I have been saying this again and again. When you learn to blog , never get entangled with a free web host. However, questions keep arising about this subject despite my cautious reminder. As a result, here are my personal opinion for those of you who still want to test out  a free web host. Remember, the risk is all yours and don’t come back to me when you are f****d! Sorry…

Source: www.acemarketinglive.com

Ok, what are some of the points you might want to search for in choosing a free web host? The standards for selecting free web host along with a commercial web hosting solution are somewhat different although they do overlap. Since How To Blog For Newbies provides folks who could be hunting for either ofthese kinds of hosting, I will cover each of thesesuccessively. Should you be only considering one of thesechoices, you may simply skip to thesuitable section. I’ve written these portions to become as independant from the other as you possibly can.

Getting a Free Web Host

1. Advertising

The majority of free web hosts enforce advertising with your website. It’s done this wayto pay for the cost of supplying your website the free web space and attached services. Certain hosts need you to place a banner in your pages, others present a window that pops up each time a page within your site loads, whereas still others impose an advertising frame on the site. There’s really no solid rule which would be to be recommended: a lot of people hate a pop-up window, other webmasters detest being forced to stuff banner codes onto their pages, many people cannot stand an advertising frame (which might create problems if you submit your site to search engines). No matter which technique is used, be sure you’re at ease with the process. Observe that free web hosts lacking forced advertisements aren’t necessarygreat news. With no workable ways to get back the expenses of operating their server, quite a few close with mind boggling volume.

2. Sum of web space

Are there more than enough space for your requirements? In the event youenvisage that you’ll develop your internet site at some point, you may need to cater for future development. Most sites use less than 5MB of web space. Indeed, in the past, just one of my other web sites, usedunder 5MB of spacethough it had about 150 pages on the website. Your requirements will change, based on the number of pics your site use, whether you may need sound files, video clips, etc.

3. File size and type limits

Keep away from these. Several free hosts enforce a maximum size on each one of the files you add (including one having a low of 200KB). Other sites restrict the file types you are able to upload to HTML and GIF/JPG files. Should your needs vary, eg,if you wish to distribute your personal programs on your own pages, you’ll have to check in other places.

4. FTP access

What’s FTP ? Some free web hosting companies only will let you design your page using their online builder. Although this is helpful for the beginner, do you know ofthe alternative to grow later after you become knowledgeable and their online page builder does not possess the facility you would like?

FTP access, or at least,being able to upload your pages by email or browser,is necessary. I feel FTP access is obligatory, except for the most simple site.

5. Perl and PHP

(In the event you’re pondering: What the heck is PHP and Perl?) It’s not particularly essential nowadays for any free web host, considering that there are lots of free web host services out there offering counters, serps, forms, polls,e-mail lists, etc, without having requiring you to dabble with Perl or PHP scripts. If however you want to make it work yourself, while using the least advertising banners from all of these free services, you will require either PHP or Perl access. Note that it’s inadequate to find out they furnish PHP or Perl accessibility: you should knowthe sort of setting your scripts run under: can it be so limited that they’re of no earthly use? For PHP scripts, does your web host enable you to make use of the mail function? For Perl scripts, have you got authority to access sendmail or its workalike?

6. Reliability and speed of access

This can be very important. A site that’s frequently down will lose a great deal of visitors. If people findsyour blog on the search engine, and that he tries gain access to it but findthat it’s down, he’ll simply scroll down the directory to locate another site. Slow access can also be very irritating for visitors (as well as for you too, whenever you upload your blog). How can you know if your host is fast and reliable? If you fail to get suggestions from anybody, the best waycould be to give it a shot yourself over a period of time, both during peak along with non-peak hours. All things considered, it really is free, so you merely always research it.

7. Bandwidth allocation

Nowadays, many free web hosts impose a set limit on the volume of traffic your site may use daily and monthly. It means that in case the pages (and graphic images) on your site is filled by visitors beyond a definite quantity of times daily (or each month), the web host will disable your site (or possibly post you a bill). It is sometimes complicated to advise a particular minimum quantity of bandwidth, because it depends upon how we design your websites, your niche, and how many visitors you can actually entice in your site. Normally, 100MB traffic monthly is simply too little for anything in addition to your current webpage and 1-3GB traffic a month is normally ample for any simple site in the beginning stages. Your usage, however, will be different.

