Over a week ago, we welcomed the arrival of 2010 with much anticipation. 2009 was a year many people simply wanted to forget and move on from. For bloggers everywhere, the beginning of a new year is a reinvigorating time to reflect on the past year and look forward to the promise of the future ahead.

So, how did your blog fare in 2009? Regardless of the level of success you achieved there is always room to improve. Let’s take a look at 18 timeless blogging tips on how to improve your blog and stand above the competition.

1. Judge a blog by its cover – If it doesn’t look pretty, people have a hard time focusing on what you have to say. Take a look at the home page of your blog, focusing on the uppermost region (without scrolling down). Would you want to take a look around after arriving on the home page as a new visitor?

2. Comment smartly and consistently – Bloggers are tired of seeing the overused “Nice post!” or “This is really interesting!” Stand out by trying to put some thought into your comments and, most importantly, make it sound like you actually read the article.

3. Get a Gravatar- Before you start commenting on blogs, it’s a good idea to register your own gravatar. If you follow step 2, readers and blog owners will become familiar with you for better or for worse.

4. Show your personality in your writing – Establishing a voice in your writing is a crucial element is producing content that people will want to keep coming back over and over again for more. Don’t be that Average Joe in a sea of Average Joes.

5. Use plenty of pictures in your blog posts – No one wants to see endless blocks of text, especially while reading online. The moment your readers’ mind wanders off, they’ll be jumping to another site before you know it. Here are some great sources for finding images: Flickr, Photobucket, picapp, Google Image Search.

6. Study SEO like your life depended on it - Driving traffic to your blog through search engines is what you call “organic traffic.” Other types include referral sites, and direct traffic. Of the three mentioned, organic traffic is what you need to be able to sustain long-term visibility of your blog. To help you get started, take a look at this comprehensive guide on SEO: The Definitive Guide to Higher Rankings For Your Blog.

7. Start with a WordPress.com blog and then switch over to a self-hosted WordPress blog - Three reasons to use WordPress: 1) Lots of people use it 2) Recognition and reputation 3) Strong support. If you are just started blogging, I recommend you get a free WordPress.com blog to get your feet wet. It can’t hurt you to do so and besides, what’s the rush?

8. Avoid grammar mistakes by proofreading – One thing that really annoys me about a blog is poor grammar. If you were listening to your teacher lecture about quantum physics and his grammar is dreadful, you would want to leave that class in a heartbeat. Same thing with blogs. You came looking for value but it’s all mixed up with a misplaced “has” and “their” and terrible spelling. Would you want to keep reading? Probably not.

9. Make you blog content rich in media – In my Studio Art class last quarter, we studied about human culture and psychology (Shrug). It would’ve been the most boring class in my entire schedule if my professor had not included numerous videos and other media into out 1- 1/2 hour long lectures. It kept me attentive and engaged. and helped me connect topics more cohesively. In other words, utilize the power of Youtube and other media sources and incorporate them accordingly into your blog content.

10. Figure out your niche and stick to it – If someone asked you what your blog was about, would you be able to answer without hesitation? If not, write down in 140 characters or less(no pun intended) a succinct and clear definition of what your blog is about. E.g: Pet Food Blog- The Blog where Pet Owners can Learn How to Better Feed Their Beloved Pets. The second important thing is “to keep the main the main thing.” If you feel like writing a post about electron polarization and its effect on our ecosystem (shrug), do you really think that readers to your Pet Food Blog would appreciate it?

11. Blog on a set schedule – There is no right answer to how often one should blog. Whatever schedule you start out with, make sure you stick with it every week. Take for example, Mashable. After visiting the site a couple of times, you can safely expect to see a new article every single day. The important thing is that they stick with that routine.

12. Reply to comments on your blog – Replying to questions or comments from readers is your way of letting people know that your blog is “alive.” It gives readers the opportunity to interact and engage in conversation. Best thing of all? It artificially inflates the true number of people who comment on your blog. Very sweeeeeet.

13. Make it easy for readers to navigate your blog – If it takes more than 3 seconds to look for a search bar or category list on your blog, than your site’s navigation needs to be improved. No one likes the feeling of being in an unfamiliar place with no directions to their destination. They feel desperate, unhappy, and hopeless. The thing with being lost in an unfamiliar site as opposed to being lost in a shopping mall is that readers can easily exit with a single click of a button. This will definitely not help your blog traffic.

14. Put an author section in your blog posts – No one wants to read material written by a face-less author, let alone by one without a name. Check out this article by Chris Spooner on how you to create your own author section.

15. Forget about the stats – How much time do you spend checking the stats of traffic to your blog? You’ll be amazed by how much more productive you will be if you focus on maximizing the time you spend writing new blog posts instead. One method to fight off your debilitating addiction for numbers is to disconnect your computer from the internet. Say what?! Yep, that’s right. If you can’t get online, you can’t get look at your stats. Pull out Microsoft Word and start writing your next blog post there. It’ll work out. Trust me.

16. Don’t think about making money…at first – If making money from your blog is your primary goal, I will not argue against that. The problem with focusing solely on money in the beginning is that you lose sight of the far more significant goal every new blog must reach first: quality content. What good will you provide your readers if you only post hundreds of affiliate links and self-promotional articles in the hope of winning people’s credit card numbers? Don’t be greedy. Money is great but don’t let it destroy your blog.

17. Write killer headlines - With eye-catching headlines, you have effectively completed over 50% of your blog’s advertising. Tell me, would you rather read an article titled, “How to Cook Delicious Spaghetti Sauce” or “How to Make Your Spaghetti Sauce Taste Orgasmic” ? (I apologize if you were eating) Anyways, the point is to avoid the overused and generic blog titles and strive for ones that are unique and thought-provoking.

18. Guest post – Don’t let the thought of submitting your written articles to other reputable blogs intimidate you. Remember, if you don’t try, how can you possibly succeed?

Source: DailyBlogTips.com

1. Comments saying “Nice post!”

Nice post doesn’t really mean nice post. It means the person had nothing to say but wants to get their link on your site. “Nice” isn’t exactly a glowing reference, though, so maybe they were sincere.

2. Very few subscribers.

Zero. Five. Twenty. Not really much point having the widget, is there?

3. Flat stats.

5 views today. 5 views yesterday. 5 views the day before. Was it just you refreshing the page?

4. A lack of link love.

You read lots of blogs, leave comments, and nobody links to you? Maybe there’s a reason for that. No, a “top commenters” or “top droppers” list doesn’t count.

5. Multiple apologies for your absence.

#1 Hi everyone, I’m out of town right now, but I’ll blog soon!

#2 Hi again, so sorry but I can’t get to the PC right now, this is being sent by carrier pigeon!

#3 I promise to update soon! Promise! Really!

#4 Are you still there?

6. A whole row of unfilled ads.

One or two empty spots is OK, but 10 empty ads? At the very least, buy an ad on your own site!

