Links links, and more links. Links are a vital part of your website for more than just the obvious reason that the more people link to your website, the more traffic you are bound to get. Links also mean that the big search engines can determine how popular your website is and reward you accordingly by placing you higher in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Yes the online game is certainly one that is a popularity contest and links are a great indicator of just how well you are fairing in the contest. However, all links are not created equally. You will get much more credit when a website that has a high page rank is linking to you over a couple of different low page ranking websites that are linking to you.

So how do you get the links to start rolling in? Here are some methods to try when you want to make your website fit in with the “popular” crowd:

Submit to Directories: Submit your website to key directories as links from these types of directories will help your ranking. Some link directories are pay and some are free. While you may thing that free is better, in this case it may not be. Look at the actual page rank of the directory before you make that decision. Page ranks of zero and one that are free will do you little good, but page ranks of five and seven that may cost you a buck or two will be beneficial. DMOZ.com is a great freebie and you can go for the big dogs like Yahoo but you will pay for it (Yahoo is $299.00 per year).

Submit to Trade Organizations: Submit your website to specialized directories known as trade organizations. These types of directories are often pay directories but if they are specialized in your industry such as finance or business, then it may be worth your while to give them a few dollars. Be careful of the specialized directories that offer you a free link but ask you to upgrade. These types come and go and usually give no precedence to those who only opt to use the freebie link.

Ask for Reciprocal Links: If you don’t ask you won’t know. Search for other websites within your niche and get in touch with them and ask if they would be interested in exchanging links. This should be done via e-mail and once you start to accumulate some of these and your popularity goes up you will begin to get requests in your inbox on a rather frequent basis. However, don’t jump at every opportunity to link with another website. Only link with websites that compliment your own no matter how high the website may be ranked. The search engines love relevancy and hate irrelevancy. If the search engines don’t like your links, they don’t like you (unpopular) and your page rankings will suffer for it.

Write for Others: If you have a talent for writing then you can use this to your advantage. Not everyone is an eloquent writer and so you may be able to find websites that are in need of some articles to be written in exchange for a link to your website. All you have to do is find high ranking websites within your niche and offer them an article to use for free as long as you can have an anchor text linking at the end of the article with a one or two sentence description about your website. This is a win for a website that needs quality content and a one way link win for you that can end up producing a huge amount of traffic for you.

Use Press Releases: Find newsworthy events within your niche and create a press release about them. Many press release services will allow you to put a link to your website at the end of the press release and this link can end up being in their queue for months at a time. The result will be more traffic and a temporary increase on your popularity. Be sure that you are preparing the press releases in the proper format as many press release services have a different way they like their press releases to be written.

The building of high quality links on your website is a long and often boring task. However, there is no better way to help the popularity of your website and once the popularity is high enough you will begin to see lots of traffic which can translate into lots of sales and finally lots of money. Just as with many things in life, sometimes you have to work hard to reap the benefits and rewards, but once you do you are happy that you did. Link building is no different.

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Everyone has a passion for something. In my case it is teaching others how to generate unheard of online traffic using the latest SEO techniques. What is your passion?

Wouldn’t it be great if you could somehow turn your passion into an online school or university that will not only teach others what you know but will also help you to earn a little money on the side? What about earn a lot of money on the side? That is precisely what I set out to do and am in fact getting ready to do. So how do you get in on this game?

There are websites online that will allow you to turn what you already know into an online course so that you can actually market the course to others, have them take the course, and make extra money. It really is as easy as it sounds too.

Take for example www.prfessor.com. Here you simply log on and let them show you where to add content. The course that is designed is entirely up to you because it is your passion that is going to be transformed into a school.

After you have created your specialized online course you can use a number of methods to track your students and you professors. Utilizing this type of information will allow you to determine exactly how you can make your online university even better and realize more passive income as a result.

Now the natural though that occurs is how costly is this? While you may think that you will be charged an arm and a leg for services such as these you may be pleasantly surprised to know that all of these features and more can be obtained for under 50 bucks per month. The best part is that most online course development websites will let you go on a month to month basis so there is no need to sign a contract. If you do run into a service that wants you to sign a contract then run the other away because there are many quality services that will not require a contract.

