Profit Blog - The social networking and bookmarking debate

So far, we've touched on the basics of commenting, blog marketing and mybloglog – now we're going to go into slightly more advanced techniques for garnering readers.

Social networking and bookmarking has grown in popularity alongside blogging and though not all of them are designed to be used with blogging, most of them are.

There are four main ones that I always suggest people focus on

http://digg.com

http://stumbledupon.com

http://del.ico.us.com

http://technorati.com

Being fair, the last one isn't actually bookmarking, but is still, nevertheless, one of the mother lodes when it comes to promoting your blog.

Technorati.com

Technorati is quite literally, an index of all the blogs in the entire world, that it can see.

It tracks every blog post, removes the splogs, and then spits out a result based on the tags that people are using. The more people using the tag, the more traffic it gets from Technorati, because in addition to tracking what people are doing, they share what their users are doing.

Technorati is one of the best 'non community' communities out there – you can't really hang out there and talk blogs, not least, you can't talk YOUR blog, like you can on mybloglog, but you can see what other people are using similar tags to yours for, and work out how, if any way, you can use that to your advantage. At the very least, its yet another way to find other people's blogs (see Day 5).

Technorati, though not a community where you can talk YOUR blog, is still also a valuable place to get blogging tips as a whole – and find out where the hot trends are – tie them into your niche, and you'll generate more traffic.

Del.icio.us.com

Del.ico.us was one of the first bookmarking systems I ever used, and its great. It was designed for people, originally, to store the stuff that interested them, and share it with others, and access it 'on the go'. People soon discovered that like most social networking sites, delicious had a huge traffic effect for the sites that were being bookmarked regularly

This effect, further exploited by Digg (designed specifically around sharing the 'best of the community) has meant that blog bookmarking sites are gaining in both popularity and spamming. And though del.ico.us is a less effective means of bookmarking than Digg, it shouldn't be overlooked.

Another great use for delicious is to use it to categorise information and links that you want, either from a research perspective, and to offer your readers links that show you are actually involved in your community. Its amazing what a little relevant linking will do – and there's even some commentary that it works in tandem with your Google rank, because though Google looks for the votes to your page, in the form of links, it also looks for the pages you're linking to – possibly as a measure of how much you are involved in the community or niche you've chosen.

With its clean, clutter free interface, Delicious is also a great site in general to use, and was one of the first 'web 2.0' true sites.

Digg.com

Digg is, quite honestly, the mother ship when it comes to generating traffic from social networking – you can be pretty much certain that if anyone makes it on Digg, they'll soon be complaining.

NO server is designed to stream the loads that people see, after becoming a top Digg – its quite likely that though most people hope and dream of seeing traffic like that, you'll experience it once and think twice about ever attempting it again!

Digg is a great place to gain readers from certain niches – its a 'geeky' site, a lot like Slashdot, and is designed to draw attention to the sites that are in those niches, with worthwhile things to say. They do, however, have a business category, which means Internet Marketers, with the right slant, can use Digg for bookmarking.

Digging someone is sort of like saying 'I recommend this' – its a global word of mouth script, and is very, very good. Every time someone 'recommends' or diggs you, you rise back up to the top of the front page, giving you a brief chance in the limelight. If you attract more attention there, you'll be dugg again, and again, and again, or you'll sink until someone else diggs you.

There is no time limit on Diggs – no statute of expiry. So its also a great way to get traffic to older posts – and probably most importantly, you can Digg yourself. You shouldn't use your Digg account only for that, but its perfectly acceptable to submit your own site to Digg, occasionally.

The community can't – really – be gamed all that well, because its so vast, but there are ways to cheat at every social bookmarking site – Digg is SO huge though that many people find they just get...buried.

Like every community, it is, in part about friendships – the gaming effect would be really easy if everyone voted for everyone else, but, to be quite honest, most people vote for the stuff that really interests them. So once you hook them as a reader they WILL vote.

There's also no harm (whatsoever) in encouraging your readership, as it grows, to digg you, to bookmark you on delicious, or to add you to other sites – there are plugins and widgets designed specifically for that purpose – just make sure your traffic is voting for the best of your material, and you'll garner even more readers.

The main thing about Digg is its like a snowball. Gain enough momentum and people will continue to vote for you and you'll keep popping right back up to the top.

Stumbledupon.com

If by its nature, Digg is deliberate and chaotic, stumbledupon.com is just plain chaotic. Its a site designed around the 'random' browsing of most traffic exchanges and the voting of Digg. Stumbled upon though brings a surprisingly steady stream of traffic to most people – you place your site in categories and you are stumbled (randomly visited) from there.

Combine all four (and any others you personally enjoy) with MyBlogLog and there's no reason why you can't gain a couple of hundred readers a month within a few weeks.

Social bookmarking itself is one of the things that is still – pretty much – an unknown factor in traffic generation. Its important to remember that NOTHING is guaranteed, so if you do undertake any work on social bookmarking sites, track your results carefully. If you get a good result, then continue, but remember that if you've only got a finite amount of time to promote your blog, and you have to produce content first, and then drive traffic second, then you should consider cutting 'loose' anything that's hard work.

You CAN take short cuts. Bookmarking demon is one of several pieces of software that allows you to bookmark your blog without logging in, and out of each site and can speed up your time with bookmarking considerably. The only caveat to this is like every other 'auto' posting program, they can get you banned for spamming and should, generally, only be used in moderation.

Profit Blog - Promoting Your Blog

Just putting your blog online is not enough. Once your content is off to that flying start (and its perfectly acceptable to found a blog and then backdate a couple (though, not too many!) posts to give your readers something to read. So over days 1 to four, you should have decided what to blog about, created and installed your blog, made sure you've got enough content to last you at least a month and posted it.

Now what?

Well, the long and short of it is, NOW comes the hard work – NOW you have to promote your blog.

Promoting your blog will put it in front of people. Fortunately, there's a myriad of ways to do it, but, unfortunately, they all take time.

Blog Marketing Ideas and concepts

You'll want to make sure that once your blog is developed and in place that its positioned perfectly to capture your market – in doing so you'll find that your blog markets itself.

To start with though, you've got to find your niche – the USP you want to target.

Defining your blog's USP is easy – what sort of reader do you want to attract, and what are they interested in? Does your blog cover it?

That's IT!

Once you've worked out your blog's USP, you can then plan where you want to advertise and approach readers – you'll also be able to track down competitors and colleagues in the arena that your blog. You'll need to know about them to know where best to comment!

Make Your Blog pull people in...

Your blog should, quite literally, mesmerise people and draw them in – interest them in reading about your opinions and information, and most of all, be completely on point for what they were expecting. Your blog should contain as much unique information as you can possibly manage, whether you've rewritten it from PLR or written your content from scratch – it should ALWAYS be unique. You'll avoid Google’s duplicate content filter, and better than that, you'll get a reputation for not following the herd.

In the case of internet marketing, this does include ads about launches, but one of the biggest mistakes most bloggers (and mailing list owners!) are making is that they think that they HAVE to share the mailing information they've been given, as an affiliate.

This is a mistake because like seeing the same image over and over again, people will start to block out affiliate based ads – so instead of sharing what you've been given, verbatim, how about writing your own ads?

Its unique content and will interest people far more than flashy music or templates, but having said that, you do need to consider making your blog at least a little memorable. Choose a template that speaks to you on a professional level, but is uncluttered, unfussy, and most of all, interesting and easy to use. There's no point in using a flash template or a FLASHY template if you've got little to no clue how to make it work.

Making your customers aware your blog exists is a bit harder, but not impossible.

Most internet marketers have access to forums, mailing lists and more – so use them to tell people about your blog. If you're lucky, a 'big dog' marketer will see what you're talking about, and link to you – hint, talk about them, though don't say anything untrue! - and you'll probably get some spill over. These 'big dogs' might also consider running a solo ad for you, but you may have to pay for it, and unless you're in exactly same niche as them, or at least one that overlaps considerably, this may not be all that worthwhile for you.

More ways to let people know you exist.

Blogging is an emergent technology – you have to keep this in mind, because if its an emergent technology, so are the ways you promote your blog.

