Writing A Blog Post – Part 2

Suggestions for bloggers
Originally uploaded by kentbrew

I have already talked about how often you should write a blog post. But for my last post of this week, I would like to re hash the issue in a different way. I would like to talk about different ways you can write your blog posts. I would like to cover some options that will help in breaking up the monotony of writing a blog post every single day that looks basically the same as the post from the day before.

Take it from me, it gets BORING! I maintain several blogs, all of which need daily attention, and the thought of keeping up this pace for 6 months, a year, even more is rather daunting to say the least. So, lets cover some of the options in writing a blog post, some of which I am sure you have thought of, but others may be a refreshing change.


The key here is, breaking off from your normal routine is OK to do occasionally, but don’t break your focus. It is extremely important to stay on target and to follow certain principals when maintaining a blog. Adding fun things here and there are nice, but it doesn’t pay the bills… So to speak.

So, what are your options?


1.) First and foremost you have your basic, every day blog posts. They are important, they are the vehicles that bring people in and bring people back. But how can you write daily blog posts about the same keywords? What I try to do is, stick with my primary keywords. In general, for most blogs, that will consist of 1-5 primary keywords. For this blog I concentrate on two. “Blogging for Beginners”, and “Beginner lessons for Bloggers”. But from those two keywords is where everything I do is rooted. You do not have to rewrite the same basic blog post over and over again 100 different ways. It just won’t work, people will lose interest, and you will lose interest. But what keywords can you pull from your primary niche. In more cases, there are hundreds of branching keywords that you can use that will all relate back to your primary keywords. Writing a blog post is a perfect example of a topic that is directly related to blogging for beginners.


2.) Second type of blog post would be a pillar post. To most of you this may be a new term. So, what is a pillar post? A pillar post is a big daddy of a post that is aimed at offering lots of information all surrounding your primary keyword. In many ways this post will wind up being a pillar post for me. It is going to be long, it is going to be informative, it is going to carry my primary keywords, and it is bullet pointed. Which is a whole different topic within itself, but just for general information, readers’ LOVE bullet points, they love numbered out reasoning, they love top ten lists, top five, whatever you can come up with. They are always drawn to that form of blog post, and chances are, if you provide your readers with great pillar blog posts, you will get links to those posts. That is always a positive sign that what you are saying is useful, and impressive. It is important to sprinkle in large and informative pillar posts occasionally. It is also important to spend sometime generating backlinks to your pillar posts. Do not just focus on backlinking to your root URL.


3.) Random, off topic posts is something that can be added from time to time. In general, I would not recommend you have more than one off topic post for every five targeted posts. Your readers are coming to your blog for a specific reason and if they are inundated by a bunch of off topic blog posts, they will leave before they take the time to dig for useful reading. Writing a blog post that is off topic is more for your own mental well being. It can become tiring to constantly write about the same basic premise, sprinkling in something fun and whimsical can be refreshing, mostly for you, but your readers may appreciate it also, it offers a window into you, and gives them a chance to relate on a different level.


4.) Picture posts are something some people will do from time to time. There are certain bloggers out there who have made it a career to post random pictures from around the internet and commenting on those pictures. Adding the occasional picture post that can be related to your keyword topic can be another way to break up the monotony of daily posting. And readers LOVE pictures. And as a side note, ADD PICTURES TO ALL YOUR BLOG POSTS! Don’t go overboard with it, but there are not a whole lot of individuals who are not more receptive to the visual stimulation you get from pictures. In fact, a wall of typing can be intimidating, some people may not even spend the time to read your post if it is 1000 words long and has no pictures. I personally do not spend much time making picture posts. I am trying to cram as much information into my posts as I can, and quite honestly, decorating my blog with pictures is not a strong trait of mine. I am Just am more of a meat and potatoes kinda guy. Also, same as the off topic posts, do not make this a habit unless you are going for that type of blog. Too many pictures and not enough content are not always search engine friendly. Make sure that you write a blog post or two, or 5, or 10 between your picture posts.


5.) Quiz or game style posts are something I am new to. Blogthings.com offers all kinds of little quizzes that you can add to a post in order to add some reader interaction. Don’t get carried away with these either, using blogthings will drive your readers away from your site through a link. That is not really what we are going for, but reader interaction is a good thing.


6.) Writing a post about other bloggers within your market seems counter productive in many ways, you are sending them to your competition in many ways. And while this is true, This type of blog falls in the same category as a bullet point style blog. And since your readers are looking for a specific type of information, sending them to other sites that will provide that information will be endearing to them. They will look at you as an authority in finding the information they need, and that will drive them back to you in the long run.


7.) And finally, contest posts. Offering contests are a sure-fire way to help your blog traffic. People love competition. And they love the opportunity to win something. These posts can be tricky, because not all topics lend themselves to this style post of offering. But if you can squeeze one in, you will most likely reap rewards. That is of course if your blog is already generating regular traffic, if nobody sees you, they will not be looking for something like this. It will become a lost posting.


So, there you go, some options for writing blog posts. There are many other variations of these forms of blog posts but those are something we will cove on another day. Today, as beginner bloggers, we will cover the basics, because at blogging for beginners, we are all about the basics. And in many instances, I question whether or not my content is basic enough. In fact, if you are looking for specific information, please feel free to comment I will work on posts that may revolve around what my readers are looking for. I am here to please and inform as best as possible.


Thank you for reading this beginner lesson for bloggers, and I hope to see you back again at blogging for beginners…. See how I got those keywords in one last time. Keep up the good work and DON’T GIVE UP!

