For many bloggers, increasing traffic to their blogs is not the sole goal. Most individuals that blog want to keep their visitors coming back for more. The following are four ways to keep visitors coming to your blog site.

Update your blog: The simplest way to keep visitors coming back to your blog site is to update your blog on a frequent basis. Subscribers will stay true to blogs that are updated day-by-day.

Some blog writers even updated several times a day. Subscribers will tend to lose interest in your writing if they have to wait several days for new material. Be loyal to your reviewers and your subscribers will be true to your blog. Likewise, there are literally zillions of blogs available on the Net. If your blog is not updated on a regular basis, you will lose your readers to another blog site.

Another fun way to update your blog and keep your readers interested in your site is to include something fun for your subscribers to relish. That could be as elementary as a joke or maybe a link to a humorous narrative you have found on the Net. You might also try including a trivia game or polls for your readers to enjoy on a regular basis.

Take Part in web communities: Taking part in web communities or discussion meeting places and mentioning your blog whenever contingent will help keep subscribers coming back to your site. In addition, you can gain new subscribers when doing this.

Understand who reads your blogs: Another great way to keep blog subscribers coming back for more is to understand who reads your blog and publish content that is targeted towards them. This does not mean that you have to compose on only one particular subject, though.

If you are a stay at home mom and write about your life at home with the kids, your loyal subscribers may not appreciate it if you write about cutting-edge issues or use a lot of offensive language in your writing. If you mostly write humor, do not bog down your readers down with sorrowful woefulness’s and stories. Your subscribers will be interested in the things that attracted to your site in the first place.

Include keywords: You can gain readership and help keep your current readers by including certain keywords in your blog. If you have entered your blog on a search engine, these keywords that point to your blog will come up after a search. This is a great way to get readers interested in your blog. This is also a good way for companies to increase the traffic to their blog. This is THE best way to receive backlinks, ranking and SERPs from the engines – the best way because it’s the easiest way.

You already have someone writing the content for you, or you might be writing it yourself – either way, by using keywords, you could beef up your visitors by blogging with keywords, adding tags on the blogs, and keeping up with the blogs. Google usually suggest 1-3 blogs every 3 days in order to get the best results possible.

Guest article by Kristi Ambrose (a huge fan of http://www.kristiambrosecontent.com)

Whether or not you are already using article in your affiliate marketing efforts, you can take advantage of it during the holiday season. Article marketing is the process of using articles full of original content that display your knowledge and expertise to attract customers. Thousands of content publishers look for quality, relevant articles for their directories.

Further focus your efforts by taking advantage of what consumers need during the holiday shopping season; valuable information. Create quality content that addresses the reader’s concerns as well as provides the information they need to make an informed purchase. Treat each individual article you write like it is the one that will generate your next sale.

Knowledge and Expertise

Some aspects of article marketing don’t change whether it’s spring, summer or Christmas time. It’s always important to highlight your knowledge and expertise about the items you’re marketing. Your knowledge as an affiliate marketer becomes even more valuable during the holiday shopping season.

More than any other time of year, the holidays bring consumers searching for products they may not know much about. Many people are searching for gifts that the recipient is knowledgeable about while they themselves are not. Use your expertise to give them confidence and ideas will draw them directly to back to the sites you are marketing.

Recycle and Use New Keywords

One great thing about article marketing during Christmas is that you can recycle articles you’ve already written. There are several ways to change your focus and re-write articles so that they appeal to the holiday shopper. One way is to highlight Christmas and holiday traditions that are related to the products and services you’re selling.

Another great way to promote your products to gift-buyers and increase sales is by grouping items together. Many people love giving holiday gift baskets or themed packages. Focusing on products that complement each other lets you upsell. Upselling generates more revenue while at the same time providing exactly what consumers are looking to give.

Take advantage of your usual keywords and add targeted holiday keywords. Potential customers will be searching for gifts, holiday themes, and festive merchandise and ideas. By adding specific Christmas keywords, you attract shoppers who are specifically looking for gifts. Once they’ve found your article, they will be further impressed by the information you provide.

