Sodafone

Blogs have many advantages over normal WebPages when it comes to internet marketing. Blogs are indexed much faster, blogs can “ping” hundreds of blog and news directories, and blogs can be listed in places normal websites are not. Here are some Power Tips to get your blog rolling!

1.) If your blog is new, create at least three to five posts per day. People who visit will want something to read. Also, focus on keywords in your niche topic for “natural” search engine optimization.

2.) Add your blog to your My Yahoo! page. If you haven’t setup a My Yahoo yet, just go to yahoo.com and click on the My Yahoo! icon near the top right. After your setup, go to your My Yahoo page and click on the “add content” button found near the upper right. You will be presented with a form to enter your RSS link. You will enter something like this “http://yourdomain.com/blog/?feed=rss2″. When you submit your own RSS to My Yahoo it is indexed by Yahoo.

3.) Add your blog to your Google’s Reader. When you submit your own blog RSS to Google’s Reader the Google Blog Search will index your site. To do this, goto google.com, click on the “personalize home” or “my account” button in the upper left. After you account is setup, sign in and click on the “add content” button in the upper left of your page.

4.) Add a link directory to your blog and trade links with sites that share a similar niche. At this point, you want to trade links mainly to get direct traffic. In the long term, this will help with your rankings in the search engines as well. Do a search like “add url” or “add link” in your favorit search engine to find potential link partners.

5.) Use ping sites like http://pingomatic.com Ping your site every time you add a new post. Check to see if your blog software is already doing this. Wordpress and B2Evolution do this automatically and is a real time saver.

6.) Submit your blog to traditional search engines such as Google, AltaVista, and MSN.

7.) Submit your blog to traditional directories such as DMOZ.com Directories (particularly DMOZ) increase relevance with Google. DMOZ is very picky and can sometimes take months to get listed.

8.) Submit to as many RSS Directories as possible. There are over 150 listed at http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/. This is a simple but repetitive process that can be done automatically with RSS submission software.

9.) Comment on other blogs and forums. Do not just leave short, lazy comments like “I agree.” Try to really answer questions or give opinions on subjects you know. How long your post will be depends on you. Generally, five to ten sentences is enough to explain yourself on someone else’s blog or forum. Most forums require you to register, so include a link to your blog in your profile and/or in your signature file. But be tactful about it; some forums get annoyed with those who selfishly drop a few links to their own site and leave. Find a relevant group on Google groups, Yahoo groups, MSN groups or any of the thousands of other FREE group services and find like minded people and talk with them. Make sure your use your blog URL like it is your name.

10.) Use track backs. If there is a blog that you refer to or quote and it is highly relevant to your subject, leave a track back. It increases your link popularity and may even score a few interested readers from the linked site. A TrackBack is a mechanism used in a blog to show, around an entry, a list of other blogs that refer to it.

Although these are some of the most popular ways to drive traffic to your blog, do not limit your self to tips and lists. Use your imagination and you will come up with thousands of ways to drive traffic to your blog!

Robert Rogers is a writer in the Washington DC area. For more tips on internet marketing and bloggin, visit his blog at http://affiliatepowertools.com/inside/

By now, most bloggers have heard the announcement that the Big 3 search engines - Google, Yahoo, and MSN - have united in support of a new tag that will supposedly combat comment spam. The new tag is a nofollow attribute that can be added to links. When added to links in comment tags, the search engines will ignore them.

An excellent discussion of this new tag and how it works can be found at Danny Sullivan’s Search Engine Watch:
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050118-204728

Google announced the new tag in a 1/18/2005 post to their own blog: http://www.google.com/googleblog/

And Microsoft added their support to the new tag in this post: http://blogs.msdn.com/msnsearch/archive/2005/01/18/nofollow_tags.aspx

At first blush, anything that can help cut down the comment spam that most bloggers are daily subjected to would seem to be a good thing. It can be pretty upsetting to access your blog in the morning and find 50 junk comments with links to casino, adult, and pharmacy sites. If your blog has any PageRank, you can expect to find more of this garbage polluting your site every day. Fighting the spread of comment spam has become a necessity.

