Interview with Gouri, The Face Behind eZaroorat.com

Gouri is a blogger and web content strategist specializing in setting up SEO friendly WordPress blogs. He holds an MBA in marketing and is the face behind the internet marketing blog eZaroorat.com.

How did you become involved in blogging?

I was already into content editing and quality when I came across an enticing introductory offer by Yahoo hosting which also included a free domain.

I bought a hosting account with an intention of learning to set up websites and adding value to my professional skills. Realizing that the in-built, template-based designing tool made my site too dependent on my web host, I went for a WYSIWYG editor. Not satisfied with the static HTML pages, soon I was looking for a CMS and came across WordPress.

That’s how my blogging journey began.

Later on, my interest in blogging made me try Blogspot and WordPress.com for experimentation. And the thrill of driving traffic to the blog brought me into the field of SEO and internet marketing.

How do you come up with blog post ideas?

Most of the times, that happens spontaneously.

You come across a useful product or tool and feel the urge to write about it. Sometimes you are going through an article on some blog or website and suddenly something flashes into your mind. And sometimes, you get the ideas delivered right into your mail box in the form of beta testing and product review requests.

See, when you are passionate about blogging, you keep getting ideas all the time. Where you are and what you are doing doesn’t matter. Whether you are in the bed or in the bathroom, you keep getting them

How do you increase blog traffic?

I always prefer to go for a long term strategy rather than for immediate results.

And the most important factor for pulling and retaining traffic in the long run can be nothing else than quality content.

All published posts are supported through social channels – most prominent ones being Twitter, Facebook and Friendfeed. Remember, that again is not for direct traffic but for long term SEO.

If a particular post is about a specific tool or service, then it’s always better to intimate the interested party. This way you can get additional support in your efforts to promote the post. This has worked for me quite well.

For promoting few important posts and pages, I also use StumbleUpon and article marketing.

Apart from these, I do read and comment on blogs, more or less, on a regular basis.

I am not able to do much on the guest posting front due to time and resource constraints.

What’s the best part of blogging?

You don’t need to go through the cumbersome process of getting license and permissions from various government departments to set up a blog.

There are no geographical barriers – the whole world is your audience.

And you can do it from the comfort of your room, sitting in shorts and banyan – saving yourself on clothing, AC and commutation.

What’s the worst part of blogging?

Plagiarism – of both, ideas and content is a huge turn off. But I ensure that proper action is taken whenever I come across it, no matter whatever amount of time and attention it consumes.

If you had an hour of free time, what would you do?

You mean free from work?

Depends upon the need of the moment.

If I were sleep deprived at that time, I would sleep. And if I already had enough of sleep, then I would dream.

Where do you go to find peace?

I go inside myself. Retrospection and introspection are the words, I guess!

Any tips for budding bloggers?

Blog on the topic of your interest.

Read some blogs in your niche regularly. Cultivate the habit of researching.

And don’t forget to follow me on twitter @gourisgupta

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Tagged as: Blogging, ezaroorat, eZaroorat.com, gouri, interview, social media, Wordpress