100k Job Trading From Home

You write a blog religiously every day or so. You provide informative, interesting content for your loyal readers. You’ve even got a couple of affiliate links in there, too. But is this enough to get great search engine results for your efforts?

Probably not. Sure, you’ll get listed with the search engines easily. But without a top twenty listing at one of the majors (Google, Yahoo! or MSN), you won’t have traffic, literally, banging down your door.

In order to get better search engine results you need to make sure you are using the right keywords (and know how to use them), have links pointed your way and regularly check the results of your hard work. Here’s how.

Putting Keywords in the Right Places

Once you’ve picked a keyword that applies directly to your blog, make sure to incorporate it into the following portions of one complete blog posting:

# The title;
# The first sentence;
# Each header (if you have any);
# Once a paragraph; and
# The last sentence.

If you have any links to outside sources, use the same keyword as your link text where possible. Also, for each blog posting, try and pick a different (but related) keyword to use. Feel free to reuse keywords every 30-45 postings.

Submitting to Directories

Your third step is to take these keyword optimized blog postings and post them to the article and blog directories. Most of the search engines determine the relevancy of your blog by how many outside websites link directly to you; therefore, posting your blog entries (with a link back to your site in your resource blurb) is an easy and straightforward way of doing so.

Checking Your Progress

It may take a couple of days to see any results, so try and wait a week before you take a look at StatCounter. Have your hits increased at all? Are there any new search engine referrals?

To track your blog’s ascent up the search engine rankings for any given keyword, try Digital Point’s free Keyword Tracker Tool (http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/keywords/). It is an excellent way of ensuring your blog positioning efforts are paying off.

With all blog postings, content is key. Without useful, interesting information that cannot be found elsewhere, your visitors won’t come back for more. Incorporate these simple search engine optimization techniques into your blogging practice however, and you’ll both keep the visitors you already have and dramatically increase your readership through high ranking search engine placement in no time.

There are many factors that make blogs much better than normal WebPages including the speed at which blogs are indexed, ability to submit to blog directories & normal directories, pings and track backs. All these little things can help drive more traffic to blogs. Here are 15 popular techniques you can use:

1. Create at least four keyword posts per day. Most of the top blogs such as Boing Boing, Daily Kos, and Instapundit (with literally tens of thousands of visitors per day) publish an average of 30 small 100-150 word posts per day according to “Secrets of the A-list Bloggers: Lots of Short Posts” by http://TNL.net

2. Submit to My Yahoo! When you submit your own RSS to My Yahoo it is indexed by Yahoo.

3. Submit to Google’s Reader. When you submit your own blog RSS to Google’s Reader the Google Blog Search will index your site.

4. Add a relevant link directory to your blog and trade links like a demon possessed! Although it may take more time than simply submitting to a search engine one time, this method is perhaps the best way to drive traffic to your site. Use software such as Zeus to speed up the link trading process.

5. Use ping sites like ping-o-matic. Ping your site every time you add a new post.

6. Submit your blog to traditional search engines such as AltaVista, and MSN.

7. Submit your blog to traditional directories such as DMOZ. Directories (particularly DMOZ) increase relevance with Google. DMOZ is very picky, but what do you have to lose by trying?

8. Submit to as many RSS Directories and Search Engines as possible. This is a simple but repetitive process that can be done with software such as RSS SUBMIT.

9. Comment on other blogs. Do not just leave short, lazy comments like “I agree.” Leave well thought out replies that will force readers to wonder “who wrote this?”

10. Use track backs. If there is a blog that you refer to or quote and it is highly relevant to your subject, leave a track back. It increases your link popularity and may even score a few interested readers from the linked site.

11. Go offline. Use newspaper ads, public bulletin boards, business cards, even stickers to let as many people as possible know your blog exists.

12. Ad a link to your blog in your e-mail signature block.

13. Use Groups (Usenet). Find a relevant group on Google groups, Yahoo groups, MSN groups or any of the thousands of other FREE group services and find like minded people and talk with them. Make sure your use your blog URL like it is your name.

14. Use Forums. Forums are one of the best places to go for advice. Go to forums and find problems to solve. Make sure you leave your blog name, but be tactful about it; some forums get annoyed with those who selfishly drop a few links to their own site and leave.

15. Tag your website. Tagging is a new idea that has erupted across the web. Sites like http://Del.icio.us, Technorati and many others have a social feature that allows you to place your article under keywords or “tags” that everyone interested in that tag can see.

Although these are some of the most popular ways to drive traffic to your blog, do not limit your self to tips and lists. Use your imagination and you will come up with thousands of ways to drive traffic to your blog!

One of the challenges of blogging is to come up with good posts that interest readers and keep them coming back. Sometimes I do not feel like I have good original wisdom. It is presumptuous to think I can have top quality original material all the time.

