Basic Beginner Blogging Lessons

The 10 Best Free SEO Tools For Blogging Beginners

2017-02-06T11:04:00.000-08:00

If you don't already know, I love free things. And, on top of that I love to research. And because of this, every one of my blogging for beginners readers are in for a treat today. Out of the kindness of my heart, I am going to give away some of my trade secrets. I have my 10 favorite free SEO tools, and I am going to give them to you in one big, fancy list. I like to call them The 10 Best, but they are my 10 favorite.

There are hundreds of SEO tools available on the internet. A lot of them are wonderful. But generally speaking, those wonderful tools are not cheap. They, in fact, could end up costing you a small fortune, especially for us beginners that are still trying to learn how to do this thing called blogging.

So, since we are not forking out dollar after dollar, in order to get a whole lot of data that, generally speaking, we won't understand anyway, these tools are going to be more than adequate for you. For you and me both.

Google free SEO tools are something I would always forget about. But we are talking about the search engine that decides where are blog should be ranked. Something tells me that they know what they are talking about and they are more than willing to provide us with tools that will help us succeed. I am going to include Google on this list a couple times, and figure I should let everyone know, it's not because I have some love or connection to Google, it just happens that they provide useful tools for free. And there UI is getting better. In the years past, their tools were hard to understand and even harder to use.

SEO tools:

#10 Google Webmaster Tools
Google Webmaster Tools is a must for any blogger who wants to improve their search engine friendliness. There is way too much for me to give a lesson on such a powerful SEO tool today, but, needless to say, this tool is nearly a must have. You will be able to force Google to crawl your web pages and report to you any errors it finds. Eliminating these errors can have a great impact on your blog’s location in the most powerful search engine in the world, not to mention improving your overall Search Engine Optimization. It is also not solely for Google properties, any of your blogs or websites can be added to your account, and I would recommend that all of them are added as soon as possible.
#9 SEO Quake Toolbar
The SEO quake toolbar is pretty awesome, to say the least. It is going to give you critical information to any website you visit. This means you can go snooping around any websites that are competing in your own niche. It is going to give you backlink quantities, pages indexed by google WhoIs data, robots.txt, Keyword density reports and a whole lot more information. You can install it as an extension for Chrome or Firefox. I am not sure about Microsoft’s browser, as I do not really ever use it.
It is an invaluable, free SEO tool. It is a must as far as I am concerned.

#8 Keywordtool.io
This tool is not a must have, it is along the lines of Google Keyword Planner. It is free, but offers a premium account which will offer up more information about keywords, things like search volume and cpc and competition will be blurred out with a free account, but even so, basically what Keywordtool.io is, is a keyword suggestion tool. You will enter your primary keyword and it will give you a list of related keywords and search terms you could use as well. I like it for its simplicity. Google’s Keyword Planner is a bit overwhelming for someone who doesn’t know what they are looking at or doing. This provides a simple way to do some basic keyword research, which, of course it critical in your SEO, and blogging endeavors.

#7 WooRank
WooRank is similar to Google Webmaster tools. But again, it is a little easier to navigate. You lose some of the functionality with the free version of WooRank, but there is enough information there for you to improve the inner workings of your blog. It will also give suggestions to make improvements, and it gives you a score you can work to improve upon. I use this as often as Google. It may be a comfort level, but in general, I find it more useful for me.

#6 lsigraph.com
Latent Semantic Indexing, if you don't know this term, I completely understand. You shouldn't ever have to know what that means! Actually, I'm kidding. It's actually a very important. LSI Keywords is actually what the term is that you will usually see. It is basically alternate keywords that will reaffirm your primary keyword in any particular blog post you write. There are often times, you may feel like you’re cramming the same keyword into places it just makes your articles cumbersome
#5 Google Keyword Planner
#4 Jaaxy
#3 Google Trends
#2 Screaming Frog
#1 Chrome Developer Tools

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5 General Blogging Tips for Beginners

2015-11-21T05:02:00.001-08:00

Blogging is, in general, an easy thing to do. At least the concept of blogging is easy. All you are really doing is writing about things you like. So, why does anyone really need blogging tips? Well, because removing an engine from a car is easy, but you cant lift it out with your hands. Learning to blog successfully is a process, it requires practice and understanding and it requires help. Tips for beginners are always useful, so I decided to offer you 5 basic blogging tips for beginners today, to help you get started.

I am, by no means an expert at the whole blogging thing, but I have worked at it and I have had highs and lows, so I understand what people new to the idea of blogging may be going through. Whether you are trying to make money with your blog, or you just want people to read what you are writing, the goal is very similar. You want traffic, you want that validation of doing it correctly, it's human nature. It's what I want, and I am perfectly comfortable with admitting that.

The problem is understanding what it is you need to do in order to be able to create a popular blog. I am hoping these tips will help shed some light on that.

The first step you take can be one of the most important steps you take. Deciding on a self hosted blog or a sub-domain, free site. There are some very important factors to consider on this point. Free blogs are great, but in general, will not see the same amount of traffic, they are harder to get rank in google, and they do not belong to you. But, on the upside, they are free. And that is a huge factor. I love, love, love free. And if you are just starting out, and you don't want to spend money on something that may or may not make you money, there is no good reason you shouldn't start with a free blog. Sites like Blogger and Wordpress are some of the Best Blogging Sites, when considering a free blog.

The second step actually just as important as the first. And that is your blog topic, or Niche. If your goal is to get traffic and to do it without extreme costs and time, you will need to do your Keyword Research! This is not fun, It's time consuming and usually disheartening. Write about anything you want, but as a beginner, you are going to want to have focus here. Your overall theme is not going to work anytime soon if you choose something like Health Insurance, That is way to general and there is way too much competition. But, maybe something like Low cost Health insurance policies in Michigan? It's just a thought, I actually did not check that and have no idea if it would be good or not. The point here is, you will want a theme that is based off a really strong keyword, but is a much more focused version of that. Personally, I like my themes or niches to have something like 5,000 unique visitors, and under 50k results in Google when I search with the "" around the Keyword.

After you have your site picked out and your niche, you will want to find a pile more of keywords that are all related to your niche, or theme. I would say you will want to find 30-50 to start out, and for each and every keyword, you will want to write a post around it. These keywords will be best if they have more than 50 unique visits a month and have less than 100 results in google.

Content: This is actually a very important tip. Please do not forget about your content. With your keywords you picked out, you are going to want to try to write a post every single day, At least every other day. You will want that content to be original, engaging, spelled correctly, include your keyword, and be more than 500 words! These are must have rules for a successful blog. Google loves good content.

Find a way to incorporate social media. This is something I have trouble with. I am not a huge fan of social media, but I am aware of the importance, Social media is king on the internet, and having a presence is very important. Even if you have no follower, or likes or anything of the sort. Give it time, and you will get some.

There you go, just like I promised, 5 General Blogging Tips for Beginners. I do hope you find them helpful. They are very general, but something I attempt to follow with every single one of my blogs.

Thank you for reading blogging for beginners.

Creating your Own Popular Blog

2014-04-14T10:03:00.000-07:00

There was a time when I would advocate forced popularity of your blog. I believed you couldn't achieve a popular blog by natural means. I was impatient. It is my nature to want immediate satisfaction. Your not generally going to get that when it comes to grass roots style blogging. In fact, many people will lose interest in their blog long before they find the popularity that they are looking for. It keeps the folks who spend money for success, at the top of the food chain. It makes others say it is impossible to rank well in search engines. It is what most people attribute to failures. And this is correct. This is why my point of view changed. I realized that if I insist on continuing in the fashion that I do, that I need to make sure what I say and how I say it are unique, well thought out and of my own doing. And also, I must practice what I preach.

I still believe that some assistance is needed in order to generate popularity in your blog. It is the nature of the beast. The internet is a large place, and without some announcement of some sort, all your work will go unnoticed. No matter how big, post wise, your blog becomes, it is just a drop in the bucket when compared to the internet as a whole. So with this knowledge, i will always do a few little things that will help your progress.

I believe that it is important to ping any new post you publish on your blog. There are a lot of different ping services. Pingoat is one of those sites. It is free to use. Please, do abuse it because it will be noticed. But a single ping to a specific post is perfectly acceptable. And will help surely. The point of this service is to help you be noticed by the search engines, pinging your link will make the crawlers aware of it. It does not mean you will immediately be listed in the search engine for the keywords you chose, but it will speed up the process.

Another thing I like to do is to make a companion article to the blog post with sites like Hubpages. There are other, very respectable article posting websites that will do the trick as well. I have been a hub member for a long time and find it to be the best one for my purposes. And use it regularly. A Hubpage or article that complements your blog post will offer another means to your blog. If you include a link. Of course a Follow link will be better for SERP purposes, but is not necessary in all cases. In fact, too many Follow links from the same location will look bad. And this should be used sparingly. Some people choose to use multiple article based websites to control this, but generally speaking, I prefer the approach of sparing usage. I am not going to write a complement article to every single blog post. Its often redundant and I would much rather use my material on my blog. Knowledge is not endless and at some point, you will run dry.

But the bottom line to your blogs' popularity, is going to be your writing on the blog, and your interactions on that blog. Writing posts that are unique and can grab a reader is going to be your bread and butter. And interacting to the comments you receive to that post is almost as important. It shows the readers that you don't just write it and forget it. This is YOUR information and your knowledge and you should own it afterwards, even if your opinions change. That is ok, because it is in our nature, to evolve our thinking, the more time we put towards it.

The point I am trying to make here is this. You cannot force something that just isn't there. You cant expect a blog, with 10, or 20 or 50 posts to support a huge upsurge in popularity. It is not part of the natural progression. It's like any other progression, you have to learn to make sounds before you can speak, you have to understand words before you can speak well. It is the same with your blog. And generating false popularity with other means, like link swapping and comment spamming is going to get you nowhere. It may, and this is a big may, generate you high levels of immediate traffic, but it will not be able to support that long term, and at some point you will be called out as a fraud, by your readers or by the search engines themselves and when this happens, its very difficult to recover from.

Real strength and a real following will be created if you do some of the minor things I have mentioned here. Pinging, and companion articles, maybe feed burning, and sometimes tweeting. The point is, don't be viewed as annoying. It is counter productive and it is hard not to do it. You do not want to be spam. Labels will stick long after you learn your lesson. The whole point to these things it to say, hey, I have something new! And nothing more. If you can pull this off, and if you can have true patience you will begin to build popularity.

In the grand scheme of things, this truly is the small fish approach. But this blog is about just what I call it, BLOGGING FOR BEGINNERS. I am not here writing to the individual that has hundreds of dollars to throw as specialist and writers to get their blog up to a level that can support a large following. I am writing to the individual that is trying to see if they can make a blog, make it successful and make a couple dollars off that success. This if for the people who have a certain knowledge set, and wants to share that with the world. And in a way, stroke their ego when their site becomes something that people look for and find. This is why I write here, and this is how I intend to make this blog popular in its own time. With no real investment but my time. And I believe this to be an important factor for anyone who wants to start a blog, but does not have the desire or ability to fund the project. Nothing is for certain, and time and patience is not the only thing that will guarantee a popular blog. But it is a good place to start. And it keeps your cost to a minimum if it still does not achieve the level of success you are searching for. I have never spent a cent on this blog, and I have no intentions to. I hope that you too will see that this is a viable method at achieving real and long lasting popularity.

