These are some tips/tricks that i gathered about various aspects of blogging. I have tried to make things clear by including links to previously posted articles and outside links.
When to start a blog?
I have seen so many people starting blogs to make money, I think if you just want to make money from your website and you don’t have enough interest in the subject then Don’t start a blog, start a stuff website instead.
To make money, Stuff websites do much better than blogs.
Still if you think you have passion for the subject and can write about that. Go ahead and start blogging.
How to find Content for your Blog ?
Finding content for your blog is not that hard, whats hard is giving it your own touch and adding something new to it. You can include images and illustrations to make blog posts interesting.
Top 3 sources where i get news from are:-
Here is a list of Top Tech. Websites and Blogs that i read. You can see Top 500 folders in bloglines to get links of some most popular weblogs on the internet.
You can join forums and discussions groups related to your blog subject. I am member of many Technology forums, where i regularly read and post.
Making your blog popular ?
Ok , so your blog is finally up. Now you need Backlinks. Backlinks are very important in Search Engine Optimization, especially in Google Optimization. SEarch engine ranking of a website is decided by the number of backlinks.
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Link Exchange
The search engine page rank of your website is decided by the number of incoming links from other quality websites. You can ask your friends to link to your website from their websites. Or you can use reciprocal links . You can use various SEO forums to search for people intersted in Link Exchange.
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Social Networking Websites
There are two ways to get traffic to your website, either readers reach you or you reach them. Social networking websites is great way to reach readers and let them know about your content.
Submit your articles to social networking websites Don’t hesitate, if you think you have written something unique. Submit it to social networking websites. I often submit my blog posts to Blogg-Buzz and Stumbleupon .
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Wikipedia
Very few people try this but i think Wikipedia is a great source of quality backlinks. If you think your website is based on a very unique topic and there is a wiki running on that topic, you can try including your link in the External Links section of that wiki.
Note: Don’t spam wikipedia entries. Wikipedia users and editors are very and intelligent and only quality links are there to stay.
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Offer Something Unique
To attract users you need to offer something unique. Make a wordpress theme, plugin, script or anything that you think others will like.
I made my first Wordpress theme Punjab, which is downloaded over 1000 times and i got tens of quality backlinks.
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Break News
If you find something interesting that is not yet submitted to digg and other social networking website, first write an article about that news on your blog, add your own touch to it.
Include a link to where you find the news from and then submit your post to digg and other social networking websites.
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Create Lists
Most of the top bloggers agree that lists do well to attract visitors toward your post. Lists do well because instead of wandering through different websites users get everything in one place. Also lists are often backlinked from other blogs and forums. Read my post on Creating lists to get Traffic .
- Share with Top Blogs
Have you ever found something interesting and next day seen the same thing posted on Lifehacker or Slashdot homepage??
All top blogs want to post about new interesting news/websites/articles.
If you find something interesting, share it with other popular blogs. if they like your idea and publish that, They will include a backlink to your website.
Most people think that the email you send to top websites and bloggers are not read because they get hundreds of emails daily. According to my experience these top bloggers not only read your emails but also reply to them.
- Use Technorati Tags
Technorati tags is a cool way to get traffic from technorati, tagjag and other similar websites. There are many plugins available for technorati tagging for wordpress and other platforms. Two most common are Ultimate Tag warrioor and simple tags.
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Feed Submissions
Many blog tracking websites use RSS feeds to get latest content from websites.
You can submit your website’s RSS feed to various Feed Directories. List of all famous feed directories and links to their submission pages can be found here and here
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Blog Directories
Submit your blog to various blog directories. This is an easy way to get backlinks. You can search for Blog directories on google.
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Google Sitemaps
Here i am not talking about general sitemaps. I am talking about XML sitemaps, its a Protocol that allows you to inform search engines about URLs on your websites that are available for crawling. a Sitemap that uses the Sitemap Protocol is an XML file that contain links to all your posts and pages that you want the search engine to crawl and include in its database.
You can use Google Sitemap Generator Plugin for wordpress to generate sitemaps for you wordpress blog. Then you have to verify your website and submit your sitemaps to google. You can do that through https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps .
Always keep an eye on your blog stats to know where your visitors are coming from. You can use Google Analytics or Stat Counter to monitor blog stats.
Is Google Pagerank significant ???
I don’t think so..
* The last PR update could have been months ago.
* The number we see is not the real PR of a web page.
* PR can actually be stolen or faked.
* PR is only a small part of the entire algorithm.
* PR0 (PageRank zero) is not necessarily a bad thing.
* PR is not always passed from one page to another.
* PR doesn’t always pass its full value to another page.
* PR is sometimes estimated.
Google HoneyMoon Period
Every new blooger must know about Google honeymoon period. Google Honeymoon” , is the period 24-48 hours after producing a new web page where it first ranks in the Google search index. For the next 2-4 weeks the page will rank particularly highly and then drop back to whatever is normal for the website.
As explained by Yaro Starak, the honeymoon period occurs so Google can collect data on how relevant your pages are for those keywords.
Adsense Tips
1. See my post on Precautions for Adsense Publishers.
If you reload your website pages again and again. And if these pages contain Google Ads, each time your reload your page, you make a request to Google Ads Server for a new set of ads.
Google is unaware that you are testing your website and it might even penalize your account for “click-fraud” since the IP requesting ads remains same. And if in the worst-case scenario, you might accidently click on your own ads.
2. Increase adsense revenue by beautifying Adsense Ads with Adsense Beautifier wordpress plugin.
Adsense Tricks
1. Offer facility to translate your blog in different languages toIncrease Adsense revenue by 200%.
2. Filter and Remove Made for Adsense ads to increase Cost Per Click.
3. Check adsense earnings from Wordpress and from Desktop.
Tips for Wordpress Users
Wordpress users see the list of Wordpress Plugins i use and recommend.
Tackle Plagiarism
Ok, so now your website is popular and some idiot has copied your content without permission. Keep these things in mind.
1. Make your Copyright policy clear. Write about your copyright policy on a seperate page or post and include a link to that post in your Overall blog footer or sidebar.
2. Find Out who’s copying your blog - Copyscape is a plagiarism detection website dedicated to defending your rights online, helping you fight against online plagiarism and content theft. Copyscape finds sites that have copied your content without permission, as well as those that have quoted you.
3. If someone steals your content, follow these articles by Lorelle and Darren. These articles covers tips, information and resources to help you deal with copyright infringement.
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Posted on November 9, 2006
thanks for the tips dude. by the way, i hope you can include your name in the post next time so that it’s easy for us to contact. Thanks for the great tips again.