Writing an Ebook Doesn't Have to Be Hard

One of the hottest trends of the day for making money is writing eBooks. An eBook, in case you didn't already know, is a book that is electronically created and published. Readers enjoy the convenience of eBooks, because they can be instantly purchased and downloaded directly from the internet, providing authors a way to make quick, easy profits. There are many individuals who have achieved financial independence and gained a multitude of fans by writing eBooks.

Have you ever dreamed about writing your own original eBooks? Perhaps you think you have to be an "experienced" writer to be able to accomplish this, but the amazing fact is that you don't necessarily need to be. If you possess passion and knowledge about a topic, you can write about it. Everybody knows about something that is valuable to others and writing eBooks gives you the opportunity to share it with the rest of the world, with the added perk of being able to make money doing so.

To become a successful part of this growing craze, you first need to determine what topics you feel most comfortable writing about. Usually, they are things that you, yourself, find interesting. For instance, if you're a mom who works outside of the home, you may know some great recipes for "quickie" family meals or, if you work from home, you may know about how to find legitimate home based jobs. There is literally a market for every kind of special interest that people want to learn more about.

Writing an eBook may seem a bit intimidating at first, but, once you discover how to properly format it, find out how to relay your information in an engaging, easy-to-understand way and learn how to market your finished work, you'll see that it can be a simple, enjoyable means of generating a continual source of income.

There are other advantages of becoming an eBook writer, too. You don't have to wait for a publishing house to "approve" your work, since you can be your own publisher. You don't have to be at the mercy of some overly critical editor since you are in sole control over what you write. You can set your own prices for your eBooks and keep the earnings yourself. You are in charge of your own destiny, so to speak.

Anybody can be an eBook author, no matter what your level of experience and background may be, from professional people to homemakers to students and more. There are millions of potential internet readers out there, waiting anxiously to learn about something you already know and willing to pay for the privilege. Why not provide them with your expertise?

You can help other people by offering them insightful information they can get access to immediately and satisfy your desire to make an endless stream of income. Imagine having a global readership who values what you have to say and receiving payments on a regular basis, to boot!

You can achieve it all by writing eBooks and using the proper marketing techniques to make sales.

30 Days to profits. Follow the simple action plan using the complete guide for writing and selling eBooks. Start today for cash tomorrow now at Writing, Selling Ebooks.

Turning Ebooks Into Your Home Business

More people than ever are running their own home business. Some individuals operate them on a full-time basis, while others work at them part-time to supplement their income. Even when the rest of the economy suffers, many home based businesses are still able to succeed.

Why not become a part of this prosperous trend?

If you have been thinking about getting involved in a home business yourself, but are totally clueless on where to start, there are many avenues open to you. One you may want to consider is creating and selling your own eBooks.

An eBook is an electronically-created book that can be easily downloaded. For those who don't have the time or patience to wait for books to arrive through the regular mail, eBooks provide them the information they seek swiftly and conveniently. For that reason, they are more than willing to pay for it.

"But I don't really know anything," you might be saying, "and, besides that, I don't have any writing experience."

The truth is that everybody knows something and has some degree of experience in a topic others are interested in. You might not be able to explain the theory of relativity, but you might be very knowledgeable about how to make crafts, how to come up with tasty recipes for finicky tots, how to lose weight, how to budget, how to design websites and much more. There is no end to the diversity and number of topics you can write about and there are always people on the internet who want what you have to offer.

Of course, you need to decide on the subjects you want to write about. You should have a definite passion for them and be able to present your information and ideas in a way that will stimulate the interest of readers. When people like what you write, they are more likely to come back and purchase eBooks you create.

If you're a bit doubtful about your writing abilities, there are a number of resources you can find online or at your local library that will teach you the basics of writing, so that you can word your eBooks in a well-structured, easy-to-understand manner. Learn to write in a way that is informative and, at the same time, fun to read.

Your home business should consist of eBooks you have written and published yourself. As a publisher of your own unique eBooks, you are the captain of your ship, so to speak. You control the content, design and pricing of your products and you get all the juicy profits.

You could even set up an entire online store for your target group of readers to come to. For instance, if you're a working mom, your store could feature eBooks that are relevant to the needs of other working mothers. Unlike conventional bookstores, you don't have to rent a building or go bonkers trying to manage everything. It's just a matter of finding out how to market your eBook business, so that people will come to where your products are, choose the topics they want to know about and pay for the downloads via credit card or PayPal.

The most enjoyable part of your home business will be watching the profits roll in. The sooner you get started, the sooner you can enjoy this.

30 Days to profits. Follow the simple action plan using the complete guide for writing and selling eBooks. Start today for cash tomorrow now at Writing, Selling Ebooks.

Ebooks and Ebook Reader Devices - Top Clues They Are Taking Off in Popularity

Ebooks and ebook reader devices are widely used today, but they are not quite standard yet. Still, the clues are there that they are taking off in a big way! There are many different reasons why this is true, and it's only a matter of time before it becomes the standard way to read books. The features of convenience, price, and user-friendliness are just the tip of the iceberg!

Many people love to read. The problem with this passion is that books take up a lot of space. It seems that more people are interested in clearing the clutter and being able to have their books with them whenever they want. That's the beauty of ebooks! In the same space where you could only have one book, you can now have hundreds of books on one little device.

