Introduction to SEO

SEO is Search Engine Optimization Means taking Your site step by step from zero to one
thousand visitors per month Or, increasing your existing traffic by a thousand.Whether you have a blogs or static site, and whether you promote products as an affiliate or products of your own... or for Adsense revenue for that matter.Furthermore, it's not about getting 1000 crappy, unqualified visitors, it's about getting 1000 high quality, targeted visitors that are the most valuable to you as a website owner.Anyone can do this, but few people will. How effective it is, will be up to you.

Background For Doing SEO

Before get to the first step of the strategy I want to remind you about a very important principle. That principle is that all traffic is not equal.1000 people coming to your website from your from your twitter profile, isn't the same as 1000 people coming to your website from a traffic exchange, and neither of those are the same as 1000 people coming to your website having searched for a solution to a problem or desire they have and selecting your website as the one that appears to have the answer.There are a lot of ways to generate traffic, and no one strategy should be used in isolation at the neglect of others. Real online business owners are open to testing everything and learning for themselves which kinds of traffic make them the best returns on their investment.That said, few will argue that traffic from highly relevant search keywords can be beaten in terms of monetary return per visitor. Sure, in total on the Internet, the traffic available through other sources like social media, media buying, and other forms of online advertising provide vastly greater volume of potential traffic than search, I've yet to find someone who will say that in general, traffic from these sources convert more highly than targeted search traffic.More importantly, when your site is just new, this traffic is the most important. It allows you to test your monetization the most easily, and start seeing profit as quickly as possible.For these reasons, traffic from search engines and other free sources will be the bread and butter of this report.

Search Engine Optimization for Blogs – SEO

Search Engine Optimization is something that makes many blogger’s heads spin – I know this because every time I write an SEO article I get comments from bloggers telling me that its too big a topic and that they’d rather just write ‘quality content’.

Whilst I’ll never argue that quality content should be anything but a first priority in blogging, the fact is that there are many millions of pages of great writing languishing around at the bottom of search engines results pages that deserve to be read by many but which rarely see the light of day because their authors have failed to understand that just a few simple tweaks in the writing process could see them ranking considerably higher.

So it’s time for another series – this time on Search Engine Optimization for Blogs!

People often ask me ‘how do I get ranked number one in (((insert favourite search engine here)))?

My answer usually starts with – ‘I don’t really know what I’m talking about….but….’

You see whilst some of my blogs rank very highly on different search engines – I often don’t really know why. Much of what I do is educated guessing and experimentation. I do read a lot of other people’s advice on the topic, but the more I read the more I realize that I’m not alone in my guess work – virtually every article I read is a ‘best guess’ of some kind.

My main advice to people wanting to optimize their blogs for Search Engines is to keep it simple. Start with quality content on a specific topic and then tweak it using the best current advice going around.

When I think about SEO for my blogs I tend to divide the things I focus upon into two parts – offsite and onsite search engine optimization techniques. Offsite techniques are more about what others do on their websites in linking to you, onsite techniques you have more control over as you write.

Off Site SEO Techniques

Off site SEO techniques are as the name suggests factors from outside the site itself (ie from other sites) that impact the blog’s ranking in search engines. Many of these factors are outside the blogger’s control – however they are useful to know. The most obvious and probably most powerful offsite factor are Inbound Links (something I’ve already referred to above).

It is generally agreed that the links that point to a website are one of the most powerful way of climbing Search Engines results pages (in fact many argue it is THE most important factor). – To put it most simply – every link to your site is seen by the search engines as being a vote of confidence in your site.

Ideally Speaking – The best inbound links have three main qualities to them:

1. they are from higher ranked sites than your own
2. they are relevant to the topic you are writing about
3. they link to you using relevant keywords to your page

Whilst you may not have complete control over who links to you these are the types of links that you should be dreaming of.

How to generate quality inbound Links?

Of course whilst most of us know this it doesn’t make getting such links any easier – its in the hands of others in many cases. So how do you get such links?

• Quality Content – There are all kinds of link generating systems out there but in my opinion the best way to get links to your blog is to write quality content that people will want to read. You can solicit links with others or sign up for different link building programs or even buy text links on other sites but the cheapest and probably safest approach is to build inbound links in a natural organic way as others link to your quality content.
• Notify Relevant Bloggers of your content – Whilst I don’t advocate spamming other bloggers and asking for links – I would recommend that if you write a quality post on a topic that you know will interest another blogger that it might be worth shooting them a short and polite email letting them know of your post. Don’t be offended if they don’t link up, but you might just find that they do and that in addition to the direct traffic that the link generates that it helps build your own page rank in the search engines (more on letting other bloggers know of your posts here).
• Directories – Another way to generating inbound links is to submit your links to directories. I know of webmasters who swear by the benefits of such a strategy – the first thing that they do when starting a new site is to do the rounds of directories – submitting links to key pages with appropriate keywords in the links. There are loads of directories out there – many of which offer a free submission. Ari Paparo has compiled a list of blog directories that you might want to start with.
• Inter-link your Blogs – Increasingly bloggers are starting or joining blog networks to enjoy the benefits of multiple sites and writers working together. One of the advantages of networks of sites is that they usually link to one another. In doing so you have complete control over how your sites are linked to from multiple domains. It is worth noting that you should be careful with this approach – if all your sites are hosted on the one server many think that Search Engines will work out what you’re doing and the impact will be lessened.
• Buy Links – Many professional web masters have a budget to purchase links from other highly ranked and and relevant sites. I won’t go into this too much here but you might like to read more about it in my recent post On Buying Text Links. update: I’d encourage anyone wanting to buy links to think very carefully about this. Google have been cracking down on sites that use this practice. They can’t catch everyone but some have been caught and seem to have been penalized for doing it.
• Swap Links – Similarly many bloggers swap links with other bloggers. Sometimes this happens pretty naturally (you see someone linking to you so you link back) but in many cases the links are strategic ones and formally arranged between site owners. I get daily requests for such reciprocal links (I rarely act on them). Whilst there is some benefit in such link swapping I would again advise caution here as many SEO experts believe that the search engines have methods for tracking such strategies and devaluing the links. Some try to get around this by doing indirect or triangulated links. ie instead of site A and B doign a direct swap they involve other sites. So A links to C in exchange for D (also owned by C) linking to B (also owned by A) – makes your head hurt doesn’t it!?! There are also a variety of systems around that say they’ll take care of such interlinking for you – I know many who use Digital Point’s Free C0-Op Advertising system. Personally I tend to avoid such schemes and have a policy of linking to sites I think are valuable to my readers. If they link back then so be it.

