Tuesday, 25 December 2012

The Language of Blogs


I read over a lot of blogs each week, casually surfing one or two of the blog exchanges I belong.
I realized yesterday that I seldom read the whole entry unless it's very short. Many are quite uncomfortable to read, some downright excruciating, in terms of their grammatical skills, spelling, and style. Because it is such an immediate and off-the-cuff personal expression, do the standard language rules apply?
The conversational nature of a blog leads naturally to an informal, casual approach that can be refreshing and innovative, indirectly echoing some of the great writers of the past who used dialect and local expressions to vitalize their work.
It is unfortunate that so many who write don't understand basic language rules so cannot effectively break them. When it takes major time and effort to understand what on earth the writer is trying to say, rather than being able to appreciate the content and point of view being expressed, it becomes merely an exercise in frustration.
The beauty, and ultimate value of blogging, is that communication is direct, individual, and uncensored. No editor with an eye on public opinion or potential legal consequences is cutting out whole paragraphs in fear they will offend. There is no filter applied by conservative management or the need for committee consensus prior to publication.
However, those of us who publish our thoughts and opinions to the world do have one big responsibility: to our readers. We can, happily, say anything we want but need to clearly communicate our point of view.
Anything less demeans the value of this wonderful new medium and leads to millions of electronic pages that fail to unite us in community, as is our goal, but merely consumes virtual space like the incoherent ramblings of a lonely psychotic.
Virginia Bola is a licensed clinical psychologist with deep interests in Social Psychology and politics. She has performed therapeutic services for more than 20 years and has studied the effects of cultural forces and employment on the individual. The author of an interactive workbook, The Wolf at the Door: An Unemployment Survival Manual, and a monthly ezine, The Worker's Edge, she can be reached at http://drvirginiabola.blogspot.com

5 Secret Benefits That Bloggers Love And Enjoy


1: Building Trust Relationships
Blogging allows bloggers to share their expertise and knowledge with a very large audience. Building a loyal audience is something that every small business owner would love to accomplish and bloggers are able to do this by simply sharing their thoughts using their business blogs. Building a community that trusts you and follows your blog updates on a daily basis is one of the key ingredients that hundreds of bloggers are using in their business.

2: Easy To Publish
Blog software is simple to use. With the push of a few buttons you can post your thoughts, link to resources and publish your blog. Blog software companies provide bloggers with all the tools necessary to get started. Bloggers can update their blogs much quicker than a website which usually requires contacting a web designer or uploading yourself.
3: Search Engine Traffic
One of the greatest benefits that bloggers receive is search engine traffic. Search engines love to spider pages that contain quality content and are updated with fresh content on a regular basis. Smart bloggers optimize their blogs by keeping their content focused on a specific niche.
4: Cost Effective
Blogging is a low cost alternative to having a web presence. Blogging has given small business owners the opportunity to create a web presence without the time to learn html or the income to hire a web designer. Blogging is quickly growing with popularity as an inexpensive method to get the name of your business out on the internet. Gone are the days of having to come up with a large investment to create a web presence.
5 Spam Free
With Spam problems and email filters creating a huge challenge for email marketers to publish their newsletters, bloggers are now using blogs as an additional option to communicate with their subscribers. The advantage of using blogs is that you don't have to worry about spam and email filters because your message will be delivered by using RSS (Really Simple Syndication). You can use these syndicated RSS "feeds" to display the latest news from major newspapers, for example, on your own web site or read them on other sites collecting these feeds. There are special programs and web-based services called "RSS feed readers" or "RSS aggregators" that, given the URL of an RSS feed will fetch the latest headlines periodically and let you read them comfortably and efficiently.

In Closing...
If you are looking for another source of traffic that is cost effective, spam free, search engine friendly, and perfect for building relationships, start publishing your own blog today. Once you get started, you too will experience the secret benefits that bloggers love and enjoy.
Copyright 2005 Benjamin Scott
Benjamin Scott is having success on the internet by following a simple step by step guide. He is currently giving access to a free online video that will teach you how to do the same. Access the video by visiting [http://www.startmoviepage.com]

Blog Your Affiliate Links

Blogging is a relatively new form of communication, closely related to the newsletters of days long past. Your thoughts, ideas, and activities are posted for the world (or a chosen few) to view, and if you choose to include the option, leave a comment. By creating a Blog and adding to it every day or relatively often, you create in your reader a desire to see "what was said next". They will return to read what you post next. Particularly, if what you posted the first time is interesting, valuable information, presented in a manner that is fun to read. A few ideas to get you off and running with your informational Blog, might include: travel, a new baby, planning your wedding, building a new business, working with your clients, developing a new product, counting your blessings, or ideas you are interested in sharing.

