It takes only a few minutes and is easy to setup your own weblog using the Blogger weblog system.  By completing only three simple steps, creating an account, naming your blog and choosing a template, you too can join the thousands of people now blogging on the web. Here’s a detailed step-by-step guide to help to get you started using Blogger

1. Go to Blogger.com and click on the arrow that says “Create Your Blog Now.”  You’ll be asked to create a username and choose a password that you’ll use to access your Blogger account;  choose a display name that will be used to sign your posts (e.g., moody mom, bloggerx, etc.) and provide an email address. You’ll also be asked to check a box indicating that you accept Blogger’s Terms of Service . Then click on “Continue” to go the next screen.
2. On the next screen to name your blog (e.g., The Blog Report, Myrah’s Insanity Report, etc.) You can choose any name you wish. After you choose your blog title, you need to choose your URL address. This is the web address that people can click to access your blog. Again, as long as it’s not taken, you can choose any address you want. Remember, the shorter and easier to spell the better it will be for people to remember.  Also remember, that many thousands of people use Blogger to host their weblog and it may take you a while to find a web address that hasn’t already been taken. Finally, for security purposes, you’ll need to provide word verification by typing in the box the word that is displayed above the box on the screen.  Then,  click “Continue” to move to next screen.
3. On the next screen, you’ll need to choose a template for your blog. This is the design of your blog, what your blog will look like to visitors. Blogger provides 12 different templates to choose from. Pick your favorite. You can change the look of your blog at a later time by choosing a different Blogger template or using of the hundreds of free templates that are available across the Internet.  After you choose your template, click “Continue.”  Blogger will begin creating your blog.
4. Once it’s created, click on “Start Posting” and write your first post for the world to see. Click on “Publish Post” and Blogger will tell you it is publishing your post. Then click on the “View Blog” tab and you’ll find that you’re officially a member of the blogging world.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

When I first started building Singaporedirectory1, I was asked quite a number of times by friends and relatives: “Isn’t it easier to just type something into Yahoo and Google?” Well, I myself hardly spend much time on directories searching for information. So, Isn’t it really a waste of time to build directories?

Unlike in the past, directories today serve a different purpose. They are hardly meant for information searching. Instead, directories serve as validation sites for search engines today. Websites included in reputable directories are often ranked higher in search engines.

This essentially means that if your site is accepted by www.abc-directory.com, abc-directory thinks that your site is worth a visit by search engine robots, and hence should deserve higher ranking in search engines. (For example: you may type “Singapore directory” in MSN. Do you find us on the 6th position?). For newbie internet users, this is what I meant by search engine ranking - ranked top in search engines for keywords that you intend users to find your site.

How will directories help your site in search engine ranking?

- Increase relevancy of your site with certain keywords and phrases
Search engines are robots crawling the web, and see all websites as a vastly interconnected “spider web”. Directories are organized in categories recognized by popular keywords (eg. Education, business). This helps search engines to determine which categories should a website falls under, and the theme of keywords and other websites that it should be related to.

- Directories serve as Expert documents for search engines
Besides bringing relevant search results, search engines want to deliver good quality websites to internet users. Importance of websites is often determined by the top down organization structure of directories. Hence, directories with certain quality control and good hierachy ranking structure helps to determine whether a site is worth visiting. Let us take a look at Google’s Pagerank technology: Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B”

- Protection from spammers
There are millions of spammers on the web constantly trying to manipulate search engine result to boost their sites’ ranking. Search engines search the web and index pages using web robots (or commonly called “spiders”), with the shortfall of not having human eyes of directory editors. This can be dangerous when spammers try to cheat the robots. However, spammers are not able to get through the human eyes of directory editors. One or two directory editors may accept a site, but Google may analyse the links from as many as few hundred directories pointing to a site.

Will search engines treat all directories with same respect?

Certainly NOT. Directories are built by human editors. And there are certain downsides:

a) Directory listing can be outdated very fast

Buidling a good directory requires effort and time. Often, website listing found in many directories are not updated, and broken links can be found in many directories. This is especially so when websites today are updated more frequently. It is indeed time consuming to maintain a directory with more than few thousand links. Directories that are more accurate with their listing is definitely more welcomed by search engines.

b) We also come to a question of fairness here

If editors themselves own affiliate sites, isn’t it possible that they manipulate their own directory listing and prevent certain listing of competitive sites. Well, search engines are not stupid. They accumulate analysis from many other directories to determine proper ranking for a website.

Feel free to visit article: Directory submission tips for further reading.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

If you want to make money online a good strategy that won’t cost you a dime is to write articles that relate to your product or service.

Search Engines are constantly on the “look out” for freshly written content that has been submitted online. So how do you come up with ideas for your next article? Here are several suggestions that may help…

• Hang out in online forums. Watch what people are talking about. Look at the questions they are asking. The topics that are bringing the greatest number of visitors would make for an excellent article.
• Take a look at what information is being broadcast on TV, radio, newspapers, and online. This information is usually a hot topic.
• Read blogs. What are people posting about? What kind of comments are they leaving? What questions do they have? Blogs are the hot internet marketing medium right now and you can literally find them everywhere on any topic. This is an excellent source for your next article idea.
• Survey your current customers or website visitors. Ask them what kind of article they would like to see in your next ezine or published on your website.
• Check bookstores online. What are the top sellers? This can be a good way to come up with an article that catches the attention of what people are reading.
• Be seasonal. Write about what is going on that time of year. Holidays, festivals, sports, graduations, etc. all make for an article that someone will want to read.
• Write an article about a current fad. There is always something that is hot at the time and could make for interesting reading from you.
• Keep track of what your customers and prospects are asking you. If you get an email or phone call with a question this may make for a good article. Others may have the same question, but are afraid to ask it.
• Start a swipe file on what others are writing about. If it is of interest to you it will probably be of interest to others. Never plagiarize the work of others, but you can certainly get good ideas this way. The biggest benefit of a swipe file is having it handy to refer back to over and over whenever you are ready to write your article and are not sure what you want to write about.

If you still find it hard to write about your idea, you can hire a professional to ghostwrite it for you. The costs are minimal and, considering what’s at stake, it could be the best investment you ever make.

Here’s a couple of resources to find professionally written articles.

http://www.elance.com

http://www.dmmarket.com/igr

Hopefully this will give you some ideas on how to come up with your next article. The internet marketer who can write interesting articles has a huge leg up on their competition. If you can master this strategy there is no limit to how much money you can make online.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR