Shoto Azikuri

Today i want to talk about Blog Catalog. It is Blog Social Network from where you can get traffic, backlinks and build relationship with other bloggers.

What does Blog Catalog offer?

• This is catalog as we can understand from title and you can submit your blog in directory. This is main meaning of this site.
• Here you can find Discussions page, which i like very much. It is something like forum, there are threads about blogging and you can talk with other bloggers, with it you can get some traffic.
• There are also Groups where are united people about some subject and they open threads about this subject.
• As i have already said you can build relationship with BC, it’s really true. Here you can add other members as friend and share your stuff to them. You also can leave messages them.
• And another service  is logs on your blog, it is competitor of  mybloglog and it is used by a lot of blogs.

Blog Catalog

This was what i want to say about blog catalog, and i want to start BC Marketing and try to get more then 30-40 unique visitors per day from this site.

If you have any experience in Blog Catalog marketing you can give me any advices

I am new in blogging and every day learning more about blogging. In this 1 month i learned some interesting blogging tips so i will share this tips.

One most important thing what you must to do first when you are starting blogging is build relationship with other bloggers.

Build Relationship with other bloggers

How can you build relationship and why? Best way to build this relationship is commenting, commenting and commenting. If blogger see that someone comments on him(her) blog often, he interest in this person and discover new blog. You can to be owner of this blog. When you are commenting frequently other readers of this blog also discover your blog and if this blog use top commentators widget you will get more visitor, backlink and promotion of your blog.

So with commenting on other blogs you can get serious traffic and backlinks. It is thing which you must do when you are starting a new blog.

Forum Marketing

You can use forums as source of traffic, you need some forums in your niche and post on these forums. You can check my post about Forum Marketing: 5 Forum Marketing Tips.

Make Your Blog Interesting

Before you start active marketing of your blog just create some interesting on it. What we can do for our blog to interest people in it?

1. Frequently Updating - when readers see that they can find a new thing after every visit on your blog their interest is growing up to your blog. It is more important then some killer and high quality content.
2. Interesting Posts - Try to write some killer posts once in week. I mean writing a post which can to share your knowledge and your readers will know that you are interesting person and it worthy to read your blog in future too.
3. Offer something to your visitors - It’s winning tactics to bring visitors. You can use Top Commentator widgets and offer backlink to your reader, or you can make contents with attractive prizes. It really works.

These are blogging tips which help you to promote your new blog and get traffic. If you like this post please stumple it and post comments with your ideas.

Unfortunately in these days I am so busy, i have to write my homework and it hasn’t the end. So instead of write posts i read blogs and i want to show you 5 blogs i read. Of course i also read problogger, john chow and other well known blogs but they aren’t in this list.

1. Linkers Blog is Danny Cooper’s blog. He write about link building and blogging, there you can find good advices about link building and blogging. One of the best things i discovered on this blog is Blog Commenting. Danny make it Art, art commenting. You can learn from Danny how to increase traffic and SE rank, how to build quality links and how to promote yourself and your blog via commenting.
2. Sly Visions is blog by Sly Blanco about Internet Marketing, SEO and Blogging. Here are also posts about Make Money Online and what i like in this blog is  Questions and Answers posts.
3. Iron Blogger is Robin Haney’s blog about Blogging, sometime i discover there really very cool posts, he spent a lot energy and time for this blog as i see and i think it is worthy to read this blog.
4. Franklin Bishop is one of my favourite blog, Franklin is really professional and you can learn from him a lot about blogging and Internet marketing. In first time, when i start blogging i was reading his posts and it help me to know how i can start successfully blog. I advice you to read Franklin’s posts.
5. How To Blog is blog with frank advices, and it is about how to blog, how to increase your traffic and many blogging tips. There are posts with practical and really useful advices. So you won’t lose nothing if sometime visit to this blog.

Many bloggers ask how they can to get people to bookmark their posts. We can talk a lot about it , but in this post I want to show you one inevitable thing for it. This is social bookmark buttons, you will agree that if reader see nice buttons there is more chance that reader bookmark your post and if buttons aren’t in fact there is a very little chance to remember bookmark post.

How to make such buttons?

