And you know what I’m talking about. You sort through people online, say at Match.com or Yahoo Personals. Some look interesting, but…the deal with the pictures is, you know, sketchy. Here’s the crash course on screening online profile pics. It’s not an exact science, but there are some short-cuts and tell-tale signs that are virtually infallible. You may not agree, and your mileage may vary, so send me your feedback. Also send me your ideas that you would have included.

Okay, first of all…you are NOT “shallow” if you want to see what the person looks like. Get that weight off your shoulders. If anyone ever says this to you again, feel free to tell him or her McKay is to blame for your attitude. I can live with that. This is a key component of attraction, whether people potentially unattractive to you like it or not! Don’t be played into thinking you are unreasonable by someone with no picture for asking. And don’t be duped into meeting the person either.

Of note also here are those with no picture (or even one substandard one) who claim, “I am incredibly hott, but have no/bad pictures because I: 1) Don’t have a digital camera, and have no friends with one either,… 2) am computer illiterate, despite my ability to complete this profile, and… 3) fear being seen by coworkers/friends and embarrassed.” Don’t buy it. Any of it. If there’s something bothering this person about being seen by others, and you are REALLY intrigued, then maybe ask for the pics to be emailed to you. This has actually panned out for me exactly one time in three years. If you get more excuses at that point, you’ve gotta jett…period. Bear in mind that people with no pics may not just be insecure about their appearance. Some may be MARRIED. Or WANTED in six states! Think about that one for a while. People with one picture that’s either fuzzy or very limited in view aren’t off the hook here, either. Ask for more pictures-it’s okay. “I have a picture up there already, and that’s what I look like” doesn’t cut it as an excuse. Here are a few more silver bullets on this subject. Glamour Shot=Run Away. Seriously. If he or she has webcam capture pics only, same story (although requesting that he or she get on the cam for you isn’t a bad idea). Also, look out for the pic that’s a very close-cropped face shot…that’s not enough to go on. And keep your eyes open for clear signs that the pics are not exactly new or accurate. One of my personal favorites was the woman who talked about having a 12-year-old son in her profile, and the pic was of her holding an infant! When I called her on it, she said, “Yeah, it’s okay. I still look exactly like that.” Hmmm. I have also seen people in their mid to late twenties who have posted pictures from high school, it turns out. That’s just wrong on many levels, if you think about it. I mean, how creeped out is a brother supposed to feel for finding pics of a 27 y.o. woman attractive-who’s actually 16? You get my drift.

The other thing–and you’ve seen this for sure–is the person with 20 pictures up…ALL of which look completely different! I’ve seen women with pictures so diverse that you’d swear an entire sorority was sharing one profile. Hair color, various stages of weight gain/loss, age differences, etc. Interestingly, I have found that there is virtually no indication as to which of the pics someone is going to really look like, with two exceptions: 1) The bigger the body, the greater the likelihood of current accuracy, and… 2) The ones with the tattoos are probably newer. That said, I’ve met women who look like NONE of their umpteen pictures, which perhaps serves as a reasonable indictment of the entire purpose of the pics to begin with, right? Also a potential question mark is the person who teases you with the promise of “12 pics”, all but one of which are dogs, sunsets, BMWs, Paris, etc. What is that about? Is the subject of the profile not “enough” to impress me? If not…well…you get it.

Look also for subtle (or not so much) clues about someone’s true personality in the pics. You know this guy. He’s the one who’s such a “loyal, family-man” type in the profile, and posts the picture where you can see what’s going on at the “gentlemen’s club” in the background. Listing examples here could go on all day.

So what are some indicators that the pics are good and accurate? Well, first…consistency. Several pics that are clearly of the same person is a plus, assuming they all aren’t from the same photo session or something. In this case, you can usually be sure that s/he might look like that when and if you meet. Be careful here, because some people are either very photogenic or not. Feel free to ask that question, and listen closely to the answer-which might be surprisingly candid. Actually if someone says, “I take TERRIBLE pics!” that tends to be a good sign. If you think about it, that makes sense if you are already liking what you see. Next, variety. A face shot, a full-body shot, indoor, outdoors, casual, formal, silly, serious, smiling, serious, etc. If people have nothing to hide here, they shouldn’t and typically won’t. I’m not talking about bikini shots being necessary here though, and the general consensus among women I’ve noticed is that they’d rather guys keep their clothes on in profile pics. So you know what I mean.

