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Here’s a quick blurb I wanted to share with you really quick.
My friend Laura Martin who is currently a finalist on Joel Comm’s “Next Internet Millionaire” has been getting some publicity all over the net but I don’t think there’s been a much more exiting article then the one I just read, see for youself:
It’s an interesting article because Britney and Laura have done have something in common. Britney embarrased herself at the MTV VMA’s last week which could potentially end her career and Laura has embarrassed herself on the Next Internet Millionaire and her career is about to explode!!
As Britney would say it…”It’s Laura Bleep.”
Your Success - My Passion,
Alejandro Reyes
skype: whoisalejandro
yahoo: whoisalejandro
Popularity: 72% [?]
Improve Readership and Rankings with Effective Blog Posting
1) The Effect of posting regularity
During my research into effective blog posting, one point came up time and time again:
As soon as bloggers reduced their posting frequency or stopped posting altogether their website traffic began to drop off, and their search engine rankings began to slide.
On the opposite side of the coin, posting too many times in one day seemed to have the same effect…
The general consensus for effective posting seemed to be one of consistency; of creating a blogging schedule and sticking to it. For example, one or two posts per week of at least 200 words, and one or two posts of 500 words or more.
The shorter posts could be a quick note referencing an interesting article or blog post you have found, while the longer posts could be an explanation of some particular procedure or a review of a product or service. The longer posts are the ones to concentrate your search engine optimization efforts on as they are more likely to be indexed and ranked.
2) Reveal Some of Your Personality
People visit blogs regularly because they form an affinity with the blogger. They either agree or disagree with the blogger, but if they respect the blogger’s opinions, they keep coming back for more.
Being too personable has the opposite affect. People are not interested in your personal life, or your possessions. They are interested in your opinions and advice. This means taking a stand on issues and products and not bragging about your latest Porche or complaining about your latest misfortune!
If you like, or don’t like something say so, but explain your reasons. Your personality will show through as regular readers begin to understand your likes and dislikes. This is when some readers will begin to form an affinity with you. Others will decide they don’t like you and stop visiting your blog… You will get the odd one who sticks around to ruffle your feathers, much like a forum troll - just delete their comments and hope they get the message.
3) Don’t Leave Your Posts Isolated
Internal linking plays an important role in search engine optimization. When you write a post link it to other related posts. Make sure you use the main keyword phrase of the post you are linking to in the hyperlink.
For example if you were writing a post about “green widgets” and had previously written a post about “blue widgets” you could reference your “blue widgets” post by creating a link to it, the html code of your link would look like this:
<a href=”http://www.your-blog.com/widgets/blue-widgets.php”>blue widgets</a>
When you are write a post using WordPress simply highlight the text you want included in the hyperlink, click the “Insert/Edit Link” button and a popup is displayed where you can enter the link URL (http://www.your-blog.com/widgets/blue-widgets.php in the example) and click the insert button.
This serves two purposes:
i. It creates a back link to the blue widgets post giving your search engine optimization for that post a slight boost.
ii. It gives your reader a link to another related article which they will probably go and read, and so you get an extra opportunity to impress your reader and ultimately expose them to your advertisements.
Your primary goal in improving readership and rankings is to keep your readers happy. Keeping the search engines happy is secondary. You might employ every SEO trick in the book, but once your readers lose interest they will stop visiting your blog. This means you stop getting return traffic, new back links and bookmarks. The search engines will soon notice this reduced activity and your rankings will begin to slide.
Hope you find this post to be helpful to your blogging efforts.
Tomorrow we’ll be discussing “How to keep your readers happy…”
Until then!
Alejandro Reyes
916.947.2455
yahoo: whoisalejandro
skype: whoisalejandro
Popularity: 97% [?]
Effective SEO Techniques for Writing Blog Posts
Your primary aim for maintaining a blog is to make money, and for the long term success of your blog you need to focus on getting as many high ranking posts in the search engines as possible.
To start out your blog will not have enough backlinks or page rank to help drive your posts into top ranking positions. The trick is to target keyword phrases which have little competition in the search engines. One major drawback is these keywords is they are unlikely to attract much traffic, and so you have to concentrate on writing posts which target many different keyword phrases.
