Utterz is a web-based service that allows you to post blogs from anywhere in the world including from your phone by text, photos, video, voice or even a combination of all of them.  You can obviously post from a PC and all you need to do is to e-mail or SMS the post to Utterz or make a phone. Once the people at Utterz receive your content it is forwarded to the blog or list of blogs that you’ve specified within 10 minutes.

This flexibility makes it sort of a Twitter of your own. It mine not yet measure up to Twitter on many aspects but it is definitely more flexible and allows you more control than Twitter does. It also comes with a few widgets which allows you to plug-in the updates you are sending through Utterz updates into existing networks including TypePad, Blogger, MySpace, LiveJournal and Facebook. There is also a code which allows you to place a widget on your personal website. The widgets come in three different size according to your specifications.

The great thing with Utterz is that it allows you to leave a voice blogging entry which also makes it easy for those who don’t have recording features on their phones and also takes care of size limitations that a mobile user may have when sending an audio file from his hand set. There is also a format which allows for the distribution of Utterz on a cross-platform level.

So now Utterz has brought along a few new things that weren’t available to many before and goes one up on anything that existed before including services such as Twitter. Utterz is also very simple and provides a great variety of functions and is absolutely superb for anyone who owns a website or a blog and needs regular access to the net.

There are a whole bunch of SEO tools available on the net that help you use the correct words in your content which makes sure that it is detected by search engines and gets you more views. Using the keywords to a certain extent and using other words which are frequently searched for is one such tactic.

Article Jockey is one such free web application through which you can create articles and content for your website or post such articles on other sites or article directories.  The deal with this tool is that the articles you write through Article Jockey will be SEO Optimized which means it will have the correct keyword densities or in other words have as many keywords as is perfect for the article. The content will also have the proper use of LSI Search Engine Proven Synonyms and will also have the very best use possible of long-tail and expert verbiage keywords. 

Article Jockey is also ridiculously simple to use and you just need to follow the following steps:

·         Enter the main keyword (the word that is central to your content or what someone would enter if he was searching for content such as yours)

·         The next step is to remove any keywords that are unwanted from the list produced by Google and add some of your own if you want to.

·         The final step is to create your content which after you know the precise number of keywords to use, shouldn’t be a very daunting task.

Article Jockey is superb for the reason that it thinks like a search engine and tells you what you need to do in order to have content that is optimal for search engines. Its an extremely unique tool and gives you just what you want.

The tool is also free and having said that the sound quality is much better than what free services normally provide. It is also very easy to use and extremely innovative. All you have to do is to paste the text into a web form, press the ‘Create mp3’ button and voila! Your text is now turned to mp3. You can listen to it through a flash based mp3 player or download it for use later on. You can also embed it into your web site and the pronunciation is also quite good.

It works in English but also works with text in Spanish and English. It is great for webmasters who want to give visitors an audio version of the content on their websites.

But then there is obviously the fault that exists with all text to speech applications. The voice gets kind of irritating after the while, but then that is there with everything of this sort. It is still a nice fancy gadget though and has a very simple interface for people who are technologically challenged and can’t find the way across the internet.

Plus there are no worries of getting yourself registered and the like and there isn’t a long list of steps you have to complete in this thing so taking all the pros and cons of this thing into consideration, I still feel it is a very good thing to have.

A few months ago there was a great deal of buzz about a service called BlogRush.  What today’s post is about is whether all that hype was warranted.  In spite of all the noise about it the concept behind BlogRush is quite simple. The basic thought is to bring more readers to your blog or site. What bloggers do through this service is essentially to promote each other’s blogs in a symbiotic relationship.

What you do is install the widget on your blog and then it displays headlines from all the other people who have installed the widget. So you in turn will also have your blog displayed on other blogs. So basically the more credits you generate, the more readers you will have for your blog. In order to increase your credit you need to have more page views. So as your blog becomes popular with other readers your credit increases. This can also be done by referring another person.

In practical use however it isn’t all that simple. Simply having a widget and having your headlines flash on a widget on another person’s blog isn’t that useful either. This is because even though your headlines may be displayed more than a thousand times the traffic to your site increasing only after someone has clicked on it.  For this you will have to make your blog headlines more attractive so that your BlogRush increases.

So what you should do is to make your headlines more attractive and continue to refer people so that your credit increases.  What BlogRush lacks in my opinion is that it doesn’t allow you to display links to other sites which is huge favorite among bloggers.  On the whole though it isn’t the greatest service released.  

There are quite a few questions in a person’s blog when he just puts up a site or a blog. What everyone is thinking is how to market the blog and how to make it popular. Making a blog popular depends on its content, use of keywords etc. There are a few free tools available on the internet which can help increase the popularity of your blog:

9 Rules

One of them is 9 rules which is a social networking site. Through this site you can make sure your work reaches a larger audience. It allows you to share excerpts from your articles. This way if your article is good it is sure to catch the attention of some user and bring you popularity. When a person clicks on the excerpt of your article he is redirected to your blog.

BlogBurst

BlogBurst is like the daddy of all directories. It is very tough to get your blog listed here. However if you get there you can give yourself a pat on the back. BlogBurst submits your articles to larger news sources. If they pick a post of yours thousands and thousands of readers will read your blog.

Blog Carnival

Blog Carnival is basically a collection of blogs or articles. Blog Carnivals exist on almost any topic and may sometimes be published as an online magazine. All you need to do is submit your blog with a carnival that has blogs on similar topics and have your content syndicated. If you have articles of decent quality you have a reasonable choice of being selected.

