Tips on building your blog readership

Blogs are started for different reasons; for recreation, as a hobby or as a source of income. Whatever the reason may be, attracting traffic to a blog is a challenge. So it has to be made certain from the beginning itself that visitors who come to read your blog are comfortable enough to stick around.

The most important thing to do to maintain a good readership to your blog is to publish fresh content to your blog regularly. This is because once readers become familiar with the frequency of your posts, they will come to read it on those specified days. When providing fresh content to your blog, remember to stay to the topic as readers prefer blogs that were focused on a particular theme or topic. If you have no theme and just going on posting about anything, then readers become passionate about your blog and may move on somewhere else! Headlines are the pullers of an article. Similarly, titles of the blogs announce what the post is about, and thus helps people navigate to your blog and this in turn influences your ranking with search engines.

People are more comfortable with personal conversations. This is the reason you have to think of your blog as a type of conversation wherein you post matter and readers comment on it. Whatever comments they give, be as active and positive as possible when you interact and converse with your readers. As you go on writing in the blogs, you are bound to have some posts termed as best posts. Don’t let these best posts get lost in your archives. Instead, focus on highlighting these posts by perhaps linking them to your best posts from a ‘best posts’ category on the main page of the blog. And if you have many pages for your blog, make it a point to provide good navigation for your readers to the popular pages of the blog. This makes the reader’s visit more enjoyable, easy and comfortable.

Maintain a regular schedule for your posting on the blog. This is because if a reader visits your blog and finds that the last post was about three weeks ago, they are bound to be disappointed and it also gives them the benefit of doubt over you. They may come back a few days later to recheck for new postings; but they are bound to lose interest quickly if you fall out of your regular schedule. When writing for the blog on a serious matter like business and medicine, you have to make it a point to be informed about the subject, to maintain your credibility with the readers. Do some research to be informed about the latest trends and information and don’t rehash old stuff that has been around for some time. Whatever you write, make it a point to use your spellchecker for any spelling and grammar mistakes there may be in the blog. This is because the more mistakes you have in your blog, the lower are your creditability in the eyes of the reader.

Blogs are meant to have short messages and views about a topic; and remember that blog readers are always on the lookout for short postings, and not to read a novel on the blog. So always maintain short and sweet blogs. Maintain an entry to a blog to only a couple of hundred words. If there is more to say, split it into a series of entries or you could perhaps write it as an article and then link it to a shorter entry in your blog. This also adds links to your blog as you get more links and thus more traffic to the website. Don’t post nonsense on the blog as it is always better to have some really gritty commentary on an irregular basis, than filling the blog with fluff to drive away the fans.

Thought blogs may be a great means of promoting your product or service, be subtle when using the blog as a marketing vehicle. This is because people hate the idea of being subjected to a sales pitch; just weave references to your product and affiliate links into solid and informative content for people to read. Make it a point to submit your blog to blog search engines. There are many blog search engines in the internet that can be found using Google. Make sure to write a good title and a good description to your blog when submitting to blog search engines to that people can easily find it and thus click on your link. This in turn leads to an increase in targeted traffic to your blog.

Next Google Update is around the corner - What have you done to increase your ranking?

After the Jagger update we all went through a rough phase. But what have you all done to recover from that disaster.
I got several emails from Webmaster's some of them saying to remove the reciprocal link which I have already listed on my website. Some have asked for to place content on our website for a one-way link to them. Some have asked to interview them and place a link on my website. Some has send me testimonials and article to place it on my website. Sounds good right if you are a SEO expert and also it is the one of the techniques to gain link popularity and especially gain good inbound links.

The above techniques may be sound goods to you but time consuming; sometime it won't work in the long run as well.

I am crazy about stats that consume half of my work time. I often use to check the web stats, Adsense stats and any kind of information about the traffic coming to my website. After Jagger Update my enthusiasm for stats checking has died down the reason was my website ranking has dropped and there is a very few referral from Google. But my MSN traffic was steady, as you all know it is easy to optimize for MSN all you need is few links with your targeted anchor text on it. A

As days went by Christmas and New Year came and gone. I was digging deep into the web to find info about has anyone figured out about the Jagger debacle. After reading posts after posts in forums, interacting with webmasters and SEO expert from around the world. I got a very little help from these efforts. I went to every search engine guidelines to find information why I was left out. I started visiting these guidelines pages but Google Webmaster's Guidelines is what impress me a lot. Then I went to my websites and figured out what went wrong, there where some CSS spamming, many unrelevent reciprocal linking, duplicate pages and content, broken links, no sitemap, fewer inbound links, no relevant outbound links etc. Then I realized the problem of why I was penalized by the major search engines.

