First of all, you need to brainstorm the topic you want to write about. When you are just starting out as a writer it helps if you focus on topics that you are interested in. Writers (of all skill levels) produce a higher quality of work when it is on a topic they are genuinely interested in. Generally mechanics and rules of the English language are also very important. An individual is less drive to read an article if it is written with poor grammar, punctuation, and spelling.

Never be afraid to elevate your direction. This simply means to toss in a big word every once in a while. This requires the reader to do a little more thinking while reading your article. It may even require them to look up what the word means.  Using the occasional advanced vocabulary term makes the reader feel like you really know what you are talking about.

A reputable article is one that sticks to the facts and avoids getting to opinionated. Your readers are going to want to know what the truth is. They are not going to want to know what you think the truth is. Opinionated writing is something that should be reserved for writing blog posts.

Open the file:

/wp-content/plugins/contact-form-7/modules/text.php

Replace this:

$html = '<input type="text" name="' . $name . '" value="' . esc_attr( $value ) . '"' . $atts . ' />';

$html = '<input type="text" name="' . $name . '" value="' . esc_attr( $value ) . '"' . $atts . ' onfocus="if(this.value==\'';
$html = $html . esc_attr( $value ) . '\') this.value=\'\';" onblur="if(this.value==\'\') this.value=\'' . esc_attr( $value ) . '\';" />';

Then Open the file:

/wp-content/plugins/contact-form-7/modules/textarea.php

Replace this:

$html = '<textarea name="' . $name . '"' . $atts . '>' . esc_html( $value ) . '</textarea>';

With this:

$html = '<textarea name="' . $name . '"' . $atts . ' onblur="if (this.value == \'\') {this.value = \'' . esc_html( $value ) . '\';}" onfocus="if (this.value == \'' . esc_html( $value ) . '\') {this.value = \'\';}">' . esc_html( $value ) . '</textarea>';

Currently, new SEO techniques are taking over as the easiest and quickest way to utilize web pages to their fullest potential. And, the reality is that SEO is still the best way to put your website, blog site or any other site on the internet straight to the top of search engine results. I have compiled a list of what’s new and relevant in regards to SEO techniques.

Guest Blogging

Guest blogging is the newest way to increase your SEO. Guest blogging consists of having a specific area of your website or blog site that is strictly reserved for guest bloggers. Through guest blogging, you will be able to capture an entirely new audience, and a much larger audience than you currently have. Guest bloggers will bring their current audience to your website and that will increase your traffic significantly.

On Page Optimization

On page optimization has always been one of the easiest SEO techniques to increase your web traffic. But, the newest way to use on page optimization is to use the most relevant and modern keywords within your content. Use news sources and other pop culture references to increase your website traffic ten-fold. Internet users will constantly be inputting relevant keywords within the top search engines and if you include these keywords consistently, you will see a huge increase in the amount of website visitors you receive.

Changing the Design of Your Homepage

Changing the design of your homepage is one of the hidden ways you can use SEO to your advantage. An entire redesign of your homepage will trick search engines into viewing your website or blog site as new and therefore, raise your site to the top of the search engine results. The reality is that people are always looking for the best and brightest aspect on the internet and the only way to stay current and fresh is to redesign your home page. If you would really like to kick it up a notch, then changing the format of your site is another option you can use in order to boost where you rank within the internet.

The month began as any other with a lot of algorithm updates by Google.

Exact Match Domain update

It came as a storm to many when the news came about Google’s new EMD (Exact Match Domain) algorithm. According to Google’s head of web spam Matt Cutts, it would affect 0.6% of English-us related queries to a noticeable degree and is unrelated to Panda or Penguin.

Here, by implementing this algorithm what Google is trying to do is to eliminate low quality information sites those have domain names same as the keyword. Earlier many sites having low quality or irrelevant content used to make it to the first page but after the update it is supposed to change.

It was made clear, that it won’t be affecting websites  that have enough good quality relevant content about the keyword as they would be having enough of material needed by Google to rate it higher.

Panda update #20

Another update to the quality manager algorithm, “PANDA” rolled out on 27^th of last month, according to Matt Cutts, the update would be affecting 2.4% of the normal English queries. Since it was an update to the algorithm, the effect was somewhat visible from the same day itself, but it took 3-4 days to complete the process. The web saw large degradation in rankings of some of the websites as the traffic decreased by as large as 80% on a few of them.

It’s not yet clear why Google publicly emphasized on EMD update which affected only 0.6% of the normal queries, despite having a Panda update which had much larger impact. Buzz around is Google tried to overlap the incompetency of EMD update by announcing a larger update. Also, there is a lot of confusion between the website owners about which update harmed them the most.

