Table of Contents Table of Contents__ Chapter Adsense Money______________________________________________________3 How Does AdSense Know What Ads to Send?_____________________6 Where do the Ads Come From?_____________________________________9 Using AdSense for Monetization__________________________________10 Rules of AdSense___________________________________________________11 AdSense for Search________________________________________________12 How Much Money Can I Make from AdSense?____________________13 Chapter 2___________________________________________________________14 Once You Are Approved for AdSense_____________________________16 AdSense Block Locations__________________________________________
_____18 Graphics and AdSense_____________________________________________19 Chapter 3___________________________________________________________19 AdSense Report Tab________________________________________________20 AdSense Setup Tab_________________________________________________20 My Account Tab_____________________________________________________21 Need More Help With AdSense?___________________________________21 Chapter 4___________________________________________________________22 Forum Signature Files______________________________________________22 Finding Forums of Interest________________________________________23 E-Mail Signature Files______________________________________________24 Back-links Bring Traffic to Your Blog_____________________________25 Article Submissions________________________________________________26 Press Release Submissions________________________________________27 Blog Directory Submissions_______________________________________27 Comment on Other Blogs__________________________________________28 Team Up With Other Bloggers_____________________________________28 2 Chapter 5___________________________________________________________30 How Does a Search Engine Work?________________________________30 Search Engine Optimization_______________________________________31 Stay on Topic & Post Often________________________________________33 Links________________________________________________________________33 Keywords___________________________________________________________34 META Tags__________________________________________________________35 Ping_________________________________________________________________36 SEO and Marketing Your Blog_____________________________________37 3 Chapter 1 Adsense Money AdSense is Google’s program which allows you to sell space on your website to host other people’s advertisements. Hosting AdSense ads on your website or blog is completely 100% free to you as the host and a great way to earn some money. How do you earn money with Google’s AdSense? Simple, every time someone clicks on an AdSense ad on your blog Google pays you. Someone clicking on your ad is called “click through.” Your visitor is clicking through your webpage to another webpage via the AdSense link on your website. Google pays you for these click through visitors because their advertising has successfully reached a visitor on your blog. You get paid because you agreed to host the ads and you provided good content which got a targeted ad and a resulting click on that ad. AdSense is a very popular way to monetize a blog because it is simple to setup and use, especially on a blog which is hosted by Blogger. Why?The
answer to that is simple; Google owns both Blogger and AdSense so the two
have been programmed to work very well together. Google wants you to
host their AdSense ads on your blog so they have made it very easy for you
to ad the ad blocks, and has made it simple to make them look great and
blend in with the theme of your blog as well.
They understand this makes for
a higher click through ratio and want to help work with you to earn as much
revenue for both of you as possible.
AdSense is also very popular because it makes you money without you
having to go out and find your own advertisers for your site. Imagine all of
the work you would have to go through to find other businesses to advertise
their products that would interest your specific visitors on your website.
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Rather than you having to go out and find other companies to advertise on
your website Google brings them there for you to advertise on your site.
This saves you loads of time and has the potential to make you loads of cash
in the process. It also brings your blog some seriously high quality
advertisers. Most all of the biggest companies in the world advertise through
Google!
AdSense is intuitive, meaning that it reads your website or blog and then
chooses ads which are relevant to the content it has found. This means that
if you have a blog on cats, then AdSense will not put ads about working at
home on your blog.
The AdSense ads are great because they will be relevant
to your topic and content which means you have a better chance of your
readers clicking on them.
How AdSense works is that if, for example, you have a blog about dogs,
AdSense will place ads for things like pet supplies, dog training and other
relevant goods and services likely to get the visitors of your blog to click on
them.
You will not see ads on a dog themed website for irrelevant things like
weight loss products or make tons of money at home stuffing envelopes
schemes.
The ads will fit the topics you are writing about.
What additionally makes AdSense ads great is that they can be made to
blend in with the theme and look of your website or blog.
This makes them
less “ad” looking and they genuinely look like a totally natural part of your
blog. While visitors to your website or blog don’t want to see blatant
advertisements, they see the AdSense ads more as a part of your content or
other links.
This is good for two reasons. Number one, you do not want to
appear to be trying to make money from your readers of your blog. Number
two, your blog does not end up cluttered looking with a bunch of very
obvious looking advertisements. You do not want your visitors to see a
bunch of billboard type ads but rather ads which blend in with both your
blogs colors and topic. AdSense does this very well and by using Blogger to
host your blog the process is very simple.
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AdSense does not allow you to select the specific ads which appear on your
site, but it does an amazing job of keeping them in line with the content on
your site. AdSense also allows you to exclude ads from your direct
competitors on your website if for some reason they happen to appear on
your site.
If for example you have a blog on which you sell your own goat
cheese, the last thing you want in advertising is your competitor who also
sells goat cheese coming up on the ads. Google understands this and allows
you to easily exclude those ads from your AdSense ads.
This is done on the
AdSense console and we will cover that later in this eBook.
How Does AdSense Know What Ads to Send?
The AdSense engine at Google sends its bot, called Googlebot, out to visit
your site on a regular basis to examine your pages.
This bot is simply a
program which reads your pages. Googlebot looks at your key words, the
structure and formatting on your web pages, the native language of your
site, etc… Using the information gathered by the Googlebot, Google then
sends AdSense ads to your site which are the most likely to entice your
visitors to click on them.
