…Continued from

Blogging And Businesses Today Part 1

Blogging And Businesses Today Part 2

First, let’s look for the top sites in your niche. Simply search the major search engines for the term that you’re targeting. In this case, let’s search for “technological gadgets”. The first few results, www.t3.co.uk and www.acarplace.com/brands/gm/gadgets.html are commercial sites, so don’t bother asking. We’re looking for community-based sites and other blogs that are more accessible to a complete newcomer like you. Seems like www.gizmodo.com or www.x-about.com would be a good option!

So, compose an email to the webmaster of www.gizmodo.com (whose email address you shall find on the site). They even have their AIM contact there, so it’s also a good choice if you use AOL Instant Messenger. Start by stating how you came across their site (i.e. “looking for gadget information”, NOT “looking for link partners!”) and how you think their site provides valuable info. Basically, try to say something really good about their site honestly. Then, suggest that so-and-so content on your own blog will be a nice complement to their site’s content and vice versa. Put a link on your blog to their site and ask subtly if they might be able to do the same to weld a mutually beneficial relationship between the site and your blog.

Along the way, you might find people who won’t even respond to your email, so forget aboutthem and move on. Remove the links from your blog to their site if they have not responded to your email within two weeks, which is a pretty long wait. Keep doing this for the first 30 search results that pop up, and before long you should have quite a few good sites all linking to you. In the next article, we shall explore further the more advanced offpage factors, and ways to improve them!

Part 6 – Offpage Search Engine Optimization II

(contiued from Blogging And Businesses Today Part 2)

This time, we’re going to explore further into linking strategies, and how to determine and obtain “high quality” links. We’re also going to talk briefly about Google’s PageRank. First, let’s examine a regular link. It’s a piece of text (or image, but we’re going for text) that links to your blog, and some of the factors that matter are

1) The address which it links to

2) The text of the link

3) The PageRank of the page on which the link resides

Let’s analyze this information one by one. First, you’d naturally want the link to link to your blog, but to which page of your blog? To an individual post or to your blog’s home page? Since your blog is a constantly updated website, it is always wise to accumulate all the links to point to your main page instead if individual posts because they tend to be very timesensitive. The text of the link also affects your rankings for a certain keyword. Let’s say your blog is about technological gadgets and another site has a link that says “Barbie dolls” and links to your blog. Doesn’t make much sense, right? If a lot of links that link to your site contain the terms “technological” or “gadget”, it will greatly boost your rankings for those keywords. Hence, it’s essential to put some thoughts when requesting links from other webmasters as you want them to link to your blog with appropriate keywords.

Now, about Google’s PageRank. It’s basically a scale set by Google to measure the popularity of websites. You can read more about it on http://www.google.com/technology/. What is interesting is that the higher the PageRank of a certain website, the more frequent Google’s robots will visit the website to index it. Of course, the PageRank of a page will also help it to rank higher in Google’s search engine results. In short, having a high PageRank will bring you many benefits SEO-wise.

Your blog will start with no PageRank (which is different to PageRank 0) because Google has not yet indexed your blog. Once Google’s robots find your blog through links on other sites, your blog will show a PageRank of 0 and depending on the PageRank of the referring page, your blog’s PageRank will also rise eventually. Getting high-quality links to your blog will help direct targeted visitors who are interested in your niche to your blog, enable search engines to find and index your blog and ultimately rank higher in search engine results.

Most people buy and beg for backlinks and that is not a very good way to go about getting backlinks. Some sites that sell backlinks have a very bad rep with google and google will penalize you for having backlinks for some sites! You will also get penalized if all of a sudden you show up on the search engine with a 1000 backlinks when the other day you had none. Remember one thing Google ain’t dumb. The programmers at Google did not just fall off the turnip truck yesterday.

You will need good solid backlinks and the best way to build your backlinks up is slow and steady. There is a report that will show you how and will give you the places to go to get backlinks, without paying or begging for them. It will show you where to get high PR backlinks, .edu backlinks, .gov backlinks, and even a few PR-8, PR-9 and PR-10 backlinks all free for nothing. Just a little work on your part. Less than 15 minutes.

