10 Basic SEO Techniques Every Webmaster Should Know

Now, it’s easier than ever to have websites up and running. You can just setup a blog at blogger.com for free. Or you can spend some $20 to buy a domain name, get a cheap web hosting and install free ready-made scripts like Wordpress, phpbb, oscommerce, joomla, etc. Some web hosting sites even made the script installations as easy as one-click-install.
Many aspiring webmasters create new sites without even knowing HTML, let alone search engine techniques. They get AdSense account and paste on AdSense code, waiting with high hope for the quick money to pour in. But day by day, the earning is really just enough to cover the hosting fee, or even less than that. So, they start to get frustated. Most quit after some time. Some worse, they “fall into the dark side”, employing black hat techniques or hiring less-than-honorable search engine optimizer firms. The rest stay on, determined to learn, and improve. Soon, they found out something about called search engine optimisation. Here I will try to describe some basic search engine optimization (SEO) techniques in a simple, easy-to-understand way.
Optimizing a website for search engine means you design a website so that search engines (like Google, Yahoo, MSN) can easily find the pages and include them in the search result. Thus, it will increase the number of visitors coming to your site. Objective of search engine optimization is to have your pages displayed highest possible in the search engine result for your choice of search phrases.
These are 10 basic search engine optimization methods I think every webmaster ought to know. See if the tools you use to create your webpages (Dreamweaver, Frontpage, etc…) allow you to do these. If not, it is time to learn some basic HTML.
1) Page title
Title is important. Place important keywords on your page title, and try to have different one for each page. I’ve seen sites with same title for every pages. While it gives stronger branding for the site name, that’s something I can do without rather than sacrificing my sub-pages traffic.
Limit your page title to 80 characters the most. Shorter page title means higher importance on each word.
2) Keyword and description meta-tags
These two popular meta-tags used to be most useful search engine optimization techniques, until they are abused by the search engine spammers. Even then, they are still holding some importance today, specially the description meta-tags. Meta description tag is used by some search engine in displaying the result page, and by other search engines to determine the relevance of your page. Limit your page description to 200 characters the most. Put a descriptive, gramatically correct, meaningful sentence for best result.
Some proclaim that keyword tag is dead. Apparently not so. Yahoo webmaster guidelines lists using keyword tag as a way to help improving search engine ranking.
Use a “keyword” meta-tag to list key words for the document. Use a distinct list of keywords that relate to the specific page on your site instead of using one broad set of keywords for every page.
Even then, if you have to make a choice between creating good keyword tag and developing useful content - our next point - go with the latter. Limit the keyword to 300 characters. Next to a good title, this is the next most important on-page optimization you can do to bring more visitors to your website. Most important thing you must remember here is this: you should write for your users first, search engine second. Write in natural, easy to understand language. The reason here is that if you write just for search engine, even if you can rank high up, the visitors will close your page as soon as they find out that your site contain just junks.
Besides, search engines now increasingly use some kind of artificial intelligence to analyze websites before indexing. You don’t want to caught off-handed using some useless texts.
First write some useful contents just as you would write offline magazine articles. Then, only after that, you can do some small tweaking to empasize certain parts, and make some changes to the word choices.
Generally, it is thought that keyword density plays some importance to seach engines. Keyword density refers to number of appearance of your keywords relative to overall page. No agreement on the optimum number though. Some believes the keywords should be around 3% compared to the overall page. Some believes the number should be higher, aroung 8-10%. Whatever it is, just try to include some of these keywords on your page, and make sure the page is still read well naturally. If it is not, take them out.
Then there are HTML tags you can use to emphasize importance of certain words. The most commons are bold, italics, and headers.
And, of course, you should use text instead of graphics or flash. Search engines can’t read what is written on your beautifully crafted picture. If you want them be indexed and found by search engines, use text.
If you must use some images, use your keywords on the file name, and always use the ALT tag.
Major search engines have developed some ability to read text in flash files, but to play it safe, avoid flash banners, buttons or page contents. Flash is great for embedded movies, not for any other use.
4) Regular content
SEO or not, this is important. Regularly updated content will draw visitors and search engine alike. But don’t put content just for the sake of it. Contents copied from other site, for instance, not only doesn’t help in search engine ranking, but can even get you penalized.
Write original, useful contents that make your visitors want to come back and recommend to their friends. You will get repeat visitors that way, regardless of search engine traffic. Good contents will also get link from other webmasters, and this will greatly help in your search engine ranking (read next point).