Christmas is a great time to draw new customers into the sites you’re marketing. By using articles to show off your expertise and the quality of your products, you attract new shoppers. They pass along great gift ideas to their friends, who will and pass the information along to their friends.

Article marketing is a great way to get the message out there for all of the products you include in your affiliate marketing business. Create a marketing strategy that includes article marketing and take advantage of the opportunity to create high quality content for consumers. Providing information they seek is the best way to turn readers into customers.

–
Mike Lawson is a freelance consultant to internet marketers. His professional writing service provides quality content for affiliate marketers. http://contentcrooner.com/holiday_promotion.php

Social Media by Luc Legay.

The social media movement has expanded the amount of people we can reach and connect with on a personal level. The new relationships and connections we create with people all over the world can have a profound effect on our personal and business growth. We learn about cultures and nations that we were, perhaps, previously ignorant of. None of this is a new concept, but what may be is how quickly you can destroy your business by using social media incorrectly.

Transparency is a Utopian Concept

Not too long ago, Michael Fortin wrote an article titled “Don’t Be Transparent, Be Authentic Instead.” That article is an important read for any social media wrangling business blogger.

That article is the tip of the iceberg in the concept of ‘transparency’ being too Utopian to work within the jaded confines of our society. Of course, true transparency is ideal. Many things about a perfect world are Unfortunately, as a group, most of the world isn’t ready or willing to accept true transparency without penalty.

When Transparency Fails

Let me give you a couple of examples of transparency failure we’ve seen.

Failure 1: We had a copywriter who was posting on Twitter about the work he was doing. He made several posts within a few hour period which were ugly complaints about a client and how ‘stupid’ he felt that client was. We obviously considered this unacceptable and immediately removed him from our list of subcontractors, but think about this: If he was hoping to use Twitter to get more client work – how many potential clients just read that and thought… “I’m not going to risk being badmouthed on here, I’ll find someone else.” Everyone gets frustrated, but what if the client he was working on read that? Put it this way, if you wouldn’t say it to your client directly – don’t post it either.

Failure 2: We had a designer who was a day late returning her design phase work. When we contacted her, she said she had a family emergency the night before and was unable to send in her work because she wasn’t home. A quick check on her Facebook showed that she was actually out at a party that night and posted multiple times while drunk talking about how much she was drinking and even hinting at wanting to bring a man she met there home with her. Obviously, we relieved her of the design work, handed it to another designer who caught up on the time schedule, and never again worked with her. In this case, people are allowed to have a life, we understand that. But if you cannot get your work done and have to lie about why – it’s a problem. If you do not have enough class to not post details about your ‘wild nights’ to everyone on your social networks — that’s also a problem.

How We Monitor Social Media Conversations

My business has been around for over a decade and is very focused on client satisfaction and excellent treatment of our web design clients. We have a network of hundreds of copywriters, designers, and coders who work with us on projects. However, even with screening of those experts when they come on board with us – you don’t always know someone until you have observed them over a long period of time.

That’s why we monitor what they say online.

How do we do that? Well first we get as many of their social profiles as we can. Usually, we ask for a list of them. We’ve also found that most people won’t provide them all. We then Google search the usernames of the ones they have given us because most people use the same usernames over and over. We also monitor blogs, and check for listings of social networks on those.

We have a system set up to consolidate all their social media comments into one master feed. That master feed can then be browsed directly to see what they’re up to, but that’s a lot of things to read each day. What we do is take the master feed, run it through a filter that creates two sub-feeds based on certain things we think are important to monitor. The first sub-feed is created by running the master list through a keyword & synonym filter that pulls out words related to business – for instance, “client” “business” “work” etc… The second sub-feed has a filter that runs their posts through a check for foul language and words like “sex” “drugs” “drunk” etc… There are hundreds of words in each filter.

Seem a bit ‘big brother’? It probably is – but reputation and client treatment is very important to us.