7. Popups.

A popup appears when you visit the site. A popup appears when you leave the site. It’s like walking into a room, having a blanket thrown over your head, then left to fumble around without being able to see what you’re doing. Knowing what will happen when you next go to the site, why would you go back?

8. Autoplaying audio.

For the love of God, will someone turn that music down? Oh wait, there’s no “off” button. I’ll just close the site then. Bye!

9. Pointless widgets.

Why is that widget there? What does it do? Oh, it shows me the latest 5 / 10 / 20 / 50 / 500 visitors to your blog. Remind me, why do I care?

10. Errors.

Take your pick:

• 404 Not Found
• Headers already sent
• Error establishing a database connection
• This account has been suspended
• Blog has been removed

Add yours to the list!

I’ve probably missed a few – can you think of any more?

Source:  toptenblogtips.com

Have you ever tried to go to sleep, only to find that your head is full of ideas for your blog? It used to happen to me all the time. Not so much now, though. Here are some tips to help you get some sleep without abandoning your blog completely.

1. Keep a notebook by the bed.

This is for flashes of inspiration – not for working on new posts when you should be sleeping. Have some discipline!

2. Maintain a sensible schedule.

Work time. Home time. Play time. Blog time. Sleep time. Set aside time for each activity, and don’t let things overrun. Stick to your schedule as much as you can.

3. Ban all questions after a certain time.

Does your significant other show an interest in your blog? Great! Just tell them to button it when it’s time to sleep. Make sure you button it, too.

4. Pretend you don’t have a laptop and wireless Internet.

It’s just too convenient to hop into bed, go online… and stay online. It might be fun, but don’t do it if you have to get up in the morning. Or if you feel like sleeping anytime soon.

5. Don’t go coffee-crazy.

I like a cappuccino in the morning. Not every morning, but every now and again. I avoid coffee in the evenings though. Too many coffees will keep you up all night. Unless you’re immune to the effects of caffeine.

6. Don’t hide your ideas under the bed.

Notebook? Sure. Anything else? No! It’s fine to jot down an idea to make sure you don’t lose it, but don’t get carried away and start developing some of your post ideas. And don’t go thinking you can hide things in the bed, either. It’s not going to be a comfortable night for you if you try that one.

7. Sit in the bath.

I’m not expecting you to use the bath as your bed. Having a bath is a great way to relax. Do keep a notebook fairly close by, but be careful not to drop it in the tub. Whatever you do, don’t bring your laptop or mobile phone into the bathroom – leave them outside where they won’t electrocute you. Seriously. Be careful!

8. Set a cut-off time for snacking.

Blogging can be hungry work, but eating doesn’t usually help you sleep. Separating food from blogging and sleeping can make the difference between getting a good night’s sleep, or losing track of time and having to pick the crumbs out of your bed, laptop and clothes.

9. Resist the urge to blog if you wake up early.

Do you have a tendency to wake up in the middle of the night? It’s best to try and get back to sleep – don’t go and start writing a new post. Of course, if you do have an idea, jot it down… but leave it at that.

10. Don’t be too good at it!

Whether you’re basking in the glory of blogging, or you’ve convinced your perfect partner that you really are all that… if you don’t want to be up all night, be mediocre! (Maybe staying up late isn’t such a bad thing…)

What do you think? Does blogging keep you up at night? What do you do about it?

Source: toptenblogtips.com

The secret to responding to the rapidly changing needs of your audience is in fact no secret at all. The cold hard truth is every single blog in existence, can in one way or another be improved. Neglecting to continuously scan your much beloved site can often drag you into the bottomless pit of failure.

The following are an array of tips I have developed through trial and error.

1. Perhaps the most obvious, yet surprisingly the most neglected. Continuously updating your blog with fresh content provides an incentive for your readers to come back. Neglecting this point will also make any of the following tips practically useless.

2. Whenever giving out your email address, ensure it is made out on your blog domain.

3. Jump onto favicon.cc and learn how to create a favicon for your blog. Creating a favicon can consequently differentiate your blog by creating a lasting impression in the minds of your readers. Furthermore, your site is more visually appealing when your visitors are sorting through links in their address bars.

4. Make your blog user friendly by removing any unnecessary widgets from your side bar(s). Besides slowing your site down, an excessive amount of widgets will shift the focus off your content and may make navigating your site more difficult.

5. Simplify any contact forms that you might have on your blog. The epitome of blogging is being able to easily establish a dialogue with your readers and neglecting this can disadvantage you big time.

6. Create a permanent glossary section if your blog is of a technical nature. Besides adding value to your blog, it creates the impression that you’re willing to help out the less experienced visitors.

7. Remove any additional Flash images, videos or other content that might take time to upload and aren’t really necessary.

8. No tacky music please, as it is very irritating and increases uploading time. Furthermore, it creates the impression that you’re merely an amateur.

9. If you don’t post original creative content on your blog, add a copyright advisory note at the bottom of the page. Getting busted (which you probably will) will adversely affect your reputation and create a mountain of other legal related problems.

10. Remember to include an archives section, especially for a long running or complicated blog. While this provides a convenient way for your visitors to browse your older posts, it is also something search engines wish for under their pillows.

11. You can also create a map for navigation through various posts.

12. Add internal links within the content of your posts, linking up relevant posts for easy access. This promotes your other work, which consequently keeps users glued to your blog for longer. This is also an effective SEO strategy.

13. Add relevant pictures or diagrams wherever applicable. This can make a blog post much more tempting to read.

14. Your content should be formatted so that it is easy to read.

15. Run a spell check on every post before posting it. Neglecting this can damage your reputation as somebody who is both competent and committed.

16. And a grammar check.

17. Create a theme for your blog and stick to it. Your readers need to have a clear image of what it is exactly you’re offering.

18. Unless some content is more relevant, create all text in one uniform color; otherwise your blog may look too jarring.

19. Add your contact details and keep these separate from your private contact details. While point number 5 centered on the importance of a contact form, the internet is now a much more complex place than it previously was. Allowing your readers to reach you on several social media mediums can intensify the sense of community around your blog.

20. The font used should be large enough to be easily read but small enough to be considered a part of a blog for grown ups. Please don’t disregard this tip because it is last. I have seen this endlessly on a wide array of blogs, and cannot help but feel for the owner who is more than likely suffering as a result.

Source: JohnChow.com & Insane Profits

On one hand, starting a blog can be outright one of the most effective ways on the planet of establishing an online presence. The entire nature of a good blog encourages interaction from readers and creates a presence that people and search engines love. Blogging can help a person to establish credibility in most industries, in fact many industry experts have become known as such through blogging.

