The major social sites in the industry have captured the attention of a majority of internet users with Facebook currently catering to 500 Millions users, YouTube with approximately 400 Million and Twitter currently at 190 Million; and with Twitter about to launch its new interface, we should see more interaction within the community and brand new innovations.

To help you get started with building your business or brand through social media, I will be discussing 7 simple yet very effective methods for taking full advantage of social media and what it means for your product or service.

Establish Common Branding Across Platforms

Its very important to start maintaining your presence on the social scene. Create a solid logo, color scheme, tag line and a unique style that can be readily identified when users start interacting with your site and social profiles. Therefore, whether its twitter, Facebook or any other social profile, ensure that graphics and various styles used are common across all your profiles.

Some examples of well-branded profiles include:

• VisitJamaica.com | twitter.com/visitjamaicanow
• Popeye’s Chicken | twitter.com/popeyeschicken
• Mashable | twitter.com/mashable
• Digicel | facebook.com/digiceljamaicafan

You will find that these brands remain very consistent with their design on all their social profiles.

Off-Page Promotion

Although traditional methods of advertising are not quite as effective as they used to be due to advancements in technology and the web, there are instances where traditional methods such as newspaper and television ads are relevant. Within these opportunities, be sure to include dialogue that mentions links to your social profiles and website. Most of the information that users will research about your company and its services will be done through your social profiles and website; this is where you need to close the deal and capture the heart of the customer.

Also, include links to your profiles via business cards, promotional flyers and other printed promotional material.

Create Added Value Not Gained Elsewhere

If you’re in business and offering products and/or services, then you NEED to be catering to your prospects’ wants and needs; and an innate need for virtually every customer is to find value for their money. There are users who spend every waking moment browsing social sites and chatting with their friends; some are searching for deals and information while others just want to chat.

Use your profile to publish special deals not found offline, engage your audience and customers by tying in prizes, coupons and discounts with user interaction. So prospects will know that they need to interact and share their ideas with you to gain certain benefits. This interaction will expose you to what customers really want which would not be as easily accessible through traditional methods of advertising.

The dialogue between you and your audience can only strengthen the relationship.

Social Media Is Not Only About Self Promotion

Maintaining a social profile is not solely about promoting new products and services or offering discounts, but should rather be a combination of support and advice for existing customers, getting to know your customers and prospects and sharing experiences of which users can relate.

Profiles that are only about self promotion at some point are ignored and oftentimes appear “spammy” since relationship building activities and a truly human presence are absent.

Spend A Little To Gain A Lot

Make provisions in your budget for paid advertising, approaching it from the point of view as an investment and not an expense. Facebook advertising is particularly very effective because its platform gives you the ability to define the demographics of the audience you wish to advertise to, thus giving you more control of your ads and their ability to target specific niches.

A client of mine spent US $100 for a Facebook ad that ran for 5 days and due to the nature of the services and deals being advertised, they gained approximately 4,000 clickthroughs (CTR) which in turn gave their service great exposure in a short period of time and on a light budget.

Facebook “Like Box” Widget

Though I do not usually recommend the use of too many promotional widgets on websites, the Facebook fan widget is particularly quite effective when attracting your site’s visitors to your Facebook fan profile.

Similar to the widget on the lower end of my sidebar, visitors will have the option of immediately “Liking” your page and in another version, view your wall posts. A visitor “Like” is very important since that action creates a constant link between you and those users allowing for continuous contact.
Click here to get started with creating your own Facebook Like Box Widget.

Link From Everywhere

Take advantage of every linking opportunity to link back to your social profiles as this will provide more exposure for your activities and promotions on your social profiles.

Conclusion

There are many other simple techniques that can be practiced to gain exposure and sales through social media. The methods mentioned above have worked wonders for my clients, so what do you have to lose?

What other techniques have worked for you and what did you learn? Please share your ideas and experiences with us in the comments below, we would love to hear from you.

Now, like most people, you probably still write your articles the wrong way and make no sales from your efforts. Sounds like you? Yeah, I already know it does. Because if you were already making as much money as you wanted, you wouldn’t be reading this. So what’s the difference between an article that makes money and an article that doesn’t?

That was a pretty broad question on my part, but I did that deliberately because the differences are many. There are questions you need to ask yourself before you even start writing. These are the questions that even I ask myself today when writing articles and going live with them. Check them out below.

Basic Questions To Ask Yourself Before Writing

The first question you need to ask yourself is, do you know enough about the product you’re promoting? New Affiliates have a bad habit of trying to promote a product they really know nothing about. And in most cases, if you don’t know enough about the product you’re trying to promote, then you don’t know anything about your target audience and they quickly identify you as an unreliable source.

Another question is do you know who your target audience is? If you don’t know who you’re promoting to and your idea is just to promote to the general public then you have a problem and you’re less likely to make sales.

The last question you need to ask yourself is do you have proof that your product actually sells? Even if your article is flawless, if the product you’re promoting doesn’t sell, it doesn’t sell. It’s like being a girl scout, using  the “cute little girl” method of getting you to buy something. But instead of selling girl scout cookies, trying to sell you tap water in a cup.

To find out proof that the product you’re promoting actually sells, first look at the product page and ask yourself if you’d buy their product if you needed it. Then if you’re promoting a Clickbank product, check out your products gravity or “grav” for short. If using Commission Junction, check out Network Earnings.

