News | Free money

A Sitemap for Sore Eyes

2009-05-30T05:00:00.000-07:00

Sitemaps have been about for a while. They were originally created a visual guide to your website. As websites became larger and more complex webmasters used them as a way to view the entire structure of a website to find the connections between pages. Think of them as a kind of interactive table of contents and index rolled into one.

In recent years the search engines have been viewing site maps as a good way to index websites and find all the related content. Google led the charge to make this a mainstream web tool when it introduced XML sitemaps. Creating and submitting an XML sitemap to Google is still the best way to get your website completely crawled by Google. It has become a standard SEO best practice.

As with many things on the web, Google, Yahoo, AOL, MSN and Ask all had their own specific way to use and submit sitemaps in the format they dictated. About six months ago a couple of these folks joined forces to create a standardized method of sitemap creation. They formed an organization called Sitemaps.org and agreed on using the XML sitemap format.

Sorry for the history lesson, but this is really good news for small business web site owners because it will greatly simplify the process of creating and submitting your sitemap and in doing so enhance your chances of getting your entire website indexed by all the search engines.

So, in today's article I'm going to tell you how to create and submit your XML sitemap.

What is a sitemap?

According to Sitemaps.org: "Sitemaps are an easy way for webmasters to inform search engines about pages on their sites that are available for crawling. In its simplest form, a Sitemap is an XML file that lists URLs for a site along with additional metadata about each URL (when it was last updated, how often it usually changes, and how important it is, relative to other URLs in the site) so that search engines can more intelligently crawl the site."

Building an XML sitemap

While there are several ways to actually create an XML sitemap I like XML-Sitemaps.com The good news is that if you have a rather small site (under 500 pages) you can simply use their free tool to create an xml sitemap. Over 500 pages and you need to get the $19.95 download.

Getting Your Sitemap found

Once you create your sitemap it's still a good idea to create a free Google Webmaster account so that you can submit your sitemap directly to Google Sitemaps

Robots.txt file

Now here's where the coming together of the search engines gets really nice. Not only will Ask, Google, Yahoo, AOL and MS Live accept the XML format for your sitemap they have also decided to accept an easy, auto-discovery method. In other words you won't have to figure out how to submit to each as they will find your sitemap if you direct them using your robots.txt file. A robots.txt file is a very simple file that resides on your server giving information for the search engines. Many use this file to tell the search engines not to find certain information.

If you already have a robots.txt file, you can simply add the line of code below anywhere to it. If you don't have one, simply create a file in notepad or other text editor, add the code below, save it as robots.txt and upload to the root of your site. (Obviously you need to put the actual URL of your site in here)

Sitemap:http://www.yourwebsite.com/sitemap.xml

Advanced tip - If you use the paid version of xml-sitemap generator you can set up what's known as a cron job (it's a Unix only thing) and have your site crawled on a weekly basis and update your sitemap. This is really great if you blog several times a weeks on your domain as it adds your newest posts. Ask your web host about this one.

10 Minutes to Your Google Sitemap...

2009-05-29T04:58:00.000-07:00

Copyright 2005 Ron Hutton

Google's calling your name...

Hi, Google here. We want to index your website...

Is anyone there?

This article has a free corresponding online video tutorial that shows you how to summons the magic Googlebot to spider and index every page on your website, and it will only take about 10 minutes of your time.

Go here now to watch exactly what to do, step-by-easy-step...

http://www.gothrive.com/google-sitemap-video.htm

What you have access to with the new Google Sitemaps program is truly a gift from the Google gods. They've offering you a tool that you can use to keep your site constantly indexed and updated in the search engine database. With Google Sitemaps, webmasters can now take charge and make sure that their entire site is crawled and indexed.

One important note to make is that the Google Sitemaps program will not necessarily improve the ranking of your site's pages. It only ensures that Google knows what you've got online for them to look at.

Before reading the following statement, promise yourself that you won't stop reading if you see a term that seems a little scary. OK? Promise? Good. Go ahead and keep reading then.

The format specified by Google for "their" sitemap is XML (extensible markup language). Did I loose you yet? No? Good again.

You do not need to understand how to code XML to participate in the Google Sitemap program. There are plenty of free online tools that will create your XML sitemap for you with no XML knowledge required on your part. More on this in a second.

What information is including in this XML sitemap?

1) The URL for every file on your website.

2) A relative priority rank that you can assign telling Google which pages on your site are most important for them to look at.

3) The date last modified for each page.

4) Anticipated change frequency per URL. This again is a variable that you control.

According to Google, your XML sitemap can include up to 50,000 URL's. If your site is a real monster and has in excess of 50,000 URL's, then you'll need to create a hierarchy of sitemaps with one leading to the next. This way you'll be able to lead Google to all of your pages.

The options for generating and maintaining your Google Sitemap range from complex systems that are highly automated to very simple systems using online sitemap generators that require nothing more than clicking a few buttons.

Google now keeps a list of these 'third party suppliers' of generators on their site. Find them here: http://code.google.com/sm_thirdparty.html

The program that's demonstrated in our free video tutorial (http://www.gothrive.com/google-sitemap-video.htm) is found here: http://www.auditmypc.com/free-sitemap-generator.asp

In a nutshell, here are the steps involved with using online generators:

1) Start the program.
2) Enter your site's URL
3) Click the "Start Crawling" button
4) Customize URL priorities and change frequencies
5) Save the site map to your local hard drive
6) Upload your new Google XML sitemap to your website in the root directory (where your home page resides)
7) Validate your new sitemap
(can be done here: http://www.smart-it-consulting.com/internet/google/submit-validate-sitemap/)
8) Submit your XML sitemap to Google.

You can access the pages for the Google Sitemap program here:https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login

8 steps in about 10 minutes. That's all there is to it.

One question that you might ask is whether or not you still need an HTML sitemap, and the answer is "Yes, you still need your conventional sitemap". XML sitemaps are not intended for human visitors. To see what I mean, take a look at the two following sitemaps:

HTML sitemap: http://www.gothrive.com/sitemap.html

XML sitemap: http://www.gothrive.com/sitemap.xml

Which version do you prefer? Your visitors will like the HTML and Google prefers XML.

When you add pages or new content to your site and you want Google to go back to have a fresh look, just log in to your Google Sitemaps control panel, select the sitemap to revisit, and click "Resubmit". It's never been easier to get Google to spider and index a website. Don't miss your opportunity to use this tool to your advantage.

Source from site pro news

How A Sitemap Can Benefit Search Engines and Visitors

2009-05-28T04:55:00.000-07:00

A website’s ranking with the search engines is one of the most important elements of business success. It is important to get your pages indexed so that you can show up in the results of searches done using the search engines.

Indexing is a process by which search engines, such as Google, send their robots to process and categorize the pages on your website. Some search engines might find it difficult to find all of your pages, especially the pages that are deeply buried.

There are some things you can do to help the search engines find all of your pages. These techniques will also help the people who visit your site to find the pages and move through your website with ease. These tips are primarily for Google, because of Google's present dominance over the Internet search industry. Google has the potential to bring more visitors to your site than all of the other popular directories and search engines, such as Yahoo and MSN, put together.

Indexing Depth

The number of visits that Google's robot will make to your site pages is determined by how often your site is updated. If you update your site every day, Google will most likely visit your site everyday. The depth of the indexing done by Google depends on the layering of levels of your site’s tree. Your homepage will be considered a first level page. Any page that is linked to from your homepage will be considered a part of the second level. Any pages that are linked to from these second level pages, but not from the homepage, are considered third level pages.

The depth that Google will travel while indexing your pages will depend on the page ranking of each page. The indexing will follow a pattern. For example, if your homepage has a ranking of at least one then your second level pages will get indexed. If the second level pages do not have a good ranking then your third level pages and any pages at a level beyond that will not be indexed. Google will not index these extended page levels.

Sitemaps

A sitemap is simply a list of your pages in a single page layout. When a visitor goes to your site they can access the sitemap to find any pages that they are interested in viewing. Usually the sitemap is to benefit the people who visit your site and give them a quick and easy way to navigate your site.

A sitemap has a benefit for the search engines as well. This sitemap will let the Google robot see how pages, such as those in the fourth and fifth level, fit into your site. If you link to your sitemap page from your homepage, all of the pages listed in your sitemap will be no farther from your home page than the third level. This will encourage Google to index your entire site.

The New Sitemap

The Google sitemap is a new type of sitemap that you can use on your website. This sitemap works a little bit differently than traditional sitemaps. The Google sitemap is a file that is on your site's server that shows all of the pages on your website and their attributes. This will allow Google to read the file and know about all of the pages on your website. Not only can you list all of the pages on your website, but you can specify how much each page is updated and what the index priorities are for each page.

So How Does the New Sitemap Work

The Google sitemap must be created in XML (Extensible Markup Language). XML is structurally similar to HTML. You may recognize XML if you have used blog feeds or RSS. An example of an entry written for each page in a website would look something like this:

http://www.torontodesignwebsite.com your site URL
2007-05-18
monthly
0.8

Let's look at each tag. The "url" tag specifies you are including new information for a new URL (a page on your site) and you specify this URL by enclosing it between tags. The "lastmod" tag indicates the date the page was most recently updated. the "changefreq" tag indicates how often the page is updated, and the "priority" tag indicates the relative priority for indexing the page.

Some Tools to Use

A Google sitemap is a wonderful way to let Google know about all the pages on your website. One thing that is difficult about the sitemap is that you must edit it in a text editor such as notepad every time you make a change to your site. If you make regular changes, you will find that this is very cumbersome. You can do a search for a free Google sitemap generator to help automate sitemap creation.

While Google does not claim that the use of the Google sitemap will give you a better ranking, it does improve the chances of your whole site being indexed. Google may then determine that your website is larger and therefore more important. As a result, your site should receive an increase in traffic. Whenever you make changes to your website you should remember to update the sitemap too. If you keep both types of sitemaps on your website regularly updated, your site will be better indexed and easier for visitors to navigate.