On the other hand, the sad truth is that by percentage, most bloggers create nothing more than a frustrating time-suck. Do you guys remember the 1986 movie “The Money Pit“? Walter Fielding, played by Tom Hanks, and his wife buy a beautiful mansion at a remarkable price. It turns out that the Fielding’s beautiful home falls apart, and the Fieldings are forced to spend all of their time and life savings to get the house into decent condition.

I created this article so that you can learn to create a successful blog while avoiding the traps that would make you continually frustrated and lacking in positive results. Please consider it as a discussion, I will be answering questions in the comment section at the bottom of the page.

I’m going to assume that since you have reached this article, you are interested in starting a blog. Some of you may have a blog and want to make sure that you haven’t missed any important steps in your blogging journey. Regardless of your level of knowledge and experience in this arena, I sincerely hope that this article will help you to achieve your goals.

This post is one that may take you a few days to process, so feel free to come back as often as you need to. Since I originally posted this, I’ve found that many of my readers and students have a hard time understanding some of the simple and powerful keyword strategies that make blogs such powerful marketing tools.

To help create the proper foundation for anyone looking to create a passive income with a blog, I’ve created an email mini-course called “5 Days to Success With Keywords.” In the course I explain how my blogs make money with keywords and search engine traffic.

The whole point of creating an article like this is to give you a resource you can use to learn about blogging. That means it will help you to get a blog set up and will show you how you can make money with a blog.

Since most of my business is online, I am asked this question almost daily, “How do people get started on the internet?” The first section of this enormous article will help you to see why you should be starting a blog if you’re new to internet marketing and why you should consider starting one even if you’re an experienced veteran in the online marketing world. After we go over why you should consider starting a blog, we’ll go over how to start one that doesn’t become a time sucking money pit.

Why Starting A Blog Is Probably Your Best Option For Online Success

The nature of blogs give you some very specific advantages over other types of sites. To best illustrate what these advantages are, let me explain in detail what a blog actually is. In the following paragraphs I want to go over important characteristics that make blogs different from other types of sites.

Blogs show the newest addition to the site on the homepage. This makes for quite a few specific advantages including:

• Ability to bring readers back for more information or more entertainment. Placing the newest material on the home page makes it really easy to find and helps to set the hook that will bring readers back again and again.
• Ability to get multiple links from sites. With a traditional site you will be consistently fighting to get links. With a blog, returning readers may link to 50+ blog posts that you write over the lifetime of your blog. Each time they do you will get some additional traffic and a search engine benefit. To get your readers to link to multiple posts that you write, they will need to be able to easily find your new material. This is why having your most recent work on your homepage is hugely important.

It’s easier to get search engine traffic from a blog than it is from other types of sites. Blogs have some very tricky ways to generate search engine traffic that are much harder to accomplish with regular websites. Here are some characteristics of blogs that help them to rank better in Google and other search engines:

• Blogs let search engines know each time new material is published. When you add something new, your blog sends a message called a ‘ping’ to blog search engines immediately. This lets the blog search engines know that your blog has new content, and gets it into Google and other engines more quickly. It also creates direct links to your blog website, which gives you a ranking benefit in Google.
• Blogs get linked to more often than traditional sites. Almost every search engine out there (including Google) uses links to determine which sites are the best. They will include sites that have the most links above sites that don’t have as many. This will give you an advantage over many of your competitors.
• People leave comments on blogs. Google and other search engines like to see constant updates from websites. Since people will be leaving comments on your blog, they will be doing a lot of the updating for you. Every time someone leaves a comment on one of your pages, Google will see that page as having been updated.
• Blogs structure content for you. One of the hardest things about creating a website from scratch is figuring out how to structure your content. Blogs do this work for you and create a search engine friendly structure.

Blogs become communities more easily than other types of sites. The process of bringing people back to a website again and again is hugely important if you want to make a large amount of money from one site. Blogs allow for 2-way communication and this makes them more interesting to visitors. They can leave their comments and ask you questions. Since a person that is interacting is much more likely to come back for another visit, this gives a blog a lot more upside. When people keep coming back it gives you more and more hits which will turn into more and more ad dollars and/or sales.

What Exactly Is A Blog?

The word blog is short for weblog. You can think of a blog as a type of website that is very much like a journal that shows the most recent addition on the blog homepage, which is often the homepage of the site.

If you take a look at the homepage of this site, you will see the most recent additions to the site there. Each time I publish something new, it’s placed on the homepage so that people can easily find it. This helps people to come back often to check for more material.

You may be getting nervous about the technical aspects of starting a blog. Don’t worry because there are some free software applications that can help you with this process. I will be covering the setup later in the article, so there’s no need to worry about this now.

Is Blogging For You?

No matter how effective a blog can be for establishing an online presence, you will have to decide whether blogging is the right business model for you. Every business out there requires unique abilities and characteristics and starting a blog isn’t any different.

Many people are attracted to blogging because it’s cheap and still provides a large upside. The extremely low entrance requirements for the business make it very cost effective, but also attract individuals that lack the persistence, motivation, and ambition to start a blog that can reach a high level of income.

I can tell you that almost every person is capable of starting a blog that makes money, but the amount that a person can make with a blog is determined by many factors including intelligence, passion, like-ability, and more importantly determination and self-belief.

You definitely don’t have to be abnormally intelligent or talented to create a blog that makes money. You do need to have a lot of persistence and determination. I’ve personally seen many friends that have the talent to make a full-time living fail at blogging simply because they quit before the fruits of their labors manifested themselves. I’ve seen other friends that have a lot less talent who have made very nice incomes through blogging simply because of stubborn determination.

Crucial Traits Of Successful Bloggers:

• Self-Motivation
• Determination
• Self-Belief
• Persistence

Some of you may look at those four character traits and wonder if you have enough of them to ever create a successful blog or business for that matter. I can tell you that there was a time in my life that I struggled in all four of those areas. I consider myself blessed to be able to say that I escaped from that negative cycle and turned myself into a person of confidence, ambition, and motivation.

You are the only one that can ultimately determine if you have what it takes to develop a successful blog. The best gauge of whether you can do it or not is whether you are willing to develop yourself as a person during the process. If you’re starting from ground zero, you have a lot to learn. However, there are plenty of resources that can help you during that process.

If you are thinking about starting a blog just to ‘try it out’, save yourself some time right now and don’t do it. In order to start a blog that won’t be a waste of time, you will need to make up your mind beforehand that you will do whatever it takes to find success, no matter the cost or amount of time required to reach your desired level.

Why Starting A Blog Is The Way To Start Online

There are literally hundreds of different methods that can be used to make money on the internet. There is e-commerce (selling products), blogging, traditional site operation, email marketing, pay-per-click marketing, affiliate marketing, social network marketing – the list goes on and on.

When people start learning about the internet and how to profit from it, they often have no idea what to start with. I can tell you that starting a blog will provide you with a much needed education that will help you in the future no matter what endeavors you take on. Free, easy to use software will help to simplify this process so that you don’t have to spend months learning all of the technical aspects of e-commerce and other methods for generating online income.

