Advertising Using Blogs
If you have a blog that you are particularly proud of, and that you want to share with other people, there are a lot of free ways that you can get your blog noticed. One of those ways is something that you do everyday, and that you may not even consider as a way to share
your blog. Put the link to your blog in your email signature. Chances are that you send out emails more timese that you can count during the day, Each time you send out an email, you can advertise your blog by putting the address of your blog in your email’s signature. It’s always a good idea to write something catchy like, See what I am up to now, or Read my latest chapter of my fanfic here, depending on what type of blog you have. The thing to remember about putting an adveritsement in your signature for your blog is to make it short,
but eyecatching. You want people to be interested enough to want to click on it, but you also don’t want to scare them off. Just like it is with any adveritsement, you want to give them just enough to be interested and take a closer look at what it is that you are advertising. Think about what it is that your blog is about. What is really going to interest people abuot it and want to visit That is what you should include in your signature, and that is what is going to get people to go to your blog.
No matter what type of blog that you have, one of the best places that you can advertise your blog is to join a blogger forum. After all, everyone who posts there has a blog and thats the main subject. It’s a great place to meet other bloggers and to advertise your blog. There are quite a few blogger forums that you can sign up for on the Internet. One is known as Bloggeries, where you can show off your blog, get your blog reviewed or review other blogs, and find lots of tools that you can use for your own blog. Another good place to go is to Blog Forum. Blog Forum, like Bloggeries, has spots for you to market and show off your blog, Blogger forums are a great place to advertise because everyone in them are of the same mind and want to make certain that their blogs get noticed and read. If you use your blog to advertise something that you are selling, or you want to get a lot of traffic to your blog in order to make money, you want to go someplace where it can get exposure. When you advertise on a blog forum, you know that you are placing your advertisement in a place where blogging is something that people enjoy. Just remember when you are posting to a forum to read the rules and abide by them. That way you’ll get your blog noticed and you will know that you are doing the
If you want to have more people visit your blog, there are plenty of blog directories on the Internet that you can submit your blog to so that people will come and visit it. Most blog directories are listed by the topics that the blogs that are submited cover. Blog Catalog is a free blog directory that offers categories such as career and jobs, writing, Iraq, and many others. It has features such as featured blogs and other things to offer those who submit their blogs there. Another great place to add your blog is blog-drectory.org. Not only do they have an an extensive list of categories with sub categories, you can get your blog reviewed. For the most popular blogs, it shows the amount of hits that blogs have and if they have any reviews. As well as listing by category, the blogs are also listed by location. There are other blog directories on the Internet – these are only a couple of them. But blog directories are a great place to advertise your blog and to make
new friends. You never know what you will find when you browsing through the directory, and you may just find out information that you never knew. Some of the blog directories offer chat features as well, so that you can meet other people easily. As you can see, blog directories are a great place to get your blog noticed and bring people to read your blog and look at your pictures.
]]>
Blogging traffic is a give and take relationship. Sometimes one of the best ways to get traffic to your blog is by visiting someone else ’s blog. Go to their blog and read one of their entries, or read a few of them. Chances are that you are going to find something that you have in common. When you find something that you find truly
interesting on a blog, leave a comment so that they know that you were there. One of the best known blogs available is LiveJournal. A great feature of LiveJournal is that you can search
for interests on their site and it will come up with results of those who have that interest. Are you interested in horseback riding You can see what other bloggers are interested in horseback riding as well. When you are commenting on someone’s post, you want to make sure that you don’t leave generic comment. If you like the post, say something about what you read in the post. After you have commented on the person’s post, then you can say something like, ‘I really like horseback riding too. I had a similar experience to yours.’ and
then use it to link back to your journal. But be sure that you sound sincere when you are
commenting, and don’t make them feel like you’re just fishing for traffic. If someone thinks that you are using their blog to get more traffic to yours, they won’t visit your site and your efforts will be wasted.
Something that you will find, especially if you join something like LiveJournal or GreatestJournal, is that users just like you have created communities for people with common interests. There are communities for just about any subject, and if you find that there isn’t a community for the subject you can create one. This is a great place to advertise your blog. The nice thing about communities is that there isn’t
any limit as to how many communities that you can join. For example, say that you love blogging about books, horseback riding, and skiing in Tahoe. All you have to do is look through the communities for ones that have those interests and join them. As long as you post something related to the topic to the chosen community, people will see you and perhaps
they will check out your personal blog. Something to remember is that you don’t want to write
a post tht is one sentence long in order to get people to go to your blog. They will want to know that what you write is interesting and is something worth reading. Joining communities can be a great way to advertise your blog and drive traffic to it. If you are referring to something that you posted about on your blog, you can use a link back to your entry in your post. As with posting comments on someone else’s blog, you don’t want people to think that you joined a community simply to get traffic to your blog. Otherwise, people won’t visit your blog and you may get banned from the community as well.