Apart from fixing those stuffs and straighten my website I had time to write some good content articles and I distributed some quality articles to article banks which was a great info for Webmaster. After a couple of weeks I check in with my status of my article online, "Oh man" I can’t believe it, it has spread like a virus
on the internet it has been reprinted in blogs, ezines, directories and website all-round the world. The chain reaction of these article submission effort has gained me many inbound links and my web analytics has started to increased referrals for many keywords from every major search engine including Google.

It worked for me it can work for you as well. The bottom line is straighten up your website from old and black hat techniques and follow the guidelines given by the search engine then no one can take you for a ride. Pretty simple "Quality Content".

Article Marketing a New Trend in SEO

Article marketing a new trend among Search engine optimization experts.
As we all know the benefits of article submission will generate traffic to your website as well as get inbound links. It’s a part of good idea to submit articles to article banks on a regular basis. Now a days there a 100 of article submission softwares and packages available one the web. Not all of them are reliable since most of these companies use automated article submission, which help you in anyway. Also a article submitted through these methods won’t meet the guidelines of the article directory to which it is intended to submit an article.

I recommend a manual article submission services which is reliable and also there is a guarantee that your article is submitted properly. These kinds of services also help you to submit to niche directories. Suppose your articles are related to a certain niche you will get advantage of this.

I would recommend certain services which I found reliable for my article submission.
http://www.isnare.com
http://www.articlenetworks.com
Both these sites are high recommend by experts and article authors to get maximum exposure. Especially Articlenetworks.com sends your article to 100 top article directories. If you calculate the average it cost just $1 per article. Please check out their website to know more about their article submission services.

Article directory submission is a best way to cut cost your workload and time in the SEO process.

Keyword Advice on Identifying, placing, density and marketing of keywords phrases

Keyword Identification is one of the most important part in a SEO process. Keywords are the doors and windows for search engine traffic. Surfers and information seekers through out the world use internet via keyword to find information on any products or services. These set of keyword phrases are vital for your search engine placement.

Keyword Identification is the first step while creating your content for your site. keyword related to your niche topics should be the first priority while creating web content. The quality of these keywords is critical for a good ranking in search engines. Researching the right keywords for your website should be the key, so that when people perform a search for a particular keyword phrase they will be able to find your site. So how do you do that will be the questions in everybody's mind. I have categories this article into 3 phrases like keyword research or keyword identification, keyword selection, keyword placement, keyword density and keyword marketing.

Before I would go further I would like to discuss about building your website for your business you should focus on certain other SEO strategies like clean navigation, a search engine friendly website architecture so that search enginespiders or robots can easily gather information from your website.

Once your site structure is done it is time to create the content for the site, which is the crucial part and where they keyword research, keyword density comes into play. If you follow these steps which I have mentioned below it is sure that your website can enjoy a higher ranking in search engines.


Step 1
Keyword Identification or keyword research:-
This should be first step while building your content, because your content will bebuild around with the keyword and phrases which has been identified at this stage. Which is very critical and if not done correctly you won't achieve the desired results. There are different ways to identify how people search on the web.

1) Think about what keyword would you chooses while you search for certain products or services. Think from the customer point of view and not from search engine or SEO point of view. Collect and write it down. I suggest using a spreadsheet so that it will help you in the stages as well.
2) The other way is you can ask your own customers or friends that how do they search on the net to find that particular products or services. Usually all people think differently and might not use the same keyword phrase to find that product or services. Collect them and store it.
3) Keyword suggestion tools. There are 100's of tools on the web some of them are free and other charge a fee. I suggest using Overture keyword tool and Googlekeyword tool (free) and wordtracker (paid). Type in your keyword and phrases into these tools you will find 100's of keywords for that particular products or services is been search on the web every month. Also it will show how many times that words are been searched on the internet. Tools like wordtracker will help you to find that how many times these keywords are been searched and how much competition is there for that particular keyword phrases. If you focus on high searched keyword it would be hard for your website to rank well because of competition. So always choose a keywords that is less competitive, so that you website will rank well for that particular keyword phrase on the search engine results.
4) The other way is if you have already had a website online check its web log and gather that keywords which helps people to find your site. This will help for existing website to recreate the content.

