Blog Carnivals

[stymiee]

15,789 (http://technorati.com/blogs/genxfinance.com)

Quite disapointing for me since some of my friends in the same niche with even less traffic/subscribers have a significantly higher rank. They said one of the keys they found to getting a high rank was to submit to a few blog carnivals every week. That generally generates a lot of diverse backlinks over time which boosts the overall rank.

Blog Carnivals?

[BPartch]

Blog Carnivals?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog_Carnival

I guess?

[ses5909]

Jeremy brought up something that I don't know much about nor have I participated in. I'm looking at blogcarnival.com (http://blogcarnival.com/bc/) and trying to really grasp how it works.

Care to enlighten me?

[Jeremy]

Oh, they can be wonderful ways to get some added traffic and link love. For example, in my niche we have the Carnival of Personal Finance which is held each week. Every week a new blogger "hosts" the carnival, which means they are responsible for collecting submissions and posting them on their blog.

The week leading up to the carnival publishing date people can submit any new and recent post they have produced to be included in the carnival. The carnival host then compiles all of the entries for the week, adds some commentary to them and then links to all of the submissions in that post.

It is then generally good practice for all of the people who submitted an article to write a quick post linking back to the carnival that highlights their post, which means the host can get dozens of backlinks from a ton of sites that have otherwise never linked to them.

For example, here is a recent carnival and it shows one interesting way the host chose to link to all of the submissions: CoPF 106 (http://www.thedigeratilife.com/blog/index.php/2007/06/25/91-ways-to-wealth-the-carnival-of-personal-finance-epic-journey-edition/)

Of course this doesn't apply as much to those who have strictly personal blogs, but if you are in virtually any somewhat focused topic area there should be a carnival for you (http://blogcarnival.com/bc/).

[stymiee]

Sounds like hosting one isn't so much the way to go but to find one where you can submit a post would be very beneficial. Unless hosting one actually does attract links in and of itself.

[Jeremy]

It depends on the group, but some people who have hosted that particular carnival have seen a 50% or more return links to the post within a week or so after hosting. If you host a carnival with 50 entries and 25 or more of them link back that can be a quick boost.

Probably more important than the links though are the potential new readers. You may snag a few that are in your niche that haven't found your site yet or even better, organic traffic from the blog host follows through to your entry and becomes a reader.

But as far as the best bang for your buck, you're right, and the submitters have the easier job. They simply submit a post that they may have already created and take 2 minutes to fill out the form and receive a new inbound link plus some added traffic. Hosting a carnival takes a lot more time and effort to put together, but if done right that too can pay off with generally new readers and more links.

I personally don't host simply because I don't have the time to put it together. I really need to get back into submitting to carnivals though, when I was doing it regularly it was usually a nice little traffic bump.

[ses5909]

I looked at that site but it was hard to find different topics. Take John for example... he blogs about merchant accounts. Merchant accounts might bt too niche, but surely there is an ecommerce carnival or something.

[Jeremy]

yes that site is hard to navigate for sure, but there is probably one or two in the business category (http://blogcarnival.com/bc/clist.php?sort=1&id=&directory_id=19&keyword=) that merchant accounts could be applied to.

Even in the money & finance (http://blogcarnival.com/bc/clist.php?sort=1&id=&directory_id=16&keyword=) category there are various credit card topics, website monetizing, etc.

[ses5909]

I just came upon this great post:

5 Minute How to: Get Started with blog carnivals (http://freshblogger.com/2007/06/5-minute-how-to-get-started-with-blog-carnivals/)