Today is the one year anniversary of the first post ever published at GrowMap. In case anyone is interested here are some stats on what has happened in that year:
- 130 published posts
- 2,402 active comments
- 1,300 subscribers
Most important to us is whether what we have shared here has been of value to our readers. We know some have applied what we have shared. We hope many have seen an increase in their traffic and sales.
Many thanks to our regular readers and commentators and welcome to new readers. You are personally invited to jump right in:
- Ask any questions you have while we still have time to give personal answers
- Comment regularly to generate incoming links to your own site
- Interact with us here and on Social Networking sites because we regularly send traffic to those who do
- Tell your friends and share what we write so others can benefit.
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Gail Gardner
Small Business Marketing Strategist at GrowMap
Gail Gardner is the founder of GrowMap.com. She is a Small Business Marketing Strategist who mentors small businesses, bloggers, and freelancers.
After 23 years in the field with IBM and 5.5 years managing AdWords accounts, her focus shifted to small business marketing strategy. GrowMap.com is listed by Cision as a Top 100 Site for Marketers and has received three Small Business Influencer Awards from Small Business Trends.
Named by D&B a Top 50 SMB Influencer on Twitter, you can follow Gail @GrowMap and on LinkedIn.
Latest posts by Gail Gardner (see all)
- Free Mentoring: How to Use the Inexpensive CRM Bigin to Increase Income - November 9, 2020
- Bullying Prevention: Taking a Stand Against Bullying [Infographic] - November 1, 2020
- Amazon: WalMart of the Internet [Infographic + New Videos] - October 28, 2020
Belated Happy Birthday. It’s 2020 now and we don’t think you will get this message. Still, we feel happy for you.
Anna would love you to read ..Best Birthday Gifts for 11-year-old girl in 2020 that she’ll love
Hi Anna,
I’m still here so I did get your message.
Gail Gardner would love you to read ..Five of the Best Free Online Video Editing Sites [2020]
Will be waiting for that day this year for your yearly blog reviews.
Yep, happy birthday.
belated happy birthday to you growmap and all the best for your future.may you get success on every step your life.great site.
.-= monika@Create my own t-shirt´s last blog ..International Shipping Now Available! =-.
Happy Birthday 🙂
Only just stumbled across this blog but there’s some great posts here.
.-= Bong Blog´s last blog ..The Bamboo Bong – No Ordinary Bong! =-.
I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don’t know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
happy birthday to you.you achieve lot in a year.i love this site i always get something new and informative.all the best Growmap for you future.keep sharing informative post.
happy birthday for you
that’s so great have more a hundred posts in a year
Thank you Kenali,
When I get some of the larger research projects completed I will post far more frequently with specific how-to type information.
.-= Internet Strategist @GrowMap´s last blog ..Top How to Make Money Blogging Resources =-.
happy birth day to grow map. You achieve lot in the one year.
Happy birthday 😀
.-= Objek Wisata di Pandeglang´s last blog ..Kenali dan Kunjungi Objek Wisata di Pandeglang =-.
happy birthday to you!
Congratulations to your success!
You have a very active follower/community here…
Welcome and thank you Harvey,
I encourage the many wedding related businesses that comment here to follow @ExecGifts and check out the ExecGifts blog. They are also dofollow and use CommentLuv and KeywordLuv and they have many wedding related gifts including groomsmen gifts.
Their Howard Miller Rosewood Desk Picture Frames, Royce Leather Picture Frames and photo frame clocks might be interesting to your clients.
If you like what they offer you could join the ExecGifts affiliate program. We would be glad to assist you in gaining traffic for your business and creating a secondary income from affiliate sales.
.-= Internet Strategist @GrowMap´s last blog ..Instantly Acquire 76 High Quality Incoming Links =-.
Very lucky to find this place, with so many nice people here. Happy birthday! I definitely want to find out more here.
Welcome Leah,
We hope you ‘ll check out all the great resources we offer for growing your business. You might also want to check out the blog for Executive Gift Shoppe. You are in the same niche and they are also dofollow.
For those who are not familiar with dofollow see our DoFollow Tools and Lists post for why commenting there and here will benefit your business.
.-= Internet Strategist @GrowMap´s last blog ..How to Optimize Your PPC Advertising to Benefit YOU =-.
Happy belated birthday! Great stats for a year of life 🙂 Keep up the good work and lets hope that next year the stats would look at least three times better than now!
Cheers!
Thank you Nice Blogger,
Did you see the post I’ll feature as the CommentLuv last blog post? It saves me a ton of time and is great for SEO for any business. I’d love to see more people offering Local Search SEO services and using <a href=”https://www.growmap.com/ubl/” Universal Business Listings to get the process started is a great shortcut.
