Here are top five things to look for in a Search Engine Position program as well as Search Engine Optimization:

1. SE Optimization (SEO) – The pages on your site are checked for the
percentage of keywords you want to target, and the quality of the
content on the page. Your SEO consultant should make recommendations
regarding your site content to improve it in the eye of the Search
Engines.
Key search engines like MSN and AOL Search still rely on metatags or
html code that include keywords related to your site. A good SEO
optimization of your metatags can mean the difference of a #40 ranking
vs. a Top 20 ranking.

2. Pay per click (PPC) – PPC search engines like Overture (formerly
Goto.com) and Findwhat can get you targeted, fast traffic while you are
patiently watching the other search engines to rank your site.
Recently, Overture’s top 3 keywords results show up at the top of
searches on Yahoo! above the Yahoo! paid sites. For some keywords,
paying for a top 3 position can be very expensive, but with careful
research you can find some keywords available for 5 cents per click.

3. Regular monitoring – You should get an initial report in 4-6 weeks
and then preferably a monthly report. Your SEO consultant should
provide ideas on achieving better rankings for keywords that are not
doing as well as you’d like to see. While a Top 10 ranking is the
ideal, some Top 20 rankings are realistic.

4. Inclusion in select pay for inclusion SE indexes and directories –
Inclusions in fee based can be useful if you want to target specific
search engines or directories like Looksmart and Yahoo! Depending on
your budget, you may want to purchase inclusion right away or hold off
until the other Search Engines pick you up first. Your SEO consultant
should provide the option to help you get into fee-based inclusions,
and be able to explain the benefits and differences of each one.

5. Submission to key SE directories – To rank well on Google and in
turn, Yahoo! web pages, you need to be listed in the Open Directory
Project directory. Directories like ODP are human edited and depending
on the category, it can take from 3 weeks to 2 months to get accepted.

Thats to Jim Lisi for this article at:
EzRankings.com

This post might help you realize sometimes money isn’t everything! Not even if you are popular on Twitter as Problogger . Many Spammers now days are hitting high profiles on Twitter to do some dirty money-favor exchange.

There is two parts to this topic

• It can hurt your reputation
• You make money and live happily ever after

It Can Hurt Your Reputation

If you are somebody who has high profile on Twitter let say 5.000 followers and more, you probably are going to be targeted person by spammers. They will ask you to advertise for them via tweets and in exchange you will get money.  First of all ask your self, is this something I would tweet if “spammer” wouldn’t ask me? Is tweet you are asked to write too spamish ? If your answer to all questions is Yes just skip the whole BS and read “You Make Money And Live Happily Ever After”.

If your answer is NO, my advise to you is to stop look like Pig with $ $ sign eyes. Remember that sooner or later one of your followers will find out who the spammer is, they might even write about it and then what? Your twitter reputation is over, your blog reputation is over. Ok maybe not over, but many of people will un-follow you and think of you as somebody that has money and is just greedy. Oh and such people are most likely banned from Twitter or their accounts are suspended.

You Make Money and Live Happily Ever After

If you chose to make money you better hide that very good. That’s all I can say. I would feel guilty and considered my self spammer.  Well at least you make money and live happily ever after….

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Many bloggers will not tell you this but I will. How to target keywords and get big traffic. Want to be successful with blogging? Build Traffic With Keywords!

Ok for past few months I have been trying to get exposure for my new technology blog! Yes I am tech guy who is very experienced in Networking as well as Systems for past 10-12 years. I turned my skills into blogging and here is how I achieve 120.000+ visitors per month in just 10 months!

First of all join every single social network there is such as Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, Plurk, Digg, Stumbleupon and others. Socialize with others! Socialize with big bloggers , yes they will respond. And please don’t be annoying!

Keywords?

Nobody will tell you how to really target or build traffic with keywords, well I wil!

Focus on one keyword per day! How? Let say you want to focus on keyword called : Ipod Touch

Write that day 2-5 posts about Ipod Touch , most important is your Topic and Your description. In description mention Ipod Touch twice.

Example:

Topic: Top 10 Ipod Touch Applications

Description: Here are some of the best Ipod Touch Applications. The list below of the Top 10 Ipod Touch Applications is from……

Whats next?

Focus on another keyword and do the same thing as I explained above. Also I want you to be aware: DO NOT, I REPEAT! DO NOT use HIGH END Keywords like MAKE MONEY ONLINE because those keywords are hard to hit and you probably have 1 chance out of Billion to become no.1 source for that keyword.