Coming Up With That Killer Title & Header

I like to look at titles and headers as a book cover. And while you’re never supposed to judge a book by it’s cover, most people do. If you’re promoting a product such as “A Six Day Guide to Six Pack,” if your article title is “How to Get A Six Pack” you’re probably going to immediately lose your readers’ attention because that title is no different than the average. Now if you have a title like “How to get a Six Pack & The Hottest Girl At The Beach,” that immediately makes most guys want to keep reading.

Now the header is pretty simple. You don’t always need it. The header is something I generally like to add if I couldn’t make the title as interesting as I wanted to. A title would be something like “How I got my High school Crush,” then the header would be right under it in smaller font and would be something like “…And how you could too.”

Providing Information While Keeping Your Readers’ Attention

Now you’ve got the readers attention. DO NOT see the intro as a point for you to start rambling and bore the reader. The intro paragraph needs to be almost as interesting as the title. At this point you want to tease the reader with questions you already know they have and then tell them they can find the answers in your body paragraph. Once you do that, you’re pretty much guaranteed they’ll look at what you have to say. And like I said earlier, it’s OK to place a link to your product in your intro paragraph.

Now when writing the body, this is where you make sure that you include information you don’t think the average member of your target audience would know but not too much, or they won’t need to buy your product. This is where you gain credibility. You want to sound like you know what you’re talking about and actually understand where your audience members are coming from; and if you’re doing Affiliate Marketing the right way, you should know where your audience members are coming from.

As a tip, when you’re done writing your body, make sure you go back over it to ensure that it’s informative but still fun to read with a light tone. If your article body is too boring, the reader is going to leave your page. You don’t want this to happen.

Summing Up & Making The Sales

Now it’s time for you to sum up your article with a closing that leaves your readers wanting more, ultimately leading them to clicking your Affiliate links. Think of your closing as a cliff hanger to a really good movie, but instead of making your audience wait for the sequel, they have access to the sequel through your beautiful Affiliate link.

If you follow these steps, you’ll be guaranteed to make money online and gain a huge advantage over the average blogger. Good luck!

Since the launch of Sam’s Web Guide, I have experienced an increase of over 1,000% in search engine traffic and the method for achieving this was not very difficult but has been very specific. Although there are so many factors that search engines use for determining ranking, today I’m going to share the most important techniques I employed that have helped my blog to soar even in tough times.

Gaining Relevant Links

Acquiring relevant links is one of the most important and effective elements when implementing your SEO strategy. Quality backlinks to your site improves its trustworthiness and weighs your position excellently when they are relevant to the content they are pointing to on your blog.

My most relevant and powerful backlinks were gained through guest posting on popular blogs that have already acquired massive authority in search engines. Regardless of what others may be saying about guest blogging, it provides solid benefits for strengthening your blog’s position and promotes you as an online publisher / blogger. Ensure that you are able to include a few relevant links back to your site with the correct use of title tags and keywords.

There are blogs that I have guest posted on that resulted in an increase of up to 10% in search engine traffic within just a week, so gaining those quality backlinks is very important for your SEO goals.

External Links

Don’t be mean with your outbound links. In fact, use links whenever they are necessary and ensure that they are pointing to trusted websites that have maximum authority. So if you’re supporting your articles with outbound links to sources of information, use sites like WordPress.org, Google.com, Wikipedia.org or any other site that provides the best official material. When writing anything about WordPress, I always include relevant links to their official site.

These outbound links contribute to the relevance of your blog posts and thus rank better in search results.

Using The Right Keywords

I have realized that this is something that most bloggers either overlook or overdo. Aim for a keyword density of 3 to 8% and write with your users in mind, ensuring that your articles are understandable and easy to read. The keywords you use basically help provide a map for users to find your posts through search engines. Its very important that the backlinks you gain are supported by the right keywords in both the link text and title tag. Spend the extra time when creating your links to get these just right.

Posting Frequency

Although I have not been posting frequently recently due to some offline challenges, my blog has a very good history of posting consistently and on relevant topics and provides lots of data. Maintaining a healthy posting frequency indicates to google and other search engines that you are a provider of fresh content. In fact, your fresh content may even gain higher priority in search results at times than articles that are well placed on established sites.

The foundation built in the earlier days of my blog through consistent posting and other SEO techniques have been able to continuously capture a decent number of search engine visitors even though my blog was dormant for a couple of weeks.

So create a schedule and stick to it.

The Results

When my blog was first launched only about 10% of my total traffic came from search engines and most of my traffic was from connecting with other bloggers through blog commenting and social networking. My search engine traffic now accounts for 50% of total visits and the numbers are steadily rising each month. This figure can vary depending on your activities online and how you gain your traffic.

So I am quickly answering some of the questions posed in my previous article, “Will Social Media Marketing Consistently Outperform Search Engine Optimization?” I will soon be writing a report on my findings and how Social Media Marketing compares with SEO. So be on the look-out for it.

Conclusion & Discussion

Search Engine Optimization has become much simpler to implement and with plugins like the All In One SEO Pack, more labor intensive SEO tasks can be automated giving you lots of free time to focus on the tips and techniques mentioned above. There really is no secret formula but only consistent practice of some basic fundamentals.

How has your search engine traffic improved as your blog grows and how much has it changed since you first started blogging? Please share your experiences with us by leaving a comment below. We would love to hear from you.

To help us understand what’s really happening, there are a few kind, hardworking and blessed individuals who spend the time and money to do the research to find out who’s blogging, how, when, where and why. Thanks to them, I’m, able to compile this post and reveal some very interesting facts about blogging and social media and their impact.

