Blogging for beginners is a DoFollow comment blog now

This post really has little to do with learning about blogging and more to do with helping others build quality backlinks for their own blogs.  Up until now, I have received basically no comments for this blog.  Even though there are people stopping by and reading what I have to say, not so much commenting about that is going on.  So, I am throwing you all a bone.  I know that I do not carry a PR yet, because of the blog age, but I will get it there, I will get it to at least a PR1 very soon, and with that I would like to share with you some of my link Juice.

Please feel free to comment here, I will moderate though, and if you spam me, I will delete your comments.  But for all those that can follow my rules on proper blog commenting, you will get a little love. 

I am doing this because I know it is hard for beginner bloggers to find links and to find places that offer Dofollow links are even more difficult to come by. 

And for those of you who do not know the difference between NoFollow and Dofollow.  Here is the basics.

A NoFollow link is a link that most spiders WILL follow, but you will not receive any sort of credit or value from that link, so, if you place a link on a website that has a high PR, it does nothing more for you than placing a link on a low PR site, if they are both Nofollow.  It is just a link.  Google cares very little about that, Yahoo seems to place a little more value in link quantity, but still give you no real benefit from it.

A Dofollow link carries the value of the link it comes from.  Meaning a Dofollow link from a High PR site is going to be viewed as a more valuable link than a Dofollow link from a low PR site.  But whether or not thesite is a high or low PR, the DoFollow link will always carry more value.

So, even though I said I was not giving a blogging lesson today, I guess in some ways I did.

Thank you for reading blogging for beginners

5 ways to blog effectively - Building effective blogging habits

Blog With Authenticity Without Getting Fired
Originally uploaded by Search Engine People Blog

The reality of blogging is that it is a draining process. Especially early on and no matter how much research you do on a specific topic there is no promises that your blog will be popular. I see that with some of my own blogs every single day. Often the problem I see is lack of effective blog habits. And refining your niche blog topics. Building habits that promote your blogging efficiency is a way to improve your odds of building a successful blog.

So, what can you do in order to blog more effectively? What are some of the steps you can do to make sure that every single post you write has an impact on your blog in a positive way? Well there are several things that will make you a more effective blogger and today blogging for beginners would like to talk about some of the tools and the mindset you will need to have in order to blog effectively. And while these will not guarantee your success, learning how to blog effectively is of key importance.

1.) Effective Keyword Research – Start before you write anything
Once you have established your Niche, establish an index of keywords for articles, immediately. You should have 3-5 primary keywords for your blog, and you should have several dozen alternate keywords that you can build your articles around. You can always go get more, and it is acceptable to have more than one post that uses the same keywords, this is actually a very effective way to build keyword density.

2.) Post word count and keyword density
Post word count is is a very important way to blog more effectively. Sometimes you may have a hard time finding the motivation on a particular topic and the post may be short. But do not make that a habit. For a good blog post you generally want it to be between 400 and 800 words long. Some people will say 200-1000, and I am ok with going up to a thousand, but 200 in my opinion is just too short, at least on a regular basis. Something many people do not realize is search engines look at the ratio between content and code. What this means is, if the search engines crawl your blog post and see that it is a code heavy, low content page, they tend to view it as spammy, and will devalue it. On the other hand if you get too wordy, readers will lose interest.

Keyword Density is something I often have a struggle with; Effective keyword density for blog posts should be between 2%-7% of the content. Much less and the engines will not no how to place your article, much more and again, engines will view you as spam. There are several sites out there that will count your keywords when you write an article, so just spend the few minutes to check density, this will optimize the article for search engines.

3.) Write posts in bulk and schedule publishing is a very effective blogger tool
This is something I would really benefit from, because I am always running behind. But it is more than acceptable to write a bunch of posts all at the same time. With blogger you can actually set up scheduled releases, so you do not even have to log in and publish an article every day. This can be a effective time saver, if you can blast out a weeks worth of posts on Sunday night, you can spend the week working on backlinks.

4.) Understand your blogs structure
Understanding your blog structure is very very important to effective blogging. It is really easy to write a post and forget about it. But once the post on your main page is replaced, it still exists, and it still has keywords that can bring new readers to your blog, that are different than your primary niche keywords. Remember that a blog is full of doors that people can enter your blog through, and that it is important to build popularity to those individual posts, and not just your root blog URL. I have a couple blogs that see most readers enter through a post instead of your Root URL. Remember to spend some time building links back to your old articles, it pays huge dividends when building your blog traffic.

5.) Encourage commenting to build new topics
This is a hard one for me, even though I try to encourage commenting. It seems that I don’t really receive a lot of blog comments, it’s not critical, but you can use blog commenting as a way to gauge what your readers are looking for and what they think of certain posts. Some posts will bomb and your readers will let you know that it is a dud, don’t be discouraged by that, use that as a motivational tool to go back to the books and try again.

There are the blogging for beginners, 5 ways to blog effectively, there are of course a lot of other ways you can improve your efficiency, but I need to save something for other posts! Thank you for reading blogging for beginners.

