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I’ve always known that MyBlogLog is a good way to draw attention to your blog and bring in new traffic, but I never realized it was this good! I used to just visit other blogs who had the ‘recent visitors’ MBL widget and hoped someone was interested in my icon (which used to be, mind you, a face) and clicked on it. Well, now I know how to use MBL properly, and you should too!

First of all, if you want to be noticed on people’s blogs under the ‘recent readers’ widget, you’ve got to make your icon stand out! So many people use a picture of their face or even someone else’s face. But no matter how pretty the face is, it’s not going to draw as many eyes as a bright avatar that just pops out at you. My avatar is brightly colored with polka dots! And I’ve noticed other effective icons that are just brightly colored and say the name of the blog on them. Whatever you do, make it stand out more than the others and it’ll be clicked on more.

But another important thing that I never did was join other communities. Why is this helpful? Because whenever you join another blog’s community, whenever some views that blog’s MBL page, YOUR icon will be shown, and YOUR icon will have a chance of being clicked on, opposed to it not appearing in the community list at all. So now I try to join as many new blog communities I can a day, especially the ones relevant to my blogging topic (I think the limit of communities you can join per day is 15). So get to joining those communities for better exposure! Get a head start and join the Super Blogging community.

There are so many ways to use MyBlogLog that is helpful to you, and I’ll be touching on this topic again in the future. Today, I wrote about using MBL to get more traffic, notice, and exposure. Very soon I’ll write another article on MBL and how to optimize it and make it even more effective for you. In the meantime, make sure your icon is noticable and that you join 15 communities a day!

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While some of you may already be in on Squidoo and using it to your advantage, I didn’t pay any attention at all to Squidoo until just a few days ago, when I read this post. I thought Squidoo was just another dumb website that would be absolutely useless to me, so I ignored it completely. Another mistake! I wish I’d gotten in on Squidoo a while back, but at least I’m signed up now.

Using Squidoo, you can drive some real traffic to your site. Squidoo lets you create a page on their site, which they call a lens. Your page can be on practically any topic you want it to be. But you can not only get traffic for your blog by making a lens on Squidoo, you can earn some money! And you can even set your minimum payout to just one dollar, so it’s not hard at all.

On Squidoo I’ve already created five lenses, including Dozens of Great Quotes and All About Blog Carnivals. Lenses are easy to create and arrange. There are great modules you can add to your lens, including Plexo and modules to add that will make you more money (including Amazon, Ebay, etc). When you create a lens you can always edit and update it. It’s your page forever.

Why does Squidoo pay you for your lens?

Like I already mentioned, you can add money-making modules to your lens and make some real dollars, and get them sent right to your Paypal. But why does Squidoo actually pay you? It’s simple. You’re building a huge database of content for them, and in return, you get publicity, money, and webspace! It’s a great deal.

How can you get traffic with a lens?

This is simple, too. If you create a lens be sure to link back to your site or blog on it. On each page, in my little ‘about me’ in the sidebar, I have linked to this blog. I have yet to actually link to this blog in the actual lens itself but that’s something I’ll be doing. If your blog is about gardening, start a gardening lens and link back to your blog. If you make sure what you’re linking to is relevant and helpful to the readers of your lens, you’ll get some traffic and maybe even some new readers to your blog!

Squidoo is not only easy to use but it’s fun and enjoyable. I have had a good time creating my lenses on their site. And on top of it all, Squidoo has become a trusted souce in Google’s view. Squidoo pages will rank easier and higher than other pages because of their authority.

Why use Squidoo?

If it’s not obvious enough by now, you can make easy money (and even donate percentages to dozens of great charities), create lenses and have your own space of the web easily and free, and link to your site/blog and draw in some traffic. There are a lot of advantages to Squidoo and I regret not joining in on the fun earlier! So sign up for Squidoo now!

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What is a blog carnival?
That’s a great question, for many people don’t know the answer! To tell you the truth, I’ve known about blog carnivals for a couple of months, but I didn’t fully understand them until just a few days ago. I definitely don’t consider myself an expert in this field, but blogging is a learning process, and I intend to do a lot of learning and helping others learn too.

