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Commenting on Blogs the Easy Way

12:20 am in networking by ClubBlogger

If you are a blog owner the one thing that you want to see is lots of comments on your blog. Comments let you know readers like what you have written and want to share their thoughts. It’s a way of showing how popular your blog is. Some will become subscribers and some wont, but a high subscriber number does not necessarily mean that you will get hundreds (or thousands in some of the most popular blogs) of comments every time you write a new post.

Most comments will come from readers who are not subscribed to your feed. They will most likely come from the blog owners who posts you commented on. I myself try and (99.9 percent of the time I do) if someone leave a comment on my blog, I visit them and return the favor. The only time I don’t leave a comment is if their blog is no way familiar to what I’m blogging about. For example If they left a comment and I go visit and find out their blog is about cars,video games etc, I wont leave one because that is not in my niche.

One of the easy methods I use to leave comments is this:

When I visit a blog to leave a comment, I look at all the other readers who was there before me and left a comment.
I then go down the line to check out their last post or click on their gravator to visit their site.



If it is a site that has updated posts and I like it, I leave a comment. I then repeat this process on other blogs.
Depending on the time I have and if my eyes don’t start hurting me too bad :) , I can do a lot of comments in a short period
of time.

The other method I use is I visit this link I bookmarked a while back.


I go down the line and visit and if they have been keeping up their blog and have content that I can relate to, I leave a comment.

If anyone has a list similar to this let me know so I can add it to my bookmarks.

The old saying works in this concept “You have to give to receive”
My post Successfully Marketing Your Blog: An Overview had some good comments on how you should comment on other blogs.
Try and leave useful meaning comments and try to avoid the one-liners.

Reasons to Use Polls and Surveys on Your Blog

7:29 pm in Content by ClubBlogger

Perhaps one of the most overlooked tools in the blogger’s arsenal is the ability to set up surveys and polls on the blog. Yet, these surveys and polls can serve a number of different purposes for the blogger and, in reality, should be used more often on many blogs. Here is a brief look at some of the benefits that polls and surveys provide.


Benefit #1: Performing Market Research


Simply put, surveys and polls help you get to know your audience better. Although you should have already conducted some market research in order to get to know your target audience better, surveys and polls will help you get to know the people who are actually reading your blog. Armed with this information, you can create posts that are more to their liking and you can add features to your blog that will help you keep your audience happy. If you are trying to make money with affiliate products, polls can also help you when it comes to selecting the products you will try to sell on your blog.


Benefit #2: Starting a Conversation


Polls and surveys are often great fodder for getting conversations going. One on hand, you can ask a question with your poll and then ask your community members to explain why they provided that answer. On the other hand, the results of the poll or survey can often stir up additional conversations – particularly if the topic is one that is controversial. In fact, using a poll or a survey is a good way to introduce a controversial subject for your readers to debate without you having to take a strong stance on either side.


Keep in mind that you will have the option to allow your readers to view the results or to keep the results closed as the survey is taking place. If you don’t want the responses to be skewed, you might want to keep this feature closed until after you have conducted the poll.


Benefit #3: Keeping it Simple


Polls and surveys are also beneficial to the blogger because they are pretty easy to set up. So, if you have a day when you really can’t think of anything to write about or you simply don’t have time for a post, putting up a survey or poll will still interest your readers without taking so much time to create.


Although polls and surveys are relatively easy to create, this is not to say you shouldn’t put any thought into the one that you create. Rather, make certain you ask a question that involves a topic that is meaningful to your readers. Also, make certain your answer choices are clear and well-defined. That way, you will get an accurate response to your poll or survey and you may actually be able to use the information to further improve the content of your site.

SEO-What’s more important?

6:45 pm in Links, SEO, Traffic by ClubBlogger

What’s more important? Creating sites for users or the engines? The answer is both.


Your favorite thing about having a blog may soon be this –
they naturally attract search engine traffic.
Blogs already have optimized site architecture. Most are set up with a clear navigation, where every page is set up to link back to the other main pages. They also have the inherent potential to be well-linked.

Primarily a site should be designed for the user, with search engines in mind. Google tends to talk out both sides of their mouth when they say, “Don’t do anything special for the engines”. Yet, they create a webmaster tool center where you can submit a sitemap, and get information about how the engines see your site, errors and what key phrases your site ranks for. That gives new site owners a little bit of confusion.

I like sites that are easy to navigate, pleasing to the eye and that help sell whatever it is you need to. Pages should be set up as landing pages. The great thing about your blog is that it can get so well-indexed that you have the potential to show up for any number of four word phrases that are relevant to your industry. This way you can give the visitor everything they need to make a purchase or fill out a form. At the same time you can optimize these pages for the engines and use the pages for your PPC campaigns. I believe in doing sites this way. It brings the visitor a much better experience.

