With Google Adsense or Yahoo Publisher, having people click onto more pages helps your revenue immensely, but how do you get them to read more than one page when they visit your website? Here are a few tips.

1. Create pages within the blog that contain reference material you refer to often in your posts. These static pages will also get crawled and indexed by the search engines and as you write posts about your topics you can refer people to these static pages as references to what you are posting about.

2. Use articles as static pages. You can reprint articles on any topic for free by visiting one of the many article directories like http://www.articlecontentprovider.com/articlesubmit/ Then refer people to read the articles that relate to the post you are making. You could even add one article as a new page every time you make a post.

3. Refer to other posts you have made on your blog or on another one of your blogs while posting. This gets the reader to click over to previous posts. You can even decide your posts by browsing previous posts and deciding which one to follow up on. Those archives are not to be lost and forgotten. Its great material, (you wrote it right?), so use it.

4. Create a page that links to your favorite posts that are timeless. You browse your old posts, find posts that you want readers to find easily, then build a links page with those posts directly linked. Then add a link to that page from your front page. Call it favorite posts or whatever and you will benefit by those that click through and follow those links.

5. I’ve posted here before about the “more” tag. You write your post as normal, then decide where you want to break the post up onto a new page. You put the more tag in and readers have to click to a new page to read the rest of the story.

6. Write once per week special projects. These are a series of articles on a particular topic. You will be offering it once per week giving readers a week to comment on it, then have them hanging on for next weeks special post in the series. Each time add links to previous posts in that series.

7. Using your content from your other websites or blogs is also a great way to get more pageviews for all of them. Use the target new tag and refer to material on your other blogs and websites. It will open a new window leaving the current blog open while they visit your other website or blog. You can quickly double up your pageviews while also introducing your readers to your other websites and blogs.

8. Make a list of 10 previous posts and the links to those posts. Make a post in your blog about 10 things you want your readers to know and read in case they have not done so before. At your suggestion they will at least go see if they have read those posts before, increasing your pageviews once again plus bringing old material to new readers. That also lets them know they should browse the archives for things they have missed.

9. Using that same list of 10 posts or a new one, visit other blogs on your topic. Find posts that talk about something similar to one of those 10 posts, then instead of adding a link in your signature to the home page, make a comment there and refer to the post that is similar and that contains helpful information to that blogger and their readers. You will also be increasing your link popularity while doing this. Do not spam the link. Make sure it actually contains useful information. Don’t be trolls or spammers and you will end up with new readers and more page views for your blog.

10. Do not stop being creative. Use the tips in this article, plus invent some of your own ways to interlink your blogposts together. Create pages. Don’t just post and forget. That content is valuable, use it. Do not make people search your blog. They are lazy and busy. Bring it to them. That is just good customer service.

I hope this article helps you learn there is more to blogging than just writing a post once in a while or even daily. If you employ the tips I just gave you into your blog I guarantee you will increase your pageviews which in turn will increase your revenue if using an ad program in your blog.

Technorati Tags: article, marketing, writer, ghostwriter, blog, forum

Blogs can be a very marketable and very profitable tool if used correctly. Profiting from blogs is just a matter of grabbing the attention of an audience and not doing any actual salesmen selling. In this article you will learn the 13 most essential steps to successful blogging.

1) Where to start?

You should begin your blog with a free blog hosting service such as Journal Home. I don’t say that because I’m the owner, but a free blog host is very rewarding for a new blog.  Starting with a free blog hosting service allows you to begin blogging instantly without having any advance knowledge of scripts, hosting, or programming. It allows you to build an audience and buzz for your blog.  It allows you to focus on your content and not the internal maintenance of the blog. The best benefit of starting with a free service, is in the case your blog doesn’t become successful you do not lose any money or are you left holding the bill. The great thing about a blog is that they are organized in chronological order, your latest entry is displayed first. When your blog traffic grows greatly and you are ready to upgrade to your own domain then you can simply make your last blog entry the announcement of your “move”.  Simply add a last entry stating that your blog has “moved” and type the new blog URL address. Which directs visitors to your new blog site, keeping your following, without a major inconvenience to anyone. Upgrade as you need to…but only when you need to!

