Picking Your Blog Topic

If you're going to write a blog, you need a topic: a *FOCUS. Let's say, without one you will have a very tough time attracting audience. Your main goal is to reach the point where your audience seeks you out. Why? Because you consistently offering information that they find very helpful in the light of their interests. If there's "NO FOCUS" meaning there's no consistency which also means no audience. When a person is truly passionate about something it is way easier to focus on a topic.

Picking that topic can be very tougher indeed. Common questions and concerns that I hear are.

I don't want to pick a narrow topic or I'll be stuck writing about this forever. No one wants to hear what I have to say period. My topic is really boring, why would anyone sit here and read it? I just flat out can't think anything

All these preceding questions are translated to one issue: fear. We're all trained to just be afraid of writing. Starting in grade school, we're told that we'll lose points for missing comma or for an incomplete sentence.

Well, you can let go of that fear now my friend.

Blogging is the best form for writing therapy on this planet, period. You should strive to write grammatically correct language lets your readers think that you're not well-educated. A great post not only gains respect and favor of the readers but it also makes the blog SEO-friendly as well. But one misplaced punctuation mark doesn't mean that you get an F. Just relax and take a breath. Smile.

Read these key tips:

Write about something that excites you, period! Write about something you truly know.

You're probably thinking "I'm doing this to grow my business right?" If you're blogging for your business, I hope you're really enthusiastic about it. Think about it, and find the one or two or many things you care about. Such as, if you're a passionate collector of plants, that's your blog topic. If you're an Internet marketer and truly care about the profession, just write about it. When writing your post, try to be controversial and basically straight to the point. Try to close your eyes and think about the last time you read through a blog post. Also, think about what you immediately thought about that post or how it made you feel.

Don't select a topic simply because you think that a lot of people search for it. Having that said, I wish you all the best in choosing your blog topic.

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Blogging For Beginners - A Simple Guide

When you decide that you want to make your own website, you can easily find yourself overwhelmed trying to figure out what to do. The steps for how to create a blog are actually quite easy, and shouldn't be stressed over.

Before you begin, you need to decide what your blog is going to be about. This is an important decision that will be reflected in every further step you take in the process of how to start a blog. Your topic will be part of your website name, your themes that you select, and can even be an important part of where your blog is created.

Once you know what you want your topic to be, you need to decide where you want your blog to be hosted at. This means the company that you want to get your internet space from. Like renting an apartment, you need to make an arrangement with someone who can host your website and get your domain online. You have two options at this point: you may use a free hosting site, which will add their own name to your domain name, or you may lease the internet space from a hosting site for a small fee.

When you decide where you want your blog to be hosted at, the next part of how to create a blog is to have potential names for your website ready to go. The name of your website will be purchased when you get the space, and can't be changed, so think carefully.

If you chose to lease your own web space, you will be able to design it as you like. Now, you need to find a blogging software to use on your site. These are easy to use, with two popular programs being WordPress and Blogger. These are free to download and install, and will give you a large choice of pre-made templates to use, or give you the freedom to create your own style from scratch, all without needing to know any complicated codes.

Select a program that you like, then download and install it. After it is installed, how to start a blog becomes as simple as following what the program steps you through. You will name your blog, select your template, decide on the privacy level of your website, and create your profile by simply filling in the appropriate blanks when you are prompted to.

After this has been completed, all that is left is to start writing. Take the time to get familiar with your website, you honestly can't hurt it. Explore what the different buttons do, and create a couple of test pages. Once you are comfortable, start writing your blog by selecting your first topic. While you may write about whatever you like, remember that poor grammar and ideas that jump all over the place will turn your readers off of your website.

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5 SEO Blogging Tips

I've talked before about how Google loves blogs and how WordPress helps you rank. The reason for this is because Google loves fresh, regularly updated and relevant content, and that is what blogging is about all over. Just using WordPress on your site obviously isn't going to guarantee you anything, so every time you make a new post keep these 5 SEO blogging tips in mind.

Keyword Research/Usage

It all starts here. Make sure that you're targeting the right keywords in your posts and use them in the correct way. This means putting your keyword in your title, sprinkled throughout the article with the optimal keyword density, and in your images which brings us to my next SEO blogging tip.

