Tips 4 Web

This is a guest post by Igor Kheifets. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

One of the most common mistakes I see aspiring bloggers make is never thinking about who they are blogging to. Usually, a person just creates a blog about something he is passionate about and starts posting. But whether you’re blogging for fun or to make money (or both) – it is essential to think about who you are blogging to.

Your blog’s authority is mostly measured by your subscriber count. The key to getting subscribers is to actually LISTEN to your audience. Just like any marketing campaign – blogging is based on the needs and wants of the consumer. Unless you are going to give your readers what they want – they won’t be back to read your blog tomorrow.

Beta software is a first class example of provider-consumer communication. Beta simply means that the version of the software isn’t final and that you can submit a ticket/suggestion on how to improve it. Beta testers are literally asking people to say what’s wrong with their product so they can fix it.

Just take Wordpress as an example. The latest update was the version 2.8.4 and there are more to come. Wordpress is being updated each month and there is a strong marketing foundation behind it. Wordpress developer team carefully studies the feedback received from bloggers and keeps improving in order to keep Wordpress the best blogging platform ever.

By now I believe you get the point, so with no more beating around the bush, I want to present you with a number of ways to get in touch with your audience.

1. Unique Selling Proposition. The USP (also known as the Elevator Pitch) is a short phrase that should communicate what your blog is about in one sentence. In order to grasp this concept, imagine that you are in an elevator with a client and you’re supposed to describe what your business is about before you he gets off.

Your USP shouldn’t take more than five seconds to read/say. It is supposed to be short and to the point.

Great USP examples are:

• Wal-Mart: Save Money. Live Better
• Lexus: The Pursuit of Perfection
• On-Time Plumbing Repairs With a No-Wait Guarantee – Or It’s Free!

2. Polls/Surveys. Polls and surveys are a great way to find out what your customer needs. It is probably the easiest way to find out about any fears he might be facing and problems he needs solved.

WP-Polls is a great plugin to conduct survey on your blog. If you don’t want to install anything, try PollDaddy.

3. Comments. Comments are another great indicator you can use to monitor your audience’s reaction to certain content. Although there are those annoying readers that comment solely to get the backlink, more often than not people express opinions about your content and it is very important to carefully examine those opinions to better understand your audience.

4. Related Posts Plugin. This plugin helps you to give your readers more of what they want by placing related entries below every published post. I recommend using Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

5. Contact Form. A contact form will enable your readers to submit questions, requests, suggestions and general feedback regarding your blog. A Contact form is a sure way to communicate an “open doors” attitude which indicates that you are open to any advice, suggestion and contribution.

You can create a contact form using the cforms II plugin.

People crave being understood. They want their problems solved and their needs met. Knowing who you’re blogging to will do just that. You will not only leave them with no choice but to subscribe to your blog in order not to miss a single post, but also build a stronger relationship based on the fact that unlike most – you CARE.

Igor Kheifets is an author and the creator of IgorHelpsYouSucceed. You can also follow him on Twitter.

Original Post:Are You Blogging To Me?

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Are You Blogging To Me?

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This is a guest post by Derek Clark. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

Earlier this year I wrote a post about the stimulus package that passed Congress in February. I titled the post Government Stimulus Package because I thought the only thing it was stimulating was government. I got lucky with this, because apparently a lot of people searched for the phrase “government stimulus package” to learn about what was in it.

The post did ok on Digg and Reddit, nothing spectacular but it brought in some traffic. It may have gotten a few other links, but not a ton. A few days after the post was published, I noticed that I was getting some traffic the search engines. The post was on the front page of Google, around 6 or so for the keyword phrase “government stimulus package.” This is the first step in improving your SERPs.

1. Look at Your Stats

Find out which pages you are getting traffic to from the search engines and what keywords are being used to get there. This is where we need to focus. Improving your ranking for a term from 7429 to 43 takes your traffic from 0 to 0. If you can improve from 9 to 1, you will see a huge increase in traffic if it is a phrase that people are searching for.

Now that we have a few pages that are getting some traffic and the keywords they are getting it from, we have to do a little keyword research.

2. Keyword Research

The first step is to find out which phrases we want to target. Look at the keywords that are getting the most traffic and find out where you currently rank. You could use your web analytics program for this, and then check the rankings on Google.

At this point, you can also use a keyword search tool to find out how much traffic each of these phrases gets.

Now we want to focus our efforts on the terms we rank the highest for that get the most search traffic.

3. Internal SEO

Have you ever written anything similar to this before? Go through your archives and find where you have mentioned this topic before. Update the old article with a link to the new one using the keywords you are trying to rank for.