Penguin update #3

Friday the 5^th, saw a small update in Google’s algorithm Penguin which aims at downgrading the rankings of sites which use black hat techniques to increase their page rank and appear on the first page of Google. The update was small and as quoted would affect only 0.3% of the normal english queries and 0.4% of non-english queries.

After a long 5 months wait, it was expected to be a huge update but yet again penguin remained nearly same to what it was when first rolled out in April this year.

Penalties and rankings

Google’s senior webmaster trends analyst, John Mueller revealed some important facts in respect to penalties levied to over-optimized websites. He told that the sites which are facing penalties due to black hat strategies, enforcements may be removed if the sites remove the elements that led to it.

He also added that a lifted penalty doesn’t guarantee old rankings, i.e. after the removal of the it the site will again have to prove through legal and Google’s recognized methods, that it is capable of delivering to the customers what its ranking shows.

This is due to the fact that the old rankings were based on the links and “over-optimization” which don’t meet the guidelines maintained by Google. So the ranking is purely to be dependent on the quality of the links that the website currently has. So the only way to get good rankings remains to use white-hat SEO methods that are Google approved or are in accordance to the Google’s anti-spam algorithms.

This is all from the first week of October, which seemed to be a long one as nearly all of Google’s major algorithms saw changes and updates. Will have to see what the real long-term impact of these changes will be on Search Engine Optimization.

In the same way SEO techniques also got complex. Now the condition is such that a lot of webmasters are earning their livelihood through this.

There are many ways of SEO which are broadly categorized into three parts:

THREE SEO Types

White Hat Techniques

Those websites which are optimized in accordance to rules and policies of search engines are said to be using White-Hat-Techniques or Ethical SEO. A website that is “optimized” yet have content relevant to queries and are genuine, a website that uses only natural backlinks which associate to similar content, a website that aims at human users and not search engines are said to be using White-Hat-Techniques. The most important benefit of White Hat Techniques is even if the SEO is stopped the quality of the content maintains the ranking of the website. The long term investors use this technique as it requires less optimization and more data management. White Hat Techniques use the consumer to get good positions and rankings.

Gray Hat Techniques

Gray being a shade in between white and black has properties of both colors. Gray Hat Techniques are those ways through which websites are optimized using tactics that don’t exactly follow the policies of search engines but somehow manage to escape from the eyes of algorithms. These may not be reliable as they are designed keeping in mind the present algorithm. Since there are updates every now and then, so in case of a data refresh the sites may be penalized cause gray is more black than white. Gray Hat techniques are not in much demand these days just because of its unreliability.

Black Hat Techniques

Most famous SEO type is the Black Hat one. More than 70% of SEO today is based on this only. These are the unofficial methods, which search engines strictly disapprove of. Once found guilty of Black Hat, the website may be blocked or severely penalized. The algorithms are made and updated keeping in view of these tactics. These are very aggressive and generally result in quick increase in page rank. But once SEO is stopped the ranking falls drastically. So, constant optimization is required. Black Hat Techniques are normally used by those who are looking for quick financial gain. Black Hat Techniques manipulate the search engine in order to get more human traffic.

Search engines will keep updating the algorithms and webmasters the SEO techniques. So this game is never ending, if search engine are in existence the SEO methods will follow.

Many online business people seem to be stumped by the idea of using Press Releases because they cannot think of anything newsworthy to write about. However, if there is nothing that exciting going on, how about creating or starting an event that you can write about?

For example, you could stage some crazy publicity stunt in your local high street or get involved in a local charity event or fete. You could sponsor a local sports event or host an event where mentally disadvantaged children are taught to play computer games.

Really, there is absolutely no excuse for not using Press Releases but the fact is, most online business entrepreneurs tend to stay well clear of press releases. This is good news to you, because it means that the competition is not as hot as it might be in other areas.

Moreover, if you distribute your press release to the major press release sites and it gets picked up by one of the major news bureaus, this single press release can create a torrent of back links as your release is republished on websites right, left and center.

The thing is, press releases also have more credibility among all the other publicity methods. While reading a press release, readers do not think that they are reading some other disguised advertisement about a product. And they are thus more willing to trust what they read in a press release.

Here is some press release writing tips that you should take note of:

1. Make sure the information is newsworthy.
2. Make use of quotes from other people
3. Start with a brief description of the news, then state who announced it, and not the other way around.
4. Tell the audience that the information is intended for them and why they should continue to read it.
5. Ensure that the first paragraph answers some of the important questions, such as Who, What, When, Where and Why.
6. Avoid flowery language, redundant expressions and unnecessary adjectives.
7. Use a catchy headline so that that your press releases will grab attention for people to read it.
8. Provide as much contact information as possible so it will be easy for interested prospects to contact you.

