Once a week, Del and I have “date night”.  He was less than impressed when I asked him to do a quick photo shoot before we went out this week. He perked up when I told I had a chance to win $1000 from Affiliate.com in their T-shirt Blogging Contest and that I’d share if we won!

Affiliate.com – a huge CPA network – gave out these cool King and Queen tees at Affiliate Summit last month.   My original intention was to pose like a fanned hand of cards, but as you can see, I’m no choreographer.

Yes, I know Affiliate.com has already made the Free Shirt Friday list, and I bumped this post up for a chance to win a grand – do you blame me?  I apologize to the other shirts in waiting for being selfish.  If it makes you feel any better, Affiliate.com is also donating $1000 to the American Red Cross Haiti Relief Fund as well.

And as a bribe to the celebrity judges – Missy Ward, John Chow, Zac Johnson, and Murray Newlands – drinks on me at #ASE10 with the winnings?!

*Update – seems I missed the entry deadline to enter the contest – it was 2/22/10 (for some unknown not-blonde reason, I thought it was 2/28). So even though I wasn’t qualified to win, the prize went to the most deserving Heather in BC!

This is a guest post by Colin Skinner, an SEO consultant and online marketer with I-COM: SEO Manchester.

These days, with sites such as Blogger, Wordpress and Typepad out there, it is easy and free to instantly create a blog and seconds later be commenting about everything and nothing. This means that gaining a relevant, high quality audience for your blog and posts is becoming more and more of a battle. Content can be improved over time and while your poorer articles and posts will get buried away in your blog archive, your blog name, if good it’s enough, will keep visitors coming back. A bad name will lead to name changes which in turn will lead to visitors either losing you on the net or losing interest full stop.

Know Your Audience

Your blog name must reflect your content and blog image, but must also appeal to your target blog audience. If your audience are the grammar Gestapo, a group who enjoy hunting down grammatical imperfections, then misspelt names such as Flickr, Pikchur or Raptr wouldn’t be appropriate. However if your audience are from the more causal Web 2.0 crowd then they may well embrace this new “text speak” alternative spelling.

Alphabetical Placement

As more of a side note than a direct rule, you may want to think about the first letters of your blog’s name, as blog rolls and directories often list blogs alphabetically; therefore the closer you are to the start of the alphabet the more potential traffic you stand to gain.

Domain Name

Having your own domain can mean the difference between being easily found or lost in a sea of similarly named blogs. Ensuring your blog name is free as a domain is a crucial stage in setting up a blog, as if it’s not available it may be worth going back to the drawing board. It’s also worth considering the length of your domain name. Filling a domain with a ridiculously long blog title that essentially means nothing is a sure-fire way to put off visitors and search engines, which look for relevancy of both domain and title. Keep things simple and avoid extra words which add confusion, for example – “Just About Everything You Can Think Of” blog.

Keep SEO In Mind

Every blogger wants their blog to be read otherwise there would be little or no point in creating one. To get a blog read and visited you must gain an optimum position in the search engines for words related to your blog title and content topic. To do this you can either leave the search engine algorithms to pick up your content then judge its relevancy and quality, or you can help yourself gain a higher position in the search results by considering SEO when creating your blog name. Produce a blog name that contains at least one main keyword which sums up your content, while at the same time trying to keep it original by adding words that differentiate your blog from others in the field. If your blog is about the SEO industry in Manchester (UK) then you may want a title such as Manchester SEO Buff, and locate it on a domain as close to the title as possible e.g. www.ManchesterSEOBuff.co.uk

Originality

For any blog, standing out is important. For any subject matter or industry insight there are multiple bloggers writing multiple blogs so using some imagination and being original is important. Look at your competition and analyze what type of blog names they have. If they are all mundane and descriptive then perhaps a more creative title would give you an edge. Think about differentiating yourself in the search listings so that users can instantly see your blog name or URL.

Planning Ahead

Think about where you’d like to see your blog in 5 years time. For example, will it always be a blog focusing on SEO in the Manchester area or would you like to expand geographically to the North West UK or all of England? Think about whether you want to stick with commenting about that specific industry, or would like to expand into the digital marketing mix in the not so distant future. Focus can be a great way to keep your target audience’s intererest.

