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

Despite having already quit my job, I recently attended a “escape the rat-race” type workshop for people who were looking to start their own businesses. My main reason for going was to see the process that people teach in order to help others successfully transition out of the cubicle and into their own company.

After all, I had completely stumbled onto my current path so didn’t have a solid blueprint for the process. One thing that really struck me throughout the discussions was that every single person agreed with this: you must make your business feel like home to someone. It doesn’t have to be everyone, but it should be someone.

I started to think of this analogy in terms of blogging and within a few minutes, I was already flooded with ideas on how to make your blog feel more homely to your audience. Now, I’m going to share them with you.

Pick a Focused Topic (The Right Address)

If you pick a focused topic on your blog, the vast majority of your blog posts will apply to everybody. In other words, every time they read new content of yours, visitors will be thinking “Yep, I have the right address.” They’ll know they’re in the right place because that’s exactly what they want to read.

A few blogs do break this mould with one of the most notable being Steve Pavlina. He blogs on the topic of Personal Development but covers so many different aspects of that niche. One week he might write about dating products and the next he’ll cover religion. I can’t help but think only a tiny percentage of his readers get to read what directly interests them on a regular basis.

The more you can give your readers exactly what they’re looking for, the better the chance they’ll feel like they’re in the right place.

Keep a Consistent Post Schedule (Familiarity)

One thing I admittedly struggle with is keeping a regular posting schedule. Some weeks I might post four times and others I might not post at all. My blogging very much operates around my personal life and I know that’s not good. In fact, the only thing constant about my post schedule right now is inconsistency.

However, I’m working to change that because I know how important the aspect of familiarity can be for your blog. I know that Darren has said a few times how if he does not post on a day (which he usually always does) then he will get floods of emails asking if he is OK or anything has happened to him. His readers are often waiting for new content to be posted because they generally know when that happens.

Remember that a (surprisingly) large portion of your readers will not use RSS or Twitter to get your articles. Instead, they’ll go the ‘old fashioned’ route and regularly return to your site manually to see if you have updated. This is especially true in the non-technical niche’s out there, so try to keep to a regular schedule.

Be Authentic (Comfort)

Authenticity online can be described in many ways, but I simply like to think of it as bringing as many natural human components you would use offline, into the online world. To me, that’s what all the advice boils down to. Authenticity brings comfort to your readers because trying to be (or act like) someone else is not only difficult an act for you to keep up but difficult for your readers to relate to.

Have you ever had a conversation with someone who is trying really hard to impress you? Within a few minutes you instantly know how much money they have or how attractive their partner is? If you haven’t, then I have. And when it happens, it just feels…yuck. That’s the only way I can describe it, it just feels unnatural.

I have found the best results blogging when I talk to my readers like they are real people and I don’t try to bring an enhanced version of my offline self, online. If I’m comfortable sharing my failures and mistakes in life and lessons that I’ve learned, I find that people can really relate to what I’m saying and connect with the words. The more you can engage your readers, the more comfortable they will be around your site.

Interact in the Comments (Community)

I honestly feel like one of the few bloggers who tries to respond to as many of the blog comments I receive as possible. I do this not only to thank people for taking the time to check out my website, but I know that whenever I leave a comment on other websites, I really appreciate it when the author takes time out to respond to me.

I actually have to hand it to Daniel here because he is one of the few big bloggers I see regularly responding to reader questions, either as blog posts or comment replies. You may want to install a email subscription plugin so that blog commenters can also be notified when you reply to them directly. This step is so simple, and while it might take up 30 minutes of your time each day, I believe it is totally worth it.

Over to you: what tips do you have to make a blog feel like home?

Glen Allsopp blogs on the topic of Viral Marketing at ViperChill. He helps people make a living online by building remarkable websites.

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

Kang Yudiono asks:

I am very happy because my blog got Google Sitelinks. For your information, the blog is 5 months old and written in Indonesian laguage.

My question: what is the benefits of sitelinks for a blog?

First things first, what are the Google sitelinks? They are those links that appear below the first result when you search for the name of a website or blog. Google implemented the sitelinks to help users find the information or section inside a particular website more easily. That is what the links only appear when you search for the exact name of a website, because those are considered “navigational queries.” Here is a screenshot of the sitelinks for Daily Blog Tips:

One could say that the sitelinks are nothing more than shortcuts in the search results to help users navigate to a website more efficiently.

The next question is how you can get sitelinks for your website or blog. Unfortunately there is no switch that you need to turn on to enable sitelinks for your site. Google handles sitelinks automatically through an algorithm, and usually you get sitelinks when your website is perceived as an authority. Practically speaking, this means that your website needs to have a good amount of backlinks, people searching for its name on Google and so on.