Something that has become increasingly popular since the Internet has grown are the email groups that are available through Yahoo, MSN, and other venues. They are a great way to meet other people who have a common interest, and are very similar to the communities that are available through blogging sites. There is plenty of diverse subjects and there are communities for just about any subject. These groups can be a great place for people who have a blog about the subject and want to share it with other people. Most of the time when you join a group, you are
encouraged to take a moment and to introduce yourself. This is a great opportunity to tell people about your blog, but make certain that you don’t overdo it. Just like with any of the other places you will advertise your blog, you want to make people want to go to your blog. If you are too overbearing, you will turn people off. If your blog covers different subjects, you can
advertise it on the other groups that cover those subjects as well. Make certain that your post to the groups is interesting and that you let people know what it is that your blog is about. There’s nothing worse than getting taken to a blog under false pretences. When people visit your blog, make certain that you thank them for visiting and respond to comments that
they leave. If they know that you appreciate the time that they
took, they are more likely to come back again.
The power of being seen is the up most importance and blogging is one the best ways you can make sure others know of you, don’t let it pass you by.www.theonlinenbiznetwork.com, www.marinisgifts.com, www.onlinenichenetwork.com
Douglas Smith has been involved with selling online since 2001 and creator of numerous websites along with being an ebay powerseller.
Related Blogging Articles
Copy Wii Games ? How To Copy A Nintendo Wii Video Game
Do you want to learn how to copy a Nintendo Wii game without having to mod your console? Well, in order for you to copy Wii games, you will need to have the proper DVD to copy the games onto and also a good game copying software.
This is actually a really important step to successfully copy your favourite Wii games that you should not overlook. You must know that your console is only able to read a handful of DVD format. If you copy the games onto the wrong format, you will be facing a lot of errors.
It is suggested to copy your Nintendo Wii games onto DVD+ R Dual Layered DVD’s with a minimum of 8.5 Gigabytes. By ensuring that you having this type of DVD ready to copy your Wii games, you can avoid wasting your money and time.
Once you have the right DVD format for you to copy your Wii games onto, you will start looking to use a good game copying software. The reason why you will need to use a program like this is because of the built in copyright protection. Game copying software will be able to easily decode the encryption enabling you to rip the data off the disc.
]]>
However, keep in mind that not all programs actually work properly and some of them can even be scams. Sometimes, if you download a fake program, they can install viruses, adware and spyware onto your computer without your knowledge.
So, to avoid getting scammed, it is suggested that you only use programs that have received tons of positive customer review and also has a really good reputation.
Currently, the best and most popular program that many people use to copy their Wii games is Game Copy Wizard. Game Copy Wizard is the only program on the market that is 100% safe, legal and scam-free.
All you need to do is to install their program, choose the Nintendo Wii game that you want to copy then you are good to go!
Why don’t you take a look at their program right now? Visit: Game Copy Wizard
To successfully copy your favourite Wii video games without having to mod your console, you will need to have the right blank DVD’s and also a good game copying program.
However, most programs don’t actually work and some can even infect your computer with viruses.
So, if you want to avoid getting scammed and only use the best and most used program to copy Nintendo Wii games yourself, then it is highly recommended to use Game Copy Wizard.
Want to copy your favourite Wii video games today? Right now? Visit: Burn Wii Games
Here is another Million Dollar Mission episode of Deal Or No Deal for the Nintendo Wii, in which this time, c3po626 will be the participant in the game. Last time, BenS71287 was in the game, and he ended up with only . Will Cory’s luck turn around? Because the million was NOT won last time, we are adding a 6th Million Dollar case. Let’s see if Cory can win it. Enjoy!
Monthly Income Announces the Complete Free Blogging Guide That Helps Blog Enthusiasts Know More About Blogs
(PRWEB) May 14, 2006
Monthly Income, a leading website about online promotion, is announcing the launch of its new “Complete Blogging Guide” free resource.
This profound new free resource provides Blog Enthusiasts with step by step guide about how to start a blog and keep it updated the best way. (For the Complete Blogging Guide free resource, see: http://www.monthlyincome.ws/blogging-guide)
Complete Blogging Guide includes everything a Blog Enthusiasts needs to quickly and easily start a blog and keep it interesting to receive more visitors and discover how you can use blogs for profits or for a business. For example, the following blogs and promotion essentials are included in Complete Blogging Guide:
The most complete guide about blogging
How to start a business blog
Why starting a blog can benefit you
How to make of your blog a great experience
Discover the potential of blogs to make a profit
“Complete Blogging Guide is the Complete way to start a blog and keep it interesting enough to receive more visitors,” said Juan Buitrago, Webmaster of Monthly Income. “Our new free resource completely eliminates the problem of searching for info about how to start a blog, keep it updated and use it on several different resourceful ways”
Monthly Income provides easy tips to make of your existing blog a success.
