Jammed: Full into Capacity

I have not written any personal entry for this blog for long time now as I have been busy with my internship and maintaining my other personal blog on my spare time.

Jammed: Full into Capacity has been online for over three years now, have gone through changes similar to what happens to a usual blog – topic and layout changes, no-post-for-weeks stages, traffic drops (as reflected on my dropping Alexa rank) and the worst thing is disappearing from the top spots of Google SERPs.  I am still figuring out until now which of the Google’s guidelines have I violated.

Since the drop in traffic, my Adsense earnings have dropped to over 50%.  This was expected because most of my traffic comes from Google searches, with about 40% or more from Yahoo! searches.

During these past days, these visits from Yahoo! searches are still giving me Adsense income.  So after over a month of blog vacation (the previous posts have been powered by Syndicate Kahuna, an auto-syndicator), I have decided to increase pageviews through Yahoo! searches.  To do it, I have to regularly post interesting topics or potentially searched topics that could drive traffic to this blog.

So I am on a mission now:

- increase my visitors coming from Yahoo!

- target potential visitors from other search engines like MSN, AskJeeves, and Altavista.

- increase my Alexa rank.

- keep my loyal visitors and subscribers.

Blogging, Personal Blog, Blogging

If you know anything about search engine optimization (SEO), you know that building links to your site (more commonly referred to as backlinks) is probably the most import piece of the puzzle. The question then for most newcomers to SEO is: “How to I get other sites to link to my site?”

In this article, I’m going to show you 10 of the most powerful techniques of getting links back to your site. Some of these techniques will cost you money. Others are totally free. Let’s get into it!

1. Submit Your Site to Web Directories – There are literally thousands of web directories online that will allow you to submit your site. Some will charge a fee, but most are free. The two most powerful
web directories are DMOZ.org and Yahoo. DMOZ is free and Yahoo charges $299 per year.

2. Participate in Forums – Many forums will allow you to put your website’s URL in a signature file. Find forums in your niche and join the discussions. Do not just spam the forum with your link or you will get flagged. Add good quality to the discussion and your link will be left alone.

3. Comment on Blogs – Just like posting to forums, you should make sure you always add good quality and post real comments. Find blogs related to your website’s theme and post comments. I personally use a powerful software tool to help me find high quality blogs to comment on. The tools is called Comment Hut. All you do is input your keywords and it finds blogs. Check out the free video about it at
http://www.contentfortunes.com/commenthut

4. Article Marketing – Write articles and submit them to article directories. You will be allowed to leave a link to your site in your author’s resource box.

5. Social Bookmarking – Make it easy for your website visitors to submit your site to social bookmarking sites like Del.icio.us, Digg and other top social bookmarking sites. Some website owners even submit their own sites (although this is sometimes considered grey hat).

6. Submit Press Releases – There are many sites where you can submit press releases online and link back to your website. Most will charge a minimal fee to include a link, but there are a few good quality free press release sites as well.

7. Answer Questions – There are a handful of sites out there that allow people to ask questions and others to provide the answers. An example is Yahoo Answers. Join this site, find questions related to the topic of your site and answer them (along with a link back to your site).

8. Classified Ads – Place links to your sites in classified ads. This could include paid newspaper classified ads as well as free classified sites like USFreeAds.com and Craig’s List.

9. Social Networking Sites – Place links back to your sites from your profile pages on any social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, Squidoo and others.

10. Paid Links – Buy links from other websites and point them back to your site. This is a controversial technique so use with caution.

Well there you have it! That’s 10 solid tips for generating links back to your site which will help your site grow in the search engines.

These tips are from the newsletter of Jason Waganer of FreeMonthlyContent.com.

Additional blog tips: 10 Best Ways to Promote Your Blog

Blogging Blog, Blog Promotion, Blog Tips, Blog Traffic, Blogging

The proliferation of blogging has captured the online community. As blogs originally were most popular during political campaigns, there are now blogs dedicated to pretty much any topic under the sun. If you’re new to the blogging community or are looking to improve your current blog, you should try to make your blog stand out from the rest of the pack as much as possible. The only way you’ll generate steady traffic to your site is if it offers something that other blogs in the same genre don’t. Here are a few tips to consider as you try to develop a niche audience for your blog:

