Friday 27 December 2013

The 3 Steps to Setting Up a Popular and Successful Blog

0 comments Posted by Unknown at 17:02
There are hundreds of different formulas or paths to achieve a successful blog, but most pathways will have some basic concepts that will always remain the same. I am so sure you must have read most of it on many blogs (the most often repeated one — Original and well written content) , which is quite a necessary factor , but not the only factor. To keep it easy I have broken it down to three simple steps. This post is made for basically word press based blogs but can be applied to other websites as well.

Get Traffic and make your blog Popular

In my 10+ years of blogging, I have realised that these three factors that make up the basic recipe of any successful blog is just 3 factors as given below
  • Content ( Regularly Posted Content)
  • SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
  • Design (Look and structure of the blog)
Good Content is necessary mainly to build up a regular audience that comes back to your blog repeatedly and also get your posts linked, leading to AUTO SEO for your blog. An yeah don’t forget that Google also likes good content except once in a while when their evil pandas and penguins do stuff that they are not supposed to do. People also bookmark good content which make them comeback at some part of time to your blog.
SEO is needed like every good product that needs advertising to get it noticed. Unless you seo optimize you blog, it’s unlikely that you will be found on the vast internet where millions of blogs are vying every day for every person’s attention. This is made easy by word press SEO plugins that make the job easy for you.
Design is a concept that pretty much needs no explanation. If you seen any makeover show on TV , you can get what I am trying to say , you make something look good ( like a blog – not a ugly chick) and people will come back and it will also register on their mind. Design includes the colours of your blog, structure of your blog and also the overall look of your blog. If you notice most successful blogs have a light colour (or white colour) theme.
So now that you got a good idea of why these 3 steps need to be implemented on your blog or website, I will show you how to do it the easy way and the hard way.

Content

Content can be the hardest part of these three steps to get your blog popular, just because it’s the most time consuming of these 3 steps. To make this part easier its always recommended to have a blog topic or niche that you are passionate about and like to write about. I Have never SEO researched my topics to post before blogging and I still get decent traffic for my niche, because the content is good. Get windows live writer for blogging and save content that interests you in your niche on windows live writer and finish and post it when you get time. One way to keep the regular flow of your blog posts going is to at least write four articles for your blog and keep ready to post ( which takes care of at least 4 posts for a month) and then in between when you get time and find articles that interest you and you want to blog about just add them as bonus posts to your blog in-between your this 4 posts. YOU can vary these numbers of posts to suit yourself depending how frequently you want to update your blog. This was the hard way, some easy but not as effective Ways are given below for the people who are always short on time or are just part time bloggers like me.
The easy way to get content for your blog
Get content for you blog from other people, this can be done in two ways PAID and Free
FREE content – The easy Way to get free content is to get people to do guest posts for your blog on you blog niche topic (to keep it relevant). This becomes easier the when your blog has got a higher Google rank as people will want to feed of your high Google ranking.
Nowadays you will also get many paid offers from SEO companies ( with provided content and link ) to post on your blog for a fee, which is happening even more after the GOOGLE PANDA & PENGUIN update. These sort of offers are good because they content provided is free and you get paid as well.
Hard way and Paid way to get content for your blog
PAID for CONTENT, for blog – This method involves a bit of work, mainly trial and error until you get the right person, with the use of content writing services that can be offered for a fee to you on freelance sites. You can get an article written for as low as $5 an article, but also finding a person who can write it for $5 without grammatical errors and good content is a bit of a hit and miss until you find that correct person. I Myself do article writing , so I know the time it can take to write a well written article , so if someone can do that for $5 and come up with good well written content then it’s cheap.
Some of the websites where you can source article writers for blogs are
Freelancer.com
Odesk.com
Fiverr.com
There are plenty more websites (vworker.com , guru.com, elance.com) which provide these services but I myself have not done any business with these sites so far .People can charge you from $1 an article to $25 an article on these websites, but you can get either well written article or a bad grammar article for somewhere between $2 to $10 an article. If your blog is making a decent amount of income this strategy is well worth considering to free up your time to focus on SEO and other aspects of the blog that needs some tweaking and attention.
When you compare all the three aspects mentioned, I believe content is one of the most important aspects of a blog, because good well written content will make people come back to your blog and also is the reason for you getting more natural links to your blog and therefore getting more traffic. Beginner Bloggers often overlook the importance of this factor and later on there is a lot of reverse work to be done to fix this.

SEO

SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimization. When a website or blog is search engine optimized it is using tools and methods to rank higher within search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. The easy way to get SEO for your blog is to get a theme which is seo enabled or then has a specific SEO function added in. SEO in a theme will only help you a little bit now days, as the definition of SEO today is rapidly changing, no thanks to Google’s regular updates on SEO. The other factor that is increasingly being taken in as measure of your seo value is you popularity on new popular social websites like Facebook, twitter and Goggle+.
One good strategy for improving you SEO and Traffic rapidly is to focus your energies on one thing — get links from authority sites. A website that is highly ranked in search engines results in more traffic to your website
A good way to be up-to-date with SEO for your blog is to read what’s going on in the SEO area, by reading reputed SEO blogs like SEOMOZ.com/blog, SEOJOURNAL, DAILYBLOG TIPS and also Google and BING webmaster tools blogs. If you got a Google account, a Google webmaster tools account or a Bing Webmaster tools account will also help keep you in good stead and help you keep a watch on your site to check if everything is proper and functioning as it should.

