From a personal perspective, I usually choose to comment or guest post on blogs that I like, that are well-written, and that provide informative material close to my own industry.

The thing is, it can be a challenge to pick out the best sites to either comment on or guest blog for, as there are so many available to choose from.

I’ve found a few tips out along the way to help you pick the best sites to get involved with, to bring you traffic and show your commitment to commenting.

Use Google to find the best sites out there

As a first port of call for hunting out sites of interest and value, Google is always the place to start. It is speedy and accurate, and brings you the hottest sites relating to your industry.

Depending on what you know about your niche, you can use Google for two things.

The first is simply to help you find sites in your industry by searching specifically for subjects related to your field of interest and expertise.

Secondly, you could search for things like “blogging” or “guest posts” to find sites that want your content, related to your own business.

Go on a niche browsing journey for your industry

Many sites in your field of business will make it clear that they accept blog posts on their site. Therefore, all you have to do is simply browse around the top sites in your niche and see which ones do.

Look for text like “write for us,” “become an author” and “submit your article”. These are all indications the site wants guest posts, so click on these buttons or send the blogger an email.

The chances are they will be delighted to forge a new contact, and you are well on your way to enhancing your network through regular comments and posts.

Use Google Blog Search, which does what it says on the tin

Google Blog Search, is quite obviously, a blog search engine. By using this tool you can easily find blogs that are accepting guest posts in your chosen area.

If you type something you may have typed into the regular Google search box such as “niche guest post” or “niche article by” then you should find some interesting results.

If you remove the niche section it’s possible you’ll find a lot of sites that offer guest posting, but few will be relevant. Take a few minutes to identify the best ones out there, and get commenting.

Get in touch with the authors of your favorite blogs…

Every blogger should know at least ten other writers in their community well enough to have built up a great online relationship of reciprocal help and support.

If you don’t, it’s worth starting your search as soon as possible.

Most guest blogging opportunities come from a direct request to one writer from another, with common or shared interests and aims.

It’s well worth using your existing relationships to offer to write for people, and submit quality content. It’s a win/win situation, as they get good content, and you raise your profile. Perfect!

Guest blogging and commenting is great to enhance your profile online. You get to show a new audience the kind of content you’re capable of writing, and broaden your exposure, opening yourself up to new opportunities.

How have you found blogs to comment or guest post on?

Please share your views in the comments below. Thanks.

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Post from: Blogging Guide

How Do I Know What Blogs To Comment And Guest Blog On?

Its ranking algorithms and crawlers are encrypted to ensure that the top rankings are given to only those sites that provide useful information to the browsers and continually update their content to provide the latest data on a subject.

In its quest to provide the best results to its users, Google is rather unforgiving when it stumbles across some black hat Search Engine Optimization techniques used by a few web masters to trick its ranking algorithms.

As a result, such sites are either banned by Google or, if less menacing, attract a Page Rank penalty.

If you are launching a new site and do not want to be relegated to the ‘Bad Neighborhoods’ – the label used by Google to tag sites that use illegal optimizing techniques, it is advisable to steer clear of methods such as stuffing keywords in your content or HTML code, plagiarizing content from other sites, using hidden text and links in the home page or other pages, and using doorway or robot-generated pages and misleading page titles.

As already mentioned, it is equally callous for a site to use link farms to build back links for their pages.

Thus, it is always a good idea to double check a link request that you get before hosting it on your site. Using such precautionary steps will prevent your site from getting in to the bad books of a search engine such as Google.

A site can also get banned from Google Adsense if it uses unscrupulous methods to generate clicks on its pages.

For now, we have listed some of the most common and deceitful optimization techniques that some websites use to secure higher engine rankings and end up getting banned from Google.

It would do you a world of good to keep away from such back handed modus operandi to get a better search engine placement.

Spamming:

One of the most common terms in Internet parlance, spamming is defined as the abuse of electronic messaging system to send unsolicited bulk messages to an indiscriminating group of people. Some of the most popular forms of spamming are email spam, Instant Messaging spam, more popularly known as IM spam, newsgroup or forum spam, spam indexing – spam targeting search engines, online game messaging spam and spam targeting video sharing sites.

If you do not want to be tagged a spammer, stay away from all of these and focus on the content of your site to help you get a higher search engine ranking. Moreover, spamming is a criminal offence punishable under law in various countries and you can be charged with several criminal counts such as mail fraud, wire fraud and e-mail fraud if you resort to this technique.

Submitting multiple URLs:

A number of web masters try to attain a higher page rank for their site by submitting several URLs for a particular site. This is one of the oldest tricks in a spammer’s book. By doing so, a spammer intends to get multiple search results for the same page, which in turn is expected to spike up the ranking of the site.

Submitting the same URL more than once in a month is also considered spamming by Google and other popular search engines such as Yahoo and MSN. By doing so, a web master runs the risk of getting his or her site banned from future listing on the search engine.

Cloaking:

Another popular black hat SEO technique, cloaking refers to having two different versions of the same page. While one of the pages is optimized for the search engine spiders that crawl through it to adjudge its content relevance, another one is optimized for the human user. Thus, in effect, the site has two different pages, one meant for the search engine and the other for the net browsers.

The trick behind this is delivering the content on the basis of the IP address of the visitor. This way, a particular page has different content in its page than mentioned in its search engine description. Pornographic sites to get traffic and to trick search engine crawlers to get a higher page ranking often use this spam indexing technique.

Using Doorway pages:

A different form of cloaking, doorway pages refer to having a homepage stuffed with highly competitive keywords that are meant to deceive the human visitors. Since a page loaded only with popular phrases does not make any sense to a reader viewing the page, the web master redirects him or her to a different page that though comprehensible is not as informative or keyword rich.

Doorway pages are known by many different names such as bridge pages, portal pages, jump pages, gateway pages and entry pages.