Source from site pro news..

How to get indexed by Google in ONE hour

2009-05-27T04:46:00.000-07:00

If you’re not familiar with how some people accomplish getting their web sites submitted to Google quickly, you are going to absolutely love this article.

I’ve bet you’ve heard from many people that it can take days, weeks, even months to get indexed by Google. If you have heard that, you’re now thinking, “OK Jamie, you must have had a really stressful day at work today and you’re now hallucinating that this is possible!”.

If I read this blog title a while ago, I’m sure I would be thinking the same thing as you! Ok, let’s move on to how to get indexed by Google within one hour.

The secret is quite simple. Almost every site in today’s Internet world uses the social network sharing buttons. On my blog, http://www.endyourif.com I include it on every article page. I also include it on the main listing pages underneath my article summary.

If you don’t already have one of these on your sites, get one now, just search “Share This” or “Add This” and you will find a ton of web sites that tell you to put a few lines of Javascript code on your web site and it does the rest.

Ok, so now you have this button added to your web site? Perfect, I would suggest going to a page on your web site that you think will be the most valuable to other users and submit it to a couple of those sites listed in the button.

I have personally found excellent success with both Digg and Reddit. I launched a web site about 1 or 2 months ago, submitted two links to Digg. I waited about an hour or so and searched Google with keywords that I felt I targeted well and lo and behold there it was, my page was found and indexed with Google. Not only was it found, it was in the top 10!

Don’t just stop here though. Submitting to the above sites will provide you with some quick traffic. It won’t last long if people don’t like your site. Plus, it won’t cause your other pages to be indexed either. It really is just a start.

The next step is to create an XML sitemap of your content. Once you’ve done this, create an account on the Google Webmaster Tools. You will need to add your domain and verify your site before continuing.

Once you’ve completed this, add your sitemap that you previously created. Within a few minutes (some times longer), Google will validate your sitemap and queue all of your links to be indexed.

This of course is not a guaranteed solution to be indexed any faster. But Google certainly seems to crawl your sitemap on a regular basis and check the links. It also checks how often your site is updated, the more frequently it is updated, the more frequently Google will crawl your content!

If it’s possible, you should try to perform some kind of daily updates to your site. Ideally if you allow users to comment, hopefully there will be several new comments per day and this will cause your data to be considered new.

I hope you’ve found this article useful. Happy Googling! If you would like more tips and techniques, visit my blog athttp://www.endyourif.com

I have been developing web sites for over 10 years and 6 years professional. I recently have decided to begin sharing my knowledge through articles and my blog:
http://www.endyourif.com

i hope this post can help u.....

5 Reasons Why Most Internet Marketers Fail

2009-05-24T05:04:00.000-07:00

When it comes to starting any endeavor, whether it be learning a new hobby or starting an online business, we all have to start at ground zero. We all have to start at the very beginning from the very same place. Granted, we each bring different skills and backgrounds into the mix, but for the most part we are all on equal footing at the starting line.

If this is the case, then we really have to ponder why is it only a choice few go on to succeed, while most people don't. Just what are the reasons why most online marketers fail? This is the core question that has to be answered if you want to fully understand Internet marketing and how it works.

What are the causes or stumbling blocks that hold many marketers and webmasters from reaching their full online potential? If we know these factors, we can learn how to avoid them and even overcome them in our own online marketing. These reasons can be a solid reference point or even a source of inspiration for any online marketer just starting out.

Speaking from the viewpoint of someone who has started from the very beginning with little to no knowledge of computers or even marketing for that matter, I can honestly relate to the beginning marketer. I even had to learn HTML from scratch in order to construct my own webpages. Probably my only advantage, I did have a background in art but designing webpages was completely different from anything I had done previously to starting in online marketíng.

But from my own experiences I have drawn some general conclusions about Internet marketing and why some people succeed while most people fail. So here in my honest opinion, are some of the main reasons why many online marketers fail:

1. Overwhelmed With Information

Perhaps, one of the biggest obstacles I faced when I first started my website - I was bombarded with so much information on how to proceed I didn't have a clue which direction to take or who to believe. Thousands of different info products telling you to do this, not to do that... so much marketing information to absorb that you end up scratching your head and looking like someone auditioning for a zombie movie.

Completely overwhelmed with so much information, many marketers or webmasters enter a state of paralysis where nothing gets done. You go from one course to another or from one method to another, without any real understanding of how to proceed or how to get a detailed blueprint to follow.

Information overflow can effectively crush all that novice enthusiasm and literally kill even the most eager of entrepreneurs. Anyone starting out must be aware of this obvious but insidious pitfall you have to avoid at all costs. One of the best remedies, simply try concentrating on just one or two marketing plans/marketers for all your information. Try to eliminate the clutter by just working on one marketing system. Just have a few key marketing resources you go to for information, not a hundred! And do your homework, only pick marketers who can back up their claims with observable results on the web. One obvious checkmark - just see if those marketers have top rankings for their sites for popular profitable keywords associated with their sites or products.

2. Lack Of Key Marketing Basics

There are some key marketing basics or fundamentals you must learn about marketing online. Internet marketing has some key elements you must get right or you will have a difficult task in succeeding on the web. Just simple factors you must get right or it's game over before you even get started.

Most marketers fail to realize the web is "information driven" and you must supply quality information or content in order to truly succeed. You must provide a valuable service or function to your visitors. You must help solve their problem. You must give them a solid reason to use your site or product. Quality content is and always will be King on the web.

You must also understand much of the web is "keyword driven" and you must construct your webpages to take full advantage of these keywords. You must have at least a rudimentary understanding of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and how you can use it to get top rankings for your keyword phrases.

3. Lack Of Time And Resources

Another major reason why many marketers fail is because they simply can't afford the time to learn and build their online business. Most people just can't stop everything and work full time online because they have bills to pay and families to support. It may take months, probably years, before you can build up a successful online business that gives you a comfortable living. The average person just doesn't have the time or the resources to spend months learning how all this works.

Keep in mind, getting a business or website going is probably the most inexpensive way to start your business. Domains are cheap. Web hosting is cheap. Web design is cheap if you can do it yourself... Compared to starting a business in the "real" world, creating an online business will only cost a faction of the normal expenses connected with starting a business. But the main problem is having the resources to pay your living expenses until your online business is profitable. Many beginning online marketers don't have these resources and the main complaint from these marketers: "I Simply can't afford the time to work at this online stuff."

One solution is to work at your online marketíng in your spare time and gradually build up your business until you can afford to do it full time. It will obviously take longer but you can still get to the same end goal.

4. Lack Of Necessary Skills

Actually, you don't need many skills to succeed online. However, one of the major skills you must have or you must learn is communication. You must learn how to communicate. The web is all about communicating your points to your visitors or viewers so you must acquire good communication skills.

It really helps your marketing if you are a good writer because you can easily get your points across with written text or copy on your site. Writing skills can be learned but many beginning marketers don't fully understand how important their writing skills will be to their success. You must be able to communicate on your site, in your newsletters, with your customers... might sound a bit obvious but you would be surprised at how many marketers lack this simple, yet necessary skill.

But don't fret, because once upon a time, the written word was king online - but not any more. Videos are rapidly taking the place of the printed word so anyone with a camera can now be a success online. Of course, you still need good communication skills even using videos, but many marketers have found this is a much easier way to communicate information about their site or product.

5. Lack Of Persistence

For me, one the most significant reasons most online marketers/webmasters fail, is because of a lack of persistence. They simply give up too soon. They try something for a few weeks, even for a few months and then they conclude this is not working and they give up.

Building a solid online business or viable website takes time, a lot of time. Just because your business is online, doesn't mean everything will fall into place overnight, it takes time to establish a customer base. It takes time to build your business relationships with others in your field.

Sometimes, it may take years before you see some solid returns. It was three years before I saw any significant revenue coming from my online ventures, and another year before I could summon enough courage to do this online marketing full time. If I had given up and not persisted at this web stuff, I would not be writing this article right now.

Building top rankings for your keywords in the search engines (especially Google) can take months, even years before you see any results. The real key is to be persistent and keep at it, day after day, until you get those top rankings. You simply must be persistent or you will fail.

In conclusion, having said all that, you must also realize there are plenty of exceptions to all of the above. There have been countless success stories on the web where someone has come up with a novel idea or product and become successful overnight. The web can provide immediate success for some, but for most of us, it will take some time and hard effort on our part to build a successful online business. Just try to avoid many of the pitfalls or reasons listed above and you will have a better chance of placing yourself in the success column.

ok that's it for now next time i will continue....

Multiply Your Marketing Like a Virus

2009-05-23T04:48:00.000-07:00

hi, welcome again to my blog, let's get start ok. In today's Internet, conversations are cropping up all over the place. People are talking. They are talking about products. They are talking about businesses. And they are certainly talking about their experiences.

When you look at how blogs, forums and social networking sites have exploded in the last few years, you can see how powerful word-of-mouth is. But the question is, is it all really important? Can it really help your business?

Yes.

And I'm not talking about traffic. And you don't need to be controversial, either. I'm talking creating systems to leverage, manage and profit from the "buzz."

Word-of-mouth is one of the most powerful lead and business generation processes there is. Online, some people call it "word-of-mouse." But we know it more as viral marketing.

Viral marketing is the process of implementing means or tools through which the knowledge of your existence self- propagates. Like a virus, your visibility spreads throughout a network of people who refer you to each other.

Notwithstanding the power of backlinking, traffic and SEO, viral marketing is key for a number of reasons. Success in the offline world is "location, location, location." The Internet is no different. Your success depends highly on the number of locations you appear online - places on which your site, link, company or product name exist.

In essence, to expand your reach, you need to be in as many places as possible, talked about by as many people as possible and be in front of as many eyeballs as possible.

With viral marketing, there are three ways of doing it:

Create content
Create applications
Create systems

The first is self-explanatory. Your content may be controversial or buzzworthy. It may create raging fans - or enraged enemies.