Thank you for reading blogging for beginners. And come back soon!!

Welcome back to Blogging for Beginners

2014-04-11T07:58:00.001-07:00

I have held off from writing on Blogging for Beginners for a long time now. In fact, for almost two years I have not written a post here. It mostly was due to life getting the best of me. I have been busy and back a couple of years ago, Google made some drastic changes to the ranking system, which caused this blog to fall from graces. I assumed that they would shut it down, but I honestly had no understanding what it was that caused my blog's fall. It caused me to be disheartened, and i lost interest when i saw the income from the site to drop off.

It never completely stopped though. People still visited the site in the last couple of years, even though the traffic was not coming from the big G. And, I have reached a point in my life where I feel like it may be time to start up my writing again. I think it is important for people to know that they can use their writing abilities and their interests in ways that can bring them some small amounts of income.

This blog has done that for me for several years now, and I was feeling a little guilty that I had given up on it. So, I want to welcome myself back to the fold and to let all who have stumbled across this blog, that I am going to begin writing again. That we are going to talk about Keywords and Ad placement and linking. But something that I have learned more clearly over the last couple of years is that all that is secondary. That certain search engines still use those triggers to determine your blogs rankings, but that the big one, does not use the same cut and dry methods. Google looks at the strength of the links in different ways. Suspect sites with links to you will hurt you. I believe that may have been what happened to this blog. I was so hungry for more and more links, I believe I might have crossed a line.

I am hoping to fix some things. I am hoping that with efforts, my site will begin to rank with Google again. And I am hoping that my readers will come back.

I am going to start blog posting as soon as tomorrow, I hope. I am going to re-analyze keywords with you. I am going to talk about links and other sites that can effectively make you money online. All of which will be through some form of writing. Being that it is my favorite way.

Thank you for reading blogging for beginners, and I hope to hear from you all soon. I have missed writing here at my blogging blog :-) and will do my best to right my lapse.

Thank you.

How to Blog Successfully in an ever Changing World

2012-05-19T04:59:00.001-07:00

Blogging is easy. At least it is if you have any interest in writing. You don't need any other special skills really...... If you just want to blog.

Blogging successfully is a completely different beast all together. But, what does that really mean? The idea of being a successful blogger will differ between individuals. But, in general the essence of what makes a good blogger is the same. A successful blogger is one who is able to keep up with the times in his or her own demographic. One who stays a little ahead of everyone else, in order to produce fresh posts that are different from anyone else on the blog. A successful blogger understands that there is more to blogging than just writing an occasional post. In fact, that is just the tip of the iceberg.

What is blogging today? In previous times blogs were considered online journals of sorts. Things for anyone to read, where individuals waxed poetically about whatever it was that was on their mind. I guess blogs are still that. But they have become much, much more than just a journal. They have become a tool for many online entrepreneurs. A blog is a very versatile way to convey your goals on the internet. the format is easy to understand and the basic setups and costs are minimal. This allows almost anyone with a couple bucks to get themselves a blog up and running.

But, just because you are able to get a blog going does not make you a successful blogger. Blogging is a long term battle, one that requires a lot of hours typing away on your keyboard, and one that will almost never show instant gratification. So, not only do you need to have some writing ability, but you will also need a heaping pile of patience. (Not one of MY stronger suits) But patience and writing ability is not the extent of what you will need, oh no, not even close!

In many ways, blogging requires a multi-tasker. You have to be capable of understanding many different aspects of the process and implementing those. You have to be able to not only write, but you have to be able to write in a way that grabs your readers and compels them to return and read more. You have to not only be able to write compelling, but you have to be able to write in a way that gets your points across to the search engines. This means that occasionally you have to be able to naturally place keywords\ (not talking about stuffing or anything of that sort). And on top of that you have to remember what you have written in the past and be able to use properly anchored keyword back links in order to drive traffic to your older works. It is more than just writing words....A lot more.

But blogging is more than just the writing part. You have to be able to set up a blog. whether you are using something easy like a blogger blog, or something more involved like a Wordpress setup, it still requires you to understand some basics of setting up your own website, and you will need to understand what works and what doesn't.

On top of that, you will need a basic understanding of SEO. Or search engine optimization. You will have to learn basic backlinking, and you will need to understand keywords. You will need to know that your word count matters and that too many links out can be a bad thing.

The point is. Blogging is not one dimensional. You need to have a grasp on many aspects of the internet. And on top of all that, it will be an ever changing experience. Trends and tactics are always changing, they will affect you and you will have to conform to them. You will need to be able to change what you have been doing for months and maybe years, just to maintain yourself. It can be difficult and it can be frustrating, but if you get it done write, it can be highly rewarding.

Thank you for reading blogging for beginners. I hope you come back soon.

Are there really hidden Blogging Secrets?

2012-04-30T16:30:00.000-07:00

I am angry. A certain search engine has dropped off the radar with this blog. And I am finding it really hard to sit here and not say anything about it. I have been de-indexed or something for some reason or another and I have no clue what has happened. It made me wonder if I was missing some sort of big secret in the world of blogging.

I am not really sure about any big secrets. I am not sure about what happened to this blog, but I am going to plug on, this is going to be my 49th post on Blogging for Beginners and I am looking forward to hitting the Big 5-0.

To start this blog post, which really is about blogging secrets, I would like to do a little experiment. I would like you to use the big 'G' and search the term: How to make money blogging for beginners....

(See what I just did there? I got my point across and I added a well placed backlink)

I am not sure if you get the same results as I do, But my results show that the first three results are all connected to problogger. Hmmm..... Do you think HE has any secrets? I do, I think there may be quite a few secrets there.

What could those secrets be? Well, I am not going to throw dirt at someone like Darren Rowse. I do not know if there is questionable tactics involved in his SEO. In fact, at this point I am pretty confident that he has no need to do anything but occasionally write a post. Otherwise he can let guest bloggers and general writers really do all his work. And this brings me to what kind of secrets he may have used in order to create such a strong blog.

First off. Problogger is a very established blog. It has been up and running for over 7 years now. In terms of blogging years, it is a lifetime really. Only a select few will ever make it that long.

Which brings us to another secret. And that is dedication. I know, this is sounding like every other how to blog post ever written on the Internet when I start talking about dedication and hard work, but it is true. It is very easy to just expect to get views simply because you write an occasional post. I do it :). But at the same time I have a very good understanding of what to expect from my effort. I know I am not going to suddenly go viral and just blow up the Internet....I blog about blogging. Com'on, I accept my place. Doesn't mean that I am happy that I have been demoted by the big search engine....Sorry, I am bitter. I busted my ass to get this blog where it was, and to have it taken away unjustly has tweaked me.

Sorry for that, I am back, more secrets.

Do not get carried away with the idea of building links. I can not stress this little secret enough. Let your blog speak for itself. It is one thing to build a few back links to get things rolling, but keep things in perspective. If you spend more time trying to generate back links than you do working on your blog, you will be left with diminishing returns. Write good posts. Write posts that are fairly lengthy, add a back link here and there, but do not become obsessed, if it is good, your blog will get read, with time.

Spend some time making blogger friends in your market. Having people in your same niche you can talk to or follow or even occasionally write for is a huge tool to building a better blog. In many ways, it gives you competition, it gives you a person to bounce ideas off of, and it gives you a larger view as to what your readers like. having other people in your network will help you greatly.

The biggest thing I can tell beginner bloggers, is to keep things in perspective. Blogs do not blow up overnight anymore. The days when you could start a blog and have it on the first page in a week really is long gone. Unless you find a gem of a niche, you will have to work and write and write some more, and bide your time and watch and read what other people are writing and then go back and write some more and then you will want to do a little praying if you are in to that of course, and then you will want to go back and read all you have written, get a couple new ideas and write some more.

Its the bottom line, to be a blogger is to be a writer. A writer that has to be dedicated to writing on a almost psychotic level. Good luck to all out there. And thank you for reading blogging for beginners.

Big Heads don't Belong Here

2012-04-26T17:33:00.000-07:00

Blogging for beginners has been around for some time now. It is well aged, so to say, and I have to admit, I was beginning to just assume that the blog was going to carry itself. I figured I was never going to take the local "problogger" out of the top spot and was very satisfied that Blogging for beginners was sitting quite comfortably at number 4, and had sat there for some time.

In a way I had myself a bit of a enlarged head. I figured I would just leave the blog alone and move on to other projects. Well..... I have been proven to be incorrect. Somewhere along the line, Google decided that Blogging for Beginners no longer deserved the position it held for almost two years, and I see now that my work is never done.

This, as a blogger is nothing new to experience. Blogging, by nature is a never ending process. That is what make blogging such a unique venue for people who want to spread their opinion to the masses.

So, what am I really saying here?

I am saying that I made a mistake. As a blogger who has always taken a bit of pride in his overall understanding of the blogging process, I have failed in a way. And I apologize.

I will never be a teacher who will tell his students that they need to post as often as possible, once a day, four times a week, I really do not believe that the frequency of your posts are as important as the quality of the posts. I do believe that you really should not go more than a couple months between posts. But I I will not tell you that you need to post so frequently that your quality comes into question. In fact, before this post, I was a believer that you really did not need to post at all once you have established a position with the search engines. Come to find out, I was just proven wrong. It did take a long time. But I have finally been proven wrong.

So, what does this mean for blogging for beginners? Oh, I am fairly confident that with a little work it will be right back there. I am pretty sure that this blog if sound, and it only needs a little freshening up. But for all you bloggers who are just learning your trade, remember, that after you put all your time and effort into your blog, and you finally see your blog achieve first page in the SERPS, do not stop. You have to continue to provide useful and informative posts that readers like. And you need to keep the search engines happy with continually updating your blog.

Do not assume that you are above scrutiny from your readers and the search engines. Because that's never really the case. The one thing I have to stress, is, the internet is an ever changing landscape and in order to maintain a position withing the HUGE world we call the World Wide Web, you need to consistently be putting forth the effort.

Take it from me here at Blogging for Beginners, Don't get an inflated ego. Don't assume.

Thank you for reading my post.

Are we Making Money on Blogspot?

2011-11-16T08:53:00.001-08:00

I am speaking specifically about Blogspot here, not talking about making money with blogging in general. I am talking about "making money with Blogspot". And I am here to tell you I do make money with Blogspot. Not getting rich from it of course. But comparatively speaking, Blogspot is my biggest earner on the internet. That is not with one single blog, I have, oh, more than four but less than ten Blogspot blogs. With no overhead, anything made is pure profit, and Blogspot is geared toward the entrepreneur. The platform is very strongly driven to help its users earn money online. In the process, Blogspot, or Google makes money themselves, well, sometimes they do.

They don't force you to use Adsense, While I am sure they like you to. But you could implement different advertisers or Amazon, in order to refine your earnings dependant on your site. I have a few different advertisers that I use, but whether you choose Adsense or any other advertiser, you have every opportunity to make money with Blogspot.

