Cyber Imprints

I received an e-mail from LoudLaunch last week that told me that LoudLaunch finally accepted my travel-personal blog in its roster of blogs that will receive opportunities from them.

Frankly, I already forgotten about LoudLaunch because I applied to them months ago but never received any message from them. Well, LoudLaunch is back to my attention and I hope that it will contribute to my income stream.
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LoudLaunch is a site that pays bloggers that post articles that contains links of their client-advertisers. It is different from other similar sites, like InPostLinks, because articles are required to be submitted to LoudLaunch first before it is posted on client-bloggers' sites. You can only post the paid article on your blog if it is approved by LoudLaunch.

I am yet to receive opportunities from LoudLaunch so I can't say if it is good. Well, I keeping my fingers crossed and hope that LoudLaunch is good.

Sometimes, when we are joining a site or blog monetization schemes, we are required to provide the RSS feed of our blog. During my early years of blogging, I am stumped whenever I am asked of the RSS link of my blogs.

Knowing your blog’s RSS Feed URL is quite easy. All you have to do is to place “rss.xml” or “atom.xml” at the end of your blog’s homepage URL.

For example, the RSS Feed URL of this blog is:

http://cyberimprints.blogspot.com/rss.xml

or

http://cyberimprints.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Notice that I just added “rss.xml” or “atom.xml” at the end of this blog homepage URL which is: http://cyberimprints.blogspot.com/

I do hope that I helped you. If you liked what you read, then please subscribe to my RSS Feed.

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Visit Before the Eastern Sunset and read about my thoughts on EDSA People Power 25th Anniversary.

Also, drop by Ahab Reviews and Tips and read about Pasalubong.

I read an article from Inquirer Sunday Magazine about a gang of bloggers who takes advantage of blogging and their online influence to get perks from establishments, specifically restaurant.

The writer of the article interviewed a restaurant owner/manager and revealed the modus operandi of these bad bloggers. According to the restaurant owner/manager: bad blogger came in to their restaurant, ate like a regular customer and left. After some days, a positive review of their restaurant was posted on bad blogger's site. Then someone called the owner/manager on the phone and asked for payment for the positive review of their restaurant. The owner/manager refused to give in to the caller's demands. On the following day, bad blogger returned to the restaurant, ate like a regular customer and left. After that, a negative review about the restaurant was posted on bad blogger's site. At the end of the Inquirer article, the owner/manager admitted that the incident made him afraid of all blogger.

Though I sympathize with the restaurant owner/manager, I disagree to his fear of bloggers. Not all bloggers are like that extorting bad blogger. There are many bloggers out there who write about the restaurants they had dined in and they write honestly without asking for any reward. I, for instance, write about the food I tasted and restaurant I dined in. I write based on what I experienced and without malice and I know that there many bloggers like me who write without malice.

However, bloggers like Bad Blogger should not be tolerated because they destroy the image of good and honest bloggers. Blogging's prominence is rising in the Philippines and it seems like evil persons are using their new found influence to extort money and other things.

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Visit Before the Eastern Sunset and read about my first dine at the Filipino buffet restaurant Kamayan.

Visit Ahab Reviews and Tips and read about some tips about PUPCET.

Follow me in Facebook and Twitter.

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I use my blog to generate income. I placed advertisements from Google Ads and Nuffnang. However, the one that give me the most income is by writing a paid article that I post on my blog. Paid articles are articles that are paid for by a person or company so that a blogger will post a review or a blog post on his blog. Usually, paid articles contain links that go directly to the advertiser’s website. Opps, which is the term used for prospective paid post article from an advertiser, is easy to write and can be obtained from InPostLinks, Blogsvertise, SocialSpark and similar websites.

However, there are Paid Article websites that requires a blog to have a Disclosure Policy before they accept any blog to receive opps from them. SocialSpark and InPostLink are few of those websites that require a disclosure policy.

What’s a disclosure policy? Well, it is just a written article, posted on your blog disclosing that you accept paid articles on your blog or that your articles may be biased to the advertisers that bought an article from you.

It is not hard to create a disclosure policy for your blog. All you need to do is to go to Disclosurepolicy.org website and follow the simple instructions there.

For a better insight, read the Disclosure Policy of my personal/travel blog.
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I received an e-mail update from Friday Traffic Report a few days ago and on the e-mail he talked about a way to solve two problems that are common with bloggers. The problems that he talked about is the problem of creating fresh content daily and the problem of getting backlink for blogs.