The Googlebot will even tell AdSense if your blog is in a language other than
English, so that your ads come to you in the language of your site. It
wouldn’t be very good to see English ads on a Spanish site or vice versa.
AdSense is available in many languages and regions around the world. And,
the ads you will receive on your blog will be from your own region and in
your native language.
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The longer your website is up, and the more you are scanned by the
Googlebot, the more tightly matched the ads become to your content. At
first the bot might misunderstand the meaning of your blog if you have not
done a great job of using lots of relevant keywords. If you have a blog about
coffee yet you talk a lot about your children in your blog message posts, then
you might end up with ads which would interest readers of a children’s blog.
If you want to monetize your blog it is important to stay on topic, most of the
time, so that the Googlebot reads your blog and serves up the ads which you
want to show up on your site.
Knowing what standards Google is looking for on your website with their
Googlebot, and keeping your blog to be compliant with those standards,
makes AdSense work it’s best for you. For some unknown reason AdSense
prefers pages with lots of text and not too many graphics.
Googlebot also
sees larger or bold text as having more importance than regular text. This
means that posting large and bold key words can help AdSense zero in on
the subject of your blog better. It also means that you will want to keep the
photos and graphics to a minimum and make sure you stay on topic a large
percentage of the time.
If you want to have a blog with a lot of photos you
might consider starting a second blog and hosting them all there and then
link the two blogs together.
One valuable tip for all bloggers is to make sure you start all of your blog
posts with a large, bold, title at the beginning of the text section of each blog
message post. It is very quick and simple to do this and yet it is very
effective with AdSense. If your blog is about frogs and you mention frogs in
your title and then again as a bold title at the beginning of your blog
message post, the Googlebot can better understand that your blog is about
frogs.
Taking the time to do this simple thing will insure that the Googlebot
understands more quickly what your blog is about and serves you up
relevant AdSense ads. It also looks natural to your readers and isn’t
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distracting to them.
It is also less time consuming than dealing with special
tag words or any other search engine games bloggers play.
Another good tip with AdSense is to make sure you use your topic’s
keywords often in your blog post titles, and use them again within the
content of your posts as well. For example, if you have a blog about
chickens you will want to make sure your post titles mention the word
“chicken” in them. You will also want to make sure you mention chickens,
eggs, and other related words as much as possible within your posted
messages. The more you can post relevant titles and content loaded with
keywords, the better AdSense will work for you and send you relevant ads.
You have a much higher click through rate for ads which are relevant to the
topic of your blog.
Think about the times you have clicked on the Google
AdSense ads on a website you were visiting. Generally speaking, was it for
something related to the topic you were already reading about? Of course it
was.
However, all of that being said, you do not want to overload your posted
messages with keywords.
Your reader wants to know that you publish your
blog for them to read, not to make money from them. By posting a sentence
which reads; “the chickens in my chicken coop are working on having more
chickens in the spring...” looks like a sentence I tried to use the word
“chicken” in as much as possible.
There is definitely a balance to be struck
between pleasing your readers and pleasing the Googlebot who serves your
AdSense ads on your website. Instead of stuffing in those keywords try
making more sentences or using them in the title and adding a bit more text
to your message posts.
You also do not want it to appear that you set-up your blog with a bunch of
keywords simply for AdSense.
You also do not want to copy content from
free sites like wikipedia and then paste them into your blog. These blogs are
called splogs (short for spam blogs) and doing this can get you kicked-off of
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AdSense and Blogger as well. You need a blog with good original content,
not just a bunch of keywords. By creating a splog you can get a high search
engine ranking temporarily but why would readers want to visit or return to
your blog if all it offers them is some keyword garbage and ads to click on?
It can take a bit of time for the Googlebot to visit your website and
determine what its main topic is.
If your website is new to AdSense, Google
will not guess about your topic, it will simply place ads on your blog for
charities or public service announcements as to not waste the advertising
dollars of its AdWord clients. This is good for you the blogger as well. The
last thing you want to do is to see ads on your blog which have nothing to do
with its topic. By putting up the neutral ads Google has solved this problem.
Where do the Ads Come From?
It is logical that at this point you might be wondering where the
advertisements Google puts on your site come from. Google has another
program called AdWords where businesses and individuals can pay to
advertise their websites via AdSense.
These companies and individuals are
assured by doing this that the websites their advertisements end up on will
be relevant to the goods and services which they want to sell. Just as
AdSense saves you time in looking for advertisers for your site, AdWords
saves a lot of time, energy and money for those businesses who want to
advertise on relevant sites without having to go out themselves and search
for the sites to host their ads.
Using the AdWords program, businesses and individuals buy AdSense
advertisements in large blocks by bidding on them. Generally a business will
pay for 500-1000 ads at a time. Based on their specified keywords, a
business allows AdSense to put their ads on sites which would likely interest
people who would be their potential customers.
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For the example above of the chicken blog, if you were a hatchery, or a
supplier of chicken accessories, then you would want ads placed on blogs
such as the above one for chickens.
This is exactly what AdWords and
AdSense do. And, they do it very well for both the advertiser and the host of
the ads. The hatchery wants to find chicken lovers and the blog about
chickens is the place it can easily find them. The blog wants ads which will
appeal to chicken lovers, and the hatchery is one of those ads.
Just as AdSense can be a good way to make money from advertising,
AdWords can be a good way to advertise your business or even your own
blog!
If you are looking at driving targeted traffic to a website what better
way than to use AdWords where it will place ads on similar websites to
yours? There simply is no easier way.
