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  • Tips for Choosing Best Web Hosting 2012-05-26T04:26:00.001-07:00
    Finding a promising web hosting company for your Internet based is an essential piece of the puzzle. This company has control over the server space, web services and the maintenance file. Here are five things you should remember when you search for a web host:
    How Choosing Best Web Hosting

    1. Trust

      There is nothing more important when it comes to selecting a web hosting company than reliability. There are a few things that can go wrong in an Internet based business and it is important to know whom you rely. Before selecting a company is good to know how well works their server.If server downtime tends to be more than 15% of the time then is better to search for other web host company.

    2. Information

      Supplemental information is an important part of a web host company and it is best to make sure that your web host company has a support department. 

    3. Domain Name

      With thousands of businesses and millions of Internet Web addresses already taken, can be difficult to find an original domain name. However, every web host should be able to give you one for a reasonable price. Check the web site host company related to a domain name prices. 

    4. CGI Access

      Depending on the type of internet-based business, you may need to run your own programs and to do this you must have CGI access. Not every web host offers this and not every company offers the same functions to access the CGI. When choosing a web host company make sure that they offer CGI access. 

    5. POP account

      To have a POP account for your business is vital because of protection offered. A POP account gives you protected access to emai.
  • How to host multiple web sites on one IP address? 2012-05-26T04:14:00.001-07:00
     Many SEO experts still argue, if hosting your web site on its own dedicated ip address would effect its rankings in search engines. As a seo expert myself, I would recommend hosting your website on its own dedicated ip address, based on the fact that many shared hosting companies, host hundreds of web sites “if not thousands” on one shared ip. As always, some of these hosted web sites might belong to spammers or warez users for example, so search engines would blacklist the ip address. Which in return would affect all the websites hosted on that ip address.
    Web Hosting

    Dedicated IP addresses cost $1-$2 per month, so its affordable for the average joe to host his website on a dedicated ip address. What about those of us who own over 100 web sites?
    You cant afford to host each website on its own dedicated ip address if you own a large amount of websites “100 for example”, you also don’t want to host all these websites on one dedicated ip address, which means disaster for those with duplicated websites such as web directories network or article directories network or general blogs network…etc

    The logical solution would be to host each 4-5 websites on one ip address. So if you have 100 web sites and only 20 dedicated ip addresses, you would assign one dedicated ip address for each 5 web sites. Anyway, the minute you host more than one website on an ip, its no longer called a dedicated ip, its called a shared ip address. So the question is how to have 20 shared ip addresses on your VPS or dedicated server?

    If you have a VPS/Dedicated server with WHM/CPanel, log into WHM with your root account. Look for “Reseller Center” under “Resellers”, then “Add Reseller Privileges” to any of your websites, but not the website used for your nameservers. Now one of your websites has Reseller Privileges, lets call it example.com

    After you give example.com reseller privileges, click on “Manage Main Shared/Ipless IP”, now choose any IP you want “not the main server ip” and click on save. The IP you have chosen is now a shared IP address and you can host as many sites as you want on it, by going to “Change Site’s IP Address” under “Account Functions”. Of course, you can give “Reseller Privileges” for AnotherExample.com, assign a different ip to it, and host a few sites on that ip.
  • How to become a google authority website? 2012-05-26T03:58:00.001-07:00
    I have seen many webmasters spend a fortune to SEO companies, to help their websites become an authority website at google. Its also amazing that this tip/info has never been discussed online, maybe the big boys want to keep it private and its one of those hush hush tips.

    What is a google authority website?

    I don’t know who named it “Google Authority Website” but the name itself is not important. Authority sites are websites trusted by Google and have been around for awhile, since Google trust these sites, it will show up in serps with extra “in site” links.

    How to become a google authority website?

    Well, this is the part which most SEO companies don’t want you to know, its all about your daily traffic and Alexa ranking. If you have a website optimized both on page and off page, plus good amount of back links, also good amount of pages/content, and isn’t penalized by search engines, then all you need to do is increase your daily traffic and Alexa ranking. I would say 1000 daily visits for a period of at least 2 months, and Google would start adding in site links for your website, in its serps.

    How to increase your alexa ranking?

    The more traffic you get, the higher your rankings at Alexa will be. The fastest and cheapest way to do this, is to buy cheap traffic. The average rate going around these days is $1/1000 visitors. Of course, this method is not recommended for those using adense on their sites or any similar programs.

    Why WebHostEditor isn’t an authority website!?

    Well, its important to know that authority websites are only good, if you want brag about it to your friends. It also gives your website a more professional look in Google serps, but it wont increase your rankings or traffic. I know this because I had a few authority websites in the past, and still have one as we speak.

    I tried this tip, its not working!?

    If its not working for you, then something is wrong with your website. It might be a new site, or badly optimized, not enough content/pages, maybe you used some back-hats methods in the past and banned in search engines…etc
    I’m sure you expected a long boring article that would go into every SEO detail, but its not. Google Authority website = High Alexa Ranking
    I hope you found this tip useful and good luck with your website :)
  • What is the difference between domains vs hosting vs website? 2012-05-26T03:49:00.002-07:00
    There are three basic parts that make up any current day web site:
    1. The domain name
    2. The web-hosting, or server
    3. The site files themselves
    The domain name is much like an entry in a phone book. Computers communicate by using numbers, called IP addresses, to contact each other, much like you use a phone number to dial a specific person's phone. If you want people to find your business's phone number, you want to be listed in a phone book. The phone book tells people looking for your phone number “Company A's Phone number is xxx-xxx-xxxx” just as a domain tells people (i.e. their computers) “domainA.com is hosted on the server xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx” Without the domain, you would have to tell your customers “Hey my site is located at 123.456.789.123/~mysite/” instead of “mysite.com” You can see how, without a domain, having a site or hosting is impractical.

