From time to time, I like visiting a particular blog that I could describe as very successful. This blog mainly discusses the topic of blogging. What I found interesting is that in one of his articles he listed all of the things he has never done to promote his blog. These included no feedcount, no guest blogging, no guest posts on blog, no contests, no paid advertising, no incentives (this means no eBooks, free reviews, or gifts of any sort), no Digg frontpages, and no frequent posting. This was a very surprising information as it shows that he did not use many different methods to promote his blog, yet he has a lot of visitors. I still wonder however how he achieved such a success. It seems that there is no consensus on how to achieve a large number of visitors. However, there are some things you can work on to increase the number of visitors. I believe that organizing and maintaining a blog is not an easy task, and that is why I want to give you some SEO advice:
-Optimize your blog properly. Your blog should be optimized first for users, then for search engines, and later possibly for monetizing it. My advice is that you look for a template that will have a white background.
-Change your permalinks so that they look as follows: /%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/. This will make your permalinks more search engine friendly, and visitors searching for particular keywords will be directed to your post.
-Manage RSS feeds. RSS is a very good way to help your content read the data from your blog. I personally am quite familiar with FeedBurner.com; however, if you want you can also try OnlyWire.com and Technorati.com. To let the search engines know that you posted a message on your blog, use such free services like PingOMatic.com and Pingoat.com.
Blog, Health, Personal, Web
One of the most basic rights is the right of free speech. However, it seems that some countries want to censor the blogosphere. Do not worry, if you live in United States or Europe, you have nothing to worry about. However, for all of the Russians or Chinese this might be a real problem. From time to time we hear some news about the desire of these countries to censor the blogosphere. As an example, I can give you a discussion held in Russia some time ago about creating a Russian computer network, one that would be separate from the Internet. It would also at large be much easier for the authorities to control. This is mostly due to political reasons. However, as a blogger I just want to say that I strongly believe in the right of free speech, and I think that such behavior is unacceptable. I think that free media is very important, and that other bloggers will agree with me as well. Officials from some countries argue that they do not want various websites to spread lies about their countries, or political system. However, citizens should have the right to express themselves, even if for some reason they are not correct. The great thing about the Internet is that it is easy for anyone to express his opinions. One of the best ways to do it is to have a blog and that is why blogging is becoming more popular with each passing day.
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Do you sometimes wonder whether participating in contests is a good idea or just a waste of time? So far I have participated in quite a few contests. Different contests have different entry requirements. I am not going to write about those contests that require entrants to pay a certain amount of money, because I do not think participants should be charged for such things.
The contests I am usually participating in do not have high requirements, although the exception was one contest where ten highest ranked posts written by ten different bloggers were winning an award. All of the winners of that particular contest put a lot of work into writing their posts.
Generally, I am more interested to participate in contests that will give me something valuable for my blog, like a link back, or directed traffic. I especially like if the organizer promises to link back to each participant just for entering the event.
I am almost always avoiding contests that have high entry requirements, and want me to do at least a few things like leave a comment, subscribe to RSS feed, write a post, and so on. Additionally, if there are many participants, and there will be only one winner, then do not get your hopes up too high.
To sum up, I would like to say that the right contests can be really great. Simply participate in contests you are interested in, and make sure you have a chance to win.
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There are various ways to promote a blog, but one of the most important things is to receive backlinks. I would like to show you some ideas which could result in you receiving a lot of backlinks. Here they are:
-Organize a massive blogroll exchange on your website. Invite everyone to participate, and explain why it is a good idea to exchange links with you. You might mention that while you might not able to exchange links with everyone, you will exchange links with those who respond first. You should make it clear that the more established a blog is, the bigger its chances of getting listed on your site. You can start the post with questions such as “Do you want more traffic to your blog?”, “Do you want some powerful links pointing back to your blog?”, or “Would you like to see your link added to my blogroll?”
-Another idea is to give away money. It does not even have to be a lot, as people will be satisfied with any amount if they receive it for free. You can ask them to write about your site or about yourself. Refer them to any pages which might contain more information. You should ask them to link to your site in their post, and later comment on your post to let you know that they want to participate in the contest. You should also let your readers know at what date you will announce the winners.
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There are millions of blogs out there. While bloggers communicate with their readers with written language, I am wondering how attractive it would be for readers to view videos of bloggers speaking on various subjects. Qik Video Streaming allows streaming videos from mobile phones, and such content could appear on blogs or related sites like Facebook. I am pretty sure that video streaming blogs will not replace traditional blogs. On the other hand, I am also pretty sure that some bloggers will want to integrate video streaming to some degree. Qik Video Streaming has a latency of around 1-2 seconds, so it is pretty efficient. Time will tell how popular it will become. While it may not become very popular within a year or two, I think that video streaming will gain on popularity when fast broadband connections will be even more accessible. Many Internet users have download limits set by their Internet service providers so they cannot download as much data as they would like. However, this is also likely to change and this is one of the reasons why video streaming might gain on popularity in the future. Of course, it does not mean that regular blogs will disappear.