Interestingly, disclaimers in the text of a profile about the pics are usually accurate…be they good or bad. I’m not quite on board with the woman who had five or six pictures, only to say on the last line of her tome-like profile that she had “gained fifty pounds since the pics were taken” (refer to “games”). Nonetheless, if someone says something to the effect of , “Yes…I’m 42 and the pictures are recent”, you are likely dealing with someone who truly is looking good for his or her age.

So there are a few ideas to get you started. I good by-product of this discussion might be to re-evaluate one’s own pics, right?

About the Author

Scot McKay’s dating strategies for those who refuse to settle for anything less than the ULTIMATE relationship are found at: http://www.deservewhatyouwant.com/ . Stop by right now and grab a FREE e-book ($20 value) when you sign up for the X & Y Communications Newsletter, which is always packed with unique and practical dating tips.

Take a look at your website. How much of your content might be considered as duplicate by a search engine algorithm? Even though you never copy anyone you can’t answer ‘none’ because someone can be copying you. Duplicate content is one of the biggest issues both for search engines trying to keep their results’ relevancy high, and webmasters trying to avoid search engine penalties.

Penalties for having duplicate content can be really harmful. This is not just a downgrade in rankings but a move to supplementary results which are hardly visible to the most of the web users. Normally it is expected that Google would select one URL over another to display in SERPs, while duplicates could be found in supplemental results. Unfortunately this is not always so. In the thread “Duplicate content observation” in the WebmasterWorld.com forum you can read about a case when an original high quality and authoritative page was removed from Google’s index together with its duplicates. Considering that this can happen even to the most honest webmaster, one can imagine the amount of attention this issue gets on any SEO forum.

Types of Duplicate Content

Duplicate content has a wider definition than the ‘copy-paste’ plagiarism; it is not just content scrapped from a competitor’s site, a SERP or a RSS feed. Apart from this there are few more aspects that are generally referred to as duplicate content.

Circular Navigation

Jake Baille from TrueLocal vaguely defines circular navigation as having multiple paths across website. This can be understood as the same content being accessible via different URLs. An example of the circular navigation could be an article that is retrieved by links like
- www.example.com/articles/1/ ,
- www.mysite.com/article1/
- www.mysite.com/articles.php?id=1

Another legitimate use of multiple URLs is forum threads. Each thread can be accessible by a link like www.myforum.com/index.php/topic.1201.html , and each message within the tread has a URL like www.myforum.com/index.php/topic.1201.msg.01.html . In the eyes of a search engine all the links lead to different pages with identical content. Solution? Think of a consistent way of linking, or apply robot.txt exclusion rules.

This can also be the case when other people link to you using differently looking URLs. Since these external links are out of your control, you should create a 301 redirect to the canonical URL you choose to be displayed.

Printer-Friendly Versions

Making a printer friendly version is a common practice and it adds value to the visitors. But printer-friendly version is also a prominent example of duplicate content! Fortunately a simple solution like adding a ‘noindex’ meta tag to your print pages solves the issue.

Product-Only Pages

Product pages looking similar are common among online stores. Typically they are created using a single template. Often two different product pages share a description that varies in just few words or numbers, which causes them to be filtered out as duplicate content. This issue has no easy solution. Either you rewrite robot.txt to allow only one product description to be crawled and lose SE traffic to the rest of them, or you roll up your sleeves and add something different to each product page, like testimonials, which is time consuming or nearly impossible depending on the number of product types in your stock.

How Do Duplicate Content Filters Work?

