Last Summer Cameron Olthuis and I met for the first time in person at SMX Advanced Seattle and we quickly became friends as we found we had a lot of things outside of seo in Coming. We both love to surf, he lives in my hometown near San Diego and I live near his home town in Utah and we both had been thinking for years how we wanted to use our seo/promotion skills to launch something in the Action Sports Industry.

After the conference we both said to each other lets just start a blog to at least get something going in action sports and we can figure it out later. We wanted to have something tangible to start with to at least commit us to starting on a project in action sports.

Why Action Sports? Well first like Cameron I don’t watch football or baseball I watch the X-Games and live feeds of surf competitions. I don’t subscribe to Sports Illustrated I subscribe to Surfer, Trans World, Skateboarder, Snowboarder etc. Action Sports have always been a part of my life and they always will be, it is a passion of mine. I was born and raised by a Mom from Oahu and a Dad from Manhattan Beach, we grew up in the water and surfing as well as other board sports have been in our blood for generations. The business reason is also a very good one as well, Action Sports is a 91 billion a year industry, with Skateboarding and Surfing making up the majority of that. We are talking billions a year for each sport and it isn’t slowing down anytime soon. The other reason with this is there isn’t a lot of Action Sports websites and communities that are adapting the new trends of the web. Companies are just starting to add blogs, but they are usually sub domains on a free service and they are not promoted or optimized at all. We have always been disappointed with the websites available in the space so we decided to do something about it.

My brother who is just as dedicated to action sports as we are and a killer web designer joined us and we built an all things actions sports blog called 5ones(don’t ask about the name I don’t have a good answer). This was last summer. We just finished our official web design and launch and are now prepping it for some mainstream exposure. We have seen some really cool things from our quiet push over the last year. We have over 5,000 natural backlinks we have been accepted into Google news which is a must for any news site. Our traffic literally doubled from Google referrals when we were accepted. We are also growing a large fan base.

Some things we found interesting when promoting something in the action sports industry, is first because Web 2.0 is still so new to the industry the large media outlets are not used to having people post opinions about brands or products. The industry is good and bad that way, it is good because everyone is cool with each other even if they are in competition with each other, but it is bad in that there is a lot of stuff that goes unsaid because people are afraid to ruffle some feathers or hurt their “bro” status. We came into the industry with no “bro” status so we would write posts about brands and we criticize them or praise them in a very opinionated fashion, and we see a lot of links and traffic from these types of posts because it isn’t being done anywhere else.

We also add our marketing twist to things and talk about things like why Volcom was able to go mainstream but still be core, and why other brands are diluting themselves by partnering with the likes of Wal-Mart. All in all we have been very well received.

One thing we found very surprising is very few people subscribe to RSS they all bookmark the site and come to it each day (which is good in the page view world) and if they are technologically advanced enough for RSS it is always to the email subscribe and rarely to the Feed Reader subscribe. It definitely gets you thinking about different approaches as we are both used to the tech savvy world of people subscribing to anything and everything they find remotely interesting.

If you are launching a blog some words of advice, set up alerts for anything and everything, submerse yourself in the industry, don’t be afraid to voice your opinion and if you cover news be very quick on the trigger and make sure you get into Google News. Then come up with posts that haven’t been done before and reach out to others in your community and you will see growth 100% of the time. Focus on good thought provoking or informative content and you will get a user base before you know it. Most important of all blog about something you are passionate about, it is true just as in business that if you are passionate about it, you will give it 200% and you will reap the rewards.

Also if any of you are looking for a designer by brother is one of the best bar none, you can find him at Modern Blue, and Cameron Olthuis really is one of the pioneers of Social Media that guy understands the Demographic like no one else. Follow his stuff.