Click here to visit your free resource called Complete Blogging Guide
http://www.monthlyincome.ws/blogging-guide
Media Contact:
Juan Buitrago
(574)4117901
http://www.monthlyincome.ws
Read more news & articles from Monthly Income:
Why use a Blog?
Getting Started Using a Blog
How to Write a Good Blog
Build a Complete Blog Site
Common Blog Problems
# # #
Backup Wii Games ? How To Back Up A Nintendo Wii Video Game
Do you want to learn how to backup a Nintendo Wii game without having to mod your console? Well, if you want to learn how to back up your favourite Wii games, you will need to use the proper DVD format and also a good game copy software.
It is really important that you do not overlook this step because it is very important if you do not want to face any unnecessary errors. Your console is only able to read a handful of DVD formats, so if you use the wrong format, you will be facing lots of errors.
To avoid having problems, use DVD+ R Dual Layered DVD’s with a minimum of 8.5 Gigabytes of memory. These DVD seem to work the best and you will be able to avoid all errors by using them.
Once you have found the right DVD’s to back up your games onto, you will need to use a good game copying software. The reason why you will need to use a program like this is because of the copyright protection embedded within each Nintendo Wii game. Without the proper software to decode the encryption, you will be unable to rip the data from the games.
]]>
However, keep in mind that you should be careful when choosing which software to use because not all programs actually work and some of them can even be scams. If you accidentally download a fake program, you could run the risk of having viruses, spyware and adware uploaded onto your computer.
So, to avoid getting scammed, it is suggested that you only use programs that have lots of good reviews and also a great reputation.
Right now, the best and most popular program that people have been using to backup their Nintendo Wii games is Game Copy Wizard. Game Copy Wizard is the only program that is 100% safe, legal and reliable.
All you need to do is install the program, choose what Wii game you want to backup and you are set.
Why don’t you take a look at this program right now? Visit: Game Copy Wizard
To successfully backup your favourite Wii video games without having to mod your console, you will need to have the right blank DVD’s and also a good game copying program.
However, most programs don’t actually work and some can even infect your computer with viruses.
So, if you want to avoid getting scammed and only use the best and most used program to back up Nintendo Wii games yourself, then it is highly recommended to use Game Copy Wizard.
Want to copy your favourite Wii video games today? Right now? Visit: Backup Wii Games
Classic Game Room – Wii SHOP CHANNEL for Nintendo Wii review
Classic Game Room HD reviews the Wii SHOP CHANNEL for Nintendo Wii with the Virtual Console and WiiWare shop! Buy games for Nintendo Wii from Wii Shop Channel like arcade classics, SNES classic videogames, Sega Genesis, Neo Geo, NES titles and Turbografx-16. There are dozens of special releases that you’ll only find on Nintendo Wii Shop Channel which work specifically for Nintendo Wii.
Video Rating: 4 / 5
Wooooohooooo! Donkey Kong is back!!!!! Nintendo just completed its press conference at the E3, here are the first trailers! SYNOPSIS (provided by Nintendo) A New Country for Old Friends Controlled by a group of evil Tikis, the animals in Donkey Kong Island have raided Donkey Kong’s Banana Hoard and stolen his stash of bananas — and he understandably wants them back. Retro Studios brings Donkey Kong™ back in a new side-scrolling adventure with familiar characters and new levels that reignite the passion players had for the Super NES™ original. FEATURES: • Retro Studios faithfully restores everything that made the original series great, from barrel cannons to mine carts, and then builds on those elements with stunning graphics and new layers of depth to the world and game play. The game offers the traditional side-scrolling experience everyone loved, but with levels created in fully rendered 3-D environments. • Diddy Kong™ joins the quest. With his trusty backpack, he can produce a jet pack or Peanut Pop Guns to give Donkey Kong more abilities. • For the first time ever, the franchise features the ability for two people to play together at the same time — one as Donkey Kong, one as Diddy Kong. Players can navigate the levels separately or as one unit. Diddy Kong can ride on Donkey Kong’s back and hop off whenever he pleases, allowing novice players to ride on Donkey Kong’s back through more challenging areas of the game.* • Hidden items, puzzle pieces and other surprises …
Video Rating: 4 / 5
Own Your Blog or Else! Easy WordPress Install
www.expertsmarketingcoach.com Watch this video tutorial and see how simple it is to get online with a blog today! Create a blog using free software from wordpress.org and get tips on why, if you want to become a serious blogger, if you want to make money with your blog or, if you want to control your blog, then using free blogs such as blogger.com or wordpress.com is NOT an option … You must own your blog. Here’s why …if you use hosted solutions such as blogger.com or wordpress.com, they can delete your site without your permission and there is nothing you can do about it. Also, using hosted sites to host your blog means that you have limited opportunities of monetizing your blog because some of them don’t allow you to make the most of advertising with say Google AdSense. WordPress.com for example makes it very clear that it is against their terms of service to commercialize your WordPress.com hosted blog by hosting paid advertising and will result in your blog being deleted. In fact, I’ve just been reading one forum where there is a reader called “Rainmaker” and he seems to have made it his job to report people who are commercializing their WordPress blogs and within no time, their sites have been deleted by WordPress. So don’t say you haven’t been warned. What you need to do is go to WordPress.org and download their free software and then upload the software to the server where you have your own hosting account, using your own domain name. Alternatively, you can use …
Video Rating: 4 / 5
Blog or website? And what people do wrong with blogs. blog.2createawebsite.com http
Video Rating: 5 / 5
Search Engine Optimization for Blogs
Whether it’s a corporate blog, a news-type blog, or even a personal blog, optimizing your blog for the search engines is a must. There are some simple changes that you can make to WordPress and Moveable Type that will make your blog more search engine friendly and make the search engines beg for more (more post and content, that is!).
