Sunday, August 15, 2010

Index your blogs

Tags are keywords that you use in your blog post. If you have a blog about dogs and you just write a post about dog food, your possible tags would be, say: dog, dogs, dog food, natural dog food, dog food recipe, and any other keywords that you used in your post.

What is a tag?

Tags are keywords that you use in your blog post. If you have a blog about dogs and you just write a post about dog food, your possible tags would be, say: dog, dogs, dog food, natural dog food, dog food recipe, and any other keywords that you used in your post.

How to use tags

Tags using your blog URLs:

<*a href="http://www.yourblog.com/[tagname]" rel="tag">[keyword]<*/a>
(remove asterisks in actual code)

Examples:

<*a href=http://www.yourdogblog.com/dog+food rel=”tag”>dog food<*/a>

If you are using Wordpress blogs you can set tags using Wordpress search function:

<*a href=http://www.yourdogblog.com/blog/search/dog+food rel=”tag”>dog food<*/a>

Using Technorati Tags:

<*a href=http://www.technorati.com/tag/dog+food rel=”tag”>dog food<*/a>

Ping Technorati and IceRocket using following URLs to your ping list:

rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
rpc.icerocket.com:10080/

You can also ping Technorati and IceRocket manually by going to
www.technorati.com/ping/ and www.icerocket.com/c?p=ping

You can use www.pingooat.com to ping more than 60 ping services in the same time.

Technorati and IceRocket will index your blog posts according to tags that you used.

Some of Technorati tags pages are highly ranked in search engines. Search engines bots spider daily these pages and when it finds your tags it will index your blog posts too.

It is recommended to use this method for each post that you write. By adding tags to your post you can drive more targeted traffic to your blog.

By using this method you can index your blogs in 24-48 hours depending on the popularity of the tags you used.

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

5 ways to increase traffic

Title:
5 ways to increase traffic to your blog
Article Body:
Blogs are a very popular ways of promoting your product or service. They are easy to install, easy to administer and easy to update. And search engines love them too. But what is a blog without traffic? Exactly. Here are five quick ways to boost traffic to your blog and start seeing those big sales.

1.Build a list of blog services to ping
There are a lot of blog services you can ping. This means that you notify this service, that you've updated your blog. These services then list your new posts and you get the traffic from them. I've made a list of 50+ blog services you can ping on my site. These list are also available if you search google or any other search engine for it. That should be enough to give an initial boost to your traffic.

2.Add buttons to popular news readers
What does this mean? Well there are sites like yahoo or google or bloglines etc, which have a members area where you can select sites with RSS feeds to fetch the latest updates from different blogs. That way you can have the latest updates from let's say 50 blogs listed on one page. I have a list of these popular pages on my website plus the buttons which link to them. Users can then easily add my blog to their news reader members area.

3.Update your content regulary
Search engines and blog services love regular updates. It's very likely that you will get targeted traffic from search engines if you post regulary. That means you should make a new post to your blog at least once per day. But be careful. Too many updates per day can harm your search engines position and hits. What's too many? 10 or more.

4.Post in forums
Post in forums, but don't spam them. Post something fresh and interesting and put a link to your blog in your signature. Don't just post in any forum. For example if you're selling cds, post in forums that are about music and cds. Don't post in car forums if you're selling furniture. By posting in forums you will get one-way links which are good for search engine position in search engines like google or msn or yahoo.

5.Submit to blog search engines
There are masses of search engines available, that list only blogs. Just google for „blog search engines“ and you should find at least 20 of them. These blog search engines will help you with targeted traffic. Be sure to write a good title and a good description to your blog, so that people will easily find it and click on your link.

Follow these 5 steps and you will start seeing lots of traffic to your blog. And the so long awaited sales will start coming in. And don't forget to update your blog with fresh unused content that you write yourself.

Monday, August 9, 2010

My blog is boring - HELP!

So you have this really great idea to start a blog on a particular niche. And perhaps, maybe you even want to make some revenue off of AdSense, Clicksor, or other contextual advertising. Super. You’ve wrote your heart out and posted some blog content. Great! No problems there. But what do you do to keep the content fresh and insightful? Are you feeling that the content you offer on your blog just "lacks"? Is your blog boring? Maybe you can’t even pinpoint what exactly is "lacking", but you just feel it. Possibly, you just do not have the time to put forth to writing 1000 word articles every couple days. If this is you, it is time you look into using other people’s articles!

"WHAT?" you say. No, I am not suggesting you steal or copy others articles. However, I am suggesting that you utilize websites that offer free web content on your particular niche. There are many free web content sites or ‘article directories’ that offer free articles for you to use on your blog or website. You are able to use these articles totally free without a problem. The only thing you are required is to give credit to the author who wrote the article. Fair enough?

Now you ask, "Why would I want to use someone else’s articles? How lame is that?!" It’s actually not lame at all. Think about it. There are thousands of other people offering new, unique insight on exactly what you are writing about. You will find that people offer a different point of view or perspective on the particular subject. A different perspective or a new idea can be very refreshing for your blog. To even go further, find those articles that offer new thoughts and respond to the author’s thoughts.

