I got payment in my paypal account from Text-Link-Ads. Here is the payment proof.
Get more visitors to your blog, $100 in FREE Links .
Get more visitors to your blog, $100 in FREE Links .
I want to discuss backlinks today, specifically whether or not you should be using a no-follow tag on your links and if so, which links, why and when.
As I have a lot of beginners reading this please bare with me for a moment while I explain the whole business of backlinks, what they are, how to create them, what Tags are and how they are used and finally why all this matters to both Google and ultimately you.
Before starting I have posted some recent comments on this issue below and I hope to answer the questions posed by the time this post is over.
Terry said...
There's a wee problem with putting no-follow on paid reviews and that's because the likes of PayPerPost will reject a review if it doesn't use the link exactly as given and that includes using target="_blank" to stop visitors clicking away from the site.
Maybe I can add the nofollow after they have paid me for the review - that only leaves the backlink alive for about a month.
I'll try that on a couple of older posts and see if they complain about it. Can't see that they would, unless the advertiser themselves get wind of it and complain to PPP - maybe it could get my account deleted!
I can't afford to lose that too. Losing adsense was a huge blow and despite my re-applying, they haven't given me a decision yet - it's been over a week which might be good news or it might not...
We'll see
Terry :-)
Monika @ The Writers Manifesto said...
Hi Grizzly,
Congrats again for the rise in Page Rank. I also have been thinking about the "no follow" attributes as of late. Especially since I'm starting to understand, that this could affect me in the future.
I wonder about 2 things mainly:
1) is there a way that I can style my code so ALL outgoing links have a "no follow" except the comments.
2) would it be beneficial for future updates to steer away from the do follow movement?
Monika
How to create a Backlink
For the benefit of the beginners, backlinks are simply text that you find that are usually highlighted and underlined and when clicked will take you to a new page or website. The process of creating a link is quite simple and is called hypertexting.
If I want to create a link to Monika's blog I simply type out her blog's name;
The Writer's Manifesto
Now to add the link I can either add code manually or if using Blogger or Wordpress I can use the software included in the program to do it for me.
Note: The following Images can be enlarged by clicking on the image.
The same is done using Wordpress
And here is the finished product - if you click the link below you will be taken to Monika's website. ( Do it later as she has a great site but stay with me for now )
The Writer's Manifesto
Ok that is a backlink. I've received a number of emails from beginners wondering what a backlink is and more importantly why do you use them and why you need others to give you backlinks.
There are two answers to this.
You give backlinks to other sites primarily because you want to direct your readers to information that you think will be useful to them. You will normally send readers to sites or pages that are on topic - ie. they relate to your subject matter. This is important and I will discuss it in depth shortly.
Another reason for backlinks is to direct readers to something they can purchase or join and you use a special backlink for this - it's called an affiliate link which has extra info stored in the link to enable you to earn a commission or credit from your readers action. Essentially the seller is told that you sent the buyer or new member and you get a commission or credit from the seller. I won't say anything more about this type of link in this post.
Pagerank.
Most of you know what pagerank is but again bare with me as I sometimes forget that a lot of my readers are brand new to Internet Marketing and a quick recap is needed.
Pagerank is simply a measure of how important Google thinks your site or blog is. You can rank anywhere from N/R (no ranking) to a PR0 (lowest) all the way up to a PR10 (highest).
The higher your ranking the better as pagerank or PR is one of the factors involved in how well Google indexes or lists your pages on it's search results (SERP's - Search Engine Results Pages). Generally the higher PR sites are listed better in the SERP's but there are other factors that contribute to this as well. Your goal is to be listed on the first page of any search query related to your subject matter also known as your keywords.
Keywords
If you have a blog on Dog Training then "DOG", "Training", "Dog Training", "German Sheppards", "Black Labs" etc would all be considered your keywords as they all relate to your site's topic. Some keywords are more relevant than others - "Training" is relevant but you could be listed on page 1 for this term and have people come to your site looking for info on "Flight Training" instead of what you offer. These types of keywords are too general to be of much use so always use terms that are specific to what you offer.
Now back to pagerank and how backlinks contribute to your pagerank. The more backlinks you have coming from other sites on the web will in general increase your pagerank although there are several conditions that these links must meet.
This blog is about "Making Money Online for Beginners". I have about 1000 backlinks pointing to me from other sites give or take. For pagerank purposes only a small minority of them are useful although all of them help me in that they can potentially send traffic my way.
Google sees all the links and decides that only the links coming from sites related to mine will be used to determine my pagerank. I have a lot of links coming from sites that I helped their owners set up or optimize but these are sites that have nothing to do with "Making Money Online". Google basically ignores these links but doesn't penalize me for them either. Google will penalize me for links coming from link farms or sites in bad neighborhoods. (Spam sites, porn, malicious software etc).
Don't worry too much about being penalized for incoming links as Google understands that we can't really control who links to us - it's only when it becomes apparent that we are actively involved in obtaining such links that you need worry - link farms are the most obvious example. This is when you create hundreds or thousands of spammy sites for the purpose of sending links back to your real sites in hopes of obtaining a higher pagerank. Don't do it.
This type of activity is done to game the system or in simple terms you are trying to fool Google into giving you a higher pagerank than you deserve. Google hates this as it produces poor quality results in their SERP's.
Of the 1000 or so links pointing to my blog I know that about 30 of them count toward my pagerank. These are links that all come from quality sites related to my niche or topic. In reality I have several hundred links that are related to my blog but the majority are from poor quality sites or have N/R pagerank themselves. From Google's point of view these are ignored.
Your pagerank is determined by the quality and pagerank of the related sites linking to you. If all 30 of the links Google uses to determine my pagerank came from sites with low PR ( PR0 - PR2 ) then I would probably end up with a PR2 myself. If a few are PR4 sites then I might get a PR3. If a few sites linking to me have a PR5 then I might be a PR4 and so on. The higher the PR of the sites linking to you the higher your PR will become. I am currently a PR5 and this is due to the fact that I have some PR6, PR7 and PR8 sites linking to me.
In general you only increase your PR if you get links from higher PR sites but there are exceptions; you could have millions of backlinks from low PR sites and this could get you a very high PR simply because of the volume. Statcounter.com is a good example of this. This site provides a free stats program that you can install on your site to keep track of your traffic. They have millions of sites using their program and every site with it installed sends a backlink back to Statcounter.com. They were a PR10 until recently - not sure why Google demoted them back down to a PR6.
This should answer your questions on why you want backlinks.
Now let's talk about the other side of the equation. Giving out backlinks.
When you give a backlink or in reality it is just a Link, you are in effect voting for the site you are giving the link to. (They are receiving a backlink from you). You are telling Google that you think the other site is a quality site that you are happy sending your readers to. If you are a high PR site then Google views you as an authority on your topic or niche and counts your vote for the other site as having some weight to it. You are telling Google that the other site is worthy of your respect and that they deserve a higher PR as well.