No matter what topic you choose, if you goal is to create an unending stream of income, generated by your Blog site, through promoting products, sites, and opportunities to visitors such as yourself. This book will help you attain your goal.
An alternative to the news filled Blog, which includes entries on a regular, or daily basis, is the Informational Blog. An Informational Blog is a site where information is presented on the one page format, along with any advertising you wish to include, and the content is so intense that it draws people back time and time again to reuse the site. Informational Blogs can be as long or short as you wish. Informational advertising links run down either side of the page, promoting topics similar to the one you are writing about.
These Blogs are chock full of information, links, ads, and ideas that promote the content or purpose of the Blog. A Blog of this type will run on "Auto-Pilot" for many weeks at a time, just earning you money, while you go out and play with the kidlets, take a vacation, or build a "real" business on the side.
A website could be likened to a store front where many objects are available over a long period of time, while a blog is more along the lines of a daily paper tossed out with new information daily. Websites have many pages with various kinds of information you might find if you were talking to the proprietor of a business. While a blog promotes primarily thoughts and ideas to share; a website offers product, reliable content, data, information, and projects that interact and supplement the site.
A website introduces you to the company, brings you specific information about the company and its owners, including their resume, a mission statement, various resources, links to fellow companies, and information about the company you are visiting. This creates a cozy place for you to do business online. The concept is simple, "Invite the customer in, show them what they want, teach them to use it, close the sale, and you have money in your pocket."
Occasionally, a website comes along that is so compelling that people just want to stay there and click on alternate links until they know everything about the site. This is the site you want to own. It will bring you income, provide information to your client, and it will bring them back.
To create this kind of site you have to be interested enough in the topic to research it well, write compelling information, and locate links to affiliates closely enough related to the topic to interest your reader. Some of the more interesting sites I've viewed are written by people who love what they do, do it very well, and choose to share their experience with the reader. Many of these are not professionally written, but are well put together with a combination of information, usually created by a developer/writer who puts the right words with the information to draw in the reader and motivate them to get involved in the site. (Copywriters are readily available if you are not able to write your own site.)

If you have a desktop or a laptop computer with Internet access, there is no reason why you cannot build a profitable Blog or website of your own. You too, can be a successful Internet Entrepreneur.
It costs nothing to own your own website or blog. There is no secret. It is simple. Clicks on your site to affiliate links earn you bucks.
Copyright (c) 2005 - Jan Verhoeff
(An Exerpt from Jan's Book "Master the Affiliate Opportunity" to be released July 25, 2005)
Jan Verhoeff combines 27 years of service in the Free Enterprise domain and a lifetime of education in business development to bring expertise and understanding of basic business principles to new business owners. An expert in the field of business development, Jan presents conceptual information through publications, live presentations, and Power Launch, a weekly live conference chat for business developers. For more information see her site at: http://makemoneyhere.blogspot.com

8 Tips To Get Traffic From Online Forums

Forums have been around since the earliest days of the Internet, and people have been using them ever since to drive traffic to their websites. While they’re not hip and sexy Web 2.0 darlings like Twitter or Facebook, forums are still a great way to drive targeted traffic to your blog. Below are 8 things you need to keep in mind when using forums as a traffic driving strategy.