If you have a blog on a unique topic
and are struggling to bring it traffic, you can buy AdWords advertising and
your blog link will show up on similar sites to yours, and this will bring you
added traffic. From this added traffic you will get more clicks on your
AdSense ads and will likely make more money from those than you paid to
advertise with AdWords.
Using AdSense for Monetization
Many websites and blogs use AdSense to monetize their sites. AdSense is
good for monetization because it tailors the ads to your site content.
AdSense also allows you to sell space on your site by setting it up once and
then not having think much about it ever again, other than tweaking a bit the
location and side of the AdSense ad blocks themselves on your site. Passive
income is always the best form of income to have because it frees you up to
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be working on other things and sits there in the background making you
money.
If you spend a bit of time placing the AdSense ad boxes on your site when
you build it, and then keep your titles and content inline with the topic of
your blog,
you can make money with AdSense without much further thought.
AdSense is a great source of passive income. Passive income is very
important and valuable. Passive income is money which you receive without
having to do daily work for it. It is simply something you set-up once and
then sit back and collect your money from it over time.
One way to publish a successful monetized blog is to find a blog topic which
is fairly unique. Find a unique topic means you do not have a lot of websites
to compete with in the search engines. By doing this you can generate a lot
of natural visitors through search engine listings and then from those visitors
a lot of clicks on your AdSense ads as well.
There are entire books written on how to find “the” topic to publish the best
monetized blog. However, the easiest way is to simply search for topics that
interest you and see how many page hits sites like Google return; the lower
the number, the better the topic. Understand however, that everything you
search will have a ton of hits. Any search with results lower than about a
two million is probably a great option for a blog topic. Any search over about
ten million is probably not the best topic to choose.
Trying to get good search engine rankings with a topic like chickens is much
easier than trying to get a high ranking with a topic like computers. With a
topic of computers there are literally millions of websites; some are very
large sites, dedicated to the topic.
All of whom you will have to compete with
for rankings! Why try and compete with IBM and Dell when you can simply
find something easier to blog on? It just doesn’t make sense to try. Stick to
the lesser keywords and you will see better traffic and AdSense income.
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Rules of AdSense
When you sign up for Google’s AdSense, you will be asked to agree to their
“Terms of Service” agreement. This is one agreement which you should read
and make sure you fully understand everything on it.
Google has very specific rules as to what you can and cannot do with their
AdSense ads. And Google is very serious about their rules. For instance
you are prohibited from asking your readers to click on the AdSense links.
You are totally prohibited from clicking on the links on your own sites. You
are also prohibited from putting Google AdSense links in pop-ups, popunders, or websites with any type of pornographic material.
You are only
permitted three AdSense boxes per website page. By understanding the
terms of the AdSense agreement it will go a long way towards helping you to
stay both ethical and profitable with their program. Ignoring their terms of
service will only cause you problems and likely get you kicked off of the
program forever.
Google tracks websites which are created with a bunch of junk content
specifically to get AdSense clicks. Google does not like splogs and goes after
them with a vengeance even encouraging other bloggers to report them
when they find them online. These sites generally copy content from other
websites or free content sites, and then post it on their site solely for
AdSense revenue. This is against Google’s policy and they will pull their ads
from these sites when they find them. As an ethical blogger this is actually a
good thing for you and your success because it can keep the splogs from
getting higher search rankings than your real and valid blog which you put
your time into creating and keeping up to date.
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AdSense for Search
Google also offers a companion program to AdSense which is called “AdSense
for Search.” The AdSense for Search program allows you to host a Google
search box on your website or blog. When a visitor to your website searches
via that search box you will be paid if they go on to purchase something
online from the search. In other words, Google does not pay you for the
search itself, but does pay you from any revenue earned from the search
which originated on your website.
AdSense for Search can be a great income generator for you. Assume for a
moment that your blog is about appliance repair. Someone finds your site
that is looking for information on the problem they are having with their
washing machine.
You have a Google Search box on your blog. After the
visitor is done reading what you have suggested the problem might be, they
decide to go on to search for a new washing machine. Maybe you had a
review on your blog of a good washer they might consider buying.
If they
buy this washing machine from the search then you will get part of the
revenue from that purchase because the search started on your blog. How
entirely cool is that? All you did was simply host a search box on your blog!
How Much Money Can I Make from AdSense?
So, this all sounds easy so far and you want to know how much money you
can earn through AdSense and AdSense for Search, right?
The answer to
that question is that it depends. Sorry, I know that’s not a great answer, or
the one you were likely hoping to hear, but that’s the best answer anyone
can ever give you. Anyone who gives you a different answer is lying to you!
Google does not release how much it pays for various clicks.
The money you
can make from AdSense and AdSense for Search depends largely on the
volume of traffic to your site and how often you get clicks on the Google ads.
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Obviously the more traffic to your site then the more potential clicks you will
receive. No one knows how many visitors you will have an no one can tell
you how many of those visitors will click on your ads. It is simply impossible
to know.
What most people do know for sure about AdSense is that some clicks pay
you mere cents and others pay a few dollars for a single click. It all depends
on the specific topic and very specific keywords for the ads. For obvious
reasons, Google does not release which clicks pay more and which pay less.
This is one of those things you have to try and guess about.
The single absolute best thing you can do to insure that you make the most
amount of money possible with AdSense is to set-up a quality blog with a
good topic, post quality information on it regularly, and promote it to get the
maximum visitors possible. Using this model you will make the most money
possible from AdSense without having to play games with Google or your
readers.
