Common problems with Digg for newbies

When using Digg, many newcomers run into the following common issues:

1) Your article is no longer showing up on Digg,

2) Your page lowered in placement under Google, or

3) Your site shut down because it’s getting too much Digg traffic

Here are some explanations for these three scenarios:

1) If you don’t get enough diggs (or if you get buried too much in the first 24 hours, you won’t make the favorites list.  Go to http://digg.com/faq  and read “Digging, Burying, & Promotion” for more details.

2) Pages go up and down in Google listings all the time, based on what other pages are up and how content, links, and marketing tactics, etc. have changed.

3)  This happens if your site does not have enough band width or space to support the traffic you’re getting.  Often free blogs or affiliate sites cannot support the amount of traffic that comes from a great Digg article.

Keep working on finding good keywords/phrases over 10 on freekeywords.wordtracker.com and under 30,000 in a Google allintitle search, and keep plugging away submitting posts on those topics to Digg.  If you’re brand new, it’s a great idea to read through other people’s posts for awhile.  Make sure to click on links to their sites and make comments.  The big dogs of Diggers pay attention who has Dugg them, and will often look into what work you’ve done.

Setting up a WordPress eCommerce website

If you’re new to the world of ecommerce and you’re looking for a cheap option to build your site, I’d highly recommend using WordPress. Turning this free blog builder program into a functional site where you can process orders and control your design is more confusing to set up initially than many all-in-one builders out there, but could save you money in the long run. Plus, you will have the flexibility to take your site to another hosting company in the future, or even take it offline for awhile without losing everything if you change your mind.

WordPress is designed to build blogs, but instead of writing posts, you can create pages that will stay in place. By having it hosted yourself (usually $6-8/month), you’ll have full ecommerce abilities like using your own domain name, attaching a shopping cart plug-in to process sales, and using new themes, etc.

Initially, you can sign up for a free blog at www.wordpress.com and play around with various options, like uploading pictures, changing templates, changing widgets, etc.

Once you decide to have it hosted on your own, you’ll need to take a few steps:

1. Visit http://wordpress.org/hosting and pick a host that’s easy-to-use with WordPress.
2. Install an FTP client on your computer. This will enable you to save all the files you’ll need for your site and send them to your host. I highly recommend downloading the free option at http://smartftp.com.
3. Download the latest version of WordPress from http://wordpress.org/download.
4. Follow the instructions at http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress to connect the dots.

Here are a few more resources that will be useful:

• http://www.wordpress.org – a collection of tutorials
• http://free-wordpress-plugins.blogspot.com – a list of plugins to make various functions work
• http://www.instinct.co.nz/?p=16 – a free shopping cart plug-in

Placement, Heat Maps, & CrazyEgg

If you’re of the opinion that the placement of various elements on your pages work themselves out naturally, there is more to the art of layout that needs discovering!

If you were a starving cross-country road tripper pulling off the freeway to get something to eat, most likely you’d choose one of the closest fast-food restaurants right off the exit. For that reason, those lots on by the freeway exit are probably much more expensive than land a few miles into the countryside.

Just as a realtor would notice the value difference for land lots, you should consider the space on your website to be very unequal.

Tools like heat maps visually track mouse movements so you can instantly see where on the page viewers are most prone to click. Crazy Egg has devised some really nifty innovations that track related indicators to help webmasters use their page “real estate” wisely.

Here’s also a great basic little map created by Google that shows general trends of places on pages that the eye goes to first. It’s crucial that you use the prime space with warm colors to specifically and succinctly have your purpose noticed.

Some areas of a site are noticed, and some aren’t. Marketing is all about being noticed. Therefore, it’s essential to take a step back and ask, “What is the purpose of this page?” If you know your purpose, it’s easier to make it a priority.

