Unique Blog Template's Are Important!

By Daniel Millions

Blogs have increased popularity over this past months. Many people have started to create their personal blogs to express their thoughts and feelings. Internet companies have also started their blogs to inform consumers on the latest product news and reviews.

Because of this, blogs are also being used as internet marketing media. Before, internet marketing is done by placing banners and links on popular websites, such as news and information sites. Links were also included on newsletters and marketing letters sent to the members of their mailing lists.

Many people spend time reading blogs. People read their friend's blogs, their favorite author's blogs, blogs on topics that they are interested in, and blogs on product reviews. With the increasing popularity of blogging, it is even feared that people rely on blogs to get the latest news.

While getting news reports from blogs isn't reliable, some people look for product reviews through blogs. In some cases, this is more dependable. While it is true that some media persons are being paid to write good reviews about a certain product, blog writers write about their actual experiences on products and services from a company.

Since there are many people who read and start their own blogs, blogs are a good medium to market a product. With the increasing blog traffic means increase in product sales.

Blog traffic can be increased by joining affiliate programs and sites, which will list your blog under a certain search category or name. You can also have your blog advertised in popular websites. This, however, will cost some money and is not advisable if you have just started blogging.

A writer who has just launched his/her blog will want as much traffic as possible to increase advertisements on the site. Also, some advertisers pay every time their link is clicked or the page that has their link is viewed.

When you have increased traffic on your blog, you should try to keep you visitors coming back and recommending your blog to friends and colleagues.

This can be done by having informative or amusing content and good blog layout and design. You may develop your blog's content or you can also acquire the services of a web content writer to provide you with the blog articles.

The blog's layout and design also plays a big role. While most of the companies offering free blog hosting offer pre-selected templates, there are also some that allows customization that if you utilize this feature correctly can increase your blog's traffic.

Here are a few tips to make your blog stand out from the millions of blogs out there that have standard designs.

Customize the banner - The banner usually has the most generic designs that are common to the blogs from a blogging company or service. You can personalize this banner by having a graphic with the dimensions of the banner. You can also edit the graphic so that it will also include the title of your blog. In this case, you can create your own graphic or you can purchase professional looking graphics online for less than $10.

Personalizing photos - Of course, most of the photos that you will be posting will be your own. However, if you don't customize the photos before posting them, you may miss maximizing the enhancing benefits graphics can add to the page. Adding photo borders can help the photo stand out from the page.

It can also add to the design of your blog. You can choose a standard border or you can also create your own border which can be associated with your blog's templates.

Add a favicon - Don't you think sites with icons on the address bar before the website's URL are cool? Many people do. These favicons add a professional look to the URL. These easy to do using photo or graphic editing softwares.

Check out blog templates, layouts, backgrounds, textures and skins from sites. There are sites that offer free blog templates, layouts, backgrounds, textures and skins. You can make use of these so your blog will not look generic like most of the blogs hosted by the service provider.

Include RSS feeds - This is a cool way to inform people with newsreaders about your blog headlines. Tutorials on RSS feeds are available on the internet.

Audio makes your blog more personal
Not only does audio personalizes the blog; it can also keep your visitors coming back. You can try having streaming radio stations, mp3 file or playlists loading with your blog.

Advertisements - If you have signed-up with Google Ad-Sense, which I am sure you would like to do, make sure that the ads are conveniently placed that these will not hinder your readers' ease in accessing the information on your blog.

Try using these tips and you can definitely increase and retain traffic on your blog.

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Which is better? Dynamic Url or Static Url?

By Charles Dick

During earlier times, all websites used static HTML pages and so the first search engines were oriented towards static web pages. As the web technology developed several new methods to generate websites and dynamically generated web pages came into being. Dynamic web pages differ from static pages in that there is no physical equivalent to the page you may be viewing on the server. Dynamically generated pages are mostly based on a single template page for generating an entire website. Since dynamic pages use scripting languages like PHP and ASP, they came to acquire the language names like dynamic-page.php.

Sample Static page: http://www.searchenginegenie.com/search-engine-optimization-articles.htm

Sample Dynamic Page: http://www.searchenginegenie.com/search-events/view_entry.php?id=717&date=20090803

Dynamic URLs versus static URLs has for long been a hotly debated subject among webmasters. A static URL, simply stated, is one that does not change and therefore does not contain any URL parameters. The fact is updating these kinds of web pages can be tedious as every single page has to be hard-coded. This is the reason why webmasters who have to frequently update sites like online shops, forum communities, and blogs or content management systems prefer to use dynamic URLs. It is recommended that if you want to serve a static URL, you should create a static equivalent of your content.

Dynamic URLs are generally used if the content of a site is stored in a database and pulled for display on pages on demand. In such cases, the site serves more as a template for the content. But it is said that URLs have a distinct disadvantage in that different URLs can carry the same content.


