Are You Blogging To Me?

This is a visitant pillar by Igor Kheifets. If you want to visitant pillar on this blog, rebuff out the guidelines here.
One of the most belonging to all mistakes I see high-reaching bloggers make is never rational about who they are blogging to. Usually, a individual just creates a blog about something he is impetuous about and starts posting. But whether you’re blogging for fun or to make circulating medium (or both) – it is indispensable to think about who you are blogging to.
Your blog’s power is mostly regular by your subscriber numerate. The key to getting subscribers is to actually ATTEND to your hearing. Just like any marketing campaign – blogging is based on the needs and wants of the consumer. Unless you are going to accord confer your readers what they want – they won’t be back to peruse your blog tomorrow.
Beta software is a first rank or symmetry example of provider-consumer imparting. Beta sincerely way that the rendering of the software isn’t eventual and that you can resign a ticket/intimation on how to amend it. Beta testers are actually asking family to say what’s unfair with their returns so they can fix it.
Just take WordPress as an example. The latest update was the rendering 2.8.4 and there are more to come. WordPress is being updated each month and there is a robust marketing footing behind it. WordPress developer team carefully studies the feedback believed from bloggers and keeps improving in symmetry to keep WordPress the best blogging platform ever.
By now I believe you get the sharp end, so with no more bastinadoing around the shrub, I want to at hand you with a numerate of ways to get in hit with your hearing.
1. Single Selling Overture. The USP (also known as the Elevator Degree of elevation) is a brief expression that should bestow confer what your blog is about in one judgment. In symmetry to clinch this not special or abstract notion, imagine that you are in an elevator with a dependant and you’re supposed to draw what your calling is about before you he gets off.
Your USP shouldn’t take more than five seconds to peruse/say. It is supposed to be brief and to the sharp end.
Large USP examples are:
Wal-Emporium: Rescue Circulating medium. Have being Better
Lexus: The Race of Wholeness
On-Duration Plummery Repairs With a No-Wait Warrant – Or It’s Independent!
2. Polls/Surveys. Polls and surveys are a large way to fall in with out what your patron needs. It is probably the easiest way to fall in with out about any fears he might be facing and problems he needs solved.
WP-Polls is a large plugin to administration overlook on your blog. If you don’t want to introduce into office anything, try PollDaddy.
3. Comments. Comments are another large indicator you can use to admonisher your audience’s recoil to certain easy in mind. Although there are those annoying readers that make comments or remarks solely to get the backlink, more often than not family press out opinions about your easy in mind and it is very momentous to carefully observe those opinions to better know your hearing.
4. Of the same nature Posts Plugin. This plugin helps you to accord confer your readers more of what they want by placing of the same nature entries below every published pillar. I praise using Yet Another Of the same nature Posts Plugin.
5. Hit Cast. A hit cast will make capable your readers to resign questions, requests, suggestions and not special feedback regarding your blog. A Hit cast is a sure way to bestow confer an “open doors” posture which indicates that you are free to any instruction, intimation and grant or bestowment of a share.
You can bring into being a hit cast using the cforms II plugin.
Family entreat being understood. They want their problems solved and their needs met. Skilful who you’re blogging to will do just that. You will not only liberty them with no election but to subscribe to your blog in symmetry not to miss a one only pillar, but also erect a stronger dependence based on the circumstance that unlike most – you CONCERN.
Igor Kheifets is an author and the maker of IgorHelpsYouSucceed. You can also tread on the heels of him on Chirp.

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Notepad on Steroids

Although most of the publishing platforms today offer friendly user interfaces and simple graphic layouts sooner or later you will need to get your hands on some code.

Tweaking the Html or the CSS directly is the only way to have complete control over the look of your blog. It also enables you to add more functionalities such as social bookmarking buttons, advertising and the like.
The easiest (and perhaps the most efficient) way to change the code is through a simple text editor like the Windows Notepad. Instead of using Notepad, though, I recommend that you download an open source text editor called Notepad++.
Notepad++ is as simple as the traditional Notepad, but it comes packed with many useful features, including:

• syntax and html tags highlighting
• auto-completion
• drag ‘n’ drop
• macros

You can download Notepad++ here.

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SEO and PPC Work Together to Improve a Search Engine Presence

Search engine marketing novices may not understand all of the different components of an SEM strategy and may be confused by the terminology. SEO? PPC? Is there really much of a difference and is one strategy better than the other? Yes there is a big difference and no, one strategy is not better than the other. SEO and PPC are independent tactics that serve different purposes but they don’t need to be mutually exclusive. In fact, they shouldn’t be. The best SEM strategy is to implement both, especially in the beginning of a search engine marketing campaign.

PPC is also known as paid search. PPC ads appear in the sponsored section of a search result. The websites that appear in this section are there because the advertiser was the highest bidder for the keyword or keyword phrase that was used. Each time the ad is clicked on, the advertiser pays the search engine. Hence the label, “pay per click”. The key to a successful PPC campaign is to target the right keywords that will result in not only traffic, but conversions. Since the website owner is essentially paying for this traffic, it might as well be worth something to them. The costs associated with PPC can be extremely high, especially in a competitive industry.
Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the practice of making changes to the website and other content across the web that will attract the search engine spiders and improve organic, or natural, web page ranking. SEO isn’t considered to be paid search because no money is exchanged between the website owner and the search engine, but there are certainly costs associated with SEO. SEO is a lengthy process that is never really “over”. It starts with industry, competitor, and keyword research. Next is on-site optimization which is followed by ongoing link building. Good link building requires time and resources to create quality content and share it on the web on a regular basis. Many website and business owners simply don’t have the time or resources. Therefore, they need to hire an in house SEO staff member or outsource the work to a trusted agency or consultant. Good SEO is paid for, just in a less direct manner than PPC.
Since web users have become more savvy over the years and understand the difference between an ad and an organic result, there are arguments that SEO is better than PPC. The truth is that both strategies have their place. While SEO is extremely important, it takes a long time to get onto that first page of a search result for targeted keywords. Some websites never even make it to that first page. PPC, while expensive, can ensure that your brand is seen on page 1. Even if the ad isn’t clicked on, it’s still improving brand visibility. As time goes on and an organic presence improves, it’s possible to scale back on PPC but it doesn’t need to be eliminated entirely. Having both a paid and organic presence on the same page really establishes relevancy for particular keyword searches.
Nick Stamoulis is the President of Brick Marketing, and he writes a weekly SEO column for Daily Blog Tips. Visit the company website to find more about its services, or call 781-999-1222 to get more information.