The real important part about making money with Blogspot, is traffic. And this is no different than with any other site out there in the world. Or any other business for that matter. Traffic will always offer the chance for income. And Blogspot is no different. It is far and away the best free blog platform for anyone interested in the blogging for dollars industry.

And who can really complain with making money with a completely free blog service that is one of the strongest blog presence on the internet. While you do have to follow and conform to the Blogspot TOS, the rules and regulations are reasonable compared to others (wordpress) that will remain nameless at this time.

I do use that other site, but with the understanding that it will not directly make any money for me. I would use it for link building purposes, along with micro-niching and traffic generation. Dang. Rambling again.

Here's the deal. Blogspot can and will earn you money if you want it. But it is much more involved then just placing ads on a blog that you write in your spare time. You have to have a focused determination and you have to work tirelessly with adjusting your ads, and adding new and fresh content. And you are and will always deal with the fact that it is a free platform. And there is a weakness in using a free platform to generate consistent traffic. There is perception. Many people who see that your blog is a free blogspot platform and have been around and searching the web for a while know that it is common to see abandoned blogs, especially if they are free. There is no financial tie to that blog, and there is no feeling of obligation for the owner to continuously work on that blog. It can make people feel that the information on the blog can be old and stagnant. And it really is an issue.

People will regularly overlook your blog just because it is a Blogspot blog. This means that you can not relentlessly focus on one keyword. your traffic will be severely hampered by that. It means that every single post you write needs to be considered as another portal for readers to find you and every single post you write, you should want to rank in the top five on Google. It is hard and daunting work for very competitive markets. This is the rub.

So, while you can make money on Blogspot, you will be doing it with a lot of effort. Probably more effort that would be required if you bought your own domain and wrote a blog that appeared to be authoritative in your particular market. But, it can be done. I am living proof. And although I will not disclose how much I make using Blogspot, you should realize, that it is enough for me to continue using the platform. And I have no intention on leaving anytime soon.

Thank you for reading blogging for beginners

Blogging for beginners, please help me name my blog!

2011-11-10T10:28:00.001-08:00

Okay, okay. If you really want to know this, I will teach you in the ways of developing a name for your blog. I cannot outright give your blog a name, I don't want that kind of responsibility, if your name fails you, I do not want to be held responsible. But, I can help you understand, I can give you some of the principals I use to name my blogs. It is really nothing so fantastical, it will just take some knowledge and study.

This is a beginner blogging tip. It may seem inconsequential, but it has value. Your blog name offers a key location to creatively pack as many keywords into a single phrase as possible without being grammatically correct. All you need for it, is to sound catchy or make it easy to remember.

Of course, for some out there, you can take the easy approach and use your name as your blog name. Problem with this is it really does nothing for you in the search engines, unless you happen to have some good name recognition, and more than likely, if you are hear, learning how to blog, you do not have that yet. So, that brings us back to the real process of giving your blog a name.

What I mean is this. Depending on your blog topic idea, you will most likely have 3-5 primary keywords that you intend will generate the bulk of your search engine traffic. These keywords and the traffic they will drive are directly related to your blog topic idea, and the amount of effort you put forth to ranking well in search engines. So, here, we are not going to talk about actual traffic numbers. only that you should have your set of primary keywords already established before you name your blog. If you ahave not yet figured your keywords out you may want to check out this post. Understanding Keywords and Phrases.

Anyway, this process of building your blog name is aplicable to any size of the blog you intend to create. Whether you are expecting one visit a day or ten thousand visits a day, you will determine your blog name by the same process.

Now, look at your list of keywords. Find the primary "action" words within that list. And try to use as many of them in your title. And if you can pepper in some of the lesser important words as well. Using filler words to make sense out of the new blog name. The goal here is for the search engine to place you in as many of the search queries as possible through the name of the blog alone. Don't get too carried away, the name is not a short story within itself, you will have the chance to give a brief overview of your blog in most blog platforms that you use. But, make sure you use as many as reasonably possible, and if the same word appears in all of your primary keywords, you really only need to use it once.

That is pretty much the trick. It may be easier than it appears by my poor excuse for an explanation, so, lets make an example. This is an example I use for many things because I have no intention on using this for a blog of my own any time in the near future. Lets use fishing. Lest say you want to start a blog about fishing. So lets begin how I would begin.

I open googles adword keyword tool. and type "fishing" in the word or phrase box. And I would click the only show ideas closely related to my search terms.

You will learn a few things about the keyword fishing.
1.)It is searched over 9million times per month locally. (always use the local number as a point of reference)
2.)It has low competition, relative to the amount it is searched.
3.)But this is the important part, you are going to get a list of relative keywords below this one.

This is where you are going to refine your idea for your blog. You will want to find about 5 keywords below that will be your primary focus of your blog. You will most likely choose keywords that have less monthly searches, in fact I would recommend that you find a couple that are below two thousand monthly searches and have a low competition.

Here is what I have chosen.

1.)Fishing Buddy
Low competition
22,200 monthly searches

2.)Carp fishing tips
Low competition
1,000 monthly searches

3.)Take me fishing
Low competition
5,400 monthly searches

4.)Fly fishing tips
Low competition
4,400 monthly searches

Ok, so I ignored my suggestion here about picking a couple keywords with less than two thousand searches, but I instead looked at the words and how I would use them. I would stay away from keywords that incinuate that I am going to sell a product like fly fishing hats or free lures or anything like that, your competition is much more ruthless in those markets.

I also have Carp and Fly fishing listed, but I am not really sure if they are related in any way. This is for illustration only.

Now with my words let me see what I can come up with......

1.)Take me fishing, Buddy - Fly fishing tips from a average Joe

And as far as a URL, I would try to go with something like BuddyJoeFlyFishing.whatever

So, with this, I have three of my four keywords within my title. I think that is solid. Does this help you name your blog? Okay, there are some more steps involved in choosing keywords, but this is not an article about keyword research.

I am sure, that for anyone who needed help with their blog name that this will give you a fairly decent idea as to what is involved with naming your blog. I know that this blog does not follow those lessons, but I started this blog at a time before I really considered the importance of my blog title. I assumed I would be able to add on new keywords to the blog as I went, but I think I would have been better suited with a name that included more of my primary keywords.

Thank you for reading blogging for beginners.

Blogging Tips to make blogging easier

2011-10-25T09:00:00.000-07:00

Here at blogging for beginners, I have made it my point to bring my readers as many blogging tips as I can possibly think of.......

Okay, I lie sometimes also. I have a treasure chest of information that I continue to hold to myself. I have reasons. I have been saving the good stuff for the book. Yup, gonna be releasing a book. I still have a bit more writing to do, I am expecting it to be a rather lengthy thing, one that covers a lot of ground.So, until then, I figure I will give up some more of my blogging tips I use to make my job easier.

But, before that, I have to tell you, Do Not Use Automatic Backlink Generators for any of your blogs you care about! Let me elaborate, the backlink generators do create links. Depending on the service you find, there are many different types of backlinks they create. But from what I have found, they are junk links, search engines will not like them, and, at the bare minimum, they will look at them indifferently, and if they want, they can and will deindex your blog, for using spammy links. So, if you use these blackhat blogging tactics, you are taking a chance. Its better to play with these tools on properties that have less value than your blog. I just wanted to get that out there, I had said I would go back to the topic. But don't think its worth its own post. So on to the blogging tips to make your job easier. And these tips will be revolving around keywords and how they can help you find new blog topic ideas.

I use Googles adword keyword tool religiously. It is one of my favorite tools. And what makes this tool so valuable is the suggested keyword ideas the tool gives you when you enter a specific keyword. This is how you can find some new post topics. This is a great tip for those bloggers who are suffering from writers block. Topics that this tool will suggest are related to your primary keyword, or the keyword you enter in the space provided. And if you select the box that asks you to only show suggestions that are closely related to the keyword you entered, it will give you strong options for keywords that are related to your primary keyword.

So, in some of my previously written blog tips posts, I have talked about the different types of posts you can write on your blog. One of these is a pillar blog post. Which is a very large post with a lot of information and lots of words. Some of these pillar posts would be well suited to be keyword articles that are highly related to your primary keywords, or only slight derivatives of your primary keyword. An example would be something along these lines:
Primary keyword for your blog: River Fishing
Derivative of that: Fishing in rivers

This creates articles that can drive large amounts of traffic all on thier own to your blog. They should be keywords that are as popular as your primary keywords and that will give you the opportunity to highly increase your traffic. Of course you will still need to market this post in order to get it to rank well in the search engines. But the first step in the battle of adding a highly popular to your existing blog is to write a keyword rich pillar blog post.

So is this enough blogging tips for the day? I think not. I have more to give.

Now lets look at the less closely related keywords that the tool can give. If you type this new keyword into the Google tool, you will get a new set of suggested keywords, from this, you can choose another, fairly popular keyword, that is a more focused search term, say, saltwater river fishing. And from that, write another blog post on your blog, not the same day, maybe a few days later, and link back to that pillar post, using a properly anchored keyword backlink.

Now, from that secondary keyword, the saltwater river fishing, enter that into the adwords tool. What you are doing now is drilling down through your keywords. So, now from this list. Now with that list in hand, choose three or four keywords for new articles. These should be even lesser popular, but still be searched terms, and with these write articles. Now one or two of those articles as a new hub or lens. And link back two the pillar post and the secondary post that are your blog. Using, again, properly anchored keyword back links.
.
After you have that done take the last of your articles and submit them to article directories, adding backlinks to that article that point to the hub and/or lense.

Wow, did you get all that? The reason I would consider this a blogging tip that will make your job easier is, all these articles and posts will be related to a very similar topic. That means you will be in the mindset, and the writing will be much easier than sporatic writing about random topics.
Its a lot of writing but blogging is, by nature, a whole lot of writing. And this is just thr tip of the iceburg in blogging well.
Yeah, this blogging tip is not something that makes your job as a blogger simple, but it does make your job easier
Thank you for reading blogging for beginners. And again, look for my first book, coming soon.

Can blogging be a successful home business?

2011-10-04T09:20:00.000-07:00

Cents add up to a successful home business

It is a really good question to ask. Can I successfully blog to the end of a strong home business?

Personally, I have not yet succeeded. I have tried and tried. Probably not hard enough yet. And because of this, I continue.

Blogging is not always the easiest path to take, for sure. But, I have to believe the possibility of a successful business. I have to because I am so heavily involved.

I know, I seem to be all negative. It is by design. I am giving all the nay-sayers fuel for their fires. It is important to give everyone what they want, right? In fact, the less people that attempt to become a blogger is all the more space for me to succeed. I do like a little competition. But, there is plenty out there. So, no, blogging cannot be a successful home business.

Now that I've got that out there, and probably ran off about half my readers, lets us get down to business. So-to speak that is. I do believe in Blogging as a business. I do and I will find my own success with this business. With time. I see rewards now, and I am slowly, but surely building a place online.

You want to use blogging as a home business? What do you need to do then? How can you be successful? And how long is this going to take?

Here at blogging for beginners, I have covered a lot of issues. I have tried to teach all I can. About how to blog. And I have always done so, even though I know I am doing nothing but creating more competition. But there is a certain benefit that comes with competition. It requires you to work harder, write better, and focus. All good attributes for a successful business.

