Blog tip

I know that many of you are very confused on how to use StumbleUpon to drive traffic to your site.  At least twice a week I have a conversation that sounds like this, SU newbie:  “But Jenniferrrrrrrrrrrr.  I don’t GEEEEEEEEEEET it.  I’m lost.” Me:  “Well, did you read my post about using the SU toolbar?” SU newbie:  “Yes.  [...]

Welcome to the second edition of the question and answer portion of the Blog Tip Sharing series. I feel like I should remind everyone reading that all 11 of these blog tip sharing posts have been based solely on MY experiences and the things I have had success with.  You may possibly disagree with my answers [...]

Thank you all so much for sending in your blog-related questions!   There were so many questions, that in the interest of your time, I decided to make several posts out of your questions.  Several questions even spurred ideas for entire posts.  Stay tuned! Question 1 is from S/he who asked to remain anonymous:  When we have links [...]

Today I’ll be preaching from my podium about the joys of full RSS feeds.  First of all, for those of you who don’t know what an RSS feed is or why you should subscribe to the blogs you read, go read Simple Mom’s explanation of RSS feeds. Did you read it?  Seriously, if you don’t understand [...]

Welcome back to class after last week’s vacation.  I hope that those of you who attended BlogHer are recovered and those of you who didn’t are recovered.  I’m NOT recovered, so forgive me if my voice sounds squeeky, or at least squeekier than normal. The focus of today’s post is your brand.  How your blog looks [...]

Welcome back to class everyone!  You all look so tan and rested.  Did you lose weight?! Today’s class is going to focus on building a community around your blog.  What I mean by community is this:  The people who visit and comment, the meaningful interactions with other bloggers, and positive word-of-mouth about your blog.   I think [...]

Welcome to week 6 of the blog tip sharing project!  Today’s topic is a continuation of last week’s discussion of blog design.   Let’s talk about your (probably overloaded) sidebars.  I say that they are probably overloaded because, well, most sidebars, INCLUDING MINE, are.  Whether you have one, two, or more sidebars, think about the purpose and necessity of [...]

A nice* blog design makes people want to stay and read.  Nice (in reference to blog design) adj. “A blog that doesn’t make your eyes bleed when you click over.” I think that everyone has opinions on what a nice blog design is, some of us think a background design looks really cool, where others think that [...]

Let’s review what we’ve learned so far in the series.  First we should write often, practicing the skill.  We have learned some writing techniques for gaining comments and readers.   Also we’ve learned that subscribing to different blogs about blogging can offer great tips.  Last week, the focus was on how social networking can pay off, and that it’s [...]

Unexpectedly, I have created the need to add a Sunday edition of my Blog Tip Sharing Project this week.  It’s urgent information that I feel like I MUST tell you, so that you won’t nearly die of panic like I did. If you happened upon this blog last night between 10:30 and 11:30 PM, you would [...]

So glad to see you all back in class today!  I’d like everyone to welcome any stragglers, I mean newcomers.  You can read Part 1 HERE and Part 2 HERE.  Today we’re going to discuss two areas of blog promotion…Sites where you list your blog and social networking sites.  I’m looking at these two areas differently, as I’m going to [...]

Disclaimer:  In NO WAY do I feel qualified to give any sort of advice when it comes to writing improvement.  My grammar is sketchy and my vocabulary is limited to words like “lame” and “awesome.”  Welcome back to class everyone!  Did you all find a comfortable chair?  You there…in the back?  I don’t bite, you can sit [...]

When I think back to just a mere two years ago, I knew NOTHING about blogs.  I assumed that people who blogged were smelly, hairy, warty, horn-rimmed spectacles wearing men living in their parents’ basement.  In these past two years, I’ve learned a lot about blogging and have come a long way from having no [...]