    The web-hosting or server portion is much like the space that you rent out to have your business in. It's merely the space itself. It does not include furnishings like shelves for your products, just as the web-hosting account doesn't include a site for you to sell your products. Luckily, in the web-hosting world, it's very easy to furnish the space provided by your host, because you can install many framework applications through the Fantastico icon within your cPanel. Without the hosting services, you won't have a place for your files to reside, so your domain would then become like a disconnected phone number in the phone directory, and your site files would have nowhere to stay.

    The site files are what your visitors and potential customers actually see - your products and services. The site files are the same as any other file you normally use, like a .jpg photograph, or .mp3 music file. Though, website files are also .php files or .html files, which are PHP scripts or html pages respectively. The web host (server) knows how to read these files, which explain how the webpage looks or instruct it to do a series of computations. These computations are things like figuring out what blog article it's supposed to send back to the viewer, or what forum post it's supposed to send back.
    In summary, you have a site visitor, who goes to your domain name, which translates into your server IP address, then the server sends that user your site files, which their browser represents to them as a typical “web-page.” You can see that, without each of these 3 elements, you won't really have a “web-site.”
  • Add Blogger Sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools 2012-05-26T03:05:00.003-07:00

    I hope you do know about Google Web Master Tools. This tool enables Webmasters to provide a better and detailed information of their site to Google.This will greatly help you in your SEO needs.Webmaster Tools allows you to submit your blog's sitemap so that Google gets a better idea of your blogs structure.
    Blogger’s robots.txt file automatically specifies a sitemap URL[The blog feed], but it would be even better if you manually add the sitemap URLs to GWT.
    Wordpress and other blogging platforms have some Sitemap generator plugins for the same.If you are using blogger you can use your blog's atom.xml feed as your sitemap.
    Note:- If you have disabled Blog Feeds then enable it by going to Settings > Site Feed and change Allow Blog Feeds to Short or Full. (Don't set it to None)
    1. Login to Google Web Master Tools with your Blogger account.
    2. See if your Blog is already listed there, if it is listed and verified then click on the blog name and proceed to Step 5
    3.If its not listed, Click on the Add a site button and provide your blog URL there and hit continue.
    add-blogger-blog-to-webmaster-tools
    4.It will now ask you to verify your Blog using any of the two methods. You can use any of those. The File upload method would be simpler.
      a. File Upload Method – Change the Verification method to Upload an HTML File. Ignore the file download and upload instructions provided there. Google will automatically download and upload that file for you. So just ignore the instructions and hit the Verify button. Your blog should get verified now. If it doesn’t then opt for the  second method (b)
      b. Meta Tag Verification method. Google will provide you a Meta Tag code which looks like
    <meta name="google-site-verification" content="verificationkey" />
    Copy this Code,  login to your Blogger Dashboard navigate to Layout >Edit HTML and place this code somewhere above </head> Save the template, come back to GWT and hit the verify button.
    5. Once your blog is verified you can  add  sitemaps for your blog [From the Left Pane > Site Configuration> Sitemap].In the sitemap URL give the following URL as shown in this screenshot and click the Submit Sitemap button
    atom.xml?redirect=false&max-results=500
     add-blogger-sitemap
    If you have more than 500 posts on your blog, then add an additional sitemap URL
    atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=501&max-results=500
    If your blog has more than 1000 posts, then add one more sitemap URL
    atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1001&max-results=500
    If it has more than 1500 posts, then add one more sitemap
    atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1501&max-results=500
    Continue this process depending upon the number of posts on your blog. So this means that you will be adding additional sitemaps for every 500 posts.
    Once you have added the Sitemap, you can play around with the different other tools in GWT. It will provide you with a better analysis your site, show you the sites linking to you, help you in managing your site links and much more.
  • Google Site Map Generator for Website 2012-05-26T02:50:00.000-07:00
    It's been well over three years since we initially announced the Python Sitemap generator in June 2005. In this time, we've seen lots of people create great third-party Sitemap generators to help webmasters create better Sitemap files. While most Sitemap generators either crawl websites or list the files on a server, we have created a different kind of Sitemap generator that uses several ways to find URLs on your website and then allows you to automatically create and maintain different kinds of Sitemap files.

    Google Sitemap Generator screenshot of the admin console


    About Google Sitemap Generator


    Our new open-source Google Sitemap Generator finds new and modified URLs based on your webserver's traffic, its log files, or the files found on the server. By combining these methods, Google Sitemap Generator can be very fast in finding these URLs and calculating relevant metadata, thereby making your Sitemap files as effective as possible. Once Google Sitemap Generator has collected the URLs, it can create the following Sitemap files for you:

    In addition, Google Sitemap Generator can send a ping to Google Blog Search for all of your new or modified URLs. You can optionally include the URLs of the Sitemap files in your robots.txt file as well as "ping" the other search engines that support the sitemaps.org standard.

    Sending the URLs to the right Sitemap files is simple thanks to the web-based administration console. This console gives you access to various features that make administration a piece of cake while maintaining a high level of security by default.

    Getting started


    Google Sitemap Generator is a server plug-in that can be installed on both Linux/Apache and Microsoft IIS Windows-based servers. As with other server-side plug-ins, you will need to have administrative access to the server to install it. You can find detailed information for the installation in the Google Sitemap Generator documentation.

    We're excited to release Google Sitemap Generator with the source code and hope that this will encourage more web hosters to include this or similar tools in their hosting packages!

    Do you have any questions? Feel free to drop by our Help Group for Google Sitemap Generator or ask general Sitemaps question in our Webmaster Help Forum.
  • How To Write An SEO-Friendly Article 2012-05-24T22:29:00.000-07:00

    This free report reveals the tips, secrets, and strategies of writing for search engine optimization.