Blogging for beginners Weekly recap

Welcome all to bloggers for beginners, weekly recap

Last week was a lazy week for me.  I was plumb out of new and fresh thoughts, already, 20 something posts in and already running on empty.  Hopefully this week I will be able to bring you something of substance.  We have covered a lot of the important parts already, and this week I would like to spend some time on some littler tips and tricks for beginners that may help them through the beginning.  It can be pretty tough for a blogger who has decided to try to tackle a topic that already has a very saturated market. (Talking about me).  But there are a lot of things we can do, just by simply using our ability to write about our topic and talk about our topic.

As far as last week.  Here are the posts that I had.

How to build blog traffic or generate blog traffic
Here I initiated a bit of a personal competition.  I am going to try to increase my page ranking for 5 articles, I will do a weekly update, that will come tomorrow.  But lest just say I have already noticed a pretty big difference.

How to create a blog – Video Tutorials
Here I got really lazy, I grabbed some you tube videos and posted them basically.  They covered how to make a blog using wordpress and one using blogger.  Hopefully someone will find them useful.

Keyword research tools and variables to consider for blogging beginners
Its just that, we talked about Google’s Adword Keyword tool, and Page rank, and Site explorer, and how you can use them in conjunction in order to do proper keyword research.

And that was it….Sorry it was so light.  I got pretty busy with a few other things and really just lost track of my time management.  I will try to do better this week.

So, come back soon, to blogging for beginners.

Thank you

Keyword research tools and variables to consider for beginner bloggers

It is a problem I deal with every single day when working on my blogs. And that is keywords and keyword research. And although I have quite a bit of knowledge on the subject and I understand the principals behind it, even for me, I find it to be a struggle when deciding on keywords. Today, at blogging for beginners I would like to spend some more time on the subject. I know I have talked about it a few times, and I will continue to talk about it, until I feel I have completely exhausted the issue.

And for someone like me, someone who can ramble on and on about almost anything that I have a little interest in. This may take a while.

In particular, today I would like to delve a little deeper into good keyword research and some of the tools I implement in building a solid core of keywords to use as my jumping off point for my blogs. And really for any content I may be planning to add to the internet. Because keywords are not just unique to bloggers. They play a role in all forms of internet content. And should be a key factor in deciding on topics that you would like to talk about on the internet.

So, just to refresh everyone. Keywords are the words that search engines use to help classify your content. Keywords are the common words that internet users will type into the search engines in order to find specific information on a certain topic. Some keywords are searched more often than others, some keywords have MUCH more competition than others. And it is all a big balancing act between ad cost and supply and demand. While there is not necessarily a direct correlation between keyword competition and search frequency, there is almost always a direct link between keyword ad cost and competition.

Keywords like loan, and money are high ad dollar keywords, this means that these words are highly competitive and that chances of a blogging beginner cracking into page one on the search engines are really really slim. This leaves us searching for the perfect balance of competition/ad cost/and search frequency.

And one of the primary places I do most of this research is with Google's Adword Keyword tool. With this tool, you can see how many times a specific keyword is searched, along with what google charges for that keyword. For individuals who are trying to make money through advertising, these are important bits of information. Through those to pieces of information you can assume what sort of value that specific keyword will have to you if you advertise on your blog. The Google charge is not a representation of what you will earn per ad click, being a third party advertiser, you only receive a portion of that cost.

Basically, you want keywords with high ad rates, high traffic rates, and low competition. And that is much harder than you may think. Competition is fierce in most instances. Meaning something will have to be sacrificed.

There are options here though. If you would prefer the high traffic count at the cost of ad rates, look for that, if you would prefer low traffic volumes for the home run hits on your ad dollars, then you can go for that. But even at lower traffic volumes, if the keyword has value, you will have competition.

In most instances, for someone who is just starting out with all this. I would recommend you look for keywords that are highly searched but have little keyword value. Because this in turn usually brings less competition.

So, what do you really need to be looking for?

Usually keywords that are worth less than a dollar, and are searched between 500-2000 times per month is a good place to start. But even after you find these keywords, there are more steps to consider when deciding on keywords.

After you have found a keyword, google-it. This is going to give you some insight to your competition. What are we looking for here is, the total results of websites that appear on the page. This will vary greatly, from a few to millions, lower numbers are always good, as long as you followed the first step and found words that are actually searched more than a few hundred times per month.

The next thing you need to look at is the top 5 sites that appear in the results, because these are your primary competition. Can you beat these sites or at least compete with these sites? There are a lot of variables that will help you determine that.

First thing you will want to do is find out what each of the top five's page rank is. Remembering that anything above a 4 is going to be hard for you to compete with. Sites that are highly popular, or sites that have been around for a very long time, or Wiki's will always pose a serious problem when trying to compete for top spots.

After you have these sites page ranking, the next thing you will want to do is visit them. Take a look at the page and try to understand why it ranks so well, look for the keywords withing the content, read the page and just get an understanding of the approach that the page takes to the specific keyword. sometimes you will find that the site doesn't seem to be targeting that specific keyword at all, it just happens to be a very strong site and naturally will rank well for that specific keyword if it is included somewhere within the page.

The last step for right now that I want to talk about it checking the quantity of inbound links that the specific page has. The easiest way I have found to do this is with Yahoo's Site Explorer. With Site Explorer you can copy and paste the URL, and it will count backlinks. Remember, backlinks can be tough to come by, the higher number of backlinks a specific page has, the more backlinks you are going to need in order to be competetive. This number can vary greatly also, from a couple, to tens of thousands. So, be very wary of what you are getting into by choosing a specific keyword.