Design

Design is not only a feel good, look good factor but also helps bring in more people back to your blog, even more if the content is good as well. Who doesn’t like to be associated with a good looking person?, the same goes for a blog to a small extent. When a website looks professional and neat more clients and Viewers will be attracted to it. SEO needs a nice looking website design in order for them to both work more effectively. If a website does not appear clean and friendly customers and clients will be put off by it
One of the other important factors for good design that is often overlooked is easy navigation and structure. Your blog visitors should not get frustrated trying to find things on your blogs. A well laid out top navigation bar with appropriate sub- links under appropriate headings, a search button for your blog and Social buttons placed in optimised positions will improve the likeability of your blog as well, due to a better user experience.
Contrary to some beliefs, your blogs design could actually be responsible for your lack of traffic. Design for a blog is getting cheaper by the day thanks to heaps of new freelance sites as mentioned above. Due to these cheaper prices, Websites that provide themes have also started reducing their prices to make it more affordable an affordable word press theme.
Good design isn’t only about the aesthetics of the blog. It also affects how your website looks on all the different web browsers that people use to browse websites. The only safe way to make sure your website does well in all browsers is making your site compatible with all of them. Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Opera — your website should be tested against each of them or at least at a minimum the most popular of browsers and how they look and render on them.
“No matter how great your blog looks, if it’s hard for your viewer to navigate your blog and find what they want, you’ve defeated your own purpose. Great design is a good marriage of form and function and usability.”
To conclude I can say there is no magic fix that your blog will become popular overnight, there are a just a few things you should get educated or get some focus on for a successful blog “I suggest learning about blogging, especially content marketing, then perhaps social media, how search engines work, and copywriting, for starters.
Read More »

Wednesday 25 December 2013

Google Will Start Notifying Users with Malware

0 comments Posted by Unknown at 18:40
A couple of days ago Google announced that it will start notifying users of its search engines about possible infections of malware or trojans on their machines. Initially the effort will be focused on the DNSChanger trojan, but hopefully it will be extended to other malware.
DNSChanger is a Windows-based trojan which changes the registry containing the nameservers your computer uses to find websites. As a result you’ll type something on the browser and will be redirect to another website, possibly containing further malware.
In order to be notified about a possible infection all you need to do is to search on Google.com. Here’s how the warnings looks like:
google-malware-report
If you are wondering why they don’t this more often, here’s why, according to a Google security engineer:
“In general we want to notify users [of malware infections] anytime we are capable of doing so, but the fact that we don’t do this more often is really just because it’s hard to come across cases where we can do it this accurately. In many cases we only have maybe a 90 percent confidence that someone is infected, and the false positive rate of 10 percent is simply too high to be feasible. But in this case we can be essentially certain that someone is infected.”
Read More »

Tuesday 24 December 2013

15 Tips For Those Who Want to Make Money Online

0 comments Posted by Unknown at 15:56
If you are hoping for some kind of ‘secret’ or ‘magic pill’, I am sorry but you will not find it within this post. In fact, I can assure you that you will not find it anywhere else on the Internet either.
However, that doesn’t spell doom and surely doesn’t mean that you will never be able to achieve your goal of making money online. While there are no secrets or magic pills, there are tips and points that can help you in your journey. Below you’ll find 16 of them.
1. Have a concise goal and plan
You need to have a goal and a plan. Don’t even think of running aimlessly and blindly. It won’t work. Be realistic in whatever you set out to achieve. Do not expect to make millions within a month or so. Have the courage to take actions and constantly remind yourself to why you ought to set out doing so.
2. Don’t even think of doing it alone. You are no genius
You may be good at a certain field, but you’ll inevitably need others to achieve success. Find a great mentor and learn to trust that person. It doesn’t have to be someone you personally know, as long as you can learn from him/her and build a relationship that is mutually beneficial.
3. Don’t ever think of quitting. Failure is just part of succeeding
Do you want to know the real truth behind most millionaires? There were willing to do what it takes, and they persisted even when things were falling apart. Nothing will ever come easy or cheap. Success comes to those who work hard and don’t quit.
4. You are who you are. Don’t even for a second think of faking it
Be genuine about who you are. Don’t try the “fake it till you make it” strategy or you might get burned. People can see right through to what you are, and they will move away if they perceive you are posing.
5. Think outside of the box
Get creative. Create the opportunities instead of waiting for one to come falling onto your lap. Keep your options open. Build networks and drive in ideas. It could be crazy, it would be silly, it can be wacky, but such ideas have eventually make many millions online.
6. The art of multitasking — expand your horizons
I understand the importance of focusing, but to an extent, you must deliberately learn to expand your horizons. Do not constantly put yourself onto a fix, rigid position. Don’t tie yourself down. Learn to diverse and see opportunities in a many different things as possible.
7. Trust your gut and your instinct
Your head speaks of what you think is logical, where else your gut and instinct takes you to what may seem impossible. Are you willing to strive into the unknown?
8. Have a vision
You need to be able to visualize how your life will look like when you achieve your goals and consider yourself successful. What kind of business will you have? What kind of customers? How will your day looks like?
9. Turn obstacles into opportunities
We all face obstacles, be it in our personal or professional life. The ones who succeed are those who know how to turn obstacles into opportunities. For example, even if you fail at something, make sure to learn something out of that experience.
10. Take action
So far we talked about goals, vision, not giving up and so on. It is all cool and dandy, but at the end of the day you need to take action if you want to succeed. Roll up your sleeves and start working! And repeat this day after day.
11. Be willing to take risks
Life in itself is a all about taking risks. If you want to succeed and make money online you must be willing to risk. You need to step out of your comfort zone. That is when real things get done.
12. Develop the ability to listen
We have one mouth and two ears, but few of us behave proportionally. Learn to listen. You will see there are many benefits when you talk less and listen more. You get to collect more new ideas and inspiration, earn trust and respect and ultimately, know more. Utilize what you have congregate wisely and see that you benefit from it.
13. Have the power to believe when others don’t
Don’t let others be the reason and support you need to achieve your goals. Believe in what you can do and decide to stick with it. You don’t need others telling you what you can do or can’t. Convinced yourself that you will be able to do it in any way possible. If you fail, that is just part of the process of succeeding. Be strong! Stay Strong! It is ultimately your own responsibility to see to where you are going, not others.
Read More »

