Posts Tagged Blogging

Popularize Your Blogs Using Google!

Are you an online blogger? Then you should realize the importance of Google in the hemisphere of search engines. You probably know the three most popular search engines – Yahoo, Google and Bing. In case you didn’t know, Bing used to be MSN Live before. If you are enjoying a good ranking on the other engines and you are relatively weak on Google, it means you haven’t even started, because among the search engines, Google is king! In all, you will probably gain virtually half your visitors via Google anyway, so I suggest you start doing something about your Google ranking fast! I suggest you use Google SEO Optimization. Here are ways you can increase your blog’s Google ranking:

1. Write original content: it seems like a trivial matter, but Google tends to frown at duplicate content. Therefore, when you are generating articles for your blog, you should ensure that your articles are fresh and unique. The reason for this is that Google can easily detect copied work and they will get stuck in its duplication check filter. The overall result is that you will experience a downsizing in terms of ranking. The best thing for you to do is write from your head. It might seem hard but it pays off in the end. If you are stuck, hang on, and continue again when you are more clear-headed.

2. Become a social blogger; in accordance with the saying that ‘no man is an island’ I say that for effective Google SEO optimization, you will need to form a network with bloggers online. This will help you have many followers, and more importantly, back-links. As you well know, the more your back links, the more your page ranking increases. Therefore, my advice is that you participate in bloggers’ forums and discussions. This way you get to share back-links strengthen your blog and gain more page ranking. Make sure you have something to give in return for this, as this will help quicken your rate of growth with the blog. For instance, you can offer to connect with friends through your blog!

3. Make the most out of keywords: since you are writing for people, you should try to have a guess at the keywords they are likely to put in when they are searching for content. It is your ability to second-guess them that will determine the probability of your content being able to generate the much needed traffic. Even if you have quality content, if it is lacking in the right keywords, everything would still fall through. While you are at it though, make sure you do not fall prey to the trap of trying to force keywords into your content. Please just try to write as natural as possible and trust the Google spiders to get the general context of your article.

If you apply these little tips well, before long it will occur to you that your little blog has grown into a mega – blog!

Mike Gates is a customer of HostGator. Hostgator is reliable web hostign provider. Read more about hostgator coupon.

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The Key to Starting a Blog or Online Business: Finding Great Web Hosting

There is plenty of great web hosting out there nowadays. Technology and competition has driven the price of web hosting down over the past number of years, which makes it a great time to start a blog, personal website, or online business at a very low cost.

At the dawn of the internet many web users would acquire free web hosting for their personal use. Even today many free web hosts exist, but their are obvious drawbacks to free hosting solutions. The company providing the free web hosting usually is serving ads and making money off of the user’s valuable content.

Many users have chosen their own route and found significant income in starting blogs and online businesses by putting pay per click ads on their own websites hosted on a payed hosting plan which will allow them to maximize their income.

While the idea of setting up a website or blog may sound easy, one of the biggest obstacles for many can be finding the right web host, after all, you are paying for a service and want to get the best value for your dollar. There are many cheap options for web hosting out there, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are all adequate solutions.

With that said, it is always important to do research. Reading web hosting reviews prior to making the purchase of a web hosting plan can be the difference between choosing a great web host and choosing a bad web host. Learning from other users’ experiences with a particular web host can save you the time and money of having to learn for yourself which web hosts are good and which are bad.

Allyn Calder, author and founder of OnlineWebHosting.info, a website web users can read web hosting reviews and find the best host for their needs, knows all too well about the pitfalls of the web hosting industry. “I’ve had to learn myself, in many cases, the hard way” says Calder, “people should always get the full scoop on what they are getting themselves into, and should read up on what the best web hosts are right now”.

The other factor Calder stresses users need to be weary of is the price of hosting. “In a rapidly changing industry, new web hosts are always emerging; competition is fearce and prices are always dropping. Consumers need to be aware of standard web hosting cost so they are not overpaying or getting ripped off simply because they didn’t know”.

