June 2008

If you have been working hard to optimize your blog for search engines and see little or no results, may be it’s about time you check into your Wordpress theme. What most bloggers do not know is that there are Wordpress themes that may be appealing to the eyes but is not friendly to search engines. As a result, you’re not getting the best out of your blog. These unSEO friendly Wordpress themes are probably the work of theme designers who have no background whatsoever of search engine optimization. The truth is, you might be losing potential traffic just because your Wordpress theme hasn’t been optimized for search engines.

While it is important to have a unique and well-designed Wordpress theme, it is also equally important that you use a theme that is optimized for search engines. And when it comes to Wordpress themes optimized for search engines, no one beats Chris Pearson, the web developer who designed Copyblogger’s and other A-list blogs’ Wordpress themes. Because the quality of Wordpress Theme that Chris creates, he doesn’t come cheap. Fortunately, he’s kind enough to offer some fantastic, search engine optimized Wordpress themes.

Neoclassical Wordpress Theme

Neoclassical Wordpress Theme is a simple and elegant template system that offers classical styling, rich typography, and huge random header images.

• Three Column Wordpress Theme
• Search Engine Optimized Wordpress Theme
• Rotating Header Images (randomly)

Click here to check the demo site.

Copyblogger Wordpress Theme

With the Copyblogger Wordpress Theme, you’ll be able to modify colors, fonts, and even the tiniest details by utilizing the custom stylesheet solution that is included with the theme download.

• Highly Customizable Wordpress Theme
• Custom Style Sheet Solution Included
• Top-notch SEO’d Wordpress Theme
• Two Column Wordpress Theme

Click here to check the demo site.

Cutline Wordpress Theme

With the Cutline Theme for WordPress, you’ll be able to add stylish flair to your text that you never thought possible, and you’ll also be able to control your images like never before!

• Two Column Wordpress Theme
• Another Top-notch SEO’d Wordpress Theme
• Stylish And Elegant Publishing Powerhouse
• Random Header Images

Click here to check the demo site.

Pressrow Wordpress Theme

PressRow is your all-access pass to new media on the Web. Publish your posts like a professional, and pull it all off with an elegant grace that you simply won’t find on any other WordPress theme.

• Two Column Wordpress Theme
• Professional Publishing Wordpress Theme
• Again, Another Top-notch SEO’d Wordpress Theme
• Big Header. Big Images. Big Identity.

Click here to check the demo site.

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Reliable and affordable best describe what makes a good weblog host. Professional bloggers know this and so, they take extra-efforts in choosing the right weblog host for them. Whether you’re new to blogging, you too should take sometime to review your web host options and decide which one best suits your needs.

Hostican - Best Deal Hosting Services

I host all my blogs at Hostican and if you’re going to ask me whether Hostican is reliable and affordable, my answer is YES! Migrating my blogs from Siteground to Hostican is one of the best decisions I’ve made. Hostican offers more flexibility and services compared to other weblog hosts I’ve used. I’m sure that you’ll find the right hosting package that will meet your requirements from their selection of hosting packages.

Here are some 10 reasons why you should choose Hostican:

1. HostICan has spent a considerable amount of time developing an ideal solution that is guaranteed to work well for you. Enjoy their clean and simple Control Panel, high allowance of disk space and unlimited monthly data transfer. They host customers worldwide, ranging from blog sites to small online businesses, and just about everything in between!
2. It isn’t everyday that you come across a company that can provide so much and require so little. You can rest assured that your site will be housed on premium Supermicro servers. They guarantee their uptime! They even put their money where their mouth is and say “if our uptime isn’t 99.9% then we will give you one month free!”
3. 30 Day money back guarantee + 99.9% Guaranteed Uptime.
4. 24/7/365 Phone & Email Support
5. Enterprise Class Data Center
6. E-Commerce Enabled!
7. Advanced Security Measures
8. Pre-Installed Scripts & Programs
9. Instant activation!
10. Unbeatable Value.

I have been using Hostican (Tera-Host Package) and so far, I haven’t encountered any problems. In two more than two months, I haven’t experienced any down-time. With Tera-Host package, I am able to host as many blogs as I want in one account, which is usually not possible in other hosting services. Also, with Tera-Host, the bandwidth I use is unmetered. In other words, I don’t have a monthly bandwidth quota.

Tera-Host is just one of the hosting packages offered by Hostican. You can visit Hostican and check out the other hosting packages available.