Building internal blog links brought to you by blogging for beginners

Something that should never be overlooked when blogging is building internal blog links, within each and every post you write. And today’s blogging lesson for beginners is going to cover how, why and when it is important to build internal blog links.

Much like Backlinks, internal blog links play a roll in many aspects of blogging, Things like reader navigation, search engine indexing and page ranking can all be effected by your internal links.

First off, lets talk about reader navigation and how it relates to internal blog links
Readers come to your blog to gain something, usually that comes in the form of knowledge, and being that, they may see something within your post that they feel they need to learn more about. Perfect time to use an internal link. Say you have previously written a post about the best blogging sites for you, and you mention it in a newer blog post. Link to it. This gives the reader a very easy solution in finding out more about the subject without trying to fish through all your label or previous posts to find what he or she is looking for. Making the reader a very happy person, and in turn creating a reader that will more likely return to read more. And the effort in building your internal links is almost nothing. Well worth a happy reader or two.

So, how does it effect search engine indexing?
Search index spiders have their work cut out for them. They have a whole lot of data to index every single day. And all you are doing is giving them a helping hand in making sure that ALL your posts are being indexed. Whenever a spider finds a backlink within your post, there is a good chance that the spider will jump to that link and index the page. This is a definite plus.

And Page Ranking?
Maybe it has very little effect on page ranking, but every backlink counts for something, right? So, remember, when you are building your internal blog links, make sure they include the Keyword or phrase of the post you are linking to, this will help generate relevance. Search engines like this, when they see the anchor text of your backlinks matching your primary keywords within your post, they are able to assume that there is a strong relationship between the two, and that the link is meaningful and useful to the keyword target.

In reality, your internal blog links may play only a very small roll in SEO, but in the world of Blogging, I believe every little bit counts. And as a Beginner, I think it is very important to start creating good habits right from the get go. Building internal blogs links now, from the very beginning will set a tone for you and your readers. Giving them the chance to become more comfortable with your style right off the bat.

On top of this, something else that should always be considered is, spend some time reading through your old posts and add your internal links where you can. It works the same way, your site will always be re indexed and the links will be found. And not only will re-reading your old posts be a chance for you to improve your internal links, but it will also be an opportunity for you to look for new topics. I find myself just grazing over certain topics within a post without elaborating on them. I use this technique rather frequently, in order to help find new and fresh content.

I started blogging for beginners with the idea that, blogging as a concept is easy, writing down thoughts and opinions every single day or talking about hobbies or subjects that you are passionate about is not difficult. The difficult part is every other little step along the way that will need to be taken in order for you blog to prosper. Whether that be financially or just from an emotional level, it is important for us, as bloggers, to be seen and heard. It is why we do what we do. And THAT my friends is why I am doing this.

Using Longtail keywords for blogs

Many of you who read this may not even understand what keywords are, let alone using longtail keywords for blogs.  So, being that this is "blogging lessons for beginners", we will start at the beginning.

Keywords are words that Google picks up on to determine search engine results.  What I mean is, Google and all other search engines have tools called spiders, spiders crawl websites and blogs and anything else they can find on the web. They use the sites URL, Description, Titles, and Content; they determine what are the primary keyword targets for that site. 

So, what does this actually mean to a beginner blogger?  If your site has no real purpose other than talking about yourself, it means nothing.  But for most bloggers, we want to be found, and we want to be read.  And whether your niche is video games or making money online, or anything else you can think of, when a person searches through a search engine, our goal is to show up on that first page of search.  Because anything after page one is a crapshoot.  Most Internet users will not search past the first couple of pages.

So, this brings me to my real issue, Longtail keywords.  Single word keywords like Money, or Loans or Football are killers.  Try searching those types of things in google and you will get some real powerhouse websites.  Chances of a little old free blog to show up for keywords like that are almost non-existent, but never fear, this is where long tail keywords will work for our blogs.  Take this blog for example:

This site is for about blogging when you come right down to it.  But what happens if you search the term “Blogging” in google?  This is what happens.  You get over 49million results and the top 10 are:

Wikipedia.org, Page rank (7)
Blogger.com, Page rank (8)
Blogspot.com, Page rank (6)
Problogger.net, Page rank (6)
Problogger.net, Page rank (5)
Wordpress.org, Page rank (6)
Marketingterms.com, Page rank (5)
Wordpress.org, Page rank (9)
Thoughts.com, Page rank (6)
Guardian.co.uk, Page rank (5)

Top 10 spots are almost unbeatable.  I guess if you worked incredibly hard, you may break into the bottom of that list.  But I doubt it.  Not very likely at all.

We will talk more about pageranking later, but understand this first and foremost.  Even really popular free blogs rarely break pagerank of 3.  Now page ranking is not everything, but it is a big deal.  And for most of us free bloggers out here, we have to be in a market with sites that rank no higher than a 4 to be competitive.

So, Just calling my site a blogging site was not gonna work for me, so, how about I try something else.  I figured since it was gonna be a learning type blog, we would go for terms that the average person my use to search when trying to learn to blog.  “How to blog” is a though, what happens?

456,000 results, way better than millions
page ranks are 2’s, 3’s and 4’s with a couple 6’s and an 8 in there.  Better, not great.

So I went a little further.. Now I am giving away my keywords for this site but, whatever…

Blogging Lessons for beginners

And

Blogging for Beginners

The first one, has 8 results.  This is perfect!!!! But problem is, it is not a highly searched keyword, and that is with it in “” meaning it has to show up just as I search it, but I will take it!!