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O.K. before you keep reading I have to apologize, I hate case studies and examples of sites that don’t show the sites involved. One of the things that Mat and I try to do to set us apart from a lot of blogs is to give specific ideas on how to do things, but in the case study below I can’t. We are growing and have a lot of clientèle that just won’t let us share their info, or even mention them as a client. That is fine, I guess if I was a 100 million a year plus company with very intelligent competitors I wouldn’t want our service providers giving away our secrets either.

With that said this will still be really cool to share and I will show you (doctored) screen shots from their analytics.

We helped a friend/client launch a blog in October and it has been some of the most successful blog marketing we have done to date in the realms of blog optimization and social media saturation to a brand new domain and website.

The blog is general and covers a lot of different topics mostly internet and advertising related, which helps. If you have a niche blog you can still have tremendous success in blog promotion, especially in terms of links and subscribers which is the most import aspect of a blogs success in my opinion.

The Stats:
The blog is exactly 39 days old it has a total of 21 pages, it has received over 165,000 uniques, over 3,000 links and over 1,117 subscribers. The subscribers and the amount of branding we have seen (see below) are what we are most exited about.

We have had campaigns that generate more traffic and links then this blog (I am working on another case study where I will actually show you an example of an article that had over 150k visits in one day, and has had over 3k links just to the article), but what is different about this site is the vast amount of subscribers and the consistent traffic. Barely any of this traffic is from Digg, the blog is receiving thousands of visitors a day on a consistent basis. So it has been a combined effort on behalf of the posts instead of one home run submitted to Digg with one traffic spike and virtually no traffic a week later. The lowest day so far as been over 1,600 visitors and the highest has been 14,922 with several days over 10k.

Graph screen shot of the blogs entire life so far:

Page Views to some of the URL’s:

Traffic Sources: (what is best about this is Direct Traffic to the domain, is over 14% which is over 24,000 visitors. Remember this blog is only 39 days, that is some sweet branding)

The majority of the initial traffic came from StumbleUpon, I think that is why the subscriber rate has been so good. We also get a tremendous amount of traffic from other hub sites picking up our stories and linking to them.

How to do it:
I would credit a handful of things the the sites success.

1.) The site owner has fallen in love with marketing and has done a great job with generating outstanding content. He has engulfed himself in Social Media and in his competing blogs and really understands how to generate good content for his audience.

2.) We mapped out and understood our audience prior to launch. We actually had a good amount of posts ready before launch so that we wouldn’t lose steam. After the first few pages being submitted to social sites we let the sites subscribers and community promote the rest of our content as it was created.

3.) The Domain is easy to remember, easy to spell and all that. By watching the direct traffic to the homepage and branded search terms in Google we are really seeing that a good domain can go a long way.

Again I apologize for not being able to give away more. I’m working on about 3 posts that all give away the farm with specific examples. Also remember this site/company did not exist before the last week in October, there wasn’t a huge brand name to piggy back off of or any prior marketing or advertising to build off of. This was brand new, raw straight out of the gates marketing.

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These are notes from a presentation that I did on blogging at the E-tourism summit in San Francisco. They are raw, but I feel there is some good info that can be taken from these notes.

1. Importance of blogging - The question I get asked while being here at this conference is; Why Blog? You do not want to make the mistake of setting up a blog for setting up a blogs sake. A blog can increase the health of your site, increase (what I like to call) your Google saturation (the more pages you have indexed the better, and help out rankings and trust if done right. If you are not willing to put the time into what it takes to run a successful, well thought out blog it really is going to do nothing for you but waste time. When you set up your blog correctly (and make it search engine friendly) it gives you the opportunity to be found and ranked for more long tail key phrases, such as “social media for Firefox” in this example - http://www.97thfloor.com/blog/announcing-new-tool-social-media-for-firefox-extension/

If you go to Google and do a site:http://www.97thfloor.com/blog you will also see how many pages that Google has indexed, and how many opportunities there are for ranking for additional key phrases.