When dealing with purpose, there are three main steps:

1. Identify.
2. Prioritize.
3. Place.

To use your most valuable space on your website for the most important parts of your cause, consider what exactly you want to have happen. Do you want viewers to buy something? Do you want them to sign up for an auto-responder so you have their contact info? Do you want to draw emotional support for your cause? Or do you want to highlight a few products on your home page to link customers to other areas of your site, etc? Do you want to come across as looking professional?

Then, decide what the most important elements are and organize accordingly!

Sure, if you saw a sign or some kind of promising indication that your favorite restaurant was only a mile down the road, the extra time spent might be worth satisfying your hunger appropriately, but that’s a big ‘might’ in the face of immediate gratification. Web surfers need that same instant gratification, so if you want them to notice it—make it instantly available!

Start blogging today to boost your business!

If you don’t have a blog already, you may want to consider setting one up, as blogs can aid your existing marketing plan tremendously. (Check out http://www.scrapbookblog.org/ or do a Google search for an idea of what a blog within your niche may look like.) The key with blogs is to be consistent and to set them up right. You’ll want to start out by creating two sites, your blog and the main site. Make sure to give the blog a different domain and run it on a different server than the main site if you want to maximize your SEO potential here. Basically, the point of this is to create a separate reference point on the net for related topics to what you’re marketing. The quality of your blog will boost the ranking of your main site as traffic is directed from the blog to your products.

 

Go to WordPress.com or Blogger.com to set one up for free.  If you decide later to give it its own domain name, you will need to have it hosted by an outside company.  If you’re new to Word Press, check out Word Press Tutorials and an explanation of blogging and features.  Keep in mind that writing a blog is keeping an online journal.  You’ll want to begin by choosing a theme you like.  Then, make some posts addressing various topics.  Play around with the editing bar within the posts area to add pictures, links, etc, and go from there.

Each blog entry should be informative, to-the-point, and have some personality. You don’t need to write a long essay, nor should you if you want people to read what you write. A paragraph will suffice. As you write your blog entries, you’ll want each one to be focused on a very specific keyword phrase. Make sure to research your keywords first to find the most effective options to use in your marketing plan. Then, follow these tips related to your keywords:

1. Set up categories within your blog and dedicate each to a keyword phrases you are marketing.

2. If you are using the same blog content to market multiple words, be sure to post it in each related category of your blog.

3. Be sure to actually use the keyword phrase of each category in EVERY post within the category, and repeat the keyword phrase throughout the post.

4. Make sure to have those keywords linked to pages on your main site with one-way links.

5. Also repeat the keyword on the page content in your main site you linked to, as well as in the index (if possible), meta tags, and html title tag.

6. On both your blog and your main site, create friendly URLs that are the same or very similar for various blog categories and subpages of your website, using your target keyword phrases.

7. Blog each day at least once if possible.

Google will reward you for consistency (how frequent you blog), hard work (how much you blog), and quality (does it have the keyword phrase you’re marketing? is it original content?).

Try out Word Press

If you’re new to web design, Word Press is one of the best web design options for affordability flexibility. It was designed as an an open source blogging program, but there are tons of options to design pages to go the traditional website route. In addition to running the eCommerce SOS blog, I also have a few other accounts including a Word Press account to keep my siblings in touch sharing updates on everyone’s families. It’s a great place to share pictures with loved ones and friends who live far apart!

Register for a Word Press account and play around with various options, like uploading pictures, changing templates, changing widgets, etc.

Technically, Word Press “hosts” the site for you, but if you want to use a different domain (that doesn’t have Word Press in the name) you have to sign up for an additional hosting provider, like Blue Host, 1 and 1, iPowerWeb, or Hostmonster, just to name a few, once you’re ready to launch the site. You’ll have a lot more flexibility if you have the site hosted by a company that gives you FTP access so you can attach a shopping cart plug-in, use new themes, etc.)

See www.wordpress.org for a collection of tutorials, as well as http://free-wordpress-plugins.blogspot.com/, where you can find a list of good plugins to make various functions work. You can get a free shopping cart plug-in at http://www.instinct.co.nz/?p=16.