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Creative Techniques To Help You Profit From Seasonal Blogging

2010 World Cup FootballAlthough many of us are blogging for the long-term in very specific niches, there exists many more dynamic opportunities to achieve blogging success as well as various styles that can be adopted. Over the years I have learned that there are some of us who have not really mastered the quality of patience and do have difficulty being committed to tasks and goals that require long-suffering dedication that leads to success.

So I have a few ideas through which I can offer some inspiration for the short-term blogger and how you can take advantage of the various changes and seasons of popular events. [Read more…] about Creative Techniques To Help You Profit From Seasonal Blogging

WordPress Plugins to Reduce Load-time

This is a guest entry by Selena from esvienne.com and searchenginejournal.com.

As our blogs grow and get more traffic, more “fun” things tend to get added on. We add a sidebar image here, a tracking script there, Adsense on top and below, etc. All these things eventually start becoming too much, and slows down your blog- especially when we start forgetting to delete old and outdated plugins as time goes on.

I don’t have to tell you this, but a slow loading blog makes for a poor user experience – and you do not want to lose those visitors you worked so hard for. Keep in mind that visitors subjected to poor site performance rarely complain – they just leave and don’t come back. Nobody is going to take the trouble to find your contact form and say, “hey buddy- your site is loading slow. I will be back here in 1 week to check to see if it’s fixed.” [Read more…] about WordPress Plugins to Reduce Load-time

Interview with Yury Polnar from Demand Studios

Today we have the honour to feature an interview with Yuru Polnar from Demand Studios. Demand Studios, who are also advertiser here at BloggingPro, are a known name in the freelance and online writing sector and provide freelance writing opportunities to many writers.

Anyone looking to get started as a paid content provider, or publishers looking for content should consider Demand Studios, several authors who write for Splashpress Media also write for Demand Studios. But now I will let Yury answer some questions we asked.

What Is Demand Studios?

Demand Studios is the creative arm of Demand Media and is responsible for producing in-demand articles and videos for a large network of industry-leading websites and some of today’s most respected online publications. Comprised of thousands of talented freelance writers, editors and filmmakers, Demand Studios creates and delivers handcrafted content to an audience of over 80 million people yearning to be informed and entertained. [Read more…] about Interview with Yury Polnar from Demand Studios

WordPress 3.0 – Have You Upgraded Yet?

The first stable release of WordPress 3.0 launched on June 17th.  Have you upgraded yet?

The new version of WordPress offers some cool new features like a new default theme (Twenty Ten), which has been getting a lot of buzz.  Also, the new multi-user functionality makes it easy for anyone to run multiple WordPress blogs from a single WordPress installation.  I’m sure I’m not the only WordPress user who is happy about that!

So there is no doubt that the new WordPress 3.0 is cool, but are you the type of blogger who jumps in as soon as a new version of WordPress is launched?  Or do you prefer to wait it out a few weeks (or longer) to see what kinds of bugs people experience before you upgrade?

Since upgrading became so easy when WordPress 2.7 came on the scene, even the least tech-savvy blogger can upgrade to the latest and greatest version of WordPress with a couple of clicks of the mouse (although you really should take the time to backup your WordPress database first — just in case).

So which are you — a Nervous Nellie or a Fearless Freddy?  Take the poll below and leave a comment to share your thoughts on upgrading to WordPress 3.0.


Powerful Strategies To Sink Your Blog’s Bounce Rate

Improve Blog Bounce RateTo effectively maintain and grow our blogs we need to pay very close attention to the facts that lie within our site’s statistics. The sole purpose of statistics is not just to show off our rising numbers in visitor traffic but can be an extremely useful tool for making those well needed adjustments to our performance that can make the difference between an OK blog and one that truly rocks.

Your blog’s bounce rate, in particular, represents the number of visitors who came to your blog and left without clicking to another page which generally indicates that there was nothing else that really interested them. The ultimate goal is to get visitors to stay, read our content, subscribe, purchase our products and all the other good stuff.

So, here are some effective techniques to capture the interest of your readers and get them flipping through the pages of your blog. [Read more…] about Powerful Strategies To Sink Your Blog’s Bounce Rate

How Gravity Forms Can Rock Your WordPress Blog

love musicI’m in love with a WordPress plugin. Let me stop right now and tell you that I’m not a WordPress plugin floozy. I don’t dive in and try every WordPress plugin I hear about, and I definitely don’t jump on the bandwagon and pay for WordPress plugins. Nope. I’m usually late to the WordPress plugin party and try plugins after other people test them out and share their thoughts about them.

So why am I telling you this?

It’s simple. I wanted to make the point that it takes a lot for me to get really excited about a WordPress plugin. However, Gravity Forms (*) has achieved what few other WordPress plugins can in my mind. It got me really psyched and I want to create more forms with it!

A single-user license of Gravity Forms is just $39, but you definitely get $40-worth out of this WordPress plugin. You can create highly customizable forms using a super easy click-and-drag tools. You can also set up custom notifications, easily add forms to any page on your blog, and more. It’s so cool! There is even a support forum at GravityHelp.com.

With all that said, I have yet to tell you about the coolest part of this plugin. If accept guest posts or other types of content on your blog, then you know it can be a hassle to reformat submissions, upload them, and publish them on your blog. It sounds like it would only take a few seconds to publish a guest post, but depending on the format the guest blogger sends it to you in, it could be a big time investment. Gravity Forms takes that headache away by allowing people to submit posts quickly an easily.