Yes the online world has done it again. We truly live in a virtual reality these days and thanks to that fact you can now take your hobby, your passion, your life and mold it into an online school or university that will teach others and bring you in extra income month after month. What are you waiting for professor? Your online school is only a small amount of work away.

These days it seems that everybody is involved in social media at some level or another. Yes no matter young or old, the world is taking advantage of social media outlets such as FaceBook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to share thoughts, feelings, interests, and expressions and there doesn’t seem to be an end to the popularity.

The sudden and strong surge in social media frenzy that is going on has not gone unnoticed by the search engines either. In fact, Google has already begun the implementation of real-time ranking with its new Google Caffeine and will continue to reward websites that are mentioned more often on a real time basis and a great way to accomplish this is by utilizing social media outlets.

Because social media is catching on at such a rapid pace there seems to be no end to the social media websites that are popping up on almost a monthly basis. However, no matter how many come out there will always be what is considered to be the big three and these include:

FaceBook: FaceBook allows people to connect and old classmates to even reconnect. This is a wonderful way to not only share your interests but also to get reacquainted with your past relationships. What it means for a business is the opportunity to promote their website and their services by being interactive within the FaceBook community. FaceBook even offers you a place to blog so that you can share your expertise on your given field.

Twitter: Everyone from regular Joes and Jills to the Hollywood stars and starlets are using Twitter to “Tweet” the latest in what is happening. A Tweet is a short one line statement that tells everyone what is going on. A smart business can use Twitter to Tweet about interesting articles that they have written all the way to Tweeting about a special they may have running. If you Tweet responsibly and interestingly then you will begin to have people follow your Tweets. Before you know it you will have a loyal group of readers just waiting for your next Tweet.

LinkedIn: LinkedIn is more for professionals to get together and share ideas. However, with over 60 million professionals as part of the community, LinkedIn represents one gigantic opportunity for your business. LinkedIn is an invaluable networking tool for any business of any size and by interacting frequently within the community you can help to make your business begin to realize its full potential.

Face it, when it comes to the world it has by and large gone digital. So too has the way that people get together and connect and reconnect. Ideas are now shared at the social media sites as opposed to social clubs and again, this trend is only picking up steam.

If you don’t already have a FaceBook, Twitter, and LinkedIn account you should strongly consider getting on the ball and signing up for all three. Just as with any other aspect of business, if you don’t conform then you fall by the wayside.

This is a continuation of a post I made in November of 2009.

Okay, so you have a great looking website and you know that you need to promote it in order for it to do its job, which is bringing you in dollars. The problem is you have no idea how that should be done and you may be thinking about hiring an Internet marketing firm to help you with the task. Maybe you are looking to your boss, superior, or close friend that has labeled themselves as an Internet Expert, but how expert is the Internet expert you are considering for the job? Sure they seem to talk the talk….holding titles such Internet Marketing Expert, E-Business Manager, SEO Expert, E-Marketing Manager or even ‘Guru’ and that’s the easy part; but have they walked the walk?

There are many ways to call out the want to-be experts to see if they are simply full of fluff. Many so called experts may have web development back ground, maybe even a coding background…some may know web design while others may have copywriting experience so it sounds like they know what they are talking about.

Here are my top ten ways to see how “expert” they really are:

