nedjelja, 30. lipnja 2013.

A Great Idea For a Blogging Web Site is No Longer Enough

Whether you
are starting up a new web site aimed at bloggers or
whether you are looking to make your existing blogging
site more distinctive, the key to building and
maintaining a site that will capture the interest and
attention of the blogging community is finding your
niche. If you can fill a unique need in a way that no
other web site does, you'll be able to build a lasting
readership among web surfers. Once you have
discovered a niche, you will still have a lot to do, but
finding your place in the blogosphere is the place to
begin.

Every great blogging web site starts with a great idea,
and you can't build a successful site that will last
without one. There are many great sites aimed at
today's bloggers, and competition for the attention of
this growing demographic is fierce. To make your
blogging web site stand out from the pack, you will
need to offer something that no other site is currently
offering, or you will need to do the same thing that an
already popular site does but in a more impressive or
valuable way.

One way to discover an ideal model for your blogging
web site is to look at the sites that have successfully
captured a blogging audience already to determine if
you can appropriate some of their strategies to help
realize your vision. Of course, you will also need to add
a unique flair to your project in order to stand apart
from your competition. Many people agree that the web
sites that do the best in today's market are the sites that
have the most personality. The fiercely individual
surfers who are bloggers are a demographic that
responds especially strongly to personality, so consider
how you can give your site a unique and attractive
feeling by lending your own voice and sensibility to
your site's design and content.

Once you have a great idea for your site, have
pinpointed a special niche that you are well equipped to
fill, and have infused the site with personality, the next
step is figuring out how to get the word out to bloggers.
In the long run, a great idea just isn't enough to propel
your blogging web site to success. You will need to
draft a smart and realistic marketing plan in order to
draw readers to your site. Once you hook a blogger,
your great content will keep them coming back, but it is
vital to get that first glance or your site won't have a
chance to shine.

nedjelja, 23. lipnja 2013.

A Blog Farm, Why You Must Have One If You Want Huge Amounts Of Traffic

Someone wrote a comment on one of my articles at EzineArticles that I had written about the need to have a Wordpress blog. The point made was that whether you have a Wordpress blog or one of the other types of blogs, you still have to have people coming to your site.

Traffic is a part of the formula that you must have for the success of your Internet venture. Without people coming to your web site you will have no sales. Without sales, you have no Internet income.

In this article I will discuss how to get links to your  Wordpress blog. If you just bought a new domain and put a Wordpress blog on that domain you will not get any traffic. That is, unless you have lots of links pointing to your blog. Remember, "no links equals no visitors". Let me say it another way, you have got to get links pointing to your site or you will not succeed!

These links should be high in terms of quality. If you get twenty five links from sites that are not authority sites it will not do you much good. It would be much wiser to get five links from web sites that have good page rank and are closely matched to the overall theme of your blog.

There are basically two ways to get these types of links. First, you can research the web and find high quality web sites that are theme related to your's and email them asking for links to your site. However, why would they want to link to your new page rank zero site?

You will get better results if you build a "Blog Farm". A blog farm has one distinct advantage, it is under your complete control. Instead of having to go asking for links, you will have the ability to post a link from your blog farm to your new Wordpress blog yourself. You will have the power to add a link to "any" new blog that you build in the future.

This is what happens, the link to your new Wordpress blog draws the search engine spiders which is mandatory in order for your blog to be indexed in the major search engines, which are Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

I will go over exactly "how" to build a blog farm in my next article.

nedjelja, 16. lipnja 2013.

25 Free Tips for Marketing your Blog

With so many blogs being created every day, it’s a mystery to many bloggers how to make their blog stand out. It’s simple. People want to read good content, and with good content comes ad revenue. Well, maybe it’s not that easy… We’ve finally unleashed the secrets of successful blog marketing. Do note that these are not guaranteed to increase your click-through ratios and they will not bring good karma to you or your ads.. If only.. Nonetheless, these tips should benefit your blog and make it more user-friendly, more easily accessible, and more content-enabled.