Truth is, you can create a home business from blogging, and truth is, it can even be successful. But truth is, you have about the same chance of success as you do in creating any personal, or home business. Its not a great rate of success. Blogging is by no means a slam dunk. You have a very large audience, but you have to be able to find ways to get that audience to find you. That is the tricky part.

The great thing about the internet and about blogging is, you can just keep adding to the pile. Every post you write, article you submit and backlink you create, can add value and income to your home business. So, in a way, its all about quantity. I may fail a little bit in the quantity area right now. I do a lot of writing but I still cannot say I have a successful home business in blogging.

But it is possible. There is a tried and true formula I follow and in doing so, I always generate more income every day. The increases are measured in cents instead of dollars though and that is what makes blogging so frustrating sometimes.

So, what is MY system? Well it is nothing so special. I do whatever I can think of to create my own web within the web to snare people. And in the process, I try to use revenue sharing sites to do that. Hubpages and Bukisa. Redgage, and yousaytoo, to name a few. Every single one of these sites offer some sort of revenue sharing, along with helping my link building. It is through these properties I am able to supplement my income and create a constant stream of money coming in. I do use sites like Ezine and GoArticles to, but more sparingly. In situations where I have trouble ranking for certain keywords.

Even though I fancy myself as not just a blogger, but a writer. All the writing required ca. Be wearing. I am constantly working on articles and stories and descriptions of stories, in order to create a larger presence on the internet. This is the key. You can try your hand at easy backlinks and backlink generators and the like, but you will find the results less than pleasing. And chances are your sites will not just grow in popularity on their own merit. People have to find you. And that requires your constant attention to detail.

If you start a Niche blog about a very specific topic, and even if your competition is nearly non-existant, you will nevertheless be required to make sure the search engines are aware of you if nothing else. And this too requires you to write and to build quality backlinks to your blog.

So, bottom line to my ranting for the day. If you have decided that you want to try to make blogging your home business, and if you want that home business to support you. It is going to require a lot of time and a lot of effort. If you have a product other than knowledge to sell, your efforts may produce better results. but for those of you who will base your income on ad revenue, be ready for a very long journey. You will need thousands of page hits and you will need to have hundreds of URL's that are all collecting income in order to find financial freedom. This is the truth, this is not me trying to scare people away anymore. This is cold hard reality. You cannot expect that just because you write and write and have a steady stream of readers, that you will find success. You have to expect that you will constantly need to build up your readership, find new places to grab your readers and find better topics to write about. All along, perfecting your own SEO and internet marketing techniques in order to generate the income stream you will need.

It will not be easy, it may not even always be fun. But, if you succeed, it can be one of the most rewarding things you ever do. To know that by sharing nothing more than knowledge, you can generate a worth while income and live happily. I personally cannot think of a better feeling of satisfaction.

So, read and read and learn all you can. read every single page here at blogging for beginners. And then search for more information and make educated and knowledgeable decisions and maybe, just maybe you can create your own successful home business.

A Blogging Beginners Guide: Automatic backlink generators...LOL

2011-09-22T11:39:00.000-07:00

I have decided, that today I am going to use this blog to give vent to some frustrations. I figure, that in a round about way this is a blogging beginner guide. And in another round about way, it is about the so called, AUTOMATIC BACKLINK GENERATORS. So, hence, the post title.

The reality is, I am pissy. I am sick and tired of every Tom Dick and Darren out there in the blogging world peddling their NEXT GREAT GIFT to the blogging industry. Letting unsuspecting people like you and me, drop dollar after dollar on these great new breakthroughs on "how to build a better blog."

Stop it! Stop letting them take your money, stop it, stop it, stop it. And Stop, for the love of all that is holy, using these automatic backlink generator services. Because they are nothing more than a waste of time.

So, I am not here to call out every service or "blogger" by name. I may even sound a bit like a spoiled child not getting my way. But I can, without any question in my being, state for a fact, that anyone trying to sell you something, does not have your best interests in mind. None of them really could give a damn, whether or not YOU succeed.

All they are really trying to do is wet your appetite. If you completely succeeded, who the hell is going to go and buy their next product, or "Upgrade" to the pro package.

Nobody

Maybe I have gone about this all the wrong way. I have really tried to make a point of not "Selling" you products, in my effort to Make Money online. Maybe it is my fault for not cramming a book or two down your throats, in the attempt to line my own pockets. But it has been something I have been against since the beginning.

Since I first started blogging here at blogging for beginners, I have made a conscious effort of bringing you information without any real catches. True, I have occasionally dropped in a referral link with the hopes of catching a couple referrals to some of the services I have subscribed to over the years, but for the most part, I have steered clear of that.

And where exactly has it left me??

It has left me wanting a whole hell of a lot more, I have to admit.

So, really, what does this all mean for the average blogger, or to the folks out there who would like to start blogging, and to make money blogging, but don't know where to begin?

Would it be terribly disappointing if I told you that I didn't really know?

It feels like to would not be that far off. I have spend my dollars on books, and I have tried my hand at a hand full of the automatic backlink generators, and have basically ended up exactly where I started with this little experiment of mine. I have no more links than when I began. Truth be told, I have a few less since I stepped away from the hard work backlinking I have always prescribed to. YUP! You heard it right, and when it gets right down to it, that is why I am so pissed off today.

Easy Backlinks? Ha! I laugh at anyone who throws that term around. It is a load. Completely. Its so easy to be a successful blogger, when you are hiring others to do the work for you, when you can throw countless dollars at a problem to make it go away. And you think THEY are going to share that wealth of knowledge they have been so fortunate to be blessed with? No. Why would they. Why would they want competition? All they want is more dollars.

Ok, so now I am just bitching, I know. And you know what, it feels kinda good. It is nice to not be so PC for a change. It is just really, really frustrating, and I do believe that anyone out there who has tried blogging in a fairly competitive market, with a very small budget, knows exactly what I am talking about.

I do have to give a hand to the big giant search engine. Over the years they have set a lot of rules in motion to help curb individuals who use unseemly methods to build countless numbers of backlinks. But, in the process, they have created a situation that makes it ever more difficult to build a presence on the internet for smaller people, like you an me. I know it is in order to stamp out all the riff raff and I completely appreciate that. BUT! It has made my job so much harder. And it has left me wondering, to what end?

I appreciate the fact that along they way I may teach some people a thing or two, but what I really, really want to do is to quit my job! And that is just never going to happed at the rate that I am going.

Maybe I am just not that good at this. Maybe.

But what I really believe is, I am good at this, I have a lot of stuff to say, and I just have to work harder at getting those words into the hands of the individuals who really need it. Having it just float out there in limbo is doing nobody any good what-so-ever.

So, I have until October 6th, working on this secret little experiment I have been working on, using methods and services that I have, up until recently avoided. And if I do not see progress by 1 month after I stopped using these so called "methods" I will unceremoniously get on this blog and start blasting these people, one after the other. And I will do so with a friggin smile on my face.

So,

What has been the point of this little rant?

Mostly, all I am really trying to tell you, is. It is more than likely a losing effort, if you are relying on others as your primary means of building backlinks. Automatic backlink generators have not proven anything to me yet. I will give them more time, but I do not have very high hopes.

And the people who are willing to sell you something in order to help you are more than likely only going to spew out what you can find for free on the internet. The idea that any of them have a new thought is fairly humorous to me. In fact, if you have a specific question, please feel free to ask me, right here at blogging for beginners, and I will attempt to tackle the question.....FREE OF CHARGE!

I am done now.

Thank you for listening. :)

Oh, and look for my E-book, coming soon! See, I peddle too. Actually, there is no book in the works at this moment. I have other things to do.

Blogging for beginners: Blogging tips from a now seasoned veteran

2011-06-13T09:26:00.000-07:00

I have now been an official pro-blogger for about a year and a half. I have spend countless hours scouring the internet and any other source imaginable for any possible blogging tip or trick you could even begin to think of. And for the most part, I have given many of them a test, to see what works and what does not. To see if there are any blogging shortcuts. Any way to convince the search engines that I deserve first place is SERP amongst the most competitive keywords. And Amazingly enough, I have nothing to report, other than write, write, write, write, until your mind hurts and your fingers bleed. then write a little more. Then backlink, backlink, backlink, until everyone under the sun is completely annoyed by you.
This may or may not get the job done. Real "Pro-Bloggers" don't do that much work anymore. A real "problogger" does not need little blogging tips or tricks to take their blog to the next level, because they succeed at this point by sheer numbers. They may or may not write anymore, many of them are now nothing more than a vessel for guest bloggers to post on their site. And they use a team of well trained individuals to strategically place links all over the internet. And they have this down to such a science, that the chance of us, lesser bloggers to achieve their success in their particular niche is virtually impossible.

I know, I spend an awful lot of time nay-saying on this blog. Telling you how you can't do this or that, that you will never succeed with this or that. And I do not mean to squash anybody's hopes or dreams here. I am just dishing truth. This blog, the one you are reading, blogging for beginners, is just over a year old, it has something like 50 blog posts on it, and it does fairly well, for an array of search terms. But, none of the very most important search terms. And it never will. And as long as certain "pro blogger" individuals are up and running, I can confidently assume that I will never hit number one in the terms I started this blog for. And I am ok with that. With time comes a form of complacency maybe, but also the reality of what it would really take.

And that brings me to my number one blogging tip for all who stumble upon this blog. Every topic, niche, keyword, or keyword phrase has a scalable amount of success attached to it. And there are enough tools out there in the world web, to figure out how much effort it will take to achieve certain levels of success. To work as hard as you can, and to be a realist about what you are doing. To not get disappointing, because you sometimes need to let a blog age and marinate before it will actually start to build steam. And to cut your losses if no success comes.

I have started built and walked away from dozens of blogs. And at this point in time, I have learned to accept the fact that some ideas will work while others will wallow and fail.

I have learned that passion about a particular topic helps. But logical keywords choices well outweigh passion. And for every niche or keyword that has a PROBLOGGER, will also have about a million other bloggers following in his or her tracks to pick up the scraps.

So, to all you budding bloggers out there. If you have not been able to figure out my cryptic blogging tip from this mess of a post. I can sum it up to a single statement.

Do your Keyword Homework

And write to entertain. Not just to teach. Writing can be a colorful and magical painting if you choose your words write and if you write them with style and grace. I am not telling anyone to do or to write like I do, because I really do not know how much my style is enjoyed. you all may find me annoying, I really do not know.

As some final author notes. I am still looking for guest bloggers. I am surprised that I have not really had any interest. Maybe I am overvaluing myself, but I feel that guest blogging is a really good way to build awareness.

And also, I am working on a very large and involved project, I hope you will all check it out soon. I is going to be something a little different than anything I have ever done before. It is called the Books of Lineage.

Thank you for reading blogging for beginners, and I hope you have found something about blogging tips in my random ramblings.

Using Social Networking to improve Blog Traffic

2011-03-16T09:36:00.000-07:00

It is no secret. Facebook is a Phenomenon like no other has been seen on the internet. It has so twisted and weaved its way through ever bit and piece of the internet, there is no getting away from it. I, personally am not into the whole social networking as far as the social interaction is concerned. I am not that much of a people person and tend to find myself bothered by sites like Facebook. So, as of this time, I do not have a facebook account. And I have no intentions of starting a Facebook account. No real time or interest.

