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By Thomas L. On June 24, 200914 CommentsWelcome back! If you have something to share, be sure and leave a comment.
Part of creating a successful blog is keeping track of statistics.
This is important because even the most minor of alterations you make to your blog can have a good or bad effect on your blog and the only way to know is by keeping track of stats.
With that said, one of the most important websites and services you need for certain statistics is Alexa.
For me, Alexa has been very important for keeping track of visitors and other stats for my blog and in a sense, you can kind of tell how successful a blog is by the rank Alexa gives your blog.
In a nutshell, Alexa gathers data from pretty much every website on the planet and gives each website a “rank.” For instance, Google is ranked number 1 and Yahoo! is number 2.
The way Alexa accomplishes this is through a toolbar they developed called Sparky that anyone can add to their Firefox browser or Internet Explorer browser.
Well, I’ll let Alexa explain it a little better. Here’s a quote straight from there website.
“Alexa could not exist without the participation of the Alexa Toolbar community. Each member of the community, in addition to getting a useful tool, is giving back. Simply by using the Firefox and IE toolbars each member contributes valuable information about the web, how it is used, what is important and what is not. This information is returned to the community as Related Links, Traffic Rankings and more.”
Now say you have this toolbar installed on your browser, information and data about every website you visit is sent to Alexa and it uses this to collect data for the website like trends, visitors, content and so forth.
How Can Sparky Help My Blog?
You may be asking yourself this question right now and the answer is pretty simple.
Every time you visit your own blog, information about your blog is quickly sent to Alexa allowing them to keep up-to-date information about your blog including hits to your site which, in turn, will vastly improve your rank with Alexa.
Besides this, there are a couple of other reasons why I really like Sparky.
One reason is because its free. Alexa completely relies on this toolbar in order to crawl the web effectively.
Another reason is the toolbar is very well integrated into your browser. I use FireFox and I noticed that some toolbars take up alot of space towards the top of my browser and very few of their buttons are valuable.
With Sparky, the bulk of the toolbar is in the lower right part the browser which displays information about the current website your on like a 4 month trend, reach meter and rank.
This is also very valuable when you visit other blogs just so you can kind of get a sense of how well that blog is doing.
Of course, there are many other important ways to acquire these stats but this one is very helpful to me.
Here is an image of what it will look like.
So I urge you to download Sparky. It quick and painless. I know you’ll be happy with it!
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By Thomas L. On June 18, 2009
14 Comments
I recently realized how little anchor text are talked about compared to other topics about blogging or creating a successful blog so I wanted to give a little of my advice on this subject.
Basically, an anchor text is a hyperlinked word, or words, on a web page that links to another web page.
It’s a simple enough explanation and a pretty easy concept to grasp right?
What many beginning bloggers fail to recognize or pay attention too is what word/s they use as the text in the hyperlink.
Often times you see a hyperlink that says “click here” or “part 2″ and this would seem like the common sense thing to do.
But an anchor text isn’t just to let the reader know where to click. Anchor text also tell search engines what the web page it’s linking to is about and this is very important to understand.
So for instance, say you are writing an article about something having to do with SEO and make a reference to social bookmarking and you have written a previous post. You would just need to hyperlink the words “social bookmarking” and link them to the post about social bookmarking like this ==> social bookmarking.
This is the same as interlinking your post which is very important to every blog because it helps search engines crawl your pages.
So using anchor text wisely can seriously boost your ranking for these keywords in search engines. Obviously it will be much harder to crack the first page of Google if there is a lot of competition but every little bit helps.
Many bloggers also used to try to saturate their pages with anchor text in an effort to rank even higher in search results but as of 2007, Google has created new algorithm to compensate for this so please keep in mind that you should try not over-optimizing
Basically, don’t force anchor text. If it feels like your forcing an anchor text just to have an anchor text then your probably right so just let it come naturally. When you see an opportunity to use one, then do it but try and use common sense.
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By Thomas L. On June 5, 2009
9 Comments
As you may have heard, Microsoft has just recently “officially” launched Bing.com, which at first may look like a mix between Google.com and Ask.com. But I urge you to take a closer look at Bing.com
If you take a quick tour of Bing, you’ll quickly notice that it has many familiar features that you’ll instantly recognize from other search engines such as a “videos” tab and a small section for related searches but instead of placing that at the bottom of the page like Google, it’s placed to the left.
