Blogging for business has officially gone mainstream. According to data from MarketingSherpa, blog posts were deemed the most effective social media platform for both B2C and B2Bs.
Marketers have finally realized that blogging can be leveraged as a content tool:

•    To generate enough interest to convert your visitors into leads, and keep you top of mind as they complete the nurturing process (hopefully converting them into customers).
•    In the early stages of the buyer’s journey, it troubles prospects about their business, showing them there’s a better way to deal with an issue that their industry sector is facing.
•    It’s interactive, less formal, and puts a human face to your company.
•    It builds trust and a sense of thought leadership.
•    It can help you increase your ranking on Google’s search engine results page (SERP).

So if the benefits of business blogging are so obvious, then why do many organizations shy away from committing to a blog?

•    Capacity. A number of people need to be tasked with the responsibility of regularly updating the blog. It’s a bit much to assign to just one person, especially if you were thinking of publishing more than once a week. Most blogs fail shortly after inception just because its creators aren’t sure what to blog about – after they post about the first 6 topics they had on their list, they lose enthusiasm and opt to abandon instead of create new, useful content. To pull of a business blog, you need a realistic amount of resources allocated to the task, with a clear editorial schedule in place.
•    Consistency. Forget how great your latest product release is, because that is exactly what people will do if they read a blog post about it (if they get through the blog post in the first place). Decide on a list of buyer-driven themes, and know exactly why they made your list. Think about how you can start conversations around these themes on other platforms, like LinkedIn Groups, Twitter, or eDM articles.
•    Alignment. Your blog should direct the right kind of traffic to your site. Each post you write is a new page to be crawled by Google, so the keywords you use are inherently a part of your SEO strategy. Make sure the same strategy is applied to your other social media channels like Twitter and Linkedin.
•    Metrics. This is probably the most important part. How can you know how well you’re doing, and which areas you could improve in, if you don’t take a look at your analytics? Determine which topics are most popular, and which keywords people are using to find your blog posts. See what you did right – which blog posts generated the most leads? Try to replicate this in future posts.

This may be daunting at first, but blogging is arguably the first pillar in content strategy – especially if you don’t have a content strategy yet. If you don’t have the time or resources to commit to blogging, there are many firms like ours that provide content services to get your blog going. For larger organizations in more complex environments, we would recommend you work with sophisticated integrated blogging solutions like InnoBlog from the US.

Think about business blogging as an inextricable component in your content strategy. It’s vital in attracting prospects to your organization, as well as its offering. As long as you shape your content around the buyer and their needs, your blog will reap success over time.

This post was written by Christabelle Tani, a Digital Content Marketer at g2m Solutions.

Are you a successful blogger yet?  

Everyone is looking for loopholes to climb to the top in their blogging career, but only few bloggers are truly enjoying today.

Others are struggling to drive traffic, while a host of others can’t even generate $100 per month from their blogs. But all that can be changed if you consider these 5Cs of blogging and take actions on them.

The 5Cs of Blogging are:

Create – Command – Creativity- Communication – Conversion : by Michael Chibuzor

Does it make sense to you? All right, let’s break the Cs down to know how they can apply to our blogging success. Are you ready?

Create

Blogging is all about creating exceptional contents for readers and target audience. You need to create a post that’s truly helpful. You can’t continue to churn articles and expect good results. There should be uniqueness in the craft.

Before you create a post, ask yourself what information you’ve in mind and wants to share with others. Are you motivated to read the article or ignore it? It’s a vital question to answer before jamming the keyboard with your fingers.

If you have nothing to say on your post, then take a walk or visit a close friend. I’m sure you’ll get post ideas by chatting with people. The first “C” is to create fresh, insightful and valuable posts. Can you do that?

Command

How can you command readers to do whatever you want? It’s so unfortunate how newbie bloggers are trying to be like professionals bloggers. In order words, they are imitating them.

You can’t be the best by imitating someone. Yes, you can learn from others; read their blogs, buy and study their products but don’t try to be like them. You’ve been equipped to succeed at any project no matter how difficult it seems. The journey might be slow, but the time of waiting would definitely pay off greatly.

To command and build a tribe with blogging, have a way of addressing a problem. It’s no longer providing solutions that counts in today’s blogging world, the solution has to be authentic and presented with style.

If your blog can solve problems, there are 10k blogs with better solutions – the only thing your competitors can’t replicate is your “voice.” It does take time to discover how unique your voice it, but constant practice will get you there.

Creativity

How can you make a difference in the world, when all you do is approach a topic in the same manner like your friends? It’s totally unacceptable and I admonish you to become creative today. Did you see the creativity in the post you’re reading?

The headline was crafted like none other. Off course, the topic I’m writing about has been written by more savvy bloggers and copywriters.

But I decided to add creativity to the mix and now, you’re enjoying it. “The 5 Cs of blogging that makes you successful” is what piqued your mind – you clicked and read.

That’s creativity at work – now, pick a common topic and add spices to it. Your readers would fall in love with you for going the extra mile.

