My Blogging Tips

There is little doubt that at the current rate of growth, blogs will replace websites as the platform of choice for people publishing online. If you are in a niche and trying to improve your position as an expert within it then you need to be blogging.

We have unearthed some interesting statistics about the power of blogs and how quickly they are becoming the site language choice of many people online. For example:

- Blog readers spend about a day a week online reading blogs. That is, the average time spent by one blog reader is 23-24 hours a week reading blogs.

- Almost 1.5 million posts are made to blogs on a daily basis.

- About one quarter of the top 100 sites in the world now are blogs. In other words, when websites once dominated this domain, blogs are now grabbing a huge slice of the top 100 market.

- Over 12 million Americans alone now maintain a blog either as a way to promote themselves and products within a niche or simply to relay their thoughts to readers. This is growing at a rapid rate each day.

- It’s expected that the term blog will overtake the term website in online talk. For example, people in the next couple of years are more likely to refer to building a blog rather than a website.

- The ability to put a blog up quickly is a major reason why people are preferring them over the static-style website. Blogging platforms are more user-friendly especially for novices making them the platform of choice for webmasters.

- Even though blogging is growing rapidly, there has never been a better time than now to “grab your slice of the pie.” The upward growth trend in blogging is likely to expode in the next two years and now is the time to get involved.

Popularity: 51% [?]

Technorati Tags: Benefits Of Blogging, reasons to blog

Coming up with content for your blog is going to be the biggest challenge in keeping it up to date and offering fresh news to your readers on a daily basis.

If you have a large number of sites to service then did you know that you can post content to your blog but drip feed it over time? Many successful bloggers, particularly those with sites will add a block of articles to their blogs but schedule them to publish over a period of time. Continue Reading »

Popularity: 100% [?]

Technorati Tags: how to drip blog content, how to drip feed blog content, how to schedule a blog post, how to schedule a post in Wordpress

Many people will often argue that they have no idea what subject to start a blog on. Did you know that you could very well be the perfect subject to start blogging about.

Here’s a fact. Reality television has dominated the media landscape in the past decade and it seems people cannot get enough of watching other people doing everyday stuff. How about if you translated this to an online scenario where you start a blog about your life, your trials and tribulations or a factor in your life you’d like to share with others.

So what are we talking about? Well, the basics would mean keeping a daily diary and making it interesting enough to keep visitors coming back day after day to see what you’ve been up to.

Pick on your hygienic habits or those of a family member who shall remain nameless; talk about your work environment and some of the drama or gossip going on within that environment.

Talk about your fitness program and give readers a daily update of where you’re at and how easy or tough it is. Talk about your hobby which could be gardening and provide readers with regular tips. Talk about your recreational pursuits such as fishing or hunting and give readers tips on how to catch the biggest fish or the best deer. We could go on and on and the ideas would never run out.

One thing to remember is if the subject may embarass others then use a pseudonym. You don’t need to use your real name. Change the names of the characters but the content really needs to be real.

Here’s the thing - once your blog has been up and running for several weeks and you’re starting to get a readership then you can look at ways of monetizing it. You could consider an adsense block, an affiliate product related to your topic which you’ve read or used and recommend and in time, you could sell advertising on your blog. The last monetization aspect is the most exciting.

When your blog gets to a level where your readership has grown to impressive proportions, then you have the ammunition to attract advertisers based on the large traffic numbers you get.

So, do you think you can find something to blog about?

Popularity: 46% [?]

Technorati Tags: blog content, Blog Ideas, blogging tips

There is no software installation required for you to go over the Wordpress.com and build a blog on their server.

Signing up at Wordpress.com gets you a blog with a name like: mykewblog.wordpress.com

You can literally start blogging in minutes.

If you need to create content for your blog, becuase you want it to be rcompelling argument and sell people on your ideas, you should consider getting a copy of the Article Marketing Secrets Report.

If you want to have your own blog, on your own domain name, like kewlBlogger.com, then you need to :

1. Purchase a Domain name (from somewhere like GoDaddy)
2. Establish a Hosting Account for your website and private email (we like BlueServer.com)
3. Install Wordpress (you can get your free how to install wordpress videos here)
4. Customize your Blogging Experience

<

Popularity: 45% [?]