Blogs are very easy to set-up and is a good avenue to create new contents to your site. Major blogging software, like Wordpress, supports RSS by default. By using RSS reader software, your visitors can then choose to be to be notified about new contents on your site.
Creating contents regularly rather than pump in many articles at one go has many benefits. Firstly, your visitors know that everytime they go to your site, they will see new content instead of the same old ones. This will make them want to visit more often. Same thing to search engine crawlers. If everytime the crawler couldn’t find new content, it provides little incentive for them to come back regularly. Thus, your new pages will not get indexed as fast as you want it to be.
Additionally, if you pump in a lot of contents at once, the search engines may think that you are trying to spam. This can result in being penalized.
5) Link and get linked
Link popularity is a way most search engines determine the importance of your site. When a website link to your site, search engines takes it as a vote for your website. In the past few years, this has greatly helped search engines getting the most relevant result for users.
Recently, with a lot of sites using links to cheat into search engines ranking, major search engines, specially Google have increasingly use and develop new technologies to determine the importance of the links.
So, not all links are treated as equal. Links from big reputable sites, for example Microsoft or Reuters are definitely worth more than link from CheatAd.com.
Relevancy of the sites also plays a part. Relevant website will give more value to the linked site. Then there is age in play. Older sites are deemed to be more trustworthy than new sites. Consequently, links from older sites are treated as more valuable too.
Directory submission is the oldest way to build your link reputation. There are free Dmoz, free or paid Yahoo Directory, and thousands other directories. Just search for “directory submission” and you have enough work to do for a whole year. Just do directory submission moderately, probably around 20 directories per week, and you can watch your search engine traffic climbing up slowly. If you have a blog, you can submit it to blog directories as well. Just search for “blog submission”.
Exchanging link with another webmaster is another way. Termed as “link-exchange”, basically you link to the partner site. In exchange, the partner will put hyperlink in his/her site pointing to yours. As many abuse this technique, Google has degraded the value of link-exchange to virtually non-existant. You might even get penalized if your link partner is considered a “bad website” for Google.
While Google has diminished the value of reciprocal link, Yahoo and MSN are still holding on, though with less value. Even then, it still valuable enough to work on. Just be careful to have only reputable link partners.
To check whether the link partner is bad, just search for “site:www.domainname.com” in Google (replace domainname.com with the partner’s website) and see if the pages are indexed.
The most “in” link-building technique now is via article submission. You can write or buy an original article, and include a link to your website on the resource box (a small section after the article, where you introduce yourself and your website).
This is what I mean:
Article here…...About the authorFernando Hal is a contributing writer for CheatAd.com, a blog about click-fraud on pay-per-click advertisements. You can then submit this article to a myriad of article submission sites, e.g. GoArticles.com for other webmasters to put it on their website.
The wonder of article submission is that not only it helps search engine ranking, but also brings in interested visitors who like your articles. This is very targeted traffic, compared with directory submission or link-exchange.
Other link building methods are visiting relevant blogs and leave comments there, as well as joining forums/discussion boards and leaving hyperlink to your site on the signature.
If you intend to purchase link from other sites, consider getting links from many smaller sites rather than few major sites. The paid link might be considered as spam by Google.
On the other hand, don’t be stingy in linking to others. Be choosy on who you want to link, but don’t hold back if you find a good site that can be useful for your visitors.
6) Usability
Always remember, your most important audience is the visitors. Give them a good experience, and they will come back. Framed pages, for example, is irritating. It breaks navigation’s “Back” button, and is confusing. Pop-up windows, javascript hyperlink, and fixed text size are just a few design mistakes notoriously committed by many new web designers/ webmasters.
For a start, read Jacob Nielson’s articles on web usability and web design mistake.
Build the website for your visitors. Make easier navigation. Look at Google, MySpace, eBay, and Amazon. There is one striking similarity among them. All four of them have drop simple interface. Many will describe them as “ugly”. But these are few of the most successful sites online. Fact to be told, web visitors don’t need pretty interface. They need a usable website. Beside helping your visitors, good navigation system will help search engines to find and index your sites.
Or look from other point of view. Your website may be well optimized for search engine, but if your site is not visitor-friendly, the visitors will leave as soon as they come. Like the way this article says it: In other words, time and money was spent to “optimise” these sites in a way that brought them traffic, and then drove it away!
7) Use Tools