This is all well and good and in a perfect world this should work like a charm for Google in properly ranking sites on the web.
It's not a perfect world though as there have been many systems devised to manipulate Google's pagerank algorithm all for the purpose of artificially inflating people's true rank. The goal as always is money. Higher PR means higher SERP listings which means more visitors to your site which means more dollars in your pocket - assuming you have monetized your site in some way.
Anchor Text
When you give someone a link the words used in the actual hypertext is called anchor text.
Let's use Monika's example again.
The Writer's Manifesto
In this case the anchor text is the phrase "The Writer's Manifesto"
Besides giving her site a vote from my site I am also telling Google to rank Monika's site for the phrase or term or keyword (same meaning)- "The Writer's Manifesto".
This means that when someone searches for "writer" or "Manifesto" then her site stands a good chance of being listed for those terms and a great chance of being listed very high in the SERP's for the whole phrase "Writer's Manifesto" especially as she has a PR5 backlink for these terms. (mine)
I couldn't find her for the terms "writers" and "manifesto" but she was up against a lot of competition. She will be indexed but farther back in the SERP's for those terms.
I mention anchor text because this is extremely important for getting indexed for the terms that are relevant to your site. I have a lot of links pointing to me using the term "Grizzly's Blog" in the anchor text.
This is fine if people already know me and don't remember my Blog's title then typing in Grizzly's Blog will get them to either of my two blogs. ( Why they haven't bookmarked me is a mystery... um HINT!)
However this is not the anchor text I want people to use as it is not relevant to my niche other than to my name. I want terms used like "make money", "make money online", "making money with blogs" etc. The reason is because I want to rank high for these terms so that I will get traffic searching for this kind of information. You will only rank high for terms used in the anchor text of your backlinks. On page content will also help but you need relevant backlinks to make it to the top of the SERP's.
Because of this many people have circumvented Google's system and have simply gone out and bought backlinks from high PR sites with their optimum anchor text used. In essence a spam blog with no quality content can go out and purchase a few hundred backlinks from high PR sites willing to sell the links. The purchaser gets the seller to use the anchor text that they want to be ranked for and suddenly Google find itself ranking crappy sites high in the listings. Needless to say Google is not happy with this and they have taken measures to combat this practice.
The No-Follow Tag
The no-follow tag is just a piece of code that is inserted into the hypertext link that tells Google not to convey any link juice on the site that is being linked to.
This may be confusing but let me show you an example.
I added a link above to statcounter.com. You can click on it and it will take you to the site. When Google's Bot crawls my page it will see the link but basically ignore it as I am not voting for statcounter.com. When it sees Monika's link it will index it as a vote for her site. The difference is that I used a no-follow tag on the statcounter link and not on Monika's.
Let me show you the difference.
Click images to enlarge.
Why you Should use No-Follow
Google has asked that everyone include the no-follow tag on all paid links. They have stated that if you sell links and don't use the no-follow tag then you will be penalized in the form of lower pagerank.
This has the Internet Marketing community in a bit of an uproar as it means a huge loss of income to a lot of people.
There are several programs that broker the selling and buying of links - some overtly and some disguise it as advertising and promotion. Text-Link-Ads is the most overt program as it exists solely for passing PR from sellers to buyers. If I wanted to make some fast cash I need only approach them and say that I am willing to sell links on my site. With a PR5 I wouldn't have any problem finding people to pay me. A PR5 link is fairly well coveted.
In the recent Google pagerank update a lot of high PR sites were decimated as Google lowered their rankings quite severely. Several PR7 sites are now PR4. While it is only speculation the most proposed reason for this is that these sites were selling links and not using the no-follow tag. The other reason seems to be that most of these sites belonged to large networks which were inter-linked with each other. Essentially a more sophisticated type of link farm.
While Google is keeping silent as to the reasons for this slaughter I believe these are the two main reasons. They have been warning people for some time now that they would put a stop to paid links and I think they just did. (See Matt Cutts) When the big boys get taken out all of us small players had better pay attention - next time Google will likely target everyone. It appears that they went after the big guns only this round as they new it would get the message out to everyone else. It has.
There are several other programs, most notably ReviewMe and PayPerPost that are also on Google's radar. These programs feign to be brokers for people who want to advertise their sites on other sites. They are willing to pay others to write a review of themselves with a backlink included. Google has no problem with people paying others for advertising - as long as the link has a no-follow tag in it. The purpose of advertising is to get traffic to your site and a no-follow tag doesn't stop people from clicking the link and being directed to the site in question.
The problem is that these programs don't allow you to change the link as Terry mentioned in his comment above. This shows PayPerPost's real intention with their program. They aren't brokering ads, they are simply selling backlinks that allow PR to flow through to the buyer. The FTC has already stated that paid ads must be disclosed so that the reader knows that the review or ad is paid for.
From the WashPost
"The Federal Trade Commission yesterday said that companies engaging in word-of-mouth marketing, in which people are compensated to promote products to their peers, must disclose those relationships."
From Calcanis.com
As I mentioned in my non-stop ridding of PayPerScamPost and their evil plan to "let the market work out" their deception issues, the FTC is stepping in. This, a day after Google said they would ding blogs from their index who participated in such schemes.
It's game waaaaaaaaaay over for PayPerPost. Google is smacking them down, and the FTC is on their doorstep. They will clean up their act now, and their "let the marketplace give us our ethics" has now happened. The industry (in the form of bloggers and Google) and the government (in the form of the FTC) have told PayPerPost clearly: STOP ENABLING DECEPTION.
Deception aside it is clear that Google will be taking a harsh stance on paid links but at the moment they have a small problem. They can't quite tell the paid links from the run of the mill unpaid links and this is what has kept them from clamping down on people using PayPerPost and the like. They are asking people to tell them who is using paid links.
From Google's spokesman Matt Cutts
One thing I heard at SES London was that people wanted a way to report paid links specifically. I’d like to get a few paid link reports anyway because I’m excited about trying some ideas here at Google to augment our existing algorithms. Google may provide a special form for paid link reports at some point, but in the mean time, here’s a couple of ways that anyone can use to report paid links:
- Sign in to Google’s webmaster tools console and use the authenticated spam report form, then include the word “paidlink” (all one word) in the text area of the spam report. If you use the authenticated form, you’ll need to sign in with a Google Account, but your report will carry more weight.
- Use the unauthenticated spam report form and make sure to include the word “paidlink” (all one word) in the text area of the spam report.
The problem here is that while you may get away with using these programs you are at the mercy of your competitors. Should someone decide that they want you out of the way they only need to report you to Google and you may suddenly find your pagerank lowered or gone completely. You may think - so what - as you are getting paid nicely for reviewing sites on PayPerPost - guess what, lose your pagerank and suddenly no one is interested in paying you to review them. This is because they don't want your traffic or care for your comments - they only want your passed on link juice. In this sense Google has a point to make. These programs aren't set up for advertising as they claim. They are set up to game Google and that's why they are a serious risk to anybody using them. Eventually Google will catch you.