The second is simple: you create an application — whether it's a video, audio, file, software, document, etc - that people can pass around, and thus proliferates the knowledge of your existence on the web through other people's efforts.

I might write about these two at a later time. But for now, the one on which I want to focus is the third: creating a system.

Before I give you some examples, let me explain why word-of- mouth works wonders. Those who get to know you or to know about you through a third party grant you a higher level of confidence, credibility and loyalty. According to Dr. Robert Cialdini in his amazíng book, "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion," this is social proof in action.

Remember a dictum a mentor of mine once told me, which is: "Implication is far more powerful than specification." In other words, if you tell people you're the best, that you're the leader in your field, or that your product is the best solution to their needs, your self-serving promotional bias makes it all suspect.
However, if someone other than you - whether it's on a blog, in an email, on a social networking site or in person - says to another that you are indeed the best or that you do have the best solution to their problems, how much more believable will that person's statement be? How much more credible and trustworthy?

The answer is "definitely more."

Accordingly, word-of-mouth is not only important because it creates an awareness of your business (let alone traffic), but also it is important to the degree to which third party marketing indirectly communicates greater credibility, superiority and value of the products or services you provide.

In his book "The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding," Al Ries stresses the importance of leadership and how that leadership is communicated.

According to Ries, people don't buy the best - they only think they do. They usually buy the leader (or what they perceive as being the best). And that perception is often molded by what they are told and by what others do, not by what is fact or by what is being advertised.

Coke, for example, outsells Pepsi. But according to Ries, taste tests reveal that Pepsi is the better tasting brand. So, why does Coke still beat Pepsi in sales? It is not because it is the leader in the marketplace or promoted itself as such but because it is known as the leader. And the reason it is known as the leader is because Coke was the first cola "in the mind" of the marketplace.

It is the one most talked about, even to this day. When a person is introduced to cola for the first time, they are often told to try Coke. Restaurant patrons still ask for "coke," even when Pepsi is the only cola served. Why is that? While other colas are bombarding them with marketing messages, people have heard of Coke first, and most likely from other people.

Consequently, if people hear about you from other people, and not some advertisement or pitch, this social proof will create not only a certain buzzworthiness about you but also an almost instant trustworthiness.

How do you do that? The most significant method is to be the first. If your business or website is unique, focuses on a niche or is the first in some category, the knowledge of your existence will spread quite naturally, almost like wildfire. It becomes viral in and of itself, in other words.

Now, I'm not saying you need to be new. I'm only saying you need to be unique. Or better yet, you need to be the first. Whether it's catering an existing product to a new niche, or adding a new twist to an existing product, you become the first.

I said it before: don't be the best, be the first. But more important, as Ries pointed out, "Don't be the first in the marketplace, be the first in the MIND of the marketplace."

That said, there are ways to use systems that will leverage the spreading of that message, on the other hand, which helps to multiply your marketing punch. Such systems both simulate and stimulate word-of-mouth advertising.

Networking systems, for example, include strategic marketing alliances, joint ventures, and affiliate programs. And unlike the more traditional traffic generators such as ads and search engines, these specific tools are much more effective since they are used by third parties and not by the original advertiser.

i hope this post can help you. don't forget come again tom see my blog.

source from site pro news.

One-Way Link Building: How To Explode Your Online Business With One-Way Link Building Strategies

2009-05-22T07:36:00.000-07:00

If you want a proven way to get high rankings on the search engines and ultimately succeed online, then you need to know how to apply one-way link building to your marketing ventures.

Why is one-way link building an effective marketing strategy?

Because it is the only way for the major search engines (Google, Yahoo and MSN) to recognize your webpages.

You need to get as many one-way backlinks to your website, so that search engines will rank your pages higher when browsers type in your targeted keywords.

You could exchange links with other sites, but one-way links are given more weight by the search engines than reciprocal links.

One-Way Link Building Through Article Marketing

Article marketing is an ideal way to get one-way links that are proven to get lots of free organic traffic.

One-way link building through article marketing could produce effective results. Not overnight of course; but in time, you can slowly (but surely) take advantage of one way link building and article marketing to make good money online – on autopilot! How do you do that?

Write informative articles and include an attention-grabbing resource box (also called author bio) in the article. The resource box is where you will put the anchored text of your link. The anchored text should contain your targeted keyword, so that your link gets a “vote” for that keyword, aside from getting a “vote” from the article directory site too.

This is not the only merit of article marketing. It could also elevate your reputation into an expert of your niche.

Thus, before you embark on submitting articles in article directories, you may first need to research your keywords and niche extensively. Look at what issues your audience face and find solution to those problems. Then, create keyword-optimized articles to help them solve that problem. As a result, people will regard you as a specialist in your field.

Article marketing is an effective promotional campaign to get your sites known and be an authority on your chosen niche.

Other Powerful Methods Of One-Way Link Building

1) Buying Links

Aside from writing and submitting articles, some internet marketer resort to buying links from other sites, preferably those with high page rank. However, if you do not have the money to buy those backlinks, don’t worry. There are free methods you can use (see below).

2) Forum Postings

A free and effective way to generate one way links, and also improve your chances of inducing trust and respect in your niche, is by posting at forums relevant to your niche.

Find the problems your target market faces and give them the solution to those problems. You may use the link to your website as a signature, but make sure they allow sig files and that you have made some valuable contributions. Give first, and the money will follow.

3) Blogging

Blogs can likewise help you in your one-way link building pursuits. If you’re passionate about your niche, you can easily write your own comments, opinions, or viewpoints on various topics related to it. Post updates in your blog regularly and include links to your business websites.

4) Content-Sharing Sites

You may also post your content (with your one-way backlinks) on social marketing or content-sharing sites. Some reliable ones include:

Squidoo.com
Hubpages.com
Wetpaint.com
Quizilla.com
Qassia.com

5) Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is a powerful tool in your one-way link building arsenal, but you have to be very careful. Many of them prohibit any marketing activities, so you need to be very subtle and “fly under the radar.” You could accomplish this by posting around 5 times more non-self-serving sites than your own sites.

You could also gain their trust by joining groups, writing comments on other people’s bookmarks, and be a helpful contributor to their community.

Some of the more famous bookmarking sites include:

Digg.com
Stumpleupon.com
Del.icio.us
Technorati.com
Reddit.com
Fark.com
Propeller.com
Kaboodle.com
Mixx.com
Furl.net

6) Video Sharing Sites

Video sharing sites can also provide valuable one-way backlinks. When you submit your videos to video sites such as youtube.com or dailymotion.com, you could put a hyperlink to your site in the video description.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

While one-way links help your sites rank higher on the search engines, you could also get top rankings by optimizing your webpages with your keywords.

You can do this by strategically putting your keywords in the title tag of your site, in the headings (H1, H2, etc.), in the alt tags of images, meta tags, and of course, in the content of your site (especially effective if you put the keywords in the beginning of your content). Selecting a domain containing the keywords would also help.

Keywords help web spiders to crawl into your webpages, and this will help you rank well in the search engines.

Aside from one-way link building and SEO, don’t forget that your main purpose is to help your target market solve their problems. So positioning yourself as an expert and having a truly quality product, combined with the right link building and marketing strategies, could skyrocket your profits to new heights.

Discover a breakthrough http://www.memberspeed.com/Link_Tracking_Management/Software.html]link tracking software to get immediate stats on how well your links are performing, and how responsive members and visitors are to your offers, at http://www.memberspeed.com/Link_Tracking_Management/Software.html. This software is part of the world's leading content and client driven e-commerce solution.

Tips Successful Social Bookmarking

2009-05-21T07:44:00.000-07:00

Have you ever found a site so helpful or with a beautiful design or great content that you wanted to tell others about? You add it to your favorites so that you can remember where it is, but how do you go about publicly sharing your great find or even your own masterpiece? Social bookmarking is how.

In the not so distant past, I recall reading articles or blogs on the web where upon reaching the end, the author would invite the reader to “del.icio.us this” or “Furl it”, if they liked the article.
It took me awhile but I finally just had to find out what was so “del.icio.us” that I might want to “Furl”.

Furl and del.icio.us are just two of the websites dedicated to allowing a user to share their personal library of favorites with the World Wide Web.

It’s like announcing to the WWW that you think XYZ.com or 123blog site is interesting as well as yoursite.com so hey everyone take a look and see if you agree! I have also seen Social Bookmark sites called “public link management applications”.

You don’t just slap the links on the page and leave though. The success of these sites depends upon real people recommending real parts of the web for other users to enjoy. Appropriately, when sharing your favorite links, you are also asked to “tag” the URL. In others words list keywords that a person would search for to find a specified article, blog or website. Writing a short description is also a feature of some of the bookmarking sites.

On the internet, you can usually snare a bonus or two. Social Bookmarking is no different. Sharing your favorites and your own website can have some huge rewards. If you have the Google toolbar installed, surf on over to www.connotea.org, www.digg.com, http://del.icio.us, and www.furl.net. If you don’t have the toolbar, I’ll just tell you that the page ranks of the aforementioned websites are PR5, PR5, PR7, and PR8. The bonus is that when you list your own website on these sites, you have high page ranked websites pointing to yours. In other words, one way inbound links from PR 5, 6, 7 and 8 websites. The best part is that they are totally free!

I would like to share my experience with Social Bookmarking. Please keep in mind that I have not spent any money on advertising.

One way inbound quality links, also known as backlinks are the number one way to get your site ranked higher by the search engines, especially the Big Three. No not GM, Ford and Chrysler. I’m talking about Google, Yahoo and MSN. Yahoo and MSN will recognize more links than Google will though. Check it out. Go to each of those three and type link:http://www.yoursite.com into their search boxes. That will tell you in their view, how many sites are linking to yours. Three weeks ago, I did this with vondonia.com, I found 2 links according to Google, 18 links according to MSN and 44 links according to Yahoo. A more recent check revealed 0 for Google, 14 for MSN but a whopping 54 for Yahoo. For Google I would attribute the loss of the two inbound links to the somewhat recent algorithm change (Big Daddy). The two links that were previously recognized by Google were my own pages on my website.

