Monetize Your Blog Instant Methods

Wednesday, April 29, 2009
I know you’re eager to know how to make money from your blog. So I shall not withhold the info from you any further,
Here are 5 money making methods you must know:
  1. Text-link-ads.com – paid link marketplace where you get 50% commission for every text-link sold.
  2. Sponsoredreviews.com – paid sponsored post in your blog.
  3. Google Adsense – Pay-per-click advertising campaign offered by Google
  4. Clickbank.com – start selling other people’s products and earn a commission for every product sold
  5. Own Your Product - I highly recommend this even though it may take slightly longer for you to develop your own product. You can start off with a $7 report of about 30 pages and sell it off at "Warrior Forum Special Offers" forum. Just remember to read the forums rules first.

10 Free SEO Tools

Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing your website with the goal of increasing your search engine ranking and ultimately your traffic and sales. It involves researching your keywords to find good phrases for your website, placing these keyword phrases strategically on your website and then improving your ranking by increasing the number of backlinks to your website.
Here is 10 free SEO tools you can use to increase your search engine ranking:-
  • What? This tool allows you to research keywords. It tells you the approximate average number of searches per month for a keyword phrase and also suggests similar alternative keyword phrases.
  • Why? You need to make sure that your keyword phrase is actually being searched on before you optimize your website. Optimizing your site for a keyword that nobody searches will mean that you get very little or no visitors from the search engines.
  • How? Enter your keyword phrase in the box, choose your language and country (or “all countries and territories” if your website is not country specific) and submit. Choose “Exact” from the drop down menu.
  • What? This is another keyword research tool. Enter some keywords and you will receive a list of up to 100 related keywords and an estimate of the number of daily searches for each keyword phrase.
  • Why? No keyword research tool is 100% accurate, so if you are serious about keyword research it is worthwhile checking your keywords in two keyword research tools. The Google Adwords keyword tool and the Wordtracker keyword tool are the best free keyword tools that I know of.
  • How? Enter your keyword phrase (e.g. dog training is the chosen keyword phrase in the above screenshot) and press the “Hit Me” button. You will then receive a list of related keyword phrases along with the estimated number of searches per day for each phrase.
  • What? This tool will generate a sitemap for you in either XML or HTML format. A sitemap contains links to all the pages on your website.
  • Why? A sitemap helps to ensure that the search engines find all the different pages on your website. It can also be helpful for your visitors.
  • How? Just enter your URL and hit the start button. Your sitemap will be created and you can upload it to your website.


Tool #4 - Social Marker Bookmarking Tool

  • What? This tool allows you to bookmark your website in multiple bookmarking websites with one click of a button.
  • Why? Many people search for pages on the web using bookmarking websites rather than search engines. The more people that bookmark a web page, the higher that web page will appear on the bookmarking website. Some social bookmarking websites will also give you abacklink which will help to improve your search engine rank.
  • How? First you will need to register individually with all the social bookmarking sites listed on the Social Marker site. This will probably take you around 1-2 hours, but you only need to do this one time. Every time you create a new page on your website, write a blog post, or find a page on the web that you find interesting you can bookmark that page in all of the bookmarking websites by visiting Social Marker.
    A similar alternative free bookmarking website is http://www.onlywire.com – this is quicker to use but contains around 20 bookmarking websites compared to Social Marker’s 48 bookmarking sites.


Tool #5 - Link Popularity Checker Tool

  • What? This tool allows you to check how many backlinks your website has. It will show you how many backlinks your site has in the Google and Yahoo search engines.
  • Why? The number of backlinks is one of the biggest influences on the ranking of a website in the search engines. The more backlinks you have to your website, the better your chances are of ranking well for a phrase.
  • How? Enter the URL of your website and optionally the URLs of up to three of your competitors. Click on the “Generate Report” button and you will see the number of backlinks in Yahoo & Google for your site and a number of other sites including any competitors that you have added.

Tool #6 - Keyword Rank Checker Tool

  • Why? Most of the traffic goes to the sites listed on the first page of Google, so your aim should be to get your site into the top 10. This tool allows you to check your progress more quickly than you could do manually.
  • How? Enter the URL of your website and the keywords that you are trying to rank for and optionally your competitor’s URL. The tool will return the position of your website in the Google search results and compare it to your competitor’s URL.

