Using Digg.com To Generate Traffic

So I finally hit it big on digg.com, I have been posting there for a while and I would get a few diggs, but nothing like this. First let me give you a little background of what digg is. Basically, digg.com is a site where users can submit their articles/videos about anything from politics to comedy. Once it is submitted users can "digg" them or bury them if they so choose. The site keeps track of all the diggs that you get on your article/video. The more diggs you have the more chance you have of making it on the main "popular stories" part of digg. You see when you first submit the story it goes into a "upcoming stories" section of digg, then once you receive many diggs they upgrade you to the "popular stories" part of digg. Once you make it there you can sit back and watch the traffic jump, it was really amazing. 

When my story made it I had over 12,000 hits in one day alone, which is pretty impressive for sites like mine that are still in their infancy and don't have any real page rank. You can see all of my stories that I submitted to digg here and you can see the story that gave me the 12,000 hits here.

The beauty of digg is that the stories are chosen by the viewers and not some editor so everyone has a chance of making it big. So what are you waiting for go sign up and starting digging, it is a great way to promote your site. Who knows maybe this article will be the next to make it big... hmmm diggers digging a site about digg, I guess it makes sense. 

Source: http://promotingyoursite.blogspot.com/

Adsense - Basic Ad Placement

One of the most important aspects of running an Google AdSense campaign on your pages is getting the advertisements noticed by your visitors. Here we'll discuss the basics of good ad placement.

One well known fact by most webmasters is that ads placed above the fold performs very well. In case you don't know that the "fold" means, imagine that you fold your monitor in half horizontally. The area above that fold is where ads perform best (in general). This area is illustrated in figure 1.

However this is of course a rule of thumb and does not apply to all cases.

Each and every site will have different locations within their pages that perform better than others. What you must do constantly is to:

1. Place Ad
2. Test/Track Ad (Using channels)
3. Change
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 over and over

This simple optimization technique is very simple but yet not carried out by all webmasters. Badly placed advertisements will yield very low Click Through Rates (CTR). Just think about it. You have a site with great content, good traffic but a CTR of 1%. With optimization you could increase the CTR to 3~5% which would mean a 3~5 fold increase in your revenue.

Anyway enough about that as all that will be covered later.

A useful page to visit when you are starting off is provided by Google. Have a look at this page for some advice from Google on AdSense Optimization.

As you can see from their "heat map" most of the locations that perform well are above the fold and to the left of the page. Again this is just a generic view of ad placement but it's a good starting point.

Successful AdSense placement also requires you to step into the shoes of your visitor. For example, if you have a page which is one long article an advert placed right at the end of the article may be a good idea (especially if you have little other navigation links at the bottom of your page. This is because the visitor will finish reading the article and then is presented with the ads when they are wondering "what next?". It's a great way of getting them to notice your advert and therefore increase the likelihood of them clicking on your ad.

Adsense Tips, Layout Optimization Tricks for Higher CTR

Google Adsense is perhaps the easiest way to attract advertisers from across the globe to your blog. Just submit your blog to Google for approval. If Google likes what it sees, it will place contextual ads linking to products likely to appeal to the readers. Each time a reader clicks a link, the advertiser pays Google a small fee, and Google splits that with you. 

The next interesting question - How to Make Money with Google Adsense ? Here are The best Google Adsense Tips and Tricks for making more money (profit) from Google adsense program.

a. Strictly follow the rules mentioned in Adsense policies. You will always earn more revenue from Adsense by playing it clean.

b. Never modify the Google Adsense HTML code.

c. Don't ask your friends or visitors to click on your Google ads. Do not include incentives of any kind for users to click on ads. Don't label the Google ads with text other than "sponsored links" or "advertisements.".

d. Don't click on your own ads - Google is much smarter than you think. You should not reload your pages excessively. If you are testing your website layout with Google adsense, follow some precautions. Or you can use the unofficial Google Adsense Sandbox Tool that is accessible from Firefox, IE and other browsers to see what kind of Google ads will be served based on content (website address URL) or keywords. 

e. Don't place ads in pop-up windows, error pages or even empty pages. 

f. Don't start a "adsense asbestos" or "home equity loan rates" website merely to make money from accidental clicks (accidence). You will never make money out these "made-for-adsense-only" websites. Instead, write on topics what you are passionate about. Don't waste your money on high-paying adsense keywords lists. 

