First you register an account then see the instructions and sign up your blog
Each account century can be your blog in many different services, eg, such as Yahoo! 360, Yahoo! 360 Plus, Yobanbe ... Just sign in and then paste the URL of your blog that you want to post. Specifically:
1. Yahoo! 360 Plus
URL is http://vn.myblog.yahoo.com/name account-yahoo
Eg http://vn.myblog.yahoo.com/
My music list module:
You upload a list your favorite music on nhaccuatui, imeem, or upload any music sites that you know.
After the upload is done, you open the music list.
Also similar to the steps as banner module. To the module content
Copy the code. For á Embed:
Tuesday 31 March 2009
Sunday 29 March 2009
Optimizing your blog for search engines
Lately, blog optimization has been catching on like a wild fire. People have been blogging about their increase in search engine traffic due to SEO and others are starting to realize that they need to optimize their blog. There are many different ways that you can optimize your blog, but here is what I recommend doing.
URL Structure
The URL structure of your blog should filled with words and try to avoid numbers and extraneous characters. Many people like the date in their URLs, but I prefer it as domain.com/posttitle. This keeps the URL short, easy to remember and crawlable.
Page Titles
Search engines use the page titles in their search results. Most blogs have their page titles as Blog Name >> Post Title but I recommend just having the page title as the Post Title. Here is the code I use for Movable Type and WordPress.
Movable Type
<$MTEntryTitle$>
WordPress
<?php if (is_home () ) { bloginfo('name'); } elseif ( is_category() ) { single_cat_title(); echo " - "; bloginfo('name'); } elseif (is_single() || is_page() ) { single_post_title(); } elseif (is_search() ) { bloginfo('name'); echo " search results: "; echo wp_specialchars($s); } else { wp_title('',true); } ?>
Meta Description
Search engines usually see your content as duplicate. Granted it usually is not duplicate content, but without a unique meta description tag on each of your posts you are hampering your search engine traffic.
Movable Type
..." />
WordPress
If you use WordPress download the head meta description plugin. Set it at 15 to 25 words. Somewhere within that range is usually fine.
Headings
The headings should represent your blog content, do not stuff tons of keywords within your headings. When using headings you have many choices, but try to use H1, H2, or H3 headings.
Section 508
Pictures and text links should have a tooltip when they are hovered over. You want to use "alt" tags on pictures and "title" tags on the text links. Make sure that the alt and title tags represent the picture or link and try not stuff irrelevant keywords within them. Here is the code for alt and title tags.
Alt
alt="enter description here"
Title
title="enter description here"
Sitemap
Most blogs do not have a sitemap and they do not need one, but it cannot hurt. You can use Google's webmaster tools to create a sitemap. This will just help the spiders index your site thoroughly and efficiently.
301 Redirect
When people link to your blog they usually link to http://domain.com or http://www.domain.com. Because of this the search engines usually see them as two separate sites and you may have 100 sites that link to http://domain.com and 50 sites that link to http://www.domain.com. If the search engines saw it as 150 links in total instead of 50 and 100 your rankings would most likely go up. You want to consolidate the links and do a 301 permanent redirect in your .htaccess file. Here is the code that I use:
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_Host} ^YOURDOMAIN.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.YOURDOMAIN.com/$1 [L,R=301]
Make sure the code is on 4 lines in your .htaccess file and replace "YOURDOMAIN" with your domain name.
Linking
Don't be a link Nazi. Make sure to link out to other related websites within your content; it can only help with your search engine rankings. By linking out, those sites might link back or include your blog in their blogroll. The more related incoming links you have, the higher you should rank on the search engines.
Pinging
If you want to increase your traffic you have to ping the blog search engines. You can do this through ping-o-matic or pingoat. If you use FeedBurner they also have a list of blog search engines that you can ping through them. By doing this every time you write a blog post, it will show up on search engines such as Technorati and Icerocket.
These are the things that you should do to your blog to maximize your search engine rankings. It cannot hurt to optimize your blog the right way, so give it a whirl and watch what happens to your traffic. You might see a drastic increase in search traffic or you may see little to no traffic increases. This all depends on the age of your blog and how optimized it already is, either way it cannot hurt to optimize your blog.
URL Structure
The URL structure of your blog should filled with words and try to avoid numbers and extraneous characters. Many people like the date in their URLs, but I prefer it as domain.com/posttitle. This keeps the URL short, easy to remember and crawlable.
Page Titles
Search engines use the page titles in their search results. Most blogs have their page titles as Blog Name >> Post Title but I recommend just having the page title as the Post Title. Here is the code I use for Movable Type and WordPress.
Movable Type
WordPress
Meta Description
Search engines usually see your content as duplicate. Granted it usually is not duplicate content, but without a unique meta description tag on each of your posts you are hampering your search engine traffic.
Movable Type
..." />
WordPress
If you use WordPress download the head meta description plugin. Set it at 15 to 25 words. Somewhere within that range is usually fine.
Headings
The headings should represent your blog content, do not stuff tons of keywords within your headings. When using headings you have many choices, but try to use H1, H2, or H3 headings.
Section 508
Pictures and text links should have a tooltip when they are hovered over. You want to use "alt" tags on pictures and "title" tags on the text links. Make sure that the alt and title tags represent the picture or link and try not stuff irrelevant keywords within them. Here is the code for alt and title tags.
Alt
alt="enter description here"
Title
title="enter description here"
Sitemap
Most blogs do not have a sitemap and they do not need one, but it cannot hurt. You can use Google's webmaster tools to create a sitemap. This will just help the spiders index your site thoroughly and efficiently.
301 Redirect
When people link to your blog they usually link to http://domain.com or http://www.domain.com. Because of this the search engines usually see them as two separate sites and you may have 100 sites that link to http://domain.com and 50 sites that link to http://www.domain.com. If the search engines saw it as 150 links in total instead of 50 and 100 your rankings would most likely go up. You want to consolidate the links and do a 301 permanent redirect in your .htaccess file. Here is the code that I use:
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_Host} ^YOURDOMAIN.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.YOURDOMAIN.com/$1 [L,R=301]
Make sure the code is on 4 lines in your .htaccess file and replace "YOURDOMAIN" with your domain name.
Linking
Don't be a link Nazi. Make sure to link out to other related websites within your content; it can only help with your search engine rankings. By linking out, those sites might link back or include your blog in their blogroll. The more related incoming links you have, the higher you should rank on the search engines.
Pinging
If you want to increase your traffic you have to ping the blog search engines. You can do this through ping-o-matic or pingoat. If you use FeedBurner they also have a list of blog search engines that you can ping through them. By doing this every time you write a blog post, it will show up on search engines such as Technorati and Icerocket.
These are the things that you should do to your blog to maximize your search engine rankings. It cannot hurt to optimize your blog the right way, so give it a whirl and watch what happens to your traffic. You might see a drastic increase in search traffic or you may see little to no traffic increases. This all depends on the age of your blog and how optimized it already is, either way it cannot hurt to optimize your blog.
Saturday 28 March 2009
25 Tips To Optimize Your Blog For Readers & Search Engines
Everyone and their dog (yes, there are a few dogs out there with their own blogs) have started up a blog these days, but many people just aren’t taking the steps needed to optimize their blogs for both readers and search engines. While blogs can be business related (another blog about mesothelioma anyone?) they can also be personal where you talk about the great ham sandwich you had for lunch today or the crappy service you had at that trendy restaurant last night.
But whether your blog is business or personal, you should ensure that you are optimizing your blog for both your readers (after all, you want to keep those readers coming back) and the search engines. Unfortunately, optimization is an important step that far too many blogs seem to be skipping over, even those that have a broad appeal to surfers and have the potential to be monetizable.
However, optimizing a blog is a bit different than your standard website search engine optimization (SEO), particularly because most blogs run off standard blog platforms, or worse, run as a hosted blog on someone else’s domain name. And there are design issues that can be unique to blogs which can impact your rankings.
Let’s face it, when you commission a styling’ new blog template, most blog designers focus on making your blog look the way you want it to. But unfortunately for bloggers, not very many of those great blog designers are also SEOs by trade, meaning that the blog design you use could actually be hurting your search engine rankings. While you may have a great design that looks wonderful to readers, new readers might not find you if your blog isn’t ranking well organically in the search engines.
Also, when you optimize your blog for the user experience, you make it easy for users to return and engage in your blog without dealing with any of the hassles that can cause them to abandon other sites or blog entries. Repeat visitors are the cream of your blog, so by following these tips you have given them the tools they need to return as well as the user experience that makes them want to come back.
Fortunately, if you are on the case to make your blog rank well while not hindering your visitor’s experience on your site, there are definitely things you can check - and fix - to prevent any indexing issues from occurring, and ensuring your blog a happy and healthy existence in the search engines.
So here is advice on how you can optimize that blog of yours for both users and search engines without alienating one or the other.
1) Dump The Default Template - Looks Count!
I cringe when I see a blog using the “out of the box” Wordpress or MovableType template. Hire a designer to create a unique look for your blog, or at the very least, take advantage of some of the free templates available and customize it a bit with a unique logo or a slight color upgrade.
2) Just Say No To Bad Color Schemes
While a hot pink with lime green color scheme might be your favorite, consider what your readers will be expecting. That color scheme might work perfectly on a teenage gossip site, but would look extremely out of place as the corporate blog for a men’s suit company. Likewise, gamers would think nothing of a black background on an Xbox 360 blog, but it would look horrendous on a parenting or pregnancy site. So while you should experiment with colors to find a good mix for your blog, keep in mind user experience and their expectations.
3) RSS Me!
Make sure you have RSS available. Many hosted blogging solutions don’t have RSS automatically available, so you will need to add it. And when you do add it, ensure you have those RSS links in an obvious spot. Don’t tuck them away at the very bottom of your index page after your most recent 20 entries, or hide them on a separate “About Us” page. Place all those handy subscribe links in your sidebar, which is exactly where people will look for them. If you use Feedburner currently, have a look at their new MyBrand option which allows you to host your own feeds for a seamless user experience.
4) Offer RSS & Feed Subscription Buttons
Yes, when people want to subscribe to a blog, they will often look for that orange RSS logo as well as the logos of the standard aggregators such as Bloglines. So it is worth the time to add the most popular ones to your blog so visitors can easily do their one-click subscriptions to your feed without it require much effort on their part. If you make it hard to subscribe, most just won’t bother. FeedButton offers a service that allows you to offer multiple RSS aggregator and feed reader buttons with a single expanding rollover button.
5) Offer Posts Via Email
Some people just don’t get RSS. So cater to them by offering them an option to get your blog posts by email instead. The most popular service to do this automatically is FeedBlitz, although there are also many other tools available to do this.
6) Decide On Full Or Partial Feeds
Do you offer full feeds or partial feeds? This is a personal preference, and is often dependent on what market space you are blogging in. One option is to offer two feeds, one being an ad-supported full feed, with an RSS ad included, and the other being an ad-free snippet copy of the feed, where readers won’t see ads but will have to actually view your blog in order to read your full entry. But this will often come down to personal preference, and the preferences of your readers.