Communication

The essence of setting up a blog is to build a community. Don’t be moved by the hype online, it’s actually difficult to make money from blogs without attaining a level of communication (engagement).

Blog readers are so careful with their money, and will not buy from a stranger. Without effective communication, you’re a stranger to your audience. You may have a beautiful wordpress theme, a unique style of writing but without communicating your brand, your voice and the solutions you’ve, nothing works – trust me!

And communication is a two-way system. Readers and prospects must talk to you. You can initiate communication by asking questions in your posts.

Ask readers to do something and give a feedback. The same concept goes for email marketing. Subscribers must reply and talk to you. A lot of bloggers don’t talk or communicate with people – they don’t even reply to comments. It’s the quickest way to blogging DOOM. Start talking today.

Conversion

This is the point where you can earn passive income from your blog.

The 5Cs of blogging success is arranged in chronological other. You’ve to create first, before you can command. And once you’re an authority, the communication line will be initiated and your readers will start talking.

Don’t try to sell a product or recommend an affiliate offer or service if you’re yet to build trust with target audience. Conversion is what we consistently pursue, but it’ll be futile if engagement is absent.

People who make money from their blogs have mastered these 5Cs and today, we reckon with them. It takes time, sacrifice and guts to climb to the top in your blogging career. But now, you’ve been equipped with the right tools and insights to sail smoothly.

Leave a comment

Did you find this 5Cs of blogging beneficial? Please leave a comment below or add your own 2-cent. Now, stop reading and share this post with your fans. Will you?

The legendary story of the Middle Ages about the infamous Pied Piper who leads the towns’ children to their doom suits Facebook analogically. A couple of days after their IPO debut, it is evident that Facebook has not received the response it had in vision. Unlike the Pied Piper, Facebook disappoints.

Perhaps, its condition is aptly summed up by Michael Pachter of Wedbush Securities: “They were playing for a pop but didn’t get it”.

Before the IPO debut, other social networking platforms had expected an increase in their share value. However, after its lackluster debut, here are the recent market reports:

• Facebook rises just by 1 percent, that is, 23 cents.
• LinkedIn goes down 6 percent.
• Yelp goes down 12 percent.
• Groupon goes down 7 percent.
• Zynga goes down 13 percent (worst hit!)

A day after IPO debuts, I received a newsletter from Perform Insider with some really important links to the reality of Facebook.

Some of them were too poignant to ignore such as General Motors pulling out their entire 10 million USD Facebook advertising budget because “they don’t work” and that 75% of Facebook users do not click on Facebook ads, questioning the revenue model of Facebook. This is more important to think about because since Facebook has gone public, they have to disclose their earnings reports to the public and if they are not able to earn as much as they would like us to believe, Facebook and its shareholders will be in serious quandary. In fact, my own Facebook profile is devoid of ads with the help of AdBlocker Chrome extension!

I have come to believe that in the last few months that sites like Facebook are not meant for advertisement displays because they are not designed in such a way. It would have been better if there had been a Facebook ‘Business’ segment exclusively for business networking rather than the current intermingling of personal and business profiles and pages.

As Keith Reinhard says –

 “There is a huge difference between creating a brand and creating buzz; a buzz is what you create about a brand, and that’s quite different than creating the brand itself.”

This is the problem with Facebook I think. Brands are rushing to Facebook to create this buzz but brands need to realize that buzz is something which Facebook can help to escalate but the basic onus of creating brand buzz lies with the company and its efforts.

Only time will tell whether Facebook IPO will succeed or not. I sincerely hope it doesn’t share the same fate as Groupon IPO but it’s too early to predict.

What do you think? Have you bought any Facebook shares or do you want to purchase? Share with me your honest views.

PS: Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, got married to his long time girlfriend Priscilla Chan a day after its IPO debut. Hope this succeeds!

Granted there are so many different ways that you get the word on your goods and services these days, it’s often difficult to remember that the linchpin foundation of all your efforts whether they are social media or SEO based have everything to do with making sure you have good content. Now while it’s possible to put together a Facebook page that might even include a video channel to add and organize YouTube video content, all these tentacles don’t mean a thing if they lead back to poorly written text.

In other words you can’t forget to write good content and that means you need to understand the differences between the kind of online writing that works well and  the stuff that’s come before it.  Here’s a few rules for you to consider to write the kind of content that sparkles and turns visitors to your website into paying customers.

First of all it’s important for you to forget about old school hard-sell techniques. The writing that does the best on the Internet is of the conversational nature. If people think they are being talked down to or manipulated in some way to buy goods and services  you have for sale, it doesn’t matter in the end whether you’ve found an excellent photo showcase application that you can use with your Facebook page.

It’s also a good idea if you remember that good content follows the 8 minute rule. Empirical evidence is clearly shown people have a problem focusing on any one topic for more than 8 minutes.  Whether you’re writing a webpage or something for mobile content uses, you need to keep this limitation in mind if you want to keep visitors following along at your website or mobile app.