More Traffic Sources

Getting links from other websites is not the only way to attract visitors to visit your blog. This time, we are going to explore alternative methods to attract high quality traffic with both free and paid methods. The first thing you can do to generate traffic is to recycle all the content you have written on your blog. What I really mean is to turn your blog posts into little “manuals” or articles that help people solve their problems or offer valuable information and submit them to article directories. These article directories are like aggregators that collect articles of similar themes together in one place, so they receive thousands and thousands of qualified visitors every day.

When you submit your articles to these directories, you are exposing your name to the thousands of pairs of eyes visiting them for free! On most article directories, you are also permitted to include a “resource box” where you can include your contact details, a simple biography and so on. This is where you can truly leverage the traffic of the said article directories. Some good article directories to get you started:

www.eZineArticles.com

www.ultimatearticledirectory.com

www.submityourarticle.com

Another excellent way to gain traffic is to join internet forums that is based on your niche. To find these kind of forums, just go to any search engine and enter “<your niche> +forum”, without the quotes. You would want the most focused forum with a substantial number of active members, and preferably always bustling with activity. Just check the dates of the threads posted on the forum. When you join active forums that focus on your field of discussion and post very useful and valuable posts, your peers will start noticing you and paying attention to what you have to say. In most forums, you are also allowed to append a link to your site in the signature line, which is under every post you make on the forums.

People will click and visit your blog if they find your posts helpful and informative. This way, your credibility is built even before they land on your blog, so traffic from the forums would be easier to turn into profits if your blog is selling your own products or recommending others’ as an affiliate since they are already convinced you’re an “expert” in the field.

The strategy we’ll discuss is word of mouth. Let’s say you already have a daily visitor count of 100. What if you compiled a small report or gift and posted it on your blog, saying that if a certain visitor can refer three of his/her friends to visit your blog the gift will be his/hers for free? If your small report or gift is lucrative enough, it will generate a small buzz among your blog readers and they will surely refer their friends to this blog that they frequent!

You can also utilize the “blog and ping” technique that everyone’s talking about. Basically, when you update your blog, you can let blog portals such as www.technorati.com know by pinging them. You can ping a lot of portals at once by using the free www.pingomatic.com. There are also paid methods like buying links from high-ranking pages or buying banner advertisement space. I do not like to buy links when I can get very good text anchor, backlinks for free.

First read my post about Blogging And Businesses Today Part 1

Besides that, it is also very useful to establish your own personality through your words.Human beings are very curious creatures, so naturally your visitors would want to know as much about you as the information you’re offering them.

Having a distinctive personality in your blog would make a world’s difference between your blog about gadgets and all the other blogs about gadgets out there.This is a lot like creating your own brand name, where people immediately remember your blog’s name when they need to find out information about gadgets, just like how people immediately think of McDonald’s for fast-food or Nike for sportswear.

Blog Content Brainstorming Face the fact – your blog needs to be regularly updated to maintain its readership! Hence, you must always find fresh topics to write about, and we’re going to discuss how to do just that in this article.It is important to know how to write attractively.The very first option that I think a blogger should write on is a topic that he or she feels passionate and interested in. You’ve chosen to make blogging your career because you want to escape a mundane job – forcing yourself to write about something that you’re not interested in is as torturous as your mundane job! The other reason I ask you to write about something you’re passionate about is because your feelings and emotion shows through your writings! If you feel indifferent to a certain subject but still write about it just for the sake of it, your readers will notice it. Remember the advice about writing with a personality? Forcing yourself to write will not establish a welcoming style at all.

Once you have chosen your main theme, start posting to your blog about it and make it a habit to post at least once every day, even if it’s only a comment on the newspaper article you read today. Think of yourself as a gigantic train. It takes a lot of effort to get you moving. First, you might just budge an inch, and later trudge slowly on until you finally reach your full speed. Then, it’ll take a lot of effort to stop you instead! However, no matter how well you know your topic, your brain is bound to get exhausted over some time, so here are methods to brainstorm for content for your blog.