1. Pick the right forum

Choosing the right forum(s) to participate in makes a big difference. Hopefully you’re already an active member of a forum or two. If not, hopefully you’re at least aware of some of the popular forums that cater to your niche. If that’s still not the case, Google “YOURNICHE forum” or check out Big-Boards.com.
If there are multiple forums in your niche, you should focus on being active in just one forum at first. You don’t want to spread yourself too thin, and you want to be sure you become a prominent member of the community. That’s hard to do when you’re trying to post in half a dozen different forums. Once you’ve become established in one, then you can determine whether joining another would be best for you.
If you’re not already active in a forum and you have multiple forums to choose from, there are a couple points to consider. How large and active is the forum? You won’t get much traffic from a forum that has 30 members and the last post was six months ago. Do you like the look of the forum? I’ve chosen to participate in certain forums because I just like the way they’re designed. Does the forum allow signatures? Some forums don’t allow signatures, which will make it harder for you to get traffic (see the “Put a link in your signature” section below). And finally (and perhaps most importantly), do you like the community that has built up around the forum? You’re going to be spending a lot of time there, so make sure you like the kind of discussion that’s going on.

2. Choose your username carefully

Your username is your brand out there on the forum for everyone to see, so it needs to be chosen carefully. Ask yourself what message you want your username to send. Using your name as a username gives your interactions with others a more personal feel than if you just used the name of your blog or business. It’s important that you username fits in with your niche and the forum. For example, if you’re posting to a realty forum and the forum community you’re posting to has a very professional feel to it, you’ll obviously want to steer clear of usernames like “xfallenangel1987x.”

3. Put a link in your signature

Your signature is the couple lines of text that appear below each one of your forum posts. Putting a link to your blog or to a particularly good post is the backbone of any solid forum-based traffic strategy. This is how you’ll get the majority of traffic out of the forum.
A standard signature will include the name of your blog and maybe your blog’s tagline or what your blog is about. Linking to an especially informative or interesting post can also be a good strategy if you want to drive traffic to certain parts of your blog. Remember that you can also link to a newsletter signup page to help grow your list.

4. Craft your profile carefully

Your profile is what people see when they click on your username, and it usually consists at least of your avatar, a short bio, and a link to your website. Most often, your avatar should be a picture of you. We like to know that we’re interacting with a real person, and a photo gives a face to the name and helps create a more personal interactive experience. If you prefer anonymity, then use anything you want as long as it fits in with 1) the feel of the forum, and 2) the image of your blog or business. Using the realty forum example again, you wouldn’t want your profile pic to be a funny animated .gif of a guy getting hit in his private parts with a baseball. Likewise, you wouldn’t want to use a serious, black and white photo of yourself if you’ve got a fun and colorful blog about funny YouTube videos.
Your bio should include relevant information about you. Again, make it professional, but don’t be boring and one-dimensional. Sure, talk about how much experiences you’ve got in your particular field, but also talk about any other interesting information about yourself. If you’re on a rock climbing forum, you could state that you’ve been rock climbing for 12 years, that you are an avid backcountry skier in the offseason., and that you love watching Lost. Give people more reasons for them to interact with you.
And while we’re on the subject of getting people to interact with you, be sure to include a line in your bio (preferably at the end) that you welcome people to contact you with any questions or comments. This can help people feel comfortable about coming to you for any additional help or information beyond what you provide in your forum posts.
Many forum profiles have a space for your website’s URL or the URL of your favorite website. Be sure to put your blog in there!
Finally, take advantage of any other profile features your forum might have. Some forums let you enter your Twitter handle, for example. Others let you enter your other interests. Use these elements to further differentiate yourself from others, to establish yourself as an expert in your field, and to set yourself up as a person people want to interact with.

5. Don’t be spammy

When you’re networking with people in person, you don’t shake their hands and immediately stuff a business card down their throats. You want to get to know the person a little bit before interacting with them on a professional level. To put it another way, you wouldn’t go all the way on a first date, right?
Sure, you’re using the forum to promote your site, but that shouldn’t look like the main reason you’re there. Stick around the forum for a while before you start promoting your blog openly. No one likes it when the forum user’s first and only post is, “Hey guys! Check out my sick awesome new blog!”

