Most Internet marketers or online business owners create a strategy for driving visitors to their websites and increasing the online exposure through different channels, from social media like Facebook and Twitter to video sharing sites like YouTube and guest blog posting. Other folks also consider forums and blogs as part of their big strategy, and we should talk a little about how to properly use blog comments for driving traffic, increasing exposure, showing your expertise and even attracting prospects to your services/products.

First and foremost, you should create a list with the blogs your potential customers are interested in. If you are selling clothes, you should also be aware of related niches like fashion, gloves, hats, everything that might be read by your potential customers. Also take a look at their blogroll, you might find some interesting blogs to be aware of but also some potential places to get some links for yourself.

Second, you want to create the main strategy – how will you approach those blogs, how many blogs you will post on daily basis, how will you respond to other comments and so on. Do not forget to subscribe to comments and subscribe to blogs’ feeds as well to stay up-to-date with new blog posts.

Probably the most difficult part is to actually comment on those blogs. You definitely do not want to be marked as a spammer (comments like “great post” are a no-no!). Always try to add value trough your comments, maybe the author ought to add something, this is your chance of getting noticed by the owner and by his readers as well. Also, remember it is not always about links, this strategy should be used only for getting noticed in your niche circle, so be more personal: use your real name, add a gravatar and start increasing your awareness and drive some laser-targeted visitors to your website.

2010 is almost gone, many good and bad things happened for the SEO industry, from major Google algorithm changes to social media involvement in search engine positioning. When it comes to WordPress blogs, there are numerous plugins that could make life easier for each and every blogger, we thought  we would  highlight the most important ones that people should be aware of:

1.  Akismet

No more captcha, less comment moderation, Akismet still is the best anti-spam plugin for WordPress blogs.

2.  All In One SEO Plugin

Even though lots of new plugins related to this one have been launched, this still remains the most used one and probably the best plugin for optimisation.

3. YARP

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin does two things: shows readers related posts they might be interested in and also is great for your internal blog’s links structure.

4. Photo Dropper

This one is great for automatically adding photos to your posts – basically it searches for photos on Flickr and ads those to your posts.

5. WP Super Cache

The best way to improve your blog’s speed is by using this plugin for caching; website speed is nowadays one of the ranking factors Google uses.

6. Thank Me Later

Want to establish a connection with your readers from their first visit? Then use this plugin! It sends an email to your first-time visitors, an email that can be customised by you in any way you would like.

7. Redirection

404 pages are bad, real bad! Use this plugin to identify and solve the problem by a permanent 301 redirect. Great for SEO and for your readers.

Earning links might be the most difficult task any blogger will face. Whether we are talking about direct links to a post or tweets/diggs, all these come with hard work, research and why not, popularity of the blogger.

Here are some tips on how to get links from other webmasters to a newly published post.

1.     It all starts with keyword research

Keyword research is not only good for driving organic traffic to your blog but also for popular topics that can be taken advantage of. Let’s take for example the conflict between North Korea and South Korea, it is a hot subject that can be approached from different perspectives, depending on what people think about this issue. It can bring lots of organic visitors but also alot of “sharing love”.

2.      Watch out for quality

Keyword research is not all. Write great content, make use of titles, paragraphs, be careful about grammar errors, double spell-check. Also, make sure the subject you are talking about can create a linkbait. Write in a compelling way, whether you are talking about web design or health, do it so that it will raise interest among readers.

3.     Social media army – Arms ready!

You should always have a few “friends” on social bookmarking websites like Digg or StumbleUpon, ready to share your story among their fellows. You cannot go viral without them! Also, this is not available for all your “sharers” however it would be a good step forward to reward them with tweets, diggs etc. This can be the beginning of a long-term “sharing relationship” you must not miss.

4.      You link first!

When writing content you should throw in to the game a few links to other bloggers, when it can provide value to your post. It is the first step for getting a link back from those you linked to, maybe not in such a short time but remember, we are building a long-term relationship/partnership!

5.      Use shortening services

Using a shorter URL will definitely increase the chances of being linked to or tweeted, and this is an opportunity you should grab as well. There are literally tons of great shortening services, use the one that you find the suitable for your taste. It does not matter, just try to keep it short!

A large number of webmasters/companies have a major goal: to rank their blog’s homepage on the first page for the desired keywords. However, blog posts have a lot of potential of bringing a lot of traffic if they rank high in the SERPs and this is not a hard task, not at all.

First and foremost, before creating a new blog post it is necessary to do a proper keyword research, see what people are searching for related to your niche and try to acquire with each post you make a small piece of the users searching for that exact term. Also, when doing the keyword research keep in mind that competition should be also checked for those very terms.

But how to properly do this? We all love examples, so let’s pick a niche at random, for example, rugs. So you have a company selling rugs, from Persian to traditional ones, with a blog that gets updates constantly. But how to create a new post that can attract some really targeted traffic? Let’s choose the keyword “traditional rugs”, it will be 100% impossible by just creating a super optimised blog post to rank for that term. Do a search for “traditional rugs”. Again, there are almost 400,000 pages competing for that term. This is where Google’s “related searches” comes into the spotlight.

