Writing by Brick Marketing on Saturday, 23 of February , 2008 at 8:12 am Leave a comment
There are many blog and website services provider in the market place now. What features do you look for before buying their services.
The first and most important feature to look for is the level of expertise in the services they offer. Some services providers claim a high level expertise but unless they can back these claims up with evidence, generally in the form of a portfolio of successful clients, then tread warily.
The second feature, whilst not truly a feature, is price. Cheap is not always best, in fact it rarely is. The lower the price the lower the level of service - it is a simple matter of economics. If your are offering a service that requires a high level of expertise from a team then low fees indicate either a small team or a lack of dedicated resources.
The major features to consider are of course the services themselves. Do they offer web hosting? Price again is important here - cheap hosting invariably leads to cheap service - frequent down times and little support. When it comes to web hosting, you get what you pay for.
Other features include web design, content writing, directory and search engine submission, SEO, blog and/or website marketing and an ongoing help program.
Providers such as Brick Marketing not only offer a comprehensive range of blog and website services, they have the expertise to see your project through from start to finish. Brick Marketing also have a wide range of blog and website services to assist you in the ongoing development of your blog or website.
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Category: Blog Content, Blog Design, Blog Marketing, Blog SEO, Blog and Website Services
Writing by Brick Marketing on Tuesday, 19 of February , 2008 at 8:47 am Leave a comment
You can spend a lot of money on a blog design. If you have, do you also have a matching favicon? Now I can hear some mumblings. What is a favicon?
Have a look in the address window of your browser. Have you ever noticed the little icons that precede the URL. This is the favicon. Now have a look at your site and tell me if you have your own favicon? These are not difficult to put together. Favicon’s are simple 16 pixels by 16 pixels images - if you use the .ico standard then you can use 32 x 32 size images.
Most browsers search for a favicon file whether or not you have one. Including the favicon to your blog design is like putting the finishing touches on any project. It adds that little touch of professionalism to your site.
Once you have your favicon designed, place it in the root directory of your site with the name favicon.ico - most browsers will automatically pick it up and use it. If you want to make sure that a browser uses the icon, or if you wish to place the .ico file in another directory then include the following line of code inside the <head> </head> code of your site.
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://yourURL.com/directory/favicon.ico" type="image/vnd.microsoft.icon">
This is standard code that is accepted by most browsers. You can also use .gif and .png graphic files as well although their resolution sizes are restricted to 16×16 pixels.
If your blog design does not have a favicon then why not design one. They certainly do add those finishing touches to your blog design.
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Category: Blog Design
Writing by Brick Marketing on Saturday, 16 of February , 2008 at 7:14 am Leave a comment
Blog design is one of those areas that most blogger’s feel dissatisfied with most. Either it is never quite right or you have simply become bored with it. So what can you do to improve your blog design.
You have a wide variety of options. You can:
- hire a specialist to revamp your blog design
- find a template that you can purchase, preferably with exclusive use
- use a common license template, remember, there will probably be others using the same template
- tweak your current template
If you are confident and comfortable playing around with the CSS files on your blog then tweaking your current template can be one of the quickest and easiest ways to update your blog design. There are many areas that you can modify to get a fresher looking blog. You can:
- change the color scheme
- change the font, font color and/or font size
- for some blog designs you can change the width of the sidebars, content or whole page
- add or remove a sidebar
- change the header image or text style
These are only a few of the areas that you can modify. On one of my other blogs I was able to increase the page width thereby allowing me to increase the width of the sidebars and the content. While I was at it I fully justified the content and increased the font size marginally. I then added a new header image. The end result was a blog that I was much happier.
Part of the reason for being happy with the improvements was due in part to the fact that I had done it. I do urge a word of caution. If you blog design was created by a specialist designer then may be easier and cheaper to get them to do the redesign.
