From the monthly archives:

May 2008

Build Your Network With Blogcatalog

by TheWeblogZone on May 30, 2008

official blogcatalog logo, blogcatalogNetworking is an indespensable aspect of blogging. It is through networking that you get more links, more traffic and more opportunities for your blog. Ultimately, it is through networking with other bloggers that you and your blog grow.

There’s no question about the contribution of networking to successful blogging. The only challenge to bloggers is to find the right tool or service that will maximize the benefits of networking and at the same time provide them with an enjoyable experience. This is where BlogCatalog comes to place.

What Is BlogCatalog?

Blogcatalog is a web directory and a social network in one. Whether you are looking to promote your own website or find websites on various topics, this site is for you. Blogcatalog is one of the fastest growing community of bloggers and non-bloggers from different parts of the world. Moreover Blogcatalog is an avenue for bloggers and webmasters to build their networks.

bloggers, networking with bloggers

Useful Features Of Blogcatalog

  1. Blogcatalog lets you submit your websites. Once approved, your website will be listed in their directory and will start to receive traffic from referrals.
  2. Blogcatalog lets you network with other bloggers, send messages to them and add them to your network of friends.
  3. Blogcatalog has one of the best discussions. The topics discussed vary from anarchism to zionism. It’s one great place to share your expertise and learn from others. It’s also a great place to ask for help and make new friends.
  4. Blogcatalog lets you join groups of your interest. It even allows you to start your own group and build your communit of like-minded bloggers.
  5. Blogcatalog lets you create different useful widgets (recent viewers, community discussions, my news feed etc.) to draw more people to your blog.
  6. Blogcatalog has a search engine that lets you search blogs and certain topics in their database.
  7. Blogcatalog allows you to integrate other social media into your Blogcatalog account. This innovative feature does not only lead to a higher traffic but it also helps you to draw more people to your groups or networks.
  8. Every month, Blogcatalog organize a “Bloggers Unite” event where bloggers come together to blog about a certain topic. Through this organized events, bloggers aim to make a difference through their posts, opinions and ideas.

What are you waiting for? Why don’t you head over at Blogcatalog now and create your account. Registration is free so as using their services.

Blogcatalog Groups - Join Me

While you’re there, don’t forget to join these communities I started.

blogcatalog, bloggers and blogging, blogcatalog logoNeed help or assistance with your blog and blogging? That’s what this group is created for. You can ask for help from the members or give a hand to others. Bloggers and Blogging is a community created specifically for bloggers and those who are interested to start blogging. Join Blogcatalog now and add Bloggers and Blogging to your communities!

blogcatalog, blogcatalog log, entrecard, entrecard group, entrecard logoThere’s NO DOUBT, Entrecard brings traffic. The Entrecard group is created for all Entrecard card users. This is the place to share and request for credits, advertise your Entrecard credit giveaways and network with fellow Entrecard users. Join Blogcatalog now and add Entrecard Group to your communities!

alexa logo, alexa traffic rank, blogcatalog, blogcatalog logo, alexa group Alexa Traffic Ranking is important if your are monetizing your blog as most advertisers use it to gauge your Blog’s worth. The Alexa Group is created for all “Alexa - Ranking - Conscious” bloggers. This group is where everyone shares their tips and tricks in improving Alexa Traffic Rank. After the latest updates in the Alexa algorithm, there are more reasons to join Alexa Group and improve your ranking.

Thank you for your time and thank you for joining my communities! :)

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SponsoredReviews - Make Money From Your Reviews

by TheWeblogZone on May 25, 2008

sponsoredreviews, make mone blogging, sponsored reviews

Doing online review is another great way for bloggers to make money from their blog. It has been my major source of revenue over the first 10 months of blogging. But with the hundreds and thousands of review sites that promise to pay you for your reviews, I found out that Sponsored Reviews is so far the most rewarding and the most reliable.