Another very nice thing that site explorer tells you, is where the links are coming from for the specific page. This gives you the chance to use some of those sites for backlinks yourself. so check them out, look to see if there is an opportunity to comment and add a link.

So, bottom line here is, "keyword research" is critical in the success of your blog. Going after the big dogs right out of the gate is going to lead to failure. No doubt about it. Find words that you feel you can handle and don't be afraid to start small and work up to the bigger words.

A common practice I try to use is, I base my blog's primary keywords around words that are searched more frequently, and from that, I write posts with keywords that are easier to achieve, in the hopes that I will pull readers through the back door of one of my older posts. It is a method I find to work, and one you may find useful also.

Well, that is it for today, I hope you enjoyed this blogging for beginners presentation and I hope to see you back soon!

How to Create a blog - Video Tutorials

Today I am slacking off.  I am going to attach some video tutorials of how to create blogs on different platforms.  Take a look at them, they may help you out.

Here is a Wordpress How to......


Here is a quicky for Blogger






I know...I am lazy today. I have been too busy!!!

Thanks for reading blogging for beginners

How to build blog traffic, or generate blog traffic

Today I am going to make all about me.  About this blog, blogging for beginners and a dilema I have come across.  See, when I started this blog, I missed something that was very important.  The term blogging for beginners is searched about 2400 times a month, which in theory is a great number to shoot for.  It usually means that the competition will be on par for what a free blog should be able to compete with, without too much effort.  But what I failed to realize is problogger hits at number one for this search term.  Problogger is a monster of a blog, and one that this blog will not be able to overtake.  Not even on my best days can I say I could ever compete with that blog, using this one.  So, that leaves me with a hube hole in my blog traffic.  So how do I fix that, how can I build up blog traffic or generate new blog traffic?  It is the question I am asking myself now, now that I realize I an in a little bit of trouble!

Although I have not invested an unbelievable amount of time to this blog, it is important for it to succeed.  It ia a stepping stone for something more I have in the works and in order for me to move forward I have to feel confident that this blog is operating at peak efficiency amd as of right now…It is pretty much running on E.

So, here is my plan of action.

I have 5 primary articles in this blog that I am going to focus on, giving them 100% of my attention, and using my techniques in building backlinks and increasing awareness.

Those posts are here:

Building Internal Blog Links
The Importance of Blog Commenting
Understanding Keywords and Phrases for beginner bloggers
Blog topic Ideas – Niche Blogging
What are Backlinkgs

I will be writing and submitting articles that will promote these individual posts.  I will also be writing hubs that will be linking back to these posts.  And for the hubs, I will be writing Helium articles and Bukisa Articles.  Along with blog commenting on the blogs that may be talking about these topics.  I am hoping that I can bring the traffic volume up with these particular posts, also meaning that the entire blog should see a substantial traffic increase.

So today, although this post it titled how to build blog traffic or generate blog traffic.  I am not showing you how to, but how it may effect this blog by implementing my existing tactics.

As a base line, We can pretty much start at ‘0’  I do not see more than a couple of page views a day, I will start putting together some charts so we can see how this will effect my traffic.

So, that is it for today, wish me luck!!!  I will try to make it a habit of talking about this process occasionally so you know where it stands, but will probably have a progress report ever couple of weeks, or whenever I feel it to be pertanent.

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

Blogging for Beginners Weekly recap

Beginner blogging lessons from last week were kinda light.  Real world got in the way and left me with too many obsticals to find the time to write as much as I wanted to for Blogging for beginners, but, I still found a way to get three new blogging lessons in the books.  So today, I would like to just quickly run back over them, like I do every week. 

Last wee we talked about Analytics, Statcounters, Focus, and make money blogging.  So, lets quickly cover over them in detail.

Statcounters and Analytics for beginner bloggers
Here we talked about the importance of installing statcounters and following the Analytics for your Blog.  These tools will help you determine how people are finding your site and Why they are finding your site.  This gives you a chance to exploite your blogs strengths and build on its weaknesses.  Invaluable tools for any blogger looking to find success, in the form of traffic.

Do not lose sight of your Primary Blog Topic
This is something I have to practice every single day.  Losing focus is a strong reason for blog failures.  Topics start to become random, you post irregullarly and you end up finding yourself falling out of favor with the search engines.  Remaining focused and on task will only build upons your blog strengths.  And help with your success.

How can Beginner Bloggers make money Blogging
Here we talked about different ways you can make money blogging.  Especially early on in your blogging life, you may find it very frustrating (as I often do) that not very many people are visiting your sites, and even less are generating any form of income for you.  So, here we talked about alternatives that will help strengthen your blog, and created some income generating content to help with your own mental well being.

So….Yeah I know, only three blogging lessons last week.  I am hoping to get a little more done this week.  But I have SOOO much work going on between the blogs, and real work.  And I still have to find some time to start building up more “Backlinks”  I was hoping that this blog would be ranking better by now for my primary keywords, but it seems that it will need a little more help.

