April 25, 2009

Best SEO Sites for Increased Traffic Tips

SEO-blocks As many of you know, Search Engines are the most substantial source of traffic for almost any blog on the web. The blogs without any traffic from Google will never have the chance to be shared with the world. In order to increase your traffic, you must optimize your blog so that Search Engines are attracted to it. Which is also known as SEO (Search Engine Optimization).


So here is a list of useful SEO sites :


Daily Blog Tips
Improve your blog with Daily Blog Tips. A fast paced blog featuring articles on blog design, SEO, promotion, menotization and more

Search Engine Land
Search Engine Land is a hub for news and information about search engine marketing, optimization and how search engines work for searchers.

Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO
talk about Google, SEO, and Gadgets. But mostly Google.

SEOmoz
Search Engine Marketing News & Tips

Search Engine Journal


Pronet Advertising
Pronet Advertising is a weblog about Neil Patel's personal experiences in online marketing.

Search Engine Guide
The small business guide to search engine marketing. Articles from the top names in the industry cover topics including SEO, PPC, SEM, blogging, social media, adsense, adwords, Google, Yahoo, MSN and Internet marketing.

Online Marketing Blog
All about the intersection of search engine & social media marketing

Marketing Pilgrim
Andy Beal discusses news from the search engine industry, blogging, rss and other internet marketing.

Search Engine Watch
Search Engine Watch provides news and tips about search engine marketing (SEM), search engine optimization (SEO), and searching the Web. We offer daily news & analysis of the search industry, including the latest on Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Ask.

Get Elastic
Ecommerce articles on internet retail, online marketing, social media, SEO, and killer ecommerce tips from Elastic Path Software; Featuring the Get Elastic ecommerce podcast - conversations with ecommerce industry insiders.

Web Analytics World
Manoj Jasra's insight on Web Analytics and the Search Marketing Industry. Also including Interviews, Technology Reviews and Podcasts

BlogStorm
Search engine optimisation & internet marketing blog

Small Business SEM
Small Business SEM by Matt McGee | SEO and Marketing Discussion for Small Businesses

SEO Scoop
SEO Scoop is a popular search engine optimization blog that focuses on SEO tips, theories and news.

Search Engine Roundtable
Search engine optimization news and resources.

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April 18, 2009

Best time of the day for blogging

blogging-old Many bloggers, especially those who only to leave a large number of questions about their new businesses. It is overwhelming, and sometimes stressful to your own blog, but there are many resources to help you. A common question that the Blogger, when the best time to the content of your website, it is when you try to cash on the Internet.

It is not really a good general answer to this question, because there are not. Every blog is different there, regardless of the market niche to which they belong. There is a slightly different guidelines and things to think when you really need the best time to write.

 

Always on your readers

If you think that your motivation to the company, you remember that your goal is to please your readers. Then, before your calendar and begin to examine the data and the hour, take a moment to think about, and your readers. Try to know what the time zone to which they belong and go directly from there.

Once you understand, you know what time that is more for them. The majority of people, when new e-blog in the morning, so could be the ideal time to your messages. But the May does not apply to all blogs. Their market niche and what kind of readers that you attract May, a lot to do with. Discover what time your readers want to see new messages.

Trial and Error

Once you decided to establish a calendar, your e-mails that attempt, and then about a week and see where he is. May you have things a little bit earlier or a little later, but you get it. If you still secondment, watch out for your readers are waiting for your contributions.

Once your system developed for the posting, your readers not begin, be sure to ask your time. Just think about the kind of blogs you read and constantly think about how often their functions and, if they are on a regular basis. Those who are more and more regularly usually easy to follow and stay on this.

The choice of timing is important

There are so many things that you learn everything, but if you are not a matter of this item, the choice is the perfect time and they remain. You will be surprised by the way these can help you, more training and readers to help you make money on the Internet. It shows the other, you are easy to calculate, and there is a good picture of your location.

If you are still problems in trying to find the right moment for you and your blog, and then simply ask your readers to receive the optimal time hope that by new messages. He never bad to ask!

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Driving Traffic to Your Blog

Many blog owners spend a good portion of their time trying to figure out how to generate traffic to their blog. This is especially true when it comes to a brand new blog that is not yet really rich in meaningful and effective content. Generating visitor traffic to your blog is an endeavor that is going to take some basic effort on your part. Thankfully due to modern technology, the task of attracting interested people to your blog is a lot easier now than in the past.

The most common online blogging platforms are Wordpress and Blogger. Both have hosted blog solutions, but Wordpress also has an open source solution for installing the Wordpress platform onto your own domain name. If you put the following tips into practice, it is more than possible for you to begin attracting traffic to your blog as early as on the first day. Within 24 hours of creating a blog you can begin to generate traffic, and if the purpose of your blog is to sell a product, you could be making sales just as quickly.

1 - Every blog has an RSS feed.