Why SponsoredReviews

  1. SponsoredReviews has one of the largest list of advertisers, hence, offering a huge selection of review opportunities. This is good for bloggers because it allows us to choose products to review that are related to our blog topic.
  2. SponsoredReviews gives more freedom to their bloggers concerning the reviews they make. Honest and professional reviews are encouraged and constructive criticisms are most welcome. However, outrightly bias, rude and hateful reviews will be declined.
  3. SponsoredReviews offers one of the most competitive review rates ranging from $5 to $9,999 or more. Review rates mainly depend on the quality of the blog, the quality of reviews, Technorati ranking, link popularity and Alexa traffic rank.
  4. SponsoredReviews only charges a 35% commission from all the reviews made by their bloggers. Other review sites, charge up to 50-60% leaving their bloggers with a meager share of the income.
  5. Revenues earned from reviews are automatically credited to your account upon submission of completed reviews.
  6. SponsoredReviews pays religiously every after two weeks. All payments are made through Paypal.
  7. SponsoredReviews allows their publishers to bid for available opportunities, which improve their chances of accumulating more review offers. Consequently, SponsoredReviews allows their advertisers to reject or approve bids from publishers. Advertisers are also given the option of directly buying reviews from SponsoredReviews’ approved bloggers. Both bloggers and advertisers can place counter-offers.
  8. SponsoredReviews lets you earn more money through their profitable affiliate program.

sponsored reviews, sponsoredreviews, paid post
Screenshot of opportunities available at SponsoredReviews

 SponsoredReviews Affiliate Program

Another way to make money from your blog is through joining SponsoredReviews’ Affiliate Program. Their affiliate program is hazzle free and easy to join. I’ve started making money from my referrals (advertisers and bloggers) about two months ago.  So far, I’ve referred 81 bloggers and 28 advertisers and revenue are starting to pour in.

With SponsoredReviews’ Affiliate Program, you can earn up to $175 per advertiser and $90 per blogger referred. It all depends on the money spent and earn by the advertisers and bloggers you referred respectively. Naturally, the higher the money spent and earnd by referred advertisers and bloggers respectively, the higher your commission.

Referral payouts are made once every month and will be added to any payouts for completed reviews. Lately however, I’ve noticed that referral payouts are made separately from completed reviews. All referral payments are done through Paypal.

What are you waiting for? Visit SponsoredReviews now and start making money online.

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Tips On Registering Your Domain Name

by TheWeblogZone on May 23, 2008

So, you want some tips for your domain name? Here are a few important reminders to consider when registering your own domain name.

Your domain name is important for several reasons. More important of these reasons include search engine optimization and branding. You must select a domain name that will uniquely represent your online business and at the same time drive more traffic to your blog. How exactly do you do this?

domain name, register domain name, domain names, www

Use Your Keywords In Your Domain Name

After you have chosen a topic to blog about, you can now register your domain name. While some bloggers have decided to use their own names for branding purposes (i.e. GarryConn.com and TerenceChang.com), I would advice you to use your keywords instead.

If your blog is all about blogging, it’s a good idea to include it to your domain name. Or if you want to optimize your blog for the keywords “Blogging Tips” and “Blogging Resources”, including these words to your domain name will improve your search engine visibility. Try using Google and search for “Blogging Tips”. You will notice that www.bloggingtips.com is on top of the search engine result page. Apparently, using your keywords in your domain name help boost your search engine ranking for those specific keywords. Of course, using your keywords in your domain name does not do all the tricks. You need to do some more search engine optimization.

Make Your Domain Name Easy To Remember

When you’re deciding for a domain name, avoid concocting tongue twisters as they are not helpful at all. Every webmaster / blogger would want to register a domain name that is short and easy to remember. You wouldn’t really want to miss traffic simply because your previous visitors forgot your domain name.

When registering your domain name, use at most three words or a maximum of 20 characters (Domain names have 67 maximum allowable characters). If you can get away with numbers (i.e. theweblogzone2008.com), the better. Doing this will minimize future confusion. Hyphens, which others claim to have some positive SEO effects, should also be avoided as it could potentially lead to confusion and sometimes inconvenience on the part of your visitors. Besides, there are no solid proofs that domain names with hyphens are much preferred by search engines. Also, it’s worth noting that a long domain name is not only confusing and easily forgotten, but it’s also not search engine friendly.

Use “COM” As Extension Or Register All Possible Extensions

With the popularity of blogging these days, registering a domain name of your choice is oftentimes difficult. Chances are, the domain name you want to register is either registered or is sold at a high price. If you already have a domain name in mind, you might want to register it right away before someone else does.

