3 Key Off-Page Search Engine Optimization Methods

On-page search engine optimization is definitely one of the key methods if a website owner would like to improve the results for his or her website's searchability. However, on-page SEO often entails technical skills. Why? Not a lot of people are HTML enthusiasts. This is often what needs to be tweaked to do an excellent job in optimizing web pages.

What if a geek friend already did the on-page optimization and now you want to know how you can contribute to the "search engine goodness" of your website? Off-page optimization is the next step. And the results you will have to pine for are one-way backlinks. Why? This is how many of the major search engines such Google, Yahoo! and MSN rank websites. The more backlinks from relevant sites with good page rank, the merrier.

So how exactly do you gather backlinks? It's not an easy task but it's definitely less nerve-wracking than HTML if you are not the techie type. Here are some off-page SEO tips:

1. Article Marketing

Quality content has been discovered to be real king. Everyone is hungry for fresh and quality info and providing it will make backlinks go pouring in. It helps a lot to be a keen writer to be successful on this endeavor. Also, practise the proper way of using a resource box. It should only include a website that contains information relevant to the article you submit to article directories.

2. Forum Participation

Look for forums that are relevant to your website's content and keep on sharing information that will be indispensable for the members of the forums. Your signature or that tag-along message at the last part of each of your posts is what will work for your off-page SEO campaign. Keep it simple and make sure that it conveys something about your website. Learn how to hyperlink to make it easy for the people who want to visit your site.

3. Blogging

Blogs or web logs are now the most popular weapons of SEO experts. Aside from being easy-to-update, they don't require a too formal tone, which is what many readers are into. Informal dialog which can be accomplished through readers leaving comments and the blog author replying to the comments is what also keeps blogs fresh and search engine friendly. Maintaining a blog that's again relevant to your website's content will keep the search engines in touch with your site. Don't forget to have a link on your main website from your blog.

The secret to be successful in carrying out these off-page SEO methods is to be consistent. Submitting quality articles to websites at least two to three times a week and regularly producing content for your personalized blog is a surefire way to make your website stand out. Forum participation should also be something done more frequently since it will not only help you up your website's popularity with the search engines but also make you learn new stuff from other forum members' participation. Also, if you discover that you don't enjoy these stuff, there's always a plan B - hire someone to do them for you!

Note: This article may be freely reproduced as long as the AUTHOR'S resource box at the bottom of this article is included and all links must be Active/Linkable with no syntax changes.

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Informal SEO is the way to go: Isulong SEOPH
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Article Sources:
• 3 Key Off-Page Search Engine Optimization Methods
• The 80/20 Of Search Engine Marketing - Part 1 Internet Marketing ...
• The 80/20 Of Search Engine Marketing - Part 2 Internet Marketing ...
• Free Articles and Content Generator for Webmasters

If You Don't Have Fresh Content?

By Victor George

It is said that content is king, but today 'fresh, relevant
content' is the master - or is it?

Every owner of a commercial web site knows that frequent fresh
content is needed on their pages in order to achieve and
maintain a high listing on search engines which actively seek
fresh content. Google sends out its 'freshbot' spider to gather
and index new material from all the sites which offer it. MSN
Search seeks it too. I've noticed that MSN Search's spider pays
a daily visit to a site of mine which has proper fresh content
every day.

By incorporating fresh content, commercial web sites will remain
competitive, for without it they will certainly fall down the
search engine listings and lose business. Besides, having
something new keeps visitors coming back and attracts potential
customers.

But creating and then manually uploading fresh content onto our
web sites each day is hard, time consuming work, isn't it? What
we want is a way of putting daily fresh content onto our web
sites easily and efficiently. Let's look at the current
techniques available to us to achieve this goal and see which
one offers a global solution to the fresh content problem:

1) Server Side Includes (SSI'): These are HTML statements
written by the webmaster and uploaded onto the server. SSI's
inform the server to include a specific block of text when a
specific page is served to a browser or a search engine spider.

Because these scripts are compiled 'before' they are served,
they remain 'visible' to search engine spiders and therefore
will be seen as fresh content. Unfortunately, not all web hosts
support SSI's; this is because the server must 'read every page'
on the web site as it looks for include statements, a process
which clearly reduces server performance.

How many web site owners have the time to manually upload fresh
HTML content onto their servers every day? Probably very few,
which is why the use of SSI's is not a global solution to the
fresh content problem.

2) Blogging: Google's Freshbot spider is so voracious for fresh
content that it eagerly devours the contents of common weblogs.
But can a daily blog be used to influence the listing of a web
page under specific keywords or phrases?

It can, but for the vast majority of web site owners, blogging is
out of the question. Putting up a daily keyword-rich business
blog onto a web site is hard, time-consuming work, and it
requires the blogger to be a competent writer, too. Few business
owners have time available or the competence to write something
new about their products or services every day.

Blogging is therefore not a global solution to the fresh content
problem.

3) RSS Newsfeeds: Having newsfeeds placed on a web site is
certainly an easy way of getting fresh material to appear each
day. 'Really Simple Syndication' or RSS, is a fast growing
method of content distribution. Newsfeed creation is an
uncomplicated procedure and therefore appears to be an easy
solution to the fresh content problem.

Many owners of commercial web sites believe that by
incorporating newsfeeds on their sites they will improve their
search engine rankings by using the links appearing within those
feeds, which are given relevance by Google. This belief is wrong
because newsfeeds are basically JavaScript or VBScript.

These scripts must be executed by search engine spiders for the
fresh content to be noted, and since the spiders take a
simplistic approach when reading web pages, these scripts will
not be executed at all. These scripts are compiled 'after' they
have been served, and not before.

