According to the Blog Herald there are currently around 200 million blogs worldwide! That is an extreme amount of blogs. Now, it is said that around 72 million of those blogs are in China. So a good portion aren’t even in the English niche. Let’s just say another 50 million blogs are also in other languages, so that leaves around 80 million blogs to compete against! Not that every single blog out there is in competition, but it is sure nice, if you are looking to create traffic to your site, to stand out in a sea of blogs. So I have compiled a list of 10 things you can do to make your blog stand out a little more than the next. These tips are not in order of importance!

1. Create a favicon for your blog. In a “Blog List” or a “Bookmark” your blog will stand out with it’s own “logo.” I don’t know about all of you, but the first thing I look at when I go to a website are the pictures. One of the first pictures to be shown is the Favicon. Any logo is better than the blank page that will show or the common blogger icon. For example, take a look at the Favicon for BloggingisSimple.com. I just took the “B” right from my header image. This will also show up in bookmarks, RSS feeds, several gadgets and widgets by Blogger, etc.
2. Meta Tags are vital for search engines as well as for browsing tabs. This will let people know what they are looking at. This is the Title of your blog! I am by far an expert in SEO (Search Engine Optimization) but do know a little. If you have a self-hosted Wordpress Blog, you can install widgets that will do all the tagging for you. However, some will recommend that you do this without the widget. So choose for yourself which will work best for your blog. One of the benefits of using a platform like Blogger, is that they are already ranking in the search engines, thus, your blog will also if you allow it to. There is an option in the blogger setup that allows you to choose whether or not you want your blog shown in the search engine listings. I have seen blogs show up in the search engines for my name in a matter of few weeks.
3. Add character to your blog with a personalized background. This is useful with blogs hosted by Blogger, Wordpress.com, or hosted platforms. Since everyone is using the same templates, stick out like a sore thumb by customizing your background with either a picture, or an actual template. Just type ‘Blogger Templates’ or ‘Blogger Backgrounds’ in the search bar and explore your options.
4. Add a custom header to your blog. Now, when I say custom, I don’t mean just putting a picture of you and yours in there. If that is all you’ve got, then it is better than nothing. When I mean custom, I mean getting one made with a border, images, your names, the title of your blog, and so on. Make it original. Make it nice and professional. That is one of the first things your readers will look at. If would like us to create one for you, fill out the “Contact Us” form of this site.
5. Photos speak a million words! In the words of my wife, “When I get to a site, the first thing I do is scroll down the page and look at all the pictures. If I like the pictures, then I’ll go back to the top and start reading!” One cool thing you can do is add a slide show to your blog. Blogger has a gadget that can do this for you or you can create your own through Picasa or Flickr and embed it on your blog.
6. Music can spice up your site or bring it down! If you doing a site for business purposes, having music will decline your traffic and kill your content, unless your content is about music. If you have a blog that is for personal use, your friends and family will enjoy some tunes as they check our your stuff. I have embedded music with Playlist.com before but there are many different music players you can use.
7. Have Catchy Post Titles! Make sure your post titles reflect what you have in the content of your post. They must be relevant to each other. The next thing that people look at after the pictures are the post titles. Have the main point of your post in the title and make it exciting, short and to the point! For example: “10 ways to make your blog stand out” works better than “A couple of ways to make your blog stand out.”
8. Adding video to your Blog will always spice things up a bit. It seems that people are turning away from reading to just listening and watching. So use that web cam that came with your computer or go get one. Just a few pointers with a video: Make sure you have good lighting, people will be able to hear and understand your message, and make it short. Don’t draw out a video, usually 1-2 minutes is plenty long. You might even go as far as using a simple movie maker software such as Windows Movie Maker to edit your video a little. If you do this, make sure to include your name in there and end it with your blogs URL. The last thing your visitors see will stick! You can then upload your video to YouTube, Google Video, or even Blogger and embed that on your blog.
9. Always have interesting, useful, and relevant content. I once heard that you can insult, make fun of, criticize, compliment, or tongue bathe your readers, but by all means, DO NOT BORE THEM! Get a little personal with your readers without giving out your social security number, bank accounts and home address. The more you blog the better your writing skills will get.
10. Interact with your readers. Relate, give advice, ask advice, and interact. This will do a number of things for your blog, but the most important, it will bring return visits and loyal readers who feel they have somewhat of an ownership in your blog. That is the best thing that can happen. They in turn will recommend your blog, because they have contributed. Leave comments on other blogs, especially of those who have left comments on yours. Answer emails and comments as often as you can and Do What You Say You Are Going To Do! Meaning, if you say you are going to write a post on a certain subject, do it!

