How do you make sure your blog ranks well enough in search results to be found by plenty of people? Search engine optimization (SEO).

SEO is a complex and ever-changing field. It is hard to keep up, but most of us have to make the effort. It simply is too expensive for many of us to hire a really good SEO expert—and the bad ones are worse than useless.

Besides, knowing how to judge an SEO expert often requires knowing so much about SEO that you might as well do it yourself. If you know what you are doing, you can hire others to some of the work for you. But how do you know where to find them?

SEOClerks is a site where SEO workers of various kinds offer their services. The prices range from just $3 on up to about $1000, depending on the complexity or difficulty of the task and the skill of the service provider. Some of the SEO workers on the site offer subscriptions or give discounts for multiple orders.

This is a great site for buying SEO services. You can try out workers by purchasing small, cheap tasks and see how they do at those before signing up for more expensive packages of services. There is no need to risk much time or money finding out how well the services work for you.

If you use social media sites to get visitors to your blogs, you can, for example, Buy Tweets. You pay a small fee to get someone to tweet your sponsored messages to their Twitter list. Then you can easily see if the tweets resulted in traffic to your blog. If you sell goods or services on your blog, you can quickly see if the traffic resulted in actual purchases.

If you have a FaceBook fan page, you can, for example, have someone get 200 people to Like your page for only $5. From there you can send them to your blog. Pretty much any SEO work you could imagine is available for a reasonable price—or downright cheap.

For a few dollars, you can have an SEO-enhanced article written, get your blog listed on dozens of directory sites, or have comments posted on high-ranking blogs that link back to your blog. You can even buy links on specific blogs to permanently link back to yours.

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When you first sign up for a blog on a site like Blogger, there is a wide variety of options made available that allow you to reach out to your readers.

From customizable templates to imbedded videos, audio and advertising, the new blogger seemingly has the world at his or her fingertips.

That warm and fuzzy feeling eventually starts to wear off though as new ideas pop up that may not be immediately covered by Blogger’s built-in features.

Luckily, Blogger and essentially any other blogging platform allows its writers to add any number of open source add-ons to their blogs for enhanced features and interaction with readers.

AdSense
The single greatest thing you can do for your blog is turn it into a profitable outlet for your daily writing. Google’s very own AdSense add-on is one of the easiest and most effective ways to do this. The best part is that it is incredibly easy to add AdSense to your blog through the interface provided by Google in Blogger.

All you need to do is sign up for an AdSense account using the same login ID you currently use for Blogger. Go to the template page of Blogger where you will find a visual layout of your site.

Click on any of the “Add a Page Element” links on the page and you will be asked how big you would like your ads to be, how many to place, and what background colors they will have. It is quick and easy and integrates directly into your account.

Templates
The templates page is a great place to find and make a great deal of changes to your blog, the best and most visible impressive add-on being a new template. The code for your template can be located here, within the Template tag of your blog settings. To change your template, all you need to do is find a new one that you like and copy the code.

While Blogger comes with a couple dozens templates already installed, there are thousands more options available almost anywhere you look on the Internet. So, despite what Blogger may want your site to look like, you can make almost any changes you want, assuming you can find someone who has built a template to match your desired look.

Subscribe to Comments – by email
This simple add-on can be found within Blogger’s own Buzz page, the company blog that announces new changes and updates to their website and services. To find it, look for it just below your list of blogs on your dashboard.

This new add-on makes it easy for you to stay in the conversation loop after you comment on a post. Blogger now gives you the opportunity to receive an email every time someone comments on the same post. This way,

if you ask a question of the post author, you will get instant notification of their response without having to check back on their blog. To use this feature you will need to have a Google account which will insure that someone else can’t provide your email causing your to receive email that you didn’t request.

Amazon Widgets
Another great way to make a few dollars from your writing, Amazon widgets allow you install links to products on Amazon that your readers may be interested in buying.

Sign up for a free Associates account with Amazon and you can then install these widgets with your own Associate ID number and get commission for any sales made through your site. It is a great way to make relevant ads on your site linked to posts you have written.

Bookmarking Buttons (Digg, Delicious, Facebook, etc)
These are almost required in today’s age of social bookmarking and networking. By default, the only way a reader can interact with you on your blog is through the commenting feature. However, you can install simple button links on your site to services like Digg and Delicious where they can bookmark your posts and share them with millions of other social bookmarkers.