There are also a couple of growing menaces associated with RSS
newsfeeds:

o Since the popularity of RSS use is growing exponentially, the
idea to monetize syndication with ads is gaining ground. Indeed,
Yahoo has announced that it will begin displaying ads from
Overture's service within RSS feeds. Now who wants other
people's ads on their web site? I don't.

o There are rumors of newsfeeds being used to deliver spam. If
this gets out of control then newsfeeds will quickly become
history. Who wants spam messages appearing on their web site? I
don't. RSS is therefore not a global solution to the fresh
content problem.

4) Newsfeed Scripting Solutions: A software solution can be
rigged up to 'extract' the HTML from newsfeeds. The HTML is then
placed onto web pages so that the fresh content will be seen by
search engine spiders. This however involves the use of PHP and
MySQL, which tends to put many business owners owners off. And if
there's spam or ads in the feed, they will get extracted, too!

Newsfeed scripting solutions are therefore not a global solution
to the fresh content problem.

5) Creating Original Content: As mentioned above under SSI's and
Weblogs, creating and manually uploading your own fresh content
every day is a time-consuming chore. And what if you have a
number of web sites, each of which requires frequent fresh
content in order to remain competitive? Yet we all know that
there is nothing better than our own proper keyword-rich fresh
content.

In summary, getting frequent proper fresh content onto our web
sites is not straightforward at all. HTML extracted from RSS
feeds appears to offer a partial solution, but it is too
complicated for most businesses and is potentially menacing.

The e-commerce industry is clearly in need of a genuine solution
to the fresh content problem. The way to do it is to
automatically have our web pages updated every day with 'our
own' content, not anyone else's. Only then will we be able to
say that fresh content is truly the master!

About the author: Victor George is a "fresh content" crusader
whose web site can be found at: http://www.autopageupdate.com

Marketing Director at Islweb Limited, a UK based software development company.

Article Sources:
• If You Don't Have Fresh Content, You Have Nothing!
• How Do I Keep My Web Site Fresh, Alive And Interesting? web design ...
• FeedBurner - Feed 101
• Gawker, Manhattan Media News and Gossip
• Free Articles and Content Generator for Webmasters

Why Blogs are Money Makers

There is a great deal of hype and talk about blogs, but when you strip them down and look at them clearly, you discover that a blog is nothing more than a web site.

In essence, a blog is a website featuring an easy to use content management system that allows for quick updating in chronological order. The roots of blogging trace back to online journaling and community-building efforts, but approached from a business perspective, blogs are uniquely positioned to make you money. Their structure, treatment from search engines, and ease of use make them a wonderful moneymaking tool.

The structure of blogs is perfect for revenue-producing efforts.

This is because the sites are, invariably, heavy on content and are naturally organized in an intuitive fashion. Regardless of what platform one uses for blogging, they will be able to produce a content-based site featuring a series of potentially well-targeted pages.

Search engines love content.

Textual content keeps search engine spiders well-fed and persuades them to visit again and again. Google, Yahoo and MSN reward informative sites chock-full of information with better positioning in search results, and index these sites quickly. Because blogs are content-driven, they serve as a model for how to build a "cooperative relationship" with a search engine. In the end, effective blog-use produces high search engine rankings and, thus, great traffic levels.

Traffic, of course, is a key to profitability. It is hard for a site to profit if no one sees it! The traffic advantages vis-à-vis search engines is one of the chief selling points of blog use.

If you are familiar with running a traditional website, you have undoubtedly learned two things. First, success will hinge, in large measure, on your ability to provide fresh content to your visitors. Second, adding new content to a static site can be a definite hassle.

You must write the content (or pay to have it written), convert it to HTML, insert it into the static page and then upload the page to the server again. The inefficiency of doing this makes it all too tempting to "overlook" making updates as frequently as you should.

Blogging solves this problem.

All major blog platforms allow users to create new "posts" (which are nothing more than blocks of content) via an easy interface and to add them to the blog with a few simple mouse clicks. The result is empowering. Instead of dreading content updates, webmasters can actually look forward to adding new material in moments. Whether a blog user writes their own content or outsources the job to a pro, adding the new text is a simple and convenient proposition.

This makes it easy to build the content-rich sites that soar to the top of the search engine rankings. It also creates a heightened level of stickiness for the blog, making return visitors far more likely. That traffic, when coupled with the right moneymaking strategy produces impressive results.

If you are relying exclusively on traditional static websites for your online ventures, you may want to reconsider your perspective.

Using a blog affords some unique advantages and can be a great way to create profitable, highly-visited sites that require minimal effort.

Article Sources:
• Blog success stories: linkers as big money makers » Netscape.com
• How Bloggers Make Money from Blogs
• Make Money Online with ProBlogger Blog Tips
• Free Articles and Content Generator for Webmasters

How to Change Your Career With a Blog!

Copyright 2006 Margaret Stead

1) Career Change - Blogs FEEL the future!

There is a MAGIC that happens when individuals FOCUS on what they want to do with their lives, how THEY want to make a difference. Suddenly they have a confidence and poise that makes them a very attractive human to be near. Blogs are MAGIC. Three years ago, I started introducing my career change clients to publishing their own blog(s) and their careers literally TOOK OFF! Virtually overnight these people would get 'legendary' job offers the moment their site went 'LIVE!' Blogs don't just know or imagine the future, they FEEL it, and therefore MAKE it happen.

2) Career Change - Telling the UNIVERSE You Are Available!

They act as an 'ICEBREAKER' between strangers and CUT ACROSS our society's normal conventions, allowing people to discuss YOUR work and availability without let or hindrance.

When you surf the Net you think you are looking for information, but there is a powerful hidden agenda - 'People LIKE people like themselves and WANT to associate with them. Therefore, if your blogs reflect the interests of key people in your marketplace, they are MORE than likely to check your background, qualifications and availability!