There are several algorithms in data mining aiming to detect similar text passages. The one claimed to be used by search engines is w-shingling. Each document has a unique fingerprint or shinglings – the contiguous subsequences of tokens (blocks of text). The ratio of magnitude of union and intersection of two documents’ shinglings can be used to determine their resemblance. Another algorithm that can be used for duplicates detection is Levenshtein’s distance

It is naturally to expect from a duplicate content filter to be able to discover the origin and rank it higher. The simplest way to detect the origin would be comparing the date of indexing implying that the original source is uploaded and crawled earlier than its copies. But with the advent of the RSS feeds the new content can be distributed instantaneously and this approach is no longer valid.

Concerning the origin’s right to be ranked higher – this is not always implemented. In this article you can read about an experiment of an article distribution. An article was syndicated twice scoring as many as 19000 copies. After some time Google, Yahoo and MSN have purged their indices leaving just few of the duplicates. MSN’s filter managed not only to discover the origin but also put it to the top of the search results. Yahoo has also discovered the origin, but in the results page to the title of the article, the origin’s position fluctuated obviously responding to the way Yahoo counts relevancy and authority.

To the tester’s amusement Google’s refined index did not include the original at all! Evidently Google featured only those pages with copies of the same article which it considered relevant and authoritative with no regard to the original source of the content! I’ve already mentioned a thread where a similar problem is discussed. The both stories took place in 2005 and early 2006 and so far I found no evidence that this issue is resolved.

For more information on search engine optimization and marketing check out our SEO Training Materials website.

About the AuthorOleg Ishenko, an Internet marketing professional gives useful advice on search engine optimization at his website SEO Training Materials

By means of the Internet we have the possibility to connect millions of people from around the world. And this number is growing as far as people discover the convenience and necessity of the Internet in today’s world, where the success in the business largely depends on information technology.

Companies and organizations have found the Internet an opportune place to promote their products and services. They use the strategy known as bulk email marketing, or bulk email sending, or sending advertisements and promotional letters to email users.

An essential element of successful bulk email marketing strategies is a clean list of targeted email addresses. This assumes that the list contains only valid email addresses of people who are really interested in receiving the emails from the company or organization. Otherwise, your unsolicited advertising will be classified as spam mail. Although sending out magazines and newsletters through bulk emailing is free, companies cannot risk the equity of their brands by offending people. A clean email list will help you assess the success of your email campaigns; and more importantly it will reduce the risk of breaking the anti-spamming laws.

So, how to build a clean targeted email list? There are a few “DON’T” here:

* don’t generate email addresses using special tools you may find on the Internet;

* don’t harvest the email addresses from web sites;

* don’t purchase a ready made list. Such lists usually come from email service providers and agencies that conduct surveys.

Ready made lists that you will probably purchase are never validated and are full of “dead” and undeliverable email addresses. Plus, those lists are sold and re-sold many times and the email addresses’ owners are already fed up with emails from other email marketers and I have a great doubt that they will open and read your message since they receive hundreds emails every day. The email addresses that you will harvest from web sites belong to people who did not hear about you and will hardly want to receive your emails. As a return you will receive a lot of complaints from people for sending them unsolicited emails, and ban of your email account.

There is a different way to build your clean targeted email list – subscription form on your web site. Before you start with bulk email marketing, get your web site up and running. Or, probably you already have a site where you advertise your products and services. Setup a subscription form somewhere on your web page and get others to sign up for your mailing lists with their consent. Spread the word about your mailing list through word of mouth. The beauty in this is that the list of emails will be self-screened and the database will only contain the people who are interested in your offers. Make sure you have their consent beforehand. It’s not as quick and easy as generating or harvesting email addresses but it’s more reliable way. You won’t send unsolicited emails as you have a proof that the recipient has subscribed himself to your mailing list.

Building Relationship with Your List

When you have an email list of subscribers who have specifically agreed that you send emails to them, you have an asset that can be leveraged over and over again. You can use that email list to drive traffic to different websites and sales pages again and again and this is why you must cherish your list like an apple of your eye. The better you treat your list, the better the return will be when you want it.

