There are many different blog publishers that offer free basic blogs and all of them have slightly different features. Choosing a blog publisher that has all the features you need can be difficult and time consuming. This article is designed to make that process a little bit easier for you.

Before choosing a blog publishing application, here are a few things to consider:

• Ease of use – you want a blog publishing application that is straight forward.
• The purpose of your blog – what features will you need?
• Are you planning on monetizing your blog? If so, you need a platform that will allow for advertising.
• Do you want the ability to make individual posts private or password protected?
• Will you be featuring a large amount of photos or other media?
• If you want a personalized domain name, choose a blog publishing application that allows mapping with domain names.
• What aesthetic are you looking for? Different blogging applications have varied ’skins’ to choose from. Some are more customizable than others.

The Pros and Cons of the Top Four Blog Publishing Applications

The following free blog publishing applications are ranked in order of ease of use. As a newbie to the blogosphere, it’s best to start with software that will be easy to operate.

1. Blogger is a Google owned blogging application. It takes just a few minutes to create a blogger account and the interface is simple for the novice to navigate. But with a simple interface, you get simple features so if you’re looking to expand your blog and add a lot of plugins, this probably isn’t the best choice. Further, Blogger has limited media space (only 1 MB).
2. Wordpress is a little more advanced than Blogger, which means the user interface can be more difficult to figure out. A Wordpress blog is easy to open, but more difficult to customize because there are so many options. Wordpress does allow the user to choose privacy options per post rather than per blog. However, unlike Blogger, you must pay for an upgraded service to map a domain name to your blog.
3. Movable Type is a more complex blog publishing application. To use Movable Type, you first must download software onto your computer, which can be difficult and it takes up space on your hard drive. Movable Type allows the blogger to post future blog entries on a schedule, and it also allows the user to edit several blogs/templates at the same time. While these advanced features might be nice, Movable Type is created for people who have some knowledge of code and blogging.
4. GreyMatter is, like Movable Type, a server-side blogging service. This software requires a download before you can begin blogging, and it requires some coding experience. GreyMatter was one of the original weblog services, and provides many features that other blogs publishing applications don’t provide. Because Greymatter is no longer in active development, it is not a promising choice for a blogging application.

Whatever your decision, have fun! What blogging platform have you chosen?Related Posts:

Top Twelve Twitter Tools
Free Twitter Backgrounds – Office Theme
How To Promote Your Wordpress Blog on LinkedIn

Say goodbye to Tweetmeme! Twitter has just released an official Tweet button for people to install on their websites and blogs. This Tweet button allows users to easily share content on Twitter and see how many times the content has been retweeted.

How to Add Tweet Button to Website

Adding the Tweet button to your website is a very simple process. Just navigate to the Tweet button page, and then follow these steps:

1. Choose your button

There are three options for button layout, two of which include the tweet count. You then select what the Tweet should say (yes, there are dynamic options), what the URL should be (also has dynamic option), and language. All very self-explanatory!

2. Recommend people to follow

This is completely new – after people use the Tweet button on your site, they will see who you’ve recommended they follow. The first account you should list is your own Twitter account; then you can also add another account to recommend. Perhaps in this space, you could add your company’s Twitter handle, an official blog Twitter handle, or a coworker/mentor. Or leave it blank.

3. Preview and install Tweet button

Next, just grab the code and install it on your site!

How to Add Tweet Button to Wordpress Blog

It’s even easier to add the Tweet button to your Wordpress blog thanks to Blogessive; they’ve already created a very easy-to-use Twitter Button Wordpress plugin. This is also a great option for Thesis theme users if you’re not sure where to put the code so that it appears on both the homepage AND single posts.

Just download the plugin, upload it to your Wordpress blog, and customize the following settings (here are mine):

Let me know if you have any installation questions in the comments below!Related Posts:

How to Add the Official Google Buzz Button to your Website
How to Add the Facebook Like Button to Your Blog
How to Add a Facebook Fan (Like) Box to your Website

Whether promoting content on your website, blog, email marketing campaigns, or social media channels, one of your goals is for readers to engage with your content. One primary form of engagement is clicking on links; links to fill out a form, links to download a free eBook, links to product specifications, etc.