You can promote blogs via link exchanges designed specifically for blogs. There's several of them including:

http://blogcatalog.com

http://poweredbywp.com

(in this case it only accepts blogs on the Wordpress platform)

Blog catalogues are probably a very good way to get a very small, but very targeted amount of traffic – usually around a similar level to submitting to places like http://dmoz.org (a directory for everything online, edited by humans).

Blog link exchanges are less common, despite the fact that there's technology in place, on most every blog, to allow people to share important links, but so far, there's been very little in the way of 'automatic blogrolling' possibly because its so open to abuse.

There are sites though, that run link exchanges specifically for blogs. One of the less typical and highly popular versions of this traffic exchange for blogs is a site called 'mybloglog'.

MyBlogLog as an internet marketing hotspot

Mybloglog isn't JUST a traffic exchange – it provides 'a return on attention' – it is, in essence the bloggers blog tool. And for an internet marketer, its quite simply a community with leverage.

And as communities go, built around blogging, MyBlogLog is really quite cool. Owned by Yahoo, it does a great job of providing traffic, and growth to blogs.

And therein lies the rub.

You have to be very careful when using traffic exchanges to promote your blogs.

Most PPC based networks (unless you're lucky enough to run your own) frown on it – and some people have reported that they've been banned from ppc using it.

Even Yahoo's oddly.

Having said that, if your primary interest is traffic, you don't need to worry. MyBlogLog gives traffic until you're swamped. And its fairly targeted, as long as you categorise yourself properly.

MyBloglog's community is also a rather interesting place to hang out – you can pick up tips, tricks and find other blogs that are in your niche – again, you need to know where these people are, if only to know what your competitors and colleagues are doing.

Blogging is, when it comes down to it, a community 'thing' – you need a community around your blog for it to be a success, and on the whole, MyBlogLog provides the community aspect that most people need – at least to begin with.

OPB – other people's blogs

I've mentioned, while explaining a lot of this, that you should also know where your competitors are in relation to your blog.

Other people's blogs are also a great way to attract traffic – after all, they’ve already got people from your niche coming into their blog – the leg work is done – and the really big ones in your niche also have a nice secondary effect.

MOST blogs, when you comment on them, or comment about them and trackback (see the advanced strategies for more information on this!) will provide a link back to your blog, with your comment.

Sometimes its 'no follow' (a protocol introduced by Google et al. to combat spam) which means you don't get 'credit' in the search engines for your link back, but people can still click through to your blog. Its always of vital importance that if you're making a comment that you WANT associated with you that you include a link to your site. Each link has the potential for traffic, either coming to your blog to blast you for your view point (this is still good traffic, believe it or not – if the person cares enough to come over and challenge you, they may stay to read more) or to agree with you, which most times is where you'll pick up new readers from other people's blogs.

The people that agree with you, especially on controversial topics are automatically more likely to comment on your blog – and once someone opens a dialogue, they usually continue it.

That's not to say you should troll blogs to disagree with others. You shouldn't deliberately look for a reason to pick a fight on another blog – in fact, its usually good practice not to argue at all on blogs. If you truly believe the person blogging is presenting a 'fake' point of view, by all means call them on it. Lots of Big Dogs meet people doing that all the time, because its human nature to take a pop at something further up the food chain – but its important that you're doing it for all of the right reasons.

Though controversial conversations are the basis of strong blogging conversations, its also essential that you come away from them looking like a reasonable person, with understandable and approachable way. And as with everything else in blogging the keys to this are reasonable and approachable.

Passion is important, but tempered passion, and reasoned argument are usually the best way to attract people from controversial topics – after all, would YOU feel comfortable talking to someone that screams everyone else down?

Responding to Other Blogs

Controversy aside, there are some important etiquette points to pay attention to when responding to any blog post – or to comments on your own blog:

Make sure you understand, fully, what the person is saying. You shouldn't respond to a comment in anger- it’ll only lead to escalated tensions, and if something was said in a joking way, however unclear, you'll probably come off looking like the bad guy, even if that's not how YOU meant it. People perceive comments the way they expect the tone to be – so if its out of character for you, it will, generally look far worse.

Once you're ready to respond, you should stay on topic – or at least, start on topic, if you're responding on your blog. If you're responding in the comments area, remember that its a small area and doesn't allow anywhere near as many words as you can fit in a blog post, so if its a LONG response, you should consider taking it, instead to your blog. You should then always link back – blogger ad Wordpress both track these – bloggers calls them 'backlinks' and Wordpress calls them trackbacks (more about effective use of them in the 'advanced' section at the end of the book)

Ultimately, the person that owns the blog gets to decide whether to run your comment. You can't force someone to post your comment and harassing them, again and again, will only lead to you being banned, and possibly named and shamed. Unless this blogger is an unreasonable person themselves, this will only lead to damage.

The bottom line to this is that the more readers you have, the more traffic you have – the more customers you should generate.

Profit Blog - The Content

Putting the cart before the horse?

Writing for the web isn't a case of collecting your ideas and then putting them online – and blog posting especially is a hidden and deceptively simple looking 'art form' all of its own.

Before you actually write one word of content though you need to think about what you're going to say. You should have your keywords organised into some sort of coherent list – and you should be weeding out the ones you're not interested in using. Once you've done that, you need to sit down and plan down your blog. You need to plan at least 20 posts and choose some sort of posting schedule.

Once you've planned your content, you can start writing your posts. In the case of WordPress, you can queue your posts as you are writing them, giving you the additional advantage of being able to post series and have them ready to go, without losing your flow. If you're using blogger, you should still write your posts as you can then simply copy and paste them into your blog on the day you want them to go live.

We always recommend that you stay at least three posts ahead of your posting schedule – that way, if you hit a dry spot, or find yourself too busy to post; you've still got 'emergency' content on tap, till you can re-evaluate.

What should a blog post BE?

Blog posts should follow one of a few formulae, but before you look at them – you should probably consider what they can and can't contain – there are a couple of 'no no’s' in blogging.

First and foremost – your blog should be advertising light, if it contains any advertising at all. People don't want to talk about your latest and greatest advert – they want to read about your opinions and thoughts in your niche – they want to know that you DO actually know what you're talking about, and most importantly, they want to discuss, not be sold to.

This means that though your blog will do the job of promoting your product, you have to do it without being blatantly, obviously advertorial.

You CAN write about products – talk about why you're so passionate about them – their features, the things that make you want to use them – or the services, or problems they solve.

You also don't need to just WRITE – you can upload pictures, podcasts (audio), video, multimedia – in fact, the more interactive your blog is, without intruding on the experience of the average visitor, the more traffic and return visitors you'll get and the more comments your blog will garner.

Writing for the web

Writing for the web is an art form.

You need to use short sentences, with subheadings, usually one per paragraph – those sub headings should be bolded, to stand out, because studies have proven, without a shadow of a doubt that the majority of internet users, especially those with a lower technical savvy than usual, skim read.

They skim read because we've been conditioned to believe two things about the internet: there's a lot of good information out there – but it can be incredibly hard to find, even on 'trusted' sites. Google's quality, page rank and duplicate content algorithms go a long way to helping to sift the dross from the perfect, but we're still left with people gaming the system, or worse, not being able to clearly state what we, ourselves are looking for.

Back to Average Joe for a minute. He doesn't know how to use boolean operators, in fact, it sounds too complex maths like to be of any interest to him, and many internet users don't search for things as much as ask Google questions.

Keyword searching is a really good technique to learn, but for most people typing in short phrases, or whole questions, is the way to go, complete with punctuation.

Depending on the sophistication of the software in question, they might get exactly what they are looking for, but the same studies that suggest people skim read, also tell us that people really don't understand how to get the most from the internet.

It was best summed up in the X-files – the truth is out there – but where?

Skim reading users do have their advantages – internet writing doesn't need to be tight – just on one (tiny) topic. Blog posts can cover one tiny minutiae of a subject and then head back, stating it differently, another day.

There is one exception to this rule – when the situation or post doesn't warrant that style, don't use it. It’s easy for someone to suggest that you blog using subheadings, but if you're blogging about yourself and your family, you might find it very hard.