To have a very profitable email list, you should simply build a relationship with your subscribers. You want them to like you, feel like they know you, feel comfortable buying from you and most importantly you want them to look forward to and enjoy reading your emails. If you can build a strong relationship with your subscribers, then you have more chances of getting them to purchase your products and services.

Here are a few tips how you can build a relationship with your email list:

1. Send emails regularly. Make sure you are reaching your subscribers at least once a month in emails or other medium. If you emailed to a list of people and had little or no response does not necessarily mean your audience isn’t interested in your product. Experiment with different emails, get to know which email strategy works best, and keep using it to reach your subscribers.

2. Send useful information and tips. Your emails should contain something that the customer wants. It shouldn’t be just the information about your company or yourself. Focus on giving more than just what you sell. Specific content, messages, and other targeted information that interests your customers are good to include. This is a great way to make readers look forward to your emails as they will know that they are going to receive great information from you. Provide value in your emails and don’t try to profit in some way form every one of them.

3. Send the videos of you and talk to your subscribers about things they want to know about. Videos are usually better than regular emails because they are more personal and show there is a real person giving the information.

4. Make sure your subscribers can read your emails. Although the videos, graphics, flash animations, and logos look impressive on an email, they are often blocked by email filters. Upload video, graphics, and flash files to your site and use a flat text with hyperlinks to the site. Once your recipients get to your site, you can show them as many graphics as you want.

5. Create a way for your subscribers to interact with you. This can be a forum, a comment system, an email submission area, a live chat room and many others.

Note that not every email you send has to have some way of profiting in it; just make sure the readers enjoy it, make sure they like you and they like your emails. Make your readers to feel as though they can trust you and everything you say in your emails.

About the Author

Author is a technical expert associated with development of email marketing program: Bulk Email Software. Did you find those tips useful? You can learn a lot more here HTML Email Guide.

Crystal singing bowls were originally a by product from the computer industry, quartz can be heated to high temperatures so quartz ‘crucibles’ were use to grow computer chips and other components within them. I am not sure when crystal bowls first came into being as healing tools but I have been aware of them for about 15 years or so. Tibetan ’7′ metal bowls which work in a similar way have been in use for centuries. More recently the quartz bowls have been infused with other gemstones such as Ruby and Rose Quartz aswell as precious metals such as gold and silver. Crystal bowls are so powerful as they combine several healing modalities; sound healing, crystal healing and healing through light and colour. These properties can be further enhanced by the power of focused intention.

Sound healing works on the principle that everything in our universe is energy which has a vibration. Everything in existence within the universe is in a vibrational state. The frequency at which we normally vibrate is called resonance. Certain sounds therefore will resonate with different organs and parts of the body. Sound has been scientifically proven to have an effect on our autonomic, immune & endocrine systems as well as the neuropeptide transmitters in our brain. Sound healing practitioners’ look at their clients from this perspective and seek to balance their clients ‘dis-ease’ through correction of vibrational imbalances in their energetic system i.e. their aura or electromagnetic blueprint. When an organ in the body is not functioning at its optimum its sound pattern will be off, yet by re introducing the correct sound pattern this will help it to heal and return to health through the law of resonance. This law states that when one energetic system encounters another, similar system, their vibrations must come into a state of resonance or harmonic vibration.

It has also been documented how sound can effect matter. 80% of our bodies are water and the effect that sound has on water has been photographically demonstrated in Dr Masaru Emotion’s book `The Hidden Messages in Water’. Different sounds produced different types of geometric shapes within frozen water. Playing ‘Mozart’ produced beautiful symmetrical snowflake like crystals whilst discordant sound had no clear structure. You can imagine then the power of sound on the Water within our bodies! Dr Hans Jenny demonstrated how matter responds to sound using Cymatics. Cymatics is the use of ‘Pure Tone’ or ‘sine waves’ within the audible spectrum to produce physical patterns on a medium such as liquid or sand. A good example of this is how the ‘Shri Yantra’ pattern is produced by the ‘Aum’ sound.

