5 Ways to Add Content to Your Blog
If you have a blog you can sometimes find it hard to come up with topics
and relevant information to write about. In fact it can become downright
frustrating to put together content especially if you’re in a
specialized niche market. Here are 5 things you should always think
about that can get the creative juices flowing.
1. Write on a buzz topic
Whatever the niche market, there will always be some buzz around
a specific topic at some time. The trick is to find out about it
early and make frank and compelling contributions to the discussion.
Always try and put a new twist to the topic and add a new dimension
to the topic that no one else has thought about. But how will you know
when something is happening in your industry? Always keep your ear to the
ground. Subscribe to other blogs in your niche especially the
authoritative ones. You should also contribute in forums related to the
topics in your niche blog so that when a new interesting topic comes up
you’ll know about it and be able to write about it. Scanning the
forums will also give you other ideas as to what to write about based
off the questions others submit.
2. Create a video
An interesting way to add content to your blog is to create videos about
a topic and embed it into your blog. The videos that really do well
are those that offer instruction on some tricky task or give breaking
news in an informative manner. For example, SEO expert Brad Fallon has a
video blog called the FreeLineReport which gives Web 2.0 news in a short
2 minutes. Another example is that of internet marketer, Michael Cheney
who offers internet marketing advice in a blog called ConfessionsOfAMarketer.
The good thing about using videos on a blog, or any website for that
matter, is that it will greatly increase the time each visitor stays
on your site. And it doesn’t have to be an expensive venture either.
Using a digital camera with motion camera capabilities for close up
disussions is standard for many video bloggers. Also the use of screen
capture software to make moving screen tutorials is commonplace.
You can pay for Camtasia Studio from TechSmith or use the open-source
CamStudio to do screen capture videos.
After you’ve created you’re video, upload it to one of the popular
video sharing sites, example Youtube or Viddler, then use the embed tags to
include it on your blog. This way, whenever others see your video and want
to share it they will also embed it into their website. This can cause a
viral effect and a massive boost of traffic to you original blog article.
3. Recycle other articles
If you prefer to stick to the written media recycling articles that you’ve
sent to article sites, example EzineArticles or GoArticles, may be one way
to go. You could also search for articles related to your niche on these
article sites and use them. But ensure you leave the original author’s
signature box with a link back to their site. Another way to gather articles
is to pay for private label rights (PLR) articles. This is the better option
because the articles become your own to do with what you please.
4. Use a ghostwriter or contributed author
You could hire the services of a ghostwriter, someone you will give the
privilege of contributing to your blog after paying them. They can be
sometimes helpful if you’re looking to write topics related to specific
keywords in your niche. However try and look at their track record and
articles written beforehand.
Also you could strike up a partnership with another blogger in your niche.
And if they contribute regularly to the niche you can propose to trade
articles at intervals. If you use wordpress, just set up a user account for
them so they can post articles when they feel like it.
5. Use ShareAPost
A new service that came out this year offers users the opportunity to share
their blog post with others with a blog. The service is called ShareAPost and
it is free to use for now. You simply sign up for an account, then when you
spot an article from another user in your niche which is relevant you can
send it to your blog using a user account you set up in your Wordpress blog.
These five techniques are a quick rundown of ways to think about gaining
content for you blog. Now what do you think is another way? Don’t be afraid
to leave you comments.
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New Search Engines Cuil and SearchCloud try to unseat Google
When it comes to web searching the search engine at the top of the list for most people is Google. In fact it presently commands over 60 percent of the search market followed by Yahoo and MSN. So when I heard that some ex-Google employees have taken steps to create a search engine of there own I had to sit up and take notice.
The new search engine is called Cuil and presently boasts to be the search engine with the highest number of pages in their index…..over 120 billion and counting. The founders of Cuil include former Google employees Anna Patterson, Russell Power and Louis Monier. Patterson and Power worked on Google’s “TeraGoogle” search index and Monier specialized in search engine design. To further stand out from Google, Cuil is experinenting with a magazine style spread for their search results. With this style they have their search results presented within three columns on the webpage varying from the single-template, 10 result per page results that Google offers. Maybe with this style webmasters may have an equal opportunity to get their website links clicked once they show up on the first page. (Just maybe). Right now only testing will provide answers to the question of user responsiveness to the layout of the results page. Presently Google’s pages show greater clicks for the first 3 results on the page than any other, meaning a lot more traffic for showing up in the top 3 for a search term.
On a side-note, Google software engineers Jesse Alpert and Nissan Hajaj, in a blogpost on the official google blog http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/we-knew-web-was-big.html seemed to make pre-emptive comments related to Cuil’s insistence that they have the largest index for search engines on the web. They said that Google scanned more than a trillion webpages but didn’t index all of them because “many of them are similar to each other, or represent auto-generated content …. that isn’t very useful to searchers.” Google has only about 8.2 billion web pages in their index.
