Over the past 5 months a number of my personal niche websites have seen a dramatic decrease in search engine traffic. You may have seen a similar drop in traffic on your own website. As you are probably already aware, this is most likely a result of Google’s recent algorithmic “adjustments”.

There has been a ton of chatter online about Google’s “Panda” and “Penguin” updates and I have even done a few posts about them myself. However, much of what has been put out on the internet has been completely wrong, and although I am not an expert on the inner-workings of Google’s search algorithm, I can share with you what has had the most impact on getting the rankings of my “fallen” sites back (at least those I have had time to work on).

Building backlinks to my backlinks

After analyzing my websites that had taken a hit, I realized that the majority of links pointing to those sites were coming from article directories and low-quality blogs. This was because the only form of marketing I did for those sites was to write and submit articles. This was an ok strategy prior to Panda and Penguin, but Google now puts a lot more weight on the quality, and diversity of links. One way the links are analyzed by the big “G” is to see if those links have any authority. In other words, do the pages in which those links to your site are located have any links pointing to them.

It was interesting because none of my client’s sites dropped in rankings. In fact, a few of them saw increased rankings as a result of Google’s updates. I can only assume that it is because the linking strategies we have always used on client sites is multi-tiered.

It is still fine to have some of these low-quality links, but it is easy enough to boost your link quality by building links to your backlinks. You can try to go through all your current links and build links to those, but your time and effort would be better served leaving those alone and focusing on building more, higher quality link structures.

On our Link Building Services page there is an infographic that illustrates this strategy well. It is how we build links for our client’s sites, and it continues to be extremely effective. Whether you hire a service to do it for you, or you simply take the time to do it yourself, creating multi-tiered linking structures is the way to go.

As an added note… Another important factor to keep in mind when building links is to not over-weight any particular keyword anchor text. For example, you don’t want 100% of your links using “buy blue widgets” as the link back to your site. I could probably do an entire post on this topic alone, but a good rule to follow is 30% your main keyword, 30% other variation of your keyword, 30% naked links (this is where the anchor text is your URL “http://mysite.com” or “mysite.com”) and 10% natural signals (this would be words like “click here”, “visit site” or “more info”).

As long as you follow this “natural” link building pattern of getting links from diverse sources, building links to your links and varying your link anchor text, you should be good to go!

…And if you want to take all the guess-work out of your link building campaign and get you site ranked, we can do it for you.

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There is so much confusion and conjecture about Google’s Penguin algorithm update that even many SEO experts are spinning. The below video by Josh Bachynski provides some of the best information I have come across regarding Penguin, and how to fix your site’s rankings if you’ve been effected.

Be sure to watch the entire video for some gold nuggets about a recently discovered secret that you can use to quickly boost any website’s rankings in Google, as well as some downright valuable backlinking tips.

If you’re curious about the SENukeX tool mentioned in this video, you can check it out here. I have personally used this tool for over 3 years now and highly recommend it to anyone serious about building rankings in the search engines.

Be sure to +1 this post, share it on Facebook or retweet if you found it useful.

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Dave Kelly is an SEO expert and someone that I have followed for quite some time online. What I like about Dave is his no-nonsense approach to SEO and that I can always count on getting real “actionable” information, unlike the streams of hype and conjecture you commonly hear from others.

I recently received this backlinking strategy case study information from Dave and simply had to share it.

I’m going to share with you the successes and struggles of 3 different customers, each of whom has given me permission to relate their individual experiences with the Articlez.com guest blogging network with you.

Let’s just call them Moe, Larry, and Curly

Moe has two main sites in two very competitive markets. Both of these markets are in the financial industry. Moe has a really good working knowledge of SEO. Most of his on site SEO and some of his off site SEO, he has done himself. He has a site designer that works for him.

Moe has done reasonably well in Google through the years, but more for long tail keywords. He’s never been able to get much above position 90 for either site for his main keywords which are very competitive.

Fortunately he has other means of generating business, so he does not really on Google for his success. Google traffic has been steady through the years, but he’d love to be able to increase his take of online traffic and conversions.

