When it comes to blogging, there are some decisions to be made related to our domain names. First of all, we have to decide where we want to host our website. For example, if we decide to host our site on Blogspot, then our domain name will look like this: domain.blogspot.com. On the other hand, if we choose a custom domain, then we can completely customize our domain name. We will also not be forced to use �blogspot�, �wordpress�, or any other word in our blog address. Custom domain cost money, but some sites can teach you how to have an extra income to cover the costs of your domains.
Being hosted on a custom domain name is generally considered to be a better solution, but why are there still many successful blogs that are hosted on Blogspot? I believe that they did not switch to a custom domain name, because they did not want to lose their domain age and back links. If that happened, this would mean that from a SEO perspective they would have to start from the beginning. Since accumulating links can take a long time, changing a domain is not an easy decision to make.
Another aspect to consider may be growing registration fees. The registration fees for domain names are generally getting higher, as VeriSign quite often raises the prices. VeriSign raised the prices at least two times since 2006, so some analysts are getting alarmed by this trend. I think that the prices are still relatively low, as the cost of hosting is the major expense for webmasters. This especially applies to those with a lot of traffic and downloadable resources such as videos, audio, and software. VerisSign claims that the .com and .net infrastructures are continually being fortified against more sophisticated cyberattacks, so let us hope that this company will spend the extra money it is receiving on security.
The decision whether to switch to a custom domain will ultimately be up to you, so consider all facts before making a final decision.
If you like implementing videos on your blog, you might be interested in the feature I am going to discuss. Some time ago Adsense introduced a feature called video units that allows its users to embed a YouTube video on one�s blog. This allows to make money from ads being displayed along with the videos.
If the videos you embedded on your website are relevant to the topic of your blog, this feature will allow you to make some extra cash, while at the same time not distract your visitors from other content. You can be always sure that the ads displayed will be relevant to the video and they will be non-intrusive. Additionally, you will be able to blend your YouTube videos into your blog by customizing the color and layout, as well as choosing from a few different player sizes.
Of course, whether you will really benefit from videos on your blog depends on your blog’s niche. Some blogs can greatly benefit from YouTube videos like, for example, entertainment blogs. It might not be that easy to find suitable videos for a niche like blogging. However, since there are millions of videos on YouTube, I am sure that every webmaster will be able to find some videos worth embedding on his blog. There are many videos that can either teach something valuable or simply video that are entertaining. Whenever you implement a video on your blog make sure that your website loads quite fast. Many webmasters make a mistake of adding to many elements to their blog that take too long to load.
A lot of bloggers struggle to post on a daily basis on their blog. However, you do not need to post on a daily basis to be a successful blogger. What is important is that you should post on a regular basis, and that you should find your blogging rhythm. Here are a few tips which should guide you in the right direction:
-Consider your niche and type of blog. How often are your competitors posting? The ideal posting frequency might be once per week or even a few times per day. The posting frequency might depend on your niche. If you are a news blogs then you might need to post many posts per day.
-Be consistent. Try to establish a consistent posting rhythm, so that your readers will know when to anticipate your next post. You may decide, for example, to post on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.
-Start out slow. Make sure you do not put unnecessary burden on yourself. It might take some time before you will get used to writing posts every day. Once you will be more experienced it will be a lot easier for you to write posts.
-Monitor your readerships response. Do your visitors enjoy your current posting frequency? Look for any signs you might not be posting often enough. On the other hand, maybe you are posting too much and it is hard for most of your readers to keep up?
You will have to make the decision yourself, so take into account all of the aspects.
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.
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.
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.
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.
An efficient way to analyze many aspects of your blog is to use a stat tracking tool. Such tools measure not only how many visitors come to your website, but also provide a lot of additional information like length of visit, geographical location, keywords used to reach the site, referring websites, and other data. Such information can be used in a multitude of ways, but let me give you an example. Let us say that you are analyzing keywords used by people using search engines to reach your site. Take notes of different terms being used to find your website and you will be often amazed how they reached you. Now that you know what the readers are interested in, you can even try to write posts on some of the topics that are related to the keywords being used, because you know that your readers have interest in it. Furthermore, one of the best aspects of such tracking tools is that most of them are completely free. What you should keep in mind that it may take some time to properly analyze all of the data. It is important not to make any hasty decisions based on your observations, and to take your time while studying the data.
Very often I see blogs created by people who have the potential of being great bloggers, but somewhere on the way they make a couple of mistakes and unfortunately fail as bloggers. Many of those people quit blogging aster some time, because they realize that they are not that successful. Here are some mistakes that you should avoid making:
-Choosing a topic that you do not like. If you do not like the topic, there is also a big chance that there are other people who are a lot more knowledgeable about the subject. Choose a topic about which you are fascinated about.
-Quitting prematurely. A person should know when to quit, but you should not quit before you put some work into marketing. You should wait at least a few weeks or even months in order to see whether your blog is getting more popular.
-Not making friends. You need other fellow bloggers as friends. You should especially try to have some contact with prominent bloggers in your niche. They can help you and guide you in the right direction.
-Not believing in yourself. Believe in yourself that your blog will be a success. If you do not believe in yourself, others may not believe in you as well.
In this post I want to discuss practicing writing skills. I am not talking about just any writing techniques, but about the ability to sell your content. Let us imagine that you are listening to an audio advertisement. In this audio advertisement the announcer usually only has a short time to present the message that is supposed to attract customers to the product he is referring to. When it comes to our blogs we do not have any time limit to put our message across, as we can write as much as we want. However, it is generally better to keep our posts concise so that our readers will benefit the most without spending too much time reading a very long message. I suggest practicing writing short posts that are supposed to present some value to the reader. You may later read them yourself in order to examine if the message is really as valuable as you hoped it to be. A successful blogger needs to write in a way that is interesting to his readers, so that is why practice is essential. Another important aspect is the ability to understand your reader base. What are the interests on your visitors? What makes them excited? Those are the questions you should know the answers to.