7) Write Compelling Snippets/Descriptions
If you do use snippets for your RSS feed, be sure to make them compelling or leave readers with a cliffhanger to encourage them to click and read the full entry. This will get you many more readers to your entries than just using the default option of including the first X number of words in the blog post as the snippet. Use your excerpts to generate interest and clicks.
8) Pay Attention to How You Write.
One of my favorite bloggers has the unfortunate habit of writing detailed long entries… without a single paragraph break and with the double whammy of also writing with a font size smaller than usual. If I look up for a moment, it is hard to find my place again in her 1000 word entries. As a result, I don’t read it as often as I would like to, simply because reading it is such a painful experience.
9) Spelling Counts
Spelling is also worth mentioning. Add one of the many spell checkers to your internet browser and run a quick spell check before you publish your entry. Every word doesn’t have to be perfect, and I am certainly guilty myself of letting on occasional typo slip through unnoticed. But I also get annoyed when I am reading typo after typo after typo in an entry. And yes, if it happens enough, I will unsubscribe out of sheer frustration.
10) Fontography Counts
Make the font easy to read. Some bloggers think it is cool to have their handwriting turned into a customized font, or use a trendy font that would be better suited to a scrapbook layout. But not everyone has those wild and weird fonts installed, which means that those people will see a standard font such as Times New Roman, and it can really kill the look of your blog. So instead design the text of your blog entries to use a standard font in a standard size.
11) Don’t Forget Navigation
Is this blog part of a larger site, such as a corporate blog on a site for a major company? Don’t just link to the main page of the blog. Syndicate your recent headlines in the sidebar to encourage visitors on the main site to check out the blog too.
12) How Fast is Your Host?
Another one of my favorite blogs has such a slow response time when I click from the snippet in my RSS to the full blog entry that I only actually end up waiting around for it to load about 10% of the time. Don’t lose readers because your hosting company thinks 30 seconds is a perfectly reasonable amount of time to load up a page.
13) Avoid Widget Overload!
Yes, there are definitely some cool widgets you can add to your blog, such as MyBlogLog or a Flickr photo box tied to your photo gallery. But be aware that having a large number of javascripts can slow down your site. So don’t sacrifice timely loading time for nice-but-not-all-that-necessary widgets.
14) Have Descriptive Titles
Some blog software actually makes your entry titles seem pretty repetitious in the search engine result pages, and can result in a lower click through than you might have had otherwise with highly optimized titles. If your title’s say something like “Jason’s Tech Industry Rants & Ramblings Blog >> New Xbox 360 title announced for April release” you should change it to “New Xbox 360 title announced for April release”. Unless you are well known as an authority blog in that market, the blog name is simply wasting crucial space at the beginning of the title tag and causing the rest of the entry title to end up getting truncated in the search results. And make sure your titles actually enhance the entry and don’t leave the reader wondering what on earth the blog entry could be about. Ensuring you have great titles when you have a small readership and are depending on search engines to send you readers is one of the first steps you should take to optimize your blog.
15) Look at your Cascading Style Sheets.
Most blogs use a tremendous amount of CSS to create that custom look. And while most of the “out of the box” designs that come standard with the installed template include all CSS in an external file, there definitely are some blog designers who will put their CSS on the individual template pages rather than placing it all in an external CSS file. And when you don’t place CSS in an external file, it can clutter up your pages and result in the most important part of the page - the entry text - being much further down in the HTML code when it has to go after the masses of CSS coding lines.
16) Post Often
The more frequently you post, the more likely Googlebot and other bots will stop by on a more regular basis. If you only post once in a blue moon, expect that it might take a while for Google to stop by and see that you actually have updated again. Google loves updated fresh sites, so it make sense to feed the bot what it wants.
17) Spread the Link Love
If you are blogging about a story, link up the original story as well as other’s commentary on the same topic. When you do so, you will often make those bloggers aware of your blog’s existence (if they weren’t already) when people click from your blog to theirs. And it also increases the odds that they will either link to you on that story or on something you blog about in the future.
18) Be Aware of Your Anchor Text
When you link to someone’s blog entry, or even a previous blog entry on your own site, make sure you link well. This means instead of linking to someone’s blog entry with the anchor text “click here”, you link to them using anchor text related to the blog entry, such as “Jason’s scoop on the new Widget Xbox 360 game”.
19) Create Unique Stories
Bloggers love to link to other bloggers. When you write original blog entries, rather than just rehashing something someone else has already said, you increase the odds that someone will find yours interesting enough to link to and talk about. And a reader of that blogger’s blog might read the entry and decide to write something about what you said as well, meaning yet another link as well. And if you are fortunate, it will go viral, meaning suddenly it seems like every blogger in your market space is talking about what you wrote. Rinse and repeat as often as possible for maximum exposure and link juice.
20) Use a Related Posts Plugin
Not only does this make sense to keep readers around for other articles on your site that are related to your current post, but it also allows you to deeplink from a current page on your blog to older entries. Often, older entries get buried several pages deep on an archive page, and this allows you to showcase entries written months or years previously and give those “oldies but goodies” an extra little kick in the search engines. There are several related post plugins available depending on which blog platform you use.
21) Ping Other Sites
When you add a new blog entry, you might want to ping site such as Technorati and FeedBurner to let them know you have a brand new blog entry on your site. You can also now ping Google’s Blog Search as well for faster indexing in their blog search engine at blogsearch.google.com. Automatic pinging is an option in the control panel of most blog platforms including WordPress and MovableType. And Ping-o-Matic offers a service that allows you to quickly pick and chose what to ping.
22) Buy Your Own Domain Name
Don’t always think your free blog hosting company will be around forever. What will you do if you build up a loyal readership then one day you discover yourblogname.examplebloghost.com no longer works because examplebloghost.com has gone out of business? You want to make sure the search engines have a URL they will always find your blog at, rather than have to worry about them re-indexing your previously well-ranked blog on am entirely new domain… that is if you are lucky enough to get your blog posts from your free hosting company. Both Google’s Blogger & Wordpress allow you to use their hosted blog service while displaying it on your own domain instead of their own branded one.
NOTE: See also our related story, Stay Master Of Your Feed Domain.
23) Manage Your Trackback & Comment Spam
You don’t want Google or Yahoo to find masses of spammy links on your site to all manner of less-than-quality sites submitted to your blog by a blog spammer. Use one of the many tools on the market for your blog platform to manage both comment and trackback spam.
24) Use a Good URL Structure
Don’t use “permalinks” such as www.yourblogsite.com/?p=123 . Instead, use www.yourblogsite.com/2007/01/01/blog_entry_title_here. Most blogging platforms allow you to change from the standard numbered permalinks to this style of search engine friendly ones. And just in case the blog platform you use has funky dynamic URLs for each entry, you will want to ensure that the bots can crawl them easily or use a mod rewrite to create a good structure such as in the example.
25) Use Great Categories
When you write a post, place it in 1 to 3 different categories related to the post. For example, and article on the television show Grey’s Anatomy could go under “Grey’s Anatomy” and “ABC”. Avoid the temptation to add it to ten different categories though, such as including “drama,” “hospital,” “interns” and “Seattle” because that is just overkill. But if you wrote something great on Grey’s Anatomy, you have made it easy for your reader to find all your posts on Grey’s Anatomy because they simply have to click on the category link at the top or bottom of the entry.
While some bloggers insist that search engine rankings will come naturally to those who wait, who really wants to wait for Google? A blogger can run into several unique challenges when it comes to optimizing for search engines, and it makes sense to get the jump on it now than simply hoping that if you write it, the bots will come. It is far easier to ensure you have a well optimized blog now than trying to figure out what the issue is 6 months down the road when only your blog’s index page is found in Google!
Does anyone else have tips they would have put in their own top 25 list of blog optimization tips? I had some that didn’t make the cut for the top list, but am interested to hear what others feel are the most important tips.
Friday 27 March 2009
5 Ways To Optimize Your Blog and Capture More Repeat Visitors
Miscellaneous Blog Tips 65 comments
Today Rich Page shares five tips on how to optimize websites to capture repeat readers.
You may be a blogger that thinks they have a pretty popular and well created blog - if so, well done. But remember every blog is a work a progress, and there is always room for improvement. Here are 5 great ways to help optimize and improve your website, and inspire new visitors to become repeat visitors:
1: Track your Internal Search Results
One of the easiest ways to gain insight into your blog and improve it is to track your internal search results. You can easily do this using Google Analytics (learn how to track this), or use this cool wordpress plugin. It’s very important to identify your top searched keywords - it helps you identify what’s popular with your visitors (write more content relating to these), and also, just as importantly, what visitors are failing to find on your blog (look for keyword searches that have zero results and create a post about them - as long as you can make it relevant to your blog). The more relevant internal search results the user finds, then the more chances of them signing up to your feed and coming back for more!
2: Reduce the Bounce Rate of your Articles
The best way to stop someone from leaving immediately after reading your blog articles (i.e. bouncing) is to expose them to as much of your blog’s great content as possible, or by getting them to sign up to your feed. And what is the best way to do this? Immediately after the visitor is done reading the blog entry they arrived at (and remember, most visitors don’t arrive at your homepage - they get deep linked in from search engines or other blogs), at the bottom of the article place prominent text links to subscribe and links to read related content (problogger.com actually does a great job of this). Just don’t fail here and bury these important links away on the right hand column, or at the bottom of your comments, like I see so often.
3: Survey and Learn from Your Website Visitors
What’s another great way to improve your blog? This one is simple, yet many blog owners don’t do it - you need gain feedback from your visitors! Simply sign up for a free survey tool like 4Q, and get to know your visitors better. It allows you to ask your visitors questions in the form of a non-obtrusive pop-up survey. Here are the 3 main questions you need to ask your visitors in order to gain insight for optimizing your blog:
* What was the reason you came to this blog?
* Did you find what you were looking for?
* What else would you like to see at this blog?
Asking these questions allows you to gain some real insight into your visitors and their needs - and remember, a blog that doesn’t meet the needs of visitors could spend all the money in the world to get new traffic, but it wouldn’t get many repeat visits (way cheaper) because the visitors aren’t finding what they want. And don’t just survey your visitors - act on what you find! It can often be very revealing…
4: Build a Community into your Blog
Want to get as many repeat visits as possible, without having to rely on RSS feeds to pull visitors back? Then build a community for your blog, and engage not only yourself with your readers, but allow your readers to engage with each other. This is particularly a great idea if you are niche blogger and you have a small but captive audience. There are a number of ways to create this community for your blog - the basic way is to setup and install ‘MyBlogLog‘ or ‘BuddyPress‘ as a widget on your blog. The more advanced way to build a community is to create a social network around your blog using Ning or KickApps. Both of these are free and allow you to fully customize, brand and create your own community, and use your own blog feed as a main ingredient of the community. Win-win situation for you and your readers!