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Chapter 2
How To Work With Google
Once you have your blog created in Blogger, signing up for AdSense is a very
easy thing for you to do. The first thing you will want to do is go to the
AdSense Console located online at:
https://www.google.com/adsense/
On the AdSense starting page you will want to click on the “Click Here to
Apply” button.
Clicking on the “Apply” button will take you to a second sign-up screen where
you will enter the URL of your blog, your name, address, phone number and
the other usual basic information about yourself.
You will also have to check the boxes agreeing that you will not ever click on
your own Google AdSense ads, that you will not put ads on sites which
include incentives to click on the ads, that you will not place ads on sites with
any pornographic content, that you can have checks made out in your own
name, and that you have read and agree to the AdSense Program Policies.
Remember to take the time here to read and understand the Program
Policies!
The last selection, the AdSense Program Policies, is very important for you to
read and make sure you fully understand it.
Google is very vigilant about
compliance to their rules and regulations when it comes to AdSense. You
cannot ever click on your own ads, you cannot ask your readers to click on
the ads hosted on your sites, and you need to understand where you can
place the ads and where you cannot. Understanding the AdSense policies
and rules will potentially save you a lot of hassle in the future.
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Once you have applied to host AdSense on your blog you will be asked to
confirm your request via the e-mail address you have provided on your
application. To do this, simply open your e-mail client, and click on the link
to confirm that you did indeed apply for AdSense in the message Google has
sent to you.
This step insures Google that you are who you say you are.
Once you have confirmed your request by clicking on the e-mail link you
were sent, then you will need to wait to be approved by Google. Google
generally takes about two to three business days to get back to you.
Generally AdSense is approved for anyone who applies.
They are mostly just
making sure you have the site which you say you do and that you do not
have another AdSense account already. They are not really looking at your
site itself and what’s on it. Even if your blog has a single post on it that’s
fine and they will approve you for AdSense hosting.
During the waiting period there is nothing you can do with AdSense other
than think about where you would like their ads to show up on your blog.
Because of this waiting period, it is best to apply for AdSense right after you
have created your blog – even if you have yet to post a single message to it.
After you have applied then the first thing you should do is make a post to
your blog so that Google can see you are making a blog and what it is
basically about for the approval process.
Once You Are Approved for AdSense
Once your blog has been approved to host AdSense ads on it, you will want
to add in the three blocks of ads into your Blogger template. How and where
you do this is vitally important as to how well you will generate income from
AdSense.
You want the ads to blend in with your template and you want
them to not look like obvious ads to your readers.
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Reading the terms and conditions of AdSense you find that you are allowed
to host three separate AdSense ad blocks per website. For a Blogger blog,
you will want one at the top of the page, one within your message text and
another on the sidebar with your links.
These have been proven locations for
many bloggers and are generally the known preferred places for anyone who
wishes to make money from AdSense.
Your number one goal with these three ad blocks is to make them blend in
with the rest of your blog and not appear to your readers as ads. Google has
helped you out with this by providing you with the ability to “blend” your ads
with your chosen template. To do this you will go to the Dashboard in
Blogger and click on Settings -> AdSense.
Notice where it says “Blend Template” under “Select Colors,” this is the
selection you will always want to use!
It is very important to have your
AdSense ads blend in with the rest of your content. While other colors might
look better, people will not click on them as often if they scream “ads” to
them. Better to stick with what has worked for other bloggers and just blend
the ads into your template.
To the left of that is the “Select Ad Format” drop-down box. This allows you
choose the size of your AdSense ad block. The size of the block you choose
will be determined by where you want the AdSense ads to appear on your
blog and how you want them to look arranged on the page.
AdSense Block Locations
You will want to place all three blocks which Google allows you to have onto
your blog. The best location to place the first ad block is at the top of your
message. In the “Select Ad Format” field choose the “468 x 15 Horizontal
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Row” format. This format will blend in nicely with your blog and will appear
as if it were a menu bar of a traditional website. Google will automatically
place this ad block for you at the top of your blog. Leave it where Google
puts it.
For your second AdSense block you will want to place it on the sidebar of
your blog. (You will need to generate this code using the AdSense Console,
which I will show you how to easily do, in the next chapter of this eBook.)
Generally, right under your “links” section is a good place to put this second
block. If you choose the same font and text size as your links you can make
your AdSense look just like additional links for your blog. To ad in this block
choose a vertical rectangle, whichever works best for the space you have,
and paste the code into your template right after where it says:
By placing your AdSense block at the end of your links, it will blend in nicely with them. Your third AdSense block should be added so that it shows up in the text of your posted messages. Again, you will need to generate the code in the AdSense Console and then you will want to paste it here in your blog template:
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By pasting your third block within your posted message content you will put
it in the reader’s view enough that they will invariably click on the links. This
can be the most profitable place of all for AdSense ads to appear.
If you do not like the ad block in your posted message area, consider adding
it in right above the footer of your posted messages. By adding the ad block
here your readers will see the links and assume you are offering them
suggested reading on the same subject of your message. And remember,
the more they look like your recommendations, the more your readers will
respond and click on them! And ultimately the more clicks you get the more
money you will make.
Graphics and AdSense
Another good AdSense money making trick of experienced bloggers is to add
a picture or graphic file directly above the Google AdSense ads. Google
requires you to have a border separating the image from the ads and to
make them not look like they belong together. However, by placing the ads
directly under the graphic your reader’s eye is drawn to the graphic and then
naturally to the ads.