Using spoofing, redirects or Meta Refresh:

A number of sites have a Meta Refresh tag that automatically redirects visitors to a different page. This tool is often abused by spammers to take the browsers to a page that has content unrelated to the typed-in key word in the search box. Given the blatant misuse of this feature, a number of search engines, including Google, are apprehensive about web sites that have a fast meta-refresh rate.

Google also views sites that use JavaScript to perform the redirection function with suspicion. Thus, it is best to steer clear of these redirection tools and stick to legitimate server-side redirection if your site’s content and structure calls for the same.

Using hidden text on the website’s pages:

Using hidden text or keywords on a page is a big no-no with Google. This is usually done by minimizing the keywords to unreadable proportions, including it behind an image or by changing its font color to that of the background.

Thus, these keywords are invisible to the human eye but are picked up by search engine spiders as that crawl through the page to check its keyword density. A number of webmasters also use keywords on doorway pages to boost their keyword density. However, once found out by Google, this is a sure shot way to get banned from its listing.

Using hidden links in the pages:

As already stated in the ‘Choosing quality link partners’ section, it is very important to ensure that you engage in back linking only with credible sites that do not use any black hat SEO methods. Using hidden links, in the same way as hidden keywords, will definitely have a negative impact on your site’s rankings and can get it banned as well.

Links can be hidden in a site in the same way as text – by using CSS tools and techniques, setting the font size to zero or by changing its color to the background color. If detected, Google crawlers will red flag your site and it will be dropped from the search engine listings faster than you can imagine.

Thus, having a text or link that is meant exclusively for the search engine spiders is construed as intended deception by Google and banned from its search index for the benefit of its users.

Generating links from Link Farms:

As already mentioned in earlier posts, getting inbound links from link farms or directories is tantamount to committing a hara kiri on the Web. Google classifies Free for All sites, link directories and classifieds as link farms as they exist solely for the purpose of providing links to the sites listed with them.

Whether created through automated programs and services or manually, linking to these directories is considered a form of spam indexing since the link exchange is driven by the greed for links for getting a better page rank rather than linking to high quality and relevant sites to add to the surfing experience of the browser.

Though a web master cannot do much to monitor the back links that he or she gets from other sites, it is better not to give reciprocal links to a particular site until you are certain of its authenticity. Entering into linking partnerships of dubious nature can also get your site into trouble and might even end up in getting your site banned from Google. You can also be fined for associating with such sites by a drop in your page rank score.

Selling page rank:

One of the easiest ways to hurt your page rank or to get your site banned from Google is by selling it to other sites. Quite a few web masters buy links from high-ranking sites to boost their page rank. However, Google sees this as a violation of its quality guidelines and has already issued a warning to web masters to refrain from this practice or else bear its consequences that range from imposition of a penalty on their page rank or banning them from the search engine’s index.

Having multiple identical sites:

Creating multiple identical sites or interlinking your website with spam pages that contain the same or very similar content is not seen favorably by Google as it is done in the attempt to cheat its spiders into ascribing a higher ranking. It is a common occurrence to see webmasters list identical sites in the search engine under different domain names to increase traffic. Also known as mirror sites, these receive the boot as soon as discovered by Google crawlers. This brings us to another popular spamming technique – creating multiple domains.

Multiple domains:

Creating multiple domains or using multiple domain names to reach the same site is not a good idea if you want to get a high page rank in Google. Often, webmasters own several domain names – including misspellings and hyphenated versions of the main site – with identical or similar content that redirect the browser to one page. This is done with the intention of increasing the traffic in the page.

However, by doing so you will end up doing more harm than good as Google spiders will see right through this strategy to get more traffic and penalize or ban your site. If you own multiple domains on the same topic, it is better to develop unique content for each of them and then interlink them to get targeted click-through traffic.

Though one of the main benefits of owning multiple domains is preventing the competitor from capitalizing on your name and branding efforts; do not be tempted to use black hat SEO techniques while interlinking them to improve your page rank.

Excessive links:

According to Google’s Webmaster’s guidelines, a site should not have more than 100 links on any given page. Though a site will not be penalized for having more links than the recommended ceiling, its page rank score might drop due to excessive linking. Moreover, a page with over 25 links does not contribute much to the visibility of the link partner. As has been stressed so many times before – quality rather than quantity should be your catchword while securing links from various sources.

To conclude, the best way to get a good page rank in Google is by adhering to its clearly laid out quality guidelines and resisting the urge to use any of the above-mentioned techniques to cheat its ranking algorithms. Remembering these ‘Don’ts’ while optimizing your site for Google will serve you well in the long run.

This is the last post in this series on ‘Link Building Campaign’. I hope you have enjoyed the series.

You can read the previous Link Building Campaing posts here:

• Link Building Campaign: Why Is It Important

• Link Building Campaign: What Makes A Strong Backlink

• Link Building Campaign: Factors To Be Aware Of

• Link Building Campaign: Past, Present and Future Of Back Links

• Link Building Campaign: Choosing Quality Link Partners

• Link Building Campaign: Ways To Get Back Links

What’s your view on these steps? Have you fallen foul of such techniques?

Please share your views in the comments below. Thanks

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Post from: Blogging Guide

Link Building Campaign: How To Prevent Getting Banned From Google

But, of course, you will have to prepare your site so that it would look appealing and attractive to the sponsors you’re targeting.

Plus, you should have a large amount of traffic so that you can easily convince sponsors or advertisers to trust you to get them more sales.

So, here are ways and tips on how you can easily get a sponsor or advertiser for your blog.