If you’re looking for link exchange/buying/selling programs you might like to look at systems like:

- Link Adage
- Text Link Ads
- Link Worth

On Site SEO Techniques

Having looked at Off site Search Engine Optimization Techniques I’ll now turn my attention to examining some of the factors you might like to keep in mind as you build your blog – (or Onsite techniques – things you do on your blog that help build a higher ranking). As with all SEO techniques there are many of these and a lot of speculation around all of them so let me touch on as many as I can:

1. Keyword Rich Content – identify a few keywords for your article that you’re hoping will get indexed highly by Google. Don’t pick too many but consider the questions

• How do I want people to find this post in Search Engines?
• What will they type into Google if they want information on the topic you’re writing?
• How would I find information on this topic in the Search Engines?
• What results come up when I do plug these keywords into Google?
• What other keywords are other sites using?

The answer to these questions will give you a hint as to what words you’ll want to see repeated throughout your article a number of times.

These keywords will need to be the most common words used in your article. Use them in some or all of the following ways:

• Keywords in post and page titles (read my post on using keywords in titles)
• Keywords in URL of page (blog herald wrote on this a while back)
• Keywords in outbound links (read this article on the pros and cons of outbound links)
• Keywords in bold tags (try do it at least once)
• Keywords in heading tags (there is debate over exactly how to use them but it’s generally accepted that h1 tags are important and that h2, h3, h4 etc tags also have an impact. Having said that I’ve seen some pages rank very well in search engines without using heading tags. There are many tutorials online about heading tags – here’s one.)
• Keywords in image alt tags (here’s how)
• Keywords in the general throughout the text of your post – but especially early on in the first few sentences
• Keywords in meta tags (they seem to be less valuable these days but many still believe they are useful with some search engines – here’s a Guide to meta tags)

Of course you can go over the top with keywords in posts and let it destroy your content – but if it fits with what you’ve written tweak it to include the words you are targeting a couple of extra times. Most SEO experts recommend getting your keyword density up to between 5-20% – I think 20% is probably bordering on massacring your content.

One last word of warning and disclaimer on keyword rich content (because I can just hear the comments on this post already) – don’t sacrifice your readers experience of your site just for the sake of SEO. Yes keyword density can be important in climbing the search engine rankings – but more important is that your content and design are user friendly and helpful to readers. There is nothing worse than a site that is stuffed with keywords – these sites come off as cheap, nasty and spammy – don’t fall for the temptation.

2. Themed sites - One of the growing theories of SEO is that you are more likely to rank well if you have a substantial amount of pages on a similar theme. ie a niche topic blog will probably rank higher than a general one that covers many topics. Build a blog with over 200 pages of content on the same theme and you’ll increase your chances of ranking well as SEs will see you as an authority on the topic. The take home advice here is to keep to some kind of a topic/niche/theme for your blog. It is also probably another argument for categories and tagging posts that relate together strongly.

3. Site Design – Search Engines like well laid out, well coded and easily to navigate sites. Make sure your pages validate (I need to work more on this) and that they are viewable on all major browsers. Search Engines don’t tend to like too much Flash, Frames or Java Script in your site – keep it simple and clean and their robots will index your site a lot faster and more accurately. Also try to keep your blog free from dead links (a challenge for those of us with older blogs with big archives).

4. Interlink your Site – The way Search Engines index your blog is to send little robot crawlers to your site to track what you’ve written and follow the links. Make it easier for them to get around your blog by using internal linking wisely. Most SEO experts recommend that you provide some sort of Site Map that means every page on your blog is just a link or two away from every other one. One way to do this for bloggers is to make sure that your category pages are in your sidebars as I do in this blog. Also make sure every page links back to your main page and any other important pages on your site. If you’re writing on a topic you’ve previously written about consider linking to what you’ve written before or use a ‘other relevant posts’ feature at the base of your article. You’ll see in my menus at the top of the page a number of my key categories and articles. One of the impacts of having them highlighted in this way is that they have become some of the most highly ranked pages on ProBlogger simply because they are linked to from every page of this blog.

5. Update regularly – The more you update your blog the more often Search Engines will send their crawlers to your site to index it. This will mean your new articles could appear in the index within days or even hours rather than weeks. This is a natural benefit of blogging – make the most of it!

6. Outbound Links – There is debate over how SEs treat outbound links from your blog. I’m in the camp who believe that relevant outbound links enhance your site’s ranking in search engines. I always link out to quality relevant sites that I think my readers will find useful and have a little anecdotal evidence that seems to support the theory that this is healthy for the way SEs index you (check out Waynes article on the topic for more info). Linking to sites outside your own blog does mean you end up sending traffic away from your blog so you need to count the cost of such a strategy. Note that you should always try to link to reputable and relevant sites to your own page. Also keep in mind that too many outbound could have detrimental impact upon your blog. Like in most things in SEO – moderation is the key.

7. Choose your domain name wisely – there are numerous factors to keep in mind when selecting a domain name. For one you might like to include your keyword in it if possible. Secondly you should do a little research to see if someone else has previously used the domain. This could have both positive and negative impact. If it was a quality site with inbound links you might reap some benefits but if it was a banned spam site you could still be banned from Google for a long time. One service you might want to use to check expired domains is Way Back Machine at Archive.org.

8. Register your Domain for a Lengthy Period – a recent patent by Google indicates that it now looks at the length of your domain’s registration in ranking it. It does this because many spam sites have short registrations and a longer one indicates that you’re building a site with substance and are in it for the long haul.