2) Niche

A niche is a targeted product, service, or topic. You should first decide on a product, service, or topic which interest you. Choose an area which you can enthusiastically write about on a daily basis. You can use keyword research services like Google Zeitgeist or Yahoo! Buzz Index to find popular searched topics. It does NOT matter if your topic is popular as long as there is a audience for your topic and the topic is precisely focused then your blog should be successful. Anything can be considered a niche as long as it has a target audience no matter how large or how small the audience is. A blog about your cat can be a niche or a blog about the species of the cat family can be a larger niche market, if there are people who are interested in hearing about your cat or the species of the cat family, then you have a niche…you can even choose to build your audience for a market which an audience does not exist, but first you must build your blog.

3) Update Daily (nothing less)

This step is a must and not a suggestion. Updating your blog daily not only keeps your blog more interesting to readers, but it also gives your blog fresh content on a day to day making it more appealing to search engines. Not updating your blog on an occasional holiday or one day here and there is understandable to most, but missing days at a time or weeks is unacceptable and will most likely result in your blog being unsuccessful. To keep your blog traffic and retain your visitors interest it is a must to update your blog daily with multiple entries. Though, I am seeing a growing trend of successful blogs that are not being updated daily, but they are successful and have a stable audience who continue to visit their blog daily.  Regardless, these blogs are still updated weekly with multiple entries.  Until you have a steady audience you should try to update your blog everyday with at least 3 or more daily entries. The best way to accomplish this is to set aside 1-2 hours a day for tending to your blog and adding new entries. It may even be wise to schedule a set time which you dedicate to your blog each day. Give yourself work hours and treat your blog as a job, what happens if you don’t come to work for days or weeks…you lose money or worse you get fired! Same applies here…if you don’t update your blog for days or weeks you’ll lose visitors.

4) Traffic

It’s no secret. You must have traffic to profit from blogs. There are numerous ways to build traffic. Paid advertising, free advertising, viral marketing, search engine marketing, RSS/XML feeds, and word-of-mouth. You should always use your blog URL address in the signature of your email, forum discussions, message boards, or any other communication media. You should submit your blog URL address to search engines and blog directories. You should submit your RSS/XML URL feed to blog ping services like Technorati, Ping-O-Matic, and Blogdigger. You should confidently share your blog with family, friends, co-workers, associates, and business professionals when it relates. Many blogs can be considered as a collection of articles, for this purpose you should submit your blog entries (those that are valuable and lengthy articles) to content syndicators like GoArticles.com or ZapContent.com. Once submitted your articles can be picked up and published by others. The trick is to make sure you include your Blog URL address in the “About the Author” passage. What this does is create link popularity and backlinks for your blog, when someone picks up your article from the syndication then publish the article on their website the “About the Author” passage is included with each publication and the link you included is followed, crawled, and indexed by search engines. Imagine if your article is popular enough or controversial enough to produce 10,000 publications across the web. The search engines is bound to find your blog in no time with that many publications and credit you a authority on the topic, in return increasing your rank on search engines. The small effort of writing a well written article is rewarding. You should try to write at least 1 full length article every week for syndication and submit your article to at least 10 article syndicators.

5) Track Your Blog

How do you know if your blog has traffic? Just because no one is leaving comments doesn’t mean your blog isn’t growing. Many visitors do not leave comments but they are returning visitors. I know it sounds crazy but with blogs people are more interested in what “you” have to say! Many visitors do not comment their 1st, 2nd, or 3rd time. Some do not comment at all, but are active daily visitors.

Tracking your blog does not have to be overly sophisticated usually a simple free page counter like StatCounter.com or Active Meter will do the trick. Install (copy/paste) the code into the html of your blog template and start tracking your visitors. Its better to use a service which gives you advanced traffic analysis, such as keyword tracking information, referral information, and search engine information. Visitors, returning visitors, and unique visitors should be standard for any page counter service you choose.