When Moe started with the guest blogging network he told me that both his sites were in the 100-150 range in Google for his main keywords.

Moe’s existing link building had a good mix. He had a few tier one type of links, (links like those the guest blogging network provides) a good amount of tier two linking, social media links etc.. and some tier three links, (blog comments etc..) that boosted his tier two links. So Moe had some strengths, and understood the game, but he was really light on the tier one link side of the equation.

Moe has been very aggressive with his link building this past month. He has sent over 500 articles for each of his two sites into the Guest Blogging Network. He has used about 80% anchor text that was his main keyword, the other 20% a variety of keywords. About 80% of his links went to his home page and about 20% to key internal pages.

All of the content Moe submitted was unique.

Moe’s site is about 7 years old so we’re not talking a new site, but one that has been stagnant in it’s rankings.

It just hasn’t fluctuated all that much even through all the different Google updates.

I checked with Moe a couple days ago, and he was excited as hell to let me know that his two sites have seen a lot of positive gains in Google. One of his sites was ranking between #12 and #19, and the other was on page 3, generally landing in the middle around #25.

This is after just one month’s worth of promo. Granted, it’s a lot of content and link building that he did, but he’s in a very competitive market and anything less just won’t have a chance.

He’s also seeing quite a nice increase in traffic to his internal pages. Overall traffic is up about 30% in the past couple of weeks, and growing. this is an industry where one conversion can mean a lot of money so needless to say, Moe Is pretty excited, and plans to continue doing more of what he has been doing.

Next we have Larry

Larry is in a moderately competitive market, but nowhere near as competitive as Moe. Larry’s site is a wordpress blog that he updates often. The site is very well indexed in Google. Larry has done quite a lot of link building but more along the lines of tier two links and some tier 3 linking, things such as social bookmarking, web profiles, blog comments etc. All useful links but not links that will really boost a site to the top as these are supportive links.

Larry’s site gets some decent word of mouth traffic, but only modest search engine traffic, and all of that traffic is long tail. He told me that when he searches for his main keywords he always finds himself down in the 200-400 range, which as anyone knows might get you one or two hits per year.

Larry just didn’t have enough tier one links.

Larry has been pretty aggressive this past month. Not as aggressive as Moe, but he’s sent about 90 links into the Articlez.com guest blogging network, but has linked the content to a variety of pages on his blog. He has not focused on the main page specifically since a lot of his best content is on the internal pages. He probably has only done maybe 4 or 5 links to his home page.

The one thing I advised “Larry” to do was to restructure his tier two and three link building while he is also boosting his tier one links. He had some new web 2.0 properties built which linked to his money site and added some tier 3 linking, blog comments etc.. to point to those tier two links.

You see, Larry’s link profile was just totally out of whack when he started with the guest blogging network. He was really short on tier one links which the guest blogging network can provide, but the rest of his link profile was sub par as well.

I checked with Larry a couple days ago, and he’s pleased with what he is seeing. While he hasn’t made it to the top couple of pages yet, he is finally seeing a lot of his pages in the top 100, which has never happened before. He’s still got a ways to go to reach his goal, but the he’s getting the upward movement that he was hoping for. The guest blogging network is a part of this but so is the revamping of his overall link profile. The pieces are all connected. While “Larry’s” traffic has increased about10%, he wants more now that’s he’s got a handle on what it takes to move up in the SERPS.

Next up is Curly

Curly, that’s not a very good name for a female is it? Nor a male I guess, but Curly is a gal. She has only been in the IM/SEO game for a little over a year, and is still learning.

She has 2 sites that are both relatively new. Both are close to having exact match domain names but not quite. Think of her domain names as something such as “keywordhelper.com” where keyword would be the exact match. So the keyword she is going after is in the domain, just not by itself.

Her one site is in a local market, it is generally non competitive. One that I thought she could do pretty well with rather quickly and without a lot of link building.

She has sent appx 20 links into the guest blogging network linking to her main page for her first site, the one that is pretty non competitive. It didn’t take her long to show up on page 2. Nice but not quite where you want to be. She created 2 web 2.0 properties. One on Squidoo and one on Hubpages and then submitted 4 more links into the guest blogging network with 2 links each pointing to the web 2.0 properties. That did the trick. She is now ranking between #2 and #5 on page one of Google.

She plans to continue link building modestly in the same manner as she did in month one. It should maintain her position and hopefully get her to the top within a month or two.

Her second site is very similar to the first with one difference. It is in a more competitive market.

She followed the exact same link building methodology as she did for site one, and while she has seen some results, nowhere near as good as results as the first site. She has cracked the top 100 but seems stuck.

I have advised her to up her tier one link building to maybe 40 per month but also get more aggressive with the web 2.0 properties and consider building a good amount of tier 3 links to those web 2.0 sites. The bottom line is this site just needs more juice. But it’s still a new site so she’s doing pretty well really, but in the SEO game we know that the goal is page one. Anything less really doesn’t cut it.

So to wrap this up, these three people are pretty good examples of people who are doing really well. I hope it gives you an idea of what you need to do with your own link building profiles.

Link building is far from dead. In fact it is still the most important factor in ranking well in Google.

Please don’t believe the hype, BS, and mis information that is propagated both by Google and spread on way too many so called SEO forums. The truth as to what REALLY works is in reality quite different than what the masses generally believe.

- Dave -

I hope you find this information as useful as I have. If you are interested in checking out the resource that Dave mentions in this post, you can check out Articlez.com here. It is completely free to sign up.

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Over the past year I have witnessed a lot of confusion in the area of social media marketing. I though it would be beneficial to provide a complete overview of my social media marketing plan that I currently use, and that works well for me. This is certainly not to say that my plan is the definitive solution, but perhaps this will provide a missing piece or two for those experiencing confusion about what to do with their social media presence, or possibly be a motivator for those on the fence about using social media for their business.

For me, it was important to first create a very simple process that I could do in just a few minutes to get the promotion machine going for each new post on my website. This promotion would then lead to many others promoting my content, creating a lot of social sharing and backlinks. Then, as time permits, I can do additional more time-consuming promotion and backlink building tasks.

The Central Social Media Marketing Hub – The WordPress Website or Blog
I use WordPress for all my websites and blogs. Each business has it’s own WordPress website/blog as a central hub for all online activities. I have found that it is absolutely the best platform to create that central connection point. It serves as a platform for me to post my content (posts, articles, information and videos that provide real value and assistance to my visitors) as well as inform my readers about who I am and encourage them to connect with me through the various social media sites.

This is also the appropriate place to promote your own program, business opportunity, products, etc. However, it is very important that this is done in the right way. I would highly recommend against loading every post with nothing but affiliate links and sales pitch content. If everything you put out is a pitch with no real helpful information, your bounce rate will be high. That means people are leaving as soon as they land on your blog. There is a place and time for promotion and it is best placed within content that your visitors will find value in.

I have a link at the top of my blog that says “TOOLS” that goes to a page of tools and resources that I personally use and recommend to others who are marketing online. I am an affiliate of some of these products, so I will earn a commission if someone else decides to purchase. I will also occasionally place a link inside of post content to one of these or another tool that may also be an affiliate product as long as it is something that adds value to the post and readers will find helpful.

The Social Gathering Points – Twitter, Facebook, etc…
The social media sites are where I typically make first contact with other like-minded people, as well as connect with those that have connected with me through other locations. This is not accomplished by marketing products or my business, but rather by simply providing content that others will find useful, interesting, fun, or funny. I also interact directly with what others are saying and posting on a daily/weekly basis. Providing this type of content and interaction, sends the message that I am a real person with real interests and that I am interested in what others are doing. You might initially think that this type of activity is too time consuming, and it can be if overdone. I recommend that you only spend a total of 30-minutes to 1-hour throughout the day on the social media sites. If you are spending more time than that, you are most likely wasting valuable time.

A good rule to follow when interacting on the social media networks is to post an average of 1-2 promotions for your own article, product, video, etc. for every 10 posts you make. Keep in mind that, with rare exception, you should not be trying to sell on the social media sites. Instead use them as a meet up point and invite those interested to visit your blog and connect with you elsewhere (your blog). It is all about building the foundation of like and trust, then moving to higher levels in that relationship.

So the steps to get this promotion ball rolling are simple. Once you publish a new blog post or website page, just share it on Facebook, on your Facebook Page, tweet it on Twitter and bookmark it on at least the main social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon, Digg, reddit.

The Relationship Builder – Your List
This may be the most crucial step, and is still not utilized by so many people. Your list is where you really get to “WOW” your subscribers by providing them your best content. The best thing is, you can write this content once and have it working for you forever. …and automatically!

The content you deliver through email to your list is your opportunity to really shine, and it is entirely appropriate to make offers for additional products, services, programs, etc., that are congruent with your content. For example, in my free course, I provide detailed step-by-step instruction on how to register your own domain name, setup your hosting account, and install and configure your WordPress website/blog. I also provide an affiliate link to the hosting service I use and recommend. I also make other offers throughout my course that provide additional value and solutions. Those offers generate revenue, but I am careful to only promote products/services that I use and show my subscriber how to use them.

Your list also gives you the ability to send out messages to notify your subscribers of special offers, opportunities or new products that you come across. If you have done everything correctly, you will always have a percentage of your list that takes you up on your offer. No matter what type of business you are running, your list should be your most valuable asset (I’m sure you’ve heard this before).

Your Primary Offer – Your Product, Service, Opportunity, or ??
Through this model of social media marketing incorporating your blog, you can easily promote your primary offer in several ways. I recommend that you have a link on your blog where those curious can learn more about your primary offer, and you will want to work it into your marketing through your list. You can even occasionally mention it through the social media sites directly, although I would be very cautious with that. Keep in mind that people are not typically on social media sites to view advertisements, so whatever you do there, be “social” about it.

Additional Strategies
Up to now, aside from the nominal charge for your hosting account, everything has been completely free and extremely simpe and fast to implement. Now I will briefly touch on a few additional strategies you can implement to really take your traffic and list building to the next level.

- Article Marketing, Social Bookmarkding, Web 2.0 & Social Networks
When it comes to getting noticed in the natural or organic search queries, you have to get into some of the top spots for your keywords. Getting ranked by the search engines is still all about backlinks (even after Google’s Panda and Penguin updates), and the best way to get quality one-way backlinks… Article Marketing, Web 2.0 and Social Network sites. You can do this type of marketing the free way, but setting up and posting content to so many sites can be a very time-consuming chore. So time-consuming in fact, that you may question it’s worth. The only way to do it effectively and on a large scale is to use tools or services that automate the majority of the work. Here are a couple of systems that I personally have used successfully. You can check them out and decide if they are right for your business and marketing budget:

Unique Article Wizard – Post unique versions of your articles to hundreds of blogs and directories automatically, and you can even have them write the articles for you.

SENukeX – This is an advanced SEO software product that can create advanced linking strategies and automate the entire thing. It is like having a staff of SEO experts working on your behalf to create backlinks across article directories, web 2.0 sites, social networks, bookmarks, forums and more. Watch the video at their site for details.

For those on a tight budget, you can do this manually, but I would stick to the most high value sites for posting your content:

Article Directories:
ezinearticles.com
articleblast.com
easy-articles.com
articledashboard.com
goarticles.com
buzzle.com

Social Networks / Blogs:
wordpress.com
blogger.com
hubpages.com
squidoo.com

For Web 2.0 and Social Bookmarking sites, there are too many to list. Just do a Google search.

The above can seem like a lot to get going, but taking it one bit at a time is what it’s all about. If you implement the above strategies, you can become an internet marketing entrepreneur in no time. Be sure to also leave me a comment below and tell me how you are using social media to build your business online.

To Your Online Success,

P.S. If you want more targeted traffic to your website, be sure to check out our internet marketing services.

