Get your Blog Dugg Up the Search Engine Ranks

It's all about Digg

In this post, I'm going to talk about the best way to boost your rankings up for free. I did mention boosting your blog rankings by social media networking in my previous post. This time I'm gonna talk all about Digg.

Digg.com is a popular social news website where contents from vast searches are shared and dugg by other users. They use a voting system and top dugged stories will be featured on the digg front page. If you don't have a Digg account yet, you should start one up now.

How to use..

It's really easy. Just create an account, fill in your details, interest and don't forget to put in a link to your blog/website. The next step is to tick some topic of interests that you would like to view. After that, you can start digging. There are two terms that you would need to know. The first one is 'digg'. When you come across articles, stories, photos or videos that you like, you 'digg' it. If you don't, the second term will come to use, which is 'bury'. When something is buried, it won't appear on your list of stuff to view.

That's pretty much the basics on Digg. A lot of bloggers are using this online hub to share their stuff(articles/photos/videos). Since the votings are done by other users, it's humanly nature is preferred by search engines and can boost your rankings at the same time. The more diggs/votes you get, the higher the chance you get to be featured on the front page of Digg which means more exposure to other people and more diggs. Get the picture? This technique can easily boost your rankings in no time.

So to sum it all up..

It's simple. Make lots of friends on Digg. The more friends you have, more people can see what you share. Leave comments on the stuff you dugg (in Digg comments area or the main page. But prefer the Digg comments area if you want to make friends on Digg. Other Digg users can easily find you there) and create conversation. Another good thing about Digg is that you can find articles related to your niche and leave comments on the main page itself.

Digg is very easy to use and if done right, it can boost your rankings in no time. It's totally free and makes sharing and commenting much easier and more convenient.

5 Popular Blog Directories for Quick Blog Rankings

There are a number of things you can do to boost your blog rankings. Besides other stuff like pinging your blogs on search engines, joining forums and etc., what you can do is blog directory submissions. This is an effective way to build backlinks to your blog and build your blog rankings.

Here's 5 popular blog directories that you should keep in mind (not in any particular order)

• Blogged.com - Very popular, has a feed-type of layout and you can follow each other which is great for networking
• OnTopList.com - Very popular directory that reviews your blog for free. It's human-edited which is always preferred by search engines and can help your blog rank better faster.
• Bloggepedia - Very popular. Perfect for newbie-bloggers who are trying to pick a topic/niche to blog about because they show popular tags used by readers.
• BlogCatalog - Very popular. Can easily be used to build free targeted web traffic and blog rankings. A perfect networking tool to socialize with other bloggers.
• Technorati - Very effective and popular. A great way to 'claim' your blog. Very easy to use and uses the 'voting' system that could help you build your ranking easily. The more your articles get 'dugg'  the the more popular you get, which gives you a better ranking as you post more quality content.

Why it's effective?
Besides the obvious reason (it is a blog directory after all), blog directory submissions helps promote your blog to other existing bloggers and at the same time get to know other bloggers and make it easier for other bloggers to get to know you too. Blog directory submissions is a great way to make yourself known to other bloggers. I repeat, other bloggers. Beats having to search in Google or Yahoo for other bloggers. Blog directories are in other words 'Bloggers' Central'. It's the place to meet, and build relationships with bloggers of the same interest/niche/business as you.

Other than that, it's a great way to create backlinks, do as much needed networking, makes commenting on other blogs easier and also gets free targeted web traffic to you blog. All these combined, boosts your blog rankings easily. What else is there to say. You should try it out and see the results for yourself. :)

Tips on Boosting Index Times by Pinging

It's time you focus on boosting indexing times for your blog. One of the many ways you can gain exposure on the web is by pinging your blog on search engines to inform them that your blog has been updated. There are other ways too, but lets focus on this part for this blog post, shall we?

So I'm gonna give you tips on how to boost you indexing times by pinging.

Let's start with Blogger.com users. Unlike other services, pinging is done manually. But first remember to set your blog for public viewing. Under the settings tab there are items like 'Add your blog to our listings' and 'let search engines find your blog'. So apply 'yes' for both items and your good to go. So every time you post an article you have to ping it on search engines so that they know you have updated your blog. I use Pingates.com just put in your blog name and address and pick a number of services that you want to ping and you're done. Just remember to pick relevant sites. For instance, no point of pinging an english blog on a japanese blog search (google.jp)

So as for you guys who are using Wordpress. You get to set your pings automatically. Here's how:

1. First set your blog for public viewing by going to the Privacy tab under 'settings'. Then choose your blog to be available to everyone.
2. Then go to 'Writing' which you can also find under the 'Settings' tab and copy and paste this list.

