If you’re going to blog as a way to make money, you need to write a bit different than if you’re just keeping an online diary.  You have to find a way to make the search engines happy while still pleasing your readers.

Search Engines

Plenty of bloggers in the blogosphere are already familiar with using keywords, but it is not something everyone knows how to do.  If your blog is for profit, it is highly recommended to put keywords into your blogs.  Keywords help search engines to place your blogs in front of targeted audiences when they do a search.  A variety of keywords all related to the same topic should be placed strategically throughout each blog.

Generally a 2%-5% keyword density is best for a 500 word article.  Your main keywords should be included in the introduction and conclusion paragraph, then 2-3 times throughout the body to get the density mentioned above.  Search engines will favor this strategy more than stuffing keywords into your blog.

Readers

It is best to determine the type of people you want to target for reading your blogs.  This is the most critical part to keeping a blog because without readers, you have no purpose.  If you are selling a product or service, your blog must strictly focus on those topics.  If you discuss other topics that could be used on another blog, you are likely to lose readers.  Also, if you are just writing on topics that interest people you must keep your writing interesting and give them a reason to come back.

Determine the writing style for your topic.  It will be harder for readers to understand  where you are coming from if your posts are written in different formats every time.  If you start with posting nothing but comments from other people or with recipes in non paragraph form, keep it that way.  Did you start with long posts?  If you are gaining readers with long posts do not change to short posts.

Write valuable information.  Once you have started writing, be sure to write

information that people want to read.  Do not write about how your day went.

Instead write about how you found your information that you are writing about.  If it seems like you are giving away tips or secrets, your readers will feel special while reading.

Keeping Both Your Interest and Your Readers

After writing for days, your mind tends to empty itself out, or loses ideas to write about.  It can also be hard to stay on topic or keep the same genre of content.  When you have emptied your mind, it is time to refill it.

Read other blogs on your topic to find ideas, but do not steal their information.  Go to yahoo answers, a site where people can ask questions on just about any topic.  You could answer their question on your blog, then go back to their question and suggest that they read your blog.  Use news syndicators to help you find information faster because posts will all be on one location.  Search social sites to see what others are discussing and find something to write.

Stay on top of your posts.  Growing your blog’s readership will be easier if you develope a schedule to post.  If you stray away from your blogging, so will your readers.  Search engines will also drop your blog if they do not receive enough information.  It is easy for bloggers to stray away from blogging.   It is a lot of work and requires your attention.  If you cannot set aside enough attention to write on your blog, then cancel it.

Once you start blogging, plan to write consistently.  You can write daily, every few days, weekly, biweekly, or monthly.  Just be sure to keep up with the dates you plan to write.  Your readers will know when to come back if they can see a consistent posting.

Your blog set up should already be established and ready to start promoting.  Blogging for cash means you must also promote your blog or blogs.  One of the best ways to promote your blog is to set up back links to bring readers in from other places in the web.  Write articles just as you would write a blog. Post them in article directories, on social network sites, or on other blogs, but ensure that a link to your related blog post is at the bottom of the article or in your signature page.

Another way to promote your blog  that will stretch your blogging profit is to place Adwords ads (PPC)  for your blog.  Your cost will be based on a cost per click and each ad will reach targeted customers according to how you set up each one.  These ads reach people when they read their email, other blogs, or visit websites that relate to your blogging topics.

Link to other blogs or websites. When you link to other blogs or websites it makes your information more valuable.  If you link to specific people’s blogs, they are likely to place a link on their blogs as well to give their readers another outlet to find more information.

Use links in your signature. if you send emails and post in forums set up your signature to show your blog url every time you send or post.

There are a lot of blog services you can ping. This means that you notify this service, that you’ve updated your blog. These services then list your new posts and you get the traffic from them. These lists are available if you search google or any other search engine for it. That should be enough to give an initial boost to your traffic.

Submit to blog search engines.  There are masses of search engines available, that list only blogs. Just google for „blog search engines“ and you should find at least 20 of them. These blog search engines will help you with targeted traffic. Be sure to write a good title and a good description to your blog, so that people will easily find it and click on your link.