Whichever path you take, it can often be easier to just tweak what you have. Your regular visitors may notice the improvements, but most items like your categories and archives will remain the same (unless you make a major change to them as well). A total change in template may have undesired results when it comes to your regular visitors. Humans like the norm, not change.
Your blog design - if you are bored - tweak it first - you may be surprised at the results.
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Category: Blog Design
Writing by Brick Marketing on Wednesday, 6 of February , 2008 at 2:50 am Leave a comment
A bouncing blog - sounds interesting. When it comes it blog SEO, you do not want a bouncing blog. What is bouncing. The bounce rate is a measurement of how many visitors land on your home page and then leave without visiting any other pages. Together with the time measurement, you can get a fairly good overall picture of your blog.
If you have a bounce rate of 70% with an average stay of 1.20 minutes; you know you are getting visitors, but they are not staying and certainly not staying long enough to read the landing page. There can be many reasons for this. Perhaps you have engaged in a pay per click campaign. People are clicking to visit but not staying. Perhaps your blog marketing is wrong with visitors arriving only to find you don’t have what they are looking for. This is a problem. It means your blog marketing campaign is not delivering.
If you do have a high bounce rate, you need to adjust your landing page to see what works; to see which modifications keep the visitors on your page and then deliver them to other pages.
Good solid blog SEO strategies along with constant analysis of your traffic should keep your blog from bouncing.
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Category: Blog Design, Blog Marketing, Blog SEO
Writing by Brick Marketing on Sunday, 3 of February , 2008 at 7:03 am Leave a comment
Blog SEO, is it really that important? After all, its just a blog. With that mindset perhaps blog SEO is not that important. Blog marketing and blog design are probably not that important either. On the other hand, if you are serious about your blog; serious about getting visitors; delivering a message or making money; then blog SEO is extremely important.
Around 85% of online consumers use a search engine of some type. If you don’t use good search engine optimization practices then your competitors are receiving the traffic and your left behind. Given the billions of searches that are made each day it is important to get onto that first page for your given keyword. The majority of consumers only go as far as that first page. Some look at the second page. Very few get to page three.
Employing a professional blog SEO consultant is often money well spent. If they can get you onto the first page then the flow of visitors will more than adequately cover that initial expense. If they incorporate blog design and blog marketing in the package then your visitor numbers will rise dramatically. If you have a good product to sell, affiliate program or other income generating program that is attractive to your visitor then you may well be able to employ the consultant on an ongoing basis. Blog SEO - here at Blog Marketing Journal, we consider it very important.
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Category: Blog Design, Blog Marketing, Blog SEO
Writing by Brick Marketing on Saturday, 26 of January , 2008 at 6:51 am Leave a comment
This is an unusual blog marketing tip, but one that is probably not utilized by most bloggers. For the initiated, this may serve as a reminder, for every one else, you are probably asking - what is a 404?
You have probably come across 404’s before - it is simply a page not found error - and a very frustrating error. Think about it. You click on a link and get an error message. The page cannot be found. What have you done in this situation? Clicked refresh just in case; hit the back button; or just moved on? The majority of people just move on. If that was your page, you have just lost a visitor and every visitor is a potential customer.
How do you resolve the problem. For the big time bloggers, their 404 Page Not Found is a blessing - they use it to promote their main pages, their affiliate pages or their products. The easiest solution is to make sure that every link is unbroken and does not result in a 404. It is always good to have a backup for those times when you cannot repair the link, for example, a link that is normally unbroken is temporarily broken due to server errors.
It is very easy to redirect your Page Not Found to any page that suits. I will concentrate on WordPress, however the concepts are the same for any blogging package. Before moving on, a blogging tip for everyone - make a backup of the file you intend making any changes to.
