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Submitting your website to different blog directories is an excellent way to increase your website’s Page Rank and to attract new readers. If you want to be a successful blogger, it is very important to have your website listed in many places. Each submission will give you a backlink, and each backlink will increase the popularity of your blog.

It might even take a couple of days/weeks to submit your blog to many directories, as there is really a lot of them. It is unfortunate that a lot of directories that are still being discussed on the blogosphere no longer exist, are not accepting registrations, or you have to pay to be included there. I would like to share the result of my work with you by providing a list of directories. They should be up to date, and are free unless something has changed recently. A lot of bloggers are submitting their sites to them, and they are generally considered to be a great place to be listed. Some of them will require your blog to have at least a few posts, in order to eliminate blogs which may not last a long time. Here is the list of the directories: technorati.com, findory.com, blogflux.com, blogarama.com, bloogz.com, globeofblogs.com, blogdigger.com, 2rss.com, blogstreet.com, bloghop.com, icerocket.com, readablog.com, weblog-index.com, bloggernow.com, fuelmyblog.com, blog-search.info, findingblog.com, blogintro.com, blog-search.com, blogdir.co.uk, lsblogs.com, 5starblogs.com, daytimenews.com/submit-rss-feed.aspx, blogmad.net, nodp.info, blogcatalog.com.

Please note that the order of the list is completely random. While some directories may cease to exist at some point, or do not allow registrations, I hope that most of them will be accepting registrations for a long time. Feel free to leave a comment recommending any other blog directories you think are worth being listed here.

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As you probably know, being a blogger requires a lot of work. This not only applies to professional bloggers. A blogger has a multitude of things to work on: ideas for posts, marketing, website design, link exchanges etc. This time I would like to give you some advice on making your CSS more organized. For those who are wondering what CSS is, let me tell you that CSS is responsible for a lot of customizability when it comes to your website. You can change the font, colors, default paragraphs, and so on. In any case, to make your CSS more organized, visit www.htmlhelp.com/tools/csscheck/, input the location of your style sheet (CSS), and run a report that gives a feedback on your code. It will give warnings for any potential elements that might cause problems. In most cases when you use a popular template, then you should not have any error. However, sometimes even if you use a popular template you might want to do some changes, and if that is the case then something can always go wrong. By using such CSS tools you can make sure that your style sheet file does not contain any errors. Additionally, such tools can be very useful for web designers who create templates on a daily basis.

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It is important to have links pointing to your site from other people’s blogs. Such links will not only contribute to higher Page Rank, but can also bring a lot of targeted traffic. There are at least a few ways you can try to obtain such links. Your site will benefit from them, so here is what you can do:

-Submit your blog to as many directories as possible.
-Submit your articles to free article directories.

The process of submitting your blog and articles can and will be time consuming. However, there is a solution to this problem. You can purchase the appropriate software that will do it for you automatically. This will cost you some money, but if you are dedicated to blogging it will not be a problem. Additionally, if your blog generates some money, your investment will surely not be wasted. It will still take you some time to register in order to submit your articles, but you will only have to do it once. The same applies to web directory submission. Many programs already have directories listed in their database for your convenience. I know there are many webmasters taking advantage out of such software, and they claim that it is worth it.

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If you are a blogger having a WordPress blog, you may want to insert a picture in your post from time to time. You might want to do that in order to make your blog more attractive to visitors. It might happen that some of your friends will send you an image that they will ask you to post on your blog. However, sometimes you might be surprised that the image is so big that it does not fit very well in your post. You should remember that you can always resize an image. To do so, go to your draft and left click on this picture once. You will see that it is surrounded by black frame with a few black dots. Move your cursor on one of those dots and wait until your cursor changes into double headed arrow. If it does, then hold left mouse button and drag it in order to make it smaller. Integrating images is a great idea, but try to remember not to make them too big. Another important thing that you should remember is to make sure your blog loads within a few seconds. In other words, do not upload too many images, or those visitors that use dial-up will have a hard time browsing your site. Images can make your blog look better, but you also have to take into account the loading time of your blog. There are some websites on the Internet that can help you measure that.

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CAPTCHA is very often used as a method to reduce the number of spam comments on websites. It is a way to verify that the person who leaves a comment is real, and is not an automated script. For those who do not know, CAPTCHA is a type of challenge-response test used in computing to determine whether the user is human. “CAPTCHA” is an acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”, and it is often incorporated it in a way that visitors have to type the letters of a distorted image. Most spam comments are posted by bots or programs which are specifically designed for spamming. They automatically visit sites on the Internet to look for places where it is possible to submit comments. They do this in order to post unwanted advertisements of websites or services. One of the best ways to stop these bots is to use the CAPTCHA system which requires the visitor to write down the letters that he sees. Since computer programs do not know how to analyze images, only humans will be able to decipher the letters. While some CAPTCHA’s have been broken like phpBB’s, it is still a very good method to avoid scripts spamming forums or other websites. A lot of sites are recently adding the CAPTCHA verification system. I think that this will not make them necessarily less enjoyable to visit, but will rather prevent spammers and hackers. However, when using CAPTCHA it is important to make it readable to for average person. After all, we want to stop bots from visiting our site, not our loyal visitors.