New users shouldn’t worry though, there is plenty of free information online that will help you find exactly the web host you’re looking for, Calder is just one of many who can tell you all about it. “It doesn’t take long, we’ve helped countless people find great web hosting that they are still satisfied with to this day”.

In the end, the potential of the internet is almost endless. Getting online with your own blog or website can be intimidating at first, but armed with the right knowledge and information, it can be easyier and less expensive than ever for just about anybody to get online.

Brian Meida is an Author and Editor for OnlineWebHosting.info, a website that helps users find the best web host for their needs by providing web host reviews, tips, tutorials and web hosting help.

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Six Efficient Ways of Increasing Blog Traffic

The number one problem of majority of the newbie bloggers is figuring out how to get people to visit their blog. They may have posts they consider quite fantastic and would be happy if only others can come in and read what they have to say. The point is that no matter what is happening in your blog or the type of content you publish there, if people don’t know of its existent they won’t visit to read the posts. Below are six simple but effective ways of attracting people to visit your blog irrespective of the niche or topic you are blogging on.

1. Commenting on other related blogs or forums is one of the mot effective ways of attracting visitors to your blog. All you have to do is consistently comment on posts you find interesting and make sure that you add value for others in the forum by making useful suggestions and posts. It is only natural that other people in such forum or blog would notice you, respect you opinion if you had consistent offered useful tips and possibly follow your link to your blog to see or read more from you.

2. Writing and submitting well written articles to several articles directories is another proficient ways of getting targeted traffic to ones blog. The articles you submit freely to these articles directories would probably be published freely by other blogger. This would mean that many people in your niche are going to read the article with the possibility of clicking through the link at the end of the article that leads to your blog.

3. Social bookmarking is another effective ways of getting traffic to your blog. You can visit some social bookmarking sites such as StumbleUpon, Digg etc. read their terms and conditions and register. It is necessary that you should be bookmarking the contents of others while doing same for your blog too.

4. Forums are other great avenues for generating immense traffic to ones blogs. Just like in other related blogs, have a well written profile and use catchy words in your signature while ensuring that you leave a link to your blog. This would be in any post you make at the forum. If your posts are valuable enough, you would definitely start getting traffic from such forums.

5. Twitter is one viral place you can use to popularize your blog. Just get friendly with as many people as possible; especially those that are interested in your niche and make sure you inform them whenever you make a new post. You can find other materials that may interest you followers and freely give them the links in your posts. This would endear you to them and earn you good traffic in a very short while.

6. Facebook is another social networking site that is currently making waves in the internet world today. You have to be careful not to appear too serious. Balance your acts and use the platform and it’s interactive nature to boost the traffic your really desire in your blog or website.

Dhruv Patel is a happy DreamHost customer. He has a web site to promote DreamHost. Use the DreamHost coupons to get a discount at DreamHost sign up.

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Prominent and Effective Ways of Boosting Your Blog Traffic

There wouldn’t have been any need for blogging if people can’t visit them to read what the owner is writing on. The major challenge faced by lots of new bloggers is how to get the necessary traffic. It would amount to one talking to him or herself if no one visits the blog either for interactive purpose or educational reasons.

Below are few of the major ways you can attract traffic to any blog and be sure of retaining such traffic if you twist and fine tune the processes.

Article writing and posting is one major traffic booster that many online entrepreneurs had used to their advantage. All you have to do is write purposeful and content rich articles that relates to the topic of your blog and send them to some of the articles directories online. This is usually read by lots of other fellows and some people even gets such articles re-published in their blogs with your link intact. Juts write persistently on the subject of your blog and ensure that your articles are between 300 and 500 words for more effect.

Commenting on other related blogs is also one of the important ways of getting targeted traffic to your blog. You just have to make your self visible in the related blogs and ensure that your activities or comments command respect for your blog or business. This would entail more traffic for you because people would naturally feel it right to visit your blog so as to interact closely with you or see what you have to offer.