Blogging is ultimately about YOUR BRAND and YOUR STYLE, so use it well, and you can't go wrong.

The most popular blog post formula

Blogging has fallen into several styles, like articles in newspapers and magazines. You can write and choose to use several different formulae, but ultimately, you have to find a way, and a style of writing that is comfortable for you.

The most common and most responsive way of blogging is 'problem – solution'. You take one common problem or current trend, or newsworthy topic and you 'solve' it.

Solving it can be as simple as providing your opinion, showing where you stand on any given issue, or it could be offering an actual solution to a problem many of us encounter.

Problem – solution or 'action – reaction' blogs are very popular with a vast majority of readers, but aren't without their inherent problems.

For a start, if you're 'solving' a current newsworthy item, although you are giving people a view of the fact that you are, in fact human, you'll also find that unless you are being very careful about expressing your views, you're going to upset someone, somewhere along the lines.

This can be a good thing – being of conviction in what you're saying not only gives you the authenticity that most blogs lack, for fear of stirring up trouble, but will also promote conversation – but not all of the conversation you promote will be positive.

You have to take the good with the bad and accept that no matter what you do, you'll always ruffle some feathers – just like in real life.

Another type of highly popular blog post is the review.

It’s fairly straight forward to write a review post, but you've got to be careful. If it doesn't fit with the theme of your blog, you'll find that it actually damages your overall traffic. Your blog should always be laser focussed on the niche you want to talk about, and related areas to the niche. You can't go off topic!

Another type of post is 'a list' – lists of the ten most popular (x)'s.

(x) reasons why (y) is the only option/ a very bad idea

(x) reasons why you should/should not do (y)

(x) life saving hacks.

The highly popular blog, http://lifehacker.com is full of these tips and tricks – an article centred on solving a problem. The problem may not be implicitly stated, but instead touched on in general terms, but the solutions are always bang on the money, and that makes this blog a must read.

Its style is easy to emulate too. What problems does your niche have – are there several solutions (that you know of?) and can you express them in simple terms?

The final type of post that is very popular and easy to write is the feature – features can be one article, or several long articles, with links to each other. They should cover something important and be packed full of information. Keyword rich, you want your readers to come away feeling like they've really learned something, and search engines to come away with a whole new platter of wonderful content to add to their indexes.

The art of writing itself

Ultimately, you have to remember that though some blogs are founded for personal gain, if you're working on it to make any sort of income at all; you need to consider that your blog is a marketing project. You're either marketing the content, your company, or in some cases, yourself.

Once you've gotten your head round that, you'll also understand why you can't use slang, or make spelling or grammar mistakes, but more importantly, you'll realise that blogging might be the one 'voice' or face you present to people, so you'll need to offer a consistent, interesting brand.

There are specific, specialised types of post that work well with blogs from an internet marketer’s point of view – like information about your company. Go beyond FAQ's and contact information – and share the nitty gritty about your operation. Make your blog readers feel like they are getting in on a secret of some description – or share something that wouldn't ordinarily be online – such as your motivation for going into business.

You can also recommend other marketers that you like, without appearing too fawning, if you're honest. Talking about experience is a sure fire way to improve on both your customer image, and your professional image.

You can also....

Use your blog to archive articles and other freebies for your company.

More importantly than that though, always ensure that you've got somewhere in your blog for people to sign up to your mailing list. Giving them the option to do that will also mean that you've got multiple traffic streaming to and from you blog, and though it seems odd to set up like this at first, people ARE more likely to sign up for your newsletter (with and without incentives!) if they like what you're saying on your blog.

As an extra bonus, you can 'tie' your blog feed to your auto responder, giving people the option of signing up to receive your posts by email – thus negating the need to come to your site until you post – we've covered that in the 'advanced' section of this e-book.

It has been suggested that there's a definite link between people that sign up for your newsletter, and people that comment on blogs attached to newsletters – and these people are the ones that are interested, interactive readers. They have a vested interest in commenting on your blog.

Style AND substance

Blogging isn't just about providing search engine content, and though its a great way to make connections with your customer base, the most important thing to remember is that shallow content breeds shallow contacts.

What this means is that if you're posting trivial stuff, people that are interested in little more than the trivial stuff will read your blog, and no one else.

Post about the 'meaty' stuff – and you're more likely to not only getting responses, but to gain responses that will help you further shape your content to fit your readers.

Though you will start out with a strong plan, and should try to stick to that as much as possible for the first few months (so as not to confuse yourself or waste the research you did in founding the blog) you should also consider the needs, wants and interests of your readers. Do THEY comment on more of one type of content? Can you write to fit the things they are raising?

Purely from a stylistic point of view, blogging works far better when you're using the active tense (Our newest division opened – we're putting the finishing touches to a launch) rather than the passive (our new division was opened – we've been working on a launch) – passive tense is both flat and doesn't contain energy. Its motionless, and doesn't give the impression of dynamism, which, when keeping a blog is very important.

Speaking of dynamic – ALWAYS be enthusiastic!

Blogging should never be a chore, and if it begins to feel that way, you really need to stop and question WHY.

Blogging is about sharing your passion, your enthusiasm, and your experience with others, and to do that, you've got to believe in what you're writing. If you don't, then how can you expect your readers to enjoy and comment?

If you love what you blog, you'll never work a day on your blog, in your life ;)

Profit Blog - Choose your platform

There are several major platforms to blog on, but for simplicity's sake, we're only going to focus on three options: Wordpress (self hosted), Wordpress (hosted) and Blogger. All three give you strong, steady options to blog from, and all three are easy to configure – and best of all, all three should integrate with any structure you've already created or are planning to create within your business.

You may find, however, that you can't integrate the self hosted Wordpress with your site, but you should find that you can find a complimentary template on most good self hosted Wordpress blogs.

Wordpress – self hosted

By far and away, one of the most popular options for anyone that is serious about their blogging, the self hosted Wordpress option. You can install your blog anywhere on your site, and its completely within your control, which means YOU can choose what you'd like to have running – an important feature if you're looking to add the ability to do things like email the information to people, or polls. Or your own advertising in some cases.

By far and away, the easiest way to install Wordpress is via Fantastico – most cpanel hosts offer both Fantastico and the ability to install up to date Wordpress. Otherwise, you can find instructions online at http://wordpress.org

You can choose your own themes, your own plugins – and modify it in any way you see fit.

Wordpress (hosted)

Hosted Wordpress is a secondary option for anyone whose hosting won't support the Wordpress self install options. You can grab blogs from lots of places, but places like http://wordpress.com won't allow you to run a commercial blog – while places like http://thejv-press.com do, in exchange for joining their email list.

Hosted Wordpress blogs will only ever offer the very basics of WordPress blogging – you can't control the themes on offer, which means you can't choose a specific theme – unless it’s already installed on the site. The same applies to plugins.

Blogger

Blogger is a Google owned blogging system, and is highly popular with non tech savvy people. It gives you a basic frame to build on – and is less flexible than either version of Wordpress hosted blogs.

However, Blogger is a great option if you really don't want to modify anything to do with your blog, other than the theme and possibly add some surface widgets.

Blogger also lets you archive your blog on your own site, giving you all of the benefits of self hosting with none of the update headaches.

Ultimately, there are more software options for your blog – such as Moveable Type (perl based) and Typepad (hosted, by the same company that offers Moveable Type and Livejournal). Moveable type is not free for commercial purposes – another one that isn't free, but is a really solid blogging package is Expression Engine – again, you'll have to make sure that you get a valid licence for it, for the purposes you want to use it for.

What about CMS’s?

I'm not recommending any of the CMS based systems, despite the fact that you can use them to build really nice, really strong blogs; you can't use some of the nicer features of blogging that you really need to take full advantage of, to get the most out of your efforts.

Most CMS systems don't have tagging protocols, track backs and pinging - though they have ways to leave comments per article or post, you'll find that they are lacking for full featured blogs.

All of the options will give you a blog that you can build a solid base from, but of course ultimately, where you want to build your blog, be it on your own website or via Blogger (to archive on your site) or hosted with another site, you'll have to stick with what you choose – purely for the fact that you're going to be promoting it – and the last thing you want is to move on after a couple of weeks cause you've played with the others and discover you prefer one over the other.