Because the FTC requires you to disclose that you are being paid for the review it won't take long for the algorithm to search out the disclaimers used when you post your review. It will then check for the no-follow tag and if it is not there you may find your site dropped from the index. No warning and no explanation. Gone and all your hard work with it.
I sympathize with Terry as he can make a decent buck using PayPerPost but I can't help feel that it may be short lived. As a friend I would urge him to proceed cautiously and at the very least contact Google and get their opinion on the matter first hand.
In regards to Monika's question about the whole do-follow program I have mixed feelings. Google doesn't have a problem with free links as it already has a mechanism in place to discount them if they are irrelevant links between sites. The do-follow program does increase comments and increases traffic.
My problem with do-follow is more pragmatic. I want high PR first and foremost. Traffic and money will come along in due course. The formula for PR is quite complex but it boils done to this - the more links coming in is good, the more links leaving is bad. Google even states that you should keep outgoing links to a reasonable number, not more than a hundred on a page. Most links are site wide so it doesn't take long to reach a hundred outgoing links.
I have seen the benefit of keeping my outbound links sparse and only to relevant sites. The vast majority of my links use no-follow. I have noticed that most sites don't bother to add the no-follow to all the garbage links on their sites - affiliate links, banner links, promotional links like MyBlogLog or Technorati or Blogrush etc. All of these types of links do suck a portion of your link juice off and it is a waste. They don't need your link love and they should all be no-followed. Save all the juice you can. I only give link love to those who I want to help. When I do, I have more to give as I don't squander it on affiliate links and such.
Most people don't believe that this makes a difference. I do as all my sites that gained a lot of PR were sites that used mostly no-follow tags.
Monika asked if there was a way to code her entire site to use no-follow and I have to admit that I haven't done much playing around with Wordpress. I have added code to my blogger blogs that enable me to tag each widget or page element to be either no-follow or do-follow and I suspect that the same can be done on wordpress. I unfortunately am not that much of a code monkey with Wordpress to know - if anyone does know please let me know or visit Monika directly and fill her in.
Before I finish I need to add one more backlink here for my friend Terry of The Honest Way just so he doesn't think I was favoring Monika over him. They are two of my favorite people online and both offer a lot of excellent information if you are trying to earn a living online. Please pay them a visit and if you are looking for a way to promote your own site you might consider joining their shared venture bloggingweb2.0. They are looking for bloggers who would like to post articles on their site and gain some exposure as well as a nice little backlink in the process.
Thanks for reading, this was a long one even for me.
Grizzly
Unless you slept through yesterday or perish the thought, actually did something other than sit in front of your computer, you will know that Google finally rolled out it's long awaited Pagerank update.
For the past two weeks Google has been devaluing the pagerank of a lot of big name sites - another major Google slap as it were. The blogosphere moaned and called Google every nasty name in the book for imposing what is thought to be a penalty on everybody selling links without using the no-follow tag. Another theory is that the penalty was applied to everybody that belonged to link networks like weblogs inc. etc. I say theory as with everything Google, nobody really knows since Google ain't tellin'. (see a word to the wise below)
Yesterday Google reversed course and began dishing out it's new rankings and suddenly there was Google love everywhere. Hordes of formally PR0 sites suddenly found themselves blessed with PR2's and 3's and even the penalized sites saw some or all of their pagerank returned - adding ever more confusion and mystery to the internet God known as the Google Algorithm.
I didn't bother posting yesterday as there was no shortage of posts elsewhere and I was busy checking out the results of my own little empire. In the end what I found was more or less what I expected - my websites dropped - my static blogs remained about the same and my core money blogs all rose fairly dramatically. All in all I wasn't that surprised as I knew what the results would be long before Google posted them.
No I don't have an insider at Google. I knew from observing what was happening on my stat counter over the past month. My websites have more or less been neglected by me as they require a great deal of work compared to blogs and really don't rank as well as blogs on the search engines even when maintained. I should qualify this and mention I am talking about Niche websites only. Niche blogs free or hosted have been kicking butt for some time now. My website stats have showed declining traffic as a result of lower serp's for my main keywords for a while now and this told me that my sites were on the way down as far as pagerank was concerned.
In regards to my blogs I have a large group that I post sporadically to - in most cases I worked them onto page 1 of the serp's just to find out that there wasn't a lot of money to be made from them and have since kept them at a status quo - they make a few bucks but not enough to get me excited. They have not fallen or risen in the serp's for some time now and I didn't expect any PR changes and I didn't get any.
My core blogs - this one included have been climbing the serp's steadily for the past few months and this above all told me that they would receive a much higher PR after the update and they did - this blog jumped from a 2 to a 5. The fact is this blog has been a PR5 for a while now - it was only yesterday that the little green bar changed to reflect this fact.
I don't want to rain on everybody's parade but you should realize something - your site will not perform better today than it did last week. If your little green bar is higher today it means that your site has been performing at that level for a while now. Don't expect a jump in traffic now - you've already had it for some time now.
I received an email from one of my readers this morning and he wanted to know why his position in the search pages hadn't increased from yesterday. He went from a PR2 to a PR4. I asked him where he ranked currently - number 9 on page 1 for his main keyword. I asked him how long he has been in that position. 3 weeks he said. Where were you before that? Page 4 on Google he said. I told him that he became a PR4 3 weeks ago. Oh... he said.
This is not to say that PR is not important. It is for many reasons; you can command a higher $ from advertisers. You can also use your PR to send link love to new sites you create and help out your friends. Having a high PR will also make you more friends as well - people will pay attention to you as suddenly you MUST be doing something right. The higher your PR the more authority you will have regardless of whether this is true or not.
A word to the wise.
Google has publicly stated that paid links are a no-no and that it will crack down on this practice. In principle they have a valid point. To maintain the integrity of their search engine they want to present relevant quality sites in their serp's.
Pagerank is one of the methods they use (but not the ONLY method) to determine which pages rank at the top of the listings for any given search query. The problem they are facing is that people who may or may not have quality sites are artificially increasing their pagerank by buying links from sites that have a high pagerank. If you were to get a link from a PR7 site this could conceivably increase your site to a PR6 instantly - even if you had been a PR0. This would certainly increase your chances of being listed high in the search listings. Great except your site might be crap and you have lessened the search engine integrity.
There is a recent movement by bloggers to adopt a "do-follow" or "I-follow" approach when it comes to linking especially in regards to comments. The idea being that this will increase comments and hence readership if people can obtain links back to their own site by leaving comments on other sites. I was curious to see how Google would deal with this and it appears that they have left it alone in this latest update. They may well have devalued the link juice gained by comment backlinks but at least there don't appear to be any penalties handed out.
This can not be said about another recent trend in blogging - paid text ads and reviews. You are probably familiar with Text-Link-Ads, Review Me? and PayPerPost. A lot of bloggers are using these programs as a way to earn revenue on their sites.