Optimizing a blog is just like optimizing any other website. The content and pages (posts) must be unique, they must be search engine friendly, and it needs links from other websites. If it’s a new blog, then you first need to make sure the blog software you’re using is set up so that it takes advantage of all of the possible optimization features. Then, announce it to the world, work on getting some links to it, and start making posts.
If you’re using WordPress for your blog software, it’s important to make sure that your site is search engine friendly, meaning that it can easily be spidered by the search engine spiders. Just like optimizing a website, it’s important to have good title tags and meta tags. Keep in mind that blog software usually uses the title of your post as the title tag, so include keywords in your titles as much as possible. It’s important to set up your blog’s software so that the URLs don’t contain a lot of variables. Instead, use URLs that include the post title or post name in them. For example, if you’re using WordPress you’ll need to set the permalinks so that it uses %postname% in the URL. You can also set up a specific category for the post archives, and you might consider using a keyword that’s related to your blog instead of the default, which is typically the word “archive”. Fintan Darragh of www.dech.co.uk has a great blog post called “Ultimate WordPress SEO Tips” (http://www.dech.co.uk/2005/11/ultimate-WordPress-seo-tips/). Mr. Darragh talks about permalink optimization and says, “The goal: stick more keywords up into the URL and remove the faff which nobody uses, to make the URL search engine and people attractive. Having keywords in your URL is an absolute must, especially when it’s as easy as WordPress makes it.” He also goes on to talk about getting rid of useless tags like the month, day, and year, as well as one important detail: whatever you do stick with the site structure you choose—otherwise you might end up with a lot of useless links to your site. Other tips that Mr. Darragh mentions are optimizing your page titles and your post titles–and installing a few plugins that are useful such as the “Related Posts Plugin” and the “Technorati Tag Generator”.
There are several other places where you can get specific tips about setting up WordPress in a search engine friendly manner, including: * SEO at Aleeya Dot Net – http://www.aleeya.net/category/WordPress/seo/
* The Best WordPress SEO Possible – http://WordPress.org/support/topic/49168
* Search Engine Optimization for WordPress – http://codex.WordPress.org/Search_Engine_Optimization_for_WordPress
* Search Engine Optimization for Blogs – http://www.blog-maniac.com/blog-seo.htm
* DYI Search Engine Optimization – http://lorelle.WordPress.com/2006/01/15/dyi-search-engine-optimization/ One of the best tutorials out there is one called “DYI Search Engine Optimization” by Lorelle VanFossen. Specifically, Lorelle (lorelle.WordPress.com) has some great tips, including how to optimize your code, develop strong intrasite links, write with strong keyword usage, use categories and tags, and how to use ping services. Lorelle says that “the goal is to help search engine crawlers move through your website collecting information to be stored in the search engine’s database. The key to your blog’s data making it successfully into a search engine’s database is to: 1) Make sure there are no road blocks in the path of a search engine crawler.
2) Make sure the crawler can move through your blog, examining all your web pages.
3) Provide adequate keywords and key phrases which clearly help categorize your content.
4) Provide clearly labeled tags and categories recognized by tagging service crawlers and many search engines today.
5) Take advantage of pinging services.” There are several WordPress Plugins available that will help you take advantage of internal linking (like the Related Posts Plugin) which will link to other posts in your blog that are on the same topic.
]]>
Other plugins that might be helpful are plugins that automatically generate a Google Sitemap file as well as plugins that help you categorize the site such as the WordPress Subdomain Plugin (http://www.webguerrilla.com/WordPress-subdomain-plugin/).