As an example, check out two pages on my blog for women in business. The first link takes you to a page where I used Gravity Forms to set up a guest post submission form and the second takes you to a page where I set up a press release submission form. Both took me just a few minutes to set up, and now the process of receiving content submissions is so easy! I get an email when new content is submitted, so I simply have to log into my WordPress account to approve it. If you want, you can set up submissions to publish automatically, so you don’t have to approve them before they publish. It’s up to you.

If you’re still not convinced that this is one cool WordPress plugin, watch the video tour and try the demo on the Gravity Forms website to see how it works.

So that’s why I’m in love with the Gravity Forms WordPress plugins. It makes my life easier, saves me time, and it’s easy to use.

Have you tried Gravity Forms? Is there a WordPress plugin that rocks your blog? Leave a comment and share your can’t live without WordPress plugins!

Image: stock.xchng

(*) Big mean affiliate link!

The Most Powerful Characteristic of Successful Bloggers

Blogging CharacterUndeniably, we can’t help but admire the legends who came before us; who set the trends and standards that many aim to achieve and maintain. Financial success and fulfillment of life are very attractive goals but require the dedicated, passionate and sometimes lucky soul who will dare to venture and claim the prize.

In the world of blogging, this is no different and still there is only a small percentage of bloggers, in comparison to the entire blogosphere,  who actually achieve huge success through blogging. After taking note, you will find that there are a few key characteristics that most probloggers possess like persistence, focus and passion but there is one more requirement to the mix. That ingredient is the ability to change and adapt. [Read more…] about The Most Powerful Characteristic of Successful Bloggers

How to Help Your Guest Authors in Their SEO Efforts

Help Guest Authors in their SEO Efforts

The blog SEO is nothing to go mad about: essentially there are just a few tweaks needed to make sure the blog post is search-friendly enough to go live. A couple of weeks ago I shared a blog post SEO checklist – it only has 5 points in it – but if you frequently feature guest posts on your blog, it is a smart idea to engage your authors into the optimization process.

You don’t have to spend time teaching each of your new authors SEO specifics of your blog. What you need to do is to fine-tune the process once and you will notice your guest bloggers get enrolled eagerly.

1. Create a Well-Outlined SEO Basics Cheat Sheet

You blog SEO basics list shouldn’t be anything too theoretic. Just outline what you have to deal with each time you are writing or publishing a post.

What I would recommend creating is a one-page well-organized outline in PDF listing your blog SEO specifics:

  • Your recommendations as to (sub)heading usage. Note, that h2 and h3 tags make your posts easier to scan; they also make your keywords more prominent.
  • Your advice on using the keywords in the article copy: which tools do you use to research keywords? How do you make your copy richer (by using synonyms, keyword suggestions, etc);
  • Your image optimization tactics: what I usually mention here is that:
    • The images should be no larger than 100K
    • The images should always have the ALT attribute – not just the TITLE tag like the standard WordPress editor would prompt you to.
    • You can also mention your hotlinking preferences (Would you like the images to be hosted on your blog? – which is usually preferable. Which free image hosting services would you recommend – I usually tend to stick to Flickr).
  • Your internal linking requirements: make it a rule that your guest authors always link (from within the article body) to a few related posts that were previously published at your blog. Let them know the best ways to find those related posts (I for one use SITE:yourdomain.com search for that).
  • Any of the SEO plugins you are using and how to apply them at the post editor level.

2. Install Some SEO WordPress Plugins

These are not actually plenty. Just a few WordPress plugins will help your authors optimize their posts:

1. Either Headspace2 or All in One SEO Pack: the choice is up to you. What’s good about both of them is that they allow to provide custom title tag, meta description and keywords – right at the post editor page:

Guest SEO: All-in-One SEO Pack

2. Insights: This plugin makes it easy to search for the related posts right from the blog editor page and also instantly link the words right from the editor:

Insights: Guest author

3. SEO Smart Links: automatic interlinking. This plugin interlinks your blog content automatically. It is rich in settings and options – so you can configure it in plenty of ways:

  • Set what to interlink (posts, pages, categories and/or tags);
  • Ignore words in links (like “about”, “contact”);
  • Set the maximum number of links;

SEO smart links

3. Equip Your Guest Bloggers with Essential Tools

Many huge multi-author blog owners prefer to buy a corporate licence of some useful SEO tools and give access to all their (guest) authors. This section looks at some free tools instead. Include the links to those tools in your SEO tutorial (see #1) and make sure your authors are using those:

1. SEO Blogger: This tool is the FireFox addon that lets the user research the related phrases in the browser sidebar. You can thus research the keywords without having to leave the blog post editor: write and format your post while researching your keywords.

SEO blogger

2. Copyright Checker. There are actually quite a few plagiarism checkers out there (Copyscape is the most famous but paid one). This one is free and easy to use. Your authors can copy-paste their post text and run it to make sure their content is totally unique.

3. SEO Analysis Tool: Suggest your authors run the tool immediately after the post is published. The tool is great at reporting prominent keywords in:

  • Link text;
  • Image alt attributes;
  • Heading and phrase elements.

This way the bloggers may quickly estimate if they are on the right path:

Keywords Found in the Anchor Tags

Relying on guest blogging and user-generated content to let your resource grow is a great tactic. The only thing is that at least some effort is required to put your readers on the right path. Do you help your guest bloggers to optimize their content?