Many people say that blogging is about “great quality content” that is delivered consistently and concisely to the readership, which will grow as a result. This is certainly true, but it isn’t the only factor in blogging successfully.

Search engines are now the primary source of traffic for most blogs, and this can be used to a blog’s advantage if it is optimised accordingly. Building links to a blog takes a bit more effort than simply creating and publishing great content – in some cases it requires negotiation and can carry a cost – but there are numerous options for bloggers when it comes to developing a backlink profile that can achieve additional website authority and as such, more traffic power. So I present to you, six ways you can build links to your blog. Some of the concept might be old but they still work and shouldn’t be ignored.

6. Guest posts

Providing content for other powerful, appropriate blogs can be a great way of developing links from relevant sources. This will often require negotiation, but most blogs with gatekeepers who pride themselves on providing high quality posts to their readers will have a high domain authority score, and so this negotiation is well worthwhile. This can also be a key activity for maintaining and growing relationships within the blogosphere, which could well lead to more link building opportunities in the future. Guest posting is one of the best ways to gain quality links today.

5. Blogrolls

Just as many blogs may be willing to negotiate guest posts, a lot of them are likely to have blogrolls on their homepage too. Whilst blogroll links are perhaps less prominent on the page and must compete with other links, they will remain on the homepage for as long as the relationship with the blog is intact, since they won’t fall down the page like a guest post usually would. Also, it’s likely that the blogroll will be present throughout the site template, meaning links across a whole blog.

4. Directories

Although some can carry a cost, directory links can be immensely valuable for both websites and blogs. There are a number of free directories out there, from the likes of DMOZ (which can be difficult to achieve links from) to others like SearchSight, which allow a detailed description of the blog in question. Other directories, which charge a fee for listing, can still be worthwhile. Some will offer links at a one-off cost, whilst for others it’s an annual fee – it’s up to you to decide which are worthwhile based on budget, but in most cases the biggest cost offers the bigger link value.

3. Press releases

For most blogs this may not be a possibility, but press release websites can also provide an outlet for the development of links with high authority. Many of the major newswires charge a fee, but there are also a number of free or cheap newswires out there, which can be useful for link building. Again, the potential for this depends on the budget of the blog – it is always worth cross-referencing cost with page rank to see where the best value lies.

2. Social media

One of the more recent developments in SEO, social media can be a great SEO tool as well as a regular traffic source. Adding the appropriate keywords alongside links to a blog in Twitter for example can add short term SEO value. Linking from a Facebook page is also highly beneficial but with a couple of caveats; firstly, the links must be created by a page rather than an individual user since page links are more visible to search engines. Secondly, Facebook’s Edgerank algorithm means that if a link is posted twice, it is served to less people – This is Facebook’s effort to combat spam-like behavior from pages in its network. As such, once a link is posted once, it can only be posted again by creating URLs within the post copy – shortened URLs are best for this, since it will keep the links neat and tidy (and in most cases can be customised to include keywords if they aren’t taken already). Links from other networks such as LinkedIn, Pinterest and YouTube are also great – it’s up to you to test and decide which of the networks work best for you and your content.

1. Sponsorship deals

Major players in the blogosphere may find themselves in a position to enter sponsorship deals. This could be around major events in their area of interest, for example a gaming blog sponsoring a games convention. As well as gaining valuable visibility from such a big deal, this could also be a great source of links if negotiated accordingly. Many blogs may already have this type of deals in place, but could have neglected to include links in the deal – it’s a great point to remember.

Whilst links can come from almost any website on the internet – it’s equally important to avoid bad links, whether from negative articles about a blog or even just malicious sites that can harm a blog’s search engine rankings. As such, it’s vital that bloggers remain vigilant when it comes to where their links are coming from – a step in the wrong direction could cause damage to inbound traffic totals.

Most of the above options can be achieved at no cost too. Either way, links form part of a blog’s foundation, and should be treated with the appropriate level of importance. What are some of your link building tactics?

This guest post is contributed by Alex Smith who is an account manager at integrated PR, search and social media agency Punch Communications, specialising in digital media and covering a global client base.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Easter break . It’s been a while since I made my last post on this blog and today, I have a few cool updates for the readers.

I love this blog as much as I love my other projects and frankly speaking, I write only for my readers.

Some of you may or may not know that I am a full time student at VCU currently majoring in Information Systems. I have almost a year to go and I am constantly hustling day and night working on my projects and trying to get things done.

When I started Mastermind blogger in late 2009, I was a one-man army trying to deal with school life as well as live the dot com lifestyle. Things haven’t been really easy and I welcome challenges all the time. I have experienced and learned a lot and am still learning till date.

I have great vision for this blog and I am looking forward to make it one of the best blogs for bloggers in the upcoming days. Now you may be wondering why I am telling all these stuff today. It is because I want you all to know that I have no reason and will never abandon my blogs (at least not this one) like a lot of other bloggers who initially start but then give up.

This blog has helped me to learn and grow myself to what I am today. I have lot to do and achieve in life and I want to help you guys do the same. Although I am unable to post regularly, I believe it will change soon as I am looking forward to collaborate and get some awesome writers to join my team.

At first, I was skeptical because I believe blogging is personal and I wanted to just share my views on this blog. But now I realize that team work is very important for success; especially when you have several things to manage.

Although, nothing is fixed as of now, I will keep you all updated. However, the good news is: I want to write and write only for you guys. I want to know what you would love to see more on this blog. I would appreciate if you take a second and Vote below.

Whenever I write, I try to solve some kind of problems. I thought taking a poll would be a great idea because this will allow me to narrow down on topics and make myself more efficient. If you don’t see a category listed, you can just post it in the comments section.

Thanks for your support again and I will be back with some awesome content soon. Let’s do this!

If you have been in internet marketing for a while or if you are a content creator, you have definitely heard the term “duplicate content” and have most likely been scared of the term “duplicate content penalty”.

Duplicate content occurs when you have content on your website that is similar to other content that already exists on the Internet. This situation results in your website to perform badly in the eyes of the search engines especially Google who takes this very seriously.

Why You Should Care

Duplicate content is not cool. If you are trying to produce or post rehashed content, your content will not do well in Google or other search engines, and you will not be able to drive any search traffic to your website.