It’s important to go back and edit what you’ve written and write more than one draft before you put it live on the Internet. If you’ve got the time, it’s a really good idea to leave the draft of the homepage sitting for a couple hours or even a day or two before you return to it.  Just a little distance gives you the opportunity to see things you might have otherwise missed

Now that there are so many different avenues for you to get the word out about your goods and services on the Internet, it’s essential that you take the time to write good content not only so you won’t draw the wrath of the search engines, but so you can convert visitors to sales and build a reputation as an experienced professional in your field.

The post penguin period has been a disaster (to most). Many sites are brought down in rank. Webmasters and Internet Marketers are thrown into dilemma. Link building techniques are now pondered. The importance and rightful SEO techniques are now questioned. The whole picture of ranking over Google is scrambled.

So how do we counteract? We do not. We shall play with Penguin. At present, the Penguin update looks forth for Domain Authorities. Domains that have the highest authority rank better. Domains like yahoo, blogspot, tumblr etc are ranking highest. Gain links through these domains and you are all set.

Facebook pages and Yahoo answers are adhered to Google’s first page. Pages from Facebook and Yahoo rarely have external incoming links. Even if they do have, it is a ‘nofollow’.

Let me show an example. I wanted my site to rank for ‘forex no deposit bonus 2012’. Hence did a search over Google for competitors.

Here is what I found in the third place:

At the third place is a Facebook page. The next question: How many incoming links it has? None.

At the fifth position is a blogspot domain.

Below is the screenshot:

This too has no backlinks.

What should you do?

Open pages over Social Medias and other domains with authorities. Run your business through it. Include the keyword in the title for better ranking. The other way is to gain more links from individual domains. Do not focus to get several links from a single domain. Of course, this is tedious work but will pay off later. In fact, your effort will be less, as you will rank higher with lesser links.

How much of anchor text is too much?

In your basic SEO, it is taught not to gain several links for the same anchor text. Yet, we do not know ‘How much is too much’. However, many sites still rank better with focused anchor texts. Do a search for ‘forex bonus’. The first result will be an ‘Exact Domain Match’ (EDM) (fig 3). It has 3896 links. Every link has the anchor text as ‘forex bonus’ (except for one or two). Several incoming links are from a single domain. So what does it say? Well, with this example it is evident that you can focus on the same anchor text (at least up to 3000).

The above examples are just a minor research done from my side. In case you have something to share please let me know in the comment.

This guest post was written by Richie Richardson, who is an Internet Marketer. Recently he launched a forex site wherein he writes about forex no deposit bonus 2012 and other forex bonus in general.

How do you improve search engine ranking?  

I came across Ping.fm a few months ago and I’ve fallen in love with it.

It’s a great social bookmarking and pinging tools. It’s so easy to use and can provide your blog with the edge to rank better.

The first time I pinged my post with the tool, Google spider immediately crawled and indexed my article and within 24 hours, it was on Google first page. Wow!

Disclaimer: the keyword I was targeting wasn’t competitive at all. It had 230 searches locally according to Google and the competing webpages were 740 when searched with quotes (“ ”).

Bear in mind that ranking on Google first page takes time and you need to build quality links.

Writing isn’t enough

Publishing a new post is the first stage. You don’t have to stop there. It’s called “article marketing” not article writing. So, the marketing aspect has to come in. Google and other search engine spiders could miss-out on new posts, especially when your blog is new and has little or no external links.

Marketing effectively can take your blog to the next level. You’ve to have the guts to go out there and get fresh readers, external links and the right resource to engage readers.

But how do you do that?

Ping your new posts with Ping.fm

When you ping a new post, it’ll notify all major search engine spiders that a new and quality post has been published. The spiders would in turn visit the blog, read through the pages to determine what topic you’re addressing.

They need the right placement of keywords and how cute your content is. With ping.fm, you can syndicate your post across 10s of social media networks like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Digg, Simply, Google bookmarks and so on.

When you register with this network, you’ll be given the opportunity to share your best and unique posts – and it’s 100% free.

Use anchor links to beef up

Let’s assume you’re reviewing htc phones on your tech blog. When you want to ping to social media networks and web 2.0 sites, hyperlink htc phones and link it to either the product page. Using anchor to syndicate your new post can make a great difference.

You’ve to do it discreetly especially now that Google is releasing Panda and Penguin to penalize over-optimized blogs.

Write Helpful Contents Always

Ping.fm can work effectively if the contents you’re syndicating are helpful and valuable to the end user. It’s not enough to write crappy posts and expect Google spider to pick it up. Research extensively. Study the various aspects of your business to ensure you know the topic before writing.

Those who produce exceptional contents will benefit from organic traffic in the long-run. Even as Google frequently updates their ranking algorithm, you need to position your blog for better and legit ranking. Don’t use tricks or go through the backdoor.

If you’re a tech blogger, the android tablet is a hot market right now, and when you syndicate latest review and articles with ping.fm, you would’ve better chances of ranking well. But pinging works both in the midstream and downstream niches – take action on this.