Article writing is a great way to increase the amount of traffic to your website, more importantly increasing your exposure to the world. Writing articles is all about getting links to your website, usually done from within what a “resource box.” Your resource box should contain links back to your website, after someone reads your article if they are looking for additional information on the subject they are re-directed to your website.

Resources boxes play an important role in developing back links to your website, which are very important to search engines for ranking your site against your competition. Back links are one of the key factors that search engine use to rate your website based on relevance of a specific keyword, or topic. Creating an effective resource box will drive traffic to your website each time a reader would like additional information about the topic.

The great granddaddy of free traffic, link exchanges are still very relevant and effective today. Make contact with sites that are in a similar niche as your own. Offer to exchange links with these sites. A word of caution – choose the sites that you link to very carefully. Avoid linking to spammy, black-hat sites with questionable content and motives. Make sure that these sites are not banned by the major search engines.

There are many directories available on the web that allow ads or links free of charge. Some are general and some specialize in a particular niche. Choose relevant ones and submit your link or ad to them. Make sure you choose quality directories that are indexed by search engines. In this way you get a one-way link back to your site. You benefit by getting free traffic and improved link popularity.

Another great, yet simple idea is to add an “Email this page” feature to your website. It’s a simple form where a visitor fills in the name and email address of another person that he/she wishes to recommend your site to. You set the form to automatically email a link to your website to that person. That person will then receive an email with a short message that says that so and so person had recommended that he/she visit your site, etc.

You not only need to get a continuous stream of new visitors to your website, you need to make sure you keep the old ones coming back all the time. The best way to do this is by providing fresh valuable content and by way of a newsletter system. Put in a newsletter subscription form on your site and invite visitors to subscribe to a newsletter that you can email to them either weekly or monthly. You can put some content, some special offers, ads and a link back to your site in your newsletter every time you email out. Also provide them with an incentive or reason to click on your link and visit your site. In this way, you remind your visitors about your website.

Beyond the traditional blog marketing techniques that are based on search engine optimization, back linking and keyword enrichment, there are other great creative ways you can drive traffic to your blog. If you’ve created a blog, you probably have some vested interest – personal or otherwise – to make sure you’re doing all you can to make sure it’s successful. Following are some fun ways to keep your blog fresh, continue to market to potential new visitors.

Consider interviewing people and then posting the interviews on your blog. Of course, make sure that the person you’re interviewing knows something about your blog topic. If you’re blogging about fighting hunger, interview the local food bank representative. If you’re blogging about gardening, talk with a greenhouse owner. Interviews can lend credibility to your blog, and have the added bonus that if someone searches for your interviewee, they might stumble across your blog in the process.

Keeping current on news that is relevant to your blog is another way to keep it updated. If there’s a local, national or international news story that will help make your point, refer to it. By referencing current events, you open up doors to open discussion with your visitors. Just be sure that you come back often and update your blog. If your post is still about something that happened 6 months ago, your readers will know right away your blog content is stale.

Contests are effective in keeping people coming back to a blog. Your contest should be somehow tied to the theme of your blog. If your blog is about dogs, you might run a funny dog photo contest, with the prize being a photo frame that has dogs on it. Everyone loves to win something, and they love to see their name listed as a “winner,” so always be sure to follow up and let your readers know how the contest turned out.

Press releases are another inexpensive way to market your blog. As press releases are generally re-printed at little to no cost to you, the release has to have something that is of benefit to the reader. This could be just an interesting feel-good type release, or a release that provides additional information on your cause. Press releases are a little trickier to write, and if you don’t have a lot of experience, you may want to find someone who can help you do it correctly.

Comments on your blog can also help to promote your blog. Comments can also be rich in keywords, and can even bring in other keywords that you may not have considered. Just be sure that you are responding to comments regularly. This proves to your followers that you are a real person with a real interest in making your blog successful. By responding to comments, you may be able to network with other bloggers, who can recommend your blog to others as well.

