SEO - When building your site, and trying to figure out how to get more traffic to come when you are done, it doesn’t take long to come across SEO sites and sites that say they have the lowdown on SEO. Some know what they are talking about, some don’t. I’m not going to try to say that I am the all knowing SEO swami, but I’ve done a bit of work with it on various sites I’ve built and seen what does and doesnt work.
    
     SEO Fallacies - Because so many people have no real idea how search engines work, it stands to reason that the entire subject of SEO techniques is shrouded in a cloud of mystery and wrapped in a blanket of B.S. I’ll go over some of the different statements I’ve read about SEO and put down what I have found out by just simply asking.

     SEO is very easy! - Not so fast. While there isn’t really anything extremely difficult about SEO, its not so easy if you don’t know what you’re doing. SEO is not just dumping a link to your website in a search engine directory. Your site needs to be streamlined so that when you do get your into the queue for the spiders and or bots from a search engine to crawl your site, that they wont be turned off by the big steaming pile of code that is your site.

Continue Reading »

     Well obviously from the numbers of last month, it looks like all the basic components are in place on the site to generate revenue. Now the focus would seem to be getting the traffic to come in. Traffic gets brought in many different ways. The most common way is through things like meta tags, and SEO techniques. The topic for the next couple days (maybe weeks) will be generating traffic for your site/blog.

     Before you even start trying to push traffic to your site, you need to make sure your site is in good working order. Look over your site for spelling errors, grammar mistakes, missing images, etc. Also, check all the links, make sure they work. There are quite a few places on line that will do this for you, you can also by software for this task, and last but not least, you can just check the links by hand. Links that don’t work are going to be a thorn in your side, and pretty much kill your google ranking because google spiders sites and links to and from that site to dictate your page rank. If the links are broke, well or rank wont be as high as it could.

     Ok, so now you have your site set up. You have spellchecked it within an inch of its life, checked all links, have some brand new shiny content just waiting to be read by your future audience. Now what? Well now, you need to let the world know where you are on the net, and you do that with search engines. Over the next couple posts, I’m going to go from beginning to end on how to get your site more traffic, and put that same information to use right here on THIS site and see how it actually affects traffic. One thing I do know, is that when dealing with search engines, instant gratification is not a thought. It takes weeks, even months to get indexed by a search engine, and if you don’t do it right, well you’ve wasted that time, and then will waste the same amount again, after you go a couple weeks before figuring out that your page rank, meta tags, or a hundred other things are probably not right. So, I’ll take the time to go through different techniques and check them out, see how well they do or don’t work, and let you judge what you want to use.

Keep checking back daily for the updates!

     Well I have been tweaking and tuning on the site, as well as posting. I’ve been adding some new features behind the scenes, and have signed the site up on a couple different services that are basically for getting the site’s name out there and known in the blogosphere. The additions I’ve made seem to be making a positive swing in traffic and response on the site. I’m getting responses on the posts, an increase in traffic and in adsense revenue.
     The biggest traffic generators at this point are Blog Explosion.com and Blog Carnival.com.
Blog Explosion is a blog community that allows you to sign up your site so that other people can check it out. You can earn traffic for your own blog as well as check out other blogs too. If you decide to use blog explosion, remember to mix and mingle. Leave comments, interact with blogs, and leave links back to your site. This will bring traffic to you. Once you find blogs you like, swap out blogrolls with them, this helps out in your google ranks (Google ranks by links from other sites). After starting to use the Blog explosion site for this month, it is responsible for about 60% of the traffic on the site for the month. Not Bad. Make sure you ‘Ping’ your blog out there because that more or less puts you on the radar of about 20 other blogging sites.
Blog Carnival is also a pretty decent traffic builder. If you check out the post here on Blog Carnivals you will read that basically you can make a post on your site, throw it on a related blog carnival, then the host site will post the carnival, with your link to your post. What this does is to bring people that are interested in the same topic, to the same place, and get your link out there in front of them, pulling traffic to your site and to the other’s in the carnival as well. Also you get to interact with other bloggers, and make some friends in the blogosphere. The more friends you have, the more traffic you will probably get.
     Also, I’ve registered with Technorati, which is like the grandfather of blogging spots. Its THE place to be for bloggers. Again, the point here is to mix and mingle. Dont just lurk blogs, get in on conversations, leave links, let yourself be seen. If you are posting interesting stuff, they will check out your blog. Also technorati will give you code to put on your page that will autoping your site for them.