1. See what the SERPS Say: ‘Google’ the person’s name and see what pops up. If nothing pops up then you can be sure that they know nothing about Internet Marketing, SEO or the like. If they were anything or knew anything they would certainly appear in the SERPS. If they can’t do it for themselves how can they expect do it for you?
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2. Ask About Research: If your Internet expert or Boss says, ‘I don’t need to research the competition,’ then drop them like a hot potato.  PERIOD. How can they know what is and isn’t working if they can’t even tell you what your main competitors are doing?
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3.  Show me the Blog: Any Internet expert who is worth their salt will have a personal blog. Ask around, you will be surprised as to how many so called experts not only do not have their own blog, but have never even posted an original blog article on their topic of expertise.
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4. Look at the Basics: What are the strategies that want to-be expert is planning on employing? If they don’t believe in the little and basic things such as Meta tagging (often referred to as Meta insurance just in case), creating landing pages for your PPC campaign, keyword rich page title tags, or they somehow try to convince you that you don’t need ‘that much’ textual content on your website then you don’t need them. The most basic rule in Internet Marketing is content is king, see if they know that.
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5.  Stuck on Explorer: The 1982 movie Firefox starring Clint Eastwood was a great film, but if your Internet expert, boss or SEO agency doesn’t know that the term ‘Firefox’ (or calls it Foxfire) in relation to the online game represents a more powerful web portal than Internet Explorer, then they are stuck in the dark ages or just plain ignorant…and it is your website that will lack as a result.
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6.  Thinking outside (the) Google (box): So many Internet experts will only utilize what Google gives them as far as marketing tools go. While Google does offer some wonderful Internet marketing tools, there are much more robust tools available to the online world than what Google has to offer (this is a known fact) and if you are working with someone who fails to realize this then you, the client, or employer are missing out on some golden opportunities.
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7.  Close Minded: Building up organic traffic takes time because you have to get your content out there. EVERY TRUE EXPERT know this. It’s a big world on the Internet and if your Internet expert ignores feedback such as this then they are close minded and not going to do you a lot of good. They are selling you snake oil or trying to run their department or business like that old (and one of my favorite movies) movie Glengarry Glen Ross….organic traffic is not like selling or buying swamp land…if they think it can come quickly…..then they are ether ignorant, using black hat SEO or they are just plain idiots.
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8.  No Social Media Accounts: WHAT???? Alright, if your Internet expert has no social media accounts then run the other way; fast. EVERYONE has a social media account or two or three these days. And with the way that Google will be ‘real time’ ranking websites going forward these social media accounts will not be something that are nice to have, but rather something that are necessary to have. If your expert, boss or agency has NO social media profile then they are ignorant or they are an idiot. PERIOD.
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9.  Not Published: How many articles does your Internet marketing guru have published and or syndicated? If they are really good they should have quite a bit. If they have none then really, how good can they be?
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10.  Not Social: If he or she is not social how can they understand ‘social media?’ If your Internet marketing professional is not a social butterfly then red flags should be waving. Any expert at any level of anything should be at the Company Christmas Party, industry conferences and the like. If your expert is always missing on the scene then so too will your website be missing in the SERPS scene.

In life it is very easy to claim that you are something you are not. Many fly by night Internet experts will come and go this year and every year thereafter. But it is easy enough to figure out if these so called experts are really good and can do what they say they can do or if they are simply blowing you full of hot air. Take the time to investigate your Internet marketing expert as it just may save you time, money, and a good ranking in the SERPS.

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Note: keep an eye out for my lengthy 3 month in the making case study titled “The Corporate SEO”

Related posts:

How Pro is Your SEO?

When you consider what type of pay-per-click (PPC) campaign you are going to do you first have to have an objective in mind. Because there are different strategies that can be employed with PPC you need to know exactly what your goals are before you ever give your first bid. There are two questions you absolutely must answer before you begin your PPC campaigns:

1. What is your budget for your campaign?

2. What time frame will be given to determine the effectiveness of the campaign?

By answering these two questions first you will be able to better know what type of PPC bidding strategy you should use.

There are three PPC bidding strategies that are often used and each can be broken down into selection of keywords, strategy for bidding, and objective of the strategy.

Here is how the three break down:

Branding or market exposure: Your ultimate goal here is implied in the name; getting as much exposure for yourself as possible. This strategy will have you going after potential customers that may not know anything about your products or services. The hope is that once you attract their attention that they will indeed be interested in what you have to offer. This strategy grabs users when they are in their research phase of the buying cycle and are getting general information on whatever it is they are eventually going to buy.

Selection of keywords: With this strategy you want to focus on a wide range of keywords in order to gain the most exposure possible for yourself. Focus on keywords that receive the most traffic, which are also referred to as the head of your list.

Strategy for Bidding: in order to properly employ this strategy you have to bid high. How high? High enough that your keywords are at the top of the list so that your business name and your ad are seen as much as possible when a basic search is conducted.

Objective of the strategy: This strategy is done to gain you some notoriety and is not meant to be anything more than a short term strategy that is developed over time into a more measurable strategy in terms of your ROI. This type of strategy is great for the initial break through into the search engine results pages (SERPs) but will prove too costly if used too long.

Conversion or ROI Strategy: This strategy focuses on getting the highest possible number of conversions or clicks throughs and will hopefully show an effective ROI for all of your keywords. To accomplish this you must take great care in selecting keywords and need to be constantly refining your keywords to ensure a high ROI.