By submitting your RSS feed to the most popular online feed services, you will be able to attract website traffic very quickly, especially if you are focusing your blog content on specific keywords that have lower competition in search engine ranks. All that you need to be able to do is to submit the URL for your feed to a wide range of different free services as soon as you actually have a live site to promote. Some of the most widely recognized feed sites are:

- Feedage.com
- Feedagg.com
- Feedraider.com
- Feedfury.com
- Feedsubmitter.com
- Feedest.com
- Search4rss.com

2 - Social bookmarking involves creating bookmarks for your blog.

Additionally social bookmarking is meant for displaying information about what your blog centers on and what it has to offer. It is important that you use social bookmarking responsibly rather than spamming these websites. Simply write a short post that explains in a little bit of detail why your site or product will interest the people that you want to visit it. There are a myriad of different social bookmarking websites out there, including but not limited to:

- Digg.com
- YahooBuzz
- Technorati.com
- Del.icio.us
- Propeller
- StumbleUpon
- Reddit
- Mixx
- Fark
- MyBlogLog

3 - Social networking, on the other hand, is a little different.

When you create an account on a social networking website, you put together a profile that allows you to connect with other people, creating powerful partnerships and even a fan following in the right circumstances. These networks and relationships will facilitate the capability for you to promote your sites and protects, although much more subtlety than through other sources. Here are a few of the most popular social networking websites:

- FaceBook
- MySpace
- Classmates Online
- MSN Groups
- Yahoo Groups
- Xanga

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Drive Traffic with Twitter

Twitter is viewed as just another social networking tool that you can utilize in order to better promote your website or your blog. You can use Twitter to promote your blog quickly and easily, and this is a truly effective way to drive more traffic without much effort. First, you need to set up your Twitter account.

If you are going to write on Twitter.com, the first thing that you need to do is to set up an account and then to get started. This will include creating an account with the username you wish to have represent you, and then completing your profile and setting up any specific settings in your Twitter preferences. For good marketing, you should set up a picture in your profile because it is important to let people get to know you.

The next step in the process is to write the content that you have in mind. You can use twitter to reference content that you post on article submission sites, so you may want to begin by writing such an article. Create a profile on the submission directory site if you have not done so already. This is just another way to get your name out there.

Now that you have an account created on both websites, and a bio or profile under each of the sites, the next step is to get everything linked together. If you have a Twitter account, you can set things up to automatically update your status when sites like ezinearticles.com approve your content. What that means is that as soon as an article you write is posted on EzineArticles, it will be automatically posted to your Twitter feed at the same time. Considering how simple both of these endeavors truly are, this is a two for one kind of marketing effect. Not only will it get your name out there in the article submission sites for better article syndication marketing, but it feeds your Twitter.

This is one of the best ways to use your Twitter account to advertise your blog or other website endeavors that you are looking to attract traffic to. This is a really hands free process that everyone can get use of because it only requires membership to two sites for absolutely free, and a little bit of content in order to get the ball rolling. If you want to use Twitter to advertise your blog or website, this is a good way to set everything up, because your Twitter account is “fed” hands free, and you can work on writing good content and letting article syndication as well as Twitter accomplish the rest of the work for you.

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SEO Principles for WordPress Blogs

WordPress is a relatively SEO friendly blogging tool to begin with. It offers a linking structure that makes it relatively easy for spiders to crawl your pages, and the code contains very little validation errors if any at all. However, there are a few additional steps that you can follow in order to make your WordPress blog even more SEO friendly, and most are so simple to implement that there is absolutely no reason not to.

1 - You need to make sure that the URLs on your pages contain your blog’s post name, rather than simply a post number.

This can be easily accomplished by using the permalinks page in your WordPress settings, typing “/index.php/%postname%” when asked about custom structure. Alternatively, you can write a rewrite rule directly into your .htaccess file in order to have an increase in control over the syntax of your URLs.

2 - Change your page title order so that your blog post name appears before the name of your blog or the date of your blog.

The first words in your title are always given more weight than anything else, and they will also catch the attention of your readers more effectively. This can be done by editing the header.php file, swapping the order of the PHP tags so that wp_title appears before bloginfo.

3 - Make excellent use of your heading tags.

You may find that your blog entry title is insert automatically into a tag, or that your blog name is in a tag. You can edit these tags in single.php as well as header.php in most WordPress templates. You can choose a format that suits you, but the best solution is typically to put your blog entry title in, swapping your blog name for an image instead. Also make sure that you make good use of other heading tags, using a good heading structure any time that it is suitable.

4 - Avoid duplicate content issues by using “index, nofollow” tags on your tag pages, archive pages and category pages, allowing search engine spiders to follow the links on these pages but not to list them in the index.

There are a number of plugins that can make this a really simple process, and one of the best is called robotsmeta.

5 - Pay attention to the linking structure in your blog, making sure that all of your blog entries can be properly accessed with as few clicks as is possible.

Remove unnecessary links from your blog pages and remove unnecessary pages from your blog as well. You are going to want to consider using a pagination plugin to help you remove unnecessary clutter from your blog for ease of use and increased access.

There are a number of other techniques that you can use to maximize your SEO for WordPress, but this is certainly a good place to begin.