To add these buttons to your page, visit the websites for Digg or Delicious and search for buttons and links after signing up for a new account. They install easily within the code of your template (which these sites will guide you through doing).

There are countless additions you can make to your Blogger blog through widgets and third party applications. When someone has an idea, someone else has probably already created an application to serve that idea.

The best way to find new widgets is to search Google for “Blogger Widgets” or “Blogger addons” and search through the listings provided. You can do wonders with your blog with the right resources.

Learn to blog with Google Blogger Tutorials. Over 100 videos available on the Internet showing you where to find and how to add thousands of add-ons including audio, video, slide shows, text, photos, credit cards and more.
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Related articles

• Half A Billion Blog Posts Later, Google To Give Blogger A Revamp (via TechCrunch) (calculable.org)
• Battle of the Blog-platforms (souzapalooza.wordpress.com)
• Google Gives Blogger a Makeover (blogher.com)
• Will Blogger Be Able to Compete With WordPress? (pressography.com)

Do not Put down Basic Styles

Writers who blog aspire their design to stand out, so they either compose or attain a design that has fascinating colors. This might be fantastic, but if you disarray your blog with flash files or complex navigation, how else can you let your visitor find to your content?

You wish your homepage to be your blog posts. Try to do away with splash pages which introduce your site, on account of readers crave to begin reading. The problem with splash pages is that they give out an idea of your blog in advance of the visitor even beginning to look at the content.

If they think the splash page is not worth their time, they will close your blog even prior to they learn from your educational content. You crave your visitors to stay absorbed to your blog, so you need make things accommodating for them even if your style is simple.

Construct Your Blog Design Convenient

Construct genuine to use the crucial features such as archives link or search fields to assist your readers without difficulty look at more of your blog. User friendly blogs tend to acquire more traffic as compared with those which tuck away their contact links.

This also means that you ought to not place your RSS feeds or subscription links hidden at the bottom. Build your blog configuration available by readers so they are capable to keep coming back. Place all the substantial knowledge at the top so once they get in your blog, they may easily get these things if they prefer to come back.

A convenient blog design works on getting the reader what they long. The navigation can easily be understood and with one click, they are capable to contact you. Make for a fact that your links are direct. Do not put a separate page which links to your additional education. Keep them on the header.

Blogs are very flexible because they may fit your interests. Your writing is your essential fuel, but your design can also generate or even break your blog. You ought to consider making your style foundational, because it can save you excess load times and confusion when looking for the content. Most importantly, a convenient blog style provides your readers things they want easily which is definitely information.

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In particular Twitter is being touted as a site that can supply all your business needs concerning marketing and traffic generation.

Does this mean blogging sites are now endangered in terms of their ‘leading’ role in web 2.0 online marketing? Actually this would hardly seem the case and here are 5 very strong reasons why.

Self-Hosted Blogs

Most blogs are self hosted meaning you own the site and the content and are therefore in total control. Online social sites have rule and regulations set forth by the site administrator governing behavior.

The ability to ‘personalize’ your space on a social network site is non-existent therefore ‘branding’ yourself is very difficult. You can not build a solid foundation to an online business on a site where you have no control.

Blogs Gain Authority

Comments or content you share at a social site are not displayed for very long thereby they will have no long lasting affect. On a blogging site every post, comment or useful information is always available for viewing and tends to build up the authority of the site itself.

The more content posted the more authority the blog will gain. This is a great foundation for building credibility and a business.

Symbol of Commitment

A blog is a symbol of commitment since it takes effort to maintain the site. Commitment is exactly what people look for in businesses since it is a sign of reliability. This leads to an increase in trust which is a vital asset to have when marketing on the internet. Online social sites require only that you ‘show up’ and chat a little thereby demonstrating very little effort or commitment.

The Strength is in the Link

Socialization communities normally link to blogs as opposed to the other way around. That kind of says it all right there since it seems these communities need to ‘defer’ to blogs as a source of reliable and useful content. This does not bode well however for the credibility of social network sites!

Analytics

Blogging sites have analytic capabilities allowing then to function more fully as a business platforms. These capabilities allow the site to improve and grow and are a necessary tool for anyone serious about building a lasting business.