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://feedshark.brainbliss.com/
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://www.blogoole.com/ping/
http://www.blogoon.net/ping/
http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud
http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php
http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2
http://www.wasalive.com/ping/
http://www.blogsdominicanos.com/ping/
http://www.xianguo.com/xmlrpc/ping.php
http://www.feedsky.com/api/RPC2
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping

Easy ain't it? :)

Now if you're using Joomla 1.5, it's a bit tricky. (got this tip from my friend Faiz Suberi, check out his cool website by clicking his name)

1. First you have to download the 'Easy ping' plugin.
2. Then under 'extensions' tab, click 'install/uninstall' button. Upload and install the plugin.
3. Go to 'extensions' again and now click the 'plugins manager' button. Look for 'systems-easy ping' in your list and then click on it. 
4. Copy and paste the above list in the 'ping services' space.
5. Enable the plugin.

You only need to do this once and it automatically send pings after every post you make.

And there you have it. Tips on boosting index times. Keep on the look out for more tips from me. Until then, I'd like to leave a word to you guys. Keep up the good work. This making money online thing can be stressful sometimes. But with a little time and effort it will work out for you. :)

How To Use Twitter for your Affiliate Blogging business

Affiliate blogging can only be made successful if you have consistent web traffic coming to your blog. One of the many ways of getting traffic is by using social media marketing and the best place to start is no other than Twitter. If you don't have a Twitter account yet, better start one now. It's the hottest social media networking service right now and by far the easiest way to get traffic for free.

Why Twitter?

There are millions of people using Twitter as we speak. People all over the world are using it to share views, latest update, latest gossip, new gadgets etc. And it's all done with a simple tweet message that is no more that 140 words. You get to follow friends and people of the same interest and at the same time their friends can follow you. The idea is to get as many people to follow you and update them with the latest article/blog that you would like to share. The best thing about Twitter is that when you tweet, your friends can re-tweet it to their friends and their friends can do the same thing and the word can be spread to a whole lot of people which in turn gives you a whole lot of exposure. So that's what makes Twitter a great tool for your affiliate business.

The main thing is to get as many followers as possible. Here's how you increase your followers.

• Put up a brief but thorough profile of what you're about and what you're into. This will make it easier for people to know your interest and learn a bit about you. Remember to put a link to your blog in your profile. Make a statement by setting up your own background. There's a lot of cool backgrounds that you can try out. A really cool place I would like to suggest is FreeTwitterDesigner.com. You can design your background there and then for you to upload onto your Twitter.
• Start by following your friends or people with the same interest. If someone follows you, be sure to follow back. The more you follow, the more people will follow-back. But be aware of robots and spammers who only uses twitter to advertise stuff. It's no fun having a bunch of ads on your page your not even interested in. The main idea of using twitter to get web traffic is to get REAL people to follow you and share your stuff with REAL people.
• Tweet about whatever you want. If you're not used to it. Start by tweeting about what you're up to or what you're feeling right now.You'll get the hang of it eventually and start tweeting about other stuff like the latest buzz or updates on your blog. Once in a while share fun-facts, hot gossip or whatever Justin Bieber's up to (apparently he's a hot topic right now). Re-tweet whatever you think is interesting. Make your tweets human. You don't want to be annoying your followers by sounding like a robot 24/7. They may end up blocking you if you do.  
• You will reach a point when you get to many followers that it's hard for you to keep track of them all. When you do, you can use an Auto-follow service (which is free) like 'Social Oomph' that allows you to automatically follow anybody that follows you. But then if you want more followers and you want to do it the easy way there are a few Auto-find services that allow you to automatically find people for you (with a small fee) without violating the Twitter follow policy. It you're interested, I would suggest Tweetomatic Profiteer 
• You can make your tweets viral to get more twitter followers. How it works is actually you join a service and follow a number of people and you are given a special link to a particular web page. If you promote that link to your friends or others (via email etc.) When they reach that page, they subscribe and they will have to follow you. And they would have to promote their link for other people to subscribe and get other followers. And this would go on 7 levels down. For example, if you are able to send 4 people to follow you and each of those people promoted and got 4 people to sign up and after 7 levels down you would have had 87,380 followers. This is also something free you can try out to get more twitter followers. Although it might get you a handful of followers in a short period of time, it may not be 'targeted' but would still work in giving your blog more exposure.You can try it out here.
• Maximize exposure of your Twitter account by putting links to your twitter account on your Facebook, Myspace and also your blog to increase your exposure. There are a number of cute badges that you can choose from and since most social media networking services are already integrated with Twitter, it won't be something hard for you to do.