22 Ways to Find Advertisers for Your Website by  Daniel Scocco

How to Find Advertisers for your website: The Ultimate Guide by Daniel Scocco

How to Get Advertisers or Sponsors for Your Website by Jeremy Schoemaker

5 Ways to Find Direct Advertisers for your Blog by Darren Rowse

Monetize your blog by directly Approaching Advertisers by HowToMakeMyBlog.com

Tips to Find Sponsors for your blog by Lax

How to Get Advertisers for your blog by Blog Traffic Exchange

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Post from: Blogging Guide

Blog Sponsors: How To Get Them

With links becoming more than just a way to get around the web, it is important to choose the right link partner.

While most webmasters set out with a dream of having a number of high quality inbound links from related sites that divert qualified click-through traffic to their site, thus boosting their search engine rankings, their idyllic notion about link building is shattered as soon as they kick start the exercise.

But the catch here is in selecting quality link partners.

Since this can be quite a task for new sites or novice web masters, quite a few of them seek professional assistance for this job.

One needs to consider multiple aspects of a web site before choosing it as a link partner.

To begin with, getting links from some sites will not be of any help for your link building purpose. In fact, you should be careful to avoid some black-listed sites completely as linking to them can attract a penalty or in the worst case even a ban by the search engine.

Some simple steps that you can follow to build a successful linking partnership are:

1. Minimize the linking to non-relevant websites even if they have a high search engine ranking.
2. Avoid linking to websites that use black hat SEO techniques such as having hidden links to a links directory on their home page.
3. Stay away from sites that have over 25-30 links in a page. Categorizing the links does not help either, as your link will get lost in the crowd of other links.
4. Try to avoid getting too many links from web sites with low search engine placement, as this will not prove to be of much help to your cause. In case you receive a request for back links from the web masters of some of these sites, exercise discretion and select those links that you believe will help in boosting your page ranking in future.
5. It goes without saying that partnering with a penalized site or a site that has been banned by the search engine will lead you nowhere in your quest for a higher page rank. It will only attract bad reputation.
6. Under no circumstances should you tie up with Link Farms. As these sites are like a directory tree that are literally overstuffed with as many links as possible, they are of no value in optimization. If truth be told, search engines consider this as spamming and linking to such sites will hamper your credibility and can even attract a penalty or ban.
7. Avoid linking to FFA or Free for All sites. Such sites do not have credibility and allow all and sundry to leave a link to their sites on their pages. Google considers their sites as spam and their links are of no value in ranking algorithms.

The secret behind an effective link building campaign is working smarter rather than harder. Choosing quality over quantity should be your aim while scouting for link partners on the Web.

The next post in this series will discuss ‘How to prevent being banned by Google’

What’s your view on these steps? Have you fallen foul of such techniques?

Please share your views in the comments below. Thanks

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Post from: Blogging Guide

Link Building Campaign: Choosing Quality Link Partners

No matter how diligent you are about setting up your blog brilliantly, and then posting up killer posts to encourage people to keep dropping in, you won’t succeed as a blogger until people know where you are.

With the millions of blogs out there today, we need to be savvy when it comes to letting people know about you, your writing, and your services.

It may seem like an impossible task to pop your head above the parapet of mass blogging and get noticed.

However, there are a few things we can do to improve our chances of getting spotted and revisited when it comes to writing your blog.

First off, it’s worth bearing in mind that you are actually writing for two audiences – the Search engines, and your readers.

The trick is to satisfy both.

Search engines are programs that cannot see the page graphics or layout, with the job of indexing the page and identifying what is important on the page in order to put in the right spot on a search engine.

Visitors quickly scan pages for content, and are usually looking for something specific. That’s why good web-friendly content can be tricky to write.

How to grab the attention of the potential readers

Your main objective when writing for searchers is to persuade site visitors to take action on a page by highlighting the best features and selling the experience.

Keep your posts focused.

This is a personal opinion and others will disagree (but we are all different, aren’t we?):

It is better to write shorter posts than have long posts that your visitors need to scroll down and down and down.

Blog posts should be between 300 to 800 words long, as a rule of thumb.  If longer is needed, separate it into several posts linked together.

Since readers scan most blog posts, you may still want to break them up with headings so visitors can easily find specifically what they are looking for.

Make your headings bold or larger than your normal page font. You can also use bullets and numbering to make your pages more readable.

Also, make sure you edit your grammar and check for typos.

Here are some things to bear in mind:

• Keyword Strategy

When developing copy, concentrate on the primary keyword first, and then rotate usage of the other phrases throughout the page. Don’t try to optimize for more than three keyword phrases per page so that your results are focused. A great tool for this: Search Engine Optimization made easy

• Copy Length

Optimal page length for the search engines is 300 to 800 words.  This length allows repeated mention of keywords while maintaining focus.

• Meta tags and Titles

As a general rule, the title should be 60 characters long because that is the length of a Google search title. The meta description should be less than 165 characters long for the same reason.

• Deep Link

Hyperlinks to other pages within the site – or ‘deep links’ – help boost search-engine rankings, especially when the links contain full or partial keyword phrases. Using the Insights plugin makes this easy.

• Places for Key Word Phrases

Title, meta description, tags, headings, bold print, text links, first two paragraphs of text, last paragraph, and alt tags for images.

• Keyword Density

Strive for between 2% to 5% keyword density. Here is a free keyword density tool for existing pages: http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword-density/

What do you do to get your blog posts noticed and read?

Please share your views in the comments below. Thanks.

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Post from: Blogging Guide

Blog Content: Make It Easy For People To Find

One of the most natural ways for getting back links is by focusing on the content of your site, ensuring that it is of high quality.

Plus, it is extremely important to update your blog content on a regular consistent basis and by providing breaking news or latest developments.

If your content is good, it will automatically draw visitors to your site making it popular. Once the word gets out about your site among the web masters community, you are bound to receive many inbound links.

If you have high quality blog posts, others will want to link to it. Google sees this as the most natural way to build back links…so make it part of your link building campaign.