1) The very best way to brainstorm is to see what other bloggers have to say about stuff happening in your field of discussion. And the very best way to find related blogs is to use http://blogsearch.google.com/ or www.technorati.com. There are other decent search tools too, you just have to look around. From other blogs, you can gather more knowledge on your subject and you can also comment on what others have to say on your own blog!

2) Once you’ve established contacts with other bloggers in your field, you’ll have quite an inexhaustible “conversation” ongoing, so you’ll not need to actively search for content to write about. However, if you’re still stuck, search for news articles related to your niche in the local newspaper or online through sites like http://news.google.com and http://news.yahoo.com.

3) You can also have conversations with people with the same interest as you in the particular niche you choose, so you will eventually build up a bank of questions and answers and interesting discussions to write about in your blog. To do this, join forums related to your niche, but don’t join every forum there is out there. Stick with one or two with the biggest number of members or the one which is most focused on your niche.

This will also come in handy much later in gaining traffic and generating profits. Remember to keep up your momentum of posting at least once per day (or more if you have a lot of content to write about) so that the major search engines will know that your blog has fresh content everyday. This will attract the search engines to spider your page on a more frequent basis, hence gaining you extra traffic.

Don’t worry about the paragraph above about generating traffic and search engines, because we’re going to talk about that in more detail later. For now, remember to keep a consistent effort everyday and build up momentum like that of a locomotive! On Page Search Engine Optimization Now, you should have a blog full with content you have passionately written. It should be a very interesting grapevine for the community of your chosen niche, as opposed to a lifeless factsheet.

However, no matter how delicious your content is, if there is nobody to read it you can’t generate profit from it. Traffic is the lifeblood of your blog. In order to attract people, you must offer attractive information. Simple enough. However, to get traffic onto your site, you have to think backwards. Where do people look when they need information? Yes, they search using search engines like www.google.com,www.yahoo.com and www.msn.com, to name a few more popular ones. So, to get these people on your blog, your blog needs to rank high on search result pages of these search engines.

When these people search for information through the search engines and see your site among the top results, they will naturally click through to your blog! The art of getting your blog or website onto high rankings on search result pages is called search engine optimization. It is a very complex and hard subject to master, but that doesn’t stop us from learning simple yet effective techniques to conquer the search results for certain keywords. The more complex techniques are usually needed to fight for very competitive and general keywords such as “fat loss”, but I’ll teach you how to overcome that later. For now, let’s determine the keywords that you want to optimize your site for. For example, your blog talks about tech gadgets. Now, you’d want to check in Google whether it is a very competitive keyword. At this time of writing, there are 29, 000 ,000 search results. Think you can beat 29, 000, 000 sites at your first attempt? I don’t think so.

Now, let’s try to narrow down our scope. Let’s look for “technological gadgets” instead. At this time of writing, Google lists 792, 000 results. That’s more manageable, but you’d like to search for more focused keywords. However, let’s optimize your blog for “technological gadget” just for the sake of learning.

First, you have to pay attention to the title of your blog. Since you’re optimizing for technological gadgets, you need to have that exact phrase in your blog title. For example, a line like “Your Best Technological Gadget Blog!” would work great. You can change the title of your blog in the Blogger control panel or the Wordpress blog when you’re creating it. If you’re proficient with HTML, you can even do that on other blog engines like Moveable Type. Bottom line? Learn a little HTML!

Other than that, your page heading should also contain the term you’re optimizing for. The page heading is the bit of text in your code that is enclosed within the <h1> and </h1> tags. This is important as it tells the search engines what your page is about (in this case,”technological gadgets”). Since we’re posting a blog, the <h1> </h1> tags are usually the post titles, so remember to include the term there whenever relevant. One last bit, you should also sprinkle the words “technological gadgets” in your posts whenever possible. The frequent occurrence of that phrase in your blog will hint the search engines that your blog is really relevant to that topic.

However, this is the most important bit of all. Always keep in mind that you’re writing for real life people who read your blog to obtain information, so it is very stupid to spam your blog with keywords! In fact, if you do that, the search engines will end up thinking you’re spamming and drop your ranking further down into oblivion. So keep in mind! Write for humans, not search engines!