Get started with Ping.fm today and share your experience. See you at the top!

Google is doing it again. Making sure content is king. In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a slow but steady sea change in the attitude of the internets content gatekeepers. The change will affect how everyone approaches doing business on the web.

The shift may, as one writer suggested, define the next incarnation of the web. The wide-open, everyone is welcome structure of Web 2.0, is shifting back to a form that emphasizes quality and accuracy. And it can’t happen too soon. Especially when you consider the proliferation of keyword-stuffed junk that often passes for “content.”

Underscoring this shift is Google’s latest search algorithm update, which has caught the attention of web masters and designers. Dubbed Panda, the new search algorithm was rolled out last year and an update was announced at the end of March.

When originally announced, the update was specifically aimed at reducing rankings for low-quality sites and boost rankings for those of higher quality. So what constitutes a high-quality site? For quality content creators, this wasn’t rocket science. Google defined these sites as having “original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.” Something most of us knew all along.

In defending what seemed to many to require no defense, Google said, “Google depends on the high-quality content created by wonderful websites around the world, and we do have a responsibility to encourage a healthy web ecosystem. Therefore, it is important for high-quality sites to be rewarded, and that’s exactly what this change does.”

Google is always updating its algorithms and changing things, which keeps web specialists busy keeping up—and content creators on their best behavior.

Website managers and marketing experts say the changes to Google Panda are more significant and place renewed emphasis on building better sites. The initial response has been to beef up content and to build better links. Google is even helping developers with a number of tips for building better websites to achieve better search results.

Here’s a sampling:

• Include a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.

• Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.

• Offer a site map and make sure the links point to important parts of the site. If the site map has too many links, break the site map into multiple pages.

• Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number.

• Make sure your site includes the words users would type to find your pages.

• Use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. The Google crawler doesn’t recognize text contained in images.

• Make sure that your <title> elements and ALT attributes are descriptive and accurate.

• Check for broken links and correct HTML.

• If you use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a “?” character), know that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages.

• While content has always been king, good content rules. So it’s no surprise that Google’s is increasingly focusing on bringing better quality to websites. As those who engage in print have long known, quality trumps quantity.

Tony Dokoupil’s recent article in The Daily Beast highlights the shift toward higher quality on the web, not the least of which is the increased use of experts to generate, edit and manage content on websites.

The return to expert-moderated web content will also influence how website experts, marketers and users approach the internet. Designers and creators will be focused on improving quality, and users will increasingly rely on search engines to return the best content for their searches. It’s a win-win for both quality content creators and those who seek it.

This guest post was written by Mike Sobol, who is Co-Founder and COO at GuestBlogGenius.com. A prolific writer, he’s always providing search marketers with cutting edge insights about white hat link building, guest blogging, and seo tips and tactics in general.

A few days ago on Blogging Tips, Zac Johnson wrote about the importance of Adding a Forum and Community to Your Blog. If you are wondering why you should do this, be sure to read his post before trying out one of these tools. Not only does he explain the benefits, but he also tells you when the best time is to start a community on your blog.

Today, I’m going to go over 5 free tools that can help you achieve the goal of having a blog community. These tools integrate smoothly into any WordPress blog and are sure to help bring more traffic to your blog as well as increase readers and user engagement.

BlogFrog

BlogFrog adds a mini community to your blog complete with a forum, profiles, photo sharing, live chats, broadcasts, and much more. They also make it easy to integrate your forum with your blog via embeddable conversations. I recently recommended this tool to a good friend and she’s really happy with it so far.

A live BlogFrog community at YourLifeAfter25.com

Although you’ll actually create your own BlogFrog community, they give you an embed code to add to your blog. You can add widgets and even monetize your community thru BlogFrom (they offer a generous CPM by the way). Members can create an account or use their Facebook account to join.

BuddyPress

If BlogFrog isn’t enough and you’re looking for a bigger community, BuddyPress is definitely the best options. It’s a WordPress plugin that turns your blog into a social network with too many features to name.

Tasty Kitchen's BuddyPress powered community

Some of the top features are: activity streams, user groups, multi-site blogging, extended profiles, discussion forums, private messaging, and much more. BuddyPress even has its own plugins and themes that you can use to add even more features and customizations.

Mingle Forum

Mingle Forum is a WordPress plugin that adds a forum to your blog. It’s lightweight, secure, easy-to-use and quick to setup. Their mission is to “keep it simple” and that they do very well.

Cartpauj & iComNow shows a Mingle forum in action

If you’re looking for another social networking option, Mingle also has a plugin for that called WP Mingle. It’s not as flashy as BlogFrog or BuddyPress, but it has a nice set of features including: user profiles, pretty profile URLs, friend activity, email notifications, Twitter-Like user tagging and private messaging. However, to get the forum feature you’ll need the additional Mingle forum plugin.