Another new search engine came into the fray this week. This one is based off the new search initiative that allows users to create their own search engine using Yahoo BOSS. It is called SearchCloud and it allows searchers to specify which keyword or keyword phrase is more important. The idea behind it is that with a weighting going to each search term the searcher includes, it will improve search relevance in relation to that specific user. However, it remains to be seen how well this user influenced search works in practice. Check out a review about the search engine from TechCrunch here: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/28/searchcloud-weights-keywords-to-improve-search-relevance/
Check out a video on how to use SearchCloud here:
What Is The Best Way To Get Traffic On The Internet Today?
You may not believe this, but even though traffic from searches is still very good, there are other excellent options open to you. Having spent a great amount of time targeting search engine traffic, I became quite familiar with the subject of search engine optimization and although many marketing experts would suggest it is difficult, it really is not the case. Nonetheless I am pleased to say there is a way of finding a mix of traffic without having to completely rely on the work of the search engines to get results.
Blogging is a super way of getting traffic, but this has to be done in the right way and needs to be updated at regular intervals. When you blog, you must, of course, social bookmark your post to the top directories, and for your guidance, some of these are listed below.
1. Digg
2. Onlywire.com (with this method you will get into twenty two directories with one simple click)
3. Propeller
4. Stumbleupon
Carry out a Google search for The Authority Black Book. When you download this information, which is free of charge, make sure you read and understand it. This will tell you all you need to know about using blogging to drive excellent quality traffic in high numbers on a daily basis to your blog.
Another way of getting great traffic is to use Article Marketing. These days if you write for traffic and get your articles into a few of the best article directories, there is no worry about duplicate content penalties.
The top 5 article directories for your articles to appear in are as follows:-
1. Ezinearticles.com
2. AssociatedContent.com
3. Goarticles.com
4. IdeaMarketers.com
5. SearchWarp.com IdeaMarketers.com
No doubt by now you will have noticed the theme taking place here. It’s the theme of getting traffic from your social booking marking directories and from article directories too.
The job of search engines is to give their searchers new and relevant material. You can easily do this for your visitors without having to be concerned with the search engines now or at any time in the future.
It’s a great feeling when you know you are getting traffic every day and will continue to do so even if Google were to totally rearrange the top ranked sites in the blink of an eye, as this will not affect you and your traffic at all.
Source: Internet Marketing
Getting Traffic For Affiliate Programs
One of the easiest ways to make money online especially for “newbies” or new internet marketers is by selling other people’s products; since it’s much easier than creating you own product. There are many outlets that host different programs that can fit into whatever niche your website is in. But the two most used to find affiliate programs is ClickBank and Commission Junction.
There are many people that make their living online just by promoting affiliate products, but some will still struggle with selling anything. But what separates the huge money earners from the “strugglers”? The answer is simply one word…….TRAFFIC. You need to get as much potentials buyers in front of your offer in order to make any sales. Where most people stumble is not in the time and effort they put into their promotional efforts but in how they choose to promote the product.
Before we look at some ways to get traffic to something you’re promoting, we have to look at the important concept of preselling. The concept is simple, if you just show somebody something once and say buy this, they are less likely to even consider the offer than if you have had some prior relationship with them. Building that gap between you “the affiliate” and them “the buyer” is like building a friendship, one based on trust and honesty.
Having An E-mail List
The best way to create that trust in buyers is by establishing an email list where you give them useful information on a regular basis. Many affiliates miss this important step in creating that trust in buyers and preselling. You must also only recommend products which you feel will be useful to others. Don’t just sell something because you know it will make you money. And you must be honest with people. Give your honest opinions about the products and don’t overhype or hard sell.
Organic Listings
One way to introduce a product to somebody is by having relevant content on a website or blog and placing links to the product within the body of the page. This not only aids in the preselling approach but the person is more likely to click if they find the information/offer might be useful.Now to boost the effectiveness of this page would be to try and show up in the organic listings in the search engines. The organic listings are search results that show up in the search engine after you type in a word. They are more heavily clicked on by surfers than sponsored links and ads. To show up in the listings you have to do some search engine optimization (SEO) techniques on the page. To find out more about about SEO, take our free seo course.
Pay-Per-Click
If you have a little money in your budget for marketing, utilizing pay-per-click search engines can be beneficial to getting traffic for your affiliate program. This type of advertising is most popularly done on Google or Yahoo! Search Marketing (once referred to as Overture). You can use it to either drive visitors to an email list (where you slowly build them up to your affiliate offer) or send them directly to your affiliate link. Try as much as possible to do the former.
If you do the later try to cloak the affiliate link which might look like this www.product.com/aff?123 to something looking more professional. You can buy a domain with a similar name to the affiliate offer and then redirect the page to your affiliate page. You can do this using the options for the Cpanel of your webhost or by including a bit of code. You can also make the redirect from a site you already own from a page like this www.mysite.com/recommends/product
To get codes for redirecting urls CLICK HERE.
Article Marketing
A short cut to getting listed in the search engines is by writing articles. If the keywords you write about are not highly competitive and the article site has a high pagerank you can generate a listing in the search engines from posting your article in their directory. Make the article related to the affiliate offer and include a link to your affiliate page in your author signature box. Some article sites frown on placing affiliate links in your articles, so you might have to have links to another page you own that has the affiliate offer listed.