6) Listen to Your Audience

When using the proper page counter you should begin to see how others are finding your blog and if through search engines then which keywords are being used to find your blog. If constantly your blog is being found by 1 or more keywords then focus your blog around those keywords to make it even more powerful. When writing entry titles and entries use the keywords as often as possible while keeping the blog legible and interesting.

7) Multiple blogs

Use multiple blogging accounts (free) to attract more people. This means you should have a blog with JournalHome.com and others. The more blog accounts the better (be sure to read and adhere to the Terms of Service for each site). You can copy/paste from 1 blog to all others. Having different blog accounts is like having a publication in different newspapers. This enables you to attract more visitors and this also increases the chance that 1 of your blogs will be in the search engine results for your focused keywords.

Short & Concise

Aside from the lengthy article a week for syndication and publication your blog entries should be short & concise (if you can help it). Sometimes there are exceptions to the rule and you have no choice but to blog lengthy entries, but try to avoid this as much as possible. You do not want your blog entries to become hours of reading. Visitors like to easily find information and skim through your entries. It is good to be detailed and provide useful information, but do not include useless information or run away sentences that veer away from your topic.  Stay keyword-focused.

9) Digital Art

Try to include non-advertising graphics, pictures, photos, and art in your blog entries. Not too much. Once a week is fine. Graphics can sometimes bring your blog to life. Of course, the content of the blog is the most important aspect and you do not want to overshadow your content with graphics, but displaying graphics can add a bit of spice to the blog. Be choosy about your graphics and make sure they fit your entry topic. You should add content with the graphic, at least a caption. Original graphics, photos, pictures, and art is recommended.

10) Keep it Personal

A blog is most successful when it is kept personal. Try to include personal experiences which relates to the topic of your blog entry. Stay away from the business style of writing. Write with a more personal style and use first-person narratives. Do not write any of your entries as sales letters, instead share product reviews and personal endeavors.

11) Interact With Your Visitors

You now have the traffic you deserve. You should begin interacting with your visitors. Create a regular theme such as: “Monday Money Tip” or “Picture of the Week” which entices your readers to look forward to each week.

Give your readers advance notice about a product, service, or topic which you are going to review and then talk about later. If the President was scheduled to give a speech then in your blog you should state that you “will discuss the speech and give your opinion after the speech airs. Comments will be appreciated”.

Try your best to find exclusive information that not many have. Do not disclose any confidential or secret information which is deemed illegal or can potentially get you into trouble, but try to get the scoop before everyone else does. Such as: If your blog was about Paris Hilton (the socialite) and you had a blog entry about “Paris Hilton Getting Married” then it would be interesting to your readers if you had a actual picture of Paris Hilton engagement ring. Give your best effort to dig and search the internet for exclusive information and you will possibly come up with something useful. Your readers will appreciate this and they show their appreciation through word-of-mouth referrals. Imagine how many readers will tell their friends, family, and others about information they only can find at your blog.

12) Make Money

Once your blog has gained some real momentum and your blog traffic is increasing then it is time to start thinking about turning your traffic into profit. You should use contextual advertising, like Google Adsense or Chitika. Contextual advertising is usually text links which use the content of your blog to publish targeted ads on your blog. The payout is usually based on a pay-per-click model, meaning for ever click an ad receives you are paid a small percentage of the profits. In addition to contextual advertising it is good to also use graphical advertising such as: BlogAds.com, Amazon.com, MammaMedia, or General Sponsored Advertising.

