The Blogging Journal

25 SEO Terms You Should Know

2014-04-26T22:42:00.004+01:00

If you own a blog, SEO is a term you can not and should not ignore. And as such, I have come up with a short list of everyday SEO terms you should be familiar with.
Below are some SEO terms you should know:

How To Become A Better Writer In 6 Simple Steps

2014-04-24T21:40:00.000+01:00

If you are going to make anything out of your blog, then you should know that "writing skill" is a necessary skill you need to possess. Truly, you can't become an incredible writer overnight, but again, you're not as bad as you think.

All you need is some little motivation and inspiration. This article will expose you to 5 simple yet powerful tips you can use to improve your writing skill incredibly. Hang on, friend -

Blogging With Blogger; A wise decision?

2014-03-31T06:39:00.000+01:00

Sometimes back, i wrote an article on 10 smart reasons why you should choose blogger as your blogging platform and I believe those points are really smart. However, as good and kind as blogger seem, it also has its flaws.
As for me, the only major disadvantage I find with Blogger is the fact that your Blog does not belong to you, rather, it belongs to Blogger.
This means that as long you are on the Blogger platform, Blogger owns your blog and she can do whatever she likes with it like deleting your blog without prior notice. But the good thing is: you can always backup your blog from time to time so you do not loose all your hardwork totally.
But again, if you do not infringe on any of the terms given by Google, I see no reason why your blog would be taken down.
Now over to you.
What are the flaws you think Blogger's got, share and let others learn.

Six Things That Make A Blogger Happy

2014-03-24T06:40:00.003Z

Whatever you do, It is always important that you find happiness in it. This is also true for bloggers. Below is my list of things that makes every blogger happy, feel free to add to and remove from the points.

1. Fresh Topic Ideas: It is always a major issue for bloggers to generate ideas for their next updates, but when you constantly find the ideas flowing in you, you just always feel happy.

2. Increasing PageViews: "Traffic, traffic, traffic"; that is one word all bloggers care about and feel estatic about when it starts coming in in great numbers.

3. Unique Visits: Unique visitors are the visitors who are coming to your blog just for the first time. An increase in the number of daily unique visits shows that your blog readership is growing; feels good, ain't it?

4. Comments: When you start to receive comments on your blog, you get happier and always motivated to keep blogging.

5. Mentions: Getting a few mentions about your blog on other blogs [especially when it happens spontaneously] makes a blogger extremely happy and makes him know he's doing something right.

6. Call To Action: Whatever your reason for blogging is, there is always something you want your readers to do at the end of the day. Maybe to buy your product, hire you, click a link, submit their email address or even just drop a comment, when this happens, you are always overwhelmed by this enthusiastic feeling.

Your Turn
It's time to hear from you, what make(s) you happy as a blogger?

10 Smart Reasons To Choose Blogger

2014-02-03T22:21:00.000Z

Blogger is a blogging platform owned by Google. Blogger makes it easy for you to create a blog and add content to it without having to do deal with so much technicality.

Wordpress is a blogging platform similar to blogger and there has always been a lot of argument between which is better of the two. In this short post, I will show some useful reasons why blogger rocks

Blog Design Mistakes You Should Avoid

2014-01-22T07:10:00.000Z

In the process of trying to make your blog as appealing as possible, you might be tempted to make some interesting design tricks which may actually be bad for your blog and might hurt your blog in the long run. In this post, I will try to keep to keep things as simple as possible

12 Hot Tips For Turning Visitors To Readers

2014-01-21T08:22:00.001Z

Conversion is one thing every blogger attaches importance to, be it conversion of visitors to readers, readers to subscribers, subscribers to customers et all. However, before we go deeper, I would like to talk about converting visitors to readers (loyal readers at that), because that's where it all starts from. As always

don't forget to call me to order wherever i get it wrong.

Visitors are people who are just visiting your blog for the first time, while readers are those who have become ardent or constant visitors of your blog. How do you now make first time visitors become loyal readers, read on to find out.