Second is still perfect for me.
36,800 results
the highest site is pulling a Page rank of 6, but that is in the first spot.

So, longtail keywords for blogs is very, very important if you have any aspirations of ever being found.  This does not mean that as soon as you add a specific set of words you will be indexed for them, not at all, it is a process, you need keyword density and you will need lots of content before google will even consider your blog as relevant.

My main point with this post is, when you are writing on the internet, quality content is very critical, people still want quality, but, it is also important to remember that keywords are also critical, and choosing the right keywords are very important. 

And while it is really tempting to shoot for the stars, it is ok to go after small fish. 

Blogging for dollars – Brought to you by Blogging for beginners

I have not spent any time so far talking about “blogging for dollars”, or as some may call it “make money blogging”.  There is a really, really good reason for this.  This is the bottom line of this beginner blogging lesson:

YOU WILL NOT MAKE ANY MONEY BLOGGING – YOU WILL FAIL AND GIVE UP!

Yep, I said it, but let me preface that by saying, you can make money blogging, in fact, blogging for dollars is real and a viable way to make money online.  But, it’s just not gonna happen for you right now. 

There are lots and lots of things for you to learn still.  You have barely got the basics, and even if you understand the basics, if your blog is new, it’s not going to generate enough traffic in order to make any money. 

In the world of blogging for dollars, your primary goal is to generate focused and quality traffic.  Which is completely different than just random traffic.  Blogs can generate random traffic just by being.  It is almost a sure thing that you will have a few page views fairly quickly. But those page views will come from sources that are not prone to lend themselves to generating income.  

Search engine traffic is going to be your most productive source of traffic.  And search engine traffic builds with time.  It is organic and is a natural progression.  Some factors, like age cannot be manipulated.  Backlinking is a process that you should participate in, but the best forms of backlinks are going to come from other sources.  From visitors who find you and find you to be viable.  Those are the people who can create backlinks that pack a punch in your traffic and SERP results. 

So, when I say you will not make any money.  I am referring to initially.  Ten page views a day from Stumbleupon are not going to pay the bills.  Most of the page views that come from bookmarking or social networking sources are going to be quick bounces.  They will not even take the time to read what you have to say unless you somehow catch them within about 10 seconds.

Don’t get discouraged by what I say.  I don’t mean to turn you all off to the concept of blogging for dollars.  It is meant to warn you that this concept seems easy but reality is it can be very difficult to succeed. 

Many people will say that starting your blog right off the bat with monetizing it effects your search engine status.  Some people believe that search engines will index you and see your blog covered in ads or affiliate marketing and they will devalue your blog, considering it spam, and only there to generate quick income.  Personally, it is my belief that you might as well start right off the bat with your monetization.  This will lead to viewers expecting to see the ads on your blog.  If you wait till you develop a loyal and consistent stream of traffic, your regular readers will be put off by the fact that you are now trying to make a buck.  You don’t want to do that.  In my opinion, as long as you keep your form of advertising and marketing respectable, Readers will accept it, and search engines will come around when they realize you are not going anywhere. 

So, what forms of monetization are right for you?
Basically you have a few options here.  I am going to briefly cover all of them but will talk in more detail about each one in later posts.

1.)Ads
Ads are probably the most common way to monetize your blog.  Google adsense being the most popular form of ad advertising.  With this form of advertising you are paid by clicks and views.  Using google is a fine way to monetize your blog.  I use it.  Lots of bloggers use it.  But it is not the only form of ad advertising.  Another very popular form is text ads.  You see them all over the place. If your cursor passes over certain text you get a pop-up.  I don’t use it, mostly because it annoys me and I cannot use something that I find annoying.  There are two very popular companies for that form of advertising.  That being Kontera, and Infolinks.  Since I do not use them, I am not going to give you much insight on them, other than saying I do believe you have to meet minimums with kontera every month or you lose your earnings.  Infolinks I believe does not operate that way.

2.)Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is another very popular way to monetize your blog.  Clikbank is probably the most popular.  This form of advertisement is commission based, and you receive a percentage for items sold through your advertisement links.  Another company that operates much the same way is Amazon.  Amazon associates offer a widget in blogger that is easy to set up.  You can see that I use it.  I have little success with it, but I do not really sell to the products I have advertising within my blogs.  If I tried harder, I am sure it would perform much better.

3.)Your own Product
This is one thing I do not believe enough people take advantage of.  I am just as guilty as the next.  In fact, once I get this blog established, it is my goal that my next blog will be set up to sell my own product. (classified information, I am sure I will announce it when I release)  But blogs can be a perfect advertisement tool for selling your own products and information.

I am sure you can find other opportunities to make money with your blog.  Those are the real basic, bottom line ways to blog for dollars.  And those are the easiest ways to start blogging for dollars.  Most likely the easiest ways for beginner bloggers to start earning money online. 

Don’t worry.  There will be lots more to come about making money blogging.  I just want everyone to realize it should not be your primary focus right now.  Practice, learn how to blog effectively and the money will come with time. 

Thank you for reading blogging for beginners, please come back soon! 

Search engine indexing for blogging beginners

One of the most difficult times in blogging is waiting for the search engine indexing.  Search engines need to find your blog before your blog will start showing up in search engine results.  And this does not happen overnight.  Sometimes it will not happen for weeks or months.  It depends on many factors.  But there are things you can do to help the process along.  And today we are going to cover some of the ways you can assist search engine indexing.