13) You’re a Professional

You’re a professional now! What are you still doing with that free blog hosting service? It is time to upgrade to a domain hosted solution. You need to get a web host and choose a domain name for your blog then check its availability. Select the blogging software you wish to use, such as: Squarespace.com, WordPress.org, MovableType.org, TypePad, etc. When you have your new blog domain setup and ready for traffic then it is time for you to announce your move on all your previous blog accounts. Your last entry to the blog should be a “move” announcement. The title should be “Moved” and the blog entry should state something like “I have a new home for my blog, please bookmark and follow the link: http://www.YourNewBlogDomainName.com”. This way all returning visitors and new readers should not have any problem finding your new blog domain.  Plus, search engines can easily index and crawl your new blog, since your old blog should already be popular with the search engines.

At the level of a professional blogger you may want to team up with 1 or more other bloggers. This will create a more interesting and more powerful blog. The old saying “two heads is better than one”, more authors mean more advertising and exposure because each author will have a vested interest in the blog. The idea of a team blog is to make it profitable and rewarding for all authors, while continuing to target the blog topic and keeping the blog interesting for visitors.

Following these blogging techniques should make your blogging experience much more rewarding. There is no guarantee that your blog will become popular or a household name, but the effort should at least put you one step closer. Making money online is not an overnight experience like many may think, but making money online is definitely a foreseeable possibility. As well, growing popularity on the web is not an overnight experience, but through time, dedication, and persistence you will be rewarded with all the royalties of blogging.

Commenting on other blogs can have a very positive impact on your search engine ranking and on the traffic you’re getting to your sites.  It’s important that you keep in mind that most bloggers moderate the comments left on their articles so you want to make sure that you’re not coming off as a spammer.

The bullet points below will help you to get your comments approved on other blogs.

Tips for getting your Comments Approved on Other Blogs

• Don’t comment if you have not read the article, it’s important that all of your comments relate to the topic being discussed. If you don’t make sure that your comments are consistent with the topic at hand then you can expect your comment to end up in the spam section of the blog admin page.

• Avoid many Links. Blogs offer you the opportunity to add a comment and include a link back to the site of your choice. There is no need to fill the comment body with a number of links unless it’s necessary. You’re given an opportunity to leave one link in the comment form so make sure that you leave a keyword rich link and you will be fine.

• Leave some value. What’s the point of commenting if your not going to leave something of value, perhaps its your opinion on the article at hand or a question pertaining to the topic. Avoid posting one word or one line comments.

It would be probably be a good idea to find 10 to 20 high traffic blogs within your market or niche - make sure to follow that bloggers work and interact with him or her via the comments section of the blog. If you become an avid supporter you will be noticed by the blogger and perhaps this may open an opportunity for future ventures with the blogs you’re supporting.

Technorati Tags: blog comments, approved blog comments, comment marketing, how to get comments approved

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The past couple of weeks I’ve been spending a fair amount of time on updating a social network I run that targets members of a cultural traditional religions. In the midst of this project I started to build a sitemap for the network and felt the need to share the importance of implementing a sitemap in your blog marketing efforts.

In Blog marketing you want to make sure that you’re optimizing your blog to the best of your ability and including a sitemap is a good search engine optimization strategy to employ. Not only does it helps the search engines, but it also enhances the navigating experience for your users.

What is a sitemap?

Sitemaps simplify the navigation process for your users and they also tell the search engines what pages should be indexed in the results and how often those particular indexed pages are updated. It grants your site the ability to communicate with the search engines and helps the search engine to understand the hierarchical structure of your site.

Why should you use a sitemap?

Sitemaps make it very easy for the search engine robots to crawl your site and thus will help to improve your search engine rankings. With improved search engine rank you can expect to see an improvement in visitor traffic.

When should a sitemap be created?

Typically sitemaps are created during the planning or design stages of website development. Having a written/hard copy site map helps you to plan the structure of your blog or site and simplifies the layout design stage. Most blogs start off without a sitemap and typically this is fine, however, it’s important that you include one as soon as possible. Those running a wordpress platform blog can install a sitemap wordpress plugin and this sitemap will automatically be created for you.

Where do you place the sitemap link?