There are many types of blogs or purposes for blogs and a certain number of tactics are applicable to just about all of them, so here is a -short- list of tips for marketing and optimizing a blog:

  1. Decide on a stand alone domain name www.myblog.com or directory of existing site www.mysite.com/blog. Sub domain is also an option blog.mysite.com. Avoid hosted services that do not allow you to use your own domain name!
  2. Obtain and install customizable blog software - WordPress and Moveable Type are my favorites.
  3. Customize blog look and feel templates - aka design.
  4. Research keywords and develop a glossary - Keyword Discovery, WordTracker, SitePoint, SEOBook Keyword Research.
  5. Optimize the blog:
    * Template optimization - RSS subscription options, social bookmark links, HTML code, Unique title tags, URLs, Sitemap
    * Add helper plugins specific to WordPress or MT
    * Create keyword rich categories (reference your keyword glossary)
  6. Enable automatic trackback and ping functionality.
  7. Create Feedburner Pro account and enable feed tracking.
  8. Setup Google acount for Sitemap, validate and prep for future submission.
  9. Identify authoritative blogs, web sites and hubs for outbound resource links and blogroll.
  10. Format archived posts, related posts.
  11. Enable statistics for tracking - Performancing, Google Analytics, ClickTracks.
  12. Submit RSS feed and Blog URL to prominent RSS and Blog directories / search engines.
  13. Engage in an ongoing link building campaign.
  14. If podcast or video content are available, submit to Podcast and Vlog directories.
  15. Submit blog url to paid directories with categories for blogs - Yahoo, BOTW, bCentral, WOW, JoeAnt.
  16. Optimize and distribute a press release announcing blog.
  17. Request feedback or reviews of your blog in relevant forums, discussion threads. If you have a resourceful post that will help others, point to it.
  18. Research and comment on relevant industry related blogs and blogs with significant centers of influence.
  19. Post regularly. If it’s a news oriented blog, 3-5 times per day. If it’s an authoritative blog, 3-5 times per week, but each post must be unique and high value.
  20. Monitor inbound links, traffic, comments and mentions of your blog - Google Alerts, Technorati, Blogpulse, Yahoo News, Ask Blogs and Feeds.
  21. Always respond to comments on your blog and when you detect a mention of your blog on another blog, thank that blogger in the comments of the post.
  22. Make contact with related bloggers on AND offline if possible.
  23. When making blog posts always cite the source with a link and don’t be afraid to mention popular bloggers by name. Use keywords in the blog post title, in the body of the post and use anchor text when you link to previous posts you’ve made.
  24. Use social networking services, forums and discussion threads to connect with other bloggers. If they like your stuff, they will link to you.
  25. Remember when web sites were a new concept and the sage advice to print your web address everywhere you print your phone number? The same advice applies for your blog.

nedjelja, 9. lipnja 2013.

13 Steps to Successful Blogging

Blogs can be a very marketable and very profitable tool if used correctly. Profiting from blogs is just a matter of grabbing the attention of an audience and not doing any actual salesmen selling. In this article you will learn the 13 most essential steps to successful blogging.

1) Where to start?

You should begin your blog with a free blog hosting service such as Journal Home. I don't say that because I'm the owner, but a free blog host is very rewarding for a new blog.  Starting with a free blog hosting service allows you to begin blogging instantly without having any advance knowledge of scripts, hosting, or programming. It allows you to build an audience and buzz for your blog.  It allows you to focus on your content and not the internal maintenance of the blog. The best benefit of starting with a free service, is in the case your blog doesn't become successful you do not lose any money or are you left holding the bill. The great thing about a blog is that they are organized in chronological order, your latest entry is displayed first. When your blog traffic grows greatly and you are ready to upgrade to your own domain then you can simply make your last blog entry the announcement of your "move".  Simply add a last entry stating that your blog has "moved" and type the new blog URL address. Which directs visitors to your new blog site, keeping your following, without a major inconvenience to anyone. Upgrade as you need to...but only when you need to!