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More and more people on the Internet listen to podcasts. For those who do not know, podcasts are similar to blog posts. The difference is that podcasts are in audio format. More technically speaking, a podcast is a collection of digital media files that are distributed over the Internet. It often uses syndication feeds for playback on portable media players and personal computers. Podcasts have become more and more popular, and some believe this is due to iPods. That is because iPods allow its users to listen to thousands of audio and video podcasts. In any case, if you want to compete with the best websites in your niche, you might consider using podcasts to gain an edge over your competitors. All you have to do is use the podPress plug-in that you can find on wordpress.org. This plug-in enables you to incorporate podcasts without making any serious changes to your site. There are many advantages of podcasts, but the biggest one is that you can speak directly to your readers or rather listeners.

One downside of podcasting is that not everyone knows how to subscribe to podcasts. However, once people get the hang of it, they usually really enjoy it a lot. They might even become fans because they will like them so much. If you want to add a personal feeling to your blog, at least consider the possibility of integrating podcasts. You might start by listening to some of the popular podcasts on the Internet in order to get inspired.

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Designing a blog template requires a lot of knowledge and skill. Even if we use finished templates, there is still a lot of work to do associated with designing our site. That is because we should try to make some changes so that our website will not look exactly like hundreds of other blogs. Sites that look more original are generally more valued over the Internet. There are many website elements that we may want to incorporate into our site to make it look more original, but the one that I want to discuss today are drop-down menus. These dropdown menus are html elements that upon clicking reveal a set of internal or external links. It sounds really fun, but in my opinion, we should generally avoid having such elements. That is because many visitors may not choose to click on the drop-down menu, and they will not visit the links we included there. We should encourage visitors to visit our links, not make it harder for them. It is true that people prefer more simple solutions, and giving them an option to choose from a drop-down menu, might only cause some unnecessary trouble. If you want to add any links on your website, try to keep it as simple as possible, and avoid complicated elements like drop-down menus.

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On this website I give advice about blogging and about a variety of Internet topics. One of the key aspects of blogging is having your domain and hosting associated with it. If you want your blog to look professional, you need to choose an established and successful hosting provider that you will be able to depend on. There is nothing worse then investing a lot of your time in your blog and then realizing that your site is not working properly or is even down, because of your hosting provider. There have been cases where hosting providers suddenly vanished, either because of debt, or because they did not have profits. That is why you should be careful choosing your hosting provider and should ask other webmasters what they think about a specific company. You may even want to visit a website that discusses Web hosting, because you can never be too careful choosing a web hosting provider for your blog. You should always ask whether the uptime is guaranteed and what is the bandwidth limit. Basically, you jsut want to make sure that your blog will continue to work without any interruptions, even if you will decide to host larger files like audio or videos.

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There are various community exchanges that are getting organized all the time. Did you ever consider organizing a community exchange? Let us say that you want to organize a MyBlogLog community exchange. If you are interested in gaining a lot of traffic and increasing the number of readers you have, this can be a very good opportunity for you.

You should start by listing a dozen or so websites along with the link to their MyBlogLog community page, and notifying them about it. You should also inform them about the rules of participating in the exchange. Let them know that they should join all of the MyBlogLog communities on the list. They should also copy the list and create a new post on their blog. They should include the list in their post, and write a brief paragraph that explains the rules of the community exchange. They can add two or three more MyBlogLog communities to the list, and then publish the post on their blog. They should also indicate that if anyone wants to be added to this list, they should leave a comment requesting it.
Not only such exchange bring new readers to your website, but also increase your backlinks and can be a lot of fun.

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Online marketing has many strategies, one of which is keyword research. Blogs can often rank well in search engines due to their frequently updated content. This can bring a lot of visitors to your site. Another way to bring many visitors is to do some keyword research. This type of research will show you what people are searching for, and will maximize the potential the search engines have to bring traffic to your site. If you research what keywords are popular, then you will know what topics to focus on, and maybe you will even change the marketing strategy your blog has. Great tools with the help of which you will be able to research keywords are keyworddiscovery.com and wordtracker.com. Both of them are relatively easy to use so check out both of them in order to decide yourself which one you will want to stick to. I have to warn you that keyword research might take some time, but in the end it is worth it. After all, search engines are an excellent source of traffic for webmasters who optimize their site for them. I does not mean you have to makes drastic changes; however, being aware of the most popular keywords will surely give you an advantage over the competition. Investing some time into keyword research is certainly a good idea for any webmaster who wants to be successful. Using a powerful keyword research toll should save you a lot of time.

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