Thursday, 31 December 2009

Blogger Sitemap Generator - Submit Sitemap Solution for your Blog

One thing that you can do to make your blog indexed fast by search engines such as Google, Yahoo, or Bing is by sending the sitemap address of your blog. Previously, Maybe you have known that sitemap address for blogger only added the code "atom.xml" at the end of your blog address, e.g. My own  blog has the address as follow:
http://jambaloch.blogspot.com
so the sitemap address to be registered would be:
http://jambaloch.blogspot.com/atom.xml
If you use the feedburner service and then you redirect the feed address to sitemap address given by feedburner, there will be a notice that the sitemap you have submitted experiences error. The solution to this error is by adding one code ?redirect=false. For example, the sitemap address below runs error:
http://jambaloch.blogspot.com/atom.xml
So to remove this error notice from Google webmaster tool, the submitted feed address would be added the code ?redirect=false at the end of fee address, e.g.:

http://jambaloch.blogspot.com/atom.xml/?redirect=false

The error message usually will be lost or it has been overcome, but it still leaves a peace of problem especially that in blogger or blogspot. It is about the pages indexed although there are a lot of posts in it. For example, my blog :
make money online
has 121 posts, but Google webmaster tool records only 20 indexed URLs.



This question is often asked by many bloggers using BlogSpot machine. Are you one of them? If yes, please try the best way that I am about to give you below.



The best way to overcome the error message in Google Webmaster Tool is by using Blogger Sitemap Generator. With the Blogger Sitemap Generator, we can create a sitemap for our blogs and proven to be able to overcome the no-indexed posts.



The following are the way to use Blogger Sitemap Generator :



1. Please visit http://digitalinspiration.com/tools/...emap/index.php
2. Enter your blog address into the empty field available, do not forget to write your complete blog address including the http:// and ends with / (slash) (e.g. http://jambaloch.blogspot.com ), and then click the Create Blogger Sitemap button.

3. Records the sitemap address, copy and paste in notepad or other programs, e.g.:

atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=500
atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=501&max-results=500





4. Also click the links to submit to Bing and Yahoo.

For those who have more than 500 posts, the sitemap address would be more than one,

For the next step, please login to Google webmaster tool to submit the sitemap you have created. If you don’t have Google account, please register here.
Below are the detailed steps:



1. When you are in the dashboard of Google webmaster tool, please find the blog that you want to submit its sitemap.
2. Click Site Configuration

3. Click Sitemaps

4. Click Submit a Sitemap button. Copy and paste the sitemap address you have created at blogger sitemap generator ( atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=500 ), and then click Submit Sitemap. For blog with more than one sitemap ( more than 500 posts ), please repeat this step until all is done.



5. The submission process of sitemap is done. Usually, it needs time until one day to get this submission sitemap worked and indexed by Google. Please login again the next day to check out whether your sitemap has worked and been indexed or not.

I hope that with this way, your blogs’ sitemaps will be indexed fast by Google, and I hope the search engines will drive more visitors to your blogs.

Wednesday, 30 December 2009

SEO Adsense Ready Advanced WordPress Theme: Black and White


This is the best and top google adsense ready wordpress theme for wordpress.


Black & White is an advanced 3-column Google Adsense ready WordPress theme (re)designed and search engine optimized by MandarinMusing and Headsetoptions. The theme is based on work by David Herreman.


Download | Source | Demo

Tuesday, 29 December 2009

Adbrite--Best google adsense alternative

Adbrite, is currently one of the best alternatives there is to Google's adsense. While they do not offer the same large selection of ad formats that Clicksor and Google Adsense provide you they do offer the most commonly used ones. In addition they offer inline page links with have some great click through ratios as well as interstitial full page ads which offer an excellent way to monetize all traffic to your site not just traffic that clicks on your ads. Their payouts are also very competitive. They have more relaxed terms and conditions than Adsense and are much more accepting of smaller publishers including bloggers.


If you're a publisher, use AdBrite to set your own ad rates, and approve or reject every ad that's purchased for your site or just have AdBrite auto accept ever ad. AdBrite enables you to instantly sell ads to your visitors via a "Your Ad Here" link, in addition to selling through AdBrite's marketplace and sales team.


Revenue is typically split 75/25 in your favor. Through a small snippet of HTML placed on your site, they handle serving, scheduling, billing, customer service, and sales. About half of AdBrite's sales are generated from the marketplace and sales team, while the other half are generated from users clicking "Your Ad Here" on your website.


While AdBrite can provide publishers with more revenue and better ads than traditional ad networks such as Google AdSense, they work fine along-side them as a way for you to generate additional ad revenue by selling ads directly to your visitors -- something the other ad systems don't do.  Ad Brite also lets you select your own minimum bid prices and give you the option of showing an alternative ad service such as Clicksor when bid prices fall below your minimum.


If you're using AdBrite on your website you also have the option to turn off AdBrite's "run-of-network ads" and AdBrite will only display ads that have been approved by you allowing you to prevent competitors ads being shown on your site. If you have no ads running, AdBrite will display nothing but "Your Ad Here" or your alternative ad provider.


Note, from my experiences it can take a day or so from when you signup with AdBrite and put their code on your website to actually start seeing relevant ads showing up. So if you see the message "Advertize on this site" just be patient and give it a day or so and you should start seeing relevant ads showing up.



AdBrite also accepts Blogs and Bloggers as sites so if you are fed up with other programs turning you down because their terms and conditions restrict Blogs try AdBrite.



Adbrite--Best google adsense alternative

Adbrite, is currently one of the best alternatives there is to Google's adsense. While they do not offer the same large selection of ad formats that Clicksor and Google Adsense provide you they do offer the most commonly used ones. In addition they offer inline page links with have some great click through ratios as well as interstitial full page ads which offer an excellent way to monetize all traffic to your site not just traffic that clicks on your ads. Their payouts are also very competitive. They have more relaxed terms and conditions than Adsense and are much more accepting of smaller publishers including bloggers.

If you're a publisher, use AdBrite to set your own ad rates, and approve or reject every ad that's purchased for your site or just have AdBrite auto accept ever ad. AdBrite enables you to instantly sell ads to your visitors via a "Your Ad Here" link, in addition to selling through AdBrite's marketplace and sales team.

Revenue is typically split 75/25 in your favor. Through a small snippet of HTML placed on your site, they handle serving, scheduling, billing, customer service, and sales. About half of AdBrite's sales are generated from the marketplace and sales team, while the other half are generated from users clicking "Your Ad Here" on your website.

