One Year free web hosting and a free domain name for your wordpress blog

Here is the good news for Webmasters looking for free Web Hosting they can grab a free hosting and free domain name from WPWebhost for 1 complete year. This is a good offer as you can get any domain name (com, .net, .org, or .info) for free of cost for one year.

Here are some advantages of a self-hosted WordPress blog which make it better than a free blog.

• You can customize your blog’s design with own premium themes.
• You can enrich your blog’s features with thousands of free third party plugins.
• Your own your blog content and backup is available.
• You are free to put advertisements on your blog.
• You can enhance your blog SEO (Search Engine Optimization) easily with plugins.

Now you can win a WordPress compatible hosting plan worth $30 from WPWebHost for you to host your blog, with free domain name provided!

Prize

1 year Rookie Plan with FREE domain name (1GB space | 5GB/mo bandwidth)

So here’s how to get this free Special Offer:

Do you have a blog on free blogging service like WordPress.com and Blogger.com? Do you wish to self-host your blog like a pro to have more control and flexibility for your blog?

How To Win?

1. Blog about this contest and link back to WPWebhost Special Offer Page. You could take a bannerhere and insert to your post.
2. Get 7 comments for your post. (Trackback isn’t counted)
3. Submit your blog post URL through comment on WPWebhost Special Offer Page, along with your name and valid email address in the provided fields.
4. After completing the steps! You will be getting a FREE WordPress hosting plan + a domain name. They will email you further steps to claim the prize within 2 weeks.

Terms & Conditions

• Every participant is entitled to only one prize.
• This giveaway ends on 30 Sep 2010.
• WPWebHost reserves the right to amend or revise the terms and conditions of this promotion without prior notice.
• WPWebHost has the right to disqualify any participation which does not fulfil the requirements.

READ MORE - One Year free web hosting and a free domain name for your wordpress blog

Why You Need to Purchase a Domain Name and Avoid “free” Domains?

Your domain name will be your blog’s address on the Internet, so it is crucial that you choose the right one. A domain gives the public a hint of what they will find at your site. If the domain name relates to your or your company’s name or brand, it makes your site that much easier to find.

That is why you MUST get your own unique domain name, like www.[YourName].com; . If you get it free from a web hosting company, your domain name will includes the company’s name (e.g., www.YourWebHost.com/yoursite ).I don’t encourage you to use “Free” domain unless your objective of creating a blog is just to create a platform to share your journal with your offline friends. The reasons to avoid “Free” domain and started with your own domain are:-

Your domain name is easy to remember;
Your customers always know how to get to your site;
It can entice people surfing the Web to visit your site before someone else’s. 
 You can easily move your site to another host while keeping your domain name;
No web host company’s advertisement on your website;
You can easily customize your look and web template at your wish…

READ MORE - Why You Need to Purchase a Domain Name and Avoid “free” Domains?

Why blogging is now an important tool for YOUR online business?

Reach a wider audience
Boost your revenue
Generate better search engine ranking
Develop relationships with your audience through open communication
Build a community of interested followers
Humanize your business and let your potential customers feel comfortable buying from you.
Establish yourself as a leading expert in your industry
Blogs offer easy-to-use, cost-effective web publishing and content management tools.

READ MORE - Why blogging is now an important tool for YOUR online business?

What is Blog?

A blog is basically just a web site. There are three key differences between traditional
website (homepage) and blog:-

Blog is extremely easy to add information to it. A blog is like an online journal, so you just log in, type what happened today, post it and it is done.

You can add a simple little feature that automatically tells a whole bunch of other website that you have made an update to your blog – every time you make a change.

There is a “comments” system that allows bloggers to have “conversations” with their readers by allowing visitors to post their own comments or views on the topic of discussion.

READ MORE - What is Blog?

SEO Your WordPress Blog in 7 steps

The 7 steps

1. Use wordpress! And get the necessary plugins.
2. What have you got, that others want?
3. Who do you want on your site?
4. Structure your content so its easy for engines…
5. Get analytics, see where you are going.
6. Work consistently for at least 6 months.
7. Socialise and

Step 1. WordPress and Plugins.

All in One in SEO Pack( http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack )
Automatically optimizes your WordPress blog for Search Engines (Search Engine Optimization). Optimizes your WordPress blog for Search Engines (Search Engine Optimization). (the best place to start)

Paginated Comments( http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/paginated-comments/ )
Paginated Comments is a WordPress Plugin ** developed with seo in mind ** that gives you the ability to break your comments
into a number of s … (if you get loads of comments)

WP-PageNaVi( http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-pagenavi/ )

Pagination on index and archive pages
Instead of of one huge page, break it up with this plugin. Google typically only indexes the 1st 100KB of html, so break up your pages

WWW-Redirect( http://justinshattuck.com/wordpress-www-redirect-plugin/ )

Make sure the engine only see one version of your site i.e. http://www.mysite.com (and not thehttp://mysite.com)

Permalinks (wordpress core)
Make Your content human friendly. Use this in permalink: /%category%/%postname%-%post_id%.html (use a unique identifier so you can be picked up by Google news)

Optimal Title( http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/optimal-title/ )
Mirrors the function of wp_title() exactly, but moves the position of the ’separator’ to after the title rather than before. Categorisation of content
Don’t mark the same post under more than a single category if possible, so you don’t get too much duplicate content.

Robots.txt
Tell the engines where you want them to go

Internal page redirections( http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/redirection/  )
Manage error pages, or redirect search engines from old posts to new ones

Step 2. What’s on offer?
• Is your content useful or entertaining?
• Do you love writing it?
• Have you got a niche you are prominent in?
• Would you read your content?
• Will you keep going even if no one visits?