     The mix of these 3 sites has gotten more people out here to read the blogs…like yourself and has comments being left. That is a good thing! And the best part, they are all totally free. Ya gotta like free.

     I’ve also added the Kontera service. Kontera isnt really impressing me to this point. It seems to work well, but isnt really making a dent.

month	#reqs	#pages
Dec 2006	19014	6963
Jan 2007	18299	6022
Feb 2007	10589	5562
Mar 2007	55053	5496
Apr 2007	57318	3922
May 2007	10674	6575
Jun 2007	21386	6876
Jul 2007	12717	5654

The numbers read that the visitor count is down a bit, however I think a lot of the previous numbers were actually me in here doing work. I havent been doing as much work and refreshing, so these numbers should be a bit more true. Plus the Google adsense numbers have show a substantial increase. Therefore I’m pretty sure that there has been a decent increase in traffic overall.

For the second month of db in blog format, the ’stats’ are

5654  page requests (down 1222)
337 RSS feeds (an increase of 131 RSS feeds)
1.89 cents revenue generated. (adsense only) ($1.50 increase)

It’s getting there, just taking a little time

Have a good weekend!

The Richest Man in Babylon - George Clayson (1991)
     If you are looking for the things your rich uncle never told you about money, you should get this book. The principles that this book puts forth for acquiring, keeping and building wealth, are outstanding. But this book’s ideas put out there for acquiring, building and keeping your money are probably not going to be for everyone, the same as a diet isn’t always for everyone. Not because the diet doesnt work, but because the person can’t make the change. The book basically lays out how to budget. Any lifestyle, any income will benefit from this, if the change is a solid change and not just a temporary attempt at a change. TRMiB is not anything like a ‘get rich quick’ scheme, but basic principles for budgeting, paying off debt and accruing wealth all put forth in a ‘tale’ of the story of the richest man in babylon, and the people he came in contact with. The story itself is actually pretty engaging and fun to read by itself, then you realize you’re being taught a lesson.
     This book is a must buy. The fact that the book has been in print in one form or another since 1926 should be a testament to that. This book started out as a series of pamphlets and then in about 1927 was compiled into a book and has been reprinted many times in its 81 year run. I would guess that this book will be in print for many years to come because the information and principles in it are about as timeless as it gets.
     But let me be clear. This isn’t a quick fix book, this is a financial lifestyle change. Changing the way you think about your money, how you spend it, how you save it, and how you protect it. It isn’t easy, but most things worthwhile aren’t. Here is an example, illustrated with ‘The 5 Rules of Gold”

1. Gold cometh gladly and in increasing quantity to any man who will put by not less than one-tenth of his earnings to create an estate for his future and that of his family. In other words, a person should put away 10% of his or her income for the future as a bare minimum. This rule is so incredibly fundamental, yet only a small minority even bother to follow it.

2. Gold laboreth diligently and contentedly for the wise owner who finds for it profitable employment, multiplying even as the flocks of the field. If you invest your money well, your money will simply make more money. Again, a very simple and obvious rule, but one that many people never get to because they didn’t follow the first rule.

3. Gold clingeth to the protection of the cautious owner who invests it under the advice of men wise in its handling. This rule encourages cautious investing, or at least encourages the investor to at least be informed. In today’s era, one can turn to the internet for plenty of investing information.

4. Gold slippeth away from the man who invests it in businesses or purposes with which he is not familiar or which are not approved by those who are skilled in its keep. This goes hand in hand with the third rule: if you invest in stuff you don’t understand, you’re likely to lose money. Don’t buy the latest hot stock from your stockbroker; investigate and invest where you want.

5. Gold flees the man who would force it to impossible earnings or who followeth the alluring advice of tricksters and schemers or who trusts it to his own inexperience and romantic desires in investment. The worst option is to invest in anything that promises absurdly good returns, or anything that you’re heavily pressured into buying. These investments are scams and won’t stand up to serious research.

     If you want a great Christmas gift to yourself, kids, grandkids, give them this book and push them to read it. It will be a great gift to give someone.

This week DB’s first Blog Carnival - Creating Income with your Blog takes off. There is a lot of good info at the sites listed below. Check them out!

