Link and Blog

Here’s a member who has caught onto the game quickly! Our newest member Cornflower hasn’t wasted any time learning how to complete a Link & Blog Challenge! For doing so, her blog was added to our blog roll too!

What was the challenge?

Cornflower already had a post about glass etching written on her blog called My Ride. When I read her post it inspired me to write a story on my blog with the topic being auto security. Her blog is about cars, and my blog is about tips to avoid being the victim of crime.

The topic of auto theft was what our blog posts had in common to make it a good link exchange for our readers as well as seo. We had our challenge completed quickly, and we are both happy bloggers with the links we exchanged in the process!

Now that wasn’t hard, was it? Be sure to snoop through our members’ blogs to determine what could be a good potential challenge for you to do, and have fun while you are at it! You may be very surprised how you can come up with new inspiration for new posts by simply looking at our member blogs.

Not sure who to do a challenge with? The easiest first step is to look in our left sidebar in the New Members category. Happy blogging!

Another successful Link & Blog Challenge was completed! Susan and I did a challenge using gift cards as the key words and topic for our posts. We created relevancy between Susan’s Spa and my blog Money Illusions, which normally would not be related blogs. For our readers it is a good link exchange too since the topic within our posts tied our blogs together. To see how we did it take a look at these two posts:

A Gift With Options Attached

Gift Card Fraud

As I mentioned before, creating relevancy is really important when doing a challenge not only for your readers, but also for how the search engines view the relationship between the two blogs.

Are you fresh out of ideas as to what to write about on your blog? Be sure to check your personal messaging system to see if someone has proposed a challenge with you. They just may have come up with an idea which could put an end to a lack of inspiration!

Ready to learn about another successful Link & Blog Challenge? Backpackermom was eager to complete one, so we were off and running to create one! The challenge? To create relevancy between her blog about living in Costa Rica, and my Money Illusions blog. Hmm, so how might one go about linking those two normally unrelated type of blogs? Travel safety tips was our solution to link our posts! Here’s how we did it:

Backpackermom wrote an article about Ten Ways to Protect Yourself in Costa Rica, and my post was about Travel Safety Tips and included a link to her post. Actually, Backpackermom had two posts that I felt were relevant to connect mine to, so I placed two links within my post to her posts. Take a look at the links on the thumbnail photos above to see how we did it.

I’m sure Backpackermom would also love to hear from some of our other members to do a Link & Blog Challenge with too, so take a look at her blog and come up with a creative way to complete one with her. Then, just login to your personal messaging system and send a message to: backpackermom!

Since she completed a challenge her blog has now been added to our blog roll! As we grow the opportunity to get onto the blogroll will become more difficult so hurry and submit your completed challenges to have your blog featured here and added onto our blogroll!

What does a software blog have in common with a blog about things such as fraud and theft? If you guessed a Link & Blog Challenge you are correct! Looking over Daryl’s software blog I realized a challenge was in order, and a challenge it was but we did it!

Now hopefully as you all catch on to creating Link & Blog challenges I won’t be the only one proposing these challenges to other members – lol! But, here is the how Daryl and I put our heads together to complete a challenge with our blogs.

Remember, creating relevancy with your post articles that you link together is really important, and especially if your blogs are not considered to be in the same type of category. In our case we certainly were faced with the challenge of relevancy in order to succeed with our challenge!

On my blog Money Illusions, I wrote an article to warn people how spam robots can harvest email addresses from websites if the email address is not properly protected. I then linked my post to a post Daryl wrote providing a solution to his readers on how to do that with a script on his DVBaratta Software blog. So there you have it! We created relevancy within our posts for our readers, and for practicing good seo!

Chris just made history as the first individual to step up to the plate and made a home run with completing the first Link and Blog Challenge! I contacted Chris through our pm system, and challenged him to come up with a post on his Zero Commute blog to link to my Money Illusions blog, and he was eager to jump at the chance! To serve as an example for you here is what we achieved:

Chris’ Zero Commute blog provided me with some fresh inspiration for my blog Money Illusions, so I contacted him to propose the challenge. I wrote this post linking to his post here. He in turn then wrote a post and provided a link back to my post here.

The most important point about doing a challenge the correct way is to create relevancy with the posts that you link. Remember, that’s what will keep your readers happy, and the search engine robot’s happy too for good SEO! If you look at the posts we wrote we created relevancy between our two blogs.

Chris also provided a testimony of what he experienced by doing the Link & Blog Challenge:

Hey Tammara,

I just discovered your Link and Blog pages a few days ago, and I wanted to take a minute to thank you for coming up with this idea!

After having participated in my first successful challenge, not only am I able to enjoy that warm fuzzy feeling of being part of a budding community of like-minded bloggers, but I was given an insight into a whole new posting area.

For all the advice I’ve started writing about what my readers should be looking for and doing, not until I accepted your challenge did I put too much thought into posting about what they should be watching out for. The funny thing is, I actually have stumbled across a scam nearly identical to that which I referenced in the challenge post, but had completely forgotten about it.

I really think you’ve come up with a unique and personal way to bring people and blogs together, and am excited to know I will have been here right from the beginning when Link and Blog hits the A-List!

I already see some other members in the directory with which I’d like to try Link and Blog Challenges. If I’m hooked on reading these blogs, I know my readers will enjoy them as well!

Thanks again, I’m off to spread some of that link love!
–Chris

Thank you Chris for your testimonial! I’m sure that will inspire our members to get excited about completing a challenge! Chris mentioned to me that he has sent a pm to a member to challenge her, so be sure to check your personal messages! He’s up to bat to score another home run!