~8 days ago there was another Google PageRank update, the April’s update. For me it meant a lot of updates of my lists. And I’ve found several pretty much interesting PR changes within the blogosphere.

I’ll mention the most important of them, which I was lucky to observe.

Note: «example.com has now PageRank 5» means, that its home page has got PageRank 5. That doesn’t apply to other pages of example.com, but it may possibly lead to a pagerank increase of those example.com’s web pages, which have dofollow links from the home page.

Top 5 Google PageRank Changes After the April’s Update

1. SeoMoz‘s PageRank has become 8. Previously it was 7.
2. Mashable‘s PageRank is 7 now. It’s fallen from 8 ( or 9, correct me ).
3. Slashdot.org‘s PageRank dropped from 9 to 7. ( Slashdot is the most popular story submission site )
4. Propeller – a well know story submission site. It’s PageRank jumped from 7 to 8, which made it one of the best story submission sites out there.
5. Wikio, where you can submit your blog, RSS feed and a story, has a PageRank of 8 now ( before the update it was 7 ).

Less Important Changes After Google PageRank Update, That Also Matter

1. IceRocket has got a PageRank of 7. ( What’s IceRocket? IceRocket is a blog search, ping service, blog directory, rss directory and RSS builder all at the same time ).
2. Blogs.botw.org has got PageRank of 7 as well. It jumped from PR 5 to 7.
3. Jumptags – the social bookmarking site, increased its PageRank by 2, it’s 7 now.
4. Diigo is also a site for your web bookmarks. It’s PageRank has decreased by 1 and it’s 6 by now.
5. Folkd – another story submission site, which turned into a spammy spot. This is a possible reason of the PageRank decrease of Folkd, it’s 7 now.

What’s My Google PageRank Now?

It’s increased by 1 and it’s 2 now, despite that prediction services promised me that it will be 4. I think it’s fair, because I hadn’t worked enough on link building and writing new content.

3 More Successful Stories of a Positive PageRank Change

• Find out why Tran Tinh’s new and fresh domain’s Google PageRank became 3, despite that it’s only ~3 months old?
• Keller Hawthorne reports that she’s finally got her blog’s PageRank back, it’s 6 again!
• Another inspiring story comes from Srivathsan, the owner of madrasgeek.com. He has migrated the blogspot blog to wordpress.. Find out what happened to his Google PageRank!

PS. Were there any exciting changes on your blogs or on those blogs, that you often visit?

***

Video Dessert: «Does the PageRank of Twitter profiles matter?»

Mani in Delhi asks: “I’m seeing Google PR for some Twitter profiles, even a PR of 4 for someone with less than 50 followers and 100 tweets, whereas for some more meaningful profiles there is no PR. Does PR of Twitter profile pages matter?

A funny case study :)

This time I’d like to share the 7 simple reasons of my most popular blog posts. Notice that I’m using the word «simple». The simplicity of these reasons very often is the cause of forgetting all or some of them.

Besides, if you’re new to blog promotion, then this post will be your guide.

My 3 Most Popular Blog Posts

I have a total of 51 blog posts (the current one is the 52nd), where only 3 became truly popular by now.

Here they are…

1. Insane List of 140 Do Follow & Nofollow Blogs with CommentLuv 2010

   

   This post has become the most visited one – it has ~2500 visits by this moment, which is the best result for my blog. It also has 20 retweets, which was incredible for my blog for that time, when I was getting not more, than 2-4 retweets on average.

   I think this is fair, because I, actually, spent ~2 days and approx. 36 hours to compile that list. Plus, this is very actual topic.. even now.

2. Getting Website Traffic in 2010

   

   Here I have used a lot of basic principles of getting website traffic in 2010. I wanted to get to the first page of Google with that big post, but I couldn’t, because the compepitors were too strong (and they are still now) having great numbers of backlinks.

   Nevertheless, with that post I have learned, that the volume of the post does not guarantee you good search results.

