WHERE TO GET CONTENT FOR YOUR BLOG [BY B.S.BISHT]

 

Where To Get Content For Your Blog

Blogs and websites that have rich content are always going to do better than those that don't. I am sure you wondered where these blogs get their ideas, views and opinions. It is easy to write about something you are passionate about- but to do that most days of the week is extremely hard, since you would probably run out of things to talk about or you simply don't have the time. So how do they do it? Where do they get their ideas? Do they get help from tools and other sources available on the Internet? The best way would be to provide the content yourself, and this is of utmost importance if your goal is to try to create traffic to an affiliated link. You'll definitely want to sell the idea about the services and products beforehand. What that will do is set the stage or the mood and give your recommendations authenticity.

THE SOURCE OF CONTENT FROM INTERNET

 Expounding on the uses of a particular service or product, with your own likes and dislikes, achieves this naturally. With an affiliate program, it is a good idea to have a personal anecdote that goes hand in hand with the product or service. Using private label articles is a viable alternative. PL articles abound in the Internet and you can always buy some that are connected to your central topic and then place them in your blog. One way of maximizing a purchased PLA is to cut it down into several pieces, thereby maximizing its content. Utilizing RSS feeds to post on blogs is becoming very popular, although not everyone is familiar or willing to learn about RSS feeds. The advantage to an RSS feed is that your blog is automatically updated with fresh news and content.

DISADVANTAGES OF HIRED CONTENT

 The disadvantage is that it is not unique content and that anybody interested in the feed will likely click out on a story that appeals to them. Putting in your very own content is the best way to go. One way to find fresh ideas is to look for an appealing news article and then do a summary write-up based on it. It's not as easy as it sounds, but you and your readers will find it the most rewarding way. If you feel that you just don't cut it as a writer or you genuinely don't have the time, then hire someone else to do it for you. There are many services out there who provide a blog service which includes daily posts of unique, engaging content and you can instruct these content writers as to where you want the links in your blog pointing to- so that any burden of cost in terms of hiring them should be offset by the gains in your increased visitor base, the marketing of your other websites and earnings from your affiliate programs. 

AUTOMATED  PATH NOT ADVISABLE

These are the best ways to generate content for your blog. It is advisable not to be going with the automated path. If you do decide to do that, you will probably have plenty of content- but the substance of the text is unlikely to increase traffic for you. Putting in some good, old-fashioned content work will yield better results for you. As the expression goes- on, you get out what you put in the vlogs naturally. A good working definition of a blog is simply a journal or newsletter that is frequently updated and intended for the timely reading. It often provides opportunities for unfiltered and immediate feedback, sports an informal or even partisan attitude, and is written in a more personal style than traditional press outlets.

BLOGS ARE ONLINE JOURNALS

 Blogs come in all shapes and subjects, from the maunderings of troubled teen souls to displays of classical photography to breaking news and commentary. They can be online journals, locked with a password shared by a few trusted friends, or they can be page after page of source code, sharing useful and free computer programs with the world. A blog may be an online journal tangential to a company's main business, where users of a company's products give feedback and ask for help. Blogs can be hosted by single individuals, shared by teams, or produced by entire companies. They may be hosted on a dedicated blog server using fancy templates or lovingly hand-crafted in HTML on a page that resembles a bulletin board. But a blog is not simply a syndicated column or a newspaper that is online.

BLOGS/ ONLINE NEWSPAPERS / MAGAZINES

 Many news outlets feature their content online and even allow readers to respond to stories. However, the newspaper's business does not change just because it has a new medium. Editors and writers still do the same jobs they did before the advent of online distribution; the newspaper does not view itself as any different from what it always was. And perhaps therein lies the difference: attitude. The newspaper sees itself as presenting all the news that's fit to print, written by objective professionals, while the blogger sees himself as presenting a piece of his own world and his own expertise from his own perspective. As blogs become more popular, more columnists are becoming bloggers and more bloggers are becoming professional in what they write.

BLOGS ARE WORLDWIDE POPULAR

 Perhaps in a few years, the distinction between the Old Media and the New will be irrelevant in the mind of writers; for many readers today, it already is. The number of individual blogs has topped 20 million and readership is exploding. In fact, the trade magazine Ad Age reports that during 2005 alone, American workers will spend the equivalent of 551,000 years reading blogs, rumor sheets, and online diaries. Hundreds of millions of readers worldwide get their news and entertainment from these independent sources, supporting their favorite bloggers through donations, link usage, and purchase of blog-related memorabilia.

