Have you thought about it? If yes, this article is for you, if not quit at once.

When I first started a blog on a blogspot account, I was in a very bad shape, to be honest.
Just like you, I was in the learning phase of the blogging phenomena.
I picked a free template, tweaked it a bit to suit my preferences, and added all the possible plugins.
And when someone told me that content is the king, I wrote content daily. As anybody’s guess I struggled to find content. I’ll list down the things that really bothered me at the time of blogging.

• Content
  - Somebody would’ve already blogged about the content that I thought writing of.
  - It was difficult to write long paragraphs about something very silly.
• Audience
  - No comments
  - Confused over who I’m writing to.
• Returns
  - No incoming money.
  - No appreciation.

Content was the major concern. When people told that you should find traffic rich keywords, I found it difficult to write on “Mesothelioma” and “Asbestosis”. And when I managed to find some interesting topics, others would’ve already blogged about it and it would dishearten me.To top it up, even when I wrote about some topics that I was comfortable about, there wouldn’t be any response from the readers (if at all there were any). I think it’s a phase all young bloggers go through when they start blogging. Despite all this events, it was not an easy task to climb up the ladder.

But, down the line, there are some things that I think worked out in making the blog a success. And let me be honest with you, there is no rocket science involved. To bring you all that in a capsule form, here goes.

• Content is not the king. Consistency is.
  Well, content might be. But I think being consistent in delivering articles to your readers plays a more important part than the content itself.
• There is no topic on steroids. Your passion in your steroid.
  You don’t need to write on mesothelioma and asbestosis. You write from your head but make sure you have the dedication and passion all the way. It shines through.
• You will or cannot make everybody happy.
  Success doesn’t mean that you will make everyone happy. A more important thing is to make everyone talk about you. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t something that you need to work towards but something that comes along.
• Nor will you get followers overnight.
  Followers doesn’t exist. It’s a wrong term. What I’d be interested to know is, the number of people whom you managed to develop an interest in.
• Success does not come with money.
  Success isn’t money. It’s the measure of how close you are to your personal goals. This is my personal perspective, it should differ for you.

So there you go, all that blogging taught me in three years in a capsule form.

The point I’m trying to make here is that, blogging is a profession/career/hobby/whatever that is very slow in delivering results. It’s probably not for the stock broker kind who wants a return the very next day. It climbs slowly and steadily. Yes, the returns are there but it comes as a surprise and you can never invite it to you. Sweet isn’t it?

If you'd like to stay updated with SEO, grab the RSS feed now !What's this?

I’m unsure how by metrics am I going to depict this, but it is surely a remarkable reference. Some would agree and some ould not, just as it should be. What are the things that you’d take into consideration before linking to a site?

If we were to dissect out the essentials of blogging, links play a vital role. Links as many calls it are votes given by one person for the credibility of another. Every time someone want to link to a site, he things twice. There are many thoughts that goes through your head. Some bloggers are voracious linkers like John TP, some are selective like Darren and many are in between.

Now, if we all know that links are the building blocks of the internet and the blogging world, why do we hesitate to link?

After all, a link is important to another person as it is to you. So why do you not be proactive and link to others?

What are your mental blocks?
Few of the things that keep you from linking to a person are these questions.

Is extensive linking good?

Many a times, people ask me, Mani why do you keep linking to Google , AdSense and such sites often, Is it good for SEO?

Well, not really. I link to them because it helps as a reference to even novice readers who might be new to a product like AdSense. It might help me in SEO in very little amounts, but that’s not my interest first.

And, I’ve never recommended anyone not to link too much. It all depends on how many incoming links you’ve got. If the ratio of incoming to out going links is fat, you are in good shape, if it’s thinner then you might not want to link too much. That’s the point.

So provided you have a healthy number of incoming links to fight the competition, you can go ahead link to various resources and content relted websites, that’s not a problem at all. Having said that, make sure that you dont go about inserting stand alone links on the sidebar and the footers as non contextual links. When Google spiders a page, it can easily make out the contextual links and the non contextual links.

If there are 10 links within an article write up, referring to content related websites, it is perfectly fine. But at the same time, if there are 10 links on the sidebar referring to websites (which cannot be determined if it’s contextual or not), it may not be ahealthy situation.

So please expel your doubts on linking and number of links. If it’s all well withing the article and it supports the article, Google sees no harm in them.

Does the guy who’s linked deserve the link?