The Enormous Upside Of Blogging

I have to admit that I never would have started a blog myself if I hadn’t recognized the huge amount of upside that blogging provides. The ability to generate traffic with a blog website is much higher than it is with other types of websites, and this will of course allow the owner to create a substantial income as traffic equals money.

A huge positive to blogging is that some of your marketing is done for you by your blog. When you add a new article to your blog (called a blog post), your blog will notify blog search engines of the new material (called content). The blog search engines will then create links to your new material so that people who search them will be able to find you. This action provides for quite a few benefits including an increase in direct traffic from blog search engines, and also a search engine benefit for search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and MSN.

The Monetization Potential Of Blogging

‘Monetization’ means making money. I’ve seen lists that have literally hundreds of different methods that people use to make money with blogs. Instead of providing one of those lists that’s full of mostly useless information, here is a short list of methods that actually work to make great money with blogs that have good traffic:

• Direct Advertising – No matter what industry or topic your blog covers, there will certainly be people and companies that can benefit from advertising on your site – as long as you have traffic. The amount that you can charge will depend entirely on your traffic levels but I can tell you that this can be a very significant method for creating an income. There are bloggers out there that are making over $15,000 per month from this revenue stream alone, and team blogs that do over $100,000 per month in direct ad sales.
• Affiliate Marketing – In order to be truly successful as a blogger that makes money with affiliate marketing, you should recommend products that you really use yourself. After you have people that have subscribed to your site you will be able to develop a reputation as a trusted source for information. If you want to do well with affiliate marketing, never betray that trust. Don’t recommend products that aren’t useful to you and your trustworthiness will benefit both you and the people that read your site. Affiliate marketing is one of the biggest revenue streams I have on my blog, and that is because I would never recommend a product that people can’t benefit from.
• Product Reviews – No matter what your topic is, there will almost always be companies in your industry that will be willing to pay to create buzz for their new products and services. In order to maintain your integrity as a blogger, you will always need to be 100% honest in your reviews. For me, that has meant letting companies know beforehand that there will be both positive and negative points that will be discussed in the review. The positive points will help people the see the benefits of the product, and the negatives will help companies to know what to change.
• Contextual Advertising – Programs like Google Adsense can provide bloggers with a simple way to make money. You can read more about how this program works here: Make Money With Adsense. The basic idea is that Google will allow you to place paid ads on your blog and will pay you when people click on those ads.
• Selling Personal Products And Services – The #1 revenue stream of Court’s Internet Marketing School is the sale of our services. We are able to provide people with the help they need to make their businesses grow, and that help is very valuable. If your blog is built around information that can help people to learn something, keep in mind that some people will want and need more help than you can provide on your blog. Some people, (myself included) would rather spend money than time to learn something new.

You can definitely build a blog into a full time income, however this will take time. The most self-destructive thing you can do is demand immediate, monetary results from your blog. This will only cause you to implode when they don’t come. The key is to be patient with your blog, while sticking to the success principles that I will outline for you in this post.

The easiest way to turn your blog into a time-sucking money pit is by quitting before you get the results you’re looking for. Don’t waste months of your life by quitting before you get results. If you decide that starting a blog is for you, make sure you are 100% committed to seeing it through before you take your first step.

I sincerely hope that by now you believe that by starting a blog, you can create income for yourself. If you don’t, I would recommend working on your self-belief and personal determination.

Choosing A Profitable Blog Topic

When the time comes to prepare to start a blog, the first and probably most important step is choosing a topic that can be profitable. In theory, there are thousands of topics that you could cover with your blog, but some will be much more profitable than others.

Although there are many different profitable topics, most people don’t realize that skills and interests they already have could translate into profitable blogs. When people talk to me in person about starting a blog, I ask them this series of questions before making any recommendations:

• Where do you work and what do you do?
• What topics are you interested in?
• What magazines and/or books do you like to read?
• What do you do with your free time?

I talk to people all the time that spend hours every day reading about something they’re very interested in without realizing that they already have their topic. If you are in this boat, I think you probably should blog about that topic, since the interest is already there.

Before making your decision final, I would recommend taking a look at whether you can actually make money with the topic you are considering. The easiest way to find this out is by looking for a similar, successful blog. If another person or group can make money with a given topic, you can too – as long as you have as much determination as they do.

To make this process a little easier, here are some random ideas that could be turn into profitable blogs:

• Make Money Online
• Investment Strategies
• Real Estate Investing Ideas
• Basic Computer Lessons
• Computer News
• Cell Phone News
• Computer Programming
• Teach People How To Diet
• Parenting
• Pets
• Celebrity Gossip
• Politics
• Sports
• Movies
• Exercise
• Humor
• Home Decor
• Books
• Travel
• Motivation
• Business
• Cars

Now I couldn’t possibly cover all of the possibilities for profitable blog ideas. If you have an idea for a blog, please feel free to use the comments in this post or my contact page. I would be happy to give you feedback about any idea you are able to come up with.

Another interesting metric that can be used to determine whether a blog topic can be profitable is whether or not there are off-line businesses that are profitable in that industry. Are there off-line businesses that do well in the pet industry? Absolutely. Are there off-line businesses that do well in the finance industry? Of course. Are there off-line businesses that do well in the industry you’re considering? If there are, there will probably be online money as well.

Once you have chosen your topic, you will move on to the next stage in the lesson.

Choosing A Domain Name

I’ve written countless times on this site about the enormously important selection of your domain name, which is the .com name of your blog website. In the spirit of being thorough, I would like to discuss this topic further. I would highly recommend taking at least a week to determine the domain name of your site. This will give you ample time to brainstorm and make an educated decision. Do not extend this process for more than one week. Procrastination will inhibit your progress and you need to get started as soon as possible.

When choosing a domain name there are a lot of factors to consider. To help you to make that decision, I would like to address a few of crucial ones here:

• Domain Brandability – In order to create a blog that is highly profitable, you will need to get people to associate your domain name with good knowledge and information in your industry. This process is called branding and is vital for any good blog. Using a name that doesn’t relate to your industry makes the process a lot harder. I have chosen to use my own name for the domain name of my site. It took a lot of extra work to get people to associate my site with internet marketing and if you go this route you will need to plan on putting in the time. Good examples of brandable names that fit well in their industries are ProBlogger.net and Techcrunch.com.
• Domain Extension – There are plenty of domain name extensions to choose from, including .com, .net, .org, .biz, .info, and many more. I would highly recommend going with a .com extension if you’re starting a blog. This will make your blog website easier to find and will also help you to get a better price if you were to ever sell your site.
• Domain Length – I wouldn’t choose a domain name that had more than three words in it. Using domain names that have 4+ words will make it harder for people to find and remember your site. Keep the name as simple as possible.
• Hyphens and Underscores – When choosing your domain name, stay away from hyphens (dashes) and underscores. These symbols will make your name much harder to remember and you will always be sending traffic to the non-hyphened or underscored version of your domain name. I have seen plenty of sites that were able to make it with these symbols in the domain, but why would you want to make it harder for yourself?