Tool #7 –Website Grader

  • What? Once you have optimized your website and started to promote it, this tool is an excellent way to get a free critique of your site. It provides information about the effectiveness of your on-page SEO, off-page SEO, blogging and social marketing. It also gives you suggestions on how to improve in each of these areas.
  • Why? It lets you measure your progress and find potential areas for improvement.
  • How? Enter the URL of your website, add competing websites (optional) and enter your email address. It will take a few minutes to process all the data, and once it has finished you will be taken to a report with a website grade (mark out of 100) and a wealth of information about how your website ranks and ways to improve it. You will also be emailed a link to your report.

Tool #8 - Google Webmaster Tools

  • What? This tool allows you to find the top Google search queries for your website, see errors found by Googlebot, find issues with your website content (e.g. missing tags), submit a sitemap, find out how many backlinks you have, remove content from the Google index and generate a robots.txt file.
  • Why? Submitting a sitemap will help to ensure that Google crawls your entire website. The diagnostics will alert you to any errors or broken links on your website and the top search query information can help you to refine your website optimization.
  • How? Create an account and then add your websites to the account. You will then need to verify that you are the owner of each of the websites that you added. You can do this by following the instructions to upload a text file to your website or by adding a meta tag to your home page.

Tool #9 – Statcounter

  • What? Statcounter allows you to see how many visitors and hits you have received to your website, the keywords that your visitors searched on, the pages that they visited, the browsers they use, the countries and towns they live in, the pages that they entered and exited your site on and how long they stayed on your site.
  • Why? It is useful to see the keywords that your visitors use to find your site and the search engines that they came from as this can help you to refine your optimization. It is also valuable to understand more about your visitors, the countries they come from, the browsers and computers that they use and what pages they visited while on your website.
  • How? Register with statcounter and follow the instructions to generate a small piece of javascript code. Place this code on all the pages of your website so that statcounter can track all your visitors. You can then login to statcounter at any time to view your statistics.

Tool #10 - Google Analytics

  • What? This is an alternative to StatCounter, as it provides similar information about your website visitors. However, it presents the information in a different way, so you may find it useful to use both StatCounter and Google Analytics.
  • Why? As well as finding out where your visitors come from, how they found your website, how many pages they visited and how long they spent on your website, you can also view the data in a variety of different formats.
  • How? Register with Google Analytics and generate a snippet of javascript code. Follow the instructions to Install this code on all the pages of your website and then login to Google Analytics to view your site statistics.

Fire Up Your Blog with PLR Content:

Monday, April 27, 2009
If you’re already a blogger, you can appreciate that it takes a decent amount of work to keep your blog active with a bunch of fresh ideas and content. But it is doable and that’s where PLR (Private Label Rights) content come in and give you a hand.
What is PLR Content?

If you’re not familiar with the term, PLR stands for "Private Label Rights" and it’s essentially content that you are free to use, edit modify and brand with your website name. It is ghostwritten content, so you don’t have to accredit the writing to a particular offer – giving you the full opportunity to use this content for your blog. And best of all, it’s an inexpensive way to get plenty of fresh content for your blog.

You can find PLR on a variety of topics right here.

Now let’s get back to the benefits and uses of PLR on your blog…
6 Attractive Benefits of Blogging with PLR having ready-made PLR content to help you in your blogging efforts has quite a few attractive benefits. Here are just a few:
  • If you don’t have time to write all your content, PLR solves that problem for you.
  • If you don’t like to write, PLR saves you the effort.
  • If you don’t fancy yourself a good writer, quality PLR is written by professional writers.
  • PLR provides you with plenty of ready-to-go ideas…no need for brainstorming topics.
  • PLR sellers have already done the research – you don’t need to do it.
  • PLR can help you increase your traffic – By having regular, fresh content on your blog you encourage repeat visitors, word-of-mouth and more.


How to Use PLR Content with Your Blogging
How you use your PLR content is completely up to you, but to get the creative ideas going, here are some tried and true ideas for using PLR in conjunction with your blogging efforts.