Step 3. Who do you want here?
• Is your site a PR device
• Do you want to make money from it?
• Is it just an ego thing?
Picture your reader and write for that person!
– A blog is a conversation, so write like you are directly
speaking with that person. Visualise him or her.
– Remember, add in the words they would use to find
you.

Step 4. Structure for Engines
• Think like a librarian…
– Books need labelling correctly
• The correct title
• Other categorisation information
– Duplication is annoying
– Put the books in the right sections

Step 5. Google analytics
• Get Google analytics and Google webmaster console
• Look out for these key performance indexes:
– Absolute unique visitors per month
– Returning Visitors / Visitor loyalty
– Time spent on site per user
– Pages viewed per user
– Number of keywords your site has been accessed by
– Which are your big traffic phrases
– Proportion of traffic from:
• Engines (40-60%)
• Direct (20%)
• Referred from other sites (25%)

Step 6.
It’s going to take time…So I hope you love it.

Step 7. Get links
Search engines love links.
Rule of thumb: If the site is human managed and relevant, then its ok. (its why general directories are worthless to you)
They look for signals that show is site is important = good relevant links
• Get commenting and contributing on relevant sites in your subject neighbourhood.
• Do the occasional link exchange
• Be remarkable, so people WANT to link to you.
• Put ‘signposts’ up on relevant sites (links pages)

READ MORE - SEO Your WordPress Blog in 7 steps

Constantly review your website and your Internet strategy

The Internet is one of the newest advertising opportunities available to modern businesses. When radio first hit the airwaves there were many different attempts at figuring out how to use it to generate advertising revenue. Many of these worked and many didn’t. The same went for television, newspapers, magazines and
billboards. They didn’t just start up and become these incredible advertising opportunities. They evolved into what they are today and the Internet is no different.

How we use the Internet now will be a far cry from how we will use it in ten years time. Think back to the first black and white television programmes where the commercials were all read by the person hosting the show. Change is the one certainty in the advertising arena and as time goes on the products become slicker and more effective.

To really make the Internet work for your business you need to be constantly reviewing your attitude towards it. You need to review your site constantly and look for ways to make it faster, more user friendly, more interesting and ultimately more effective. For those businesses that embrace the constantly evolving
nature of the Internet change is not so much of an issue.

The preconceived ideas we have developed about the Net and what it can do for our businesses is the single biggest limitation facing those wanting to do more business over the Net or wanting to promote their business more over the Net. Overcome those preconceptions and accept that today’s business owners are
pioneers in the Internet field. What we do today will form the trends and standards for tomorrow’s Internet users.

Don’t get stuck in the rut of doing what everyone else is doing and be prepared to think outside of the square. After all, this is what helped to develop the Internet in the first place.

READ MORE - Constantly review your website and your Internet strategy

Search engine advertising—what does it mean?

What are search engines? I like to think of them as the librarians of the Internet. If your business is well positioned with search engines it means you are more likely to be found when people are surfing the Internet. Using search engines is essential to getting traffic flow to your website.

Companies that host websites can give you statistics about where your traffic flow comes from and how many people come from each particular search engine. These facts and figures show the importance of the search engines in generating traffic flow. There was a time when submitting your domain name and website to the search engines was free. This is becoming a rarity and the norm will soon be that you will have to pay to submit. Just about every search engine will charge you to list your site. This will have a couple of spin-off effects.

Obviously it will be an added expense for businesses wanting an Internet presence but it will generally reduce the overall number of websites that come up whenever you do a search, meaning less competition. The smaller websites will opt out of paying for search engine initialisation, leaving a less cluttered database for consumers. Whether this is better or not depends what you are using the Internet for. If you use it for research you will probably be worse off; if you use it to sell products you will probably be better off.

There are different levels of advertising rates on search engines. The simple way to understand this is that the more you pay, the more people will be directed to your site. Also, the more you pay the higher up the search list your business name will appear when people plug in a keyword.

The Internet is a numbers game. If you sell one product for every thousand visitors to your site the aim is to increase the number of visitors so you sell more products. This may appear oversimplified but the Internet has become overcomplicated and it doesn’t need to be.

READ MORE - Search engine advertising—what does it mean?

Banner advertising—does it work?

Banner advertisements were treated with a large degree of enthusiasm, closely followed by a large degree of skepticism. Now they are treated with a larger degree of neutrality. Do they work? I believe they do, but like all advertising the success of them lies in the advertisement itself. If a banner advertisement is to work it needs to be selling something of interest to a particular consumer. For example, a banner advertisement waxing lyrically about the benefits of mountain climbing equipment will probably not produce great results on a site promoting stamp collecting (I know this example is extreme but I’m sure you get the picture). For banner advertising to work it has to tie in with the targeted audience. Make it relevant and appealing to the people who will see it. One way I have found banner advertising particularly advantageous is to use it on my own website. You can have banner advertisements for your own products or services scattered  throughout your site. This will lead people visiting your site to explore other areas of the site which they may not normally visit.
If they are logging onto your website in the first place odds on they are interested in your products or services to some degree. It will be a relatively easy process to then lead them to other areas in your site to increase the overall effectiveness of your website. Banner advertisements need to be bright and bold, contain
minimal wording and be straight to the point. I liken them to advertising on buses or on billboards. If the reader can’t take the message in within seconds they are a waste of time. Animated or moving banner advertisements are good for catching attention, but they have to load fast—too many are simply too slow and the customer may have moved on before it is ready for viewing. As with all advertising take a look at other advertisements in this medium next time you are surfing the net to see which ones catch your attention. Take note of what aspect of the banner reaches you. Is it at the top of the page or the bottom? What colours do they use? What wording do they use? One of my pet hates is when you do click on a banner advertisement and the link no longer works. Banners need to be checked quite regularly and expired links are like disconnected phones—a waste of time. Use banner advertisements to either direct traffic to your site
or to direct traffic within your site. Follow the above guidelines and be prepared to try a number of options to find the one that works for you.