These links are your calls-to-action, which aren’t just limited to the “big red button.” If you think about it, every link you create is a call-to-action, since there has to be some reason you’ve linked to some internal or external content. And the more internal links users click on, the greater chance they will become a customer or lead, and lower your bounce rate.

So here are eight easy ways to optimize your links within content to get more clicks:

1. Underline all links

This might seem obvious, as underlined text is commonly recognized as linked text. However, many designers prefer a more sophisticated non-underlined look, so it’s important to make sure your links are obviously links by including the underline.

2. Make links a different color

It’s important to make your links stand out so users know to click on the link, so this is the same principle as underlining your links. You don’t need to use neon colors here; just make links a different color than your regular font color using one of the colors in your design scheme.

3. Bold important links

Bolding every link just looks obnoxious, but if you bold important links within your content, it will attract your readers’ eyes and make it clear that whatever content is behind that link is important.

4. Use relevant and descriptive anchor text

Adding a linked “click here” to your content is simply a wasted SEO opportunity. Instead, delete the “click here” and add the description you’d written before or after it into the link itself. That way, you’ll get the added SEO juice if linking internally, and if not you’ll give your readers a better idea about what they’ll be clicking on.

5. Open external links in a new window

If you link to external sites without opening the link in a new window, you’ve lost the user unless they hit the back button. But it’s likely that they will close the tab when browsing a new page, and then you’ve lost them for good. If you add  the target=”_blank” attribute to a link, the external page will open in a new window, and when the user closes the new tab, they’ll be right back on your website. I’m very surprised at how many blogs and websites I see that do not have links set to open in new windows; I often have to go back, right click the link, and click “open link in new tab.”

6. Place important links high on the page

Ideally, your primary calls-to-action will be above the fold. But when writing a long blog post on a blog that has a big header, ads, or additional content above the post, this may not be possible for every link. The farther people have to scroll down your page to see a link, the less likely they will be to see it and click on it. So make sure your links are close to the surface.

7. Make sure image links have associated text links

If your links within content are syndicated via RSS, you can’t guarantee that people receiving your RSS feed via email will see the images, since many email services block images by default. So if you include image links, make sure (1) that your images have descriptive ALT tags and that (2) you include text links either as a caption or within the preceding or following paragraph.

8. Look at your data!!!

Go look at your data right now. Which links generate the most clicks? Take a look at those links and take note of what makes these links different than the rest on your site. Is the call-to-action language more persuasive? Is it bolded? Is it above the fold? And then once you implement the tips above, what sort of difference do you see in your data?Related Posts:

16 Ways to Improve Your Blog’s Bounce Rate
Free Social Icons to Fit Your Site’s Design
5 Reasons to Lower Your Blog’s Bounce Rate

There are lots of blogs out there. 50 million or something like that. I’ve started freelance designing blogs, leading some of my friends to wonder if they should start blogs of their own (knowing they would get a massive friend-discount).

But is there a point to starting a blog when there are 50 million other blogs out there?

Is there any way to possibly break through the clutter of 50 MILLION blogs? First of all, that’s a silly question. Not all blogs are about the same topic, and I’d venture to guess that 40 million have been abandoned after a month or two. But even if you never rise to the likes of Mashable, or become a bald head of wisdom like Seth Godin, there are many personal benefits to starting your own blog.

1. Become an expert.

If you blog consistently on any topic, you’ll be an expert on that topic within a year. Sure, there might be some exceptions. Like organic chemistry or astrophysics. Or Latin. You might actually have to go to school for that.

But generally speaking, you will become more of an expert than the majority of individuals interested in that topic, and at the same time you’ll be learning yourself. There’s no better way to learn than to teach.

2. Let others know you’re an expert.

After a while, you will establish yourself as an expert. U Stand Out has definitely opened doors for me; my current employer was impressed with my blog during the interview process, so who knows where I’d be now without it? It’s also giving me the opportunity to start a freelance blog design business, and people email me, Twitter DM me, etc. to ask me questions about social media and blogging. Having your own blog will make others perceive you as an expert in your field.

3. Fuel your passion.

It’s so important to blog about something that you’re passionate about. Otherwise it simply won’t be fun. Blogging can be quite a chore, especially if you’re writing about something you don’t love 3+ days a week. But if you’re passionate about your topic, not only will you learn more about what you love, but your passion will resonate with your readers and your blog will be more successful.