9. One topic per post – the more tightly focused the theme of a page the better when Search Engines come to rank it. Sometimes you might find yourself writing long posts that end up covering a number of different topics. They might relate loosely but if search engine ranking is what you’re after it could be better to break up your post into smaller more focused pieces.

10. Write optimal length posts – there is some thought going around the Search Engine Optimization community that pages that are too short can get passed over for high rankings. I try to keep posts at least 250 words. Of course there are some posts on my blogs that are shorter, but if I’m writing a post that I want to rank well I try to give it some meatiness in terms of length. On the other hand don’t make it too long either – because in doing so you make it difficult to keep your keyword density up and could end up with a less tightly focused page. Research also shows that longer articles can have a pretty steep drop off rate in readers after the text gets below the ‘fold’ or to the end of the first screen of article .

11. Avoid Duplicate content – Google warns publishers in its guidelines about having the same content on multiple pages. This goes for both multiple pages that you own but also pages that others own. This is because a tactic of spammers is often to reproduce content on many pages and/or to steel content from other sites. There is some debate over what duplicate content does and doesn’t include (for instance many bloggers use ‘free articles’ as content on their blogs – these articles often appear on hundreds and even thousands of other sites around the web and to me could be seen as duplicate content) – my advice is to be very careful about how many places your content appears. I do republish occasional posts (or parts of them) but try not to do this too much and attempt to add elements that are unique on each occasion that the posts are republished).

12. Ping – services like Pingomatic (there are numerous others too) will ping a variety of websites for you to notify them that you’ve updated. In doing so you’ll also be letting search engines know that you’ve updated which will trigger their robots to come visit your blog. I’d also suggest pinging Google’s blog search tool.

13. Submit your RSS to MyYahoo – submitting your RSS feed to MyYahoo seems to help with getting indexed on Yahoo. Read more about this at Getting Yahoo Traffic for your Blog. Some also think that doing the same thing to Google’s Personalised pages could have a similar impact.

14. Quantities of Content – I always get into trouble when I write about having lots of content – but I think its true that bigger sites tend to rank better than smaller sites – whilst it is possible to rank highly with a small site – it’s probably not the norm.. Search Engines will see your site as more comprehensive the more content you have. You also better your odds of being found in Search Engines if you have more pages. By no means am I saying just to put up random junk content – be careful about this – rather work at building a comprehensive and large site over time.

15. Submit to Search Engines – You can do all the best onsite SEO strategies in the world and still get no where because the Search Engines have not found you to start with. Each search engine has a way of letting it know about your site – submit your URL to be included in the index. Please note that this takes time and perhaps a quicker and more effective way is to get linked to by a site already indexed by the search engine. I’ve written a post about his previously at how to get indexed by Google.

You might also like to tryout some of the services around that offer to submit your sites to search engines for you – I’d be wary of paying for this sort of service though. I never have and seem to do ok.

Again I will reinforce – the above techniques come out of my own experience and from the things I’ve learnt from others. I am not an SEO expert but find that if you keep the above in mind you can do reasonably well. Don’t become obsessed by SEO – if you do you run the risk of forgetting about your reader, forgetting to write quality content and you could find yourself getting into some dodgy SEO tactics that could get you banned from the Search Engines You’re trying to get listed in.

I’ll finish here by adding that SEO can take time – so be patient. After 2.5 years of blogging I’ve managed to build my blogs page ranks and SERPs but it did not happen over night. Sometimes it seems that no matter what you do nothing works – it may be that the words you’re wanting to target are actually a heavily targeted segment of the internet (consider changing your approach) – or it may just be that there is some unknowable glitch with the SE you are targeting – its a fickle game and one that I’d recommend you don’t rely on alone. So yes work on your SEO but also consider the many other methods around to find readers for your blog. You might like to read my Finding Readers for your Blog Series as a starting point.

Blog Creation Software and Tools

Blog Creation Software and Tools

Wordpress Elite

The only system that will let you mass optimize 100+ Wordpress blogs a day and manage all your WordPress blogs from one central location. Read review here

Blog-In-A Box

A blogging package that comes with has 20 Pre-Built Blog Templates in Easy-To-Use HTML format complete with PSD files for easy modification to fit your needs in a variety of styles and colors. The templates can easily be integreated into Blogger's publishing setup. As a bonus, you also get a the manual, Your Complete Guide To Publishing A Traffic-Generating Web Log, valued at $37.77 with your purchase.

Blog Software Resources

Reviews of free and fee-based blogging software and tools by T. L. Pakii Pierce

Weblog Publishing Tools

A comprehensive list of web log publishing tools at the Open Directory Project.

Instant Video Generator

Put Video on your Blog with this easy-to-use service from Armand Morin.

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Blogging Services (Hosted)

Blogsome
Free hosted blogs on the Wordpress platform. I prefer wordpress because it allows trackbacks, categories and is more feature-rich than blogger.

Blogger
One of the easiest ways to start a blog. Create an account here for free. This Blogger tutorial will walk you through the process of beginning your own blog with Blogger.

BlogID
A powerful and easy to use weblog service. From pictures, videos, links, documents, newsletter, opinions and more, BlogID makes publishing quick and easy.

SquareSpace
Beautiful templates, lots of features. If you have the moolah and looks matter, go for this service.

Typepad
A popular blogging hosted service, TypePad gives users a rich set of features to immediately share and publish information -- like travel logs, journals and digital scrapbooks.

Skinny Mouse
Every account comes with WordPress, a fantastic blogging and publishing tool. And no technical integration required.

MyST-Technology
Maker of MySmartChannels and the MyST Web Services Platform. Ideal for Corporate Blogging and Knowledge Management. MySmartChannels is an Application Framework Server that lets anyone quickly and easily publish, organize, and reuse information in a secure Web environment. Beneath the MySmartChannels interface lies a powerful Web services platform that provides a solid foundation for corporate blogging, knowledge management (KM), enterprise collaboration (EC), and a collection of services for solving a wide variety of content-oriented problems.