Next posting would be on How To Choose The Best Web Host For Your Blog.

As you learn how to set up a business blog, I will show you some of my personal insights. Business blogging is usually a different ball game to blogging for profit which, subsequently, is entirely different to a social blog. The type of blog you maintain will establish the voice, design, and identity of your blog along with the work you probably will set into marketing it.

Business blogs must be professional and even appear to be it. Regular posting on topics that your potential audience will genuinely like can promote you for an specialist within your discipline. A blog are able to keepthe queue of contact between you and potential prospects open. It allows you to publish relevant, keyword rich postings that encourage new traffic and improve yourcustomer base.

This is far from an exhaustive list but here are ten tips to keep in mind when building a business blog:

Tip 1: Identify Your Objective Early

In pretty much every guide you ever come across, it says “identify your objective or goal”;it could be a adage but it’s true. Having a business blog your probable goal would be to improve revenue but other deserving targets may include:

•Interacting along with your present or potential clients

• Sending organization information
• Responding to inquiries and issues
• Offering instructions for existing clients

• Providing a website to anything beneficial linked to your market

The look of the website,kind of content to incorporate, whether to feature ads, and several other decisions are going to be ruled by why you begin blogging. The sooner you understand precisely whatyou would like to accomplish, the quicker you’ll attain it.

Tip 2: Make use of SEO Friendly URLs and SEO Plug ins

WordPress is an excellent SEOapplication. It’s a dedicated Content Management System but, more importantly, it features a team of fiercely loyal users that create themes, plugins, widgets, and much more and provide them totally free to other people. Among these power tools are a myriad of SEO related tools which you can use to ascertain your meta description and title tags.

A straightforward but potentially efficient SEO fix would be to alter the format of permalinks or URLs in order that they dispense using the default page id to become substituted for a less strenuous to read and keyword optimized page URL. This can be done with the WordPress dashboard.

Tip 3:  Consider Your Media Positioning

Incorporating photographs and illustrations, logos, videos, as well as other types of mediaare ideal for reader engagement, but you should think about all of your blog assets and put the most important and valuable in the most prominent position. The faster you are able to grab a reader’s attention, the greater your chances will be to maintain it longer.

Certain themesenable you to easily embed video and slideshows in to the sidebarof one’s blog which will be an extremely useful tool to produce your site appear more appealing while relaying genuinely useful information.

Tip 4: Think about Your Ad Setting

The main targetof your business blogisn’t usually to make money directlyfrom the blog itself. Therefore, the inserting of 3rd party ads just isn’t necessarily the ideal choice. However, you can include ads to your company or service in addition to associate websites. You may also add banners to specific categories, tags, or pagesinside your blog. Don’t overdo the number of banner ads along with other distracting advertisements though and continue tomaintain your interface professional and clean.

Tip 5:  Provide Your Readers the opportunityto move You Around

Add me, share this, retweet, and email this functions ought to be offered for yourcustomers. Once you post something helpful and your readers shares it, it’s got the potential to go viral that will createlots of coverage to your blog and for that reason your site and your business. Thisfunctions especially good with extremely unique user generated contentand may be textual content,audio tracks, video etc.

Several themes have these abilities constructed into them, but do make sure they’re enabled. On the other hand locate a sidebar widget or even a social bookmarking plug-in that provides the identical functions and set up this. Many blog readers read several blogs regularly and by allowing them to add you to social bookmarking and social networking sites you might well create a lasting rapport together whilst allowing them to notify others of that which you offer.

Tip 6: Maintain Excellent Content Coming

Attempt to set your self a frequent routine but don’t forget that it could be broken and it can be included to at the appropriate interval. If news breaks, then post your comments onto it. Should you work in product reviews and posts that correspond with your business then attempt to schedule these. Ensure you publish frequently, at least every week, and devote more time to getting active in the community that builds around your blog.

Tip 7:  It need not be just about advertising

So long as you fill your blog with appropriate,fascinating, and well crafted posts then website visitors will make an effort to check around, read several posts, and also clíck the ads to your website to be able to see precisely what you have to offer. Not each and every post must include multiple links aimed at your website pages.

