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| Tuesday, October 26, 2004 |
| The History Of Blogs |
The Internet boom has revolutionized our ways of communication and posting information to the online world. In the Nineties, electronic communities like the BBS and email lists became popular modes of communicating. They allowed one to post and receive articles and important information. Use net news groups were also favored as was proved by their shear numbers.
With the popularization of the world wide web however, everyone wanted his or her presence in this fascinating world. Thus came the millions of web pages. As people rushed to create their own web sites and online homes, another revolution loomed round the corner.
Web logs first started out from personal diaries, which were kept by people with a running account of their lives. These people called themselves diarists, journalists, journallers, or journalers. A few called themselves escribitionists.
There were many other forms of journals kept online. A notable example was game programmer John Carmack's widely read journal, published via the finger protocol.
Web sites, including both corporate sites and personal home pages, had and still often have "What's New" or "News" sections, often on the index page and sorted by date. This proved to be a big factor that led to web logs. One noteworthy early precursor to a blog was the tongue-in-cheek personal web site that was frequently updated by use net legend Kibo.
The term "web log" was used and first proposed by Jorn Barger on 17 December 1997.
The word web log was again shortened by Peter Merholz to blogs. He used this term in 1999. Today, the word blog is a noun and to blog means to edit or post ones blog on the Internet.
Blogs were popularized in the late nineties by the appearance of new blogging technology and tools. Open Diary launched in October 1998, soon grew to thousands of online diaries. Open Diary innovated the reader comment, becoming the first blog community where readers could post their thoughts and views to various author's writings. The biggest was yet to come. Blogger.com as we know it today, was first started by Pyra Labs in 1999. It was bought over by the online giant google in 2003 and today, it leads the blogging communities.
Today, blogging software like word press and P machine have made it easy and attractive to own a small corner on the world wide web. All blogs include features like comments, where viewers can post their comments and thoughts in response to an author's article, track back where web sites can directly link to the article and permalink in which you can see the entire address of the full article.
In 2003, Dave Winer made a big contribution to the blog community.
He setup servers which web logs could ping to indicate updates. This just helped to make using these much simpler and easier in our everyday lives. Web logs first started out from personal diaries, which were kept by people with a running account of their lives. Sandra Stammberger is the editor of Free
Blog Traffic. Find all you need to know about Blogs and how to use them to generate targeted website traffic. |
posted by birdflu2006 @ 8:23 PM  |
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| Tuesday, October 12, 2004 |
| How To Optimize Your Blog For The Best Search Engine Results |
- By: Gregg Hall If you are interested in trying to make money from your blog, you probably want to know how you can best optimize your blog for great search engine results. After all, most people stumble upon blogs when doing a search for something. If you use these optimization tips effectively, it may be your blog more people are drawn to. So, check these tips out and experiment with your own blog. Note what has the best results and stay with it. Change the other things around a bit until you get the results out of them that you want.
Simple Content
Many experts say that the best way to optimize your blog is to keep everything very simple. You can choose one quality content topic and make it your base. Then from there you can use variations of the topic in order to keep everything going. This may seem like a broad and useless tip, but once you get into blogging more and more, you understand how important it is.
Put More Out There
If you are trying to get more of a presence on search engines, be sure that you have something to show. The more content you have, the more likely you are to show up on a search engine. Bigger sites always do better than smaller sites. It is simply a numbers game. Search engines will see your site in a different manner, depending on how much content you have. The more content you have, the more there is a chance there will be that someone will stumble onto your site.
Ask Search Engines for Help
Few people know that you can actually submit your site to search engines. Submit your site’s URL and ask to be put into the index. This can take a while, but if they do list you in the index, you will see a larger increase in traffic. Beware however of a service that asks for money in exchange for getting your sites into search engines. These can be a little misleading at times. There are ways to do this without needing to pay anyone at all.
Keyword Pay
A great idea for optimization is to identify the most popular keywords. By doing this, you are essentially targeting the keywords that people most often search for. When you do this, you have an edge over the competition. When you know exactly what the people are looking for, you can give them just that. Once you have a list of keywords, simply create articles that use these keywords. By creating these articles, you are putting yourself out there to be found. When someone does a search for those keywords, your blog just might pop up on their screen. Be careful not to use the keyword so much that your article does not make sense however.
Daily Updates
If you really want the best optimization, you should update it daily at the least. The more you update it, the more often search engines will index your blog. Therefore, you will want to be sure your blog is always fresh. Adding new information is the best way to update your blog. The more new information you have, the better off you will be! Just be sure that when you do update, it is for a good reason. You should always remember that content can have a purpose, but it should always be quality content. If you compromise content, you are only allowing yourself to strip the creativity from your project. If you are happy with doing that, by all means go ahead. However, as a writer, you will have a certain responsibility to web surfers. Unless you want everything on the web to be useless, do your part!
