Does the mere mention of “Search Engine Optimization” make you scratch your head? Do you have no clue what makes for a well written SEO content? That’s where we come in.

SEO and Search Engine Optimization Content Writing is one of the many things we do well. We can write the content for you, get you submitted to the search engines, link building and more. Who wants bad SEO? Who wants to be listed several pages hack in search results?

Sometimes it really is best to spend a little money and let th professionals help you out, and with something as vital as SEO, this is one of those times.

Something I hear time and time again is how people don’t feel they have time to blog, or they think they aren’t even smart enough to know how to start one. True, they are time consuming, and can even be a bit daunting if you’ve never seen the admin side of one before, but that’s where blog and website services come in.

Sometimes it is better to leave it to experience hands at all levels of the blog creation and running side of things. That’s why companies such as ours offer to help those of you who just don’t think it’s for you, but still want that marketing power. We can set up your blog for you, host it, and even write the content for you if you like.

So what are you waiting for? Swing by and check out our services and prices today!

If you’re a corporate blog you’ll probably skip placing advertisements on your blog, but for everyone else you probably will be. Have you thought out overwhelming your readers with them? Will they be annoying? Will they actually fit with your theme? (for instance, if you’re a site for vegetarians, I doubt you’d join an affiliate program for a steak house)

For the most part you’ll want to stick with static, non-distracting ads, and no matter what, you’ll want to avoid “inline ads”. You know, those pesky double-underlined words that if your mouse hovers it, an add pops up. Those are tempting to run, but they tend to annoy your readers more than anything.

Always think as a reader when figuring out what ads to run and how to place them in your blog design.

A friend approached me last week and asked me to help her get her very first blog started. She had found a niche she felt she could fill, she wanted to monetize from day one, and she wanted my advice on how to get the ball rolling. Well, seeing as I have known her for 10 years, I jumped in with both feet, and did it in my spare time.

Oof… I had forgotten how hard this can be when your doing everything on your own. Just finding her a theme was rough enough, then getting set up with affiliate programs, ads, getting all the plugins set up, tweaking this, tweaking that… it’s a lot of work when you’re doing it on your own. Then on top of all that, we still have the marketing to do.

If you’re just getting set up, may I suggest you leave at least some of the work, such as the services we offer? Leave that marketing to the professionals… and you can handle those days of tweaking. Doing it all by yourself can be a bit overwhelming!

PageRank and Alexa both serve purposes, but both have their detractors to how inaccurate they can be. This is why you need to verify what’s going on with your ranking independently so that you can make any needed adjustments. Using a company like WebPosition will let you verify what you’re seeing, and most times you will find you have an inaccurate picture of the truth.

Without good blog seo, your site is doomed to failure, so it’s always worth it to spend a few dollars and see what really is happening out there in cyberspace in regards to it.

If you’re going to get your blog on the social networking sites, you need to make it as easy as possible for folks to do it. There are loads of sites out there now using ShareThis, and so should you. It just adds a small green icon to your posts that when your readers click on it, it expands and gives them easy access to adding you the most popular social sites. It also gives the option of emailing the article to their friends or interested parties.

The only way you’ll get on the all important bookmarking sites is if you make it as easy as possible, and this plugin is becoming the number one way to do just that.

According to WebProNews, there is a group working on a StupidFilter that will tell someone their comment is unintelligible and they should try again.

I can’t stress what a bad idea I think this is for your relationship with your readers.

An inanimate object is going to judge your readers to be stupid? And no one finds this as potentially insulting, and a good way of alienating your users? Why not let other readers judge what’s stupid, but let every one have their say?

This just strikes me as a good way to insult people to me.

Yesterday over at TechCrunch a post was made by a guest blogger Dan Ackerman Greenberg that was, to say the least, controversial. Mr. Greenberg’s “business” is to spread viral content by any means necessary, even if some of his motives are questionably ethical at best.

The debate on this site isn’t so much the content of the actual post as to how it was handled by the site’s staff. It seems that Michael Arrington, the owner of the site, was not aware of this post before it was published and he decided to express his displeasure over it publicly. His staff later replied saying this post had gone through the normal editorial process and they stood by their decision to publish it.

I can not stress how inappropriate this was on a blog of any size, let alone one of the top 10 blogs in the world. If blogs are to ever be taken seriously, we have to handle ourselves in a professional manner at all times, and this was far from that. The biggest moral of this story has to be that you are always responsible at the end of the day for what appears on any blog you put your name on. Even if you don’t write it, you should at least check in as often as possible and see what’s being said. And if you do have a problem, handle it privately, not out in the open for everyone to see.

Since we’re here on Thanksgiving Day, the kick off of the holiday season in the United States of America, it seems like a good time to talk about having some sensitivity in your blogging through the holidays. If you wish to wish a happy holidays to everyone, go right ahead, but remember that not every one celebrates the same holidays.