.-= Internet Strategist @GrowMap´s last blog ..Instantly Acquire 76 High Quality Incoming Links =-.
this is a great blog. a lot of information available here. belated happy birthday.
Hello Saurabh and thank you. If there is anything specific that would benefit our readers who are not in the U.S. do let us know.
.-= Internet Strategist @GrowMap´s last blog ..How to Optimize Your PPC Advertising to Benefit YOU =-.
Oh, that’s nice… Happy birthday to you guys! Hope you continue giving us readers the info that we need for businesses. 🙂 And more birthdays to come!
.-= Louise | UPrinting.com´s last blog ..14 Business Card Designs in Dark Colors =-.
Thank you Louise,
We are always sharing what we have learned and continually testing more ways to grow businesses. If there is ever anything specific you would like to know just ask.
Did you see the post I’m featuring using CommentLuv in this reply? That service is a huge time-saver and can really make a difference online.
.-= Internet Strategist @GrowMap´s last blog ..Instantly Acquire 76 High Quality Incoming Links =-.
Happy Birthday
I personally have picked up plenty of good information from reading your blog. I have it in my reader and I don’t have many in there.
Hello Al,
I am glad to hear that you’ve found information that was beneficial. I know how busy everyone is and how challenging it is to make time to read more blogs. Watch for my next post on a short cut to getting really high quality incoming links to any business.
Even if you operate totally online and don’t have a physical store you can still benefit from those links. Are you planning to review any specific lift kits? I wonder if there are any good affiliate programs for offering them.
Be sure to optimize each page for a single one to three word keyword phrase. See Selecting Keywords for more information on how to get your site well indexed in the search engines.
.-= Internet Strategist @GrowMap´s last blog ..Success IS a Numbers Game =-.
Hello and welcome. I see you’ve collected many of the guitar lessons available online on one site. You are using some interesting monetization techniques I don’t believe I’ve seen before. I would love to hear how well your pages are converting for you.
So many sites just load AdSense ads everywhere which really detracts from the credibility of a site and greatly reduces how often even quality content gets shared on Social Networking sites. I avoid linking to and sharing even quality content if the site content is being overwhelmed by advertising.
Each site owner must decide where to draw line – where that balance between quality content and monetization must be drawn for them. That decision changes the type of visitors and regular readers you will attract and keep and who will recommend your content.
Many blogs have already gone too far and overdoing advertising or offering get-rich-quick schemes that don’t work have caused many to condemn all types of monetization which is truly unfortunate. There must be ways for us to recommend quality products and services from our favorite small businesses and online retailers.
There is already so much information here which you can most easily see by scanning the categories in the right column with more added regularly. I do hope you’ll check out all the free strategies for growing businesses including blogs found there and I invite you to Subscribe to our RSS or Subscribe via email.
.-= Internet Strategist @GrowMap´s last blog ..Success IS a Numbers Game =-.
Can you give me tips, how to get a lot of comments and subscribers like this blog in a year. I really wanna too do this. Hope so.
Welcome Mencari,
As I explained to Mark above I shared the decisions we made to encourage an active community here in the post Blogging Best Practices: Enabling Your Readers to Subscribe to Comments.
That post explains the various plugins we use to reward those who make the time to click through to our blog and comment. Once your blog is set up to encourage comments and subscribers then use the strategy explained in Blog Traffic Up 54.87% in the Last 30 Days to reach out to other bloggers.
The better your comments elsewhere the more the owners and readers of other blogs will be attracted to visit your blog to see what else you have to share.
.-= Internet Strategist @GrowMap´s last blog ..Enhance Your Email Marketing with Social Media =-.
happy birthday for your blog
that’s so great have more a hundred posts in a year 😉
.-= Kenali dan Kunjungi Objek Wisata di Pandeglang´s last blog ..Blog Aleusia Kembali Untuk Ikut Kenali Objek Wisata di Pandeglang =-.
Welcome Kenali,
When I get my business growing processes completed I plan to increase the number of posts per year. As anyone who is familiar with my writing knows the information provided here is more comprehensive and includes many related links for additional research.
I hope you’ll be a regular reader. Thank you for taking the time to comment.
.-= Internet Strategist @GrowMap´s last blog ..How to Optimize Your PPC Advertising to Benefit YOU =-.
I’ve been a fan since we first met a few months back. I appreciate your wisdom and experience when it comes to local search. It’s important that we share our experience & wisdom with businesses today – technology is moving way to fast for most busy people to keep up with!
Great job Growmap!
Thank you Jeff. I have learned from what you are doing at My Local Lookup and all of your other fine projects. I am looking forward to really using more of your sites to see what other great ideas you’ve introduced.
My readers will be hearing more about how businesses can use My Local Lookup and your other sites to increase their revenue in the near future.