It is possible to download plugins that furtherthe chance of users reading more posts. Some adda listing of related posts to the bottom of each entry even though many themes offer the opportunityto exhibit “hottest” and “most commented” posts to further direct the flow of traffic around your blog.

Tip 8:  Reply Where Responses are anticipated or Warranted

Running a blog is much more than posting a missive on the week’s news every Friday. Regardless how often you post you ought to devote more time to reaching the community that develops around your blog. Respond to your questions and inquiries, provide ideas, and allow an answer whereyou are requested.

A business blog should invariably be professional, meaning maintaining posts and messages which are too personal away. Similarly, spam comments can be extremely damaging to your SEO along with the trust your readers place in the business. There’s decent spam settings in WordPress and you may further extend these.

Tip 9: Run into the writer’s block? Engage in Web 2.0

More specifically study forums and blogs, wikis and news sites associated with your business. Search for those information, stories, articles, and videos which you like the most and therefore are strongly related your blog and write about them. Read the commentswithin your blog and check through your analytics to ascertain the pages which are most in-demand with readers.

Take a look at emerging keywords and news topicsand then try to take appropriate steps swiftly. Slant the resulting article in favor of your business,when possible, after which post this to your blog too. There’s lots of online portals and sites for newswithin your market and you mayutilize email updates, RSS readers, and browser or home page plugins to show them regularly as well as in an orderly and comprehensible way.

Tip 10: Blogging is ideal for Business But Clients are Also Great for Business

Getting stuck right into a blog and truly growing your blog community could be a terrific way to build traffic aimed at your website and develop clients for your business. Reading related blogs and becoming a dynamic member in social networks can assist you discover what your readers want and deliver it regularly.

Blogging and Web 2.0.generally can easily become addictive.It ought to be treated being a tool to help in managing your web business, meaning you need to focus on the other facets of your business. Outsource your blog development and content creation if requiredand relish the results.

How To Set Up A Blog

How to set up a blog?

Unfortunately, many people do not know where to start. We hear so much about what a blog can do for our business and yet, it seems like only a privilege few can afford to hire IT programmers to set it up for them. What’s next?

The problem is most people use the internet only for surfing and sending emails. A blog is a totally different creature. Some may suggest that you engage a free blog like WordPress.com and Blogger.com. However, please bear in mind that you don’t own blogs that you set up in such platform. The autonomy belongs to the host and you can practically forget about having your own advertisements, affiliates and other money making plugins that you can install in your own blog site.

The fact is, not many of us are technical savvy enough to set up our very own blog site. It used to be, when you want to have your own website, you need to know programming languages such as HTML, Dreamweaver and PHP. Many people has actually failed to start when they thought about all the time and resources that need to be invested. Some may even give up thoroughly.

Those who managed to learn up Dreamweaver for example may not necessary be able to get their blog found in Google and Yahoo. You see, setting up a blog site is not just about putting in place some colorful frames and contents. Without doing Search Engine Optimization, your blog can never be found in search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing etc).

However, all is not lost. With the current technology, you can actually learn starting up a blog and get it running within 10  minutes. Take immediate action now because knowing how to set up a blog would open up a whole new money making opportunities for you in the internet.

How To Blog for Newbies Day 30

It would be great if you could find out how many people were frequenting your blog daily. How would you like it if you can do the following all for free:

a. Which pages your visitors were viewing?

b. How long they spent reading each page?

c. How many returning visitors vs new ones?

You know, all you need is just a Google account. Just go to www.google.com/analytics and sign in. Once logged in, Google will give you a simple Java Script to include on your site. If you are using WordPress, you would just need a suitable plugin to put in the site code and your analytic would be up for business within 24 hours.

Getting Started

Once logging into Analytics, the Dashboard would be displayed prominently.

1. The graph shows the number of visitors coming to your blog per day. At a glance, it will show whether your website or blog’s traffic is rising or falling.

After getting an idea of where the traffic trend is heading, you need to focus on specific dates to get the micro-picture. Go to the top right of the dashboard and click on the desired date duration, for example from yesterday to today’s date.

2. Move to the bottom right of the screen is your Content Overview. This panel would show you which pages on your blog are the most frequented. This piece of intelligence could help you in figuring out where you need to place your advertising or affiliate on your website for maximum effect.

