jeudi 28 février 2013

7 Tips To Make An Effective Ending For Your Blog Posts

Classic fountain pen on vintage paperIn blogging, as in every other type of writing, there needs to be an arc that carries the reader from introduction to conclusion. The ending reminds the reader of the gist of the ideas contained in the previous text, and plants useful cues for further thinking or action. In fact, deficiencies in endings are one of the marks of a mature writer; look at the essays of young children, and you will find ideas trailing off at the bottom of the page, or trivial irrelevancies shoved in at the end, or abrupt, “so there” sorts of closings, to name just a handful of mistakes.

Unfortunately, all too often, many writers with chronological maturity display these amateur failings. Especially since blogging often has a marketing component, whereby the reader is being encouraged to do, feel, or purchase something, the ending of a blog post needs to be just as compelling and engaging as the lead-in. Here are some thoughts on avoiding such weaknesses.
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lundi 25 février 2013

Basics Of On-Page SEO (Explained)

On Page SEOOff-site SEO is a common practice and a number of site owners think that’s the main way you can generate traffic to a website. However, there are on-page tactics that make a huge difference, as well. Making small changes to your various pages will help you increase visibility on the web.

At the end of the day, it all comes down to how high your site or blog is ranked by the search engines. In order to give you every chance to move up the search ranking ladder, on-page SEO tactics should be given a try. The results will begin to show up in a few weeks time.

Here’s what on-page SEO is all about.
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samedi 23 février 2013

5 Interesting Misconceptions Of Blogging

Blog LogoMany people now are starting to create their own blogs for different reasons such as to release stress, to live their passion for writing, to market their business, to connect to more people, and so on. Sometimes we get too paranoid on thinking that nobody reads our blog.

A little bird has told us that longer articles are better—these are favored by search engines and readers will perceive the post author to be an expert for writing such a lengthy explanation of a simple idea. To make the article long, bloggers would write flowery words and go in circles. This is one misconception in blogging. In this article, we will talk about further on this and the major misconceptions with blogging.
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vendredi 22 février 2013

5 Facebook Tips For Driving Traffic To Your Blog

Cool Facebook LogoBlogs and social media sites go hand in hand. They reference one another and drive visits to one another, as well. There are many aspects of Facebook that can help boost clicks on your blog, but you have to be wise about the tactics.

Posting too often on Facebook turns off your friends and page fans. If they “hide” your posts (or worse yet unfriend / unlike your page), you’ve lost a connection and a few extra clicks all because of your overzealous posting.

Managing your Facebook page ethically is vital for your online reputation. Without monitoring what people are saying about you or your work publicly could damage your success severely. Also, it could cost you readers.In addition to keeping an eye on your reputation, there are ways to increase traffic to your personal or company blog by utilizing your Facebook page.

First, there are a few ground rules to obtain a solid foundation.

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jeudi 21 février 2013

8 Essential Do’s And Don’ts Of Guest Posting

8 Essential Do’s & Don’ts Of Guest PostingGuest Posting undoubtedly plays a pivotal role in the context of search engine optimization. The concept of this strategy is quite simple but it yields great results! It is one of the best and most reliable ‘white hat’ SEO techniques that add to the online reputation of your website. In this article we will provide some handy do’s and don’ts of this strategy that will help amateur SEO professionals to get things right.

The Do’s of Guest Posting

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mercredi 20 février 2013

Manage Your Social Media Efforts With Content Curation Tool Rebel Mouse

Rebel MouseRumours of the influence of ‘social search’ made internet marketing teams sit up and take notice. Bloggers should pay attention too because the promotion potential of social media is real. Several posts have been published here on Spice Up Your Blog about how to use social media to promote your blog (5 Tricks To Sync Up And Maximize Your Social Media Efforts & How To Create A Sustainable Social Media Strategy.) However with all this content around we’re in danger of overloading our potential audiences. We need to organise this content in order to make it more accessible and reach our target audience. And so, content curation is born.

What is content curation?


