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Building Findable Websites

Often times, the term SEO is mentioned in derogatory terms. With many of the poor techniques people use to garner site traffic, it's not hard to see why. However, Aaron Walter has recently finished a book entitled Building Findable Websites which casts a wide net on the concept of building a quality web site that goes well beyond just the mere topic of SEO. The concept of "findable websites" may be familiar if you recently read Aaron's article in A List Apart, entitled Findability, Orphan of the Web Design Industry. In the article, Mr. Walter talks of three very important things that a site needs to accomplish, helping people:

• find the web sites they seek,
• find the content on the site, and
• rediscover valuable content they've found.

The book covers plenty of topics including SEO, microformats, and integrating third-party APIs like Google Search. The supporting site also has plenty of supporting content including five additional chapters. Read more

What Are Tags and How To Use Them in WordPress

Tag is a very common word used in the blogosphere, but what does it really mean and how (or why) do you use it? My definition of tags:

Tags are descriptive keywords used to label something.

But here’s the “correct” definition according to Wikipedia: Read more

20 Types of Pages that Every Blogger Should Consider

When you use WordPress you’re given the choice when publishing between doing it as a ‘post’ or as a ‘page‘. Posts go up on your blog while ‘pages’ are static pages that you can publish without it having to go up on your blog. There’s a lot of reasons why you might choose a post over a page or a page over a post (that’s for another post) - but today I thought I’d highlight a few ‘pages’ that I have here on ProBlogger as examples of pages that bloggers might want to develop to promote their blog to different groups of people. Some are more essential in my mind than others but all have been helpful in the development of my own blogs. 1. About Page - perhaps one of the most common uses of the ‘page’ function on WP is the good old ‘about page’. Having an about page is essential in my mind as it gives new readers to your blog a snapshot of who you are and why they should subscribe to your blog. This is the page that I go to every time I hit a new blog - if they don’t have one it decreases my chances of subscribing significantly. Read more on adding an about page to your blog. 2. Contact Page - I’m amazed how many bloggers don’t have any way of contacting them on their blog. While I understand the temptation not to have one you could be missing out of wonderful opportunities by not giving readers, potential partners, press, other bloggers a way of contacting you. Read more on Why your blog’s readers should be able to contact you. Read more

A Year Ago on DBT: March 28

Inspired by yesterday’s guest post I will write some “A Year Ago” posts once in a while. Most of our content is timeless, meaning that even the tips and advice that we published one year ago should still be valid and useful. Secondly, I am sure that we have thousands of readers that were not around one year ago, so they will have a chance to dig on our archives. Finally, it is also fun to see how our tips and writing evolved over the time. Below you will find some interesting posts from the week that ended on March 28, 2007.

• 7 Ways to Promote your Site with a Bit of Money: Some time ago I wrote an article titled “Are you marketing your blog?” where I argued that there is a myth around the Internet that bloggers and webmasters should not spend money on advertising. The myth comes in great extent from the success stories of people that managed to create popular websites without spending a dime on advertising or other paid promotion techniques.
• Always install Wordpress on the root directory: Unless your blog is a secondary part of an existing website you should always install Wordpress on the root directory. When I created my first blog I used an automatic Wordpress instalation that my web hosting company offered, but the standard installation was done on “www.domain.com/blog”.
• Speed Up Your Site: Use a slash on your links: When a server opens a link in the form of “http://www.domain.com/about” it will need to figure what kind of file or webpage is contained on that address, wasting time on the process. If instead of using that link you include a slash (”/”) at the end like “http://www.domain.com/about/” the web server will already know that the link points to a directory, reducing the time to load the page.
• Avoid tricks when placing ads: When placing ads on your site do not try to trick the reader. By trick I mean any technique that will deceive the reader into thinking that a link or image is not an advertising when it actually is.
• Post excerpts on the Homepage?: Lately some blogs are starting to display post excerpts instead of full posts on the Homepage (e.g. Pronet Advertising). There are both advantages and disadvantages with this method.
• Are you marketing your blog?: There is a myth around the blogosphere that bloggers should not spend money on advertising for their blogs. It is founded on the success stories where established bloggers affirm that they achieved thousands of dollars in monthly revenues without spending a dime on advertising or other marketing techniques.
• Customize the Feedburner Chicklet: This tip is easy to implement but it can be very useful if you are trying to customize the text on your Feedburner Feed Count Chicklet. Just look into the HTML code that Feedburner provided you for the Chicklet and locate the address of the image.