Images/Videos

Remember to fill your post full of not just text but images, as well. Google likes this, your readers like this, and this gives you a chance to rank in the SERPs for your images, as well, assuming you remember to use your keywords as the alt and title tags.

On a related note, Google loves video, as well, so adding a video to your post can help you rank, as well.

Internal Linking

Whenever you get the chance, it's important that you create internal links to other relevant posts and content on your site within your new posts. You'll notice I'm doing a lot of that in this post. Internal linking spread the juice out to other posts to help them rank better in the SERPs for their keywords, plus it keeps people on your site longer.

Permalink Structure

This refers to how your URLs are designed whenever you create a new post/page. I use a specific permalink structure to ensure that it's optimized for SEO and has the best chance for ranking well.

Consistency

The last of these SEO blogging tips doesn't have to do with the content itself but rather with the schedule which you add new content to your site. Maintain some kind of consistency with your posts to show that your site is updated regularly. This doesn't mean that you have to add a new post or page every day. If you can only manage one new post a week, stick with that schedule. It's a turn off to both search engines and your regular readers to see inconsistent post updates, so find something you can do and stick with it.

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Blog Themes: How to Entice Your Community

Have you ever been on a site which is so dull that you wonder what made you check it out? If yes, you will probably agree with me that the theme vexed you in the first place. Well, I always say that image is everything. I tend to think that one of the prime reasons a blog may get and hold more visitors than another blog is the display.

Here are some factors that you need to consider when choosing a blog theme.

Customize your theme template

Theme templates can be either free, premium, or if you are really particular, custom. When using one of the free themes, you need to consider that there is a big chance that multiple bloggers will have the same theme as you choose. In this case, your content will have to be outstanding. On the other hand, you may choose to buy a premium theme that will cost you around $70. For the more meticulous blogger, a custom theme would be the obvious choice. However, this would cost you anything from a few hundreds to a few thousand dollars. Whatever package you choose, remember that you can still get an attractive theme at a pocket friendly price.

Get your theme from a trustworthy designer

When making the decision of who will be making your theme, you may need to get a person who is well-known for his/her great work in web design. Anyone can get away with creating just any blog theme, but not everyone can create a great blog theme. You are looking to have a great blog, not just a good one. Having your theme created by a well-respected designer with a great track record will make sure that the theme have great features as well as efficiency.

Get a blog that tickles your fancy

When you are browsing through various blogs, you may have found one or two with a design you like. If this is the case, you can contact the blogger and make an inquiry of what theme or template he/she uses and then see whether you can borrow a leaf from their blog.

Be unique

Everyone wants a blog that is unique, attractive, and definitely eye-catching; it shouldn't look like a typical blog. The blog needs an insightful ladder of components to link between the content and the presentation. Apart from these, you also need to have proper illustrative use.

Take care of layout components

Before finally settling on a theme, you need to consider certain blog theme components such as color and font. This is because some elements can easily be altered by a person familiar with CSS while some may prove to be a bit more difficult. However, sometimes your font of choice might not exactly work with the design you want. Invest your time in various blogs; look at their display and decide whether you like them. Another thing about color and font is, you want to use a user-friendly color/font combination and not clashed out ones. Color blocking only works in fashion, not so much on the World Wide Web. You are trying to attract more readers to your blog. This will be next to impossible if your visitors almost get blinded the minute your blog loads, right?

If you put all these in mind when choosing a blog theme, you will not only have an eye-candy type of blog but also one with rich, unique, outstanding content. Remember, you want to entice your readers, keep them glued to the screen waiting for the next post. As I said before, image is everything. So be sure, your content matches your font and color choices and make you stand out in the world of blogging!

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Using Image Alt Attribute in Blogger

If you use the Blogger Platform to host your blog, they make adding Image Properties very simple. It's commonly called the Alt Attribute or the Alt Tag. This tutorial will explain what the Alt Attribute is and how to add it to your images in Blogger.

The alt attribute is used as an alternative to the image. If someone visiting your site has their images turned off or blocked in their browser, they would use the image alt attribute to understand what was being displayed. The Alt Text would be displayed instead of the image. Individuals who are seeing impaired or blind often use screen reading software to listen to websites. This attribute would come in very handy to them as well, because they would hear the Alt Text.