A second challenge is the time to blog. I work while blogging so when I decided to blog I knew I needed to figure out how to do it efficiently. My blog is mostly about efficiency and time management; these are topics I study.

These two challenges can be solved with a simple concept. Copy.

Ideas to use when copying are:

1 – attribution. Give the credit together with the link to the original author.

2 – look for something you can add to. Blogs can be synergistic. Take a concept or part of a blog post and expend on it and give your opinions, insights or views. In many cases, this can start a flow of ideas that are enriched from the original post.

3 – You can use either the whole post or most usually just part of it and point people to the original.

4 – I usually ask for permission which has never been denied. After all copying helps the original author and garners them some readership. And of course never copy copy written material without permission (and most blogs are not copy written).

5 – The simplest place to find material to use to copy is by blog surfing although this can mean a lot of irrelevant material to filter. One source of free articles sorted by topic is www.isnare.com.

6 – In many cases the person you copy from will point a link back to you since it is flattering to them. Charles Caleb Colton said “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” (one trick on quotes is to look them up on www.brainyquote.com). These links to you can increase your traffic.

In summary, copying saves time and increases the quality of material on your site. It can even lead to traffic since in many cases you will get link backs from the original site.

Does the cream rise to the top? Of course it does but outside of the
world of the dairy, a lot depends on how you define cream. If you
consider the those bloggers who have the highest readership to be the
best than yes, the blogosphere is a meritocracy with readership being
the ‘payoff’ for being the best. The best, however, is not always the
most popular. You will, while surfing, run across some extremely
intelligent, extremely poignant and extremely erudite bloggers who have
a very small readerships, as evidenced by very few, if any, comments to
their posts. That can be explained by those blogger’s lack of
willingness to ‘play the game’ that must be played to attract a large
readership, e.g., aggressively promoting their blogs, spending many
times more hours reading and commenting on other’s blogs than they
spend writing for their own, listing their blog on every available
directory, etc.. Every one of us has a different definition of success,
to some, a large readership is adequate success, to some using their
blog as a money-making device and actually making some money is the
ultimate success while to others, like those with an intentionally low
profile, feel that simply creating posts that are perfect expressions
of what they want to say is reward enough.

There are certain myths that have grown up around blogs, bloggers and the blogosphere in general. Here are just some of them and some clarifications:

Anyone can start a blog! Not just anyone! There are some requirements, some more obvious than others. Obviously, you need a computer that you know how to use, an Internet connection and some experience using the Internet. You also need a host for your blog; there are blog hosts that are free and some that cost a small amount per month. One last requirement is not just an ability to communicate your thoughts but also a willingness to do so.

Anyone can set up a blog! Some blogs are much easier to set up and use than others, this depends on your blog host (e.g., blogger, iblogs, typepad, tblog, etc.). Some blog hosts take you through a couple simple set-up steps and you’re off writing your first post but there are others that get far more technical than the average user may be ready for.

Blogging doesn’t take up that much time! That depends! Some posts, when you have a clear idea of what you want to say, may take just a few minutes while you may struggle for days (literally) with others that involve complex issues or thoughts. In general, blogging is a daily activity for the serious blogger (some bloggers write up to ten posts a day) and a once-a-week activity for the casual blogger.

Blogs are in competition with the main-stream media! This is true in a few cases (not as many cases as bloggers would have you think). Just recently, there have been some very popular and influential social and politically-oriented blogs that have caused main-stream media outlets to back-track and change their coverage of important events.

Bloggers just criticize and have no new information to add! This may be true in some cases but blogging today is much more than the personal activity it used to be. Corporations, media outlets, public personalities, politicians and experts in almost every field have now joined the ranks of blog producers. Considering all this expertise, one would have to say that bloggers have a lot of new information to add to any debate.

You can’t believe anything you read in a blog! That’s a bit of an overstatement. You’ll run across bad information and even intentional untruths in blogs but, for the most part, bloggers who state facts are stating what they honestly believe to be fact. It is always up to the readers to verify that any information they receive is accurate information.

• Google heavily manipulates its Page Rank (PR) system by punishing sites/blogs for selling links, which makes it so biased and useless.

• The page rank is so easy to be forged and even Google toolbar cannot detect a forged PR.

• It could give a web site with 0 back links with a PR4, yet another web site with hundreds of back links a PR0

Most of you must have known about the story of rich dad – Robert Kiyosaki. To my understanding, one of the keys to his success is asset building. Over the time, he accumulated enough assets to generate a sizable income to surpass his rich dad. The real value of an asset is that it brings you income, passive income for most of the time. While my blog and web sites started to bring me stable income month after month, I feel that I’m on the right path to be a rich dad myself. Have a look at some of my recently acquired blog/web sites, as they started to generate income for me almost immediately:

Somebackup.com – a Tech blog,
PHPpeixun.com – a PHP traing company site,
Lidanatural.com – a site development originally in a foreign language, I converted it to a photography library.