  1. Simply post the PLR articles on your blog for extra regular content.
  2. Schedule a bunch of articles to publish on your blog at regular intervals, so you have a continuous stream of fresh content.
  3. If you have a separate articles section on your website, publish the PLR content there. That’s fodder for an easy new blog post. Simply make a new post with your commentary and opinions on the article and link to it.
  4. Email your mailing list with an excerpt from a PLR article and invite them to your blog to read the whole article.
  5. Use PLR content to display ads on your blog. Whether it’s content-targeted ads like Google Adsense or other types of advertising, PLR content gives you plenty of opportunities to show your ads.
  6. Include affiliate links. Add links to products that are relevant to the content being discussed.
  7. Bundle some articles into a special report that your visitors can simply download. Create a new blog post to tell your readers about it – your readers will appreciate the new gift.
  8. You can also bundle articles into a report that you can offer as an "ethical bribe" for completing the mailing list opt-in form on your blog. When they subscribe for your list, they get to download the report.
  9. Got an audio blog? Put the PLR content into an audio recording and stream it or allow your readers to download the mp3.
  10. Many PLR sellers offer product reviews with PLR rights. Post the product reviews and allow comments to generate a valuable discussion about the product.
  11. Don’t feel comfortable posting PLR content as your own? Create a "ghost guest blogger" profile on your blog and post that content through a pen name on your blog.
  12. Add a new income stream to your blogging by creating an information product. You can bundle up a series of related articles into an ebook and even record the content to include an audio component to your product as well.


Making PLR Content More Appealing to Your Readers

Your blog is unique and so are your readers. Publishing quality PLR articles to your blog or using the other creative ideas above can certainly appeal to your audience – but if you want to take it a step further, there are things you can do to make the PLR you publish more appealing to your audience.

  • Add examples. Make the PLR content your own by adding examples unique to your niche or your own experience. For example, if you’re publishing an article on how to quick smoking, add your own story and experiences to create a more interesting piece.
  • Link to other info. If you have resources where the reader can get more information or to solve a problem, tell them about it.
  • Add your own perspective. You don’t have to agree with everything in a PLR content – add your own editorial commentary and perspectives.

How To Write A Blog Post

Sunday, April 26, 2009
There are many ways that you can create a blog post and there’s no one fixed structure you must follow. Below are some guidelines for you:

a. Common ranting
Ranting can be a very good way to start blogging. We just type whatever we want to say or whatever that has happened in our lives. Treat it like a casual conversation, without using any conscious effort to phrase it in a formal tone. Ranting can be a good start to get you into the momentum of typing. It’s just like sharing something about yourself when meeting up with you good friend (the blog) and saying whatever that comes into your mind.A tip for you: Just set your mind free and share whatever you like within your comfort level.
b. Intro-Body-Conclusion (IBC)
If we want to create a blog that will capture loyal readers, we need to focus on what’s in it for them. After all, the readers are reading your blog because of its enticing content. They are reading it because they want to find answers to their problems. So we must create a proper structure for our blog post that is easy and pleasant for our readers to read so that they will return.

A common structure to start with is having a short introduction paragraph to catch hold of the readers’ eyes and make it attractive enough for the readers to click on the tag.
It can be a summary of what the post is about and what the readers can learn by reading the rest of the blog post. Then, create a BODY which contains the gist of the story. You can share with your readers what happened, how did it happened, why did it happened and who were involved. Write about 200 words for the body and be straight to the point. End off with an insightful CONCLUSION with about 30 to 50 words to share from your point of view, what the readers can learn and how they can apply back to their own lives.

Here’s a tip for you: To make it really easy for anyone to read, you can always use the numbered list format.For example,Here are the 3 tips you should know before buying a iPhone.
  1. Know your budget
  2. Buy from a reliable retailer
  3. Take good care of your iPhone
And go on to elaborate each point in greater details.
c. Intro-Experience-Point-Conclusion (IEPC)
For this blog post structure, it’s similar to the structure of a diary entry. You first share a short paragraph of roughly what happened. Then, after the MORE tag, you can share about your experience by following the 5 “W”s- Who, where, why, what and when.End off with a conclusion you want to leave an impression on your readers. Remember to keep it short and straight-to-the-point.
d. Blog Readers Love to Read About Tips and Secrets
This is a common structure which I am used to writing and it works for me everytime. It’s a method I like to use to develop relatively long posts with lots of good value information for my readers. This is also good for “link-baiting”. What’s that? You might ask.Well, let’s put it this way. Assume some lady reads my blog post and finds it interesting. She’s so impressed by the content that she wants to share these tips with her friends. As the post is too long for them to copy, they will take the easy way to either email her friends the whole link or do a linkback from her blog. Either way, I’ll get free traffic to my wedding blog. That’s call “link baiting”.