It is always better to follow a natural simulation process while link building.

A few ways to get links naturally:

• Cash in on the love of lists that most Internet surfers have. Whether it is a ‘Top 10 List’ or a ‘101 List’, you can be sure to get visitors looking for these.

My list type posts have been some of my most popular:

• 173 Tips For A Quality Life While Working From Home

• 43 Blogger Tips – What you should do after installing WordPress

• Get Backlinks – Here are the 11 methods and backlink tools I use

• 50 Tips For Bloggers Who Work From Home

• The Top 111 WordPress Plugins

• 11 Ways To Outsmart The Average Blogger

• 50 things you just didn’t know about me

• Organizing a competition will also get a number of visitors to your site. You can spread awareness about your competition by asking some of your on-line relationships to promote for you. Plus ask each contestant to promote as part of entry to the contest. Here’s my first ever blog contest. That blog post gave my blog a great kick start with regards visitors and comments.

• Start an online community that will act as a genuine forum for like-minded people to interact with each other, share their opinions and mobilize a cause that they feel strongly about.

• Offer a free service. This will not only add to your goodwill but provide you free advertising as well.

• If not free, provide a special offer for certain sections of customers such as students, middle-income groups, senior citizens, veterans…

• Offer a free download such as an e-book guide and allow others to promote for you…ensuring they link back to your site.

No matter which of the above-mentioned methods you adopt to get links for your site, always remember to keep your eyes open for free links that you can get.

For instance you can get free links by asking or answering a question on Yahoo Answers following it up with links to relevant sources.

Creating a topical Squidoo page, which is back linked to your site are also good link generating methods.

You can also get links to your site by leaving your signature link on an online forum.

Or by commenting on Comluv blogs.

Remember to check out my post: Link Building Campaign to see what tools and services I use to build backlinks automatically.

The next post in this series will discuss ‘choosing quality link partners as part of your link building campaign’

How do you build backlinks?

Please share your views in the comments below. Thanks.

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Post from: Blogging Guide

Link Building Campaign: Ways To Get Back Links

The problem is with terms like this, is that most of don’t know what the heck it means. Like Web 2.0. the term ’social software’ came into more common usage over the past few years, and it pays to keep abreast of new terminology to understand the part of the market we are operating in.

So – what’s the definition?

Social computing is commonly described as being ‘software that supports group interaction’.

This means that, rather than the traditional web sites and static content, you are opening up your marketing for two-way discussion, rather than just telling people about your product. By enabling services such as commenting and discussion on your blog, you’re working to promote Social computing.

This occurs by you inviting feedback, rather than just presenting your services to your existing and potential customers.

The discussion revolution

When you talk about ‘groupware’, people think of the hard-to-use, under-adopted Lotus Notes software category that was taken up by many corporate companies in the last decade.

In the mid-90s, groupware and knowledge management were used for software that represented the taylorization of knowledge work – the idea that you can automate knowledge work into pre-defined workflows and ‘capture the assets’ in people’s brains.

Often, the ideas sounded good to managers, but the tools did little for the people using them. There were fancy schemes intended to ‘incent participation’, because the tools didn’t do much for the people using them. Email had massive adoption, and more complex tools often gathered dust.

Meanwhile, the term ‘virtual community’ became associated with discredited ideas about cyberspace as an independent polity, and failed dotcom ideas about assembling community in the shadow of a mass-market brand such as forums on the Coca Cola site.

The birth of blogging

Several years ago, in the depths of the tech recession, there were signs of creative life in weblog and journal communities, conversation discovery with Daypop and then Technorati, the growth curve of Wikipedia, mobile games, photo and playlist sharing.

The liveliness was about the communities, and also about the culture of the tools being used.

Many of the attributes of social software -– hyperlinks for naming and reference, weblog conversation discovery, standards-based aggregation -– build on older forms. But the difference in scale, standardization, simplicity, and social incentives provided by web access turn a difference in degree to a difference in kind.

How social computing grew to be a mainstream part of our lives

These forms grew without being forced.

People naturally interact, and blogging is an instinctive response to being given a platform to showcase our products and personality. People are compelled to write blogs and journals to share, to contribute to Wikipedia and open source software projects for the joy of building things with other people.

There are some lessons about social patterns and social affordances that this generation of social software communities and tools get right, are worth understanding and building on.

Is ’social software’, which just now gaining wide acceptance, destined for the same trash heap of uselessness as groupware?

And, if so, what impact does the changing of this terminology have on the field of social software itself?

Only the future holds those answers.

What is your view of Social Computing, and how has it changed your business?

Let me know…please share your views in the comments below. Thanks.

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Post from: Blogging Guide

What The Heck Is Social Computing?

Earlier, it mainly consisted of submitting one’s sites to a number of search engines and directories so that their indexing programs, more popularly known as “robots” or “spiders”, can crawl through all of the HTML code of a page and use their individual page ranking algorithms, which were highly confidential, to ascribe a ranking to the page.

This was a fairly simple method and effective too until the emergence of spammers.

However, the loop holes of this system were soon ‘found out’ by the search engines as it was relatively easy for a spammer to get his or her site in the top search displays by using the targeted keyword as many times as possible on the page – in the headings and the text – in the META tags, HTML code, description, marquee and so on.

This was effectively hidden from the browsers by either minimizing the text to unreadable proportions or by simply hiding them with the help of HTML tricks. With search engines lacking the cutting edge technology to identify this kind of spam, such sites invariably got high rankings without providing any valuable information on the subject.

Link building and its impact on the search engine rankings in the past

Nonetheless, with search engines’ ranking algorithms becoming more and more sophisticated by the day, they now tend to take better advantage of external information regarding a site to offer better results as the information contained inside a document can be easily manipulated. This restricts a site with poor quality content from appearing in the top search displays.

