As most of us already know, linkage data determines where you sit on Google’s food chain.  But what if I told you that you don’t have to have thousands of links to have a high ranking site?  In fact, it merely takes a few high quality links to have the same results as having thousands of links from lower quality sites.

The links that you should be targeting are high pagerank links, or .edu links.  Links from .edu sites are generally very trusted, and they hold a lot of value in Google’s algorithm.  These links come from colleges, universities, and research institutes across the globe, and can be just what you need to start building a high profile link portfolio.  But how do you get them?

The easiest way is to buy them.  Digitalpoint often has .edu links for sale in it’s forums.  They aren’t cheap, but being as valuable as they are, you wouldn’t expect them to be either.  Check out the forums at Digitalpoint and see if you can’t find a few.

The second method involves friends and family.  Some schools, offer free web pages, or even a social network for their students.  If you are enrolled, or have friends or family that are enrolled… ask them about this.  It’ll be free, and it gets you a few high quality .edu backlinks.

You can also try writing a high quality paper for a university, and see if they can use it as part of their course.  When they do this, it’s generally pretty easy to bargain a link or two out of them.  However, this is extremely time consuming.

Or, my favorite way to get .edu backlinks is by using our favorite search tool… Google.  You can type in this search string to pull up .edu sites that allow you to comment.

site:.edu inurl:blog “post a comment” -”comments closed” -”you must be logged in” “your topic”

site:.edu [finds edu domains]
inurl:blog [ find blogs]
“post a comment” [makes sure we can post to this blogs]
-”comments closed” [does not show these closed blogs]
-”you must be logged in” [does not show blogs where u need to log in]

Give it a try… see if you can find some great .edu backlinks!

You’ll regret it, I assure you! If you give up and shut down everything you’ll be wasting a massive opportunity. Think about it, you’ve made the initial steps setting up your blog and putting in those hours of writing and you’re going to throw it away? Don’t be silly!

It’s Not a Chore!

No one ever said it would be easy but don’t let writing become a chore. For people who start blogs and this is a mindset that you shouldn’t let yourself get in to. Let’s think about the ideas you had when you first launched the blog. What did you think about building it in to? You need to think about that blogging is a thing that you do for fun.

Keeping Your Motivation

There are many ways to keep motivated and everyone has different motivations but I think reading about others successes and refreshing your blog as well as your take on things will keep you motivated for the future. Money is a nice place to start fantasising about! J But stop fantasising and start doing!

Commitment

Making sure you commit yourself to someone is essential to not giving up. Set yourself a time period for a project and make it work. If you don’t meet your targets for the time period then you can consider stopping the project, not “giving up”.

Practice Makes Perfect

Rome wasn’t built in a day and your blog won’t be either. Everything you try will be new to you and practicing using it will help you make the most of it. If you discover something that works for you, make sure you practice getting better at it and you’ll see the results.

Get back on Track

If thing’s are not going to well, let’s go back to the drawing board and plan some new stages for your blog. What can you improve on? Ask some visitors. Is it time for a design refresh? Go look for some themes. Do you need to create a schedule? Then do it.

What advice would you give to your fellow bloggers in regards to helping them to keep blogging?

What are Blogs?

Most web users will know a blog is an online journal where bloggerspost their daily or hourly entries (their opinions, views, info, links)on any subject that interests them. The most popular blogging systems are Blogger.com (owned by Google) Bloglines (owned by Ask Jeeves), LiveJournal, and many professional marketers use the free WordPress software which they can host on their own websites.

Each blog has its own RSS feed — RSS stands for Really Simple Syndicationalthough its original acronym stood for Rich Site Summary. TheseRSS feeds broadcasts the information in the blog posts to allconcerned parties — those who have subscribed and use an RSS readeror aggregator to view the posts. Or more commonly, they use the FireFox browser,Google Desktop, or MyYahoo to access their favorite RSS feeds. The next version of Windows will have RSS embedded into its operatingsystem.

What are Tags?

Tags are really another name for keywords. Most surfers will knowkeywords are the exact words Internet users type into search enginesto find what they’re looking on the world wide web. Tags work in the same way and are a form of social bookmarking, a way of classifying and accessing all that content in all those countless blogs.

Many major blogging directories such as Technorati use tags to serve up the information to its patrons. One simple techniqueto create a tag in Technocrati:

<*a href=”http://technorati.com/tag/Laptops” rel=”tag”>Laptops<*/a> (remove asterisks in actual code)

Or if your blogging software supports categories; this willbe recognized by Technorati as a tag.

What the heck is a Ping?

A ping is a simple way to notify the different search engines to letthem know that your blog has been updated. You call up or ping yourblog post.