Monday 23 December 2013

8 Solid Entrepreneurship Tips

0 comments Posted by Unknown at 16:33
A couple of days ago Neil Patel posted a very interesting post on his QuickSprout blog, titled 8 Core Beliefs of Extraordinary Entrepreneurs. As usual Neil hits the nail on the head. For instance, here’s the first point, which I think applies to the majority of people, myself included:
Belief #1: Make a decision and go!
This was one of the first lessons I learned when starting my first business and it was extremely hard to get used to making a decision and then taking action on that decision.
I was so afraid I was making a mistake. Since then I’ve learned that making a mistake is not a bad thing. You actually learn from those mistakes, which helps you make better decisions down the road.
You will struggle with hiring and firing people, project budgets, office space and advertising creative. When you first start off in business you will take days and even weeks to answer these questions.
This core belief actually came back to me when I lost a million dollar client. They were happy with the service I was providing, but they wanted to know what else I was going to do to take their business to the next level. I had a few ideas, but I didn’t make a decision on which idea I was going to act on. Long story short, I took too long to make a decision and I lost a $1.2 million client.
The other points are just as interesting/practical, so make sure to set 5 minutes aside and read the full article.
Read More »

Sunday 22 December 2013

How I Made $900 With A Mini Website, In The First Month

0 comments Posted by Unknown at 16:20
When I re-opened the Online Profits training program back in June, there were two main changes. First of all the course became virtually free. That is, you just need to create a hosting account with my hosting partner to gain a lifetime member account to the program now.
The second change was the introduction of a new section in the members area, called “Live Case Study.” Inside that section members would basically follow the steps I would take to build, promote and monetize a website from scratch. I created this section because I wanted the members to gain some practical knowledge too, learning how to apply all the concepts they would get from the training material.
I decided to build a mini website for the case study (also called niche website), because you don’t need to spend too much time or money building one, and once the site is “complete” it becomes a passive stream of income.
This doesn’t mean that making money with mini websites is fast though. I launched my mini website on July, and I was expecting to start generating some revenues with it after three or four months. But this little project surprised me. In the very first month it generated $875 in profits, and I only used free methods to promote it. I am not sure how things will evolve, but if things keep going as they are by the end of the year the mini website will be making close to $2,000 per month.
If you want to follow the case study and check all the steps I am taking to build and promote the mini website, with screenshots and monthly reports, you just need to join the Online Profits training program. I say “just” because it is a no-brainer right now. You’ll pay $5 or so to sign-up for a hosting account with our partner (HostNine), and you’ll get complete access to our training material, the live case study, the resources section, the content library and more. Plus, you get another hosting account, and you can use that to build your own mini website.
Read More »

Saturday 21 December 2013

Six Rules of Blogging (That Also Apply to Twitter)

