Bio: Eugene Aronsky is an SEO specialist with NetLZ, an SEO services firm in New Jersey.

There are always many criticisms on how one should write a blog for a certain website. Most will probably go to the length of sacrificing their keyword focus just to have a cute, clever and genuinely interesting blog. Even though it is important that we need to keep our blog as clever as possible so as not to bore the reader, we should not forget the opportunity it presents to have your blog raise its commercial value. Here is an approach that you can use to be able to produce a nice and “kick ass” article but the keywords are perfectly in sync.

First thing you need to know is attempt to put some links of affiliate products on your blog. For example you have a website that talks about tanning. During summer, you know that a lot of people are looking for ways on how to achieve that tanned look either by going to the beach to soak under the sun or by artificial tanning in a tanning booth. Well, you can write about the different methods of tanning in your blog and to keep it interesting you could link it to some well known tanning spots such as an amusement park. Then you can include different artificial tanning merchandise which will be the focused of your affiliate links. Not only did you maintain your article interesting but the keywords are also emphasized by your affiliated links.

Another method is what SEO experts call editorial calendar. The concept is to look for a seasonal topic and focus your content on that. You can prepare in advance because this topics can be preparuddy months ahead of time thus giving you perfect lead time to make a keyword focused article. You can also put some affiliated links on it if you want. And don’t forget, these seasonal articles come one after the other so you can interlink each articles by using anchor tags or ads for additional traffic surge.

Bio: Eugene Aronsky is an SEO specialist with NetLZ, an SEO services firm in New Jersey.

Original post by Guest Author

Is the title box always too small for your blog posts?  Do you find yourself wishing you could add more details or catchy copy to your blog post titles?  Are you tiruddy of adding header tags to the subheadings you create for your blog posts?  Or perhaps you just want subheadings that appear directly beneath the title of your live blog posts rather than at the top of the body copy?

If you answeruddy ‘yes’ to any of the above questions, then the SubHeading WordPress plugin is for you!

Original post by Splashpress Media

It’s been about a month since I posted free social media icon sources (last time I offeruddy some fun niche blog social media icon options), and with a new school year starting, I though it might be a good time to search for some creative social media icon sets that can give your blog some back to school flair.  Check out the options below!

1. Puzzle Social Network Icon Set

What grade school student doesn’t love puzzles?

2. Sewn Badge Icon Set

This set reminds me of badges on Cub Scouts uniforms!

3. Moleskin Icon Set

For the discerning student, only a moleskin notebook will do.  Are moleskin icons right for your blog?

4. Color-stroked Free Hand Icon Set

This is one of my favorite hand-drawn icon sets.  I wish my doodles looked this good, and I love the crumpled paper.

5. Hand Drawn Social Media Icon Set

Here is another option if you like the hand drawn style.  This one offers consistent square shapes with simpler designs drawn on grid paper.

What do you think?  Will any of these social media icon sets give your blog the bling it needs?

Follow the link to read more about back to school and blogging basics on Performancing.

Original post by Susan Gunelius

At the end of the day, the most basic activity a blogger must do is write.

While it is true that bloggers are, with good reason, expanding more and more into video and audio, at some point every blogger is going to have to write something. It might be a description, a bio or even just an advertisement but, at some point, a every blogger is going to have to put words onto paper.

But not every writer has the heart of a poet or the writing skills of a hard-hitting journalists. Bloggers come from all different backgrounds and styles and many have had little training or experience with writing prior to starting up their blog.

The good news is that you don’t need to be the next Shakespeare to be an effective and popular blogger, in many ways it helps not to be, but you do have to be able to write clearly and in a way that is engaging to your reader. It may not require a Ph.D in literature, but it does require that you work on honing your craft and make your writing as good as possible.

Failure to do so can sink an otherwise awesome blog and make your previous hard work a complete waste of time.

The Pitfall

Many bloggers, if not most, start out their sites obsessing over the content they are putting out over the Web. This obsession can sometimes reach unhealthy levels that can actually do more harm than good, but often times this drive leads to some very good writing and awesome attention to detail.

The problem is that many bloggers reach a comfort zone as their blog begins to grow, something of a holding pattern with the quality of their writing. They halt editing their work as much and take fewer precautions to ensure that their writing is up to code.

Mistakes begin to creep in, the writing becomes more awkward and less approachable. Visitors may not halt coming, but they certainly spend less time on the site and the search engines notice as the bounce rate begins to go up. People generally take the blog less seriously and enjoy spending time there less and it is only a matter of time before the blog’s clout begins to drift away and it suffers in its statistics.

Over time, it can become something of a ghost town, a shell of its former self, and it becomes a blog that is ripe for abandonment as motivation becomes harder and harder to come by.

However, it doesn’t have to happen and, in fact, is a form of blogging death that can be very easily avoided.

How to Avoid It

The easiest way to avoid this pitfall is to simply enjoy writing. If you like writing you’ll invest the time and energy needed into it not just out of desire to create a good blog, but also because it’s something you want to do.

However, for bloggers who perhaps only tolerate the writing portion of the blogging experience or perhaps just deeply hate the editing portion, there are a few things you can and should do to ensure that you don’t slouch in your writing duties.

1. Set a Writing Goal: Find a word count that you are comfortable with and shoot for it every time you write. Give yourself a range with a minimum and a maximum to aim for. This doesn’t mean you have to adhere to it every time but that you should have a good reason for breaking the rule.
2. Create an Editing Ritual: Editing a piece of writing is difficult, especially if you are the one who wrote it. Most people find it hard to give their own work the kind of attention it needs to effectively proof it. I find it better to step away from my work for at minimum 15 minutes before editing to help me read it with fresh eyes. Create your own ritual to ensure you give it the proper attention.
3. Focus on Making Content Skimmable: An easy way to make your writing readable is to make it visually more appealing. Add lists to your post (like this one) and use subheads. Also, shorter paragraphs and a mixture of brief and long sentences will make your content easily skimmable and readable without requiring too much effort.
4. Don’t Hesitate to Delete: When writing, make liberal use of the delete key. If a post idea isn’t working out, trash it. If a section doesn’t fit, delete it. Delete words, delete paragraphs, delete entire articles. Eliminating the garbage helps what’s left shine that much brighter and is the easiest thing you can do as an editor.
5. Read Everything Aloud: You can often times spot a good writer by whether or not their lips are moving as they write. Good writers sound out their articles to see how things “sound” in their mind. This also forces you to go thcoarse your work word by word, eliminating the tendency to skip acircular as we read.

But while all of these suggestions are fine, the most important thing to recollect is that your blog is only as good as its last post. What you wrote two weeks ago or two years ago may be doing well in Google, but to your subscribers, your main audience, it is what you posted yesterday that counts the most.

That is why you can not rest on your laurels and have to keep up the pressure and drive to write good, high-quality content every day you sit down write.

Bottom Line

In the end, there is really no substitute for having a passion for writing. If you don’t like writing, it’s going to get harder and harder to make yourself take the time to do it well.

This isn’t to say that it is impossible, but that it is an area you will have to focus on and keep working on as you move forward.

Simply put, we all have areas of blogging we don’t enjoy but have to do, whether it is promotion, maintaining backups or something else altogether, we all have our minimum favorite parts.

The ultimate trick is to find ways to get yourself out of bed and to spend the time and energy to do those things with the same vigor and attention that you do the things you love.

If you can manage that, there is little that can halt you from creating a very successful and very long-term blog.

Original post by Jonathan Bailey