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May 16, 2013

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Blogging

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(Still) New to Blogging? Better Make Your Own WordPress Site Instead

With the rise of the blogger generation over the past few years, it is not possible that somepeople may still be new to the topic of making your own blog or website. Do you want to setup a blog but are not sure where to host it? There are certainly numerous options for you to choose from but we of course recommend using the WordPress platform to host your blog. User experience wise, it is completely free and it offers features that many blogs either do not have or do not have in abundance. Below are our reasons you should host your own blog using WordPress.

1 – You Own Your Blog

The number one reason to choose WordPress over the others for your blog is that with WordPress, you are in charge of what you want to feature, and how you want to do it. By downloading a number of useful plugins at WordPress.org, you can install them yourself on your own web server and then you are free to do whatever you want with the content.

2 – Easy Bookmarking and Social Media Integration

It is well known that WordPress is a preferred blogging platform for bookmarking sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit and for social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook. Blogger and other blogging platforms are not nearly as favored and WordPress has become somewhat of the global standard for social networking sites.

blog

3 – Easy Customization Via Themes

Hands down, WordPress far exceeds Blogger and other platforms with regard to the number and style of themes available to users.  There is a theme available for just about every style and themes are fairly easy to install. Just find the theme, click install, then click activate, and you’re done.

4 – Easier to go forth with Search Engine Optimization

WordPress far exceeds other platforms in regards to SEO. The program has a very robust built in system, and this can actually be improved via the use of additional SEO related plugins. SEO is very important if you want the right readers to find your site and the ability to optimize your site via SEO is among the most important things you can do to boost traffic.

5 – Blog Reselling

If your Blogger blog has become popular and you want to sell it to make money, you can do this. Google owns Blogger and does not permit the sale of Blogger sites. On the other hand, WordPress does not have restrictions when you host your own site. If your blog becomes popular and you want to sell out, you are free to do so.

6 – Mobile Customization

WordPress has perhaps the best options for mobile customization thanks to both plugins and themes available to users. Using the WPtouch plugin, simpler sites can be automatically rendered for most mobile devices. For those wanting to reach the greatest number of mobile users, a responsive design template is best for your site as your content will automatically re-size and rearrange based on the device it is being displayed on. You can check also check out an easy video tutorial on how to make a mobile friendly WordPress site, like this one, to know the steps on how you can do it yourself.

Lastly, having your own blog reflects on how you are moving forward with your passions in life. With a wide variety of topics to choose from, in time, who knows? Your blog might stand out among the rest of them all over the world. This is the most important factor that you have to consider, so feel free to explore and start making your own website instead.

 

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April 17, 2013

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SEO Tips

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How to get SEO Results

If you want to get some SEO results for your websites, it will be important to make sure that you take all the time you need to do the research which will enable you to make more money than ever before from your online business endeavors. There are going to be thousands of different tips that you will find on the internet about SEO work, but ultimately you will need to review the very best and start putting them into action as soon as possible.

Make the Commitment

One of the most important things that you can keep in mind when you are going about doing this type of work online is that it is a long term commitment, so that is exactly how you will want to look at it going on. As long as you are willing to make this kind of commitment, you should have no problem whatsoever improving your site over time. A lot of people end up failing miserably at SEO because they simply are not willing to make the kind of long term commitment which is required in order to truly succeed.

Build a Solid Website

Another one of the most important tips that you can possibly follow is to make sure that you build a good solid website, because that is ultimately what your success hinges on. As long as you have a good website with the kind of quality information/content that people are looking for in a specific niche, you will be able to do very well for yourself. The more time you spend working on your website(s) the better your chances will be of making a maximum amount of money from it. A lot of people make the mistake of quickly throwing together a site and then spend all their time trying to drive traffic to it, so make sure you avoid doing this completely.

The more tips like these you have the better your chances will be of getting guaranteed SEO results so you can finally start making the kind of money you have always wanted to while never having to leave the comfort of your own home. A lot of people do not even know how much potential there is in this type of work and in order to tap into it you will need to do some research and gather as many of these tips as possible or simply hire a SEO company in USA to do all the work for you while you reap the benefits.

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April 15, 2013

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Marketing

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Use Orbital Campaigns To Enhance Your Marketing Effort

Marketing though digital media such as TV and online has become incredibly popular over the last few years. A once flagging television advertising industry has recovered in part, thanks mainly to its incorporation of some of the viral techniques that have made online advertising so successful.

In business though, it is not enough just to have people talking about your advert, it’s conversions that matter. One way of improving conversions is to increase the ways in which consumers can interact with your brand, using a related campaign that encourages those who had their attention caught by your advert to take more notice of the company behind it.

So how do you do this? Orbital campaigns can consist of many different aspects that all use the theme of your advert to feed back into your company. A popular advert is nothing if nobody knows who produces it, so feeding off the buzz created by your ad is essential if your campaign is to be considered a success. Here are some ways of doing this:

Orbital campaigns

Create a Specialist Website

You might be able to create a great buzz from your campaign, but if the product you are trying to sell isn’t something that people would want immediately (insurance, for example) then they aren’t very likely to follow it up by clicking on to your website. If you create a special website that is specific to your campaign however it can be an effective way of driving consumer interest towards your brand and keeping you in their minds even after the end of the campaign.

This can then help to drive a secondary viral online campaign that will have your brand buzzing around the internet, not only securing more potential customers but also doing wonders for your internet marketing efforts.

Social Networking

Social networking has become a great way for businesses to interact with customers, and sites such as Facebook and Twitter provide companies with an effective way of connecting the marketing campaign with the brand. Pointing your customers in the direction of your business Twitter and Facebook accounts is as close as it comes to providing physical contact with your company over the internet, forging a community of people who have one thing in common, your brand. By getting people to “Like” you on Facebook, you will also be getting them to tell all of their “Friends” about your company and your campaign, opening yourself up to potentially thousands more people who will interact with your company.

Promotional Products

If you have created a campaign with memorable characters or catchphrases, using relevant promotional products and promotional gifts can be an effective way of capitalising on the success of your campaign. It is providing potential customers not only with a further interaction with your brand, but putting something physical into the hands of consumers who have only had a virtual relationship with your company up until that point.

Improving the interaction between those who are interested in your advertising campaign and your brand is a key way of increasing conversions. A popular advertising campaign is a great start, but orbital campaigns are vital if those who are interested are going to be convinced to buy from you.

When you are looking at your next big marketing and advertising campaign, make sure you go orbital to improve your chances of success.

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April 11, 2013

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Content

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My Topic Isn’t Unique. Should I Still Blog About It?

Question: I have an idea for a blog that is something I am really interested in. But there are already a lot of blogs, some of them really popular, on the same topic.  Should I even try?

First of all – YES!

But your question does bring up some questions of its own. Namely the big one – what is your goal in blogging?

Defining your goal is one of the keys to your happiness and sanity. If your goal is just to make money blogging, then you will get disappointed very quickly.  Building a blog up to the point where it creates a steady income takes years, and success is definitely not guaranteed. If on the other hand your goal is just to talk about what you are passionate about, and if it makes some extra income that’s great – you will find that a lot more rewarding.

Looking at a topic and finding heavy competition is definitely tough.  Think about all the blogs on how to do blogging. There are hundreds if not thousands of blogs on that topic, and many are written by the top powerhouses who have books, products, programs and more. But they all had to start somewhere.

What gives your blog its uniqueness isn’t only the topic – it’s your voice. You are unique. You have your own personal spin on what you are trying to say, and your own take on the information.  Two people given the same material and information will present it in two completely separate ways. And the one who presents it in the most unique way will probably come out on top.

Unique

I have written a book on a subject completely different than blogging. It was a grueling process. Every time I thought I was done, I took the chapter I just wrote, broke it in half and then added to it so each of those halves were its own chapter. Little by little I built up the book. It took over a year just to write!  I didn’t write the book because I was looking for a big pay-day. I didn’t write the book because I thought I “had to”. I wrote the book because I needed to.  Not needed as in money, needed as it was burning in my soul. Writers need to write!