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How To Increase Earning Potential of Google AdSense

logo-adsense When you include Google AdSense ads on your blog, there is certainly potential to make money, but how? Many beginner bloggers have Google AdSense ads running, but the earnings aren't coming. Follow the steps below to give your blog's Google AdSense program the greatest chance for success & start making money now.

Difficulty: N/A

Time Required: Ongoing

Here's How:

1. Determine your blog's primary focus

Google AdSense ads are most effective when they are served to people who are interested in the products & services those ads offer. With that in mind, Google AdSense tends to work best on blogs that are about niche topics such as a specific product/hobby. Consider how you can make your blog's topic more focused to better attract specific types of readers & specific types of ads.

2. Write consistent & focused content

Google serves ads based on the content on each of your pages. The more focused your content is on each page, the better Google can determine which ads are the most relevant to your readers. Write consistently & stay focused on a specific topic to increase the likelihood that Google will display ads on your blog that your readers are apt to click on.

3. Work to increase your blog's traffic

The more visitors to your blog, the more potential for clicks on your Google AdSense ads. Work to increase your blog's traffic to boost your chances for ad click-throughs. However, keep in mind that if you write focused content, the ads on your blog will be relevant to that content. The traffic that comes to your blog needs to be interested in your blog's topic & your content/they are not likely to be interested in your corresponding Google AdSense ads. Work to drive traffic but make a concerted effort to find traffic that adds value to your blog.

4. Research & test keywords

Google serves ads through its AdSense program based on keywords. Advertisers bid on keywords relevant to their businesses. Some keywords are more popular than others & therefore, drive higher bids. Higher paying keywords also mean higher payouts to you when your readers click on them. The ads served on your site are determined by the content on your site. If you're writing about topics related to higher paying keywords, then you're likely to earn more money from your Google AdSense program than if you wrote about topics related to lower paying keywords.

5. Test Google AdSense ad positions on your blog

You can display Google AdSense ads just about anywhere on your blog. Test a variety of positions on your blog to determine which work best for you in terms of generating click-throughs & maximum revenue.

Tips:
  1. Check with your blogging software provider & blog host to ensure your blogging package allows you to place Google AdSense ads on your blog. For example, Wordpress.com doesn’t allow Google AdSense ads.

2. Don't fall victim to the allure of covering your blog in ads to generate income. Blogs that are cluttered with ads are difficult to read & readers typically don't return to blogs where the meaningful content is hidden in between ads.

  1. Track your results to see what's working, particularly as you test keywords & ad positions. This will allow you to develop the best advertising mix to maximize your blog's income while staying consistent to your blog's brand image & overall message to readers at the same time.
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About Affiliate Advertising

affiliate-networks Many bloggers are eager to find revenue streams to help monetize their blogs. Once your blog is established & receiving some traffic, you may want to begin researching affiliate programs that could allow your blog to put money in your pocket.

What is Affiliate Advertising?

Affiliate advertising is basically an online marketing channel. An advertiser pays a blogger to promote the advertiser’s products/services on the blogger’s site.

There’re 3 main types of affiliate ads: pay-per-click, pay-per-lead & pay-per-sale. Each of these affiliate ad types has 1 thing in common. They’re all performance based meaning you don’t earn money until your readers perform an action such as clicking on a link/clicking on a link then purchasing the product on the page to which the link brings them.

There are several large & well-known companies that offer affiliate programs which you can set up on your blog within minutes regardless of how well established your blog is.

Examples of Companies Offering Affiliate Advertising Programs to Bloggers:

  • Amazon: You can choose from a wide variety of ads such as text links, banner ads & more. If you’d like, you can also select the exact Amazon products you’d like to feature on your blog.
  • eBay: You can choose from eBay’s auctions & find the specific products you want to advertise on your site.
  • AllPosters: You can choose from 400,000 products to advertise on your blog.

What is an Affiliate Directory?

You could sign-up to monetize your blog through an affiliate directory where various online merchants post their affiliate ad opportunities. You can review the ad opportunities and apply to host a specific ad on your blog.

Most advertisers on these sites will have restrictions related to the blogs they will work with. Typically those restrictions are related to how long the blog has been active & the amount of traffic the blog receives. For those reasons, an affiliate directory is most helpful if your blog is well established.

Take some time to research each affiliate directory to find the right one for you and your blog. Different affiliate programs offer different payments & credibility. Take your time & investigate your options before you jump into anything.

Examples of Popular Affiliate Advertising Directories:

Factors to Consider When You Select an Affiliate Advertising Program to Monetize Your Blog

  1. Read all the details about the opportunity including the pay, the terms, etc.
  2. Select affiliate program ads that are consistent with your blog’s content. Ads that don’t match your content will undoubtedly be clicked on less frequently (meaning less revenue for you) & can decrease the credibility of your blog (meaning fewer readers will return to your blog because it's cluttered with irrelevant ads).
  3. Don’t go overboard with affiliate ads. Too many ads not only make your blog look suspiciously like spam to readers, but search engines will think so, too. Sites that are covered with affiliate ads & little additional original content will be marked as spam by Google & other search engines which will hurt your traffic & page rank overall.
  4. Don’t expect big profits (at least not at first). While many bloggers can generate a decent ancillary income from affiliate advertising, most bloggers can’t boast those kinds of results. Boosting your income through affiliate advertising takes time & practice. Don’t be afraid to test new ads, placement, programs & more until you find the best mix to meet your goals for your blog.