g. For short articles, CTR is best when ads are placed just above the content

h. For long articles, CTR improves if ads are placed somewhere in middle of the content - visitors read the long content and then they are looking for more resources.

i. Use Text Ads instead of Image Ads as users get more options. If you still want to display image ads, consider ad formats that support image ads - Choose either the 300x250 medium rectangle or the 160x600 wide skyscraper - or both, if you display multiple ad units on a page.

j. Google Ads without background color and borders always perform better. Make the border color and background color same as your page background color.

k. Always put ads above the main fold. Make sure that the ad unit with the highest clickthrough rate is the first instance of the ad code that appears in the HTML. Since the first ad unit is always filled before the rest, you want to make sure that ad unit is located in the best placement on your page.

l. Try setting the ad link URL color to a lighter shade. If your text is black, you may make the adlink as light gray.

m. Go Wide - The large rectangle is the best paying adsense format (336x280) - The Google Adsense Publisher team also feels that the best formats are the wider ones - the ad formats that contain the widest individual ads. Try using the 336x280 large rectangle, 300x250 medium rectangle, or 160x600 wide skyscraper.

n. Placing images next to ads or above ads does help in attracting user attention.

o. Blend AdLinks with other navigation links or place horizontal adlinks at the top of your webpage. AdSense publishers are permitted to click on link unit topics on their web pages, provided that they do not click on any Google ads on the resulting page.

p. Organize an Adsense Party for your friends and colleagues - Request them to navigate your website, watch their activity - it will provide vital clues about which regions on your website draw more user attention. Try putting ads near those areas. (Thanks Darren)

q. You can put upto 3 adsense units on a page. Try putting a large skyscraper on the right navigation sidebar of your website. That area is close to the browser scrollbar. You can also add 2 AdSense for search boxes, 1 adlink unit and 1 referral button per product (i.e., 1 AdSense referral button and 1 Firefox plus Google Toolbar referral button).

r. The first few lines of your content are an important factor for determining what Ads are served on your webpage. That's the right place to put keywords in bold (strong or &ltb> tags) or header tags (h1, h2, etc).

s. Always select the setting to open Google Adsense search box results in a new browser window, so you won't lose your visitors. Click the Open search results in a new browser window checkbox and this add target="google_window" to your form tag.

t. Maximum people think the search box is on the top right corner. So you know where to put it.

u. Don't syndicate full content. If people can read everything from the newsreader window itself, why would they visit your website where your ads are.

v. Use URL channels to determine performance of individual pages. I track my most popular pages with Google Analytics, Statcounter and create a channel for each of the URL. You can even track Adsense Clicks with Analytics

w. For low CTR pages, try changing titles or adding more content to get better focused ads

x. Block low paying advertisers with Filters. Why to loose a visitor for 0.01 cents. Use Overture or Google Adwords Keywords tool to discover keywords that are less popular with advertisers.

y. The AdSense for search Top Queries report shows you what your users are looking for, by listing the 25 most common searches conducted through your AdSense for search boxes. Use this report to identify additional topics to add to your site, or to keep track of your most sought-after information. Focus and improve that content.

z. Not everyone has a RSS reader. Use RSS to Email services like FeedBlitz, Bloglet or Rmail to let users subscribe to your blog by email.

Remember, you are the best judge when it comes to choosing ad formats. Even Google doesn't offer the best advise always. For instance, in the visual heat map, Google suggests that webmasters are best served by positioning ads on the upper left-hand side of a Web page. But on the Google homepage, you will find ads on the far right.

Related Links

Display only relevant Google Ads in Blogs

Google Adsense Layout Tips for Maximum Clicks

Guide for Google AdSense Publishers

AdSense is one of the best tools you can use to draw dollars to your site. Remember that there is no easy way to make money on Adsense... it takes a lot of work. Adsense publishers on blogspot.com can integrate Adsense directly from Blogger Interface.

Yahoo Publisher Network YPN and Chitika eMiniMalls offer interesting Adsense alternatives. You can use this free online Sandbox tool to compare Google Adsense, Chitika eMiniMalls and Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) Program. 

Enter any keywords or a website address (URL), choose a geographic location (for Google), customize ad colors or choose from an existing color set and click "Udate Ads Display". You can try the Adsense, YPN or Chitika Services without signing up for any of these services.