Setting up and installing RSS feed for your blog is another potent way of getting immense traffic to your blog. Your blog may be indexed faster as a result of the fresh content the feeds churn out. You may also decide to advertise your blog in your business cards or even email signatures. Imagine the number of emails you send out each week and think of the exposure your blog would naturally get if you had kept a link to it at the end of every mail you send.

You can join the social network craze of the moment and be sure of getting more traffic to your blog. You must be warned that social networking can be time consuming and may be destructive in nature. This isn’t saying that it isn’t beneficial for those that indulge in them. You have to pick just few vital ones and position your self as an expert in your chosen niche. Sign up with the social network of your choice, create the appropriate profile that you feel would attract your followers and start making friends from the network.

One if the most prominent social network in the internet today is the twitter. Tweeting has really given another color to social network marketing. You can effectively make use of the opportunities available via tweeting to advertise and market your blog. You may simple decide to be providing free but useful content for your followers while ensuring that you intimate them each time you make fresh post in your blog.

Dhruv Patel is a happy DreamHost customer. He has a web site to promote DreamHost. Use the DreamHost coupons to get a discount at DreamHost sign up.

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Blogging is a Great Way to be Heard

Since the beginning of life, people have wanted to be heard. In the past, this required an intensive and expensive education, as only the richest and noblest were allowed, or taught, to write. Now, since the widespread adoption of public school systems, more people are fully literate than at any other time in history. However, traditional analog printing (books, magazines, etc.) is expensive, time consuming, and as such, publishing companies are reluctant to print anything that crosses their doorsteps. These companies are struggling to survive, though, thanks to the rise of, and near ubiquitous access to, the Internet. No longer do the large publishing companies decide what makes it into widespread syndication. Now, anybody with access to a personal computer at home, work, school, or the library can document their thoughts and feelings, and make them available to the world at large.

There are a few major points to consider when the “blog bug” bites. First, will the blog be used as a diary, a place to write down and keep track of the ups and downs of daily life, or will it be used to post updates and news for a chosen topic? If the former is true, then the size of audience will probably not matter- as long as stuff keeps happening in the writer’s life, there will be plenty of content to post. The goal of a diary-type blog is usually to provide a hobby or calming ritual to the writer’s life, so who cares what other people think of what’s actually written there.

If the Blog is to be used for advertising, news, or other commercial venture, then website traffic is obviously a large concern. The goal in commercial blogging is to get as many unique visitors to that blog, in as little time as possible.

The more people that visit a blog, the more people click on advertisements, and the more people will order the writer’s products or services. The ultimate deciding factor in website traffic is the site’s content. Bottom line: If people do not find information they desire or enjoy, they are off of that website in less than five seconds. Period. So it stands to reason that if the goal is to make money, the writer should pick a topic that lots of people are interested in. There are a multitude of websites on Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, that provide insight into what people are searching for, and how they are searching for it. After picking a high-interest topic to devote writing energy to, there are some small things that can be done to drive up traffic to the blog. Based on what the SEO sites say about the chosen topic, the writer can fill their blog with relevant “keywords”, or words that people searching for any given topic use most frequently. For instance, a blog on Ponies would probably want lots of words in its content that relate to ponies, like “stable”, “horse”, “Clydesdale”, etc. This way, when people search for anything that is related to ponies or horses, the blog will be near the top of the list of results.

So, even though the digital revolution has made writing more popular and available to the masses, it can be difficult to gain a foothold in the market. Just like with everything else, hard work, dedication, and education will pay off in the end, resulting in a new, booming blog.

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How to Improve Alexa Ranking Quickly

Alexa Ranking is a site ranking assigned by Alexa Internet to measure websites’ popularity. It claims to use a number of factors in deciding the site popularity, but really it depends mainly on usage data collected by the Alexa toolbar.

