Whether it’s a website or a blog, it needs to project credibility. If the blog doesn’t meet the highest standards of credibility, there is no way in the world that it’s going to attract a loyal readership.  So improving the reputation of your blog must be a high priority task for you.

Credibility can be built, but it can't be bought!

Here are three tips that will go a long way in improving blog credibility:

Only post Relevant Content

It is only if your blog has relevant content that it can strike a chord amongst users. The reason why visitors want to go through your blog is because you have promised them specific information and if they don’t find that information on your blog, they are not going to come back to it again.  For e.g. if your blog is about iPhone applications and their development and you start offering information about Android or Symbian development, it’s not something that the readers are going to like very much. Another facet of relevant content is that it should be fresh. Readers want the latest information and are not looking for content that is old and whose expiry date is long past.

Answer your Comments

If you think that you can improve the credibility of your blog purely by publishing fresh content, then you have another thing coming. Once you have posted on your blog, it’s important that you answer the comments that you attract for a particular post. The fact that readers have taken time out to post a comment means they have read your blog post with interest and decided to air their views about what was written. Their comments might be appreciative or can even be critical of the ideas or thoughts that have been expressed in your post. As a blogger you need to show your acknowledgment for their appreciation and in most case a short and sweet ‘thank you’ will do.

But when it comes to criticism, you can defend what you said in the blog post and clarify any doubts that the reader has expressed through the comment. This tells blog visitors that you know what you are talking about and are saying something not just for the heck of it, but with conviction. It’s a simple equation really – If you are convinced about what you are saying, you stand a better chance of convincing your readers.

Don’t Keep Projecting Yourself as the Best

Confidence is always good, and you can project that confidence through the content of your blog posts. But, if your blog keeps saying that you are the best at regular intervals, be it through the tag lines used, its content or the images used, instead of looking like an expert, you will come out looking obnoxious. The fact that you are the best shouldn’t be told to the readers of your blog, it must be something your readers should be able to gauge naturally, over the course of time.  The use of visuals, call to actions etc. must be commensurate with the purpose of the blog and not be put in place to tell visitors that there is nobody better than you.

It’s important to note that these are not the only tips that will ensure credibility for your blog. As you go along, you will learn of new ways to improve the credibility of your blog. The important thing is to do the simple things right.

3 Great Ways to Improve the Credibility of Your Blog is a post from: Blog Godown

If you’re newbie to SEO stuff, you might need to know the difference about the true and false statements made about it. Before actually starting to spend your own money and efforts on SEO, take some time to look through the statements and make a weighted decision.

1. SEO is way too complicated for the usual people.

It’s actually not true. The basics of the good SEO technology are placed in the basic texts, which will help you to make your text nice and clearly readable by the search machines. Of course, there are some complicated SEO topics, still, it’s much more an exception than the main rule. If you’re comfortable with the basics, you may start making SEO optimization for your site. Read the corresponding articles like “Ten steps to nicely optimized site” etc. There you will get the knowledge about how does the optimization process go.

2. There is too much to learn to do SEO. I’ll never learn such type of skills.

And yet again it’s not completely true. SEO is no less then any other subject, still it’s nothing more then a one. You don’t feel like getting a fishing specialist after seeing one single program on TV? Here we have got the same things, start from the very beginning and learn from the basics to the complicated things, step by step without fear or hesitation. Be sure that the knowledge will definitely come to you slowly. After feeling like you have learnt the basic concepts, try reading “SEO 101” for getting the overview of SEO.

3. The moment I Indexed my site for search engines, I got all the business done.

This is a completely false statement, as the indexing in search engines doesn’t guarantee high level of visitors. All you’ve done is you showed to the others you’re here, so they are now able to find you through the search engine. Yet still, you’ve got to do something for them to start looking for you. The best option is to get to the highest ranks of the search engines, so the link onto your resource will appear on the first page. Study the basics of publication for the information on the topic.

4. SEO optimisation needs too much time.

Not exactly again. The meaning of the effective optimisation is not a complicated one. All you need to know is that you shall have the unique interesting content, the code and the site design. You’re already spending enough efforts on these things, so all you need to do is to keep in mind the SEP basics to interlace them all into the project and to help yourself for the very point. Read the materials like “When do I see the first results?” to sustain your curiosity.

5. For success, I shall place my page in at least 1000 search engines – is that true?

This might appear to be the most common myth about SEO, as well as the most false one. First of all, think about all these search engines. Did you ever use any of them? So why do you think all other people know about their existence at all? If somebody asks for money to make publishing, he will most likely do nothing about it. Read “The basics of the site placement” for your consideration.

6. My site is way too big to do everything alone.

Be sure Roma wasn’t created at one single day. Same goes about your site. Take your time to consider the most useful tactics and start making everything page by page. Creating one page at a time will be just fine. Remember that every page is the bright door to your site available for the visitors. Concentrate over the post popular pages, try to analyze what do they actually need, after that consider the materials you have and make the proper decision. While combining the material, keep in mind the basics of SEO, to the effect would be greater.

7. Meta tags are the most important part of the process.

The popular Meta tags are just as important keywords as the other ones. They are usually placed as words, headlines, descriptions; all this is usually used by bots to index your page. There’s no actual fact for these tags to be the most important task for the SEO master. Still they are an important task of the popularisation of your resource, to keep them in mind as well.

8. I need directories to get a high rating for the page.

There is one thing you must know about directories, they are overflowing with keywords etc. All these ways are considered to be the black hat SEO techniques and shall never take place in normal ways of optimisation. These can be even considered as spam, and the bots will just ignore your site.

9. It’s not possible for me to reach the top if the keywords are very small.

The SEO optimization will demand a lot of energy from you as well as lot of efforts. You might think it’s actually not true, but a single thing won’t just bring you to the top. Your goals should not to be in the very top of the list at any cost. The most important thing is to offer your services to the audience, and this might happen on the third page as well. It’s sometimes enough to build a really good site with a lot of options and offers of the craved product to get a lot of visitors. Your site shall be productive and created according to the tendencies.

10. I don’t need SEO, the search engines are nice to me.

And yet again we have to agree with that. No matter how satisfied you are with the current level of visitors? Will you be satisfied with it in a month? Perhaps you will ask for something more and that is the most important part of SEO optimization. Take your time to learn the basic opportunities in order to make your site even more appealing for the clients.

10 the most popular myths about SEO is a post from: Blog Godown

Read any blog, article, white paper or other content on the subject of SEO and no doubt there will be a mention of how social media has been a real game changer in recent years, in contributing to improved rankings of websites and as a result an increased drive in organic traffic. Spend some time on SEOMoz (look at their SEO pyramid which places social at the top) and you’ll see a whole host of articles on the power of social media, and in particular Facebook and Twitter has not only on SEO efforts, but also on branding and increasing your brand exposure. Of course many site owners, nowadays, have become well versed in the need to have an online social media presence with many companies going so far to employ social media strategists and contracting social media optimisation specialist companies to handle the management of their accounts.

(credit: CrowdSpring)

But what if you’ve joined the Social Media craze late in the game, how do you “catch up” with your competitors?

Many webmasters whether they run a blog or website, or both, will often make the grave mistake of trying to do too much at once, without having thought about their social media strategy and researched their targeted market well. Others, will feel that just plonking a few social media widgets on their site, and posts/articles will do the trick in attracting interaction. Whilst, this may work for some very well qualified traffic sites with a strong online reputation already, but, for the vast majority of web masters just doing this will result in very unsatisfactory results.

So what’s the answer?

A few tips when engaging in any social media activity:

1. Competitor analysis. Find out how your competitors are using social media, how often they tweet, do they post useful and informative articles or are they just posting a lot of irrelevant links? Knowing what the competition is currently doing, not only gives you some useful insight but also sets some goals to work towards.

2. Pimp your page. Whether it’s Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or another social network platform you’re planning to use. Make sure that your Fan Page, Twitter profile, or LinkedIn page is customised and fits in with your company profile. Doing this just makes you look more professional and stand out a bit from the crowd.

3.Focus on quality and not quantity. The old adage is as valid as ever. This applies to both recruitment of fans/followers but also in posting links and content. Steer clear of schemes where you get thousands of followers in a short space of time, they will either get you banned, or even if they don’t it’s unnatural and most of those followers or fans won’t give a damn about what you’re saying anyway. In short it’s a futile exercise.