0 comments Posted by Unknown at 13:12
I’ve been blogging for around 4 years now and despite all the changes we see in technology and software, the ‘rules’ to a successful blog tend to have remained the same. Yet, while the rules haven’t changed much, a lot of our traffic generation methods have. Gone are the days where 50 votes would guarantee a Digg homepage or you could place some technorati tags in your post and get thousands of visitors.
Each niche is getting more competitive by the day but it still doesn’t mean you can’t stand out from the crowd. One of my favourite new sites for creating relationships (hugely important) and getting website traffic has actually turned out to be Twitter. For the last few months, the micro-blogging has been in my top 5 referring sites, sending thousands of visitors monthly.
In this post I want to look at six common rules which can help with your blogging and also benefit the Twitter users of you out there who want to drive more traffic back to your site. Please note that I use the term ‘rules’ loosely, everyone has their own way of doing things and there will always be exceptions but you’ll probably find that these work well for you.
1. Provide Value
Let me ask you all a quick question: Why do you read Daily Blog Tips? I can safely assume you’re a blogger, but what is different to the hundreds of other blogging blogs out there? While answers to this may differ, the underlying factor is that the site provides value to you in one way or another and you don’t want to miss it. That is the single most important reason anyone subscribes to a blog.
They get value, whether that value is in the form of humour or in the form of how to make money, that’s what people want. Instead of getting into blogging to think of how you can benefit (mindshare, income etc) look at how you can benefit your readers. How can you make someone laugh, how can you make someone more money or in the case of this site: how can you help somebody become a better blogger?
If you offer constant value to your readers, you’ll give them an important reason to stick around.
Twitter Tip: Instead of just linking to your website all the time, why not help people out. Ask people who you can help them or even just inspire people with some motivational quotes.
2. Don’t Flood Readers with Posts
I’ve ran a number of blogs, from ones that focus on internet marketing, one that covers self improvement and for a while I even ran a celebrity blog (which I quickly sold). What I’ve learned from this is that certain types of blogs have a different level of posting frequency. If I only wrote once per week on a celebrity gossip blog then readers of the site are going to miss out on all the news.
However, if I run a site about personal development and write a 3,000 word post everyday, that’s going to be far too much for people to digest, and I’ll probably end up repeating much of what I’ve already said. Unless you run a news blog that needs to be updated multiple times per day, try to find a nice posting schedule that you can keep to. I tend to post around 3-4 times per week on my main sites.
Twitter Tip: Overactive users tend to get unfollowed. This has been minimised by tools like Tweetdeck, but if you are tweeting 10 x per minute (some people really do this) then you are going to clog up the twitter ‘stream’ and people will stop wanting your updates.
3. Take Part in the Conversation
This point is relatively obvious so I’ll get straight to the point. Blogging is not just about you and it’s actually not even just about your readers. It also includes the conversation that goes on between your blog and others in the same industry. Read the blogs of others and leave comments to let them know what you think of their sites.
Link out to others and you’ll find that people will start linking out to you; you can even go as far as connecting with other blog authors on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn and stay connected that way. Do not think that your industry is confined to your blog; there’s a whole world out there.
Twitter Tip: Get to know the people that follow you and follow the leaders in your industry. I’ve made many friends this way that has led to Re-Tweets and even backlinks from their websites.
4. Make Your Blog unique
There are a lot of things you can do to make your blog stand out:
  • Have a unique design
  • Write long, detailed posts in a niche that writers short informative ones (or vica verca)
  • Implement an idea nobody else uses like the bloggers face-off or a list of top blogs
  • Bring in authority figures for interviews
  • Offer content in different formats such as audio and video
  • Give away a free eBook for more in-depth topics like this one I did on how to make friends
Despite new blogs being created every single day, it doesn’t mean you can’t stand out from the crowd. Make sure you offer pure value consistently with a splashing of the above and you can’t go far wrong.
Twitter Tip: Make your profile stand out by adding an image and a creatively designed profile. It looks far better than a generic offering and shows you really care about getting involved.
5. Make it Easy for Readers to Connect
Quickly think of some of your favourite blogs that you read regularly. DailyBlogTips? TechCruch? ProBlogger? Something that I find in common with people and their favourite blogs is that they know a lot about the author, and feel like they ‘know’ them a bit. For example I just know that the author of this site is Daniel and he lives in Brazil. I just know that the author of ProBlogger is Darren Rowse and he lives in Australia with his wife, V.
Do you make it easy for your readers to get to know you and connect? Some easy ways to do this include having an informative about page, using your name on posts and blog comments and even sharing your personal stories at times in your blog posts.
Twitter Tip: A good way to tell people about you on Twitter is to fill in your bio, but you can also include a link and use this as a specific ‘twitter landing page’ that quickly tells people about you and your website. This is usually far better than just sending them to your homepage.
6. Make Content Easy to Read
There is nothing worse in my opinion than content that is just split into huge chunks of text with no line breaks. Even a post like this which is well over 1,000 words, is easily scannable due to the ‘list’ format and the bold headings.
Some tips on making your content easy to read include:
  • Spell-checking your posts before you publish them
  • Use bullet points where necessary
  • Create sub-headings for longer, in-depth posts
  • If you are doing a list post, separate the points with bold headings for people who scan / skim
  • Include paragraph breaks after every 3 or 4 sentences
  • Read the post yourself to see that it all flows properly
Twitter Tip: Although nobody expects you to write perfectly with 140 characters. Try to make sense and don’t shorten every single word, use multiple tweets or direct messages where possible.
Read More »

Friday 20 December 2013

5 Tools to Auto-Detect Downtimes on Your Site

0 comments Posted by Unknown at 18:40
However good your web hosting might be, sooner or later you will have some downtime. It happens to all of us. If you can be the first to know when your site goes down, though, the problem will be much smaller, because you will be able to contact the customer support and hopefully solve the issue before most readers even notice it. Below you will find 5 tools that can help you with that.
1. Pingdom
You are able to use Pingdom to check your web hosting every 5 minutes, and when your blog is down, Pingdom will notice you via Email, SMS or even Twitter. But, only one website can be monitored for free account. So, if you have two or more websites, you can upgrade to a premium account, or put all your websites in the same web hosting, or use other free similar services mentioned below.
With Binary Canary free services, you are able to select the detecting frequency as 15 min, 30 min or 60 min. You are able to monitor 5 websites, and when the websites are down, you will receive email alerts, no SMS alert.
As a free user, your website will be checked every 1 hour. You are able to monitor 5 websites, to manage your account easily with iPhone, and to receive unlimited SMS alerts. But there are some ads on your dashboard, and there is no detailed report.
Hyperspin support multiple languages and multiple monitoring locations (but it didn’t say how many). For free account, the websites will be detected every 60 minutes, and you will receive an email alert when the websites are down, no SMS alert.
5. AlertX
When registering a free account in AlertX, you are able to monitor 1 website, which will be auto-detect every 3 hours. When the website is down, you will receive an email alert, no SMS alert is available.
Are the free services offered by the above 5 websites workable for you? Please share your comments if you have any other similar services.
Read More »