If you decide to get a little more creative when marketing your blog, you might want to look to other blogs and websites for ideas. Just remember that you don’t want to steal anyone else’s work. This is plagiarism. Feel free to take inspiration from what you find, but don’t copy anything word for word, or idea for idea. If you do find something you really want to use, be sure to acknowledge it by providing a back link in your blog. By encouraging the exchange of links, you will find others willing to include your link, and everyone can generate additional traffic.

Blog marketing takes an investment of time, and some creativity as well. However, with a little ingenuity and time, you can help make your blog more successful. Don’t quit looking for new ways to market your blog, and if you come up with something that works, be sure to share it with other bloggers. They might just have something that would help you, too!

The first, and probably most important, consideration a blogger needs to make is determining the right niche for their blog, especially if they are blogging for financial compensation. A blogger should find a topic that they know a lot about, and that they passionately believe in.

By finding the perfect niche, they can be confident they will be able to blog frequently and accurately, always have a fresh blog for the reader. The blogger also needs to research the competition, and determine their ultimate goal in blogging. By carefully considering these issues, it becomes easier to narrow down the topic for a blog, for both brand new bloggers and experienced bloggers alike.

This article will discuss some of these considerations in further detail.

Finding the Right Topic

The blogger needs to review their personal interests to find a topic they can blog about successfully. It’s best to start with topics in which the blogger already has a lot of information, and is passionate about. If the topic is right, once the blog is up and running, it will be easy to expand on it, add fresh ideas, and keep it up to fresh for visitors. Visitors will immediately recognize the passion behind the blog posts, and be drawn in for further information.

Subjects don’t have to be high-tech or even extremely unique. They can range from widely discussed topics to more specialized niche topics. Even with a topic that may only appeal to a small portion of the population, if readers are interested in your blog subject, they will seek you out.

If the blogger is passionate about the subject, others likely are too. But it’s important to keep in mind that if the ultimate goal is to drive high traffic for financial gain, this will be more difficult with very narrow subject matter.

Researching the Competition

Once the blogger has selected their topic, they should get online and do a search of other blogs with similar subject matter. This allows the blogger to get an idea if the market is already overwhelmed with blogs on a given topic.

It will help the blogger see how others are attracting visitors, and how interested the general public is in the subject matter. By checking out the competition, a blogger can truly assess if they feel confident they can compete in the open market with other bloggers on the same subject matter.

Goals of Blogging

Finally, a blogger needs to determine their ultimate goal in starting their blog. Some bloggers simply want to exchange their ideas with others, some want to promote a cause close to their heart, and some serious bloggers are looking to make money. Blogging for personal use is easy, as bloggers simply need to put their ideas in writing and get it out where others can find them.

They don’t need to worry about tracking traffic numbers. However, if the blogger wants to promote a specific cause and/or generate income, they need to seriously consider whether or not they will be able to drive the necessary traffic to their blogs to accomplish their goals. Topics that appeal to a larger audience are, in general, better for these purposes. If research has shown that the Internet is already inundated with blogs and sites with similar content, it’s going to be more difficult for the blogger to make his blog stand out from the rest.

If, after looking into all of these considerations, the blogger is confident they can create an accurate, informative and fresh blog on the topic, it’s time to get started!

No matter what you blog about, you can never make everyone happy. If you have ever taken a chance at anything in life, you know it doesn’t always turn out as you expected. If you’re blogging about political or controversial issues, you probably expect some negative feedback. But even if your blog is just personal in nature, some readers may still respond negatively.

They may not agree with your choices in life, or your point of view on a certain subject. When this happens, as it likely will at some point, your reaction will define your future as a blogger.

Whether the negative criticism is coming from an unknown reader, or maybe from friends or family, there are ways to positively deal with this. We will give you some tips here, and also briefly touch on times when a blogger could actually get into legal trouble with their posts.