In addition, try to figure out how to increase the blog traffic to less visited pages. If visitors do not come to these pages via search engines, you may be able to market these pages using social medias like Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.

3. Pay attention to the navigation bar on the left. For example, click on Content, then to Top Exit Pages. This view usually tells you which pages readers looked at immediately before leaving your blog.

Chances are you may identify a pattern why people are leaving via the specific pages. Can you carry out some optimization for the page like adding more links; tweeting, stumbling, digging or writing an article in ezine that could redirect traffic to it?

4. Click on the Traffic Sources at the navigation bar.

This tool can tell a story about which search engines and websites are directing traffic to your blog. Pay attention to average time spend by the visitors coming from the different refering sites. What kind of visitors will spend longer a time reading your pages? What cause those patrons to leave so early? Is it due to the misleading nature of your title?

The search engine data could imply to you which keywords lead to your site and how often they perform so. This should tell you whether you are optimizing the right keywords for your website.

5. Last but not least, the Content tab has a small link called Site Overlay. Considered to be one of Analytics’ best trick, it launches your blog with percentage click through pasted over the top. This gives you a visual impression on where visitors are clicking when they are viewing your page.

No matter what you call them, be it social media marketing, social networking or microblogging, they are tools for publicity that you can’t go without nowadays.

As a makerter, you will be known as old school if you declare that you don’t need Twitter or Facebook in any of your campaign. As a blogger, you are inadvertently a technopreneur and as such, engaging in social networking is a necessary evil. However, there are different strategies when you communicate in different Social Medias.

In this post, I will try to explain some general strategies on how to micro-blog in Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin. You just have to figure out the details yourself though.

Twitter

In general, the game is to express your message within the scope of 140 characters. You can choose to tweet using the customize Twitter site or you could resort to using Twitter desktop like Tweetdeck, Seeismic or Hootsuite.

Until now, the majorities of people engaging in Twitter are trying to garner as many followers as possible. Somehow, the number of followers displayed under your profile speaks volume of your ‘influence’ in the Tweetzone. ‘Superstars’ like Guy Kawasaki for example has in excess of 223,000 followers (and following 246,000).

Ask yourself, are these followers relevant? The majorities of Tweeterers would follow you back either out of courtesy or out of motives best known only to themselves.

In Twitter, its not easy to engage your ‘friends’ personally especially if you are a newbie. The real successful Tweeterers are famous celebrities like Lady Gaga, Arnold Shwarzenegger, and Justin Bieber. They have developed a cult following and trust me, they would be famous with or without Tweeter.

I’m not saying that you should forget about using Twitter. These are the few pointers that you can use when you want to use tweets to help your blog or website.

1. Select the personalities whom you think are the most relevant to your subject of interest. Photography perhaps. Take your time and select 3 or 4 person each week who are really ‘influential’ so to speak and engage them.

2. Stop following too many people all at once. Too many tweets coming from them would drown your message in no time! It’s actually happening to me now and I’m thinking of revamping my whole portfolio.

3. You want your tweets to be retweeted, not getting thousands of followers. If you can get 100 genuine Tweet accomplice who would retweet your message, you are hitting the bull’s eye.

4. Don’t spam

Facebook

We humans are highly adaptable creature. The moment we switch to a new environment, we tend to act and speak differently.

Facebook is very much a different creature from Twitter. You don’t post one line buzz in Facebook and expect them to amplify your message. You gauge your status here through the response you get when you post a microblog.

Residents in Facebook are more concern about genuine relationship. You start by engaging your live friends and slowly branching out into their acquaintance.

These are the tips to interact successfully in Facebook:

1. Be prepared to spend more time in Facebook as compared to Twitter.

2. Engage your friends personally as what you would have done in your office. Set up an occasional outing to cinemas or restaurants with your friends using the interface.

3. Join them in their area of interest, for example playing Farmville! (Unfortunately, yours truly is never an avid gamer)

4. Set up a fan page for your website or blog. Start by introducing the page to your closest friends.

5. Engage your audience continuously in the fan page and yes, continue to play Farmville.

6. Don’t spam!

LinkedIn

LinkedIn caters to the professionals. When you use this Social Media, you have to put on a different hat.

