If you write frequently or if you write for more than one blog then this lazy little blogging tip may not only save some time, it may help boost your reader numbers. The terms ‘content is king‘ and ‘avoid duplicate content’ are probably going to ring loudly after reading this blogging tip, just give it some thought before being too critical.

One of the joys of blogging is when you write that post that not spikes your traffic a little, it also gets a  decent response in the comments area as well.  One option you have is to try and follow up the post with a new one that builds on the previous. If you are a good writer and have plenty of material, this is fine. If you don’t, then just like in the movies, the sequel is often a disappointment.

You can however use the success of the article further down the track. This can be done on either the posts blog or on one of your other blogs. Using a second blog has several benefits. It not only increases the traffic on the second blog, it can also drive traffic back to the original article.

I am of course talking about republishing but republishing with a twist. Rather than republishing in full, you need to be able to republish a really good teaser together with an introduction and of course deep link to the original article.

This tactic introduces new readers to the article and refreshes the memory of those who have been before. If you do get that good article that can be used in this way, wait for the right moment to republish. Some of the best bloggers have the knack of grouping some of their old posts and writing a post that simply links them together.

This blogging tip can serve several purposes. It does of course provide a suggestion for a quick and easier blog when your stuck for time or inspiration. If you use this tactic then you are also going to provide your article with either deep links or good internal links - all of which are good SEO practices. What a lazy way to get more traffic.

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.

Social bookmarking has to be the most cost effective way to promote your blog. The cost in dollar terms can be nil. The cost in time can be minimal once you are established. The rewards can be huge compared to other forms of blog promotion.

One of the biggest mistakes that new bloggers make is to try and get on the Digg or Stumbleupon hit parade. If you can get on the front page of Digg or get a good surge from Stmbleupon then sure, you are in for a fun ride. However  your bounce rate is likely to be huge, your click through rate low; and the
long term affects on traffic can be negligible.

If you are prepared to take your time, research several of the social bookmarking sites to get the feel for them and then spend some time getting to know the players, your long term traffic can be boosted; it will be quality targeted traffic as well.

By fostering relationships within these sites you will slowly build subscriber numbers and just as importantly slowly develop backlinks. With the increase in backlinks comes the increase in recognition by search engines and with that development comes the increase in quality targeted traffic.

The key to successful social bookmarking is to get to know the important people on these sites, promote yourself to them by visiting their blogs and leaving thoughtful and appropriate messages. Don’t jump in and add them to your contacts. Become known first. Don’t throw every article you write into the mix; promote your best articles. Finally, respect the other  players; promote their articles only when they deserve promoting; don’t promote articles to become popular. You will gain a reputation for being selective in what you promote, what you submit and who you befriend. Your opinion will start will be valued.

Compared to other forms of blog marketing, social bookmarking can be very productive and very cost effective.

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.

Blog marketing can be a difficult task with varied results at the best of times. One marketing tactic is to use an email survey. Email surveys, when designed intelligently, can return positive results in several areas.

The obvious result from a survey is to gain feedback from your readers or clients. However, with some cleverly designed questions, an email survey can result in an increase in traffic. Using survey questions that ask the respondent to undertake comparisons on products, services, changes to your blog or post styles are just a few areas. These questions really require the respondent to visit your blog before they can properly answer the question.

A blog marketing email survey like this could also include free gifts, downloads or entries into a prize draw as a further enticement. One blog marketing tactic that I have seen used to effect is to use a standard survey but making the final question a ‘must visit to answer’ type question. Get the answer right and you are entered into a prize draw or receive the free gift.

With some thoughtful design, an email survey could also provide you with some valuable insight as to how others view your products or blog; what changes you may need to make; and what areas are currently working and not working.

Blog marketing can be difficult, however if you can think outside the square and use concepts like email surveys you may be surprised at the results.

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.

There are many blog and website services that sell traffic. In fact, they offer traffic that is dedicated to your niche. The question is, is it worth the money? Let’s dispel a few myths first.

1 - Buying traffic is a useful blog SEO tactic that can increase your Alexa Rank. This may be so, but only if the traffic coming in has the Alexa toolbar installed. I also question why you need your Alexa Rank low. Generally speaking it is your PR that matters, not your Alexa and your Alexa rank will not affect your PR.

2 - Buying traffic is a useful blog marketing tactic that increases your income. Generally speaking, most traffic programs are either paid per visit or free traffic in return programs. The surfer often ’surfs in the background’. In other words they go about their normal internet business with the traffic program running in the background. They hardly see the page they are visiting let alone the contents. Those that do look at the contents are generally waiting for the timer to count down before moving on to the next page. They certainly don’t stop to buy or click an ad that takes them away from their click program.