There is NO HARM in testing them all out first and getting comfortable, if you've never blogged – or haven't explored for a while. Wordpress (self hosted) is easy to install 'vanilla' (no plugins or themes) via Fantastico – just follow the instructions presented and it'll install a simple Wordpress install in around three clicks.

Once you've gotten comfortable you'll need to decide on your theme – you'll also want to pick plugins for Wordpress, play with certain features in Blogger, and add widgets in other programs. We'll cover the plugins and other features for Blogger at the end of the book – for the moment, all you need do, now, is to find a theme you're comfortable with.

Picking a theme

Most people that found blogs have great plans – they want to write interesting content (that makes them money for their effort) and they want to be THE site that people come to for their information.

Most people don't consider what they want their site to look like though. Whether this is a deliberate oversight or if they just don't know what to do with their theme, it’s probably one of the biggest 'beginner' mistakes that anyone can make.

Blogger comes with lots of pre-installed themes – or you can add your own CSS to it, to give it your 'unique' look. Its important to at least personalise any theme you choose be it on Wordpress(self hosted) or Blogger – its not possible on hosted versions of Wordpress, or at least, not as easily. There are customisable options on Wordpress.com but they cost money and they are still aren't as flexible as you can have on your own site, so aren't as customisable as you really need to present a professional image for yourself and your blog.

There are many themes that you can choose from – and it can kind of be like decorating your first house – lots of fun, but very wearing!

Wordpress:

http://themes.wordpress.com

http://www.wpthemesfree.com/

http://www.wpthemespot.com/

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/02/09/83-beautiful-wordpress-themes-you-probably-havent-seen/ (this might take a while to load, but its well worth it)

All of the above sites allow you to use their themes for free, though its well worth checking the licences – some are completely open – others are restricted simply to personal use.

You can also buy templates from professional designers – or look around and see who other people are using. It’s a fair bet that your colleagues or favourite blogs will have designers to recommend highly.

Blogger

Unsurprisingly most Blogger template sites are actually hosted ON Blogger, so you've got a vast array of free blog themes.

http://www.isnaini.com/2005/09/04/blogger-templates-no-60-profesional-themes/

http://blogger-themes.blogspot.com/

http://blogger-templates.blogspot.com/ - the final site also contains a lot of wonderful tips outwith the scope of this guide, about how to add more features, such as web albums (including Picasa) and forms.

Themes are easiest described as the thing that 'skins' your site to look different – more than that though, your theme controls ALL of the appearance of your blog – it’s not just the wall paper on the walls, but the walls themselves in some cases.

Profit Blog - Give Your Readers What They Want

Look at what you're ABOUT to do from a reader's perspective

One of the more important actions anyone creating or 'cleaning up' a blog can do is look at what you're doing or about to do from the perspective of average Joe reader.

Average Joe doesn't care about profitability. He doesn't care that you're optimising to make the most out of PPC clicks. He REALLY doesn't care that you've worked hard in getting your information into the search engine – and in front of them.

ALL he cares about is what they are looking for – and they are hoping that YOUR site is the site that will provide it.

Average Joe will remain on your site and read ONE POST in for anywhere up to 30 seconds. They might then click on your PPC advertising – they might sign up for your newsletter – they might read more of your posts (yes!) or, if your site doesn't live up to what they were expecting – what they were looking for, they'll click away, either back to the search engine, or to their next option from the search engine.

Blogging isn't just about eyeballs on your page – it’s about eyeballs on your page, and comments in your inbox. People have to have a reason to come back, and the simplest way to ensure that is to ensure you've got a reason for them to WANT to visit your site again.

This stickivity is what makes blogging so tantalising- if you can get it right, your blog will attract Average Joe, Average Jane and all of their friends, because the best blogs get commented on in other places – and shared with others.

So, from a reader's perspective is your blog going to fulfil a) your niche and b) give your readers quality, quantitative content that will either strike a controversial or empathic chord with them, giving them something to comment on.

Give Your Readers What They Want

Studies suggest that there's up to a quarter of the internet reads blogs – that's a lot of eyeballs. And on top of that, another study suggests that there's two blogs founded every minute. Two blogs a minute is 120 blogs an hour – and nearly 3000 a day. Take that to its logical conclusions and that's a lot of blogs competing for a less rapidly increasing source of traffic.

More than that though, blogs are competing for a specific NICHE of readers – though its true that some blogs will pull in readers from search engines, blogs still don't have the impact of static sites – and the average internet user may not know HOW to search blogs – let alone that http://blogsearch.google.com even exists, so you can't rely on them finding you UNLESS you are not only good – but one of the best in your niche.

Once you've got the absolute best information in your niche, you can be sure that you'll attract the right kinds of traffic, and that they'll attract MORE traffic by referencing you on their sites – bookmarking you, and more.

Blogging is all about the reader – ultimately, its not about how well you position yourself, or how strongly you optimise your site – though you can bookmark yourself, and generate a certain amount of traffic that way – the best sites have faithful readers that bookmark and discuss the site independently of ANY input from the site owner (you).

The best blogs are one or a mix of tips and advice, hobby or interest discussion, technique and connection. When blogging, if you can make a connection with your reader, then you've won most of the battle. 'Connecting' with your readers is as simple as being personable, and approachable, and giving people a chance to empathise with you.

Who is your reader?

Thinking about what your reader wants to see lets you work out WHO your reader is. Which you'll need later too, to advertise your blog effectively.

So who IS your ideal reader?

Do they have a specific interest, within your niche?

ULTIMATELY, when you know who your reader is, you can plan the creation of a blog that will fully appeal to any readers you attract. If you've planned on whom you're targeting, you'll find it far easier to write content that will continue to satisfy your readers, whilst giving you room to evolve and plan more content as you grow.

Got all of that sorted out?

Now you can move onto the technical stuff!

Profit Blog - Your Blog Theme

Starting a blog is as simple as finding a space online to write – and the time to write.

To start though, you'll need to work through a brief list of steps to create your space.

Before you even consider your blog though, you have to think about WHAT you're going to blog about. It’s important to stop and think about your blog, before starting it because, to be quite honest, without purpose, blogs are pointless. And this pointlessness will dilute your message considerably.

So, you need to think about what you're writing and why. Consider your theme – and then build some keywords around it, because for the first little while, you should try to include at least some of them in every post. You'll get archived in all of the right places that way, which will lead valuable NON COMMENT generated traffic to your blog. You'll also be commenting on blogs similar to yours and hopefully, generating more traffic based on the links you leave.

You can choose your topic, keyword, and theme simply by considering what, in connection to your business you're an expert in. Once you've looked at that, you can decide whether it’s profitable, or viable to pursue it. If not, look at a related area that you can cover – your blog should always relate to your business choices, and give you interested traffic. Having said that, your blog isn't a free advertising system and nothing more – you've got to remember that people will be turned off by blatant advertising.

Choosing your keywords

Keyword Research

Keyword research is relatively simple – you can undertake basic research at http://www.thetoolman.net/keywordtool/research.php

You can use this to research your general keywords – and check on their general profitability, if you're using CPM advertising. You might not be – but most blogs make a residual income from Adsense or similar, and it’s not something you should overlook, for your long term stratagem. Niche blogs can earn well.

Once you've found a profitable overall keyword, you'll need to check out your competition -

http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

Though considered less effective now – it’s still a good tool for finding your competition levels. You'll be able to assess your competition – basically, you're looking for a niche that's either tiny, if it’s narrow, or large, if it’s broader. Your narrower niches can only support a tiny amount of blogs – whereas the broader your definition, the more your niche will support – but the flip side to that, is that you've got more competition.

Once you've worked out your profitability, and competition, you can also use the keyword search at Overture to evaluate your other keywords (and get an idea on where to start blogging from).

You can place that information in a spreadsheet for reference – or use programs like article architect to extend on your research (affiliate link for article architect)

Once you've made a list of your keywords – and paced them into a spread sheet, you can take your research a step further. Article architect does it for you, but if you've not got that piece of software, or a similar one that researches keywords, you can do it manually.