3) Career Change - SHOWCASE Your Potential Without Embarrassment

If you have always shied away from 'selling' - blogs are the ideal platform for you.

Now, YOU can 'SET OUT YOUR STALL' in a blog and readers can casually taste and sample YOUR wares from the safety of their desktop. Unworried by being actively SOLD to or 'hurried' in anyway - they now have NO hesitation in making that call.

4) Career Change - ROCKET to the Top With the POWER of Blogs

If you tried to DESIGN a web site that was easily linked to, effortlessly keyword saturated and stickily popular you could NOT INVENT a better alternative than a blog - that you can CHANGE yourself, WHEN YOU WANT!

5) Career Change - Blogs are the NATURAL HOME of Networkers!

Blogs are the NATURAL HOME of Networkers and will act as a 'vehicle' for your conversations and expertise exchange with recruiters, prospective colleagues and like-minded individuals. In 1991, I invented the word 'Networking' to describe the magical effect of individuals trading their expertise and using their interest, knowledge and enthusiasm to accelerate their career transitions. My mission then was 'To teach networking to a million people'.

I think you'll agree that a whole industry has since grown up around the word 'Networking' and that blogs are where they choose to live. If you want to lead, then you need to blog.

6) Career Change - Positions YOU as an AUTHORITY In Your Field!

Blogs have an 'Authority,' born of succinctness and an immediacy that is irresistible! You can do EVERYTHING with a blog that you can do with a web site and FAR MORE CHEAPLY and EASILY.

Blogging clients have consistently reported how people in their field have asked their advice, when in FACT they were SENIOR to them!

7) Career Change Blog - You CAN Have Your Very OWN Domain Name

Many of you will have noticed that the 'minute' you buy a domain name for your web site is the 'minute' you can think of a better name and wished you'd thought of it before!

(It probably explains why I have a 'bank' of forty or fifty unused domain names.)

With Blogs you can choose a name that includes the keywords for your sector, create and link clusters of blogs that create in effect a web 'site'.

Now, you can even find that domain name YOU bought ages ago and OVERLAY it onto your blog address. Nobody will ever guess that you have created such a beautiful and telling platform for your career from something with such an UGLY name!

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HOW TO PUBLISH A BLOG THAT MAKES YOU MONEY, FAST!
My FREE Special Report will tell you how! Learn why publishing a simple blog will market your practice, position you as No 1 in your field and deliver the income you deserve - it's EASY and it's FREE: http://www.careersnet.co.uk/career-change-why-blog/

Article Sources:
• How to Change Your Career With a Blog!
• Career Intensity Blog - David V. Lorenzo
• Blogs Will Change Your Business
• Free Articles and Content Generator for Webmasters

Best Blogging Software

The blogging platform wars are getting really interesting and much of the discussion I find myself in lately revolves around what is happening with various CMS systems. The market can essentially be defined into 3 major camps: remotely hosted, self hosted, and community based systems. I have used pretty much every blogging platform available and each of them has its ups and downs. In this article I will cover the best options for each area taking into account price, usability, market share and of course SEO potential.

All of these products are either open source, completely free or have a functional free version.

Remotely Hosted Blogging Software
(Note: I cannot really recommend any of these from an SEO stand point as optimizing a domain you do not own or control is obviously not a good marketing plan.)

Blogger

Blogger is completely free and currently owns the majority of the remotely hosted user base, but not by a land slide . Bought out by Google in 1999, Blogger essentially fired up the blogging trend we see today. It is by far the easiest overall solution to use and if you are a novice user looking to throw up some recipes or poetry, this is for you. Blogger is completely free and includes some great features like comments, photo blogging, and a basic community feel with user profiles. Because it is so dumbed down there are some features you may not find with Blogger that are only available through 3rd party add-ons. As a side note Blogger weblogs do quite well in the search engines and this was recently exploited with it being the first choice for spam blogs or splogs. A splog is a weblog used for the sole purpose of gaining inbound links or generating thousands of keyword stuffed pages with Adsense and the like. The recent Google Jagger update cleared a large portion of this up. Free.

Typepad

Released in 2003 Typepad is a product of Sixapart, the makers of Movable Type. it is largely based on MT but there are some major enhancements and differences. Your blog can accomodate one or more photo albums with auto thumbnail generation. You can easily add music, books, and other media to Typelists, which grab a thumbnail from Amazon and other retailers for easily displaying in your sidebar. Typepad is also a great deal more technical than Blogger so a bit of HTML know how is recommended. On that note editing your blog to look the way you want it also quite easy and Typepad blogs are known for being very eye pleasing, intuitive and easy to navigate. In Sixapart's business model Typepad is aimed at regular home and small business users while Movable Type is targeted at larger businesses or for internal intranets. Price: Basic, $4.95 a month; premium, $8.95 to $14.95 a month.

Xanga

These guys originated back in 1999 as a site for sharing book, music and movie reviews. Although it quickly morphed into a full blown blogging tool Xanga still maintains the ability to run a powerful review site. Xanga pulls data from several retailers like Amazon.com including thumbnails, pricing and a cover. The software also is very usable by novices with a powerful WYSIWYG editor allowing for easy HTML editing, adding smilies, links, and other symbols. By using Blog rings it is also easy to interface with Xanga's other 3 million users to share interests, ideas, and of course traffic. Xanga comes in a free and $25 flavor.

Mentions: Blogsome, Blogster, MindSay, Multiply,

Self Hosted Blogging Software

WordPress

WordPress originally began as a mod of an older open source package known as B2. WP is MT's biggest competition and is often the bain of endless Wordpress vs Movabletype style threads around the internet. Although launched just over a year or so ago WP has really taken the blogosphere by storm. And with good reason - Wordpress is completely free under GNU licensing and is packed with many featured you will not find anywhere else. It is also much easier to install and get blogging for novice users and has a very large and helpful community. WP runs on PHP/mySQL and is quite scalable judging from some of the very large and trafficked sites I see using it. It also sports utilities to import files from Movable Type, Textpattern, Greymatter, Blogger, and b2. Wordpress recently upped the ante when Yahoo recently included them on their hosting packages, in addition to MT. I have to admit I am finding myself more and more digging WP and will likely convert Profitpapers to WP as I get time (it can be a biznitch). Wordpress is free.