I can tell you though, that vondonia’s Alexa.com ranking has been steady and positive. If you don’t have the Alexa toolbar, you should also download that to help keep track of your traffic rankings. I have seen huge authority sites with PR zero from Google but ranked in the top two thousand in Alexa.

Here is what has happened to Vondonia.com in an experiment with Social Bookmarking. Any additional promotional actions taken are listed.

04/10/06 - Commence statistics monitoring Google-PR3, Alexa 1,042256
04/17/06 - Alexa 706,994. Registered vondonia with two social bookmark sites in previous week.
04/20/06 - Alexa 648,405
05/04/06 - Alexa 417,985. Registered with two more SBM’s.
05/15/06 - Alexa 348,878
05/18/06 - Alexa 331,693. Had written an article and distributed it to a handful of article sites.
05/22/06 - Alexa 312,069
05/29/06 - Alexa 304,050. I noticed that someone else had SBM’ed my site in Connotea.org
06/02/06 - Alexa 298,091
06/05/06 - Alexa 298,971. Wrong way!! I believe it was lack of promotion, posting, bookmarking, etc....
06/08/06 - Alexa 292,737. Added RSS feed from site-reference.com to site and registered article with del.icio.us.
06/12/06 - Alexa 256,031
06/19/06 - Alexa 254,885 and Google PR is still PR3
As you can see, social bookmarking helped site rank with Alexa which also helped my website appear higher in searches and according to Alexa resulted in more visitors.

Here are a couple of webmasters and their websites who are sharing programs to make your social bookmarking experience easier. They have developed software so that you can add one link to your site, article or blog and your visitors can submit it to a huge choice of social bookmarking sites. This will also serve as an extensive list of social bookmark sites for you to sign up with and announce your favorites.

http://www.toprankresults.com/tools/social-bookmark.php

http://clsc.net/tools/bookmark-links.php

http://www.solutionwatch.com/175/sw-collection-social-bookmarking-galore/ is a site that not only lists a few SBM sites but some descriptions as well. Notice that there are different types of bookmarking sites for various types of sites or pages. My experiment hints that if others bookmark your site, it might help a site count as an inbound link.

Best of luck with your Social Bookmarking!

The queenofvondonia is the webmaster of www.vondonia.com and www.lawyeranddetective.com and she is not an internet guru. Not yet anyway =)

3 Websites That Will Drive More Traffic To Your Internet Business Blog

2009-05-20T07:37:00.000-07:00

There are as many ways as there are ideas to get visitors to come to your blog. In this article we'll focus on social bookmarking and news websites. Let's look at 3 and see how they work.

OnlyWire.com

By definition OnlyWire is a social bookmarking service that allows you to submit your articles or blog posts to many social bookmarking websites at once. Social bookmarking allows internet users to classify pages they would like to bookmark with tags instead of keeping them in a bookmark folder on their computer. These bookmarks can then be shared by all online users of the social bookmarking website. The theory behind social bookmarking websites is that if you find something interesting or useful on the web then the odds are high that someone else using the bookmarking website will find it interesting as well.

Social bookmarking websites are very popular with the major search engines, so if your blog posts can be found on these social bookmarking sites they will be noticed by the search engines as well. Additionally, as people bookmark resources that they find useful, resources that are of more use are bookmarked by more users. Thus, such a system will "rank" a resource based on its perceived utility. This is arguably a more useful way to get information than other systems which rank resources based on the number of external links pointing to it.

When you create an account with OnlyWire you'll be initially asked to sign up for all of the bookmarking sites that OnlyWire will submit your blog posts to. This initial effort will allow OnlyWire to bookmark you blogs on 10 or more social bookmarking sites all from a button installed on your browser's tool bar. Once you set up your account and are ready to submit a post you'll simply need to enter the title of the post, a short description, the main keywords that describe your post(tags), and the category that it fits. Over time you will find more and more of your posts ranking in the search engines.

Stumbleupon.com

StumbleUpon works on the same premise as OnlyWire and is also assigned a button on your browsers tool bar for when you are ready to submit your content. The difference with OnlyWire is that there is also a community component so you can add friends to your account and let them see what you've been bookmarking and vice versa. You can form networks of people with similar bookmarking interest, and vote on sites that have been bookmarked.

Digg.com

Submitting your blog posts to Digg.com is a great and fast way for quality traffic. Digg was create for people to share content from anywhere on the web. You can create an account to submit your posts which are then read and rated by it's users. By submitting informative and helpful items you can create popularity and be promoted to the front page. This can create a stream of traffic that lasts a long time and potentially cause your blog to be seen my millions of users. Another advantage of Digg is that all information is equal when it is submitted and only becomes ranked higher by the people who vote for it. If you have a way of tracking the traffic to your blog you will notice visitors from Digg after every submission from people across the globe.

As you can see, there are many ways to get free traffic to your internet business blog. These methods don't take much time at all and can have a long lasting effect on your blog traffic. Social bookmarking websites are also significant to the search engines which is where most websites and blog traffic comes from. Becoming consistent at using these sites every time you make a new post is the technique will work to get some good traffic to your internet business blog.

Get more Information On How To Build Your Own Internet Home Business. For Internet Business Opportunities To Make Money Online, Visit: http://www.MyAffiliateStarter.com

88% of Marketers Now Using Social Media

2009-05-19T07:31:00.000-07:00

It’s not just hype anymore - marketers are migrating in greater numbers to social media venues although 72% have only been at it for a few months or less. Currently, Twitter is the favorite social media site for marketers but blogs, Facebook and Linkedin are running a close second.

64% of marketers use social media for five or more hours per week and 39% for 10 or more hours. The majority of marketers using social media fall in the 20 - 39 age range.

Stats were compiled in a social media study done by Michael Stelzner for the Social Media Success Summit 2009. For a full copy of the study, visit: http://www.whitepapersource.com/socialmediamarketing/report/

Unusual Things May Influence Ranking

2009-05-18T07:22:00.000-07:00

You may not realize the impact the following items have on your search engine ranking but they are worth considering when developing a plan for your website. While Google provides a whole host of great tools, their motivation may be more selfish than you believe. Google uses the information they gather in these tools to make determinations about websites. The information they gather may impact the ranking of your website in organic searches for important keyword phrases.

1. Low Traffic

Google collects a vast amount of information using the Google Toolbar, Analytics, Google Search and now Google Chrome. Google can track click-throughs, and the amount of time a visitor remains on a website. If the website is not sticky, meaning that visitors do not stay on the web site for any length of time, or does not attract visitors Google may view the website as being insignificant or less important than a competing website that attracts similar website visitors.

2. Low Value Links

The proverb "you are who you hang with" can be attributed to search engine linking. If you consistently link to what Google perceives as low-quality websites, your website may be perceived to be of the same ilk, and Google may devalue your website based on the linking scheme you use.

3. Incoming Links not Trusted

A website that has a large number of incoming links from websites that are not considered trusted sources by Google, could impact your search ranking. Incoming links have long been known to be a component in organic search ranking, it was previously believed the more links the better. What may now be true is that web sites may be penalized for links from untrusted sources.

4. Unreliable Hosting

If Google is frequently unable to access your website when they attempt to spider it, they will perceive that the website is unreliable and may devalue its importance in their algorithm.

5. Spam Techniques

Using techniques that are widely known to be considered "black hat" or "spammy" like keyword stuffing, or cloaking pages may cause your website to be penalized by Google as well as other search engines.

6. Duplicate Titles

Avoid using duplicate titles and meta tags on all web pages within your website. Google prefers unique titles and descriptions on all pages within a website.

7. Unnatural Links

The links coming into your website should vary. If you have an unnatural linking structure where the same term is always used to link to your website, it will appear to Google that you have attempted to "game" the system and as a result your site could find itself penalized.

It is safe to assume that Google in its infinite wisdom evaluates the historical performance of a website and considers the information they collect when assessing the importance of any website.

Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com software for creating, editing, publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. In addition Sharon manages marketing for RecordForAll http://www.recordforall.com audio recording and editing software.

source from www.site-reference.com

Using Social Media to Boost Search Engine Results

2009-05-17T07:18:00.000-07:00

Most of us are well aware that the search engines frequently change their algorithms to improve search results for users (and foil spammers), which can make it challenging for small businesses just to keep up. But as web technology continues to evolve, it also creates new opportunities for small businesses to improve their SEO strategies and boost their rankings as well. Social media (sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Technorati, Digg, etc.) provide an excellent opportunity for small businesses to not only promote their products and services online, but also to gain significant ground in the search engine results.

One of the most critical components to getting top search engine rankings is the number of inbound links and link popularity a web site is able to build. Although there are several existing link building strategies available to small businesses (e.g., press releases, directory submissions, article syndication, etc.), social media can help create additional high-value, on-target inbound links that are essential to achieving top placements in the search engines.

For example, each time you use Twitter to publish a link to new content on your web site, that link gets “planted” on the Twitter page of each person following you, and has the potential to spread even further as your followers share that information with their own network of contacts.

Integrated Social Marketing (ISM)TM
If you have properly integrated your social networking profiles together, that same Twitter “tweet” could then be fed via RSS to your Facebook business profile, your corporate blog, your LinkedIn account, and any number of other social sites that you have set up for your business. It’s not a far stretch to imagine the link you broadcast on Twitter could reach dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of other places on the web, all pointing back to your web site! By integrating your social networking profiles with each other, with your web site, and with your existing marketing initiatives, you can easily make one single marketing action (such as a tweet) show up in multiple places online, each containing a new, relevant inbound link to your site.

