I would like to congratulate a blogger friend, Azrael Coladilla of azraelsmerryland.blogspot.com for putting up the BloggersFest last Saturday April 16, 2011 at Thunderbird Resort Event Center. It was a day for foods, exciting prizes and very informative talks and tips from a fellow well experienced bloggers. Aside from “BloggersFest” event, it was the awarding for the winner of the “EXTRA ORDINARY ONLINE VIDEO CONTEST”.

Below were the speakers and their topics:

Azrael Coladilla of Azrael’s Merryland Blog
“Blogging 101″

Micaela Rodriguez of Micamyx.com
“Sharing your story through personal blogging”

Jonel Uy of Blogger Manila
“Blogging and Writing with SEO in mind”

Fitz Villafuerte of Ready to be Rich.com
“How To Write Awesome Blog Posts”

Antonio Carranza JR of PusangKalye.net
“Photo Blogging Essentials”

Arvin Ello of Vintersections.com
“Beating Writer’s Block and The Importance of Revision”

JP De Leon of Kampeon ng Pagibig.co
“Domain and DNS Management for your blogs”

Marlon Guzman of Solid Hosting
“How to Secure your Blog from Hacking”

Aside from these topics, there’s a break out session for photo blogging, music blogging, and food blogging. I attended the photo blogging session and I‘ve learned something about taking photos, how to manage images, lighting and choosing the right background, making corrections, and a lot more. It was indeed a day of learning and having fun in one great place.

The only cons I see in this event was the Wifi, It could have been better if there’s a live cast of the event or internet access where we could do microblogging updates at the same time…. Well, to all who attended the “BloggersFest” congratulations, and a job well done to Az and all the speakers!

Panoramic View of Bloggers Fest

[Show as slideshow]

A blogger friend contacted me last night asking for help on adding a Facebook’s Like Button on Blogspot.  That’s why I’m sharing this simple 7 steps in adding the like button.

1. Login to your Blog and Goto Design Tab .

2. Click Edit HTML.

3. Before you edit anything click “Download Full Template” and save it to your computer as backup of the original template.

4. Click the Expand Widget Templates checkbox.

5. Select and Copy the RED CODE below:

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == &quot;item&quot;'>
<div><iframe allowTransparency='true' expr:src='&quot;http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=&quot; + data:post.url + &quot;&amp;layout=box_count&amp;show_faces=false&amp;width=100&amp;action=like&amp;font=arial&amp;colorscheme=light&quot;' frameborder='0' scrolling='no' style='border:none; overflow:hidden; width:53px; height:65px;'/></div>
</b:if>

6. Press Control+F to locate Look for <data:post.body/> and immediately before that paste the code between the following Tags:

<div class=’post-header’>

<div class=’post-header-line-1′/>

</div>

************ [The RED CODE Goes Here] ****************

<div class=’post-body entry-content’>

<data:post.body/>

7. Then click SAVE TEMPLATE and you’re all done!

Hope this will help you Mark.

I just want to share some simple tips in optimizing your post according to your preferred keywords. These tips will help your post rank on SERP or Search Engine Result Page according to your preferred keywords. In this article, I will also provide some example on optimizing keywords to help you appreciate the following tips.

Keyword Arrangement

1. Tips#1: Make sure you have target keywords on the below tags. For example I will optimize for the keywords – Houston Auto Repair:
a. Title Tag:

In this example I make sure that I have the keywords “Houston Auto Repair” between the tags. Title Tags is your Post Title if you’re using wordpress or bloggers.

b. H1, H2, H3 … Tags

Inserting one of your keywords in between these tags will surely give importance when search engine index your post. Just make sure that your H tags follows a structured leveling.

c. A Tags (Link Tags)

Creating an external or internal link will definitely add importance to your keywords. The links connecting the pages of your site together must have your targeted keyword terms in them as well as all links throughout the site — even though it seems excessive, having variations to your targeted keywords would also help when linking out to other pages within your site.

d. Strong Tags

Making your keywords bold will not only visually add importance to your reader but to search engine as well. It may not have same level of importance with A tags but it will definitely add points to your post. Just take note that the proper arrangement of your Keyword on your post is more important than keyword density. Over doing keyword density will make a bad impression to search engine.

