Blogging – Insider Tips on Building Your Readership & Improving Your Search Engine Ranking
Insider blogging tips: Would you like to know how to attract over 2 million readers to your blog every month? Steve Pavlina hosts one of the most popular blogs on the internet and he shared the following blogging tips in a recent mastermind session:
Broadly speaking, your blogging strategy should be divided into 3 phases:
- early game strategy
- middle game strategy
- late game strategy
Your early game strategy is twofold: to build your readership and increase your blog’s ranking in the major search engines. Essentially, this can be done in two ways:
1) Link swops
2) Blog carnivals
Link Swops:
Link building is a fantastic way of building your readership as well as increasing your search engine rankings. Find other blogs in your niche and request a link swop. The easiest way to discover other blogs in your niche is to type your keywords into one of the major search engines. Visit the blogs that match your search results and begin interacting with these people, commenting on their blog posts and generally add value to the relationship. Once this rapport has been built, email the blog owner and ask if you can swop links. Perhaps the easiest way to do this is to add a blogroll to your site with a link to their blog, then email and ask if they can add you so that you can both introduce your readership to new content. Also, don’t forget to see who they are linking to (this can be done using Alexa.com, see below) – this can be an easy way of building your network fast.
The second reason for building links is to increase your search engine rankings, so that your site appears higher in the organic listings. At its most basic level, the more inbound links your site has (i.e. outside sites that link to you), the more ‘important’ the search engines perceive your site to be and the higher they will rank you in the organic listings. A word of caution here: the inbound links need to have an equal or higher ranking than your site to really be of benefit, and the links need to be from sites that are related to your niche (so, if your niche is ‘Personal Development’ there would be little benefit in linking to bathroom sites for example).
Use a ranking site such as Alexa.com to identify which sites are worth linking to: Go to Alexa.com, type in the URL of the site you are exploring and Alexa will instantly show the site’s popularity, from 5 million (worst) to one (best). Bear in mind that the top spots will be reserved for Google and the other major search engines (because obviously every website links in to them!) and also the top social media sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, my space. Any website with a ranking of 50,000,000 or above is generally considered very good.
Blog Carnivals:
Blog carnivals are basically ‘events’ held by other bloggers to promote their own, and other blogs in a particular niche. Essentially, the carnival ‘host’ will create a new blog in a particular niche and this blog will be made up of content submitted by other bloggers from their own site. The purpose is twofold: the carnival host gains exposure and credibility and the people submitting their posts gain increased readership and increased inbound links to their own blog. In reality, the readership to these blog carnivals tends to be pretty minimal, the real value is in the inbound links for search engine optimisation (SEO) purposes.
BlogCarnivals.com is probably the best known blog carnival site and is extremely user-friendly (even for a self-professed techno-phobe!). Simply log on and you can search for blog carnivals in your niche, select one of your blog posts and submit it to that carnival. You can submit to dozens of these carnivals each week. The carnival host will review each post before accepting it, so not all of you submissions are guaranteed acceptance, but work on around 70% acceptance. If you are submitting multiple posts to multiple carnivals, there is now software available that allows you to do that quickly and efficiently.
Essentially then, link swops and blog carnivals work to increase traffic to your site in two ways: First, by introducing other people’s readership to your site and second, by improving your visibility in the search engine rankings, allowing people to find you more easily when searching.
To sum up your blogging tips: Your strategy in the early days should be to network like crazy with other bloggers, either directly or via blog carnivals, to build your readership and your visibility fast. There is absolutely no point however working to build a readership unless that readership stays. The key to keeping you readers is content and we will be covering that in the next article on blogging tips.
Happy Blogging!
Author: Mandy Swift
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Wordpress plugin Guest Blogger
3 Ways to Make Sure Your WordPress Site is Unique
There are thousands of websites created daily. I would assume that means thousands of WordPress websites as well. With that type of volume how can you stand out in the pack? The good news is that most people throw up a site and don’t so anything with it. If you only take a couple steps you can easily stand out from those sites. What about the sites people do customize though? How can your site stand out from those. Luckily, you don’t need a ton of knowledge to make a unique site and this is especially true with WordPress.
1. Go Minimal – A lot of websites are all about the fancy graphics, huge images and cutting edge looks. What if you did the opposite? Wouldn’t your site stand out just by contrast alone. I think so. In fact, I believed in it so much I did a complete minimal redesign of my WordPress blog. Although it is hard to quantify how effective it was, I did notice I made it into a couple “showcase” sites. These sites profile unique blog design and I received some significant traffic from them. When everyone is concerned with bigger, brighter and louder, toning things down can actually make you get noticed first.