WordPress normally has a file aptly named, 404.php. To redirect the browser to a page of your choice, open the 404.php for editing and add the following:
<?
header ("Location: http://your page url/");
?>
Replace the ‘your page url’ with the url of the page you want to have displayed. The best choice is either to redirect to your very best post or back to your home page. Even better, if you have the skills, is to have a dedicated page that advises the visitor that the page requested is not currently available, has a search option to find similar pages, at the same time promotes who you are, you current posts, products or services. This WordPress tip is very straightforward. For those using other platforms it is just a matter of finding your 404 file in your blog design and making the adjustments.
As a marketing tool, the 404 Page Not Found error should never be wasted - it is an opportunity to promote your business.
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Category: Blog Design, Blog Marketing, Blogging Tips, WordPress tips
Writing by Brick Marketing on Sunday, 6 of January , 2008 at 8:08 am Leave a comment
There is nothing worse when surfing the blog network than to be faced with a mirror of your own blog, just with different content. If your blogging for fun then a public domain or free template will suit your purpose. In fact you may think it amusing to find your template being used elsewhere.
There comes a time however when you may need to think professional. For some blog owners, particularly corporate blogs, you have to start with a custom designed blog. If you are using a free template then at the very least you need to consider designing a header, or having one designed for you.
When considering your blog design don’t stop at what you want. It comes back to why you are blogging in the first place.
- think about what message you are trying to deliver,
- who your target audience is, and
- what it is you are trying to sell.
These are not exclusive. If you are selling a product or service then your blog design needs to make it easy for you to market your product to the right audience with, in all probability, the aim of getting them to click through to a sales or order page. This message may well be lost in a cluttered three column blog design. You may however be selling many different messages where the content is the attraction but the sales pitch is in the side bars - in this case a three column blog design would be perfect.
There are many blog and website services that can design blog templates at very competitive prices. Check out some of their work first. If the designer is a professional then they will generally have links to working pages that they have designed. You can see them in action; see them being used.
Approach the designer with a clear idea of what you are looking for; the layout, the header and any extra options like links to sales or checkout sites. Most importantly, make sure the end result is going to be a blog design that is usable by both yourself and your reader. Design is the first step to attracting and keeping your readers.
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Category: Blog Design, Blog and Website Services
Writing by Brick Marketing Staff on Thursday, 3 of January , 2008 at 11:59 am Leave a comment
When you set up your new WordPress blog, should you go with a template or a new custom design. There are pros and cons to each.
Template - WordPress has many templates that you can choose from. The advantage to using a template is that it’s easy to pick one and install it at the click of a button. The downside is, not all templates are optimized for the best performance. This is easily remedied as you can always replace a template if it doesn’t work out for you. Another downside is that other people are using the same template. Do you want your blog to look like everyone else’s? If not, then you should go with a custom design.
Custom WordPress Theme Design - The problem with designers is that they are not created equal. If you find a good theme designer who knows SEO then keep him because that’s a rare bird. That said, custom WordPress themes are a good way to go if you want your blog to stand out. But it can be expensive. If it doesn’t fit your budget then you should just go with a WordPress template and work toward being able to purchase a custom theme down the road.
One way you can find a custom blog theme for your WordPress blog is to visit other blogs and evaluate the designers style. If you see a designer that you like - that is, you see several designs from a particular designer that catches your eye - then ask about his prices and be sure to ask about the optimization performance of the blog themes he designs. If he doesn’t know about the performance then chances are he doesn’t design optimized blog themes. It’s very important that you get a blog theme that is optimized and a good designer will know that his themes are optimized and be able to tell you how his designs fare at the search engines.
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Category: Blog Design, Blog SEO
Writing by Brick Marketing on Monday, 24 of December , 2007 at 10:36 pm Comments (5)
Choosing a domain name for your new blog is just one thing. There’s still the hosting, SEO, content, and design to think about. It’s important to tackle each and every issue if you are ready to start a new blog, whether corporate or personal. DailyBits’ Steven Ward wrote an interesting list of 8 Bad Decisions When Starting a Website. The items included in the list may seem basic but a lot of webmasters completely forget about them.