The solution that will hit the birds with just one stone is the technique that they call as RIFFING. Basically, in riffing you will just quote other blogger’s post on your blog and hope that the blogger that you quoted will quote your blog too.

According to Antone Roundy, riffing will help you generate new contents for your blog because all you have to do is to quote the blog, with the topic you are interested in, and expound on the quote or the topic of that other blogger.

Riffing is also good in getting backlinks because other bloggers will quote on your blog.

However, riffing is a voluntary process. This means that the blogger that you quoted from is not obliged to quote you back. This is the weakness of riffing. What if you are just a simple blogger with a low pagerank blog? I am sure that other bloggers with blogs with higher pagerank will not quote your blog. The low-pagerank blogger will be waiting a backlink that will never come.

Antone Roundy says that the solution for this is for the blogger to create a compelling and quote worthy content. Also, those who would want to participate in riffing should place this badge:

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The badge shows that you are participating in riffing and that if they quote your blog, then you will quote them back.

However, having this badge still does not guarantee that other riffing participants will quote your blog post. Riffing all boils down to quality content and that what you should keep in mind before participating in riffing.

Visit the riffers' page to know more about riffing.

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There are times when I can’t accomplish anything when it comes to my blog. I just stare in front of my computer but my mind can’t give me any thought that can jumpstart my writing. No matter how much I squeeze my mind, nothing seems to come out of it.

Yes, sometimes I experience “writer’s block” and this is the common enemy of bloggers. So, what can I do to avoid having “writer’s block?” Here are some of the things that I do:

Sometimes, our mind is just too exhausted that it can’t give you any idea or motivation to start you writing. Maybe, you are just tired from work or you did not slept well. The best solution for this is to take a break. You can sleep, or just play a simple game with your PSP or Nintendo DS.

All you need is to take a break from writing and let your mind wander off. According to an article I read from “Wired Science,” many “eureka” moments of scientists occur when they let their mind wander for a little bit. Maybe, all your mind need is a little bit of daydreaming to give you that “eureka” moment to jumpstart your writing.

Writer’s block may also stem from the fact that you don’t have any idea on what you are writing about. This problem happens to me every time when I was assigned to write about a topic that I remotely know about.

The solution for this is to read about the topic that you need to write about. This will give you ideas and will surely help you in writing your article.

Sometimes, ideas suddenly pop-out in inconvenient places. This usually happens to me when I ride a bus home.

Previously, whenever ideas pop-out of my mind, I just let it stay in my mind because I believed that I will be able to remember it when I am at home. However, I was wrong, because after a few minutes, the idea fades away from my mind and I totally forgot about it when I reached home.

So as not to lose those ideas, I make sure that I type it in my cellphone so that I will be able to retrieve it when I am at home. Taking notes helped me create a list of topics that I will post on my blogs. Because of this, I always have something to write about.

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These are some of the things that I do to avoid “writer’s block.” How about you? What are the things that you do?

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As bloggers, our main weapon is our writing skills because text articles are still the meat of blogs. Thus, developing good writing skills is very important in blogging.

Many people are afraid to start a blog because they are afraid to be criticized for their poor writing skills. This should not be the case since writing is not an inborn talent. Even great writers and authors start from stupid or uninteresting piece of work. Great writers developed their skills through perseverance and hard work.

You could be a good writer too and here are some tips to help you develop your writing skills:

“Practice makes things perfect.” That saying is also true in developing your writing skills. The best way to improve your writing skill is to write regularly. Compare one of my first blog posts and one of the latest blog posts on my personal/travel blog.

As you could see, the first blog post is terrible. The grammar is terrible and the topic is very personal. The second post, on the other hand, is better and lengthy as compared to the first blog post. The topic is also less focused on the self and more focused on the facts that my blog visitors will like to read.

Writing regularly on your blog will surely hone your skill. You can practice your grammar and make you write confidently. The more you write confidently, the more you can relate yourself with your readers.

When I started blogging, I write mostly about my self and my “romantic struggle.” As time pass by, I learn to write about other topics that I know well. From writing about my self, I progress to writing about the things that surround me and then writing about my travels and other things that I know of, personally.

