The following post was written by Anthony Wayne.

I am probably the most unlikely blogger in the world. In fact, I didn’t even own a computer until six years ago. I should also mention that I am in my 60’s and didn’t grow up with the technology, and was intimidated by computer technology like many older people. Once I found out just how much information was available online, I started spending more and more time on the internet until my computer use totally replaced watching television. I started writing reviews for a few websites owned by a relative (like this one), and this introduced me to the world of blogging.

I ended up writing articled for five Forex sites, one lottery site, and five or six online bingo sites. Every day I must come up with material for five internet bingo blogs, and believe me, finding that much material on a daily basis is far from easy. I start my day with about two to three hours of research, and once I have the information organized and collated, I am ready to write. Most of my articles on the blogs are between 400 and 700 words, and I had to learn how to write for an internet audience.

I also had to learn about SEO on my own. Fortunately, there are many excellent sites (like this one!) that explain this important aspect of blogging in clear, easy-to-understand terms. I usually do most of my own keyword research, although the number of strong, effective keywords for online bingo is limited in number, and the top search terms rarely change. Once I became familiar with the concept of SEO I was able to write more effective articles for the blogs, and several have been cited by other industry websites. SEO fascinates me and I am constantly following the latest methods and trends to garner more attention for our blog articles.

I also had to become familiar with several content management systems over the years. At one point I was ‘forced’ to learn basic HTML because the CMS used by the blog required that all articles be posted in HTML. Looking back, it was not that difficult to learn. Most of our blogs now use WordPress, which is very easy to learn and use. It allows me to tag keywords and add images, videos and links to make our content more interesting to a wider audience. We are in the process of marketing some of the articles and I anticipate more work coming my way. It is easy to enter the world of blogging, and I plan to continue for as long as I am able to type.

-Anthony Wayne

The post was written by Anthony Wayne. Anthony works as a web content writer for several websites across a wide swath of industries, including Online Bingo News directories.

Guest writer George Martin shows us how to survive in the relatively new profession of Virtual Assistant…

Those who choose to take up their career online will notice that as the business gets rolling, the work load piles up. With the rising numbers of online careers, and as people get busier and busier, there has been a major increase in the need for Virtual Assistants.

Internet marketers will run more than one website, and when work piles up- many will need assistance. Queue the Virtual Assistant to the rescue. Personal Virtual Assistants make sure that the marketers are able to keep their lives on track while balancing the workload.

For those who have tried to accomplish a striving Internet marketing business, but have not been able to get their business off the ground; become a Virtual Assistant. The benefits of being able to work at home are a major bonus in becoming a Virtual Assistant.

There are many ways to get business’s names out there and involved in the online community.

Promote!

The only way to become well known is to promote the business like crazy. Research the popular Virtual Assistant forums and related outlets, and start promoting there. If there is no effort in getting noticed, then companies cannot find you.

Fiverr.com and Elance.com are two great websites to get the business out there and have work start streaming in. By doing small jobs and getting great reviews the Virtual Assistance’s portfolio will be escalating; letting other employers see feedback as it’s established. Both websites are known for offering long-term jobs, so once the name is out there with good reviews; there is no limit on the work coming in.

Call the Shots

There are plenty of Virtual Assistants out in the world trying to find work, and the only way to get one’s business off the ground is to have the employers provide a complete and total quality service with a consistent manner of output.

When starting off it is best to stay in one category and focus on building up in that area before branching off into some unknown topics.

Once the first topic has been mastered, branch out into other areas and learn to master them. Build your skills and plan to expand monthly. With a variety of services under the belt, getting noticed will be no problem at all.

Searching for Treasure

Another touched upon topic are the fees. It is crucial that there is no underbidding to get work, and that the prices that are agreed upon are representing the level of work that is accomplished. The more underbidding that is done; the more eyebrows the company raises towards picking you.

Choosing the proper fees is tied in with being a respectable Virtual Assistant in the online community. In the beginning the prices are low with a lot of time put into the final product. The more jobs that are accomplished will lead to less work for better pay. You have to make a living so  it takes fees, time, and material expenses to take in account when projecting a cost.

There are many different ways for Virtual Assistants to offer their skills for online professionals. From organizing online records and answering phone calls, to creating graphics for blogs and websites; Virtual Assistants keep everything in check so business owners can concentrate on the main body of work and relax knowing their business is being managed.

While the concept may sound like grunt work at first, the online Virtual Assistant field is growing daily. Virtual Assistants rarely do the same job twice in a row, so many enjoy the break in monotony from what cubicle jobs offer. Taking the first step to becoming a Virtual Assistant may seem rough, but the final result is worth the hard work.

The post is shared by George Martin. George is small business expert who provides answers, encouragement to small entrepreneurs. Visit his site to know more about virtual office and serviced offices melbourne.