Now that domain name extension are no longer limited to “com”, you should also consider registering all other possible extension like; net, biz, org, us, and cc to protect your brand. If you can’t afford keeping all these domain names, make sure to prioritize registering your domain name with a “com” as an extension. COM as an extension is the most popular and oldest extension.

Considering that some people mispell domain names, why don’t register these domain names and have them rerouted to your blog. This would mean driving more traffic to your blog. The word “Blogging” for instance is oftentimes mispelled “Bloging”. If your domain name is Blogging.com, you might want to register Bloging.com and have it redirected to your blog to avoid missing traffic.

Don’t Register Domain Names That Infringe On Trademarks

Last but not the least, keep your business legit and avoid registering domain names that infringe on trademarks. If before, companies are willing to pay hundreds and thousands of dollars to buy registered domain names in order to keep their brand, nowadays; companies are turning to their lawyers for help. Laws regarding trademark infringement vary from one country to another, but trademark infringements are always prosecuted.

Before you proceed to the registration of your domain name, make sure that you considered the pointers raised in this post. If you think I missed some valuable tips with domain names, do share them in the comments.

Thank you for your time. ;)

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Choosing Your Blog Topic

by TheWeblogZone on May 22, 2008

How did you choose your blog topic? What were the factors you considered? Did you give time to think about it or you just started blogging with no specific topic in mind?

blog topic, choosing blog topic, choose blog topic

I think a lot of bloggers don’t see the importance of a blog topic that they end up blogging without giving it a careful thought. The problem starts as soon as they realize that they’re no longer interested to continue with their topic or when they find out that they don’t have sufficient knowledge of their chosen blog topic. Not unless you’ve chosen to blog about anything, changing your blog topic will only alienate your readers and subscribers.

A friend of mine who want to start blogging asked my advice regarding choosing a blog topic and here are the pointers I told her.

Broad Topic Vs. Narrow Topic

Topics you can blog about may range from broad to narrow. A broad topic allows bloggers with a wider option of subject matters to blog about (i.e. Blogging, Online Marketing, Online Businesses) while a narrow topic limits bloggers with topics to cover (i.e. CSS Coding, Entrecard, Mozilla Firefox). Moreover, a general topic requires a general knowledge of everything, while a narrow topic requires a more specialized knowledge of your chosen topic.

Some established bloggers will tell you that a broad topic leads to a more profitable blog. In reality however, a narrower topic gets more advertisers and review opportunities. This for the simple reason that a narrower topic allows a blogger to establish authority and crediblity on his topic while a broader topic makes estabilishing authority and credibility much more difficult. Authority and credibility are regarded valuable by most advertisers and play crucial roles in their decisions.

Factors To Consider When Choosing A Blog Topic

To help you decide in choosing a blog topic, consider the following factors.

Interest In The Topic

Interest in your blog topic is the most important consideration you should take into account. Many bloggers failed because along the way, they lost the passion and motivation to continue blogging. If you love your blog topic, it will be easier for you to draw inspiration and keep yourself motivated to continue blogging. Naturally, if you forced yourself into a topic far from your interests, sooner or later you’ll lose your motivation and stop blogging. Also, remember that you will have to add more substance to your posts by doing some research and gathering useful information for your readers. This process is going to be difficult if you have less or no interest in your blog topic.

Knowledge Of The Topic

People read blogs for various reasons but mostly to get information. This is where a thorough knowledge of your blog topic helps. Instead of trying to blog about a topic you don’t know, why don’t you blog about something of your expertise. Doing this will enable you to contribute something of value to your blog readers or something that is probably unique from all other published articles with the same topic.

Profitablity Of The Topic

Aside from interest and knowledge, you need to choose a topic that brings in more revenue (assuming you want to make money from your blog). You can blog about Kiribati Island but there are only a few people who are interested about it, hence, fewer opportunities from advertisers. On the other hand, you can choose to blog about technology and receive a much larger traffic because there are more people interested about it, and at the same time, receive more opportunities from advertisers.