Link Exchange Primer

One method of promotion that many webmasters engage in is link exchanges. A link exchange is an agreement whereby two webmasters agree to link to each other from their respective sites. The benefits of a link exchange are twofold. Firstly you gain direct traffic from people clicking on the link, secondly you gain another incoming link for search engine optimization purposes.

Not all link exchanges are created equal and this article is going to explain how to optimize your link exchange efforts so that you get the most benefit possible.

Evaluating Partners

The quality of the sites that you exchange links with reflects on your own site. It is important for your site's image that you only exchange links with sites of quality. If the sites you link to look cheap, you do too. A fair link exchange is one in which both sites receive the same benefit. This doesn't mean that both sites get the same amount of traffic though. A site with a high amount of traffic might not advertise it's off site links as much as a site with lower traffic and so the amount of visitors sent each way might even out.

You can simply ask the webmaster how much traffic he receives, or you could use a tool like Alexa.com to get an estimate. You should also note where he places his links, as compared to where you place yours.

You will need to measure the PageRank of your partner's site, you can do this using the Google Toolbar. Specifically you should know their overall PageRank power, or the PageRank of their links page. If a person links to you on every page of their site then their overall PageRank power will tell you how much PageRank the exchange will give you. If you also link to the person on every page of your site then your overall PageRank power will tell you how much overall PageRank (spread throughout your entire site) you will lose in this exchange.

If you both employ separate link pages you can calculate how much PageRank you gain and lose by dividing the PageRank of your or your partner's links page by the number of links (both internal and external) on that page.

Doing the above will allow you to measure both your partner's PageRank and traffic contribution to your site so that you can decide if it is worth while to exchange links with them.

Deceptive Practices

There are many ways to mask links so that search engines do not see them. This can be done for a valid reason, such as denying a search engine access to a shopping cart script, or to stop the flow of PR to an affiliate program when you sending them PR is not part of the affiliate agreement. However it is my opinion that using such methods in a link exchange is unethical unless your partner is fully educated about the matter and decides he wants to exchange links anyways.

Introduction to Viral Marketing

Viral marketing is an oft-used buzz word and it may not be entirely evident what it actually means. Viral marketing gets it's name from a virus obviously, so to understand how viral marketing works is to understand how a virus works.

A virus works by infecting a host cell and injecting it's own DNA so that the host cell starts replicating the virus until it can take no more and dies. Then, once where there was just one virus, there are hundreds or thousands, which then go on to infect other cells and replicate again, and again, and again, the virus replicates exponentially.

Like a virus cannibalizing cells, viral marketing works by enlisting your users, either wittingly or not, into promoting your site for you. So that one user enlists 2 more users who each enlist 2 more users who each enlist 2 more users, and so on, and so on. A viral marketing curve would thus look like an exponential curve with every user you get generating more traffic for you.

In a perfect viral marketing scenario each user would generate 2 or more new users. However, that doesn't always happen, especially with the most basic viral marketing applications.

You might in fact already be using viral marketing and not know it. For instance in it's most basic form viral marketing can be represented by an "Email to a Friend" script that lets one user tell another user about your site or product or article.

You can encourage this tell a friend behavior by appealing to the competitive side of a user if your site involves some sort of quiz, test, or game. Once the user gets their score you can ask them if they want to challenge their friends to beat their score and provide them with an email form for letting their friends know how they did.

Another method for getting your users to promote your site for you is with bribes. These bribes do not need to be monetary however. You can run a contest to see who promotes the most new users. The winner or winners could get a monetary reward but also you could simply offer more site features to them. If you run a forum this is very easy as you could offer them things like larger avatars, more private message storage, or other user enhancements. In this way you still get the viral traffic but it does not cost you anything.

If you run certain types of game sites you can provide in-game power or currency to users who do this. Many people game sites actually provide a unique link for each user and anyone who visits that URL ends up providing a power up of some sort to the user who provided the link. This is one of the most effective ways of promoting a new game and can approach the ideal viral situation I mentioned above.

The most successful types of viral marketing though tend to just be things that are either so interesting or so funny or so entertaining that people share them, post about them, and talk about them, so that a massive word of mouth campaign ends up delivering massive amounts of traffic for your site. It is very difficulty to engineer this type of viral marketing though, and it isn't going to be for every site, because it generally relies on some sort of pop culture multimedia content.