So here they are. I called them “8 No So Wise Decisions” because really, forgetting about them is just not so wise.
1. Free or Cheap Web Hosting. Low cost hosting will bring you to hell Frequent downtimes? Low bandwidth? Goodluck!
2. Not Buying a Domain Name. Read Why Domain Names Matter.
3. Not Getting the Right Domain Name. Review the 7 Highly Effective Domain-name Habits.
4. Designing Exclusively for Search Engines. SEO, SEO, and SEO. It’s all about optimization baby! Try to get noticed by Google.
5. Prioritizing the Look Over the Content. Content is still king. What’’s the point of having a really cool flash-based blog if your content is so-so?
6. Forgetting About the Target Market. On a niche? Stick to it.
7. Poor Navigation. Please, don’t confuse your readers with fancy navigations. It’s just pointless. Help them by pointing them to the right page easily.
8. Ineffective Keyword Targeting. As part of good optimization efforts, learn to target the right keywords.There are lots of keyword research tools out there that could help you find the more popular keywords.
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Category: Blog Content, Blog Design, Blog Marketing, Blog Metrics, Blog SEO, Blog and Website Services, Blogging Tips
Writing by Brick Marketing on Thursday, 20 of December , 2007 at 11:00 am Comments (1)
We’ve already heard of ways to get links to your blog. Now, you’ll read about simple effective tips to finding readers for your blogs. Sure you may have a million of backlinks already but you’re reader meter is still not improving. What’s the point of having lots of websites linking to you if people don’t patronize your blog?
Darren Rowse of problogger.net wrote on the topic of finding readers for your blog. Since I’m in the mood for giving away blogging tips that have helped me further my blogging, here are another set of tips you can also find useful:
Tips to Finding Readers for Your Blog by Problogger Darren Rowse:
1. It takes time. Be patient. Every tree takes awhile to grow.
2. Quality Content and Good Design. Post timely and relevant content always.
3. Link to others . Be generous with your linklove.
4. Comment on others’ blogs. Show other bloggers that you are alive.
5. Interact with Readers. Be friendly. Don’t be a geek.
6. Update frequently. Four entries in 3 months will leave your few readers uninterested.
7. Search engines . Gotta love Google…and well okay, Yahoo, and MSN, and etc.
8. Add a signature to your outgoing email. This always works.
9. Web Rings . Join blog groups and networks that share the same interest as you.
10. Add an RSS feed to your blog . More and more people now trust their feed readers for updates. Why not join the bandwagon?
11. List your site on Portals . Think classified ads.
12. Blog Search Engines and Indexes . Same tip no. 7.
13. Get Involved in others Blog Projects. Volunteer your blog and talents for a cause.
14. Get involved in other web forums . Forums are another area of live discussion. Don’t ignore them. Make friends with the active members.
15. Take all advice with a grain of salt - Be yourself and have fun! . Enough said.
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Category: Blog Content, Blog Design, Blogging Tips
Writing by Brick Marketing on Saturday, 15 of December , 2007 at 12:34 pm Comments (1)
Now that you’ve decided to to start a blog for your business or even for your own personal reasons, you need to learn that blogging about a topic is just one part. There is still the dreaded yet highly effective linkbuilding. While there is really no guarantee that YOUR link building efforts will be rewarded the way you want it, it is good to be noticed. I have compiled a list of how to get links to your blog written by successful SEO’s and bloggers like Seth Godin, Aaron Wall, Andy Hagans, and more.