So here are some mind-blowing statistics that show what’s really happening in the blogosphere, social media and beyond.

Statistics of the Blogosphere

1. More than 133,000,000 blogs have been indexed by Technorati since 2002
2. 77% of Internet users read blogs according to Universal McCann
3. Blogging is equally popular among both men and women with 50.9% of bloggers being female and 49.1% being male.
4. The United States has the largest share of bloggers with 29.22% of bloggers coming from the U.S.
5. 60% are 18-44, 75% have college degrees and 40% have graduate degrees
6. One in four has an annual household income of $100K
7. Around half of Bloggers are working on at least their second blog
8. 86% have been blogging for at least a year
9. 70% of all respondents say that personal satisfaction is a way they measure the success of their blog
10. 61% say they blog in order to supplement their income.
11. 53% of professional Bloggers are interested in attracting new clients from blogging.
12. 57% say that their future plans include blogging even more (including 74% of 18-24 year olds).
13. Part-Timers, Pros, and Self-Employed Bloggers are blogging more than ever, while Hobbyists are blogging somewhat less.
14. 15% of Bloggers spend 10 or more hours each week blogging.
15. One in five Bloggers report updating on a daily basis.
16. The most common rate of updating is 2-3 times per week.
17. The majority of blogs use tags (85%).
18. 82% of respondents say that they post photos to their blog, making images the most popular form of multimedia.
19. Bloggers participate in an average of 5 activities to drive traffic to their blogs.
20. 72% of respondents are classified as Hobbyists, meaning that they report no income related to blogging
21. 38% of bloggers post brand or product reviews.
22. 56% say that their blog has helped their company establish a positioning as a thought leader within the industry.
23. 58% say that they are better-known in their industry because of their blog

Blogging Platform Traffic Statistics & Demographics

According to Compete.com, WordPress.com dominates the blogosphere with approximately 35 Million unique visitors per month as of May 2010. The graph below shows a comparison of monthly unique visitor traffic between WordPress.com, Tumblr, Posterous, Typepad and Blogger over the past year.

Sysomos, a provider of social media analytics, has also presented a report based on an analysis done on 100 Million blog posts showing bloggers’ age, gender and locations. You can find the full report here and below you will see a table of percentages of bloggers by location.

Based on the table above, we see that the majority of bloggers in the world reside in the United States by it does not deter the fact that blogging is truly a global activity and can be launched successfully from any country.

Social Media Statistics

We cannot deny the power of social media and its endless possibilities when it comes to launching and growing your business and truly connecting with the world. The statistics below will give you an idea of social media’s reach and impact on the world and should help convince you of its effectiveness if you’re still doubtful about it.

1. Over 50% of the world’s population is under 30-years-old
2. 96% of them have joined a social network
3. Facebook now tops Google for weekly traffic in the U.S.
4. Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web
5. 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media
6. Years to Reach 50 millions Users:  Radio (38 Years), TV (13 Years), Internet (4 Years), iPod (3 Years)…
7. Facebook added over 200 million users in less than a year
8. iPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months.
9. We don’t have a choice on whether we DO social media, the question is how well we DO it.”
10. If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 3rd largest ahead of the United States and only behind China and India
11. Yet, QQ and Renren dominate China
12. 2009 US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction
13. 80% of companies use social media for recruitment; % of these using LinkedIn 95%
14. More than 700,000 local businesses have active Pages on Facebook.
15. More than 80,000 websites have implemented Facebook Connect since December 2008 and more than 60M Facebook users engage with it across these external sites each month.
16. The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females
17. Ashton Kutcher and Ellen Degeneres (combined) have more Twitter followers than the  populations of Ireland, Norway, or Panama.  Note I have adjusted the language here after someone pointed out the way it is phrased in the video was difficult to determine if it was combined.
18. 50% of the mobile Internet traffic in the UK is for Facebook…people update anywhere, anytime…imagine what that means for bad customer experiences?
19. Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé – some universities have stopped distributing e-mail accounts
20. Instead they are distributing: eReaders + iPads + Tablets
21. What happens in Vegas stays on YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook…
22. The #2 largest search engine in the world is YouTube
23. While you watch this 100+ hours of video will be uploaded to YouTube
24. Wikipedia has over 15 million articles…studies show it’s more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica…78% of these articles are non-English
25. There are over 200,000,000 Blogs in existence
26. Because of the speed in which social media enables communication, word of mouth now becomes world of mouth
27. If you were paid a $1 for every time an article was posted on Wikipedia you would earn $1,712.32 per hour
28. 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content
29. 34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands
30. Do you like what they are saying about your brand? You better.
31. People care more about how their social graph ranks products and services  than how Google ranks them
32. 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations
33. Only 14% trust advertisements
34. Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI
35. 90% of people that can TiVo ads do
36. Kindle eBooks Outsold Paper Books on Christmas
37. 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation
38. 60 million status updates happen on Facebook daily
39. We no longer search for the news, the news finds us.
40. We will non longer search for products and services, they will find us via social media
41. Social Media isn’t a fad, it’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate
42. Successful companies in social media act more like Dale Carnegie and less like Mad Men Listening first, selling second
43. The ROI of social media is that your business will still exist in 5 years

Discussion & Conclusion

What can we learn from these statistics? The main thing anyone should realize is that blogging and social media are here to stay, at least for now, and any viable online business can be launched beyond traditional boundaries and truly excel globally.

What are your thoughts on the distant future of blogging and social media? Please leave a comment below, we would love to hear from you.

