Content Publication

The search engine companies do not publicize exactly how they determine a site’s search engine ranking, but they do give website owners tips for improving their rankings. Some search engines use frequency of new content as one of the factors used to determine a site’s ranking. When you have a static website, the content stays the same for long periods of time. If you have a blog on your site, you will be publishing new content regularly. This increased frequency makes it possible to improve your ranking.

Backlink Opportunities

Unless your website covers a unique or controversial topic, it is difficult to attract natural backlinks. Backlinks are one of the factors the search engine companies use to determine a site’s ranking. When another website owner links to your site, the search engine companies see it as a “vote” for your content. The more “votes” you have, the better your ranking. When you have a blog, you have many opportunities to attract natural backlinks. Writing in-depth posts that contain thought-provoking content is one of the best ways to attract natural backlinks to a website.

More Keywords

Keywords are the words and phrases people use to search for information online. When someone wants to find information about a topic, they opens a search engine window and type a query into the search bar. Smart website owners integrate keywords into their content to make it easier for people to find their sites. Blogging is beneficial for SEO because each blog post is an opportunity to target a new keyword. Someone who runs a party supply website might use “cheap party supplies” as a main keyword. When writing blog posts, the website owner may decide to target keywords like “princess party supplies,” “first birthday party supplies” and “dinosaur party supplies.” Targeting additional keywords improves the chances of attracting new traffic from the search engines.

Commenting

Opening your blog to commenters may actually help improve your search engine ranking. Comments add to the conversation, helping you attract more people to your site. Comments also act as new content for your blog. You do not have to pay anything for this content, giving you a great return on your investment. Some commenters may even use longtail keywords, helping you improve your ranking without spending a penny.

Viral Marketing

When something “goes viral,” it means that it has become very popular in a short amount of time. Think about a YouTube video that gets a million views in a week or an article that has thousands of comments. People like the content so much that they share it with their friends, and those friends share it with their friends. If you write controversial or thought-provoking content, there is a good chance it could go viral. This will bring additional traffic to your site and increase the number of comments you receive. All of these things can help you improve your search engine ranking.

Interlinking Opportunities

Interlinking is when a website owner links from one page of her site to another. This practice helps improve search engine rankings, but it is difficult to do if a site only has unrelated product pages. A blog gives a website owner many opportunities for interlinking one related post to another. Someone who owns a website about marketing might write a post on inexpensive marketing tips and link it to a post on free marketing tips. This makes it easier for readers to find content and also gives the search engines additional links to follow when crawling a website.

Any website owner who wants improved search engine opportunities should consider blogging. Not only can blogging help with SEO, it can also help attract new readers to a website. This SEO tactic is one of the most effective and least expensive available, so it should be a part of every website owner’s marketing plan.

Affiliate Programs

An affiliate program is a business arrangement where an online merchant pays a website owner a commission each time the website owner makes a sale or provides a sales lead. Website owners place affiliate ads on their sites and, when readers click on those ads, a tracking cookie tells the merchant where the lead came from. Affiliate programs typically pay a flat fee per lead or a certain percentage of each sale. Commissions range from as low as one percent of the sale price to as much as 50 percent of the sale price. If you have a high-traffic blog, affiliate programs can be a great way to generate revenue. Our affiliate program pays you monthly instead of one-time. So if you’re interested in making additional income, you should definitely look into it.

Advertising

There are several ways to generate revenue from blog advertising. One is to use pay-per-click (PPC) programs like Google Adsense, which pay you every time someone clicks on one of the ads displayed on your blog. The amount you get paid per click depends on how much advertisers are willing to pay. Some clicks generate only 5 or 10 cents each, but other clicks can generate several dollars each. If you have a blog with several dozen posts, you have plenty of opportunities to display these ads on your site.

Another way to generate revenue from advertising is to sell ads directly to advertisers. This works best if you have a high-traffic blog with a lot of loyal readers. When you sell ads directly to merchants, they will give you banners or other graphics to display on your blog. You must display these ads for the life of your advertising agreement. Advertising experts recommend asking advertisers to commit to at least three months of advertising.

Product Sales

If you run a product-based business, your blog is the perfect platform for selling more of your items. Blog readers do not want to read a 400-word sales pitch for your products, but you can subtly advertise your items. Provide useful, relevant information to your readers in every post. At the conclusion of each post, explain the benefits of using one of your products. Link to the product or offer a special discount for a limited time. This can help you sell more products and generate more revenue.

Sponsored Posts

Some companies promote their products and services by paying bloggers to talk about them. When you get paid to talk about a company’s product or service in a blog post, this is known as a sponsored post. This is a controversial tactic, so use caution if you want to make money with sponsored posts. Always let readers know that a post is sponsored. If possible, address the negative aspects of a product or service to provide a fair and balanced review.

