Improve Load Time Of Your Blog

Whether your blog is related to your business or its just a personnel blog we all want our visitors to stay and read our content. But if your blog takes a long time to load chances are your visitor will click the close button before they even get to see the content. That is why it is very important to optimize your blog so that it will load quickly. Now that you understand the importance of reducing your load time lets see some simple things that you can do to improve the load time of your blogs.

Removing Unnecessary Database Calls: Free Wordpress themes are coded in a general way so that it can be used by many people without a problem.The problem with this approach is there are few unnecessary database calls that can be removed. For example if you are using self hosted Wordpress and have access to the header file you can remove some unnecessary calls that get the header name, style sheet information etc and hard code the values in your header.

Optimizing Images : Definitely one of the biggest headaches for blogs , because of there high file size images usually take a while to load, so if you are using images in your blog you should optimize them as best as you can. You should be careful of the type of images you upload as well, although Bitmap type images gives you the best quality there large file size reduces load time, so PNG and JPEG formats are the best to use in your blog. Other than that you can use free image optimizing software available in the internet. Plenty of them come up with a Google Search and they all have there advantages and disadvantages. Pick the one that best suits your needs.

Using Plug-ins : Also you can use plug-ins like WP-Cache which really helps improve the load time of your blog if you are getting lots of visitors. Also after adding a plug-in its always a good idea to check the load time of your blogs because some plug-ins tend to make the blog load very slow. Of course if that plug-in is essential to your blog you have to consider other ways to improve performance.

Getting Rid of Ads : If your blog is cluttered with ads then chances are its performing slowly, instead of displaying lots of ads which the user even want see because they take a long time to load, you are a better off showing few ads to visitors that actually see your page. So reducing the number of ads in your blog can go reducing load time.

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Blog - Search engine Optimization

Search engine optimization is the process done to generate traffic through search engines. It became a need for websites because 80%-85% of visitors come from major search engines. Higher rankings mean greater number of visitors. The same concept applies to blogs. However, many blog owners are not aware of their chances of being more visible on the web. They just update it once in a while and that's it. Considering the great number of blogs on the net today, from personal to corporate blogs, all their efforts will just go to waste if they do not optimize it.

Yes, blogs can be optimized, too. It should be done for the benefit both of your readers and search engine spiders. Although the process is quite similar with the standard website search engine optimization, it is a bit different. Here are some tips that you can do to start:

Consider the Design

It is not advisable to use the default template being offered by blog publishing sites. You wouldn't want to bump into a girl in a party wearing the same dress, do you? Same thing goes to blogs. You can hire a designer to do the work for you. If running a tight budget, you can always look for free templates offered by web design companies and you can customize it a little to make it unique.

Optimize the Tags

Use the most substantial phrase for your blog in the hard code of the title tag. Also, you have to double check that each entry's title appears on the tile tag. This is sometimes overlooked.

Keywords

You should always use your keywords in the blog post titles and categories. You can also use many categories in one entry if appropriate.

RSS Feed

It is best that you have RSS subscription button available on your blog. This would be more convenient to your readers because it will publish your recently updated work. If your blog publisher don't have RSS automatically available, there are RSS feed button creation tool on the net. But make sure that you place it where the readers can easily see them. You can put it in your sidebar. It is already on the blog owner's prerogative if he/she wants to full or partial RSS.

Use Email

Because there are some people who are not familiar with RSS feeds, go the extra mile and offer them something else with the same benefits. I'm talking about You can have your blog post via email. Free tools are also available online to do this.

Compelling Introduction

Introduction about the blog post is sent out via RSS feed. Make sure that it is compelling to enough to make your readers want to have more of it so that they would click the “more” button and read the entire article. Therefore, it should be interesting.

Keywords-rich Anchor Texts

In placing links in other sites/blogs and even in putting internal links, make sure that you are using keyword-rich anchor text. Remember that it is always better to use your keywords than “click here” or “more”. It would benefit you when search engine spiders crawl your blog.

Keep Your Posts Bonded

If your blog post is somehow connected to your previous posts, link them to each other. The idea is that if your reader is interested in this particular topic, then he/she probably can also be entertained of a different story with the same subject matter. You can use Related Posts Plugin for this.

Do the same in other blogs. If you see a blog entry or an article on the same issue, make them knowledgeable of your existence by placing a link going to your post.

Purchase a Domain

We all know that blog hosting companies will only be around for such a time. Once they close their business, they will be closing your blog as well. If that happens, where will your loyal followers find you? Or there are change in the domain of your blog host, it will surely affect your rankings.

In case you have limited resources and can only settle to free hosting companies, look for those who offer to display your own domain rather than displaying their own like Wordpress and Blogger.

Proper URL Naming Convention

It is always a bad idea to use dynamic URLs whether on websites or blogs. You should always take advantage of any chance you have to use keywords, without keyword stuffing.

Good Navigation

If your blog is just a part of a website, it is not ebough that you a have a link going to your blog's main page. Use the sidebar to syndicate your new posts because the visitors of the website might get interested in your articles if they see the titles.