The biggest struggle that I see people have with blogging is coming up with content, and ideas to blog about … especially in boring industries. You do not need to worry. The travel industry will be a piece of cake. For example if you are in charge of a tourism website for the Grand Canyon then you can do a weekly “10 of the most beautiful pictures you will see this week from the Grand Canyon” You can also work in a little link bait with a catchy blog title like “The 10 costliest places to spend the night” or “10 travel destinations where you get the most bang for you buck”

where to find ideas:

SERPH
Google Blog Search
Ezine Articles (find articles that have had most views and reviews/comments etc - you can do this easily by viewing the author details)
Google Alerts.

2. Setting up a blog
-no matter what blogging software you use - wordpress, typepad
-don’t do subdomain, or new domain … just do a directory - example 97thfloor.com/blog because if you get a popular story on digg (or any social sites you want your domain name getting credit for that story) THAT IS WHY its so important to have it in a directory rather then a sub domain or other domain etc…

-more important for branding because it can tie back into your site.
-help out the rankings (the site will rank better because any links you have inside the blog posts will help your site out)

-most blogging software categorizes blog posts through categories and dated archives and what it does is create a duplicate content issue. (basically same post shows up several places on your blog)
- you will want to tweak your blog so it categorizes one way or the other, or do a robots.txt files that does it all. If you do a Google search for robots.txt you will get some good sites explaining how to go about setting up that properly.

-blogging software does not generally come search engine friendly so you need to make sure that you are tweaking your blogging software to include things like search engine friendly URLs, and meta data and social media optimization tools like sociable.

3. RSS - What it stands for - really simple syndication
-blogging is even more important then Google rankings because you need readers.
-if you want people to read, you will need some way for them to subscribe to you.
-RSS is like the new newsletters/ opt in/email marketing from the old school days
-Google Reader - people use it as an aggregator to read all their subscriptions.
- its like subscribing to a newspaper. You can subscribe to 4 different newspapers in the same town, and they all go to your house (for example)
-Bloglines is another aggregator like Google Reader that you can use to read all of your feeds.
-if you get accounts at these places then there is a good chance the people subscribed to their services like (bloglines) will find you as well.

Use RSS for marketing by setting up profiles pages on social communities like SQUIDOO and MASHABLE and include your RSS from your blog to gain additional links pointing back to your site. (make profiles on these sites using your brand name because it will get them more exposure too.)

4. Blog Marketing
-finding top bloggers on sites like Technorati - do a search for your keywords and find the top bloggers, and use them to see what they are blogging about. If you have something good, you can send them an email to see if they will mention it on thier blog.
-Stumble Upon - Use the stumble upon toolbar (they will need to get firefox or IE to use SU) and start submitting stories related to the travel industry. Submit to correct category, and use proper keywords to tag it , and seperate wtih category. (use the drop down and find the best possible categories)
how to use stumble upon - add friends - build up - find related categories
stumble upon ads and how to use them if you are to lazy to build up an account - SU is so much better then like digg or reddit because you can pay for visitors 5 cents up to 3k a day and get people to start reading your blog that way. You need people to find out about your blog - you need readers/subscribers and this is how to do it.
- you can get 200 visitors in an hour with a stumble account that is built up….but if you dont want to do that then just use the SU ads.

-when you are popular on Stumble Upon you will get other people saving your stuff on del.icio.us (a social bookmarking site) and that helps search engine rankings because you are getting additional links.

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If you are writing for Diggers, Stumblers, or Rss Subscribers in my opinion there is nothing more important then applying the “Inverted Pyramid” to your writing. I’m not Darren Rose or Brian Clark but I have written a lot of blog posts, submitted a boat load of stories to social sites, and I have tested technique after technique. The inverted pyramid has become my most effective tactic for grabbing readers or votes. The inverted pyramid is exactly what it sounds like, it is taking the meat and the core of the story and putting it at the top. It is a little more than “above the fold” which is making sure you have your most compelling info above the “fold” or “scroll” since we are talking websites. This is more about the title and then the content. It is giving up the pay off without users having to click through to read the full story. It works for readers with all attention spans as it maximizes the information the reader absorbs.