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

How can beginner bloggers make money blogging

The biggest problem with the concept of making money through blogging is generating enough blog traffic to keep up with statistical facts.  What I mean is, if you are only seeing 5 unique visitors per day.  The chance of you making any real income through your blog is minimal.  You need real, substantial traffic that believes what you are saying if you are going to have any luck with making money through your blog.

And for beginners, blog traffic sometimes is something that is non-existent.  It is not uncommon for new blogs to see no traffic for days.  No people = no money, it is just a fact.  So, no matter what your method for monetizing your blog, or what your keyword topic may be, unless you maximize your blog traffic, you will not make the money your after.  Patience is key.  I have been feverishly posting to this blog and generating good backlinks and commenting on others blogs and doing all the things I am supposed to be doing, and traffic is still minimal.  I am still only seeing a handful of visitors a day.  Some of that is due to the fact that “Blogging for Beginners” is a fairly competitive market.  Some of that is because the blog has not had a chance to properly age.  Search engines take into account the age of a website when determining where to place it in the SERP.  It is not the most important factor by any means, but a blog that gets constant updates for months will place better than a blog that is only a month or two old and gets random updates.

But, we are not here really to talk about traffic today.  Traffic is something that will come with time.  Today we are here to talk about making money with your blog.  In my previous Blogging for Dollars post, we covered the ways you can use to make money blogging.  Today I do not want to talk about that.  I do not want to talk about adding ads to your blog or affiliate marketing to your blog.  I want to talk about an alternative to this.  Something that in many cases, you may have more luck with.

Previously we have talked submitting content in order to generate solid backlinks.  This is one of the best ways to get really good backlinks.  But not all content sites are created equally.  Sites like Ezine and Hubpages, or Goarticles are the sites that will give you the BEST link juice for your money.  The main reason I use these services is to help generate traffic and page rankings.  But there are other sites on the web that can do something for you as well.  Sites like Helium and Bukisa are two content sites that pay you for page views for the articles you write for them.  It is not much.  Sometimes less than a penny per view, but when you are just starting every little bit counts, right.  The problem with Helium and Bukisa is, they allow you to include backlinks in their articles, but those backlinks are NOFOLLOW links, where the links you get with Hubpages, and Ezine and Goarticles are DOFOLLOW.  So, in reality, creating backlinks with the other two are really not doing a whole lot for you…..It is true that every link has value, but every link is not created equal.  So, with this, you can look at sites like Bukisa and Helium as a way to monetize your blog.  By using your blog as a funnel, AND as a way to get a really nice backlink for your articles. 

Now, let me explain what I do, it may make more sense than me rambling on like I am.

I have a structure to the way I go about my business with my blogs and websites.  I write a post, and after I write my post, I look for ways to generate backlinks for that specific post.  I will write articles to submit to content sites like Ezine and GoArticles, and I start to concept a hub for it.  After I have the article or articles submitted, I write a hub.  And after I write a hub, I write a Bukisa and at Least one Helium article…..Or this is what I try to do…Some times I falter and run out of time…Its why I have a list of hubs that I am supposed to get done and it is not getting any smaller. 

Anyway,  Now I have my content.  I have a blog post, and linked to that blog post I have my content articles, and my hubs.  And then, I link my Helium and Bukisa articles to my hub…Or my blog too, but I am focusing on the hub.  So I have established a hierarchy.  Post>Content=Hubs>Helium=Bukisa. 

But now I want to get views to the Helium and Bukisa articles, because those are the ones that can make me money now.  So, I keep a mental note of them, and when I have the opportunity, I link to my helium and Bukisa articles from a post in my blog.  Or along the side of my blog as other material worth reading.  This way I have created a loop in some ways.  I am turning one visitor into the possibility of being one visitor over multiple pieces of my content.  This is a ways to maximize your earning potential.  Especially for beginner bloggers trying to make money from their blog

Good luck and good blogging.

Thank you for visiting blogging for beginners, and please come back soon!

Do not lose sight of your primary blog topic - focus is key to successful blogging

Today I want to spend a little time on blog topics and the importance of staying pinpoint focused on your topic, and primary keyword selections.  Because it is all too often that I see blogs that are all over the map.  That the author has been unable to stay focused.  There are many reasons for this.  But the reason I believe is the most common is the lack of information about the blog topic.

Many people, who are beginning to blog, do so because they have an interest in expressing their opinions about a specific topic.  The problem with this is, once your opinion is out there, you have nothing left to talk about.  You can mindlessly drone on about the same thing over and over again, but this doesn’t solve anything, this will actually start to annoy your readers.

So how can you find something that you are knowledgeable about, something that you can obsessively write about and consistently have something new to share with your readers?  You have to focus on things that you are more than just interested in; you have to focus on things you truly have a wealth of knowledge about.  You have to spend hours learning and reading and improving your own basic knowledge in order to take that information you have learned, and jumble it all up in your mind, put your own spin on it and spit it back out on your blog.

Now, don’t get me wrong, what I just said sounded a bit like I am telling you to read what others write and just regurgitate it.  That is not it at all, I am telling you to learn, to practice what you learn and to put your own spin and level of importance on it, then tell others.  Having a unique spin or opinion on what others are constantly repeating is what will set you out in a crowd.  This is what should be your primary goal when writing your blog posts.  This coupled with the fact that you are staying with your primary topic.