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Blogging Tools (Server-Installed)

WordPress
An Open-source (free) state-of-the-art semantic personal publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. Lots of features and ease of installation make this a popular choice for bloggers. Click here for Wordpress tips and tools.

Movable Type
A powerful, customizable publishing system, which installs on web servers to enable bloggers to manage and update weblogs. This enables a blogger to hand edit the other parts and pages, including the Daily Links, in TextPad. You can use a date format string for the individual entries, and for monthlies. Movable Type includes a default RSS Feed.

Server-Side Blog Software
This chart displays attributes of different user-installed blog software packages side-by-side for comparison. Only server-installed scripts are included in this list.

pMachine
PHP/MySQL system with many features beyond weblog maintenance, including mailing lists and dynamic content management.

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Blog Add-Ons

Wordpress Plugins and Themes
BloggingPro has lots of information and links to beautiful Wordpress themes and some very useful plugins.

Wordpress Styles
The styles listed on this page work with the default WordPress template and can be used with my CSS Style Switcher. Download these award-winning Wordpress templates and give your blog a unique look and feel. More Free Wordpress templates

FeedWordPress
An Atom/RSS aggregator for WordPress. It syndicates content from newsfeeds that you select into your WordPress blog; if you syndicate several newsfeeds then you can WordPress’s posts database and templating engine as the back-end of an aggregation (”planet”) website.

Blogboxes
Free , Open-source internet applications for your blog or wiki. They provide exciting, instantly deployed functionality and are free for non-commercial use.

Blogrolling
BlogRolling is a one-stop linklist you can use for your blog. The blog helps you to manage your need for constantly evolving linklist with ease.

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Other Blogging Tools

BOP
BOP Stands for "Blog Oriented Publishing", an open source database-backed system written in perl. Still in early alpha and looking for contributors.

WikiWeblogPM
A "page of links on research about things relevant to software that would combine the best features of existing wiki, weblog and PIM software."

FactoSystem Weblog (ASP based)
Facto is a collaborative web publishing system. The system can be used for creating personal or group 'Blog' type sites. It is written entirely in Active Server Pages (ASP) and can use Microsoft Access or SQL Server as a database backend. The operating system that is required is Windows 95/98/2000 and the programming languages used are ASP and JavaScript. It is mostly used for message boards and site management.

InstaBlog
InstaBlog appeared as a result of two things: responding to the simplest possible way to maintain a weblog, and trying out the extremely cool Perl MSN IM client. InstaBlog functions in the following manner: it is run as a background process on a machine with Internet access. With its own Passport identification it is constantly logged into the MSN instant messenger service. When something worthy of note is found in the weblog, chat windows is opened with the InstaBlog and the weblog entry is typed. The software takes it, adds it to a copy of the weblog it maintains, and uploads it via FTP to a webserver.

OpenJournal
OpenJournal is a completely Web-based interface. The software's features include: automated file creation; automated index updating; editing of all files through a Web-based interface; entries with or without titles and time posted; automated archiving based on a weekly or monthly format. All done through ordinary text files and no additional perl modules are needed to run it. Basically, the software allows the users to keep an online journal, customize and configure it. All needed to do after installation is to write in it from time to time. It requires no third-party, external perl libraries or support programs. The program itself is relatively small and simple and takes about 5 minutes to install and another 5 or 10 to customize.

GeekLog - The Ultimate Weblog System
GeekLog is a web content management system suitable for running full-featured community sites. It supports article posting, threaded comments, event scheduling, and link management and is built around a design philosophy that emphasizes ease of use. The development status of the software is 5 - Production/Stable. The programming language that has been used is PHP and functions mostly to maintain dynamic content.

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Commenting Systems

aspcomments
Free ASP-based comment system for use on Blogger-backed and other weblogs.

BlogBack
Comment system that does not require server installation.

blogKomm
PHP-based system to integrate comments directly into a blog

cgiComments
Free perl-based comment system for use on Blogger-backed and other weblogs.

dotcomments
Free PHP-based comment system for use on Blogger-backed and other weblogs.

Enetation
Free hosted commenting system

SnorComments
Hosted commenting system for Blogger-based blogs

YACCS
Commenting made simple

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Posting APIs and Tools

AvantBlog
Posting from Palm or Windows CE via AvantGo

BLog
Web services interface to (I think) Blogger.

blogBuddy
Windows front-end to Blogger.

Bloggenmoz
Blogger API support for Mozilla Composer

Blogger API
Details of the XML-RPC interface to Blogger

BloggerBot
AIM client for Blogger.

bloggerCOM
COM interface to the Blogger API

blogger.el
EMACS module to post using the Blogger API

BlogniX
Blogger client for Linux

BlogScript
Mac OS X.1 tool for easy posting to Blogger-powered blogs.

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Why Wordpress is Now My Blog Software of Choice

The more I use Wordpress, the more I love it. It has 2 very important features that Blogger doesn't yet support.

Number 1, you can set up Wordpress to automatically ping all the RSS and blog feed directories every time you make a post.

This is a very powerful feature if you want your blog to get a lot of traffic right away. On top of that, you'll be quickly developing backlinks to your blog almost automatically.

Think about how long it can take you to build a regular site, get the search engines to index it, get backlinks to improve your listings, and then start getting traffic. A blog like Wordpress can do all that "grunge" work for you automatically.

Number 2, Wordpress allows the use of Categories. Categories are a very powerful way to improve the structure of your site both for human visitors and for the search engines.

Let's say the topic of your site is Widgets. You could create a Category for black widgets, one for orange widgets, and one for green widgets.

Now when you add posts to your blog, you can choose which of your categories your post belongs to. Now your blog will archive your past posts not only by their month and date, as Blogger does. But also by Category.

So if you have a visitor who is especially interested in green widgets, they can easily find all your posts on green widgets. They don't have to go through your entire archives to find them.

