Social Bookmarking And Blogging -Say What?Part 1 Get Ready For Reddit

This entry is part [part not set] of 1 in the series Social Bookmarking

What is Social Bookmarking?

Social bookmarking is an online service which allows bloggers to add, comment, edit, and share bookmarks of web documents. It is a critical tool to help pump up your search engine optimization. SEO)

Social bookmarking sites can make it easy for people to find blog sites and help you generate backlinks to your website. If you bookmark your website more in social bookmarking websites, you will get backlinks from each website. This results in a higher page rank for your webpage or website.

A backlink is a link from some other blog to another blog page or post. Backlink strategies have been an important part of online marketing for a long time now. They help improve your website’s traffic, rank, reputation, and even relationships. It is critical that you have quality content, with something valuable to say in order to earn your backlink.(Not anything that looks like spam or needs to be trashed.)

Join Social Bookmarking Sites

Please consider taking the time to join Social Bookmarking sites. I challenge you to try and join at least 20 sites before the end of the month. Let’s start with REDDIT

WIKIPEDIA states: As of February 2021, Reddit ranks as the 18th-most-visited website in the world and 7th most-visited website in the U.S., according to Alexa Internet About 42-49.3% of its user base comes from the United States, followed by the United Kingdom at 7.9-8.2% and Canada at 5.2-7.8%. 22 percent of U.S. adults aged 18 to 29 years, and 14 percent of U.S. adults aged 30 to 49 years, regularly use Reddit.

Please note the demographic. That means, my fellow babyboomer, that you should post stuff that the indicated age groups may feel is quality content. I personally feel that most of what we write about is “quality content” but must be perceived as such by others.

How Does Reddit Work?

As  with all the social bookmarking sites you must first register. With REDDIT you submit your content to the site such as links, text posts, images, and videos, which are then voted up or down by other members. Posts are organized by subject into user-created boards called “communities” or “subreddits”, which cover a variety of topics such as news, politics, religion, science, movies, video games, music, books, sports, fitness, cooking, pets, and image-sharing. Submissions with more up-votes appear towards the top of their subreddit and, if they receive enough up-votes, ultimately on the site’s front page. Despite strict rules prohibiting harassment, Reddit’s administrators have to moderate the communities and, on occasion, close them

Reddit suggests that you join at least 5 communities. Once you do you can create posts, videos etc and select which community you want your content to be seen in. The interface  is easy, very easy for this boomer to use.

As you begin this journey it is important that you document each site you join and keep a record of the passwords and the sites you join.

I decided to provide a FREE copy of the blog directory form for your use. Although it does not say social bookmarking, you can still use for that purpose.

Let’s make this happen.

Baby Boomer Bloggers You’ve Got to Get Up and MOVE

One of The greatest challenge I face blogging is getting up from the computer and stretching. It is easy to practice poor posture and strain my neck and back while engrossed on the computer. So I attempt to stretch and walk.

I find that walking really helps with blogging because then I have an opportunity to mull over blog posts ideas. In addition I might find a picture I can snap with my phone or small digital camera that becomes a dressing for a future blog post.

I may not be walking as fast and far as I used to but I am still a work in progress. Bottom line is I have to move it!

What are you doing to move your body even if it is just lifting your legs while at the computer?

 

How to Get Dynamic Traffic to Your Blog-Part 3

This entry is part [part not set] of 3 in the series How To Get Dynamic Traffic To Your Blog

This is the 3rd post in a series by Guest Blogger Ron Whitaker

Well, friends, we’ve reached the end…the end of my little series, that is.

In Part 1, I discussed the importance of keyword research before writing and publishing a blog post.

In Part 2, I provided some best practices on where to include those keywords in your blog posts.

Now, in Part 3, I’ll provide some tips that I’ve learned over the past few months about how to drive traffic to your website once you’ve completed the above steps.

But first, a question?

Were you popular in high school?

Were you the popular cheerleader or jock who everyone wanted to hang out with? You know, the one who got invited to every party and activity?

If you were, I envy you!

Granted, I had friends, but definitely didn’t fall within the cool crowd.

But that was then…and we’re in a new age: the Internet age! And the good news is, the game’s changed!

Whoo-hoo!

So today, I’m going to show everyone who reads this post how they can be cool and popular online.

Is it easy?

No. It WILL take work, but it’s doable! And the rewards can be fantastic!

What does being popular have to do with driving traffic to my blog?

