Question for the Blog Gurus

[DannyCox]

I'd like to get some input on the proper use of Blogs as a marketing tool for a website. Carol has been doing Blogs for a few years, but on other sites like xPeeps, etc., and not for her own site (mainly because I never got around to installing one for her). Her Blogs are very text rich with all sorts of keywords and she also includes images and teaser video. They work well getting traffic to her site from the various community style sites, but I want to take it further and use it on her own site. She publishes both real stories, along with some fantasy stuff just passed off as reality.

First question....what is the best way to attach a Blog to a site:

1) Separate website? ie. http://www.carolcoxblog.com

2) Tertiary Domain? ie. http://blog.carolcox.com

3) Within website? ie. http://www.carolcox.com/blog/

Above domains are for example purposes only


I also still need someone to explain the proper method of using RSS Feeds for use on other Blogs/Sites. For some reason, I just can't wrap my mind around that stuff...I'm just too old school I fear! How would someone use the RSS Feed on their site and can someone point me to examples being used. I'm still not sure if the Feed is displayed in its entirety on someone else's Blog, or just as a link to the submitting Blog.

Any help with the basics would be appreciated.

[Toby]

Here's an example of how I use blog RSS feeds to promote sponsors.

www.hottie-heaven.com

Nearly all of the posts are aggregated from sponsor blog RSS feeds. Most already have my affiliate codes inserted. A few I have to edit the post manually to insert the affiliate link.


I'll defer to others in regard to the marketing part of your question.

[Jace]

http://blog.carolcox.com is probably the best, all thought it really isn't that big of a deal where you put it

think of rss feeds this way

you put up content, what an rss feed is, is a stream of that content in coded format, so other computers can pick up that code and put it back into readable format

think of it like paysite video feeds...feed suppliers shoot out thousands of the same feed and paysites pick that up and throw it into their members area

in this case the paysite video feed is a text rss feed and the paysites are just blogs

[DannyCox]

Toby, are those submitted by the Amateurs listed or do you pick them up automatically some how? Or do you just grab what you like and insert it into your Blog?

Jace, my only knowledge of RSS Feeds is that I subscribe to some so I can quickly check what's going on. The ones I grab all have to do with sailing, so are only interesting to Sail Geeks like me

I wasn't sure if the RSS stuff was something that webmasters linked to (with an affiliate code) in order to get surfers to subscribe and that somehow the aff code stayed with that surfer.....or if they somehow linked to the feed and it contained aff codes back to the hosting website.

I apologize for my total lack of understanding in this area, it's just something I never paid attention too. I just had a bunch of webmasters bugging me about the Blogs Carol does for other websites. They are much more involved than the ones that Toby has on his hottie-heaven.com Blog as they contain longer, more explicit stories with pics and/or video teasers.

I'm not even sure what affiliates would be looking for?? The quickie stuff like Toby has, or the more involved and in-depth story style Blog? Both??

I'll probably contract someone to help me get set up with this as I don't feeling like working through the learning curve. I grabbed WordPress, and the templating for design is quite simple, but that would be about the extent of what I could do at the moment.

[Jace]

Originally Posted by DannyCox

Toby, are those submitted by the Amateurs listed or do you pick them up automatically some how? Or do you just grab what you like and insert it into your Blog?

Jace, my only knowledge of RSS Feeds is that I subscribe to some so I can quickly check what's going on. The ones I grab all have to do with sailing, so are only interesting to Sail Geeks like me

I wasn't sure if the RSS stuff was something that webmasters linked to (with an affiliate code) in order to get surfers to subscribe and that somehow the aff code stayed with that surfer.....or if they somehow linked to the feed and it contained aff codes back to the hosting website.

I apologize for my total lack of understanding in this area, it's just something I never paid attention too. I just had a bunch of webmasters bugging me about the Blogs Carol does for other websites. They are much more involved than the ones that Toby has on his hottie-heaven.com Blog as they contain longer, more explicit stories with pics and/or video teasers.

I'm not even sure what affiliates would be looking for?? The quickie stuff like Toby has, or the more involved and in-depth story style Blog? Both??

I'll probably contract someone to help me get set up with this as I don't feeling like working through the learning curve. I grabbed WordPress, and the templating for design is quite simple, but that would be about the extent of what I could do at the moment.

here is a good example of a rss fed blog

http://www.rshblog.com/

that blog is TOTALLY built from rss feeds...so every single post you see is grabbed from an rss feed from an affiliate program

now, when you step from normal rss feeds to affiliate rss feeds make sure you have someone professional do it, because that is something you can fuck up pretty bad, and last thing you need is to throw rss feeds out there for affiliates for 2 weeks only to discover that their affiliate codes haven't been being saved into the posts, you can't undo that and every affiliate has to go through and change each post out, one by one

if you need any help let me know, I have some free time coming up next week, i wil gladly walk you through everything

[Mediaguy]

From my experience making a blog a subdomain (blog.mainsite.com) is the least effective, it seems that playing with the www isn't appreciated by SEs.

