Choosing a Graphic Designer For Your Blog

A visually appealing design can make a world of difference in a blog's popularity. The human brain is hard-wired to respond to attractive designs with a higher level of engagement. So even if your blog contains exceptional, well-written content, it may ultimately fail unless it features an attractive layout. Here's the problem, though: many bloggers have little-to-no experience in graphic design. They may understand the basic concept of pixel dimensions and file types (e.g. GIF, JPEG, PNG, etc.), but they lack the skills necessary to create a custom header or theme/template design. If this so...
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Create Effective Landing Pages Using WordPress

Wouldn't it be great if you could create effective landing pages in WordPress instead of building them from scratch? It's no secret that WordPress is used primarily for blogs, and for good reason: it supports both posts and pages, allows multiple users to log in and publish content, and offers a built-in visitor commenting feature. But WordPress can also be used to create brilliant, fully functional landing pages. What Is a Landing Page? If you asked ten different marketing experts what the definition of a landing page is, you would probably get ten different answers. Wikipedia, however, off...
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How To Make You Blog Post Go Viral

While the exact number remains unknown, some marketing experts estimate there to be more than 150 million blogs currently online. Whether you're searching for information on pets, health, fashion, sports, celebrity/pop culture, or practically anything else, there's probably a blog covering it. But with such heated competition, it's difficult for the "little guys" to make a name for themselves, which is where viral content comes into play. If you're able to create a viral blog post, you'll receive tons of new visitors while drawing the attention of search engines. What Is a Viral Blog Post? L...
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Bing Expected To Roll Out Mobile-Friendly Update

Just weeks after Google altered its search ranking algorithm to increase the mobile rankings for smartphone/tablet-optimized websites, Bing has announced plants to roll out a mobile-friendly update of its own. The Microsoft-owned and operated search engine announced the upcoming mobile-friendly update in a blog post titled "Our approach to mobile-friendly search." In the post, Bing's Shyam Jayasankar reinforces the fact that mobile Internet usage continues to grow as a "percentage of overall" search queries. Bing initially unveiled plans to push for greater mobile friendliness back in Novem...
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Report: WordPress Remains The #1 CMS

There are dozens of content management systems (CMS) available, some of which include Drupal, Jooma, Business Catalyst, BigCommerce, Blogger and Tumblr just to name a few. However, WordPress remains the single most popular and widely used CMS for content-driven websites, according to a new report published by CodeGuard. The cloud-based data backup and monitoring service provider claims that approximately 79% of all content websites are powered by WordPress, with Drupal coming in at a distant second with just 72.%, and Drupal with 5.3%. This begs the question, why do so many webmasters and b...
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Beware! 4 Things That Can Hurt Your Blog’s Rankings

Search rankings play a direct role in the amount of traffic a blog receives. In fact, a study conducted by the marketing firm Chitka found that websites in the first organic, non-paid position in Google receive 32.5% traffic share for the respective keyword, whereas websites in the eleventh position received an abysmal 1% traffic share. This week, we're going to discuss some things that are known to negatively impact a blog's search ranking. Duplicate Content Don't get me wrong, small amounts of duplicate content is perfectly fine and shouldn't have a negative impact on your blog's rankings....
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What Google’s Recent Mobile Update Means For Bloggers

We first talked about Google's mobile-friendly update last month, revealing some helpful tips for webmasters and bloggers. In case you missed it, the Mountain View company rolled out a major update to the algorithm it uses to rank websites. Called "Mobilegeddon" by some marketing gurus, it's designed to improve the search rankings for mobile-friendly sites, while lowering the rankings for mobile-unfriendly sites. So, how will this update affect bloggers? Google began rolling out its new mobile-friendly update on April 21st. At the time, it was unknown just how significant this update would ...
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How To Make Your Blog More Personal

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Creating a personal connection with your readers is critical to your blog's success. Readers want to feel like they are a part of a community to which they can relate. If your blog is nothing more than a series of generic articles, you will ultimately fail to establish this relationship. Thankfully, there are several simple yet effective techniques for making a blog more personal. Use a Real Name Are you still using the default "Admin" username that came with your blog's content management system (CMS)? While this may seem harmless enough, it doesn't have the same effect on readers as a real...
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Where To Find Images For Your Blog

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As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words, holds true when blogging. Adding relevant images to your blog posts will encourage a higher level of visitor engagement, which in turn translates into a better blog. Due to international copyright laws, though, you can't simply copy and paste any image you come across. To legally use an image on your website, you must download it from a source that grants such permissions. Flickr Creative Commons Arguably, one of the best source of free-to-use images is Flickr Creative Commons. With over 20 million images and counting, you can find pic...
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Why Won’t Google Index My Blog?

Can't seem to find your blog listed in Google's search results? While Yahoo and Bing may provide some traffic, it fails in comparison to the Big G. So when a blog fails to rank in Google, it can be troubling for the owner. The good news is that you can often fix this issue, first by identifying why Google hasn't indexed your blog. Copyright If your blog has been reported for copyright violations, Google may deindex it. The person or organization reporting the violation, however, must provide ample proof; otherwise, Google will let it be. To check and see if your blog has been reported, visit...
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