By the same token – bloggers need to blog!  I consistently see people who have tried to start a blog and after a couple of months have given up. I don’t call them bloggers. There was no need for them to start their own blog. They started their blog because they thought it was just part of the process of making money. There was no passion.

If you wake up in the morning and feel you “have to” do a blog post today – do the Internet a favor and stop blogging now.

But if you are truly passionate about your topic – get out there and do it! Who cares if there are 10-20-200 blogs on the same topic out there… put your own spin on it. Participate on those other blogs (don’t forget to put your own website link in your signature or comment!) and enjoy talking about your topic your way and on your own terms.

Yes, if you want to grow your blog, eventually you will need to examine your processes, your visitors, advertisers, and all of the things that move your blog out of infancy to the next level. But you need to get your feet wet first, and if you are doing it just for the money – that money will probably never come.

Bottom line – it doesn’t matter how many blogs there are on a topic, if you enjoy the topic, enjoy writing about the topic, have your own voice, and don’t really care about the money right now – then you have a great start on a blog already. Get out there and start writing.

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January 11, 2013

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Ask the Blogger

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Where’s the best place for ad placement?

Question: Where is the absolute best place for ad placement?

Answer: wherever people see it!

Ok, that’s a bit of a non-answer. The real answer to this question has been debated for years. Web site designers have employed the use of heat maps and usability studies, meticulously crawled through the web site usage stats, and have tried to find a rhyme or reason to locate the best location for their advertisements on their web site. In fact, for every person who claims they know the best location, there is at least 1 more (and usually a hundred fold) saying the opposite is true.  So where do you start

Conventional wisdom tells us people scan webpages in an S pattern. Eyes start on the right, move toward the right, scan the page from left->right, and then back towards the left again making an “S” pattern from top to bottom of the web page.  Banner Blindness often occurs since large ads at the top of the page are so commonplace, so that spot is usually left for a run-of-network ad or internal promotion.

place for ad placement

Following this logic, the best place to put ads on your blog, and where you should put your highest affiliate links, will be immediately to the right of your content near the top of the page.  This is where the “S” starts.  You can also put ad blocks in your content, and immediately thereafter to capture the attention of the reader as they are reading or skimming your content.

Your website is unique, so your best locations may differ too. Don’t be afraid to experiment with different ad locations and keep track of clicks, earnings, or another means of figuring out where your ads better performed.  Even if you find the perfect location, there may be times where a particular ad underperforms or bombs altogether – its normal.

If you look at the design here on asktheblogger.com, you will see I have used this type of placement for the small, square graphics on the right hand side.  Yes, there is a banner ad at the top, but it is not the best performing ad.  In addition, after each blog post’s content, there is a larger rectangle of Google-served ads immediately following the article.

Where to place ads on your site depends a lot on your site’s main design, and even the habits of your users. Start with basic ad positions such as on the right hand side and under your content, and then continually test to find the best ad position for you. That is part of what makes blogging fun – finding what works for you.

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January 5, 2013

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Ask the Blogger

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What Is a PR Rank?

Question: What does [it] mean by blog rank PR 1/ 2 / 3 etc ?

A “PR” ranking is short for a Google Page Rank.

Simply put, the Google Page Rank is a number from 0-10 on how “popular” google considers your site.  The term popular is a misnomer really, because the actual calculations google uses to compute your PageRank include links in from different sites, number of pages index, and more.

pagerank

A good place to check your Google Page Rank is http://www.prchecker.info.

A more thorough explanation of the PageRank history can be found on Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank,

Sorry for the short answer, but all the information you need can really be found on wikipedia, and with formulas and a lot more information.

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December 18, 2012

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Ask the Blogger

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How Can I Maintain the Same Content On Two Blogs?

Question: Can I have maintain same content in wordpress and blogger blog, if the answer is yes means ..how can i import the data to blogger to wordpress?

This is a tough question to answer because there are so many different tangents that can go off from examining it in detail. The intricacies of the question center around both the technical and generic reasons for wanting to maintain content in two different places.

