Blogging Tips

If they say “Content is King” then I shall say “Traffic is the Queen”. Traffic is essentially the engine of every successful blogs. As such building an audience to your site is one of the most important aspect of blogging. In fact, it is the most difficult one to achieve. Agree? Gone are the days when you could just write and expect people will come.

The truth is a considerable portion of my blogging time has been spent on building that desired audience. So let me share with you a quick list of what I have learned and the 50 steps I have taken – and will be taken – to boost my blog traffic. Hope you find success with any of them as well.

1. Everything begins with contents people want to read.
2. Post often, not necessarily on daily basis.
3. Use a catchy post title.
4. Write a controversial post.
5. Link to your own post – internal linking is good from SEO standpoint.
6. Tag your post with keywords.
7. Use list on your post for better readability.
8. Buy your own domain. Sad to say, many still take it for granted.
9. Tweak your site design for better users’ experience.
10. Do away with widgets. It just drives away your visitors.
11. Unclutter your sidebar and footer.
12. Make your blog title SEO-friendly.
13. Ask your readers’ opinions and thoughts on what you write.
14. Place your RSS button in prominent place.
15. Invite and remind your visitors to subscribe in any possible way.
16. Optimize your RSS feed with Feedburner.
17. Submit your RSS feed to RSS directories.
18. Offer email subscription.
19. Experiment with email marketing.
20. Join social bookmarking sites. StumbleUpon is good.
21. Submit your articles and let others Digg and vote.
22. Submit your blog to niche directories.
23. Commenting on other blogs in your niche. Please don’t spam.
24. Response to each comment and feedback.
25. Don’t moderate negative comments. Let users have a say.
26. Learn to use trackbacks.
27. Enable DoFollow. Disagree?
28. Always thank your commentators.
29. Show appreciation by visiting your commentator’s site.
30. Create an Archive page. Show your old posts.
31. Create a Sitemap for search engine.
32. Use Google Webmaster Tools.
33. Statisticize your site with Google Analytics.
34. Know where your visitors well.
35. Join BlogCatalog & participate in its community.
36. Participate in Yahoo! Answer.
37. Use Twitter to promote your post.
38. Offer to exchange links with other blogs in the same niche. Do it moderately.
39. Participate in related forums.
40. Optimize forum signature with your link.
41. Offer help to other first-time bloggers.
42. Share your knowledge and experience generously.
43. Write an e-book.
44. Write about Google. We all loves it.
45. Hold a contest with giveaway prizes.
46. Guess blogging.
47. Do a review on other blogs.
48. Interview other bloggers in your niche.
49. Use images in the post.
50. Start a pool on your blog.


Get to know which blogs rank high on Google for your keywords and leave your comment there.
Use Entrecard to promote your blog.
Ensure internal links use keyword anchor text, and point to each other.

What’s your idea?
The preceding list is never meant to be an exhaustive and ultimate list but it should give you a good start to building your blog traffic and bringing it to the next level.

I am hoping that I could make a 101 list on How to Build Blog Traffic but without your participation it would not be possible. So do feel free to post your ideas below, if you have any. I’ll pass the link love back to you. How about it?

Although the common perception is that blogging is just a personal diary of writing mundane facts and personal trivia, blogging in fact can help raise a lot of fund if one can maintain a blog with topics and events of consequence, a blog from which readers can benefit.

Yes, you need to present your blog well, structure the information such that it is easily relatable and it is up to date for people to use. However even before your presentation, the most important step is to decide on the topic for your blog.

It must be relevant, you must have enough content to keep the blog up to date, you must have a fair idea on what you are talking about, you must have sources to keep the blog up to date and your topic should create a niche audience such that they are loyal to your blog and may also drive new traffic to it.

It is strongly advised that you choose a topic for your blog that you think is most relevant to you and suits your background. Let’s look at some blog topics that have been successful over time.

Cooking and Recipes

If you enjoy cooking and food, you have a great opportunity to kick off a blog with great personal recipes, reviews of best restaurant and your tips that may fetch a lot of traffic to your blog and in turn revenue. Add a little bit of a history about the food item you are discussing, the calorie information, how you created the recipe, personalize it a little bit and if possible add an image too. Remember to add relevant links for the readers and discuss their comments actively. This ensures that you are involved with your readers.

Reviews

If you are good at observing and analyzing things, then you can make a good living by writing a blog on reviews. You can review a new product on market, a new film, a new compact disc, or a new book. People always want to know about things before they spend their money to buy it or watch it. Good reviews can earn loyal readers from everywhere and a steady traffic is always a boon for any blog. Consider writing reviews as a topic for your blog.

Hobbies

Statistics show that gardening is one of the most common hobbies for people all across the world. They all need tips and suggestions on how to have their garden ready before spring. They need to know the best stores to buy the products from and how to maintain it. Consider keeping gardening as a topic of your blog if it interests you. For that matter you can even consider writing blogs on other hobbies like cross-stitching, knitting, etc. Remember to pep it up with links and tips.

Technical Topics

You can choose from a series of technical topics if you are confident and have knowledge of the same. From using different software, tools, playing golf to DIY or photography or cameras or business ideas, sales etc. there is a wide range of topics to choose from and you can easily have a dedicated audience for your blog.

Words of wisdom are from people who not only knew what they were saying but who also knew how to say it well.

Quotes from the world’s greatest thinkers are timeless. Not only they are still relevant today, they can be aptly applied to blogging as well.

I have recently discovered a few gems of wisdom that I’ll like to share with you for a bit of inspiration and motivation for your daily blogging.

Timeless Blogging Tips from Non-Bloggers

1. They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel. Carl W. Buechner
2. My opponent can compress the most words into the fewest ideas of anyone I’ve ever known. Abraham Lincoln
3. First learn the meaning of what you say, and then speak. Epictetus
4. What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure. Samuel Johnson
5. To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others. Anthony Robbins
6. What is the shortest word in the English language that contains the letters: abcdef? Answer: feedback. Don’t forget that feedback is one of the essential elements of good communication Unknown
7. Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something. Plato
8. To listen closely and reply well is the highest perfection we are able to achieve in the art of conversation. François de la Rochefoucauld
9. You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions. Naguib Mahfouz
10. Nothing gives an author so much pleasure as to find his works respectfully quoted by other learned authors. Benjamin Franklin

The quotes above is the work of Sueblimely’s 50 Timeless Blogging Tips. It’s another masterpiece I couldn’t help but to respectfully quote and reproduce it here and I hope you’ll enjoy the rest of the 40 timeless blogging tips from the greatest people the world has ever seen.

If there is one wisdom which is the mother of all wisdom, let it be this one

Of all parts of wisdom the practice is the best.

What’s your favorite quotes?

Your blog is a piece of your virtual real estate in the online world. It’s natural that you’ll make every possible effort to make it more comfortable for your readers and subscribers to hang around.

Your readers and loyal subscribers are the life blood of your blog in my opinion. Without them, I see no valid reason why a blog should exist in the first place.

20 Possible Ways to Optimize Your Blog

In this article I’m presenting to you 20 possible ways to optimize your blog in the hope that by implementing them, you will see an increase in traffic and ultimately gain a few more subscribers as a result. In the spirit of giving back to my readers, I’m sharing with you some of strategies I have adopted and what has worked well in my favor.