Good question.

Let’s delve into that topic with another question:

Thinking back to those popular kids in high school, how did you know they were popular?

Maybe they were nice?

Maybe they dressed in the coolest, hippest fashion of the time?

Maybe they knew all the words to the latest popular songs?

What exactly did they do or say that clued you in that they were popular?

Perhaps the famous quote by John Kuebler will provide a hint: Show me your friends and I will show you your future.

The playwright Euripides also provides a clue: Every man is like the company he is wont to keep.

Thinking back to the question above—how did you know they were popular?—the obvious answer to tell that those kids were popular was by the quantity of friends they surrounded themselves with.

So, there it is in a nutshell. They had friends. And lots of them!

But what does that have to do with driving traffic to your website?

How to be popular on the Internet

Well, if you want to get traffic to your website, you’ve got to be popular on the web!

How?

Just like in high school, you knew the popular kids were popular by the number of friends they had, the same principle applies to the Internet!

Man typing on keyboard

Image courtesy of suphakit73 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Here’s the secret: search engines like Google recognize how “popular” your website is by the number of links from other websites that point to your website.

Show me a website that ranks high for a particular keyword in Google, and I can pretty much guarantee that that site has a fairly high number of links, also known as backlinks, pointing back to it from other websites from around the virtual world.

Great! I wanna be popular on the web and get links pointing back to my website. How do I do it?

There are many ways.

I’m going to focus on two in this post:

  • Guest blog posting
  • Blog commenting

Guest Blog Posting

So, what’s guest blog posting?

Well, it’s what I’m doing here! I don’t own Blogging for Boomers, Rosie does!

Though my website lies elsewhere in the virtual world, Rosie was kind enough to invite me to come on over here and do a series of guest posts.

What does guest blog posting do?

Several things.

Guest posting allows you to build relationships around the web. (Hint: make friends! The more you have, the more popular you become!)

Also, when you guest post on another blog, it allows you to create a link or two back to your own website.

How do you find blogs for guest posting?

As an example, say you have a budding blog centered around the topic of vintage auto restoration.

Head over to Google and perform a search like the following:

Auto restoration “write for us.”

What does this search operator do?

Boomer woman at laptop

Image courtesy of stockimages / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

It returns websites centered around auto restoration and that allow guest bloggers to post on their blogs (hence “write for us”).

Here are some other searches you can use to find blogs that allow guest bloggers on their sites. We’re still using our example of auto restoration as your business. You can replace “auto restoration” with keywords that are related to your own blog.

  • Auto restoration “guest post”
  • Auto restoration “guest blogger”
  • Auto restoration “submit an article”
  • Auto restoration “submit a blog post”

Those ought to get you started!

And here’s a hint, when you provide a blog post for another site, make sure it’s your best stuff! Show the world what you know about your topic! Sock it to ‘em!

You’ll make new friends along the way (becoming popular!), you’ll build credibility with a new audience, and you’ll get a sweet link (or two) back to your own blog.

Blog Commenting

What’s blog commenting?

Actually, I feel another story coming on!

Once upon a time there was a new website owner/blogger who wanted to start making friends around the webosphere.

He started commenting on blogs that were related to his own website, and who had audiences he was trying to reach as well.

One day he left a comment on a blog about blogging for boomers. Someone named Rosie noticed, replied to his comment, and invited him to post a blog series on her website.

The end.

And it all started with commenting on a blog!

Commenting on blogs simply means finding those blogs that are centered around topics similar to yours and then visiting them and posting comments at the end of posts.

It’s that simple, but I have a STRONG word of caution.

The first rule of commenting is when guest commenting make sure you enter “quality” comments.

Do NOT, under any circumstance, simply write “Nice post. Thanks.”

Just don’t go there!

When commenting, make sure your comments are heartfelt and really provide VALUE to the comments section. Provide a comment that offers a new point of view, or affirms through your experiences how you relate to the points that were made by the author.

In other words, provide quality comments.

You never know what might happen. You just may receive an invitation to guest post on that blog.

I did!

Do You Know How to Move Your WordPress Site to Another Host?

Ok, maybe everything is just fine with your current host.  That’s Great! However, stuff happens. Little things like the server goes down right before you are about to press PUBLISH. Oops, when the server comes back up only part of the post was saved.Well, that was ok but when it happens two more times in the upcoming weeks you wonder if you should investigate other options.