WAYS TO GET LINKS TO YOUR BLOG
1. Provide content in English.
2. Link or comment to niche blogs:
3. Out link a lot
4. Identify your “link-niche”
5. Always verify you pinged or tracked-back.
6. Use StumbleUpon.
7. Submit to blog directories
8. Build a “101 list”
9. Create 10 easy tips to help you
10. Create extensive resource lists for a specific topic
11. Create a list of the top 10 myths for a specific category
12. Create a list of gurus/experts.
13. Make your content easy to understand so many people can understand and spread your message.
14. Put some effort in to minimize grammatical or spelling errors.
15. Have an easily accessible privacy policy and about section so your site seems more trustworthy
16. Buy relevant traffic with a pay per click campaign
17. Syndicate an article at EzineArticles, GoArticles, iSnare, etc.
18. Submit an article to industry news site.
19. Syndicate a press release.
20. Track who picks up your articles or press releases. 21. Trade articles with other webmasters.
22. Email a few friends when you have important relevant news asking them for their feedback and/or if they would mind referencing it if they find your information useful.
23. Write about, and link to, companies with “in the news” pages.
24. Perform surveys and studies that make people feel important.
25. Submit your site to DMOZ and other directories that allow free submissions. (Read more…)
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Category: Blog Content, Blog Design, Blog Marketing, Blog SEO
Writing by Brick Marketing on Monday, 10 of December , 2007 at 11:07 am Comments (4)
Some bloggers often take for granted the design of their websites. Since WordPress is perhaps one of the best web blogging platforms in the blogosphere, it is important that one takes some time in choosing the right theme or design. SEO-wise, WordPress still rules the blogging world because of its permalinks and it allows bloggers to easily add tags or link titles that all play an important factor in optimization.
Blogging on WordPress is favored by more people because themes are easily customizable and are free. There are hundreds to thousands of free themes available but there are also premium themes you can choose from.
Here are some tips on how to choose your WordPress theme for a more successful blogging career:
1. Identify the look and feel of your website. Simply put, decide on how you want your blog to appeal to your readers. If it’s a personal blog, choose a theme that you know you can customize or tweak. But if you’re gunning for a more corporate blog, it is best you hire professional blog designers.
2. Decide yourself if you wish to monetize through your blog. If you do, you may look for themes that allot spaces for more banners, buttons, and ads.
3. Identify how many people also use the same theme. While customizing the website if easy, not all bloggers are able to personalize their blog designs. If you choose a more popular theme, you may have a hard time standing out. However, a popular theme often is supported very well.
4. Choose a more search engine-friendly website theme. Such WordPress theme is best to use should you wish an optimized blog. Your well-optimized website could rank well on the likes of Google because SEO is the current name of the game.
5. Check if your theme is widget friendly. Widgets allow bloggers to easily change the code with just a click or a drag. But remember, changing the code directly is still better.
6. Determine if your blog entries are easily readable. Try posting 2 or more sample blogs so you can see how the entries and comments can be viewed.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned after more than 3 years of blogging from blogging — it’s the importance of changing the blog design. If you don’t change often, people can get bored with it. You should learn how to attract readers and give them a reason to always check your website. After all, isn’t that one of the many reasons why you blog? To let people know what’s on your mind.
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Category: Blog Design, WordPress tips
Writing by Brick Marketing on Wednesday, 28 of November , 2007 at 4:36 am Leave a comment
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.
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Category: Blog Design
Writing by Brick Marketing on Tuesday, 20 of November , 2007 at 6:33 pm Leave a comment
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.
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Category: Blog Design
Writing by Brick Marketing on Monday, 12 of November , 2007 at 3:19 am Leave a comment
While platforms such as WordPress has numerous (actually, thousands) of free blog themes, the problem is, everyone uses them. How do you stand out from the crowd? Part of it will be your own voice, but everyone’s first impression will be how it physically appears, so getting a theme designed for you by designers is always a good idea.
The problem comes from finding designers and getting quotes from all of them. That’s when sites like QuoteCatcher.com come in handy because you can get up to five quotes at once. Fill in the information of what you are looking for and you will receive quotes based on that.
If you’re looking to go cheap, then use the free themes, but if you want to invest in your blog, and stand out from the crowd instantly, make sure you go with your own look.
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Category: Blog Design
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