#1 Link Out to More Bloggers

Make an effort to link out to other bloggers by finding relevant and useful articles that may be of interest to your readers. You could either write a Sunday Link Loves, a trend I believe started by Jim from The Net Fool or find an opportunity to include any relevant topics from other blogs into your post which is exactly what I’m doing it here.

#2 Do More Internal Linking – Rejuvenate Your Old Posts

Linking out to other bloggers is just as important as Internal Linking. I can’t think of a better way to reactivate and rejuvenate the old and buried posts in your archive than to link them internally in your recent post.

You shouldn’t underestimate the power of internal linking in the distribution of your Page Rank – if any, to your internal pages and in helping to improve your search engine results. Link building is never enough without proper internal linking.

#3 Hold A Contest

One of the common yet effective methods used by many bloggers to attract new subscribers and generate more buzz around the blog is by holding a contest where participants are required to perform specific tasks in order to win certain prizes. You can either offer your own prizes or you can contact other bloggers to sponsor your contest in return for some exposure and publicity.

In case you aren’t in the know, to celebrate my super 3 months blogging, I’m running a ‘thou shall win’ Contest with up to $2500 worth of awesome prizes to be won. The contest will runs till August 31, 2008. So if you think celebrating Christmas in August is just a myth, I’ll promise you this is one contest you’ll probably wouldn’t want to miss.

#4 Dedicate A Post to Your Reader’s Question

I’m sure there are times when your readers will email or contact you to ask some questions that you think may be worth writing a post to address them. I have recently converted a simple question from one of my loyal subscribers into an article titled Post vs Backlinks . Here not only I had the opportunity to express my personal opinions, I was able to hear different version of viewpoints on the subject being discussed from my readers.

When you are experiencing writer’s block, this method not only present you with an idea to write your next article, more importantly your readers will feel appreciated with your effort. Such a gesture of appreciation is most welcome and helps to enhance a better community around your blog.

#5 Invite Guest Bloggers

Guess blogging is a win-win situation for both bloggers involved. On one hand, it gives your readers fresh perspective and different style of presentation. On the other hand, the guest blogger will gain some exposure and permanent link in his guest post. I have so far invited 3 guest bloggers as part of my experimentation to gauge how well my readers are accepting another blogger running the show for a day. I’m yet to receive any negative feedback so I presume it’s been good so far.

#6 Write a Guest Post

In the much the same way of inviting guest bloggers, writing a guest post on other blogs is yet another powerful way of networking with other bloggers and gaining some extra exposure to drive traffic to your site. Writing guest post on other blogs certainly helps to increase your online profile and credibility.

Imagine if you have made several appearances on Problogger, John Chow or other authority blogs, however the more popular the blog is, the higher the barriers of entry are. That said, I still believe there are many bloggers out there who are more than willing to publish your articles. All you need to do is to sell yourself well.

I have recently made a special appearance on BradBlogging.com writing a guest post titled A Guest Blogger On Guest Blogging on why guest blogging is good for you and why you should start today.

#7 Optimize Your ‘About Me’ Page

I’m not sure if it is the same with you but I do notice that many of the first-time visitors will tend to check out my About Me page. If your ‘About Me’ page is out-dated or worst still, non-existence, it’s time you let the world know who you are and what they can expect from your blog and in such an impersonal world of blogging, your photo does make it more personal. If you haven’t done so, it’s time to procrastinate no more.

#8 Automate Daily Backup of Your Blog

They say, “Prevention is better than cure”. Regardless of how old is your blog, you shouldn’t put off till another day to backup your blog, lest you’ll cry over spoilt milk. It’s one of those things you shouldn’t risk it till too late.

If you are on WordPress, there is an easy way to automate the daily backup using a WP Database Backup plugin. I have opted to back up my blog and send it to my Gmail on a daily basis for safekeeping. In this case, procrastination is never an option.

#9 Remove Unnecessary Plugins

As time goes by, you may have installed and collected a lot of plugins in your plugin folders of which you may not be using at all. Due to compatibility issues, some of the plugins may cause some problems to your blog so it’s best to filter what you need and remove what you can do without.

Moreover, excessive use of plugins tends to slow down your blog’s loading time. Do your spring cleaning once in a while and remove unnecessary plugins off your blog. Here’s 5 Possible Ways You Can Speed Up Your Blog for your reading pleasure.

#10 Unclutter Your Sidebar

One of the common mistakes I have discovered in most newer blogs is the clutter of unnecessary widgets that get in the way of content and the blog as a whole. Those clutters are what distract your readers’ attention the most. Isn’t it time to de-junk your sidebar? Here’s 50 tips to Unclutter Your Blog to enhance the simplicity and usability of your blog.

#11 Offer Email Subscription

While RSS subscription may be a trivial matter to most of us but the vast majority of your readers may not be tech-savvy and familiar enough to use it. So offering an alternative and easier option to subscribe and get updates via email can make a whole lot of difference to your readers’ experience.

As a side note, I would recommend that you write a simple page explaining What RSS Is? for the benefit of those not in the know.

#12 Install Top Commentators Plugin

One of the most effective way to encourage more comments from your readers and reward them for their active participation is to install a Top Commentator Plugin. The most active commenters will have their names and links shown on the list. Isn’t it time you show appreciation to your readers?

#13 Separate Trackbacks from Comments

Most theme will display trackbacks and pingbacks along with comments from your readers but I personally find that separating the two is better to keep the flow of the conversation and keep tracks of how many trackbacks you receive. With WordPress, it’s relative easy to separate one from the other using WP Comment Remix plugin which will save you time and effort.

#14 Add Subscribe to Comment Option

How do you get you readers coming back for more comments? You can offer an option to your readers – your commenters – to have the latest response to the comment emailed to them using Subscribe to Comments plugin. In my opinion, this is the most effective way of encouraging your readers to come back and stay engaged in the discussion. I can’t think of any other better way to do it. Do you have it on your blog?

#15 Get Your Blog a Makeover

Get your blog a well-deserved makeover every 3 to 6 months to satisfy your readers. With thousands of WordPress themes available for you to use, you’ll be spoilt for choice. Pick the one that suits your personality and relevant to the theme of your blog and if you have a little budget to spare, invest on a premium theme to differentiate yourself from the rest. Why You Should Invest Your Time or Money For A Custom WordPress Theme.

How about a new logo design? Hugo from BloggerVenue.com is one satisfied blogger who has just got himself an awesome-looking new logo as part of his branding process.

#16 Study Your Stats

Do you know where your readers come from? On what keywords, do they find your blog? What are your most popular posts? By the way, when was the last time you check your stats?

You can make use of tool such as Google Analytics to analyze your stats. It all boils down to the importance of tracking and learning how people find your blog. With all these data at your disposal, you will be able to see which area you should optimize and which can be improved further for better performance and improved traffic.

#17 Join Affiliate Marketing

In monetizing your blog, apart from Adsense and other PPC programs, Affiliates Marketing can be used to diversify your online income, thus not putting all your eggs into one basket. Not only affiliates do give higher payouts, they are pretty handy to fill the voids on your sidebar before your manage to sell all your direct ads. Don’t leave it empty, maximize the empty slots with some good affiliates.