Like this blog.  I am always going to write posts that will be informative and will give my readers new insights on what it takes to become a successful blogger.  I am never going to write an article about celebrity gossip or ant reproduction.  Although the ant reproduction thing is kinda an interesting thought.  Anybody who finds me on this blog is not looking for that, and that is not what I want him or her to find.  If they stumble onto an article that has little or nothing to do with my primary target, there is a very good chance I have just lost that reader forever.

So, even though I am here talking about remaining focused on your primary keywords and topics, I have to admit something.  The very thing that brought me to the world of blogging is the one thing that makes blogging so difficult for me.  See I have the attention span of a three-year-old.  Staying focused is my weakness, but it is what made me start a blog.  I saw one, thought it was neat, realized I could do it for free and went at it!  It was a complete failure.  I wallowed through it, writing about this and that, with no real direction and do you know what happened…absolutely nothing!  Nobody came.  I gave up on it.  I lost hope.  But being the type of person I am, I started learning.  Learning about blogging, reading blog posts much like the ones I am putting here on blogging for beginners.  I started building up my knowledge base, and I tried again.  And do you know what happened…Almost nothing!  Yep, second attempt is still up and running and I post to it at least once a week, but the topic is so wide ranged that I will probably never rank well for any specific keywords.  But I know that, I write on that blog in a way that it will just not get the traffic.  And I am ok with that.

So after that, I started my third blog…It took off.  I was getting more and more hits every single day, and I was writing and writing away.  Things were looking good, but then a crazy thing happened.  I ran out of stuff to say.  I even pleaded with my readers to ask me questions or give me suggestions, so I could find more things to write about. But I got NOTHING! Nobody was commenting.  The blog was not interactive, readers were there with the sole purpose of finding information and they were using the blog as a way to find that information, often that information was on other sites.  And all I was doing was linking them to the other sites.  Chalk it up to a bit of a failure.  And why?  Because I didn’t have the adequate knowledge to stay on topic.

First attempt was lost because I could not stay on topic

Second attempt will remain what it is because although I do a better job of it, I do not always stay on topic
Third failed for lack of knowledge about the topic

So understand something from this.  And this is key.  Laser like focus is of primary importance when you decide to start to blog.  If you want a blog that is successful and that brings a bulk of your readers from search engines you need that focus to be sustained over a long period of time.  This is not a process that will happen overnight.  This is not even a process that will happen in a couple of weeks.  But an ever-consuming process that has to be maintained over the lifetime of the blog if you truly want to see your readership constantly moving in the right direction.

It is really funny to me that I think a couple of times within this post; I lost focus and went off on a tangent…. What can I say, I never really learn!

Thank you for reading blogging for beginners and I hope you come back soon!

Statcounters and Analytics for beginner bloggers

Today I would like to talk a little about statcounters and Analytics for blogs.  As beginner bloggers you may have no concept of what this means, and I feel that these tools will give you important insight into how your blog is performing and why it is performing the way it is. 

For me, I use Google Analytics, and I also use statcounter.com.  I use both for a very good reason.  I have some form of statistical OCD.  I am constantly checking stats and keywords all day long.  That is why I use statcounter.  It keeps a real time tally on page views.  Google's analytics also tracks page views and visits. But it only refreshes daily, this is fine for most, but being I like to keep a very close eye on when I get page views I use a free statcounter account that I can access through my blackberry browser, any time I want.

Ok, so what are analytics and statcounters really good for?
They track how many page views you receive, they track how traffic is finding you, and they track keywords if you are found through a search engine and they keep a running total of your total page views.  Now, for some, to see the actual number of page views really has little importance.  But for others like me, you will become obsessed with it.

First off, lets spend most of our time talking about Google’s Analytics.  This account will provide you with in depth information on the visitors to your blog, but before you can get the information, you will have to set up a Google analytics account.  This is very straight forward, especially if you already have a Google account.  It will just be linked to your existing account.

Once you have your account, you will need to link the account to your blog.  You will do this by providing Analytics with your blog name and URL, and Google will then give you a code to add to your blog.  This part is a little bit tricky, because it is HTML and you will have to add it to your template code.  So, just remember to make a copy of your template code before you alter it.  You know, save early save often.  After adding the code, Analytics will confirm that they have located the tracking code and within the next 24 hours your stats will start accumulating. 

With Google’s Analytics, you will be able to see how many visits you receive, you will see how many page views, and you will see average time on the site.  But that is not all, you will also see your traffic sources.  You will see keywords used to find your blog, and you will see what pages within your blog are being viewed along with how many times they are being viewed.  Now there is more information that Analytics provides, but you will learn that along the way.

The important thing here is to see how you are getting traffic, and if keywords are being used, what the keywords are.  This gives you the opportunity to improve upon your most successful posts, by adding more backlinks or rewording the pages to optimize them for the keywords being used. This also gives you a chance to see the posts that are just plain missing the mark.  And you can also spend some time correcting them in order to see better results.

Now for some, all this information that is provided by Analytics is not important.  It will really depend on your overall goals.  But, I would say that most new bloggers, or old bloggers are mostly interested in getting as many new visitors as possible and this tool is an excellent way to help you build a better blog.  All beginner bloggers should set up an analytics, just to get a little affirmation, and to be able to determine if what you are doing is “hitting the mark” so to speak.

