Blogger And WordPress

Most people do not start out with a paid host and a paid domain. Blogger and WordPress have given even the most un-savvy Internet users a way to put their content on the web. The problem with Blogger and WordPress is actually universal to all free plans. You do not get a domain. You get a sub-domain. For instance, let’s say that you do have a Blogger account. Your domain is going to be “domain.blogger.com.” The domain is a sub-domain of Blogger. This is the same with WordPress, Yola or any other free site. Can you still rank in the search engines? Yes. Will it hurt your ranking? Yes. When you pay for a domain, you own the domain and your can have keywords attached. This is more recognizable to the search engines and will help you rank faster.

Monitoring

When you go with free hosting, you might not have all of the features of a paid host. Let’s take WordPress as an example. WordPress is one of the biggest platforms on the Internet. It’s used for sales pages, landing pages and one sheets for millions of products online. But when you are using a sub-domain of WordPress you do not have the ability to install plug-ins. Blogger doesn’t allow you to use WordPress if your blog is adult oriented. These are the consequences of using a free domain and free hosting. When you pay for a host and pay for a domain, you own the domain and you pay for the features of your package. Again, if you’re just starting out, features might not be what you’re looking for. You might want to gain a following before you opt in for a hosting package.

Ads

Free hosting is notorious for putting their own ads on your website. If you’re going for a free package, you should be aware of this. Your web page’s ad space should be utilized for products, RSS feeds or Adsense. Not an ad for your package. When you pay for a package, you don’t have to put an ad on your page. Placing an ad on a free package is the host’s way of making up for the fact that you aren’t paying for their service. The fact of the matter is that hosting doesn’t have to cost you an arm and a leg. You can easily find an affordable host like HostGator for very little money. Consider this when you are determining your packages.

Customer Perspective

The customer or reader on your blog is why you have a blog or website in the first place. When you are trying to establish yourself to the reader, it’s important to realize how they will see you. Will they see you as a professional who is paying for premium web hosting and a great domain? Or will they see you as an amateur who is using free services? Your domain is key. When they see that your site is a sub-domain, they could instantly be turned off. The same goes for free web-hosting advertisements. These are a dead give away that you’re not serious about your website.

Bandwidth Caps

The bandwidth on your website is essential for handling traffic. Free web hosting is going to have a bandwidth cap on your site. This means that even if your site takes off, you will not be able to handle the amount of users who want to visit your site. Upgrading to a hosting package increases the amount of users you can have visit your site in a given day or month. Upgrades can be implemented when needed and you probably won’t notice bandwidth caps when you first start out. Consider a hosting package if you’re getting a lot of traffic.

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Today what we are talking about is the old Google slap. One day your site is ranked number one or at least on the first page for a Google term and then seemingly overnight, or within just a few days, you are ranked 1,001. You are like “what happened, what did I do wrong?” Don’t panic we’ll talk about some of the main reasons why Google may ban your search engine marketing campaign, and how you can correct it.

Google Won’t Tell You Why

We speak from experience on this topic because it has happened to us before. You hear about other people but when it happens to you it is a little more personal and far far less delightful. Anyways, assessing the problem; what the heck just happened, unfortunately you are SOL because Google is not going to tell you the exact cause. They are not going to tell you, “well you change this on that page and all of a sudden you are not really number one anymore however if you were to change it like that all of a sudden you would be number one again.” Easy huh? They are not going to tell you anything like that.

They do however have, and we did an article on this – if haven’t already be sure you read it, Google Webmasters tools. Be familiar with that, it is your way to know at least some stuff on how Google looks at your site. They have a form in there that you can submit to say “what’s up? I got nothing wrong I don’t think. Help me out, I am not violating any terms of use.” You may or may not get any response from them and if you do you will usually get something vague like “your site is violating their terms of use.”

So be sure to read all of that stuff before you submit the stuff and make sure you are not if violation of that stuff. Definitely read their Webmaster guidelines very closely. If you do get a response from the form they may tell you your homepage is in violation or something and it is really tough to know exactly what they mean and what exactly is in violation but do you very best, make sure you are following those guidelines to the letter – no exceptions.

Use Google Webmaster Tools

Use Webmaster tools to track your keyword rankings. They tell you what your keywords rank and show you nice pretty graphs, and sometimes they drop – not a good thing – but you want to keep watching it. You want to know what is going on the Google front and how they see your site. Keep in mind the change in page rank could be just a blimp, they could be just tweaking stuff and changing gears like one of those semis changing gears. And actually we have seen our page rank drop before it moved up two points so don’t overreact about page rank changes.

It is like public companies verses private companies. The latter can focus on strategic as much as possible and be patient. In our experience if you are penalized by Google it can take as much as a year to get back to it. Which begs the questions: are you in it just to make a quick buck? You started it today and you want it to be successful in 6 months or it isn’t worth it to you? Then maybe it is time to do something else, start another site, whatever. But if you are in it for the long hull, be in it for the long hull, be the best you can be at it.

Understand the Rules

It’s best for you to familiarize yourself with their’s rules before you even start building a blog. Google will often ban or penalize your website without even giving a warning, and it may take a lot of online business owners a while to even realize that they aren’t coming up on the search engine. Usually it’s when businesses notice a dramatic drop in their customer base that they start digging into it further, and realize that they are no longer coming up in search results.

No Black Hat

Don’t engage in black hat marketing tactics, no link triangles, no buying text links on other people sites. They will catch on to that stuff. Also, make sure that you have fresh content on your website regularly and just keep building your brand. That is what you got to do, keep building your brand and eventually Google will come back around.

We kind of go back to this every time when we talk about how to get Google and the search engines to notice you. They are spending billions of dollars to weed out the crap from the useful stuff. Every now and then when the change you may get flagged along with the crap even though your stuff’s not crap but if you keep building your brand and doing the right stuff and good stuff and more people link to you eventually they are figure out “not crap, let’s put them back in.” So, are you in it for the long run and do you really mean it? And if so you probably want to keep going with it. So what are you going to do, you have assessed it now you are going to track your results – you are gonna try to fix it.

CPC – Cost Per Click

Arguably the most popular way of advertising online, CPC (also known as cost per click) advertising is virtually every where. Chances are that you have performed a “cost per click” action and not even realized it.

CPC-based advertising is a method which allows businesses to pay only for the targeted leads that they receive. With this method, your advertisement would be displayed in the same way as a CPM (or cost per 1000 impressions), but there is a difference. With CPC, you are protected by only paying for each click that your advertised link receives. You will not have to pay for thousands of impressions that are uselessly displayed, as with CPM.

You can use banner advertising with CPM. With banner advertisements, your advertisement will display, and every time your banner is clicked by an end user, you will pay the specified cost for that banner ad. That advertisement will then run until you have reached your predetermined amount of clicks. This means that you may receive a lot more exposure than you would using other advertising methods, because the length of time your ad is visible on the internet is based solely on how many clicks it has received.

TIP: If you are interested in CPC, a great program to use is Google AdWords. AdWords will allow you to pick the keywords that you want to use and you will only have to pay for as many clicks as you can afford. Unlike a lot of other sites, you will not have to pay for a campaign since you can set an actual limit on the amount of money you have in your budget to spend on this type of advertising.

CPM – Cost Per Thousand Impressions

CPM, also known as “cost per thousand impressions” is a very effective way of improving your conversions by reaching potential customers on the web. Rather than paying “per click” with CPM you can purchase a set amount of impressions that your blog will have.

NOTE: An impression is a single instance of an advertisement appearing on your website or blog.

CPM tends to be a more cost effective way to advertise when compared to CPC, or “cost per click”. For example, if you chose CPC advertising, you would pay for each click that your advertisement receives. So let’s say that you are spending $1 for each click, meaning that ten clicks will cost you $10. In a CPM-based advertising campaign, you may pay only $3 for 1000 impressions. So if your advertisement receives a click through ratio of just 1% you would then be paying $3 for the same 10 clicks.

One thing to bear in mind when it comes to CPM is that text-based ads tend to receive a lot more attention than banner ads, which most internet users tend to completely ignore at this point. CPM-based advertising is also a great idea for any company that has popular and/or very expensive keywords.

CPL – Cost Per Lead

Cost per lead is one of the less common ways of making money through blogging and advertising, but it is still one that is used by a lot of bloggers. CPL is the calculation of the actual cost that is incurred in successfully acquiring a valid lead. Leads are typically generated in several different ways, which include the gathering of information.

Let’s say that a website visitor submits their email address after doing a survey or they register for an offer and provide their contact information and possibly their demographic information. This will then be counted as a “lead”.

NOTE: PPL, or pay per lead, is different from CPL. PPL refers to the actual model in acquiring a valid lead, while CPL is the actual cost that one will incur for successfully acquiring a valid lead.

CPL is a great option for the budget conscious blogger, especially during these trying economic times. With CPL advertising, you are able to generate guaranteed returns on your online advertising dollars.

TIP: CPL is also often referred to as “online lead generation”.

CPS – Cost Per Sale

What really draws other bloggers to cost per sale marketing is that this strategy is low-risk and high profit. It’s also a great way of reaching an unlimited amount of prospects over the web.

Cost per sale is a great new way of marketing which doesn’t involve risky and expensive methods of marketing such as print ads, television ads and direct mail campaigns. With cost per sale marketing, the company that is selling the product or the service will pay the publisher or the marketer only when a product or a service has been sold (the CPL model is also often referred to as “revenue share” or as an “affiliate relationship”). These models work best for customers that are not willing to take a risk or who have a very, very small marketing or advertising budget.

The one downside to this method of marketing is that, when compared to either CPC or CPL models, the cost that the vendor incurs can be quite a bit higher per conversion, and the contract terms that one must agree to are longer. Most CPS marketing models are best for e-commerce websites

Which Way is Best for Me to Make Money?

The type of advertising for you to use for your blog to generate revenue truly depends on two things: your budget, and how much you need to sell. Methods such a CPS are great for those with a low budget, but if you want a lot of exposure than CPC is probably your best bet.

How Is SEM Different From SEO?

Search engine marketing is not SEO, but SEO is a part of SEM. When you are optimizing your blog from Google, Bing, Yahoo, AOL or any other search engine, you are hoping that somebody will see your site or blog in the search engine results page and click on the link. When they click the link, they are taken to your site. This is a very easy concept to understand because you probably do it yourself every day. But what if you wanted to pay for your site to be advertised on the search engines? Many bloggers use Adsense as a way to boost some of the income to their websites. These are ads placed on the sides of the search engine results. If you type something into Google right now you will see “Sponsored Ads” on the right side of the window. If you wanted to advertise your site on the search engine, you can set up and advertisement campaign to include your site as the link on the advertisement. This is called Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC).

PPC/CPC

Pay Per Click and Cost Per Click advertising is the same thing. The basic concept is that you will pay to have your blog or website advertised on the search engines via a keyword search. So let’s say that you run a web site that has to do with weight loss. You aren’t getting the traffic that you want so you decide to invest in a PPC or CPC advertising campaign. You go to the Adwords website and you set up your account. Then you start to choose the keywords that are applicable to your website. These could be “weight loss,” “weight loss strategies” and “weight loss programs.” Weight loss is a highly competitive niche so you are going to pay a lot per keyword. When you use this service you will have to pay a specified amount of money each time your advertisement is clicked on the ads page of the search engine.

PPC For Products

One of the best ways to sell a product through SEM is to have your link embedded in the advertisement and then have the link go to your blog. Your blog should have a review of the product to entice the reader and get them to buy it. We’ll use the weight loss model again. Let’s say that your website is selling a weight loss program. So you use a PPC campaign to advertise a weight loss model. When a reader clicks on your ad, they are directed to the review of the weight loss product on your blog. Sounds simple enough, right? Once the reader has read through the review, they decide that they want the program and they buy it through your site. Now you have used a PPC campaign to sell a product.

Is SEM Better Than SEO?

There are a lot of benefits to SEM, but there are also a lot of benefits to SEO. When you’re paying for a PPC advertising campaign, you are buying traffic to your site. So not only will you be bringing in targeted visitors, you are getting traffic to the site to help with your rankings. PPC can bring traffic to your site immediately where as SEO is going to take months or years to take effect. When you are looking for a fast way to get traffic and targeted visitors, SEM can be a solution. The problem is that you have to pay for it. With SEO, you simply optimize your site and wait for the traffic to come in. The bad thing about SEO is that it will take a long time for your to rise in the ranks unless you are releasing a much needed product or information to the public. SEM is fast and can be extremely cheap depending on your niche.

Tweets offer its users 140 characters of space, and they can be sent from a user’s computer or their cell phone. It’s a quick and easy way to communicate with people that you know as well as with people who you have yet to know, which means it is a great way to promote your blog or products to cyberspace. When you create a “tweet”, your message is then posted on a large bulletin blog in a cloud. This bulletin is called a “live stream”, and anyone can read it.

Sure, you can post links to your blog and to your landing pages with a short explanation of what it is, but let’s face it; every business owner is doing this. It becomes rather bland and boring to most, so they will simply ignore it on the live stream. So what can you do to get your share of attention from followers and non-followers alike?

One of the best ways to get attention in the Twittersphere is to create a bit of controversy.

A lot of celebrities use this method. They may engage in some sort of a “Tweet war” with another celebrity, calling them out or insulting them on their dress or behavior. These tweets undoubtedly are then published on entertainment and gossip sites.

Another example is that of Shama Kabani. Kabani is a well-respected social media consultant who has been on Twitter since the very beginning. She then decided to unfollow all of her followers in one swift and bold move.