But after first cheering the proactiveness of the search engines, many bloggers have stepped back and taken a closer look and they don’t like what they see. You can read a sampling of their thoughts at Search Engine Watch Forum:
http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=3797

Brian Turner’s incisive article “New Nofollow Tag Cheers Bloggers but Fails Blogs” discusses some of the potential abuses of the new nofollow tag:
http://www.platinax.co.uk/news/archives/2005/01/new_nofollow_ta.html

And Jim Pryke’s article “Bloggers Cheer Google As Their Search Rankings Plummet” makes it very clear that not only will this NOT stop comment spam. But it will actually hurt bloggers as a community:
http://netinstitute.com/archives/2005/01/20/bloggers-cheer-google-as-their-search-rankings-plummet

For an hilarious take on the new tag and how it will get abused, be sure to take a look at Link Condom: http://www.linkcondom.com

I have to agree with these bloggers that the nofollow tag won’t even put a dent in the problem of comment spam. You have to realize that the comment spammers who cause the most problems are the ones who use automated bots to spread their spam onto every blog they find. The fact that they find a blog using the nofollow tag won’t stop the bot from posting. If you have a popular blog, you’ll still wake up every morning to find 50 casino/pharmacy/adult ads on your blog. You’ll still have to spend the time deleting those posts to clean up your blog.

You see, the problem to bloggers isn’t that those comment links pass PR. It’s the fact that those spam posts make your blog look like garbage. Whether the links pass PR or not isn’t the big issue for bloggers. It’s the time it takes to get rid of unwanted comments and the detraction to their sites. The nofollow tag won’t do a thing about that problem. You’ll still have the problems, even if you use the tag.

Think about this: how effective have email filters been in stopping email spam? As most of us know, they’ve hardly done any good at all. Email spam becomes a bigger problem every day. Spammers really don’t care if some of their emails are blocked. They just send more of it to compensate. The same will be true of the automated comment spam bots.

The fact of the matter is, there are already much better tools in most blogging software to fight comment spam AND save the time and effort of the blogger at the same time. There are already a number of plugins for WordPress, Moveable Type, and other blogs. There will undoubtedly be more in the future. These tools are already more effective at fighting comment spam than this nofollow tag will ever be.

What is unfortunate is that the people the nofollow tag will really hurt is bloggers themselves. Traditionally, bloggers have read and commented in each other’s blogs. And these comments have added value. When I write an article for my blog, I love it when other bloggers take the time to add their insights on the topic I’m discussing. These comments add content to my site and continue the discussion. This is one of the reasons blogs are so easy to grow into topic-specific information-rich sites that are popular with readers. Unlike static sites, they offer two-way communication between reader and blogger. They become communities.

When someone adds this kind of value to my blog, I am more than happy to give them a link to their blog that passes PR. That will help them build the readership of their own blog, grow the community even larger, and add to the richness of the discussion. These are exactly the kinds of links that any webmaster should want on their site!

Adding a nofollow tag to comments can only quash this discussion. It can only discourage commenters with the most to contribute from taking the time to add to the discussion. After all, if the time I spend on another blog doesn’t contribute to the growth of the blogging community as a whole or aid in the visibility of my own blog, am I going to spend as much time and effort doing it?

Anything that decreases the open flow of discussion currently enjoyed in the blogging community is a bad deal for bloggers.

The question that should be asked is this: why is comment spam so profitable? After all, if it weren’t profitable, so many people wouldn’t be going to such ridiculous lengths to do it.

The answer to this is obviously Google’s link-heavy PageRank algorithm that forces webmasters to get every link they can to get their site’s indexed and ranked. Most webmasters know that in order to get ranked in Google, they had better have a ton of links to their site.