Statcounter on the other hand is more of a luxury for me.  Being that I can see real time statistics for my blogs, I can get an idea if what I am doing makes an immediate impact or not.  It lets me know if new blog posts are getting immediate recognition or if they take time to start seeing results.  But either way, it is a free counter, and one that I would consider if you like to track your statistics.  It also will require you to set up an account, and claim your blogs.  And it will require you to add code to your HTML in order to track your site performance.

Even though these tools will not directly impact your blog performance.  What they do is offer you the ability to look into how your blog performs and why it performs like it does.  It will let you see that certain posts get much more attention and it will let you get and idea as to why they get more attention.  It is quite often that keywords that are showing up in analytics are keywords that I didn’t even consider when writing a specific post.  When that happens, I am left with the option of researching the keyword and determining if it is a keyword that I should promote within that post.  Using it as anchor text in backlinks and optimizing the article to include the exact phrase that has been searched. 

So, whether you start a blog purely out of pleasure, or with the sole purpose of generating high traffic numbers to increase your earning potential, Statcounters and analytics are must have tools for any blogger.  Get them and use them.  And the more you become familiar with them, the more that they will benefit you in your progression from beginner blogger to master blogger.

Thank you for reading blogging for beginners, come back soon for more blogging lessons!

Blogging for Beginners – Weekly Recap

It was a short week last week.  We only had four real workdays.  And if you have not noticed so far, This blogger does not work on days off.  I prefer to take a little time to recharge.  I never stop thinking of topics, and in fact I usually will have a notepad close by to jot down any thoughts that may pop in my mind.  But I usually will only do my writing on weekdays.

You do not have to follow that pattern.  You can write a post every single day.  You can write two posts every day if you are that into your topic.  Or you can write less.  Or, maybe you can write a week worth of posts on the weekend and schedule them to be published, as you deem fit.

Anything really works.  Just set a pattern and stick to it.  More posts are always better, but remember, more posts mean more work.  Not just with writing, but with keywords and backlinks.  There are a lot of little things to remember with every single post you write.

I tend to write by the seat of my pants.  I have general ideas for topics, but until I am in the moment, I really don’t do any “rough draft”, kind of writing.  I could, but having the personality I do, I would forget about them, and move onto the next shiny object that happens to catch my view. 

But, just like with every other money, I want to quickly cover over all of the previous week’s lessons.  Even though it was a short week.  We still have 3 blogging lessons from last week.

Creating Backlinks through online writing
For this post we discuss the importance of creating backlinks through online writing.  Some online writing sources who are nofollow links, but there are many out there who are dofollow.  I would recommend you use both forms.

SEO tools for blogging beginners or Advanced
Here I gave you blogger tricks.  Bloggertricks is a wonderfully useful blog that everyone should take a look at, it will provide you with lots of useful tid-bits.

Proper blog commenting
Here I used the first comment I received for this blog as a tool to illustrate the wrong way to comment on blogs.  Under normal circumstances, I would have deleted this comment, but for the sake of teaching I allowed it.

There you go.  This week we will be talking about Focusing on your topic in order to maintain good serp rankings.  We will cover over saturation of keywords within articles.  Maybe sprinkle some blogging for dollars in there.  Maybe look at some webmaster style tools to help track statistics.  Something like that.

Here at blogging for beginners, I am just flying by the seat of my pants!  Thank you for reading and come back soon!

Proper Blog Commenting

Today I have received my first comment on this blog, and although I would not usually let this type of comment through my moderation, I figured it would give me the perfect opportunity to illustrate to you the difference between proper blog commenting and comment spam.  

See, this person has broken all the rules in my book as to how you should use blog comments to help your website, because truly that is what we as bloggers are going for.  The problem with that mentality is many people pay very little attention to the comment in which they are actually commenting on.  This person was just looking for a juicy backlink, and in the process, really made a few big mistakes.  He just happened to luck out a little today when I decided to let it actually pass. 

The Comment was posted on my weekly recap, and as you can see.  He totally went straight for the jugular and stated that he heard this was a good place to get a backlink.  What? Really?  It that what he was really told?  Because backlinks that you will get from commenting on this blog offer very little value at this moment, if it is not on topic!  My comments are set to Nofollow, meaning he gains no PR juice from me, and with very little traffic this blog is seeing so far, he is NOT going to receive any traffic to his site through the link.  And it is not just because I have no traffic, it is also because the site has NOTHING to do with the topic we are talking about here.  And he took no time to try to spin his comment to make it look like he was relating it to our topic.

All big NO-NO’s.  Most bloggers would never do this.  Not unless they were real beginners who have not taken the time to really learn proper blog commenting.

Let me break this all down for you as best as I can. 

Starting from the beginning, why is it important to comment on others blogs?
Because it creates awareness, it shows the other readers of that blog that you exist, in many ways it is a first impression.  For both the readers of the blog AND the author of the blog.  What you write within the comment should be relevant and add perspective to the article.  Remember people, first impressions.

See a lot of people only comment to create a backlink.  But there is a big flaw in this mentality.  If all you are trying to do is impress the search engines with all your backlinks, then you are barking up the wrong tree.  Most of the comment sections within most blogs out there are NOFollow.  You may not know what this means so I will give you a brief idea of what NoFollow and Dofollw mean.