If you want people to take you seriously, forget about small talks and gossips. Leave the informalities to Facebook. Instead of asking your followers to meet in your neighbourhood’s cafeteria, you ask your connections to meet in conferences and seminars.

In other words, LinkedIn would give you rapid traffic results if you are able to engage your audience in a professional manner. Here are the tips to promote your blog here:

1. Join groups that are relevant to your blog’s topic.

2. Observe and join in discussions and observe what makes the audience tick.

3. Be professional and polite when engaging in discussions. You will come across smart alecs and self-professed experts who would not hesitate to defend their egos at the slightest brush. Remember, you are there to connect, not to create adversary.

4. Be generous with your tips and forget about redirecting your discussions to your blog’s link all the time. Give your group members great value in all your discussions.

5. Terms like ‘make big money’ turn people off, be it LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook. Nobody likes jerks who only preach on monetary subjects.

How To Blog For Newbies Day 28

Bloggers should expect to witness an exhilarating 2010. Trends that have been evolving over the course of the past years are creating new opportunities for blog owners as well as e-marketers.

Source: koreatimes.co.kr

Blogging communities are inevitably linked to the real world. The economy doldrums that spans for the last 10 years; from the collapse of the dot coms, the currency crises to the current financial mismanagement have all helped to shape a new world order. Both these man-made and natural disasters give leverage to the strength of Social Medias like Twitter, Facebook. By the time you are reading this, a dozen new ones should have been hatched. What we are talking here are global real time conversation and mass word-of-mouth at the speed of a click.

With those events unfolding, as well as with the advances with new science and technology, what follows are 10 scorching trends that affect all areas of blog marketing, from advertising to branding and everything in between.

1. Be A Trusted Authority

Like you and me, most netizens have gone through the ups and downs of the turbulent events throughout the past decade. Therefore, don’t expect your would-be audience to swallow wholely what a blogger tell them.

Blogs that are determined to be sincere and honest about their topics will generate desirable readers responses. Building trust is the utmost priority in 2010 and beyond and bear in mind, this is not easy. In other words, honesty is an ongoing effort and once you have earned it, you need to make sure you keep it!

2. Find other ways of monetization instead of concentrating on Adsense

Many established bloggers acknowledge this. The day when you can merely depend on adsense for an honest income is over. Bloggers need to be more enterprising in this new era.

3. Provide Value To Your Readers

Tips and ‘how tos’ are found in abundance in the internet. Be sure to update your knowledge and as far as possible, try to provide the latest ‘know how’ or news to your audience. Invest in good books regularly so that you could stay at the top of your game and as such, be an authority in the topic of your choice.

4. Prove your point

Blog readers do not believe in everything they read. Remember, you are trying to reach out to a global group of sophisticated ‘customers’ whom are both web-savvy and technology-inclined.

As a result, don’t just tell, prove your point by quoting evidence. If you are selling a service in let’s say, ‘increasing your Twitter followers in hours’, make sure you back your claim by having at least 10,000 followers in your own twitter account.

5. Adopt and engage in Social Medias

Microblogging or social medias are the new kids on the block. Bloggers beware, there is actually a real threat that blogging will be ousted by the likes of Facebook, Twitters, Linkedin and Foursquare. The massacre is real and there are only 2 options left to survive this ‘bloodbath’. Join the party and don’t give up on your blog (because only your blog could stay loyal to you).

6. Stay up-to-date with the latest net happening

Do you know that Facebook has overtaken Google as the largest search engine? With this information in your grasp, how should you leverage on the new trend?

7. Build real relationship

In the real world; built out from the brick and mortar, marketing could only differentiate and strategise on your overall objective. At the end of the day, you still need the human touch of a professional sales personnel to infiltrate into the market to make the sales conversion.

Same concept applies when it comes to blog marketing. With the advent of web 2.0, we should make use of Twitter and Facebook to build up lasting friendship instead of merely tweeting about your latest post or affiliate programs. Friends will support you, not strangers.

8. You need not be a tech-wizard; but just be tech-savvy

Learn up as much as possible about video and mobile marketing. They are set to explode in 2010. Learn how to create a simple online video using Youtube or Vimeo. Then find out about at least one video conversion software in the market. Who knows, the skill will come in handy when you least expected it. I forsee the coming of a real time Video Social Media similar to Google Wave in the fourth quarter of 2010. Wanna bet?

