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Keeping people interested in your blog, whether it is a business or personal blog, is key to attracting a lot of regular visitors. Many blogs have died because people have just lost interest. The main reason for the lack of interest is simply a lack of posts by the blogger. Regular, frequent posting, which will boost your blog’s ranking in search engines, is essential to the survival of any blog.

You might be asking yourself, what is frequent posting? How many blog entries should I make on a given week? How do I make frequent consistently good posts? What are the reasons for me to post frequently? In this newsletter, we will go over all of the above.

What is frequent posting?

Frequent blog posting is posting enough to keep your readers interested. Obviously, people will not want to come back to a blog that hasn’t been updated in months. They want to see consistent posting so that they know coming back to check the blog next week to see if there are more posts won’t be a waste of time.

How many blog entries should I make each week?

This is one of the tougher questions to answer. It really depends on the purpose of your blog. If it’s a personal blog, a weekly or twice weekly update is an excellent idea. A political/sports/music/religion blog should have 3-4 posts per week. Business blogs should have at least 2 posts, but preferably 4 each week.

The thing to remember is that quality counts. Posting frequently just for the sake of posting frequently tends to result in subpar posts which people won’t care about. It is important to find a balance?”frequent, quality posts that won’t result in burnout on your part. Why create 4 poor quality posts each week when you could post 2 quality posts per week?

How do I create quality postings on a consistent basis?

It’s all about following a consistent pattern of writing. Maybe you’re not a natural writer and this is difficult. That’s why we’ll give you an outline to help you.

1. Pick a topic that is interesting to you and to your readers. Maybe if your blog is a personal blog, you could write about the latest happenings in Hollywood. 2. Carefully think about what you’ll write about the topic. It makes it easy to make quality blog postings if you know exactly what you’ll write. Plot out everything about the post before even beginning to write it. 3. Before writing your content, pick out some keywords that are relevant to your blog. If you naturally use keywords throughout your post, you will please search engine spiders which will get your blog ranked higher on search engines. Your visitors won’t mind the use of keywords if they are used in a tasteful way. 4. Begin writing your post. Don’t limit yourself to a particular amount of words. Just do what’s natural. And if any blog post is hard for you, just take a timeout and relax. You should be able to finish the post a bit later on, after you’ve had some time to think things through, you should be able to finish the post with no problems.

Why is frequent posting important?

Blogs are meant to be outlets for individuals or businesses. They are used to get an opinion out on something and to engage readers. Readers need to have something that makes them want to keep coming back to a blog. That something is usually quality, frequent posts.

Gaining and maintaining visitors isn’t the only reason to post often in your blog. Catching the eye of a search engine?”and achieving a high ranking?”is another valid reason for posting frequently. Most likely, each posting in your blog features some keywords or keyword phrases scattered throughout it. Logic says that the more natural keywords you have on a blog, the better. Thus, the more posts you make on your blog, the more keywords you have on there. And the more keywords you have, the more likely a search engine bot is to crawl your site. The more your site is crawled by bots, the more likely it is that you will have a high ranking on a search engine.

Frequent blog posting can be easy as long as the person who is posting takes the time to plot out what they’ll write about. So take a few minutes to think about your post and then just do it!

About the Author

Len Hutton is a information publisher specialising in helping people start their own home based business. Get a no cost video showing you step by step how to set up a niche ebook empire at www.nicheresidualincomes.com Keep your eye on residual income business opportunity regularly to learn and earn. http://residualincomebusinessopportunity.blogspot.com/

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In the last article (See Resources for details) we discussed several ways to enhance your users experience and how having a site that is user friendly is so conducive to having pages that are also easy to crawl and index. This time we’ll discuss the central elements of the ideal Web 2.0 ready site and they are collaboration and interactivity. I want you to really focus on these two key concepts in particular because they really are an essential must have in the Web. 2.0 era

When you get right down to it, the most important aspects of Web 2.0 are collaboration and interactivity. Essentially, this means facilitating the means of communication between like-minded individuals who have similar interest. The online encyclopedia Wikipedia is a perfect example of a very large group of people in mutual cooperation who all share a common interest. Similarly there are other sites such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook that encourage ordinary people to actively participate in the creation of content.