First, what is the reason for maintaining content in two places?In the search engine world, there is a line drawn in the sand amongst those who believe in the Google duplicate content penalty and those who do not. But the bigger issue is why would you want to have the same content in two places? In my opinion, doing so will only hurt you in the long run.

First, whether you believe in it or not, the duplicate content penalty for Google is always a possibility of being real. Having the same content in two places can be a flag to the search engines that the same content is being used on two different sites. Think of it from their point of view – you are trying to get twice the search engine listings for your content using two sites. It is in their best interests to try and weed out duplicate content.

Same Content

Second, whether or not the duplicate content penalty exists or not, having the same content on two sites will severely hurt your link popularity. Where you might have other websites linking to one site and increasing your link popularity and SEO, having two separate sites give visitors two different sites they may link to. Consider the following:

Site 1 links to www.domain.com
Site 2 links to www.domain.com
Site 3 links to www.domain.com
Site 4 links to www.domain.com

You now have four links to www.domain.com which will greatly help your search engine rankings and people to find your site.

Now consider:

Site 1 links to www.domain.com
Site 2 links to www.anotherdomain.com
Site 3 links to www.anotherdomain.com
Site 4 links to www.anotherdomain.com

Your site www.domain.com is now being penalized because the other sites are linking to your other domain.

Having all links going to one domain is definitely preferred.

All that being said, there are a couple things you can do. (more…)

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December 1, 2012

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Ask the Blogger

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What is a Website Silo?

Question: What is a website silo?  Is it just another word for categories?

A website silo is a type of format for websites and blogs that categorizes its contents in distinct silos, or categories, and confines each piece of content (pages, posts, etc) to those silos.  In addition, each silo has its own page that links to the various topics within.

By using silos on your website, you can keep your content organized, and help your search engine ranking by offering the search engines a clean “path” to indexing the content on your website.  Silos are not only physical categories on your website, they also help you organize your thoughts, pages and posts into easy-to-follow areas your site visitors can quickly navigate.

Website Silo

Let’s look at an example website on apples.

You might have the following main categories:

type of apples
apple recipes
growing apples
apple news

Those are your silos  They are usually your main topics that are listed (sometimes as dropdowns) in your navigation menus.

Each of those silos also has its own page.  That page has links to all the articles underneath it.

For instance, the apple recipes silo might have articles on apple pie, apple crumb cake, cinnamon apples, and caramel apples.  The main index page would contain links to all of those other sub-topics or even individual articles.  The page can be in list form in a pinch, but doing so in a narrative (paragraph) format will help boost your SEO rankings.

Each article, such as apple crumb cake, would link back to the main silo of apple recipes, using the term “apple recipes” as the linking text.

Cross-linking between silos isn’t forbidden, but usually everything underneath a particular silo will link upwards, but not across categorizes.

Using a silo format on your blog/website helps keep your posts and pages within their categories, which is said to also help search engine relevancy.

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January 25, 2011

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Ask the Blogger, Blogging, Content, Outsourcing

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Should I Outsource My Blog Content?

Question: I’ve read a lot of prominent bloggers outsource their blog content.  Is this really a viable method of generating content and should I try it?

Ever since Tim Ferriss told the world how he practically outsourced his life in his book The Four Hour Work Week, outsourcing content and design for blogs and websites has seen an incredible explosion popularity.  It sounds great – pay someone else a low fee per article and receive content to put on your website or blog at regular intervals.  Even better – pay a one-time fee and receive 10 or 20 articles so they can be scheduled on your blog while you take a vacation to the Bahamas.

Sounds almost too good to be true, doesn’t it?

There are two main reasons to outsource your content.  First, your blog is insanely popular and you just can’t keep up with the amount of content being requested from your readers.  Your reader’s contact you constantly about writing an article on this topic or that topic, and you simply don’t have the time to keep up with all of them.  You need help and you need it now.  The other reason is the opposite: You just don’t have any ideas for more content and you need someone fresh to come up with new ideas.

Both of these aren’t necessarily good reasons.