While AdBrite can provide publishers with more revenue and better ads than traditional ad networks such as Google AdSense, they work fine along-side them as a way for you to generate additional ad revenue by selling ads directly to your visitors -- something the other ad systems don't do.  Ad Brite also lets you select your own minimum bid prices and give you the option of showing an alternative ad service such as Clicksor when bid prices fall below your minimum.

If you're using AdBrite on your website you also have the option to turn off AdBrite's "run-of-network ads" and AdBrite will only display ads that have been approved by you allowing you to prevent competitors ads being shown on your site. If you have no ads running, AdBrite will display nothing but "Your Ad Here" or your alternative ad provider.

Note, from my experiences it can take a day or so from when you signup with AdBrite and put their code on your website to actually start seeing relevant ads showing up. So if you see the message "Advertize on this site" just be patient and give it a day or so and you should start seeing relevant ads showing up.


AdBrite also accepts Blogs and Bloggers as sites so if you are fed up with other programs turning you down because their terms and conditions restrict Blogs try AdBrite.


Monday, 28 December 2009

How to calculate google page rank?


First things first: What is Google PageRank? It is an algorithm pages. The basic idea behind the PageRank algorithm is the fact that a link (also called hyperlink or backlink) from page A to page B can be seen as a vote of trust from page A to page B. The higher the number of links pointing to a page, the higher its PageRank, and the higher its rankings inside Google's search results. One detail that you need to keep in mind is that each link has a specific value, which is determined by the PageRank of the page where the link is located divided by the total number of outgoing links on that page. For instance, if a page has a PageRank value of 8 and 4 outgoing links, each of those links will pass 2 points of "link juice" (the calculations on the algorithm are more complex, but this is the basic idea). Most people focus on getting external links to increase their PageRank, but they forget that internal links also pass link juice, and this is how you can create PageRank within your websites. Now let me use a simple example to illustrate the concept. Suppose that you just created a website with one page only, the homepage. At this point your website has a PageRank of 0, because it is not even indexed by Google. You then convince a friend to link to your website. The page where the link is placed has a PageRank of 10 and 2 outgoing links, so your website is receiving 5 points of link juice from that link.
The actual PageRank of your website will be 4.25, or 5 x 0.85. This happens because Google applies a damping factor of 0.85 when it makes PageRank calculations (this is necessary else the PageRank of two pages linking to each other would grow to infinite). If you then proceed to create a second page on your website, linking to it from the homepage, that second page will have a PageRank of 3.61 (4.25 from the link it got from your homepage, multiplied by 0.85). And there you go. By adding a second page to your site your managed to actually create PageRank. The cool thing is that when you link that second page to the homepage, they will be sending link juice to each other, back and forth, until the damping factor kills the effect. Now don't worry if you haven't followed the maths. The takeaway message is: every time Google indexes a new page from your website, the total PageRank within your website will also increase. Getting external links is obviously essential to having a high PageRank, but increasing the number of pages that Google indexes from your site can also help, and most people neglect this. Finally, if you want to monitor how many pages Google is indexing from your website, simply search for "site:yourdomain.com" on Google.

Saturday, 26 December 2009

Best Search engine optimiztion plugins for wordpress

The best place by far to find traffic is from search engines. The art of Search Engine Optimization is often very daunting for new bloggers. Even some experienced bloggers just see SEO as a cloudy puddle of mud they would rather not play in.


Wordpress by default is pretty decent at letting search engines see what’s going on. But there are a whole bunch of other things that can be done to make your blog rank better. Fortunately there are plugins available to help you get better rankings for your blog, so you don’t have to go digging into the code of your blog to get some results from search engines.


I’m not going to explain the validity or effects of each of these SEO tactics in detail. There is more than enough of that on the Internet already if you want to do some research. I’ll mention briefly what the benefits of each plugin is, and why you need it.


1. All in One SEO Pack


This allows you to set the basic SEO stuff for your blog. You need page titles, meta tags, keywords, and descriptions. This plugin allows you to configure them for either your entire blog or on a post by post basis.


2. Redirection


From time to time you make changes on your blog. Sometimes these changes end up breaking your Permalink structure. This often happens when you make a change to an old post, or do an upgrade to Wordpress and make some changes to the permalinks. It’s very very common if you move your blog from one host to another.


Basically what happens is that each post has a unique URL, called a permalink. When this changes, visitors who go to that blog post won’t find it. The redirection plugin helps you fix these problems by redirecting the visitor to the new permalink. This reduces the amount of traffic you get to pages that don’t exist.


3. Robots Meta


By default search engines crawl and index ALL the pages on your blog. This isn’t ideal, because it creates duplicate content and you can get yourself punished by search engines without knowing it. What the Robots Meta plugin allows you to do is tell the search engines which sections of your blog to crawl. This means that you’ll get more respect from search engines, and likely more traffic.


4. SEO Smart Links


One of the key issues with SEO is your internal linking structure. The more you link to a certain page on your blog, the more important it is to your overall content. Search engines treat your internal links as an indication of how well structured your site is. The problem with this is that if you had to manually go and create links to relevant and important posts you’ll spend hours and hours doing it.


SEO Smart links allows you to specify a word, like ‘SEO’ and then link it to a post on your site. Then each time the word SEO appears on your site, it’s automatically turned into a link you specified.


5. SEO Friendly Images


Images also play an important role in your SEO strategy. So it’s important that you tag them correctly. SEO Friendly images allows you to do this, and saves you hours and hours of work. If, like most bloggers you use images in your posts, then this plugin is essential.


6. Google Positioner


It’s important to know your keywords. And this handy plugin allows you to track the keywords you’re getting searches for. It’s pointless selecting a few keywords, then writing some content for those keywords and hoping that the rest goes well. SEO is about being proactive and tracing what works and what doesn’t.


7. Permalinks Moved Permanently


A common mistake bloggers make is choosing the wrong permalink structure. When you start your blog you think you know which is best, and as time goes buy you want to change your permalink structure. The problem with changing your permalink structure is that your traffic will come to a standstill until your site is reindexed, and that could take months.


This plugin is similar to redirect but is an easier and better way to manage permanent permalink changes.


8. Nofollow Case by Case


The nofollow attribute over the last year or two has had a fairly large impact on the blogosphere. All comments in Wordpress by default are nofollow links. This means that no Page Rank (PR) is being given via the link. This plugin changes that and makes comment links valuable again. There are a number of reasons you would want to give away link juice. It’s often used to attract people and encourage them to comment. It can be very useful for new blogs who need some exposure.


9. SEO Slugs


Stop words are ignored by search engines. So most of your post titles have them in, but they are meaningless to search engines. So when you have a post title like this: “What You Can Do Immediately For Higher Rankings” you have a permalink like this: ‘/what-you-can-do-immediately-for-higher-rankings’ but what you really want is for your permalink to look like this: /immediately-higher-rankings.