The phenomenal popularity of sites such as these has had more and more organizations that are doing business online reexamining the status quo. Consumers now simply expect more than just a one-way conversation or a static mandate. Think about it, why should anyone follow what your have to say if you are not willing to listen to what they have to say to you in return. Consumers prefer to interact; they want to know what other customers have to say about your product or service. That means you have to facilitate a place for your customers to express their point of view, start a conversation, comment on a particular topic or simply ask a question. With that in mind, you need to start thinking about your online presence as an outlet or podium that regularly encourages and endorses an entrenched sense of community among its users.

But how can interactivity increase conversions and make you money? If you read the last article you already know about the importance of having good content. Search engines love content. They want the foremost authority on any given subject. In other words, they want a site that knows the most and is the most reputable on a topic. Now we need to look instead at what we don’t know. We need to gain a better understanding of what our customer’s wants and needs are. That is where interaction and collaboration come in.

Tools like web analytics (e.g. Google Analytics) which help you see what’s happening on your site by determining which aspects of the website work towards the business objectives; for example, what pages they looked at, visit durations, where they left from and who referred them, only tell you half the story. Web analytics tools are great for answering questions like when, where and how. But what they don’t tell you is the who and the why. Only by feeding and growing the interactivity of your online presence can you gain a better understanding of your customer’s wants and needs. Moreover, giving your customers a voice will you help you better tailor your product to suit them.

If for instance you are looking at launching a new promotional campaign you can use the feedback on your site from your prospects so as to test the idea before you launch. You can even find out how people currently perceive your small business. This type of research is invaluable in helping you improve and make the right decisions concerning your online business. As they say: “If you don’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”

Having an interactive site does not have to cost you and arm and a leg either, there are plenty of low-cost solutions out there, one of which I will be telling you about in the upcoming weeks. However, the key here is you have to facilitate the means to carry that conversation. You need to open that dialogue to get insight into what’s really working or isn’t working on your site

In the upcoming weeks we’ll talk more about these new Web 2.0 trends and also show you the easiest way to launch your own ready-built web 2.0 site. As always please feel free to share your thoughts, comments, feedback and keep checking back for more updates.

Resources:
Is Your Site Search Engine and Users Friendly?
How to Analyze, Optimize, Publicize, Monetize and Troubleshotize the Ideal Web 2.0 Site in a Nutshell.

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In the last article of this series (see Resources for links), I explained the importance of having regularly updated content on your site. In that same vain, we looked at how that content must be clear, authoritative and more importantly, relevant to your niche. Additionally, I talk about how crucial making your content available through RSS is become with the advance and development of the decentralized information movement. In this article, I’ll discuss two more fundamental characteristic of the ideal Web 2.0 site, and that is that your site must be search engine and user friendly.

The Internet is free source of news and opinions. This is a wonderful thing from a buyer and shopper point of view however, for you the publisher of information, so much information in such variety of media equals lots of competition. Things that were heavily relied upon in the past for Ranking, such as meta tag keyword and description information are being deprecated and may not always prove so fruitful. Nowadays, technology is diving distribution and forcing the search engines landscape to evolve more quickly. So how do you build a search engine and user friendly website?

As I’m sure you may have already heard, at the center of all this there’s a lot of technology: JavaScript, HTML and XHTML, a bit of dynamic HTML, Ajax, and even some XML (Extensible Markup Language). Don’t worry if you don’t understand all of this (or any of this for that matter) you don’t have to. What I’m about to teach you through this series of articles does not require any knowledge in programming. Anyone can do this and I don’t care if you are selling garbage bags, bartending, teaching disco dancing or working retail. These are all very easy and inexpensive techniques anyone can use to launch their very own Web 2.0 ready site and it can be done in a matter of just minutes.

Building a site with SEO in mind goes Hand-in-Hand with having a site that is user friendly too, in fact you can’t work towards the one without the other. Search engines love feeding web users lots of relevant content, so the more authoritative and relevant your content is, the more likely it will eventually be served. Consequently the better the users experience the better your Ranking. In other words, make pages for users, not for search engines. Hence, you need to figure out your niche and be carefully defined within that niche. In addition you must updated your content regularly and that content must be authoritative.

Now that we understand the significance of having the right content lets talk about the sites structure. First, you must take common-sense steps to ensure that your site helps users find their content easily. For example, is your content organized in an easy-to-read hierarchical layout? Are you using HTML links on every page, and does each page provide internal links in the text to help the search engine crawler find its way around? Does your site offer a site map and do you include a link to the site map somewhere on each page? And last but certainly not least. Do your pages contain relevant information that clearly and accurately describe your content and is that text clear, crisp and legible?