Instead use use keywords that are similar and with 20 keywords like that you will achieve same thing as with “Make Money Online”.

What else?

Don’t forget to download All in One SEO Pack plugin for wordpress. If you are using blogger , make sure that you strip-out unneeded code. Have somebody help you!

Share this post with others. Believe me it works! I know from experience

Friends of mine from Zemanta really developed one of the best wordpress plugins I ever download and installed on any of my blogs. I am not saying this because they are my friends but because of their wp plugin I received over 500 backlinks on 4 different blogs!

Whats great about Zemanta in my opinion?

• First of all as I said above, I got over 500 Backlinks in less then 3 months
• When I write an article on my blogs, I see on admin sidebar what other bloggers wrote and I can link to related topics
• Traffic it’s just amazing, zemanta increased almost 15% of my whole traffic for past 3 months!

Do I have to say more?

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See what I am talking about? Look at those related topics, each of the links above now will receive backlink from me of PR3-4 !

Over past few years visiting over hundreds of blogs per year I have noticed that most bloggers have between 3000 and 4000 page views per month and reason for that is because they don’t take one step ahead. Bloggers make mistake by doing the same thing over and over and never change their way of blogging, yet they expect to reach more traffic more comments and more publicity.

Here are few things bloggers should do to take one step ahead:

• Socializing – Sign up with different sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, Plurk, Twitter talk to other people about your new post , ask them what do they think about , do that have any different opinions
• Advertising – Blog with that much page views can only receive about $10-$30 per month via Adsense yet they could receive more by
• Style of Writing – Maybe your style of writing sucks and need some change, have you ever think of placing Poll on your blog post, have you ever write something about personal experience of blogging
• Navigation and Theme – Your blog could be cluttered with ads or not enough navigational , have you ever think to change your theme , look and feel of your blog? Example what not to do
• Linking to others – Just because you think sharing other blog link will decrease your revenue , you got that wrong. In most cases that same blog(ger) will link back and that way you will receive more traffic.
• Images – Some blogs don’t have any images posted and I think thats just wrong, use images to express your self and not only with words.

Now that you have few ideas on how to increase your traffic and change your style of blogging your homework is to improve your traffic by end of this month! Feel free to list your blog below and at the end of this month ill check your traffic improvements. I wish also to know what you changed

Many of you know that I also own LiveCrunch technology blog and yesterday something happened that blogger should not do, and I just want to give you an example of what consequences you can face when writing about another bloggers blog.

Out of blue Alley Insider blogger Michael Lernmonth decided to write about Tinycrunch and LiveCrunch in this post (TinyCrunch, LiveCrunch: Parasites, Or Just Blogs Doing What Bloggers Do?) , his thoughts are that TC and LC are copying things from TechCrunch and using word “Crunch” to get more attention, and that might be the truth for TinyCrunch because I really haven’t seen any of their posts “yet” , but on the other hand me as Blogger at LiveCrunch and with over 11 years of expreience in IT field , I decided to write things about what’s going on in blogsphere ( here is my response to Alley Insider )

Ok I will assume by now that you see what is going on? One blogger using their publicity and bashing on another bloggers without asking them questions like “How do you come up with blog posts, Who are you and what is your name, What is your experience, How long do you blog already, How did you come up with that domain name and why?” ….you see where I am going?

Anyways what I would like to share with you today is something that you should really watch out as blogger, because there could be some positive and negative things that you might regret later on.

I have seen many Top Blogs using their audience to crush another blog and that seems to be working, yet if your facts aren’t strong or valid then you do not want to do that. Here is an example of TechCrunch , for some of you this post might be great and funny , but for IT people that read TechCrunch for past 2-3 years it is not, because it has nothing to do with technology news, it has nothing to do with new startup company . And that my fellow bloggers is something you do not want to do no matter how popular your blog is.

Leave your personal things aside for private conversations, but keep your blog clean.

If there is blog that started writing bad things about you, and you want to make things straight , just leave comment  make fool out of them or if its something about your blog , write post as I did in positive way yet keep the topic close to the niche you are writing about. Turn the negative attitude into positive.

Dear bloggers, don’t use your blog as attack weapon, unless its something that you need help with.

Like not to long ago Darren Rowse at Problogger got banned from StumbleUpon, after his post 1hour later StumbleUpon unbanned him.

