Helping You Rock Out Your Site Like A Rockstar!

Blogging is a powerful tool that search engine marketers are using for contextual link building these days. Apart from specialist SEO copy writers, blogs can provide content writing professionals a robust platform to establish themselves as writer. Well, writing for blog is one thing and becoming a successful blogger is another. How can one bridge the gap? Here are a few suggestions regarding the art of blogging.

Image Courtesy: rickischultz.wordpress.com

Be candid, be simple…

When users read a blog they want the writer to be candid in expressing his/her point of view. Simple lucid language is appreciated. You can be informal with the mood and choice of words. You can be interactive by throwing some questions to your readers to encourage them in participating in the discussion. Subtle touches of humor can make your post even more interesting, but this is optional if it doesn’t come naturally.

Choose your topics carefully…

When you are writing with the purpose of earning links you are given a set of related keywords or key phrases that set up a platform for your article. But you have the freedom to choose your topic; freedom to improvise your own style, freedom to experiment with the style of writing and scope to know what your readers expect from you by following up blog comments. So, be choosy with topics and stand out from the rest.

Look into the readers mind…

Identify your readers (target audience). Do a good research on them, so that you can deliver exactly what they want and what they need. Remember, what you write must have a utilitarian aspect. Even if you are blogging to promote a specific product marketed by your company it’s not about writing overview of the product or advertising for it. Rather you can blog on how to make the best use of the product or highlight a particular feature that has been added lately. Shouting for your products or services directly can put your readers off. Product promotions can be saved for company website – blog-readers look for something more.

Be consistent …

Be consistent with the style of writing and presentation. Make it simple or a bit more complex; it’s your choice since your blog has a set of readers who are interested in the particular stream of topics and accustomed with the particular style of writing.

People will read your post if you…

• Cover a trending topic, of course with insight and authority.
• Give something extra about a commonly known subject or project it in a different light.
• Provide something useful, say, tips to optimize the usage of a particular device, or tool, or software etc.
• Be very specific on a particular topic to curb the competition, e.g, if you are writing for a web design blog ‘how to design a fast loading mobile website’ can be a wiser choice than ‘how to design a fast loading website’.
• Make it interesting with proper formatting and relevant images.

People will come to your blog if you…

Make sure you put an attractive title to your post and use your keywords craftily to maintain the natural flow.  Inserting keyword in the title is important to feed the search engines so that your blog is found in organic search. I would suggest keeping it closer to the start of the title as much as possible, but not at the cost of naturalness, of course.

Note that external links play a key role in boosting your blog’s rank on SERPs, which in turn may sharply increase the number of visitors to the blog. But, that’s a separate issue.

People will keep visiting your blog if you…

Well, there are a hundred ways to retain your readers and at the same time increase readership. But, I am not here to discuss on the technical aspects, such as adding plug-ins for subscription or integrating your blog with social networking sites. This post is purely about what you can do with your writing. Therefore, one idea will be, explicitly asking for comments. You can easily add a line in the end asking your readers to express their takes on what you have written. Inviting to comment does have a positive psychological impact on readers.  And if you find the comments worthy of responding never forget to leave a reply – a simple ‘thank you’ can do wonder.

An online business trying to improve their online visibility, target audience and increase exposure must create a blog that is totally dedicated to the site of their business… period! There is no shortcut to online success. A proven and tested principle that search engines use when ranking a website is to look at the frequency at which the content of the site is being updated. The surest and easiest way, therefore, to ensure there is a constant supply of fresh content is through blogging.

Note, however, that blogging with specific high quality content that is targeted at the niche market is not enough. You must create some more buzz and attention around your site, distribute your content, and more importantly be around your blog readers. How do you do that effectively? Here are a few ways of doing it.

• Familiarize yourself with how bookmarking tools like ping.fm or HootSuite can be utilized to boost the amount of high quality inbound links to your website by posting each of your blog posts to at least 25 of the leading social networking and bookmarking websites automatically
• Use online available tools like the famous Google Keyword tool to establish the kind of long tail keywords the market is using to search for information related to your business.
• Ensure there are enough social networking icons within the blog that will encourage your readers to retweet, bookmark or even post a link on their site redirected at your blog post
• Ensure your primary keywords feature generously in the title and body of the blog posts in order to have them rank highly on the Search Engine Results Page.
• Ensure there is a comment section after every blog post which will encourage your readers to share their views and comments regarding the information contained in the blog.
• If you are good enough, try to post some of your content on other blog that accept guest articles. Most of them will offer you 2-3 links back to your website.
• Build social community with people that are really interested in your niche. Is worthless if you have 30000 followers on Twitter if only 5 people are interested in your posts.