Technorati Tags: free wordpress blog, Hosting, install blog

Anchor text is very important yet many inexperienced bloggers seem to get this horribly wrong when linking there text. How do we mean wrong? Simply put, they often just link random words which really have no SEO benefit at all.

Here’s an example. Let’s say we are writing an article on dog training and it looks a little like this:

“Did you know dog training is a great way to teach your canine how to behave correctly especially in public. Many people attempt to train dogs on their own but if someone has little experience then teaching them the wrong things at a young age could prove a source of frustration later on.”

Now I’ve just made all that up so don’t take any notice of it but for the purposes of showing you a bad piece of anchor text have a look at what has been linked. “Many people attempt” is the phrase linked but from a SEO perspective, it means nothing and has no benefit whatsoever.

Instead, to get the search engines attention here are the phrases we would link given that the article is about dog training:

dog training
train dogs

That’s it. Can you see what we are getting at. Always link the words or phrases related to what the article is about. It makes much more sense to the reader who sees a colored link with words in it related to the article they are reading. Remember, most people go online looking for answers and solutions and if they are looking for dog training, then they are more likely to click on either “dog training” or “train dogs” than “Many people attempt.”

Popularity: 45% [?]

Technorati Tags: how to create a link, how to create anchor text, how to make an anchor text

One of the great benefits of blogging is the availability of templates. Templates in a sense can either make or break a visitor’s initial perception about a blog. Many people will be familiar with the Wordpress blue default template and it’s probably the most used template out there.

But you have plenty of options including going to a resource like http://wordpress.org/extend/themes for lots of theme choices.

Recently, we came across a your theme designer who has produced what we feel is one of the finds of the year. It’s called the Flexibility theme and it’s designer has taken blog themes to another level.

One of the bugbears with many themes is they either lack or need something you want to add and that means going into the theme editor and making the necessary adjustments. For inexperienced people this can be a proverbial “pain in the butt” and many simply stay with what they’ve got until they can be taught how to change or add code.

The Flexibility theme has taken this out of the equation to a great extent by offering an interface where you can do all your alterations without messing with the code. That inludes changing header colors, adding links to footers, adding images…you name it, it’s there. It’s under the Flexibility Theme Options tab and after some playing around with it, you’ll probably agree this is about as good as themes operations get.

Recently discovered a minor bug which I reported to the developer Ryan and it will be fixed in the next update. The theme is free but there is an option to make a donation and seriously, a few bucks his way makes a lot of sense. It’s a great theme and you can get it here:

http://www.flexibilitytheme.com

Popularity: 52% [?]

Technorati Tags: blog themes, flexibility, flexibility theme, themes for blogs

One of the pitfalls inexperienced bloggers fall into is to simply write a post without much thought given to it’s construction and input.

What we’re talking about is making your post search engine friendly and a piece of content that will live forever. In other words, it needs to become an “immortal piece of content” and the way you do this is to optimize it for specific keywords and make it a good quality post.

Don’t be tempted to write content just for the sake of putting something on your blog. Poor quality content will soon be recornized for what it is…bad and if this occurs then your reputation can suffer. Write your post with passion and this will be reflected in the final outcome.

Now for those hungry search engines. Avoid writing without giving much thought to the search engines. Before you write your post on your blog think about the topic then do a search on Google Search for keyword ideas. For example, type dog training into the Google Search box and as your typing, Google will make related suggestions. These are the suggestions we came up with for dog training:

dog training collars
dog trainers
dog training advice
dog training schools
dog training books
dog training video
dog training equipment
dog training supplies
dog training courses
dog training dvd

As you can see, you have a big list to work from and better still, at least eight future blog posts. But we’ll talk about this in another article. For now, remember to pick a keyphrase and write your content around it. Include it at least once in the title and at least three times in a 300-400 word post. Also use variations a couple of times

Now you have a post keyword optimized and you’ll keep both your readers happy and also those hungry search engines.