Fast Page Load

The amount of time involved for a page to load all depends on your host. There are some blogs that takes about half a minute just from the snippet of RSS feed to the full article. You can lose a lot of readers just because of this reason alone.

Moderated Trackbacks and Comments

Spammers are everywhere. They always find a way to abuse your blog by putting non-sense comments with links going to their website. It is annoying and it can also affect your rankings. There are numerous tools available online which you can use to moderate and avoid comment and trackbak spam.

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Blogging VS Free web hosting

Blogging Or free web hosting?

This is a very interesting concept to be writing on, both blogging and web hosting have pro's an cons. I will start with the pro's for blogging

blogging advantages

* very easy to set up

* Indexed in search engines fast

* extra easy traffic trough blog network

* easy to find partners for link exchange

* well written content management system

* premade layouts to pick from

Free web hosting advantages

* Build/download your own scripts and layouts

* detailed visitor statistics (Awstats,referrerlogs/rawlogs)

* Email lists and own email like admin@domain.com

* Looks more professional due harder to set up

* Free templates are available too you just need to know where to look

* Own banwidth control, database control.. basicly only what YOU want.

Well, blogging might be easy and all but setting up a free hosting account also has a lot of advantages, ofcourse it will be hard to get going at first. but once you find some ways to keep traffic comming It will turn out much better. from my expirience, conversion rates ( affiliate marketing, referrals ) are higher when you go for a free hosting account and even higher when you buy paid hosting, but thats not the topic here.
So do you suggest Free web hosting over blogging?

It totaly depends on what your goals are, If your goal is to entertain and inform, lets say you like to write about the movies youve seen. I would say a blog would be the best choice for you! you can set up a blog, pick a template and get started immediatly! But supose you want to promote products, other websites, special programs or even services it might be a better idea to build a free website.This is because money is involved. People tend to have less trust in blog sites just because anyone can set these up. I would trust a free website with referral links to get paid to sites more than a blog. How honest the user may be, does not really matter!

So this is my conclusion

Writing for entertainment, because you love it? blogging is your best choice!

Writing for financial gain or any sort of 'promotion' go for free web hosting!

Blogging, what I noticed

I noticed that getting found when you write a blog site seems to be far easier. You do not have to actively promote your blog for it to get visitors! I have three wordpress blogs, I never really promoted any of them and still I had about 10 000 visitors spread over these three blogs.

I also noticed that advertsing on blogs is harder then on a free web page. It might be because blogs are easy and fast to set up, and readers tend to look for specifc information written on blogs.

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Using Social Networks To Build Your Blog

Best And Worse Social Media Sites

1. Stay away from Yahoo Answers. I used to answer questions on the site. However, their system is terrible. A lot of automated spam bots post questions on the site. The commercial intent is virtually non existant. And worse of all, they will delete all of your answers and links if you promote your own blog or website in the link section. What kind of motivation will people have? You'll just get a bunch of time wasters if any people it all, using the site. I predict answers.yahoo.com will be out of business in the very near future. The system just expects to use peoples' time without any motivation or reciprocation.

2. Hub Pages rocks when you first start out optimizing your blog. The search engine crawl Hubs super fast. Not only do you get access to additional visitors through the hub network, it really helps build quality backlinks to your blog. Just remember to achieve over 75 on your hub score so your links are followed. Otherwise, they will be marked with no follow tags.

3. Sphinn is showing a ton of potential because of the hot topic feature. Their home page is marked with the hot topics and carries super page rank strength. Also, the search engines will pick up your blog when you post new sphinns. I also love reading the latest internet marketing news.

4. Ezinearticles - This is the monster site of article marketing. I used to subscribe to article submission services but dropped them. I find Ezinearticles.com offers enough value alone. They are also slowly transforming their website into a more web 2.0. friendly site. They offer a twitter plugin where your articles are tweeted the minute they are published live. I love it. I don't want to be a slave to Twitter. I want Twitter to work with me. Automation!

5. I am still working on Twitter. Its taking some time. I see a lot of people using as a spam board. I don't want to follow that. I am working on ways to setup contests and make it more valuable for my followers. My hunch is there is a viable marketing future with Twitter, they just need to stick to tranforming the network as they go along, which they have been. More tools also need to come out which help with automation. You'll never make money writing tweets 24 hours a day. There has to be a way to leverage the system while offering value, not through spamming with some bot, and not by sending one custom message after another to another follower.

6. Other Social Media - Every website caters to a different audience. There's more than a 1000 social media networks on the web. Find a handful of networks that target your audience, and get connected to that network.

Forced Marketing Versus Voluntary Marketing

When I started one of my first e-commerce sites, I tried to force people into reading my newsletter. It didn't go over so well. The conversion rates were virtually non existant. I realized I was making a huge mistake. So I reformed my thinking. I now allow people to opt in or out of emails they receive. I became aware of my mistake and became a better marketer. Often we unaware of the habits we carry out. We adopt them from people around us or other organizations. A lot of corporate companies try and strong arm the consumer.