If you make it its own domain name it also doesn't seem to benefit as much as it could. Seems weblogs are defined, somehow, differently than regular sites.

The best experience I've had as far as search engines (blog search and plain old search) is to have the subset: domain.com/blog seems to work the best.

It's as if the blog is defined somewhere more as a companion to a mainsite, and has to "know its place", and somewhere in the configuration of user agents and blog aggregators there is a definition of what is a blog and what is a site.

And unless you want to make RSS feeds with dynamic codes for affiliates, you don't have to worry about your RSS as long as you have a blog software that generates xml feeds and you have a link to the xml on your index page.

Some sites that use xml content will crawl your site all on their own. Some you have to submit to. Just make it a text/css link button instead of a graphic link.

sites like
http://www.babefriends.net/
http://www.adultblogfinder.com/
http://www.bloglines.com/ (not sure how they take adult anymore)

seem to go fishing for rss feeds; but you're always surer to be found if you submit manually heheh.

OR if you submit and get listed at places like
http://www.sbloggy.com/
http://www.adultblogdirectory.com/
etc.

You won't get as many hits but your link will get parsed by sites with spiders.

This is a neat one, too: http://www.freesmutclub.com/browse (manual submit though one blog they listed I don't remember adding, so ...)

A great place to kick-start your blogroll, to get your blog on online aggregators and get indexed, is http://www.tradeadult.com/#blogs - which has all the recips pre-coded ready for you to copy-paste to your sidebar for submission readiness in list or raw code format.

Another thing is the tags or labels - make sure your blog software is able to generate those; if your blog entries are text-rich and keyworded well, the labels or tags make it even easier for you to be indexed high, particularly in blog search engines, and indexed by categories, niche, acts or action.

You can even submit to non-adult blog and rss listing places, such as Technorati, as long as your images aren't too explicit (they can link to explicit stuff, just not contain it).

Let me know when you're ready we can do some link trades


.

[Toby]

Originally Posted by DannyCox

Toby, are those submitted by the Amateurs listed or do you pick them up automatically some how? Or do you just grab what you like and insert it into your Blog?

Those posts are picked up automatically twice a day by a feed plugin script and added to my blog, whenever any of those RSS feeds have new posts.

[Jace]

Originally Posted by Mediaguy

From my experience making a blog a subdomain (blog.mainsite.com) is the least effective, it seems that playing with the www isn't appreciated by SEs.

weird, I start about 20 new blogs a day and experienced the exact opposite

in my experiences se's HATE folders off the main domain and treat them the same as the domain itself

perfect example..I had a banned domain in google and set up some new blogs on folders off the main domain, the folders NEVER got picked up, yet the subdomain did within 24 hours

to this day the folders are not recognized in google, but the subdomains are pr3 and higher

[Mediaguy]

Originally Posted by Jace

to this day the folders are not recognized in google, but the subdomains are pr3 and higher

No way.

Really? That is really really weird! I mean, incredibly... how much direct traffic did you get to the subfolder domains in relation to the subdomain indexes?

I had the exact opposite: my /blog started getting crazy traffic, so I started ignoring the mainsite.com to update the blog fairly often and keeping the bookmarkers happy etc... and it went to PR3 before it was sandboxed... the domain was virtually ignored...

We transferred our LCN Girls blog from an off-site sub folder (internetsexnetwork.com/blog or /news/bnews.html something like that) where it was PR3 to a blog.livecamnetwork.com location and it hasn't recovered since.

And where I used to give a lot of credence or importance to click-to's it seems irrelevant in this instance because we get a lot of clicks to the posts, especially when they update regularly... and poof, no wanna no bwana...

[RawAlex]

IMHO, carolcoxblog.com would be a good idea as well. Google is funny sometimes with third level domain stuff, but done right, you could run the blog and get a second bite at the google apple.

[Mediaguy]

Originally Posted by RawAlex

IMHO, carolcoxblog.com would be a good idea as well. Google is funny sometimes with third level domain stuff, but done right, you could run the blog and get a second bite at the google apple.

There's plenty of sites run on blog/soft on independant URL's and they do fine... a few of them pound me on page 1 results...

I think in time I'll be wishing I'd started the blogs as the main domain, it's just a Google/Blogger thing - Google doesn't consider its blogspot domains as highly as it does someone who starts a blog on a wordpress or thumblogger indy URL, so...

Yet I don't really think the /blog blogs will suffer, just that in time whether or not a site is a blog or a hand-coded html or anything else that's readable (and blogs are amongst the most readable of all online apps-created sites) it won't matter...

[RawAlex]

yeah, I was thinking more from the standpoint of "stacking" results, where you end up only getting one page into the immediate google results for "carol cox" and then everything else is "see more from this domain". If you are using a seperate domain, there is potential that you could end up holding down multiple spots in the top 10, which would be a good way to improve the percentage of google traffic overall for a given term.