Writing on a topic that you know intimately is very helpful because your knowledge on that topic will give you confidence. You will not fumble around the things that you write on your blog because you are confident that what you are writing is correct.

You can expand to other topics as you develop your writing skills. You can include topics that you are not that knowledgeable of as you improve. However, to be able to write good on those topics, you will need to focus on the next.

Ideas in our mind can be exhausted. There are days that writers are stump and can't produce ideas. This experience is called "writer's block." You can avoid this if you are a fervent reader. Yes, reading!

A goood writer does not only have time for writing, but also has time for reading. Reading is like recharging your minds with good ideas that you could use when you write a blog post. Reading will also help you in broadening your horizon and in adding new knowledge to topics that you don't know well. Also, reading other people's work could help you in choosing what writing style to use because you will be exposed to different writing style.

For several times, I got involved in heated debates on Facebook. Debating with other people online, were arguments were thrown almost real time, will help you build an articulate mind.You will learn to look for the weakness of your opponents arguments and you will learn to use logic in making your counterarguments.

Also, by discussing with other people, you will learn the value of doing research, which is valuable when you are writing an article even if it is just a blog post. It is a plus for a blogger like you to develop an articulate and logical mind so as to make you capable to write a better blog post, especially if you are a political blogger.

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Of course there are other tips that will help you in becoming a better writer. However, the tips I enumerated here are the vital tips that you will need in creating better blog posts or articles.

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Facebook already has more than 200 million users worldwide. Because of this, marketers and businesses have Facebook accounts to take advantage of its wide exposure. Bloggers should also take advantage of the exposure that Facebook has to offer. All serious bloggers should open an account in Facebook, not only for exposure, but also for added interactivity with your visitors. Another reason is that Facebook have a great number of potential readers that you could tap to go visit your blogs.

I, for one, already have a Facebook account and I can say that it helped me reach to out to more people and gave me better connection with other bloggers. Facebook has many tools that could help a blogger reach his/her audience. One tool that I use is the NetworkedBlogs.

NetworkedBlogs is Facebook Application (App) that is useful for bloggers. It is useful because NetworkedBlogs allows your blog to be included in the NetworkedBlogs network of blogs that could be seen by hundreds of Facebook users.

The advantage of this is that your blog may be followed by any Facebook user even if you are not friends. This is great because you can promote your blog in Facebook, not only to your friends or Facebook contacts, but also those people who want to follow your blog without necessarily inviting you to be their friend in Facebook.

This advantage of NetworkedBlogs is made possible by the badge that you can place on your blog. Here is the sample of a NetworkedBlogs badge I placed on my persona-travel blog:

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By clicking the NetworkedBlogs badge, visitors of your blog will be able to receive the updates from your blogs on their Facebook account without them inviting you as their contact in Facebook.

So, what are you waiting for? Go no to NetworkedBlogs and have your blogs listed in their network. Don’t forget to place a NetworkedBlogs badge on your blog so that visitors and blog readers will be able to receive real-time updates on their Facebook.

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Social Media sites are websites that allows the subscribers or members of that website to socialize with one another through the sharing of comments, pictures, videos, and other online interactive activities. There are numerous social media websites that are present in the World Wide Web. Each of these websites caters to various groups and has their own strengths and weaknesses. Some of social media websites that I encountered through the years are Friendster, Facebook, Twitter, Multiply, Yahoo 360, and Plurk.

Social Media Optimization, or SMO, is the process of creating awareness of your blog through the use of social media websites. It is opposed to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) that focuses more on increasing the rank of a blog in search engines. Because of the continued prominence of social media websites, successful bloggers utilized them to promote their blogs and reach out to more readers.

I also use SMO to promote my blog posts. The social media websites that I currently use for my SMO are Facebook, Twitter, and Friendster. Prominent bloggers already attested the effectiveness of Facebook and Twitter as SMO tool. I have not seen any review for Friendster.

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Friendster is one of the leading social websites in the Philippines and it still boasts of thousands of active Filipino users. Though, many of its veteran members shifted to Facebook. I observed that very few bloggers use Friendster as a blogging tool. 

The main page that is fronted to other Friendster users is the Profile page. This page contains the self-description of the Friendster user and the comments made by his/her friends. The profile page is the main page where a blogger can leave links leading to his/her blog. Bloggers could also use the Friendster bulletin for blog promotion.