The single most important search engine optimization tip to employ when you are writing a blog post is to select a primary keyword phrase and then include as many related words and phrases as possible.
Keyword density is not something you should concentrate on. Rather than stuffing your post with your primary keyword phrase, use words which have the same meaning (known as synonyms) and add related phrases (or secondary keyword phrases). The days of creating one blog post for each keyword phrase are long gone.
You can use the WordTracker free trial to find keywords which you have researched (i.e. they are searched for regularly, but have little competition). Once you have identitfied suitable keywords, use the Google Keyword tool to find related phrases which Google associates with your main keywords. Enter your main keyword into the “Keyword Variations” text box. Make sure the “Use synonyms” check box is checked and click “Get More Keywords”.
The Google Keywords tool will then return a list of keywords it thinks are related to your main keyword. Save these in either a text format or as a .csv file which you can open using a spreadsheet (e.g. MS Excel). Go through each keyword phrase and delete those that have no relevence to the blog post you intend to write.
When you write your post include as many of these related keywords as you can, but make sure your post has a logical flow to it and your included phrases makes sense. You should write for your readers first - make your post content informative and easy to read.
Include your primary keyword phrase in your post title, but make sure the post content closely matches your chosen title. You should also include your primary keyword phrase once or twice in the post content, and include the related phrases you have identified, for example if your primary keyword phrase is “increase website traffic” and the Google Keywords tool returned these related phrases:
-improve website ranking
-top website traffic
-get website traffic
-targeted website traffic
-guaranteed website traffic
-your website traffic
Here is how you could use them in your post title:
Dramatically Increase Website Traffic and Improve Website Ranking with These Top Website Traffic Tips
In your post you would refer to all the keyword phrases once or twice and back them up with even more similar or related phrases, for example: website traffic -> website hits -> unique hits -> site traffic. Don’t keep repeating the same phrase over and over in your post content.
If you have written other posts which targeted some of the related secondary phrases, link to them using the secondary keyword phrase as the link text. Linking to similarly themed posts benefits your readers because they can find more information, but it also gives your posts a slight SEO boost from the internal “in context” linking.
One very important point to remember is 30% to 40% of all search engine queries are one time long tail search phrases which the search engines do not have any matching webpages to display. The actual results displayed will be the webpages which the search engines decide are the closest match. When writing your posts take this into account and create as many permutations as you can of the keyword phrases you are targeting. For example (this is a real example from one of my niche websites):
- facts about whether a plant grows faster inside or outside
- information on a plants growth rate inside and outside
- growing plants inside vs. outside
- do plants grow faster indoors or outdoors
Pay attention to your post slug as WordPress uses this to create a file name for your post. Make sure the primary keyword phrase is near the beginning of the slug. By default, WordPress uses the post title as the post slug, but it cleans it up by removing apostrophes, quote marks, and other characters.
For example, using the title in the “increase website traffic” example, WordPress would automatically name the post slug:
dramatically-increase-website-traffic-and-improve-website-ranking-with-these
-top-website-traffic-tips
To write a new post slug, simply rewrite it with dashes between each word, for example:
incease-website-traffic-improve-ranking-top-promotion-tips
N.B. - Make sure you change your post slug BEFORE you publish the post, and don’t include non essential words like a, the, but, my, with etc. Changing your post slug after you have published it can cause problems with the posts permalinks and result in a 404 File Not Found error…
I hope these past few days are giving you some help with your optimizing your Wordpress Blog.
Until Tomorrow,
Alejandro Reyes
916.947.2455
yahoo: whoisalejandro
skype: whoisalejandro
Popularity: 68% [?]
Improve Your Search Engine Ranking Potential: Essential SEO Plugins
The basic “out the box” WordPress SEO settings are not enough to fully optimize your blog, but there are a number of plugins you can use to enhance your WordPress blog further:
1) Make a decision - to use, or not to use, the www. prefix in your blog URL’s…
If your blog uses URL’s which include ‘www.’ and others which do not, the search engines will index two versions of your blog and aside from the possible waste of bandwidth from double spidering, one of them will be filtered as duplicated content. While this problem might be real or just a storm in a tea cup, being pro-active seems to be the wisest option. You need to decide which system you want to use and stick to it, always!