Automate Twitter

This guy gives great tips on using Twitter. I even went so far as to link my ezinearticles.com account to twitter. Whenever one of my articles is published live, it automatically updates Twitter. I am even working on tools to help automate contests on Twitter. I am receiving a lot of great responses and interests in the contests.
How To Leverage Social Media By Repurposing Content

Picture your content caught up in the web of a network. You won't go far if you yourself get stuck in that web. In order to thrive, you need to use that web of social media networks to your advantage. So first, create 100% original unique content. Add your spin to the content. Then disitribute it across the web through various social media networks. You can rewrite versions of the content so each social media network receives a tailored piece. Your audience will read your content over and over even if there is just a few new tid bits or angles added. Just as long as its world class.

Create a Network Around Your Blog Content

Your blog content needs to be world class. Once you start turning out high quality though provoking material, you can start creating a network to distribute it. The blog will serve as the central hub for your posts. Then you can start adding tools like twitter, rss feeds, syndication networks, article submission etc

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Increase Your Blog Traffic

One of the most common complaints that I hear from bloggers is the fact that no matter how hard they try, they can’t grow their blogs past 110 or so daily page views. Those early days are indeed the hardest, because you need to put hard work in without the certainty of achieving results.

If you are in that same situation, here is a simple strategy that will certainly increase your blog traffic and make you break the 1,000 daily page views mark. In fact, the strategy could be used even if your are already over that number but have reached a traffic plateau lately.

Just make sure to execute the Four steps as planned and to spend the two hours and a half every day (obviously if you have more time available you can expand the time spent on each of the four steps proportionally).

First Step: Killer Articles (One hour per day)

Spend one hour brainstorming, researching and writing killer articles (also called linkbaits, pillar articles and so on).

Notice that your goal is to release one killer article every week. If that is not possible aim for one every 15 days. So the one hour that you will spend every day will be dedicated to the same piece. In other words, expect killers articles to take from 5 up to 10 hours of work.

If you are not familiar with the term, a killer article is nothing more than a long and structured article that has the goal of delivering a huge amount of value to potential visitors. If you have a web design blog, for example, you could write an article with “100 Free Resources for Designers”. Here are some ideas for killer articles:

* create a giant list of resources,
* write a detailed tutorial teaching people how to do something,
* find a solution for a common problem in your niche and write about it, or
* write a deep analysis on a topic where people have only talked superficially

When visitors come across your killer article, you want them to have the following reaction: “Holy crap! This is awesome. I better bookmark it. Heck, I better even mention this on my site and on my Twitter account, to let my readers and friends know about it.”

Second Step: Networking (Thirty minutes per day)

Networking is essential, especially when you are just getting started. The 30 minutes that you will dedicate to it every day could be split among:

* commenting on other blogs in your niche,
* linking to the posts of bloggers in your niche, and
* interacting with the bloggers in your niche via email, IM or Twitter.

Remember that your goal is to build genuine relationships, so don’t approach people just because you think they can help to promote your blog. Approach them because you respect their work and because you think the two of you could grow together.

Third Step: Promotion (Thirty minutes per day)

The first activity here is the promotion of your killer articles. Whenever you publish one of them, you should push it in any way you can. Examples include:

* letting the people in your network know about it (don’t beg for a link though),
* letting bloggers and webmasters in relevant niches know about it,
* getting some friends to submit the article to social bookmarking sites,
* getting some friends to Twitter the article, and
* posting about the article in online forums and/or newsgroups.

If there is time left, spend it with search engine optimization, social media marketing and activities to promote your blog as whole. Those can range from keyword research to promoting your blog on Facebook and guest blogging.

Fourth Step: Normal Posts (Thirty minutes per day)

Just like a man does not live by bread alone, a blog does not live by killer articles alone. Normal posts are the ones that you will publish routinely in your blog, between the killer articles. For example, you could publish a killer article every Monday and normal posts from Tuesday through Friday. Here are some ideas for normal posts:

* a post linking to an article on another blog and containing your opinion about it
* a post informing your readers about a news in your niche
* a post asking a question to your readers and aiming to initiate a discussion
* a post highlighting a new resource or trick that you discovered and that would be useful to your readers.

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How to increase your pagerank blog?

Six ways to increase your pagerank blog

Some people use pagerank as the measure of the favorites of the blog. The high pagerank means the blog get high rank in search engine. The blog with high rank is easy to find much money. You can monetize the high rank blog with link, paid to review and advertisement.

Unfortunately, increasing page rank is not easy work. You cannot increase pagerank in one night. You should be patience to do it. Pagerank is difficult for learning especially blogger who has no IT background. I think pagerank science like investment science that is difficult to predict. We cannot predict the stock movement precisely. You should know the Google keep the algorithm formula so the people could not manipulate the pagerank.