Donations

Providing people with free information costs a lot of time and effort. Even if you don’t want to sell advertising or join an affiliate program, there is a way to make some money with your posts. Some bloggers add a donation button to their blogs and ask that readers make a donation if they find a post particularly helpful. Some people will use the information without donating, but other people will appreciate the effort and contribute to the upkeep of the blog.

Information Products

An information product is exactly what it sounds like: a product that contains useful information. E-books and reports are examples of information products. If you have expertise in a particular niche, consider writing information products and using your blog to sell them. This is a good way to generate income with your blog.

The above ideas are just some of the ways to earn money with a blog. All of them require consistent blogging and a commitment to quality. While most blogs will not make money overnight, hard work and perseverance will pay off in the form of passive income.

Dashboard Access

Creating a basic website with WordPress does not require you to know any coding or programming. If you want a simple website that people can read and navigate, all you need to do is use the default templates and tools available. When you create a website with this platform, you do everything through the administrator dashboard. This dashboard lets you add new posts and pages to the site, change font colors, add graphics and videos, and even change the appearance of your site. The availability of the dashboard is one of the things that make WordPress so easy to use.

Widgets and Plugins

If you have a traditional website, you probably have to hire someone every time you want to make a small change. If you don’t have the budget to hire someone, you have to try to change the code yourself, which takes a lot of time and can create a lot of frustration. WordPress users have access to thousands of plugins, which are tools that help you add features to your site. If you want to add a newsletter sign-up form in the sidebar of your site, you can easily do so by adding a widget. Widgets also make it easier to manage ad units from affiliate programs and direct advertisers.

Flexibility

When you pay someone to design a site for you, you typically have to use that design until you are ready to pay for a redesign. This may not happen for several years. When you use WordPress, you can change the look of your site at any time with just a few clicks. There are thousands of free and paid themes available for this platform, making it easy for users to change the appearance of their websites. Even changing the layout of a site is easy when you use WordPress.

Search Engine Optimization

WordPress makes it easy to optimize each post and page for the search engines. There are dozens of tools available to help you assign content to categories, assign tags to each post, create meta titles and descriptions and add keywords to your pages. All you have to do is fill in the settings for each post and WordPress takes care of the rest. There are a number of plugins available to help you link from one related post to another, which can also help you improve SEO for your site.

Easy Ad Management

If you want to make money with Google Adsense or with one of the many affiliate programs available, you have to display the ads on your site. If you have a traditional website, getting the ad code to work with your website code can be a nightmare. WordPress has plugins available to help users manage AdSense units, Amazon affiliate products and other affiliate program ad units. There is even a widget available that allows you to rotate which ads appear on the sidebar of your blog posts. Instead of showing the same ad on every page, you can customize your ad placement to generate more revenue.

Security

One of the biggest benefits of WordPress is the added security. When you run a traditional website, there is always the risk that you will not immediately identify a security breach, allowing unscrupulous people to steal your information and even disable your website. WordPress regularly updates its software and keeps security in mind when doing so. If a new version of WordPress is available, you will get a notification at the top of your dashboard. Installing new versions not only improves security, it also expands the functionality of your site.

Due to its ease of use and availability of thousands of customization tools, WordPress is ideal for personal websites or small business websites. With just a little time and some clicking, you can create a website that gives visitors a great first impression.

Twitter Name Creation

When you sign up for Twitter, you will be asked to choose a user name. Too many people make the mistake of picking something like Joe194 or Gurlie921. Your Twitter name should tell people about who you are or what your blog is about. Someone with a blog about nursing might choose the user name “nurseblogger” or “surgicalnurse.” If you want to blog about marketing, “marketingmaven” or “marketingexpert” would fit. Pick a name that will not confuse people about what you do.

Completing a Profile

You should treat your Twitter profile like an advertisement for your blog. If your profile is empty, it won’t attract the interest of other people. If your profile lists your expertise, other Twitter users will be more likely to follow you and click the links leading to your blog posts.

Linking

Twitter gives you plenty of opportunities for linking to your blog posts, but there are a few things you should know before you start tweeting links. You need to shorten your links using a URL shortening service, or else they will exceed Twitter’s 140-character limit. Once you have a shortened URL for your blog post, send out a tweet with the link and a short description. Don’t tweet something like “Here’s my new blog post.” You want to draw readers to your blog by sparking their interest. A tweet that says “Is your water bottle giving you cancer?” is sure to capture attention and get people to click on the link to your blog post. Avoid tweeting about the same link multiple times, as you do not want to lose followers because they are annoyed with your Twitter habits.

