Introduction to Blogging

INTRODUCTION

So you've heard the term "blog" and you want to know what blogs are all about. Well you've come to the right place. In this series of four articles we will take you from asking what a blog is to having all the knowledge you need to start a blog of your own so you can share your thoughts with hundreds or even thousands of readers.

WHAT IS A BLOG?

Let's begin with some definitions. A bit dry, we realize, but this is a necessary evil. First we'll define the word this whole site is based around - blog.

A blog is a frequently updated online personal journal or diary. It is a place to express yourself to the world. A place to share your thoughts and your passions. Really, it's anything you want it to be. For our purposes we'll say that a blog is your own Web site that you are going to update on an ongoing basis. Blog is a short form for the word weblog and the two words are used interchangeably.

Here are a couple of other definitions:

"...the first journalistic model that actually harnesses rather than merely exploits the true democratic nature of the web. It's a new medium finally finding a unique voice."--Andrew Sullivan

"[a] collection of posts...short, informal, sometimes controversial, and sometimes deeply personal...with the freshest information at the top."--Meg Hourihan

TERMINOLOGY

As so often happens in the English language, many derivates of the word blog have been created. One who participates in the activities of maintaining a blog is known as a blogger and the activity of keeping a blog is known as blogging. So we could say that the blogger blogs in his blog, but that might cause your English teacher to weep. We are going to use these terms with alarming frequency, so make sure you understand what they mean before you go on.

Blog (noun) - a journal or diary that is on the Internet - Andrew Sullivan has the most popular blog on the Internet.

Blogger (noun) - a person who keeps a blog - Bloggers are revolutionizing the way news is shared.

Blog (verb) - to write a blog - I am going to blog before breakfast this morning.

Blogging (verb) - the action of writing a blog - Blogging is my way of sharing my passions with the world.

Originally blogs were known primarily as places for people to write about their day-to-day activities. Their mundane, everyday tasks became fodder for journal entries. Somehow these writers gained a following and the hobby of blogging was born. Today people write about far more interesting topics. But we'll get to that in a minute.

WHO BLOGS?

So who are these fearless people who would be willing to post about their lives in as public a forum as the Internet? They are people just like you. Once the haven of technical know-it-alls, blogging has suddenly caught-on as a legitimate hobby and has entered the mainstream. Every day millions of people, some of whom have no technical ability whatsoever, write on their blogs. To meet this demand some amazing tools have been created that will allow anyone, even people with very little knowledge of computers, to have their own blog. If you can find your way onto the Internet and follow some basic instructions you can have your own blog. It's just that easy.

WHY DO PEOPLE BLOG?

So you may be asking why anyone would want to have their own blog. We believe the answer lies in the fact that every human has a voice and wishes their voice to be heard. The Internet is a medium that is unparalleled in its reach. Never before have average people like you or me been able to reach a global audience with so little trouble. Bloggers have the opportunity of reaching hundreds or even thousands of people each and every day.

There are still many people who like to share the details of their days. They may post twenty or thirty times a day, detailing when they ate lunch and when they headed home from work. On the other hand there are bloggers who give almost no detail about their lives, but write instead about a hobby or interest of theirs. They may dedicate their blog to something they are passionate about. Let me give you some examples:

This blog is about the business of Online Marketing.

So by now you know what a blog is and know that people from all walks of life have their own blogs. We'll turn now to the various components of an average blog.

COMPONENTS

1. Advertising - Many blogs have advertising banners on them. Most often the money generated by advertising goes to the company providing the blog software, not the individual blogger.
2. Title - The blog's title.
3. Date - The date of the most recent post. You will notice that previous posts have been pushed down on the page to fit below the most recent one.
4. Post Title - The title of the most recent post.
5. Text - The actual text of the most recent post.
6. Posting Information - Information telling who wrote that particular post and when it was posted to the blog.
7. Comments - An area for readers of the blog to add their comments. This is an option some bloggers use and others avoid.
8. Previous Posts - A list of the most recent posts.
9. Archives - A link to view the archive section which contains older posts.

Though there may be variety from one to another depending on the preferences of the individual blogger, most blogs have all or most of those components.

REVIEW

A blog is a place for anyone to say anything to everyone at any time. Blogs are so easy and accessible that even a novice computer-user can begin and maintain one and gain a dedicated readership.

WHAT NEXT?

In Step Two of this tutorial we will look at how to get started, what costs you can expect and what pitfalls to avoid.

What is Article Marketing?

Article marketing is a fast, safe, proven method to attract new buyers. You write an article, and submit it to article directories, content publishers, e-groups and forums around the Web. You don't have to worry about spam filters because your customers come to you. You won't pay-per-click like adsense or banner advertising, and you instantly build trust in the hearts and minds of your target audience.