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Using a Premium Wordpress Theme is a great way to build your own brand and differentiate your blog from the rest of the others. While there are thousands of free Wordpress themes, there are also thousands of bloggers using them so your chance of building your own identify and be different from the rest is going to be a difficult task. What if you don’t know how to tweak a free Wordpress theme? You’ll probably end up using these free Wordpress themes as is. But then, you compromise your brand and identity.

To solve the problem of branding and identity, you can purchase a Premium Wordpress Theme and use it to cloth your blog. But since it’s a Premium Wordpress Theme, you will have to pay for it. If you don’t have a budget for a theme, the other option is to join contests like this one where you can win a Premium Wordpress Theme.

Win A Premium Wordpress Theme For Your Blog

So you want to win a Premium Wordpress Theme? Join my simple contest and you might end up winning a Premium Wordpress Theme for your blog. Here are the three simple steps to join this contest:

1. Make a short post about this contest and let your readers know about it. (In your post, choose the Premium Wordpress Theme that you are most interested in.)
2. Link to this contest and link to my homepage.
3. Leave a comment on this post with a link to your entry post.

On 5 July 2008, I will randomly draw three winners (one for each Premium Wordpress Theme). A post will be published on the same day to announce the winner. Winners will then have to contact me to claim their prize.

Premium Wordpress Themes At Stake

Here are the three Premium Wordpress Themes up for grabs.

Premium Wordpress Theme - Revolution Theme : Brian Gardner

Click Here For DEMO

Premium Wordpress Theme - Wordpress Remix : R. Bhavesh

Click Here For DEMO

Premium Wordpress Theme - Bosco20 : Michael Pollock

Click Here For DEMO

Good luck everyone and thanks for joining!

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I have always been a big fan of Technorati. As I built and grew my first blog, I paid a close attention to blog rankings and invested much of my time to rank high on them. Technorati and Alexa were among my favorite ranking systems. I’ve truly invested time and resources to rank high in these rankings as they were widely used by advertisers to gauge the value of a blog.

Not until lately, Technorati’s value to advertisers and bloggers have diminished tremendously. The usual buddies I have online who always talk about their Technorati ranking progress seem to have stopped blogging about it. It’s not only my friends, but when you go around the Blogosphere, you’ll feel that the once popularly talked about… Technorati has become insignificant.

Is Technorati dead? Are Technorati ranking and Technorati authority still hold some value for bloggers and advertisers? Is Technorati search engine still used?

Apparently, Technorati is not yet dead. It’s still operational and some changes have been implemented on their homepage where they tried to include more useful features. Just lately, Technorati received additional funding amounting to US$7.5 million from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Mobius Venture Capital, and FG Incubation.

While Technorati is doing its best to thrive and grow, it hasn’t done enough to make sure it performs its main functions. If you noticed, Technorati has not been indexing blog reactions as frequent as before. Technorati blog ranking and authority are now infrequently updated. Sometimes the updates are one week due. As a result, the main users (bloggers and advertisers) of Technorati shifted on using other ranking system.

Another Technorati function, its search engine, has become notoriously unreliable. The search results are oftentimes loaded with spam and are usually less relevant to the users. One of the reasons why Technorati was popular before was because its search engine is popularly used by bloggers and advertisers. Because the search results are full of garbages, naturally, users have to find better blog search engines. In terms of search result’s relevance and accuracy, Google Blog Search is so much better than Technorati.

Technorati failed because the people behind it weren’t able to identify the best feature of Technorati worth investing on. Instead, they spend much of their financial resources on “new” features that have already been introduced in other websites. If Technorati wants to survive, it must do what it can while it is still possible. I just can’t believe that a company that big can’t even think of more innovative features to include in their services. Technorati should go back to its main functions and improve its efficiency on them.

What do you think should Technorati do to save itself from total failure? What do you think went wrong with Technorati? Do share your thoughts through the comment.

Thank you for your time.

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Writer’s block is that moment when you feel uninspired. It’s that same moment when you don’t have anything in mind to write about. It’s the time when the best thing you can do is step away from your computer, have a cup of coffee and give yourself a break.

All writers have experienced the “state of uninspiredness”. Those who are able to overcome writer’s block or the “state of uninspiredness” are those who stay long in business.

Writer’s block can happen to anyone and can strike at anytime.