This plugin automatically removes stop words from the permalink, helping you to rank better.

Best Search engine optimiztion plugins for wordpr

SEO for biggeners

Much has been written on the topic of search engine optimization for bloggers – but let me give you a few basic first steps:


1. Content is King


The quality of the posts you write is the single most important factor when it comes to Search Optimization on a Blog. I suspect others will argue differently but as I look at my own blogs success in the search engines I’d say that this has been the number one factor.


Quality content that helps people will quite often draw a reader to want to share what they’ve written – of course they do this by passing on the link to your post and often they’ll do it in a way that helps your search rankings (on their own blog for example).


2. Anticipate What People Will be Searching For


Every time you write a post you should be automatically be considering what words people might be putting into search engines to find that type of information. Once you know what kinds of words they’re using you’re in a great position to position yourself for that search.


3. Titles Titles Titles


There are a number of things to keep in mind when it comes to titles. Google pays particular attention to titles – so make sure you get them right:



  • first make sure that the way you set your blog up puts the title of your post in the ‘title tags’ on the back end of your blog. This is really important.

  • if you’re just looking from an SEO perspective don’t include your blog name in the title tags of single posts. This dilutes your keywords. Of course if you’re looking more at branding including your blog’s name in the title tags might be worth doing.

  • next – include the keywords that you identified in point #2 in your post title

  • also, keep in mind that the words you use at the start of a title tend to carry more weight than words you use later in your title


4. Keywords in other parts of your post


Use the keywords you identified in point #2 within your post also. If you want Google to rank you for a term or phrase you need to use that term or phrase. Use it in sub headings in your post (use h tags where you can), use it in the content itself, use the words in the alt tags of images etc. Don’t go over the topic but do use the words where you can naturally in the post.


5. Link to Your Own Posts


Don’t over do this one but while links from other sites are a great way to increase your blog’s rankings so are links from your blog. Interlink your posts to share where readers can find more information on your topic (where relevant) but also consider linking to key posts on your blog from other places on the blog (sidebar, front page etc).


6. Links from Outside Your Blog


Links from other sites to yours are key in SEO but they can be hard to get. Start to linking to your blog from other sites that you have or are active on. Some (like on Twitter) won’t count for anything much as they have no-follow tags but they are all potential ways for people to access your site and some will help with SEO.


Don’t become obsessed with getting links – rather become obsessed about writing great content and the links will generally come in time. However if you’ve written a great post that you think will be relevant to another blog don’t be afraid to let that blogger or website owner know about it – they could just link up.


Also – take note of the type of posts that you write that do well at getting other sites to link to you. You can learn a lot about generating linkable content by doing so and might just develop a technique that will work again and again.


7. Plugins


I don’t tend to do much to the back end of my blog to alter things like meta tags – but there are some good plugins around if you’re using WordPress that can help with some of this and that may give you a small edge. Check out 9 SEO plugins that every WordPress Blog Should have for some suggestions on this.


8. Readers Begat Readers


This isn’t an SEO technique as such but it plays a part. The more readers you have the more likely your blog is to be found by other readers. There’s a certain ’snowballing’ thing that happens on a site over time – as you get readers quite often momentum grows as those readers pass on your site to others in their network. They link to you, they bookmark you, they tweet about you, they email friends about you, they blog about you, they suggest your site in recommendation engines….


Not all of this counts with SEO but some does and the accumulation of it over time all certainly helps to grow both organic and search traffic. I guess what I’m saying is to get readers any way you can – don’t just focus upon ‘SEO’ as such. It all counts.


My Hunch with SEO


Before I share my hunch…. let me say that I’m not an SEO and this could be completely wrong…. but it’s a hunch that I’ve had for a while now.


I’ve been doing this blogging thing for almost 7 years now and from what I can see the tweaks that many bloggers do on their blogs to optimize it seem to be having less and less impact on the rankings of blogs. Don’t get me wrong – I stand by the above tips completely and would do them as a common sense bare minimum – but from where I sit Google seem to be in the business of finding the best information that they can for their users. They don’t always get it right but I think they do a pretty good job.


As a blogger your job should be to provide the best information that you can.


It strikes me that Google have an ever increasing way of working out if your information is good. It’s not just about what keywords you have or how many links that you get – but these days they own Feedburner (know how many people subscribe to your blog and what links people are clicking on), they own Google Reader (again giving them all kinds of great data), they own Gmail, Google Analytics, YouTube etc…..


Now they may or may not use all the data in their ranking of sites but they certainly could know a lot about your blog and the posts you write. There’s also been increasing talk over the last 6 months or so about how easy it’d be for search engines to start generating data on what content is being shared in social networks and bookmarking sites.


My hunch is that many traditional SEO methods are less important (NOT irrelevant though) and that other factors are increasingly going to come into play. I’m sure that some will work out ways to manipulate this (SEO 2.0?) but increasingly the way to get ranked high in Google will be that you just need to keep producing great content and making sure that it’s sneezed out to your network.

How to quickly index in google

1. Blog Communities


There are few blog related community portals that have a very good rankings in Google and other Major Search Engines Results, they are: MyBlogLog, BlogCatalog, Blogged and NetworkedBlogs, particularly MyBlogLog. This means that if you get your blog on these blog communities, Google will have no other choice but to index your blog. So, go ahead and register for an account on these communities and list your blog on it. Once you are done you will have a page like this, this and this.


What to pay attention: Your blog’s description (have a proper write-up), keywords & tags (add related keywords and tags to your listing, this will be used by other members to find your blog), branding (put your logo, avatars, screenshots etc. have a consistent branding everywhere), and list your blog in the correct category.


2. Site Valuation & Stats Sites


Some of those How Much Your Site Worth? sites have a good ranking in Search Engines. All you need to do is to go there and check how much your site worth. This would create a special page for your blog (like this) and consecutively it would be indexed by Google. Here is a list of worthy sites: WebsiteOutlook, StatBrain, CubeStat, WebTrafficAgents, BuiltWith, WhoIs, QuarkBase, URLfan and AboutTheDomain.


3. Feed Aggregators


List your blog’s feed in these feed aggregators Feed-Squirrel, OctoFinder, FeedAdage. Once you have submitted your feed to these sites, they will keep track of your newly published posts and index them in their site. Whenever someone clicks on the blog post title, he/she will be redirected to your original blog post sending you free traffic and getting your latest posts indexed by Google.


4. Social Sites


Registering account on Social Sites with the same username as your blog’s URL is very effective in getting your blog indexed by Search Engines. Especially for those targeted keywords.


