Hi everyone. As many of you know yesterday I announced the launch of our very own marketing system here on Blog Engage for bloggers named, Direct to Front Page Marketing from Blog Engage. I got some great feedback and I thank you all for taking the time to share your feelings.

During our conversations I took away one specific thing I didn’t notice was affecting our members. This issue I believe was with regards to the lack of length in which articles stay on the front page. (more…)

The best part about working hard is being able to take time off and enjoy a vacation. The trick is in choosing a place. The vast number of articles found on the Best Travel Websites directory can help make that choice a little easier. They’ll help you decided on a place to go, when to go, and even on finding a place for the entire family or a romantic escape for two. It all comes down to where you want to be.

When it comes to family vacations, theme parks seem to be the place to go. But with so many, which one do you choose? This article on the Best Family Theme Parks Around The World showcases some of the coolest theme parks without mentioning the most obvious ones. This list will take you around the USA and into the UK, Germany, and even Spain. And though you won’t find a set of plastic ears anywhere in the list, you’ll see a ton of real smiles. (more…)

You have a great winning idea for a new blog, you’re an ace writer, and just to make things even easier for you, you have the graphic design experience to make your new blog look as good as a Spielburg movie. So what’s with the lack of traffic?

Just because you have a blog, that doesn’t automatically mean that people will be flocking to your new domain to read your mind blowing content. Building an audience takes time, and the blogosphere can be a rough place, especially if you’re a newbie; but don’t fret! Here are some tips that will help you boost the traffic on your blog, whether it’s a few years or a few weeks old.

Leave Comments On Like Minded Blogs

While we would all like to think that we are the only person on the planet who had the brilliant idea to start a blog focused on ______, unfortunately that isn’t the case. Odds are, there are a few blogs out there that are somewhat close in subject to yours and this is something that you can use to your advantage. Visit these blogs and become an active member of their comments section. It’s not polite to blatantly advertise your blog on someone else’s comment board but, leaving a link to your site after a well written clever comment never ruffled anyone’s feathers. Get your name out there the right way.

Article Directories

Post relevant articles to an article directory and (again), be sure to link back to your blog.  This is a great way to increase back links to your site as well as up your Google ranking.  The best part about having your work included in an article directory is that your article continues to work for you long after it has left the front page in your blog for the archives.

Keep A Schedule

One of the main reasons readers abandon a blog is lack of frequency when it comes to new posts. Readers today want their information fast and often, and if you can’t keep up with the demand, your blog will find it difficult to maintain it’s current readers, and even more difficult to attract new ones.

Design

A poorly designed blog is a major turn off for most readers. Why would someone stay to read your latest blog post if your blog is over run by obnoxious pictures and difficult to see text? Make sure that your blog is designed well, easy to read, and easy to navigate. A menu bar that lets your reader move backwards, forwards, and to the home screen, should be easily accessible on every page.

Guest Posting

Guest posting is a great way to direct new traffic to your site, especially if your blog is the new kid on the block. Like I mentioned before, there are sure to be some sites that cover similar material to yours out there somewhere. Take some time to familiarize yourself with these blogs, and once you know the lay of the land, write the author and ask if they would mind if you wrote them a guest post. Or better yet, write the guest post and then send it to them with the request. This will show them that you mean business and, if the post is worth it’s salt, they will have no reason not to publish it. Don’t forget to offer them a chance to post on your site as well.

Respond To Comments

Readers respond very well to blogs where the author takes an active role in the comments section. It lets your audience know that you support conversation, debate and community among your readers. Make sure to visit your comments section regularly, if for no other reason than to thank your audience for taking the time to read your posts.

Driving traffic to your blog isn’t difficult. All you need is respect for your audience, a sense of community (not just your own) and patience. Good luck and keep blogging.

I am very happy to announce the automatic Twtter module is now in effect. When your story is published on blog engage it will automatically be tweeted to all my followers.

The greatest part of this announcement is we tweet the Blog Engage story page and in return this will increase your chances to earn when using the Google Adsense Revenue Sharing.

How does it work?

1. You sign up to Blog Engage.
2. Edit your profile and add your Google PUB Number.
3. Submit your story into our community upcoming section
4. Gain sufficient votes to become published.
5. Your story becomes published
6. Blog engage Automatically submits that story page url to twitter.
7. My twitter friends follow the link and increases your Blog Engage Adsense pageviews.

If the visitor is interested in the Ad they will click it and in return it will increase your Blog engage Google Adsense Earnings. Remember it’s very important to set up the Blog Engage Adsense channel to see what your earning.

How to track your earnings?

First things first make sure to set up your Google Adsense Revenue Sharing. Log into your profile and add your PUB number.

1. Log into blogengage, select profile, select modify.

2. Add your full pub number and select save.

3. Visit your story page do as shown below and confirm your pub. (refresh may be needed)

This means when we syndicate your blog articles to Blog Engage your Google Ads will be displayed on all story pages and not ours. When you inspect the code you will see your pub number is being used..