Here’s the thing: If we can read it and you can lose work with us over it… how many POTENTIAL clients did you lose also?

7 Ways to Edit Yourself

We’re not suggesting you stop having a life and stop making mistakes. You can post about those things and it simply makes you a more interesting person to read about. Just use common sense:

1. If you wouldn’t say it to a client or boss – don’t say it where they can read it either.
2. If you wouldn’t say it to your grandmother – don’t say it on your public posts.
3. If you wouldn’t say it to police officer – don’t post it on your social networks. For that matter, don’t do it either.
4. If you plan to lie to your boss – don’t put the truth where they can see it.
5. If you plan to go out and get drunk and know you have a tendency to post while drunk – give your phone to a friend to keep for you.
6. Learn how to use privacy settings and understand how visible your posts are on different social networks.
7. If you want a place to vent – create a completely different identity for yourself to do that. Name no names in your posts, and make no connection to your other profiles or email addresses.

Consider it all part of Internet Etiquette. Social networks are great to hear more personal things about someone and we encourage people to share a bit of themselves online (using normal cautions etc..). In the long run, full transparency is too Utopian for our modern world to handle well. We’re still at a point in our societal growth that when someone seriously calls a client an idiot – they tend to get a bit upset about it.

~Nicole

100 Articles in 100 Days

Ezine Articles is promoting an article writing contest started by a Ning group of article writers. The contest involves writing and publishing, 100 articles in 100 days. Keep in mind that these have to be published on Ezine Articles to count, so read through the linked post if you’re interested. Even though this one has already started, it has only been on for 10 days so you still have time to catch up. The goal is to write 100 articles before July 1, 2009.

31 Days to Build a Better Blog

Problogger is again starting the challenge they do every couple of years. You can read about the 31 Day Challenge on the Problogger site. The first challenge day was yesterday and involves writing an elevator pitch. Today involves writing a list post for the challenge.

Thirty Day Challenge

The 30 Day challenge has been around for quite a while and you can now do the previous year challenges at any time during the year. The challenge, which has had some good success, involves teaching you to come up with an idea for a product, market it online, and make your first $1 online within 30 days. The Challenge is free and none of the things you are asked to do for it involve spending money. The 30 Day Challenge for 2009 begins ‘pre-season’ in June, so you just have enough time to do the 2008 challenge (archived online and people start it every day) and still participate in the 2009 one.

Between these 3, that should be enough to keep anyone busy and full of inspiration for the next month!

~Nicole

1. I’ve changed my blog domain 3 times (a blogger blog, then on enrogue.com, then here).
2. I’ve changed my rss feed location 4 times.
3. I change my entire site look completely -at least- once a year.
4. I don’t push people to subscribe via RSS or email.
5. I’ve taken many breaks over the years where I may not write for months at a time.

After reading an article about people who stress about their RSS subscriber count, I realized I hadn’t even logged into Feedburner but maybe once this year – and that was just to give the ‘ok’ for them to change my feed url to the one run by Google.

Why don’t I care if my numbers are low, high, or anywhere in between? It’s simple – that’s not how I gauge success.

Back in the day, when I first started blogging about web standards and people were still refusing to believe that this small collective of ‘standaristas’ had any idea what they were talking about.. I got a lot of visitors to the blog. That was my goal at that point, to get the word out on the topic I was passionate about. I wrote many hundreds, if not over a thousand (don’t recall), articles on the subject for a variety of places. But, time moves on.

Goals change. People have accepted standards. I hit a point where I no longer felt like there was much I needed to teach on that because it became viral, there were tons of other people doing it. So, what next was the simple question. My next goal was to see if I could simply keep writing, finding other things to write about often enough to keep up the blogging habit. I succeeded, I failed, it was flexible depending.

Nowadays, I’m simply happy that if you type in my name or my site name it’s right up there on Google’s main page. For me, this blog has always been an outlet. I’m not trying to have the biggest readership, biggest amount of visitors per day, nor am I trying to have a 100+ comments on each post. I’m not trying to make money off this blog (even though I have a few Google ads on it I don’t think they’ve made any money over the years and I’ll probably remove them entirely on the next redesign). It’s simply a place for me to really discuss topics that interest me now.

