Quick quality posts

What makes a useful, valuable post that increases traffic, SEO, and brings in readers? High-density posts: a short, pointed, link-rich blog post. A high density post is:

• To the point, and brief.
• Filled with relevant links to other sites and (best) other posts in your blog.
• Focused.

Good hyperlinks are:

• Descriptive.
• Relevant.

Great hyperlinks include title tags. I think it's better to link out to another post in your blog, instead of combining the two into a longer post.

• You will write tighter, more focused posts.
• Traffic to one will boost the other, linked posts.
• Search engines love interior links.

Blogger.com Custom Code Installation (Google Analytics)

The ability to install custom code in your blog template is one of Blogger.com’ most powerful features, and it’s part of the free account. The problem is that your customizations may be lost if you switch templates. Google Analytics is the most common code modification I make to my blog templates, and it’s a great example of how to edit a template. Follow these steps to install Google Analytics in your Blogger.com template:

1. Log in to your Blogger: Dashboard and select the Layout link for the blog you want to modify.
2. First, back up your existing template -- very important! Go to the Layout | Edit HTML tab; select the link to Download Full Template.
3. Find the location to insert the code modification. For Google Analytics, this is right before the /body tag.
4. If you need to add the custom code, paste it.
5. When you’ve completed your modifications, click [Save Template]

Selling: Amazon Associates

One of the quickest ways to turn traffic into revenue is to join an affiliate program, where you earn essentially a sales commission by referring customers. You get paid when someone makes a purchase, so everyone comes out ahead. Amazon.com Associates program is a good place to start:

• They offer a sliding scale of commissions, depending on volume.
• They will handle all the tracking, purchase, and fulfillment.
• They sell practically everything.

Read About.com's Review of the Amazon Associates Affiliate Advertising Program for another perspective. To start selling as an Amazon.com Associates - join at Amazon.com Associates Central (secure). Under Account Settings,

• Set up your Payee information. I recommend direct deposit.
• Select a fee structure, Classic or Performance.

Then, start by adding Text Links.

It’s a good idea to read and understand the Amazon.com Operating Agreement so you don’t make any mistakes that can jeopardize your revenue. Also, the Agreement describes ways you can sell Amazon products, including:

• Special (Product Text Links) links
• Search box link
• General link to Amazon
• Car Link
• Easy Link
• Search Results link
• Any Page link
• aStore by Amazon Link
• Omakase Link
• Context Links
• Quick Linker Links
• Your Video Widget Links
• Preview Player Link

Tips

• Read the Agreement so you understand how you will make money.
• Only add one type of Amazon link at a time to your blog. Test to see how this works, and track it against your best keywords and traffic patterns.

This whole process of setting up the account takes about a half hour, not including the time it takes to read the agreement.

Is Your Blog Indexed? Use Google Webmaster Tools to Find Out

To see what your blog looks like from Google’s perspective, use Google’s Webmaster Tools. Google Webmaster Central - links to all the Webmaster tools Google Webmaster Tools - Site Status - see if your site or blog is indexed using a simple wizard interface.

Promoting Blogger.com Blogs: Send Pings

I’ll start my testing with the simplest option: ask Blogger.com to ping the blog notification services. On my blog, Neil's Open Source & Linux Blog, I turned on pings on July 20. Here’s how:

1. From the Blogger.com Dashboard, click Settings.
2. Under the Settings tab, click Publishing.
3. For the Send Pings option, select Yes from the drop-down menu.
4. Click [Save Settings].

Does it work? So far, no. Here’s how I test:
Enter the URL to your site in the Google search field, preceeded by “site:” -- like this:

site:http://njlinux.blogspot.com/

See the results here: site:http://njlinux.blogspot.com/ - Google Search
Does this feature even work? If so, what services does it ping?

Adding Your Blog to the Google Index

If your blog isn’t indexed by the search engines, no one will find it unless they know the URL. How do you do it? Here are some recommendations for Blogger.com:

• Adding Google sitemap to blogger.com blog account | Hakuna Matata
• How Do I get Google to Index my blog - How Do I? | Google Groups
• Dummies Guide to Google Blogger Beta: How to Submit Site to Google?

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be testing the different approaches to find which one is most effective, and examining some other methods.

Getting Started - for Free

The best way to learn about blogging is to ... start a blog. I recommend starting with one of these two free popular blogging services:

• Blogger: Create your Blog Now -- FREE. Hosted by Google, Blogger.com is much improved in the last few months, since the Google purchase. You'll need to set up a free Google account, which gives you access to a whole bunch of other tools you'll want to use, anyway.
• WordPress.com » Get a Free Blog Here. Free hosting for blogs running the open source WordPress Blog Tool and Weblog Platform. Just set up a new account and you are off and running.

For a period last year, before Google bought them out, Blogger.com was in a slow death spiral: server performance was so slow and unreliable as to make it almost unusable. Out of frustration, I turned to WordPress and started The StratoPress on WordPress.com. I think WordPress is great, and I'm a big fan of open source software. WordPress was way ahead of Blogger.com when I launched The StratoPress, especially in terms of features and reliability. After Google picked up Blogger.com, they upgraded to a Google-style server farm, and the performance problems disappeared. In addition, overall reliability has improved steadily, if not dramatically. Finally, the Google elves have been hard at work adding new features and closing the gap with WordPress. At this time, although I think that WordPress still has a slight edge on features and interface I'd give the nod to Blogger.com because:

1. You'll want to set up a Google account anyway to use Google's Webmaster Tools and other great Google properties (like Gmail, perhaps).
2. Blogger.com makes it incredibly easy to set up AdSense ads on your blog, a simple first step to start making some scratch from your blog.
3. I suspect that Google may give their blogs on Blogger slightly preferential treatment when indexing -- but I can't prove this.

But, you can't go wrong with either choice. The important thing is to start blogging.