Open up both Google and Yahoo, and start plugging your keywords into it – at the top you'll see a listing 1 of (a number) – you can then divide your 'competition' number by the total of your searches (a number) – that will give you a rating for that keyword – and the keyword with the 'best' ratings are the ones you'll probably want to focus on.

Article architect does this automatically – highlighting the 'optimum' keywords – and there are other pieces of software will do the same.

The reason you're doing this is to see where your keywords will have the best chance of ranking – you'll be able to find the best place to 'position yourself' this way.

Keep those keywords handy – you'll need them when you start writing content.

Got your keywords? What do you want to blog about?

Once you've got your keywords, you'll have an idea, at least, of the profitable areas of your niche that you can take advantage of. You'll be able to choose an interesting niche – for both you to write in, and your prospective readers.

You'll find that you can narrow it down pretty easily based on what you've got on your keyword lists – and what YOU feel like you want to write.

While its important to work out what you want to do with your blog, based on your view of profitability, it’s also important to remember that working based on keywords alone is a sure fire way to build an impersonal, and possibly unmotivated blog for your readers.

Blog Basic

A blog is sometimes called web log or weblog. At first, they were used as a personal place, for collecting links, sharing commentary – but now; they are a valid and VALUED form of communication for business people of all types. From the basics of blogging, to the intermediate areas – such as social bookmarking, and article marketing, to the advanced techniques using auto responders and more, there's something for every affiliate marketer to put into motion.

The great thing about blogs is that people read them for fun and for information – in fact, blogging is one of the few areas of the internet that covers business, pleasure, networking and play.

They do for your company what face to face marketing could only do in the past – they provide you with a real, interesting connection to your readers – personalised contact, and information about your company that will allow them to empathise, and discuss your most important points, and anything that ties in with hot button topics and your business.

Blogs give your readers and consumers a chance, not only to read and connect with you, but a chance to comment and discuss with you, and your team, the information that you're sharing – allowing them to further relate to your message. And a consumer that relates to you is a customer in waiting!

Our guide covers the very basics of blogging – it skims into areas that you'll possibly never have heard of – and cover them so that you can employ them in seven days – or less.

SEO Cheat Sheet

The Secrets of income from ClickBank

Steps 01 – Search for a GREAT PRODUCT to promote

============================================

This step is MOST IMPORTANT, and I knew that if I get this correct I will make money with my SEO & Web 2.0 skills. 

Instead of spending time to find a winning product by searching ClickBank database or CBengine or AdSpyPro or SpyFu i invented my OWN FORMULA, and I worked like a magic.

I thought that I there is a successful product already in market and the same author is launching another product in same market, people will definitely go for it. At least in the launch phase when you don’t have the real feedback of product ( because all affiliates will ONLY WRITE GOOD FEEDBACK as they want to sell it…! ) – THIS IS THE BIGGEST SECRET. The product I choose was in fitness industry and the author already had 3 very successful products before this one.

Step 02 – Choose Correct Domain Name

=================================

With my past experiences of SEO work I know 100% that Google gives very good importance to the DOMAIN NAME. The product launch schedule was announced before 2 months of launch but the date was not decided, so I registered a domain with the PRODUCT NAME in it. Because I was early in business I got the domain name I wanted.

You can add anything BEFORE or AFTER the product name like : review, scam, info, get, secrets, the etc. So you will get all the traffic on the PRODUCT NAME SEARCH.

Step 03 – Create The Website

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At the beginning of 2008 I wrote a small post here on IJ telling and asking for the plans of the year 2008. There I wrote I will use WordPress for my next projects.

WordPress is THE BEST. It’s is UNMACHED. Weather it is a 1 – 5 page affiliate website of 100 page corporate website or 1000 page huge online ecommerce store, USE WordPress – Forget Everything Else. I don’t want to write a WordPress guide here but it is so easy to install and you can do anything with WordPress. So just GO FOR WordPress.

The theme I chose had a simple header image and right sidebar and it was FREE.

Step 04 – Elements of Website

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01 – Header Image : I put the ebook cover image, photo of author & a big Call to Action

02 – Optin Box : I offered my visitor 2 free reports by giving their email address. The report was provided by the author himself.

03 – First Post : A big bold head like with one more Call to Action. Made this post sticky so that I appears 1st every time. This 1st post should be the REVIEW or INFORMATION of the product itself.

04 – Other Posts: You must have 2-4 other pages / posts related to the product of the category of the product

Step 05 – SEO

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I recently watched the IPK videos last week and realized that I was already doing all the things given in video. He called it OPSEO.

01 – Use All in One SEO plugin for WrodPress

02 – Use different Titles & Description for each page / post. Don’t repeat

03 – Use Alt Tags for all the images

04 – Must put H1 tag on each page / post

05 – Use 1 or 2 H2 tags on each page / post

06 – Use your particular keyword ( for that particular page / post ) in H1 & H2

07 – Use your particular at the start of the page, at the middle of page & at the end of the page

08 – Use the keyword in page / post name

09 – Use SILO. It’s killer. For example if you are selling a N97 mobile of NOKIA your page structure should be 

www.domainname.com\mobile-phones\nokia\N97.htm or

www.domainname.com\nokia\N97.htm

10 – Go to Google and search for your main keyword with ~ function to find LSI keywords or your MOTHER KEYWORD. 

For example ~mobile phone 

Similarly search for your particular keyword of the particular page like ~Nokia or ~N97 

Google will highlight the LSI keywords in bold, copy these keyword in notepad and use them in H1, H2 tags, Discretion, Site Content etc. This trick will help a lot to make the THEME OF YOUR WEBSITE.

HOW DO I KNOW THAT LSI WORKS ??? I have proof, just today I checked the back links of my website and surprise – I don’t have a single back link in Google & only 2 back links in Yahoo. It’s only because of the On Page SEO & LSI that my site is still on page 1.

11 – Once you have all required page on your WordPress site, create XML site map for Google and just tell Google about it by submitting the sitemap.

Step 06 – Web 2.0 Marketing

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If you don’t get traffic & visitors to your website there is no way you will make money and the best way to marketing in current period is Web 2.0 Marketing. There are 500+ HOT Web 2.0 properties on which you can put your content and get good amount of traffic & boost in Search Engine rankings very fast.

I created account of the following : YouTube, Yahoo Video, Digg, HubPages, Squidoo etc.

I created a Power Point presentation & recorded the screen with Camtasia Studio and uploaded the video to video channels.

I created 1 article and submitted to the Remote Blogs like HubPages, Squidoo

I created Digg account and digged my own site.

Step 07 – Some Other Points

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1 - Don’t ever put and AdSense or anything else on your Affiliate Product Review Page. Why –Because you don’ want to give the visitor any chance to quite your page. The visitor should quite your page only 3 ways : Your own affiliate link directly to the product page, Link leading to more info about the product on your own domain ( like optin ) or just quit.

2 - Put a Contact, Disclaimer or Privacy Policy page on your page. Just to make Google feel good.

3 – Always have an optin box, so that you can contact the interested visitor later on.

At that time I used a FREE 3rd party optin service called ZOOKODA ( zookoda.com ). But there is a free WordPress plugin available these days which is better than this. It’s called GWA Auto Responder ( freeautoresponder.biz )

The Result

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After submitting the XML site map to Google didn’t do anything else. In just 3 days my site was crawled by Google and it was indexed. Now please note that Indexing doesn’t mean Ranking.

After I submitted my Videos to YouTube & Yahoo Videos, those pages ( of YouTube & Yahoo ) were indexed in 2 days

Within 9 days my site was on 1st Rank in Google for the Product Keyword….! In fact the main product site was at 2nd number, and my YouTube page was at 3rd Place…!

After 15 days I had 5 places on 1st page of Google out of 10. ( Conversation Domination )

And this is how it got my 1st Affiliate Commission of $255

Thing That Went Wrong

====================

As I said I had some unavoidable engagements and I stopped doing any work on this project after the initial 7 days. 

What happened at that time was the product was launched and I didn’t put my affiliate link on the site. I checked in my Google Analytics account and saw that I had the MAXIMUM VISITORS in those 3 days, I guess I lost all the sales at that time, as my site was on 1st place in Google without my affiliate link.