The higher the ranking is, the smaller number is the rank given. Based on Alexa, Google (Alexa Ranking 1) is the most popular website in the Internet, followed by Yahoo(2), Facebook(3), and Youtube(4).

You can see website ranking in your browser after installing the toolbar or just check it at Alexa website.

How accurate is Alexa Ranking?

In a perfect world, Alexa user base would be a fair statistical sample of the Internet user population, and thus the ranking should be quite accurate in comparing popularity of one site to another.

However, in reality Alexa Ranking is hardly reliable. Alexa ranks sites based on tracking information of users of its Alexa Toolbar for Internet Explorer and from plugins in Firefox. Thus it is greatly dependent on the number of Alexa toolbar installed among the site visitors.

Websites targeted to webmasters and web designers generally do better in Alexa Ranking compared to websites in other niche, e.g. food or pregnancy. That is largely because webmasters are more willing to install the Alexa toolbar to check on the competitors’ Alexa ranking as well as to push up their own website ranking.

Internet users in some countries are also more willing to install the Alexa Toolbar compared to others. I have seen a Singapore website with 10k visitors a day ranked 60k in Alexa, while an Indonesian site with just 1k visitor a day ranked 30k in Alexa.

How To Get Higher Alexa Ranking Easily

Less than a week ago, the 7 day average of Cheatad.com Ranking was 165,534. Today when I checked again, the 7 day average has advanced to 93,963, with yesterday ranking was an even better 67,568.

At 67,568 it means that Cheatad ranks even better than my other website which has 40 times more visitors and 120 times more pageviews. That is absolutely amazing, or ridiculous, depending how you see it.

On the other hand, while that is a bit unexpected, there is really not much surprise here. Alexa Ranking is known to be unreliable, and skewed specially to websites with webmasters visitors.

The main factor of Alexa Ranking calculation is the number of visits by the Alexa toolbar users. Knowing that, it is quite easy to improve Alexa ranking for your website. As long as more of your visitors have Alexa toolbar, your Alexa ranking will shoot up.

Here is the five easy and simple ways to rank higher in Alexa:

1. Install Alexa Toolbar

Download and install Alexa Toolbar. If your browser is Firefox, you can either use the Sparky plugin (official Alexa toolbar for Firefox) or SearchStatus plugin. I personally use Search Status for the other nice functions like ability to highlight nofollow link, calculate keyword density, etc.

2. Encourage Others To Install Alexa Toolbar

This includes your blog readers as well as friends. The point is, it should be easier convert your current regular visitors to use the toolbar rather than getting new visitors that happen to have Alexa toolbar installed.

3. Write About Alexa Ranking

Posting an article about Alexa Ranking is a good way to attract more webmasters to your blog, most of whom have the toolbar installed.

4. Participate In Webmaster Forums

Again, most webmasters have Alexa toolbar installed. When allowed, make sure to include your blog URL in the forum Signature. Some interested webmasters might just click to visit your blog.

5. Reload Your Pages Incessantly

With your Alexa toolbar installed, read back all articles you have written, try different searches, and refresh pages over and over, to increase the pageview count. Even better, set your webpage to auto refresh every 15 seconds.

Well, try them and you will notice your Alexa Ranking shooting up. Of course, you need to make sure you actually have got good contents and good number of visitors too. Otherwise the Alexa rank that you have gained will be short-lived.

Fernando Hal is the main contributor at CheatAd.com, a blog on SEO & Google Adsense. Subscribe to our RSS Feed for more tips.

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Five Ways To Grow Your Twitter Followers

Most integrated marketing campaigns include social media, and by now you’ve probably launched a Twitter account for your company. Do you have a growing list of followers? If not, try these proven tips to grow your followers and extend your brand presence online.