If this is a topic that people want to know more about, consider writing another post or two expanding on the first one. In each new post, link to the original article with one of the keyword phrases you are targeting.

Next, go back to the post you are hoping to rank higher. Is the keyword already in the article? Consider making it bold. Is there a section where the phrase would make a good header? Consider adding it. Don’t stuff the article full of keywords as you still want the people that come to enjoy your writing. However, if these changes can be made without affecting the quality, they may help improve your ranking a little bit.

These things do two things. They show the search engines what your pages are about (hopefully the keywords you are targeting) and they show them that they are important pages. The more links you have pointing to the page, the more important you are making it in Google’s eyes.

4. Watch your Rankings and Traffic Surge

I went back to my post and made the keyword bold when I used it. Then I went through the archives and found another post that talked about the stimulus package and added a link to the new post. I also wrote a few more articles in the following weeks that talked about the stimulus package, so I linked back in each of those as well. The result? I moved up to #1 in Google for the phrase “government stimulus package” before it passed. It brought thousands of visitors to my blog, and the week that the bill passed is my highest traffic week ever.

The part of this that is really powerful is that all of this was done several days after the article was posted. The regular readers had read it already, and anyone who was going to link to it already had. I was then able to move from #6 to #1 in Google simply by telling Google what the page was about and that I thought it was important. Never underestimate the power of linking to yourself internally.

I have since dropped behind irs.gov and recovery.gov, but that post has been viewed more times than any other. It also gave me a valuable lesson in SEO that has helped increase my search traffic to many other posts as well.

Derek Clark blogs about conservative politics at Geek Politics. You can also follow him on Twitter @clarky07.

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Core Tip: repetitive content filtering search engine to search for users in order to provide a better search experience, if we search a keyword, the search results in a large number of different sites of the same content, I think this is not the search engine would be welcome.

Engaged in search engine optimization of the staff are very clear and original content for the significance of search engine optimization, especially in the second half of 2008, Baidu for duplicate content pages more stringent filtering, and search engines filter the content is repetitive in order to search provide users with a better search experience, if we search a keyword, the search results in a large number of different sites of the same content, I think this is the search engine will not be welcome. Search engine duplicate content on the originality of the content filtering and identification, mainly through the Hyperlink fingerprint analysis and information technology, to determine whether an article belongs to original, original content for the search and whether the user has what kind of significance?

Original content for the search engines mean?
More trust in search engines and like to include a large number of original content sites, because they hope that through these sites to get more content, rather than repeat the contents of a large number of early, many people use the procedure to collect the content of other sites, to enrich its own Web site content to advertising through the flow area of the goal, so there is duplication of content on the Baidu increasingly stringent review, if a large number of duplicate content sites, may result in the search refused to record the contents of this web site or search engine did not position that to go unpunished, since the content for these users is meaningless, but a large number of original content for the site, search engines will give a higher weight, and record the contents of these pages for better rankings. Therefore, a lot of regulators trying to reprint the content of other web sites, and then proceed to the second editor, is the so-called pseudo-original, which seems to have some effect, two years ago, in this way is very effective, but now we may not be Nevertheless, search engine technology teams are constantly study how to better filtering of duplicate content, to provide users with a better search experience, to some extent, the search engine’s duplicate content filter technology is more mature, and of course, later will be even better. Therefore, high-quality original content for SEO is very important.

Original meaning of the content for visitors?
We are always considering how to improve the website’s ranking, consider how to cater to search engines like, if one day we do not rely on search engines get traffic, your site will be some people like it? Our Web site content provided by search engine not only to meet the like, and the more content we offer visitors whether you really need them, it really meets their needs. If we provided the content is only to deceive the search engines, there is no way to meet the needs of users, we have lost the meaning of building site eventually flow needs conversion, so if it is simply the volume and position, will be meaningless. Therefore, content quality is not just original enough, more users really need high-quality content.
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SEO project implementation – can not make bricks without straw
SEO project implementation with the entire team, every detail is important, high quality SEO content is in the process of project implementation an important part of the actual process of implementation of SEO projects, many teams have taken his words to the editor in accordance with save to write the content, but for a small team, this is unrealistic, and then the staff in terms of search engine optimization, high-quality content is very important, so we in the SEO process of project implementation, it is necessary to consider how to make more valuable premium content, the following is my personal project implementation on the SEO process, a major factor in the proportion of plans:
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Excellent search engine marketers is to focus on the needs of the market by means of Internet marketing SEO, and not only for the traffic and ranking, if it is only for the traffic and ranking, I am SEO strategy that can be resolved through the search engine filters repeatability content, and then it is unfriendly to visitors, so our ultimate goal is through the web site marketing and promotion, rather than simply the number of order flow.

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