I attached my affiliate link and forgot about it but the product was good and people continued to buy it and I got the commission.

Conclusion

==========

1 – If I can do it any one can do it

2 – All of us have as good knowledge as the GURUS but the difference between them and us is TAKING ACTION

3 – You don’t need to spend money on PPC to be a successful affiliate

4 - I guess I am quite good at SEO & Web 2.0 Social Marketing.    

The Search Engine Optimization Mistakes You Must Avoid - Part 2

4) Creating lots of similar doorway pages

Another myth prevalent among people is that since the algorithm of each search engine is different, they need to create different pages for different search engines.

While this is great in theory, it is counter-productive in practice. If you use this tactic, you will soon end up with hundreds of pages, which can quickly become an administrative nightmare. Also, just imagine the amount of time you will need to spend constantly updating the pages in response to the changes that the search engines make to their algorithms. Furthermore, although the pages are meant for different engines, they will actually end up being pretty similar to each other.

The search engines are often able to detect when a site has created such similar pages, and may penalize or even ban this site from their index. Hence, instead of creating different pages for different search engines, create one page which is optimized for one keyword for all the search engines.

5) Using Hidden Text

Hidden text is text with the same color as the background color of your page. For example, if the background color of your page is white and you have added some white text to that page, that is considered as hidden text.

Many webmasters, in order to get high rankings in the search engines, try to make their pages as keyword rich as possible. However, there is a limit to the number of keywords you can repeat in a page without making it sound odd to your human visitors. 

Thus, in order to ensure that the human visitors to a page don't perceive the text to be odd, but that the page is still keyword rich, many webmasters add text (containing the keywords) with the same color as the background color. 

This ensures that while the search engines can see the keywords, the human visitors cannot. The search engines have long since caught up with this technique, and ignore or penalize the pages which contain such text. They may also penalize the entire site if even one of the pages in that site contain such hidden text.

However, the problem with this is that the search engines may often end up penalizing sites which did not intend to use hidden text. For instance, suppose you have a page with a white background and a table in that page with a black background.

Further suppose that you have added some white text in that table. This text will, in fact, be visible to your human visitors, i.e. this shouldn't be called hidden text. However, the search engines can interpret this to be hidden text because they may often ignore the fact that the background of the table is black.

Hence, in order to ensure that your site is not penalized because of this, you should go through all the pages in your site and see whether you have inadvertently made any such mistake.

6) Creating Pages Containing Only Graphics

The search engines only understand text - they don't understand graphics. Hence, if your site contains lots of graphics but little text, it is unlikely to get a high ranking in the search engines.

For improving your rankings, you need to replace the graphics by keyword rich text for the search engine spiders to feed on.

7) Not using the NOFRAMES tag in case your site uses frames

Many search engines don't understand frames. For sites which have used frames, these search engines only consider what is present in the NOFRAMES tag. Yet, many webmasters make the mistake of adding something like this to the NOFRAMES tag: "This site uses frames, but your browser doesn't support them".

For the search engines which don't understand frames, this is all the text that they ever get to see in this site, which means that the chances of this site getting a good ranking in these search engines are non-existent. Hence, if your site uses frames, you need to add a lot of keyword rich text to the NOFRAMES tag.

The Search Engine Optimization Mistakes You Must Avoid - Part 1

When it comes to search engine optimization, there are certain common mistakes that I see people making over and over again. Here's a list most common mistakes that I see people making. By avoiding these mistakes, you can avoid a lot of anguish and frustration in the long run.

1) Optimizing for the wrong keywords

The first step in any search engine optimization campaign is to choose the keywords you should optimize your site with. If you initially choose the wrong keywords, all the time and effort that you devote in trying to get your site a high ranking will go down the drain. 

If you choose keywords which no one search for, or if you choose keywords which won't bring in targeted traffic to your site, what good will the top rankings do?

2) Putting too many keywords in the Meta Keywords tag

I often see sites that have hundreds of keywords listed in the Meta Keywords tag, in the hope that by listing the keywords in the Meta Keywords tag, they will be able to get a high ranking for those keywords. Nothing could be further from the truth. 

Contrary to popular opinion, the Meta Keywords tag has almost completely lost its importance as far as search engine positioning is concerned. Hence, just by listing keywords in the Meta Keywords tag, you will never be able to get a high ranking. 

To get a high ranking for those keywords, you need to put the keywords in the actual body content of your site.

3) Repeating the same keyword too many times

Another common mistake that people make is to endlessly repeat their target keywords in the body of their pages and in their Meta Keywords tags. Because so many people have used this tactic in the past (and continue to use it), the search engines keep a sharp lookout for this, and may penalize a site which repeats keywords in this fashion.

Sure, you do need to repeat the keywords a number of times. But, the way you place the keywords in your pages needs to make grammatical sense. Simply repeating the keywords endlessly no longer works. Furthermore, a particular keyword should ideally not be present more than thrice in your Meta Keywords tag.

Other methods that work

So far from my knowledge there is no better way of getting quality back links then looking through articles and searching through forums, but usually that takes a long, long time. There has been some talk that purchasing links is bad and Google frowns upon it, but that is only when the links appear overnight, but if they appear over a while, they should be fine, and it will cost you a lot less work. If you indeed go that route and want to buy text links or other kinds of links, let me give you a few pointer's first.

When looking to buy text links or other kind of links on other websites, you have to be careful in the quality of where your link will be placed. Remember, you don't always get the choice of where you link will be placed on the seller's page, they usually choose placement. Another thing to consider when purchasing links from other websites is if your link indeed is getting shown like you pay it to be. Sometimes you will pay for a link, but the seller decides to take it off and scam you. You always have to think of these type of things when considering buying links, and you always have to make sure your link is getting displayed properly.

My best tip if you are going or thinking about buying links is to mainly buy on forums. Some major forums get a lot of traffic, such as digital point, but they also have a lot of indexed pages in Google, and the Google bots are always happy to see new and fresh content. If you could buy a text link at the bottom of every page, which is very common to sell in forums, you would have a massive amount of quality links coming into your site. All usually indexed in Google! Not only will you get major traffic, but you will get tons and tons of quality back links, increasing your search engine position, page rank, amount of traffic, and overall amount of money on your pocket!

I hope you enjoyed my e-book and I also hope you enjoy the Bonus text links that you may use at your disposable. They are all verified by the Google toolbar, but if you see any links that are not the PR that they say they are, please feel free to e-mail me.

The Key to Online Forums

Getting quality links from online forums isn't hard to do; it only requires patience and persistence. But I will show you a way around that, so you can get the most quality back links possible, in the shortest period of time possible.

Posting in online forums again, requires the same procedures as always, except instead of answering questions or commenting on other article sites, you posts do not need to include your website link in your comment at all. What you need to do is sign up to an online forum website that allows you to have a signature, such as digital point forums. A signature allows you to put what ever you want into a comment box, so whenever you comment on someone's post, you have the option of leaving your signature under it. So for example if you posted something totally irrelevant to your website, your signature would still display your website, and your account would not be band or considered spamming. All you are doing is commenting on a topic or post, with your link being written underneath, and that is the beauty of posting to online forums.

This is a really easy way to get some back links. Not all of them are going to be as high as quality as others, but if you want mass back links without being considered a spammer, this is the way to go. Be advised that you still have to use some discretion in your posts, and you still have to relate to the topic that you are commenting on. It cannot be something that is totally irrelevant or you will be band.

Another way to use online forums to get some good back links is to find forums where they allow you to show off your website. They usually have a high Page Rank themselves because lots of people want to show off their website for FREE! Who doesn't? Anyways I have listed a couple of website's that allow you to show off your website for free in their forum, and allow you to have a signature.

1. LameLime.com = an online gaming forum which allows you to post your website for free (http://www.lamelime.com)

2. SiteSellForums.com = an online marketplace which allows you to post your website for free also (http://www.sitesellforums.com/marketplace)

3. Board Reader.com = an online fan site which allows you to post your website for free (http://www.boardreader.com)

These are only just some of the many website's that allow you to post your website in your signature and under a special section only to show off your website. There are many more which can be found with a simple Google Search ☺.