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What is eCPM? How it is Calculated?

ePCM means "effective cost per thousand ad impressions".
It is calculated by the below equation:

eCPM = [earnings/ad impressions] * 1000

I give you an example:

If your ad is shown 500 times and your earning is $3.50, then your eCPM is

[3.50/500]*1000 = 7

So, for thousand ad impressions, you will get $7.

The equation is simple, the more eCPM you have, the more $$ you will get.

There are a few tips which will increase your eCPM very well. I will reveal them in my next posts.

If you want to increase your adsense CTR, placing ads inside or between blog posts will definitely increase your revenue.

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Kinds of Blog Advertising

your_ad_here The Main Types of Blog Advertising Opportunities:

Online advertising offers three primary types of ads bloggers can use to make money from their blogs.

  • Pay-per-click: The advertiser pays the blogger each time someone clicks on the advertiser's ad.
  • Pay-per-impression: The advertiser pays the blogger each time the ad appears on the blog's page.
  • Pay-per-action: The advertiser pays the blogger each time someone clicks on the ad and performs an action such as making a purchase.
 

Contextual Ads:

Contextual ads are typically pay-per-click ads. The ads are delivered based on the content of the page on the blog where the ads will be displayed. In theory, the ads shown on the page should be relevant to the content of the page thereby increasing the chance that someone will click on them. Google AdSense & Kontera are examples of contextual advertising opportunities.

Text Link Ads:

Ads that are not served based on the content of a blog's page but rather are placed based on specific text in the posts of a blog are called text link ads. Text Link Brokers & Text-Link-Ads are examples of text link advertising opportunities.

Impression-Based Ads:

Ads that pay bloggers based on the number of times the ad appears on the blog are called impression-based ads. FastClick & Tribal Fusion are examples of impression-based advertising opportunities.

Affiliate Ads:

Affiliate ads give bloggers a choice of programs to provide links to products. Bloggers are paid when someone purchases the advertised product. Amazon Associates & eBay Affiliates are examples of affiliate advertising programs.

Direct Ads:

Many bloggers offer an option for visitors to purchase advertising space on their blogs. Direct ads are typically shown in the form of banner ads or similar display ads provided directly to the blogger by the advertiser to be uploaded to the blog. Pricing and payment methods vary from blogger to blogger (often dependent on the amount of traffic the blog receives). Direct advertisers on blogs are sometimes called sponsors of that blog.

Reviews:

Reviews (often called sponsored reviews) are an indirect form of advertising on blogs. A company might contact a blogger directly asking them to write a review for a product, business, website, etc. If the blogger is paid to write the review, then it is a form of advertising revenue. Some companies offer forms of review advertising such as PayPerPost.

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Make Money from Blog (Other Than Using Ads)

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The Value of Monetizing Your Blog Through Nonadvertising Opportunities:

By displaying ads on your blog is certainly a simple way to try to generate an income from it. However, ads aren’t a guaranteed money-maker. For 1 reason, they are often dependent on the actions of your blog's readers. For another reason, generating a significant amount of money through advertising on your blog is unlikely (possible but unlikely) unless your blog receives a very large amount of traffic each day.

By diversifying your income-generating opportunities, you'll have a greater chance of successfully monetizing your blog. Following are a variety of nonadvertising methods to earn money from your blog.

Sell Merchandise:

Many bloggers have success selling branded and non-branded merchandise on their blogs through CafePress.

Ask for Donations:

It can't hurt to ask your readers to donate to your blog. Some of them just might do it. You can add a donation button to your blog through PayPal.

Sell Your Guest Posting Services:

Most bloggers write guest posts for other blogs for free as a way to promote their own blogs. However, you can also offer your guest posting services for a fee.

Write & Sell an Ebook:

If your blog has loyal readers then they must like what you have to say. Similarly, if you've established yourself as an expert in your blog's topic, then there is a good chance people will want to read more from you outside of your blog. Leverage that position by writing an ebook & offering it for sale on your blog.

Write a Book:

If you've established yourself as an expert in your blog's topic & developed a strong following, you could write a book & either try to have it published or self-publish.

Become a Professional Blogger:

Many blogs and blog networks look for talented & knowledgeable writers to author blogs & many of those blogging jobs are paying. Apply to blogging jobs to boost your blogging income.

Apply for Other Writing Jobs:

Blogging can help you polish your writing skills, which can help you land other freelance writing jobs online & offline. Transitioning into freelance writing from blogging is not unusual & can be very lucrative.