2. Custom Graphics – Now on to the opposite spectrum. Minimal sites aren’t for everyone, so what about people who like a more detailed design? WordPress themes make site design easy, but if you want to take it up a notch you can add your own custom graphics. You have two ways to do this. First, you can do the design yourself to start. If you are handy with design programs, it shouldn’t be too hard to find some tutorials to bring your graphics to the next level. If the mere thought of designing your own graphics is too much to even think about, then you can outsource it. There are a number of sites that offer image design very cheap. Fiverr.com for example is full of people doing small design jobs for just five dollars. Whether you do it yourself or outsource, give your WordPress theme a unique twist with custom graphics.
3. Be Honest - Here is one that is especially tailored to those people who want to make money online with blog. Have you ever thought of trying an honest approach? I am so sick of seeing long sales letters full of fake testimonials and the promise of riches. If I hear about “how I can start making money today with no effort” again, I will throw up. Take a toned down honest approach. Do things like show real earning reports. Tell your story and how you made your money. Don’t leave out the downs, people know every story has ups AND downs. People might not see this difference on first glance, but will certainly notice once they start reading. A difference like this can mean instead of visitors bouncing, they are engaged in your story and eventually your product.
These three methods are sure to separate you from the vast majority of the pack. To differentiate yourself from the elite websites out there you will have to provide content that trumps them. No matter how pretty your site is, if it doesn’t have good quality, engaging content you are just wasting your time.
That said, if you start off by making one or two of the above changes you will be well on your way to sticking out from the pack. Combine that with great content and you might just be unstoppable!
Author: T. Payne
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Guest blogger
How to Use WordPress Themes – Choosing, Installing and Configuring Your Theme
Are you wondering how to use WordPress themes successfully? WordPress is one of the easiest platforms to use to run your site. However, it has so many options that it can be overwhelming to do users. One option is which theme you use.
A theme defines the overall look of your site. It determines what your header looks like, how many columns you have, and what colors your site is. You can find several free themes directly through the WordPress site. You can also pay for custom or specialty themes. It all depends on the type of image you are trying to portray.
When you are choosing a theme, make sure it is SEO friendly. Also, you will want a theme which is widget enabled. You want one that will work on all Internet browsers, anyone which loads fast. Loading time is starting to become a factor in how your site is ranked. So this will be more important as your site ages.
You also want to choose a theme which matches the style of your site. For example, traditional blogs have their sidebar on the right, while e-commerce sites have their sidebar on the left. So if you are setting up a store, you want your sidebar on the left.
It can also help to have an easily customizable header. This really makes your blog look attractive and stand out from other blogs using the same theme.
Once you learn how to use WordPress themes, you’ll find it easier and easier to set up multiple sites. So make sure you put your knowledge to good use and start setting up your site today!
Author: Colleen I Slater
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Tissot virtual reality
Real Estate Agents and Brokers Can Now Master WordPress in 7 Days
WordPress recently upgraded to version 3.0 and with this the “Multi-Site” option is now available. What this means is that a real estate agent, broker, team or office can create multiple websites to market their business with just one installation.
If you are tired of getting charged $2,500 – $5,000 for each real estate website, this will be particularly beneficial for agents that may specialize in different areas such as luxury, foreclosures, short sales and want to brand the look/feel and search types depending on the focus.
You simply may not want your luxury real estate clients have to be bombarded with images of foreclosure properties even though you may be working in that area as well.
With WordPress 3.0 you can now setup your website like this:
EXAMPLE DOMAIN NAMES
Main website: myrealestatesite.com
Foreclosures: foreclosures.myrealestatesite.com
Short Sales: shortsales.myrealestatesite.com
Luxury: luxury.myrealestate.com
Agent Page: johnsmith.myrealestate.com
How much do you think this would cost? If you call a web developer you will easily be talking at least $5,000 to have a website with less functionality than that.
You could build this yourself in just a few hours with a little patience and by following some simple instructions. The best part is you will be able to continue replicating these sites with just a few clicks whenever you come up with a new marketing strategy and want to add it to your website lead capturing efforts.
If you have had some success in the past creating your own real estate blog and are familiar with the basics of making posts, then you will have a great chance of success creating a new real estate website using WordPress 3.0.
Fortunately, there are plenty of online tutorials available to help guide you through the learning process. One thing that is especially important to note is that if you built your last blog using Blogger it will be very easy to export all those entries out and import them right into WordPress. There are several user-friendly tools available to make the transition smooth.
So, the next time you are looking to re-invigorate your real estate marketing strategy or trying to find new ways to generate more leads for your pipeline – be sure to give WordPress 3.0 a try and I am confident you will never look back.
Author: Thomas A. Lee
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Cool mobile gadgets
What to Do With Your WordPress Database Backup
Have you ever wondered what to do with your WordPress backups?
You can have backups scheduled for your WordPress database every ten minutes, and even that amount of diligent security won’t do you a molecule of good if you don’t have a clue what do with them if your site gets hacked or fails in anyway.
You need a plan, so if your site disappears overnight, you won’t lose hours, days or even weeks running in circles while trying to restore it. This is a massive avalanche of stress that most people simply don’t have the time or energy to deal with, even if it is a worst case scenario.
