Get More Traffic By Commenting
Source : http://www.frontpageblogs.com/?p=100
This must be the most overused term in Blogging Terminology. Not only do They (Pro-Bloggers) recommend it, they even stress it out. Well the big question is, how does commenting really drive traffic to your Blog?
Before posting comments to other blogs, you usually see this:
So the first thing you do is enter your name followed by your email address, then your website (very important - this is the one that drives the traffic) and finally your comment (Most important). And the one thing that I’ve noticed is that though a lot of people use this as one of their means of driving traffic, not all of them I believe have been successful with it. Why? Well because of a few things that I’ve noticed namely: First, some people dont put in their REAL Name. I wonder why? Well in this business I think you should if you want people to recognize you. I go by the username “amberlights09″ and trust me when I’m commenting, I don’t use that as my name. Next and the most important is the content of the comment. Well if you want people to recognize you and click on your name (which is linked to your site), you’d better come up with a good comment. When I say good, doesn’t necessarily have to be a very praising comment like “That’s great! Thanks!” or “Nice post! Keep up the good work!”. This is one thing I’ve noticed and probably is becoming a habbit or even worse a cheap shot to get to be known.
Tips on Commenting on other Blogs
- I think we should go back to basics. Want to comment on other blogs and get to be known or use these High-Traffic Blogs as one of your sources of traffic? Please, read and understand the article.
- When you make your comment, please make sure you are making sense… at all. Refer to tip number 1.
- Be careful of what you are about to type. Remember a lot of people visit to these blogs and by just being careless with words might bring out a different meaning to the readers especially the Blogger. Thus, use positive scripting when giving feedback. Try to replace negative words like “You are terribly wrong” or “I dont believe in you”. You may want to try phrases like “I may have another approach on this one” or “Maybe we could also look into it at this point of view”.
- Try to get into a conversation. If you are lucky to get the attention of the blogger by your outstanding comment, the better. You see if the blogger recognizes you and replies to your comment, then you’ve just hit the cherry of the bull’s eye!
- Put your thoughts on what you are about to type. You may not have to agree completely to everything he says but at least give your honest opinion. I think that every Pro-Blogger is open to feedback.
- Be honest with your comment. Don’t try to get attention by trying hard to make an over rated comment or comming up with a very praising one.
- Last but not the least, (This is solely based on my opinion and you may disagree with me) don’t promote your site when commenting. I just think it’s not polite. But then again, that’s just my own honest opinion.
So there you have it. All of these were based on my very own experiences and I would appreciate your feedback. Hope you guys learned something.
Blackhat & Whitehat SEO
What is Blackhat SEO?
Blackhat SEO is defined most easily as methods used to trick or manipulate search engines improve your rankings. So anything that the search engine forbids you from doing, like using doorway pages, cloaking, and hidden text, are not good practices. Blackhat SEO results usually in a ban from the search engine. Just remember that if you get into this, the search engine will eventually ban you, and you will lose all that potential traffic you could have got from them by using whitehat SEO.
What is Whitehat SEO?
Whitehat SEO is the practicing of SEO techniques that the search engines don’t consider “illegal”. Whitehat SEO results in not getting banned from search engines, and being respected among the webmaster community. Most people frown down on people who cheat, and use blackhat SEO to get there pages ranked high. But they will pay the price by getting banned later down the road.
Blackhat SEO Techniques
Overview
Don’t think I’m taking the time to write these blackhat seo techniques so that you can learn how to blackhat SEO your site. I’m writing this so that someone new to SEO can benefit from knowing what the search engines consider cheating. Often times, webmasters get their sites banned from google and other search engines because they followed a tutorial or instructions they found online that promissed to get them ranked better. So the following will help you recognize what is blackhat SEO and what is whitehat SEO.
Getting Banned
Google, and other search engines, have one thing all in common. They hate when people try to cheat their engines. The search engines want to give their searchers the most relevent results as possible. So if someone gets their site to #1, and #5 on the list is much more accurate, this isn’t a very good search engine. Or is the search engine a good one, and their is just a blackhat SEO person behind the site? That is usually true. If no one cheated to get their site to the top, search engines would have much better, quality results in their listings. This is why Google and other search engines have set rules to ban websites who use this technique.
Doorway Pages
Doorway Pages are used by webmasters to improve their search engine rankings. Doorway pages are pages packed with keywords, and designed solely for the search engines. You can recognize a doorway page easily. Doorway pages have alot of nonsence content, that is considered spam from the user. So a doorway page has a link to the real site, which has the content that the user wants. This is a no-no.