There are many tools to help you rank better in the search engines. By that, I mean tools that can help you to analyze your website so you can make changes accordingly. By all means, stay away from all automated tools that promise to help your ranking, e.g. automated search engine submission software or automated link-exchange software. Your website can get penalized by search engines due to the intrusive nature of many of these automated tools.
Here are few tools that you can use with peace of mind:
- Google Analytics (http://www.google.com/analytics/)Google Analytics is powerful site statistic service that tells you almost everything you want to know about how your visitors found you and how they interact with your site.
Currently Google Analytics is offered by invitation only. I have an extra invitation that I’d like to give away. If you are interested, just leave your comments or trackbacks for this post. I’ll give the invitation to the most useful comments/trackbacks.
- Sitemap generatorA sitemap is a file/page where you can list down URL of all pages from your website. A correctly done sitemap can help search engine crawlers find and index your pages.
xml-sitemaps.com provides free service to generate sitemap in three different formats: xml, html, and text format. You can then upload these sitemaps to your site and follow the search engine submission procedure accordingly (see next items). Note that the free service from xml-sitemaps.com has a limitation of 500 pages per website.
You may also try http://www.sitemapspal.com/. It has higher limit, but can only create sitemap in xml format.
- Google Sitemaps (http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemap/)Google Sitemaps is an easy way to tell Google about all the pages on your site, which pages are most important to you, and when those pages change, for a smarter crawl and fresher search results.
After you have the sitemap ready, you can then submit to Google Sitemap. Google Sitemap takes in xml-formatted sitemap. Go to http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemap/ follow the instruction there. If you already have a Google account (e.g. Gmail), you can use it straight away. Otherwise you’ll need to register an account.
But Google Sitemaps is much more than just for sitemap submission. It can also answers questions you might have about how Google sees your site. For example, you can learn about errors and statistics.
- Yahoo Site Explorer (http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/)Site Explorer allows you to explore all the web pages indexed by Yahoo Search. You can view the most popular pages from your sites or competitors’ sites, dive into a comprehensive site map, and find pages that link to that site or any page.
- Yahoo Feed Submit (http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request)Yahoo does not have the service equivalent to Google Sitemaps, but if you are looking for a place to submit your sitemap to Yahoo, you can do it at http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request. It takes in RSS, Atom, and text format. You can submit the urllist.txt created by xml-sitemaps.com above.
8) Be patient
Google imposes a period of time called sandbox, which cap your ranking from going top until a certain period of “probation” is passed. This range from few weeks to more than a year for competitive topics / niche. Many webmasters agree that Yahoo also has a certain kind of “sandbox”, although there is no specific name for it.
So, if your site is not yet ranked well, be patient. Remember that search engine optimization is not magic. Search engine companies closely guard their mechanism for fear that the information will be used to trick the search engine. All these SEO talks that we have are based on observation of many experienced webmasters. Nothing is fixed here. The search engines may change their algorithm - and thus, your ranking - anytime.
Refrain from overdoing anything, including techniques above or any other technique. Search engines’ main interest is to provide quality result for their audience, the web searchers. When you do too much, it raises suspicion that your content might be not worthy enough to build up naturally.
Know your limit and ability. If you are new on search engine optimization, don’t go for a very competitive keyword like gambling, lawyer, or the infamous mesopotamia.
Moderation, thus, is the key.
9) Stay away from black hat optimization techniques
Black hat search engine optimization techniques promise quick way to improve your site ranking and bring visitors to your site. These includes page cloaking, hidden text, link-farm, comment-spamming, and duplicate pages.
You may not understand all these terms, but if you anyone telling you they can improve your search ranking overnight, these are most likely black hat techniques.
They work by tricking search engines to think that your pages hold more value than what they really are. As the search engines competes to provide the most useful search result to the visitors, they shun these techniques.
Nowadays, major search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN have advanced detection technology to sniff out these black hat techniques. When they fail, your competitors are all too happy to point it out to the search engines.
Search engines will then take action accordingly, like penalising your site ranking or even take them down altogether.
If you are interested to find out, read this blog: SEO Black Hat. Don’t be deceived by the name. It is a great site covering both white-hat and black-hat SEO techniques.
10) Keep on learning
These techniques are just the basic to get you started. There are many resources on the Internet to learn search engine optimization.
Here are some places to get you going:- Wikipedia- Google Webmaster Help Center- Yahoo! Webmaster Resources- Webmaster World- Digital Point Forums