I am just guessing but I think Text-Link-Ads is just about done as it exists solely for the purpose of buying and selling links that pass Pagerank on to others. A lot of sites that felt the recent Google slap had advertisements for this program on their home page. You might want to think about this before getting involved with it.
ReviewMe? and PayPerPost may survive but they may have to become advertising and consulting programs only. Currently you can make money by being paid to review someone else's site on your site. Google doesn't have a problem with this as long as you include the "no-follow" tag in the paid link. The problem is that most people paying for a review are asking high PR sites for the review with the knowledge that they will get a backlink from the high PR site that doesn't contain the "no-follow" tag. This is the whole premise behind these programs at the moment as exemplified by the fact that the higher your PR the more you can charge for a review.
This will soon stop or the reviewer sites will see their pagerank diminished by Google. In the end you will have to have a high traffic site to really make money selling reviews using a "no-follow". This will hurt a lot of high PR yet low traffic sites that currently sell reviews as no one will want to pay them for a backlink that doesn't have any benefit other than sending a low amount of traffic.
If you use these programs I can't tell you which way to go but the latest Google crackdown on paid links should give you pause about whether to use the "no-follow" tag or not.
That said those of you who gained PR this go-round enjoy your little green bar and hopefully we can all make money from it without pissing off Google in the process.
Oh.. if you gained a high PR you may notice a sudden increase in spam comments - gotta love those spammers. Do any of these clowns actually make money or do they just enjoy annoying the rest of us?
Cheers,
Grizzly
How do you protect yourself? And, what can you do if someone steals your content?
If you have been blogging for any length of time then you have probably come across a site that has blatantly ripped off your material and posted it on their own site without credit in the form of a link to you. This is copyright infringement and has become a common occurrence on the Web.
The first thing you should know is that you don't have to register your material for it to be copyrighted. Virtually anything produced be it written, drawn, photographed or played ala music is protected by copyright law. This doesn't mean you are safe though as many people don't know or worse don't care that copyright applies to the internet as well as the usual mediums.
To protect yourself you can use a service like
copyscape.com.
This service is free for up to 10 pages a month and offers a paid service if you are a frequent victim of content theft.
I ran a couple of my pages this morning and you guessed it... one site is basically stealing most of my content for their site.
see below.
Click image to enlarge.
and another page of mine.
As you can see copyscape is a fast way to find the buggers stealing your content but this isn't a sales pitch for them. I already know who the thieves are by using a couple of my own systems.
I have mentioned before that you should always include a link pointing back to your site in all your content. When morons like the site I've just shown you post your content they rarely remove or change anything. In the two examples above he or she posted my article on their blog with my backlink in it. This does two important things. Technorati keeps track of all blogs linking to me so I found this site as soon as technorati did. Secondly it tells Google that I am the originating site and that this clown is posting duplicate content. Love it.
Another easy way to find people stealing your content is to run a Google search using the exact phrase method ie. use quotes (") on both ends of a phrase that is unique to your post in Google search.
Here is an example from my post on "How to Get Traffic - My System"
Click to enlarge.
Always use text from the beginning of your posts as some sites will only post a small snippet of your work - usually the first paragraph.
Here is the result of the Google search.
Here is the result clicking on the omitted listing.
Some thieves are smart enough to remove your backlink. If you find sites using the Google search method that have removed your links then start hiding your links in the punctuation used on your posts. Click on the last period and see what happens. These hidden links are hard to spot and very effective.
So what do you do once you have found a content stealer?
According to Kelly Sims of Virtually There VA Services you should do the following;
1. Contact the offender. You can usually visit the "contact" page of the offender's website to obtain their contact information. If for some reason you can't find their coordinates that way, you can perform a search for "who is" to find many sites that can provide information about the website owner by simply entering their URL. The website owner's contact information should be posted here, but if not, their website host will be and you should contact them. Keep your first contact civil. Calling or emailing the responsible individual with a stern, yet professional demeanor will be much more effective than yelling or name calling. Remember that the owner of the site isn't necessarily the writer, and if they are, then being nasty may not have the desired effect and in fact may create more problems for you in the long run.
2. Send a cease and desist order. If your initial contact didn't get the desired results, your next step should be to send a cease and desist order. You do not need to hire a lawyer to create one for you. A simple search for "cease and desist order templates" should give you an order that can be altered to meet your needs. Send one copy by email and one copy by registered mail and make it look as official as possible. Include a date by which the material should be removed. You want the offender to know that you mean business.
3. If action is still not taken, send a cease and desist order to the offending party's web host. Again, the host information is available by performing a search for "who is". The majority of hosts will take action by temporarily removing the offender's site until the copied material is removed.
4. The situation should be resolved at step 3, but one more step that can be taken is to notify search engines of the infringement. Performing a search for the "DMCA" or "Digital Millennium Copyright Act" policies for each search engine will provide the information you need to contact each of them in order to request that the offender's website be removed.
Finally, it's always advisable to protect yourself by keeping records of the dates your content was placed on your site. This ensures that the other party can be proven wrong it they claim to have posted their content first.
This is good advice and quite proper.
I have my own methods for dealing with thieves but that is a path best kept to myself.
Oh one last thing... feel free to visit the thief's site as mentioned above and leave as many insulting comments as you can think of.
Till next time,
Cheers
Grizzly
I get a lot of emails asking for help and I try and keep up as best as I can. Some emails really irritate me... "tell me how I can make a lot of money fast". These type drive me crazy because they haven't read a thing on here and worse they think that there is some secret to making money online. I usually answer by telling them to go rob a bank.
For those that haven't caught on yet - there is no secret.
On the other hand I do get a lot of questions about things that I can help people with and the other day a really nice woman asked me for some help installing a stat counter.
I told her what to do and after all was said and done I asked her for her URL just to check out her site. She didn't ask me to help promote it and mentioned that she was just starting out and was looking for a way to make some money from home. I have to say that after reading her first post I had tears in my eyes and can't think of anyone I would like to help more than her. I won't mention her name as I didn't ask permission but I think everyone should read her blog.
Please take a moment and visit her site. Adopted Two Teens
That's all for today,
Grizzly
Make Money Using Humor
Humor can get you a lot of traffic and make money for you in the process. Check out the "Buy My Stupid Ebook" site below for a great example of how to create an Adsense site dressed up as a very funny one page sales letter. 
Click Here to see the entire site.
Make Money Using Viral Applets
Dane Carlson from Business Opportunities Weblog created this widget (see below) using Technorati's API. Carlson's widget will figure out your sites worth by using the same ratio of dollars per links on technorati that AOL/Time Warner used to purchase WeblogsInc. Tristan Louis ran some data and came up with a number value for each link you have pointing to your site. Depending on whether Aol paid Weblogs Inc $25 million, $30 million or $40 million (real price not released but assumed to be in this range.) then each link to your site would be worth $564.64 (25m), $677.57 (30m) or $903.42 (40m). I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for someone to come along and offer you this kind of money but it does give the blogospere a yardstick to work from.
You have probably seen the widget on lots of sites as it appeals to a lot of people - just how well do I stack up against others online?