Blog, Tech, Web
Blogging requires a lot of dedication, so over the course of time, you might have abandoned one of your blogs. Maybe months might have passed and you did not add any new content. You barely receive any visitors, and have very few RSS subscribers. Is it worth restarting such a dormant blog? I believe it might be a good idea for a few reasons:
-This blog will have an older domain. Older domains seem to be more trusted by search engines. This means that your articles might get ranked higher in search engines.
-Existing back links are another reason why restarting your old blog is a good idea. Relevant back links often lead to increased traffic. Old blogs often have a lot of links coming from various sources.
-Existing subscribers. If you create a new domain, in the beginning you are not going to have any subscribers. Even if you currently have very few RSS subscribers left, at least you will have a few loyal readers from the start. Of course, if your blog has been abandoned for a very long time, then there might not be many subscribers left.
I think that there is no doubt that there are many advantages to restarting a dead blog.
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It appears there are a lot of sites offering free templates for WordPress. Of course, you can modify them to make them suitable to your needs. I found many websites that have templates. I do not know if everybody would want to choose their new theme based on one of the templates offered on these websites, but from what I found out, some of them look very pretty, while others seem to be more practical. That is why you can find a template for yourself, no matter what your requirements are. If you want a pretty template, which might not have many columns or places for widgets, you will be able to find one. On the other hand, there are also some templates that do not offer almost any graphics but there is a lot of space for text and other elements such as calendar, archives and link exchanges. Anyway, these are great places to look for templates if you want to start a new blog or maybe just change the current theme you have. You might also simply add some elements from the templates, as you might get some interesting ideas how to enhance your own template after viewing so many attractive themes. Make sure you choose an original template, so that your blog will not look exactly the same as many other blogs.
Blog, Tech, Web
Did you know that you can post blog entries by email? If you have a mobile phone that enables you to send email messages to your account, then you can also use it to post your messages on your blog remotely. Even if this is just a standard cellular phone, it will still work, but you will be somehow limited. Whenever you are on holidays and think that there is something that you would like to add to your post or write a new one, you can easily do so. You will be limited on how long your post will be as usually in one SMS you will be able to send maximum 2-3, maybe 4 sentences. You can always send a few messages that will make a longer post as a whole, but you will need to edit them into one larger post.
Another way you can utilize your email is to take advantage out of the very useful option to receive RSS by email. Feedburner allows it, and since most people use emails, it is very convenient because your readers will not need to download any other programs including RSS readers. I also want to give you a hint how to properly count your RSS by email subscriber amount. I am talking about a situation where a person subscribes to your feed, but after some time does not check your messages anymore. The question is how can you estimate how many subscribers are really active and reading your posts. The answer is surprisingly short, as Feedburner has an integrated tracking image in all emails, which means that if the subscriber does not open the email by a set amount of time, the subscriber will be removed from the RSS count. As you see, emails can help you in managing your blog.
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Webmasters know the the appearance of their website is very important. Did you ever wanted to know how search engines view your site? If that is the case, then you might be pleased to hear that there is a tool that might help you with that. Seo-browser.com is a quite innovative browser that offers a lot of information about any website you wish to check. It displays information from a search engine point of view, which means you will be able to see such details as page loading time, number of links, detection of robots.txt, number of cookies, number of frames, IP address, and many more. You can use a lot of this information to make your website more compatible, and you can also check if search engines detect the elements you want them to. Remember to switch analysis mode to advanced if you wish to see all of the details.
These days there are so many browsers that it is important to have a template that is compatible with all major browsers. Otherwise, your website is not going to look professional and because of that your site might be receiving less traffic. After all, there are users out there that use Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, and Google Chrome among others. It is important to know that your site loads properly no matter what browser is used. I am sure that both computer advanced users and those who just created their first website will appreciate this tool.
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If you are looking for a way to drastically improve your Technorati rank, multiply the amount of RSS readers you have, and expose you to new blogs; I encourage you to participate in link and feed exchange programs. Having higher rankings and more readers will result in being more respected in the blogosphere. This in turn will give you even more traffic. I am going to give an example of how such a program can work.
The idea behind it is simple. It is based on the premise that all bloggers want readers and link backs. So how does it work? You simply copy a list on your blog. This results in link backs for your blogging friends. If a particular program is also a feed exchange, you then click the RSS feed link to subscribe to all of them. Then you add yourself or even a few other bloggers and their feeds to the end of the list. You then publish it on your blog. The reason such programs can be so successful is because the news of such an exchange will spread very fast on the blogosphere. Just imagine if 10 people would do this, and later 10 more after them. That would result in your blog obtaining 100 link backs and 100 feed subscribers.
Participating in such programs have various advantages and it is a great way to get exposure for a blog. Usually even new blogs are allowed to participate so every new blogger should consider participating.
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