4. Get involved with your industry and help people. I’m a strong believer in contribution, and adding something of value and benefit to your audience or industry. There’s many ways this can be done, perhaps get involved with a local charity project or organisation, offer to build a website for free for a community group, develop an app that helps your target market etc. There’s so many ways we can improve the web and useful content and experiences for people, and by doing something creative and a bit different, the link sharing and word of mouth effect will soon kick in.

5. Embed social buttons. Often people get so obsessed with their websites, they often forget other more obvious and noticeable places to embed social buttons. Email signatures are good, and you’ll be surprised how effective just adding a few social buttons for Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, LinkedIn, FriendFeed can be. If you’re writing new press releases and syndicating them to different places, make sure you leave some space for social sharing buttons.

Social Media has become a tour de force in digital marketing, and if implemented and used correctly, it can not only improve your search engine rankings but also your brand and offer a great way for your to reach to your target audience and customer base and open up the channels for quicker communication. If used in the right way, social media can be very rewarding for your company and brand, and dare I say it very addictive – you’ll wonder what took you so long to harness the power of social media.

Harnessing The Power of Social Media is a post from: Blog Godown

An interesting article that reflects on how Google + can change the rules of the game of SEO. There is no doubt that Google is the world’s most powerful machine in the field of business based on public relations.

In recent times, and after placing in brand new algorithm that seeks to banish the poor quality of the fabric, it has been much talked about Page Rank, a classification system of trademarks that saw the light back in 2001 and has caused many headaches who are focused on pursuing actions to increase it.

Closely linked with the PR we the paper representing the links  … if we extrapolate that the strengths that underlie social interaction, it seems to have less and less weight … yes, the links like the Page Rank are are useful for any business if they are not supported under the fundamental premise of quality that is only possible with good social interaction. Likewise, the PR and ranking of brands, it makes no sense if it is obtained through the actions and the quality of those marks in the fabric … what else makes up the reputation?

Now Google is here to stay + the new commitment by the congregation’s social search engine, which sees the light surrounded the debate, a debate that lights the fuse on the quality and manages to go one step further in the exhibition, connectivity and interaction , as central to the growth in Internet.

What looks like a reality is that today is social interaction, the core of the growth … Google + comes to establish itself as a meeting point between the information and advertisers (brands) so … the exposure and the model  of business , this is the SEO … could possibly experience changes from the staging of the more social side of the search engine robot ever more human ….

Some modifications carried out in the search engines, the tangible evidence of these changes … is a quality status updates will be used to measure the reputation of the brand, the editor, Web master … in short, Google could form very creative and innovative to establish a comprehensive SEO in which the algorithms applied to the interaction of Google + have a specific gravity of relevance in SEO

Google + Circles

While links are votes for corporate portals, Google + circles is consolidated as people vote, this is a measure of influence, reputation within the network.

+1 Google Button

+1 Button Google is a metrics-based functionality and is more than evident that statistics provides data of great importance, although it does not have an entirely clear penetration and must face a “readjustment” of the social routine to which users are accustomed.

Google + Sparks

We take a step further with this functionality in Google. Through it you can build a relationship – high efficiency, between a user’s vote and their preferences, tastes and interests, set in the profile.
So we take a step in the comprehensive assessment of positioning, brand SEO and personal SEO merge resulting in a ENTAM in which only the permanent and the interaction and the quality, efficiency and gambling will enable us to achieve progress in our market.

Google + Profiles

Definitely, personal data are the basis for the location, the satisfaction of interests and staging of new goods and / or services that respond to needs.

Interpretation of these data, shown in the profile resulting actions designed to achieve a more integral position, a superb and efficient formula that allows us to advance our brand through quality and protection … all prosumers now, we should not forget.

Google + meetings

Chat with video and audio … it is possible that these talks will derive additional information that might eventually be analyzed and transformed into data to achieve a quality social SEO, which finally seems to be where we are headed.

Location … always there

The configuration of the GPS, which is a key element in Google +, allows brands to target their products using traditional and never well weighted, item location …

Another step towards hegemony or a step towards social integration and the staging of a proposal for efficient business and personal SEO, what seems certain is that Google does not want to stay away from social interaction and the mobile is an innovation, a way of life that is here to stay, gaining more followers.

Photos, exposure of who we are? What we do … the social augmented reality allows us to form links through the elements that allow our recognition. Google+ can track not only our data but also allows Google to understand who we are and what we do in the “real world” … and although it seems a definition of science fiction, should be analyzed from the weight that it, has in the geolocation business, and when dependent on brands and a good SEO.

7 Tips that change the Google + SEO is a post from: Blog Godown

Blogs take time, effort, and a whole lot of content. While having one isn’t a bad thing, they can quickly become detrimental to your brand if started for the wrong reasons. A blog started with the wrong intent is almost guaranteed to fail.

Although blogging is the cornerstone of online activity for many people, there are still companies and businesses that misinterpret their intentions.

 credit: Webtreats

The following are 6 poor reasons for starting a blog.

1. Competition

Do not start a blog simply because your competition has one and you feel intimidated. The reasons for starting a blog should be your own, derived from the progressive behavior and marketing strategy of your own brand. Remember that what works for one company, may not necessarily work for the other.

Do not let your actions become reactions of your competitions’ behavior. Think before you make the commitment to start writing. If you are blogging just because you think you should, there’s a high probability that you won’t dedicate the time needed to make it successful.

2. SEO

Adding a blog to an existing site is a great way to consistently attract a fresh stream of visitors and increase traffic and exposure. With that said, if the main motivation behind wanting to start a blog is to optimize search engine results, then stop while you’re ahead.

While a blog can deliver better search results, it can only do so with quality, optimized content. Ensure that the initial launch of your blog can be executed with the ability to continuously provide this type of content.

3. To encourage feedback

Admittedly, applying what you learn from feedback to help critique products and services of your company is a great reason to create an online presence. On the other hard, not only are there other facets of social media that perform better for this function, but remember that feedback can be both positive and negative. Ensure that your business is prepared to face both before launching a blog.

4. To generate content

Do not start a blog because you think that someone else will be made responsible for generating content. The most crucial aspect of a blog is that it needs an author that understands exactly what your niche subject area is, and have plenty to say about it.

Whether you believe it or not, the passion you have for the subject will be reflected in the writing. In turn, readers will feel the excitement or lack thereof, making it evermore pertinent that you write your own content when launching a blog.

5. Cutting corners

Do not assume that just writing a blog will bring you visitors. It is a terrible decision to start a blog if you are not willing to back it up with any other marketing.

A blog will never take the place of good ol’ fashion marketing strategies like press releases and research groups. It will only ever work as an extraneous entity of your marketing efforts. Do not utilize it for more.

6. Broadcast marketing

Do not make the mistake of thinking that a blog is just a digital form of broadcast marketing that you control. Again, a blog will never take the place of the marketing strategies you already utilize.

If you can’t market your business without a blog, a blog is not going to save it. A blog is a great way to get more out of social networking and expanding your brand’s presence online, but you need a brand first.

While this may seem negative, it is only because blogging is not simple and requires a lot of thought and patience. Take the time to think through and determine whether starting a blog would be the most effective move for your company. If it is, then do some research and best of luck.

6 Poor Reasons For Starting A Blog is a post from: Blog Godown

I’m surprised that I see so few articles about writing a great author bio because it really is one of the most essential aspects of a guest blog post. It might not be the most important thing you do to get your article accepted, but before it’s posted I hope you put in some quality thought ahead of time to benefit as much as possible.  Let’s take a look at a few basic tips and some other broad marketing campaign suggestions to make sure you’re addressing the key components of what goes into your author bio and why you do it.

Short And Sweet

No matter what blog or website you try to get your article submitted on, they are not going to want you to have an extremely detailed author bio explaining your life story.  If the article you’re writing is about facts and you are sharing knowledge with a sense of expertise it does help to back that up with some references, but keep it concise.  50 words should be more than enough to share your name, your experience, your interests and your links.

How To Link

How do you link? Duh! It’s a hyperlink, not rocket science.  Wrong! Creating a link is easy, but how you use that link for marketing purposes is where the skill comes into play.  If you’ve simply determined that the anchor text of your hyperlink should be “computer software” because you have a website that sells software, you’re not getting as much value as possible.  I say this because unless you are a massive computer software company, good luck fighting your way to the top of the search results for that keyword search.  Instead, try focusing on longer, more specific keyword searches such as “macbook pro laptop software.”