This can be one of the most effective ways to place
AdSense on your blog! Just make sure you adhere to Google’s requirement
that you clearly separate the ads from the graphics.
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Chapter 3
Your Control Center
Once you have created an AdSense account and added your ad blocks to
your blog, you will want to learn a bit about the AdSense Console, what it is
and what it can do for you. To logon to your AdSense Console simply go
online to:
https://www.google.com/adsense/
Enter your e-mail and password for AdSense, which you used previously to
create your AdSense account.
AdSense Report Tab
The AdSense Console is very easy to use. The first page you see is the
“Overview” page of the “Reports” tab. Here you will find the number of page
impressions your blog has had, the number of clicks on your ads, your page
click-through rate, and your earnings.
You can view today, this week, last
week, all time, etc… Using this simple overview you can start to adjust your
ad block locations and see if your revenue improves or declines based on the
location of your ad blocks. One good thing you can try here is to look at your
click through rate for a day. Move your ads and then see if your click
through improves or declines. Look at the content on various days and find
out if one topic seems to get you better click through than another. If so
then you might want to create more content based on those keywords.
Your
goal is the highest click through rate possible.
As you can see in the graphic above, Google holds AdSense payments until
you have reached a total of $100 and have specifically told Google how to
pay you. This helps to keep Google’s overhead down and your earning
potential higher.
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In addition to various simple to use reports, Google offers you a Site
Diagnostics page.
This site will alert you if there is anything on your site that
the Googlebot has issues with. It is a good idea to view this from time to
time and make sure everything is okay with your site.
AdSense Setup Tab
The AdSense Setup tab located in the AdSense Console allows you to create
the customized text blocks you will need to paste into your Blogger template,
get the code for AdSense for Search, and also an AdSense referral button
which you can put on your blog to generate income through referring other
sites to use AdSense on their own sites.
From the “AdSense Setup” tab you can easily generate the code for your ad
blocks, change the colors and look of your ad blocks, update your channels
and use the “Competitive Ad Filter” to filter out any ads from you competitor
websites which may be showing up in your AdSense ad blocks.
My Account Tab
Under the “My Account” tab you will simply find your personal and financial
information.
This is where you would update your payment choices or
address, e-mail account, etc…
Need More Help With AdSense?
One of the best things about Google is that they assume everyone needs
some clear helpful explanations and easy to navigate help pages. They have
done an excellent job of creating their “Help” pages with regard to AdSense.
Reading the help screens in AdSense can help you to get the most out of the
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program with your blog. It is well worth taking some time to familiarize
yourself with these pages and the information contained within them.
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Chapter 4
Generating More Adsense Money
Forum Signature Files
One way to increase traffic to your blog is to post messages on internet
forums. An internet forum is simply a message board where people gather
to talk and form their own online communities.
There are forums on just
about any topic you can think of. Seriously, you would be surprised what
topics you can find forums on! You can find forums on anything from
childbirth to finance, from politics to world history, and literally every other
topic in between.
Most online forums allow you to have a personalized signature file. Within
this personal signature file you can generally put a link to your blog, a link to
a website you own or frequent, your name, the city you live in, or any other
basic information you choose to have visible to anyone who reads the forum
messages.
When you post a message on the forum, your signature file will
automatically post the information you entered into it, at the bottom of each
of the messages you post. Using a signature on forums can be a great way
to get people to come and read your blog while being able to reach your
target market easily.
What you will want to do first is to sign-up for forums which either relate
directly to your topic, or where people with similar interests to your topic
hang-out online, and then include the link back to your blog in your signature
file.
You want to make sure to only post good quality and more important
relevant messages to the topic of the forum. You should aim to become a
valuable participant in the forum.
If your messages add value to the forum
for the other community readers, and you get to know some of the other
posters and build an online friendship, then they will likely check-out your
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blog and start reading it. When they find that they like your blog they will
also post messages on their favorite forums about it and bring you more
readers. They will begin to advertise your blog for you. What’s better than
some passive advertising? Nothing!
What you do not want to ever do is join a forum and simply post about how
great your blog is and how everyone should check it out. This is considered
spamming and will result in you being banned from most forums, and might
even get your blog itself shut-down
You will not gain any meaningful traffic
from doing this. All you will do is irritate people and possibly get some nice
rude comments added to your blog. People will not check out your blog
because you say it is great.
Finding Forums of Interest
Finding forums which are relevant to the topic of your blog is a very easy
thing to do. Suppose for a moment that you have a blog with a topic of
“trout fishing.” You can simply go to www.google.com, or any other search
engine you prefer to use, and type in “trout fishing +forum” and you get
back 258,000 possible locations to visit for forums relating to trout fishing.
The list which Google returns to you will include some duplicates and some
other junk, but you will also find that there are more trout fishing forums
than you ever imagined!
Because of the way search engines work, you will find that the most popular
forums will show towards the top of the search result pages.
Those are
probably the best to join and get to know people in. Because they have a
high search engine ranking tells you that they have a large membership and
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a good grasp of the topic of your interest.
They are the most likely places
where people who enjoy trout fishing are hanging out online.
As well as searching for “trout fishing,” you might also consider searching for
other topics which would be of interest to other people who trout fish. Some
of these topics might include subjects like backpacking, camping, fishing, fly
fishing, hiking, outdoor life, outdoor recreation, living off the land, etc…
Think about all of the other things you are interested in and think about
whether or not others who trout fish would also be interested in those things.