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8 Key Tips for Building Successful Website

1. Content (Useful, informative, free, and easy to understand)

If you offer well written, original, easy to understand information, spiced up with good imagery, the chances of getting quality links, social media exposure and high spots in SERPs are bigger. The whole point of the Internet is finding useful, relevant, free information. Everything is about information. If you’re able to convey it in a manner that stands out from the crowd you’re automatically step ahead from the others in the pool.

2. Basic SEO

I vouch for the fact that you don’t have to be a SEO expert to rank your site high on Google search. Just several things to remember here:

• include meta title tags,
• optimal and natural usage of keywords,
• provide good link bait article titles,
• simple navigation through out the site,
• proper usage of H1, H2 and H3 tags,
• include sitemap,
• use Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics to gain insight on what works and what’s not,
• use robots.txt file,
• proper permalink structure,
• avoid duplicate content (CMS issue),
• use canonical tags.
• read the Google SEO Starter Guide (PDF).

3. Design

You want more eyeballs on your website, and you want them to stick with it more often. Except offering quality content you’ll need some good graphics for your site. Number one tip: If you’re serious about your site don’t use free, generic template. I would go even further. Don’t use paid template that is available online for others to buy. Pay someone to design a unique website for you. It doesn’t need to be jaw dropping and very expensive. A simple, pretty enough, and unique look would be good for starters.

4. Competitors

Whatever you do, you have to be more innovative, original, have a better design, better content than your competitors. Simply try to beat the competition. Use them to learn what works for them, and what doesn’t. Don’t be antagonistic towards them. Instead try to befriend them and let them become your mentors. They rule your niche at this moment. Learn what they did in order to achieve what they are now. That doesn’t mean just to read their blogs daily, but to investigate what they are doing. Where is their presence, who is linking to them, what CMS are they using, their SEO etc.

5. Promotion

Promote your site whenever you have a chance to do it, but do not exaggerate (don’t be a spammer). Also several things to remember here:

• use Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or any other social platform popular at the moment,
• comment on other blogs related to your niche,
• be active on forums,
• guest post frequently on well established blogs,
• pay for ads if you really have to (Adwords).

This will certainly lead to significant exposure of your site. If you have the previous 4 points in place it’s just a matter of time when the ball starts rolling.

6. Speed

Make your site load fast as much as possible. This is important from two aspects: user experience and a SEO factor. Several things to remember:

• Use good server
• Optimize your code,
• Optimize the images,
• Use sprites,
• Use tools such as Google Speed, YSlow, Web Page Test, Pingdom,
• Gzip and minify your pages and static components where possible,
• Make your pages cacheable (both server and browser side),
• Use CDN for static content,
• If you’re using scripts, prefer asynchronous loading or place them at the bottom,
• Avoid redirects,
• Read in details what Google and Yahoo have to say about it.

7. E-mail addresses and RSS subscribers

Usually young webmasters and bloggers are overwhelmed with information and it might happen to forget to implement thing or two or they may think that some of the tips are irrelevant and not worth. So remember, capture e-mail addresses and get people to subscribe to your feed early. Two-three years from now (if you’re good) you might have 50k email list and 50k RSS Subcribers. And that is a big valuable asset. Trust me.

8. Monetization

This is the cherry on top of the cake. It’s time to gather the fruits of your labor. I’ll suggest don’t do it early. Wait some time until your blog gets traction. The possibilities are virtually endless and experimentation is the key. There are basically three main methods to get money out of your blog/site:

• Placing ads (CPC, CPM, CPA, CPV). Basically you need click, page view, action or video view in order to get paid.
• Promoting affiliate products.
• Selling you own products (ebooks, membership websites, services – design, coding, coaching, etc).

Wrap up
Of course these 8 tips are not everything you should have in mind but I would say they’re essential. Anyhow, the most important tip would be that you do your experiments with everything I said above and come to your own conclusions about what works for you, your blog and your niche.
Vlatko is the owner of Keen Talks. Check it out to find Featured Talks, Lectures, Interviews, and Debates.

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In My Book Motivation and Hard Work Trump Talent Any Day

Around six months ago I purchased a Brazilian blog about the Android operating system (called Blog do Android). I wasn’t too happy with the write that was taking care of the content there, so last week I decided to hire a new one.
First of all I published a post on the blog itself saying we were looking to add a new staff writer to the team, asking interested readers to get in touch. Within a couple of days I received 50 or so emails showing interest.

After that I replied to all the candidates explaining the hiring process: basically they would send me a first article. If I liked it I would publish it on the blog and they would work and send me a second and possibly a third article. After that I would have enough data on my hands to make my decision.
And here’s the interesting thing: the “data” I am referring to above is not only the writing quality of the articles, as one could wrongly assume. In fact the writing quality is not even the most important aspect. What I want to test with the above process is the motivation and the willingness to work hard of the candidates.
For instance, a couple of the candidates sent me really nice articles. The grammar was impeccable, the style was humorous and easy to follow, and the topics they decided to write about were pretty interesting.
However, after I replied saying I liked their first articles and that they could start working on a second piece, one of the candidates took three days to tell me he would start working on his second piece, and the other sent me a second piece after six days.
By that time I had already hired my writer. It was a guy who sent me his first article a couple of hours after I explained to him the writing process. Once I told him I liked his first piece within six hours he had a second one ready to go, and was already asking for some feedback so that he could improve on this third, fourth and subsequent pieces.
Bottom line: if you want to hire someone, look for motivation and ability to work hard. If you want to get hired, show it.

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How To Increase Your PageRank Fast

This is a guest post by Tony Chou. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