Twitter Works

As mentioned above, Twitter is a tool that will allow you to type up anything you want in 140 characters or less. You can tell people:

- What you’re doing
- What’s on your mind
- Post a link to something that you find to be of some importance

From there, you will then get one of two different responses:

a) Someone will read your Tweet and learn more about you
b) Someone will read your Tweet and then either reply to it or “retweet” it to their followers

How to Gain Followers

There are a few different ways in which you can try to gain followers on Twitter. We will start with the first:

1. Follow People Organically

If you have never used Twitter before, you may be wanting to get some followers, and fast. This may actually be detrimental to your success as using Twitter as a controversy-inducing tool. Just begin by searching for people that you know ‘in real life’ and follow them. From there, you will gradually come across others who have your same interests and values. Follow them.

Remember: it’s all about the quality of your followers, and not the quantity. If you are going for quantity, then you will end up with a list of “bots” as followers who will be of absolutely no value to you or your business!

2. Follow People who Talk

As a new user to Twitter, you may just be writing out status updates or sending out links to things of interest. In turn, you probably are reading other peoples’ status updates and checking out their links as well. But once you get more comfortable, you may want to start having Tweeting conversations with others.

The best way to do this is to follow people who are already talking on Twitter. If you click on a person’s profile, check out their stream. If you see anyone with a lot of @replies, then you know that they like to talk on Twitter. Follow these people.

3. Keep Twitter Clean

As much as you may want to post tons of links and conversations on Twitter, you will want to keep it fairly uncluttered. Check into some of the many websites that are out there that will be able to tell you who is following you, and who is not following you in return. In a month or so, you can easily unfollow anyone who isn’t bothering to follow you.

TIP: Before you unfollow anyone, just send them a quick and easy @reply in response to one of their most recent tweets. If you don’t get a reply after a day or so, then go ahead and unfollow them.

When someone follows you, act fast. Check out their profile and their twitter stream, and quickly decide if there is any potential interest. If there is, follow them right away.

4. Go for Anyone with a Face Photo

Don’t bother following celebrities – they will be of no use to you. You want to be following real people with real faces on the web (this means that if someone has a picture of a cat or a flower on their profile, you should move right along). Check out their profile page and read through their little bio.

Using Controversy to your Advantage

Now it’s time to start tweeting about some controversial matter, something that will get people talking. You may have a particular opinion on a product or something that is in the media. If you do, post about it! Make sure that any tweets that you leave are not insulting or hateful, but write in such a way that your opinion is clearly shown. Now wait for someone to reply.

Once someone replies, make sure that you tweet a reply back right away in support of your side of the “argument”. Then, the other party will most likely reply back. Then another person may throw in their two cents. This creates a “tennis ball” effect. The more people that join in on the conversation, the more attention it will get, and the more people you will be seen by. This will help you gather more followers.

TIP: You will need to come up with a creative way to use the controversial topic to the advantage of your blog or product. Say, for example, you have a blog that is about natural sweeteners and you want to talk about how artificial sweeteners are bad for your health. You can post a tweet about how artificial sweeteners in “diet” products actually make people gain weight rather than lose weight.

Social Media Marketing is all about getting your fans to share and promote your product or content.  Think of it kind of like having email subscribers, or an email list in real time.  You’re able to stay in touch with your customers at a very low cost.  Your motto should be “the more subscribers, the better.”

Using Facebook

The first one, Facebook, it started out as just a little website for college friends to connect, but we all know it has gotten much, much, much bigger than that. Then they rolled out something called pages where you can actually set up a page for your business. The reason that we recommend that you do not set up a personal Facebook page for your blog or business is because you can only have like 5,000 friends if you do that. Pages allow you to have unlimited amounts of followers so set up a page for your blog.  We will get into how to use those tools a little later in another video.

Twitter Magic

Twitter, less bells and whistles, is limited to 140 characters of text, and even more real time. Think of it this way, A lot of people say “should I be on Facebook? Should I be on Twitter?”  It’s a no brainer, yes, because some people like Twitter, some people like Facebook. Guess what, do you not like the Facebook folks? Do you like the Twitter folks? You like both of them and you want them to like you, you got to be in both places. You are going to have to post more often on Twitter if you want to build a following because there is a lot more noise going on.

You can make short announcements about new products and special offers on Twitter.  Use the Twitter search tool or tools like “Twiends” to locate people with interests or a business similar to yours, and follow them.  Chances are they will follow you too, and if you make your tweets engaging and beneficial to the public, they will retweet your tweets.  This again means that you and your blog will get more and more traffic, which of course means that you may be seeing an increase in ad or affiliate revenue very soon.

New Kid on the Block: Google +

A new player in the game is Google +, they came out in about the summer of 2011. There was a lot of excitement and a lot of hype in a typical Google fashion.  They came out in beta and rolled to the general public.  The interest is there again, but the jury is still out if they can catch up with Facebook, so pay attention to that one. You want to create an account on there but don’t put all your eggs there just yet. It will be interesting to see where it goes now that anyone can create an account there.

Social Media Marketing vs. Traditional Marketing

There are quite a few differences between social media marketing and traditional marketing. Traditional marketing would be television and print ads, for example, which simply advertise your business or product and may give a brief description of what you or it is all about. Social media marketing, on the other hand, should always give your customers something of value and be personable. If you have nothing of value to offer, then they won’t waste their time talking to you about it.

You need to also have a real human voice when you interact on any social media platform. If you sound too sales-pitchy and are only promoting your product, then people are going to unfriend, unfollow and completely remove you from any social media lists. Interact with people just as you would online. You can use smiley emoticons and even some internet jargon, such as “LOL” and “TTYL”. Keep it casual – just make sure that you don’t keep it too casual. Be courteous, polite, and always reply to anyone who comments or asks questions either about you or your business.

Putting it All Together

If you’re new to social media, you may be wondering where to start. The best way to do this is to start with a blog. A blog gives you a good opportunity to introduce not only your company and the products that you sell, but it also gives you a chance to introduce yourself to the online world. Your blog is just as much about you as it is about your business, so it’s important that you keep your blog personable. Once you have written abut yourself and your business, start writing up blogs that are related to your products and business. Start posting things about yourself and your every day life that people may find entertaining (pets and children are a great place to start). Showcase your products on your blog, while also sharing things and news clips that you find funny. This will give readers the clear message that not your blog isn’t only for promotional purposes; it also shows who you are as well.

Once you’ve got your blog going, you can then open it up to all of the other social media outlets out there. You can open up your very own Facebook profile page, and then open up a “group” page for your blog as well. Encourage friends and family to join the group. Once they join, it will show up in the newsfeeds of their other friend and family who may not be on your “friends” list, thus increasing your exposure. Keep your Facebook group page updated regularly with your blog posts, and always provide a link back to your blog.

There are a lot of different ways that you can approach social media, and depending on your business, you may want to start off with Facebook or Twitter. The important thing is to make sure that you link up all of your social media accounts so that they direct customers back to your blog or website where they can find out even more information about your company.

You may be thinking, “But isn’t my Twitter account enough?” No. With Facebook being more popular than Google as well as the number one ranked site in several countries, you need to take advantage of the 400 million users that are on the site. We will start with how to create the page itself to how to find more fans so you can promote, promote, promote!

Step 1: Creating a Facebook Page

If you don’t have an account yet, then get one. It’s quick and easy to create. Once you have your very own account, you can then find the “Ads and Pages” link on the sidebar of your Profile.

NOTE: A lot of users have found that this link seems to be mysteriously missing, but you can still access the “Ads and Pages” link from this URL: https://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php .

Step 2: Select your Page Type

It has fortunately offered a load of different pages types that you can choose from. Most bloggers will probably want to choose the “Brand, Products or Organization” option, and then scroll down to the very bottom of the drop down available to find “website”. From there, you will be able to give your website a new name. It’s always best to go with the name of your website so that users can quickly and easily associate it with your site.

After you are finished setting up the site, make sure that you tick the box that will authorize you as the representative for your own blog. Then all you have to do is click “Create Official Page”.

Step 3: Customizing your Page

So it may look a bit empty at first. You can easily start fixing it up to make your page more exciting. For an image, make sure that you add either your website’s logo, or a picture of yourself. Using a picture of yourself will make the page more personal, but if you want to brand your site more than brand yourself, use the logo.

You will also need to add a short little blurb about your blog. Make it short yet descriptive so that users will know exactly what they’ll be in for when they visit your blog.

Step 4: Using the FMBL App

Congrats! You should now have a fairly well set up Facebook page that is almost ready for fans. You will find that in the sidebar an “Edit” tab. Click this tab, and then scroll to the bottom of the page to find more applications. Click on “Browse More” and then choose the “Static FMBL” app.

TIP: You may need to conduct your own search for this application. You can easily do this by typing “Static FBML by Facebook” in the application search box.

Once you have obtained the app, then all you have to do at this point is click on the “Add to my Page” link at the upper left hand side. You may receive a popup too; make sure you select on the popup that you would like to add this app.

Step 5: Setting up the FBML Application

Once you have added the FBML application to your Facebook page, make sure that you go back to your page. Once there, click on the “edit” tab and then scroll right on down until you find the “FBML Static” app. Click on the “Application Settings” and then swap the default settings so that you have removed the ‘box’ and then added the ‘Tab’. This will enable you to create a new tabbed page as your Facebook landing page.

Step 6: Adding the Coding for your Facebook Landing Page

You can now start to fully customize your landing page. You may first want to change the box title. An easy box title you may want to have is “Welcome”, simply because this is the very first page that any visitor is going to see. You can then insert the code that you want to display. The coding can be as advanced or as basic as you see fit. You can start with having it be just one image that will redirect visitors to your blog or to an offer that you are making online.

Step 7: Set Up your Landing Page

Click back over to the edit screen again. Find the “Wall settings” and then click on the “Edit” link. This will expand the box. From the second drop down menu you will now be able to find your brand new landing page by the name that you gave it (in this case, it would be “Welcome”). You can then change some permission settings, such as whether or not you will allow visitors to write on your wall, post links, post photos or post videos.

TIP: You may want to disallow anyone from posting links or photos or videos to external sources. This is your page, after all, so the focus should be on your blog and not on whatever the visitors are posting.

Step 8: Promoting your Facebook Page

The best and easiest way to start promoting your page is to “like” your page and become a fan. This way it will be automatically added to all of your friends’ feeds, and you will definitely have a few fans by the end of the day.

Once you have done this, it’s time to hunt down some new fans. You will want to post about your new page on Facebook to bring awareness to it. You will want to add the link to your Twitter account. You can also find apps online that will help you find Facebook members who you can add as a “Friend” who may have an interest in your blog!

1) Add This

Add This is a plug-in that allows you to share your content to over 330 of the most popular social networking sites on the Internet. Add this shows up on your site as a widget on the sidebar with one master button. When your visitors come to your blog, they will be able to share your content with all of their friends on a social networking site through the Add This button on your site. Add This also allows people to sign up for a free account so they can get stats on the content that is visited the most and what sites their articles and blog posts are being sent to.

2) All In One SEO Pack

Search Engine Optimization is the number one way to get traffic to your blog. If you don’t know anything about SEO then you might want to invest in the All In One SEO Pack. This WordPress plug-in is one of the best for configuring your site for the search engines. The All In One SEO Pack comes with Google Analytics support, integration with WordPress ecommerce sites, and support for other CMS-style WordPress installations. You can tune up your pages and the navigational links as well as construct canonical URLs. If you’re a beginner you don’t have to worry. Once installed, this plug-in has an excellent interface that is very user friendly.

3) Simple Tags

Do you spend hours looking at the Google Adwords tool to help you find tags for your blog posts? If so, you need Simple Tags. Simple Tags gives you a very easy way to find the best tags for your posts. Search engines use your tags to determine the relevancy of your posts and articles. If you don’t have the best tags on your posts then you will be passed up for your competition. If you have highly competitive tags you will also find it hard to compete. Use Simple Tags to find the best tags for your posts.

4) Automatic SEO Links

Automatic SEO Links is a great plug-in that allows you to choose a phrase or a word for automatic linking on your website. You can set this up for the internal and the external links for your blog so you don’t have to go through hours of linking again. You can also set up the anchor texts for your links and choose “nofollow” if you want to. Other plug-ins run the risk of text spamming, but Automatic SEO Links will allow you to set this up for first word in your post. This means that you won’t overload your post with links.

5) Redirection

How many times have you had to move a page on your blog to another place? If you have ever done this you know how much traffic you lose after the move. Redirection allows you to easily set up your 301 redirects without losing any web traffic. If you have archived pages that you want to move around you can install this plug-in and keep your traffic. You can even set up RSS feeds for errors so you know when something isn’t working. Redirection also allows you to capture a log for your 404s.

Plug-ins not only make your life a little easier, they can save you from the hassle of losing traffic. If you aren’t using plug-ins for your WordPress blog, you are missing out on thousands of unique visitors per month. These 5 plug-ins are some of the best for capturing traffic, maintaining your rank in the search engines and giving you back precious time that would have been spent editing links or researching tags. Download these plug-ins now and watch as your traffic soars. Remember that you need a hosting siteto install plug-ins for WordPress. If you don’t have a hosting site, head over to HostGator for a great rate.

Getting Your Feed

Depending on the hosting account or the URL to your website, your feed URL can vary. For the most part, your feed URL is going to be http://yourwebsite.com/feed. If you are using Feedburner, the program will burn your feed to look like http://feeds.feedburner.com/yourdomain. “ Feedburner is a great way to get stats on your feed once you have submitted them to different RSS directories. Once you have your feed, you can add a “Subscribe” button to your website. This is a good way to get your readers to subscribe to your blog. Once they subscribe, they will get an email notification telling them when the blog has been updated with new content.