From there you can come up with relevant words to search and a whole new
batch of forums to introduce yourself on and participate in.
If you think outside the box a bit you can come up with unlimited options of
where to share links to your blog. The more ideas you can come up with
then the more readers you can bring to your blog. The more readers to your
blog then the more potential AdSense clicks and the more money in your
bank account.
E-Mail Signature Files
Most every e-mail client these days offers you the ability to create a
signature file. Even free e-mail accounts, such as Yahoo or Hotmail, allow
you to create a signature file. Exactly the same as on an online message
board or forum, this signature file is attached to each and every message
you send out from your e-mail account.
Think of all the people you send email to each day and all of the possible new blog readers you can gain from
this one simple signature file.
If you attach a link to your blog in every e-mail message you send out people
will invariably click on it whether it has to do with what you e-mailed them
about or not. People are very curious creatures and they want to know
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what’s up with other people and what they are thinking.
Your blog allows
them into your brain a bit, so they will click on the link to your blog and look
it over.
These e-mail contacts may be potential blog readers who you would not have
reached with online advertising in any other way. Using signature files allows
you to easily reach a large variety of people yet not spend more than the
couple minutes it takes to initially set up the signature file itself. And, if you
have a good quality blog then it is entirely possible these new readers will
pass along your link to all the people they know as well.
If you have multiple blogs and multiple e-mail accounts you can put links to
all of your blogs in the signature files of each e-mail account or your can put
one link per account.
Try to think what will generate you the most traffic to
the specific blogs you choose. You should always take the time to promote
your own blogs and your own sites through your other blogs and sites; even
if they are not directly related to each other. Your goal for any blog or
website should always be to have the most visitors possible and you can do
this through promoting your sites wherever you can both online and off.
Back-links Bring Traffic to Your Blog
One of the best ways to bring up your search engine rankings, and bring
traffic to your blog, is by having a lot of back-links. A back-link is a link on
someone else’s website to your blog.
There are many ways to get back-links
to your blog, you can write and submit articles to directories and other
websites, you can write and submit a press release online, or you can simply
post comments on other blogs which will then link back to your blog.
Other
ways to get back-links is to link all of your blog to one another and to link up
with other blogger’s sites for the mutual benefit of all of you.
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Article Submissions
There are many places online where you can submit a short (400-600 word)
non-fiction article about something you know. This article could be your first
blog posting, it could be something you come up with just to post on an
article directory website, or it could be an article you have someone else
ghostwrite and then publish under your own name.
This is one time where
having other people write for you probably isn’t a bad thing. As long as the
article is good and sound it really doesn’t matter if it was written by you or a
ghostwriter you hired to write it.
Submitting an article to an online article directory is free, simple, and easy.
Simply turn one of your blog posts into an article which can stand alone, and
then submit it to the article directory of your choice. (Some popular ones are
articlealley.com, contentdesk.com, ezinearticles.com and goarticles.com.)
There are also automated submission programs you can use to submit your
articles to many article sites all at one time.
Attached to your article will be a “byline.” Your byline will contain
information about you and a link to your blogs and other websites. You could
have your byline read something like “Jane Smith is a programmer by day
and blogs on horses at night.
See her amazing programming website at
www.iprogram.com and read her blog at www.besthorseblog.com.” This
example byline just created two back-links for every time you publish the
article; one to the programming site and another to the horse blog.
If you
post this article five times on the web you have ten back-links to your sites.
Also, many article sites allow you to publish non-exclusive rights articles on
their sites.
This means that you are free to post the same article on other
article sites as well. Each time you submit the article you build links to your
site. In addition, other bloggers and webmasters will link to these articles on
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their own relevant sites and that creates even more links for your site as
well. By submitting articles to article directory websites you can build links
easily to your site to increase your search engine rankings.
Press Release Submissions
If you were to start a small home business, one way to receive free
advertising for it would be to send a press release to your local newspapers.
Online there are a few press release websites where you can submit a free
press release about your new blog or website. (The two most popular are
prweb.com and prfree.com.)
To make a press release, simply write up a short statement about how
awesome your newly launched site is and post it on the free press release
websites. Make sure to have a link to your site in your press release and you
have just created one additional back-link for each site you submitted your
press release to. Press releases are a great way to get links without a lot of
work.
They can be short and to the point.
Blog Directory Submissions
Just as there are directories online for e-mail address, phone numbers, and
other information, there are also directories which contain blog listings.
These blog directories are websites where people can go to find a whole list
of blogs on any specific topic of interest to them. The search this directory,
just like a search engine, and the results page is one of blogs which are on
their topic.
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Submitting your blogs to directories will help you to get both back-links and
more readers to your blog. Both results will help with your search engine
rankings as well as your AdSense ad revenue.
Comment on Other Blogs
Another way to create back-links to your blog is to post comments onto other
people’s blogs and websites.
If you leave quality comments then people just
might want to find out what else you have to say on your own blog.
If you
leave comments on another Blogger blog, then your account will show up
and your comments with automatically link back to your own blog.
Readers
of the blog will read your comments and click on your link to see what your
blog is all about.
Some people will post a short message about enjoying a blog and then ask
the blogger to check out their own blog and include the link to their own
website. By simply leaving a spam message of “hey check out my blog” you
will likely irritate people and not gain readers. Leave quality information and
people are much more likely to check out your blog.