Conan Stevens presents Website Generates Acting Leads posted at Worlds Biggest Action Hero?.
Leo Dimilo presents Thinking Outside the Box to Make Money posted at Idiot Affilate.
supermom_in_ny presents Make Money on the Internet: Update for May and June posted at Getting Out of Debt.
uni presents Make money helping people! For FREE! posted at You Deserve More.
Madeleine Begun Kane presents Ode To The Google PageRank Obsession posted at Mad Kane’s Humor Blog.
Steve Ashton presents Creating a Money Making Blog posted at MoneyMakingShed.com.
Praveen presents The Key to Online Business: Do Something Small posted at My Simple Trading System.

     There are many books and online stories you can read about how to create income. Many of the ‘guru’s out there seem to sort of hinge around one point and that is, if you see someone who is where you want to be, follow that person, for they already know the way. Basically they are saying to follow the well travelled path, it will get you where you want to go, and for the most part, that usually works. However the most travelled path to a destination is not always the best path, and there could be a shortcut if you just go a different way than everyone else goes. That’s why I like the site millioncount.com.
     The site is set on a pretty simple premise: Three friends, Eric Brown, Jeremy Harper and Rob Hayes are college friends from the University of Alabama, Birmingham. One of the things these friends share is an entreprenual spirit and as it happens a bit of charitable streak. They were apparently looking for a way to create income, or they were just bored between beer bongs and decided that it would be a great idea to put someone on the Internet, counting to 1 million. Somehow, Rob and Eric decided that Jeremy would be the guy for the job. So he basically took off from his job at a local software company to sit at home, on a live webcam with sound and count to 1 million. Not exactly an idea as stellar as say ‘The Pet Rock’…but I could see it’s merits. This is one of those things you see on the Internet that everyone will click to check out atleast once, and then they will go tell their friends about this guy they saw on the internet, counting to 1 million, and those friends will click on the site atleast once, and then go tell their friends…etc. Get the picture?

     Now our clever trio figured out that the one click crowd is going to be a pretty steady stream, and set off convincing different businesses, even the National Guard to advertise on their site, and sell blocks of time. A business pays to have their banner put up under the picture of the talented Jeremy counting for a block of numbers, and these blocks are purchased through ebay auctions. Some of these blocks go for between $20 and $200. Add to that, google adsense on a site that according to alexa.com has a traffic rank of just over 102k. Not bad for a site that is pretty much just a webfeed.
     Also, you’ll notice the walls behind the couch on the webfeed. When I first looked at this site, there were 3 banners back there. One was for a radio station, one for a local sports magazine, and a third I couldn’t make out. Now the site has ‘commercials’ before the feed starts, and instead of relatively cheap banners tacked up on the wall, the guys at millioncount.com have got an LCD with a scrolling marquee for ads…the guys are coming up in the world. And how the hell can you even think of a site like this withou t-shirts? That’s right, you cant, and luckily our guys have the t-shirt problem nailed down.
     And as a bonus to making probably quite a bit of coin for the guys, the site is also helping a charity called Push America. Making money and doing some good for the neighborhood, can you ask for much more than that? I’m going to continue to watch the site just out of curiosity to see how it develops. I am going to try to see if I can maybe interest one of the guys in sending me a little blurb about how their site is doing. Bookmark them for later, it will be interesting to watch how they progress and if the site matures or dies at 1million.

     Now I’m not trying to say this is the greatest site the internet has ever known or anything like that. But it is a very clever way to create income from a website, and in that I applaud the guys over at Millioncount.com. They seem to be reaching their destination, and its definately on a path that’s being cut as they go.

   The old saying ‘Content is king’ is a pretty solid truism when it comes to blogging. If your content is interesting, people will read it. If its good content, hopefully they come back. But if you dont update your content, add new things and invite interaction on your blog, it will not move and groove. In the beginning, you may be carrying on a conversation with yourself, putting your information out there, hoping that people find it interesting enough to read. Then when you start picking up a couple people reading, then through word of mouth and networking your start getting a little traffic that builds and builds then before you know it, you have a bonafide audience…a following even.

     But all this fantastic stuff hinges on you updating your content regularly. If readers don’t see you update, more than once a month, you’ll be forgotten on their daily network travels.