The Redirections plugin by John Godley allows you to specify which system you want to use and will automatically create ‘301 redirection’ for other URL’s. For example, if you decide to use the ‘www.’ prefix any link to your blog that does not contain the prefix will automatically be redirected to the correct URL which contains the ‘www.’ prefix.
The major advantage of using this plugin is that it also creates re-directs if you choose to change a post slug (used for the post file name). It also creates redirects if you decide to change your permalink structure and already have posts indexed in the search engines using the old permalink structure.
2) Create Optimized post title tags
The SEO Title Tag plugin by Stephan Spencer is an essential plugin. By default WordPress places your blog name, a separator and then your post name in the title of each page (i.e. between the <title> tags). The SEO Title Tag plugin reverses this and places your post name before your blog name in the title. From a search engine optimization stand point this is advantageous, because:
- It gives the keywords in your title more prominence.
- It provides more meaningful search engine listing results.
- It provides more meaningful browser bookmark names.
One of the major advantages of this plugin is that you have the ability to create a unique title tag for your blog index page and separate title tags for your category pages. By default, WordPress just uses the blog name for the index title and category names for the category page titles.
3) Include description and keyword meta tags in your blog’s <head> tags…
Including meta keyword tags in your blog’s header is not a necessity, most search engines ignore them, but including them won’t harm your search engine optimization chances on some of the simpler search engines.
Some search engines will use your meta description in their search listings, others like Google will display all or part of a sentence which contains the first instance of the keyword or phrase being searched. The most obvious thing to do would be to add your keyword phrases into the meta description tag, but these must contain a call-to-action (e.g. make the reader want to read your article).
Creating a compelling meta description which includes all your keyword phrases makes it somewhat difficult for programmers to build a plugin for creating automated meta description tags…
The most common meta description solutions are plugins which take the first 100 or 150 characters from the first sentence to include them in the meta description. The most effective meta keywords plugins are those which also handle the tags you add to each post. Here are two plugins for you to consider:
i. The Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin by Christine Davis is the ultimate tagging solution for bloggers, but it can also include the tags you add to your posts as meta keywords. This plugin can be used for a number of different features on your blog, so it makes sense to use it instead of different plugins for each feature.
ii. The Head META Description plugin by Kaf Oseo takes your post excerpt or if you don’t enter one, the first 20 words of your post content and includes them in a meta description tag.
To get the most out of this plugin you need to get into the habit of writing an attention grabbing post exert (or first sentence) for all your posts. This is a good article writing habit to get into whether you use the plugin or not.
Instructions for installing all the plugins during these 17 days and for configuring your blog are given in “Installing the Plugins” post…
See you tomorrow.
Happy Blogging,
Alejandro Reyes
916.947.2455
yahoo: whoisalejandro
skype: whoisalejandro
Popularity: 66% [?]
I’ve decided to spend the next 17 days to give you a blueprint that you can use to optimize and profit from your own WordPress blogs. The next 17 days will be the results of my research. It is based partly on my own experiences and also on how experienced professional bloggers operate. I also took into account tips gleaned from less experienced bloggers, their mistakes, their light bulb moments and their research.
Basic “Out the Box” WordPress SEO settings
In this report I am assuming that you have already installed a WordPress blog, but if you have not, installing WordPress is not difficult. The easiest method is use Fantastico found on most hosting which uses cPanel.
If you want to install your blog manually and aren’t sure how to do it, CNet has a video you can watch here.
If you want to know how to set up a MySQL database, watch this quick video tutorial here.
While most blogging platforms tend to do well in search engine rankings, the default WordPress settings are not very well optimized. There are a few changes you need to make which will give your blog the edge over those with no optimization, but it is worth noting that good search engine rankings depend more on your actual blog posts, posting frequency and the number of back links to your blog. Here are the basic “out the box” changes you must carry out on your WordPress blog:
1. Change the default permalink structure.
The /%category%/%postname% permalink is the most commonly advised, but to the search engines your blog post appears in two places. If you look at the URL as it shows in your browser, it appears as follows:
http://www.your-blog.com/your-catagegory/your-post/
But your post can also be found here:
http://www.your-blog.com/your-catagegory/your-post/index.php
To keep your permalinks constant you can force WordPress into naming posts with a URL which contains a suffix, for example you could use the following permalink:
/%category%/%postname%.php
Your blog post can now only be found at:
http://www.your-blog.com/your-catagegory/your-post.php
To change your permalink structure, open your WordPress Admin Panel and click on “Options” then “Permalinks”. In the “Custom structure” text box enter the following:
/%category%/%postname%.php
Then click on the “Update Permalink Structure” button.
