Advertising and Marketing

How To Make You Blog Post Go Viral

Posted on by sitemanager
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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What Google’s Recent Mobile Update Means For Bloggers

Posted on by sitemanager
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

Posted on by sitemanager
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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

Posted on by sitemanager
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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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How To Manage Spam Comments In WordPress

Posted on by sitemanager
One of the perks of choosing WordPress as your blogging platform is the ability to engage directly with your visitors. WordPress has a built-in commenting feature which allows visitors to share their thoughts on posts/articles. While you can always disable this feature, it's usually best to keep it turned on. Each time a visitor leaves a comment, it creates unique content for your blog -- and search engines love fresh, unique content. Unfortunately, though, WordPress also attracts comment spam. You may notice generic comments like "Great blog, I'll grab your RSS" or "This was a wonderful bl...
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Why Self-Hosted Blogs Are Better

Posted on by sitemanager
One of the decisions you'll have to make when starting a blog is whether to use a hosted or self-hosted platform. Two of the most popular blogging content management systems (CMS) -- WordPress and Blogger -- offer both of these options. While many beginners automatically assume hosted is the best option, spending the extra time and resources to set up a self-hosted blog will prove far more beneficial in the long run. Custom Domain You can always tell if a blog is hosted or self-hosted by looking at its domain name. Hosted blogs are restricted to subdomains, such as yoursite.wordpress.com...
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Can You Really Make Money Blogging?

Posted on by sitemanager
The short answer to this question is yes, you can make money blogging. But it takes more than just throwing up a WordPress site and a couple of short articles to produce any sizable income. Blogging is highly competitive industry, with millions of active blogs currently online. If you want to succeed, you must differentiate yourself from the rest while providing something of real value to your readers. So, how can you make money blogging? Dozens of different opportunities exist, one of which is writing blog posts for high-traffic blogs in exchange for a flat per-post fee. It's not uncommon ...
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Free and Paid Ways To Promote Your Blog

Posted on 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

Posted on 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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How To Make Your Blog Posts More Attractive

Posted on 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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