So back to the subscribers count – is it a true reflection of … much of anything at all? Nah, not really. Outside the young and the high tech, most people don’t know what a feed reader is yet. Most people are so sick of filled email boxes they just start mass dumping stuff out of their email boxes, including newsletter subscriptions. So what’s a decent measure?

You can consider your site hits I suppose, although that’s filled with various inaccuracies also. What if they got there by accident, or got there and didn’t find what they wanted. If it says they’ve visited 10 pages on your site, is that good.. or does it mean they couldn’t find what they wanted? If it says they stayed on your site for 20 minutes… were they actively looking for all that time or did they walk off and get a snack and leave the window up? Who knows.

So what -is- a useful stat? One fairly useful stat that I actually will look at is available in most statistics programs, and it shows the entry URL. I love seeing my counts for people who typed in my URL directly – which often means they have the site bookmarked or simply remember it. That’s a useful stat, in my opinion.

I had my visitor spikes and huge stats ‘back in the day’ and at this point, I am just writing for the enjoyment of it — which, upon reflection, is really all I should’ve ever been doing with this blog. Note I said THIS blog. I have other sites I am not nearly so flippant about. Sites that are monetized and sites that involve businesses I run. You really need to decide where your position in it all is.

If you have a blog for venting, enjoyment, recreation… keep it that way as long as you can. Like anything, when you turn your hobby into work, it loses some of its charm. If you can, separate your blogs and keep one for personal venting and let your other blogs be for money/business blogging. Sure, you can cross-reference your blogs between each other to share traffic.. or not. Depends on how much separation you want for your own sanity.

I’m not good at talking about really personal things, probably related to the fact that I am cautious enough to never post pictures of my kids or much information about them online – and they’re a huge part of my life. So, instead of a ‘very personal’ blog, my recreational blog is this one — where I talk about the tech stuff that I actually want to talk about, versus coming up with articles just to fill space and meet a ‘post-per-week’ goal.

My suggestion for anyone who is coming into blogging is very contrary to what most people will suggest. Keep at least one blog for yourself. The rest will come, or not. If you don’t enjoy listening to yourself talk, maybe you will do better with social networks than blogs. Save the numbers game and worry for a site/blog you have attached to something that brings in money. Let your personal blog simply be as it is, and evolve with you — faults, mistakes, errors and all the rest.

~Nicole

The short answer is simple: I didn’t feel like calling it that.

The long version is a bit more intricate, and includes a somewhat eccentric fixation on coffee.

NOTE: If you’re not in the mood for a slightly musing and off-topic post, I suggest you stop now and read another article on the blog.

I had my first cup of coffee when I was about 6 years old – it was a latte, with more milk than anything else and plenty of sugar – pretty much the same as drinking a coffee flavored milk instead of chocolate milk. But in spite of the fact that there was very little coffee in it, I loved the unique taste instantly, and began asking for that more regularly. Of course, as time went on I started to make my own with a decreasing amount of milk as the years past.

Counting back years based on how I made my coffee is starting to sound a bit like T.S. Eliot when he said:

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

But that’s only the background on my initial love for coffee, because years later it would mesh in perfect harmony with my love for technology. When I got into technology as a hobby and then a career, it was most certainly acceptable (perhaps even expected) for me to be a caffeine junkie (whether coffee or soda).

Back somewhere around late high school and early college… with late nights, lots of studying and hanging out with friends, drinking coffee became (for my so-called ‘yuppie-tech generation’) a combination of personal like, a need to stay awake until I chose to go to sleep, and also a social activity. My friends and I didn’t go to bars or clubs – we went to coffee houses. We spent hours pouring over ideas, thoughts, and random other things while enjoying an endless cup of coffee.