As of the recent PageRank update on August 2, my blog has been around for 79 days. Previously, I had been a PR0, but due to this update, my blog has become a PR2. I would like to tell you what I did right, and what you can copy from my success. As we all know, the key to building a decent PR quickly in a short amount of time lies in top notch content and lots of backlinks. Here are some tips I would like to share with you.
Top quality content that ranks very, very well in the SERPs, and also appeals to readers.
When writing content, bloggers are worried about mostly two things. 1)Does my content appeal to my loyal readers? 2) Will my content receive a lot of search engine traffic? I’ve devised a really decent formula to write tons of content that readers love, yet receive thousands of referrals from search engines a month.
What’s the most visited site on earth for content? Wikipedia of course! Encyclopedia entries are the most searched for things in the world. So I decided to write some encyclopedic entries of my own. My blog is about investing, so I wrote some posts like ‘Buy and Hold’ and ‘Support and Resistance: Technical Analysis’. These are encyclopedic terms for the world of investing. If I do some serious backlinking on these articles, they’ll rank very high for keywords that get tens of thousands of searches a month!
But writing encyclopedic entries on things related to your blog’s niche isn’t very appealing to your loyal readers. After all, they can just search for keywords like ‘buy and hold’ on Wikipedia. So I devised a way to counter this problem. At the end of every encyclopedic article, I add my own opinion. For example, for my post ‘Buy and Hold’, I added a section titled ‘Why buy and hold doesn’t work’. Now this is an opinion that my readers couldn’t get elsewhere, so they absolutely loved the post for giving such an insightful explanation plus an honest opinion on buy and hold.
What you should do: Don’t write too many encyclopedic-like posts. Write too many, and your readers will get bored. Considering the fact that encyclopedic-like keywords need a lot of backlinking to rank high in the SERPs, you won’t rank very high if you have too many keywords to rank for and not enough time to build enough backlinks. I suggest you write maybe 1 or 2 encyclopedic-like posts every month, add your own opinion into those 1-2 posts, and spend the rest of the month building backlinks towards those 1-2 posts.
Now comes the really good part. A backlink building strategy.
A problem that I once had with building backlinks is that I would soon forget how many backlinks I had built towards certain posts! So I devised a table to solve this problem.
This is a list of all the encyclopedic keywords and high traffic keywords I want to rank for. As you can see, this table allows me to keep track of my backlink building campaign. The ‘# of Top Quality Backlinks’ column refers to the number of PR3 or above backlinks I have towards my post. As you can see, this table is detailed enough to tell me a lot of things such as how many searches a month there are for my desired keyword, but not too detailed so that it will take forever to update. Feel free to copy this table for your own purposes.
I can’t stress this enough, but guest blogging is the only true way to get high quality backlinks and significantly improve your SERPs and PR. Simple as that.
So how do you get write guest posts that really improve your search engine rankings? I once wrote a post titled ‘Problems in America’. Then I went onto a really big, PR8 finance site and wrote a post titled ‘Finance Problems in America’. Then I created a backlink from that guest post to my ‘Problems in America’ post. A key part of how much Google values your backlink is how relevant your guest post is to your website’s post. Notice that my post and the guest post I wrote are very similar in nature. That is what consists of a good backlink. That one backlink made my ‘Problems in America’ post rank 12th for the keyword ‘problems in america’.
To summarize, write guest posts about things that are highly relevant to the post that you are backlinking to. And we all should know this, but a link from a high PR site is more valuable than a link from a low PR site.
Bonus!
Since I’m a huge fan of the DBT community, I’ve decided to include a little extra into this post. There’s one simple way that has netted me an extra 200 dainew daily unique visitors. It’s called…… commenting.
A lot of people have heard that commenting on other blogs is the way to generate lots of traffic for his or her own blog. So they go out and try that, fail, and start thinking that commenting doesn’t work. The truth is, it doesn’t work because they’re doing it wrong.
Instead of commenting on a ton of blogs and sites, you should focus commenting on one high traffic website. For example, I only comment on a really, really popular business news site, and those comments usually net me an extra 200 – 300 unique visitors each day. For obvious reasons, I prefer not to disclose the name of that news site. Anyways, I scour around for articles on that news site that seem to be interesting. Then, I go to the bottom of an article, and I get REALLY engaged with the other commentors. I write decent comments on that posts, and at the bottom of every comment, I include a highly relevant link to one of my blog’s post. For example, there was this post titled ‘America’s Politicians Need to Get Their Heads on Straight.’ I got really involved in the discussions on that post, and at the bottom of everyone of my comments, I included a link to my ‘Problems in America’ post. Some of you might think that I was link spamming, but in fact, I was not. The other commentors all liked my link, and the news site has never blocked me or rejected me from including a link to my highly relevant post.
You can do the same.
This blog post was written by Tony Chou from Investorz’ Blog. On his blog, Tony dispenses investment and financial advice that everyone, from novice investor to pro investor, can use.

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Google Penguin Update Is Live

After Google Panda now it’s time for Google Penguin to changing changing the search rankings around the web. This update to Google’s algorithm was rolled out a couple of days ago, and it’s main purpose is to make Google be able to recognize and punishes web spam more effectively.

More specifically this algorithm update will target:

• link schemes designed to increase rankings of certain pages or websites
• keyword stuffing used to increase the rankings of a certain page
• duplicate content used with the purpose of increasing the size of a website and thus its rankings
• redirects and cloaks used to show one things for users and another for search engines

Here’s a quote from an article on Search Engine Land:

The web spam techniques above aren’t new. Some of them are more than 10 years old and date back to before Google even operated as a search engine. So why is Google only now going after such methods?
It’s not, even though the blog post might give some newcomers that impression. Google’s warned about and fought against such techniques for ages. Rather, what’s really happening is that Google is rolling out better ways that it hopes to detect such abuses.
Despite warning against such spam techniques, it’s easy to find cases where they still work. It’s enough to make some long-time “white hat” SEOs feel foolish arguing that people should avoid spamming Google when it seems to pay-off, as I wrote about recently.
“We’ve heard a lot of solid feedback from SEOs who are trying to do the right thing and who don’t want to see webspam techniques rewarded, and we feel the same way,” said Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s webspam team.

Google said this update will affect only 3% of queries. While not much, it certainly is a signal that Google wants to tighten the grip on web spam, so make sure your SEO strategies are aligned with that.

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Outrank Your Competitors Faster with These New SEO Tools

A couple of weeks ago I got an email from the CEO of a company called cognitiveSEO. I knew they offered a set of SEO tools, but I had never used or tested the tools personally. The CEO gave me a live demo of what the tools could do, and I was impressed, so much that I decided to test the tools myself.

The first thing you’ll notice is that the user interface is really polished, and there are some useful features that you rarely find on similar sites, like the option to create bookmarklets on your browser and to use those to analyze the current website or page you are visiting.

After playing around a bit I tested the “Backlink Report” tool. It gives you a complete view of the backlink portfolio of a specific page or of a domain name. You’ll get details like the total number of links, the authority of the page/domain according to various sources, a cloud with the anchor text terms, the authority of the incoming links and so on. The cool thing is that you also have access to all the individual links, as you can see on the image below:

This seo tool will even track when the link was first found, whether it’s nofollow or dofollow, and the IP address of the linking website.

Next I decided to create a campaign, which is how you manage your activities inside the suite. You basically create one campaign for each website you want to improve the rankings, and while you add a new campaign you’ll be able to add the URL of your competitors, whether you want the tool to track new backlinks to your and so on. You’ll notice that it takes a while to create the campaign, but that’s because the tool will go and crawl on-demand all the links that it can find for your site and your competitors.