5: Setup Goals and Begin Testing to Improve Them
Lastly, one of the most important things to remember for blogging success is to set goals and try and beat them. And for blogs, your goal is likely to get as many readers as possible. But be more specific and actionable. For example set a weekly goal for new readers, i.e. 100 new subscribers per week. Then, test elements of your website (using Google Website Optimizer) to try and improve your subscribers and reach your goals. One of the best things to test is the ‘subscription’ area, usually found to the top right of your blog - where your RSS feed links and newsletter signup form usually is. Test different calls to actions, different images and different copy. See which one drives the most goal conversions. And for the goal conversion to work, you will need to tag your thanks page with tracking code (which is easily done if you use AWeber to manager your feed readers). Here is a cool plugin to help you use Google Website Optimizer on your blog. Also, if you are selling a product or giving away something like an ebook on your blog, you can track that as a goal and test to improve sign up rates.
So there we have it. And remember, don’t ever think your blog is ‘done’ - always keep striving to improve your blog. If you don’t, before you know it, a competitor will appear out of nowhere and start stealing away your beloved visitors. For more ideas on how to help improve your blog (and websites in general), and to find ways to stop wasting so much money on online marketing, consider checking out my new free ebook all about this.
So, what are you waiting for? Use these tips and start improving your blog right now - and who knows, it may end up being as successful as ProBlogger one day!
Today Rich Page shares five tips on how to optimize websites to capture repeat readers.
You may be a blogger that thinks they have a pretty popular and well created blog - if so, well done. But remember every blog is a work a progress, and there is always room for improvement. Here are 5 great ways to help optimize and improve your website, and inspire new visitors to become repeat visitors:
1: Track your Internal Search Results
One of the easiest ways to gain insight into your blog and improve it is to track your internal search results. You can easily do this using Google Analytics (learn how to track this), or use this cool wordpress plugin. It’s very important to identify your top searched keywords - it helps you identify what’s popular with your visitors (write more content relating to these), and also, just as importantly, what visitors are failing to find on your blog (look for keyword searches that have zero results and create a post about them - as long as you can make it relevant to your blog). The more relevant internal search results the user finds, then the more chances of them signing up to your feed and coming back for more!
2: Reduce the Bounce Rate of your Articles
The best way to stop someone from leaving immediately after reading your blog articles (i.e. bouncing) is to expose them to as much of your blog’s great content as possible, or by getting them to sign up to your feed. And what is the best way to do this? Immediately after the visitor is done reading the blog entry they arrived at (and remember, most visitors don’t arrive at your homepage - they get deep linked in from search engines or other blogs), at the bottom of the article place prominent text links to subscribe and links to read related content (problogger.com actually does a great job of this). Just don’t fail here and bury these important links away on the right hand column, or at the bottom of your comments, like I see so often.
3: Survey and Learn from Your Website Visitors
What’s another great way to improve your blog? This one is simple, yet many blog owners don’t do it - you need gain feedback from your visitors! Simply sign up for a free survey tool like 4Q, and get to know your visitors better. It allows you to ask your visitors questions in the form of a non-obtrusive pop-up survey. Here are the 3 main questions you need to ask your visitors in order to gain insight for optimizing your blog:
* What was the reason you came to this blog?
* Did you find what you were looking for?
* What else would you like to see at this blog?
Asking these questions allows you to gain some real insight into your visitors and their needs - and remember, a blog that doesn’t meet the needs of visitors could spend all the money in the world to get new traffic, but it wouldn’t get many repeat visits (way cheaper) because the visitors aren’t finding what they want. And don’t just survey your visitors - act on what you find! It can often be very revealing…
4: Build a Community into your Blog
Want to get as many repeat visits as possible, without having to rely on RSS feeds to pull visitors back? Then build a community for your blog, and engage not only yourself with your readers, but allow your readers to engage with each other. This is particularly a great idea if you are niche blogger and you have a small but captive audience. There are a number of ways to create this community for your blog - the basic way is to setup and install ‘MyBlogLog‘ or ‘BuddyPress‘ as a widget on your blog. The more advanced way to build a community is to create a social network around your blog using Ning or KickApps. Both of these are free and allow you to fully customize, brand and create your own community, and use your own blog feed as a main ingredient of the community. Win-win situation for you and your readers!
5: Setup Goals and Begin Testing to Improve Them
Lastly, one of the most important things to remember for blogging success is to set goals and try and beat them. And for blogs, your goal is likely to get as many readers as possible. But be more specific and actionable. For example set a weekly goal for new readers, i.e. 100 new subscribers per week. Then, test elements of your website (using Google Website Optimizer) to try and improve your subscribers and reach your goals. One of the best things to test is the ‘subscription’ area, usually found to the top right of your blog - where your RSS feed links and newsletter signup form usually is. Test different calls to actions, different images and different copy. See which one drives the most goal conversions. And for the goal conversion to work, you will need to tag your thanks page with tracking code (which is easily done if you use AWeber to manager your feed readers). Here is a cool plugin to help you use Google Website Optimizer on your blog. Also, if you are selling a product or giving away something like an ebook on your blog, you can track that as a goal and test to improve sign up rates.
So there we have it. And remember, don’t ever think your blog is ‘done’ - always keep striving to improve your blog. If you don’t, before you know it, a competitor will appear out of nowhere and start stealing away your beloved visitors. For more ideas on how to help improve your blog (and websites in general), and to find ways to stop wasting so much money on online marketing, consider checking out my new free ebook all about this.
So, what are you waiting for? Use these tips and start improving your blog right now - and who knows, it may end up being as successful as ProBlogger one day!
Wednesday 25 March 2009
How to Optimize Your Blog for Search Engines
Search Engine Optimization 87 comments
christmas
So you’re looking to increase the profitability of your blog for the Christmas period (and beyond). You’ve optimized your AdSense, Chitika and Affiliate programs, you’ve even written a little seasonal content…. but there’s one missing element…. Traffic.
Unless you actually have people viewing your blog it is very difficult to actually earn anything from it.
So how do you drive traffic to your blog?
I’ve written quite a bit of this previously in a number of posts (for example here) but want to spend a little time talking today about Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Why SEO?
When you are looking online for information on a topic where do you go first?
While I’m sure there will be a variety of answers given to that question - the majority of average web users would answer with one word - ‘Google’.
Every day Search Engines like Google send many millions of web users to websites in their index. While there are plenty of Web 2.0 web indexing services around that are increasing in popularity - the fact is that search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN are still the biggest source of traffic to websites on the web.
As a result - learning how to be indexed and ranked well by them seems like a no brainer.
Writing for Search Engines and Humans
Some bloggers have a problem with the idea of optimizing a blog for search engines. They argue that rather than writing for search engines a blogger’s sole focus should be that they write quality content for humans.
I personally don’t see that writing for humans and search engines have to be mutually exclusive things - in my opinion both can be achieved without compromising either.
Some bloggers argue that if you write for humans that SEO looks after itself. To some extent I agree with that - if you do write quality content that others like you will find that they link up to your site (a key in SEO) - however I would argue that incoming links from other sites is just one part of climbing the rankings in Search Engines (an important part but not the only one).
There are other factors that come into play also and I believe that by knowing them and naturally incorporating them into your blogging you can increase your chances of being found by readers in Google, Yahoo and MSN.
Of course - some people become a little obsessed with SEO and forget the human reader, don’t fall for this trap and keep a balanced approach and you’ll benefit both from traffic from the search engines as well as a loyal readership who keeps coming back for more quality content.
Basic SEO tips for Bloggers
I’ve written previously on this topic so rather than writing the same thing again in a slightly different way will republish some of my previous tips below. I hope you find them useful.
Before I start - I’ll say that while I do get a lot of SE traffic that I’m not really an SEO expert (it isn’t what I devote most of my time to). If you want to read something by someone who has spent a lot more time and effort on the topic I recommend looking at an e-book by Aaron Wall - SEO Book (aff). I’ve actually been reading through it in the last few weeks (it’s been on my to do list for a long time) and have found it really helpful.
SEO experts tend to divide search engine optimization techniques into off site and on site techniques.
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.
* 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
christmas
So you’re looking to increase the profitability of your blog for the Christmas period (and beyond). You’ve optimized your AdSense, Chitika and Affiliate programs, you’ve even written a little seasonal content…. but there’s one missing element…. Traffic.
Unless you actually have people viewing your blog it is very difficult to actually earn anything from it.
So how do you drive traffic to your blog?
I’ve written quite a bit of this previously in a number of posts (for example here) but want to spend a little time talking today about Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Why SEO?
When you are looking online for information on a topic where do you go first?
While I’m sure there will be a variety of answers given to that question - the majority of average web users would answer with one word - ‘Google’.
Every day Search Engines like Google send many millions of web users to websites in their index. While there are plenty of Web 2.0 web indexing services around that are increasing in popularity - the fact is that search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN are still the biggest source of traffic to websites on the web.
As a result - learning how to be indexed and ranked well by them seems like a no brainer.
Writing for Search Engines and Humans
Some bloggers have a problem with the idea of optimizing a blog for search engines. They argue that rather than writing for search engines a blogger’s sole focus should be that they write quality content for humans.
I personally don’t see that writing for humans and search engines have to be mutually exclusive things - in my opinion both can be achieved without compromising either.
Some bloggers argue that if you write for humans that SEO looks after itself. To some extent I agree with that - if you do write quality content that others like you will find that they link up to your site (a key in SEO) - however I would argue that incoming links from other sites is just one part of climbing the rankings in Search Engines (an important part but not the only one).
There are other factors that come into play also and I believe that by knowing them and naturally incorporating them into your blogging you can increase your chances of being found by readers in Google, Yahoo and MSN.
Of course - some people become a little obsessed with SEO and forget the human reader, don’t fall for this trap and keep a balanced approach and you’ll benefit both from traffic from the search engines as well as a loyal readership who keeps coming back for more quality content.
Basic SEO tips for Bloggers
I’ve written previously on this topic so rather than writing the same thing again in a slightly different way will republish some of my previous tips below. I hope you find them useful.
Before I start - I’ll say that while I do get a lot of SE traffic that I’m not really an SEO expert (it isn’t what I devote most of my time to). If you want to read something by someone who has spent a lot more time and effort on the topic I recommend looking at an e-book by Aaron Wall - SEO Book (aff). I’ve actually been reading through it in the last few weeks (it’s been on my to do list for a long time) and have found it really helpful.
SEO experts tend to divide search engine optimization techniques into off site and on site techniques.
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.
* 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
HubSpot's Inbound Internet Marketing Blog
Can Having a Twitter Bio Get You 8 Times as Many Followers?
We've all heard people say "I won't follow you back if you don't have a link and bio" etc. But do people really mean it? Does having a bio and website link in your Twitter profile really make a difference in the number of followers you have? The answer is yes.
I dugg back into the data we've collected from Twitter Grader. We have a bunch of different information on over 1.6 million Twitter accounts, including bio, link and follower data.
The first "aha" moment from this slice of data is the sheer number of users without bios and links. Almost two-thirds of users don't have a bio or link listed on their Twitter profiles.
Looking at the average number of followers shows a very distinct trend. Users with a bio have over 8 times more followers on average than users without a bio and users with a link have over 7.5 times as many as users without.
