Why Small Business Owners Should Blog

by sitemanager
Many people assume blogging is only useful for personal purposes, sharing with world your political views or movie critiques. While there are literally thousands of blogs that fall under these categories, blogging can also be used to promote and grow a small business. To learn more about the benefits of blogging for small businesses, keep reading. Builds Authority Arguably, one of the greatest benefits of blogging for small businesses is the simple fact that it helps to build authority and credibility. Your target audience will read your blog's content, at which point they will view you ...
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Common Blogging Pitfalls and How To Avoid Them

by sitemanager
Thinking about starting a blog? Thousands of people make the decision to launch their first blog every month, but only a small fraction succeed. This week we're going to take a look at some of the common pitfalls of blogging and how to avoid them. Generic Cookie-Cutter Template If you're serious about blogging, you should invest in a custom template (or theme for WordPress sites). Using the same web design as hundreds of other blogs sends the wrong message to your target audience. Readers will view your blog as being unprofessional and generic, and they may even mistake it for another bl...
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5 Simple SEO Tips For Blogs

by sitemanager
#1) Beware of Duplicate Content While small amounts of duplicate content shouldn't have a negative impact on your blog's search ranking, large amounts can knock it several pages back. Blogs are particularly susceptible to duplicate content since they often publish the same content in multiple areas. In WordPress, for instance, content is published in categories, archives, tags, author, and the actual post URL. The bottom line is that you need to implement some type of measure (e.g. canonical URLs, plugins, noindex, etc.) to prevent duplicate content issues. #2) Publish New Content Regula...
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Security Vulnerability Spotted In Yoast SEO Plugin

by sitemanager
A critical security vulnerability has been identified on one of the most popular and widely used SEO plugins for the WordPress content management system (CMS). Yoast SEO suffers from an exploit which allows hackers to modify the server's database using a method called blind SQL injection. And failure to fix this vulnerability could have disastrous consequences. Yoast SEO features a wide range of tools designed to help webmasters and bloggers optimize their sites, including an XML sitemap generator, RSS enhancements, on-page content analysis, custom titles and meta tags, breadcrumbs, canonic...
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Free and Paid Ways To Promote Your Blog

by sitemanager
The amount of traffic a blog receives is a direct indication of its success. Blogs that receive hundreds or even thousands of unique visitors per day will rank in the search engines and generate more sales/leads than blogs with only a trickle of traffic -- it's just that simple. You can boost your blog's traffic by using free or paid promotional methods, which we're going to discuss further in this post. Free Blog Promotion Methods Blog commenting. Let me rephrase that, commenting on other blogs can be used to promote your own blog. Assuming the other blog allows commenters to include a...
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Heads Up: Google May Change Its Ranking Algorithm

by sitemanager
If your blog relies on organic, non-paid search engine traffic, you should take note of what I'm about tell you. A new report has emerged, suggesting that Google may alter is search ranking algorithm to focus on the truthfulness/accuracy of websites' content. Google currently uses a complex ranking algorithm consisting of hundreds of different signals. While the Mountain View company has yet to reveal the exact formula it uses to rank websites, some of the signals Google is believed to use include backlink quantity, backlinks quality, social shares, domain age, and brand name mentions. Webm...
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5 Ways To Improve Your Blog’s Readership

by sitemanager
#1) Social Media If you aren't publishing links to your new blog posts on social media, you're missing out on one of the easiest ways to attract new readers. Facebook alone boasts more than 1.3 billion monthly active users, making it an excellent source of traffic, and readers, for your blog. Whenever you publish a new blog post, try to get into the habit of immediately publishing a link to the URL on your social media accounts. #2) Syndicate Content Another simple way to improve your blog's readership is to syndicate your content. Syndication basically involves publishing either part...
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How To Make Your Blog Posts More Attractive

by sitemanager
Still struggling to generate any sizable readership following for your blog? When you're busy researching and writing new topics, it's easy to overlook the visual element of your posts. But the human brain is hard-wired to respond to visual stimulation, so overlooking this key fact could significantly hurt your blogging efforts. So, how can you make your blog posts more attractive? Avoid The 'Wall of Text' One of the most common mistakes new bloggers make is creating a wall of text. As the name suggests, this is a style of writing characterized by nothing more than a wall of text (hence ...
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WordPress Tip: Adjust Your RSS Settings

by sitemanager
WordPress is arguably the most powerful and versatile blogging platform on the planet. Along with its clean, easy-to-use interface, it features tens of thousands of "plugins" and "themes" to streamline the process of creating and managing a blog. But when you're busy setting WordPress, you might forget to adjust the RSS settings. What Is RSS? RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, is a universal XML format for displaying a website's content. Visitors can subscribe to a blog's RSS by submitting the blog's URL into their RSS reader. So instead of having to visit the blog every time a new post ...
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5 reasons why a Professional Salesperson needs a blog

by sitemanager
Happy Friday! I had a really interesting conversation today.  While I have always promoted blogging and online publishing as a way to Build Authority, I realized that this message may be perceived as something just for businesses or personal endeavors. The conversation was with a salesperson working for a company. His view was that it was his employer that should have a blog. His employer should build the Authority. His employer should invest the time and energy in building authority, trust and keeping the customer. My response, "So, you are telling me you are an order taker. You're clearl...
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