If you’re using Movable Type for your blog software, then it’s also important to make sure that your site is search engine friendly and can be spidered by the search engine spiders. Just like optimizing a website, it’s important to have good title tags and meta tags. Keep in mind that blog software usually uses the title of your post as the title tag, so include keywords in your titles as much as possible. Miles Evans (http://www.webpronews.com/expertarticles/expertarticles/wpn-62-20060310Movable TypeSEO.html) says that “Movable Type is optimized quite well out of the box, but there are a few quick tricks to easily providing the spiders with some dynamic content.” He goes on to say that you need to optimize your template. “For my main home page and category index pages I hardcode most of my meta data. Your meta tags will be at the top of the template within the tag. You can get fancy on your index pages but I cannot really see why. Optimize these two templates by hand for whatever keywords you are targeting site wide.” Mr. Evans also has another article titled, “Best Movable Type Plugins” (http://www.webpronews.com/expertarticles/expertarticles/wpn-62-20060310BestMovable TypePlugins.html) that talks about his favorite plugins that help him get great search engine rankings. His favorite Movable Type Plugins for SEO are Dashify, MTPaginate, MT Blogroll, MT InlineEditor, MT-Textile, BigPAPI, as well as Ajaxify (a set of plugins that adds several ajax/javascript widgets into the Movable Type interface), CheckLinks, FormatList v1.0, and Better File Uploader for uploading files. Nicholas Carvan (http://www.nicholascaravan.com) has a great article about Movable Type optimization called “Optimizing your Movable Type blog for Google” (http://www.nicholascarvan.com/blog/optimizing_your_Movable Type_blog_for_google.html). In it he talks about PageRank (and how it relates to your internal linking on your blog), having keywords in your URL (which is important for all blog optimization) and blogrolling. He defines the term blogrolling very well, saying, “Blogrolling: Inbound links are gold, but in Google’s eyes, not all links are equal. In particular, Google isn’t wild about links contained within JavaScript – apparently they can index them, but that doesn’t mean they always want to.”
Once you’ve set up and configured your blog’s software, it’s important to make sure that you leave it alone—if you change your page URLs then any links that you’ve received from other bloggers may not be valid anymore. If you need to change your site’s structure (perhaps you’ve been blogging already and wish to use the tips from this article to optimize your blog), then you might want to take a look at the Objection Redirection WordPress Plugin(http://WordPress-plugins.biggnuts.com/objection-redirection-WordPress-plugin/) if you’re using WordPress. The Objection Redirection Plugin gives you a simple interface to redirect users (and search engine bots) to the proper page, especially if you’ve changed your site’s structure.
The best thing you can do is to start blogging. Go ahead and post to your heart’s content and write, write, write about your topic. The more content you can provide the better—and it seems as if adding content on a regular basis really helps, as well. Feel free to link out to other blog posts that are related to the topic you’re writing about. For example, before you publish a post, go on over to your favorite blog search engine and find another recent post on the same subject—and link to the post. Linking out to other bloggers will get their attention, and hopefully they’ll end up linking to you as well. If other bloggers have trackbacks turned on then their blog will link back to your post. Some trackbacks are moderated, so it might take some time before your link shows up on the other blog. And some bloggers have trackbacks turned off, so a link back to your site might take some manual intervention. Categorize your posts as much as possible, and feel free to add categories as you blog—it will help the internal linking structure of your site, and help the search engines and users find on-topic posts.
Whenever you make a post in your blog, your blog software will attempt to ping certain sites to let them know that you just updated your blog. There are many blog ping services out there, including Ping-O-Matic and Pingoat. Your blog software can be configured to ping sites automatically, and I’ve posted a list for WordPress of ping services on by blog (http://www.corporatewebsitemarketing.info/cwm/WordPress-ping-list). If your blog is new or you would like to get some more links, you can submit your blog to blog directories as well as other sites that will list your blog (don’t forget to submit to DMOZ.org, Yahoo! Directory, and the Best of the Web Blog Directory). About.com has a great article about promoting a blog (http://weblogs.about.com/cs/blogpromotions/a/promoteblog.htm) and even Biz Stone has great tutorial about promoting your blog (http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=1060). Lastly, don’t forget to turn on your blog’s RSS feed. And if you’re looking to promote your RSS feed, try searching your favorite search engine for “promote rss” to find a lot of good tutorials.
Promoting your blog is just like promoting a website—you need good spiderable content, links to your content, and you need to set up your blog software to take advantage of all the great features. There are also plugins that will help make blogging easier for all of us.
Bill Hartzer manages the Search Engine Marketing and Social Media Marketing team at Vizion Interactive, a leading search engine optimization company, social media marketing, and web design firm based in the Dallas, Texas area.
Search Engine Optimization for Blogs
Whether it’s a corporate blog, a news-type blog, or even a personal blog, optimizing your blog for the search engines is a must. There are some simple changes that you can make to WordPress and Moveable Type that will make your blog more search engine friendly and make the search engines beg for more (more post and content, that is!).