Those buttons are very nice and easy to see, so how to make such buttons? It is easy:

1. Find buttons in .gif, .jpg or other format and upload them to your ftp.

2. Go to WP-Admin>Design>Theme Editor>Main Index Template (index.php) and find this code:

<?php the_content(’Read More…’); ?>

and you must add here code of social bookmark buttons, you must search urls from where you can add your post to social bookmark site and edit it, for example http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url= this is url where you can bookmark page in SU so you must edit this code http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url=<?php the_permalink(); ?> the_permalink menas link of your post, so there is final code you must add :

<a href=”http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url=<?php the_permalink(); ?>”><img src=”http://cdn.stumble-upon.com/images/32×32_su_shadow.gif” alt=”Stumble It!”></a>

<a href=”http://digg.com/submit?url=<?php the_permalink(); ?>&title=<?php the_title(); ?>”>
<img src=”http://digg.com/img/badges/32×32-digg-guy.png” width=”32″ height=”32″ alt=”Digg!” />
</a>

<a href=”http://del.icio.us/post?url=<?php the_permalink(); ?>&title=<?php the_title(); ?>”><img src=”http://azikuri.com/wp-includes/images/delicious.png” width=”32″ height=”32″ alt=”Bookmark!” /></a>

You have already added buttons on main page of your blog.

3. In the end you should add buttons on post’s page in single.php instead of index.php. Find this code:

<?php the_content(’Read More…’); ?>

and add the same code below.

Now you can see social bookmark buttons on your blog, if you want another social media site’s buttons on your blog find image of buttons, submit url and make it as others.

So if you like this article you can bookmark it with nice social bookmark buttons :))

There is a lot of source where you can to promote your blog and get traffic. One of such source is Forums, where are lot of members which will interest in your blog, there is things what you must to do for driving traffic to your blog via forums. I can’t say that i am guru of forum marketing, but I will share tips which I know:

1. Firs you must search forums related your blog,  choose 2-3 most popular forums in your niche and start posting.
2. Try to be active member, post more then 40-50 post per day, if it is large forum, if isn’t then it’s enough 20 post per day.
3. Write informative and intellect posts, help to other members and be friendly.
4. Take part in discussions and if your opinion will win you’ll get respect from other  members.
5. Open threads and share your knowledge and tips which will be help and interest by members.

Those were few tips what I can tell you about forum marketing and end of my post i want to show some interesting links about forum marketing:

• 100 DoFollow Forum - here is a list of 100 dofollow forums, you can choose some from this list.
• How to Use Forums To Drive Hundreds of Thousand of Readers to Your Blog - i think in headline is everything told, it’s great problogger post.
• Forum Marketing - another interesting blog post about forum marketing.

If you like this post please Stumble This.

Daily Blog Tips launched Blogging Idol 2, which is bloggers competition, so you can see what is it:

After tweaking the rules a bit and discussing the competition with the readers, we are finally ready to launch Blogging Idol 2.

You can participate with your existing blog or website, and I am sure it will be a good opportunity to improve your blog and to get motivated to increase your RSS subscriber count. On top of that, there are also $4,500 in prizes.

You can send the application from today until the midnight of next Thursday (October 30) via the contact form. That is only 4 days, so read the rules and send yours right now!

The competition will start on November 1st.
Win Over $4500

First of all I would like to thank the sponsors that we have aboard.
A lifetime subscription to Keyword Country (worth $2,000)
An annual subscription to the Trackur corporate edition (worth $1,000)
$300 courtesy of Sponsored Reviews
$300 courtesy of BidVertiser
$300 courtesy of TNX
$100 from Daily Blog Tips
$300 in text links from Text-Link-Ads
A 3-month subscription to the SEO Book Training Program (worth $300)

This time we will also have prizes for the 3 competitors with more points. The first prize will be the lifetime subscription to Keyword Country and $1,000 in cash. The second prize will be the annual subscription to Trackur and $300 in text links. And the third prize will be the 3-month subscription to the SEO Book Trainning program.

Read full story on Daily Blog Tips.

In this post I’ll show you how to add favicon to your blog, what is favicon and why we must use it. Let’s start:

What is Favicon?