RSS Submission

Really Simple Syndication submission is a good way to bring traffic to your blog or website. Basically, you are submitting your feed to RSS directories much like how you submitted your website to a website directory. When the Google bots crawl the directory they will find your feed link, which is essentially your website link. This is another way to get a backlink to your website. However, there are other advantages to submitting your feeds to directories. Other websites will come to these directories looking to add a feed to their pages. RSS feeds give websites a way to fill the ends of their pages with related content. For instance, if you have a dating website and you subscript to a feed from another dating website that is ranked better, the Google bot will associated your dating website with the higher value site. This also helps with your rankings.

RSS Software

There are a lot of software packages on the market that are designed to submit your feeds automatically to thousands of directories. Can these software packages be helpful? Of course. Should you be weary of them? Yes. Here’s the problem with submission software. Just like most submission software packages, they are working on a bulk level. When you are looking at RSS submission, you want to submit your feeds to related websites. The last thing that you want to is to have your dating site feed attached to a cooking site. These software packages will blast away without finding your niche. Your feed could be on home improvement directories, health directories or even gaming directories. When you are submitting your feeds to directories, you need to have a directory that is related to your niche. Stay away from RSS software and put in the work yourself.

Finding RSS Directories

Finding an RSS directory to submit your links to is not very difficult. A simple Google search can bring you thousands of directories in your niche. When you are submitting your feeds to different directories, it’s best to run a PR check on the directory before you submit your link. A PR rating of at least a 4 or 5 is best when using their service. Some directories will have a link exchange program. Shy away from link exchanges or any directory that will charge you for inclusion to their website. You should never have to pay for a backlink or a submission of your feeds. If you find that the directory requires a link exchange, remember that you will be losing ad space on your page if you participate.

RSS feeds can lead to a lot of traffic to your site. If you’re looking to get a boost in the rankings, use your feeds as a way to syndicate your content across the web. Your website or blog should have a “Subscribe” button that you can implement into the page. The best way to get subscribers is to keep your content updated frequently. When your readers see that you post new content to your site every week, they will want to be in the loop.

However Apple stands out, and makes some really, really awesome products by following some very important but, simple principles. Here’s how you can apply these principles to your products.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Simplicity

Ok, Simplicity. Albert Einstein said make things as simple as possible but no simpler. It can be a tricky line but here’s the thing with Apple products, there always so easy to use. You can just figure it out. Now, if you’re a Windows user and you’re use to all the complex stuff, then you switch over to Apple and it can be a little confusing, but once you start thinking about, hmmmm, how would I actually do this there very simple and intuitive to use. The user ability of your product or service, whatever it is, is critical. Critical!

Delight

Now delight people should be delighted by your thing. They should look at it and go, “oh my god that’s really awesome. That’s way cool!” Like most people are when they look at an ipad or an Iphone and most of these Apple devices, if you actually use it and not just own it. “All I use is Windows -Apples suck.” That’s not really an informed perspective. When you use it and you actually try and give it a shot; you’re going to be like whoa that’s kind of amazing. This is pretty cool. Even the packaging is cool. When you buy stuff from Apple, like the iphone, it comes in like this Neiman Marcus quality box.

But what really contributes to that, you want to pay attention to all those details because that’s what Apple does. Pay attention to every single little detail and anticipate what the customer actually wants. Not just; I want this feature in there. What does the customer want – and pursue that excellence look follow all those details; all to be the best because everything matters. People notice. Don’t release a product that’s mostly finished because you know what there going to be mostly, “Aaaaa that’s kind of buggy dude.” That’s not the perception that you want people to have on your product.

Elimination

The next one is elimination. We’re talking about getting rid of the fluff. Get rid of the crap. Look at your product or service very closely and say, ok what don’t I really need? What am I doing that’s just fluff, that’s just filler? And get rid of all of it, ok? You got to be brutally honest with yourself. That’s crucial. Just get rid of anything that doesn’t work.

Suspense

Suspense. It’s one thing that Apple does fantastically well that other brands seem to fail at. Does anyone know or even care about what HP is bringing out next? Didn’t think so. But everyone is always speculating how this year’s iPhone is going to differ from the last model, or what changes may come with the new iPad.

Apple has a great way of keeping any information about their products a complete secret. Keeping the specs of their new products a secret helps build up the anticipation and excitement for its release. People these days are just dying to have the newest and greatest thing, and not knowing what’s coming up next drives them crazy.

The brand is also quite good at building up suspense by creating a sense of scarcity. There’s not enough new iPhones for everyone all at once, meaning that only a select few will be able to have the brand new phone the very same day it’s released. Everyone else will have to wait a week, a month, or maybe even longer for their own – at which point Apple is already creating suspense over another new product that’s coming out.

This suspense is also what draws a crowd to those electronic stores and has people camping overnight, just so that they can have a chance of being one of the first coveted few to have the newest “it” product. Crowds and line ups imply that what ever is being sold must be good; otherwise why would so many people be waiting for it?

Clever

Apple has some of the most memorable and clever marketing campaigns out there. Where they really excel is creating advertisements where they compare themselves to the competition. For example, Apple has created a whole line of ads in which it points out the difference between a MAC computer and a PC. The ads are incredibly simple in appearance and in their message, but because they are so simple, a viewer is able to immediately understand what’s going on. Thanks to such advertisements, almost anyone can tell you just why a PC is very different from a MAC computer.

MAC isn’t afraid to use actors in their campaigns either, but they have never used big, flashy actors. Justin Long is currently the “pro MAC” guy in a lot of the ads where they compare MAC computes to a PC. The “pro PC” actor is John Hodgman, an even less notable actor. Using actors that aren’t easily recognized or very established in the acting world can arguably present less of a bias towards the actor, and therefore the product. So let’s say Charlie Sheen was the “pro MAC” guy. Given recent events, a lot of people have a whole lot of different opinions on the guy, so a bias has already been formed there when it comes to him. Justin Long, however, isn’t a huge actor (though is still recognizable) and hasn’t been in any scandals or anything else. Also, he looks like a normal, average guy. It adds to the appeal.

There are a lot of things that you can take from Apple when it comes to thinking about and creating your information products. From the product itself to the marketing campaign to how they even design the layout of their Apple stores, they keep their customers engaged and wanting more. They do a great job of making everything seem incredibly easy: from the simplistic product designs to the spacious store layouts, the brand seems to keep its promise of delivering exactly what we want, and in just enough time so that we don’t forget the brand, and yet we don’t get tired of it either.

So what should you do? Your priority when it comes to keyword research is finding keywords that are actually realistic, and that will get you those conversions. What you need to do is learn how to find the right types of keywords that are going to grab your target market’s attention. With the right tools you can find the right keywords for your blog that are geared towards your target demographic, such as 18-24 year old males as opposed to 60+ year old females.

The Different Levels of Keywords

A lot of people will refer to these different levels of keywords as “the head”, “the body” and “the tail”. We’ll start by explaining “the head”.

“The head” are keywords that are pretty generic, like the keyword “real estate”. If you want any chance to ranking any where close to these generic and overused keywords, you will have to have a whole lot of money in order to do so. Otherwise there is no use in using them.

“The body” keywords are typically two or three different keywords that will have less searches per month than “head” keywords, such as “real estate guide”. The good thing about “the body” is that as these keywords have fewer searches every month, there is a good chance that there is also less competition.

“The tail” keywords are three or more keywords. The “tail” has the least amount of searches of them all, but the good thing about the tail is that if you use keywords effectively, you can target a very small specific group that will bring in highly targeted traffic. The other good thing to remember is that over 70% of all searches are made up of long tail keywords.

How to Find Keywords that Bring In Traffic

You definitely want as much traffic coming to your website as possible. If no one’s checking out your blog, then you are making zero dollars off of it.

First, start off by completely ignoring any “head” keywords. What you will want to focus on are body keywords, and tail keywords. Body keywords should have between 1000 and 100,000 searches every month, and tail keywords should have 1000 monthly searches (if not more) each month. But how does one even go about finding out about these searches so you can start optimizing your content and link building?

Step 1: Google Trends
Before you start even considering a particular set of keywords for your blog or website, it’s always a good idea to check out Google Trends to see what head keywords are on the rise. Why? This will give you a good idea of what you can expect from a particular market in the near future.

Step 2: Google Keyword Tool
The Google Keyword Tool is where you will be able to really start to whittle down a keyword list. With this tool you can compile a large list of keywords that you can use. From there, you can start to sort out both the body and tail keywords. Make sure that you choose 100 keywords (or more) and then you can begin to narrow it down.

It’s also a good idea to take any keyword or sets of keywords and just try searching them on Google. Type in your query, and note what the other suggested searches are. Write down or copy and past any more promising searches by checking out the number of searches in the Google Keyword tool. Then, you can hop right on over to Google Sets.

Step 3: Google Sets
When you have a basic lit of keywords, you can check and see if there was anything more that you may he missed by giving Google Sets your 5 keywords of choice. It will then come up with a few more predicted keywords that you may not have already had on your list.

Step 4: WordTracker
WordTracker is a favorite since there is a free version that you can use. WordTracker will help you compare Google’s data with other data (as great as Google may seem, you never want to depend on only one source of information!).

Step 5: Keyword Difficulty Tools
Most keyword difficulty tools will cost you a bit of money, but if you are serious about optimizing your website, then it is definitely a worthy investment. The Keyword Difficulty tool will give you a pretty good idea of what the competition is for each keyword or keyword set that you would like to use, so you can get a good picture of how well your blog will rank for that particular keyword.

TIP: As important as the Keyword Difficulty tool is in checking out the competition, it’s equally important that you take the time to heck out your competition manually. Some things that you want to bear in mind when you do your manual search are:

- Is the whole site keyword related or is it just one standalone page?
- Is it relevant?
- Are they a strong brand or an individual blog run by one person?
- What is the link velocity?
- What is the social branding?
- What is the user interaction?

A Final Word on Keyword Research

Keywords are the most important thing when it comes to SEO. There are a lot of tools to help you do it correctly, but it’s always a good idea to keep your finger on the Internet’s pulse. Check into social networking sites if you ever have any question as to what’s hot and what’s not. Look at trends and keep your ears open for what’s popular.

Customize The Site’s Sidebar

The sidebar is one of the most important aspects of your WordPress site. When you first sign up for WordPress or install it on your hosting plan, you will get default sidebar options installed on the site. These default options usually include the “Categories,” “Blogroll” and the “Archives” listings. When you haven’t changed out the sidebar options your blog is going to look like every other blog on the Internet. Change it up with different widgets for a customized feel. Implement social bookmarking widgets or differentiate the standard “Blogroll” and “Archives” options with “Articles” or “Reviews. This will help you establish your online authority.

Ghostwriting Made Simple

One of the best ways to get your WordPress blog some more traffic is to offer your readers a chance to submit their original content to your blog. There are a plugins that will give you a form to implement on your blog so users can submit their content directly or you can set up an email account to accept blog posts. Either way, you will get users who submit their content and then tell their friends about it. Not only will you be offering people a way to backlink to their website, you will be creating a traffic tree where friends tell their friends about the post who then tell other friends about it. This is a great way to build traffic, subscribers and original content.

Browser Compatibility

There are a lot of different browsers on the market. If you’re not sure if your WordPress blog is going to work with different browsers, you can check through on an online website called Browsershots.org. This will test your WordPress blog for compatibility over different browsers such as Internet Explorer, Safari and Firefox. If your blog isn’t compatible with different browsers, you’re going to see a decline in traffic and sales. The Internet is moving into the mobile phase and you need to make sure that your WordPress blog is also compatible with mobile browsers. Check your blog to make sure that your readers have the ability to access it while mobile or while working with Linux, Windows and Mac systems.

Use RSS

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a great way to get your readers to subscribe to your blog and keep coming back. The best thing about RSS is the fact that it actually is really simple. You can use this by installing a subscribe button to your “Plugins” directory. Log into your WordPress blog and go to the “Plugins” option. Click on the “Install” button and then install the plugin so your readers can subscribe to your posts. Once you have built enough authority to your site, you should see regular traffic coming in as you post new content. You can also submit your RSS feeds to different RSS directories so they know when you have uploaded new content to your blog.

Organize Categories

The categories on your WordPress blog are going to be the first line of communication with your readers. He comes to your blog or website they’re looking for information based on your niche. When you fully implement categories into the sidebar of your blog or website your readers will have an easy way of navigating through different blog posts and articles. The categories that you choose for your blog or website are going to depend on your niche. Try to make the categories as narrow as possible. You might want to divide the categories into reviews, articles and product information or something similar depending on what your website is dealing with. Make the categories personable for added effect to the readers.

WordPress can be a powerful blogging platform when implemented properly. You want to establish yourself as a credible blogger so using the same methods as every other blogger on the Internet isn’t going to cut it. Differentiate yourself and create a blog that is pleasing to the eye while still giving your readers the information they are looking for. Follow these tips and you should see an increase in traffic in no time at all.

CPC – Cost Per Click

Arguably the most popular way of advertising online, CPC (also known as cost per click) advertising is virtually every where. Chances are that you have performed a “cost per click” action and not even realized it.

CPC-based advertising is a method which allows businesses to pay only for the targeted leads that they receive. With this method, your advertisement would be displayed in the same way as a CPM (or cost per 1000 impressions), but there is a difference. With CPC, you are protected by only paying for each click that your advertised link receives. You will not have to pay for thousands of impressions that are uselessly displayed, as with CPM.