Optimizing a blog is just like optimizing any other website. The content and pages (posts) must be unique, they must be search engine friendly, and it needs links from other websites. If it’s a new blog, then you first need to make sure the blog software you’re using is set up so that it takes advantage of all of the possible optimization features. Then, announce it to the world, work on getting some links to it, and start making posts.
If you’re using WordPress for your blog software, it’s important to make sure that your site is search engine friendly, meaning that it can easily be spidered by the search engine spiders. Just like optimizing a website, it’s important to have good title tags and meta tags. Keep in mind that blog software usually uses the title of your post as the title tag, so include keywords in your titles as much as possible. It’s important to set up your blog’s software so that the URLs don’t contain a lot of variables. Instead, use URLs that include the post title or post name in them. For example, if you’re using WordPress you’ll need to set the permalinks so that it uses %postname% in the URL. You can also set up a specific category for the post archives, and you might consider using a keyword that’s related to your blog instead of the default, which is typically the word “archive”. Fintan Darragh of www.dech.co.uk has a great blog post called “Ultimate WordPress SEO Tips” (http://www.dech.co.uk/2005/11/ultimate-WordPress-seo-tips/). Mr. Darragh talks about permalink optimization and says, “The goal: stick more keywords up into the URL and remove the faff which nobody uses, to make the URL search engine and people attractive. Having keywords in your URL is an absolute must, especially when it’s as easy as WordPress makes it.” He also goes on to talk about getting rid of useless tags like the month, day, and year, as well as one important detail: whatever you do stick with the site structure you choose—otherwise you might end up with a lot of useless links to your site. Other tips that Mr. Darragh mentions are optimizing your page titles and your post titles–and installing a few plugins that are useful such as the “Related Posts Plugin” and the “Technorati Tag Generator”.
There are several other places where you can get specific tips about setting up WordPress in a search engine friendly manner, including: * SEO at Aleeya Dot Net – http://www.aleeya.net/category/WordPress/seo/
* The Best WordPress SEO Possible – http://WordPress.org/support/topic/49168
* Search Engine Optimization for WordPress – http://codex.WordPress.org/Search_Engine_Optimization_for_WordPress
* Search Engine Optimization for Blogs – http://www.blog-maniac.com/blog-seo.htm
* DYI Search Engine Optimization – http://lorelle.WordPress.com/2006/01/15/dyi-search-engine-optimization/ One of the best tutorials out there is one called “DYI Search Engine Optimization” by Lorelle VanFossen. Specifically, Lorelle (lorelle.WordPress.com) has some great tips, including how to optimize your code, develop strong intrasite links, write with strong keyword usage, use categories and tags, and how to use ping services. Lorelle says that “the goal is to help search engine crawlers move through your website collecting information to be stored in the search engine’s database. The key to your blog’s data making it successfully into a search engine’s database is to: 1) Make sure there are no road blocks in the path of a search engine crawler.
2) Make sure the crawler can move through your blog, examining all your web pages.
3) Provide adequate keywords and key phrases which clearly help categorize your content.
4) Provide clearly labeled tags and categories recognized by tagging service crawlers and many search engines today.
5) Take advantage of pinging services.” There are several WordPress Plugins available that will help you take advantage of internal linking (like the Related Posts Plugin) which will link to other posts in your blog that are on the same topic.
]]>
Other plugins that might be helpful are plugins that automatically generate a Google Sitemap file as well as plugins that help you categorize the site such as the WordPress Subdomain Plugin (http://www.webguerrilla.com/WordPress-subdomain-plugin/).
If you’re using Movable Type for your blog software, then it’s also important to make sure that your site is search engine friendly and can be spidered by the search engine spiders. Just like optimizing a website, it’s important to have good title tags and meta tags. Keep in mind that blog software usually uses the title of your post as the title tag, so include keywords in your titles as much as possible. Miles Evans (http://www.webpronews.com/expertarticles/expertarticles/wpn-62-20060310Movable TypeSEO.html) says that “Movable Type is optimized quite well out of the box, but there are a few quick tricks to easily providing the spiders with some dynamic content.” He goes on to say that you need to optimize your template. “For my main home page and category index pages I hardcode most of my meta data. Your meta tags will be at the top of the template within the tag. You can get fancy on your index pages but I cannot really see why. Optimize these two templates by hand for whatever keywords you are targeting site wide.” Mr. Evans also has another article titled, “Best Movable Type Plugins” (http://www.webpronews.com/expertarticles/expertarticles/wpn-62-20060310BestMovable TypePlugins.html) that talks about his favorite plugins that help him get great search engine rankings. His favorite Movable Type Plugins for SEO are Dashify, MTPaginate, MT Blogroll, MT InlineEditor, MT-Textile, BigPAPI, as well as Ajaxify (a set of plugins that adds several ajax/javascript widgets into the Movable Type interface), CheckLinks, FormatList v1.0, and Better File Uploader for uploading files. Nicholas Carvan (http://www.nicholascaravan.com) has a great article about Movable Type optimization called “Optimizing your Movable Type blog for Google” (http://www.nicholascarvan.com/blog/optimizing_your_Movable Type_blog_for_google.html). In it he talks about PageRank (and how it relates to your internal linking on your blog), having keywords in your URL (which is important for all blog optimization) and blogrolling. He defines the term blogrolling very well, saying, “Blogrolling: Inbound links are gold, but in Google’s eyes, not all links are equal. In particular, Google isn’t wild about links contained within JavaScript – apparently they can index them, but that doesn’t mean they always want to.”