Favicon is Favourite Icon, which you can see in your browser’s address bar, before url. It is 16×16 or 32×32 icon. First is very small so it is better to use 32×32 icon. Mostly favicon depicts symbo or first letters of your site. On my blog you can see that favicon depicts “S” and “A”, it means “S”hoto “A”zikuri.

Why Must We Use Favicon?

Favicon is something what give your blog means to become more famous and well-known. Do you interest how can favicon becomes your well-known? So I’ll show you little example of this, here is list of favourite blogs from my opera bookmarks, now look at this picture below and you can understand that it is more easy to notice blog with favicon and if you have ever seen blog’s favicon second time you will easy know what is this, and favicons aren’t used only in browser’s bookmarks, there are a lot of other resources which are using favicons.

How To Add a Favicon?

At last, how we can add favicon:

1. First you must have a favicon, you can do this in Photoshop,Fireworks and e.t.c, then save picture(32×32) in .gif format and with this site http://www.html-kit.com/favicon/ you must edit format to .ico
2. Download favicon.ico and upload it to your ftp.
3. Then go to wordpress admin panel>Design>Theme Editor>Header Template(header.php). Now find <title>…</title> tags and write this code below title tags:

<link rel=”shortcut icon” href=”favicon.ico/or any other location of favicon.ico” >

That was all, if you like this post please Stumble this and leave comments.

You know that make wordpress theme isn’t a easy work and to do theme you must know html/css and php, but there is a great tool for making wordpress theme without knowledge of html/css/php.

Wordpress Theme Generator

This online generator creates your own custom unique WordPress Theme. Without any need for HTML, JS, PHP, or CSS knowledge.

Change the colors, settings, layout, preview live, click “save” and download your unique Wordpress theme zip-file. Extract, upload, set, and you are done! If you have any questions or need additions visit the forum.

Based on WordPress 2.1 to 2.6.2 with Yahoo! UI (grids, tabs & fonts) to support all A-Grade browsers and valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional. Theme supports Widgets & Tags. Themes examples: read more…

I can’t promise you that you’ll make cool theme, but your theme will be unique and simple, here is link: http://www.yvoschaap.com/wpthemegen/.

And end of the post i want to ask you: Will you use theme created by Wordpress Theme Generator?

Today I’ll review two keyword suggestion tools, these tools are importent for every SEO marketer. Before you choose main keywords of your site or your blog, you must know how much people search for this keyword and these tools give you chance to choose right keyword and get good traffic from Search Engines.

• Seo Book Keyword Suggestion Tool - with this Seo Book’s tool you can get info about search counts about your keyword and it give you info about releated keywords. There is count by Google search, by Yahoo and by MSN.

• Free Keyword Suggestion Tool From Wordtracker - this is one of the best keyword suggestion tool, there are 100 related keywords and you can choose one which hasn’t a big competition in Search Engines.
  

So find the best version for your new blog post’s title or your new web site and enjoy with organic traffic

I wrote on my blog about Top Commentators Widget. You know that commenting on popular blogs and not only on popular blogs is a very good marketing tip, but there are blogs wich give you chance to promote your blog better with commenting. These blogs have top commentators widget and if you comment a lot you will get link from their home page. You will agree with me that it is a great promotion for your blog, it is good for your Link Building and it is good for popularization your blog.

So here is list of blogs wich are using top commentators widget:

Page Rank 7

• http://onemansblog.com/

Page Rank 6

• http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/
• http://www.shoemoney.com/

Page Rank 5

• http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/
• http://www.blueverse.com/
• http://elitebydesign.com/
• http://techie-buzz.com/
• http://www.quicksprout.com/

Page Rank 4

• http://www.balkhis.com/
• http://theuniversitykid.com/
• http://www.sueblimely.com/
• http://zacjohnson.com/
• http://bluehatseo.com/
• http://www.pureblogging.com/
• http://www.catswhocode.com/blog/

Page Rank 3

• http://linkersblog.com/
• http://otooo.com/
• http://www.johnchow.com/
• http://thoushallblog.com/

Page Rank 2

• http://slyvisions.com/
• http://www.enkayblog.com/
• http://dablogger.com/
• http://www.mastersofseo.com
• http://www.gathersuccess.com

Using this list you can build a lot links.

if you know another blogs with top commentators widget please comment and i will add it.