Most folks place their sitemaps on the footer of the page, but some say that it’s best to include your sitemap in the top right corner of your web pages. You should consider placing the sitemap link on the homepage of your blog or site since the home page is typically the highest ranking part of your site and probably the first place the search engine robots visit when crawling your pages.

Recipe for a Search Engine Friendly Sitemap:

• Make sure to create links to the most important pages on your blog or site.
• Include short descriptions of those links.
• Make sure to include niche related keyword phrases/links on your sitemap.
• Ensure that your sitemap is on the root or homepage of your blog/site.

If you run a wordpress blog, install this sitemap plugin on your blog.

Wordpress Sitemap Plugin

For those running sites on different platforms you can try the following free sitemap generating services to help you develop your sitemaps.

http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/
http://www.auditmypc.com/free-sitemap-generator.asp

Technorati Tags: sitemap structure, automatic sitemap, sitemap format, google sitemap seo, sitemap for seo, sitemap and seo, seo sitemap generator, sitemaps and seo, xml sitemaps seo, sitemaps for seo, sitemap seo, xml sitemap seo

You guys probably know that most people that start blogging or marketing for the purpose of making money online via a blog or any other type of website typically fail. I remember reading somewhere that 95% of people trying to make money on the net typically fail. This failure rate can be attributed to the fact that there is no business model or plan for that new online business. Since that plan is the solid foundation to online success now you can probably understand why they fail.

Below I’ll share with you guys 3 of the most popular business models that are used online for the sake of making money, all 3 have been proven to be very promising methods. Two of the blogs that I often visit are a testament to the success of these business models once applied and worked correctly.

Affiliate Marketing

It’s probably one of the most popular business models and open to almost anyone - all you’d have to do is sign up for an affiliate program like NeverBlue or Azoogle and as soon as you’re approved you can begin promoting the products or services of your choice. There are certain guidelines you need to follow and as long as you stick to them you’re free to promote and make your money. If someone signs up or buys into one of the products your promoting you will collect a commission payment from the program you’re promoting. One of the greater benefits in affiliate marketing is that your not paying for product creating or handling customer service as the program you’re promoting handles everything for you - all you do is promote and when users become customers for the particular program you will get paid.

Information Products

You’ve probably read an e-book online or bought some sort of informational product from the web - guess what you can create your own and begin selling it online. The great thing about information products is that you can write about anything and as long as it’s good content you will find buyers. You can even submit your informational product to some of the affiliate market places like Clickbank and have other affiliate marketers promote your product for you - once they help you to make that sale you earn your percentage and they earn theirs. In the case of informational products as the author or business that is providing this service you willbe responsible for the customer service and the business transactions that take place.

Google Adsense

Probably the most popular of the already mentioned business model. I call it a business model because some folks make their living off adsense but if you really think about adsense, it’s not really a true business model because you are not in control of it. There are many disadvantages of relying solely on adsense as your account can be terminated from day to night if Google finds that terms have been violated and you can go from making thousands of dollars a month to making nothing over night. It’s a great way to generate income but you are not in control here, however, for those that follow the rules and stick to the Google guidelines this can be a very profitable avenue to take. The idea is that you will build a website or blog with market or niche related content and once you’ve signed up with google and you have been approved you will paste snippets of code that will serve ad’s on your blog or site. As your users begin to click on your ad’s you will start making money.

There are many ways to make money online, the 3 above seem to be the most popular business models but the potential is unlimited. There are those that start off with membership sites where they charge a monthly rate for the subscription and there are those that start their own affiliate networks. The key is to remember that to succeed in blogging for money you have to have a pretty strong idea of what business model you’re going to be employing. You can get involved in all 3 but you have to lay the bricks the right way in order to be considered successful.

What business models have you thought about and have you made money in any of the above? would love to hear your thoughts.

Running a professional, business or niche focused blog comes with expectations - these are 3 of many points to consider when running a blog for business and even if you’re doing it as a  hobby.

