Dan Lew’s Keyword Winner 2.0 Rocks!

Today’s an exciting day because Dan Lew’s Keyword Winner version 2.0 is officially available for purchase. I’m here to say that Keyword Winner is the #1 must have SEO WordPress plugin of 2011. I’ve been leveraging Keyword Winner 2.0 for about a week now (Dan Lew has graciously allowed me to be a pre-launch beta tester) and must say that I can’t live without this tool. Today, I’m going to review Keyword Winner, from the standpoint of someone that lives keywords each and every day (I’m a pay per click professional and buy keywords on search engines for a living).

Optimize Title Tags Instantly With Keyword Winner

Keyword Winner

If you’ve been in online marketing for a while, you probably know the extreme importance of keyword rich titles. When it comes to ranking blog posts in search engines, it’s all about targeting the right “winning” keywords in your page title (both the meta title and also the actual post title on your blog).

Back several years ago, you could just insert high volume keywords in your title and capture tons of traffic. However, these days there already exist hundreds (if not thousands) of pages that already have the high volume keywords. So, what’s the best strategy? Really, it comes down to finding the highest volume search terms that are relevant to your post, yet have the least amount of competition. When you leverage these keywords in your title, you will rank rapidly in search engines (usually within a matter of hours) and will receive great traffic. While this process may take hours if done manually, Keyword Winner automates it, for a one-time fee of only $47!

How Keyword Winner 2.0 Works

So, how does Keyword Winner work? It’s quite slick. After installation (which takes only 5 minutes), your WordPress post dashboard is transformed with new functionality. After you type in a few keywords in the title area and click “Get Keyword Winner Suggestions”, the plugin will return back possible keywords to leverage in your blog title. It looks at many factors including the:

Number of inbound links to rank on the suggested keyword (data gathered from Yahoo)
Overall popularity of the suggested phrase (returned by Google Insights)
Number of competing pages for the suggested phrase (returned by Google)
Monthly search volume trends (returned by Google)

Then, it ranks the suggested phrases with red, yellow, and green color codes. Green phrases are the best because they’re highly searched terms with little competition (meaning, you will rank right away and get some serious traffic). Red phrases are the worst because the competition is too high to easily rank. After you see all of the suggestions, it’s easy to pick the best one and then turn it into the perfect title for your post.

Keyword Winner 2.0 also offers many other great features. Two of my favorite are a little button that allows you to add the suggested keywords as tags, and also the fact that it color codes the posts on my the posts summary page so I instantly know which ones are keyword optimized and which ones are not.

Keyword Winner 2.0 Is Cheap

Now, theoretically I could do everything I just explained to you manually. But, that would involve opening multiple windows and spending hours upon hours contemplating post titles each time I want to blog. However, at only $47, Keyword Winner 2.0 saves hours of time and puts everything right there in my WordPress post dashboard. That’s why Keyword Winner 2.0 is my #1 rated SEO plugin for 2011.

Whether you’re in the corporate world of search engine marketing and manage blogs for your company (if you’re a direct advertiser) or manage blogs for clients (if you’re an agency), or if you’re an affiliate marketer/blogger, you cannot afford to miss out on this essential plugin. Your time is just too valuable.

Dan Lew Is a Great Guy

So, who’s behind this awesome WordPress SEO plugin? Dan Lew – a professional blogger, affiliate marketer, SEO champion, and personal friend. I’m here to say that Dan is a great guy and I’ve really enjoyed collaborating with him on SEO and paid search over the past year. He’s a true expert in our industry and his personal and professional reputation is at stake with this epic product release. That’s exactly why Dan is pleased to offer a 60 day money back guarantee! Like I said, there’s no good reason not to have this plugin if you’re trying to drive SEO results with your blog.

My Special Tip For Using Keyword Winner

To close out today, I want to offer my own special tip for leveraging Keyword Winner to the max. I recommend spending a good five minutes typing in different keyword phrases, scouring the Keyword Winner suggestions, and then picking your favorite phrase (and crafting a complete title around it). However, during all this time, your WordPress permalink will get set to the first keyword you type into the title field, even if it’s not the final post title (which it rarely will be). My suggestion is to update your permalink to match your final post title after you’ve done all your research and tweaking. Just as important as the post title itself, you will rank much better if your permalink is completely optimized to match the title (with dashes between the words).

