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Intro

Almost every self hosted or Blogger, English speaking blog in the world seems to be using BlogRush, a JavaScript widget that helps you gain more traffic to your blog. Even some non-English blogs are using it, but that violates the terms of service, also quoted below.

-The blog should be updated on a regular basis (at least several times a month) and should not just go a few months between posts.

- The blog should already contain at least 10-12 quality posts. New blogs with very little content will not be accepted.

- The blog’s primary contain must be in English. BlogRush is currently not available for non-English blogs.

- The blog should not contain an excessive amount of advertising and links and very little actual content. The focus of the blog should be quality content.

- The primary content of the blog should not be “scraped” content from other sources and/or script-generated pages for the sole purpose of search engine rank manipulation. The focus of the blog should be quality content.

- The blog’s content (or advertising) should not contain any of the following types of content: hate, anti-racial, terrorism, drug-related, hacking, phishing, fraud, pornographic, nudity, warez, gambling, copyright infringement, obscene or disgusting material of any kind, or anything considered illegal.

I’ve come across at least fifty blogs using BlogRush that have violated at least one, and mostly multiple rules. The following tips are meant to be used by BlogRush users that follow the terms of service. I ask that, if you do not follow the terms of service, please go and fix your blog, so that it does, and then come back and make use of the tips. I am now going to go over the common mistakes of BlogRush users and how to fix them.

Maximizing BlogRush

1. Negatively Reviewing BlogRush. This scares your readers. Don’t worry about BlogRush collecting IP information or any other sort of data. It doesn’t do that. Even if it did, though, your ISP is already doing that anyways, so what’s the difference?

2. Quitting on BlogRush, because they haven’t gotten a lot of traffic. BlogRush isn’t designed to bring in a boatload of traffic, it’s designed to bring in good targeted traffic (people who are interested in what you are writing about).

3. Not Including BlogRush on every page. If the people aren’t interested anymore in your content, they are going to leave anyway. So, do yourself a favor and allow them to leave through BlogRush. Everytime someone clicks through BlogRush on your blog, you get more exposure on other blogs’ BlogRush widgets.

4. Hiding BlogRush. If you don’t display BlogRush prominently, no one will click on it on your blog. If no one click on it on your blog, no one will see links to your blog in other blogs’ BlogRush widget. Don’t put it in your footer, put it about midway down your sidebar, and choose a color to match your theme.

5. Using Long Post Titles. BlogRush cuts the title off after 40 characters, so make your title short, sweet, and to the point.

6. Lying In Titles. If you make the title of your post something completely irrelevant, chances are no one, after following the link, will ever visit your blog again.

7. Writing uninteresting titles. No one will click on it if it sounds boring. Juice it up, get creative, that’s what blogging’s all about. Just don’t lie about the article.

7. Adding BlogRush to a blog with no content. This is also lying to the readers. If you have no content when they come, chances are, they won’t come back. Unless your 1st post is darn good. For example, after my first post, I already had 4 RSS subscribers. That’s the most I’ve ever gotten in under 24 hours of starting a blog. Not bad, eh?

9. Making it hard for readers to find their other, “good” content. Use a good Related Post(s) Plug-In, manually do it, or show your Top Posts somewhere. Make sure your readers can find the rest of your good content. If you are not sure, ask a friend, or even better, ask me, I’d be glad to help.