One such external factor that has come to acquire considerable significance in engine ranking is link building. Google is seen as the pioneer of this technique as it developed the PageRank algorithm under which the relevance of an inbound link plays an important role in determining the ranking of a site.

The irony here is that every leap in ranking algorithms has been closely followed by new search engine optimization techniques that try to cheat these advanced algorithms.

For instance, the new breed of spammers now buy several domains that link to each other or pay sites with high visibility to include their links in their pages to get higher rankings.

In fact, a number of websites engage in link exchange schemes and build partner pages exclusively for the sole purpose of cross-linking their sites.

In this quest, they often overlook the quality of links that they are generating and suffer in the long-term due to their indiscretion.

This is because such practice is seen in violation of Google’s Webmaster guidelines, which is likely to have an adverse impact on the site’s ranking in search results.

However, this situation can be easily avoided by paying attention to your site’s content and ensuring that it is both useful and unique.

In such a case, your site will soon become popular in the Internet community, thus increasing your chances of getting quality links from various relevant and credible sites.

The fact that links are valuable is widely accepted in the cyber space. However, their value depends largely on the source page from where they come.

Linking and its importance in SEO in present times

Of the three pillars of search engine optimization, namely content, site architecture and links, for some, the last one is the trickiest.

Though we have already established the importance of linking to get a good search engine ranking, the weightage that the search algorithms assign to links has varied from past to present and will be different for future as well.

To make the most of your optimization efforts make sure that the links that you generate are of high quality.

You can employ any of the most popular methods of link generation today – directory submissions, submitting articles to article syndicates, guest posting, RSS Directories, blog carnivals, social bookmarking….

Irrespective of the method that you deploy to secure inbound links for your website, make sure that your link text is interesting, keyword rich and varied.

It is imperative to have good link text as various search engines read this text to determine what your website is all about. Thus, if your site is about hotels, try to have link texts that not only talk about hotels in various destinations but also associated services as well such as package tours, air travel information, bookings and reservations.

The future tense of linking

With the search engines continually striving for more sophisticated algorithm systems to improve their ability to identify and distinguish between quality index pages and those that have been spammed or use black hat optimization techniques, the economics of link building is all set to revolutionize as well.

I believe, in the coming years, links will play an even more critical role in earning the trust, authority and importance required to rank among the top searches.

With techniques such as advanced non-HTML content indexing, XML feeds and clustering already on the table, the face of the Internet and SEO is all geared up for a makeover.

If you do not want your blog site to lag behind in the rat race for better rankings in the next few years, now is the time to revamp your link building campaign. You can either do it yourself or get professional help to infuse a new life into your site.

The next post in this Link Building Campaign series will discuss ‘the ways to get back links’

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Post from: Blogging Guide

Link Building Campaign: Past, Present and Future Of Back Links

That is why Vlog Wordpress Themes are popping up.

These kind of themes allow you to post your very own personal videos or videos from other sites in an orderly and attractive fashion.

Choosing the right Vlog theme for your wordpress site is crucial and it is also important to make your site look great and pleasing to the eye.

So, for those looking for video wordpress themes out there, try these links. I hope they’ll be really helpful to you.

List of all Wordpress Video Themes by Wordpress Feed

Best Video WP Themes by WPHub

Free and Premium Wordpress Themes for Video Blogs by EvoHosting

The Best Wordpress Themes for Video and Photography byOrangeCast

6 Brilliant Wordpress Themes for Video Blogs or Vlogs by Shusaantu

Free Premium Photo Gallery & Video Wordpress Themes Templates by AnsBlog

Best Video Wordpress Themes by Premium Wordpress Themes

Best Premium Wordpress Video Themes by Best Wordpress Themes

5 Attractive Video Blogging Wordpress Themes by BloggingOT

Video Blog Themes by Best Blog Skins

None of the above links are affiliate links but there may be affiliate links within the individual blog posts.

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Post from: Blogging Guide

Wordpress Themes for Video Blogging

The concept of link building has more to do with the quality of links rather than quantity.

Hence, it is extremely important that you do not crowd your site with numerous irrelevant links.

Over time of course, you are going to have inbound links from irrelevant sites and that doesn’t matter. Your AIM is to have more backlinks from quality relevant sites than non-relevant sites.

Some other precautions that you should keep in mind while launching a link building campaign are:

1. Generate links from both “old trusted” as well as new sites.
2. Mix up your anchor text across your back links. Target your keywords by varying your anchor text as much as possible.
3. Try not to host a lot of links from the same site with the same anchor text, as search engine crawlers will see it as an unnatural phenomenon. It is better to use different sets of anchor text and links from different sites.
4. A Link building Campaign can be fairly time and money consuming. Take your time. Add a few methods to automatically get backlinks.

See my Link Building Campaign post that shows you some automatic ways.

With search engines attaching more and more importance to link analysis to rank a site, consider a link building campaign as a long-term investment.

The next post in this series will discuss ‘the past, present and future of back links’

Have you started your Link Building Campaign?

What tools / methods are you using?

Please share your views in the comments below. Thanks.

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Post from: Blogging Guide

Link Building Campaign: Factors To Be Aware Of

You will therefore have to promote it in order to get some traffic.  Not all promotional techniques are equal, however, so you need to determine what works the best for you.

Your goal is to receive as much quality, targeted traffic as possible.

Here is a list of the ultimate ways to promote your blog:

Article directories

Most webmasters and bloggers agree that article marketing is extremely helpful in bringing in targeted traffic.  It’s perhaps the most effective type of “bum” marketing.  Article directories rank very high in search engines, and you can get two or three backlinks for every single article you submit.  This not only serves in helping you get traffic to your blog, but it helps your blog’s ranking go up as well.