Content curation, like any other form of curation is the process of presenting content with a centralised theme and providing context so that the best and most relevant resources for a certain topic are grouped together. Another guest blog 5 Content Curation Tools to Help Your Build Content dealt primarily with curation tools that gather content from other authors, I’d like to look at a new platform that allows you to gather together all your social media output in one place in a hybrid of curation and social media management. Meet RebelMouse.com.

RebelMouse is my new favourite content curation site and I’m not the only one. Content buffs all over the web are falling over themselves with glee. I first heard about it from lovely blog site Launch Grow Joy. So what is this amazing new service? RebelMouse is a ‘social media aggregator’ which you link to your Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google+, Flickr and Pinterest accounts and then watch as it sorts through your most interesting past posts. TechCrunch described it well as a “Pinterest style collage that represents your social media presence”. It was developed with publishers in mind and has in fact been adopted as a major tool for journalists, bloggers and social media enthusiasts.

Getting started


Although the login process leaves a lot to be desired (you are redirected twice, first in and then out of your chosen social profile) I found the rest of the experience really slick. Connect social media profiles to RebelMouse to pull in all your past posts through those channels. Using this content a Homepage is created for you, with posts containing video or images generally receiving preference. You can edit the front page by changing what is displayed as well as where and how. Then go on to create new pages to sort the content by category or display posts that weren’t previously selected for display. All your other posts will automatically be saved in a ‘drafts’ tab for easy access and management.

You can edit your RebelMouse site on a Dashboard page. This means curating your own content, creating more connections to your other profiles around the web, including embedding your RebelMouse page on your blog and redesigning your RebelMouse site. Sort your posts with tags and create different pages for different themes to make the most of storytelling potential that curation is all about.

I call it a hybrid of social media management and content curation because first and foremost you are curating your own posts. However these may be posts where you shared content from around the web so you’re adding to a topic with more than just your own organic content. You can also ‘stick’ content you find online directly to your RebelMouse site, without posting through Facebook or Twitter first. While doing that you can also post through RebelMouse onto your Facebook and Twitter. Although unlike other social media management tools like TweetDeck and HootSuite you can’t time your posts. RebelMouse’s position as a hybrid means this isn’t its primary purpose but through changes and updates may be possible in the future.

Social Media

More treats for early users


Rebel Mouse is currently in its very early stages, running a Beta that is subject to lots of changes in the near future. Signing up early seems to have several benefits:

Use their developers for free! RebelMouse are actually offering to help you build your RebelMouse site into your website or blog. It is possible to do this yourself but why not take them up on this rare opportunity? Additionally you can have a say on how RebelMouse develops. The service is still very much in the development stage so now is the time to ask for the features you want because you’re far more likely to get them.

You’ll be able to save the username you want. You’ll have a greater chance of creating continuity with your blog or social media accounts by selecting your ideal username.

You could get featured. As RebelMouse go to town promoting their service in the early days they need quality examples of how their site is being used. You can put yourself forward to be featured and get publicity off the back of their promotion efforts.

The benefits for you


Your past posts become a useful, easily accessible resource for you and others. This is a chance to collect your posts together in a clear and visually appealing way.

You’ll get statistics relating to your posts that show how much impact your post has had e.g. page views, clicks and shares. This feature is set for some big updates in the future and should provide a clear view of the success of your social media output.

Lastly one of RebelMouse’s most appealing attributes is that it optimizes your social media content. You can tell your audiences and the search engines what certain content relates to instantly. As I said at the top social search is gaining influence. Playing up to this fact can only be a good thing.

My advice is to get on the bandwagon now before you get left behind.

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mardi 19 février 2013

SEO Techniques To Recover From Google Penalties

SEO techniques to recover from Google penaltiesGoogle is a great source of vast information. In fact, all search engines are indeed most efficient and cheapest way to reach masses. So it is obvious for any business to rely on them for promoting themselves and gaining more and more traffic. But for the past few months, all those websites who were top rankers on Google are now suffering from major drops in Google ranking.