#18 Track Your Adsense

Is your Adsense getting enough clicks? How high your CTR is? Are your ads getting in the way of your contents and distracting your readers? There is no sure-fire way when it comes to monetization. Every single method is being tested through trials and errors to see what works and what’s not.

If you are using Adsense, assign different channels to track which ads format gives you the optimal result at which position on your blog and rearrange those that are not giving you enough clicks.

#19 Drop Entrecard

Entrecard – a 125×125 image which represents your blog. It’s part advertisement and part business card that you can drop on other blogs to drive traffic to your site and to earn EC credits where you can use to advertise on other blogs. It is a unique platform of social networking with other bloggers and an effective method of blog promotion.

#20 Spin Publicity Wheel

Publicity Wheel works almost in the same way as Entrecard and basically serves the same purpose. However, the mechanism of it is different in a sense that your chance of getting the publicity and exposure will largely depend on whether you win the wheel spin every 5 days. To see how it can spin some traffic your way, here’s an article on how Publicity Wheel Can Boost Your Blog’s Traffic In a BIG Way.

What’s Your Thoughts?

What have you done to your blog lately? Share your experiences and success methods with us for the benefit of others.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is all about optimizing your blog to rank high in the Search Engine Results and thus increase overall visibility. Apart from unique contents and site design, it’s one of the most important aspects of blogging.

Basically, what you are trying to achieve here is to figure out On What ‘Keywords’ you want the visitors to find your site and how to optimize the said ‘keywords’ to rank high & relevant in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP).

Simply put, everything begins with what you have carefully chosen as “Your Keyword“. An example of mine are Blogging Tips for Beginners and Blog for Beginners which currently ranks #2 and #1 respectively.

15 SEO Tips for Beginners

If you are new to blogging concept and SEO in particular, I’ll like to share with you 15 SEO Tips to help improve your site’s ranking in the Search Engine Results, all without the usual jargon.
1. Keywords in title tag

One of the most important factor to rank high in your chosen keyword is to have it – your keyword – inside the title tag. The title tag is what appear in the clickable link on the search engine results page. In what I have came to learn is that what appears in the beginning is more important than what comes next.

To give you an idea, let’s take a look at 2 of my chosen keywords – Blog for Beginners & Blogging Tips for Beginners, as the former appears first follows by the latter, naturally Blog for Beginners appears higher than Blogging Tips for Beginners. However, this may not always be the case as other factors such the competitiveness of the keywords are equally important. What I’m trying to say is that you always put your Primary Keyword first.

Now if you are on WordPress, I’d recommend use of an indispensable Platinum SEO plugin to help you optimize your title without messing up your theme code.

2. SEO-Friendly URL

By default, WordPress set the permalink structure as www.domain.com/?p=12 which is a big NO NO for Search Engines Optimization (SEO). It doesn’t actually gives any indication to the robot what the url is all about.

In what I have came to learn, the optimal URL structure, according to Matt Cutt with his SEO tips, would be to use only the post title as part of the URL and don’t include the post date in your URL. Not only it is human-readable, more importantly it gives the maximum SEO benefits. How to Optimize Your URL For Search Engines.

3. Proper Use of Keywords in (h1, h2, h3)

Don’t expect the search engine to figure out which are the headlines – it won’t. Instead, use your keywords in the h1, h2, and h3 tags to provide clues to the search engine. A good buddy of mine, PB has revealed The Best SEO Tricks Ever that shows you how to optimize your keywords within those headlines.

4. Keywords in Image tag

Indeed images speak a thousand words but Search Engine Spiders don’t read images, they only read the tag which is the textual description of the image. Hence, it is important to always provide a meaningful description of an image with your keyword within the tag. Why you should care with the image ALT attribute.

5. Anchor Text of Inbound & Outbound Links

What is Anchor Text? It’s the word within a hyperlink. Here’s an example, About Yan Susanto, in which “About Yan Susanto” is the anchor text. Not only it gives your readers an idea of about the content of the page you’re linking to, more importantly it tells search engines what the page is about. Used it wisely, it will boost your rankings in search engines, especially in Google. As a rule of thumbs, avoid using “click here” for an anchor text. (See the outbound links on #2 and #3)

6. Origin of Inbound Links

Besides the anchor text, it is your duty to ensure that the sites that link to you is not from bad neighbourhoods. The theory is that it’s better to have one inbound link from a reputable site (generally speaking, sites with greater Google PR are considered reputable) than to have one hundreds links from untrusted sites. Simply said, who links to you does matter.

It’s also important to note that inbound links from sites of similar niche has far more credibility in the eyes of Search Engine than that of unrelated ones. Where Do You Get The Best Quality Inbound Links?

7. The Power of Internal Linking

One important element of SEO that is often overlooked is Internal Linking which, in layman term, means the process of linking to other pages of your site within your archives. I can’t think of a better way to reactivate and rejuvenate the old and buried posts in your archive than to link them internally in your recent post.

You shouldn’t underestimate the power of internal linking in the distribution of your Page Rank – if any, to your internal pages and in helping to improve your search engine results. Link building is never enough without proper internal linking.

8. Links from Directories

I’m not a fan of free directories as IMO having tons of links from PR0 directories is useless and it can even be regarded as link spamming, but being listed in DMOZ Directory, Yahoo Directory and similar directories will certainly boost for your overall ranking. However, it is almost impossible to get into DMOZ without much of a credibility – and some says ‘certain form of connection from biased editors’. Still it’s one of those things that is worth your while.

9. description metatag

Though metatags are becoming less and less important, there are two metatags that still matter in SEO, these are the description and keywords metatags. Both are still important from a human and search engine perspective. description metatag is what you use to describe your site. In fact, this description is what the visitors see when your site appears on the search results. How to Create The Perfect Meta Description For Google (& Searchers)

10. keywords metatag

While you are it, fill your keywords tag with relevant keywords. Relevancy here means that every word within keywords metatag must somehow appears somewhere within the body text. If not, it can be penalized for irrelevance and considered bad for your ranking. What’s The Best Keyword Meta Tags Formula?

11. Use of Robots.txt for Duplicate Content

Basically the purpose of creating a robots.txt file is to improve site indexation by telling search engine crawler to only index your content pages and to ignore other pages (i.e. monthly archives, categories folders or your admin files) that you do not want them to appear on the search index because it may lead to duplicate content issue.

If you are using WordPress, Syed Balkhi wrote a must-read Robots.txt Guide for WordPress – Avoid Duplicate Content.

12. Use of Sitemap

While Robots.txt instructs search engines which parts of your site to exclude from indexing, a Sitemap tells search engines where you’d like them to go. From a search engine perspective, sitemap is useful for better and faster indexing while a plain HTML sitemap with the use of plugin provides ease of navigation for your visitors.

As such, it is not uncommon to have 2 sitemaps of which one is created for human – your visitors and the other for search engine robots.

For Search Engines – You can create a Google Sitemap online and add your Sitemap to your Google Webmaster account or if you are on WordPress, install Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator which will generate XML-Sitemap supported by most of the search engines.
For Your Visitors – Clean Archives Reloaded generate a list of your posts sorted by months for better navigation. To see an example, have a look at my archives page.