6. Provide quality content

We’ve all heard that “Content is king” for getting traffic to your blog and getting people to subscribe to your blog. The same applies to forum posts. For example, don’t just respond to a question by saying “Yes” or “No,” but justify your response with a clear, well-thought-out, informative, helpful reply. Provide the best content you possibly can. Link to other resources both inside the forum and elsewhere online to provide even more helpful content.
Another tactic you can use is writing content especially for the forum. Think of it like guest posting for the forum: you provide your own content for free to the forum, and in exchange you get more exposure for your blog. At the end of the forum post, you can include a line of text that says something like, “This was written specifically for the Whatever Forum. If you found this information useful, check out my blog at WhateverIsAwesome.com.” You’re adding value to the forum while at the same time giving people a reason to check out your blog. Win-win!
Having said all of that, not all of your posts need to be long and epic. Quality content can be as simple as posting a funny YouTube video that a lot of people in the forum community can enjoy.

7. Start new threads

If someone opens up a thread to read it, that person is obviously going to read the first post in the thread, right? The first post in a thread gets read more than any other, so being in that position is a great way to leverage your forum posting.
It’s important, however, that you start the right kinds of threads. If you’ve got genuine questions about something, then by all means ask about it. If you don’t have any questions, a great way to go is to ask people’s opinions on a topic that they all can have input on. If you’re posting to a mountain biking forum, for example, ask people what they’d do if they had $5000 to spend. Would they spend it on a new bike? Upgrades to their current bike? Travel to that place they’ve always wanted to ride? More examples can be asking people on a Corvette forum to post sweet pics of their ride, or encouraging members on a photography forum to post links to their portfolios.

8. Post often

Forum posting isn’t the best passive traffic strategy. You can’t just spend a week posting multiple times a day and then sit back and expect the traffic to roll in forever. The threads that you spend all that time and effort posting in will eventually be pushed further and further down the page until they disappear from page 1. It’s sad, but that’s just the way it is. Participating in – and getting traffic from – forums is very much an active process. To get the best results, you really need to commit to it and make it a regular part of your blogging process.
Above all, just try to enjoy the experience. Hopefully you’re talking about things you like, and you might as well be building blog traffic while you’re at it, right? In addition, forums are great way to get post ideas for your blog, so keep your eyes peeled.
Pick a forum, do your best to become part of the community there, apply the above 8 points, and you’re sure to see the traffic start to come. Good luck!

Top 5 Web Design Mistakes Small Businesses Make


If you’re a small business owner, your website is the central hub of your company, and it’s a pivotal part of your marketing and branding.
Potential customers visit your site specifically for its content, meaning its appearance and usability are critical to its success and how those users view your company. However, getting your web design wrong can have a negative impact on your business.
Here are 5 common web design mistakes you must avoid to create a great user experience and grow your bottom line.

1. Poor Navigation


Many small businesses fail to make navigation a priority, but without careful attention to how people navigate your site, you could unintentionally be creating a frustrating experience for any potential visitor. People visit your site for specific information, and if they cannot find it they will quickly go elsewhere, leaving with the impression that your business is disorganized in more than just its website.
A good navigation structure should be seamless and will keep visitors on your site longer, which means potentially more readers, subscribers, sales or leads — whichever is your primary objective.
Website navigation affects both usability and accessibility, so it’s important to make it a primary concern. Most websites and blogs use common navigational techniques that are expected by the average visitor. The pages and sections of the site should be easy and logical for visitors to maneuver. Don’t make your visitors think about how to navigate your site; it should be effortless and natural.
There are several principles you can follow to create an effective navigation structure:
  • Use icons to aid navigation. They’re both visually appealing and easy to use and understand.
  • Create logical groups of related links, with the most important links on the top-level navigation bar and functional (dashboard, account, settings, etc.) and legal (copyright, privacy, terms) located elsewhere.
  • Provide location information so users know where they are on any given page and how to proceed to another area of the website. This can be achieved by using Breadcrumb navigation.

2. No Clear Calls To Action


The fundamental error of many small business websites is the lack of a clear call to action. We’ve all seen bland small-business brochure websites with nothing but endless descriptive paragraphs. If you aren’t leading users to commit to an action (buy a product, contact you or subscribe, for example), then you are losing them.
Driving traffic to your website is important, but that traffic is useless if your primary call to action is a plain “click here” link buried in a sea of text. Call-to-action buttons are a great way to grab the user’s attention, and these buttons can be the key to higher conversions. Investing time and consideration into creating successful calls to action can help guide users and address their needs while achieving your own business goals.
It’s important to keep the following best practices in mind when creating an optimal call to action:
  • The design of a call to action can be broken down into 4 simple elements — size, shape, color, and position. Each plays a vital part in determining how effective the call to action is in directing the user.
  • Don’t make your users work or think, or they’ll leave. It’s not that they aren’t smart, it’s that they want access to information quickly without spending unnecessary time searching for it.
  • Don’t overdo it with multiple, competing calls to action on every page. Decide what your primary target is and then define a clear objective per page. Your content should have answered, “What’s in it for me?” and your call to action should now answer, “What do I do now?”