1. Produce new material. If you’re simply regurgitating what’s already available on the web then you’re going to have a small audience and nobody will link to your site. Offering a unique perspective on your topic is what will keep people coming back for more. While you should read as many blogs similar to yours to see what others are saying, use your research to your advantage and figure out what seems to be missing in the online dialogue and fill in those holes.
2. Be amusing. Regardless of whether you’re telling a personal story or commenting on something that happened in the public limelight you should let your sense of humor emerge. What’s humorous for one person may not be for the next guy, but don’t let that keep your sense of humor to shine through.
3. Link to a variety of sites. If you’re simply linking to the same sites that other blogs in your genre are then you’re going to alienate readers. Readers want to follow a trail of links that brings them to new, interesting sites. Peppering fresh links into your articles will make your readers a happy bunch and they’ll remember that you produced an enjoyable reading experience.
4. Keep it short and sweet. You need to keep your reader’s attention span in mind and keep your articles on the short side. Somewhere between 300 and 500 words is a solid length for your posts. Being concise and getting to your underlying point quickly will make your blog sing better.
5. Accept guest posts on your site. Allowing other people to post on your site helps you and your guest blogger. It gives you a rest and gives the guest blogger a chance to shine on a reputable blog.

By-line:

This post was contributed by Heather Johnson, who writes on the subject of yahoo efax. She invites your feedback at heatherjohnson2323 at gmail dot com.

Blogging, Tips Blog, Blog Tools, Blogging, SEO, Tips

1. Make and develop your own website. Do NOT copy or get websites that have absolutley no value. Always write and create good content for your website visitors. It will be much easier to write, make and develop a website about what you already know.

Build a website with lots of good original content….this is what almost all “Internet Marketing Guru’s” will tell you. It’s also called Niche Marketing.

2. Find your niche. What do you do for a living? What are your interests, your hobbies, your love. Do you like sports? What about working and tinkering with cars/trucks. Do you like skateboarding, gardening, are you a wizard at math, electronics, computers. Do you enjoy the outdoors, traveling, gambling, and music. Why shoot even the 9th grade math expert can tell others about their algebra problems.

3. Once you have that in mind start writing it down. Yes… take a pen and put it on paper. You will probably have tons of content for your website. This is what people want, and more importantly what “google” and the rest of the search engines are craving for. Think about it! More and more people turn to their computer to find a solution to their problem. And you may have the answer.
Read more…

Blogging Blog, Blogging Tips, Internet, Webmaster Tools

Blogging For Traffic Tip #17 – Getting One Way Links To Your Blog

So how do you get reciprocal links? Easy! Submit your links to directories and add link sites.
Here is what you do.

Go to Google.com and type in “Add Link” “target market” then “Submit Link” “target market”

If you don’t know what I mean, here is an example.
“Add Link” “gardening”
“Submit Link” “gardening”

Do that exactly as it’s typed and see what you get…. If you did it correctly, you should have a listing of websites that accept link submissions in your target market.

Blogging For Traffic Tip #18 – Setup Your Own Opt-in Newsletter For Repeat Traffic

If you want to keep getting more and more repeat traffic from loyal visitors, the best way to do this is to setup an opt-in list or newsletter or some sort of way to capture peoples email addresses.

You can setup a mailing list easily with a service like Aweber.com.

The best way to run a mailing list like this is to send out a weekly newsletter, but if that sounds like too much trouble, setup a mailing list where you email people everytime a new post is made in your blog.

Having an online newsletter is very beneficial to blog traffic. People will email your newsletter onto their friends and you will get even more traffic.

Blogging For Traffic Tip #19 – Submit Your Blog And RSS Feed To Relevant Directories!

Another great free way to get traffic to your blog is to submit your blog to all the best blog directories and rss directories.

There are two great websites that are free that deal with this.
Read more…

Blogging, Tips Blog, Blog Tips, Blog Traffic, Blogging, Blogging Tips, Get Massive Traffic

Blogging For Traffic Tip #9 – Become An Expert In A Small Niche Market

One the best ways to get traffic to your blog is to become a big fish in a small pond. When you corner the market in any niche, you become an expert and a traffic gathering machine.

Becoming an expert in the field is not that hard. Just post lots of really informative blogs, setup an opt-in list newsletter, maybe write a few ebooks.

It is so much easier to become an expert in a niche within a niche. Trying to be an expert in a big field full of experts already is hard work.

Internet marketing is a niche, creating landing pages is a niche within the niche. Become the expert in the niche within the niche.

Blogging For Traffic Tip #10 – Great Examples Of Highly Successful Blogs

You can learn a lot from really great blogs, the problem is, truly finding a great blog to replicate. One of the best blogs around is at….

http://www.stevepavlina.com

He actually wrote a post about how he makes money from his blogs. He even shows you how much money and how to get traffic to your blog.

http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/05/how-to-make-money-from-your-blog/

His blog is the perfect example of timeless, quality, original content that gives people a plan to use and his personality shines through.
Read more…

Blogging Blog, Blog Tips, Blog Traffic, Blogging, Blogging Tips, Get Massive Traffic