Tal.ki Embeddable Forums

As the name suggests, Tal.ki lets you embed forums into your WordPress blog via a plugin. It features: customizable CSS, private and public forums, email notifications for users, an announcement feature, the ability to lock topics, image and video embedding, and more. Users can also login via Facebook, Twitter, Google and more.

Another embeddable forum option is Vanilla Forums. “Vanilla allows you to create a customized community that rewards positive participation, automatically curates content and lets members drive moderation.” It also has a feature that lets you add forum widgets to your blog to help integrate the two.

Simple:Press

If you’re looking for something that’s really simple to to use and easy to setup, Simple:Press is for you. It’s the forum plugin for WordPress. It’s lighweight, fast, and has its own themes and templates that can be used to customize it further.

A look at the Simple:Press support forum

Some of its features include: forum ranks and badges, forum statistics, custom icons for groups and forums, RSS feeds for forum and topics, email notifications, blog integration features, SEO support, security features, and much more. Even though it’s called “Simple” it sure does have tons of amazing features.

With these 5 free tools, you have many options to choose from. So, which one do you prefer?

Do you already have a forum or community on your blog? If so, which tool are you using?

(Image Source)

No matter what type of business or service you are running, you need to adapt with the times. Even local doctors, dentists and all other medical practices will quickly fall behind if they do not implement internet technology and web sites into their business model. The truth is, more and more people are looking online to find reviews and information about visiting a doctor or professional before actually making an appointment. If local businesses in your area don’t have a web site, they aren’t getting ranked and providing the customers with what they want… which also means they are losing out on a lot of business.

With the massive rise in local marketing and web sites, this leaves huge room for opportunity. Not only for the local businesses in your area, but also for designers and marketers as well. Officite is well established web site creation and hosting service that have spent a lot of time in the local medical markets and specialize in building web sites for companies who have yet to adapt with the changing times. It’s not just about getting a web site created, it’s also about building a quality service, getting ranked in the “local results”, building a web site that caters to your customers and continually works for you by delivering new customers day after day.

An excellent way to understand how local marketing and site creation works, be sure to watch the short video below.

In addition to watching the video below, there is also a great deal of useful information that can be found on the Officite blog. With several new peices of content being added weekly, there is definitely something for you to learn from. A few of their top articles are listed below.

• Are You Losing Clicks to Competitors? 
• 3 Easy Tips for Improving Your Facebook Presence
• How to Tackle Negative Online Reviews
• The Evolution of Medical Websites

There are two ways to look at all of the information and services that you have at hand here.

1. Local Business – If you are a local business or medical related company, you can hire Officite to create a full service web site for your business.
2. Online Marketer – Even if you have nothing to do with a local business or in the medical field, you can still put all of this information to use to better improve your web sites and ad campaigns, especially if you are already working in a local niche market.

No matter the size, niche or current status of your business or local advertising, be sure to check out the Officite web site and contact them to see how they can improve your current business model and local advertising.

10 tips for attracting relevant, high ranking inbound links

I learned that search Engine Optimization (SEO) link building is a vital element to the success of a business blog working for a firm that specializes in Search Engine Optimization. However, if you’re new to blogging and the world of SEO, you might be just learning how important inbound links (those coming from other relevant or expert sites within your industry) are for improving your page rank and your ability to be found organically in the search engines, like Google.

Here are 10 valuable tips and rules you should remember and follow as you start building links for your business blog:

1. Target quality inbound links

And by that I mean relevant sites with high page ranks. Concentrate on those over sites that don’t have any relevancy to yours as well as those with low Google page ranking.

2. Try to attract links for sites that are viewed as “expert sites”

This means they have a good reputation, i.e., a link from newyorktimes.com has a higher value compared to a link from your local community newspaper’s site. The same goes for .gov and .edu sites—these are considered of higher weight than .com and .org links.

3. Placement of inbound links

The location of your inbound links is as important as the expertise and relevancy they carry. For example, inbound links placed on your blog homepage have more authority than those embedded further in. This is also true of placement of links on the actual page, i.e., inbound links embedded at the top of the page (above the fold) carry more weight than those placed at the bottom.

4. Link concentration

Or link density also makes a difference—i.e., a link surrounded by two other links on the same page carries more weight than one surrounded by 10 other links on the same page.

5. Relevant anchor text

Does the anchor text used in your inbound link contain keywords relevant to your blog? For instance, if your blog is a baseball hobby blog, relevant anchor text could be “major league baseball statistics”.

6. Keep the type of inbound links varied

By type I mean the type of sites your inbound links are coming from—it should be a mix of other relevant blogs, article resources, directories, websites, and etc.

7. Mix new and old

Concentrate on a blend of links from newer sites and older, trusted sites and blogs as well.

8. Build links over time

The search engines might actually suspect and penalize your blog if you build too many links too quickly in a short period time—instead build links gradually over the long term.

9. Build quality content around your links

Create useful, relevant, and unique content and you will have other authority websites wishing to link to your blog. Remember, content writing and SEO link building go hand-in-hand.