Once your campaign is ready to go, you have four sections to explore: Inboud Link Analysis, Link Management, Rank Tracking and To dos.

The Inboud Link Analysis section will give you all the backlink data, in a similar fashion to the Backlink Report, but with much more data. However in this section you have the option to compare your backlink portfolio with that of competitors, as you can see on the image below:

One cool thing you can do with the Link Analysis tool is to identify websites that have been punished with Google’s Penguin update. Here is a video case study on how you can actually do this.

You also have the ability to filter the links. For instance, you can select only links that were tracked over the past 3 months, that have a ranking authority of at least 3 and that are coming from blogs. So basically you can perform detailed research to understand why your site or that of a competitor is gaining or losing rankings over a certain period of time.

The Link Management section is where you go to manage and grow your backlinks. The tool automatically tracks all new links, as well as the existing ones to make sure they are still online. There’s even a preview tool that let’s you see on a small thumbnail exactly where your link appears on the website that is linking to you. You can also compare your performance with competitors here.

The Rank Tracking section allows you to input keywords you want to track, and it will keep a time line of your rankings, as well as that of competitors. You’ll notice that the graphics are really elaborate and customizable. All the tracking is done on a daily basis, in all the 3 big search engines (Google/Bing & Yahoo).

Finally the To-Do section is where you can schedule tasks, co-ordinate efforts with your partner or other members of the team and so on.

As a feedback to the creators of this toolset, I would love to see more modules added in the future. Social stuff and On Page reporting will be great add-ons to the toolset.

If you are planning to take your SEO to the next level I would take a look atcognitiveSEO. The pricing is pretty affordable (starts at $19 per month), and the set of tools you’ll get are among the best in the market, so check it out.

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Careful with Your Linkbuilding Strategies

If you haven’t been following the SEO sphere lately here’s what you need to know: Google is starting to push harder against artificial linkbuilding methods, including low quality links, link networks and so on.

Earlier this year Google started sending warnings to websites that were breaking one or more of Google’s policies regarding backlinks. Then we had the Penguin update which supposedly hit many of those websites hard.

The curious thing is that in some cases the penalty coming from those bad links was pretty harsh, and large websites that were penalized were desperate to fix things.

Google’s own advice was to remove those bad links. so the websites started asking for other websites to remove links pointing to them, and threatening to sue if they didn’t! I am not sure if this was clear, but here’s what they were basically saying: “Hey, you know those links you have pointing to my website? While I appreciated them a couple of months ago, I don’t need them anymore, so please remove them or I’ll sue you!”.

Search Engine Land has a very interesting article covering this whole debacle:Insanity: Google Sends New Link Warnings, Then Says You Can Ignore Them. Here’s a quote:

But what if people couldn’t get links taken down? The head of Google’s web spam team, Matt Cutts, just generally suggested such a thing was possible without giving any specific advice.

This led further support to those who argued that “negative SEO” was now suddenly a real possibility, that any publisher could be targeted with “bad links” and made to plunge in Google’s rankings. Google stressed that negative SEO in this way is rare and hard. To this date, negative SEO still hasn’t seemed to be a wide-spread problem for the vast majority of publishers on the web.

Those reassurances — along with a Google help page update saying Google “works hard to prevent” negative SEO — hasn’t calmed some. Negative SEO has remained a rallying cry especially for many hit by Penguin (and many were deservedly hit) looking for a way to fight back against Google.

Bottom line: don’t resort to artificial linkbuilding schemes, networks or paid links, as sooner or later it will get your website penalized. Sure, natural linkbuilding takes a lot more time and effort, but at least you can be sure it will be worth it in the long run.

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How to Make Money with Forex

Forex trading has made many people rich: George Soros, Warren Buffett are just some of the notable people who have made a fortune from trading currencies. You can make money from forex too, but in order to do this, you need to be properly positioned for this and go about it the right way. Here are the steps to take if you want to discover how to make money from forex.
Opening an Account with a Forex Broker
In order to trade forex, you need an account with a forex broker. Opening an account will require that you select a good broker, fill the account opening form online, attach documents to prove your identity and place of residence, and then fund the account. You need to be extremely careful here because a poor selection of brokers can start you off on a very bad footing. First, you need to select the right kind of broker.
There are basically two types of brokers; market makers and ECN brokers. You are much better off going with an ECN broker. It is more expensive though in terms of initial trading capital as well as cost of transactions, but it is worth every penny in the long run because the Electronic Communication Network (ECN) environment provides you with the most transparent environment for trading.

For account activation, make sure you have an international passport and a utility bill/bank statement as proof of address.
Payment Methods
You need to have an acceptable payment method for funding your trading account and withdrawing from your account. Many brokers allow traders to use credit/debit cards, Paypal, E-wallet services such as Moneybookers and wire transfers to deposit and withdraw funds from their accounts.
Whichever method you use, you need to make sure that you keep that method secure. Most of these methods will require online usage, so you must have the latest antivirus and internet security software installed on your computer. Make sure you are careful about the sites that you visit.
Funding Your Forex Account
You will need to fund your account with cash. Yes, you need cash to make cash in forex trading. Even though many sites claim you can start forex trading with as little as $100, the truth is that the same effort used in trading $100 is the same effort used in trading $10,000, and of course, you stand a better chance of making more money with $10,000 than with $100. So traders should as much as possible, try to lay their hands on as much money as they can to enhance their chances of generating more profits.
Learning How to Trade Currencies
Money and a trading account all count for nothing without the necessary skill. The trader should visit online forex trading forums, forex sites and attend online webinars on various aspects of forex trading in order to gain the necessary knowledge about how to trade the markets.
It will take some time to gain forex trading knowledge; indeed it should be seen as a form of going to school. School is something that never really ends.

How to Make Money from Forex: Key Issues

A key issue that many traders never really take time to address is how much money they intend to make from forex and how to go about it. The billionaires mentioned above are usually in positions for the long haul, but occasionally take some speculative trades when there are clear opportunities to make money (e.g. George Soros’s speculative trade in September 1992 against the British Pound)
So the trader has to decide on whether he is in it for speculation (in which case, positions will be closed out on a short term basis) or for the long term. The path the trader travels will determine how trades are made, and the risk management techniques. Trades made in a speculative manner carry greater risk.
One way a trader can decide to trade forex is to have an account for trading for the long term, and another that can be used to generate money on a weekly or monthly basis. When trading for the long haul, the trader is basically going to use the principle of compound interest to grow the account over a number of years using very low risk.
Using this technique, a trader can grow a $1000 account with 5% monthly target to at least $300,000 in about 3 years. This means that if you had only $1000 at the time of the global financial crisis in 2008 and you grew your account by just 5%, you would have hundreds of thousands of dollars as you read this. This is truly remarkable and if you can appreciate that 5% of $1000 in the first month is just $50, and that every other 5% gain is just the way $50 is to $1000, then you can appreciate the way the forex billionaires have made their money over time.