Meta Tags

Tips # 2. Make sure that your meta-tags are arranged correctly – your page title tags and description tags should describe the content of your different web pages. The page title tags should be less than 60 characters and the description tags more detailed but less than 160 characters. If you’re using wordpress I would suggest you use the All-in-One SEO Pack. This will help you define these tags within your post and automatically. In this example I optimized for the keyword “Ford Expedition” as my tags. All-in-One SEO Pack automatically generate this tag for you in wordpress.

Naming your Image

Tips #3. In attaching image to your post, make sure that you use descriptive URLs for your images i.e. use water-pump.jpg as apposed a bunch of numbers and or letters .jpg. Also make sure that you label all of your images with descriptive alt attributes. Example if you’re optimizing for the keyword water pump, you should name your images accordingly and your alt attributes in your img tags should also related to water pump as well.

Hope you have learned something from this post. These are just (3) three, I would appreciate if you can add some more. Thanks!

Maintaining several blogs, a full-time-job, internet & consulting business and web projects really requires proper time management. Planning, allocating, setting goals, delegation, analysis of time spent, monitoring, organizing, scheduling, and prioritizing is really a necessity to balances every thing. That’s why last year I made a survey on “How much time does a blogger need to maintain his blog?” Based from the responses,  most of the full time bloggers spent 14 to 48 hrs a week into blogging.  From the result I was able to classify bloggers as follows:

0 to 2hrs a week -  “Blogger Wanna Be, But Cannot Be “or As EntreCard define it “They’re just here for the view.”

2 to 5 hrs a week – Casual Blogger – do blogging on weekends or casually.

5 to 14 hrs a week – Part Time Blogger  – Who a lot time for blogging but doing it part time.

14 to 48 hrs a week – Full Time or Dedicated Blogger – blogger who take blogging seriously and with dedication.

48hrs or more  – a week - Serious Blogger – blogger who takes blogging as their bread and butter.

Does Blogging Requires Time?  If you really wanted to earn online, I guess it’s a big Yes. But like Edcel one of my commenter says ” … I don’t count blogging as work, it’s more of a hobby and i like to blog so it doesn’t feel like a hassle to me at all, though sometimes it does. nevertheless, it’s more on being able to blog because of wanting to blog.”

With that I leave you guys  something to think about… (H. Jackson Brown Jr. Quoted.)

“Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.”

Are you like me, eating while blogging? or if you have any tips on how you handle your time, share it. Sharing won’t hurt a bit….

Related Post:

How much time do you spend in blogging?

Time Spent in Blogging – Responses Summary

Courtesy of Ms. Janette Toral

In case you haven’t notice this is my latest post since last December 2009. I’ve been trying to juggle my time with my fulltime job, freelance job and blogging time in one day. This does not includes the hours I spent with the preventive maintenance of my Qlick Cafe – Internet Shop and the time I spent with my family. Although, I’ve been earning some money with my website development and consultancy job online, but I really wanted to earn it through blogging. I wanna proved to myself that their is a pot of gold at the other side of the blogosphere (hehehe) . I really wanted to prove that we can really earn cold cash in blogging. So please join me to my quest as we reveals the secret of earning money thru blogs.

Ok to balance everything, I need to develop a new schedule and set my goals. So I started answer the below question:

What are the activities that I need to do to be able to generate traffic for this blog?

Based on what I have learned from the Seminar that I have attended last September 2009 on Ms. Janette Toral Online Seminar entitled “Making Money on Blogging.”(in which I have mentioned in my other blog), to take care of our blog we have to:

• Write a relevant content.
• Don’t let it lose its soul – it is about you!
• Build readership and community.
• Be socialble.
  • Promote in Social Networks
  • Comments in other Blogs
  • Mingle with fellow Bloggers
  • Join or Organize contest and events.
• Be Open to Opportunities.

On my next article I’ll be posting about How much Time an Average Blogger Needs to Spend in Maintaining his Blogs.
Meantime, if you have some tips not listed above, sharing it would be very healthy.

Related Post:

Preparations before attending a webinar.
What is WFM Jobs?
Search Engine Optimization