Once you have your blog set up, which is an automated process in most cases, you need to decide what you’re going to blog about. Make sure that you focus on one particular subject as this is one of the biggest secrets of how to make money by blogging. After all, people that visit your blog regularly are going to expect information on the same subject. Give your visitors what they want and you will excel.

To begin making a WordPress blog, you first require a theme. There are hundreds of free themes, which are the basic look that you blog will have. The theme includes all aspects from the layout to the colors that are used in the design. If you would like, you can even have a theme custom created for you, or you can purchase a premium theme with lots of built in features. I myself use a premium theme with a few customizations.

WordPress is a very popular blogging platform because it has so many options available for users. There are features that are available “right out of the box,” and there are numerous other features available by using plugins – these add new features for your blog when they are activated.

If you are using WordPress, whether it is actually for blogging, a general CMS, an article directory or one of the other type uses that this incredible platform lends itself to, you will inevitably get in the situation that we all arrive in, where to get the ideal theme for your site.

A blog is basically a means of communicating with others, and providing them with information. It does so by being available on the World Wide Web through the internet, and anybody that knows the name or URL of your blog can access it at any time they want either by clicking on a hyperlinked URL or anchor text, or entering the URL of the blog into their browser.

First of all there are two ways you can start your own blog. There are quite a few free blogging communities like Blogger; which is owned by Google. It’s real simple to set up your blog using one of the many templates they offer. The problem with being in blogging communities you won’t get enough traffic to make any money. You need to be a stand-alone entity to cash in on earning money from blogging.

Every time you add new information to your blog, you want to let the blog directories know about it, this is known as pinging. Some Blog providers automatically send out pings when you update, but to be on the safe side you will want to do this manually too.

One of the best ways to make money with blogs is to create and market niche blogs that aren’t too competitive. The best blogging platform that Rob recommends is WordPress and he provides a list of plugins and themes that are essential for your blog to attract traffic.

Purpose of your blog: This is important as this will help you to select your theme for the long term. If you are going to write a blog only for you to vent out your emotions and thoughts, you do not need to give much importance to many other aspects of your blog like advertisements, widgets, etc. But if you blog to help others like this one you are presently reading, or to make money out of it, then you need to also consider few other things in addition to the above ones.

The phenomena called PPC search engine marketing has bombarded the online world and has become an extremely popular phenomenon amongst the companies to achieve a certain level of visibility on the online world. Such is the nature of these PPC ads, that the moment they go live on the internet, they stand all the chances to get noticed by the prospective costumer and generate a considerable amount of the relevant traffic through it. And if your website is good enough, you might expect greater return on investments. The PPC search engine management has grown effective and quite popular with the companies for obvious reasons. However you should be very careful in understanding that if you think that aimless and vague campaigns will help you achieve your task, then you are certainly mistaken. It might as well happen that with a blurred vision of your targets, you might not be able to harness full benefits of the PPC search engine marketing.

Granted that the search engine promotion yield higher chances of having a better online visibility on the World Wide Web, it also offers to give the desired results on a grand scale. However, it should be noted that the most important part about this phenomena is to find and know the right keywords which will draw the right results for your business. A good SEO can do a thorough research to find out the most accurate and the right keyword which is impeccable enough to hit the bull’s-eye. The keywords should be taken into account by thoroughly analysing the products or services offered by your company and accordingly choosing the relevant out of all. This isn’t as simple as it looks on the face value. It involves much pain staking efforts and right amount of knowledge to decide the right keywords.

PPC search marketing has been gaining momentum on the online scene and hence causing more and more companies to join the bandwagon to achieve instant results. In such a circumstance, your chances of hitting your target market become quite limited and sometimes, you are not able to get the kind of results that you anticipated. So, the point is to use some logic and accordingly invest in such marketing campaigns.

It seems simple.  It seems small.  It doesn’t even take that long to do.  Creating a list of keywords to use to optimize your website or blog is not a complicated task.  That is, until you find out you have the wrong keywords.  There are many steps and methods for choosing a list of targeted, popular, low competition and “relative” keywords for your business, but you should never settle on a list of keyword phrases until you’ve tested them for success!

So, how do you find out if your keywords will attract the right prospects?   And more importantly, how do you do this quickly?!!

The answer is pay-per-click, or PPC.  By leveraging paid advertising through Google Adwords or Yahoo Search Marketing you can quickly find out beyond a shadow of a doubt just how profitable your keywords will be for your business.

To briefly give you an idea how to set up a keyword test (both Google and Yahoo have video tutorials on how to use their services) here are a list of steps to follow:

1.    Set up a “Landing Page” with a lead-capture form that contains some kind of “offer” that you will give your visitor in exchange for his or her email address

2.    Break your keywords into related groups (you may want to use a free tool called Traffic Travis to do this)

3.    Create a campaign in your preferred PPC provider (Google often has promotions for $100 to use towards advertising) for your keyword  test

4.    Put your groups of keywords each in a separate “ad group” and write an ad for each (To get ideas for ads run a search for your keywords in the search engine and look at the competing advertisers ads) **NOTE: Make sure the ad is consistent with your offer on the landing page**

5.    Be sure to set a daily limit on your spending

6.    Let this test run for a week and then go back and evaluate your results.

Don’t be overwhelmed by all of the features and options available to you in the PPC interface.  You are just testing which keywords have the highest “attraction” and conversion rates.

In a week, go back into your account and look at the number of times each keyword prompted your ad to be displayed.  Then look at the “click-through rate”.  The number of displays will give you an idea of how popular the keyword phrase is, and the click-through rate will tell you how well searchers who input that particular keyword are attracted to your offer.  This gives you an idea of just how often a placement in the search results will lead to targeted website traffic.

