Info About Links Blog

SETTING UP YOUR BLOG
Before we jump in and set up your blog, let’s first talk about the different types of blog platforms that are available to you. There are free blog platforms as well as more sophisticated blog platforms that you purchase as software or on a subscription basis.
There are also blog platform providers that require that they host your blog for you as well as blog providers that allow you to have your blog hosted where ever you choose (by hosted I am referring to where and by whom the blog application is being stored and run).
The two main blogging services that are both free and hosted are Blogger.com, and WordPress. In my opinion, the main benefit of WordPress, is that it is an open source software. Without getting into too much detail, this is helpful when you run into technical issues with the software. There are tons of online support resources available and if you ever want to add features or functionality to your blog you can usually find a plug-in that does what you need.
One of the main benefits to using Blogger.com is that it is owned by Google. Although technically this should not make a difference, Google and its many products seem to function smoother when using Blogger.com. They are both good services and work just fine for what we are trying to do.
For now, let’s use a platform that is free and hosted for us. Blogger is the easiest to set up and to start blogging quickly; however, as you get serious about blogging there are a couple of things that you should be aware of.
NOTE: When signing up for either Blogger or WordPress, unless you tell them otherwise, they will provide you a sub-domain of their domain. However, both platforms will also allow you to use a separate domain name that you already own. This will become important down the road if you ever decide or are forced to move to another blogging platform (like if your blog gets shut down). If you do not own your domain name, you will loose your search engine rankings, all your back links that you have set up, as well as all traffic that you have worked so hard to generate.
Domain names are cheap and easy to purchase. Personally I use and recommend iPowerWeb
Also, if you would like to have your blog hosted by a third party hosting company (not by the blog platform provider), iPowerWeb offers free domains when you purchase web hosting. Not only are they very inexpensive, they also have WordPress already loaded as one of the options, making it extremely easy to get your blog up and running.

SETTING UP YOUR BLOGGER BLOG
Setting up your blog at Blogger.com is pretty straight forward so I am not going to get into a lot of detail. You just follow the instructions. However, there are a couple of key points to keep in mind:
• When selecting a Blogger URL, make sure it contains the keyword phrase that you have selected for this blog. This is extremely important if people are going to find you through search engines. The URL can have other characters or hyphens mixed instead, but in order for the search engines to find you, the URL needs to contain the phrase that they are searching for. For example if your blog is about biodiesel your URL could be: biodiesel.blogger.com
o If you want to use a domain name that you own, you do so in Step 2. Click on the “Advanced blog setup” link located towards the lower left hand corner of the page and insert your own URL in the appropriate field.
• The title of your blog should also include your keyword. This will greatly increase the search engines’ ability to find you when people search for your keyword.
Once you have completed the set up process, you will need to make sure that your blog settings are configured correctly to allow you to optimize your blog. Once again, I am not going to go through all your settings, just the ones you need to be aware of.
• Basics Tab-
o Keyword phrase needs to be in the title.
o Your Description is what will show up when your blog is listed in different directories. Use your keyword 2 or 3 times and list the purpose and benefits of your blog. If your description is well written and compelling, it can generate a lot of traffic.
o ‘Add your blog to our listings’ set to ‘Yes.’
• Publishing-
o Notify Weblogs set to ‘Yes.’ This will alert the search engines (and people) when your blog has been updated.

• Archiving-
o Enable Post Pages set to ‘Yes.’ This makes it so that each post can be optimized for that post’s keywords, the same way a web-page is optimized (don’t worry, I will explain this in much more detail later on). This becomes important when the search engines are indexing your site.
• Site Feed is referring to “Web Feeds” also called “RSS feeds” (Really Simple Syndication). These types of feeds are used on news sites or blogs to update readers that there is new information available. Instead of the reader having to go to the website to see if you have posted something new, a feed, or message is sent to them. The message, or feed, is read by a ‘RSS reader’ (also called a feed aggregator). Usually the feed does not contain the whole story; just the headline, a brief amount of text, and a link back to your site. If the reader wants more of the story, they will have to come to your blog to view it.
o ‘Site Feed’ set to ‘Yes’
o Set ‘Description’ to ‘Short’ so that when people import your RSS feed they will only get the title, and about the first 50 words. If they are interested in what you are saying, they will come to your blog to finish the story (more visitors to your site). For this reason, make sure that the first paragraph of every post is well thought out and compelling.
Congratulations, your first blog is up and running and you are now ready to start blogging.
It is important to post to your blog fairly soon after it has been activated. I recommend that you post within the first 24 hours (read Section 4, ‘Generating Content’ for information on what to post).
Whenever you are posting to a new blog for the first time, make sure that you use your keyword (the one in the title) several times in the first few lines (you only need to do this the first time that you post on a new blog).
In this first post, I usually welcome my readers, spell out the intent of my blog, describe what I hope to accomplish or provide with my blog, and include a little bit about myself.
Every time you set up a new blog, you should try to post every day for at least the first 3-4 days. Don’t worry if you don’t have anything to write yet; we will address that in the content section a little later in this book. In that section, I will show you what you should post; and, if you don’t like writing, I will even show you how to get good content without having to do it yourself. Just make sure to read the section. And remember, post everyday for the first few days.