2. Next you need to rename the default category from “Uncategorized” to a phrase related to your blog under which all your default posts will be saved. It is not essential to name this particular category after a keyword phrase, think of your readers first. For example you could use the phrase “From My Point of View” as the name for the default category. Most of your posts will be fairly short, and often your point of view on some topic, making this the perfect place to file these posts.
You can change the default category by editing it in the “Manage / Categories” section of your control panel.
Any longer informative posts or reviews MUST be saved under categories which are named after a keyword phrase. For example if you had a blog related to promoting websites, you could name one of your categories “Increase Website Traffic” and all the posts you write about increasing traffic to a website should be posted under this category.
3. Delete all of the default links in the “Blogroll / Manage Blogroll” section of your WordPress control panel (”Links / Manage Links” in older installations). Linking to arbitrary blogs will hurt your rankings in the search engines. One of the best ways to link to other blogs is to use “in context” links by mentioning them in posts that you write.
4. Remove unnecessary links in your blog footer template. The links in your footer should only point to pages on your blog (unless the terms of use for the theme you are using require a link back to the theme creator). You can edit the footer template in the “Presentation / Theme Editor” section of your Wordpress control panel. The text will vary depending on which theme you are using, and how you edit this file depends on your personal preferences, but you should include a copyright notice which links to your copyright policy.
5. Make sure your WordPress theme only uses the <h1> headline tags once in the individual post pages (and that should only be for the headline of your post). Most themes use <h1> tags for the headlings in the side bar, so you will need to manually edit these to <h2> or preferably <h3> tags. Unfortunately this also means editing the CSS file to return the sidebar headings to their previous formatting.
Tomorrow’s topic will be how to Improve Your Search Engine Ranking Potential: Essential SEO Plugins.
Until then - Happy Blogging!
Alejandro Reyes
916.947.2455
yahoo: whoisalejandro
skype: whoisalejandro
Popularity: 58% [?]
5 Reasons Why Blogging is a GREAT Internet Marketing Tool
Blogging is a concept that started in late 90s. It used to be a way to comment an existing webpage, an opportunity for visitors and readers to react or voice out one’s opinion on the said page. What started as a single-sentence commentary has evolved into pages of personal take on just about anything and everything under the sun. As it continues to move forward, online advertising has tapped into the blog’s potential. Here are 5 reasons why you should use blogging as an Internet Marketing tool.
1. Blogging is simple. The simplest way to get your piece on the net is through blogging. No skills are necessary… an average adult can read and type, or at least click a mouse. It’s like having a virtual piece of paper and you just write your ideas, experiences, new products, and hope that the truth behind your articles comes out and entice your reader to also try your product. If you have a computer and an Internet connection (who doesn’t?) then you can blog and advertise.
2. Blogging is authentic. In this day and age where advertising saturates our lives, we question the credibility of promoters’ claims. However, in blogs, real people share their real-life experiences, unscathed by paid advertising. Reading blogs about first-hand product use is like talking to people about their first-hand experience. You definitely want to buy a tried and tested product.
3. Blogging is free. Because blogging is yet to be proven as a mainstream online advertising media, most sites see it as something to augment current marketing tools and thus offer it for free. Any opportunity for free webspace is definitely a bonus especially to businesses that are starting up. Needless to say, paid blog pages can generate more income for your seriously growing business.
4. Blogging builds credibility. As you get more and more into writing your experiences on a particular product or industry, your readers come to realize that they can depend on your posts for their own information needs. As such, you become an expert on it; as a consequence, more readers visit your site and more bloggers link to your blogs. As companies and professional organizations notice the growth of your readership base, they may soon get in touch with you for advertising on your blog page, or make you an affiliate, which pays for every referral generated from your blog site.