9. Stay focus

You can’t afford to be a Jack Of All Trades And Master Of None in 2010. Focus on 1 to 3 niches. If you could afford it, hire a team to run the day to day operation for you. The strongest brands are always the most focused brand.

Build your base and build it as strong as possible before you extend your resources and branch out into new ventures.

10. Adopt integrated blog marketing tactics

It should be absolutely essential to combine all possible marketing strategies for your blog in 2010. The amount of internet marketing communications that a person see each day is overwhelming.

As a result, use all kinds of method to get your blog message across. SEO tricks, building links, directory submissions, press release, social medias and this list is by no means exhaustive. Learn how directories work and find out more about social bookmarking sites.

How To Blog For Newbies Day 27

At this point of your blog business, I’m sure you already have your own Twitter account. Many so called ‘gurus’ should have put in a lot of tips on how to use this microblogging tool to promote your articles and pages.

Apart from all the tricks so rampantly circulating in the web, you may be just wasting your time using Twitter to self-sabotage your own blog. Try going through these mis-steps and see whether they sound familiar to you.

Source : rlv.zcache.com

1. Follow Blindly

When starting off on Twitter, most newbies will tend to just follow anyone they can find in Twitter.com. They don’t care whether those members they are following have the same particular interest as themselves.

So the first step that you can sabotage your blog is to follow any Tom, Dick and Harry that you can find on your tweet site. Many will follow you back out of courtesy. Spammers would be more than happy to reciprocate your follow so that they can fill up your valuable twitter space with their advertising and affiliates. The truth is, halves of these people do not really care about the topic you are so passionately talking about in your blog.

A simple step than save you the agony of attracting the wrong company is just by typing your topic of interest into the ‘find people’ space at the top right corner of your account. If your blog is about mobile phones, just type in “iphone” and you will find lots of people who are acquainted with the gadget one way or another.

2. Not Maintaining Your Twitter Account

Research found that nearly 30 % of Twitterers do not tweet after registering into a Tweet account. Twitter is a free and powerful micro blogging tool that will benefit your blog marketing greatly if you would just care to use it properly.

Twitter in Plain English

3. Spamming Your Friends Away

We are given only a limited space by Twitter to post our tweets and as well as read from our associates. If all you do is to tweet about your latest affiliates program and advertising, your followers will unfollow you like a plaque. Imagine all those valuable informations being pushed to the back page by your inconsiderate and unethical act.

4. Chatting in Twitter main page

Twitter is never meant to be a traditional ICQ or chat forum. Again, the easiest method to get people to dismiss you is to chat in the main page. Not only you won’t get a respond most of the time, you will be treated as a pest in  the eyes of your fellow twitterers.

People don’t care whether you have just brushed your teeth or that you have last night’s egg tart for breakfast. Only your mum is interested. If you really want to talk and make friends, use the DM command. In this way, only your targeted audience would see your message. It will also go on to show them that you are a civilized user and know your way around the Web 2.0 ethics.

5. Posting insults

Honestly, I have actually come across people who posted insults in respond to others’ Tweets. No matter how much you disagree or how much you are irritated by some Tweets, just stay cool. Your perception of others need not be shared in the little box that only allows 140  characters of ‘gist ‘ writing.

Just unfollow and if needed to, report the person as a spam.

6. Not Keeping Up With The Latest Trend

In this cyber age, one can never afford to be labeled as a cave man. The least you can do is to keep yourself updated by subscribing to Google alert. Register in this wonderful tool and keep yourself armed with the latest information so that only the best ideas are reflected both in your blog and in your Tweets.

(How to blog and Blogging tips for newbies. How To Blog dot Org)

How To Blog For Newbies Day 26

I dare say, all search engine uses page factors as a critical component in its ranking algorithm no matter how they are changed throughout. These factors will weigh heavily on which page your blog will appear in Google, for instance. Let’s go through them:

Source: www.karate-school.co.uk

1. Link Popularity

Google put great stock in your blog pages if other web sites link to your any of your page for the subject of the search. Let us say that you have a blog that talks about ‘multi zone amplifier’. As it turns out that your website has a particular page that has many links to it that all have the anchor text (the clickable words in the link) ‘multi zone’ or ‘multi zone amplifier’. That will cause the page to rank highly for the queries on these two keywords.