   But still.. this is my 2nd most popular post with 17 retweets, 120 stumbles and 968 pageviews.

3. 22 Blogs Accepting Guest Posts: Only the Best Ones

   

   Guest posting is rather fresh and extremely actual topic today. Somewhy… there are not too many lists like that, which is why my latest compilation of best guest blogs got ~40 retweets by today. And I think I can get even more… because I haven’t commented on blogs with CommentLuv, which usually attracts a lot of retweeters, if you have something worthy to show.

7 Reasons Why My Most Popular Blog Posts Are Popular

Nothing happens without a reason.. at least, this is how blogging works. And popular blog posts have always some certain explanations of their popularity. The most curious thing about this fact is that you can do the same by analyzing popular posts.

Here’s my example of how the analysis of blog posts’ popularity should look like. Pay attention, that I start from the most important reasons.

1. Trackbacks – When I know, that I’m writing a post on some actual topic – I always try to link to fresh, relevant and, more or less, popular blog posts, which accept trackbacks. There is no 100% guarantee, but usually some of them accept my trackbacks.

   If you’re new to the «science» of trackbacks, then you might find this Trackback Tutorial useful. If you would simply like to refresh your knowledge, read this short post with video – «Using trackbacks to get more links and traffic» by Jack Humphrey.

2. Feature Post – The greatest way to focus your visitors’ attention on some special post is to put it on the homepage of your blog. It won’t work, if your home page consists of your recent posts – it depends on your blog theme and your skills.

   Anyways, you can create a text widget on your sidebar and call it «Featured Post», where you should manually add a link to some certain post.

   Of course, there are other ways. For example, you can create a «Featured Post section in WordPress» or to install a special plugin – e.g. Featured Posts Plugin for WordPress

3. Twitter – is my #3 reason why my posts become popular. Today I can’t imagine my blog without Twitter, which plays a role of a window to the online world.

   New to Twitter? Simply follow Sarah’s Beginner’s Guide to Twitter to understand the basics of it.

   I remember how I have signed in on Twitter for the first time.

   «What are you doing?» – it asked.

   My first thought then was: «How the hell I’m supposed to promote my blog like that?!»

4. BlogEngage – This is a great blogging community, that can give you the general sense of the quality of your blog post.

   Thus, you can decide, if there is any point in additional promotion of your post to get the maximum.

   If BlogEngage is something you haven’t heard of before, read Brian’s (BlogEngage owner) post – How to use BlogEngage?

5. Subscribers – You can see, that this is my #5 reason of my blog posts popularity. The fact is that I don’t have thousands of subscribers and still it doesn’t mean, that my posts can’t become really popular.

   But.. I should admit, that the more subscribers you have, the greater will be the potential of your blog posts’ popularity.

   Just to help you with getting more subscribers – here’s CopyBlogger’s excellent article: «10 Effective Ways to Get More Blog Subscribers»

6. CommentLuv on My Blog – This is extremely hot plugin for your blog’s comments today to attract bloggers (commenters) to your blog. Then, if you have some great content, there is a chance, that it will be retweeted or somehow promoted by those, who came on your blog because of having CommentLuv plugin on your blog.

   There is no point in ignoring the CommentLuv plugin and not using this opportunity to increase the potential of your blog posts’ popularity.

   There is one exciting (..really!) article by Kikolani – «Reasons to Love CommentLuv Blogs».

7. Commenting on Blogs with CommentLuv – Commenting on CommentLuv blogs is also a great way to get some extra promotion of your posts. When you’re sure, that you have extremely quality last blog post – simply jump into commenting on blogs, that use CommentLuv. And no doubts, that this would help you as much as it helps me.

   Here’s the sneaky CommentLuv trick as an extra bonus for my readers – by Karl Foxley. This article can help you upgrade your way of commenting on blogs with CommentLuv.

How These 7 Reasons Actually Work?