This is yet another popular factor. Before linking to (mostly personal sites) a site, it is normal for someone to think as to whether the person being linked to is actually deserving the credit. Well, the choice is your’s. If it’s not a relevant content you better not link. Keep in mind that you are not linking to a person to make him happy. You should be linking to a site because the content in the website is interesting and you like to refer it to someone else. Simple as that.

When you think in that sense, you might link to a person boldly than otherwise.

Will he reciprocate?

Again, here are two situations. 1 - If you are linking to a person to make him happy, then chances are that he would just be happy with your link and never link back to you.

2- If you are genuinely linking to a person because you think the content is interesting and you agree/disagrre to it, then he sees some value in your link and is more likely to reciprocate.

So, when you link, let the question be as to whether your link is passing on value or not rather than it is to make someone happy.

Will he acknowledge it?

This is interesting. There is no thumbrule to this, but from experience I’ve found that genuine and gentlemen bloggers do acknowledge links. Some of them I can name are Nate Whitehill, Michael Martine and Kevin Muldoon. They are big names in the blogosphere but rarely miss a chance to acknowledge genuine links. I’ve experieinced it over the years.

So if your link is genuine and passes on value, people are likely to acknowledge it. Again, it depends on whom you are linking.

Will he just enjoy the link or will he return it back?

This might be of interest to all those link-exchange freaks out there. My sincere apologies to all of you. But this practice is something that I don’t recommend. If you are linking to someone assuming (or even nudgin him on chat) that he will link you back, then I’m sorry even if they link back, it is not going to give you any value. It just becomes an excercise that is not going to help in long time.

So essentially speaking, when you realy have to link to someone, because an article he wrote is interesting or you’d like to refer it to your reader, please do go ahead and link to him even if you don’t like his hairstyle.

But never link to someone in the hope that tommorow he will link back to you or send you some money over paypal.

Before writing this article, I had two thoughts. Should I be really telling this out to the world? The trade secrets that is. As a matter of fact, off-site optimization is the trump card up every SEO’s sleeve and so is mine.

It is my favourite tool, and experience has proved that out of all the weapons in my armour, off-site optimization works best that anything else. But, I thought I should let you guys know some of the secrets in off-site optimization, after all information and knowledge is to be shared. So here I go, hope you enjoy it and make good use of it.

So what is off-site optimization?

Off-site optimization includes all the strategies an SEO implements other than on the website, to increase the chances of ranking higher.

So that means everything except title tags, meta tags, keyword density, internal links, layout/design etc fall into the brackets of off-site optimization.

What are the factors in off-site optimization?

Off-site optimization consists of many factors that directly and indirectly affect your rankings. Having said that, they are not non comprehensive.

The Incoming links

I’m sure all of you are already aware of this. The incoming links to your website is the biggest offsite optimization factor that directly affect your rankings. Incoming links are of various types based on their relevance and importance in SEO. Though they are all essentially the same in code, based on where they are located, their weightage and placement, each of them carry a different weightage.

1-A sitewide incoming link,
2-A contextual incoming link
3-A homepage icoming link

A sitewide incoming link, is one in which an incoming link is repeated in every page of a website with the same anchor text. Examples are links placed in teh sidebar of a blog, footer of a website, navigation bar of a website etc. Essentially, a sitewide link will carry more importance than any other type of incoming link, as the link is more relevant. But there are problems with it as well.

When the link is placed at areas like the sidebar/navigation bar/frames, there is no textual content near the links most of the time, since the code is seperate for the sidebar or frame. But yes, if you can manage to get a couple of authority sites giving you sitewide links, nothing else like it.

A contextual incoming link, is the one that is placed in a relevant link, among all the other textual content on a webpage. Examples are the normal links a blogger would place in an article. Even though such links carries a good amount of weightage, and increases the relevancy of your webpage, it will not help you beat your competition, if you have a few of those. You need to have a healthy (not huge) number of contextual links to prove your point on the SERPs. But Google gives much importance to a relevant, contextual link than a sitewide link. When considering competition, it all comes down to numbers and equations.

A homepage incoming link, is obviously the link that is placed at the homepage. It carries a certain level of importance and when combined with other factors of the link provider can work wonders. But again the number factor will play a huge role when deciding your ranks, as a single homepage link from a single site may only give you a push of two-three positions.

So mostly, though the different types of incoming links carries their own importance levels, it’s ultimately a mix and match of these factors that gives you the results. Like when sometimes several single homepage links fail to give you the desired result, a single sitewide link may do the trick! Again, the competition is the factor that decides what is the equation that has to go into it.