Viral marketing is one of the cheapest ways to promote your site, and as such there should be some sort of viral marketing component included with every website, even if it is just an email to a friend form. With other forms of marketing you end up paying for each visitor you get, with viral marketing you only need to get the ball rolling and eventually it could snowball into an avalanche of traffic. Only organic search engine optimization can approach the ROI (return on investment) of viral marketing.

So spend some time and brainstorm ways you can enlist your users to promote your site for you, the beauty of viral marketing is that, if you achieve the ideal viral scenario, you really only one good idea. One good idea to open the traffic flood gates.

Unleash the Power of Popups

Popups are wonderful tools. Yes, I am serious. Sure most articles about popups focus on how users hate them, how they're annoying, or things of that nature. This article is going to be different, it will explain how you can use popups to your advantage to draw attention to a part or parts of your site. The kicker is, these popups shouldn't end up being annoying.

Applications of Popups

Popups might be annoying, they might be hated, but they draw eyeballs better than just about anything else. You can use their abilities to great success by advertising parts of your site using popups. Now I'm not talking about signing up with an ad network and paying for popups at $X CPM. I'm talking about running your own popups, on your own site, to advertise your own site. One might wonder, if someone is already on your site why do you need to advertise your site to them? The answer to that question is that you are not going to advertise your whole site, you're going to advertise a specific portion of your site. To illustrate this effect I am going to run through a few examples.

Suppose you run an informative website that has an accompanying newsletter. You put the newsletter subscription box on every page of your site, but even if it is up at the top not every person is going to focus their attention on it. In contrast if you promote your newsletter through a popup your site visitors will be forced to focus attention on it and your subscription rates will greatly increase. If you do run a newsletter I suggest trying this for a week or a month and seeing the results for yourself.

Another application would be to promote a survey. Many websites run demographic surveys as a way to obtain data about their audience, as well as to gauge on their audience feels about their website. This data is useful when planning site expansions and when selling advertising to companies wanting to target a specific demographic. The problem is drawing attention to your survey can be a hard. Anything more than a text link takes up valuable real estate and a text link by itself is not going to get a large response. The solution again is to use popups.

Yet another application of popups is to promote products or services. This is especially true if you only have a few products you sell. Ecommerce, even on a small scale, can greatly increase the profitability of a content site. The problem is letting your visitors know that you have goods for sale. If you're just doing small scale ecommerce then the bulk of your website will still be your content and so putting links on menus or elsewhere will not be that effective since the links will be outnumbers by links pointing to your content. The solution again is to use popups. If you're only selling one or two products anyways you can in effect promote every product you sell through a single popup window.

The above applications are all good, but just doing them isn't enough. You need to be able to control your popups in order for them to be effective, and you also need to limit their annoyance or you may alienate your visitors.

Google Adsense Optimization Secrets

There are two ways to make more money from your website -- get more traffic or make more money from your existing traffic.

Google's Adsense program provides a great way for you to easily increase your current revenue, even if you already use it there are things you can do to increase your revenue with it.

In this article I am going to show you the methods I've used to double my own clickthrough rates as well as those of other website owners.

What You Can Control

One of the things that set Adsense apart from other banner ad programs is your ability to customize the code to fit the look of your site, and the wide variety of unit sizes available.

Advertisers write ads which are then shown on your site. As an advertiser I can increase my clickthrough rate by writing good ad copy. This means more targeted prospects visit my site. I then have the opportunity to "convert" them into my customers.

As a publisher I can control the color and placement of advertiser's ads - but I can't control the words. So in that way there is a limit on what kind of optimization I can perform. I can't make advertisers write better ads afterall, luckily though Google is constantly analyzing advertisements and ones that do not get clicked on end up filtered out or shown less often. In the end though color and placement simply draw attention, but it is the words that create the action (the click), and the words aren't under your control.

However, there is an unpublished feature called Google Hints that does give you some control. It does not allow you to edit ads, but it does allow you to give Google help on picking keywords for your site. You aren't supposed to use this feature without permission though.

As far as changing the color and appearance of your ads, don't worry, you don't need permission to do that. In fact Google encourages publishers to experiment to find the best placement. After several months as a publisher Google mailed me a little book which gave tips on increasing my clickthrough rates. You can visit Google's website to see an illustrated heat map whichs shows the best places for you to put Adsense ads.