It’s Part of the Bigger Picture

The anchor text you use to link back to your website should be part of your larger Internet marketing campaign. Determine the most important and easy to compete keyword searches and have individual “landing pages” within your website that focus on those specific keyword searches. Now that you’re in the blogosphere taking the time to write quality guests posts you can really benefit by linking back to certain pages within your website that are focused on searching better for a few specific keyword searches.

How Many Links Should I Use?

Again, check the author guidelines within each specific page for this question, but a general answer would be 1-3.  If you’re allowed more than one, you might as well take advantage by linking to your different landings pages or to multiple different sites if you have them.  Most blogs just don’t want the author bio to look spammy or trashy, so as long as you’re within the author guidelines and everything looks professional I’d use as many links as you’re allowed.

Bringing it All Together

The main point of this article is to point out that your link building campaign is part of a larger marketing strategy.  If you realize this and put effort into making sure they are working together instead of separate entities, the benefits will be exponential.

Author Bio Essentials to Benefit Your SEO Campaign is a post from: Blog Godown

The question of whether blogging is the future of SEO is quite an interesting one and by the future I mean is blogging both on your own website and on other websites going to be a bigger ranking factor for search engines than it is today.

What Lies Ahead?

A company that blogs regularly on their company news section and submits their content into social bookmarking websites such as Delicious, Digg and Stumble Upon will not only have more inbound links by doing this they will also have a better flow of referral traffic. This is why it is very important to make sure you produce quality content because the better the content, the more referrals you will get because people want to read what you have written.

Link building is a hard task and to do it effectively it can take a lot of hours on the computer contacting other web masters and working out how to get a link from them in an organic way. One of the most popular ways is to guest post or guest blog for them. This way they get a nice original bit of content on their website and you get an anchor text back link to your website from theirs. Again it seems that blogging is a very good and effective method of SEO and in my opinion one of the best ways to acquire links from new websites.

Blogging is very important not just for a websites main keywords but for all keywords a site might want to rank for especially the long tails. For example if a website was selling sailing clothing then they should use their websites blog to write about other aspects surrounding sailing clothes with titles such as ‘where to buy sailing clothes’, ‘getting the best deals online for sailing clothes’, the best brands for sailing clothes’. Over time there website would become a resource for all sailing clothes search terms because search engines would see it as the most relevant resource available.

At present one of the most important aspects of SEO is link building which is the practice of getting other websites to link to your own. Link building is abused by some people who spam thousands of links and essentially trick search engines into ranking them higher. Search engines are constantly looking for these spammers and when they find them they will devalue the spammers website in the rankings.

This is one of the reasons I see blogging as the future of SEO because it is much harder to fake good original content, where as link building can be automated, spammed, bought and sold, however good quality content on a websites blog not only pulls in traffic but it also attracts links naturally.

I think search engines may start placing less value on links and more on original quality content simply because it is not easy to fake good content. Sure you can spin articles quite well but that will only pass duplicate content filters, it certainly won’t read well, meaning it won’t attract visitors or links.

I personally believe quality blogging on company websites is a huge part of good SEO and this will only increase in importance in the future.

Is Blogging The Future Of Seo? is a post from: Blog Godown

On February 24, Google unleashed the Panda update, marking a rise in the importance of quality, relevant content. According to the official Google blog, Panda affected 11.8% of their queries, causing chaos on the web as site owners tried to figure out why they were losing ground in search rankings and how to fix it. The change hit the blogging world especially hard, because it was formerly characterized by relentless plagiarism, piracy, and casual  trademark infringement, which is exactly the behavior the Panda update penalized. This caused many changes to blogging culture, including added focuses on quality, building community, including relevant content and links, building variety in traffic and income and building more engaging content.

The Panda Update

Quality

Panda changed the algorithm by attempting to evaluate content the same way a human would. A major focus of this is quality and originality. Content scrapers, the main target of the update, routinely steal content from other sites and post it as their own, stuffing keywords and links with it to gain rankings. Now, bloggers have to carefully check their spelling and grammar and ensure that they aren’t republishing content that’s already posted elsewhere.

Community

With the added focus on quality and originality, it can be difficult for bloggers to keep their former update schedules and still produce quality content, particularly if their blog fills a small niche. That’s where guest blogging comes in. By having others write content, they get another voice and another point of view, improving the uniqueness of their content. Writing guest blogs also opens the opportunity to engage new readers through author bio links at the beginning or end of the guest article.

Relevancy

Google can now determine whether content present on a website is relevant to the rest of the content on the site, as well as whether any links present actually pertain to the subject matter being discussed. Producing content that fits with a site’s overall theme and only linking to pages that will improve the reader’s experience is a major determining factor in search results ranking now.

Variety

With so many sites being downranked suddenly, many bloggers were made aware of a need to vary their traffic and income sources. Relying on one source for nearly all traffic and revenue is risky and, in a culture flooded with social networking sites, unnecessary. Sharing links, primarily over Twitter and Facebook, adds another layer of traffic referral. Plus, Google is investigating social cues for use in ranking search results, though there’s currently no concrete evidence of their effect.

Engagement

One of the most important changes made to blogging culture as a result of Panda is the increased need for engagement with readers. Google looks for content that keeps users on the page, keeps them coming back and makes them want to bookmark and share. Providing quality content that helps readers solve problems or answer questions should be the foremost concern for any blog owner. Well-researched, quality articles will be ranked higher by Google.

Google’s Panda update caused chaos in the web at large and in the blogging community specifically. Many site owners saw a marked decrease in rankings and traffic, but, in the end, the update improved the quality of blogs by requiring them to focus on quality content, engaging with other blog owners and their readers and becoming more active in social networks.

5 Sea-Changes in Blogging Culture, Post-Panda is a post from: Blog Godown

Search engine optimization is the practice of making changes in different areas of your website and web presence overall so that the search engines can find you and deliver targeted visitors to your website.  A properly implemented SEO campaign will result in an increase in quality traffic to a website.  However, that’s where the SEO power ends.  SEO can get a visitor to your website, but the quality of the website itself will determine whether or not that visitor takes the steps necessary to convert or bounces right out of there.

In order to get the most out of an SEO campaign it’s important to have a website that:

Is Visually Appealing

Who says that looks don’t matter?  They certainly matter when it comes to website design.  A website should be clean looking and without unnecessary distractions.  Hard to read fonts, a blinding color scheme, and pop up ads can all contribute towards a visitor thinking, “I’m outta here!”  A website should look modern.  If it looks like it was designed in 1997 that reflects poorly upon your company.  It looks like you are just as outdated as your website and that you don’t care to make the effort or spend the money to upgrade.

Is User Friendly

The first thing that a visitor notices is page load time.  The days of dial up are long gone and Internet users are impatient and have grown accustomed to receiving information at lightning speed.  It’s important to always be aware of your page load time and make necessary adjustments to improve upon it.  Anything more than a few seconds provides a bad user experience.  Another big part of website usability is the navigation and internal linking structure.  It should be easy for a visitor to navigate a website to find what they need.  Users have grown accustomed to finding a primary navigation with drop downs to all of the main internal pages at the top of a website.  Breadcrumbs also contribute towards a good user experience because they leave a “trail” of where the visitor has been so that they know where they are in the grand scheme of the website.

Provides Only Quality Content

The content of a website is more than the text.  It’s everything that makes up the site.  Some website owners think that they should get the most out of this website “real estate” by cramming as much in as possible.  Don’t do that.  Website content should be about quality content that is most relevant to what the website provides.  Extraneous “clutter”, like too many images, is an unnecessary distraction.  Some of the best websites are quite simple.

Makes It Easy To Convert

The goal of a website is to increase conversions, whether that is sales or leads. The goal of an e-commerce site is obviously to get the visitor to purchase something.  In order for the visitor to feel comfortable making a purchase, they need to trust you.  Provide contact info and a clear return/exchange policy.  The shopping cart experience should be simple and straightforward.  The goal of many B2B sites is to get a lead form filled out so that the sales team can follow up.  It isn’t a game of 20 questions. Only ask for the most important information like name, email, phone number, and reason for contacting. Too many questions are annoying to answer and the visitor probably doesn’t want to give you too much information anyway. Whether the purpose of the site is to generate sales or leads, you should include clear call to actions throughout the site encouraging the visitor to make the move.

SEO Is Only Half the Battle is a post from: Blog Godown

I came across a software named SheerSEO. At first look, i was not at all impressed with it. But, on a deeper look, i found some of its features to be really helpful in my seo strategy.