2) Niche

A niche is a targeted product, service, or topic. You should first decide on a product, service, or topic which interest you. Choose an area which you can enthusiastically write about on a daily basis. You can use keyword research services like Google Zeitgeist or Yahoo! Buzz Index to find popular searched topics. It does NOT matter if your topic is popular as long as there is a audience for your topic and the topic is precisely focused then your blog should be successful. Anything can be considered a niche as long as it has a target audience no matter how large or how small the audience is. A blog about your cat can be a niche or a blog about the species of the cat family can be a larger niche market, if there are people who are interested in hearing about your cat or the species of the cat family, then you have a niche...you can even choose to build your audience for a market which an audience does not exist, but first you must build your blog.

3) Update Daily (nothing less)

This step is a must and not a suggestion. Updating your blog daily not only keeps your blog more interesting to readers, but it also gives your blog fresh content on a day to day making it more appealing to search engines. Not updating your blog on an occasional holiday or one day here and there is understandable to most, but missing days at a time or weeks is unacceptable and will most likely result in your blog being unsuccessful. To keep your blog traffic and retain your visitors interest it is a must to update your blog daily with multiple entries. Though, I am seeing a growing trend of successful blogs that are not being updated daily, but they are successful and have a stable audience who continue to visit their blog daily.  Regardless, these blogs are still updated weekly with multiple entries.  Until you have a steady audience you should try to update your blog everyday with at least 3 or more daily entries. The best way to accomplish this is to set aside 1-2 hours a day for tending to your blog and adding new entries. It may even be wise to schedule a set time which you dedicate to your blog each day. Give yourself work hours and treat your blog as a job, what happens if you don't come to work for days or weeks...you lose money or worse you get fired! Same applies here...if you don't update your blog for days or weeks you'll lose visitors.

4) Traffic

It's no secret. You must have traffic to profit from blogs. There are numerous ways to build traffic. Paid advertising, free advertising, viral marketing, search engine marketing, RSS/XML feeds, and word-of-mouth. You should always use your blog URL address in the signature of your email, forum discussions, message boards, or any other communication media. You should submit your blog URL address to search engines and blog directories. You should submit your RSS/XML URL feed to blog ping services like Technorati, Ping-O-Matic, and Blogdigger. You should confidently share your blog with family, friends, co-workers, associates, and business professionals when it relates. Many blogs can be considered as a collection of articles, for this purpose you should submit your blog entries (those that are valuable and lengthy articles) to content syndicators like GoArticles.com . Once submitted your articles can be picked up and published by others. The trick is to make sure you include your Blog URL address in the "About the Author" passage. What this does is create link popularity and backlinks for your blog, when someone picks up your article from the syndication then publish the article on their website the "About the Author" passage is included with each publication and the link you included is followed, crawled, and indexed by search engines. Imagine if your article is popular enough or controversial enough to produce 10,000 publications across the web. The search engines is bound to find your blog in no time with that many publications and credit you a authority on the topic, in return increasing your rank on search engines. The small effort of writing a well written article is rewarding. You should try to write at least 1 full length article every week for syndication and submit your article to at least 10 article syndicators.

5) Track Your Blog

How do you know if your blog has traffic? Just because no one is leaving comments doesn't mean your blog isn't growing. Many visitors do not leave comments but they are returning visitors. I know it sounds crazy but with blogs people are more interested in what "you" have to say! Many visitors do not comment their 1st, 2nd, or 3rd time. Some do not comment at all, but are active daily visitors.

Tracking your blog does not have to be overly sophisticated usually a simple free page counter like StatCounter.com or Active Meter will do the trick. Install (copy/paste) the code into the html of your blog template and start tracking your visitors. Its better to use a service which gives you advanced traffic analysis, such as keyword tracking information, referral information, and search engine information. Visitors, returning visitors, and unique visitors should be standard for any page counter service you choose.

