5 Tips to Improve Your Blog Readership




Let me share with you 5 tips to improve your blog readership. If you implement these 5 components in your blog, you will begin to see an improvement in the time the reader spends on your site.

1. Know Who Your Audience Is

Before you can begin any blog, you must understand who your audience is. What is in your reader's mind and what would attract him/her to your blog? It is not merely about presenting material but rather about offering information that is going to be of interest to the person who visits your blog. So it is not only about you but about what interests your reader. It is very important to come up with material that everybody can understand. This does not mean that your reader will necessarily relate to everything you say, but they will be able to understand it.

2. Make Your Blog Beneficial to the Reader

It is absolutely your choice to decide what subject matter you will write about on your blog. Yet, the best approach is to write about something that would be of interest and benefit to your reader. Today the internet is the primary way of conveying information around the world. It would therefore seem most appropriate to use this technology to provide useful information for the people who visit your blog.

3. Readers Love Visual Images

There is something about visual images that is very attractive to the human brain. This suggests that adding images will prove beneficial in attracting readers. However, this does not mean that you must post your own image on your site although many would suggest that adding a personal image may give you a more personal connection with the reader. It does however mean that any picture you post should not be insulting to any of your readership.

4. Keep Your Blogs Simple

In order to make your blog interesting and readable, don't try to use highly technical language. Your blog should not be a university treatise or debate, so keep it short and simple. Bear in mind that most people who use the Internet usually do more scanning than scrutinizing each site word for word. Therefore, it will be more profitable for you if you don't bore your readers with lengthy articles.

5. Interactivity will Keep Your Readers on Your Site

Interactivity is captivating. The more interactivity you have on your site, the longer people will remain. So make your blog interactive. Add video and audio clips to your site. Enable comments and feedback on your blog. In this way, you can get some impressions or reactions of other people. Who knows, you might even gain some friends just by making them feel at home on your blog.

A blog must have a purpose in today's internet world. It is useful tool and perhaps the best way for any aspiring writer to learn his/her craft. Therefore, for people who wish to harness their writing craft, blogs may be the best way to achieve this.

As they say, blogging is the contemporary term of creative and commercial writing.

7 Steps to a Search Engine Optimized Blog

If you are thinking about creating a blog, how to advice is always good to have. Here are my 7 steps to a search engine optimized blog:

1. Find a subject that you are knowledgeable about. Make a list of subjects and pick the one you know the most about. If you have a business, then you may want to write about it. If you are new to your business then writing about a hobby or interest is best.

2. Find a host for your blog. I like WordPress but there are others such as blogger.com, livejournal and thoughts.com. I recommend using your own website to host the blog rather than the free hosting. This will cost money but well worth it if you want the search engines to find your blog. If you are just blogging for fun, then the free hosting will be fine.

3. Once you create your blog setup, the next step is to add a post. I start with a keyword search tool such as Google AdWords. Then I think of a string of words (3 or more) and do a search. What you are looking for is many people searching for the words but not many people using those keywords. When you find a string of keywords that 4,000 - 10,000 people are searching for but only 50% or less are using these keywords, then write your post around those words. Use those words in your title and in the first paragraph (bolded). This is the hard part. Making your blog post make sense using those keywords. This is where your creativity comes in to play. You may not think you are creative, but you will be surprised when you put your mind to it.

4. Once you have created the blog post, send out an email to your list and let them know about your blog. I use Twitter but there are many social networking sites that you can use such as Facebook, My Space, Orkut, Linkedin, Tagged and so many more.

5. If you want the search engines to find your blog, post to your blog everyday. If that is not possible, then post at least 2 - 3 times per week. Search engines love fresh content, so the more you post, the higher you will rank in the search engines.

6. Now that you have completed steps 1 - 5, it is time to take your blog post and create an article. You may have to change it up a bit in order to follow the articles posting rules. I like Ezine Articles, Article Dashboard and Free Articles Directory. Once you have 3 articles posted, you will be considered an expert author and that will also help you with the search engines.

I also recommend Squidoo and Hubpages. These are single web pages with your articles on them.

7. The last thing I recommend is to visit other blogs and post a comment. Make sure you read the post and leave a sincere comment. Also, use the blog's keywords in your comment. This will provide links to other sites, another thing the search engines look for.

Blogging can be fun and also hard work. The more often you post, the quality of content and keywords you have in your post and the links to your post will determine how quickly the search engines find you. It does take time to get the "natural traffic" from blogging but it will be worth it in the end.

How to Make a Successful Affiliate Marketing Blog Site

If you are one of those that want to start joining Affiliate marketing programs, it is necessary to do some things before you actually sign up for it. This is a guide for enterprising individuals who wants to start out in the business and find success as well as for those who are a part of existing programs but have been suffering from low income or even none at all.

For those that are starting out, create a blog that may serve as your platform. There are many free blog sites out there that have the necessary tools to make the experience easier for you. Some of the more popular choices you can opt for are blogging via Blogger or WordPress. Though it is not necessary to buy your own domain, many of those who are successful in the business have their own domain names. Create a layout that is both pleasing to the eye as well as very functional.

Once you have your blog site up, take note that it is necessary to learn how to apply search engine optimization or SEO. For every post that you will do, make sure that you apply this internet marketing technique. This will ensure that you would have a good page rank, increasing the chance of your posts to show up in more favorable spots in search engine results.