How to perform Adsense Optimization

There are two different "theories" on how to place your Adsense code. One says blend it into your site, the other says make it stick out. My own experience has shown you need to blend it in but make it visible. By that I mean that you should blend your ads in enough so that they do not look like banners (which people tend to gloss over) but yet you don't want the ad to be too hard to see that no one clicks on it.

What approach do you take when building a new website? Do you create a nice layout and leave extra space for a few banner ads? This is the wrong way to do it. It is critical to think about Adsense when designing your website. If you want to maximize your earnings you can't just make a fancy design and plop the Adsense code in as an afterthought. By planning ahead you can insure maximum placement effectiveness. I specifically made a recent site with Adsense in mind. The result? Earnings 5 times higher than what I had predicted them to be.

So how is a website designed around Adsense? Match Adsense's font - that includes the size and color. Get rid of the CSS mouseovers on your links and make them plain and boring -- like Adsense. Also think about placement as you build the site.

MySQL Optimization Hints

Every programmer loves to optimize, even when we know we shouldn't. To satisfy your cravings MySQL has several keywords that can be placed in your SQL statement to give the database server an explicit optimization instruction.

I should point out that using the hints incorrectly will most likley cause your queries to perform worse, so be sure that it actually makes sense to use them before you go nuts. This means use EXPLAIN and read the documentation on each hint before using.

It's also a good idea to enclose the hints within a SQL comment, for example SELECT /*! SQL_NO_CACHE */ columns FROM table. This can help to make your application a bit more portable.

Let's take a look at some MySQL Optimization Hints:

SQL_NO_CACHE

The SQL_NO_CACHE hint turns off MySQL's builtin query caching mechanism for a particular query. You can help MySQL make the query cache more efficent by using this hint on queries that are highly dynamic (such as a keyword search, or a report that only runs nightly). Make sure query caching is turned on otherwise there is no need for this command.

Checkout my article on the MySQL Query Cache for more info.

SQL_CACHE

If you have setup MySQL Query Caching to explicit mode (set query_cache_type = 2) then you can use the SQL_CACHE hint to tell MySQL which queries to cache.

My article on the MySQL query cache also covers this hint.

HIGH_PRIORITY

The HIGH_PRIORITY hint can be used on SELECT or INSERT statements to let MySQL know that this is a high priority query. This hint will basically allow the query to skip in line.

LOW_PRIORITY

The LOW_PRIORITY hint can be used on INSERT and UPDATE statements. If you use the LOW_PRIORITY keyword, execution of the query is delayed until no other clients are reading from the table. This means that you may wait a LONG time, or forever on servers with a heavy read volume.

INSERT DELAYED

An INSERT LOW_PRIORITY statment will not return until the statement has been executed, which could possibly be forever. Instead you can use an INSERT DELAYED statement. It will return immediately, but it will still wait until other clients have closed the table before executing the statement.

I have written an article on MySQL Insert Delayed as well.

Note: INSERT DELAYED only works on MyISAM, MEMORY, and ARCHIVE tables.

STRAIGHT_JOIN

This hint will tell MySQL to join the tables in the order that they are specified in the FROM clause.

Use EXPLAIN to make sure that MySQL has not already figured out the optimal join order. And if you specify an ill order you can make MySQL do a lot more work than it needs to.

SQL_BUFFER_RESULT

This hint tells MySQL to put the result of the query into a temporary table. This will free up a table lock while the resultset is being sent to the client. So you would only want to use this on large result sets.

SQL_BIG_RESULT

The SQL_BIG_RESULT hint can be used with DISTINCT and GROUP BY SELECT statements. It as you might guess, tells MySQL that the result set will be big. According to the MySQL documentation, if invoked

MySQL directly uses disk-based temporary tables if needed, and prefers sorting to using a temporary table with a key on the GROUP BY elements.

SQL_SMALL_RESULT

AS you might guess this is pretty much the opposite of SQL_BIG_RESULT. When enabled MySQL uses fast temporary tables to store the resulting table instead of using sorting. Since this is typically the default route of the optimizer, this hint is often not needed.

If you want to dig deeper, have lots of articles on MySQL, and I can also recommend the book High Performance MySQL by Jeremy Zawodny and Derek Balling from O'Reilly.