So there you have it. Integrate and follow these tips and you will not only increase your traffic, but you will gain loyalty by having readers who leave your blog fulfilled!

You might think that bringing in some cash out of blogging sounds too good to be true. But that’s the reality! It has been a major buzz on the internet today, and many bloggers have been trying their luck for years. Although some of them ended up with no good result, you could still find ways to lift your hopes high. You just have to be patient and keen into details especially on different blogging techniques. One effective technique to start with, especially if you are into Adsense and other pay-per-click programs, is drawing in thousands of hits to your blog everyday.

Giving up is never a key in a business. So the best approach to use is by looking your way ahead, but do not look into the end of your goal. You may start with writing interesting blog posts. You can turn them into articles by rewriting them substantially. Regular posting is one way to the top so give your blog at least thirty minutes of your time in a day. Your goal here is to raise your profile all over the internet. And blog directory can help you with that.

You are probably wondering how a blog directory can actually do that. It is so simple. It lists your blog according to a category along with thousands of others. And since many internet users have the same interest as yours, they would often search for that through the search engines, and these search engines would crawl over different blog directories. So your blog can have its possibility to show up and be read by thousands of readers online. And this can generate your blog a good deal of traffic.

You might find it hard to understand the value of blog directory especially that your blog is not the only blog listed in the directories. But if you are really eager to learn ways on how to make money online, then you better read and understand the reasons why submitting your blog to a blog directory is a good idea.

1. The structure of blog directories appeal to major Search Engines, such as Google, Yahoo and MSN so they are often crawled for keyword rich information searched through the sites.

2. The power of curiosity attack bloggers to also check who else is listed in the blog directory, especially in the same category. It then creates clicks and exposure to many internet users.

3. Every blog directory receives a large number of incoming links. Most of them do offer an option to provide a small subscription fee for reciprocal link. This results to more links generated regularly, hence, giving your blog a chance to become popular on search engine results.

4. Aside from posting your blog in blog directories, you can also post your blog feed for RSS feed updates, which usually updates on a regular basis. This is easier for internet users to subscribe to your blog RSS feed.

5. Blog directories play an important role to bloggers. They exchange information in different ways, making it simple for internet users to find what they are searching for. Search engines are in one way or another keep an eye on the world of blogs.

6. Blog directory submission is a snap. You can do it manually or through the aid of software packages.

So if you have wanted to increase your blog’s exposure, then you may start submitting your blog to different blog directories. Tons of them are available so you can freely choose what appeals to you and your blog.

You always can make money Blogging guidance in a variaty of ways, and in this article I want to share veil you up to nine 9 ways domination which you burden to make money blogging.

Here is the 9 ways to make money with your blog :

1. Make Money Blogging by Selling Advertising Space – Before the advent of Blogs, we have e – zines and selling advertising space on ezines was a popular plan to earn extra money. If you race your own Blog, you importance charter others patronize imprint your Blogs camouflage bunting ads, solo ads, sponsor ads, classifieds and since on.

Forthwith that we keep Blogs, you subjection repeat the alike racket model that e-zine publishers undertake, that of selling advertising space. Besides placing advertisers ads on your Blog, you obligation again make money Blogging by placing Google Adsense into your Blog.

2. Make Money by providing specialized services like owing to Blog hosting or latitude up Blog – You burden besides earn money blogging by providing mechanical services undifferentiated since gob people to set up their Blogs or providing your own Blog hosting service.