Quantity AND Quality
In addition to the sheer number of inbound links that are created through social marketing, the value of the links that are created is another important criterion that search engines consider. To be valued by the search engines, inbound links must be from relevant, “quality” web sites, and search engines today give social sites like Facebook and Twitter great value. These sites are highly visible to the search engines, and are constantly taking updates from users. Links tend to be shared according to subject matter, which means the search engines will see them as being relevant and on-target. All of these factors combine to create high-quality inbound links in the eyes of the search engines.

Online Visibility and Branding
Creating visibility for your business and your “brand” is really key when using social media for building links. The power of social media is realized when other users see your links or content, then share that information with their own network of contacts. Simply adding a bunch of links to your social profiles is not enough; you need to have a strong reputation and a brand that users trust so they will feel comfortable sharing your content with others. Brand recognition typically leads to natural link building anyway, which means your inbound links will end up coming from bloggers, colleagues, customers, and other people who are exposed to your links and find them useful enough to share with their own contacts.

The Proof is in the Rankings
A recent example from Website Magazine explained somewhat surprising results when they searched for their publication’s name in Google. As expected, their web site came up as the number one listing on the results page. But what was not expected was the number three listing on the results page was the magazine’s Twitter page. They then performed a number of Google searches for the terms “Chicago Tribune,” “Chicago Public Golf,” and “Daily Career Tips,” all with similar results in Google - the Twitter page for each of these terms came up near the top of the search engine results every time.

The conclusion was that given these results, Google must be giving serious weight to Twitter content, and I happen to agree. The search engines of course keep their ranking algorithms top-secret, so there’s no way to know how much weight (if any) is really given to Twitter or other social media sites. But results like those in the example above are hard to ignore!

A Great Opportunity
Social media is here to stay, and small businesses are beginning to use it to effectively promote their businesses, reach their customers, find new leads, keep customer mindshare, and instantly communicate with customers. But maybe one of the biggest benefits of adding social media to your marketing mix is the creation of high-value, on-target inbound links that can help improve visibility in the search engines and boost your business to the top of the search engine rankings.

How to Get Your Web Site Listed at the Top of Google

2009-05-12T02:12:00.000-07:00

The biggest challenge every single website owner has (including me) is getting traffic to his/her web site. And bar none the best traffic you can obtain is Organic Search Engine traffic.

So what is Organic Search Engine traffic?

Simply put, when someone is searching for a product or service they type their query into the search engine (google, yahoo, MSN etc.) and then the results of that search are displayed. And you want your web site to come up in that search query.

You probably already know that the majority of people will not go past the first page of the search engine results and even less people will go past the top 30 results. Therefore, your challenge is getting your website listed on the first page of the search engines for the keywords relating to your site.

Now there are a ton of people that will tell you there is some mystical voodoo secret mojo to SEO (Search Engine Optimization). And if you’re not familiar with the term SEO. Simply put SEO is where you build your web site in such a way that the search engines like it and the result is getting better rankings on the search engines.

Well I’m here to tell you that it is not as mystical as everyone would lead you to believe. Just like anything, advertising, google ad words, article marketing it takes constant work to achieve the results you want and in this case, that would be to maintain a top search engine ranking.

I will admit there are many things you can do optimize your web site but I am going to touch on the basics. I have been doing this for some time now. I was taught from some of the best people in the business, so I am passing onto you what was taught to me.

What I am going to share with you is for google. Since it’s the big guy on the block that’s whom I optimize my sites for. There is a lot of info I want to share with you so I have broken this article into 2 parts.

First, just as important as learning What To Do. Is learning What Not To Do.

These are known as black hat techniques. Just stay away from them, if your caught your website will be penalized or even worse banned completely from google. Then you have to start all over and that’s just not worth it.

If you want even more information of the Do’s and Don’ts by Google, just type into Google:

Google Webmaster Guidelines

Ok here are the no, no’s of SEO.

1) Door Way Pages. A doorway page has been designed just for the search engines and not for human beings and is redirected to the goal page. The goal page is the page you ultimately want people to see. So what the webmaster does is makes minor changes to the page and resubmits it to the search engine over and over again.

So when someone finds that page he/she is redirected to the real page and this is usually done with a fast meta refresh command. Google no longer accepts pages using fast Meta refresh. Google see’s these page(s) as duplicates and exclude them from their listings.

Don’t confuse a doorway page with a landing page. Landing pages are ok as they provide a lot of information, have relevant links pointing to them and can be seen by both humans and the search engine spiders.

2) Hidden Text And Links. As the term suggests keywords and keyword phrases are hidden on the page. Usually this is done by having the text the same color as the page color.

Not only Google but the other search engines have the ability to recognize that white text is being displayed on a white background or black text on a black background and so on.

If you want to see if your webmaster has used hidden text, start by looking for large blank areas at the top, bottom or sides of your web page. Now simple scroll your cursor over the area any hidden text will appear. Or you can look at the source code.

You can also hide Hidden Text in your “ALT” tag. The “ALT” tag text will appear when you place your cursor over the image. It will also display the text if your image does not display.

If a few words or even a sentence appears that’s ok. If an entire paragraph appears or a lot of words that don’t read as a sentence appear, that’s bad. Your web master has tried to stuff too many keywords inside the image’s ALT tag. Get rid of them.

It is best to use 4 or 5 words or a sentence of 4 or 5 words long in your “ALT” tag.

3) Cloaking. This is where the content presented to the search engine spider is different to what is presented to the browser (you). By doing this a page that other wise would not be displayed is displayed.

So what happens is the information being delivered is based on the content on the IP addresses or the User-Agent HTTP header of the user requesting the page. When a user is identified as a search engine spider, a server-side script delivers a different version of the web page, one that contains content not present on the visible page.

4) Link Farms. I’m sure you’ve heard of the term link farm. All a link farm is, is a system where all the members are linked to each other via a common set of link pages. The result is that all members have a links page with the other members’ web addresses on them.

Many of these link programs have several hundred or even thousands of members, so by joining you have almost instant access to hundreds of other web sites that point links to your site. This can lead to your site looking very “popular”.

The big problem with this is that you are artificially boosting the popularity of your site. You see when a spider from a search engine (Google) comes to your site it checks out your links. If it sees you have a lot of inbound links you can achieve a higher ranking because the more inbound links you have the better. However, it also checks out the quality and relativity of those links to your site.

So if you have a site about “dog training” and most of your links have nothing to do with dog training you will not receive a better ranking. In fact anyone using this type of linking will be penalized. Either your site will get dropped down in the search engines listing or you will be banned all together.

5) Duplicate Content. The search engines only want to index original content. They don’t want to index the same content 1000 times. If duplicate content/site is detected only one will be indexed. The rest will end up as supplemental context and won’t even rank.

6) Keyword Stuffing. Yes you need to have your keywords on your site and in your meta tags, but there is a delicate balance. Sure, you want to rank for a specific keyword and the more times you use it on the page, the more likely you’ll rank for it. Just don’t go crazy.

I have about 25 keywords in my meta tags and all of these keywords are used in the content of my site. But they are used only when the content calls for it.

Keep your writing natural and use the keywords as you feel suitable. Using them too many times will make your site look spammy, which doesn’t sit well with either your human visitors or the spiders that crawl your site. Might not get you banned but you certainly won’t get a favorable ranking either.

Here’s an update many search engines Google for one, do not use Meta Tags as part of their ranking system any more. However, some still do so that’s why I mentioned it.

7) Duplicate Sites. This is when you clone your site under a bunch of different domain names with the same content and then you have the pages linked together so the can get a better ranking and get the top spots for your keywords. This is a really bad idea, and sure way to get banned. Short and sweet, never do this.

ok. that's all. hope this will help you. thanks

Let People Search For You and Find Your Blog

2009-05-11T01:54:00.000-07:00

Having a famous blog does not always mean that your name is equally famous too. Considering Google and Yahoo as the current leaders in search engine technology, if you search your blog‟s name and your own name in these search engines, your blog may not necessarily be displayed in the top 10 results in both the cases. Why Not? For you and for those who know, you are the author of your blog, your name may be seen as an important keyword for your blog. But for search engines and other millions of users, your name may or may not be considered as a keyword for your blog. What has to be done? So to tell everybody that you are the owner of your blog, make these changes/additions in your blog:

Use your name as the “author name” in your blog in the correct format (e.g. John Smith instead of J.Smith), which will be displayed below all your posts, as “Posted by John Smith on 5th October”. By this method you will increase the density of your name in the blog, and visitors will start recognizing you as the author of the blog.
While commenting too, make sure that your name is being shown as the commentator‟s name, which is linked to your blog. Again this will increase the density of your name, and visitors (especially those who are active and frequently comment on your blog) will recognize and even use your name in their comments while addressing/conversing with you.
Link your name with your blog, from different web pages (do-follow blogs) and forums.

And more importantly tell the search engines that you are the author of your blog:

The above methods are applicable in this section too.
While adding the meta-tags to your blog, make sure your name is included in both meta-keywords and meta-description.
Write an About US page, with a brief description about you, a picture of yourself and if possible a video too.

An important strategy you MUST NOT miss in the 3rd point is the title of your “About US” page. Although in most of the blogs, including some professional blogs, you will see the title as “About Us - Blog Title”, but this is a big mistake according to search engine optimization techniques (if you want to connect the author with the blog). So the best title for your blog‟s „about us‟ page must include your name in it, for e.g. “John Smith Author At - Blog Title” This technique ensures a better connection between you and your blog, as words in titles are given maximum attention by Search Engines. Depending on the popularity of your blog, your “About Us” page will reach the top 10 results within a week or two, with your name as the keyword.

So the best title for your blog‟s „about us‟ page must include your name in it, for e.g. “John Smith Author At – Blog Title” This technique ensures a better connection between you and your blog, as words in titles are given maximum attention by Search Engines. Depending on the popularity of your blog, your „About Us‟ page will reach the top 10 results within a week or two, with your name as the keyword.

