Blogging 101

The Latest Books to Help You with Your Blog

Biggi — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 23:04:00 +0000

I am recommending two books below for the beginning blogger. I am sure even the advanced user can pick up a new trick or two.

These two books should get you on your way to blogging success quickly! I recommend you get them soon, since they are so current and will include the latest information and blog software versions.

Blogging for Dummies is just being released today!

Amazon.com: Blogging For Dummies (For Dummies (Computers))

From the Back Cover

Express yourself, build your business, or promote a cause

Make your blog stand out in a crowd, build an audience, and even make it pay

Whether you’re just finding out about blogs or you’ve been blogging for a while and are curious about podcasting or videoblogging, you can find answers in this book! Get the scoop on software options and how to boost readership, handle comments, make money with ads and sponsorships, add audio or video, and much more.

Discover how to:

Create and maintain a blog that draws readers
Protect your privacy and your job
Deal with spam and inappropriate comments
Find your niche
Use your blog to promote your business

WordPress for Dummies is only two months old!

Amazon.com: WordPress For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech))

From the Back Cover
Includes coverage of WordPress MU community software

Create a hosted, self-hosted, or multi-user blog, explore plugins, and more.

WordPress is powerful software known for helping bloggers share their thoughts online. Whether you want to set up a blog in the WordPress community, add a blog in the WordPress community, add a blog to another site, or build your own blogging community, this book shows how WordPress can help. With this book, you’ll soon be navigating WordPress templates plugins, and themes with no problem.

Discover how to:

Personalize WordPress settings
Understand common template tags
Manage and moderate comments
Deal with spam and trackback
Troubleshoot common problems

Technorati Tags: blogging book, WordPress book, for dummies computer book, learn to blog, learn WordPress

Multimedia Blogging Course by Mark Joyner

Biggi — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 16:51:17 +0000

I’m evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they’re letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.

It covers:

The best blogging techniques.
How to get traffic to your blog.
How to turn your blog into money.

I’ll let you know what I think once I’ve had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it’s still free.

Technorati Tags: blogging for beginners, learning to blog, online blogging course, blog traffic, monetize your blog

Improving Your Blog

Biggi — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 05:42:14 +0000

Building a Better Blog

7 Essential WordPress Hacks Video Series

Learn To Think Like A Blogger

An Introduction to Using Images on Blogs

Technorati Tags: better blog, improve blog, add images to blog

How to Write Great Blog Content

Biggi — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 05:39:06 +0000

THE Resource on blog copywriting is Brian Clark at Copyblogger.com. He is especially effective at teaching how to write excellent headlines.

Also see Copywriting 101 on Copyblogger

Here’s a good Problogger article on 10 Tips for writing a blog post.

Here’s a good article from A List Apart on How to write a better weblog.

How to Write Excellent Blog Content – by ProBlogger (also follow links to related articles on this page – they are short but to the point)

Top 5 Tips Writing for Blogs

Technorati Tags: blog writing, improve writing skills, writing tips, writing headlines

Affiliate Programs

Biggi — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 05:34:52 +0000

How to find affiliate programs for your blog.

Technorati Tags: affiliate programs, list of affiliate programs, blogging income, monetize your blog, make money blogging

Monetizing Your Blog

Biggi — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 05:31:58 +0000

How to make money from your blog - Steve Pavlina

Top 7 Monetization methods - Entrepreneur’s Journey

How To Make Money Blogging - doshdosh

A comprehensive list of articles on blog monetization from Problogger.

Especially check out this article on Direct methods, and this one on Indirect Methods.

Also read this article from Copyblogger on Indirect methods.

Google AdSense

Chitika eMiniMalls – must receive at least 10,000 monthly page views to apply

TextLinkAds – Warning! Google might not like these. Please do some research first.

Technorati Tags: make money blogging, blog income, monetize your blog

SEO for Blogs

Biggi — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 05:28:59 +0000

Here are some resources on SEO specifically for blogs.