13. Site Accessibility

Another fundamental yet often neglected factor that might affect your site ranking is the issue of accessibility. Often your site may be unaccessible due to broken links and wrong use of robots.txt that may cause your pages not indexed by Search Engines.

The solution: Broken Link Checker for WordPress will check and detect both internal and outbound links that don’t work and notifies you on the Dashboard of any broken links.

14. Keywords in First Paragraph

Put simply, search engines scan and expect that your first paragraph will contain the important keywords for the article. Make sure your keywords appear in the first paragraph of your content. If you do notice, in the first paragraph of this article, I place two primary keywords, SEO and blogging as part of my keyword optimization.

15. Keywords in Footer

Well, the first impression and the last impression usually makes the most remembered impression. A simple SEO trick of placing a link to your main page with your keyword as an anchor text could have a positive result in your search engine ranking.

Final Say

SEO is never intended to be a one-time effort. No success can be achieved overnight. It takes a lot of patience, commitment and the know-hows to succeed. All the above tips when applied may not push you into #1 but it will surely bring you one step closer to #1.

The key to SEO success is persuading search engines that your site is relevant in any search query. There are no hard and fast rules to SEO, it all boils down to the right mixture of quality content and quality inbound and outbound links with proper keywords optimization.

Good luck with your SEO. If you have any opinions or feedbacks, send them my way. I’m all ears.

You have several different ideas for possible blogging topics. But how do you choose the right one?

When you are first starting your monetized blog, a lot of the decisions you make early on can determine how successful it will be. Choosing the right platform is pretty important. So is choosing a good title. Even choosing which affiliate products you will promote can make a huge difference.

But it all starts with your topic. It’s easier to maker profits with some blogging topics than with others. My win a mercedes or empowerism blog are quite profitable but some topics will be extremely difficult to make money with, especially for a new blogger.

Here are some tips on choosing blogging topics.

Choose a Profitable Niche

One of the big draws of running a monetized blog is that you can make money while writing about things that really interest you.
But maybe you really love tadpoles, so you have decided to start a blog all about them. Keeping a tadpole blog for fun might be a great experience.

But, if you want to make money blogging, you might find that tadpoles aren’t a very profitable topic.

Actually, experienced bloggers might say it’s possible to make money in any niche. But, when you are just starting out, make things easier on yourself and choose a niche that will appeal to more people. For example, instead of focusing on tadpoles, make your blog about caring for pet fish in general. That way, you can still write about tadpoles, but you will increase your blog’s money making potential.

How Do You Find a Profitable Niche?

So, how do you choose a profitable niche?

You look at the stuff people are buying. If people are spending money on products in a certain category, then niches related to that category will probably be profitable.
How many infomercials do you see related to dieting and losing weight? Quite a few. The dieting and weight loss industries are big money makers.

What books are on the nonfiction bestseller lists? What are those books about? If people are buying books about these topics, then they could make profitable niches for your blog.

It is possible to make money blogging. But choosing the right blogging topics can make all the difference in how much money you make, and how fast you make it.

It doesn’t happen everyday but when it does happen, I’m compelled to write about it to address the questions once and for all on the importance of choosing the right niche with the emphasis on the word ‘right‘.

A lot of my readers emailed me with all the nicest words I couldn’t say it better myself and for the sake of this article, I pick two of the questions posed to me,

Tom from Stand Out Blogger

You have created an amazing blog in the blog about blogging niche and I think it would be great if you could write a little bit about why you decided to choose this niche for your blog.

Junnette from Word Play

Why “a blog for beginners” instead of a “make money blog,” just as you said in your About page?

Here’s What I Have To Say

In retrospect, I didn’t start this blog with any niche in mind. I discovered it later upon clear understanding what my audience’s needs were.

thoushallblog.com was initially created with only one single purpose, that was to be my personal journal of all things I learned about the beauty of WordPress. Little did I ever expected that people actually appreciated what I did and have continued to support it till today.

I attribute the continued support to the fact that I’m passionate about what I do. It’s the single most important key to blogging success if you ask me. I write about topics that interests both my readers and myself. Yes, myself. I couldn’t possibly continue to do what I do if it doesn’t excite both myself and my readers.

Why I Choose This ‘Blogging for Beginners’ Niche

Every minute a new blogger is born and they need a one-stop place to find all the elementary blogging resources and I see the need to fill in the gap. The fact that I’m a beginner myself, I know what’s best for beginners and I make every possible effort to speak in the language they could easily understand.

Just in case you aren’t in the know, thoushallblog.com is not a blog that teaches you how to ‘make money online’. I simply can’t bluff my way into that MMO niche.

What I’m blogging sharing here is what I have personally learned, experimented, applied and experienced first hand as a beginner. As such, everything is written by a beginner, for beginners and with beginners in mind and it will stay the same.

I aim to be the best in the ‘blogging for beginners’ niche and I wouldn’t trade it for any other niche – at least for now. Also, this is the kind of niche I could stand tall among the pack and to be a stand out blogger.

That said, I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of sharing what I learn about ‘blog monetization’ at a later stage but that will only come in later when I have found greater success with what I’m doing.

Yes, I did make my money through private ads, affiliate sales, sponsored reviews to have a decent living in the third world countries but that’s not the kind of stuffs my readers are interested in – I presume.

Choosing The Right Niche

It’s true that one of the first things you’ll be deciding when you start your own blog is the niche you want to be in. What kind of target audience you’re writing to? A niche gives you a sense of purpose, yet many is good at failing to choose the right one.

Sad but it’s true, a lot of new bloggers are happy to be part of the ‘make money online’ crowd without realizing that one has to go above and beyond the ‘average’ to succeed in such super competitive niche. In most cases, when the money is no where to be seen, they are quick enough to find the next exit door.

The MMO Niche is a victim of its own success. Here’s why Jason from TUK reasoned out that Make Money Online Blogs = Fail which makes an interesting read.

My Thought on ‘Make Money Online’ Niche

Let me hold your hands and show you how to be the next millionaire…

Sounds familiar? Oh yeah, I’ll let you hold my hands once you decide to change your default WordPress theme. I could perhaps give a couple of good recommendation if you need one. If a million of people like you buy premium themes using my affiliate links, I’m on my way to be a millionaire.

My point is ‘stop telling others how to make money online’ when you are still a distance away from cashing your first adsense check. Switching out of the MMO niche will probably make you more money and how about getting off the Make Money Online bandwagon & make your fortune from John Cow who is considered the authority in the MMO niche.

If that isn’t enough, please allow me to quote one of my favorite words of wisdom on the MMO niche

“Those who know SHOW while those who don’t TEACH”

You have to be seen as a master in your chosen niche to stand out from the crowd and aim to become “a big fish in a small pond rather than a small fish in a big pond”

Passion is The Key

Choose one that you are passionate about and it’s not time-sensitive, which stop appealing after a few months. Apart from MMO niche, there are still plenty of gold mines yet to be discovered.

Once you have decided your niche and target audience, your blog should be a one-stop solution for them or at the very least, try to be one.

That being said, if the passion and enthusiasm runs dry, it’s time to move elsewhere. You can’t excite your readers without a drop of passion in what you do or write. The key is being aware of who you are and what you are passionate about, and use it to leverage your success

….and be a winner.