But from a blogging traffic standpoint, it can not be overlooked, nor can the other forms of social networking be overlooked. So, lest discuss this process a little bit.

Using facebook as an example first off. You have a chance with your facebook pace to let a large number of people know that you have a blog, and in turn you can direct a whole lot of traffic in one quick swoop, just by letting all your facebook friends know that you have a blog and would love people to check it out, through a simple status update. This is nice, this can be, if nothing more a huge ego stroke. And ego plays a big part in the continuation of your blog. Even if you don't look at it that way. You will become much more excited to do something if you are receiving some sort of positive affirmation of your efforts. It is human nature to do so. And there is nothing wrong with that.

I would like to make sure I am not confusing the reality though. You are not going to rank better in search engines if you occasionally mention your blog on your Facebook page. Google could care less. But it is short sighted to think it is not worth the effort then if you are not going to place well in Google from a link.

All along I have been preaching one thing over and over again. And that is awareness. Awareness is the key here. The coveted "Golden Ticket" you may say is in that awareness. Because what you HOPE will happen, is sooner or later, from that awareness you create, you will start to receive real, non-solicited backlinks to your blog. And these are worth more than any link you can build on your own. Not only to Google and the like, but to your overall traffic. Every time you get a random link from a new source you have opened up the opportunity to new viewers, new audience pools, and this alone my friend, is how you continually repeat the cycle. This is how you slowly but surly take your little blog to something that can be much more.

So. Now I think you get the idea I am going for. Creating awareness using social networking is a very powerful tool. Since I am not a Facebooker. I found other sites I use.

Twitter, is a wonderful option. It is very easy to build a large follower list. I am not sure how many followers I have at the moment, but I can tell you it is in the hundreds easily and I do not do anything to build my followers list. So, whenever I post a new blog post. I tweet that I have done so. It usually results in instant traffic to my blog. Or Awareness article, or Backlink Article. I will tweet any new property.

On top of that, I use Linkdin. It is a more business orientated Social Networking site. It really does not drive much traffic to my properties, mostly because I have very little interest in the site, and do not spend the time to build up a friend list.

And the last site I use is, PeopleString. Ok, it is pretty much Facebook with a twist. They pay you to use the site. They don't pay a lot. But like I have said before, I am driven by money. And every little bit will slowly add up. It all makes a little difference. People string is a social networking site, with a forum, and games, and message boards, with the twist being, they pay you a portion of their ad revenues, on a scale, depending on how much you use the site.

I am not here to get everyone to Join Peoplestring. Although, if you do use my referral link, it will improve my earnings (Hint hint). But What I am saying is, there are other sites besides Facebook, that can work equally well, if you give it time.
Twitter has been a wonderful tool for me. I use it all the time. I would recommend this one highly. Facebook also is probably the strongest tool out there for self promotion within your circle. And Peoplestring is a nice alternative for those of you who would like to try and earn a couple dollars along the way.

Again, it has not made me rich. Some claim that they make hundreds and thousands per month with the site. I have to casually question these statements. But who really knows.

Thank you for reading blogging for beginners, please come back soon!

What are Awareness Articles?

2011-03-14T09:20:00.000-07:00

So, what exactly is an awareness article? Some may call it by a different name. Some may even think they are a waste of time. I mean, the reality is, they are not going to improve your position in Google, and for many, that is all they are really looking for. Personally, my belief is, awareness is awareness, and the larger web I can create, the more likely new people are to find me. So, this is why I find awareness articles important.

There is another reason to enjoy awareness articles…..MONEY! And that alone drives me and what I do on the internet. It is a very strong pull for me and there are MANY opportunities to make income on the internet. Other than that from what you can make with your blogs. There are many sites that will pay your for your content. Usually paid per view from a unique party. And I have to admit, the income is not great. But it is still what it is and it is still something that should be considered. Because, not only are you making money from your work, but you ARE creating awareness of you, the author, and of any link you include in your article.

So, with this awareness article, you are not only creating a link back to your web property, but you are creating an awareness of yourself. And you are as important in this article as the link itself. Undoubtedly, the link will be a No-Follow link. And this of course means that Google will not give you “Credit” for the link, but what you can gain from this link is direct traffic to your blog, or Hub or whatever else you make link to it. And being that these sites sole purpose are to drive traffic. They tend to get a healthy amount of traffic, and they tend to naturally place well in search engines without a whole lot of work. This alone gives you a chance to make an impression.

The goal of these articles should be to create a spark or create interest in what you are and your writing style. You want these articles to be snappy. You are trying to catch people. Remember, that what you are trying to build is a web of links, you want them to spend as much time in your web as possible. Because sooner or later, you will attract permanent readers, repeat readers who will come back every time you write more. And this is really our goal. Whether it is income driven or just your drive to be recognized and for people to see you is irrelevant. You are just trying to capture a persons interests.

So, above I stated that there are many places that offer this kind of service to you. Some I have mentioned here before. Some may be sites you are well aware of. Some formats you may like. Others are not all that great. But, as with all things when we are talking about awareness. Variety is key here. Don’t be afraid to have multiple sites you write for. Work smart and create a similar article for every site and have them all posted. It will pay off in one way or another.

Well, what are these sites you might ask…

Here they are, in no particular order. There are others besides the ones I will cover, but I use these and find them to be very suitable for my needs.

Helium:
Helium has been around for quite a while now. I believe I have been a member of helium for years. They have a huge library of topics. And you are judged by your peers. Every article is judged independently. And the system they employ will require you to judge articles as well, if you intend on earning income from your own articles. You can just post and not earn income. That is completely acceptable, but if you do a little extra work, they will pay you per view on your article. The pay scale varies depending on how well you rank within a particular topic and what the topic is about, and it will not pay a lot. As an example, I have 30 some odd articles on Helium and I rank in the upper 75% and make a few dollars a month usually. It is not going to make me rich. Maybe if I had thousands of articles, I could say it may make me rich, but the shear volume needed to reach that level is beyond my comprehension really. I tend to right on a whim, it comes and goes in spurts. I just lack the focus to maintain a consistent writing schedule. But, in any way, helium is a well rin site that had a great reputation and should not be overlooked.

Bukisa:
Bukisa is relatively new. And lately service has been somewhat sketchy to say the least. They have had a lot of server issues. But, when they are running smooth this site is super easy and pays well comparatively. They have no specific topics, meaning you can write pretty much about anything as long as it falls within their rules. And you are paid on a set scale. Based on 1000 unique views. I make good money from Bukisa, I get lots of views, but that may be soley based upon my topics. I chose topics really well and they immediately ranked well in Google. Well, immediate in Google terms. It took a few weeks. Again they allow you to add back links and an author profile. But links are No-Follow. It is a site I would give consideration to if you have a hard time confining yourself to particular topics.

And the Third I am going to mention today is

Associated Content:
Ok. Something is amiss with Associated Content. You can still write for it, but it is now owned by Yahoo, and I honestly do not know how it even works now. Once I have the chance to investigate, I will let you know. Join if you want, I am pretty sure it will still provide a very useful tool. I am just not sure how at this moment, and do not want to wait on publishing this post.

So, there you have it, and understanding to what awareness articles are and how they will benefit you and your goals at becoming a blogger that is reconnized in the blogging community. These articles are not amazing link builders and they are not going to give you a great SERP by writing them, but they will start to create some constant online income. And in many cases that alone will give you drive to keep working at it. Becoming discouraged by lack of change from your efforts is all too common. I hit several road blocks along the way that made me want to quit. In fact I did quit a time or two. Feeling that the amount of effort was largely unbalanced to the result I was seeing. And even now. Close to two years in to my commitment to seeing this thing through, I am still not to a point to which I can retire and happily spend my time blogging. But I can see progress. And with time and effort you can too. Just give it that, time and effort, and a huge helping of patience. The internet works in a very slow and methodical manner. You will most likely not become an overnight success. But you can build it and find your success at some point.

Again, thank you for reading blogging for beginners. Talk to you all soon!

How to drive traffic to your blog

2011-03-12T07:21:00.000-08:00

I am gonna get right down to it. There will be no beating around the bushes and there will be none of me telling you that in order to drive traffic to your blog you are going to have to buy some sort of product from me. It is just not the way it is, and in fact. Driving traffic to your blog is more a test of patience than it is a test on your pocket book. At least in my mind it is. And unless you are some sort of Uber Blogger with the most wonderful idea in the world. Chances are your topic has been written about once or twice. And being that. Why would you start dumping money into an idea that is not “fresh”. It just is not worth the cost. Because reality is, your not going to make millions. Sorry. Some people may tell you if you follow them and click here and read this and sign up for this program you will also be able to make millions. But reality is, the market is saturated. New ideas are scarce and competition is unbelievable for almost any keyword worth a damn.

So what do you do? How do you drive traffic to your blog. WHERE IS THE TRAFFIC FOR YOUR SPECIFIC BLOG?

Very good questions my friend. Very good questions indeed. And the answer, of course is not black and white or cut and dry. The answer lies in this hazy area. So, even if it may seem that what I tell you is a little bit like beating around the bush. The reality is, it is reality. It is what it is.

As you see below here, I have created a basic tree of building blog traffic. You can see that at the top of the tree, Website is what I consider the apex. Not blogs. This is what it is. Although many of you will consider blog as the apex. That is quite okay. But not reality.

So, below the blogging portion of the tree. You will see that there are several categories. These are the categories that we are going to cover IN DETAIL! I am going to explain exactly what I do in order to build blog traffic using these methods.

So.....Let me stop rambling! Let's get started

Link Building Articles

As far as I am concerned, this is and will always be the #1 most important aspect of building blog traffic. And there is more than one way to skin a cat and there is more than one way you should be skinning your cat. There are, in fact, dozens of ways to do this.

My number one most favorite way to build links through articles is HubPages. I love Hubpages. Google gives you huge mojo for Hubpage articles. Not only that but Hubpages are highly popular and have a wonderful community. And wait, there is even more! You can include your Adsense Id and include Adsense adds on your Hub. Hubpages does keep a portion of your Adsense revenue, but what you will usually find is, you will either be paid for your article or you will get true do follow backlinks. You will usually not get both. With Hubpages you do. Not only can you use Adsense, but you can also use your Amazon Associates Id and add, Amazon ads to your blogs.

This means that You can get multiple effect from your Hubs. You can write very Sales orientated hubs in order to sell product on your hub, and slyly drop a couple backlinks to your blog. It is not so much about the traffic you directly generate from the link, but more about the Juice Google places on that link, and how much that link will help you in SERP. Some blogs I built, I have placed well in Google with nothing more that a couple Hubpages.

Now Hubpages is not the only site that is like this. Info Barrel is another winner. Not quite as established, but still a great site. And it is very important to build variation to your backlinks. You do not want them all to be from the same origin. Your backlinks will be discounted if they are viewed as spam.