As long as a domain is available and doesn’t break any of the above rules, you should add it to your list of possibilities. After a week you should have plenty of possibilities on your list, and you will then choose the name that you like the best. Since each of them fits the criteria of a good name, it will come down to personal preference when you make the final decision.

Checking Availability Of Domain Name

Any site that sells domain names will allow you to check a name for its availability. Any name that is currently registered by another person will come back unavailable. The site that I use to check for the availability of domain names is called ProudDomains.com, but really any domain registrar will do.

Once you have chosen an available name that you want to use for your blog, you will of course register it. I use ProudDomains.com for this as well, it costs under $10 per year to register a domain name there.

Setting Up Your Blog

Once you have a domain name, you will then proceed to the setting up of your blog. This will involve setting up hosting, installing your blog software, and starting to add material to your site.

Web Hosting And Blog Setup

A web host is a server (computer) on the internet that your blog will be stored on. I use ProudDomains for most of my hosting because it’s pretty simple and straightforward to use. They also have a support number that you can use if something gets messed up. In another article that I wrote about starting a blog, I have included a walk-through that you can use to get your hosting set up properly. You can find that here: Starting A Blog. The article also covers the installation of WordPress, which is the blog software that I would highly recommend using.

Developing Your Blog

If you followed the instructions properly in the other article I linked to in the last paragraph, you should now have a blog set up. You still have a long way to go but are off to a great start. Congratulations, you have just started a new business with a few days work and less than $20 out of pocket.

Giving People What They Want

The biggest piece of advice that I could give anyone that is starting a blog is simple. Forget about what you want, and start thinking about what other people want. One of the biggest mistakes that you can make when starting a blog is believing that people are interested in you personally. Unless you have off-line celebrity, this will not be the case. If you want your blog to be a business, treat it like a business. People will read your blog if it takes care of one of their needs.

Please take the time now to think about this concept well. If you owned a Radio Shack, would you talk to every person that came to the store about how you are frustrated with your husband and kids? Would you talk to your prospects about how you ate a really crappy burrito last night? If you would, I would never recommend buying a Radio Shack. People go into Radio Shack because they want help figuring out how to take care of their problems, not to deal with yours.

People that visit your blog will be there for one reason – because you provide or claim to provide something that they need or want. You need to keep this concept fixed in your mind every time you work on your blog. Forget about yourself and focus on providing people with information they need, or with information they enjoy. Stay on topic, stay on topic, stay on topic.

How Often Should You Post

This is a highly debatable topic to say the least. Some people believe that you need to post as much as possible, and other people think that you need to choose quality over quantity. I believe that quality is the most important factor to consider, but I also believe that people will lose interest in you if they have to wait too long for your next post.

If you desire growth for your blog, you will need to post quality articles as much as possible. If you can’t post a quality article at least three times per week it could take years for your blog to grow to the needed level. Start by posting 3-7 times per week and focus on providing value. If you have the time and knowledge to post more, by all means do it.

How To Make Your Blog Look Unsuccessful

More often than not, bloggers scream ‘lack of success’ from the mountain tops. They will plaster all over their blogs that the blog is ‘their journey to online success’. If you are in this boat, I don’t mean to offend you. What I do mean to do is tell you that you are basically telling people that your are not successful right now. You might as well say, “I don’t know what I’m doing,” because that’s exactly what you’re implying.

People are looking for blogs and websites that know what they’re doing so that they can learn. If you don’t know what you’re doing you will need to learn as quickly as possible. Think of it like a new job – do you know 100% of the ropes on your first day at work? Let’s say you start working at a Radio Shack and on your first day you don’t have the answers the people are looking for. Does that mean that you’re going to give up? You might be uncomfortable for a few weeks, but after that you’ll have a better understanding. In the meantime, you’re going to do the best you can with the knowledge you have.

If a person comes in to your Radio Shack and wants to buy a cell phone, are you going to tell them that you don’t know anything about cell phones and send them on their way? No, you’re going to do your best to sound professional and knowledgeable right?

No matter what industry you have decided to blog about, people will be evaluating nearly every word you write. Be a professional and people will treat you like one. Be an amateur and people will treat you like one.

Make Your Best Information Easy To Find

I could never stress enough the importance of creating an easy-to-see section that contains your best work. When a stranger visits your site, they will often click around a little to see if there’s anything that interests them. If they can easily access your best information, they will come around more often and may even subscribe to your site on the spot. I have such a section called ‘Court’s Best Work’, and I owe a large amount of my subscriber base to that section.

Other Tips And Tricks For Developing Your Blog

In this article, I couldn’t possibly include everything that you can do to develop your blog. Since I have written extensively on the topic of blog development, here are some links that I would recommend taking a look at:

• 10 Easy Ways To Make Yourself Look Like A Blogging Newbie
• Related Posts Plugin and SEO
• Not Using Permalinks – Search Engine Suicide
• Using The All-In-One SEO Pack To Target Keywords
• The Three Personalities Of Exceptional Copywriters
• How To Trash Your Blog’s Brand In 5 Easy Steps
• 3 Reasons You Desperately Need RSS Subscribers
• This Worst Post In The Universe
• Looking At Keyword Stats Like An A-Lister
• The Obvious Secret To Never Running Out Of Post Ideas
• A Not-So-Often-Used Trick To Increase RSS Subscriptions
• Creating Landing Pages Worthy Of Getting Ranked #1
• How To Create Rippin’ HTML Title Tags
• 12 Ways To Get People Hooked On Your Site
• The Secret Of Building A High-Traffic Site

Promoting Your Blog

Once you have created and started to develop your site, you can start promoting it. Promoting a blog is not an overnight process but it shouldn’t take years either. If you are promoting correctly, you should be able to see increases in your traffic during each calendar month.

Since every blog is different, it is impossible for me to lay down exact time-lines for blog promotion. That said, there are certain methods that you should use in the beginning stages of blogging that you probably won’t use in the latter stages, and vice versa. In order to illustrate these differences, I would like to lay down a simple, estimated time-line that will approximate the process of promoting a blog. Please understand that this line isn’t meant in any way to be exact. Some of you will implement ideas more quickly than others. Additionally, some ideas can be integrated more easily in certain industries.
0-2 Months

During the first two months you have your blog online, you will have very little leverage. This means that other bloggers probably won’t really respect you and this means that they will probably not help you much with your promotion. During this time period, you will also get very little love from search engines like Google, who favor heavily sites with more age and more online presence.