10. Submit your blog to directories

To start, submit your blog to directory submissions—i.e., Google Webmaster Central, DMOZ and Yahoo—and you will attract links.

This guest post was written by Caeden M MacGregor, who is a staff writer for SEO in Vancouver who specializes in blogging on viral marketing, social media, and internet marketing tips and techniques. Caeden has written for numerous blogs in a variety of fields ranging from software to fitness, and from gourmet food to travel.

Recently I switched to Bing in an attempt to show support for the underdog (not often Microsoft gets to be called an underdog!) and to try and encourage a bit of competition among search engines. This would be a very good development for webmasters and bloggers as it would mean that we no longer had to do precisely what Google said – and it would mean that no longer were we completely susceptible to any changes to Google which currently could completely ruin our business.

Trying Bing

So I moved over to Bing to try and practice what I preach, but the only small problem was this – it doesn’t really seem to be much good. Constantly I find myself searching for Google so that I can get the result I want. I recently searched ‘best SEO blogs’ and the top result wasn’t a countdown of the top blogs – the first of those was number three.

Similarly I was looking for the second post credit scene on the Avengers to find out what happened. I got some news telling me that there was a post credits scene, I got some links to dead videos, and even a link to the post credits scene from Thor. Not really what I was looking for…

Yesterday too I remember searching for pictures of Cheryl Cole in her new photoshoot in GQ (don’t judge). Unfortunately despite the magazine coming out about 3 weeks ago those pictures were on Bing yet, and actually half the results weren’t even Cheryl Cole – odd considering how many of her there are out there.

And another instance I remember was searching for Android code. In brief I wanted to know how to convert a ‘float’ into a ‘long’ – i.e. I had a variable with decimal places and I wanted to use it as coordinates on the screen meaning I needed to first round it up and convert it to another type of variable. Some other searches I tried failed to even recognize that this was a coding problem and instead just told me about how to get more from my phone. Argh.

Sadly I was unable to get the results I wanted – I got information on what a Long was, and what a Float was. Other results told me about floats in c++ and I also got videos about Android phones and decimals. Nice.

Features

Meanwhile when I search for videos I get a link most commonly to YouTube videos. Only I then have to watch the video using an annoying little window thing because of course Bing doesn’t want to send me to Google-owned YouTube when it could be keeping me on its page.

And another reason I miss Google already is the recently implemented Authorship schemas and the way they integrate with Google Plus. Yes when I am looking for one of my own articles on Google I now get the satisfaction of getting to look at a little picture of myself with a list of my articles underneath. I’ve got to be honest, that’s a pretty cool feature for webmasters and it’s one I would kind of like back.

Sorry Google…

What this has shown me then is that while I might be a little annoyed at some of the changes Google has made to its SEO, and while my sites have in some cases suffered, ultimately they are still the best and these changes are still good news.

Partly I guess it’s the more semantic search Google is now using – while the top result when searching for how to convert a float to a long is still the same as on Bing, the third, fourth and fifth are all from Stack Overflow and they answer my question in a variety of ways. Google seems to intuit what I want and match me with it.

So no I’m not going to stop moaning about Google, but I guess I’ m not going to stop using it either… Do better Microsoft!

This guest post was written by Tom Koh, who is avid blogger and usually writes article related to seo/sem and web designing. He believes best way to get traffic to website is doing proper seo optimization and quality posts.

There’s a new and exciting way to share updates, photos and videos with your friends online while also connecting with all of the major social networks. Staree was launched today and the goal behind the site is to make it more fun and profitable to share your favorite pictures and updates with your friends. Today the site has officially moved out of their beta launch and are now accepting members from all social platforms. The better your rankings and following in Twitter, Facebook and Klout, the more likely you are to be accepted and setup with a profile page.

Staree allows users to post photos and videos from their mobile device or desktop, and share them with friends through Facebook and Twitter. Users make money from display advertising targeted to their content and product placement in photos and videos.

What’s exciting about Staree is that it brings the worlds of social networking and celebrities together. Staree is brought to you by Izea, which is the same company that runs SponsoredTweets and is already working with mega A list celebrities, and bringing them over to Staree won’t be an issue at all.

In their official press release, Staree talks about the many celebrities who are already using their site and how it will continue to rapidly grow over the next several weeks, months and years.

Starting today, Staree is available to everyone: From Hollywood A-listers to everyday people. The hottest celebrities like Kendall Schmidt and Logan Henderson are already using Staree to take their social media presence to the next level. Kendall got his start on hit shows like “Frasier” and “ER” and is currently starring on “Big Time Rush.” His co-star Logan found his passion for acting after appearing on “Friday Night Lights.”

You can see a screenshot of Franke Muniz’s profile page on Staree below. As you can see, Staree makes it easy for you to ask celebrities and members questions, follow them through Twitter and Facebook, and also makes it easy for you to leave comments on all of their latest updates.

As a user of Staree you will also have all of these same benefits. Once setup, you can download the mobile app and start sending updates, photos and videos right to your profile page from your phone. You will also earn money in the process, as Staree is rewarding their users with ad placement compensation. Another great feature is that you can copyright all of your original photos that you are publishing to your page.

