SEO For The Common Webmaster

In a journey to get the quick buck, many webmasters turn to automatic blogs. Basically an automatic blog is set up with either some software or a Word Press plug in to bring in feeds from other blogs. The automatic blog is made up of copies of someone else’s blog posts and articles.

There are a few problems with this. First, readers will catch up and you will lose your traffic. Readers like to read original content and when you copy other blogs, your readers will catch up and quit coming.

Another problem is that you may be infringing on copyrights of others. This could cause you to be sued, your hosting account to be suspended, or face other legal issues. Besides that, it is ethically wrong.

The final problem I will mention is the fact that many search engines like Google frown on this type of duplicated content. It could cause you not to be indexed in the SERPs or cause you to be placed so low that it does not matter of you are listed or not.

When creating a good blog, it is important to write for your readers and write original content. We all want to make some money but the short term quick buck of automatic blogs will dry up and you will be left started over from scratch.  It is better to do it right from the beginning and build your blog or website over time.

This does not mean that you can never copy a good article if you think it is useful. However, you should only do so with permission and only if you give credit to the original author.

Creating a blog or website can be fun and profitable, don’t take the cheaters way by stealing from others. Create the best you can with your talents and you will form a long term project that will attract lots of traffic and earn you money

What is your opinion on automatic blogs? Please share your opinion by leaving a comment.

If you are not familiar with Stumble Upon, it is a social bookmarking site owned by eBay. It works best if you are using the Firefox browser. It is an installed tool bar add on that allows you to thumbs up or thumbs down a site you come across. It puts that site in a cycle where it is sent out to people who are looking for a certain topic.

On Stumble Upon, you can also get friends (up to 200) and have fans of your personal page. When you have friends and fans, you can send pages to them for them to view. When you hit the stumble button, you will also view pages that your friends have sent.

Along with thumbs up and thumbs down, you can give a review of the page rather you liked it or not. This is helpful to other people.

Stumble Upon is fun and you can spend hours just stumbling sites and finding interesting sites to view. However, I just wanted to give a basic overview as an opening to the main point of this article so to find out more, just download . Once you have the browser go to tools and add ons and download the Stumble Upon add on and sign up for an account.

I use Stumble Upon everyday and every time I write a post on any of my blogs I stumble them. At one point I started a blog dedicated to website reviews and stumble exchanges but I was told this is no longer allowed so I changed the site to just website reviews.

Now on to the point of traffic from Stumble Upon. In my experience and the experiences of many webmasters that I converse with everyday, Stumble Upon provides a lot of traffic. The problem with the traffic from Stumble Upon is that it does not convert well. If you are selling something or trying to make money on clicks from ads, this traffic does not turn into money as well as regular search engine traffic.

Many users of Stumble Upon just keep clicking through and do not stay long enough to even read what you have on your site. I would venture to say that less than 1% converts into any ad click or sale. I am not sure what the percentage is that stay on your site and read it but I would say that is low too. There are those who search for your topic and are really interested in your site but like I said before, many just click right on through.

So after reading that, I am sure you have one big question. Why should I use Stumble Upon at all? The answer is clear. It is free and though it may not be the best traffic, it is still traffic. If you get just a few people out of thousands that will really enjoy your site and make you a little money, that is more than you had without Stumble Upon. It is also a great way to get your site seen. If you site get many thumbs up, you can thousands of visitors a day to your site. Many will not return. However, some will and you could end up with a nice loyal reader base.

I love Stumble Upon and find it both fun and a good way to drive traffic to my site. Do not use it as your only source of traffic because you will be disappointed. However, mixed with other sources, it can add visitors to your site and money to your pocket.