Somewhere along the line you are going to have to spend a little money on a guide to show you all of the real ins and outs of blogging. One of the best reports I know of is Blogging And Businesses Today How To Become A Blogging PRO Save Hundreds Of Lost Hours and thousands of dollars in lost time and potential earnings by setting up your blogs right the first time!

Most plug-ins are free and can be gotten at wordpress.org, however there are a few that are well worth paying for. Here are a few plug-ins you can’t live without. The first six are MUST have. If you do not have those first six plug-ins………forgetaboutit. Most of the plug-ins are at wordpress.org, if you can not find one or two of the plugins there then just “google” it.

all-in-one-seo-pack

google-sitemap-generator

google-analytics-for-wordpress

maxblogpress-ping-optimizer

wordpress-automatic-upgrade

FeedBurner_FeedSmith_Plugin

add-to-any

advanced-permalinks

all-in-one-adsense-and-ypn

answerlinks

are-paypal

autoresponder-gwa

auto-translator

business-directory

cnn-news

diggz-et

full-text-feed

max-banner-ads

maxblogpress-favicon

maxblogpress-unblockable-popup

jeromes-keywords

Lucia_s_LinkyLove

onlywireautosubmit

Offpage Search Engine Optimization

We’ve already optimized our blog to rank well for search results of certain keywords that we’re targeting, but here comes the sad news – it affects your ranking in only very minor ways. However, don’t skip this step as every little bit helps when you’re competing for search engine rankings! Now, we’re moving on to offpage search engine optimization. That is, factors that are not on your blog but affect your search engine rankings very greatly. There are a lot of offpage factors, but we shall study them one by one. The first and most obvious one is the number of links to your blog. As a general rule of thumb, the more links to your blog, the more the search engines think you are an authority in that particular niche and hence the higher they rank you.

However, take care to observe the quality of the links. For example, a thousand links from totally irrelevant sites like online dating sites would not help at all because your blog is a technological product blog. In contrast, a single link from a highly authoritative site about technological gadgets will get the search engines crawling about your blog like the Feds storming a crack den.

Anyway, the most cost effective way of getting high quality links from authoritative sites is simply to ask for it. If your blog contains high quality content that is original and will provide valuable information to the site’s readers, chances are the webmaster(s) will link to your blog or even write about you!

Let’s talk about how we should ask these webmasters of authority to link to your blog. We’re discussing this based on the presumption that your blog is really content rich and offer high quality information to anyone in your niche or topic of discussion. The most viable option would be to send an email directly to the webmaster.

Will continue in the part 3..

Many people wonder what exactly is a blog, and how can it help their business, if at all. This is a common question that people ask me as I make big money on the internet with blogs, but before you can make big money with blogs you must first understand what blogs are all about, because many people simply don’t know.

The blog has been around for years, however just came into major popularity in the last three years. The weblog, or blog is simply a application that allows users to post written text that gets immediately posted to the web, like an online journal of sorts. The blog is something that is meant to be as easy to use as the word processor application on your computer. While most websites take hours to update, a blog can be updated in real time, as quick as one would save a file to a computer.

This is partly what makes blogs magical. Blogging is a great way to get information on the internet inexpensively with friendly results, such as high search engine ranking, and free advertising. The blog, with it’s variety of keyword heavy posts allows people to make money off of the high return result on a search engine like Google. What this means is that if you are selling home security systems, and you create a blog about good deals on such systems, chances are people looking for a security system will come across your blog in the search engine. This added exposure will surly help more people notice your business, and make purchases, thus creating greater business for you.

For first time bloggers, a free blogging web site is a great way to get started in the blogosphere. Popular blogging web sites like blogger.com and wordpress.com allow users to set up and host a blog without paying any fees at all. This encourages people to start blogging, because the fact that one of these sites can provide you with all of the tools that you need to get your blog up and running without spending any money means that you have nothing to lose by starting a blog.

The fact that it is so easy to find a way to blog for free is one of the reasons why so many people who have never had any other kind of web presence before find themselves drawn to blogging. By signing up with a free blogging web site, you may find it easier to get listed in search engines that you would if you were starting your own blog from scratch. For example, google runs the free blog hosting site blogspot and crawls its pages very often looking for updates, so if you have your site hosted by blogspot you are almost guaranteed to be listed on google’s blog search engine.