Staree.com is just kicking off, but it’s definitely worth taking a look into and joining today.

Every blogger uses effective plugins in his/her site. Normally, after successfully installing the WordPress script, the confusion (choice of plugins) sets in. Visiting WordPress.org today and hitting Plugins will show you 19,368 Plugins and 298,881,751 Downloads (and counting). So whether you’re a newcomer or have been blogging for some time now, you can still get overwhelmed especially on those cool plugins.

I hope you’ll find these Top 10 WordPress plugins helpful in one form or another. After all, they have been keeping their promises of remarkable wonders on my sites since installing them.

1. Akismet  – this is a built-in plugin and all you have to do is activate it. For first timers, you just have to acquire your Akismet key once and place it in all of your blogs. Once installed successfully, it’ll catch spam comments for you. I could have hundreds of comments right now, but since I deleted them permanently, some posts have none. But it’s better to have zero than a hundred of spam comments.

2. WordPress SEO by Yoast – Sometimes I use All In One SEO Pack, sometimes I use Yoast. But since I’ve generated some page 1 organic results on some keywords with this, I’ve been using this more lately. Its Page Analysis will check your post if it’s ready or not.

3. Maintenance Mode – With 664,985 downloads as of today, this WordPress plugin is simply my choice. Just set the time and activate. This is especially useful if you’re working on your blog, waiting for some outsourced graphics, editing some posts here and there. You can call it “On Maintenance” or “Under Construction” and your visitors will see “be back on July 4, 2012 12:00AM” or something like that. That’s what I did in my Filblogger.com to buy me some time.

4. WP Super Cache -This plugin generates static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog. This will make your site load faster and uses less bandwidth in server. If you are installing a number of plugins, then you should have this.

5. Google XML sitemaps – This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com to better index your blog. Just be cautious though if you want to hide some particular pages as they may just be exposed.

6. Really simple Facebook Twitter share buttons – Its simplicity attracted me the most. You can choose which of the social media buttons (LinkedIn, Stumbleupon, Reddit, among others) to include or not. To make it simple, I have checked only Twitter, Facebook, Digg, PinIt and Google Plus to be displayed above my posts.

7. .html on Pages – this appends .html to the URL of PAGES when using permalinks.

8. Fast Secure Contact Form – this contact form lets your visitors send you a quick E-mail message. This is customizable with a multi-form feature, optional extra fields, and an option to redirect visitors to any URL after the message is sent. This Includes CAPTCHA and Akismet support to block all common spam tactics. Spam problems are out of issue. I alternately use this plugin as well as the Contact Form 7.

9. Pretty Link Lite – this is a great plugin for people who want to cloak their affiliate links. It generally increases the reach of their website by spreading these links on forums or comments on other blogs. Pretty Link tracks each hit on your URL and provides a full, detailed report of where the hit came from.

10. CommentLuv -This plugin will reward your readers by automatically placing a link to their last blog post at the end of their comment. It has been found to increase comments and the community spirit for the thousands of blogs that have installed it.

I could have named this as Top 20 WordPress Plugins since I have a few more sets of functional WordPress plugins, but to save some space, let’s just be contented with Top 10 for now. I may have another set of 10 in my next post.

This guest post was written by Jojo Colinares, an Internet Marketer by dawn, telco executive by day and a happy family man by night. Article writer. Web designer. Chrisfarrellship creator. Coffee Lover.

Pinterest, a massive collection of online bulletin boards that display users’ handpicked favorites from all over the internet, has been taking the social media world by storm. The site’s users create virtual bulletin boards to display their favorite ideas and things by uploading their own images or linking to an image that is already posted online. Users can browse the never-ending flow of pinned ideas on the homepage and re-pin images and ideas that spark their interest. The more an image is pinned, the more it is seen by the Pinterest community.

As a blogger, this popular new form of exchanging ideas can be harnessed as both a promotional tool for your blog and as an additional way to reach your readers with your blog’s unique ideas. Whether you’re new to the blogosphere or already have a dedicated following, Pinterest can be highly beneficial for you and your readers. Consider these ways of putting the site to work for you:

1. Connect with others that share your same interests and might be potential followers of your blog. When you register for an account, you can select your personal areas of interest and subscribe to the boards of other users with similar interests. When you subscribe to someone’s board, they will receive a notification asking them if they would like to follow your boards back.

2. Organize related content from your blog in a visually appealing format to draw Pinterest users to your blog by creating boards to display your top product choices with images that link back to blog posts with extended explanations or reviews of the products. For example, if your blog deals with shopping, budgeting or finances, you might create a board that displays what you believe is the best credit card to apply for, or pin images of several cards so that your followers can easily compare business credit cards.

3. Place a Pinterest button on your blog to allow your followers to easily pin their favorite images from your blog to their boards and help you win new followers. Because of Pinterest’s visual nature, it is especially powerful for those who have fashion, craft, food or travel blogs with original photographs.