Ready to start “winning” the game of SEO? Take it from someone that buys keywords for a living: There is nothing more important in online marketing than picking the best, most relevant keywords to complement the message you are trying to get across to your readers.

Images in this post © KeywordWinner.com

I Upgraded To HostGator VPS Level 3 Hosting

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jan 30 12

My blog has been growing quickly! While the shared hosting plan I had on BlueHost served me very well for the past year and three months, it became really apparent in recent months that it was time to upgrade. Why? I’m enjoying 10,000+ visitors per month (thanks everyone!), I have advertisers on my blog, I aspire to start (slowly) making money from my blog, and my personal reputation is on the line with PPC Ian. As such, I decided to upgrade to HostGator VPS Level 3 Hosting. I couldn’t be more excited! My blog now loads faster and it will be far more consistent and stable. The end result: A better user experience for you!

What Is HostGator VPS Hosting?

So what the heck is this VPS stuff? There are three basic types of hosting: shared hosting, VPS hosting, and dedicated hosting. Shared hosting means your site(s) are hosted on a server with many other sites. Shared hosting is a great solution and you can get so much value for cheap. I actually have shared hosting accounts with BlueHost, HostGator (in addition to my VPS account for PPC Ian), GoDaddy, and iPower. I have over 80 active web businesses so shared hosting across multiple hosts (with add-on domains) is the ideal way for me to diversify and stretch my hosting dollars.

HostGator Web Hosting

What’s the downside of shared hosting? Most of the time it works really well, but from time to time your sites can slow down when other sites on the server get a surge in traffic. I noticed this happening with PPC Ian every few weeks. How do you solve this dilemma? Easy: Get a dedicated server for your site (which can be expensive) or VPS (virtual private server) hosting like myself. VPS basically means PPC Ian is one of several sites on the server, but the server is partitioned and my site has guaranteed dedicated resources just as if it were on its own server. Sweet stuff!

Why I Went With HostGator VPS Hosting

So, why did I go with HostGator VPS hosting? First and foremost, I have personal experience with their shared hosting plan and couldn’t be more happy. Second, HostGator has been getting a lot of great press in the Internet marketing community. John Chow has been blogging about HostGator quite a bit and if HostGator VPS hosting is good enough for John Chow, then it’s definitely good enough for PPC Ian!

Third, HostGator is the host that can grow as you do. When it comes to VPS hosting, HostGator offers 9 different plans. I started out with plan 3 (with the cPanel option). For $49.95 per month, I’m guaranteed 1.13 GHZ CPU, 768 MB RAM, 30GB disk space, and 500 GB bandwidth. This plan starts at $39.95 but you have to pay $10 extra if you want cPanel. As PPC Ian grows, it’s easy to upgrade to higher level VPS plans.

Another reason I went with HostGator: They transitioned my site from BlueHost free of charge. I filed a ticket on Friday and within 48 hours my site was transitioned over with great attention to detail. The technical support team at HostGator is top notch and I couldn’t be more happy with the free transfer process.

I Hope You Enjoy My Faster Blog

To close out, I want to sincerely thank you for your support. It’s because of my readers (like you) that PPC Ian has been such a success. I’m really pleased to offer faster load times and more consistency. I’m also going to be experimenting with some other technologies to keep my blog as fast as possible, such as the W3 Total Cache plugin. Thinking of signing up for HostGator? Fan of PPC Ian? I’d truly appreciate it if you signed up through my affiliate link!

HostGator Web Hosting

Happy Birthday To PPC Ian!

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Oct 30 11

Hey Everyone,
Today’s an exciting day! Today marks PPC Ian’s 1 year birthday. It all started one year ago when Unique Blog Designs completed my slick custom blog design and I went live! My first post highlighted my passion for PPC and SEM. Now, 94 posts and 683 comments later, PPC Ian is growing quicker than ever! I wanted to take this opportunity to sincerely thank YOU for your support. It’s my readers like you that have made PPC Ian such a success. Today, I’ll be going through some of my favorite highlights from the past year. I hope you enjoy!
Sincerely,
Ian Lopuch (PPC Ian)

It’s All About The Online Marketing Community

Birthday Cake

When I look back on the past year, I’m extremely excited about the friendships I have developed with other bloggers and the online marketing community in general. How did I do it? Well, it honestly all came down to my blog commenting strategy. I got out there and commented on all the great online marketing blogs. Upon doing so, I met a lot of talented individuals and also ended up driving some serious traffic and quality comments on PPC Ian.