The Basics of Blogging / Introduction To Keywords

Okay, so now we know content is king. And of course since we are creating our own blogs, (remember blogs is short slang for Weblogs – which is what their “formal and official” name is), most of our information is going to be “unique” and “Original”. Yet every now and then, since we are only human, and since we simply cannot “create” more and more information, we will copy information from other web sites. That is cool. There is no problem with that, unless, you decide that “copying” and/or “linking” is simply better and forego writing anything. Now let me make this clear. If you are offering a service to people, where your main business is to offer out links to other places where people can get information, in other words you are a repository where people come to get links, because you already did all the research – that is fine. Because what you will loose in content, you will make up in “eyeballs” and “hits”.

MORE HITS! MORE EYEBALLS! MORE VISITORS

 Remember the end result of good search engine listings is just that. MORE HITS – MORE EYEBALLS – MORE PEOPLE VISITING. And content is not the only parameter an Search Engine looks at. Not by a long shot. This is a critical point to keep in mind. Everything we will talk about, every method, from content to email to lists to whatever, has but one goal in mind. To consistently and constantly increase and build your website “hits”. To make sure you have an ever-growing “fan” club “motivated” because of the service you are offering, to come back. So please differentiate between the end goal and the methods.

CONTENT IS THE METHOD FOR SEARCH ENGINE

 Content  is a method towards the goal of getting listed in a good position on a search engine, and the goal is to have people use and come to your web site or blog, and create a “buzz” about it. Let us go back to content for a moment. Here we are talking about something that all writers know about and are familiar with. Text, words, phrases. Original, unique text. So in order to continue on our own fairly logical path, we will now concentrate on the “text” and what has to be in it. Which brings us to the subject of “keywords”. Before explaining just what these are and either their importance or total invalidity and worthlessness these days, let us define keywords more carefully. If you have a website selling hair beauty aids, you will want to sell your material writing content around what you are selling.

RELATE THE "SUBJECT MATTER" IN YOUR BLOGS

 Obviously if you write something about the difference between different models of dishwashers, this is not going to relate to the “subject matter” and content of your site. So you will write articles around your hair supplies. You will write articles on good hair care, on how to dye your hair, how to get rid of split-ends, how often to shampoo etc. etc. Our magic hair website is called “Hair Is Not Forever”, and it is at www.hairisnotforever.com. But this is our site for now and we will keep it as we go along. hair is not forever also has a blog. This blog we will call “Silky Fair Hair” and we will put it, for the sake of our example in blogger.com under the name of the proprietor who is aptly named Mr. Nor Hair. So now we have as follows: 1. Web Site – Hair Forever @ www.hairisnotforever.com 2. Blog – SilkyFairHair @ http://norhair.bl.com. These names are important and so are the URL’s. (URL stands for Universal Resource Locater). 

WRITE A COUPLE OF ARTICLES ON ONE KEY WORD

So keep them in mind as we go along through these articles especially when I get to the article on the importance of finding the right name. So Mr. Nor Hair and his wife, Mrs. Purple Hair work together. They create the site, get all the necessary stuff to sell something on it, write a couple of articles about hair and sit back and wait for the people to come beating their “virtual” door down. Well as we say in Hebrew, “Boker Tov” (which literally means “Good Morning”), or as you say in English, “Knock. Knock. Good Morning! Anyone Home?” Okay the Hair couple know about keywords. So they create articles in which EVERY sentence has the word hair in it (or balding). But hair is the name of the game. They make sure their content is original, and once they have written two HTML pages of hair articles, strategically placed by their cousin the graphic artist (who is bald) around the advertisements for hair products and now they think they are done! Woah! Not by a LONG SHOT! And here is where it gets depressing for the uninitiated and non-dedicated people. 