The nxt most important factor in off-site optimization is the quality of the site that links to you.

A true quality website is not always the one with a high PR. Clear that mis conception off your head first off. Many a times, SEOs refer to sites as “authority websites”. Well, authority websites are the ones that have already managed to get into the Googles good books basically. One peculiar feature of authority websites are that they are listed at the DMOZ directory. Of course, that is not the litmus test for an authority website. Every website cannot find it’s way to the DMOZ directory after all. But yes, many of the top authority websites would be there on the human edited directory - DMOZ.

But I have a different take on the authority websites theory altogether. I don’t think that authority websites are those that are on the DMOZ or those that have a high PR.

To me, authority websites (in the context that they will be a sure shot way to boost rankings), are the ones that have quality backlinks, and have been around on the internet for quite some time. Sadly, all the authority websites in my list are not on the DMOZ.

Some factors that may be taken into account when deciding authority of a website are the number of incoming links to that website, the number of outgoing links, the amount of information rich pages, the number of pages listed on google, the number of supplementary pages, the age of domain etc.

The moral of the story is that, out of all the seo methods, on-site optimization may fail, but if there’s one thing that will give you an edge over others, it is indeed off-site optimization. So forget the header tags, and H1 tags go for some serious link building my friend, that’s were the soul is.

There are quite a lot of social bookmarking sites and equal number of plugins available these days. Every new blog has a list of social bookmarks by the side. One question that came to mind is , how many of them do you really use?

There is magnolia,blink bits, blink list, buddy marks,citeulike,connotea,del.icio.us,digg it,feed me links, furl, give a link, gravee, igooi, lilisto, linkagogo, linkroll, netvouz, newsvine, reddit, scuttle, rawsugar, shadows, sphinn, simy,tagtooda, talkdigger, wink,diigo, dzone, squidoo, looklater, recommendzit,segnalo,mr.wong, my tuts, flog this, feedmarker, linkroll and boy there are many more getting ready for 2008.

I was thinking of putting the most popular ones link on the blog and was literally confused going through the entire list of available social bookmarking sites available. Many of these sites are very much popular in their own niches, and localities like Mr. Wong which is very popular in China. But the truth is that all the visitors may not find all the social bookmarks interesting. Everyone needs to make a selection out of the whole bunch.

My favorites are Stumble upon, Sphinn and Digg. I normally use these out of the whole array and am pretty sure that they are the popular guys around. Anyway, I’m putting these guys(along with some other guys) link in the articles page so that visitors can easily pick their favorite social bookmarking site.

Also, I;d like to introduce you to a nice site which will help you put the social bookmarking links to your site as well. It throws up a neat looking HTML code, that you can of course tweak around to your own styling preferences. But there are no buttons, this one is for the guys who believe in minimalism. The site is called Social bookmark link creator and it gives you a clean little HTML code based on which social bookmarking site you prefer. Try it out today, hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I did.  

These days, importance is given to link building than anything else in SEO metrics. Out of the various factors considered today as must have’s for SEO, link building stands out. At the forums and discussion boards, there is always someone who’s looking for outsourced SEO’s who can work on link building for their site. Many are preferring cheap SEO’s too. Hmm, though it looks murky, I’m not of the opinion that link building should be outsourced to any cheap SEO.

If you take a look around, you’ll see that out of all the bloggers, only a few say less than 10% even consider outsourcing link building. The majority of them handle it themselves. And they are good at it. May be there’s something you can learn here.

1. Link building is not tough as it seems like.
You have no clue why your site is getting a better PR, or a better position. That doesn’t mean that your link building campaigns, if at all any, has gone wrong.
Probably it means that you’re not doing it right. I’ll get to some tips of how to do link building successfully down the article.

2. Link building is not easy as it seems like.
Having said that, it’s not something everyone can focus on. Many of us do a one man job at the site, writing content, tweaking template etc. In between all this, link building goes out of focus and remain down the priority list.

3. Link building is not about commenting and directory submission alone.
Many of us count link building practices limited to directory submission and commenting. Well, honestly that’s only 10% of the whole process. There is a whole lot more in link building. Let’s see further.

Let’s clear some common mis conceptions about link building.

Last, day I asked a question, what are your link building methods?

And the common answer many agreed on was that - Exclusive content and natural linking will help you more than anything else. 

Josh Spaulding says that, since he deals with niche sites, he believes in natural linking though he submits his blog to directories.

Josh is right. If you have a niche site, and if you haven’t marketed in properly, it is highly unlikely that it will get noted by others and hence the link building will be fairly okay while not helping the site much. In such cases two things can help.

