Start and manage your own blog

Tips on how to set up your website or blog to attract visitors:

Stick to your keywords
Pick a few keywords or phrases that describe your site. Use them, and words related to them, whenever it's natural to do so. Repeating them uselessly is no good, use them in sentences, headlines, and links.

Content is king
Users don't search for design, they search for content. If your site doesn't have content people want, no one will look at it.

Each page should lead with a relevant keyword, and the first paragraph of text should be a summary of the rest of the page.

Links have meaning
Search engines pay a lot of attention to the links on your site, and the words used in those links. Never use "click here" or "see more" for a link. The link text should describe where the link will take the user, such as "learn how we can improve your SEO." The more relevant the links on a page, the more findable the page becomes. Don't go overboard, and don't link to anything irrelevant.

Choose good titles. Your titles are being read by the search engines. Use good keywords and think about what you are trying to do.
Every page in your site should have a title with the site name and a short description of the page. Include a keyword. Remember that the page title is what appears in search results, it should give users a clear reason to click on it.

A long time ago meta tags were the secret to SEO. Those days are gone. The only meta tag that really matters now is the description tag. Search engines may use it to provide the text under the link to your page in their results. Make sure it describes the page in a way that explains why a user searching for your content would want to look at your page.

Promoting your website: The process takes time. Build an email list.
An email list is one of the best tools you can use to build your online business. These people have already have shown an interest in you or your product. A good email list can turn into a gold mine. When building your email list, it is helpful to offer a free ebook, guide , whitepaper or you can have them subscribe to a newsletter or something similar like that.

There are many paid email marketing services, such as Constant Contact, iContact, and Vertical Response, just to name a few. There are also free programs you can use, such as PHP list.

Free ways to drive traffic to your website:

Article Marketing
It's completely free and writing articles is easy. You do not have to be a professional writer to do this. You can write an article and submit it to one of many e-zine article services. The article will contain some information about you and your services and a link back to your site on the bottom.

Forums
I get a great deal of business from a support forum I am active in. The key to using any forum successfully to promote your site, is to build trust first. Don't oversell yourself. Become a regular member who participates in conversations. Learn the rules of the forums you want to join, hang out there and get a feel for the place. Do not spam forums, and contribute. You can even set up your own forum on any hosting account.

Blogs
There are many blogs and websites that will allow you to sign up and create your own "mini" blog on their site. A great example of this is a writer's website called Red Room. This site gets very high traffic and you can join and start writing for free. Your work will be on the same website with best-selling authors. There are many websites like this. Once you start doing this, you will find people contacting you to "guest" blog on their blogs. You should always link back and forth with any sites you are working with. This helps your ranking in the search engines.

Social Media
You should have a few profiles on some of the top social media sites. For them to be effective you need to use them, and you should have what are called "badges" on your website and blog. These "badges" are the icons that link the image of the social media site back to your profile. Some examples are: facebook, twitter, linked, and youtube.

Multimedia
YouTube, Vimeo, Blogtalk radio, podcasting are all free and will increase your traffic. Search engines love sites with multimedia content. So text, videos, mp3's or podcast all help you get found in the search engines.

Take it in "byte" size pieces
Try to do a little bit each day. It is better to only have one account and be using it than to open 3 or more and let them die online from neglect.

Takeaway: If you did only 3 things a day to move your business towards your goals, how much could you really get accomplished?

Visit Linda Lee at:
http://askmepc-webdesign.com | http://wordpresscentral.org | http://smartwomenstupidcomputers.com

Video cameras provided by Staples:
When it comes to video blogging, recording and uploading footage isn't always simple, but Staples makes it easy providing a variety of cameras that offer high quality video with quick, convenient, sharing capabilities. The Sony Bloggie™ HD Camcorder and the Flip Video Mino™ HD Digital Camcorder, are both great examples to help you create exciting, interactive blogs. The Sony Bloggie™ HD Camcorder features a 5x optical zoom and is compatible with both Mac and PC. It is available at your local Staples store or online at staples.com for $199.99. The Flip Video Mino™ HD Digital Camcorder provides up to an hour's worth of HD recording capability and it can easily fit in your pocket with its slim design. It is available at staples.com for $229.99, but be sure to check out the variety of additional Flip cameras also handy for blogging at Staples stores throughout the Bay Area.

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