4. Build your online presence.

These days, if you work in marketing having a blog is pretty necessary to establishing your personal brand if you really want to make it big. So why not in other niches? If your blog is search engine optimized, when people search for your topic in Google they will come across your content. Add an author box to the bottom of each of your posts to let readers know who you are, and you’ll gain loyal readers faster than you’d think.

5. Network in your industry or niche.

Once you build your online presence and establish yourself as an expert with your blog, it will be easier to network on sites like LinkedIn and Twitter. Prominently display your blog URL, RSS feed, etc. on your profiles, so that when you reach out to industry peers, they will look at your profile and see that you’re someone worth replying to.

6. Learn how to write

Blogging will help you learn how to write. For me, this is one of the most valuable benefits, since I’d like to write books someday (ebooks, novels, you name it). Writing is an important part of any career path, whether you’re an engineer, historian, marketer, chemist. Blogging will help hone your blogging skills, and can also help you find your unique voice.

7. Have fun.

Sorry to disappoint, but “making money” is not on this list. Such a small percentage of bloggers actually make money from blogging that I honestly didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up. You shouldn’t start a blog with the sole purpose of making money (though blogging certainly helps to market a company or product you’ve already launched). The point is to have fun and learn more about what you’re passionate about.

I recently came across a blog post about how bloggers should stop blogging about blogging. (Did you have to read that twice?) They have a good point in that social media is still under-utilized by the mainstream, so there’s so much opportunity for people who know how to blog to succeed in other niches. But if you’re passionate about blogging about blogging, then blog about blogging! Don’t let anyone tell you not to blog about a certain topic just because other people are doing it; who’s to say you can’t do it better?

If you choose a niche like blogging that has a lot of competition, pursue it anyway. What’s important is that you’re passionate about what you blog about. Just because other people are blogging about the same thing doesn’t mean that you can’t do it better, or that your presence in that niche community wouldn’t be appreciated. And you’d be learning more about what you’re passionate about.

What’s your top reason for blogging? Let me know in the comments below!Related Posts:

10 Reasons Why Part-Time Bloggers Shouldn’t Post Every Day
How To Create Content Worthy of Social Media Marketing
16 Ways to Improve Your Blog’s Bounce Rate

Adding an author box to your post footers will help build your personal brand on your blog. An about the author box helps your visitors get to know you, especially first time visitors. And it also is useful on blogs like this that are not personal FIRSTNAMELASTNAME.com blogs, and the picture helps personalize the post. This post will show you how to add an author post box to your Wordpress blog, as well as to the Thesis theme.

Step One: Add Bio Info

In your Wordpress dashboard, go to “users” and then “your profile” in the left column. Scroll down to the box “biographical info” and click “update profile.” The code we’ll add to your theme pulls the information right from your profile.

Step Two: Add the Box

Open your single.php file and locate the section that is the bottom of the post, right before the comments begin. Every Wordpress theme is different, but you’ll want to place the code below before the line “<?php comments_template(); ?>”.

<div id="authorbox">   <?php if (function_exists('get_avatar')) { echo get_avatar( get_the_author_email(), '80' ); }?>
  <div class="authortext">
    <h4>About <?php the_author_posts_link(); ?></h4>
    <p><?php the_author_description(); ?></p>     </div>
</div>

This code calls a Gravatar, which pulls a profile image based on the one you’ve assigned to your email address. If you don’t have a Gravatar account, go set one up for free.

If you are using the Thesis theme, you’ll want to add the following code to the custom_functions.php file:

function post_footer() { if (is_single())
{
?>
<div id="authorbox">
  <?php if (function_exists('get_avatar')) { echo get_avatar( get_the_author_email(), '80' ); }?>
    <div class="authortext">
      <h4>About <?php the_author_posts_link(); ?></h4>
      <p><?php the_author_description(); ?></p>
    </div>
</div>
}
}
add_action('thesis_hook_after_post_box', 'post_footer')

Step Three: Style the Box

Add the following code to your style.css (and if you’re using Thesis, add it to your custom.css file).