1.)Submit your URL to search engines
Some people will tell you that this is not a critical step, they will tell you that search engines will index your url when they are ready to and submitting your url will not speed up this process.  It is my opinion that anything I can do to assist the search engines in finding my website is worth doing.  I would suggest at the bare minimum to submit your URL to the three major search engines, that being Google, Yahoo, and Bing.  During the period of waiting, why not be a little pro-active in assisting your chances in search engine indexing. 

2.)Set up Feedburner
Although I am not covering it in detail today, Set up a feedburner account and submit your RSS feed to feedburner.  Feedburner will update your feed every time you make a content change to your blog, and every time your feed is updated you have a chance for your feed and URL to be indexed.  The primary goal here is to create awareness with search engines in order for the spiders to crawl your page more frequently.

3.)Ping your Feed
Ping your feed with sites like Ping-O-Matic, and article pinger.  These sites pull your Rss feed and list them, article pinger lists them on their main page and ping-o-matic pings your site across several sites.  All this increases your visibility, and raises your chances in being found by spiders.

4.)Social Bookmarking
Social bookmarking is a subject I will talk about more in detail later on.  I am not completely convinced that social bookmarking provides any real benefit.  But at the bare minimum I would set up an account with delicious and submit your url as a bookmark with them.  Some people have luck with social bookmarking, personally I don’t see any real benefit from it.  I do not see backlinks from it from any of the major players and I do not get much traffic from them.

5.)Finding a high Page ranking backlink
This is a sure fire way to get indexed, if you can find a site to link to yours or if you can find a place to comment and add your link you greatly increase your chance to be indexed.  Sometimes you need to force the issue.  You can do this by writing content for another website and include your backlink within the content.  Again this is something for another day.

So, there you have it.  5 ways to help along search engine indexing.  This site was indexed this morning when I checked.  It took Google and Yahoo 8 days.  I did not submit my url with any of the search engines.  I am pleased with those results.  I did practice all the other methods I included above as means to improve my search engine indexing.

So, there you have it, the basics of search engine indexing from blogging for beginners.  I do hope this assists you with your project.  It is important to remember to be patient, and to work every day at increasing awareness of your blog of blogs.  It is one of the most important things you can do and a true lesson for beginner bloggers.

Thank you

Blogging for beginners – Weekly recap

Here at blogging for beginners, I expect to give lots of beginner blogging lessons every single week.  And being so, I would like to try to revisit my posts once a week.  To make sure you are able to read everything.  For my first active week on this blog, we covered quite a few topics.  And below is a quick overview of the topics and links to them so you can easily check them out.  In the weeks to come we will talk about other topics and I will elaborate on the topics I have already started.  Giving more details and ideas for you to become a productive blogger.

I hear very often that it is easy to blog, and that is why there are so many blogs and bloggers out there on the Internet, and while I do agree with the idea that it is easy to blog.  It is NOT easy to be a blogger.  And to be a professional blogger is even harder yet.  All to often Beginner bloggers start a blog, go all out for a week or two, then end up abandoning their blogs, just because of lack of ideas or loss of interest, so, yeah, there are a lot of blogs out there, and there are a lot of blogs that have been left abandoned. 

It is a sad state to witness but it is reality.

So, now that I have gotten that out of my system, let’s quickly talk about what we have already talked about;

What are the best blogging sites for you?
This was my fist post on this blog.  Here I covered briefly a few of the major players in the free blog blogosphere.  Wordpress, Blogger and Live Journal being tops on that list.  Being a blogger blogger, I recommend that you all start with a blogger blog.  But, to each his own.  Wordpress and live journal are both wonderful options and may be a better fit for you.

Blog topic Ideas – Niche Blogging
Here we covered the basics of finding a blog topic and sticking with it.  Giving you a basic understanding of why it is important to find a Topic, or Niche and stay with it.  Finding a Niche that you enjoy, whether that be a hobby or a game or just you, is an excellent place to start when thinking of Niche blogs.

Writing your first blog post
Here I talked about post settings and general practices to consider when you start to write your fist blog post.  Although some of the settings are strictly based on the blogger platform, many of the concepts can be represented in any of the blog platforms out there.

Understanding Keywords and Phrases for beginner bloggers
In this post I covered the importance of Keywords and phrases and how they affect your SERP, and how search engines seek keywords in order to properly represent your blog in their search engine results.  There will be lots more to come on this topic, as I feel it is critical in blogging success, and one of the harder subjects to completely grasp.

The importance of blog Commenting
This post talks briefly about finding your blogging community and actively participating in it.  Reading others blogs within your same Niche not only helps you see what others are talking about, but gives you the opportunity to comment on their blogs, giving you the chance to be seen by their viewers and the blogger also.

What are Backlinks? Blogging for beginners basic understanding of backlinks.
This is an important post also.  Building backlinks are key in order to generate page traffic.   In many ways, backlinks will help your blog become popular.  And that is one of the goals when blogging.  To have people read you.

How often Should you write a blog post?
This post was meant to give a quick understanding of the importance of consistently adding new content to your blog.  People will be more apt to return to your blog if they see you update frequently.  Everyone searching the Internet is searching for new information.  And you can provide them that through regular blog posts.

In the weeks to come I will be discussing in more detail the importance of quality post that are posted frequently, I will be talking in more detail about keywords and how to generate long tail keywords.  Also backlinks and some of the lesser known places you can find solid backlinks. 

We will also be talking about social bookmarking and how it effects your backlinks, we will be talking about search engines and how they function, and we will be talking about making money through blogging.

Of course there will be more than that, those are just a few ideas I have on my mind at the moment.

I hope you find this blog helpful, please comment if you have questions or ideas.