You bookmark or place an entry in any one of the countless bloggingsites such as Technorati, Furl, del.icio.us, Blinklist, Flickr —you go to these sites and click your blog or tag to inform themyou have updated your blog. Many blogging systems will automaticallyping your blog updates.

Or you can do this manually, for example Technorati’s ping form is here: http://www.technorati.com/ping

Simple Way to Ping

If this is still confusing to you, one simple way to ping your tags/blogs is to use a site like: http://pingomatic.com/

and it will automatically ping your blog in many of the mostpopular blogging services.

Enter The Online Professional Marketers and It All Hits the Fan

Of course, online marketers have long discovered that the wholeblogging system — blogs, rss, tags, pinging — is an excellentmarketing vehicle. One great marketing system delivering targeted traffic to their products and services.

It really is a corruption or commercialization of blogging and this surely wasn’t the idea the original designers of blogs had in mind. But the whole blogging system isso lucrative, many professional marketers (the author is pleading the fifth!) are using blogging systems like WordPressto create mainly marketing sites that may have little resemblanceto a real blog. It just uses the backbone structure of blogs, RSS, Tags to give their sites a slight competitiveedge in a very competitive world.

As we saw with the ‘comment spam’ there is a greatlikelihood that Tag and Ping will be misused and furtherantagonize the blogging purists. So if you are going to useTag and Ping make sure you’re creating valuable, usable content– then most sites will want to link to your site anyway. Content is still king no matter what tricks the professionalmarketers want to use. Always will be!

Using a Simple Tag and Ping Marketing Technique With Technorati

To explain further the whole idea of Tag and Ping. Lets justwalk through a marketing system you can quickly create usingTechnorati, one of the most popular blogging services.

First, sign your blog up with Technorati. This is quite a simple procedure. Just upload a photo, doesn’t have to be ofyou — your site’s logo will do. Register your profile withyour 20 or so tags relating to your blog. Make sure theseare keywords you’re marketing with your blog. Then you have to place the Technorati code on your blog for a link back.

Next, you must understand that Technorati creates a landing pagefor each tag in their system. This page is made up of four parts:

- Flickr Photos

- Recent blog posts tagged with that keyword or phrase

- Who’s Blogging About sidebar which links to any profiles of blogs

that those same keywords or phrase in their profile

- Links from Furl for the same tag

So to take full advantage and to use this marketing technique youhave to sign up with both Flickr and Furl. Your aim is to getyour links in all four spots on this Technorati landing pagefor your tag or keyword.

When signing up for Flickr, many marketers use their site’s name for their Flickr username, just use a dash instead of a dot inyour site’s url. You can use a photo of the product they’re promoting to get a link from Flickr in the top spot on the landingpage. Pick your tags and description for the product.

Set up a Furl account and download the Toolbar , bookmark a fewsites to get the hang of how its done.

Now You’re Really To Put Everything Together To Tag and Ping

1- You can start with the Flickr photos at top of the Technorati page.

Just post a photo or cover image into your Flickr account, making sure you tag it and use a catchy headline in your description.Link it to your landing or affiliate page url. Example:

Don’t buy another marketing tool until your check out this site.

2 - Next, make the first of your blog posts on your particular subject or product to your blog, making sure you tag it with your keywords and then ping Technorati. Make all your posts good content, reviews, product information or free downloads. Your entry will appear on the top of the list for that tag shortly in Technorati.

3 - Furl your blog post and your landing/affiliate page with your tags to make sure your entry/post is listed the bottom section of the Technorati page for your tag.

To work this system, add another blog post every few hours, Tag and Ping, plus Furl your posts. For better results you can sign up for countless other social bookmarking sites and bookmark your pages. Here are just a few good ones: del.icio.us, blinklist, moreover, icerocket, weblogs…

Flickr, Blog, Tag, Ping, Furl

This is just one Tag and Ping method, professional marketers have countless systems and sites working many variations on this relative new marketing technique. But the information given above should get you startedon your own Tag and Ping marketing system.

Remember, blogging and RSS are the wave of the future, make sure you’regeared up to take advantage of all they have to offer. You musthave at least one blog on your site. Use WordPress if youcan — Blogger will do in a pinch!

Just make sure you’re using some Ping and Tag marketing techniquesto harvest all those links, traffic and sales for your site.This is one marketing technique you should now be using. Justremember to Flickr, Blog, Tag, Ping, Furl - Rinse and Repeat!

You have been working hard to produce good-quality, original content on your blog and you have attracted a decent amount of traffic by doing so. However, money is not going to appear out of thin air just because you have traffic. You have to turn your traffic into money.

There are several ways to generate profits from the visitors of your blog, and Google’s Adsense program allows you to do so with ultimate ease. First, visit their website at http://adsense.google.com/. You’ll find out more about their advertising program there, but here are some extra bits I’d like to tell you.

