ClubBlogger » internet

Mobile internet will outstrip ‘desktop’ use by 2014, says ex-Obama adviser

ClubBlogger — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 10:05:10 +0000

We’ve been thinking a lot recently about mobile blogging, both in terms of blogging remotely using mobile devices (WordPress is awesome on the iPhone) and reading blogs on the move.

Which is why we found this article fascinating, brought to you by our blog partnership with Guardian:

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Staying secure when using Wi-Fi hotspots

ClubBlogger — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 20:38:57 +0000

With many bloggers relying on public wi-fi to keep their blogs up-to-date whilst working on the move, this topic is crucial for most of us. ClubBlogger examines, via our link with Guardian technology experts, the risks we face when blogging using hotspots.

You really need to be aware of the risks and take appropriate steps to safeguard your blog.

The content previously published here has been withdrawn. We apologise for any inconvenience.

Google Instant is trying to kill me

ClubBlogger — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 12:00:45 +0000

We recently wrote about Google Instant Search. Now, from another great post powered through our Guardian partnership, you can read this fantastic piece on ClubBlogger. Views appreciated – please feel free to comment, below:

The content previously published here has been withdrawn. We apologise for any inconvenience.

Shareholder trading values Facebook at more than $33bn

ClubBlogger — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 12:15:40 +0000

We have written about the power of Facebook before. Many people are considering how to blog on Facebook or how to use Facebook to power their blogs.

As the power of Facebook increases and increases, every blogger must and should be aware of it. Take a look at this new piece:

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SEO-What’s more important?

ClubBlogger — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 23:45:47 +0000

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.

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

ClubBlogger — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 04:10:33 +0000

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

Part 1 : Successfully Marketing Your Blog: An Overview

Part 2 : Successfully Marketing Your Blog with Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising

Part 3 : Successfully Marketing Your Blog with Social Networking

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.

Advertising Methods Compared

ClubBlogger — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 04:10:07 +0000

Whatever your business is on the web, you’re going to need advertising if you want the big bucks. First though, we must recognize that the meaning of the world ‘advertising’ has changed since the days of the TV, Radio, Magazine and News Paper monopoly. Advertising was simple to define and easy to recognize back before the internet, but web based advertising techniques are a different ball game altogether. Let’s take a look at these new alternative advertising methods in order of their cost to your business.

Word of Mouth: The internet’s impact on ‘word of mouth’ advertising has been huge. The invention of social networks and media sharing facilities has put thousands of likeminded people in touch with each other in ways that were impossible before the web. If you have a great product that a particular group of people will really like, you can be sure that it’ll be talked about on the web.

PPC/PPI Advertising: Pay per Click advertising and Pay Per Impression advertising will both cost you a little bit of cash, but you can build a campaign relatively cheaply and reach many thousands of people for extremely low cost. PPI is best for generating brand recognition on the whole, while PPC is ideal for deployment to key demographics who might want to read more about your product or service.

Affiliate Systems: Affiliate systems are a great way to sell medium to high cost services. Using an affiliate system allows you to put your affiliates in charge of your advertising. They are rewarded only for sales converted from their links, and so the burden of advertising, and the large rewards, rest firmly upon your selected affiliates. Be prepared to give away a significant percentage of your profits though, as good affiliates work hard to promote your product and expect payment in kind.

Mail / Software use: Last but certainly not least is the use of bulk e-mailing and software advertising. These are generally considered to be distasteful and annoying advertising methods but are certainly effective. Consider your business relationship with its customers very carefully before you undertake such a project. While these are ideal for one shot small purchases, they can alienate more picky customers.

Tips for Free Business on the Net

ClubBlogger — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 10:23:13 +0000

The internet is the most democratic arena available for new business, intellect and service providers to show what they have got. If you’ve got something good to share with the world, the internet is the only place that will do it justice. The challenge is getting that good or service onto the web in the first place. The beauty if the internet is that you hardly need a single penny to get your product in front of millions of people. But you’ve got to know how to do it!

The first rule of making a free business is, open source software: The open source community has been around for as long as closed source development and open source products are comparable, if not better quality in some cases. Name a bit of software your business needs and it’s very likely that an open source version is available, in some cases making a choice to use open source software can save you thousands of dollars in licensing for single programs.