1. Follow Others:

You’re promoting your Twitter account on your web site, in your email and print media, encouraging others to follow you, but remember that your brand can follow others as well. By following other Twitter users, you’re more likely to get them to follow you and your list will grow. Just make sure you’re following relevant consumers because quality is ultimately more important than quantity. You don’t want to follow 1,000 random people to only gain 300 of your own followers. Try to keep an equal ratio of Followers to Following.

2. Create Lists:

You can group your followers into unique lists which makes it easier for others using Twitter to find them. For example, you can create lists such as “Health Experts” or “Smart Bloggers” and by including people in lists, you are complimenting them on their expertise. The great thing about lists is you don’t have to follow somebody to include them on your unique lists. And once included in your list, those people are more likely to follow you. Plus, organizing the Web this way benefits everybody, right?

3. Use Hash-tags (#) in Your Updates:

Hash-tags such has, #cancer make it easier for people searching Twitter to find tweets about that specific topic, such as “cancer”. By including hash-tags in your tweets you are exposing your tweets to an entirely new audience that is searching Twitter for that topic. If your tweets are good and relevant, you’ll pick-up good follower by hash-tagging.

4. Tweet Good Content (good enough to re-Tweet)

Imitation is the highest form of flattery and so is re-Tweeting. If somebody re-Tweets your content to their network of followers, that’s an endorsement and exposure to more potential followers for your brand. In my experience, good content is either very timely or helpful(a link). For example, if you’re announcing a grand opening, that’s timely but if you also mention free wine and cheese, that’s something Twitter followers are more likely to re-Tweet to their followers.

5. Tweet Regularly (and re-Tweet as necessary)

According to a study presented by the Harvard Business Review, the top 10% of prolific Twitter users accounted for 90% of all Tweets. This gives you some insight into how many Twitter accounts are launched but not supported with content regularly. Tweet on a regular basis that makes sense for your brand followers. If you run out of ideas on what to Tweet, then re-Tweet other relevant content from your followers.

Bonus Tip: Create Multiple Twitter Accounts

If you’re a Twarketer (Twitter marketer), you’ve probably been tempted to set-up alternative Twitter accounts to test social media and marketing campaigns. Or on a personal level, maybe your 200 business contacts doesn’t mix well with your 750 close friends. When you attempt to create a new Twitter ID, you’re required to use a unique email address — which is a hassle. If you use Gmail, you’re in luck!

Gmail allows you to add a period anywhere in your email address. For example:

FrodoBagginsMail@gmail.com (your main gmail address, for Twitter ID #1)

Frodo.BagginsMail@gmail.com (alternative address for Twitter ID #2)

F.rodoBagginsMail@gmail.com (alternative address for Twitter ID #3)

Frodo.Baggins.Mail@gmail.com (alternative address for Twitter ID #4)

Each unique email address delivers email or Twitter updates to your main email account (FrodoBaggins@gmail.com in this example).

Jim Larranaga is President and CEO of Priority Integrated Marketing based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He consults with marketers nationwide on effective communication strategies. Visit http://www.priorityresults.com or you can follow him on Twitter, http://twitter.com/Jlarranaga

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Hitting Your Stride: Four Keys to Timing Your Blog

There are a number of important factors that go into the production of a first-class blog. Quality of content, the layout of the page, how best to integrate video, formal versus informal tone, each of these is a decision that must be made during the creation of the project. That all comes before more esoteric concerns, which include the integration of meta tags, link building, traffic generation, and keyword/SEO implementation.

Yet underlying these important issues is one that many people wrestle with: How often should the thing be updated? Innocuous as it sounds, post frequency is actually vital to the success of any content project, and especially to blogs. Equally, it is a surprisingly complex decision that can involve numerous factors. Time, place, and availability of content all have parts to play in determining just how often you need to update your blog.

Finding the Right Frequency

Blogging is an extension of the principles of marketing. You want to get your content the exposure you feel it deserves, so you market it as best you can to cultivate an audience. This involves doing the legwork and research necessary to act on good information, and testing your ideas while allowing room for adjustment as you work and grow. Chances are you will not hit the right rate of posting immediately, and that is all right as long as you’re prepared to adjust when it’s required.