For example, if your blog’s name is WhiteElephant, it’s a good practice to register the same username at twitter as @WhiteElephant, and to create a page in Facebook at www.facebook.com/WhiteElephant. Having a consistent keyword-username on all major Social Sites will help get your blog indexed faster, and at a later stage it will also help build a “brand” for your blog.



So, get account on major Social Sites for your newly launched blog, namely: Twitter, Facebook (create a page for your blog), Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicious etc. By the way, it’s a good pratice to create a separate Social Sites account for each of your projects. This way you can stay focused and post messages that are related to your project. In the long run, this will help build a community that are like-minded around your project.


Note from Darren: it’s worth nothing that many social media sites (like Twitter) use no follow tags on links which means the links don’t really help with SEO. Having said this – it’s still worth getting pages for your keywords/brand as these pages can rank in and of themselves in Google and can help you to have control over numerous search results for the same keyword.


5. Misc Sites


Squidoo is a community website that allows people to create pages (called “lenses”) on various topics. Creating a topic that is related to your blog and then including your feed in that page would help your blog get indexed by Search Engines. Squidoo used to have a really good ranking in Google results, but not so much today. But it’s still ranks well and it shouldn’t be neglected.


ChangeDetection is a website that monitors sites for changes. When you monitor a particular site using ChangeDetection, it will ask you whether you want the notices to be public or private. If you say public, it will be published in their news section. For example; AdesBlog.com got an update today, type of update: text additions etc. This of course will get picked up by Search Engines and Search Engines in return will index your blog.


Technorati is a search engine for searching blogs. According to Wikipedia, as of June 2008, Technorati was indexing 112.8 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media. It’s a dying breed, but not just dead yet. You have to definitely register for an account and get your blog listed on Technorati.


That’s it. Once you are done with creating accounts and submitting your newly launched blog in the above mentioned sites, you should see your blog in Google’s Search Results within 24 hours. Most of the time it will appear within the next few hours only.


Lastly, getting indexed is one thing but sustaining that traffic is another. And this is where the Content is King phrase should truly be emphasized. Because, without a good and valuable content, all your effort will be just wasted.


Friday, 25 December 2009

25 Free Ways To Generate Traffic To website

So , in response to that here are 25 ways to generate traffic to your blog:



  1. Article Marketing

  2. Forum Marketing

  3. Google, Yahoo, and AOL Group

  4. Viral Marketing - Giveaways & Bonuses

  5. Expired domains

  6. Squidoo

  7. Social Bookmaking sites

  8. Social media sites

  9. BUM Marketing

  10. Viral Videos at Youtube.com

  11. Press Releases


13.Post regularity
14.Submit your posts to social media sites
15.Submit to My Yahoo!
16.Submit to Google's Reader
17. Ping your post to ping sites such as ping-o-matic. Ping your site every time you add a new post.
18. Submit your blog to web directories such as DMOZ
19.Submit your blog RSS feeds to as many RSS Directories as possible
20.Submit your blog to Search Engines
21.comment on other Blogs
22.Participate in Forums
23.Tag your website
24.submit to social bookmaking sites
25.submit your blog to blog directories

Search engine optimization tips

There are a lot of free web directories on the net now and there are an equal number of sites that list free web directories.
So your first step should be to visit every directory and submit your link to every free web directory you can find.

Link Exchanges
If you are taking part in reciprocal link exchanges it is important that you 1) Exchange links only with related sites. If a site has nothing to do with your site a reciprocal backlink from it will serve little to no purpose and 2) Do not mass mail webmasters. If there is one thing that will guarantee i will ignore you it is if i receive an email that has been BCC’ed to a thousand other webmasters. You could also get other webmaster to ask for a link exchange by putting a contact form on your site and letting people know you are open for link exchanges.

Link Baiting
Link baiting is when you post something controversial, a flame or something very interesting on your site with the intention of getting people to blog about it or post it on forums. Link baiting is sometimes seen as “spam” but take no notice of that, It’s not, People are choosing to link to you, It’s upto them.

Providing Quality Content
This is my favorite way to get backlinks. Make a good site with good content.
If there is one thing people like, and like to link to, it is a good site.

Posting on forums
I am hesitant to include this suggestion, But i will, and i will explain exactly what i mean.
When i say by posting on forums read it as `join a forum and contribute`. It does not mean join a forum, spam your link 50 times and then leave. Most forums allow you to include a signature in your posts so it’s an easy way to get backlinks. If you become a trusted regular poster it will also mean you get a lot of traffic from these backlinks. Spamming not only make you look like an amateur, But it will be deleted that same day by a moderator, Probably before a google bot even gets to see it.

RSS Feeds
RSS feeds allow you to syndicate your content. This means other sites display your content on their pages via a feed which includes a backlink to the original article or page. So you could syndicate us

Submit Articles
If you know a lot about the area you work in (as you should) then writing articles could be very beneficial. Every time you write and submit an article that is one backlink, and the good thing about articles is they are often copied and used on other article sites, sent in news letters or posted on forums, Each time this happens you get another backlink.

Provide a link to me code
Put a page on your site that contains link to me code. This will be HTML code that people just have to cut and paste into their site to link to you. But don’t use all text. Provide a few banners, some buttons, Be creative. Sometimes if people are trying to find filler for their site they will be more than happy to include your sexy looking banner or button on their page.
The trick is to make it easy for people to link to you.

Buy Text Links
If you have money set aside for your advertising you can also Buy Text Links from companies such as LinkWorth, Also good if you want to make money and sell text links.

Thankyou

Tuesday, 22 December 2009

SEO for WordPress

I’m an SEO and I have been working a lot with WordPress, here I give you all my tips for you to rank very well in Google with your blog.


Quick Facts



  1. There are 55 million blogs out there, if you don’t stand out you will have no chance.

  2. The first second of a visitors attention is the most crucial.

  3. Your main traffic should come to articles and posts inside your blog, not the home page.

  4. Search engine rankings relies heavily upon the quality and quantity of links to your blog when they determine the ranking.

  5. The best way to get links is by natural recommendations from other bloggers or web site owners.


Section 1: Optimize Your Blog


Usually the WordPress themes are well designed and structured already but there are a number of things you really should do to improve it for better optimization for search engines.


Using the best URLs


To enable the permalinks is easy and you have probably already done that, just go to Options -> Permalinks in the admin panel. But what format is the best to choose? The structure /%postname%/ – nothing else. This is best because your URLs to your articles should never change. And if you have it like this it does not matter if you change the category of the article or republish it with a new date, it will always be the same URL (more about that later). And if you happen to have two posts with the same title it is not a problem as WordPress will automatically add “-2″ in the end.