READ MORE - Banner advertising—does it work?

Linking is advertising—work with others

Links are really the essence of the Internet, allowing information to flow—one website leads to another. Linking your website to other websites is important for a number of reasons. Search engines in particular look for sites with lots of links as it shows that there is significant interest in the site to attract more visitors.
Linking is a simple process that is inexpensive and logical, particularly if you link to businesses or associations that make sense for the customer. For example, one of our clients makes protective clothing to wear in the ocean. Their website links to the Bureau of Meteorology for up-to-the-minute weather forecasts as
well as to the Skin Cancer Foundation, which gives the consumer all of the reasons to cover up and to keep out of the sun. This is a logical relationship that works well. Likewise the links work backwards. Someone connecting to the Skin Cancer Foundation’s website can find a link to our client’s site, where they can
buy clothing to protect them from the sun. There are countless logical associations like the above and
it is a simple matter of putting some thought into it. You will need to always thoroughly explore any websites you plan to link to, of course. Websites have to be as professional as the site they are linked to and the information on the site cannot conflict with recommendations or products on the main site. I often see
high quality websites linked to amateurish sites and I really believe it lets the main host down. Link your site as much as you can but be selective about who you link to. Take a few moments right now to make up a list of businesses you could link with your site.

READ MORE - Linking is advertising—work with others

Directional advertising and the Internet

We have done a lot of advertising for property developers in recent years and their standard approach has always been to take big, bold full-colour advertisements in the newspapers. This is very expensive and often the advertisements are competing with literally hundreds of other developers’ advertisements. As a result we have encouraged our clients to use directional advertising. Directional advertising is where the mainstream radio, newspaper and television advertising drives traffic to a website. We often do it as a ‘teaser’ campaign—small advertisements in other media tease people or even dare them to visit the site. Once the
customer logs on it is up to the website to sell to them, which of course it should do magnificently.
This type of advertising is not only cost effective as the advertisements needed are much smaller, it enables a much wider reach of advertising. We put advertisements that direct traffic to the website in papers all around the world looking for investors and the results speak for themselves—dramatic sales while highly
cost effective. Another benefit of directional advertising is that it takes the consumer away from other competitors that are advertising in the same paper. We have used this directional advertising in another
manner to save clients money. One client wanted to recruit a pile of new staff. They didn’t want to use a recruitment company so we suggested they form their own employment site and use small directional advertisements in the ‘positions vacant’ section of the paper in order to drive potential employees
to their site. It worked a treat and saved them tens of thousands of dollars in advertising costs. Whether the recruitment process was better or not is questionable but their desired result was achieved.
Using directional advertising to attract visitors to a website is becoming increasingly popular and it will continue to grow. The real key to its success is to make certain your website is of a high enough standard to complete the sale once you have the customer there.

READ MORE - Directional advertising and the Internet

The importance of your domain name or web address

Having a memorable or logical domain name or website address is essential when it comes to increasing traffic flow to your site. If your business is called Bob’s Bakery, ideally your website domain name should be www.bobsbakery.com. This is logical and it makes it easy for customers to find it on the Internet. They
can pretty well guess the site name or try just a few variations before finding it. What is all too common though are businesses that have complicated names, long names, difficult to spell names or common names. These make it harder for people to find the site on the Internet and harder to remember the site name from
advertising.
The moral to this story is to try and have your domain name matching your business name as closely as possible. If you can’t because someone else has registered the name you will have to choose a name that is either closely related, perhaps with the suffix—.net, .org or .something else—so all the consumer has to
remember is the last bit, or alternatively pick a name that describes the business. For example, I had a business once called Let’s Go North Queensland. This website name is too long so we simply registered the site www.letsgo.com.au, which was available, easy for the customer to remember and easy to
promote.The importance of a good name cannot be underestimated when it comes to using the Internet.

READ MORE - The importance of your domain name or web address

Give people a reason to come back to your site

If a website doesn’t change its information and/or graphics people may look at it a few times but then basically have no reason to come back to the site. Research shows that the best websites are constantly changing and they contain information the customers will want to refer to on a regular basis. An
example of this is websites that show stock prices or news. They are constantly changing and being updated every few minutes. Whenever the consumer visits the site there is always something new to see and as a result they keep coming back. Even sites that don’t necessarily have lots of new information can be set up so the front page (or home page) changes every time a visitor hits the site. This can give a constantly changing
feeling to the site and in turn adds a higher degree of interest for the visitor. The other thing to do is to put information on the site that people will want to read on a regular basis. This may be news flashes, weather, a webcam, product releases, a daily column about your business or just about anything else. Make it interesting
and appealing and change it frequently and your customers will have a reason to come back to your site.

READ MORE - Give people a reason to come back to your site

Comparing Blogger to Other Blogging Software Options

Blogger has changed significantly in recent years. New functionality is continually added to ensure that Blogger retains its position as market leader. Other blogging software programs have come and gone with several threatening Blogger, but the team behind Blogger continues to improve the product by offering improvements and new technologies. The following list describes some other blogging programs:
✓ WordPress: The biggest rival to Blogger is WordPress, which is known for its wide variety of plug-ins and add-ons, such as contact forms, related posts links, and sitemaps, that allow users to customize their blogs to suit their individual needs. Blogger offers customization, but WordPress wins the race in terms of giving users the most variety. The drawbacks of WordPress are twofold:
• The free version is far more limited than the version that requires users to pay for their own domain names and web hosting.
• The free version doesn’t allow users to monetize their blogs.
✓ TypePad: Although TypePad is easy to use, it isn’t free. Users pay a monthly fee to use TypePad. It offers a decent level of customization,such as templates and design (although less than WordPress with paid
hosting), but its use comes at a cost.
✓ Moveable Type: The program’s biggest drawback is the expensive licenses that users have to pay for in order to use it. The installation process also isn’t as simple as in other blogging software programs, and
its features aren’t as vast. On the flip-side, it is extremely easy to add multiple blogs to the same account with Moveable Type, which made it popular for team blogs in the past (although WordPress is gaining