From a viral marketing standpoint Carlson has a winner. By creating this widget he gets a lot of traffic from curiosity seekers and backlinks from all the sites who use the widget.
Generate Traffic by Creating a Free Tool
People love using tools online. If you can think of something that people would like to know hire a code monkey and offer the world a free tool. Internet marketers love comparing their sites with everybody else's sites. Who has more traffic? Who has the most backlinks? Who ranks better in the SERP's? Who has a higher PageRank? Where can I find a niche? You can finds tools to answer all these questions. If there is something you want to know but can't find a tool then have someone build it and offer it to the world to use for free. This is a great way to drive traffic.
I found Website Grader recently and it's a prime example of what I'm talking about.
Website Grader is a free seo tool that measures the marketing effectiveness of a website. It provides a score that incorporates things like website traffic, SEO, social popularity and other technical factors. It also provides some basic advice on how the website can be improved from a marketing perspective.
It's a pretty cool tool and gives you a lengthy report on how your site compares with others from a marketing point of view. You get a rank between 1-100 the higher number the better. How they arrive at the final number is not exactly clear but since I scored an 83 I'll let it slide. They did mention that my blog isn't sufficiently dummed down for most readers...
Readability Level : Advanced Degree (PhD)
This score measures the approximate level of education necessary to read and understand the web page content. In most cases, the content should be made to be simple so that a majority of the target audience can understand it.
This is a criticism? John Chow's blog has a readability level of a grade 5 student and this is just tickety boo according to them. Bastards!
Here is my score summary - if you don't understand it you probably don't have the required PhD.
Click to EnlargeHere is the link again if you are interested in checking out your ranking.
Website Grader
Before I leave here is another site you should take a look at if you want some humorous ideas. Spanklin
Have a great weekend
Grizzly
After "How do I get Traffic?" the next most popular question I get is "What's the easiest way to make money using blogs?"
The answer is simple ... Google Adsense.
Most of you know this already and I don't mean to insult you but a lot of people don't really know how to make the most of Adsense and complain about making pennies a day.
I received an email the other day from a fellow blogger and internet marketer who basically asked for proof that I made over $8.00 a day from Adsense on this blog. (Update - As of March 2008, this blog is averaging $100 per day with Adsense)
Read his letter;
Hi Grizzly,
I read your "Common Blogging Mistakes" article and find it difficult to believe that you make as much adsense profit as you claim. My blog has twice the traffic and I am lucky to pull in $2 a day. It doesn't seem that snippets would cause Google to send me poorer ads, my posts have the same keywords as yours. I know some others who also target make money online ads and they are the same as me. Ilike your posts and agree with most things but have to disagree with this.
Sincerely C.M. (Name withheld by request)
He was referring to my use of single posts on my home page. I had stated that I get better adsense ads by using a single post rather than snippets. A single post is more targeted to a particular keyword as well as related long tail keywords and results in a higher quality score. Snippets are great for readability and style perhaps but they are dis-jointed when it comes to the Google Bot - too many unrelated keywords on one page and hence a lower quality score as far as Adsense goes.
Keep in mind I only suggest that you try this if your main goal is to make Adsense income. I completely agree that using snippets is a better system if you are building a large and loyal readership and it allows you to cover many topics giving more choices to your viewer.
I don't like showing screenshots as it is overdone and can certainly be faked but in this instance I will if for no other reason than I hate being accused of lying. He didn't use that term but same difference.
Click to Enlarge.Keep in mind that I don't consider this an Adsense site as people actually read stuff on here - well occasionally. My niche sites are far more optimized for Adsense in the sense that I more or less encourage the reader to click on the ads or affiliate links by giving such general info that they don't find what they are looking for. Here I make a feeble attempt at actually giving people what they want... or at least think I do. If I am inept at least it's not on purpose.
I have over 200 niche sites now and the vast majority don't make this kind of income from Adsense but 25 of them are in this ballpark. This adds up each month and is how I earn a decent buck online. Don't be discouraged when starting out as it will take you some time to build up your blogs - usually 6 months before you start to see some real results but in time you will find you have a nice little business going. Patience is the keyword here.
I have recently changed my look up top as the previous layout was more in tune to attaining Adsense clicks. Old habits die hard - make the reader search for real content while making ads and affiliate links easy to find. My content is now up top on this blog and two things have happened; my Adsense revenue has dropped and my page views have increased. Not surprising as more people are sticking around and reading more posts.
I won't go into more detail on Adsense as I have covered the topic several times elsewhere on here. I just wanted to clarify a few things to any doubters out there.
Simple Lead Generation Marketing
There are other easy ways to make income using your blog - notably getting paid for leads. This is different than affiliate sales in that your referral doesn't have to buy anything - just sign up to a mailing list or a free report. Finding programs that are reputable and that will actually pay you can be tough but I have found one that is quite profitable considering I don't do a thing other than post a link on this blog. I have talked about Project Payday before - it's a legitimate program that shows you how to make money with freebie sites (IFW's). (note; Americans and Canadians Only) I personaly don't care for it as it is time consuming and a little too much like work but it does make money. I like their affiliate program though and recommend it to others as an easy way to make a few bucks by simply referring leads to the site.
Here is a screen shot of my recent commissions from Project Payday.
Click To Enlarge.As you can see it has a 26% conversion rate which is pretty high - 1 out of every 4 people will sign up. In case you are wondering I have been paid twice already directly to my Paypal account. Sign up, get your link and post a blurb on your site.
That's about as simple as it gets. ( March 2008 - Update, $2400 so far)
On a final note I received an email from Russell Brunson recently. He is looking to hire a webdesigner. See below. Just thought I would post it as some of you may be interested.
Hey Grizzly
Are you or someone you know a webdesigner? We are looking to hire
a webdesigner at DotComSecrets.com.
You need to have html and css skills. Either know SEO, or have the
desire to learn it from us.
You MUST be willing to relocate to Boise Idaho.
This job is an awesome opportunity to learn internet marketing from
some of the best in the world. Work with me and my staff, and make
a lot of money doing it.
If you qualify, and could relocate to Boise, please send me an
email with your resume, and samples of your work to:
jobs@dotcomsecrets.com
Thanks
Russell Brunson
2404 Bank Dr. Suite 101 Boise, Idaho 83705
Till next time,
Grizzly
I didn't finish my rambling yesterday as I was interrupted by a golf game so I thought I would pick up my train of thought today. I've received a number of emails since yesterday asking about the effects changing a blog's title and/or layout would have on existing traffic. This is a good question and it has several possible answers.
I want to use one blog in particular as an example and I hope Ester won't mind. She has a wonderful daily diary style blog called "My Daily Thoughts" and she has asked if she should change the title to "My Days in my Mind" which is her URL title.
The first thing I should mention is that you will certainly see a drop in traffic whenever you change your blog title. This is assuming that you were receiving hits from people searching for your original title. In Ester's case if people were typing in "My Daily Thoughts" in the search engines to find her then changing her title will have a negative effect. I am only guessing however that she probably doesn't get a lot of traffic - I could be wrong though - from people searching for those keywords.
