Your Blog’s On Page Search Engine Optimization
November 24, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Click here to learn how make profitable blogs with Blogging to the Bank. Now, you should have a blog full with content you have passionately written. It should be a very interesting grapevine for the community of your chosen niche, as opposed to a lifeless factsheet.
However, no matter how delicious your content is, if there is nobody to read it you can’t generate profit from it. Even if you talk about compare life coverage quotes. Traffic is the lifeblood of your blog. In order to attract people, you must offer attractive information. Simple enough.
However, to get traffic onto your site, you have to think backwards. Where do people look when they need information? Yes, they search using search engines like www.google.com, www.yahoo.com and www.msn.com, to name a few more popular ones. So, to get these people on your blog, your blog needs to rank high on search result pages of these search engines. When these people search for information through the search engines and see your site among the top results, they will naturally click through to your blog!
The art of getting your blog or website onto high rankings on search result pages is called SEO. It is a very complex and hard subject to master, but that doesn’t stop us from learning simple yet effective techniques to conquer the search results for certain keywords. The more complex techniques are usually needed to fight for very competitive and general keywords such as “fat loss”, but I’ll teach you how to overcome that later.
For now, let’s determine the keywords that you want to optimize your site for. For example, your blog talks about tech gadgets. Now, you’d want to check in Google whether it is a very competetive keyword. At this time of writing, there are 29, 000 ,000 search results. Think you can beat 29, 000, 000 sites at your first attempt? I don’t think so.
Now, let’s try to narrow down our scope. Let’s look for “technological gadgets” instead. At this time of writing, Google lists 792, 000 results. That’s more manageable, but you’d like to search for more focused keywords. However, let’s optimize your blog for “technological gadget” just for the sake of learning.
First, you have to pay attention to the title of your blog. Since you’re optimizing for technological gadgets, you need to have that exact phrase in your blog title. For example, a line like “Your Best Technological Gadget Blog!” would work great. You can change the title of your blog in the Blogger control panel or the Wordpress blog when you’re creating it. If you’re proficient with HTML, you can even do that on other blog engines like Moveable Type. Bottom line? Learn a little HTML!
Other than that, your page heading should also contain the term you’re optimizing for. The page heading is the bit of text in your code that is enclosed within the tags. This is important as it tells the search engines what your page is about (in this case, “technological gadgets”). Since we’re posting a blog, the tags are usually the post titles, so remember to include the term there whenever relevant.
One last bit, you should also sprinkle the words “technological gadgets” in your posts whenever possible. The frequent occurrence of that phrase in your blog will hint the search engines that your blog is really relevant to that topic.
However, this is the most important bit of all. Always keep in mind that you’re writing for real life people who read your blog to obtain information, so it is very stupid to spam your blog with keywords! In fact, if you do that, the search engines will end up thinking you’re spamming and drop your ranking further down into oblivion… So keep in mind! Write for humans, not search engines!
Click here for more on how to make money blogging
Strategic Alliances and Where to Find Them
September 25, 2008 | Leave a Comment
I read a book called Acres of Diamonds many years ago? The most obvious place to start looking is your own back yard. This story is very well explained in Acres of Diamonds.
So the first place I would look for joint venture partners is in my own back yard. Think of your own customer database or mailing list. Your existing customers are a great place to start looking for joint venture opportunities, after all, they already trust you. Your strong relationship is virtual money in the bank, by giving people great service you can open up lots of opportunities.
Magazine Publishers
A lot depends on who the magazine publisher is, some of the very largest might be hard to reach but certainly the smaller or niche magazines are a good place to explore. It’s the same with people who distribute newsletters on line or printed material off line. They are a fabulous resource, often with very large databases and hungry customers.
Library
Your library is a virtual goldmine of good quality research material. There are reference books available that show you the numbers of members. In the USA and Canada you can review http://www.mediafinder.com/. They have around 75,000 newsletter for you to explore. There is a cost involved with this service so do your sums first before subscribing.
Another great USA based service is Standard Rates and Data Services http://www.srds.com. In the UK you can go to a list broker like Marketing File http://marketingfile.com/ Buying a large list is not our first port of call because there is a good chance that a business somewhere will already have a large list with a strong customer relationship and that is where I would go first.
Your library is going to have some great resources for research. You could always buy these directories your self. They are normally quite expensive so you could always see if they are available on eBay. Even the older ones still have gems.
Yellow Pages
This publication is now showing it’s age a bit because so much is researched on-line. But, the people who already advertise in yellow pages are a useful point of contact for joint ventures.
Seminars
Seminars can be a great place to meet potential joint venture partners. Be choosy about which ones you attend but generally they can be a rich pool of motivated people. Paid for seminars will have some of the better joint venture opportunities because you won’t get so many tyre kickers.
Search Engines
Go to Google and type in the keywords that you are looking for. You will be surprised what pops up.
Discussion Boards
Are a great place to find passionate people. These forums give you a chance to form relationships and build up trust before suggesting a joint venture deal.
Newspaper Ads
Newspaper ads can provide some good opportunities, they are after all advertising for business. Why not call them and see if they might be interested in starting a dialogue with you.
Your Website
If you have your own website, think of ways you might be able to use it to search out for joint venture opportunities. Why not mention that you are open to joint ventures and explain what you are looking for.
Ezine Directories
Competitors
I know this might sound a bit odd to start with, but your competitors could offer you useful partnership opportunities. Some of the fiercest competitors can become the strongest joint venture partners.
And the mailing will also be very targeted. Why not capitalize on this and make a handsome profit?
Referrals
Ask for joint venture referrals from existing customers. Just pick up the phone and ask them who they might know.
Other Places to Find Partners;
- Business events
- Newsgroups
- Business Directories
- On-Line classifieds
- Magazines / trade magazines
- Trade Fairs
There are hundreds of places to look, have fun.