I’d like to hear your thoughts on this and why you decided to choose the niche you are in. Are you a big fish in a small pond or a small fish in a big pond?

In any case, here are my 12 lessons:

1. Ask Questions. No matter if you have just started blogging or have been doing it for years there is a ton to learn and asking questions is the best way to do it. But first, you always need to be able to answer this one question. “Why do I want to write a blog?” This one question alone will help you answer all future questions. Why? Because the answer will help you to know what the right questions to ask are in the first place.

2. Dive In. Again, there is so much to learn and the sooner you get started the better. One of the best resources on the web is The Blogger Face-Off at Daily Blogs Tips. If you look through all the advice these many popular bloggers give you will find that most of them wish they would have started sooner. So if you are worried about learning something just dive in and do it. Just remember to back up your database first. ;-)

3. Join the Community. No blogger is an island. We are all part of what I consider to be a fairly tight knit community. And most of us are pretty friendly and helpful to each other. If you have that concept in your head from the beginning you will be a much more successful blogger in the long run.

4. Write grrrreat content! You want Tony the Tiger saying your blog is great. If you have nothing of real worth to read on your blog, why should people come? The must read article about creating great content is Yaro Starak’s article on writing a Pillar article.

5. Go Comment. Ok. So you have decided upon your reason for blogging and have started learning how it is done. You started to feel the community vibe, and you have started writing at least a few good articles. Now what? Well the reason I got so many visitors to my site in my first week is because I commented so much. I just dove into the community and started commenting on everything. A lot of people followed my links back and I had over 500 page views my first week. I attribute most of that traffic to my comments on other people’s websites.

6. Write Some More. You might not have to write everyday depending on your niche, but you should sure try when you are just starting out. It doesn’t have to be great content every single time, but it has to be good. Always strive for original content. If you got nothing for that day, highlight another article that is a great resource that you have dug up along the way. Make sure you write at least 2 or 3 paragraphs summarizing why this is a great article. For an example, check out my post entitled “Become a Lifestyle Entrepreneur: Anywired”

7. Leverage Your Available Tools. Have you got your feedburner feed going yet? Have you setup any useful widgets? These can come after writing some great content, but I think a feedburner feed is a must have from the beginning. It should be easy to subscribe by email as well as by a reader. Also, think about your REAL needs. It is almost guaranteed that there is a tool out there you can use to accomplish what you want to do.

8. Use Your Tools Wisely. Being the gadget junkie I am, I downloaded over 30 plug-ins to try out. As I activated them my page load time became slower and slower. Don’t make the same mistake. Here is my bare essentials list of plug-ins that I use. Akismet, commentluv, Homepage Excerpts, SRG Clean Archives, Subscribe to Comments, Top Commentators, WordPress Backup, WP Super Cache, and WP Widget Cache. To make it a nice round 10 I will give a shout out to the Dagon Design Form Mailer. Feel free to ask me about any specific plug-in in the comment section. ;-)

9. Be Accessible. Make a contact page with the Dagon Design Form Mailer. Answer your emails. Respond to every comment. It’s a community right? If you don’t participate you miss all the fun!

10. De-clutter and Simplify. My web page started to be one big mess because I kept adding things and had no sense of organization. I still feel my website is too “busy”, but I am working on that. My mantra is that simple is always better. I think Apple has some great products because of that mantra. You can too! Learn to simplify.

11. Learn Some Marketing. Once you got some grrreat content, have learned how to use all the tools, and have simplified your site to make it user friendly, you still have to promote it. I won’t pretend to know how to add “1,000 visitors in one day”, but I know you can learn it somewhere. So learn, apply it, tweak it, repeat…

12. Fall in Love All Over Again. No matter what endeavor you chose in this life, you are only going to succeed in it if you love it. The key to a great blog is to love giving your readers great value for their time. If they click on your site, you better deliver something great, otherwise you are just wasting their time. And the only way to do that is to always be in love with what you are doing.

Thanks for reading everyone! I hope you can take at least one of my lessons and go and make your blog better today. I look forward to the comments!

According to Technorati data, there are over 175,000 new blogs every day. Bloggers update their blogs regularly to the tune of over 1.6 million posts per day, or over 18 updates a second.

In what I come to notice, the majority of beginners that jump into the blogwagon have several commonalities. In this regard, they are more likely to commit one, if not all, of the 7 deadly sins of newbies.

Blame it on the “gurus” who are selling dream that blogging success can be achieved overnight with little efforts. Nowadays, a blog can be created almost at the snap of fingers.

You and I know that blogging is fun and rewarding and it can also be pretty frustrating at times. It’s also true that there is no such thing as instant success. It takes a great deal of commitment, time and efforts to see the fruits of our labor. Convince me otherwise.

This article is by no means the end-all and be-all of being an effective and better blogger, but hopefully it may shorten your learning curve and bring you closer to whatever your dream is.

Deadly Sin #1 – Too many ads too early

There’s nothing more amateurish than seeing the desperate display of ads block on every possible space on a blog. Adsense aside, it’s pretty common to see 8 125×125 ads on their sidebar when 7 of them are empty. Why? It’s probably because John Chow has 8. If he has 10, they will have 10 also.

You see, there is no hard and fast rules when you should monetize. It’s a matter of personal choice. However, it’s advisable not to overdo it and distract your visitors’ attention away from your content with too many ads.

Pick the ads carefully in the beginning – if possible, make them relevant to your niche. For example, if you are doing finance, credit cards might be great. Suffice to say, content is one of those factors that either makes or breaks your blog in its early stage.

Deadly Sin #2 – Too passive

The best way to get yourself noticed when you are a new kid in the blog is to go out and introduce yourself to the blogosphere. I can even begin to say that how many beginners don’t do this but blog commenting is the most effective and powerful method of propelling yourself from an unknown to possibly a celebrity. A case in point is Caroline Middlebrook who is still the undisputed comment queen.

Gone are the days when people will come knocking at your door, you need to seek them out. So the next time you lament why you ain’t getting enough comments, don’t be passive, go commenting and be the next comment queen or king.

On the home front, make an effort to reply to your comments and reciprocate the same by visiting their blogs. It’s a time-tested and proven strategy to build relationship with fellow bloggers. As the saying goes, “No blogger is an island.”

Deadly Sin #3 – Wrong focus

In any marketing principle, product comes before promotion and it’s sad to see that most beginners are either unaware of this or simply be in hurry in pursuit of popularity.

Getting the visitors is the easy part (see #2), converting them to be your returning visitors (aka: subscribers) is probably the hardest part. Who would be interested in a new blog, let alone subscribe to it? It’s not the ideal first impression for first time visitors.

My point is to worry less about traffic, promotion or subscribers in the early stage of your blog. Instead you should focus on creating quality contents you and your visitors can be proud of.

Deadly Sin #4 – Ignoring basic SEO

One of the most common mistakes beginners are more likely to commit is to take for granted the importance of permalinks. It’s the easiest SEO trick yet overlooked by many. Frankly speaking, ignorance is not an exception here. If you are still at a loss, here’s 15 SEO Tips for Beginners.

Deadly Sin #5 – Not proofreading

No one is expecting you to be perfect always. Even in the best of times, we’re all make some unforced gramatical errors but that’s not the issue. The fact that you proofread before you push the ‘publish’ button does say a lot about you as a blogger.