6) Listen to Your Audience

When using the proper page counter you should begin to see how others are finding your blog and if through search engines then which keywords are being used to find your blog. If constantly your blog is being found by 1 or more keywords then focus your blog around those keywords to make it even more powerful. When writing entry titles and entries use the keywords as often as possible while keeping the blog legible and interesting.

7) Multiple blogs

Use multiple blogging accounts (free) to attract more people. This means you should have a blog with JournalHome.com and others. The more blog accounts the better (be sure to read and adhere to the Terms of Service for each site). You can copy/paste from 1 blog to all others. Having different blog accounts is like having a publication in different newspapers. This enables you to attract more visitors and this also increases the chance that 1 of your blogs will be in the search engine results for your focused keywords.

8) Short & Concise

Aside from the lengthy article a week for syndication and publication your blog entries should be short & concise (if you can help it). Sometimes there are exceptions to the rule and you have no choice but to blog lengthy entries, but try to avoid this as much as possible. You do not want your blog entries to become hours of reading. Visitors like to easily find information and skim through your entries. It is good to be detailed and provide useful information, but do not include useless information or run away sentences that veer away from your topic.  Stay keyword-focused.

9) Digital Art

Try to include non-advertising graphics, pictures, photos, and art in your blog entries. Not too much. Once a week is fine. Graphics can sometimes bring your blog to life. Of course, the content of the blog is the most important aspect and you do not want to overshadow your content with graphics, but displaying graphics can add a bit of spice to the blog. Be choosy about your graphics and make sure they fit your entry topic. You should add content with the graphic, at least a caption. Original graphics, photos, pictures, and art is recommended.

10) Keep it Personal

A blog is most successful when it is kept personal. Try to include personal experiences which relates to the topic of your blog entry. Stay away from the business style of writing. Write with a more personal style and use first-person narratives. Do not write any of your entries as sales letters, instead share product reviews and personal endeavors.

11) Interact With Your Visitors

You now have the traffic you deserve. You should begin interacting with your visitors. Create a regular theme such as: "Monday Money Tip" or "Picture of the Week" which entices your readers to look forward to each week.

Give your readers advance notice about a product, service, or topic which you are going to review and then talk about later. If the President was scheduled to give a speech then in your blog you should state that you "will discuss the speech and give your opinion after the speech airs. Comments will be appreciated".

Try your best to find exclusive information that not many have. Do not disclose any confidential or secret information which is deemed illegal or can potentially get you into trouble, but try to get the scoop before everyone else does. Such as: If your blog was about Paris Hilton (the socialite) and you had a blog entry about "Paris Hilton Getting Married" then it would be interesting to your readers if you had a actual picture of Paris Hilton engagement ring. Give your best effort to dig and search the internet for exclusive information and you will possibly come up with something useful. Your readers will appreciate this and they show their appreciation through word-of-mouth referrals. Imagine how many readers will tell their friends, family, and others about information they only can find at your blog.

12) Make Money

Once your blog has gained some real momentum and your blog traffic is increasing then it is time to start thinking about turning your traffic into profit. You should use contextual advertising, like Google Adsense or Chitika. Contextual advertising is usually text links which use the content of your blog to publish targeted ads on your blog. The payout is usually based on a pay-per-click model, meaning for ever click an ad receives you are paid a small percentage of the profits. In addition to contextual advertising it is good to also use graphical advertising such as: BlogAds.com, Amazon.com, MammaMedia, or General Sponsored Advertising.

13) You're a Professional

You're a professional now! What are you still doing with that free blog hosting service? It is time to upgrade to a domain hosted solution. You need to get a web host and choose a domain name for your blog then check its availability. Select the blogging software you wish to use, such as: Squarespace.com, WordPress.org, MovableType.org, TypePad, etc. When you have your new blog domain setup and ready for traffic then it is time for you to announce your move on all your previous blog accounts. Your last entry to the blog should be a "move" announcement. The title should be "Moved" and the blog entry should state something like "I have a new home for my blog, please bookmark and follow the link: http://www.YourNewBlogDomainName.com". This way all returning visitors and new readers should not have any problem finding your new blog domain.  Plus, search engines can easily index and crawl your new blog, since your old blog should already be popular with the search engines.