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Facebook picked up the comment elements of Friendster and expanded it. Interactivity in Facebook is through posts that are posted by the Facebook user and is visible to all of his/her friend’s Facebook main page. His/her post can be commented by his/her friends and the comments are showed in a nested form. This ingenious mode in Facebook promotes online conversation because commenters reply to one another.

Facebook is more blogger friendly because it is easy to post links that lead to your blogs. An added bonus is the use of Networked Blogs that automatically pull your blog post and is ready to be posted on Facebook.

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Twitter is almost similar with Facebook in that it also uses the posting system that could be found in Facebook. The main difference is that you are limited to 140 characters (space included) for your posts or more popularly known as tweets. This limitation is not a disadvantage though because many people subscribed for this websites and that includes successful bloggers. Leaving a tweet could even be made through SMS messaging of mobile phones.

Of the three social media websites that I used, Friendster is the least effective, which is followed by Twitter. The most effective is Facebook. Friendster contributed 17% of the readers coming from social media sites, while Twitter contributed 33%. Facebook, meanwhile, contributed 50% of the visitors.

This simple statistics only shows that Friendster is not a good platform for social media optimization. The possible cause of this is that the facilities where I place links to my blogs is usually ignored by Friendster users. Whatever the reason, it only means that Friendster has to redefine itself to be more blogger friendly.

For better social media optimization, I suggest that you both use Facebook and Twitter. These two websites were somehow compatible with one another. An example of this compatibility is a Facebook application that posts your tweets on your Facebook wall. 

You can stay away from Friendster when doing social media optimization and you will not be missing anything.

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For more information on how to use Friendster as a blogging tool please read “How to Get Inbound Links to our Blog.”

Further comparison of Facebook and Friendster could be found at my article “Facebook vs Friendster.”

Logos of Facebook, Friendster, and witter are under the copyright of their respective owners.

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For whole week, I noticed something weird on my blog. The weird thing is that I noticed that my blog Before the Eastern Sunset is showing public service ads from Adsense. That problem is not exclusive to that blog alone but is also shown on this blog.

I observed it for one whole week and did not do anything because I thought Google Adsense is just having problems. I also thought that Google Adsense blocked my blogs for reasons unknown. I just let the public service ads be because I don’t have much time to fix it until this weekend.
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Look at the Kiva Microfinance ad at the upper-left corner.

I visited my Google Adsense account and I saw this warning:
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The problem is that I forgot to input my Adsense PIN to my account. I received my PIN more three months ago through mail but I somehow forgot it. Thankfully, I did not lost it and updated my Google Adsense account.

Now, the Adsense ads on my blogs are back to normal again.
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In the first part of this post, we talked about some “slow way” of getting links to your blog. Today, we will talk about some “easier ways” to plant inbound links on other websites.

As I had said in the first part of this post, our goal is to place our links on websites in a way that our links will not be ignored by the robots of the search engines. There are many websites out there that you could use to place your links on, however, there are only few of them that could be planted with links that are not ignored by Google.

Many people said that Friendster is dead, especially now that majority of its users are migrating to Facebook. However, I still view Friendster as an important tool for my blogs. My first reason is that Friendster is still a popular website and has high rank in Google. My second reason is that public profiles in Friendster can be crawled on by robots. Because of this, Friendster is a valuable site to plant your link on.

For starters, I placed the link of my blogs on my Friendster account. I made sure that my Facebook profile is open to public so as not to restrict Google’s robots from crawling. Next is to place a comment or testimonial on the profile of your Friendster contacts. Just make sure that your links are included in the comment. Imagine if you commented on 100 Friendster users then you have 100 links to your blog.

Guestbooks are usually placed by website administrators as a way to get feedbacks from their visitors. The problem with guest books is that they are usually not open to the robots. However, there are some of them that are open publicly and could be crawled on by robots. Most of these “open” guest books are found on government websites. You will know if the guestbook is open if the comments in the guestbook are shown in search engine results.

There are many blog directories out there and they could be found with just a click from Google. However, you must search for blog directories that do not demand payment from you or ask you to place widget or link on your blog. Their widget will serve as an outgoing link on your blog and will negatively affect your page rank. Look for free blog directories that have pages that could be crawled on by search engine robots.