/* AUTHOR BOX */
#authorbox {background:#fcf8d7; border:1px solid #e2dede; width:495px; margin:0 auto; margin-bottom:0px; overflow:hidden; padding:10px;}
#authorbox h4 {font-size:16px; color:#5a5a55; margin:0; padding:0;}
.authortext {padding-left:100px;}
#authorbox img {margin:0; padding:0px; float:left; border:5px solid #e2dede;}
#authorbox p {color:#5a5a55; margin:0; padding:0px; font-size:10px;}
#authorbox h4 > a {text-decoration:none;}
#authorbox a {font-weight:bold;}

Modify the CSS to match your blog’s theme; otherwise it will look like mine.

That’s it! Let me know if you have any questions in the comments below.Related Posts:

How to Add the Facebook Like Button to Your Blog
Wordpress Thesis Theme Review – 8 Reasons to Switch
How to Add Official Twitter Button to Your Site or Blog

Thesis is an amazing Wordpress theme. I recently made the switch to the Thesis theme from the free Flexibility 2 theme, and I can already tell that it was a worthwhile investment. When I was looking for a new Wordpress theme, my main criteria were customizability, SEO friendliness, fast load times, and excellent user support. By choosing Thesis, I got all this and SO much more.

Download the Latest Version of Thesis >>

1. Fully Customizable

When it comes to customizations, the sky is the limit. Even if you’re a novice at programming and CSS, Thesis makes it pretty foolproof. Instead of having to modify core theme files and risk breaking your blog, like you do with most free Wordpress themes, you won’t have this problem with Thesis. The only two files you’ll have to customize are custom.css and custom_functions.php. This also means that when making future Thesis upgrades, your customizations will carry through to the new version, so you won’t have to redo all of your hard work.

As long as you know enough CSS and PHP to be able to take pre-existing code and modify it for your own needs, you can make your theme look EXACTLY how you want it. There’s also a nifty little plugin called Thesis OpenHook that lets you place your custom code anywhere on your blog, including before content, before or after sidebars, in the header, in the footer, etc.

2. Outstanding Support

This, in my opinion, is one of the biggest advantages of the Thesis Wordpress theme. The support is simply amazing. After buying the theme, future upgrades are free. And if you have any questions about the theme, the Thesis community forum is excellent about answering your questions quickly. The team answers anything from setup and implementation to plugin integration and advanced customizations, and usually within a couple hours (in my experience, and a  day at most).

The support team really goes out of its way to help people customize their blogs with Thesis, and you simply don’t get this with free themes.

3. SEO Friendly

The Thesis theme was developed with search engine optimization (SEO) in mind. I’d have to say that most themes out there, especially the free ones, have so much code bloat. They prioritize fancy designs over SEO, and the code just weighs those themes down. Remember: it’s not the design that gets you search engine traffic; it’s the content and SEO. If you have tons of messy code above your content, the engine crawlers are going to see the mess first, rather than your high-value content.

Thesis has very clean code, and the only two files you need to customize are called from externally, so even the fanciest designs maintain a clean code structure. It also eliminates the need for the All in One SEO Pack plugin, as you can specify each post’s meta tags within the theme’s functionality.

4. Easy to Use

If you’re a true novice when it comes to coding, Thesis is good to go out of the box. The initial design is very professional looking, and the Design Options page allows you to make font, color, site layout, and image customizations. One feature I personally love is the ability to change the column layout without having to go into the code and risk breaking the universe.

All you have to do is choose between a two and three-column layout, and simply click the radio button next to the column order you’d prefer. And it was so easy for me to make other customizations, such as adding thumbnails next to my popular posts in the right column. Since making the switch to Thesis, my blog’s bounce rate has decreased nearly 20%, and I simply wouldn’t have been able to figure out how to make these customizations with a free theme.

5. Highly Successful Bloggers use Thesis

Having endorsement from very successful bloggers who use the Thesis Wordpress theme on their own blogs made a big impression on me. Here are just some of the top blogs that use Thesis:

• Problogger
• Chris Brogan
• Twitip
• Copyblogger
• SimpleMom

6. Eliminates the Need for Many Plugins

Because of the extensive customization options and outstanding support community, you can easily implement changes using Thesis Hooks that eliminate the need for certain plugins. For example, I was able to easily add page numbers to the bottom of my homepage and get rid of Pagenavi simply by searching the support forum for how to do this, and copy/pasting a couple bits of code into custom.css and custom_functions.php.

Eliminating plugins will reduce the amount of php calls on your blog pages, and increase your blog’s page load time.