AdSense Optimization Tips (from google)

Google recently held a webinar for AdSense publishers. They gave out some adsense optimization tips that they have gathered over the past few years. The transcript is pretty lengthy, so here's the summary:

• Ad Location - "the middle, above the fold location perform best." Also "if you have an article page with a long body of text, the bottom of that article is actually pretty successful"
• Ad Formats - "the top three formats are the 336x280 that you see on the page; the 300x250 medium rectangle; and then the 160x600 wide skyscraper." Additionally "the wider ad formats are doing better than the other ones and the reason is that they actually take up fewer lines. And so with every additional line, you have a chance of losing that interested user."
• Ad Colors - Pick colors that blend well with the site. Matches the background color, and compliments the site. Make them feel like a part of the site. They give an example where a customer went from blended background to yellow, and clicks dropped 65%
• Ad Blindness - if the colors stick out too much, readers may immediatly identify them as ads and not even look at them. Also frequent readers may stop reading ads so you could alternate positioning and colors to get their attention. "The more you blend in with the site, the less chance that ad blindness will occur."
• Experiment - this was a big theme in the webinar echoed by all experts. Use channels to test different colors, positioning, and formats to find out what works best. They show that you can more than double your revenue just by finding the right color, position, format combo.
• Image Ads - If you want to maximize revenue they recommend turning them on. I personally disable them in my account, because I find them too distracting/annoying to the user. Yes you may increase your CPC, but you will probably decrease impressions over time.
• Link Units - Don't take up much space, and also "allows the user to refine what they're interested in. So if they may not be interested in specific ads on your page, they might be interested in a particular topic, and by clicking on a link unit and a link in the link unit, they'll be able to specify that they're interested in that specific topic and get a lot more options and variety on the ads that might appear." I also bet google remembers what they click on and then tries to generate better ads for the page... just my speculation.
• AdSense For Search - You can use this for your site search, and you get a percentage of ad clicks.
• Focus on Content - Duh!
• Don't click on your own ads - One of the callers asked the question "I was just noticing that someone asked about clicking on their own ads and it says you're not supposed to. And I don't remember reading that. And I occasionally do click on the ads... So is that detrimental in some way?" - I can't believe they said that to google. Google's response was: "Yes, that's sort of chief among the terms and conditions".
• Impression Counter - Google confirmed that Page Impressions are counted when a public service ad (or alternate ad url or color) is displayed.
• Your site is unique - all these things may not matter, the best location, format, and color is different for every site. So again, go experiment.

Successful SEO Needs Effort, Not Quick Fixes

It would be nice if we could master search engine optimization, and procure high rankings simply by editing Meta tags, but thats just not going to happen.

The reason is because, in order to achieve SEO success, a combined effort of different, long-term methods is required. There is no one quick fix that will solve the problem.

Nevertheless, despite the fact that there are no easy solutions, people still insist on using various techniques to try and find them. For instance, it is possible to quickly generate high rankings from words that no internet users will search for. However, even if you rank number one, if no one uses the words, your business will flop.

In addition, the following are some more quick fixes that many people try, and fail at:
Changing or Adding Meta Tags " Search engines are limited when it comes to deciding what sites should be shown in the result list of a keyword search. Meta keyword tags assist search engines and help them select the pages with the most relevancy that pertain to the keyword of a Web surfer.

Of course, there is a difference between a public search engine, like Yahoo, and an internal search engine. A public search engine contains virtually every webpage they are aware of. Therefore, they cant trust all the Meta tags they find, as not all website have been designed to provide the internet users with relevant information on the keyword they are searching for. Some website have been set up for the sole purpose of advertising and generating traffic. Thus, the goal of a public search engine is to weed out these irrelevant websites and help searchers find exactly what they are looking for.

An internal search engine, on the other hand, consists of only a small amount of web pages or products. Therefore, it is less difficult for the search engine to produce the most relevant pages. Moreover, the Meta tags that are present on the internal search engine on your site are trustworthy; because your goal is to help your visitors find what they are looking for.
When all is said and done, by adding or changing the Meta tags on your website doesnt quickly or slowly fix anything. The bottom line is this method will have not effect on the result of your SEO traffic.

Increasing Web Content " Increasing web content can boost your SEO success, but this is something that takes plenty of time. Sure you can quickly increase the content by writing useless puff pieces, using auto-generating software, or ripping off content from other sites, but none of these methods are actually going to improve your business profits in the long run.
The only web content that is going to secure your success is information that is relevant and valuable. It takes time and experience to generate this type of information, so dont try to cheat your way to the top with wasted words or words that are not your own. Stay true to your business and keep your integrity.