Thursday 19 December 2013

43 Web Design Mistakes You Should Avoid

0 comments Posted by Unknown at 20:53
There are several lists of web design mistakes around the Internet. Most of them, however, are the “Most common” or “Top 10 mistakes.” Every time I crossed one of those lists I would think to myself: “Come on, there must be more than 10 mistakes…”. Then I decided to write down all the web design mistakes that would come into my head; within half an hour I had over thirty of them listed. Afterwards I did some research around the web and the list grew to 43 points.
The next step was to write a short description for each one, and the result is the collection of mistakes that you will find below. Some of the points are common sense, others are quite polemic. Most of them apply to any website though, whether we talk about a business entity or a blog. Enjoy!
1. The user must know what the site is about in seconds: attention is one the most valuable currencies on the Internet. If a visitor can not figure what your site is about in a couple of seconds, he will probably just go somewhere else. Your site must communicate why I should spend my time there, and FAST!
2. Make the content scannable: this is the Internet, not a book, so forget large blocks of text. Probably I will be visiting your site while I work on other stuff so make sure that I can scan through the entire content. Bullet points, headers, subheaders, lists. Anything that will help the reader filter what he is looking for.
3. Do not use fancy fonts that are unreadable: sure there are some fonts that will give a sophisticated look to your website. But are they readable? If your main objective is to deliver a message and get the visitors reading your stuff, then you should make the process comfortable for them.
4. Do not use tiny fonts: the previous point applies here, you want to make sure that readers are comfortable reading your content. My Firefox does have a zooming feature, but if I need to use on your website it will probably be the last time I visit it.
5. Do not open new browser windows: I used to do that on my first websites. The logic was simple, if I open new browser windows for external links the user will never leave my site. WRONG! Let the user control where he wants the links to open. There is a reason why browsers have a huge “Back” button. Do not worry about sending the visitor to another website, he will get back if he wants to (even porn sites are starting to get conscious regarding this point lately…).
6. Do not resize the user’s browser windows: the user should be in control of his browser. If you resize it you will risk to mess things up on his side, and what is worse you might lose your credibility in front of him.
7. Do not require a registration unless it is necessary: lets put this straight, when I browse around the Internet I want to get information, not the other way around. Do not force me to register up and leave my email address and other details unless it is absolutely necessary (i.e. unless what you offer is so good that I will bear with the registration).
8. Never subscribe the visitor for something without his consent: do not automatically subscribe a visitor to newsletters when he registers up on your site. Sending unsolicited emails around is not the best way to make friends.
9. Do not overuse Flash: apart from increasing the load time of your website, excessive usage of Flash might also annoy the visitors. Use it only if you must offer features that are not supported by static pages.
10. Do not play music: on the early years of the Internet web developers always tried to successfully integrate music into websites. Guess what, they failed miserably. Do not use music, period.
11. If you MUST play an audio file let the user start it: some situations might require an audio file. You might need to deliver a speech to the user or your guided tour might have an audio component. That is fine. Just make sure that the user is in control, let him push the “Play” button as opposed to jamming the music on his face right after he enters the website.
12. Do not clutter your website with badges: first of all, badges of networks and communities make a site look very unprofessional. Even if we are talking about awards and recognition badges you should place them on the “About Us” page.
13. Do not use a homepage that just launches the “real” website: the smaller the number of steps required for the user to access your content, the better.
14. Make sure to include contact details: there is nothing worse than a website that has no contact details. This is not bad only for the visitors, but also for yourself. You might lose important feedback along the way.
15. Do not break the “Back” button: this is a very basic principle of usability. Do not break the “Back” button under any circumstance. Opening new browser windows will break it, for instance, and some Javascript links might also break them.
16. Do not use blinking text: unless your visitors are coming straight from 1996, that is.
17. Avoid complex URL structures: a simple, keyword-based URL structure will not only improve your search engine rankings, but it will also make it easier for the reader to identify the content of your pages before visiting them.
18. Use CSS over HTML tables: HTML tables were used to create page layouts. With the advent of CSS, however, there is no reason to stick to them. CSS is faster, more reliable and it offers many more features.
19. Make sure users can search the whole website: there is a reason why search engines revolutionized the Internet. You probably guessed it, because they make it very easy to find the information we are looking for. Do not neglect this on your site.
20. Avoid “drop down” menus: the user should be able to see all the navigation options straight way. Using “drop down” menus might confuse things and hide the information the reader was actually looking for.
21. Use text navigation: text navigation is not only faster but it is also more reliable. Some users, for instance, browse the Internet with images turned off.
22. If you are linking to PDF files disclose it: ever clicked on a link only to see your browser freezing while Acrobat Reader launches to open that (unrequested) PDF file? That is pretty annoying so make sure to explicit links pointing to PDF files so that users can handle them properly.
23. Do not confuse the visitor with many versions: avoid confusing the visitor with too many versions of your website. What bandwidth do I prefer? 56Kbps? 128Kbps? Flash or HTML? Man, just give me the content!
24. Do not blend advertising inside the content: blending advertising like Adsense units inside your content might increase your click-through rate on the short term. Over the long run, however, this will reduce your readership base. An annoyed visitor is a lost visitor.
25. Use a simple navigation structure: sometimes less is more. This rule usually applies to people and choices. Make sure that your website has a single, clear navigation structure. The last thing you want is to confuse the reader regarding where he should go to find the information he is looking for.
26. Avoid “intros”: do not force the user to watch or read something before he can access to the real content. This is plain annoying, and he will stay only if what you have to offer is really unique.
27. Do not use FrontPage: this point extends to other cheap HTML editors. While they appear to make web design easier, the output will be a poorly crafted code, incompatible with different browsers and with several bugs.
28. Make sure your website is cross-browser compatible: not all browsers are created equal, and not all of them interpret CSS and other languages on the same way. Like it or not, you will need to make your website compatible with the most used browsers on the market, else you will lose readers over the long term.
29. Make sure to include anchor text on links: I confess I used to do that mistake until some time ago. It is easier to tell people to “click here”. But this is not efficient. Make sure to include a relevant anchor text on your links. It will ensure that the reader knows where he is going to if he clicks the link, and it will also create SEO benefits for the external site where the link is pointing.
30. Do not cloak links: apart from having a clear anchor text, the user must also be able to see where the link is pointing on the status bar of his browser. If you cloak your links (either because they are affiliate ones or due to other reasons) your site will lose credibility.
31. Make links visible: the visitor should be able to recognize what is clickable and what is not, easily. Make sure that your links have a contrasting color (the standard blue color is the optimal most of the times). Possibly also make them underlined.
32. Do not underline or color normal text: do not underline normal text unless absolutely necessary. Just as users need to recognize links easily, they should not get the idea that something is clickable when in reality it is not.
33. Make clicked links change color: this point is very important for the usability of your website. Clicked links that change color help the user to locate himself more easily around your site, making sure that he will not end up visiting the same pages unintentionally.
34. Do not use animated GIFs: unless you have advertising banners that require animation, avoid animated GIFs. They make a site look unprofessional and detract the attention from the content.
35. Make sure to use the ALT and TITLE attributes for images: apart from having SEO benefits the ALT and TITLE attributes for images will play an important role for blind users.
36. Do not use harsh colors: if the user is getting a headache after visiting your site for 10 consecutive minutes, you probably should pick a better color scheme. Design the color palette around your objectives (i.e. deliver a mood, let the user focus on the content, etc.).
37. Do not use pop ups: this point refers to pop ups of any kind. Even user requested pop ups are a bad idea given the increasing amount of pop blockers out there.
38. Avoid Javascript links: those links execute a small Javascript when the user clicks on them. Stay away from them since they often create problems for the user.
39. Include functional links on your footer: people are used to scrolling down to the footer of a website if they are not finding a specific information. At the very least you want to include a link to the Homepage and possibly a link to the “Contact Us” page.
40. Avoid long pages: guess what, if the user needs to scroll down forever in order to read your content he will probably just skip it altogether. If that is the case with your website make it shorter and improve the navigation structure.
41. No horizontal scrolling: while some vertical scrolling is tolerable, the same can not be said about horizontal scrolling. The most used screen resolution nowadays is 1024 x 768 pixels, so make sure that your website fits inside it.
42. No spelling or grammatical mistakes: this is not a web design mistake, but it is one of the most important factors affecting the overall quality of a website. Make sure that your links and texts do not contain spelling or grammatical mistakes.
43. If you use CAPTCHA make sure the letters are readable: several sites use CAPTCHA filters as a method of reducing spam on comments or on registration forms. There is just one problem with it, most of the times the user needs to call his whole family to decipher the letters.
Read More »