You can use banner advertising with CPM. With banner advertisements, your advertisement will display, and every time your banner is clicked by an end user, you will pay the specified cost for that banner ad. That advertisement will then run until you have reached your predetermined amount of clicks. This means that you may receive a lot more exposure than you would using other advertising methods, because the length of time your ad is visible on the internet is based solely on how many clicks it has received.

TIP: If you are interested in CPC, a great program to use is Google AdWords. AdWords will allow you to pick the keywords that you want to use and you will only have to pay for as many clicks as you can afford. Unlike a lot of other sites, you will not have to pay for a campaign since you can set an actual limit on the amount of money you have in your budget to spend on this type of advertising.

CPM – Cost Per Thousand Impressions

CPM, also known as “cost per thousand impressions” is a very effective way of improving your conversions by reaching potential customers on the web. Rather than paying “per click” with CPM you can purchase a set amount of impressions that your blog will have.

NOTE: An impression is a single instance of an advertisement appearing on your website or blog.

CPM tends to be a more cost effective way to advertise when compared to CPC, or “cost per click”. For example, if you chose CPC advertising, you would pay for each click that your advertisement receives. So let’s say that you are spending $1 for each click, meaning that ten clicks will cost you $10. In a CPM-based advertising campaign, you may pay only $3 for 1000 impressions. So if your advertisement receives a click through ratio of just 1% you would then be paying $3 for the same 10 clicks.

One thing to bear in mind when it comes to CPM is that text-based ads tend to receive a lot more attention than banner ads, which most internet users tend to completely ignore at this point. CPM-based advertising is also a great idea for any company that has popular and/or very expensive keywords.

CPL – Cost Per Lead

Cost per lead is one of the less common ways of making money through blogging and advertising, but it is still one that is used by a lot of bloggers. CPL is the calculation of the actual cost that is incurred in successfully acquiring a valid lead. Leads are typically generated in several different ways, which include the gathering of information.

Let’s say that a website visitor submits their email address after doing a survey or they register for an offer and provide their contact information and possibly their demographic information. This will then be counted as a “lead”.

NOTE: PPL, or pay per lead, is different from CPL. PPL refers to the actual model in acquiring a valid lead, while CPL is the actual cost that one will incur for successfully acquiring a valid lead.

CPL is a great option for the budget conscious blogger, especially during these trying economic times. With CPL advertising, you are able to generate guaranteed returns on your online advertising dollars.

TIP: CPL is also often referred to as “online lead generation”.

CPS – Cost Per Sale

What really draws other bloggers to cost per sale marketing is that this strategy is low-risk and high profit. It’s also a great way of reaching an unlimited amount of prospects over the web.

Cost per sale is a great new way of marketing which doesn’t involve risky and expensive methods of marketing such as print ads, television ads and direct mail campaigns. With cost per sale marketing, the company that is selling the product or the service will pay the publisher or the marketer only when a product or a service has been sold (the CPL model is also often referred to as “revenue share” or as an “affiliate relationship”). These models work best for customers that are not willing to take a risk or who have a very, very small marketing or advertising budget.

The one downside to this method of marketing is that, when compared to either CPC or CPL models, the cost that the vendor incurs can be quite a bit higher per conversion, and the contract terms that one must agree to are longer. Most CPS marketing models are best for e-commerce websites

Which Way is Best for Me to Make Money?

The type of advertising for you to use for your blog to generate revenue truly depends on two things: your budget, and how much you need to sell. Methods such a CPS are great for those with a low budget, but if you want a lot of exposure than CPC is probably your best bet.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Been doing it already but haven’t been getting a good response? Then you’re doing it wrong. “Tweeting” is a whole lot different than writing out a well thought out piece that you post to your blog. You have 140 characters or less to get out a quick message to the world, a message that you are praying will not only be clear and get the point across, but that you are also hoping will get retweeted across the “Twitt-o-verse”.

Here are some of the best tips that you may or may not already be using that will help promote your blog on Twitter better than ever before.

1.Create Your Profile

This one is obvious, but so many people don’t even bother doing it. You create a Twitter account, then you fill out the profile. Populate it, put as much information as possible so that your followers will know who you are. This means putting your URL in there so that people can follow the link back to your site. Upload a picture. It can be your happy face, or your logo, whatever. Just let people know that you’re open for business. Don’t look generic though.

2. Don’t Spam Your Followers

Sometimes less is more. You want to be a good curator. You want to post stuff that actually matters. It doesn’t necessarily mean just post once per day, but use your judgment. It’s like speaking. You don’t want to babble.

3. Separation of Business and Personal Tweets

Now we understand that your Twitter profile needs a personality. You’re welcome to stick to that personality, but if you’re a business, you want to separate your personal feed from your business feed. Your friends don’t care about all of your business stuff. Vice versa, your business followers might not care about all of your personal rants.

There can be exceptions. For example if you’re a brand like Martha Stewart, or Dan and Jennifer, your personal like of cross into your business, because your personal musing is your business. But unless you’re your own brand, keep them separate. Just have two accounts, one for each desired purpose.

4. Add Value

This is really important and gets back to the basics. Provide good useful stuff. Add comments, analysis, quips on current events, or things that’re currently going on. Or include deals and coupons that will be useful to your followers. Add your own take, but remember to be positive, no whining or bitchin!

The only exception is if your niche is negative, for example, “Something Stupid That My Dad Says,” where it’s actually entertaining. Otherwise stay upbeat, and put a lid on any negativity.

5. Watch your Tweet’s Character Length

Having 140 characters may seem small, but in order to be an effective tweeter, you have to keep it even shorter than that. Why? Because if you want to get retweeted (which you definitely do), a follower would have to then edit your post in order to edit it. If your posts are hard to edit, do you really think a follower will bother to do it?

People are lazy. If you want to be retweeted, then you have to make it as easy as possible to have this happen. The best and most surefire way to leave enough space in your tweet so that you will be retweeted is to make your comment 125 characters or less (and remember, spaces count as characters too). That way anyone can easily retweet your message with a simple click of a mouse.

6. Make Them an Offer they Can’t Refuse

Now what you have to avoid having happen is having your Tweet come across as sounding like, “Hey! Hey you! You need this, so uhh… click here!” That’s going to get you nowhere. But if you have unraveled some secret mystery, or discovered something that [insert name of hot new celebrity] is doing that has not yet been revealed to the public, then that will get you responses.

Making actual offers is great, too. Free vacations are always a winner, but most of us bloggers don’t really have that sort of a giveaway on hand. Offer things that you have noticed on the web that may be related to your niche. Say, for example, you know of a great deal online for 16GB memory sticks. Write up a quick blog post about it that gives your readers the scoop on this great deal. Then write up an enticing tweet about it and provide a link back to your blog post about it. Your blog post can then have the link to the offer itself, but people had to go through your blog to get to it.

7. Leave 2-5 Posts a Day

Leaving a post a day for your blog isn’t going to get you anywhere. People are getting a constant feed of new tweets every single minute, so you want to make sure that you actually get seen every once in a while. The ideal amount of messages to post in a day is 2 to 5 different posts. They don’t all have to be related to your business or niche, but they should mostly, if not all, take people back to a page on your blog that may have a funny video, a photo that’s gone viral, or information about something that is of interest (universally funny things or political blunders are generally well accepted).

8. Take Advantage of Twitter Apps

You do NOT have to stay sitting at your computer all day. You can use a number of different Twitter apps that are out there to make your job all the more easy. There are tools out there that will actively seek out followers and people to follow for you. There are tools out there that you can pre-program to actually post tweets for you, even if you aren’t at your computer. There are tools out there that will allow you to control and maintain a number of your social media sites all at once and on one screen. Don’t waste a lot of time tinkering around on social media sites like Twitter. Get the apps to do it for you.

What is RSS?

RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication”. This technology has been around for a while, but most users do not use it to its full potential. Millions of web users that span the globe use this technology to keep track of their favorite websites (or blog posts)

In order to optimize your RSS feed, you will first have to do a few things to ensure that your followers are actually watching what you are doing.

Publish the Full RSS Feed

Why should you publish the full RSS feed? Because users won’t have to click it to read it. If you only offer a partial RSS feed, that would require followers to then click on the link and read through it. Most people don’t have the patience to do this, especially as they undoubtedly have other RSS feeds to check out themselves.

Publishing the full feed will not only help keep your current subscribers, but you can easily gain 50 to 100 subscribers in one month (or even more, depending on your current subscribers list).

Use Programs to help Share your Posts

Programs such as FeedFlare will help your subscribers share your posts to the social network of their choice. When you use a program like FeedFlare, your feed will then place bookmarking and social sharing links on the footer of your RSS post. From there, you can choose what sorts of services you want to display, such as Twitter or Facebook.

Optimize your Feed Title and Description

If you find that your description or title isn’t as SEO friendly as you thought, you can then use other programs to try and change the metatags for your feed. These can be changed in the Title/Description Burner.

TIP: You can also use programs such as Google Analytics and Google Keyword Tool to help you come up with appropriate tags and SEO data that you can use for your RSS feed. The tools are not only free, but they’re easy to use too.

Cross Post your Articles

Cross posting your articles will get you a whole lot more traffic than you ever thought imaginable. Programs such as BuzzBoost will allow you to republish the burned feed’s content as HTML. From there, you can set it up and then place the code snippet that has been generated in another website which you may already manage.

Always include an Email Signature

A small HTML snippet will help draw a lot of attention to your website. You can include the email signature in your emails, or you can place it anywhere on your website. If you use a tool, such as Headline Animator, you can create quality and professional looking signatures that will show as an animated banner which will then cycle through all of your recent posts.

Always Offer Email Subscriptions on your Feed

A great way to keep subscribers and to hold interest is to offer an email subscription on your feed. Once you set this up, the Feedburner will then automatically send out regular and pre-planned emails to your subscribers when ever you have posted any new content.

A lot of bloggers may already be doing this, but are they doing it successfully? A bland, boring looking email isn’t going to get a whole lot of attention. The smart way to do it is to add your logo and customize the confirmation email. Take a look at the delivery options and set them in a smart way. One of these ways would be to set the delivery time to when your readers tend to be the most active on your blog.

TIP: To find when your readers are most active on your blog, you can track the user activity easily with a free tool such as Google Analytics

Provide a Creative Commons License

Want other bloggers to be able to republish your blog posts? Not a problem. The legal way to go about doing this is to provide anyone who will republish your posts a “Creative Commons” license.

Most users do not actually bother contacting you and will just use your content without even asking. But this too can be used in such a way that you benefit…

How to Benefit from those who Steal your Content

The best way to go about benefiting from those who rip off your content is to add a link to your original content somewhere in your RSS feed. This will help clear up any confusion which Google may have as to which copy of the article is the original, and which is the “stolen” copy. When the search engine sees the link in your feed, it will immediately recognize you as the original blogger and differentiate you from the “splogger” (those who enjoy republishing your stuff without asking).

For blogging, all you have to do is open up your blog dashboard. From there, go to your “Settings” and click on “Side Feed”. In the “Post Feed Footer”, add the code:

<hr />
<a href=”http://www.myblog.com”>My Blog Name</a>
If you are on WordPress, you can open the functions.php file and then add the following code:

function embed_rss($content) {
if(is_feed()) $content .= “<p><a href=’”. get_permalink() .”‘>’” . get_the_title() .”</a></p>”;return $content;}
add_filter(‘the_content’, ‘embed_rss’);

Once you add this, a link will be added to your main blog at the bottom of every article that is published in your feed.

Brag about your FSS Feed Count

You can easily use FeedCount to generate a graphic that will display to all of your subscribers just what your subscriber count is.

Notify Different Feed Reading Services of your Articles

You can easily use different programs available on the web to help notify different feed reading services that you have posted a brand new article to your blog.

TIP: If you already have Twitter (which you probably do) you can easily use HootSuite, TwitterFeed, or even your own Twitter app to post any fresh content you may have.

Niche Similarity

Your website or blog is going to cover a niche market. Going after a niche market is the only way that you can compete against large websites that have a bigger authority online. So if you’re using a niche market, a backlink to your site needs to be on another website that is related to your niche. Most focus on advertising. So let’s say that your niche has to do with German shepherds. More than likely, the exchange site is not going to mention German shepherds. When the Google bots crawl the site they are going to find the keywords “link exchange” or “advertise.” This is bad because now the Google bot is going to think that your site has something to do with exchanges or advertising based on the exchange site’s keywords.

The Link Exchange Site Might Be Banned

Link exchanges are generally considered a black hat practice. This means that they are not in favor with the search engines. If you find a program through a different website, run a PR check on the exchange site. Your links should never appear on a website that is considered “NA” by Google or any other search engine. This means that the exchange site is banned or has fallen into the supplemental search results. Your link on the site will basically mean nothing and could hurt your search engine rankings.

Web Page Space

As mentioned before, this is an exchange. When you sign up for a site, your backlink will appear in their database. However, you will have to put a reciprocal link on your website also. This takes up web space that could be used for affiliate products, Adsense or another page feature like a subscribe button for your RSS feed. Instead of using your ad space to promote something that will make you money, you are going to use it for their’s. This is essentially a waste of ad space for very little return.

It’s A Gamble

Link exchanges are a gamble that you might not see any traffic from. Even if you run a PR check on the site and you see that they have a rating of 5 or more, think about how may other people are using their service. Your link could get lost in the database and leave you with no traffic. You can always remove the reciprocal link from your site after a couple of months if you aren’t seeing any traffic from the exchange, but these are months that could have been spent with affiliate’s on your site.

