SEO/Traffic

SEO Stuff and Traffic Generators

Articles/Editorials, SEO/Traffic

TechBurgh and Tubu Internet Solutions bring you $10/year Hosted blogs

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I just got an email from the folks at Techburgh and they’ve worked out a deal for some very affordable hosting, it’s less than $1 per month to have you blog hosted on their servers… very nice deal actually, and you’ll become part of the TechBurgh blog network so it basically includes some basic promotion for your new blog as well… now a bad deal, too bad I already have hosting…

But here’s the email with the info:

TechBurgh and Tubu Internet Solutions bring you $10/year Hosted blogs

Are you blogging? if you are, wanna make it better? if not, why not?!

Let me define ‘blog’ for you.
Short for “Web log,” a specialized site that allows an individual or group of individuals to share a running log of events and personal insights with online audiences. Blogs with political or current-events themes have grown in popularity and become “soap boxes” for instant mass-audience commentary.
www.pvt.com/oth/glossary.htm

We at the TechBurgh blog (and podcast) seem to be pretty good at making deals. We pleaded and wheeled and dealed (and at one point threw a tantrum) with the fine partners at Tubu Internet Solutions to arrange something really special to grow the ‘blogosphere’.

You can now get a hosted WordPress blog for just $10 per year!

We’re aiming to sign up 250 blogs. It seems like a lot but I think it’s doable.

Why?
We’re trying to promote blogging. Not just “I had a good cup of coffee this morning” blogging but interesting, organization, fundraising, meaningful blogging too. Especially in the Pittsburgh region – cos we love Western Pa!

What is a hosted blog?
Well, it is a professionally hosted (Tubu is great!). A hosted site gives you functionality, flexibility and customization that anyone needs to start their own blog. Use templates, addons and all kinds of fun stuff.

Wait, isn’t there free services out there?
Yes, yes there are services like blogger and typepad etc. etc but they’re full of ads and not nearly as customizable as a hosted blog is. Also withh a hosted blog you can use your own web address (instead of whatever.blogger.com)

But I don’t know how to blog!
You’re reading this aren’t you? well, in that case you know how to blog. It’s that easy. If you need help both TechBurgh and Tubu can help.

How can I help?
I know a lot of you might have blogs already but spread the word, post an article on your blog/site and let people know they can get blogging for less than $1 a month.

How do I get started?
Just reply to this message and we’ll get you going. http://techburgh.com/blog/2007/10/20/get-blogging-were-starting-a-network/

What else?
Well, every blog that signs up will be listed on the TechBurgh blog (instant promotion) and will be part of a TechBurgh blog network.

and more info about this offer can be found here:  http://techburgh.com/blog/get-blogging/

Articles/Editorials, Product Previews/Reviews, SEO/Traffic

Google Adsense Video and YouTube

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By now I’m sure most of you now know that Google Adsense has rolled out their Adsense YouTube player… I was very curious about this so I figured I’d give this a shot and see how it works, and to check it out live….

So here goes my version I made to match this site… and I added it to the sidebar as well, but I think it’s too big… but as you can see just adding the code into WordPress works perfectly fine

-Another interesting thing I see is that it apparently knows when to show the video and when not to… I have it on the sidebar as well, but when it’s displayed in my post it only shows a text link on the sidebar, but if you go to another page or post it will then show that video on the sidebar.. very cool!

Watch the latest videos on YouTube.com

SEO/Traffic

Ways to increase traffic to your site.

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Let’s face it, we blog for other people, sure we blog because we like it, but what’s the point really if no one reads it right?

So how do we bring traffic or visitors to our sites to read what we ramble about?

There are several ways to do this of course, and I’d like to touch on a few and maybe help others out who are trying to get traffic to their site.

This is by no means a complete list, just something off the top of my head that I compiled quickly for this post:

Contests and GiveAways:

This is probably one of the easier ways to get traffic to your site, and of course get link backs as well. Hold a contest and give something away like a prize or money even, people love to get free stuff and especially love money. The best thing to do is to do it randomly, have people link to you with an anchor text of your choice and just randomly draw a winner when the contest is over. The idea of the anchor text and link is essentially to bring traffic and also to help your search engine rankings by using that particular anchor text to identify your blog.

A couple examples would be:

Hey It’s Free – He blogs about free stuff you can find, including contests offering free stuff, if you have a contest then drop him a line

ContestBlogger – There are quite a few blogs that are just blogs about contest, but one that is becoming popular very fast is Contest Blogger, he’ll post about your contest and even have it featured for a price…

Reviews:

Have people review your site, especially if you are a higher ranking blog, you can offer to link back to other blogs if they review your site, this not only helps you with a bit more exposure but also helps out ‘the little guy’ who is trying to make a name for themselves and sends some quality traffic their way as well.

Community Traffic Generators:

There are a couple popular blogging community sites out there, these help to link blogs together and help individuals find out about new blogs as well that they might be interested in.

MyBlogLog – is by far the most popular blogging community out there, it’s easy to use and very well done.

BlogCatalog – is sort of MyBlogLogs competition, BlogCatalog works but just not as well as MyBlogLog, personally I just don’t like the feel of BlogCatalog, but if it helps to get more traffic then join either way right?

Technocrati – sort of falls under the community traffic generators, but it’s not quite as community oriented as the above two are, but it does work very well at bringing traffic and we all know that Technocrati is used for ranking your site.

BlogRush – not quite a community traffic generator, but they work with you displaying a widget on your site, like I have at the bottom right. Every time you get a page view, your site gets a link on someone another BlogRush widget. It’s listed under community because it takes the community of bloggers joining to make it work. It’s a very interesting and very new concept that I’m curious to see how it works…

Social Bookmarking Sites:

Social bookmarking sites are a lot harder to get into, but they can bring a bit of traffic to your site and if you’re VERY lucky they can bring a whole lot of traffic to your site and make you very popular overnight… but it doesn’t last long…

Digg – we all know what Digg is, no explanation needed

del.icio.us – another type of social bookmarking site that can work as well as Digg does

Reddit – it’s a different type of social bookmarking site, a bit more on the conservative side I think though..

The next three don’t quite fall under Social Bookmarking but they sort of work the same way..

StumbleUpon – has become very popular, it sort of works on the social bookmarking but you have a browser plugin or toolbar that allows you to essentially vote on sites or articles

DIY News – not many people really know about DIY News, but you can submit stories and users can vote on them. They have an interesting rating system where your story/article can be voted on and commented on as well.

Slashdot – Slashdot really isn’t social bookmarking as it is editorial bookmarking, you submit something and just hope it gets picked by one of their editors….

Feel free to comment on others out there, as I said this is by no means a complete list, just something I threw together that I thought might be a bit interesting to others out there…