I have spent approx. 2 hours to come up with the picture below, which explains why my 7 reasons really work!

You can see, that there are different font sizes and two types of arrows and boxes.

Here’s how you should treat them:

1. Different font sizes – This is very simple. The bigger – the more important.
2. Two types of arrows – There are pink ones and red ones. The red arrows mean, that what’s written in the box, where the arrows point at, depends on you. The pink arrows accordingly have the opposite meaning.
3. Narrow and bold boxes – I have tried to express the importance of the key points of this scheme. The bolder – the more important.

***

This is it for this time.

What are your special ways or methods of promotion of your potentially popular blog posts?

***

Video Dessert: «The World’s most amazing Basketball Shot»

A guy rebounds the ball and gets a shot off just milliseconds before the buzzer.
Watch the rest to see what happens.

A funny case study :)

Recently I have been looking for a plugin, that could add a dynamic to my sidebar. What I mean is that I wanted some widgets to be visible for certain type of my web traffic and on certain pages.

Certain Widgets on Certain Pages

I have found what I have been looking for – this plugin is called Dynamic Widgets. It, actually, allows you to modify visibility of your sidebar widgets whatever you like. And I wanted to display “text” widget, which shows 3 best articles, only on single post pages.

Why?

I have modified my front page so that it could focus my web traffic’s attention on certain places: “Featured post” and “Latest stuff”, which supposes them to click on those links. I do not want to have too many things to “check right now” on my front page.

In this case it acts against you.

But displaying “3 Best Articles” widget on single post pages makes readers take a little look at them (because they have attractive pictures) while reading solid texts. And after reading a post or (if they did not like it) while reading, they may switch to “3 Best Articles”, which plays a positive role.

I reduce my blog’s bounce rate and extend average time on site!

Certain Widgets for Certain Web Traffic

WordPress plugin Dynamic Widgets also allows you to display certain sidebar widgets for certain web traffic.

Widgets could be displayed only for:

• Administrator
• Editor
• Author
• Contributor
• Subscriber
• Anonymous

… or for several types of visitors at once, while others cannot see your certain widgets.

Dynamic Sidebar Has Even More Advantages!

1. You can make some special note for your subscribers on your sidebar, which is cool, because your subscribers want to be unique and to be noticed;
2. You can run some certain poll specially for your subscribers… or for contributors. You can, actually, run different polls for different types of traffic! Isn’t that great?
3. You can display your ads only for anonymous web traffic, which shows some sort of respect for your readers;
4. What about a special message or several rules for editors? You can do that as well. It saves your time;
5. What about a widget, that displays “Top Authors” only for authors or “Top Contributors” only for contributors?
6. Any more ideas? (I think there could be more great types of purposes!)

***

Oh.. I almost forgot – the link: Install Dynamic Widgets plugin.

***

Today’s Dessert: Robot Boys’ Awesome Dance

Winner of Talent 2008 Denmark – Robot Boys. These guys are amazing dancers and entertainers. They won the final, and the prize money of 250,000 danish kroner. Watch…

The thought about it visited me lately, when I was thinking of the first time I’ve heard of Henri Junttila and ProBlogger. I’ve started digging the reasons why they impressed me and what made me speak about them and even link to them.

The answer I’ve found within me was so essential and natural, that I’ve decided to share it, because this is how it works with all of us in every moment of our lives. Besides, it’s a good idea for another post at iWoodpecker.

In order to understand, what I want to explain and to show, I’d like to pay your attention at the concept of external links.

Basically, most of us are hunting external links. There’s nothing wrong with it, but.. it will only make you visible to search engines. You can even make a post about useless stuff and it will be on the first page of Google results. But you know… if the stuff is worthless, I do will click your link, but I’ll run away as soon, as I’ll understand, that there’s nothing useful. But.. the deal is different, when I know you somehow. I will probably check some other stuff of yours… Why not? I’m here anyway ;)

And guess what? This is how it works, when it comes to the type of online promotion, that I’m going to speak about here. But let’s get back to the concept of external links and the reasons we need them as many, as possible.