We can't forget that nearly everything is becoming electronic these days. People are attached to their Blackberries, iPhones, laptops, TV's, and other devices. It only makes sense that old hardbacks and paperbacks are going by the wayside to be replaced with something electronic. It's far more convenient and makes sense for modern lifestyles.

Speaking of modern lifestyles, there are many people who are just too busy to sit down and read these days. If they do find the time, it gets difficult keeping track of which page they were on or finding an exact portion of a book. Ebook readers will surge in popularity as more people realize that the devices save your page for you, allow you to easily mark in them, and help you find exactly what you're looking for with a simple search.

In addition to those convenience features, there is also a matter of price. If you go to the local bookstore and open the front cover of a hardback you'll likely go into sticker shock! It's amazing how much they are charging for books these days. Those high prices will cause more and more people to buy ebooks instead. Since companies have less overhead for these electronic titles, that cost savings gets passed along to the reader.

As more publishers catch wind of how many people all around the world are reading ebooks you can only expect the number of titles to increase. When some of the more popular books are converted to ebook format it will attract more people to them. This will create a snowball effect where people all around the world start realizing how amazing it is to read your books in an electronic format!

There is also the matter of having the ability to distribute books on a wider basis. There are some smaller publishing companies that just cannot afford to get their book in many areas. This limited distribution not only hinders sales, it also hinders creativity! With ebooks, people realize that the costs are so low they can effectively get their books into the hands of anyone who wants them. This will cause the ebook movement to spread like wildfire.

Ebooks and ebook reader devices will continue to increase in popularity all the time. If you haven't gotten started reading ebooks, now is definitely the time as they are widely available and can save you a ton of money on popular books.

Are you ready to get your hands on these popular ebook reader devices? The two most popular readers right now are the Kindle and the Sony Reader.

Stop bouncing: tips for website success

Would you believe me if I said you don't need a Ph.D. to understand your website data? No? Believe it. Free tools like Google Analytics can help simplify website data so that you can better understand what visitors are doing when they arrive on your site.

One of the coolest innovations in understanding your website has been to provide delightful metrics on your web data so that you can make direct changes to your site. In lesson one of our series on The Power of Measurement, we will learn about bounce rate and how understanding it can improve your website.

You may be used to reading about how many “hits” a site or a page has received. But reporting a "hit" meant something back in 1985 when it was essentially a pageview (the number of times your webpage was viewed). Today, you will find that each web page gets many "hits," rendering the metric meaningless. While the number of "hits" a page received used to be the best measure of success, we now have more in-depth and detailed metrics to analyze the performance of our web pages.

Bounce rate is insightful because from the perspective of a website visitor, it measures this phenomenon: "I came; I puked; I left." (OK, technically it also means the number of sessions with just one pageview.) While metrics like visitors show the number of people who came to your site, bounce rate will tell you how many of those people were unimpressed and left your site without taking any action (not even dignifying the site with a single click!).

Bounce rate has these attributes:
1) It is really hard to misunderstand. It measures the number of people who landed on your site and refused to give you even one single click!
2) It is available in most web analytics tools, including our own Google Analytics.
3) It is quick and easy to use. Bounce rate will help you understand where and how to make changes on your website in under an hour.

Now, let's make this real. If you have a Google Analytics account, you'll see this when you log in:


This means that about 77 percent of website visitors came to the site, "puked," and left. Ouch. Based on that, you may need to light a fire somewhere, as things need fixing. Here are two simple and specific ideas:

Tip #1: Find out where your visitors are coming from and which of these sites sends visitors with the highest bounce rate. To do so, all you have to do is go to "Traffic Sources" (in Google Analytics, or whatever tool you are using), click on "Referring Sites," and boom!


In about fifteen seconds you know which sites are your “best friends forever” (BFFs), and where you need to look a tad deeper. By identifying the sites that are sending you visitors with high bounce rates, you can investigate the reasons why (the campaigns, the context in which your link is placed, the ads) and make changes to ensure that visitors find what they are looking for when they come to your site.

However, it may not just be the campaigns that turned your readers away; it could be the specific page that your visitors landed on. That leads to my Tip #2: Go to “Content” (labeled as such in Google Analytics) and click on "Top Landing Pages" report:


You can see different pages of your website on the left and the corresponding bounce rates on the right. Remember, you don't decide the homepage of your website. When people search, the engine finds the most relevant page on your site and that's the homepage. If you have 50,000 pages on your website, you have 50,000 homepages. The report above is showing the top ten pages of your website and which ones might be letting you down by not engaging your visitors enough to get even one click!

In under an hour you can discover which sources are your BFFs and which pages on your site need some sprucing up. This will ensure lower bounce rates, higher engagement with your site, and perhaps even higher revenue. To learn about other ways in which you can use bounce rate effectively, check out this article on my web analytics blog, Occam's Razor.

Good luck!

5 Ways to Make Money Blogging (Once You Have Traffic)

Making Money From a Blog - Moving Past AdSense

While it is possible to make some money with a blog of any size - your chances of earning income from a blog do generally increase as you increase your readership numbers.

Many bloggers start out monetizing their blogs using ad networks like AdSense. While ad networks like AdSense can still earn you a nice income as your blog grows (many large blogs use them) - an increased audience will also open new opportunities to you as a blogger.