Beyond sheer number of followers, power users are even less likely to follow you if you don't have a bio and link. (Power users are Twitter users with high Twitter Grades.)
Users with a bio have over 15.5 times more power followers than those without a bio. Users with a link have over 22 times more power followers than without.
And of course your Twitter Grader score is effected strongly.
The bottom line here is that if you haven't already specified a site and a bio for your Twitter profile (and lots of you haven't) go do it now.
Webinar: Twitter for Marketing and PR
|
Download the free webinar for tips and tricks to drive inbound marketing using Twitter. |
Simple. Effective. Successful. Text link advertising with teliad.com
Successfully linked with teliad
teliad is the marketplace that makes the purchase and sale of text links simple. Text link advertising with direct HTML links is an effective form of online advertising that is becoming more and more popular. The text links take the form of text advertisements containing descriptive information and are predominantly placed in the editorial environment of a website. Especially our innovative products, Content-Links and InLinks, methodically target the valuable content area of a webpage, since text links in the content are classified as more important for search engine relevance.Text link advertisements specifically increase the number of visitors to a website and at the same time raise the relevance for search engines. The only form of online advertising that can do both. As opposed to other forms of advertising, such as sponsored links, you benefit with static links in complete independence of click rates or page views.
Success is measurable
Text link buyers can choose from more than 75,000 text link places on 15,000 URLs and 7,000 domains offered in our marketplace. The text link offers are subdivided in a catalogue into over 35 different categories, such as shopping, travel, health or finance. The marketplace is internationally successful: teliad can now be reached in 5 languages. Text links in many different languages are offered in the international marketplace.We are the leading German marketplace for text links. For good reason: we make it easy for you to earn money with text links.
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Monday 23 March 2009
22 immutable laws of Marketing in
1. Guidelines on top.
Product is the first time also have advantages over products better
2. Guidelines on type.
If you can not is the product of a first type, change the nature of that type, or create a new category that you can be the first product.
3. Guidelines ladder.
Strategies you will apply depending on the stair some things that you are using.
4. Principle of dual.
In the long run, all the rival will then only two remaining horses.
5. Principles of thinking and awareness.
Marketing is not a battle of products, it is a battle of perceptions of customers, and sometimes makes up the awareness of the client before creating more advantages than penetrated the market first.
6. The principle of focus.
Concepts have the highest impact in marketing a property is in thinking of potential customers.
7. The principle of expansion.
Expand the brand is usually a pressure can not be intensified.
8. Guidelines and the unique superiority
Own position of superiority in the thinking of customers as vital elements, marketing is a continuous effort in the search of unique.
9. Principles of **** division.
Over time, a product will **** and divided into two (or more) category.
10. Principles of the heart.
Strategies without the emotions will have no effect.
11. Principles characteristic of
When you have to focus on product features, any aspect which has one of the characteristics and performance.
12. Guidelines on the real thà
When you accept a Nhược points, potential customers will give you an advantage
13. The principle of sacrifice.
To be one you have to reject one another.
14. Principles of success.
Success often leads to the haughty, arrogant and failed to
15. Principles of failure
Failure is to be expected and accepted
16. Principles of factors can not anticipating ago.
Unless you are prepared the plans of the competitors, you can not know what will happen in the future.
17. Principles of strength điệu
Real situation often contrary to what appears on the report.
18. Principles of family
The success is often based on a best time that based on trends
19. Principles of scenario.
Marketing effects usually occur and last
20. Principles of the antipodal
If you target the second, your strategy by top decision
21. Principles of origin.
Made in the brand name usually more important than quality
22. Principles of natural resources.
Not have sufficient budget resources and knowledge necessary expertise, ideas can not become reality and brand name can not be created.
Blog - personal diary, but with society. (Photo from Internet)
Anyone in we also have time pimping, more giãi tung burden are VAC, and get a hand through difficult appeased. However, it should be careful when selecting media clearance nỗi sad. Blog is not a suitable tool!
Today, the blog (personal diary on the Internet) has become a part of the lives of young people and modern. They chat with friends via blog, search for a new relationship through the blog, and they share, motivate your life on the blog.
Waves blog spills from country to country, wool from the star to the personal chastity. But then with the impact of borderless blog, the potential risk of exceeding the figure of people.
Please log on ... Bay City
Photo marriage of Kim Hee Sun is her generous bounce blog to share with fans. (Photo taken from people's blogs)
Over half of the year, movie star famous Kim Hee Sun massively raised private blog of photos such as wedding photos, influence honeymoon, photo organizing birthday parties, photo spouse errant in supermarkets, the two images together decorate the warm welcome Christmas.
Even, picture spouse just wake up, both sleep wear, face undecked also "beauty icon a" Korea generous post. With which the message is as love between husband and wife stars. The purpose of Kim Hee Sun is shared. She said: "I posted the picture because of their wish to share the joy with the fans."
But unfortunate, most of them not exciting with "extensive" by Kim Hee Sun. A Chinese blogger comments: "Kim Hee Sun, please do not turn her wedding into a cheap play."
A few days after bringing personal photos online, Kim Hee Sun has faced waves boycott by the public and abroad. Name, her career may be destruction because the action from the exposure to blog.
Diary sad ... also described street
Blog Hoang Thuy Linh's skyrocketing number of the scandal see "movies sex UK Gold". (Picture is only illustrative)
In blog world, it's easy to find the message to exposure sorrow individuals, seek understanding from residents network.
Blog has only told the couple conflict. The reasons for her husband with him. Too grief and despair, the wife to blog retrace past life there. She points to more time in the life of both husband and wife, from the happy to the period of difficulties, from the living enrichment sure to divide assets. All secrets large and small exposure is clearly not to be more specific. Her confidence and find an iron from the comment feedback on your friends network.
Including the husband, the children, to work legs, the female owner blog through exposure of the conflict between husband and her mother started. The message of her overflowing ngập nỗi sad and hopeless. Network mining, crab, react strongly to the surface is changed from the way the article is a blog owner often use.
Again the blog Stories nerve uncomfortable even in office. When the child is not a new behavior for the right margin only. Sếp is at the top make the requirements too significant, making the employer on a blog under the tired nhoai without effect. A private world that is complete exposure for thousands of thousand people, far from familiar to strange and occupies the threshold.
All stories will not have anything serious if the blog owner only stop in the matter and seek clearance mental stress. Unfortunately, the majority of blogs in the suffering, the owner has complete course put too many details about the individual, even names and addresses, titles, images of characters are related exposure is the log book on the network.
Work, the employer is not anticipating the consequences leave personal blog that may have caused you. With the speed of spread of the internet and calculate mò human, quickly press the button after the post, message confidentiality and families of individuals has been spread with the speed of light. Result, they become famous people begrudge the network does not know the never got clean
Blog personal danger as a bomb left
Anyone in we also have time pimping, more giãi tung burden are VAC, and get a hand through difficult appeased. However, it should be careful when selecting media clearance nỗi sad. Blog is not a suitable tool!
Simply because the blog is a log book to expose the daylight. The information posted on it not only affects the individual in a transient but can cause the long-term consequences later.
An article on The Economist has the analysis of very interesting personal blog: "Journalism often use the phrase" personal diary online "when it should brief comments on blogs. The definition is not wrong , but not completely correct ...
Normally, logs are private, confidential and of course never be associated with other log. But the blog is social, whether placed in the public (public) or group (only allow a group of people). "
Blog is a means to transfer messages. The information you give to blog even though not all want to bring "mission" of a message from you to the community.
When you choose to talk about this without talking about the other, that is a message. When you decide to show the love or hate, not love or do not hate, it is a message. When you are blogging regularly, in close decisions blog, that is a message. But when you play a message, it will create the impact, whether you want to or not, you have to meditate before or not.
Therefore, tips are: Make sure what you want, and consider what you intend to hold out on the private blog. If not careful, personal blog is no longer a quiet garden to the result that a bomb brought destructive power!
Today, the blog (personal diary on the Internet) has become a part of the lives of young people and modern. They chat with friends via blog, search for a new relationship through the blog, and they share, motivate your life on the blog.
Waves blog spills from country to country, wool from the star to the personal chastity. But then with the impact of borderless blog, the potential risk of exceeding the figure of people.
Please log on ... Bay City
Photo marriage of Kim Hee Sun is her generous bounce blog to share with fans. (Photo taken from people's blogs)
Over half of the year, movie star famous Kim Hee Sun massively raised private blog of photos such as wedding photos, influence honeymoon, photo organizing birthday parties, photo spouse errant in supermarkets, the two images together decorate the warm welcome Christmas.
Even, picture spouse just wake up, both sleep wear, face undecked also "beauty icon a" Korea generous post. With which the message is as love between husband and wife stars. The purpose of Kim Hee Sun is shared. She said: "I posted the picture because of their wish to share the joy with the fans."
But unfortunate, most of them not exciting with "extensive" by Kim Hee Sun. A Chinese blogger comments: "Kim Hee Sun, please do not turn her wedding into a cheap play."
A few days after bringing personal photos online, Kim Hee Sun has faced waves boycott by the public and abroad. Name, her career may be destruction because the action from the exposure to blog.
Diary sad ... also described street
Blog Hoang Thuy Linh's skyrocketing number of the scandal see "movies sex UK Gold". (Picture is only illustrative)
In blog world, it's easy to find the message to exposure sorrow individuals, seek understanding from residents network.
Blog has only told the couple conflict. The reasons for her husband with him. Too grief and despair, the wife to blog retrace past life there. She points to more time in the life of both husband and wife, from the happy to the period of difficulties, from the living enrichment sure to divide assets. All secrets large and small exposure is clearly not to be more specific. Her confidence and find an iron from the comment feedback on your friends network.
Including the husband, the children, to work legs, the female owner blog through exposure of the conflict between husband and her mother started. The message of her overflowing ngập nỗi sad and hopeless. Network mining, crab, react strongly to the surface is changed from the way the article is a blog owner often use.
Again the blog Stories nerve uncomfortable even in office. When the child is not a new behavior for the right margin only. Sếp is at the top make the requirements too significant, making the employer on a blog under the tired nhoai without effect. A private world that is complete exposure for thousands of thousand people, far from familiar to strange and occupies the threshold.
All stories will not have anything serious if the blog owner only stop in the matter and seek clearance mental stress. Unfortunately, the majority of blogs in the suffering, the owner has complete course put too many details about the individual, even names and addresses, titles, images of characters are related exposure is the log book on the network.
Work, the employer is not anticipating the consequences leave personal blog that may have caused you. With the speed of spread of the internet and calculate mò human, quickly press the button after the post, message confidentiality and families of individuals has been spread with the speed of light. Result, they become famous people begrudge the network does not know the never got clean
Blog personal danger as a bomb left
Anyone in we also have time pimping, more giãi tung burden are VAC, and get a hand through difficult appeased. However, it should be careful when selecting media clearance nỗi sad. Blog is not a suitable tool!