Have you been using the wrong format? Well, if your blog is not totally new you should not change. It is not vital and for the next time you make a blog you know how to make it right.


Handling URL Canonization


Every WordPress blog has an issue in which there are 4 different URLs for the same post and this has to be fixed to prevent dilution.


Title Tags


The title tag is the most important HTML-tag in terms of SEO.


Here are different versions you should use inside the <title></title> located in theme/header.php


Optimum ranking:
<?php if(is_home()) { echo 'Your blogs name | Few important words'; } else { wp_title('') ;} ?>


For branding purposes:
<?php if(is_home()) { echo 'Your blogs name | Few important words'; } else { echo 'Your blogs name:'; wp_title('') ;} ?>


The best title tag solution for advanced users


Either install and properly use the SEO Title Tag plugin or do the following:



  1. Download and install this plugin.

  2. Replace <?php get_header(); ?> with the context in header.php on single.php, page.php and category.php.

  3. Work out the best titles for the different versions and use the plugin to create different versions of category.php and single.php with their own versions of title tags. For example if your category with ID 5 is “SEO News” you could have the following title tag in single-cat-5.php:
    <title>SEO News: <?php { wp_title('') ;} ?></title>
    In category.php you could have: <title><?php { wp_title('') ;} ?> | Your Name</title>


Headings


Headings are defined by HTML with H1 (largest) to H6 (smallest). You need to use them in your articles when you write. Your article title should be in a main heading (H1), sub headings with H2 and small headings with H3.


Make sure that in theme/single.php this code <?php the_title(); ?> is wrapped in H1 so that it looks like:
<h1><?php the_title(); ?></h1>


If your theme designer already used a specific CSS design for the heading tags you can do like this:



  1. Open up theme/single.php and add <div class=”singleheadings”> to the top after <?php get_header(); ?> and </div> to the bottom before <?php get_footer(); ?>.

  2. Add then add for example the following lines of CSS to your CSS file:
    .singleheadings h1 {font-size:XXpx;font-family:XX}
    .singleheadings h2 {font-size:XXpx;font-family:XX}
    .singleheadings h3 {font-size:XXpx;font-family:XX}


You can change your quicktags by for example using this file instead (also add H2 to the file) so that you easily can insert heading tags when you write.


Navigation


Most of the link power is coming to the home page of your blog and gets distributed evenly among the rest of the links on that page. So in additional to having a good navigation structure for your visitors also do the following:



  • Have links to the most important articles and pages from your home page. That can easily be achieved by making a category with your best articles and using the WP Category Post plugin to make a list of them on the index.php file.

  • Install the Related Posts plugin and have your articles link to similar articles.

  • Also link yourself to previous articles you have written.

  • Place the attribute rel=”nofollow” on links that are totally useless for search engines such as to RSS feeds for the blog and comment links. In case you want to remove the nofollow on the comment links make sure you check the author links before approval as it is important that you don’t link to bad sites from your blog.

  • You should not have hundreds of external links on the home page, if you have that I recommend that you place them on a separate page.


Site Map


A Site Map is where your visitors go to navigate and find specific articles and posts on your blog. It is also a place for search engines to find links to all your pages on your blog.


What about a Google Sitemap?


It is not needed. There is no reason for a WordPress blog with a proper navigation structure to submit a Google Sitemap other than for information purposes. A Google Sitemap does not improve your ranking, only crawling, and that is not a problem.


Design


Everyone has different tastes about design but here are points to think about when you design your blog:Keep the design simple, very simple.



  • Have the body text big with big and clear headings.

  • For some reason blogs are not liked in the big social network sites (like digg, reddit etc) so make your theme unique and try to make it look like a site and not a blog.

  • Make sure nothing steals attention from your text.

  • The text width should not be longer than one and a half alphabet, even shorter.

  • When a visitor reaches an article on your blog, the text should be seen instantly. Have the text as far up as possible. A visitor should not have to scroll to reach the content.

  • If you are not making decent money with ads I suggest you to erase all ads you have on the blog.


What About the Meta Tags?


There are various WP plugins out there for this but to be honest and frank I can tell you that they are not worth the effort. The meta keywords tag are not used anymore (or extremely little) in the ranking calculation and while the meta description tag can show up in the SERPs I consider the snippet of text the visitor gets being better.


CSS Positioning


It has been said that by providing the important content first in the source code it will make a positive difference in your search engine ranking. I am not sure if this is true, but it won’t hurt to do it. For example on this blog the navigation on the left is in the bottom of the code.


Section 2: How to Craft Your Articles


You should read the entire section of Authoring High Quality Content by Mr. Fishkin but I give you here a very quick summary as it relates to this article.


First the most important quote:



One Great Page is Worth a Thousand Good Pages


While hundreds or dozens of on-topic pages that cover sections of an industry are valuable to a website’s growth, it is actually far better to invest a significant amount of time and energy producing a few articles/resources of truly exceptional quality. To create documents that become “industry standard” on the web and are pointed to time after time as the “source” for further investigations, claims, documents, etc. is to truly succeed in the rankings battle. The value of “owning” this traffic and link source far outweighs a myriad of articles that are rarely read or linked to.



Write articles or posts that serves as a stand alone document. This means there is everything valuable collected on that page on that specific topic. For example a stand alone document on “SEO for WordPress” should have everything on that page and the reader should not need any other articles on that topic.


Better 1 great article that you revise 10 times than 10 smaller ok articles.


To do this you can also rewrite and republish your old articles with the current time to show up again as the latest article.


Include links to more reading if applicable


Withing or at the end of your article you should link to other sources so that the reader can read more if he is interested. You can also use this as sources if you got your writing materials from other places.


Headlines


You should write the kind of headlines to your articles that:



  • Contains important keyword combinations or phrase for ranking

  • Describes with great interest what the article is about

  • Makes the reader want to read it and clicks on it in the SERPs

  • And is short and to the point


Section 3: Increase User Interaction



  • Use polls from for example Poll Daddy.

  • Increase the commenting field for longer user comments and better interaction. This also provides more unique content to your articles.

  • Install the Subscribe to Comments plugin.

  • Actually do reply to your commenters and answer their questions.

  • If you revise an article based on a comment, do link and give credit to the commenter.


Section 4: Get Links



  • Post your link baits on the major social network sites such as digg, reddit and the others.

  • Install my Link to Me Textbox WordPess Plugin which provides an automatic HTML box of code for easy linking to you.

  • Regularly link and reference other bloggers in your field in your posts to get attention from them. You loose nothing of it and many of them will return the favor and link to you. Also comment on their blogs to make them discover your blog.