Sources:

Socialnomics by Erik Qualman
Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere
Sysomos Analytics

Achieving all of this is not a walk in the park and you can’t just launch a blog on any old topic with poorly thought out design and writing and expect the entire internet to flock to your work. A successful online presence requires lots of attention, dedication and innovation to make that success a reality. A high level of user interaction and engagement will help to secure your blogging future, so here are some proven techniques that are guaranteed to help make you a success on your blogging journey.

Encourage Discussion Through Debates

There are some hot topics that readers just can’t help but to share their thoughts and ideas, sparking huge debates and sometimes controversy. Think about these types of topics, look at what gets people going and write posts based on these. All of your posts don’t need to be debates but include these once per week. Make the post all about the readers’ views and encourage them to share. So don’t be afraid to ask your readers for their input, sometimes this is the nudge they need to get them commenting and they will feel more appreciated since its all about their thoughts and ideas.

Do Serious Research On Topic Ideas

Make the effort to do some extensive research to find out what’s hot and what’s missing from your niche. The opportunity lies in filling the gaps and providing content and experiences that can only be found on your blog and nowhere else. Explore within to discover unique writing styles that may deviate from the norm but leaves lasting impressions in the minds of your readers. There is a gold mine of information on the web, it simply depends on how you use it.

Spend Some Time on Your Blog Design

You don’t have to be a web or graphic designer to have a great blog design. Just think about your ideal design from a logical standpoint. Your readers need to be able to find all relevant information quickly, should not get lost in a crowded design, should never need to sift through unnecessary elements and colors should be easy on the eyes and soothing to the soul. The design should be inviting and sometimes simple is just 10 times better than the hype. There are thousands of excellent themes to purchase and also download for free, so spend the time to find the right fit; even if it takes a week to  do so.

Also, don’t flood your blog with ads to the extent that visitors are swimming through them before they get to your content. I’ve seen sites where 90% of the content above the page’s fold is advertisements and this is a deadly practice that will push dedicated readers away. Don’t do it!

Make It Easy To Comment

Try to reduce the barriers that may discourage readers from leaving comments such as captcha forms, turning comments off, comments that require readers to login and allowing spammy comments to take over. Visitors want to read, get their fill, leave their comment quickly and move on. Leaving a comment should not be like signing up for a bank account. Making simple changes like avoiding the barriers above and even moving your comment form up to the end of your post rather than at the bottom can help to encourage readers to comment.

Reply To Your Comments

Ensure that you’re replying to the comments your readers leave on your site. Read them carefully to determine if there is some way that you can add value through your reply to what they’re saying or trying achieve by providing useful information. Especially if they ask questions, ensure that they are answered effectively. This is a unique opportunity to build relationships, authority and trust; and for the future, they will feel better about commenting.

Use the Subscribe to comments plugin so that users can get comment replies through e-mail and followup.

Focus On Building Trust

If your readers trust your views and advise, they will be more likely to try out products and services that you recommend, spend more time on your site and provide valuable feedback on your work. Focus on building a solid relationship with your audience and don’t be just a distant blogger.

Connect With Your Social Circle

Connect with your audience by searching for and adding them to your social profiles when they leave valuable comments. Take the time to get to know them, become friends and steadily build on your contacts and relationships. While you are building these online friendships, your trust and authority will rise and so too will interaction on your blog. So break down the barriers and your readers will feel compelled to read, comment, offer assistance, present valuable opportunities  and advice.

Host A Monthly Contest

Hosting a monthly contest that your readers can look forward to each month is definitely a surefire way to attract readers to your blog and get them active. Try to find businesses and other bloggers who are willing to sponsor these competitions and in return offer them some exposure. Build your contest around readers getting involved like guest posting, voting, commenting or any other action. This can do wonders for getting your blog out there.

Discussion & Conclusion

A high level of user interaction can mean the difference between a successful and failing blog. It means that readers like what you’re doing and will most likely spread the word about your great blog to their circles which will attract even more traffic to your site.

What techniques have you used to capture the hearts and minds of your readers to get them involved in your blog? Do you value interaction or do you simply blog for the fun of it? Please share your ideas and experiences in the comments below, we would love to hear from you.

One of the greatest problems many new bloggers face is getting people to read their blogs, they would work hard and try to give their best in terms of valuable content yet nobody is reading their great posts.

It is a great pity the rule “Build it and they will come“  does not apply to blogging or the internet in general.

Even if you provide such great content that will make everybody want to read and do their best to promote your blog, you will still need some readers to do that.

Below are 5 great and powerful ways to promote your new (or existing) blog.

1. Blog Commenting

This is one of the best ways to get traffic to your blog but it is very unfortunate it is not working for many people due to some reasons. Some people believe it is overrated and many of them believe since they see it everywhere it might not be effective.

Blog commenting is really great if done properly. You might decide to have a blog commenting schedule on which you make a number of comments on top blogs in your niche each day.

Those who get better results are those who do it on a large scale, I mean those who make hundreds of comments every week, nevertheless, it is still as effective as it used to be and can help create awareness for your blog.

2. Guest Posting

Having written a lot of guest posts, I must tell you guest posting is one of the most effective ways to get traffic to your blog.

It is all about taking up the courage to start. You don’t really need to start with big blogs (because many of them take time to accept your post and might even reject it which might make you feel discouraged), you might start with small to medium sized blogs and begin to grow until you build up the courage to start contacting larger blogs.