Anyone can check out their free local search – and find out if your business is in it – by using the bright yellow search box in the right column here. Also watch for their commercials on a television station near you.
.-= Internet Strategist @GrowMap´s last blog ..Major Television Stations Feature MyLocalLookup =-.
2400 comments is fantastic for one year! That is something I strive for, so you must be doing something right 🙂
Hi Mark,
Thank you. We do go out of our way to create an interactive community. Derek and I discussed the options for doing that at length. If you would like to see that process it is included in the post Blogging Best Practices: Enabling Your Readers to Subscribe to Comments.
I have to admit that many of those comments are my replies – something I consider one of the key reasons others are willing to join the discussions here. I make it a point to answer all questions and provide additional explanations and information to any who take the time to ask.
.-= Internet Strategist @GrowMap´s last blog ..Success IS a Numbers Game =-.
Nice post congrats on the first post.Keep posting good blogs i like it.
Hello Shenandoah,
While this is obviously not my first post but my first YEAR your comment does not seem to be spam so I’m keeping it. I am working on a post about a really excellent, inexpensive way for businesses like yours to quickly get listings in over fifty local search directories.
I hope you subscribed because you absolutely should take my advice on this. When you can get incoming links from major sites like Google, Yahoo, Bing, and get your site in databases that feed GPS systems in cars and cell phones you don’t want to pass that up. If you do you lose business you would have received!
.-= Internet Strategist @GrowMap´s last blog ..Enhance Your Email Marketing with Social Media =-.
Congratulations and Happy one year Birthday. Your stats are very impressive but it stands to reason because your content and exchange is nothing short of excellence. You should be proud. Nice job.
Thank you Brian. Your comment is one of the finest comments I’ve ever had. I’m glad you dropped by because it reminded me to review your blog at StumbleUpon. As often happens for me there, your StumbleUpon review is being featured.
The way you know StumbleUpon is featuring one of your reviews is a small orange icon with white text that simply says Featured shows up on the edit review page. Unfortunately I have yet to figure out WHERE they are featured and no one I have asked – not even Tamar – knows either.
I wonder if my regular readers have noticed that whenever they comment or Stumble or Tweet something for me I return the favor?
.-= Internet Strategist @GrowMap´s last blog ..Did You See Our Guest Post at Merchant Circle? =-.
Wow, thank you. That was very kind and I will return the favor.
.-= Brian D. Hawkins´s last blog ..News Related AdSense Site – First Month = One Hundred Dollars =-.
Thank you Brian. We all benefit by sharing content, writing about each other’s efforts, and especially by adding reviews on the various blog directories. I expect PostRank to rise in importance, Technorati is still important so far and I am researching and ranking many of the other blog directories. Watch for a post in the near future with my findings.
.-= Internet Strategist @GrowMap´s last blog ..Top How to Make Money Blogging Resources =-.
Happy birthday to you and congratulations on some excellent stats, especially the subscribers which just goes to show how much they truly appreciate your blog.
.-= Sire@ WassupBlog´s last blog ..What Bloggers Do =-.
Hello Sire,
Thank you. If I were more focused on growing instead of helping others it could be more; however, my priority is assisting small businesses including bloggers so I am happy with the results so far.
I see you and Mitch are embroiled in controversy once again. I think I’ll stick to how to grow businesses at least for now. 🙂
.-= Internet Strategist @GrowMap´s last blog ..How to Optimize Your PPC Advertising to Benefit YOU =-.
Contraversy, me? If that’s true it’s all Mitch’s fault.
.-= Sire@ WassupBlog´s last blog ..Why I Don’t Comment On Blogger Blogs =-.
LOL – yes, it is usually Mitch who has the controversial point of view, isn’t it?
.-= Internet Strategist @GrowMap´s last blog ..Save 25% ppcSummit Deadline Extended to Sept 15 =-.
You know it’s funny how there can be two blokes who live on opposite sides of the globe that actually share a lot of the same opinions, but when differences of opinion do occur we respect each others right to them. Too bad the world leaders can’t act in the same fashion.
.-= Sire´s last blog ..Why I Don’t Comment On Blogger Blogs =-.
Congratulations and big hugs! 🙂
Tommy Schmitz
Thank you Tommy and congratulations on your books. When you comment here in the future do include a link to your new WordPress site so we can easily read the latest chapters.
I hope all my readers will add their URLs to their comments. In the name box put YourName@YourKeywords where YourName can be your real name or the UserId you use online and YourKeywords is the best description for your link.
In Tommy’s case that could be the name of his book. For Dr. Pete that could be Usability and for VikkyJain that would be WebDesignNJ. Then put the URL (Web site address) in the Website box. You are welcome to use internal pages as well as your home page.