Get in to the Image Results too: This is not a big deal once you have optimized the title. Simply in the same web page, put your own image. But make sure to include your name both in the „alt tag‟ and in the image file name. Example: The blog administered by V Divya Sai – BloggerStop.Net is being displayed at the First position in both Google and Yahoo searches for the key words “V Divya Sai”, and that's the admin name.

ok that's all for now, i hope this can help you...

How to Boost Your Search Engine Ranking For Free

2009-05-10T01:34:00.000-07:00

Hai guy's i will share tip's How to boost your search engine rangking for free...

so stay tune in this blog ok. here we go....

so your website is up and running and the investment in time and money you’ve put into your PPC campaign is now paying off.

With the website tracking you have implemented, you have been able to fine-tune your campaign so that you now have a fairly good idea about who you’re marketing to, what they’re searching for and the highest converting and traffic keywords. You have also been able to slowly reduce your CPC (cost per click) down to a more reasonable level.

But like all good businesses, you are constantly looking for ways to improve on your ROI which in the world of internet marketing means higher click rates. You should also be fully aware that you need to know how to monetize the traffic you are generating from your website. Traffic means nothing if you’re not doing anything with it.

There are a multitude of free ways to improve your search engine ranking so that you’re on the first page (and hopefully first position) on your relevant keyword search results.

In this article I’m going to go through the main ways in which you can do this. The most common term used for this is Search Engine Optimisation or SEO.

A search engine’s primary purpose is to serve the user the closest match and most relevant information for any given keyword search. Search engines reward websites that have good quality, relevant information with high search rankings.

One of the ways that a search engine ranks a website is by the number of unique links the website has from other websites. From the search engine point of view, this is an indication that the website must have something of value to other websites.

There are some important key things you must always understand to have an effective SE marketing strategy.

1. Provide valuable, relevant content.

Don’t just fill your site with non-relevant garbage. All articles on your website should be relevant and consistent to what your website is about. Try to avoid using free article to pad out your website, as people will soon find out that the information is non-relevant and won’t bother visiting.

People need to be interested in the articles or else they won’t link to your website and you won’t build your rankings. This takes time…as I keep reiterating in my articles…”Rome wasn’t built in day.” Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with using free articles, but the least you can do is filter out any non-relevant stuff.

2. Try to add content to your website on a regular basis.

Don’t expect to be able to add 1000 articles to your website in one go and expect a 1st position ranking in Google overnight. To get a high ranking using these free techniques takes time. Try to think of your internet business as an organic thing like an oak seed. It might take a while before you see any results, but given a bit of time and attention, it will grow into something massive and long lasting.

Weblogging (or blogging) is probably the easiest way to add content regularly.

Specifically designed websites called weblogs or blogs allow for easy and regular posting of articles. Of the many blogging sites on the internet today, one of the most popular can be found at www.wordpress.com. In fact, this blog is being hosted by them.

When writing your articles, make sure the content is relevant to your website and make sure it will interest whoever is reading it. Make sure that the article has links back to your other websites, be they your personal website or your lead capture pages, so that you are encouraging people to click them and so build up your authority status and keep the search engines happy.

Remember, search engines sole purpose is to provide people with the best quality and most relevant information possible. If you are doing that, they will reward you with a higher search engine ranking.

3. Get your articles published by as many other websites as possible.

It is important to throw your net wide and get a large variety of different websites linking back to your websites. Use syndication sites, reprint rights, press releases and article distribution sites to get your articles published by other websites, so that you can steadily build up your search ranking.

How do you do this? In actual fact, this blog is a form of syndication. A popular method is to use RSS, which allows subscribers to be instantly notified of any new updates. You can also publish articles using article submission sites like www.ezinearticles.com or submityourarticle.com.

So how often should I publish an article or blog?

Well it’s really up to you, what your website is and what sort of ranking you want. Approximately 1-8 articles a month is optimal, but never more than this. Publishers soon get tired of numerous articles from the same author. The key is consistency. Submit an article a few times a month, every month, and you should see results in just a few months.

Because blogs and articles are a simple and effective way to get content out onto the internet, they can be misused and abused by people flooding blog sites with complete rubbish using automated scripts in an attempt to boost their search engine rankings. People want content that is interesting and relevant and will soon get bored and annoyed with sites that have obviously gone for the quick and dirty approach to providing relevant content.

I hope this tips can help you to make your blog get the highest rank.... see you in the next post

Generating Online Website Traffic

2009-05-06T11:52:00.000-07:00

The Truth About Generating Online Website Traffic

It is easy to build a website these days, with many of the free blogger networks offering everything from ready-made templates to HTML tutorials. It is that easy, but generating traffic to your website, well that’s another matter. With almost anyone propping up a website or two, getting the right amount of attention will take some effort on your part. It is, in a way, similar to a bookshop seeking customers. With many new ‘bestsellers’ vying for shelf-space, the only way these books get picked up is as a result of ‘getting the word out’. That phrase is the key to generating a healthy dose of internet traffic to your website. The major handicap that most internet marketers face is a lack of internet traffic, mainly because they failed to get the word out.

So let’s say that you have managed to get the website up and running, now the only thing left for you to do is to go on a marketing binge. Getting visitors to your website is the objective, that’s a given. So with that in mind, there are a few things that you can do to ensure that you achieve your objective.

You can start by incorporating a feed on your website, try ‘feedburner’ ( a google tool that allows blog owners and podcasters the ability to manage their RSS feeds and track usage of their subscribers), as that seems to be the popular choice and it is free to use - which is an additional incentive. The point is that any time you add fresh content to your site, it gets converted into a ‘feed’, making it possible for many feed subscribers to access it immediately. The whole idea behind the ‘feeds’ is that it makes content available to multiple internet users and provides content in real time, allowing you to garner some valuable traffic in the process. Now feeds are just a small step in the right direction. You will need to make sure that your site url is posted to the various search engines out there thereby increasing your site’s reach.

But the above method is utilized by nearly every webmaster and may not get you the huge increase in traffic that you are looking for. So here are a few additional strategies.

You can visit other websites; provide comments to blogs resulting in valuable one way links. You can utilize some of the paid traffic sites to increase your traffic. Though webmasters do use the paid traffic option as a marketing tool, it works only if the traffic provided is real and not one delivered by ‘web robots’ (used for web-spidering at a much higher speed than humanly possible). It’s essential that you check out the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page of the ‘paid traffic’ site to see if the site in question provides this source of traffic. If they do not, then you can be sure that the traffic delivered by such sites is not that beneficial.

Article marketing, now that’s a method that works seamlessly. The traffic generated by way of posting articles to some of the major article directories is so effective that webmasters have started using it for affiliate marketing, another cool way to make money as long as you are able to generate the traffic. But here is the catch, you need to be able to write well, for it is only a good article that will generate traffic. In addition to the directories, you can try your hand with some of the classified sites such as google and ebay OR utilize the benefits of google ad sense.

There is no doubt that marketing online will take a little effort on your part and it will be sometime before you can see some meaningful results. However at the end of the day, having worked through some of the approaches listed above, you should be able to generate a healthy dose of internet traffic to your site.

4 Easy and Proved Ways to Pull in Traffic to a New Website

2009-05-06T11:51:00.000-07:00

The reason so many people fail online so quickly is because they don’t get traffic, at least not enough of it.

The problem is, people end up spending money on advertising without making much (if any) profit back, or they simply spend too much time trying to get free traffic and burn themselves out.

Of course, once you’re successful you can pay someone to get you the traffic, but how do we get out of the never ending cycle of trying to get traffic without wasting time and money?

Well, I am going to start with the fundamental tasks that you should focus on first, then we’ll take it from there…

1. Directory submissions.

This can be achieved using automated submission software or can be done by hand. It’s a little dull but will result in lots of back links to your website for better visibility in the search engines. This is pay off as you add more content and back links to your site.

2. Social bookmarking.

This is about submitting links to the major Web 2.0 social bookmarking sites such as Digg, Propeller and Reddit (to name just a few). The great thing is you can use software such as socialmarker.com to make the process far easier. You can also buy inexpensive software to automate the whole process.

The benefit of social bookmarking your content is so that you gain back links from these authority sites (which is essential for being found in the search engines) but also, if you content is worthwhile and interesting, you increase the chances of your submission being passed around other readers really quickly, which can of course result in a lot of traffic to your website.

3. Back links.

Back links are the backbone of getting your pages listed high in the search engines. The more people link to your site naturally (i.e. without being paid or listing your site in some sort of link farm where the site linking to you is junk), then the better your rankings will be in the search engines. Not to mention the direct traffic that will come from the actual links from other sites too.

4. Collaboration.

Most people want to be the “one person wonder” or the sole entrepreneur in their business, which is fine. However, don’t underestimate the sheer power of teaming up with other well established websites directly and offering your content, help or other services in exchange for some exposure to your own website.

The classic “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” effect comes into play here and trust me, it works like a charm providing you genuinely approach people to help them first.

There are of course, many other ways to start getting traffic to your site such as writing articles like this one, or getting involved with many of the Web 2.0 properties out there online today. The more social you become with your website at other people’s parties, the more people will come to your party when you come to tell them about it…just like real life isn’t it?

Ways to Increase Page Views and get Targeted Traffic to Stay on Your Site

2009-05-06T11:21:00.000-07:00

You cannot build a successful internet based home business unless you are able to get targeted traffic to visit your website and stay on it long enough so that you can get your message across and act on it.

A websites’ level of success is related to the number of page views it gets each day. Page views are generated by unique visitors who surf onto your site and check it out in order to find the answer to information they are looking for on how to do something.

Enticing visitors to click through the pages of your website is a great way to keep them there and the more time they spend the more likely it is that they will get your message and take some action.

There are four easy steps you can use to increase page views:

1. Use proper highlighting and formatting.

The style and appearance of your site is very important. If your website has great sections of hard to digest text, people will surf away as quickly as they got there.

You can increase the length of time they spend on your site by highlighting all the keywords and phrases. White space is not something that you need to worry about as generally, highlighted text that has white space around it is more attractive to the human eye and makes for easier reading and scanning of the page.