Better Alternatives

There are a lot of alternatives to exchanges that will help your traffic. RSS feed submission, forum and blog comment posting and social bookmarking are just the start. Having one way links are much better for the Google crawlers. When you’re considering a exchange program, there are exceptions. If it has a high PR rating and an Alexa presence you might consider it. If the site is reputable and is within your niche then you also might take the chance on it. For the most part, using other alternatives if better for your online authority. One-way links from forums and blog comments do not require you to waste ad space. Blog comment posting can also be lead generation to your blog or website. In short, link exchanges are not the route to go when you are trying to establish your website or blog. Using good content with great, low competition keywords will bring you more traffic in the long run.

Click here to view the embedded video.

1. Great Content

I swear we keep saying this, great content rules. Make stuff that people want to read, which is the same stuff that people actually want to link to and people will read it and link to it. I mean it’s really what it gets back to other blogger’s will naturally link to it. They don’t just say, “ I wrote this link it to me. Alright really great stuff.” People will be like, “oh look someones writing really great stuff lets link to them.” I mean it really does work that way. Keep it fresh and publish consistently though.

2. Consistency

Consistency. That’s a big thing, ok? You gotta, you can’t just post once every three months, ok? Build relationships, ok? That just never goes away in business. Network, network, network. Ok. Reach out to other bloggers, other web site owners, even PR and news. OK, use contact, emails, forums, twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and if you have to…get on the phone, ok? There are still people that like to get on the phone these days. You know, comment on other peoples stuff. Be useful, ok? Don’t just blah, blah, spam everybody but provide useful feedback, useful comments, engaging…

Dan: I’m engaged

Jennifer:You want to be someone that people want to be partnered with.

3. Write Guest Posts

Absolutely! And another one and this is a good one, write guest posts, blogs always need more content; online magazines always need more fresh content. So what do you do, you solve their problem. Offer to write fresh content for them and they’ll publish it and you should get the link back, you should get the link back, plus you’ll get exposure to their audience. Great one way.

4. Directory Links

Directory links are a great way to help spread the word about your website or blog in a good way. The more directories that your site can be found on, the more that search engines will trust your site.

While it may sound easy to go ahead and submit your site to a directory, bear in mind that there are literally tens of thousands of different web directories out there – and not all web directories are equal. Some of them are poor in quality and not SEO friendly – which means that they won’t help your site in search rankings in the least. You want to make sure that the directories you are submitting your site to will actually be able to pass your web link down the line.

The best way to submit your site to a directory is to try and use a niche directory submission. Niche directories are those which are created with one specific topic in mind. Niche directories will only accept sites that they say are related to that particular niche, which is why Google places a lot more importance on backlinks that come from any sort of relevant site or sites anyways, so this will help you a lot when it comes to search engine rankings.

Submitting your site to a directory one by one is incredibly boring and time consuming, so you may want to look into hiring on a directory submission service provider. These providers already have a whole list of directories that they know will help improve your site’s rankings in search engines, and they also understand the nature of each and every directory they are submitting your site to. They know how to get your site approved so you don’t have to spend countless hours fiddling with this or that, and they typically quite affordable.

5 Social Media

Social media are all the rage these days and they are continue to grow. Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, YouTube, even MySpace… the list goes on and on. You can build some really important links just by having a placement on each of these social media sites (yes, even MySpace is still a bit relevant, so don’t count it out entirely).

Social media is great since they offer a lot of different ways to have people promote your content FOR you. People can retweet, “like”, “share”, “+1” and just plain old copy and paste a link to your website right on their social media accounts if they find the link that you have put on your very own social media site at all valuable or useful. If you have a blog (which you should, and we’ll discuss that in a second), then you should try to have it on the very same domain as your company’s website. Social media is all about keeping it real and keeping it human, so having a blog, which is far more human than just a website advertising products, is a must-have.

Conclusion

Link building plays an incredibly important role for any website or blog that wants to actually have a presence on any search engine. Unfortunately, link building has gotten a bit of a bad rap lately, mostly because people have used and abused it for a while now. One of the worst types of link building that everyone should avoid is the Blackhat SEO (aka completely unethical) link building techniques. This type of technique attempts to manipulate any search engine’s rankings through things such as hidden text, paid links, cloaking, and link farms.

There are a number of reasons why you want to build links to your site. For one, it will help improve your site’s authority in a number of search engines, like Google and Bing. Having a strong network of links backing you up tells search engines that you are trustworthy and aren’t a site full of useless garbage. Link building will also help draw attention to your site’s important keywords, which in turn will help improve your ranking in search engines. Lastly, having a strong network of links will make your site all the better known on other larger websites. This will, of course, help increase the referral traffic to your site, and it won’t even cost you a dime!

This is where stock photos come in handy.

Whether free or paid, there are a whole lot of websites out there offering up photos for you to take and use as needed. Some are worth visiting, and some are definitely worth passing up on. Rather than wasting hours in front of your computer trying to figure out which site is worth your time and which isn’t, we’ll tell you which photo sites are worth your while.

Stock.xchng

If you are looking for a website with high image quality, top image selection and good customer service, then  is the stock photo site for you. The one thing that has been a negative factor to the site is that many complain about the website design, but that’s besides the point. They have excellent photos and a whole lot of them.

The selection to some may be a bit lacking in some categories, but it is varied. This along with the poor site lay out may confuse a lot of users, but if you have the time to focus and navigate through the site, then you shouldn’t have any problem finding what you want.

Stockvault

Stockvault.net has been around since 2004 and is one of the top free stock photos sites on the web. With over 26,000 free images at your disposal, you will be hard pressed to not find the one that is right for your website or blog. There are a number of different categories to choose from (such as 3D renders, animals, graphics and natural objects) and the site is fairly well laid out so it’s easy to search.

MorgueFile

Don’t be so turned off by the name. Morguefile may not have the same selection as Flickr (a website which you can very easily get lost on), but it still has a huge database offering a number of great images that you can use for your blog or website. You can search the images easily by size, date, rating, category, keyword, color, users or geotag. Being able to filter by the color is particularly nice, as you can easily find something that will look nice with your blog and match the topic that you have written about.

It’s easy to download, the images do not require attribution, and it’s easy to use. How can you go wrong?

Everystockphoto

Everystockphoto isn’t so much an actual site for stock photos as it is a search engine to help you locate the photos you need, and on what site. This site will also allow users to rate and “tag” photos.

The interface is user friendly, there are a wealth of photos that you can find through here which are located on numerous different stock photo sites (several of which you would have never heard of) and they have great customer service too if you ever need it. Membership is totally free as well, and development is now underway in looking at adding more feature and increasing its indexing capabilities. Within a few years, this website is going to be the “be all, end all” for searching for stock photos on the web.

iStockphoto.com

iStockphoto.com is definitely the most popular stock photo website that is out there today. Why? Because it has literally everything that you need for your blog or your website. You can use a ton of free photos to completely change your entire site and give it a facelift if you wanted to. There are the royalty free stock photos, but you can also find audios, videos, flash animation, and a whole lot more to add to your website.
Even if you did choose the “paid” route for iStockphoto, it would most likely be worth your money. The rates are incredibly affordable (thanks to its popularity) so you would be only paying very little more for a higher quality image or video.

Shutterstock.com

Shutterstock.com is one of the paid stock photo websites out there, but with a claim like being the world’s largest subscription-based photo agency, what do you have to lose?

This website does have an amazing collection of images that vary in numerous forms, patterns and styles, meaning that no matter what you are looking for there’s a good chance you will find it here. There’s also a good chance that what you find will be so unique that it will capture the attention of those who visit your website or blog.

There are a number of different subscription plans that you can choose from and you can choose which is right for you.

Gettyimages.com

Though Gettyimages.com is a newer website compared to most stock photo websites, what really makes it attractive is just how easy it is to use. Not only that, but it also has a number of really great and unique images that are from a number of different fields: from technology to travel, from biotech to business. There are also some more high quality video clips that can easily be added to any website or blog. They have a lot of royalty free videos as well, and the music store has a lot of great tunes that are easy to incorporate into your own site.

Freedigitalphotos.net

Freedigitalphotos.net is another royalty free website that has a whole lot of different photos available for you to peruse and to use. There are thousands of these images on the site as well as illustrations available, but do be aware that they are all in different resolutions.

But hey, when it’s free, can you really complain? This is a good site for those who aren’t too picky about the resolution of their images, and who have a lot of time on their hands to go through at least a few images before they settle on the right one for their site.

Dreamstime

Dreamstime is of the cream of the crop site for premium stock photos. It’s also what we use. It has both free photos and paid ones. We buy in bulks, hundreds of stock photos a time because there’s a significant quantity discount. Specifically, Dreamstime has a monthly subscription service that’s quite a bit cheaper than say iStockPhoto.

Or we should say, “are” alternatives. There are a lot of great web site design services out there for those with little to no experience with design, and they won’t cost you an arm and a leg (or possibly not cost you a single dime!). Listed below are some of our favorite web site design services that you need to check if you are interested in making your own website.

1.WordPress

There’s so many thing about WordPress that make it deserve top spot on our list. You know it’s gotta be good when both amateur and professional web builders and bloggers are using it, first of all. Second of all, it comes with a ton of templates for you to choose from, and if you don’t like their templates, you can get them elsewhere.

What’s even more impressive is that this service is absolutely free, and it’s incredibly uncomplicated. Literally anyone can open up a free account and create a professional looking website within a very, very short span of time. If you are looking to create a blog, then WordPress gives you every tool that you need to build and promote it. It gives referral stats without you having to add any sort of third party app, and it’s not flooded with ads. Definitely check this service out, whether you have no idea what you’re doing when it comes to web design, or if you are a total pro.

2. NVU

NVU isn’t as easy to use as WordPress, but it’s still a great free website creator and editor. The one thing that one can really appreciate from a beginner’s standpoint is that NVU doesn’t require you to memorize tons and tons of code. What else makes it unique is that it is one o the very few free WYSIWYG HTML editors out there. You can use it what your Mac, with Windows and with Unix, and it has a site manager with FTP.

TIP: WYSIWYG interface is an acronym that is used to describe a type of application that will display the content you enter in code exactly as it will appear when it is complete. So while you’re entering code and putting stuff together with WYSIWYG, you know just what your website is going to look like once it is published and goes live.

Now for the bad points. It doesn’t have a CSS validator (though it does have a built-in CSS editor) and you aren’t able to edit images or connect to an external graphics editor. This can be a real headache for anyone who doesn’t have a clue how to make websites. You may have to spend some time trying to clean up some coding, which at first is incredibly frustrating if you have no idea what you’re doing. But on the plus side, cleaning up the code will force you to learn a little bit about it and help you create a better website.

TIP: Another web design service, Kompozer, is derived straight from NVU. How it looks, feels and works is incredibly similar to NVU, so if you aren’t happy with NVU, you won’t fall in love with Kompozer, either.

3. WebEasy Professional 8

Though this web site design software isn’t free, you still don’t have to put out a ton of cash to get it. Whether you have never created a website in your life, or you have a lot of experience with web design, what really makes this product popular is the easy-to-use WYSIWYG –user interface.

Another great benefit is the tutorials that are provided. While a lot of web site design programs will advertise free tutorials, most of them are so boring or headache inducing that new web builders just give up. These ones are actually worth your while and will keep you engaged.

There is one thing that we don’t like about this software: the multimedia effect. We would like to see more options than playing and recording audio, but for new web site designers, this probably isn’t even a slight concern.

4. Intuit

This is another program that you will have to pay for on a monthly basis, but it’s definitely worth it for the new web designer. Intuit gets points on having an interface that is both user-friendly and intuitive. It also comes loaded with templates, so there is definitely something for everybody with this software.

We can see Intuit really being beneficial for any company that wants to sell things. If you have products or service that you want to advertise, you can count on Intuit to basically come up with the HTML code for you so you come out with a fully customized website which includes professional royalty-free photos.

But what we really loved was the drag and drop functionality and the step by step instructions. This makes it so easy to quickly create a very clean and professional website that can display your merchandise, advertise your services, or even act as a contact form. Their monthly fee also provides hosting and storage for your site, something that could easily cost more per month and not even offer web site design and building tools.

So what didn’t we like? The fact that there was no spell checker. Any website with spelling errors looks extremely unprofessional, so you may want to dig up your Microsoft Word program and run anything you type through there before you publish it to your site. There also isn’t the ability to have the program automatically name your pages, which can be a bit of a nuisance but to most isn’t a deal breaker.

Search engine optimization doesn’t have to be a guessing game; fortunately, there are a number of different tools and services out there that will help you optimize your blog so that you are getting the best search results possible.

Why should I Care about SEO?

If you don’t know why you should care about search engine optimization, it’s definitely time to start learning about it.

When you want to search for something online, where do you go? To a search engine. Search engines are exactly what will bring people to your blog – if you use proper and effective search engine optimization tactics to make it locatable. You need to learn just how your website will be indexed and ranked in order to understand how to optimize your blog.

In this article, we’ll talk about both offsite techniques for making your blog all the more searchable, as well as the onsite techniques.

Offsite Techniques for SEO

These methods will discuss factors that are outside of your actual site which will have an impact on your blog’s ranking in search engines.

Inbound links are definitely one of the best ways to start generating fresh traffic to your blog. Links that will point to a website will help you climb up on search engine result pages, meaning you will be more visible.

Putting it simply, every single link that is not on your site and which leads to your site is somewhat like a vote of confidence towards your site. It increases its validity, which in turn increases its value, which in turn increases its position on search engines.