Using Digg to get free, quality back links

Digg.com is a well know article site where you can submit your website or article, and people have the option of, Digging, your website, which really mean's that they like it. In this case you do not get special points like yahoo, but this is more for quality link building, and enhancing your chances of getting a higher Page Rank.

To start off, like any other article site, the first thing you need to do is sign up. It's free and it only take’s a couple of minutes. Here is the link to Digg: http://digg.com. Now that you have signed up, you are now ready post. Again, posting on Digg requires the same principals of posting on Yahoo Answers. Look at the example for posting to Yahoo Answers for a better example. I advise that you still leave a space in between your text, and that you link to your site in your site's description. When posting on dig however you are not answering questions, you simply can comment on a specific topic, and all dig articles are open for commenting. None of them need to be open, which saves a bit of time when looking them up.

When searching for topics to comment in, you do not need to search for articles within the website, as these webpage's usually have a lower Page Rank, and we are really focusing on quality links (Links that can improve your Page Rank), which I will now show you how to get.

To search for quality articles with a PR, search Google for a specific topic related to your niche, but before you type in your topic, type Digg, before it. So for example when searching for articles in Google type "Digg proxy sites" into the Google search bar.

Now you should get about 2 listing’s usually right at the top of Google with a digg URL under it. It should look like this: (You can use any search term, this is just an example) These links in Google usually have a high Page Rank. So when you leave your comment on them, you will get a free quality link to your website from Digg, with a high PR. Thus

giving a "vote", to your site from other sites, which gives you better search engine rankings, and also increases your Page Rank on your website. If you would like Page Rank explained in detail, just search on Google ;). I am assuming most of the people reading this e-book know what a Page Rank is.

So once you have submitted links to two of the above example links (Your links would be different depending on your search term), search relevant keywords on Google, still using the Digg keyword before your search term.

Now you should be able to get some really good quality back links from Yahoo Answers, and Digg.com. Like I said earlier, consistency is the key to link building. Maybe set up a daily schedule to remind yourself when to post links, or when to advertise your website etc.

Benefiting from Yahoo Answers

If you do not know what Yahoo Answers is, I will fill you in a bit. Yahoo Answer is issimply a website where you may ask questions, and other’s may reply, answering their question. You get 2 Yahoo points for answering a question, and 10 points if your question get's selected as Best Answer.

The more points you have the better, because the more points, the more questions you may answer in a day. This method involves some physical work of actually going out and submitting an answer, but if you use a daily

schedule, your links will add up.

To start off, please take the time to first sign up at http://answers.yahoo.com/, as this will greatly affect your ability to post there ;) Now that you have signed up to Yahoo Answers, you are ready to start posting! The main thing that you are doing here is posting your answer to a question, but make it sound so your website is relevant to the question. Thus you are posting your link in the Answer, and you are also answering a question, which both the person, Yahoo, and you are benefiting. Here is an example:

  Question: Are their any good Proxy Sites?

  Answer:  

   A really good one is, http://www.yoursite.com

And so far it's not blocked at school or work =) (A basic closing) 

I find that using spaces in between your text makes people look at your answer in particular because it is unique and few people put spaces in between their text. Note that I also put a smiley face after the bottom footer, I know it sounds strange but when someone sees this, I found that they are less likely to report your for soliciting your website. You should use this not only in this example, but in other examples as well. It not only brightens things up a bit, but it also protects your answer from being taken off by Yahoo.

Now that you know how to post properly to a question, I will show you where to post, and how to find questions that are not already answered on Yahoo. Firstly, you need to login to your (Yahoo Answers) account. Once you have done this, you should now see a link titled, Advanced, right beside the search bar in the center of

the page, click it.

Now that you have clicked that, a new page should come up: To search for unanswered questions, type in your keyword, set the question status to "Open Questions", and click search. NOTE: You must search for open questions if you want to answer a question because they will not let you answer a resolved question.

Once you have entered all of your information and clicked search, a whole new set of open questions should come up, ready for you to answer and submit your link with it.

 

Tip: You may also hold down ctrl if you have the newer version of internet explorer and click the question links. This will open the links up in a new tab, so you don't have to keep reloading the page and losing where you left off answering, enabling you to also answer more questions in a shorter period of time.

This method should get you about 20 links a day easy and for free, but make sure you are consistent in your posting, they will add up over time.You now know the basic strategies of posting and getting one way back links to your

website from Yahoo Answers☺. Please continue reading to find out more way's you can post your website without a reciprocal link to

How To Drive Free Traffic To Your Site With Articles

Tools to drive visitors to your website are many but the main one that should be employed is the use of articles. The popularity of article writing and exchange has emerged as a convenient way for people to promote and get fresh content for their sites. The popular search engines want new, creative material and content for their users who are very demanding. Most internet users consider the internet to be one huge database and the search engines also see it as a giant source of information. 

It is a good idea to understand what it is the search engines are looking for, so rewriting an article automatically makes it something the search engines want, unique content.

However, you may be of a mind to start writing articles from scratch and discard the idea of rewriting existing articles and if that is the case there are a few things you will need to consider. Once you have determined a topic to write on you need to do some research and this is easily done online by entering a search phrase for your topic into your favorite search engine. The importance of making the article flow correctly must not be underestimated so ensure that you have a beginning, middle and an end which should hopefully round up the article nicely. 

The conclusion is a winding up of all the information you have just written and doesn’t need to be more than about four sentences with most articles approximately twenty sentences long. Remember to split the article up into about three or four paragraphs for easier reading and once you have written the article, you need to include a resource box containing your information and any links.

Article writing is a great way to make money online whether it’s through advertising and promotion for your website or for writing articles for other peoples’ websites. It’s the first article that can be difficult to write so how do you start? Article ideas can easily come from real life, for example, if you have a long and happy marriage, then write articles which help people with their relationships. You could also, get some ideas for niche markets and the articles would at least give you a starting point for writing.

In order to excel at article writing, do not forget that it’s imperative you use good writing methods. Writing on a daily basis will help achieve this because you will come across the same problems faced by every other regular article writer but it will help you to improve. This method works well and that’s the reason why I believe you should remember that the more writing you do, the more effortless and productive it will become. I wish that these guidelines were like the Holy Grail of writing but they’re not although they have worked for many writers including myself, only you can decide whether it’s this system or another that best suits you, however, whatever method you choose, stick with it.

How To Ensure The Search Engines Find Your Website

One of the most fundamental aspects of search engine optimisation (SEO) is ensuring that the pages within your website are as accessible as possible to the search engines. It's not only the homepage of a website that can be indexed, but also the internal pages within a site's structure. The internal pages of a site often contain important content such as products, services or general information, and therefore can be uniquely optimised for related terms. As a result, easy access to these pages is vital.

There are many do's and don'ts involved in ensuring all of your pages can be found by search engines. However, it is important to first establish how the search engines find and index web pages.

Search engines use "robots" (also known as "bots" or "spiders") to find content on the web for inclusion in their index. A robot is a computer programme that can follow the hyperlinks on a web page, which is known as "crawling". When a robot finds a document it includes the contents within the search engine's index, then follows the next links it can find and continues the process of crawling and indexing. With this in mind, it becomes apparent that the navigational structure of a website is important in getting as many pages as possible indexed.

When considering the navigational structure of your site, the hierarchy of content should be considered. Search engines judge what they feel to be the most important pages of a site when considering rankings and a page's position in the site structure can influence this. The homepage is generally considered the most important page of a site - it is the top level document and usually attracts the most inbound links. From here, search engine robots can normally reach pages that are within three clicks of the homepage. Therefore, your most important pages should be one click away, the next important two clicks away and so forth.

The next thing to consider is how to link the pages together. Search engine robots can only follow generic HTML href links, meaning Flash links, JavaScript links, dropdown menus and submit buttons will all be inaccessible to robots. Links with query strings that have two or more parameters are also typically ignored, so be aware of this if you run a dynamically generated website.

The best links to use from an SEO perspective are generic HTML text links, as not only can they be followed by robots but the text contained in the anchor can also be used to describe the destination page – an optimisation plus point. Image links are also acceptable but the ability to describe the destination page is diminished, as the alt attribute is not given as much ranking weight as anchor text.