Consider the benefits of using free content articles for your blog or website:

  • When you use other quality articles, you are offering your visitor with useful content, and in effect, your visitor comes back for more.
  • Using free web content will allow you to keep your blog fresh and updated on a daily basis with valuable information.
  • Other people's articles can inspire new thoughts and ideas for your blog.
How do you find quality free web content for your blog? When you find an article that you would like to put on your website, make sure you are permitted to actually use it. You can usually find that information right on the article page or the website’s terms of service. When you are positive that you can use the article, read it over to make sure it is even applicable to your website. Do run it through a spell check to make sure that level of quality is portrayed in the article. If there are a bunch of errors, do not change the errors because that would violate the terms for the article. Instead, move on to finding another article. So do some searching and reading. Find that interesting web content and post that interesting web content for your readers! Delight your readers with something interesting and exciting!

Saturday, August 7, 2010

Search Engine Optimization

E-commerce is a cut throat business. You have to arm yourself with the proper know-how and the tools to make your site a cut above the rest. Each day, more and more sites are clambering to optimize their rankings in websites and if you lose your guard, you may just get trampled on and be left in the abyss filled with so many failed e-commerce sites.

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a term widely used today by many e-commerce sites. For the past few years and the next ten years or so, search engines would be the most widely used internet tool to find the sites that they need to go to or the product or information they need.

Most people that use search engines use only the ten top search results in the first page. Making it to the first page, more so to the top three is a barometer of a sites success in search engine optimization. You will get a higher ratio of probability in being clicked on when you rank high. The more traffic for your site, the more business you rake in.

But, it is essential to grab a hold of that spot or make your ranking even better. As I aforementioned, each day is a new day for all e-commerce sites to make them selves rank higher using search engine optimization. It is imperative to make your site better and better everyday.

So just what is search engine optimization and do you have to use it? The answer to why you have to use it is an easy one. You need search engine optimization to be number one, or maybe at least make your site income generating.

With search engine optimization you can get the benefit of generating a high traffic volume. Let’s just say you get only a turn out of successful sales with 10 to 20 percent of your traffic. If you get a hundred hits or more a day, you get a good turn out of sales already. If you get only twenty to ten hits a day, you only get one or two if not any at all.

So once again, what is search engine optimization? Search engine optimization is utilizing tools and methods in making your site top ranking in the results of search engines. Getting yourself in the first page and better yet in the top half of the page will ensure that your site will generate public awareness of your site’s existence and subsequently generate more traffic, traffic that could lead to potential income and business.

Search engine optimization requires a lot of work to be fully realized. There are many aspects you have to change in your site or add as well to get search engine optimization. These will include getting lots of information about the keyword phrases that are popular in regards to your sites niche or theme.

You may also need to rewrite your sites contents so that you could get the right keyword phrases in your site without making it too commercial but light and informative. There are certain rules and guidelines to be followed with making your site’s content applicable and conducive to search engine optimization.

You will also need to collaborate with many other sites so that you could get link exchanges and page transfers. The more inbound and outbound traffics generated by sites among others are one of the components search engines uses to rank sites.

Try to search the internet for many useful help. Tips, guidelines and methods for search engine optimization are plenty to be found. Read many articles that can help you optimize your site in search engine results. The more knowledge and information you gather the better. This will all help you in getting those high rankings. This may require a little time and effort in your part but the benefits will be astounding.

If you can part with some money, there are many sites in the internet that can help you in search engine optimization. There are many sites that help in tracking keyword phrases that can help your site. There are also some content writers that have lots of experience in making good keyword laden content for your sites that have good quality.

Act now and see the benefits garner with search engine optimization. All of these will result to better traffic and more business for your site and company.

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Video blogging: Pros and cons

Video blogging has a lot of advantages over text-based
blogging, and it is little wonder that this new
technology is catching on all over the globe. Video
blogs very effectively grab the attention of web surfers,
and people are much more likely to become excited
about the dynamic content of a video blog than they are
likely to find a written posting very thrilling. The more
enthusiastic viewers are about a site, the quicker the
word of mouth spreads, and the more traffic the site will
get.

Of course, there are plenty of disadvantages to video
blogging as well. Hosting a v-blog requires quite a bit
of server space, which can make it difficult to get
started. It takes more time to process and upload a video
file than it does to dash off a quick bit of text, which
means that running and updating a video blog can be
quite a bit of work. In addition, web surfers sometimes
grow frustrated with the slow loading times of the files
on many video blogs. Whether you opt for a video blog
or not depends on what kind of subject matter you want
to cover, and how much time you can devote to video
blogging. Before you decide to pursue a video blog,
consider if there is an easier way for you to get your
message across.