The second rule to free business on the net is: Cheap web hosting! There is simply no need to maintain or buy dedicated or virtual hosting if no one knows your website is there. Open a cheap account with a high quality service provider like godaddy and they will be very glad to quickly and painlessly upgrade your hosting as and when you need additional power, storage and bandwidth. There is simply no need to pay for a vastly overpowered service before it’s needed. A few adverts will bring in enough revenue to pay for your website hosting, making it free!

The final step to free business on the net is: Free promotion! Google the term ‘SEO’ and check our SEO blog category on the left. There is a wealth of free information available on this topic, which will teach you exactly how to configure and write your website to be search engine optimized. Custom SEO services are expensive because they usually come with guaranteed results, but these results are within your reach given enough time and understanding of the topic.

If you follow these three simple rules, you’ll get your business online for almost zero cost. Website builders and promotions agencies might try to sell your expensive packages and hosting services, but remember these basic rules and you’ll be fine.

The Danger of Low Quality Traffic

ClubBlogger — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 13:20:27 +0000

There are two kinds of traffic on the net, quality and… Well, not such high quality. Quality traffic represents a target demographic who may actually be interested in the product or service you are providing. These people are likely to return to your site if they like what they find, and there’s a distinct possibility that they will generate you significant revenue over time. Low quality traffic will usually make up the majority of your visitors; these are people who landed from search engine links, from reciprocal linking programs and random news sources. These people are unlikely to tour your website, and will have little interest in anything other than the exact reason they landed on your website.

What’s so bad about low quality traffic? Well, there is nothing inherently bad about low quality traffic if you are prepared for it, but there are a few things that it might represent:

Search engines don’t understand your website very well and are sending the wrong people
You are over extending your marketing programs. Untargeted marketing is next to useless.
Quality traffic might not be able to find your website as a result of the first two points!

In addition to all these, low quality traffic costs you money! Though you might expect to offset your bandwidth and hosting charges with advertising revenues, low quality surfers are unlikely to pay for themselves, leaving your high quality traffic to pick up the bill.

Low quality traffic might look good on your monthly statistics, but a low quality surfer isn’t a tenth as valuable to you as a high quality one. Retarget your advertising campaigns, cut down on low quality referrals and slim down that hit count statistic. If you can remove ten low quality surfers, and replace them with just one new high quality surfer then you’ll improve the profitability and overall popularity of your website considerably.

Tips On Writing Amazing Blogs

ClubBlogger — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 04:05:15 +0000

There’s arguably no finer way to reach people on the web, than with a well written blog. Whether your objective is business promotion, search engine optimization or good old fashioned journal keeping, the blog is still where it’s at. That’s all very well if you’ve already got a captive audience through a personal website or business, but how do you find new readers, and most importantly; keep the old ones?

Firstly, you’ve got to embrace one principle which applies to all blogs, even if their main function is to act as search engine optimizers: Your blog content must be original and information rich. Search engines and normal readers’ alike share a desire for new information and experience. If we want our blogs to be widely read and popular we must please humans and computers in equal measure, so lots of rich new information in each blog is a great place to start!

If you are writing a personal blog, then don’t write about everyday experiences unless you are prepared to discuss your associated feelings in an unusually open manner. Think about what really drives great plots in TV shows: They are all about emotion! You don’t have to be cynical and calculating about your blog writing, but be aware that using the odd literary technique to generate suspense and emotion where you might feel it in your everyday life is a fantastic way to keep readers.

If you are writing for search engines, don’t forget the readers. Search engine bots are becoming increasingly advanced and are now capable of recognizing poorly written content. The penalty is that a poorly written blog with a similar number of keywords will fall well below a well written entry on search results. Keep things legible and don’t overdo those blogging keywords!

Finally: Keep it regular! There’s nothing readers and bots like more than a good regular dose of the thing they visit the site for. Regular updating will work over time to generate long term blog readers, and it’ll keep bots happy because they can figure out a schedule to visit your site and know that they will always find new content. Get out there and get blogging!