Blog Comments That Are Negative

When a reader disagrees with what you have posted in your blog, the most common way they will let you know is by leaving a negative comment. Sometimes your initial reaction could be anger. But consider this…you’ve actually accomplished your goals of getting people to read your blog, think about what you have to say, and become personally involved in your topic.

You can deal with negative comments in a number of ways. The best way is to view them as an opening to further discussion, and attempt to clarify your point. If you do respond, remember to treat your reader with respect in your response, and stick to the issues presented.

Bloggers can also choose to block specific visitors or even user comments in general. If a certain visitor consistently leaves inappropriate comments, the blogger can block them entirely from posting in the future. Some bloggers instead choose to not allow comments at all. By doing this though, they are also blocking any positive feedback that visitors might want to leave. Bloggers can also choose to pre-approve any comments before they post, or delete specific comments they don’t like.

Remember, though, that deleting is done after the fact, and does not guarantee that other visitors haven’t already read the comments.

When Family and Friends Disapprove of Your Blog

Sometimes the nature of your blog itself could upset family and friends. They may be concerned about your reputation, they may disagree with your views, or they may be worried about how they could be affected by what you post. Family and friends might decide to talk to you about their concerns personally, rather than leave a general blog comment.

It’s difficult to answer the phone and realize that you’ve hurt someone you love. It’s also difficult to try to balance your personal relationships with the vision you have for your blog. These are delicate situations that need to be dealt with on an individual basis.

You may choose to try to explain your position to your family and friends. You may choose to just delete the blog. Or you may choose to modify your content. Remember, though, that if you modify your blog based on others’ opinions, it may turn off visitors in your target market.

Potential Legal Issues for Bloggers

Some bloggers post on anything and everything that comes to mind. It is important to remember that this is a public domain, and in reality, anyone can access it. If your blog post is defamatory to another person, or contains information that is clearly untrue, the person you are writing about may have the right to file a lawsuit against you for slander.

Posts that threaten the personal safety of others could create legal problems. Blatantly copying another’s work can be copyright infringement. Don’t assume that freedom of speech laws allow you say anything you want, whenever you want. This is a public forum, and you can’t infringe on the basic human rights of others. Some topics are best left in your personal journal at home, just to be safe.

For those who may be thinking about how to get traffic for your blog, this article covers ways of generating blog traffic that is not available for regular sites. It is important to remember that all blogs are websites, but not all websites are blogs. The primary method for generating traffic to both blogs and websites are basically the same. These methods include article marketing, link building, content creation, and ranking factors. The focus of this article will be using links to build traffic for your blog.

Blogs need to build traffic if they are to be successful. And to build traffic, you must introduce your blog to the community. There are several effective ways of attracting new visitors to your blog. The method discussed here tells how to link your blog to others with the same interests. The blogging world is an intricate community where you will be marketing your blog.

In the beginning it was okay to send out emails when you wanted to have a link on their site. In today’s blogging community, sending unsolicited emails is nearly a thing of the past because of the serious problem with spam. When you publish your blog for the first time, it is proper blog etiquette to introduce yourself to the community. Send a friendly email stating how pleased you are to be a part of the blogging community and that you will be glad to lend a helping hand whenever you can.

How do you find blogs with topics that you are interested in? There are several ways to find blogs that interest you. You can download the Alexa toolbar and enter a search for the type of blog that you would like to find. The Alexa toolbar is free to download and works with popular search engines such as Yahoo, Google, or Bing. When you have entered a topic for the blog that you want, you can browse the blogs that you would like to subscribe to.

The blogs found on these search engines have high rankings in the blogging community. You can add the links you like best in your blog roll and read them each day. This will help you stay current on community news and information. You should not waste time reading blogs that are of no interest to you. It is only natural for you to see blogs that you don’t like, but you must respect all the bloggers in your community.

Link exchange is a common practice for most bloggers, if a link is sent to you and you like the blog, you can send them a link to your blog. You should only add links that are relevant to your topics. Don’t become too concerned if you are confused about outbound and inbound links. The more you blog, the more you will understand.