If you can’t be bother to proofread your content which is esentially yours, would you be atentive enough to look after your’s readers? Would you be diligent enough to provide the most valuable and informative contents in the best interest of your readers?

* grammatical errors are not proofread on purpose

Deadly Sin #6 – Faking your subscriber count

Despite all the bad publicity, blogosphere is never short of fakers who proudly display his/her inflated subscribers count. I recently came across a site with a decent 950+ subscribers on its chicklet and an archive as deep as 2 months. I clicked away with smile on my face. We certainly need idiots like them to remind us of the value of honesty.

Faking your subscriber count is the lamest and dumbest marketing gimmick. Don’t fall into the trap, it’s a sure-fire way of losing your credibility fast. There’s a real good chance you’ll never get it back.

Deadly Sin #7 – Not subscribing to www.bloggingtip.net

It’s probably one of the biggest sins any beginners should avoid. It’s highly recommended that you subscribe now if you haven’t yet as the best of blogging tips for beginners is yet to come. Didn’t anyone tell you that before?

There you have them all – 7 deadly sins to avoid. Don’t commit those mistakes, I have warned you in much the same way God had warned Adam not to touch the forbidden fruit.

So God bless you and I love ya all

A good proverb can communicate an abundance of wisdom in a simple sentence. These sayings can be applied to many areas in life and blogging is no exception.

While these sayings were first spoken many years before blogging was even thought possible, their meanings still ring as true today for modern bloggers as they ever did.
Don’t put all your eggs in one basket When it comes to making money online, especially from a blog, don’t limit yourself to a single source of income. Different methods of monetization are naturally going to suit some types of blogs and niches better than others.

If you only use AdSense and never branch out into other ad providers, affiliate marketing, paid reviews or the many other ways to earn online (that are increasing every single day) then you are only taking money out of your own pocket by limiting your options.

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer While you shouldn’t consider other bloggers in your niche enemies as such, you shouldn’t forget that they are also your competition. When it comes to the quality of your content, it’s these other blogs that you will be compared against.

For this reason you should always keep an eye on what other bloggers are doing and what they are writing and never let yourself get left behind. Reading should be as important to a good blogger as their writing is as it’s the best way of knowing what’s going on in your blog’s world.

A picture paints a thousand words While blogging may rely on the written word, at it’s core it’s really about communication and there are situations where an image can communicate something far more effectively than words ever will.

Images in a blog aren’t just about making things look pretty or breaking up a wall of text, when used correctly they can speak volumes to your readers and help you get across an idea that would be wasted in words.

Rome wasn’t built in a day and your blog wont be either either. There are thousands of new blogs created each and every day but if you visit these blogs again in 3 months time, most of them don’t survive, instead they get neglected and abandoned.

Success in the blogging world doesn’t happen over night, it requires a lot of patience to build a blog into what you want it to become, so don’t give up too quickly.

Two heads are better than one No matter how much of a blogging genius you may think you are, you are still only one person with a single perspective. By discussing your ideas with other bloggers and getting feedback on what you do, you’ll be able to improve upon what you are capable of creating.

Networking with other bloggers is fun, rewarding and easy! You can find other bloggers on forums, through email & blog commenting and don’t forget Twitter, which is getting more popular all the time. So don’t be afraid to talk to other bloggers and become a part of the community.

If at first you don’t succeed try, try and try again Most of the time, your first idea will fail, no matter how much you believe in it. This is a hard fact to accept for a lot of bloggers but it’s an unfortunate reality. This doesn’t mean that you should give up or even consider these setbacks as failures, instead think of them as lessons in what no to do next time.

Thomas Edison was quoted as saying “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work” and that’s the attitude bloggers should adopt as well. If something isn’t working then don’t waste your time struggling to keep it afloat, instead try throwing all your ideas out there and seeing what sticks.

So what’s your favorite saying and how can it help other bloggers?

This month completes a year blogging with WordPress. During this time, I’ve learned valuable methods, developed sound habits and have been changed because of insightful suggestions. The connections, friendships and challenges during this time have been amazing.

If someone asked me to narrow my list of essential blogging tenets, these following three areas are critical to a blogger.

So learn, modify and perform!

3 Essential Aspects to Blogging by Miguel Wickert
Control Your Mindset. Blogging isn’t easy, period. Like anything in life that’s of value- it will require everything. This game is not for the faint of heart. There will be days when you feel depressed, unmotivated and de-attached. It can be a lonely experience- no comments were left, stats were low and so on.

You’ll be convinced (in your own mind) that you have nothing intelligent to offer. Quitting will become attractive as your drive and inspiration fell into what feels like a long, cold lonely, well. You must press through these times. Hang in there, we’re here to help you.

How to fight and defeat these feelings and thoughts:

Remember your accomplishments
Ask for help
Reward yourself
Don’t be a phony
Write out of your experiences
Consider others first
Find a blogging mentor
What else? (share below)
Know Your Plan. If you don’t have a blogging plan, this covers all aspects to blogging. For example, Do you have a writing schedule? Marketing approach? If you haven’t developed a thorough plan for your weblog, STOP!

Don’t comment on other sites (until your plan is in place), stop wasting time on Twitter and Facebook.

Write out a blogging plan. Get it on paper immediately. Having it on paper goes a long way because you’ll want to keep it in front of you as purse your tasks daily. This will ensure that you stay on track.

Don’t rush the planning process. If you skip over this, your blog or business will fail.

If your serious about your blog no matter the topic, learn to treat it like a business. Think about these things as you write your plan:

Concept Overview/Site Objectives
Core message of your blog
Monetization Strategy
Site Map
Content ideas
Offline Strategy
Research
What else?
Master Your Habits. Consistency is central, I know it’s easier said than done. We all struggle but your worse off if you don’t have a plan in place to rescue you when you’re drowning in a sea of information overload.

Respect the blogosphere- it’s able to distract and hinder your productivity.

If you have bad habits in your life, this will leak into your blogging, you must replace them with sound, efficient immediately. If you haven’t done so already, go pay Leo from Zen Habits a visit.

What are quality blogging habits?

Learning to be original. That’s what people want- people don’t need another blogging guru. Sticking with your writing schedule. For example, you might spend your Sunday and Thursday mornings writing in 3 to 4 hour blocks.
Having purpose and direction. It doesn’t take a college degree to realize that having a sense of purpose (aim) can be the driving force behind your actions.
Master a to do list (or what type of system works for you). The resources and voices out there about productivity are many, so you don’t have any excuses.
More content creation (cannot be overemphasized).
Daily Blogging Checklist (to ensure you don’t miss a step).Talk about a productivity boost.
What else?
Final Thoughts

Boost your blogging output, potential and success- control these areas:

* Mindset
* Plan
* Habits

Efficiency will ignite your blogging output. Also, this isn’t meant to be some secret fomula for overnight success because such a thing doesn’t exist. I believe the three areas mentioned here are essential, and only represent a small steps of an entire process.

Ask and thou shalt receive. In what I’ve come to learn, the blogosphere has its fair share wonderful people who are always ready to offer their help and point you in the right direction if you need one. All you need to do is “Ask”

Backup your blog. Losing your data is one thing, being unprepared is another. I really can’t stress enough how important it is to back up your data and take precaution lest anything goes wrong. If you are not doing it yet, let WP Database Backup automate the whole process of daily backup for peace of mind.