Movable Type

Aside from maybe Greymatter (the original open source blogging tool), Movabletype dominated the blogging market share in 2002-2004. Released in late 2001, Perl based Movable Type by Sixapart has maintained a large portion of the blogging market share, due mainly to the fact that there is a free version (supporting up to 3 weblogs) and that it is incredibly powerful, intuitive and easy to customize. Template driven Movable Type also sports one of the largest communities of developers and blogging enthusiasts around, meaning lots of support, idea sharing, and of course plugins. Movable Type can be configured to dynamically generate HTML, PHP or any other kind of pages you like, meaning it is incredibly scalable, fast, and loved by spiders. It is perhaps the most well known blogging software for SEO purposes and it what currently powers Profitpapers and several of my other projects. Moveabletype is either Free with 3 authors, 1 weblog, and no support or $69.95 with unlimited weblogs, authors and full support.

Textpattern

Textpattern is the brainchild of Dean Allen and was written to ease publishing of content for those not inclined to learn HTML. Like WP and MT Textpattern runs on PHP and mySQL for easy administration, backups, and power. What really sets textpattern apart from the others is the integration of Textile. Textile is a tool for easily formatting content for those who do not know HTML. WP & MT have modules for textile as well but it is native to the Textpattern system. Another bonus of the app is its superior handling of comment spam due to its smaller market share. On a blogs I maintain running WP and MT I often find myself clearing out spam every day, whereas on some very busy textpattern sites I receive only manual comment spam (not bot driven). TP is open source.

Mentions: Blosxom, LifeType, Serendipity.

Community based Blogging Software

Slash

Waaaaay back in 1997, Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda launched a website known as Chips & Dips, supplied via his student account at Hope College in Michigan. In 1999 Andover.net acquired Slashdot. Shortly after, the underlying code was released as open source software called Slash. Like Movable Type and Greymatter, Slash runs on Perl, but it also has established hooks into MySQL and a very strong track record of scaling to enormous traffic levels. To give you an idea, the term 'slashdotted' originated from acquiring a link on this now infamous and very popular tech news website - and consequently watching your servers melt. If you have never messed around with Slash, you really should as it is quite a powerful platform. Slash is open source.

Scoop

Another well known Perl based community blogging software is Scoop. Scoop is the software that powers Kuro5shin, DailyKos and many other busy community weblogs. Scoop took the Slashdot idea and expanded on it, making the discussion rather than the news the focus of the application. Where Slashdot entries tend to have a link with added commentary pointing readers off the site, Scoop points to stories written by members of the community keeping the reader within your own weblog. Scoop is also well known for handling large volumes of traffic and a large very technical community. Scoop is free .

Drupal

Drupal is a well known open source community blogging platform with a very large community of users and developers. Not only is Drupal free but it is damn powerful. Instead of Perl, which is quite hard to decode at times, even if you are a fluent coder, Drupal uses a PHP/mySQL platform. Drupal is also a very community focused application with a built in forum, download area, and hundreds of other home brewed mods and hacks. If you are looking for a lot of functionality give Drupal a check - the project has become quite mature. It is also much easier to use and customize than either Scoop or Slash. Drupal is also another open source project.

Mentions: LiveJournal, PHP Nuke.

Miles Evans writes for ProfitPapers where he writes essays on organic SEO, SEM, development and other equally fascinating subjects.

Article Sources:
• Free Blog Software / Hosting - Free Blog Providers & Services
• 5-Point Criteria for Best Blogging Software for Beginners
• Blog Software Breakdown
• Free Articles and Content Generator for Webmasters

Is It Time For You To Get Paid For Your Blog?

By: Bruce A. Tucker

The online advertising, promotional and marketing website Indocquent.com today announced the release of its promotion campaign, Promos by IDQ. The campaign is geared toward businesses and individuals who have their own Blog and would like to earn extra income from Indocquent promotions.

“We think this is a great opportunity for those who maintain items like a Blog,” claims Indocquent Associate Managing Director, Bruce A. Tucker. “We know there are a lot of people out there who write daily Blogs. This is a good way to make extra spendable income with very little effort and without our promotions looking like they are intruding or over crowding their Blog space.”

Promos by IDQ works similar to other ad programs. The owner of the Blog, places a small piece of html code that will generate a series of advertisements or promotions to be displayed. Each time a visitor to that participant’s Blog clicks one of the promotions, the participant gets paid.

“We believe what sets our program apart from the others is that we reward participants of Promos by IDQ who obtain more clicks,” says Tucker. “With our unique leveling system, as the participant receives more clicks, their level increases and so does the amount we pay them for each click.”

A Blog, which was shortened from the term web log, is when someone has a website where they contribute written content in a chronological order. That content, when a visitor goes to it, is then displayed in a reverse chronological order.

Blogs, which became very popular and mainstream a couple of years ago, are a way for businesses and individuals to provide commentary or news on a specific subject. A lot of Blogs function more like personal online diaries, where Blog writers, or better known as “bloggers”, enter in their own personal accounts of a particular subject. Blogs are mostly text input, however many include pictures and links to other useful and related content.

Although blogging is nothing new, Tucker believes tapping the blogging market for advertising revenue is. “The last statistics we read showed that there are over 400,000 Blogs worldwide covering every topic you can possibly think of.” Tucker continues, “A lot of people do not realize they can use the extra space on their Blog to earn a nice income from advertising revenue.”