[Mediaguy]

Originally Posted by RawAlex

yeah, I was thinking more from the standpoint of "stacking" results, where you end up only getting one page into the immediate google results for "carol cox" and then everything else is "see more from this domain". If you are using a seperate domain, there is potential that you could end up holding down multiple spots in the top 10, which would be a good way to improve the percentage of google traffic overall for a given term.

On keyword searches I get multiple listings because of labels and internal search-engine report pages.

I agree with you, though - having your blog on an independant URL will have benefits, long term - I just don't see those yet in my results.

[gonzo]

Organic SE results are only part of the equation.

[Jace]

Originally Posted by Mediaguy

No way.

Really? That is really really weird! I mean, incredibly... how much direct traffic did you get to the subfolder domains in relation to the subdomain indexes?

I had the exact opposite: my /blog started getting crazy traffic, so I started ignoring the mainsite.com to update the blog fairly often and keeping the bookmarkers happy etc... and it went to PR3 before it was sandboxed... the domain was virtually ignored...

We transferred our LCN Girls blog from an off-site sub folder (internetsexnetwork.com/blog or /news/bnews.html something like that) where it was PR3 to a blog.livecamnetwork.com location and it hasn't recovered since.

And where I used to give a lot of credence or importance to click-to's it seems irrelevant in this instance because we get a lot of clicks to the posts, especially when they update regularly... and poof, no wanna no bwana...

traffic never really mattered, these were all fresh subdomains and fresh folders with blogs, i never transferred any sites

I work completely organic these days, I don't try and push traffic with scripts or manipulate rankings at all, it has served in my better interest too, i haven't had a domain sandboxed or banned in at least a year

I start from scratch and build from organic linkbacks and listings

[Jace]

Originally Posted by RawAlex

IMHO, carolcoxblog.com would be a good idea as well. Google is funny sometimes with third level domain stuff, but done right, you could run the blog and get a second bite at the google apple.

i agree kind sir

[Jace]

Originally Posted by Mediaguy

hand-coded html

do people still do that?

[DannyCox]

Would anyone see a problem with actually doing mirrored blogs? Like having both blog.carolcox.com and carolcoxblog.com to catch both the affiliates and the SE traffic? Or would that create problems down the road with places like Google? One can be used for affiliates to use, and the other for the surfers that walk in the front door of the site (most of Carol's traffic is still type-in/bookmark)

Jace, I'll contact you via e-mail early next week. I would like someone who knows what they're doing assist in the initial set-up as I know I will miss things. We can discuss cost then. But would you rather have the WordPress program installed with basic set-up, or do you prefer doing the install? I've learned people like to work in different ways, so before I start a thing, I like to check on how they like to work.

Thanks all

[Jace]

duplicate content, you would in the long term be fucking yourself

se's dont like multiple sites with the same content

[Jace]

Originally Posted by DannyCox

But would you rather have the WordPress program installed with basic set-up, or do you prefer doing the install? I've learned people like to work in different ways, so before I start a thing, I like to check on how they like to work.

Thanks all

sorry, missed this

it would be in your better interest to have me do it...I have a programmer that has created a much better wordpress for me. He takes the latest version of wordpress and "fixes" it for me and I use that for my clients.

[Mediaguy]

Originally Posted by DannyCox

Would anyone see a problem with actually doing mirrored blogs? Like having both blog.carolcox.com and carolcoxblog.com to catch both the affiliates and the SE traffic? Or would that create problems down the road with places like Google? One can be used for affiliates to use, and the other for the surfers that walk in the front door of the site (most of Carol's traffic is still type-in/bookmark)

If your content is similar but formatted or laid out differently it shouldn't matter.

There's a lot of sites now, like even mainstream news sites, stocks & bonds, etc., who all subscribe to the same xml feeds.

Google differentiates on presentation, linkage, lay out, etc...

You can pretty much duplicate, especially if you're running the affiliate dupe site on php for code-carrying purposes, as long as it's on a different url with a different css/html lay out.

Also you may want to tweak the dupe site with more hardcore/explicit sutff since you won't be running it or its feeds to the aggregators and such.

[Jace]

Originally Posted by Mediaguy

If your content is similar but formatted or laid out differently it shouldn't matter.

There's a lot of sites now, like even mainstream news sites, stocks & bonds, etc., who all subscribe to the same xml feeds.

Google differentiates on presentation, linkage, lay out, etc...

You can pretty much duplicate, especially if you're running the affiliate dupe site on php for code-carrying purposes, as long as it's on a different url with a different css/html lay out.

Also you may want to tweak the dupe site with more hardcore/explicit sutff since you won't be running it or its feeds to the aggregators and such.

I think he was referring to just mirroring the exact site

but yeah, if you change it up a bit and make one drastically different, there shouldn't be any issues