Successful internet marketers have learned that content gets into the mindset of potential buyers. When you provide content that a reader is looking for, it easily slips past the standard defenses against advertising. Why? Because, quite simply, your potential customer is searching for information on a specific topic, and you are supplying what they seek.

The World Wide Web was originally designed as place for people to share information. From its very early days, people have used this global network of computers to exchange content on myriad topics with people around the globe, around the corner, across the quad, or just down the hall.

Article marketing is how regular people get their message heard by (literally) millions of potential customers. It's a back to basics approach that cuts through the advertising and sales messages bleating at them from every corner.

Article marketing gives your target market exactly what they need, with no hype or jumping about. Just good solid information that entices your target market to act on your message.

Better than Blogging

If you create a blog, you still have to entice people to visit it. You have to get people to come to you. Article marketing allows you to post your content (along with a link to your site) on other people's sites, piggybacking on their marketing efforts. Let THEM attract visitors - while you benefit from their efforts.

Far and Wide

The Article Marketer service gives you a platform to spread your message far and wide. Simply write an article (or have one written for you) that explains some aspect of your business. Think of it like something you might read in a business journal, trade magazine or newsletter. Whether or not you write it yourself, you'll want content that your target audience wants to read.

Thousands of Outlets

As an Article Marketer subscriber, your article is sent to thousands of publishers around the world. These publishers work hard to attract subscribers in a particular niche. They put out newsletters, have active blogs, manage extensive opt-in mailing lists, and run well-travelled content sites. In order to succeed, these publishers need a steady stream of content for their audiences. That's where you come in.

Some of their sites have tens, even hundreds of thousands of loyal readers. Article marketing is how you, as an ordinary person, can tap into that deep, specialized target market. You don't need your own mailing list or tons of traffic to your site in order to succeed. Article marketing is the best, most certain, cost effective way to reach a specifically targeted pool of potential customers.

It's truly a win-win-win situation.

Readers get desired information

Publishers get necessary content

You get qualified visitors

What Do Publishers Want To Publish?

Start with the easy part. You know the kind of stuff you yourself DON'T like to read. You can be certain that a publisher won't be interested in that crap either. Someone just being a blowhard, articles that are just blatant advertisements for products and services, or the regurgitated "same ol' same ol'" that everyone has read 1,000 times before. That kind of stuff doesn't help a publisher keep subscribers happy. And it won't get you any traffic.

On the other hand, you know your prospective customers. You also know the kind of things you DO like to read. When you're surfing around the Net, you want to get some information, some helpful bit that answers a question in your mind.

What questions do your customers have about your business? What attracts them to you? What problems do you solve for them? Answer these questions and anyone who feels you have the right answer will contact you - potentially becoming a customer.

How Does it Get Out There?

Article Marketer helps both experienced authors and also first-time article marketers. If you're new at this, don't worry - we'll help you succeed. An extensive publisher network (presently over 69,671 people on 3,484 sites, directories, and lists) receives articles through our servers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Reach your specific market when you organize your articles using the most extensive list of categories available anywhere.

But I've Never Tried It Before? Can You Help?

Helping authors get their articles published is the hallmark of the Article Marketer service. This website is filled with information about how article marketing works to answer any questions you may have. You can take advantage of a ton of free resources like Article Marketer University, where you will learn the ins and outs of article marketing from well-respected professionals.

One of the most popular features is the thorough Diamond Assurance™ review process. Every article is reviewed by a real live human being before being sent to the harshest critics out there: the publishers you're trying to impress.

Professional article reviewers make sure that you avoid some of the very common mistakes that prevent articles from being published. You'll get specific feedback so that your article has the best chance of being accepted by the publishers around the net.

The Article Marketer system was built using scientific "Yahoogle-icious" processes that take all the hard work out of article marketing.

Honest, Honorable Marketing for Good Guys

Article marketing is known as the white-hat way to get noticed by the search engines and reach your target market. When your articles are published in newsletters, you get highly relevant links back to your site.

And these backlinks are the exactly what the Yahoogles crave -- fresh, relevant links from other popular sites.

There's been a thriving little underground community -- the "internet marketing experts" -- that really understands the power of this process. You may have heard talk about "bum marketing," "article submission," "writing article," etc...it's all about article marketing, and it works. And it's easy and affordable for any size business. Take advantage of this great opportunity and create your own online success.

What is Google PageRank?

Where is Google Page Rank from and how do I view it?