Popularity And Competition

While choosing a popular topic could lead to a more profitable blogging, you also need to look at the competition involved. A topic like “make money online” is widely popular but the competition among bloggers is fierce. In fact, there are so many blogs about making money online that the barrier of entry is almost impossible to overcome. You need to be strategic and strike a balance between popularity and competition to ensure your blog’s sustainability.

What else do you think should be included in the list? It would be nice to hear what you have to say.

Thank you for your time. :)

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Why Use Your Own Domain Name

by TheWeblogZone on May 19, 2008

It’s a common mistake, especially the ones who are starting their blog, to use a sub-domain (i.e. theweblogzone.blogspot.com, theweblogzone.wordpress.com) usually provided by their free host provider. I made the same mistake when I started blogging, and hopefully through this post, you will not have to go through the same mistake again.

domain name, use domain name, blog with domain name

In this post, I will discuss the benefits of using your own domain name compared to when you’re using a subdomain. More importantly, I will share some of the disadvantages and the opportunities you miss when you decide to blog under a subdomain name.

5 Reasons Why You Should Use Your Own Domain Name

Here are the five of the most important reasons why you should blog under your own domain name.

Using your own domain name is doing yourself a favor.

Starting your own blog using a subdomain will become a problem later on when you decide to move and host your own blog. Moving and hosting your own blog is the way to go when you become serious with blogging. Doing this gives you more freedom and flexibility and allows you to optimize opportunities. Unfortunately, when you move and host your own blog, you can’t use the subdomain given to you by your free host. You will have to register your own domain name.

The problems with using a new domain name for your blog include the risk of lossing your traffic and your precious Google page rank. Using a redirect does not always work, especially if you know little about the technical stuffs of blogging. Do yourself a favor and use your own domain name. Registering your own domain name is really cheap and will spare you the troubles of moving and hosting your own blog.

Using your own domain name makes your site more credible.

If you are running your business online under a subdomain name, you appear less credible to your potential customers, which means you’re missing potential profits. In fact, if you are doing business online and you are using a subdomain, you are likely to be suspected of scamming. This is the result of the wide use of free hosting services by many people to scam.

Credibility is an important element in order to succeed online. And as you use your own domain name, you increase your credibility and with improved credibility comes; more links from other blogs, more advertisers and more subscribers. Of course in the real blogosphere, credibility can’t be achieved by simply using your own domain name but it’s helpful in boosting your credibility.

Using your own domain name increases opportunities.

There are some problems monetizing your blog when you are using a subdomain or when your blog is hosted for free. Currently, there are advertising networks and review sites that do not allow bloggers into their publisher program if their blogs use subdomains or when they are hosted for free.

Just take a look at the opportunities available for bloggers in the more popular review sites (PayPerPost, ReviewMe and SponsoredReviews), some advertisers don’t wish to receive reviews from blogs using subdomains or blog hosted for free. This is probably because of the increase of spam blogs (usually with Blogger and Wordpress) created for the sole purpose of doing reviews without the intention of keeping quality and providing value to readers.

Optimize your blog for search engines by using your own domain name.

Based from experience, my personal blog that was hosted under Blogger took a longer time before  it was indexed by Google. On the other hand, the blogs I created using my own domain name was indexed faster and received traffic from search engines (Google and Yahoo!) in as short as 3 days. We can therefore generalize that search engines crawl blogs using their own domain names over subdomains, but then again, this depends on several other factors.

One way to optimize your blog for search engines is to generate more backlinks to your blog. One way to do this is to submit your blog to different directories (paid or free). From personal experience, a blog that uses a domain name has a higher approval rate over blogs using subdomains.

Branding is easier when you blog under your own domain name.

Everytime you use a subdomain name, like theweblogzone.blogspot.com, you are promoting and marketing your blog and your free host provider. This creates a problem of branding as it’s impossible for you to have a distinct blog. Using a logo or a distinct layout or theme isn’t going to do any good.

Why do you think businesses would like to register their business name and will go through court to prove their right for ownership? This is simply for the reason that your product’s name and business name means alot. Online, your domain name or if you’re using a subdomain name is your online identity. It’s your business name too.

These are only 5 of the many benefits of using your own domain name. You can find more articles available online with a more comprehensive list of benefits you can get from using your own domain name. Tune in to this blog to learn about registering your own domain name easily and using it with your free hosted blog in the succeeding post.

