Tips 4 Web

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

Some website owners might not want visitors to come from all over globe but rather from a specific country, city or region. This could be the case with local bloggers or offline business owners, for example. In those occasions it would be a good idea to optimize the site for local search, and here are some tricks that you can use for the purpose.

1. Add Your Site to Google Maps

Visit local.google.com and click on “Put your business on Google Maps.” You will need to login to a Google account, and after that you will need to fill some forms.

After that you will need to locate your location on the map and describe the category that better describes your business or website. Set your office timing along with you contact numbers and preferred payment option. You can also submit photos or videos.

Once you are done you will need to verify your insertion, and this can be done via SMS, phone or postcard. After the verification is complete your website will start appearing on local search queries.

If you want you can also submit your website to Yahoo! Local and Bing Local.

2. Use Geo Tags

Geotagging, according to Wikipedia, is the process of adding geographical identification metadata to various media such as photographs, video, websites, or RSS feeds. These data usually consist of latitude and longitude coordinates, though they can also include altitude, bearing, accuracy data, and place names.

Geotags help search engine to locate you on the map and this may help on local search queries. Classic geotags are a combination of Latitude and Longitude for your city. To find Latitude and Longitude of you city you many visit mygeoposition.com.

Applying geotags is not hard. Here is an example for Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India. You just need to add the code below to the Head section of your site or blog (modifying it accordingly):

<meta name="geo.position" content="23.039574;-72.566020">
<meta name=”geo.placename" content="Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India">
<meta name=”"geo.region" content="Gujarat-IN">

3. Use Google Webmaster Tools

Another way to let Google know about your geographical location is via the Google Webmaster Tools. Once you are logged go to Settings (If you are managing multiple website then select the target website first). There you will find one option called “Geographic target.” Specify your location and save.

4. Local Web Directories and Yellow Pages

Submitting your site to local web directories and yellow pages will help you in two ways. First of all it will drive local traffic to your site. Secondly, it will also give you some relevant backlinks and improve your search engine authority for local search queries.

Remember that directories and sites with your country level extensions (e.g., .co.uk, .in and so on) will work better than sites with normal top level extensions.

Jaydip blogs about Internet Marketing, SEO and Blogging on Jaydip.info.

Original Post: How To Optimize Your Site for Local Search

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How To Optimize Your Site for Local Search

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My friend Chris Garrett is working on a new social media course, and to get the ball rolling he is offering a bunch of free guides, reports, cheat sheets and the like.

In other to grab the stuff you just need to visit the Social Media Workbook website and sign-up for the free newsletter.

Another cool thing that Chris is offering there is a Q&A channel. When you sign-up there is form where you can write about one or more social media questions that you have, and Chris will answer them on the newsletter.

One of the reports that you will be able to download is the “102 Headline-Writing Formulas.” As you can see from the screenshot available, it comes with pre-written headlines that you can use for inspiration for blog posts and headlines.

As usual with Chris, it is all quality stuff, so don’t miss it.

Original Post: Did You Get Your Social Media Guides?

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Did You Get Your Social Media Guides?

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

I have been blogging for over a year now, and during this time, I came to a point where I wanted to expand my blog. The problem was that I just didn’t have enough time, as I have a full time job as a market researcher outside of my blog. This lack of time led me to the decision to hire writers for my blog. This wasn’t any easy decision, and it raised lots of questions. How would I pay them? Would it just add more work? Am I fit to manage other writers?

All of these questions were hard to answer, so I did what most people do. I just started blindly hiring writers with no roadmap in place. I was going with a straight trial by fire. It took some time and patience, but I now have a great system in place and am really glad I expanded to a multi-author blog. In this article, I’m going to tell you about the benefits and drawbacks of having a multi-author blog.

The Benefits

I figured it best to give you the good news first about have multiple authors on your blog, so you don’t just read the bad news and be scared off from attempting this drastic change.

1. More Articles and Content for Your Blog

I have never been a blazing fast writer, and I have a full time job. These things together make it near impossible for me to get more than 2 or 3 quality articles done a week. With only a limited number of articles per week, quick expansion of audience and article portfolio was out of the question.

Multiple authors have allowed me to ramp up the number of posts per week, and it allowed me to keep up posting consistency. If I went on vacation or took a break before, the blog sat stagnant. With extra authors, I always have a nice stock of articles just waiting to be published.

2. Expand the Topics Covered

Much to the dismay of many bloggers out there, I am a Windows guy. I have been my whole life and will continue to do so. I run a tech blog, so I would love to write about Mac software and hardware. However, I have no experience in that arena, so any articles I may have tried to write would have come off as uninformed and low quality.

In my search for authors, I made sure to find a few that used Macs in order to expand my blog’s coverage into that area. This helps round out my articles and gives me a little more variability and flexibility.