4. Recruit friends and followers to pin images from your blog to their boards. It doesn’t hurt to ask your loyal followers to help promote your blog by pinning you to their “favorite blog” boards. And, it never hurts to repay the favor by pinning a fellow blogger’s images to your own blog.

5. Glean new ideas from the boards you follow or happen across. Probably one of the best ways that you can put Pinterest to work for you is by combing the constant flow of new pins for inspiration that will allow you to make your blog posts more interesting, timely and relevant.

If you are a blogger whose serious about increasing their online visibility, get on Pinterest.  Not only is the social media platform an easy way to get your content out there, but is makes going viral incredibly easy.

This guest blog post was submitted by Amanda.

Finally, you can make money blogging.  

I’m glad to share my fail-proof strategies for building a profitable blog that can generate income from every angle.

If you don’t read this post, you may continue to struggle thinking that ‘favor’ or good fortunes will come your way one day.

Turning a blog to a money maker isn’t a guess work; it takes a goal – a plan – hard work.

And because I know how to turn a new blog into a money maker, I decided to launch a new blog, my latest passive income ideas blog is already striving, generating leads and bring trickles of income. It’s barely two month old.

How do you turn your blog into an instant money maker?

Well, if you’re reading this post with a get-rich-quick mindset, I’m sorry to disappoint you. I don’t have the answer to your question and I don’t recommend high yield investment programs. What I’ll lay out right here is proven to work for you. But you’ve to WORK HARD.

Everything you do with your blog might be a waste of time if you fail to do these two things. What are they?

• Collect leads and build relationship
• Create a product and sell

 1.    Collect Leads and Build Relationship

I once read an e-book from my good friend at Maxblogpress. It was after reading the e-book that my eyes were opened and when I put to work the tips and advice, things changed. I started making money, after 2 years of struggling as an affiliate marketer.

See, if you’re not collecting leads and building relationship on your blog, with your readers, you’re a “suicidal blogger!” – (unknown)

What does this mean?

It means you’re virtually wasting your time. It doesn’t matter if your blog is a day or 2 years old, from the outset, get a theme that encourages readers to subscribe to your email list.

And don’t overlap things, I’m not talking about RSS subscription, I mean real email subscription – either via aweber, getresponse or the one you like.

The bottom-line is to collect leads. If people like your contents, and respect you, then get them unto your premium email list, where they can receive exclusive information which you can’t share elsewhere. If someone decides to unsubscribe, it’s a good thing – you don’t need unserious people on your list, really!

The only way to make money from your blog is to build a tribe and the tribe is a group of people who like your blog, your voice and have decided to learn more.

Learning more goes beyond free reports or latest posts, it extends to paid e-books, membership access or anything that can put money into your pocket and provide VALUE. Stop sending visitors and readers to your homepage if you’ve no optin on the header, sidebar or via pop ups.

2.    Create a Product and Sell

This step is explanatory, don’t create a product to sell if you’ve no email list yet– it’s a waste of time and the struggle to sell it would be higher than the pain of creating it.

What some folks don’t know is that e-books, short reports of 7-15 pages sells like hot cakes online. If you know what you’re doing, you can develop over 5 different short reports in 12 months and use your blog to promote then.

A lot of bloggers make me sick. They’re not doing anything worthwhile to earn extra income. Unfortunately, they’re the ones who complain that blogging is hard work – they say it’s hard to make money via blogging. Off course, affiliate banners and ads are real hard work, why waste precious time reviewing affiliate programs when no reader trusts you.

We respect a lot of industry experts; Darren Rowse, Brian Clark, Pat Flynn, Yaro Starak and the owner of this blog, Zac Johnson. Guess what? All of them have one form of product or the other. I’m serious. You can contact them to verify if I’m telling you the truth.

They were able to succeed in marketing the e-books, short reports, software, plugins, themes, blog platforms, software and so on because, they had a tribe (a group of people who respect their opinion).

Start by collecting leads, then build strong relationship with readers by offering quality, in-depth and insightful contents and over time, discover the problems and needs your subscribers are facing. Ask them questions via newsletter or send a quick survey. Create a simple poll with surveymonkey.com

Then, go right ahead – invest time in creating a product to suit and solve the problem they face. Fix a fair price and sell the product. You can sell at discount to your subscribers before releasing to the market. This early bird sale would motivate subscribers to get in before the price goes up.

Over to you

What’s stopping you from making money online blogging? I don’t know you and maybe this is the first time you’re reading my article, but I’ve to tell you the truth. Get up!

Challenge yourself to transform your blog this year. You already know how to drive traffic with guest posting, press release, social media marketing, article marketing and most powerful search engine optimization (SEO).

Send the targeted traffic to your landing page and get them unto your email list.

These 2 simple strategies are what make blogging fun and profitable. Any other activity is secondary. Don’t be a suicidal blogger – get unto the fast track system today and start making money as a blogger. Leave a comment and to learn more about my income streams, click here.