Link Popularity - One of the most popular quick fix methods out there are link schemes. Anyone who does business on the internet knows how valuable links are. Links are what help to increase web traffic and increase website visibility. That being said, you will want to avoid becoming a link farm, because if your goal is to only get links to increase your SEO rankings, youre not going to take your business anywhere.

As tempting as it might sound, you need to ignore link popularity. Your focus should be on your target market, and how you can reach them to let them know your website exists. Thus, you need to market your website, which means you may have to dish out a little money to publicize your website in local newspapers, magazine, or even in a television ad. The more your site is recognized, the better chance it has of ending up in the right niche markets to attract the right attention.

If you want to be successful with search engine optimization, you need to commit yourself to achieving long-term results. This does take patience, but is necessary if you want to come out on top. The following tips can help bring you closer to your high ranking goal:

Tip 1: Conduct thorough research for keyword phrases " use effective keyword programs such as KeywordDiscovery or WordTracker. The paid programs of their software will help you generate the best keyword phrases for your business.

Tip 2: Valuable web content " Dont create a website that is overrun by graphics. SEO spiders will crawl right over these graphics and pass you by. Your website needs a reasonable amount of web content that is pumped full of valuable information. It needs to be clear and concise, and should also convey your website message which needs to include the keywords youve selected to rank high for.

Tip 3: Relevancy " Ensure that all your link anchor text and title tags are relevant to one another, as well as to the web content that is presented on your site.

Tip 4: Patience is a virtue " It will take almost a year, or even longer, before you begin to see any traffic from the natural results of search engines. Try not to let this get you down. Take this time to continue to improve your site and give the competition a run for their money. Eventually, your persistence, patience and positive thinking will pay off.

Always remember, it doesnt matter how well you market your website, you are not going to achieve overnight success. Just like most things in life, taking the easy way out when it comes to marketing your business online isnt going to create you long lasting success. If you want an impressive future that provides you with plenty of reward, you need to spend the time and money, and do things right the first time.

Author: Mark Nenadic

Adsense Tips for Bloggers 8 - Miscellaneous Adsense Tips

We have unpacked our Adsense Equation in detail and have given numerous tips for maximising Adsense Revenue. Whilst there are occasions that Adsense doesn’t perform as well on some websites for no particular reason as others we can safely predict that if you work on each of the four areas you should see an increase in the amount of the cheque that Adsense sends you at the end of each month. Remember though that your revenue will only be as high as your weakest link - work on all elements of the equation - not just one or two.

As well as the proceeding tips there are a number of other things that might be helpful to know in using Adsense that we couldn’t find a place for in previous posts.

Outgoing Links - One theory going around is that pages with fewer outgoing links result in higher click-throughs. Give your readers fewer options of links to click on and they are more likely to click on your ads. This MAY be true, but don’t let it determine your content. My Digicam site has many outward links because it is a page that acts as a hub of information from around the web. I’ve not noticed that this makes my revenue levels suffer - in fact I suspect its because of these helpful links that people come to my site.

Using Frames - If your site uses frames I’m told you should make sure your ads are placed in the frame where you content is or else it will not provide relevant ads for your content. Thanks Greg for this tip.

Don’t click your own ads - It might be an obvious way to get a few click throughs and increase your Adsense revenue - but Google is very clever at working out if your clicks are genuine or not. Its not hard to track IP addresses and to see patterns emerging between where clicks are coming from. It is not worth the risk of being banned from the program for a few cents per click. Especially don’t click ads from the same IP address that you check your stats from - this is asking for trouble.

Don’t encourage your readers to click on your ads. Its against the agreement that you enter into with Google. Once again they will track you down if you break these rules. I’ve seen a number of people who have been banned from Adsense for this. Let your ads speak for themselves.

Monitor your Statistics. Many adsense users check their stats all day everyday. Whilst this might be overkill (its like watching grass grow) it is useful to track what is happening at this end of your campaign. Use channels to monitor which pages are doing well and which are not. Tweak pages that are not doing well and make more pages similar to those that do.

Alternative Ads - Use alternative ads for when Adsense cannot serve ads to your page. When they cannot find a suitable ad for your page Adsense will serve you with a ‘Public Service Announcement’ (PSA). These ads may be for a good cause, but they will not relate to the content of your page and will not earn you any money. Instead Adsense allows you to nominated an alternative ad that they will serve into the position instead of the PSA. I use Amazon for this, but also have experimented with affiliate alternative ads Affiliate Sensor which I find works really well as it lets you choose from a wide range of affiliate products and still target them to your site.