Blog's like Ester's are a challenge to optimize for traffic. They are a pleasure to read when one finds them but are not the sort of thing that people actively search for on the search engines. Diary style journals typically have wide ranging subject matter and attract a readership based on the author's writing style and likability factor rather than a particular subject matter. Search Engine Optimization is based almost exclusively on subject matter and not aesthetics. Now having said that the search engines will index Ester's blog for lots and lots of terms stemming from her post titles and this, I think is where the traffic will come from. Changing her Blog title at this point is not likely to effect her greatly but I should add that changing it to "My Days in my Mind" is not going to benefit her in the long run anymore than her original title from an SEO perspective. The new title is not likely to be searched for anymore than the original.
If I was to optimize her blog for her I would probably zero in on the Personal development niche and use a title like "My Daily Thoughts - A Road to Personal Development" or "My Daily Thoughts in Search of Self-Fulfillment". The point is to include relevant keywords that are searched for in the search engines. This will eventually bring in relevant traffic that she doesn't get presently and it will not negate any traffic she is currently receiving as her original keywords are still being used.
Let me use my blog as an example of how I target keywords using my blog title.
When I started this blog I had a goal in mind - I wanted to take a completely free service such as Blogger and use a free hosting platform (blogspot.com) and see if it was possible to attain page 1 ranking for a highly competitive keyword - "Make Money Online". To do this I had to identify my intended audience and then decide on my best course of action.
I chose to target internet marketing beginners as I believe they are terribly under served online except as potential customers. There are very few quality sites that provide real step by step instructions for beginners using blogs in the field of internet marketing. Even fewer that provide this information for free. I chose to use a free service and host not because this is the best method but because I wanted to show beginners that they can make money online without spending a single dime. This blog has not cost me a single penny so far and it has made me several thousands of dollars over the past 9 months - the majority of it acquired with adsense.
That was the goal I set out to achieve and while I haven't made page 1 yet I am making steady progress. This morning I ranked number 39 out of 200,000,000 sites indexed for "Make Money Online". Number 16 out of 140,000,000 for "How to Make Money Online". These are from Google.ca (Canada) and my ranking will be a page or two lower on Google.com (USA). A side note: you will rank differently on Google depending on which country the search is instigated in.
Now when I started this blog I chose to use "Make Money for Beginners" as my blog title and managed to get these terms for my URL as well. I didn't bother targeting "Make Money Online" at first as this would have been over reaching. When you start out pick keywords that can be attained in a short period of time. By attained I mean ranking on page 1 of the SERP's. I took over top spot for "Make Money for Beginners" in just over a month after start up. This was relatively easy as there are only 2.5 million competing sites for this term. Are there a lot of searches for this term... not really, maybe 10 - 20 per week but it was a good starting point.
The term allowed me to add more keywords as I gained PR and something I call Google Bot Attraction. What this is I can't explain aside from saying that if the Google Bot was human it likes some sites more than others and tends to crawl favorite sites a lot more than less favored sites. Page rank has some effect on this but there has to be other factors as well based on my experience. If I had to guess I suspect quality content is one such factor. This PR2 blog gets crawled more than several PR4 websites I have and my posts usually draw traffic from Google within an hour after posting. Yesterday's post was indexed about 15 minutes after I posted it. For whatever reason the Google bot likes this blog and zooms in and out frequently.
After three months I noticed that I was getting crawled frequently and I changed my Blog title to "Make Money Online for Beginners". The effect was quite rapid. Within a few days I found that I went from page 3 for the term all the way to top spot on page 1 on Google. I also held onto top spot for the previous term "Make Money for Beginners". Pretty cool I thought. I recently added the words "How to" to my title and sure enough I got top spot the following day for "How to Make Money Online for Beginners" as well. Now I can't say that I get a ton of traffic for these exact terms as most people don't add "for Beginners" to the query. However by adding the "Online" and "How to" terms I noticed that my blog moved up drastically in the SERP's for the terms "How to Make Money Online" and "Make Money Online" which are both found in my Title. Although I haven't made page 1 yet I am seeing 20 - 30 visitors a day now for my primary keyword "Make Money Online" and I can only guess what kind of traffic page 1 will bring.
The point of all this is to plan things out in an achievable fashion when starting your blog. Pick your primary keyword and then use "long tail" keywords that compliment your primary keyword as a starting point. As more an more of your long tails' get indexed and achieve high ranking they boost your primary keyword ranking in the process and more importantly bring in traffic for secondary keywords related to your niche. If you only concentrate on your primary keyword you will spend a long time without any traffic at all and find it hard to ever see high rankings. Google wants to see a consistent and sustained pattern of keyword relevancy regarding your subject matter before it will reward you with high rankings.
In the past spamblogs would simply pick a popular keyword like "Lemon Laws" and then proceed to post thousands of pages of drivel using the term "Lemon Laws" over and over again in order to out "Lemon Law" the competition. This fooled Google for a time but now the algorithm wants to know why there aren't other relevant terms for the main subject in the posts. You have to include lots of relevant long tail keywords in your content now or you will be flagged and ignored.
The best way to bolster your Blog title and hence your primary keyword is the often overlooked "blog description" area. With websites this is contained in the Meta Tags and it is now ignored by Google and a few other search engines thanks to keyword stuffing abusers. It is not ignored on blogspot blogs however and is a very powerful aid for getting your secondary keywords ranked.
This is the wording used to describe your blog located right below your Blog Title. I change mine all the time when I want Google to rank me higher for recent popular searches. My Blog Title tells Google that in general this blog is about how to make money online. My description tells Google the specifics of how this is done. When I find popular subjects like "Project Payday" or "Yahoo Answers" I quickly do a little research, write a few posts and then change my description to let Google know that I cover these popular subjects and more importantly I let searchers know it too as my description is displayed in the SERP's. This works like a charm and gets me ranked well for just about any topic I choose. A word of caution though. Each time you make a change there is a delay of a few days to maybe a week that you will see a drop off in traffic as Google drops your rankings for previous terms that you have removed from your description. It usually takes a good week before your new terms are indexed and start drawing traffic.
Ok, I've rambled on enough but before I stop I just want to make a few comments on Google Page Rank and Alexa's traffic stats.
The Page Rank update is long overdue and is frequently discussed online these days. Who knows why it has been so long delayed but quite frankly it is a historical number and is not important save for a few programs like payperpost and such that require a certain page rank before accepting you in. CPA programs are the most notable ones for requiring PR before allowing you to collect leads for them. Advertisers place a lot of stock in it but they really should look at traffic instead. For most people the PR you see is quite useless. It simply shows the PR of a page the last time it was updated but it does not tell you the current PR. My PR is 2 but that was what Google deemed it almost 6 months ago. My current PR is unknown and this is the problem with pagerank in the first place. It is not fluid but static - showing only what you were and not what you are. Don't get hung up on that little green bar.