After these steps are done use your spreadsheet to determine the keywords It is ideal to have more keywords rather than focusing on a few words. In that spreadsheet matches the following keyword in terms like how many times the keywords are searched and how much competition is that keyword facing on the web. As I said before always choose less competitive keywords. Once these stage is over start constructing your website content with the identified keywords.

Step 2
Keyword placement:-
Placing the keyword is very crucial, because if the keywords are not place properly the search engine spiders will have a difficult time in identify and storing information from your web pages. You most important keyword should appear on the title of the page at least once which all search engine given relevancy. Next the same or related keyword should be there on the heading of the page. Also use a related keyword while starting a paragraph and through out the web page evenly. The density factor is discussed below.

Step 3
Keyword density:- Search engine robots are very intelligent spiders they can determine while some tries to cheat them. Some webmasters and SEO experts use keyword spamming or keyword dumping which is ethical for a good search engine optimization. If search engine spiders indexes a web pages it determine who much times that keywords has been used on a particular web page. So Keyword density is important. An ideal density would be anything between 10-15 % keyword densities on the page. Also use keywords which are related to that phrase so that it gets relevancy for that web page. For example When I search for a keyword "dog supplies" I found 100 of related terms which like "dog supplies online" "dog supply store" etc so think and figure out keywords which are more related to that topic. Also Sprinkle the keywords phrases right across the web page and not concentrate at a certain place.


At this stage you website content should be ready, keep in mind with the 3 top priority factors. This will determine your website success or failure in search engine. The next stage is keyword marketing.

Step 4
Keyword marketing:- Some of the techniques you will use as a off site factor rather than on the side, because it affects only the marketing process. As you all know all search engines give links more relevancies in the algorithm. So after your keyword identification, density and placement are over you should focus on marketing your site. Like site submission, article submission, link popularity while all these techniques are for increasing inbound links to your site. So you would be using your anchor text for creating a link pointing to your site. So here is where keyword marketing comes to play. You should use your key important phrase in these anchor text also mix up your related keywords. Keyword marketing is also vital for Pay per click marketing where keyword is the king. So gather keywords related to your business and use it widely in your PPC campaign. Pay per click industry is solely depends on keyword marketing. If you website want the maximum ROI (return of Investment) you will have to apply the maximum keywords while bidding your keywords. For example your website visibility will increase if you choose maximum keyword for your Pay per click marketing.

The bottom-line is to gain a high ranking in search engine use keyword whichis related to your business on your onsite and offsite website marketing. Keyword is the king when it comes to content and content is the king when it comes to Search Engine Marketing.

Thomson Chemmanoor is a webmaster and a search engine optimization expert who operates the following websites Guaranteed Web site Promotion , SEO Services , Submit Articles

Link building Strategies for 2006

"off page" factors have become one of the important factors for search engine ranking. And link popularity is "off page" factor.

Link building is very pain staking process because it consumes lot of time and also see the results only gradually. During the past few years webmaster exchanged mails to other webmaster to gain inbound links to their website which is commonly called "Link Exchange" during the year 2005 many link farms, link directories and building and selling link website and companies popped up just to carter this sector. Since search engines still value these links like MSN which gives importance to anchor text links pointing to any website in their algorithm. But after some of the major update of Google in 2005 and especially the Jagger update which was done in 3 phrases over a period of 40 days made webmasters and SEO experts to give a second through about reciprocal linking.

Reciprocal linking was a method to artificially increase the link popularity of the website and gain search engine ranking. However after Google Jagger 3 update webmaster and website promotion experts learned that their website was dropped to a few hundreds of pages in the search engine results. What happened was Google discounted or gave no value to those kinds of links build artificially by webmaster to gain link popularity. Besides website which has high quality inbound links replaced those ranking which was previously enjoyed by other websites. Inbound links doesn't mean just links pointing to the website; it should be from authority

website and should be seen as natural by search engine spiders. Any kind of artificial method to gain inbound links will be identified by these spider bots and there will be a drop in those particular website ranking.

The important tips and techniques to be used in future link building for 2006 are as follows.

1) Reciprocal link - Before I go further I would like to tell you that reciprocal linking is not dead. For example if you run a website on pets supplies and linking to a dog grooming website it is definitely take in to consideration by search

engine, since it adds value and information for the visitor to these websites.