For a start, it’s not necessary to come up with such a big post. You can start off with articles with 3 to 9 tips.

Free Traffic Tactic : Make Comments On Other Peoples Blogs

Saturday, April 25, 2009
If you leave relevant comments on other peoples blogs you will get traffic back to your website. To do this of course you have to actually find people's blogs to leave comments on. The easiest way to find other blogs is to go technorati.com and search for other peoples blogs related to yours.
  1. Go to www.technorati.com and do a search for blogs you'd like to find
  2. On the next page, after you entered your search term, click on 'blogs' in the center of the page to reveal the blogs related to the keywords you entered.

Another great place to locate blogs is bloggerforum.com. All you need to do is go to the forum and search for threads with the same keywords you used to locate blogs at technorati.com. Once you have located relevant threads, you'll then need to search the signature file of the posts for blog links.
You want to find other blogs that are in the same market as yours and leave the owners of those blogs comments. In order to find related blogs at bloggerforum.com all you need to so is search the forum for threads related in some way to your blog and then search the signature files of the posters.
What kind of comments should you leave?
The best kind of comments are those that add a little additional information to the blog post you are leaving a comment on and entices the reader to follow your link back to your blog. Suppose your blog is about video games and found some other video game related blogs. The owner of one of these blogs had just left an update about the soon to be released and much anticipated Mercernaries 2 video game.

In order to get some traffic to your blog you would leave a comment like this:
“Yeah, I've also heard that the developers of Mercenaries 2 were bombarded with requests for a multiplayer mode after the release of the first Mercenaries was released. Supposedly, Mercenaries 2 will not only feature a multiplayer mode but the developers say it will be better than the one found in Halo 2! I've heard there are also going to be a couple more really sweet new features being added. I made a couple of updates to my blog about these if you're interested.”
Notice how this comment both adds information and then entices the reader to look at your blog. Anyone who was a video game enthusiast themself would almost DEFINITELY look at the person’s blog to see what additional information they had. What video game enthusiast wouldn't?
When you leave comments on other blogs, NEVER leave blatant advertisements for your blog or comments that attack the integrity of the blog owner. Leaving either types of these comments is not only in poor taste but it will likely be deleted by the owner. Even if your comment isn't deleted by the owner it won't likely produce much traffic as it will be viewed by the people reading it as spam and everyone hates spammers.

Choosing a Blog Topic - Play With The Time

Thursday, April 23, 2009
Choosing a blog topic could be hard for some active blogger. This is because they want people to visit their blog more frequently. Esspecially when if their blog is for some short of Internet Marketing purpose. Put a topic with the popular keywords might drive traffic to your page. But you also can play with the time for your topic/title. Two time base topic is you could choose from are:-
  • Topic that become popular for specific time/suddenly
  • Timeless Topic

Write Posts That Are Very Topical For The Times

One of the best ways to get a sudden burst of traffic is to write about something that is hot right now or in the news. This is a great way to get a sudden burst of really interested traffic. This is because some people get into internet to find out more about the news they saw in tv or magazines, or even newspaper.
You can find out whats hot now by watching the news or use online services like Google Trends, Yahoo Buzz or Ebay Pulse. These sites give you lists of searches that are very popular online right now.

Some of the hot topics right now are :
  • Obama
  • Global Warming - 60 earhth hour
  • Economic downturn
Do a research on that topic and if you could, add some additional information to make it more interesting. Put your comment into it, make it very professional and wise might drive your vistor to add your page to their favorite.
Create Content That Is Timeless

If you want your blog to be around for a while and you want readers to come in 5 years time and still find your content relevant to them, you need to make sure the content is timeless, whether they read it in 3 months, 3 years or 30 years.

This not only means you don't have to keep updating your content every 6 months which will save you time, it also helps with other people who you may allow to use your content on their websites.

Some topics however, will always be timeless. Find those, write on them. It could be a technical topic which point to some technical people for example write a topic about renewable energy, farming, or a Do it Yourself. Another category might be a topic that won't be expired for a long time such as fashion. People will keep coming back because the content is timeless.