1. Directory submission and  2.Social Media Optimization.
If you submit the site to some quality directories, it is likely to get some attention and traffic(Not all does give it, you have to chose wisely).It would help you get some Google juice atleast, again it’s only a better alternative to waiting for your content to get noticed.

Social Media Optimization is the thing! If you are clever enough to create a remarkable(in the right sense of it’s meaning) article, which is likely to get noted by others, then things happen really quick! People notice your blog and favour it with links. Just what we wanted.

Nitin Pai is of the opinion that, natural linking is the best way to get links.

Here too, the uncertainty in when you will get the incoming links and attention is something that will put us off.Again, SMO will help you out here.

Rajan and Mohan is also of a similar opinion. They say that the content itself will bring you links if it’s exclusive.

So what we can learn from this discussion is that taking into consideration, the uncertainty and ambiguity in waiting for the spotlight to feature your content, taking a step forward and creating those killer, viral articles optimized for the social media, would help you more than anything else in building links.

• Agreed that content is king and exclusive content will bring you natural links but optimizing your site for the social media is the right weapon to hunt for links. It’s a fool proof strategy. Waiting for natural links to come is vague.
• Links from commenting does not help you get a higher page rank.
  I heard some one say that he builds couple of links a day through commenting to ensure that his page rank is better the next update. It’s a wrong idea. Commenting on blogs can only bring you traffic, and backlinks on Yahoo and MSN but not Google, unless if the blog is “Nofollow” free.
• Links from forums don’t help you at all.
  I know many of you will disagree with me on this. I can explain.
  Just answer the following questions and you will agree with me.

  - How many links can you gather from a forum?
  - If you are getting signature links at a forum, many others would. Isn’t it?
  - If all of us link to our sites from one single forum (or as many which provides sig links), wouldn’t Google put them all in one bracket ?
  - What’s that you’ll get from a forum that other’s don’t?

  Do you get my point now? From my experience, if you rely solely on forum links, they don’t give you any exclusivity at all. If you know of a forum that allows signature links, probably everyone will. Though it carries some weight, when everyone starts getting incoming links from common domains, they does not give you that edge over others. This is more applicable in the case of sites that fight for positions on the SERPs. For the small time amateur blogger, who just needs an incoming link for the sake of it, it works fine.

So the point here is that, handling link building campaigns yourself may not give you the desired effect because you are not specialized in it. But if you are very clever, there’s nothing stopping you. From my experience, hiring a so called “cheap SEO” doesn’t serve the purpose if you are looking for quality links. Many of them I know rely on forum links, directory submissions and at the most article submission. Beyond all these traditional methods, I’ll rank Social Media Optimization as the right weapon. If you can find someone who’s good at it, he can give you quality links than a cheap SEO. Remember, links are not just about numbers, it’s also about quality. Fifty incoming links from forums/directories is equal to five quality contextual incoming links.

We all love his themes, they are simplistic, elegant and classy. I love them for their versatility and user friendliness while some claim that they are easy to tweak and clean by code. Well, Sadish is a software professional in the US. He’s a very popular wordpress designer more so for his simple and clean wordpress themes that every blogger would love to pick up. I’ve been using his themes for a couple of websites, and I’d love to recommend them for young bloggers.

I managed to do an interview with the man. I must that him for finding time out for us, amidst his busy like crazy world. Here goes -

Sadish, I’ve read that you take up WP designing as a hobby. So, what are you professionally?

I am a software engineer by profession and I develop intranet web applications using Microsoft.NET technology for a corporate client in New Jersey.

OK, So since when did you start designing?

Actually I am not a designer by profession. I like coding and that is what I am good at. I jumped into designing when I had my site at Xanga.com in 2002. I started tweaking the site to suit my needs and that is when I got introduced into templates and CSS. I downloaded and played with many free templates on the web and I just started learning stuff by trial and error.
Then I helped one of my friends to find a free template for his website and I also helped him in tweaking it for his requirements. He reciprocated with an year of ASP hosting with the domain “sadish.net” registered for me. That was the starting point.

Interesting. Why do you like WP theme designing?

This is really hard to answer. The simple answer could be “because I feel so comfortable with it”. I have tried several other alternatives before settling on WordPress and I feel much comfortable with installing and customizing WordPress.
WordPress is developed with “the end user in mind”. If you look at the features on every new version, you would clearly know that the development team is listening to the people’s needs. The other thing is, testing of any changes you make to the theme, takes just two seconds. You don’t need to compile anything. You open up any theme file and edit and save it. That’s all you have to do.