First, Google’s Adsense program is a really useful way to monetize your blog because when users finish reading your newest post, chances are they want to leave your blog because they have nothing else to do on your blog. If your Adsense advertisement block is visible on your blog, they might see advertisements relevant to them and click on them to exit your blog. Ka-ching! You’ve just cashed in on your first virtual cents!

But yes, your profits will only be cents if you don’t “do it right”. This involves placing your Google ads in the right places and ensuring they blend in to your site so that they appear more like links rather than advertisements to your visitors. Consult the page https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/static.py?page=tips.html to see the “heat map” of your blog. The “hotter” a certain area, the greater the chances of someone looking at your blog.

Once you get a Google Adsense account, you can change the colour of your advertisement text and links. You will want them to match the colours on your blog. If your blog’s text is black and the links are red, do the same for the ad blocks too! It’s that simple.

Another way to earn profits from your blog is to recommend products to your readers. When your visitors buy from the merchants you recommend, you get to keep a little commission too. This is known as affiliate marketing and it is very easy to start because you don’t have to create your own products or services.

Anyway, let’s refer back to our technological gadgets blog example. Let’s say you discover this Gadget X on a merchant’s website, and they offer an affilliate program. What you would do is to create a post in your blog and do a mini-review on this Gadget X. Rip it apart and point out its benefits and bad points, if any, and include a link (which is given by the merchant) for the visitor to purchase the Gadget X online.

If your visitor clicks and purchases the gadget, the merchant will track from the link that the purchase is referred by you, so they will send you your share of the profits. Imagine if 1 out of every 100 visitors you get purchases this product, and you earn $27.00 commission from each purchase! If you get 10,000 visitors in a month that would be a $2,700.00 paycheque for you just for writing about ONE product.

Now, affiliate programs are very nice ways to generate profit, but how do you find affiliate programs that are related to your blog’s theme? Easy, just go to Google and search for <your niche> +”affiliate programs”. Another slightly better way is to go to http://www.associateprograms.com/search to look for affiliate program in your niche.

The two ways mentioned above are basic ways to generate profits from your blog. We’ll be discussing other great, profitable ways, so keep your eyes peeled!

Getting links from other websites is not the only way to attract visitors to visit your blog. This time, we are going to explore alternative methods to attract high quality traffic with both free and paid methods.

The first thing you can do to generate traffic is to recycle all the content you have written on your blog. What I really mean is to turn your blog posts into little “manuals” or articles that help people solve their problems or offer valuable information and submit them to article directories. These article directories are like aggregators that collect articles of similar themes together in one place, so they receive thousands and thousands of qualified visitors every day.

When you submit your articles to these directories, you are exposing your name to the thousands of pairs of eyes visiting them for free! On most article directories, you are also permitted to include a “resource box” where you can include your contact details, a simple biography and so on. This is where you can truly leverage the traffic of the said article directories.

Some good article directories to get you started:

www.eZineArticles.com

www.ultimatearticledirectory.com

www.submityourarticle.com

Another excellent way to gain traffic is to join internet forums that is based on your niche. To find these kind of forums, just go to any search engine and enter “<your niche> +forum”, without the quotes. You would want the most focused forum with a substantial number of active members, and preferably always bustling with activity. Just check the dates of the threads posted on the forum.

When you join active forums that focus on your field of discussion and post very useful and valuable posts, your peers will start noticing you and paying attention to what you have to say. In most forums, you are also allowed to append a link to your site in the signature line, which is under every post you make on the forums. People will click and visit your blog if they find your posts helpful and informative. This way, your credibility is built even before they land on your blog, so traffic from the forums would be easier to turn into profits if your blog is selling your own products or recommending others’ as an affilliate since they are already convinced you’re an “expert” in the field.

The strategy we’ll discuss is word of mouth. Let’s say you already have a daily visitor count of 100. What if you compiled a small report or gift and posted it on your blog, saying that if a certain visitor can refer three of his/her friends to visit your blog the gift will be his/hers for free? If your small report or gift is lucrative enough, it will generate a small buzz among your blog readers and they will surely refer their friends to this blog that they frequent!

You can also utilize the “blog and ping” technique that everyone’s talking about. Basically, when you update your blog, you can let blog portals such as www.technorati.com know by pinging them. You can ping a lot of portals at once by using the free www.pingomatic.com.

Besides the techniques described here, there are also paid methods like buying links from high-ranking pages or buying banner advertisement space. A thing to keep in mind when buying paid traffic is to always weigh your profits generated from the paid ads. If your profits do no offset the expense, you will end up losing money, so choose wisely.