I was wondering why many people are offering free blog templates. Are they so generous to exert time and effort to give us free templates? The answer is no. Creators of free blog templates place the links of their sites on their templates. Thus, if hundreds of people used their free blog templates, then they are guaranteed with 100 free inbound links to their site.

These are just few of the methods available to plant inbound links on other blogs or websites. There are other methods out there that you could use. If you know other techniques, please share it with us by leaving a comment.

Inbound link is a blogger’s treasure because it helps the blog get a good page rank and a chance to land to the front page of search results in search engines like Google and Yahoo. Thus, many bloggers are working very hard to get inbound links from other blogs or websites to their blogs.

There are many ways to get inbound links but before we get into the meat of this topic, let us understand how links and linking works. Links serves as a doorway from one page in the Internet to another page in the Internet. People who are surfing the net clicks the link to get to another page. Therefore, links is an important tool to bring in readers to your blog. This is the reason why Google is putting heavy weight on inbound links in calculating the page rank.

However, not all links are treated as equal and some of the inbound links are totally ignored by search engines. Links on the comments page of blogs are ignored by Google, thus inbound links from there do not matter. Google made this policy to prevent bloggers to spam the comment pages with links to their blog. Another thing is that inbound links on popular website or blogs have much weight in page rank calculations than inbound links on obscure blogs or websites. Google have complex way of calculating the weight of a link to your blog but the simple principle is that the more links you have the better and the links on popular website are the most valuable.

Google indexes all the websites in the Internet using what they call as robots. Robots crawl the web pages and follow the link located on those pages. The robots were programmed to follow specific types of links. As I had said, there are links that are ignored by Google like the links on comment page of blogs. Links with “no follow” attribute are also ignored by robots.

Therefore, in your quest to put inbound link to your blogs on other webpages, be sure that those links are not ignored by Google.

There are many ways to get inbound links for your blogs. For my blogs, I used varied websites to plant my inbound links on. Here are some of the methods that I observed as a good way to get inbound links.

1. Exchange Links

Exchange link is done by asking other bloggers to place your link on their blog in exchange for placing their link on their blog. This is good especially if the other blogs have higher page ranks than your blog. However, Google disapproved of this racket and put a little weight on links placed on the sidebar.

Other bloggers may also ask you for exchange link. Be careful when accepting this kind of offer. I have experienced that those asking for exchange links usually delete your link on their blog after a month or so. So if you do not check their blog, you will never know that they just tricked you so they could get one-way link to their blog. I suggest that you don’t accept invitations for exchange links from bloggers who just recently visited your site.

2. Befriend and be a Friend

One of the best ways to get inbound link is when your blog is linked by other people on their blogs. However, getting inbound links through this way is not easy because it entails you to engage in continuous communication with other bloggers. For more than three years of blogging, I have been linked by my blogger friends for so many times. However, conversing with other bloggers through their blogs is quite engaging to the point that I just consider inbound links from them as bonuses. Currently, I have scores of blogger friends through my travel and personal blog. There are times that some of them link to me through their posts. Links on the blog of your blogger friends is not only for your Google page rank but also help introduce you to their readers, which will help you add more readers to your blog.

3. Be an Authoritative Blogger

Blogging is all about sharing information to other people in the Internet. Thus, when you a start a blog, make it your goal to be an authority to the niche that your blog covers. If other people and blogger see you as an authority within that niche then many people will cite your blog and place your link on their sites.

4. Link from Your Other Blogs

If you have other blogs or websites, make sure that you will include the link of your blog to those other blogs of yours. If you are talking about a topic on one of your blog that has a related post on your other blog, then link your blog to the related post on your other blog. This is not just helpful in putting inbound links for your blog but it also help in increasing the exposure of your other blogs.

Other bloggers use this technique, especially if they own a blog that is paid-hosted. They create blogs on free hosting sites like Blogger. Their free-hosted blogs will serve as their platform to place inbound links to their paid-hosted blogs.

 I just outlined here the “slow way” of getting inbound links to your blog. In the next post, we will talk about some “faster ways” that I used to have inbound links to my blogs.
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One of the characteristic of a blogs is that it is like a diary. Its pages are sorted by the time and day that the blog post was posted, with the latest blog post placed in the first page of the blog and the older blog posts are placed on the next pages. Consequently, the older blog posts are not seen by the readers and authors of blogs that have too many posts forgets some of his/her old blog posts.