SheerSEO looks like any other seo software (in my opinion, they can do a bit to improve their look and feel), but it offers a motherlode of features. I would not go and tell you about every little feature it offers, but I will review some features that caught my attention and maybe it catches yours too.

Monitoring your SEO performance

Drafting and using a seo strategy is just on part of SEO. The other bit is to monitor the performance. SheerSEO comes in handy in that respect. It offers features which can track your seo performance on various levels.

Search Engine Rankings

Most of the SEO guys are targeting first page of google. Why? Because the first page of google search results has the maximum chance of converting into organic traffic. SheerSEO Ranking helps you find out the rankings of your pages in the keywords of your choosing. You can add or remove keywords depending on what set of keywords you are targeting at the moment.

Also, one great feature of SheerSEO is that the keywords reports can be received on your mail. People have a tendency to check mail regularly. So, anything that comes in the mail has more chance of being read than on a website.

Apart from this, you can monitor the number of backlinks on each page, the people who are referring to your website and the page rank for each link (for all the PR lovers). The number of backlinks shows you the total number of backlinks to the domain and sub-domains. It would be better if there is an option to see the backlinks for each page just like in yahoo site explorer.

Adding Keywords

Analyzing Keywords

Social Media Metrics

Social Media’s impact on SEO has led to a new field named Social SEO. Due to this fact, most SEO softwares have added social media metrics to their software suite. In SheerSEO’s context, there are three social metrics – Twitter, Facebook and Other Social Media (Digg and Delicious). I liked the facebook metrics because it showed me the detailed metrics of each page (shares, likes and comments) and also a comprehensive chart as shown below.

Facebook Analytics Graph

The Twitter metrics were not so different than any other twitter analytics. It showed weekly tweets which can be seen in many social media tools. Also, it had a feature similar to backtweets.com which shows all the tweets that share my blog’s link.

The other social media metrics showed total stats on Digg and Delicious. This feature was not at all impressive, I wanted detailed info on each digg and delicious submission. Also, there are many other social media websites which have a lot of impact on traffic such as StumbleUpon and LinkedIn which have not been included which is quite strange!

On the whole, it is a cool tool which you can try for free for 3 months. But, for it to be a preferred paid tool, there is a need to add some features which benefit most of the people. Its you turn to try the software and let me know what you think of it!

Analyzing and Improving your Search ranks using SheerSEO is a post from: Blog Godown

If we thought the blast of Facebook and Twitter had been so giddy … best not to analyze the profound changes that occur in regards to the space-time with the staging of Google + and network integration in a context 100% social.

Since blogs came to light, the interaction of users has been an inherent aspect of the use of Internet for all users, however, seems also a reality that we are at present several of those early steps.

The social interaction led to a new world of options, a range of business opportunities that were built around the new habits of consumption demanded by users, more educated and increasingly efficient, and always with the exaltation of the “well done” as a central axis on which to build the reputation, the basic premise of online presence.

Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, YouTube and now … Google + channels are interacting in the universe today.

Understanding the Key Concepts of Social Media

Agencies, consultants and subject enthusiasts rack their brains trying to find the best marketing strategy, the most viral, the more emotional the better results and better ROI, but there are some variables, whose prior achievement – although difficult measuring the return-are consolidated as essential for success in social networking, the social fabric.

Not to mention that Google + takes us to a new level of exposure where the relevance of reputation is an integrated variable positioning.

The focus is the customer. It is essential to integrate channels , meet and merge them into networks on your criteria.

Consistency necessary to understand that the best we can do is expose, expose our quality and our added value, users, potential customers, who decide what to choose. The interaction is essential . It is central to the marketing and the best way to build network. The innovation should always be the pillar that supports the interaction in social networks, each entry must be unique.

Never, though part of any planning process, management and execution, we can forget that after each “like” each “tweet” each “+1″ there are people who have found a way to bond with the brand, this allows us to get a clear idea of what to forget some of the metrics and statistics should acquire the commitment to people and this is a fundamental premise for success in a marketing campaign social media.

Rethinking concepts like “internal customer” and “external customers” can be helpful in the internalization of empathy, a commitment which should prevail in social relations.

Active listening is always present and always necessary, it is here telling us what they want, what they like and do change. And the metric , although we mentioned before that it was more advisable to focus on people, these metrics should be parameterized to give us concrete answers we need, the only way to be efficient and give us time to interact with our users.

Assimilate that today dominates a new concept of success, today the business aspects are very tightly linked to preservation of commitments, successful entrepreneurship today implies a way of life, productivity and variable measurement and a complete change in the definitions of common concepts. Success is now synonymous with consistency and ongoing work, commitment, connectivity, interaction and effort without limit.

Maintenance of horizontal relationships with the leaders and guides required to be implemented in a re-education companies, ensuring that all clients are linked with the brand is essential to consolidate this as the backbone of the business.

And finally, the quality … we are building the Internet, social exaltation occurs because it is efficient resource allocation is based on option generation and construction of networks, communities, circles … high efficiency, this is the biggest gamble the quality, adding value is essential to succeed in a marketing campaign on social networks and now also helps us build … +1, more relevant, more reputation.

12 Keys to success in Social Media is a post from: Blog Godown

After the Panda Update Google has proved again that “Content is the king” formula is still the #1 SEO factor. In this article I am going to share my 3 SEO mistakes I made last year. I wish my fellow bloggers do not make the same mistake, so I am sharing the list of those mistakes and also give tips on SEO. Lets start:

Social Networking Websites

Last year, I heard from Matt Cutts that now Google considers links from social networking websites namely Facebook & Twitter. The mistake I made last year was I did not used Facebook & Twitter for my blog. I did not place Re-tweet and Share buttons on my blog and never indulged in sharing and tweeting other links. In this way my blog posts were never shared and re-tweeted. In this way I ignored an important SEO factor.

Tip : If you are also ignoring social networking websites I recommend you all to start using Twitter, Facebook & LinkedIn and follow 3 steps below:

• Add 20-25 royal friends on Facebook & Twitter
• Get in touch with them, share and re-tweet their blog posts
• In return ask them to do the same with your blog posts
• In this way, you will start getting links on social networking websites

Ignoring “Content is the king” SEO factor

On one of my blog I was writing the same stuff that was written on 20 other blogs. I was not sharing any new stuff on my blog and preferred quantity over quality. I later came to know that how I was ruining the authority of my blog by not writing original content.

Tip : Google really love those blogs/sites that break news, share original content. If you are writing the same stuff that is already written on other blogs, please stop it! Give importance to quality not quantity.

Internal linking and anchor text

Internal Linking : The last very important SEO mistake I made last year was I was not considering internal linking of articles. I did not care about my articles that were beautifully written and were not indexed by Google.

Tip : It is must that you interlink one or two old articles of your blog in your new articles. In this way your old articles that are not indexed by search engines will start getting indexed.

Anchor text : First let me tell you about anchor tag. There is an HTML tag called Anchor Tag that is used to link pages. Its syntax is

<a href=”anchor-link-here”>Anchor Text Here</a>

Google gives very high importance to the anchor text linked to the anchor link. If you’ve high number of anchor links to same anchor text, it will rank high for that text in Google. I did not know about the value of anchor text. I never cared about the anchor text and anchor link value in terms of SEO.

Tip: Whenever you get any backlink, make sure you use a good keyword and also make sure that the link is do-follow

My 3 SEO Mistakes I Made Last Year is a post from: Blog Godown

As we all know, Seo (search engine optimisation) is constantly evolving every single week and as a result it means that ranking factors that once were important in Google, Yahoo and Bings algorithms become either less important or essentially obsolete.

This makes online marketing a tougher process to understand because essentially there is no correct answer to any Seo strategy and even if someone did come up with the ‘perfect’ Seo strategy, it would soon become imperfect after a few weeks or months when the algorithm and ranking factors change.

What I want to look at today is what 3 of the most important on-page Seo ranking factors are in 2011 today in my opinion.

Title Tags

This is a very obvious and in many ways simple area of on-page Seo that sometimes is over looked. In basic terms a title tag tells the search engine what is inside the page and so it is important to have every title tag on your website unique, so each page on your website can rank individually. Also it is a good idea to format your title tags in such a way that the key words or key phrase you want to rank for is in the title tag.