Thank you for reading blogging for beginners.

How often should you write a blog post?

It is an age-old question.  How often should you write a blog post?  And the answer is not completely cut and dry.  While I do prescribe to the method of posting once a day.  I often fall or fail at that.  It is very common for me to only post once a week.  Sometimes even less, it really depends upon my schedule.  Commonly, what will happen with me is I will let my traffic and the style of blog dictate how frequently I will write a blog post.  Some of my blogs will function just fine if I only post once every couple weeks.  These blogs are unique though.  They are not about topics that require new content to remain relevant.  While it is true, that if I posted to them daily, search engines would probably treat them better, they perform ok, and with the amount of content I am already publishing every day, it is a breath of fresh air when I do not need to give them constant attention.

But what does this do to my blog?

Consistency is really key when writing blog posts.  When starting, beginner bloggers will be best rewarded if they post at least once a day.  It is not a must, but it will help you in the long run if you can get into the habit of posting at least once a day.  The more content that is constantly being fed to your blog, the better chance you have of search engines reconizing this.  And until your blog gets indexed I believe it to be crucial to write a blog post a day.  Sometimes even two blog posts a day.

For me, I take a free form approach.  For all my blogs I try to get to about 50 posts before I slow down.  I post daily, sometimes multiple posts a day, until I hit my 50 post mark, then I will back off a little bit.  Start focusing on generating backlinks and internal links.  Spend some time optimizing my keyword density, and just some overall house keeping.

But even when I slow down my posts.  I always try to post once a week, at least for my blogs that are in more competitive markets. 

Case in point.  This blog will probably be a blog that I will remain highly active in for some time.  Of course there will come a time when the blog will be highly populated with content, and I will start slowing down, but that could be a while.  I am full of ideas and topics right now.  So much so that I find myself writing multiple posts a day right now.

So, let me recap, since again, I am finding myself rambling.

Blogging lessons for beginners – "how often should you write a blog post?"

Write a blog post every single day.  If you have days where you can write two posts, by all means, feel free, if you are feeling really frisky and have three posts…Save the third for the following day.  You don’t have to of course, but you will have days where you just don’t feel like writing, it will come in handy if you have some posts stored up for those occasions.

What are backlinks? Blogging for Beginners basic understanding of Backlinks

What are backlinks?
Backlinks are links to your website that are located on other websites around the web.  They can be generated by you or by others who may wish to link to your content.  They provide search engines and individuals an easy way to locate your blog on the internet.

Why are backlinks important?
Backlinks are important because, search engines use backlinks.  When a search engine is crawling the Internet and stumble upon your backlink, it is an open invitation for that search engine spider to crawl your site.  Opening up the possibility for your site to be indexed.

But that is not the only reason backlinks are important.  They serve several purposes in increasing your blogs traffic.  Not only does that backlink provide awareness for search engines, but it also offers awareness for any individual who happens upon it.  Giving them the opportunity to “Check it out”.  This is an instant traffic generator.  It is a way to increase focused traffic to your blog.

On top of that, Search engines use quantity and quality of backlinks to factor into the SERP and page rank.  The actual value of backlinks to a search engine is well beyond my ability to calculate, but they use a very unique algorithm in order to determine page relevancy. 

So, with that, we can determine that backlinks are important, but how do we generate backlinks?
This is the time consuming part.  There are many forms of backlinks. So, let me cover a couple of your options in creating backlinks.

1.)Blog commenting – I just talked about this in my last post, about the importance of blog commenting, this is an easy and proven method in generating backlinks on sites that are relevant to your own. 

As a side note, it is important to try to generate backlinks on sites and in content that are within your own niche, id does play a factor, search engines will give unrelated backlinks less weight in calculating Page rank.

2.)Within your own blog – As I mentioned before, you will first off, want to make sure your title includes a link to your home page, this creates a backlink, even if it is devalued due to the fact that it comes from within the URL, it still is a backlink.  Also, include backlinks based on your keywords that you will include within your articles.  Some may call these links internal links or inter-linking, they too add to your backlink count, along with offering your readers a way to find other articles within your blog.

3.)Content – There are several content sites on the web that you can write for besides your blog.  I recommend it highly.  Become a member with sites like Hubpages, Bukisa, Ezine and Goarticles.  There are of course many more options to choose from here, these are just a few.  And with sites like Hubpages and Bukisa, you have the added benefit of earning money online, along the way.

4.)Account Profiles – Under most account profiles you will set up on line, they offer you a space to add your personal website URL.  Never forget to add it!  It is an easy backlink.  I am not sure how much real value this backlink adds, but every little bid does count!

5.)Social Bookmarking and Web 2.0 – Social bookmarking and social networking sites offer an excellent place to include your backlinks.  Although some social bookmarks frown upon self-promotion and view it as a form of spam, the occasional bookmarker will not hurt.  This along with any social networks you may be involved in, offer the chance to generate a lot of traffic, at little time cost to you.

6.)Naturally occurring – These are the best possible backlinks you can get.  Problem is, they are not something you have much control over.  In order to get naturally occurring backlinks, you will need other individuals to link to your site, through their own content or websites.  Again, this is going to be controlled by the quality of your content.

So, there you have it the blogging for beginner’s guide to understanding what are backlinks.  I hope this helps you in your blogging quest!

The importance of Blog Commenting

In many ways, blogging is a community.  Bloggers read other Bloggers, we comment on each others works and we build business style relationships in order to assist each other and our blogging endeavors.  And the key to becoming involved with the other blogs that are within your Niche is through blog commenting.  And here I will give you a beginner lesson in blog commenting.  And blog commenting etiquette.