Traders need to start looking at the long term forex investment strategy in order to make real money from forex, as opposed to just trading for a few hundred dollars a month. So you can take the steps itemized above to set yourself on the path of how to make money from forex.

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3 Incredible Blog Growth Tricks (and How I Got on Lifehacker)

I’m not the biggest fan of discussing “tricks” when it comes to talking about blog growth.
Sometimes, however, there are a few tidbits of info that can have a big impact on your subscriber numbers, and when that’s the case, it’s worth talking about.
Today I’d like to reveal 3 tips I’ve been using recently in order to grow my own blog.

1.) The power of email

Recently, I had a post get featured on Lifehacker.com, and the result was a ton of traffic back to my site.
How did I get this to happen.
Would you believe it was as simple as a single email?
It’s true!
Well… there’s a bit more to it.
The key to getting featured on these big sites (see Steve Kamb’s experience of getting featured on Gizmodo) is to create the kind of content that they already share.
Here’s what I did: I saw that Lifehacker had already shared a post by my buddy Leo Wildrich on What Multitasking Does to Our Brains.
These are the kind of things you need to look out for.
I knew that if Lifehacker was willing to post about some cool psychology studies that reveal something about our brains, they’d be willing to do it again (as long as the article was different and interesting).
So, I wrote up a piece called How our Brain Tries to Sabotage Our Goals and had it featured on the Buffer blog.
I then shot both Leo and the Lifehacker contributor email a quick message about wanting to see if my post was suitable for Lifehacker.
Within a week, I got an email back saying it was going to be featured, and I’ve had great results since, all for a little extra effort both before and after creating my post.
You can do the same thing by finding popular pieces of content on large sites (not limited to the Gawker network!) and then pitching the original author a piece of content that you’ve written on a similar topic.
If the first piece did well for them, they are going to want more.
Derek Halpern would call this “The Drafting Technique“, which asserts that journalists are always on the hunt for content that will perform well, and it should be your job to give it to them.
The “drafting” effect comes in by following up on a previously popular piece, because you won’t have to make the argument that your piece will do well: they already know because they’ve already had a similar piece.
Are you reaching out to the right people to promote your content?

2.) Capturing leads on SlideShare

Earlier this year I wrote about getting on the homepage of SlideShare and how it can effect your traffic.
One thing that I didn’t know was how effective capturing leads on SlideShare can be (especially email subscriber).
Over on HelpScout, we did a test with our 75 Customer Service Facts & Statistics by putting a big chunk of the content on SlideShare:
It’s been really effective so far, because the call-to-action at the end of the presentation is much more effective if there is more content to consume.
A few things to keep in mind is that design is important and that your call-to-action should include a link to an opt-in page for more: don’t just tell people where to go, allow them to get there easily.
Fortunately, SlideShare allows you to include links into your PowerPoint presentations, so this is easy to do.
As I mentioned, formatting a large e-Book like we did for HelpScout has been super effective so far.
Readers seem much more likey to check out your call-to-action if it’s more of the same great content that they’ve already been reading.

3.) How to Easily Network with Fellow Bloggers

Networking has been the greatest asset that I’ve leverage in gaining the thousands of subscribers that I have on both Sparring Mind and Sophistefunk.
I talked about how I didn’t even use guest posting for Sophistefunk, relying totally on artists interviews and word of mouth from fans and other blogs to grow my site.
I relayed to you above how I reached out via email to both Leo and the Lifehacker staff to feature my content, and you can probably guess how that payed off (hundreds of new email subscribers in a single day).
Point is, networking is a powerful tool for growing your blog.
Most bloggers don’t know where to begin in this aspect though.
One place to start is by guest blogging.
If you need to find sites, you should be hitting up places like AllTop (browse by your category, they even had one for electronic music which I used).
Once you get started, you’ll find it easier to land guest blogging gigs.
The power here isn’t necessarily in the articles though: although guest posts can send you a fair amount of traffic, the real power comes in establishing connections with fellow bloggers and getting on their radar.
I’ve done a few guest posts for the Buffer blog, but the support Leo has shown for me and my business far outweighs the direct benefits I saw from posting for his blog.
This goes a same for a lot of bloggers I’ve connected with, and this isn’t niche specific: networking is the way to go no matter what you write about.
Don’t be afraid to shoot out friendly emails (not promoting yourself, just asking to connect) to bloggers, writers and journalists that cover your niche, you’ll never know what kind of connections you’ll be able to establish until you start.
Guest posting is good for networking because it allows you to offer something to busy people, and it starts the process of reciprocity with no former connection between the two parties.

Over To You

Thanks for making it to the bottom of my post!
Here’s what’s next:

• Let me know which of these techniques you are going to try first.
• Have you ever been featured on a huge site? How were you able to get featured? I’d love to hear your story.
• As a special thanks for reading my post, feel free to download my free e-Book on ‘Conversion Psychology’ or grab the HelpScout e-Book on 25 Ways to Thank Your Customers, totally free!

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the comments!
Gregory Ciotti is a regular DailyBlogTips columnist and a content strategist for HelpScout. You can get more from Greg on his blog Sparring Mind.