Forums and message boards

Most forums allow users to have a link in their signature line, which is great for getting visitors and backlinks.  Participate and contribute useful ideas and information at forums associated with your niche.  You can’t just spam, however, you need to make intelligent and thoughtful posts.  That way, readers will be interested in visiting your site to learn more.  If it’s a public forum, your posts will end up being indexed in Google, as well, which means your link will be exposed to more people.

Social networking and bookmarking

Social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, are often overlooked by bloggers.  Make sure you don’t overlook or underestimate the importance of networking with other people; you can never have too many contacts on the internet.  Most of these sites have forums and chat rooms as well in which you can participate.  Once again, however, make sure you contribute quality information and never spam.

Social bookmarking sites are also very useful.  In fact, if you want your articles or videos to go viral, then your best bet is to promote through bookmarking sites.  These sites include Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, etc.  If your article or video goes viral, your blog hits will literally skyrocket overnight!

Other blogs

One way to promote your blog is through other blogs.  Post comments in other people’s blogs and leave a link to your own blog.  You especially need to leave your link in “do-follow” blogs so that the search engines will pick it up.  Your blog’s ranking will improve a bit if your do-follow comments are accepted by other bloggers.  Make sure you leave an insightful post and not just spam.  Return back and respond if someone (the blogger or other readers) responds to your comment.

All of these promotion techniques are free.  Some take a lot of work, but they’re definitely worth the time and effort you put into them.

Try doing all of these, if you can, in order to promote your blog as much as you can.  If you notice some methods work better than others, spend more time on those that work.  You need to be consistent and persistent in order to promote your blog successfully.

What’s your best method of promoting your blog?

Please share your views in the comments below. Thanks.

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Post from: Blogging Guide

Promote Your Blog Using These Ultimate Ways

We are to believe that…Google believes that prior to everything else, links should be of benefit to the visitor.

Thus, the popularity and strength of a link depends on its usefulness to the reader.

The anchor text (i.e. clickable text) you use should be relevant to the actual information you are linking to.

So many bloggers use ‘click here’ at the anchor text and it is a waste.

For instance, they may say:

Read my last post about making a bead necklace: click here

‘Click here’ is the anchor text which is used which has no relevance to the blog post they are linking to.

A much better link would be:

Click on this link and read my last post about making a bead necklace

Or simply:

Read my last post about making a bead necklace

Link Popularity Definitions

Those well versed with various search engine optimization techniques and the process of link building understand the importance of link popularity in determining the ranking of a site.

Link popularity refers to the quality of links that a particular site has, which in turn decides its link popularity score. This score is included by various search engines in their algorithms to provide a page rank for the site. Thus, page rank or engine rank is a derivative of link popularity that indicates the quality of links that feature on a site.

Though an average site does not need to obsess about link popularity to push up its engine rankings, it should not ignore it either.

A site can have a good link popularity score even with a few highly relevant inbound links that have strong anchor text. This can be done by seeking out links from top rating sites or by creating domains with highly competitive keywords and back linking them to the site.

As link popularity is all about quality, it is important to be selective about the sites from which you request links.

Do not be tempted to use link farms to boost your popularity score as this can be perceived as a black hat SEO and can lead to black listing of your site.

Read my post regarding the back linking campaign I use to boost my inbound links.

The next post in this series will discuss ‘the factors to be aware of in your back linking campaign’

How many backlinks do you have?

Are you using anchor text in the best possible way?

Please share your views in the comments below. Thanks.

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Post from: Blogging Guide

Link Building Campaign: What Makes A Strong Backlink

From ultra-memorable short domain names to incredibly targeted shopping terms, the value of a good domain is well established, and any smart online marketer knows how important it is to find a domain name that sells your business for you.

For bloggers, things can be a little more complicated. Picking a name for your blog is often less about driving direct ‘buyer’ traffic and much more about summing up and explaining your content.

For some bloggers, personal branding comes into play too.

From self-named domain names to semi-random number and letter combinations, blog names can be incredibly varied.

These tips should help you pick a domain name for your blog. Whenever you build a blog, give some thought to your domain name, for it’s essentially your online calling card.

Check out these tips, get on the registrar, and get ready to pick a great domain name.

1: Your blog’s name should be content-relevant

If your blog is about tree frogs, let people know in the domain name. If your blog is about generating income, make it clear in the domain. If your blog is about anything and everything, pick a domain name that doesn’t make it seem uber-specific.

Focus on something that brands your blog effectively.

2: If you’re going to build a blog for personal branding, use your own name

If you perform a Google search for your name, what comes up? For most people it’s a few irrelevant results, possibly an old Friendster account, and a Facebook page.

Your blog is your online calling card, and without a great domain name it’s going to be hard for people to find you, at least in the early stages.

If you’re making a personal blog, use your own full name as the domain name. While it will cut down on direct SEO benefits for your content, it’ll work wonders for your own personal branding.

After all, what’s better than having your own website appear when a potential employer or client searches for your name? Believe me, they’ll be searching for you, so invest in a domain that shows off what you can offer.

3: Cheap top-tier names can save you time and money

Is the .com taken? Get the .net or the .org. Top-tier domains are all virtually the same for SEO benefits, so unless your website is going to be directly entered into the search bar often, it’s best to just go for the next best top-tier domain name. If you’re stuck between picking a $10.00 .net domain and a $2,000.00 .com, go for the .net every time.

#4: Always invest in “whois” protection, unless you’re planning to sell.

When you build a blog, you’re putting yourself at risk of copycat bloggers popping up straight away. Protect yourself from fraud and spam by hiding your domain registry details. Of course, if you’re planning on selling your domain name eventually, keeping your “whois” data on the domain itself is incredibly useful for finding buyers.

Getting the domain is a crucial first step.

For more info on picking the best domain names you can check out my video:

How to choose a Website Name

How did you choose your domain name?

Please share your tips in the comments below. Thanks.