What is your Blog about?
The first one or two seconds a new visitor spends on your blog is what will determine whether they will read your blog or not. Within this short period of time, a visitor needs to get the clear picture what your blog is about.
A brief intro as to what you blog about will do just fine, just to make sure the visitor knows where she is.
Provide good information:
Most people will be coming to your blog for the first time mostly because they are searching for a particular information. How do you make sure they actually stay on your blog? Simple, provide them with the information they need, and they sure will keep coming back for more.
Read:How to write a great blog post
Add Value:
At the end of every post you compose, ask yourself, have i added any value to my reader? If you can find a good answer to this question, then definitely your visitor will have a positive answer to. People love to read things that add value to their lives, and if you're able to do that, why won't they keep returning to your blog for more.
Communicate:
Your blog is as good as waste if visitors can not understand what you are saying. The rule here is to keep things as simple as possible. Nobody is interested in how sound your vocabulary is if it's not going to solve their problem.
Interact With the Visitor:
For Heaven's sake, this is not your school essay. Common friend, you're talking to humans not some robots. Let your posts involve your readers and you.
Avoid annoying Pop Ups:
Pop ups can be very annoying especially when it affects usability and readability. You don't want to scare visitors away after their visit to your blog, do you?
Keep a Simple URL Structure.
Provide Search Bar:
Read:A searchbar widget, do you need it?
Make Navigation simple and Easy.
Provide Links to Valuable Resources.
Scannable Content
Have A Nice Looking But Simple Design Layout.

Read this very interesting post from dailyblogtips
Have i missed anything, feel free to add or remove from any of my points above, Let's learn. Share your experience.

15 Examples Of Post Titles That Get Clicked

2014-01-07T20:51:00.001Z

Writing great post titles is as important as writing a great article itself. Because no matter how informative and quality a blog post is, if its title is not compelling enough, it will just sit down idle on your blog with no one clicking through to read it. Therefore, it is important that you pay attention and take time in coming up with your post titles.
In this post, I have compiled a list of 15 post titles which I think are great and will always generate click-throughs. And I also hope you find some useful tips from how they are constructed to help you in deciding the titles for your upcoming blog posts. Now, hang on...

Now over to you, what is your say on this list of compelling post titles?

Why You Should Focus Less On Driving Traffic To Your Blog

2013-12-19T20:29:00.003Z

How do I drive traffic to my blog? Is a question that runs on every bloggers’ lips. Bloggers are so traffic-crazy that some even employ some black hat techniques just to bring traffic to their blog. But I want to tell you today that: what you need to focus more on is “how do I retain the traffic that comes to my blog” rather than how do I bring traffic to my blog.

How do you retain this traffic is what I will reveal to you in this post.

12 Steps Towards Creating A Successful Blog

2013-12-18T21:29:00.001Z

Countless number of blogs is created daily around the world, and the competition is so stiff that one begins to wonder if a “new blog” can even succeed at all. Well, I can also tell you that so many blogs die out after about a month of inception and just a few of them make it through to the land of success. How do you make you blog one those few that succeeds? That is exactly what you will learn by the end of this article. This post will show the 12 ultimate steps you need to take in order to create a successful and standout blog.

1. Purchase A Domain Name:

If you want to get serious about blogging and you intending to build a brand rather than just another blog, a top level domain name is a must for you.

Whenever you create a blog with the blogging platforms available, you are given a domain which is a subdomain of those platforms. For example, Blogger gives you something like myblog.blogspot.com, while wordpress gives you myblog.wordpress.com. Having you blog hosted on a sub domain makes your blog look unprofessional and also reduces the importance people give to your blog.

These free platforms offer you a way with which you can host your blog on your top level domain, either by purchasing directly from them or purchasing from another domain registrar and redirecting your blog to it.

Another major downside of using a subdomain for your blog is that, it makes it difficult (impossible even) to move your blog from one platform to another.

So, get a domain name if you want to be taken serious as blogger. You can purchase domain name(s) from domain registrars like Godaddy or Hostgator or from the blogging platform you use.

Read: 10 tips for choosing a domain name.

2. Choose A Good Blogging Platform:

The two most popular blogging platforms are Blogger (owned by Google) and Wordpress (owned by the Automattic and powered by the open source wordpress software). Of course there are other blogging platforms (some free and some paid) but these two are the most popular and most used.

The debate of “which is better between these blogging platforms” is one which will never end especially among their users. Before you create a blog, set to and make research about your choice of platform and see how well it suites you.

3. Choose A Niche For Your Blog:

Niche is the target market of your blog. i.e. the type of audience that will read your blog. Deciding a niche for your blog can seem to be a very daunting task, but it need not be. Examples of niche include:

· The food niche

· Travel niche

· Fashion niche

· Automobiles

· Technology

· Health

· Fitness and a whole lot more.

If you are finding it difficult to decide on which niche to blog about, here are some tips that can be of help:

· Blog about something you are passionate about.