Simply because the blog is a log book to expose the daylight. The information posted on it not only affects the individual in a transient but can cause the long-term consequences later.
An article on The Economist has the analysis of very interesting personal blog: "Journalism often use the phrase" personal diary online "when it should brief comments on blogs. The definition is not wrong , but not completely correct ...
Normally, logs are private, confidential and of course never be associated with other log. But the blog is social, whether placed in the public (public) or group (only allow a group of people). "
Blog is a means to transfer messages. The information you give to blog even though not all want to bring "mission" of a message from you to the community.
When you choose to talk about this without talking about the other, that is a message. When you decide to show the love or hate, not love or do not hate, it is a message. When you are blogging regularly, in close decisions blog, that is a message. But when you play a message, it will create the impact, whether you want to or not, you have to meditate before or not.
Therefore, tips are: Make sure what you want, and consider what you intend to hold out on the private blog. If not careful, personal blog is no longer a quiet garden to the result that a bomb brought destructive power!
E-Marketing: Blog - a new way to market-friendly but efficient
At present every second, the world has a blog site. With young people, as this page ... electronic diary, but shared together in the internet world! To attract and retain more people see the blog is to update the information, the latest events in the field of readers, writers and experts, interest or community interest
Blog channel is becoming "media" have more impact to the community. Blogger.com alone has over 200,000 active blog with more than 1 million people are using. The new village in Vietnam more than a year, blogs have increasingly shown the power not only in the number of blogs increased dispose earth each day. Many are brought to blog also cause shock and spread with high speed dizziness. Tendency to provide information to the press as the blog of Vietnam is in the movement of the blog to save the world. Blog along with newspapers and the Internet are treated as the media it's effective.
According to a survey by the U.S., every 5 young in age from 12 to 17, with 1 being to maintain individual blogs. Blog is also not only for children of that extended to all elements in society. To the report also to the players to exchange with readers, get feedback quickly and attract participation in the competition. This is not only individuals but companies and independent blogs to get such places to introduce yourself but do not take one cent cost money. When business building or a blog, a lot of people to read will collect the feedback to think of consumers, with information and new trends in related fields. An attractive blog, the reader will want to read to read and wait for the new.
You will ask for the official website of enterprises it? Please thưa since that appears when the blog seems to connect to the website is created especially attractive to readers. When to see the Internet website, customers often have a disturbed feedback not? This clearance is not connected by any comparison with free connection through the blog for readers to find delight and information exchange.
Community blog connecting each member to their blog, with blog readers preferred. Advantages of enterprise blog is that it brings together the views of readers - more customers, impact on the reader an emotional, quietly and reliably, but more effective for enterprises to create image-friendly, not rigid, bureaucracy, easy access ... This is because when the blog, people can feel closer. Factors private blog will create more trust than the official website of the enterprise.
It found the enterprises through business as customers will want and only purchase from the company style. Moreover, in the purchase, the oral transmission, RI on a different product that is often decide to buy or not. Now participating in the blog site, people search in the other comments for goods to buy. Conversely, the enterprise in addition to gathering the feedback again can affect the decision to buy or sell your blog readers ...
The marketing staff has used blogs as a tool for effective business, amount of power actually leave. While every day, billions of people still search on the web!
Saturday 21 March 2009
Skill to write paper
Skill to write paper
I have been fortunate to attend a class on writing skill in English paper at Todai (Uni. of Tokyo). Layer for SV Todai end of the year but with my last exam ki useful. Faculty are the UK, have senior in rewriting the paper field of Informatics. Rewriting is reading and the correct paper for the author, especially the author that English is not the native language before you submit the journal, conference. Say It I learned, and even Todai INRIA, research in France also have this service.
There are things that I must wrestle each self when writing paper, for example: name stars as the title, abstract writing, introduction how to test the (tense), ... are mentioned most in this subject. I really want to share but it has learned with you because I know you also sure it has not encountered difficulties as me.
I read a very worrying emails long du issues including spicy start to go away, so to stiff-chan, I will send a small parcel in each email. Many people read email in English does not provide chan that I will write a referral in English before then new to the English original into.
Now, please begin with the story: Written in the paper?
Paper here limit again in the paper that as scientists we want to send (submit) to the conference or journal. Target when sending the paper is often publish results of research. Therefore need to do that prominent paper in which we need to publish. English called this message is clouded thesis, argument or claim.
Remember that your main aim is usually to persuade your readers of something. For this reason, a paper should be based on a thesis, or main argument. A paper that only states facts is not a good paper. You must draw some conclusions from those facts.
Vietnamese
I have been fortunate to attend a class on writing skill in English paper at Todai (Uni. of Tokyo). Layer for SV Todai end of the year but with my last exam ki useful. Faculty are the UK, have senior in rewriting the paper field of Informatics. Rewriting is reading and the correct paper for the author, especially the author that English is not the native language before you submit the journal, conference. Say It I learned, and even Todai INRIA, research in France also have this service.
There are things that I must wrestle each self when writing paper, for example: name stars as the title, abstract writing, introduction how to test the (tense), ... are mentioned most in this subject. I really want to share but it has learned with you because I know you also sure it has not encountered difficulties as me.
I read a very worrying emails long du issues including spicy start to go away, so to stiff-chan, I will send a small parcel in each email. Many people read email in English does not provide chan that I will write a referral in English before then new to the English original into.
Now, please begin with the story: Written in the paper?
Paper here limit again in the paper that as scientists we want to send (submit) to the conference or journal. Target when sending the paper is often publish results of research. Therefore need to do that prominent paper in which we need to publish. English called this message is clouded thesis, argument or claim.
Remember that your main aim is usually to persuade your readers of something. For this reason, a paper should be based on a thesis, or main argument. A paper that only states facts is not a good paper. You must draw some conclusions from those facts.
Vietnamese
List of DoFollow Blogs, easy get backlink now
What happens if a blog doesnt install a DoFollow plugin or removed the Nofollow in their blog? Search engines will ignore those links and will not be counted as a backlink to your site.
Although these blogs have installed a DoFollow plugin in their blogs most of them are moderated to lessen spam in their blogs. When submitting comments to these blogs you might want to write some relevant and useful content and always remember not to spam their blogs!
When you submit one comment to all of them then it gives you more more back links to your Website/Blog. And these back links can help you get you a better PageRank.
Wednesday 18 March 2009
MARKETING BLOG 3.0: BRAND BUILDING BLOG
With two previous Marketing Blog version 1.0 and version 2.0 is you can have a total number of page view is quite attractive to meet a number of beautiful grass, it is more of the work you do. You have to be a list of the blog's Commen Wealth of Vietnam 360, is no longer matches her friends sitting alone crying in the corner khuất again.
Perhaps now the total number of page view it is not so important as when you view the lower instead what you want is what I assert by yourself or another way to build a brand for your blog. For every time someone mentioned your blog, they will be content to your blog with a topic which is do.Sau the supplement to the blog you can HOT and have a brand for your blog.
MARKETING BLOG VERSION 3.0
1) Avatar on Top.
Some people think that is why your friendlist Ava has friends on the avatar and friends at the above does not. After a period of research and germ mò final answer is Godfarther recreate the original is based on the update of the blog owner.
Islamic sure the top of the friendlist you will always see your blog's avatar is always in the top of the friendlist and each time you press the Home of your blog you will always see your blog at first. So that you always update your blog with the review, a review will be considered as a new blog and your blog immediately raised will be No.1 in the top right friendlist. Now and in godfarther Top 100 Reviewer best of my quite long already.
But if you write a review lười you just press the button save blast again is also calculated as 1 and review the blog you will top position ngay.Nhu so attractive to the avatar who surf through the blogs you opportunities click on the blog you will be up a lot, help increase visitors visit your blog.
Strategy 2.Spam Comments:
Yes as written in the Marketing version 1.0, the spam comments that the decision to the famous fast or slow by the blog ban.Cac you go quick comments in many blogs is to increase opportunities for many people visit blog, but you should focus your spam blogs where the comments are not too quick not fast is very tired.
Monday not have any new blog is also so many spam messages when you blog that unfinished business to spam people to read will find chán less impressive for the blog you like and brand your blog will become so chán with exclusive gia.Vay when that blog you feel outward or spam to anyone to read when they will be impressive and memorable about your blog, through which your brand is going.
3.Public Relation:
This is hard because to be referred to the press or to other blogs and referred to the ad on your blog, you really have to have any actual blog or to copy them and cited the blog as They promote your blog to other people.
As I personally want the blog to others or to have a copy of the writing category 3:
* Dí Hài Convention dom: Yes xì teen how this important
* Mushy romance
L * Enter the Comment xao.
And when you have an article or the then you should spam a lot on the blog to report to create the natural balance luan.Tat way through relationships friends shrine as serial Andre wrote but it really is not effective for work in practice.
4.Message Strategy:
When you have a large blog you friendlist in the notice to them if you have any message or by one method is fast and convenient by blog.Luon always remember that any actual or calculated and share high outward message message to friends.
Monday is when the log message you must turn off the friends list to your recipients do not see what your friendlist and they list that the spam message to your ban.Nhu This is affecting brand blog you will be listed on spam blog and immediately after you receive this message when vulnerable del now.
Unfortunately this feature has broken its 2 months ago and not the message you will receive your feedback.
5.Joining Group: Pooling ideas:
Group is also creating a shrine to serial and create a brand for the group as well as fish nhan.Cai benefits of creating a group you can learn, together creative ideas that are new to viet.No also part create pressure for you to write or hon.Va a more important when you are all ideas that you think the blog is still known through brand groups and people will still visit.
Twitter is a great social tool
Twitter is a great social tool
Twitter gives access to networks
Need to find people interested in your niche? No problem, simply search for a related word in twitter search and find hundreds of people tweeting on your topic. A search for SEO as an example shows a list of people who have mentioned SEO in their tweets. With a little legwork and an examination of their followers and who it is they follow you can quickly find people with related interests. Whilst this isn’t a perfect model, it will for specific niche terms give you insight and access to people you might otherwise have had to have spent hours researching.
Twitter is a great social tool
Twitter is one of those communication tools that can be a fantastic asset in terms of building connections and enhancing relationships with those you already have. Be it with friends, colleagues, prospects or clients twitter offers you the opportunity to connect and share in ways that previously were simply not possible. You can plug your twitter stream into other social accounts, facebook and friendfeed. You can plug it in to your blog and simultaneously update your blog on the fly as you tweet. You can share pictures with friends, connect via text directly to a users twitter message account. It’s a two way process too. Most non UK twitter users can connect for free via text message in a two way interchange meaning that friends (people you’ve added) can send message to your phone via the twitter DM system.
But for me, the real power in twitter is in the opportunities it gives us all to connect to a wider range of people in a broader geographical space in a multitude of social and business environments. You can use twitter in ways that best suits you and you alone. Want to spam your network and followers? Boom, the choice is yours? Prefer to nurture and grow your network then boom, your choice again. Through being social and engaging with like minded people, you really can forge useful meaningful relationships, be they business or social.