Selection of keywords: With this strategy you will give much focus to long tail terms that will help to qualify your potential customers before they ever get to your website. This is done by targeting keywords that generate a high number of conversions.

Strategy for bidding: This requires some effort on your part. You have to figure out which keywords are giving you the most bang for your buck or the highest ROI. After you figure this out you can bid higher for the keywords that are returning more and less for those that are underperforming.

Objective of the strategy: You want to generate as many conversions or click throughs as possible with this strategy. By constantly monitoring and adjusting your keyword bidding you can accomplish your goal without too much trouble.

The sales cycle strategy: This particular strategy actually takes a little of each from the first two strategies. Here you use both broad and targeted keywords to attempt to capture users in every phase of the buying cycle.

Selection of keywords: Because you are attempting to get the users at every stage of their buying cycle, your keyword selection will of course be very broad.

Strategy for bidding: Bid lower on the more general terms that a potential customer might use when they are just beginning their search and bid higher for keywords that are going to have a high conversion rate because it is what the potential buyers will actually be looking for. This is a three tier bidding approach. For example, you will bid lower on the keyword lawnmower because it is a very general term. You would then bid a bit higher for a self-propelled lawnmower as the person conducting this search is more definite on what they want. You would then bid the highest for a keyword like John Deere self-propelled lawnmower because a person conducting this search knows exactly what they want.

Objective of the strategy: This strategy is designed so that you will have visibility to a potential customer no matter how detailed they get with their search or regardless of what stage of the buying cycle they are in.

Regardless of which strategy you choose to go with you need to be sure that you are constantly optimizing and enhancing your campaign. You can try one or all of the strategies here, just be sure that you are not wasting your time and money by not following your ultimate goals and your overall business plan.
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Take a look all around. Now take a look at yourself. The world by and large has everything branded and that includes you. Don’t believe it?  Your shoes are probably Nike, your shirt an IZOD, your pants maybe Dockers. Wow, you are a walking billboard. Now look at your car, is it a Chevy, a Ford, a Toyota. Whoever manufactured it, it is branded.  But what about the most important brand of all; your own?

Whether you think so or not we all have our own brand so you may as well make the most of your branding opportunity. ’But I don’t need my own brand, I work for someone else.’ EVERYONE needs to build their own brand regardless of whether you punch a clock or work from home in your pajamas.

Corporate giants have known this for years. Building a brand increases visibility and the likelihood that an even bigger corporate giant will come alone and gobble up a company (at a tidy profit). Maybe Hollywood will want to buy the story for a movie or your favorite author will want to write the book. All this can happen, but first you have to build your own personal brand.

Building your personal brand is just something that needs to be done. Face it, even if you work for someone else you are by and large a ‘free agent.’ Being a free agent in a world that is filled with endless brands is a great opportunity to create, mold, perfect, and sell your own personal brand and the good news is that everyone has this unique opportunity. The better news is that many people are content with their nine to five lives and will never work on their own personal brand, so some of the competition is out of the way right off the bat.

Now the bad news. You need to understand how to build your own personal brand before you can conquer the world. This can be easier said than done and will require a good deal more than a megaphone and a voice. So where do you turn?

Big corporations get the picture. In 1993 when Phillip Morris decided to cut the price of the famous Marlboro branded cigarettes by 40 cents per pack on a Friday, the rest of the market felt a $25 billion decline in packaged goods as a whole on Monday. The consensus; brands are a dying breed.

Where else can you turn? The Internet is filled with all sorts of web sponsors that get the importance of branding. You know them too. Google, Yahoo, NASCAR.com; all branded websites. How branded is JoeSmith.com though?

Because the Internet allows virtually anyone to have an active website, virtually everyone in fact does have a website. Which sites get bookmarked, visited, add to a favorites list, and the like? The ones that are branded the best. A good web brand will tell your visitors that your website will not only offer them what they want once, but in fact over and over again.

Now think about another big tech innovation; e-mail. Here again anyone can have an e-mail address and really these days do you honestly know anyone who doesn’t? Which e-mails do you decide to open and which e-mails you decide to trash is all a matter of branding.