Also your title tags should be no more than 70 characters long as Google does cut them off if they are any longer. So for example a health and safety company that is looking to rank for the key term ‘fire risk assessments’ would have a page on their website completely dedicated to fire risk assessing and a correctly formatted title tag for that page should look like this:

Fire Risk Assessments | Company Name

If they wanted to rank for another key term then there is plenty of room to have more keywords in the title tag as well.

Link Structure

A websites link structure in my opinion is of vital importance to both your human visitors and also search engine spiders. There are a lot of link structure options that you can decide upon however I am a big fan of keeping things simple and there is nothing worse on a website than an over complex link structure with too many categories. A website visitor should not have to click more than 2 times to find the product category they want otherwise you run the risk of losing them.

A good link structure is something that a website should really have from day one as it is much more difficult to alter once in place. Furthermore altering a link structure at a later date could mean that any inbound links you have built could end up going to a 404 error page because the URL no longer exists.

So when it comes to link structure, keep it as simple as possible and make sure that you think about your link structure for you human website visitors first and search engines second. In my experience if you get it right for the human visitors then you get it right for the search engines by default.

Content

The aim for all search engines is to return the most relevant and up to date results for a particular search term and so with this in mind it makes sense to have good quality updated original content on your website. I personally think each page on a commercial website should have 100 to 200 words on describing the page and so the search engines have some content to index.

For this reason as well I think a company blog or company news section is a huge benefit to any website on the Internet trying to rank competitively. This would allow a company to write articles daily or weekly on topics in their business market that they could then submit to social bookmarking websites and gain traffic and links from the exposure.

It also allows a company to become a good online resource if they write good quality content which can increase their traffic hugely. So for example if the health and safety company I mentioned above were to blog about new safety regulations, interesting workplace safety legal cases and other useful health and safety related topics every week then they could become an online resource that other company managers and directors would read up on every week.

Conclusion

There are many online ranking factors that are all important to improve your websites exposure on the search engines, however I do believe that the 3 listed above are 3 of the most important factors today.

3 Important On-Page Seo Factors in 2011 is a post from: Blog Godown

Many writers generate quality content for a variety of blogs across a wide range of subject areas.  These articles they write are then marketed to blogs that preferably have a decent PR (Page Rank) in Google, along with high domain authority and page authority.  For many bloggers who work in article marketing for SEO, the biggest obstacle to link building isn’t writing the content – it’s finding high quality blogs to publish the articles on.  It works like this:  a blogger finds a high quality site to write an article for, then writes the article.  The article is written and provided to the blogger, usually at no cost, but in exchange for a link and anchor text to be included either in the body of the main article, or in a resource box at the end.  The more links that exist for any given URL , the higher it is likely to rank when Google crawls that site.  This is a legitimate, white hat form of link building that can still be very useful for SEO, as long as the blogger knows of many high quality blogs to submit articles to.  Here are the five best sources for finding high quality guest posting opportunities:

1. Start with blogs you already read on a regular basis.  If you enjoy writing about remote controlled catboats, chances are you will also enjoy writing about them.  Perhaps you have already become involved with this specialty blog by registering as a user or commenting on articles and forum posts.  If so, then you already have a connection.  Contact the blog’s owner and propose an article, even if it seems out of your league.  It just might pan out.
2. Make use of search engines to locate blogs that actively invite guest posters to submit articles.  A search for words that flag a site as guest post friendly might look something like this:  intext:”write for us”, or intext:”guest posting.” You can try different search terms, or add intext parameters to combine several at a time.  Once you get the results, save them someplace and keep them organized so that you can find them again easily.
3. Consult MyBlogGuest – a site specializing in pairing content writers with blog owners searching for fresh articles to publish on their sites.  Here, you’ll find forums where site owners post messages seeking particular articles and setting forth their writers’ guidelines.  You’ll need to contact the original poster for any additional information you may need.  Alternately, if you have a paid account here, you will have access to the article gallery, where you can post completed articles that can be found by bloggers who conduct a search.
4. Search Twitter.  Twitter search results yield instant leads, in real time.  That means they’re even better than Google Alerts, and since you can search on the same strings as you would with Google Alerts you know you’re not missing anything.  Furthermore, Twitter has search specialization that can greatly assist your efforts – such as searching by hashtags, geographic location, and even the date.
5. Try searching for Blogger Linkup – another site dedicated to linking blog owners with content writers – but not via forums. Instead, subscribers receive a periodic email newsletter with requests for articles on very specific topics.

These are a few ways to start building a collection of links to blogs that rank well with Google, and want posts from guest bloggers.  Once you find a large number of sites to write for and organize them in some way (say, a spreadsheet or database) you can easily manage the frequency with which you make submissions to each site, build relationships with blog owners, and have an inexhaustible store of places to publish your articles for SEO.  Happy searching.

The Five Best Sources for Finding Guest Posting Opportunities is a post from: Blog Godown

Google updates its search algorithm nearly every day with small changes which most websites never even notice however in the last few months we have seen an update that has got a lot of media attention and that is the ‘panda’ update.

The reason this has got a lot of attentions is because many websites that have been associated with complete white hat seo techniques such as SEOmoz have had a dip in their long tail keyword rankings. The long tail keywords refers to key phrases that are specific to your market, so for example a jewellery box website’s main keyword might be ‘jewellery box’ and one of their long tail keywords might be ‘black leather jewellery box’.

The long tail keywords can bring in a lot of good solid targeted traffic to a website and so a website that might have relied on lots of long tail keywords will have been affected the worst with this update.

Why just the long tails?

This is a good question and one of the main reasons is that a lot of seo’s used content websites and article directories such as Ezine Articles to create links back to their long tail pages. What the ‘panda’ update appears to have done is devalue the links from content farms and so in reality people’s websites have not been penalised, they have simply had some of their links devalued.

Ok, so what now?

The first thing to do is not to panic and start getting rid of links and content that you have already posted on content websites such as Ezine Articles. There is still some value in the links, it has just been devalued.

There really isn’t a right answer at this point however my personal checklist would be the following:

1. Get some fresh new content on your website targeting your long tail keywords as Google loves new content and make sure it is original. Then submit this into the Social Bookmarking websites such as Digg, Delicious etc.

2. Have a look at the internal link structure of your website and make sure the internal links to your long tail pages from the high Page Rank pages such as your index page are in place.

3. Look at what long tail keywords you dropped down in i.e. was it across the board or just a few long tail keywords. Once this is known you need to begin a direct link building campaign to get these lost rankings back again.

4. Finally make sure you have no duplicate content on your own website as this is not a good thing to have. If you do then get rid of the page that is ranking lower and this should then boost the other page that was duplicated.

This is just one of those updates that has caught everyone a little off guard however there is no need to panic. The formula has not changed in theory as new links and new original content is still the best way to rank well on Google!

Optimising Long Tail Keywords After Google’s Panda Update is a post from: Blog Godown

One of the first lessons we learn when doing SEO of our blog posts is to use a healthy number of keywords within the article. Search engine algorithms are created such that they consider the keyword density in an article. The better the density, the better chances that article will rank higher for that particular keyword. However, we have also read from many SEO engineers and SEO blogs that using too many keywords in a single article can affect the SEO negatively. Since Google and other search engines consider too much stuffing of keywords in an article as unnatural and blacklist the site or page as spam. This is why it is important that we as bloggers understand the ideal times a particular keyword can be repeated within a post.

How much is enough?

Factors that affect the decision for number of keywords:

• The length of the article: The length of the article is the most decisive factor when it comes to deciding how many times a keyword can be used. If you are writing a post with only 200 odd words and when you are writing a post that is 1000+ words – there will be a significant difference in the number of times the keyword is used in the latter and former cases.
• The nature of keyword: Are you optimizing your article for a short-keyword or a long-tail keyword? This is another question. It is much easier to repeat short-term keywords in an article compared to a long-tail one. However, long-tail keywords are less difficult to optimize since they have comparatively lesser competing pages.

So how many keywords can be used?

Finally, we have to decide how many keywords can be used. For this there are many answers that are provided by search engine experts. Some search engine engineers claim that the ideal percentage of keywords present in an article should hover around 5-7%. A 10% usage of keywords means that in a 1000-words article, 100 words are dedicated to your keywords only. Now this seems like a very low ratio, but practically implementing you will find that using 10% of keywords in an article makes it really keyword dense. If you can stuff the keywords smartly – then use the percentage. If not it will make the readers feel like they are reading some kind of a monotonous and repetitive slogan.

