Should I podcast? Should I video cast? Or should I blog? You know. Write. Hit publish. Rinse and repeat.

Blogging beats podcast beats video

Podcasts are cool. Unless you sound like me - tweezers on the nose, all nasally.

Videocasts are cooler unless you look like me. I mean, most people if they had a dog with a face like mine they’d shave the dog’s butt and make him walk backwards.

Blogging – the coolest. Just write. And hit publish. Images and links, too, of course.

But what is really cool about blogging is that it is searchable. Findable. Search engines can’t search video and podcast content. These mediums work best… ONLY work?… when they are embedded into a blog post and surrounded by searchable text.

Bottom line…. blogging wins IF you want to be searched out and found. Podcasts and Videocasts are what you serve up AFTER the reader gets there.

In short, nothing is better than the written word when it comes to wanting good search engine optimization.

This guest post is by Jackie Wills

Not many bloggers realize that you can increase Page Rank by revitalizing your old posts. For starters, it is important to have a proper linking structure connecting all your posts. Then as you write newer posts, the old ones are inevitably going to need updates or provide some background for the new post.

Search engines realize this, and their algorithms look for updated posts that are still relevant rather than something you wrote a long time back and haven’t touched since.

Let’s say you wrote a post about how internal linking helps to boost page rank.

Now you’re writing a post about how to revitalize your old posts to increase page rank. The first article is relevant here, and can be linked to from within this post. This new incoming link to the old post tells search engines that the old post is still relevant and useful.

So, now you know that new incoming links are one way to revitalize old posts. You can also update the old post content itself, so that it reflects the current situation or at least tells users where they can get newer information. You could simply add a link to the new post, along with one line explaining the update.

On this point, there’s a couple of ways to do this. You can do it manually, by revisiting old posts and adding links into the post to newer content. Or you can use a “Related Links” plug-in. This is a contextual tool that automatically lists all related posts under the main post content. So you don’t have to worry about old or new posts and manually updating them. The content will change dynamically as you write more posts.

You can optimize old posts to make them more focused on a keyword. This can be done by changing the title, and using the keyword within the page content a few times. Note that search engines may entirely drop a page if the subject matter and/or title changes too much. So, be careful when you tweak it, and do it incrementally.

Lastly, nothing works better than a few comments and a conversation going on below the post. It adds new content to the page without disturbing the actual post content, and search engines start pushing the post up the rankings as more and more comments pile up. It helps a lot if you have a “latest comments” widget so that the post gets incoming links from all posts on the blog.

This guest post is by Alden Hooper.

A blog’s success is in the eye of the beholder. An individual may blog as a form of expression while corporate bloggers do it for brand exposure, industry networking and customer relations. Professional bloggers and entrepreneurs see only a big $ sign hung around every visitor’s neck.

So, what a blogger expects from blog readers depends largely on the blogger’s motivation for starting the blog and keeping it updated. Technorati’s latest annual State of the Blogosphere survey speaks volumes about these differences.

The report says that only 13 percent of bloggers now consider revenue as the leading metric for success. The primary reason cited by an overwhelming 70 percent is that “they use their blog as a way to share expertise and experience with others.” The keyword here is sharing.

The one thing that all successful blogs have in common is an engaged community where blog readers become blog contributors. New visitors to a blog get this feeling that they are part of a conversation where their voice will be heard and responded to by others.

Bloggers need to encourage blog readers to post comments. A human connection is established between two strangers when a reader posts a comment and the blog author or another reader responds back. This motivates readers to come back and continue the conversation or post another comment on the latest blog post.

When a lot of readers start doing this, the conversation expands into a free for all where readers respond to each other and the blog author only has to step in occasionally. Apart from the satisfaction of being the host of such an engaged and active community, it’s also a very good magnet for more search traffic.

Every comment adds new content to the page, and search engines love pages that are constantly updated. Since most blogs have a “latest comments” widget in the sidebar, every new comment creates an incoming link from all other posts on the blog. As the comments keep piling up day after day, the blog post starts getting more search traffic which only adds to the number of readers and comments.

A single post like this can snowball for months with increasingly more comments and search traffic. If this level of engagement can be sustained for all new posts, the blog will be an unqualified success. Success in this case is all inclusive, with personal satisfaction, brand exposure, more unique visitors and more sales (if required). So yes, what every blogger needs most from blog readers is community engagement.

This is the first of I don’t know many blog posts I will write to tell readers what I know about how to blog for money.

Controversy is Good for Traffic and Income at Blogs

I have been blogging for money (I will explain what I mean by this in a moment) for almost 5 years.

I consider myself a professional blogger. By that I mean I pay my sizable Silicon Valley mortgage through income earned from blogging.

The resourceful reader can easily enough look up my address and go to Zillow or some other such site to find out how much I owe (more…)

New bloggers and young blogs face a common problem. Only relatives and close friends stop by and respond to the questions in the blog.

The general internet users show no interest in the contents of the blog. The simplest solution to this age old problem in blogging is Guest blogging.