Bloggers are the common victims of writer’s block. Although there’s more to blogging than writing, it is writing that consumes most of the time of a blogger. Bloggers need to continuously create new content for their blog to feed their readers and the search engines. But with writer’s block lurking around, there’s now way this is going to be possible.

Overcoming Writer’s Block

One of the best ways to overcome writer’s block is to avoid its causes, hence, avoiding writer’s block from happening. According to reasearches made; anxiety and stress are the main culprits why people experience writer’s block. Now if you can manage to get away from anxiety and stress, you should be able to escape writer’s block.

If the first tip doen’t help, here are some other useful tips that could probably solve your “state of uninspiredness”.

1. When you don’t feel like writing, don’t write. - Don’t try to write when you’re not into it. It will not do you any good. Instead, do something else and you might end up drawing some inspiration from it.
2. Lack of idea or no idea? - Don’t be fooled of experiencing writer’s block when you don’t have an idea to write about. It’s either you have not been reading lately or you just need to read some more. To be able to write something interesting or useful, you need to READ and READ some more.
3. Exploit your state of inspiredness. - When there’s a state of uninspiredness, there’s also a state of inspiredness. This is the time when you have so much ideas coming up. This is the best time for you to sit back and start writing. While the ideas are coming, continue writing them down. Some bloggers would make as much as 5 posts when they are inspired and schedule their posts for the next 5 days.
4. Condition yourself to write. - Usually, I make my post for the following day in the afternoon the day before. I tried to write my post in the morning, at noon, in the afternoon and in the evening and have found out that afternoon gave me the best results. Since then, I tried conditioning myself to write my post in the afternoon at about 3-6pm. You should try it too.
5. Write about something you like. - Most bloggers who experience writer’s block are those who are forced into writing about something they don’t like. It is therefore important that you decide about your blog topic before you even start your blog. This way, you’ll be able to get away from writer’s block.

Where’s the 6th tip? Well, I gave 5 already. The 6th tip will be coming from you. So what is it? Do share your tips in the comment.

Thank you for your time.

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If you can build more backlinks to your blog by leaving comments on Dofollow Blogs, you can also get more backlinks by submitting your posts to dofollow social bookmarking sites. Here are some reasons why you should try using dofollow social bookmarking sites.

• Most social bookmarking sites have high Google page rank. Think of the Google juice you’re getting.
• Social bookmarking sites are frequently crawled by search engines. If your post got bookmarked with a dofollow social bookmarking site, the index rate of that page will be faster.
• Drive more traffic to your blog. Social bookmarking sites have thousands of users. If your post is good enough to catch their users’ attention and interest, you’ll certainly get a spike in your traffic. Just make sure you have enough bandwidth to accommodate the huge traffic though.
• Social bookmarking sites are free. That’s free promotion and free advertisement.
• A large number of popular social bookmarking sites are actually “Dofollow”.

Bookmarking Tips

Before we go to the list of dofollow social bookmarking sites, here are some useful tips that will help you maximize the SEO benefits of submitting your posts.

1. Install social bookmark buttons or links at the end of you posts. : It would be better and more credible if your readers submit your post to social bookmarking sites instead of you doing it. Providing them with bookmarking buttons at the end of your posts makes it more convenient for them to bookmark your post.
2. Use catchy and keyword rich titles. : You need to use a cathy title to attract more visitors to your blog. This doesn’t mean you have to resort to making attractive titles for the sole purpose of generating more traffic. You have to remember that other than pleasing humans, you also need to please the search engines. In most cases, the title you’ve used for a post you submitted becomes the anchor text. Hence, using keyword rich titles improves your search engine ranking while at the same time increases your backlinks.
3. Make sure to include a summary of your post. : Most social bookmarking sites require you to provide a summary of the post your are bookmarking. When you do this, avoid doing the mistake of copying the first few sentences of your post and pasting it in the summary. As much as possible, make a new summary. Use relevant keywords or keyphrases in your summary.
4. Make sure to use tags when available. : When submitting your post to social bookmarking sites, include relevant tags. This will help improve the search engine visibility of the post you’ve submitted. Ultimately, this would mean more traffic for your blog.

Dofollow Social Bookmarking Sites

Now that you’re ready, here are some useful list of dofollow social bookmarking sites. Submitting your post to social bookmarking sites is not an easy job but when your posts are interesting and useful enough, naturally, your readers should be doing the work for you.