Crystal bowls are unique in sound healing as they produce ‘pure tones’ when played. When we produce a sound with our voices or other instruments the note waivers and varies. With crystal singing bowls the note does not waiver. This produces a wave of energy known as a ‘sine’ wave that spreads out for a kilometre from the bowl in all directions and lasts for several minutes. Sine waves appear in nature in ocean waves and light waves. At higher frequencies sound converts into colour which is within the spectrum of light. Sine waves have the same energetic pattern that occurs in our brain in alpha state. In the alpha brain wave state the brainwaves run at about 8 to 12 cycles per seconds or hertz. This is a calm meditative state where the person is still alert and the is more receptive to learning, focusing and suggestion.

Crystal healing also works with vibration. Scientifically Quartz crystals have been shown to have high piezoelectric & pyroelectric properties. The piezoelectric effect is produced when a quartz crystal is compressed, which causes it to release a voltage of electricity and sometimes light. With Crystal bowls this compression of the crystalline structure occurs when the bowl is played. Pyroelectricy is caused by variation in temperature of the crystal and causes the energy within the crystal to expand when heated and contract upon cooling. This cooling would then store the energy within the crystalline structure. In my experience the crystal bowl ‘warms up’ when played. Even very small changes in temperature have been shown to produce this pyroelectric effect. Quartz crystals have the ability to take in energy, store it, redirect it and amplify it. Quartz absorbs white light and therefore has every colour frequency within it. Our bodies also contain silica and some of our glands are said to oscillate like crystals. Glands like the pineal gland are even crystalline in shape and structure as are cells right down to the molecular level. So quartz crystals will resonate with these structures. The bowls that have other gemstones fused with them will also have the metaphysical properties of that stone. Colour plays a part in this as does the individual mineral content of the stone. For example the gemstone turquoise is good for helping with joint pain and problems such as arthritis. Turquoise is a mineral rich in copper; copper bracelets have been used for centuries to bring sufferers relief from these ailments, so the stone will thus have a similar effect.

Crystal bowls work as a synergy between all of the above mentioned modalities. As quartz has the ability to take in energy and vibration and as our thoughts are waves of energy or vibration the bowls will absorb these ‘thought vibrations’ and amplify them. Carlos Castaneda said there’s an immeasurable, indescribable force which shamans called “intent” and absolutely everything that exists in the entire cosmos is connected to it. When we focus our thoughts with laser like clarity and precision we are connecting to the vibration of that which we seek to manifest. Quartz bowls will hone our thoughts and make them clearer. Through the law of attraction these clear thoughts then magnetize those things to us. The film ‘The Secret’ clearly documents how and why positive, clear thought brings those things that we focus on into being. It also demonstrates how we create our reality by our thoughts and the vibration that they and we as individuals hold. Positive thought has been shown to produce positive changes in out physiology. Therefore the more we ‘intend’ and believe the crystal singing bowls will effect those and others the more they will.

About the Author

Ursula Avins of Aphrodite’s Rocks has been involved with using crystal singing bowls aswell as gemstones for healing for 14 years. She runs http://www.mindbodysoul.ws where various bowls and crystals can be viewed and purchased.

The first part of being able to organize your work area is ensuring that you have enough space for active and inactive projects, equipment, and yourself. You will also need to have the correct types of work surfaces such as drawing tables and computer desks, depending on the type of business you own. Once you’ve taken care of these basics, you can start sorting through what you already have and making a list of what you will need to purchase. Some of the areas for improvement in your office might include file management, storage of office supplies, and creating better access to what you need to complete your work.

File management can be difficult in a home office because home offices are traditionally smaller spaces. There may not be room for large filing cabinets like some companies use for their file management. You can still come up with a well-organized filing system if you work at home. You just need to be willing to spend the time and effort to come up with such a system. You can use color coding as a means of file management, alphabetical filing, or filing using another method. The important thing is that all files are clearly labeled and that you take the time to file papers in the correct folders each day. This will reduce the buildup of files around your office and help you find information quickly.

