Below are ten easy-to-follow tips on how to improve your traffic, not necessarily in order. Its usefulness will still depend on your commitment and dedication.

* Be the best
If you have a specific niche then I suggest be an expert on it. Some bloggers look for common interests where they can acquire useful information and tips. You can offer books reviews, do’s and don’ts in blogging, online money making, vacation havens and any other topics you have good experiences and knowledge that you want to share.

* Be connected
Include RSS, Bookmark, and tag contents such as Technorati, del.icio.us, Flickr, Reddit, Digg, StumbleUpon, etc.

* Be thoughtful
If somebody took the time and effort to write you and asks a question, spend time to answer them even if not instantly, especially if it was a suggestion or a good idea for your blog. This would mean a lot to your reader and builds a connection between you and your readers.

* Be imaginative
Make the most out of your space by incorporating comments, graphs, polls, meters and other interactive tools. This creates a lively environment and active participation from your members.

* Be interesting
Do not bore your readers. Be the kind of person that would exude excitement, information, and fun with his personality and posts. Know your visitors and what they enjoy getting to keep them coming back.

* Be alert
Proofread, proofread, and proofread. If you can have somebody to do it for you better. A perfect topic can wind up a disaster if simple typo errors and grammars are not checked.

* Be generous
It is sometimes appropriate and always fun to give out freebies such as eBooks, software, and other downloadable to your ever loyal readers.

* Be active
This is very effective during the early stage of your blog when you don’t have many regular readers yet. The photosphere is a huge network and can serve as a useful avenue to promote you site. Participate in other people’s blogs, forums, and other online networking.

* Be smart
Use simple and effective software in monitoring and maintaining your blog. Tools such as Blogger, WordPress.com, TypePad, and LiveJournal can automate some of your chores. It can also provide key indicators and stats on how well your site is doing and what you can do to turn the table.

* Be organized
Archive and categorize your posts. Some readers may not exactly remember the title of the article but the month or category type could be easier for them to note.

Anyway, one of these blogs is a free blog from blogger.com, so I went on and reported it. The response was very fast so I think its an auto responder for copyright infringement cases.

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Hi there,

Thank you for your note. It is our policy to respond to notices of alleged infringement that comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (the text of which can be found at the U.S. Copyright Office website: http://lcWeb.loc.gov/copyright/ and other applicable intellectual property laws, which may include removing or disabling access to material claimed to be the subject of infringing activity.To file a notice of infringement with us, you must provide a written communication (by fax or regular mail, not by email) that sets forth the items specified below. Please note that pursuant to that Act, you may be liable to the alleged infringer for damages (including costs and attorneys’ fees) if you materially misrepresent that you own an item when you in fact do not. Indeed, in a recent case (please see http://www.onlinepolicy.org/action/legpolicy/opg_v_diebold/ for more information), a company that sent an infringement notification seeking removal of online materials that were protected by the fair use doctrine was ordered to pay such costs and attorneys fees. The company agreed to pay over $100,000. Accordingly, if you are not sure whether material available online infringes your copyright, we suggest that you first contact an attorney.

To expedite our ability to process your request, please use the following format (including section numbers):

1. Identify in sufficient detail the copyrighted work that you believe has been infringed upon. This must include identification of specific posts, as opposed to entire sites. Posts must be referenced by either the dates in which they appear or the permalink of the post. For example,
http://example.blogspot.com/archives/2003_01_21_example_archive.html#2104575

2. Identify the material that you claim is infringing upon the copyrighted work listed in item #1 above.

YOU MUST IDENTIFY EACH POST BY PERMALINK OR DATE THAT ALLEGEDLY CONTAINS INFRINGING MATERIAL. The permalink for a post is usually found by clicking on the timestamp of the post.

3. Provide information reasonably sufficient to permit Blogger to contact you (email address is preferred).

4. Include the following statement: “I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described above on the allegedly infringing web pages is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.”

5. Include the following statement: “I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

6. Sign the paper.

7. Send the written communication to the following address:

Google, Inc.
Attn: Blogger Legal Support, DMCA complaints
1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy
Mountain View, CA 94043

OR Fax to:

(650) 618-2680, Attn: Blogger Legal Support, DMCA complaints
Sincerely,
The Blogger Team
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I don’t know but it seems exaggerated that we have to go through all this to report copyright infringement at blogger.com. The guy copied all my articles and he placed a linkback at the bottom of each article, to this blog as the original resource. So its very clear that the content was copied from here without permission. Even if he’s linking back to my blog, that doesn’t give him the right to copy my articles. I guess I’m going to have to fax them what they need and hope things won’t get more complicated!