I even decided to launch my own blog commenting contest and the winners Profit Addiction, Dino Vedo, and My 4 Hour Workweek ended up getting their blogs reviewed for free as the prize! Even after the contest, Jeremy, Dino, and Eric have continued to comment like crazy on PPC Ian, I am truly thankful for that!

I also feel blessed that PPC Ian got serious press coverage on some of the top online marketing blogs around! Some of my favorite instances of PPC Ian in the press include: Super Affiliate Jonathan Volk, Celebrity Blogger John Chow, Teen Domainer, ZK’s Web Traffic ROI, Morgan Linton, and most recently my buddy D3so. A HUGE thank you to everyone out there in the online marketing community, I sincerely appreciate your support.

My Sponsors Rock!

I’d also like this opportunity to sincerely thank my sponsors, Marin Software, Acquisio, and WordStream. I have taken a truly unique approach to sponsorship on PPC Ian. Basically, I’m extremely picky and only include sponsors that offer products I personally champion. That’s right: I only include sponsorship from companies that offer killer products, the types of products that search marketers can’t live without! After all, I’m here to empower the search marketing industry. I’m proud to say that I can’t think of better products and companies than these three!

Want to learn more about Marin Software? I highly recommend checking out my exclusive interview with Marin’s Matt Lawson. How about WordStream? You just have to check out their free Quality Score Toolkit that I just reviewed in my last post. How about Acquisio? Stay tuned for my next post, I’m going to review their unparalleled display advertising whitepaper! Sponsors, my sincere thank you for partnering with me in making PPC Ian a big hit! My success wouldn’t have been possible without you!

Some of My Favorite PPC Ian Posts

I’d like to close out by highlighting three of my favorite PPC Ian blog posts from the last year. First and foremost, it was one of my 2010 goals to speak at a major event this year. That opportunity came up and I jumped all over it! What am I talking about? My two hour presentation about PPC, SEO, and Social Media at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.

As you may know, another one of my big goals for 2010 is domaining and developing websites that drive passive income. I’m excited to announce that I’ve totally killed that goal. Along the way, I quickly learned that it’s super critical to scale your Bluehost and Host Gator accounts with add on domains. It’s no surprise that others have the exact same goals and are finding my post all about BlueHost Add On Domains extremely helpful. It’s actually the most visited post on my entire blog!

Last but not least, this just wouldn’t be PPC Ian if I didn’t mention my passion for PPC automation. I’m extremely proud of my SEM Automation Buyer’s Guide, my FREE 12 page whitepaper. I’m looking forward to writing more of these in the future!

To close out, I wanted to share a screenshot with you. Take a look below, PPC Ian’s organic listing on Google now has site links. This is a new development, one that I’m quite proud of. It basically means that Google is acknowledging PPC Ian as a blog that has authority. Sweet! Thanks again and here’s to another year of hockey stick growth!

PPC Ian Site Links

Image of Birthday Cake © iStockPhoto – skodonnell

Unique Blog Designs Rocks

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Aug 10 18

I started PPC Ian back in October, 2009 with very high aspirations. I started planning my ascent to becoming the John Chow of pay per click from day one. With blogging fame in mind, I immediately knew I wanted Unique Blog Designs to design and build my blog. After all, Unique Blog Designs also designed the blogs of these famous Internet marketers (and so many more): John Chow, Jonathan Volk, Zac Johnson, and Yaro Starak. Moreover, I immediately had a ton of respect for UBD because they truly understand online marketing. Case in point: They created the amazing Squeeze Page WordPress Theme. I had very specific and high expectations from the beginning and UBD executed like crazy (I give them my absolute top recommendation)!

PPC Ian Works With Unique Blog Designs On Enhancements

Recently, PPC Ian has been on fire, thanks to all of you (I sincerely appreciate it). As such, I decided it was the absolute perfect time to work on some enhancements to my blog. When I was at SMX Advanced Seattle, I had the great opportunity to meet up with the Unique Blog Designs Team, specifically Matt Blancarte and Josh Mullineaux. It was great getting to meet these guys in person and planning the next round of revisions to PPC Ian. Today, I’d like to walk through UBD’s awesome work!