3. Increased Network

One thing that I didn’t think about at all when hiring writers, was how it was going to change my network. I never realized that you are not just hiring writers, you are hiring new marketers as well. I’ve had writers submit articles to social media sites and link me on their blog. This does nothing but attract more readers and get Google to like my blog that much more.

5. Become an Editor

My undergrad degree is in industrial engineering. That’s about as far away from journalism as you can get. Needless to say, I’ve never been the most swift writer, but I have polished my skills and been really impressed with my progress over the last year. However, I still don’t have amazing writing speed, so crafting a great article takes me some time.

Editing articles takes FAR less time for me. I am very open to all types of writing styles and articles, so skimming through someone else’s article and correcting grammar and formatting errors goes much faster. Becoming the editor has been great for me, as I still get to put my spin on things without having to spend so much time on research and writing.

5. Management Experience

Before have a multi-author blog, I had never been anyone’s boss. Being the boss has provided me with some great experience that will translate into the real world. I know that it isn’t exactly the same as face to face managing, but I still have to assign tasks, resolve conflict and communicate goals and objectives clearly. I firmly believe that these experiences will help me in my future career wherever it may take me.

The Drawbacks

Now that I’ve gotten you excited about expanding your blog, I’m going to give you the other side of the expansion story. The next five reasons are going to focus on the downsides of running a multi-author blog, because not everyone is going to find a solution to their blogging issues by changing to a multi-author blog. Let’s get right into the reasons of why you may not want a multi-author blog.

1. Loss of Control

In a multi-author blog you are still the final approver of content, and you can reject whatever you want. You could also demand all of your authors to write only about this topic or that topic, but I have a feeling that most people won’t like to be told exactly what to do or what to write about. If you don’t give your authors flexibility, someone else will.

Writers will write in a different tone or style than your own, and they will write about topics that may not have been your first pick. I was a little bit of a perfectionist before I hired authors, but I had to drop that mindset quickly and let go of my control over everything. If you want everything to be done a certain way, having multiple authors may prove to be a challenge.

2. Loss of Voice

This goes back to the fact that other authors have a different writing style than your own. This may help or hurt your blog, as you may have built up a strong audience with the way you write. You can still edit posts to make them sound more like you, but there is a fine line between just editing an article and rewriting it. It can be hard to keep the blog as just your own, because future readers will see many authors. This takes the focus off of you and could be a deal breaker for certain bloggers that want their blog to just be their own.

3. Become an Editor

This was one of the reasons to have a multi-author blog, but that was due to the fact that I am not a writer at heart. If you are a natural writer and really love crafting articles, becoming an editor could be something that provides you with little reward or excitement. Moving your time from the creative side to a more administrative role could be very hard and boring for many individuals and cause them to lose the passion they once had for their blog.

4. Become a Manger

This, again, was a positive in the previous list. The truth is that managing people can be challenging and down right frustrating at times. People have different personalities and ways of expressing their feelings. Dealing with people can be great, or it can be like babysitting.

Also, turnover tends to be fairly high, because you probably won’t have all the money in the world to pay your authors to keep them around. Training and constantly dealing with new people can get really old after a while.

5. Share the Wealth

If you hire authors, you have to pay them (well, most of the time). This starts to cut into that revenue you were building and were so proud of. Going from $100 a month back to almost nothing, because all of it is going to authors is a very hard thing to swallow. You may not see how the increased articles will yield increased revenue in the future. It is an investment, and some investments never pay out.
Conclusion

I am a big fan of running a multi-author blog and have gotten lots out of the change, but there are also many reasons to not take on this expansion, especially if your blog is very focused on your thoughts and opinions. Let us know what you think about multi-author blogs in the comments.

This is a guest post by Kyle Judkins, owner of LostInTechnology and the recently launched UpYourSocial.

Original Post: 5 Reasons For and Against Making Your Blog Multi-Author

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5 Reasons For and Against Making Your Blog Multi-Author

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It would be hard to find a person who has never heard about a to-do list, right? Yet I bet that many of you do not use it, or do not use it effectively.

I was on the same boat until some months ago. I knew that every day I was supposed to list the tasks that needed to be done, but most of the time I would just list those tasks mentally and get on with the work. Needless to say that by lunch I would have already forgotten what I was supposed to do….

I also tried to use digital solutions, including a desktop application that manages my to-do list and the “Tasks” feature inside Gmail. They worked for a couple of days, but that was it.

Then one day I thought to myself: “Let’s get old school and start doing a to-do list with pen and paper.” And suddenly and I was getting more things done than ever before.