According to Google Webmaster Guidelines, all website owners should provide unique content that deliver value to their visitors and internet at large. As opposed to this guideline, if your website consists of duplicate content, Google and other search engines view your content as spam and will reduce the Page Rank.

In simple terms, Google’s search algorithm devalues website that simply copies and pastes stuff from other websites and thus, ranks them very low. They may even remove your entire website from their search results which could be a nightmare.

Unfortunately, many internet marketers and content creators cannot see the opportunity here. Instead of being scared of the duplicate content penalty, you can be rewarded by the search engines for having unique and quality content. In other words, instead of blaming search engines for their elaborate approach, you should try to understand the benefits of providing unique content and enjoy the increased search ranking results by doing so.

Benefits of Unique Content

Unique content that presents useful and interesting information helps to build credibility and trust which is required for expanding reader base and create loyalty. Also, quality content has better chances of getting noticed by other popular websites that might consider linking to your pages giving you some link juice. Consequently, as you build more back links, both your Google Page Rank and search ranks will be boosted. Most importantly, this will increase your website’s traffic and help you reach your content marketing goals.

If you are the person who creates the content, you should never copy any existing content. You can search for the subject and topic you are going to write about but you should always use your own words and ideas. If you hire writers to create your content, you need to check the content you receive from your writers before publishing it on your website. Also, you need to check the content you have already published regularly to verify if any piece of your content has been copied by others.

Plagiarism is a serious issue which has some serious consequences and therefore it matters.

6 Popular Online Duplicate Content Checkers

There are some very successful tools to check for duplicate content very easily. The following is a list of the most popular duplicate content checkers with some explanations about their prominent features.

1. Copyscape – Copyscape is the most famous and authoritative duplicate content checker on the internet. Copyscape’s products are used globally by millions of website owners. The tool has a free and paid version. With the free version, you can only search already published content. To be able to check unpublished content, you need to use the paid version. Copyscape searches Google and Yahoo for duplicate content.
2. Duplichecker – Duplichecker is another free duplicate content checker. It allows you to check your unpublished content for free. You can either upload the .txt file or paste the content on the tool itself. With Duplichecker, you can search Google, Yahoo or Bing.
3. Plagium – Plagium is another tool and it is a good alternative to Copyscape. One of the best features of the tool is that it sends an email alert in the case of your content is copied. Plagium checks your content on all Google, Yahoo and Bing. The tool has both free and premium membership versions.
4. ArticleChecker – ArticleChecker is another reliable duplicate content checker tool that checks content on Yahoo and Google. It enables you to enter your content in the tool or upload a file containing your content.
5. CopyGator – CopyGator provides an entirely free service that monitors your blog’s RSS feed. It can automatically notify you when your new post has been copied to another feed. Another great resource for bloggers.
6. Webconfs.com – This site enables you to find out what percentage of two pages is similar. You simply enter the URLs of 2 similar pages, and the tool gives you the percentage.

Verdict

As a smart blogger and an internet marketer, you should see the opportunity here instead of being scared of the search engines’ duplicate content penalty. You should always check your content with these effective tools to prevent the duplicate content issue.

As you provide unique and quality content, you will not be rewarded only by the search engines but also by your readers who will spend more time on your pages and become your loyal readers or customers. Avoid duplicate content and Be you-nique!

This guest post is contributed by Andrew who is trying to produce fresh content for an elevator company in New York keeping in mind possible problems with duplicate texts or paragraphs.

In a perfect life, a landing page on your website should be a gateway of sorts—uncluttered by things like slow page load, too many navigation options, distracting graphics, and etc. When I first started writing at Prestige Marketing, I learned that landing pages provide a portal by first, bringing visitors to your website, and second, by leading those same visitors towards taking action (e.g., filling out a user poll or generation lead form, making a purchase from your affiliate campaign, reading and leaving comments on your blog, or even picking up the phone to make an appointment with your business).

Whatever the desired action is, it will be dependent on that initial impression your landing page makes. And in the fast-paced online world, you can guess how easy it is for a visitor with a poor first impression to click off of your landing page and click on your competition’s instead.

So knowing that you only have one chance to make a good first impression, website owners should take their landing pages very seriously. It’s vital to ensure that there are no barriers to the gateways and paths leading users into your website and around your web pages. For instance, features or design implements can prohibit readers from finding the information that they want—for instance, making a purchase, learning more information about your company, or contacting your customer service department.

8 Ways to Optimize your Landing Page for Better Conversion Rates

1. Page load time

Enter your website from a variety of landing pages. Does it take a long time for your landing pages to load? If it does then chances are that your visitor has already clicked off. That’s the trend for landing pages that take too long to load—and such pages have the lowest conversion rates to prove it.

A slow loading landing page does not make for a great user experience, and Google will judge your site for it. Keep in mind that the average page load time should never exceed 5 seconds. Use google page speed tool to check the loading time of your landing page. If it’s bad, I suggest you use a CDN (content delivery network) like Amazon S3 or MaxCDN which will drastically improve your site’s load time.

2. Obstacles on landing page

How are you supposed to know how users using all sorts of different browsers see your landing page the way you do? You check—that’s how. Take the time to load your page using a variety of popular web browsers to see if the video or flash works, to see if images load, and to see how your content formatting looks. This is because not all browsers will see your site the same way.

People using different browsers might have a different experience when viewing your landing page so it is always wise to check if your website or landing page is cross browser friendly. You don’t have to load your site on each and every browser; just enter your site link on browser shots and it will do the magic.

3. Distractions on landing page

Seeing that most web visitors will make the decision to stay or go within seconds of visiting your landing page, your page should be clean with no distracting clutter and contain a clear call to action. For instance, you might use a catchy headline to attract the user to a feature blog post or even to your affiliate. This works out great.

Avoid stuffing your landing page with too much irrelevant info. Simple pages with strong headlines, catchy subtitles and good call to action perform better in terms of conversion rates.

4. Take control with your navigation

Landing page navigation should almost trap a user once they land making it difficult for them to leave the page.

Sure, your home page should offer great navigation options to help them find the information they desire, but the understanding is that if they’ve entered via a landing page, they are where they want to be. So remove the standard website navigation on your landing pages to gain better control over what the visitor sees and does on the page, and make it obvious for the user where you want them to click with big, colorful action buttons.