Alexa is one of the crappiest things to have invaded the online world in my opinion. People live and breathe over it and most don't understand that it is so inaccurate as to traffic that it should be ignored. The numbers it spits out are always contrary to your own traffic stats and this is for a number of reasons; it only gathers data from surfers who have the alexa toolbar installed on their browsers. 99% of all internet surfers don't have this toolbar and have never heard of Alexa. Only techies and internet marketers use it. If you have a site that attracts techies or IM'ers then you probably have a decent Alexa ranking but it still won't reflect your true numbers. If your site is about shoes then you won't have much of a ranking at all. My best niche site has over a thousand visits a day and my alexa rank is 2,000,000 and change. This blog gets about 300 - 400 visitors a day and it ranks 180,000 give or take. Go figure. While you are ignoring the little green Google bar you can just as easily ignore the little blue Alexa bar as well.
Please don't ignore me though...
Cheers
Grizzly
What's in a Name?
I am currently on a little golfing vacation and this time I brought along the old laptop in order to catch up on a backlog of emails I've received. My golfing really sucks but I have managed to put a good dint in my "to do" email list. While answering your questions and reviewing the blogs my readers have asked me to look at I have compiled a small list of things that many of you are a bit confused about.
The number one question is always about traffic. Why aren't you getting any? Let me sum this up with one question. When you started your blogs who were you hoping to attract? Let me put it this way. You start a blog about the trials and tribulations of making money online as a work at home mom and call your blog "My Life Online". (I made that up) The problem with this is that there is no way the search engines can categorize your site for your niche. Your blog title is the primary keyword(s) used by the search engines in deciding what your blog is about. Next in importance is your blog description and then comes your post title and finally your header titles.
Sure you can call your blog "My Life Online" or "Bob's Blog" and still get relevant traffic if you keep using your primary keywords throughout the rest of your pages but this is making things a lot harder than it has to be. Google will figure out what you are about eventually but you will find it hard getting to the top of the rankings if your primary keyword isn't in your Title. Yes, John Chow dot Com made it to number one for the term "Make Money Online" but this is the exception rather than the rule and he did it by garnering an insane amount of backlinks optimized for his keywords. He also went too far and got himself Google bombed right off the front page in the end but that is another story. Make it easy for the search engines... use your main keyword in your blog title.
If available you should also try and include your main keyword in your URL as well or some variation of it.
The bots that crawl your pages start at the top left corner and work down to the bottom right. Do not put anything irrelevant in the top left portion of your page as this is what is used to categorize your page for both indexing and adsense ads. Let me explain this further as it is very important and even experienced marketers don't seem to understand this.
Google will index your page using your blog title followed by the first line of html text it sees. Make sure the first line of text is your page title. Make sure your page title contains the keyword you are trying to get traffic for. Make sure your page title is alluring enough to get people to visit as this is what they are presented in the SERP's. (Search Engine Results Pages) This may seem obvious to you but I have critiqued a number of blogs lately that have started their posts with sentences like "Thank you for coming to my site" or "Welcome to my blog" or "Part 2 in my continuing journey online". This is what gets indexed and people searching on the engines are not likely to click on these sites as they won't have a clue as to what these sites are about.
Your page Title and post title specifically is what Google uses to send you relevant adsense ads. If your blog is about cats and you use a post title like "Why dogs suck and cats don't" you will get ads for dogs, cats and pets in general. This might be fine but if your readers are cat lovers you wont get the best ads available. The more you optimize your post title and post content the more Google optimizes the ads it sends you. I want to explain this in further detail as a lot of people don't understand adsense at all.
Let's say you start a blog called "Cats" and your first post is titled "Why I love Cats". Wonderful. Your post rambles on about all the reasons you love cats. So far you have told Google exactly what your blog is about and that your post is most likely about four legged cute little furry hairballs and not about a Broadway musical. You will get indexed for cats. You might get some traffic but not much. You will get adsense ads for cat related products... perhaps even for tickets to a musical. The problem is that your ads will be low paying and your traffic will be browsers - people out for a sunday drive. Why? You are far too general in content and this is not how to attract readers or how to get the best paying adsense ads.
You can use the blog title "Cats" but your post title must zero in on something specific about cats and then your post should expand on this theme. Try "Common Cat Diseases and Treatments" or "How to Maintain a Healthy Cat". By doing this you will draw a targeted audience and moreover you will get better targeted ads... ads that pay more and are more likely to be clicked on. Most marketers don't realize that Google rewards good quality sites with the best ads and sends low paying ads to poor content sites. The more optimized your posts are the more optimized your ads will be.
The ads on this blog average about 35 cents a click and often produce 50 cents a click. I have even had $1 a click days but this is usually when a beginner starts using adwords and bids way to high on keywords. They don't last long and learn an expensive lesson. Most of the marketers I know in the "make money online" racket are getting 3 cent clicks and the reason is simple. Home page optimization. Huh?
Your home page gets the bulk of your traffic. This is true for everyone and it tends to have the highest page rank. A blogs home page is different than a website's home page. Bloggers tend to post several posts on their home pages usually in snippet form with a link to the full article on a separate page. This looks good and gives the reader lots stuff to read. All in all this has become the norm for blogging and I don't disagree with the practice at all. I don't do it though and this is why. The majority of ads clicked are on the home page and not on secondary pages. Why. People reading further into your blog have found what they are looking for and aren't clicking on ads. People on your homepage have not found what they wanted and click your ads in hopes of better luck elsewhere. Blogs that use several posts on their homepage aren't optimized for adsense - too many subjects and post titles - the content is varied because the page contains several different subjects and the Google bot doesn't know what the page is about specifically. The end result is that the page will receive general ads based on the overall content of the blog and this means low paying ads.
I only post one article per page including the home page. Each page is optimized around one subject and Google sends me the most relevant ads which also pay the most. The downside of this is that I don't get as many page views as regular bloggers but I do make more money from adsense. If you are skeptical just test this on your own blog. This blog makes an average of $8.83 a day with adsense and that is way more than most blogs. I have had a number of people ask me why I only use 1 post on my front page and this is why. It pays better.
Ok.. there was more I wanted to yak about but I tee off in half an hour so maybe I will just post this and pick up again next time.
Cheers,
Grizzly
Optimizing your Blog - Why your article content matters.
This may shock some of you but your content has more to do with your search engine page rankings than any other factor - period. It has become increasingly clear that Google has tweaked it's algorithm in this direction for some time now and despite how many backlinks you have or what kind of pagerank you achieve - your content is the overriding determinant in how well your pages get ranked in the searches.
How do I know this?
I have been experimenting for some time now using SEO techniques, backlinking strategies, website design, blog design, hosting platforms, black hat, grey hat, white hat and every other kind of gimmick, trick and sorcery I know of and the inescapable conclusion is this - my best performing sites to date are all low PR, low age simple blogs either hosted here on blogspot or on my own domains. Most have few backlinks and none have any high PR backlinks. By "best performing" I mean simply that these blogs have the most pages ranked on pages 1-3 in the SERP's for the keywords I have targeted and hence they pull in the most free traffic.