    SEO copywriting has traditionally been about optimizing web page copy by targeting keyword phrases in certain frequencies and densities. And yet search engine research shows that almost 85% of the total factors that determine how a web page is ranked in a search engine is based on things that happen off the page itself.
    image of Simple SEO Copywriting
    While keyword research is still crucial, search engine algorithms have evolved. Google treats the trust and authority of your domain, what others think about your content, and the words they use to describe it in links as an important indication of quality and relevance.

    Thanks to blogging and social media platforms, more people than ever are able to cast their vote on what’s relevant by linking to it, bookmarking it, and tweeting it. Modern SEO is all about crafting content so compelling that other people want to promote it by linking to it or sharing it, which increases your trust and authority and helps the pages you want to rank well for certain keywords.

    How to Create Compelling Content that Ranks Well in Search Engines

    This free 27-page report written by Copyblogger founder Brian Clark provides you a step-by-step strategy for creating content that scores links, is highly readable and engaging, and ranks well in search engines. You’ll discover:
    • Why SEO Copywriting Still Matters
    • How Search Engines Work
    • Why You Have to Spoon Feed Search Engines
    • The 5 Essential Elements of Search Engine Keyword Research
    • How to Create Cornerstone Content That Google Loves
    • Five Link Building Strategies That Work
    • Five Areas to Focus On for Effective SEO Copywriting
    • Why Writing for People Works for Search Engines
    • How to Make SEO Copywriting Simple

    How To Write An SEO-Friendly Article

    Once you’ve done the keyword research for your website, you can then use those phrases strategically in your article submission campaign. By creating keyword focused articles, you’ll get much better results from your article marketing efforts by helping search engines to associate your website with particular keyword terms.
    This article gives some quick article marketing tips on how to appropriately use your keywords in your article submissions:

    1 – The Headline:

    The purpose of your headline is to indicate the topic of your article.
    Try to place the keyword phrase that you’re targeting at the beginning of your headline. This takes some thought – the goal is to create a headline that would capture the attention of your potential reader, but that also prominently displays the keyword phrase. The title also has to be grammatically correct and contain correct spelling.
    The best SEO-friendly titles just look like a great title – no one should be able to tell that you have specifically crafted it with your keywords in mind.
    Please note: In addition to the keyword research you completed for your website, it’s a good idea to also do keyword research for the topics of your articles. The phrases associated with your article topics will naturally be longer, say 3-8 words long. They are more specific than the main words that are associated with your website, but that makes them perfectly suited for article topics.
    The main difference between these two types of words is that the ones you use in your title and article body are what you’d like the article to rank for, and the keywords you use in your resource box are the ones you’d like your website to rank for.

    2 – The Article:

    The topic of the article is determined by the title.
    Try to repeat your keyword phrase in the first 5 sentences or so of the article, in a natural sounding way of course.
    Then, just write naturally about your topic. Since the keyword phrase is closely related to the topic of your article, then variations of the phrase should appear naturally in your article. Don’t try to force it too much, and by all means don’t pepper your article with the keyword phrase.
    The most important part about the article is that it is easy for a reader to understand and that it provides helpful information. So, focus on writing a well-written article that teaches your reader something. After carefully placing your keyword phrase in the 5 lines, don’t worry too much about how many times the keyword phrase appears in the article. It will show up every once in a while as you naturally write about your topic.
    Also, it’s okay for the phrase to appear in different forms, for example, ‘race cars,’ ‘racing cars,’ ‘race car gear’, etc.

    3 – The Resource Box:

    The resource box is where you can tell a little about yourself and your business and where you can encourage the reader to click the link leading back to your website. This is also a great spot to put one of the keyword phrases that you’d like your website to rank highly for.
    Many directories will allow you to create an anchor text link in your resource box. With an anchor text link, you can use your keyword phrase to form the link that leads back to your website. This helps search engines to associate that phrase with the topic of your website and can influence the search engine ranking for your site for that phrase.
    Be sure not to use the same phrase each time though – you should have a list of keyword phrases for your website, and you can alternate those in your resource boxes. If you use the same phrase as anchor text each time, it can look suspicious to search engines, which could have negative SEO consequences for your website.
    Let’s recap the main things to remember when creating an SEO friendly article:
    => Do your keyword research, and find phrases to target in your articles as well as phrases that you’d like your website to rank for.
    => Write naturally. The phrases that appear in your article should not be conspicuous or awkward sounding. They should just be a natural part of a helpful article.
    => Be sure to use proper spelling and grammar. This is necessary for the article to be published and also for readers to be able to understand what the article is saying.
    After doing this a few times, writing an SEO-friendly article will be like second nature. You’ll become very skilled at creating content that’s useful to your readers, while at the same time crafting an article that will attract the attention of search engines.
  • 5 Ways to Make money online with Google 2012-05-24T22:23:00.002-07:00
    If you can’t lounge around the well-known, award-winning Google HQ offices as an employee, there are other ways to make money off the big G.
    1. Blogger - Whether you’re running ads, selling products, promoting affiliates, or using this blog platform as a way to promote your business or services, this Google service can aid you in making money online.
      Read more
      How Bloggers Make Money from Blogs
    2. AdSense – This is one common way to monetise blogs and websites. Also see: How Adsense Publishers Can Make More Money.
    3. AdWords – You can advertise your business, products, or services using AdWords. This is, of course, in conjunction with the Adsense programme.
      Read more
    4. Google Image Labeler – Just a roundabout way of making money by tagging photos online.
      Read more
    5. Google Checkout – Use this online payment system to help you process your web business transactions.
      Read more
                                     
      Making money with Google In-App Payments for the Web
  • How To Make Money With Youtube 2012-05-24T22:20:00.002-07:00

    YouTube is a popular online website, which allows internet users, just like you, to share videos or watch an unlimited number of them.
    