Don’t think that the above mentioned is an all-inclusive list of measures to take in your link popularity strategic development plan to boost web traffic. The strategies, tips and techniques that will drive traffic towards your site are only limited by your very own imagination.

This is also not all there is for you to do, you have to search your specific niche market and find websites and blogs that rank the highest. Ensure you get affiliated with the blogs as they already have a well established page rank. By having your blog posts feature on their pages, you will get more visibility, publicity, and broad exposure. Request for a link in exchange for them posting your blogs on their sites and you will sure get the traffic that you want.

After a lot of work, Alex King finally got Twitter Tools working again. However, there is a catch. If you want to automatically post to Twitter, you will have to apply for a Twitter API to sync it with your Twitter Tools.

Although Alex says it is a big tricky, it really is not. The directions given to get the API working are very simple. It may not be easy for newbies, but if you have set up RSS Grafitti or a Facebook Application, it might not be so difficult.

Truthfully, all you have to do is follow the directions. Once you have filled in your website’s URL into the correct fields, the API will give you some codes for you to put into your Twitter Tools. Below is a screenshot of how I registered Blondish.net for a Twitter API, just for Twitter Tools usage.

It is important to note that if you are practicing in devious things online (like spamming) or have been reported for abusing Twitter in the past, Twitter may suspend you. The oAuth solution is the current approach, but according to King, he is definitely open to other solutions.

For a lot of people, this update comes as a relief. Twitter Tools is one of the most popular and downloaded plugins in the WordPress plugin repository.

What are your thoughts on the oAuth method? Have you set your Twitter API for Twitter Tools up on your site yet?

There are so many sites, and all the sites out there in cyberspace, there are millions of blogs (well, at least is is assumed considering WordPress 3.0 alone had well over 10 million downloaded.) Naturally with all these websites, some people are going to be talking about nearly the same thing. So, why not link to each other?

Linking articles are extremely important. In a way, I find it like a handshake with another website owner, telling them that I read their article and may have been inspired to continue the conversation, but also give them some type of credit. In other words – some link love.

Linking articles can do a number of things:

• Open a topic to a whole new crowd of people that would have never seen the original source
• Promotes traffic
• Could build a good friendship between webmasters
• Raise awareness on controversial topics and right a wrong
• Keeps the conversation going with people who are interested in connecting with others

While there is a lot of competition going on for traffic, even the larger sites link to articles that are valuable. It just makes sense to do so in order to cover a topic as thoroughly as possible.

In fact, I challenge you to write an article based on this topic and link back. When you do, comment here and I will add your article’s title and link in this post. Let the link love begin!

Connections (Connections in the WordPress plugin directory) is a plugin that allows you to list a directory of people, much like an address book, or a directory listing of people.

This is great for businesses that like to list their employees or management team. The plugin allows for an avatar or picture, website address, social network handles, address, and even phone. Visitors can download individuals entries (vCard.)

The plugin can be customized to fit your needs by simply adding CSS to your theme’s stylesheet, rather than editing the plugin’s default stylesheet. When uploading photos, if you have not set up a certain thumbnail size and go back to adjust the settings, you may need to re-load the images. The caching is a bit terrible.

The plugin can be applied to any theme and only needs the shortcode. For shortcodes, there are several methods to show the listings like descending order, alphabetical, and even by group.

I have used this plugin on a couple client’s sites and it is a real convenience because it is user-friendly. All that is needed is entering the information from the WordPress admin backend and the plugin arranges the rest.

I would like to see this plugin include a way to add extra fields or name certain fields. For example, if I had a business that I listed the management team, and a few blogged, I would want to list a link to the person’s author page. Currently, the only option is to select ‘Website’ and enter the URL.

I have written some topics in the past that have been controversial. Unfortunately, because not all bloggers are within the United States, my claim for 1st Amendment rights are not always possible, as shared by Jennifer Brown Banks in her article How to Tackle Controversial Topics in Blogging.

Unfortunately, employers are surfing the net and will find you, so if you are going to be controversial, even politically, you need to blog anonymously. The stories of people being fired because they blogged about some topic or another is proof. I have blogged about this before.

