Archive for January, 2007


Our Blogging Community

You may be wondering, “Hey, Tammara – where art thou?” Lol – well maybe not exactly in those words, but you may be wondering why we have not yet launched the blogging community in it’s full platform as promised? As you may recall, originally we had anticipated to announce the opening for registration on our full platform by the first of the year, and that is obviously past and gone. So, what’s the current scoop?

The scoop is all good news. Although I’m not on track time-wise, the project is still in progress, but the learning curve with putting it together has been the mountain to move, and each step has taken me way too much time due to the degree of that curve! Waiting for answers in vendor forums for getting help was also taking an enormous amount of time, and especially in that we were near the holidays and there were less people in the forums to get assistance from.

After much distress, I finally realized I was going to need to hire someone to help get the project moving forward. Who better to enlist than one of our own members – right? Well, help is what I desperately was in the need of, and our member Daryl began conversing with me and realized I was quite frustrated with my project. He has now installed many of the components needed to get the community together, but I still have much configuration to do to get it done. Thank you Daryl for providing the much needed assistance! :)

So, when will we launch? If I may ask for your patience, hang in there, and it will be very soon! :) I would hope for the early part of February, but again I don’t want to attempt to make a promise that I may not be able to live up to! We also have more new members to announce, so stay tuned for more fun! Thanks for your patience with the development of our new blogging community!

Here’s a member who has caught onto the game quickly! Our newest member Cornflower hasn’t wasted any time learning how to complete a Link & Blog Challenge! For doing so, her blog was added to our blog roll too! :)

What was the challenge?

Cornflower already had a post about glass etching written on her blog called My Ride. When I read her post it inspired me to write a story on my blog with the topic being auto security. Her blog is about cars, and my blog is about tips to avoid being the victim of crime.

The topic of auto theft was what our blog posts had in common to make it a good link exchange for our readers as well as seo. We had our challenge completed quickly, and we are both happy bloggers with the links we exchanged in the process!

Now that wasn’t hard, was it? Be sure to snoop through our members’ blogs to determine what could be a good potential challenge for you to do, and have fun while you are at it! You may be very surprised how you can come up with new inspiration for new posts by simply looking at our member blogs.

Not sure who to do a challenge with? The easiest first step is to look in our left sidebar in the New Members category. Happy blogging! :)

One of our newest members has already completed her first challenge and is ready for more! She was eager to get started and finished her first one quickly, and I’m sure if you sent Cornflower a pm she would like to challenge you too! Cornflower already had a post written up about CraigsList, and I did too! So, CraigsList was the key word that essentially provided us with the ability to link our blog posts. Although we both already had the posts written, it still is just as valuable for link exchange so here’s the scoop on what we did.

Cornflower had this post on her blog about CraigsList and she linked that post to my blog post, which was also on the topic of CraigsList on on of my other blogs. So there you have it! A quick exchange of links done, and in a manner that is valuable to both search engines, and the human reader!

Hello everyone! We have several members to announce this week. Like Cornflower, those of you who are beginning with Link and Blog this early have a huge added advantage – more exposure for your blogs! So without wasting any additional time, our latest member Julia, who you will get to know by her user ID Cornflower has quite a few eggs in her blog basket! Let’s take a snoop and see what she blogs about.

Are you ready to get fit and trim this new year? If you’re not sure how to get started you may want to take a look at this blog:

Stay Fit

Once you are fit and trim you may want to treat yourself to a new auto or fix up the car you have. So drive on over and check out this blog to get some ideas and auto tips:

My Ride

But wait…hold on there now! Before you make that new auto purchase you may want to take a look at her other blog and get some tips on credit and other financial matters:

Smart Divas

Three blogs down and we are not yet half-way through because Julia is a busy lady! Next in line is to find out how you can prepare for the various holidays! With her holiday blog you’ll find out how to make them much happier by learning some great new ideas.

Happy Holidays

If you’re single and you’ve researched her blog on how to stay fit and your sporting around in your new car you might be looking for a hot date! Her online dating blog just may be what the dating doctor ordered!

Smart Divas Online Dating

By now you should be getting some great ideas on some Link and Blog Challenges that you could create with this member, but even with your head swimming with some great new inspiration, here’s her next blog up to bat. Are you looking to build a better website? Then check this one out:

A Better Website

Next is a blog to help you overhaul your life! With topics such as “Don’t Look Back” and “Dare to Dream” anyone is sure to pick up some great pointers from here:

Brigidsblog

We’re coming up to her last several blogs and this one will give you some good information in regards to various things going on in the world of the Internet at sites such as ebay.