2. Put a site map and article teasers onto your main page:

A site map makes it easier for visitors or search engines to navigate your website.

You can also increase page views by placing excerpts or teasers from other pages of your site onto your homepage and link each teaser to the relevant page. This will help to encourage visitors to click through to the next page. It is also an excellent idea to provide a site map to make it easier for people as well as search engine spiders to navigate your site.

3. Unique well written content is crucial to getting visitors to stay:

People are hungry for good quality information and this is one of their main motives for surfing the internet. Content is king when it comes to the internet more so than anywhere else. If your site is able to give them the information they require, they will be more than willing to check it out and more likely to bookmark your site for return visits and recommend it to other people. Your content is also more likely to get picked up by the search engines which will dramatically increase the number of people who visit your website.

4. Keep the copy short and simple

When it comes to website copy, short and simple is best. Give the information in short concise easy to read paragraphs. People have short attention spans on the internet. No one will read a thousand word articles. People generally tend to scan articles rather than read them. They will only read an article from start to finish if the style and content are so good that they can’t help but read everything.

Above are the four steps that you will need to implement in order to increase your page views and get people to stay on your website long enough to get your message across.

What Is Paypal?

2009-05-04T10:23:00.000-07:00

PayPal is an e-commerce business allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet. PayPal serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper methods such as checks and money orders.
A PayPal account can be funded with an electronic debit from a bank account or by a credit card. The recipient of a PayPal transfer can either request a check from PayPal, establish their own PayPal deposit account or request a transfer to their bank account. PayPal is an example of a payment intermediary service that facilitates worldwide e-commerce.
PayPal performs payment processing for online vendors, auction sites, and other commercial users, for which it charges a fee. It sometimes also charges a transaction fee for receiving money (a percentage of the amount sent plus an additional fixed amount). The fees charged depend on the currency used, the payment option used, the country of the sender, the country of the recipient, the amount sent and the recipient's account type.[1] In addition, eBay purchases made by credit card through PayPal may incur a "foreign transaction fee" if the seller is located in another country, as credit card issuers are automatically informed of the seller's country of origin.
On October 3, 2002, PayPal became a wholly owned subsidiary of eBay.[2] Its corporate headquarters are in San Jose, California, United States at eBay's North First Street satellite office campus. The company also has significant operations in Omaha, Nebraska; Scottsdale, Arizona; and Austin, Texas in the U.S.; India; Dublin, Ireland; and Berlin, Germany, and now also in Tel-Aviv, Israel after PayPal acquired an Israeli startup called FraudSciences for $169 million.[3] As of July 2007, across Europe, PayPal also operates as a Luxembourg-based bank.

About PayPal

PayPal is the safer, easier way to pay and get paid online. The service allows anyone to pay in any way they prefer, including through credit cards, bank accounts, buyer credit or account balances, without sharing financial information.

PayPal has quickly become a global leader in online payment solutions with more than 153 million accounts worldwide. Available in 190 markets and 18 currencies around the world, PayPal enables global ecommerce by making payments possible across different locations, currencies, and languages.

PayPal has received more than 20 awards for excellence from the internet industry and the business community -most recently the 2006 Webby Award for Best Financial Services Site and the 2006 Webby People's Voice Award for Best Financial Services Site.

Located in San Jose, California, PayPal was founded in 1998 and was acquired by eBay in 2002.

Source From Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.

That's all For NOW, If You want more Detail you can see The Detail in
Here

Blog As An Online Reputation Management Tool

2009-05-02T04:28:00.000-07:00

Most people who blog are blogging for either two reasons: making money from the blog or just passionate enough to blog (even without getting compensated).Only few people do understand that blogs can be used as an online reputation management tool.How is that so?Let me explain. In an online business, or just even business in general, reputations are like “trust cards.”Most people won’t even care to talk to you unless they know you. Even worse, they may even blacklist you if you have a bad reputation.Another example is when doing transactions in forums. One thing to notice is that when you’re just starting out and you are virtually an unknown to everybody, they are skeptic to do transactions with you. They want to you to do a condition first before doing a business with you to gain trust.

There’s no big deal about that and it’s the thing most newbie face when they jump into the online marketplace.So why blogs?It’s been talked about so much how search engines love blogs. Blogs are easy to spider, ranks well on some keywords and most provides high quality content (if not all).When you apply for a job position, or have a joint venture with someone, the first thing the company/person normally do is do a short Google search for your name. Then obviously your name is going to appear on some high ranking social sites which then leads to your blog. If you’re a good online presence, then it’s pretty sure that people will link to you and by a good means.You can easily notice that these well-known bloggers are the ones that have the most reputation! Guys like Darren Rowse didn’t just become a hit because of his blog. He actually became so famous because of the high quality content he is constantly producing, the great brand he has imprinted online and establishing the reputation as probably the top blogger in the industry.What can these online reputation then lead to?Count em! Aside from actually getting some really good revenue, there are far more important results one can get. These are being invited to speak at those great conferences, being able to hang out with other famous people within your niche, getting established as an authority, getting gifts from these companies who obviously want you to give them a plug and a whole lot more.Believe me, having a blog is a BIG PLUS for a reputation! And having a blog with a great community is even better! But do always keep in mind that there are no shortcuts.I believe that good reputation is what long term success of blogging is all about. So make sure you’re not just blogging for profits, or for passion or as a hobby. Leverage your blog, take it into the next level, and stick yourself into it.In the end, its not just about how big you are making with your blog, or how unique your money making techniques are. It’s about how people trusted you and your brand.And how well-recognized your name is.This article is written by Melvin Dichoso is an 18-year old internet marketer who’s been working in the internet for over a year. He’s currently taking up BS Computer Science and is planning to work in internet full-time sometime in the future.He blogs at Melvin Blog dot com where he shares his personal tack on internet geeky stuffs. If you find the article interesting, do take the time to subscribe to his feed.

How to make $$ From Blogging ?

2009-05-01T05:11:00.000-07:00

Money. It's every blogger's dream to make money off his / her blog. How do I know? A majority of the blogs on the internet have banners, ads, and other signs that show they are trying to get money from their work. And who doesn't? I must admit, the ads on this site are meant as a means to help me pay for college at least a little bit. But it isn't easy to "get rich quick." You need to invest a lot of time into your blog, and let time take its course before you can expect any reasonable income. For instance, after 5 days up, and over 500 visitors, the ads over this blog made 8 cents. Yup. That is going to take a huge chunk out of my college bills.

Adsense: One of the most popular services is Google Adsense. There are referrals and pay-per-clicks. For both you are required to put links / buttons on your blog. For referrals, the visitor has to download the program in order to be paid. But it can be quite lucrative. For people who refer users to Adsense, when a referred visitor makes their first $100, SO DO YOU. But it can be hard. For pay-per-clicks, you get paid a certain amount of money every time a visitor just clicks on an ad on your blog. Thats it. Depending on what type of blog you run, the ads will vary in price. There are certain keywords that must be in your blog that can get you very high paying ads, but how and why you get those ads is (most of the time) luck. The service is simple to sign up for, use, and get paid by. Every time you make $100, you get a check in the mail.

Yahoo! YPN: This review will be short because I do not use it, it is still in beta, and it apparently does not accept blogs with little traffic. They money you can make with YPN has been reported to be equal or greater then that of Adsense. For more about Yahoo, Go Here.

Amazon Associates: Run by Amazon.Com, this is like Adsense Referrals, where the visitor has to buy a book or product for you to get any kind of money from the deal. For a small time blogger, this is hardly worth the space that it will take up on the blog. For more information, Go Here.

CJ.Com: CJ stands for Commission Junction, where you get a monthly check no matter how much money you have earned.

Text-Link-Ads.Com: This site sells you exactly what is says: Text-Link-Ads. It displays a block of text link ads anywhere on your page and the amount you get per click depends on how many ads you have displayed. For more information, Go Here.

While the last few ads are short, there is a perfectly good reason for that: They are not really good for the small time blogger, which I assume is my biggest reader. Adsense is good for the small people. Feel free to click helplessly on one of the links at the top of the page if you enjoy my advice; I'll return the favor.

Good luck making money!

What is more important, SEO OR Content?

2009-04-30T06:56:00.000-07:00

This is a guest post from a fellow Philadelphia based blogger : LinkManDX - LinkManDX’s blog covers a wide range of topics from politics to philosophy to the Internet and blogosphere.

It is often said that “Content is King.” What this means is that no matter what, the best content in today’s Internet will reach the top, regardless of marketing efforts. While we all know this is a bit ofan exaggeration, it is still important to realize that without good content, SEO is worthless – you’ll drive initial hits, but you’ll never convert anybody to readers. How SEO and content go hand in hand is a process that is deceptively difficult, but they must go hand in hand. Without content, your site is useless. Without SEO, your site is unread. The relationship must be made – but how?

Consider how Google and other search engines are designed to find you. Not how it actually finds you, but how it’s designed to. Google crawls through the web looking for links to content from other content, ranking it as “important” along the way. The algorithm has developed whereby that’s not the only way it finds content, but that’s still an important way. You can spend ages building backlinks, but it’s much simpler, but less likely, that you’ll write a killer post another blogger links to in his content, and I believe Google can recognize that link as better and rank you higher. Built backlinks are great, but are no match for these.

As I alluded to in the first paragraph, SEO without content drives initial hits but doesn’t convert them to returning visitors or readers. Readers are the currency of bloggers – they come back to your blog for each post, and read your content almost religiously. These are guaranteed future hits, and not just the initial hits your drive from SEO. This is what I mean by hand in hand – you get them to come with SEO, and you keep them coming back with good content. Good content is more valuable, because you could abandon SEO after a good long while and still have a ton of visits coming from readers, whereas readers abandon you if your content lacks.