Another way to build links with articles is article submitting to article directories. Specifically I am going to suggest Ezine.com and Goarticles.com. These are the two that I use and the two I find to be the best. What article directories do is, allow you to submit articles to a general, public directory. In your article you are usually able to include a backlink and also include an about the author section. Once your article is submitted and accepted by the site, anyone can use your articles on their website or blog. This can be huge. This means that you not only get the high quality backlink from the Article Directory, but you will get a link for any site that uses your article on their site. You will not make any money for these articles. But, its not about making money. It is about building links in large quantities. And it is really a must for any highly competitive keywords.

In general. There is no exact science on what to link to. What you really want to create is a web. Something like I show in this illustration. Articles link to hubs and blogs, hubs link to specific posts and to the main Url of your blog. The thing to really be considerate of is, more links per article is not better. 2 or 3 links per article really should be your max. You will start to see diminishing returns on your links if you saturate your articles with too many of them.

I have to stop. I know you want to learn more about how to drive traffic to your blog, but, this post has already hit 1000 words. Nobody likes a chatty kathy. And I would like to save more for later.

For more about links you might want to read my article about internal blog links. That is a good topic.

Thank you for reading blogging for beginners.

And I want to give thanks to Ed at Oldsputnick.com. His interest has inspired me into writing again. I appreciate that, even though he may have had no idea for what he was doing! Good luck Ed and good luck to all of you. And for anyone who would like personal help, please ask. I will always try to help.

Blogging for long term Success

2011-01-12T09:13:00.000-08:00

I realize that there has been a pretty big delay since my last post. I have been caught up with some other things. And to be quite honest with you, I had soured on the blogging thing for a little while. And it is not because I had not been seeing progress, because I surely have. But I had some run-in's with Google and had one of my blogs shut down and for the life of my, I still can not see what the problem was. I never truly got a clear answer, they just accused it of being SPAM! So, I guess on a subconscious level, I was waiting for the other blogs to be closed down on me. But they were not, so, I figure it is about time to get back on that horse.

But since I have been on a bit of a blogging vacation, I have noticed something. My blogs have continued to chug along. Not really improving but surely not failing. This blog has been consistently performing with no help from me. And it got me to thinking. Whats the rush?

Now I know, everyone in the world today is looking for the instant gratification. I know I do, I know I hate to watch some blogs flounder, and often times I may give up on a blog before I have given it a proper chance. There are doubts and concerns that I am wasting my time with a particular topic. And in the end, I often pick up and move on to the next.

Since I last wrote on this blog, my blogging profile has changed. Previously I was constantly writing on four free blogs and 1 paid blog. I was stretching myself as much as I possibly could in order to create the success I was so desperately looking for. The problem with that mentality and process is, I ended up burning out. Not wanting to do anything anymore, because I just was not seeing the instant gratification. And that was when I decided I needed to change my mindset. I needed to take a step back and really look at what I was trying to accomplish.

For all of you who do not know, my main objective was to try and create income through blogging and online writing. Enough to allow me to consider leaving my 9-5 job and work solely for myself. Well after 10 months of that, I came to the conclusion it was not happening. But what was happening was, I was slowly but surely creating awareness, and creating the all elusive web traffic that everyone in this business wants. But I just was not seeing any of that traffic converting into income. I was but the ratio was so far from what I had hope that It was just maddening.

So, I stopped. I stopped it all, and became average Joe 9-5 again. I remodeled my bathroom, worked lots of overtime and really just assumed that I would let my blogs wither and die. But they did not. I am now the proud owner of two very well traveled blogs. Not tooting my horn because hundreds and hundreds of bloggers out there see more traffic than I can dream of, but I see that I have two investments that can and should pay off in the long run.

So that brings me to what I want to stress to you all today. And that is don't give up, set your expectations at reasonable levels and watch closely at what you are doing and whether or not it is working for you. Make sure that you spend time on your posts. Make sure that they have value to your readers, and make sure that you do your homework and you know what search terms and "keywords" are going to perform for you.

I have given you a lot of insight and ideas as to what it takes to generate awareness of your blog in the ever expanding world of the internet. You have to build backlinks and write informative and keyword rich articles, you need to find unique ways to build free backlinks through sources like Bukisa and Hubpages. You need to use your social networking to promote your site and generate easy traffic, and you really just need to be creative, personable, and understandable. If you can pull those things off, you will most likely see people coming.

And it is not going to happen tomorrow. You will have failure and you will have success, and just like anything else in life, you have to learn from failure and build on successes.

Now I know this sounds like a big pep rally, and in many cases, it is. I really am not here to teach you anything today, other than to not give up. To find your niche and build build build. Because over time, you will start to see your efforts paying dividends. And slowly, you will start to see income or traffic building, or both, depending on what you are trying to achieve.

Don't let people tell you that free blogs are a waste of time. Because I have to say that the majority of my success comes from my free blogs. I have actually given up on the paid blog for the time. The investment it was costing me was just not being paid back. The blog got very little traffic, and it generated a big ZERO in the income column.

So look for me in the coming weeks and months, because I am back and I am ready to provide you with lots of new insight into this world of blogging, and I hope to see many succeed in what they are trying to accomplish.

I appreciate everyones comments. I always love comments and hope to see many more soon!

Thank you,
Blogging for Beginners

Blogging for beginners - Free blogs or paid domains?

2010-10-04T07:01:00.000-07:00

I received a comment the other day talking about the only way to really do well with blogging is through a custom domain. Or a paid blog, you may call it.

So, it got me to thinking, what is the real difference I have noticed between free blogs and paid blogs? Because I do also have blogs I pay for. But I really do believe that free blogs are not so shabby, especially for individuals who are just learning the process and concept of blogging.

So, whether you are blogging with the intention of making money or just blogging for the fun of it, I thought I would explain in a little bit of detail the pros and cons of both free blogs and paid blogs.

Take this blog for example. This blog would probably do very well as a paid blog. I have given it quite a bit of love in order to place fairly well in the search engines. And at times it does seem to be a bit of a waste of time to keep pumping hours and hours into a free blog. And why is that you ask, well, lets break it down really plain and simple like.

Pros of a free blog
1.) There is no financial strings attached. If you do something that negatively effects your blog, you really have lost nothing, except some time in order to try and fix what you have done.

2.)Wonderful place to really learn the art of blogging. Free blogs are a great place to test your technique. That means your writing style, and your SEO practices. You can use them to determine what works and what sells and what just completely fails. I have used my free blogs for just that purpose. And in the process, I have had some serious failures. I, in fact have one blog right now that has been slapped by google and taken right down....for, SPAM. They are calling it a spam blog. And although it may skate along that hairy edge of being legit and being a little questionable, none of my content on that blog would be something I would consider SPAM.

But I think that is a perfect example of the learning process you may face when beginning to blog yourself.

3.)Blogger and Wordpress. How you may wonder am I going to call these sites pros? Well, because they are power houses with huge communities, and that along can generate some traffic. And while having the Term Wordpress, or Blogspot within your url can hinder your place in the search engines. The reality is, people see these and respect these names. People who spend time reading blogs are very aware that there are hundreds and thousands of quality bloggers using these tools to start their own blogs.

And what are the CONS of free blogs
1.)You are under the thumb of a larger entity. Case in point is the blog I mention above. If I was under my own url with that blog, It would not be wiped out by google. They would pull my adsense account, but they could not just delete it. And that is a big deal. That blog had about 100 posts and tones of content that is now just gone. Hundreds of backlinks just wasted.

2.)Your URL is a sub domain of a bigger site. What this means is, search engines give it less value than if it was your own URL. A site called bloggingforbeginners.com is going to rank better on url alone than my blog, if all other factors are equal.

3.)Customization. This is a big one, artistic freedom with your content is really big when it comes to proper page layout and structure. And while both blogger and Wordpress offers a lot of options, they can never compare to the freedom you get with a custom URL.

So, what about a paid blog? How does a paid blog stack up to a free blog?

Reality is, there is no comparison. It is so much easier to build a successful blog with your own URL. One of my paid blogs already has a better page rank than this blog and it has only been around for two months and I have given it almost no attention as far as SEO is concerned. It just naturally ranks better.

1.)So, Number one Pro would be just that. Google gives more weight to a paid URL. It shows a level of commitment that is just not there when you use free blogs. This means that more time and effort will have to be placed in a free blog in order to rank it within Google. And this is big, because you will find that you will be spending more time trying to improve your standings in the search engines than you will writing content for your own blog.

2.)Worpress software. Wordpress is by far and away the best blog software out there. And it is free. They have such a large community of great programers and code writers that you will be able to find an limitless amount of templates and widgets for your blog. Everything you can imagine.

3.)Since of responsibility. This is of course going to vary from person to person. But if you are investing your own money into a blog, you will want to see it do well. And you will spend more effort in making sure it is as good as you can make it.

Cons of a paid blog
1.) There really is none, except maybe the fact that it is not free. That you will be paying for hosting and you will have to pay for a domain name. Sites like GoDaddy and Host Gator make the costs as reasonable as possible, but you will still be looking at a monthly investment.

Other than that. I really see no downside to owning your own URL. So, am I telling you to go out and get one? No. I am telling you to look at it all as a bigger picture. The way I look at this process is, The paid blog is the top of my food chain. but off that I have several smaller micro niche blogs, I have Hubpages, I have Bukisa articles and other article sites, and I link from all these places. Some go back to the main blog, some don't. But my goal and intention is, to create a web of information, because the longer my readers spend reading MY content, the more likely they are to click on something that in some way will make some money for me. And that is really my intention with the efforts I put into my blogs and other online properties. I try to provide value with the hopes that I will get something in return. Not asking for anything in return, because that is just not my style.

Thank you for reading blogging for beginners. I have appreciated the increase in traffic. It has really been a breath of fresh air in a time when I have had trouble finding ideas for writing.

Blogging for beginners is suffering from writers block

2010-10-01T06:20:00.000-07:00

I know it has been some time since I have posted here on blogging for beginners. I have been dealing with a bit of a funk, some sort of writer’s block. Or some sort of laziness. Not sure what to call it, but it has been real. And it has been really tough for me to find things and ideas to write about.

But, I am still around. I have not abandoned this blog by any means, and I have been fairly happy at the traffic increases I have seen. Not to say I am satisfied yet, because I do believe there is a lot more room for improvement here at this blog and I have every intention on making it happen.

The main purpose of this blog has been to show beginners the fundamentals of blogging. We have spent a lot of time on Keywords and backlinks, and we have talked a bit about making money with your blog, and the importance of commenting on blogs.

We have really covered a lot of the more important issues regarding starting a blog for the first time. But something we have talked very little about is something that I am dealing with right now, and that is not having topics to write about. Running out of fresh ideas.

It is a tough obstacle to overcome. Because once you fall into that, it becomes very easy to let it snowball, and next thing you know it has been a month since your last blog post, and you have been watching your blog slowly drop in your search engine rankings and you start to stress. But that solves nothing, all it does it makes it tougher to come up with new ideas for your blog. So, what can you do?

You can do a few things

You can read other blogs, and try to find ideas in what other bloggers in your niche has written about. Put your own spin or opinion on it and write an article about it.

You can read through your old blog posts and see if something pops out at you. An area that you did not cover in detail that you could now go back to and write a post about it.

You can change things up a little and write off the cuff about whatever is grabbing your fancy at that very moment.

Or you can use others articles from sites like Ezines, as long as you give proper credit to the author of course.

