Trying Out A New Widget

I have decided to try out a new widget on this blog, provided by WidgetEasy. It is basically an RSS Feed presented in a nice scrolling box, as you can probably see above this posting. Of course, I could have used the Blogger RSS module, but this looks a neater I think.

You can choose any feed you like, your own or somebody else's. I have chosen my Squidoo Lensmaster Feed, but I may decide to vary this in the future, possibly getting more creative and merging feeds together from a number of sites. If you would like to know more about the benefits of utilising RSS Feeds, have a look at Seven of the Best Uses for RSS Feeds on Squidoo.

30DC Update: Best Hair Removal

Well, I am very impressed with the results so far. The Best Hair Removal Blog has been up for less than 24 hours and it has already been ranked by Google at no. 5 in the US, 38 in the UK, 12 in Ireland, 24 in Canada and 19 in Australia. It will be interesting to look at Analytics tomorrow to see if these rankings generate any traffic.

It is also interesting to note that the Digg has been ranked too, no. 19 in the US, 46 in the UK, 22 in Ireland, 40 in Canada and 29 in Australia.

No doubt Google will be re-ranking regularly and these results will go up and down like a yo-yo, or even disappear altogether for a while. Still, I am very impressed with this and I have not even submitted to any RSS directories yet.

30 Day Challenge 2008

Since returning from holiday I have beavering away trying to catch up with the lessons on 30 Day Challenge, provided by Ed Dale and Dan Raine. I have chosen a niche topic and created the WordPress Blog Best Hair Removal, which is hosted on the WordPressDirect platform. I have also created the Squidoo Lens Best Hair Removal Products and applied a little social love to both sites. Hopefully I will see some SEO results in a day or two.

I now need to create a HubPage, add more articles to the blog and continue with the social bookmarking. Plus, complete the new tasks that arrive every day from the 30 Day Challenge team. August always used to be a quiet time, work wise. Ed and Dan have certainly changed that!

New Squidoo Lens: Harry Potter Online

The Harry Potter bandwagon has started rolling again, so I have decided to increase my virtual real estate by creating Harry Potter Online. The movie "Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince" is currently in post production and will be released a few weeks before Christmas.

Interest is bound to increase around the time of the film's release and, with a bit of luck, Harry Potter Online will be nicely placed to get some decent traffic by that time.

Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince

Due to the interest generated by the movie trailer release of Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince, I decided to give my lens Harry Potter Magic Wands a bit of a make over. I have added the video trailer and a brief review of the book, with a link to Amazon for further information and book purchase.

The film is due to be released around the beginning of December, so if you would like to know more about it, have a look at Harry Potter Magic Wands.

Niche Testing Update 1: Orchid Care

I have submitted Caring For Orchids to StumbleUpon and a couple of other sites now. I will continue to Social Bookmark, but in a very gradual way. I believe that submission to many bookmarking sites at the same time is likely to do more harm than good, so maybe 3 or 4 bookmarks every couple of days will suffice. My StumbleUpon blog has been submitted to a number of RSS Feed directories, further backlinks should be automatically created by this tactic.

Caring For Orchids is definitely indexed by Google, but does not appear within the first few pages of search results and has not received any traffic yet. Interestingly, my previous post, Testing A New Niche: Orchid Care, has also been indexed, which is an unexpected bonus.

I have a number of other blogs in the Gardening Market Sector, so I will now link them all to Caring For Orchids to see if this will improve search engine rankings.

Testing A New Niche: Orchid Care

I have decided to try out a different niche marketing technique that I have been considering for a little while. I undertook some keyword research in the home gardening market and came up with a few keyword phrases that looked interesting, especially when I discovered that there are at least three Clickbank products relating to this niche. My normal procedure to follow this research would be to create content pages on sites such as Squidoo, Hubpages and Blogger, with affiliate links strategically placed throughout the articles. However this can be a very time consuming exercise, so it is time for a slightly different approach. As a first test I have created a simple review page on Tripod - Caring For Orchids.

To keep the process simple I am utilizing the CBtopsites Clickbank Mall for the review page. CBtopsites provides all the code required for redirecting to the relevant page, so creation of the Caring For Orchids review on Tripod only took a few minutes.

The next step will be to add Caring For Orchids to a few Social Bookmarking sites to see if it can generate traffic and get ranked in the search engines. I will then search for further free hosting sites that might be suitable for employing this tactic.

Watch out for more posts about this simple experiment over the coming weeks.