My Awesome New Blog Footer

As my top priority for UBD’s enhancements, I wanted a new footer. All the great blogs have slick, graphical footers. More than anything, I wanted a new footer to make the overall design of PPC Ian stand out. I wanted that flashy appeal that only comes with a professionally designed footer. I’m pleased to announce that Unique Blog Designs absolutely killed it when it comes to my new footer (just scroll to the bottom of this page and check it out for yourself).

Basically, we took my simple single row footer from before and totally pimped it out. My new footer features three columns with an additional row below containing my copyright information. In addition to some awesome graphical appeal, my new footer serves three main functions:

It provides an easy way to sign up for my Feedburner Feed. Whether you want to sign up for my posts feed, my comments feed, or both, it’s super easy! Just enter your email and you’ll automatically receive new posts and/or comments directly to your email.
It offers enhanced site navigation. As PPC Ian grows, I had been quickly running out of space to link to relevant pages in my old footer. Now, I have much more space and more comprehensive site navigation.
Perhaps most excitingly, my new footer now offers a top commentators section. Your heard that right! If you’re one of my top five commentators, you will receive a link to your blog or website from my footer. This is a very powerful link as it appears on every page of my site (and is "real" in terms of SEO value). I’m a huge fan of blog commenting. There’s nothing I appreciate more than a great blog comment on PPC Ian. As such, I wanted to go above and beyond to reward my top commentators.

PPC Ian Now Supports Advertising

As my traffic grows, I’m starting to explore options to drive revenue from PPC Ian. The obvious place to start? I’m going after some select advertisers with opportunities to advertise via 125×125 banners in my right rail (under the "Ian Recommends" section). Right now, I have a few affiliate banners there. However, I have already signed up my first advertiser (one of my favorite companies in the space) and expect to sign a few more in the coming months. Want to advertise on PPC Ian? Please don’t hesitate to contact me about advertising opportunities.

I’m Determined To Grow My Email List

I’m sure you’ve read it over and over, especially if you frequent blogs about affiliate marketing: The power is in your list. From what I’ve experienced so far in my email marketing tests, this is absolutely true. As such, I’m totally focused on growing my email list. I originally started building my list by offering my free PPC eBook for simply signing up. Then, I took things to the next level by offering my free PPC Whitepaper by signing up for my new whitepaper series mailing list. Now, I have installed the Standout Comments plugin to gain more subscribers (both to my email list but also to my Feedburner feed). How? It’s super easy: When someone comments, I offer the opportunity to sign up for my lists!

PPC Ian Goes Mobile

As you probably know by now, I’m a corporate guy. I absolutely love managing gigantic pay per click campaigns in the corporate setting. I actually work in San Francisco but live on the SF Peninsula. As such, I’m commuting each and every day on Caltrain. What do I like to do on the train? You guessed it: I like to read (and comment) on online marketing blogs. It’s always so much easier when you have a great mobile theme. PPC Ian now has a slick new mobile theme to make it that much easier for you to read (and comment) on my blog on the go!

Trackbacks Now Work

I’m a huge fan of trackbacks. What is a trackback, you ask? It’s how blogs communicate with each other. When one blog links to another, the blog with the link will ping the other. If you have trackbacks enabled, the blog that got pinged will then automatically link back to the other blog. It’s basically a reciprocal link exchange automated. Moreover, it’s a great way for the user to find other relevant posts on other blogs. For a while, my trackbacks were not working due to formatting issues. Trackbacks are now integrated into my comments section and look really slick! Want to see an example? Check out the comments section of my new dot co post. While you’re at it, don’t forget to register your favorite dot co domains!

Graphical Links To Facebook and YouTube

I’m also pleased to announce that my right rail now offers some really slick graphical links to PPC Ian’s Facebook Page and YouTube Channel. If you friend me on either Facebook or YouTube, I will be sure to friend you back (please email me if I forget).

One Change We Didn’t Make

As you can see, Matt really went all out and made a ton of awesome improvements. There’s one, however, that we tried but just couldn’t do. Can you guess? It’s changing the background color of my posts. We tried experimenting with lighter colors to make it easier to read, but decided to stay with black. Why? Any changes we made dramatically changed the look and feel of my blog and I just couldn’t stand to do that. I love my theme just how it is! I know what you’re thinking, it’s not a best practice to have white text on a black background. Well, it’s my firm belief that rules are meant to be broken!