Your WP designs are strikingly simple and quick loading. Is this deliberate?

Basically I love simple designs for use on my website. I never created a theme which I would not use for my own site. In fact, many of the themes that I share now are originally created for my own use. The other reason is that I want the user to be able to take the theme and tweak it for his needs. If the theme is more graphics oriented, then it is less customizable by the end user. Customizing the theme is a lot of fun, and I do not want to keep all of that within myself let other people also have the fun.

OK Now a question my readers would love to hear you answer.
Do you think bloggers can make money online?

Yes, definitely. But you should never start your blog with the motive of making the money. It really spoils the things you write on your blog. Just pick up a niche area that you are specialized with and start blogging for the fun of sharing it with the community. You might start with a small set of people, but once people know your passion for blogging, the community will get bigger and then you could be making money online without even realizing you are making it.

So, how much money do you make online by selling WP themes?
You think people can make money by selling WP Themes?

Yes they can. Actually there are people selling their WP Theme for $100 and such. While it is definitely possible to make good money, it also takes a lot of patience and commitment to keep things rolling.
Sometime back, Small potato wrote these tips http://www.wpdesigner.com/2007/11/27/premium-theme-buying-tips/ for people buying a premium theme. I suggest this list to anyone trying to sell WP themes.
You should also be on top of the future WP releases and make sure your theme is compatible with and supports the new features with each release.

Are you into any other money making ventures?

Not right now. I only make money by selling WP themes and by selling text-link-ads on my sites.
There is a potentially huge market for “theme customization projects”, and I get many of those offers through my contact form, even though I said “I am not available for such projects” right at the top of the contact page. If I am not working on the day job, I would have taken many of such offers, but unfortunately I can not.
If one of your visitors is capable of taking such projects, I can gladly forward the projects that I can not take.

Tel me something about your new e-book? What is it and who is it for?

Actually I wanted to make it a printed book, but the process of getting it into print is time consuming.
Also the problem with getting such a book printed is that the content will become out-dated in a few months as newer versions of WP are released.
It is basically a “Do it yourself” kind of book, where a fairly knowledgeable person can read the book and customize his website. It is not a tutorial for creating a new theme, but it will offer useful tips and tricks for an intermediate to advanced user. You can read the first few chapters at http://wpthemetips.com

And, what is your advice to young designers?

1. Get a local installation of WP on your machine. Installing XAMPP will help for Windows developers and MAMP if you are a Mac user. This will be a good playground for building and testing the themes.
2. Play with various WP themes, preferably themes that are done by different people.
3. Spend some time at the support forums like http://wordpress.org/support/ and if possible, help other people solve
their issues.

What is the future according to you in designing as a career?

As I mentioned earlier, there is a huge potential for theme customization projects and if you are ready to take up such challenges, you will grow a lot. Remember, “one happy customer” will lead to more happy clients.

So there you have it. I must confess for not asking him more design related issues out there but it’s in the bloggers interest that I asked more about online money making. Hope you all enjoyed it. Get Sadish’s WP themes here.

Some of you might have already spotted it.. for those who have not, here’s the news.

I have a new website directory launched at DaiySEOblog. You can find it here.

It is a simple directory which enables you to add your site with the Title, Description and URL to the appropriate category. No link back required ;)!

There are some interesting categories at the moment, and many of them are technology, blogging and internet related. I’ll be expanding it soon to at least 50 in number soon. My idea is to keep the listings close while focusing on the content.

Does it make any sense having two categories - Web 2.0, Internet, Blogging and Weblogs? No Isn’t it?
So I may stick with one category Internet. But it’s not that horrible as it sounds I have some really nice categories for you there.

I will be manually moderating the submissions to the directory, and ONLY quality websites will be added, just because I want to keep out spam and low-quality websites.

By quality, I mean sites with original content and good quality articles. If you have a young site with no incoming links at all, don’t fret, provided you have good articles and a decent post frequency, you’ll be included.

Why should you include your blog in the directory?

Good question. Here goes -

- It’ll fetch you some quality  google juice.
- Get indexed on Google and other major search engines in less than hours.
- Also some decent traffic (you may have to get creative on the description.)
- Get noticed by other DailySEOblog readers.
- You don’t have to copy paste a code to link back!
- It takes only less than a minute to submit a site.

Who is the directory for?