The name "Google PageRank" is originated from one of Google's founders Larry Page. It was invented to help Google Search become more precise. PageRank is a "rank" for a website and ranges from zero to ten (0 - 10). You will notice that high respected websites have a higher PageRank assigned whereas new websites will have a lower PageRank.

Popular known websites:

Yahoo http://www.yahoo.com - 9 out of 10 PageRank

MSN http://www.msn.com - 9 out of 10 PageRank

Google http://www.google.com - 10 out of 10 PageRank

Websites that are not as popular as the ones mentioned above will usually have a lower PageRank, something ranging from zero PageRank to 5 PageRank. Google PageRank update's every three to four months but in some cases it can take up to six months before you notice any updates.

To view the PageRank of a website, you can either download the Google Toolbar or use an online tool such as iWEBTOOL's Rank Checker.

The basic understanding of Google PageRank

According to Google, the PageRank given to a website indicates the website's importance, and is calculated from sites linking to a page. For instance, if PAGE A has a text link to PAGE B then PAGE B will be ranked higher as PAGE A is "voting" for PAGE B. However, although it seems very straightforward, many different factors are considered while calculating the PageRank. The page casting the vote will be inspected by Google also.

Google analyzes the webpage that has the text link to another website and looks at various qualities of the webpage. For instance, one of the foremost quality is the PageRank of the webpage that has the link to another website. The higher the PageRank of the "linker", the higher the link will value. For example, if PAGE A has a PageRank of 5 and is linking to PAGE B. This link will be valued more as PAGE A has a high PageRank of 5. Whereas if PAGE A had a small PageRank of 2 then this link will not be valued as much. Another factor that is taken into consideration is the amount of links on a webpage. If PAGE A has only one link on the page, it will be valued much more than if it were to have five links on the page.

An important information most webmasters tend to forget nowadays is that PageRank isn't as relevant to search results ranking as it use to be. There was a time when PageRank had a very important impact on the search results from Google but in the recent changes, Google has developed new factors and PageRank isn't as critical now.

Check Page Rank of any web site pages instantly:

What is a web directory

A web directory or link directory is a directory on the World Wide Web. It specializes in linking to other web sites and categorizing those links.

A web directory is not a search engine and does not display lists of web pages based on keywords; instead, it lists web sites by category and subcategory. The categorization is usually based on the whole web site rather than one page or a set of keywords, and sites are often limited to inclusion in only a few categories. Web directories often allow site owners to directly submit their site for inclusion, and have editors review submissions for fitness.

An Introduction to the Social Scene: Social Bookmarking and Tagging

Have you been wondering what all the recent talk about social search, social bookmarks, and social SEO has been about? In this article we'll go over a few of the services that you may or may not be familiar with, what they do, and how you may be able to take part in these services.

What is it? Simple and Social.

The essence of many of the sites that I'll be touching on, is that they offer a means to converse with others in a community based web site. A wide variety of web based services and sites fall into a broad category labeled as 'social'. Many of the features that we now take for granted like email, forums, instant messaging, Usenet (most know this as Google Groups now), free web space providers, and others could all fit in the broad definition but these are not what most people are referring to when they talk about the subject today. What differentiates the old from the new? These days I believe that the 'social' category is primarily defined by sites and services that provide many of the same overall functions listed above but often with a focus on simple interfaces along with their social functions. Simplicity in that you often fill out a profile and then you are ready to start contributing vs. having to know HTML and set up a website to post links or photos... And of course the social aspects of publicly contributing comments, photos, blogs, links, or other items to the larger community of a website. Then a discuss by the community leading to the promotion or removal of the contribution in a very public fashion.

Social Bookmarks

In the past if you had several bookmarks that you thought were wonderful and you would like share them with others, you could send an email or instant message to a friend. If you were HTML savvy you would post the links to your web page, or log in to a forum to share them. Today many turn to social bookmark services like Digg, Del.icio.us, Furl, Jots, Socializer, Simpy, browser tool bars like StumbleUpon and a bevy of others. Create a profile and start reviewing links that meet your interests, submit new links that others might like which are added to your profile. These links/bookmarks are viewable from just about any computer, pda, or other device that has web access or accepts RSS feeds.

When you post your bookmark most of these services will allow you to give a short description of the page, video, graphic, or other item that you are bookmarking. What makes these services 'social' is the fact that these links are available to the site's community for review. If people 'digg' your bookmark, it can reach critical popularity and arrive on the front page of the community site and sometimes bring additional traffic. Alternately your bookmark suggestion can be buried where the community's thumbs down means that the link will be available only through a search or when checking your profile page.