Or,

Everything is just dandy with your server but when you think about all 24 of your sites on one server, oh my. What happens if it goes down? It just might cut into your online action. My mom always said that” A poor mouse only has one hole to run in.”

Or,

You want to send more traffic to your other sites.  So, yes you can write posts and link to another one of your sites to get some trackback action. But it sure looks good to Google and other roaming robots traveling from top search engines, if that traffic is coming from another IP address.

I currently use Bluehost and Hostgator. The support is simply amazing.  But I wanted to share this critical and invaluable information from fellow Baby Boomer Heidi Caswell-just in case you ever need it.  So please read the post below and keep it handy.

How to Move Your WordPress Blog to Another Server

What is a Backlink?

If you do not know what a backlink is you have certainly heard another blogger or Search Engine Optimization (SEO) expert mention it. Here are two good definitions:

In basic link terminology, a backlink is any link received by a web node (web page, directory, website, or top level domain) from another web node [1]. Backlinks are also known as incoming links, inbound links, inlinks, and inward links.  (Wikipedia)

The backlink is essentially the same thing as an inlink. It is a link on someone else’s site that leads to your own, and it’s extremely important to garner a large number of backlinks that are reputably obtained for several reasons. First, in SEO or search engine optimization, part of the algorithm for ranking your page on search engines is determined by the number and quality of backlinks to your site, providing they occur naturally and you have not purchased them. Second, backlinks are how you get known on the Internet. If lots of other sites provide a link to yours, a natural increase in traffic to your web pages occurs. (Wisegeek.com)

Here is a post I read on backlinks today. If you have other references you would like to add please post a comment.

Three ways to generate backlinks for FREE

Random Facebook Pages of Blog Challengers Will Be Reviewed

I am currently in a 30 Day blog challenge sponsored by Jeannette Cates. There are over 100 people participating. Now the cool thing about this is not only do you meet more people but you pump out blog content. This makes the search engines happy and may fulfill other goal s you personally have for blogging.

Those goals could  include:

  • product sales,
  • product development,
  • affiliate sales,
  • clicks on other ads on your blog
  • hopefully increased blog RSS subscriptions
  • Personal therapy
  • Twitter followers
  • Facebook Page “Likes”
  • Plus more

One of the things I am so very impressed with is the vast variety of all the blog posts. Many of them have Facebook Pages that I want to showcase. I won’t get to all of them. But I want to start showcase some of them randomly. So, if you want to visit I am going to do short reviews on one of my sites called Rosies Boomer Review.

I am looking forward to learning, getting empowered and motivated by some of the, sometimes unknown, Facebook pages. So often we are on Facebook giving updates on our dinners etc, but there are some REAL GEMS ON FACEBOOK PAGES.  Lets, start tapping into them and also PLEASE PARTICIPATE ON THEM AFTER YOU SAY YOU LIKE IT.

PS If you are a baby boomer and want to be challenged with great content, teleseminars, etcFacebook Page PLEASE visit visit Boomer Diva Nation’s Facebook Page moderated by the infamous and empowering Beverly Mahone.

Ever Create a Password Protected Post on Your Blog?

Password protected posts allow you to create content that is visible to the world if they know the password you gave the post.

So How Do You Password Protect Your Blog Post?

  • You can locate the option to change the VISIBILITY of your blog post within the PUBLISH box on your dashboard
  • Click on the  EDIT option to change the post to Password Protect or Private
  • Choose Password Protect (Private means that only Administrators or Editors on your blog team can see posts)
  • Key in a password
  • Congratulations! You have now created a Password Protected Blog Post.

What Can You Do With a Password Protected Blog Post?

I often use password protected blog posts to host PowerPoint slide shows for trainings. Now I challenge you to allow your imagination to expand. Think about a contest, or something else that your readers can enjoy.

Click Here to see an example of a password protected blog post. Oh, the password is lead

How To Add Your Facebook Fan Page To Your Blog

Facebook makes it real simple to add your Facebook Fan page to your blog. After all your Facebook Fan page gives you an opportunity to showcase your business, niche, causes and other areas of interest. There just might be others that share the same interest or need your service.

I have presented the steps in screen shots below.

1. Sign into your Facebook Page and click on the Wall Tab then click on the fourth link on the left under your logo.

Promote Your Facebook Fan Page 12. Select the Facebook Page you want to promote by clicking on the drop down options. Also, complete the other options.

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