The most natural way to organise content on a website is to categorise it. Break down your products, services or information into related categories and then structure this so that the most important aspects are linked to from the homepage. If you have a vast amount of information for each category then again you will want to narrow your content down further. This could involve having articles on a similar topic, different types of product for sale, or content that can be broken down geographically. Categorisation is natural optimisation – the further you break down your information the more content you can provide and the more niche key phrases there are that can be targeted. If you are still concerned that your important pages may not get indexed, then you can consider adding a sitemap to your website. 

A sitemap can be best described as an index page – it is a list of links to all of the pages within a site contained on one page. If you link to a sitemap from your homepage then it gives a robot easy access to all of the pages within your site. Just remember – robots typically can't follow more than 100 links from one page, so if your site is larger than this you may want to consider spreading your sitemap across several pages.There are many considerations to make when optimising your site for search engines, and making your pages accessible to search engine robots should be the first step of your optimisation process. Following the advice above will help you make your entire site accessible and aid you in gaining multiple rankings and extra traffic.

HOW TO DESIGN A SEARCH ENGINE FRIENDLY WEBSITE - Part 2

Flash

Try and avoid building your main site entirely in Flash. If you do, you'll also have to build an alternative site in HTML or you will receive no listings whatsoever. Search engines cannot read anything within a Flash file.The use of Flash within a web site is acceptable, provided its use is monitored. Animation and moving logos are great - they add interest and depth to a site. Flash buttons and text embedded within Flash is not so great. Search engines will not follow the links to other pages and cannot read or index any text within the Flash file. Use Flash sparingly.

Navigation

Search engine spiders start at a site home page and follow all the links within the site until they reach a dead end before jumping to the next site on their list. The key to good navigation is to make sure that search engine spiders can reach as much of your site as possible before jumping to the next site.At the very least, every page within your site must have a link back to the home page. This is crucial. In addition, links to each of the other main pages within the site help the spider move around more efficiently.If your main navigation is a set of buttons at the top of the page, like in this site, add some small text links at the bottom of each page just to make it easier for search engines and visitors to get around your site.

HOW TO DESIGN A SEARCH ENGINE FRIENDLY WEBSITE - Part 1

Search engines favour well designed web sites with plenty text content for their top rankings. Here's some tips on how to design a web site to be ranked at the top in the search engines.

Text Content

The cornerstone to your web site is the text content. Make sure the site contains plenty subject matter right from the start. Your home page will introduce and describe the content of the site while each section goes into more detail on the relevant subject.When adding text content to your site, identify the key search terms and use them in context. Where possible highlight the search terms by placing them in bold text or within H1 tags. This makes the key search terms stand out so that search engines mark them as being important.

Frames

Although all search engines claim to be able to navigate frames, they still complicate matters. The best advice is to avoid frames entirely. Framed sites are listed in search engines, but no matter how many tricks are employed, they never seem to get listed as high as their non-frames equivalent. If you have a frames based site, consider rebuilding it without frames. You'll see your listings skyrocket.

Page Forwarding

Many sites are now using page forwarding. It is used on the home page of a site to determine if a visitor has Flash installed, or what browser they are using. After testing the visitors machine, they are then forwarded to the appropriate real home page.This practise does not help with search engine listings. Your home page should be designed to work with any browser, and visitors should be given the choice of proceeding into a Flash site or a standard HTML site. In any case, forwarding past your home page is missing the chance to introduce plenty of good text content to visitor or search engine.

Heavy Graphics

Don't use too many graphics on each page, and certainly don't embed valuable text in your graphics. Search engine spiders see all graphics the same - indecipherable binary code - and embedded text will not be read.Where you do use graphics, make sure to add alt-tags to describe the image, including key words and search terms where applicable.

Dynamic Pages

One of the great things about the internet today is the immediacy of information. Dynamic web sites make it possible to keep content bang up to date with minimum effort. There is a fallacy that if your site contains dynamic pages it will not be indexed by search engines. This belief is only partly true. Search engines will visit any page, .asp, .php, .cfm etc. If the URL for the page ends with the extension such as /pagename.php it will be indexed and added to the search engine. If however dynamic information is passed within the URL e.g. pagename.php?section=2&user=xyz, then the page will not be indexed.The idea behind gaining listings for your dynamic pages is to ensure that your home page and other top level section pages do not include dynamic information in the URL. Deeper into the site, sure, include all the dynamic information you want, but at the top level make sure there is enough apparently static information to gain some search engine listings.If you already run a fully dynamic site, take a look at our optimisation section for some ideas on promotional and traffic capture pages.

How To Drive Free Traffic To Your Site With Articles

Tools to drive visitors to your website are many but the main one that should be employed is the use of articles. The popularity of article writing and exchange has emerged as a convenient way for people to promote and get fresh content for their sites. The popular search engines want new, creative material and content for their users who are very demanding. Most internet users consider the internet to be one huge database and the search engines also see it as a giant source of information. It is a good idea to understand what it is the search engines are looking for, so rewriting an article automatically makes it something the search engines want, unique content.

However, you may be of a mind to start writing articles from scratch and discard the idea of rewriting existing articles and if that is the case there are a few things you will need to consider. Once you have determined a topic to write on you need to do some research and this is easily done online by entering a search phrase for your topic into your favorite search engine. The importance of making the article flow correctly must not be underestimated so ensure that you have a beginning, middle and an end which should hopefully round up the article nicely. The conclusion is a winding up of all the information you have just written and doesn’t need to be more than about four sentences with most articles approximately twenty sentences long. Remember to split the article up into about three or four paragraphs for easier reading and once you have written the article, you need to include a resource box containing your information and any links.

Article writing is a great way to make money online whether it’s through advertising and promotion for your website or for writing articles for other peoples’ websites. It’s the first article that can be difficult to write so how do you start? Article ideas can easily come from real life, for example, if you have a long and happy marriage, then write articles which help people with their relationships. You could also, get some ideas for niche markets and the articles would at least give you a starting point for writing.

In order to excel at article writing, do not forget that it’s imperative you use good writing methods. Writing on a daily basis will help achieve this because you will come across the same problems faced by every other regular article writer but it will help you to improve. This method works well and that’s the reason why I believe you should remember that the more writing you do, the more effortless and productive it will become. I wish that these guidelines were like the Holy Grail of writing but they’re not although they have worked for many writers including myself, only you can decide whether it’s this system or another that best suits you, however, whatever method you choose, stick with it.

Make Easy Money With Twitter

Step 1) Get one or more twitter accounts. 

Twitter requires no email activation, so get 1-10 accounts to start with.

Step 2) Join twitterad. 

They pay by paypal, within 48 hours! You choose which ads you want to post on your twitter profile and you will get arounf $0,06 to $0,20 per click. It doesn’t really matter as you will get a lot of clicks, so don’t worry! After you joined twitterad, you can add your twitter profiles. To post an ad, simply press ´post ad´ and select the profile 

Step 3) Mass follow people. 

If you follow them they will follow you back and then you can ‘promote your ad’.This can be done with the free website twollo. You can follow people that twittered about certain items with twollo. You can follow people that twitter about the same subject as the ppc ad. You can set it up in less then a minute and it will work for you till the limit has been reached. Now that’s what I call time-effective 

Step 4) Wait for people to follow, or rinse and repeat

How to Choose the Best Keywords

First, think about the theme of your site and write down the words you would use your self when searching for a similar site. Now if the sites you expected came up then you have got a good list of keywords ready to build your site content around.

Do not make your content TOO keyword heavy though as this will result in a penalty from the search engines, there are lots of free tools available for you to check your keyword density and they will tell you what state your site is in regards the keyword situation.

Another good tip is to check your competitors who are getting good search results, view the source code on their page and make a note of their keywords, now have a look through that pages content to see what kind of keyword ratio they have. Do not copy a competitors keyword and content per se, but use it to your advantage. A lot of websites tend to take their foot off the gas once they have a good search engine position. You need to put time into this constantly to stay ahead of the game.

Use Googles webmaster tools they are there to help you. Make sure your meta tags are correct, poor meta tags can affect you more than you think. Once you have good keyword density then you need to start building up traffic.