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33 Ways to Instant Blogging Failure

There are a lot of posts written about blogging success, but perhaps not quite as many written on why blogs fail. Since I believe failure is such a great part of the entrepreneurial learning process, and you really only fail when you quit, I thought I’d write an “homage” to failure if you will. Here you go: 33 ways to fail at blogging:

1. Not having a plan. Your blog just be a business some day, but you should run it like one now. That means spend time writing down your goals (like physically writing them down!) about where you hope to be in a month, six months, a year, etc.
2. Stop trying. I can’t tell you how many blogs I’ve started, worked on regularly for about three weeks, and abandoned. Of course, sometimes it is better to realize when you’ve hit a brick wall, but other times it just takes perseverance to break through The Dip and push on.
3. Stop caring. Apathy for your topic is a close second to #1, but it is slightly different. Lack of caring happens when you forget why you’re blogging in the first place—the energy for your topic is lost; all the great ideas fleshed out, overworked, and drained.
4. Having the wrong expectations. Similarly, if you have impossibly high expectations for your site that don’t align with the real world, burnout and apathy might be nearby.
5. Bad design. Having a site that projects the wrong image can be like trying to open a 5-star restaurant in a strip-mall. Possible? Sure. Likely to succeed? Probably not.
6. Too many ads. Corbett Barr of Think Traffic likes to start his students on a “no ads” blogging approach, only adding them in when the blogs are ready. “Ready” is obviously subjective, but it seems to me like having fewer than 2,000 visits a day might be pushing it.
7. Not having a big orange RSS button. This is a small thing seemingly, but I’m of the type where if I don’t have a super-easy way to subscribe to your content, I won’t come back (it’s not that I don’t love you, it’s just that I’ll forget). It doesn’t need to be orange, but you know…
8. Writing bad headlines. Or at least, not writing awesome headlines. Take the time to read how to write the best headlines possible, and practice them.
9. Not optimizing your About page. People who read your stuff want to read about who you are. Some guys can get away with being a meme, but you’re a person. Give us a big ‘ol mugshot of yourself and a couple paragraphs about why we should want to buy you a beer.
10. Not cross-linking your posts. Blogging—and the web, if you think about it—is ALL about links. Don’t go overboard, but remember that once you get someone on your site, you don’t want them to leave. Link to old posts, new ones, and pages on your site they might enjoy. Lead them to your product, if you have one.
11. Not setting up systems. I love systems. My first post at ProBlogger was on blogging systems, and I recommend it now, too.
12. Having a site that looks like an MFA (Made-for-AdSense) site. Unless, of course, you’re solely trying to blog for profit (nothing wrong with that, but it’s much harder to do when it’s a personal blog). If your design reeks of over-the-top AdSense ads, banners, and in-text link ads, it’s distracting and off-putting for visitors.
13. Bad SEO. Sure, you might not be trying to focus on organic search results for your “personal experiences” blog, but there’s a reason Google’s algorithm is such a proprietary equation: it KNOWS what’s good and bad, when it comes to content. If you haven’t taken at least a little time to optimize your content for a few keywords and add links, it can seem stale, vague, and boring for your readers.
14. No images. If there’s one universal truth that seems to still be pervasive in blogging (and even then there are exceptions), it’s “have at least one image in every post.” Images add color, depth, and flow to otherwise stagnant content.
15. Bad writing style. Your writing should certainly reflect who you are, but I doubt you talk in long-winded paragraphs. You probably also don’t sound like an advanced legal professor—tone it down, trim it down, and let us “hear” who you are.
16. Bad content layout. Going with the prior example, you shouldn’t let large paragraphs of content into your writing. Take a look at the LiveHacked blog, Jeff Goins’ blog, and read some Ernest Hemingway to get an idea for what short, easy-to-read text is all about.
17. Not using lists. This concept is not something that needs to be in every post, but if you visit some of the more popular blogs (including this one!), you’ll often see that the most popular content is blog posts organized into lists.
18. Having too many categories. The guys over at Thesis have a great policy on how many categories a blog should have. You’re not Huffington Post or Yahoo! Don’t have a thousand categories with one post in each.
19. Placing posts in too many categories. Also, don’t stick each post into every single possible category that seems like it might fit. Give each post one—maybe two—categories. It will help Google as well as your visitors find information faster.
20. Being annoying. Some bloggers have an “air” of rudeness to their writing—let them do it, because they’ve figured out how. For you, it’s better to be nice, humble, and kind—especially to your commenters.
21. Not having comments enabled. This is certainly a topic for debate, but I like to be able to leave a comment (looking at you, Mr. Godin!). I do understand, however, how huge sites can’t maintain the massive amounts of comments—and spam—that comes in. But you’re not that big yet—turn them on!
22. Placing too much on the sidebars. Again, this fault seems to plague “little-guys-trying-to-be-big-guys.” It’s not that you don’t have as much to say, it’s just that in the early years of your site, you need to be especially clear, almost to the point of minimalistic, about your site design.
23. Not capturing visitors’ attention. I highly recommend going through a copywriting course like Copyblogger—even if you’re writing about your trip to Africa, you can probably learn a few tips about drawing your readers in with a great writing style. See #9 and #14.
24. Not building a list. If you ever want to build a site that can generate income—even a little—start building a mailing list now. Even without ads, your visitors—if you’re offering great content—want that extra “connection” with you. Let them sign up to a mailing list. (I prefer MailChimp or Aweber).
25. Not engaging with visitors. Engagement can look like following up to commenters, starting dialogue through social media, etc.—just be available to your readers when they want to discuss your topic.
26. Not adding value. This one’s easy—if you’re not giving me a reason to come back, I won’t.
27. Too much self-promotion. If your site only links to other posts you’ve written on your site, and completely disregards the fact that there might be another blog with a somewhat similar topic, and your Twitter account is full of “check me out!” tweets, I’m gone like Donkey Kong.
28. Not enough self-promotion. Okay, okay—there is another side to the coin. You must take the time (I recommend an hour a week) to practice reaching out, engaging, and yeah—self-promoting your work. You did work hard on it, right?
29. “Shiny Object Syndrome.” There’s always another course to sign up for, always another product to buy teaching yada yada, and there’s always another traffic-generation tactic that you must try and implement now. Please resist—I’ve tried many (not all, but more than I should have). These products and “shiny objects” aren’t bad, they’re just probably bad for where you are in your blogging journey. Instead, read #25.
30. Not guest posting. Guess what? The best way of generating traffic, attention, and leading visitors back to your site is free. It’s called guest posting, and if you’ve not really put in the time to try it, check out Jon Morrow’s course at www.guestblogging.com (yeah, I know I just said not to grab at the shiny objects, but at least check out his free videos. He has quite a story, too!).
31. Not interacting with other “small fries.” Or “medium fries,” or “large fries” (or “ProBlogger-size fries”). I’m currently working with a few bloggers who have similar niche markets and are of similar sizes to my blog. If you’re not reaching out to these people, and trying to build relationships, don’t come crying to me when the world moves on without you.
32. Not reading. Read more. Period. Whether it’s news related to your industry, other blogs (I have about 300 blogs I read in my RSS reader), or just awesome fiction thrillers, you need to read as much as you can. It helps your understanding of your marketplace and it can greatly enhance your writing abilities.
33. Not writing enough. Back to #1 and #25, if you feel stuck, write. If you feel like quitting, write. If you feel like you’ve made it (yay! My post just went live on ProBlogger!) write. There’s never enough you can write—since blogging is directly monetized through words, you need more of them to make more of it. Kapeesh?

