Australian online news and views

In an hurry again.

Copywriting is hard its not something that just roles off your puters keyboard, well not for me anyway. I then suggest that quality blogging can also be hard, it is something that you should at least briefly plan out and think about before you do. It is very easy in a rush of ideas or a rush to get content into your blog to just start typing. If you do not have good content and I mean by that easy to consume content that is on topic you will not have much success. That is you probably won’t get any repeat visitors “stickiness” on your blog.

One of the key successes of a blog is in bound links and email or subscriber users.

I often find myself typing away on my laptop before I have even start thinking about what it is that really want to communicate.

Who am I writing for?
What am I trying to say?

Don’t forget when you publish information anyone can see. So you should always be putting your best foot forward. With this in mind I have decided to try and fix up all of my previous posts and sites and find out the best way to do it. I have just added this blog to my blogroll and suggest you take a look.

This blog covers a number of copywriting issues and i think they cover them well.

such topics as :

1. Tips for designing the ultimate landing page
2. SEO copywriting
3. 10 effective ways to get more blog subscribers

and much much more check it out its good stuff.

Blogs, Blogging, Bloggers there are millions of them, search almost any subject and a blog is returned in the SERP.

So what is a blog anyway?

Well if you weren’t aware you are reading one now !

According to wikipedia a blog is a website where entries are made and displayed in a reverse chronological order.

They can provide commentary or news on any subject many are personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic.

Here are a few other definitions from “pro blogger”:

‘A weblog is a hierarchy of text, images, media objects and data, arranged chronologically, that can be viewed in an HTML browser.’ ‘A frequent, chronological publication of personal thoughts and Web links.’ Source

‘From “Web log.” A blog is basically a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is “blogging” and someone who keeps a blog is a “blogger.”‘ Source

‘A weblog is kind of a continual tour, with a human guide who you get to know. There are many guides to choose from, each develops an audience, and there’s also comraderie and politics between the people who run weblogs, they point to each other, in all kinds of structures, graphs, loops, etc.’ Source

‘A blog is basically a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is “blogging” and someone who keeps a blog is a “blogger.” Blogs are typically updated daily using software that allows people with little or no technical background to update and maintain the blog. Postings on a blog are almost always arranged in cronological order with the most recent additions featured most prominantly.’ Source

‘A blog is a website in which items are posted on a regular basis and displayed in reverse chronological order. The term blog is a shortened form of weblog or web log. Authoring a blog, maintaining a blog or adding an article to an existing blog is called “blogging”. Individual articles on a blog are called “blog posts,” “posts” or “entries”. A person who posts these entries is called a “blogger”. A blog comprises text, hypertext, images, and links (to other web pages and to video, audio and other files). Blogs use a conversational style of documentation. Often blogs focus on a particular “area of interest”, such as Washington, D.C.’s political goings-on. Some blogs discuss personal experiences.’ Source.

Blogs are usually (but not always) written by one person and are updated pretty regularly. Blogs are often (but not always) written on a particular topic - there are blogs on virtually any topic you can think of. From photography, to spirituality, to recipes, to personal diaries to hobbies - blogging has as many applications and varieties as you can imagine. Whole blog communities have sprung up around some of these topics putting people into contact with each other in relationships where they can learn, share ideas, make friends with and even do business with people with similar interests from around the world.

This is a complete copy of the posting from http://seo4wordpress.wordpress.com

I wanted to keep a copy for myself and so have grabbed the compete entry.

Or you could also check out this page it seems to have the ultimate in content word press management.

problem at the moment is i can;t get it to work !!!! argh

Running a WordPress Blog is best done on you own Domain, and for the best results you need to create Search Engine Friendly URL’s.
This means instead of a post link like

http://seo4wordpress.wordpress.com/page=33 (example)

you get links to

http://seo4wordpress.wordpress.com/2007/03/31/the-beginning-of-search-engine-optimization-for-wordpress/

If you want to use the permalinks option to get clean urls, there are three conditions you have to meet:

Conditions:

* Webserver running on a Unix or Linux Distribution (Windows is possible, but much harder)
* Webserver software you use is Apache with the MOD_Rewrite module active (Most hosting servers provide this)
* Use of you own .htaccess file.

If your webhosting provider is running these options, as said most of the do, you are ready to activate the permalinks option.

Login to you administration panel and go to the Options menu and then choose for Permalinks.
Tick the option - Custom and use then /%postname%/ for the best results.

WordPress will not let you create the same post slugs so you don’t need to be affraid that you get duplicate urls..

The .htaccess File

Once you set the option, you get an update of the field content below that shows you the content of what is going to be your .htaccess file.

