Showing posts with label Blogging Tips. Show all posts

2 New Ways to Advertise Using Google Maps


Google Maps is the most popular online mapping destination. Seventy-one percent of the 91.7 million people in the US who visited maps online in February 2012 used Google Maps, according to comScore. This puts them far ahead of Bing's online map, or MapQuest. People use Google Maps to locate businesses and other landmarks, but there are two new ways that your business can use Google Maps to attract customers.
Blue Pin
If your business is a subscriber to Google's AdWords Express, which is primarily for small-to-medium sized, local businesses, then your business will have a "blue pin" on Google Maps. That way, when someone puts your keywords or business name into Google, you will have a blue pin that stands out from the rest of the pins on the map. When a user clicks on the pin, he or she will go to your business's location on Google Maps. The blue pin will also appear next to your listing in the Google search, making it easier for the user to connect to your location.
Google Offers
Managing a local business is enough work as is; not to mention finding time to advertise to potential customers. Online advertising is a great way to reach a plethora of potential leads. You might think you already have enough on your plate, or are already spending enough advertising dollars on your online marketing campaign.
Through your site analytics, you already know what your customers are searching for on Google to find the products and services you offer. Google Offers makes online marketing for local businesses easy by use of their current AdWords campaign. By jumping in the online coupon business as a competitor to Groupon and LivingSocial, Google is now a competitor with a new program called Google Offers. These offers can be directly linked with your listing on Google Maps and Google Places. This means that if a customer's Google search brings up your business' listing, the customer will see that you are offering an online deal. This is a great way to convert a web user doing a simple search, to a new customer for your business.
When using Google offers, there is certain guidelines that you must follow to be able to place an offer on Google. If these guidelines are not followed, Google will send you a notice advising you that your offer has been suspended due to requirement violations. Don't worry, this doesn't mean that you are unable to put your offer on Google. If you think that your offer is walking on that fine line, you can go to Google offer policies or the Google Business Help Center to better inform you on the requirements.
By Tom M Calvin
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The Best 15 WordPress Plugins The Newbie Blogger Needs

