Semi-Pro Blogger

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Dot 5 includes all of the typical services you would expect with a domain registrar, but do so at an unbelievable price.  Whether you are just getting started with your website or you already have one and wish to transfer to Dot 5, they make the entire process quick and easy.

If you are looking to start your own blog or website I recommend looking into what Dot 5 has to offer.  A partial rundown of what’s included with a Dot5 domain hosting account includes:

• Unlimited hosting space
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• The ability to host an unlimited number of domains from 1 account
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• Free Website Builders
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• $50 in free Yahoo credits to advertise your site
• $30 dollars in Google Adwords credit to advertise on Google
• Google Webmaster Tools integration for improved SEO efforts
• and more

Learn more about the Affordable Web Hosting from Dot 5 and sign up today!

Having run multiple blogs, I’ve had the opportunity to try out quite a few plugins for different functionalities.  Below are the ones I’ve used and really find usefull.  I encourage you to play around with each of these.

• Feedburner Feedsmith - this plugin detects all ways to access your original WordPress feeds and redirects them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber
  Download Feedburner Feedsmith
• Google XML Sitemaps - This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Google, Yahoo and MSN.  Each time you post, the sitemap is automatically updated.
  Download Google XML Sitemaps
• OneClick Installer - Installs any plugin or theme without having to upload them manually via ftp. Can also delete theme and plugin folders.
  Download OneClick Installer
• WP 2.3 Related Posts - Generate a related posts list via tags of WorPdress 2.3
  Download WP Related Posts
• Popularity Contest - This will enable ranking of your posts by popularity; using the behavior of your visitors to determine each post’s popularity. You set a value (or use the default value) for every post view, comment, etc. and the popularity of your posts is calculated based on those values. Once you have activated the plugin, you can configure the Popularity Values and View Reports. You can also use the included Template to display post popularity and lists of popular posts on your blog
  Download Popularity Contest
• Show Top Commentators - Encourage more feedback and discussion from readers, by rewarding them every time they post a comment! Readers with the most comments are displayed on your Wordpress blog, with their names (linked to their website if they provided one).
  Download Show Top Commentators
• Twitter Updater - Updates Twitter when you create a new blog or publish one.
  Download Twitter Updater
• WP Polls - Adds an AJAX poll system to your WordPress blog. You can easily include a poll into your WordPress’s blog post/page. WP-Polls is extremely customizable via templates and css styles and there are tons of options for you to choose to ensure that WP-Polls runs the way you wanted. It now supports multiple selection of answers.
  Download WP Polls
• LightBox - Used to overlay images on the current page.
  Download LightBox
• SEO Title Tags - Search engine optimize your blog’s title tags. Create a customized title tag for any post, static page, category page, UltimateTagWarrior tag page - indeed, any URL! And will auto-insert the tag name into the title on tag pages generated by UltimateTagWarrior plugin. Admin allows for mass editing of title tags.
  Download SEO Title Tags

What other plugins are a must have for your blog?

Organic search can be a powerful source of traffic and brand awareness for your blog if thought about strategically. If you are unfamiliar with the term organic search, an official definition is:

Synonym for “Natural Search.” Traffic or search results that are a product of a Search Engine’s algorithm, rather than paid advertisements.

If your in the US, then the major search engine that you need to be most concerned with is Google, followed by Yahoo, and on a much lower level, MSN/Live. Google owns just over 60% of the market in online searches and therefore should receive the majority of your attention when it comes to rankings.

If you leveraged my tips for creating a domain name, then you will have a keyword rich website URL that is most likely highly competitive in your niche. Having the keywords in your domain is the first of many steps to obtaining rankings on the first page of Google. A second strategy is to not only get one listing on the first page, but to have 2, 3 or even all 10. Google limits the number of results to 2 per domain, so how can you go after all 10?

How to get all rankings on all 10 position on the first page of Google

I can answer the question in 2 words - Social Media. Social media/networking sites have become wildly popular over the last few years and are continuing to go more and more out of the tech savy market and into the mainstream. I’ll save going into the more in depth reasons of why you should be participating in these social sites for later, and just touch on the strategy of obtaining multiple listings in the search engines.

Each of the social sites allows you to create a profile page that contains keyword rich content. This in combination with the importance the search engines are beginning to place on social sites allows for an easy opportunity to create content on your niche topic on multiple domains and allows you to “get around” the 2 listings per domain rule.