Although these factors are working against you, there are still methods that you can use to promote your blog. Keep in mind in the beginning that each new visitor is a victory. Each time a site links to you during this time period is a huge success and should be treated as such. Here are some of the best promotion methods you can use during this low-leverage promotional period:

• Blog Carnivals – Blog carnivals are basically articles that people create on their sites that showcase other articles related to a certain topic. Usually all you have to do to be showcased on a blog carnival is create an article that’s on topic that you can submit. People that create blog carnivals will rarely exclude a decent article, so it’s a great method to use to build some links in the beginning stages of your blog. Each carnival will usually also deliver a small amount of traffic to your site. Here’s a post where I explained how to ‘carnival’: How To Get Links Using Blog Carnivals.
• Commenting On Other Blogs – This promotional method doesn’t provide you with a ton of leverage, but should still be used in the beginning stages of blogging. Some of the most important links I was able to get from other blogs in the beginning of Court’s Internet Marketing School came from people who found me because of a comment I left on their blog. There is a great post that I read on this subject a while back here: Do You Have A Blog Commenting Strategy?
• List Building – In order to turn your blog into a credible site sometime in the future, you will need to get to know some of the more prominent and mid-level bloggers in your industry. While this won’t help you during this time period, it’s a great time to work on building the list of people you know in your industry. I would start by sending a simple letter of introduction while letting the bloggers know that you would be happy to link to their valuable articles. Asking them for help or links at this point is almost ridiculous – that will come into play much later down the road.

If you have some regular traffic after your first two months (this amount doesn’t have to be huge), you know that you’re on the right track. By that time, you should have a few readers that visit regularly and you should also have at least a few people that read your site through RSS or email RSS. Since you started from ground zero and haven’t spent any money on promotion, don’t worry if the numbers are small. Later on you will be able to use higher leverage to create bigger promotional opportunities.

If you don’t have any regular readers at this point, it would be wise to figure out why. Either your blog’s content isn’t good enough or you haven’t been promoting enough. Continuing on without figuring out the problem would be a waste of time. Take an honest look at your site and promotional methods and try to identify areas where you can improve.

3-6 Months

By this time you should have some regular readers and hopefully some contacts that will be able to really help you to promote your site. While this time period will provide you with some additional leverage that you didn’t have during the first two months with your blog, you will still have relatively low leverage compared to what you will have in later time periods.

During this time, Google and other search engines will continue to show you very little love. This is normal and doesn’t mean that you are doing something wrong. As I stated earlier in this lesson, Google favors heavily websites that have more time online and a larger presence. Even though search engines aren’t going to show you a ton of love during this time period, you should be able to get some search traffic. You will also start laying the foundation that will lead to the big search traffic that’s down the road.

Additionally, this is a great time period to network with bloggers that are close to your level of success. Since it really doesn’t do any good to network with sites that aren’t related to yours, take some time to search Google and Technorati for blogs that cover similar topics.

Here are the promotional methods that I would be using during this time period:

• Aggressive Link Building – While your search traffic probably won’t be spectacular during this time period, you will want to use this time to build links, because that will help you in the future. There are a lot of different methods that you can use for this, but I would focus primarily on blogroll link exchanges (don’t do too many during this time period because later on you will be able to do exchanges with stronger sites – do 5 or so), blog carnivals, and emailing other bloggers when you create great content. You can supplement this with some good article marketing.
• Socializing With Other Bloggers – This includes commenting on other blogs, emailing authors of blogs, and just plain being cool to people. I wrote an article a long time ago for eMoms at Home and published some surprising side effects of being social. Here’s the article: My 8 Hours As A Blogging Socialite.
• Social Media – With the help of some of your friends and contacts, you can start to use social media for traffic during this time. You will need to take some time to research what kinds of content do well on each of the social sites that you decide to use. I would focus primarily on Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, and BloggingZoom. They are all open to bloggers and of course I have a preference for BloggingZoom because I own part of it. Your success with social bookmarking and voting will depend heavily on your ability to write interesting content. Don’t get discouraged when you aren’t a smash hit at first. You can and will learn to do well with social media if you keep working at it.

By the end of the first six months your blog is online, you should be able to get a significant amount of repeat traffic. Again, if the repeat traffic isn’t there you will need to re-evaluate your site. There’s no reason to keep working the same way if you aren’t getting the results you’re looking for. Make some changes and take a hard look at where you might be going wrong.

7+ Months

After the first six months are over, you will be able to make a lot more progress with your blog. Time will start working in your favor because of a few important factors:

• Google will stop hating you. If your site was placed in Google’s sandbox, it will likely come out at about this time which will mean that you will start getting the Google traffic that you deserve.
• You should have at least some name/brand recognition at this point. If not, you failed during the first two sections of promotion so you will need to start over with the list building and networking.

The use of these two advantages will give you increased leverage as you start this period of promotion. This will give you more and more ability to create traffic with your promotional efforts. During this time period, these are the methods I would focus on:

• Marketing Your Best Articles – By this point you should have friends and contacts in your industry. You should create mutually beneficial relationships where you help each other to market good articles. You will help your contacts by linking to their good work and they will link to yours.
• Guest Posting – Once you have established somewhat of a name for yourself or for your brand you will be able to approach bigger blogs about becoming a guest poster. As long as you have earned some respect in your industry these bigger blogs will probably be happy to have you. There are plenty of sites that accept guest posting, and many of them have tens of thousands of RSS readers. I’m sure that you can see the value in getting your name in front of that many people.
• Social Media – As long as you continue to provide value to the online communities you are targeting, you will find continued success with social media. You can increase that success by expanding your area of influence and networking.
• Link Building – During this time period you will continue your link building efforts. This will help you to increase your search engine traffic and direct traffic from other sites. You will use basically the same methods I talked about in the previous section.

Additional Promotional Information

Let’s be honest, I couldn’t possibly include everything about blog promotion in a single article. In order to help you guys to understand more about the successful promotion of blogs, here are some other articles that I’ve written on this topic:

• Increase Search Traffic With Effective Link Structure 2.0
• 10 Secrets Of Advanced SEO Copywriters
• The #1 Word Of Successful Bloggers And Copywriters
• Creating Landing Pages Worthy Of Getting Ranked #1
• How To Create Rippin’ HTML Title Tags
• Search Engine Optimization For Yahoo
• How To Make Your Posts 500% More Powerful With Only 25% More Work
• Escaping The Search Engine Pipe Dream
• 10 Simple Ways To Get Banned By Google
• The Beginner’s Guide To Top Google Rankings
• The Effective Way To Market With Articles
• Offsite Optimization – SEO That Works For A Change
• Write Using Keywords

No matter where you’re starting out, no matter what you currently know, I believe that you can start a profitable blog. I sincerely hope that this article can help you to get started, while showing you how to avoid the pitfalls that could waste your valuable time.

