Tools and sites for the pro blogger
Here are a collection of the essential tools we use all the time to build blogs.
Browsers
If you are going to build any type of site, whether it’s a website, Landing Page or a Blog, then it’s essential to make sure it works in as many browsers as possible. Most of you will have Internet Explorer on your system already, but you may want to download at least the following.
Firefox
Opera
Apple Safari
Google Chrome
Keywords
Keywords are used by search engines to help them index what your site or blog is about. If you use keywords well withing your blog you will find it easier to get ranked and therefore attract more traffic to your blog. One of the best tools for discovering keywords and key phrases is Google FREE keyword Tool. We have included a few others as well which will help you with your keyword selection.
Google AdWords: Keyword Tool You can use Googles’ FREE Keyword Tool to get new keyword ideas – This is the latest Updated Page. Google changed the location as of 5th May 2010
Wordstream
Wordstream provide some free and paid tools which expand your keyword research. A good way of finding some great key words and phrases is to go to the niche finder below, get some good longtail keywords and then put them into Google Keyword Tool to see how many people search for that specific phrase every month!
Keyword Tool – Get loads of relevant keyword suggestions.
Keyword Niche Finder – Discover the most profitable pockets of keyword opportunities for your business.
Buying A Domain
Now that we have got an idea for the name of the site we need to check if that domain name is available and if it is we need to buy it. Go Daddy GoDaddy is one of our favourites – you can regularly get coupons so that you can purchase domains with discounts up to 30%
Hosting
Here you have a couple of choices. If you only want to host one blog then the cheapest way is to either host with us, or get one off hosting from any company which has 1 click install for products like WordPress. Hostgator is particular good and is a very inexpensive way to host an unlimited number of your websites or just one. HostGator is one of the world’s top 10 largest web hosting companies with more than 2,500,000 hosted domains. Around the clock support. Every web hosting plan comes with a 45 day money back guarantee, 99.9% uptime guarantee.
If in doubt about your hosting options give me a call direct on 07867 546 101 and I will be happy to advise you on the options available.
A very user friendly site which has a special offer on at the moment – 60 day free trial – Aweber is our No.1 choice for Internet Marketing Data Capture. The product has a great AutoResponding software which lets you schedule follow up messages. This is great when putting together a Internet Marketing Campaign. Aweber is the choice of most internet marketers. There are other alternatives such as Constant Contact and iContact
Announce and Verify You Site
Google – https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/
Yahoo – https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/mysites
Submit Your Website to Yahoo – https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit
Submit your website to Google
Twitter Counter
Twittercounter.com is the world’s largest Twitter statistics service.
http://twittercounter.com/
ReFollow
Manage your Twitter Account and Build Followers Quickly
http://refollow.com/
Automate Twitter
https://www.socialoomph.com/
Twiturm
This sites lets you upload Music and Spoken Word – This could be a great way to share AudioBlogs to through Twitter
http://twiturm.com
Finishing Touches
FavIcon Generator
Dynamic Drive – Use this online tool to easily create a favicon (favorites icon) for your site. A favicon is a small, 16×16 image that is shown inside the browser’s location bar and bookmark menu when your site is called up. It is a good way to brand your site and increase it’s prominence in your visitor’s bookmark menu.
Html Tools – This site offers a great way of generating 2 different icons to be used as favicons. It produces a .ico file and an animated.gif file. Our favoured favicon plugin uses bot to ensure it can be seen in all bowsers.
CountDown Timer
Countdown Timer – The CountDown Timer is a interactive gadget for displaying time left to important events or a website launch, etc. It is a great tool for Internet Marketers. Creating a sense of urgency, where you can have an offer up for a specified period etc.
Video
Video Distribution
http://www.tubemogul.com/ TubeMogul OneLoad is a free service that provides a single point for deploying videos to the top video and social networking sites
Downloading from YouTube
www.keepvid.com Great site to download video from YouTube. This is a great way to incert a video into a presentation of if it’s public domain you can use it in your own videos. Beware of Copywrite issues!
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