· Blog about something you are very good at.

· Is there a popular problem you know people would like to get solutions to?

· You can blog about you field of study

· You can even blog about yourself.

It is important that you research you niche of your choice well, know who, what where your audience are and what they need. This will guide you towards creating relevant information and make them loyal to you. When you are able to solve their problems, they will always keep coming back for more.

4. Get A Good Design Template:

The look of your blog also plays a key role in the success of your blog. If you are a design oriented person, you can design your blog by yourself, or get a nice looking template and customize it to your taste, but if not, it is a worthy investment for you to hire a professional to do so for you.

The overall design of your blog is as important as the quality of the content of your blog. We are in a generation of click and go readers. Most people won’t wait to view the content of your blog if you do not have an attractive looking blog.

Mind you, a well designed blog does not just mean beautiful but also includes properties such as: easy navigation, fast load time, well structured etc.

Read:7 ways to make your blog load faster.

5. Create Unique And Quality Content:

After you must have fulfilled all the above steps, the next step is to start putting quality and relevant information on your blog. First, to create quality content, you need to get the “copy-paste” mentality off your head because honestly, it will do your blog no good.

Unique content doesn’t necessarily mean a never-before-seen content, but it means reinventing the wheel in a creative manner. Plagiarism defeats the purpose of blogging which I believe is to express your creativity. Before I write posts, I take time to read related blogs and generate ideas from them, but this doesn’t mean our content will be the same.

Creating quality and unique content will earn you loyal readership, make your blog a friend of search engines and also positions you as an authority in your niche.

Read: How to write a great blog post.

The concluding part of this post comes later on in the other part. Subscribe to get notified whenever it is published

6 Quick Tips For Formatting Your Blog Post For Readability

2013-12-14T21:04:00.000Z

When you are writing your blog posts, it is important that you make your posts scannable and easy for readability. The tips in this article will show you some quick fix to help you format and structure you blog posts well in order to make it easier for readers to grab your content.

How to Add Meta Description To BlogSpot Blogs

2013-12-13T19:31:00.001Z

Meta description is an HTML attribute that describes your blog to search engines. When people make a search for your content relating to your blog, this description will be shown to users to give them an idea what the blog is about. Meta description is no doubt an effective SEO technique.

7 Ways To Make Your Site Load Faster

2013-12-10T19:05:00.001Z

The time it takes a site to load is a deciding factor of whether readers will read the contents of the blog/site or not. Nobody has the patience to wait(unnecessarily long) for your blog to load, so what happens is, readers just navigate quickly out of your blog if you make them wait too long; even though you might have the best content on the web. In this article, I will show you some some simple ways you can use to make your blog load faster:

Six Blogging Practices Every Blogger Should Engage In

2013-12-08T19:10:00.000Z

There are so many reasons while people set out and create a blog. Be it for the fun, the money, the passion or for whatever reason, what we always want at the end of the (and which is of course natural) is to see our blogs gain readership and popularity.

How do we achieve these goals is what leaves many bloggers restless,

10 tips for choosing a domain name for your blog

2013-12-01T16:29:00.000Z

How good is your domain name? Domain name are said to be real estate of the internet. A domain name could be said to play a vital role on the success of a blog, so it is important that when you want to start a blog, you choose a good domain name for your blog.

In this post, I will highlight some basic points to consider in choosing a domain name for your blog:

How To Enable/Disable Anonymous Commenting In Blogger

2013-11-29T20:36:00.001Z

This is a very quick and short tutorial on enabling and disabling anonymous commenting on your blogger blog.

Anonymous commenting allows readers which are not registered with your blog or have an OpenId to comment on your blog(s). This has its advantages and

How To Set Custom URL For Blogger Posts

2013-11-23T19:43:00.000Z

Anytime you publish a new post in blogger, Blogger automatically creates a URL address for the post using the title of the post. Usually, it uses this format by default :your blog url(e.g www.sdknaija.com)/the current year(2013)/the current month(11)/the title of the post.

For example, the title of this post is :"How to set custom Url For Blogger Posts", the URL which blogger will use for this post will be :http://www.sdknaija.com/2013/11/how-to-set-custom-url-for-blogger-posts.html

A search Bar Widget; do you need it?

2013-11-20T22:22:00.000Z

Adding a search bar to your blog is one cool feature and interesting widget to have on your blog. But do you really need it.

The first time you created your blog, you might be tempted to add as many widgets as you see to your blog, but the truth is, you might not necessarily need them all.