If you have the time, try teaching yourself to restore your site from the backups. There will be a bit technical know-how require, but the task is fairly straightforward and something you can probably learn.
Since a full site restoration isn’t something you’ll do on a regular basis (at least we hope not!), make sure you record all the steps, then keep them along with your passwords in a safe place for simple retrieval.
You can also contract with a professional service that schedules WordPress database backups and routine maintenance on your behalf. There are many different services, with a range of pricing, but this type of insurance can prove invaluable, especially if you’re blog is your business and your time is your money.
Bad stuff does happen, and data failure can creep on us all. You can’t always control hardware failure or malicious attacks, but you can be proactive and establish a strategy that ensures your protection under even the worst of circumstances.
Author: Sean Platt
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Get my ex back
How to Use WordPress Features
The WordPress has some very nice features that can make your website work even better. In looking around the dashboard you may wonder where they are or how they work.
One Click Upgrade Plugins
If you have several plugins, you know how often you see the little tab that says upgrades are available. You know the process of upgrading each one. You may even check the bulk actions tab wishing there was a way to upgrade all your plugins in one click. No more, there it is! Check the plugins that need upgrading, look under bulk actions and click upgrade and upgrade up to 15 plugins with one click.
Upgrade Themes
Yes, you can now upgrade themes. WordPress 3.0 will tell you that you have themes that need upgrading. It will create a “child theme” which should save most of your changes to your theme while upgrading the majority of the theme. This is a great feature, because WordPress 3.0 is going to require some major theme upgrades.
Menus
Have you ever wished you could just quickly add a new tab to your menu? You can now. Visit Appearance and Menus. Not all themes accept the menus option, but this impressive feature will soon be something theme developers will add. If your theme accepts it great, if not you can visit Widgets, Appearance, and drag the Custom Menu to your sidebar.
Creating a Menu
This is impressive. Many of my clients want to link different blogs and websites. With “Custom Links” you type in the web address, called URL, and then add a label for the menu. You can check mark various pages to be added to your menu or scroll down and check the categories you want added. Then over on the right on the new menu you can create a custom name. Click the down arrow beside the menu item and you can change the “Title Attribute” or “Navigation Label” and from here you can also remove the item.
Short Links
If you use Twitter or FriendFeed you know using a short link is almost always a requirement. Now underneath your post title you can choose to edit the title, view your post or get shortlink. The link starts with WP.me and then a short code like other services. Currently you can not change the code, but you may be able to soon.
The Twenty Ten Theme
The Default theme has been Kubrick and Classic. These themes are not included in new installs but they are replaced with the new theme Twenty Ten. This theme uses all the new features of 3.0 including the menu. You can change the background color or image. Use one of their eight headers or upload your own.
Make Your Website Unique
With the Twenty Ten theme, you can have lightweight, easy to use theme that you can personalize to create your own unique website feel. By using the menu function you can create a menu that works for you without having to hire a programmer to add special links or remove certain pages. Your website can be as unique as you.
Author: MJ Schrader
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Awe Inspiring Pictures
Make Money by Making New Blogs in a Free Way
Making money in internet marketing business without spending money is hard. If you don’t spend any money, then the biggest factor is time, with average Blogs. We all want to make money without spend money, and do it in free way. So I will show you here one great way to make some money for Free with your Blogs. You maybe already know about that, but as it is a good way I will post something about it. Now let see what we need to do, to make money in a free way:More…
1. Create a Blog for free
You can make yourself a Blog for free on wordpress or blogspot. I prefer Blogspot, because you can ad HTML and SCRIPT ads, like AdSense or other Pay per click programs. So make yourself your own Blog and try to rename the title as the niche will be about.
2. Optimize it for Search Engine
The second thing you need to do is to SEO your Blog. You can follow some tips here. With SEO your Blog, you will gain some Search Engine traffic and this is what we want, Referring sites are also important.
3. Write one good and long post, with rich of keywords
This method is about making or more posts in a small niche. So try to write a quality,long and rich of keywords post, so after some time you will get a lot of visitors to this post. You can make more posts, but try to be focus on one niche and write only quality posts. What we want to do here is get traffic directly to your post.
4. Making money ads
When you write a quality post, now you can add some PPC ads and gain some money from that. You should put one ad in content, there will most of visitors click.
5. Or affiliate links
You can make also quality and long posts which are talking about an product. When you write post you need to put an Refer URL, so if they buy the product you get money.
6. Do some promotion and wait
Now try to promote your Blogs on some sites, also try to submit site in directories, so it can get better ranks in SE. Also use it in signature on forums.
In a simple way
* we create a lot of Blogs with only one or more articles
* we put ads and affiliate urls in posts
* we do some promotion
* we wait and from time to time we earn some money
Author: M G Greg
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Credit card currency-exchange fees