Personal branding, just like any other branding is a building of trust. When your brand becomes bigger and better so too does your reputation. All of the sudden people will want to visit your website and will even send their friends, family, and co-workers your links. All of the sudden people will want to open the e-mails you send and will even forward them along. Once the trust is there, the people know that your brand will offer them an incredible value that they can put their faith in.

Perhaps though the best example of those who know the importance of branding are professional service firms. They almost always follow the same business model; get hired by a client, show up to work for that client, and then figure out how to provide value to that client. They almost never have any tangible assets to speak of and most of them walk around in expensive suits sporting the latest technical gadgets such as an iPhone which they are always using.

Separation comes from the firm or firms that can figure out how to better service clients and have the ability to learn on the fly. All of the sudden as results get better and the name gets better. Last to follow is the reputation and the rest isn’t history. One client recommends you to another and so on and so on.

This is precisely what you must do; figure out how to stand out in a crowd of millions. You have to be nimble and learn things as they come your way. You have to be open to new and innovate ideas and can never get sedentary in your ways. You have to figure out what you can offer someone that no one else can. It is a sometimes long and arduous journey, but if you try hard enough and look long enough you can somehow find, create, mold, and then perfect the most important brand of all; YOUR OWN.

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 Advice for the employer…Advice for the frustrated employee

When you hire someone to work on your search engine optimization (SEO) you expect that professional to be, well, professional. The problem is that many a pro SEOer only takes a handful of classes and or courses on SEO and then goes to work for non SEO corporation. This is not to say that they will not be good at what they do, they just won’t be great…even if they have had past success.

The fact that a pro SEOer only takes a couple of course before they go off into the wild world of SEO is not by choice, but rather by design. That’s because there are only a limited number of resources available for those interested in SEO to take advantage of and the rest of the learning curve has to come by way of their own steam. Much of SEO is a ‘learn as you go’ process and while that may be alright for some professions it can be very harmful for the SEO profession (For example, the taking over a PPC campaign). An SEO pro who only conducts SEO thoughts and techniques between a certain number of hours per day will not only lack in the results department, but in the passion department as well.

A true SEO pro will be one that is infected with the SEO fever and will know that the only cure for their disease is MORE SEO. Along with anything else they do at their normal job for SEO you will find them at home working on their own side work. Blogs, websites, affiliate programs, social media, you name it. If there is an opportunity to conduct SEO then that is where a real SEO pro should also be. MOONLIGHTING…SEO by day and SEO by night (after the family goes to bed.)

SEO takes years of practice and honestly it is an art that can never be perfected. SEO/SEM, and organic traffic for that matter takes time…not days or weeks…There will always be new and advanced SEO techniques that come out and this will in turn always give the true SEO pro something new to learn. Many of the new advances will come as a direct result of an SEO pro’s experimentation. However, experimentation can go wrong and as Judith Lewis of deCabbit says, ‘Better that they try and fail on a test site than a live site.  Better to get a blog banned than a multi-million pound (or dollar) e-commerce site.’ If your SEO pro is only working on SEO for a normal job then they have no time to experiment and learn the true art of SEO except for work time. The last thing you will want is to have your SEO pro ‘try something new’ on your website and have repercussions brought to your site because the experiment goes haywire.

So how pro is your SEO? If you are not sure you should ask. Your SEO pro should be the one who leaves the office only to go home to work on multiple projects of their own. Your SEO pro should be the one who gets very little sleep and when they do all they dream about is new and innovative ways to conduct SEO. Your SEO pro should have an absolute true passion for the SEO biz.

It’s your website and it’s your business and because of that you need to ensure that your SEO pro is in fact a pro and not just an SEO part timer who walks away at the end of the day only to return to job they really don’t like the next day. While finding the right SEO pro for your website may take a bit of time, in the end it is worth its weight in gold. When you find an SEO pro who lives, breaths, and eats SEO then your website will begin to flourish as a result. Once that happens there is only one thing after that which will ultimately occur; your bank account will begin to get bigger and bigger.

Pareto’s Law – The Definitive Guide to Bigger, Easier ProfitsAfter you’ve heard the adage “work smarter, not harder” for the gazillionth time, you probably want to gag. Reading Timothy Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Workweek, you’ll find it again; this time, swallow the gag reflex and pay attention.

It comes in the form of Pareto’s Law, the 80/20 principle (another teaching point that’s been around the block more times than a new driver in a Mini Cooper). Never mind. You really do need to learn this principle – and put it to use – if you want to boost the bottom line and still have time for a life.