Social Bookmarking
Utilizing social bookmarking (SBM) sites or establishing a Web 2.0 strategy is an easy and cheap way of getting traffic to your affiliate page. There are many sites now on the internet that allow you to bookmark pages that you like for free for future reference. But don’t just bookmark your affiliate page alone. That won’t work. Try and get some content related to your affiliate offer like articles and blog posts, have a link in it to the affiliate offer and then bookmark that page. Utilize sites like Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit, Furl, Spurl, Twitter and many others. (At the end of each of my posts there is a link to a bookmarking tag. Click on it and see a list of sites I’m talking about.)
But don’t just stop there! If the program is popular utilize Squidoo and HubPages to write reviews about it. People sometimes search for the terms “productx review” or “buy productx” and if you write about it on one of these sites you can score high in the search engines for those keywords. You can also search for less competitive keywords related to the product and create pages on the two sites mentioned before related to them. And of course include a link on the page to the affiliate program you promote.
But don’t just stop there!! Further bookmark the mini-pages you’ve created on Squidoo and Hubpages on the SBM sites. And even more, link to each content you create about the product to another page about it. Say for example you wrote an article, have a product review on Squidoo and have a content page on HubPages.com, link from the HubPage to the Squidoo page to the article. In that way you provide relevance to each site and by interlinking you have a better chance of ranking well with more than one page.
To learn more about becoming a better affiliate read the FREE report Affiliate XFactor. Where a super-affiliate goes through some techniques he used to generate a $40,000 Clickbank affiliate pay check in 72 hours selling a $77 ebook. Find out more here http://www.addtrafficnow.com/recommends/xfactor.html
Summary
In summary, utilizing some of the more effective traffic generation methods can help in making affiliate sales. An important concept to remember is that the buyer must be presold to the offer to maximize conversion rates. Apart from the more popular website promotion methods utilizing a Web 2.0 strategy can be influential in gaining more traffic for affiliate programs.
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Enter SEO Contests and Sharpen Your Skills
One way to learn more about SEO and sharpen your skills to use later in your online promotions is by entering SEO contests. This is usually hosted by experts in the field to create buzz about a topic or website or for analytical purposes. Besides generating attention it can be a great learning tool for beginners (newbies) and also be done for fun and to get great prizes.
The folks over at SEONoobs.com recently launched a contest about 3 weeks ago for SEO newbies to rank best for the phrase “Yicrosoft Directory”. It’s a 30 day SEO Challenge to see who can come out as the #1 organic listing for the keyphrase “Yicrosoft Directory”. The contest ends March 4th so it might be too late to enter and win but by just looking at the listings for “Yicrosoft Directory” in the search engines you can get an idea of the methods that people are using for their SEO campaign.
In case you wonder why they used that keyphrase; Microsoft recently put in an offer to Yahoo! to buy out their company and merge it with Microsoft for a cool $44.6 Billion. Seems the main reason they did it was to try and compete with Google in the search engine arena. Yahoo! looks to have rejected the offer so far. Of course all this has created a buzz around the internet with different websites and videos. People have been even created mock logos as to what the company might become. Maybe MicroYahoo or Microhoo? Who’s to tell? In case you missed this bit of news here’s a report of it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDrDITVJMls&NR=1
Typing in the contest’s keyphrase in Google returns some 52,000 normal results and 21,100 results in anchor (meaning the phrase was put in quotation marks ie “yicrosoft directory”). But whichever way you look at it the contestant who leads (as of this posting), owns the site Yicrosoftdirectory.net. The next two rounding out the top three are Garrysoft.com and Yicrosoft-directory-online.com. Doing a quick check in Yahoo! tells me what I knew would be the main reason for these people leading the list. And the answer is one word folks….LINKS.
Breakdown of Top Five Contestants
SITE PAGES INLINKS
Yicrosoftdirectory.net 21 677
Garrysoft.com 11 2,470
Yicrosoft-directory-online.com 10 252
Yicrosoftdirectorygirl.com 25 1,330
Gh-yicrosoft.info 14 271
But why are the second placed and fourth placed listings not listed better? A quick look shows that the number one site has a lot more content (21 pages) than the 2nd placed. Ok…I hear you ask….So why does it still beat out the fourth placed site. Simple. The content that is on Yicrosftdirectory.net is a lot more optimized for the phrases “yicrosoft”, “directory” and “yicrosoft directory”. In fact it lists itself as a directory (probably gaining more reciprocal links from this method) accompanied with great content that repeatedly has “yicrosoft directory” in title tags and headers. It also is getting links from a more diverse set of sites (not just one site, like some of the others). And I didn’t check this but more than likely the links they received from sites have better authority and page rank according to Google
Why not check out this for yourself?…….Go to Yahoo! and in their search bar type in link:www.thesite.com (replace “thesite” with whatever site’s name is listed) and analyse the listings you see. It will give you an idea as to what to do for your own SEO promotion. Go ahead…….have some fun with this SEO thing
P.S. The reason I used Yahoo! to check the links is because they usually show a more accurate look of backlinks for most sites, once they’ve been indexed.
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