The best inbound links that you can have will have three qualities:

a) The sites on which the links are posted are higher ranked
b) The sites are relevant to the topics that you blog about
c) The sites will link to you using keywords that are relevant to your page

So here’s the next important and pressing question: how do you generate inbound links? There are actually quite a few different ways:

Notify Other Relevant Bloggers about your Site

Spamming isn’t highly recommended here, but if you start seeking out other bloggers who have similar interest to yours and you gradually introduce yourself to them, then you may very well have an inbound link. The best way to build up a rapport with another blogger is to offer to link to their blog, and they to yours. If you also write a good post on a topic that you know is if interest to them, you can throw in a link as a sample of your work.

You Need Quality Content

Adding further to the topic of content of your blog, you need to have content that’s worth reading. If your content is stuffed with hyperlinks and is clearly keyword spammed, then no one is going to want to read it. Write information that is correct, that is helpful, and that is interesting.

Submit to Directories

Another good way to try and generate those inbound links is to submit your blog to a directory. There are paid and free directory services, all of which will help make your site more visible on the web. Compare what each directory can do for you before you decide to shovel over any cash to a directory company.

Recommended: Technorati

Do a Link Swap

Why not swap links? As mentioned earlier, if you create a rapport with another blogger, you can then swap links and support one another’s sites. This link swap may very well come about organically and with you both enjoying one another’s content and wanting to share it. Or, you can very well send an email – or receive an email – asking to link swap.

Link swaps tend to be rather effective, but there are some rumors about search engines being able to track the link swapping strategy, which would then devalue the links. Do your research before counting on this method of search engine optimization.

Onsite Techniques for SEO

There are a lot of techniques for onsite SEO that can work for you. We will start with the most obvious and work our way from there:

Keyword Rich Content

What makes your blog searchable on the web? Keywords. These keywords help define what your blog is and will allow you to optimize it accordingly.

Coming up with appropriate keywords isn’t as easy as a lot of people think. The most used keywords have been bought up by the large corporations, so you will have to get a bit creative and try to figure out keywords sentences or phrases that may be relevant to your blog. Some great tools for these are Google Analytics and the Google Keyword Tool. They’re both free, so they are both definitely worth trying out.

Recommended: Google Analytics and Google Keyword Tool

NOTE: One important thing to point out is that stuffing articles with keywords, while it may improve your search results, just isn’t worth it for your website. You need that quality content to keep people coming back. Otherwise, no matter how high your site may appear on Yahoo! or Google, no one will swing by your site.

Themed Blogs

A lot of people truly believe that having a lot of pages that relate to the same theme will help increase your rankings on search engines. Your blog should already generally be about the same sort of theme anyway, but a theme will help a search engine more easily decide where your blog belongs.

Site Design

Site design does play a role in how searchable your website is. Sites that are nicely laid out, that are well coded and easy to navigate tend to fair better on search engines. Flash animation and Java Script don’t tend to help you for search engine searchability at this time, but some people suggest that imbedding video that they have created or that is off of YouTube will help improve search results.

Recommended: www.reelseo.com for video services

Click here to view the embedded video.

1. Hostgator

The first one is Hostgator. It’s one that we recommend, and they have a sweet deal for our viewers where you can start a blog for a penny. If you get a 3 year package, you can get one as low as $3.96/month. Unlimited disk space, unlimited bandwidth, so you don’t run into shortage issues. They also use wind power which is really cool, green, and environmentally friendly.

They have a phone number for international users as well, and 24/7 phone support and live chat. They are pretty good about solving any minor issues that you have so you don’t have to worry about it. Basically their support is really awesome. You can’t say that about all web hosting.

A big difference for Hostgator is that you can sign up month to month and get a good deal vs other web hosts where you can to have a long term contract to do so.

2. Bluehost

The next one is BlueHost. Like Hostgator, you get unlimited disk space and bandwidth. If you sign up a 2-3 year deal, you can get for about $3 to $4 / month. They have 24/7 phone support and email support. They also offer a script setup that can be a little easier than Fantastico. While we love Hostgator, this is a good alternative.

3. 2MHost

Now going down a step and lowering the price is 2MHost. It start at $2.75 / month for a 1 year package. 5 gigs of disk space, so you’re getting some limitations here. Although you get 24/7 tech support, it’s a step down from previous 2 web host companies. If you only sign up for 1 year, then it can be cheaper, but you may get what you pay for…

4. 000webhost

Ok the next one is 000webhost. This is great if you’re really not sure that you want to be in the web business, and you just want to tip your toe in the water and see if you like it. It’s free, but you only get 5 domains and 5 emails addresses, and a very limited disk space of 1.5 Gig. There’s no support, phone or chat, though there is email. You only get 1 ftp account, but you do receive Fantastico.

5. iPage

For a couple of dollars you get what the site claims “over $450 of extras” – and this site definitely is worth your time. With this cheap service, you get:

- A free domain name
- Free security suite (SiteLock)
- Free online store
- Free site-building tools
- Unlimited disk space
- Unlimited email
- Unlimited bandwidth
The site also boasts that it is 100% green, being powered by wind energy, and they also have an anytime money-back guarantee. It includes some neat marketing bonuses that will help you get started, like a credit for Google Adwords, for Facebook Advertising, and for Yahoo! and Bing sponsored searches. If you live in the United States, they’ll also hook you up with a free tool-free phone number. Building your website is also a cinch with their drag and drop site builder, and there’s also a blog and photo gallery set up wizard to help your page look as professional as possible.

6. Fat Cow

Apart from having a cute name, this web hosting service is not only cheap, it offers you a whole lot. The longer that you sign on with this hosting company, the greater the discount you receive too.

This is another web hosting that is powered by wind energy, and they also have oodles of extra goodies like a Google Adwords credit, a Yahoo! and Bing credit, a Facebook advertisement credit, and you get a free Yellow Pages listing. Nextiva also offers a free toll free phone number with the service, and it’s a great Word Press publishing platform.

So let’s go over some of the specs:

- Unlimited Disk space
- Unlimited bandwidth and email
- Unlimited domains hosted
- Unlimited MySQL databases
- Free domain name
- Free shopping card
- SSL secure server
- Free script bar (which includes WordPress, Joomla, and more)
They also have some pretty solid partnership programs, including an affiliate program with a $100.00 payout and a referral program that will get you $10 in credits. Customer support can be reached 24 hours a day, every day of the week through phone, email and live chat, so if you ever encounter a problem you know you have back up.

7. Just Host

The final hosting service to make it onto our list is the justhost.com web hosting service. As with the other hosting services they offer the 24/7 customer service and technical support, and they also boast an anytime money back guarantee – so you know that you won’t get stuck in some service that you hate!

This hosting service offers the same sort of features that other cheap hosting services do, like:

- Free shopping carts
- Free domain name
- Free site builder (including templates)
- Google and Yahoo! Ad credits
- Instant setup
- Unlimited domains, including parked domains
- Free script library (through SimpleScripts)
- Free installation of WordPress and Joomla

What made them stand out is that they use cPanel as a control panel (which some other cheap hosting services do not) and their homepage mentions that they will be able to help you do a website transfer. Whether you’re a veteran when it comes to web hosts or if you’re new at it, Just Host makes it rather simple to navigate and manage any number of domains that you may create through their cPanel.

So in summary, we recommend Hostgator, but if you just don’t like it for some reason, then move down the list to others.

It’s kind of funny because many cases the web host support is the real value especially when your blog is down and you need help. Anyway what web host do you use and why?

Some users like to build their own themes, but unless you really know what you’re doing, it’s always a good idea to nab one of off a professional and use that for your site. We’ll start by listing some of the free websites where you can download a quality theme, and then a paid segment for those who are willing to pay a little bit more for quality.

Free WordPress Theme Sites

Free sites don’t necessarily mean “cheap” or “poor quality”. As a matter of fact there are a ton of great and professional looking theme sites out there on the web that are absolutely free. You may have to dig a bit for them, or you can choose to use one of the sites listed below:

LightWord

Clean and simple with clever themes, you can easily set up your site. It allows for either two or three columns, it supports AdSense, there is a fixed width and it’s widget-ready, and it will allow threaded comments.

If you have WordPress 2.9 or higher as well as a valid XHTML & CSS+ WP3 ready, you can use any of the crisp themes offered on this site.

Toolbox

Toolbox is another theme site that offers super clean themes that you can take advantage of. It is a semantic and HTML5 canvas for any CSS artist.

Adventure Journal

This is a bit of a different theme and may not be appropriate for all users, but for those who want something specific, Adventure Journal may have it! You can customize a wide array of different features from the very comfort of your dashboard. What does this mean to you? You don’t need to use any coding (or know any either, for those who are a bit green when it comes to computers). You can use your very own headers, your own background art, change the column layout for any where from 1-3 columns, set up totally unique sidebars for pages and posts, add a custom stylesheet… the possibilities with Adventure Journal seem almost endless.

It also includes support for different languages, such as French, German, and Portuguese. It is also maintained by Contexture International.

Suffusion

This site is a bit more elegant than a lot of the free theme sites that you will find out there. It’s versatile and browser safe, and it’s packed with a lot of different options. Some of the different options you can expect to find include:

- One, two and three column fixed width and flexible width formats
- 19 different widget areas
- 17 pre-defined color schemes
- 10 pre-defined templates
- Two customizable and multi-level dropdown menus
- Features a magazine layout
- Featured posts
- Widgets for Twitter and Social Networks, as well as Google Translator
- Tabbed sidebars
- Translations in several different languages
- RTL language support

Custom Post Types, WP 3.0 menus and Custom Taxonimies are also integrated into the program, and a BuddyPress support pack plugin is available so that the integration is smooth and easy.

Twenty Eleven

Something has to be said about the theme that WordPress offers for free. Last year the theme was twenty ten, but this year it is definitely twenty eleven. It’s adaptable and sophisticated, and you can make it your own with their fully customizable menu, header image and background. It comes with a showcase page template that can turn any frontpage into a showcase that will display the very best of your content, it has widget support, and there is also a custom Ephermera widget to display your Status, Link, Quote or Aside posts.

Paid WordPress Theme Sites

ElegantThemes

Created by a user who just wasn’t satisfied with what was being offered online, they went ahead and created their very own themes and templates for WordPress. It’s compatible with the latest version of WordPress, and it’s coded in valid CSS and XHTML. These themes will work in all of the most popular browsers, and the sidebars are all widget-ready.

The cost: $40USD annually

Templatic

One thing that makes Templatic stand out for the rest is that it does offer some fantastic technical support. Most of the theme sites out there have absolutely none, but the support that you find on Templatic can have the most basic and inexperienced of users creating gorgeous websites in no time.

The installation is fast and easy, the coding is simple, and there are themes for every single niche out there. If you’re looking for something, you’ll find it on
Templatic.

The Cost: You can choose from two: there’s the Daily Deal standard license for $89.95 (this includes tech support for one domain for one year, theme support, and more) and then there is the Daily Deal developer license for $159.00 USD annually (this is the option for those with multiple domains)

iThemes

As with anything that seems to begin with a lower case “i”, iThemes is one of the most popular paid theme sites on the web to date. Tutorials and training is also available on the iThemes website. What makes it so popular is their flexx & builder theme, and the pluginbuddy plugins also make creating a WordPress theme extremely simple.

This site is definitely a must if you have any business and magazine themes that you are looking to incorporate or use for your site. They are also frequently offering discounts on their site for annual sign up rates, such as 25% off.

The Cost: Currently you can buy the “all access theme pass” for just under $300 USD. If you combine this with their constant discounts, the price that you pay is pretty standard for anyone who wants quality and unique themes for their site.

Publication

When you publish your article on a directory you are providing it to the world free of charge. Because of this, anybody can republish your content. If the article is republished on a site that isn’t even ranked, your backlink within the article can actually hurt your ranking. Furthermore, some article directories don’t even have a PR ranking of 2 and this can give you a bad backlink to your website also. Run a PR check of the directories that you are publishing your articles to before you submit your piece. If you are going to use article marketing, you need to be savvy. Publish your articles on a directory that has a PR ranking of at least 5.

Duplicated Content

Duplicated content is a big no-no to Google. By now, you should know this. In the early days of the Internet, you could publish the same article on thousands of websites and have a great rank. Now, duplicated content can even lead to your website being banned. The problem with duplicated content is the fact that even phrases used within the article could be seen as duplication. Never mind actually cutting and copying the full version of an article, using the same keywords over and over again can be seen as duplicated content. If you are worried about getting your website banned by the search engines, never write an article on the same topic using the same keywords.

Anchor Text

So you have a bunch of different articles and you want to use the same anchor text for your backlink. Don’t even think about it! Anchor text is seen the same as copy and keywords. If your anchor text is “sliced bread” and it’s attached to your backlink, Google will recognize this and negatively affect your website ranking. Mix up your anchor text if you’re going to use article marketing to get your website some backlinks. One of the best ways to get backlinks is through blog comments and forum posts relevant to your site. Search the web for good posts related to your niche and post your link on their comments section to start getting some authority for your site.

Can Article Marketing Still Be Effective?

Article marketing can still be effective, but not exactly for Google rankings. There are a lot of people that keep article directories as bookmarks in their browsers. Article directories allow people to find a wealth of information very quickly. Is there a lot of junk on article directories? Yes. Does this mean that you will not be able to get a lot of readers from them? No. Article directories should be treated as another resource. Depending on the information and the quality of your content, you can still gain a lot from them. The thing about article directories is that they give people a great way to find you. This is much different than trying to gain backlinks and rank in the search engines. Article directories should be used to bring readers to your blog so they can subscribe to your RSS feeds. Other tactics can be used to rank in the search engines.