Become a Public Speaker:

If you've successfully established yourself as an expert in your blog's topic & generated a decent amount of traffic to your blog, you could offer your services as a public speaker at events related to your area of expertise.

Become a Consultant:

If you've established yourself as an expert in your blog's topic, you can offer consulting services to other people or business' who could use the help of your expertise. Alternatively, you could offer consulting services related to developing & writing a successful blog.

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Add a PayPal Donation Button to Your Blog

donate-with-paypal As you spend time visiting other blogs, you'll probably notice dontation buttons on many blogs. Some may be obvious & say "Donate" while others could be a simple linked line of text that says, "Buy me a cup of coffee".

While the words & appearance may vary, the purpose is the same. In each case, the blogger is asking people who read & enjoy the blog to donate some money to help keep the blog going.

You can easily set up a donation button through PayPal. Just sign up for a PayPal account & follow the simple instructions on the PayPal Donations web pages to obtain the code that will link to your PayPal account. Next, you'll simply copy & paste the code into your blog (most people do this in an easy way by putting it on the blog's sidebar so it appears on as many pages as possible).

Once the code is inserted in your blog, the donation button will appear automatically. When a reader clicks on the donation button on your blog, they'll be taken to your personal PayPal donation page. Whatever money they donate, will be deposited directly into the bank account you chose during your set up process through PayPal.

It's important to understand that a donation button is not likely to bring much revenue, but it's simple enough to add to your blog that it's worth the few minutes of effort it takes to get it up & running.

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April 17, 2009

Add Page Element to Blogger Header and Posts

You would notice under Template -> Page Elements that there are options to add a Page Element to the sidebar and the footer. However, there is none for the Header and Blog Posts. Having a Page Element option to these latter two is useful. You may want to add a picture at the top, or a Google Adsense ad at the top or bottom of your blog posts.

To have an “Add a Page Element” option, under “Template”, click “Edit HTML”. Scroll down and towards the bottom, you will see these lines:-


<div id='header-wrapper'>
<b:section class='header' id='header' maxwidgets='1' showaddelement='no'>


Change them to this:-

<div id='header-wrapper'>
<b:section class='header' id='header' maxwidgets='3' showaddelement='yes'>


This will give you 2 more page elements that you can add to your Header. You can increase this number if you want.

Right after that are these lines:-

<div id='main-wrapper'>
<b:section class='main' id='main' showaddelement='no'>


Change them to this:-

<div id='main-wrapper'>
<b:section class='main' id='main' showaddelement='yes'>


You are now able to add Page Elements either before or after your Blog Posts.



Note:

1. In different templates, the 'header-wrapper' may be called 'header-wrap' or 'header' and so on. Scroll to where you see an option called showaddelement and you can probably figure out the rest.

2. We realized that in some templates like the Dots Template, there is no separate Header at the top. Instead, the Header is contained in the left sidebar and the main posts appear on the right. This is the template layout and it is probably the reason for your choosing this design. In such templates, you can Add Page Elements to the 'main-wrapper' but not at the Header. Nevertheless, you can still look at the guidelines below to Add Page Elements in the 'crosscol-wrapper' part of the template. This will give you the option to Add Page Elements right on top of both the sidebar and main posts. You can upload images, insert AdSense code, text or other scripts into this section.

Update:

There is an additional position where you can add Page Elements to. This is between the Header and the Blog Posts. When you add a Page Element in the Header section, it follows the Header styles (like font, color and margin settings) and similarly, if you add a Page Element in the Blog Posts section, it follows the styles defined for the Blog Posts. You might want to include a Horizontal Menu or Navigation Bar or AdSense Ad unit just below the Header but before the Blog Posts and sidebars.

To do that, scroll to here and change to the value (shown in red):-

<div id='content-wrapper'>

<div id='crosscol-wrapper' style='text-align:center'>
<b:section class='crosscol' id='crosscol' showaddelement='yes'/>
</div>


This should appear in all new Blogger templates. If you don't see this in your template, you can also add the entire code (shown in green). When you view your Template -> Page Elements, you should now see a new section in between the Blog Header and Blog Posts where you can insert Page Elements.



Once these are done, Save the Template. Click the “Page Elements” tab, and you will now see “Add a Page Element” option at the top of the Header and Blog Posts. Assuming you decide to add the element below the Header or Blog Posts, not to worry. Simply create whatever element you want and save. Next, drag and drop the element to the bottom of the Header or Blog Posts. Click the Save button at the top right hand corner of the page, and your settings have been saved.
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April 16, 2009

How Much Money is Your Blog Worth?

Gold

 

How much $$ is your blog worth? I think this is one of those typical questions that we often ask ourselves. We know that a blog unlike a real estate (landed property) is basically an intellectual property and there is no specific measurement to determine the value of our blogs. The popularity of our blogs however are heavily depending on Alexa, Google PR, backlinks among others. I'm going to tell you now how valuable my blog is.