A fast growing software that a large number of bloggers use is called WordPress. WordPress is a user friendly website that makes it easy to create and publish your blog. The WordPress control panel highlights all of your blog statistics including the amount of inbound links, as well as a list of recent bloggers that have been linked to you. WordPress has a variety of eye catching templates that you can use to set up your blog.

When you notice a blog with a unique title that is linked to you, you will likely open it and read the complete article if it is clearly written and the message is easy to understand. If the content is relevant to your topic of discussion, you can add their link and send them one in return. This will help attract visitors to your blog.

Even if you are working with non-blogging websites, you can still add their links to generate traffic for them. These websites use referrer logs to track visitors to their website. If you are a web master of a non-blogging website, it is important for you to check your statistics on a regular basis. You will be able to monitor the traffic that is generated by your blog, and see where it is coming from.

Whenever you login to post new content, your control panel will show the statistics for your blog including how many people have visited, how many visitors left comments, and the day of your last post. The control panel allows you to edit or remove content from your blog, and download pictures or videos.

Once you let the community know about your blog and the topics that you will be discussing, you can start linking to other bloggers to let them know that you are a friend to the community who is proud to be part of such an elite group of bloggers and writers.

Understanding and paying particular attention to search engine optimization (SEO) techniques is extremely important for the blogger who wants to build high traffic to their website. SEO techniques help improve the strength of the blog’s rankings with the search engines.

Essentially, each search engine uses an internal algorithm, or formula, to find blogs and websites that most closely match the keywords the user puts in while searching for information. No two search engines use the exact same formula, which is why many times you will get different results when searching for the same things on Google, Yahoo or Ask.

However, by following a few general guidelines, you should be able to help increase your ranking on any search engine. In this article we will discuss the use of relevant keywords, creating back links to your blog, and benefiting from the use of image tags.

Keywords are Key

The easiest and most common way to maximize your search engine ranking is by using keywords in your blog posts. Bloggers have different philosophies on the best way to approach this. Some believe that the best way to optimize your ranking is to use the keywords as many times as possible.

Others believe that a formula of 1-3% keyword saturation is sufficient to produce successful results. Still others choose not to really pay attention to the use of keywords at all, believing that as they write normally, the keywords that they need for SEO will naturally flow into the blog itself.

No matter which strategy a blogger adopts, it’s important to do some background keyword research. Try looking up what you believe are the keywords in your blog, and see what kind of results come back. A blog about gardening in general could also be informative to someone looking for answers on her rose bushes, but the blog may not come up as a relative search result if she only puts “rose bushes” in the inquiry. Besides doing just old fashioned research, there are also many software programs available that can help generate keywords which are relevant to your topic and might help you attract a wider audience of visitors.

The Importance of Back Links

This is not a programming thing. A back link is in simplest terms a link to your blog, which is contained within someone else’s site. If another blogger likes your information and includes a link to your site in his blog, that’s a back link. Many search engines weigh back links into their formulas, so this is another way that you can try to increase your search engine ranking.

The formula can be more complicated than with simple keywords. Basically, you want a higher ranking site to contain a back link to your blog. If a high profile site talks about your blog and provides a back link, this is more important (to the search engines at least) than if your neighbor mentions you in her gardener’s club newsletter, which also happens to be online.

You would think now that any back link is a good back link, and you might be thinking about all of the people you can ask to help out. The search engines can generally determine if back links are reciprocal and unrelated to a specific topic, and they can usually tell if the links are generated through link exchanges and link farms.

These types of back links are not considered very beneficial in the search engine formula, so you might want to focus your efforts elsewhere.

Improving Search Engine Ranking by Use of Image Tags

If you use photos in your blog, you probably know that you can create an image tag (that little box that appears when you hover over the pictures). While search engines generally cannot read the photo itself, the search engines generally can pick up on the tags you add to your pictures. So if you need to increase your keyword saturation, but it’s just not flowing naturally into the content of your writing, you can tag images with a few strong keywords to try to get a higher ultimate ranking.

Remember, though, that your blog reader will also see the tag when they hover over the picture, so make sure your tag is appropriate and relevant.