Despite the similarities, there are a few differences that I like. For instance, when you search for something that has videos related to them, instead of just having a still image of the video, it will play once you move your cursor over the image as well as play sound.
I recommend that you stop by the new search engine and take a look around. Even the home page of it has some original aspects to it.
How Does Bing.com Affect My Blog And My Blogging Efforts?
Now you may have asked yourself this question, even if it is only for a split second.
The short and broad answer to that question, in my opinion, is that it will either not directly affect you and if it does, it can only be positive.
As far as I’ve learned, the basic standards for listing websites and blogs in search results will remain unchanged and your blog should already be in Bing.com.
Think of it this way… It’s just another major search engine that your blog can be found on and you should go about your SEO efforts the same way, assuming you’re doing it right.
Also, keep this in mind, Bing.com is only the first step in the journey that Microsoft is on right now. So expect many more new innovations to come from Microsoft and Bing.com very shortly. I mean, Microsoft does have Qi Lu as the head of it’s Online Services Group.
For those who don’t know who Qi Lu is, he happens to be the former head of development for Yahoo’s Internet search division. So expect big things from him.
Oh ya, and don’t worry about Google either. As we all know, Google is the undisputed KING of search engines… at least for now. Google has a vast share of the search engine market and once a company gets to that number 1 spot, innovation tends to drop.
And you may have heard that Google just recently made a controversial move by allowing marketers in about 200 countries to purchase trademarks as triggers to display “sponsored search” ads on Google. Talk about being in it only for the money!
So please, look around Bing and see what you think. If you’re an affiliate marketer, chances are you’re already all over this.
If you’ve had some experiences with Bing already then I’d like to hear about it but until then, happy blogging!
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By Thomas L. On May 7, 2009
11 Comments
“How am I going to make money from my blog?” This is by far one of the biggest questions every new blogger has when they set out to start their first blog.
Their are a lot of different ways to monetize a blog. So many, in fact, that new bloggers have no idea where to start or what form of advertising to use.
I’d like to give my insight into two of the most widely used forms of monetization used for blogs – Google Adsense and Affiliate advertising.
Blog Monetization – Using Adsense
The reason I aim this section directly at Adsense is because Adsense is more lucrative than other PPC networks by far. There are other quality PPC networks to chose from, like Adbrite, but you wont get paid nearly as much per click like you will with Adsense.
With that said, I see a lot of ads from people on the internet that say they can teach you how to make massive amounts of money from Adsense. They claim that by simply adding the Adsense code to your blog, you’ll make thousands of dollars a month.
The claims made these people aren’t necessarily untrue but they mislead you to believe that it is a simple and quick process.
Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot of money to be made from Adsense and some people make their living from it but don’t waste your money on these ads and claims.
So how can you make money online with your blog and Adsense? Well, let’s look at a couple of basic facts:
- You make money from Adsense when a visitor clicks on an Adsense ad that is placed on your blog
- A very small percentage of your blog visitors will click on your Adsense ads
Fact is, your visitors are there to look at the content you provide to them. Every once and a while, visitors will see something out of the corner of their eye that catches their attention and will proceed to click on it.
But simply hoping that they’ll click on your ads won’t work and asking your readers to click on those ads or offering some sort of incentive would not be smart and doing so will quickly get you banned.
There are ways to increase your conversion rates though.
Superior banner placement – This can make a huge difference in conversion rates. There are many different sizes of ads and plenty of spots to place the ads making the possibilities endless. Choosing the best places and sizes takes a lot of time, research, and patience. For a newbie, the best bet would be to purchase a premium blog theme, such as Carl Ocab’s Blogging Theme or Thesis Theme for Wordpress, that has done this research for you. All you have to do is put the code in the spots and focus on content. To find more themes, you can do a search on Google.
Blend Adsense Into Your Blog – The great thing about Adsense text ads is that you can change the color scheme of the text to fit your blog’s color scheme. This makes it seem as though the ads are part of your site making it more likely for visitors to click on it. If you feel that this may be misleading or sort of blackhat, keep in mind that Adsense ads match the content of your blog and simply provides more relevant information to your visitors.
Blog Monetization – Affiliate Ads
I like affiliate marketing for a lot of reasons. Basically you just market products services from other companies on their behalf.
You then get a commission, sometimes as high as %75, for every sale you make. You don’t have to deliver an actual product to the customer or even carry inventory. Simple right?