Personally I have never worried too much about sitelinks on my new websites. If you keep publishing quality content and promoting it, eventually you will get the sitelinks.

The last question is: what are the benefits of having Google sitelinks? I believe there are two, one tangible and one intangible. The tangible benefit is an increase in traffic for your website, because the sitelinks will give you more exposure in the search results, increasing the CTR you will get on search queries.

The intangible benefit is the credibility that you get from having sitelinks. Only established and authority sites have sitelinks, so when users come across them after searching for the name of your website or blog they will get a reassurance from Google itself that your content or products must be good.

You probably already visited or heard about I Can Has Cheezburger? right? It is the blog that pioneered the concept of adding funny captions to pictures of cats (called lolcats). What you might not know is the business empire that such blog created.

The blog was launched early in 2007, and late that year it was already so popular that a group of investors, led by Ben Huh, acquired it for around $2 million. After that Ben acquired and launch a bunch of other blogs, all of them with the same humorous approach and style. How big is the network today? According to a TechCrunch article, all the sites combined receive 12 million monthly unique visitors. Just to give you a frame of reference, Digg.com gets around 48 million monthly unique visitors (according to Compete), which is only four times more.

Another interesting part from that article is the strategy used to develop new blog ideas. Here is a quote:

People frequently forget that Huh actually acquired I Can Has Cheezburger? and the FAIL Blog—he didn’t start them. (More on that purchase price below…) Since then he’s opened dozens of humor sites, about 50% of which fail, but some grow spectacularly fast, proving that LOLCats wasn’t a fluke and that Huh has an eye for what makes something funny in that specific viral sort of Internet way. Right now, he’s got a spreadsheet of 150 ideas that he’s moving around, honing and assigning to a team of writers who each curate about five blogs each.

Overall it is an interesting case study, and certainly evidence that blogging can be big business.

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

Promoting a new blog can be quite daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. As you might expect, breaking down blog promotion into small, actionable tasks eliminates the mental road block you’ve probably experienced when trying to wrap you head around how to get people’s attention. You don’t have to do everything in this list, and some items will have a greater effect then others, but every tactic will at least drive some traffic, and any traffic is better than no traffic.

Content
1. Write a list of over 100+ resources or ideas.
2. Write the definitive guide to something. Spend time making this awesome.
3. Release a manifesto.
4. Release 2 manifestos.
5. Interview cool people. People like talking about cool people.
6. After your articles are indexed in search engines, break them up into smaller articles and submit them to ezinearticles.com (and other article directories).
7. Or just pay someone to submit the articles for you.
8. Write a list of all the cool blogs and people in your niche.
9. Check out the most popular content on high trafficked blogs. Create similar content but applied to your own niche.

Facebook

10. Start a page.
11. Make that page awesome.
12. Start a group.
13. Make that group awesome.
14. Create a Facebook app for your blog.

Fundamentals
15. Wait. After you’ve taken action it can take a short while for traffic to arrive.
16. Be patient. Some bloggers may seem like overnight successes, but if you look back in their archives, they’ve been creating content for a long time.
17. Motivate yourself.
18. Read The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing.
19. Have an interesting story and overall purpose.
20. Embrace the Law of Reciprocity. Everything you give will come back exponentially.
21. Make blogging easier.
22. Take action every day. Just get one important thing done every day and eventually you’ll start getting traffic. The more you do each day the faster your blog gets traction.
23. Find people with blogs at a similar level to yours and help each other out.
24. Turn off your computer, do some cool stuff, turn on your computer again and blog about it.
25. Understand the importance of context.
26. Be consistent. You don’t need to blog every day but try to stick to at least some sort of schedule.
27. Make it a numbers game. Decide upon a definite plan of action (eg. 20 blog comments per day, 1 guest post per week etc) and stick with that.

Online Video
28. Create videos and distribute them through tubemogul.com
29. Or for wider video distribution trafficgeyser.com may work for you (expensive though).
30. Respond to YouTube videos with your content.
31. Include your full blog address at the TOP of your video descriptions.
32. Take your time with devising video titles and tags.
33. Convert your video to multiple formats, with slight editing changes, and upload it to video sites multiple times, targeting different keywords. The content remains the same but you can test what videos and titles work the best.
34. Buy the accounts of popular YouTubers and then add your blog address to the descriptions of their videos.
35. Start the first live show in your niche (Ustream, Justin.tv and LiveStream are popular choices). Make sure you record the shows too so they can be distributed as a podcast later on.