Customization

Twitter offers a number of customization options that you should use if you want to promote your blog or website. Upload a custom background image that includes the name of your blog, your business logo, your tagline and a short description of your blog. Doing this will help you build your own personal brand.

Font

You might love Lucida Handwriting, but your blog readers may have a hard time reading a script font. Unless you blog only for yourself, the needs of your readers should be your top priority. Use a non-script font in a size large enough to see at several different screen resolutions. You do not want to force your blog readers to change their browser settings just to see what you have written.

Colors

Color can add a little personality to your blog, but it can also hurt people’s eyes and make them never want to come back. If you add color to your blog template, make sure it does not clash with other colors on the site. Avoid using neon colors, as these are often difficult to see. Do not use dark text colors on a dark background or light text on a light background. Before your blog goes live, ask a few people to look at it and let you know if the colors you used make the site difficult to read.

White Space

Text, video and pictures are important components of every blog. However, you also need some white space. Do not cram text together without using paragraph breaks or post dozens of pictures side-by-side. White space makes it easier to read your text and look at any photos or videos you post on your site.

Theme

Your blog’s design should match the theme of your content. If your blog is about marketing and you use a template covered with sports pennants, people who find your blog might get confused and leave without reading anything. Use colors, text and pictures that relate to your theme. If you use your blog for business, make sure the theme is professional and portrays your business in a positive light.

Customization

If you do not have the funds to hire someone to design a theme just for your blog, make some changes to an existing template to create something that is entirely your own. Most blog templates come with certain fonts, colors or widgets. Move the widgets around, change the colors or try new fonts. Making these changes will set your blog apart from other sites using the same template right out of the box.

Information Placement

Online readers do not have time to search your entire site for important information. You need to put it where they will see it as soon as they land on your blog. This means putting the most information at the top of the page so readers do not have to scroll down to see it. If you have an important announcement about your blog, you can create a static post that stays at the top of the page. This will help ensure that all of your readers see this important information.

Browser Checks

Unfortunately, your blog might not look the same in every browser. If it looks fine in Chrome, it might look buggy in Internet Explorer. As you make changes to the design of your blog, check the site in several browsers to make sure it displays correctly. You may have to make some slight adjustments so that the blog displays properly in all of the major browsers.

Usability Review

It’s difficult to determine how a reader will react to your blog if you don’t get feedback from other people before you go live. This is why you should conduct a usability review. Sit down with a few of your friends and ask them to visit your blog, click on all the links and use all of the features. Your friends should then give you their honest feedback about what works and what doesn’t. Making changes based on these suggestions will make your blog easier for readers to use.

Business Updates

Let your customers know about new products and services, staff changes and other important business news via the Twitter interface. Make short announcements that get the message across without exceeding the 140-character limit. Include links to longer announcements on your blog or company website.

Ask for Input

When developing new products or deciding which services to offer, you need to consider the customer first. Your marketing team members may have great ideas, but they might not be exactly what your customers need. Use Twitter to take surveys or solicit feedback from those who follow your tweets. You will gather valuable information you can use to improve your business.

Customer Service

In the past, unhappy customers would call you and make a complaint. Today, many people skip this step entirely and post about their problems with your company on Facebook and Twitter. Since this type of publicity can harm your business, it is important that you handle any complaints properly. Set up custom searches to search for tweets with your company name or product name in them. If you come across a complaint, respond professionally. Offer to assist the customer and resolve any outstanding issues. If other Twitter users see you responding quickly, they may be willing to try your products or services.

Respond to Tweets

The whole idea behind using Twitter for business is getting customers engaged with your brand. If someone asks a question about your business, respond as soon as possible. Not only will you be providing good customer service, you’ll also be posting helpful information that can help turn other Twitter users into customers.

Follow and Promote Others

You don’t necessarily want to promote your competitors when using Twitter, but you should find other companies to follow and talk about. Try to find companies with products and services related to your niche. If you run a sporting goods store, you might want to follow companies that produce hunting gear, fishing poles and camping equipment. You can promote their products and suggest that your followers visit your store to buy them.

Get Staff Members Involved

One of the many problems with using automated menus for customer service is that customers start to think you don’t care about their concerns. Letting people see that you have great staff members that want to provide good customer service is an excellent way to connect with customers. Allow your staff members to send out tweets or make regular updates to your blog. You might even consider creating a schedule so that every staff member gets to make at least one or two tweets per week. This will help your customers get to know your staff members so they feel comfortable contacting you with questions and concerns.