My best tip to maintaining an ideal keyword density:

The best way to maintaining an ideal keyword density is to follow the Inverted Pyramid. By using the inverted pyramid technique while writing an article, what you do is that you have a lot of keywords in the beginning of the article and it keeps reducing as you come to the end of it. This is especially effective because it caters to all the SEO principles we are used to applying such as:

• We all know that keywords used in the first line (beginning) of any article is much more valuable than the text in the footer. This is similar to the reason why links in the footer are given lesser weightage from Google as compared to links between the post or right in the start. The reason why Google gives less priority to footer links of an article is because that is usually the format of article directory sites and Google has tailor made its algorithm accordingly so that no site gets popular through rampant article submission to high Pagerank directories.
• Keywords are also unevenly distributed when you use keywords with the Inverted Pyramid technique. This way the crawlers will find your post is not involved in any kind of keyword stuffing and will pass it as legit and good content.

A final tip

There is really no objective way to say how many keywords one can use in an article. But ideally, it should be enough to get the attention of search engine spiders but not such that it deteriorates your visitors reading experience. The number one disadvantage of repeating keywords is that your readers will find your article very very boring and frustrating to read.

I hope this post was useful for you. I’d be happy to entertain any questions from your side.

How Many Times Can a Keyword be Used in a Blog Post? is a post from: Blog Godown

I am a huge fan of businesses using blogging for SEO purposes. Whether you maintain your own blog on your company or personal website, or post on others’ blogs, blogging can be a great tool for improving your search engine rank. Google likes to see new content being added to sites, and the more often you add new content, the more often Google will visit you. Simply throwing up useless blog posts, however, will not do you much good at all. Here are a few tips to help you use blogging to your SEO advantage:

Write Relevant Blog Posts

If you are going to be using a blog post to link to one of your website pages, whether internally or externally, you need to try and write relevant content. If you have a website offering Utah SEO services, blogging about your neighbors new cute baby won’t do you much good at all. Although there are many benefits that come from Blogging, blogs are for people to actually read. Users don’t want to visit your blog post expecting one thing, and end up with your life story. Keep your blog post within the framework of your industry. Save your musings on other subjects for your journal or personal blog.

Write Targeted Blog Posts

Following the previous point, try to not make your blog posts a wild fantasy journey that takes you from one magical world to the next. Try to have a central theme or idea to your blog post. Some blogs may take on a kind of free-for-all style, where anything goes and one blog post may just be someone recalling how their day went. This is not the best way to use a blog to increase your SEO rankings. Keep your blog, and blog posts targeted to your industry.

Post Only Unique Content

For heaven’s sake, this should not need to be said. Google clearly does not like duplicate content. Do not copy from Wikipedia, or any other site! Write your own stuff, or you will be penalized. Enough said.

Use the Opportunity for Links in Each Post

Obviously, adding new content to your site is great and Google loves it, but each blog post can be a great opportunity to link to some of your pages internally, or to get a link to your site if you are blogging on someone else’s blog. Do not mistake me, I am not suggesting blogging solely for the purpose of a link. But if you are going to blog, don’t waste a good opportunity to get a good link. This will boost your search engine rankings better than anything.

Clearly, the art of blogging is something that can be abused. But if these few steps are followed, I believe many useless and irrelevant blog posts will be prevented from being written.

Using Your Blog for SEO Purposes is a post from: Blog Godown

With the whole world online these days (hence why it’s called the World Wide Web), traditional marketing practices are getting an overhaul as some believe that the Internet has negated their worth and cost-effectiveness as part of a marketing plan. With many marketing experts (and traditional journalists) lamenting the demise of newspaper readership and subscription renewals, online versions of every major paper have stepped up to support their offline brethren. As phone books lose ground to local-based search apps, many marketers are left speculating as to where the local search industry is heading.

But website owners and companies shouldn’t abandon their traditional marketing efforts in favor of SEO and SEM any more than they should completely ignore the changing landscape and subsequent shifting to an online world. Following either of these tunnel vision approaches will only hurt the business, the brand and the company’s bottom line in the long run.

Having an online presence provides companies with the chance to connect with their consumers on a different level. Their brand can reach into user’s lives at more touch points than ever, with every moment having the potential to prompt that user to action. Every day, more and more users turn to search engines to ask questions and find information. It makes no sense for a company not to promote their site as the answer to the user’s query. It is especially important to have an online presence when users search for that company or one of their brands in particular.

With the growing use of social media sites and the new phenomenon of daily deal providers like Groupon and LivingSocial, companies can push their SEO efforts and reach an even broader consumer base that, interestingly enough, can be more targeted than before.

But none of these online endeavors are magical potions that can make up for a lack of offline branding and promotion. If consumers don’t know a company by name or product, it makes it that much harder for them to find that company’s site unless by chance.  Online and offline efforts need to work together to help a business grow their consumer base and promote their brand.

For instance, let’s say a restaurant is offering a special Valentine’s Day deal. They are trying to get word out about their Valentine’s Day promotion that gives customers two free glasses of champagne with their dinner if they book their reservation by February 10^th. They post this deal to all their local-search and social networking profiles, as well as the restaurant’s main site. They also decide to print the offer at the bottom of customer receipts for the first two weeks in February, prompting in-house patrons to book their reservation once they finish their meal. The restaurant also decides to create a partnership with the florist next door, where guests can purchase a custom designed Valentine’s Day bouquet for a discount when they mention their reservation at the restaurant. The florist posts this information to his site, hangs a sign in his front window and has an ad printed up in the local newspaper announcing the promotion.

All of the aforementioned efforts work with each other to promote the restaurant’s Valentine’s Day deal. The results are a full reservation book and a very busy florist.

The Ultimate Marketing Technique

Relying solely on offline or online efforts effectively cuts the legs out from what could be a very successful campaign. Marketing plans should allow for both to be implemented and worked through.

Ultimate Marketing Technique – Offline plus Online Marketing is a post from: Blog Godown

You’ve decided on your blogging platform, and you’re excited. You look at the screen, and your fingers are poised on the keyboard and tingling with anticipation. But what do you type? How do you start well out of the blogging gate in the race for search engine attention and building a reader following?

The biggest question - What to do next?

Keyword Tie-Ins

Regardless of the theme of your blog, keep in mind what gets attention from search engines and from the reading public: keywords, content, and site or blog advertising.

Title your blog with one of the top keywords in your subject area.

Use keywords or phrases with a density of once for every 100 to 150 words, not including your blog signature, which should include your main keyword phrase or blog title. Don’t overuse the keyword in your posts. Search engines block listings from overly-dense content.

Post consistently and always with relevant content. Make a posting schedule and keep it. Try for a minimum of two or three times per week or more often if possible.

Legal Advertising

There are several methods that can legally—as in non-spam—advertise your blog:

1. Related Blogs and Forums: Find blogs and forums that relate to your blog topic. If direct URL posting is not allowed, contact the blog owner or site manager and request a link exchange. If disallowed, continue searching. There are hundreds of thousands of related sites on the Internet.
2. Your Personal Email: On every personal email address you have, you can legally advertise your blog in two ways: Signature Block: Create and use a signature block that includes an automatic link to your blog. Every person you email will get one automatically. Vacation Responder: Periodically use this tool to send a message to every person who sends you an email when it’s activated. The message can read simply, ‘Sorry I can’t answer right away. I’m busy with my blog, Border Collie Lover in Pasadena, found at:’ and include the URL. Finish it with something like, ‘I’ll personally answer your email soon. Thanks for your patience. Meanwhile, come read!’
3. Email List Owners: Sign up for e-zines about your blog topic. When you get a good feel for the content being sent, email the list owner and volunteer content for his or her e-zine. Include the content and the resource box listing your name, your blog’s name, and the blog’s URL. If the list owner likes the content and agrees to send your mini-article in the e-zine, you’ve just succeeded in advertising your blog to potentially thousands of people, and without spamming.
4. Social Networking Sites: Yes, yes, and yes. Yes, create a page, entitled the same or as close to your blog title as you can on every social network site. Yes, link to and from your blog, and yes, include the social sites’ URLs in your signature blocks and resource boxes.
5. Article Writing: Write an information article or series regarding your topic. Meet the submission guidelines regarding no ‘selling’ your particular site, and include your blog, et al, in your resource box. Allow others to use your article—with your name, your copyright notice, and your resource box left intact—freely on their sites. This allows you to advertise your blog on potentially thousands of web pages, creating a back link on each posting site.

Potential to Earn Money

Blogging presents two ways to possibly earn money: paid advertising on your blog and freelance blogging.