Other Blogs
36. Be the first commenter on the posts of popular blogs. But still provide value.
37. If you can’t be the first then comment anyway. But try to be the first.
38. Stumble and Digg cool blog posts you find and let the blogger know via a comment. If you have something worthy on your blog, they’ll probably reciprocate.
39. Use google.com/blogsearch to find fresh blog posts and then leave intelligent comments.
40. Link to blogs of a similar size. They’ll notice and then good stuff may happen.
41. Write a guest post for a large blog. You may not always get published, but when you do the traffic spike will be significant.
42. Write a guest post for a small blog. You’re more likely to get published and build relationships with the next wave of A-List bloggers.
43. Write some more guest posts. Can’t hurt, that’s for sure.
44. Join a blog network.

Paid
45. Start a StumbleUpon Ads campaign.
46. Get reviewed.
47. Buy some ad space.
48. Send out a press release.

People
49. Attend relevant meetups.
50. Tell your friends and family about your blog. Have them tell everyone they know.

Podcasting

51. Start a podcast and submit it to the iTunes directory.
52. Convert audio files to video files (just use Windows Movie Maker or iMovie) and send them out via tubemogul.com
53. Submit it to some other podcast directories.

Search engine optimization
54. Write linkbait.
55. Have any video or audio content transcribed and posted to your blog.
56. Register your domain name for 10 years.
57. Take advantage of sites scraping your blog’s feed by interlinking posts. Simple way to get deep inbound links.
58. Use Thesis.

Social networks
59. Join every social network you can.
60. Or, just join a couple and be really active.
61. Become active in relevant ning.com communities.
62. Convert blog posts to PDF files and submit them to Scribd – include your blog url in the description and document itself.
63. Add your Scribd documents to relevant groups.
64. Submit your best posts to blog carnivals.
65. Join relevant forums, add your blog address to your signature and start posting intelligently.
66. Sign up at ping.fm and use twitterfeed.com to auto post your latest blog content to a bunch of social networks.
67. Create lists on Amazon.com
68. Write reviews on Amazon.com
69. Better yet, create video reviews for Amazon.com
70. Answer relevant questions on Yahoo Answers, leaving your website as the source.
71. Or on Mahalo Answers.
72. Or even through LinkedIn Answers.
73. Start your own Slinkset, and feed your RSS feed into it automatically.
74. Submit your site to alltop.com
75. Write an article aimed at Digg (okay, that article won’t help much).
76. Also, befriend one of the many Digg powerusers.
77. Create a new thread on a forum and write up a really great guide with no self promotion. Simple way to be seen as an authority figure and to elicit comments on your writing (don’t forget that signature link though!).
78. Submit your content to dofollow social bookmarking sites.
79. Or have Bookmarking Demon do it for you (certainly a bend in ethics though).

StumbleUpon
80. Become an active stumbler to understand what stumblers like.
81. Friend people who stumble your content (they may just want to stumble more in the future)..
82. Have other people initially submit content (or “Discover” it as it’s known).
83. Place a Stumble button in your post template.

Su.pr
84. Sign up at su.pr and use it for all your short url needs.
85. Post content to your Facebook and Twitter stream.
86. Install the Wordpress plugin to automate the process.
87. Identify the times that result in the most clicks and schedule tweets for them.
88. Setup your blog as a promoted website.

Twitter
89. Include hash tags (#tagname) in your tweets.
90. Search for your niche and answer any questions people have.
91. Place a Retweet button in your post template.
92. Follow relevant, popular, and interesting people.
93. Send @replies to relevant, popular and interesting people.
94. Tweet links to your content at multiple times during the day.
95. Love a product from a company that’s on Twitter? Review it and they may just notice and tweet about the review. It’s happened to me.
96. Sponsor some tweets.
97. Find cool people in your niche who live nearby and organize a tweet up (a meet up where you invite anyone on Twitter).

Wordpress
98. Install All In One SEO Pack.
99. Automatically ping lots of ping services.
100. Create a theme, include a link to your blog in the footer, and then release it for free.
101. Create a plugin and release it for free. Add a link to your blog within the admin area. If it’s a good plugin people will love you for it.

David Turnbull is a Buddhist blogger, Apple fan boy, lousy musician, designer, book worm, simplicity freak and dedicated computer geek. You can visit his blog on davidturnbull.com.

Last week I was reading the official WordPress blog and I came across an interesting plugin: WordPress Exploit Scanner. It basically scans your database entries and site files looking for suspicious lines of codes. On top of that it also looks for suspicious plugins, posts, pages, users and WordPress settings.

Here is a screenshot:

It is worth to run this plugin once in a while, and especially if you believe that a malicious user might have compromised your installation recently or in the past.