Blog Commenting creates awareness, it does so because most Bloggers enjoy receiving comments about their blogs or posts.  We all appreciate being read, it is why we blog.  And to know that we have wrote something that inspires a response is a stroke to our egos.  Not that all Bloggers walk around with big heads because we are receiving positive affirmation through our comment sections.  But personally, I know that I take the time to read every single one of my comments.  And I also take the time to reply to those comments.

And what does that matter really?

Well, within your comment, you are going to add identity to it, a way for the person reading the comment to link to you, or your blog.  Anyone who comments on any of my blogs gets me as a visitor.  I will go check out their blog and see what they are doing.  And, in turn I will comment.  Sometimes I will message them also, if I have a means to do so.  To create a bond with them, that can benefit both parties. 

It is important to give quality comments if you have any chance to catch the bloggers attention.  Poor comments will be viewed as spam and will sometimes be discarded by the blogger.  You never want to be viewed as a spammer.  This will only hurt your standings within your blogging community.  There are many great bloggers out there.  And they succeed for one reason or another. And maybe they have some insites or maybe they may have an interest in guest authoring a post on your blog, and maybe you have the same in return.  All this creates a possibility for others to find you.  If you have links to your blog on another person’s blog, you now have the chance to receive some of their traffic.  Traffic that is focused on the topic, and is looking for more information.

As a side note, I want anyone who may read this to know, that if you contact me, I will be receptive.  If you would like to guest blog, or would like me to guest blog on your blog.  I am always open to the possibility.  I can find a way to make it work
And this is only part of the benefits in blog commenting.  Something we have not really talked about yet is backlinks, we are getting to that, but realize that quite often, when you comment on someone elses blog that falls within the same niche as your, you are creating a backlink.  Search engines love backlinks as a way to determine popularity and relevancy.  These are key factors in page ranking and s.e.r.p (Search engine results page).  The more quality backlinks your blog has, the better your standings will become with search engines.  And in turn, will increase your overall traffic.

So, remember to spend some time every day blog commenting.  Reading other peoples blogs will only help in your success, and in turn, you giving your fellow bloggers some attention will help them. 

Important factors to consider when Blog commenting

-Make sure you are not commenting anonymously, this will not create backlinks.
-Make your comments insightful and noticeable.
-A little self promotion is ok, just don’t go overboard with it.
-Comment on at least one blog per day.
-Make sure your comments are turned on, on your own blog, to allow reciprocal commenting.


And there you have it, a basic blogging for beginners, understanding of why you should take the time for blog commenting.  I hope this helps you in a successful blog.

Understanding Keywords and Phrases for Beginner Bloggers

Understanding Keywords and Keyword phrases is a very important factor when we are talking about online content.  Although quality content is king, if we do not correctly use keywords and keyword phrases, we will be left without any pages views.  For some of you that will not matter, but for the majority of Bloggers out there, it is of paramount importance for us to be found and read.  And found for the correct niche topic.

So what are Keywords?
Keywords are describer words that search engines will use in order to properly categorize your content within the search engines result page.  What this means is, words like Football or Fishing, or a billion other possibilities are basic keywords.  And if your Blog has a specific niche, you will need to be conscious of the fact that some of these keywords will need to be in your content.

Then, what are keyword phrases?
Keyword phrases, also known as longtail keywords are statements, questions or other groupings of words to help describe your Blog or website.  Phrases tend to be much specialized or focused.  For example, Fishing is a very broad term, but river fishing is much more focused, and river fishing for beginners, is even more specific.

So why use keyword phrases?
If you try to search the term “Fishing”, some very heavy competition is going to show up.  Competition that a beginner Blogger is not going to be able to compete with.   But a term like river fishing for beginners, there is a word with much less competition.  One that a Blogger is going to have much better luck with ranking well in search engine results.

So, how do I find Keywords and Phrases?
Google just so happens to have a very useful tool called Adwords Keyword Tool.  With this tool, you are able to punch in your basic keyword, and from that, Google is going to generate for you, how many times that keyword is searched, and will also give you a whole list of alternate keywords and short phrases, with their traffic values.

So, how does this all work?
Ok, so you now have a basic understanding of what keywords and phrases are, but how are you supposed to use this information?  It is tricky.  I will explain how I usually use keywords as best as I can.

When I start a new Blog, I have a specific topic in mind.  Let’s take this blog for example.  This blog is about blogging.  But the keyword Blogging has way too much competition; I would not be able to compete with that.  So I narrow it down.  I make my blog about blogging for beginners, there is much less competition there.  So, I make sure that all my posts draw some focus to the fact that the overriding factor here is “blogging for beginners”, or, my alternate keyword “blogging lessons for beginners”.  So, The majority of everything I write about here will go back to those basic keywords.

But every post is not going to be called Blogging for beginners or blogging lessons for beginners, that would just be ridiculous.  But it will always come back to that.  In this post, I have focused on “Understanding Keywords and Phrases”, and those are my primary keywords for this specific post, all the while referring back to my primary keywords for the entire blog.

Does that make sense?  It was not something I just learned overnight, and it is not something that people really explain in detail.  For one reason or another, since we are all on the Internet competing with each other in one way or another, some tricks are not completely explained.  Understandable, but it makes it very difficult for beginners to learn what they need to know in order to become productive.

So…What did I learn today?
You learned that understanding your goals and Niche topic is very important when establishing keywords.  That there are tools available to us in order to find good core keywords for our blogs, and for out posts.  And you have learned that it is important to include your keywords within your content, in order for search engines to know how to classify your blog.  If you’re writing about fishing you do not want to somehow show up in off roading or something. 