The perfect site is not only user friendly, but optimized for the engines. You need to target where people go to in order to provide them with the information or product they need. There is nothing worse than having people landing on a page that is optimized for a phrase but offers no information about it… It brings the user a bad experience and you a missed sale or lead. You have a choice. You can target a general high traffic keyword you have little chance of ranking well for and get barely any traffic. Once you have a page optimized, you can streamline the transition from viewing what you have to offer to facilitate a purchase. You can also provide related content and links. This, in turn, will help with you PPC because Google is now checking to see how relevant your landing pages are to the keywords you buy.

As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimizing a website primarily involves editing its content and HTML coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines. Sometimes a site’s structure (the relationships between its content) must be altered too. Because of this it is, from a client’s perspective, always better to incorporate Search Engine Optimization when a website is being developed than to try and retroactively apply it.Make a good quality site that will attract natural links to it in order to obtain any form of long term presence within the search engine results page.Make a good quality site that will attract natural links to it in order to obtain any form of long term presence within the search engine results page.

Should You Get a Business Credit Card?

11:54 am in Finance, business by ClubBlogger

If you have decided to make blogging a business venture, you might be considering obtaining a business credit card. There are many perks to having a business credit card, but you also need to be careful when selecting one in order to make sure you are getting the card that will serve you and your business the best.


Perks of Having a Business Credit Card


Many people are frightened by the thought of getting a business credit card. After all, credit cards have earned a bad name because many people have managed to dig themselves into a significant amount of debt with their credit cards. If used responsibly, however, a business credit card can provide you with all of the following perks:


  • Make you appear more professional to your clients because having a credit card makes you look like an established business

  • Provide you with a free form of advertisement since you can put your company name and logo on a business credit card

  • Help you keep your business expenses separate from your personal expenses, which is particularly helpful at tax time

  • Allow you to give cards to your employees or business partners while still being able to monitor their spending and placing separate credit limits on different cards

  • Make it possible for you to get a quick business loan if needed to help take your business to the next level




While using a business credit card irresponsibly can certainly lead to an overwhelming amount of debt, using it wisely can help you take your business to the next level.


Picking the Perfect Business Credit Card


There are many factors you should consider when selecting a business credit card. One of the most important factors you should consider is the interest rate on the credit card. This is particularly important if you plan to use the card to help you get your business going rather than obtaining a traditional business loan from a bank. In this case, you want to find the card that will offer you the lowest interest rate possible. In fact, if you are applying for a new card, you should also look into the various introductory rates offered by business credit cards. You may be able to find one that will offer a 0% APR or a very low interest rate for the first several months.


If you don’t plan on borrowing against the credit card and carrying a balance from one billing cycle to the next, the interest rate may not be your biggest concern. In this case, you should look for a card that offers attractive benefits to its cardholders, such as discounts at certain stores or insurance coverage. You might also want to consider obtaining a business credit card with a rewards program, which can actually help you make money from the credit card if you pay it off at the end of each billing cycle in order to avoid paying finance charges.

Successfully Marketing Your Blog with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Techniques

12:10 am in Advertising, SEO, Traffic by ClubBlogger

This is part 4 of a 4 part series on Marketing your Blog.

The final method you can use for marketing your blog is through the use of search engine optimization, or SEO, techniques. Search engine optimization involves taking steps to make your blog more attractive to the search engines so the search engines will provide your blog with a higher ranking on the organic search engines results page. Obviously, the higher your blog is ranked on the results page, the more likely it is that people will visit your site. And, since these search engine results are completely free, you don’t have to worry about paying every time someone clicks on your link.


Getting your blog to rank naturally high on the search engine results is possibly the best way to market your blog. Not only does it cost nothing, but many people don’t bother to look at the sponsored links that are brought up from a PPC campaign. In addition, simply having your site ranked high on the list automatically makes your blog appear to be more relevant and reputable in the eyes of those who are searching for a particular keyword phrase.


There are numerous ways you can get your blog to rank higher in the search engine results pages. One method is to incorporate certain keyword phrases into your blog posts. In order to give yourself the best chance for success, visit a site such as Google Adwords and look at the popularity of various phrases that are related to your site. Ideally, you should target those phrases that are searched often but that do not yet have a great deal of competition on the Internet.


Creating links within your blog also helps increase your search engine standing. By linking various relevant posts to one another, the search engines are better able to crawl throughout your blog and analyze what it has to offer. It is also beneficial to build up your incoming links, which are links coming to your blog from other blogs and websites.


There are several methods you can use to increase your incoming links. If you engage in social networking, you can build your incoming links by leaving a link to your website at forums, blogs and other social networking websites. You can also increase your incoming links by guest blogging on other blogs and by submitting articles to article directories. If your article is good enough, it may go viral. This will help increase your incoming links while also improving your overall reputation within your target market.


The way your blog is set up can also have an impact on your search engine ranking. If your blog is full of broken links, for example, the search engine spiders will not be able to comb through your blog properly. As a result, the spiders may think your blog has less to offer than it really does. Therefore, if you are not comfortable with the technical aspect of maintaining a blog, it may be worthwhile for you to hire an expert to help you with the initial set-up. That way, your blog will be attractive and easy to navigate for search engines and for your readers.