Commenting is the way to go. No question about it, blog commenting is a great way to build relationship with other bloggers. It is the most effective of method of driving traffic to your site. If commenting isn’t your kind of thing, grab a copy of Commenting Blueprint before you are out of the game.

Don’t fake it. Unless you are damned sure of what you are talking about, it’s smarter to write something you are knowledgeable about or at the very least have put into practice before. It’s never difficult to tell when a blogger is faking it. The blogosphere is too small for you to lose your credibility this way.

Entertain your readers. Facts and details are deemed to be boring, you need to pay attention that not only your article should be informative, it must also be entertaining. Jay from SuiteJ did it really well here with his video review. Tell me what you think about it (…mind ya it’s addictive).

Focus on your chosen niche. One of the key factors to blogging success is the ability to define your focus and stay on topic 90% of the time. It’s nothing wrong to write off-topic articles once in a while but unless you are John Chow, no one is interested to know where you had your lunch.

Google tools. Having the right tools such as Feedburners, Webmaster Tools, Analytics makes a whole lot of difference to your site. With all the information at your disposal, it’s easier to stay on top of the game.

Help fellow blogger in need. Your sincerity and willingness to help, no matter how trivial the issue is, will come in handy when you need help from one of them in the future.

Interaction with your readers, in whatever form, is an important part of maintaining a healthy community around your blog. In such an impersonal world of blogging, responding to your readers’ comments adds a little more personal touch to it. Use your blog to start a conversation.

Joining social sites helps to extend your blog exposure to a wider audience. However, it’s best to choose which social sites you’ll join before it turns into “social networking overload”. Personally, I find BlogCatalog, Twitter and StumbleUpon have all worked pretty well for me thus far.

Know your competitors and yourself, you will win every battle – Sun Zhu (the Art of War). Well, I’m not referring to a ‘seek and destroy’ strategy here but rather spying on your competition to understand their strategies and learn what makes them more successful than you.

Link building is the art of building credibility in the eyes of search engines, thus placing your site higher in their search results. For the uninformed, it’s the process of building inbound links pointing to your own site which can be achieved in general through reciprocal link exchanges, article marketing or commenting on dofollow sites. Either way, it helps in creating awareness, visibility and credibility of your site.

Marketing is the pillar to your online success. The best contents in the world won’t do you any good if you fail to market it to your target audience. As the blogosphere is getting more crowded, it’s much harder to stand out so having the right marketing mix ensure that you can stay longer in the game.

Networking is an integral part of your marketing strategy and building relationship with fellow bloggers should never be the last thing in your agenda. Whether you are looking to improve your blogging skills or increase your readership level, networking is the way to go. Don’t be alone in the blogosphere.

Optimize your site for search engines. The key to SEO success is persuading search engines that your site is relevant in any search query. For a start, let’s take a look at 15 SEO Tips for Beginners that will push your site higher in search results.

Passion is the single most important ingredient that keeps your motivation alive. If you don’t have a passion in what you do, there will come a point in time when blogging becomes a drag and is no longer a fun thing to do anymore. In the absence of it, usually the slightest setback opens the best exit door.

Quality Article. Write from your heart, proofread and speak to your audience through your writing. These are the obvious points yet pretty much overlooked by the majority of beginners. Just remember that it all comes down to quality vs quantity.

Read more. The more you read, the more ideas you will get. I simply can’t think of a better way to learn from success of others than subscribing and reading other people blogs. It’s simply a great way to improve your knowledge and give you a different perspective of what you have already known.

Speed up your blog. Apart from choosing the right hosting provider, it is also important to ensure that your site is able to handle sudden spike in traffic and WP Super Cache does it pretty well. Here’s 5 possible ways to speed up your blog.

Tracking your stats is an essential part of managing your online presence. Knowing how many visitors you have, where they come from, on what search terms they arrive, which pages are more popular and using all these information is the best way to optimize your site for better results.

Understand your audience. They are the very reason why you blog in the first place. Listen to their feedback and provide the kind of stuff they want to read and not what you want to write. Don’ t be shy to ask your readers what they want more of.

Vote for others articles. I often refer to it as “link karma”. You see what goes around comes around eventually. When you link out to others, not only you are providing additional resources to your readers, you are exposing yourself to them in the hope that they will visit your site and link back to you.

Walk the talk. Practice what you preach. Don’t try to be someone you are not. Your honesty is probably the biggest asset you can leverage to gain more loyal subscribers. Again it’s more realistic to choose the subject you are passionate about.

Xchange link. If you just enter into the blogosphere, you are better off exchanging links with fellow bloggers within your niche as part of your initial link building exercise. The key here is to be proactive.

Yan can blog and so can you. Don’t let the fear of uncertainty leads you to inaction. If you are still contemplating to start your own blog, all the reading and learning will not do you any good if you don’t take the first step to just do it. When in doubt, let me hold your hands and help you in your journey. See #1.

Zoom to the top commentator list. It’s no longer a secret that the easiest way to get one-way quality backlink is to comment on other blogs that rewards its most active commenters with a piece of a valuable real estate on their sidebar. If you ain’t sure where to find one, here’s the best places to get quality backlink.

This article is written by Gloson an 11-year-old blogger from Malaysia who is passionate about blogging, writing poems for kids and taking photograph of his cats. He is the author of Gloson Blog.

I’ve been surfing through the blogosphere and found out that there are some common blogging mistakes many bloggers make, especially beginners. I would like to point them out in this post so that they can avoid these mistakes, and become a better blogger.

1. Writing in large blocks of text

Which do you prefer to read? A large block of text or text with occasional spacing like how I am writing now? Most people would prefer spacing, instead of a large block of text. When I read large blocks of text, I find myself reading the same line over and over again. I also strain my eye. When I read text with spacing, I find it easier, comfortable, and more relaxing to read.

2. Not offering your readers email subscription

More than half of my subscribers subscribe to my blog via email. If you want more subscribers, set up an email subscription service so that your readers can subscribe via email. Most people do not use readers, or they simply prefer email. To set up an email subscription service, use Feedburner. To get started with Feedburner, read a tutorial on how to burn your RSS feed with Feeburner.

3. Having a complicated blog design

Having a complicated blog design makes readers look at them and distracts them from reading your content. It also slows down loading and will drive impatient visitors away. Your readers don’t really care much about your design. All they really care about is your content.

A complicated blog design has too many pictures, loads very slowly, and takes up a lot of memory. You can use a beautiful and simple design, but not a complicated one.

4. Not creating an archives page

An archives page a page where you can view every post in the blog. This isn’t exactly a mistake, but you should create an archives page so that your readers can find something to read, easily.

To solve this, get a archives plugin. For people who want fun and unique archives, you should use Snazzy Archives. Here is an example of Snazzy Archives in action.

For those who want clean archives and whose blog updates frequently, use SPR Clean Archives (It is the archives plugin I am using for my blog).

5. Sticking with number (post ID) permalinks

A permalink is the link that links to a post. The permalink of this post is http://www.thoushallblog.com/5-most-common-mistakes-by-bloggers

But for some blogs, their permalink is – http://www.(blog).com/p?123

It is highly recommended that you change it to the blog’s title or ‘slug’ because it will help in your blog’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and therefore, will bring more visitors to your blog.