The Name Depends on the Type of Blog

Naming your blog depends on what you want to get out of it and who you are trying to reach with your blog’s content. Deciding this should be one of the first things you do before actually coming up with names. Get this wrong and there may be no point in starting a blog in the first place.

Commercial Blogs

Commercial blogs are often linked to from the homepage of a commercial site for example I-COM, a Manchester based SEO and web agency. Commercial blogs have a tendency to be either named simply as ‘Blog’ or after the company’s service or brand. This is to give an instant point of reference and help visitors know exactly whose blog they are reading. Some companies disguise their blogs with people’s names or generic service titles to build up a network of followers who can then be linked back to their homepage and create traffic as well as potential customers.

Personal Blogs

Just because a blog is personal, it doesn’t mean that title doesn’t matter. Choosing a suitable blog name can help your audience relate to you, and their numbers increase. A blog name or title can immediately tell your audience a lot about your character and personality, giving them an instant reason to connect with you or leave your page. For example this blog, entitled I Work In My Pajamas, instantly hints to any visitor that the author has a job which allows them to work from home, a passion for what they do and importantly, a sense of humor not to mention a fondness for online.

Informative Blogs

A blog name such as SEO Manchester would be considered a more formal, informative title used by an industry expert or freelance SEO consultant to talk about news and goings on in his or her industry. The title gives the visitor a clear indication of what the content of the blog will comment on and helps the search engines match the content with the name. Having a domain that contains those keywords will increase the chances of a good search engine page rank.

Lastly here is a quick checklist for a good blog name:

• Easy to Read
• Easy to Pronounce
• Easy to Spell
• Easy to Remember
• SEO Friendly
• Original

If there’s a story behind your blog name then feel free to leave a comment below.

Good luck and happy blogging.

The following is a guest post by Pamela Hilliard Owens, M.Ed.

Now that you have been working your freelance business for a while, you have probably found out what a lot of freelancers already know: there is a difference between the steady paycheck of a “real job” and the “feast or famine” existence that often befalls freelancers. But it doesn’t have to be that way! As a freelancer, you too can have a “steady paycheck”, but it will take steady work on your part in the form of consistently marketing your business.

Many people start the New Year with a resolution “lose weight” and sign up for a gym membership just knowing that they will be there three times a week without fail. We all know what happens, other obligations get in the way, and those regular workouts become less and less frequent. Freelancers often start their businesses the same way: marketing like crazy at the beginning, but then, when there is plenty of work, the marketing efforts become less and less frequent. One day, the freelancers look around and not only are all of their projects completed, but there is nothing in the sales pipeline to replace them!

It is really essential that you consider marketing your freelance business as part of your regular workload. Putting marketing activities on your daily or weekly work calendar will help you to remember to actually do the activities necessary to keep your name out there in the marketplace.

There are many ways to market your business, both through traditional outlets and with social media marketing; and it really depends on your particular freelance business which marketing activities will work best for your situation. But by returning to your initial written marketing plan (you do have a written marketing plan, don’t you?), you can now refine it and expand your activities as necessary.

Whichever marketing activities you choose, make sure that you have a program in place to track how well each different activity is working for you. Remember, consistency is the key—even while you are busy with your present projects. Keeping your pipeline full of prospects will keep your bank account full of client payments.

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After a career of 35+ years in education, collaborative sales and sales management and marketing, Pamela Hilliard Owens, M.Ed. started her own freelance writing and editing business in July of 2008. Her company, Writing It Right for You knows that “It Matters How You Say It”! She work with individuals, graduate and post-graduate students, and businesses throughout the United States, Canada, the Middle East, India, Russia, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom on a variety of academic and business writing and editing projects.

Pamela Hilliard Owens specializes in working with graduate students–especially ESL students, anything involving education, ghost-writing and working with authors, writing web content, social media marketing and networking, direct sales, and writing and editing various papers of any length involving research and/or APA citations. She also does affiliate marketing and maintains more than three personal, political and business blogs and guest blogs for several clients around the world.