7. Fast Load Time

Again, I really need to emphasize the importance of having a fast page-load time. With my last theme, the code was so bloated that my blog loaded so slowly, even after I eliminated all plugins to test out how fast it would load. Because the Thesis framework is so clean and SEO friendly, you also get the benefit of extremely quick load time (barring your use of certain plugins). Remember, the faster your page load times, the less frustrated your readers will be, and the lower your bounce rate.

8. The “Big Ass Save Button”

When I first installed Thesis and went to one of the customization pages, I literally laughed out loud when I saw the save button:

I mean, really, that’s just awesome.

In Conclusion…

This doesn’t even cover all of the unique features Thesis has to offer. But one hesitation that many people have about Thesis, including myself, is the price tag. The personal option runs at $87, and the developer’s option is $164. I chose the developer’s option so that I can implement Thesis on all of my blogs, and so that I can offer Thesis to clients at a much smaller licensing fee. (So if you want to hire me to set up or improve your blog,  consider yourself having saved $87.) I personally decided that the theme would ultimately pay for itself, as it’s now so much easier to monetize this blog, and you can probably apply the same logic to your own blog. It’s simply worth it.

Disclaimer: Yes, all the links to Thesis in this post are affiliate links. If you do decide on purchasing Thesis, I would appreciate it if you used the links.

Related Posts:

How to Add Author Box to your Wordpress Post Footers
How to Add the Facebook Like Button to Your Blog
How to Add Official Twitter Button to Your Site or Blog

You might have noticed that Facebook has gone a bit “like” crazy this week. One major change affected fan pages: instead of becoming a fan of a page like Coca-Cola, you now “like” the brand. Facebook also introduced a “Like” button that could be added to any page on the internet. This little like button is the easiest way to share content yet. With just one click, a user can share your content with all of his or her Facebook friends.

On Facebook, you can tell your friends if you’re interested in their status updates, posts, photos, or videos by clicking “like.” At the F8 conference this week, Facebook revealed a new social plugin that allows any webpage to add a “like” button and reap the benefits of this viral functionality. Although this new feature is integrated onto Typepad, there isn’t yet a customizable plugin for Wordpress. Here’s how to easily add the Facebook like button to any website, including a Wordpress blog:

1. Get the Like button code

This is the only code you’ll need to install the Facebook Like button on your Wordpress blog. It will automatically detect your post title.

<iframe src="http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=<?php echo
urlencode(get_permalink($post->ID)); ?>&amp;layout=standard&amp;
show_faces=true&amp;width=450&amp;action=like&amp;colorscheme=light"
scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowTransparency="true" style="border:none;
overflow:hidden; width:450px; height:60px"></iframe>

Please note that if you are adding this code to a website OTHER THAN a Wordpress blog, use this code instead and customize the “URL.com” for your own domain name:

<iframe src="http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http://URL.com
&amp;layout=standard&amp;show_faces=true&amp;width=450&amp;action=like&amp;
colorscheme=light" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowTransparency="true"
style="border:none; overflow:hidden; width:450px; height:60px"></iframe>

2. Choose the button type

If you’d like to use the standard Like button, keep the code above the same (layout=standard).

If you’d like to use the button count version of the Like button, change “layout=standard” to “layout=button_count”.

3. Customize your Like button

There are various customizations you can make to your Like button, all of which you can see on the official like button social plugins page on Facebook’s developer site.

• Show faces or not: Show faces of your friends with “show_faces=true” or not with “show_faces=false”
• Like vs. recommend: Have a like button with “action=like” or a recommend button with “action=recommend”
  
• Color scheme options: If you have a light color scheme on your webpage, choose the correct contrast with “colorscheme=light”; if you have a dark color scheme, use “colorscheme=dark”
• Border: Add a border by changing “border:none;” to “border:1px;”

4. Adding the code to Wordpress

Adding the Like button to each post

Open your single.php file and look for the_content(). Each theme will be coded differently, but this php call should always appear. I’ve added my code above the the_content() code so the like button appears at the top of my posts. You can choose to add the button below your posts by inserting the code below the_content().

Adding the Like button on your homepage

If you also want the like button to appear above each post on your homepage, like I do here at U Stand Out, open your index.php file and look for the_content(). Just as you did for single.php, add the code above the php code for the_content(). You can also simply add the code to a sidebar widget to give your readers the option to “like” your blog’s homepage.