At the level of a professional blogger you may want to team up with 1 or more other bloggers. This will create a more interesting and more powerful blog. The old saying "two heads is better than one", more authors mean more advertising and exposure because each author will have a vested interest in the blog. The idea of a team blog is to make it profitable and rewarding for all authors, while continuing to target the blog topic and keeping the blog interesting for visitors.


Following these blogging techniques should make your blogging experience much more rewarding. There is no guarantee that your blog will become popular or a household name, but the effort should at least put you one step closer. Making money online is not an overnight experience like many may think, but making money online is definitely a foreseeable possibility. As well, growing popularity on the web is not an overnight experience, but through time, dedication, and persistence you will be rewarded with all the royalties of blogging.


četvrtak, 6. lipnja 2013.

Business Blogs to help your rankings

For the past several months now, there has been a new development used more and more by businesses and companies of all sizes: Business Blogs. First, for those of you who may be wondering what “blogs” actually are, they are an abbreviation for “web logs”. First popularized by journalists, tech geeks and by teenagers, “blogs” are now increasingly in use by the business community and Fortune 500 companies.

If you have new ideas or a new product your company would like to promote, business blogs are a good, inexpensive vehicle. And there are many other advantages to using blogs too: major search directories and Search Engines such as Yahoo, Google, Alta-Vista and most of the others crave on fresh and new information that is frequently updated, sometimes many times a day. Business Blogs consist of many links, written with fresh content that is propagated everywhere on the web.

The more Search Engines like Google find daily and updated content, the more often their search spiders will visit that business blog, resulting in high Search Engine rankings for a good part of your business blog-powered data. If you still have your doubts on business blogs and are wondering if they are just a passing fad, for your information, in February of 2003, Google bought Blogger, itself a blogging software pioneer. Google publicly said they don't even know how they are going to use the company, but they will certainly have some use for it... (!) (Quoted in the New York Times).

If you are still asking yourself why should your business start a business blog (b-blog), here are a few answers to ponder about:

1. If you have timely information to share with your customers
2. If you're unhappy with the results and ROI from email marketing
3. You would like your web site to have top-ranking positions in Google
4. Many observers think that blogging will last for a long time

Here is a list you might want to read of the many business benefits of starting a good and serious business blog:

Higher search rankings on Google with no paid-submission
Other Search Engines will most likely position you higher too
Pay-per-click (PPC) is great but free marketing has infinite ROI
Create visibility with information by sharing with your customers
Fresh information appears on Google in only a few days, not weeks
Other business bloggers will point prospects towards you for free

Now all of this is great and can help companies a lot in their Search Engine rankings. But Business Blogs should not be viewed as the single winning “solution” that will “do the magic”. Business blogs should be viewed as an added, parallel solution to increase communications and ideas to your prospects and customers, while at the same time helping your web site in the Search Engines.

To be real successful, a business first needs to have its web site properly optimized by a professional Search Engine optimization firm, one that knows Search Engines and truly understands your specific business needs. After a serious optimization campaign and the ensuing positive results that can be analyzed in detail and carefully measured, business blogs should be considered as an added way to help increase Search Engine rankings in the major Search Engines, while at the same time more effectively communicating new ideas, products or services to the business community, your clients, prospects, suppliers, business associates, etc.

Be prepared to see a lot more developments in this area. Already the Internet is seeing a new wave of business blogging software and related applications claiming to propel your web site to the top of the search results. Be careful before choosing any such software. While some can be of help, as with anything that is new and “revolutionary”, careful analysis, due diligence and product evaluation is necessary before deciding on one final choice. We will continue to monitor this development closely and will keep you posted on our findings through this web site.