Social Tagging

Also different from a normal bookmark on a normal web page, services like Del.icio.us and Simpy, additionally let users 'tag' keywords to links. This allows a tagged link to be made searchable for specific words and word combinations, available through directory like lists, as well as other methods like 'tag clouds'. Searches can be set as RSS feeds and sent to your RSS reader, APIs can be used to publish searches and feeds, and there are new uses just about every day.

Social Search

While throwing a link out to the masses for judgment is less personal than sending it to a friend, the overall process can help to winnow down the wheat from the chaff. In many cases, results are considered 'more relevant' than a search engine's algorithm because the results are hand picked.

Some services even go a step further. Eurekster and Rollyo for example can assist you in creating a personalized/shareable search engines based on your own set of criteria. The subjectivity that engines lack is one of the factors that appear to keep these services popular with their users, which follows on the basic blue print that the Open Directory had set long ago.

Social SEO/SEM?

During the SES San Jose conference, social book mark services, tagging, and social search engines had been brought up quite a lot. Could this new breed of tagging, bookmark, and search service be of use in promoting a web site? There seemed to be two types of answer to this. Some were optimistic but hesitant. Others had an attitude of, "do what you can, while you can".

Both answers boil down to the fact that a link back to your site from many of these services can gain you some small or large amount of traffic. But the traffic may not be very useful if you are trying to sell a product or service.

Most of these users are looking for topical information or entertainment rather than commercial sales links. So news, blogs, article links, entertainment seems to work best.

A link from these pages may cause a page or site to be indexed quicker because these sites are very popular.

Links from specific sections could potentially pass a little page rank.

The potentials above aside, there are consideration to be made. If you hammer only your links using an account or by using several accounts, it may look bad to the community and your profiles will likely be shut down by the community or the administration of the service. While many of these sites do not use a 'no-follow' tag or other method, it may be a matter of time before they do. Also consider that there is discussion that normal engines like Google may not give credibility to paid text links on large sites. I would imagine that well known social bookmark sites may end up in a similar boat if SEOs aggressively promote their own sites and significantly skew normal search engine rankings.

On the other hand, search engines are investing in things "social". Yahoo owns tagging site Del.icio.us, there are 'answer' sites by Yahoo, Google and a beta site by MSN as well as APIs to help you connect these services to your site. MSN has Live Spaces. Through Google's Personal Search you can share your searches via an RSS feed. A normal tagging service or shareable profile doesn't seem that far off if the engines only decide to fully embrace these services. Some tentative steps are already in place so that you can tag using Yahoo's browser tool bar. Some turn to creating their own integration using tool bar APIs or third party apps.

On the SEO side, if some one answers a question on one of these answer sites and points back to one of your pages, does this pass any benefit to you? Should it? There are a lot of unanswered questions regarding the future of these social sites and services but they will likely evolve and continue to hybridize into something new. Taking part today at the very least, may help you to understand future developments and issues.

There may also be not so obvious benefits from taking part in these social sites. Some sites like Technorati and Meetup may help you to meet others in your industry. Be aware, read the FAQs as some sites do not want companies signing up for their service directly, but they do like individuals. If your company takes part in charitable causes, community fundraising, sponsors large events, etc. take pictures and submit them to your personal account. Submit them and tag them with appropriate tags including your business name if appropriate to the photo. Put on rose colored glasses for this, you never know what will happen. You may find a way to gain more volunteers, a new way to reach out to a constituency, or enough prestige to be fought over if you take part in some of these social networks in a meaningful way, even if you are not taking part for traditional rankings, link gathering, or other reasons.

Share and Enjoy:

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What Is SEO

I. Introduction – What Is SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is often considered the more technical part of Web marketing. This is true because SEO does help in the promotion of sites and at the same time it requires some technical knowledge – at least familiarity with basic HTML. SEO is sometimes also called SEO copyrighting because most of the techniques that are used to promote sites in search engines deal with text. Generally, SEO can be defined as the activity of optimizing Web pages or whole sites in order to make them more search engine-friendly, thus getting higher positions in search results.

One of the basic truths in SEO is that even if you do all the things that are necessary to do, this does not automatically guarantee you top ratings but if you neglect basic rules, this certainly will not go unnoticed. Also, if you set realistic goals – i.e to get into the top 30 results in Google for a particular keyword, rather than be the number one for 10 keywords in 5 search engines, you will feel happier and more satisfied with your results.

Although SEO helps to increase the traffic to one's site, SEO is not advertising. Of course, you can be included in paid search results for given keywords but basically the idea behind the SEO techniques is to get top placement because your site is relevant to a particular search term, not because you pay.