I also hope I won’t end up faxing them, each time a blogger at their site copies my articles!

It will surely be a waste of time if you try to put up a website, have visitors check out what you got, and then lose them instantly. This is what normally happens if you don’t get to plan your design effectively. All your ideas, effort, and money go down the drain.

There are some tips that you can always follow to ensure that you have the most effective website set up.

1. Be as informative as possible. Do not simply rely on information. Instead, go for the juicy, interesting ones—those types that customers will be digging in. There are already a lot of tools to help you out with that one. You can check out popular blogging communities such as Technorati or Digg.com and see what topics people love to read and talk about. You can also use free keyword selector tools to determine what “are good keywords” these days and use them to search for interesting articles. You can also participate in forums so you’ll have an idea what ticks in their minds. Once you have a list of excellent topics, you can start writing about them.

2. Get rid of any inconveniences in your design. Thus avoid scrolling texts, blinking letters, or bold and flashy colors. For one they are irritating to the eyes. Second they are not really necessary. It’s good to have a perfect blend of colors and a great layout, but don’t overdo your design. You can use a little flash, though, and some funny animation.

3. Make your website truly easy to navigate. You can do this by minimizing visitor’s clicks as much as possible. At most two clicks are sufficient. A click is a manual action; no matter how simple the process can be, it still requires energy and effort. Nobody will surely like to dwell on websites where information is real hard to find.

4. Put variety into your site. Too much media is bad; so are plain texts. Strike a good balance between the two. For example, if you’re designing a travel site, you can combine your review with pictures of the place. It makes visitors relate to your stories a lot better than by merely reading them.

5. Settle for small-size media files. It’s true that you should have audio or video formats in your site but do limit their sizes. They eat bandwidth too, especially if you have a real-time online streaming system. This will then slow down the speed of downloading your webpage. Not all people are patient on that. The best thing you can do is to compress these files with free software available.

Web design is more than graphics or art. It also incorporates words. A good web designer should be able to create superb chemistry between these two.

Your website shouldn’t be difficult to read. Not everything you’ve written will be read and not all would want to read everything. As a matter of fact, they only check out those they are really interested in. To compel readers to read yours, you can start by breaking up your contents. You can also utilize headers to separate various ideas to provide ease in giving the readers what they want. Develop a good structure for your articles. Coherence and consistency is the key.

Moreover, do not use lengthy sentences. Complexity can destroy their essence. Learn to express your thoughts in short but meaningful words. You can also adjust the font color. Remember it should contrast with your background’s color. If you’re background is white, your text should be black.

If you settle for similar colors, don’t expect that they can still be read. Make your fonts bigger too, enough for your visitors to read. Squinting eyes can be tiring and no one will be interested in understanding what you have to say with those small fonts. Do not overlap bright images on texts. This makes it hard to read too.

Web browsers have different ways in treating your website. It may look perfectly fine with Mozilla but a disaster in Internet Explorer. It is recommended that before you officially launch your site; make sure that it goes well whatever browser your visitor may be using.

It is also ideal if you can develop a more consistent design. You can stick with at most two different layouts—one for the homepage and the rest for the sub pages. You want your readers to get a good feel of their “surrounding.” Help them familiarize your website in that manner.

If your site contains media files that are heavy, chances are it takes forever to download your page. View this as a crisis as visitors do not have patience for such. You can do something about it, though. You may minimize the sizes of these files—images, videos, and audios.

For your layout, for example, you can use external CSS method. You may also settle for modest repeating backgrounds for very cool effects.

Navigation is composed of links and menus, this provides a “way” for your visitors to find the information that they want. If they tend to check out other pages first before they can get any article worth reading, you can begin by planning an effective navigation system.

As much as possible, a visitor should only click either once or thrice. You can opt for a simple design such as you simply repeat both the top and bottom menus. You can also create right or left menus with links to these pages.

You can further help your readers when it comes to navigation by providing appropriate linking texts that can describe the nature of the page. A common example is the Home navigation menu, which means, by clicking it; you’re transported back to the homepage.