5. Keep it above the fold

Folds, meaning page folds, refers to the content and images that appear on screen before the reader needs to scroll down for more. Folds have no place on your targeted landing pages, and your call to action (i.e., a user poll, an opt-in form etc.) should always appear above the fold in all instances.

6. Create trust

A first impression is very dependent on earning the trust of potential customers. You can do that by using elements of trust on your landing page. For instance, feature things like customer testimonials, company descriptions, guarantees, and privacy policies help create the trust needed for today’s online shoppers to feel secure.

7. Use relevant graphics

Images are great way to add some visual engagement to your website; on landing pages, and on your entire website for that matter, only use images that are relevant to your content and compliments your company’s mission statement, personality, and marketing messages. Always use high quality images, and if you can’t afford to pay a professional photographer, buy stock photography to avoid looking cheap and unprofessional.

8. Always consider what’s not there

White space refers to the empty space surrounding all elements on screen—including content, images, captions, page banners, headlines, and etc. Overwhelming a visitor with too much “stuff” and not enough white space can have them clicking off in a jiffy. On the other hand, the proper use of white space to surround your key messages will greatly improve the user experience and guide them naturally to your call to action button.

You can improve on white-space by examining your landing pages for too much information. Ask yourself, do you need every single image and marketing message on the screen? If you don’t, then remove it. OR if it’s important enough, then create a new page for it instead of muddying the waters with too much information on the same page.

Check out Optimize Press which is one of the best landing page themes powered by wordpress. You can see this awesome theme in action on legit product reviews.

Remember, landing pages are very important as it plays a vital role in conversion rates. Take some time and go through all the tips I’ve mentioned. Implement them, tweak and split test it on your landing page and see your conversion rates double.

This guest post is contributed by Caeden M MacGregor who is a staff writer for Prestige Marketing, a Vancouver internet marketing company that specializes in blogging on viral marketing, social media, and internet marketing tips and techniques. Caeden has written for numerous blogs in a variety of fields ranging from software to fitness, and from gourmet food to travel. He currently lives in Katy, Texas with his wife, young daughter, and his best friend, a French bulldog named Morty.

If you’re looking to increase traffic to your blog and eventually turn a profit, welcome to the club. There are thousands of bloggers out there who share the same vision as you. Many of these bloggers will see their vision through but the majority will fall victim to one of the pitfalls that ensnare driven people: they’ll get worn down by the constant attention and consistent work that is required of bloggers.

I always find it hard not to laugh when I hear someone saying something about a get-rich quick scheme involving blogging. The business of blogging is like any other business. You build up customers and information and that is your product. The only catch is that your product is free. Your challenge is to monetize your site and figure out a way to get a profit out of a seemingly unsustainable business model. Most people choose to go with advertisements. Some sites use membership fees and others use referrals to make money. Whatever method you decide on, you should take these tips to heart.

How to: Improve your Blog Today!

Write What You Know

This is one of the oldest tips in the writing book and it holds true for blogging just as much as any other form of writing. If you’re looking to gain a loyal readership, you should stick to subjects you know. No one cares about a chef’s thoughts on software programming. Look at your set of skills and expertise and base your content off of that. You will find that you are able to make more informative posts and more enjoyable posts when you focus on one of your areas of expertise.

Write Everyday

This was the first thing my professor in my college news writing class told us. If we sit down each day and write about something — anything — we will soon find our vocabulary and our ability to create interesting thought connections expanding. You don’t necessarily have to update the blog every day, but you should take some time at the beginning or the end of the day to write. Maybe it’s about your day or about a dream you had last night, but it should happen on a daily basis. This is the most effective way to sharpen your writing skills.

Encourage Guest Posts

This is an especially important practice if you are blogging as a second job. There will be times when you find that you are simply too busy to update your blog on a regular basis. Encouraging guest submissions can allow you to build up a big backlog of entries that you can post in the event that your week becomes entirely occupied by business trips, meetings, dinner parties and other activities and obligations.

Get Social

Take advantage of the opportunities that social media present to you. Sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn provide you with an audience of millions. Get on the sites and start conversation with your followers. Take an interest in what others are saying. Social media is only as valuable as you’re willing to make it. If you create a Twitter account but only follow Wired.com and Popular Science, you’re never going to grow your readership. Follow liberally and get engaged in conversations with people. People are more likely to return to your site when they actually see a personality behind the curtain.

Take It Easy On Ads

No one likes coming to a site that is splattered with ads. It is not visually appealing and can be hard to navigate. If you’re looking to make money off of ads, that’s great but don’t jump the gun on setting up ads. Facebook took a long time to even start putting ads up. They waited because they knew that if their users felt like they were just customers or numbers on a quarterly earnings report they would not be as inclined to use the site. It wasn’t until they had people hooked and had created their own ecosystem that they introduced the ads. This is not to say that your site has to wait years to ever introduce ads, but it should be a lesson that your page should never have more ads than editorial content.

Be Original

This is perhaps the most important and hardest tip to stick to. Sometimes when we read a post on another site, it’s so darn good that we just want to copy and paste it onto our own page. There is nothing wrong with occasionally putting someone else’s content on your site (as long as you have permission and credit the author properly) but this should not be counted toward your personal quota of posts for that week. If you’re especially inclined to post someone else’s content on your page, do it and then post your reaction to it. Tell the readers what you thought of the post. What do you agree with or disagree with? Put your own spin on it.

Blogging is not a get rich quick scheme. It is hard work but it doesn’t have to be laborious. It can be an enjoyable creative outlet if you stick to these tips. Now what are you waiting for? Follow these tips for a better blogging experience.

This guest post is contributed by Lisa who is a guest blogger and writes about the blogging community, tech news and how to get deals using HP coupons.

In this new era, the whole concept of marketing has crept into a new level. With people becoming more and more aware of the internet and its advantages, “Content marketing” is one such approach that companies use to gain the attention of customers. From providing online content for websites, blogs, social media channels, micro websites and advertising campaigners, “Content marketing” services are much in demand.

And as a blogger, it is very important that you know how to create some awesome content that will not only provide value to the community but be interesting to your readers.

9 ideas to make your content marketing a huge success!

1. Know your business

It is important that before you start any kind of content marketing campaign, you must know your ultimate goal and your business. You should also know your niche, the product that you’re trying to market, the market where the product is sold, key value propositions of the product and differentiating factor from the rest of the products available.

Knowing your target market and audience is the first step to content marketing success so get this straight.