ground in this market).
✓ LiveJournal: Users must pay a monthly fee to use LiveJournal, which provides a limited number of features and customization options.
✓ MySpace: MySpace offers a blogging option, but it’s quite different from Blogger and many of the other available blogging software programs because so much of the success of a MySpace blog comes from the audience of MySpace members who become its “friends”. MySpace is more of a social network  with a blogging platform included rather than a stand-alone blogging software program such as Blogger.
✓ Xanga: Much like MySpace, Xanga is a social networking site with a blogging option integrated into it rather than a stand-alone blogging software program such as Blogger.

READ MORE - Comparing Blogger to Other Blogging Software Options

Deciding what to track in your statistics

When you first open your blog statistic reports, you probably won’t know where to begin. Don’t feel overwhelmed. Begin by focusing on the “big ticket” stats, such as page views, referrers, and keywords. In time, you’ll learn to use the various reports and data available through your blog statistic tracker.
You’ll even learn how to analyze those numbers and apply your learning to your blog. For now, take a few moments to familiarize yourself with some of the most commonly analyzed blog statistics. Always make sure you set the time period you want to analyze before you begin to review your blog stats.

✓ Hits: Your blog statistic tracker counts a hit every time a file downloads from your blog. Each page on your blog can have multiple files on it. When a person accesses a page on your blog, every file on that page
downloads and counts as a hit. For example, if your page includes a blog post with multiple images in it, each of those images downloads when a visitor accesses that page, which gives an inflated view of the popularity
of your blog. Therefore, hits aren’t typically used to determine Web traffic trends.

✓ Visits: Each time your Web site is accessed (any page), a visit is counted in your blog statistic tracker. This means a person who visits more than once is counted multiple times. Therefore, visits give an inflated view of your blog’s popularity and aren’t typically used to determine Web traffic trends.
✓ Visitors: Accurately tracking the number of visitors who enter your blog is challenging for blog statistic trackers. Unless visitors register and sign in to access pages on your blog, it’s close to impossible to ensure repeat visitors are counted only once. Stat trackers often use cookies to reduce the number of visitors who are counted twice, but if people clear their cookies, there’s no way for the stat tracker to identify them. That is, if visitors return after clearing their cookies, they’re counted as a new visitor. Therefore, tracking visitors is more accurate than tracking visits in terms of determining the true metrics related to your blog.
Some blog statistic trackers break this stat into unique visitors (those who visit one time only) and repeat visitors (those who visit more than once), but these numbers can never be 100 percent accurate. Use them
for guidance but do so with caution.
✓ Page Views: Page Views is the most commonly used statistic that bloggers track because it provides the clearest picture of how popular a blog is. Each page viewed on your blog regardless of who views it counts as
a page view. Online advertisers use page views as the standard of measurement to calculate advertising rates. More page views equals more people seeing the ad and potentially clicking it or acting on it.

✓ Top Pages Viewed: Blog statistic trackers typically provide a report that shows your blog’s most viewed pages (which correlate to specific posts if you choose Enable Post Pages in your blog settings. Monitoring Top Pages Viewed can help you focus your contentcreation and marketing efforts.
✓ Top Paths Taken: Paths represent the way visitors travel through your blog — the links they follow, the content that’s most interesting to them, and the features that keep them on your blog longer.
✓ Top Entry Pages: Top Entry Pages represent the pages that people most frequently land on when they visit your blog. This statistic is helpful in terms of finding where visitors are coming from. Using the Top Paths
Taken statistic with the Top Entry Pages statistic can provide valuable information.
✓ Top Exit Pages: Top Exit Pages represent the last pages that people view before leaving your blog. This statistic can help you identify content that is underperforming.
✓ Bounce Rate: Bounce rate is a useful statistic that shows you the percentage of people who leave your blog immediately after finding it. The bounce rate represents people who didn’t find what they were looking
for when they were led to your blog. The lower this number, the more effective your marketing and search engine optimization efforts are; meaning the people who are finding your blog are the ones that you
want to find it. In other words, your search engine optimization and marketing efforts are reaching your blog’s target audience.

✓ Referrers: One of the most powerful statistics you can access through your Web analytics, referrers are the Web sites, blogs, and search engines that lead visitors to your blog. Often the Referrers statistic is
broken down further into a category for search engines only and another for non-search engines. You can find where traffic is coming from and determine where to focus your marketing efforts going forward.
✓ Keywords and Keyword Phrases: Another powerful statistic you can access through your Web analytics is Keywords and Keyword Phrases. Search engines have the potential to drive large numbers of visitors to
your blog. By analyzing the keywords and keyword phrases that people type into search engines, which lead them to find your blog, you can focus your future search engine optimization efforts and content creation
efforts to target those keywords.

Don’t think you’ll be a master at blog statistic analysis overnight. It takes time to understand how to read your blog’s statistics and then effectively apply them to your blog plan to meet your blogging goals. Keep in mind that there are no regulations or rules related to Web analytics; the statistics one provider delivers could be very different from those delivered by another provider. With that in mind, you might want to try a few different stat trackers and compare the results delivered by each until you find the one that
works best for you and appears to offer the most accurate data.