After years of that practice, I started to relish the habit of sitting down with a cup of coffee and thinking. It’s almost a meditiative thing in many ways. When you have developed a extremely strong tolerance to coffee, it’s not necessarily just about drinking coffee because your body won’t function without it (although that’s part of it). There is another aspect, for someone who truly enjoys something, to turn it into a very contemplative act. Whether it’s the ritual of drinking coffee at a quiet table in the morning, or something else, it can be a time to think while you engage in something you enjoy.

That is what comes when you move beyond the caffeine, when you aren’t drinking something, but are actually taking part in a ritualistic behavior that allows you to relax and let your mind work.

One of the founding fathers of realism, Honore de Balzac, once said:

When we drink coffee, ideas march in like the army.

I cannot agree more. I’ve had some of my most interesting and inspiring technology business ideas while sitting on my back porch, relaxed and sipping on a cup of coffee.

It doesn’t have to be coffee for all people, and I’m not suggesting to others that they develop an addiction to coffee so that they can ‘gain clarity of thought’ or whatnot. I’m simply saying that the idea of creating some simple, monotonous ritual, something that takes no actual thought but that you enjoy, can provide a period of ‘clear’ time for you. When your mind can wander while you do something pleasant, and perhaps… you’ll have some inspiration.

I think that balanced, relaxed, and contemplative few minutes is essential to staying sane in the midst of a world that is focused on time and how quickly something can be done. I believe that it’s a good practice and a pleasant task to set for yourself. You know, Bertrand Russell said once…

To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level.

Perhaps I named it Beyond Caffeine because maintaining that ‘level’ is what I’m aiming for.

If you’d like to see some of the beautiful meditative coffee photos that I’ve added to my SXU lightbox, feel free to take a look – you’ll be seeing them on here soon anyway

~Nicole

I’ve been doing all sorts of lovely things this summer, but they are all keeping me quite busy.

A few things I’ve been up to…

Went to the coast and took this (as well as many other) photos:

Finished taking a class on Film and Literature. It was allright. It forced me to watch a few movies I had never seen before and consider them from the point of adapted works.

I’ve also just gotten in playing WoW (yes, I fought against it for years), and now both my daughter and I are hooked on the game.

The game seriously has a dangerous addictive quality.

They need to create support groups or something. But I’m loving it.

And finally, I’ve been working on my CSS layout book.

This is, of course, all the non-client work things that have been keeping me entertained. I also judged a CSS/WordPress contest and got to see some great new designs come about.

Today seems like it will be one of those ‘productive’ days because I’m going to go pick up my glasses (been waiting a MONTH for them to be fixed) and buy a new computer (unfortunately I can’t find what I want without Vista installed, but ah well, I’ll deal with it.) Annnnddd.. it’s around that time to take my daughter for ‘back to school’ shopping. I’m putting it off and seriously considering ordering online to avoid the crowds.

So, there you go. A relatively busy summer has kept me from writing on the blog as much as I should. It will start to pick up again soon

~Nicole

Promotion methods

There are lots of different ways to promote your site, in this article we will look at the pros and cons of some of the different methods of website promotion. We will cover:

• Online Advertising
• Offline Advertising
• Link Exchanges
• Purchased Links
• Articles
• Directories
• Search Engine Submission
• Forum / Email Signatures

Online Advertising
There are lots of different methods of online advertising, PPC (pay per click) is the most easy to manage model, as you only pay for the visitors you get. Let’s say I run a flower website, and I convert roughly 1 in 10 visitors into a buyer, also my average order converts to $10 profit. Then if I pay 50 cents/click, that is $5 for each order. So even though I am paying 50 cents for each visitor from my PPC ads, my business is still profitable as on ever 10 PPC visitors I make $5 profit. ($10 profit – $5 PPC costs)

To find out more about internet advertising, I suggest you read this article: http://www.affiliatesrated.com/article.php?article=cpm_cpc_or_cpa

Offline Advertising
You can advertise your website with flyers, in magazines, on billboards, on television and on the radio. Although it is harder to monitor how profitable your advert is, it is important not to forget that these adverts can be just as effective as internet campaigns and often more effective. For example if I run a website selling bike parts, and advert in a cycling specialist magazine would be the perfect way to target my advert to my chosen audience.