WordPress is an awesome website building platform that is relatively easy to learn, within days even the most timid internet user can have a professional looking blog and website up and running. With WordPress there is no need for HTML or JavaScript coding skills. Everything is created with an easy to use 'plug n play' style system. I guess that is why they call the add-ons 'plugins'.
Once you have WordPress installed onto your server a default theme will be visible, this is usually the 'Twenty Eleven' theme, if you do not like this theme all you need to do is change it. We will talk about how to change themes in another post. For now, the default theme is good enough to start your newbie blog.
WordPress functionality may seem a bit basic at first and it is, but even the basic theme can look great if you use it well, once you start to add the plugins then the magic can really start. Plugins can turn your blog from just a one or two video posts to a complete video style website or it can become a photo gallery. You can add podcasts, sales pages, and ecommerce stores. The possibilities are endless. Anyway, I better not get you either too excited or frazzle your brain with 'too much to learn syndrome'.
I will take it easy and start small. I am going to give you a list of plugins that I think every new blog owner should know about and install before you go into the seriously good plugins. Some are essential and some are, well you guessed it, not. These are in no particular order
1. Akismet- Great plugin that stops spamming comments and deletes automatically saving you the time and annoyance of having to go through the comments left by people pushing porn or Viagra! Akismet is usually pre-loaded into WordPress and should be found in the plugin section. This will need a key for it to be enabled and you will need to register with Akismet to get a key. It used to be available from WordPress.org but unfortunately they have stopped doing that. [Essential]
2. Contact Form 7 - Great plugin this, adds a contact form (if you hadn't already guessed) to your site. You simply add in your email address that you want emails sent to, and any other info you require then copy and paste the simple code it gives you into a page. Give the page a name like hmmm 'Contact Me' hit publish and you are done. [Essential]
3. EzineArticles - This is a cool plugin, when you write a blog post, before you put links or pictures into it you can hit a couple of buttons and send your fresh article straight to EzineArticles for distribution. Now article marketing used to be big but since Google have taken a bit of a dislike to article sites I am not sure how powerful article marketing is; however, it can still be good for you if other websites and newsletters to take your article with a link to your site and use it.
4. Google Privacy Policy - This is a must if you want to monetize your site with Google AdSense. They will not add any adverts to a site that doesn't comply with their terms and a site must have a Privacy Policy. This sorts it all out, similar to Contact Form 7, you copy a bit of code and post it into a page and hit publish. Job done. [Essential]
5. Google XML Sitemaps - The best way to describe this is by using the plugin description itself 'This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com to better index your blog' I couldn't have put it better myself.
6. CKEditor for WordPress- This is great for copying and pasting from Word etc, keeping the text and font formatting. Better than the standard default text editor in WordPress. It gives you more choice and control when writing your blog posts or importing pictures. This is not an essential plugin really, more a preference.
7. cbnet Ping Optimizer - This stops the over excessive 'pinging' of your website to search engines. WordPress by default will 'ping' your blog posts to help them get index by the search engines. If you are like me, you will create blog posts by adding bits, publishing it, taking a look, editing it, updating it etc. etc. This can go on time after time after time. Every time you hit 'Update' WordPress will send a new 'ping'. You may think this is good, it is not. Too much 'pinging' can in fact go against you. Google may think you are spamming and trying to get index really fast for naughty reasons. So you could in fact be punished for excessive pinging. Installing this plugin is a must. [Essential]
8. Share and Follow - This is a social share plugging that adds all those lovely Social Media and bookmarking buttons at the top/bottom of posts allowing people who like your posts to share and bookmark them (obviously) There is also a 'Follow Us' bar where you can add your Twitter and Facebook links so your site visitors can easily join up and follow you on the popular Social Media networks.
9. Yoast SEO - Search Engine optimization is a must for websites to help them get higher rankings in the search engines, this great plugin checks your posts before you publish them to see if they are written as best as they can be with your chosen keyword for them to have a better ranking in places like Google. Alternately you can use All in One SEO Pack plugin. I prefer the Yoast personally. [Essential]
10. Digg Digg - Another Social Media plugin that allows your site visitors to ReTweet or Share your posts. Digg Digg has a great funky floating bar that runs up the side of your posts. I run this alongside share and follow.
11. Statpress Reloaded - This is great little plugin for showing you how many visitors you have had to your site, where they came from, what page they looked at, what search terms they used etc. Once you have activated it, it is up and running unlike Google Analyticator plugin which requires you to set up a Google Analytics account and get an ID password before you can use the plugin. Statpress Reloaded is straightforward and fast working. [Essential]
12. WPtouch - Awesome plugin that automatically turns your site into a smart phone friendly version. Most smart phones these days can view normal websites well and the new version of WordPress seems to adapt automatically when viewed in phones, however saying that. WP Touch makes your site look a lot better and arranges your posts into an easier to read list. Install, give it a try, if you do not like it deactivate it and delete. Not a problem
13. Related Posts Thumbnails - This cool plugin allows related posts to be seen on the side bar and at the bottom of your posts with the featured image, giving your reader something else to see, possibly capture their attention and have them clicking through to your other posts keeping them where you want them, on your site!
14. WP Photo Album - Another excellent plugin that gives a greater visual dimension to your blog. This plugin allows you to upload loads of photos, create albums and galleries. You copy some code into a page, give it a title and hit publish to create picture galleries within your site. It has several widgets that can be placed into the sidebar creating a picture of the day/hour, a slide show of pictures and a top ten pictures section giving your site an incredible visual experience.
15. FeedWordPress - This is for the lazy people who don't like creating their own content. Plugin this baby and it will pull content via RSS from the websites that you choose and place them onto your blog as posts. As long as they have an RSS feed of course. Great for news type of blogs. Use this alongside your own content then you have a winning combination. Regular posting of content is good in the eyes of search engines, they don't normally like duplicate content but if you use it wisely it can do you good. The only drawback is that you must choose the websites that you pull your feed from wisely otherwise your site could get populated with rubbish.
By Tim M Lowe
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How to Write a Better Business Blog Post