One of the most important things to consider when writing guest posts is to try and ensure your guest posts are great ones. You might be thinking how you can waste such a great post by publishing it on another blog instead of yours but I can assure you, you are not wasting your post. The better your guest post is, the more viral it will go and the more traffic you will get.

It is also important to have a great byline because that is your call to action and it will most probably determine whether the blog readers of your host will visit your blog.

It is also very important that your blog is ready by making sure you have great content on your blog because this will help you retain a large percentage of your new readers.

3. Blogging Communities

This is also another great and underutilized way by which you can get traffic to your blog.

Another great advantage of blogging communities is that it helps you create more awareness and more value since most of those who use these networks are also bloggers and they will most likely share your posts with their readers if it is great.

Two great blogging communities to start from are Blog Engage and MMO Social Network.

4. Social Networking/Bookmarking

Social Networking and Bookmarking is another powerful way of getting traffic to your website, it involves you sharing your blog posts with other users and if done properly it can send you thousands of visitors overnight.

Social bookmarking is when you submit your blog post to a website which depends on other users vote to put your website on the front page (which leads to traffic) while social networking is when you connect with other users who may be your friends, readers and followers.

Some great examples of social bookmarking sites are Digg and Stumbleupon while some great examples of social networking sites are Facebook and Twitter.

5. Search Engine Optimization

Optimizing a website for search engines is a crucial step every webmaster should take.

I might be a difficult task but the results are far better than that. Search engines have the potential of sending you thousands of visitors only if you can tap into them.

There are several factors to be considered when optimizing your site for search engines, some of which include:

i. On page factors like internal linking, use of appropriate keyword density, fast page load times, etc.

ii. Link Building

Link building is one of the most important exercises in SEO and should not be ignored. The type and number of links to your blog will determine how you will be ranked in the search engines.

Other search engine optimization factors also count and you might want to read more about WordPress SEO.

Discussion

Getting traffic to your blog is not rocket science if you choose to do things the right way. Are there any other unique tips and practices that have worked greatly for you not mentioned here? Please share them with us in the comments below, we would love to hear from you.

Photo credit: jj_pappas423

Here are 26 major factors that Google uses in measuring up your site / blog and determining your authority. Although there are over 200 factors, the ones listed below provide more powerful results within the shortest period of time.

Keyword Usage

1. Using keywords in URLs and domain names
This refers to your post slugs (page name URL) and domain names with your targeted keywords. For example, www.telescope-sales.com, where telescope would be a main keyword.

2. Keywords in Page Title
Keywords must be used in your page titles and should be between 10 to 60 characters. Avoid using special characters.

4. Keywords in H1, H2, H3 Tags
In writing posts, ensure that you use your keywords in heading tag styles.

5. Keyword Density of 3% to 8% in the Body
Ensure that you are not spamming your articles with specific keywords. Use your targeted keywords in moderation and let your articles flow naturally.

6. Keyword Prominence
Ensure that your main keywords are used as early in your articles as possible. The higher up in the article your keywords are, the more attention google pays to them.

7. Keywords in ALT & Title Tags Text
All ‘alt’ and ‘title’ tags for images and text links should contain relevant keywords.

8. Keyword Use in Internal Link Anchor Text
Internal links should have relevant anchor text

Internal Links

9. Efficient Tree Like Structure
Try to have no page deeper than 4 clicks to reach it if you want it to rank effectively. Try to have a maximum of 2 clicks.

10. Ensure that All Internal Links Are Valid
Use the free W3C link checker to validate your on-page links. This tool will let you know if any major internal links are broken.

Outgoing Links

11. Link To Only Trustworthy Sites
Linking to blacklisted or shady websites will harm your authority in the long-term. Be care how you approve trackbacks on your blog. My philosophy is do not accept, they are not necessary.

It can take several months to a year before google reinstates your authority and inclusion in search engine results.

12. Outgoing Link Anchor Text
Ensure that outgoing link anchor text are relevant to the site’s topic.

On-Site SEO Factors

13. Moderate Page File Size
Ensure that your page size does not exceed 100K. This does not include images.

14. New Pages & Fresh Content
Fresh content from established sites rank better in search results. Recency is a valuable asset when links are hard to acquire. Its also good to have a higher ratio of new pages to old, plus newer pages on old sites get better recognition.

15. Frequent Updates
Frequently updated sites are crawled by search engine spiders more frequently than others.

16. Domain Age
Older domains have more authority in google search results and shows stability.

17. Site Load Times
Faster load times for your site is a new factor that google has started to pay attention to. Faster times indicate a better experience for searchers. Follow these guidelines to ensure a faster loading site.

Off-Page SEO Factors

18. Incoming Links from High Ranking Pages
More incoming links from reputable, high ranking websites with improve your SERP authority significantly.

19. Link Acquisition Speed
Ensure that you are acquiring those incoming links naturally. Newer sites will get penalized if links are acquired too fast, in an artificial manner. A site going naturally viral won’t have any troubles.

20. Older Longstanding Incoming Links Are Better

21. Change of Anchor Link Text for Incoming Links
The anchor text of your incoming links should not be changed frequently and is bad in google’s eyes.

22. Incoming Links From Popular Expert Sites
Being featured on popular sites can boost your search engine traffic. This tells google your site is trustworthy and will rank you higher in search results.

23. Clickthrough Rate(CTR) on Search Results Pages
CTR on search results pages is a large cumulative factor and this data is collected by google to help determine authority.

Page & Site Metrics: User Behavior

24. Time Users Spend on your Site
The more time each visitor spends on your site, the higher the indication to google that your site provides relevant content and thus ranks you better.