The fact remains that not only is blogging here to stay it is growing larger each day. This increase in growth creates a number of possibilities for the bloggers and advertisers alike.

Article Source: http://www.articlecat.com

Help! My Blog is Boring!

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

"WHAT?" you say.

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

Now you ask, "Why would I want to use someone else's articles? How lame is that?!"

It's actually not lame at all. Think about it. There are thousands of other people offering new, unique insight on exactly what you are writing about. You will find that people offer a different point of view or perspective on the particular subject. A different perspective or a new idea can be very refreshing for your blog. To even go further, find those articles that offer new thoughts and respond to the author's thoughts.

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

• When you use other quality articles, you are offering your visitor with useful content, and in effect, your visitor comes back for more.


• Using free web content will allow you to keep your blog fresh and updated on a daily basis with valuable information.


• Other people's articles can inspire new thoughts and ideas for your blog.
  

How do you find quality free web content for your blog? When you find an article that you would like to put on your website, make sure you are permitted to actually use it. You can usually find that information right on the article page or the website's terms of service. When you are positive that you can use the article, read it over to make sure it is even applicable to your website. Do run it through a spell check to make sure that level of quality is portrayed in the article. If there are a bunch of errors, do not change the errors because that would violate the terms for the article. Instead, move on to finding another article.

So do some searching and reading. Find that interesting web content and post that interesting web content for your readers! Delight your readers with something interesting and exciting!

Brett McQueen is freelance author, web designer and programmer, and the administrator for the Article Cat Article Directory and Catalog. You can begin your search for quality free web content articles at ArticleCat.com.

Brett McQueen is freelance web designer and programmer and the administrator for the Article Cat article directory at www.articlecat.com.

Article Sources:
• Free Articles and Content Generator for Webmasters

How To Optimize Your Blog For Search Engines

Many clients ask me how to drive more traffic to their blogs. By now you have probably heard that blogs are an excellent resource to get leads as well as clients for your business. The best way to do that is by creating search engine friendly blog posts that get indexed in search engines. When people search for information on topics you discuss in your blog it appears on the search engine result pages. Potential customers then are able to read what you have to say and get on your mailing list.

So now it all boils down to techniques that help you effectively optimize your blog for search engines. Here are tips and ideas to do just that:

- Create A Keyword Rich Header For Your Blog. The header repeats on all pages on the blog. By making sure that your header contains targeted keywords, you are able to get more of your blog pages indexed in search engines.

- Treat Each Blog Post As A Separate, Optimizable Page. Use the process of search engine optimization on each blog post. This means that you need to create an optimized title for each post, find targeted keywords for each post and weave the keywords into your post's text.

- Make Sure That Each Blog Post's File Name Are Descriptive. Different blogging software behaves differently, but some will call your blog posts 2.html, 3.html, 4.html, etc. As you can see, that is not very descriptive and not particularly helpful to either people or search engines. When you create a post called "How Coaching Helps Business Owners", calling it "how-coaching-helps-business-owners.html" is a much better title than "5.html"

Make sure that your blogging software creates descriptive file names for your blog posts; it is better both for human readers and search engine spiders.

- Get Links Pointing To Your Blog. Quality links to your blog means more blog visitors and higher search engine rankings. Current search engine algorithms value links to your blog, which means that having links pointing to your blog will improve your blog's search engine rankings.

- Get Your Blog Listed in Blog Directories. Blog directories are a great source of getting unidirectional links to your blog. Since blog directory links many times are unidirectional (they link to you, but you don't link back to them), they are great for boosting your search engine rankings. Having many unidirectional links pointing to your web site will improve your search engine rankings.

A blog is an excellent marketing tool, but your blog will not attract more leads and clients for your business if you don't use search engine optimization techniques to optimize your blog and attract targeted search engine traffic to it.

Biana Babinsky shows you how to drive thousands of targeted visitors to your blog in her Step by Step Search Engine Optimization Special Report. Learn more about the report at http://avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/zseo

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Article Sources:

• How to Optimize Your Blog for the Search Engines - flyte: web marketing strategies for small business
• How to Optimize Your Blog for Search Engines " Netscape.com
• Free Articles and Content Generator for Webmasters

How to Find a Niche For Your Blog

It is important to realize that your choice of a niche can have a significant influence on the success or failure of your new blog.

Deciding on a theme can be a daunting task. What exactly are you going to write about? Your niche needs to be a popular topic that many people are interested in.

If you are going to blog about yourself, then you better have a very interesting life, or you will have difficulty keeping your readers coming back for more. You should choose a topic that will make it comparatively easy to grow your readership and build a strong following.

Since many bloggers write about their favorite subjects, it's not a bad idea to start brainstorming by writing down a list of your hobbies, interests, and any areas of professional expertise. Now try to determine a niche you can target within one of those areas.

Should you blog about automobiles in general, or the latest sports cars? If you choose too narrow a theme then you may struggle to come up with regular, fresh content. And if you choose a topic that's too general your readers may be confused by a jumble of seemingly unrelated posts.

You might consider niches within the following general topic areas which have proven to be popular for blogging:

. Automobiles
. Computers & Information Technology
. Digital Cameras
. Gadgets
. Music
. News
. Photography
. Politics
. Shopping

If you plan to use Pay-Per-Click advertising to get traffic to your blog, then remember also that the hottest topics might have the highest pay-per-click fees.

You can sometimes get great niche ideas by browsing at Blog directories and sites like Google Blog Search: http://blogsearch.google.com

Since it is so time-consuming trying to com up with the 'perfect' niche idea, many bloggers and webmasters have turned to specialized niche discovery tools. I particularly recommend Online Gold Finder and NicheTopics.