I hope this helps you and gives you a basic understanding of keywords and phrases.  And come back soon to get more blogging lessons for beginners. (See I squeezed it on one more time, and it’s not too forced)

Writing your First Blog Post

So, here we are, got ourselves a nice Niche topic, we have chosen the best Blogging site, and we are ready to get started.  We are ready to start writing our first Blog post. 

Depending on what your goals are with this Blog you are starting, will truly be the deciding factor when writing your first post.  Do you want to talk about yourself, or do you want to dive right in and start talking about your topic of choice?

Whatever the case may be.  There are some things I would like to cover with you, in regards to writing your fist Blog post.  Being that this Bog is dedicated to Blogging for beginners, I think it is very important to understand a few basic settings and concepts within your posts, that will help bring your readers and help keep them interested long enough to read the entire post.

In many ways this is my first real Blogging lesson for beginners, and there will be some things I cover in this post that may not apply to you entirely the same.  If you are using Wordpress or LiveJournal, you may have some different settings.  But this is what we do with Blogger.

The first thing I would like you to do is to go into your settings, before you start writing your first Blog post I think it is important to understand some of the settings and options to consider, regarding your posts.  So, follow me and click on your settings icon, and then continue over to the formatting tab.

From there, you will have some changeable options -

Show at most- This is how many posts you want to show on your main page.  There are limits; I suggest one or two max.  I set mine at one.

Date Header Format – Just that, it is the way you want your post date to show up on the Blog

Archive index format – This to is just the way that your archive will show up on the side of your Blog, it is just another date format.

Time stamp format – same again, this is for your post dates

Time Zone- Self-explanatory

Language- Also self explanatory

Convert line breaks – This is something that is more for the HTML side of things.  If you are not familiar with HTML I would suggest you leave it on yes and forget about it.  It will not effect you.

Show Title Field – Turn this on to show your title for your post.  I always have mine turned on

Show link Fields – This allows your to place a hyper link in your title.  I always have mine on and I always put the root address for my Blog in that spot (easy backlinks 101)

Enable float alignment – Another HTML thing, I would leave it turned on, unless you are having problems with JPG files not showing up correctly within your blogs.

Post Template – Not important unless you know HTML, then you may use this! 


That is it for that Tab, Click save at the bottom and move to comments

Comments are not something that can be nice, but can also cause problems, sometimes if you do not put some control and restrictions upon them, you will get all kinds of spam comments, looking for easy backlinks from your blog.  If you are ok with this then by all means, that is your call.  I like to have some basic restrictions, but I do not try to go over board with them, I like comments, good or bad, if it is spammy, I will remove it.

Comments – Hide or show, very basic

Who can Comment – Here you decide if anyone can comment or only certain people.  I like to let anyone

Comment form placement – Decide where the comment form is, I change from blog to blog on this, Pop-up windows are nice or at the bottom of the post.

Comments default for post – This gives you control over how soon people comment on your posts

Backlinks – This is interesting to me.  This allows your posts to show a small snippet of text from anyone who may link to your article in something they write.  It is a way to create backlinks and recipricole linking, I turn mine on. 

Backlinks for default posts – This allows your newest post to not have the backlinks option show, until it is replaced with a newer post.

Comments Time stamp Format – Another format options

Comment form Message – Just another generic template you can set up for your comment form, it is up to you to set that up.

There are other tabs and options that you can control. But for now, those are the important ones.  You can play with the others a little just to see what they do.

But on with writing your first blog post!

When writing your first blog post, there are things to consider, but they are no different between your first blog post or your 100th blog post.  And that is finding something that people want to find and want to read.  And something that keeps the reader interested long enough to make it through the whole post, and maybe even good enough for the reader to read some of your other posts.  So how do we to all that.

First thing is first, this is blogging for beginners you know!

Write a good title, one that pulls readers, one that carries your keyword phrase, or your blog topic, whatever you may want to call it.  Before you go much further, you may want to read about understanding Keywords and phrases (Topic is coming soon). 

Once you have your title and you are ready to write, do not forget to add your http to the title, remember backlinks 101. (I will come back to that).

Next start your writing.  For most bloggers, the goal will be to write blog posts somewhere between 200 and 800 words.  You can go more or less, but less and your not really giving your reader any information and much more and readers will wander, get bored and just leave.  We don’t want that.

After you have written your post.  Find a couple pictures to Jazz it up.  People love pictures, we love to be visually stimulated and a thousand words sitting in front of us just is not so interesting.  Make the pictures relevant, or just fun, doesn’t really matter so much.

After you have written your blog, go back through it, re-read it, check for spelling errors, punctuations and all that sort of thing.  We are not perfect, I know I am not, and most readers will understand occasional errors, but if it is not readable, people will not come back.

And finally, at least for this post.  Add a couple links if you can.  If you can link to something that may be relevant to your topic, that people may not know about, do it, they will appreciate that, and even though it takes them away from your content, there is a chance they will come back if they feel you have something to offer.

Well, there you have it, a basic idea of what it will take to write your first blog post, I hope that it helps And I hope that you all come back for more “blogging lessons for beginners”!

Blog topic Ideas – Niche Blogging

One of the first steps for any new blogger will be to brainstorm for BLOG TOPIC IDEAS, or NICHE BLOGGING.  It will be something you will spend a lot of time doing through your entire blogging career.  For some of you, it will probably become an obsession of sorts.  For others, it will be like pulling teeth.  It is monotonous, time consuming research into words that relate to the overall theme of your blog. 