Source: http://www.cheatad.com/2006/07/17/search_engine-optimization/

How to Cheat Google AdSense (and get your AdSense account disabled)

Face it. You come to this article probably thinking to find some ways to cheat Google, or to confirm whether some method you have on mind will work. Well, if you want to know how to cheat AdSense, here are the ways, focusing on the AdSense click-frauds. These covers from basic AdSense cheating techniques to the advanced class.
But before you proceed, you might need to know why you shouldn’t cheat Google (answer: you will get caught).
Basic clicker cheat
This is a noob. This guy knows almost nothing about web technology or network architecture. He clicks on his ads every time he has chance. It can be a few clicks to hundreds of clicks daily. Most likely he doesn’t even read the AdSense Program Policies and Terms and Conditions.
Proxy clicker cheat
She knows a thing or two about cookies and IP address. Or she doesn’t know, but somehow guessed that if she use the things called anonymizer, Google will not be able to trace her, because her identity is hidden. She may use anonymizer / proxy websites or specialized anonymous software like tor (The Onion Router).
Multiple computer clicker cheat
He knows that somehow Google will detect if the clicks are originated from his own computer. So he will try to even out origin of the clicks. He will recruit his friends, family members, relatives, neighbors, his cats, and his dogs on single mission: to click on the ads. He will also click on the AdSense ads when he is using the library computers, or his office workstation.
Software clicker cheat
Graduate to the next step is buyers of clickbots / click-bots. These are specialized robot software to click on AdSense ads. It will browse around your websites, clicking on the ads every few minutes. The more advanced ones will cloak the IP address too, so the website seems to be very popular worldwide. To cover the track, this clickbots will browse around the advertisers sites too while continuing its “click quest”.
Paid-clickers cheat
If you don’t like automated things, there is always other option for you. Just pay $50 dollars a month to the professional AdSense clickers. These are groups of highly specialized Internet surfers with office in the dark rooms in street corners of India, Pakistan, and China, helping AdSense account owner to earn good amounts of money � before the AdSense account is disabled, that is. They will browse around your websites, clicking on the ads every few minutes. Because they use human eyes, they know which ads worth more. And to be more convincing they can click a link or two, or sign up free offers / newsletters on the advertiser sites.
Click-rings cheat
Network is power. So says many business gurus. Instead of taking things to their own hand, this people realize that they can join hands with those with similar goals and distribute AdSense clicks among themselves, the so called AdSense click-rings. Joining this click-ring network means that your website address will be made known to members, who will regularly browse the website and click on your AdSense ads. In exchange, you will also browse other members’ sites and click on their AdSense ads. The medium used varies. Some click-ring groups use mail-list for communications. Some are using bulletin boards/forum, Yahoo groups, or Usenet. IRC is another popular way. Slightly more complicated is specialized AdSense exchange software for collecting members website address and displaying others’ websites for clicking.
Other medium cheat
I have tens of thousands email address on my newsletter subscriber list. If I include AdSense ads on my newsletters, with 5% CTR, I can get a thousand clicks per one email. Not bad. Or I can pay someone to write some useful/nice/funny/cute toolbars or firefox extensions or screensavers that people can download and use for free, and display my AdSense ads there.
Visitor cheat
Simply putting “Visit out sponsors” or “Check out the ads above” on your website is cheating. This might not be very clear-cut cheat to some. But Google AdSense program policies has stated clearly, the only text allowed are “Advertisements” or “Sponsored List”
Spam cheat
This is the highest level all click-frauds, the Maestro of Fraudsters. She spams millions of emails regularly, offering to “satisfy your inner needs if you can help me check on the links on my website”. Of course, email is not the only way. What IRC and instant messaging (IM) are for, after all. She will look for unsuspecting victims, offering something too-good-to-be-true “if only they will visit the website and click on the links”.
Click-through-rate cheat
Whichever method(s) above used, there is one limiting condition: the CTR(click-though-rate). Any CTR that exceeds certain percentage (probably around 10%) will raise red flag in Google AdSense back room. To lower the CTR, the professional cheaters will create some pages on the same domain that attracts very high traffic. Some interesting freebies will sure do the tricks. AdSense code is pasted there, thus creating a very high page impressions. Whether or not the the ads are clicked does not matter anyway, because they are targeting low paying keyword that does not have much competition. The fake clicks are, of course, on where the big money is, the low traffic pages stuffed with high-paying keywords.