What is Google penalty- Google penalty can be defined as the manual actions which are taken by Google against various websites who seem to use such techniques which add to the violation of Google webmaster’s guidelines.
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dimanche 17 février 2013

Common Sense Tips To Avoid A Rubbish Blog

Blog In Bold Text With Computer KeyboardWould you like insight into some fundamental points you should adhere to when making a great blog? Good, because in this article, we’ll be discussing some of the basics you might have overlooked when making your own blog.

We’ll cover a few simple design techniques you should take into consideration when you first start your blog, such as what content management system to use and basic layout, then we’ll progress on to blog post structure and the importance of good grammar and punctuation.

So let’s begin!
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samedi 16 février 2013

5 Free Image Sites To Keep Your Site Legal !

It’s all too easy to head on over to Google Images and search for your target key phase, then poof! There we go, a brand new image for your site or latest blog post. Unfortunately, using these images will more than likely result in infringing upon someone else’s copyright. Not only that, but the artist or photographer will have worked hard to create that image and deserves attribution for their creation.

We’ve all been there; someone decides to copy your blog layout or latest post, removes your attribution and claims it for their own. So why is copying someone else’s image any different?

Fear not though friends, there are ways to get your hands on high quality images which are fit for most purposes without having to spend a penny!

Be aware, some authors still require attribution but a simple e-mail is usually all it takes to legally use an image.
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vendredi 15 février 2013

Effective Writing: How To Write Emotion-Based Blog Posts

Growing up we’ve all heard “Don’t be too emotional” a number of times. Even as adults we steel ourselves with phrases such as – “If you don’t want to get hurt, don’t show your feelings”. Perhaps, we’ve even given the advice ourselves? Emotions are bad and must be kept hidden or else, all hell will break loose.

Emotions sell

Advertising experts know that emotions sell. People respond to emotions. We remember commercials that make us cry, laugh and think. To make a campaign ad successful, it has to touch people enough to want to do something, whether it is to pick up the phone to give a donation or to order that delicious-looking pizza you’ve just seen on TV.

If you could translate that into your writing, you won’t have to worry about boring your audience. So yes, this is the time to unearth all that pent-up emotions you’ve been hiding, because guess what, you might actually earn from them!
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dimanche 10 février 2013

How To Get Your Blogs On-Page SEO Right In 2013

SEO Image Jigsaw guyA lot of webmasters get the wrong idea on what true on-page SEO is. The engineers at the major search engines like Google and Bing put up algorithms that can do much more than just detect if the content on your website is unique or not. Optimizing your on-page SEO is not about “tricking” the search engines. It is about doing the right things to meet their requirements and provide a good user experience to web searchers. In this article, I will show you how to do that.

Duplicate Content vs. Syndicated Content vs. Unique Content


I will start with a heavily discussed (and misunderstood) aspect on the subject: unique and duplicate content.

People often make the confusion between duplicate content and syndicated content.

The issue of duplicate content occurs when you have multiple pages on your own website that have the same content. This is not something that always happens on purpose. It may be a genuine mistake by the Webmaster, or it can be that the same page has different versions (one for desktop computers, a mobile version, a printable version, etc.).

There is no real “penalty” given by Google for this, but they certainly do not want the 2nd, 3rd and 4th spots on their results page to be taken by different versions of the same page. So what they do, is “pick” the one page their algorithm “thinks” is best for the users, and displays that only in the results page. The problem is that the algorithm sometimes gets it wrong.

Google explains how to fix this issue with rel=“canonical”.

View the full explanation and instructions on how to use it here:

==> http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139394

Then there is what we call syndicated content. This is content that is posted and re-posted many times on the web, on different pages of different websites. For example, an article posted on EzineArticles may have been posted on 8 different websites. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but again, the search engines do not want the same content to appear in multiple spots on their results page; so they let their algorithm decide which page is the best for listing. This depends on a lot of factors, like how many backlink the page has, or how many social signals the page is receiving.

This is why creating unique content is viewed as THE way to “rank your way up the SERPs”. Unique content avoids the confusion. It also shows more time and devotion, hence, more value. This is not to say that you cannot rank with syndicated content! But it’s just that you will have to provide more value than the other pages (maybe generate more comments from your reader-base?).