NoFollow links are backlinks to your site that are labeled in a way that tells the search engines not to follow them.  Some search engines do not follow this rule and will follow the link, BUT, this link carries no real value to the search engine.  Even if you comment on a blog with a great page ranking, none of that juice is passed onto you for your page ranking, so, Nofollow has little value, other than to find new readers from other blogs.  It is a way to generate traffic, and it is something to be practiced regularly.

DoFollow links are backlinks that carry value to the search engines.  If you establish dofollow links on high page ranking sites, your page ranking will be effected, you get a little bit of their “Link Juice”, These links are key to raising your own page rank, but are not as easy to come by as the nofollow links.

And it is all for good reason.  Originally all links were followed.  Back in the day every link carried value to it, but what happened is spam, lots and lots of spam.  So, to combat that, the nofollow/dofollow tags were added to blog comment sections, because these were the biggest culprits to the spam that the search engines were finding.  But in turn.  Many websites have picked up the nofollow tags for links.

Rambling, I know.

Back to my point anyway.
So, it is important to maintain a high standard when you are commenting on others blogs, because you want to leave a good impression.  It is also important to make sure you are commenting on blogs that are relevant to you own personal blog.  People seek out topics to learn something about that topic and are not usually interested in running off to a site that seems to have nothing to do with what they are learning at that very moment.

Like I have said before, Blogging is a community.  Readers and writers alike read blogs and tend to gravitate towards that style of website when seeking out information.  Blogging has a very unique ability to stay current, due to the fact that the best blogs are blogs that are constantly being updated with new materials.  It is what makes us special.  Blogs always offer the possibility of offering new perspective.

So, can you see now how that persons comment was almost useless.  Luckily they didn’t waste much time on it.  And luckily they happened to comment on a blog that talks about topics such as blog commenting.  They really lucked out, but it will not happen again.

This is not to say I do not welcome comments, far from that in fact.  I would like to see my readers comment and add a link back.  Just remember that I am no follow and that if you want to generate any real interest with that comment, it better be worth our time.

Now, being that I am a blog about blogging for beginners, you may ask, how can I comment on this blog?  My blog is about…________ (fill in the blank).

It’s not so difficult.  In that case you are going to create a comment that expresses the fact that you think I am wonderful and I have taught you so much and have helped you improve your own blog, _________(fill in the blank), and would appreciate if I took a look.  Maybe ask for a pointer or tip.  Something along those lines.

Mask your primary goal with complements!!  I feed off them.

I hope this helps illustrate the importance of "proper blog commenting".  I am sorry I had to make an example of this person just trying to establish a backlink, but, if they had taken the time to learn a thing or two, they would never have commented.

SEO tools for bloggers beginners or advanced

Today I am going to write a pretty quick post.  It is really not my own at all, other than this, kranthi at blogger tricks has a post that offers tons of free to use SEO tools for bloggers.  I have referred back to this post over and over again and I feel it is well worth mentioning.  It has a meta tag generator, it has a favicon generator, page rank checker, backlinks checker, keyword suggestion tool, keyword density checker, website speed test, logo maker, nofollow link checker tool, and reciprocal link checker.  Shoot there may be more there, but those are the ones I can think of.

Check these tools out, check his whole blog out, it is well worth the read.  In fact, I have learned a lot myself from this blog.  And it has helped me become a better and more efficient blogger. 

As far as explanations for everything I mentioned up above, because I do realize some of you will have no idea what most of those items are, well, that will just have to come at a later day.  I fully expect to go into detail the benefits of almost every single one of those tools purposes.

Be careful with some of them.  Tools like the Meta Tag generator will require you to alter your blog HTML and may not be for everybody.  Meta tags are not as important as they used to be, but they still do play a little role in building the best possible blog.

Thank you for reading blogging for beginners and I hope you find blogger tricks as useful as I have!

Creating Backlinks through Online writing

Backlinks are something that eludes many of us.  We all want popularity and we all want to be seen, but if nobody knows we are there, how can we ever be seen.  And if we are never seen, how can we generate popularity, and without popularity, there are no backlinks. 

So, what can we do in order to jump-start the process?  Well, luckily for us.  We do have a way to generate quality backlinks using our anchor text or keyword text as the link.  We just have to find those places, and then we do what are already doing.  And that is telling stories, showing people how, or just writing thoughts. 

What I am talking about is online content.  There are many sites on the Internet that offers you the ability to submit your content.  Some of those sites pay you for your content, while others just take it, and it is used how they deem fit.  And it is my opinion that you should be ready and able to use both tools as a means to establish quality and long lasting Backlinks. 

Online writing can be difficult for some.  But if you are a blogger, and if your main form of communication on the internet is through your posts and writings, it should not be too difficult for you to establish a presence through these online writing sites that we are about to talk about.

But before we talk about Online writing, lets first talk a little bit about your blog.  In a previous posting I talked about the various types of posts you can write as a blogger, in order to break up the monotony of blogging.  And one of the posts is something I called a Pillar post.  Pillar posts are your posts that are going to be the most prominently found posts.  They are going to offer the most information, and being so, they will generate the most buzz.  So, when building backlinks through online writing sources, it is important to create backlinks to these posts, as well as your root URL.  Every single post in your blog is like another web page, and just because your root page is doing well, does not mean that there is not room for improvement with your other pages.  So, when writing content with backlinks in mind, remember to not only write content that will be linked to your primary URL, also write articles that will link back to your pillar posts.