Business blogs have become the adopted standard for online marketers due to their flexibility, ease of use and ability to interact with customers. Recent trends however indicate an increasing acceptance/reliance upon using certain online social sites such as Twitter as free standing marketing platforms.

These social communities offer the same attraction that blogging sites do in terms of interaction and ease of use but comparisons stop there. The ability of social sites to help people ‘build’ a business when marketing on the internet is in question.

The 5 reasons mentioned above as to why blogging sites are not likely to fall from favor as online marketing platforms merely fortifies their dominance. While many social network platforms such as Twitter are great traffic sources they do not offer a solid platform upon which to build a long lasting business.

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About the Author:
TJ Philpott is an author and Internet entrepreneur based out of North Carolina. To learn more about the effectiveness of business blogs as marketing platforms and to also receive a free instructional manual that teaches valuable niche research techniques simply visit:http://blogbrawn.com/
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Blogging to the Bank has gone through several valuable upgrades over the years. The author keeps adding and updating information to keep up with changes in the business climate and the internet.

I still like the package, and I recommend taking a look if you want to make money with blogging:

http://www.blogdesignjournal.com/likes/Blog2Bank3/

Text messaging on a mobile phone

Want to drive more traffic to your blog? Here is an effective way to get blog visitors that you may not have thought of: a text messaging service.

A hot topic in the Internet marketing world right now is the generation gap between young users. More and more Internet users avoid email as much as possible. They prefer text messaging, Twitter and Facebook, unlike the “older” generation who prefer email.

Text messaging is huge, and you can use it to drive traffic to your blog.

A new mobile marketing site called 84444.com allows you to set up interactive text message marketing campaigns from your computer that can send traffic back to your site from the huge market of mobile texters. Think about how you can use that for SEO/SEM!

Using the self-service system at 84444.com and an existing list, you can direct customers to a particular website in real time. This is instant traffic!

Want to see how it works? Text the keyword LENS to 84444 (the short code) to get a discount on eye glasses.

Want to try it out—for free? You can get a free trial account (no contract, no setup fees) and set up a free trial campaign that allows you to send 25 free text messages.

With mobile marketing, you can set up sweepstakes, polls, and other interactive activities and send mobile coupons that can be used on line or in person.

As always with blog promotion, the only limit is your own imagination (as long as you stay with in the terms of use of the participating service providers and the applicable laws).

Clearly you also need to be sensitive to text user needs and preferences. Do not spam. Tightly target users with offers they will be glad to receive.

I’m excited about text marketing for traffic. I have not only set up a trial account; I have also signed up to be an affiliate.

For more information on the interactive text marketing industry and more ideas on how you might use text marketing to get traffic for your blog, you should read the Text Message Blog, which reports on mobile marketing.

A blog of domestic implements from a few features, allow search engines to crawl the content very quickly. The result was the fastest I have ever witnessed, added a new post within 20 seconds (including the top 10 ranking) for relevant phrases. How can this come about?

BlogPing

BlogPing is a protocol that implements any popular blog system. It serves primarily two things:

1. Blogs to notify each other (They were linked)

2. Notify search engines (Google Hello, I have published a new page)

Especially with the integration of Google Sitemaps that go on WordPress with a click of the hand, you need a search engine’s new content page to look once more. Sitemap opens directly to crawl a new page.

High degree of optimization of the source code

In WordPress usually retains very accurate web standards. A title is reported only as such. The same is true with other HTML tags. The quality of the templates is such, that the code can almost always run easily to W3 validation process. This also simplifies the search engines crawling a site.

A clean URL structure

WordPress provides the possibility of a rational use of URL structure. This is also helpful.

Performance

In conclusion, you don’t have to worry about the performance website. Because WordPress is indeed far from being resource-saving, it also provides a plugin called wp-super-cache.

Good internal linking

A blog encourages even the structural reasons to link an already written word. This is partially automatically handled by features such as tag clouds and the category classification of the contributions.

Latest content

Many blogs are designed to publish updated information. This is also one of the reasons for the short-term transport in the top ten. It is because blogs often contain the latest information about a topic. This also fits with the current real-time strategy Google uses. One carried a no-name content that is thought to be of high quality and watched the development of the link as the residence times, etc.