That’s the problem with PageRank as an algorithm. It encourages artificial linking between sites that no longer has any relevance whatsoever to the goal of providing good resources to visitors. Do we really believe that most reciprocal link directories provide a resource to our visitors? Not likely! If websites are real estate, reciprocal link directories are the slums, the seedy bars and tattoo parlors on the edges of polite society.

Whole businesses have sprung up as a reaction to PageRank. I’m talking about the link auction and link selling sites. Under the PageRank system, sites aren’t being ranked by who provides the best content, but by who has the deepest pockets to buy the most links. Or, in the case of comment spammers, whoever wants to spread their bots all over the internet spamming blogs. This system has over time totally skewed the natural linking between sites that once dominated the internet - the very thing that Google’s PageRank system is supposed to reward.

Ironically, blogs are one of the few places left on the web where linking is actually about providing good content to visitors and rewarding value provided on other sites. Bloggers as a group are the most likely to link to sites because of the content value to their visitors. Their links are very likely to be very topic specific. You don’t find that on other sites. These are the kinds of links that I would assume Google would want to encourage through their PageRank system, not those junky reciprocal link directories or purchased links.

It would seem to me that the only effective way to cut down on comment spam and all the artificial linking techniques Google purportedly wants to thwart is not by making life harder for bloggers - the very people who link in the most relevant fashion. But at taking a second look at their own PageRank system and whether it is really serving the usefulness of their own search engine and the whole web in 2005.

For more tips and ideas on how to make money blogging, be sure to visit my “Why Marketers Should Blog” weblog at (what else)
http://www.WhyMarketersShouldBlog.com

Blogging is your online diary of events, thoughts or for the business person a reserve of articles and comments directed toward your business. That definition is just the beginning of what blogging is becoming — it’s becoming much more.

Since Google Adsense has allowed Google Ads to occupy a place on your blog — additional revenue, is at your disposal. “Oh”, you say, “is that all?” No way. There are some individuals that do not have a website, but are utilizing their blog or multiple blogs to create an income, even testing the waters before a website goes up, and again, creating a presence on the web. And as for advertising for your blog — take a look at BlogSnob at http://blogsnob.simpleads.net.

Your Blog, Your Website

For those who have a website, your blog can help you with your SEO process. As your readership increases so will your ranking — what is dependent on that, of course, is the quality of the content. Content and search engines are extremely compatible as you know — thus, your search engine ranking can take a big jump.

If you have a website, here are some ways to getting noticed:

1. A remotely maintained blog or one on your own server, place a link on your website. This can help you to increase traffic to your blog.

2. When you make an entry into your blog, try to make reference to something on your website — this creates an inbound links. In addition, I would use absolute links — which will enable you to place a couple of keywords in the title.

3. Be keyword aware — and relevant to your website. This helps your SEO process as well.

Blogging Accessories and Necessities

After you have written your quality content — get it out to the masses — have it pinged by Ping-o-Matic (http://pingomatic.com/)– again, it’s free. Pinging gets your blog out to the masses, letting them know that you have updated your blog and it is ready for them to read.

As your readership increases you may feel the urge to create a blog forum — a tagboard services, which enables your readers to interact, as if in, a forum. If you are on blogger.com they have several free tagboards that you can use — look under “Third Party Add-ons”, or do your own search in Google.

Will there be Misuses with Advertising?

Will there be and misuses with advertising in blogs? Yes. People have different agendas, priorities and scruples.

You will probably see article misuse as well as, reader frustration to advertising if it is overkill. Thus, first and foremost, the blog must give potential readers quality content, and as to advertising — it must be appropriate without overkill, or your reader will just simply click the blog away.

For example:

1. If you have more advertising then content — you’ve lost the premise of a blog.

2. And if you put links to your own products within the body copy of another person’s article, this, in my opinion, is changing copy, and saying that the author endorses the product. (article misuse)

Blogging can be a positive addition to your website or even to your first attempt to gaining a presence online. But with everything, there is a right way and a wrong way of presenting your product, service or views on line. Remember, to always keep your reader in the forefront — by asking yourself — if I was reading a blog, what would I want to see — and most importantly, what would annoy me the most.