READ MORE - Deciding what to track in your statistics

Choosing a right statistic tracker

Many Web analytics tools are available to bloggers. Some are provided free whereas others have a cost. Take some time to research the various Web analytics providers to find the one that offers you the functionality you want at the price you’re willing to pay. Most Web analytics tools integrate with your blog through a simple copy-andpaste procedure. You register for an account, enter information about your
blog, and a snippet of code automatically generates that you copy and paste into a new HTML/JavaScript gadget  on your blog. It’s a simple process but one that helps your blog to grow immensely.
Several free Web analytics tools provide sufficient data and functionality for typical bloggers. Following is an introduction to several popular Web analytics providers that offer a variety of free blog statistic tracking services.
✓ Google Analytics. Google Analytics integrates seamlessly with Google Blogger, as you’d expect. It’s considered one of the best blog statistic trackers because it provides comprehensive information to users at no charge. You can create custom reports and even track advertising and promotional campaigns.
✓ StatCounter. StatCounter delivers basic blog statistics to users for free. However, the free version of StatCounter displays only the last 100 visitors to your blog in its statistics. This may or may not be adequate for you depending on your goals for your blog and the level of tracking detail you want. StatCounter also offers a package that delivers additional data and functionality for a fee.

✓ FreeStats. FreeStats provides a variety of reports for bloggers to analyze their blog traffic patterns. As the name implies, FreeStats is available for free.
✓ SiteMeter. SiteMeter offers a basic amount of blog statistics for free, but only displays information about the last 100 visitors to your blog (similar to StatCounter). Depending on your requirements, this might not
be enough for you. SiteMeter also offers a package that provides more information and data for a fee.

Some of the blog statistic trackers and tools available to you online are not compatible with blogs hosted through Blogger (meaning they have a Blogspot extension in the URL). Hosting your blog on a third-party server gives you maximum control and provides access to the widest array of blogging tools,
including blog statistic trackers.  The Web analytics tool you choose is entirely up to you. In fact, you might
want to test the free versions from multiple providers to compare their offerings and find the one that works best for you. If you require more robust statistics, you might want to consider upgrading to a package that provides more features and functionality for a fee. However, most bloggers find the free tools adequate.

READ MORE - Choosing a right statistic tracker

Tracking your blog stats.

Now that you know it’s important to track your blog’s statistics, you’re probably wondering why. In short, blog statistics can help you understand:

✓ Where visitors to your blog are coming from. What Web sites, blogs, or search engines are helping them find your blog.

✓ What keywords people enter into search engines that lead them to your blog.

✓ How many posts visitors look at before they leave your blog.

✓ How many new visitors come to your blog each day versus repeat visitors.

✓ The length of time that people spend on your blog.

✓ The most frequently viewed posts on your blog.

These are just a few of the statistics you can track on your blog. How can these statistics help you grow your blog? Take a look at the following explanations:

✓ Where visitors to your blog are coming from. When you know which Web sites and blogs are sending traffic your way, you can concentrate your marketing efforts on those sites. For example, you can leave comments

on those blogs or mention their posts with links to the original post on your blog. It’s a proven traffic generator that you can exploit and grow further.

✓ What keywords people enter. When you know which keywords people use to find your blog, you can further optimize your blog posts to get more search results by using those popular keywords or keyword

phrases.

✓ How many posts visitors look at. If you see that most visitors look at more than one post on your blog, you can feel confident that you’re publishing compelling content and building a loyal readership.

✓ How many new visitors come to your blog versus repeat visitors. Ultimately, you want a mix of loyal, repeat visitors and new visitors to find your blog each day.

✓ The length of time people spend on your blog. If people arrive at your blog and leave immediately, they’re not the type of traffic you want, and you need to adjust your efforts to find qualified traffic or enhance your

content to be more compelling.

✓ The most frequently viewed posts on your blog. When you know your most popular posts, you can exploit that knowledge by linking to those posts from new posts, promoting those posts through your marketing

efforts, and writing similar posts in the future.

You have countless ways to use your blog statistics to learn about your blog’s audience and what they want from your blog. Review your blog’s statistics to see if there are any trends or patterns. Try different writing and promotional techniques, and then analyze your blog statistics to see how those techniques affect your blog’s traffic and performance.

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Managing feeds and subscriptions

People who like your blog will want to visit whenever you publish new content. Moreover, if they find the comments on a particular post interesting, they might want to be notified each time a new comment is added to that post. Blog feeds and subscriptions provide an easy way for people to access your new content when it’s published and are particularly helpful to people who read many blogs each day. In short, you can create a feed of your blog’s new content that people can subscribe to. Instead of visiting your blog’s URL everyday (as well as the URLs of all the other blogs they enjoy reading), subscribers can view all new
content for every blog they subscribe to in one location via a feed reader. Many feed readers are available, including Google Reader..
Setting up your feed
Blogger uses Atom 1.0 language to create and deliver Web feeds. It’s very easy to set up your blog to generate a feed and to provide links for visitors to subscribe to your blog’s feed in their feed reader of choice. Here’s how:
1. From the Blogger dashboard, click the Settings link. The Settings window opens with the Basic settings window displayed by default.
2. Select the Site Feed tab from the navigation bar near the top of your screen. The Site Feed window opens.
3. In the Blog Posts Feed drop-down menu, choose Full to make all your blog posts available in their entirety for subscribers to read in their feed readers. A blog posts feed provides the content of your new blog posts to your subscribers to view in their feed reader. If you prefer, choose Short from the drop-down menu to provide only an excerpt of each blog post through your feed. Subscribers need to click through from their feed reader to your blog to read the entire post. Alternatively, choose None from the drop-down menu if you don’t want to offer post feed subscriptions to your blog readers. If you want to grow your blog, it’s a good idea to offer all feed and subscription options to your visitors.