Wednesday 18 December 2013

The 7 Characteristics of Good Domain Names

0 comments Posted by Unknown at 16:16
Domain names are the real estate of the Internet. Just as a good location is vital for a bricks and mortar business, a good domain name will be the corner stone of your website’s success. But how to identify them? Below you will find the 7 characteristics of good domain names.
7characteristicsofgooddomainnames.png

1. They are short

Good domain names are short. It is not a coincidence that all the three-letter and four-letter .com domains are already gone, and that the five-letter ones are going fast as well.
There is no definite number of characters that you should aim for, just remember that the shorter the better. If you really need some guidance, try to go below 10 characters, and never exceed 20.
As for the number of words, one-word domains are gold, two-word ones are good, three-word domains are average, and above that it is usually a bad idea.
Example: Quotes.com is a superb domain and probably worth millions of dollars. ProQuotes.com is a good two-word domain worth thousands of dollars. ProQuotesNow.com is an average domain and could be used for a website. YourProQuotesNow.com is plain worthless.

2. They are easy to remember

Many Internet users do not use bookmarks. They just memorize the domains of their favorite websites and type them whenever they wan to visit one. Guess what, if your domain is complex and not easy to remember you will lose these visitors along the way.
Example: Brcwr.com is a short domain name, but is not easy to remember at all, so it would be a bad idea to use it for your website (unless the initials represent the name of the website or a memorable message).

3. They are easy to spell

The last thing you want is visitors misspelling your domain and ending up somewhere else.
Avoid unusual foreign words, words that have complex pronunciation, strange combinations of letters and anything else that might cause someone to misspell your address.
Example: CappuccinoBar.com might be problematic for English speaking visitors. Cappuccino is an Italian word, and not everyone is aware where the doubles are placed.

4. They have a .com extension

Organizations might prefer to register a .org domain, and companies targeting very specific geographical regions might want to register a local domain (e.g. .it, .co.uk, .cn and so on). Apart from these cases, however, a .com domain is always the best way to go. This extension is the most popular around the around, and it is already stuck in people’s mind.
Visitors coming to your site via search engines or organic links will pay attention mostly to the name and not to the URL. The next time they want to visit your site it is very likely that they will just type its name followed by a .com. Guess what, if you are not there when they hit enter they will just go somewhere else.
Example: Darren Rowse created his popular blog on Problogger.net. Despite having a strong brand, some visitors were still going to Problogger.com. After a couple of years Darren decided to buy the .com version for $5,000 and redirect it to his site, so that no more visitors would leak.

5. They are descriptive

Many visitors will come to your site through the search engines and via direct links on other websites. That is, they will come if the domain that they will see will be appealing.
Having a descriptive domain name will give visitors an idea of what your site is about even before they enter it. If related keywords are present in the domain it might also help your search engine rankings.
Example: You would be able to guess what TelevisionGuides.com is about even before visiting it right?
Put it in another way. Suppose you are searching for a movie review. You make a quick search in Google. The first result comes from MikesLair.com. The second result comes from MoviesCentral.com. Which one would you rather click?