Sure, being politically correct isn’t all that fun, but in a situation like blogging, where keeping your users coming back for more is your life’s blood, can you really afford to annoy them by forgetting one holiday but name, but while mentioning your own prominently?

My biggest suggestion is just taking a moment before you put up any post about the holidays to re-read it, change the holiday you mentioned to another one, and see how it would sit with you to read that. This is actually a good rule of thumb on every post, but during this time of year it’s even more important.

RSS (Real Simple Syndication) can be a double edged sword. Sure, your blog is getting read, but those readers aren’t increasing your page views, and they aren’t seeing your ads. So, how do you get RSS readers to click through to your blog?

Feedburner has a tool called Feed Flare that can help. It will show at the bottom of your entries how many comments have been left on your entry, amongst other info you can set. It’s a great way to get way people to click through, leave comments, and give you those all important eyeballs on your site.

1. Log in to your Feedburner account.
2. Click on the name of the blog you want to work on.
3. Click on the “Optimize” tab.
4. Then click on “Feed Flare”
5. Answer the questions as to what you want to display
6. Hit “Save”

You’re good to go!  It’s easy, and it can help turn your RSS readers into a steady stream of site visitors.

I spent part of day looking at one of my blogs and thinking “You know, I like the basic layout, but man am I bored with it.” So, I then went out looking at themes, seeing if there was something I could find that I liked, and nothing came close to what I am currently using.

Being in a slump, I emailed a designer I had used in the past, and she shot me an incredible price for a ground up build of a new theme. Now, admittedly she had messed up the time frame a little on the last one, so she was trying to make up for it, but it was just too good to pass up.

Not everyone has this option though. Sometimes you just get so bored, even you don’t want to look at your own blog, or some new design aesthetic starts sweeping the web (mind you, don’t get caught up in a fad… remember blinking text? Thank goodness that horror is gone!), and you want to change things, you need a designer. That’s why I recommend everyone hit up QuoteCatcher.com because it allows you to get up to five quotes in one shot. And if that doesn’t work out, you can always try GetAFreelancer.com and let freelancers bid their way in to the job.

Mind you, I’m not saying do anything TOO radical, but sometimes it doesn’t hurt to slap a fresh coat of paint on the old homestead.

A little while ago we mentioned that you shouldn’t sell content space on your blog as Google was taking a hard line against it. Well, that hard line has gotten even harder as blogs participating in the Pay Per Post system (non-link intentional so as Google doesn’t confuse it) got their PageRanks dropped to zero recently.

There is nothing wrong with monetizing your blog, but you have to do it in a transparent way. Writing up “reviews” of websites or products that you are paid to do has always been a bit of a gray area, but now it’s a lot clearer that it’s not going to be tolerated by the “Google Gods”.

So what do you do to make money? Sell advertising space that is done in a common fashion, sign up with Google, join affiliate programs, but just make sure to stay away from systems like Pay Per Post!

So many themes and plugins are out there, but one thing always makes m think twice before installing: The amount of work.

No one enjoys downloading, unzipping, and then FTPing in to install it, and that’s where the OneClick Install plugin comes in. After you install this plugin (the old way) you’ll find a OneClick Install option under “Dashboard”. All you need do to install a new theme or plugin is to download the zip file, go to your Dashboard, select if it’s a theme or plugin, point to the zip file, and click “Upload”. Yes, it sounds like several steps, but it only takes seconds.

This will automatically unzip your new item and install it for you. So much faster and simpler than the old way. Although, as always, keep in mind how many plugins you’re running as you don’t want to shoot your content vs. code ratio. Still, it is a very useful tool to have and saves you loads of time in the install process.

It’s been a while since we talked about social bookmarking… you didn’t forget about it did you?  Especially if you do list type posts like we mentioned the other day, these are the perfect types of posts for sites such as StumbleUpon or Digg.

People love to “remember” things they think they may need at a later date, and if they add your post to a social site, it will grab the attention of other users.  It’s best to have someone else do it naturally, but if need be, add your posts yourself.  Either way, the whole point is getting the post out there for even more people to be able to find it.

Plan one day a week, say Friday or Saturday, where you do a “bookmarkable post”, something that is sure to be a subject people would want to come back to, and make sure it gets out there for all that lovely social traffic!

Do you know how people are finding your blog? What keywords are they using? Are they coming in from an email campaign or cost-per-click program?

These are all things you need to know, and that’s why you need an analytics system to study what is going on with your site. If you see a keyword is bring in an unexpected amount of traffic, you can adjust some of your future entries to make sure you focus on that keyword again. This should, in turn, increase pageviews, and grow your search rankings.

The reason companies like HitsLink are better than some of the free alternatives is… well, they aren’t free. They have incentive to keep growing their offerings and staying on the leading edge of technology. They also tend to focus more on conversions than most, letting you know just how successful your ad campaigns really are.

This is essential to running any successful site or blog. If you don’t know your visitors, there’s no way you can tailor your offerings to them.