• 9 Dofollow Social Bookmarking Sites - Compiled by SEJ
• 22 Dofollow Social Bookmarking Sites - Compiled by Caroline Middlebrook
• 24 Dofollow Social Bookmarking Sites - Compiled by Reviewer of Sites
• Ultimate Dofollow Lists - Compiled by Pixelrage

That’s it for today. You should be able to get more backlinks to your blog by submitting your best posts to the lists of dofollow social bookmarking sites.

You need to be careful when submitting your own posts. Some bookmarking sites are keen on spammers. If you get caught for submitting too many of your posts to the same bookmarking site in a day, your blog can get banned. It is always safe to submit one post a day!

Thank you for your time and as always, your comments are most welcome.

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As promised, here’s another blogging tip that will help you increase the number of backlinks to your blog. You may read building backlinks to your blog in case you missed the first tip to be able to understand the importance of building more backlinks and what it can do for you. Continue reading if you’re ready for another blogging tip that will help you increase the number of backlinks to your blog.

Dofollow And Nofollow Blogs

The Blogosphere has two kinds of blogs; Dofollow and Nofollow blogs.

Nofollow Blogs are blogs that implement a nofollow attribute to their external links (rel=”nofollow”). This is usually implemented on the links in their comments, which prevent search engines from crawling the website they are linking to. As a result, you don’t get any link juice from leaving your comments on them.

Nofollow attribute in comment is used by most blogging platform (i.e. Wordpress and Blogger) by default. This is done in an attempt to curb the number of spammers.

Dofollow Blogs on the other hand are blogs that don’t implement the nofollow attribute in their external links, which means to say that leaving your comments and reactions on their posts will reward you with a backlink.

How To Know Whether A Link Is Dofollow?

If you would like to get more backlinks to your blog while you leave your comments, you should comment on dofollow blogs. But how do you know whether links in the comment of a blog are made dofollow?

The first thing you can do is to view the page source of a particular page. Look at how links in the comments are coded. A nofollow link has the “nofollow” attribute in it and it looks like any of these:

<a rel=”nofollow” href=”External Link”>Anchor Text</a> or
<a rel=”external nofollow” href=”External Link”>Anchor Text</a>

The other method is to use Mozilla Firefox as your internet explorer and download and install the Search Status Plugin. The Search Status Plugin will enable you to quickly check on the Alexa Traffic Rank and Google Page Rank of every webpage you view.

Using your mouse, right click on the “Q” icon found just before the Google page rank and choose “Highlight Nofollow Link”. All Nofollow links of every webpage you view will be highlighted in pink. For a more detailed information, you can read my previous post on Search Status Plugin.

The Easier Way - Dofollow Blog Lists And Dofollow Search Engines

Of course there’s always an easier way. That’s to use existing compiled lists of dofollow blogs or use custom made search engines.

1. Dofollow Blog Directory
2. Bumpzee - Dofollow Blogs
3. D-List Blogs

You can also use blog search engines that will find dofollow blogs for you. All you need to do is use a search term (keywords or keyphrases) and it will return you with a list of dofollow blogs.

1. Dofollow Driver
2. Dofollow Blog Search
3. Digerati Blog Search

Keep in mind that SPAMMING is not good for your blog. Don’t waste your time spamming because there’s a good chance that your comment will never see the light. Instead, comment on relevant blogs and add something of value to the post/discussion.

What are you waiting for? Go ahead and try the lists above and start building more backlinks to your blog. Like always, your comments are most welcome. Thank you for your time.

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Today (June 3, 2008), Entrecard finally launched the long awaited option to buy Entrecard credit. This has been prompted by the huge number of requests from Entrecard users and the increasing number of scammers selling Entrecard credits online.

Everyday, Entrecard will buy 20,000 to 40,000 credits from their trusted users, which will then be made available for sale.  This means, available credits for sale in a day is limited, and is subject to a first come first serve basis.

You can buy Entrecard credits using your Entrecard account through the link provided in your dashboard. Currently, 1000 and 5000 Entrecard credits are sold at US$9.50 and US$47.50 respectively.

Other Ways To Earn Credits

Entrecard now lets you earn more credits by simply publishing new articles. However, this incentive is limited to once every three days and is handled automatically via your RSS feed, which their system picks up automatically.

Other than publishing new articles on your blog, you can also earn more Entrecard credits by writing for them. Entrecard is giving away as much as 2000 credits for an article or even more depending on its quality and usefulness to the EC community.