You always want to
make sure you are adding value to the web, not just out advertising your
own blog to make money.
Team Up With Other Bloggers
Teaming up with other bloggers can be a great way to get links to your blog.
You can have a one-way back-link to your website, or you can have
reciprocal links. A reciprocal like is where you link to someone’s site and
they link back to yours in exchange. Search engines prefer back-links over
reciprocal links, but any link is better than none. And, the more links to your
blog, ultimately the better.
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Many bloggers have formed what is called a “blogroll.” A blogroll is a list of
links to other blogs with similar topics of interest. This allows blogs to have
back-links to them and also allows you to advertise your blog to the readers
of all of the similar blogs.
Blogrolls can be a great way to get new readers to
your blog and to raise your search engine rankings at the same time.
Another thing bloggers will often do is trade posting message with another
blogger. This trade of message posts is called “guest blogging.” Suppose for
a moment that I have a successful blog on work at home opportunities.
Another blogger who I found online has a blog on stay at home parents.
We
could trade posts where I would allow her guest post on my blog about stay
at home parents in exchange for my guest posting about work at home
opportunities on her blog.
We swap “guest” posts and each includes a byline
with a link back to our own blog or website. I have a back-link and she has
one as well.
By teaming up with other bloggers and guest blogging in this way you can
have access to the loyal readers of another blog and they will have access to
your blog.
Because, in the example above, our blogs do not directly compete
with each other for readers, we can be an added service to each other and to
our respective readers.
We can both build up our readership and also create
some links to our site at the same time.
This is a win-win situation for
everyone involved in it.
Finding other bloggers to guest blog with is not difficult.
If you take the time
to develop a good blog, with quality content, then other bloggers with good
quality blogs will want to exchange links and posts with you. The better your
blog, the better guest opportunities you will have!
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Chapter 5
Even More Exposure
How Does a Search Engine Work?
Before we can talk about search engine optimization you need to know and
understand the very basics of how a search engine works. While the process
is very mathematical and way more complex than most people care to know
about, I will try and give you a very simple explanation.
A search engine, such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc… sends a “spider” to a
new website.
This spider is simply a bit of code, or a program if you will,
which “crawls” the website. Crawling the website is simply a matter of
copying the pages and then downloading a copy of them to the search
engine’s web server.
Once the site has been crawled by the spider, the search engine then indexes
the information from the pages it now has copies of. The indexing is all
about keywords, tags, and what the site itself is all about.
When you go to www.google.com and put in a keyword to search for, your
“search results” page is based in the indexed pages from this process.
So, a search engine basically sends a spider to your pages, crawls them,
copies them down to their own server, indexes the information on them, and
then uses their index when someone does a search. It’s not really that
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simplistic of a process, but as far as what most of us need to know that is
basically what happens.
Search Engine Optimization
Once you have your blog established and are working to get the most traffic
to visit it as possible, you will invariably hear about search engine
optimization, or as it is commonly referred to - SEO.
While search engine
optimization sounds pretty daunting, it really is a pretty simple process to
understand. Being mindful of SEO can bring your blog more visitors, and
thus generate more income for you by those visitors clicking on your
AdSense ads.
This eBook will cover the basics on SEO, but know that just like the actual
workings of a search engine; entire books can be written on the topic! And,
as an added frustration, the search engines do not release exactly how they
process their information and index.
This means that everyone trying to
optimize their sites for the search engines is doing a fair amount of guessing
and trial and error to see what works for them.
When looking for something specific online you invariably go to your favorite
search engine and put in the keywords to search for whatever it is you are
looking for. For example, if you want to buy a new golf club you would likely
go to www.google.com and type in “golf club” in the search box.
Google, the search engine, would then return you a listing of probably a
million or more pages of possibilities.
The first website you see on the search
results page is the page ranked #1 with Google; the second result has the
#2 ranking, and so on down the list. With search engine optimization your
main goal is to get to as near the top as possible of the results pages when
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someone searches on the keywords for your blog topic. You want to be on
that first page of search engine results.
When a visitor does a search through a search engine and then clicks
through to your site from there they are referred to as “natural” or “organic”
visitors.
They got to your website by a “natural” search engine search and
not through another form of advertising you have done. Search engine
optimization is all about getting you the most natural visitors to your site as
possible.
Why? Because these natural visitors come to you without you
doing any work and then click on your AdSense ads.
This gives you the best
form of passive income possible!
The key to good search engine optimization is getting the highest ranking
possible with the least amount of extra work on your part.
When someone
searches Google for the keyword which is the topic of your blog, you want
your blog to show up on that first page of results, nearest to the top as
possible.
While the search engines use very complicated and secret
algorithms to create their rankings, there are some simple things you can do
to help get your blog up nearer to the top.
You should be posting on your
topic and often, building links, using good keywords and keyword density,
tagging your posts and pinging regularly. Let’s take a moment and look at
each of these suggestions in more detail.
Stay on Topic & Post Often
Search engines naturally prefer blogs over static websites.
They appreciated
that they are frequently updated and that they generally stick to one topic.
This makes it important for you, as a blogger of a monetized blog, to stick to
one specific topic on your blog. It is also vitally important to update your site
regularly.
These are the two easiest and absolute best things you can do for
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search engine optimization. Stay on topic, and post quality content
regularly. Simple.
Links
Links to your site from other sites helps to raise your search engine rank.