Does this surprise you?
I admit that I was surprised at first but have come to see the pattern developing. Google has one overriding goal - give the end user (the searcher or reader) the exact information they are looking for and compared to a few years ago they are achieving this in spades. When you search for something today on Google you usually find exactly what you are looking for. In days past you had to sift through a lot of garbage before finding what you wanted. How Google has achieved this is a credit to the "Brains" behind their engine and while most internet marketers have grumbled and whined over the changes that have crippled their former empires I have come to relish these changes. And so should you.
What this now means.
Google has leveled the playing field for everyone. In the past the folks who made money online had all the resources and knowledge necessary for gaming the engines. Newcomers had a steep learning curve and in most cases didn't stand a chance of reaching the top pages in the SERP's. That has now changed. Anyone can get top ranking by doing what Google wants you to do and you don't need deep pockets to do it.
So what exactly does Google want you to do?
Produce good quality content. Original content.
Anything else? Nope... not really but you can help yourself out by producing it in a search engine friendly way which I will explain shortly.
Over the past few months I have created a number of niche blogs ranging from shoes to recipes for cooking fish. All of them were indexed within 2-3 days by Google. All of them had traffic within a week of creation. 1 blog had traffic 26 minutes after I created it. All of them have pages on the 1st page of the SERP's. Most got there within 2 weeks. Those with less competition got higher ranking faster.
The blog that got indexed and sent traffic in 26 minutes floored me but it also told me that what I was doing was all that needed to be done. The blog btw is in a hugely competitive market but the keyword I targeted was not optimized by others. In case you're wondering it was "how to cook (a certain type of fish)". A small niche to be certain but I get 30 - 40 visitors a day for it. This might not sound like much but I have added a lot more pages to the blog all optimized for related keywords and the blog is now pulling in 200 plus visits a day and I make $3-$4 daily from adsense and have made 4 affiliate sales. The blog is just over a month old.
So what is my system?
This is where I am supposed to hit you up with a sales pitch for my ebook. Send me money and I'll tell you. Lucky for you I'm too lazy to bother with setting all of that up and writing the book so I'll just tell you.
Here it is.
Create your blog using your main keyword in your Title.
Write your first post using your main keyword in the post Title, the first paragraph and use it again in the last sentence of the post.
Link the post Title back to your blog.
Don't over use your keyword in the main content of your post but try and use 5 or 6 related keywords a couple of times each throughout your post. If you are talking about "Fishing Recipes" then use related terms like "trout", "perch", "bass" and so on in your text. This tells the search engine that your content is on topic and makes your page easier to categorize. Think of it this way. If you are trying to get ranked for "Car Insurance" and all you write about in your content is "Car Insurance" then you will get categorized under "Car Insurance" and ranked about 2 million. If you mention several models and makes of cars in your post and several types of insurance plans available then you will get categorized for not only "car Insurance" but for all the more specific terms as well. It is these specific terms that will get higher rankings and all of them will boost your main keyword's ranking in the process.
Each new post should have your blog's main keyword in it but you want to write each new post on a specific sub topic of your main keyword. If my blog's main keyword is "Fishing Recipes" then each page will concentrate on a different fish and recipe. In time you will build up your main keyword while getting indexed for highly specific or targeted sub keywords or "long tails" as they are known.
Post at least three times a week for the first two months.
Do not add adsense or advertising or affiliate products to your blog for at least a month after getting indexed. If you do you will slow down your rankings or lose position on the SERP's. By not monetizing your blog you appear to be a credible source of information for the search engines. You can add this later but expect to see at least a slight drop in your rankings when you do. I have tested this extensively and can say without a doubt that you will always rank higher without monetization.
Have an "about me" section which gives your name, address and contact info. This makes you more credible. The more info you give the better although most people do not want to do this. This is not mandatory as you won't be penalized for not doing it. You will rank better if you do is all.
That's it for on page SEO
Now for off page SEO.
Get indexed.
To do this don't bother submitting your site to the search engines or directories. Waste of time and quite frankly you don't need to.
I use a link from a PR7 site to get indexed immediately. Most of you won't have this option so do the next best thing. Put your link on a high PR site. How? Submit an article to ezine articles (PR6). The bots crawl it several times daily. When it gets crawled, your article gets crawled and the bot follows your link all the way to your new blog. You can also set up a page (lens) on Squidoo for the same results.
It might take 2-3 days before you actually see it indexed on the search engines but this is only because they can be slow to update their results. When you do see it you will notice that the blog was actually picked up a few days earlier.
Submitting to Propeller (formerly netscape) also works just as well.
You are just about done. All that is left is to boost your pages up the search engine rankings. This is done by obtaining a few decent backlinks.
How?
Articles. I know you hate writing but there is some work involved in making money online.
For each post you write on your blog you should write 2 to 3 similar but not duplicate articles emphasizing the same keywords and submit them to different article directories. Start with Ezine articles and GoArticles. There are hundreds of article directories out there and you can find them with a little Google search. Use the highest PR sites first. Each time your article is picked up and posted on someone else's site you get a little link juice back to your blog. Don't write crap. Make your articles useful and compelling - people will want to use them for their own readers. Don't just put your link in the Author's box - this gets left off when people only post a snippet of your article on their site. This is when they only use your first paragraph and then put a link back to the original article so readers can read the rest if they choose. Put your link in the first sentence of the article using your keyword as the anchor text.
Note: If you can't write your own stuff or need help may I suggest you check out The Writer's Manifesto - a great site run by a wonderful person by the name of Monika Mundell. If you need someone to write for you then see her freelance site Monika Mundell.com
Anything else?
Nope.
This is all I have done recently and it works like a charm. It works because I have concentrated on giving Google good quality original content. They reward me by ranking my pages high in the SERP's. I outrank about.com, Squidoo, wikipedia and a host of high PR sites with my 1-2 month old blogs for one main reason. The content on my pages are more optimized and relevant to the subject matter than what the competition has produced on their pages. I don't have PR or many useful links so what else could it be. The simple fact is that your content will win out over PR if you write quality.
A note on quantity.
I am not positive but I am beginning to believe that quantity also has a great deal to do with this as well. I don't mean how many pages but rather how much I write on each subject. It appears that the more exhaustive I am the better. I tend to write long and extensive articles. Most bloggers write snippets. From Google's point of view who gives the most information - a 250 word article on a single topic or a 3000 word article on the same topic but also includes info on relevant topics. Would Google rank Joe Bloggers 1000 word post on "war and Peace" as more relevant than some old Russian dudes 2 million word post on "War and Peace"? Not likely. Now having said that keep your reader in mind always. The reader wants info but probably doesn't want to spend all week reading it. There is a fine balance to be had between giving lots of info and too much info.
On that note...
Try it out.
It works.
Grizzly
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