Now let’s track your earnings

* Log into your Google Adsense Account

* Select AdSense for Content

* Select +Add new URL channels hyperlink

* Type in the URL address for Blog Engage in the box

* Click on Add channels button

First you must login to you Adsense account and select the Adsense set up tab. From here select the channel tab and proceed to the websites section.

• Select AdSense for Content

• Select +Add new URL channels hyperlink

• Type in the URL address for Blog Engage in the box

• Click on Add channels button

Now you should be able to filter your Adsense earning by channel. If you go back to the main page it should look like this.

Now all the earnings you earn and page views from the Blog Engage URL will be shown in your filter. This is how you can see if you are in fact making money from Blog Engage.

If you need any help with setting this up please see the forum topic. Thanks to everyone for all your support I hope you make some money using our revenue sharing community.

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Be sure to add me as a friend, bbrian017

Twitter, bbrian017

Thanks,

Brian

The Importance Of Guest Posting

Guest posting is one of the effective ways of gaining website exposure. More importantly it’s a way to make your blog rank better in organic search results for your targeted keywords through a right system of backlinking. Backlinks are those hypertexted words or phrases – called anchor texts – which “link back” to your blog. By finding a quality and famous blog to write articles for, you can as well convert those readers to your readers too and make them members also of the community which you are currently building. For me, as an affiliate marketer, guest posting has helped me climb up the ranking in Google search results and target the visitors who are interested in buying the products I promote.

When I first launched my reviews and coupons blog, I was focused exclusively on adding high quality content regularly. I remember writing a post every day like crazy. After 2 months of insane writing, the only thing I had achieved was to rank from 16 million to 450K in Alexa. I hope you know by now that Alexa doesn’t bring money; targeted visitors with their credit card handy do. How can you make those ready-to-buy people land into your product page?

You have to appear on the first or second page of Google for those keywords which the prospective customers search for. To achieve this, make a plan to guest post at least 15-20 articles per month in high PR blogs and include specific niche keywords as your anchor texts. These links will work like votes to your web and Google will eventually identify that your blog is “suggested” by other blogs as the right one for these particular keywords. This way, the pages you want to promote will start ranking higher and higher. Don’t forget: Google ranks web pages not just websites.

My Tips To Get Your Guest Post Published

Unlike writing for your own blog, there are other necessary criteria required of you, both by the owners of the hosting blog and their loyal readers. This is why guest posts are expected to be of high quality and well written, but if they are not, you are likely to get rejected. In order to this and increase the chances of making our guest posts rock, here are what to consider.

Be Confident

Success in anything in life starts from the mind. You can succeed if nobody believed in you but you will never make a step forward if you don’t believe in yourself. The very first attitude you must imbibe as a guest poster is self confidence. Being confident will allow you the breathability needed to speak effectively and convince your audience.

Write In Relevant Topics

Your efforts to start guest posting should start from picking a host blog. Your chosen blog must be treating contents in your chosen niche. I’d advice you to write on more technical and challenging topics; focus on making them simple and easy. When readers go through such work, they can’t wait to find the person that offered them this solution for more help.

Stay Away From Copied Contents

Copied contents have a bad effect to any online business no matter what the business is all about or which audience it is meant for. Worst still if you ever need traffic from the search engines, then you are really dreaming of an impossible world with copied contents. This is not to say that works done before can’t be repeated, but the repetition should be such that the new trends and findings discovered in that field should be included to make it more interesting and captivating. Fresh contents are more result oriented.

Edit Your Work Well

Due to a lot of writing tasks and demands in internet marketing, many people are now accustomed to writing anyhow and editing thoroughly before posting. Never post content immediately after writing. Most times, it may be better to take a break before coming back to edit your posts and then posting them. Posts that need heavy editing will never be published since hosts may not have the time or may not be tolerating post of that nature; regardless of what you are treating.

Be Careful With Your Links

Contents with several links, inserted here and there, will always fail to achieve what they are meant for. First of, the owner of the blog may never publish such work knowing the implications of letting such a haphazardly arranged content come to his blog. On the second hand, the readers of such a post may never see anywhere through which they can read out something tangible without encountering a link that will prompt them to buy or sign up. It is irritating and the result may be devastating.

Make Your Ending As Effective As Possible

The ending of any write-up matters a lot, in the sense that it is when the reader gets to make a decision as regards what he/she has been reading. Your target at the end will therefore be to help them make a positive decision. And point it to them that they are not doing it for your interest but to their own benefit.

Complement Your Guest Posts With Other Efforts

Promote your guest post by using the social media like Facebook, Twitter, Digg and StumbleUpon, to name a few, or link to it from a post in your blog as well. As soon as your guest post is published, then write a complementing post to welcome the new traffic that will be coming from the guest post. When these new traffic come to your site, they will expect to see the same qualities that prompted them to click through; don’t disappoint them with less-quality contents.