With a blog that has been around for awhile and has hundreds of posts, that would be pretty discouraging. Using Categories makes it very easy.

Categories are also very search engine friendly. When you use Categories in your blog, there is a link on every one of your pages to your categories. Think about this: would you rather be #1 in the search engines for March 2003, or for green widgets, one of the main keywords of your site?

By using the Category feature, you will eventually have hundreds of pages on your site with links to green widgets, black widgets, and orange widgets. All those backlinks to those keywords can result in much higher search engine rankings.

Another neat feature is that you can easily create an RSS feed for each of your categories. Then every time you post to your blog, it could be pinging the Blog/RSS directories for each feed!

Compare that to putting up a new page on a traditional website. Even if the search engines find your new page right away, it might be a month or two before it actually gets indexed and starts drawing traffic. It might be a long time before it enjoys a first page position for its keywords.

It's almost amazing how easy all this is with a well-structured blog like Wordpress with Categories enabled!

Blogging Information

What is Blogging?

Blogging is publishing for the rest of us...

Anyone can write a blog, even if they don't know the first thing about html coding and building Web sites.

You can be up and publishing a blog in under 30 minutes. No technical expertise required!

Why should you blog? Is it worth the effort?

Blogging is do-it-yourself public relations. Whether you are :

• A consultant or a professional
• An entrepreneur or small business
• A corporate or CEO

Blogging can help you -

• Boost Your Business And Profits
• Increase Your Visibility And Search Engine Rankings
• Brand Yourself, Your Products, Your Services
• Promote Your Services To A Wider Audience
• Help You Establish Your Credibility As An Expert In Your Field
• Put A Human Face On Your Business
• Reach Out To Potential Customers And Stakeholders

Blogging can do all this and more... But only when it's done right!

What Are Blogs?

Blogs are a frequent, chronological publication of personal thoughts and Web links.

Blogs are alternatively called Web Logs or Weblogs. However, "web log" can also mean a server's log files, so the term "blog" is used because it is less likely to cause confusion.

More than a list of links and less than a full-blown zine, blogs may be hard to describe but easy to recognize. A blog can be recognized by its format: a webpage with new entries placed at the top, updated frequently.

Often at the side of the page is a list of links pointing to similar sites. Some sites consist only of a weblog. Others include the weblog as a part of a larger site. These are a few common characteristics of a blog, but blog types may vary slightly.

Blogs are posts that are short, informal and sometimes deeply personal no matter what the topic of discussion is. They can be characterized by their conversational tone.

Some blogs provide succinct description of judiciously selected links. Some others contain commentary and links to the news of the day.

A few are an endless stream of blurts about the writer's day. Others are political or intellectual commentary. Some are hilarious and some topic driven.

One thing common about all bloggers is that most are non-commercial and are impassioned about their subjects.

Why You Should Publish A Blog

With Weblogs becoming popular, personal websites have become an extensions of our day-to-day lives.

Weblogs tend to be personal and immediate but they are more simple and straightforward. People can publish their thoughts, even for the first time, with almost no training.

Blogs are more permanent than posts to an online discussion list, more dynamic than older-style home pages. They are more personal than traditional journalism, and definitely more public than diaries.

A blog is often a mixture of what is happening in a person's life and what is happening on the Web, a kind of hybrid diary site. So, there are as many unique types of blogs as there are people.

Another reason why one should start blogging is dissemination of "micro-opinions" important to a small audience - opinions that would never make it in newspapers.

You should also consider blogging if you need feedback from your target audience because blogs enable interaction and invite others to reward a person's creative effort with feedback. They weave new social networks, introducing people with common passions.

If you have a web presence but want more than a static homepage, if an elegant treatment of posts on a global platform is what you require, then 'blogging' is what you need.

Blogs are the mavericks of the online world. Two of its greatest strengths are their ability to filter and disseminate information to a widely dispersed audience, and their position outside the mainstream of mass media.

How To Build Traffic To Your Blog

With the growing interest in blogging as a means of online promotion and branding, a lot of marketers are starting blogs to promote their opinions, products, books and services.

But a blog is like a website. "Write and they will come" isn't exactly a magic formula to bring in traffic by the boatload.

If you need to promote your website in order to build traffic to it, you need to promote your blog as well.

Here are some ways you can become a well-read and influential blogger.

1. Write Posts That People Will Want To Read

This should be common sense, but many marketers tend to forget that their readers are real people and that you need to use the principles of online copywriting to make your headlines and copy interesting to your readers.

If you write posts that people enjoy reading, they will reward you by returning to your blog regularly.

Make your posts conversational, pithy and topical. Keep them short and stick to one topic per post.

Write often and regularly so that both readers and search engines visit your blog more often.

2. Optimize Your Posts for Search Engines

I cover this topic in detail in my article on "Search Engine Optimization For Blogs"

But here are the most important rules to follow to get your posts listed for keywords of your choice.

• Make sure your blog URL contains the primary keyword you want to optimize for
• Use your primary keywords in the title of your post
• Use your secondary keywords in the body of your post
• Use your keywords in the anchor text of links in the body of your posts

3. Submit Your Blog and RSS Feed To Directories

If you publish a blog you should submit your blog and RSS feed to big directories like Yahoo and Dmoz, as well as the numerous blog directories and search engines.

Here is the best list I've found of places to submit your feed or blog, compiled by Luigi Canali De Rossi, who writes under the pseudonym Robin Good.

Best Blog Directory And RSS Submission Sites

Another list of sites to submit your Blog

4. Ping The Blog Services

There are a number of services designed specifically for tracking and connecting blogs. By sending a small ping to each service you let them know you've updated your blog so they can come check you out.

Bookmark the Ping-O-Matic ping results page so you can visit it and quickly ping a number of services with a single click.

5. Build Links To Your Blog

I recommend the methods here as the best ways to get links pointing to your blog.

• Link to your blog from each page on your main website
• Trackback to other blogs in your posts
• Post legitimate comments on other blogs with related topics
• Offer to exchange links with other similarly themed blogs and websites

6. Edit Your Blog Posts Into Articles

One of the best methods for promoting your website is to write articles and submit them to article directories.