Once you’ve set up and configured your blog’s software, it’s important to make sure that you leave it alone—if you change your page URLs then any links that you’ve received from other bloggers may not be valid anymore. If you need to change your site’s structure (perhaps you’ve been blogging already and wish to use the tips from this article to optimize your blog), then you might want to take a look at the Objection Redirection WordPress Plugin(http://WordPress-plugins.biggnuts.com/objection-redirection-WordPress-plugin/) if you’re using WordPress. The Objection Redirection Plugin gives you a simple interface to redirect users (and search engine bots) to the proper page, especially if you’ve changed your site’s structure.
The best thing you can do is to start blogging. Go ahead and post to your heart’s content and write, write, write about your topic. The more content you can provide the better—and it seems as if adding content on a regular basis really helps, as well. Feel free to link out to other blog posts that are related to the topic you’re writing about. For example, before you publish a post, go on over to your favorite blog search engine and find another recent post on the same subject—and link to the post. Linking out to other bloggers will get their attention, and hopefully they’ll end up linking to you as well. If other bloggers have trackbacks turned on then their blog will link back to your post. Some trackbacks are moderated, so it might take some time before your link shows up on the other blog. And some bloggers have trackbacks turned off, so a link back to your site might take some manual intervention. Categorize your posts as much as possible, and feel free to add categories as you blog—it will help the internal linking structure of your site, and help the search engines and users find on-topic posts.
Whenever you make a post in your blog, your blog software will attempt to ping certain sites to let them know that you just updated your blog. There are many blog ping services out there, including Ping-O-Matic and Pingoat. Your blog software can be configured to ping sites automatically, and I’ve posted a list for WordPress of ping services on by blog (http://www.corporatewebsitemarketing.info/cwm/WordPress-ping-list). If your blog is new or you would like to get some more links, you can submit your blog to blog directories as well as other sites that will list your blog (don’t forget to submit to DMOZ.org, Yahoo! Directory, and the Best of the Web Blog Directory). About.com has a great article about promoting a blog (http://weblogs.about.com/cs/blogpromotions/a/promoteblog.htm) and even Biz Stone has great tutorial about promoting your blog (http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=1060). Lastly, don’t forget to turn on your blog’s RSS feed. And if you’re looking to promote your RSS feed, try searching your favorite search engine for “promote rss” to find a lot of good tutorials.
Promoting your blog is just like promoting a website—you need good spiderable content, links to your content, and you need to set up your blog software to take advantage of all the great features. There are also plugins that will help make blogging easier for all of us.
Bill Hartzer manages the Search Engine Marketing and Social Media Marketing team at Vizion Interactive, a leading search engine optimization company, social media marketing, and web design firm based in the Dallas, Texas area.
Learn About Commercial Blogging
A corporate blog makes it easy for readers, be they customers or prospects, to find the latest and most accurate information about its new products and services. It can help achieve customer familiarity with the company products or services. Through the corporate blog, a company can converse directly with customers and prospects. Two-way communication creates trust and builds customer relationships. A corporate blog is the perfect choice for interacting with existing and potential clients. Corporate blogging serves as a channel for a company and its customers to meet on common ground and to know each other more. If a corporate blog can fit your company culture, selecting the individual or employee who will write your blog is doubtless to say the most important decision. An ideal corporate blogger is one who is an expert in his field. He should also write with passion and sincerity. The object of your blog is to engage your customers and prospects in conversation and the most effective way to start a conversation is to be sincere and honest in your blog while writing about topics that are important to your company. He should have good writing skills. More importantly, he should be one who is respected by his peers and reacts calmly to outbursts. Blogging is an intense medium. The individuals who will blog for your company should be the ones who can keep their cool despite critical comments. Most likely, the ideal individual is not your CEO. Corporate speak wonâ€TMt thrive in the blogosphere. In corporate blogging, goals/missions are of prime importance. For a blog to yield value, it has to be created with specific goals in mind. Some of these goals may be to increase company credibility, enhance customer service and interaction, and give customers a peek of the behind-the-scenes of the corporate culture, showcase new products or services and more. The important thing is to be clear about your goals. You have to be sure about what you are trying to get done and stick to them. As with any corporate undertaking, you also need to periodically evaluate how well you are meeting these goals. If blogging is proving to be futile, then make changes. If it still does not work, then discontinue blogging. Do take time to know your customers or prospects. Find out what your audience care about, what they are interested in. You have to identify what their needs are and what service you can perform for them. To get their attention, work out a way to participate in a conversation credibly. To be credible, come up with worthwhile content ideas, insights, news and information. Do engage your audience in lively