      John Chow has a pretty good article on his front page that looks at this question from the other end of the problem. The article questions when a blog stops being a blog and when it becomes more of a media portal. Many thing that once a blog is past being a one man operation, its not a blog anymore its a ‘conglomerate’. They basically are saying that once a blogger gets past the percieved grassroots of being a blog, one person, doing all the work, and starts having multiple posters, even guest bloggers adding content, that it is no longer a blog, but a source of media fueled revenue. Personally I think that as long as a blog is updated, its a blog. Now whether its an interesting blog or not, thats a different subject. But as long as its being updated, and people are actively reading, that pretty much sounds like a blog to me. It just so happens that if it is being updated, and people are reading it, then it has created an audience, and the concept of an audience, and marketing in the form of various media, usually go hand in hand, so its sort of a match made in cyber-heaven I guess.

     Check out the all knowing John Chow for his take on this and post a comment on his post.

     Since google adsense came out, people have been tweaking, tuning and adjusting it to see what works best where. Many people have their own idea of where to place google ads and some of them even make sense.
     As far as the google adsense code goes, there is no real optimal place for the ads. Putting the ad on the top, bottom, left, right doesnt mean that the code will somehow pull more relevent content that will flood your site with visitors. The code looks for content the same way, no matter where it’s placed. However, there are also ’sectors’ on your webpage where you will probably want to place ads just because those particular areas are more likely where your readers’ attention will be drawn. If you have a lot of action on the left side, your navigation, archives, contact info, such as the way I have it here, putting your adsense ad’s on the right side of the page, probably wont be the optimal choice. The reader is already on the left side of the page with their eyes, checking out links and stuff that catch their eye. Putting the ad’s in the path of where the reader is most likely where it’s more probably they will see and ultimately click on the ad. 

Putting the ad on the top is a generally safe bet, no matter where your content directs the reader. Most people will atleast check out the header of a site, to get the site’s name, and a general idea of the content of the site. But putting it at the bottom of the page most likely wont do as well, because of the attention span of an Internet surfer. Most blog readers, or website readers, will check out the first couple posts. If they are still interested, they stay and read more, if not, they move on. Atleast at the top you know they will most likely see that when perusing the name of the site.
     Putting ads after posts is probably THE optimal place for ads because regardless of whether your site is justified to the right or to the left, most software for blogs and websites physically ’stack’ posts or content in chronological order on top of each other.

     That being said, the logical place to put ads for absolute best placement and return would be at the top AND in between each post, right down the center (atleast this will be true for most blogs), where all the eye traffic is being routed.

      But experiment yourself, see what’s working and what’s not for you. When you set up your google adsense you can make channels and put each position you lay an ad in, on its own channel and with that, track what positions get the best response.

     Bruce Willis is the man. There is no truer statement in the world, and the Diehard series proves this statement as fact. John Mcclane once again saves the entire country single handly, while dropping atleast 3 quarts of blood from various injuries recieved within the last 2 hours of Live Free or Die hard. To me, the great movie series’ follow a certain flow. Take Rocky for instance. You know that in pretty much every Rocky the story will go something like: Rocky get done wrong, Rocky fights, Rocky gets beat down, Rocky trains (with music) and Rocky comes back to kick the crap out of the bad guy. The same holds true for the  Die Hard saga. John Mcclane’s stories always starts with him doing something rather mundane. Flying out to see his ex, at an aiport during Christmas, and in this case, after a major cyber attack on key government installations is sent to pick up a known hacker (and Mac guy) Justin Long. It takes all of about 5 minutes for Mcclane to begin his mundane task in this movie before bad guys show up, bullets start flying, stuff starts breaking, and computers start detonating. Yes, computers start detonting..this is Die Hard..remember?

     The movie was pretty much a ride from start to finish. Hardly any ‘down time’ to catch your breath before the bad guys with big guns and really bad aim come around the corner, guns a’blazin. Willis still carries the torch of John Mcclane pretty well, and overall, the movie is just what a Die Hard fan wants: explosions, bullets, massive blood loss and lots of Bruce Willis kicking ass as only John Mcclane can. Definately worth the watch on the big screen, mandatory to buy when it comes on DVD.
If you haven’t seen it, go, go now, go now and don’t return until you watch it.

8/10

Over at homeequityloanlowdown.com There is an excellent blog carnival going on that includes posts from some of the great income oriented blogs (like this one ) all in one place. Go check it out!

http://www.homeequityloanlowdown.com/2007/07/carnival-of-w-2.html