I’d like to close out and thank Unique Blog Designs again! I can’t say enough great stuff about these guys. I know I will be doing business with them for years to come and would not trust my blog design to anyone else. Make sure to check out their Squeeze Theme and also Blog Theme Wars sites as well. I sincerely hope all of you enjoy the enhancements to PPC Ian!

Image of Unique Blog Designs Homepage © UniqueBlogDesigns.com

Three Amazing Blogs You Need To Visit

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jul 7 11

So I’m a huge fan of blog commenting. As a result, I decided to run a blog commenting contest. The contest was extremely successful and I announced the winners a few days ago. Today, I’m super excited to review the three winners: Profit Addiction, Dino Vedo, and My 4 Hour Work Week!

Profit Addiction – When revenue is not enough

I’m going to start out by reviewing Profit Addiction, the winner of my contest with an astounding 48 comments in just two short weeks! It’s no surprise that Profit Addiction won because my blog commenting strategy was originally inspired by this blog. Jeremy, the owner of Profit Addiction, is a blog commenting king. His comments started showing up everywhere and I certainly took notice.

I’m really happy to see Profit Addiction win my contest because I have been a long time fan and commentor on this blog. Jeremy’s tag line really says it all: "When revenue is not enough". I always hear about both affiliates and companies making a lot of money. However, a lot of the time, these people are talking about revenue and not dollar margin (also known as profit). Jeremy gets it right: It’s all about profit and revenue isn’t enough.

So why am I such a fan of Jeremy’s blog? Easy! Profit Addiction offers amazing case studies where he really goes into detail. Many blogs these days focus on the high level. Just think about it: If you had a winning strategy, would you share it? Not everyone would, and that’s ok! Profit Addiction, however, takes a very different approach. Jeremy goes into amazing detail about his personal online marketing tests.

As you may know from my recent review of Johnathan Volk’s Facebook Ads Guide, I’m a huge fan of advertising on Facebook. Jeremy is an expert when it comes to Facebook and provides some serious value on this topic. A few of my favorite posts about Facebook Ads on Profit Addiction:

One of the other reasons I like Profit Addiction: Jeremy really gets it when it comes to the high level attitude and strategy stuff. PPC Ian is all about corporate PPC. Interestingly, while Profit Addiction is more of an affiliate marketing blog, many of Jeremy’s posts really hit home when it comes to the corporate world. Some of my favorites: What’s Your Strategy? and Numbers Don’t Lie. I strongly encourage you to visit Profit Addiction, you won’t be disappointed!

Dino Vedo – A Young Entrepreneur Turned Millionaire

Dino Vedo, the runner up in my blog commenting contest, delivered a very respectful 26 comments! Just like Profit Addiction, Dino Vedo sports an awesome tag line: "A Young Entrepreneur Turned Millionaire". Now, if I’m trying to learn about online marketing, who am I going to listen to? Well, a millionaire certainly sounds like a great starting point!

Just like Jeremy from Profit Addiction, I have seen Dino Vedo commenting all over the Internet. For that reason alone, he gets instant points in my book. Dino obviously knows what it takes to build relationships in the online marketing community to drive volume to his blog. Recently, Dino Vedo has been updating his blog every single day, something else I respect and even envy. As a blogger, I know that involves a ton of work.

While I’m newer to Dino’s blog, I have quickly become a regular reader. I can definitely count on Dino Vedo for top notch online marketing articles that get me thinking. Following are a few of my recent favorites:

Dino Vedo, awesome work on both your blog and your comments on my blog! Everyone, make sure to check out Dino Vedo’s blog!

My 4 Hour Work Week – Passive Income & Lifestyle Design

I’m a huge fan of passive income. I love dividend-paying stocks. I love dividend-paying websites (also known as affiliate marketing). Robert Kiyosaki is my hero and I’m also a huge fan of the 4-Hour Workweek book by Timothy Ferriss. As such, I immediately became a fan of My 4 Hour Work Week, the third place winner with a solid 9 comments!

As the name implies, this site is all about building your optimal lifestyle, one filled with unlimited options. How do you have so many options, you may ask? Easy: Passive income! This blog is not associated with the official book. Rather, it’s run by Eric, a CPA at a big accounting firm. Eric discusses his personal quest to build passive income in his spare time. One of my favorite posts: Passive Income Experiments.