These days I can’t work unless I have my notebook and a pen on my desk. Here is how I structure the process:

1. At the end of every working day I will sit down and list the tasks that need to be performed on the next day.
2. I list them in descending order of importance (so priorities go on top).
3. I also list stuff that I am NOT supposed to do (e.g., check my email more than twice a day or visit YouTube).
4. As I move along the day I just cross the completed tasks and move on to the next ones.
5. If I fail to complete a certain task I move it to next day’s list, on top.

This is probably the best single thing I have done to improve my productivity. If you are not doing it, give it a shot.

Original Post: How I Doubled My Productivity Overnight

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How I Doubled My Productivity Overnight

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I must confess that I was surprised with the results. When I launched the poll last Monday asking our readers whether or not they worked full time on the Internet, I was expecting at most 20% of them would say “Yes.”

It turns out that almost 50% of our readers do work full time online (47% to be precise). We had a total of 371 people casting a vote, so the results should be somewhat meaningful. Another 40% of the readers who took the poll said that they don’t work full time yet but are definitely planning to. Only 13% answered that they don’t work full time on the Internet and don’t want to.

Interesting huh?

Anyway, I am glad to know that almost 90% of our readers are either working full time online or planning to. I firmly believe in this professional path (more on this on a future post).

Thanks for everyone who answered the poll, and stay tuned for the next one.

Original Post: 50% of Our Readers Work Full Time on the Internet

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50% of Our Readers Work Full Time on the Internet

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

Knowing when and why to use paragraph breaks is something that most of us were taught at school and, if it doesn’t come to us instinctively, is frequently got wrong. However, it is a key skill to ensure your posts are easy to follow and retain your readers through till the end. So if your instincts aren’t working well, what should you do?

Traditional advice to journalists was to write stories in such as way that they carry on making sense each time you slice a sentence off the end of the story. This was suited to the pre-electronic era where stories had to fit the size of the paper, but it often wasn’t known at the time of writing exactly what the size of that space would be. Moreover, the manual manipulation of text meant that any editing other than trimming words from the end could be slow and cumbersome.

This writing style is still frequently used and still has many merits – such as by catering for both the busy reader, who just reads the first part of the story, and also the more interested reader, who reads on and gets further detail.

It isn’t that well suited to online writing, though, both because usually there isn’t the same constraint on the number of words and also because the increasing trend towards conveying messages via telling stories means you cannot structure posts in the same way. The narrative arrangement of a story is not amenable to editing away from the bottom up.

The traditional way of writing is, however, an approach that still works well within paragraphs. The first sentence of the paragraph is the main point, with the other sentences then clarifying, substantiating or expanding as needed. When you get on to a new point, it’s time for a new paragraph.

So when you’re done, there are two checks for your paragraph structure. First, the post should still make sense even if you only read the first sentence of each paragraph. Second, you should be able to in turn chop off the last sentence of any paragraph (that is more than one sentence long) and for the post still to flow.

Finally, remember that as with all rules about writing, all rules are there for the breaking on that occasional moment of genius.

Mark Pack is Associate Director, Digital at Mandate Communications and blogs at markpack.org.uk.

Original Post: Do You Know How To Structure a Blog Post?

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Do You Know How To Structure a Blog Post?

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This post is part of the weekly Q&A section. Just use the contact form if you want to submit a question.

Vlad asks:

Should one start a blog using his own name or should he seek a general, more describing domain name? In other words, do you think that DanielScocco.com could have had the same success as DailyBlogTips.com when writing about blogging? To extend this question to other fields, do you think a writer, a historian etc, should brand his name or set up a blog using a specific domain name?

Quite a controversial topic, as there are people sitting on both sides of the fence here.

In my opinion the answer is connected to the goals that you have for your blog. Let me break down the different scenarios:

Scenario 1: You want to start a personal blog to talk about whatever comes to your mind, update friends and family about your endeavors and so on.

Ideal domain name: Either YourName.com or any other cool domain that you find and like. Since we are talking about a personal blog, there aren’t any rules here. Go with whatever you like best.

Scenario 2: You want to start a blog to promote your personal brand or your services. This could include writers, consultants, painters, lawyers and so on.

Ideal domain name: YourName.com. Keep in mind that in this scenario I am not talking about professionals who want to promote their companies. For those a domain with the name of the company is obviously preferred. I am talking about people who make money thanks to their personal brands, like Seth Godin.

Scenario 3: You want to start a blog on a specific niche and make it a popular site. You might want to monetize it in the future as well, either with advertising, affiliate marketing or by selling your own products and services.

Ideal domain name: Something descriptive, brandable, easy to spell, easy to remember and with a .com extension.

So to answer your initial question, I don’t think that DanielScocco.com would’ve been as successful as DailyBlogTips.com for this blog.

What you guys think though? Feel free to answer Vlad’s question with your own take on the issue.

Original Post: Should I Use MyName.com as My Domain?

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Should I Use MyName.com as My Domain?

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