Old blog posts are important, especially if you have a new blog post that is related to that old blog post. There is important information that visitors to your blog could read and make his/her visit to your blog post more informal. It is also good that new readers will read your blog posts from the past.

The best way to re-connect to your older blog post is by linking to that blog post. One of the way to this is by using Linkwithin.

Linkwithin is a free application or widget that you could place to your blog. This widget automatically pulls related older blog posts and places them on the page of the new blog post. The application decides on what blog posts to feature by looking at the tags, relevance, and currency of the featured blog posts.

As of now, the application only generate up to five links. However, unlike its competitors, Linkwithin features a link with a thumbnail that have a picture from the featured blog post. This set-up of Linkwithin boosts the promotion of your old blog posts and is more attractive compared to its competitors.
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Setting-Up Linkwithin

Installing the Linkwithin widget is easy. The widget could be downloaded for free from the LinkWithin website. You just have to provide your e-mail address, the link to your blog, the platform of your blog, and the number of link that you want for each blog post.

Linkwithin supports Blogger, self-hosted site in Wordpress, and Typepad. A new window that contains instruction for installing the widget will appear. The instructions are easy to follow.

You have to wait for a while before the links will appear on your blog posts. The more blog posts that you have, the longer time you have to wait for the links to appear.

Internal linking, or linking to your blog posts in your blog is a good way to promote your blog posts and increase its rankings on search engines. This will also enable you to keep your old blog post from falling to obscurity. Linkwithin is a good way to do internal linking as it is automatic and has more attractive to look at.
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Links are important elements or factors that are being considered by search engines like Google and Yahoo in ranking every website in the World Wide Web. Basically, the greater the number of incoming links that the site has, the higher its ranking will be in the search engines.

Because of this, bloggers do their best in scattering the links to their blogs in the internet by trying to place their links in other blogs or websites. Linking your blogs to other websites or blogs is called as external linking. There are many ways to do external linking like asking other bloggers to place your blogs link on their blogs, which is called as exchange link. Leaving comments is also helpful in leaving links on other people blogs or websites. 

There is another type of linking that many bloggers ignore. This is internal linking.

Internal linking is done by placing a link or links in a page of blog or website that is referred to another page or pages that are also within your blog or website. For a blog, this is done when links were placed on a new blog post that are referred to the older blog posts that are related to the topic of the new blog post.

For example, you are writing a blog post about Siamese cats and you remembered that you posted a blog post about Persian cats in the past. It will be a good idea if you will place a link on your Siamese cats blog post that refers to your blog post about Persian cats. Doing that is what we call as internal linking.

Search engines do not only rate blogs as a whole but it also ranks each page of a blog. This means that one of your blog posts may rank higher than your other blog posts. Just like in ranking websites, search engines rank pages by looking on the different factors like the number of visitors that the page receives, the number of incoming links that the page has, and many more. Doing internal linking will help individual pages or blog posts to garner higher pageranks.

Links are doorways to other pages and it will be good if that doorway will lead the visitors of your blogs to your other blog posts, thus making them stay longer in your blog. Placing links of your other related blog posts will also show the readers that you have more to say about the topic that they interested in, thus making you more credible in the eyes of your visitors.

Because of the diary-like set-up of blogs, old blog posts are being buried under new blog posts and many of them are forgotten. This should not happen to any blog posts and bloggers must ensure that old blog posts will still be visited by readers. Internal linking is great way of resurrecting old blog posts.

There are many ways to automate the placing of internal links on your blog posts. Many widgets are available and are free to use and download. One of them is the LinkWithin, which on my travel and personal blog and my tips and review blog.

You should also know what is the best color of links to make it work better for your blogs.

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The creation of the Internet also entailed the creation of the hyperlink. The hyperlink is a character, word, or phrase on a webpage that takes the reader from the current webpage to another webpage. In HTML coding, the hyperlink is created by using the anchor tag that is referred to the Internet address of the webpage.

The hyperlink is an important blogging tool. It is used by bloggers to link to their favorite websites and websites of their advertisers on their blogs. It also serves as the venue for new readers to reach your blog after they clicked on the hyperlink (referred to your blog) from other blogs. This is the reason why many bloggers are asking for link exchange from other bloggers.