The Exact Keyword Density Finally Revealed

Keyword Density Collage

People also tend to emphasize on a “magic number” concerning keyword density. “Aim for 1.5%”, says 1 ‘expert’, while another will say, “3 – 5% is the way to go!”

While having too much of your keyword in your article may be considered as keyword stuffing, the issue should not arise at all if you are writing with the intent to provide genuine value. If you come up across good keywords in your research, writing content around them will naturally get you to do the right things. Let’s say you pick 1 keyword to write about:
  1. You will naturally have the keyword in the title
  2. You will naturally mention the keyword a few times in the article
  3. You will naturally use the so-called “LSI keywords” in the article (you won’t even have to look for them)
That’s all the SEO you need in terms of keyword density. A number cannot possibly indicate how good an article is (unless the number is 15% or something, which would then definitely be stuffing!).

Examples Of Good Internal linking, And Why It Works


An extremely good example of internal linking is Wikipedia. Have you ever noticed how often Wikipedia ranks #1 – #3? Their internal linking structure is amazing. All of its articles have anchor text linking to other articles on its own domain. It’s almost impossible for any search engine to “miss” a page they host.

Just for fun, I searched for “seo” on Google. The first result is…Wikipedia! The very first sentence has 5 links, each linking to an internal page!

See it for yourself:

==> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization

Internal linking shows a strong structure, and suggests that your website is well themed. Here is an example:
Let’s say you publish an article about weight loss on your blog. It’s probably going to contain phrases like “drink a lot of water”, “exercise regularly” and “fat metabolism”. These could link to the other articles you publish on your website; “Water & Weight Loss”, “3 Sample Workouts for Losing Weight” and “How Your Body Burns Fat”.

Provide a good user experience in terms of "being on your page"


It’s good to be creative, but there is a limit! Pale orange text on a yellow background is hard to read for most users. It’s unpleasant. And when people don’t like it, it doesn’t rank well!

Let’s again take Wikipedia as example. No fancy colors, no fancy images; just plain old black text on a white background. Google does the same, and so does Apple.

Always give priority to “clean and neat” over “fancy and complex”.

Why you need to avoid software for your on-page SEO


It may be heart breaking for many on-page SEO software providers, but honestly speaking, it’s more about you than the software you use (for on-page SEO!). The use of software should actually be kept to a minimum when it comes to this aspect of optimization. Software cannot “feel” (yet) how it’s like to be on a page, as a human.

However, you can. Be a good and objective judge when looking at your page. Do you like it? Would you be able to read for long on it? Is it pleasant? Is the article useful? Does the page provide value? These questions are what on-page SEO is about. If you answer “Yes” to all of them when analyzing (with your eyes and brain) your page, then you’ve probably got it right. If not, then work towards making all these questions an indubitable “Yes!”.

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mardi 5 février 2013

Top SEO Linking Dos And Don'ts For 2013

Correct tick and wrong xAh the old hyperlink. One of the most basic and fundamental aspects of web design and crucial to the whole infrastructure of the internet. It's a critical system for sharing information and for navigating our way around the plethora of sites on offer, and it's the foundation of things like Google search (and so SEO) and of PPC Marketing.

The link hasn't changed all that much in the days since the birth of the web, but what has changed is the way we use it and our views of it and sometimes this can even get quite controversial. So let's look at some linking dos and linking don'ts to help you navigate your use of hyperlinks to the betterment of your blog, website or online business.
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vendredi 1 février 2013

Complete List Of 25 Best Android Apps For Bloggers

Android guy 3dWhen I started blogging in order to do some work I had to head to the desktop computer in the back room.But times have changed and the introduction of android phones and tablets have made the bloggers work much much easier.From taking notes, photos and research to actually waiting and publishing posts there are so many apps to help the blogger.

In this post we will focus on the most useful 25 apps for android phones and tablets for us bloggers.So if you blog with WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr or any other platform we have something for you !

Lets start off with the android apps for each of the main Blog platforms.With these apps you can quickly and effortlessly update your blog on your chosen platform.

25 Best Android Apps For Bloggers

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