I learned about the inverted pyramid from the book, “Made to Stick” in the book it says the origin is rumored to come from the Civil War. Reporters would try to get back to their offices with information regarding the latest developments and their lines of communication would get cut or interrupted repeatedly by the war happenings. Due to the lack of time they had to convey their message they learned to communicate their information with the most important aspects first. When you have 15 seconds on the wire with your editor you`are going to go down the Page from most important facts to the least.

This is the same with today’s media, our lines are cut every minute through a new IM, text, email, phone call etc… when I go through my friends stories on digg I will go through all 200 plus submissions in minutes scanning and digging based off of the info in the title and the description, but mostly title. How many times have you seen a good story and thought, “that would be doing a lot better if it had a different title.” You will see this a lot on digg and reddit, where the commenter’s will correct the submitter and say, “the title should of read…” or that is an awesome story, too bad the title was so bad.” The opposite is true as well, you will often see stories with great titles make the homepage of a social site only to have the entire audience say, “Tricked by the title” or “I thought that story was going to be a lot better.” When you are on “Up and Coming” on Digg it is the Title and only the Title the users see. On Reddit you don’t submit a description at all, everything revolves around the title.

A lot of people think that creating grabbing and creative writing is hooking the reader through vague leading stories or words all the way through trying to build anticipation until the very last paragraph. It is common to see people build up and up until the very end only to let you down by stringing you along. This works in a mystery novel, but not on blogs and social sites. When you follow this type of writing you will commit writing suicide or what Journalists call “Burying the Lead.” You are just going to make your readers become disenchanted, loosing interest in your posts. Don’t make your readers think about what your story is about. You will see more links, more comments and more rss subscribers if you make it a habit to give away the farm in the title and in the opening paragraph.

When writing your Titles or Headlines all you have to do is follow one simple exercise and that is finding the core.

Finding the Core: Why are you writing your article? What is the point you want to make and what are you trying to get across?
Guy Kawasaki in “Art of the Start” talks about how companies should adapt Mantras instead of Mission Statements. He rags on MBA’s coming straight out of college and using the same 5 paragraph nonsense all inclusive mission statements. If I recall correctly he even conducted an experiment that used an automated software to build mission statements and those were seen as the better when compared to the statements written by someone from the actual company. Nike is the icon of Mantra with “Just Do It” Southwest Airlines applies their mantra to all decisions, “The Low-Fare Airline” if it doesn’t help them stay “The Low-Fare Airline” then it doesn’t happen. You don’t fly Southwest to eat Salmon. Missions Statements bury the lead, Mantras are the epitome of the inverted pyramid.

Take your article and re-read it and tear it down to it’s bones. If you had to say one thing or had to use only one sentence to tell this story what would it be? Write down your answers and play with them and you will come up with your “Inverted Pyramid.”

As mentioned above I first came across these ideas through the book “Made to Stick” there is a section in the first chapter talking about James Carville and the successful Presidential Campaign he ran for Bill Clinton. One day he was frustrated with how things were going inside the campaign among his staff and he went to the a big white board in the middle of their office and wrote, “It’s the Economy, Stupid.” This is obviously the wheels on what became Clinton’s victorious campaign. He also told Bill who is very smart and can talk for hours about any policy in great detail, that “If You Say Three Things, You Don’t Say Anything.” This helped Clinton to always bring his message back to the Economy.

Whether it is for you landing page for your website, that sells a product or a service, or in your blog posts or social news submissions, take an extra second to think about what you are trying to convey and break it down to it’s core. Then use that as your “Campaign” or your message and you will see more readers, votes and comments.

If you care anything at all about Viral and Sticky Marketing you have to read, “Made to Stick” it is the “Unofficial” Social Media Bible.