  • Read and follow my Link Building Guide

How to Get Google to Send Traffic to Your WordPress Blog


After recently moving a number of blogs from Blogger to a hosted WordPress Blog I discovered a BIG problem, Google stopped sending me traffic.


I managed to resolve the problem, and after a lot of hardwork, frustration and after what seemed like a life time, Google has started sending traffic to my new WordPress blog. I naively thought that this would be straight forward process and I wasn't alone as when I first started writing about this issue on my blog I was surprised to find that this is a common problem.


So when I finally found the solution I thought I would create an article and summarise the steps taken to resolve the problem.


It was certainly easier to get Google traffic to a blogger hosted blog as most of this process seemed to be automated.


These are the 7 steps I followed to get Google to send traffic to my WordPress blog:


Step 1: Tell Google your site exists, go to Google's add URL page and enter your sites details.


Step 2: Register an account with Google Webmaster tools. This will give you a meta tag so that you can be tracked by Google's tool set, by using the Google Integration Toolkit plugin for WordPress.


Step 3: Install the Google Integration Toolkit plugin for WordPress. This plugin is useful to integrate a number of different Google tools into your blog i.e. Webmaster toolkit, AdSense, & Analytics.


Step 4: Install the XML-Sitemap plugin for WordPress. This plugin is useful as it automatically creates and updates a XML-Site map of your site. Sitemaps are useful as they help search engines like Google crawl through your site.


Step 5: Install the All in One SEO plugin for WordPress. This plugin allows you to potentially increase your page ranking by incorporating SEO techniques into your blog. When you create a post a new section becomes visible which allows you to fill in a few details for SEO, then the plugin does the rest.


Step 6: Create some internal links. Google appears to like internal links, so I wrote a blog post which linked to every other post.


Step 7: Allow Google to see your site. Make sure your robots.txt file allows Google to crawl through your site - Google WebMaster tools can easily provide a working robots.txt file. There is also an option in the privacy settings of WordPress to block or allow search Engines, make sure this is set to allow.


I hope these 7 steps help some people out there.


Sunday, 20 December 2009

Top ten techniques for Search engine optimization

No matter how hard some people try to mystify SEO, it is not as complicated as many would lead you to believe. Despite all the techno jargon that many in the field will throw at you: SERPs, SEM, PageRank, Keyword Density, Vertical Search, Algorithms... SEO is really simple to do if you understand some basic concepts and follow some easy steps.

Search Engine Optimization is getting your content listed in all the top positions in Google, Yahoo and MSN for your targeted keywords. When someone does a keyword search in a search engine for your particular subject or niche - you want your site or content to be at the top of the list.

Here are 10 SEO tactics that have worked and are working for me at this moment in time. I make this clarification because you must understand search engines, especially Google, are constantly redefining how they rank pages. Here are my favorite tactics and strategies:

1. Quality Content is and always will be your number one factor for getting high rankings and keeping them. You must understand search engines are simply businesses who supply a product like any other company. That product is information. They must offer quality results to anyone using their service to solve a problem, answer a question or to buy a product. The more relevant, the more targeted the search solution they return, the higher the overall quality of their product and the more popular their search engine will become. Providing quality content is vital for SEO success.

2. Keywords are your number one tools for achieving high rankings. You must understand keywords and how they work on the web. You must know how many searches are made each day for your chosen keywords. Sites like Wordtracker and Seobook will give you a rudimentary number of searches. Design your pages around your targeted keywords and don't forget to do some deep-linking to these pages on your site. Find and build backlinks to these interior keyword pages and not just to your home page or domain URL. Picking keywords with medium to low competition has worked out well for me. So too has using the more targeted and higher converting "long-tail" keywords been very beneficial for me.

3. Onpage Factors and site design will play a major role in the spidering and indexing of your site/content. Make sure all your pages are SEO friendly, made sure all your pages can be reached from your homepage and no pages should be no more than three levels away from it - keeping a sitemap listing all your major pages makes the search engines happy. Make sure you have all your meta tags such as title, description, keywords... are all optimized. (Title = around 65 characters, Description = around 160 characters) Remember, your title and description should not only be keyword targeted but these are the first contact/impression anyone will see of your site - make sure you use them to draw and entice interested visitors to your site and content. Also make sure your title and URL are keyword matched for maximum effect. Having your major keyword in your Domain Name also helps, using a pike | to separate different elements of your title has helped my rankings, so too does having your keyword in the first and last 25 words on your pages.

4. Google will send you the most qualified traffic so concentrate the majority of your SEO efforts on Google. Don't ignore Yahoo! or MSN but Google is king of search so give it the respect it deserves. With its new browser, Google's influence will only grow stronger so you must optimize your pages for Google. Use Google's Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics to fine-tune your pages/content for Google. I also use Google Alerts to keep up on my niche keywords and for comment link-building on the newly created pages Google is indexing.

5. Link Building is still the most effective way to boost your search rankings. Make sure you get backlinks from relevant sites related to your niche market and make sure the 'anchor text' is related to your keywords but don't ignore the text and overall quality of the content linking to you. The anchor text is the underlined/clickable portion of a link. Don't forget linking is a two-way street, make sure you link out to high quality, high ranked relevant sites in your niche.

6. Article Marketing


is a well established method of getting quality backlinks and it still works. Writing short 500 - 700 word informative helpful articles with your backlinks in the resource box is still very effective for getting targeted traffic and backlinks. Longer articles have also worked for me and I use an extensive network of distribution including SubmitYourArticle, Isnare, Thephantomwriters... plus other major online sites. Don't forget the whole element of blogging and RSS feeds in your article distribution. And always remember you're also using these articles to pre-sale your content or products. Don't forget to leverage sites like Squidoo, Hubpages... to increase your rankings and traffic.

7. Onsite Traffic Hubs have worked extremely well for me. These traffic hubs are whole sections of your site devoted to one sub-division of your major theme. For example, if you have a site on Gifts, then wedding gifts could be a separate section. This would be fully fleshed out with extensive pages covering everything dealing with wedding gifts - a self-contained keyword rich portion of your site on wedding gifts. Works similar as a sub-domain but I prefer using a directory to divide it up, such as yourdomain/wedding_gifts. (Most experts suggest always using a hyphen in your urls but underscores have worked fine for me.) Search engines love these keyword/content rich hubs but keep in mind you're creating content to first satisfy your visitors.

8. WordPress blog software is extremely effective for SEO purposes. WordPress software is easy to install on your site even if you have no experience with installing server-side scripts. Besides search engines love these highly SEO friendly blogs with their well structured content and keyword tagging. I have at least one of these on all my sites to draw in the search engines and get my content indexed and ranked. I also use Blogger (owned by Google), Bloglines and other free blogs to help distribute my content.

