Archive for June, 2009
What is a blog and why do people use them
Where did this wonderful new world come from? What is a blog? Well, blog comes from shortening the original phrase weblog. A weblog as you can guess is simply a log one keeps on the web - think journal, diary, anything type of log you might be keeping with pen and paper turned to the web. What is a blog? A blog is just a digital diary that can be used for personal blogging or professional blogging purposes.
The official definition for what is a blog is compliments of wiki:
Blog: Website in the form of an online journal, with new entries appearing in sequence as they are written
And the person at the helm of said blog, the blogger definition:
Blogger - a person who keeps and updates a blog
What does this mean? It means anyone can blog. Anyone can create a spot on the web and write just like anyone can pick up pen and paper and write. There is no hidden secret to blogging or tricks to the form.
Sure, when you get really into it and look to build an audience you deal with seo tips, seo fixes, keywords and other tricks to increase page rank of your blog but that isn’t needed to blog. What is needed to blog is simply content (personal or professional) and a place to post it online.
What is a blog? A blog is just a form of communication. Do with it what you will.
![[del.icio.us]](http://thebloggingcenter.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/delicious.png)
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Filed under Blogging
What most people forget about personal blogging
While you can always set your blog to be private and put it under lock and key, most people do not do this. Most who take part in personal blogging write whatever is on their mind, about anyone or anything and post it for the world to read.
Maybe people are just used to writing whatever they want on paper knowing it is kept in an underwear drawer and no one is going to read it. Personal blogging is a different animal. When you take part in personal blogging whatever you throw out there, you put it out there for the world to read. If you make fun of your boss, he or she could read it. If you make a comment about your family members, he or she could read it.
Even more personal blogging leaves a trace of you on the web for history. Young folks seem to not realize that things you do when you are still in high school or college can forever be linked to your name now with the web. Comments posted, opinions about certain subjects or people can haunt you in the future. Ten years after personal blogging a prospective employer could google your name and find what you wrote a long time ago.
This stuff happens. Google is a normal part of hiring someone these days. Background checks are common and your history on the web can impact your career even decades after you were personal blogging.
Bottomline, think about what you are going to blog about with your personal blog. Decide if you mean to make it public or if it should be private. If you decide to quit the blog, be sure to delete posts and hope in time the cache of your blog posts go away.
Here are some examples of why you need to be careful when you are personal blogging:
- http://www.bloggersblog.com/cgi-bin/bloggersblog.pl?bblog=926071
- www.blogherald.com/…/cnn-producer-fired-for-personal-blogging
- http://personalweb.about.com/b/2006/02/16/reporter-fired-over-personal-blog-comments.htm
Don’t let this happen to you. Be sure to be responsible with your personal blog.
Filed under Blogging, Blogging Tips
Three tips to effective blog marketing
There are a lot of terms and phrases out there when it comes to increasing traffic to your blog, but in the end it all boils down to blog marketing. SEO tips, backlinks, Social Media, these are all forms of blog marketing. Ways to get your name out there and get attention for your domain.
So how can you effectively get involved with blog marketing. Here are three tips I would start with:
Social Media Optimization: Social Media Optimization or SMO is the process of joining social sites where people can share blog posts, mark ones they enjoyed and follow bloggers they enjoy. If you are new to blog marketing with SMO and don’t know where to start, check out this list of the top 100 Social media sites out there. Join a few and get active.
Search Engine Optimization: Let’s go right to the source on this one. Here is what google has to say about how to get attention for your blog on their search engine. This is the process of making your blog more appealing to Search engine spiders by using SEO techniques to increase your page rank which in the long run will increase your traffic.
Content: Using SMO or SEO you can get people to FIND your blog but this doesn’t really mean anything unless you get them to READ your blog. Better yet, you want them to subscribe to your RSS feed or bookmark your site so that they come back over and over again with your new posts. The key to his blog marketing is simple, write good quality content for your blog. Add value to your reader so that when your SEO and SMO pans out for you, you can keep the reader coming back for more in the future.
How to start a blog for beginners
The nice thing about blogging is that no matter how poorly your handwriting is, it doesn’t matter. Okay, bad joke to start this blog post but I am tired, give me a break. I wanted to write a detailed blog post about how to start a blog especially focused on the beginner blogger. Someone who has friends who blogs or reads blogs but has no background with technology and really just wants to learn how to start a blog of their own.
So I started to outline my blog post and did some research online to see where I could fill in some blanks and then I stumbled on this blog called sure enough, How to start a blog. which lays out everything someone looking to start one needs to keep in mind. I think there is enough duplicate content out there in the world so if I find a good post, I don’t feel the need to reinvent it with my own, just simply point to it so hopefully you can read it and learn from it.
The basics of the post on how to start a blog for beginners is the process follows a logical progression:
- Decide what you want to blog about
- Decide if you want to host it yourself or use a free blogging service
- Pick a domain name
- Setup your blog basics
- Setup the them for your blog
- Write your content
The blog post here goes over much more details on the decisions you need to make to get started and covers how to start a blog with pretty good detail. Once you get it started you can worry about increasing your traffic and building a readership but for now, just get it started. Content is king and focus on that especially when you just get started.
Filed under Blogging, Blogging Tips
Increase traffic to your website with Google blog search
In addition to getting backlinks for your blog and writing good quality content rich in keywords, another way to ensure more traffic is to ensure you are part of google blog search. You may have submitted your site to google search and every other search engine out there but google blog search is a different entity and you may not be found there.
Google blog search only does what it says, focuses on blogs that match the keywords search upon and ignores websites or other content out there. You provide your RSS feed and it will index that for future queries. I have submitted this to the blog search tool and have seen some referrals already so I do think it is effective.
One tip I have found is that blogs with more then one author tend to do better with the blog search tool. One of my blogs has new authors each week and it is always on the first page of the results for my keywords.
A second tip I can suggest is that this blog search tool does look at when the content was released. This gives you an advantage over some of the older more established blogs who have old blogs that dominate certain keywords. If you post on a normal basis your posts will show on page one for your keywords during the first few hours or short period of time depending on how popular your topic is. For many, that may be the only way to get to the first page given how competitive some of the keywords are.
Give it a try and let me know if you see an increase traffic to your blog using Google blog search.
It is never too late to start SEO fixes for blogs
So you started a blog years ago. Been posting on a some what normal basis and still no one has ever found your blog using any search engine. Frustrated you google how to increase traffic to my blog and find three magical letters. SEO. You read further and further until you find golden lists of top ten things to do for SEO fixes. You begin to cry and know what you must do.
Where do you go from here? Well, it is never too late to start updating an old blog with SEO fixes. There is no way to show you everything you need to do instead I am going to point you in a few directions. The more you know, the more you read, the better off you will be. There is no one magical SEO fix that will make you now get traffic but a number of things you can do over a period of time that will make the search engine spiders like you a little more each day.
If you get the chance read the links in the following paragraphs. Ramp up on SEO fixes for your blog and you will see traffic eventually.
Here is a great list of things to consider from John Simpson about what SEO fixes are available for old websites. Another list of SEO fixes you should be able to knock out on your own.
The more you can do your own the better off you will be. Remember, SEO fixes are a constant thing that take time to see an improvement. If you have someone do it for you, that will require a constant hand holding. Learn to do it yourself. Here is a great article to further push this point.
If you feel overwhelmed at it all and considering hiring someone to do all of your SEO fixes for you, here is a good article to read first.