Whether you’re new to passive income or an old time fan, I highly encourage checking out Eric’s blog. I respect Eric very much and feel like his ambition is very relatable. In other words, it’s hard these days to find someone who is not trying to build at least a little passive income and financial freedom (via the Internet and other means) in their spare time. Make sure to follow Eric and his exciting journey! Eric, thanks for your insightful comments and congratulations! Want recommendations on even more quality blogs about online marketing? You may wish to check out my favorite online marketing blogs.

Images In This Post © ProfitAddiction.com, DinoVedo.com, and My4HrWorkWeek.com

Blog Commenting Contest Winners!

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jul 1 10

Today is the day you all have been waiting for: I’m about to announce the winners of PPC Ian’s first ever blog commenting contest! The contest was a huge success with the top three commentors generating 83 insightful comments. That’s quite amazing considering my blog has a grand total of 351 comments since its launch in October, 2009 (including my own comments as well)! In just two short weeks, I was able to leverage a simple contest to rapidly accelerate my comments and take my user engagement to the next level. The takeaway: A blog commenting contest is a great way to drive your blog to the next level.

The Purpose of My Blog Commenting Contest

Trophies

Why did I run this contest? It’s simple: Comments are the most interesting part of blog posts (at least in my opinion). Posts without comments simply aren’t as interesting. Moreover, comments tell both humans and search engines that your blog is good and worthy of traffic. If it weren’t interesting, there wouldn’t be any exciting comments. In short, I ran the content to increase user engagement while drawing in new PPC Ian readers. It definitely worked!

You may recall that I linked to 10 posts in the contest that previously had 0 comments. I’m now pleased to announce that all of these posts have comments. Excitingly, my post about leverage and my post about eBay’s quality click pricing each have 10 comments now!

Contest Winners: Profit Addiction, Dino Vedo, and My 4 Hour Workweek

Without further ado Here are the winners:

Jeremy from Profit Addiction – 48 comments
Dino Vedo from Dino Vedo – 26 comments
Eric from My 4 Hour Workweek – 9 comments

Jeremy, Dino, and Eric, I sincerely thank you for your comments! I learned a huge amount from your insightful comments and questions. It’s really quite funny: Jeremy from Profit Addiction originally inspired my blog commenting strategy. This strategy received a ton of interest, became one of the most popular posts on my blog, and even got featured on Jonathan Volk’s Week In Review. My blog commenting strategy in turn inspired my blog commenting contest. Coming full circle, it’s absolutely no surprise at all that Jeremy won the competition, he inspired my original strategy after all.

As promised, I will be reviewing the blogs of the three distinguished winners (Profit Addiction, Dino Vedo, and My 4 Hour Workweek) in my next post. One thing is for sure: All three of the winners are expert commentors and have incredible blogs. I have been frequenting all three and can’t wait to review them! Stay tuned…

My Blog Commenting Strategy

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jun 1 44

In my opinion, it’s all about PPC. At the same time, you can be even better at PPC if you learn other marketing opportunities and channels as well. Just last week I wrote all about offline marketing and specifically the WebEx Caltrain Station Takeover. Today, I’m excited to share one of my new blog marketing strategies: blog commenting.

Growing PPC Ian’s Traffic Base

Jonathan Volk Top Commentors

I launched PPC Ian, my first blog ever, back in October, 2009 and it has been an amazing learning experience for sure. My marketing strategy originally revolved around my extensive network of friends on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. As the months passed, my strategy shifted to an SEO and PR one with a little PPC mixed in. My traffic stats are now at an all time high thanks to loyal readers like you! However, I’m an ambitious guy and definitely want to grow my traffic quite a bit more. Moreover, realizing that blog marketing requires a whole different skill set than my portfolio of static websites, I’m now experimenting with some new marketing strategies including blog commenting.

Why Am I Commenting On Blogs?

There are many reasons I decided to start commenting on other blogs with the following topping the list. First, I noticed my friend Jeremy from Profit Addiction commenting everywhere! In tandem, I noticed Jeremy’s traffic and comments on his blog spiking. Blog commenting seems to be a strategy working quite well for Profit Addiction so this definitely piqued my interest in running my blog commenting test.