KEYWORD ISSUE FOR S.E.O./ META TAG

Let us deal with the “keyword” issue. Keywords are like indices or if you wish, categories. A keyword is something that the search engine will look for and validate, to use as one of the parameters as to how to list your site. The keywords we refer to are in two distinct and totally different places. The first in the page header of the site. in what is known as the section for “meta” tags.  However let us just say these are the keywords most search engine look for (with their “bots”) when visiting your site. An example meta tag for keywords on our site may look like this: 

<p>&nbsp;</p><header class="entry-header" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #666666; font-family: lato, sans-serif; font-size: 17.92px;"><h1 class="entry-title" itemprop="headline" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-family: lora, sans-serif; font-size: 2rem; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 1.2rem;">Where To Get Content For Your Blog</h1><p class="entry-meta" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #999999; font-size: 1.2rem; margin: -1rem 0px 1rem; padding: 0px;"><span class="entry-tags" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block;"><br /></span></p></header><div class="entry-content" itemprop="text" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: lato, sans-serif;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.6rem; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>

RICH CONTENT LEADS TO SUCCESS

Blogs and websites that have rich content are always going to do better than those that don't. I am sure you wondered where these blogs get their ideas, views and opinions. It is easy to write about something you are passionate about- but to do that most days of the week is extremely hard, since you would probably run out of things to talk about or you simply don't have the time. So how do they do it? Where do they get their ideas? Do they get help from tools and other sources available on the Internet? The best way would be to provide the content yourself, and this is of utmost importance if your goal is to try to create traffic to an affiliated link.

KEYWORDS / META TAGS / S.E.O.

Again, we will discuss these keywords, and meta tags, but for now take it as a given these are some of the keywords that will be in the meta tag. When the Search Engine technology first became popular and meta tags were implemented, the keywords tag was critical. Search Engines looked at the keywords in the meta tag and assumed that was what the site was about and listed the site under those keywords. This was caught on to immediately, and humans being the crafty devils they are, began listing keywords that had nothing to do with their sites in order to drive traffic to the site. (Remember – the end result is the oh-so-important one: Hits & Eyeballs) So porn sites especially, adopting this as yet another “fool the engine” technique, would put keywords like “hair”, “technology” etc. into their meta tags, and give the site an innocuous name and voila, more traffic. 

THE IMPORTANCE OF KEYWORDS IN META TAGS

So in the never-ending battle Search Engines caught on, and did a few things. They deprecated the importance of the keywords in the meta tags according to their algorithms, UNLESS the content on the site actually did match the keywords. Of course, this was not enough as porn sites will put “real” content around their stuff. I will give you a REAL example which I find funny, but it is very serious. In one of my posts on my blog, you can see my bio which is picked up by search engines. The other day I received an email from an old flame of mine saying “I freaked out. I googled you, under Ted Gross Writer, and you are connected with a site about tushy’s!” So I go and Google it, and sure enough in like the fifth position is this: “Ted Gross’s Unofficial Bio – The Real Version by Tushy” and of course I click and get led to another site (no url here as I do not want to publicize that site for obvious reasons) and I come to a porn site which ripped off, out of all the content on the internet, MY profile to place around their porn adverts. UGH! But you see that is how crafty people are! (Here we are not going to talk about “splogs” – meaning “spam blogs” yet. But keep it in mind.) Okay now what happens – not in theory but in practice. Two scenarios: 

1. You have keywords in your meta tag (and you should have them!) The little Search Engine “bot” (that is a software program whose job it is to travel around the Internet, never sleeps and never eats and gets into all those porn sites too!, and picks up information on ALL sites so the information can be categorized), comes to our site of hairisnotforever and reads the keywords on the page. Then this little bot makes a snapshot of the web page. Then the algorithms take over and match the keywords in the meta tags to the text and stuff on your site. (Remember Search Engines don’t “see”, they are NOT visual (males are visually oriented not Search Engines!) so graphics are not taken into account unless you use the alt tag.) The algorithms get more and more sophisticated as time goes on and they look for content, keywords, phrases etc. (Remember original content!) 

2. You have no keywords in your meta tag so the engine just looks at your content. So our happy couple figures okay lets put the word hair say, in every sentence at least three times. NO! Don’t do that. Overuse of a keyword is a red-flag to a Search Engine and you will be penalized for it! It should be used and used frequently, but NOT overused. 

KEYWORDS UPON MILLION PARAMETERS

Now when you Google for hair products using the word “balding”, the Search Engine has the keyword, and based upon a million parameters decides what position for that specific keyword, hair is not forever will have, and feeds it out. So our couple figures what the hell. We will also sell mascara, and they put in a picture advert and the word mascara in their keywords, without having any content for it. Well then www.hairisnotforever.com will probably be listed as the last of the last of the last for anyone looking for “mascara”. So for this lesson the formula is: “Content + Keywords in the content + Keywords in Meta tag.”