Get Your Blog Noticed

Alexa Page Rank - What the HECK!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Fairbanks Alaska Things To Do) — Tue, 26 May 2009 22:46:00 +0000

Ok so I really started this blog to document things that I have learned as I try to promote my other blogs such as this one. And I recently started researching the importance of Alexa Page Rank. Although I am not sure its completely fair. And why do so many people swear buy it?

So far here is what I know. It is based upon visitors that have the Alexa toolbar installed on their computer (an possibly sites that have an Alexa widget on them). Now how is that fair. I don't think most internet users have and Alexa toolbar installed on their computer. So how did this site become so important? I really don't know but I do know that if you are serious about your blog or website that you need to install this Alexa Toolbar and probably some Alexa widgets. You can find all of these at Alexa.com but more importantly I think this is the page you need to visit. It has all the things you could use as a webmaster.

So to sum thing up really quick before we move on:
1. Install the Alexa Toolbar
2. Put some sort of Alexa Widget on your website

Now these things are the only things that I feel you have control over. Other things you may consider are to try to get your viewers to use the Alexa Toolbar.

Other than this I think other things are a waste of time for the weekend warrior blogger like myself. Other than these things increasing traffic is your main concern.

Have any other suggestions please leave a comment.

Yahoo! Answers

noreply@blogger.com (Fairbanks Alaska Things To Do) — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 13:23:00 +0000

Have you ever looked through Yahoo Answers. Millions of people use this service everyday looking for answers to their questions. Maybe you should be answering those questions, but not just any questions. They need to be questions that relate to your blog. So lets use an example:

Lets say you have a blog about money .
Making money, spending money, whatever.

Go on over to Yahoo! Answers and do searches for questions pertaining to money. Now look for good questions that you can answer. Answer this question in a blog entry, being as specific as possible. Now answer the question on Yahoo! Answers, being vague of course and tell them for more information to check out the following link and place a link to your article as a source.

Now to follow up. You want your question to be voted as the "Best Answer". Well here is something great, Yahoo! allows you to vote for your own as "Best Answer". So do it. Most people don't vote so if you vote for yourself and you will have a good chance to get that "Best Answer".

I try to answer a few questions a day. I try not to answer to many questions as I feel like I may be spamming and that's not what I want to do. So get out and answer some questions and start getting traffic.

Blogging For A Business

noreply@blogger.com (Fairbanks Alaska Things To Do) — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 02:47:00 +0000

Have you thought about making a Blog for your Business. If not you definitely should. Blogs are exploding everywhere. They are making people rich with affiliate programs, they connect families, they allow people to vent frustration, they give how-to guides, and for you they will connect you on a personal level to your next customer.

Think about this. A personal connection with your next customer, not your current customer, or a long time customer. But your next customer. With a Blog it is completely possible for you to build a relationship without ever having met the customer. Picture it a customer building loyalty to your company without ever having used your services. That's magic.

So what do you Blog about? Well you need to start off by sharing your company with the customer. What is your mission statement? What does your company do? And what do you promise your customer? These are some of the most important things you need to address in your first post. Your customers need to know what your business does or a blog is useless.

So you made your first post. How does it look? A little rough around the edges. That's alright, we aren't looking for you to be super eloquent with your fist post. But you need to make sure that you are free of typing errors and that your grammar is correct. Cuz @in't no 0ne gonna wanna do buiznes wif a foo who can't make some sense. Now that's probably a bad example but you know what I mean. Even if you are looking to connect to the younger croud this is the wrong way to go about it. But lets say that you don't like your post later on well come back and change it. Great Bloggers are always revising old posts so that information is kept up to date. Not only that but after writing so many posts you become a better writer and you will want to put some icing on some old posts. Now lets move on to Post #2,3,4 etc.

With your following posts give a history of your business. Now I would probably give a little history of your company in the first post but nothing major. The second post and so on is where you really get into specifics about things. Other things would be to go into detail about your services (not so much to where they could do it themselves), talk about specials that your comapny is having and a great post is how your company is benifitting the surrounding community. People love to support companies that give back.

So if I haven't convinced you to start a blog for your business I'm sorry that I have failed you because it is the best way to connect with your customer on a personal level before they even enter your store.

Things To Blog About

noreply@blogger.com (Fairbanks Alaska Things To Do) — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 01:40:00 +0000

So we all come to a place where we can't figure out what to blog about. If you haven't read my story about PPP (Pay Per Post) advertising. I recommend you check it out here. This is a great way to make money from your blog as well as give you something to write about.