6. Or brandable

A brandable domain will have a nice pronunciation, an interesting combination of letters or simply an appealing visual effect. Sometimes they will not be descriptive, but they can be equally efficient.
Brandable domains will make your visitors associate the name with your website and its content. (Notice that brandable domains can be descriptive at the same time, but that is not always the case.)
Example: Kotaku.com is one of the most popular gaming blogs on the Internet. The domain is not descriptive at all, but the brand is so strong that gamers immediately recognize it across the web.

7. They don’t contain hyphens or numbers

Domain names containing hyphens and numbers are cheaper for a reason. They suffer the same problem of domains not using a .com extension or with complex spelling.
Consider Tech-World.com. The names that will stick in people’s mind are “tech” and “world.” Many visitors will just forget the hyphen along the way. Eventually they will try to access your site by typing TechWorld.com, in vain.
Numbers, on the other hand, will confuse people with the spelling. Suppose you registered Tech5.com. Visitors might mix it with TechFive.com, if they manage to remember the number in the first place!
Example: Coolest-Gadgets.com is an extremely popular gadget blog, with over 70,000 RSS subscribers. With such a huge readership you get people often typing the domain directly on the address bar. Needless to say that many of them would just forget to add the hyphen. The owner of the site bought CoolestGadgets.com afterwards to fix the problem.

Final remark

Do not get discouraged if your current domain doesn’t have all these characteristics; or if you can’t find one that does. These are just factors that you should consider when evaluating domain names.
There are plenty of examples of popular websites with domain names that lack in one or two points covered on the list. Just make sure that your domain has most of the characteristics and you should be fine.
Read More »

Tuesday 17 December 2013

5 Reasons Not To Make Money With Your Blog…Yet

0 comments Posted by Unknown at 16:31
Here are the five reasons.

1. You Do Not Have A Product

In the real world before you begin to make money you need to offer a product. A lot of people think this rule does not apply in the online world.
Spending a few hours creating a blog and slapping together 10 posts does not mean you have a product. All you did was follow a few simple instruction on how to create a blog and then spend a couple days writing posts. Why should you make money for doing that?
A blog with ten posts is not a product or a service. True, you did work and you sweat and strained, but nobody asked you to. Nobody asked you to write a blog about your summer vacation or the best place to buy an iPhone.
Creating a blog and expecting to make money from it just because you created it is like expecting to get paid for moving dirt from one pile to another pile without anybody asking you to do it.
The act of creating a blog is not a product. A blog becomes a product only after you create content that people want.
Unless you are blogging about the alien that landed in your backyard or you are Martin Sheen, nobody is going to want to read your blog when you start. It takes time to build your blog into a product.
Once people start visiting your blog because they want your content – you have a product and you can start making money with.

2. Making Money Will Make You Sad

Remember how sad you were at the end of the movie Old Yeller when Travis had to shoot his beloved dog. You wanted the dog to live forever, you kept hoping that Old Yeller recovers – please don?t shoot him Travis! Travis shoots, dog dies, you cry.
That was years ago, you are grown up now, you have a better handle on your emotions. But let me warn you from personal experience that the tear jerking sadness will return if you try to make money from your blog right from the beginning.
If your hope is to make money right from day one of your blog then you are setting yourself up for disappointment. At the beginning you will spend countless hours making your blog better and adding content. If you are doing it for the money, if every hour of work you say to yourself – this will make me rich, then only tears can follow.
Starting your blog and hoping to make money is like hoping Travis will not shoot the dog – pull out the Kleenex.
Do not put yourself through this unnecessary misery, don?t expect to make money right away. Save yourself from the agony of checking your bank account on a daily basis only to discover that nothing has changed.

3. You Might Get Terminated For Your Ignorance

During your first few weeks as a blogger you have no idea what you are doing. You have a lot to learn. Not only about how to change your logo and how to add posts, but also how you are suppose to behave online.
You might think that you can do anything you want – the Internet is a free place where you can do and say anything you want – right? Wrong.
When you open a affiliate account or advertisement account you are entering into a contract. They let you use the service only if you agree to follow their rules.
Most people create a blog and a few days later open a AdSense account. They place ads on their blog but never bother to read the Adsense Terms Of Service which outline the rules for using AdSense. Without knowing the rules you run the risk of breaking them. AdSense has strict rules about how many ads you can have on your blog, where they can be placed, what kind of content you can have and so on. If you break the rules your AdSense account can be terminated. From what I have heard, visit any webmaster forum for proof, it is very difficult to get your AdSense account reinstated after it has been terminated.
There is nothing worse than making a silly mistake at the beginging and then having to suffer for it. If you are just starting out then focus on creating content for your blog. When you are ready and have plenty of time start considering all your monitazation options patiently. Before you sign up for anything make sure to read the rules.