That is the end of our Adsense tips for Bloggers series. Feel free to submit your own Adsense tips and strategies in comments below. You also might like to check out some of the following alternative Adsense Tips pages for more tips from around the web. You might also like to check out the the Chitika eMiniMall Ad system which I make most of my income off these days. I reviewed it here and have a series of tips for getting the most out of your eMiniMalls.

Article Source: www.problogger.net

Adsense Tips for Bloggers 7 - Well Placed and Designed Ads

Revenue = high readership + high paying ads + relevant ads + well placed and designed ads

The forth element of our Adsense Equation is that of having well designed and optimally placed Adsense Ads. I’ve found that ad positioning is incredibly important. I remember shifting the ads on one of my blogs a while back and being over the moon to discover the next morning that the move had doubled the click through rates that I’d had over night! Its worth doing some tweaking.

Adsense Ad placement and design is an issue that is often hotly debated in Adsense discussion forums. It seems that each Adsense user has their own strategy - some like ads that blend in, others like ads that stand out from the rest of the page. Some like ads in banner positions, others in skyscrapers, others like to put them right in the middle of content. In my experience, different strategies work on different blogs at different times. The key tip I’ll give you is to experiment. Try new positions and design and track your results. One of the best ways you can do this is by using Adsense Tracker which is an amazing tracking package for adsense which gives you much more control over what and how you track your adsense performance. It does cost to purchase the tracker but in my experience you’ll make your money back pretty quickly by using it to adapt your Adsense strategies.

Let me also share a few other tips that you might like to experiment with.

Blend - Most successful Adsense users seem to be taking the approach of blending their ads into the overall theme of their page. This often means making the ad’s background (and often border) the same (or similar) colour to the background of the page and making the title and URL the same as links of the rest of the page. In this way the ad does not stand out as being ‘ad-like’. Having said this I know of a few bloggers who take the opposite approach and make their ads as bright and ugly as possible in the hope of attracting the attention of their readers. I don’t

 subscribe to this because I think it cheapens the overall feel and look of a page.

In Content - More and more bloggers (and webmasters) are putting their ads inside the main body of their posts. In this way the ads are prominent and more likely to be seen by readers as they read your content. If your text wraps around the ads this can be quite effective. On the flipside of this argument is that you may run the risk of frustrating your readers with dominant ads. People reading content online are a fickle bunch and get easily turned off by blatant advertising.

Above the Fold - it is generally accepted that your Adsense ads should be placed towards the top of your page and be visable without your reader having to scroll down. Studies show that blog visitors stay on average for only 60 or so seconds, many without scrolling down. If you ads are hidden towards the bottom of your page you decrease the likelihood of them ever being seen let alone clicked.

Left is Best - Google has put together a ‘heat map’ which is probably the best thing that you can look at when thinking about the positioning of your ads. You’ll see from it that they have found that ads on the left hand side of the page do much better than those on the right hand side.

Too Dominent? - The position and design of your Adsense ads needs to be balanced with the overall purposes and design of your blog. What is the priority of your blog - is it to make money or is it something else. I have a number of blogs - and place ads differently on each depending upon their purposes. For example this blog is not a commercial blog - I’m more interested in building relationships, sharing and hearing others ideas and updating those interested in what I’m doing with my life. As a result my Adsense Ads are in a less prominent banner position and are designed to fit with the overall theme of the blog. However on my Digital Photography Blog there is obviously a more commercial intent (as well as it being something of a passion and hobby). As a result I experiment with more prominent Adsense ads (usually skyscraper and within content).

I cannot stress enough how useful it is to experiment. What works on one blog doesn’t always work on another. I’ve also noticed that if you have a blog with regular and loyal readers that it is good to keep things changing as your readers tend to get used to the way your blog is and become blind to things like Adsense Ads. I notice that when I move my ads around that it often creates higher click throughs for a few days - until the blindness kicks in again. Joel Comm’s What Google Never Told You About Making Money with Adsense is an excellent E-book written with lots of good tips on positioning your adsense ads if you’re wanting to get another person’s opinion on this topic.

Article Source: www.problogger.net