Lets say that its just not enough and you need a little extra. Why not give these topics a try:
1. Why you use "Blogger" (whatever host you use) to host your blog
2. Who is your childhood hero.
3. Current Events
4. What you think about Digg, and Stumble and other social bookmarking sites.
5. Volunteer work you have recently taken part in. (whether voluntary or court ordered its up to you.)
6. Why I hate/love public speaking
7. Favorite childhood memory and what you learned from it.
8. Your favorite historical moment.
9. What's on your iPod.
10. Interview someone important to your blog or blogs topic. (if your blog is about banking interview a banker)
11. If you were homeless what would you do for money.

This list is growing so check back. Also feel free to share other topics to blog on.

Other Options:
1. Ask for Guest Posts
2. Don't Post today. Go read some other blogs and comment on them. (with a link back to your blog of course)

I Have Nothing To Write About - Bloggers Block

noreply@blogger.com (Fairbanks Alaska Things To Do) — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 17:40:00 +0000

Do you have Bloggers Block? It's like writers block but much more serious because if your not blogging well your not making money. If you have it and you are admitting it just know that you have taken the first step and I congratulate you on doing such. The next step is to sign up for PPP (Pay Per Post) advertising. I know it sounds really great and that's probably because it is. You see with PPC (Pay Per Click) and other types of affiliates programs you are gambling on whether or not someone you don't even know is going to click your ad. How about you start getting paid when you post. That sounds much better to me. Let me be in control of when I make money. So tell you what sign up for PPP advertising with the link below and turn your Bloggers Block into cash. Its free so sign up today.

Also see my post on Topics To Write About to help you find a topic to blog about.

Monetize Your Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Fairbanks Alaska Things To Do) — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 13:32:00 +0000

So you have Google Adsense but your not making much money. Have you thought about placement or even about using more than one affiliates program. If you just put your ads wherever you are hiding the money making potential of your blog. If you are only using one affiliates program you could again be limiting the amount of money you could make. You see while I like and use Google Adsense I realize that everyone else does as well. What this does is it gets peoples eyes used to seeing them and they tend to look right over them.

So what we need to do is use different affiliate programs. Now its not enough to just put the ad up and leave it alone. I like to rotate them. So for 2 weeks I will have Ad #1 at the top of my blog and ad #2 in the side bar. After that 2 weeks I might rotate them, or if they are doing well in their current position I may leave them alone. What this does is it give your blog readers a little something new every time they visit your site so they will have trouble just looking over your ads.

Lets talk about placement. Everyone thinks they have the best placement for ads and let me tell you it really depends on your readers. What I would do to start off with is use this guide. Now on this guide the darker pages are places that are considered the "best" places by Google to put ads.

Affiliate Programs I Use

LinkShare.com - you can sign up for a ton of affiliate programs through LinkShare.com. Instead of Google Adsense trying to figure out what is best for your page you can find an affiliates program that pays well and that you think will work.

Brandcaster (Coupons.com) - A great affiliates program because it puts coupons right on your site.

Google AdSense - Good to have but not as your only way to make money. While I use and Like AdSense the payout of $100 is a bit much.

- Great because you can get paid just for posting.

Advertise your blog Offline

noreply@blogger.com (Fairbanks Alaska Things To Do) — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 13:20:00 +0000

Do you want to advertise your blog? Yea dumb question, sorry. Ok so in a previous post I talked about how to get your blog listed on search engines and bring in some traffic. Now we are going to talk about what you can do offline to get your blog out there and seen. I'm going to make a list (boring I know)

1. Make fliers - do you go to school, work, coffee shop. These places usually have a bulletin board that you can post things on. Make a flier and make it colorful with little tabs on the bottom to pull off that have your URL on them.

2. Make a T-shirt - you probably won't give these away for free but make one for yourself, family and even close friends. Also sell your shirts on your blog if you like and let your readers help you advertise.

3. Make Business Cards - you can get these fairly cheap and even free sometimes. Put your name and e-mail on them and your blog URL. Hand these out to new people you meet put them in businesses for people to take with them.

4. Make a sign - okay so this is weird but I made a sign and posted it at a yard sale I had this weekend. That day I had a bunch of hits on my blog and when I did an IP trace they were all from my local area. Who knew. So I left it up in my front yard. I wonder how it will do?