2. Define strategy

For the success of your content marketing campaign, you must have a clear strategy in place. Your strategy should be based upon your ultimate goal and what you are trying to achieve.

Whatever product you decide to release to your niche market, it should be of quality and provide value to the prospects and the community.

3. Be buyer centric

If you want your online content marketing to succeed, you need to ensure that the content you develop should directly connect with the target audience. You need to understand the various levels of potential buyers and ensure that the relevant content is available for them. Even before you start developing your content, you need to focus on your prospect’s or audience’s requirements. Remember that you are writing for a specific group of people so it is vital that you know about them, their likes and dislikes.

4. Plan your strategy

In this phase you need to plan exactly what you are going to create. Your outline of the content, tactics that may be helpful etc should be ready to be implemented. Maintain a spreadsheet to track what you are going to post. This will not only create a checklist but also help you keep track of your current and upcoming posts. In this way, you can stay well organized and schedule your content accordingly.

5. Create the content

Now that you have planned your content, it is time that you get creative and develop the content. It is unlikely that you might have to post entire content at one go. Plan your postings accordingly and strictly adhere to the time lines that you have set up. Your in-depth research in the previous step which is planning your strategy would come in handy as to what to post during different time frames

6. Track & Analyze

It is always a good practice to analyze how your content is performing in the web. If you are not tracking your blog traffic then you won’t know what works and what doesn’t for your readers.

Open a Google analytic account (it’s free) before you launch your blog. You can also try out some premium analytical stuff such as clicky which is awesome for tracking real time visits to your blog. Another cool site is Neil Patel’s Kissmetrics and of course, Crazy Egg which is awesome for tracking clicks, heatmaps, split testing etc.

Bear in mind that monitoring performance is tough through social media websites which is why you should consider using an analytical tool.

7. Follow-up and Reach out

After publishing your content on your blog, make sure that you reach out to all the potential target audience. Use social media networking to your advantage. Try to respond to each feedback you get on your post. This doesn’t only show that you care for your readers but also increases your credibility as a knowledgeable blogger.

Observe that your online content marketing improves with each cycle that you publish.

You may also want to consider advertizing in websites and do pay per click marketing (PPC); such as Google adwords and facebook ads which are pretty good for driving traffic to your blog. If your content marketing addresses the target audience then you will not have any problem building connections and a super online audience.

8. Document and analyze performance

With frequent data collection of the performance of your content, you would be in a better position to analyze and improve on your future projects. Do not get de-moralized if your performance is bad. Document all your findings and ensure that you learn what not to do in your next assignment. Keeping a track of all your success and failures would be a good idea for reference in future.

9. Continue improvements

This should be a continuous process where you need to be more effective and stay in business to get more results. Re-track progress at least once in 2 months. Accordingly set your goals and targets. Create content and analyze data for those 2 months. You would be in a better position to decide what strategy worked and what did not.

Try to get feedback from customers, readers or fans and see what can be improved in your next content marketing campaigns. This will ensure that you can reach to the pulse of your target readers and be in business for a long time to come.

Content marketing cannot happen overnight and it requires a lot of strategic planning and implementation techniques in order to achieve immense success. You need to be in a position to reach out to the target online audience and connect with them. Now go out there and start creating some awesome content.

This guest post is contributed by Alyssa Clarke who is a blogger and also happens to be a tech lover. She is always on a look out for latest tech stuff and is currently hunting for some cool Mac apps. She recently read about the Toggle touch remote control and desperately wants to own it.

Making money from blogs is a popular subject that is discussed far and wide across the Internet. Inspired by stories of bloggers who are making thousands of dollars every day (think The Huffington Post, Mashable, Copyblogger and Life Hacker); many people are looking at ways they can get in on the act.

The good news is that it can be done; many bloggers have already proved it, and new success stories hit the press on a regular basis.

The bad news is that these popular blogs that we talk about have usually been around for quite some time and more often than not have a whole bunch of passionate bloggers working on them. Meaning? If you’re going solo and looking for overnight riches, you may well be better off buying a lottery ticket and pinning your income dreams on scooping the jackpot instead. Good luck with that.

Mashable and Huffington Post have several bloggers creating content for them on a regular basis. Can you have a super blog like that? Well of course you can. But sadly, not right away. If you look at problogger, Darren Rowse started it by himself and now ton of writers contribute to that blog. Meaning? It’s possible! But, you need to put in lot of quality work in the initial stage.

Newbie?

If you’re totally new to blogging, you have to understand that the word ‘blog’ does not automatically translate to the word ‘money.’ Making a decent income from your blog is usually not going to be as easy as throwing a few Google ads up and hoping for the best. It doesn’t work quite like that and, besides, there are a whole heap of things you could do before turning to the Google Adsense or any other ad network.

First things First!

First and foremost, your blog needs to be ready to monetize. That means you’re going to need a whole bunch of traffic, a loyal fan base and a niche topic to boot. Careful consideration needs to be given to “When” you’re going to monetize your blog as well.

It has been known for bloggers to see some success in monetizing their blog from the outset, but the generally accepted recipe for reward is to first concentrate on providing good content and building up your visitors. You’ll often do better by concentrating on building credibility for a year or so before attempting to make some money.

Even then, you’ll probably find that some of your most loyal readers will abandon your site the minute you try to squeeze a few dollars out of them. The blogging scene can be very precarious. Push harder and never give up!

It’s Time to Make Some Moolah

Assuming you’ve delivered some fantastic content and built up a fan base, it just might be time to consider turning your blog into an income stream. There’s a ton of methods you can use to monetize a blog. It’s best to drip feed them in over time. Meaning? Don’t try everything at once.

The Top 3 Blog Monetization Methods

Advertising Networks

This is mentioned first because it’s often thought that this is the main way that bloggers make money. That assumption is pretty far from reality and the truth is that, due to the saturation of these ads, more and more surfers are actively avoiding them.

Putting banner and links ads on your blog does work but you have to be very careful with what you are promoting. Test it out, spend some time tweaking it, but don’t bank on it being your main income stream because there are better ways.

Information Products

Knowledge is king, right? People just can’t get enough of the stuff. Info products like e-books and how-to videos are a great way for you to share your in-depth knowledge on a subject with your readership.