Like always, do share your comments and reactions. I’d love to hear what you think. Thank you for your time. :)

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Improved Adsense For Search - Custom Search Integrated

by TheWeblogZone on May 16, 2008

Google Adsense has recently introduced a more improved version of Adsense For Search. With the improved version of Adsense for search, custom search is now integrated allowing publishers to take advantage of this new feature without having to leave their Adsense account.

Here’s a short video from Google Adsense to introduce you with the new features of Adsense for search.

Here is a summary of the features of Adsense For Search powered by Custom Search Engine.

  • Site Search: You’ve worked hard to attract users to your site, so it’s understandable that you’d be concerned about those users leaving through web search. Now you can choose to provide just site search so users can find all the information they’re looking for on your site, and you can host the search results on your own pages so that they can find that information without leaving your site.
  • Improved indexing of your pages: We’ve recently improved our indexing technology so that you can provide a more enhanced Site Search experience for your users. AdSense for search will now index even more pages of your site, as long as we’re able to crawl them, so that your users will see more results from your site in your AdSense for search results. Stay tuned for more updates on future crawl and indexing improvements!
  • Vertical search: You can also allow your users to search across multiple sites - this could be a network of sites that you own or other related sites that you think your users might find useful. If you write book reviews on your blog, for example, you can use vertical search to specify a list of online bookstores for users to search through. Other examples of vertical searches include computer forums, travel blogs, political sites you endorse, etc.
  • Tuning search results and ads with keywords: Search terms can have different meanings in different contexts, so you can now configure your search engine with relevant keywords. Let’s say you manage a site about yoga - you can enter keywords such as ‘yoga,’ ‘exercise,’ and ‘meditation’ so that when a user searches for ‘mat,’ the search results and ads will be more related to yoga mats and less to commercial floor mats. (You can see an example of this in the video below). In experiments, we’ve found that this tuning has led to an increase in earnings for publishers.
  • Selecting ad location: Do you want ads to appear at the top and bottom of your search results? Or along the right sidebar as well, just like on Google.com? Now you can make the call on where ads are placed. (Here’s a tip: we’ve found that placing ads at the top and right monetizes the best for publishers.)
  • Quick and easy updates: Just as you use our ad management feature to quickly change the settings for your ad and referral units, you’ll be able to do the same for your search engine within your AdSense account. Your settings will be saved in your account, so you won’t need to generate new search code for each change.

What do you think of the changes? Do you think this will help improve monetization of blogs and sites? Share your thoughts through the comment.

Thank you for your time. :)

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Why Your Blog’s Theme Should Be Your Top Priority When Starting Your Blog

by TheWeblogZone on May 14, 2008

Every time I start a new blog, the first thing I always work with is the theme. Although most bloggers will disagree with me but I personally believe that your blog’s layout (theme/template) should be the first thing you need to fix before you start making your posts. This does not mean however that your content is secondary to your layout, it’s just that when you start a new blog, fixing your theme should be your top priority.

search engine optimized theme, wordpress theme, wordpress dream theme

Today’s post answers the question why there is a need to invest in your blog’s theme, why it should be your top priority when starting your blog and why you should have it fixed before you start publishing your articles.

Satisfied Blogger Equals Productive Blogger

When you start your blog and you are not happy or satisfied with your theme, your productivity is adversely affected. Bloggers who are productive are usually those who are motivated, which is generally attributed to their satisfaction and confidence with their blogs. Confidence and satisfaction, especially when you just started your blog is best achieved with a well-designed theme to your liking.

Chances are, you will spend tremendous amount of your time tweaking your blog, while at the same time, worrying about your next posts. Chances are, you don’t feel confident with your blog because it looks the same to a number of other blogs or you don’t think that your blog theme is appropriate to your blog topic. Whatever makes you unsatisfied with your blog definitely affects the quality of your post and your productivity in general.

The need to use an appropriate theme for your blog that satisfies your requirements is a must for every bloggers because satisfaction comes with confidence and motivation. Ultimately, confidence and motivation makes a bloggers productive.

Weblogs Are Judged Initially By Their Themes

The theme, layout or design of a blog is the first thing noticed by your visitors. It’s the first aspect of your blog that your visitors notice, hence, the first thing judged.