Note: Slated for January 31st, 2004, Rank for $ales will have a Business Blog solution ready for it's clients. Interested parties please enquire here. In the mean time, you are encouraged to visit www.escalate.ca for more information on blogging news and business blog technology. If you would like to see an example of a personal blog website (with a touch of humour) that is already online, then you can visit www.bloggers.ca

Business Blog Web Design Mistakes

With more companies adopting blogs, we're starting to see what works and what doesn't work from a design perspective. As a cue from Jakob Nielsen's article on the topic, here are thing problems I often find.

Bad headlines. They're frustrating. Some bloggers like to get creative... but creativity can affect search engine keyword opportunities. The important thing is that readers have a hint of what the post is about.

Links. Readers like to know where links take them and most of us rely on the status bar, but sometimes that doesn't help. Some experts say to use "click here" to help those who are newer to the Web and others say that's wrong, wrong, wrong. It just depends on the content. When linking, try to pick the best words that give readers an idea of what to expect.

Calendars as the only way to navigate a blog and impossible to find archives or older entries are big problems. I almost always resort to search when I want to find postings no longer on the home page. Unfortunately, some blogs don't have search. That's why I put "archive" links in my sidebar in both meryl's notes and meryl's notes features. As my site goes through redesign, I'm making sure the archives are accessible especially in the features section. I found some old entries from 2001 that are still relevant today.

Bloggers must be regular. No bathroom jokes here, please. :) When a blog looks abandoned for a month... your audience is gone. They'll take you off their feed reader and blogroll. If you plan not to do it again or take a long sabbatical... prepare to start over again when you return.

Keep the boss in mind even if your the head honcho. Always blog with a boss in mind. Will your boss (current and future) be offended by your posting? Not only do people get fired for their blogs, but also they could cost job offers. It wouldn't surprise me if managers are Googling applicants while going through the interview process.

Junky URLs. Nielsen says having a typepad.com or blogspot.com equates to having a yahoo.com or aol.com email address. Some of the bigwigs use Blogspot or Typepad URLs. Guess what? I never remember their URLs. I have to rely on Google. So this makes sense, BUT I wouldn't call it unprofessional.

Business blogging has many benefits and problems. Companies tread carefully when entering this new world. It's wise to have policies on the approval process and what can and can't be said. Like anything else in a business, blogs need to be evaluated to determine whether or not they fit the business' model.

Boost Your Online Revenue With a Niche Blog

You already know how valuable blogging can be to increasing the visibility and value of your online business.  Having a niche blog is something that can be profitable and easy, or challenging and difficult depending on how you handle the day to day posting. Niche blogs are typically blogs related to one or more specific industries or fields, including hobbies, illnesses, and sports. The more niche, or in-depth a blog is, the harder it might be for people not involved in that niche to get into it. However, people who are interested in the topic will become very loyal because they will find the connection very valuable.  It is for this reason that one must think about the best way to make the most out of niche blogs, and finding the right niche is a good start.

utorak, 4. lipnja 2013.

Blogs-Why Do People Blog?

Blogs are becoming very popular. The rate at which the numbers are increasing is mind-boggling. Why is this happening? Why every body wants to create a blog? Who else will read that blog? If everyone is busy writing his/her blog why and when will they get time to search for other blogs and read them? Because of this over population and density, will blogging become another failure? Is it a fad, which will pass away? Let us examine?

Why do people blog? Most of the people write blogs to express themselves. They are sure that on their blog they will get what they want printed. If they write articles or columns for newspapers they may or may not get printed. Writing a blog gives the power to each of us to get printed immediately. I personally write my blog to express myself freely and feel good to see that what I wrote got printed immediately.

Another reason of writing in a blog and website is freedom of design, layout and structure. Blogging gives this freedom. It does not need navigation architecture designs of a website nor a structured menu. You write and get printed - as simple as that. This has a flip side also. In a website one can lay out the information in an easy to access and read format. You can lead your reader to a particular page in a website. You cannot do that on your blog.