Twitter is a great promotional tool
The final reason for the purposes of this post at least, is that Twitter is a great way of pushing a message out - It enables for direct access to the twitter streams of your followers, putting your message directly before them.
How you choose to construct your message and the relative success of your message depends on many factors of course. None of us want to do things for selfish or unhelpful people, it’s not a take take take phenomenon. Like many other social media platforms out there your success or failure to promote what it is you do, or who you are, or a service or message that you think people might benefit from is, at the end of the piece, dependent upon your ability to communicate and connect to others.
Be they power users with big networks and influence, or general users with smaller more tightly focused followings your message simply won’t fly if you don’t have presence and connectivity.
Twitter is a revolution
I make no bones about it. To me, twitter is amazing. It’s like web 3 offering up endless possibilities to break strangleholds and reshape the communications and search mould.
It’s invigorated the whole tech space and has generated excitement and buzz across the spectrum. Iphone apps like tweetie, twitterfon, twitterific, twinkle all enable for constant interaction be you walking or sitting on a bus or train. if you have a bit of 3g then you can continue building and sharing or just plain having fun with it all.
Don’t get me wrong not everyone ‘gets it’ some look at it and think WTF? Like a colleague remarked the other day on my status update around sticking a chicken in the oven to feed the kids, it was hard for him to understand where the value in that lay. Heck in lots of ways he’s right too, a bit like my drunken tweets repleat with pictures and my various trials and tribulations, but yet for many this is the whole attraction of twitter. Twitter enables for access to all manner of whatever it is we choose to share - its a part of the human condition to want to know, explore, laugh and cry. maybe in todays busy busy time starved world, tools like twitter allow us to use these pauses within our lives to say something random, to put it out there, to micro blog, to micro interact even.
I can’t recall the last time I personally got so zealous and bought in to a product that is, by and large a glorified bulletin board wih pictures.
I’m reminded of a discussion with @davefreeman the other day on the walk to Sainsburys to pick up some lunch, we talked about times of old the MSN Chatrooms whereby everyone there was randomly talking to people they knew nothing about screaming “ASL” or some other less charitable form of ape cry. The history is that MSN on the back of public concerns around children and paedophilles generated by tabloids hungry for headlines on the advice of legal counsel pouring tales of grief and woe, elected to shut them down. I’m not saying that twitter is in any way a replacement; it isn’t thats clear. But if we take the enagement that msn chatrooms had and broaden the reason out a little, then we can safely draw a conclusion that people like to connect and communicate. Twitter ramps that up a little and connects the offline worlld with the on. That’s powerful.
Tuesday 17 March 2009
Seo blogger - get traffic your blog
It’s the dream of every blogger to get a lot of traffic, but something first time bloggers often don’t realize is that just publishing a few posts will not get them regular readers. I am no expert in getting traffic, but I have been working on a few things which has increased my traffic a lot.
When I first started this blog I used to get only about 10-20 visitors a day.
After the first few months, I started getting traffic from Google and other search engines and my unique visitors increased to about 100 a day. Now for the past few weeks I have been getting about 550 visitors a day.
The sudden increase in traffic I had from about 100-500 visitors was mainly because my recent posts were linked back from many sites. So yes, linking can get you traffic depending on which sites link to you. Links can be thought of as the currency of blogs.
I received a lot of emails (even while writing this) from bloggers asking how they can get more traffic, I hope this helps…
Blog Design
A good design won’t bring you traffic but it will get your visitors to stay longer. No one will stay on your blog too long if the layout or navigation annoys them. So the first thing to do is to select a good theme for your blog and then design your own header. The goal is to have a unique blog that stands out from all other blogs (making your visitors want to come back again and again).
Often bloggers select a theme and forget about the design. The problem here is that your blog will look similar to hundreds of blogs that use the same theme.
Your design should allow your visitors to access the main pages of your blog and to contact you easily. Your blog should have an about page and an author photo. The more a reader knows about you, the more they trust your content.
Quality Content
Your blog should have good content inorder to keep your visitors coming back. By good content I mean well written posts that are unique and useful at the same time. Writing original content is definitely the key.
Do not copy-paste contents directly from other blogs to your blog. Re-blogging is a bad thing and will kill your traffic. The solution here is to write that content in your own words adding your own unique ideas to it. And don’t forget to link to the original post.
The more engaged you are with your content, the more interesting it will be.
Get Links
The more links you have the more traffic you get. Like I said before links are the currency of blogs. So how do you go about getting links to your blog?
Well written posts are often linked back by many sites. You are lucky if you get linked by heavily trafficked sites.
Another way is to get links from other bloggers. Link to their blogs and ask them politely to do the same for you. Also visit the ‘links’ section of a blog (if they have one) and check for a link exchange form. If there is, submit your blog after linking to theirs.
You may also take part in other link exchanging programs.
Join Conversations
Most of my first visitors came to my blog because I left a comment on theirs. When you comment on a blog leave your blog address. Often people like to know who is reading their blog and will come visiting you.Readers of that blog will also pay a visit to your blog.But do not comment just for the sake of it. Make genuine comments that relate with the post. In the process you will not only get visitors to your blog but might also make friends.
Take part in Blog Top Sites
Submitting your blog to Blog Top Sites like blogtopsites.com and top100bloggers.com is another way to get more traffic. These networks make your blog easier to find and search for as well. After you sign up for an account on their website, you just need to copy a bit of code and paste it somewhere on your blog.
You can also take part in blog traffic exchange communities like BlogExplosion and BlogClicker.
To join these blog traffic exchange communities - visit the site, sign up, confirm your account, add your blog to the member directory and then start visiting other member’s blogs.
Basically, you need to earn ‘credits’ in order to get blog traffic exposure. These credits are often gained by visiting other member’s blogs. When you have enough credits, your blog becomes eligible for promotion. Usually, a link or graphic to your blog will be shown on the main site or in fellow member’s blogs. This is how other people find your blog.
Of course, the more members there are in the community, the more potential visitors. So, if you are part of a blog traffic community, it’s good to promote the communities you belong to as well. Besides, when you promote the community through a referral system, you get more credits too.
Tag Technorati
Technorati is one of the best traffic providers for bloggers. People find your blogs easily when people search by technorati tags. Technorati will rank your blog based on the number of links from other websites.The higher your rank the easier your blog is to find when people search for things.
If you do not have a Technorati account, signup here. After you have setup the main settings, such as your profile, you need to claim your blog.
Make good use of Technorati tags by tagging every keyword in each of your posts. If you use WordPress, I recommend Ultimate Tag Warrior (UTW) which makes tagging Technorati a lot easier.
By tagging your post effectively you will get a lot of quality traffic to your blog.
Monday 16 March 2009
10 Ways To Optimize Blog Traffic
This is a list any beginning blogger will find useful. It is mainly for wordpress users, this will definitly help boost traffic, and optimize your wordpress setup for the greatest visibility for search engines. You can also check out my previous articles similar to this topic, which lists some of the Best SEO Plugins for Wordpress.
- Permalink Structure
This is a great way to get better visibility from search engines, instead of having a site url of “domain.com/?p=345″, it would rather be “domain.com/05/20/06/google-bought-youtube/”. To change your permalink structure you need to login to your Wordpress admin panel, then go to Options > Permalinks - Keywords In Content
Using keywords in your post title is important, but you also need to use keywords throughout your post. Concentrate on the first paragraph then use variations of your main keyword throughout the rest of your post. - Header Tags
The header tags are used when assigning a title, typically within a post. These title tags are have a numerical value associated with them that also indicates their importance, ie. <> is used for your most important header, <> would be used for a sub title etc. Place the same keywords as used in your post title in the <> tag then use variations of your keywords in <> / <>tags for optimum effect. - Install the Meta tag description and UTW plugins
Head META Description - Optimizes the meta description for search engines to index your site properly.
Ultimate Tag Warrior - Makes it easier by searching through the tags you made for the posts. - Related Posts
When a person visits your blog you want them to stay for as long as you can. One of the best ways to keep visitors interested is to show them other content on your blog that may be related to the post they are currently reading. The easiest way to do this is with the ‘Related Posts‘ plugin. Upload using your FTP client into the wp-content > plugins folder, then login to your Wordpress admin panel and activate the plugin from the ‘Plugins’ page. - Use Sitemaps
To get the most traffic from search engines like Google it is best to get as many of your pages indexed as possible. Make it easier by installing the Google Sitemaps plugin. Upload into wp-content > plugins via FTP and then activate from the Plugins page. This will then create an XML file that Googlebot can spider and then find all your content. You’ll need a Sitemaps account though where you can register your new Sitemap. - Use proper HTML Tags
Using “Alt” tags on your images and “Title” tags not only helps your search engine rankings, but it also helps disabled people with screen readers view the content on your site. It also can help your page be valid HTML (another thing that can help your SE ranking). I recommend simply describing the link/image and not trying to cram tons of keywords to boost your ranking. For more information on doing this, visit W3C’s site and look up the tag for the version of HTML/XHTML used on your site (if you want it to be valid). - Build Backlinks
To get more traffic you need backlinks. Ideally other blogs will like what you write and link to you, but if you are just starting out and need a little exposure then submit your blog technorati.com. Other ways to get backlinks is via commenting on other blogs and using trackbacks. - Ping Other Sites Automatically when you Update your Blog
Pinging other sites allows other sites to get updates from your blog much sooner and automatically when you make a new post. To have your blog update other sites when you update it, login to your Wordpress admin area, select Options > Writing and copy and paste the links below, under “Update Services”
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php
http://www.blogsnow.com/ping
http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080 - Spread the Word
While it may not seem like much, telling people you know can help you build a site. People you know can offer advice on design, topics, etc. and let people they know about your site. People who know you are also far more likely to comment on your postings, making your site look more active, thereby encouraging others to do the same. If you choose to do this step, ask the person to tell 3 other people they know about your site. This will in effect create a small network of people reading and commenting on your site. Plus, if they really like your site they’ll continue to tell others about it.
Some useful tips to increase your Alexa Rank
1) Encourage your friends and others like blog readers, webmasters and visitors to use alexa toolbar. Add link to the page of alexa that explains about alexa ranking and dowload instructions.
2) Install alexa toolbar and make your website as default home page for all browsers in your office and on your pc. It will be useful if work on dynamic IP addresses.
3) Write about Alexa and its importance in your blog or article section in your website.
4) Write on very important topic like domain or SEO related to webmasters.
5) Post your article to social book marking websites.
6) Join community forum and be the part of webmaster topic and add your website in your signature.
7) Use digg, myspace and stumbleupon to increase more traffic to your website. Content should be attractive
Sunday 15 March 2009
25 Blog Optimization Tips Even Dear Old Dad Could Ace (Plus 10 More Tips for Mom!) June 3rd, 2008 by Richard Burckhardt | 19 Comments
As fate would have it, my 55 Quick SEO Tips Even Your Mother Would Love post (hint - read on for ten more bonus tips!) came out just in time for Mothers Day, so, in honor of dad and Fathers Day, here are a few tips that even dad could follow to boost the traffic on his golf or fishing blog!