Make Relations

Do not let your post stand alone. Relate it to other posts on that blog. Hosts are more liable to accept any post written in relation to the rest of the contents on their blog. When you help the reader go round the blog to different posts that answered different questions they might still have on that subject or a related one, you are saving them the time of clicking out and searching from one site to another. They will also have the sense of completeness that you are offering and will follow any advice, direction or suggestion you may still have for them. Put your links in the appropriate places and never try to sell them through a guest post; it is better not to do it at all than doing it wrongly.

Do Not Irritate Your Readers

You have to be careful as to the extent you are prompting your readers to action. If they take all the action in the world here, it may not really be to your benefit; at least not 100 percent of them. It is true you have to set them out to motion with your words, but remember you are just a guest writer, unless their actions has up to 50 percent benefit to you, you don’t have to go through that stress.

Be Nice To Your Hosts

Your hosts will probably want to know a lot of things about your posts and the motive behind it. Answer their questions directly and try as much as you can to make them see reasons with you. Show them how and why your post is very important to their niche and why it has to be published in their blog at that particular time. This way, you will get your post published.

Do Not Forget Your Host’s Guidelines

And last but not least, no matter what you do, remember that this post is going into another person’s blog and therefore you need to satisfy your host’s terms and conditions. Keep your posts in-line with all the guiding rules if you really want your posts to be published in that blog and gain all the advantages that go with it.

Good morning everyone. I would like to welcome you to another great week here in the blog engage community. Please be kind and vote for other bloggers when submitting your links this week. Engage with one another and comment on each others blog articles.

Every Monday I put together a list of 5 articles that I think will make it to the top engaged at blog engage this Friday. To date I’ve only gotten 1 correct out of 10 selections. I think as time passes I will start to do better and eventually maybe get 5 of 5… yeah right lol.

#1. 10 Lesson Your Parents Can Teach You About Blogging –

#2. Why Plugins Can’t Help You to Rank Better and What You Can Do About It –

#3. Create Your Own Fast Social Sharing Buttons For WordPress –

#4. 9 Blogging Lessons We Can Learn From Professional Wrestling –

#5. Is Google Ditching PageRank? –

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Be sure to add me as a friend, bbrian017

Twitter, bbrian017

Thanks,

Brian

One thing that sets apart good bloggers from just the average ones is the ability of the former to drive traffic on a consistent basis. Driving traffic these days is easy but what counts the most is on whether the traffic that you’re going to drive is going to convert or not.

Conversion can vary depending on the goals that you set as a blogger but the bottom line here is that every serious blogger must aim for consistent and returning traffic, not just a one time spike.

In this post, I would like to talk about different things that you can do in order to get that consistent stream of traffic. But before that, let me just cover first the facts about traffic and why you need to aim for consistency.

Why Consistent Traffic?

This question is kind of like vague. It’s obvious that everyone wants consistent traffic on a daily basis but what’s a consistent traffic in the first place and how does one achieve it? To simply put it, just look at the top bloggers in the industry. They can rest or take a vacation for a week but does that decrease their traffic? Partly yes, but just because of how big they are right now, it’s more likely that the decrease wouldn’t be that much.

Getting that Consistent Stream of Traffic

Now a little bit about me and my blog. When I started last 2008 with MelvinBlog, it grew really rapidly (and of course some others grew even faster!). Just 4 months after the blog has been launched, I started slacking and thought I already had it going.

Long story short, I stopped writing and growing the blog and obviously the result was I lost some readership. That’s basically prematurely thinking that the blog has already consistent traffic. Now that story was long over and I learned a lot from it. I made sure that mistake will not happen again.

So here are now the 5 ways that everyone of us should work on to achieve that consistency. The list starts now:

1. Establish yourself initially via commenting

In the past few months, I’ve written so many articles already about commenting. I’ve always said that the best way to get known initially is to do bulk commenting. And that’s because when you’re getting started there really isn’t that much option. You can’t immediately ask bloggers to accept your guest posts and you cannot get them to link out to you so the way to go is to introduce yourself and the best way is to comment.

I’ve written a comprehensive guide on blog commenting on Famousbloggers and if you’re just getting started, I highly highly suggest you to check out that post.

2. Write for People, but build for search

These days we already know that most search engines, Google in particular, started moving into this model of ranking sites that people are reading the most. But that doesn’t mean that we have to stop caring about the basic things that we have to optimize for our blogs. I’ll be frank with you, SEO for blogs especially with WordPress is damn easy. So why not spend some time setting up things that have to be set up like the All in one seo pack, robots.txt, canonicalization and so on. Those things don’t take more than a day to complete but its long term effect can quite be dramatic.