1. Direct Ad Sales

One thing that becomes possible as your readership grows is that you can begin to attract your own direct advertisers. I’ve written on this topic numerous times before so rather than writing a long tutorial on the topic let me point you to some previous posts:

• Find a Sponsor for your Blog
• 10 Ways to make your Blog more attractive to advertisers
• How to Find Advertisers for Your Blog
• Finding Advertisers for Your Blog
• How much should I charge for my Advertising Space
• 5 Ways to Find Direct Advertisers for Your Blog

2. Ad Representation

Many bloggers struggle to sell advertising on their own blogs. Most bloggers are not experienced in the area of ad sales, don’t have contacts in the advertising industry, are unaware of how much to charge or even what technology to use to serve ads. Most of us also are passionate about writing content and building community - the admin of finding and interacting with advertisers can often be a distraction.

One alternative once you have a reasonable amount of traffic is to outsource your ad sales. Some blog networks and ad networks will handle this kind of thing for you once you have enough traffic. Generally you need a fair bit of traffic for them to look at you but in these tough economic times I suspect we’ll see more and more services to do this.

3. Start Your Own Ad Sales Network

One thing that I’ve been hearing more and more bloggers doing is joining together to sell advertising as a collective or network within a niche. You might not have enough traffic to attract a top tier advertiser alone - but what if you joined with 4-5 other medium sized blogs in your niche and approached advertisers together?

4. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing can work on blogs of all sizes but once a blog has an engaged and loyal readership it can really pay off. Readers that have tracked with you for a while are more likely to buy something that you recommend than a one off visitor - so this is a particularly useful strategy if you have built a ‘community’ rather than just a blog that has a lot of search traffic. The key is to find products to promote that are of a high quality that you can genuinely recommend and that have high relevance to your readership.

Further Reading: 5 Tips for Making Money with Affiliate Programs

5. Sell Your Own Product

Another monetization strategy to start thinking about once you start seeing growth in your readership is your own product to sell.

Whether that product be an e-book, a membership area, a real hard cover book, training (online or real life), consulting, merchandise…. once you’ve got a loyal readership who trusts you and sees you as an expert in your field you’ll find that they are increasingly likely to buy something that you sell.

You’ll also find it easier to get other blogs in your niche to promote your product once you’ve build a blog with profile. I’m seeing more and more bloggers doing this and suspect that as advertising budgets get smaller in the current economic climate that we’ll see more and more of this type of approach (I’ve previously called it ‘indirect income’) by smart bloggers.

problogger.com

What is Facebook’s Slogan Saying

I just finished reading an interesting post over at Howtosplitanatom.com about brand slogans. The article talks about the classics like: “Always Coca-Cola” , “Just Do It” and “Think Different”. After reading the post I started thinking about the slogans of some of the social networks out there and what they really said.

The article makes a point to mention that some slogans appear to be after thoughts created with no real perspective. Having worked in marketing I find this hard to believe. Marketing people spend hours looking over the finest details.

With my new mission I decided to look at the slogans of some of the popular social networks and see what they said about their product. Certainly this is all up to interpretation, but it never hurts to look back at a product to figure.

MySpace: “a place for friends”

MySpace is the giant of social networking. In retrospect it is ironic that the MySpace logo is “a place for friends” since one of the major complaints is that a large portion of the profiles are fake. The slogan however embodies what MySpace was trying to accomplish, a place for friends to meet and stay in touch.

hi5: “Who’s in?”

Hi5 has the most inviting slogan of all the social networks. I think this makes sense since hi5 has created itself a truly international community feel. Their network slogan gives a sense of, “come see if you don’t like it we won’t be offended.”

bebo: “EXPLORE”

Bebo’s slogan makes the most sense out of all of the social networks. Bebo focuses on providing content rich experience that allows users to explore and discover new media. By connecting with people on bebo you can find explore their world of entertainment.

Facebook: “Facebook is a social utility that connects you with the people around you”

While Facebook’s slogan isn’t very catchy it says quite a bit about the social platform. Facebook has taken a very utilitarian stance on providing a social network. They have created a framework and are expecting you to do most of the work. I do not use Facebook to meet new people, but instead use it to maintain connections.

I was wondering what your thoughts were on these slogans. I find it interesting how a slogan can me something different to different people. Let me know what your thoughts are on these slogans and maybe you could suggest some better ones.

Facebook Tutorial: How to Create a Facebook Profile

Do you want to know how to register for Facebook and create a profile? This tutorial will walk you through the process of registering and getting set up. This first video is approximately 6 minutes in length and by the end of the tutorial you should have learned how to complete your profile will all the relevant personal information. For more tutorials check out our Facebook tutorials page.

Facebook Profile Tutorial Overview

You probably know a lot of people on Facebook already, and they are probably wondering why your not on it yet. Facebook is one largest social networking sites on the web and it’s a great way to keep in touch with your friends. As more and more people join Facebook is becoming an important tool in helping people stay connected. It’s also free so there no real reason not to join!

The first step in joining Facebook is creating your account. On the Facebook homepage you’ll see a large blue box in the lower right hand corner of the page. Here is where you sign up for Facebook.You’ll need to type in you name. This is the name you’ll want to appear on your profile and the name by which people can search for you within Facebook. You’ll also have to add your email address and a password. This is how you will login to Facebook. Facebook will also ask you to add your gender and your birth date at this time.