Do blogs get read? How does one popularize one's blog? These are difficult questions to answer. For most of us, it is difficult to find time and submit our blog in the increasing number of directories. It is also difficult to make sure that our blog will get one of top rankings in a search. Only the search engines know the secret of that and others only speculate. If we try to read the articles written on this subject, not only the quantity but the difference of opinions will leave most of us tired, frustrated and undecided. One more issue- before you decide that you would want to popularize your blog, please think - whether you search for blogs and read them? A lot many of us are so busy writing our own blogs, that we find no time looking for others. Why should this not apply to our potential readers?

Whatever the pros and cons of blogging, one outcome is certain. Blogs give us the opportunity of writing what we want and get it printed.

Blogs What Good Are They?

Blogs; what good are they anyway? Well, actually blogs are both fantastic whether you are running a business website or you are simply using blogs for fun. In terms of business, blogs can prove to be a supplemental form of advertisement and you will find them to be a unique device that you can use to keep in contact with your clients. Further, in terms of personal use, blogs are definitely an excellent way to stay in touch with your family and friends, even if they are across the globe. Best of all, blogs can often be established for free and can easily stand on their own, without an existing website to support them.

Blogs have become quite popular and more and more blogs are appearing all over the Internet. In fact, the more people realize the great benefits that they can get from using blogs, the more people will be using them. Blogs, not only serve as personal journals, they also serve as business supplements and people love communicating with others by using blogs and allowing others to comment on their postings.

Blogs are regularly updated which means that they have fresh content on them all the time. This makes them appealing to visitors and search engines alike. Every new posting means new content on your blog and if you update your blogs daily or weekly you will see them grow rather quickly. With fresh content, you can improve your search engine ranking. Whether you use the blog alone, or you used it to accompany an already existing website, your fresh content can be used to draw more and more traffic to either your blog or your website, or both.

Additionally, you can add links to your blogs and start a link exchange campaign. In doing so, you will see your page ranking increase in search engines because SE algorithms frequently focus on the number of links that are pointing to your website. The more external links that recommend your site or blogs, the easier your site or blogs are to find in the big search engines like Google.

Blogs can be used to freely advertise your products or services. That’s right, blogs can serve as free web space for you to use to advertisement of your business. Also, blogs are great from providing existing clients with updated information about new products and services you may be offering. Want your clients to share there feelings about your products and services? You can use blogs to receive and share client testimonials. There really is no end to the benefits one can derive from using blogs.

What is equally fantastic about blogs is that there are ways that you can create blogs for free. Sites like Blogger, recently purchased by Google, allow you to establish a blog free of charge. Moreover, there are a variety of layouts, fonts, and templates to choose from and Blogger even allows you to post images. Finally, sites like Blogger give you the opportunity to archive your postings so that visits can return to them again and again.

Finally, creating blogs can be simple fun for everyone. No matter what one’s age is, Blogging is the new wave in Internet entertainment. Friends can create clubs and use blogs to establish them, friends and family can share photographs and sentiments, and finally, personal expression can be satisfied when creating blogs. In fact, if you have a particular passion, why not share that passion with the world by starting one or more blogs? Communicate with people from all over the world that share the same passions that you do!

Blogs Could Become An Embarassing Exposure

Public entries intended for friends could become an embarrassing exposure.

The number of places where young people go to bare their souls, to vent, to gossip is increasing. These places are the blogs – where people post their innermost thoughts for any number of Web surfers to see.

“My philosophy is to be totally honest – whether it’s about my neighbor’s dog or my opinions about Iraq war, since the people who read my blog are friends or acquaintances of mine.” said Sarah, who lives in suburban Illinois and has been blogging for three years.

But some people find that a price can be paid for putting one’s life online. Maya Marcel-Keyes, daughter of conservative politician Alan Keyes, had some discussions on her blog about being a lesbian, and this became an issue during her father’s recent campaign for U.S. Senate because he made anti-gay statements.

Such incidents can cause personal and public dramas, often taking on a life they wouldn't have if the Web had not come along and turned individuals into publishers.

Other people think that some blog entries about partying and dating exploits will have ramifications down the road.

