Simple tweaks while on your coffee break

Was going though Sphinn yesterday when I stumbled into a post by Jennifer called 52 easy ways to optimize your blog in your coffee break, and as most of us are part time bloggers I can see the value in this post, as much of my blogging is done in my lunch time and the odd hour though the day (sorry boss if your reading my post).

coffee break Source: beconfused

Here is a few of my favorites:

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March 28, 2008 | Filed Under blogging Tips | 2 Comments 

Building Backlinks to your Site

Previously I spoke about backlinks and submitting to directories, and explained that backlinks are incoming links to your site from other sites and how having more backlinks will benefit your traffic as well as your Google PageRank.

Remember your Anchor Text

Try using anchor text that will be used by others when they use search engines, a relevant anchor text for which I like to use for my site would be Blogging tips. Search engines pick up links and the more they find the anchor text with blogging the higher the ranking on the search engines. This will apply to any other anchor text too.

Tips to obtain more Backlinks?

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March 23, 2008 | Filed Under blogging Tips | 2 Comments 

100 Sites With Free Stock Images

Inserting an image into your post is a excellent idea, it works in it will draw attention and improve the readability of the post, but one of the biggest issues bloggers have is finding the magic image for that special post.

One of the issues bloggers do have when the find that image is it owned by others and can’t be just copied, thats why the guys at arcagility came up with this list of 100 sites with free stock pictures.

So happy searching….

March 21, 2008 | Filed Under blogging Tips | Leave a Comment 

Your Website in the Search Engines Eyes

Daniel at Dailyblogtips shows us what Google, Yahoo and others see when their search Engines crawl your site, the tool is called SEO-Browser. Just add your URL and information, by clicking the advanced button at top right will display like below.

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March 11, 2008 | Filed Under blogging Tips | Leave a Comment 

How to Speed Up your wordpress Blog Loading Time

As you may have noticed our blogs start to get slower and slower, more so when we encounter a traffic rush. Here is a simple tip to speed up your WordPress Blog. This can be done by adding Cache all the database inquiries on the server.

How to Improve the Speed?

Just add the following to your wp-config.php file:

// Enable WP Object Cache:
define(ENABLE_CACHE, true);

I added this to my config-File today and can see the difference instantly, this can be a great tool to counter the people who are impatient to see your website loading up.
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February 14, 2008 | Filed Under blogging Tips | 3 Comments 

How to Increase your Blog Subscribers?

We all want to be the next Problogger or Copyblogger with thousands of readers who follow by RSS feed. Currently Problogger has 36,533 and Copyblogger has 28,147 readers who daily open their blog updates and follow the happenings of their blog.

Why are RSS feeds important?

RSS feeds shows a blogs quality and authority within their niche and can be used as a valuable reference for when you would like to sell your blog.

Another reason why RSS numbers are valuable is they are very difficult to manipulate compared to other statistics.

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January 29, 2008 | Filed Under blogging Tips | 3 Comments 

25 + 1 Tips to Increase your Subscribers

We all want to increase the number of RSS subscribers to our blog, today and tomorrow I will give you 25+1 tips to ensure you can increase the numbers of people who subscribe to your blog.

  1. Produce Great Content. These words always seems to appear on every list we do but it’s a fact great content will ensure blog subscribers. This is the single must important attribute that will ensure readers will return.
  2. Don’t post off topic. Define your niche and stick with it, people don’t like if they subscribe and you wonder off your niche
  3. Clearly indicate your RSS feed button. You know the one, the orange button that typically at the top of your page. This is the international language for RSS feeds, there are several modifications too it but the general shape and design does not change much
  4. Post frequently. Ask yourself why people subscribe to your blog? Basically to ensure they don’t miss out on your next post. So combining tip 1 by adding quality content which will encourage people to subscribe in the fear that they will miss a post. On the frequency, it will slightly depend on each individual blog but I recommend to aim for one post per day.
  5. Put your RSS button above the fold. The fold is the end of the first screen shot that your blog shows when it loads up, basically within 6 inches from top of the page, there’s no compromise, if you want people to find your RSS feed you must place it here.
  6. Offer a full RSS feed. Many people have wrote about it and Darren at Problogger did a poll and the result showed that 75% want see the full RSS feed, I would not subscribe to a blog that gives partial feeds.
  7. Simplify the number of steps required to Subscribe.By using the likes of feedburner you can simplify the steps required to subscribe and therefore ensure your readers have an easy life subscribing to your blog.
  8. Give option to subscribe by email. You be surprised on the people who don’t use RSS Readers but prefer the old fashioned subscribe by email, therefore give this option tooIt can be easily set up with the likes of feedburner.
  9. Write a post on what is RSS feeds. As discussed in tip 8 , explain to people what is a RSS feed? and how to use them. By adding a simple post on what is RSS feeds you will clear people doubts on what to do. An example is this great video.
  10. Explain how to use the popular RSS feed readers. Explain to your readers on how to use the likes of Google or bloglines readers.
  11. End of each post give the option to subscribe. A lot of visitors will subscribe if given the option after a great post. By giving the option straight behind will give no reason for readers to say no.
  12. By using visitor tracking widgets or by using comments. You will be able to get in contact with readers, so why not ask them to subscribe to your blog by leaving a message or dropping an personal email to them. The likes of MyBlogLog and Blogcatalog are good examples and I typically will track my viewers from here.
  13. Use the “What Would Seth Godin Do” plugin. This wordpress plugin allows you to ask your readers to subscribe to your blog. You can configure the message which is added when a new reader visits your blog.

Ok , so here’s my first 13 tips and tomorrow I will continue with the next 12+ 1 tips… So why not sign up for RSS feed (link is below) so you can stay updated.

January 3, 2008 | Filed Under blogging Tips | 4 Comments 

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