    Make Mony with Youtube
    
    While a good portion of the individuals who post videos on YouTube are just posting videos that they have laying around, there are many more who actually make videos with the sole purpose of uploading them to YouTube and sharing them with other internet users. If you are one of those individuals, there are a number of points that you will want to keep in mind.
    What you need to MAKE MONEY WITH YOUTUBE
    When it comes to making a YouTube video, one of the things that you will need is a video recording device. Popular video recording devices include camcorder, webcams, as well as cell phones with video recording capabilities. If at all possible, you will want to try and use a webcam or a camcorder, as these video recording devices often produce the best quality. If you are looking to make your YouTube video be a hit, quality is something that you will want to take into consideration. Many YouTube video viewers dislike watching poor quality videos; in fact, not everyone sticks around to finish watching them.
    Editing is also something that you will want to take into consideration. YouTube actually encourages you to examine your video before uploading it to their site. If you notice anything that you would like changed, you are advised to edit your video before uploading it to YouTube. Of course, you don't have to edit your video if you don't want to, but editing your video is also likely to improve the overall quality of your YouTube video. It is also relatively easy to do. Most computers come with movie editing software programs already installed. It may even be a good idea to play around with a movie editing software program and your YouTube video; you may be surprised just how fun it can be.

    How To Make Money With Youtube



    It is also important that you think about and examine the content of your video, especially if you are planning on doing a comedy video.


    Comedy videos are popular on YouTube, but you need to remember that a large number of people visit YouTube for entertainment. Many of those individuals are from different races, sexes, and religions. You will want to be cautious of offending any of your viewers, intentionally or not. Keep in mind that comedy means different things to different individuals. Of course, you have the right to make just about any type of YouTube video you want; you are advised to use your best


    Should you be good at making YouTube videos, you may be able to make a name for yourself on YouTube, but you will want it to be a good one.


    It is also important that you examine safety when making a YouTube video. As previously mentioned, comedy videos are popular on YouTube and so are video blogs.


    Video blogs are where internet users recite their blog in front of a camera, instead of in print. Video blogs are fun to do, but many video blogers, both on and off of YouTube, make the mistake of giving out too much information about themselves. For your safety, you will want to avoid giving your real name, especially if you are showing your face on your video blog. It is advised that you do not mention your real name in any of your YouTube videos, but you definitely do not want to mention your address or any of your phone numbers. Not divulging your personal information is for your own safety. You need to remember that you never really know who is watching your YouTube videos or what they are thinking.


    The above mentioned points are just a few of the many that you will want to keep in mind, before making a video which will later be posted on YouTube. In short, aim for quality and keep internet safety in mind and your YouTube video could end up being a hit.
    Look, subsribe to my Boot Camp and you will get WAY MORE that just how to make money with youtube. I will show you how I make money with Youtube, Myspace, Facebook and hundreds of Web 2.0 sites. BUT VIDEO MARKETING is the cement in the business. Within 1 year I have replaced a very good executive income. Hope to see you soon!
  • How to Increase Blog Traffic Article 2012-05-22T07:13:00.001-07:00
    It's easy to build a blog, but hard to build a successful blog with significant traffic. Over the years, we've grown the Moz blog to nearly a million visits each month and helped lots of other blogs, too. I launched a personal blog late last year and was amazed to see how quickly it gained thousands of visits to each post. There's an art to increasing a blog's traffic, and given that we seem to have stumbled on some of that knowledge, I felt it compulsory to give back by sharing what we've observed.
    NOTE: This post replaces a popular one I wrote on the same topic in 2007. This post is intended to be useful to all forms of bloggers - independent folks, those seeking to monetize, and marketing professionals working an in-house blog from tiny startups to huge companies. Not all of the tactics will work for everyone, but at least some of these should be applicable and useful.

    #1 - Target Your Content to an Audience Likely to Share

    When strategizing about who you're writing for, consider that audience's ability to help spread the word. Some readers will naturally be more or less active in evangelizing the work you do, but particular communities, topics, writing styles and content types regularly play better than others on the web. For example, great infographics that strike a chord , beautiful videos that tell a story  and remarkable collections of facts that challenge common assumptions  are all targeted at audiences likely to share (geeks with facial hair, those interested in weight loss and those with political thoughts about macroeconomics respectively).
    A Blog's Target Audience


    If you can identify groups that have high concentrations of the blue and orange circles in the diagram above, you dramatically improve the chances of reaching larger audiences and growing your traffic numbers. Targeting blog content at less-share-likely groups may not be a terrible decision (particularly if that's where you passion or your target audience lies), but it will decrease the propensity for your blog's work to spread like wildfire across the web.

    #2 - Participate in the Communities Where Your Audience Already Gathers

    Advertisers on Madison Avenue have spent billions researching and determining where consumers with various characteristics gather and what they spend their time doing so they can better target their messages. They do it because reaching a group of 65+ year old women with commercials for extreme sports equipment is known to be a waste of money, while reaching an 18-30 year old male demographic that attends rock-climbing gyms is likely to have a much higher ROI.
    Thankfully, you don't need to spend a dime to figure out where a large portion of your audience can be found on the web. In fact, you probably already know a few blogs, forums, websites and social media communities where discussions and content are being posted on your topic (and if you don't a Google search will take you much of the way). From that list, you can do some easy expansion using a web-based tool like Double Click's Ad Planner:
    Sites Also Visited via DoubleClick

    Once you've determined the communities where your soon-to-be-readers gather, you can start participating. Create an account, read what others have written and don't jump in the conversation until you've got a good feel for what's appropriate and what's not. I've written a post here about rules for comment marketing, and all of them apply. Be a good web citizen and you'll be rewarded with traffic, trust and fans. Link-drop, spam or troll and you'll get a quick boot, or worse, a reputation as a blogger no one wants to associate with.