A theme speaks a lot about the blog and the blogger. Usually, first time visitors don’t stay if they come across blogs that are not organized. Whether your content is valuable, most of your visitors will judge it based on their first impression. Their first impression in most cases is based on the visual impact of your blog’s theme and layout.

Start Optimizing Your Blog For Search Engines With Your Blog Theme

There are still a lot of bloggers who don’t know that  their blog themes can be optimized for search engines. Themes that are not optimized for search engines are usually created by web designers / template designers with no background whatsoever of SEO. As a result, their designs may be visually appealing but is not search engine friendly. Thus, reducing potential traffic from search engines.

If you would like to optimize your blog for search engines and get quality boundless free traffic, then perhaps you can start your SEO with your blog theme. Actually, the first step when optimizing a blog is to first optimize its theme and layout.

Well Designed Blog Brings More Opportunities

It’s been proven that a blog that started with a well-designed blog theme receives twice as much opportunities than those who haven’t invested anything on their themes. With a well-designed blog, you get:

  • More offers from advertisers.
  • Better opportunities to monetize your blog.
  • Higher subscription rate from your visitors.
  • Higher traffic from search engines (SEO’d Blog Theme).
  • Lower bounce rate and higher visitor retention rate.
  • And many more…

Considering the benefits of a well-designed blog theme to your satisfaction, did you invest in your blog theme? Are you satisfied with your theme? Or if you think that a blog’s theme is not really important, I would love to hear your ideas why. Do share your comments and reactions in the comment.

Thank you for your time. ;)

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How To Submit Your Sitemap To Google

by TheWeblogZone on May 11, 2008

One of the best ways to get Google to crawl your new website is to submit your sitemap. Submitting your sitemap to Google helps improve your search engine traffic because it improves your index rate.

Today’s post will guide you in the step-by-step process of submitting your sitemap to Google and will provide you with some helpful tips in making your sitemap.

What is a Sitemap?

A sitemap is a web page that contains all the links to other pages of your website. Usually in XML format, sitemaps are created to help Google better crawl pages of your website. In return, the number of pages from your website indexed by Google increase resulting in an increased website traffic.

Sitemaps are particularly helpful if:

  • Your site has dynamic content. (i.e. weblogs)
  • Your site has pages that are not easily discovered by Googlebot during the crawling process.
  • Your site is new and has few links to it. (Googlebot crawls the web by following links from one page to another, so if your site isn’t well linked, it may be hard for Google to discover it.)
  • Your site has a large archive of content pages that are not well linked to each other, or are not linked at all.

Creating Your Sitemap

Luckily, creating your sitemap has become an easy task and even non-techie bloggers can make one for themselves. This is particularly true if you are using Wordpress and Blogger as your blogging platform.

Wordpress

For Wordpress users, there are several Wordpress plugins that can help you easily generate an XML-sitemap compliant sitemap of your Wordpress blog. Here are the best Wordpress plugins you can use to create your sitemap.

  1. Google XML Sitemap Generator - Arne Brachhold
  2. Sitemap Generator WP Plugin - Dagon Design
  3. Wordpress Simple Sitemap - Jens Tornell

Detailed instructions for using these Wordpress plugins can be found in their download page.

Blogger

Blogger users on the other hand can simply use the built in XML file of their blogs. All you need to do is simply add atom.xml at the end of your blog’s URL and this could already serve as your sitemap.

Submitting Your Sitemap To Google

Submitting your sitemap to Google is easy when you have your sitemap ready. First, you need to log-in to Google Webmasters. If you have an email with Gmail, you can use the same information to log-in. Otherwise, you need to create a Google account. It’s for free so there’s nothing to worry.

Once you’re inside your Google Webmaster account, the first thing you need to do is add your blog’s URL. Make sure that you submit your domain name NOT YOUR SITEMAP. Here’s an example.

submit sitemap to Google

Click on “Add Site” to submit your site.