According to a study made by Chitika, Internet users usually associate characters, words, and phrase in blue font or color with hyperlink. The study explains that since the inception of the Internet, the color of the hyperlink had been blue. Because of this, Internet users had been “trained” to think all blue colored words on a webpage as hyperlinks. Because of this, the blue-colored hyperlink has a higher probability of being clicked than other hyperlinks of other color.

Thus, it best to keep you hyperlinks colored as blue on blog, especially the links of the ads on your site. Blue-colored hyperlink will generate more income than green-colored hyperlink, or any hyperlink with other color.
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Last month, I have seen an error on my Adsense account that goes like this:

According to the error, Google Adsense is now requiring publishers to verify their Adsense account by inputting their Personal Identification Number (PIN). Getting the Adsense PIN is important because Google requires it before the publisher could cash out from his/her account.

I guess Google’s insistence on verifying the Adsense account is in connection with the measure of the US government to put tax on online incomes of US citizens.

To get your Adsense PIN, all you have to do is to request for your PIN and fill out your address information in your Adsense Account. Your Adsense PIN will come by mail within three weeks after you filed your request.

After receiving your Adsense PIN via mail, all you have to do is to input your PIN so to enable you to cash out from your account.

Bloggers love to see comments on their blogs. Comments serves as a proof that there is indeed someone who read the bloggers blog post. But that is not the only reason, comments also gives the bloggers indication that the commenting reader wants to have an active interaction with the blogger. Through comments, the reader sends their reactions – be it a question, a disagreement with contents of the blog post, or an appreciation to the information posted by the blogger. Comments also show how the audience receives the blog posts and could be used as a tool to change the blogger’s strategy in marketing their blogs. A blog with active readers is an indication that the blog captured a set of core readers that can serve as start of streams of traffic trickling to the blog.

Whatever the reason is, comments are valuable to the bloggers. And because of this, many bloggers tried many ways to make the passive readers leave a comment on their blogs. Some well-established have schemes like online contests to foster commenting and attract hordes of traffic. However, those kinds of scheme are beyond the reach of newbie bloggers and young blogs.

Blogging is a mode of communicating and connecting with other people. Commenting, as a tool of blogging, is a simple way of initiating conversation. It is also a good way of developing good relationships with other bloggers.

Tips on Making Comments a Powerful Blogging Tool

1) Initiate the Conversation First

This is the first thing that I did when I started blogging. Instead of just waiting for someone to comment on my blog, I started to visit other blogs and leave a comment on those blogs. And it is not just any blogs that I went to. I make sure that my blog have something in common with the blogs I am visiting, or that I have something in common with the blogger who owned the blog I am visiting. For my Before the Eastern Sunset blog, I started visiting blogs owned by bloggers who also live in my hometown. By doing this, I know that I have something to relate to with the blogger.

Initiating the conversation first is just like visiting the houses in your new neighborhood and saying hello to the homeowners.

2) Leave Meaningful Comments

Many bloggers do not like seeing comments that do not add value to the conversation. Short comments like “LOL,” “That’s great!,” or “Nice post,” are examples of such comments. Bloggers who receive such comments can only reply short comments that in no way continue the conversation. You can only use such comments if you already have an established relationship with the blogger you are commenting to and simple words like these are enough to convey your message. But if you are a new visitor, never leave such comments.

Reading the blog post is also important. Leaving comments that are off topic is a big no-no. Comments that only contain advertisements or promotion of commenter’s blogs are also a big no-no and comments like these are likely to be ignored or, worse, deleted by bloggers.

Leaving a meaningful comment shows you value to the blogger whom you are commenting to. It shows that you want to spark a meaningful conversation with the blogger. Leaving meaningful comments also have an added benefit because comments like these attracts the attention of other readers. If the blogger and the readers find you comments meaningful, then there is a great chance that they will also visit your blog to know more about your blog. 

3) Follow Up On Comments

Leaving on comment on a blog is not the end of conversation. If the blogger or other reader answered your comment, then it is good that you also answer their replies. Following up on comments only shows that you are interested in conversing with them.

However, monitoring replies to each of your comments is quite hard to do. Thankfully, there are ways to automatically know if your comment had been replied to.

Blogger, for instance, allows you to subscribe on the comments of the blog posts you commented on. For other blog platform, there are Disqus and Intense Debate which are installed by bloggers to foster interactivity in their blogs. Do not fail to take advantage of such facilities in the blogs you are commenting on.