And also, if you look at the permalink, you will know what the post is about.

To change the structure of the permalinks in your blog (if you use wordpress), go to this URL and replace ‘[yourblog]’ with the domain name of your blog.

http://www.[yourblog].com/wp-admin/options-permalink.php

In the ‘Custom’ text box, type only /%postname%/.

Your permalink would be changed to:
http://www.[yourblog].com/[the-permalink]/

Don’t worry. The links to your posts won’t be disturbed. That’s because amazing wordpress would recognize the number (post ID) and will redirect your readers to the post to which you mean to link.

For example, before you changed the structure of your permalinks, your post permalink is

http://www.[yourblog].com/p?123

After you change it, it becomes

http://www.[yourblog].com/the-blog-post/

Anyone who visits http://www.[yourblog].com/p?123
will be redirected to http://www.[yourblog].com/the-blog-post/

To have a better blog, you should avoid all these 5 mistakes. It’s for you and your readers’ benefits.

Why do you blog?

What do you hope to achieve by taking time out of your busy day to write a blog post?

Do you want to become a professional blogger and make money blogging?

Or do you blog to vent, rant, or talk about your boss? (be careful, he/she may subscribe to your blog secretly)

Whatever your reason for blogging, if you’re like me, you want people to READ what you have to say and comment.

To help you achieve whatever blogging goal you have in mind, I’ve compiled a list of 5 steps to help you better promote your blog post.

Step 1: The Power of the Title

Your content could be the BEST out there, but if your title sucks, the content probably won’t get touched.

Write a blog post with a catchy title!

Brian Clark calls this “The Law of Headlines and Hooks“:

Your post titles must stand out in a crowded, noisy blogosphere, and you must quickly communicate the value of reading further with your opening.

Some of the titles that have worked best for me:

5 Performance Goals All Bloggers Should Set
How To’s in List Format
Love them or hate them, informational posts presented in list format are easily digestible and allow for an efficient transfer of your value proposition to the reader…creating an excellent list gives you an extra boost in terms of presentation and connecting with your readers.

10 Social Media Books to Read in 2010
A title in the form of a Frequently Ask Question
(ie. Is Blogging Really Worth It?)
Step 2: Blog Posts Must Be Reader Friendly

Make sure the blog post is “scannable” so readers don’t have to sift through all the “words” to get the gist of the content.

How to Make a Blog Post Scannable

Bullet Points
Header Tags
Numbered Lists
Pictures
Quotes
Short Paragraphs
Bold Text
Good spacing between lines (this is CSS technical stuff)
Step 3: Pictures are Worth 1,000 Words

dr.eyre-sexiest-man-alive
Include pictures in ALL blog posts.
Not only does a picture “liven the mood” of an article, but it’s more likely to get passed on in the social networks, especially if it’s funny, creative and applicable to the content you’ve shared.

(My client will LOVE this!)

Step 4: Use Video from Time to Time

I’ve seen video used really effectively.

And I’ve seen video OVER-DONE. Use it from time to time if you feel it’s adding value to what you’re sharing.

One small recommendation I give clients is to add at least a few paragraphs of text after a video. Not only does this show you’ve put in a bit of time to get the content ready, but it will help with SEO too.

I’ve even “transcribed” or “summarized” video content about social media marketing in the form of text to emphasize key points.

Step 5: Keep It Simple Stupid

If you’re blog posts are way too long and wordy, you’ll lose readers right away! I usually shoot for 500-750 words max.

I don’t care how good your writing is, most people won’t read more than a few sentences. Any more and they’ll start scanning. You probably aren’t reading this article exactly from top to bottom are you? In fact, you’re probably not even reading this sentence. Man, for a discussion about brevity this sure is dragging on. You can fight it by being more entertaining, but the best policy is to just write less.

How have these steps helped you promote your blog and achieve your life’s purpose?

Nate Moller has helped thousands of new online entrepreneurs start an online business. He does SEO consulting for a variety of clients, including one of the best dropship companies online. He also works with clients to build their online reputation via social media marketing strategy. Follow him on Twitter @mollermarketing.

As internet users, we all more or less go through the same problem of duplication of content. But before going any further let us first get acquainted with the word “duplicate content“.

When content is available word by word on more than one different URL then the content is considered to be duplicate content. The duplicate content is also termed when the same site have several copies of the same content on its different URLs.

Besides the word ‘duplication’ is also sometimes used when the search engines get confused between pages with same description when displaying search results.

Different popular search engines always discouraged the duplicate content because they want to give internet users unique results which will become food for their thoughts while eliminating same content available on different websites from their result pages.

Types of Duplicate Content

The issue of duplicate content is circulating among many internet users from quite some time which has created disturbance among many online peers. So it is a real dire need to settle down the dust of disturbance.

Basically there are many shortcomings of a duplicate content but here we will first dissect the types of duplicate content and then discuss the shortcomings of it.

One type is deceptive or malicious duplicate content and the other kind is non-deceptive or non-malicious duplicate content.

Shortcomings of Deceptive Duplicate Content

Deceptive duplicate content is categorized when the content is intentionally duplicated on various websites to manipulate the ranking categorized by search engines or to improve the page ranking of a particular site.

The shortcomings of this type of duplicate content and deceptive technique will ultimately cause the page ranking of the site to suffer or in severe cases the site might be entirely removed from the index of search engine.

Search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc absolutely discourage and hate the duplicated content. These search engines, mainly Google is totally aware of this technique and have implemented back end crawling tactics to dig out the sites involved in duplication of content.

Shortcomings of Non-Deceptive Duplicate Content

Non-deceptive duplicate content is considered by search engines when the same content is placed more then once in same site under various URLs.

For instance if any one of you have clothing business and the product red trouser is your newly added product or it’s the main item on your website then for sure you will place the same content about red trouser on your different pages. Google will instantly consider it as a duplicate content.

Even if you write copyright policy of 300 words at the end of every page then again it will be considered as a duplicate content because Google will see it as keywords stuffing on every single page. There are also some shortcomings of this type of duplicate content. When Google finds same content on same site it only choose one page of that site and discard the rest.

How to avoid Duplicate Content and its Shortcomings

Now as a matter of fact now there are many ways to avoid non-deceptive duplication of content to outrun from its shortcomings. You can block content of some pages of your website with ‘noindex’ meta tag or adding ‘robots.txt’ meta tag in the head section to stop the spiders of search engine to index that page.

But the best way to become Google friendly website is to use canonicalization. Canonicalization is used when there is more then one identical content on your website and you want to stop Google to consider it duplicate content then you pick a canonical URL (preferred URL) to consider for indexing.

On and off you should also check the content of your website for any replication. If you found yourself a victim and your content is theft and duplicated then you can report the matter to Google under their DMCA guidelines.

Besides this, there are also some disadvantages of Google’s policy of removing duplicated content which is hampering the page rank of many sites. But this topic is a subject of totally another topic which will be discussed afterwards.

Stephen Royce is a Wholesale expert and has a good understanding of supply chain management. He writes frequently for Wholesalers on topics related to blogging, internet marketing, Finance, ecommerce and dropshipping.