If you uploaded an empty .htaccess file and made sure it was writable WordPress would have filled it for you.

If you didn’t you need to copy and past the content of that field into an empty file created with Notepad, Not Word or any other wordprocessor, because you need a flat file.

Save it as htaccess.txt and then upload it to your root directory of your wordpress installation.
Once you have done that, set the permissions to 707 and rename the file to .htacess.

Most FTP Programs will not show you the file anymore, than the . files are hidden files in Unix.
Fillezilla has an option to show you these hidden files.

If you did everything the right way, you should now see your URL as mentioned above.

Added a couple more blog to the roll today, one I stumbled across while on Yahoo answers, and another from that blog

The first http://socialmediasystems.com/blog/
covers a good range of info

# Blogs - Blogging Feed for all posts filed under Blogs - Blogging
# Case Studies Feed for all posts filed under Case Studies
# Copywriting Content Feed for all posts filed under Copywriting Content
# Featured Feed for all posts filed under Featured
# Internet Advertising Feed for all posts filed under Internet Advertising
# Search Engine Marketing Feed for all posts filed under Search Engine Marketing
# Site News - Press Feed for all posts filed under Site News - Press
# Social Media Marketing Feed for all posts filed under Social Media Marketing
# Web Design Development

and

http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/
covers
“Internet marketing consultant and expert Andy Beal, and contributing authors, keep their finger on the pulse of internet marketing news and get the scoops and interviews to keep you informed.”

what was that saying again so much to do so little time……
Both of these blogs are worth reading or adding to your feeds.

Cheers
ken Wong
www.kenwong.com.au

Here is the beginning of a list of questions that i want to answer on my site.

Questions that i have come across in the past few months trying to set up a blog and site.

Blogging Questions

What is a Blog?
Why start a blog?
Why Blog?
How do i start a Blog?
What about My space Blogs?
What is technorati
Why should I use technorati ?
What is the best way to use technorati?
What is delicious?
Why should i use delicious?
Which piece of blog software should I use
What is Wordpress?
Why use Word press?
What plugins are here for Wordpress?
How can i make money from a Blog?
What affiliate programs’ work best
What are tags?
What are auto tagging programs
Why do blogs rank so high on search engine results
What is a track back
What is the value of a track back

Cheers
Ken Wong
www.kenwong.com.au

A strange thing this technorati.

A place where you can see all your blogs rather than create your own blog roll or page with a list of blogs or useing an rss feed rather a site that does all that for you and more.

Kind of strange in a way, any way added to my blog and hacked the sidebar.php file to add a new Feeds section to the side bar.

I have no coding experience so I am happy that i can get some of thee things to work

hehehe this is also a test once I post this i will ping the techorastis site and see what happens.

Do i know what I am doing no, but there is only one way to find out.

Just do it

Cheer
Ken Wong
www.kenwong.com.au

I stumbled on to this site this morning.

This is another good blog that lists out a multitude if ways to drive traffic specifically from blogs.

I have cut and paste this content from this blog entry

Here are the top 30 tips

1. Sridhar Katakam
Keep track of blogs and leave comments on them. A good way to keep the conversation going is to install a MyBlogLog widget and visit the blog of people visiting your site.

2. Ian Delaney
Nothing creates long-term traffic more than value. Consider writing posts with resources or explaining how things work. Useful things get linked to and they get onto del.icio.us, which is far better long-term than a digg front page.

3. Scott Townsend
Inform search engines and aggregators like Technorati (using the ping functionality) when your blog is updated, this should ensure maximum traffic coming from those sources.

4. Kyle
Simplify. Pay attention to complex issues in your field of work. It may be a big long publication that is hard to wade through or a concept that is hard to grasp. Reference it and make a shorter “for dummies” version with your own lessons learned and relevant tips. When doing this, I have been surprised to find that the simplified post will appear before the more complex version in search results. Perhaps this is why it results in increased traffic; people looking for more help or clarification on the subject will land on your blog.

5. Grant Gerver
Try to be polemic. I write obsessively about all-things political from the left-wing perspective in the form of humorous, sarcastic one-liners.

6. Daniel
A simple tip that will probably boost your page views: install a translator plugin. I decided to use a paid plugin for this, but if I am not wrong there are some free ones as well. The translation is not very good, as you can imagine, but it helps to attract readers that are not fluent in English.

7. Rory
Submit articles to blog carnivals (http://blogcarnival.com) that are related to your niche. Your article almost always gets posted, and it must generate a handful of visitors, at least.

8. Ramen Junkie
Newsgroups. I always see a spike when I post a review to a newsgroup.

9. Eric Atkins
Create a new design for your website. Not only will it be more attractive to your regular readers, but you can submit it to some CSS gallery showcase sites that feature great designs. This will give you exposure on those sites while generating a lot of traffic and backlinks from those types of sites.