Second, I realized that blogging is a very social phenomenon. It’s all about conversation. If you don’t participate in the conversation, you’re not going to get as much attention. I realized how important it is for me to join the conversation. This is a very different philosophy that the one I’ve historically leveraged with my portfolio of SEO websites and one of the key differences between a blog and static website, in my opinion.

Third, I realized that blog commenting is a great way to get quality inbound links to my blog. Many of the great blogs out there have a top commentors list in their sidebar or footer (meaning the list shows up on every single page of these blogs). Moreover, many of these top commentors lists are real links. Unlike links in the actual comments you make, the top commentors links do not contain nofollow tags so search engines respect these as legit links!

Fourth, and most importantly, it’s just plain fun! I’m commenting on other blogs because I very much enjoy it. There are a number of amazing blogs out there about online marketing and it’s fun to join the conversation.

Where Am I Commenting?

There are two images in this article. The first shows me as the number one top commentor on Jonathan Volk’s Blog. I’m a long time fan of JV and enjoy his blog quite a bit. If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you may know that JV interviewed me a while back. I can always count on JV for quality posts and enjoy interacting with others on his blog. Moreover, his top commentors list gives me that great inbound link I was just discussing. I’m currently reading JV’s new eBook about Facebook advertising and hope to review it here in the coming week or so.

The image below shows one of my comments and also shows that I’m a top commentor on JohnChow.com. In the world of online marketing, JohnChow.com is a man who needs no introduction. I actually just reviewed John Chow’s Book and was also reviewed on John’s blog a while back. Like JV’s top commentor’s list, John’s also provides a quality inbound link.

Want to learn about more of the blogs which I frequently comment on? Make sure to check out my blogroll and also my post from a while back about PPC Ian’s favorite online marketing blogs.

Some Closing Thoughts

While my experiment is still in progress, I wanted to leave you with a few interesting closing thoughts. First, I must say that commenting requires time! Not too much for me at this point, but the commitment is definitely there. Longer term, I may decide to outsource some of the work if I further build out this strategy.

Second, I am already seeing some results. I’m getting direct traffic by participating in the discussions out there about online marketing. At the end of the day, that was my goal so I’m thrilled.

Third and most importantly, I wanted to call out the great fact that I’m learning. If you’re in the corporate PPC world like me, you’re probably laser focused on PPC all day long. That focus is a good thing because it creates a guru level mastery of PPC. At the same time, it leaves little room to learn other stuff. Most of my personal knowledge of SEO, email marketing, and now blogging has been self-taught. If you’re in the corporate world of online marketing, I highly recommend dabbling in a few side projects such as blogging. Your knowledge will skyrocket and will start paying dividends in your corporate career.

PPC Ian’s New FeedBurner Feed

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment May 23 5

Hey Everyone,
I’m pleased to announce that PPC Ian is now leveraging FeedBurner to syndicate my full posts! It really hit me when I was reading Make Money Online, John Chow’s new book. John clearly calls out that FeedBurner is important for two reasons.

First and foremost, it gives all of you the opportunity to receive full PPC Ian posts right to your email inbox! This is a super convenient way to enjoy PPC Ian articles as soon as they are posted. Want to sign up? Simply visit PPC Ian’s Feed and click the option at the top of the page to receive email updates.
Second, FeedBurner offers advanced RSS feed statistics. I’ll get a better picture of how many people are subscribed to my feed, a great way to understand the growth and success of this blog. Curious about my subscriber statistics? I’ll definitely post them on here in the future.

I sincerely thank you for visiting and supporting my blog! I encourage you to subscribe to PPC Ian’s FeedBurner RSS Feed as the best way to get up to the minute PPC Ian posts.

I wish you an awesome week of online marketing!
All the best,
PPC Ian (Ian Lopuch)

PS – Existing RSS subscribers, this should not change anything for you. If you notice any unexpected changes, please don’t hesitate to reach out. Of course, if you’d like to receive updates via email, that new option is now open to you. Simply visit the PPC Ian Feed and select the email option toward the top of the page. Thanks again!

PPS – In addition to my FeedBurner RSS Feed, I highly recommend signing up for PPC Ian’s eBook highlighting my top five secret PPC career strategies. When you sign up for my eBook, you will also receive my PowerPoint presentation from my recent Stanford GSB Presentation in addition to my exclusive newsletter. The newsletter and extras only go out to eBook subscribers!