WHAT REALLY MAKES A BLOG SHINE

Wednesday, April 22, 2009
In the billions and billions of words posted by the millions of blogs worldwide,what makes one particular blog stand out from the teeming mass? What puts the blog writer into a special class, makes readers return day after day and brings accolades from the media? It’s connection. Successful bloggers are those who connect with their readers, whether 10 or 10,000 people, by entertaining or enlightening them. Many people like to draw boundaries between bloggers and other writers (journalists, novelists, marketers) but their goals are similar: grab people by the collar and don't let go. But what makes these and other noteworthy blogs shine? Here are some of their main attributes, the things that set them apart from all those millions of other blogs.

A UNIQUE AND PERSONAL VOICE
The best bloggers talk in their own voice, celebrate their unique identity and tell the stories that are real to them. Weblogs come from the idea of an online journal, a personal journal, so it's important to remember that journaling is not like academic writing, not like impersonal writing for a wire service.

KEEP IT CURRENT
The biggest problem with the vast majority of blogs is that they are stale. Because most people are not paid to blog, it takes a while to integrate blogging into their daily routine. Many people start to blog, try it out, and then never have the time to update it. To be successful, bloggers must keep writing posts on a regular basis and stay up on the topics that interest them, including current affairs. That doesn't mean they have to post 12 times every day, but a few weeks off can kill a blog's audience.

CONNECT WITH AND EMPOWER READERS
One of the distinguishing features of blogs is interactivity. There are many ways to engage your readers, involve them in the conversation and utilize their feedback. You could run an online poll, or give them your e-mail address, or just enable comments under each posting.

TELL TRUTH TO POWER
While many blogs include commentary, some also include original old-fashioned reporting. There's no right way to do it, but having either original reporting or an original angle on a story helps set your blog apart. The key is that these bloggers and so many others have spoken truth to power, and had the courage to stand up as a collective blogosphere to authorities that would rather hide the truth.

Search Engine Optimization For Blogs

Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Search Engine Optimization is something that makes many blogger’s heads spin. As most of us know, SEO is one of the best way to get a high page rank in search engine which is good for your traffics draw.
I'm going to share with you 2 SEO techniques that you can use which is On Site SEO TEchniques and Off Site SEO TEchniques.
Off site SEO techniques are factors from outside the site itself (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.
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. 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.
The best inbound links have three main qualities to them:
  • They are from higher ranked sites than your own
  • They are relevant to the topic you are writing about
  • They link to you using relevant keywords to your page
Below is few tips on how you can generate quality inbound link :
  • 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
  • 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.
  • 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’d encourage anyone wanting to buy links to think very carefully about this. Google have been cracking down on sites that use this practice. They can’t catch everyone but some have been caught and seem to have been penalized for doing it.
  • Swap Links - Similarly many bloggers swap links with other bloggers. Sometimes this happens pretty naturally (you see someone linking to you so you link back) but in many cases the links are strategic ones and formally arranged between site owners. 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. There are also a variety of systems around that say they’ll take care of such interlinking for you.

On Site SEO Techniques is things you do on your blog that help build a higher ranking. As with all SEO techniques there are many of these and a lot of speculation around all of them so let me touch on as many as I can:

  1. Keyword Rich Content - identify a few keywords for your article that you’re hoping will get indexed highly by Google. Don’t pick too many but consider the questions:
    -- How do I want people to find this post in Search Engines?
    -- What will they type into Google if they want information on the topic you’re writing?
    -- How would I find information on this topic in the Search Engines?
    -- What results come up when I do plug these keywords into Google?
    -- What other keywords are other sites using?
  2. Themed sites - One of the growing theories of SEO is that you are more likely to rank well if you have a substantial amount of pages on a similar theme. ie a niche topic blog will probably rank higher than a general one that covers many topics. Build a blog with over 200 pages of content on the same theme and you’ll increase your chances of ranking well as SEs will see you as an authority on the topic. The take home advice here is to keep to some kind of a topic/niche/theme for your blog. It is also probably another argument for categories and tagging posts that relate together strongly.
  3. Site Design - Search Engines like well laid out, well coded and easily to navigate sites. Make sure your pages validate (I need to work more on this) and that they are viewable on all major browsers. Search Engines don’t tend to like too much Flash, Frames or Java Script in your site - keep it simple and clean and their robots will index your site a lot faster and more accurately. Also try to keep your blog free from dead links (a challenge for those of us with older blogs with big archives).
  4. Interlink your Site - The way Search Engines index your blog is to send little robot crawlers to your site to track what you’ve written and follow the links. Make it easier for them to get around your blog by using internal linking wisely. Most SEO experts recommend that you provide some sort of Site Map that means every page on your blog is just a link or two away from every other one. One way to do this for bloggers is to make sure that your category pages are in your sidebars. Also make sure every page links back to your main page and any other important pages on your site. If you’re writing on a topic you’ve previously written about consider linking to what you’ve written before or use a ‘other relevant posts’ feature at the base of your article.
  5. Update regularly - The more you update your blog the more often Search Engines will send their crawlers to your site to index it. This will mean your new articles could appear in the index within days or even hours rather than weeks. This is a natural benefit of blogging - make the most of it!
  6. Outbound Links - There is debate over how SEs treat outbound links from your blog. Linking to sites outside your own blog does mean you end up sending traffic away from your blog so you need to count the cost of such a strategy. Note that you should always try to link to reputable and relevant sites to your own page. Also keep in mind that too many outbound could have detrimental impact upon your blog. Like in most things in SEO - moderation is the key.
  7. Choose your domain name wisely - there are numerous factors to keep in mind when selecting a domain name. For one you might like to include your keyword in it if possible. Secondly you should do a little research to see if someone else has previously used the domain. This could have both positive and negative impact. If it was a quality site with inbound links you might reap some benefits but if it was a banned spam site you could still be banned from Google for a long time. One service you might want to use to check expired domains is Way Back Machine at Archive.org.
  8. Register your Domain for a Lengthy Period - a recent patent by Google indicates that it now looks at the length of your domain’s registration in ranking it. It does this because many spam sites have short registrations and a longer one indicates that you’re building a site with substance and are in it for the long haul.
  9. One topic per post - the more tightly focused the theme of a page the better when Search Engines come to rank it. Sometimes you might find yourself writing long posts that end up covering a number of different topics. They might relate loosely but if search engine ranking is what you’re after it could be better to break up your post into smaller more focused pieces.
  10. Write optimal length posts - there is some thought going around the Search Engine Optimization community that pages that are too short can get passed over for high rankings. I try to keep posts at least 250 words. Of course there are some posts on my blogs that are shorter, but if I’m writing a post that I want to rank well I try to give it some meatiness in terms of length. On the other hand don’t make it too long either - because in doing so you make it difficult to keep your keyword density up and could end up with a less tightly focused page. Research also shows that longer articles can have a pretty steep drop off rate in readers after the text gets below the ‘fold’ or to the end of the first screen of article .
  11. Avoid Duplicate content - Google warns publishers in its guidelines about having the same content on multiple pages. This goes for both multiple pages that you own but also pages that others own. This is because a tactic of spammers is often to reproduce content on many pages and/or to steel content from other sites. There is some debate over what duplicate content does and doesn’t include (for instance many bloggers use ‘free articles’ as content on their blogs - these articles often appear on hundreds and even thousands of other sites around the web and to me could be seen as duplicate content) - my advice is to be very careful about how many places your content appears. I do republish occasional posts (or parts of them) but try not to do this too much and attempt to add elements that are unique on each occasion that the posts are republished).
  12. Ping - services like Pingomatic (there are numerous others too) will ping a variety of websites for you to notify them that you’ve updated. In doing so you’ll also be letting search engines know that you’ve updated which will trigger their robots to come visit your blog.
  13. Submit your RSS to MyYahoo - submitting your RSS feed to MyYahoo seems to help with getting indexed on Yahoo.
  14. Quantities of Content - The bigger sites tend to rank better than smaller sites - whilst it is possible to rank highly with a small site - it’s probably not the norm.. Search Engines will see your site as more comprehensive the more content you have. You also better your odds of being found in Search Engines if you have more pages. By no means am I saying just to put up random junk content - be careful about this - rather work at building a comprehensive and large site over time.
  15. Submit to Search Engines - You can do all the best onsite SEO strategies in the world and still get no where because the Search Engines have not found you to start with. Each search engine has a way of letting it know about your site - submit your URL to be included in the index. Please note that this takes time and perhaps a quicker and more effective way is to get linked to by a site already indexed by the search engine.