How can external links help you?

1. First of all, you know, that tons of external links is a straight way to high Google Pagerank and Alexa ranking.
2. All the above stuff leads you to your improved search results of your website or blog.
3. Then of course… you start getting website traffic. Mmm.. this precious web traffic. I know, I know.. all we are addicted with the tracking its statistics etc.
4. Finally, we get more sales, ad clicks and income in general. That’s why most of you and me have blogs, or a blog, or a website.

But again.. as I were saying, you won’t get the results of ProBlogger, CopyBlogger, Henri Junttila or any other pro blogger unless you have one thing, which is more important, than having tons of backlinks.

More important than external links?

Let me bring the explanation of it all step by step.

Good words about you and your creations

When familiar people mention someone, you almost always agree with the opinion or follow the advice, because you hear it from someone you know well and you trust him or her.

The same principles has this way of essential online promotion. Let’s take a look at the reasons, why I link now to ProBlogger and Henri Junttila and why they are so often my examples.

Problogger

• The first time I’ve heard about ProBlogger was an ad with him, where he says something about Chitika, which is number 2 after Google AdSense for him.
• The second (more effective way) time was, when I read some review about ProBlogger. Now I cannot mention where it was..
• The third time was… you won’t believe it… his own posts, where he shares his own success stories. Wow, right?

Henri Junttila

This is the most recent example.

• It happened after I read someone’s tweet, that mentioned the article «How I Leaped from Pagerank 0 to 4 in 21 Days Without any Connections». It impressed me a lot. Now I speak about him and mention him..

Types of this promotion

Now let me bring you several examples of these kind of online promotion. It’s not that easy to organize it, but it does a great job for you.

• Reviews:

  When someone makes a review about you or your website… this is awesome. Be sure, that even if you won’t get tons of unique traffic to your website or blog, you will recieve those, who will come to your website again and again or will even mention you somewhere;

• Recommendation:

  If someone recommends you, then the fact itself is great. This means, that you’re, actully, riding the essence of online promotion; Keep it up, because this is the thing, that will get you to your dream/aim;

• Quoting:

  This works almost the same, as recommendation or mention. It’s just another type of it;

• Mention:

  Mentioning itself means recommendation and quoting at the same time. So, it’s not hard to guess the value of it for you;

Summoning this promotion

There are 2 things that worked for me:

Being cool and friendly:

Which means that people love it. But it’s not all. I always try to imagine how I’d like people to treat me.. and I treat other people that way. You know what? It comes back. Seems like the world spins like that.

Mention others to be mentioned:

The bad news is that you can mention others 100 times and only some of them will mention you. It’s not the reason to get upset, but it’s the system, that cannot be overriden. Everyone’s unique.

***

These ways are average and won’t be viral ever. But they are easy to use, so do it. Being social isn’t hard and if you want to promote your website or blog, this is your way.

Website promotion isn’t fast. But it can help you to get the credibility, to make people know you, to remember your name, to mention you, to write reviews about you, to help you, to buy your products, to love you and even to hate you. Yes! Even if someone hates you, he, naturally, speaks about it with others. And there’s 100% chance, that someone will have the opposite opinion and this way you get a new loyal reader.

***

Video Dessert: «American Idol – Worst Singer Ever!!! (The Super Hero)»

This guys thinks he’s the real Greatest American Hero (A super hero from the 1980′s) Weird…

I’d like to introduce this video about the importance of play in our blogger lifes. I’ve seen this video before I started this website and now I think it’s time to correlate it with what I’m doing – with blogging. And yeah.. this topic relates to website traffic, because the better way you blog, the greater is your website traffic.

What was Stuart Brown talking about?

I’ll highlight only those phrases, that I think are important ones, because I’ve understood them.. yeah. I’m not that expert to get the gist of every single word he said. I’ll highlight phrases and will express my opinion on how they could possibly be related to blogging.