Expand the “more search tools” tab and then click on “related searches”. You will notice different terms like “contemporary rugs”, “floral rugs” , “red traditional rugs” and so on. We will concentrate a little on “red traditional rugs” while it includes our major keyword. Click on it and then on “more like this”. Voila! Google reveals what other phrases users are searching online and the “red traditional rugs 67cm x” seems quite interesting. Only ~1,400 results!
The next steps are easy. Create a blog post with the keyword in the title, description and content and ranking for it should be guaranteed. What you want to do more of is to build a couple of links to that page, the easiest way of doing it is by article marketing, targeting that exact long tail keyword.

This will not bring you an instant flood of traffic, not at all, but if you keep writing the blog post that target different long-tail keywords like this, with low competition, in time you should see some visible difference in traffic and in sales, while most traffic will be targeted to the products you sell.

This method works. Whether you promote rugs, sewing machines or website design services, all it matters is the content you put up on your blog, how optimised it is and what competition the keywords you are after have to face.

Nowadays it is such an easy task for anyone to create and launch a blog in the online environment with hundreds of weblogs launched daily worldwide. However, blogging is not only adding a template to WordPress and start creating posts but also optimising it for a better positioning in search engines. Higher ranks translate into more visitors and in the end, that is what every blogger needs, right?

Content was, is and will always be the king, that phrase should guide your entire blogs creative process. Many webmasters still go with the old-style keyword stuffing where the actual post is filled with keywords they want to rank for but nowadays this method, instead of helping your rankings, can definitely hurt them. Content should be well documented, written for both search engines and for visitors as well. In the end, fantastic content is the one that drives links to a site or become so viral that in one day a website can get a flood of traffic that can then become loyal readers.

Watch out for duplicate content. Though there is no penalty for duplicate content, as Google stated in the past, it is advisable to use a duplicate content generator like bots. Although, duplicate content can result from misusing the blog’s functions, these can be solved easily. Use Google Webmaster Tools to setup your primary address first, whether it is with or without www and also make use of 301 redirects.

Do a proper keyword research. Do not aim for hard-to-get keywords, instead use the long tail ones that get a decent amount of searches and are easier to rank for. A great tool for this is Google Related searches. When using it bloggers will find interesting new long-tail keywords Google considers “search-able” so try to use it as much as possible.

Optimise your images. Best practices tell us to give them descriptive names (instead of image03847.jpg use keyword.jpg. Also, never forget to add a description to the image containing the keyword again. People do not only search for text but also for pictures and videos, so try to optimise those two as well.

Make use of meta titles and meta descriptions. The most important one is the meta title while it appears in the search engines’ results so create an appealing one, one that will make the people click through your link to read more. Also, create an SEO meta description, always use your primary keywords at the beginning but again, do not do the mistake of stuffing it with keywords.

Always create an XML site-map. XML site-maps are easy to create and once they are live, submit them to the major search engines available.

Internal link structure has a major importance. Always link back to your homepage when using keywords and also make use of internal linking to create deep links to your inner pages. A major mistake one might do is to use the wrong anchor text for the link (instead of “blue widgets” they use “here”). Try to avoid this mistake.

Back-links can be created in various way, from social bookmarking to link-baiting, what matters most though is the quality over quantity. Always, a homepage link from an authority PR6 website will be more powerful than maybe 100 links from blog comments. Also, link diversity plays a major role in Google’s eyes.

Stay tuned with UK’s best web designers’ blog for new interesting tips and tricks related to online industry.

Are there any companies out there with no writing on a corporate blog? As odd as it might sound, yes there are, and there are plenty of them. This article will show you the benefits of having a corporate blog and why, in our opinion, every company should have a blog.

1.      Blogs are relationship builders

You will quickly find out that most of your blog readers are in fact your customers. Whenever a new product will launch or a new service will be improved, they will find out first and many times dialogues through the comments section will give you some brief thoughts about what they might think, what can be improved, what they would like more and so on. Another point to take into consideration would be to use comments for answering customers’ questions and solve whatever problem they might have related to what you sell.

2.      Press releases? Who needs them?

It’s a fact: almost all online surfers read blogs nowadays. Whoever reads your blog with regularity will definitely subscribe to your feed in order to stay updated with your announcement. Interesting blog posts, new discounts, new products are spread all over the Internet by social bookmarking and social networking ways, way faster and targeted then by the means of press releases.

3.      Competition has no blog, why should I create one?

The answer is in fact, in the question. Because it doesn’t have one, it’s as simple as that. Being one step ahead of the competition has always been seen as a great advantage, whether we are talking about online or offline businesses. This way when competitors create a blog you will have already created an established online presence with loyal readers and a larger social presence. They will only try to catch up with you…

4.      Traffic, traffic, traffic

Nowadays, Google loves blogs way more than static sites while they provide fresh and unique content for users, with regularity. Also, blogs are a perfect way to target related long tail keywords that can literally skyrocket your online presence and as well the number of visits you receive each day. In time, along with ranking for those long tail keywords you will see how through your blog even harder than target keywords is ranking higher and also other phrases/words you did not expected bring visitors. And what better way to increase sales/conversions  might you find instead of steadily increasing the traffic your website receives?

There they are, four great reasons why any business should create a blog. If you like our website design blog subscribe to our daily posts or follow our tweets on our Twitter page.