Hidden Text
Hidden text is used by webmasters to try to get more keywords into their pages, but this time, without spamming the page with keywords that bothers the end user. Hidden text is made by making the text the same color as the background, so you can’t see the text. Alot of search engines actually look for this now-a-days. This may temporarily raise rankings, but once Google catches on to what your doing, your out of their!
Link Farms
A Link Farm is a page that is created for the pure reason to achieve a higher PageRank, and better SERPs. Free-For-All links pages are often considered link farms by Google. These pages usually require a link back. So if you link to them, then Google sees your linking to a page thats not in the good side of the neighboorhood. This isn’t good, and might result in a PageRank penalty, or possible a ban. But remember, no incomming links will ever hurt you, since you can’t control who links to you. So don’t worry if a bad site links to you. It won’t matter.
EMail Spamming
EMail Sapmming, while maybe not directly related to SEO, is not a good thing. But I thought I might as well bring it up. Let me just say; don’t do it!
Selling your PageRank
Google dosn’t like when websites boast that they have a high PR, and then in result, sell links on high PageRank pages purely to get the page they are linking to to get a higher PageRank. But don’t get me wrong. It is perfectly ok to sell a link for the purpose of benefiting the page your linking to with traffic, along with the search engine benefits. But don’t sell links on pages ONLY because it has a high PR.
Identical Content
Google dosn’t like to find content that has been used on more than one page. So if you developed a site, and then copy and pasted the files to a new domain, and kept the old site on the old domains, Google dosn’t like it. So basicly dont use or copy & paste content from page to page in order to increase your indexed pages.
Multiple Domains
Having multiple domains redirect to a main site is ok. But if you take those domains and put the same content on all of them, and link from one to the other within your circle of domains, that isn’t good. This usually results in more backlinks, and better SERPs. But Google dosn’t like it, and its not recommended.
Too Many Links
It is recommended that you don’t link to more than 100 URLs on one page. This won’t result in a ban from Google, but it will drain your PageRank, which will be discussed later.
Summary
If you do not practice any of the above techniques, you will most likely be all right. But there are some techniques that Google still dosnt like, like scripts that make it look like you have many more pages then you do, and others. So if anything you hear on the net sounds like it MIGHT have a long term negative effect, or something you think a search engine woulden’t like, don’t do it. And if your unsure, post on a forum, or a related place, and ask SEO experts. Make sure you get 3 or more people’s opinions though. In conlcusion, Don’t turn into a blackhat seo!
Search Engine Optimization Guide
E-commerce is a cut throat business. You have to arm yourself with the proper know-how and the tools to make your site a cut above the rest. Each day, more and more sites are clambering to optimize their rankings in websites and if you lose your guard, you may just get trampled on and be left in the abyss filled with so many failed e-commerce sites.
Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a term widely used today by many e-commerce sites. For the past few years and the next ten years or so, search engines would be the most widely used internet tool to find the sites that they need to go to or the product or information they need.
Most people that use search engines use only the ten top search results in the first page. Making it to the first page, more so to the top three is a barometer of a sites success in search engine optimization. You will get a higher ratio of probability in being clicked on when you rank high. The more traffic for your site, the more business you rake in.
But, it is essential to grab a hold of that spot or make your ranking even better. As I aforementioned, each day is a new day for all e-commerce sites to make them selves rank higher using search engine optimization. It is imperative to make your site better and better everyday.
So just what is search engine optimization and do you have to use it? The answer to why you have to use it is an easy one. You need search engine optimization to be number one, or maybe at least make your site income generating.
With search engine optimization you can get the benefit of generating a high traffic volume. Let’s just say you get only a turn out of successful sales with 10 to 20 percent of your traffic. If you get a hundred hits or more a day, you get a good turn out of sales already. If you get only twenty to ten hits a day, you only get one or two if not any at all.
So once again, what is search engine optimization? Search engine optimization is utilizing tools and methods in making your site top ranking in the results of search engines. Getting yourself in the first page and better yet in the top half of the page will ensure that your site will generate public awareness of your site’s existence and subsequently generate more traffic, traffic that could lead to potential income and business.
Search engine optimization requires a lot of work to be fully realized. There are many aspects you have to change in your site or add as well to get search engine optimization. These will include getting lots of information about the keyword phrases that are popular in regards to your sites niche or theme.
You may also need to rewrite your sites contents so that you could get the right keyword phrases in your site without making it too commercial but light and informative. There are certain rules and guidelines to be followed with making your site’s content applicable and conducive to search engine optimization.