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Over the past couple weeks there has been much histeria in the SEO world about Google’s latest crack-down against link networks and artificial link building in general. Judging from all the talk in popular SEO forums, this has a lot of people worried. There are many so called “Gurus” spewing out the usual “SEO is dead” commentary, as well as Google’s minions themselves stating that the algorythm has become so advanced that they will find all your links and crush them, de-list your site and all that crap.

Well, you should not believe everything you hear. I have not seen any change in any of my rankings, with the exception of a couple of my sites that are now ranked even better. As I have stated before in several posts, as long as you are publishing and distributing quality useful content, you have nothing to worry about.

Here is what a individual whom I highly respect has to say about this. I highly suggest you read this article if you are at all concerned about your backlinks:

Recent forum post from John Ledger
Here John has basically the same view that I do on the subject – further proof that nothing has really changed with SEO.

So now that we have all that out of the way…

One of the things that I noticed a while back was that the vast majority of my backlinks were not even counting because Google was not even aware of them. It is stated that as high as 95% of your backlinks are providing you no value at all. This is hard to swallow when you are spending valuable time (and often money) to obtain those links.

You can relax, there is an easy solution to this problem…

Lately I have been using a service called BacklinksIndexer that is an extremely cost-effective solution to making sure that all your backlinks get noticed and counted by Google and other search engines. The concept here is to build backlinks to your backlinks. Doing this will raise the importance of the links pointing to your site. Since I started using this only a few months ago, I have noticed my rankings soar. I am not here to sell you on this service, but simply let you know about it. Go to the site and check it out for yourself –> BacklinksIndexer.

I hope you found this post helpful and that it has set your mind at ease about the future of SEO. Drop me a comment and let me know how you feel about this topic.

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Lesson 7 – Blogging Questions Answered

Before I wrote this WordPress blog e-course I emailed all my subscribers and asked them what they had difficulty with and to email me back with any questions about blogging. I thought this would be a great thing to include as the last post for this series so that you can benefit from this information.

Blog Design And Setup Questions

I want to change the URL of one of my posts, but whenever I change the title, the URL stays the same. How can I change the URL?

Under the Page Title form is your website URL, click EDIT and you are able to edit the actual URL.

Is there a way to change the date of my posts once they are posted so that they appear to be older?

Yes, in the post edit screen there is a box in the upper right corner just above the “publish” or “update” button. You can edit the line where it says “published on…” to whatever date you wish.

How can I customize the look of my blog so that it is a unique design that nobody else has?

In my e-course I recommended that you choose a professional theme from WooThemes. They have a large selection of unique WordPress themes to choose from. Each theme offers a number of customization options to make it appear different than anyone using the same theme. However, if you are someone that does not mind doing a little more hand-on customizing, I highly recommend using Thesis for your theme. Thesis is a super fast WordPress framework that allows for total customization. You can use their default setup, or customize absolutely every aspect of your look and feel. I currently use Thesis on the InstallLogic site.

Can I use a FREE blog hosting site such as WordPress.com or Blogger.com?

Yes, you can, but it would be your biggest blogging mistake. This is one of the most common blogging mistakes made. If you plan to take blogging seriously and do wish to make money blogging, you will never achieve that goal with a free hosted blog. You need to use a good hosting company and register your own domain name. It will make you look more professional and give you so much more control (not to mention ownership of your content). Another thing to consider with this is that you will never be able to sell a free hosted blog.

To register your domain, see GoDaddy.com

To setup hosting, I recommend HostGator <-- Use this link for special pricing.

I want to blog about something I have no experience with, is this possible and is it a good idea?

My best advice is to only blog about something you are passionate about and have a great interest in. Not having knowledge of that topic is not a barrier for blogging about it. You could learn about that niche and share what you learn with others in your blog posts. This is how a lot of successful blogs started. Keep in mind nobody starts as an expert.

I would like to know where I could find advertisers for my blog?

You can simply use turn-key programs like Google Adsense or Chitika. If you are wanting to run your own advertising program, the best way is to focus on quality content and advertisers will literally come to you asking for advertising opportunities. If that is not happening yet, you need to focus on more content and getting that content to the top of the search engines.

With so many programs, how to do I choose what affiliate programs to promote on my blog?