3 - Buying traffic can increase your backlinks. I refer to my previous observation. The surfer is only interested in getting to the next page - not linking to your page.

Buying traffic can often be money down the drain. With few exceptions it doesn’t lead to any increase in revenue, links or Page Rank improvement. I can only think of one situation where I would consider buying traffic. That is if I needed to boost my daily visitor numbers sufficiently that I could obtain a higher price for my ad space. That really needs a campaign over several months - not several weeks.

If you are considering buying traffic, think carefully about the outcomes you are trying to achieve. Often there are far more economical ways of increasing traffic and with it revenue. There are many blog and website services that can help develop backlinks and effective marketing programs. Your dollars may be better spent with them.

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.

Blog marketing is a difficult task however it often a task that we make more difficult than it should be. A real trap with a blog site, or any web site for that matter, is to become blinkered in our view of marketing. We think internet therefore our marketing is through the internet.

There are so many blog marketing opportunities off line that are either not considered or are used ineffectively. Every document you produce, from letter head to envelope to business card should have your web addres and your blog address prominently displayed. I often see companies that have web and/or blog sites but the URL and details are in the finest print on their documents. It almost gives the feeling that they are ashamed or embarrassed to admit they have these sites.   Even with online communication, how well do you promote your web or blog sites in the footer of your emails.

You can become quite inventive when it comes to off line  promotion. I recently read an article regarding one blog owner who parked a vehicle with his URL plastered down the side near a busy highway. Considering there are probably over a hundred thousand vehicles using that highway, luring just 1% would be a significant increase in traffic.

If you can use every opportunity that comes your way, the off line opportunities are always going to be there. It is just a matter of seeing the opportunity, seizing it and capitalizing on it. Blog marketing off line can be just as successful as any on line campaign - often you are reaching a brand new audience. As the saying goes - don’t put all your eggs into the one (online)  basket.

Blog Marketing is a tricky business that most bloggers handle through social networking, blog directories or through social bookmarking sites. There are a lot of bloggers that buy ad space through various agencies such as Google. You can however market your site by simply changing one line in your header.

I read with interest how some sites have great blog SEO strategies. So great that they often appear in the top four or five for search results. Yet they don’t actually receive a lot of traffic from that position. The answer lies in what the person doing the search actually sees in front of them. Do they see an interesting description of the site, or just a list of keywords?

The TITLE meta tag holds the information that will be seen in the search results. If your title tag has been written to gain good search engine positioning, then it is probably key word rich and information poor. This can be changed without dramatically affecting your search engine position. When crafting your title meta tag you need to do it in such a way that it delivers a message whilst also maintaining keyword integrity.

Write a short marketing blurb. Go through it and see where your keywords could be placed. Think of the searcher as a potential client or customer that you are trying to lure through your door. The end result should be a short blurb that will attract the searcher to click whilst still maintaining some of your keywords. This is one simple blog marketing tip that could make a lot of difference to your traffic.

Blog marketing, and bloggers are media. The White House among other places now recognize bloggers as member of the media, hence blog marketing must be the media agent. No the question is how to capitalize on that point and to do it now before the competition discover this land mine.
On way to use Blog marketing is to build your email list through the blog, and also to have your blog become that email list. By encouraging your readers to subscriber either via RSS or email is one way to do that. But how to you grow the subscriber list?

1. Make subscribing easy-Attach a link to each of your posts with a subscription link.

2. Stay focused-Keep your postings limited to the subject of your blog. it is easy when using blog marketing to make one quick post about your souse, children or the weather and it changes the whole focus of the blog.

3. Offer a Bribe-It’s an ethical bribe, in the form of a free e-book, report, e-course or audio series. Typically this only works with email subscriptions tied to auto responders, because you want to condition delivery of the bonus on subscription. If you have a WordPress blog, use the free Feedvertising plugin to link to the download page for your free gift. Since Feedvertising links only show up in the feed (and not in the post), only feed subscribers will see the link and have access to the bonus.

4. Use viral e-books-This is a spin on the ethical bribe strategy, but instead you let other people give away your PDF e-book or even bundle it for sale with other products. The PDF in turn promotes your blog. Check out this post to see how I bundled my free Viral Copy report with a book that spent several days at the top of the Amazon bestseller list.

Dedicated subscription landing page-Create a page that is dedicated to nothing more than obtaining a subscription, and drive traffic to it from your blog, AdWords, or really any other source you want. You can even put it on a unique URL, and add in the ethical bribe strategy to increase signups. For more information on doing this with AdWords, read this article, and then this one.

Following these five steps will have your blog gaining subscribers quickly, provider you are using unique relevant content.

Many organizations, both online and off line, are using blogs as a way to market their business. Your blogs content can be one of the most cost effective forms of marketing available. The following tips will help you create a blog that boosts your business and encourages your clients to come back, frequently.