Remember, optimizing your site structure has to be an integral part of the design process and must enhance the overall user experience. Furthermore, pages that are simple to navigate and don’t require much thinking on the end users part, will also be pages that are easy to crawl and index. In reality, SEO is pretty simple, avoid using overzealous SEO practices and think about what’s best for the user. The ideal search engines and user friendly site is all about providing the user with content–rich relevant information and getting them to that information as soon and as easily as possible.

And there you have it. Two more fundamental ingredients of the ideal Web 2.0 ready site; is your site search engine and users friendly? In the upcoming weeks we will be continuing this discussion, as promised, and show you how you can launch your very own ready-built Web 2.0 site. If there’s anything you wish to add on the subject of search engine and users friendly websites please feel free to share your thoughts and comments and keep checking back for more updates.

Resources:
How Can Interactivity Increase Conversions & Make You Money?
How to Analyze, Optimize, Publicize, Monetize and Troubleshotize the Ideal Web 2.0 Site in a Nutshell.

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Recently I have been talking a lot about Web 2.0 and the far reaching effects it is had through the whole social media phenomenon. Hugely popular sites and services like (Digg, Blogger and YouTube) attract enormous amounts of audiences by delivering the once impossible, now inevitable opportunity to rant to anyone clear across the world or, discuss your special expertise in a particular niche with those who share a similar interests.

In this series of articles (See Resources for links) I will explain how to apply these new trends and new technologies using very inexpensive techniques and services that do not involve tinkering with the HTML code of your pages themselves so you too can be well informed and able to make every effort to take full advantage of the social media era.

First and foremost, stay fresh! Having just a simple digital brochure (e.g. an online bulletin board of your services, contact page etc) simply doesn’t work anymore. Your site has to have regularly updated content. Nobody likes stale news; similarly, your sites content needs to stay fresh in order to continually hook and delight your primary audience. Moreover as a publisher of information people will want to do business with you if they trust you and one of the best ways to build that trust is to provide the users with relevant clear authoritative content.

This involves coming up with a strategy to keep people coming back for the latest and greatest. For example, you could plan to keep up with the latest trends in the home load industry, such as mortgage rate trends, refinancing etcetera. Or you could feature relevant news articles, special promos, tips or tutorials that draw attention to your particular niche. In addition, your plan should provide a checklist with specifics “to do” items essentially saying that you are going to do this many blogs this week, this many podcasts this month, this many videos and keep a regular publishing schedule (remember we’re talking long-term strategy here) so your subscribers will become used to hearing from you and, you’ll be able to gain their trust. So again, your site has to have regularly updated content.

Secondly your content should be made available through RSS (formally “RDF Site Summary”, commonly known as “Really Simple Syndication”) or RSS feed. You don’t need to understand the ins and outs of the RSS protocol (I promised you no tinkering, didn’t I? Though if you want to know more, here is a good place to start), all you need to know is why RSS is becoming so popular and how important it is to make your content available through RSS. Basically, what’s so attractive about RSS (versus bookmarks or even email) is it allows the subscriber to control the delivery of information. In other words, unlike with email, subscribers can limit what they receive to exactly what they want.

If you’ve ever opened your inbox and seen something that looked like spam, walked like spam or quacked like spam I think you can certainly appreciate this. Since users can be counted on to be a little lazy (or would most likely prefer avoiding going all over the place for new information), they’ll just use sites and services like myYahoo or Google Reader that can constantly checks their favorite news sites and blogs for new content. Consequently, as the web becomes more and more decentralized placing media control in users’ hands and allowing them to experience what they want, when they want, your site needs to adjust to this decentralize nature and be present wherever your target market is looking. So, whether you are posting up article regularly, video blogging or podcasting, whatever the case maybe, you need to be positioned to allow syndication on your site and that means making your content available through an RSS feed.

In the upcoming weeks I will be talking more about these new Web 2.0 trends and also show you the easiest way to launch your own ready-built web 2.0 site. Likewise, please feel free to share your thoughts and comments and make sure to check back for more updates.

Resources:
Is Your Site Search Engine & User Friendly?
How Can Interactivity Increase Conversions & Make You Money?

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