Guest Blogging is a new found trend amongst the existing as well as new bloggers. Guest Blogging benefits both the blogger and his blog in many ways.  It is one of the ways to create a popular blog and create brand value. It is by far one of the most powerful ways to get more subscribers to your blog.

For a better understanding of this relationship between an Author and a Blogger, read Why you want Guest Blogging RIGHT NOW?

There are many qualities that you seek in a professional blogger who may add some value to your blog, Bill has previously mentioned the 5 Qualities that you look for in a blog consultant, in one of his post.

Guest Blogging allows you to make new contacts and thus creates possibilities for joint ventures

Following are some of the advantages of starting your own guest blog or having a guest to write articles for you.

There is no other full proof advertisement strategy for your blog than a guest blogging. Guest Blogging helps you generate more traffic and this will attract more prospects to your website.

The guest becomes popular in blogging network and the blogger gets a new article. This type of guest blogging gets target visitors for free. It expands the network with pother bloggers and helps in getting those useful back links.

You may also like to read some great tips for those who want to write a guest blog but not sure where to start from.

It also gives some invaluable feedback. Guest blogging helps you know what other bloggers think about your article and the reaction of the readers as well.  At the same time, it also helps you become a better writer and enables your article to reach a wider audience.

Not only do you reach wider audience, but have access to wider topics for discussion as well. This will also help cater to a variety of audience and get maximum readers to your blogs.

Blogging is a platform of choice for writers and authors in High Desert

Several times, guest blogging helps the blog campaign to go viral. It helps bloggers to broaden their outlook, knowledge and resources.

Have you seen what Google did to their home search page to celebrate Mark Twain?

Google celebrates Mark Twain

Here’s a tip I have advocated for some time.

Find out what people WILL BE interested in reading about BEFORE they are interested and write about that. So, when their interest is piqued you are there waiting for them.

How many people do you think are searching about Mark Twain today after seeing what Google did to celebrate the American icon?

Try these two sites

On this day (NY Time)

 or

On this day (BBC).

Then read into the future, ask yourself what might people be celebrating or remembering in the days to come.

Write about those topics as they relate to your web site topic.

Man on the moon, celebrity birthday, death, anniversary of an invention….the sky is the limit.

In that way, when that day rolls around, you and your site will be primed to be read…provided you have been faithful to your site up until then.  Learn how to do this at my Facebook.com/TheTrafficProfessor page.

The Traffic Professor Facebook Fan Page

You cannot write one article a month and expect people to find that one article. Or at least I don’t know how to do that.

You can, however, faithfully write at your blog…find the good balance between appeal to readers and search engines…then when it’s your turn, you will be ready.

Abraham Lincoln, “I will prepare and some day my turn will come.” Hmm, now when was he born? Assassinated? Maybe I will write about those days….

Wilby testing search engine tool Soovle

Sitting in a session at Blog World Expo presented by my friend, Stephan Spencer and Jennifer Miner on SEO for beginners.

Stephan just pointed out a cool search engine tool that I had never heard of – Soovle.

It works like Google’s suggested search terms except it goes one, um, 7 steps farther.

Soovle will give you suggestions from Youtube, Bing, Yahoo, Wikipedia, Amazon and Answers, too!

That’s kind of neat.

Writing something? Need ideas for what words or key phrases to use? Soovle seems to be a good place to start.

Now, I am wondering what other kinds of nuggets I will pick up while here.

I didn’t know this.

Wilby looking for a FREE WordPress Theme

Sitting here in a session at Blog World Expo I learned that 8 of the top 10 search results in Google for a free WordPress theme will give you (FREE) a theme that has malware that is installed or some sort of spam code.

Thanks, Google for making sure results are relevant!

There is, however, a place where the cheapskates (that’s me) can get a free WordPress theme that does NOT have malware or spam code.

1,448 FREE WordPress themes – remember, you get what you pay for.

These 1400+ themes have been downloaded more than 39 million (count ‘em) times. That’s a lot.

The themes are clean, and approved by Automattic…creators of WordPress.

Need a free WordPress theme?

Start here.

Getting a good theme is absolutely fundamental to getting good traffic.

Repeat after me…Wordpress.

I am at the Blog World Expo in LA for the next 3-days…covering it for Examiner.com.

Here’s my first article: Keynote Peter Shankman – lost in translation.

Peter Shankman at Blog World Expo

BWE has come a long way since the first try in Vegas some half dozen years or so ago. I was there then, too.

It’s stimulating here…there a lot of interesting topics and the exhibits open tomorrow.

Shankman…gets us off to an R-rated start.

Really, is that the best he can do? Needs to resort do such language to get a laugh?

Maybe I am just prudish.

Indeed he did have some good insights, gained from experience. I just wonder who could hear them.

Transparency – if you make a mistake, own up to it.

Relvancy – listen to your audience.

There were a couple of more but I can’t remember now. I think they started with an F-.

If you are here…ping me. And let’s hook up.