The search engines see links to your site as meaning that other’s value it
enough to link to it. They do not see if those links are created by
submissions you have done yourself or others have linked to you on their
own.
We have already discussed how to get links to your site through forum
postings, articles, press releases, guest blogging, etc… and the reason you
want to spend some time and energy gaining links is simply to improve your
number of readers and to help out your search engine optimization efforts.
Keywords
Keywords are essential to getting your blog(s) seen and ranked well by the
search engines. In a previous chapter of this eBook we talked about writing
keyword rich content, using your keywords in titles, and using special
formatting like bold to attract the Googlebot to your topics.
The reason for
this is simply for search engine optimization.
You want to use your blog’s
keywords often because this will help the search engine better index your
website for your keywords. Better indexing is equal to a better ranking on
the search engine results page when someone searches for those keywords.
Suppose for a moment you have a blog about living in Podunk. The more
times you mention Podunk in your titles and posts, the more Google and the
other search engines understand your site is about Podunk.
This means that
when someone goes to search for Podunk on Google, your page will return
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with a higher position than other sites on Podunk which uses that word less
on their websites.
One of your main goals with search engine optimization is to have your blog’s
content have a lot of keywords contained within it. In other words you need
to make sure that within the words on your page, you make sure that a lot of
those words are keywords.
This is commonly referred to as “keyword
density.”
Assume for a moment that you have a blog on laptops.
You write an article
of about 500 words and you mention the word “laptop” 10 times in the
article. This would give you a key word density of 2%. That means that 2%
of your words in that article are “laptop.” If you changed that same article to
have the word “laptop” in your article 18 times, use a title of “The Best
Laptop For Your Money” and then include the second title at the beginning of
your blog text, you would then have used the word “laptop” 20 times. Using
the word “laptop” 20 times in your 500 page article would give you a new
keyword density of 4%.
The examples above are very simplified examples, but enough to understand
why keywords, and how often you use them in your writing, are important.
Your goal should be to have a keyword density of between 5% and 10% but
not much higher than that. Adding too many keywords into your blog will
make it hard to read for your readers and the search engines start to think
you are building a splog if you get much higher than 15-20%. Again this is
an area where you will want to strike a nice balance between what will be
comfortable for your readers and what will be okay by the search engines as
well.
META Tags
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META Tags, or simply referred to as “tags,” are small hidden pieces of code
which tell the search engines what your blog is about. Basically tags are just
a listing of keywords which your visitors don’t see but the search engine’s
indexers do. Tags are used to help the search engines index a website better
without being visible and distracting to your readers.
If for instance you have a blog on photography, then you might want to add
a group of tags such as: photography, photo, photography studio, pictures,
prints, portrait, camera, film, etc… You want your tags to stick to your
specific topic of your blog, but you also want to include all the possible words
someone could search on and find your blog.
These tags help get your blog
indexed for all of the words included in the tags.
Unlike other blogging software, Blogger does not contain an easy way to add
tags to your blog. Some blog formats do, Blogger happens to be one which
doesn’t. However, it is possible to generate tags for your Blogger blog by
using another website and then cutting and pasting a bit of code into your
template. (Similar to what we did for AdSense.) It is very simple and free to
do. And it is advisable that you do put tags on your blog posts. Anything
which will help with your search engine optimization you should spend the
time and make sure you do it.
Some popular tag sites include del.icio.us and technorati.com Signing-up for
either site is very simple and free.
Once you have registered then you can
generate the tag code for your Blogger blog and simply paste it into your
blog template.
Once you have the code you will want to paste it into your template by going
to your blog’s template.
First back up your blog’s template just in case you
do not like the changes, and then paste the tag code after the place in your
template which says:
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<$BlogMetaData$>
By pasting your tag code here, each time you post a message to your blog
the search engines also get a copy of all of your tagged keywords added on
to the bottom of it. Even if for some reason your blog post doesn’t mention
your keywords the tags will!
This means that if you have a blog on
Christmas but you choose to talk about your family pets in your post, the
indexers will still get Christmas as one of your keywords, because they get it
from the tags.
Ping
The search engines send their spider, or bot, to your site on a regular basis.
They schedule their visits based on the size of your website and how often it
appears to be updated. However, if you want to send a message to them
letting them know you have updated your site, then you can do something
called “pinging.” Pinging, in this context, is simply sending a code string to
the search engines which says “hey come look at my site again, it’s updated,
and I want it indexed again.”
All you have to do to ping the search engines is to go to a ping website, enter
the URL of your blog, check the boxes of where you want to ping (generally
do all of them) and then click “Ping.” It really is that simple and quick. The
two most popular ping websites are www.ping-o-matic.com and
www.pingoat.com.
It is generally advisable that you ping each time you update your blog, or
each week at least. This makes sure your site is getting seen by the search
engines and that it is being indexed as fast as possible.
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SEO and Marketing Your Blog
Search engine optimization is a very important part of making your blog
successful.
It’s important to understand how the search engines see your
information and what they do with it. By understanding how they work you
are better able to create your blog as a “search engine friendly” site.
The
easier the search engine can work with your site, then the better rankings
you will receive from them.
While search engine optimization is important, you cannot rely solely on
natural visitors to your website from the search engines. It is great to have
some of your readers come from there, but you will generally want your
blog’s name to get out there in other ways as well.
You will want to do all of
the other things suggested to help drive traffic to your website. The search
engines, even if you get a great ranking, will not do it all for you! You need
to market your site and market it to your target audience.
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