4) Answer Comments on Your Blogs

If a visitor commented on your blog, then the best thing to do is to reply to their comment. This is the best way of rewarding readers who took their time to write a comment on your blog. Replying on your reader’s comment also shows that you are interested in conversing with your readers. It adds interactivity to your site and make develops a personal relationship with your readers.

If your visitor left a question, then answer the question to the best of your knowledge and as soon as possible. It is also best if you go out of your way to research the answer to the questions so that your readers will look at you as a person who personally knows the topic in question. This will raise your value to the blogosphere and will attract more readers through the word of mouth of commenters who got their questions answered.

Commenting is a powerful blogging tool and the best way of developing strong relationship with your readers. Use the tips I included herein and good things will be coming your way.

Leave a comment. If you have questions, reactions, or clarification about this article then please leave a comment. All comments will be replied to, personally, as soon as possible.
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There are quite a number of blog platforms out there but the most popular are Blogger and Wordpress. New bloggers usually narrow down their choices of blog platforms between Blogger and Wordpress. So, for your new blog, what blog platform should you choose? Is it Wordpress? Or is it Blogger?

Blogger is owned by the Internet giant Google. Large number of free hosted blogs uses Blogger as the blog platform. Blogger is easy to learn and use. It uses the “what you see is what you get” principle in designing. Publishing your blog post is easy and you could either compose your blog post by manually typing HTML tags or automate tagging their composer.

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What I like about blogger is that there are many free templates that could be found in the Internet. My templates for this blog and my travel and personal blog were just downloaded for free. Another good thing is that there many available widgets that you could download for free to make your blog look better.

The best bit is that you could place advertisements on your blog without even applying for paid hosting in the Blogger blog platform. All of my blogs using Blogger blog platform has Google Adsense and other ads from other advertising services.

I like Wordpress for its professional look and feel. This is the reason why I use it for my socio-political blog. Wordpress is the blog platform of choice for bloggers who want to have a .com site. For bloggers who just want to have free hosted blog, Wordpress is also recommendable as a blog platform. However, free hosted blogs is given some limitations by Wordpress. One limitation is that free hosted blogs is not allowed to have any ads. Any blogger who do not follow this rule have their free hosted blogs closed down by Wordpress.

Because of this restriction, I recommend Wordpress for those bloggers who just want to have a blog without the intention of monetizing it. For a free hosted blog to have ads, the only advice is to have pay for the hosting of your blog.

Sans the restriction, Wordpress is a good blog platform. One of the things that made it great is its dashboard that shows the statistics of your blog for free. The Wordpress dashboard can show the number of visitors of your blog, most popular blog post, most clicked links, and a graph showing the number of your blog visitors over time.

Another thing that I like about Wordpress is that you could create categories for blog post, aside from having tags for the blog post. Blogger do not have such functionality and its users are just limited to tags (or labels).

These some advantages and disadvantages of using Wordpress and Blogger. For better reference, here is the summary of advantages and disadvantages of the two blog platforms:

How about you? What can you say about Wordpress or Blogger? What is your blog platform of choice?

This night (July 6, Philippine time zone), I was dismayed to discover that some of the comments from blogger friends are not showing up on my blog. No matter how I try to refresh the page, no comments are being shown. An example of the blog post that is experiencing this kind of problem is my blog post entitled, "Tips on Taking UPCAT, ACET, DLSUCET and other College Entrance Exams."

My friend Nicxter posted a comment on that post and I approved it just this night. I received an e-mail that notified me that the comment was posted.

However, when I go to to my blog, the comment is missing. I tried posting comments on that post but my own comments are also missing. I opened my blog both on Firefox and Google Chrome but the problem persisted. I somehow proved that the problem is not on the browser but on Blogger.

When I go to Blogger's forum page, I discovered that I am not the only one who is experiencing this problem. There many bloggers who also have comments missing on their blogs and many thread were opened to find the solution to this problem. However, there is still no solution and I was just consigned to report to Blogger my problem through the Blogger forum and "Report Problem" page.

The "Missing Comment" problem is a systemwide problem of Blogger. The company said that their engineers are now working to fix the "Missing Comment" problem. I just do hope their solution will not make the comments of my readers to be deleted.

How about you? Did you experienced the same problem? Do you have a solution for the problem of missing comments? Please share it with us.