Are you covering all the bases with your business blog's content? Or are you sitting back thinking that blogging doesn't work for your business?
If you want to make your business blog work better for you then read on.
  • Is your blog post title interesting enough to make people want to click through and read more?
  • Are there keywords/keyphrases in the title?
  • Are there keywords/keyphrases in the body of the post?
  • Is the first paragraph interesting enough with a good hook?
  • Is your business blog post well-written and not a bunch of fluff and nonsense?
  • Is there a strong call to action in your bio.
Your title has to "talk" to your ideal reader, if your title is generic or bland it will not talk to anyone. Drill down your title and tailor it to your ideal reader. Women: Do the way men drive annoy you? will work far better than Things than other drivers do that annoy you.
Keywords and keyphrases are how you get found in the search engines, you should mention a keyword in your title to stand a chance of being found for that search term. But you can't stop with a keyword in the just the title, for a business blog post to get found you need to mention the keywords or keyphrases a few times in the content itself, as well as tagging the images with that phrase.
Is the first paragraph of your content hook the reader and luring them down the post, is it driving the urge to read more? If it's not then you need to tweak it and adjust it until it does, and that's the great thing about business blogging - it's not set in tone. You can tweak it until it does what it is supposed to do - hook your reader in.
The danger with all types of business post and not just a business blog post is that it's all fluff and no substance. Be ruthless in your editing, if a sentence is there just so you can say you have written a 500 word blog post - delete it. Delete superflous words, sentences and paragraphs. Get rid of the fluff and leave behind strong, useful content. 300 words of great content will perform better than 600 words of great content diluted with fluff.
Is there a strong call to action in your bio? First off check you are adding a bio to each of your blog posts - don't assume the reader will click the about page, give them reason to. Each blog post must have a call to action:
  • If you like this post share it on Twitter
  • If you found this article useful please share it on Facebook
  • If you want more great advice subscribe to my newsletter
If you don't feel comfortable asking your reader to get in touch ask them to share the article on Facebook, Twitter or Google Plus. Remember, one call to action per post or you will confuse your reader.
It's just not enough to write a business blog post and forget about it. For your business blog post to work you need to include the above elements every time you create a post. after you have written the post, you then have to promote it!

By Sarah Arrow
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Top SEO Tips Today

Many small business owners struggle with getting their website ranked - you are not alone. Small business owners needs quality websites, and often they are not sure what it takes to get it noticed by customers. The SEO tips below should help you with these problems.
Tip 1:
Never design your website without SEO. Make sure your web designer understands your reasoning for organic SEO. Doing a retrofit on your shiny new Flash website after it is built won't do it. Spiders can crawl text but not Flash or images.
Tip 2:
Got a new website you want spidered? Submitting your website to Google's search engines take weeks. The quickest way to get your website spidered is by getting a link to it through another quality site.
Tip 3:
When defining the keywords for your page, try to only target a maximum of three per page and make sure that the keywords you are using actually exist in your web page at the beginning paragraph, middle of the body and ending paragraph of the page.
Tip 4:
It's very important to get listed in other online business directories? Listings of your business in directories such as Local.com, Yellowpages.com, your local city's chamber of commerce, or directories affiliated with your business can help boost your page's ranking.
Tip 5:
There many of plugins for WordPress, a handful of favorites that can make a huge difference when it comes to optimizing your site. These SEO plugins take the work out of optimization and allow you to focus on other strategies, like content! WordPress's All-in-One SEO Pack or HeadSpace2 SEO.
Tip 6:
Try different strategies: The goals of an SEO campaign is to convert a lead. A successful campaign can be attained when integrated with other campaigns. Think about attracting visitors that are at an early stage of buying. Think about strategies to get them to sign up for your newsletter.
Tip 7:
Optimizing your pages, such as keywords, heading tags, and internal links can help search engines better recognize the content of these pages and how they're structured. Many of these optimizations aid users' navigation and usability of the site. You have total control over page optimization, it greatly depends on you to make it happen
Tip 8:
Use bold text. Use the tags around some of your keywords throughout your page. Don't use them everywhere
Tip 9:
Have several articles related to your website's Keywords. Make sure you use a different keyword search term for them. For instance, one article might use the keywords "Healthy foods for Babies," while another might use the term "Babies Healthy Foods."
By Scott Bueller 