Popularity: 56% [?]

Technorati Tags: blog content, how to create blog content, how to write blog posts

If you are stuck for ideas for blog content then don’t despair, the possibilities are endless. One of the best sources to get content ideas on a non-stop basis are online news and group discussion areas.

Remember, we are talking abvout getting content ideas not the actual content itself. Many times, one of the best ways to overcome writer’s blocks is to simply read what others are talking about and either agree or disagree with what they are saying.

Did you know that as a blogger your role is to really keep your audience abreast of the latest news and happenings within your niche. Think about this, if you have a regular list of readers then something attracted them to your blog and it’s more than likely the things you have to say.

People trust your opinion so they look forward to every post you make. So the best way to keep in touch with what’s happening in your niche is to go to news sources on a daily basis. Find out what people are talking about and what’s popular.

You can either elaborate, comment or simply write your own take on what’s being discussed and then add a link to the original article for others to read. But where are these news sources?

Good question and here are a list of resources you can check out. Before we list them, you should also sign up to Google Alerts at http://www.google.com/alerts for daily news in your niche. Now for that list of sites for your blog post ideas:

http://answers.yahoo.com
http://groups.yahoo.com
http://buzz.yahoo.com
http://groups.google.com
http://groups.msn.com
http://digg.com

Popularity: 41% [?]

Technorati Tags: content for blogs, how to create blog content, how to create content for blogs

Adding images to your blog posts is a great way brighten up the post or make it more appealing to readers. There’s little doubt that images which even remotely match the content will give your blog post a more professional look.

Images attract attention and even if your post is eye-catching with a title that gets attention, people will tend to look at an image first before actually reading the post.

Many struggle to actually find images they can use but there are some great resources online where images are available. One of those is at flickr.com but in this article, we want to point you towards a resource which makes adding images to your post as “easy as pie.”

It’s called Zemanta at http://www.zemanta.com and basically it’s a plug in you upload to your blog and when you complete a post, it will offer suggested images you can use related to your blog post. It doesn’t get any easier than that.

So in a nutshell, Zemanta will read your blog post and analyze the contextual content and then it goes off on the web to pull in suggested relevant images as well as text and keywords. It will then present these images in a sidebar alongside the post and you simply look at each one and decide which one you want to use.

Better still, when you’ve found an image you like, you simply click it and it’s automatically inserted into your post. Images are a great way to enrich one’s content and if you have struggled to know how to insert images into your post then try Zemanta.

Popularity: 42% [?]

Technorati Tags: blog images, images for blog posts, images for blogs, zemanta

Do you get bogged down with coming up with unique blog posts on a regular basis? One of the ways to get around this is to source other people’s articles and the best place to find them is article directories.

Directories such as Ezine Articles are full of content submitted by webmasters and while this content is unique to the people who write them, this doesn’t mean you cannot use them.

Coming up with unique posts can test even the most experienced webmasters. If you get stuck why not consider pulling a post from an article directory and presenting it to your readers as information you thought they might be interested in.

For example, if you have a blog on growing bamboo and produce tips and tricks to your readers to grow the best bamboo possible and come across an article you think will benefit your readers then why not publish it on your blog. But won’t this article be published elsewhere meaning it’s not unique content? Sure but there are ways to make it unique to your blog.

Here’s what you can do:

1. Look for articles on article directories such as Ezine Articles for content related to your blog.

2. When you find one you want to publish add it to your blog.

3. Do not remove the author’s resource box so make sure you leave their links within their resource box.

4. Now let’s make it unique to your blog.

5. Add an introduction either commenting on the article, points of interest within the article or add extra information you feel the author may have left out. Then introduce the article. This extra content can be anywhere from 100-200 words.

6. For extra uniqueness, add a video from You Tube related to your topic.

7. For even extra unique touch, add an image from your collection or check resources such as flickr.com

That’s it. Now you have unique content on your blog and it will not have taken much time to produce. Be sure to target a specific keyword in your title and introduction.

Popularity: 50% [?]

Technorati Tags: blog content, free content for blogs, how to get blog content