To conclude, blogging is beginning to grow, and its uses, are only limited by an individual’s imagination, and of course, the search engines rules — and I might say, individual readers tolerances and your ethics.

Vickie J Scanlon has a BBA degree in Administrative Management and Marketing. Visit her site at: http://www.myaffiliateplace.biz for free tools, articles related to affiliate marketing, ebooks, how to info, affiliate opportunities - all aimed toward the affiliate marketer and the marketing process.

What do I mean by how you blog?

One of the most common mistakes made by the novice blogger is to fill their blog with 60 - 80% recycled content. Sure, it’s fine to quote other sources and give your opinion. But just re-blogging other posts, or cutting and pasting reprint articles does not a great blogger make.

And maybe you don’t want to be a Great blogger. Perhaps you don’t have the time.

But you do want to be at least a good blogger, or you are killing your blog’s incredible potential to be a search engine magnet, as well as boost your traffic and sales from both first time and return visitors.

Your content doesn’t have to be picture perfect, and you don’t have to make article-length posts to your blog.

But what you do need is:

* Blog Posts that Engage Your Audience * Blog Material that is either Original in Topic, or Original in Approach * More Original Content than Re-Hashed * Unique Viewpoints, Sources or Perspectives to add to content that you quote.

Does when you post to your blog make a difference?

Yes. You’re going to find that some days of the week get you a better response, maybe because more people are online. Or perhaps if you’re an entrepreneur, informing other micro-business owners, you might find that certain times of day work best for you.

Paying attention to trends that work best for your site for the time of day, week, and even year, can bring a measurable boost to your readership. Some people, myself included, even find that blogging when more people are likely to be on their site brings a boost in sales.

There isn’t much hard data as to why that is, but when you think about an offline analogy, it makes sense. I don’t know about you, but if I’m browsing a store in a mall, it greatly increases the chances that I’ll leave without buying if no one is around.

Does that mean you have to be around and blogging all the time? Not necessarily. But if you see a dip in traffic or sales when you haven’t posted in a while, a few short posts may help reverse the trend.

There’s also a certain pace of blogging that can help you secure your search engine positions once you obtain them - but that’s another article.

Copyright 2005 Tinu AbayomiPaul

Is there a perfect time of day to blog to increase your search engine traffic? Is there a best pace for blogging that will help keep your blog and the rest of your site ranked well in Google and Yahoo? At http://www.rescueyourblog.com/blogtraffic you’ll find the answer to these and 50 other blog traffic questions.

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When you’re new to blogging, a free blogging web site is a good way to get started. Popular blogging web sites like Blogger and Eponym allow users to set up and host a blog for no cost at all. The fact that one of these sites can provide you with all of the tools that you need to get your blog up and running for free, encourages people to start a blog. As it’s free, you don’t have anything to lose. Many people that have never had any other kind of web presence before find themselves drawn to blogging, partly because it is so easy to find a way to blog for free.

Compared to starting your own blog from scratch, signing up with a free blogging web site will get you listed in search engines much easier. For example, Google, that runs the free blog hosting site Blogspot, crawls its pages very often to look for updates. As a result, if you have a Blogspot blog, you are almost guaranteed to be listed on Google’s blog search engine. This way you can spend less time on promoting your blog, and you can gain a following with a minimum of marketing effort.

If your blog attracts many readers, you may want to think about moving your site. Many people think that a blog that is hosted by a free blogging web site has a kind of amateur flavor, not appropriate for a high-profile blog. Your own domain name can help you make your blog feel professional, and finding a webhost is not difficult or expensive. Once your blog starts to attract a large readership, you will probably be able to sell enough advertising space to be able to afford to buy your own domain and pay for a hosting package, and still have money left over. However, until you have a sizeable readership, there’s really no need to invest in these luxuries.