You will also need to collaborate with many other sites so that you could get link exchanges and page transfers. The more inbound and outbound traffics generated by sites among others are one of the components search engines uses to rank sites.
Try to search the internet for many useful help. Tips, guidelines and methods for search engine optimization are plenty to be found. Read many articles that can help you optimize your site in search engine results. The more knowledge and information you gather the better. This will all help you in getting those high rankings. This may require a little time and effort in your part but the benefits will be astounding.
If you can part with some money, there are many sites in the internet that can help you in search engine optimization. There are many sites that help in tracking keyword phrases that can help your site. There are also some content writers that have lots of experience in making good keyword laden content for your sites that have good quality.
Act now and see the benefits garner with search engine optimization. All of these will result to better traffic and more business for your site and company.
Source : http://www.dnlodge.com
Choosing The Keywords For Good Seo
Choosing The Keywords Your Website Should Target
Choosing which keywords your website should target is perhaps the most important decision you can make when beginning search engine optimization.The aim of keyword research is to discover which words and phrases will not only bring traffic to your website, but more importantly, bring targeted traffic to your site. Targeted traffic is the traffic that will generate most sales as the searchers will actually get what they are looking for when they enter your website.
Before you use the first keyword that pops into your head it’s wise to first do some research, firstly to find out how difficult it will be to get a good ranking for your chosen keywords and also the number of people that enter those keywords into the search engines, which will give you some idea on the amount of traffic you can expect.
Research Your Keyword
In order to research your keywords you can use WebLink SEO's Overture Keyword Research tool. The keyword research tool enables you to enter a word or phrase and view other similar words/phrases that people have search for, and also how many competitor websites there are for each keyword suggestion. This enables you to search for niche keywords that do not have high levels of competition while also generating targeted traffic to your website.
For example, lets pretend you operate a website that sells wedding cakes. We can see from the Overture Keyword Research tool that the number of people who typed “wedding cakes” into Overture was 155,018 for the previous month.
However, let’s assume the product or service your website offers is not available to a global audience, but rather you want to target a local audience. There’s little point targeting the phrase “wedding cakes” as the majority of people that come to your site won’t be able to buy any wedding cakes as they might not be in the same country as the shop itself! You might get a large amount of traffic to your site, but it’s unlikely you will get good conversion rates, and also the additional time you spent optimizing for this popular phrase could be wasted. Instead you should try to get ‘Targeted Traffic’. This is where you get traffic to your site that is most likely to lead to a sale.
So let’s say our wedding shop is in New York. Rather than targeting the keyword “wedding cakes” you should target “wedding cakes new york”.
If we now look at the overture keyword tool again, we can see that the number of people that type “wedding cakes new york” was less than the number that typed “wedding cakes”, but because we've targeted a more specific phrase, the visitors you do get will be more likely to lead to a sale. It will also be much easier to get a high ranking in the search engines for the term “wedding cakes new york” as there is less competition for that particular phrase.
Analyzing The Competition
So, we now have an idea of what phrase we want to target, let’s look at how difficult it will be to get on the first page in Google for that phrase.
At this stage I want to introduce a new concept – Google PageRank. The way Google (and other search engines) decide which order websites appear in its results is to look at how many websites provide links to a certain website. The more links a website has, the more popular it is deemed to be, and the better the position in the search engine it will receive. This is currently the major factor that determines what position a website will appear in the search engine results. There are other factors (which I will cover in later guides), but this is fundamentally the main factor that the search engines use.
Google PageRank offers a measure of how many incoming links (or backlinks as they’re known) a website has. The PageRank itself is an exponential scale between 0-10, the higher the PageRank of a website, the more links it has coming into the website.
If I use the Search Engine tool in WebLink SEO we can see the Google PageRank for the top 10 results for the term “wedding cake new york”.
I can see that my website would need a PR of at least 4 to stand any chance of getting in the top 10 results. So how many incoming links to my site would I need to get a PR4? Here is a chart that approximately shows how many links are needed to achieve a certain PR from pages with a particular PR.
From the chart you can see for example that if you want to achieve a PR of 5 you need 18 PR5 pages linking to you, 3 PR6's or just one PR7. This of course is just an approximation. If the page has 30 links instead of 50, more PR would be passed and less links are needed to achieve the same PR.
I hope this guide has helped you get started with optimizing your website, and introduced the basics of search engine optimization. In the following guides I will walk you through the process of optimizing your website for the target keyword, and the different methods that can be used to get links from other websites.