Good article about unblocking today from guest writer Alyssa Clarke.

Increasing partake in social media is the next step towards digitization consequent upon which more and more people prefer discussing things and events real time on social networks than face to face. It is high time that companies too accept the fad and make a way to the emerging wave.

Current speculation is such that majority of the companies do have an official blog but the posts are quite limited, I mean, not more than 5 or 7 at the max. All this insinuates that the companies are deficient in taking a regular follow-up or there’s lack of people that might take care of the organization’s PR.

At times, I wonder what could be the probable reasons that hinder updation on the official blog post. Is it because of lack of content or ideas or is it the procrastination?

I feel blogging can never be equated as English assignments rather there are ways to keep the ball rolling. You may wonder that official blog must only contain matter related to the new product or matter containing the company’s recent goals and achievements. I am not saying to negate these things in fact I am talking about some add-ons that you may add in your official blog.

The only rule to be kept in mind while furnishing the official blog is give preference to customers/consumers needs and wants. You must be aware of what is going on their mind, are they happy or showing dissatisfaction of your company’s products. Reverting to their queries real time is an easy and efficient step words overall growth.

Avoid serving the same type and format of content to your audience. Try involving your audience in your content, I mean, try generating a two-way conversation than merely one way, which actually is the case with blogging.

Try playing around with format and theme of course keeping the audience in the loop. You may throw question at them. Ask them what they want to hear from you. Introduce polls, quizzes & giveaways.

Blogging is not a monotonous task as a matter of fact; it helps in cultivating the grey cells in brain. I believe bloggers has an unmatched creativity and accordingly there can be no stopping by, once the vault is opened. So, what are you waiting for, go ahead and enjoy the unleashing of your own creative ability.

Alyssa Clarke is a blogger who also happens to be a tech freak. She loves spending on tech stuff and recently bought a cool new laptop graphics card. She also happens to be a car lover and her dream machine is Peugeot 208.

Free Blog Help is honored to show episodes of Future of Publishing by Murray Newlands, the CEO & Founder of Influence People, and Oliver Roup, the CEO of VigLink. In the first episode, Roup and Newlands have an interview discussion with some of the tech industry’s leading experts in marketing and publishing:

• Yulia Smirnova, SEO Manager,
• Pirouz Nilforoush, President and CEO of NetShelter, and
• Paul Edmonson, CEO of HubPages.

Free Blog Help missed out on the first live episode, but we’ve gotten our hands on an edited version of the premiere. Check it out below:

Check out more on the Future of Publishing Facebook page.

Partial transcript:

Murray Newlands (host): Hello, I’m Murray Newlands, and you’re watching the Future of Publishing. Today’s show is brought to you in conjunction with BlogWorld and sponsored by VigLink. I’m here with my cohost, Oliver Roup from VigLink, as well as Paul from HubPages, and Yulia who’s SEO Manager for a large Internet brand, as well as Pirouz who’s the President of NetShelter, which is a company that represents over 200 of the biggest tech blogs in America. If you go to FutureOfPublishing.tv you can enter our competition to win an Amazon kindle and a hint to answer the questions on that (we’re an international crowd) Yulia’s from Russia originally, Oliver’s from Canada, I’m from the UK. I’d also like to thank out many syndication [and other] partners. I’ll run through a long list here, obviously Justin.tv, Justin.tv/futureofpublishing, BlogWorld, AdRants, Adotas, Growmap, Famousbloggers.net, Business2Community, VigLink blog, MurrayNewlands.com, NetShelter blog, and HubPages blog, as well as about 20 other sites out there, thank you very much, and also to Tagged for hosting us. Oliver, now to you!

Oliver Roup (host): Thanks very much. Now I thought I’d just start by asking you guys to describe the business you’re in, what you do, and how the business works.

Pirouz Nilforoush: So, an introduction, my name is Pirouz from NetShelter, and we’re a network of over 200 of the most influential technology blogs, and we really enable these blogs to focus on what they love doing, which is producing engaging content, and help them really monetize their content and connect them with brands.

Oliver Roup: Paul.

Paul Edmonson: HubPages is a top 60 website in the world, we’re a little over 50 million uniques, and it’s build by individuals: People who are just starting out publishing online that are sharing the things that they’re passionate about, the things that they know how to do really well, and then we combine a great monetization engine with it that help people build meaningful content streams.

Oliver Roup: Yulia.

Yulia Smirnova: Usually I help big companies to try to drive natural traffic to their site and optimize that site toward that channel, or sometimes I also look at site optimization and see what we can do on the pages to make conversion [rates] better.

Learn more by watching the show!

Michael Clark provides us with some Ford news.

Ford Motor Company is planning to promote social networking to their customers. The companies want to provide iPod-thumb controls and Web browsing into the majority of their new models in year 2015. This is in the works due to the heavy demand that consumers have for high-tech communicative features in their cars.