Once you click the green ‘Sign Up’ button you’ll be taken to email confirmation page. Facebook will have sent you an email to confirm that you are creating an account. Just click on the link in the email and you’ll have a Facebook account.

First, Facebook will prompt you to several ways you can find your friends on Facebook such as through searching your e-mail and your school/company networks. Skip these pages for now; we’ll come back to them another time.

Facebook will then ask you to join a regional network. If you choose you can join a network that represents where you live. Just start typing in the city or region in which you live and Facebook will present you several options. Just choose the closest fit.

Now you’re ready to create your profile page. You’ll first be taken to the Facebook homepage. To get to your profile page click on your name on the banner on the top of the page. You can also reach your page by clicking on ‘Profile’ on the banner.

This is your Facebook profile page. Here you can add information about yourself to share with friends. To add information click on the info tab underneath your name and Facebook will guide you through a few different pages. You can pick and choose what information you want to share on your profile. There are also several privacy options you can choose from if you want to restrict who can see certain parts of your profile.

The first section Facebook will guide you to the page for your ‘Basic Information.’ Here you will see the information you added when you signed up, including your birth date information. You can choose how people see your birthday in your profile by clicking on the dropdown list. You can also add your hometown, relationship status and your political and religious views on this page. Any field you choose to leave blank will simply not appear on your profile. Once your finished click on ‘Save Changes’ at the bottom of the page and you’ll be taken to the next section.

This section is for your ‘Personal Information.’ In this section you can pretty much put any information about yourself that you want to. There is a section for activities, interests, music, movies, books, your favorite quotes, and an ‘About Me’ section where you can write about yourself. You’ll notice when you start typing in a field Facebook will prompt you with several popular choices but you can add whatever information you choose. Once your done save your changes and move on to the next page.

This section is for your ‘Contact Information.’ Here you can add your various ways people can get in touch with you. Again, if there’s any information you do not wish to share leave the field blank and it won’t appear. Here you can add your IM screen names (up to five), any phone numbers, your address, and a website if you have one.

If you want to add this information but want to restrict who can see it you can click on the lock to the right of the information you want to restrict. A window will appear with a pull down list. The list will give you several options to control who can see the information including your networks (the region) you joined, friends of friends, only friends, or you can customize to make your privacy options even more specific. Once you choose the privacy settings you want you can save the changes and move on to the next page.

This page is for your ‘Education and Work’ information. Here you can add information about the colleges you’ve attended, including the year you graduated, your majors/minors, and whether you attended for college or graduate school. You can add up to five colleges. You can also add up to two high schools you attended. There is also a section for job information. If you want to share where you work you can add this information in this section including a description of your job, how long you worked there, or if you currently work there. You can add up to 15 jobs. Once you your done adding information, save your changes and you are now done editing your profile.

Once you finish editing you’ll see how all the information you just added looks on your info tab. Now you can add your profile picture.

Click ‘upload’ link under the silhouette. If you have a picture in mind (it must be a jpg. gif., or a png.) just click on ‘browse’ in the window it will open your files. Find the picture you want and open it. Facebook will upload it onto your page.

If you have a webcam you can add a picture that way. Click on the ‘Take a webcam picture’ under the silhouette and it will open your webcam.

Once you have added a picture you can update your Facebook status. Fill in the bar that asks you ‘what are you doing right now?’ you can answer the question, add how you’re feeling or any update about yourself that you want your friends to know. You can update this as frequently as you want. Once you filled in the bar click post.

Once you refresh the page you’ll see how your completed Facebook profile page appears. You can change any aspect of your profile page, including the privacy settings, at anytime.

On your profile page you’ll see that everything you have just done appears on your mini-feed. Every time you do something on Facebook it will appear in your mini-feed. People can also comment on the stories that appear in your mini- feed.

You can change the comment settings by clicking on ‘settings’ above the mini-feed. If you uncheck the box comments on your mini-feed stories will not appear on your profile.

You can also remove stories from your mini-feed by scrolling your mouse over the information you want to remove and to the right an ‘edit’ button will appear. When you click on it, the option to delete the particular mini-feed story will appear.

Now you have completed setting up your Facebook profile page. In the next tutorial we will look at how to find your friends on Facebook...

What is Quality Content for Search Engines

We often hear the SEO advice that ‘Content is the King’, and search engines like Google favor good quality content. Many people confuse it with creating more pages, and they often end up in buying software like spam site generators, automated content generators and scrapping tools. Many others buy cheap articles and stuff their websites with copies of the articles. However, search engines are not lookinig for such useless garbage which hardly offers any value to the site visitors.

Quality content in short is link-worthy content which is original, conceptually unique and serves as a useful resource for information. And, it refers to the text part of your website. Though keywords matter in your page copy, your page should not look like a keyword stuffed page for search engine robots; you should write for your site visitors focusing on readability and usefulness.

Good quality content has other rewards, too. If people find your content useful and spreading information, they will naturally want to link to your site, and give referrals. Thus, useful pages meant for people can attract links which are very valuable for your ranking in the search engines.