Content is still the best way to attract other users to visit your site. It is necessary that you have a keyword-rich title because the title shows the summary of the whole article itself. Having a good content can also affect the perception of people how trustworthy your site is. The more trust there is between your site and your visitors the more chance there is for your links to generate a sale.

Make sure that you distance your contents away from subjects that are too personal. Create a personal blog for that but in your affiliate marketing blog, the contents must be able to support why people should buy the stuff you are talking about. Before you publish your write-up, make sure that your content must still be useful even after months of posting it.

There are only a few things you should do in order to create a good affiliate marketing blog site. The layout itself is the basic framework of the site while the content is what gives it life. If you have a good layout and an excellent content and if you mix it with other internet marketing tools, you can be like others who have found success in the industry.

8 Solid Blogging Tips

Why are some bloggers successful in attracting readers and and then getting them to return again and again? To be honest, there are many intangibles. For example, having a sense of humor that is appealing to your readers, and this is something that just cannot be taught, but you can work on it develop it. Then there is your writing style. This is another aspect of writing you can only get a handle on by doing it and then gauging the response from your readers.

So while there are no absolute rules, here are some guidelines that most successful bloggers have followed.

Blog Tip 1: Get a schedule and stick to it.
Having a regular posting schedule serves several purposes. It let your readers know when to expect your pearls of wisdom. You have a lot of competition right out of the starting gate, and more new blogs being started everyday. You can post 5 days a week or just once. If you specialize in certain types of information, you may not want to post everyday, but you do want to keep your content relevant and fresh. This will keep you from being totally forgotten by your readers.

Another reason is for the search engines. You want the search bots to get used to a certain schedule and then they will regularly come to index your site.

Blog Tip 2: Use Your RSS feed
That leads us to the importance of utilizing your RSS feed. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. What you can do is encourage your readers to sign up to your RSS feed, that way they will be informed whenever you post an article. Your article will only be a snippet of course, and if it catches their interest they will click on your link and go to your blog. Also, many other bloggers are looking for fresh content. If your posts are something they feel that their readers may be interested in, they will include it on their blogs. This will give you even more exposure.

Blog Tip 3: Stay on topic. Stay informative.
If your blog is about the financial market don't write an article about taking out carpet stains, unless you can relate it to something financial. I know it may seem obvious, but... If you are writing from a perspective of being knowledgeable about a particular subject make sure you are up to date with your information. If you are mainly offering your opinion, make sure that it is clear to your readers. It is important that you establish trust.

Blog Tip 4: Its your reputation

Never endorse a product that you have not personally tried. It will quickly become obvious to any of your readers who have tried out a particular product that you don't know what you are writing about. Your readers may not always agree with what you write, but by having an honest opinion and offering factual information you will maintain their respect.

Blog Tip 5: Write with clarity and simplicity.
Be sure to make your posts and blog entries easy to understand. What may seem obvious to you, may be something completely new to some of your readers. It always drives me crazy when somebody writes: "as everybody already knows". Unless you are a professor who is speaking about a course that you have already gone through with every student in attendance, don't assume that every reader understands what you are speaking about. Also keep in mind that the worldwide web is just that, global. You are able to reach a worldwide audience, so depending on what kinds of subjects you are writing about you may want to keep that in mind.

Blog Tip 6: Be sure to do spell checking and proof-reading.
Hey, it only take a click to use your spell checker and a few minutes to go over your article, so do it. Nothing says 'unprofessional' as having a few misspelled words in your article. You may also want to consider what you are writing, especially if you are in a heated moment. Remember that everything you publish on the net is archived and can be found later. So whatever you are writing about, take a moment or even a day, to reflect what you are posting about.

Blog Tip 7: Use the right Keywords
This can be a little tricky. You need to use the right keywords in your article for the search engines to index your post properly. If X amount of people are searching for information are are using particular keywords, you should be sure to use them in your article, several times if possible. This tell the search engines that you have content related to what people are searching for. The trick is not to make it seem to obvious. Be sure to use the keyword in your articles headline.

Blog Tip 8: Quality matters.
Look, you just are not going to get that many chances with your readers. People can look past many defects in writing styles, but the bottom line is, that if you don't offer the kind of information they are expecting, they just won't return. I know I don't. So if you need to, be sure to do some up to date research on your subject. Because old news, is just that. Until you become proficient in just being able to articulate off the cuff, take some to plan out your article, or series of articles.

How to Make Money Blogging

What many people do not realize though is that this form of self-expression can be a great way to make money online. If you want to know how to make money blogging then read this article in its entirety because here you will discover concrete ways on how to monetize your blogs. Blogging is one of the easiest and most fun ways to make money on the Internet and it so easy to do so that even a 10-year old kid can do it.

So without further adieu, here are the blog monetizing ways for people who want to know how to make money blogging.

1. Affiliate Programs. Blogging is a very effective marketing technique and you can use blogs to market other people's products through the different affiliate programs that are available on the Internet. This is probably one of the easiest ways for you to make money online. All you need to do is drive enough traffic to your affiliate link and for sure you will be making tons of money from affiliate programs.

2. Advertising. You can also make money blogging through advertisements on your blog. One of the most popular online advertising system is Google AdSense. Signing up to Google AdSense is free and setting it up on your blog is easy. Google AdSense will also tailor fit the type of ads to put on your blog according to the theme or topics of your site.

3. Textlinks. This is one of the newest ways to earn for people who want to know how to make money blogging. The use of textlinks is also an advertising method but instead of employing actual ads that can usually clutter a site, ads are embedded through clickable words on your blog.