4. In the Blog Comment Feed drop-down menu, choose the Full, Short, or None setting to configure the feed settings for your blog comments. A blog comment feed provides all new comments left on all your blog
posts to subscribers to view in their feed reader. Each setting works the same as those described in Step 3 above for the Blog Posts Feed setting.
5. In the Per-Post Comment Feeds drop-down box, choose the Full, Short, or None setting to configure the feed settings for comments on individual blog posts. A per-post comment feed provides a person’s feed reader all new comments left only on specific posts the viewer subscribes to. Each setting works the same as those described in Step 3 above for the Blog Posts Feed setting.
6. In the Post Feed Redirect URL box, enter the feed URL from FeedBurner or a third party feed provider.
If you want to use a feed provider other than Blogger’s Atom 1.0 service, you can create your feed through a third party, such as FeedBurner, and then enter the URL for your blog’s new feed in this box. The nearby
Using FeedBurner sidebar discusses FeedBurner in greater detail.
7. In the Post Feed Footer box, enter the text you want to display with your subscription link after each post on your blog. If you’re using a third party feed provider such as Feedburner (see the nearby sidebar), enter the post feed code supplied by that provider in this box.

8. When you finish making edits, click the Save Settings button. Your feed is configured. Next, you need to make it easy for visitors to subscribe to your feed.
9. Select the Layout tab from the top navigation bar on your screen. The Page Elements window opens.

10. Click the Add a Gadget link. The Add a Gadget window opens.
11. Click the + icon to the right of the Subscription Links gadget. The Configure Subscription Links window opens.
12. In the Title box, type the text you want to use as a title for your subscription link. You can leave the title’s default text, Subscribe To, or choose another phrase.
13. Click the Save button to save your changes. You return to the Page Elements page where you can follow the link toview your changes on your blog.


Subscribing to blogs

The longer you blog, the more blogs you’re apt to read on a daily basis. Instead of opening all of those blogs each day to see what people are talking about, you can subscribe to your favorite blogs and read all the updates in a single location. Feed readers save you time and effort. Many feed readers are available, including Google Reader. When you start your Google Blogger blog, you create a Google account. You can use that Google Account username and password to log into Google Reader and begin subscribing to blog feeds.

To subscribe to a blog’s feed, simply select the subscribe icon or link found on that blog. Typically, a window or list will open showing the various feed readers you can choose from to subscribe to that feed. Select Google Reader from the list. You’re prompted to log into Google Reader to complete your subscription. The next time you want to see the new content from that blog (and others that you subscribe to), you can simply log into Google Reader and view that content in a single location.

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Understanding the Google Connection

In 2003, Google noticed Blogger and made an offer to purchase the blogging platform from Pyra Labs. Google had been known in the online world as the search engine powerhouse that was extending its reach to include online advertising and more. In fact, Blogger could be considered one of the first in
a string of acquisitions made by Google to extend its brand and its strength in the online market.
It turned out that Google’s timing was perfect, and Blogger’s hundreds of thousands of users quickly turned into millions. Google benefited from new access to millions of customers, and Blogger users benefited from a series of redesigns and upgrades to the software program that made it easier to use and added more functionality than ever. Those upgrades and redesigns would allow the new Blogger to retain its position as the leader in a market that was growing more and more competitive every day. The blogging platform
that was once considered the “beginner’s tool” continues to attract new users at a staggering rate.
Blogger users can now leverage the power of Google and its many products. Considering the availability of Google applications, users of Blogger can easily incorporate them into their blogs to advertise, publish content from mobile phones, upload and embed videos, and send RSS feeds to their feed readers. Here are several Google applications that users of Blogger can incorporate into their blogs:
✓ Google Docs: With Google Docs, users can create documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Google Docs is particularly helpful when bloggers want to share documents with other people or publish presentations
on their blogs.
✓ Blogger Mobile: If you use a mobile device in the United States, you may be able to publish content on your blog directly from that device.

✓ Google Earth: Google Earth is a perfect tool for creating maps for your blog.
✓ Gmail: Gmail is an excellent free email program that can be accessed from any computer.
✓ Google Groups: You can join Google Groups that interest you in order to network and share information with like-minded people. Alternatively, you can start your own Google Group. Each of these activities can help drive traffic to your blog.
✓ Picasa: When you upload photos to Blogger, they’re stored in your Picasa account, which comes free with Blogger. You can also organize and edit your photos by using Picasa.
✓ Feedburner: Feedburner is the most popular Web content feed-management program online. You can share your blog’s feed using Feedburner for readers to subscribe to using their feed reader of choice, such as
Google Reader.
✓ Google Toolbar: Using the free Google toolbar helps you save time because redundant tasks are quicker to perform with a click of the mouse. Additionally, the Blogger instant-blogging feature, BlogThis!, appears
directly on the Google Toolbar.
✓ Google Reader: Google Reader allows you to subscribe to blogs and to follow those feeds from any computer or certain mobile devices.
✓ YouTube: You can upload your own YouTube videos to embed in your blog, or you can use YouTube to find videos by other users that you want to share in your blog.
✓ Google Video: Google Video is a video search engine as well as a site to upload videos that you can link to or embed in your blog.
✓ Google AdSense: AdSense is an advertising system you can use to display ads on your blog in order to generate revenue.
✓ Orkut: You can use the Orkut social networking site to promote your blog.

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Pinging your blog

An important part of growing your blog is making sure that the World Wide Web knows your blog exists and knows when you publish new content. Blogger helps you achieve this through its automatic pinging service in conjunction with Weblogs.com. In simplest terms, pinging is the process by which a signal is sent to a server
(called a ping server) whenever new content is added to a blog (or another online source). Weblogs.com is a ping server that aggregates the pings it receives and makes them available to third parties, such as the search
engines Technorati and Google. If you want your blog posts to appear in search engine results, make sure your blog is set up to ping. Blogger users can easily configure their blogs to ping Weblogs.com, the largest
and oldest ping server, as follows:

1. From the Blogger dashboard, click the Settings link. The Basic configuration window opens.
2. Choose Yes from the Let Search Engines Find Your Blog? dropdown menu. By selecting yes, your blog will automatically ping Weblogs.com and Google Blog Search (an alternate ping server) every time you publish new content, making it immediately available to search engines.