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If you host your own WordPress blog then you will love this hack created by my good friend Brandon Buttars -called Meta Tagz. This plug in will allow you to create custom meta info for each page/post of your blog. It also does a ton of other cool things, but the meta tags (part of it) is what excites me the most because its such an easy plug in to use, and its probably one of the best things you can do to help get better blog rankings for individual blog posts and pages. Enjoy!

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I got to admit, it really is getting annoying blogging about how Yahoo has screwed up (another great program) again.  I have promoted, and talked a ton about My Blog Log, and how it’s such a good source for blog promotion, but I am beginning to wonder.  Shoemoney (a self proclaimed NON SEO) has been banned.  WHAT?  ShoeMoney was simply (more…)

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I tell people every single day things they need to be doing to get more exposure, better traffic, and more search engine love to to their blog, yet when I talk to them later on in the week nothing has been put into action. The information is not going to do you a damn bit of good if there is no action. (more…)

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Just wanted to let everybody know about the latest release of WordPress 2.1

Here are some pretty cool features of the latest release: (more…)

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I have really been digging on Technorati lately for all the blog promotion tools they offer, and obvious added traffic to all my blogs, and (of course) rankings that are showing up because of my using this powerful blog promotion website.  But I have narrowed down my top list list of “kick a” things that Technorati offers:

1. Technorati Browser Buttons (makes it easy to save any blog you like)
2. Buttons to show off who links to your site
3. Blog Search Box
4. Claim all your blogs on one account
5. 20 tags per blog claimed
6. Social Media Marketing Tools/Buttons/Blog Promotion widgets developed by community of Technorati users
7. Automatic Pinging
8. Technorati Favorites Plugin (pull all your favorites into your blogroll)
9. Technorati generated tag cloud on site
10. Technorati blog info (find out any info on any blog easily)

Yes, you get all this and more when you are a part of the Technorati community.  You need to get started today with Technorati, and by the way, if you have not added me yet to your favorites, let me make it easy - Save the Eplanit SEO Blog to Technorati

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I have been working really hard with an (SEO) client of mine that has been doing just about everything that I have told him to do - perfectly and is seeing massive results and ROI.  (mostly return on his investment to me)  But something that I wanted to point out from our conversations that (to me) is amazing is what he has said about the power his blog is having on his conversion rate.

When he first startd getting into blogging he was not doing it faithfully.  Maybe a post here one week and a post the next - they were really good posts, (don’t get me wrong) but it just was not consistent.  Once I was able to get him in the mindset of blogging (atleast) once a day things have really started cranking for him in the form of sales and conversion.

He mostly deals with higher end sales where people he is closing down are spending anywhere from 2k - 14k on the spot for his services.  He is a slick dude that can talk to the best of them, but what he has told me about his blog and closing these people down is amazing!  Every single person he has closed down has told him that they have read his blog from first post to last and gained a trust in him that he knew what he was doing and talking about and were ready to sign on the dotted line before he even talked to them.  Now that is power!

I love blogging and have people do it often times for marketing purposes and search engine optimization/content etc, but this is evidence of helping conversion rates be higher simple because of a good blog with amazing content!

The point here is to not just blog for the search engines, but to blog for adding value to your website as well as content for the readers and potential readers and sales you could be getting.  Also, making your blog easy (not so much writing for the search engines) to read, and blogging often will get people back to your site.  I have found through analytics programs that it takes an average of people to visit your site 7 times before they will purchase anything from you.  So blogging gives people a good reason to visit your site and build trust.

If you have a hosting account that allows database creation, and are good with open source software you can download free blogging software at WordPress.  If you are not so good with that hosting stuff, then you can get a free blogging account at www.blogger.com or www.wordpress.com (yes different then the above wordpress)  So, even if you have to use a free blogging software I would suggest you link to your new blog right on the home page of your website, and include it in the navigation somewhere so it can be found easily by all your visitors.

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