For me, I write for several Article submission sites.  They are Helium, Hubpages, Ezine, Goarticles, and Bukisa currently.  They are not the only ones available to you.  Associated Content, Info Barrel, and Squidoo are others that are considered very popular.  But, since I have some I am familiar with, I will talk about those specifically.

Helium
Helium is an online content site that pays you for your articles.  They pay per view, they have standard titles that you have to choose from and you write an article for that title.  And it goes into the pool of articles that are also under that title.  As a writer for Helium, you are also asked to rate the other writers articles, this is how everyone is placed within helium, the better your articles rank within their perspective titles, the more money you earn for that title.  But the money is not the only thing here.  The goal when creating backlinks through your articles is, to write an article that is directly related to your post you are linking back to, or to your Blog as a whole if you intend on linking to the root URL.  And somewhere within that article, you will need to include your primary keyword phrase, and create a link back to your post, or blog.  This is a very strong backlink, and one that Google will not ignore.  Helium as a whole carries a page rank of 6, meaning that any links you establish through this website have a very good chance of being considered a very strong link.

Hubpages
Hubpages are almost like mini blogs.  You can write about whatever you want.  There is an approval so your content will need to be solid and cannot break any rules that Hubpages has.  With Hubpages you also have the chance to make money.  They allow you to place your Adsense or Ebay or Amazon Affiliates ads on the hub, and with that, you can reap the rewards twice over.  Once through a site that has a page rank of 6 and has high traffic volumes, and also through the extra income that can be earned through your affiliate programs.  Hubpages does take a cut of your earnings, but it is a fair trade off.  There is a hitch with Hubpages, if you do not have a writers score of above 75, your backlinks are classified as No-follow links, this means that search engines will ignore them and will not index your blog through them.  If you have at least 7 or 8 hubs that perform fairly well, you should be able to keep your score above 75 though.

Ezine
Ezine is a content submission site that does not pay you.  Here they have some stricktly rules on where you place your backlink, but they offer you an author bio area at the end of the article.  The ezine site itself has a page rank of 6 also, and search engines view this site as a very strong link.  The benefit of writing articles for Ezine is that other website owners use Ezine as a way to find content.  This means that any article you write for Ezine has the chance to be distributed all over the web, offering you an unlimited opportunity for generating backlinks.  The more webmasters that use your articles the more backlinks your articles create.

GoArticles
Goarticles is another site that is basically the same as Ezine.  They do not pay your for your content, but they distribute your content to webmasters who are looking for content for their websites.  This offers you the same benefits as Ezine.  Goarticles seems to have a more lenient review process, but they have a lower page rank of 4.  That still is not chopped liver.  More than likely that is quite a bit better than your blog, and any link that Goarticles provides for you is going to be a good one.

Bukisa
Bukisa is much like Helium, but the difference being, you do not have to follow any set title.  You can write about anything you want.  You don’t even have to write, you can submit slide shows, or videos, well, you used to be able to submit videos, I have never tried, but I have heard they no longer accept video.  But Bukisa will pay you per view, they have something that is called a Bukisa Index, this number represents the amount, in dollars they will pay you per 1,000 views.  It is not going to make you rich, I believe right now the index is about 3.22, meaning they will pay you $3.22 per 1000 views.  So, just like Helium, you get the bonus of building backlinks along with the chance to make a few dollars along the way.

So, there you have it, a run down of some of the more popular content submission websites.  In general, I recommend that you write one article, per post you want to generate backlinks for, per content site.  Meaning, for me, I will write about 5 articles per post that I want to generate backlinks for.  It is a lofty goal I do not always achieve very quickly, but, the beauty of writing your own blog is, there are no deadlines, you write when you can and when you feel it.  But, as a final note, it is important to know that you have to make the content count, what I mean by that is, do not duplicate content.  Articles can be similar in general, but copying your article and just pasting it to these sites will throw up red flags with the search engines, if you can create several, unique articles about the same subject, your rewards will be better.

So, there you have it folks, my lesson for you today, here at blogging for beginners.  Good luck, and good writing.

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 the past 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, and 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;


Search engine indexing for blogging beginners
For this post we discuss what it takes for search engines to index your blog.  There are several factors and methods that you can implement to assist the search engines in knowing you’re out there.


Blogging for Dollars – Brought to you by blogging for beginners

A very hot topic for many is blogging for dollars, here we touch on some of the basics involved with blogging for dollars or making money with blogging.


Using Longtail keywords for blogs

Here we elaborated on understanding keywords by talking about very focused, long tail keywords.  And how to effectively use them in order to be picked out of the bigger sites.


Building internal blog links brought to you by blogging for beginners
Building internal links is very important for site navigation along with search engine optimization.  We talk a little about the causes and effects internal linking will have on your blog.


Writing a blog post – part 2

Writing blog posts are one of the most important factors in blogging.  Without solid and useful content, we do not have a blog.  Here we talk a little more in detail about the inner workings of writing good 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.