One sample of this is www.typepad.com. This is a Blog hosting service provider that charges a annual charge. Typepad lets you sire your Blog and they will host your Blog for you, and add you cache a quantity of Blog drift.

3. Make Money Blogging by setttin up joint essay marketing – Joint Dare marketing is a competent marketing program full plate by many top online marketers. At last how joint flyer works is this: You befriend person B ‘ s merchandise to your subscriber and customer catalogue, and you arouse a cut from whatever sale that follows from this promotion.

You liability promote the principle of joint jeopardy marketing to Blogs thanks to whole. If you posses a substantial readership to your Blog, you power besides sponsor or endorse certain wares to your Blog readers and this street, and split the profits from the sales generated. This is extended system to make money blogging.

4. Make Money Blogging from using the Membership model – Over stretch, if your blog has lots of postings and serve supereminent merit content, you obligatoriness consider turning bodily into a membership site and charge access for undoubted, further giving you extended approach

5. Make Money Blogging by turning your produce into – Major plan dominion which you contract make money blogging is to repackage your Blog freight into an e – book or an audio product and sell positive. For paradigm, if you bound your own Podcasting representation or an ‘ online radio manifestation ‘, you constraint feeble compile your podcast recordings into a Record compiliation and sell solid.

6. Earn Money Blogging by swapping blogs – You posses heard of ad swapping when absolute comes to e – zine publishing, post publishers publish each other ‘ s ads dominion their own e – zines. This journey, you save on adveritising costs. You burden repeat the corresponding paste-up to Blogs, as swap ads on Blogs as strong. Thence instead of palmy augmentation sample, you inspire to direct, which factor spare money because you to spend!

7. Perfect Money Blogging by turning your blog contented attentiveness RSS feeds again ante up positive whereas number one feeds – Your blog lading constraint embody tainted care an RSS keep. If the merry is admirable, you pledge reconnaissance seeing net businesses that are looking now great gratified for related topics and sell their feed to them.

8. Make Money Blogging by hale, application! – Hey, who is stopping you from putting a PayPal donation jar or button on your Blog? Attached all, proficient are lots of easy nation out finished you sense.

9. Make Money Blogging owing to an Straighten Marketer – Added journey you burden make money blogging is by promoting other persons ‘ s goods on your Blog. This is again proclaimed in that range marketing. In straighten marketing, you influence paid a commission when someone clicks on your rank link and makes a purchase. Depending on the subject of your Blog, you incubus speak for goods that solve individuals ‘ s problems.

For lesson, I had a subscriber who asked me how coed burden blog about BALI and make money from blogging about BALI. I requited reserve her that firstly, feasibly mouse might wish to get-up-and-go calling instead of targeting the broad grade of “BALI”, and using the quotation of a Tasteless BALI TOUR, which is a recess by itself, filly incubus origin a blog on Showy BALI TOUR, providing valuable tip-off since whole since recommended solutions and goods to the upkeep and maintenance of the topic.

Getting your blog ranked high on Google is a fantastic way to attract potential clients. Here’s how it’s done.

1. Select Your Keywords and Keyword Phrases

Choose the keywords and keyword phrases you want your blog post to rank high for on the Google search engine results page. For example, I want my blog post to rank high for the term, “blog ranked high on Google.” Currently there are approximately 286,000 pages using this term so I’ll have to do everything in my power to compete with these web pages to get my blog post on the first page of the Google results page for that term.

My keyword phrase also includes other keyword phrases like, “ranked high on Google” with about 310,000 competing pages and “high on Google” with over 71 million competing pages. Getting to the first page for these terms would be a bonus.

2. Use Your Keywords in Your Blog Title

Google pays very close attention to the words and phrases you use in your blog title. Notice how I used the term, “blog ranked high on Google” in the title of this article. It’s important to use your keyword phrase in your blog title if you want to rank high for that phrase on the Google results page.

Another reason you want to use your keyword phrase in your blog title is to give your reader an immediate understanding as to what your blog post is about. If your blog is listed at the top of the search engine results page for your keyword phrase but no one reads it, it’s of no value. Use a title that will cause people to click through to your blog post.