Top 10 Mistakes You Can Make When Starting A Blog

Some of the best information I’ve read on blogging hasn’t focused on what I should be doing, but instead focuses on what I shouldn’t be doing as a blogger. Here’s a short-list of pitfalls that will waste your time and stunt the growth of your blog:

1. Choosing topics that aren’t interesting to you.
2. Failure in providing enough value to your target audience.
3. Quitting before your traffic comes.
4. Failure in learning about search engine optimization techniques.
5. Failure to make friends and/or make contact with prominent bloggers in your industry.
6. Failure to write with social media success in mind.
7. Relying 100% on Adsense.
8. Blogging too much about yourself, thinking that people are interested in you.
9. Failure in approaching your blog as a business.
10. Failure to believe that your blog will be a success.

Source: Courtneytuttle.com

One of the best things about the web and social media is how much great information is written and produced every single day. If you’re a regular reader of blogs, you probably come across great articles that you just want everyone to know about. But what’s the best way to share these posts? Luckily, there’s no shortage of ways to spread the word. Blogs, social networks, instant messenger, and mobile phones are some of the many ways to let others know about the best content on the web. Here are our 20 favorite ways to share a great blog post:

Sharing Via Social Media:

1. Using Twitter to Tweet and Share: Perhaps the fastest and most effective way to share a great blog post is through Twitter (). Sharing or retweeting a link in Twitter can spread like wildfire. Use a URL shortener such as tinyurl or bit.ly to shorten links to fit within 140 characters.

2. Posting to Facebook: Sharing a blog post on the world’s largest social network is as simple as going to the Facebook () homepage and posting a link.

3. Digg it: Not only will you help bring that blog post one step closer to reaching the front page of the news site Digg () (which will spread it even further), but all of your Digg friends will see it as well.

4. Post on MySpace Profile: Don’t forget about the world’s second largest social network when sharing your favorite articles. Post the link to your MySpace () profile so your friends can enjoy it too.

5. Posting to LinkedIn: Some blog posts are worthy of being shared by your business network on LinkedIn (). Post a link to the Network Updates area in the homepage.

6. Stumbling on StumbleUpon Stumble the post! StumbleUpon () is a favorite network for discovering fun websites and useful information, so make sure that you give the post a thumbs up. The StumbleUpon Toolbar is the easiest way to Stumble.

7. Bookmarking to Delicious: Delicious () is great for not only sharing posts, but for helping categorize blog posts for others to find. In addition, you can import your delicious bookmarks to Facebook, FriendFeed (), and other social media websites.

8. Sharing on FriendFeed: The social media aggregator FriendFeed has a vibrant community who love to share videos, links, and pictures. Use the FriendFeed bookmarklet to quickly share a good blog post to FriendFeed.

9. Adding to Reddit: Reddit () is another great social media site for sharing and voting on articles. It’s quick and easy to submit a link

Sharing Via Blogs:

10. Reblogging Great Posts: Blogging about a great article is one of the best ways to engage with the topics being discussed. Post a link, write some commentary, and share it with all of your readers. And don’t forget to share your own blog post as well!

11. Sharing via Google Reader: Google Reader () has a great feature for sharing blog posts. If you use Google Reader as your news reader of choice, all you have to do is click the “share” button at the bottom of blog posts to share it with all of your Google () friends. You can also add notes and comment as well.

12. Posting on Tumblr or Posterous: If you want to share something via a blog, but don’t want to write a full blog post about it, there are great options for that as well, primarily Tumblr () and Posterous (). They are the quick and easy versions of full-fledged blogs, ideal for posting about pictures and blog posts.

Useful Tools for Sharing

13. TwitThat: TwitThat is one of the quickest and easiest tools for sharing blog posts. It will post to your Twitter quickly and easily. Just add the bookmarklet to your browser toolbar and click it whenever you come across a great post.

14. Shareaholic Firefox Extension: There are a lot of great social networks where you can share a great post, but who wants to visit Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and LinkedIn to share a post? If you are a Firefox () user, then install Shareaholic, an extension that goes on your toolbar. It provides quick links for sharing to all of the major social networks.

15. Ping.fm: If you’re a busy person, you might not have time to share on all of these social media websites. Isn’t there an easy way to share a blog post everywhere, all at once? Ping.fm () links to all of your social networks and sends your updates to LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, to any other website you wish to link to it. You can even update from your instant messenger. It’s the perfect solution for those who like to share content all over the web.

Other Ways to Share:

16. Emailing: Email has always been a good way to share articles, especially with close friends and family. Although it may not reach as many people as Twitter, it will definitely reach anyone who isn’t as deep into social media as you are.

17. Texting: Did you know you that many blogs, including Mashable (), support sharing an article via text message? Look out for the ShareThis button (three green dots connected by lines) under blog posts and select the “text” option. iPhones and mobile browsers have made it easy to read links sent by texts.

18. Changing IM Statuses: You probably have dozens, if not hundreds of IM contacts. Share great posts with all of them by changing your IM status to a great post you just read or wrote.

19. IMing a friend: If changing an IM status seems too impersonal, then just IM your friends the link. You can then have a fun chat about the blog post.

20. Talking to Friends: If you don’t have a computer handy, then don’t forget about the analog approach – call a friend or tell him or her over coffee about a great blog post you read. You can always send the link later if necessary.

How Do You Share Blog Posts?

This post only scratches the surface of sharing in social media. There are hundreds of tools and resources at your disposal. If you have another great way to share blog posts, please add it in the comments.

Source: Mashable.com

WP-Database Backup Plugin is a very useful plugin for Wordpress that I have just recently installed on my blog. For those of you who never think to backup their blog database this plugin is for you! Normally if you blog often you could backup your database as often as once a day. If you were to do this manually it could be pretty time consuming so why not have this process done automatically for you? Here is how you can get the plugin for yourself!

• Download the plugin here
• Extract the files to your computer and upload the folder to your wp-content/plugins folder
• Login to your backend of your Wordpress – /wp-admin
• Click on Plugins on the left and check the box for the plugin and click activate
• Then click on Tools (down arrow) and select Backup
• Now here is where you can setup the newly installed plugin
• You can select certain tables to include and exclude
• You can do a backup right away to your server, computer, or to your email account
• You can also schedule backups – which I recommend doing!
• I set mine to backup once a week to my email but you may want to do it more often depending on how much you blog

So there you have it.  How to take away the hassle of backing up your Wordpress database.  You will not have to worry about backing it up again and thats a good thing because it gives you time to concentrate on other aspects of your blog.  Just remember to check and make sure you are getting those backups sent to your email because if your blog ever crashes you will need that backup or else you will need to start from SCRATCH!  No one wants to start their blog over after they have spent soo much time and effort working on it in the first place.

For those of you who use Wordpress for your blog you may want to consider upgrading your Wordpress to the latest version if you haven’t already done so.  I always find it a pain to upgrade to the latest version but I know it is important to do because of the new security features and possibly the new features that could be helpful.  So without further delay here is how you upgrade to the latest version of Wordpress!