Again, focus on only promoting those items that you have found to help you personally, or that you “know” would bring a great value to your visitors.

I work full-time and can only spend a couple hours per week on my blog, it is worth doing with only that much time?

Absolutely! I only spend a couple hours per week on my blog even now. Even if you can only create one new post/week, you can build a substantial following as long as you are putting out quality content.

How many posts do I need to have on my blog before I start promoting it to get traffic?

One. Yep, that’s it. It all starts with your first post. Don’t wait until everything is perfect, or you may never get started.

Is it a good idea to outsource some or all of my content writing?

It can be, but only if your content writers are producing quality material. Most content writers that charge $6 – $12 per article only produce content that is suitable for some article marketing strategies and I would not recommend putting it on your blog. You can however allow guest posts from other bloggers that produce quality content.

Where do you come up with all your blog post ideas?

The best way to come up with blog post ideas is to be in tune with your niche. I subscribe to other blogs in my niche and read their content and see what others in my niche are talking about. When I see a lot of talk about a certain topic or question, I simply write about and provide a solution or how to guide to help other with that topic.

Should I use my actual name as my domain name for my blog?

This really just comes down to personal preference. One of my first blogs was under my own name at jonochs.com. The reason I redeveloped a new one using LogicBlogger.com is because I realized that my blog could only go so far using my personal name. As my blog continues to develop I will also bring on additional guest bloggers to contribute content. I just felt like it was more appriate to not use my name. Again, there is nothing wrong with doing it; it really is a preference thing.

Questions About Driving Traffic To Your Blog

Should I be using social bookmarking like Digg and Stumbleupon to drive traffic to my blog?

It is certainly not a requiremnent, but I have found that it certainly helps and I do get a good amount of traffic from social bookmarking sites, especially StumbleUpon. There are some tools like OnlyWire that can automate the process of submitting for you.

How can I rank #1 in the search engines for my keywords and outrank my competitors?

It entirely depends on the competition for your individual keywords. One way to do this is through article marketing. This strategy works great if you have a focused set of keywords you want to rank highly for and need a boost to get to the top. The tool I have found to be the best for this is Unique Article Wizard.

I have read that I should be commenting on all blog posts and forum posts in my niche to drive traffic, is this true?

I only comment on blog posts that I feel compelled to comment on. You certainly can comment on other’s blogs, and if they are using a plugin like CommentLuv, you can get a backlink to your blog. You want to make sure you don’t spam other’s blogs just for the purpose of a link. I don’t do a lot of commenting because I don’t want to spend the time. I do however always respond to comments on my own blog.

I hope you have found this Q&A session to be helpful. Please do me a favor and use the social sharing buttons to share this course with your friends on Twitter and Facebook.

To your blogging success,

P.S. Remember to focus on providing quality and value and the the money will follow!

Find this via a link from a friend, or Twitter? This lesson is part of a 7-part free blogging course. I take you step by step from Zero to a complete professional WordPress blog, without any hype or lame sales pitches.

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Lesson 6 – Monetization: Make Money Blogging

When it comes to making money with your WordPress blog, there are quite a few options.

Ad Placement (Google Adsense, etc.)
This is probably the easiest way to monetize your blog. By joining programs such as Google Adsense, chitika and others, you simply copy and past ad codes into your blog or use a plugin like Easy Adsense. This will display ads across your blog in designated areas and when a visitor clicks on an ad, you get paid. Depending on your niche the payment for a click will be anything from $0.01 to as high as $4.00 or more. It is a quick and easy way to monetize your blog’s traffic.

Affiliate Programs (Clickbank, Amazon, etc.)
Affiliate programs are when a vendor agrees to pay you a percentage of any sales you originate. You can make as much as 75% of the total sale with programs such as Clickbank. It is free to become a Clickbank affiliate and there are some great products to promote. The key here is that you need to only promote products that you use youself and you will get more sales by showing people how to use them and how they have helped you personally. My policy is that I only promote products and services that I use myself and absolutely love. I suggest you do the same.