While listings from the social sites wont send direct organic traffic to your website, you can safely bet that if your able to rank your profile pages along with your main site in the search engines that it’s going to get people’s attention and reinforce you as a dominate source of information on the topic. If you build your profile pages in a strategic manor you will also be able to gain some indirect traffic to your main site from their listings in the search engines.

One of the best examples of this that I saw recently is Darren Rowse ranking for the keyword ProBlogger on Google. Below is a screenshot:

You can see that each of these listings are all his websites and profile pages on other sites. These are just positions 1-6, but he has listings all the way through page 2 of Google. He has wisely named each of his profiles with the keyword “problogger” rather than using his name or some un meaningful handle.

Creating profile pages on multiple social networks is a great strategy for dominating the search results pages, but more importantly than creating the profiles on these sites, is the actual participation. You may be lucky to get multiple listings by just creating the profile, but you are much more likely to succeed by actively participating in each of the social networks you sign up for. The question then is, “Which sites do I target for my niche?”. That is a little bit tougher question, which I will save for a later post.

Choosing a web hosting provider when registering your domain name can be a tough choice. I’ve suggested before that you check out BlueHost.com, but there are many options to choose from so I am going to go through a series of reviews to help you make your decision.

First on the list is HostGator.com.

Host Gator offers shared, reseller, and dedicated hosting solutions and claim to have a 99.9% uptime guarantee, 24/7 support and a 45-day money back guarantee. For only $7.95 a month with HostGator, you get:

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• CGI, PHP 4 & 5, RoR, Perl
• MySQL, SSH, SSL, IMAP, POP
• Free Site Builder
• cPanel Hosting
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HostGator also provides multiple free services for people looking to switch domain hosts including :

• Free Domain Transfer
• Free File Transfers
• Free Database Transfers
• Free Script Transfer

Head on over to the HostGator website below and learn more about the great services they have to offer.

Google Adsense is one of the most popular forms of monetizing a blog or website.  The vast number and variety of publishers in the Google network makes it easy to start making money quickly with ads directly relevant to your content.  I’ve been using Adsense for quite sometime and have a created a steady 2nd steam of income in addition to my full time job.  Below are 5 secrets for being successful with Google Adsense that I have picked up along the way.

Have a Common Theme for Your Blogs Content

Having a blog focused on one general topic makes it much easier for Google to show the most relevant ads for your visitors.  In order for you to receive clicks from your visitors the ads must be relevant to what they are looking for on your site.  When a blog is completely random and the topics of each post vary widely, Google will do its best to serve an ad, but it may be completely unrelated to the content on the page.  This will result in a much lower CTR (click through rate) and a much lower check for you to cash each month.

Blend Ads Into Your Content

It is important to have your ads match the theme of your blog.  Many people just take the default color scheme and stick the code on their website while not paying attention to how it really looks.  There are many studies that show that blue links with a white background have a  higher CTR because that is what people are use to seeing.  This may be true, but more important is the fact that your ads should blend perfectly with the background and link color of your regular links.  People are much less likely to click on an ad if its blatantly an ad.

Place Ads Above and Below the Fold

Second to blending your ads, the location of your ads is next in importance.  I’ve found that scattering your ads throughout the page will result in the best CTR.  Having ads above the fold, meaning you can see them without scrolling down at all, results in every visitor to your website seeing the ads and may result in a click.  I also like to put an Adsense ad at the bottom of posts so that if a visitor does scroll and they can no longer see the ad at the top, they are presented with another one.  Many people tend to place ads in the sidebar of their blogs.  This can sometimes be an effective location, however many people tend to ignore the sidebar and focus on the main content in the middle of the page.  Each blog and its visitors are different, so it’s important to continually tweak the location and size of your ads in order to find the best combinations.

Use Channels when Creating your Adsense Ads

Channels allow you to monitor which ads are being clicked on the most frequently and are resulting in the largest amounts of revenue.  When setting up your ad color and size, be sure to assign a channel name to each ad type that you will be able to distinguish.  I tend to use things like domainname-top-linkunit, or domainname-sidebar.  Having Channels assigned to your ads will make it much easier to determine which sizes, locations, and colors are working best for your blog.

Use Text-based Ads Rather than Images

I’ve found that text based ads from Google Adsense tend to perform better than using image ads.  The reason for this goes back to point number 1.  Blending text with your text content is much easier than with an image.  Having a big rectangular image promoting something typically screams “HEY IM AN AD”, and people will completely ignore it.  This point is a rule of thumb though.  If your blog or website is about a certain type of product, or offers product reviews, then image ads may actually perform very well for you if implemented strategically.