• Download the new upgrade.  You can download the upgrade by clicking here.
• Unzip the file and place it somewhere on your computer
• Backup your Wordpress database.  This is a VERY important step and if you skip it and wreak your blog this is  your own fault.
• You can backup your Wordpress database by going into the cpanel of where your website is hosted and there should be an option to backup the database to your computer.
• If the explanation above is not detailed enough you can click here to get a full guide on how to backup your blog database.
• Once you have backed up your database I would backup all the files on your server just incase you made changes to your Wordpress templates or anything of that nature.
• To backup these files all you need to do is use an FTP program such as CuteFTP to download the files to your computer.
• Disable all of your blog plugins before making any changes.  Not doing this could possibly cause problems with the upgrade process.
• Delete your old wp-includes and wp-admin directories. (be careful to only delete these folders)
• Copy the new wp-includes and wp-admin folders from the upgrade download to your server.
• Copy all the files from the upgrade download to the server but do not overwrite the wp-content folder, wp-config.php file, .htaccess file, wp-images folder, robots.txt file! (doing so will overwrite your themes and other changes you’ve made to your blog.
• Compare the wp-config-sample.php file that comes with the upgrade download to the one you have on the server.  If there are any lines that are different then copy the lines from the sample file to your current file and save and upload the file.
• Visit your main WordPress admin page at /wp-admin.
• It may require you to upgrade and if it does just click on the option to upgrade your database.
• Turn on your plugins one at a time and test your blog to make sure it works.
• Now if you have any caching plugins installed on your blog you want to delete the cache so your blog displays properly for visitors.
• Now you should be done if you did everything right!

If these steps don’t work for you you can get a full guide here.  Good luck upgrading your blog and hopefully this little explanation will help you upgrade your blog easily and successfully!

Creating traffic to your blog can be a difficult task. While doing some research and looking at my Google Analytics stats I realized there is another way to generate traffic to your blog. This is something most of you probably have never thought about and I didn’t think about it myself until I started getting traffic to my website through this method. Everyone knows that getting traffic through search engines is great because it usefully converts better and you don’t need to advertise your blog all the time to get this type of traffic. Have you ever thought of the possibly of getting traffic through the Google image search feature? If you haven’t this might be something to look into. Let me explain a bit further.

When you add a image to your blog you think you are doing this mainly to create an attractive website that people will be interested in; however there are other beneficial reasons why you may want to add pictures to your website.  This other main reason is because people can find your blog through the Google image search feature.  Have you ever seen the Google Image search feature?  There is a button at the top left of Google to search images when you search for topics and in the search feature you sometimes get Image results showing at the top of the search results.  See example below:

So how can you optimize your images so they show up in the Google search feature?  If you can get in one of these top spots when people do regular Google searches you could potentially generate a lot of traffic to your blog.  So how is it done?  Here are a few steps you can take to optimize your images so you can get some better traffic to your blog through Google Image search feature.

1. Insert keywords into your Alt tags – this should be pretty self-explanatory.  If you put descriptive alt tags on your images you are more likely to come up in the search results
2. Name your Images with Descriptive titles - this as well should be pretty obvious.  If you have unique titles for your images then you are more likely to come up in the results.  If you have a very generic title for your images then the likelihood of it being the same as other images is very good and therefore giving you bad image search results
3. Use relevant text around the images – It is helpful to have relevant keywords around the images because those keywords will likely show up in bold as well and the user who searches will more likely click on the images
4. Optimize the title and meta tags of your pages – this is something you should already be doing for all of your pages.  You should especially be doing this for the pages that have the images so that they come up in the results a bit more easily
5. User anchor text keywords in links to images – what this means is if you have a hyperlink to an image and its text make sure the text is descriptive and not something generic like “Click for full size image”.  That type of thing is generic and will not help.  If you put something like “Jessica Alba Hot Picture” you are more likely to get the right results
6. Make Your image folder accessible to search engines – you need to make sure that your images folder is accessible by search engines.  If it is not then the images will not get indexed by Google and you will not get in the search image results
7. Enable Google Image Search in Webmaster Tools – this is one that I just recently found.  If you are signed up with Google Webmaster tools what you can do is login to your account and go to the Tools tab on the menu bar and find the option to enable enhanced image search on the left sidebar.  Once you do this your images will hopefully be indexed a bit more easily
8. Monitor the Number of Google Images Indexed – this is an important step because if none of your images are indexed then you are not going to get any traffic from Google image search.  You can do this by going to Images button at the top left of Google and then typing – site:www.yoursite.com or site:yoursite.com.  It really depends on how your site is indexed for if you should have the www or not.  If it brings up results then those are the images indexed by Google.  If you get no results then you have no images indexed by Google and you need to work harder on the steps above to get your images indexed.

So hopefully these tips above will help you generate some extra traffic to your blog.  I know it has worked in the past for many other people and can work for you if you just give it a try and try to follow these guidelines.  Good luck and let me know how successful you are at this technique!

Recently I had a chance to experience what it is like to be a guest blogger. I got to do a guest post on Altafsayani.com.  It was a great honour to be asked by another blogger to post on their blog and I enjoyed doing it.  I re-wrote a post I did on my site about 15 Awesome Search Tricks For Google.  It was fun getting the opportunity and if I get another chance I would gladly do it again.  By doing this I get some exposure to my blog and I get to make new friends in the blogging community.  I think overall it can be a win win situation if done correctly (I will explain more later in this post).  The blog I got to post on got new content and I got a bit more advertising for my blog.

Have you ever had the chance to be a guest blogger?  How did you feel when you were given that opportunity?  I think for the most part most of you would be thrilled to get a chance to post on someone elses blog and you would find it a great honour to do so.

Is guest blogging a good or bad thing overall?

You may wonder why I am asking this question after I have said how much I enjoyed guest blogging myself.  Well the reason why I ask this question is because even though I had a great experience posting myself on their blog it might not be the best for the personal who is getting a  guest post on their blog.  Here are some reasons why it can be a bad thing for them:

• What the guest says on your blog might reflect badly on the host
• Getting the keys to someone elses property can be dangerous
• Having too many guest posts on your blog can alienate your subscribers because they are use to your writing style and visit your blog for your style and not someone elses
• You are effectively writing another person’s blog for free
• What might work for you blog might not work for another persons blog
• If you find topics hard to come by in the first place how do you decide which ones to keep for your blog and which ones to give away?

So these points above are some things to consider when thinking about guest blogging.  I think for now if I get the opportunity I will continue to guest blog on other peoples blogs but keep the door closed for now for people guest posting on my blog.  Maybe in the future that will change but we will see how things go with my blog.  If I run out of good content and people are wanting to post on my blog in the future I may let them have the opportunity.

Would you let someone guest post on your blog?  Do you think it would be a positive thing or cause issues with your readers?