SEO can be a 30-minute job or a permanent activity. Sometimes it is enough to do some generic SEO in order to get high in search engines – for instance, if you are a leader for rare keywords, then you do not have a lot to do in order to get decent placement. But in most cases, if you really want to be at the top, you need to pay special attention to SEO and devote significant amounts of time and effort to it. Even if you plan to do some basic SEO, it is essential that you understand how search engines work and which items are most important in SEO.

1. How Search Engines Work

The first basic truth you need to learn about SEO is that search engines are not humans. While this might be obvious for everybody, the differences between how humans and search engines view web pages aren't. Unlike humans, search engines are text-driven. Although technology advances rapidly, search engines are far from intelligent creatures that can feel the beauty of a cool design or enjoy the sounds and movement in movies. Instead, search engines crawl the Web, looking at particular site items (mainly text) to get an idea what a site is about. This brief explanation is not the most precise because as we will see next, search engines perform several activities in order to deliver search results – crawling, indexing, processing,calculating relevancy, and retrieving.

First, search engines crawl the Web to see what is there. This task is performed by e piece of software, called a crawler or a spider (or Googlebot, as is the case with Google). Spiders follow links from one page to another and index everything they find on their way. Having in mind the number of pages on the Web (over 20 billion), it is impossible for a spider to visit a site daily just to see if a new page has appeared or if an existing page has been modified. Sometimes crawlers will not visit your site for a month or two, so during this time your SEO efforts will not be rewarded. But there is nothing you can do about it, so just keep quiet.

What you can do is to check what a crawler sees from your site. As already mentioned, crawlers are not humans and they do not see images, Flash movies, JavaScript, frames, password-protected pages and directories, so if you have tons of these on your site, you'd better run the Spider Simulator below to see if these goodies are viewable by the spider. If they are not viewable, they will not be spidered, not indexed, not processed, etc. - in a word they will be non-existent for search engines.

Spider Simulator Enter URL to Spider

After a page is crawled, the next step is to index its content. The indexed page is stored in a giant database, from where it can later be retrieved. Essentially, the process of indexing is identifying the words and expressions that best describe the page and assigning the page to particular keywords. For a human it will not be possible to process such amounts of information but generally search engines deal just fine with this task. Sometimes they might not get the meaning of a page right but if you help them by optimizing it, it will be easier for them to classify your pages correctly and for you – to get higher rankings.

When a search request comes, the search engine processes it – i.e. it compares the search string in the search request with the indexed pages in the database. Since it is likely that more than one pages (practically it is millions of pages) contains the search string, the search engine starts calculating the relevancy of each of the pages in its index to the search string.

There are various algorithms to calculate relevancy. Each of these algorithms has different relative weights for common factors like keyword density, links, or metatags. That is why different search engines give different search results pages for the same search string. What is more, it is a known fact that all major search engines, like Yahoo!, Google, MSN, etc. periodically change their algorithms and if you want to keep at the top, you also need to adapt your pages to the latest changes. This is one reason (the other is your competitors) to devote permanent efforts to SEO, if you'd like to be at the top.

The last step in search engines' activity is retrieving the results. Basically, it is nothing more than simply displaying them in the browser – i.e. the endless pages of search results that are sorted from the most relevant to the least relevant sites.

2. Differences Between the Major Search Engines

Although the basic principle of operation of all search engines is the same, the minor differences between them lead to major changes in results relevancy. For different search engines different factors are important. There were times, when SEO experts joked that the algorithms of Yahoo! are intentionally made just the opposite of those of Google. While this might have a grain of truth, it is a matter a fact that the major search engines like different stuff and if you plan to conquer more than one of them, you need to optimize carefully.

There are many examples of the differences between search engines. For instance, for Yahoo! and MSN, on-page keyword factors are of primary importance, while for Google links are very, very important. Also, for Google sites are like wine – the older, the better, while Yahoo! generally has no expressed preference towards sites and domains with tradition (i.e. older ones). Thus you might need more time till your site gets mature to be admitted to the top in Google, than in Yahoo!.

About Me

Hi Everyone, I am Samar Singh

I'm a simple person, out going not really a party people type, but somehow I go out with my friends. I can easily get along with other people which maybe with different attitudes and beliefs than my own......

About My work exp.

I Started my career from a small IT company E-design Studio Pvt.Ltd. in Panchkula. I Worked there 6 months. Then I Joined India Based IT Company SBwebx Solutions Private Limited in Panchkula As SEO Executive. I am working on many SEO Projects such as www.ePassportphoto.com, www.Lasany.org ,www.giftingmadeeasy.com, www.fpss.co.uk & more..