With Online Gold Finder you can uncover profitable, undiscovered online markets with just a couple of clicks. Read more about Online Gold Finder at: http://www.moneyforblogging.com/goldfinder.htm

NicheTopics is quite handy in a different way. You get to use some great research that's already been completed by an expert. It is a ready-to-use report on 109 unique, untapped niches. Read more about NicheTopics: http://www.moneyforblogging.com/nichetopics.htm

The tools above are not free but consider for a moment. If you are planning - or would even like - to make some money from your blog, then it will be worthwhile to start off with a well-researched niche.

If a particular tool uncovers a good niche that pays an additional $5 a day, it will pay for itself inside the first month!

Don't forget, it will be very difficult to change the theme and niche of your blog later. So invest some time wisely during your planning stage.

You will be off to a strong start in building a successful blog.

Mike Seddon is a writer, entrepreneur, and webmaster. He is the author of the popular e-book, 'How to Build a Money Making Blog', available from http://www.MoneyForBlogging.com

---

Article Sources:

• How to find a niche for your blong
• How to Find a Niche For Your Blog
• 3 Help, How to Find a Niche For Your Blog
• How to Find a Niche For Your Blog
• Free Articles and Content Generator for Webmasters

Blog SEO - For A Rank Beginner

You've optimized your website why not your blog.

Picture it this way.

Each new post to your blog is fresh and new. I know you know this - search engines like fresh content.

I call it feeding the spider.

In this case the food is the new fresh content. What's more appealing fresh fish or fish that's been lying around for a while? See my point? Fresh fish is always better, who'd stick around smelly old fish anyway?

The same with search engines, they like fresh content that's updated often.

Even you return to a blog because of the new fresh content.Update your content often.The search engines like the fresh new content.

So, put a keyword or keyphrase in the title of each post and a few scattered out through your post and you now have optimized your content.

The search engines will love you for it!

Internal linking plays a part too. I've done this myself and the results are the search engine spider crawls my site everyday.

This is a tip that is so simple and cost you nothing but more free traffic to your site.

Wayne Hurlbert from Blog Business World says,

"Blogs are optimized using the same techniques as static websites. Keep in mind that a blog is simply another website. What works in the search engines for other sites will also work for optimizing a blog".

Great piece of advice.

The reward for the fresh content (food for the spider), the search engine spider will frequent your site more often.

Now don't forget to link to your main site with your rich keyword or keyword phrase. Many new bloggers just starting out forget to do this.

If your site is theme based, your blog page or the many pages you have on your blog can boost your PR (page rank), so by starting to blog it will benefit you in the way of more FREE traffic.

I've only scratched the surface on blog seo but you can see it is another strategy in marketing you can't afford to neglect.

Believe me, everybody and his brother are talking about blog seo. The reason why? It WORKS!

To your blogging success,

Cindy Warner owner of Christian Book Outlet writes about practical tips that work and how to get FREE traffic to your site without spending an arm and a leg. Main site: http://www.christianbookoutlet.spreadtheword.com Blog: http://onlinechristianbusiness.blogsome.com

Cindy Warner owner of Christian Book Outlet, enjoys giving practical tips that work and helping others succeed in their online businesses.

Article Sources:

• Aaron Wall's SEO Book.com
• Blog SEO - For A Rank Beginner
• SEOmoz | Daily SEO Blog
• SEOmoz | Beginners Guide to SEO
• Product Review :: Advanced Web Ranking - Beginner SEO
• Free Articles and Content Generator for Webmasters

MyBlogLog Community

Another blog community to make your blog more popular in the net is MyBlogLog Community. Member interactions facilitated by web widget that many members install on their blog. Bloggers sign up for free accounts or using their yahoo email account on MyBlogLog and can initiate a blog community for one or more blogs they author. Other registered members can subscribe to these communities, effectively bookmarking them for future reading and sharing them with their own contacts.

The most advantageous which bloggers can have when joining this community is they can submit whatever kind of their blog without reviewed, so this is good for all beginner bloggers to build network for the first time.

Bloggers can then display widgets on their sites which show MyBlogLog online community members who have recently visited their page. These widgets also contain links to visiting members' community pages, and are one way in which users connect with one another.

All members can see certain basic information about how many people visit their blog, what links they clicked and where they come from. Members may also view more extensive information about traffic on their site for a small monthly fee.

MyBlogLog is launching this new Communities service to empower authors and readers to operate at the same level. For the first time, everyone who reads a web site or blog can learn about and engage with one another, and in the process take the conversation to a whole new level.

MyBlogLog was acquired in January, 2007 by Yahoo for slightly more than 10 million dollars and with over 45,000 blogs subscribed at the time. Currently, there are approximately 100 million visits to pages with MyBlogLog widgets per month, and the site has over 140,000 registered members. MyBlogLog has an Alexa rank of under 500 and Google PageRank of 7 out of 10. Similar blog networking sites with similar widgets and analogous community functions also exist, such as Blog Catalog.

Goto and Join Mybloglog Community, Click Here!

ref: mybloglog.com, wikipedia.org, forbes.com

Analyze Your Blog with Sitemeter

In order to improve our website (webblog), we have to know what exactly happen to our site. Sitemeter offers some services to bloggers where it can track their blog activity and count how many audience that come to their site comprehensively.

This vital data and information is provided in your sitemeter account in some differents ways such as in term of visits, page views and in term of time that can help us to analyze our site easily. Another kinds of benefit from sitemeter are sitemeter provide us traffic prediction which predict our site visitors in advance, we can request our site (blog) statistic summary to be emailed to us daily or weekly and another beneficial tools which you can found after you sign up to sitemeter.

This is an example of my blog prediction which provided in sitemeter account. Eventhough this prediction is not figured the real condition of my blog, at least this kind of report could encourage me always to update and improve my blog continuously.