Paid advertising is either presenting ad space for others to rent on your blog or signing up for Google AdSense which pays you, as the blog owner, each time someone clicks an AdSense ad on your blog. The more popular your blog becomes to the search engines, the more people who are going to read your blog, which means there are potentially more ads clicked and more money paid to you.

Once you have a consistent, well-designed and maintained blog, others may contact you to write for their blog or you can apply to blog writers’ advertisements, and use your great blog as a sample.

I Have a Blog. Now, What Should I do? is a post from: Blog Godown

Making a link chain

Linkbait has been found to be highly successful in promoting links to websites through the use of relevant, significant and gripping content. Eventually content then holds the key to website success, which will not only improve the sites rating in search engines but also enhance business. Successful websites have online visitors who keep returning and many of them become regular visitors. Such sites are called “sticky”, and can sustain their stickiness only if they have all the ingredients needed. Some of these include the following:

Features of a Sticky Website

Once the ultimate goal is to have a sticky website, the next step is to find the essential features of such a site and how to go about creating one that proves to be a perfect fit. Each of the features signify superior quality, so that it stands out amongst the thousands of mediocre sites, with nothing to differentiate them. Therefore, if quality means more expenditure to get the best in terms of layout, design and content, it will be worthwhile in the long run.

• Outstanding content- Content found on websites comes from various sources. It has to be original, and can either be written by owners themselves, have it outsourced from a freelancer or have a member of the team write it. Whatever the source, it must be unique, consistently good in quality, and constantly updated so that viewers keep returning to the site for more.
• Adhering to timelines- Projects undertaken must be completed on time to build trust and credibility. If design and content are outsourced, then keeping suitable margins become important so that there is no embarrassment due to delays.
• Delivering flawless products- This becomes important, since no one has patience with grammatical or spelling mistakes, shoddy pictures and unimpressive art work. Delivering less than the best would impact the success of the linkbait, and it would lose its credibility.
• Website brand- The linkbait has to promote your website as a brand through character, quality and cohesiveness. It must appear genuine and sincere and above all authentic. Any trace of duplicity will compromise on the reputation of the brand and it would lose credibility in the eyes of the discerning but serious customer.

Getting Started

Once the linkbait meets all the criteria of stickiness, the next step is to have it reach the viewer and creating an impact to such an extent that he instantly shares it with others. This would offset a chain reaction and lead to multiple viewership. This could be facilitated by:

• Proper placement of content- Linkbait content must ideally be placed away from the main site on a blog or even a static page. It would be suicidal to place it in the commercial section, especially if pertains to commercial web property. A non-sales pitch appeals far more and a blog proves effective in this respect. Moreover blogs offer the simplest tools for sharing the linkbait with others.
• Ideal promotion sites- Some well known sites like Digg.com, Reddit.com and other bookmarking sites are the best first bet for promotion that offer higher success probabilities with accounts revealing good participation levels.
• Incorporate features to ease sharing- The web offers simple and easy to use tools that make sharing interesting information and articles with a network of friends and colleagues. All that is required is using social news voting buttons, Facebook and Twitter integration and see the linkbait reach hundreds of readers across the globe. The linkbait content can be added to other blogs if you have added codes that can be easily copied, especially in the case of infographics.
• Reaching out to other bloggers becomes easy since there are thousands of blogs in the same niche as your linkbait. If the linkbait content is of the kind that appeals to the blogging audience, it is not difficult to post it on these blogs as a regularly and encourage people to share it with their readers.

Gaining Mileage

Once the linkbait is on track and moving along predicted paths, there is lots left to do. The idea is to maximize the benefits to ensure that the linkbait brings maximum returns. The following steps can prove to be helpful:

• Use existing traffic for the next launch- A successful linkbait will rope in substantial traffic which can then be channelized to launch the next set, which must be kept ready, and released at the right time. The new piece can ride to success by simply piggybacking on the previous linkbait.
• Get as many links as possible- While creating infographics, many readers use the content but do not provide the links back to the creator. It is possible to trace users of the linkbait content who have not sent the links with the aid of sites like Tineye.com and then get the links needed for long term use.

Quantifying the Outcome

With all the steps in place, the linkbait creator now can see the outcome and measure the results of his labor. This can be assessed by tracking the following:

• The number of Facebook shares, tweets, digs, reddit votes received by the linkbait
• Links can be tracked with the aid of Webmaster tools, Yahoo Site Explorer and so on.
• The links and the referral logs will reveal if any of celebrities shared the linkbait. If yes, this can be used to influence others.

The end result will doubtlessly be a successful website and the one that holds promise for enhanced profits in business.

Using Linkbait To Get The Most Out Of Your Site is a post from: Blog Godown

The author of this plugin Vladimir Prelovac, has developed a new premium version of the plugin especially for small and large business owners and bloggers.

There are a number of features that set it apart from it’s free version. To name a few:

• Nofollow whitelist – Allows you to specify a whitelist of domains that you do not want to add ‘nofollow’ attribute to (for example for your own sites). It is a really good feature for bloggers who want to optimize multiple websites for search engines. Linking one website to the other will help increase the page rank as well as the search engine rankings
• Advanced automatic interlinking options – SEO Smart Links is more powerful with new features like:

1. Option to prevent cross-category linking (autolink to articles within the same category only)
2. Option to parse only posts older than given number of days
3. Post slug keywords can be matched now
4. WordPress 3.0 custom taxonomies support
5. Option to specify the minimum length in characters for keyword to be considered
6. Disable WordPress texturization filter option

• Caching: To interlink, a lot of resources are used to parse content. For large websites, it would mean excessive load on your site. To reduce the load, internal caching is used which is compatible with W3 Cache and WP Super Cache plugins.
• Link Cloaking: One of the most useful feature for affiliate marketers. The affiliate links can be cloaked using a base permalink for redirection like /go/. It will help you increase the number of sales.

There are many more interesting features which can be checked out at their sales page.

The Premium SEO Smart Links Plugin is available in 3 licenses :

1. Personal (79$) : For bloggers with a single blog.
2. Professional(149$) : For multiple blogs.
3. Business (299$) : Recommended for businesses. Can be used by you and your clients.

You will get a special 10% off on all these licenses if you use the coupon down10.

Take a look at the video of this plugin:

What do you think about automatic interlinking? Have you used any plugins for that? Have you tried the SEO Smart Links Plugin?

Premium SEO Smart Links Plugin has been Launched is a post from: Blog Godown

How to decrease Bounce Rate

This is a guest article by Jasmine of Best Web Host. You too can be part of this great knowledge sharing community. Take a look at ourguest blogging guidelines.

Analyzing traffic and the trends on your website or blog can be the most important factor in determining the success (or failure) of your website. One of the components in this analysis is the bounce rate. Bounce rate simply refers to the total number of visitors who left your website without visiting another page. Having a low bounce rate shows success, and a high bounce rate usually is a sign of failure. So, how do you reduce your website’s bounce rate? Here are 12 top tips to reduce bounce rate.

Tip #1: Have a Good Website Layout and a Compelling Design

First impression can mean a lot and having a good looking site and an attractive design can actually result in your visitors staying longer on your website. Chances are he or she will read more and click one or two of your links on your website and thus reducing your bounce rate.

Tip #2: Stick to the Topic

When your visitors are reading your blog or site, they are obviously looking for some information regarding the topic. If you don’t stick to the topic and start discussing things unrelated, visitors will feel that you are wasting their time and they will leave your website regardless of how good the other posts or pages are.

Tip #3: Focus on Keyword Research and SEO traffic

Getting traffic to the blog is hard enough, but making the visitors stay loyal or become repeat visitors is even harder. By doing proper keyword research and focusing on SEO traffic can result in more targeted visitors, who are obviously interested in the theme of your website. They will more likely read more than one of your pages and thus reducing the bounce rate!

Tip #4: Use Catchy Titles & Tags

Having great titles and interesting tags can result in visitors clicking them more often to further check out those pages, this can reduce bounce rate by a large margin!

Tip #5: Maintain Simple Navigation

Having a simple navigation structure for your website is important. Not all your visitors are web savvy and they often leave the site because they don’t know how to navigate. In this sense, providing better site navigation can no doubt reduce bounce rate.

Tip #6: Provide a Search Box

Providing a search box can prompt visitors to use those and find what they are looking for, thus reducing the bounce rate.