SEO may take time, be patient and most importantly, keep updating your blog as regular as possible and in the mean time try to do more research which will then help you to learn more about SEO tips while other information will come to you. Remember that Internet is the best way where you can learn about everything.

How To Market Your Blog

Blogging is the internet trend of today. There are millions of blogs showing up on the internet every day. With all of these blogs and competition the biggest problem is how to promote or market your blog.

It doesn't matter why for which you have started a blog, it can be successful only if you know how to promote it: meaning, you have to get readers. There are quite a few ways to do so, it depends on on what your blog is about.
First of all, you need to search on the web and browse at what the rival is about. Blogging is something you learn and improve as you attain more experience; actually we could probably say there are hardly any boundaries related to the possibility to get traffic to your products over the internet. The best help you can get traffic is from domains similar to yours, by the use of friendly links.

As soon as you have gotten your post up and going do not pause to have links to your blog posted on other sites, which you may have to do the same in exchange to help others. Which is not a bad thing. Nevertheless, it is good to mention here that you must pay close attention to the blogs quality to make sure that you do not promote a blog that you don't believe in. Then, you should most likely know that there are many types of blog directories where you can submit your pages so that you make it more easily accessible. Keep in mind such sites require a detailed description of your blog, and it is here that you need to show your writing talent.

Just in case you have to describe the blog as clearly as possible, try to focus on the overall matter and topic of the blog. The title you include here will be part of a category that you must select very carefully, so that it shows your intent completely. This introductory part should be short and to the point, though you'll have to include some descriptive details and the right keywords. If you are able to fill in all these insertions the right way, then you can expect to attract readers to the blog.

When you are just starting in the blogging world, you have to get the word out that you are available with great subjects, pictures, unique articles, products, videos and whatever else specific to your topic. One of the best way to spread the news about your blog is to write a press release and submit them to free directories; research shows that many bloggers chose this promotional way as it is the best way in terms of gaining friendly links and good positions in search engine rankings.
Posting original content and also submitting them to article directories is another great way of getting free back links. Forum postings is also to be used in parallel with press release listings and article marketing, results should start to show almost immediately.
Blog for whatever intention, without promotion is a waste of time because of course you create a blog for someone to read. It is vital to market your blog, otherwise it is inactive, just like your diary that you keep for your self.

Monetization Strategies For a Niche Blog

Saturday, April 18, 2009
Terminology

A niche blog is a blog that is updated less frequently and on a more tightly focused topic than a flagship blog. Most of the visitors find the site via a search engine and will leave once they have found the answer to what they want, or if they believe a link from the niche blog will lead them to the answer. Every blog is in a niche, but for the sake of simplicity “niche blog” has become the correct phrase to use for smaller blogs. Niche blogs are often developed into flagship blogs by the author if they have been going well.

Types Of Advertising To Use When Monetizing A Niche Blog

With a niche blog the majority of traffic comes from search engines and there are far fewer repeat visitors. Search engine users are looking for an answer to their query. They are not interested in subscribing (although some inevitably will if the content interests them). They see the blog as a whole and have never been exposed to the ads before, which means a different strategy to the flagship blogs should be used.

Depending on your plans for the niche blog you may wish to monetize to different extremes. For example if you don’t plan on growing the niche blog into a blog with a loyal readership then by all means monetize it as much as possible. However, if you plan on building a flagship blog out of the niche blog, it may be an idea to use some space for an RSS/email/newsletter subscription widget and not be so harsh on each visitor in terms of advertising, because it can stunt loyal readership growth.
If you have a niche blog where the readers are web-savvy it is much harder to monetize. My advice is to only start a blog with a web-savvy readership if you are going to grow it into a flagship blog.

Therefore, traffic to a niche blog is likely to be predominantly un-web-savvy search engine traffic. Using PPC is a good method to monetize this type of blog. With this type traffic you are more likely to receive a high CTR and earn more money. The most commonly used PPC network is Google AdSense but experimentation is key to successful monetization so it is worth trying out other networks.
Affiliate links on niche blogs are a great way of adding an extra income stream. On a niche blog affiliate links can be effective if placed in the sidebar of the blog and not just the content. Remember to use anchor texts (text visible to humans and spiders in the link) that encourage the right people to click and take action. Less is earned from affiliate links in the content of niche blogs because author cannot easily utilize the power of personal recommendation, but they are a good way to diversify income streams.
Product based niche blogs can take advantage of large affiliate programs such as Amazon and eBay where there are a wide variety of products to promote. The affiliate links can be displayed in a widget with these programs.