Let me know if you have any questions in the comments below!Related Posts:

How to Add Official Twitter Button to Your Site or Blog
How to Get More Facebook Page Likes Using Exclusive Content
How to Add Author Box to your Wordpress Post Footers

Now that you know why you should lower your blog’s bounce rate, let’s cover some easy ways you can reduce the bounce rate of your blog.

First, it’s important to understand what a bounce rate is, and to analyze your current bounce rate using Google Analytics. So if you don’t already have Google Analytics installed on your blog, install it and wait at least a week to accumulate some stats and determine your blog’s bounce rate. And keep in mind that blogs tend to have a higher bounce rate than other types of websites.

Definition of Bounce Rate

Bounce Rate is the percentage of readers that “bounce” away from your blog after just one page view. According to Google expert Avinash Kaushik, your bouncing site traffic won’t even give you five seconds of consideration; that’s not much chance to impress! You can find out your blog’s Bounce Rate right on the Dashboard of Google Analytics. The formula Google Analytics uses to calculate bounce rate is:

Bounce Rate = Total Visits With Only One Page View / Total Visits

A reader can bounce, or exit, your blog by:

• Clicking the back button to leave your blog
• Closing the tab or window of your blog
• Going to a new URL from the browser’s URL bar
• Clicking a link to another site
• Session timeout (when a user only has one page view, but leaves the browser open for 30 minutes on that page)

How To Improve Your Blog’s Bounce Rate

1. Highlight popular posts above the fold

Many blogs make it difficult to find the highest quality posts, so the users quickly get bored and leave. With the oversaturation of content on the Internet, it’s important to prominently display your most popular posts from your blog above the fold where they can be easily seen, such as on the top of your sidebar. You can use Google Analytics to learn what your most popular posts are. This will spark the reader’s interest to click and read more on something you already know your readers find interesting.

2. Use post excerpts on the homepage

If each of your blog posts are too long, you may only be able to fit 2-3 blog posts on your homepage. If your first-time visitors don’t find one of those few posts interesting, it’ll lead to a higher bounce rate. This is where blog excerpts come in handy. Display only a paragraph or two of each post on the homepage. This way, you can fit anywhere from 10-15 blog posts on your homepage, which gives readers a much greater likelihood of being interested in one of those posts.

3. Share related posts on each post page

Traffic from search engines or social media sites will usually land on a single post page. This kind of traffic tends to have a higher bounce rate. Listing 4-5 related posts on the bottom of each post could help keep these users interested. You can manually add these links at the bottom of each posts, or if you have a Wordpress blog, the Wordpress plugin Similar Posts will automatically generate five related posts to list at the bottom of each post.

4. Interlink within the content of each post

If you are writing a post and find yourself referring to something you’ve previously written about, link to that older post using relevant anchor text. If you look at the first paragraph of this blog post, you’ll see that I’ve linked to my previous blog post 5 Reasons to Lower Your Blog’s Bounce Rate. There, I’ve just done it again. Have these links open in a new window so that your readers can get that clarification from your previous post, and then return back to the first post to keep reading. Interlinking will also improve your blog’s SEO.

5. Provide obvious links to homepage

If your first-time readers are landing on a single-post page and are interested in your blog, they will want to see your blog’s homepage. So make your header image link to your homepage. It really surprises me how often I see the header image NOT link to the homepage; this should be an automatic setting on every blogging platform. If the link to your homepage is hard to find, your readers might get frustrated and leave your blog entirely. Provide another link to your homepage in the navigation.

6. Have clean navigation

Make your navigation clean and easy to spot; try not to clutter the navigation area with Google AdSense or affiliate ads. And keep it simple; your top navigation should link to your homepage, about page, contact page, archive, and perhaps a few other top-category pages.

7. List the your blog categories

Include a list of your blog categories in your sidebar. This way, if a user is interested in a particular topic, he can easily navigate to a page that will list all of your posts on that topic. Utilize the setting that displays the number of posts you have in each topic to peak interest.