    #3 - Make Your Blog's Content SEO-Friendly

    Search engines are a massive opportunity for traffic, yet many bloggers ignore this channel for a variety of reasons that usually have more to do with fear and misunderstanding than true problems. As I've written before, "SEO, when done right, should never interfere with great writing." In 2011, Google received over 3 billion daily searches from around the world, and that number is only growing:
    Daily Google Searches 2004-2011


    Taking advantage of this massive traffic opportunity is of tremendous value to bloggers, who often find that much of the business side of blogging, from inquiries for advertising to guest posting opportunities to press and discovery by major media entities comes via search.
    SEO for blogs is both simple and easy to set up, particularly if you're using an SEO-friendly platform like Wordpress, Drupal or Joomla. For more information on how to execute on great SEO for blogs, check out the following resources:
    Don't let bad press or poor experiences with spammers (spam is not SEO) taint the amazing power and valuable contributions SEO can make to your blog's traffic and overall success. 20% of the effort and tactics to make your content optimized for search engines will yield 80% of the value possible; embrace it and thousands of visitors seeking exactly what you've posted will be the reward.

    #4 - Use Twitter, Facebook and Google+ to Share Your Posts & Find New Connections

    Twitter just topped 465 million registered accounts. Facebook has over 850 million active users. Google+ has nearly 100 million. LinkedIn is over 130 million. Together, these networks are attracting vast amounts of time and interest from Internet users around the world, and those that participate on these services fit into the "content distributors" description above, meaning they're likely to help spread the word about your blog.
    Leveraging these networks to attract traffic requires patience, study, attention to changes by the social sites and consideration in what content to share and how to do it. My advice is to use the following process:
    • If you haven't already, register a personal account and a brand account at each of the following - Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn (those links will take you directly to the registration pages for brand pages). For example, my friend Dharmesh has a personal account for Twitter and a brand account for OnStartups (one of his blog projects). He also maintains brand pages on Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+.
    • Fill out each of those profiles to the fullest possible extent - use photos, write compelling descriptions and make each one as useful and credible as possible. Research shows that profiles with more information have a significant correlation with more successful accounts (and there's a lot of common sense here, too, given that spammy profiles frequently feature little to no profile work).
    • Connect with users on those sites with whom you already share a personal or professional relationships, and start following industry luminaries, influencers and connectors. Services like FollowerWonk and FindPeopleonPlus can be incredible for this:
    Followerwonk Search for "Seattle Chef"

    • Start sharing content - your own blog posts, those of peers in your industry who've impressed you and anything that you feel has a chance to go "viral" and earn sharing from others.
    • Interact with the community - use hash tags, searches and those you follow to find interesting conversations and content and jump in! Social networks are amazing environment for building a brand, familiarizing yourself with a topic and the people around it, and earning the trust of others through high quality, authentic participation and sharing
    If you consistently employ a strategy of participation, share great stuff and make a positive, memorable impression on those who see your interactions on these sites, your followers and fans will grow and your ability to drive traffic back to your blog by sharing content will be tremendous. For many bloggers, social media is the single largest source of traffic, particularly in the early months after launch, when SEO is a less consistent driver.

    #5 - Install Analytics and Pay Attention to the Results

    At the very least, I'd recommend most bloggers install Google Analytics (which is free), and watch to see where visits originate, which sources drive quality traffic and what others might be saying about you and your content when they link over. If you want to get more advanced, check out this post on 18 Steps to Successful Metrics and Marketing.
    Here's a screenshot from the analytics of my wife's travel blog, the Everywhereist:
    Traffic Sources to Everywhereist from Google Analytics


    As you can see, there's all sorts of great insights to be gleaned by looking at where visits originate, analyzing how they were earned and trying to repeat the successes, focus on the high quality and high traffic sources and put less effort into marketing paths that may not be effective. In this example, it's pretty clear that Facebook and Twitter are both excellent channels. StumbleUpon sends a lot of traffic, but they don't stay very long (averaging only 36 seconds vs. the general average of 4 minutes!).
    Employing analytics is critical to knowing where you're succeeding, and where you have more opportunity. Don't ignore it, or you'll be doomed to never learn from mistakes or execute on potential.

    #6 - Add Graphics, Photos and Illustrations (with link-back licensing)

    If you're someone who can produce graphics, take photos, illustrate or even just create funny doodles in MS Paint, you should leverage that talent on your blog. By uploading and hosting images (or using a third-party service like Flickr to embed your images with licensing requirements on that site), you create another traffic source for yourself via Image Search, and often massively improve the engagement and enjoyment of your visitors.
    When using images, I highly recommend creating a way for others to use them on their own sites legally and with permission, but in such a way that benefits you as the content creator. For example, you could have a consistent notice under your images indicating that re-using is fine, but that those who do should link back to this post. You can also post that as a sidebar link, include it in your terms of use, or note it however you think will get the most adoption.
    Some people will use your images without linking back, which sucks. However, you can find them by employing the Image Search function of "similar images," shown below:
    Google's "Visually Similar" Search


    Clicking the "similar" link on any given image will show you other images that Google thinks look alike, which can often uncover new sources of traffic. Just reach out and ask if you can get a link, nicely. Much of the time, you'll not only get your link, but make a valuable contact or new friend, too!