Sponsored posts on small niche blogs are a problem because a lot of what the advertiser is paying for is the bloggers time to write the post rather than the exposure, which isn’t cost-effective on smaller blogs.

Monetization Strategies For a Flagship Blog

Friday, April 17, 2009
Terminology

Monetization is the set up of income streams on a blog.
A flagship blog is high maintenance, high traffic blog that has its own brand. It has a broader topic than a niche blog and significant percentage of its visitors are repeat visitors. They visit the site to read the content, rather than searching for an answer to a very specific question. A flagship blog receives search engine traffic as well, but because it is regularly and consistently updated it builds a loyal following usually much larger than the search engine traffic.

Types Of Advertising To Use When Monetizing A Flagship Blog
A flagship blog has both loyal readers and 1-time visitors. This means as long as the advertising matches the topic of the blog, no matter what type of advertising is used there will always be a reasonable ROI for the advertisers and bloggers.
For example using AdSense only on a flagship blog with a loyal web-savvy readership (worst case scenario for a flagship blog) will still make SOME money, but using privately sold banner ads on a small niche blog will make 0.

Flagship blog monetization scenarios
Traffic to the flagship blog is usually predominantly returning traffic and so the strengths of the blog are in its content and in its brand. It’s also important to remember that loyal readers often Subscribe via RSS or email and only see the content, so the content is extra important.
To take advantage that the traffic is focused on the content in a flagship blog, the most effective way to advertise is by monetizing the content itself.

Monetizing the content can be done by:
  • Selling sponsored content. Using sponsored content brokers such as PayPerPost (see full list ad networks later) can help you find advertisers, or advertisers to find you. If your flagship blog is still young and isn’t yet receiving offers for private advertising they are especially useful. It is very important to strike a balance between making money and damaging your readership by writing off-topic sponsored posts.
  • Promoting affiliate offers and including affiliate links in posts. Many different Websites have an Affiliate program, where bloggers can sign up and earn a commission on a pay-per-sale or sometimes a pay-per-lead basis. You can write an entire post designed to sell the product and also drop in affiliate links where relevant in other posts. Another technique is to create Pre-sell pages, which we will look into later.
  • PPC In-Content links require bloggers to insert a code snippet into their blogs. A popular example of network that provides this is Kontera . They turn certain keywords on your blog into temporary links to advertisers Websites. You earn for each click through. I have found these systems can slow down a blogs loading time but are worth experimenting with. These also do not appear to RSS or email subscribers, but can provide a good supplemental income stream. (Adbrite is a contextual alternative)


To take advantage of the strong brand of a flagship blog, using privately sold 125 x 125 banner ads is effective, because it is beneficial for the advertiser to be associated with your strong brand. Being privately sold (sold by you), you get to keep 100% of the revenue and can cut out the middleman. Because flagship blogs have higher traffic it is worth the advertisers time to order privately like this. If your flagship blog is still young affiliate banners can fill the spots if they are not yet sold. To be privately sold an advertising page needs to be set up. Remember to be honest on your advertising page, but show of the traffic you have and include details about where your readership is from, what they are interested in and why your blog is a great place to advertise. Including testimonials from the most well known names you that advertised on your blog adds to the chance of success with privately sold advertising.


If the traffic to the flagship blog is predominantly returning, web-savvy traffic then it is a waste to use PPC advertising as the main income stream because there are only a few search engine visitors and the readers know the ads are ads and they are focused on the content. 125 x 125 banners (or any size banner) are still effective with web-savvy readers because the brand of the advertiser is still be strengthened even if there is a lower clickthrough rate. Banner blindness is an issue that lowers the CTR on banners, especially on flagship blogs where the loyal readers are over-exposed to a banner, but for the sake of branding banner ads are still commonly sold for a fixed monthly fee.


If the traffic to the flagship blog is predominantly returning, un-web-savvy traffic (they can’t tell what’s an ad and what isn’t) then extra monetization channels can be implemented. It is here that PPC ad networks come into play. PPC works best where visitors are from the search engines, or are loyal but “un-web-savvy”. If your blog matches these criteria then PPC networks like Google AdSense are a good option. Remember to blend the AdSense ads so they match your content to help get more clicks.