This is a huge topic for new bloggers.  It is an important thing to consider from the moment you decide to make a blog of your own and it is something you will always need to consider, if your goal is to get steady, organic traffic from search engines.  And it is your first lesson, in not only how to blog, but general SEO tactics most bloggers employ in order to develop a popular blog.

Being that the topic is big, I am going to attempt to break it up into sections on the process I would use when deciding on Keywords, Topics, niches and themes for my own blogs.

Bright Ideas can become great niche blogs

Step #1-Why do you want to blog?

The first course of business when starting a new blog will be to decide why you want to make a blog.  Will it be for personal use, similar to a diary, maybe a place for your friends and family to come and see what is happening in your life, if so, you can stop reading right there, this post is more about the importance of laser like focus surrounding a specific group of people that you would like to be able to find your blog, using conventional search engine phrasing.

If your goal is to get pull readers to your blog from search engines, whether that is just to share information, or with the expectation of monetizing your blog and earn extra income, will be your choice. 

First step out of the way, now we can begin learn how to decide what to blog about.

Step #2-Deciding what to blog about, or choosing your niche.

This step is still tough for me.  Most people that teach blogging will tell you to brainstorm all your hobbies and interests, things that take up most of your time, and choose from them your topic to blog about.  It’s a good game plan, but it was rather humbling to me when I first did this and found very little of substance that I would like to spend countless hours, writing about.

Another option in finding blog topic ideas is an approach I favor.  Find something that interests you, but something you are not necessarily pursuing currently.  It will make your work much harder, you will have to learn and become proficient in your topic.  It will require countless hours or research, and it surely is not for everyone.  But for me, a researcher at heart, find it to be a rewarding experience.

The important thing to remember when choosing your niche is that you will be studying the topic from every different angle you can imagine, and attempting to find topics within your topic to write about on your blog.  And you will be writing and writing and writing, so your subject should be one you really like.  It will become very tedious to continue with a blog, if you reach a point where you have no interest left in the topic.

Step #3-Focus your Topic into a Micro Niche

This is where you will start to utilize some online tools in order to attack your topic with laser like accuracy.

I will use an example:

Say you want to start a blog about cars.  First off, there are millions upon millions of niches within that single word that you need to consider.  The truth is, you will have little chance of ever ranking in search engines with such a general term.  So let’s start to pinpoint that topic a little bit.

If you are having trouble at this point, I would suggest a few different options to get some ideas:

Google:  If you put the word ‘cars’ in the search bar in Google, before you hit enter, it will give you some alternative options to the term.  Do any of these ring true with you?  Maybe one of those are a better place for you to start.  If not, hit enter, and scroll all the way to the bottom of the page.  At the bottom of the page is a list of suggested related terms.  Maybe one of these are more interesting to you.  Grab it if you want.

Keyword Tool:

There are tons of keyword tools out there.  If you have a Google Adword account you can use the Google Keyword Tool.  If you don’t, or you do not like it, there are other options.  Keywordtool.io is one.  It’s not going to give you search volumes though, only suggested keywords for your broad term keyword.  It will give you a list of more focused keywords you can use for your blog niche.

If you would like something a little more powerful, I suggest Jaaxy.  It is part of the Wealthy Affiliates network, which, I have to disclose, I am a part of.  You can set up an account with Jaaxy and it will give you 30 keyword searches per month.  It will give you monthly searches and estimated traffic, along with some other useful information.  Along with a list of suggested related keywords to the one you enter.

As a rule of thumb for all this, you will want a keyword, or Blog Topic idea, or Niche that isn’t too high, I would say, under 3,000, remember, this is for your overall theme to your blog, all your posts will be best if they tie back to this major topic in some way or another.

Another thing to look at during this process is your competition.  If you search your topic in Google, using “” around the words, you will find sites with exact matches to that search term.  You want this number to be low.  I like a quantity of under twenty percent of your total monthly searches.  This means I would like to see 60 sites or less turn up if the monthly searches are 3000.  This might be difficult with general keyword terms of one or two words.  More than likely you will be looking for terms or three to 6 words long.

With these tools, I am hoping you can find a niche that suits you.  Personally, if I was looking at the broad term, ‘cars’ my final choice would have ended up being something like ‘Car Engines’ and the name of my blog, would run along the lines of something like, How to Repair Car engines. Or Something like Saturn Car Engines.

Step #4-Deciding on Blog Post Topics, Niches within Niches

Now that you have the basic foundation laid for your blog topic idea, you can begin compiling a list of topics you want to write about on your blog.  Generally, I like to grab a fairly substantial list and try to write a post for every keyword I decide on.  You can use the same steps as above, using the keyword tool of your choice to start drilling down into the keyword to find more focused topics.  Here, you will want to find words with little competition, that also have monthly search totals of 50 or more.  The number seems low, and it is.  You are just starting this blog and you will want to start small if you want any early success.  With time you can look for tougher keywords, but I would recommend you start with the small fries first.

Blog topic ideas can be difficult to come up with

In Conclusion

That is the basic process I go through when I am searching for blog topic ideas, and in the bigger aspect of Niche Blogging.  It is going to be important for you to start small when you are new, and looking for things to blog about.  It takes time to build authority, and it takes more time to compete with blogs and websites that are in your blogging niche and have been around for years. 

Blogging is easy, but lifting an engine is easy,  but both require tools and planning if your intent is to be successful.

Thank you for reading.
(This Post has been edited on: November 24, 2015)