(Word count 233)

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Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Video Blogging

Videoblogging is the next generation of posting ideas and products over the internet. Everybody knows about textblogging. Now they use videos for a better way of expression. This form of communication may entail a lot of resources, but it is all worth it. If pictures say a thousand words, videoblogging exceeds that by far.

A videoblog requires larger disk spaces on websites, a faster server, and a whole new set of programs to support it. Videoblogs can be fed through RSS. This is technology of syndicating your website to other RSS aggregators.

Videoblogging works with people on the internet expressing their selves. Now if you put this on a business prospective, you are up to a lot of benefits. Think of it as a powerful tool in making showing your prospective customers your line of products or your services. It’s just like showing a commercial all for free. And if you videoblog through RSS, then most probably you are getting your target market.

People like to see what they are going to buy. Some would like to see proof and be sure that they are getting their money’s worth before shelving their dimes on it. All of us know the influence of a thirty second commercial. The effect of videoblogging is similar to that. You show your product, people watch it. If they like it, they buy it. If you present it good enough, they’ll buy the product even if they don’t need it.

Now on the web, things are pretty much static, unlike in television in which all are moving. If you post something that is mobile, it would most likely catch attention. Now imaging your product parading in all it’s royalty through videoblog. You’ll get phone call orders in no time.

If your business is just starting up, you can create a videoblog right at your own home. All you need is your web camera, microphone, video software, and lights. For as long as you know how to use your camera, then you can create a videoblog.

Invest in a good web camera. The higher its resolution is the better the output. And you like to present your goods in the optimum way so get the best one possible. Make a short story, or just capture your goods in one go. Just make sure you are getting the best profile for each. Get those creativity juices flowing.

Lights are important in a production. Make sure you illuminate entirely the area you are going to use to create videoblog. The brighter the area, the crispier the images will be. You can also use lighting effects for added appeal to the presentation.

Should you require sounds for your videoblog, you need a microphone. Record you voice as a voice over for promoting the product and its benefit to consumers. Sounds are as important as videos on a videoblog. It is advisable to make your sound effects as enticing as the video.

Your video editing software can be any program. You need this to finalize your work. You can add sounds, delete some bad angles, or insert some still pictures in there too. Some programs are user-friendly and can be used even with zero knowledge on video editing. Even simple video editing programs should do the trick. Select your background carefully too. The light affects the presentation so make sure that the background and the light complements each other.

Videoblogging is a great tool but it also has it downside. It may slow down the computer so other may steer clear of it. Download time may also be time consuming especially if customer is still on a dial- up connection.

But don’t let those stop you. Let videoblogging be an alternative for you, though it is best to still keep the text and pictures present in your presentation to accommodate all possible viewers of your site.

Nowadays, the more creative you are in presenting your product to the market, they more you are likely to succeed. Videoblogging offers an interactive way of selling. You involve the customers. You instill in them the advantage of your goods. And at times, those are enough to make a sale.

Sunday, August 1, 2010

Photo blogging

Many people feel that photo blogging is the most
exciting kind of blogging that exists. Building and
maintaining a photo blog is no more difficult than
creating and updating a text-based blog, and many
people feel that the internet's high speed, full-color
technology reaches the pinnacle of its appeal with the
transmission of images. Posting photographs in a blog
format on a daily, weekly, or occasional basis is a great
way to express yourself while reaching viewers in an
emotionally charged and aesthetically engaging way,
and surfing photo blogs can help you to get a whole
new perspective on the world in which we live.

Many people who run image blogs are photographers by
trade, but photo blogging is also very popular among
hobbyists and amateur shutterbugs. To be certain, a lot
of the most popular photo blogs have gained attention
because the pictures on them are of the highest artistic
caliber, and a lot of the people who run these striking
blogs are graduates of prestigious art schools and have
impressive professional portfolios. However, some of
the most well known and most often visited photo blogs
are as notable for their concepts as for the pictures
themselves. Certain photo blogs, like the popular "Cute
Overload" which features picture after picture of
adorable animals, are more about the thematic content
of the pictures than they are about the style in which the
snapshots are taken.

The fact that photo blogs range from forums to display
the work of highly skilled artisans to playful collections
of curiosities shows that photo blogging is a truly
diverse form. The fact that photo blogs are so easy to
build and to update makes this kind of visual
communication very democratic, and enables people at
all skill levels to become a part of the global
conversation about the nature and value of photography
today.

Whether you are an artist or hobbyist who wants to
create a photo blog, or whether you are just somebody
who enjoys learning about new places and things,
spending some time looking at the most popular
photography blogs on the internet can be a very
rewarding endeavor. You can travel to another place or
another time by seeing pictures of faraway locations and
long-gone eras. You can see your own neighborhood
with fresh eyes by discover how local artists have
photographed the town or city in which you live. Photo
blogging allows people to communicate all of these
things and more, which makes it a very exciting part of
the modern blogosphere. If the best thing about web
technology is that it allows people to reach each other in
a very personal way from across great distances, then in
many ways photo blogs are the most successful kind of
web sites.

(Word count 469)

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