You are here: Home / Archives for Guest Blogger

How to Write a Great Headline

5:47 am by 2 Comments

How to Write a Great HeadlineA great headline will be the reason someone clicks on your blog title on Twitter, Facebook, Alexa or any blog listing out there.

It’s one thing to share your post at every opportunity. It’s great to have as much exposure for your article as possible. However, no matter if your post has been shared hundreds of times by kind supportive friends,without a great, intriguing headline no one will click on it.

Think of all the blog posts titles you’ve clicked on when you’re out and about on the Internet. You clicked on those articles without seeing anything except their titles. Why? Because they were great headlines!

Of course the rest of your article needs to support your innovative title, but how are you going to get others to read your masterpiece without enticing them to click on the title in the first place? Here are some top tips for writing a great headline.

Challenge what your readers believe in your headline

Don’t be controversial. You want to attract readers, not repel them. Stay away from politics and religion unless you absolutely know you can pull it off. Challenge your readers to think differently about a particular topic. Challenge them to contrast two very popular or opposing beliefs (not religious beliefs). Show them what others are saying and contrast this by what you believe is true. You can challenge your readers in several ways with the following headings:

The real story behind…
What you should know about…
What was never revealed about…

Promise value in your headline

Think about what you would type into to Google (or any other search engine) if you were looking for a particular topic. This is exactly what you have to name your article when you write about it. Don’t go for sentimentality, puns or fancy language. Plain and simple, this article promises to show you how to write a great headline. If you have a problem writing headlines, you’ll type this term into your search engine. If you saw this heading and one which says, ‘Great headlines Are Important’ you’d click on the former. Know what your audience is looking for. Use Google Keywords to research the competition and the search volume of your chosen keyword, then promise something of value in your blog title based on this research.


Another way of promising value in your headline is showing your reader how to do something you’ve done well on your own site. This kind of headline is very profitable on my own blogs.

Ask questions in your headline

Bloggers comment on so many blogs each day that by the time they get around to yours, they may be out of inspiring things to say. Asking them a direct question instantly gives them a chance to answer. This is the perfect way of getting your readers to think and interact with your site. They may have never considered the idea before, but your question will urge them to get involved and maybe even offer vital information to you and the rest of your readers. Questions in headlines always make people want to get involved. ‘Why Is Your Blog Dying?’ will bring a lot more curious readers (who’ve never heard of your blog), than ‘Your Blog Is Not Alive’.

Mix and match these elements in your blog headlines and see your traffic increase. Doing this not only helps your readers, a great headline keeps you focused on the topic at hand and it forces you to do your job of writing well. You won’t want to let down a great headline. It’s one of the things which will keep your readers coming back for more.

 

Author Bio

Alan Rita is a freelance writer who has mastered the trick to writing
great headlines. She is currently writing for payday loans site.

Filed Under: Guest Blogging Tagged With: , , ,

Getting Local with Your Online Marketing

7:09 am by Leave a Comment

Getting localized is becoming a crucial part of online marketing. In the beginning when the internet made its first big splash as the newest way to sell goods and services, the global nature of it was all the news. Today, it’s becoming apparent that, even though the Internet may be global, people still like dealing with businesses in their area. Local marketing on the Internet can bring in a lot of revenue for a company if it’s done right.

Local Resources

One of the first tactics that you may want to try for your localized online marketing strategy is taking out advertisements on home-based sites that have good search engine positioning. This will generally give you instant results, quickly driving up traffic numbers to your site. The only problem with this strategy is that the benefits it offers do not last after the advertising campaign has been stopped. In this regard, advertising on local sites is very similar to pay-per-click.

Another tactic you’ll want to employ is getting your site linked to — from other area sites. Getting links to your site from other sites is one of the most effective ways to get good search engine placement, to bring up the Page Rank of your site and to drive traffic to your site.

One advantage of this type of campaign is that it’s actually a bit easier in this regard than… getting links from sites that are owned by people with whom you’ll never have any contact. You can always pop in at a local business that you’re friendly with and ask them if they can put a link on their site that leads to your site, oftentimes they’ll do so if you’ll reciprocate.


Address Information

Some of your more premium WordPress themes usually have a widget or other feature that allows you to include a map showing the location of your business and a way to include your contact information on every page. This is vital for a business that wants to make certain that they have local visibility.