Aaron Wall’s SEOBook - a much respected ebook on SEO. I highly recommend it! Aaron also has a blog.

SEO Tools - free tools, also from Aaron Wall.

SEO for blogs - Problogger.

Here’s the WordPress plugin I use - All in one SEO.

How to use The All in One SEO Pack

Free Guide to Learning Search Engine Optimization

Step by Step Instructions for Search Engine Optimization, plus free PDF

List of Blog Directories

Search Engine Optimization for Bloggers - podcast

Technorati Tags: SEO, search engine optimization, SEO for blogs

Keyword Research Tools

Biggi — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 05:23:42 +0000

Top 5 Keyword Suggestion Tools

Overture Keyword Selector Tool

Google Adwords Keyword Tool

WordTracker - Free Trial or subscription.

SEO Tools from SEOBook.com

HitTail is a product that reveals in real time which keywords people use to find your website.

Technorati Tags: SEO, search engine optimization, SEO for blogs, Overture, Google Adwords

Top 10 SEO Techniques

Biggi — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 05:20:53 +0000

Know who you are attracting to your site and why.
You’ve done your research. You know who your ideal clients / customers are. You do know who your target audience is. Right? Now you’re ready to create pages to attract them.
Know what Keywords and Phrases you are optimizing each page for.
If you know and understand the people that you are optimizing for, it should be a fairly easy process to determine the keywords that will attract them. Refer to the Keyword Research Tools post to begin the process of finding the right keywords.
Optimize your site for your human visitors first, robots and spiders second.
Great placement in the search engine listings means nothing if, when a visitor comes to your site they can’t find what they’re looking for or have a hard time reading your content. Make sure that every page has a clearly defined topic. Don’t try to cram too much information – or too many keywords into one page.
Content: Quality and Quantity Count.
The search engine spiders are remarkably adept at recognizing quality content when they see it. And this quality content also encourages visitors to spend more time on your site and come back for more. But with the search engines, especially Google, quantity is also critical. Google loves sites with lots of quality content. And it loves sites that regularly add and update content.
Use Your Meta Tags.
The power of meta tags has been somewhat reduced lately. But many, if not most, Search Engines still take them into consideration when ranking your page. So make sure you’ve got a Title tag with your primary keyword/phrase in it. Include a unique Description tag for each page as well as a unique list of Keywords.
Make sure the Spiders and Bots can navigate your site.
If you use fancy bells and whistles on your site – Flash, JavaScript, frames, forms, etc. – be sure to include alternative means for search engine spiders to navigate your site and be sure to let them “know” what is contained in the elements they can’t “see.”
Generate a site map for your visitors and for Google.
You may never use sitemaps, but there are lots of folks who do. So make nice and create one for them. You never know who is going to turn into a great customer or client. And while you’re at it, create a sitemap for Google. It’s a great way to get a new site listed more quickly and to get your site additions and updates spidered more efficiently.
Use tags for your images.
This is a great way to get a few extra keywords into your page. It’s also a web design “best practice” to ensure that your site is accessible to site impaired visitors as well as visitors who have turned off graphics – yes there are some folks that turn off site graphics!
Use keywords in your page names and / or domain name.
URLs are searchable and searched by the spiders. And they give some weight to keywords in URLs. So if you’re selling massage tables and you can get the domain name www.massagetables.com that would be a very good thing. If not, you can create a page within your site that is named massagetables.html. If your domain name was www.xyzenterprise.com the URL of that page would www.xyzenterprise.com/massagetables.html. Not bad from an SEO perspective. Plus it clearly lets visitors know what the page is about - a double bonus.
Get incoming links to your site.
The key here is related and reputable. No link farms please. And a link from Joe’s auto body shop to your massage therapy site will probably not count for much. If you have valuable information, you should be able to get some good links. As you search the web keep track of sites that you think could benefit from linking to yours and send a well-written email to the webmaster of the site explaining why a link to your site would benefit their visitors.