2. Popularity Data

Many blog searchers use search toolbars, the Google and Yahoo toolbar being the most popular. Do you know that these toolbars gather information about which pages are visited most?

Unknown to many of us, the search engines keep track of which pages we are visiting. Ask.com for example confirms using popularity data to give popular pages more clout in the ranking when searchers look for words that appear on those pages.

3. URL Length And Depth

Dynamic URLs with more than two parameters might cause spiders to avoid the page. You should be aware that longer URLs in general, reduce your page’s ranking (or priority since Google has asked us to stop thinking too much about page rank some 3 days ago) in small way.

Search engines are more likely to boost pages that are closer to the root directory of your site. As a result, the same page that locates deep in your site (perhaps at www.yourdomain.com/news/announce/today/top.html) may rank a bit lower than if placed nearer to your home page (www.yourdomain/news/top.html)

4. Freshness

If your blog does not change for a very long time, its rank might be reduced because search engines like Google suspect its information to be out-dated.

5. Page Style

Blog pages that are organized like a newspaper article (important words at the top, kinda repeated throughout, and reinforced again at the end) are sometimes said to have an advantage in SEO.

6. Site Organization

Good design will often help in your blog’s ranking. Avoid using frames and make your site simple to navigate with a well planned linking structure. Sitemaps, remember.

7. Spam Free

Every page on your blog contains text that can inform a visitor and attract search engine. When you try to mislead a search engine with spam techniques, your page will be penalized in ranking, possibly even leading to your site being ‘sandboxed’.

(How to blog and Blogging tips for newbies. How To Blog dot Org)

How To Blog For Newbies Day 24

This should not be my topic for the day. Only two days ago, I was bragging in Twitter that I would be coming out with my first Video Blog using Camtasia and boy, was I excited. But as fate has it, I encountered some problems while trying to upload the file to Youtube. Anyway, the experiment can wait and you would probably gain more by reading my blogging tips, for now.

Please reflect on your website for a moment. Have you been following How To Blog and Blogging Tips for some time? If you are like me, whom have just started a blog not too long ago, chances are you are an unknown rookie. Do your audience naturally associate your subject with a generic name?

Generic name is defined as name of a successful (and usually the first) product, used commonly by people to name an entire category or class of products. Amplifier, camera, notebook and computer are some great examples of what were once exclusive brand names but now refer to all brands under their respective category of products. Generic names cannot be owned by anyone, not even by the firm who first introduced them.

Source : www.searchenginejournal.com

Let’s take ‘camera’ as an example. Anyone interested in a camera would naturally think of Canon, Nikon, Olympus. Is your name or company easily identifiable with the product?

If  you own a company which is very identified with camera, you should target the word ‘camera’ in your blog which is categorized under the company’s website. You make every kind of camera there is. Portable cameras, diving cameras, SLR cameras, DSLR cameras, digital cameras. You make every variety of camera known to man, so it’s only natural that you go after the big broad word.

What if you are not the owner or director of Nikon?  What if you are only a small time camera collector? Although it’s tempting to target the word ‘camera’ like the big guns, bear in mind the word command 310 million searches in Google alone daily. You probably think that by fishing in where the fishes are, you would probably get some of those searchers.

The fact is, the word is too hot for you and you will definitely get burned. You would need to compete with probably millions of websites or renowned blogs which are well optimized with this keyword ‘camera’. There are two outcomes if you are still stubborn on using the keyword:

1. You garner very few clicks. If you are lucky, it may take months or even years for the net audience to find your blog. Remember the competition?

2. You get many clicks but low conversion. For instance, you might hold a promotion to give away free cameras to entice an audience to your site. Many folks will click your site through social bookmarks or via your tweet. However, if you don’t talk about what they want for example ‘pinhole camera’, they will abandon your site and never to return again.