Of course, this isn’t as easy as it sounds but you can get paid much faster this way than you can from Adsense.
The best affiliate programs will have pre-made banners for you to use in different sizes, email marketing letters, and text ads. All you need to do is use them how you see fit. Never spam though!
To become an affiliate for a company, you can join am affiliate network like Clickbank or PepperJam, or some companies have their own affiliate program.
Keep in mind that there are two different kinds of routes you can go with this. One time affiliate commission, which is when you get paid a commission only once for a sale that the customer only pays for once, and there is recursive affiliate commission, which is when you get a commission for a sale that the customer has to pay for more than once such as a monthly membership to a site.
I recommend that you try to be an affiliate for as many monthly membership sites.
To truly be successful with affiliate marketing on your blog, you have to remember to keep the ads you place on your blog relevant to your blog niche and the information you have on your blog.
If you have an entertainment blog, put ads up that have to do with movie downloads, ringtones, etc.
This is important because you have to realize that your visitors are already interested in stuff that has to do with your blogs niche so it’s best to capitalize on that.
Do you use these two forms of advertising on your blog? If so, have you had any success? If you don’t use these two forms of monetization, what others do you use?
Post a comment with the answer to this question and join the discussion.
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By Thomas L. On April 27, 2009
11 Comments
There are many reasons why I like using Wordpress for all of my blogs. One of the main reasons, however, is the variety of plugins available to improve our blogging efforts.
Wordpress is an open source project which means there are literally hundreds of people that work on it whether it be to improve the overall platform, or to develop and improve plugins and widgets.
With that, comes possibly thousands of plugins that you could possibly add to your blog. With so many choices, it can be a little overwhelming to decide which ones will really help your blog and aid you in your journey to creating a successful blog.
So I’ve decided to narrow the list down for you and breifly describe 8 of the absolute best plugins you MUST incorporate into your blog. These are plugins that even the elite bloggers use for their own Wordpress blogs.
So let’s jump right into it…
All In One SEO Pack – The creator of this plugin descibes it as out-of-the-box SEO for your blog. This plugin is exactly that! After you activate the plugin, all you need to do is go to the settings of the plugin and follow the directions. It allows you to not only do quick SEO for your blog as a whole but also SEO for every post you make to your blog. The plugin homepage also has a great video about the key basics of the plugin and how to configure it properly. To get this plugin, simply go to the “Plugins” tab on your dashboard and click “Add New.” Then just type in the name of the plugin and it should come up. This plugin is the most essential plugin to have!
Google XML Sitemaps - This will create an XML sitemap that is compatible with all major search engines. In fact, this plugin is very important if you want to be indexed by Google as fast as possible by helping Google get to the content of your blog much faster. This is a very important plugin and if you don’t have it yet, GET IT!
Akismet – It goes without saying that spam is a huge problem on the Internet nowadays. Especially for blogs. It’s annoying and does not add to the discussion on your blogs, whatsoever. Akismet.com recognizes this and provides this free plugin to every blog and website. What it does is automatically stop spam comments on your blog before they can see the light of day and allows quality comments, or “ham”, to be added. Akismet is constantly improving itself and it holds spam in queue for you to review. If the comment is in fact spam, you can delete it. If it accidentally marked a good comment as spam, you can correct it and it will learn from it. Awesome plugin and it is highly recommended to have.
I Love Social Bookmarking – In previous post, I have stressed the importance of social bookmarking and how important and effective it is to your blog. What this plugin does is allow your readers to quickly submit your content to some of the best social bookmarking sites like Digg, Technorati, and StumbleUpon. This plugin uses a drop-down menu of icons from social bookmarking sites and will be locted at the bottom of every post. This isn’t the only plugin for social bookmarking but it’s the best in my opinion.
What Would Seth Godin Do – If you don’t already know, Seth Godin is a very successful blogger, among other things, and this plugin was developed with him in mind. Basically what it does is display a welcome message at the top of your latest post for new visitors. All it says is welcome and suggest that the reader subscribe to your blog. It is only shown to new visitors and simply provides another unobtrusive option for newcomers to become regular readers. This plugin is great and is highly recommended if you are trying to build a regular audience.