9. Social Bookmark/Media Sites are becoming very important on the web. These include a whole range of social sites like MySpace, FaceBook, Twitter... media news sites like Digg, SlashDot, Technorati... you must get your content into this whole mix if you want to take full SEO advantage of Web 2.0 sites. You should be joining these sites and using them. It's time consuming but it will keep you in the swing of things. One simple thing you must do is to put social bookmark buttons on all your pages so that your visitors can easily bookmark your content for you. You can use a WordPress plug-in or I like using a simple free site/service from Addthis.com which gives me a simple button to put on all my content.

10. Masterplan! Many webmasters and site owners forget to develop or have an overall masterplan/strategy when it comes to SEO. You must have an understanding of what SEO is and what it can do for you and your site. More importantly, you just don't want SEO - you want effective SEO. In order to achieve effective SEO you must have three things: Relevance, Authority and Conversions.

First, your content/site must be relevant to the topic or niche area you're pursuing - your content must fit in and be related to all the other sites in your niche. That's why closely themed sites do so well in the search engines, they give only relevant content to what's been searched for or discussed.

Second, your content/site must be perceived as an authority site on your subject or niche. Establish this authority position and the search engines will love you and your content. One way is to develop this authority, besides offering superior content, is to form links/partnerships with other perceived authority sites in your field. Always strive to make your site an authority site - tops in your niche - the one site everyone has to check before drawing or forming a conclusion.

Third, conversions should be your main goal of any SEO efforts because you want to convert your targeted traffic into site members, subscribers, buyers or just repeat visitors. If you're into online marketing, conversions will be the most important element of the whole SEO process because you want buyers, not just visitors coming to your site.

Most of all, you must convince yourself Search Engine Optimization is not difficult, nor is it the equivalent of the online bogeyman as many would like you to believe. Used effectively, SEO can give you the targeted traffic you're seeking, just follow some of the outlined steps/tactics listed above and you will have SEO working for you and your site in no time at all.

Top ten techniques for Search engine optimization

No matter how hard some people try to mystify SEO, it is not as complicated as many would lead you to believe. Despite all the techno jargon that many in the field will throw at you: SERPs, SEM, PageRank, Keyword Density, Vertical Search, Algorithms... SEO is really simple to do if you understand some basic concepts and follow some easy steps.

Search Engine Optimization is getting your content listed in all the top positions in Google, Yahoo and MSN for your targeted keywords. When someone does a keyword search in a search engine for your particular subject or niche - you want your site or content to be at the top of the list.

Here are 10 SEO tactics that have worked and are working for me at this moment in time. I make this clarification because you must understand search engines, especially Google, are constantly redefining how they rank pages. Here are my favorite tactics and strategies:

1. Quality Content is and always will be your number one factor for getting high rankings and keeping them. You must understand search engines are simply businesses who supply a product like any other company. That product is information. They must offer quality results to anyone using their service to solve a problem, answer a question or to buy a product. The more relevant, the more targeted the search solution they return, the higher the overall quality of their product and the more popular their search engine will become. Providing quality content is vital for SEO success.

2. Keywords are your number one tools for achieving high rankings. You must understand keywords and how they work on the web. You must know how many searches are made each day for your chosen keywords. Sites like Wordtracker and Seobook will give you a rudimentary number of searches. Design your pages around your targeted keywords and don't forget to do some deep-linking to these pages on your site. Find and build backlinks to these interior keyword pages and not just to your home page or domain URL. Picking keywords with medium to low competition has worked out well for me. So too has using the more targeted and higher converting "long-tail" keywords been very beneficial for me.

3. Onpage Factors and site design will play a major role in the spidering and indexing of your site/content. Make sure all your pages are SEO friendly, made sure all your pages can be reached from your homepage and no pages should be no more than three levels away from it - keeping a sitemap listing all your major pages makes the search engines happy. Make sure you have all your meta tags such as title, description, keywords... are all optimized. (Title = around 65 characters, Description = around 160 characters) Remember, your title and description should not only be keyword targeted but these are the first contact/impression anyone will see of your site - make sure you use them to draw and entice interested visitors to your site and content. Also make sure your title and URL are keyword matched for maximum effect. Having your major keyword in your Domain Name also helps, using a pike | to separate different elements of your title has helped my rankings, so too does having your keyword in the first and last 25 words on your pages.

4. Google will send you the most qualified traffic so concentrate the majority of your SEO efforts on Google. Don't ignore Yahoo! or MSN but Google is king of search so give it the respect it deserves. With its new browser, Google's influence will only grow stronger so you must optimize your pages for Google. Use Google's Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics to fine-tune your pages/content for Google. I also use Google Alerts to keep up on my niche keywords and for comment link-building on the newly created pages Google is indexing.

5. Link Building is still the most effective way to boost your search rankings. Make sure you get backlinks from relevant sites related to your niche market and make sure the 'anchor text' is related to your keywords but don't ignore the text and overall quality of the content linking to you. The anchor text is the underlined/clickable portion of a link. Don't forget linking is a two-way street, make sure you link out to high quality, high ranked relevant sites in your niche.

6. Article Marketing

is a well established method of getting quality backlinks and it still works. Writing short 500 - 700 word informative helpful articles with your backlinks in the resource box is still very effective for getting targeted traffic and backlinks. Longer articles have also worked for me and I use an extensive network of distribution including SubmitYourArticle, Isnare, Thephantomwriters... plus other major online sites. Don't forget the whole element of blogging and RSS feeds in your article distribution. And always remember you're also using these articles to pre-sale your content or products. Don't forget to leverage sites like Squidoo, Hubpages... to increase your rankings and traffic.

7. Onsite Traffic Hubs have worked extremely well for me. These traffic hubs are whole sections of your site devoted to one sub-division of your major theme. For example, if you have a site on Gifts, then wedding gifts could be a separate section. This would be fully fleshed out with extensive pages covering everything dealing with wedding gifts - a self-contained keyword rich portion of your site on wedding gifts. Works similar as a sub-domain but I prefer using a directory to divide it up, such as yourdomain/wedding_gifts. (Most experts suggest always using a hyphen in your urls but underscores have worked fine for me.) Search engines love these keyword/content rich hubs but keep in mind you're creating content to first satisfy your visitors.

8. WordPress blog software is extremely effective for SEO purposes. WordPress software is easy to install on your site even if you have no experience with installing server-side scripts. Besides search engines love these highly SEO friendly blogs with their well structured content and keyword tagging. I have at least one of these on all my sites to draw in the search engines and get my content indexed and ranked. I also use Blogger (owned by Google), Bloglines and other free blogs to help distribute my content.