and substantial conversations. Take into account what they say and reply to their comments. Respond in a professional and businesslike manner whether the comment is positive or negative. Allowing comments from your audience will definitely mean some complaints and criticisms. Don’t take them personally. Respond honestly and your company credibility will rise. Allowing audience to make comments is a distinct characteristic of blogs. Openness is important for successful blogging. For a blog to accomplish its mission, do update regularly. Post often and consistently, daily or weekly, at least. Do be generous with your links. Linking is one reason why blogging has become a popular online communication medium. The best corporate blogs, more often than not, have lots of links in each blog post. As for what not to do, do not close down existing employee blogs. More often than not, an employee is already writing a blog. It might be full of grievances about the recent spate of oil increases or it could be snapshots of a relaxing vacation in the Maldives. Maybe this employee is singing praises of the company’s new product. Why not engage this employee blogger in a dialogue about what your corporate blog aims to achieve. Don’t wait for a crisis to break out before creating a corporate blog. It takes time to see potential results of blogging. Don’t keep your corporate bloggers unidentified or hidden behind some make-believe characters. The audience will know and it will have detrimental effects. Lastly, a blog is not a miracle cure. It will not single-handedly turn your distressed company around. Corporate blogging should be incorporated with other marketing and communication tools to achieve desired results.
A corporate blog makes it easy for readers, be they customers or prospects, to find the latest and most accurate information about its new products and services. It can help achieve customer familiarity with the company products or services. Through the corporate blog, a company can converse directly with customers and prospects. Two-way communication creates trust and builds customer relationships. A corporate blog is the perfect choice for interacting with existing and potential clients. Corporate blogging serves as a channel for a company and its customers to meet on common ground and to know each other more. If a corporate blog can fit your company culture, selecting the individual or employee who will write your blog is doubtless to say the most important decision. An ideal corporate blogger is one who is an expert in his field. He should also write with passion and sincerity. The object of your blog is to engage your customers and prospects in conversation and the most effective way to start a conversation is to be sincere and honest in your blog while writing about topics that are important to your company. He should have good writing skills. More importantly, he should be one who is respected by his peers and reacts calmly to outbursts. Blogging is an intense medium. The individuals who will blog for your company should be the ones who can keep their cool despite critical comments. Most likely, the ideal individual is not your CEO. Corporate speak wonâ€TMt thrive in the blogosphere. In corporate blogging, goals/missions are of prime importance. For a blog to yield value, it has to be created with specific goals in mind. Some of these goals may be to increase company credibility, enhance customer service and interaction, and give customers a peek of the behind-the-scenes of the corporate culture, showcase new products or services and more. The important thing is to be clear about your goals. You have to be sure about what you are trying to get done and stick to them. As with any corporate undertaking, you also need to periodically evaluate how well you are meeting these goals. If blogging is proving to be futile, then make changes. If it still does not work, then discontinue blogging. Do take time to know your customers or prospects. Find out what your audience care about, what they are interested in. You have to identify what their needs are and what service you can perform for them. To get their attention, work out a way to participate in a conversation credibly. To be credible, come up with worthwhile content ideas, insights, news and information. Do engage your audience in lively and substantial conversations. Take into account what they say and reply to their comments. Respond in a professional and businesslike manner whether the comment is positive or negative. Allowing comments from your audience will definitely mean some complaints and criticisms. Don’t take them personally. Respond honestly and your company credibility will rise. Allowing audience to make comments is a distinct characteristic of blogs. Openness is important for successful blogging. For a blog to accomplish its mission, do update regularly. Post often and consistently, daily or weekly, at least. Do be generous with your links. Linking is one reason why blogging has become a popular online communication medium. The best corporate blogs, more often than not, have lots of links in each blog post. As for what not to do, do not close down existing employee blogs. More often than not, an employee is already writing a blog. It might be full of grievances about the recent spate of oil increases or it could be snapshots of a relaxing vacation in the Maldives. Maybe this employee is singing praises of the company’s new product. Why not engage this employee blogger in a dialogue about what your corporate blog aims to achieve. Don’t wait for a crisis to break out before creating a corporate blog. It takes time to see potential results of blogging. Don’t keep your corporate bloggers unidentified or hidden behind some make-believe characters. The audience will know and it will have detrimental effects. Lastly, a blog is not a miracle cure. It will not single-handedly turn your distressed company around. Corporate blogging should be incorporated with other marketing and communication tools to achieve desired results.
http://www.blogers-guide-to-profit.com