If your pages are copies of pages on other sites, search engines like Google will perceive your site to be of poor quality offering no value. You should therefore create content which people will find useful in your niche. It is better to have few pages with quality content than having thousands of pages filled with garbage. Good content will attract referrals and citations to your site and boost your ranking naturally.

SEO Guide for Beginners from Google

Is Google getting into SEO business? Well, such a move from Google would lead to a potential conflict of interest. But even Google is telling us that there’s nothing wrong with SEO, and Google’s official Webmaster Central Blog is now formally offering a free “SEO Starter Guide” with practical search engine optimization tips for new webmasters about how to improve their website’s performance in Google.

This search engine optimization guide comes in a 22-page, pdf format. Google uses the same principles inside Google for optimizing its own sites such as YouTube. This starter SEO guide from Google covers dozens of topics such as

• Title tag
• Description Meta Tag
• URL Structure
• Site Navigation
• Content Creation
• Anchor Text
• Heading Tags (H1, H2, etc.)
• Optimizing Images
• Effective of Robots.txt
• Rel=”nofollow”
• Website Promotion
• Webmaster Tools
• Web Analytics
• More Helpful Resources

The guide is well written and is aimed at new webmasters and website owners who are looking for basic training in SEO techniques. I feel it is a good guide for newbies, to cover the basics of SEO before they go for more advanced stuff.

Blogger Seo Tips - Part 2

On the first blogger seo tips post, I went through the basic settings that you should modify on the blogger.com setting area. On second part, I will show you how to optimize your blogspot/blogger templates. Default templates offer none SEO whatsoever causing most blogger users to rank low on SERPs.
There is one thing I love about Wordpress: the tag! Blogger does not have this. This can result in duplicate content entries, showing the same content on post pages and archive pages. You do not want to have the same content on different pages of your website.

Blogger does not have this built in, so we are going to do a small tweak to accomplish that. Make sure you have selected a widget-ready template. There are couple of steps, so read the whole post carefully. Place the below code before the html tag in your template. Its a small javascript.

Download the first code

Second step involves changing the post includables. If you do not have a widget-ready template, you will not be able to apply this step, since non-widget-ready templates do not have includables. To get to the post parte, where you will change the code, search for id=’post’. If you are unable to find it, you may not have expanded the template. Select the checkbox named “Expand Widget Templates“, which is right above the template code, to expand it into more code.

Download the second code

Now, go to Settings –> Formatting and paste the below code inside the text box labeled “Post template”:

Type your summary here

Type rest of the post here

When you create a new post on your blogger blog, this will clearly show where to write your summary or excerpt, and rest of your post text. It is important to make sure that the /span tag above is at the end of the post. So before publishing your post, check the html source code and make sure that is at the end of your post. The “Read more” link will appear only for the posts that have been divided like this.

SEO tips for blogs hosted on Blogger

Blogs are the fastest growing class of websites on the internet. No longer the sole domain of teenagers and the love lorn, blogs are now an established form of internet communication.

The online business community has recently discovered the power of blogging, and as such are faced with raising the blog site's ranking in the search engine results pages (SERPs). As a direct result of some of the blog characteristics, high search rankings are readily available for the careful blog writer.

Like any other website, blogs have techniques for search engine optimization (SEO), many of them the same as for traditional static websites, and many of them unique to blogs. Among the issues faced by some bloggers is the abundance of free blog hosting sites.

Not requiring any initial cash outlay, the free blog hosts have literally millions of blogs on their books. One of the most popular is the Google owned blog host Blogger.

Note that in this article, the capitalized word Blogger refers to the blog hosting company, while the lower case generic term blogger indicates the blog writer. Confusion between the two words will be avoided as much as possible.

Like all free web hosts, Blogger hosted blogs face unique optimization challenges. Unlike sites where the domain name is owned by the webmaster, free blog hosts maintain ownership of the blog. In fact, the blog name is a sub-domain of the blog host, making value from the blog URL a less powerful optimization tool.

Despite the limitations faced by a blog hosted by Google owned Blogger, there are many very powerful optimization techniques available to the blogger. As we will see, blogs have some optimization methods, that are only available to blogs in general, regardless of host.

When considering the optimization techniques to apply to blogs, the basics of fresh keyword rich content, theme relevance, incoming links, and link anchor text all apply to blogs. In that sense optimization for blogs is no different from other websites.

On the other hand, some additional methods and some restrictions in the choice of techniques are involved as well. The various restrictions are often a direct result of the placement of the blog on the free host.

In this case study, the free host is Blogger. These shortcomings must always be kept in mind, when considering the best course, to fully optimize your blog.

Free Blogger hosting for your blog

Blogger enables you to host your blog on their server for free. As a very simple use interface system, even a novice with absolutely no programming or blogging experience of any kind, can be fully operational in a matter of minutes. The procedure for starting a blog is very simple, and takes only minutes to complete.

The Blogger server offers the choice of having a free standing blog as a separate website, or the option of writing your daily posts on the Blogger interface, and file transfer them to your existing website via the built in FTP feature.

Blogger provides a choice of pre-written templates for the blog layout, but all of them are changeable to include different color combinations and page formats.

Blogger freely permits the use of third party add on features, including commenting systems, track back, visitor counters, RSS site feeds, and most scripts often seen incorporated into traditional websites.