A simple example would be a 1000000 page site with each page generated with the format below

http://fishbase.org/Country/CountrySpeciesSummary.cfm?c_code=356&id=24516
http://fishbase.org/Country/CountrySpeciesSummary.cfm?c_code=356&id=24517
http://fishbase.org/Country/CountrySpeciesSummary.cfm?c_code=356&id=24518
http://fishbase.org/Country/CountrySpeciesSummary.cfm?c_code=356&id=24519
http://fishbase.org/Country/CountrySpeciesSummary.cfm?c_code=356&id=24520
http://fishbase.org/Country/CountrySpeciesSummary.cfm?c_code=356&id=24521......

All the above mentioned six URLs end up with six different landing pages. But when the search engine tends to remove the information subsequent to the first offending character, the question mark (?), ultimately all the six pages become identical :

http://fishbase.org/Country/CountrySpeciesSummary.cfm
http://fishbase.org/Country/CountrySpeciesSummary.cfm
http://fishbase.org/Country/CountrySpeciesSummary.cfm
http://fishbase.org/Country/CountrySpeciesSummary.cfm
http://fishbase.org/Country/CountrySpeciesSummary.cfm
http://fishbase.org/Country/CountrySpeciesSummary.cfm

At this instant, your unique pages have become identical, and consequently the URL’s are duplicated which won’t be indexed by the search engines.

This is one foremost reason why webmasters prefers to rewrite their URLs and make them as static ones. But while rewriting URLs, it must be borne in mind that it is tough to correctly generate and maintain rewrites. Professional’s suggestion is that while rewriting the URL it is necessary that you remove the redundant parameters while maintaining a dynamic-looking URL.


Here's an example of a URL with a couple of parameters:

http://fishbase.org/Country/CountryChecklist.php?c_code=356&vhabitat=fresh&sid=98ert17890664

c_code indicates : Country code

vhabitat indicates : Type of fish category

sid=98ert17890664 - the session ID number is 98ert17890664


The following are some examples of static-looking URLs which may cause more crawling problems than serving the dynamic URL without rewriting:

Dynamic URL : http://fishbase.org/Country/CountryChecklist.php?c_code=356&vhabitat=fresh&sid=98ert17890664

Wrong URL Format 1 : http://fishbase.org/Country/CountryChecklist-c_code-356-vhabitat-fresh-sid-98ert17890664.html

Wrong URL Format 2 : http://fishbase.org/Country/CountryChecklist//356/fresh/98ert17890664

Wrong URL Format 3 : http://fishbase.org/Country/CountryChecklist,356,fresh,98ert17890664.html

Wrong URL Format 4 : http://fishbase.org/Country/CountryChecklist-356-fresh-98ert17890664.html

Rewriting your dynamic URL to one of the above examples might cause us to crawl the same piece of the content unnecessarily through many different URLs with varying values for session IDs (sid). These forms make it difficult for us to understand 98ert17890664 have nothing to do with the authentic content which is returned through this URL. Conversely, here's an example of a rewrite where all irrelevant parameters have been removed:


Correct URL Format (After Rewriting the Dynamic URL) : http://fishbase.org/Country/CountryChecklist//356/fresh

consequently the finest solution is to keep your dynamic URLs as they are. Or, if you tend to remove irrelevant parameters, bear in mind to leave the URL dynamic as the above example of a rewritten URL shows:


Correct URL Format (Dynamic URL) : http://fishbase.org/Country/CountryChecklist.php?c_code=356&vhabitat=fresh


How to Rewrite Dynamic URL's

Mod Rewrite Rule Generator tools helps you to generate dynamic URLs to search engine friendly URLs. For search engine friendly (rewrited) URLs you need the rights to put a .htaccess file on your webspace and you need the Apache Webserver module mod_rewrite. Check it [http://www.searchenginegenie.com/mod-rewrite-generator.php].



Sample Code
Dynamic URL : http://fishbase.org/Country/CountryChecklist.php?c_code=356&vhabitat=fresh

.htaccess Code:

RewriteEngine on

RewriteRule ^CountryChecklist-(.*)-(.*)\.html$ CountryChecklist.php?c_code=$1&vhabitat=$2&sid=$3

Generated URL : http://fishbase.org/Country/CountryChecklist-356-fresh.html


Go excavate and start learning the Mod Rewrite in detail.[http://www.webforgers.net/mod-rewrite/].

There is a popular misconception that dynamic URLs cannot be crawled. Google claims it can crawl dynamic URLs and interpret the different parameters. Google may have problems crawling and ranking the dynamic URLs if dynamic URLs are made to look static and parameters hidden. Thus the inference is to avoid reformatting a dynamic URL to make it look static. It is preferable to use static content with static URLs as far as possible. But in the event webmasters decide to use dynamic content, they should provide the possibility to analyze the URL structure by not hiding parameters and making them look static.

As you can see the HTML version is the best because it is so easy to manipulate and the dynamic URLs can at times be atrocious. Google has however made it amply clear that dynamic sites cannot be crawled as fast as static sites. Google is apprehensive that dynamically generated sites can potentially have unlimited pages and so Google assumes a dynamic looking site is far too large and slows the crawl speed.

