to Spam the hell out comments, knowing that a small percentage of comments will get through spam filters and moderation and stick. Their crappy sites then fill up the search results, and everybody gets fed up with them.
3. Some webmaster who is working hard for their blog or site's SEO, but doesn´t really know what they are doing and spam your comments out of ignorance of the correct way to go about it.

The technique

There is not much you can do about spammer number 2, the black hatter, apart from put more barriers on your blog such as spam filters, captchas and the like, and change your comment form footprint.

However, with spammers 1 and 3, you can turn this to your advantage and gain a nice link. First, go and look at the site that has left a spam comment on your site. Many times, it is a legitimate, good looking, well established site in a related niche, and the owners are either unaware of the practices their seo agency are using or they are ignorant as to the correct way to do it. Then, we send them an email, such as this one:

Hello SITE MASTER,

I look after the site mysite.com, where you left a comment one of our blog articles, with a link to your site. I did not publish the comment, because it looks blatantly like SPAM, and would stick out like a sore thumb in the article.

I thought I would get in touch with you because your site does look nice, and I know how tough it can be promoting your website in these times. I don´t know if you are doing these comments in-house or paying some agency to do it for you, but this is not the way to get links from blog comments. May I ask how many of these comments got approved?

You commented on a post about xxxxxxx we had added on our website, and this was your comment:

INSERT THEIR COMMENT HERE

Let me know if you want some pointers on how to get proper links.

Thanks, your name your email your telephone your website

IMPORTANT!

You need to get the actual email of the site to send this to, as many times the email used to send the comment is managed by the people doing the spamming, not by the site owners.

Notice how the email is worded, I am not blaming them for spamming my blog, I am just alerting them to the fact that it has happened to help them out. I am also giving them a way out if it was them, by blaming the third party linkbuilding agency.

Hi Ben,

That would be an outside agency, sorry I'll bring it up with the owner. I just manage the actual site. the marketing isn't me.

Once again, sorry.

So I sent one back saying:

Hello xxx,

That´s ok, I thought I would just let you know as we have been burned by this sort of thing before. If you like, we can swap links, I can give you one in the body text of one of our posts, and you do the same?
Let me know,
Thanks.

And voila, a nice, juicy, related, in-body anchor texted link.

Conclusion

This is a great example of how lateral thinking and reaching out can turn a situation where you get frustrated and angry into one where you gain something of value, and make a new contact. So next time you get spam in your inbox, instead of huffing and puffing, you will get excited at a new link prospect! Has anyone else had success with techniques such as this?

Travel Blog Promotion Blog

It is many people´s dream to make a load of cash from the internet without doing anything, and to be free of 9-5 drudgery. Most people quickly realize that this is not the case, that basically making money on the internet is like running your own business, with the same amount of work and commitment involved. But after the first few years of struggle, pulling your hair out with frustration, making mistakes, making bad decisions and learning from them, you eventually start getting things right. The money starts coming, and that freedom you dreamed about when you first started suddenly becomes a reality. Now what?

The sensible thing to do would be to reinvest and continue to grow your business, but there is no point doing it at all if you are not going to enjoy the fruits of you labour, so I am going to take a lighthearted break and look at what I will get with all my cash.

Bloody great big posh villa in Spain

I live in Barcelona, and need to be closeby for regular business meetings, so I would buy this luxury villa for sale in Spain, located about an hour by car outside of Barcelona. It has an enormous 571m2 house, set in 69,000 m2 of land. The bedrooms all have en-suite bathrooms with jacuzzis in them, there is a big old swimming pool, a 4 car garage for all my posh motors I am going to buy and loads of land. Best of all, it is self sufficient and environmentally friendly, with its own underground water supply, and a windmill to generate electricity. And there is a huge office overlooking a terrace where I can do my internet work from. Bargain at 3.3 million Euros.

Big posh cars to put in garage of afformentioned luxury villa

I always wanted one of these Jaguar Xk8s in British racing green ever since the baddy in James bond drove one: they still look beautiful after 15 years and are sure to be a classic, with a big fat 4 litre v8 engine. In British racing green. Its not new or particularly expensive, but it is classy. At least I think so.

Other cars I would buy are the mercedes SLS AMG, and probably a Volvo Diesel estate for doing the shopping with the missus.

And perhaps some quad-bikes and go-karts and stuff.

A bouncy castle

So as not to be a predictable rich sod, I would get a big bouncy castle to put in my massive garden. This I would jump on every morning to remind me not to take life too seriously. Until I invariably sprain my foot, which always seemed to happen when I went on one of these as a kid.

Expensive hobbies

I would also get a very expensive hobby, such as hot-air ballooning. I love the idea of floating leisurely above the trees, not knowing where I will end up. For added amusement, I would get myself one of those balloons in the shape of something ridiculous, such as this jesus hot air balloon. No offense to anyone.

Employ someone to play practical jokes on sales people

I would employ somebody full time to answer my telephone, and everytime someone calls wanting me to change my internet service providor, electricity provider or mobile phone provider, say OK. As every company calls at least once a week, they will all get terribly confused by the constant switching backwards and forwards between the companies. For the rest of the time, I would get my employee to mail random people with 20€ bills, just because I would be extremely delighted if someone did that to me.

What will you do with all your internet monies?

Travel Blog Promotion Blog

In a previous post, I ranted about the type of blogger who is a fat stay at home american mom who clips walmart coupons and has a fat cat. I wonder who is the first result in google when we type this in?

This page

At least, at time of writing. Perhaps this post has outranked that page by now, if you are reading this from the future. The woman says she is:

a stay at home mom with four wonderful kids. I have been married for over 10 years to my best friend. I am head over heels in love with him. He always supports my crazy "thrifty adventures". We have a lot of fun together. I enjoy seeing how far I can make our budget stretch, and when I take the time to match sales with coupons I am able to get all those "fun & fancy" items that would other wise be out of my budget. Being thrifty has always been a way of life for me, but it has also become a real joy.

How unfortunate.