Storing your office supplies correctly is important for two reasons. One, it helps you find supplies when you need them. Two, it helps to keep your office free of clutter. Imagine what life would be like if you had office supplies all over your office. You’d never be able to get an accurate inventory and you might run out of needed supplies. Alternatively, you might not be able to find supplies and order more, only to find out that you had several of that item hidden under a pile of papers. This wastes money and you also waste time searching for what you need. Consider a desk with several draws or purchase several supply cubes or storage containers. They come in a wide variety of styles and colors, so organizing your supplies can actually be fun.

Finally, figure out whether you need to move your furniture around to have better access to your computer, supplies, and other needs. If you’re constantly making trips across the room to get paper for the printer or you have a pile of trash around your trash can because you can’t reach it, it’s time to consider moving things around. Your desk should have easy access to all of your basic supplies such as pencils, notepaper, computer accessories, stapler, and envelopes. Items that are used less frequently may be placed in a cabinet or storage unit near your desk. Rearranging your office like this can cut down on wasted time and improve your level of productivity. Organizing your office takes a lot of time and effort, but once it’s organized, you can continue to reap the benefits for many years to come.

About the Author

** Rasheed Ali is CEO and founder of the Internet Coaching Academy http://www.InternetCoachingAcademy.com where he and his team of internet business experts are helping people from all over the world start, build and profit from their own internet business. He also offers a FREE newsletter and FREE video course on building a profitable home based business on the internet. **

Here are some quick tips on how your business can become more environmentally friendly, without too much effort or expense. These same principals can be applied to other areas of your life and home as well as your business.

Recycle

Recycling can take many shapes and forms. For instance, you can start purchasing recycled paper for your office machines such as printers, copiers, and faxes.

Recycled paper is now widely available at office supply and paper stores.

If you have a large office with many employees, set up recycling bins for soda cans, plastics, glass, and paper and find a nearby recycling service that you can take these items to.

When equipment or computers become obsolete, consider donating the items to a local charity or school (check out the Computers for Schools Program at http://www.pcsforschools.org/howhlp/howtodon.html)instead of setting them out by the dumpster (many computer items contain hazardous materials and should never just be thrown in the trash). When you upgrade your cell phones, be sure to recycle those as well. If you can’t find a local drop off point, you can visit http://www.recyclemycellphone.org/recycle.cfm. If you need to upgrade your office furniture, consider purchasing used furniture or donating your old furniture.

Buy other recycled products (aka “post-consumer waste” products) for your business such as recycled paper towels, packaging materials and other supplies.

Offer or Ask For Alternatives

If your business involves manufacturing or the sale of products, explore environmentally friendly alternatives. Non-toxic, recycled, or organic alternatives are available. Often times, recycled materials can even be less expensive that new raw materials.

Even services companies like ours can offer alternatives. For instance, we offer eco-friendly printing (printing using recycled paper and vegetable based inks) to our clients as well as a web hosting alternative that is powered by wind and sun (renewable) resources.

Consider the Commute

Although not every business can be a home-based one, there are ways to reduce the effects of commuting on the environment.

If you have employees, try to organize a car pool. If you live close to the workplace, considering walking, riding a bike, or taking public transportation (in many large cities, some bus lines run on natural gas or electric).

Consider buying a TerraPass (http://www.terrapass.org) for yourself or your employees.

If you’re in the market for a new company vehicle, look into purchasing a hybrid.

If you are part of a large company or corporation, try to institute breaking up the work shifts to help reduce the amount of traffic on the road at peak hours.

Go “Paperless” & Get Online

Make your office paperless by converting to electronic billing or invoicing, sending electronic faxes and email, and even selling online.

Having a website is an important marketing tool, but you can also offer your clients and customers a way to grab things like forms or documents online by having them on your website. You can also collect and store data by having a database programmed into your site and send your clients an electronic newsletter instead of a paper one.

Evaluate Your Environment

Can your business be using less power? Two simple ways to reduce power consumption is to install energy efficient lighting/light bulbs and to power down equipment or computers when they are not in use (weekends, evenings, holidays).