Even just the title of Ferriss’ book should be enough to nudge your imagination. What would you do with a workweek that only lasted four hours or less? If it’s really a possibility – and it is – it’s worth taking another look at something that actually works, and not just looking, but putting it to use.

Here’s how it works: Pareto says you get 80% of your results (good or bad) from 20% of your input (what you do). In business, it can look like this: 80% of your sales come from 20% of your customers. That means that you’ve got a dead weight factor of 80% among your client base. They’re requiring an inordinate amount of work, and are only producing a small portion of your revenue. Translation: not good.

How do you put this principle to use to boost your profits?

1. Track everything.
First, you’ve got to be able to know which clients are the most profitable. If you’re not keeping track of this info, start. If you’re in an MLM selling health and beauty products, you need to know which clients buy the whole anti-aging line – on the autoship plan, and which buy the occasional mascara, if you call them… after seven attempts to reach them. It works the same way for every business – product- or service-driven, from haircuts to custom-built private jets. That same 20% of your customers are easy. They know what they want. They buy it from you. They’re happy. You’d better know exactly who they are.

2. Know that 20% like you know your own dog.
You want to be able to pick these customers out of a lineup because you know them so well. What makes them such great customers? What trends do you see? How do they like to be contacted? What are you providing that compels them come back for more? How did you find them? Where can you go looking to find more just like them? By taking the time to get to know them, you can learn a lot – it’s time well spent. Essentially, by learning all about these customers, you form a blueprint for your ideal customer. With this blueprint in hand, you take the first step in designing your customer base.

3. Be picky.
When you’re new in business, you’re so grateful to have anyone come through the door that you’ll put up with a lot just in hopes of making a sale. It’s not a good precedent to set for your business, but it happens. The trick is moving away from that as quickly as possible. Given the choice, why would you gather unpleasant, high-maintenance, penny-pinching customers who tax even your best customer service person’s patience? Instead, you could assemble a group of loyal, quality-driven, appreciative clients who value what you provide and make doing business a pleasure. It’s a matter of choosing quality over quantity, at first.

4. Get into cloning.
Well, not really. But you do want to redirect your efforts from how you used to do marketing and sales – anyone with a pulse – to attracting more who fit the blueprint of your ideal customers, and by spending more time and energy on the customers you’ve got who are already ideal. You can find more of these precious gems by asking for referrals, by going where they go and doing what they do, and by doing everything you can to provide exquisite service to them.

5. Systematize it.
You’re probably not in the position to just go willy-nilly firing clients who don’t meet your dream come true blueprint. But you can definitely make sure that your new clients are the ones you choose. Set up a ranking system so you’re able to keep track of your clients and their profiles. Customize your service so you spend the bulk of your resources on the most productive clients – while still providing excellence to your B-list clients.

It’s always possible that today’s 80%-er may become tomorrow’s best client – or they may introduce you to that dream client. Regardless, your goal is to provide excellence to all clients, while actively pursuing the ones that’ll make your life easy and your business boom.

An internet business isn’t something you want to jump into without any training – but with a bare minimum of tech skills, anyone with a computer, internet access, and a hobby or interest can build a business.

Additional Resources on this topic:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle

You know that a blog is a wonderful way to keep your name out there and to promote your website and thus your business. What you don’t know is how to get the traffic to your blog flowing and flowing well.

There are many does and don’ts when it comes to blogging but rather than going though the entire list you should focus on the more important factors. The following tidbits of information will help you to not only ensure your blog traffic starts, but will also make sure that your blog traffic explodes:

Use the Right Blog Software: This is of utmost importance. When choosing the blog software you want to use you need to consider how you want your comments page to be, your archiving page layout, categorization, sub-pages, the works. While Wordpress and Blogger often do the trick you may want to custom make your blog. A good source of info in that department is OpenSourceCSM.

Host the Blog on Your Domain: By keeping the blog hosted directly on your own domain you are attracting attention, gathering links, gaining some much needed publicity, and increasing your trust and rankings on the SERPS. By not hosting the blog on your own domain and having it on a different primary site other than your own you are really moving backwards. Yes you will be garnishing attention, just not for yourself as much.