Note that Blogger offers all of those necessary blogging functions, including a site feed through Atom, with the exception of track back, in its blogging service package. Other third party feeds can be freely added to the Blogger template. I use several on my blogs.

The user is under no obligation to use the Blogger supplied versions, however. The company agreement does require that the Blogger logo icon remain on all of the pages, however.

When choosing a URL for the blog, it will appear as http://yourblogname.blogspot.com or if you prefer, as http://www.yourblogname.blogspot.com making the blog URL a sub-domain of the Blogger system.

The main domain is indicated by the "blogspot.com portion of the URL. With being a sub-domain, there are some unique, but not insurmountable challenges to optimization, as we shall see.

A Blogger user is not restricted in the choice of blog titles, and careful title and URL selection can help greatly in the optimization process. Many blogs suffer from having very poorly selected titles, that contain no relevance to the overall blog theme. Keep that in mind when selecting a title.

Keywords within the blog title and URL are very powerful in ranking well, with a blog component, especially as a sub-domain from the Blogger host.

After creating a blog title, and selecting a blog template to be customized later, the Blogger registration process is completed. A new blog writer is ready to begin writing blog columns, which are referred to as posts.

Optimization and SEO power of blogs

Contrary to what many people believe, Google does not give preference to blogs hosted on Blogger, despite Google's ownership of the popular blog service.

As a result, bloggers using the Blogger hosting system are on even footing with bloggers using other free or paid blog hosting services, and with blogs hosted under an owned domain name, or as part of an owned domain website. The playing field for optimization is as level as possible for bloggers using a sub-domain of Blogger, and for other bloggers as well.

Blogs rank well in the search engines by their very nature. They are regularly updated with keyword rich content. Most blog writers stick to a main theme for their blogs making relevance easy. Because of the blog's versatility, the blogger can add more themes to the blog and tie them together, enabling a blog to maintain several strong themes.

Blogs are also link magnets, mainly from other similarly themed blogs. It is not unusual for a blog to receive a Google PageRank 4 or 5 after being live on the internet for only one month. The theme relevant links are often placed right in blog posts, and contain powerful link anchor text.

One way inbound links to blogs are freely given by other bloggers as many blog writers are not concerned about search engine rankings. As a result, the competitive level of the sought after keywords is not as strong as its overall potential, based on sheer numbers of blogs.

Bloggers maintain large link lists, called blogrolls, that usually sit on the blog's home page. The weakness of the blog link lists is their volume, providing less than optimal PageRank and link popularity passage, as it's divided among large numbers of receiving blogs and websites.

What the blog link popularity lacks in amount of what is passed along, is made up for in theme relevance and quantity. Blog links are literally a volume business. Note that reciprocal blog links don't appear to suffer any downgrading, as is often the case for static sites. Incoming links, including reciprocal links, are effective for blogs.

On page blog optimization techniques

Blogs are optimized using the same techniques as static websites. Keep in mind that a blog is simply another website. What works in the search engines for other sites will also work for optimizing a blog.

Blogger assists the blog writer by building in many optimization features, that enable a blog to compete in less competitive searches, even if no other optimization techniques are applied.

The blog title is important, and should be chosen carefully to reflect the topics and themes of the blog. Many blog titles are frivolous, and provide little search engine value. Including at least one important keyword in the title is recommended.

The title is important as it forms part of the URL sub-domain. Combining a keyword enriched title with the blog URL is often enough to compete for non-competitive searches.

As the regular posts are added to the blog, each one generates a unique page with its own URL. Since the blog title forms part of that URL, it's important that it contain some keyword, as the blog title is at the front of the URL.

The individual page URL contains all of a short blog post headline, and most of some longer ones. For that reason, place the targeted keywords early in a blog post headline to ensure their conclusion. Blogger publishes the page URLs, with the headline words separated by dashes, in accordance with the Google preference for dashes over underscores.

The blog title tags are readily and easily changed in Blogger, to reflect any targeted keywords and phrases. Because the blog itself is a website sub-domain, altering the title tag is a very powerful option for any blogger to utilize.

The Blogger supplied templates are pre-written with h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, and h6 tags. The headings are placed in the heading tags automatically, providing an instant search engine advantage for the blog. The templates are fully CSS compatible and welcome both additional CSS and html coding.

Blogs are well crawled by the major and lesser known search engine spiders. Because the posts are so frequent, the spiders return to reindex the blog, on at least a daily basis.

By pinging the blog, which is notifying the specialized blog search engines and RSS aggregators of an update, the blog reaches a huge audience including media outlets. A good one stop multiple site pinger is Ping-O-Matic.

Three very powerful optimization tools are missing from Blogger templates, and would be very helpful in improving searches for Blogger hosted blogs.

One missing item is categories. Blogger users can't place their posts into theme related categories. The ability of other blog hosts to provide categories gives those blogs a bit of a theme related SEO advantage. That is to say nothing of the benefit to the blog readers of neatly organized categories for related links.

Blogger doesn't provide a related links feature that lets readers find additional posts on the same blog topic. Another benefit to readers, and to the search engines due to the loss of an internal link, is missed by Blogger.

A third issue is the lack of internal "tag" coding. Blogger users are required to write their own tag code for Technorati and other users of post tags for search. As embedded linked keywords, tags are also very powerful for creating themes in search engines.