No single article can cover every eventuality of course, but we can break down a few core principles to get you thinking in the right direction. The key is to consider these ideas and extrapolate from them, using the other lessons you’ve learned, to build a solid, whole-picture approach.

1 – Make content king.

More than almost any other community, web users are keenly attuned to fluff pieces that don’t really say much. This isn’t true for 100% of the community of course, but those who can pick out an airy, pointless piece will almost invariably be sure to point it out, leading to some word of mouth you probably didn’t want. Don’t pick an update schedule that can’t live up to the content you have available. Stick to a schedule that you know you can provide a quality post for, every single time you sign on.

This has a twofold effect. One, it keeps the ‘pressure to post’ at a minimum. Content drives the posting, and you aren’t struggling every third day to come up with more information, or worse to rehash the information you’ve already posted. Secondly, it shows you have respect for the community, and keeps them interested and coming back.

2 – Set the time and day.

Even though the web never sleeps, a great part of the world still functions on a Monday to Friday, 9-5 schedule of sorts. Taking these rhythms into account can help you build the ideal web traffic for your project. For example, a blog focusing on home and family concerns and selling books related to it might not find as much of an audience during traditional business hours as during the time when people are at-home with their families. Granted this is only a rule of thumb, as many people surf the web for their favorite blogs during lunch breaks.

Another part of this element is the Monday-Wednesday-Friday cycle. Many business blogs and publications settle on a three-a-week update schedule, and the MWF routine works out very well for this. They’re all business days, and the schedule covers the start, middle, and end stretches of a workweek.

Of course since this ends up being something of the default, it means that Tuesdays and Thursdays end up with comparatively little content for people to peruse. Sundays suffer a lack of content as well, for the obvious related reasons. If you find yourself preferring less frequent, longer posts, consider a T-Th routine to take advantage of the ‘gap’ between other updates.

3 – Have a conversation.

One of the most interesting contributions to modern marketing is the blog comments section. Every blogging software out there has some feature for allowing or disallowing comments. As we’ve discussed before, consumer input can have an incredible effect on any brand, and blogs are no exception.

Taking advantage of this resource requires a certain amount of patience. Conversations develop in the comments section as people discuss, dispute, and debate the merits of what you’ve posted. In short, you need to not just let this happen, but cultivate the effect. Allow reasonable discussions to grow, and comment yourself on the more relevant points. Let the consumer know their input is being seen, and that you care enough to respond to it. Posting new blog posts too frequently overruns this tendency, and could rob you of vital feedback.

4 – Be nimble.

As we’ve mentioned, you are not likely to get it right just out of the gate. You may bite off too much to chew, or update too infrequently for people to care. Evaluate the data, ask your consumers questions, and be prepared to change as needed. Flexibility is the ultimate survival tool on the web, and your blog will benefit if you approach the affair with an open mind and a willingness to try several approaches. Pick an update schedule, observe it, and then experiment with others until you have the one that best fits your needs.

Enzo F. Cesario is an online brand specialist and co-founder of Brandsplat, a digital content agency. Brandsplat creates blogs, articles, videos and social media in the “voice” of our client’s brand. It makes sites more findable and brands more recognizable. For the free Brandcasting Report go to Brandsplat.com or visit our blog at http://www.ibrandcasting.com.

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Make a Blog the Easy Way!

There are a lot of free and easy ways that anyone can create their own personal Blog. If you have a current website you can add a blog for discussions. One of the most popular and easy to use blogging software is called WordPress. WordPress started in 2003 and developed a very easy way to install a self-hosted blog on any website. Since then they have expanded to the largest and most popular blogging software on the Internet.