Link Exchanges
These can be very beneficial, but only in certain situations. For example, if I run an internet shop selling PCs, and my friend has an internet shop which sells PC games, then a link exchange could be mutually beneficial. My visitors who are buying a new PC might decide to buy some new games from his site, and his visitors who are buying new game might decide it is time for a new PC so they can play the latest games and buy one from me.

Link exchanges are no longer of any real benefit from a search engine point of view, and so should only be used with the intention of getting more visitors, and not for getting higher search rankings.

Purchased links
There has been an increasing trend in purchasing links from other websites. This is because the benefit here is two-fold. Firstly, assuming the website is targeting the same market as your site, then you get a new stream of targeted visitors. Secondly, search engines see the one-way link as a vote of confidence in your site, so you can get a search engine boost. You will need to weight up the cost of the link with whether or not you think you will get a significant boost to traffic as a result.

Articles
As should be clear by now, I am a keen advocate of articles as an excellent means of website promotion. Firstly, by publishing them on your site first, you get unique website content for your site. Secondly, then by submitting it to an articles directory other webmasters will post the article on their site providing you with tons of one-way links back to your site. Although the glory days of articles are over, they are currently an under-rated method of promotion, so if you are a good writer, and have knowledge about topics related to your site which others might not know, get writing!

Directories
Directories have really frustrated me. Time and again I have submitted my sites to directories and I have only been disappointed. Firstly, it often takes ages to submit your listing, and once submitted, your listing may take ages to be accepted. Also, the benefit of directories has been hyped up, hardly anybody tries to use a directory to find what they are looking for, they use search engines. Some promote the idea that search engines use directories in calculating rankings, especially the ODP, as far as I can tell the ODP is pretty much dead with a backlog of 1000s of site submissions and editor submissions and is old news. So are directories. Conclusion: don’t waste your time on them.

Search Engine Submission
Search engine submission is the process of going to the search engine and telling them about your website by hand. I would recommend doing this for msn, yahoo and google but only when you first launch your site and they don’t yet know about it. If your site has been around for a few days and has some links from other sites indexed by these engines, this won’t be necessary as your site will already be indexed by these engines. The other search engines aren’t worth your time or effort, they will make it their business to find your site so don’t waste your time on them.

Forum / Email Signatures
Why don’t more people do this? It’s such a simple method of promotion, and it’s free! All you do is put a link to your site in your forum signature and that could mean hundreds or thousands of new links to your site depending on how often you chat in forums. With the email signatures, lets say I send a funny email to a friend, and they forward it to all their friends, all of a sudden lots more people could find out about my site. Don’t overlook this promotion gem!

Conclusion
I bet you hadn’t thought of all these different ways to promote your site! And even if you had, I’m sure you learnt something new. I hope that the article has helped you find new ways to promote your site. To find out more about promoting your website I suggest you look at http://www.affiliatesrated.com/affiliate_tips.php

Written by: Benjamin Wigoder

About the Author:
Benjamin Wigoder is a website designer, programmer and entrepeneur. He has been using affiliate programs for years and his new (affiliate programs directory) allows webmasters to see affiliate programs rated and reviewed as well as categorized to make choosing suitable programs easy.

Choose a Topic You’re An Expert In
Consider this. You have just discovered the world of online affiliation where you can make money through advertisements placed on your website. You see advertisements on just about every web page on the net these days, mostly in the form of Google AdSense. “Open a Google AdSense account and start earning commissions today!” Sure, it sounds great and it can be very profitable, but the mistakes many new webmasters will make is choosing a market that they feel will make them a quick buck rather than choosing something they are passionate about. The result of this over-enthusiasm for capital gain is typically a website that lacks originality, style, and quality content. You’ll find that the key to success is providing users with a quality site where content is your main focus. Once you’ve established a niche that you feel comfortable in and can showcase a strong knowledge on your subject matter, content will come easy.

