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Contact Forms or Emails?

Kent — Sun, 02 Jun 2013 07:23:36 +0000

Last time I checked there was an estimate of 30 billion web pages on the Internet. It sounds quite impressive and the number is growing. The number of websites and blogs that are getting spammed is also growing, so webmasters are finding ways to combat spam. It has been stated that one of the reasons that webmasters are receiving spam is because they place their email address on their website. The problem is that spammers are crawling webpages in order to obtain any email address they can find, so that later they can send spam to that email. Often email addresses are also being sold to other spammers. One of the ways to protect yourself from your email being harvested like that is to implement a contact form on your website. This way people will still be able to contact you, but it will drastically reduce the amount of spam you are receiving. Generally, it is a good rule not to give away your email address in any public place. Sooner or later, spammers are going to find such email address and it is easier to prevent spam, then to fight with it. That is why using contact forms on websites is an excellent idea.

High Quality Posts

Kent — Fri, 31 May 2013 07:24:22 +0000

While college literature and writing classes can teach us to write articles properly, the Internet has its own rules. Here bloggers try to converse with their readers, and usually avoid using complicated language as they appeal to a broader spectrum of people. Actually, very few good and popular bloggers graduated from some kind of English studies, or have a diploma in this field. Writing the highest quality posts takes dedication, rather than knowledge. Here are some ideas on how to write a really outstanding post:

1. Use as many visual aids as possible. Do not hesitate to use colorful images that correspond to the topic of your post. It is true that a picture is worth a thousand words. In today’s world of media with so many ways to present reality like movies and slide shows, it is essential to do everything possible in order to stand out. Otherwise, your posts and blog might not attract many readers.
2. Use different formatting techniques to underline the most valuable content of your post. Try underlying the key points of your article. Use capital letters to emphasize the content that cannot be missed by your readers. Make use of it so that you can communicate something very important. Nonetheless, it is important not to use formatting techniques too much, because this way your post will become harder to read.

Of course, nothing can replace actual experience so I suggest that you keep writing. Writing high quality posts takes a lot of time so take that into account.

Bounce Rate

Kent — Wed, 01 May 2013 08:07:55 +0000

Bloggers strive for more visitors, but they should also keep in mind how long visitors stay on the site, how many pages they visit etc. One of the ways to measure such performance is to determine the bounce rate. Bounce rate is in a sense a measure how interesting other pages of your site are to your visitors. A bounce is when a visitor lands on one page of your site, but does not visit other pages on your site. If you want to find out your bounce rate, you might want to use Google Analytics, as it displays your bounce rate, along with an average time spent on your website. But how important is bounce rate? Well first of all, it provides certain information that you can take advantage of and maybe make some appropriate changes to your website. On the other hand, I would not worry too much about it, because blogs often tend to have a quite high bounce rate due to the fact that at least a few newest posts are displayed on the main page. On the other hand, if you are happy as a blogger, and if you are happy with what you do, you will not worry if many people are reading your posts. If you write for a few people only, like your family members or friends, your bounce rate will not be as important to you. At least, it should not be as important as for people who try to have the most popular blog out there.

Top Commentators Plug-in

Kent — Wed, 01 May 2013 07:03:35 +0000

There are many interesting plug-ins that blogs have installed these days. I like visiting blogs that implement the top commentators plug-in on their site, as this way I have the opportunity to be listed on a blogs homepage by commenting a lot on it. This is a feature that can encourage readers to engage into an active discussion on a blog, and reward them by giving them SEO benefits and possibly traffic. I have to admit that as a regular commentator myself when I am deciding which blog to visit and comment on, I am much more prone to choose a blog that will allow me to appear as a top commentator. One of the reasons that is the case is that this way I can feel like a contributor. Commenting on blogs is definitely something that a lot of bloggers might be interested in doing, not only for fun, but also to acquire some backlinks. A lot of people probably do not care whether they appear as top commentators, but it has its benefits. Many people prefer not to leave any comments; however, leaving comments on a blog that you have just visited can give you something that you need: popularity, backlinks, and even friends. I encourage each one of you to leave a comment on various blogs from time to time. This is also an excellent way to get in touch with other bloggers, and get involved in various events in the blogosphere.

Tips on Blogging

Kent — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 08:23:39 +0000

Do you feel like you could benefit from some advice? Do you need some tips on blogging? Here are some tips that might be useful:

1. At the end of each post try to encourage your readers to leave feedback by asking them a question, or even a few short questions that they will be able to answer in their comments. This only makes sense if you enabled comments and are willing to read what your visitors have to say.
2. To make your posts more attractive, use pictures, graphs, and other visual forms of communication. One picture can mean more than even a thousand words. However, make sure that you do not use too many pictures, because you want your page to load in a reasonable time. Not everyone uses broadband connections yet, so such users will appreciate websites that load fast.
3. Make sure your website does not have a lot of downtime. It simply looks unprofessional and your readers may notice that. If possible, choose web hosting that has a guarantee of 99% uptime.
4. Always try to chose catchy titles for your articles that will attract the attention of your readers. You can see for yourself what I mean by catchy titles by looking at the top submissions at bookmarking sites like Digg.
5. Focus on writing “how to” type of articles. People love them, and they are always willing to read more of those in hope of learning something new. Make sure it is something related to the topic of your blog, and something that is actually interesting and useful. You can always ask your family and friends if you need someones opinion.

