But I’m getting a bit ahead of myself here. The real reason I’m writing today to to talk to those out there that are blogging on blogger.com, wordpress.com or other blogging platforms and hosting the blog at those services. If you’re blog’s URL is something like yourblogname.blogger.com then I think you should SERIOUSLY consider moving your blog to your own domain name. Having your own domain gives you your own place online that you own and can manage as you see fit. With the other blog platform hosting you’re stuck in the box that they give you. Plus it just looks a lot more amateur.

I’m sure that sounds a bit intimidating, but its not really all that hard to do. In fact the hardest part might be coming up with a good domain name, which is why i want you to check out Bustaname. On the site you can pick words that you think might be a good fit and the combine them in various ways to find combinations that are available still.

So, for example, give the pic below a peek and what I did is made a group (Group 1) that included the word ‘blog’ and ‘journal’ and then made a second group (Group 2) which had three words that I thought might be a good fit in this case I used ‘name1′, ‘name2′ and ‘name3′. Then I set Group 1 to only be at the end in the combinations that it checks (since I don’t want blogname1.com and others in the wrong order). In the second column then the available combinations will be shown (as you can see, all are available except name2blog.com).

After playing with Bustaname for a few minutes its quite easy to understand, so go give it a try and if you’re still hosting a blog at blogger or wordpress then definitely make the move.

1. Install and Use Windows Live Writer

I can’t even begin to describe how useful Windows Live Writer has been in speeding up my blogging. Since its just a desktop app, Live Writer loads up a bit quicker than Wordpress does, but also has a bunch of really useful addons to speed things up even more.

First off be sure to use the Text Template add-on. This allows you to have a few different pre-formatted blog posts ready to go whenever you need them. Really helpful if your posts tend to have similar formats.

Also if you add pictures frequently, then the SnagIt add-on is an essential. With just a few clicks, Live Writer will add any image to the post and take care of uploading it for you. This has been HUGE for me on one of my other site because it means no more clunky Wordpress image uploads.

2. Set Aside Dedicated Writing Time
I’ve found it incredibly helpful to do all of my week’s writing all at once (for me usually on Mondays). By having a set aside time I can just start typing, spend a few hours grinding out a bunch of articles and be done for the week. For me this is BIG, because once all of the blog posts are setup then I can shift my focus to promoting the blog instead.

3. Make a Calendar and Stick to It
Going along with setting aside writing time, by having a planned out calendar of topics to write about you can save bundles of time and write blog posts a lot quicker. Take some time now to brainstorm a bunch of topics to write about over the coming weeks/months and get it down on paper. Then during your dedicated writing time you can pound those posts out quickly.

I’ve had a few blogs in the past that have been hurt big time by sudden drops in my Google rankings and I think this posts helps understand the best way to approach that situation if it ever happens to you.

Read the article on ProBlogger…

So here’s what you wanna do:

1. Write a good article on a specific topic. Pick 1 medium to long tail keyword and focus on that as you write.
2. Proofread and make sure the article is pretty solid.
3. Submit to EzineArticles and wait for it to be approved. EzineArticles is the best article site out there and only accepts unique articles so you have to publish there first.
4. Now use Article Submission Helper (free at http://www.articlesubmissionhelper.com) to ’spin” new versions of the article. By “spin”, what you do in Article Submission Helper is rewrite a few sections in the article to give various options for those sections. Then Article Submission Helper will randomly pick from the various sections and come up with a unique article.
5. Also in Article Submission Helper you can submit to a ton of different article sites and even rotate (“spin”) your bio to get different types of anchor text.

To give it a try head over to http://www.articlesubmissionhelper.com. Again, its total free and definitely worth a try.

After watching Tim Ferriss’ video on blogging I couldn’t help but give CrazyEgg a try and its pretty damn awesome.

I set up a mini test on FreshTrend.com which is another site that I run and the CrazyEgg software automatically tracks what visitors are doing on the page: where they click, what pages they go to next, where they came from, etc. It sounds on the surface like its not much different than Google Analytics, which is why I was skeptical. But Crazy Egg blows GA out of the water in terms of getting actionable results.