Although no one know the pagerank tips, we can learn by doing. Make some experiment to raise pagerank. You may receive or reject other blogger suggestion. I have some tips to increase the link. Perhaps you may try.

Build a great content

This is the ultimate way to raise your pagerank. Make great content with rich keywords that is easy and friendly with Google or Yahoo. People need a great content for increasing the knowledge. They will find you as an expert of certain niche.

Original Content

I write 75 pure articles in my own language. I never duplicate other content. In, three or six month, my pagerank has risen to three. Some blogger think put free articles or copy content in

Exchange link

You can ask link to you friend, neighbor, family blog link. It is difficult to link change with unknown blogger. I have asked some blogger to link exchange but they do not respond my request. Sometime, a blog cheat me. He promised me will put my link, and then I put the link. After one month, I could not see any link to my blog. Then I delete the link to his blog.

You should exchange link with same niche blog. For example, your blog is SEO blog, so you should exchange link with SEO blog.

Comment to other blog

Comment nicely to other blog. Do not ever spam other blog because it is not polite. The quality of your comment is important to boost your traffic. Do not make simple comment that makes people uninterested.

Buy link

If you cannot exchange link, you may buy link at adbrite, text link ads, backlinks, etc. Certainly, you should provide some bucks for it. Make sure you buy at trustable place that could bring your blog to higher rank.

Write great content for other blog

Some blog offers the writer writing at their blog. Off course, you can put the link that derived to your blog.

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How To Design Your Own Blogger Blog Layout

Custom Blogger Blog Layouts

If you want to make your blogger blog unique you need to know a little bit about HTML and CSS (cascading style sheets). If you don't know anything about these then the easiest way to customize your blogger blog is to use the page elements section add/remove elements and lay them out the way you want. With Google's drag and drop interface this is quite easy to do.

To further customize your blog you will need to go to your blogger blog and click on the layout tab. Next click "edit HTML" and you will see the full contents of your blog template. From this screen you can customize the look and feel of your blog by modifying the style sheet settings.

If you don't want to edit the HTML and create a template yourself you can do a quick search and find templates that you can download and upload to your blogger blog.

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Managing Multiple Blogs

It is not a surprise to see that there are many bloggers are able to manage multiple blogs at a time. Howver, not all of them are able to manage them successfully. There is often a comprise in quality of blog content to make up for the time spent in managing many blogs at a time.
Yet, there are also some bloggers who are able to keep their multiple blogs up to date and ensure a steady stream of visitors at the same time.

In this article, I'm going to share with you some key points to take note of, if you want to manage multiple successful blogs at the same time. They include, keeping your blog updated, making your content origninal, and limiting a certain amount of time that you spend on each blog.

The first factor that you must consider is to keep the contents of your blogs original rather than recycling them between your multiple blogs. It is crucial that your blogs each have their unique and original blog posts. This is because your readers will often browse through your blogs one by one and if your content is reused between your blogs, it will leave them with a bad impression and they may not return to view your blogs again.

The second tip for having multiple successful blogs is to make sure that all of them are updated regularly. You do not want your visitors to view a blog that is stagnant and not up-to-date. Even the most interesting or remarkable blog post can lose its charm if your readers are returning to your blog only to see the same old blog post.

It is unavoidable that finding the time to update multiple blogs can be a challenge. However, the trick is to limit your time spent on each blog so that you will spend too much time on one, and neglect the rest. You can start out by looking at the needs of each blog and allocating the time needed for updating that particular blog. Some blogs may require more time and effort each week to ensure that it functions properly while others do not.

There are blogs which require more research when you are writing them while others provide more of a mental catharsis where you express your thoughts and feelings on a certain topic. Plan out a timetable to assign each blog to certain period of the day where you can write best and take the time to evaluate your performance otherwise adjust your schedule until you are able to work at your maximum efficiency.

When dealing with multiple blogs, the most important thing is to manage your time wisely. Be sure to plan out your schedule properly so that you can devote sufficient attention and effort to each blog to ensure its success.

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Blog directory

Which Blog Directories Should You Submit Your Blog?

If you submit your blog to popular blog directories, you will not only add significant value to your blogging, but also get significant traffic from them. However, there are hundreds of blog directories available. It is a big challenge to find the most useful blog directories.

Bearing this in mind, I listed the top blog directories in terms of traffic and Google Pagerank. Submit your blog to these directories, and enjoy the ever increasing traffic.

* Technorati

* Blogarama

* Bloglines

* Syndic8

* Answers

* Blogdigger

* BlogExplosion

* The Truth Laid Bear

* Blogflux

* 2RSS.com

* Blogz

* BlogPulse

* Yahoo! RSS Submit

* WeBlogALot

Some of these blog directories need you to insert reciprocal links on your blog. In such a case, you can publish a “Links” post on your blog, setup the date as several months before, and place the links on it. Good luck!