EZ Create Watermarks With Watermarktool
Those who dabble in photography or digital art work know the importance of watermarks. Watermarks consist of visible marks that appear on top of an image that can be identified by the source of the work. They are used to deter others from copying and reusing the image. Watermarks can easily be created in a photo editor of choice such as Adobe Photoshop but why use a program when you can use an online solution which takes care of the hard work for you. Introducing Watermarktool. Site Info:
No user registration is necessary to use Watermarktool. Also, the service is completely free. Since January 1, 2008, over 28,000 watermarks have been generated.
Creating Watermarks:
Using the service is fairly straight for
ward. On the home page, there are a number of different configuration options from which to choose from. These include:
Upload: Watermarktool supports the ability to upload an image but it must be 100KB or smaller in size.
Text: Configure the text that is displayed via your Watermark
Font: Choose between a s
elect number of fonts
Text Size: The size of you
r Watermark text
Repeat: Decide whether your pattern should repeat or not
Position: Choose
which direction the watermark should repeat
Text Color: The color of your watermark text
Text Transparency: The lower the transparency level, the harder it will be to see the watermark
Box Color: This is the color of the watermark box
Box Transparency: How transparent the watermark box appears
Results:
Using the Problogg
er header logo as an example, this is what I was able to come up with. The first image is the configuration I used. The second image showcases a before and after image.
Final Notes
As you can see, the watermark I generated is not complicated but I feel it has enough complexities to deter others from using the image. The most common mistake I see with regards to watermarks is that, the watermark sometimes overpowers the image. Watermarks are not an end all be all to protect against others using copyrighted images but they certainly help. Also, if you use a unique watermark that only you can identify, spotting frauds on the net becomes pretty easyCreate A Media Kit To Attract Advertisers To Your Blog
In this post Marko from How to Make My Blog takes a look at how to develop a Media Kit to attract advertisers to your blog.
Having direct advertisers is a very lucrative way of monetizing your blog. Ads are one of the few ways in which a blogger can capitalize on existing blog traffic without any additional work, such as developing products like e-books or providing services like search engine optimization. First step for a blogger to attract sponsors to his blog is to create an online blog media kit.
What is a blog media kit?
Your blog advertising media kit should give potential sponsors the chance to learn behind-the-scenes facts and stories to supplement the content on your blog. Think of the blog media kit as a resume for your blog. It is a package of information that introduces your blog to interested advertisers and answers their questions about it.
Why should I develop an online blog media kit?
A blog advertising media kit is a sales tool for selling advertising on your blog and it is a must-have for any blogger who wants to monetize his blog content via direct advertising contracts. Your blog media kit should be used to get potential advertisers excited about advertising on your blog.
I recommend developing an online blog media kit as a professional looking document that potential advertisers can download from your blog, that you can send out to companies that contact you, and that you can send out to companies that you contact directly.
How to write your own blog media kit?
Remember the key practices of writing blog content online. Employ scannable text by using these suggestions:
- low word count
- one idea per paragraph
- sub-headings
- highlight keywords and paragraphs
- bulleted lists
What should I include in the blog media kit?
The blog media kit should provide your potential advertisers with immediate access to advertising rates, key demographics, blog traffic information and your contact details. It should include everything a potential advertiser might need to know to help him decide to buy advertising space on your blog.
Make sure your blog media kit information is accurate, consistent and up to date. Update your media kit regularly as your blog grows and expands.
Blog profile
Start simple by tailoring your blog media kit to describe your blog, define your blog values, describe your blog content and you personally.
Blog target audience/traffic
It is important to show the potential sponsor what they are buying. Your blog traffic and your blog target audience are two primary motivators for the advertiser. Keep working to build your blog traffic and be ready to share your blog traffic stats, number of RSS subscribers, and number of email newsletter subscribers.
Add credibility
Add credibility to your blog by including external, third-party references. Include links from popular blogs to your content and also include links of your guest articles on other popular blogs. Also include third party rankings of your blog like Google PageRank and Alexa Ranking.
Be prepared to back up your blog traffic stats with graphics from your Google Analytics account. You may also need to grant the potential advertiser the access to your Analytics report. Google Analytics features a very safe option to do that without giving away your username and password.
Search engine rankings
When people search the Internet for keywords relevant to your potential advertiser and they end up on your blog, you have a key selling point. One of the most powerful strategies of selling advertisements is to show the potential sponsor how you rank in search engines for their product / service related keywords. Compile a list of keywords that you rank for that you can include in your blog media kit.