Yet another good question. Popular bloggers might find it irrelevant because, they already have submissions at various directories.
But this directory is for the young bloggers, the budding bloggers who have great content in their blogs but cannot find a place to show it off.

I have gone through this earlier when I started blogging. When I had a month old blog, I found it difficult to get people’s attention. And honestly speaking, even some of my friends today were not willing to link to me, they would simply avoid my request.

So this directory aims at taking young bloggers out of that frustration.

Here, we give free incoming links to all the quality bloggers out there who is looking for some attention and some google juice the next google update.

Having said that, I’m extremely concerned about the quality.

If you are still not convinced whether to submit your site or not, read this and this and this.
Meanwhile, if you have suggestions, forward them my way.

What’s common between Bloggingfingers, Cashquests, 5xmom, and Blotrepreneur.com?

Yep, you guessed it right. They are all “Make money online” blogs, and that they are all on sale/or sold already!

So, it’s a fact that all are eyeing on the big money and short term goals and dumping all the blame on “personal reasons”. I thought this might be the right time to discuss about things to look into when buying a website.

Honestly, I’m no authority to discuss this. I can probably give you a lecture on SEO aspects one should look into before buying a domain, but I thought it might make more sense to get advices from experts in the domain.

I went around asking all the experts about their opinions on things to watch out for before buying a blog. Let’s see.

1. Chris Garret from ChrisG says -

The main thing I would look for are verifiable details of the traffic and subscriptions. What you don’t want to find is you have bought a site thinking it gets 20k visitors a month only to see that 99% of the traffic is from one or two front page diggs and all the links disappear because they were rented.
Also be cautious of earnings claims, get details. A lot of sales show monthly earnings based on one-off affiliate deals, like new product launches, negotiated commission deals you could not continue yourself, or things Google is clamping down on such as selling links and paid reviews.

2. Daniel from DailyBlogTips says - 

The first thing you need to consider is what kind of content is going on that blog. Blogs that publish too much personal stuff lose a point here. You must make sure that the readers go to that blog because they are looking for the usefulness of the information there contained, and not because they like the opinions or style of the author. If that is the case it would be very hard to keep the momentum of the blog going after the sale.
The second aspect is the monetization one, given that many of these blogs that go on sale claim that they make good money. Make sure that the revenue sources are stable and legit. If they have direct advertisers, for instance, it would be a good idea to confirm that they would stay on board even after the sale (just ask the contacts and talk to them directly). Be careful with blogs that used to generate money via PayPerPost and similar as well, because that source is not stable.

3. Amit Agarwal from Labnol, suggests -

1. Check for any traces in the archive.org database
2. Check if google ads are not banned (through Adsense preview tool)
3. Ask for raw server logs before closing the deal

4. Emma Jean from Blog about your blog says -

If I was to purchase a site I would want to know about the history. How long its been established and if the domain has ever been dropped. If its been dropped and has a PR it could be affected the next update. Therefore the value isn’t as high.
As you can see with the recent sales of blogging fingers and cashquests is the branding and the blog. People know them just by the name.. “Oh Cash Quests ya that blog is about etc.”
The most important thing I would consider is the ability to expand and earn. If you are buying a site and must pay 10 months revenue, you want to be able to earn back your investment. If you can’t it’s essentially a waste.

5. Patrick Altoft from Blogstorm says -

1. I would want access to the sites Google Analytics account. If that wasn’t possible I wouldn’t buy.
2. Also I would check as many pages as possible from archive.org to see if the site sold links or anything in the past.
3. Check every page on the site and every link using Yahoo Site Explorer.

6. Mohsin Naqi from Bloggingbits says -

Essentially, I’ll give top consideration to the blog’s niche and its earning potential before checking domain’s age, its  google and Alexa rank, and other similar factors.

7. Ankesh Kothari from BlogClout says -

 * Current cash flow.  Is the site profitable?  $$ it earns.  Followed with: page views / unique visitors it gets.  Subscribers / members it has. 
 * Future potential.  Whats the current strategy of the website.  Is the seller selling because of some impending legal / technical reasons or maybe because of increasing competition?  Can I improve upon the strategy and the business model?  How much time, effort and money will go into it?  Will the site work without its current owner?
The price I would pay is 6-8 times the current monthly cash flow.  Plus $1-2 per subscriber.
This changes if the site also owns intellectual property (patents / exclusive softwares).  Also if the site sells a tangible product and I have to buy its inventory too.
I don’t look at the site age.  Or the participation on it.  Or its page rank or alexa rank or any such 3rd party ranking that has no effect on the bottom line. 
Google backlash comes under future potential - which I check for (For eg: if a blog whose business model upto this point has been earning via payperpost only - then I would think about buying it.  And go for it only if its price is lower than I would otherwise pay for it.).