I've heard plenty of marketing gurus tout the amazing benefits of public speaking. They speak of how it will grow your business by leaps and bounds as you fill theaters with people waiting to buy what you're selling.The only problem is not everyone is a good speaker. Just because you can stand and speak in front of crowd without getting nervous doesn't mean you should. Having the title President, CEO, or Manager doesn't make you an amazing public speaker.Personally, I'm not a bad public speaker but thanks to English 101 I'm a better writer so that's why I blog. Blogging has it's own drawbacks as there's more than a little trepidation about publishing a blog to an unknown audience of hundreds, if not thousands. Facing a large audience can be a little unnerving but once you focus on your thoughts and your topic at hand, then you're on your way. I've been blogging for almost six months and I've written over a hundred blogs. I can no longer be stopped! So if you're one of thos

An easy way to jazz up your blog and to catch your reader's attention is to insert a couple of graphics. The old saying that "a picture is worth a thousand words" holds true in the world of blogging too.What helped make the concept sing for me was to think of each individual blog as a magazine layout. Articles that use pictures to help tell the story are more appealing to the eye, this is especially true since most computer uses scan versus read word for word so you will want to make the scanning process easy as possible.While using images can be easy and incredibly fun, you never want to forget that most images on the web are copyrighted, so you will either need to get permission to use an image, make your digital camera your best friend by taking your own pictures or use graphics that are open for public use.Also, do not forget the importance of underlines, italics, bold, and color. These are simple formatting options that draw your reader in and make your blog enjoyable and simple

I blog because I have something to say. I have thoughts and ideas I want to express to the world. Because I feel this way, I assume most other bloggers do too.Blogging is another form of communication and we know that nothing is more ackward than to feel like you are talking to yourself. The only way to know someone is listening in the blogging world is by comments left on your blog. Whether the comment is long or short, it is always nice to know that someone in cyberspace is listening.Next time you run across a quality blog why not take a moment to leave a comment? Not only are you making the writer feel good but you will also have the opportunity to leave your name and a link to your website, which will provide a free one-way link to your website (aka free promotion).Happy commenting and blogging.

I blog because I have something to say. I have thoughts and ideas I want to express to the world. Because I feel this way, I assume most other bloggers do too.Blogging is another form of communication and we know that nothing is more ackward than to feel like you are talking to yourself. The only way to know someone is listening in the blogging world is by comments left on your blog. Whether the comment is long or short, it is always nice to know that someone in cyberspace is listening.Next time you run across a quality blog why not take a moment to leave a comment? Not only are you making the writer feel good but you will also have the opportunity to leave your name and a link to your website, which will provide a free one-way link to your website (aka free promotion).Happy commenting and blogging.

Gentle Reader, of Shelf Life, tagged me with a meme that is quickly turning into a nice list of blogging tips. Each of the tagged bloggers simply adds a tip to the bottom of the list and asks a few other bloggers to participate. I'm not going to directly tag anyone at this point, but if any of you guys see this and it appeals to you, just copy the list, add your own tip to the end, and post it

This one is a very short easy one that seems to hold some weight. While you have sprinkled your keyword judiciously through out your blog, both heading and body, make sure the keyword is also in bold. This is fairly obvious from the way I have bolded the keyword in this post huh?

Once you start posting on your blog, stick with the same domain or you could end up losing a lot of your traffic and regular readers. Also stick with the topic you selected for your blog. If it’s about diving don’t suddenly switch to another topic such as fishing because you will loose traffic.If you have a number of subjects you want to blog about, start a number of blogs. For example if you have a resort with fishing and diving, start a blog for each. Chances are their are 2 staff members who run each of these activities.For example see Matava in Fiji's blogs on fishing and diving (note anchor text here):Gamefishing Fiji, http://gamefishingfiji.blogspot.com/Diving in Fiji, http://gamefishingfiji.blogspot.com/

Use your primary and secondary keywords in the anchor text of links when linking to other blog posts or to other pages of your blog.Keyword in links have more importance than simple text. This is major to the search engines, ANCHOR TEXT IS VITAL!For example if you want to rank using the keyword diving then make sure all the links to the site use the word diving like this: divingDon't just put in the code http://www.diving.blogspot.com, use the link button in the posting WYSIWYG editor and highlight the keyword, like this: diving

If you want to get listed for secondary keywords (which most of everyone does), use them infrequently in the body of your post.The theory is that the more times a keyword appears within a blog's web page, the more relevant the page is likely to be for someone searching those keywords.But do not overdo this by repeating the same keywords over and over again. Google bots can find out if a keyword is too frequent on a page and might just remove your site from their index.As outlined below, checking a keyword density using software is a smart idea. See the post on WebCEO in April 2007.