The suggestion for extending this to edit your blog posts into articles and submit them to directories came from the coach at "Explode Blog Traffic" who also has other noteworthy suggestions at his blog.

You'll find an extensive list of article directories here

7. Create Buzz About Your Blog

Creating a buzz about your blog posts and topic in the local and online media will give your marketing a viral component.

• Create a controversy around your blog or it's topic.
• Distribute bumper stickers or other merchandise with your blog's URL and tagline.
• Write a press release about something newsworthy and tie it in with your blog topic.

8. Capture Subscribers By Email

It may seem strange for a blogger to send out updates by email, but email is still the #1 choice of most people who want to receive news and information.

Using a free service like Bloglet to manage your subscriptions is easy and it allows your subscribers to manage all their subscriptions from one interface.

However, if you want more control over your list and don't mind mailing out the updates yourself, you can use an autoresponder system to capture and follow-up with subscribers.

RSS Responder is a new script that allows you to keep in touch and follow-up with your subscribers without the hassle of email.

These tips should give you a good start to building your blog traffic.

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Search Engine Optimization For Blogs

Blogging software is really a simple Content Management System (CMS) that easily adds new pages and integrates them into your site's navigational structure and linkage.

Blogs and blog posts are naturally search engine friendly because they are text-rich, link-rich, frequently-updated webpages that use stylesheets or CSS, and have very little extraneous HTML.

Optimizing a blog is very similar to optimizing a website, and optimizing a blog post similar to optimizing a web page.

But depending on the blogging service or software you use, the results may look somewhat different.

If you follow some simple rules for search engine optimization, your blog can rank much higher than static website pages in the search engine results pages.

Here are the most important rules to follow to get your posts listed for keywords of your choice.

1. Use your primary keyword in your blog domain

Whether you purchase a separate domain (recommended) for your blog, or host it on a blogging service or a subdomain of your own site, try to ensure that your URL contains the primary keyword you want to optimize for.

For example, if you want your blog to get found for the keyword "rss" get a domain with the keyword "rss", or use the keyword in a subdomain as in

http://ebizwhiz-publishing.com/rssnews

Getting a domain name with your own name might make for good branding, especially if yours is a personal blog.

But if you're doing it for business and want the targeted traffic to flow your way, keywords in the domain or subdomain are a move in the right direction.

2. Use your primary key phrase in your blog header tags and the title of your posts

If your primary key phrase is "business blogging" make sure that the word business, or blogging, or both, appear in your blog headers (the H1 or H2 tags) as well as the title of each of your posts.

Most blogging software will take the keywords in your post title and put them into the file name of the permalink posts it creates.

For example, if you have a blog on Blogger and title your post "Search Engine Optimization For Blogs", Blogger will automatically create a page with your post and name the file "search-engine-optimization-for-blogs.html" or something similar.

With other server-side software like Wordpress and Movable Type, you may require the mod_rewrite command to save the title of your entries as a permalink.

3. Use your secondary keywords in the body of your post

If you want to get listed for secondary keywords use them infrequently in the body of your post and pepper your blog titles or links with them appropriately.

Don't overdo this or your posts will end up sounding unnatural and spammy to readers.

4. Use your keywords in the anchor text of links

Keyword in links have more importance than simple text.

Use your primary and secondary keywords in the anchor text of links when linking to other blog posts or to other pages on your main site.

Link keywords where they naturally appear in the body text, but again, don't overdo it, or you'll end up with spammy looking pages.

5. Make sure search engines can spider your blog easily

Set up your blog so that the side navigation bar is present on all pages.

Make sure your archives and previous posts are accessible from all pages of your blog so they get spidered easily.

6. Get backlinks from other blogs or websites

Links pointing to your blog or posts are essential to build pagerank and make your blog rank higher in the search engine listings.

I've seen many people recommend Blogrolling as one method of building links to your blog.

BlogRolling is a one-stop linklist manager for your blog or journal. But all this service actually does is give you a bit of javascript code that "calls" the links.

As far as search engine rankings go, this method of linking is of little use, because spiders can't read external javascript code.

Instead I recommend that you focus your linking efforts on the methods here.

Submitting to Blog Search Engines and Directories:

Submitting your blog and RSS feed to blog search engines and directories is essential for getting high-quality links back to your blog.

Here is the best list I've found of places to submit your feed or blog.

Best Blog Directory And RSS Submission Sites

Link Exchanges:

Many similarly-themed blogs are often willing to exchange links with other blogs and form richly interlinked networks or communities. Link exchanges with other blogs are easy to implement with most blogging software.

Trackbacks:

You can also get links back to your blog using trackbacks. One of the disadvantages of using Blogger is that it does not automatically create trackback urls that others can use to link back to your posts.

Haloscan is a free service that will automatically add comments and trackbacks to your Blogger blog.

But if trackbacks are an important component of your linking strategy, I would advise using another software or system that adds this feature automatically.

Comments:

You can also get back links to your blog by posting legitimate comments in response to posts on other blogs.

7. Update frequently

There's no better food for search engine spiders than fresh content.

Post and update your blog frequently using all the rules outlined above and there's no reason why your blog will not get you top rankings in a short period of time.

8. Stay put

Once you create your blog, try to stick to the same domain and blog host or system for as long as you continue to publish.

Writing Powerful Short Post

Writing is a powerful form of communication. Composing thoughts into letters which form words is a beautiful medium to express yourself and share your knowledge. For this reason books are written in print and digital form, blogs are produced and long resource filled posts are produced. But what if you do not have a lot of time to write? Then short but well written posts are your answer.

Short posts can be very powerful. Look at poems for example. Often brief, poems explore the realms of emotion, morality, and knowledge. Their limited words produce potent meanings which instill deep thought and searching. Your blog posts though short, can be just as expressive. The following elements will guide you in creating brief, yet powerful posts.