Thank Me Later – Have you ever wondered how you can invite people who commented on your blog to come back and comment again without hassling them? Well this plugin answers that question. When visitors leave a comment on a post, they leave an email address. What this plugin does is send a “Thank You” message to that email thanking them for leaving a comment and inviting them back. In fact, you can set the exact amount of time it takes before it sends out the thank you message whether it be hours after they commented or even days after.
CommentLuv – This plugin provides a great way to show visitors to your blog some “love” if they leave some quality comments on your post. If the commentator leaves an address to their blog, this plugin will place the title of their latest post under their comment and make it clickable. It’s just another way of saying thank you to your visitor for leaving quality comments. It’s all about people helping people.
I believe that all of these plugins can be found through a simple search done in the “Add New” section of the “Plugins” tab on your Dashboard. Just type in the name of the plugin in the search box.
Like I said, these plugins are awesome and they will help you immensely in your efforts to create a successful blog but keep in mind, nothing will make up for the hard work and dedication that needs to be put into your blog.
Now get to it! Activate these plugins and I wish you happy blogging until next time.
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By Thomas L. On April 21, 2009
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Social bookmarking is all the craze right now on the Internet. Experts and Newbies alike have started to impliment social bookmarking into their everyday SEO process.
In fact, every reliable SEO firm that I know of, like DeveoplerHut and SubmitEdge, have added social bookmarking to their list of services. Let’s face it, social bookmarking has been proven to increase traffic to websites and blogs, increase sales, and even improve PageRank.
Let’s face it, there are no downsides to social bookmarking. The more places your content is in, the more relevant traffic you will get. And remember, targeted traffic is what you will need to succeed online. Not just traffic in general… TARGETED traffic! Social bookmarking provides this for you. That’s if, and ONLY IF, your content is quality and provides readers with what they are looking for.
As I read through the beginning of this post, I quickly realized that I’ve made social bookmarking seem like it’s an easy process. It really isn’t though. Well at least not if you want to do this in the most productive and effective way.
Social bookmarking has become so popular that it seems like dozens of these sites are popping up all over the place everyday. It takes a lot of trial and error to do this process right and find out which social bookmarking sites work best to make your blog successful and hopefully help you make your first dollars online.
Well I’ve decided to list some of the best social bookmarking sites for you right here. It would be in your best interest to go through these sites and create a profile and add your best content. Make this part of your daily link building process.
The Best Social Bookmarking Sites!
PR 9
http://del.icio.us
http://slashdot.org
PR 8
http://www.Propeller.com
http://www.digg.com
http://technorati.com
http://www.2collab.com
http://www.connotea.org
http://twitter.com
PR 7
http://www.backflip.com
http://reddit.com
http://segnalo.alice.it
http://mystuff.ask.com
http://furl.net
http://multiply.com
http://www.newsvine.com
http://www.citeulike.org
http://www.rollyo.com
http://www.mister-wong.com
http://www.folkd.com
http://www.Blinklist.com
http://www.google.com/bookmarks
PR 6
http://www.linksnarf.com
http://www.Plime.com
http://www.sitejot.com
http://www.fetch.com
http://www.indianpad.com
http://www.searchles.com
http://www.netvouz.com
http://www.linkagogo.com
http://sphinn.com
http://swik.net
http://www.bibsonomy.org
http://spurl.net
http://dotnetkicks.com
Okay, okay, that’s enough for now. As you can see, I’ve listed them according to PageRank so it would be a good idea to start at the top.
Again, this process is a must for those who want to make money with blogs but I’d also like to point out that it is also important to those who just want there blog to be successful. It’ll get your material in front of people who really want to read what you have to say so get motivated and get to work!
One more thing before I forget. If you feel like this process would just take too long or you just don’t feel like you can do it right, I would suggest you get some professionals to do it for you. It really pays off for you in the long run when you go with the right SEO firm.
So if you have a budget or some extra funds that you can use, you should go to SubmitEdg.com, the best SEO firm in my opinion, especially for blogs, and use their services. They have a lot of services to help you with your link building process and it’s done manually by professionals, which is extremely important.
If paying for these kinds of services is going to leave you broke, hold off for now. Do it manually yourself until you can afford it. And please, PLEASE don’t buy scripts and stuff, like Social Bookmarking Demon, that claim to do this for you automatically. It isn’t done manually and I’ve seen some bad feedback about them on forums like DigitalPoint and BlackHatWorld.
So stop thinking about it and go do some social bookmarking!
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