Touch-command systems

Lincoln MKX, Ford Focus and Ford Edges will be featuring touch-command systems this year. Ford is going to reveal My Ford Touch system in Las Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show this year. The system features thumb-wheel controls located on the steering wheel, weather and navigation control functions, eight-inch television monitor with touch features in the dashboard and audio.

Kia Motors Corporation is introducing a similar system later on in the year in their Sorento model-cars. Both the Kia and Ford systems are based on the Microsoft Corp. MSFT’s in-car voice-activated technology. Most consumers view this technology as a new way of interacting with their cars.

Social Networking and driving

Introducing this new technology to consumers was only a matter of time, considering the amount of time consumers spend not only on the Internet but in their cars. Ford along with Kia found ample opportunity in establishing leadership with this type of connectivity for consumers. The Sync technology was a serious investment for Ford with viewing 32% of buyers taking advantage of the innovative software for their cars. This technology is now available on seventy-percent of Ford vehicles overall. The new My Ford Touch will become standard on the higher-end trucks, and cars. The Ford base models will feature a basic-touch screen.

Text conversion technology

Ford has begun augmenting Sync with the ability to adapt texts into spoken words. This proves beneficial for drivers who want to be safe while driving the open-road. It will give drivers standard text responses that can be transmitted with a mere voice command. You might be wondering at this point if the technology exists in converting speech to a text message. Ford is still researching the ability to accomplish this task, but consumers should expect such technology in the near future.

MapQuest and Twitter users

If you enjoy Twitter and MapQuest, Ford is incorporating the social network’s Open Beak software into their Synch technology. Ford is not stopping there with adding Stitcher and Pandora Internet radio along with MapQuest.com’s online mapping programs. Unbelievably, Ford has their own Web browser that can only be used when the car is parked. To produce the best technology possible to consumers, the automaker is allowing independent software developers to design new functions for the Sync technology.

Conclusion

One might think that Ford is ignoring driver safety with introducing these types of technology for consumers but, Ford has endorsed numerous legislations to support driver safety with outlawing texting while driving. Ford has also conducted their own research that indicates that hands-free communication does not distract drivers.

The post is contributed by Michael Clark. Michael gets inspired by technical, creative and genuine works. Visit his site for bijtelling berekenen and Auto leasen.

Today’s well-written article about Google Panda is provided by Mitch O’Conner.

Back in February of 2011, Google unleashed a sweeping change to their search results ranking algorithm known as Panda, all in hopes of downranking “junk” and “copy-pasted” websites while boosting the visibility of better, more useable and unique sites.

Big surprise: it didn’t work perfectly. Although the algorithm changes indeed altered search results (in some cases for the better), the search giant was met with a backlash from many site owners accusing it of everything from poor quality control to putting its own corporate interests over those of the websites they help internet users find.

If you run a website or blog, there’s no getting around Google Panda. Instead, you’ll need to adapt and adjust, which in many cases will mean improving the overall quality of your site. Here are seven ways to do exactly that:

1. Create More Content, and Don’t Worry About Length

If you read too heavily into SEO guides (many of which are outdated by Panda, by the way), you may think that every single page on your site should contain no more than 300 to 500 words of content. Although there’s certainly a case to be made for short, punchy, to-the-point posts, the reality is that Panda calls for the best possible user experience, which in turn calls for content that’s only as long as it needs to be. You might have one page that makes its point in 200 words, while another may exceed 1,000.

Of course, there are some common sense limits to this. If a single page of your site exceeds, say, 2,000 words of content, you may want to think about how it could be restructured or broken into two or three separate pages that obviously deserve dedicated areas of their own. The old advice about breaking up lengthier posts with plenty of pictures, lists (when applicable and needed) and subheadings still applies, too.

2. Make Your Content Valuable and Non-Redundant

If you’ve had some sub-par content sitting and rotting away on the outskirts of your site, now might be a great time to clean it up. Although this type of content may have been seen as a neutral factor in the eyes of Google pre-Panda, especially if the rest of your site was high quality, it’s now viewed as a serious detriment that could drag down the rest of your site along with it. Anything that even remotely resembles spam will fall into this category.

Here are a few tips that go beyond the basic advice of writing for value:

• Update pages whose only purpose is to link to other pages. Roll them into other pages that have content, or write some new valuable content for them.
• Place plenty of original content above the fold, in the area immediately visible upon landing on the page.
• Don’t plaster every page with ads. Having some ads is still fine, of course, but they shouldn’t take up more real estate than your actual content.
• Never use auto-generated content. This simply won’t fly anymore with Google’s new algorithms.