Don’t Get Caught With Google Adsense Click Fraud

Click fraud is the act of clicking on ads for the purpose of costing the advertiser money. It is simply the same as paying out cash for false leads. Many bloggers, including myself are aware of this fraud and are sharing the same sentiment that this is the one big problem that Adsense is facing.

How do you prevent being involved in this fraud?
Majority of webhosts are offering access logs. Once this is offered to you, it is necessary that you hand it over to Google as well. This allows them to look for any suspicious activity on your site. Problems like this are very serious and giving it to them is saying that you would want to help them in any way you can in solving the problem.

It can also help if you have a click monitoring software. If you do not have one yet, you should try and get one. There is absolutely no major factor preventing you from having one because most of this software is free. As usual, all the information you have received should be turned over to Google. This is showing Google that you too are fighting against click frauds and is in no way a part of it. Study your server logs and watch for any activity that seems suspicious. Report anything that you may find odd, may it big or small thing.

You may want to consider disabling ads for your own IP address and local geographic area. This will certainly prevent accidents and will not make Google mistake another user as you. You can do through a htaccess file. This will avoid Google mistaking as clicking on your own ads and be kicked out because of it.

Keep your Adsense off on pop ups and pop unders. Your ads should not be displayed on content sites that promote illegal activity or tampering of the legal rights of other people or business. Included in this are the content that is considered adult and gambling ones. If you think that you may be breaking this rule, immediately remove your content or Adsense from the web page.

Be truthful and confess up to Google about times when you might have clicked on your own ads, whether accidentally or intentionally. Or the times when you have done something that is against the Terms of Service that they are implementing. Be honest about anything that you may have done that is wrong. Confessing is way better than Google learning about it eventually. It would mean eventual termination and no getting back what you have worked so hard for.
Do not tell your family or friends about Adsense on your website. Chances are they may start clicking on them to help you make money without you knowing it. They may be doing more harm to you than help by trying it in the first place.

If ever someone you know chanced upon your Adsense, make sure they understand that they cannot click on your ads under any circumstances. It would be wise to brief them on important things about Adsense and what not to do with them.

Most pay per click networks have different measures in hand to protect website owners against click frauds. Other search engines can track more than 50 data points, IP address, browser’s information, user’s session info and pattern recognition. They also have “systems” available that detects fraud. Not to mention the specialized teams monitoring how things are going and helping advertisers stop click frauds.

Google offers suggestion on how to avoid click fraud. Using “negative keywords” can be used to keep your Adsense showing on products and services that are in no way related to yours. Adding tracking URLs to your links so you can track the traffic coming from Google.
Do not be caught in the Google click fraud. Be aware and be wary.