    #7 - Conduct Keyword Research While Writing Your Posts

    Not surprisingly, a big part of showing up in search engines is targeting the terms and phrases your audience are actually typing into a search engine. It's hard to know what these words will be unless you do some research, and luckily, there's a free tool from Google to help called the AdWords Keyword Tool.
    Type some words at the top, hit search and AdWords will show you phrases that match the intent and/or terms you've employed. There's lots to play around with here, but watch out in particular for the "match types" options I've highlighted below:
    Google AdWords Tool

    When you choose "exact match" Ad-words will show you only the quantity of searches estimated for that precise phrase. If you use broad match, they'll include any search phrases that use related/similar words in a pattern they think could have overlap with your keyword intent (which can get pretty darn broad). "Phrase match" will give you only those phrases that include the word or words in your search - still fairly wide-ranging, but between "exact" and "broad."
    When you're writing a blog post, keyword research is best utilized for the title and headline of the post. For example, if I wanted to write a post here on Moz about how to generate good ideas for bloggers, I might craft something that uses the phrase "blog post ideas" or "blogging ideas" near the front of my title and headline, as in "Blog Post Ideas for When You're Truly Stuck," or "Blogging Ideas that Will Help You Clear Writer's Block."
    Optimizing a post to target a specific keyword isn't nearly as hard as it sounds. 80% of the value comes from merely using the phrase effectively in the title of the blog post, and writing high quality content about the subject. If you're interested in more, read Perfecting Keyword Targeting and On-Page Optimization (a slightly older resource, but just as relevant today as when it was written).

    #8 - Frequently Reference Your Own Posts and Those of Others

    The web was not made for static, text-only content! Readers appreciate links, as do other bloggers, site owners and even search engines. When you reference your own material in-context and in a way that's not manipulative (watch out for over-optimizing by linking to a category, post or page every time a phrase is used - this is almost certainly discounted by search engines and looks terrible to those who want to read your posts), you potentially draw visitors to your other content AND give search engines a nice signal about those previous posts.
    Perhaps even more valuable is referencing the content of others. The biblical expression "give and ye shall receive," perfectly applies on the web. Other site owners will often receive Google Alerts or look through their incoming referrers (as I showed above in tip #5) to see who's talking about them and what they're saying. Linking out is a direct line to earning links, social mentions, friendly emails and new relationships with those you reference. In its early days, this tactic was one of the best ways we earned recognition and traffic with the SEOmoz blog and the power continues to this day.

    #9 - Participate in Social Sharing Communities Like Reddit + StumbleUpon

    The major social networking sites aren't alone in their power to send traffic to a blog. Social community sites like Reddit (which now receives more than 2 billion! with a "B"! views each month), StumbleUpon, Pinterest, Tumblr, Care2 (for nonprofits and causes), GoodReads (books), Ravelry (knitting), Newsvine (news/politics) and many, many more (Wikipedia maintains a decent, though not comprehensive list here).
    Each of these sites have different rules, formats and ways of participating and sharing content. As with participation in blog or forum communities described above in tactic #2, you need to add value to these communities to see value back. Simply drive-by spamming or leaving your link won't get you very far, and could even cause a backlash. Instead, learn the ropes, engage authentically and you'll find that fans, links and traffic can develop.
    These communities are also excellent sources of inspiration for posts on your blog. By observing what performs well and earns recognition, you can tailor your content to meet those guidelines and reap the rewards in visits and awareness. My top recommendation for most bloggers is to at least check whether there's an appropriate subreddit in which you should be participating. Subreddits and their search function can help with that.

    #10 - Guest Blog (and Accept the Guest Posts of Others)

    When you're first starting out, it can be tough to convince other bloggers to allow you to post on their sites OR have an audience large enough to inspire others to want to contribute to your site. This is when friends and professional connections are critical. When you don't have a compelling marketing message, leverage your relationships - find the folks who know you, like you and trust you and ask those who have blog to let you take a shot at authoring something, then ask them to return the favor.
    Guest blogging is a fantastic way to spread your brand to new folks who've never seen your work before, and it can be useful in earning early links and references back to your site, which will drive direct traffic and help your search rankings (diverse, external links are a key part of how search engines rank sites and pages). Several recommendations for those who engage in guest blogging:
    • Find sites that have a relevant audience - it sucks to pour your time into writing a post, only to see it fizzle because the readers weren't interested. Spend a bit more time researching the posts that succeed on your target site, the makeup of the audience, what types of comments they leave and you'll earn a much higher return with each post.
    • Don't be discouraged if you ask and get a "no" or a "no response." As your profile grows in your niche, you'll have more opportunities, requests and an easier time getting a "yes," so don't take early rejections too hard and watch out - in many marketing practices, persistence pays, but pestering a blogger to write for them is not one of these (and may get your email address permanently banned from their inbox).
    • When pitching your guest post make it as easy as possible for the other party. When requesting to post, have a phenomenal piece of writing all set to publish that's never been shared before and give them the ability to read it. These requests get far more "yes" replies than asking for the chance to write with no evidence of what you'll contribute. At the very least, make an outline and write a title + snippet.
    • Likewise, when requesting a contribution, especially from someone with a significant industry profile, asking for a very specific piece of writing is much easier than getting them to write an entire piece from scratch of their own design. You should also present statistics that highlight the value of posting on your site - traffic data, social followers, RSS subscribers, etc. can all be very persuasive to a skeptical writer.
    A great tool for frequent guest bloggers is Ann Smarty's MyBlogGuest, which offers the ability to connect writers with those seeking guest contributions (and the reverse).
    MyBlogGuest
    Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ are also great places to find guest blogging opportunities. In particular, check out the profiles of those you're connected with to see if they run blogs of their own that might be a good fit. Google's Blog Search function and Google Reader's Search are also solid tools for discovery.