So other than submitting articles that you’ve written to be published on article directories, you can upload the original word doc file to document sharing sites.

Cool thing is, content that is uploaded to this top document sharing sites get indexed in the search engines FAST! Your documents could show up in the search engine results for keywords you’re targeting within 24 hours.

Because unlike most article directories, there’s no approval period for document sharing sites and you documents get approved instantly.

Another benefit to these sites it that these sites normally allow you to write a description of your document. So just like article marketing, you include a live link back to your site and gain a precious backlink!

Additionally, your documents themselves can often have live links as well. So you could possibly gain two from uploading one simple document.

All in all, this is the perfect method to drive backlinks and traffic fast to your website. It’s a lot like article marketing, but a whole lot easier and even more effective!

Another thing I like is for most sites, you can mass upload articles. This means you can select ten articles and upload them automatically. It will take you less than 3 minutes to upload 10 articles!

If you haven’t been making use of this strategy (it’s amazing how few people are!) then it’s time to get started.

While many of these document sharing sites get a lot of “Google love,” you’ll want to do some things to give your content an extra boost so it gets picked up faster. Don’t worry — this won’t take long!

As soon as you submit your content, you can ping it at www.pingoat.com or you could add the URLs to social bookmarking sites. It’s entirely up to you.

I shan’t go into details on how to sign up and upload your documents because it’s really easy.

Here are the top 2 sites that you should submit to:

http://www.scribd.com

http://www.docstoc.com

What you need to do is sit down and write a series of 350-550 word articles, each of which focuses on one of your main keyword terms. Use the keyword term in the article title, the first and last paragraphs and perhaps twice more somewhere else in the body text.

Create a two or three line description of your article, focusing on telling anyone who reads this description exactly why they should read your article. This is in effect a punchy two or three sentence ‘sales pitch’ for your article, because it is this description which decides whether someone who sees it will take the trouble to read your article or not.

When you submit articles to the major directories, you must also include what is known as a resource box, which is a short description of you or your business. Once again, this resource box is your ‘sales pitch’ as to why someone should visit your site, so make sure that you tell them.

For example, ‘Joe Blow has a blog where he writes about how loss’ is a dead loss! Try something like ‘Joe Blow is an acknowledged hair loss expert. His hair was disappearing fast until he discovered an amazing organic hair loss remedy that stops hair loss dead in its tracks. Get Joe’s exclusive FREE report to stop your hair loss now by clicking organic hair loss remedy or go to http://www.YourSite.com/OrganicHairLossRemedy’

The keyword term is mentioned twice, once as an anchor link, plus the URL is included for directories that do not accept direct links. There is an attractive free report on offer and a clear call to action telling the reader exactly what they need to do to get the report.

A resource box description like this does two things. First, it will drive a ton of targeted visitors to your site.

In addition, it will generate an anchor text link to the appropriate page on your site from the directory where the article is published.

Most directories have achieved fairly high Google Page Rank, so this link in itself is extremely valuable.

Moreover, most article directories allow Webmasters to download articles for republication on their site or in their newsletter as long as they include the original author information, including the back links. Consequently, if you create an article that is downloaded and republished many times, one article can generate dozens or even hundreds of links. What is more, it does it all on autopilot without any input from you.

Publishing articles on directory sites is a numbers game. The more articles you publish, the more links you generate.

For this reason, you should use some of your articles to generate links to internal pages on your site to spread the link power more evenly across the whole of your site.

Try to write two or three articles every day using different keyword phrases (once you have practiced, this should take from one hour to 90 minutes) before submitting them to the following top few article directories:

EzineArticles

GoArticles

ArticlesBase

SearchWarp

If you use the Microsoft Office suite of programs, you will have PowerPoint installed on your computer. If not, download the free Open Office suite of programs and use the Presentation program to do pretty much the same thing.

You can use PowerPoint or Presentation to make as many different types of video as you can create almost any kind of presentation and video it. This again represents a very quick and easy way of creating a relatively simple video.

And although you would not necessarily think of a PowerPoint presentation being entertaining, you can make it pretty good fun if you do things right.

You can also make the message that your video carries very powerful as well.

Remember that the primary purpose of creating videos is to convince someone that just watched your video to visit your site to see what else you have to offer.

One highly effective way of doing this is to create a two-part video presentation, only one part of which is published externally on sites like YouTube, Google video etc. The other half is published on your own site so that the viewer who has watched the first half and wants to get the rest has to visit your site to do so.