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Ideas on Quick Ways to Make Your Own Website

With the web being the area most moving forward and progressing in the area of marketing and design, having a website for your company or even for yourself is an essential. For this reason, learning what it takes to make one easily and efficiently is an essential. Here we will lay out the basics to any web site creation from the home base and what it takes to start yourself off as a web designer.
The first thing you need to grasp is what a web page consists of. A web page is just a set of files of code, typically HTML and CSS. These are the basic blocks of a web site. A web site is simple a bunch of these pages linked together in a set order. Where do these pages live? These pages live on what is called a server computer and they are assigned a particular "domain name" (example.com).

Once you have this domain name and place where to store these files you are ready to start the building process. There are two essential languages to building a site unless you are willing to go with a visual builder such as Wix. These flash based sites have their many disadvantages, but if time is that scarce to you then it may be to your advantage to not step into the world of web design and got past the part where you learn to make your own website to just having the site up. These sites like Wix are pretty straight forward and give you a direct way to build not a top quality personally designed site, but something that will work until you have the time to invest in getting a real quality one up.

The essential languages to any site creation are HTML, CSS, and basic PHP. With these three you can learn to use a quick fix and create a site. This obviously does not take into account the design part of the web creation process as this is primarily about the building process of the web developer.
There are several quick fixes or shortcuts if you are willing to learn these basic languages. WordPress is the first among these and is a major advantage to any budding web designer. It allows you to have a site that is fully content manageable (in other words you can have changing and updated content, like a blog for example) and can hook you up with many features that would take you lots of time to learn how to create like preset contact forms, automated email relays, members areas, and so many other pluses.

The second of these is Joomla. Joomla is much like WordPress though WordPress is considered its superior in many respects. They share the manageable content on the site with Joomla being much more about pages and less about making things like blogs or other features.
With a little basic HTML, CSS, and PHP you can build amazing sites. You may find that you like the work so much that you change from the field that you are currently in to working in that sphere as a rule. Learning to make your own website can be amazingly fun and a great way to exercise your creativity.
By Elijah James 

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Make Money From Google Ads - How to Work With AdSense

Most people know that you can make money from Google ads and that in order to do so, you need to display Google ads on your site, but many don't know how to work with AdSense to maximise revenue.
Here are some tips on how to make money from Google ads and how to work with AdSense.

Tip #1 Before you apply for your AdSense account make sure that you have at least one blog or website with some interesting and informative content on it. As a minimum, you should have three or four posts and/or pages. If you submit a site which is obviously under construction and has no real content then Google may reject your application and once rejected, it's very hard to be considered again, so get it right first time.

Tip #2 Play it safe with the type of website you submit. Google do not permit the display of AdSense adverts on sites with adult content, sites with copyrighted content which do not have the legal right to display such content, gambling sites, sites related to drugs, alcohol or tobacco, violence, weapons, hacking, other illegal activities, compensation programmes and "hate" content. Financial and foreign exchange related sites are also having difficulty gaining approval.

Tip #3 Once approved, create your AdSense for content blocks and make sure to create Custom Channels. Custom Channels will enable you to track the success or otherwise of your ad blocks. Name your Custom Channels so that you will recognise which ad block is being referred to. For example, for my text links which run across the top of my site about cats I use the Channel "catstop" and for the block which appears in the middle of each blog post, I use "catsmidpost".

Tip #4 Google allows the display of up to three ad units and three link units per page. However, use your common sense when choosing how many ads to show. If your page has little content, then six ads will just look like one big advertisement. I usually use a link unit across the top, a large square or rectangle mid-post and another link unit at the end of the post. I also use a skyscraper in either the left or right sidebar. Check out Google's advice on hot spots which will show you the best positions to make money from Google Ads
By Liz Canham
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