Use these tips to help optimize your blog and get the most from search engines. The more you post and use these tips, the more results you will see. If you earn your living from the number of clicks your blog or your ads get, this will essentially mean more money for you. You can use all of them or some of them. Experiment with them to see what works best for you and your blog. Put these tips to use and watch your results rise today! If you use these optimization tips effectively, it may be your blog more people are drawn to. So, check these tips out and experiment with your own blog. Note what has the best results and stay with it. Change the other things around a bit until you get the results out of them that you want. Gregg Hall is a business consultant and author for many online and offline businesses and lives in Navarre Florida. See more articles on blogging and internet marketing at http://www.theinternetmarketingsecrets.com |
| posted by birdflu2006 @ 9:10 PM |
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| Monday, October 04, 2004 |
| Boost Your Business With Blogging! |
- By: Jeremiah Patton
Business blog is an incredible online marketing tool that saves you thousands of dollars but provides great business opportunities in just one click. Blogs are user-friendly, customized and flexible medium for disseminating useful information for effective positioning of your products in the market.
Companies engaging in business blogging have a definite edge over its competitors. Here are some advantages:
1.Word-of-Mouth. In a survey, there are currently 14 million blogs with 80,000 more being added each day and about 30 percent of the 50 million users are blog readers. Imagine how much gain your company will have, if your products are advertised through blogs. With Internet, information spreads so quickly especially if an impressive write-up goes with your product. Soon your blogs will be passed on to hundreds of possible customers.
2.Awareness and loyalty. Open communication with your customers creates trust and loyalty among them. Being there to respond to their questions and comments make them all the more willing to try your products and services.
3.Feedback. Blogs is good for product research and reviews. It would be easier to improve on your products if you observe your customers’ thinking and behavioral patterns. You can also take immediate action to your customers’ concerns.
4.Community halo-effect. Bloggers are reasonable, friendly and helpful. They are more than willing to create blogosphere of comments regarding your product. The only thing you have to do is embrace and take active part in the culture and your product will surely be considered in their next stop to the supermarket.
For better marketing results, actively promote your business blogs by submitting your blogs to blog search sites and directories. Do not forget to paste in with your blogs, your URL. Be sure that your blogs contain exclusive information with value and are always updated to keep readers popping in, read up your blog, move on to the next and click on again for updates.
Blog is like a setup booth in the biggest trade show on earth everyday. Marketing possibilities are just around the corner waiting to strike your sale scales up.
The Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds are important too in conjunction with your blogs to get the best benefits. Use effective keyword phrases to generate high ranking status in the search engine traffic. In this way you have better chances of people finding your website leading to your blogs. More traffic means more potential sales.
For this to be successful, you can use RSS for news update feeds which can be read through RSS reader application. This is a very useful tool for business and internet marketers as well.
If you are already convinced with the potentials of business blogs for marketing and targeting sales increase, your company is now ready to start blogging. But first, you have to be in tune with your company’s business objectives and determine if blogging will really help you achieve your goal.
1.Several blogs are dedicated to teaching people the do’s and don’ts of blogging, READ them! Include in your reading materials blogs that are consumer-based too to give you an idea.
2.Setup several test blogs right away.
If your initial try out with blogs worked well, you can now start setting up your blogs.
1.Study blog design. Blog hosting services provide pre-designed templates. But if you opt for paid blog service, you can ask your artist to design and layout your blog site to match the company’s identity and needs.
2.Choose a topic. Its good to have a line-up of topics you want for your blogs but be sure they are in consonance with your business objectives. This would be a test of your flexibility and open-mindedness since results may be going against the set objectives.
3.Remember the following safety measures in blogging:
*legal issues are sometimes involved in blogging; it is safer to include disclaimers and limitations of liabilities;
corporate communication and legal department are responsible in educating the senior management on how blogs might affect business;
*create blogging policies; set limits on who gets to blog and what information are allowed to be made public;
*avoid outright marketing blog or you will shy away your readers;
*make content updated, relevant and fresh;
*reinforce the company’s core values; and,
*encourage employees to use it.
4.Start blogging and complete 20 posts before going to marketing.
5.Begin marketing.
6.Regularly monitor the coming ins and outs of readers and get updates. Then, measure your results.
7.Adjust if needed. You can always play with your designs in the blog site as long as it remains to match the company’s identity.
8.Strive to be consistent with your topic all the time.
9.Try to have unrelated topics with general and broad appeal.
10.Schedule updates regularly. Monday, Wednesday and Thursday would be best to update blogs.
Once you have done all these things, you can now ultimately enjoy the benefits of business blogging.
Business blog is an incredible online marketing tool that saves you thousands of dollars but provides great business opportunities in just one click. Blogs are user-friendly, customized and flexible medium for disseminating useful information for effective positioning of your products in the market.
Jeremiah Patton has been utilizing blogging to gain traffic and interest for his work at home business opportunities website at http://www.2ndincome4u.com |
| posted by birdflu2006 @ 9:42 PM |
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