Creating and publishing an e-book, in particular, is an easy process and one which could bring you in some pretty serious income over time. BookBaby (bookbaby.com) offers a comprehensive service that could see your product not only up for sale on your blog, but also on the likes of Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Apple.

Have a unique idea or a method that works? Why not share it with the world and get paid for it. Simply create an e-book!

Affiliate Marketing

This method of monetizing your blog hooks you up with relevant retail sites that pay you a percentage for each sale that originates from a customized affiliate link on your blog. Some bloggers have found a great deal of riches using this method.

Rosalind Gardner, author of ‘The Super Affiliate Handbook: How I Made $436,797 in One Year Selling Other People’s Stuff Online’ is probably one of the better-known examples of how affiliate marketing can be used to generate a significant income stream.

You’re going to need to find retailers with products that are relevant to your blog’s niche content, see if they have an affiliate scheme and start plugging their products. It’s always wise to put an earnings disclaimer and a disclosure somewhere on your site if you’re going to try your hand at affiliate marketing.

Bonus – Online Brand Rep

A slightly less well-known way and admittedly more difficult way to monetize your blog is to indulge in a spot of brand reputation. If your blog becomes influential enough, you’re likely to attract interest from related companies that are just dying to get a mention on your site.

You act as an endorser for their products and do things like write sponsored blog posts, run contests and offer coupon codes. It’s worth noting that you may be paid ‘in kind,’ receiving products as opposed to cold hard cash. It’s still a great way to earn something from your site though, and you can always throw your reward on eBay if you’d prefer cash.

However, if your blog is above the standard and is well established, companies will not only send you free products to review but also pay you for it. In this way you get to keep the products as well as get paid to write about it. How cool is that?

Remember: you should only endorse products that you actually like and support; it will be painfully obvious to your readers if you don’t.

So there you have it, the top 3 methods of monetizing your blog and if done right, bloggers can generate an income from doing what they do best. Take the time to get it right and you could be looking at turning your part-time hobby into a full-time income.

This guest post is contributed by Sue King who is a freelance writer from Minnesota and contributor to DegreeJungle.com. She specializes in writing blogging-related content for a host of clients across America.

Doing SEO for websites is nothing unusual and I bet most of us hear this term a lot especially in the internet marketing industry. Without any doubt, we know the importance of SEO don’t we?

Although we write for our audience who are “real people” and not bots, we still tweak and twist our blog posts in someway so that even the search engines love it and rank it well. Whether you talk about ranking a blog, a video, a simple website or even niche sites, you need to know at least the basic SEO.

Most of us fail to realize that SEO which stands for Search Engine Optimization is not as hard as it sounds like; most of my clients stare at my face when I tell them, “You need to do a little bit SEO to get your site on top”, …….. and then I tell myself, “Gosh, who am I talking to about SEO ”. I love my clients so I decided to write up 7 simple steps to help you better understand wordpress seo.

I found a re-brand able infographic which had 8 steps listed. I believe these points are legit and can still be applied today to do simple yet effective search engine optimization on your blog. I was not satisfied with the order in which they were listed so I decided to do some photoshopping and wala, its right in front of you.

So without further ado, I present to you the

7 simple steps to wordpress seo

1. Keyword Rich Domain

If you think that only niche sites should have keyword rich domains then sorry my friend, I have no idea who told you that. Look at problogger.net which has the term “blogger” in it. It is not only awesome for SEO but tells us what the domain or website is about. How about this blog? It also has the term “blogger” in it and I do rank for certain keywords just because I have the term “blogger” in the domain name; just like Pat Flynn’s smartpassiveincome.com that ranks for “passive income”.

However, don’t mistake me. It is NOT necessary to have your keyword in your domain name. Although you should try going with an EMD (exact match domain) for your niche sites, it’s not required that you do the same for your personal or even business blogs.

I chose “mastermind blogger” because I thought it was a cool name for a brand. My choice is solely for branding because I wanted to stand out. Blogs like johnchow.com, viperchill.com, davidrisley.com might not have any generic keyword in the domain name but they have established themselves as a Brand and rank very high in the search engines.

An awesome name like socialtriggers.com or zenhabits.net is already rich in keyword . Have a cool name? Go for it!

2. Permalinks

You got your domain, your hosting and installed wordpress, now what? First thing I always do after installing a fresh copy of wordpress is setup permalinks. Those who are new to the term, according to Wikipedia: A permalink is a URL that points to a specific blog or forum entry after it has passed from the front page to the archives. Because a permalink remains unchanged indefinitely, it is less susceptible to link rot.

Most bloggers who complain that their website links are messed up or not working is usually having problems with their permalink setup. The name might be fancy but there is nothing fancy about it Although, it’s a must do after wordpress installation.

Go to your wordpress, dashboard, settings, permalinks and then change the link structure to “/%postname%/” without the quotes. I think this is the best setup and is awesome for SEO. Some people even include months and years in their link; however, I don’t prefer that.

/%postname%/

3. SEO plugins

This is probably the best thing about wordpress; lots of awesome plugins and widgets to help you make SEO easier. There are ton of wordpress seo plugins out there. I often receive emails from my readers requesting me to post my recommended plugins. I use a few free ones and some premium ones.

Do not just use any random plugins without having much knowledge on it. You might end up with something messy or at most, download a malware that will hijack your blog.

I have listed several wordpress seo plugins in the past and I would still recommend them.

I do not want to post any other new ones that I am using on my blogs at the moment because I don’t want to confuse you. But the GOOD NEWS, I will write a detailed post on the top seo plugins that I personally use and recommend very soon.

4. Keyword Research

If you don’t do research before you purchase an item, you end up being scammed or getting the wrong stuff. In the similar way, if you don’t research your keywords well, you might end up writing on an unpopular topic or even do seo on a keyword that no one searches for. I am sure you get the point. Keyword research is very important.

Whether you write for a niche site or for your readers, you must find out what people are actually looking for and to do that, you need to do some keyword research. I would highly recommend the free google keyword tool which is just awesome. You can also use wordtracker or Market Samurai if you want to take it to the next level. However, stick to the basic for now.

Once you find the keyword you want to rank for, come up with a catchy headline for a blog post and then do SEO based on that specific keyword. I am not going to explain On-Site and On-Page SEO on this post but I will definitely write a guide on that too. Btw, if you are using Thesis theme, you shouldn’t find on-site seo that difficult.