8. Monika Mundell from Writer’s Manifesto says -

For starters I would look at the following stats:

Alexa ranking
Google page rank
Age of the blog
Active Subscribers
Blog Layout (is it designed to display ads effectively)

If the blog doesn’t qualify through this I will not go further. It would be silly to think that buying a so called established blog with no rankings and no subscribers will be justified. If the blog qualifies, then I will apply some deeper scrutiny, such as looking for income revenue. If the blog currently provides the owner with a monthly income either via adsense, direct advertising, pay per click or anything else, then my first point of evaluation would be how much income there is per month. If the sales price exceeds the blogs monthly earnings x 24, then it would be considered too expensive or over ambitious.
Example: Blog currently earns $400 of monthly revenue.
$400 x 24 months = $ 9,600 then this figure is the maximum I would pay.
Also another important step is to look at the current spending habits of the blog owner to get those $400/month. Naturally if the cost is considerably high, I would keep my fingers from it. One kind of blog I would never buy is a self branded name blog. Buying an established blog can be a great decision for any serious entrepreneur. But we mustn’t forget that the future growth of the blog will only happen if we choose the right niche for us and keep the blog
updated. It is no good spending $10,000 on a dog blog if we intend to write about cats in the future.

9. Kevin from BloggingTips suggests -

1 ) With regards to traffic. You need to see as many stats as possible. Ask for screen prints of analytics, webalizer, awstats and any other stat scripts the current owner is using. You should of course be interested in the current level of traffic however more importantly you need to look at where this traffic is coming from.

   * If a lot of traffic is coming from other sites the owner owns then you need to ask if these links will remain up after the sale and if so, for how long. Likewise, if traffic is coming from an advertising campaign, when does the advertising campaign end?

  * Has a lot of traffic come from social networking - eg. digg. If so, you should bear in mind that these traffic spikes were most likely due to the blog owner working hard to get posts dugg and unless you do something similar yourself you wont receive traffic in this way

  * What sort of search engine presence does the site have? What sort of keywords and search terms are bringing in the most traffic? Can you improve the SE presence the blog has?

2) The most important thing you need to pay attention to is how many subscribers the blog has but I believe it’s also worth checking out the growth of the feed. An easy way to check this is to view the feedburner feed graph. Big jumps in subscribers may have been of a result of an advertising campaign or even a guest post. It’s worth noting how much the feed count grows on a ‘regular day’.

3) Make sure that the income stats the blog owner is giving you are true. Try and get as much proof as you can. Many website owners exaggurate how much money their site makes in order to make more money from the sale. This is something which is unfortunately very common. Another important factor is how is the advertising generated. Does the blog make money from direct ad sales or through a CPM ad network etc?

You should also find out how long the blog has been live and how long the domain has been live on the net (sometimes not the same) and you should think about the design of the blog - are you happy with it? If not, how long would you spend working on a new theme, or, if your not a designer, how much would it cost to get a design which suits the blogs needs.

Finally, it’s worthwhile doing a background check on the seller. Check the previous posts from the seller - is he a trusted member of the forum community? Has he sold before - if so, what did the previous buyer think about them as a seller.

10. Skellie from Skelliewag.org says -

My primary concern would be that the content is transferable or not. Sometimes a blog and its author are virtually inseparable, and people visit and subscribe as much for the author’s experiences, advice, personality and style as they do for other aspects of the content. A blog like that(with strong personal style) may well flounder if it’s handed over to new authors.
Site age wouldn’t matter much to me. Some people take three months to grow as much as another blogger might grow in a year. PPP would actually devalue a site as far as I’m concerned as it’s not something I’d personally want to pursue. As for Google backlash, I’d want to take over a site with high quality inbound links but wouldn’t be bothered about PR and that sort of thing.

So essentially, there are a few things in common that’s interesting.

10 things that you must check in a website/blog before buying it.

1. Traffic is stable or not
2. Had there been a Digg effect recently?
3. Was the blog thriving because of the authors personal branding?
4. Get the detail report of their earnings. Make sure it’s not PPP or any affiliate sales.
5. Contact the existing advertisers to see if they will continue the ads if you buy the site.
6. Make sure the site hadn’t got a backlash from Google because of PPP or text link ad sales.
7. Check if Google ads are banned.
8. Check in archive.org for recent drop in Google ranks (PR drop).
9. Monitor traffic and cash flow for a longer period than specified.
10. Check if you are comfortable with the blog Niche and there’s future potential to it.