Source: Adsense Tips

How To Get Your Google Adsense Account Banned

I was browsing the affiliate marketing forums last night and saw several new post about people who got their Google Adsense accounts banned. I see these types of post all the time and it leaves me scratching my head. It’s not difficult to follow the Google Adsense Terms Of Service.

From what I’ve been able to tell, there are two types of people who get their Adsense accounts banned:

1. Those who deliberately push the limits. They know there’s a chance of getting their accounts banned and they’re not surprised when they get the notice.

2. Those who do not take the time to read the TOS and are crushed when they get their banned notice from Google Adsense Group #1 is understandable and most of them know the risk. There is no excuse for Group #2. It’s your responsibility as a Google Adsense Publisher to know the Google Adsense Terms Of Service (TOS).

Here’s a quick list of the ways you can get your Google Adsense account banned.

• Click on your own ads. Sure, accidents happen. But if you’re so “clumsy” that you click on your ads 20 times in 10 minutes, you probably need to be banned. If you do accidentally click on your ads, contact Google Adsense immediately and let them know what happened.
  
• Put Google Adsense on websites that have questionable or banned content such as Hacker, Warez, Porn, Drug and Gambling sites.
  
• Showing Adsense ads on Registration or “Thank You” pages.
  
• Sticking ad relevant images next to your Adsense blocks. For example, tricking people to click on your ads by putting pictures of cell phones next to an Adsense block showing cell phone ads.
  
• Registering multiple accounts. I’ll just say it’s possible to have multiple accounts legitimately. However, for most of us, one account is all they will let you have.
  
• Registering an account after you have been banned. See above.
  
• Taking part in a “Adsense Click Ring”. These are groups of people who click on other members ads. Google is smart enough to figure this out folks!
  
• Putting Google Adsense on Pop Ups that keep generating other pop ups when a user tries to close them. This gets a lot of Adsense Account holders. This increases your “impression rate” thus messing with your data that Google uses. The best thing to do is to not put them on pop ups anyway. Google also does not want their ads on Pop Unders.
  
• Asking other people to click on your ads. Google says not to do it, so don’t. Simple as that. I’ve seen video’s and other forms of advertisements where goons asked people to click on their ads. It’s my opinion these people need to be banned!
  
• Disclosing click through rates, earnings per click and impressions. Although I don’t agree with this one, Adsense TOS says not to do it, so I don’t. Their money, their rules.
  
• Using malicious automation software such as ‘bots’ to click on your ads. Again, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know this is bad. I don’t feel sorry for these types of people either.
  
• Putting Adsense on pages with no content. Some people will put up pages with nothing except ads on them.
  
• Hiring overseas workers to click on your ads. There are companies/individuals who do nothing but click on Adsense ads. Do you really think Google can’t figure this one out?
  
• Creating Made For Adsense Websites. Google is beginning to really crack down on websites that are made just for Adsense.
  
• Putting Adsense ads on Hate websites. Bad business, don’t do it.
  
• Keyword stuffing pages. Google considers this a No-No and may yank your account for it. I use to see this a lot with Mesothelioma pages. (FYI, Mesothelioma use to be one of the highest paying keywords on the Internet)
  
• Putting Adsense on websites that promote guns & ammo, beer or hard alcohol, tobacco, prescription drugs, copyrighted infringement content, knockoff clothing or goods and sites that distribute term papers or essays.
  
• Using excessive profanity. I’m not sure who decides what “excessive” is, but Google will ban your Adsense for it dammit!

There are more, but the ones listed above are the ones I see violated the most. Here’s a link to Googles policy terms. https://www.google.com/adsense/policies and here is their Terms and Conditions page https://www.google.com/adsense/static/en_US/Terms.html

Long story short, if you value your Google Adsense account, play by the rules!

I don’t agree with all of the rules above, but like I say, it’s Google’s money, you have to play by Google’s rules. All the more reason all website and blog owners should diversify their sites income generating streams. If you live by Google Adsense, you might find yourself dying by them.

Source: http://www.affiliatewatcher.com/how-to-get-your-google-adsense-account-banned/

Defining Blogs

Blog: a frequent, chronological publication of personal thoughts and Web links. Blogs are alternatively called Web Logs.

