Taking Your Blog The Next Level

Posted by Mike on May 16th, 2008

We all have to start from somewhere, then climb the ladder step by step or even better you lay brick by brick till you settle securely at the top of the pyramid.

One thing that makes this blog exclusive is that it cuts excessive hype and clicks a balance between emotion and hard facts.

One one the major queries I get from starters is: “I have opened a blog, done a few posts and still my blog readership is not that appealing. It’s wise to be of a sober mind and therefore be considered competent to make it in the blogging industry.

Surely you can’t expect 20,000 hits on your second week of blogging.

There are two “Things to do” that remain consistent from day one and has to be practiced throughout your blogging life. It doesn’t matter what web masters baptize them but they remain constant. You may research and get as many terms to describe the same but they boil down to just two indisputable hard facts namely:

1. Content
2. SEO - Search Engine Optimization

Anything else is a subcategory of the above.

I highly recommend that you commit equal time to two factors above.

For a further understanding:

Content - Your content is your audience. Once you have Identified the audience you want to target then you must be knowledgeable and command authority in that field. Give your blog a brand and let its content radiate at the back of your readers. Below are some tips that will take care of the quality of your content, hence a loyal readership:

* Have a target audience - do not be misled and try to be everything for everyone. If your blog is about Golf, stick to that, period! Do not be excited to break the news and start writing about earthquakes in china. You will get hits for that day and then the following day your stat indicator will be a mark of a falling star. I have articles that I wrote on wordpress.com sometimes back. I later abandoned that blog and got myself a domain name , I visited the blog the other day after 6 months of neglect without updating and I met the shocker of the year. My blog or say; ex blog was showing an average of 50 hits per day with a minimum of 21hits on a Sunday. Now this leads me to my next point
* Let Your Posts be timeless. It can never be said better than that. always ask yourself; will my post make sense 3 years from now. if not then join the news industry, and be the first to hit headlines.
* let 75% of your posts be text as opposed to images. - I have subscribed to newsletters, am a busy person and i don’t have time to select ‘ display images’ on my in box. if your message is not in text then too bad I don’t have time to be entertained by rotating banners.
* Remain Simple and attractive. Yes strike a balance between the two. The fact that you can do a post: that makes you a publisher and if you can customize your pages a little bit it then it makes you a web master. Now remember not all your readers are web masters or publishers. They do not necessarily have ie7 or the latest version of Mozilla Firefox with over 500 add ons and tools. make sure you are not losing your audience with unnecessary sophistication.

SEO - Search engine optimization - This is a complex topic that is maturing very fast and becoming an independent field separate from internet marketing. However, do not be afraid about anything. Start with the basics. Listed thus:

* Site Submit - There are 3 major global search engines; Google, Yahoo and Msn . make sure you submit your site to these search engines for free. After that you can search for other submitting services that are free or at a premium rate, e.g. Dmoz, Jayde, Exact Search, Crawler, Entireweb, Alexa, Ask Jeeves plus your local search engines.
* Submit your articles to directories - It’s hectic but it helps, Here is a list and more info on the same.
* Write a squidoo lens - Am also challenging myself on this one I need to update my lens as well. You can earn income with a lens and also your increase internet visibility.
* Own a Key Word - Your domain is your brand. Can you imagine if Yahoo had a business name like free email and search engine .com. or Google with a site like thebestsearchengine.com it never works like that. Get a brand and leave the description of what you are about to your ………… If you search for “mikes notice or mikesnotice or mikes mind” you are more likely to land on my my website or blog than trying the over saturated keyword like “Internet marketing”. I challenge you to build your key word today. Especially in Viral Marketing. people tend to forget exact domain names and can only Google what they remember. If you don’t own a key word then 90% of your recurrent traffic land on your competitors site.
* Develop a Tool Bar or join an existing community - My toolbar has over 1200 users and still counting. In as much as i get income from it. My major target is branding mikes notice at the same time adding value to my readers, through rss inclusion, chat room, email notifier, the love of skysports and other gadgets one can customize.
* Link Back - Always speak your mind whenever you visit a blog. you can use http://www.comentkahuna.com to search related blogs with various keywords, and leave your comments high niche blogs. this also increases your presence on the internet.
* For more high SEO techniques visit http://www.seobook.com

Again kindly remember quality content and seo optimization is an ongoing process.

Finally, “… and on the seventh day He looked at the work of his words and it was good”

If it can appeal to you then most likely it will appeal someone else or even better attract positive criticism that if observed would help make you better.

Once its done now market your blog locally and virally.

Charity begins from home.

If you are in employment then consider developing separate business cards that show you as a blogger and your area of specialty. This will help in improving your image and their perception about. You could be a working in a chemical industry and your friends cannot relate you with internet stuff. now its time to strart the viral ad.

Do articles and review your area of expertise. then give those articles to your local media for free. They could review your articles and mention your blog or even luckier give you a column to write.

Imagine your blog to be like any other business, go ahead and talk about it offline.

Most of the people you meet face to face will market you naturally for free plus they are most of the time likely to be royal/ loyal leaders.

Hold small parties of people you think would be interested with your expertise entertain them, do a small speech and you are guaranteed to have loyal contributors who are supportive and if you have joined affiliate marketing they are likely to be good and repeat customers.

I highly focus a lot more on advising solutions and affiliate products than on Google ad sense. Google adsense is more focused for lost traffic but not loyal readers.

Next post I will zero in to:

…. ways of monetizing your blog…

Never again will the Host company burn a hole in your pocket but your blog will be able to sustain itself and even better add more income and the joy of earning from a hobby as opposed to a profession that you not sure whether you really like it or even worse it was forced to you by your significant others.

This is the only internet marketing blog that focuses on solutions that don’t suck your blood but rather adds value and supports you fully till you stand on your feet.

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Happy Blogging :)

Your Partner in Success

Mike Ndegwa