Advertising options / rates
Let the potential advertiser know what kind of advertising options you offer on your blog. Include the position of ads, the size of ads, show it by including a screenshot which has the potential ad position marked. Do not forget to include pricing for each of these ads.
Contact details
Finally make sure to include all the contact details needed to get in touch with you.
What to do when I have collected all the information?
Compile all the information into a nice looking PDF or DOC file and provide access to it from your Advertise here page. When potential advertisers look for advertising options on your blog, they will be able to request you to send the media kit to them and find out anything that they might need to know.
5 Tips for Making Widget Ads Perform Better on Your Blog
In my last post I talked about 4 Widget Ad options that bloggers should test in the lead up to Christmas - in this post I want to give a few quick tips for beginners to keep in mind as they test and optimize these types of ads.
1. Keep Ads Relevant to Content
To make any kind of product ad or affiliate program work the product that you advertise needs to match what you’re writing about as closely as possible.
Most of the widget ad units mentioned in the last post allow you to choose what product (or at least category of product) that will be featured in the ad - so make sure you choose products carefully to match your blog (and individuals posts) topics.
2. Position Prominently
These Widget Ads work best when your readers see them. Now there’s an obvious statement if I ever heard one - yet I see so many ads on blogs that are likely to go unseen. Make sure your ads are in a part of your blog that will be seen by readers.
This means putting them above the fold, as close to content as possible or perhaps even underneath posts (people pause at the end of a post and look for something to do - an ad can work well there despite it being low on the page).
Avoid putting them in sidebars unless you have no other option to do that.
3. Multiple Ad Units Per Page
A logical way to increase the earnings of these types of ads is to show more than one per page. If you have one high on the page include a second one lower on the page also.
Don’t fall into the trap of stuffing your blog with too many ads - but don’t be afraid to have more than one on a page.
4. Blend Your Ad Units
Each of the widget ads can be customized in terms of size and design so don’t just let the ads sit on your page in their default appearance.
I find that ads that blend into your blog’s design a little work best. Try making the colors of links in ads the same color as links on your blog, remove borders (or at least make them the same color as your blog background) and where given the choice use fonts for the ads that don’t clash too much with your blogs font.
5. Track Your Results
Most of the widget units mentioned in the previous post have the ability to be tracked in one way or another. Utilize this and work out what works best for your blog. You will find that some ad positions, design and products will work better than others - once you work out what works best stick to it.
What tips would you ad? What have you found works best with Widget Ad Units on Blogs?
4 Widget Ad Options To Make Money On Your Blog This Christmas
Remember - this is a time of year where those using the web are in a buying frame of mind and are more likely to click on product ads that they might see. Here are four options that present products visually:
1. Shopzilla Publisher Program
This program has been something I’ve experimented with more and more of late and it’s producing quite good results. It presents publishers with a variety of widget type ads with a large variety of options in terms of design, sizes and types of ads.
2. Chitika
Regular readers know that I’m a big fan of Chitika. It’s my second largest earner from blogs (2nd only to AdSense) and performs brilliantly on product related sites - particularly at this time of year.
As with all of these types of ad units it does best when you can make the ads show products that relate to what you’re writing about (using the ‘keywords’ feature that they’ve built in). Payment for these ads is on a CPC (cost per click) basis (although premium publishers also get an impression based bonus).
Chitika offer a variety of ad units including their eMiniMalls, Linxx (in text ads), Multiple Product Units (pictured below) and more.
Also check out their ‘premium ad unit’ that shows special ads only to those arriving on your blog from search engines. The ads that these premium ad units show are contextually relevant to the keywords that people are searching for in the search engine - they are doing very very well for me.
3. WidgetBucks
This is another CPC based widget ad unit that many publishers have found to convert well. You again get a good range of options when it comes to design and sizes. Here’s how they look (I chose a Christmas theme).
The only downside of WidgetBucks is that not everyone will be able to see the ads - if your readers are not within geographic areas that they serve ads to they’ll get impression based ads instead.
4. Amazon Associates Widgets
The Amazon associates program has quite a few widget type ad units that will help drive people into their store and increase the chances of earning you an affiliate commission. Of course these differ from other ads featured in this list in that you only earn something if people make a purchase.
Some of the ad units include: Deals Widget, Search Widget, Carousel Widget
There are plenty of other types of widgets to choose from also.
When These Widget Ads Work Best
The above options won’t work equally for everyone. While this time of year increases your chances of earnings with all of them - they all work best when there is relevancy between what you’re blogging about and what is displaying in the ads.
Blogs with a product related focus (or posts with a specific product being featured) will always out perform putting these ads on a general focused blog.