In most cases visitors expect new content on at least a weekly basis. However, depending on the subject matter the visitors may expect updates on a basis which is either more frequent. Similarly visitors may not be interested in receiving this type of information more than a few times a year.

Blog owners should be aware of the frequency of which readers expect new posts and should make an effort to oblige the readers with updates this often. This article will discuss methods for keeping a blog up to date including scheduling a regular time to post blogs, using publishing tools wisely and hiring guest bloggers when necessary.

Finding Time to Post Daily

One way to help to ensure a blog remains up to date is to schedule time to post blogs on a daily basis. This is especially important when blog readers expect new posts on a daily basis or at least several times per week. Bloggers who allot a specific block of time each day to researching, writing and publishing blogs are more likely to have a blog which is up to date than bloggers who plan on accomplishing tasks when they find time to do so.

There may still be days in which the blogger is unable to publish a new post on the blog but these days will be less frequent than if the blogger does not have a block of time strictly dedicated to keeping the blog up to date.

On days in which the blog is unable to devote time to blogging, the blogger may wish to at least publish a short message explaining why it was not possible to post a new blog entry. This will let readers know you are aware of their desire to read more information but are simply unable to publish a new blog post.

As long as this does not become a regular occurrence, blog visitors are not likely to stop viewing a blog simply because the blogger skips a day or two.

Taking Advantage of Publishing Tools

Some blog publishing tools enable bloggers to write blog posts ahead of time and specify when each post should be published. This is an excellent feature for bloggers who want to publish new posts daily but are unable to dedicate time each day to writing blog posts.

This way the blogger can dedicate a block of time each week to write blog posts and have the posts published throughout the week. This is often an easier method for many bloggers because they are able to be more efficient this way.

Hiring Guest Bloggers

Bloggers may also want to consider hiring guest bloggers to assist them in keeping a blog up to date. This can be a worthwhile method for bloggers who are not only having difficulty keeping their blog up to date but are also interested in providing readers with a little variety.

However, blog owners who opt for this message of keeping their blog up to date should carefully consider how the dedicated blog readers will react to this change. This is important because some readers may not be interested in reading blogs written by a guest blogger. Therefore the use of a guest blogger can actually be more detrimental to the blog than not updating the blog regularly.

Bloggers can gauge reader reaction to the use of guest bloggers in a couple of different ways. The simplest and most straight forward method is to poll the readers about the use of guest bloggers. This can be done by asking readers to comment on the issue and tabulating the comments received.

Another method to gauge reader reaction is to introduce a guest blogger and compare the traffic the guest blogger receives to the traffic the blog owner receives.

A blogger puts a lot of time and effort into making his blog a success. It takes a lot of hard work to create a blog that is interesting to others, and that has a large volume of traffic. Blog visitors become fans of blogs because they enjoy the content, they like the writing style, or they agree with the views the blogger expresses.

However, if visitors come back and content is not updated as they expected, or the style and viewpoints have changed dramatically, they may become disillusioned and look for a different blog. Sometimes a blogger might need to consider a guest blogger, especially if they know they won’t be able to update their blog for a longer time period. It’s important to let fans know that this is a guest blogger, and assure them that this is for a relatively short period of time.

This will avoid confusion. In looking for the right guest blogger, you need to consider style, and compensate them as an incentive to treat your blog as they would their own.

Finding the Right Guest Blogger

When a blog owner decides they need to find a guest blogger, there are a number of places to look. Online job boards are a great place to start. The blog owner can post a request for bids from other bloggers. Many times you can find experienced bloggers that are looking to make some extra income.

They might know a lot about your specific blog topic, or they might be able to blog expertly on a wide range of subjects. Job boards for freelance writers can also help you find the right guest blogger.

Freelance writers may not have specific experience in blogging, but most have honed writing skills and are very adaptable in their styles. When looking for a guest blogger, the blog owner should post a job with as many specifics as possible – the topic of the blog, the expectations from the guest blogger (daily, weekly, etc), and the duration of the project. This will help narrow down the responses and help you find someone who will be able to do what you need to get done.