Brand Yourself

When you spend valuable time and money creating a brand for yourself, you should be sharing it with customers so they always have your company in their minds. Customize your Twitter account with a background made from your logo or company color scheme. Make sure you use a Twitter account name that is your real business name. You want to come across as authentic, so avoid using a fake account name.

Post a Company Bio

Unfortunately, many businesses do not take the time to educate people about their products and services. Creating a complete Twitter profile is one of the best ways to broadcast information to a broad audience. Create a compelling biography that tells the story of your company and lets people know about the products or services you offer. Talk about the company’s managers and staff members so customers feel like there are real people listening to their concerns. If you have photos from your company picnic or latest staff retreat, post them to your account so your followers can see them.

Contests

If you’re having trouble thinking of post ideas, ask your readers for help. Offer to give away something for free to the person who comes up with the best idea. You might even want to offer several prizes so that you get several weeks’ worth of ideas. If you run a service-based business, you may want to offer a free consultation to the winners.

Surveys

Since your blog exists to provide information for your readers, the best way to generate new post ideas is by asking readers what they want. Conduct a reader survey that asks readers what topics they are interested in and how they want to see them covered. If you get a good response to this survey, you will be able to generate plenty of ideas. For surveys we recommend going with PollDaddy.com

Interviews

If you run a blog for business reasons, interview other professionals in your field. Ask them about recent trends, best practices in your industry and other related topics. The answers they gave you may spark several ideas for blog posts.

Blog Carnivals

Instead of thinking up every idea on your own, participate in a blog carnival. Blog carnivals have several benefits, especially for those looking to increase traffic. Instead of coming up with your own idea, you will blog about an assigned topic. Other people in your niche will blog about the same topic, but they’ll do so from their own unique perspectives. Blog carnivals are advertised on several websites, so you have a good chance of picking up new readers by participating in this type of event.

Auto-Complete Searches

If you’re really struggling to come up with ideas, use Google’s auto-complete feature to find out what people are searching for online. If you type in a word or two, auto-complete will bring up some of the most recent searches related to that phrase. This is a great way to find ideas for timely content that will attract reader interest.

Keyword Stuffing

Many blog owners make the mistake of stuffing their text with keywords, thinking that if one or two keywords are good, then a lot of keywords must be better. This is a mistake for two main reasons. One is that keyword stuffing makes the content nearly unreadable, which causes blog owners to lose their readers. The second is that search engines constantly change the way they index content. Many major search engines actually penalize blogs that have the same keywords too many times on the same post. This can cause your rankings to drop, reducing the number of people that visit your blog and leading to lost traffic.

Picking the Wrong Keywords

You need to pick your keywords carefully, as choosing the wrong keywords can leave you with low traffic numbers and lagging sales – if that’s what you’re after. The key to picking good keywords is finding out what people are searching for when they want information on your niche. There are many keyword research tools that can help you determine what keywords people use to find information. If you have a traditional brick-and-mortar business, you should also keep your location in mind when determining which keywords to use. “San Diego graphic designer” will help you get more customers than “graphic designer” since many people look for businesses near their homes or places of business.

Failing to Update Content

You need to update your blog regularly so that the search engine spiders have more opportunities to crawl your posts. Google, one of the most popular search engines in the world, places particular importance on regularly updating content. One of the best ways to keep your content fresh is by writing more posts to your blog. Every time you publish a new post, you are updating your blog’s content.

Picking the Wrong URLs

Many blog owners make the mistake of allowing their blog publishing platforms to generate random URLs every time a new post is created. It is better to create URLs that contain keywords related to each page, as the use of these keywords can help the search engines decide what your page is about. Instead of http://www.site.com/post82814, create a URL such as www.site.com/types-of-widgets. That’s why we strongly recommend WordPress which does it automatically.

Too Many Backlinks

Any time another site links to one of your pages, the link counts as a “vote” for that page. Unfortunately, many site owners buy and trade links from sites that are considered spam. When a spam site links to your site, you can be penalized just for being associated with that site. If you ask another site owner for a backlink, make sure his site is relevant to yours. If you own a computer repair shop, a backlink from an antique clock website won’t do you much good. If you get a backlink from a computer parts manufacturer, however, the link might help you improve your search engine rankings.

Failing to Hire a Professional

Cutting costs is important to most business owners, but it’s important that you do not sacrifice results when you reduce your expenses. If you do not know how to properly optimize your blog, it is best to hire a professional who can get results. A search engine optimization professional knows how to improve your search engine rankings without resorting to amateur mistakes and unethical tactics. The money you spend on an SEO professional is money well-spent if your rankings improve enough to attract more traffic and generate more sales. Look for an SEO consultant who has several years of experience and a portfolio that demonstrates extensive experience in the field. Once you hire a consultant, request regular updates so you know how the SEO work on your site is progressing.