If you have a small business, considering opening windows and doors and using low-power fans instead of the air conditioning on warm days.

Large businesses and corporations in high-rise buildings can research becoming part of an energy management program such as The Energy Coalition (http://www.energycoalition.org) in California.

You can also help to improve your indoor air quality by using a hepa or ionic filter or even adding some live plants to your environment. More information on indoor air quality can be found on the Environmental Protection Agency website at http://www.epa.gov/iaq/is-imprv.html.

Get Involved

Consider researching and either volunteering or making a contribution to a non-profit environmental organization. A good place to start your research is CharityEvaluator.org (http://www.charitynavigator.org) and Give.org (http://www.give.org/reports/index.asp). Both sites can help you make intelligent decisions on finding and supporting charities.

Some of the environmental charity/non-profit organizations we support include: Co-Op America (http://www.coopamerica.org) The Conservation Fund (http://www.conservationfund.org/) Environmental Health Coalition (http://www.environmentalhealth.org) Coalition For Clean Air (http://www.coalitionforcleanair.org) Sustainable Northwest (http://www.sustainablenorthwest.org/) The Sierra Club http://www.sierraclub.org/

As you can see, “going green” doesn’t have to be difficult and can make a big difference.

About the Author

Sherry Holub received her degree in design from UCLA in 1995. She is now the Lead Designer and Creative Director at Southern California firm, JV Media Design (http://www.jvmediadesign.com). Sherry is also a member of the NAPP, AIGA, the International Academy of the Visual Arts (IAVA), and Cambridge Who’s Who.

You write, you post, and you wait. Crickets are chirping in the silence as you start to wonder, “So now that I have a blog, how do I actually get people to look at it?”

If your traffic report for your site is like a flat line on a graph, don’t fret.

Unless you’re Guy Kawasaki or Seth Godin, it’s not likely that your blog will shoot to the tippy top of Technorati overnight. For us non-famous folks, it takes consistent, patient, strategic work in order to build up our blog traffic.

Building blog traffic is all about creating useful content for your readers and making contacts within the blogging community.

It’s kind of like when you move to a new city where you don’t know anyone. Little by little you build relationships, you meet folks who introduce you to other folks, you make connections, make a name for yourself, and you become better known in the community.

It’s the same with blogging, except it’s a different type of party and you make your connections in different ways.

Here are 7 techniques that savvy bloggers use to make those oh-so-important connections and pump up blog traffic:

1. Focus on a targeted niche. Decide who you’re writing for, what you’re going to write about, and then stick to it. Don’t be all over the place and have one post on marketing, another on dog training, and then another that’s a review of the movie you saw last weekend. A blog with multiple topics is disorienting, not just to readers that stumble upon it, but to the search engines as well.

You see, the Google robots are easily confused. If they visit your blog and see that it’s a mish-mash of information, they don’t know what to make of it. But, if they stop by your blog and see that the words “marketing” and “small business” (or whatever) are sprinkled steadily throughout, they think, “Aha! This blog is about small business marketing. Whenever folks google the words “small business marketing”, we’ll know to include this site higher up in our results!”

Not only does having a very specific topic for your blog make it search engine friendly and result in higher rankings, but it also gives you the chance to become known as an expert in your field and have readers coming to your blog for their daily fix. The tighter you can make your niche the better.

2. Post as frequently as you can. When you first start your blog, it can feel a little overwhelming to have to write posts all the time. That’s normal–you just need to focus on getting into a regular writing schedule. Trust me, after a few weeks your mind will start to think in “blogging mode”, and you’ll start to come up with ideas for blog posts everywhere you turn.

I’ve noticed that most of the pro bloggers post almost daily, and oftentimes several times a day, but don’t feel pressured to mimic the pro bloggers Herculean blog writing stamina.

That would be like trying to go from couch potato to marathon runner overnight. Blogging is supposed to be fun, so don’t hurt yourself. And really, if it’s not fun, you’re not going to stick with it, are you?