"I would bet that in the 2016 election, somebody's Facebook entry will come back to bite them,", says Steve Jones, head of the communications department at the University of Illinois at Chicago, referring to a networking site for college students and alumni, that is something of a cross between a yearbook and a blog.

Some traditional blog sites, like Xanga, LiveJournal or MySpace, which allow easy creation of a Web site with text, photos and often music, have gotten more popular in recent years, especially among the younger set.

Pew Internet & American Life Project made some surveys completed in recent months and found that nearly a fifth of teens who have access to the Web have their own blogs. And 38 percent of teens say they read other people's blogs.

I’m increasingly hearing stories about the risk of posting a blog, says Amanda Lenhart, a researcher at Pew. For example, a man whose daughter was a college student looking for a job. He typed his daughter’s name into a search engine and found her blog, with a title that began "The Drunken Musings of ...."

“And they surely have some discussions” said Lenhart, chuckling.

nedjelja, 2. lipnja 2013.

10 Ways To Increase Your Blog’s Pageviews

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With Google Adsense or Yahoo Publisher, having people click onto more pages helps your revenue immensely, but how do you get them to read more than one page when they visit your website? Here are a few tips.

1. Create pages within the blog that contain reference material you refer to often in your posts. These static pages will also get crawled and indexed by the search engines and as you write posts about your topics you can refer people to these static pages as references to what you are posting about.

2. Use articles as static pages. You can reprint articles on any topic for free by visiting one of the many article directories like www.articlecontentprovider.com Then refer people to read the articles that relate to the post you are making. You could even add one article as a new page every time you make a post.

3. Refer to other posts you have made on your blog or on another one of your blogs while posting. This gets the reader to click over to previous posts. You can even decide your posts by browsing previous posts and deciding which one to follow up on. Those archives are not to be lost and forgotten. Its great material, (you wrote it right?), so use it.

4. Create a page that links to your favorite posts that are timeless. You browse your old posts, find posts that you want readers to find easily, then build a links page with those posts directly linked. Then add a link to that page from your front page. Call it favorite posts or whatever and you will benefit by those that click through and follow those links.

5. I've posted here before about the "more" tag. You write your post as normal, then decide where you want to break the post up onto a new page. You put the more tag in and readers have to click to a new page to read the rest of the story.

6. Write once per week special projects. These are a series of articles on a particular topic. You will be offering it once per week giving readers a week to comment on it, then have them hanging on for next weeks special post in the series. Each time add links to previous posts in that series.

7. Using your content from your other websites or blogs is also a great way to get more pageviews for all of them. Use the target new tag and refer to material on your other blogs and websites. It will open a new window leaving the current blog open while they visit your other website or blog. You can quickly double up your pageviews while also introducing your readers to your other websites and blogs.

8. Make a list of 10 previous posts and the links to those posts. Make a post in your blog about 10 things you want your readers to know and read in case they have not done so before. At your suggestion they will at least go see if they have read those posts before, increasing your pageviews once again plus bringing old material to new readers. That also lets them know they should browse the archives for things they have missed.

9. Using that same list of 10 posts or a new one, visit other blogs on your topic. Find posts that talk about something similar to one of those 10 posts, then instead of adding a link in your signature to the home page, make a comment there and refer to the post that is similar and that contains helpful information to that blogger and their readers. You will also be increasing your link popularity while doing this. Do not spam the link. Make sure it actually contains useful information. Don’t be trolls or spammers and you will end up with new readers and more page views for your blog.

10. Do not stop being creative. Use the tips in this article, plus invent some of your own ways to interlink your blogposts together. Create pages. Don't just post and forget. That content is valuable, use it. Do not make people search your blog. They are lazy and busy. Bring it to them. That is just good customer service.

I hope this article helps you learn there is more to blogging than just writing a post once in awhile or even daily. If you employ the tips I just gave you into your blog I guarantee you will increase your pageviews which in turn will increase your revenue if using an ad program in your blog.