May 20, 2008 | Posted by Jacob
When you start a blog, you’re incredibly excited and you start to really cram out the content. I can remember when I started my first blog, I had time stamped about four articles and I was writing more and more. The first few articles were published and I waited…waited…waited…And no traffic came. So I tried some more articles and I waited…The same thing happened. Now, when I started this blog, I was brand new in blogging. Since then, though, I have determined what my problem was: no one could find me.
But, not only could people not find me, search engines could not find me. When you’re running any kind of website, whether it is a forum, blog, or content site, you want the search engines to find you. They bring the traffic that is going to click ads and sign up for affiliate offers far more than any other kind of lead to your site. I realized this and went in search of some information to try and increase my ‘findability.’ I realized that I needed to build links to get people to my blog. However, I also needed to use the right keywords.
What I pieced together was a series of steps that I felt would increase my ‘findability.’ They’re not full proof as nothing in this world is, but they are an effective method in increasing the number of backlinks you receive as well as increasing your keyword rankings in the search engines. Take from this list as you please. However, here are some methods to increase both:
- Join a couple of forums in your niche and put a link to your blog in your signature. However, not only are you going to put the link in your signature, you’re going to use the anchor text (keywords) that you want to rank for on the search engines.
- When you write a blog post that is really good, send an e-mail to the authorities in your niche and let them know that you wrote it. Sometimes, they are looking for ideas and they’ll link back to you for giving them an idea.
- Another thing to do when you write an awesome post is submit it to an authority blog in your niche for a guest blog post. By doing this, you’re getting on their blog, but you’re using the keyword YOU want rather than the one that they think you may want.
- Comment a minimum of ten times a day on different blogs. I found that if I commented on different blogs at least ten times a day, I would start to become a part of the communities and people would know who I was.
- Consider holding a contest. By holding a contest, you’re going to determine how they can win. If you’re link building, tell them that to be entered in the contest, they need to link to you with the keyword you want. My advice, though, is to have a couple of keywords rather than one.
- Finally…Consider having a budget and going out to purchase some links. If you purchase the right links, you can really get the ‘findability’ that you want as well as the ranking in the search engines. But, do it the right way else suffer the great Google Ban!
The trick to getting good backlinks and strong keywords is to be in control. Pick a few keywords that you want to rank for. Also, don’t JUST link to your homepage. If you wrote a very cool article, link to that article with a very specific (or not so specific) keyword. By doing this, you’ll get traffic to individual blog posts and not just the main blog.
All in all, what you want to do is make it so people and search engines can find you. By using the above steps, what you are guaranteeing is that you are increasing your backlinks and, on top of that, making sure that the keywords you rank for in the search engines are the ones that you want to maximize traffic. By doing this, you’re going to really increase your exposure to the blogosphere. Try it out…See what happens.
Jacob is an avid guitar player as well as a biology major in college with hopes of becoming a professor. When not blogging on The Webmaster Blog, he is over at his political opinion blog.
Categories: Marketing | 
Tags: backlinks, blog, Blogging, keywords, Marketing, search engines, traffic | 
4 Comments »
May 19, 2008 | Posted by Kat
Before we get into the reasons a dedicated IP is far more better than a shared IP let’s go over the difference a little. A shared IP would be like getting a birthday cake and sharing it with 10 complete strangers. You don’t know where their hands have been and you don’t know what they’ve done with those hands. A dedicated IP would be like having a birthday cake to yourself. You know exactly where you’ve been and exactly where your hands have been. With the growing number of spammy website’s and black hat webmasters on the internet today, having your website on a shared hosting provider using a shared server IP could get your site blacklisted, blocked, and even penalized by search engines. A dedicated IP is just that, dedicated. Your website is the only website using that IP address meaning you control your own destiny. Many easy website hosting providers offer dedicated IP’s for their customer’s who wish to take advantage of them. Paying the extra $2-$4 a month for a dedicated IP may not be such a bad idea. It could save your hard work from getting blocked by Google, Yahoo, and other popular search engine due to someone else’s bad spamming habits.
Categories: Hosting | Tags: Hosting, webhosting | No Comments »
May 19, 2008 | Posted by Karen Zara
In the previous part of our free webhosting series, we discussed the advantages to having your sites hosted for free, as opposed to the disadvantages mentioned in the first part.
Now you have enough information to support your decision. If you choose to try a free webhost — even when you are aware of its probable limitations and risks — , there are still several factors that you should take into consideration before picking any company.
Here are some things to keep in mind when choosing a free webhost:
1. Make sure the free webhosting provider offers exactly what you need. Will they let you display your own ads on your pages? Which file types are allowed? Are MySQL databases available to users? Can you build your site from scratch or do you have to stick to pre-made templates?
2. Your site may not need as much bandwidth and disk space as you think. So, don’t get easily impressed at free webhosts that offer vast amounts of either. Otherwise you will expose yourself to the risk of having an unpleasant surprise some months later… when the company modifies their features in the most drastic way possible (in case you’re wondering: yes, it’s happened to me). Please take this piece of advice: pick a free webhost that offers realistic packages.
3. Always take the time to visit several sites or blogs hosted by the free webhosting company you’re interested in. Many free webhosts have directories. Others will display links to some users on their front page. In any case, try to study the sites, analyse their load time and take a good look at the default ads forced by the webhost (if any).
4. If you plan to make money from your site or blog, study all the possibilities *before* starting your site. If you save this task for a later time, you will be disappointed when you are rejected by potential advertisers because your site is hosted for free. So, analyse the money-making opportunities available to free webhosting users before you do anything else.
5. Does the free webhosting provider make it easy to access their sign up page? If it doesn’t, don’t host your site there. I’ve seen a free webhost do a rather ambitious startup campaign, but when I visited their site and tried to register, their sign up page didn’t load. All webhosting companies are subject to downtime, of course. But let’s just say that an inner voice advised me to stay away from that specific one because it had overpromised and underdelivered.
6. Don’t let anyone make you feel less important just because you chose a free webhost. Many (arrogant, prejudiced) people state that they won’t even visit a site if they know it is hosted for free. In fact, some of those people are able to make ruder statements on this subject. They will want to make you feel worthless. Now, tell me: can you please everyone at once? Of course you can’t. So, relax, forget the offences and just do what you feel that is right for you at this moment.
A final word of wisdom that applies to both free and paid webhost users: never ever forget to back up your sites regularly. Don’t rely solely on the back up facilities offered by your webhost, no matter how reliable they appear to be. Bad things can happen to the best companies. Accept this fact and do what you can to prevent the loss of your precious files.
As always, feel free to leave comments and share your own tips and pieces of info regarding free webhosts.
And this is the end of the free webhosting series. Or is it?
While writing this final article, I just came up with enough ideas for a whole new post. So, click here now to subscribe to our feed and you will soon be reading tips on how not to lose visitors when you move from a free webhost to a paid one.
Karen Zara has been involved with Internet-based projects since 2002. She is the creator of Abaminds, a blog for content producers that you can visit by clicking here.
Categories: Hosting, Uncategorized | Tags: free webhosting, webhosting | 2 Comments »