There appears to be little, if any discrimination against Blogger and other free hosted blogs among the members of the media, and other blog RSS feed subscribers.

Link power of blogs

Much of the search engine optimization power of blogs is through their extensive linking networks. Blog owners are free and generous linkers. They link to other blogs permanently, usually from the high PageRank home page, and freely link to what they consider interesting blog posts.

Not only are posts linked frequently by other bloggers, but the on page link is often from a post to a post. As a bonus, the link is usually dripping with important keywords and phrases.

Links from other blogs tend to be very theme relevant in content, as bloggers link to articles, blog posts, and other blogs that are of interest to themselves and to their readership. One way incoming links are a very frequent event for bloggers.

Reciprocal blog links don't appear to be discounted by Google or the other major search engines, as the exchanges are usually between theme related blogs. Blog owners should, however, exert some level of caution, regarding link exchanges with non-theme relevant blogs, as those incoming links might not receive full value.

Linking to and from Blogger is easy, and the template provides an unlimited sidebar area for the inclusion of html links, to other blogs and traditional websites. Links can also be coded within the posts themselves, right at the time of post composition, using simple embedded html conversions.

The Blogger posts are archived after a chosen time period of usually one week, into one month long archive sections. Those time frames are changeable in the Blogger settings, for longer or shorter durations.

The internal linking of the pages is precoded by Blogger, enabling PageRank link popularity, and link anchor text to pass freely from one page to another. The pre-written code can also be altered should the blogger prefer a different internal linking structure.

Conclusion

Hosting a blog on a free host like Google owned Blogger need not be a disadvantage to achieving high search engine rankings. Simply apply recommended standard SEO optimization techniques and the blog will do very well in the SERPs.

The Blogger supplied, and readily alterable templates contain many powerful optimization features by default, including h1 tags, CSS, and strong internal page linkage, to name just a few.

Be sure to keep in mind that the blog URL shows a sub-domain. Because of that limitation, care should be taken with the blog title, title tags, and the headlines given to the regular blog posts.

The power of the many keyword rich anchor text incoming links, from theme related blogs and websites, will go far towards reaching the top of the rankings.

The links are to be expected because of the regular posting of theme relevant content. Other bloggers will link naturally to the blog, with the highly potent one way link.

Be sure to add your own tag code for using those powerful search tools.

The blog combination of fresh keyword rich content and relevant incoming links will propel the blog, and a related website, to the top of the SERPs.

While it's always a better policy to own your own blog domain, don't be afraid of a free blog host, if you are short of cash.

Even a free hosted blog is highly powered in the search engines.

Wayne Hurlbert provides insigtful information about marketing, promotions, search engine optimization and public relations for websites and business blogs on the popular Blog Business World.

Blogger Seo Tips - Part 1

More people start to host their own blogs to make money online. It is more customizable, and lets you have more control, but it is more stress dealing with hosting payments, downtime and even stress every now and then. Blogger.com is the one who started it all, hosting more blogs than any service or personal blogs combined. Everyone has analyzed and optimized Wordpress to boost their rankings in every aspect, but left blogger/blogspot users looking for tips.

Welcome to Blogger Seo Tips Part 1. I will be covering what blogger settings you should choose before we start to optimize your blog.

Blogger Settings:

1. Title: Title of your blog, make it short and simple
2. Description: The description should include your keywords that you are aiming and should be a complete sentence.
3. Add your Blog to our listings?: YES
4. Show Email Post links?: NO; nobody uses them, they just lower your keyword density.
5. Send Pings: YES
6. Date Header Format: Choose the one with the less text, ex: “8.9.07″
7. Comments: Show, but delete the unrelated/short comments
8. Backlinks: Hide, no need to share your PageRank value, is there?
9. Enable Post Pages?: YES, so that each of your posts can attract different visitors
10. Archive Frequency: Weekly. Its better to have the least number of posts on a single page.

Recent Posts and Recent Comments at Sidebar

Many from bloggers wish insatlling the widget of Recent post and Recent post at sidebar, and for this matter is several blogger creating recent post and recent comment widget by javascript, However i think that is not good for your blog SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Besides not good to SEO, installation javascript risk to slow down your blog loading, so that matter it's can make your visitor don't feel balmy.
To install recent post and recent comments, be in fact you can use your blog feed address. this is the address of Recent Post :

http://YourBlogName.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

And this is the address of Recent Comments :

http://YourBlogName.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default

YourBlogName must be alter with your blog name. For example :

this is my Recent Post address :

http://rohman-freeblogtemplate.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

And this is my Recent Comments address :

http://rohman-freeblogtemplate.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default


Still compused to install this feed adress to your blog. Please follow the steps :

1. Login to blogger with your ID
2. After entering the dasboard page , click Layout. Please saw the picture :

3. Click at Page Element tab. See the picture below :

4. Click at Add a Page element.
5. After emerging pop up window , Klik add to blog button for the things Feed. See the picture following :

6. After that, Insert your fedd URL (URL feed post for Recent posts or URL feed comment for recent comments). Example :

7. Click Continue button.
8. Then alter the title with Recent Post for recent post widget or Recent Comments for recent comments widget. Example :

9. Click SAVE CHANGES button.
10. Move that element where you want, and then click SAVE button.
11. Finish. Please see the result.