Read more

WOMM-U 2008!

Learn Word of Mouth Marketing for the top professionals. Including, The New York Times, Dell, Jaffe Juice, and much more!

How Much Should I Charge for my Advertising Space?

In this post Daniel Scocco answers to another question on the Problogger Question Box (and a question that I get asked a lot). Brian Auer asks:

What about [direct advertising] pricing? Are there any good ballpark price structures? What do we base rates on?

As soon as a blogger decides to play with direct advertising, the question of “how much to charge” emerges. If you charge too much, you might end up with no advertisers at all. If you charge too little, on the other hand, you will be leaving money on the table. Unfortunately, as Brian wonders, there are no standard pricing structures across the Internet. You will need to take a look around, do some research, and experiment on your own site to find the rates that will maximize your revenues. Read more

Welcome to Firepow - Premium Sponsor

Over the last few weeks while I’ve been traveling you may have noticed a new sponsor on ProBlogger in the headline banner position. Where as previously we’d kept this position for internal advertising this month we’ve launched a premium sponsorship package which was quickly snapped up by new sponsor Firepow. Firepow is a new (well actually it’s soon to be released) software developed by a fellow Aussie Hansen that aims to help you make your blogging and niche site marketing a more profitable experience. Firepow will be launched on 30 April and Andrew is currently building a prelaunch notification list so that you can be informed of it’s developments over the coming weeks. I’m yet to use Firepow but have had Andrew walk me through some of it’s features and aims and from what I can see it is designed to help bloggers with three main challenges: Read more

How I Use Twitter to Promote My Blog

How Can Twitter be used to promote a blog? In this guest post Chris Brogan sheds some light on the topic. Twitter is a lot of things to a lot of people. For some, it’s a virtual water cooler. For others, it’s a great way to get answers to questions. Since I started using Twitter, I have more than doubled my blog traffic over the last several months, and I can tell you how. Some people just dump their blog posts into Twitter automatically, with a simple “New Blog Post: Money is Better Than Dirt” and away you go. I’ve found a way of using Twitter to encourage participation on my website, and it’s better than easy; it’s tasteful.

Ask a Question

Instead of telling your Twitter audience that you’ve published a new post, ask them their opinion on the core topic you’ve covered. “Do you think banner ads are dead?” followed by a link to your site is much more appealing than posting to Twitter, “Banner Ads Are Not Dead.” Asking a question engages your Twitter followers and solicits their experience. Read more

10 reasons

1. Our focus is to support you

Ask us anything at any time, our business approach is to support our customers in whatever they are trying to do, whether its putting their site/blog together, designing an identity or advising on marketing and growth strategy for your brand.

2. We’re affordable

There simply isn’t anyone else offering the depth of service and range of features that Brand-Forge.com has put together to get you started at unbeatable low pricing.

3. We’re quick to respond

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Sphere: Related Content

How to Breathe Life Back into Your Blog

Thinking about quitting your blog? Dee Stewart examines some way to give it a new lease of life. Thinking about cutting the plug on your blog? I almost did last year after I found myself busy with other projects, my Adsense and Chitika checks were waining and especially after I noticed that many of my blog friends had shut down their blogs or were barely using them. At first I wondered was I kissing a dinosaur? Should I stop blogging and move onto something better? But for some odd reason my blog would not go gentle into that goodnight. Read more

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