Notice that in VikkyJain’s comment the link says WebDesignNJ. If done the way I’m suggesting here it would say VikkyJain @ WebDesignNJ and the WebDesignNJ portion would be linked.
.-= Internet Strategist @GrowMap´s last blog ..Did You See Our Guest Post at Merchant Circle? =-.
Congrats on getting such results. You rock.
Thank you VikkyJain,
Good to see you here again. You may find some of my web site evaluation processes particularly interesting. More on that soon.
.-= Internet Strategist @GrowMap´s last blog ..How to Add Your Free Listing at Local Promote =-.
I haven’t been here in a bit, but I like the new look. And congrats on your anniversary; I know there’s bigger and better to come. 🙂
.-= Mitch´s last blog ..Learning More Lessons About Writing =-.
Hi Mitch,
Thank you for stopping in too. We’re continually improving the design and features here and the new professionally designed Logo is the main reason the new look is so obvious and distinctive.
I know so much more I need to get down in posts plus I am working on documenting all the processes any blogger or business needs to increase visitors and conversions. That is a huge job that is taking a large amount of my time.
.-= Internet Strategist @GrowMap´s last blog ..Local Search Directory Taps the Power of Television =-.
Interesting stats, Growmap you have really grown in an year! Congratulations! I have just gone through all your previous post and i must say you have some valuable informations. so of course you will not only smell the birthday cake but even eat it as well and yes party hard! congratulations once again! 🙂
Hello Allan,
Thank you for checking out what I share here. My intention is to make this site a reference so that a business or blog can quickly get the latest advise on any subject related to growing their visitors and conversions.
I bet your site is very busy. Selecting the appropriate hosting company is so important and I see you have a huge selection of even those difficult to locate types.
.-= Internet Strategist @GrowMap´s last blog ..How to Optimize Your PPC Advertising to Benefit YOU =-.
Congratulations and happy birthday! Looking forward to year two.
Hello Dr. Pete,
I am honored to have you drop in. For those who may have missed previous links I highly recommend reading and applying what Dr. Pete has to say about Usability.
.-= Internet Strategist @GrowMap´s last blog ..How to Optimize Your PPC Advertising to Benefit YOU =-.
The most impressive statistic? 1,300 subscribers! I see many sites that claim “x,000 Twitter followers” yet they only have a handful of e-mail or RSS sign-ups. The subscriber count is a better indication of actual READERS, and by my index you have thousands of them!…. Congratulations, GrowMap!
Thank you Matt,
You are one of my most active contributors and I really appreciate it. The key to my subscriber growth is using FriendFeed. My posts and comments are fed there and many of my readers read me either there or in Google Reader although I love it when they click through and make the time to comment.
I’m working on a post about a shortcut to getting your business listed in 47+ local search directories plus a list of blog directories bloggers will want to ensure they are using. You may be interested in both of those.
.-= Internet Strategist @GrowMap´s last blog ..Success IS a Numbers Game =-.
Happy Birthday! and congratulations on such excellent results. Thanks for such support of my blog too, I really appreciate all the help and link love you gave me.
Peter Lee
Hi Peter,
I really need to make time to visit your blog more often. I am certain there are many new posts there that I will be sharing at Twitter, FriendFeed and StumbleUpon. Every serious blogger needs accounts at each of those because of the amount of visitors they can send you.
I will be writing about how to best utilize these sites soon. I am GrowMap everywhere so follow me wherever you see me and I will follow you back.
.-= Internet Strategist @GrowMap´s last blog ..Success IS a Numbers Game =-.
Happy belated birthday! Congrats on your success and look forward to the following your future paths.
Hello Davids,
Thank you. Your congratulations came shortly after I posted and on the very anniversary of the launching of this blog. I’m glad you dropped in because we are active in the wedding space as ExecGifts at Twitter on behalf of Executive Gift Shoppe.
There are many wedding planners following us there who will be very interested in the Wedding Dresses you offer at Bridepower.com.
I was going to suggest that you may wish to use Wedding Dresses as your anchor text in your comments and realized that perhaps you had a reason for choosing to use Davids instead.
For those who don’t know, anchor text is the words that are actually linked. We use a plugin called KeywordLuv that allows you to choose when commenting. If Davids wanted to use Wedding Dresses he could have put Davids@Wedding Dresses and instead of Davids being the link Wedding Dresses would be.
I hope you’ll be a regular visitor and commentator. We are always working on many new shortcuts and strategies for growing businesses.
.-= Internet Strategist @GrowMap´s last blog ..Happy Birthday GrowMap – One Year Old Today =-.
Just say…happy birthday!
.-= RC Helicopter´s last blog ..Gas RC Helicopters For Sale =-.