1. Main Point: Your post no matter the length needs to have a singular purpose it is trying to get at. When writing even sentences have a subject to guide their purpose. Likewise your posts should have a main point. So first come up with this. In writing this “main point” is called your thesis.

2. Argument: I am not talking about being rude, snappy, or even debatable but your main point needs to have supporting evidence. This is done by backing up your main-point with logical sub-points to form a cohesive argument. The sum of your argument will create the necessary logic needed to prove your ideas correct and relevant.

3. Structure: Short posts especially need to have a solid structure. Open your post quickly and concisely by getting to your main point in the first couple of sentences. Then go directly into your argument by addressing your supporting sub-points and then introduce the major counter point to your argument. After briefly counter arguing why you are still right end with a conclusion that is brief and summarizes your main point again.

Just like this post, you can follow the strategy of introducing your main point, supporting it with your argument, and creating a proper structure to write brief posts that will allow your readers to get the main point in a short amount of time

Top 10 Websites to Get Internet Usage Statistics

Sooner or later most of us need to collect some Internet statistics. Maybe it is for your homework, maybe it is for a market research you are doing for a project, maybe it is just out of curiosity. Over the years I came across several websites that provide these stats, and I decided to list the best ones in this post.

1. Pew Internet Project

One of the best resources for people looking for Internet statistics. Their research cover social networking, web 2.0, broadband and digital divide. Apart from detailed reports you will also find infographics, presentations, trends and surveys. The research topics are quite actual as well. For instance, they already have a bunch of reports and numbers on Twitter.

2. w3counter Global Web Stats

w3counter provides a web analytics program for website owners. However, they also use the data collected on the websites using the program (over 28,000) to create a monthly report called “Global Web Stats.” On the report you will find the most popular web browsers, operating systems, screen resolutions and countries.

3. w3schools Browser Stats

The w3schools website also publishes a report with browser, operating system and screen resolution statistics. One advantage of this site over the previous one is the fact that you can see at a glance the market share evolution of the different browsers over time. They have data going back to 2002, and there is also a section about the adoption of JavaScript.

4. Internet World Stats

If you are looking for Internet usage and adoption statistics from around the world, this is the website to visit. It comes with data regarding the total number of Internet users, a break-down by continent and penetration rates. The data seems to be updated frequently as well.

5. Alexa Top Sites

Not all of us are Alexa fans when it comes to traffic estimations. However, we can’t deny that Alexa has been tracking traffic numbers for a long time, and its list with the 500 largest websites on the Internet seem to be relatively accurate. If you need to get an idea of what are the largest sites on the web, it is worth a look.

6. Nielsen Net Ratings

Another company that offers decent traffic estimations for large websites is Nielsen. On the free report that is available inside their website they list the top 10 web parent companies, top 10 U.S. web parent companies, top 10 U.S. video sites and top 10 U.S. search providers. Nielsen also offers a monthly newsletter with the latest online trends and numbers.

7. Hitwise Data Center

Hitwise is a company offering competitive intelligence services. Inside its website there is a section called “Data Center” where you can access all sorts of Internet data. For example, they offer a list of the top 20 search engines, top 20 websites per industry, top 10 search terms per industry and the like. Make sure to check the Reports & Webinars section as well.

8. Point Topic

Point Topic is a research company specialized in DSL and broadband research. Most of their reports are paid, but they have a section called “Free Analysis” where you can get access to a bunch of free reports and studies. As far as broadband numbers go, they are the most complete I have found online. The only catch is that you need to register an account before getting access to them.

9. Internet Growth Statistics

If you want to see some data regarding the early days of the Internet (i.e. 1993 – 2000), check this website out. Apparently it was created by an MIT student, and it is not complete, but it does have some data available. For example, you can see the growth in the number of websites, web hosts, and the usage of the different protocols over time.

10. Verisign Domain Name Industry Brief

Verisign is the company responsible for the .com and .net domain registrations. As you can imagine, they have a lot of data regarding domain names, and they provide a quarterly report detailing all the latest numbers and trends on the domain industry. You can download the PDF documents directly, and they are well structured.

5 Things to Know When Starting Your Blog

There’s no doubt that blogs are here to stay, but if you are thinking of hitching a ride only now, you need to be aware of a few ground rules. So, before you start your blog, it’s best to:

1. Be realistic: Yes, there are many people who blog for a living; they don’t have regular jobs, and they make all the money doing what comes best to them, writing for an audience and making money off it. But, you must be realistic when you start to write and know that you cannot expect such stupendous success, at least not for a few years. If you’re hoping to make huge amounts of money right from the word go, then you’re in for disappointment.

2. Don’t quit your regular job: Because blogs make money randomly or not at all, especially when they’re new, it’s not wise to quit your regular job and sit at home in front of your computer hoping to strike the mother lode instantly. Instead, set aside some time every day to work on your blog and popularize it.

3. Enjoy what you do: Only if you truly enjoy blogging will you be able to stick to it and make it work. If you’re in it just to make money, you’re not going to be able to keep your enthusiasm going when you don’t see the dollars pouring in like you’d envisioned. So write on something you’re passionate about, something that you can sustain on a daily basis over a long term period.

4. Focus on a niche: Blogs that focus on a niche tend to do better than those that just prattle on about any random topic under the sun or those that are more personal in nature. So choose a niche that you enjoy and one which you can portray creatively so that other people will be interested in reading what you have to say.

5. Know that patience pays: One thing you must remember when beginning a blog is that you must be patient in order to see even a modicum of success. It takes a long time to popularize a blog, and even when that happens, it may be some more time before you start to see monetary results. You must focus on quality rather than trickery to market your blog, because that’s what will sustain it in the long run

SEO Tips

Traffic is the core element of a successful website. Search Engines have become the primary way of bringing traffic to an online venture. Targeted traffic can convert into potential business and revenue for any website owner.

Tip 1: Avoid Bad Coding.