Some SEO aspects you must check before buying a blog/website(Just my two cents).

1. Age of the domain, from Archive.org. If the niche is promising, then you can compromise on the age, but the more the age, the better.
2. Incoming links on Google, Google blog search and Technorati. The more the merrier.
3. Quality of incoming links - Are they bought from link farms or are they genuine from blogger’s review?
4. Recent Google backlash? Google page rank drop?
5. Had the site offered PPP and paid text links?
6. Outgoing links - Does it link to malicious sites(mainly from the sidebar/footer)?
7. Content has duplicate content or not?
8. Has it got supplemental results on the SERPS? The less the better.
9. The frequency of posts to links ratio. An even ratio is better.
10. Spiderability of the site. Test with a spider simulation test to see if the contents are poperly seen by Google, or else you may have to go for a template change.

If you had been knowing the website for too long all this factors won’t really matter, but if you can probably negotiate with the seller if you find something interesting here on the above factors.

So there you have it! All the factors you must check before buying a blog. Hope they are also useful for bloggers who plan to sell their sites. Because you heard it from the experts.

Lijit is an exceptionally good tool for bloggers. It helps you to give your readers an option to search ALL your social medias, and I mean ALL. That includes delicious,facebook,digg, stumble upon and quite a lot more. All your bookmarks, all your micro blogs and even all your contacts in those networks along with their social medias (opt in) are searchable with Lijit.

It is a small widget with a search bar that can sit on your sidepanel.

Now it makes more sense to have a lijit widget (wijit as they prefer to call it) on your blog so that your readers can find sites and information that you think are good. It helps you to improve and fulfil that personal commitment to your readers. And readers should find it interesting too.

According to Lijit, it think searching on Lijit is like doing a search in real life.

When your readers search for information in real life, their first step is to typically seek out a friend for the answer. If their friend doesn’t have the answer they need, someone in that friend’s social network may. Eventually, they get an answer they trust, because it came from a source they trust. Your readers can now have that same experience on the web and it all starts with the source they trust. That source is you, the blog publisher.

It’s a very good concept and I totally agree to it. Unfortunately their widget didn’t quite “style” itself to my theme so I had to remove it after placing it the first time. But. I’m contacting them to customize it the way I want it.

You can register for Lijit here.

Do you see all those link give away campaigns happening around?

“Subscribe to my feed, I link to you” - “Comment on my post, I link to you” - “Subscribe to me, I give 100 bucks” goes the hype.

Now that he page rank thing is abused, and carries less weight, bloggers are focused on the feed count.

What’s the catch? Clearly, the owner wants to increase his subscriber list and is trying all that he can to pull you in. Fair enough.

But, does it work all the time? Is it a sure shot strategy to win you readers? Can everyone copy the same strategy?

Well, yes and no.
Yes because everyone who wants to increase their reader base or get more traffic can copy it. It does not require any investment or any particular wealth. All you need is a well planned strategy and an attractive “reward” for participants.

Many a times, it’s a linkback or cash. Some bloggers prefer cash while some prefer linkbacks. I think linkbacks works best for grabbing new and young bloggers while cash works for established ones.

No - because the campaign is just a number focused game.

True that you get to increase your reader base (in numbers), but apart from the numbers does it give you real value and quality?

Are these readers likely to read your articles and comment on them regularly? Yes they are. But hey, they would do it even if you didn’t offer them a backlink or money. 

Ethics - Another concerning factor is the blogging ethics part. Running a campaign is not really unethical but sometimes Google thinks that they are. Remember what happened to John Chow, running the “Review me-I link you” campaign..it got a backlash from Google. And anybody who links to John now are likely to be counted as bad neighborhood now. So these campaigns carry a risk of penalty from Google, since they are counted as “artificial methods to get backlinks”. An increasing feed count campaign may not be treated as one, but yes there is some amount of risk as the links are involved.

Bottom line - Loyal readers subscribe to your blog willingly. You don’t have to offer them anything to. The reader base you collect offering a reward is probably second quality. They are not your loyal readers.

Mohsin from Bloggingbits inspired me to write this post. He’s running a “Link giveaway” scheme at his blog, where if you subscribe to his RSS feed, he’s rewarding you with a linkback. Young bloggers who are looking for linkbacks, can try your luck there.