A Voice Is Unique

Many people enjoy a good impression.  But no impression can fully copy the original. For a blog to be successful, it needs its own voice.  That voice can only come from the blog’s regular writers.  You can set as many guidelines for the article as you want, but chances are it will have a feel all its own. Your readers want to hear from you – not a paid article or blog post writer.  While you can outsource your posts, you can’t outsource your voice.

You Win Some, You Lose Some

Even Tim Ferriss notes in his book how every virtual assistant he used wasn’t the best.  If you outsource your content, you may get back articles that are completely worthless or need a lot of revision.  Worse, you may google a couple sentences and find the article was lifted word-for-word from another website, blog, or published article.  Since you prepay for the writer to supply the article, there is usually no recourse or way to not-approve the article.  It’s money down the drain.

For A New Blog, It Isn’t Cost Effective

For new blogs starting out, outsourcing content seems like the perfect starting place.  And if you have a healthy budget it may be just the thing to get your blog started.  But article writing is not necessarily cheap, and you have to weight whether or not that blog post or article will make the return on investment you made in having it written.  If a blog post cost $5, will that post actually make your blog $5?  For new blogs, probably not.  The posts may bring in traffic, however, and that traffic can eventually and indirectly make that return on investment you paid – but it isn’t 100% trackable.

Still Want To Outsource?

If you still want to outsource your blog’s content, make sure you subscribe to this site’s feed.  We are planning another post to help you through the common pitfalls of outsourcing to improve your chances of receiving quality articles and blog posts from your writers.

 

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January 19, 2011

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Blogging, Google Adsense, Make Money Blogging, niche blogs

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Help! I’m Still Not Getting Relevant Adsense Ads!

Question: I would like to know how to put ads on my blog that relate to my interests.  I speak of daily things that happen in my life, my love for cooking, my family, etc.  I have even mentioned some sites that I order from like Amazon UK, I am also selling a property.  Yet I only get stupid non-related ads!  How do I fix this?  I don’t even know how to get people to follow my blog.  Help!  Thanks. – Luisa

Even after following all the advice in my post about Why Aren’t My Adsense Ads Relevant, it is very likely you will still see what you consider non-relevant ads appearing on your blog.  Especially given the varied topics covered by your site.

Luisa gave me the actual blog address, and I spent some time looking at the topics, structure, hosting, and of course the google adsense ads being displayed.  Here is what I found out.

  • Having a blogspot URL/domain name can trigger ads for blog software, autoresponse software, mailing list software, etc. just by having the term “blog” in the domain name.
  • Several little things boil down to one big truism when it comes to personal blogs like yours:

Personal blogs by their very nature do not make the best blogs to put adsense on.

The topics are too varied, the scope of the site is too large, and google gets confused about what your blog is actually about.   Unless you are Wil Wheaton, Justin Bieber or a celebrity, personal blogs are one of the toughest to get started, obtain readers, and obtain advertising.

Why don’t advertisers like personal blogs?

Easy – visitors to personal blogs are not as likely to actually click on the ads and buy something.  The audience for a personal blog is comprised of a completely different mindset than those who visit a niche topic blog and who may be ready to buy or research a product.  Visitors to a personal blog come to read your experiences and stories.  The visitors to a niche blog on say paraplegic skydivers are there to not only read the author’s topical posts, but perhaps to book their next adventure, buy equipment, read reviews, etc.

Two completely different audiences.

That is not to say a personal blog is looked down upon, or a personal blog is not “worth” doing – not at all.  You just have to be honest with yourself that a personal blog is not generally not going to achieve the type of monetary success an actual niche blog would have.  If I were in your position, I would remove all the adsense ads from your personal blog and start up another blog just about your cooking passion.  Link from your personal blog over to your cooking one.  Place adsense ads on the cooking one and see what happens.

Chances are your cooking blog, since it is more focused, will attract more visitors.  Once they get to know you there, they may jump to your personal blog and get to know you on a different level.    You might also consider going deeper with your cooking blog and focus on a particular style of cuisine.

Personal or general topic blogs are extremely hard to monetize, I hope this gives you some guidance.