MegaSite Mania

If you’re like me you may be getting some spring fever! I’m currently looking out my window at our yard, which is under a fresh blanket of snow. I’m green with envy over any gardening blog since I love gardens. If you need some tips to make your thumb greener then you will enjoy:

My Garden @ House N Style

Now that you have had a chance to get to know the blogs this productive lady has it’s time to get to know her a little and communicate with her to do a Link and Blog Challenge. Be sure to contact her so you can exchange ideas for writing a post on each of your blogs to connect to with a completed challenge, and become a link exchange partner with her!

In that she has nine blogs surely there is some way you can create a Link and Blog Challenge with her!

Are you posting any news topics on your blogs? If not, you may want to consider doing so! If you are like me you may be thinking, “Why do I want to post news topics on my blog? People can go anywhere on the Internet to read the latest scoop on the news for the day!” That was exactly the way I felt as I entered the world of blogging, so I never placed any breaking news topics on my blogs.

Suddenly, at the close of 2006 I learned my way of thinking was terribly wrong. My failure to place breaking news on my blogs resulted in a huge traffic restraint, which I was not aware of! Have you placed the same traffic restraint upon your blogs with the same attitude?

You may be wondering why I had a sudden change in my attitude. It all came about as the result of a very tragic loss of life! The weekend of December 8th I noticed a sudden increase in traffic to my Tall Sails Adventure blog coming in from Google organic searches. In one day I had 80 more people on my blog than normal! Then for many days later it continued and although it dropped way down, I was still averaging around 10 extra visitors than my normal traffic flow, and now over a month later I’m still receiving traffic as a result of the breaking news placed on my blog! In addition to the traffic increase I have already gained three new incoming back-links from people who found my blog from their search results!

The first lesson here is to watch your referring urls! If you do not have a web stat counter to provide you with that data or other resource, be sure to plug into one right away. Secondly, do a bit of research to determine why people are searching for the specific term or phrase that brought them to your blog.

In my situation, the name of a specific ship brought people to my blog when news hit the world that a young female sailor had been washed off the deck by a rogue wave, and unfortunately she was lost at sea!

Sometimes there are valuable lessons in many forms to learn from tragic events, and because of that, for me as a blogger I’ll never forget the first bit of breaking news I had placed on my blog!

Some blogs and websites also have RSS news feeds, which automatically send news to your site. If your attitude toward posting news on your blogs is the same as mine, I hope you will reconsider so you can break through some traffic restraints for your blogs! One of my goals for blogging in 2007 is to be more in tune to breaking news that is relevant to my blogs. What about you?

What is your blog all about, and from which keywords do you want to drive traffic to your blog? I’ll be the first to admit I’m not an expert, but I’ve learned some tips about keywords by watching the results from organic traffic to my blogs.

A primary place to make sure your posts contain your keywords or phrase is within your post title. When someone does a search for a specific keyword or phrase you have a much greater chance of them landing on your blog if it is contained within your post title.

You can run a simple test on your blog using that strategy by simply publishing numerous posts containing your targeted key word or phrase within your post title, and see where you end up in Google Rankings or by watching your organic traffic referrals.

Another way to bring in more traffic results from a specific keyword or phrase is from using the keyword or phrase in your blog url, and in your h1 heading blog name. Other heading titles such as your sidebar links using the word or phrase you wish to target, or bold text in your posts can also help. There is also the benefit from using Technorati tags or other tag methods. It requires extra work, and I must say I don’t often do that simply because of the extra work involved.

How do you determine your keywords or key phrases to use on your blog? With great effort, but the way to make that task easier is with a keyword tool such as the one available through Overture, and if you take a look at this prior post, there are other tools there to help too. For starters, you may wish to stick with the free keyword tools, but then later you may want to subscribe to a service that provides a more in depth keyword analysis.

Due to the fact that there is a tremendous amount of competition to become number one, or at the very least within the top ten results of a specific Google search, it is very rewarding mentally to see your blog in that position. But, is it enough?

If your blog is number one or even in the top ten for a specific keyword or phrase, it may not do you much good if there is no one looking for that specific keyword or phrase. Here again is where the tool will become of great benefit to you. A keyword tool will show you just how popular a specific keyword phrase is for the current trend. So choose your keywords wisely in order to reap the greatest rewards.

Another article in regards to this topic for your reading pleasure is, “Keyword Exchange”.

In the long run the payoff for doing keyword research will result in more traffic to your blogs.

Powered by WordPress and Motion by 85ideas.