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How To Place Photos Side By Side In Blogger

If you've probably been trying to get pics into your blogger posts in a side-by-side fashion, but couldn't quite figure out how to manage it. That's because the option isn't available in the control panel for some reason. If you want to place two photos side by side in blogger, you'll have to go into the HTML of the post itself (NOT the HTML of your template!), but don't worry, it's really very easy to do; you just need to host your image on a free image hosting site like Photobucket. You will, however, have to do insert the new code every time -- in other words, every time you want to create a post in blogger which has side by side pics. So let's get to the part about how you do it.

Step 1

Go to your Blogger dashboard

Step 2

Click on the Posting tab

(Clicking on the posting tab should automatically take you the Create Post section.)

Step 3

When you first open the Create Post section, it will automatically be in Compose mode. To view the HTML mode, you will want to click on the HTML tab, which is right beside the Compose tab. Both of these tabs are on the far right, just above the tool section.

Step 4

Once in the HTML section, you will want to use/paste the following code:



Don't forget to replace the "insert your jpg link here" here with your own link! See below for an example.

Step 5

This is the same code, but with img links included as an example.



Step 6

Once you've inserted your HTML code, you can check the images by clicking on the Compose tab. You can also use the Preview link, which is just below it.

Step 7

It's best to insert pics first and then write your blog post, because it can be very tricky to navigate the blog post HTML once you've started to write it.

Publish your post Successful!

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Building Backlinks To A Blog

How To Build Backlinks To Your Blog

While no one knows exactly what the formula for search engine rankings is, we do know that it has a lot to do with how many "votes" you have out there on the web. These votes are counted as backlinks. If you think about it, what do you when you find something you really like and want to share with others? You link to it! That's why the search engines count these so highly. While you should definitely aim to get to the point where others will link to you, it's possible to take things into your own hands for now.

Below are some of the top strategies you can use for building backlinks to increase the value of your blog in the eyes of the search engine.

Write Articles and Submit Them

Writing and submitting articles is a great way to build backlinks! There are sites out there like EzineArticles.com and GoArticles.com that allow you to post your content with a link back to your site. That means you get to have your link on authority sites! The more articles you write, the more you can submit them. The beauty of this is that you can often submit the same articles to different sites, or rewrite them quickly to have something that is more unique.

Comment on Other People's Blogs

It's a great thing to remember that a huge part of blogging is getting involved in the community. Commenting on other people's blogs will not only get you some recognition from their readers right away, it also counts as a backlink! Keep in might that some of these links are termed as "nofollow", which means the search engines may not pass along ranking or "juice." That's okay, because the algorithms are always changing, and since these links are so highly targeted they are a great thing.

Write Guest Posts

Writing guest posts for other niche blogs is an amazing strategy. People love to let you do this because it gives them a day off from blogging. Readers love it because they get a fresh perspective on a topic they are interested in. You'll love it because it means you get a link back to your site and all you had to do was write an extra post for the day Use Social Bookmarking Sites

Another thing you can do is bookmark your sites. Now, there are some rumblings out there that these won't count as highly in the future as they do now. Still, bookmarking your sites lets the search engines know "you are there" for fast indexing. If you take the time to make sure the sites you bookmark with are high quality, you'll get the benefit of those links as well.

Paying for Links

There are many different ways you can pay for links. It is important to know that Google and other search engines frown on this because it's like you're gaming their algorithm. Whether you choose to do this or not is up to you, but it can be an effective strategy if you don't go overboard and aren't obvious. You can contact people directly or even work through link exchange networks.

Learning how to build backlinks to your blog is extremely important if you want to rank well. Add a few links at a time and they will build up in a massive way over the long run. To Your Blogging Success

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What is and how to configure the RSS feed?

Probably many of the readers who have not signed the following RSS feed because it probably does not know very well to serve. The FeedBurner is a site that provides various tools to help optimize and disseminate the RSS of your site or blog. We suggest the FeedBurner as part of Google and be simple and intuitive to use.

How to use FeedBurner?

If you want to run a feed of the entire contents of your website or blog, first copy the link of your website and paste in the blank space that appears on the homepage logo of FeedBurner. Then, click Next and follow the instructions.

After being registered, you will have access to a wide range of tools that let you among many things, monitor daily the number of people who visit and read your RSS feed. For this option, go to the link MyFeeds of FeedBurner. If you click on the title of the feed will display a graph with the number of readers in the last 30 days. It also has the option available to 'See more about your subscribers' that allows you to view the type of RSS readers that your readers use, and traffic generated by them.

Optimizing the RSS Feed

Browser Friendly - You can enable this option that lets you improve the performance and display of content in RSS Feed browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Safari, etc..), And facilitates the entry of offering its visitors links to the readers of RSS most popular market.

SmartFeed - As the name suggests, this feature allows the easy way, that FeedBurner to automatically convert your RSS or Atom reader for your RSS feed reader that uses the default, thus ensuring maximum compatibility.

FeedFlare - This feature is very interesting, allowing the addition of links to the end of each post in your feed so that your users can send the same post by email, add it to del.icio.us, etc.. You can set up their own 'Flare', the instructions can be found in this link.