Your Own Services (Consulting, etc.)
If you are an expert in your niche you can offer your services for sale and even allow for people to pay/order online using PayPal. This is a great way to monetize your blog. I used to offer consulting services at $150/hr, but have since stopped doing it because I have other things that don’t require my time that are far more profitable now.

Your Own Products (ebooks, courses, etc.)
Another way to make money with your blog is to create your own info products or courses. I used to sell a course that was not as complete as this one for $97. When I improved the course, I began giving it away free to build my list and have found it to be more profitable than selling it.

You will need to experiment with things a bit to dial in your profits. Also keep in mind that when you first begin, your focus should be on creating content and creating value for your visitors. There will be plenty of time to monetize once you begin to have a steady stream of quality traffic. This also gives you the ability to listen to your visitor’s comments and feedback and get good ideas for what they want or would be willing to pay for.

I have put together a quick video to show you a few simple monetization techniques for WordPress blogs and my favorite Google Adsense plugin.

Here is the Amazon WordPress plugin shown in the video: EasyAzon Plugin

To your blogging success,

P.S. Are you ready to take your WordPress earning potential to the next level? Check out this proven blueprint that allows even beginners, to build simple WordPress sites that earn fantasic affiliate revenue. Check it out here!

Find this via a link from a friend, or Twitter? This lesson is part of a 7-part free blogging course. I take you step by step from Zero to a complete professional WordPress blog, without any hype or lame sales pitches. You can subscribe and get the entire course free through the sign up form at the top right of the page.

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Lesson 5: Content Is King!

If you write great content, the traffic just comes! People will regularly visit your website looking for more great posts and other bigger sites, with even more traffic will link to you. One mistake that many seem to make is that they focus on the quantity of posts rather than the quality of those posts. I have found that a quality unique post about something people are interested in, will bring in more traffic than many not so good posts. In fact, I have many posts that I have done that have continued to bring in steady traffic even a year later.

Today the internet is full of blogs reposting a lot of the same, or even copied content. Take the time to focus on quality unique information and the rewards are great. The big thing is just keep offering more value, time after time.

Before we start creating posts, there are a few Pages that you really need to have on your blog. Here is a summary of each, then I will show you how to create these pages in the video:

About page
This is where you can tell your story. It is up to you how much of your story you tell, but keep in mind what your visitors would want to know about you that relates to the topic of your blog. If your blog is about dog training, you need to go into your background as a dog trainer or what makes you qualified to speak about that topic. Don’t be afraid to get a little personal as it relates to your blog’s topic. You want your readers to get to know you and be inspired by your story.

Contact page
This could be as simple as your email address and phone number, or you can provide a contact form using your favorite WordPress form plugin.

Privacy Policy page
This is a page that should be on every blog or website. It is where you tell visitors what you do with their personal information, how it is collected and how you don’t share it with anyone else. There is a very easy way to create this page with just a couple of mouse clicks that I will cover in the video below.

You can create other pages as you feel necessary for your blog. Here is a really short video showing you how to create pages and link them to your blog’s navigation menu…

Here is a short video that shows how to create posts on your new blog and format them to look great…

The prospect of writing your first blog post might be intimidating to some, but you must have something to talk about or you would not be interested in creating a blog in the first place, right?

So, now it’s time for you to get down to it and start adding some valuable content to your blog.

Finishing Touches

In the lesson 2 I spoke about blog themes, It is so important for your brand that you have a good theme. So often I see great content on poorly designed websites, what’s worse is they aren’t prepared to invest $80 in themselves. If you haven’t already got Thesis (Recommended), or a good WooTheme, order it now!

I spoke about how important my mailing list and RSS feed are to me in lesson 4. So many people will come to your website and never come back because they don’t have anyone to remind them. Make sure you get everyone on your list and prompt them often to come back. They won’t mind as long as you provide them with value! I actually get people emailing me saying “Jon, when is your next post?” – crazy but it’s true, people actually look forward to your emails.

In the next lesson I will show you some incredibly easy ways to make money with your blog if you don’t have your own product or service. You won’t want to miss it!