Your About Page

It’s fairly easy to get into bag blogging habits - one of the worst habits is to ignore your “About Page” - this page is extremely important because it lets your readers know who you are and helps them to establish some sort of online relationship with you as the author of the blog. It helps them to understand your vision for the blog, and tells them a bit about who you are as a person and as an expert or authority within a particular field or niche. Believe it or not, most folks check out the about page and when they find the generic page provided by wordpress you can kiss them goodbye, so to speak.

Use your about page to tell your readers who you are and why you are qualified to write a blog within your particular niche market - it helps your readers to understand why they should believe or support what you are saying.  Once they become supporters, they will return to your blog.

Claim your Blog on Technorati

Have you claimed your blog on technorati? when you claim your blog on this service you’re registering the site as yours. It can help to improve your traffic. It takes a little while for new blogs to get a decent amount of traffic and you want to attack every possible avenue within your reach to ensure you’re getting a decent amount of readers.

Host your blog on your domain

It’s easy to set up a blog on wordpress.com or blogger.com but you have to remember that although there is no difference on incoming traffic or ranking - hosting your blog on your own hosting account establishes credibility as a professional or authority within your market. When running your blog on these hosted services you have to remember that those companies are ultimately in control of your blog and if you break their terms you run the risk of losing your blog and content with or without notice.

Technorati Tags: blog, super blogging, power blogging

What you’ll find below

1. What are blog categories
2. Why are they important?
3. How will choosing the wrong categories impact my blog?
4. Tips on choosing the right ones?

What is category?

In blogging categories are simply a group or collection of content that belongs together.

Blog categories, why do I care?

In blog marketing it’s important that you keep in mind that choosing the right categories have an impact on your search engine results and your readers experience. When thinking of blog categories think of archives, or filing systems. The idea is that you organize your content into those categories in the same fashion you would put away a file in a filing cabinet.

Categories are important because they help you get organized and it’s pretty clear that the last thing you want is a cluttered and unorganized blog. This is a total turn off to your readers and ultimately to the search engines. It will also help you to keep your blog focused and in line within your niche or market.

If I choose the wrong ones

Choosing the right categories for your blog is crucial in blog marketing. If you haven’t heard of LSI or Latent Semantic Indexing this is the moment where categories become important. LSI is the algorithm or process that a search engine performs when determining the rank of a blog or webpage. It’s kinda like saying that the search engine has become a bit more humanized. It’s looking over the content of your blog and expecting to find synonyms or keywords that surround your particular niche. In other words, if you’re blogging about fashion the LSI process expects to find related phrases like “accesories”,”Mens Wear”,”Women’s Wear”,”Fashion Tips”, “Designing”, etc. Overall it expects to find keywords surrounding the concept of fashion. LSI is in place to make sure that the readers experience is well worth it and choosing the wrong categories will stray you away from your market or niche and therefore have a negative impact on the ranking of your blog.

The easiest way to please the LSI algorithm is to keep your readers in mind and come up with an effective filing system. In understanding the above it’s important to note that LSI goes beyond categories but choosing the right categories will definitely help you to improve your ranking because in choosing the right ones it helps you to stay inline within your niche.

Choosing the best blog categories..

If you already have a blog, look over your current categories and try to figure out which categories you can combine. Are there any that you can break up into two categories or perhaps sub-categories?

Another tip that could help you in choosing the best one’s would be to google your market, for instance if you’re niche relates to making money online - google that very term and click on a link to any of the blogs in the top 10 results. Once you do this, look over the filing system they have created and determine if it’s something that you can replicate. I dont recommend that you necessarily copy or duplicate their categories, but use them to get an idea about how you can organize your own articles.

With that said, I’m off to review the categories on all of my blogs….will you do the same?

Technorati Tags: Blog Categories, Blogs, Latent Semantic Index, LSI, Blog Category, Blog Marketing Categories

About the Author - Ruben Ricart the founder of Frusketing.com. He works as a freelance online marketing consultant, loves blogging, and wants to share everything hes learned with you. Written on: September 2,2009