5. Quality Content

Writing hundreds of rehashed articles to impress Google will take you no where my friend. Google has become smart and you cannot fool it by spinning articles or copying them from elsewhere. If you want to survive in the search engines and rank high, you need QUALITY CONTENT, period!

It’s pretty easy to get your blog sandboxed these days. In simple term, if your articles suck, google will penalize your blog and may even remove it from their search result.

So how do we write quality content? What makes an article worth reading or interesting? I bet these are some of the questions hitting your mind at the moment.

Now let me tell you, I don’t think I am a “great” writer but not bad either what do you think? I am so jealous of Glen Alsopp and his awesome style of writing long detailed posts. I also don’t know how Seth Godin writes less than 500 words which get tweeted out x 1000 times. Or, was there anytime when I have not clicked on the email link sent by copyblogger.com; these guys know how to write killer headlines and content.

I cannot teach you how to write. It is either inherent or something that you master in the long run. The more you write, the better you get. Don’t write just for the sake of writing; write when you really want to do it.

Have an idea? Don’t wait! Take out a paper, list down the points or draw an outline. Once you have those ready, do a research and try to find relevant but popular blog posts that talk about your topic or idea.

List down the blogs and take notes from their posts. I said take notes; don’t copy their work. If you decide to use a large chunk from one of the blog posts then at least mention them on your post or give credit.

Now I bet you have enough content that you can put into a blog post. Think, research, write! Be passionate, practice often, read some of the popular blogs that I have mentioned and you will definitely produce some quality content for your blog. I have faith in you.

6. Social Media

Ok, I ran out of words now. Hey, do you have a facebook? Nah joking I don’t think I even have to explain the importance of social media when you know that most of us are active on social media sites everyday.

First of all, you must install a social plugin on your wordpress blog. As I said earlier, wordpress plugins make things easier so why not make use of it. You can either use digg digg or simple social bar plugin which will display social icons on your blog posts. And whenever you write a post, make sure you share it with your network.

If you are blogger then you probably use facebook, twitter, google +1 in general. I highly suggest that you be active on these network and share your content with your fans and followers.

Why share on social network? What a stupid question! Are you willing to lose tonne of targeted FREE social traffic? Alright, how about this… Social sites also help with SEO and it has been proven many times before. As a matter of fact, I still remember when some of my tweets were re-tweeted by the mass, it went viral and not only it brought in some extra traffic but also got my link ranked in the first page of google. Now beat that!

7. Backlinks

Backlinks are like the backbones of SEO. If done wrong, might penalize your blog. If done right, it will increase your page rank.

Most newbie bloggers make several common mistakes when creating backlinks to their blog. Don’t fall into the trap of push button softwares that promise to create legit links. I am not saying that all softwares are bad and even I use some . But, sadly, most people who purchase such software have less to no knowledge about it and they end up abusing it; hence, causing backlinking disaster.

Creating hundreds of backlinks in a short time is considered SPAM and trust me, you don’t want to make daddy google mad.

So how do you get backlinks? When and from where? Alright, I won’t tell you to comment on hundreds of blogs relevant or irrelevant because both just don’t seem right. This is very common and we all know that most people who comment on the popular blogs are trying to get a backlink to their site. Maybe not all but most.

Don’t let this discourage you to comment. I love your comments so keep them coming . Again, I am not saying it is something bad to do and my opinion is that I comment on blogs only if I have something to say. Most of the time you see people leaving irrelevant or short comments like “hey, nice article” or “ok thanks” or “some long weird story with porn links…” I mean w.t.heck…

It’s all good when you genuinely follow a blog and provide feedback; in return get some backlink juice . Some other basic backlinking strategy includes articles directory submission, paid links, contextual links etc which I will get into details in the upcoming posts.

And if you want to build some awesome backlinks Pat Flynn’s way, then check out THE Backlinking Strategy That Works. Pretty awesome guide but once I write my version, his will look peanuts…ouch (PS: I love Pat)

When I write a guide, I make sure I include each and everything so if you see me MIA for a while, don’t panic. Know that I am working on something awesome for you guys.

Now go get that awesome blog with seo, quality content and backlinks… you know you can do it. If this blog post was too basic for you then go get some pop corn and get ready for the advance seo and wordpress guides coming soon. I would love to see your comments. Let me know what do you think and would like to see more on this blog.

Blogs are like trees in a forest, there are thousands of them that all look the same until you get up close, and even close up sometimes it is hard to tell one from another! If your blog is like one tree in a huge forest, indistinguishable from hundreds or thousands of others and struggling to be noticed, then you need to concentrate on your marketing strategy.

In this post, I will focus on 7 basic tips which are actually very important and should be considered a part of blog marketing strategy. Some of you might not find it new but as I said, these are basic tips that are often ignored by lots of bloggers. Your job is to pick 1 at a time and implement them because I know they work. Whether you are a pro blogger or just starting out in blogging, make sure you put these tips to work if you really want to see results

1. Host your own blog

Marketing from a hosted solution such as wordpress.com will limit your options. I have always preferred self hosted blogs since you own it and you have total control over it. Let’s assume that you have a blog hosted on blogspot.com which is owned by Google. You start building backlinks day and night and do a lot of marketing. One day you wake up and find out that your blog was suspended for whatever reason, how would you feel? This is some freaky stuff that you don’t want to encounter. The solution is not that expensive. Purchase your own domain name from namecheap, select a good reputable host like hostgator and then start working on the marketing strategy for your blog.

2. Select a stable platform

Marketing your blog becomes easier when you host your blog on a stable platform. There are many options for bloggers and marketers for choosing a platform for their online business. Your selection of which platform to use will dictate how easy your blog updates are and how well they are picked up by search engines. WordPress, Blogspot, Joomla, Drupal, Moveable Type and Typepad are 6 of the largest blogging platforms and they are all well supported. According to me, in marketing perspective, I feel that WordPress beats the rest. Selecting a stable and popular platform should definitely be a part of your blog marketing strategy. Why? Simply because the structure and architecture of some blogging platforms like WordPress is good for SEO. Beside that, WordPress has some amazing plugins and search engine optimized themes that can take your blog to the next level. I am sure you know that SEO can be related to marketing. If you can rank, you are getting better

3. Stand Out

Make it Unique. Remember the forest and tree analogy? You need to make your blog stand out from the rest, and if you have selected wordpress as your blogging platform then this will be easy. This is because wordpress has ton of themes, plugins, hacks etc which you can easily customize and use it on your blog. There are several free themes if you search on google but, if you are serious about blogging and want to look professional then go for thesis; its one of the best search engine optimized wordpress theme available today. With just a few tweaks and clicks, you can customize the theme to suit the requirement for your blog. I have been running my blogs on thesis since the beginning and I can vouch for it. Check out some awesome thesis skins from Kolakube.