When i started my blog, I had the search bar on my blog, but I later found no reason to keep it there. Hang on to find out why.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO tricks) you should avoid

2013-11-17T18:50:00.000Z

In the bid to rank higher in search engine results, some bloggers may be introduced to some bad search engine optimization tricks (usually called black hat SEO). How dis works is that, they trick the Search engines (e.g yahoo and google) to make their websites or web pages appear higher in search results.

But how do you know which SEO method is right or wrong? That is the question which brought about this post. In this article, I will point out some tricks to be avoided when optimizing your sites for search

Six qualities of a good blog

2013-11-12T19:30:00.000Z

One of the many questions usually asked by newbie bloggers is "how to have a good a blog?". Having a good blog is not something so difficult to achieve, just by following some simple steps, you have a good blog -ready to be taken to the ultimate heights- in place.

You might have seen so many posts written on the web concerning having a good blog, but with the simple points I am going to show you in this post, you will realize that your blog is not so far-fetched from being one of the good blogs out there:

How to Publish Posts on Your Blog

2013-10-26T20:05:00.000+01:00

So you have set up your own blog with blogger, now it's time to start putting up posts on your blog for the world to see. Well, it's quite easy and all you've got to do is just click a few buttons and you are done.

In this post, i will be showing you a quick tutorial on how to publish your posts in blogger fast.

So, let's begin:

How to change your Blog address in blogger in 5 easy steps

2013-10-25T21:29:00.000+01:00

For one reason or the other, you might have to change the URL address of the blog you already created using blogger.
Perhaps, you made a mistake while choosing the blog address during set up or a better idea just popped in your mind after you already have set up your blogger blog.Well, it's quite easy to do that and it is in fact one of the easiest things you can do on your blogger dashboard.
So, in this post, I will walk you through a short tutorial on how you can change your blogger address in 5 easy steps, Let's go:
STEP1:

What is PageRank (How it works and its effect on your blog)?

2013-10-19T10:37:00.001+01:00

What is pagerank?
Pagerank is used to determine how important a web page is. This pagerank is one of the factors used in determining how and where a web page appears in search results.
Pagerank was created by the founders of Google(Larry Page and Sergey Brin) and its name was most likely gotten from Larry Page's name.
How Pagerank works?
The pagerank of a page or site is determined by counting the number of links coming into a website(especially from outside), these links are more or less like votes. Yes, you get votes from other websites. Links to a web page are counted as votes i.e a link to a webpage from another page is counted as one vote.
But in the pageranking system, Votes have different values. Pagerank considers the number of links to your web page and where the link is coming from.
For example, if a webpage with having a ".edu" or ".gov" links to your web page, it has considered more valuable when compared to a link coming from an ordinary ".com" domain.
Although some sites do use some kinds of bad tricks to get higher pageranks, Google are constantly making updates to thr system to ensure such doesn't happen. And Google wouldn't hesitate to punish sites like that. One of the black tricks used is called link farming.
How Pagerank is measured?
A web page's pagerank is measured on a scale of 1-10. Only few websites have a pagerank of ten, which I
don't think even Google.com has. As at the time of writing this post; twitter.com has a pagerank of 10, facebook.com has a pagerank of 9, wikipedia.org has a pagerank of 9. (Well, my blog is still unranked, probably I will get to the top someday).
More About Pagerank:
Pages with higher pagerank have higher voting powers compared to pages with low pagerank. Also, the number of links on the page casting the vote is put into consideration. A page with high pagerank and lesser number of links, have a higher voting power.
How can i increase my pagerank?

Backlinks is the major thing that should be on your mind in the course of increasing your pagerank. You can get backlinks by asking people to link to your page, but be careful about this by making sure you get links from relevant content pages -although you might not have control on who links to your web page- but be sure you are trading links with the wrong pages.
Another tip for increasing pagerank is by submitting you site to some site directories, but only submit to directories with high pagerank.
And lastly, to increase your pagerank, create content that people will want to link to. CONTENT IS KING-always remember that-

How i can i check my pagerank?
There are lots of tools you can use to check your pagerank, ranging from online sites to browser extensions. One example is : prchecker.com

Ps: One other thing you should know about pagerank is that: different pages in a site or blog have different pageranks. i.e a page on your site might have a pagerank of 3 meanwhile, your homepage just have a pagerank of 1.

So, that will be all from me for now.

Your turn: it's time to hear from you. What do you know about pagerank, or perhaps you have questions concerning this post. feel free to talk by dropping your comment(s).