Blogs & The Worldwide Web
Both personal sites and lists of links have existed since the web was born. Indeed, the ability to link one document to the other that existed on the global network drew early enthusiasts to the Web. They published pages and eagerly perused the pages published by others. That was the time when the accessibility to the pages from any computer with a modem and a browser was more important than the content of that page. For a while, webpages became an interesting addition to the cyberspace. Then the space got crowded. As a result the web grew at an exponential rate and search for the required information became difficult and simultaneously more time consuming.

Until, a few of these enthusiasts decided to put the links they collected daily onto a single webpage. These people placed their stuff – descriptive text and link/s, for example: their travel records, on the web. The text enabled the reader to know why they should click the link and wait for the page to download. And so a particular type of website was born.

The New York Times article about a website named ‘LemonYellow’, published in July 1999, didn’t say a word about weblogs, but affirmed the notion that webloggers were onto something. Most of the early weblog editors designed or maintained websites for a living. Few of these editors just knew HTML - the simple coding language used to create webpages.

With Weblogs becoming popular, the personal websites became extensions of their day-to-day lives. Webloggers started rolling personal journals — ongoing links-laden riffs on a favorite subject. Soon they linked to general interest articles to online games, and often to Web-related news.

Blogs and Journalism

The world has seen the emergence of a new style of journalism, based on a 'raw feed' directly from the source. And the common notion that surrounds the emergence of serving ‘raw feed’ is that the journalists testing the new waters are bound to wreak havoc on institutionalized media. Also a popular notion is that Weblogs changes the nature of 'news' is in the migration of information from the personal to the public.
Unquestionable, a blog is a medium that gives maximum exposure to one’s creativity. Just by hitting the 'post' button and any personal writing becomes published writing.
Weblogging is driving a powerful new form of amateur journalism. Today, millions of Net users — young people especially — have taken up the role of columnist, reporter, analyst and publisher while fashioning their own personal broadcasting networks. For the inexperienced, a blog consists of a running commentary with pointers to other sites. Some, like Librarian.net, Jim Romenesko's Media News or Steve Outing's E-Media Tidbits, cover entire industries by providing quick bursts of news with links to full stories.
Journalism and blogging together is becoming popular day by day, more than any other form of blogging. Following reasons are considered to extensively contribute to its increasing popularity:

Creative Freedom
Part of a blog's allure is its unmediated quality. For a journalist, there's no luxury like the luxury of publishing unedited essay. The freedom in being able to present yourself precisely as you want to is of enormous joy. It does not matter how sloppily, irrationally or erratically the content is written. The idea is to publish what you think in the way you think.

Instantaneity
To a few writers, even writing for a weekly magazine may seem like taking ages to print. With a Weblog, you hit the send key and it is out.

Interactivity
It is a kick to receive feedback from people who have taken interest to read and criticize your work. These are the people you have never heard of; who stumble on your Weblog and become a part of your thinking process.

Lack Of Marketing Constraints
When blogging it is not necessarily to tailor a work piece for a certain readership or demographic. People interested in a perspective finds its author – the blogger, instead of the blogger finding a publication that reflects people’s interests.
Most of the time, the Weblogs tend to be less about actual reporting and more about analysis and punditry and opinionated commentary. The 9/11 terrorist attacks fuelled the public's appetite for information, analysis and news, if only to make sense of the tragedy. Bloggers rose to prominence by feeding this desire.
Blogging has taken off in remarkable fashion; in a way, it has made good where newsgroups have failed. It has kept the promise that the Internet would provide real community to Web surfers. Tuning in to some of the newsgroups devoted to the terror attacks; one may sometimes feel to be in the middle of a verbal war zone with so much noise passing for informed discussion.
Weblogs run from single person operation to large teams and communities, to business organizations spread throughout the world. They offer a great way for readers to find constantly updated news and information. It also allows authors to connect to thousands of readers in a personal way and add the honest, unedited voice of thousands to increasingly commercializing Web.
The plethora of tools that helps managing the weblog capitalizes on the ease of publishing posts to even greater extent.
These are probably the reasons why they have been widely adopted and maintained - for several years in some cases.