Finally, SEO only concentrates on one portion of incoming visits – the Almighty Google. I’m not saying that Google hits are bad, and shouldn’t be pursued, but this is a classic case of putting one’s eggs into only one basket. If your content is good, people will link to it. These links get followed, and are more likely to be converted to readers. If bloggers embrace good content, Google could disappear and they would still get hits from these content links.

Keep at your SEO strategies, but keep in mind that good content is indeed king – it leads to better links, more readers, and allows you to diversify your marketing strategies. It seems too simplistic, but it indeed can accomplish these things, when placed along a good SEO strategy.

A Basic Guide For The Beginner Blogger - Blogging for Success

2009-04-29T07:09:00.000-07:00

To understand and make use of blogging as an internet business tool, beginner bloggers first should understand what a blog is and why it can be so popular, convenient, and effective as an internet business tool. Blogging can be compared to a public forum or journal, where any topic of interest can be discussed at length by various users. This is a perfect tool for sharing thoughts and ideas, and this concept is easily applied as an internet business tool for beginners as well as old hats. Text blogging is the simple form, meaning that entries are typed out for others to read. Audio blogging takes the same blogging concept however the entries are created through an audio feed, allowing users to listen to their message rather than read it. A blog site is detailed by a few various elements that are generally easy to recognize when you venture into the land of using blogging as an internet business tool. First, you will come up with a title for your post. You cab as plain as offering a single word main idea or you can create silly or creative statements within your title. Once you have entered the title, you type out the body, which is everything you are interested in using in that particular post. If you are using your blog as an internet business tool your body is going to contain your business message and excite people who read your message. Providing links on other websites that can allow users to access your blog is known as using a trackback, and it is a very common and useful method of bringing additional traffic to your site. You permanent link is the URL associated with your blog entry, and the comment section allows other users to ask questions, post comments, or speak freely regarding your blog. Most blogging sites offer a simple and easy to use template that instructs new users how to implement their thoughts into an actual blog entry. This way, new users can start using blogging as an internet business tool immediately without long tutorials or hefty advertising costs. Blogging has been simplified as an internet business tool by the use of simple template that create new pages, rather than the use of numerous templates necessary for the use of other websites. This makes creating additional blog sites and entries simple, effective, and easy to understand. Blogging is used for much more than an internet business tool. If you are brand new to blogging and want to get your feet wet experiencing blogging before using it as an internet business tool, you might want to select a blog that appeals to your personal or educational use. This way, you can understand how blogging works and then apply what you learn directly to using blogging as an internet business tool. Blogging leads to communities of like minded individuals. One of the advantages of blogging is that it brings people together in search of the same thing, in this case, that would be successful operation of an internet business. Using blogging as an internet business tool allows you to reach new levels of communication. Learning to blog is likely to open up new relationships with people from all over the world. In the meantime, good luck on your journey to success. OR if you would like to succeed immediately to create financial freedom working only 4 hours a week, check out www.secrets2internetfortunes.com AND for a Limited Time, you will also receive a FREE copy of a limited number of the amazing 113 page eBook "Online Fortunes A Beginners Guide!" which is jam packed with so many ideas you can use to instantly create an automated income for life! That’s my GIFT to you as a way of saying thank you for reading my articles.

Surviving in the Blogging World

2009-04-28T07:58:00.000-07:00

Every half second, a new blog is born. Thats right. According to CNet and Technorati, someone around the world makes a new blog every half second. How do you survive and stand out from the rest?

1) Submit posts to "article directories". They are websites which post your articles and link to your blog, sending you visitors. A good one is http://www.ezinearticles.com/

2) Contact other bloggers that share your interest / topic area and ask about guest writing on each others blogs.

3) Create some sort of contest for your blog. Have a Blog Carnival (more later on about that). They draw visitors to your blog. Some questions to ask about the contest though, from blogclout.com

How easy is it to enter the contest
How fun is it to participate in the contest
What rewards and incentives can be won
How to generate the first few participants for the contest
How easy is it to spread the word about the contest

Thats the end of my quick post... Good luck!

Why Should You Keep On Blogging?

2009-04-27T08:50:00.000-07:00

If you are frustrated by a lack of comments, a lack of people clicking on ads, or by a lack of plain old traffic, why should you keep blogging?

Well, for one thing, building traffic takes time. You have to post on different blogs, websites, forums, etc. to get your blog out there. No matter what type of blog you have or the subject of your blog, there are always going to be places where you can find a good amount of traffic.

If you like and have a genuine interest in what you are writing about, why care if someone reads it or not? You are putting it out there for the whole world to view, and if they view it or not, thats their business. As long as you enjoy doing it, you shouldn't stop.

Good luck blogging!

Blog for friendship

2009-04-26T07:46:00.000-07:00

Blogging can be a great way to make friends and connections, it can also be addictive.

Is one blog enough for you? Many people seem to have at least two.

As a blogger I found that not only do I love working on my own blogs but I love the community atmosphere of blogging, reading other bloggers new posts, following and subscribing. I do however find it hard to meet other people with a similar interest in blogging. It can be time consuming searching for interesting blogs that are updated regularly.

I blog for many reasons, obviously I would like to eventually earn a living from working online, but also as a mother of three young children, I don't get out much! and I know there are many others like me, but finding them can be hard.

So I decided to make another blog, (see the addiction?) this one is a little different though, its a combination of a blogging directory and mini community for women who blog.

Blogging is not a competitive sport

2009-04-25T04:45:00.000-07:00

Being a blog author means becoming part of a wide circle of bloggers, a community of writers who, with the right attitude can help one another, learn from one another and make friendships and business partnerships

It should not be a competition

Think of it this way, most of a blogs readership is made up of other bloggers, which is why there are widgets like the followers widget that you will find on Blogger blogs

SO WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?

Simply put, other bloggers are for the most part, your targeted audience. If you insist on being a blogger who feels that all other blogs are your competition, then you really have your work cut out for you! If on the other hand you are like many people, an internet enthusiast and user as well as a blogger, then you are more than likely also someone who uses the internet to purchase goods

SO THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU WANT FROM YOUR VISITORS

Do you want people who will actually read your content? other bloggers will

Do you want people who will comment and leave feedback? again bloggers will

Do you want regular readers who trust you and are more likely to purchase from you? your subscribers are much more likely to do this than a one time visitor

SO WHAT SHOULD YOU DO

Build an online presence for yourself, visit others blogs, comment on others blogs that you like (don't spam, no one likes it and its not the impression you want to give out)

Make friends with other bloggers, give advice, participate in the blogging community and make a reputation for yourself as someone who cares about others and their work

Follow blogs you like, visit when you get a chance, subscribe to your favourites

Share links, if you see a great post that is relevant to your topic, link to it from your own blog, your readers will appreciate the extra information you have found for them and the author of the blog is more likely to at least visit your blog, and you never know maybe if they like your blog they may return the favour

If you follow these guidelines you may be surprised by the positive reaction your blog recieves

5 Most Common Mistakes by Bloggers

2009-04-23T20:00:00.000-07:00

This article is written by Gloson an 11-year-old blogger from Malaysia who is passionate about blogging, writing poems for kids and taking photograph of his cats. He is the author of Gloson Blog.

I’ve been surfing through the blogosphere and found out that there are some common blogging mistakes many bloggers make, especially beginners. I would like to point them out in this post so that they can avoid these mistakes, and become a better blogger.

1. Writing in large blocks of text

Which do you prefer to read? A large block of text or text with occasional spacing like how I am writing now? Most people would prefer spacing, instead of a large block of text. When I read large blocks of text, I find myself reading the same line over and over again. I also strain my eye. When I read text with spacing, I find it easier, comfortable, and more relaxing to read.

2. Not offering your readers email subscription

More than half of my subscribers subscribe to my blog via email. If you want more subscribers, set up an email subscription service so that your readers can subscribe via email. Most people do not use readers, or they simply prefer email. To set up an email subscription service, use Feedburner. To get started with Feedburner, read a tutorial onhow to burn your RSS feed with Feeburner.

3. Having a complicated blog design

Having a complicated blog design makes readers look at them and distracts them from reading your content. It also slows down loading and will drive impatient visitors away. Your readers don’t really care much about your design. All they really care about is your content.

A complicated blog design has too many pictures, loads very slowly, and takes up a lot of memory. You can use a beautiful and simple design, but not a complicated one.

4. Not creating an archives page

An archives page a page where you can view every post in the blog. This isn’t exactly a mistake, but you should create an archives page so that your readers can find something to read, easily.

To solve this, get a archives plugin. For people who want fun and unique archives, you should use Snazzy Archives. Here is an example of Snazzy Archives in action.

For those who want clean archives and whose blog updates frequently, use SPR Clean Archives (It is the archives plugin I am using for my blog).

5. Sticking with number (post ID) permalinks

A permalink is the link that links to a post. The permalink of this post ishttp://www.thoushallblog.com/5-most-common-mistakes-by-bloggers

But for some blogs, their permalink is – http://www.(blog).com/p?123

It is highly recommended that you change it to the blog’s title or ‘slug’ because it will help in your blog’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and therefore, will bring more visitors to your blog.

And also, if you look at the permalink, you will know what the post is about.

To change the structure of the permalinks in your blog (if you use wordpress), go to this URL and replace ‘[yourblog]’ with the domain name of your blog.

http://www.[yourblog].com/wp-admin/options-permalink.php

In the ‘Custom’ text box, type only /%postname%/.

Your permalink would be changed to:
http://www.[yourblog].com/[the-permalink]/

Don’t worry. The links to your posts won’t be disturbed. That’s because amazingwordpress would recognize the number (post ID) and will redirect your readers to the post to which you mean to link.

For example, before you changed the structure of your permalinks, your post permalink is
http://www.[yourblog].com/p?123

After you change it, it becomes
http://www.[yourblog].com/the-blog-post/

Anyone who visits http://www.[yourblog].com/p?123
will be redirected to http://www.[yourblog].com/the-blog-post/

To have a better blog, you should avoid all these 5 mistakes. It’s for you and your readers’ benefits.