SEO DadAgain, maybe not my dad, but then, I’m nearly 53 myself (old enough to be a grandfather) and I’m writing this stuff! Don’t assume that we old geezers won’t get it!
;-)
A blog is one of the best and easiest ways to generate fresh, up to date content for your site as well as link love. Good, quality content naturally attracts links, but there are ways to optimize your blog to get the biggest bang for your buck.
What is a blog? Short for web log, a blog is a content management system, basically an interactive web site that allows you to create and post content through a web-based control panel. Rather than create a web page and upload it, you just log into your blog control panel and write articles and post them. They are live immediately and readers can post comments so that it is a more interactive experience for the visitor.
For some, a blog can completely replace a traditional web site. With an almost word processor-like interface, even dear old dad can be blogging in no time!
And, one of the great features of a blog is the built-in RSS feed that visitors can subscribe to for keeping up with your new content. An RSS feed is commonly referred to as “Really Simple Syndication” and it does just what the name suggests - it allows your blog articles and news to be automatically retrieved by user feed readers (like Google Reader, MyYahoo, BlogLines, etc.) all over the world as you post them. The distribution potentially drives traffic, deep links and popularity to your blog which can help with your rankings. Pretty cool, huh?
In addition to providing a platform for terrific information (for humans and search engines), a blog is a natural pathway to the world of social media. Blogs are interactive, encouraging posts and information from visitors, and syndicated through RSS feeds, spreading your content (and links) across the web to be found in search engines, dedicated blog searches, news feeds, you name it.
Bottom line - if you don’t have a blog, get one now!
The plugins (small programs that add features to your blog, usually free) mentioned are specifically for the free self-hosted version of WordPress, probably the most popular blog platform currently used, but the concepts apply to all blogs.
1. Use full text in your RSS feed. It is common to just include the first paragraph or two (a summary) in what goes out in the feed and then insert a “More” link to get the reader to go to your blog. That diminishes your ability to get back links from services like TechMeMe because any links below the “More” won’t appear. Use the full text. Don’t worry about your feed being duplicate content. According to Rick Klau, formerly of Feedburner and now with Google, a feed in itself will never be considered duplicate content.
2. Optimize the text in the RSS feed just like you should with your posts and web pages. Use descriptive, keyword rich text in your title and description.
3. RSS feeds with podcasts and video enclosures will get you into additional RSS directories and engines. Be sure to use show notes (text transcripts) for your podcasts and videos, though. Remember, search engines love text and can’t yet pull content from multimedia files.
4. Include tag clouds on pages. Tag clouds are basically keywords from posts on your blog that are linked to a search results page on your blog that include all articles related to the keyword. Let’s say the word that shows up in the “cloud” (basically just a list) is “widgets” and you click on it. You’ll get a page showing all posts on your blog that are tagged with the “widgets” tag. To produce tag clouds, Simple Tags, a free plugin for WordPress, can be used.
5. Use a Related Posts plugin. Cross linking to related posts on your blog helps with your internal linking, making keyword rich anchor text more prominent on your blog as well as helping your visitors navigate your site. Use a related posts plugin for WordPress like Contextual Related Posts.
6. Top Ten Posts with links. This can be put on auto pilot with yet another plugin that automates the process of deciding which posts get clicked on the most and placing a list on your blog for visitors (and spiders) to see and follow. Popularity Contest is a good WordPress plugin for this.
7. Add Technorati tags to your posts. Technorati tracks blogs and social media and tagging your posts can help spread the word about your content. Go to Technorati, register for an account (it’s free) and claim your blog as your own. A nice plugin to help automate the placement of Technorati tags on your blog is Simple Tags (different plugin from the “Simple Tags” mentioned above).
8. Optimize your TITLE. Don’t just let your blog software automatically create the TITLE for your post by pulling the text out of your post heading. Customize and optimize it. The SEO TITLE Tag plugin is perfect for WordPress. And, just like with any web page TITLE, put your company name or the name of the blog at the END (if you must include it at all). Unless you are Coca Cola or Microsoft, NOBODY will be searching for it. Sorry…
9. Make posts sticky. By using a “sticky post” plugin, you can create keyword rich content that will stay at the top of a category page, for instance, rather than moving down as additional content is posted. I am currently using WP Sticky.
10. Create Sitemaps. The search engines can follow your RSS feed sitemap just like they can follow one for a normal web site. Create sitemaps for each category RSS feed and tell the search engines about them, either by pointing to them in your robots.txt file or by submitting them to Yahoo Site Explorer or Google Webmaster Central.
11. Use Feedburner. Feedburner offers a ton of free features that can add to your blog’s optimization and marketing efforts, including stats, post e-mail notifications, the ability to include Flickr photo posts and much more. Now owned by Google, features that were previously paid services like MyBrand are now free.
12. Use Optional Excerpts. When you make a post, WordPress will grab some text to display on your category page and in your feed (if you aren’t using a full feed as described above). Unfortunately, it doesn’t always grab good text. Using the Optional Excerpts feature in WordPress, you can type in the exact keyword rich, topical text that you want displayed.
13. Domain name - In a nutshell, if you think having your blog on a separate domain from, say, your business, will give you more authority and street credit, then go for it. It boils down to a choice of mydomain.com/blogname or blogname.com.
14. Use the Update Service built into WordPress. This is in the Options menu and all you do is place a list of URLs to different services like Feedster, Netgator, Technorati, etc. and whenever you make a post, those services will be notified. You can find a list of the services at WordPress Update Service.
15. CEO blogging - priceless! If you are running a business, particularly a consumer driven business, get your CEO (Dad?) blogging! CEO influence on a blog is incredible as this is the VOICE of the company. And, responding to reader comments will cause your credibility to skyrocket! This is especially true for a family business. It just makes visitors feel welcome.
16. Socialize. Interact with your visitors. Don’t just publish your posts and sit back. Answer questions, link out to their sites when they offer good content, respond to their comments in a timely, informative manner, etc.
17. Own a niche. It’s a lot easier to dominate a space if you start out with a smaller, less competitive, narrowly focused subject area. For example, you’re more likely to become a dominant player with a blog about “rechargeable outdoor power tools” than you are for simply “tools’ which is way too broad a term with a lot more competition.
18. Work your titles for both audiences - readers and searchers. Be sure you start out with the title of your post to attract readers. After the post has some history and has fallen into the archive section of your blog, go back and optimize the title for SEO.
19. Keep the post slug the same. Write this yourself, don’t let WordPress generate it. Don’t go back and change it at a later date because this is what determines how your post link is formed. Writing your own post slug allows you to create an easy to read, optimized URL.
20. Optimize for the Google indent. We’ve all seen Google search results where a page from a domain ranks with another page from the same domain just under it, but indented. Focus on getting a post ranking well using standard SEO, anchor text links, etc. Then find another, similar post to optimize. Link the ranking post to the second post to try to pull it up.
21. Re-purpose posts and pages. Let’s say you did a post on social media way back in 2005 and you want to do a similar, updated post. If the 2005 post is just way out of date and not of particular use these days, write over it with your new content. The old post has history and back links that can give you an immediate bump.
22. Use a single category. I know it’s tempting sometimes to place your posts in multiple categories, but get over it. You risk duplicate content issues with multiple categories, so make it easy for Google and concentrate on one.
23. Use a folder. Unless there is a very good reason to put your blog on a separate domain or subdomain (like your site is just a blog or you really believe a separate domain will give you more credibility - see tip #13), put it on your main site as a folder. This keeps link juice targeted to your main domain.
24. Got a Flash or image site that won’t rank? Start a blog on the domain to create the related content and links to the Flash or image pages. Chances are your blog pages will be what rank, but they’ll link back to and guide your visitors to your Flash and image pages.
25. Create your own custom footer. If you’re using WordPress, try the Feed Footer Plugin. With it you can create your own custom footer content, complete with HTML, for your posts that will show up in your RSS feed. This is great for plugging favorite posts and monetizing your feed.
26.
One final thought to consider. Blogs are all about sharing, so if a visitor shares something really good, promote it to the front page of your blog. Do a post all about it (You caught a fish that was HOW big?) and thank them for the great content. Your visitors will love it and come back for more.
Remember, you can turn active users into free SEOs who write content for you.
Of course, if you’re reading this, you’re obviously the family SEO geek, so share the love with dad and help him out with these tips and plugins. The more automated his blog is, the more time he has to spend researching his subject on the golf course or at the fishing hole - great for Fathers Day!
- - - - - - - - -
As promised, for reading this entire article, here are ten bonus tips to add to 55 Quick SEO Tips Even Your Mother Would Love
56. Use Google Alerts to be alerted about back links - http://www.google.com/alerts. Add link:www.yourdomain.com to the Search Terms box to get notified by email when someone links to you.
57. Optimize your press releases just as you would a web page. Use your keywords, keyword anchor text and headlines in a way that will maximize your visibility without being spammy. In addition to possible pickup by major news sites, these releases are archived on the web. And, remember, don’t put out press releases to sites like PRWeb unless you have REAL news to share.
58. Move JavaScript and CSS to external files whenever possible. This will make your code tighter, move your content up higher, the page will load faster and the spiders will have fewer possible roadblocks in their quest to devour all that good content you wrote .
59. Build pages around phrases like Where can I or How can I because there are a TON of searches for variations of these. Just search for one of these phrases using the free WordTracker Keyword Suggestion Tool and you’ll see what I mean.
60. If you write articles for distribution to article sites for mass distribution (a great way to get back links), be sure to publish the article on your own site first and give the spiders a chance to crawl it. That identifies you as the originator of the content. Then push the article out for distribution across the web, making sure you have a link back to your site in the article content.
61. Tweak and test. Make one change at a time and evaluate what effect it had on your ranking, if any. Changing too many things at once can confuse things to the point where you don’t know which change you made did what.
62. Local search is getting hot! Create a local listing for all locations if you have more than one. Don’t just create a local listing for the main one. Get them all in there! Start with local listings at Google, Yahoo! and Live. Include photos, videos, links, web pages and coupons if available.
63. Don’t try to fake it. Those 50 domains you bought in 1998 with dummy content all linking back to your main site might have made you #1 last decade, but now they can get you booted from the rankings altogether. The “mini-net” is dead.
64. Want to see what Google has indexed from your domain (or any domain for that matter) during, say, the past seven days? Just point your brower to http://www.google.com/search? q=site:yourdomain.com&as_qdr=d7 .
Simply change the “yourdomain.com” to your actual domain name and alter the “=d7? to be whatever number of days you are looking for (d5, d10, etc.). Or, change the “d” to “w” for weeks or “y” for years.
65. Test domains should be invisible. It you are using a domain simply for testing new designs, functions, etc., be sure it is not accessible to spiders or users, who will both be confused about which domain is the real thing. If the spiders can get to it, you could be in for big duplicate content issues. A simple way to block all spiders is with the robots.txt file.
Richard V. Burckhardt, also known as The Web Optimist, is an SEO based in Palm Springs, CA with over 10 years experience in search engine optimization, web development and marketing.