The New York Times creates two different titles for their articles. They use a catchy, creative or humorous title for their newspaper, and a keyword specific title for the articles and blogs they post to the Internet. They do this because people looking for jokes about the eating habits of nuns generally go to a search engine and type, “jokes about the eating habits of nuns,” not “Nuns, Buns and Puns.”

3. Use Your Keywords in Your Blog Text

Notice how the keyword phrase, “blog ranked high on Google,” is used throughout this blog post. Google pays attention to the text on a blog in order to understand what the blog post is about. Once Google comprehends the content of the blog post, it will categorize the blog based on that information. By using your keyword phrase in your text, both Google and your readers can quickly understand what your blog post is about, allowing Google to accurately categorize your blog making it easy for your clients to find.

In the past, search engine consultants encouraged writers to use their keyword phrase in the first 25 words of their text and again in the last sentence. Today, the search engines don’t seem to pay as much attention to word placement, but reader’s do.

If your article is about your keyword phrase, it’s a good idea to use it in the first and last sentence because it helps your reader quickly know what your blog post is about. It’s also a good idea to use your keyword phrase in the first sentence because that is the text that is most likely to show in the description text on the search results page.

4. Link To Your Blog With Keyword Rich Anchor Text

Get as many one-way links leading back to your blog post as possible from as many quality blogs and websites as you can. Do your best to insure that the text people click on to get back to your site includes your keywords and keyword phrases. This is known in Internet marketing circles as anchor text.

In this example I want the anchor text leading back to my blog post to have the keyword phrase, “blog ranked high on Google,” as the clickable text. The clickable text is the means by which all of those other web sites and blogs tell Google what your blog post is about.

Google provides far more weight to the theme of your blog post based on the quality and size of the sites linking back to your blog than the text on your blog. For example, if you do a Google search for the term, “click here,” you will be taken to the Adobe Reader download web page. It’s interesting to note the term “click here” doesn’t appear anywhere on that page. The reason the Adobe Reader download page comes up first for this term is because there are millions of other sites that use the anchor text, “click here,” to direct people to the Adobe Reader download page.

There are two wonderful ways to get keyword rich anchor text directing people back to your blog post. The first is to write and submit an article about your blog post to other web site and blog owners who will upload your article to their site. In return those web site and blog owners will provide you with a keyword rich anchor text link from your article back to your blog. They get great content for their web site and you get a valuable one-way link back to your blog post.

The second way is to encourage other blog owners to write about your blog post. In doing so, they are very likely to use your blog title as the anchor text leading readers back to your post. This is another reason why it’s so important to use your keyword phrase in your blog title.

5. Ask Your Readers To Digg Your Blog Post

Ask your readers to tell the rest of the world about your blog post by submitting it to one of the social bookmarking sites. They include DIGG, Stumble, Blink and many others. If the title of your blog post includes your keyword phrase, it is likely that this is how your readers will describe your blog post to the social bookmarking sites. This helps Google decide where to rank your site on the search results page.

6. Blog On A Community Site

Recognized Expert, Active Rain, and Christian Blog are all examples of niche community blog sites. Recognized Expert is a site for marketing experts, Active Rain is for real estate professionals and the Christian blog is for, you guessed it, Christians. These niche sites have tons of traffic along with the undivided attention of Google and the other search engines.

If you’re a marketing expert for example, blogging on a site like Recognized Expert will push your blog post to the top of the search results page in a matter of hours. That’s a huge reason to blog on a community site. If you wrote the same content on your own blog, it may take months to be seen by Google, and you may never get close to the first page for your keyword phrase.

Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL and the other search engines explore busy community sites for new content every few minutes. On the other hand, they visit newer and smaller sites every few months. If you’re serious about generating business from blogging, consider blogging on a topic specific community site.

Apply these six steps to every blog post you write, and you will quickly create a huge following of clients and potential clients. This is how the pro bloggers get their blogs ranked high on Google.

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I have successfully been using article marketing now for over three years. Of course I am not the only one! Article marketing has become one of the most popular ways to promote an Internet business because of the low promotion costs involved.

