Hi Folks,

Someone asked “How many times should I update my blog with content?”

It all depends on what kind of blog you have, is the first part of the answer.

Things to consider

1. Is my blog created to rank well in the search engines and once people see it all I want them to do is click on my affiliate links?

If this is so, I have blogs like this and adding fresh content once a week helps hold my rankings. But the rankings have a lot to do with incoming links and a few other factors we’re not getting into today. (I’ll post about getting good rankings soon if you want and I’ll even show some examples.)

Fast note on the article being added once a week, the title of that article is based on a long tail keyword. A long tail keyword is a keyword or phrase that gets low searches a month and has little or no competition in the search engines. You can read more about keyword research here.

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I’m going through 100’s of questions submitted today because I wanted to make some content for you. But, there is a big issue. Many of the questions are so broad I feel uncomfortable addressing them.

For example, how do you make money?

Or, get more traffic? Don’t think that’s a question but you see what I mean?

To answer the more traffic question is easy, buy it. Go to Google adwords and buy some traffic. But I’m not answering it that way because I have no idea what the person knows about keywords. You see, it’s easy to tell someone to just go and buy traffic but if they have no idea about keywords and how they work, they could go broke buying traffic. Don’t want that on my shoulders.

I’d like to ask you a few questions.

1. What’s your understanding of keywords? Do you know what a buying keyword is or a research keyword?

2. What is one thing you are doing consistently to get traffic to your blog?

3. Do you have a blog?

4. Is your blog converting? This means, if someone goes to your blog are they doing what you intend them to do? Signing up to your list? Clicking on affiliate ads, etc…

5. Are you using a heat map as a reference for ad placements on your blog?

6. Are you following a model for your blog? Where did you get it?

7. Are you in need of some fundamental training?

If you’d rather not post answers as comments, go ahead and hit that “contact Craig” button above and let me know where you’re at because I need details in order to serve you best.

Just got the following question…

Hi Craig, I was trying to find a wordpress theme for Life Enrichment/ Spiritual Growth, but can’t find one to my liking. My webmaster wants to charge me $225.00 (1.5 hrs@ $150) to customize the one you have on religion. Is there a less expensive way to customize a template  with ‘Life Enrichment’ and my picture in the heading?

So let’s chat about themes today.

If I have a blog idea that I really like and I’m going to stick to building it, I’ll just pay
someone to do the images like what you see here on this blog.

If you have more time than money, you may want to customize your theme.
Let’s just talk about changing your header image for now.

Here’s what you do:

1. Find a wordpress theme you like.
This means finding a theme that has the structure you like; right or left sidebar, etc…
(Colors, images, font size can all be changed easily.)

2. Make sure that theme is widget ready.
Some themes are old and not widget ready. These themes do not communicate well with new wordpress installations.

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Found a cool plugin for wordpress that let’s your readers vote on your posts.

Why would you want this on your blog?

Well if you have a blog with the font size set tiny because you want the traffic to avoid reading and only click on links that make money, then this plugin will not serve you.

Yes there are blogs on the net that could care less if you read its content or not. These blogs are built to rank well in the search engines and get loads of free traffic.

Interesting model above that may make money but not a business. 
(we’ll chat soon about all types of blogs on the net.)
You’d be surprised to see how some are using blogs.

But if you know the value of feedback then using a “vote for this post” plugin will serve you well.
Click here for the download page.

This plugin is just one more way to make your blog interactive and get feedback from your readers.

Making your blog interactive is a good thing. It’s how to get people involved, empower them and give them a chance to let them feel their voice matters (Because it does).

What are some other ways you could make your blog interactive?

Today I’d like to chat with you about questions.

Tony Robbins said “The quality of your life will be determined by the quality of the habitual questions you ask on a daily bases.”

Tony also talked about endless loop questions that get and keep you stuck. Questions like “Why is it that no one leaves comments on my blog?” Endless loop questions are disempowering and provoke more endless loop questions that drive you down to a place where not much good can come from. (A better question could be, “How can I repackage my message so I ignite more interaction with my target audience via blog comments?”)

So today I’d like to post some questions about your blog, or blog to be and where it’s all going for you. I’m doing this in hopes of creating some real value for you as a reader here. But more importantly, I want to be the one that saves you loads of time because if some of these questions are not answered, you could end up very frustrated and discouraged with the results you produce.

If some of these questions make you uncomfortable, that’s OK. If it’s too uncomfortable to answer, then you’re just not ready and that’s OK too.

But please understand, at some point if you don’t answer these questions, you could end up spinning your wheels for a real long time ending up frustrated, disappointed and bitter. Now we don’t want that do we?

If you do answer them, you’re chances of profiting are as good as it’s going to get for you.

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