After you’ve added your website, the next thing you need to do is verify that the website you submitted is really yours. Click on “Verify Your Site”.

verify your website

You will then be directed to a page where you will choose how to verify your website. Click on the drop down menu and choose add meta tag. Adding a meta tag is the easier way to verify ownership of your website.

submit sitemap, verify website

After choosing to add a meta tag, you will be given a code that you need to copy and paste in your site’s home page in the first <head> section of the page, before the first <body> section.

add a meta tag, adding meta tag

Once you’re done adding the meta tag, click on “Verify”. You should now be able to add your site’s sitemap. Visit your dashboard, then click on the Add link just below sitemap.

add your sitemap

You will be directed to a drop down menu where you will choose the type of sitemap that you wish to submit. Choose “Add General Web Sitemap” from the drop down menu.

choose sitemap to submit

For the final step, you simply need to add sitemap. If you’ve used Google XML Sitemap by Arne, just add sitemap.xml or simply add atom.xml if you are using Blogger. Click on “Add General Web Sitemap” to finalize your submission.

submit wordpress sitemap, submit blogger sitemap

Now all you have to do is wait for Google to visit and crawl your website.

If you have any thing you want me to write about, please feel free to use my contact form. I’ll try to cover them in my future post or I’ll just send you a detailed instruction.

Thank you for your time. Your comments are always welcome. ;)

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Excessive Link Building Is UnSEO - Good News For Lazy Webmasters

by TheWeblogZone on May 8, 2008

Here are some simple truths about SEO that alot of you seems not to know.

  1. Excessive link building harms your website. (You don’t really need to submit your site to all the directories on the list.)
  2. More back links does not necessarily translate to a high Google Page Rank.

link building, excessive link building, chains, link love

What is Excessive Link Building?

Excessive Link Building happens when an unusual accumulation of link for a website takes place in a short period of time. This is of course relative to the age of the website. So if your website is just 1 week old and it gets more than 1000 backlinks in a day, that is obviously a case of excessive link building.

Excessive link building is usually a common problem with new bloggers who have just created their first blog. After knowing the importance of Google page rank for a website and how this can be achieved by building as much backlinks as possible, newbies tend to be agressive with their link building strategies. They end up submitting their blogs to hundreds if not thousands of directories, comment on dofollow blogs and spam forums. These link building strategies are no doubt effective in boosting your site’s backlink, but contrary to popular belief, these strategies harm your blog.

How Excessive Link Building Harms Your Blog?

Excessive Link Building is treated by search engines as an “unnatural” phenomenon especially when your website is relatively new. It’s just impossible for a new website to get tons of backlinks not unless the owner resorted to any of these methods:

  • Used Review Sites (PayPerPost, SponsoredReviews, ReviewMe and Smorty)
  • Purchased Links from Text-Link-Ads, LinkWorth and related websites
  • Used Directory Mass Submission services
  • Spamming

By using the above strategies to boost backlinks to your blog, you only catch unwanted attention from suspicious Google. Remember that these methods violate Google’s prescribed Webmaster’s Quality Guidelines. As soon as Google finds out that you’ve violated their webmaster quality guidelines, expect a penalty, which might not take effect immediately but in the next two to three months.

Google’s recent reported crackdown of websites participating in selling links and doing sponsored posts are some proofs that Google is seriously against these methods. Google hired the best engineers and programmers for this purpose. Unfortunately, Google relies heavily on its established system to make sure that those who violate their quality guidelines get the penalty they deserve. Google’s systems, however, are mere programs so even if you generated backlinks to your blog by painstakingly submitting to free directories, there’s not guarantee that Google’s system will distinguish your method to be different from those who purchased links. That explains why even if you have tons of backlinks, your Google page rank is lower than other sites with fewer links to them.

Higher Backlinks IS NOT EQUAL To Higher Google Page Rank

One of the common misconceptions about Google Page Rank is that the more backlinks you have, the higher Google page rank you get. While to some extent this is true, it’s not always the case. Google is using a complex system to identify the page rank of certain pages of a website. Backlink is just one of the factors considered.

If you have been observing and keeping track of your competitors, you might be surprised that they have higher page ranks despite the fact that you have more backlinks. Since no one really knows exactly how Google calculate page ranks, I came up with some conclusions from my personal observations. I will talk about them in my succeeding posts so make sure to visit Blogging Mix often or better yet subscribe so you won’t miss any blogging tip.