    #11 - Incorporate Great Design Into Your Site

    The power of beautiful, usable, professional design can't be overstated. When readers look at a blog, the first thing they judge is how it "feels" from a design and UX perspective. Sites that use default templates or have horrifying, 1990's design will receive less trust, a lower time-on-page, fewer pages per visit and a lower likelihood of being shared. Those that feature stunning design that clearly indicates quality work will experience the reverse - and reap amazing benefits.
    Blog Design Inspiration

    These threads - 1, 2, 3 and 4 - feature some remarkable blog designs for inspiration
    If you're looking for a designer to help upgrade the quality of your blog, there's a few resources I recommend:
    • Dribbble - great for finding high quality professional designers
    • Forrst - another excellent design profile community
    • Behance - featuring galleries from a wide range of visual professionals
    • Sortfolio - an awesome tool to ID designers by region, skill and budget
    • 99 Designs - a controversial site that provides designs on spec via contests (I have mixed feelings on this one, but many people find it useful, particularly for budget-conscious projects)
    This is one area where budgeting a couple thousand dollars (if you can afford it) or even a few hundred (if you're low on cash) can make a big difference in the traffic, sharing and viral-impact of every post you write.

    #12 - Interact on Other Blogs' Comments

    As bloggers, we see a lot of comments. Many are spam, only a few add real value, and even fewer are truly fascinating and remarkable. If you can be in this final category consistently, in ways that make a blogger sit up and think "man, I wish that person commented here more often!" you can achieve great things for your own site's visibility through participation in the comments of other blogs.
    Combine the tools presented in #10 (particularly Google Reader/Blog Search) and #4 (especially FollowerWonk) for discovery. The feed subscriber counts in Google Reader can be particularly helpful for identifying good blogs for participation. Then apply the principles covered in this post on comment marketing.
    Google Reader Subscriber Counts

    Do be conscious of the name you use when commenting and the URL(s) you point back to. Consistency matters, particularly on naming, and linking to internal pages or using a name that's clearly made for keyword-spamming rather than true conversation will kill your efforts before they begin.

     

     

    #13 - Participate in Q+A Sites

    Every day, thousands of people ask questions on the web. Popular services like Yahoo! Answers, Answers.com, Quora, StackExchange, Formspring and more serve those hungry for information whose web searches couldn't track down the responses they needed.
    The best strategy I've seen for engaging on Q+A sites isn't to answer every question that comes along, but rather, to strategically provide high value to a Q+A community by engaging in those places where:
    • The question quality is high, and responses thus far have been thin
    • The question receives high visibility (either by ranking well for search queries, being featured on the site or getting social traffic/referrals). Most of the Q+A sites will show some stats around the traffic of a question
    • The question is something you can answer in a way that provides remarkable value to anyone who's curious and drops by
    I also find great value in answering a few questions in-depth by producing an actual blog post to tackle them, then linking back. This is also a way I personally find blog post topics - if people are interested in the answer on a Q+A site, chances are good that lots of folks would want to read it on my blog, too!
    Just be authentic in your answer, particularly if you're linking. If you'd like to see some examples, I answer a lot of questions at Quora, frequently include relevant links, but am rarely accused of spamming or link dropping because it's clearly about providing relevant value, not just getting a link for SEO (links on most user-contributed sites are "nofollow" anyway, meaning they shouldn't pass search-engine value). There's a dangerous line to walk here, but if you do so with tact and candor, you can earn a great audience from your participation.

    #14 - Enable Subscriptions via Feed + Email (and track them!)

    If someone drops by your site, has a good experience and thinks "I should come back here and check this out again when they have more posts," chances are pretty high (I'd estimate 90%+) that you'll never see them again. That sucks! It shouldn't be the case, but we have busy lives and the Internet's filled with animated gifs of cats.
    In order to pull back some of these would-be fans, I highly recommend creating an RSS feed using Feedburner and putting visible buttons on the sidebar, top or bottom of your blog posts encouraging those who enjoy your content to sign up (either via feed, or via email, both of which are popular options).
    RSS Feeds with Feedburner


    If you're using Wordpress, there's some easy plugins for this, too.
    Once you've set things up, visit every few weeks and check on your subscribers - are they clicking on posts? If so, which ones? Learning what plays well for those who subscribe to your content can help make you a better blogger, and earn more visits from RSS, too.

    #15 - Attend and Host Events

    Despite the immense power of the web to connect us all regardless of geography, in-person meetings are still remarkably useful for bloggers seeking to grow their traffic and influence. The people you meet and connect with in real-world settings are far more likely to naturally lead to discussions about your blog and ways you can help each other. This yields guest posts, links, tweets, shares, blogroll inclusion and general business development like nothing else.
    Lanyrd Suggested Events

    I'm a big advocate of Lanyrd, an event directory service that connects with your social networks to see who among your contacts will be at which events in which geographies. This can be phenomenally useful for identifying which meetups, conferences or gatherings are worth attending (and who you can carpool with). The founder of Lanyrd also contributed this great answer on Quora about other search engines/directories for events (which makes me like them even more).

    #16 - Use Your Email Connections (and Signature) to Promote Your Blog

    As a blogger, you're likely to be sending a lot of email out to others who use the web and have the power to help spread your work. Make sure you're not ignoring email as a channel, one-to-one though it may be. When given an opportunity in a conversation that's relevant, feel free to bring up your blog, a specific post or a topic you've written about. I find myself using blogging as a way to scalably answer questions - if I receive the same question many times, I'll try to make a blog post that answers it so I can simply link to that in the future.
    Email Footer Link


    I also like to use my email signature to promote the content I share online. If I was really sharp, I'd do link tracking using a service like Bit.ly so I could see how many clicks email footers really earn. I suspect it's not high, but it's also not 0.

    #17 - Survey Your Readers

    Web surveys are easy to run and often produce high engagement and great topics for conversation. If there's a subject or discussion that's particularly contested, or where you suspect showing the distribution of beliefs, usage or opinions can be revealing, check out a tool like SurveyMonkey (they have a small free version) or PollDaddy. Google Docs also offers a survey tool that's totally free, but not yet great in my view.