Traffic Generation

When you join a LinkedIn group, you should avoid spamming group members with links to your blog. No one likes to be on the receiving end of hundreds of links per day. However, you can generate traffic to your blog by using discretion when posting links. If someone in the group asks a question, you can respond with a link to one of your blog posts as long as it is relevant. If someone asks for information on a specific topic, link to a blog post that covers the topic. This will help you generate more traffic for your blog, and since you won’t be spamming the group with links, people will be more willing to trust you and read what you have to say.

Networking

Knowing people in your industry is an excellent way to keep on top of job opportunities and other items of interest. However, industry insiders are reluctant to give up valuable information unless you have something to offer in return. Joining LinkedIn groups allows you to share tips and useful tricks with other people in your niche. The networking site has groups for every professional, from legal services providers to pastry chefs, so you have a good chance of connecting with someone who can share valuable advice.

Building Credibility

If you want people to visit your blog and take you seriously, you need to build credibility in your field. Joining LinkedIn groups gives you an opportunity to post about your areas of expertise, which helps people see that you have professional experience in your industry. When you position yourself as an expert, people will be more willing to read your work and buy your products and services.

Network Expansion

When you attend local networking meetings, you are limited to networking with those in attendance. If the event only gets 10 or 20 attendees, your networking opportunities are very limited. Participating in LinkedIn groups allows you to reach anywhere from hundreds to millions of people, as these groups expand your LinkedIn network. If you have 200 LinkedIn connections, joining just one LinkedIn group allows you to reach thousands of new connections. If you join multiple LinkedIn groups, you will be able to reach several thousand people with just one blog post or article.

Community Building

Owning a LinkedIn group is a great way to build your own community of like-minded people. As the group owner, you decide the qualifications for joining the group and can approve or deny membership applications. The result is a community where people with specific interests can talk to each other and exchange information. Starting a LinkedIn group also helps you show off your leadership skills, as running a group takes several different skills. If one of your group members takes notice of your skills, you may find yourself with new blog readers or exciting new work opportunities.

Targeted Communication

One of the hardest parts of marketing is making sure that you target your communications to reach the right audience. If your target audience consists of people 30 to 40 years of age, it does you no good to reach people who are outside of this age range. Participating in LinkedIn groups allows you to target very specific people so they receive your marketing messages and invitations to read your blog. If your blog is about marketing law firms, you can join a LinkedIn group that has a membership list consisting of several hundred lawyers. This way, your messages only go to people who might be interested in your services.

These are just a few of the many benefits of participating in LinkedIn groups. If you do not have a LinkedIn account, now is the time to sign up for one and start building a profile. The only way to reap the benefits of membership is by signing up and letting people learn more about you. If you don’t have a blog, you can contact us here for a free quote.

Profile Creation

Facebook allows you to create a detailed profile that includes your work history, education, hobbies and interests. Maintain professionalism when creating your profile, or else you run the risk of other professionals not taking you seriously. Avoid making disparaging remarks about past employers, always use professional language, and proofread your profile before publishing it to catch any errors.

Choosing a Photo

Choosing a photo is one of the most important steps in creating a business profile on Facebook. This is not the time to post glamour shots that have you looking suggestively at the camera. If you plan to get a photo done specifically for Facebook, ask the photographer to take several shots. These shots should show your entire face, as this is what people will see when they look at your profile. Avoid wearing too much makeup or jewelry, as these can be distracting. Dress conservatively for the photo, as it will be seen by thousands of different people.

Custom URL

When you first create a Facebook page, your URL will be something like www.facebook.com/194. Facebook allows you to create a custom URL that contains your name, business name or other segment of text. If you are using your Facebook profile for business purposes, your URL should contain information about your profession or industry. A professional photographer, for example, might choose www.facebook.com/sandiegophotographer as his custom URL. Using this Facebook feature makes it easier for people to find your profile.

Wall Posts

Your Facebook has a “wall,” which is where you should post updates. Keep these updates focused on business whenever possible. You might update people about changes to your website, provide information about upcoming professional events or share industry tips with your Facebook readers. Minimize the number of personal messages you share on your business Facebook profile. Before you post any content to your wall, proofread it carefully and make sure it does not contain any terminology that would confuse readers.

Sharing Links

Facebook makes it easy to share links, but use caution when deciding which links to post. Make sure they are useful or interesting for the people in your target market, or else people may drop you from their friend lists. Always vet links before posting them so that you do not inadvertently post a link to adult content or to websites infected with viruses and malware.