Another point concerning the timeliness is: A blog is posting updates itself. This is done firstly through features such as tag clouds or looking for constant movement on the sides. Another way is by comments that are received every now and then.

Blog instead of conventional web pages?

I am always wondering if it is best to ask a blog instead of a static Web site. The answer is clear: Why not? WordPress is ultimately nothing more than a content management system. Of course, it can create quite conventional looking pages. One thing is certain: Blog contents are not mainly preferred, because they are thought to be blog content. They are preferred because WordPress is so well optimized, and can be optimized by plug-ins.

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If that is the case, you should start of with a blog and just journaling in it to see what it is like. Keep it updated so that you can see what is required to get readers, and try some of these techniques listed below.

While you are learning all about the aspects of blog marketing, you are going to find that comments on a blog are also a very important aspect of blog marketing. You will want to be sure that you always answer and acknowledge the comments that are made to your blog as well as others.

When you show that you are an actual person that can hold a conversation, you are showing others that you are real and that you really and truly have the best intentions for your blog. Make sure that no comment goes unanswered.

When you do this and do it consistently, it will show your readers that you will acknowledge them and answer their questions. That will in return make them come back to see what your answer was if they asked a question.

Having contests are another way that you can market your blog. Having contests on various things would be a lot of fun, and something that will keep your readers coming back.

Everyone loves to win things, and you can also make the prize that you are giving away relevant to the market you are promoting on your blog. Some do not realize how effective this aspect of blog marketing can be. While others are reaping the rewards.

Another huge aspect of blog marketing is the track back feature. When you have the track back feature on your blog, you are allowing other people to link to your blog. Maybe someone has a post to post on their blog that is relevant to one of yours. They can use the talkback to your post, and send their readers to your blog so that they know what they are referring to.

Another good thing to remember is that if someone gives you a track back, it is a courtesy to return that to their blog if at all possible. This is something that most bloggers all ready know and something that new bloggers should know.

Something else that is a big thing in blog marketing that is frequently overlooked is using SEO on your blog, which stands for search engine optimization. SEO will help get your blog out there and read, and will also help you get a better ranking with Google. Being as high as you can be in the Google search engine results is something that you want. Doing this will allow your blog to get out there so that people searching for things that are relevant can find it.

While there are many aspects of blog marketing, you are going to see that these are all the most important. If you have all of these tools and techniques in place, then chances are you are getting some great traffic. If not, just keep working on it. Your hard work is going to pay off and you will be glad that you did.

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To understand what’s going on, we will need to debunk the oldest myth of the web: Built it and they will come. In reality, quite a bit more work is involved.To get people to visit your website, you also need to (1) make sure that your website can be found and (2) give visitors something worthwhile when they arrive.

Make Sure That Your Website Can Be Found

The first step to building traffic is to ensure that potential visitors can find your website. This means that you need to make sure that your website can be found in search engines and directories. Some basic things which need to be accomplished to be most effective in this regard include:

search engine submission – Submit your website to search engines.

directory submission - Submit your website to directories.

inbound links – Get other people to link to you. This will help to get visitors as well as help search engines find your website.

search engine optimization – Getting in search engines is not enough. You also need to be at the top of search engine results pages. After all, if you are on page 55 of a search, it is unlikely that visitors will be able to find you. So you need to apply search engine optimization techniques to improve your search engine visibility.

Give Visitors Something Worthwhile

Once visitors come to your website, you need to provide them with something useful in order to keep them there. The something useful could be quality content, a great product, a useful service, or a free tool. But whatever it is, it must be able to hold a visitor’s attention, cause them to return, and perhaps recommend the website to others.

So… How Long Will It Take?

Back to our original question, How long does it take for a blog to become popular? Answer: There is no specific time required to make a website popular. It all depends on the type of website and the techniques used to market it.

Some websites, for example, can achieve great popularity in as little as a week, whereas others may take several months or even years. So the question that you should be asking is: What is the best way to make my website popular?

Some suggestions that we have for increasing the popularity of your website include:

Continuous Blogging. The frequency with which new content is added to your website will go a long way to generating traffic. In other words, you will achieve popularity faster if you blog everyday as opposed to once a week or once a month.