8. Post high-quality content

Content is always king. You will read this everywhere (at least, from authors who know what they’re talking about). Good content = high traffic. Good content = high viral sharing. Good content = lower bounce rate. If you’re looking for easy ways to get tons of traffic, you might be sick of hearing this. But it’s so true. Having good content isn’t always easy, but if you focus on turning out high-quality posts a few times a week rather than short, crappy posts every day, you will reap the rewards.

9. Improve loading speed

Users might get frustrated if your blog takes forever to load. If you use a blogging platform with plugins, such as Wordpress, try keeping the amount of plugins installed to below 15. And if there’s one plugin that slows down your blog significantly, consider finding an alternative. Also make sure all of your images are compressed so they load quickly.

10. Remove anything that autoplays

Videos, music, or any sort of media should never autoplay. There’s no better way to get a visitor to click the back button than by having autoplay media on your blog. The user should opt into any media on your site via a play button..

11. Provide ways for users to interact

Prompt your readers to comment on your blog posts by asking questions at the bottom of each post. Have a blog commenting system that is visually appealing and easy to use. Also, include polls, surveys, or other interactive plugins to keep your visitors on your site.

12. Be smart about monetizing

Most bloggers try some methods for monetizing their blogs. This is great, but don’t overfill your blog with ads. Not only does your bounce rate increase with each ad click on the first page view, but too many ads will make for a frustrating user experience. Anything that might frustrate your readers will give them a reason to click that back button.

13. Rethink your sidebar

Try removing some of the external links from your sidebar. If your blogroll doesn’t include extremely relevant links to your niche, remove it. If you see that not many people are clicking through to your MySpace page through your sidebar, delete the link.

14. Research using Google Analytics

Google Analytics is an extremely useful and completely free tool; take advantage of it! You can find out all sorts of cool nerdy things like which traffic sources yield the highest bounce rates. For example, traffic from StumbleUpon might have a bounce rate of 88%, but traffic from your Facebook fan page might have a bounce rate of 60%. This way, you can learn which traffic sources to focus more of your marketing efforts on. You can also see the bounce rate of each and every page on your site and optimize accordingly. How awesome is that??? (Yes, I’m a dork.)

15. Optimize older blog posts

Don’t just forget about your older blog posts as time passes. If you elaborate on a certain point you made on an older blog post, go back to that older post and link relevant text to your new post. If that text doesn’t exist, make a slight modification to add it in. Make these tweaks and then note the changes in Google Analytics to see how effective your interlinking really is.

16. Test, test test!

To build on #19, after you make optimizations to reduce your bounce rate, wait a week or two and then look at your Google Analytics stats to see if your optimizations were effective. Don’t be afraid to tweak and try new tactics; you can always change things back.

What other tips do you have to reduce bounce rate? Have you implemented any of these tips? If so, how have they worked for your blog?Related Posts:

5 Reasons to Lower Your Blog’s Bounce Rate
8 Ways to Optimize Links To Get More Clicks
Wordpress Thesis Theme Review – 8 Reasons to Switch

Did you know that lowering your blog’s bounce rate can get you more subscribers? Or that your Google page rank might be partially determined by your bounce rate?

Unlike regular or ecommerce websites, blogs tend to have higher bounce rates because of several reasons, including the nature of blogs (readers only find value from a single post), affiliate marketing tactics (encouraging users to click ads to external sites), and methods bloggers often use to promote their blogs (social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon). As such, bloggers tend to overlook the value of implementing tactics to reduce their blog’s bounce rate at all.

First, let’s cover the basics:

What is a Bounce Rate?

Bounce Rate is a percentage of visitors to your blog that “bounce” away to a different site before visiting a second page on your blog. The formula looks like this:

Bounce Rate = Total Visits Viewing Only One Page / Total Visits

A visitor can bounce from your blog the following ways:

• Clicking a link to an external website
• Closing the window/tab for your blog
• Entering a new URL
• Clicking the back button to leave your blog
• Session timeout (30 minutes of staying on the first page and leaving the browser open on that page)

Why You Should Lower Your Bounce Rate

1. Visitors Will Consume More Content

You should focus on tactics to lower your blog’s bounce rate to keep visitors on your site and consuming more content. The more pages they look at, the more interested they will be to ultimately subscribe to your blog and come back for repeat visits. The lower your bounce rate, the more valuable and loyal readers your blog will inherently have.