25. Are Your Pages Bookmarked?
When visitors bookmark your site on social sites like Delicious.com, Reddit.com, Digg.com, etc google increases your trustworthiness.

26. Domain Registration Time
Register your domain for 5 years or more. This indicates that you are serious and here to stay, thus more trustworthy.

Conclusion & Discussion

Search engine optimization is very important to practice if you hope to gain any traffic through search engines. In most cases, the factors are common sense and are really easy to implement. In your practices, bear in mind that anything that seems to mislead search engines or visitors, is usually bad for your site’s authority and search rankings.

Also, bear in mind that each factor on its own is not enough to dominate search engine results but the consistent practice of each will lead to success.

Are there any other major ranking factors I left out? Please let us know by leaving a comment below, we would love to hear from you.

So here are 17 techniques to put in action and practice to help you rank higher in search engines and attract tons of relevant visitors to your blog.

1. Optimize Your Blog’s Loading Speed

Google has since started using loading time as a factor to rank a site’s authority in search engines. Google gives sites that perform better higher authority and ranking because these sites will provide a better experience for their searchers. Simple techniques such as reducing the sizes of your images, using a reliable web host and caching plugins such as W3 Total Cache can help to reduce your blog’s load time.

2. Article Marketing To Increase Backlinks

Not many bloggers consider using article directories like Ezinearticles.com or Hubpages.com but article marketing can be an excellent way to gain quality backlinks to your blog, gain popularity and increase search engine traffic since they are so frequently and readily indexed by search engines. This works excellently for getting new blogs indexed quickly.

3. Ensure Your Blog’s Code is W3C Compliant

This is extremely important and a poorly coded site can prevent search engine crawlers from effectively indexing your site. Use the W3C Markup Validation Service to check for any errors on your site. Having a few minor errors will not be detrimental for your blog. However, if there are many, you may want to go through those errors and make corrections or employ a developer to do so.

4. Avoid Black Hat SEO Techniques

Black hat SEO techniques are practices that mislead and degrade the relevance of search engine results like keyword stuffing, spamming, using link farms, text hiding and article spinning. These techniques will get your blog banned from google and other search engines. Which means zero search engine traffic for your site.

5. Web Directory Submissions

This is another under-rated technique and yet it can be very effective for increasing the trust level of your site, provided that you submit to trusted high quality directories. Submit your blog to directories like DMOZ, Yahoo Directory and Best Of The Web Directory to name a few. Ensure that you submit your blog within relevant categories. These will help to increase pagerank and authority.

6. Choosing The Right Domain Name & Niche

Once you have decided upon the niche for your blog, try to ensure that your domain name has a couple related keywords in it while keeping the name short, sweet and easy to remember. Launching a website with iPad in the domain name while providing spectacular iPad related content will drive thousands of visitors to your blog who are searching for iPad info, especially if you register and market the domain in anticipation of the product launch. So choose a specific niche and take advantage.

7. Use Google & Bing Webmaster Tools

Google and Bing Webmaster tools pages allow you to submit your blog’s sitemap to the search crawler queue which will help your site get indexed faster and in a more in-depth and complete manner. These webmaster tools pages provide feedback on your site’s performance and offers advice on how to improve.

8. Consistently Create Original Useful Content

Ensure that your blog is a source of original link-worthy content that people will enjoy and share and is not just a copy of posts on other sites. Google does in fact pay attention to how far reaching and how much your content is being shared and this is an indicator of the authority of your blog. Never copy content from other sites, this may not get you banned immediately but will destroy your site’s authority.

9. Take Advantage of Trending Topics

Its an awesome technique if you can build a blog around popular events like World Cup, the launching of the iPad or any other trending topics. Millions of people are searching based on these hot topics and if you can get the stories, news and reviews out quickly, google will rank you highly for these topics and bring traffic your way. These are awesome opportunities for selling related merchandise and monetizing targeted traffic through advertising.

Use the Google Trends tool to find out what people are searching for and a history of trending search topics.

10. Frequently Update Your Blog

Google especially places high priority on fresh new content. As a blogger, you will notice that on the first two days that you publish new articles, you should see a rise in search engine traffic for those particular post keywords, then it will eventually get lower and taper off. This is because google picks up your content as being new and sends some traffic your way. Continuous and frequent blog posting will give your site the upper advantage in search results and google will index your site more frequently than the average.

11. Guest Posting To Increase Backlinks & Trust

Guest posting on quality, trustworthy blogs will get your site indexed quickly, increase backlinks and improve the authority of your blog. This is very effective for new blogs.

12. Write New Product Reviews

Writing timely product and book reviews can send tons of traffic your way from searchers who want to find more information on products before making their purchase. Also, if you can gain the attention of the product owners or authors they will readily share your reviews if they are in-depth and useful for the buyer which means more traffic for you.

13. Twitter As A Search Engine

Twitter is fast becoming a search engine on its own and using appropriate hash tags can gain you extra traffic when sharing your articles this way. For example, when I post new jobs to my job board, I commonly use the hash tags #jobs and #jobsearch with the tweets since many users search for jobs on twitter using these keywords. So start taking advantage of that and use tags that match your site and content when sharing.

14. Effective SEO Techniques

Ensure that you know a little SEO so that you can easily and consistently optimize your blog for search engine traffic. Techniques such as using Alt tags for images, using appropriate link text, good keyword density within posts, usage of heading tags, internal link building and having simple navigation structures can allow searchers to easily find your blog’s content and attract more relevant quality visitors.