Anyway, to answer the question, a blog carnival is not an actual carnival with lions, elephants, acrobats, and clowns. It is actually a type of blogging event. Blog carnivals are published on a regular basis, and a lot of the time each edition is hosted on a different blog (but not always). The publishings can be weekly, monthly, the first Saturday each month, or just anytime the creator wants to.

Why should I enter a blog carnival?

When you submit one of your posts/articles to a carnival, it will most likely be featured in the carnival’s next edition. This way you will not only get a link, but a lot of exposure and people seeing your article! This can help your pagerank, Technorati rank, traffic reach, and more. There are so many advantages, and a lot of people are already in on this secret. You should be, too!

How do I enter a blog carnival?

Just go to BlogCarnival.Com and sign up. Once you’re registered you can browse through all the carnivals and find one that looks right for you. There is a carnival topic out there for everyone, so when you enter, be sure the article you’re submitting is relevant to the carnival. If you have an article that is about making money with blogging, go ahead and please submit it to my first carnival, Tay’s Make Money Blogging Carnival. The first edition will feature the categories blogging tips, generating traffic, search engine optimization, and make money online. It will be hosted here on Super Blogging. So far the first issue is planned for July 20 and submission deadline is July 16. These dates are subject to change, however.

Go ahead and enter as many relevant carnivals you can to get a lot more links, exposure, and people reading your blog! After that, if you’d like to take a spin with being in charge for once, host your own carnival. It’ll be fun.

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Have you ever thought about the keywords you enter when you’re searching for an image on Google? Have you ever thought about putting those keywords to use in your own blog? If you do it right, your images can show up in the searches and lead a lot of visitors to your site. So why not? Learn how to properly tag your images to get in on the advantages!

It’s not complicated and it takes hardly any time at all to add the proper coding to your images, and the few seconds you do take to do this will pay off when your blog gets more clicks through image search!

Make sure your SRC is right. That’s basically the URL/link to the image. Then make sure you specify the height and width of the image. Now the most important parts… The Alt tag is where you describe your image, and where the keywords are. Then title your image. I usually make the title about the same thing as the Alt tag. This helps to ensure the quality of the image you’re providing. So, when it’s all put together, what’s it look like? Here’s my image example (it’s my kitten!):

And here’s what I created the code for it to be:

<img src=http://superbloggingtips.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/kenya-smokey-me-001.jpg alt=”Tortoise Shell Kitten Mix in Sink” title=”Tortoise Shell Kitten Mix in Sink” height=”300″ width=”350″>

Easy, isn’t it? Of course, you’ve probably already figured some images will fare better than others. Not as many people search for tortoise shell mixes in sinks… But it doesn’t hurt to tag your images correctly, because you’ll always do better with them tagged than not at all! The Alt and title tags are most essential, so when you’re coming up with those think of what you would search for if you were looking for this certain image.

Let me know if you were already in on this trick, or if you just started to follow this little tip and how it’s working for you. If you still need more information, check out what Mr. Gary Lee has to say on this.

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There are a lot of good reasons why you should link to other posts that you find helpful or that you get your information from. Linking is a big part of being a blogger, so help others by linking to their posts! You help your readers too, when you link to relevant posts. That way they can read on and learn more. But wait, that’s not all! When you link to another person’s post inside your post, it creates a link back to you, or a trackback (can also be called a pingback).

Up until I read Kevin’s helpful post, I did not really understand what trackbacks were, but now I’m taking full advantage of them! Some others who blogged about trackbacks were Stephen Welton, Dylan Kingsberry, and Leroy Brown. They’re all getting in on the pros of trackbacks!

If you don’t know what a trackback/pingback is, it is basically when you are writing a post, you link to another person’s post in yours. Then on their post page, if they haven’t turned trackbacks off, a link will appear to YOUR post. It helps generate a lot of traffic for you! So next time if you’re reading a post someone wrote about traffic exchanges and you get inspiration, instead of posting your ideas in a comment to their post, elaborate on what they’ve said and add your own thoughts to a post in your own blog, and link to their post! Thus, a trackback will develop, and you’ll have a link back to your blog. Of course, don’t go link crazy, and it’s especially important to link to posts that are relevant. Good luck with your future trackback success!

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