Here, you would encounter with a problem called overheated meanings.

a. Related Meanings

If you blog about real estate insurance, and a group of particular audience was searching for real estate financing, the bounce rate would be substantial if they don’t find what they want.

b. Multiple audiences

The keyword ‘security’ carries different meaning to an antivirus software enthusiast as compared to a home burglar alarm researcher. As with the ‘camera’ example, sometimes you can add qualifying words like ‘pc security’ or ‘home security’ to bring down the heat for the word to make the temperature just right for your niche audience.

c. Multiple intents

A job seeker may look for the word ‘job’, whereas employers would psychologically search for help with ‘recruitment’. And both might dig for the word ‘recruiters’ (which is too hot a keyword) in Google.

d. Singular and plural meaning changes

Search engines look for both the singular and plural forms of a word, and that can sometimes cause overheating. ‘Sale’ has a different meaning from ‘sales’. A would be camera buyer would search for the word ‘camera sale’ and a job seeker may instead look for ‘camera sales’. See my point.

e. Acronyms

‘FIA’ could mean Federation Internationale de’l Automobile (the body that holds F1 racing) or Fitness Institute Australia!

Most bloggers whom are less familiar with SEO will follow the mantra ” the more the merrier” hypothesis. If ‘wordpress blogging tools’ is a good keyword for your blog, ‘blogging’ will be even better. Millions of people are searching for ‘blogging’ that is sure fire way to drive in optimized traffic. Look here, I’m just being sarcastic.

Instead of looking for hot keywords that might burn your time, effort or even money for those who uses ppc, look for “just right” words instead.

(How to blog and Blogging tips for newbies. How To Blog dot Org)

How To Blog For Newbies Day 22

Tricking Google or Yahoo to rank your pages higher than they deserved is called spamdexing, or simply spam. There are a host of spam techniques and they can easily get your blog or website banned from search engines. Trust me, you don’t want this to happen because once your site is blacklisted, it’s no easy task to regain back the trust of the big G and the rest of the SEs.

Source: cdn-i.dmdentertainment.com

There are multiple ways of tricking the search engines, people being the clever creatures they are. However for my post, I would only describe to you about content spamming techniques. Mind you, my goal is not to teach you how to perform these techniques. Rather, you should know adequately enough to spot them to prevent your site from running afoul of the rules and suffering the consequences. Try to spot these methods on a fellow blogger’s site so that you could advise him from having his site blotted out.

1. Doorway Pages

Any page that is designed solely to achieve high search rankings, without adding any value to your visitors, is considered a doorway page. However, search landing pages are not doorway pages!

2. Keyword stuffing

Known also as keyword loading, this technique is really just an overuse of sound content optimization practices. It’s correct to use your target keywords on your search landing pages, and thus, use them often. Unfortunately, when you start throwing them in just to attract the search engines’ crawlers to your pages, they might be flagged. Dumping out of context keywords like ‘sex’ into the alternate text for images is one variety of this same unethical technique.

3. Hidden Text

HTML offers many opportunities to place text in front of the spider that human visitor will never see. Fonts with similar color to the background is in a way shunned by some search engines. Displaying texts in unreasonably small sizes is also one hoary spam technique.

Newer approaches  include utilizing style sheets to write keywords on the page that are then overlaid by graphics or other page elements.  In a nutshell, anytime you can see text in the HTML source of a page that does not show up when you view the page in your browser, it is probably a spam.

4. Duplicate Tags

Using duplicate title tags or other metatags have been speculated to boost rankings in the past. The same style sheet approach that can hide text could also overlay text on top of itself. As a result, it is shown once on the screen but listed multiple times in the HTML file.

Frankly, I’ve tried this approach once on one of my website and I see no evidence that it has benefited from this rogue technique.

5. Duplicate Sites

Why stop at duplicate tags when you can clone your whole website?? Go ahead and duplicate your  contents in slightly different version under several domain names and then have each of your sites link to each other. The very thought of the consequence has just send a chill through my spine.

Bear in mind, these techniques I have just described to you do work. Search engines do get fooled, because they are after all mere programs created by human. However, spam techniques are akin to stock tips. When you hear about the tip, it is probably too late to apply them. Google might have already put in place a counter attack measure to punish those webmaster who is naive enough to resort to such ‘lazy’ strategies.

(How to blog and Blogging tips for newbies. How To Blog dot Org)