The Bottom Line

Article marketing was a trend that brought in a lot of traffic, but as all trends come to an end, it is officially dead. This doesn’t mean that you won’t benefit from article this. It just means that you need to weigh the time and effort of marketing your site through articles over building your ranks in the search engines. Article marketing is not nearly as effective as writing original content or using forums to market your site. If your primary means of getting your site ranked was through article marketing, you’ve probably already experienced a drop in your rank. Rebuild your ranking through other means to stay in good standing with Google.

Pay per click, what is it? For those who don’t know, ok, you know when you go to Google or your favorite search engine, you search for something and then you see these little boxes at the top and another one down the right hand side? Those are paid ads, ok? Those aren’t the best results, but those are paid ads ok? That is what pay per click is, people pay money, then when you click on that they get billed. It pays the bills the search engine so the search engine can keep finding stuff for you.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Ok, so who are the major players of pay per click? Well, you have the big 800lb gorilla; Google Adwords. That’s Google’s big cash cow, pay per click. Ah, you can also promote additional, in addition to search results you can also promote videos on YouTube, in a way through adwords as well; which is kind of cool. Now, there is also Microsoft AdCenter which now manages Yahoo and Bing together. And, also Facebook ads. It’s more for targeting by demographics, but that’s also an option. So, there’s alot of options out there, but here’s the key; you got to manage your pay per click campaign. If you’re not careful you can literally loose your shirt. Everybody thinks, I got to be number 1! Ok you got to be number one well you may be paying $5 a click to be number one.

When we first started in business we have this memory, or nightmare if you want to call it, of our $6,000 pay per click, ok. You don’t have to be number one, you do want to be in the first few results, but you’d be amazed at the cost difference between position one and position five. And you also, when you have a pay per click campaign going you always want to be split testing you ads to see which one gets the best click through. You can call it A-B Split Testing, or whatever, but you always want to meet the control. If you have at least two ads running and you’re always trying to get a better click through every time. Absolutely! Set the daily budget! Set the daily budget definitely!

Definitely set the daily budget and track your visitors. See what they’re doing. Are those visitors converting like you hope they will? Absolutely! Because it’s driving traffic but that’s a cost. You want to drive traffic that you know converts. Well, you can have an ad that gets a really great click through but people don’t buy or you can have an ad that gets a little bit less click through but everybody converts, so you just go to…Testing! Test! Test! Test!

So where do you send that paid traffic? Do you just send them to your homepage? No! You want to send them to a targeting landing page. And, basically you want to see which ad you’ve written and you want people to click on that ad, but the landing page to get to has to jive with the ad they clicked on because, if you make a proposition in their ad that their interested in and they click on it they are not going to buy if you send them to your homepage. It’s just a wasted click and a waste of money. So, always send them to a targeting landing page. And get them to make an action; like join your email list, buy and item, whatever. Test all the way to the end.

For Publishers: Google Adsense

Never heard of Google Adsense? Then this is where your money making venture begins. Google has their “Adsense” program which really allows other website owners and bloggers a chance to make some extra cash after they sign up for the program. How it works is that Google allows for a third party to place Google adverts on “their” Google websites (which would include your blog), and Google is then paid by that advertiser. Google’s Adsense program allows you the ability to also make a portion of the cash that they earn from those advertisements, since the ads that they are being paid for are being placed on your blog or website.

With the “per click pay” or “pay per click” program, you’ll make a pre-defined amount of cash when someone clicks on those ads. This form of advertising works like this:

1) Person finds your blog
2) Person sees advertisement on your blog
3) Person clicks on the advertisement
4) You and Google make money, and client is happy that you directed a new potential customer to their site.

Before you can benefit from any of this, you will need to create a Google Adsense account. It’s free and easy to do. All you need to do is go to the Google Adsense site and then provide your personal details, such as your name and address. From there, you can then start defining what types of advertisements you want on your site.

Different Types of Advertisements

Google Adsense offers some different options when it comes to the types of ads that you want on your site. You can choose from:

- Text only ads
- Image only ads
- Text and image ads

You can also change the size and color of the advertisements so that you can make the advertisement look as if it belongs and is a part of your blog. If an advertisement looks like it’s out of place on your blog, it will be glaringly obvious and it will hardly get any clicks, which means you’ll be getting hardly any cash. The more the advertisement blends into your blog, the more likely people will click on it.

Still difficult to choose? Generally text ads go over well with blogs that are related to business, careers, politics, science, self help and more educational topics. Image ads are better for “sexier” and more glamorous niches, like music, movie and TV, fashion, celebrity news, sports, fitness and gaming. If you want a blend of both text and image ads, consider these if your blog niche is in cars, pets, technology, or the food and drink industry.

What is NLP?

An acronym for Neuro-Linguistic Programming, NLP is an approach in which one’s pattern of mental and emotional behavior is changed by self-awareness and effective communication. It was founded by Richard Bandler and John Grinder, who felt that it would be a useful technique in allowing people to have more fulfilled and better lives.

The name comes from the idea that both neurological processes, or “neuro” processes, and language, or “linguistic” and behavioral patterns that have been learned through experience (referred to as “programming”) could be organized to achieve specific goals. It was originally developed for therapeutic purposes, but now a lot of businesses have adopted the processes for their own financial gain by persuading customers.

Step 1: Believe in Yourself

The best way to start by practicing NLP is by using it on yourself. One thing that is very important to remember about this process is that everything that we think, do or say has an impact on our unconscious mind. What you have to do is program your mind so that you are getting exactly what you want out of it.

One example of this is by you perhaps telling yourself that you are forgetful and just never seem to be able to remember things. When ever you say this to yourself, either in your mind or out loud, you are further reprogramming yourself to believe that yes, you are that forgetful and things will never change. This will only further create a self fulfilling prophecy where you will then always have a bad memory.

So how do you remedy this to make yourself more successful? Always be mindful of each and every word that you say. Use your conscious and aware mind as best as you can to screen and eliminate any unwanted or inappropriate data. Tell yourself that you will remember, reassure yourself that your mind is quite capable of remembering things. The key behind this approach is to remind yourself to remain present, positive and believable.

Step 2: Be Positive in your Blog

The best thing that you can ever do to try and increase your conversion rates and to draw attention to your blog is to BE POSITIVE. Negativity will get you no where in the sales world.

What you want to do when you are writing your blog is to keep everything upbeat and positive. Write about what your customer or followers want. Write about what you want and the positive aspects of your product or service that you are promoting. Write about what your product can do for your customer, and don’t go on about what your product won’t do for them.

Step 3: Build a Rapport

Why do we buy something? It’s not always just because we have faith in the product; it’s because we have faith in the person selling it, too! Though a blog takes away the ability to meet a potential customer face to face, presenting yourself as a positive down to earth person will get you far.

One NLP technique that is commonly used is referred to as “mirroring and matching”. This method typically involves you copying or “mirroring” your customers’ habits, gestures, the words that they use and the talking style to build a rapport. What a blogger can take from method is that they can certainly match the style that a potential customer or fellow blogger is using. Whenever replying to email messages or posts, don’t be too afraid to sound unprofessional or casual. For example, if a customer writes:

“hey im interested in ur product. How much is it?”

An appropriate response would not be:

“Dear Customer,

Thank you for your query about the cost of our product. Our current price is $19.99, but if you act now you will receive an instant 20% discount.

Thank you for your interest.”

Aim to match the tone of your buyer. Don’t send out random auto responder messages or emails. A good response would be,

“Thanks for your interest! It’s $19.99 for the product, but the good news is that if you buy it today, 20% will be taken right off of that price.”

Step 4: The Right Thing to Say

How you say (or type) things is what will make NLP work for you in the blogging world. There are a particular series of words that our brains will innately “accept” far more easily and without analysis. What does this mean? The listener or reader is more receptive and ready to accept what you say. Some of these words include:

- Unlimited
- Easily
- Naturally
- Realize(ing)
- Experiencing
- Aware
- Expanding
- Before
- Now
- After
- Because

Step 5: Make them Feel Good

Let’s face it, most of us don’t buy things that we actually need; we buy things that we want! So when a potential customer feels good about a product, there’s a much higher chance that he or she will buy it. Your job is to make sure that they do feel great about buying your product or service.

The best way to do this isn’t to hint at how they will feel good. The best way to do this is to imply that the statement will make them feel good. One example is:

“I know that if I bought this product, I’d be so happy and proud. I’d get things done a lot faster and then be able to spend more time with my family. I’m so lucky to have my family and I’m so grateful for them every single day.”

Step 6: Copy their Values

You don’t want to enforce your values or what you think is valuable about the product with any potential customer. Have a little chat with them over your blog or through email and find out what they’re all about. From there, you can use the same sort of example as in step 5 and determine different ways in which the product will make them feel good about themselves through their values.

Our advice to making money in this new year: diversify your portfolio. It’s a good idea to get your hands on as many things as you can, though work on one thing at a time. Once you become a pro at one thing, keep doing it, but then try out another online venture. Below are some of our favorite ways to make great cash online:

1. Start a Blog

Don’t think people want to hear what you’ve got to say? You’ll be surprised by just how many people want to know what you know and share in your life experiences. Blogs are a great way to make some extra cash, but they will take a bit of time to get started. This is why we say you should start up a blog first and get it rolling before you move on to any other ventures.

Blogs aren’t just about having people stop by and read your stuff. You can turn a blog into a profit by selling ad space, creating AdSense ads, doing affiliate marketing promotions, and more. You should learn about SEO (search engine optimization), themes, templates, and where you can get some great royalty free images too so you can create the best blog ever.

TIP: Your first blog may be a total bust, but don’t give up. It often takes people 2-3 times before they create a blog that they love and that will start making them some serious cash.

2. Become a Micro-Jobber

Never heard of microjobs? Microjobs are little tasks that people need to have done, so they go onto the internet, post an advertisement for a small job to be done, and those interested can then respond by submitting a proposal, a resume, and/or a sample of their work. Microjobs are quickly becoming a way for people to earn a great supplementary or even full time income!

There are a number of micro job sites out there, like oDesk and Elance, and Craigslist even often has microjobs posted too. Most of these sites list jobs by category, and there’s a category for everyone, from web design to freelance writing to sales and marketing. Most of these sites require you to register first and it can be a bit hard to get going, but once you do you’ll soon be easily making an extra $500 a month.

3. Sell Things Online

A great way to make cash is to sell things online. People are buying online more and more these days, but the market isn’t so saturated yet that there’s no room for you. Sites like eBay, Craigslist, Amazon and Kijiji are full of people whose full time occupation is just selling stuff over the internet! Each website has its own pros and cons and may work better with some items than others, but test it out and see how it works.
You can sell:

- Stuff around the house you don’t need any more
- Stuff that you find a great deal on, and then flip it and sell it online for market value
- Wholesale items (there are a ton of websites online that sell wholesale, so you buy brand new things for under market value and can then sell them at market value)
-
Check into any shipping deals that you can offer too if you plan on selling online. People love to hear the words “free shipping”!

TIP: If you’re crafty and good at making things, definitely start selling your stuff on Etsy. Etsy is one of the biggest sites for selling any homemade items, so you will have a large audience checking out your stuff on a daily basis.

4. Do Surveys

Okay, so this is one of the less fun ways to make money online. No one wants to sit at their computer, slaving away and completing surveys. Not only that, but there are survey sites out there that promise to pay, but they never, ever do.

Surveys do take a bit of time and sure, it can take a while to make more than just a few bucks. But once you find reputable sites and start filling them in, you’ll be surprised by how quickly the money ads up. That extra $5-$10 a day you make filling out mindless surveys quickly turns into hundreds and thousands of dollars a year. Check out Opinion Outpost and Cash Crate if you’re interested.

5. Earn Swag Bucks

Swag Bucks are quickly becoming THE currency of the internet. Swag Bucks is an online portal that helps you earn “digital dollars”, which are referred to as Swag Bucks. These Swag Bucks can then be redeemed for a number of different things that you can find in the Swag Store, like Amazon and Starbucks gift cards, downloads, and a number of different products.

There are a number of different ways that you can earn Swag Bucks. One of the easiest ways is using the Swag Bucks homepage as your search portal. Whenever you enter in a search query, you then have the chance to make some Swag Bucks. Another way is to just simply watch videos that you’re interested in. Your “Swag Bucks” meter increases by the number of videos you watch. Once your meter is full, you then have the chance to earn “Swag Bucks”.

But that’s not all. You can also earn Swag Bucks by:

- Taking surveys
- Playing games
- Filling out time sensitive offers
- Checking out special offers
- Recycle stuff like your old cell phone and game systems
- Make referrals
- Answer polls
Check out their website for more details on how you can make some easy extra cash.

Examples of blackhat strategies are spinning articles, using questionable backlinks, keyword stuffing, duplicating content, concealing text and incorporating keywords that have nothing to do with your blog’s theme. While blackhatting is tempting because it is relatively easy and does work, its effects are only temporary because sooner or later, the blog employing black hat tactics will be caught and penalized by Google, which may put that blog in a place worse than it was prior to using blackhat tricks.

What is Content Spinning?

You have probably encountered this while searching blogs for information, blogs which have content that mysteriously sounds just like or very similar to other content you have read somewhere else. This is called “spinning” or “article spinning” and is essentially a webblog owner stealing another blog’s content and copying it onto their own webpage.

Or, in an effort to seem less of a plagiarist, the owner replaces certain words in the article (using a synonym finder or automatic article rewriter) but leaves the gist of the article alone. They also do this in order to pass something called “Copyscape“, which is a program designed to test articles for plagiarism. Spinning is almost always detectable because the articles does not make much sense and contains strangely worded sentences, improper word placement and sometimes little or no punctuation. Using content spinning is considered blackhat by Google and also makes your blog look foolish and substandard.