This easy access to search engines can take some of the work out of promoting your blog, and can help you gain a following with a minimum of marketing effort. If your blog attracts a large readership, you may want to consider moving your site. Many people feel that being hosted by a free blogging web site gives a blog a kind of amateur flavor that is fine for a new member of the blogosphere, but is not appropriate for a high profile blog. However I have seen some very high profile blogs hosted on free platforms. There is a very serious drawback to hosting your blog on a free platform. You do not own the blog. Your blog can disappear….puff!, just like that. No warning, no nothing, just gone. Hey it’s their server, and they can do what they want. I have lost quite a few blogs that I had hosted on wordpress.com. WHY???? I don’t know. So if you feel that you want to invest a little bit of work into this blogging thing, then host your own blog.

Having your own domain can help you make your blog feel professional, and finding a company that will host your domain is not difficult or expensive. Once your blog takes off, you will probably be able to sell enough advertising space and/or affiliate/adsense to pay for a hosting package, and still have money left over. Domain name.$10.00. Hosting $10.00 a month. Starting your blog on a free blogging web site is a great way to build a following before you spend any money on your blog. If you do use a free blog system, then have a way to capture names, and email addresses. If and when your blog becomes popular and you are ready to take the next step and purchase your own domain, your readers will follow you to your new home.

If you get shut down you will have a way to contact your readership. The fact that it is possible to use a free blog host like blogspot.com as a kind of incubator for your blog is great news for bloggers everywhere. There are some good free blog host out there, but I would stay away from “wordpress.com”. I have registered a blog with them make one post and have them shut down the blog and never get a reason why.

Here are a few common “blog-related” words to help you out:

1) Permalink – Permalink stands for permanent link, which is a URL (uniform ressource locator) that leads to an individual post that you make in your blog.

2) Trackback – When you post about someone else’s blog post elsewhere, your post will show up in their “trackback” section. This feature, however, is not available with a Blogger.com account.

3) Pinging – Blogging seems to be paired with pinging almost every time either one is mentioned nowadays. Pinging is actually the action where a certain aggregator is notified whenever your blog is updated, so that the aggregator may show the newest post of your blog on their website. This is a useful way to gaining traffic, which we shall discuss later.

Blog Content

First off, I want you to understand that there is no fixed scope that your blog should have, which means you can write about whatever you’re interested in. However, the difference between a profitable blog and a non-profitable blog is the way the blog is written. Just imagine, would you prefer to read your university professor’s lecture notes or the latest novel by your favorite author? You may prefer to read the novel because it appeals more to your interest, or because it is not as mind-numbing as the lecture notes by your professor. However, the most important point is people like to read “light” stuff most of the time. You see, when people log on to your blog, they are not only looking for information – they are also looking for information they can obtain easily, and better still in a relaxed manner. So, to attract more visitors as well as to keep your current visitors coming back for more, it is very important to add a human touch to your blog posts. This can be done by simply imagining you’re talking about a certain topic with your personal friend.

An extra bonus for your readers would be a great sense of humor, so try to add funny comments in your articles where they are suitable. Another important key point is to avoid addressing your reader as a plural unit. What I really mean is you should not write as if you’re preparing a speech. Instead, you should write as if you’re having a conversation to a single person because this will make your visitor think of you more as a personal friend rather than a person of higher authority.

The best domain names have vanished into the interweb’s vortex. People need to be creative. Using country code top-level domains (ccTLD) to create a unique domain is a great way to play on the domain extension and the name itself, also known as a domain hack. Some ccTLDs have lost its original meaning/purpose as they are now frequently used by international companies rather than by the country’s natives. We found ten sites that have been successful in combining their name with a ccTLD.

Not all countries allow their ccTLDs to be used by anyone other than their own citizens and domestic companies. Many of the smaller and lesser known countries, however, tend to be quite generous when it comes to selling out their ccTLDs as it can generate a good income for the country.

