Blogging 101

Ways to Optimize Your Blog for Maximum Traffic
Once you have decided to create a blog and publish it on the World Wide web you still
have to do a few more things before you can expect to earn any profit from your blog.
This is especially true for those blogs that are not affiliated with any existing sites and
blog owners who have never run a website before. You are going to have to work to
build some traffic and readership to your new blog. It is going to be hard to earn any
income, let alone make a profit, on your blog site if no one is reading it.
Before starting any aggressive advertising campaigns it is important to make sure your
blog is search engine optimized. There are plenty of companies that will charge you a
pretty penny to make these changes for you, but it is easier (and naturally cheaper) to
do things yourself. Meta tags must be included in your blog in order to catch any
random search engine traffic that might stumble your way, and to make sure your site is
indexed to appear in a search engine in the first place.
Two free tools that will generate quality meta tags for your site are the Submit Express
Meta Tag Generator (http://www.submitexpress.com/metatag.html) and the Submit
Corner Meta Tag Generator (http://www.submitcorner.com/Tools/Meta). I have used
both of these tools to generate meta tags for all of my existing blogs. This helps ensure
that my blogs get indexed and that I can receive traffic from search engine results that
display my blog. Both of these tools are completely free and only require the user to
answer a few questions and fill in a few blanks (site description, keywords, etc.). When
you are done both tools can be used to analyze your newly created meta tags and give
suggestions on how to optimize them (make them shorter or longer).
Depending on your blogging platform your newly created meta tags might have to go in
different parts of your blog. Using Wordpress I usually place my meta tags in the
header and main index page of my blog layout. If you are not sure where to place the
meta tags consult your blog platforms Frequently Asked Questions or search for a help
forum dedicated to your specific blogging platform.
Once your meta tags are created and in place you can now start submitting your blog to
major search engines. There are plenty of companies that offer to submit your domain
to search engines, for a fee, and I recommend against using them. If you have some
time at the beginning of each month to submit your domains manually it will be just as
effective and save you money. I usually use Submit Express
(http://www.submitexpress.com) to submit my blog to the search engines. Also,
because of the constant updating, blogs get indexed faster (and stay indexed longer)
than traditional websites. This fact alone makes me a blog supporter and promoter.
When you have gotten comfortable with blogging, and your chosen platform, it is time to
beautify your blog. You want to make sure that your blog stands out in the crowd, and
the only way to do that is to have a unique blog theme/template. The worst thing that
can happen to you in the world of blogging is for readers and clients to confuse your
blog with that of your competitors.
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There are many websites that sell pre-made blog templates for reasonable prices. One
that I have personally worked with is Template Monster
(http://www.templatemonster.com). They sell Wordpress, Joomla, and Mambo
templates for anywhere between $30.00 and $70.00. For an additional fee they offer
another service, Template Tuning, which will customize your heading and other parts of
the blog design for you. However, if you know anything about Adobe Photoshop then
you should be able to make any necessary changes to the template yourself. Template
Monster includes the editable PSD files with each order.
It is also possible to hire a designer to create a completely unique theme/template for
your blog for a fee. These services can cost anywhere from $30.00 to $300.00
depending on the designer and the complexity of the design. In most cases you will
need to provide images for the designer to work with. These images can be purchased
from stock photography sites such as Dreamstime (http://www.dreamstime.com).
Dreamstime will also, occasionally, have free images available for use as long as the
photographer is credited somewhere in the design.
Some of the best places to find designers who will work for reasonable fees are on
Craigslist (http://www.craigslist.org) and deviantART (http://www.deviantart.com). If you
are looking on Craigslist for a designer go to the Creative and Computer services
section, and perform a search for blog design, blogging, or your platform by name. Be
sure you search all major cities to try and find..