To your blogging success,

Find this via a link from a friend, or Twitter? This lesson is part of a 7-part free blogging course. I take you step by step from Zero to a complete professional WordPress blog, without any hype or lame sales pitches.

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Lesson 4 – The Power Of RSS Feeds And Email List Building

An RSS Feed is basically a reminder for regular readers to alert them when you have a new blog post, this is one of the most important parts of a blog. I use Feedburner to manage all our feed updates. You can sign up free and create a code to update your blog RSS link to the feedburner one.

Feedburner also has an email update script that you can use, when you are logged in at Feedburner.com click “Publicize” and then “Email Subscriptions”, they will give you some code that you can add as a widget on your blog’s sidebars.

Adding an RSS Subscribe widget is really simple. Just login to your WordPress Dashboard again and click Appearance, then Widgets. In the widgets screen, just drag a “TEXT” widget to your sidebar, then open and paste in the code you got from FeedBurner. Your readers will now be able to subscribe for updates, when you add a new post and they will get an email or RSS message alerting them of a new post on your blog.

Ask any seasoned blogger what their biggest blogging mistake was, they will tell you they wish they would have started building a email list sooner!

Creating a list is incredibly powerful and a great way to make money online. Say you had 100 people visit your site each day, you want to get around 10 of them to sign up for your list. This means you can continue to communicate and promote your website and products to them in the future, as long as they remain subscribed to your list.

What I do is create an auto responder email series which automatically sends them an online e-course over a set period of time. This e-course provides them real value in exchange for their email addess and the right to keep in touch with more great information and occassionally a recommendation to a product or service that I have found to work well for me.

As long as you provide real value and relevant content, you will build a great relationship with those on your email list and they will in turn recommend you to others as well as review your recommendations for relevant products and services.

For those of you who will be using your blog to generate revenue I recommend you look at getting yourself an auto responder to do this. I personally recommend Aweber or iContact for this, they both offer a great service! I prefer Aweber simply because of their incredible ease of use and copy and past resources that make it simple to integrate your list subscription forms into your blog.

Here is a short video training to show you how simple it is to integrate a FeedBurner RSS subscription and Aweber email subscriptions into your blog.

Task: Setup your Feedburner RSS feed and your Aweber Email integration.

Comming up in the next lesson I will show you how to create and format posts and pages on your blog, as well as some great time saving tips for creating valuable magnetic content that keeps your readers coming back for more.

To your blogging success,

P.S. Be sure to “like” InstallLogic on Facebook.

Find this via a link from a friend, or Twitter? This lesson is part of a 7-part free blogging workshop. I take you step by step from Zero to a complete professional WordPress blog, without any hype or lame sales pitches.

Share and Enjoy

Lesson 3 – Adding Incredible Functionality To Your blog.

At this point you should have your blog up and running with your professional WordPress theme, and have made the vital configuration changes to optimize your blog for the search engines. Now we will cover the steps to adding some incredible functionality with my recommended initial Core WordPress plugins…

My recommended Initial Core WordPress Plugins

As always it is easier to see it visually than to read it, so here is another short video to walk you through the process of installing and configuring these vital plugins…

Here is a list of the core plugins included in this lesson.

Akismet
SI Captcha Anti-Spam
All In One SEO
CBnet Ping Optimizer
Google XML Sitemaps
TweetMeme Retweet Button
Simple Facebook Share Button
fbLikeButton
Facebook Like Thumbnail
Facebook Share Button Zero Count Fix
Google Analyticator

If you’re ambitious, take a look at this post I did where I outline the Top 25 WordPress Plugins The Pros Use For Blogging Success. These are plugins you really need to know about.

In the next lesson we will talk about how powerful RSS feeds and Email list building can be, and how to easily integrate them into your new blog. Also coming up I will show you how to add posts and pages to your blog, some cool tricks to save a lot of time as well as some incredibly easy ways to make money with your new blog.

To your blogging success,

Find this via a link from a friend, or Twitter? This lesson is part of a 7-part free blogging workshop. I take you step by step from Zero to a complete professional WordPress blog, without any hype or lame sales pitches.

Share and Enjoy