10. Megan Taylor
Participate in conversations on related blogs. Start conversations on your own blog. Don’t just post about a story and leave it at that, engage your audience, ask questions and call to action.

11. Guido
Comment on blogs, write useful content and make good friends on forums.

12. Brian Auer
You must be active to generate traffic. I post comments on other blogs that are related to mine, and I post my site link in my signature at the forums. Spread the word about your blog and it will certainly attract readers.

13. Shankar Ganesh
Just browse around MyBlogLog.com and you will surely get visitors to your blog. Also try to join as many communities as possible that are related to your topic.

14. Andrew Timberlake
A great tip for generating traffic is off-line by including your url in all your off-line liturature from business cards, letterheads, pamphlets, adverts through in-store signage if applicable. I even have our website on my vehicle.

15. Cory OBrien
Read lots of other blogs. Leave trackbacks. Make sure your blog is optimized for search engines. Leverage social bookmarking sites like digg (both for new ideas and for traffic).

16. Jester
Leave comments on other blogs. If you’re already reading them, it takes
just a couple of seconds to leave a message agreeing or disagreeing
with the author, you get to leave a link to your site, and you will almost
ALWAYS get traffic from your comments.

17. Goerge Manty
Post 3-5 times a day. Use ping services like pingomatic or set up wordpress to ping some of the ping services. Engage your readers. Put up polls, ask them questions, give them quizes, free tools, etc. Make them want to come back and tell their friends about you.

18. Engtech
Community. It’s one word but it is the most important one when it comes to blogging. The only “blog metric” that makes sense is the vibrant community of readers it has. Building a community around your blog will bring you increased traffic, but how do you start? The boilerplate response to building traffic is always “SEO, social networking sites, and commenting on blogs” but it can be simplified to “be part of a community”. The easiest way to seed your blog is with an already existing community. But the only way to do that is to be part of the community yourself.

19. Chris
Squidoo Lenses are a good way to generate traffic. By using a lense,
you can generate your own custom “community” of webpages, including some
of the more popular pages in your “neighborhood.” Including your own
webpage in such a list is a good way of generating traffic.

20. Splork
I’ve had good success writing articles and submitting them to EzineArticles. Articles that have been written from well-researched keyword phrases and accepted by EzineArticles tend to rank very high in Google for that search term. Placing anchor text in the footer of those articles so the reader can visit my relevant website has always increased my site traffic.

21. Jen Gordon
I came upon some unexpected traffic when my blog popped up on some css design portals like www.cssmania.com and www.webcreme.com. If you can put some time into the concept behind and design for your blog, I’d recommend submitting your site to a design portal not only for
additional traffic but to build an additional community around your site.

22. Kat
I’ve recently gotten involved with several “MySpace-like” community sites that focus on my target audience. I share my thoughts in their forums, post intros to my real blog on their system blog and I’ve even created a group for my specific niche. It’s been very, very successful for me.

23. Inspirationbit
Well, obviously everyone knows that social bookmarking sites like Digg, del.icio.us, etc. bring lots of traffic. But I’m now submitting some of my articles to blogg-buzz.com (a digg like site for bloggers), and I always get not a bad traffic from there.

24. Mark Alves
Participate in Yahoo Answers and LinkedIn Answers where you can demonstrate your expertise, get associated with relevant keywords and put your URL out there.

25. Tillerman
Be the first to write a post about the ‘Top Ten Blogs’ in your niche. The post will rank highly in any general search for blogs in your niche and other bloggers in your niche write about the post and link to it.

26. Nick
Participating in forums is a great way to get loyal readers. Either link baiting people in your signature or posting great advice and tips will give you high quality traffic, which will result in return visitors.

27. Brandon Wood
A simple trick I’ve used to increase traffic to my blog is participate in group writing projects. In fact, that’s what I’m doing right now.

28. Alan Thomas
Don’t forget your archives. I just posted a roundup of all interviews I did over the past seven months. One of them generated a new link and a big traffic spike from a group of users that look like they will be loyal readers now.

29. KWiz
Write something controversial. I don’t think it’s good to write something controversial just for the purpose of getting traffic necessarily (especially if it’s only for that purpose and you’re being disingenuous), but it works.

30. Dennis Coughlin
Find the best blogs on your niche and contact the authors. Introduce yourself and send a link of your blog. This might help them to discover your blog, read it and possibly link to it.

Thats it fro know plenty of food for thought.

This blog also conatins the linkback to the original posters sites.

Go check them out

Cheers

Ken Wong

www.kenwong.com.au