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How to get Ideas for your Blog Posts

I’ve been thinking to start publishing regularly on my blog, and I needed ideas for that. I found out several good tips on how to get ideas for your blog posts, and I’m sharing them here to help other bloggers too!

Use Google News – Google news (http://news.google.com) is a great way to stay updated with industry related news. Use your keywords to find latest news and updates to find a story which interests you. You might find an interesting news story, or you can write about something you agree or disagree with. Be sure to search around for related stories to get ideas and use your thoughts while writing content. Remember, do not simply repost summaries of the news you read on Google because that will only lead to duplicate content being added to your site. If you add your opinion or view point in the article, it gives it genuine value and makes it more interesting for the readers.

Leading Industry Blogs – Find out what other leading industry bloggers are discussing and posting on their blogs. If something new is happening in your industry, you should discuss it on your blog too. Read through “expert” blogs of your specific industry and subscribe to their RSS feeds.

Website User Logs – Use your website analytics to look for “long tail” keywords or phrases which are relevant to your website. Find information about those subjects and write detailed articles about these areas. Since these keywords were used by users when they come to your site, they will be interested in reading more about them. Focusing on less popular or obscure phrases, keywords and search terms helps in bringing targeted customers and readers to your site. These keywords will also attract more traffic to your site or blog.

Search for specifics in your industry niche – You might think that there is a lot of information related to your industry published on the internet, but that is not always the case. If you start searching a particular topic, you will find areas which have minimal content published. If you are searching for it, there can be other users searching for it too. Use this opportunity to develop and write content. Do your research and write a blog post on that topic.

If you are good at tackling controversial topics, which most people find difficult to write about, you can consider writing challenging content as an opportunity. These kinds of topics are often overlooked, but can attract a lot of users to your blog, which will result in an increase in the number of comments people leave on your posts.

You might be wondering that the sources for new content mentioned above are all originating from content already present on the web, but you will be surprised to know that ideas for blog posts are mostly influenced by other web content. Use these tips to write unique, fresh and compelling content to add to your blog. You will not only find an increase in the website rankings and search engine traffic, but you will also experience an increase in your subscribers.

JohnChow visited my Blog!!!!

JohnChow MyBlogLog

I was just going through the latest visitors of my site using MyBlogLog widget and was amazed to see that JohnChow had visited my Blog! I was so happy to see him on the list of visitors, that I thought of blogging it on my blog and bragging about it 😛 (Come to think of it, JohnChow even gets links from blogs by visiting them, lol)

I’ve been trying hard to post regularly on my blog but never get to meet my goal. I’ve been too busy working on some client sites that I simply don’t get the time to blog regularly. Posting new posts on a regular basis will bring return visitors and I’m sure it will also attract a lot of traffic from the search engines and other social bookmark sites.

Anyways, I’m off to give myself a treat to celebrate John Chow’s visit to my blog. I’m also very excited to announce that I won the “Comments ClosedFunny T Shirt from the contest I entered last week 😀 Waiting for the Tee to arrive anxiously and then I’ll add some pictures on my blog.

Using Keywords in Anchor Texts

Before you start a links campaign for your website, or directory submissions, you need to decide the Keywords you will be targeting and the Anchor Texts which you will use for your links campaign. These anchor texts will use your important keywords in them which will help you in Search Engine Rankings for these Keywords.

Here are a few tips which will help you make your anchor texts.

1. Only use the most important Keywords in your Anchor Text

It is a good idea to do some Keyword Research using a Keyword Tool like Wordtracker to decide the most important Keywords related to the theme of your website. You should be using the popular search terms in your Anchor Texts which show up in the Search when you use the Keyword Tool.

You can find a very good Keyword Suggestion Tool at Digital Point.

2. Do not make the Anchor Texts too long

Long, rambling, keyword stuffed Anchor Texts make no sense and might actually harm you in Search Rankings. Search Engines might penalize your site for using a long keyword stuffed or spammy Anchor Text. Remember, your Anchor Texts should be short and to-the-point and should make sense.

3. Make your Anchor Text Useful

Don’t simply paste Keywords in the Anchor Text, separated by commas, like Keyword 1, Keyword 2, Keyword 3. This looks completely absurd and users won’t be interested to click on it. Your Anchor Text should be a coherent sentence or a short phrase which makes sense. Make your Anchor Texts natural.

4. Use Anchor Text variations

If you are targeting 5 or 6 important keywords, it is always a good idea to make 5 or 6 different Anchor Texts, each focusing on the targeted Keyword. You should use these variations when submitting your site to link directories.

5. Make different Anchor Texts for different Landing Pages

If you have several important landing pages in your site, which you want to promote using link building, make different Anchor Texts for each of these landing pages. Use a Keyword Tool and research for the Keywords for each of these landing pages. Then create 3 or 4 variations of Anchor Texts for each of these landing pages. You can then use these Anchor Texts to submit your site to Directories and Link Forms.

6. Relevance is most important

This might seem obvious, but relevance is the most important thing in Anchor Texts. If you are making Anchor Texts for a page for Blue Widgets, make sure you use Blue Widgets in the Anchor Text, instead of using keywords like Green Widgets, Cheap Widgets etc.

Remember, Search Engines also give importance to Relevance. If your anchor text has Blue Widgets in it, and your page also used the Keyword Blue Widgets in the Title, Content and Body of that page, the anchor text will work perfectly with that page.

These tips are useful for all sort of anchor texts, whether internal or from other websites. When you link to an internal page of your site, always use some meaningful anchor text like ‘Find more details for Blue Widgets‘, where Blue Widgets should be the link, instead of ‘Find more details for Blue Widgets here‘.

You can also find more tips for Anchor Texts by following these links:

Better Anchor Texts by John Chow

Anchor Text Optimization Tips

Too many Blog Comment Links can be Harmful

Many webmasters and website owners today have changed their focus from reciprocal links to non-reciprocal / one-way links due to the importance Search Engines give to one-way non-reciprocal links. There are a number of strategies that can be adopted to increase the number of one way, incoming links to a website. One of these, which you’ll come across, while reading many link building and development guides, is Blog Comments.

Leaving Useful Comments on blogs related to your niche is no doubt a very good idea to get links and users to your website. It is the easiest and most targeted method through which people will find you and will link to you if you provide useful comments and are a regular visitor to those blogs.

However, there is a very fine line in using Blog Commenting the ‘Ethical Way‘ and the ‘Unethical Way‘. If most of the incoming links to a website are from Blogs, and specifically from Blog Comments, Search Engines might end up penalizing your website.

Search Engines now consider websites that have a high percentage of links from Blogs as ‘Bad Neighborhood‘ sites. Domains that have a high occurrence of links that appear to be from blogs may be penalized by Search Engines. It may be normal for blogs and forums to have lots of incoming links from blogs, but for many commercial websites, a large percentage of links from blogs could indicate an attempt to increase search engine rankings through blog comment spamming.

So if you have a new website, and you plan to promote it and bring traffic and users to it through blog comments, make sure you have some other methods of attracting links to your website also, to even it all out. Incoming links from Blogs only can be harmful for your website.