Tip #7: Content is the KING

Yes, it’s true. Content is the King and if visitors love what they are reading for the first time, they are more likely to visit other web pages on your website. Also make your articles easily readable because not all readers have a high level understanding in English.

Tip #8: Fast Website Loading Time

If your website loads slowly, then visitors are more likely to leave you without even waiting for it to show up. People don’t have patience and having quick loading pages can reduce bounce rate tremendously.

Tip #9: Provide Random & Related Posts

Providing random & related posts at the end of the article can result in reduced bounce rate as people would be interested in reading more.

Tip #10: Proper Categorization

Categorizing your articles and posts properly can help to reduce bounce rate. No one likes to read an unrelated article in a category which they are interested in! Make sure you put your articles or posts in the proper categories.

Tip #11: Internal linking of Keywords

Inter-linking between your articles and posts. Usually people are interested in finding out more especially when they are interested in the topic, and so this can result in lowering the bounce rate.

Tip #12: Don’t clutter the site with Advertisements

Cluttering your website with advertisements can annoy visitors. Some of them might get the wrong impression and leave without reading anything at all!

12 Tips to Reduce Bounce Rate is a post from: Blog Godown

This is a guest article by Deborah Dera You too can be part of this great knowledge sharing community. Take a look at our guest blogging guidelines.

The world of SEO, or search engine optimization, can be incredibly overwhelming – especially if you are new to blogging and web development. The truth is that many new webmasters are making serious mistakes that are hurting their site’s SEO value more than they’re helping. Here are a few to watch out for as you develop your first site.

Choosing an Unrelated URL

Not long ago I did work for a client who decided that he was going to purchase existing websites with strong rankings and then optimize them for his keywords. His goal was to keep the site’s rankings while changing the total focus. End result? He had a website URL that included the name of a hotel but was trying to optimize the content so that he could sell a home improvement product. One morning he woke up to find that Google had blacklisted his site! Your URL needs to be somewhat related to the content you are posting and, if you can, should include one of your main keywords.

Failing to do Keyword Research

You may be an expert when it comes to selling widgets but building a website based on what you think is popular is going to prove disastrous. You simply must do keyword research before you attempt to build a blog or website. Trust me when I say Google knows what people are looking for better than you do. Google will tell you exactly what keywords and keyword phrases you should be using to optimize your website. Ignoring Google’s advice will not help you to increase your Google rankings.

Ignoring Onsite SEO

Your website needs to be SEO-friendly. You need to have titles on every page included on your site, include great descriptions, and avoid keyword stuffing when you create your content. You also need to have a sitemap so that the search engine bots can easily identify what pages of your site have been updated and what pages need to be indexed. Interlink your pages, using relevant keywords, and make sure all of your graphics have alt descriptions that include keyword phrases as well. The behind-the-scenes aspects of your site may not matter to your visitors, but they matter to Google.

Building Sites in Flash

Here’s the problem with flash. Not everyone who visits your website will have the tools necessary to view it but everyone can view an HTML based site. If you simply must use flash or some other image-based system, make sure you have an HTML version of your website as well. Search engine spiders (and your visitors) will have an easier time seeing your content.

Skimpy Content Creation

The people who visit your website want to see content, not a few lines here or there written only to include keywords and phrases. Give your visitors (and Google) something to read and make sure it is unique. The better your content the more frequently they’ll visit – and Google will notice that traffic.

Search engine optimization doesn’t have to be complicated. Simply stay away from the easiest mistakes to avoid and you’ll see your rankings improving little by little – guaranteed.

5 Horrible SEO Mistakes You Need to Avoid is a post from: Blog Godown

This is a guest article by Tam. Join the discussion and voice your opinion by following our guest blogging guidelines.

The online business industry is getting more and more popular. With the increasing number of people starting their own online businesses, tighter competitions arise where the strong will win and the weak will just have to wait for their downfall. Having a small online business does not mean that you cannot compete with the bigger ones. What really determines your success is the power that you have to compete and your small business can compete with the bigger companies out there. There is a saying that goes “great power comes in a small package.” This can apply to your business. Though small it may be; your business can survive. The key to survive and win the competition is the Search Engine Optimization or SEO.

Small businesses often do not have the fat budget to hire an SEO company with worldwide reputation. But that is not the reason to give up. Here are 5 best SEO strategies that will cost you practically nothing because you can do it yourself.

1. Choose the right keywords or keyphrases for every web page. This strategy is one of the best because it is the basic thing about being found by search engines and it is definitely in your control.  The right keywords are the ones that describe your websites’ purpose and content clearly. It is better for you to make up keyphrases instead of keywords because it is more effective. So invest some time to sit and make up some key phrases that consist of two or three words.

2. Place the keywords strategically. As soon as you come up with the killer keyphrases, the second strategy is to put them on the right places. This strategy is one of the best because how well you place those keyphrases as well as how many quality external pages link to you determine the quality of SEO. The strategic places for you to put the key phrases are like the headings, title and the body in each of your webpage. Keep the keyphrase together. Repeat the keyphrases several times in the body text and make them in bold. This will enable the search engines to detect them quickly.

3. Put a Site Map.The third strategy is putting a Site Map. This strategy is best because with the presence of a Site Map, search engines will find it easy to follow, find and index all the pages in your site. Make sure the Site Map includes all the pages and place the link somewhere near the top of the homepage.

4. Text/HTML format. In building the pages, prefer text and HTML over graphics or other editing formats. This is the fourth best strategy because these preferences are more likely to be chosen by search engines. A website with complex editing format will be hard to navigate by the search engines and less likely to rank on the top list.

5. Avoid Flash and JavaScript. The last but still one of the best strategies is to avoid Flash and JavaScript. Search engines do not follow them, so putting them in your website will only make it less likely to be found.

So there you have it, the 5 best of SEO strategies that you can do yourself without have to hire an SEO company. Good luck!

How to increase your website popularity through SEO is a post from: Blog Godown

This is a guest article by Amanda. You should voice your opinions by taking a look at our guest blogging guidelines.

Everyone is writing their own blog today, and it is a great opportunity to have the world view your opinions, tips, art and stories. A blog can quickly make someone into a thought leader in their industry, but it does not come easily. If you want your blog to be taken seriously, you will need to know how to optimize your blog.

Optimizing your blog is not as easy as clicking a button and hoping everyone will arrive to your site. There are multiple actions most Internet marketing companies would recommend you can take to make your blog more accessible and user friendly. Your blog should bring readers in, keep them interested while they are there, and keep them coming back in the future. Here are several ways you can begin to optimize your blog.

Keywords

One of the only ways people are going to find your blog is by searching for keywords. Each blog post needs to be focused on a small set of keywords. Those keywords also need to show up in the title tags, meta description, custom URL, and even alt text for any images in the post. When you help a search engine like Google identify that your blog post is relevant to the keyword, you will increase your ranking in the search results. A good rule of thumb is to use 1-2 keywords per post and repeat them each 2-3 times within the body of your post.

URL Structure

A lot of people will not realize that they can customize exactly how their blog’s URL’s are formed. In order to optimize your blog, you will need to change the structure to include the title of your blog post in the URL itself. Additionally, it may be a good idea on some blogs to include the category of your blog post in the custom URL.

Sitemaps

Search engine bots will crawl all over your blog, trying to decipher what you offer the world. A lot of times, the bots can get lost and leave your site without reading every page. In order to prevent that, and make it easier on the bots, create a sitemap that tells them exactly what pages you have on your site and where they are. This is also helpful for users who are looking for a specific page on your blog.

Snippets

Most blog services offer a place for you to enter a compelling snippet that describes the content of your post. This snippet will show up in the search engines rather than simply the first 3 lines of text on your post. A user will know ahead of time exactly what your post is about if you write strong descriptions.

RSS Feed

Many blogs today do not offer their visitors an easy option to subscribe to their blog via RSS feed. RSS allows people to easily digest all of their favorite blogs’ content on their own reader such as Google Reader. This is a very important step to help bring your visitors back to your site and stay updated with your content. Without an RSS feed, there is no way for your visitors to know when you post something new. Many RSS services also offer a tool to allow your visitors to subscribe by email, delivering your content directly to their inbox.

When you know how to search engine optimize your blog, search engines will begin to value your content more and visitors will come more often and stay longer. There are multiple other tips you can use to optimize your blog, and each blog service can be different. Simply search for exactly what you are trying to do on your blog and someone likely posted a guide on how to do it. Optimizing your blog is an important step to grow your web presence.

How to Optimize Your Blog is a post from: Blog Godown