Okay, So understand everything so far. The idea is to increase your followers and turn them into your web traffic or leads. The more followers you have, the higher the chances are that they will check out your blog. But try not to promote stuff to them too often. Remember, we're all humans. Don't be an annoying salesman. Because nobody wants a sales-robot as a friend.

How to get web traffic for free

Having a regular web traffic coming to your blog is very important. You wanna make money online you have to have people coming over to see your stuff in your blog. Let's face it. No traffic, no blog. So what can you do if you don't wanna spend money to get traffic to your blog?

1. Article marketing can help you build back-links to your blog. This idea would need a bit of effort from you since you would have to write new articles/posts every other day. But article marketing is very effective in terms that it would help show off what you can offer to your readers and in return help you find loyal people coming back to your blog.
2. Social media marketing For example, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Stumbleupon, Delicious, Digg  etc I'm sure is nothing new to you. Another important aspect when you want to make money online is networking. You heard what they say about if Facebook is a country it will be the 4th largest country in the world? This sort of networking if done right can bring you a lot of web traffic to your blog
3. Making videos will get people's attention. Anyone can write, but adding your own 'how-to" video will be an added advantage. Youtube is a great tool to use to gain web traffic to your blog. 
4. Commenting is another sure way of getting traffic. Leaving comments on other people's blog would help create back-link to your blog and get the robots crawling over on their page to crawl on yours too. So leave some useful comments on other articles. This tactic not only get those curious ones to check you out but you can learn some useful things from others along the way.

So there you have it. Easy ways to get traffic for free. Yeah sure it's easy. But these tips don't get you the results you want overnight. It will take some time and a whole lot of effort from you to get those people to come to you. So be patient trying it out ok. Good luck!

Start Blogging Today!

Blog today! It's very simple. Once you have picked your niche, everything else should be a breeze with some proper blogging tips and tricks, of course. I like to start blogging with blogger because it's easy to start compared to other blogging platforms. So here's how you start a blog with Blogger.

1. First off, you have to register with Blogger by signing in with your Google account (Gmail, etc.) here. If you don't have one, you can easily open a Gmail account here.
2. After signing in, you have to choose a name and address for your blog. Pick one that is related to your niche. For example, it you're into hair care (i.e. haircarewithkatie.blogspot.com). Make it simple and easy for people to remember your blog. Putting a name that is related your niche would help your blog ranking and indexing in search engines.
3. You should pick a simple theme for your blog which is readable for your your viewers. A good tip about picking a theme that I've learnt is to have your blog posts on your left while the gadgets on your right.This is because some experts claim that search engine robots read your blog from left to right.
4. Then post your introductory post. Make a short post introducing yourself and what your blog is about. 
5. Finally set your blog settings according to your preference. Just remember to have your blog set to public view by picking 'yes' for "blog to our listings" and "Let search engines find your blog".

And there you have it! Your first blog. I'll be posting more blogging tips that would be useful for you soon. In the mean time, keep your blog filled with content. Update your blog with posts from time to time and remember to be consistent and put your keywords in. Have fun blogging!

How to start as an affiliate blogger

Being an affiliate blogger is one of the many ways to make money from the internet and it's not that hard. There's no cost and not much of a hassle to start being one. Basically, being an affiliate your job is to help a publisher sell his product. You don't even have to make a sales pitch to sell it. You just have to put a link in you blog that directs your readers to the sales page and your readers can buy it from there. So, interested to start??

Here's what you should do to be an affiliate.

• Register with an affiliate program. Publishers would have an affiliate program if they want affiliates to sell for them. Like Malaysian publisher, they usually have their own affiliate program while American publishers like to put their products in Clickbank, the biggest affiliate program in the world.
• Get your affiliate ID. After registering, an ID will be given to you and also a link which you can put on your blog.
• Place this link anywhere on your blog for your readers to click on and you're all set.

When someone is interested, the link that you put in will take them to the publisher's sales page for them to buy the product and you will get the commission if a sale is made.

Sound pretty simple so far right? What's the catch?

Well, affiliate blogging is pretty popular and a lot, i mean A LOT of people are doing it. So there are a lot of competition out there depending on your niche. But that doesn't mean it's impossible to earn money from affiliate blogging. The key idea is to build traffic and a few other tips that you have to follow to get people to click on your link. But that will be discussed some other time, okay?