When you become more proficient with blogging, you might hear of other ping servers and wonder whether you should manually ping them. Typically, the answer is no. Weblogs.com — the largest ping server — is used by the major search engines. Many other ping servers simply duplicate a portion of what
Weblogs.com does. Be sure to research other ping servers before you commit to manually pinging them or add code to your blog to automatically ping them to ensure it’s worth your time and effort

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Blogging Glossary -A must read for new bloggers

affiliate advertising: A process in which bloggers display ads for advertisers as affiliates for those advertisers, and the advertisers pay the bloggers every time blog visitors follow those ad links and make purchases or perform specified actions. Popular affiliate advertising programs include Amazon
Associates, LinkShare, and Commission Junction.
archive: The location on a blog where posts that aren’t current are stored for easy access by visitors.
Atom: A type of syndication format used to deliver feeds. See also feed, feed reader, RSS.
attribution: The citing of the source of a story, a quote, or an image used within a blog post.
audio blog: See podcast.
backlink: A reference link (or “shoulder tap”) used to notify one Blogger.com blog when another Blogger.com blog has linked to that site. Backlinks appear as links within the comments section of blog posts
blog: An online diary with entries listed in reverse chronological order, one of the first methods of bringing user-generated content to the mainstream. It’s a shorter version of the original term weblog, a fusion of the words Web and log. As blogging grew in popularity, individuals, groups, and businesses joined the blogosphere. Blogs uniquely provide a two-way conversation between author and visitor by using the commenting feature.
blog carnival: A blogging promotional event in which a group of bloggers gathers virtually to write about a predetermined topic. All participants submit the links to their posts, and all links are published in a single carnival round-up post. All participants promote the carnival on their blogs with the intention of driving traffic to all blogs involved.
blog contest: A blogging promotional event in which a giveaway is raffled in order to drive traffic to the hosting blog.
blog host: A company that provides space (for free or for a fee) on its servers to store and maintain blogs.

blog marketing: The process of promoting your blog to drive traffic to it. Examples of blog promotion tactics include leaving comments on other blogs with links back to your blog; linking to blogs within your blog posts and sending backlinks or trackbacks to those blogs; adding blogs to your blogroll; and participating in social bookmarking and networking. Also called blog promotion.
blog post: An individual entry written by a blogger and published on a blog.
blog promotion: See blog marketing.
blog statistics: The data used to track the performance of a blog.
blogger: A person who writes content for a blog.
Blogger: An online software program, owned by Google, that helps users create and maintain blogs.
blogging: The act of writing and publishing blog posts or entries. blogging software: The program used by bloggers to create and maintain blogs, such as Blogger, LiveJournal, Moveable Type, TypePad, and
WordPress. Also called blog platform.
blogosphere: The online blogging community, made up of bloggers from around the world creating user-generated content as part of the social Web. blogroll: A list of links created by a blogger and published on her blog. Links in a blogroll are typically related to the blog topic or other sites that the blogger enjoys or recommends.
bounce rate: The percentage of people who leave a blog immediately after finding it.
browser: A software application used to surf the Internet, including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Safari, Google Chrome, and others. Also called Web browser.
comment: An opinion or a reaction, written by a blog reader, to a specific post. Comments can be submitted at the end of blog posts when the blogger has chosen to allow them.
comment moderation: The process of holding comments for review before publishing them on a blog so spam and offensive comments aren’t published. comment policy: A set of rules and restrictions published on a blog to set visitor expectations about which types of comments are allowed and which types are likely to be deleted.

contextual advertising: A type of ad that’s based on the content found on the page where the ad appears. Popular contextual advertising programs include Google AdSense and Kontera.
CSS: The acronym for Cascading Style Sheets, which is used by Web designers to create blog layouts. CSS coding directs the look and feel of a blog.
dashboard: The primary account management page of an online software program, such as Blogger or Google AdSense, where users can access the tools and functionality to modify settings and create content, for example.
domain name: The part of a URL that represents a specific Web site. Domain names are typically preceded by the letters www. and end with an extension, such as .com or .net.
feed: The syndicated content of a blog. See also feed reader, RSS.
feed reader: A tool used to receive feeds from blogs and deliver them to subscribers in aggregated format for quick and easy viewing in one place.
flame: A message, a comment, a blog post, or another online published submission intended to attack or undermine another person.
flame war: The process of exchanging blog posts, comments, or online content between two people in an ongoing, back-and-forth manner for the purpose of attacking or undermining one another.
flash: Streaming animation that appears on Web pages.
footer: The area spanning the bottom of a blog page, which typically includes copyright information and may include other elements, such as a contact link or ads.
forum: An online message board where participants post messages in predetermined categories, creating an online conversation between a potentially large group of people.
FTP: The acronym for File Transfer Protocol, a process used to transfer files from one computer to another across the Internet.
Google: A company based in California that produces software, programs, tools, and utilities to help people use the Internet to accomplish tasks. Popular Google programs include Google AdSense, Google AdWords, Google Docs, Google Groups, and Google Search.