Source: SolveYourProblem.com

How do you become a great Blogger? Follow the Standard Rules

Blogs release the voice of the readership by allowing experts in their field to correct others, and be corrected themselves. With so many participants, being dissimilar becomes difficult and it becomes more difficult with a certain set of similar rules.

Time Is Your Ace
Bloggers should take care of the freshness of the content. Publishing the content on time is the mantra. Bloggers may post a link to the original news source and can convey the news hours before established outlets can commit resources to their own rehash and news top.

Share The Credit
While traditional media avoid reporting anything "not invented”, bloggers should reveal the web's vast resources through compulsive linking. Giving credit to the real authors should do this linking to web resources.

Roll On The Blogs
Bloggers should weave new broadcast networks. In other words, bloggers should regularly commend and link to other blogger's posts.

Chronology
To make room for fresh arriving news most of the traditional publishers dump their old product into search enabled database warehouses. But a blog should be like a diary-like stack of events. Its chronological news presentation should fit with innate human story-telling or information-processing habits.

Site Construction
Do not over-engineer and brand-bloat the site. Avoid heavy-handed attempts at graphic branding that may generate more clutter and confusion with poorly placed content. Highlight the urgency and directness of the content. Make it more funny and insight-filled blog.

Reliability
Defeat the notion that Blogs are unreliable. Writing only about the truth can do this. Be accurate. Be consistent. Sometimes, blogs distill a reality too fragmented for a person to comprehend, so avoid breaking links and avoid directing people to sites where they would not like to go.

Communication
Most human verbal communication is not rocket science; it's sloppy, looping, incoherent, and prolix. Blogs compare rather well to an older and more widely used communications tool, talking. Advertising in a blog will enable an advertiser to communicate with a critical mass of thinkers.

Adhering to Privacy Statement
People who report the news should be aware of the consequences of abuse that is inherent in the system. Handling privacy is not an easy task. A blogger’s ethical standards are designed to delineate the journalist's responsibilities and provide a clear code of conduct that ensures the integrity of the news. The only exception to this rule is when inadvertently personal information about someone else is revealed. It is only fair to remove the offending entry altogether, when you discover that you have violated a confidence or made an acquaintance uncomfortable by mentioning his or her name in your write-up. Also important is that you remember that you have made a mistake and try never to repeat that again.

A Touch Of Human Interest
Blogs should provide details from the writer's life: missed flights, break-ups, and rodents under the stove, computer meltdowns, muggings, and tamale recipes. These are the examples of what visitors actually want to read.

Discover The Passion Within
Blogs are mostly written in the first person and can convey a blast of the emotions. This emotional richness may consist of irony, elation, bitterness, tears, laughter, profanity, boredom and compulsiveness. Blogs should be written as human expressions rather than corporate excretions.

Devotion
It should be remembered that readers would reciprocate to all honest efforts. They are equally devoted. If bloggers get to write about what they care about at whatever length and in whatever detail – they will write with far more commitment than the average corporate scribe.

Conclusion

A widely dispersed audience depends on weblogs for filtered and disseminated information as it plays an important role positioned outside the mainstream of mass media.

Professional bloggers are experts in evaluating the nature of information sources; it is not reasonable to assume that all readers can do the same. Readers depend on the bloggers to provide them with their knowledge share. Weblogs point to, comment on, and spread information according to their own idiosyncratic perspective. Readers accept all information provided to them via blogs – all information – including articles from a source that is a little wacky or has a strong agenda etc, but not an unethical nature of source.

If it is felt that a well-written article can stand on its own only with ethically clear and relevant sources. Readers may cease to trust a blog where disguised or unclear source of an article is discovered. Making the sources clear or providing the readers all the facts is important because it enables the reader to avoid evaluating the facts differently. So, weblog’s ethical standards are designed in way that delineates the responsibilities of weblog professionals and provide a clear code of conduct to ensure the integrity of the news.


Source: SolveYourProblem.com