I. Unique Logo – Design a unique logo for your blog that stands out and serves as a visual reminder to your visitors. A logo is the most important part of marketing. It represents your blog, company or website. If you don’t have the Photoshop skills then, outsource it and get something done professionally. I recommend logonerds for all your logo designs. They are simply awesome and cost effective. They have created some of my logos including the one on my personal blog. Check them out

II. Tagline – Your blogs tagline is the short piece of text next to the logo or header. It needs to be short, memorable and unique to your blog. It usually describes the mission, purpose or goal of the site. Taglines help increase your blog’s brand identity and are often underestimated in marketing strategy. Sometimes your visitors will remember your tagline more than your domain name. If you look at some of the popular blogs and my favourites like Amish Shah, he has a unique logo and his tagline is “Make Money, Give Back, Create Happiness” which is pretty neat. Another example would be on this blog itself where the tagline reads “Learn the Skills To Build a Profitable blog” which tells you the mission of this blog. Sometimes a logo is powerful enough to create brand awareness. However, taglines make it even stronger.

4. Proper On-site SEO

As I mentioned earlier in point #2, SEO should be a part of your marketing strategy; It is actually a very essential part. Remember that marketing means exposing your blog to search engines, not just visitors. Spend a couple of days researching your keywords and on-page SEO strategy. If you use themes like thesis then, on-site Seo will be easy breezy.

There are plenty of tools out there to help you with keyword research, Meta tags and keyword density. Check out Google Keyword tool, wordtracker and Market Samurai for choosing the best keywords. Use these tools to ensure you stand the very best chance of getting good results from search engines. I have also listed some nice wordpress seo plugins that work and I am sure you will find it handy. Last but not the least, here is an easy wordpress seo guide and a comprehensive wordpress seo guide, check them out and read them all the way to make your blog seo proof Make sure you take action.

5. Marketing your Blog with Press Releases

Most bloggers think that a press release is something that large corporations do when they have an announcement to make, but it is actually a viable way of marketing your blog. When I started blogmasterpoint, I hired some writers to create some awesome press releases for the site. I then had someone send it to major outlets and just in a few days, I had several pages indexed. There was also an increase in visitors on the site. Press Releases might not give you tonne of traffic but if you do it right, you can get huge benefits from them in the long run. Use Press Release outlets such as www.prweb.com to distribute new content on your blog. It’ll reach all the search engines, thousands of journalists and bloggers bringing you new traffic on a regular basis. Writing a press release is a no-brainer. If you can blog, I am sure you can write one up and start marketing your blog.

6. Leverage the Power of Social Media

Social Media is so powerful that some marketers are starting to rate it above backlinks. And you know what, it’s free. You can easily create a facebook page for your blog, a twitter account, a google page, a linkedin page and more. These are free to create and if you can optimize them well, you can get huge amount of traffic. One other important benefits from creating pages on these popular social network sites is that you get free traffic from search engines; because, these sites have a high PR and rank pretty well on Google. For example, if you search for “Mastermind Blogger” on google, you are most likely to see its official facebook page and twitter account on the first page of the search result. This should explain the power of social media.

With the introduction of the new Google +1, it is obvious that google gives priority and importance to the links that get lots of quality +1s. This means the more +1 your website or link gets, the higher it will rank in Google. This is a great time to create an official Google page for your blog and optimize it for more visitors and better conversions. Same thing goes for a facebook page and a twitter account if you haven’t already created one for your site.

Sign up for ping.fm. Make sure you are at least signed up with the popular social networks. Now link them all together in ping.fm. In this way, when you make a blog post, your post gets directly sent to the connected social networks and then instantly gets indexed This not only saves time but gives you lots of backlinks and traffic.

Social media is just growing enormously and if you are not scaling up with it, you are missing out on a lot of important stuff. Get on with it and rock it.

7. Collaborate!

Collaborating with blogs in the same niche can reap rewards if you can find a way to encourage this participation without seeming too competitive. You can reach a new audience and potential visitor numbers can increase as a result of project collaborations, so be creative, think outside the box and use your initiative.

I. Guest Post- I have seen lots of great minds collaborate and create something astonishing. Guest posting is a great way to reach out to different audiences and start collaboration. For example, let’s assume that I write a guest post on Smart Passive Income Blog. Pat Flynn, the owner of the blog never got to know me until I made the guest post. Since my post was awesome Pat saw my skills and decided to collaborate with me on creating a new product. How cool is that? I am sure you get the point. Guest posting allows you to network, reach out to new audience and get more traffic; you also get backlinks, media attention and maybe future JV opportunities. This is huge so get on with it and show your skills.

II. Reciprocal Promotion- John Chow has collaborated with Shoemoney in some projects in the past. John mentions about Shoe’s stuff on his blog and Shoe does the same for John on his blog. Both of them are a leader in the industry and are exchanging links and promotions. I call this the “Reciprocal Promotion”. Can you see the power of collaboration now? It doesn’t only open doors to new opportunities but also to new relationships which could be really profitable in the long run. Have a great idea? Don’t wait! Find an industry leader and collaborate. This is actually one best way of marketing your blog which is pretty much Free. You just have to know the art of networking

Bonus – Build that List!

Probably one most important aspect of marketing is building your email list. Whenever you decide to start a blog, try signing up for an email list program like aweber which I use and recommend. I realized the power of list building and email marketing after 1 year of starting this blog and today, I feel I have wasted that particular year for not implementing one of the most powerful marketing systems available today.

Building an email list is more than making money online. It helps to keep track of the subscribers who are serious about your stuff, who look up to you and want more stuff from you in the future. An easy example would be the “14 days Blogging Course” I offer on this blog. People who sign up for this course should definitely be interested in blogging and want to learn more. This means, I can send them more blogging tutorials and related stuff down the road.