When you want to build a following before you spend any money on your blog, using a free blogging website is a good idea. Later, when you feel ready to take the next step and pay for your own domain, your readers will follow you to your new home.

Mieke Janssens is the webmaster of The WebZone - thewebzone.50webs.com.
Subscribe to her FREE 8 Day Blogging eCourse - adtrackpro.net/t.php?l=2567

The Internet has changed the way we live, breathe, and even write - in fact, it is mainly due to the blogging phenomenon that we receive headlines, change them, and even get the latest buzz on issues newspapers and popular media will not dare tackle. Blogging has become so common, it has prompted dictionary makers to create new terms. For instance, each article on a blog is called a “post,” “entry,” or “blog post.” A person who blogs is called a “blogger.”

But what is blogging, and why is it so popular?

Blogging refers to the activity of updating one’s blog. What is a blog? A blog is a web log, or an Internet-based publication which contains articles about a variety of topics. Blogs are either run on dedicated hosting services, or they can be run on any ordinary web hosting service using scripts meant for blogs.

Blogs often focus on a particular subject. They can tackle movie reviews, political issues, important local news, or one’s personal opinion. Most blogs serve as online diaries, and will contain personal images, artwork, and writing.

Blog posts will contain the following elements.

• A title - Some personal bloggers have modified this, and have added subtitles to add “meat” to their entries. They may indicate the music they are currently listening to, their current mood, and the subject of their post. Journalistic bloggers will often link their title to similar articles available online.

• The body - This is the main content of the blog. It can be a fictional entry, in the case of story or novel blogs; or a non-fiction entry, in the case of other blogs, such as news blogs or diaries.

• A permalink - this is the link to the individual blog entry, which other bloggers can use if they would like to link or refer to the article.

• The date - this is simply the date, time, and sometimes place in which the entry was first posted.

Some blogs may also contain the following.

• A comments section - this enables readers to make comments or react to the blog entry. This is also a useful way by which other bloggers can make themselves, and their blogs, known.

• The tags - this is the section where bloggers list the categories under which their current article falls. For instance, a post on “Saving the Whales” can be categorized under “environment,” “whales,” and “ecology.”

• Trackback - Also known as pingback, this is a list of links of other sites that refer to the article or post.

There are many different kinds of blogs available, depending on the topic they tackle. A few types include the following

• Personal - These blogs focus on personal experiences, and feature an online diary, usually with images or artwork. Some photoblogs fall under this category, where bloggers post pictures instead of writing about their experiences.

• Paid - Some bloggers are paid to blog their career experiences, or the latest news about a company.

• Socio-cultural - Some blogs are devoted to socio-cultural experiences, and can allow people of other cultures a glimpse into the quirks and specialties that make other cultures unique.

• Science - Some scientists have taken to blogging about their research findings, or to share laboratory techniques. Such a method, however, has been met with derision in the science community, since it overrides the traditional peer-based review of research.

• Political or News - Some blogs focus on the latest news, and can even offer political opinions on certain subjects.

Blogging is definitely here to stay, and it can influence cultures and headlines through the widely popular medium of the Internet. Have you tried blogging yet?

Khieng ‘Ken‘ Chho - Online Blogging Resources. For more, visit Ken’s website: http://blogging.1w3b.net/

Copyright © 2004 Priya
Shah

The question of the day is “Should you start a Blog?”

People all over the planet are blogging. Companies, CEOs, lawyers, journalists,
stewardesses. Even dogs and babies.

Why? Because they can. It’s that simple.

Blogging requires little or no learning curve. If you can type, speak into
a phone, bark, chew, record a holiday movie, you can blog.

Blogs have taken publishing out of the domain of those who know HTML and designing,
to make this powerful tool available to the rest of us.

That holiday in the Far East, your grandma’s birthday, you company’s latest
product offering, your new recipe for rum cake, your daughter’s first step,
your pet’s antics, what you thought of the Garfield movie - you can blog all
this and more.