Suggestions And Recommendations When Building Links For Your Blog

  1. Avoid submitting to free directories at the same time. Submit your website gradually to avoid suspicion from Google.
  2. Avoid using ‘Directory-Mass-Submission’ services promising to submit your website to thousands of directories in a short period of time. (They’re usually scams!)
  3. When building links, quality is better than quantity. Quality links are links obtained from relevant and of good quality websites.

This post should come as a good news to those who find link building a time consuming task. Now that you know that the best approach to link building is doing it moderately, you don’t have to force yourself to submit your websites to all directories you come across with.

What are your thoughts on this matter? I would love to hear what you think. Do leave your opinions and reactions through the comments.

Thank you for your time. :)

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What Is Niche Marketing?

by TheWeblogZone on May 3, 2008

Today’s post explains what niche marketing is all about and answers the question whether you need it? As online bloggers who are constantly marketing our blogs, is it a good idea to limit and and blog about a more specific topic? Today’s post although it talks mainly of niche marketing can be used in the context of blogging to understand whether having a niche is better.

Introduction To Niche Marketing

niche blogging, niche marketingIn ecology, a niche refers to the place or position occupied by an organism or a population within an ecological community called the ecosystem. It is the term which defines the role the organism or the population plays in the general scheme of things. The niche an organism or a population holds is the one responsible for dictating the ability of the species to survive. It is the one which spells whether an organism or a population will perish or thrive.

In marketing, a niche refers to a service or a product that occupies a special area of demand. It is that small corner in the market that accounts for a certain kind of specialty concerning an unmet customer need. To be able to attract a strong, solid market, the choice of a niche product should ultimately complement the website that one owns. It is through this scheme that a marketer is able to generate a specific market for the niche product he/she is trying to sell.

Niches are involved in niche marketing, the process of finding market segments that are small but potentially profitable nonetheless. To maintain a profitable quantity of sales, this marketing strategy relies on increasing the loyalty of customers so that their corporate objectives will be met or surpassed. Illustrative of this is the fact that the quality of the product or service sold will generate customer satisfaction and, consequently, customer loyalty. The result is profitability garnered through a solid market base that trusts in the ability of the product or service to really deliver.

One of the great things about niche marketing is that it encourages those who indulge in it to be unique and one-of-a-kind. Here one is not forced into the lion’s den and made to compete against established marketers. He is made to occupy a strong and secure position that ultimately wins him a real place in the market. Niche marketing differs from other online marketing strategies because this particular quality allows it to operate almost autonomously and without having to contend with corporate sharks that tear each other to pieces.

One of the most important things that should be thought over by those involved in this type of business is the niche business that is going to be involved in the process. It is important to consider the type of business that one is going to work on to be able to ensure himself of the success that he hopes to have. It is also important for him to know everything about the niche business at hand. Learning the tricks of the trade in is one of the things that one could do to make a niche business prosper tremendously.

Being able to reach the niche market is another consideration to make. In doing so, one should know the exact phrases that people are searching for. The use of tools can help a lot in knowing the type of keywords that should be used to make the business profitable. Targeting the right keywords does a lot in making this type of business soar.

Niche Marketing - Do You Need It?

Those who engage in niche marketing know that determining the potential of a niche before doing everything else is a must if one wants to save all the time and effort that might be wasted if he plunges into everything head on. Building a niche marketing site that proves to be profitable should be done after an unsatisfied customer demand is identified, and marketing the site appropriately by reaching out to customers the best possible way is what niche marketers should consider if they want their business to reach skyrocketing success.

Is niche marketing needed in a world teeming with a hundred like systems designed for people to make money online? Those who know how the system works will answer in the affirmative, because niche marketing is the only system capable of filling up a gaping hole in the market by catering to the unsatisfied needs of customers - needs that are usually not given notice by those in the big league. Though niche marketing, one is able to gain a foothold in the market by being a needle in a haystack. Small and inconspicuous it may be, but its ability to sting someone so madly once it is found will render him more than surprised.

Applying the concept of niche marketing in blogging, do you think that it’s a good idea to have a niche? Does it makes a blog better when it covers an exclusive topic? Do blogs that have niches have higher success rate? Do share your thoughts and opinions through the comment.

Thank you for your time. ;)

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