One of the most attractive things about creating a WordPress blog is that that you can do the initial install with a utility through a very simple menu. About 95% of the web hosts have a utility called Fantastico that does the heavy lifting (a blog is basically a database in PHP). Answer about 3 questions like, location, admin password, and nickname for posting and you now have a forum that allows people to make comments.

There is a little configuration once you get your blog up, but you use an admin panel with all the settings available to setup the basics. The general installation gives you all that you need to start but many may want to add a new theme to dress up their new blog. There are many free themes that you review at the WordPress website.

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There are 100’s of websites that offer tutorials, including the WordPress website. Most people can put a blog up and get it running in under an hour, even the first time. That’s why blogs have become so popular. There are also many free plugins (small programs written to do very specific things within the blog) that are designed to increase any blogs capabilities.

Another big factor in favor of blogs is that the visitor can make comments on any of the current posts or articles. Getting instant feedback can liven things up on any type of discussion. Blogs are all about getting input from readers and create an open forum for just about any subject.

Many of the popular Web 2.0 websites like Facebook allow each user to create their own blogs too. Once you sign up as a user you can create a blog on any subject within the parent website’s guidelines. Part of the social aspect of Web 2.0 is the ability to start a conversation about anything of interest.

There are free hosting companies that will allow you to start your own blog like Google’s Blogger. You don’t need to register a domain, just pick an open name and you can set it up in a matter of minutes. You can make it look anyway you want through a set of menus so even a new user can individualize their style and look.

Blogging has become a big part of the Web 2.0 mix and can let anyone create a place on the Internet to discuss just about any subject. Any subject from a hobby to a current event can be up and running quickly. If you want to promote something or put your 2 cents out there on a subject, this gives you the opportunity.

So the next time you have something you want to say about a subject or event, head on over to one of the Web 2.0 websites and start your own discussion. Or if you want to create your own website but don’t know how to use HTML or any of the complicated website software, check out WordPress and you’ll be up and running in a matter of minutes.

If you need some help with your Blog, check us out here: Houston Website Design. If you want to do your own Blog with style, you’ll love our Blog templates: Best Blogging Software.

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Search Engine Optimization Tips For Bing

Search Engine Optimization Tips For Bing

With recent Microsoft – Yahoo deals which combine their search and advertising abilities, there are large consequences for many webmasters. For me personally, I have ignored MSN, Live, and even the recent Bing for so long. It seems like a little too much problem to search-engine optimize my websites for such a small target audience of Microsoft search engines. Visitors from Microsoft search engines (whatever the name is) in my sites accounts for less than 10%, across all sites. Google generally make up about 60%-70%. There are exceptions, however. Some sites have more visitors from Yahoo than from Google.

However, now that Yahoo is going to hand their search capability to Microsoft Bing, it becomes essential that we take steps to ensure that our websites are ready for the change. Bing also seems to be well received by more Internet users, and there is possibility that they might be able to gain some market share from Google.

Generally, search engine optimization is almost the same, regardless which search engine you want to optimize for. However, there are also some additional details you need to take care of.

Here are some search engine optimization tips for Bing

1. Contents

Contents are king. Good contents are what differentiate good websites from the bad. Even if you disregard all other optimization tips below, you will still get much ahead compared than if you get all those below but neglect to have good contents in your site. Search engines want to be useful to the users so they can gain more and more market share. They want to find good contents that can satisfy and match the users need. All other criteria are actually additional way to find out how good and important a page is.

Good contents are:

1. Unique, not copied or duplicate from other sites

2. Useful and interesting information for website visitors

3. With more than 300 words of content (specially for Bing)

2. Page title

In all major search engines, page title is among the most important part of Search Engine optimization. However, it seems somehow that Bing pays more attention to the page title compared with other search engines. Order of the words does not matter much, but you must make sure to place your most important keywords of each page to the page title. Limit your page title to 80 characters the most. Shorter page title means higher importance on each word. And get different page title for each page. Concentrating on just a few key phrase will not get you a lot of visitors, even if each of them rank first. This concept is something called as long tail optimization.