Ensure web pages are W3C Compliant. Search Engines bots crawl through web sites by analyzing the sites code. The idea is to make html clean and error free so that these bots are able to index every page of a website. Having errors could mean that your entire site does not get indexed by the bots, and ultimately can lead to a lower page ranking.

Tip 2: Use Relevant Keywords.

If a website is about belgian chocolate, then go after specific keywords. For example "gourmet belgian chocolate" and "belgian chocolate truffles" would be good choices because they are very specific. The more specific a keyword is, the less competition it will receive in search engine rankings. This allows sites to have an easier time ranking, and a better position in the search engines.

Tip 3: Smart Keyword Placement.

After the keywords have been decided on, they should show up somewhere in the site title and header tags. The keywords should also be in the web pages body, but avoid overdoing the keyword density.

Tip 4: Get Inbound Links.

Relevant incoming links from other websites that are 'trusted' can boost the site's search engine ranking. Try to avoid paid link backs and too many reciprocal links. Stay away from link schemes.

Effective Blog Commenting to Increase Page Rank

It’s amazing how many people do not know the principles of blog commenting. The concept of dofollow may be a fairly new concept – especially to those outside the SEO community – but if you don’t pay attention to this very important attribute, your blog commenting strategy will be for naught. It depends somewhat if you’re after traffic or better page rank, but my guess is that a lot of people are commenting for the page rank exposure, rather than the traffic (which can be slight). What other explanation can there be for the litany of people posting comments with stellar anchor text on a PR 0 blog that has nofollow for comment links? Obviously, these aspiring marketers have no idea that their links count for nothing.

So every blog commenter should devise a good strategy for commenting on blogs in order to get the most page rank value. Here are the main commenting tips:

1. Write a useful comment. Take as much time thinking about writing a comment as you’d think about writing a paragraph on your blog. A comment needs to be tailored to the post. Yes, people are desperate for comments, but vague comments get thrown out – like “Great post. I like your style.” (just wait for some smart a*s to write that comment on this post.)

2. Find a list of blogs in your niche. It’s recommended to go to a dofollow blog directory and find dofollowers in your niche. Narrow down those dofollow blogs by pinpointing the blogs with the highest page rank (in the Google toolbar, SEOQuake plugin, or other method).

3. Seek out blog posts that already have a good number of backlinks. Just because the blog’s homepage has a decent page rank doesn’t mean that every blog post will. There are cases where an internal blog post can have better rank than the homepage if that internal page gets a lot of links. Note: if it’s a new post, page rank won’t show up in a toolbar, but trackbacks will show up in the comment section. Also, the number of comments signifies its overall popularity.

4. Use Google reader or other RSS reader. This is a WAY better way to organize links than through standard browser bookmarks. Can’t recommend this enough. How many time have you gone to a browser bookmark only to find that the same frontpage post is still sitting there? Using a reader will organize posts based on their freshness. It’s easier to hop around between blog to blog to find places to comment. Really, commenting off a reader should be one of your daily marketing strategies. Whenever you find a blog with a good home page rank and dofollow comments (this is usually advertised), grab its RSS feed.

5. Subscribe to a thread when you comment. Someone might respond to you and then you can add another link and add to the discussion.

6. Look for sites that activate Commentluv, as this will add a link to an internal page. If you add Commentluv to your own site, you can choose which page to list. Otherwise, it will list your most recent post – which means after you post you should head over to your Commentluv site list and make another comment.

7. Find Top Commenter sites. Another plugin will show a blog’s top commenters (sort of irritatingly misspelled as “Top Commentators”). Often, it only takes 2 comments to make it to the list. Even sites that have nofollow enabled in comments will have dofollow for the top commenter list, so you shouldn’t always stay away from nofollow sites.

8. Make five comments a day, at least. This means you have to have a pretty big RSS feed list, because you can’t make five comments a day on the same two blogs. Over time, these comments will really build up. Added bonus: many of these comments will show up in your Technorati profile, improving your Technorati rank.

SEO for Wordpress Bloggers

One of the most important part of setting up a blog is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO for a WordPress blog is different than SEO for static websites, mainly because of the social nature of blogging technology. It is less about buying links or tricking inadequate search technology. SEO for WordPress blogs is more focused on the technical infrastructure of your site, and your ability to write creative articles that are noteworthy for others to read and link to. This SEO guide should be your reference point for all WordPress blogs because in here we will mention some of the tips that has been proven to work. These techniques does not require heavy investment except for few bits of your time. Don’t make this to do list a chore, you can do these trick one per day and not feel stressed out about it.

Why bother with SEO? If you want to get more exposure for your blog, Search Engine Optimization can make a huge difference. It can bring 10,000 visitors to your site compared to the 100 that you were getting. Therefore if you are thinking about getting organic traffic from search engines at no cost, implement the techniques discussed in this article to your WordPress blog and take it to the next level.

On Page SEO

On page SEO is technical aspects within your site that you can tweak to give your WordPress Blog a leverage over others when ranking for a specific keyword. These aspects can range from permalink structure, to page title, to web semantics and much more. Before you even begin promoting your site, you need to have all of these aspects taken care of in order to achieve the maximum potential benefit from the search engine ranking positions (SERPs).
1. Optimize Post Titles

By default your WordPress post title will look like:
Blog Title » Archive » Keyword Rich Title of Your Post

Surprisingly, it is exact opposite of what you should have in order to increase your SERPs. One thing you must understand is that search engines put higher weight on keywords that are near the start when ranking a post. So theoretically you are hurting your chances of ranking higher in search engines.

Well since WordPress is not a static site, it is difficult to generate the title in the way we want. Thankfully there are great plugins like All in One SEO that lets us do that with a few clicks. First thing you need to do is install/activate this plugin and follow the settings we suggest.

Now as you note that we don’t have our blog’s name in the post title or the page title. We believe the more keywords you add, the more diluted the strength of each keyword will be in the title. Most of the time people will add Blog Title with the post title, but there is no point in repeating something as obvious as that. You will rank for your main blog title for the most part. For example someone can type in the search engine: “wpbeginner 14 header design” and they will find your site on top regardless.