Site Meter offers detailed, step by step instructions for integrating Sitemeter into all the top blogging and website hosting services.

We just have to do three simple steps:
1. Create an account (Basic for Free or Paid Premium).
2. Copy code from your account.
3. Paste code into each page you want tracked.

That's way I suggest you to use this service immediately. It's free, easy and fun.

Go and Sign Up To Sitemeter.Com, Click here!

BY THE WAY,
HAPPY NEW YEAR 2008
WISH ALL THE BEST THINGS COME ALONG WITH US THIS YEAR!
BE AT PEACE

Placing Google Talk in Our Blog

What is Google Talk?

Google Talk is a Windows application for Voice over IP and instant messaging, offered by Google. The first beta version of the program was released on August 24, 2005.

[wikipedia.org]

Google Talk is a free and easy service you can use to make voice calls and send instant messages. This downloadable Windows application makes real-time communications simple and intuitive.

All you need to make calls with Google Talk is a Gmail address, an internet connection, a microphone, and a speaker. That's it! Your friends can be anywhere in the world, and you can talk for as long as you want. All calls are free, and the voice quality is excellent (for optimal voice quality, we recommend a headset). Google Talk also does everything the Gmail Notifier used to do, and can show notifications for new messages in your Gmail account, as well as for incoming calls or chats.

[web.archive.org]

How to place this Google Talk gadget to our blog / webpage? Here some steps that we can use to place Google Talk gadget to our blog / webpage:

1. Go to google talk home page. [You can start here later!]
   
2. With heading "Get started with the Google Talk Gadget" and sub "There are several ways to use the Google Talk Gadget", choose no.3, "Add Google Talk to your own webpage or blog".
3. Customize the gtalk gadget, you can change the title, width, height and border as you desired.
4. To make sure your gtalk looks like, click "Preview Changes" button.
5. If you ready to install gtalk to your blog,click "Get the Code" button.
6. Block the code, Copy and paste the HTML code to include the gadget on your webpage.

You and your visitor need to sign in with each google account in order to interact with the other directly.

Blogger for Blogger

I was thrilled when I found this blog, he had wrote a lot of article about blogging and it's circumstances. I just feel how small I am in the blogging world when many people have done so much in blog development and give much lesson for new bloggers while me still trying to build a new blog. But I think its ok, I believe that everybody has their own unique skill more than the other.

It is good for new bloggers to have this blog as their references to develop their blog become a nice and attractive blog. It is "http://tips-for-new-bloggers.blogspot.com", arranged by bizwhiz. All I wanna say here is a lot of thanks to bizwhiz for his magnificent blog that very helpful especially for new bloggers including me. I agree with you that "knowledge is good only if it is shared". It is what I say "Blogger for Blogger", every blogger have to have a lesson from and to another bloggers. Great work bizwhiz, keep on going! Have a nice day!

Go to http://tips-for-new-bloggers.blogspot.com !

Grow Your Network with Blogcatalog

What is blogcatalog [www.blogcatalog.com]?

This is what they say about:

"Blog Catalog is the premiere social blog directory on the internet. Whether you're looking to promote your own blog or find blogs on various topics, this site is for you."

Thats right, by joining blogcatalog you can promote your blog, find many friends, join a forum, browse various type of blog and many others benefit if we join with blog catalog that in the end we can boost our traffic.

Before you register to blogcatalog, just make sure that your blog is well prepared and have updated. Here are some rules that you should know before you join blogcatalog:
(a) all registration information you submit is truthful and accurate;
(b) you will maintain the accuracy of such information;
(c) you are 14 years of age or older; and
(d) your use of the BlogCatalog Services does not violate any applicable law or regulation.

[Read more the rules in their Term of Service / TOS - click here]

Why you should do that? Because when we register to blogcatalog, we aren't fully accepted as their member yet. They will review our submitted blog first within 48 hours or less. If your blog is good enough and didn't violate their rule, you will be confirmed by email that your blog is approved so you can start to your blogcatalog account.

It's quite simple to hear, but if you aren't careful maybe you will be rejected or even banned.

Visit and Register to Blogcatalog - Click Here.

Blog Traffic

How popular is your blog? Why your blog must popular? What happen if your blog isn't popular?
These question are often become attention for the bloggers particularly for new bloggers. Blog popularity is one of parameters how success is a blog. Blog popularity is usually determined by how much traffic does it has in a time span such as daily, weekly, monthly even anually.

Blog traffic or generally called web traffic means the amount of data sent and received by visitors to a web site. It is a portion of Internet traffic. This is determined by the number of visitors and the number of pages they visit. Bloggers should monitor the incoming and outgoing traffic to see which parts or pages of their blog page are popular and if there are any apparent trends, such as one specific page being viewed mostly by people in a particular country.

Blog traffic can be analysed by viewing the traffic statistics found in the web server log file, an automatically-generated list of all the pages served. A hit is generated when any file is served. The page itself is considered a file, but images are also files, thus a page with 5 images could generate 6 hits (the 5 images and the page itself). A page view is generated when a visitor requests any page within the web site – a visitor will always generate at least one page view (the main page) but could generate many more. Tracking applications external to the web site can record traffic by inserting a small piece of HTML code in every page of the web site.

There are some types of information are often collated when monitoring web/blog traffic, these are the example:

• The number of visitors
  
• The average number of page views per visitor – a high number would indicate that the average visitors go deep inside the site, possibly because they like it or find it useful. Conversely, it could indicate an inability to find desired information easily.
  
• Average visit duration – the total length of a user's visit
  
• Average page duration – how long a page is viewed for
  
• Domain classes – all levels of the IP Addressing information required to deliver Webpages and content.
  
• Busy times – the most popular viewing time of the site would show when would be the best time to do promotional campaigns and when would be the most ideal to perform maintenance
  
• Most requested pages – the most popular pages
  
• Most requested entry pages – the entry page is the first page viewed by a visitor and shows which are the pages most attract visitors.
  