If you have any other ways to promote your blog offline I would love to hear about it. Leave a comment on this blog and I will add it to this blog (giving you credit of course)

[This list is forever growing so check back for updates]

Content is Key???

noreply@blogger.com (Fairbanks Alaska Things To Do) — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 13:13:00 +0000

Ok so you have heard that for your blog to become popular that you need to have content. This is true, but what content is never really mentioned. Some Bloggers write for an audience and others write for themselves. Which are you going to be. Let me tell you that if you advertise your blog in the right places that any blog could become popular. Let me elaborate. If you make a blog that is interesting to yourself, lets say a blog about alien abductions, there are other people out there that are going to be interested. You are not the only person who thinks this topic is interesting. So let me tell you that the next time someone criticizes your blog and says your content sucks don't let it get to you. If you have a blog and don't get any pageviews or maybe very few don't give up. Keep on Blogging maybe change where you advertise but keep it up.

Add Meta Tags to Blogger

noreply@blogger.com (Fairbanks Alaska Things To Do) — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 23:08:00 +0000

If you are serious about your blog and want to get your blog noticed you need to add Meta Tags. To do this the easy way just follow my 3 simple steps.

1. You need to have some content on your site. Hopefully your blog has a theme as this will make your Meta Tags more relevant to searches.

2. The code that you need to add is as follows:

You need to replace the blue letters with the information needed.

This will be posted directly under

2½. Now your probably going to ask what do I use as a keyword. Keywords need to be words that are found in your blog, for best results they need to be related to the topic of your blog. This is why I said earlier that it would be best if you had a theme for your blog such as this blog here, this blog is dedicated to money. So keywords were easy to come up with.

3. Now that you have that done its time for a quality check. For that we use SEO Centro's Meta Tag Analyzer. This is a great tool. Check it out here.

A quick breakdown on how to use SEO Centro's Meta Tag Analyzer. First put your URL into the box marked "URL". Now the box named "SPIDER ROBOTS", I usually just leave this blank along with the next box named "USER AGENT". Now fill in the "ACCESS CODE".

The parts that we are concerned with are:

META TAG ANALYSIS

-This is great look at each section here it will tell you what is wrongin each section so its an easy fix.
-Do you have a "nasty gram" telling you that Keywords meta tag relevancy to page content is fair or even poor? If so check out the next section to show you relevant keywords.

KEYWORDS FOUND IN THE ANCHOR TAGS

-This section shows you keywords found in your blog and how many times it is found. Look through and find keywords on that list that you feel are relevant to your blog. Now go back and update your meta tags with these keywords.

NOTE: Using blogger if you change your Template you will need to add your meta tags in again so I recommend that you save your HTML code somewhere to save you the trouble of writing them again.

11 Places to submit your blog without and account

noreply@blogger.com (Fairbanks Alaska Things To Do) — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 16:11:00 +0000

Here are some ways to help get your blog listed for free without having to sign up for an account. While this is an alright way to get started on promoting your blog I will discuss other ways to get your blog noticed. I recommend that you start at the top and work your way down. The most you will have to give is your email address all other information will pertain only to your blog.

NOTE: If any of these links do not work please leave a comment below and I will remove the link ASAP.

1. Blogger List - A place on blogger that is dedicated to organizing blogs on blogger.

2. DMOZ.org-This is human edited directory of the web. Search engines such as Netscape Search, AOL Search, Google, Lycos, HotBot, DirectHit, and hundreds of others. They say it can take 2 weeks to a few months to get your blog listed but its worth it in the long run.

3. Submit to Google - you can submit to Google yourself.

4. Ping-o-Matic! - after submitting make sure that you bookmark the page so that you can resubmit your blog after every post.

5. 2RSS.com - close to the bottom of the page is a section to suggest a RSS feed.

6. Submit Express-submit your site to over 20 top search engines for free.

7. Read a Blog-got turned down once because I didn't have enough content. If this happens to you make note of it and revisit later.

8. blogio.net-small directory of blogs. You have to find the category you want your blog in click the link then near the bottom of the page is a way to submit your URL.

9.Live Search URL Submission - Submit to Live Search

10.Blogz

11. BlogPulse - I love this you can submit multiple blogs at once.

12. Blawger Pages - Blawger Pages is a FREE, Human Edited Blog Directory. They never ask you to pay so your listing will be based upon blog quality instead of your wealth.

Others (these may require an account but you probably already have one)

Have a Myspace or a Facebook these are great places to put your blog just list them on your user lookup. Lets say you don't have one of these you can always ask your friends to link to your page.

Talk on message boards? If you do (and if your blogging you should) why not put a it in your signature. Give a link to your blog or make a banner to place there. Related to this you can comment on other peoples blogs tell the "how much you like it" and give a link to yours.