There you go—33 things to go work on right now. And I do realize there are more—many more. Let’s get it going in the comments section and see what else you can come up with (and what I forgot!).
You can read more from Nick Thacker on LiveHacked.com, where he publishes tips and tricks to hack your life and make it more suitable to your lifestyle.

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How to Make Your Blog Stand Out

Whether you’re blogging for profit, pleasure or promotion, your primary goal will always be to get as many eyeballs as possible on your posts. As the bigger kids on the blogging block – like Daily Blog Tips – have proven, it’s possible to start from scratch and attract a substantial, highly profitable following over time.

How to Make Your Blog Stand Out

Some of the most popular niche sites such as Mashable began as hobby blogs and now serve up millions of page views per month. If you want to get to that level, there are a few things you should keep in mind when structuring your blog’s content and layout.
Niche It Up
First and foremost, memorable blogs tend to zero in on a lower-level niche at a particular level of specificity. For instance, you won’t have much success by focusing a blog on “technology”, as it’s too broad a topic. Google, Bing and the like will favour the heavyweights when it comes to search engine rankings and visitors are more likely to drift towards a trusted source. A more reasonable niche to pursue would be “creative industry technology”. It’s a lot easier to corner a smaller niche than it is to dominate a broad swath of the market, and you can deliver higher-quality content to your readers by narrowing your focus.
Avoid the Clichés and Find Your Voice
One of the main problems with most bloggers is that they use a generic approach to crafting blog posts and entries. While such utilitarian writing styles have their place in standard reviews, tutorials and news items, they don’t really resonate with readers and are extremely forgettable. When is the last time you saw a post on Yahoo News or even Mashable that really stood out to you? Bloggers like Seth Godin and James Altucher have a distinctive writing style that’s easily recognisable, which is something you should attempt to emulate in your own way.
Take Risks and Be Passionate
When you take an unconventional stand, people respect your integrity and will debate you on your point of view. Don’t be controversial just for the sake of being edgy, but avoid vanilla-flavored boilerplateop-eds that are forgettable. In addition, you should blog about something that really lights your fire intellectually. When you work on something you love, your passion shines through the underlying content and attracts a dedicated, die-hard core of readers that are extremely loyal. Furthermore, those fanatical readers often do your evangelising for you and promote your blog in an organic manner through social media channels.
Build a Destination & a Reputation
Probably the most brilliant thing Apple ever did with the iPhone was to create an all-inclusive platform for users. In other words, they crafted an entire ecosystem instead of just an operating system or a piece of hardware. Alongside iTunes, the iPhone forms a one-stop iOS destination for apps and media content. Your blog should be a one-stop shop for information on your niche that your readers will immediately jump to when they need advice. Make sure your deep content is well-indexed and easy to find, and invest time in perfecting internal linking to increase time-on-site and boost page views.
Parting Words
The most important thing to remember is that very few people strike gold on their first attempt on any given blog. If a successful, high-traffic blog is integral to your overall business plan, you’ll just have to tough it out and plug away until you discover the magic formula. Finally, always remember that all the fancy software and SEO tactics in the world can’t replace quality content that delivers value. Craft relatable content that first and foremost helps your audience, and the traffic will follow sooner or later.
Matt Beswick is a digital consultant based in the UK, specialising in SEO, and also runs Pet365. Find him on Twitter @mattbeswick.

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NoFollow Feedburner Feed Links?

Inserting the rel=’nofollow’ tag within links will inform Google and other search engines that they should not follow that link (i.e. not sharing the link love). Most of the times using this attribute is a bad idea because it will remove the value of external links, like in the Wikipedia case.

What about the links pointing to your Feedburner feed(http://feeds.feedburner.com/yourfeed)? Feedburner provides an outstanding service and they do deserve recognition, but could a rel=’nofollow’ tag on those links have some benefits?
First of all many blogs have their Feedburner feed page ranking higher on search engines than the blog itself for most keywords. This is not optimal since a potential reader might end up visiting the feed page and not visiting the blog at all.
Secondly, provided you publish full feeds, the Feedburner feed page will also have the same content of your Homepage, possibly resulting on duplicate content penalties.
Inserting a nofollow tag on the feed links could resolve the first problem and improve the second one, specially if your feed links are sitewide and your blog has a high Pagerank.
Update: Marketing Pilgrim has a post with more suggestions for this issue.

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Search Engine Ranking Factors

It is always a good idea to be updated on the factors that search engines use to determine search results and rank websites. SEOMoz released a very detailed document titled “Search Engine Ranking Factors V2”, which outlines the views of 34 SEO experts regarding how Google’s algorithm works. Below you will find the Top 5 positive and negative factors on the study:

Top 5 Positive Factors

1. Keyword Use in Title Tag
2. Global Link Popularity of Site
3. Anchor Text of Inbound Link
4. Link Popularity within the Site
5. Age of Site

Top 5 Negative Factors

1. Server is Often Inaccessible to Bots
2. Content Very Similar or Duplicate of Existing Content on the Index
3. External Links to Low Quality/Spam sites
4. Participation in Link Schemes or Actively Selling Links
5. Duplicate Title/Meta Tags on Many Pages

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How Google Ranks Blogs

Google Blog Search is a new tool that is gaining popularity on the Internet lately. The Blog Search might also be a good source of visitors if your blog rank on the first positions for specific keywords, but what factors does Google take into account to elaborate the search results?

The “Seo by the Sea” blog has an interesting articleanalyzing a new patent from Google that contains some indicators about the positive and negative factors affecting blog ranking, check it out:
Positive Factors:

• Popularity of the blog (RSS subscriptions)
• Implied popularity (how many clicks search results get)
• Inclusion in blogrolls
• Inclusion in “high quality” blogrolls
• Tagging of posts (also from users)
• References to the blog by sources other than blogs
• Pagerank

Negative Factors:

• Predictable frequency of posts (short bursts of posts might indicate spam)
• Content of the blog does not match content of the feed
• Content includes spam keywords
• Duplicated content
• Posts have all the same size
• Link distribution of the blog
• Posts primarily link to one page or site

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Apply for the SEO Clinic

The Search Engine Journal started a new project called SEO Clinic. They will basically select one blog every week and optimize it. The tips and advice will include link building techniques, site navigation, usability, copywriting, social media optimization and more.
The project is a free service, and considering the expertise of those guys I guess that it could be worth even for established sites. You can candidate your blog for the SEO Clinic through the contact form on the website.