15. Social Bookmarking is a Must!

Social bookmarking sites are among the most frequently indexed sites on the web and creating links in sites like Delicious.com, Digg.com, Reddit.com, StumbleUpon.com and so on can get your articles out on the wide web quickly and higher in search results.

16. Maintain A You Tube Channel

Google owns YouTube and displays search results that match videos in the YouTube database. Create channels for your blogs and have supporting videos for the content that you produce on your site. If you publish technical tutorials on your blog upload supporting videos to YouTube. When uploading your videos, ensure that the titles and descriptions contain the most relevant keywords that will attract the best targeted traffic.

17. Use Paid Press Releases

Publishing a paid press release through a site like PRWeb.com can significantly get your articles out on the web and go viral. You’ll even get Google advertising credit, get inclusion in Yahoo, Google and Associated Press releases that are viewed by millions of people. Its very important that your content is unique and captures the attention of readers.

Conclusion & Discussion

Following the tips above will get you started on an excellent path to start dominating your niche and attract relevant interested visitors to your blog through search engines.

Are there any techniques not mentioned above that have helped you to gain massive amounts of traffic? Please share in the comments below, we would love to hear from you.

Now I’m not here to dwell upon those who may think they have failed but to encourage those who may feel like giving up or need that extra push to keep their engines going.

So here are some proven techniques that will work for the blogger who dares to be better than the average and truly excel towards the Pro Blogger title.

Focus On Clearly Defined Goals

As gentle and soft is the feel of water, it possesses  the power to carve through hard rocks when it is focused and flows consistently onto a single spot. This is the same attitude one should have towards serious blogging. Spend the time to think and decide the best direction to go on your blogging journey. Look within yourself, think about your interests, your talents, skills and passion and launch your blog in that direction. Once you have decided which direction to go, I want you to have an undying focus and belief in the niche that you have chosen.

A focused and unwavering mind will produce excellent results as you become a better blogger. If you have the passion and yet without skill, your focus will lead you on a path of learning to acquire the skill set required to master your niche. Always think about ways to increase your knowledge, experience and expertise in your chosen field. Seek guest posting opportunities, engage and learn from the experts and challenge yourself in every possible way.

Never be complacent with being average and doing things the same way others do. Go the extra mile to do and be more and your rewards and accomplishments will be miles ahead of the average.

Study Like You’re In School!

For me, blogging is meant to be fun and not a task that is a pain. This is why I always preach and say, “Blog about what you’re passionate about!” So if you’re blogging about things you have a great passion for, when it comes to increasing your knowledge through daily study, it won’t end up being such a daunting task. Whichever niche you choose to blog about, you are sure to find thousands of resources online and offline that you can learn from and find inspiration. Always make the effort to increase your knowledge. Treat your blogging as part of your daily life. Aim to be the source for everything within your niche.

Respect Your Fellow Bloggers

With great power comes great responsibility; and as you become more of an expert in your field, the more other bloggers will seek your assistance and guidance to help them do better. Never forget that you were once new to blogging and you are where you are now because of others. Always be thankful for what you have achieved and the fact that others were willing to help and contribute.

Provided it is within your abilities, seek and accept opportunities to help and teach others. Provide a greater value than what is expected from you and your success will be multiplied beyond your wildest dreams. Never pride yourself too much in being better than others but be humble in all your comments and other interactions. A massive amount of bloggers will see you for the great person you are and become attracted to your online presence.

Be Consistent & Never Give Up

Consistency is key to accomplishing any goal. The task that is repeated and practiced becomes perfection; and blogging isn’t any different. You may be a newbie now but you will never be the same a couple months from now; if you consistently blog and increase knowledge that is. As you keep posting, your writing skills improve, speed improves, expertise develops, connections with other bloggers are made, traffic increases and your confidence soars. The main prerequisite is that you are consistent with what you do.

The biggest mistake many bloggers are making is giving up. Do yourself a favor and stick to it.

Discussion

Developing and practicing the right attitude towards blogging can help anyone achieve success. What techniques or lessons you have learned on your blogging journey that you would like to share? Was there any point in time that you felt like giving up? Tell us how you overcome by leaving us a comment below.

However, I’ve come to the conclusion that there are some very simple, popular and legitimate techniques for making money online with very high success rates when done properly. So, I’m going to be sharing 12 money making ideas and I’m sure there are a couple here that will fit your blog’s niche or business model.

I’ll start with some basic techniques that can be implemented into every blog:

1. Make Money Through Google Adsense

This is by far the easiest method to start earning from your blog. Google’s adsense gives you access to their huge network of advertisers through which you can display advertisements that are relevant to your blog’s audience. You earn whenever someone views and clicks your ads. More visitors to your blog will mean high earnings and clickthrough rates. Ensure that you setup adsense ads for your feeds as well, google provides this option once you sign-in to your dashboard.

Click here to sign up for Google’e Adsense

Several Alternatives – Here are some alternatives to adsense that offer the same types of services. Chitika, Text Link Ads, AdBrite

2. Selling Private Advertising Space

This is another method for earning from your blog where you reserve certain spaces on your site for advertisers to place their banner or text ads. This way you specify your rates which are usually paid on a monthly basis. The cost of these ads will depend on your site’s popularity.

You can have as many as 8 advertising spots on your site without it being too intrusive for your readers. Each could bring you and average of $12 per month which means about $96 per month. You can find advertisers through the Buy Sell Ads network.