Participate in Other’s Blogs: Whatever your interests are be it personal or business you can rest assured that there are others out there who will share your passions. This also goes for your industry. Take some time and conduct a search or two to find some worthwhile blogs and forums that already exist in your industry and see what they are all talking about. Be sure to leave intelligent comments when you can and if there is an opportunity to name drop for yourself then do so. Just be sure you are not coming off like a salesperson.

Write Tags for Two: When you are writing your title tags you need to remember it is more than just keeping them snappy and witty for those who have subscribed to your blog, or that you hope will in the future, but you have to write them in such a way that the search engines will like them as well. The perfect way to accomplish this is by writing the blog post first and the title tag second. In this way you will be able to scour the post to pick out pertinent keywords and phrases that you can then use in the title tag.

Begin with Silence: When you are looking at your blog or anyone else’s and you see a bunch of posts and most of those posts have a big goose egg under the comments section, what do you think? Dead blog or boring post? Whatever the case may be you may judge the blog by the number of comments as this shows interaction and really how popular the blog is. Well that is going to be what people think about your blog as well. To combat this you can disable the comments at first and wait until you have over 100 RSS subscribers or you are getting about 750 unique visits per day and then open up the lines of communicating. This will ultimately lead you to light, but steady activity in the comment department.

Don’t Recycle News or Thoughts: When you are first starting out you need to be more than original with your blog posts. Just because there is a big news story that deals with your industry, it doesn’t mean that you have to be covering it. Remember there will be hundreds, if not thousands of other bloggers who will be covering this very topic and many of them are already well established. Simply covering a news snippet in your own words is not enough. No one will be looking to your blog as a source of the latest news; at least not yet. Stick to all original thoughts and blog posts and wait until you are an authority within your industry before you jump on the bandwagon of news reporting.

Link and Link Again: It is far better to be over nice with your link giving then it is to be considered an under linker, especially in the blogging community. If you do take some thoughts or ideas from another blog be sure to give it honorable mention. Failing to do so will give you a bad reputation as a blogger and will only hurt you in the long run.

Hold off on Advertising: Nobody likes advertising but it has become a way of life online. However, until your blog is well established hold off on the AdSence for crying out loud. If you have no reputation and no following then over advertising will certainly put people off and you risk running off potential subscribers. This is not to say that you can never use AdSence, but you may want to wait just a bit before you do.

Make Your Blog Posts Sexy: Nothing will put a reader to sleep faster than line after line of plain old text. Try breaking up your text a bit with a picture or two. You can also use bullet points, italics, add different fonts, whatever. The point is that you want your blog to be both enjoyable to read and enjoyable to look at. Make the readers enjoy their visit and they will come back again and aging.

Give Them What They Want: Take some time to research what it is that everyone is pondering. What questions are being asked and what answers are being given? You would be surprised at the number of questions that are all over the forum boards that have no solid answers. If you become the authority and a go to place to find answers then you blog will benefit greatly.

Give Them Something Special: People who are into reading blogs love the idea of an open source world. Within your blog you want to give the readers something they would not normally be privy to such as pricing, trade secrets, and even the occasional rumor; so long as it is a harmless one. Just be careful and don’t go overboard. Know your limits before you begin to blog and you will be all set.

Be Consistent: If you want to build a following you need to be consistent with your posting. One post a day is ideal but whatever you start you need to maintain. Being sporadic with your posting will only be viewed by readers as a letdown and you will lose your audience. Perhaps the worst thing to do is to be ultra-consistent for months on end and then go on vacation for two weeks and not post at all. Does this mean that you are chained to your lap top for the entire trip? No, but if you are not going to be posting invite a guest blogger to do so for you while you are away. The end result will be your subscribers getting what they want and you getting a break.

Stick to a Brand: When you set out to create your blog you need to have clear cut goals in place. The first thing you want to accomplish is the building of your brand. If your blog is to be known for a place where readers can find answers to questions they have then don’t break that mold six months into your blogging life. Once you are established it is very hard to change without suffering major repercussions.

Blogging is a great way to get yourself out there but you need to remember it is no longer a secret for Internet gurus only. Everyone it seems is blogging these days both young and old. In order for your blog to make it in the ever filling pool of blogs you have to go about it just right. Using some ingenuity and some tenacity will go a long way in seeing your blog become the blog in the minds of many a reader.