«Social play: if you want to belong, you need social play»

Smart one. But what could be a social play in blogging? May be contests, competitions? Polls? May be.. But all of them are virtual. Isn’t there any other way?

Blogging is mostly a single player game. You are sitting alone at home.. Social play – is a multiplayer game, so you need at least 2 players to play it in reality. You and someone else.. Seems like it’s a deadlock seeking a way to play blogging in reality. So, back to virtual variant.

«Polar bear playing with husky»

I don’t know why, but it reminded me of the quarrel with ExtremeJohn. It was a 100% play. Guess now who was a polar bear :)

So, it wasn’t a fighting till death. As to me – it was a pure play, nothing serious.

Did it work? Oh yeah.. just look at the people reactions. Though most of them are negative ones, I believe that everyone enjoyed the whole situation. It was fun, no one would deny that. And it was about emotions.

«Play born by curiosity»

Just like when you reveal your blog stats or your online income to people, that are curious about it. I wonder.. what could be the “play” factor here? The “showing” itself?

«Imaginative play»

Well, this one’s easy! You can play with your readers making them imagine something. Money.. the easiest example. A clear dream of something.. etc.

«Chaotic play»

Not a single idea about this one. I can only guess..

Chaotic play in our real life is when kids are running at the yard or else – screaming and playing with each other. I think this could be an example of chaotic play. But what about blogging? Any ideas?

«Nothing lights up the brain like play»

Awesome words. So true..

The bad news is that I can name only one blogger, that I know, who lighted up my brain – his name is Jordan Cooper from NotaProBlog.com. Yeap.. he’s comedian, he plays with those things about blogging, that supposed to be unplayable.. serious. And he’s doing it good.

I bet that being a comedian is not the only option to light up the brain in blogging. You’re your own magician. So.. creating something playful on your posts could, actually, light up your readers brains. Have you tried anything like that?

«Life without play»

Now imagine your life without any signs of play. It’s dipression.. No fantasy, no colorful pictures, no laughing, no passion etc

Would it become as boring as I think? I bet it will.

What do you think of “PLAY” in blogging?

What about blogging? What signs of play do you do on your blog? Any?

For example, I’m using that birdy on the top. It speaks tips and various stuff about blogging, that is supposed to help you :) I could, actually, tweet those phrases, but I’ve decided to make some fun out of it. I hope I did.

I’m now running a contest – “Become a M.I.C.“, which, as I think, is much more interesting, than usual commenting with a boring purpose to get some external links.

As you also can see, I use a lot of funny images. I don’t put any, that I think are not fun.. :)

Have you tried something yet? Did it work for you?

Warning: This post was made just to make you laugh a little :)

I’ve been thinking a lot on this problem…Thousands of experts that create blogs, where they blog about blogging tips, SEO etc. Most of these experts are ready to help you.

Well.. you read them in order to learn. After awhile you’re making a blog and you also blog about blogging tips and SEO and you try to help other bloggers to make their own blogs. You know it, right? Well.. there’s nothing bad, except it makes some problems.

Will review them in a second… OK, ready.

Why it’s not a good idea?

1. #1 reason is that your audience is other bloggers. They are used to avoid your ads;
2. The niche about blogging is too busy by today. And I believe, that it’s getting more busy each day;
3. There is a critical lack of topics to talk about, because most of them are mainly discussed.

How to improve?

1. Be the one, who needs help, even if you don’t;
2. To attract beginners, camouflage the facts, that you are a beginner*;
3. Make your blog “do follow” and enable CommentLuv (blah-blah-blah);
4. Comment like a psycho;

* How to camouflage the signs, that you are a beginner?