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Post from: Blogging Guide

Build A Blog With The Best Domain Name

This is the first one and it simply outlines why a Link Building Campaign is important.

Some say, the Page Rank of your blog is the make or break factor for it.

They go on to say, the Page Rank or numeric value that Google assigns to a blog denotes its importance on the web and plays a deciding role in its visibility in the top search displays for the optimized keywords.

And an important factor of your Page Rank score is inbound links to your site.

As inbound links play a vital role in the calculation of the page rank of a site, one needs to understand the importance of link building for improving their page ranking and subsequently drawing more traffic.

Link building refers to the process of securing inbound links to your blog from various other websites and other online sources such as press releases, newsletters, social media, e-zine articles, blogs and directories

The more trusted or high-quality links a site has, the higher the Page Rank and that can improve the placement of your blog in the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN.

Why have a link building campaign?

With the information superhighway, as the Internet was once referred to by former US Vice President Al Gore, being revolutionized by the day, link building has become an integral part of every site’s online marketing strategy.

However, link building in itself is not enough, the trick is in generating quality inbound links that add value to one’s site.

Some of the main advantages of having a link building campaign  are:

• Proper link building can help the site get quality traffic from relevant sites, which in turn will help your site become a part of the core searches for the targeted keywords

• Having a number of high-quality inbound links improves the page ranking of a site as it is considered to be offering a valuable service to the reader.

• Link building not only helps in enhancing the visibility of a site, but also adds to its credibility if the inbound links come from popular or respectable sites.

• Link building is also an effective strategy to obtain a wider search engine exposure and to get indexed by them to secure a higher engine ranking.

• Link building helps save advertising cost and time as your having inbound links from well-known sites is an effective means of marketing one’s site in the online space.

The next post in this series will discuss ‘What makes a strong backlink?’

Do you have a Link Building Campaign?

How do you build your inbound links?

Please share your views in the comments below. Thanks

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Post from: Blogging Guide

Link Building Campaign: Why Is It Important

Typical of Gideon – he has listened and put in place an arrangement to make the Rapid Video Blogging course more affordable to many people.

Don’t forget you can still get our bonus, the Income Blogging Guide course for free if you purchase Rapid Video Blogging via our link.

Check out our bonus offer by clicking on this link:

Do NOT Buy Rapid Video Blogging Course

Plus Gideon has run and created a webinar to help answer questions about Rapid Video Blogging.

Here are just SOME of the many things Gideon covered inside the webinar:

• How to overcome the fear of being in front of a camera.

• A secret link where you can find my battle tested video export settings for best HQ video results on YouTube – this one is worth GOLD!

• How to record video interviews with Skype and another FREE tool.

• Where to find some of the BEST WordPress themes on the internet.

• A sneak peak inside the actual members area.

You can listen to the free webinar by going here: Rapid Video Blogging Webinar

And don’t forget about our special bonus: Do NOT Buy Rapid Video Blogging Course

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Post from: Blogging Guide

Video Blogging Course: Now Simple To Have

There are a lot of reasons why website owners sell their blogs.

One of these reasons is that they may not have enough time to care for their blogs as before.

Or they have new projects that are more promising than the blog itself.

Or it’s just not working out as expect.

Or for just the simple reason that they just want to sell it.

Now, you may be planning on selling your blog but you don’t know how?

Here are a collection of blog posts that tell us how and where to sell a blog.

20 Sites to Sell Your Blogs or Websites by S. Pradeep Kumar

7 Ways to End a Blog byDarren Rowse

Where and How Can I Sell My blog? by Daniel Scocco

How to Sell Startup Websites Easily: My Interview With Ian and Amy by FlipWebsites.com

What to Think About When You Sell Your Blog by John Chow

A Few Warnings When Selling Online Business Websites by Aaron Wall

Top Five sites Where You Can Sell Your Website by Sweta

Ever sold a blog? What’s your experience?

Please share your views in the comments below. Thanks.

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Post from: Blogging Guide

Planning To Sell Your Blog?

Can you remember a time before blogging?

Although it seems that the weblog has become as much as part of our lives as newspapers, they’ve only been around since 1994.

Before blogging became popular, digital communities took many forms, including Usenet, commercial online services such as GEnie, BiX and the early CompuServe, e-mail lists and Bulletin Board Systems (BBS).

In the 1990s, Internet forum software transformed the net by creating running conversations with ’threads’.

The first blog…

The modern blog evolved from the online diary, where people would keep a running account of their personal lives. This was practiced initially by journalists and diarists. Justin Hall, who began personal blogging in 1994 while a student at Swarthmore College, is generally recognised as one of the earliest bloggers.

Dave Winer’s Scripting News is also credited with being one of the oldest and longest running weblogs. Another early blog was Wearable Wireless Webcam, an online shared diary of a person’s personal life combining text, video, and pictures transmitted live from a wearable computer and EyeTap device to a web site in 1994.

Early blogs were simply manually updated components of common Web sites. However, the evolution of tools to facilitate the production and maintenance of Web articles posted in reverse chronological order made the publishing process feasible to a much larger, less technical, population.

After a slow start, blogging rapidly gained in popularity.

Blog usage spread during 1999 and the years following, being further popularised by the near-simultaneous arrival of the first hosted blog tools including Open Diary, LiveJournal and Blogger (launched in 1999 and purchased by Google in February 2003).*

Recipes for success

Nowadays, most successful businesses have a blog, and there is as wide a variety of subjects covered as there are humans and hobbies. The most popular blogs seem to focus on celebrity news, politics and technical reviews, primarily because these sites capture specific demographics of readers, and cater to their tastes.

