April 21, 2008

Google Me The Movie - Jim Killeen

I'm straying away from the topic of my previous posts about blogging to let you know about something exciting that is happening this week. Read on:

********************

Jim Killeen's adventure through the search engines of GOOGLE to the far corners of the Earth have given him a knowledge one can only obtain throughout the journey.

Computers are now a focus of our daily lives rather than an addition to the tasks we perform each day. Strictly checking our occasional emails has become a thing of the past. Bringing the computers out of the den and into the main living area of the home for researching information, watching videos and sometimes gathering advice on the many websites available through the world-wide web. GOOGLE has produced the greatest impression and has enabled web users to connect, seek, and ultimately locate each other.

GOOGLE Me The Movie, Jim Killeen, and Blog Talk Radio are merging together for a one night event on GOOGLE Me Talk Radio! Thursday night April 24th at 8pm ET. This will be an exciting evening with the host of GOOGLE Me Talk Radio, Jim Cobb and The GOOGLE Me Man with the plan, Jim Killeen. Spend time at http://www.googlemetalkradio.com/ for an entertaining evening.

April 11, 2008

Why Are Keywords Important When Blogging?

Keywords, or keyword phrases, are the words that people search for when looking for information that is of interest to them. Search engines operate on keywords. By putting those keywords within your blog, your blog has a higher probability of being discovered. The traffic to your blog will dramatically increase by using the keyword or keyword phrases that people type into the search engines.

So, how does one find which keywords are searched for in your niche? There are a variety of free online tools, such as nichebot, that can help you to determine which keywords are best. You can do a search for "keyword finder" which will provide you with some options to choose from. There are also paid online tools, such as WordTracker, that can also assist you in finding the right keywords to use.

So, how should you use these keywords once you have them? You need to determine how many times your keywords should appear within your blog to trigger a positive resopnse from the search engines. So how many times should a keyword appear? This is up for debate. Some experts say that a keyword should be used enough to comprise 3-5% of the total text of your post. Others say that a higher density will do better. And yet there are others that maintain that keyword density is not as important a producing content that contains the keyword and related relevant term.

There are ways to make sure the content of your blog does its job when it comes to keywords. You can write your blog post around popular keywords related to your topic - or - you can focus on turning out good, relevant content and assume the volume of your output and its overall quality will produce the desired keyword result.

Most bloggers will take a strategy that is somewhere in the middle of these two extremes. A blogger can be successful by producing content with an understanding of keywords while not compromising its integrity in an effort to stuff all of their posts with popular search terms.

Primary keyword(s) should be in the title of your blog's post. You should also use words, phrases, and keywords of secondary importance, within the content of your posts. But you should also beware of overusing keywords. Search engines reward those sites that use keywords within valuable content, not those that have an endless stream of keywords that are nothing more than an effort to try and fool the robots.

Come back in a few days and I'll discuss what types of content gets noticed and how to get readers to invest time in reading your blog.

April 6, 2008

How Key is High Quality Content for Your Blog?

Nothing will turn a blog into a success like high-quality content. Good content will create readership, and the lifeblood of a successful blog is repeat visitors. Other blogger notice good content so they will often link back to your posts. This creates backlinks which helps place your blog higher in the organic listings in the search engines.

If your blog has top-notch information or touches the reader in some way, they will come back to your blog. Effective writing is key to your blog being a success. It may take a little more time and effort to develop a well-written post then simply just quickly writing down your thoughts, but the end result will be well worth your time.

You should also strive to produce unique content that will make your blog different from others. Therefore you should choose topics that are interesting, have compelling opinions, do whatever you can to capture the reader's interest. You must have something in your blog that gives people a reason to come back to your blog that is different than other blogs with the same topic.

If people are interested in the topic of your blog, the more often you can provide new information, the better the possibility they will return to your blog. Search engines also like to see frequently updated sites. They reward blogs that provide frequent updates with higher rankings in the search engines. So frequent updating will lead even more people to your blog.

There is no magic number as to the number of posts you should add to your blog in a week, but the general rule is that the more often you can post, the better. Some bloggers update their blogs several times per day, some will do an update just once a week. You need to consider the amount of time you can put into updating your blog and how much new and relevant content you can put into your blog. Posting to your blog just for the sake of adding content make assist in getting your blog ranked higher in the search engines, but if the content is not high-quality, you will lose readers and make your blog useless.

People who make a living online will tell you that content is key. Content is what brings people to your blog. It is what keeps them there and will keep them coming back. The search engine spiders favor sites that have more content and content that is updated frequently. Some niches that are underserved may continue to successfully generate traffic with infrequent updates, but the more competitive field your blog topic is, it will be necessary for you to frequently provide updated content. Short posts have less value than more involved writing.

Next time I will discuss putting keywords into your blog post.

April 2, 2008

Why is Blog Content Critical?

The one thing that is critical to the success of a blog is Content. Content refers to the materials presented in the blog, therefore, your subject matter of what you're writing is critical to the traffic potential for your blog. Your writing quality, uniqueness from your perspective, and how often you add content to your blog will make a difference.

Blogs that are more specific to one subject, or related subjects, will generally draw more interest than blogs that have a very scattered approach. But, if you blog within a particular niche, make sure the subject is not too limited as you may not get the high-volume traffic you were hoping for.

Here are some guidelines you can follow when selecting a topic for your blog that will have the potential for good traffic:

Because you will be revisiting and updating your blog frequently, it makes sense to choose a topic that you are interested in or have a lot of knowledge in. If you don't have the interest or the knowledge, you may find it difficult to maintain your blog over time.

There are two different factors to consider when choosing a topic that has great traffic potential. The topic needs to be of interest to others, but you must also consider how many other sources of information are already available. If there are a lot of competitive resources for your topic, you may find it difficult to get traffic to your site. So, ideally you should find a hot topic that has little competition - which is easier said than done. You can find online tools to get an idea of the competition and interest levels. One such tool is nichebot.

If you do decide on a topic in a competitive field, you must give people a reason to come to your blog instead of going to others. It will be a challenge, so remember to offer something that will separate you from the rest.

Next time I'll go over quality and updating content.

March 30, 2008

How do I get people to see my Blog?

So now that you've been blogging for awhile, you're trying to get people to visit your blog. You've got good content, a popular topic, and even well-placed advertising...but you don't have many visitors. You have to find a way to create a blog that attracts visitors.

So how do you get visitors to your blog? The key is traffic. Traffic can come from a few different places. Direct links to your site may produce visitors, but search engines offer the real key to high volume traffic. People go to the search engines to find the sites that provide them the information they are looking for. If your blog comes up early in the organic listings of the search engine results, you will see more traffic.

If the content of your blog has something that people are interested in, they will come back again to visit your blog. This can produce word-of-mouth promotion and assists in improving your blog's placement in the search engines.

Every link can serve as a traffic producer. When someone finds a link to your blog on someone else's site, all it takes is one mouse-click to find your blog. Search engines take into consideration the number and quality of the links to your blog. They reward a higher placement in the search engine results when a blog is linked to frequently.

So if you want your blog to receive traffic you need to do these two things: Provide content that people want to come back to and get links to your blog.

Come back in a few days and I will have more information for you on how your blog can have great content and how to get links to your blog.