1. Don’t show the number of your subscribers;
2. Grow the number of your Twitter followers with any kind of followers. Try to grow it each day for max;
3. Make your posts dates old. It should show, that you’re blogging for a long time**;
4. Make an image with a big number of your subscribers. I’ve seen the example somewhere… I don’t remember the blog. Anyways, it looks impressive, though if you’re an advanced blogger, you might close a site like this;

** The problem here is that you won’t be able to hide the number of your retweets, rediggs etc.

What traffic to attract?

1. Attract web traffic from young blogs (Commenting, right.);
2. Comment on blogs, that relate to niches like travelling, design, games, sports, personal, life;
3. Personal and life niches are the best ones to comment;

Any pluses of a blog about blogging?

• You’ll have a lot of comments from other bloggers blogging about blogging, because most of them believe, that they should comment on other blogs, that relate to their niche :);
• You’ll get a lot of “positive” comments, because your audience is other bloggers. They are used to read this kind of info and they are used to comment the same way on this kind of blogs:);
• Be ready to hear tons of THANK YOU’s, that are given to you only because you have a do follow blog with CommentLuv.

Now you don’t have to tweet about your new posts. Feedburner will do that for you.

Yesterday, it was announced on adsenseforfeeds.blogspot.com.

Great idea. But.. I don’t think, that it should help a lot. It’s just another news, that made too much shout about it.

Moreover, I’d say, that this is a pure promotion of Feedburner. Why not Twitter? Do you think, that Twitter needs to be promoted? Today it is the most popular chat-service. What’s the point of spending money on another way of promotion? It’s better to earn money. It’s better to make your name work for you at this stage.

Why am I talking about it? I just wanted to pay your attention on how the “Giants” promote themselves. This is a great source to learn from. So do it :) All those common ways are helpful, but they are still common ones. And day by day the get older. That means, that maybe tomorrow they will be useless.

I’ve spent several days submitting my site to various web directories, bookmarking my web pages, twitting.. The result is really terrible. I’ve been waiting much more stats than these:

This screenshot shows how many visits I had for the last week. Is that normal? I don’t think so..

Anyways, let me show you what I’ve been doing.

First of all, I’ve submitted my website to almost half of this list of web directories. Most of those web directories haven’t accepted my site yet.

Secondly, I’ve submitted my posts to my list of social bookmarking sites. I used about 80% of the list, because the rest sites didn’t fit with their categories.

Lastly, I’ve started twitting! As you can see from the screenshot, it gave me 20 visits. Ok, not bad. But wait, look at my twitter profile! It has 300+ followers! And only 20 visits.. Come on! What’s wrong with social media? Is it overfulled or what?

I have to figure it all out. Who can tell me what to do now?

How do you, actually, end your stories, explanations or tutorials? Is it like “that’s it..”, or “next time we’ll talk about the exact steps..”, or “I’ve got nothing else to say”?

The answers are given too early
Today I’ve realized the reason, why almost everyone writes so boringly and usually. Their stories and articles are as usual, as my PC mouse. Yeap.. I know exactly what’s in the end not because I read it, but because the real answer is given somewhere at the beginning. And it keeps repeating until the end of the story. So what’s the point of the full story?

I wonder what’s in the end?!
Yes.. This is the reason, why we love movies, soccer and fightings. I guess, that the same structure of your story(content) would make your readers wait until the end no matter what.

Using this method
You should know exactly what’s in the end of what you’re trying to say. Take a deep breath and delay giving your answers right now. Keep in mind, that the reason, that you have readers is that they want to know something. And they are here, because they guess, that you, probably, have the answers.

As attractive as MCdonald’s “Big Mac”
Let your audience know about your “secrets” or “answers”. Let them know, that you’re going to share it. Show some outlines like a movie trailer.

Desire to come back
Do not make another usual structure for you content/story/video/post/article. Try something new:
1) Give one half of your “answer” in the beginning. End up with the second part of the “answer”.
2) Make the current story as an introduction. Leave the full “outcome” for the next time.
3) Give answers asking several new and logical questions. As a result, your audience would feel, that only you know the answers.

Of course, it’s up to your imagination, how to act.