1. Provide reviews of your products or services. One of the benefits of using blog software such as WordPress is that you can create static pages. Write short reviews of products or services with links pointing to more in depth articles placed on static pages.
2. Create staff profiles on static pages with links either from short articles or from within other articles. Customers often like to know who they are dealing with. Remember, when potential clients visit your website they do not get the same face-to-face contact that is available in an off line enterprises.
3. Create ‘How To’ articles. How to articles help your clients get the best out of your product or services. Potential clients see the support that is available which may just make the difference between closing the sale or seeing them moving on to a rival.
4. Develop a FAQ section based on client feedback. This can often save you time answering the same questions all the time.
5. If you have off line store fronts or agents, write informative pages introducing each of those store fronts or agents including contact details.
6. Use the blog as a record of news releases, company announcements or any other marketing activities. If you are running a competition, highlight it on the blog. Likewise if you are opening a new store or releasing a new product, use your blog to promote it.

The most important aspect is to place yourself in your clients shoes. If you were looking to buy, what information would like to have at hand? Keep your blogs content simple and straightforward. Ensure each article or page provides sufficient information without going overboard. Used effectively, your blogs content can boost your business and boost your client satisfaction levels.

It’s the new year and like most fearless forecasts, there are a lot of website predictions coming out like the 40 Plus 2008 Web Predictions presented by authors of ReadWriteWeb.  

Here at BlogMarketingJournal, we are confident that the year 2008 will be a better year for bloggers and the blogosphere as a whole.

It will be a more fruitful blogging year for old and new bloggers alike. Here are BMJ’s Blog Predictions for 2008:

1. Blogging will be more lucrative than ever.  Those who have just started with problogging can expect an improvement in pay per post.

2. More blogging jobs will be made available. More and more people will hire bloggers to post whether for personal or corporate blogs.

3.Blogging will become a household term. It will go more mainstream and the public will know more about blogging.

4. Bloggers will be the new media. Companies, agencies, and even media outfits will look to the opinions of bloggers as part of the new media. These companies have started to realize the power of blogs and bloggers and no one’s going to stop them now.

5. Bigger blogs like Engadget, Mashable, and TechCrunch will continue to grow making a fine line between new media and mainstream.

6. Smaller blogs will continue to have revenue no matter how small.

Now there. As compared to last year, blogs will be a bigger and better thing this year as the Internet world will realize the importance of social marketing.

So here’s to a successful 2008 blogging! Cheers! Blogging rules!

When it comes to marketing your blog, there is more than one way to skin a tiger. And just in case you’re wondering, no I don’t play with tigers. They play too rough.

Nevertheless, blog marketing is something that every blogger should give some consideration to. There are different methods for marketing your blog and almost all of them can be done at no charge. Here are the most popular ways to go about blog marketing:

• SEO
• Directories
• Trackbacking
• Leaving comments on other blogs
• Social bookmarking
• Article marketing
• Guest blogging

Guest blogging is actually gaining a foothold these days. It’s becoming very popular. But one method of blog marketing that is often overlooked is social bookmarking. Many blog marketers will bookmark their entire blog and totally forget about bookmarking each blog post. I think social bookmarking each blog post is a good idea. In some cases, you can get a hundred new visitors to your blog just by bookmarking one post. Of course, I wouldn’t expect that with every post, but if you bookmark 10 posts and get a hundred new visitors on one then you’ve done well. Don’t forget about social bookmarking.

When it comes to marketing your blog there are a ton of places online where you can do that. Blog directories are a great source of traffic and almost all of them are free. Here is a list of blog directories that you can list your blog at for greater exposure:

• Blog Hub
• Blog Explosion
• Blog Catalog
• Bloggernity
• Blog Listing
• Blog Flux
• Best of the Web
• Blog Top List
• Blog Rankings
• Blogarama
• Blog Hop
• LS Blogs
• Technorati
• iBlogBusiness
• Total Blog Directory

That’s a long list of blog directories, I know, but it’s not even all of them. There are plenty more. Some of these charge for listing your blog. Weigh that carefully to ensure it is worth the effort. BOTW (Best of the Web) charges a fee for a listing, but it’s a great source of traffic. Not all directories are so great, though.

Other blog directories require a link back to them in exchange for your listing. Blog Catalog, for instance, does this and gives you a choice on the size of the icons. I don’t recommend the huge banner that shows all your latest visitors. It looks cool for a personal blog, but it really doesn’t look right on a business blog. If you do link to blog that require a link back, use the small icon that simply lists the name of the blog without all of the extra fluff.

No matter how you do it, though, blog marketing isn’t complete without at least a half a dozen blog directory listings.