To be able to write for Entrecard blog, here are the three simple steps you need to follow:

1. Get Your Idea Approved. - Before you start working on your article even when you’ve written for the Entrecard blog before, you need to email Graham (graham@entrecard.com) and tell him about it. Use “Post Idea” as your subject. Once you’re idea has been approved, Graham will  set up your account on the Entrecard blog so you can log in and start writing your post.
2. Submit Your Post For Review. - When you’re done with your post, click on the ”Submit For Review” button. Phirate or Graham will do the final review of your post before it gets published. At the same time, Graham or Phirate will decide how much Entrecard credits to pay you. Remember that the Entrecard credit you receive as a payment depends on the quality and usefulness of your post to the Entrecard community.
3. Get Paid For Your Post. - Sit back and relax. You receive your Entrecard credit once your article has been published.

Here’s a quote from the Entrecard Admin about what to write about:

“We are looking for posts that will help people improve their blogging and keep the community connected. Tips for blogging, tools, resources, are all great. Personal anecdotes and stories that make this place feel like a community are also great. Jokes, funny stories, industry news is all fair game. Just send your post ideas to graham@entrecard.com and we’ll go from there.”

If you are still looking for another way to earn Entrecard credits, why don’t you subscribe to their blog. Entrecard is offering a one-time bonus of 50 EC by subscribing to their blog via email. Click here to subscribe.

Thank you for your time.

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Backlink, otherwise known as external link, is a link to your website from another site. This is important to your website for three reasons:

1. Backlinks improve your Google page rank.
2. Backlinks improve your ranking on search engine result page.
3. Backlinks drive more traffic to your website.

For the month of June, I will be blogging on building more backlinks to your website. I will be sharing the tips and tricks I have used and have found effective in generating more backlinks. To kick things off, I’ll be sharing one of the easiest methods I’ve been using over the course of my blogging career.

Article Directories And Link Building

You probably read somewhere else that submitting articles to article directories is an effective link building strategy, especially when you submit your articles to highly indexed and highly ranked article directory sites. Doing this however, is time consuming because you need to spend a considerable amount of your time to make several articles for submission. Then you have to painstakingly submit your articles to as many article directories as possible.

What makes the entire process even harder is the need to avoid getting penalized by Google for duplicate content. In other words, if you use one article and submit it to as much article directories as possible without rewriting it, you’re risking yourself from being penalized by Google for duplicate content. You see, Google wants to return quality search results to their users and the idea of a duplicate content just doesn’t meet their standards.

If you would like to take full advantage of the benefits of building backlinks from submitting articles to article directories, then you have to edit or rewrite your posts before you submit them. This can be done by a combination of any of the following:

1. Changing the title of your post.
2. Replacing some words with synonymous terms.
3. Changing the (sentence or paragraph) structure of the article.
4. Remove or add information.

Use Public Label Rights (PLR) Articles

Public Label Rights or PLR, grants you the right to use content written by someone else as if it were your own. Public Label Rights article accords your the right to:

• Modify or re-write the material any way you like.
• Insert your own name as the author.
• Sell or distribute the material to others.

Since I started blogging, I’ve been using PLR articles to gain more backlinks for my blog. Rather than spending more time on writing unique content, which is time consuming, I simply modify or rewrite PLR articles and submit them to different article directories.

There are tons of Public Label Rights articles you can find online. They usually come in packages of 100 or more articles. Some are expensive (exclusive PLRs) while others are cheap (lesser exclusivity). But the good news is, there are tons of PLR articles that are free.

Free Public Label Rights Articles From PLRSpot

PLRSpot.com has been my source of Public Label Rights articles. It’s an excellent resource for free PLR that you can use. Joining is all it takes to gain access of their free PLR articles, and since it’s free, there should be no risk involved.

PLRSpot has a huge collection of free PLR articles from different topics. Some of the topics include; affiliate marketing, technology, product reviews and many more. You can visit PLRSpot.com now, register and start using their free resources. Just remember to modify or rewrite the articles before you start submitting them to article directories. And of course, don’t forget to include a link to your website from the post you submit… that’s the whole point of submitting an article anyway.

There you have it. One simple tip that will help increase the number of backlinks to your website. Visit TheWeblogZone tomorrow for another doze of link building tip. And like always, your opinions and comments are most welcome.

Thank you for your time.

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