For example, this morning I setup a test of the site homepage to monitor the next 3,000 visitor and after just 300 so far I can already tell that I need to improve the bottom part of my pages since many people are actually reading through the whole post and then clicking the “Next” link (which is tiny). By making that bigger I bet I’ll drastically improve people clicking on that and thus keep them on the site longer. The beauty of CrazyEgg is that after I make that change I’ll be able to test it and see how well it works out.

Final analysis: Anyone serious about their blog should give CrazyEgg a try, even if you try for just 1 month you’ll learn a ton about your blog’s visitors.

1. Flickr – Under Creative Commons you can use a lot of the images on Flickr, just make sure you give the appropriate credit.

2. Stock.Xchng – Big collection of free stock photos, some have weird license terms, but the collection and variety is pretty amazing.

3. MorgueFile – The amount of photos is a bit limited but the quality is really quite high.

4. Stock Vault – More of an exchange for images between photographers but you can snag some free images from here even if you’re not a photographer.

5. EveryStockPhoto – Search engine of free stock photos. Very useful for deep dives looking for images.

Hit or Miss

6. FreeRange – Nice collection of good quality images.

7. FreeFoto – Collection is a bit limited, but occasionally you’ll find exactly what you need.

8. Pixel Galerie – Site isn’t in English but isn’t that hard to navigate and does have some nice pictures.

9. Unprofound – Decent collection in both size and quality, but nothing too amazing.

10. Public-Domain-Photos.com – A few thousand images only but you might stumble on what you need.

Longshots

11. Google Images – You can always search images on Google and then contact the site owner of any images that come up to see if you can have permission to use the image. Not very likely to work, but you never know. Your odds will be better if you’re non-commercial.

When All Else Fails…

12. If none of those worked out then I suggest iStockPhoto. Pictures are super cheap and really nice quality, but not quite free

If you don’t know Tim Ferriss, he’s the real deal. Super successful and full of a lot of interesting ideas on blogging and life in general. The video is a bit long but well worth a watch. Titled “How to Blog and Not Kill Yourself”

Best Free Blog Directories

Blogged.com – Nice, easy to use site. Free listings and a decent place to find other bloggers.

Spill Bean – Like this one a lot especially since it took the blod step to not have ‘blog’ in its name. Bravo SpillBean.

Bloggapedia – Not a lot of blogs listed, which could be a good or a bad thing, but its worth a try.

Blog Catalog – Make sure your blog has a bunch of content before you submit, but once it does Blog Catalog is well worth submitting to.

Blogging Fusion – The header reads “Total blogs approved this week: ( 2 )” and its Thursday currently, so although its free I’m not sure many sites get let in.

Best Paid Blog Directories

Best of the Web Blogs – If you pay for any blog directories, this is the one to pay for.

Eaton Web – Probably the next best paid blog directory out there. $34.99 to list but its unfortunately an annual fee.

Bloggeries.com – $39.99 seems a bit steep for a mediocre site, but it is a one time only fee which is nice and would be a nice link to snag.

Worst Blog Directories – Avoid These

BiggerBlogger.com – Total waste of time. You have to register just to find out it costs $1/month to be on the site.

1. Use a commonly available Wordpress plugin such as SEO Title Tag or All In One SEO Pack. Both give you full control of your Wordpress titles and allow you to SEO optimize them as you see fit.
2. A lazy man’s approach is to update your header.php file and replace the with following:
   <title><?php wp_title(””); ?><?php if(wp_title(””, false)) { echo ‘ :: ‘; } ?><?php bloginfo(‘name’); if(is_home()) { echo ‘ :: ‘; bloginfo(‘description’); } ?></title>

   Doing this puts “Blog Name :: Description” on the hompage and “Title :: Blog Name” on all other pages which for me is close enough to perfect and then I don’t need to worry about setting up any plugins and keeping the plugin updated.

Any other tips on SEO optimized titles? Share them below…