If you see this from a money making perspective, imagine you have a list of 1000 targeted loyal subscribers. These people are hungry for your stuff ‘cuz they love what you provide. These people see value in your stuff. Let’s assume that I have created an awesome product which is related to blogging and priced it at $27. I feel that the product will help my subscribers so I sent out an email to the 1000 loyal subscribers. Guess what? 50% converted which means $27 x 500 (50%) = $13,500 in sales Now note that I said only 50% converted. If you have a targeted list and if you really deliver the best stuff, I wouldn’t doubt 80%+ conversion rate. Can you now see the power of email marketing?

Verdict

I have seen a lot of articles on blog marketing and frankly speaking, most have somewhat similar points. The main purpose of this post is to educate you on the importance of several marketing aspects that most bloggers often ignore or are not aware of.

If you can follow all the 7 tips mentioned on this post, then you will have developed a great strategy for marketing your blog, and be several steps closer to blogging success, talk soon!

Running a successful and popular blog means completing several steps that work together to increase your chances of achieving your target visitor numbers. Your blog will need good on-page search engine optimisation (SEO), good off-site SEO, good content that is regularly updated, and good anchor text backlinks from high Page Rank websites.

Once your blog has all those factors lining up with good results, the visitor numbers will start to increase. But once you have all these new visitors, how do you retain them? To make your blog successful you must learn how to increase blog subscribers, also known as the art of blog subscriptions, guaranteeing that your visitors can’t help but return, again and again.

Increasing blog subscribers is one of the most important aspects of a successful blog yet surprisingly under appreciated by many internet marketers and bloggers. Now don’t confuse yourself with Blog Traffic and Blog Subscribers. It’s fine to have several thousand unique visitors every day, but if they never come back, then you will have had only one isolated opportunity to achieve your blog’s target. Whether it be an adsense click, an affiliate purchase, or a product sale, how much more likely would that objective be if your visitor returned twice instead of once, or 5 times, or every day?!

What do the pro bloggers mean when they say “Money is in the list”; even in this case, we are trying to get the email lead of the visitor which means turning the visitor into a subscriber so we can send them follow ups and blog updates. I bet now you can understand the value of return visits, and the very best vehicle for that return traffic is a subscription. If you can persuade your visitors to subscribe to your blog, they will return over and over again, and every time they return, they are increasing the value of your blog; in terms of traffic, sales, higher click through etc.

Whether you know this or not, if you can’t convince your visitors to subscribe to your blog, you will not be that successful in blogging industry. This is the bitter fact but you always have an option . Keep reading…

When a visitor subscribes to your blog, they are basically saying “yes, I like this blog and I appreciate the content”. Subscribers (not visitors) are most likely to fulfil your blog’s ultimate goal in the long run by purchasing your stuff, supporting you and looking up to you. There really is no better way to quickly increase return traffic than to increase blog subscribers.

So how do we entice blog visitors to click on to the RSS feed and become a loyal subscriber? There are lots of ways to get subscribers and retain them and I have posted several related articles previously such as Top 4 Methods to increase RSS subscribers but today, I will post my top 2 essential steps that always work. If you seriously follow them, I bet you will start to see an immediate increase in subscribers count.

The 2 Essential Steps to Increase Subscribers

Step 1 – Don’t Make it Difficult!

I know this sounds easy but I still see lots of blogs that are not following it. There are entire books on website usability; it is such an expansive topic. When it comes to persuading a site visitor to make a choice and actually click on something, usability has to be perfect. Anything less than perfect is a lost subscriber. So how do you make it easy, simple and a no brainier for your visitors to subscribe to your blog?

The most frequently used method of syndicating content and allowing visitors to subscribe to your blog updates is using an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed. Thousands if not millions of blogs have an RSS feed, but how many of them actually describe how to use the RSS feed? RSS means Really Simple Syndication, however to anyone who has never come across it before, it is far from simple.

You may be surprised to learn that many visitors simply click on the RSS logo, see a page of text, and then failing to understand what they have done, close the page and leave the blog! 80% of my friends and family do not know what RSS is. Surprised? Don’t be. Everyday the number of new internet users is increasing which means a lot of them will have/have no idea what RSS is and needs to be educated about it.

To ensure that these new visitors actually understand about RSS and subscribe to your blog, next to your RSS button or image, you can place a link to a page on your blog that explains what an RSS feed is and how to use it. To make it even better, you can include the following details:

• explain that RSS feeds are web-pages for computers, not visitors
• explain and link to example browser based RSS readers
• explain and link to downloadable desktop RSS readers
• describe where to find your RSS feed buttons, including the Firefox RSS feature
• explain how to subscribe using each type of RSS reader

By explaining these five crucial steps to understanding RSS feeds, you are massively increasing the chances of your visitors actually using your RSS feed and seeing content that they want to return and read in full. Make sure the link to this page is prominently displayed near to every RSS logo on your blog, and reap the benefits of RSS subscribers. This is a tip that you won’t find in many places; you will see this method in action on this blog in a few days so, I am giving you a head start

Step 2 – Encourage Visitors to Subscribe

With your RSS beginners guide in place, and your RSS feed button or link displayed on every page, you might think you have done enough to encourage visitors to subscribe, but no, you are only half way there!

Every web marketer should know that visitors need told what to do in order to close a sale, they need what is known as a “call to action” button. It is no different with RSS subscribers, they need a call to action i.e. you need to tell them to click that RSS feed button.

The best and most natural way to do this is to include a reminder at the end of the blog post along the lines of “if you liked this article, please subscribe to our blog!” You could make a subscriber link as your blog entry footer. On this blog, I have an intro plugin that asks to subscribe at the beginning of the post . You can also notice an email subscription option on the sidebar that clearly says what it does. I hope you get the point. I am listing some plugins that I personally use on my blogs. These will help you with the RSS stuff.

WordPress Plugins I found useful

1. What Would Seth Godin Do – Displays a custom welcome message to new visitors and another to return visitors. I am sure you know what to do with it You can have a customized RSS or even Email Subscription form at the end or beginning of your posts by using this plugin.

2. WP Greet Box – I have this installed on this blog. It simply greets visitors with a small message. You have the option to include the RSS link and various other social icons. Just check it out.

Enough said; if you can follow these two essential steps on every blog you run, you will definitely see an increase in blog subscribers – taking you one massive step closer to achieving your goals!