Blog owners might also look for guest bloggers on message boards that have similar subjects to their blog. They may even ask for a guest blogger on their own blog. While the visitor may not have experience blogging, they are likely to be knowledgeable enough about the subject to produce interesting and insightful commentary.

Choosing the Guest Blogger

Remember that your guest blogger will be in charge of your blog for the time period you specify. Anything they say or do will reflect directly on you. When it’s time to make the decision as to who will be asked to do the guest blogging, you need to be comfortable with who you choose.

The guest blogger should be able to consistently produce blogs that are informative and well-written. The best way to test a blogger’s skills, or that of a freelancer, is to ask for samples of prior work for review. You can also provide a unique topic and ask them to write about it.

Many of the job boards give employer-rated feedback on a writer, so you can get a rough idea as to whether they have consistently met the requirements of previous work they have accepted.

When considering a guest blogger that you found on a message board, or even your own blog, review the comments they have previously posted. This will give you a good idea as to their skill level and overall views on your topic. If others have responded to their messages or posts, see how they are received. Will they blend well with your core visitors?

Paying a Guest Blogger

Most guest bloggers are doing this to generate extra income. If you expect quality, you need to compensate them for their work. Check the job boards for a general idea of the current going rates for blog writers. Compensation may also be offered in the form of allowing the guest to post a biography on your blog with a back link to his or her own blog or website.

This is essentially free advertising for the guest blogger, and if your blog is successful, they will be happy to have the chance to invite your readers to view more of their works.

When you and your guest blogger come to an agreement as to how he will be compensated, be sure to spell out the terms of the expectations and compensation in the form of a written contract.

Blogging is like a secret society and like most secret societies, it has its own language that you must learn. Although technologically savvy individuals can easily familiarize themselves with these terms, it might be hard for those who have limited or no background with Web publishing whatsoever.

First, the most important term in blogging is post. A post happens every time you place or publish an update to your blog; you also create a post this way. Second, since blogs are a means of communication, comments are also possible. If your audience leaves a message regarding your published content, this message is referred to as a comment. Normally, the comments are labeled and time-stamped to allow you and other readers to see who posted the comment and when it was posted.

Archives – records of important documents or files preserved

Blogosphere – a term that simply means the entire blogging community

Blogrolls – categorized list of links to other blogs or sites that you recommend

Comment Spam – irrelevant comments that spammers post to try to obtain a backlink

Downloads – a verb pertaining to the pictures, audios, or videos streamed from the author’s device memory; can also refer to files specifically set up for readers to obtain

Excerpt – summarized ideas of the post usually having a part of the entire article

Feeds – part of another’s site supplying the material for one site

Footer – the very bottom part of the blog where you’ll often see the copyright information

Guests – are the readers, viewers, spammers, etc., who visit your site

Header – the very top part of the blog usually containing the title of the blog as well as a logo or image

Hosts – web sites willing to accommodate your registration as a blogger

Index page – the front page of the blog; the first thing a visitor sees when typing in your domain

Introduction – preliminary part of the blog page showing the personal profile of the author or a brief description of the subject (can also be on a separate About the Author page)

Links – a tie up with a series of sections in the web suitable for navigation from one site to another

Permalink – the unique URL to a single post

Ping – this is a tracking tool that allows you to tell the search engines that you’ve posted new content

Plugins – combined term for plug-ins, these are characters or scripts adding additional function to the site

RSS feed – stands for Really Simple Syndication, enabling your content to be gathered and accessed by others; the feed will contain the latest posts from your blog

Sidebar – a column or columns on the left, right or both sides of the blog

Tags – a system of adding keywords which can help gather similar posts; another tool to let the search engines know what the content is about

Theme – this is the CSS code that creates the site’s design and layout

These are just a few of the terms that you will encounter in blogging. With the software and add-ons constantly evolving and new technologies being developed, there will always be new terms introduced as time goes on.