What is Cloaking?

Cloaking is another blackhat tactic that will put you on Google’s naughty list. This means that a blog owner is attempting to direct users to different URL’s other than the real one found on a Google search. For example, someone may serve a page of HTML text to a variety of search engines but display a page of Flash content or .JPG images to users. blog owners generally employ cloaking when they have elements embedded in their page that isn’t searchable material to a search engine.

According to Google guidelines regarding cloaking, when Googlebot retains a page that uses JavaScript, it isn’t able to follow links which may be concealed within the programming language itself. While JavaScript is a legitimate language to use in a web page, those who implement JavaScript just to trick Google and other search engines is definitely not a valid method to use when trying to rank high on Google.

Webmaster guidelines for Google state that putting a different text inside a Java tag rather than a “no-script” tag breaches the rule regarding the appearance of alternate content for users than for search blogs which “see” that no-script text.

Stuffing With Keywords That Are Not Relevant To Your blog

While utilizing meta-keywords are not vital to being recognized by Google search anymore, it is still important to use and correctly select keywords. However, blackhatting occurs when someone uses keywords in their blog content which has nothing to do with their blog in order to get picked up the a search engine spider.

Google does not appreciate a blog owner repeating the same keyword or phrases in an article, either. This is called “keyword spamming” and will result in a blog immediately being lowered in rank. In addition, integrating trending keywords in your blog content which are not relevant to your blog theme is another no-no upon which Google frowns. For example, if your blog is about marketing cell phones, don’t try to fit Lady Ga-Ga’s name into the content just to try to get picked up by search engines.

Knowing how to use keywords effectively when creating a blog’s content is imperative to being ranked high on search engines. While using one keyword such as “dog” or “car” will place you in a position where you will be competing with millions of other blogs also adopting this same keyword, using key phrases will not.

Instead of “car” as a keyword, a blog owner could use “family-friendly car” or “car with good gas mileage” which will reduce the number of blogs vying for rank. Remember, however, that overusing keyword phrases is not any more effective than using them at a 2% to 3% rate within an article. Also be aware that search engines usually examine the first 250 words of content because they consider these to be the most important words in an article.

What is Google Bombing?

When a blog owner has finally achieved the spot he or she wanted on Google’s search page, they may decide to start “Google bombing”. This means they will start to create many other “mini-blogs”, or blogs which have the minimal amount of elements necessary to constitute a webpage and link that quasi-webblog back to the main one. This means that higher ranking blog can possibly have hundreds to thousands of links directing users to it in a few days or weeks. When Google discovers this, they will undoubtedly investigate this unnatural phenomenon and take action against the owner.

Using the Blackhat Technique of Hidden Text

Have you ever wondered why some blogs have an inordinate amount of blank white space on their page, usually at the bottom? Check it again, only this time highlight the area. You will probably see that it is not empty but contains white text written against a white background.

Blackhatters think they can utilize this strategy and either add keywords not related to the blog or indulge in keyword stuffing. Blackhatters may think that Google cannot see the words but actually, the Google spider can detect these “hidden” words. Once discovered, Google will probably penalize the blog owners for employing this tactic and demote or eliminate the webblog altogether.

So play it safe when trying to get your blog ranked high on Google’s search engine and avoid the blackhat techniques which may result in your blog laying helplessly at the bottom of the link barrel.

Facebook is the number one social media site on the Internet. It has a population that is larger than hundreds of countries on this planet, with members coming from every corner of the earth. Just being a member means that you are potentially exposing yourself or your business to millions upon millions of people – and all with little to no effort. Though a lot of bloggers don’t realize this, Facebook offers a number of tools to promote your blog. Let’s start with the most basic of them all:

Change your Profile

What’s the purpose behind your Facebook profile? Is it to connect with friends and family? Is it to showcase pictures of your wild night out last Saturday? Or do you want it to be associated with you, a professional blogger who is an expert in your niche? You have to really consider how seriously you want to be taken, starting with how your profile is set up. People will be looking at everything about you, from what you “like” to what you are a “fan” of to the different pictures you have taken of yourself. Say, for instance, you have a blog about putting a stop to animal cruelty. A picture of you eating a steak probably isn’t the best thing to have on Facebook.

If you do want to have your profile about your personal life, then strongly consider having two separate accounts – one for “you”, and one for the professional blogger.

Seek out Friends

Don’t wait for people to find you; you’ve got to go out there and find them! The search tool  is pretty thorough, allowing you to search for people not only by name, but also by company, school, networks, email address, and more.

And don’t think that you need to know a person before you send out a friend request. You can send a friend request to absolutely anybody on Facebook. What’s the worst that can happen? They can decline your request or ignore it. But what happens more often than not is that they do accept your friend request (many people have a strong urge to have a high “friend” tally) and you then have a brand new addition to your Facebook blog network.

You can also try to seek out people who may be interested in your niche by checking out people on your friends’ friend’s lists or through group and fan page lists.

Create your own Group or Fan Page

One of the best tools for it is the Facebook Page. We’re not talking about just creating an account and friend everyone. People won’t follow you just for that. Instead they want to get updates from your blog. In fact, the first fans of your Facebook page might just be your own friends. Have them click on the “like” button. That way when you post something, they’ll be able to see it on their feed.
When you do create a Facebook page for your blog, make sure that you also upload your blog’s content onto it. When people comment or reply, make sure that you also reply and keep the conversation going. It  is an online community, so in order for that community to survive, everyone has to keep on talking and participating. If you post and never reply, you’ll find that people will quickly lose interest in your Facebook page and your blog.

One big difference between a fan page and a personal page is that the former can have an unlimited number of follows, while your personal page is limited to 5000. Obviously, you hope that your business will bigger than that at some point.
So how to you get people to like you page. Well put the “like” button on your post. It’s a matter of engaging the Facebook audience on your site, and have them eventually subscribing to your Facebook page as well.

Comment

You know how a lot of blogs have comments by default. Well the problem with that is you get a lot of spams. Facebook solves that problem by offering a plugin that requires actually Facebook accounts. So it means only authenticated users can post on your blog. Additionally when someone post comments about your article, it shows up on their wall and feeds that’s visible by their friends. So it creates a viral environment that promotes your blog.

Like Box/Facepile

It’s a box that you can embed into your website to show the number of people who likes it. Someone can click on the Like button, and become a follower as well. There’s also Facepile which shows the pictures of users that like your blog.

Hook Up with your Other Social Media

Every social media site can work with the other social media sites in some way. If you create a Facebook page, for example, you can include this link in a number of your Twitter entries. Link your blog’s RSS feed right up to Facebook to create up-to-the-minute status updates. While you’re at it, link up your Twitter feed and if you have a SlideShare account, add that to Facebook too. Keep on connecting different social media to other social media that you have to create a web, or network, of sites that are all promoting your blog and what it’s about.

Remember to Be Human

Whether your blog is written solely about daily observations, or whether it is more business-minded, you still have to be human. Facebook is less professional and more casual in nature (unlike some other business-related social media sites, such as LinkedIn). People aren’t on Facebook to be bombarded with promotions and business-only material. If that’s all you’re giving people, then they will be de-friending you soon enough. Make sure you do a fair mix of both personal stuff and promotional material. As long as the personal material isn’t too personal, your customers will appreciate it. Funny observations, pictures, quotes, and videos are all great to share. Talking about what your dog, cat, child, or friend did – as long as it’s appropriate and, preferably, universally funny – will give your Facebook page a fun, personal edge.

So these are some of our favorite tips & tools tools. Tell us about which ones that you like the most.

Don’t Be Outrageous

Are there people online who have started making $5000 after just a couple of months? Yes. But they are very few and far between. When you make outrageous claims about your products, you eliminate any credibility you have tried to establish with your reader. The reader is coming to you for expertise in the niche that your website or blog focuses on. When you tell them that they are going to start making $5000 after just one or two days and then they do not, they will no longer trust anything that your blog or website says. At this point they will probably go to your competition, which is giving them a soft sell. Actually telling your readers what a product can do for them instead of what it will do for them is the best way to be credible. Listing the product features and how it helped in the past is a really easy way to deliver the soft sell principles.

Be Personal

More than likely the product they you’re trying to sell your readers will have a product page listing the technical specifications, system requirements and other key features. If your readers wanted this information than they would be at the product homepage. The whole reason that the reader is at your website or blog is because they want your perspective on the product and how it helped you. Be personal with your readers. Tell them the problems that you were having before you bought the product and how the product gave you a solution. Simply telling the readers how the product helped you with a problem instead of why they need to buy the product is an easy way to come off as personable.

Spammy Links

Let’s say that you’re trying to sell a product on acne. There are several ways that you can use the product name in your article or blog. You can either add a direct link with the website URL and your affiliate link attached, or you can add anchor text with your affiliate link embedded. If you are going to use the website URL make sure that you only list it at the top and bottom of your blog post. Putting too many links in your post will not only turn the reader off, it can come off as spammy to the search engines. If you have too many links in your post the search engines could like your article and put it into the supplemental search results. If you are going to use links that are embedded in anchor text, spread them around your blog post. You want to have anchor text links embedded at about 1% of your total blog post’s word count. For instance, you’re doing a review of an acne product. If you have a 500-word article, you want to have about 5 anchor text links in the post so you don’t get flagged. This will also be aesthetically appeasing to your reader.

Comparisons

Comparisons can be some of the best ways to do a soft sell online. When you compare the product that you are selling to other products on the market and give the reader examples of why your product is better than the others, you are effectively tapping into a sale. More than likely the reader has been researching different products to solve their problem. They probably already know the competition for your product and are wondering which one is best. When you do a comparison of the two products and show why your product is the best you are effectively using a soft sell to put your product into the forefront of their need.

In contrast, if you were writing a blog and suggested that people examine “www.allergies.com” to find excellent information regarding allergies, then this link would be considered an “outbound” link.

When you have a good amount of other sites linking back to your site, the traffic being directed to you can be nothing short of amazing. It also does wonders for your search engine rankings, which is the ultimate goal of all bloggers. Nine times out of ten, a person will choose to click on a site which is contained on the first or second page of a search result. Getting inbound links incorporated into as many blog as possible will increase your rank quickly and without using “blackhat” tricks which can get you penalized by certain search engines.

Google’s Disapproval

Google genuinely disapproves of “black hat” techniques intended to optimize a site on search engine rankings and may penalize a site in regards to its search engine rankings. These tactics include using invisible text or url’s, concealing keywords and keyword stuffing or revealing one page to people and another to Google’s search spider. White hat techniques, on the other hand, are approved methods relating to SEO strategy, such as utilizing inbound links that are legitimate blogs.

Best Method: Good Content

Experts say the that best method to use in order to obtain as many inbound links as possible it to consistently generate quality content that actually provides users with meaty information and meaningful advice. People don’t want to read the same old content or blog over and over again.

Eventually, they will stop visiting a site if the content remains the same or if the content has changed but is inferior and poorly written. blogs which contain “fluff”, or writing that is there merely to take up space, is like an inept and crudely decorated room. People won’t want to return to something that is unattractive and never changes.

Creating unique and substantial content on your blog cannot be stressed enough if you want to continuously add to your list of inbound links. When a blog, video, or other internet product becomes suddenly famous for one reason or another and spreads all over the internet like wildfire, this phenomenon is what is known as “going viral“.

For a website to produce such an effect on the web means that it will have to demonstrate something extraordinary and fascinating for people to feel compelled to send other the link or include it in their blogs. This is why producing a steady stream of powerful writing is absolutely necessary if you are going to generate those inbound links.

Article Sites

Another method which can generate inbound links to your site is for you to begin writing articles to sites like eZine or HubPages. These are sites which require you to follow a specific writing format and the moderators will ask you to submit an example of your writing before they accept you as a member of their writing community.

Once you are in, however, you can start writing articles for these sites which will be published containing your name and blog url. Since these article sites get millions of visitors each day, there exists the potential for at least someone to read your article, think it is good, and link back to it in their own blog or another article written by them. This is another reason why anything you write which is creating inbound links needs to be written as engagingly and professionally as possible.

Online Directories

Some individuals take advantage of online directories which contain hundreds (sometimes thousands depending on the size of the online directory) of links that are used by people searching for information regarding all sort of topics. However, because there are so many of these online directories and because most of them are only meant to provide links for the search engines themselves (called “link farms”), it probably would not be that beneficial to take the time to contact these directories and request them to add your link to their site.

Contact the Blog Owner

A direct approach to get inbound links is to personally contact the person who owns a blog. Email him or her and ask if you can place your link on their page. This especially works well if the webmaster you choose to contact deals with exact or similar topics that you do.

As long as your site is legitimate, most site owners shouldn’t mind creating an inbound link for you. You can also become known as a friendly linker if you incorporate a section on your blog which permits others the opportunity to link to your site. Don’t forget to include the HTML code when offering this chance for others to build their inbound link list.

Ebooks

With the popularity of Amazon’s Kindle and other online reading services peaking recently, the concept of E-books is rapidly trending on the internet. An e-book is exactly what it is called–a book specifically written just for the internet and is not in paper form. When you pen your own e-book, you can place links to your page anywhere in the book you wish. In addition, you can also post your e-book on blogs that host e-books.

Automated link exchange programs

One word of caution: don’t bother participating in automated link exchange programs. For the most part, they are ineffective and disadvantageous because they will link you with other blogs that are low-quality, sometimes illegitimate and do nothing to augment your site whatsoever. A search engine may even discipline you by placing your site link way down on their list for joining an automated link exchange program.