After optimization, you can put in the meter readers of your website / blog so simple and attractive.

The instantaneous and it is counting only the number of readers who visit regularly to feed. This value can vary daily, depending on the regularity of its readers.

Email Subscriptions - You can also activate this service, which lets you create a form for your readers to register to receive a daily email with new blog posts.

As you can see, the RSS feed is very interesting and allows a quick reading to their customers.

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Top Five Blog Directories For Web Traffic

When I first started blogging, I listed myself everywhere. They didn’t all of them do something for my traffic, but some of them did. I’m not entirely sure how they make money, these directories, but these are all free and will at least get you a few new visitors every now and then.

Note, in most cases, you will need to give them a link as well – if you don’t they might take you out of the directory.

So here they are:

* Blogflux

This one has brought me visitors more than any other, that I’m aware of. They have tons of listings, so go on and sign up. It’s very cool, because it shows you have many unique pageviews were sent to you via it. It’s a great way to determine if it’s getting you visitors. Lots of listings here, you can find cool stuff by browsing.

* iBlogbusiness

If you have a blog based on your business, or a blog-based business, this is the place for you. It’s very professional looking, which immediately inspires confidence. Listings are hand selected – which means you won’t see spammy links in there, or other crap that doesn’t belong in a business directory. Great directory, go for it.

* Technorati

It can drive traffic, but there is at least one other major reason to use it: They have a function called “Blogs that link here”. You can put this on your blog and anyone who clicks on it will see how much link love you have. The nice thing about this is the mob mentality that accompanies it – if you have a lot of links, of if someone cool and nifty links to you, you will seem more link worthy to whomever is checking you out. On the other hand, there are people who just trade links and don’t give a crap about quality, so don’t get too, too excited!

* Blogoozle

I really like this one. Maybe I’m just partial to red! It’s very nice and neatly organized, which always appeals to the girl in me. They have lots of subcategories too, so you don’t have to worry about trying to explain why you’re a little of this and a little of that. I recommend this one, for sure.

* BlogHub

Pretty good sized directory – 35,000 people can’t be wrong, eh? To be honest, it’s a little MySpaceish for my tastes, but that doesn’t mean it can’t work for you. It seems to perform best if you’re active in their community, so if you’re a social butterfly, this could be the thing for you!

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Make your blogger posts into podcasts!

I came across a tool which can convert you blog posts to podcasts!. As you may aware, you actually can listen to my blog posts. You just click the the button at the beginning of each post, and it will read the post to you. It actually does a very good job, and is the best text-to-audio reader I have ever heard, although not perfect, but the best I have heard.

If you have a blog, I suggest that you sign up to Odiogo and create a podcast automatically out of your posts. If not, you'll definitely be signing up soon.

To sign up to Odiogo is also very easy, you're even not asked to provide anything but your blog feed address and your email, yes, nothing else! Then if your blog feed passed the testing, only two or three click, done, your blogger blog posts has already converted to podcasts. Now you can listen to your posts.

Add Kontera ads on your blogger blog

Can I have both Adsense and Kontera ads on the same page in my website? Is it against TOS to add Kontera?

No, it's no against TOS, Both are fine as long as konterra doen't generate inline ads within the adsense ads.

One man allegedly from Kontera, says: "I wanted to mention that ContentLinksTM can be placed alongside Google Adsense and in fact, many publishers find the combination to be highly successful.

The advertisements differ in forms- Google provides relevant ads to the side of the content while our ContentLinksTM are within the text. For this reason, Kontera ads can be used as a supplemental ad service as well as a primary source of revenue."

To ad Kontera ads widget to your blogspot blog is also very easy. Kontera has created a special widget "Kontera It!" for Blogger, you may implement ContentLinkTM very quick and effortless.

What you need to do is to login to the Kontera Publisher Center, select the "ContentLink Setup" tab and click on the "Kontera it!" button. This will lead you to your blogger template editor, and add a widget on the side navigation bar, you may change its position by drag and drop. After finish, save it. ContentLinkTM ads will be distributed to all your blog's pages.

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Learn to Make Money Blogging

There are two main business models that bloggers use to make money blogging. The most common way to profit on your blog is to sell advertising to different companies and brands who looking to reach your audience demographics. The second way to money making blogging is to help a single brand improve its image by creating positive associations between the blog and the product in the mind of consumers. If the blogger implementing these methods has a good marketing mind then there can be some good money made and better yet a positive experience for the company.

If you are blogging with the goal of selling advertising,there are two basic ways that you can go about recruiting sponsors who want to put ads on your site; you can let someone else do all of the legwork, or you can do the work yourself and keep all of the revenue. Within the first group, many people make money blogging by selling space through Google’s AdSense program. The advantages of this program are numerous, as it requires very little effort on the part of the blogger or webmaster to begin raking in profits. However, most people discover that they make less money through this method than they had hoped that their blog would earn.