For past few months now, I have been socializing a lot, you can see me active on sites like Twitter, Plurk, Stumbleupon and many others. Since I have been socializing with other top bloggers and people that follow me I have realized how helpful social network can be. On few occasions I asked others “What do you think about my blogging?” or “What do you think I should do?” Once I followed few advices my readership, comments and traffic over all trippled. Since I am blogging not only on Bontb.com but also on LiveCrunch.com others notice that my blogging got improved.

Social networks are great because you can talk to bloggers that might don’t get a chance to answer your question in blog comments, yet if you ask them same question via Twitter for example, you get that same question answered, and not only from one person but multiple. Bloggers like JohnChow , ZenHabits, ChisG, Darren Rowse, Maki from DoshDosh are all on twitter every single day. They understand that the more they socialize the more popularity they gain , the more popularity you get the more profitable your blog is.

So your homework for the rest of this year is to socialize with others on sites I mentioned above.

Don’t forget to add me:

Twitter

Plurk

StumbleUpon

Digg

FriendFeed

Want some real statistics?

Lets take LiveCrunch technology blog for example. Blog is only 8 months old, in late february when I started socializing I have been receiving about 1500-2000 visitors per month, blog was only 2 months old at that time. I joined social networks , since then my blog for past 4 months is receiving over 160.000 page views not only because I socialized but because people I talked to helped me build better blog and told me few things I should fix. Unfortunaly because I did not start branding Bontb I don’t receive as much traffic like LiveCrunch.

Don’t ever feel stupid when it comes to Search Engine Optimization. If you know what SEO means, that makes you now days an expert. So here are few things I would like to write today, what to do and what not to do when it comes to SEO.

Some so called experts will tell you don’t use keywords, well I say the hell with such experts! Keywords are very important for many things, not only helps search engines (plural!) categorize your blog in their algorithms , but helps ads networks categorize your advertising niche like Adsense, Adbrite etc.

Title Tag should be H1 header if its not, change it. H1 Header points out to search engines that the topic is important more then description.

Description should always be your primary focus, first 160 characters are very important, so make sure when you write post, the first 160 characters is the main thing.

Use plugins like All in One Pack SEO for Wordpress, or if you are using some other blogging platform, research if there is such plugin.

The less plugins you use the better that is, imagine having 40 plugins that have something to do with home page, do you really thing google or other search engines have time to go through and scan whats important whats not? So make sure not to use plugins that aren’t that much of importance.

Make your url pretty, I hate seing urls like whatever.com/p?=21014 , make sure its something like whatever.com/yep-this-is-good or whatever.com/do_you_like_me , you can customise that under Settings in your wordpress

There is bunch of seo tips and tricks I could tell you about, but I am saving that for my video sessions which are going to be free, unlike others they charge $500 for giving you same information that I just wrote above. Don’t get scammed by such people, instead of waisting $500 on such nonsense presentation you could pay for some advertising.

Some blogs get acquired by another company or another blog. Few weeks later they announce they are professional bloggers or full time bloggers. Now let’s debate what professional or full time blogging is.

I can say that Darren Rowse is one of the first professional blogger among others as well as full time blogger. Now many of you know who Darren Rowse is or let say ProBlogger, he got that tittle since 2005 and he did well earned it.

People make mistakes by going full time blogging all the time, they quit their job, they quit their hobbies and dedicate 4-8 hours a day to blogging instead of working for somebody else. Problem is that many of them think by covering mortgage and all other costs, they can live that way forever, yet they don’t think about long term investments, remember if you don’t save for your retirement you are screwed, if you don’t have at least 6 months of saved money on your savings account you are screwed again. That is exactly where so called “professional bloggers” make mistake.

What is full time or professional blogger ?

Professional blogger isn’t profession tittle, there is no such thing “yet” as Professional blogger or blog. You can’t go to University or College and ask “Do you offer Masters Degree in Professional blogging?”. To be clear, professional blogger is only a word that bloggers started calling each other when they: A. Earned enough money to leave work, B. They work more then 4 hours a day, C. Because they feel that way.

Full time bloggers are just bloggers that spend way too much time blogging, someone like me.

I spend every day over 10 hours blogging for different blogs I own, yet I enjoy every single minute of it. To be clear, I still work, go to college and take my dog potty! and don’t tell my friends I am Full time self-employed as blogger.

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