3. Color & Contrast


Color and contrast aren’t usually high up on the list of priorities for a small business owner when it comes to creating a website. But it should be, because if your website text does not have sufficient contrast compared to its background, people will have difficulty reading your content, especially people with poor vision or color-blindness.
Aside from plain readability, color and contrast are important because they can be used to create visual interest and direct the attention of the user. It can equally be effective in organizing and defining the flow and hierarchy of a page, and it’s therefore an essential principle to pay attention to during the design process. Here are some tips:
  • Using a free a Color Contrast tool (which conforms to accepted standards) you can easily check to see how the contrast on your website measures up.
  • Research how major sites use color and contrast to improve readability and highlight specific sections, and use this knowledge to experiment with color schemes.
  • One of best ways to enhance contrast is by creating size differences between elements, making some things appear larger than others. This works especially well within a minimal color scheme, and it means you don’t have to necessarily rely on color.

4. Content, Content, Content


People visit your website for its content, and how that is structured is a huge factor in its success or failure. Unfortunately, an overwhelming number of small businesses get so caught up in overloading the user with information that they overlook how that information is presented.
Most people do not read unless it’s absolutely necessary, and they prefer to scan through information quickly to get to the points of interest. This is why it’s so important to establish a strong visual content hierarchy so users can quickly scan your site and sifting through relevant information. A logical content hierarchy also acts as a guide through each page and creates a more enjoyable user experience.
So when focusing on your content, it’s best to keep in mind these three tips:
  • White space is possibly the most important factor to consider. It will allow the user to focus on the meaningful content within each section.
  • Break up lengthy pieces of information into digestible blocks of text, utilizing headings, sub-headings, bullets, blockquotes and paragraphs.
  • Readable content is important, so use a good line height that is large enough to make content scannable. Margins and letter spacing also need to be taken into consideration.
When talking about content, spelling and grammar cannot be underestimated.

5. Clutter


We all know at least one small business website that seems to include everything but the proverbial kitchen sink. Many small business owners tend to cram as much as they can onto a single page — the end result is a busy, cluttered and unreadable page.
The more extraneous items there are on a web page, the more unprofessional it looks, and it becomes overwhelming, confusing and distracting for the user. A cluttered website will also affect traffic because visitors won’t return if they can’t understand or follow the content, which leads to low traffic, a high bounce rate and possibly a poor Page Rank.
Clutter also applies to images. Too many can be a huge distraction and just plain annoying. Images should be used to illustrate, capture attention and guide the user where required.
Follow these guidelines for a more streamlined visitor experience:
  • Challenge every item on each page and ask, “Does it really need to be there? Does it serve a specific purpose? Can I live without it?”
  • The key is to aid the visitor in finding the information they’re looking for, so make sure to differentiate between areas of content, advertisements and promotions.
  • Prioritize your content and decide what is the most important to your visitor and potential customer — and sell it well.
Even the greatest content can become lost in a mess of words and graphics, so de-cluttering is essential.
These are just five web design mistakes that many small businesses make. What other mistakes have you noticed on small business websites?

Top 10 Smartest SEO Tips for Online Businesses

You will be keen to learn SEO properly. If yes, then please don’t forget to follow our most important and useful internet marketing tips for your web promotion and marketing.

Tip no.1 Pay Attention To Backlinks Always 


The backlinks are the most important factor in increased and maintained web traffic for any online promotion company. If you don’t understand the value of the backlinks, then goodbye you won’t get the best results with regard to your online promotion. So bear in mind this advice from an SEO expert if you want to increase your web traffic.