Cheers!

How to Be A good Blogger

2013-10-07T18:12:00.001+01:00

Being a good blogger is not something so difficult to achieve, there may be a thousand and one rules to follow to be a good blogger, but I have narrowed down the million points to the best of my knowledge. I hope you do gain something by reading this.
Below is my list of complied points for being a good blogger:
1) Be yourself :
My number one rule to being a good blogger is to be yourself. Write in your own style and in your own voice, and you will be surprised at how well you will do as a blogger.
2) Choose a Niche for your blog:
A niche (in its simplest of definition is the people to which you are directing your blog content to). Choose a niche which you know about well so you never go out of content.
3) Know your readers well:
Even before you write your first blog post, it is worth the effort to take the time to study the kind of audience you are marketing or directing your blog contents to. Some criteria to watch out for are: their marital status, their age, education level, location and so on. These might not be the only things to look out for, but they are worth studying.
4) Relate with other bloggers:
Seriously, to get your blog going, it is an inevitable activity that you must carry out for the good of your blog. This has so many advantages of which i can manage to mention a few here, because, it really is a topic on its own. Relating with other bloggers especially those in the same niche with you will not give your blog exposure to a larger audience but help you build back links which in turn increases your pagerank and the perceived value of your blog in the eye of our dearly friends (search engines).
Really, the importance of relating with other bloggers can not be over emphasized, engage in it, and you will have me to thank for it.
5) Be ready to improve:
Yes, you will have a lot of areas to improve at as a blogger. Your writing skill, you communication skill, your thinking skill are just some of the major areas you will need to really improve at if you really are going to be good blogger.
6) How consistent can you be?
You can never be a good a good blogger if you lack consistency. Go ask the big bloggers. As a blogger, you need to set a particular time range which you will update your blog. Are you convenient with putting up a blog post once a day, twice a day, once in two days or probably even once a week.
Just set an achievable time frame, and let your readers know you for it. You will be surprised at how loyal some of your readers can get due to your consistency.
What happens if you have three or four posts at hand, and you only post once in three days, it will just be nice if you can hold it off and release them as scheduled. Read: How to schedule blog posts in blogger.
7) Write good content:
Well, like the saying goes: "content is king". There is no substitute good content. Work well and spend time to create quality, unique and original content, and you will have both search engine and humans addicted to your blog.
Your turn: Now it's time to hear from you. Is there anything you would like to add or subtract from my list? Let's talk.

Difference between a website and a blog

2013-10-04T21:16:00.000+01:00

Is there really any difference? you may want to ask, yes there is and also, there is not.
What prompted me to write this post was when someone asked me this question which I found interesting to answer.
Basically, a blog is a type of website but with a different kind of format. A blog is more of an online diary. A blog is updated on a regular basis (may be many times a day, once a day or even weekly). Blogs are usually updated by writing articles to fill the the blog, these articles are called "posts".
Usually, a blog is mostly free and easy to set up, requiring little or no knowledge of web design skills.
Popular Platforms for blogging include blogger.com , wordpress.com and tumblr.com. Blogger is absolutely free and the easiest to use, especially for a complete newbie. You can read on how to create a blog with blogger here.
A blog may be updated by an individual or a group of people(authors). Some blogs provide information on general topics while some are based on specific topics (usually called niche blogs). A blog is quite easy to maintain, considering the fact that you have little back end stuffs you have to carry out on the blog and also little or no cost to run it. But I advise to get a custom domain for your blog, to at least make it professional.
Blogs also encourage interaction between the author of the blog and its readers. A blog can be created separately or integrated as part of a static website.
On the other hand, a website is a collection of static pages (although, that is changing recently), displaying specific information. A website is mostly used for professional or official purposes. Like showing information about a company. But today, we are having a lot of dynamic websites or social forums where contents are also updated regularly, therefore, almost reducing the distinction between blogs and websites.
Many bloggers actually blog for the fun of it, and they enjoy the joy of been able to pour out their mind on the internet. And even, some bloggers go as far as making money from their blogs.Some even turned blogging to their full time job (though I don't know so many bloggers who have done this). Read: How to make money blogging.
Let me also add that, most blogs are specifically created to solve a particular problem or the other. Readers can check in, look for the information they want, read it and comment.
Blog and websites do have a lot in common, but they are meant to serve different purposes.
I hope I have been able to clear your doubts concerning blogs and websites now?
Your turn: it is time for you to have your say. Let's talk.