In the event that your results are inconclusive, which can occur if you do not have enough traffic (often caused by a low position in the results) you can run the test again for another week.  But before you do, increase your bid by 25-50% for all keywords that are not in the top 4 positions.
Keep in mind that the higher required bid is due to increased competition and will likely result in more natural search engine optimization competition as well.

Utilizing this simple (and free, if you get Google Adwords’ $100 credit) method of keyword conversion testing you can save thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours you’d otherwise be wasting on keywords that just don’t convert for your particular business.  Whether this is your first time at keyword selection or the hundredth, there is simply no reason not to go through this final keyword evaluation step.

Still doing all your search engine marketing
tasks yourself? So … how come your site isn’t on the first page of Google? It is rare for one person to possess all the skills needed to create a successful website: you need to be versed in website development, graphic design, database and other software development, ebook and content writing, article marketing, and search engine optimization.

Here are a few more SEO mistakes that just about every other Webmaster out there makes, along with a suggested fix that will help you draw more business and get better results from your marketing, in spite of of how big or small your budget is.

Marketing Mistake #1: Webmasters don’t blog.

Blogging is popular right now and we suggest you look at it as the perfect marketing opportunity. Blogs are easy to set up and maintain. They are the perfect way to get repeat visitors to your website, and it’s very easy to add products to sell online through your blog. Blogging is also an excellent way to keep people informed about your business, especially if you add an RSS feed.

Marketing Mistake #2: Webmasters don’t take advantage of article marketing.

Article marketing is here to stay, there’s no doubt about it. What are people interested in reading about? You can find out what people are talking about on sites like Yahoo Groups, if you’re interested in writing on a particular topic. You should also search the Internet for other hot topics of interest. You will also need to research the keywords people are searching for, so your articles can be properly targeted.

Marketing Mistake #3: Webmasters are reluctant to hire ghostwriters.

The biggest advantage to hiring a ghostwriter is the time you will save. Ghostwriters can religiously update your blog or write search engine optimized articles for your site daily. You will gain more visitors if your website is updated regularly. Google, like all other search engines, loves new content, and for this reason, it tends to rank blogs higher in its search results, especially when new posts are added often.

Marketing Mistake #4: Webmasters don’t tag their sites.

You may have heard the term “tagging” or seen “tag clouds” on websites and blogs. Tags are essentially keywords that are linked to page content and topics. If you don’t get in the habit of tagging now, you will be in trouble if you want to start later. Imagine having a blog with hundreds of posts and then having to go back and edit each one individually to add the tags associated with it.

Marketing Mistake #5: Webmasters don’t outsource.

Outsourcing has already trickled down from large corporations to small businesses, which now have online service providers doing everything from secretarial work to graphic design. Any work that doesn’t require meeting in person has the potential to be outsourced, thanks to instant messaging, computer scanners and email attachments. Webmasters must be able to distinguish when a routine job can be done digitally, and across time zones.

Whether you’re changing your entire site or simply retiring outdated or unneeded pages, the importance of choosing the correct redirect strategy shouldn’t be underestimated. Imagine you’ve just completed a costly overhaul of your web site. You’ve kept some sections the same but have also opted to change a few file names, add a number of new pages and delete a handful of products, catalogues and old news items. Your new site is fresh, relevant and completely up to date. While you may be happy with the new look, this is potentially the most dangerous time for your fledging new design as you risk losing both site visitors and time spent on search engine optimization and web site rankings if the correct redirects haven’t been implemented.

The majority of sites will harvest their traffic from search engines
. So, when visitors find an older page listed in the search engine results and try to visit that destination URL only to find it’s no longer there, what happens? The visitor (potential clients, returning clients and search engines) receive a 404 File Not Found error message. Suddenly your stock with that potential client plummets as they are forced to go back to the search engine and try another listing or manually type in the home page URL based on the address of the missing page.

This damage to a site’s reputation also extends to the standing of the site in the eyes of the search engine. If the spiders try to access a page that has been removed or renamed, information held about that page (including its page rank and position) is lost. This can have a knock on effect on traffic numbers and rankings, ultimately leading to a lower online profile and the loss of years of hard work and marketing budget building prominent positions in the SERPs.

Avoiding both of these worst case scenarios is possible with an effective redirect strategy. Depending on the permanence of the switch, you have a number of redirect options – choosing the most appropriate one for your situation will help you direct visors seamlessly to new pages and retain important page rank and inbound link counts in the eyes of the search engines.

Do you need a permanent redirect? If so, implement a 301 redirect page. This is a page that appears to users as they are transferred from one site to another or, from one page to another. A 301 redirect is the most efficient method of ensuring site visitors arrive at the correct page and the most effective redirect option for SEO purposes.

A 301 redirect is implemented with a .htaccess file. The server side document contains instructions for specific tasks such as IP exclusion, the use of alternate index files, creating custom error pages and changing file extensions. A simple text document, the file can be created in notepad and should include a command similar to ‘redirect 301 /oldsite/oldpage.htm http://www.mynewsite.com/newpage.htm ‘. The file is then saved and uploaded to the server. When the search engine spider next visits the site and accesses the file, it is educated as to the new site structure and which new page replaces which old page.

Do you need a temporary redirect? If so, try a 302 redirect page. This is a temporary solution to shift traffic to a specific new area for a short period of time. It may be used for example if you have a seasonal micro-site only used for the Christmas holiday period; rather than changing your entire site, you would simply redirect incoming traffic to the festive themed micro site using the 302 redirect. When the holidays are over, removing the 302 redirect will channel users straight back through to the main site. Using the 302 code tells the search engines that the move is only temporary and instructs them not to update their index records.