Tip no.2 Implement PR Campaign For Your Online Business

 

This is one of the most important internet marketing tips for any SEO expert. The press releases are not general based. Rather they are promotional. Therefore if you are going to launch a new website on the Google, don’t forget to implement the press release submission strategy for generating the quality backlinks and web traffic for your new site.

Tip no.3 Employ Proper Social Media Marketing Strategy For Your Web Promotion

 

Everyone is familiar with the social media marketing strategies these days. Being a professional SEO expert this must be your job to implement the best yet effective social media marketing strategies for grabbing the best results for your business website. The most important social media tools are known as
 
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • LinkedIn

Tip no.4 Implement Proper Article Marketing Campaign For Your Online Business Promotion

 

Remember article submission is the most important part of SEO services. Without article submission and marketing online businesses and companies won’t be able to generate quality backlinks and traffic for their websites. Article must be general based. The promotional articles won’t be accepted on most of the websites over the World Wide Web.

Tip no.5 Employ Blog Posting & Guest Posting Strategies

 

Do you know about the blog posting and guest posting? If not, they are one of the most reliable SEO services for any online business around the world today. The blog posts and guest posts are not general. Rather they should be newsy and catchier towards the targeted audience worldwide.

Tip no.6 Put Into Operation Blog Commenting & Forum Commenting Strategies

 

Commenting does play an important role in grabbing the backlinks and traffic. SEO experts must bear in mind and implement these SEO strategies for online business promotion. These are valuable SEO tips for online marketers.
 

Tip no.7 Think About Forum Posting

 

The forum posting is very important for any SEO services company. Through the proper forum posting you will be able to get unique visitors for your sites.

Tip no.8 Mull Over Video SEO Campaign

 

Of course video SEO has emerged as a revolutionary online business promotion tool today. Through video marketing online companies will be able to get quality traffic.

Tip no.9 Publish Unique Content

 

Content is kind due to valid justification because it will help to increase your web visibility all over the place.

Tip no.10 Never Compromise With Quality SEO/SEM Services

 

Finally you should never compromise with your sole objective. That is to promote online companies through effective SEO services and SEM services.

How to Make Money Online With SEO


Earn money online with search engine optimization is one of the best ways for online money making with affiliate ads program. SEO refer to websites or web pages that are set up in such a way that are optimize for various factors that are search engine looks for when deciding you rank of your WebPages.

The search engine optimization provides you the technique for promoting your website by organic method. Where you not required to purchasing the ads links. Using SEO services your traffic comes from search engine result pages. Well SEO web pages will normally get higher rank for long time. When you are designing a WebPages then consider all things according to SEO rules, this is called on pages optimization. Your website ranking also consider off-page factors to keep it there, mainly good quality of back links forms the relevant sites. 
To making money online from SEO you need a well optimized your web pages that ranks for its keyword. If your sit rank is more then you get more and more online customers. Using this process you can make money online with SEO. But you have to required ads links for published on your website. 

Then Google AdSense is one of the top pay per click (PPC) program for online money making. But before activation of your ads account of on AdSense you have to required online infrastructure. 

1. Domain NameChoose a domain name related to your working or exact main keyword phrase of your website. If your domain name is a keyword then you can easily get the higher rank on the server. Domain.maxustech.com is good domain Registration Company. You can purchase here own domain name. 
2. Website Hosting: Hosting is required to run your website. Please ignore free hosting because free hosting is not a good thing for SEO. 

3. Website Designing: WordPress web builder software(CMS) one of the best and easiest ways to build a website. This software is free lenience for everyone, you can install in a minutes. It’s a very easy process to implement. Mostly server provides you a link of WordPress installing in application folder using this you can install this CMS at one click. 
4. After complete of your website then you will need the all SEO plugging for WordPress. Using this link you can install and operate this plugin. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/ 
You will use the all in one best SEO plugin to promote your website. First understand your targeted keywords and please populate it. Always use heading tags H1 to make the main keyword of that WebPages. All search engine search heading tags H1 to making keyword. 

There is main things that how to make money with SEO. Because search engine optimization promote only you’re WebPages. The answer is if your website gets the popularity with any keywords then a good numbers of visitors worldwide come on your website and then you can sale your products and services with affiliate program.