Why People Stop Blogging

Kent — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 09:12:50 +0000

Blogging is a great way to express yourself, and an efficient way to share your knowledge. Blogging is certainly attractive for many reasons. That is why I have been asking myself a question why people stop blogging. Why do they abandon the results of their hard work? Here are some reasons why people might stop blogging at some point:

1. They do not see enough people visiting their blog as they wished. They feel that their blog is somehow inadequate and not attractive. Being proud of your website is important, if you want others to appreciate it as well.
2. They abandon blogs because they decide to spend their time in some other way. Blogging is time consuming, so take that into account.
3. They do not make any money from their blog. This can be especially discouraging for people who pay a lot of money for hosting, web design, SEO, advertising, and other services.
4. They do not see the results of their work immediately. Blogging is not for everyone, as it requires patience and often some investment. Many people start seeing results after at least a few months of blogging.
5. People start too many blogs at the same time and later are not able to keep the pace.
6. Some bloggers are no longer interested in a topic that they chose in the beginning of their blogging life. It happens. In my opinion, blogging about something that you have passion for is crucial.

Maintaining your Blog

Kent — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 07:26:03 +0000

This time I want to give some practical advice about updating your blog regularly. It is easy to start a blog; however, it is a lot harder to update it on a regular basis. One of the main challenges is to find time to write a blog entry a few times per week. That is because it requires you to have a regular lifestyle. However, many bloggers agree that there is an easy way to solve this challenge. The solution is to write a few blog entries in advance. You can write them in Word or any other text editor, and later copy/paste them to your blog without any problems. If you write your blog entries like that, you have to watch out that your blog entry will not be outdated when you post it. If your blog offers general type of advice, it will not be a problem, as entries will probably not get outdated very fast. On the other hand, this idea is quite useless when you think about news blogs, which need fresh content. So as I said, it is important to know whether the post you are going to write is going to get outdated soon. Anyway, if you want your blog to be popular, but you do not have time to write a few blog entries per week or per month, then you should probably re-evaluate whether you want to be blogging at all. Of course, you can still be blogging from time to time if the visitors of your blog are just your closest friends.

Plagiarism

Kent — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 09:13:00 +0000

A lot of bloggers are worried about others stealing their posts, and posting them on some other blogs without permission or any kind of acknowledgment who is the real author of the post. One of the reasons that some people keep doing such things is that it is a lot easier to have rich content on your blog just by copy/pasting, rather than writing posts yourself. Many people think that nobody will notice that the content was taken from another website, and they feel pretty safe doing so on a regular basis.

Unfortunately for them, there are tools to look for plagiaristic content and one of such tools is copyscape.com. It is a website that basically searches the Internet for copies of your website/blog entries and lists the results for you to analyze. It is a free service and a lot of websites like, for example, getafreelancer.com take advantage out of it to check if submitted articles are original. Keep in mind that if somebody copies your blog entry to a website that is not indexed by Google, copyscape.com might not detect it. On the other hand, people will not be able to find such a website easily anyway. If you are seriously interested in protecting your website, you might want to put a “Page Protected by Copyscape Do Not Copy” widget on your blog. Other bloggers did so, and while it will not prevent anyone from copying content from your blog, it will let them know that you know how to check for duplicate content.

Implementing Videos

Kent — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 08:11:59 +0000

While I was reading various blogging tips, I read somewhere that in order to attract more traffic to a blog or website, it is advisable to add some movie content. What is more appealing to people: movie clips or plain text? I think that there are a lot of people who may prefer video over text, and that is why TV is so popular. Of course, those who visit blogs generally enjoy reading text, but there is no reason why you would not want to enhance their experience by adding some video clips. Integrating movie clips to one’s website can be easy for someone who has a suitable website like, for example, a blog dedicated to entertainment. On the other hand, it may be more difficult to add clips if your blog is about other topics like, for example, blogging. This is because of a few reasons:

Internet users like watching funny movies, and I have never heard of any funny movie on the topic of blogging. Actually, there are not that many videos about the topic of bloggign at all.

Most video clips about blogging are copyrighted so you would have to create your own videos, which is not that easy. Not all writers would actually even enjoy creating videos.

Bloggers usually do not need a hosting company that offers a lot of bandwidth. However, if they choose to host numerous videos, they would also need to make sure that they will not exceed their bandwidth limit.

Email and Your Blog

Kent — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 07:11:14 +0000

As a blogger it is a good idea to have an email address that can be solely used for your blog, unless you have a contact form on your website, which enables your readers to contact you. Since having an email dedicated to your blog seems to have many advantages, it is a good idea to make sure that your email account is always reachable and that it has free space for incoming messages. You can make sure this happens by registering at such places like Gmail. Gmail allows you to store over 6GB of data, which means that you never have to delete your emails. You can always access your messages, which gives Gmail an advantage over other free email accounts which unfortunately are quite often under maintenance. For me the most important thing is accessibility, so that is why I recommend Gmail. However, I am sure there are also other reliable companies that might offer similar quality of services. Of course, they might not always be free like Gmail is. It is also not a secret that Gmail gained so much popularity, because it is backed up by one of the largest Internet giants: Google. Google has the financing and traffic to make such projects work.