One of the pitfalls that businesses oftentimes end up falling prey to when they put their contact information on their website… is putting that contact information in the context of a logo. Usually, this will be done to try to keep their brand image consistent and to use a digitized version of the sign outside their store, their business card or some other physical representation of their address on their website.

Make certain that your contact information is always presented in text. This ensures that the search engines can pick it up and make it a part of the listing for your site and, of course, it gives you a chance to get your business name, city and state all associated with one another, which is vital to localized search engine optimization.

There are a lot of ways that you can build up your local visibility in the search results. Sponsoring events and having links put on the event sites that lead to your site is an effective method. Putting up area news & information on your site that doesn’t have a sales angle and just helps people to learn a bit about where you do business is also a good method. The thing to remember, however, is that, in addition to your keywords, you’re going to want to associate your domain with your city and state. From an online marketing standpoint, this means that you’ll sometimes have to include your business name or business type plus your city and state in the content you put on your site so that the search engines get the point.

About Author

Olga Ionel is a creative writer at ThemeFuse.com. She is passionate about WordPress, SEO and Blogging. Don’t forget to check out stunning Premium WordPress Themes (warning: no boring stuff)

Filed Under: Guest Blogging Tagged With: , , , ,

How To Use the Cloud

5:28 am by 1 Comment

A recent study claimed that cloud computing will create more jobs than the early Internet boom did. The industry is slated to create big business opportunities, as well as hundreds of thousands of jobs. In fact it is such a big deal, venture capitalists are expected invest upwards of $30 billion into the industry over the next five years or so.

Cloud Education is a Top Priority

Fortunately, you won’t have to wait five years to see the effects the industry has on the job market. Currently, there are far more of these employment opportunities than qualified candidates to fill those positions. Jobs are being advertised ad nauseam across the Internet and even Rackspace, a huge name in the cloud computing industry, is looking for new talent. These jobs are expected grow dramatically over the next few years. According to a report by technology analyst firm IDC, available cloud-computing jobs are expected to reach 14 million globally by
2014. While this is a good problem to have, it is a problem nonetheless. The industry needs a large stable of qualified IT
managers, systems administrators and network engineers to meet the rapidly growing needs of this technology.

Cloud Computing 101: Introducing CloudU

Part of the problem is that while there is plenty of discussion about how awesome it is, there is not much discussion about why it’s awesome, and how it works. Rackspace has built an intensive online resource, providing educational tools to train the general public, and potential Rackers (read: employees) in cloud computing
concepts. The resource is called CloudU, and answers two big questions right off the bat within the first couple of lessons:

1) What is cloud computing? & 2) How do I understand the cloud computing stack (Iaas, PaaS, SaaS)?

• What is Cloud Computing?

In previous years, enterprise-level computing was expensive. It was expensive on two levels: On one level, storing and managing massive datasets required massive processing power, which is definitely pricey to maintain. On another level, running in-house server technology and data centers required using lots of electrical power. It provides high-powered processing, while keeping electricity consumption low, and at a fraction of what it would cost to run a dedicated server or data center for a large-scale company. This is all accomplished in cloud-based data centers where processing and hardware resources are shared among multiple servers simultaneously. This gives the service providers the ability to provide scalable, customized computing resources on a subscription or as-needed basis to their customers.


• Understanding the Cloud Stack

The cloud stack is broken into three distinct components:

Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).

• IaaS – Infrastructure-as-a-Service providers, sometimes called Hardware-as-a-Service (HaaS), is just that, a provider of server hardware for companies. Companies can rent server space, hardware and operating systems, and have them installed on-site or at a third-party location. Rackspace is among the largest providers of IaaS solutions.

• PaaS – PaaS is often referred to as middle-ware. This is because PaaS solutions provide an easy path of all a company’s application deployment needs. This includes server space, operating systems, and a host of deployment methods that cut the app development time in half.

• SaaS – SaaS is the most common type of service, primarily because it is the easiest to access and use. Essentially, SaaS providers offer powerful software solutions over the web. This includes everything from storage to word processing to digital video editing. SaaS includes any type of software that you can use online.

Everyday, technology is becoming more of an omniscient presence blanketing the planet. As these types of networks continue to augment traditional server delivery and mobile technology expands to necessitate more cloud infrastructure, we can expect jobs in the field to continue blossoming long into the future, potentially growing to make cloud computing and information technology one of the foremost industries in the future.

This guest post is by Thomas Stone a contributing author at technected.com

Filed Under: Guest Blogging, technology Tagged With: , ,