The thing to remember is, a blog that goes stagnant will suffer with time. It does not happen over night. Just because you miss a couple days of blogging does not mean your blog is going to plummet to the depths of Google. But it does mean that your blog will not grow as well as it could with fresh content. Search engines love blogs because of the fact that they are active. Because they are fairly current, due to the fact that the authors of blogs tend to write regularly. And this is the real advantage bloggers have to static websites. And this is why bloggers can easily rank well in the search engines.

So, from now on, I am going to try and make a conscious effort of blogging at least once per week here. I will do my best. I have seen some of my primary keywords begin to perform very well in Google and I would hate to lose that for no good reason.

I have a lot of things to say, I just often have a hard time deciding on how to say them or taking the time to actually say them.

Thank you for reading blogging for beginners.

I do appreciate your patronage

Blogging for Dollars...Again

2010-08-25T06:47:00.000-07:00

That is it, I am don! I am not spending any more energy on this topic. I am writing this one last post about how you can make money blogging for the sole purpose of telling you that I have a new place for you, if that is what you’re looking for.

Here, we are mostly interested in teaching blogging for beginners. We will be focusing on the issues that beginner bloggers encounter and we will talk about how to create a successful blog. Or at least try and give you the tools in order to create a successful blog. Because knowing how to create a successful blog and actually creating that successful blog are two totally different beasts.

When blogging for dollars, there is one bottom line factor that needs to be accomplished in order to begin generating any real income. And that is traffic. No matter what your primary focus is on monetizing your blog. Traffic creates customers, customers create income. It is the way it will always be.

Now, some topics will always convert better than others, and that is the area I would like to talk a little about today. Converting readers into sales. And what types of readers are more likely to convert.

The primary factors to look at when trying to get an idea as to conversion ratio is, the types of people you are going to be attracting, and the product you are trying to sell. And by that, I mean through ads, through traffic or through the actual product itself.

First lets talk a little about the person you are selling to. It is easiest if I use some examples of my own to explain this. I have a blog that gives Video game tips, the video game is free to play, and it is probably targeted for the 15-25 age range. Now, there are a couple problems with this. For this blog, I rely on ad clicks in order to generate income on the blog itself. But first issue, It is a free to play game. This means that individuals who play this game are not really financially invested in the game, and they are not for a reason, usually they do not have the money to pay for a game, or they are not willing to spend money for playing a game. This means they are less likely to click on ads. They don’t want to be sold something; they want their stuff for free. And I completely understand that mentality. It is pretty much my mentality regarding video games. It is now how I want to spend my money.

Another problem with this blog is, the age demographic. 15-25 year olds tend to be pretty computer savvy, especially ones that play video games on a computer. And in general, I find that computer savvy individuals are less likely to click on ads. They know what happens when they do, they are taken away from where they are, and they are “sold” a product.

So, what does this mean exactly?

In general, you want to target individuals who have excess income, and who are willing to spend a little bit of that income in order to get what they want. It is far more productive to do that by targeting an older audience, or an audience that is rabid about a particular product. Less computer savvy individuals, and individuals who “Need” what you are pushing.

I am not going to give you the answers. Only give you the tools in order to find the answers. These are the tools, and this is the information that is important. Because the possibilities are endless.

In my opinion. The best audience is going to fall somewhere in the range of 30-50. These are the people who use the internet pretty good, and they have the extra income to spend on purchases over the internet. This rule is not hard and fast of course. But it does seem to work pretty well.

Thank you for reading blogging for beginners, hope you come back soon

How to blog like the pros

2010-08-13T12:31:00.000-07:00

Today blogging for beginners would like to talk about problogging, and how to blog like a professional blogger would. This is a bit of an oxy-moron you could say, because a lot of the really big, professional blogs consist of more than one person. In fact they often will have a team in place to take care of the blogs activities. They have writer; they have marketers and SEO gurus all playing their parts to generate the big and powerful blogs that you can find all over the web.
But don’t get down, not all great blogs are this way. There are a log of really quality blogs and bloggers out there who run solo. And you can too. It will just require a lot of attention to detail and a lot of different abilities for you to create a highly successful blog.

Now remember, success is relative. Take some of my blogs for example. This one, is not yet a success. But I have been working vigorously to get it where I want it to be, and even if it is not showing up in the quantity of content I have on-site, it has paid dividends, I am starting to see my ranking for specific keywords going up and up. This site is only going to get stronger as I add more content and more backlinks to the content. This site will generate income, I am pretty sure of that.

I have a blog about a video game on the other hand, that I would consider a success. And being that I am happy with the progress of that blog, I am able to focus more on other blogs. That blog sees about 100 page views every day. So, it is not a huge amount, and with some effort I am sure I can increase that number ten times over. But, there is something to be said about letting a blog marinate, and age a little bit. Allow it to generate some natural popularity and links. It is something that plays a strong hand is rankings for some search engine. Besides that, the site is about a free video game. And the nature of the type of traffic that this site gets is cheap. They don’t want to buy anything usually; they are playing a FREE ONLINE GAME. So, I use the blog to funnel the traffic to places like Bukisa, where I am paid just for traffic, not for selling anything.

I also have a blog about making money online. This blog is something I never really expected to see huge traffic numbers, so, I would consider it a success. Its primary purpose is to generate referrals for some of the programs I am involved in, in order to generate some income. So, it does its job. The problem with this blog is, making money online is a monster niche to try to break into, so most of my traffic comes from highly focused lontail keywords and phrases. And quite honestly, I am ok with that, because I have a much larger project I am about to launch that will be going after the big guns on keywords like this….Shhh, you will hear more about this in the future I am sure.

Wow, did I just get off on a tangent. Anyways, you are here today to learn how to blog (like the pros) and I will give you some of what you are looking for now.

The thing that a lot of people will tell you on this topic is content is king. Content is important. I am not exactly sure on this, but I am convinced that search engines like Google will not even give you the time of day if your blog only has a few pages of content. Maybe in some niche markets it would, but in most of the markets I play in, there is no way. In fact, it is my belief that you really should not even start to try to build backlinks aggressively until you at least have a good 15-20 posts. And at least 5-pillar type posts. But once you reach this level, this is where you really have to know how to blog. This is where the work comes into play.

After you have a decent amount of content, and Google has responded by indexing your site. I would take some time to find out how well you place in the search engines (Google-all others are of minimum importance) So, Google yourself using your keywords that you are targeting, and see how you rank. Under normal circumstances, if I cannot find myself within the first 300 results I give up…I know I am not doing well and will need to really focus if I want to place.

After you know where you rank, you will want to take a look at the competition. Particularly the top 10/first page. And what you will want to look at, particularly is, the Page rank of the site, The URL, The inbound links, and the actual content of the page listed in the results page.

So, let me explain each one of these in more detail, because these are important how to blog lessons.

The Page Rank
The page rank of the site does not dictate where the site will turn up in the search engine results page for particular keywords. But a site with high page rank will rank easier for keyword terms, than a site with a lower page rank, meaning the site has already established popularity, and can generate high search results for a high number of keywords with very little SEO for that particular keyword.

The URL
Why is the URL important? Because if it is the Root URL for that particular site that shows up in the results page, it will be more difficult to beat than if it is one of the pages within the site. The term is more likely to be one of the sites primary keywords. And will more likely have a large number of quality backlinks behind that keyword.

The Inbound links
And how do you check this. Well there is no exact method to learn how many inbound links a site has, personally I use Yahoo'’ Site Explorer to get an idea as to how many links a site has, and figure I have to beat that number.

Actual Content
This is important, sometimes you will find that there is no real good reason that the page is showing up in the results page, other than it is a strong site and mentions your keywords within the content, but really has nothing to do with your keyword. IF this is the case, you job just got much easier, with the ability to create highly focused articles about particular keywords, you can easily overcome these pages.

So, after you have determined where you rank with your primary keywords or phrases, which I am hoping is a list of about 5 keywords or keyword phrases. And you have a handle on your competition; you can put a plan in action. Now what should that plan consist of you may ask. Well, I am gonna give you a general idea of what you will want to do next. Now, every topic and blog is not created equally so you will have to modify this basic approach based upon your site and abilities, but here is what you will want to do.

Add your blog to blog directories. Technorati, MyBlogLog, Blog Catalog, are just a couple, but you can find more.

You will want to be active within your blogging niche community and comment on blogs, and include your link. While many people will tell you that you can generate a lot of backlinks through Blog Commenting, I feel that these backlinks carry very little weight with the search engine. And they should only be a complement to your other backlinks you can create that will be high quality. But, none the less, they should be included in your strategy. If you can find a blog for a .edu or .gov site, it will carry much more weight. But that is something for another day. Sorry, can’t give you all the goods today!

You will also want to start writing article for Ezine and GoArticles. These backlinks are priceless, and will have the ability to generate an endless number of backlinks, not to mention the sheer fact of getting a backlink from a highly ranked website like Ezine or Goarticles.

After that, I would recommend finding a forum or two (the highest page ranked) within your niche and set up an account that will have your site link within the signature. And start posting, answering posts and just generally being active within that forum. This method can generate a lot of backlinks quick. They are not as quality as the article backlinks, but solid.

Ok, so this is not all the answers to how to blog like a professional. But this is a start. These are the steps and concepts you will want to consider when you are trying to build traffic, and these will take you quite a long way. This will not be my only how to blog article on this topic. But seeing as I am up over 1500 words with this one, I have to call it quits for today.

Thank you for reading blogging for beginners and I hope you come back soon.

Blogging for beginners: Giving you a couple easy backlinks

2010-07-27T11:19:00.000-07:00

Today is probably going to be a short post. I have a milliion things going on, but wanted to give a little tid-bit. I wanted to give you beginner bloggers a couple easy backlinks to get your ball rolling so to speak. I am not really going much out of the box on these so you may or may not have heard of them.

1.)Technorati.com
Submit your blog to Technorati. This is almost a must. Technorati is probably the most popular blog directory on the web. They are indexed regularly, they have a high PR, and will be a great first backlink for your blog.

2.)MyBlogLog
Mybloglog is a lot like technorati. Submit your blogs here too, for another solid backlink.

3.)Dmoz
Dmoz or ODP is the largest human reviewed directory on the web. Search engines love this list. But, its not the easiest to get on it. Since it is all human reviewed, it takes a long time, so submit as soon as you can and just hope that you are actually accepted.

4.)blogCatalog
Another blog Directory that gives good backlinks. Join and add your blog. This is a good place for good backlinks, and can generate quite a few backlinks too.

See. I told you it would be short but sweet. I consider these must have links though. They are always the first ones I go for. Hope this helps you all in finding backlinks.

Thank you for reading blogging for beginners

Blogging for beginners| Widgets and Gadgets

2010-07-21T08:54:00.000-07:00

Here at blogging for beginners I have spent a lot of time going over SEO techniques and ways to optimize key areas of your blog in order to improve your search engine ranking. And while that is some of the most important beginner blogging lessons, I figure it is time to spend some time talking about widgets and add-ons that can make your blog more appealing, or make it an actual tool in blogging for dollars.