You can start off by setting a goal for yourself of writing 3 posts a week.

The posts don’t have to be long essays. They can be short, compact posts that relay tidbits of info (often linking back to other people’s blogs) that your readers find interesting and are great conversation starters (which causes folks to make lots of comments).

3. Link to other people’s blogs. I try to link to other folks’ blogs as much as I can. This means that I see a great post at so-and-so’s blog, and then I write a post on my own blog that has a link to their post.

When my readers click on the link to go to the other person’s blog, that blogger will notice that he’s getting traffic from my site, and he’ll really appreciate it! I’ve had a few bloggers contact me to say hello and leave comments on my blog.

There are 50 million blogs out there (literally), but the blogosphere can be an incredibly small world. When you show a genuine interest in what another blogger is writing about, then that peaks their interest in you. You’ve just built another link in your community. Linking to other blogs also helps with your search engine ranking.

4. Comment on other blogs. My goal is to post thoughtful comments on at least 5 blogs a week. (If this sounds too much to you, start out smaller. The important thing is to get into the habit of commenting on other blogs.)

I look for interesting blogs in my genre (online business, marketing, productivity). I keep up with what they’re writing about, and when one of their posts catches my eye, I post a relevant comment. (You can research posts within your genre at Technorati.)

While some people like to post anonymously by just leaving their first name, I include my first and last name and a link to the URL of my blog. I do this because I want to build name recognition within these communities.

5. Use Trackbacks. A trackback is like leaving a remote comment on a person’s blog. When you reference a post on another blog, you use the trackback address for that post and enter it when you’re creating your post. When you create a trackback to someone’s post, you’ll see an excerpt from your post with your URL appear under their post in the trackback area.

Trackbacks are often the forgotten step-child in blogging, but I’ve found them to be the most effective means of making connections within the blogging community.

I’ve even had a journalist from a major newspaper contact and interview me as a result of a trackback I left, which led to another journalist finding me and interviewing me for her article, which led to me being featured in articles that were published in more than 20 different newspapers in the United States! How’s that for a big time payoff for one trackback?!

6. Blogging customer appreciation. Whenever a new person leaves a comment on my blog, I send her an email thank you note to let her know how much I appreciate her input. And if someone is sweet enough to talk about me on their blog and link to me, I go to their blog and leave a comment thanking them for giving me the attention. Also, when people write about me on their blogs, I make a post on my own blog (“Look who’s talking about me. Go see what they’re saying…” sort of thing) to bring attention to it and send traffic back to the other person’s blog.

7. Beef up your blogroll. I look for interesting blogs that cover similar topics to my blog, then enter their links on to my blogroll. When my readers click on those links, the folks on my blogroll can see that they’re getting traffic from me. It works the same as when you link to other blogs within your posts. It’s another way of letting the community know you’re there and that you’re interested in what they’re saying. Some of the folks on your blogroll might even reciprocate by putting you on their blogroll. Who knows?

If the thought of implementing all 7 of these tips makes your brain hurt, don’t fret. Maintaining a blog is an ongoing process, so start off by picking just a couple of these tips to work on, then when you feel comfortable start working on another.

Out of all of these tips, I would say that ones to start with are 1, 2 and 3– streamline your post topics to focus on your targeted niche, post as frequently as you can, and link to other blogs.

I’ve heard pro bloggers say that it can take 6-9 months before seeing a noticeable increase in traffic, so don’t feel disappointed if you don’t see immediate results.

Evangelizing your blog is really an exercise in patience, with consistency and longevity being the keys. Thankfully, it’s a fun, creative exercise, and if you stick with it you’ll have a blog that’s a source of joy for you, as well as being an excellent marketing tool for your business.

About the Author

Sharon Sarmiento is a Virtual Assistant who specializes in helping folks with internet technology & web media companies explode their businesses to the next level. She organizes, oversees and manages the million tiny details that go into the day-to-day operations of online businesses. For free resources on how you can work less and have more free time while still making more money, visit Sharon’s blog, eSoup, at: => http://www.eSoupBlog.com .