Another obvious benefit of this is that it can be really rewarding if done properly. Some sites that really do well from search engines almost no longer need to add new content to their site because the search traffic that it gets is already worth it.

3. Establish your social media presence

This is probably one of my biggest regrets in blogging. I dived heads first into social media thinking I can get tons of traffic just by submitting each and every of my posts. Obviously that’s wrong.

Like most things, social media is all about establishing and building your connections first before reaping the benefits. These days I really get good amount of traffic from social media and that’s because I’ve used it as I should and unlike before, I already have connections. Think about it, if you’re just into a new territory and you want people to do things for you, do you think they’re going to do you that favor?

4. Set  Guest Posting Goals per month

Well if we’re aiming for consistent traffic then why do we have to guest post every month? My simple answer is that simply because there are hundreds of new readers everyday. Why do you think guys like David Risley, Daniel Scocco, ViperChill do guest posts even though they’re getting over 1000 uniques a day? It’s because of they know that there’s just so much potential out there and also plenty of untapped traffic sources to get into.

That should be it for you. 5 guest posts per month shouldn’t be that hard. Make sure to set some goal in this and it could really give you a lot of return traffic.

5. Keep Funneling your readers

Assuming you have 30-50 visitors on a daily basis, what do you need to do then? Two things, first is try to work more on getting more traffic and second is funnel those existing readers to make the most out of them.

Funneling them could be as simple as letting sign up to your newsletter or subscribe to your rss and follow you on twitter. Or it could be as complex (and rewarding) as getting them to buy your stuff or join your membership program. All of these depend on what you initially planned and how you want to execute that plan through your strategies.

Conclusion

So that’s it. Just 5 things, but as you can see it involves a lot of hard work and dedication. That’s why I always tell people that blogging isn’t hard, but just needs a lot of hard work. The fact is that people will read this but nobody will do anything which is why only really few people get traffic and eventually make money from their blog.

I hope that in this article I’ve given up some good information on getting consistent traffic and how it can be done. Remember, its not about the quantity, its the quality that you get that counts the most. I’d rather have 50 people reading me and following me over and over again than 1000 people that I’m not even sure if they’re real person or bot, that would follow me for just one day and disappear the next day. What do you think?

In the past years, article marketing has turned into one of the best ways for spreading the word about yourself and your website on the World Wide Web.

The concept behind article marketing is straight forward – you write promotional materials, closely related to your work niche and then spread them across the dozens of article directories or blogs out there.

After each article you get to add a resource box with few words about you and your business. The more important thing however is that marketers are allowed to include a link with anchor text, pointing towards their webpages.

In most cases such blogs (or directories) get thousands of visitors daily, which means huge potential for getting highly relevant visitors and thus a good chance for making sales, getting subscribers, etc. Whatever your goal, hitting it becomes ten times easier when you are getting good traffic.

There’s the added benefit of all the links being dofollow enabled ones, which means that your search engine rankings will benefit as well. And it is undeniable that article marketing is one of the best ways to boost your SEO – big percentage of the guest bloggers are doing it solely for that purpose.

Slowly (a bit too slowly maybe), we are getting to the essence of the current article. That is a question asked by many and namely – “How to squeeze the most out of my writing?” Read on to discover few useful tips to utilize, when starting with your first article marketing campaign.

Quantity IS Important…

I bet that you are often hearing the phrase that quality always goes in front of quantity. Well with article marketing, things are a bit trickier – you need them both. In order to make it working, one article won’t be enough unfortunately. Writing for as many relevant blogs, as you get to find is what you should be striving for.

There are two reasons behind this. The first one is straight forward – the more articles, the bigger your presence in your niche, which inevitably leads to more traffic. The second reason for quantity’s importance is SEO – in order to make an impact on the SERPs, you will need as many quality backlinks, as you can get your hands on. More articles equal more backlinks, which in turn equals better SEO – simple as that.

… As Well As Quality

Hundreds and hundreds of new guest articles are being submitted daily. All of them are there for one thing – to catch the reader’s attention. This means that the competition is always tough, so in order to get noticed, you need to provide unique and interesting content, offering different perspectives and useful resources.

Write As If No one is Reading

Before starting to write anything, you need to free yourself of bad thoughts. Just stop thinking about how others will judge your work and start writing! Remember that people are different and there will always be both negative and positive reactions. When you have copped with that, simply go with the flow – write exactly what is on your mind. Don’t pretend to be someone you are not. Be yourself, readers will appreciate it.

Define Your Message

You always need to make sure that readers will be able to understand your points with ease. The way you say things can prove a decisive factor for the effectiveness of your articles. Remember that you are striving for a call to action from the viewer’s side and such won’t follow if you fail to deliver the content in the appropriate light.

These are the main factors that should be taken into consideration when diving into article marketing. Try following them and you will be one step closer to success.