3. Aim for a Natural Link Profile

Let’s say the purpose of your site is to discuss wireless internet services. You might link to a bunch of broadband providers, and possibly some mainstream media articles regarding the same topic. What you probably wouldn’t do, however, is link directly to competing sites trying to fill the same niche. In a post-Panda online environment, this is a mistake.

Panda is all about delivering the best possible experience to the user. Your site can do that by linking to other sites solely based on the value and relevancy of their content, regardless of whether they’re competing for your traffic. Your readers will appreciate it, and hence, Google will too.

4. Build Your Empire by Creating More Assets

When Google looks at your “brand,” they want to see more than just a single website that looks like a buoy in an ocean. Modern internet users want more than just pages with pictures. By creating more assets for your site, such as email lists, interactive forums and Facebook pages, you build a community around your brand. In a post-Panda environment, these are the types of sites that Google will prioritize in search results.

Get creative: is there some aspect of your site, or facet of your content, that could be better conveyed with an ongoing, regularly updated video series instead of just text? Seize the opportunity to use increasingly affordable multimedia to beef up your site/brand.

5. Select More Natural Keywords

Outdated SEO advice went something like this: pick one or two keyword phrases most closely related to the topic you’re covering in a post, hammer them into the content as heavily as possible, and make them even more obvious by bolding them and putting them in every subheading as well. Google’s new algorithms see right through this, and treat it as nothing short of a devious tactic.

Of course, you still need to include the keywords you’re trying to promote, but the key is to let that happen naturally. Write about the topic in a thorough and insightful way, and you’ll probably notice upon proofreading that you automatically included several variations of the keyword phrase without even really trying. It’s less work for you, and Google actually appreciates the efforts by ranking you higher.

6. Pay Attention to Navigation

No amount of excellent content will be worth anything if your users can’t find their away around your site. This one’s rather basic: keep menus consistent and logically arranged, use internal linking whenever appropriate, and don’t bury anything on your site.

7. Skip the Short-Cuts

Lots of site developers and SEOs are claiming that they circumvented the downranking effects of Panda through what basically amounts to a tricky short-cut: moving pages and sub-domains from a “pandalized” domain to a new one, and suddenly recovering the search rank and traffic they experienced before Panda even happened. Sounds like they just beat the system, right?

In reality, these types of short-cuts may work for a few days, at which point Google’s search-bots will finish analyzing your “new” pages only to penalize them yet again. The only real way to get your ranking back post-Panda is to shape up your content, cut the duplicate copy and give your users a thoroughly better and more valuable experience.

About the Author: Mitch O’Conner is an online marketer and writer. When he’s not busy testing sites, generating traffic or writing content, he enjoys spending time with his wife and kids, watching TV, playing games or going camping.

Today’s post about mobile and search is from Mark Thompson from Businesswebhostingplans.com.

Although the internet and web applications have advanced at breakneck speed, one of the areas that seems stuck in the 90’s and early 00’s are search engines. Although many search engines have done a good job of getting us the information we want quickly and efficiently, not much has changed in terms of the big picture. We are still finding ourselves typing in a few keywords to a box and hoping to get the right web page within the first 3 or 4 results. With the advent of mobile search this dynamic is slowly changing with search engines designed for mobile users on the go.

If you’re in the cohort of people surfing the web more and more on your mobile device the experience you have using a search engine probably isn’t the best from your tiny screen. Search queries originating from mobile devices are still a small proportion of overall searches but they are the fastest growing group overall. Currently, around 15% of Google searches come from a mobile phone and the rate is at 20% for Yahoo. Bing and Windows Mobile have been in the search game for less time so they have actually been able to focus more of their growth strategy on mobile search. The strategy behind the new Windows Mobile smartphones is to integrate Bing across many applications and leapfrog the competition.

One way that mobile search is taking advantage of powerful new smartphones is though voice search. On almost all smartphones you can now simply speak your search query and the result list will load when your voice is converted to text.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the growth in mobile search is that around a fifth of all mobile searchers are looking to make a purchase of some type. These may be people who are in a physical store or who are doing shopping research online before heading out. Yet another group of people (who must be a large percentage of the total) want to make a purchase with their phone – and quickly.

The fact that most retailers still have not optimized their websites for the mobile shopper is resulting in lost sales every day. A key for website owners to provide a good experience for mobile visitors is to invest in a windows hosting plan . Search engines are quick to this fact and have developed slick mobile interfaces to do the shopping for you. For example, the Deals app from Bing produced by Windows Mobile makes it easy to search for both physical goods like books and DVDs as well as getting a good deal on a restaurant via direct access to Groupon deals.

If you are a website owner, don’t be relegated to the desktop website visitor only. Be sure your site is optimized for mobile search and you’ll see instant growth in visits and interactivity.

This guest post was brought to you by Mark Thompson from Businesswebhostingplans.com, an independent portal reviewing the best web hosting companies