3. Paid Job Board

Setting up a job board to complement your blog is fairly simple. Through this you can offer free and paid job listings for visitors who may be interested in job opportunities. To earn from this, simply offer premium listings that will get more exposure than the average posting. Charge anywhere from $10 to $100 per month for listings. The price, of course, depends on the amount of traffic your blog receives.

Here are some up and running job boards to help you get the idea: Sam’s Job Board, ProBlogger Jobs and BloggerJobs.Biz

4. Accept Donations Through This Awesome Widget

Depending on what your blog focuses on you can accept monetary contributions paid directly to your paypal account through the ChipIn Widget. This is a flash based web service that simplifies the process of collecting money using a neat little widget to catch your visitors’ attention as seen in the setup example below.

Now for some more advanced techniques for monetizing your blog:

5. Writing & Selling E-Books

If you are an expert in the niche you are blogging about you can write unique e-books that provide a vast amount of useful content for your readers. Your first e-book can be sold anywhere from $7 to $30 depending on the quality and uniqueness of the content. If you’re serious, your e-book can be completed within a couple of months and provides a solid long-term income. Imagine selling an e-book for $12 with 1,000 copies being sold. That’s $12,000 in sales and is a lot of money even if its earned over a 12 month period.

6. Create & Sell WordPress Themes & Plugins

If you have great web development skills or have a few friends who do, you could design and develop a few WordPress themes and plugins and sell them for a minimal price of around $30. Think about it, there are over 100,000 blogs being launched daily. These bloggers are looking for themes for their new ventures; many of them are willing to pay for premium themes to get their journey started.

In addition to promoting your work on your own blog, you can sell your themes through the Themeforest marketplace. They’ve sold over 47,000 different themes on behalf of designers and developers and their site is one of most trusted and visited on the internet.

7. Theme Reviews Using Affiliate Links

You could also write in depth reviews of new themes that may be launched by other developers and themes builders that offer commissions for their affiliates. Sign up for an affiliate account with these websites and start writing the reviews. Visitors who read the reviews may be interested and click your affiliate links to purchase the theme. These visitors will be counted as your referrals and earn you commissions. Some sites that offer these types of affiliate earnings are: Woo Themes and Elegant Themes

8. Write For Other Paying Blogs

There are lots of opportunities for bloggers who are willing to write for blogging networks or other individuals and businesses who may need your help. These sites pay from $5 per blog post up to even $100 per post depending on the popularity of the blog and quality of content you will be required to produce. You can find freelance blogging jobs at BloggerJobs.Biz or my job board at Sam’s Job Board.

9. Creating & Selling Blogs

I always say that owning a website or blog is like owning a piece of virtual real estate and in the same way that you can buy and sell homes and other properties, you can use the same techniques for selling websites. The value of websites appreciate depending on many factors like, domain age, content, actual earnings, traffic, etc. and these factors affect how much your site can be sold for. You can buy some interesting domains, build up some blogs that focus on specific niches and once it has a steady flow of traffic you simply sell. Flippa.com is an excellent marketplace for buying and selling websites.

10. Write Sponsored Reviews

SponsoredReviews.com allows you to earn cash by writing and posting honest reviews on your blog about their advertisers’ products and services. Advertisers will benefit from your reviews since it increases backlinks, popularity and search engine rankings for their product sites and that’s what they’re paying for. Depending on your readership and the quality of your blog, you can earn from $5 to $1,000 per post.

11. Become A Consultant Through Your Blog

If you are a specialist in your field, offer consultation services that are charged at an hourly or daily rate. You can also charge for speaking engagements at conferences and other types of offline forums. Ensure that you market these services effectively through your blog to ensure that visitors can readily see that you are available.

12. Private Forums, Memberships or E-Courses

Your regular blog’s content is one thing but you can go a step further by offering premium content on a paid membership basis. This especially works if you offer a specialty in your niche and already have a decent readership that enjoys your regular content. Create membership areas of your site that requires your readers to pay a small subscription fee to login. A small fee of $5 per month can easily accumulate to thousands of dollars per month if your are truly dedicated to providing superb content for your members.

There are quite a few plugins on the market that can create password protected areas of your existing blog and integrates a platform for accepting payments.

Other facts to keep in mind

To maximize your earnings through your blog, you really need to ensure that you are aiming for high quality in all aspects. Factors such as a user friendly blog design, easy to find and read information and your character as a blogger can affect the ultimate earning potential of your blog.

Also, ensure that you have:

An Advertising profile – This provides basic information of your site such as your readers’ demographics, your alexa rank, monthly visitors, banner ad prices, your google pagerank, number of feed subscribers and any other useful information for potential advertisers

A Serious Focus On Your Niche – Most advertisers only advertise within their niche. Its easier to attract advertisers when they see that you are focused

Build a Mailing List – Use AWeber or Mail Chimp to build your e-mail list or at least ensure that you have feedburner setup so that your readers can keep updated on your new content. This is the easiest method for contacting your dedicated readers when you are promoting a new affiliate product or service. You should have already built some trust with your subscribers and thus it will be easier for them to make a purchase from you.

Conclusion

Its pretty easy to start monetizing your blogging efforts; and the ideas above are guaranteed to give you a kick start in the right direction. Check out this list of the 30 Highest Earning Blogs on The Internet to get an idea of the potential of blogging and the simple techniques that are used to make a killing online.

What money making techniques have worked best for your blog? Which ideas are you excited to start trying. Please share with us in the comments, we would love to hear from you.