This site is filled with articles about how to create a blog.  From the very basic “starting a blog from scratch” information, to developing “niche sites”, to getting your blog recognized by the search engines.  We provide this information for free to everyone who just wants to get started in the blogosphere.  My Newbie Blog has two sister sites, Blog Consulting and Blogs For Sale, where you can receive help for any blogging questions you have at very reasonable rates.

In this “How to Create a Blog” series of articles we are going to talk about how to make your blog one of those sites that people keep coming back to.  Return visitors to your site are a key element in developing a successful blog.  We will create a blog called “Current Events Online” to use for demonstration purposes.

We will assume that you know how to get a domain name and web host and be able to get your site to the generic Kubrik theme provided by WordPress.org.  (If you need help with any of these things, read the articles on this site about “How to Start a Blog”).

Let’s get started.  We are going to install a theme to help us begin to get noticed by the search engines.  For this project we will be using a theme called Dateless Sniper by Courtney Tuttle.  This theme is simple to use and is very good with the search engines.  I think it is a good theme to use in the beginning of your blog.  After you have your blog well developed and situated you can change the theme.  The Dateless Sniper theme will allow for an easy transition to a different theme later on.  In our next article we will discuss adding some plugins.

I want to introduce to you a system that will help you in developing your blog and or blogging business. A system that helps you to get focused and to achieve success in the Internet Marketing arena. A system designed to help you practice good techniques and get organized and disciplined with your blogging journey. This system provides you with one element that is crucial to being successful, “community”. As you help other people, you are also helped. One of the best features of the Golden Rule Blogging system is that it is absolutely free. The Golden Rule Blogging system does require hard work and commitment, but that is part of the territory in having a successful blog.

As you begin blogging one of the things that you realize is that you need people to come to your site. You need traffic. Most of the traffic that comes to your site will come through the big three search engines (Google, MSN and Yahoo). If your site shows up on search engine results, you will get traffic. If it doesn’t show up. you won’t get much traffic. To get your site to show up you need to be aware of how to optimize your site for the search engines (SEO). The search engines are looking for fresh original content (which is why you write original informational articles), and they are looking for how many other sites link to yours (there are other factors, but these two are significant). The fresh content part is obvious, you need to write a lot, at least three of four times a week in the beginning. The links are harder. You can develop links through Social Networking and Article Marketing, but these methods take a lot of time. Unless….

What the Golden Rule Blogging system does is organize you into communities of 10 bloggers. You make a 3 month commitment to each other to comment on each others articles ( favorably), link to each other’s sites, and bookmark each other’s articles. The process will provide you with a lot of good clean links and traffic in a short period of time. Your community group can continue to work together past the three month period which will add more and more good links into the mix.

For a detailed explanation of the Golden Rule Blogging system go the Blog Consulting site or www.goldenruleblogging.com.

I have been doing more consulting lately so I have decided to start a new site to take on that side of my blogging business.  I think that developing the new site will ultimately make some people very happy.  On the new site I will be expanding my range of services.  On this site (My Newbie Blog)  I primarily assist people with support on SEO and fixing the little problems that pop up from time to time.  I have called this service “A Little Extra Help” and I will continue to provide this service at very reasonable rates.  On the new site I will be developing and offering a full range of services including complete blog start up, a variety of article writing services, quick and easy technical help to help people when they get stuck (utilizing remote PC software when necessary),  training and coaching on all areas of blogging business (utilizing skype whenever possible), and also making available blogs that are already aged and linked.

The new site, Blog Consulting (www.blogconsulting.biz) will begin to take shape over the next couple of months.  I would expect it to be fully functional by October 1st, 2008.  Of course, if you have been reading this site, you know that it will take some time to get that site positioned on the search engines.  That particular area of blogging is very competitive and most of the established sites have been around awhile and have a lot of links pointed at them.  I consider it a challenge and fully expect it to take at least 12 months to begin to even get close to page 1, if it is actually possible.  While the site is waiting I will be utilizing a variety of other methods to get some traffic to the site (i.e. Adwords, 125×125 ads on certain sites, etc).  If you would like to take advantage of the services offered head over to the site and we will be happy to help you.