One of the first things I learned was if you don’t get read you are dead! I have used this philosophy to apply to the title of the article and then throughout the introduction, body and closing paragraph of it.

Let me share with you 5 ways that you can improve your articles and help ensure that they get read.

1. The title is very important! Your goal is to draw the reader into the article, but that can be hard to do with the number of articles being submitted to article directories today.

Therefore you need to write an interesting title that grabs the attention of the reader and leads them down into the article. You can do this in various ways including making them interesting, writing funny titles, titles that approach an article from the point of fear, and of course including relevant keywords to serve a search engine bait.

2. One technique that does work is known as the inverted pyramid technique! Because you want your readers to come into the article and make it all the way down to your resource box you need to start out with something very interesting.

What many successful writers on the Internet today know is that you want to include some of the most important information at the very beginning of your article. If you save it to far down in the body people may never read that far to begin with. Of course the risk of that is they will never make it to your resource box!

3. Do not forget to write for search engines either. An easy way to do this is to include your primary key word in the title of your article, and in the first and last paragraphs. From there you should have a goal to write as though you talk.

Because search engines will end up penalizing you for it there is no sense writing for keyword density. You are better off to include your primary keyword or variations of it in the body when it makes sense and sounds natural.

4. Today writing articles on the Internet can be a tremendous marketing tool if you solve problems for your readers. This means you need a write through the eyes of your reader whenever possible.

You do this in several ways, but one of the most important things is you must provide relevant content. Again try to solve a problem for your reader and keep your articles focused on one theme.

5. Keep in mind that the primary goal of your article is to get the click. What that means is your goal is to get the reader down to the resource box and to get them to click on the link you provide for them. If you write your articles with the goal of generating traffic for your business you will find article marketing to be a very profitable way to promote your business.

In summary this is five article writing techniques you can use to improve your traffic by improving your article. As with anything on the Internet this is a skill that can be mastered over time.

Choosing how to monetize your blog is a huge decision! There are many different options and it can be difficult to judge which type your readers will respond to most. Take a look at these different options, and make your choice with your readers and the market overall in mind.

Option 1: Adsense

Adsense is probably the easiest way to monetize — and the most difficult! It’s easy because it’s just a simple code that Google gives you (they even automatically match up the ads for you!). You make money as soon as someone clicks on your ads, whether they actually go on to make a purchase or not. Adsense can also be incredibly difficult. You usually get paid a few cents per click and it can take a lot of traffic for it to add up to something that is even remotely worth your while.

Adsense might be a good thing to test, especially as you’re getting your feet wet with blogging. If you’re in the right market and find the right ad positions and colors, it can certainly turn into a nice hands-off income for you.

Option 2: Affiliate Products

Selling products as an affiliate is a great way to make money. For one thing, you get to earn money from the products without having to fulfill them yourself or deal with customer service issues. Nothing is better than that! The returns are usually higher than with Adsense, provided you’re able to find an offer that converts well with the people who visit your website.

You will have to decide if you want to promote digital or physical products. This decision will likely come down to what kind of niche you’re in and how your site visitors will respond.

Option 3: Creating Your Own Products

After you get a loyal following of readers it’s easier than ever to create and sell your own information product! You’ll have to fulfill the orders and deal with customer service issues, but the tradeoff is that you get to keep all the money! You are also the one who knows your readers best, so you’re likely to come up with an offer that converts extremely well since it’s exactly what they want.

You can write an ebook, create a membership site, deliver a paid e-course, create a video series, or record audio. If you want to make the package even better you can combine a few different approaches to add massive value. The options are endless when it comes to monetizing with your own products. Some of your blog readers might eventually want to become an affiliate of yours as well!

As you look at these different options you might start to feel overwhelmed. That’s perfectly normal! It’s hard to know what the best path is when you’re just starting out with a new niche. A good way to get a feel for the best way to do things is to see what other blogs and sites in your niche are doing. You’re not trying to copy them, you’re simply taking note of what works and using it yourself.