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Gather .edu and .gov backlinks

It is widely accepted that .edu and .gov backlinks carry a larger weight for search engine algorithms. Despite the fact that Google has never admitted it (sometimes it even neglected) most SEO and online marketing experts would confirm that .edu and .gov links outperform other extensions in terms of search ranking juice.There are several ways to collect those links, below I will explain two of them, depending on whether your blog has relevant content to educational and governmental websites or not.
Blogs with relevant content
The first step to get some .edu and .gov backlinks pointing to your website is to locate sites related to your topic ending with those extensions. Using the Google operator site:.edu and site:.gov combined with the keywords of your blog should enable you to find an extensive list of such sites.

site:.edu "keyword 1" 

site:.gov "keyword 1"

Once you have a list of sites explore them and select the ones you think would have a higher probability of sharing some external links with your blog. Finally contact the webmaster of those sites and point them to the content on your blog that could be relevant and valuable to those sites. It is always a good idea to link first to the sites before asking the backlink.
Blogs without relevant content
If your blog does not have content that could be relevant or valuable to educational and governmental websites your should look for types of sites that allow users to create a backlink without interacting with the webmaster, and the most common types of those sites are blogs and online forums.
Again you can use the Google operators to generate a list of such sites. Notice that the site:.edu argument limits the search results to sites with a .edu extension while the inurl:blog attribute ensures that results will have the word blog on the URL structure.

site:.edu inurl:blog "keyword 1"

site:.edu inurl:forum "keyword 1"

site:.gov inurl:blog "keyword 1"

site:.gov inurl:forum "keyword 1"    

Finally track down the sites with discussions relevant to the topic of your blog and join the conversation, leaving a backlink to your site either through the comment section or on inside a forum thread. Bear in mind that you should not spam those sites for the sake of getting as many backlinks as possible. Make sure that you are adding useful information and not just polluting the online environment.
Update: Check out the “Enhanced” version of those search queries.

 

                         

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Get rid of the calendar

Many blog templates or WordPress themes come with a calendar by default. This feature could be useful if you write content that is dependent on time. Someone writing about his journey across the Sahara desert, for instance, would need to have a calendar so that readers would be able to track posts in a chronological order and find posts of a specific day.Get rid of the calendar

Most bloggers, however, write about topics that are not dependent on time. The first question you need to ask yourself is: “Will my readers benefit from having a calendar where they can click on a particular day and check what I have written on that day?”. The answer is probably “no” in most of the cases. The calendar, therefore, will only clutter your sidebar and confuse your visitors.

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Create a robots.txt file

The robots.txt file is used to instruct search engine robots about what pages on your website should be crawled and consequently indexed. Most websites have files and folders that are not relevant for search engines (like images or admin files) therefore creating a robots.txt file can actually improve your website indexation.
A robots.txt is a simple text file that can be created with Notepad. If you are using WordPress a sample robots.txt file would be:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-
Disallow: /feed/
Disallow: /trackback/

“User-agent: *” means that all the search bots (from Google, Yahoo, MSN and so on) should use those instructions to crawl your website. Unless your website is complex you will not need to set different instructions for different spiders.
“Disallow: /wp-” will make sure that the search engines will not crawl the WordPress files. This line will exclude all files and foldes starting with “wp-” from the indexation, avoiding duplicated content and admin files.
If you are not using WordPress just substitute the Disallow lines with files or folders on your website that should not be crawled, for instance:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /images/
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /any other folder to be excluded/

After you created the robots.txt file just upload it to your root directory and you are done!

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How to setup a 301 Redirect

The “301 Permanent Redirect” is the most efficient and search engine friendly method for redirecting websites. You can use it in several situations, including:

• to redirect an old website to a new address
• to setup several domains pointing to one website
• to enforce only one version of your website (www. or no-www)
• to harmonize a URL structure change

There are several ways to setup a 301 Redirect, below I will cover the most used ones:
PHP Single Page Redirect
In order to redirect a static page to a new address simply enter the code below inside the index.php file.

<?php
header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
header("Location: http://www.newdomain.com/page.html");
exit();
?>

PHP Canonical Redirect
The Canonical 301 Redirect will add (or remove) the www. prefixes to all the pages inside your domain. The code below redirects the visitors of the http://domain.com version to http://www.domain.com.

<?php
if (substr($_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'],0,3) != 'www') {
header('HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently');
header('Location: http://www.'.$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']
.$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);
}
?>

Apache .htaccess Singe Page Redirect
In order to use this method you will need to create a file named .htaccess (not supported by Windows-based hosting) and place it on the root directory of your website, then just add the code below to the file.

Redirect 301 /old/oldpage.htm /new/http://www.domain.com/newpage.htm

Apache .htaccess Canonical Redirect
Follow the same steps as before but insert the code below instead (it will redirect all the visitors accessing http://domain.com to http://www.domain.com)

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^domain.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

ASP Single Page Redirect
This redirect method is used with the Active Server Pages platform.

<%
Response.Status="301 Moved Permanently"
Response.AddHeader='Location','http://www.new-url.com/'
%>

ASP Canonical Redirect

The Canonical Redirect with ASP must be located in a script that is executed in every page on the server before the page content starts.

<%
If InStr(Request.ServerVariables("SERVER_NAME"),"www") = 0 Then
Response.Status="301 Moved Permanently"
Response.AddHeader "Location","http://www."
& Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_HOST")
& Request.ServerVariables("SCRIPT_NAME")
End if
%>

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Optimize your Meta Description Tag

The Meta Description Tag (placed between the head and /head tags) is used by some search engines to create the snippets of text that you see right below the results on search queries. It does not carry any weight in the search algorithm of Google, but it does carry a certain weight for Yahoo and other smaller search engines so you should not neglect it altogether.
One problem with the Meta Description Tag of most websites is that it is static. People usually include a general description about the site, which is suitable only to the home page. Should a visitor find an internal page (say a single post) through a search engine the tag will be the same, containing no information about the content of that internal page whatsoever. You can use the SEO tools listed here to check the quality of your meta description tags.
In order to optimize your Meta Description Tag you should make it dynamic, making sure that it will include the first few lines of text of every single page on your site. A very simple way to do this under the WordPress platform is to make the Description tag equal to the post excerpt, like the code below illustrates.

            <meta name="description" content="<?php the_excerpt() ?>" />

Alternatively you can download a plugin called Head META Description. Just upload the plugin, activate it and insert the following line on your header:

                                             <?php head_meta_desc(); ?>


The plugin will generate the Meta Description automatically, either by extracting the first words of your posts or by displaying the post excerpt (you can configure it).

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