7 Days to a Better Blog

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Blogging has become a popular way to make a bit of money and make yourself known as an expert in your particular niche. But too many bloggers think they can just put up any old site, write a few posts, and watch the money come rolling in. This is not likely to happen for most people.

If you want to really make money with your blog, it needs to be organized and well-written. Do you want a few tips on how to make your blog better? Keep reading to find out how you can have a better blog in just 7 days.

Day 1: Get Organized. Get a notebook that you can keep on hand to jot down possible topic ideas as they come to you. Create a folder on your computer that’s dedicated to your blog writing. You may even want to make special bookmark folders in your internet browser for different websites that can help you (e.g. one for sites about blogging, one for other blogs in your topic, one for research related to your topic, etc.)

Day 2: Think about your readers. Who is reading your blog? Male or female? What age? Where are they from? These factors should all affect the style of your blog and your writing. For example, certain people may not like an informal writing style, while others may be put off by a professional style. If you know your audience you can cater to them. Also, think about what types of things your audience needs and what type of information they don’t have. Knowing this can help you come up with things to write about or affiliate programs that you should think about promoting. Make sure you’re writing all of this down either in a notebook or in a file on your computer. You don’t want to forget these ideas.



Day 3: Find similar bloggers. Spend about an hour looking for other blogs that are similar in topic to yours. Pay attention to what sort of style they use. What are you going to do to make your blog unique? Can you create a niche-within-a-niche? Bookmark all of these blogs in a special folder so that you can visit them frequently. It’s good to keep tabs on what other same-topic bloggers are writing about. You wouldn’t want to miss a time-sensitive piece such as a news story. You also can use these blogs to study what affiliate programs others in your niche are promoting.

Day 4: Keyword research. Today you should research keywords. Do this using a keyword research tool. Your job is to find keywords within your niche that are large enough that people are searching for them, but small enough that there isn’t too much competition already. Make sure that you write down all of these keywords, even if you may not use them for awhile. You never know when inspiration might strike.

Day 5: Brainstorming. Get out that notebook (or open that Word file) and start writing your ideas out onto the paper. Don’t censor yourself. Everything is OK here. Nobody but you is going to see this. Once you’ve got your main ideas down, see if you can break them down any further. For example, with this article, I thought “How can I make my blog better?” then I wrote down each of the ideas. This made it much easier to actually sit down and write the article.

Day 6: Do your research. Do your blog posts need additional research? Today’s the day to focus on that. Take a look at your brainstorming lists from yesterday. See where there are holes and fill them in with a bit of research. It’s going to make tomorrow much easier.

Day 7: Get writing! Today, write several blog posts and store them on your computer. These should be very easy to write because you have followed the steps in the previous days. If you write a few articles in one day, you can post them throughout the week without spending much time each day. This streamlines the process and makes it much easier.

Some of these steps may seem unnecessary to some people, but I assure you that doing all of them will only make things easier for you. In just 7 days you can get organized and start writing the blog masterpiece that I know is inside you.

About the Author: Madeline Crogan has been making money from her blogs for many years. She currently lives with her husband in Hawaii.
For FREE blogging tips and videos as well as information on how you too can be making money from your blogs, click here.

Article from: http://www.easyarticles.com/article-86249.htm

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Go Link Fishing with These Linkbaiting Hooks

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If you’re a blogger or website owner then you’ve run into the issue of finding traffic to your site. It isn’t that people don’t trust you, well some don’t, but the fact is most people just have never heard of you or your website. It isn’t that big of a problem. It happens to every site once and awhile. Even recognized blogs sometimes need a boost in traffic. Linkbaiting is the answer all search engine optimization services will give you.

Good linkbait comes from great content. Your linkbait content needs to make a promise to the reader about what they will be reading, learning, or achieving from your site. All of the subsequent content should be devoted to meeting this promise.

A good hook will help you meet this goal by keeping the content focused. The hook should have the potential to immediately pull the reader in and generate some sort of emotional response. Here are some of the most common types of hooks used by website owners for linkbait and search engine optimization purposes:

• News Hook - A good news hook happens when you are the first to report a story. By doing so everyone who then carries your story should then link to you as being the original source. You don’t need to have insider information to get a scoop you can just be the first to publicly foresee something or to come to a controversial conclusion. Be careful with this type of hook if your scoop turns out to be false. It will make other bloggers and writers unwilling to reference your site again as a credible source.
• Resource Hook - A resource hook is when you write a particularly helpful piece of content that everyone will want to bookmark for future reference. This may be the easiest hook to write and the most fun. As opposed to a news hook, a resource hook encourages people to link to and bookmark it for long periods of time. It becomes content that naturally obtains trusted, relevant backlinks just by sitting there with no updates. How can you go wrong?
• Humor Hook - Everyone loves to laugh, especially at others in the industry or niche they share. Most markets have so little humor that anything you say can bring out a chuckle and hopefully, a link. By even directly mentioning leading industry people, you may get a link by flattering them.
• Giveaway Hook - Anyone who ever attended some sort of industry conference knows that they’ll never need to go shopping for pens, highlighters, key rings, and loads of over freebie junk. Companies give things away at events because, when directed towards the correct audience, giveaways are a great way to drive sales and get a return better and quicker than ordinary advertising. Websites are no different.
• Contrary Hook - There are times when to get a link you disprove a common industry myth. This is called a contrary hook. There are few areas of the blogosphere which have certain beliefs that are known to be self-evident such all sports writers believing Barry Bonds cheated. Calling these people out and proving they are wrong will usually incite them into talking about you, and more importantly linking to you.
• Research/Statistic Hook - Maybe one day you are bored and start to compile some industry number. A post like this will undoubtedly get a lot of link love. This works quite well in new and untouched markets. While a scientifically-conducted study with valid methodology can get better links, truth is that nearly everything and anything can pass as research on the web.

A good linkbait hook is the most time-efficient and easy way of building relevant, trusted, editorially-given backlinks for all of your search engine optimization purposes. It’s factor that can make or break a website in getting ranked in Google for competitive keywords.

Anyone who owns a web site will tell you that a good looking, user friendly website is only the just first step towards owning a profitable one. This is where the experienced SEO specialists in Scranton, MysticLiquid come in. Visit them at www.mysticliquid.com.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jonathan_Peters

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