2) Directories links - A link from Dmoz and yahoo directory is still considered as gold by Google and eventually your website will be included in Google directory is you are listed in Dmoz. Directory submission is not bad idea but if you run

a website related to real estate and submitting to non related directory it is not given value and will be discounted. The quality of the link matters rather than number of links. So try to get links from your Niche areas and directories.

3) Be a Content provider:- This is pretty tough but worth the effort that means give people a reason to link to your website. The reasons could be if you provide information to relate to our niche area on your site. I mean unique content and

where webmaster can't find these kinds of information and it will be useful to reader in your niche area. Create an article section in your own website, so definitely you will get requests from other webmasters to link to your site.

4) Think out of the box to get links: - Send testimonials for products and services which you have used and ask a link pointing to your website. Conduct interviews with professionals in your niche area.

5) Press release:- Submitting a press release related to new services, features or products which you are launching will have drastic effect to gain links and popularity to your website. Submitting press release is fast catching up with

webmasters. There are many publishers and subscribers looking for latest news and content. So by submitting a press release you gain a wide publicity.

6) Submitting articles.- This is a form of viral marketing or like a virus because you articles submitted to article banks and ezine publishers will be picked by hungry webmaster and publisher looking for free reprint content. Imagine this article which i have written might be picked up in newsletters and online publishers which in turn gain me a free inbound link.

Read More at Article Networks

The basic facts of search engine optimization:

We create beautiful graphics with different colors to make a logo, brochure or a banner-head look attractive to us. Similarly, to make a web page look attractive to the search engines, search engine optimization, known as SEO, is implemented. By making a web page attractive, it means that the better optimized the page it, the higher is the ranking it receives in search engine result listings.

Search engine optimization helps a website generate sales for both online and offline businesses. It is a good means of generating leads and convincing search engine users to subscribe to your newsletter or register for a seminar. It is very important to get a page get a high ranking in the search engine results pages (SERPS) as people who use search engines usually look only at the first page or two of the search results. So if you plan to get high traffic from a search engine, it has to be listed in one of these first two pages. Basically, search engine optimization uses the principle of making sure that each web page has appropriate title tags and meta tags, and that the keyword or keyword phrases for the page are distributed throughout the content of the web page so that the search engine can pick the word from it. It is always better to get a professional SEO help you target the right keywords and make sure that users of the search engine actually see you.

Usually search engines find and catalog web pages using spidering software. There are different types of software available, and this is the reason why all search engine spidering software don’t work the same way. If a web page gets a high ranking on one search engine, it is not necessary that it will get a high ranking in another search engine. The rankings change. As the search engine submission policies undergo changes quite frequently, search engine optimization specialists too have to keep track of these changes so that they can optimize pages accordingly.

It should be remembered that search engine traffic has the capacity of breaking or making an organization’s success as the targeted visitors to the website provide the needed publicity, revenue and exposure, equal to no other form of marketing. So, don’t think twice about investing in SEO in terms of hiring a professional or you yourself spending time to do it yourself as it provides an exceptional rate of return. Similarly, when hiring a designer to create a business web site for you, you should make it a point to ask him or her to have search engine optimization built into your pages. Of course, it doesn’t take long to optimize or tweak pages that have already been published; but it’s a lot sensible having search engine optimization included when the page is first written!

Actually, search engine optimization is just a part of the multi-faceted search engine marketing tool. The other facets of this tool are pay-per-click, paid inclusion, search contextual ads and pay-per-call. Pay-per-click is a popular advertising model where you purchase search listing text ads that are ranked based on keyword bid price. However, pay-per-click ads have to be closely monitored to see how effective the keyword is as you may have to change your bid or keyword accordingly. Paid inclusion is a tool that lets the website owner pay for guaranteed, fast inclusion and frequent visits from a search engine spider. However, this tool only gets you to the database quickly, and doesn’t guarantee you a high ranking in the SERPs.

Search contextual ads are ads that are placed on related publisher sites and are distributed throughout the major search engines. Here your are ads are rotated so that your ad need not be found on the same website all the time; it is found in inter-related web pages. Pay-per-call is a relatively new service that was started in the early 2005. This service is based on the principle that some products and services benefit better with personal contact. So advertisers here bid for phone call leads. When using the search engine, the user sees a phone icon next to the company’s sponsored listing which upon clicking lets them enter a phone number. Then a click on a ‘connect for free’ button links the user with the other party with Google calling the user and dialing the company to thus connect the two. Although this service is more expensive than pay-per-call, there is a lot of room for growth here.