 

 

 

Congratulations! Your blog is worth $24,630

 hjghjjhj

Wow! I just can’t believe it. My infant blog (less than 1 month old) worth $106,020 and this amount is far far beyond my expectation and imagination! This blog must have cost me a fortune lol. Imagine the value of it after a year, it's going to be 10 times more than the amount now. MY BLOG IS A GOLDEN EGG. Anyone wants to buy my golden egg, please contact me now  .

Well needless to say much,I guess you know it’s too good to be true. After all it's just a game designed to make you feel happy at least for a while but it’s fun to play. Do try it out yourself and if you like, you can let me know how much your blog worth.

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How To Change The Template

At this opportunity, I will discuss about how to change template in blogger.com. First matter to be in considering in changing template is you have to make a backing up your old template, this good for if you feeling not match with your newly template. if you not yet known the way to back up template, please read at the post how to backup template, and also don't forget to back up your widgets (this is very important). For back up your widgets, please read at the post how to backup your widgets.



To change the template, of course you must had a new template to uploaded. If still not yet had, you can download for free template at uniQue Template or at other sites. Have ready for changing your old template with newly template? Please follow the steps below :

  1. Login to blogger with your ID


  2. After entering the dasboard page , click Layout. Please saw the picture :






  3. Then click edit HTML tab. Please saw the picture :






  4. Click the Download full template link. Save your template:






  5. Click browse... button. Choose your new template. and then click Upload button.



  6. browse button image


  7. Usually go out commemoration that your data in your widgets will be delete forever (so don't forget to backup your widgets).


  8. For example, the image will show like this :





  9. Click at Convirm & Save button.


  10. Finish. Please look he result.



Now you have had the new face. However of course your template is still empty, So next step is inserting your widgets manually through page element menu.

Enjoy your new blog face
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Free Tool - CSS Tab Designer

Create killer menus effortlessly!

CSS Tab Designer is a unique and easy to use software to help you design css-based lists and tabs visually and without any programming knowledge required!
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With the CSS Tab Designer, you can :
  • Quickly design your list visually
  • Choose from a variety of styles/colors (60+ different designs/colors supported). [ Styles Authors / Credits ]
  • Generate strict xhtml compliant code
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CSS Tab Designer screenshot CSS Tab Designer screenshot Separator
» Windows 98 / ME / 2000 / XP / 2003 «
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hide-disable-remove-blogger navbar from your blog

Learn how to hide,disable or remove the blogger navbar (navigation bar) from your blog.
First,let us see what blogger navbar is:

Blogger navbar allows users to easily navigate to other random blogs and it also has a feauture to search the blogs ,and mark any blog as spam.
So,now you have a clear idea of what really a blogger navbar is.So, why so many people prefer to just remove the navbar inspite of the feautures it has like search,etc.Many people think that, it spoils the look of the blog,especially if your blog has differnet subtitle layout which looks too obvious to see for a visitor.Well, let me come to the actual point on how to disable or hide your blogger navbar.

Below is the step-by-step procedure on how to do it with photos to make it easy to understand.

1.Sign in to your blogger account and click the layout button next to your blog name.

2.Next, click the edit html tab.

3.Add the below html code as specified in the below picture.



#navbar {
height: 0px;
visibility: hidden;
display: none;
}


add the code like this

4. Save the changes.

Now, you can see your blog without that navbar(this tip can only hides the navbar,it doesn't completely delete it).If you want the navbar to appear again,just remove that code and save the changes.
If you have any doubts,regarding this post,don't hesitate to ask.You can ask your doubts via comments to this post. Continue Reading...

6 FREE ways to DOUBLE your blog traffic in less than a week

6 FREE WAYS TO DOUBLE YOUR BLOG TRAFFIC IN LESS THAN A WEEK:

Everyone wants traffic. You set up a blog with great content but, no one is visiting your blog, so what's the use of it. So, you need at least a decent amount of traffic and what's great than getting that traffic for FREE?
So, here is the good list of 6 Free ways to get traffic to your blog.

1.SEARCH ENGINE: Yea! it brings lots of traffic to your blog. There are millions of people search in the search engines like Google, Yahoo, msn everyday. So, if your blog has so many good posts and is well indexed by Google, etc.. you will get a good amount of traffic via search engines. There are a few steps to look at if you want a decent amount of traffic from the search engines like "submitting your blog sitemap to Google", yahoo to index you blog pages very quickly. And the other important one is adding meta tags to your blog. If you follow these two simple steps, then you will get a decent traffic (massive traffic if your content is good).

2.Submitting your blog to Blog Directories: You may know this before,submitting your blog to blog directories will bring you a good traffic.
Here is a good list of blog directories (there are so many directories,but the below one's will bring you a good traffic). Most of these blog directories ask you to register before you submit your blog.My suggestion is,create a new email address solely for this purpose so,your personal emails are not flooded with the emails sent by the blog administrators,etc.

3.Participate in forums,groups,etc:Just go to Google and enter your [major keyword + forum] or [keyword+groups] and search.Suppose,your blog is about blogging,then search 'Blogging forum'.You will find some forums,groups related to your site.Register in the forums and post articles,etc with a link back to your blog(as a signature).Answer questions,clarify doubts and provide a link to your blog.But,Don't SPAM.