An effective and easy way of doing this using a PowerPoint presentation is to firstly find three or four trivia questions in your market.

The first slide of your presentation will be the first question, which you should leave visible for a few seconds to allow your viewer time to think of the correct answer.

The second slide in your presentation should produce the correct answer to the question. Next, you show the second question and again, leave it visible for a few seconds to allow the viewer time to come up with the answer before providing it with your next slide.

Now, if you have four questions – which I have found to be the best number from my own testing of this particular strategy – you provide the third question and answer in exactly the same way.

However, when it comes to the fourth question, you provide only the question before the last slide which tells the viewer that they have to visit your site in order to get the answer. If you have targeted your trivia questions accurately enough at people in your marketplace, this extremely simple strategy has the capability of driving hundreds of curious visitors to your site, so it is one that is definitely worth trying.

Once your presentation is complete, you need to convert it into a video which you can do by using free video screen capture software such as CamStudio orJing (the latter will also work with a Mac too).

More screen capture options…

Once you have downloaded and installed either of these video screen capture program, you can use them to make videos of almost anything you do using your computer. Indeed, the only restricting factor applicable to video screen capture videos is your own imagination and the limits of the processes that you can demonstrate on your monitor.

However, if there is anything that you do on a regular basis with your computer that other people in your niche would be interested in, you have a perfect subject for a short video. And even if there is nothing that springs immediately to mind, you might be surprised how easy it is to make informative videos using screen capture software that other people in your market really will be interested in.

One thing that I often do when I am trying to think of a good video subject is look at the software that I have installed on my computer.

Each of those programs has a specific operating method and although you may think that everyone knows how to use the software that you have, this is simply not true. There will be many people out there for whom a training video would be invaluable and as you’ll discover a little later, there are thousands of training videos already on sites like YouTube that are extremely popular for this very reason.

As an example, if you have just downloaded and installed one of the video recorders highlighted in the previous section, you’re going to learn how to use the software. Consequently, why not make a video to show people how easy and quick it really is to use the software?

Basically, if something – anything in fact – can be effectively demonstrated on your computer screen, you have the basis of a video right there.

Granted, making videos in this way may seem contrary to what I suggested earlier about making entertaining videos because demonstrating something on your computer screen in this way is hardly likely to be enthralling.

Nevertheless, it is still a fact that ‘how to’ tutorial videos are extremely popular if they focus on demonstrating something that lots of people in your niche need to know about.

Once you have your video ready together with your title and description, you are ready to submit your work.

There are many different ways to create videos for marketing purposes, with the way that you do so being dependent to a certain extent on the product
or service that you are promoting. You can (and should) use any or all of the following video production tactics because by doing so, you will quickly establish what works best in your particular marketplace or niche.

Using Animoto to make videos…

Animoto is a site where you can create a unique 30 second video ‘short’ for free which can then be uploaded directly to YouTube from within animoto itself.

To get started, visit the site to create your free account. Your video, you will need approximately a dozen still images that you can upload to the site as the basis of the 30 second video ‘short’. If you already have appropriate images that you can use, this is extremely simple but even if you don’t, you should find suitable images by searching a stock photo site like stock.xchang.
Once you are logged in, click the 30 second video link to start uploading these images to animoto:

You can do so either by downloading the images directly from the stock image site (if that is where the images are coming from) or by uploading them from your own computer:

You can even use images from the animoto collection but from my own experience, you are unlikely to find a sufficient number of images that are appropriate to your business for this to be workable. Consequently, it is better to use either your own images or those that you have downloaded from a stock photo site to make the video you want.

Next, you add a soundtrack from the animoto collection and that is basically the job finished. All you need to do is create your description and title before uploading the video directly to YouTube.
The advantage of using animoto to make 30 second video shorts in this way is that it is extremely quick and easy to do. The downside is that because you are using still images for your video, it is probably not going to be the most entertaining video ever made, although even the most attention- challenged video viewer should be able to stick with you for at least 30 seconds!

The other negative about using animoto is that you can only upload the finished video to one networking site and whilst YouTube is unquestionably the biggest video network, this is nevertheless a limiting factor that may partially restrict the effectiveness and profitability of your video marketing efforts:

Although you can embed the video on your site or blog, you cannot officially download the video so that you can send it to other networking sites for example, although I recently discovered completely by accident that you can download animoto video shorts if you use the free version of Real Player on your computer:

I don’t think that downloading the video so that you can upload it to other networking sites is in breach of any animoto rules but if you are planning to do so, make sure that you check whether it is allowable or not. Alternatively, you could wait until the video appears on YouTube and then download it from there for free.