So, here is how to tackle controversial topics without bombing out:

1. Know your rights. If you work for a company, know your company’s policy regarding divulging work in public. Some companies do not have any policies concerning workers talking about work outside the facility. Others do. In the United States, if you are employed in a state that has a ‘fire at will’ policy, you could be out of a job.
2. Be truthful. Be civil and do not create statements that could be defamatory.
3. Be thorough when stating facts to back up your opinion. You could put your opinion out there, but it would not hold a ‘grain of sand’ or rally any support.
4. Do not expect others to agree with you. Everyone has an opinion and while you may be well informed on your topic, there may be others who have a lot of proof. Let them lay their opinion down and even if you do not agree… at least the topic has been discussed from several angles. Never write off people because they do not agree with you. These are the people that you can learn a lot from, even if you do not agree.
5. Be civil. Name calling, demeaning words will not only piss people off that might be involved, but a lot of readers are turned off by such behavior. If you are going to shout from your soapbox, at least have some integrity.
6. Keep an open mind. You may feel your opinion change a bit on some issues. That is perfectly fine. No one is forcing you to be a certain way. It is your blog. However, if you find yourself agreeing, be sure to do a follow-up post and share your revelations.
7. Choose your words wisely. While you could choose your battles wisely, it is probably best to choose your words wisely. In blogging, you can write on whatever topic you want. It is how you word your articles that may make or break your site. If you have written something in the heat of the moment, save it on draft, and then read over a few times before posting. If you go back later, people will not appreciate the passive-aggressiveness.

Do you walk the fine line of controversy? How have you succeeded? Have you had a bad experience with blogging?

So, you have decided to dabble in accepting guest blogging. Perhaps you have accepted posts, but have been only accepting the articles via email and posting them yourself.

STOP!

You are making more work for yourself.

Guest blogging is like regular blogging… it should not be a chore. You should be accepting posts, reviewing, and publishing, so streamline your work.

Here are ways to prepare your site for guest bloggers:

1. Create a page just for Guest Writing. It can be “Guest Blog Here”, “Guest Write Here”, “Submit Your Article”, or whatever. That page needs to have your requirements and how a person can submit their post.
2. Secure Your WordPress Site. You are opening your site to people. Make sure to try to keep your WordPress installation up-to-date and make sure you keep an eye on who registers on your site.
3. Install the Role Manager Plugin for WordPress… that is, if you are using WordPress. You will be able to specify exactly what capabilities your guest bloggers will be allowed to do on your site.
4. Create an Author Box for your posts. Forget bylines when the author box can be filled out by your guest bloggers filling out their WordPress user information. This is where they can promote their own sites or businesses they work for.
5. Create an Author Page for your guest bloggers. If you have a few regular guest bloggers, this is a nice page for your guest bloggers to bring back to their own site to promote.
6. Promote that your site is open. It might be once a week you have to mention it, but it is necessary. People need reminding and while they may not jump for the chance immediately, they may sometime down the line.

While I would put in the list Adsense revenue sharing, I am going to leave that as optional as that is more of a personal choice rather than something that is truly necessary.

What other resources should site owners use when preparing their site to accept guest bloggers?

Web Hosting is one of the first thing you should care about, it’s the foundation. Foundation should be strong and healthy in order to get long term benefits. During selecting web host companies, one should always remember that buying hosting is the first step that will determine your blog/website popularity. A good web hosting company will give you secure blog and weak hosting will give you weak blog.

1. Price

Price is the first thing you should care about. Newbies can’t afford expensive web hosting plans.  If the web hosting company you are going to select is providing limited features as compare to price, then don’t go for it. Search the web for all web hosting features and prices and then decide to select your hosting company.

Currently I am using HostGator because of its superb features and reasonable prices.

2. Support

As a newbie, you must select a web hosting company that provides Live Chat and 24 hours customer services. In case of any problem (example: blog hacked, crashed, log-in info lost, etc..) instant customer service is needed. During selecting web host don’t forget about this.

3. Promotions

Check previous promotional offers offered by the web hosting company. If one is good in term of Prices and Support + Offering Promos, then go for it. Promotion offers are normally related to renewing your existing package, free domains, free IP, free email clients, free software etc…

4. Reputation

Well it may be possible that a web hosting company will have all the above qualities, but still you can’t decide whether to choose or not. You will have to check if the company has its own blog, uses social media,  optimized for search engine, created official profiles etc. Such factors will tell you that the company has good reputation and people trust on their service.

The above tips will help you to decide if a web hosting company is good for you or not. Think strategically and go for things that give you benefits for long terms. Hope these tips will help you in deciding a better web hosting company.

For those who have been with web hosts for a while, what other tips do you have for newbies?