Blog Rankings

Blog Rankings is another blog directory. Here users rank your blog. So good content will get you ranked high here which will automatically translate into more traffic.

Using these free services will do absolutely no harm and if you have good content on your blog will definitely help in diverting additional traffic towards your site.

Website design is not rocket science. Even though you need a basic level of understanding of computers and the internet, there are just a few basics to follow to make a decent website. While we shall talk about how to design a website in detail later, first things first. What not to do when you design a website:

Bright colors: The first thing that hits you when you log onto a site is the presentation. It would be absolutely disastrous for your site if you were to have a loud garish color theme with colors that clash. You certainly don’t want red, yellow and green on the same page. Blinding color themes with too much of design is unwanted and will put visitors off your site.

Contrasting colors: Just as the above holds true, it is also necessary that the color themes are contrasting. The font should stand out from the background and the colors on the website should contrast tastefully. This means that you could use different shades of a same color or different colors that go well together. For ex- purple and mauve. It is necessary that you draw attention to the font through smart use of color.

Background music: Another thing that is very putting off is background music on a website. I absolutely hate it when a song starts playing the moment I enter a website. When people are browsing the net they are probably listening to music anyhow and it’s extremely annoying when another song starts playing automatically. Most websites don’t even give you the option of shutting off the music. Background music also ensures that the website loads slower.

Animation: It is not nice to have animated icons on a website that say things like “click here” and “click there”. Banners are fine, but that is about it. Animation is simply excessive and it is not cool anymore. Most people just like plain websites where they can find what they’re looking for. And trust me it is not a small animal or something popping out of nowhere.

There are certain things that can be done to make a site have a high ranking with a search engine. There are things that you can follow that can make your site move higher in the search engine rankings.

The Advanced Meta Tag Generator: This tool will help you add Meta tags to your site so that it may show up more often in searches.

Future Page Rank: Searching in this tool will lead to a check in Google’s various data centers to check for any changes in PageRank values of any URL.

Google Keyword Suggestion: This software will help you choose the relevant and often searched terms related to your selected key item.

Link Popularity: This tool will search for a URL through all search engines and give you a total figure of how many times a link has been tried.

Similar Page checker: This software lets you know when your site is similar to another. This is important because search engines have been known to have penalized sites which have copied from others.

Domain Age Detector: This tool lets you know how a website looked when it was first started. This you can compare how your website has fared as compared to the competitor’s.

The usage of the above Search Engine Optimization tool will make sure that the ranking of your site climbs among search engines. It is all about projecting your site.

This is an excellent place to start your website from and then host and maintain it. They layout of the site is excellent and they have a range of templates which you can use or you can design your own look for the site. They have really cool tools for the users like hit counter and vote casters. Also unlike many hosting sites they have excellent customer service. The site also doesn’t have any spyware which may cause problems later on. BraveNet is excellent in all the features it offers and what has earned it so many fans is the fact that it is free.

But like everything else BraveNet also has its drawbacks. They are very few however. The problem with BraveNet is that it is free. That is why it is so popular and that is also the root cause of the problem. Because it is a free site and the providers have to make their money from somewhere, your site will be subjected to advertisements without asking you. But I guess that is a price most will be willing to pay if you look at all that it offers. Unless the site is a very public thing which is used for a popular business or similar purpose, the presence of ads should not be very bothersome.

On the whole BraveNet is one of a kind and is truly a brave attempt. We could use more of such hosts in the cyber world today.

The first step in promoting your website is to list it with various internet directories so that you get enough traffic to your website. When you start a website it is essential that you list it with online directories as they have a major impact on your site including its search engine rankings. For a site to be accepted by an internet directory it should be competent and have good enough content. The editors of directories usually have a look at the sites and so if a site is reasonably good it may be accepted straight away. It is not very difficult to get your site noticed by a directory but you may have to apply a couple of times before your site is accepted.

Once a site has been listed with a directory it will receive a larger amount of traffic but if you want to further increase the number of visitors to your site you should make sure your site appears through search engines. For this the site design should be engine friendly and you will also need to use keywords on your site. Keywords are words that people enter in a search engine when they are looking for information on a certain topic. So the more keywords you include on your site the better the ranking you will get from a search engine.

The next thing to do after these two steps is to try to get your site more publicity. This can be done by advertising on other sites and diverting traffic to your sites. You could also add the URL of the site in your email signature so that more people see it. If is also useful to have your site included in a list of top sites and writing newsletters and articles can also bring more internet traffic your way.

If you have followed the above steps and tried at improving your site and fitting various parameters, it won’t be long before your site has heavy traffic.

Also it is important to avoid heavy animations and things that make a web page slower. Internet users like website that are minimal and open quickly. If your website takes too long to open the user will just visit another web page instead. Also when you design a website it is important to check that it is compatible with the more popular browsers like Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox and also that the animations on the website if do not require very unusual software.

The website that you design should also contain relevant information and not unnecessarily contain too many links that move traffic away from your website. For example if your website is launched for your business focus on your company, what you do and the various services you provide. The way things are documented on a website should be professional so that customers know that you mean business. Avoid bright colours and big fonts and stay basic so that it is the content that gets across to the surfers. 

It is also imperative that your website is secure. Make sure that there are no viruses and other things that come through your website because once a person knows that there are viruses on your website, that will be the last time he ever visits. Also if you deal with online cash and credit transactions make sure the information does not leak out anywhere. It is also important to assure customers of the security of your website.             

The most important thing when designing a website is to keep it simple and get the basic message across.