2. Increase Viral Growth

The more content your visitors consume, the more likely they will be to share your content with their connections. This personal endorsement for your content can be more effective at bringing in traffic than some of the tactics to increase page rank, such as link sharing or buying.

3. Increase Engagement and Blog Comments

Once visitors read more content on your site and read other users’ comments, they will become more likely to comment themselves. And again, subscribers and repeat visitors will be more likely to comment on your posts.

4. Increase Conversions

The longer a visitors remains on your site, the more opportunities the visitor will have to click on those Google AdSense ads or affiliate links. Or perhaps you’ve written an eBook; the more interested a visitor is in your content, the more likely he will be to purchase that eBook to find out more. Additionally, getting a user to become a fan of your Facebook page through your Facebook Fan Box or follow you on Twitter is still a valuable conversion because of the free advertising opportunities later.

5. Improve Search Engine Rankings

It’s been speculated that your bounce rate can affect your search engine rankings. According to this article on Search Engine Land – Do Search Engines Use Bounce Rate As A Ranking Factor – a website’s ranking can be impacted by significant changes in bounce rate. Search engines like Google want high-quality sites to appear higher in their search results, so sites with a higher bounce rate might indicate low-quality content or a poor site experience. Again, this is a big MAYBE, but it’s still worth keeping in mind.

In a couple days, I’ll cover some ways you can improve bounce rate on your blog. Have you implemented any tactics on your blog to decrease your bounce rate?Related Posts:

16 Ways to Improve Your Blog’s Bounce Rate
Wordpress Thesis Theme Review – 8 Reasons to Switch
Introducing the New Google Search Results Page

Google Buzz is the latest hot topic in social media. Whether it will ultimately be a hit or a flop, many blogs are already incorporating the button into each post, just like Tweetmeme’s retweet button and Facebook’s sharecount button.

There are several plugins and methods you can use to add the Google Buzz button to your Wordpress blog, at least until Google comes out with an official button. Here are the best methods I’ve found for adding Google Buzz as a share count button, a sidebar widget, and a social share chicklet:

Google Buzz Share Count Button: WP-Buzzer

Although there are several varieties of Wordpress plugins, WP-Buzzer by Hameedula is the must customizable button in terms of placement of the button in your post. This is important to bloggers who want to line up the Google Buzz button with other share count buttons (such as Tweetmeme and Facebook sharecount). As you can see below, I’ve chosen the default “float: right” position, so the button will line up with my other Twitter and Facebook buttons.

How to line up Google Buzz button with Tweetmeme’s Retweet button:

If you already have the Tweetmeme button installed, this Google Buzz button doesn’t line up correctly at all. Additionally, the button is kind of clunky; you can see the pixilated edges. We’re going to fix that.

1. Upload the wp-buzzer plugin to your blog. Do not yet activate it.
2. Save this png file to your computer as googlebuzz.png:
3. Upload this image to the folder /wp-content/plugins/wpbuzzer
4. Go to your installed plugins page and click “edit” under the wp-buzzer plugin.
5. Search for the following text: background-image: $style = ’style=”height: 58px; width:50px;  background-image: url(‘ . WP_PLUGIN_URL . ‘/wpbuzzer/wpbuzzer-google-buzz-big.png)
6. Change “wpbuzzer-google-buzz-big.png” to “googlebuzz.png”
7. Add “padding-top:12px;” after “width:50px;”
8. Click save. That should be it!

Google Buzz Sidebar Widget: Google Buzz ER

The Google Buzz ER widget will display your public Google Buzz content on your blog. Simply upload the plugin to your blog, and in the plugin settings enter your Google username, create a title, and define how many Buzz posts you want to appear in the widget. Then go to your widgets page, where you can drag and drop the widget wherever you want it to appear.

Google Buzz as a Social Chicklet: Light Social

I’m sure all the major social bookmarking plugins will soon include Google Buzz as an available social chicklet (I use SexyBookmarks here, and they have not yet). The Light Social plugin is one of the early adopters to add the Google buzz button. Plugins like this automatically insert a set of social chicklets, or share links, at the bottom of each of your blog posts.

Have you integrated Google Buzz into your blog yet? Which Google Buzz plugins are you using?Related Posts:

How to Add the Official Google Buzz Button to your Website
How to Add the Facebook Like Button to Your Blog
How to Add Official Twitter Button to Your Site or Blog