4.Social Bookmarking:Social Bookmarking is another way to build good traffic to your website/blog.If you don't know what Social Bookmarking is
"Social Bookmarking is a practice of saving Bookmarks,tagging the posts with keywords in a website".Bookmarking means saving a specific website url (address) in your browser that you wish to visit later.There are so many Social Bookmarking sites like del.icio.us,digg,furl,technorati.
One good thing about these Social bookmarking sites is,you will get instant traffic.Just register with them,store your bookmarks,tags,.. and you are done,See your site meter blasting with traffic.

5.Submit Articles to Article Directories: Submitting articles to article directories is another effective way to build more traffic.By submitting to them,your articles get massive exposure and gain you more traffic.
Some of the popular article directories are goarticles.com, ezinearticles.com, articlecity.com, etc.
There are hundreds of article directories,just google it.

6.Leaving Comments on other blogs:Leaving comments with a link back to your blog is another good thing to do.Leaving comments in the related blogs is more useful and it also increases your pagerank.Always leave good comments and don't Spam(by placing links like 'click here' like that)
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April 15, 2009

How to add Twitter Followers Counter/Chiklet to your Blog

twitter-counter This post explains how to add a Twitter Follower Counter/chicklet widget to your Blogger and Wordpress blogs.. like the feedburner counter.

Similar to Feedburner Counter which counts your RSS Subscribers, Twitter Counter counts your Twitter Followers.

Default button :

twitter counter 1

 

 

Code :


<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" src="http://twittercounter.com/embed/?username=username"></script>


Write your twitter account(username) in place of username.

There are total of 4 colors to choose from.. You can find them here.

To add in Blogger :
Sign into Blogger » Layout » Add a gadget » html/javascript
paste the code and save it.

To add in Wordpress :
Sign into Wordpress > Widgets > Text
paste the code and save it.

Continue Reading...

April 14, 2009

Is Google Threatened By Twitter Search

twitter-search Recently there are quite a number of people discussing about Twitter as a search engine. Twitter is not just a personal messaging platform. Instead it is a informational conversional platform for social networking purpose.

Twitter is growing rapidly since the year of 2008 and heavily used by quite a large number of bloggers and marketers. This has resulted quite huge number of quality content stored in Twitter server. In order to receive quality informational content, Twitter search is one of the important channel besides following information creator.

One reason I like Twitter search is it can return me the latest topic people are talking and discussing about. Unlike traditional search engines, it is almost real-time in Twitter which is an advantage. We can use such feature to analyze the current trend real-time and no need to wait at least a few days for traditional search engines to grab all the information from the web. This is a critical feature for businesses if they want to know what are the responses from people interested in their products or services. They can base on the conversation and adjust their marketing strategy and tactics faster and improve their efficiency and effectiveness.

Although Twitter search is good but it is still very young compared to traditional search engine giants. Personally I have a few opinions on how to improve Twitter search to compete with traditional search engines.

#1 Relevancy

One of the key factor in the search engine result is relevancy. All the results retuned must be related to the search term. The results should be ordered according to the relevancy. The most relevant content should be at the top and less relevant content should be placed at the bottom of the page.

In Twitter search, the results are ordered by message posting date and time. The most recent tweet is placed at the top of the result page. It is good to show recent content to the searcher but it is better if the Twitter search algorithm can include the relevancy check not just base on the posting date and time. Sometime the most relevant information might be posted a few days or months ago. So Twitter search should have the intelligence to show this content at the top instead of the content posted a few minutes ago.

#2 Authority

In Google or other traditional search engines, authority has been introduced in the search engine rankings calculation. It means if more web pages link to a your web page, then your web page will have a higher ranking due to higher authority. Not all contents are created equally. Some contents get popular might be due to their presentation and writing styles. All these factors are hard to determine using algorithm, so we need other ways to find out which content or information are preferable. And authority is a good way to resolve this issue.

Twitter search should consider developing a ranking algorithm to make the search engine perfect.

#3 Spam Filtering

Usually people will include a link in the message pointing to a web page for the full content. Right now there is no verification about the content in the link that exist in 140 characters message. People can link to some web pages that do not related to the content of the tweet. This can be considered as some sort of spam.

Twitter search include some sort of checking to figure out is the content in the link related to the tweet. If not, searches will lose the trust to Twitter search.

Conclusion

There are still lots of improvements to be done on Twitter’s search engine to return the result we are expecting such as relevancy, spam filtering and etc. I do not think that Twitter can replace Google in the very near future. At least it will take years for it to come true if it has the potential.

Continue Reading...

April 9, 2009

5 Tips To Optimize Your Web Page Content

Business Graph

 

Search engine optimization is about content. The higher the quality of your web page content, the higher it will be ranked for your keywords. Without effective content optimization, your off-page optimization efforts might be wasted. The following explains top 5 tips about optimizing your web page content.