If your primary key phrase is diving help make sure that the word diving and help appear in your blog headers such as H1 and H2 tags as well as the title of each of your posts.So make sure you have a usable keyword!

You need as many links as possible to link back to your posts or blog because it will help you build pagerank and get your blog to rank higher in search engines. The more links you have the higher your blog is ranked in Technorati helping your blog to be found easily. So how do we get backlinks? Basically a lot of hard graft and slogging and cutting and pasting.The 1st thing to do to get high-quality links is to submit your blog and RSS feed to blog search engines and directories. As a start submit your blog to all the directories listed on this page:http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/http://www.toprankblog.com/rss-blog-directories/Link exchanging with other similarly-themed blogs will help you to form richly interlinked networks or communities. This again takes a lot of time online cruising around to find them. Start by searching for your keywords and the word blog...If you find an interesting article on another blog, link to it generously. This means 3 to 5 times from a p

Make sure your navigation bar is present on all pages of your blog. Your previous posts or at least the popular ones should be linked to all pages so they get spidered easily.Most of the standard blog set-ups (WordPress, TypePad, Blogger) will give you an option to have Archives and Blog Archives module to do this automatically for you.Remember, we are going to submit only the primary domain and RSS feeds to the directories and search engines and they will only find all of your pages and posts if they are linked on the main page.

The first thing to do is to ensure that your blogs URL contains the primary keyword you want to optimize for. Using the targeted keyword in sub-domains also helps. For example, if you want to start a blog site about diving then the primary keyword you want your URL to contain is diving. So choose a URL like www.divingblog.com. You can also use the keyword in subdomains like www.fiji-resort.com/diving

This tip comes fresh out of the mouth of moiSidebar Archives do's & dont'sPeople, you have got to put a limit on your sidebar archives. I notice way too many blogs that have their archives so damn long that it takes up almost the entire sidebar. Do you really think your visitors are reading each and every link? They're notIf your archives are longer than, lets say the size of your index finger, roll them up! Your visitors don't come to read what you have previously wrote. They are there to read what is on your main page. If they like what they read, they may turn to your archives and begin to read some of it.If you have a popular post that is in your archives, why not make a link in your sidebar for that particular one. If you have several links that were popular, create a sidebar title such as "Popular Post" or something along those lines and put those links under that. But again don't let that get out of hand either, you can roll that up alsoWith blogger beta you will now ha

I will be adding some tips to help you improve your blog, all tips will come from other sites. If you have a tip you would like to share please Contact MeTip below is from HTML Basic TutorOptimize Web Site - Improving Download SpeedImproving download speed of webpages is important to the success of a website. Internet users are impatient with slow websites and will move on if the webpage takes too long to render (also known as download). There are a few things you can do to improve download speed of your web pages which include implementing techniques to optimize web site performance. This article will suggest some ideas on how optimize web site performance and improve web site download speed.Optimize Web Site - Improving Download Speed of ImagesImages can take a long time to download. To improve download speed: * Optimize images to the smallest possible size without loosing a lot of quality. * Use a few as possible on the page * Include the width and height attributes of the

Web Design: Should You Hire Someone or Do It Yourself?Web design is an art and a scienceA good web designer is worth their weight in gold. There are literally a thousand and one details you will need to know before your site should be live. These details include designing a clean, easy to use user interface all the way to proper search engine optimization techniques. Can you learn these details? Sure, but how much time do you have? Unless you plan to do web design for a living, hiring a web designer could save you hundreds of hours and lots of mistakes.Web designers: Things to consider before you hire anyoneWhen looking for a web designer, there is an expression that comes to mind. Web designers are a dime a dozen but good ones are hard to find... Just because your cousin's friend's brother's sister can put together a website for cheap, it doesn't mean that it won't end up costing you big time in mistakes and missed opportunities. A bad design will cause your website visitors to l