4. People Might Assume Your Blog Is Spam

When you land on a site for the first time and it is covered with advertisements you instantly become suspicious. Does this site want to help me or are they simply trying to squeeze money from me?
The internet is full of websites that exist to take instead of give. These websites are really just one big advertisement with very little value to the visitor. Internet users hate these sites, search engines hates them, but they exist.
Fortunately search engines are getting better at discovering these spam sites and removing them from search results. Also most people recognize these kind of sites as soon as they land on them and hit the back button very quickly.
If you place advertisements or sell product on your blog while it is new and with very little authority people can mistake your site for a spam site.
At the beginning you will need to self promote your blog. You will be telling people your blog is great and this it has lots of great information, but because you are new people will have doubts. If they go to your blog and see a lot of advertisements or products their suspicions will be confirmed – you are just trying to sell something.
The problem is that you have no trust. At the beginning people are visiting your blog because you ask them to. But who are you, why should people trust you? At the beginning you are one in a million and nobody trusts you.
Only after you blog matures does the trust build. Only when other people talk and praise your blog can you begin to make money. Visitors who hear good things about your blog are not suspicious. A person visiting your blog because they heard how great it is has a completely different mindset, than someone who visits your blog because you begged them to.

5. First People, Then Money

If you start with an aim to make a lot of money you will probably make none.
It is amazing how many success stories start with somebody just doing what they love with no intent on making money. This is true for blogs and real companies. A popular example is Darren from Problogger who started his blog as a hobby. He did not start making money until he had a popular and trusted blog. Steve Wozniak created the first Apple because he loved computers and wanted one for himself – his focus was to make a great computer, not to make money.
At the beginning your attention should be on people. All your creative energy should be aimed towards helping people and impacting people’s lives.
A blog that has an impact on peoples lives is easy to monetize. A blog that does not impact people’s lives will never make any money regardless of how much energy you spend thinking about it. Do not think about it. Focus on people and the money will come later by itself.
Read More »

Monday 16 December 2013

12 Logic Fallacies That Can Kill Your Blog Traffic

0 comments Posted by Unknown at 16:13
When it comes to shrinking a blog audience, the ways to do it are aplenty. Not posting often enough. Phoning it in with dull verbiage. Writing way too much on something very few people care about (your parents don’t count).
But perhaps the most insidious traffic killers are logical fallacies: disingenuous, oversimplified, and often emotion-driven statements that do a terrible job defending a cause. Here’s a list of 12 logical fallacies so you can avoid them in future posts.
1. Rash Generalization — All women want to look hot, or all Frenchmen are rude. If you are stating a generalization that you are basing on evidence that is biased, insufficient, or outright illusory, you are damaging the value of your own post.
2. Either/Or — Stop global warming or we’ll all drown, or either the tax code is revised or America will go bankrupt. The fallacy of presenting only two diametrically opposed possibilities when there are endless alternatives and shades of gray to the issues being discussed will make your blog seem extremist and disconnected.
3. Non Sequitor — Mitt Romney is tall so he’ll make a great President, or the Greeks can’t solve their financial problems because they drink too much Ouzo. If your conclusion does not logically follow on from the premise, you’re coming off as a total idiot to any perspicacious reader.
4. Ad Hominem Attack — David Letterman shouldn’t host his talk show because he had sex with staffers, or Bill Gates is an untrustworthy executive because he was arrested at 19. Ad hominem is a form of non sequitor with a vicious edge that attempts to correlate some personal trait with the capacity to perform a completely separate task, and thus has no place in any blog.
5. Red Herring — How can anyone vote for Obama after he said his son would look like Trayvon, or why bother with healthcare reform since doctors are crooks. You are distracting and misdirecting your reader by correlating the essence of your post with an issue that is irrelevant.
6. Circular Logic — Anyone can diet if they have the will power to eat less, or if piracy was not illegal then it wouldn’t be prohibited by law. The assumption that a claim is true does not mean that there is evidence to support that claim. Fallacious reasoning assumes that your readers are ignorant and easily swayed, and you’ll find to your chagrin that they’re neither.
7. False Analogy — The universe is a mechanism and since every mechanism must have a designer, so does the universe, or he was wearing colors which proves that he is a gang member. Applying an argument which is trivial and deceptive to arrive at a far fetched conclusion is only going to devalue your blog in the eyes of your readers.
8. Questionable Cause — I washed my car so it rained today, or the Chilean earthquake caused the Dow Jones to fall. Simply because an event follows another event chronologically, it does not equate to the assumption that they are in any way related.
9. Straw Man — People who do not contribute to hunger programs want to see children starve, or the Administration’s contraception policies represent eugenics. Oversimplifying a viewpoint in order to attack an essentially hollow argument fails to take into consideration the complexity of an issue.
10. Slippery Slope — If the government passes copyright protection laws the internet will collapse, or if superbikes are banned then all motorcycles will soon be legislated off the roads. If you are basing your blog on the premise that if a particular event happens then there will be a domino effect that will cause a far greater impact than is reasonably likely, you are dynamiting your own post.
11. Genetic Fallacy — Americans shouldn’t buy Mitsubishi cars because they built the WWII Japanese Zero aircraft, or Donny Osmond believes in polygamy since he’s a Mormon. If you are establishing your post’s thesis on assumptions of value, character, or nature about the origins of a particular entity you’re not writing a blog, you’re just slinging mud.
12. Ad populum — All loyal Americans have to reject the Iranian regime, or you can’t believe in democracy while still doing business with the Chinese government. These forms of equating unequatables represent emotional, not factual, arguments. There is in effect no linkage between the two aspects of the correlation other than appealing to patriotic, belief-based, or other jingoistic triggers.
Logical writing is a skill your readers will profoundly appreciate, even though it’s not as flashy or sensational as fallacy-laden posts. Steer clear of adding unnecessary drama and over-simplistic writing, or you’ll see your argument undercut and your audience migrate to blogs written by more level-headed individuals.
Read More »
 

© 2011. All Rights Reserved | A2z Earning Articles Box | Template by Blogger Widgets

Home | About | Top