Google Adsense Ads Custom Font

Now Google Adsense has many new features such as Adsense for feed, Adsense for domain, and font customization for Adsense as text.

Adsense for Feed allows us to get more earnings from our feed readers such as Google Reader and more. Adsense for domain is for those who have an unused domain. You can place Adsense on the domain, and for those who used to play in Domain parking, will know more about Adsense for domain.

When you create Adsense for content in the form of text or image, usually you can only customize the Adsense format, Adsense color, and corner style (rounded or square). There is a newest feature that you can customize in Adsense for content. You can customize the font of your Adsense text. With this font customization, you can fit your Adsense font with the text font of your blog, it will make your Adsense in harmony with your blog so that the readers will be much interested in clicking your Adsense, and dollars will be closer to your pocket.

Happy optimizing your Adsense!

What First Impression Does Your Blog Give Off?

First impressions last, or so they say. To be fair, first impressions do not always stand the test of time. There are times when first impressions are false and perceptions change through time. But then again, when talking about your blog and new readers, would you take the risk of not converting a first time visitor to a returning one merely because of a so so first impression? I thought not.

So, have you taken a look at your blog lately? I mean really LOOK – from an outsider’s point of view. What impression does it give off? If you cannot answer that objectively, you might want to take on the help of other people who would be able to give you constructive criticism.

When doing so, try to look at a few important points.

Does your blog layout look messy?
Does it seem like the elements were put together hastily? Try to determine whether this is what other people see and if so, do something about. Trim your blog, clean it up – do whatever you need to get a tight look.

Does your blog look spammy?
Messy I can still take. But at the first signs of spamminess, I pack my bags and hit the high road – and I bet a lot of other people do so as well. Choose your ads tastefully and place them in strategic locations without sacrificing the essence of your blog.

Does your blog look too plain?
This might be a matter of preference but I think that there are a lot of readers out there who would like to have some visual aids complementing the text. If you find your blog looking like a 1000-page novel, it might be prudent to consider adding splashes of color and photos here and there.

These may seem trivial to some but they can make a difference as to whether or not someone decides to return and pay you another visit.

Tweet Your Way To More Traffic

Twitter has been around for quite some time and it has garnered a humongous amount of followers. Indeed, it has become so widespread that the core concept has already been “copied.” You now have Plurk and other similar social platforms operating around the same idea. If Twitter has been able to achieve such heights of success, then it must be doing something right, right?

I have to say this right now – I have been using Twitter for a year or so but I have not really optimized it in such a way as to benefit my personal blogs. The fact is that, perhaps like many other people, I started using Twitter because everybody else I knew was using it. Recently, however, I have begun to realize that there is something more to Twitter than micro-blogging.

I have been seeing and following a lot of other people on Twitter who seem to know how to use Twitter for more constructive purposes other than telling the world what they ate for breakfast or what they are doing over the weekend. One example is how some people put their blog URL or the URL of a specific post on their Tweet. The logical result is that people who see their Tweet would click on the link, hence bringing traffic to their site.

Another thing that I can think of is that there are more people in Twitter than people you actually know who you can encourage to visit your blog. While not everyone who stumbles upon your blog through Twitter will keep coming back for more, it is a good way to expand your readership.

What other ways can Twitter help your blog? Care to share your own experiences?

Video Blog The 4 SEO Factors

Monday’s video post is up. On this one I did a quick SEO review of the factors that you need to have in place on single post pages.

Here is a quick summary of what I covered:

• On most blogs, the single post pages are the most important ones as far as search engine traffic is concerned
• That is because the bulk of the organic traffic will go there, since you can target very specific keywords and optimize the page elements more efficiently there
• The first thing to keep in mind is that the full content should appear only on the single post page itself
• The second factor is the title tag, which should be dynamic and concise.
• The third factor is the permalink structure, which should be based on words, and should not use weird characters or unnecessary information
• Finally, you should also make sure that the title of your posts are using an H1 tag

dailyblogtips.com

Blog Promotion: SEO Tools

The process of Search engine optimization tools is one that takes place when a certain type of material is put through a process and the resulting is another totally different substance. The same is the case with computer SEO tools this form of SEO tools requires that a certain type of binary code data is implemented into human written contents and similarly that human language is used and reused in the form of keywords so that the machine can read and execute any and all commands that are put by the user. SEO tools used by a computer expert take place by the use of special software that is made up and integrated into the computer main frame or mother board.
These days the world of all types of industry runs through the basic function of having web sites and proper advertisement and marketing strategies. This is a very good way of getting the web site to gain popularity and also making a good profit. The way companies use the internet to market their products and services is by sending emails and offers regarding their products to all people. These days having an email id is the trend and every one who is any one has one. The web sites will take a list of annual email addresses and send automated offer and other information emails to people’s inboxes this type of emailing is called Spamming or junk mailing. The term SEO tools are used to refer to types and patterns which are used to include valuable information regarding your web site. The only biggest difference that lies between other techniques of SEO tags and other types of SEO tools is just that techniques are known to be placed between the already existing works that are of the search or results page. A wide array of differences and other Search Engine Optimization and tools would now be available so that a person can include page-related types of information, however they are only two of them, the first is the keyword type density and the second is the description type content, these are the most important from SEO tools perspective.

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