There is also the fact of the alt attribute contributing to your sites Search Engine Optimization. (SEO) When the Google Image Bots crawl your site, they can't see the images, they read the image properties. If you want your images to appear within the correct search results, then the proper use of these properties is needed.

Let's look at the two options Blogger gives you. When you add an image to your post, you will see a menu below with the word "Properties". Clicking on "Properties" will bring open a window with two sections:

1. Title Text

2. Alt Text

Title Text is what your readers will see if they were to hover their mouse over the image. It is the title of the image.

Alt Text is the "alternate text" that is shown in the screen reader software and to the image bots and crawlers.

With the alt text, there are many variances out there.

<img src="IMAGE NAME.JPG." width="150" height"20" border="0" alt=IMAGE DESCRIPTION">

Or

<img src="IMAGENAME.GIF" width="20" height="15" alt="IMAGE DESCRIPTION">

Or

<img src="IMAGENAME.GIF" alt="IMAGE DESCRIPTION">

Or

<img src="DIRECT IMAGE URL" alt="IMAGE DESCRIPTION">

A couple of things to keep in mind is if your image is jpg, gif or png, you would need to change it to correspond with the image and of course, you will need to edit the capitalized area. The src and alt attributes are required information. The width, height and border attributes are optional.

The best advice I can give with the image description is keep it short and to the point. Think about it like this, if you were unable to see the image, which keywords would best describe it to you. If you have a picture of blue, four door vehicle that has been in an accident, you wouldn't put the description as that, you could just put vehicle accident.

I found a great video on the Official Google Webmaster Blog explaining it a bit further. You can copy and paste it into your browser.

googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/12/using-alt-attributes-smartly.html

If Google suggests doing it a certain way, who are we to argue?

Do you use the image alt attribute? If so, what method above do you use?

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Producing Blog Content - Being Result Oriented As Opposed to Being Activity Oriented

I just had an AHA moment this morning. If you read some of my articles or have watched my videos, you know that I write every moment that I get. I write and write and write and then I record videos on everything that I write. I realized that I can crank out an article in 10 minutes and can do 3 or 4 videos in about 20 minutes. It is empowering to produce more than I have every produced before.

However, I realize that I can be so much more powerful if I can step away and learn new ways to communicate so that the work that I am producing can impact those who read that work.

There are things that I want to learn and things that I need to mater beyond just producing content. Below are a couple of things that I am in the process of starting to master starting now -

1. Focus on the end result as opposed to the input (Result Oriented) - My intention is to generate two new customers every single day. The action I am taking is to crank out as much content as I can, thinking that if I throw enough stuff (quality stuff) against the wall, then something will stick. I can put together up to 12 articles per day if I really stretch, can do 10 fairly regularly and can do 8 with ease. Well, if I just strive for 10 articles per day, then I can get that done as quickly as possible and then shift my attention to training myself to make my articles better. Wow, even in this paragraph, I digressed to the input as opposed to the output. The bottom line is that my intention is going to be focused on generating 2 sales per day every day starting today. I will ask questions like - What needs to be included in this article that will generate 2 sales a day from this article alone? What else do I need to do? Who are the customers who are going to read this article? What are their problems and challenges? Why are they going to buy? If I am able to write from that place, I will be light years closer to generating two sales a day. You See? (Or if you are like me - You feel?)

2. Get a clear vision of what people who are generating the sales are doing - What are people doing that I am not doing. I can tell right now that they have reviewed training that I have not quite finished. I train myself towards the end of the day, as I am falling off to sleep. I am estimating that I have about 40 hours worth of training to do and at the pace I am going right now, I will finish that training in three weeks. That is way too long. I need to allocate some of my writing time to training time, so I can get through the training more quickly and be quicker at implementing what is in the training.

3. Deal with the things that I am putting off - There is one work project that deserves a little more attention and a personal project that deserves more attention. I shall devour those projects starting today and get them to a place where I feel great about where we are with those projects. As a result, I will be in a much better position to deliver what I need to deliver. Being result oriented is as simple as that.

The bottom line in being result oriented is that there is always a higher level of focus and I higher level of mastery. I am so much better than I was even thirty days ago but I have learned that the more I learn and the more I do the bigger the gap of where I want to be. Those are the facts of life and the law we must follow.

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