guest blogging: The process of writing free posts to appear on another person’s blog, or accepting free posts from another blogger to publish on your blog, with the purpose of networking and driving blog traffic.
header: The area spanning the top of a blog page where the blog title, graphics, and, possibly, navigational links or ads appear.
hit: A blog statistic that’s counted every time a file is downloaded from your blog. Each page in a blog or Web site typically contains multiple files. home page: The first page visitors see when they enter a root domain name.
HTML: The acronym for Hypertext Markup Language, a programming language made up of tags used to create Web sites and blogs.
HTML editor: The section of the blog post editor within a blogging software application, such as Blogger, in which the blogger must enter HTML code to create the post rather than typing text in a WYSIWIG (What You See is What You Get) post editor. See also WYSWIG.
hyperlink: See link.
impression-based advertising: An ad model in which bloggers publish ads for advertisers and are paid based on the number of times visitors see those ads. Popular impression-based advertising programs include Tribal Fusion and ValueClick.
keyword: A word or phrase used to help index a Web page by topic so that search engines can find it.
label: A keyword used in Blogger to categorize a blog post.
link: A connection between two Web sites that, when selected, opens another Web page in the user’s browser. Also called hyperlink.
link bait: A post written for the primary purpose of attracting traffic and
links. Link bait posts are typically related to popular topics that might have nothing to do with the topic of the blog on which the post is published.
lurker: A person who frequently reads blogs but doesn’t leave comments or make his presence known.

message board: See forum.
microblogging: A method of publishing short snippets (typically 140 characters or fewer) by using a site such as Twitter or Plurk.
moblogging: The process of writing and publishing blog posts using mobile technology, such as cellular phones. A fusion of the words mobile and blogging, it’s also called mobile blogging.
multiuser blog: A blog authored by more than one person that can be edited by multiple people using blogging software.
newbie: A person who is new to blogging or forum participation or another online activity. Also called noob.
niche: A specific and highly targeted segment of an audience or market. A niche blog appeals to a specific group of people.
page rank: A ranking used to determine a blog’s popularity, typically based on traffic and incoming links.
page view: A blog statistic that tracks the number of times a Web page is viewed independent of who is viewing the page.
permalink: A link to a specific page in a blog that remains unchanged over time. It’s a fusion of the words permanent and link.
ping: A signal sent from one Web site to another to ensure that the other site exists. Pings are also used to notify sites that receive information from ping servers of updates to a blog or Web site.
podcast: An audio file that’s recorded digitally for playback online. Bloggers use podcasts to create audio blog posts. Also called audio blogging.
post: An entry on a blog, typically published in reverse chronological order.
post editor: The blogging software function that a blogger uses for typing the content of a blog post. See also HTML editor, visual editor.
professional blogger: A person who writes blogs as a career.
profile: A blogger’s About Me page, which describes who the blogger is and why she’s qualified to write the blog.
referrer: A Web site, blog, or search engine that leads visitors to a blog. RSS: The acronym for Really Simple Syndication, the technology that collects Web content. Users subscribe to Web sites and blogs. The updates to those Web sites and blogs are collected together, and subscribers receive new content from those sites in one place within a feed reader. See also feed, feed reader.

search engine: A Web site used to find Web pages related to specific keywords or keyword phrases. Search engines use proprietary criteria to examine the Internet and return results relevant to submitted keywords. Results are typically presented in a ranked order determined by the aforementioned
proprietary criteria. Google, Yahoo! and MSN Search are popular search engines.
search engine optimization: The process of writing Web content, designing Web pages, and promoting online content to boost rankings within search engine keyword searches. Also called SEO.
SEO: See search engine optimization.
sidebar: A column on a blog to the right or left or flanking the largest, main column. Sidebars typically include ancillary content, such as a blogroll, archives, and ads.
social bookmarking: A method of saving, storing, and sharing Web pages for reference. Popular social bookmarking sites include Delicious, Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon.
social networking: The act of communicating and building relationships with other people online. Popular social networking sites include Facebook, Friendster, and LinkedIn.
social Web: The second generation of the World Wide Web, which focuses on interaction, user-generated content, communities, and building relationships. Also called Web 2.0.
spam: A type of comment submitted on a blog for no reason other than to drive traffic to another Web site. Spam can also come in e-mail form.
sponsored review: A blog post written for the purpose of being paid by an advertiser who solicits it. Popular sponsored review networks include   PayPerPost.com, ReviewMe.com, and SponsoredReviews.com.
subscribe: To sign up to receive a blog’s feed in a feed reader or by e-mail.
tag: A keyword used to identify and categorize a blog post. Tags are also read by blog search engines to provide search results to users.

Technorati: A popular blog search engine.
template: A predesigned blog layout created to make it easy for people with little to no computer knowledge to start and maintain a blog. Also called theme.
text link ad: A type of ads that appears as a simple text link on blogs and Web sites. Text link ads are typically used to drive business and to boost the number of incoming links for the advertiser’s Web site, thereby boosting the advertiser’s page rank.
third-party host: A company other than a blogger’s blogging software provider that stores blogs on its server for a fee.
trackback: A reference link (or “shoulder tap”) used to notify a blog when another blog has linked to that site. Trackbacks appear as links within the comments section of blog posts. Blogger.com does not accept trackbacks from other blogs.
troll: A person who posts comments intended to detract from the ongoing conversation on a blog.
unique visitor: A person who visits a Web page and is counted one time regardless of how many times he visits it. See also visitor.
URL: The unique address of a specific page on the Internet consisting of an access protocol (for example, http), a domain name (for example, www.sitename.com), and an extension identifying the specific page within a Web site or blog (for example, /specificpage.htm). It’s the acronym for Uniform Resource Locator.
visit: The occurrence of accessing a page on your blog.
visitor: A person who views a page (or multiple pages) on your blog.
visual editor: The blog post composition function that bloggers use to type posts by using an interface similar to common word processing. See also WYSIWYG.
vlogging: The process of publishing videos rather than written blog posts. A fusion of the words video and blog; also called video blogging.
Web log: See blog.
Web 2.0: See social Web.

WYSIWYG: The acronym for What You See Is What You Get. The visual editor provided by most blogging software programs allows users to type blog post content in a form similar to traditional word processing software,so they can see how a post will look online as they type it.

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