    #18 - Add Value to a Popular Conversation

    Numerous niches in the blogosphere have a few "big sites" where key issues arise, get discussed and spawn conversations on other blogs and sites. Getting into the fray can be a great way to present your point-of-view, earn attention from those interested in the discussion and potentially get links and traffic from the industry leaders as part of the process.
    You can see me trying this out with Fred Wilson's AVC blog last year (an incredibly popular and well-respected blog in the VC world). Fred wrote a post about Marketing that I disagreed with strongly and publicly and a day later, he wrote a follow-up where he included a graphic I made AND a link to my post.
    If you're seeking sources to find these "popular conversations," Alltop, Topsy, Techmeme (in the tech world) and their sister sites MediaGazer, Memeorandum and WeSmirch, as well as PopURLs can all be useful.

    #19 - Aggregate the Best of Your Niche

    Bloggers, publishers and site owners of every variety in the web world love and hate to be compared and ranked against one another. It incites endless intrigue, discussion, methodology arguments and competitive behavior - but, it's amazing for earning attention. When a blogger publishes a list of "the best X" or "the top X" in their field, most everyone who's ranked highly praises the list, shares it and links to it. Here's an example from the world of marketing itself:
    AdAge Power 150

    That's a screenshot of the AdAge Power 150, a list that's been maintained for years in the marketing world and receives an endless amount of discussion by those listed (and not listed). For example, why is SEOmoz's Twitter score only a "13" when we have so many more followers, interactions and retweets than many of those with higher scores? Who knows. But I know it's good for AdAge. :-)
    Now, obviously, I would encourage anyone building something like this to be as transparent, accurate and authentic as possible. A high quality resource that lists a "best and brightest" in your niche - be they blogs, Twitter accounts, Facebook pages, individual posts, people, conferences or whatever else you can think to rank - is an excellent piece of content for earning traffic and becoming a known quantity in your field.
    Oh, and once you do produce it - make sure to let those featured know they've been listed. Tweeting at them with a link is a good way to do this, but if you have email addresses, by all means, reach out. It can often be the start of a great relationship!

    #20 - Connect Your Web Profiles and Content to Your Blog

    Many of you likely have profiles on services like YouTube, Slideshare, Yahoo!, DeviantArt and dozens of other social and Web 1.0 sites. You might be uploading content to Flickr, to Facebook, to Picasa or even something more esoteric like Prezi. Whatever you're producing on the web and wherever you're doing it, tie it back to your blog.
    Including your blog's link on your actual profile pages is among the most obvious, but it's also incredibly valuable. On any service where interaction takes place, those interested in who you are and what you have to share will follow those links, and if they lead back to your blog, they become opportunities for capturing a loyal visitor or earning a share (or both!). But don't just do this with profiles - do it with content, too! If you've created a video for YouTube, make your blog's URL appear at the start or end of the video. Include it in the description of the video and on the uploading profile's page. If you're sharing photos on any of the dozens of photo services, use a watermark or even just some text with your domain name so interested users can find you.
    If you're having trouble finding and updating all those old profiles (or figuring out where you might want to create/share some new ones), KnowEm is a great tool for discovering your own profiles (by searching for your name or pseudonyms you've used) and claiming profiles on sites you may not yet have participated in.
    I'd also strongly recommend leveraging Google's relatively new protocol for rel=author. AJ Kohn wrote a great post on how to set it up here, and Yoast has another good one on building it into Wordpress sites. The benefit for bloggers who do build large enough audiences to gain Google's trust is earning your profile photo next to all the content you author - a powerful markup advantage that likely drives extra clicks from the search results and creates great, memorable branding, too.

    #21 - Uncover the Links of Your Fellow Bloggers (and Nab 'em!)

    If other blogs in your niche have earned references from sites around the web, there's a decent chance that they'll link to you as well. Conducting competitive link research can also show you what content from your competition has performed well and the strategies they may be using to market their work. To uncover these links, you'll need to use some tools.
    OpenSiteExplorer is my favorite, but I'm biased (it's made by Moz). However, it is free to use - if you create a registered account here, you can get unlimited use of the tool showing up to 1,000 links per page or site in perpetuity.
    OpenSiteExplorer from Moz
    There are other good tools for link research as well, including Blekko, Majestic, Ahrefs and, I've heard that in the near-future, SearchMetrics.
    Finding a link is great, but it's through the exhaustive research of looking through dozens or hundreds that you can identify patterns and strategies. You're also likely to find a lot of guest blogging opportunities and other chances for outreach. If you maintain a great persona and brand in your niche, your ability to earn these will rise dramatically.


    Bonus #22 - Be Consistent and Don't Give Up

    If there's one piece of advice I wish I could share with every blogger, it's this:
    Why Bloggers Give Up Traffic Graph

    The above image comes from Everywhereist's analytics. Geraldine could have given up 18 months into her daily blogging. After all, she was putting in 3-5 hours each day writing content, taking photos, visiting sites, coming up with topics, trying to guest blog and grow her Twitter followers and never doing any SEO (don't ask, it's a running joke between us). And then, almost two years after her blog began, and more than 500 posts in, things finally got going. She got some nice guest blogging gigs, had some posts of hers go "hot" in the social sphere, earned mentions on some bigger sites, then got really big press from Time's Best Blogs of 2011.
    I'd guess there's hundreds of new bloggers on the web each day who have all the opportunity Geraldine had, but after months (maybe only weeks) of slogging away, they give up.
    When I started the SEOmoz blog in 2004, I had some advantages (mostly a good deal of marketing and SEO knowledge), but it was nearly 2 years before the blog could be called anything like a success. Earning traffic isn't rocket science, but it does take time, perseverance and consistency. Don't give up. Stick to your schedule. Remember that everyone has a few posts that suck, and it's only by writing and publishing those sucky posts that you get into the habit necessary to eventually transform your blog into something remarkable.
    Good luck and good blogging from all of us at Moz!

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