A blog is an online journal or diary. Which makes it ideal for voicing your
opinion, recording your pregnancy blahs or announcing your company’s latest
acquisition.

People are using them to communicate with family, for education, for business,
and almost anything else you can think of.

But one thing not all blogs get is a readership.

Unless your blog is only for your family or your business colleagues, you’re
probably writing with the hope that someone will read about what you think.

So many blogs are started with little or no purpose. If you want to blog and
survive, first start by answering your why.

If you’re writing only for the search engine spiders, then be prepared for
no one but them to read your keyword-rich spam.

Blogs demand a readership. And for that you have to write about something worth
reading.

Here are some tips to follow if you want human beings to read your blogs.

1. Stay on topic

Opinions are fine, but unless you’re the CEO of Microsoft, very few people
will want to know what you ate for breakfast. If you started your blog to air
your raves and rants about the latest movie you saw, better mention movies in
at least every post you write.

2. Write in a conversational tone

Forget what your English professor taught you. Write the way you speak, or
you’ll end up sounding uptight and unnatural. And no one reads tightass copy…
even from the CEO of Microsoft.

3. Be opinionated

Your blog is not a company brochure or a press release, but a way for people
a.k.a. your target audience, to get to know the real you. The worst sin you
can commmit is to bore your readers. Most people respond better to an honest
airing of views than pleasant platitudes. And if you get a few rude or nasty
comments in response to your posts, just accept the fact that you can’t please
everyone

4. Be funny

Infuse your posts with your natural wit for a better response from your target
audience. And if not everyone appreciates your particular brand of humor, read
the last sentence in the point above.

5. Stay informed

If you’re writing about your profession, you’d better know what you are talking
about. Word spreads at the speed of thought in the blogospere and if you’re
trying to become an authority on something you know very little of, prepare
yourself for the brickbats.

6. Stay current

Write about the latest developments in your field. No one wants to read stuff
that has been around for a long time, or that hundreds of other bloggers have
chronicled.

7. Update frequently, but don’t burnout

Most blogs die because of blogger burnout - bloggers trying to update too frequently.
Stick to a publishing schedule that is humanly possible for you. If you’ve just
updated your blog and find a story you want to share, save it for later.

On the other hand, don’t post just because you think you have to stick to a
schedule. Going a few days or even weeks without posting is fine if you really
have nothing worth sharing.

So are you still wondering if you should blog?

If you think you can meet the requirements above, and know your why, then like
the shoe people say - just do it.

Resistance is futile.

Priya Shah is an ezine publisher by day and doubles as a Blog Maniac by night. Blog Brandz is the legitimate offspring of her affair with the blogosphere.

Is it possible to make $100,000 annually from Internet advertising using only a small low traffic blog? Actually it is not only possible but it is actually being done every day. And I’m not even talking about the lucrative blog sponsorship deals that are increasingly common the blogosphere these days where a fortune 500 company sponsors a small blog to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars every month. I am talking about a blog being able to raise a monthly average of about $8,400 from Internet advertising from clients who’ve purchased space in the blog site. This kind of consistent performance will put $100,000 into the pocket of a blogger by year-end.

Just like in the case of offline advertising sales, the niche targeted for is extremely important. The big secret here is that the better a job you do of targeting the right niche for your blog, the less important the volume of your traffic will be. A word of caution is in order here. It is absolutely significant for bloggers with low traffic to ensure that their limited traffic is highly targeted. Just by ensuring you do these two things I have mentioned within this paragraph, you will have a pretty good chance of generating $100,000 in Internet advertising from your blog even if you have as little as 50 to 100 unique visitors daily.

There is nothing wrong with targeting several small niches at the same time, that are all related to the subject matter of your blog. They will all neatly fall into separate pages which all have advertising space that can be hired out in exchange for dollars.

Which brings us to the other critical fact in generating advertising revenue for a blog. You must find a way of making full use of a significant amount of the space in each page of your blog if you intend to reach $100,000 in Internet advertising revenue for your blog.