It is good to know that if you are starting a new site and want the most traffic out of Google, then filenames are important and static HTML pages are very easy to name for optimum SEO benefit. Google finds static URLs more comfortable because Google takes all words it recognizes from a URL and uses that in the rankings algorithm.

Just click here for clear view of above article: http://www.searchenginegenie.com/Dynamic-URLs-versus-Static-URLs.html.


Search Engine Genie is a Leading Search Engine Optimization Company (SEO) and SEO Consulting Services to its US, Canada, and UK clients.Search Engine Genie is a Great resource with 75 plus Free webmaster tools, forums, SEO Articles, SEO Blog and more. Contact us at support@searchenginegenie.com (or) Call us at 1-714-516-8845.

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Problogging and How To Make Money with Blogs

By James Murray

A weblog (or simply blog) is a website that 'publishes' or features articles (which are called 'blog posts', 'posts', or 'entries'), written by an individual or a group that make use of any or a combination of the following; Straight texts, Photographs or images (photoblog), Video (videoblog), Audio files (audioblog) and Hyperlinks.

Usually presented and arranged in reverse chronological order, blogs are essentially used for the following purposes; Online journal or a web diary, Content managament system and Online publishing platform.

A typical blog has the following components; Post date, the date and time of the blog entry. Category, the category that the blog belongs to. Title, the title of the blog. Main body the main content of the blog. RSS and trackback, links the blog back from other sites. Comments, commentaries that are added by readers. Permalinks, the URL of the full article. Other optional items, calendar, archives, blogrolls, and add-ons or plug-ins.

A blog can also have a footer, usually found at the bottom of the blog, that shows the post date, the author, the category, and the 'stats' (the nubmer of comments or trackbacks).

There are numerous types of blogs. Some of them are the following;

a) Political blog, on news, politics, activism, and other issue based blogs (such as campaigning).

b) Personal blog, also known as online diary that may include an individual's day-to-day experience, complaints, poems, and illicit thoughts, and communications between friends.

c) Topical blog, with focus either on a particular niche (function or position) that is usually technical in nature or a local information.

d) Health blog, on specific health issues. Medical blog is a major category of health blog that features medical news from health care professionals and/or actual patient cases.

e) Literary blog, also known as litblog.

f) Travel blog, with focus on a traveler's stories on a particular journey.

g) Research blog, on academic issues such as research notes.

h) Legal blog, on law (technical areas) and legal affairs; also known as 'blawgs'.

i) Media blog, focus on falsehoods or inconsistencies in mass media; usually exclusive for a newspaper or a television network.

j) Religious blog, on religious topics

k) Educational blog, on educational applications, usually written by students and teachers.

l) Collaborative or collective blog, a specific topic written by a group of people.

m) Directory blog, contains a collection of numerous web sites.

n) Business blog, used by entrepreneurs and corporate employees to promote their businesses or talk about their work.

o) Personification blog, focus on non-human being or objects (such as dogs).

p) Spam blogs, used for promoting affiliated websites; also known as 'splogs'.

Blogging is typically done on a regular (almost daily) basis. The term "blogging" refers to the act of authoring, maintaining, or adding an article to an existing blog, while the term "blogger" refers to a person or a group who keeps a blog.

Today, more than 3 million blogs can be found in the Internet. This figure is continuously growing, as the availability of various blog software, tools, and other applications make it easier for just about anyone to update or maintain the blog (even those with little or no technical background). Because of this trend, bloggers can now be categorized into 4 main types:

Personal bloggers, people who focus on a diary or on any topic that an individual feels strongly about.
Business bloggers, people who focus on promoting products and services.
Organizational bloggers, people who focus on internal or external communication in an organization or a community.
Professional bloggers, people who are hired or paid to do blogging.

Problogging (professional blogging) refers to blogging for a profit. Probloggers (professional bloggers) are people who make money from blogging (as an individual blog publisher or a hired blogger).

Below are just some of the many money-making opportunities for probloggers; Advertising programs, RSS advertising, Sponsorship,
Affiliate Programs, Digital assets, Blog network writing gigs, Business blog writing gigs, Non blogging writing gigs, Donations, Flipping blogs, Merchandising, Consulting and speaking.

The following are a few things that you need to consider if you want to be successful in problogging;

a) Be patient. Problogging requires a lot of time and effort, not to mention a long-term vision.

b) Know your audience. Targeting a specific audience or group is a key to building a readership.

c) Be an 'expert'. Focus on a specific niche topic and strive to be the "go-to" blogger on that topic.

d) Diversify. Experiment with various add and affiliate programs that enable you to make money online (aside from blogging).

e) Do not bore your readers. Focus on the layout. White spaces, line spacings, and bigger fonts make a blog welcoming to read.

Certainly, it is possible to earn money from blogs. One just needs to take risks, the passion, and the right attitude in order to be a successful problogger.

James Murray is a successful writer and online gambling expert providing valuable tips and advice for those interested in gambling and online gambling strategies. His numerous articles found on the Internet ,provide useful and factual gambling information and insight. Some of his websites are http://www.casinospokerrooms.com. Check out Absolute Poker at http://www.casinospokerrooms.com/em/absolutepoker.html.

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