Selling advertising directly to companies who want to put banner ads or sponsored links on your blog can take quite a bit of time, but it is often fairly lucrative. If you have a lot of contacts in particular industries related to your topic, you may want stick to this industry. People who have a strong background in sales and are experienced at pitching proposals can make quite a bit of money by renting blog space to interested companies. The most serious problem with this model is that you often have to build quite a sizable readership before you can attract advertisers, which can mean that you have to do several months of work before you start to make money blogging.

Now that blogging has proved to be a lucritive opportunity many companies are now getting on the blogging bandwagon. One way that companies are capitalizing on the blog movement is by having blogs that provide a kind of friendly face for their corporation. Often, a company will employ an established blogger to create a weblog designed specifically to appeal to that company’s customers and to create positive associations with the brand in consumers’ minds. More than one writer who never even dreamed that he or she could make money blogging has been approached by a company and offered quite a pretty penny for this kind of gig.

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Website or Blog: Which is Better?

Website or Blog?

Websites and Blogs have some very different features and depending what your online goals are one may be better than the other; or you might want both. Here are the basic benefits of each one:

Websites

Websites are usually static in nature - meaning they do not change very often. A companies website may have information on products, services, staffing, and other general information about the company. They are generally not very interactive. Since they are mostly static there is a limited number of keyword phrases that can be indexed by the search engines. A website is an extension of the business and is a great branding tool.

Blog

A Blog can be much like a website but also a great deal more. Blogs are more interactive and accumulate a great deal of on-going content for search engines to index. There are an unlimited number of keyword phrases that your blog can be indexed for - over a period of time. This is the main advantage that Blogs have over a static website. Because Blogs are updated quite often with new content, your blog will be found with search terms that your static website would never be indexed under. Blogs also offer interaction with your readers and customers and they help to build your authority in the industry quicker than a static website. The one drawback of a blog is this: If you do not use it then you should not have one. Having a Blog that is dormant will have the opposite effect - it can actually hurt your credibility and authority.

If you have the discipline to post often in a blog then this is a great venue to build traffic for your main site.

Blogs can:

* Build Authority
* Create a Conversation
* Create Trust
* Search Engines favor Blogs over Static Websites
* Blogs can Increase PageRank for your Static Site (if connected)
* Blogs are more Interactive
* Blogs are Social Marketing Friendly
* Blogs are Web 2.0
* Blogs increase Sales - that is the bottom line

Is Blogging for you?

1. You must be dedicated to Blogging to make it work for you. If you do not take it seriously then nobody will take you or your business seriously - and this can hurt your online efforts.


2. Blogging does have a learning curve - but it is well worth the effort if you can take the time to learn the blogging platform of your choice.


3. If you have someone in your company that would enjoy the challenge of Blogging then make that person the official Blogger for your company.

4. Know your strengths and play to them - outsource what you cannot handle.

Blogging is not for everyone but it can have vast rewards and greatly impact the companies bottom line if done right.

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How To Give Blogger Blog A Professional
Look Through Templates

Blogger The Platform

Blogger is a very popular platform from Google and has been the entry point for many in the arena of blogging. Blogger provides a free way to start blogging. And it is very easy to get started. Simply get registered and start blogging. One of the first things that a blogger wants to do is to give his blog an attractive look. Although blogger comes with some ready to use templates, more often than not bloggers want to give their blog a sassy look.


Give Your Blog A Professional Look

Blogger has evolved over time. I have seen many blogs hosted on blogger which can give many websites a run for their money and looks. This blogging platform allows you to customize every aspect of your blog.There are many websites which provide professional looking blogger templates for free. Just Google the term free blogger template and you will see the tons of sites offering blogger templates free of charge. Some blogger templates are html based but more polular are the XML based ones. Some websites even offer beautiful wordpress themes converted for blogger.

These sites allow you to download the template and update your blogger template. Although the process is very smooth and even a non-techie person can do the basics of updating the blogger template, there are times the things go wrong while updating the template and it becomes almost impossible to revert to old one. Here are a few things that I have learnt while updating blogger. These small steps go a long way in making your blogging experience smooth.

Backup Old Template

I know it has become a cliche to say so. But this step is very essential and people often overlook it. Things can go wrong anytime when updating blogger template. Sometimes you may get a cryptic error message that something wrong happened and so your template could not be updated. That is why before going for updating the template, it is very essential that you save a backup of the existing template so that you can revert back and start over if things go wrong.

To do so go to Blogger Dashboard -> Layout -> Edit HTML

There you will find the Download Full Template link. Click on it to save the template.

Update The Image URLs Used In Blogger Template

You will often notice that goodlooking templates often use images for certain elements of blog. For instance, there may be a header image and an image to be displayed on sidebar. These images are fetched from template author's website or hosting space. There is a glitch. Suppose, the blogger template you are going to use is very popular and is going to be used by many bloggers all of them fetching same images from the same hosting site. There will obviously be a bandwidth problem. One fine day, you may find that content is there on your blog but the images are not there, because the bandwidth exceeded the limit.

