All Entries Tagged With: "blogging"
Can You Make Money Blogging – With Search Up 46%, Of Course You Can
With reports that Global Search Grew By 46% In 2009 you know people are looking for something. If you are wanting to make money blogging then the trick of course is to tap into the topics that people are searching for. Easier said than done but there are ways to succeed.
First, making money through a blog requires a commitment. I won’t say it’s hard work, but it does take that daily commitment to develop your blog and to work at ways of delivering traffic. How do you find what people are searching for? If you’re a first time blogger then let me suggest you start by looking at yourself. What do you have a passion for? What do can you write about right at this very minute with very little in the way of research? That should be your starting point.
If you have a passion for clothing, and you are a plus size, then think about what you can write about that area. Clothing covers such a wide range from pants to tops to dresses and that’s just the outer layer. Do you like capris? Can you write a post such as – Plus Size Capris are Hot. More importantly, can you monetize it? You can even if it is through ads such as Adsense or similar.
Adsense is just one method of monetizing a blog. Other sources of income include affiliate earnings and selling your own products. Can you teach others how to do something? Could you teach something like – How to Excel in Medical Transcription? If you can, take the time to create a first class ebook – they are becoming popular again.
There are many different ways to monetize a blog. Start with areas that you have a passion for. Do a search for affiliate programs that match that niche or settle for straight out pay-per-click advertising. the choice is yours. Write to your blog everyday using keywords that you want to target. Use social media to promote your blog together with article marketing to gain inbound links. You can make money blogging - just read through some of the posts on this blog for more in-depth information on each area.
What’s The Most Important Aspect Of Blogging?
What’s most important when it comes to writing and marketing a business blog? Is it brand? Traffic? Design? Social media? SEO? Or none of the above?
Actually, it could be all of the above, but there is a deeper answer. When it comes to business blogging, there are a lot of factors to consider. But the most important aspect of your blog is your audience. Who are you writing for? Think about it for a minute and when you’ve defined your audience, write it down. Because that’s who you should write every blog post for.
Don’t write for the search engines. Yes, make sure your posts are SEOd, but don’t focus so heavily on SEO that your forget your human audience. Instead, write with your audience’s needs in mind and market your blog, write your blog, design your blog, and promote your blog with that audience in mind. It’s the most important thing about blogging.
A Blog Is The Best Link Building Tool You Have
I love it when people verify what I’ve been saying for years. Michael Martinez back in February had a great post that discussed the three best link building tools. One of those is blogging.
Here’s what he says about the benefits of blogging:
Pros of Blogs
–They are usually easy to set up and low-maintenance
–They are more powerful and flexible than widgets, gadgets, gizmos, and plug-ins
–They allow you to populate multiple domains/subdomains quickly
And I’ll add this to the pro list on blogs as well – They achieve better search engine results more quickly than any other tool available. Yes, even better than articles. Better than static websites. Better than social media. More powerful than a speeding bullet. Etc.
Why are blogs so good for search engine optimization, including link building? Because they are crawled – like all updated content – every single time you update them. The more often you update your blog, the more it will get crawled. The more it gets crawled, the more opportunities you have of achieving great rankings. Each and every blog post you write is treated like a separate web page by the search engines. Therefore, every ranking factor that applies to any web page applies to every single blog post you write. If you have a blog with 500 blog posts then that’s 500 chances to rank for your keyword, 500 chances + for your links to build link juice and gain the age advantage, 500 chances to build anchor text links with high quality and relevance, etc. Blogging is guerrilla SEO on steroids!
I could write all day about the search engine benefits of blogging. But, do it wrong, and you can kill your rankings. That’s why it is important to choose an expert in blogging, ghostwriting, and SEO who can steer you in the right direction and keep you away from dangerous waters.
Want to know more? Get a free consult with a blog consultant.
Can An Off-Site Blog Build Inbound Links To Your Main Website?
One strategy that some SEOs and Internet marketers have used to build inbound links into their main website is to set up an off-site blog and link profusely to their main website. The question is, does this work? There are two parts to this discussion:
- First, yes, it can work to a limited degree.
- But only if approached in the right way.
The Real Purpose For Your Blog
Before you start talking about the link building aspect of your blog, you need to first understand the primary purpose for your blog, namely, to communicate with your customers and potential customers. Your blog is a marketing tool. You want it to draw in potential customers and drive them to your imporant web pages. The most effective blogs are the ones that do this using high quality, relevant content on a consistent basis.
There are three primary approaches to marketing with a blog and each of them should work in tendem to support the others. These are branding, pre-sales, and information publishing.
Let’s discuss these in backward order. Information publishing is all about delivering quality and helpful information to your readers. That doesn’t mean every blog post has to be a dynamic 1,000-word tome. Size doesn’t matter. Quality does.
Pre-sales information is not about closing. You can effectively use a blog as a sales closing tool, but it doesn’t have to be use that way. The way Blog Content Provider approaches blogging is to use each blog post as a pre-sales tool. We set up the sale by delivering useful, relevant information to your readers that interests them in more information and entices them toward your sales pages.
Branding is a term that simply means you develop a recognizable name for yourself in the marketplace. By using a blog as a branding tool you communicate an important message to your potential customers that you are professional and serous about doing business.
How To Build Inbound Links With Your Blog
Your off-site blog can be an important way to attract new business into your sales funnel. Each blog post has the potential to achieve high search engine rankings on its own with the proper search engine marketing techniques. But that alone will not be enough to drive massive traffic to your website.
Inbound links to your main website can increase your search engine positioning relative to your competition. Your off-site blog can play a part in that by adding links to your website from the body of each post as well as in your sidebar. Honestly, though, the links in each blog post – the in-text links – will be more valuable in this regard and can drive traffic to your main website as well as build links.
Another way to build links is through a signature at the bottom of each blog post.
The danger in using this method to build links is that it could be construed as a form of spam if not done properly. Mixing some outbound links into your blog posts to highly relevant, authoritative websites within your niche can assist you with your link building efforts as the search engines see this as a sign that you are using natural linking techniques. But you want to be sure of two things with regard to your outbound links:
- You aren’t link to your competitors
- And you are avoiding bad neighborhoods
The Limitations Of Blogging As A Linkbuilding Tool
Every search engine marketing technique has its limitations. Including blogging. While you can build relevant and authoritative links using an off-site blog, there are some concerns you should take into consideration before you start blogging.
No. 1, don’t put your blog on the same IP block as your website. Host it with a completely different hosting company. The search engines have been known to discount links from sites owned by the same owner just for being on the same IP block and in the same niche.
Secondly, don’t rely entirely on your blog for inbound links. This is one of the biggest mistakes that website owners make. Link diversity is very important. If all of your links are coming from the same source then you will likely cap out on your rankings, and there is a high degree of probability that it won’t be on page 1. You should also build links from other sources. This link diversity along with variation in your anchor text will bring you more search engine favor than your blog alone.
For more information about blogging, click here to speak to a blog consultant.