• Most requested exit pages – the most requested exit pages could help find bad pages, broken links or the exit pages may have a popular external link
  
• Top paths – a path is the sequence of pages viewed by visitors from entry to exit, with the top paths identifying the way most customers go through the site
  
• Referrers; The host can track the (apparent) source of the links and determine which sites are generating the most traffic for a particular page.
  

Those are a little explanation about blog traffic and I'm sure that you understand why your blog must popular and what happen if your blog isn't popular. I think It's not too hard to be understood.

[reference : wikipedia.org]

Blog Template

When we want to start blogging, we have to decide the layout form of our blog for the best appearance and best suit for us further. The layout you choose of course adjusted to your need of blogging or what is your purpose for blogging. The choice or design of your blog/weblog layout determines the success of your blog congruent with the purpose of what you’re blogging for, including monetized blog or professional blog.

If you smart enough about web design, you can make this layout form by yourself. For the beginners of course this will be burdensome, but they don’t have to worry about it because there are many website that provide blog templates for free.

A blog template means an empty content finished layout form of blog that can be used for everyone who want to use that. It is a kind of web page or blog without content and can be downloaded for free or commercial.

Here are some examples of sites that provide blog template for free, for another free blog template site you can search it in search engine like google.com, yahoo.com, ask.com and etc.

http://www.bloggertemplates.org

http://blogger-templates.blogspot.com

http://www.templatepanic.com

http://www.blogskins.com

http://freetemplates.blogspot.com

http://www.isnaini.com/blogger-templates

http://blogtemplates.noipo.org

http://blog.templatemonster.com/2006/02/17/word-press-themes

http://www.uniqueblogdesigns.com

http://www.blogtemplates.info

http://www.etondigital.com/design/blogger-templates.html

http://www.cheapwebtemplates.com.au

http://planetblogtemplate.blogspot.com

Search more blog templates : Google | Yahoo! | Ask.com

Be wise to use any of blog templates that you like, be sure that it is most suitable for your need, style and your main purpose of blogging.

Professional Blogging

Nowadays, many people are fascinated with the revenue which bloggers have had in the recent years start from only $10 to $1000 until $100,000 or more a month. It's incredible achievement for the bloggers that they never been imagined before, because many bloggers start from just doing their hobby to write anything in the web. Now, the new money making machine has been revealed in the net. Many people have a race to catch this chance just for one purpose, to make money from their activity in the net so they can work from home.

These situations have made a new chance for people to get income in order to have a good and quality in life. People are in throng to get started build and develop their blog day by day and have this kind activity to be their habit until it becomes their profession. Maybe this is called as "Professional Blogging".

In my opinion, "Professional Blogger" is persons who do blogging as their prominent activity to get some revenue to shore up their life. Out of that, maybe there are someone who do blogging just for fun or any other reason why they do blogging without expect to get revenue from it.

Here are some little steps where everyone can try to be a Professional Blogger written by Randy Charles Morin and edited by Sterling Chip Camden:

1. Determine what you want to blog about

2. Register a blog with Blogger

3. Create a FeedBurner account

4. Write 1+ blog entries every day

5. Read other blogs like yours

6. Register for a del.icio.us account

7. Leave 1+ comments every day

8. Register for an AdSense account

9. Don't give up

10. Check your stats and refine

[source & read more in: kbcafe.com]

even those step are not a rule, but it can be use as general guidance to people who want start to be a professional in blogging world.

WHY BLOG

As a part of net world, blog has being developed so fast and perform a fantastic result for the developer and the blogger (blog user) itself. Started from individual, group to corporate users, blog has proved that it has powerful use in order to introducing people to the net world. By blog people can make them feel free like they own their own web page and make them have endurance in the web page where they do blogging.

So, what does exactly blog mean?
Here are some definitions about blog from the web which most represent in my opinion.

"A blog is a type of website that is usually arranged in chronological order from the most recent ‘post’ (or entry) at the top of the main page to the older entries towards the bottom."
[from: problogger.net]

"A blog (short for weblog) is a personal online journal that is frequently updated and intended for general public consumption. Blogs are defined by their format: a series of entries posted to a single page in reverse-chronological order.Blogs generally represent the personality of the author or reflect the purpose of the Web site that hosts the blog. Topics sometimes include brief philosophical musings, commentary on Internet and other social issues, and links to other sites the author favors, especially those that support a point being made on a post."
[from: searchwindevelopment.techtarget.com]

"Short for Web log, a blog is a Web page that serves as a publicly accessible personal journal for an individual. Typically updated daily, blogs often reflect the personality of the author."
[from: webopedia.com]

"Blog (the same as "weblog") - a personal or business online journal or diary shared over the web. Publishing of a blog is "blogging". Entries in blog are called posts. Blogs are frequently updated and entries in the blog are arranged in a chronological order."
[from: bytescout.com]

"A blog is a personal diary. A daily pulpit. A collaborative space. A political soapbox. A breaking-news outlet. A collection of links. Your own private thoughts. Memos to the world.
Your blog is whatever you want it to be. There are millions of them, in all shapes and sizes, and there are no real rules.
In simple terms, a blog is a web site, where you write stuff on an ongoing basis. New stuff shows up at the top, so your visitors can read what's new. Then they comment on it or link to it or email you. Or not.
Since Blogger was launched in 1999, blogs have reshaped the web, impacted politics, shaken up journalism, and enabled millions of people to have a voice and connect with others."
[from: blogger.com]

From all of those definitions, it is clear and no need to discuss that blog has been a part of our life. There are many other people saying the definition about blog that you can search in the net. The point is that people around the world can share anything with anyone in anytime as long as they have internet connection and blog.