Enlist The Help of Ghost Writers
Writing quality content can be time consuming. The more ambitious your site is, the more quality content you’ll need to provide. Don’t be afraid to enlist the help of Ghost Writers to help you fill those empty pages. As long as you enlist the help of others who are experts in your chosen website category, you’ll be well off with the additional content writers. Try asking some colleagues if they’ll write an article or two, post messages on forums stating that you’re looking for a content writer. Of course not everyone is willing to help without some form of compensation. If you site offers services that users typically pay for, try offering those services to a select few friends or colleague for free in exchange for articles and content.

Be Your Own Worse Critic
When it comes down to the quality of your content, be your own worse critic. Be nitpicky about every little nuance and aspect of every sentence you write down. Read it several times over, making sure it’s relaying effectively the message you’re trying to get across. When in doubt, have a friend or co-worker read through your content and get their honest opinions. You only have a few seconds to make an impression on your users, so never publish anything that is less than perfect. Your goal is to make sure your content contains useful and quality information without error before being seen by visitors of your site. Also, make sure to run your article through a spell check (such as with MS Word) before publishing it.

Add Something New Each Day
A website that remains static will not retain users. It’s fact. For your website to keep generating repeat traffic, you need to give your users something new each day. They will need to see constant changes, new articles, and up to the minute news and information so they will be intrigued in coming back. Never fall into a comfort zone where you feel you can “wait another day” to update your site. You can be sure of one thing, if you’re not on top of your website, the competition will be!

Write Your Content For Users, Not Search Engines
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is important to search engines, content is important to users. Do not confuse the two. Content should be written with the user in mind, without thinking about how it will impact search engines. Content written for search engines usually are comprised of keyword stuffing (repetitiveness of key words), which more often that not will make the content neither useful nor particularly enjoyable to read. You will be doing a disservice to yourself and your users if you write your content for search engines.

By focusing on the user you’ll soon reap the benefits of quality content that was written with passion and knowledge. Over time you’ll find that you’ll receive residual traffic as other webmasters link to your site, users post your URL in forums, and word of mouth spreads. Although content is just one component to generating traffic to your site (you still need to apply SEO), it will ensure that the traffic you do get keeps coming back for more.

Written by: David Nicolosi
About the Author: David is a Senior Programming consultant and SEO expert with over 10 years experience in the IT industry. David currently owns several successful websites, including Free Links Direct, a free SEO service that provides one-way links and quality SEO articles and tips.

A bit of an update as I am trucking through, slowly but steadily on my book. I can surely identify what has been the largest difficulty for me in the past two months. On a good note, I can also say that I have (I believe) overcome that difficulty.

Primary Problem – Organization

The organization of how I want to present the information kept repeatedly coming back to me as I was writing. It simply felt… off. I kept having a recurring feeling that the more I wrote, the more I was going to have to later fix. It just wasn’t feeling well organized.

It has been an element of extreme importance to me for the book to be easily readable, but in that, one of the most vital aspects is for it to be well organized. I want people to be able to flip to the section they want without any question. Was that happening… well no. I realized that I was writing it more in the way of a desktop reference. Listing things out, and that was not what I wanted to do. So… some changes had to occur.

A Bridge Across

I feel like I’m getting closer to being caught up in changing what I had already written to increase the readability. I definitely do not want to make the book complicated to find information in. But, at the same time, I don’t want it to be just a desktop reference. I think (‘think’) that I have reached a solution to it.

Primarily I decided that I’m going to use the approach of how I would explain it (such as the order I would address it were I using a lecture format) and try that method. So far, it is seeming to be significantly better and flow together much nicer.

Hopefully, that will continue. On the downside, getting prepared for organizing a seminar is also putting a bit of a roadblock in my time, and some of the volunteer projects I’m working on are also taking a bit of a bite. I’m sure that it will all work out in due time, and I am definitely on the road to getting this moving along at a better rate now.

~Nicole