Here is some additional tips from Bing webmaster community about page title:

-The closer a word is to the start, the more heavily weighted it is as a keyword. This is true for the bot as well as the reader.

- Keep the title text between 5 and 65 characters in length

- For greatest efficiency and consistency, write titles using this syntax: keyword phrase, category, website title (or brand)

- Make the title text unique on every page

- Do not use any of the following special characters in title text: ‘”{}[]()

3. Page URL: Domain name, sub-domain, folder name and file name

Yahoo and Bing place specially high importance on the page URL compared to Google. Try search hotels in dublin in Bing. Notice that 9 out of 10 results on the first page have the words hotel and dublin in the URL, while the only other one has the word dublin even though it does not contain the word hotel. Try the same search for hotels in dublin in Google. Notice now there are 7 results with the word “hotel” and “dublin” in URL, one result with the word “hotel”, while the other two does not have any of the word “hotel” or “dublin” in the URL.

Domain name is not something you can choose over and over or create one for each keyword, so if you have not started your site yet, think and choose a domain name that is most appropriate for your niche. That should be for your most important keyword/key phrase. If you have started the website and the domain name isn’t that ideal, then be it. You’ll be more than make up for it if you follow these search engine optimization tips.

Sub-domains and folder names are most appropriate for sub-category within your niche.

File name will the most specific keyword for each page, it should be somewhere along the page title. I would recommend slight variation from the page title to get the maximum result.

For example, if your website is about hotel, and one of your target market is hotels in dublin, the ideal URL would be dublin(dot)hotel(dot)com/compare.html for comparison between dublin hotels and dublin(dot)hotel(dot)com/information.html for information about dublin hotels. Of course, most of such domain names has been taken long ago, so you got to use some creativity in choosing a good domain name.

There are arguments on which one is more important between sub-domain and folder. I say, it is up to you. These are mere tools, you can choose to use either sub-domain or folder name. Or you can choose using both of them. Remember though, try to keep the URL as short as possible. Search engines loves short URL.

4. Link back and Link out

Link-back remains one of the most important aspect of Search Engine Optimization. Some webmasters swears by “If content is king, then link-back is the queen”. Link-back, or sometimes called inbound link, means the hyperlinks from other websites to our sites. Natural links from other sites (when they link to us in their article) without any reciprocal link (us linking back to them in return) remains the best valued link back.

Other methods like web directory submission or link exchange is still useful, even though it is having much less influence on Google. Bing is less stringent compared to Google for what constitute as valid link-back, so every link back to your site counts. However, remember that while it is easier for you to accumulate link-back, so are your competitors.

The most valuable links are not those link to your homepage, but linking to specific internal pages. That is called deep-linking.

Aside from link-back to your website, link-out (also called outbound links) to reputable sources is also a good way to improve your site ranking. Do a research and be careful of who you link to. You do not want to link to websites frowned upon by search engines. For example search for “site:cheatad.com” in Google, Yahoo and Bing. You’ll see there are pages indexed in all 3 search engines. If you see that a specific website does not have any page indexed, steer clear of them. Either those are new websites (which do not have much reputation point to pass anyway) or bad websites.

5. Use Bing Webmaster Center

Following Google Webmaster Tools and Yahoo Site Explorer path, Bing have Webmaster Center for webmasters to manage and review their website and Search Engine Optimization effectiveness. In the Webmaster Center, you can submit your website and sitemap, diagnose crawling issues, as well as review back-links and outbound links.

6. Meta tags: Meta Description and Meta Keywords

By now, these are considered ancient techniques already. Do not bother too much with those, unless you have extra spare times.

Well, try the simple techniques above and your website will get much ahead in a very short time.

Fernando Hal is the main contributor at CheatAd.com, a blog on SEO, Google Adsense & OpenSource. Subscribe to our RSS Feed for more tips.

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