Key to remember here is too many gadgets is too much. Most readers do not like to be bombarded with flashy lights and moving banners and pop-ups. In fact most readers will be turned off by that. Not to mention the fact that every single little piece of code you add to your blog slows down the load time. Which is another big no-no in both your reader’s eyes and the search engines eyes.

Which is why I will not spend much time talking about adding gadgets and widgets to your blog. And which is why I try to keep this blog fairly uncluttered. This is personally the approach I will always take with blogging for beginners and any other blog I will be affiliated with.

So, Lets talk about gadgets and how you should approach them as a beginner.

The gadgets/widgets I would recommend to everyone would be, whether you’re a beginner or a pro:
    1.) Labels
    2.) Blog Archive
    3.) Followers

After that, the possibilities are endless. Things that I find important though are:
    1.) RSS Feed
    2.) Adsense
    3.) Twitter
    4.) Links

Now that I have gotten that out of the way, Lets talk about why I think the top three are must haves.

1.) Labels
The labels widget, in many ways are like keywords. They offer links to the articles you believe should be related back to specific keywords. Sometimes the same article can be linked to multiple labels, giving multiple keywords, with anchor text.

Not only is this important from the standpoint of internal blog links, but is also offers you additional space to add keywords you want your blog targeted for. And anytime you have a chance to improve your keyword density; I would consider that very heavily.

2.) Blog Archive
The blog archive widget is strictly for site navigation. As a blog reader myself, it is often one of the first places I look after I have read the article that brought me to a particular blog in the first place. I can drill down and find all the articles with their titles and when they were published, and it gives me the perfect opportunity to pick and choose which articles I want to read. Site navigation is extremely important for your readers, and if there is any chance that they will be coming back, some of that decision is based on whether or not your site is user friendly.

3.) Followers
The followers widget really is the least important of the must have widgets in my mind. All this really does for you is validate you to other readers. If they see that there are actually people following your blog, they may be more apt to buy into what you are saying. This is not a promise of any sort, but, in my mind, it is helpful. And I do believe it is something every beginner blogger should consider as important. We all want validation. And this is one way to receive that.

As far as the additional widgets I talk about. Blogging for beginners is and always will be a monetized blog, and always will be one of the tools in my making money online arsenal. So, with that being said, all these links revolve around that fact.

1.) RSS feed
I find that I get a reasonable amount of my traffic from my RSS feed. It is nothing groundbreaking, but I do believe that your RSS feed is a traffic getting tool. People find them easy to follow, and they are so easy to sign up for, I really cannot find any reason why not to include them on my blogs.

2.) Adsense
Again, this blog is here too not only teaching people, but to generate online income for me. It doesn’t generate a great deal of income for me, but every little bit counts. And Adsense is one of the easiest ways to monetize your blog. And if you use Blogger blogs, it really cannot be any easier. You may notice I do have Amazon on the blog also. Amazon is nice, but relies on commission based sales in order to make any income. I have much less luck with Amazon than I do with Adsense. And for any beginner blogger, I would opt for the Adsense route over commission based sales, at least until you are able to build up a significant amount of traffic.

3.) Twitter
Although Twitter does not directly earn me any money. It is a quick and easy tool to use in order to inform people of anything new that may be happening within my circle. I use one common twitter account for everything. I feel that this gives my readers a chance to look at some of my other projects without having to give my speal all over the Internet for all of my individual projects. It also opens up doors for new audiences. You may follow my twitter from my link on this blog. But say I tweet about an article I wrote about making money online. Suddenly, you may find a whole new world that interests you.

4.) Links
I include links on my blog to help others or help my other blogs get publicity. If I find something that interests me, I may include the links, if I have a blog that I feel may be useful to my readers, I will include a link.

The keys with both Twitter and links is, for me, I am trying to keep readers within my web of products I have on the internet.

So, there you have it, a quick breakdown of some of the widgets and gadgets I find to be important for any beginner blogger. I know I don’t go over too many of them, but that is due to the mindset I have. I really do believe it is important not to get carried away with too much flash on your blog. I can quickly create negative effects. No matter how cool it may all look.

Thank you for reading blogging for beginners, and please come back soon.

Blogging for beginners: Top 10 Beginner blogging lessons

2010-07-15T08:51:00.000-07:00

Today I would like to give you a top 10 list I have been bouncing around for a few days now. I have covered a lot of topics here at blogging for beginners and I feel it is important to recapture major lessons that should always been in the back of any beginner bloggers mind. Being that blogging is so much more than just writing. It is often easy to forget the other aspects involved with building a successful blog.

So, with that being said I have put together my top 10 beginner blogging lessons. These lessons are general, but you can find more detailed information about most of these topics within the blogging for beginner’s blog.

Now with that being said, let’s get on with the top 10 list:

1.) Be yourself
It is often easy to fall into a persona that you feel your readers will want to experience. But it often feels fake and it often leaves your readers feeling that they are not getting the whole story that you are trying to tell. Be yourself, even if it means making a few people mad along the way. Personality is one of a blogs' strongest attributes when it comes to readership. Response is positive, whether it is good response or bad response, it all creates a small amount of buzz.

2.) Blog regularly
This cannot be stressed enough, for both your readers and the overall strength of your blog. The more content you have the better your blog will be represented on the Internet. And the more consistent you can be on posting new material, the more readers are likely to return for what comes next.

3.) Promote your blog
What ever methods you implement in promoting your blog, never back off, promotion is a never ending process, if you want to reach the top and remain on top, you MUST constantly be increasing awareness of your product.

4.) Be active in your blogging community
Read other bloggers, comment on their blogs, find ideas and thoughts from the other blogs within your niche, and learn what readers are interested in by the quantity of comments and the general direction of the comments. This will take you a long way in understanding what type of reader will be reading your blog.

5.) Respond to your commentors
Commentors appreciate your response to them as much as you appreciate the initial comment, and whether positive or negative, try to find the time to respond to the comments left on your blog articles. It will have good results.

6.) Be prepared for positive and negative feedback
And with commenting comes both positive and negative feedback. Be prepared for that, some negative feedback is constructive, some is destructive. There are a lot of differing personalities on the internet, and exposing yourself and allowing people to step into your personal thoughts and ideas will create a response. And sometimes don’t be afraid to allow the negative comments to remain on your blog.

7.) Always be on the look out for new blog topics
In every day life I try to keep a notepad close at hand. I find that the littlest thing can trigger an idea for one of my blogs.

8.) Don’t be afraid to experiment
Something that I have worried about in the past is trying different ways to generate backlinks. Because certain search engines can be really fickle about the way you get backlinks. Sometimes viewing them as spam and too much spam can put your blog into the “Sandbox” or removed from the search engine indexing. This can be very unfortunate, but as long as you are going about your business in a reputable fashion, they should not frown on your methods. And there are so many opportunities out there for finding quality backlinks.

9.) Actively participate in forums about your blog niche
This can help you in a couple ways. One is by answering questions that are connected to your personal blog. You can show the other forum members that you are an expert in your niche, and if you can include your website in your forum signature, you can receive quite a bit of traffic from other forum members. This is good traffic that is focused on the topic of your blog. Another thing this does is creates a lot of backlinks to your blog through your signature. The more posts you participate in, the more backlinks you are generating.

10.) Patience
Patience is a tough one for me. I want results now. But even though the web is an ever moving and evolving animal, it takes time for your blog to be found, and to start generating interest. The amount of time will always very. But it should be expected that you would need six months of work before you should start to see results. It can be deflating at times. But if you stay on it and stay consistent, you should begin to slowly see improvement in traffic.

A lot of these will be nothing new to most of you. Most of you know that in order to be a successful blogger, your best course of action will be, being genuine. And being approachable. But other things are often overlooked, and some of the lessons will take practice to become more natural for you. But in the end, with a lot of hard work and effort, and PATIENCE, you will be rewarded with a blog that has the ability to generate relative popularity within your niche.

Of course there will always be exceptions to the rule. That is where experimentation will come into play. There will always be more than one way to reach your goals.

Thank you for reading blogging for beginners

Factors to Always consider when writing blog posts

2010-07-13T11:37:00.000-07:00

A while ago I wrote a post about writing your first blog post. And I am perplexed by the fact that this particular article seems to receive more traffic than any other post I have on this blog.

In that post I covered a lot of the different blogger menus and showed you some of the functions and menus you should alter in order to make your blog more readable and more likely to be found.

What surprises me is, There is really no science when you sit down to write a blog post. Posts are really only limited by your own personal imagination. Some posts will be duds, some will become wildly popular, and until the post is published, you really cannot be 100% of what that particular post is going to do.

So, besides the basics of actually starting a blog post. Today I would like to talk about some other tactics to consider when writing blog posts. Things that we are going to hit on are.

1.)Blog Post Title
2.)Keyword placement
3.)Internal blog links
4.)Pictures
5.)Bold or Italicized text
6.)Style

1.)Blog Post Titles
The first thing you have to consider when writing your blog posts is your blog titles. Your title should be eye catching, fist and foremost. It should entice people to continue and read what you have to say. But on top of that your title should include your primary keywords for the particular post. Also it is better if your keywords appear early in the title. Just to make sure the Engines pick them up.

2.)Keyword Placement
Keyword placement may have little effect on the strength of the post. But in general you will want your keywords to show up within the first couple of lines of text. This ensures that the search engines will spot them early. And search engines will usually use the first couple lines of text in the descriptor in the search results. After that, it is common practice to have about 2%-5% keyword density within the article. After that, I would also recommend that you use your keywords in the last paragraph of your article if possible.

3.)Internal Blog links
Internal blog links are almost as important as external backlinks, internal blog links should be relevant to your current piece and should use the keywords for your previous article as the anchor text for the link. Internal links within your posts are Dofollow and will share the link juice within your own blog. Always remember to add a couple Internal blog links.

4.)Pictures
I cannot stress enough how important photos or some form of visual stimulant is for the casual online reader. A big wall of text can usually turn people off, but the sight of a couple pictures that are related to the topic in one way or another helps keep your readers attention and creates a more relaxed feel. Text walls can be intimidating and many people in todays day and age will view it as too time consuming to read all those words....Trust me, it is true.

5.)Bold and Italicized text
Many may ask what does this have to do with anything. It has a lot to do with writing blog posts. Sometimes you will use keywords for links, but sometimes, just sometimes, adding keywords in bold text or italicized text, or within quotes will stand out a little for both your readers and for the search engines. Now you do not have to apply this to all your keywords, but sprinkling it in there is a helpful thought.

6.)Style
Style really depends on you and the type of blog you are writing, whether your a synic by nature or an optimist, you will want your personality to shine through a bit. This will help readers relate. And it helps to keep your articles from feeling artificially generated. Blogs and bloggers have a chance to be unique solely from the take we may have on certain subjects. This doesnt mean you have to be extreme and outlandish in order for people to find you unique. It does work for some people, but if that is not who you are it will not work for you. But don't be afraid to let your quirks shine through, people will enjoy them. People like imprefection.....See how I misspelled that...Exactly!

So, writing a blog is really nothing so difficult. It is important to be yourself, do not sensor yourself in order to be more 'PC' or to try to be more than you are. Be genuine, and remember some of the tips here, and your blog will have a chance to be successful.

Thank you for reading blogging for beginners....Come back soon