To avoid this situation, find out which images are used. You can find this out easily. Simply open the template in wordpad and find the url(...) tags. There between brackets, is the url of the images the blogger template is fetching. Simply copy the url and copy it in a new tab and press enter. You will get the image. Download the image to a folder on your computer. Do this with all the images. Now find a image hosting site. There are plenty. Photobucket being one of the very popular one. Upload all your images to the image hosting site.



Update The Blogger Template

After you have uploaded the images, go again to the template code in the wordpad and replace the old url references with the new ones. Now your blog will fetch the images from your own hosting space.

Now you can update the blogger template and should the things go wrong you can always revert and start from the scratch.

Learn HTML And CSS

HTML and CSS are the bones of whether it be a blog or a full-fledged website. And knowing HTML and CSS gives you a definitive advantage when you go for customizing the blogger templates or tweaking them. You are not required to be a geek but HTML and CSS are something which cannot be ignored.

Link Back to the author

It takes time and effort of the author to create a blogger template and if the template is available for free generally there is a link at the bottom of the template pointing to the author's website.

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Secrets To Getting Unique Content For Your Blog

All successful blogs and websites have one thing in common: great content. Content is the key to building an audience online and you might have wondered how the successful sites manage to continue filling their site with the kind of content that keeps their readers coming back. It’s easy to come up with compelling content about the things which you’re knowledgeable or excited about, but this alone may not be enough to sustain new, well written content week after week. Of course, it can also take a lot of time to write all of the material your site will need. So how do these other sites keep it up? Do they have some sort of secret weapon you don’t know about?

The best way would be to provide the content yourself, and this is of utmost importance if your goal is to try to create traffic to an affiliated link. You’ll definitely want to sell the idea about the services and products beforehand. What that will do is set the stage or the “mood” and give your recommendations authenticity.

You can write reviews including personal anecdotes about the product or service. These are a good way to personalize your content and make your audience more likely to trust your recommendations about products.

The fact is that a lot of us just don’t have enough hours in the day to keep writing enough new content to keep our websites regularly updated. If you have this problem yourself, then you can examine using private label articles instead. These articles can be purchased and if you’d like to get the maximum use out of this material, you can split them into pieces and make a few articles out of one.

Utilizing RSS feeds to post on blogs is becoming very popular, although not everyone is familiar or willing to learn about RSS feeds. The advantage to an RSS feed is that your blog is automatically updated with fresh news and content. The disadvantage is that it is not unique content and that anybody interested in the feed will likely click out on a story that appeals to them.

However, it’s always best to write all your content yourself if possible. One way to get ideas for new content is to read through news sites which are relevant to your industry and write posts or articles which summarize the news items which will be of interest to your readers. It can take some time to get the hang of creating new content from other sites, but with a little practice, this can make for good content for your readers. This can help you be seen as a source of good information to your readers. If you don’t feel like your writing skills are equal to the job, then you may want to consider hiring someone to write content for you. You can use some of the blog writing services which create new, unique content for your site on the topics you specify. Having good content written by professionals will increase the credibility of your site and give you more traffic - something which is more than worth the cost of hiring a writing service.

If you’re looking to get more content for your blog or site, doing it yourself or hiring a professional to write it for you is the best way to go. Using programs to automate content creation for you isn’t going to get you results - since your content needs to be interesting and readable to your audience. Like they say, garbage in, garbage out.

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5 Steps to Start Successful Blogging

I share with you the Five steps to take, to get started blogging!

1. Pick a topic

Remember that in order to have a successful blog, you need to have a good readership. People like to read blogs that are focused, on one single topic. Pick a topic you are interested to share with people about. Is it tennis or golf or hockey, or computer tips, or creativity or stress management? Decide on one. Just one.

2. Get started with Blogger

The next step is to quickly get started with the blog already! Getting started with the blog is the simplest step! Just head on to Blogger.com, and follow the steps. You can get started in less than 10 minutes! Do your best to pick a URL that is consistent with your blog topic.

3. Start your first few posts

Start writing a post a day, don’t worry about marketing your blog yet. Really, explore different writing styles, try writing at different times of the day. Make sure your blog is at least a week old with at least 5 - 10 posts before you start to decide to market your blog. Many blogs don’t even get past this stage.

4. Market your blog

When you have more or less got comfortable with writing on your blog, then its time to market your blog. This way, when the visitors come, at least they have a short archive to read rather than one pathetic post! You can market your blog in different ways, and the best way I’ve found is to go around finding blogs in the same topic and start posting your valuable comments on their posts! Strive to add value, don’t spam.

5. Keep updating

Keep updating your blog on a regular basis, respond to comments. As you start to write, you will start to write better, and slowly you will start to create a writing personality. At the same time, keep up with the marketing, keep surfing around for blogs and commenting. Also observe how people craft their posts, and do your best to write better posts that would entice comments. Soon, you will find reader coming back everyday for updates!

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