Opening blogging up to all

The confessional blog came along and demonstrated that anyone, anywhere, can create a successful blog. Housewives and husbands, hobbyists and enthusiasts have all made an impact with their writing, even when ostensibly it would appear there would be little to say. Some of the funniest and most engaging blogs focus on everyday life, cataloguing the highlights and disasters of regular people doing regular things. While these journals will never hit the top spots for viewing popularity, they still generate a wide enough readership to create a great income.

Creating a niche

In a world where we are bombarded by blogs, how are we supposed to make an impact? The truth is, it is hard to build up a following and become successful through your blog.

However, it is still possible.

By writing interesting, engaging copy and paying attention to your customer requirements, you can still use the blog to both earn an income, and promote your services.

* Statistics and information for this entry has been unashamedly stolen from Wikipedia!

When did you start blogging? Please share your views in the comments below. Thanks.

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Post from: Blogging Guide

In The Beginning, There Was The Humble Weblog

No doubt you have been sent numerous emails and seen many blog posts trying to persuade you to buy Gideon’s Rapid Video Blogging course…

…BUT DON’T.

Not until you see what we have in store…

What we are saying is buy the course and if you buy it via our affiliate link, we will provide you with our complete Income Blogging Guide Course for FREE.

The real news…what others won’t say…

I’m not going to lie to you and say, “I know for a fact this brand new course, Rapid Video Blogging is brilliant.”

Why not?

Because if I did it would be a lie. I haven’t seen it. I haven’t experienced it.

BUT WHAT I WILL SAY IS:

We have experienced Gideon’s previous courses (including his previous video courses) and they are the best around…without doubt. He is the best in the business when it comes to making an income via videos.

Just go here and see what you get:

Rapid Video Blogging

You see, Gideon’s course is sharing what he does well…make an income via video blogging.

BUT WHAT YOU DON’T GET…

…is the step-by-step approach to building your blog or marketing your blog or building a list or getting traffic or outsourcing and the best support around…EVERYTHING our course does show you.

In fact, my business partner Joel (from BlogTechGuy), with whom I run the Income Blogging Guide Course, knows Gideon pretty well. Joel has known Gideon for about 2 years now and he still does work for him today.

You see, we contacted Gideon and he said, “My course doesn’t go into the detail of setting up the blog like your Income Blogging Guide course does.”

Gideon goes on to say, “Your course would be an excellent companion as a bonus for people.”

Check out what our course offers by going here:

http://www.incomebloggingguide.com/stepbystep/

But don’t buy our course…get it for free by grabbing Gideon’s course.

What Gideon is offering is a course we say you should buy but if you want someone to:

• Explain the step-by-step approach to blogging

• Invite you to live weekly teleconferences for all your blogging questions

• Provide you with access to a private forum

• Give you a WordPress Premium theme

…then buy Gideon’s course via our link and get our course for free.

How to claim your bonus

1. Join Rapid Video Blogging using this link only: Rapid Video Blogging

[By signing up with this affiliate link I do earn a commission.]

2. After buying Gideon’s course just send us your ClickBank receipt and we’ll get you hooked up to our course immediately. Email us at support@incomebloggingguide.com with a copy of your receipt and we will set you up with access within two days.

Please note: If you cancel your Rapid Video Blogging membership, it will also cancel your Income Blogging Guide membership.

P.S. We have the best complementary bonus around for Gideon’s course. Buy Gideon’s course via our link and get our Income Blogging Guide course for free.

Buy via this link: Rapid Video Blogging

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Post from: Blogging Guide

Do NOT Buy Rapid Video Blogging Course

Mine was pretty good – I decided to be ruthless and get rid of a lot of possessions I no longer need including numerous books.

Now, I’d like to give these books away to you.

The list is below with a link to Amazon so you can read more about the book.

To win…just tell me which ONE you would like in the comments.

This Friday I’ll randomly pick a winner for each book, contact you to get your address and ship them out to you (postage paid by me).

Some of the books are brand new, some used.

Also, please note the cover may not be the same as per what is shown on Amazon.

Here are the books:

Motivate to Win by Richard Denny

Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind By Al Ries

When Success is Not Enough by Adam Walker

The Brand Called You: The Ultimate Personal Branding Handbook to Transform Anyone into an Indispensable Brand by Peter Montoya

The Naked Coach: Business Coaching Made Simple by David Taylor

Millionaire Upgrade: Lessons in Success From Those Who Travel at the Sharp End of the Plane by Richard Parkes Cordock

The Joy Diet: 10 Steps to a Happier Life by Martha N. Beck

The Adversity Advantage: Turning Everyday Struggles into Everyday Greatness by Erik Weihenmayer and Paul Stoltz

The Rules of Life by Richard Templar

Personal Best: 10 lessons to help you achieve your true potential by Marc Woods

Customers For Life: How To Turn That One-Time Buyer Into a Lifetime Customer by Carl Sewell

The Six Value Medals: The Essential Tool for Success in the 21st Century by Edward De Bono

And if you don’t mind and have time, please Tweet or “share” this book giveaway post.

Thanks.

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Post from: Blogging Guide

Win A Book By Simply Commenting

Some of you may say yes, some may say no.

Some may be able to handle these negative comments with grace but some may not.

So, how does one really handle negative comments?

Go ahead and check out these blog posts:

The Day I was flamed at my blog (and 7 ways to handle flames with grace) by Darren Rowse

How to Handle Negative comments by Mark Goren

Ignore ‘em or embrace ‘em? How to handle negative blog comments by Mack Collier

How should your company handle negative blog comments by Mack Collier

How to handle criticism by Steve Errey

Handling negative comments in social Media and in blogs by Richelle Anderson

Dealing with negative comments on your blog by Michele Martin

When is Negative feedback too negative? by Bradley J. Moore

How to handle customer comments by Jesse Stanchak

Crisis: Dealing with negative comments online by Gini Dietrich

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Post from: Blogging Guide

How To Handle Negative Comments