5. Blogging builds your market. Unless you are a Hollywood star, chances are, only your Mom reads your posts. Mom has a lot of friends, so she lets her friends know how interesting your blog site is. But you need not depend on Mom to increase your readership base. Look into the following ways to build your market through blogging:
Give your business or online presence a boost by effectively using blogging as an Internet marketing tool.
To your Online Success,
Alejandro Reyes
Online Entrepreneur
916.947.2455
skype: whoisalejandro
yahoo: whoisalejandro
Popularity: 100% [?]
Over the next few weeks I’m going to to be sharing information about “Blogging”, what Blogs are are, and how Blogging can help you: express your thoughts, expose your business, and make money online.
I hope this information is useful to you! Here we go.
Blogging 101
If writing is an art, then, blogging is one way of using words to come up with an art. This is because people who are into blogging are the ones who are artistic on their own sense, carefully choosing words that would best describe their feelings, sentiments, wishes, desires, and everything.
Basically, blogs were first introduced as weblogs that refer to a “server’s log file.” It was created when web logging hit the virtual market. Since its inception in the mid-1990s, web logging gradually saturated the virtual community making the Internet a viable source of greater information.
However, with web logging, you still need a web site and domain names, but with blogging, you do not need anything just an account with blog providers. In most cases, these kinds of blogs are free of charge.
With the onset of blogging in the industry, personal journaling had been a common ground for people who wish to be known all over the world. However, not literally famous as this is not a case on being popular or well-known personality.
Generally, blogs are created for personal use. Like a journal, people can write their daily adventures, sentiments, and whatever ideas they want to express online.
Nevertheless, with the advent of the online businesses, blogs had gradually taken the limelight in providing businesses a chance to boost their productivity online. This is where the business blogs have taken the limelight.
Business blogs are, basically, created to advertise the services or products of a certain web site or online business in order to increase online sales.
Moreover, business blogs are also one way of promoting the company so that the other readers will know that a certain company exists online. With blogs, entrepreneurs are able to establish a name in the virtual market through articles that can be very useful in the reader’s life.
From there, you can make money out of blogs by simply syndicating it to your business’ web site. This can be done through the RSS technology.
So, if you are thinking to create a blog, whether for business or for pleasure, you need to know some tips that could help you get through and make your blog one of the interesting blogs online.
Here’s how:
1. Consider your audience
Even if your blog is generally personal, still, it would be better to consider the minds of your readers. You have to think of something that would interest them.
After all, most of the reasons of people who write blogs are not at all confined to their own personal motives. Most of them would love to be “heard” (or read) and would love to be known, in some way or another, even for just a minute. Hence, it is very important to come with a write up that everybody can understand, not necessarily that these people can relate to it but they can understand it.
2. Pictures speaks a thousand words
To make your blogging worth the browsing effort of your readers, it would be extremely nice if you will put some pictures in it. It does not necessarily mean you have to place a picture of yourself. Any photographs will do as long as it does not pose danger or insult to anyone who will be reading your blog.
3. Make constructive and beneficial blogs
Even if you are free to write anything you wan to say to the world, still, it would be better to create some write-ups that would be beneficial to your readers.
After all, its information technology that you have there so better be inclined to provide information rather than sheer quirky entertainment.
4. Avoid making multifaceted and complicated blogs
In order to have an interesting blogs, try not to use some highly technical and highfalutin words. After all, it is not a science discourse or a debate that you are making, so better stick to simple facts and short blogs.
Bear in mind that most people who use the Internet usually do more scanning than scrutinizing each site word for word. Therefore, it would be better to come with blogs that will not bore your readers just because you have these lengthy articles.
5. Make it interactive
As much as possible and if your capacity will allow it, make your blog interactive. Yu can do this by placing some video or audio clips in your blog.
You can even place an area for comments or for some feedbacks. In this way, you can get some impressions or reactions of other people. Who knows, you might even gain some friends just by making them feel at home in your blog site.
Indeed, blogs are not created just for the mere fun of it. It also has its own purpose in the world of the Internet.
Therefore, for people who wish to harness their craft, as far as writing is concerned, blogs are the best way to do it.
As they say, blogging is the contemporary term of creative and commercial writing.
Until next time folks.
Alejandro Reyes
916.947.2455
skype: whoisalejandro
yahoo: whoisalejandro
Popularity: 57% [?]