Link Bait. Every website needs a bit of viral content, content that will get visitors talking and referring their friends. This is a great way to get a boost in traffic and lots of inbound links.

Press Releases. Another great way to spread the word is to create a press release and submit it to syndication services. Press releases could be used to anounce your blog or some special tool or content series that you might have added. We like press releases because they work for themselves and make their way all around the internet without much help. They’ll also get you lots of inbound links.

If you have a new website, don’t just wait for traffic to come to you, or you will be waiting for an eternity. Instead, get the ball rolling by making sure that people can find your website, providing useful content, and by using our suggestions above.

Sofia Sapojnikova
Vesta Digital
http://www.vestadigital.com

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2. Command a niche market. Choose a niche in which you have some experience or that which you are willing to learn. Can you continue writing for over 2 or 3 years on the topic? If so you found the sweet spot.

3. Submit (Bookmark) your posts to Digg, Technorati, Flickr (Flickr is a service offered by yahoo for uploading and sharing cartoon. Don’t get confused with flicker.com which surprisingly yahoo has not yet bought), Del.icio.us, Stumble Upon and other such sites to increase traffic to your blogging blog.

Submitting your articles to these and other such social networking sites will increase the number of individuals who shall view your content leading to an enlargement in traffic to your site. Enable your readers to bookmark your posts to such sites as well. There is a neat trick to bookmarking which you will find here.4. Readers search for blogging blog through tags. However, search engines push traffic to your blogs. Hence, not paying attention either one will cost you dearly in terms of traffic. 10 words must be the maximum size of your title tag.

5. Make it a mark to update your blogging blog regularly. You can lose your hard earned reader base very quickly if u do not post good quality posts to your blogging blog on a formal basis. Regular posting helps in not just retaining your reader base but also improving it as word spreads about the quality of your blogging blog on the web.

6. Scour the web for good quality content from other blogs related to your niche. This will keep you in the good books of other bloggers who will not hesitate to quote u and provide a link to your blogging blog to their readers. Do not hesitate. Become a blogger now

7. Spice things up by providing good and relevant photographs, presentations and videos along with text. This enhances the value of content on your blogging blog and will increase traffic to your blogging blog. If you notice the affiliate blog by Shawn Collins, you see that most of his posts are composed of videos which are rightly done. Having videos gives you the advantage of getting viewers from sites like YouTube, Metacafe, DailyMotion etc.

8. Add content to your blog intelligently. Try to give definitive answers to questions related to your niche with your recent blog post. This is the best way to quickly increase popularity of your blog as u would have done what no other blogger in your niche succeeded in doing.

Try answering one of your reader questions. This will spark of a communication between the readers and the author and also raise a sense of community within the blog. Earn money with forex trading tips

9. Find out which posts fetch you the maximum traffic. look at what you wrote in the blog post. If you did something different, then it has obviously helped bring more traffic to your site.

10. Do update your old posts once in a while. Search engine likes to see fresh blog post added on and when you do an update you not only give new fodder for search engines but also provide value to your readers. Your reader might be reading the post you wrote back in 2001 in “present year”. Having a sentence “Updated in 2009 with so and so” gives the reader a feel of your dedication.

It is natural to make the mistake of taking your self too seriously when you become successful. You might find instances where you took rigid stances at the cost of your readers. This does not mean you should avoid topics of high emotional value.

However, handling even such topics dispassionately will help you get appreciated by your readers. Hence, not only do you avoid losing readers but this approach will help you actually pull more traffic to your blog.

11. Successful bloggers often find themselves in the happy position where a particular post attracts a lot of traffic. Do not become complacent when this happens. Rather, add even better posts to the blog to convert your latest readers into permanent traffic for your blog.

12. The basic purpose of a blog is to communicate with people. If you are scared of revealing too much information and if you would prefer to keep all that you know about your niche close to your heart, just give blogging a skip. However, if you are going to blog, make it a point to reveal as much as you know in each blog.

Readers are quick to recognize when a person is adding hitherto unknown aspects and facets of the niche. Your blog shall be rewarded with a lot of traffic for your blog post.

13. It is one thing to provide comprehensive information on a topic blog post. However, it is a completely different thing to present information in boring manner. This will help you pull additional traffic to your blog.

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