Ma.tt

Matt Mullenweg, the creator of WordPress. Being the genius that he is, he came up with the idea to combine the ccTLD of Trinidad & Tobago with “Ma.” And voila, he has a domain name of just his name: Ma.tt. There are no registration restrictions for .tt, with the exception of .edu.tt, .gov.tt, and mil.tt. Physical presence in Trinidad & Tobago is not required to get a .tt domain; making it open for everyone to use.

Blo.gs

Blo.gs is owned by Automattic and is a site/tool that keeps you updated, via the web and email, when something is happening on your favorite blogs. The ccTLD “gs” belongs to South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands that are part of the British empire. The .gs domain is often used with no connection to these islands and it is open to international registrants. Go to their official domain registration website (www.nic.gs) if you want to get a registered domain, since buying .gs is unavailable at the most popular domain companies (e.g. godaddy).

Chi.mp

While .mp is the official ccTLD for the Northern Mariana Islands you will not really be able to find many websites with this suffix that are related to this tiny country. Chi.mp is the most popular .mp, and is a content hub and identity management platform. Through them, you can obtain your own .mp domain. A .mp domain currently costs $20 per year, but if host it on Chi.mp’s own platform it’s free. There are no restrictions when it comes to registrations.

TV.nu

The ccTLD .nu is a very popular domain prefix in Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands since “nu” means “now” in the local languages. The Swedish site tv.nu (translated as tv.now) is just one of many .nu sites in Scandinavia. Originally it was the assigned ccTLD for the island state of Niue and it is one of the first ccTLDs that was offered as an alternative to the common .com and .net. Check out nunames.nu if you want to get your very own .nu.

MTV.tv

What do most people think about when they hear the word TV? Probably entertainment, video, and audio. The ccTLD .tv is the perfect match for sites such as MTV, VH1 and the like. Tuvalu was the intended country for this ccTLD but is now open for registration all over the world. If you want a .tv domain, you can visit www.verisign.tv and check the availability of these domain names.

Insure.me

The .me ccTLD has, for obvious reasons, become very popular in English-speaking countries. It is marketed for personal websites. Last summer Montenegro (that little country where Bond’s Casino Royale took place), opened up registration of .me to the public. All of the cool and not-PG friendly .me are gone now, but the ability to create salacious names are never ending. If you want to buy a .me domain, go to doMEn (domain.me).

Cr.yp.to

The ccTLD .to of Tonga is open for registration, without restriction as well. The famed programmer, mathematician and cryptologist Daniel Bernstein has registered the domain hack cr.yp.to as his own personal website. Visit the Tonga Network Information Center (www.tonic.to) if you wish to register a site with a .to domain name.

will.i.am

Armenia is the country with the ccTLD .am but its friendly spelling has allowed it to become popular among radio shows and the AM networks. The prefix is still widely used in Armenia but it is being marketed as an international domain. There are no real restrictions when it comes to registering an .am domain name but the registry reserves the right to revoke registrations in case of obscenity or illegal activities. Above you see an example where some Will.I.Am fans became creative and registered the fan site will.i.am.

Last.fm

The Federated States of Micronesia, an island nation located in the Pacific Ocean, owns the ccTLD .fm. The top level domain is however not particularly related to Micronesia and it has instead become widely connected to the FM radio networks. It is open globally and there are no restrictions for people wanting to register a .fm domain name. One of the most well-known examples is the above listed social music website last.fm. Go to www.dot.fm to register a good domain name.

Monetize.it

Many English words go well with the Italian ccTLD since it spells “it.” .IT is still very popular in its homeland and the most common of all these ccTLDs to be used by the native country. If you want an .it domain you will have to be a resident of an EU country and the registration request has to be sent in Italian, via paper or fax letter to the registrar. A little archaic, but hey it is Italy. Also, the domain name itself has to consist of at least three characters. Monetize.it is a good domain hack (even though the site is not all that beautiful). Go to this site (www.nic.it) if you wish to read more and want to register a domain name.

And you thought your favorite domain name was taken by some spammer? Here you have more options to find a creative and awesome domain. If these ten names do not satisfy your thirst, there is also: Iceland (.is), Antigua and Barbuda (.ag), and the United States (.us).