SEO DadAgain, maybe not my dad, but then, I’m nearly 53 myself (old enough to be a grandfather) and I’m writing this stuff! Don’t assume that we old geezers won’t get it!
;-)
A blog is one of the best and easiest ways to generate fresh, up to date content for your site as well as link love. Good, quality content naturally attracts links, but there are ways to optimize your blog to get the biggest bang for your buck.
What is a blog? Short for web log, a blog is a content management system, basically an interactive web site that allows you to create and post content through a web-based control panel. Rather than create a web page and upload it, you just log into your blog control panel and write articles and post them. They are live immediately and readers can post comments so that it is a more interactive experience for the visitor.
For some, a blog can completely replace a traditional web site. With an almost word processor-like interface, even dear old dad can be blogging in no time!
And, one of the great features of a blog is the built-in RSS feed that visitors can subscribe to for keeping up with your new content. An RSS feed is commonly referred to as “Really Simple Syndication” and it does just what the name suggests - it allows your blog articles and news to be automatically retrieved by user feed readers (like Google Reader, MyYahoo, BlogLines, etc.) all over the world as you post them. The distribution potentially drives traffic, deep links and popularity to your blog which can help with your rankings. Pretty cool, huh?
In addition to providing a platform for terrific information (for humans and search engines), a blog is a natural pathway to the world of social media. Blogs are interactive, encouraging posts and information from visitors, and syndicated through RSS feeds, spreading your content (and links) across the web to be found in search engines, dedicated blog searches, news feeds, you name it.
Bottom line - if you don’t have a blog, get one now!
The plugins (small programs that add features to your blog, usually free) mentioned are specifically for the free self-hosted version of WordPress, probably the most popular blog platform currently used, but the concepts apply to all blogs.
1. Use full text in your RSS feed. It is common to just include the first paragraph or two (a summary) in what goes out in the feed and then insert a “More” link to get the reader to go to your blog. That diminishes your ability to get back links from services like TechMeMe because any links below the “More” won’t appear. Use the full text. Don’t worry about your feed being duplicate content. According to Rick Klau, formerly of Feedburner and now with Google, a feed in itself will never be considered duplicate content.
2. Optimize the text in the RSS feed just like you should with your posts and web pages. Use descriptive, keyword rich text in your title and description.
3. RSS feeds with podcasts and video enclosures will get you into additional RSS directories and engines. Be sure to use show notes (text transcripts) for your podcasts and videos, though. Remember, search engines love text and can’t yet pull content from multimedia files.
4. Include tag clouds on pages. Tag clouds are basically keywords from posts on your blog that are linked to a search results page on your blog that include all articles related to the keyword. Let’s say the word that shows up in the “cloud” (basically just a list) is “widgets” and you click on it. You’ll get a page showing all posts on your blog that are tagged with the “widgets” tag. To produce tag clouds, Simple Tags, a free plugin for WordPress, can be used.
5. Use a Related Posts plugin. Cross linking to related posts on your blog helps with your internal linking, making keyword rich anchor text more prominent on your blog as well as helping your visitors navigate your site. Use a related posts plugin for WordPress like Contextual Related Posts.
6. Top Ten Posts with links. This can be put on auto pilot with yet another plugin that automates the process of deciding which posts get clicked on the most and placing a list on your blog for visitors (and spiders) to see and follow. Popularity Contest is a good WordPress plugin for this.
7. Add Technorati tags to your posts. Technorati tracks blogs and social media and tagging your posts can help spread the word about your content. Go to Technorati, register for an account (it’s free) and claim your blog as your own. A nice plugin to help automate the placement of Technorati tags on your blog is Simple Tags (different plugin from the “Simple Tags” mentioned above).
8. Optimize your TITLE. Don’t just let your blog software automatically create the TITLE for your post by pulling the text out of your post heading. Customize and optimize it. The SEO TITLE Tag plugin is perfect for WordPress. And, just like with any web page TITLE, put your company name or the name of the blog at the END (if you must include it at all). Unless you are Coca Cola or Microsoft, NOBODY will be searching for it. Sorry…
9. Make posts sticky. By using a “sticky post” plugin, you can create keyword rich content that will stay at the top of a category page, for instance, rather than moving down as additional content is posted. I am currently using WP Sticky.
10. Create Sitemaps. The search engines can follow your RSS feed sitemap just like they can follow one for a normal web site. Create sitemaps for each category RSS feed and tell the search engines about them, either by pointing to them in your robots.txt file or by submitting them to Yahoo Site Explorer or Google Webmaster Central.
11. Use Feedburner. Feedburner offers a ton of free features that can add to your blog’s optimization and marketing efforts, including stats, post e-mail notifications, the ability to include Flickr photo posts and much more. Now owned by Google, features that were previously paid services like MyBrand are now free.
12. Use Optional Excerpts. When you make a post, WordPress will grab some text to display on your category page and in your feed (if you aren’t using a full feed as described above). Unfortunately, it doesn’t always grab good text. Using the Optional Excerpts feature in WordPress, you can type in the exact keyword rich, topical text that you want displayed.
13. Domain name - In a nutshell, if you think having your blog on a separate domain from, say, your business, will give you more authority and street credit, then go for it. It boils down to a choice of mydomain.com/blogname or blogname.com.
14. Use the Update Service built into WordPress. This is in the Options menu and all you do is place a list of URLs to different services like Feedster, Netgator, Technorati, etc. and whenever you make a post, those services will be notified. You can find a list of the services at WordPress Update Service.
15. CEO blogging - priceless! If you are running a business, particularly a consumer driven business, get your CEO (Dad?) blogging! CEO influence on a blog is incredible as this is the VOICE of the company. And, responding to reader comments will cause your credibility to skyrocket! This is especially true for a family business. It just makes visitors feel welcome.
16. Socialize. Interact with your visitors. Don’t just publish your posts and sit back. Answer questions, link out to their sites when they offer good content, respond to their comments in a timely, informative manner, etc.
17. Own a niche. It’s a lot easier to dominate a space if you start out with a smaller, less competitive, narrowly focused subject area. For example, you’re more likely to become a dominant player with a blog about “rechargeable outdoor power tools” than you are for simply “tools’ which is way too broad a term with a lot more competition.
18. Work your titles for both audiences - readers and searchers. Be sure you start out with the title of your post to attract readers. After the post has some history and has fallen into the archive section of your blog, go back and optimize the title for SEO.
19. Keep the post slug the same. Write this yourself, don’t let WordPress generate it. Don’t go back and change it at a later date because this is what determines how your post link is formed. Writing your own post slug allows you to create an easy to read, optimized URL.
20. Optimize for the Google indent. We’ve all seen Google search results where a page from a domain ranks with another page from the same domain just under it, but indented. Focus on getting a post ranking well using standard SEO, anchor text links, etc. Then find another, similar post to optimize. Link the ranking post to the second post to try to pull it up.
21. Re-purpose posts and pages. Let’s say you did a post on social media way back in 2005 and you want to do a similar, updated post. If the 2005 post is just way out of date and not of particular use these days, write over it with your new content. The old post has history and back links that can give you an immediate bump.
22. Use a single category. I know it’s tempting sometimes to place your posts in multiple categories, but get over it. You risk duplicate content issues with multiple categories, so make it easy for Google and concentrate on one.
23. Use a folder. Unless there is a very good reason to put your blog on a separate domain or subdomain (like your site is just a blog or you really believe a separate domain will give you more credibility - see tip #13), put it on your main site as a folder. This keeps link juice targeted to your main domain.
24. Got a Flash or image site that won’t rank? Start a blog on the domain to create the related content and links to the Flash or image pages. Chances are your blog pages will be what rank, but they’ll link back to and guide your visitors to your Flash and image pages.
25. Create your own custom footer. If you’re using WordPress, try the Feed Footer Plugin. With it you can create your own custom footer content, complete with HTML, for your posts that will show up in your RSS feed. This is great for plugging favorite posts and monetizing your feed.
26.
One final thought to consider. Blogs are all about sharing, so if a visitor shares something really good, promote it to the front page of your blog. Do a post all about it (You caught a fish that was HOW big?) and thank them for the great content. Your visitors will love it and come back for more.
Remember, you can turn active users into free SEOs who write content for you.
Of course, if you’re reading this, you’re obviously the family SEO geek, so share the love with dad and help him out with these tips and plugins. The more automated his blog is, the more time he has to spend researching his subject on the golf course or at the fishing hole - great for Fathers Day!
- - - - - - - - -
As promised, for reading this entire article, here are ten bonus tips to add to 55 Quick SEO Tips Even Your Mother Would Love
56. Use Google Alerts to be alerted about back links - http://www.google.com/alerts. Add link:www.yourdomain.com to the Search Terms box to get notified by email when someone links to you.
57. Optimize your press releases just as you would a web page. Use your keywords, keyword anchor text and headlines in a way that will maximize your visibility without being spammy. In addition to possible pickup by major news sites, these releases are archived on the web. And, remember, don’t put out press releases to sites like PRWeb unless you have REAL news to share.
58. Move JavaScript and CSS to external files whenever possible. This will make your code tighter, move your content up higher, the page will load faster and the spiders will have fewer possible roadblocks in their quest to devour all that good content you wrote .
59. Build pages around phrases like Where can I or How can I because there are a TON of searches for variations of these. Just search for one of these phrases using the free WordTracker Keyword Suggestion Tool and you’ll see what I mean.
60. If you write articles for distribution to article sites for mass distribution (a great way to get back links), be sure to publish the article on your own site first and give the spiders a chance to crawl it. That identifies you as the originator of the content. Then push the article out for distribution across the web, making sure you have a link back to your site in the article content.
61. Tweak and test. Make one change at a time and evaluate what effect it had on your ranking, if any. Changing too many things at once can confuse things to the point where you don’t know which change you made did what.
62. Local search is getting hot! Create a local listing for all locations if you have more than one. Don’t just create a local listing for the main one. Get them all in there! Start with local listings at Google, Yahoo! and Live. Include photos, videos, links, web pages and coupons if available.
63. Don’t try to fake it. Those 50 domains you bought in 1998 with dummy content all linking back to your main site might have made you #1 last decade, but now they can get you booted from the rankings altogether. The “mini-net” is dead.
64. Want to see what Google has indexed from your domain (or any domain for that matter) during, say, the past seven days? Just point your brower to http://www.google.com/search? q=site:yourdomain.com&as_qdr=d7 .
Simply change the “yourdomain.com” to your actual domain name and alter the “=d7? to be whatever number of days you are looking for (d5, d10, etc.). Or, change the “d” to “w” for weeks or “y” for years.
65. Test domains should be invisible. It you are using a domain simply for testing new designs, functions, etc., be sure it is not accessible to spiders or users, who will both be confused about which domain is the real thing. If the spiders can get to it, you could be in for big duplicate content issues. A simple way to block all spiders is with the robots.txt file.
Richard V. Burckhardt, also known as The Web Optimist, is an SEO based in Palm Springs, CA with over 10 years experience in search engine optimization, web development and marketing.
