Sunday, August 10th, 2008
Backlinks are one of the keys to ranking well in search engines. Without them, you almost never show up on the first, second, or third page in Google, Yahoo or any other search engine. So what are backlinks? Backlinks are links to your site from other blogs or websites. However its important you understand the difference between a backlink and a quality backlink. Quality backlinks are links that are on related niche sites and carry even more weight if they are on sites that you actually interact on. So every time you comment on someones post and add your website link you gain a backlink.
There are a lot of bloggers out there that try to coax people into “free backlink” programs by promising to add a link to their page if you copy certain text from their page onto yours. I do want to point out something though. As many of you have heard before, even bad advertising is good advertising. So the more you get your name out there they better chance you will have in attracting people to your site but if the link isn’t a quality backlink then you may not receive “credit” from Google when its time to update your Page Rank (PR). Something else you should know too. If you manage to have someone with a higher page rank link to your site, those links will carry more weight than say someone with a lower rank.
Ex. If I were to have my page linked on Garry Conns main page, which carries a Page Rank of 5, that would help me out more than if I were to link to another page with a PR of 3, I would not have the same return on investment so-to-speak.
So don’t get sucked into the scams out there and try to build relationships with other bloggers in your niche. This will allow you to gain credibility in your niche and PR.
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Posted in Blogging | 4 Comments »
Friday, August 8th, 2008
Another great plugin that I use is the All-in-one SEO pack. It is used for SEO automation on your blog. So what is SEO? Search Engine Optimization. What does that mean? According to Wikipedia, Search Engine Optimization is “the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” (”organic” or “algorithmic”) search results for targeted keywoards.”
So what does the All-in-one SEO pack do for you? It will automatically optimize your blog post titles. Generates META tags automatically. Avoids duplicate content and more. Overall it makes your job easier when it comes to improving your chances to be listed in search engines.
Check it out and download here.
*Also, let me point out, this is a Wordpress Plugin.
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Saturday, July 26th, 2008
Popular among a lot of bloggers, Cybercoder.net has now been sold. According to Cybercoder himself, he claims he wants to turn his focus towards other blogs of his such as dcooley.net and musicramble.com and put some distance between himself and his alter ego of Cybercoder. Its a sad day for some of us bloggers, but hopefully the new owner will keep the site alive with similar content and we all know CyberCoder a.k.a David Cooley will continue blogging elsewhere. Check him out on Twitter as dcooley.
Posted in Blogging | 1 Comment »
Monday, July 7th, 2008
Reading through some forums recently, I noticed a trend. There are a lot of people out there that have started blogging recently or months ago and are struggling with getting their name out there. Well to you all, I offer the same advice I have in the past in my post about social networks.
Become active in your niche community. That is key to your blogs growth. There are many other methods you can take that may not take as much effort, but trust me when you don’t prove yourself as credible, the visitors you do receive will not become readers. One good tip I can give you to help promote yourself and your blog is to join a social networking site like Facebook or Myspace and interact heavily like I have done with my new myspace site.
Its important to transform your visitors into readers. Read other blogs in your niche and comment on their blogs. Build relationships and backlinks. Nothing is stonger than having your link on someone elses site. So think about it, what sites do you visit daily and what are you getting in return for visiting those sites?
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Tuesday, July 1st, 2008
Is your blog easy for your readers to read and interact with?
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Wednesday, June 25th, 2008
What have you done for your blog today?
Blogging, as I have mentioned before, can be a full time job and when you have a full time job it can create a problem for people that are not organized(like me). For those of you that have been tracking along with my blog(s), you will notice that lately I have been unable to post daily or even every other day. Part of this is because of simply being exhausted after 10-12 hour days and part is due to writers block.
So I want to give you some ideas on how to remain consistent with you blog posts. One thing is to stay active in your niche community and that will generate great ideas. Another way is to keep a list near you, in your car, on your desk, etc… for ideas when they pop up. I also mentioned a few posts ago that writing multiple posts and saving them as you go instead of posting them immediately will help. You can generate an inventory of posts to pull from and publish as needed.
What other ideas do you have? What are your blogging habits? How are you posting?
I also want to point out that when you don’t have consistent posts, you better ensure that when you do publish a new post, it is good. Something to keep your readers attention. Quality content is important.
Posted in Blog Design | No Comments »
Tuesday, June 17th, 2008
I have been blogging for a little over a year now and have read a lot about “how to blog” and “how to make money online”. Everything from keyword optimization to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and have come to this conclusion. If you want to be successful you need to do all of that and none of it. Let me explain.
(more…)
Posted in Blogging | 3 Comments »
Tuesday, June 17th, 2008
Thanks to one of Garry Conn’s new posts I recently learned a cool way to make your blog accessible via mobile devices. There is a website called FeedM8.com which has a very simple UI. All you need to do is visit the site and type in your sites URL and bam, you now have a link created for your mobile device. I have added that link to my blogroll on this site and one of my others. So Im now trying to think of a way to advertise it.
Just another way to get your content out there. Thanks Garry.
Posted in Blogging | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, June 11th, 2008
Myspace, Facebook and many other Social Blogging sites are being used by millions of people for different reasons. My question to you is, why would you not want to leverage that power and opportunity? Most of you already have either a Myspace or Facebook site or both. What could you do for your blog if you leveraged the traffic you received from either of them.
This is not a new idea, and actually one that I am trying out myself. Many professional bloggers are using this as one method to generate traffic to their site. Twitter provides users with the ability to tell the world what they are doing on the fly. Using Twitter has provided me with the ability to get my blogs out to many more people than I would have originally in a shorter time frame.
Don’t let the obvious marketing tools pass you by because you think they won’t work. Try it and see for yourself.
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Monday, June 9th, 2008
To go hand in hand with the last post, Setup RSS Feed, I thought it would be important to mention that keeping your readers attention is crucial. If I am going to return to someones blog/website I need to see something I didn’t see before. Keeping the info on your blog up-to-date is key to creating returning readers let alone trying to get them to subscribe to your RSS feed.
So what is your blogging routine look like? I try to start the week by writing 2 or 3 posts and only publishing one the day of. So I actually have a bank of posts that I can use to provide new info. I’ll admit its hard to continue with this practice but if you plan to have a successful blog you will need to keep a steady flow of info for your readers to read.
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