 

#1 Keep Your Content Fresh

Google and other search engines love fresh and unique content. It helps to separate your site from countless others in your niche. From user point of view,  we want to read the most updated information. This is what search engines trying to emphasize.

Blog is a good way to produce fresh content. And one of the biggest advantage in blogging is it will update post content automatically by attracting comments. This will certainly keep your post content fresh and hot enough with better rankings given by search engines.

#2 High Text To Code Ratio

Maintaining a high text to code ratio is always preferred. Search engines are different from human. They like to index simple pages as compared to pages with lots of fancy codings such as Ajax, Flash and etc. The more is your codes, the more likely the errors will occur. And it will prevent search engines from crawling and properly interpreting your web page.

#3 Maintain Appropriate Keyword Density Percentage

Since keywords are the terms that people searching to find your web pages, it’s important to maintain appropriate keyword density percentage. In any of your web page, you should target a few keywords instead of just having one. This is where Google determine your page relevancy to a niche.

Having a low keyword density for your targeted keywords will result in low positions and having a high percentage may cause Google to think that you are stuffing keywords. For the best effect, choose 1 ~ 2 strong keyword phrases and target for 2% ratio for keyword to article length. For example, if an article is around 300 words, then it should have 6 keyword phrases.

#4 Start Strong And Finish Strong

The secret of SEO is to start strong and finish strong. This is often overlook by most of the people. You should place your main keyword phrase in the first and last paragraph of your content. The purpose is to attract the attention of your readers and relate your article to what you’re searching for.

However it doesn’t mean you can ignore the rest of your article. Sprinkle the keyword phrases throughout the remaining content will help to strengthen its SEO effectiveness.

#5 Strategic Links On Keywords

One of the effective ways to increase your search engine rankings is to embed internal links in your page content pointing to another page of your site.

For example, intead of waiting for a visitor to click to your “SEO” page, you can write a phrase like “affordable SEO” and link to your “SEO” page. This will not only bring traffic to your “SEO” page, but it also increase the search engine rankings of your “SEO” page.

Conclusion

While you’re optimizing your web page with other on-page and off-page techniques, you should not forget the importance of content optimization. With 5 technique mentioned above, content optimization gives you the best effect.

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April 1, 2009

Give the Power of RSS to Your Blog

RSS gives you more visibility, we all know that. It also gives you what every site owner loves to have, i.e., Incoming links. If you write articles which are very appealing to your visitors, a lot of them will subscribe your RSS feed and display it on their own site, what do you get in return - incoming links. Syndication should be such that people can use your articles in their site, linking back to you.
Incoming Links with relevant anchor text can prove to be a boon for your Search Engine Optimization. For this you just need to name the feed right. The title of your RSS feed is equally important as naming of your blog, but the difference here is that your Blog’s title is read by the humans and also machines, whereas, RSS feeds are interpreted by machines or programs. A blog’s title should be attractive and catchy, where as a feed’s title should focus on the keywords it uses.
Submitting your RSS feed to major RSS search engines and directories is one of the best online marketing strategies you can use, as it allows people to find you through the very gateways used by others to search for the content they are looking for. You can search for these directories through search engines themselves like Syndic8.com
To get through Yahoo or MSN search engine, use the backdoor entry, the much faster and easier way. Login your own yahoo or MSN account and Add your feed to MyYahoo! or MyMSN personalized page. That’s it, you are done. Your RSS feed will soon be listed in the Yahoo!’s or MSN’s Directory with the pages your feed links to from your blog.
Build your feed category wise. Depending on the blog software which you use, a number of options might be available(especially for those using blogging engines installed on their own servers). It’s wise to provide with the specific information your audience is looking for. Options can mean more people subscribing and a higher level of interest from those who receive the feeds. The specifics of how(and if) your blog engine can support these enhanced syndication features will vary based on the software you use. The options for you to try could be:

  1. Category Feeds- People who may want to know about Search Engine Optimization may not want to know about blogging, or people who might want to know about latest films may not like to know about the latest ipods in the market. As almost every blog covers wide variety of topics, in a niche, and a reader may want to know only about a few of them.
  2. Calendar Feeds- subscribers will want to know about the events a resort conducts date wise. Offering a dedicated calendar feed for the purpose will do the trick.
  3. Author Feeds- Your blog may have more than one contributor. Offering specific feeds for the author can create a different fan-following for both. Nonetheless, both would be traffic for the same blog.
  4. Comment Feed- Now-a-days readers want to keep a track of the conversation going on, at their favorite blog, and want to get notified for every new input. The more powerful blog systems are now offering comments feed as an option.

One of the very basic profit you can acquire from RSS is that you can keep your blog updated and fresh by displaying relevant RSS feeds there. Apart from keeping your blog alive this would also help you cover the latest developments in your niche and technology news of the market. You can subscribe to lets say 10 blogs and display important feeds from them. Providing a different feed for this section will help your users to get necessary information from subscribing your blog itself, and he wont have to subscribe the 10 blogs where you are picking feed from.
Think beyond directories and how in real world you can exploit RSS for the benefit of your business.

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