9. Social Bookmark/Media Sites are becoming very important on the web. These include a whole range of social sites like MySpace, FaceBook, Twitter... media news sites like Digg, SlashDot, Technorati... you must get your content into this whole mix if you want to take full SEO advantage of Web 2.0 sites. You should be joining these sites and using them. It's time consuming but it will keep you in the swing of things. One simple thing you must do is to put social bookmark buttons on all your pages so that your visitors can easily bookmark your content for you. You can use a WordPress plug-in or I like using a simple free site/service from Addthis.com which gives me a simple button to put on all my content.

10. Masterplan! Many webmasters and site owners forget to develop or have an overall masterplan/strategy when it comes to SEO. You must have an understanding of what SEO is and what it can do for you and your site. More importantly, you just don't want SEO - you want effective SEO. In order to achieve effective SEO you must have three things: Relevance, Authority and Conversions.

First, your content/site must be relevant to the topic or niche area you're pursuing - your content must fit in and be related to all the other sites in your niche. That's why closely themed sites do so well in the search engines, they give only relevant content to what's been searched for or discussed.

Second, your content/site must be perceived as an authority site on your subject or niche. Establish this authority position and the search engines will love you and your content. One way is to develop this authority, besides offering superior content, is to form links/partnerships with other perceived authority sites in your field. Always strive to make your site an authority site - tops in your niche - the one site everyone has to check before drawing or forming a conclusion.

Third, conversions should be your main goal of any SEO efforts because you want to convert your targeted traffic into site members, subscribers, buyers or just repeat visitors. If you're into online marketing, conversions will be the most important element of the whole SEO process because you want buyers, not just visitors coming to your site.

Most of all, you must convince yourself Search Engine Optimization is not difficult, nor is it the equivalent of the online bogeyman as many would like you to believe. Used effectively, SEO can give you the targeted traffic you're seeking, just follow some of the outlined steps/tactics listed above and you will have SEO working for you and your site in no time at all.

WordPress and Search Engine Optimization


For some years now, Internet marketing gurus have been preaching that static websites are a thing of the past and everyone hoping to profit from free search engine traffic should build their websites using a WordPress blog.


I hate to let the cat out of the bag, and if you want to build any websites in my markets I hope you ignore this article, but in my opinion this is not true.


First of all, if Google loves blogs just because they're blogs, you'd think they'd give first priority to Blogger blogs, because they own Blogger. But they don't.


Granted, WordPress is a lot niftier than Blogger. It has an enormous range of plugins and themes. No serious blogger should use anything except WordPress. But there's no intrinsic reason why a WordPress blog should automatically be preferred by Google for its search rankings.


At this point, WordPress advocates point out that WordPress has plugins to optimize your blog for the search engines. The most well-known one allows you to adjust your post names, and modify the title tag and put in the keyword and description meta tag.


Fine -- but you do that with a static web page. In fact, planning your directory structure and names pages and so on is a heck of a lot easier than customizing the All in One SEO plugin.


Yes, there's a Google sitemap plugin. But you can do that for your website automatically with online software.


Personally, I think that what Google loves is WordPress blogs that stay on one theme or topic. If you love cats and so every day you blog about cats and information about cats and nothing else but cats, then Google can analyse your blog and see that it's about cats. You'll rank well for cat keywords because you stick to that subject, not because you're using WordPress.


However, if you write about your pet cat today, and tomorrow about a movie you watched and next week about your girlfriend breaking up with you... then Google sees that your blog is not focused on anything and you won't rank for anything despite being a WordPress blog.


Most websites aren't so personal, but most are not organized well, and that's why they don't do as well as they could. For example, my website on computer careers contains a lot of pages on various computer subjects and technologies, but I didn't organize the directories. I piled articles on programming languages on top of operating systems on top of hardware on top of database terms. When one directory had about 100 pages, I started another one.


The one advantage WordPress has is the ability of visitors to interact with your site and leave comments. If that is important to your business model, then you need a blog.


But if you just want to put up a small site on a tightly defined subject so you can make money, static sites are easier and, I believe, just as effective. You'll rank as well as your onpage optimization and off page links.


SEO For WordPress Websites


Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a vital part of any website. In this article I will present several tips on how to do SEO on a website based on WordPress.


WordPress is a great platform for creating websites quickly and easily, without having to be a GURU in HTML or CSS. With all its features, such as built-in editor, search engine friendliness, and free plugins, it allows you the possibility of creating a complete website in about a day!


Here are some tips on how to optimize your WordPress website for SEO:


Domain Name - Most people don't realize how important it is to get the right domain name. The right domain name will include the main keywords you want to rank for on the search engines. For example, if your website is about dog training, use names such as DogTrainingForPuppies.com, or DogTrainingSecrets.com. Make sure your main keyword is part of the name. If possible, place it as close to the front as possible.


SEO Plugins - There are two great plugins available for WordPress in the area of SEO:



  1. All-In-One SEO - This plugin allows you to edit the Title, Meta Description and Meta Keyword tags for your home page, as well as individual pages.

  2. Ultimate Noindex Nofollow - Some pages on your website (such as Contac Us, Privacy Policy, Terms and Conditions, etc.) don't need to be indexed by the search engines. You want the search engines to focus on your main (money) pages, not on these unrelated pages. With this plugin you can specify which pages will have the "nofollow" and "noindex" tags.


Pictures - If you are using pictures in your website, don't make the mistake of giving them generic names such as Pic1.jpg, or Pic2.jpg, etc. Give the pictures meaningful names, using the appropriate keywords in them. For example, names such as dog-training-poodle.jpg, or dog-training-jump.jpg will help the search engines figure out what your site is all about. Make sure you use keywords every chance you get!

Anchor Text and Backlinks - The more backlinks your site has, the more popular it is, and the more it will be liked by the search engines. Backlinks are links pointing back to your website from outside sources, such as articles, other blogs or websites. One important part of the backlink is the Anchor Text. For example, let's say you have the following sentence in an article:


For more information on Dog Training for Puppies, click here.


In this example the link "click here" is your anchor text. The problem is that when the search engines index this link, they will label it as "click here". NOT GOOD. Let's re-write the sentence and change the link:


For more information, check Dog Training for Puppies for tips...


Now the anchor text is "Dog Training for Puppies", and the link will be indexed under "Dog Training for Puppies". MUCH BETTER!


How to Double Your AdSense Income Instantly

As you probably already know, AdSense is revolutionizing the way many infopreneurs are creating revenue from their web site traffic. The reason for this is its simplicity. Through AdSense, revenue is generated when someone simply clicks thru the AdSense ads displayed on the webmasters web site.


In this article I want to give you a few simple ways to dramatically increase your AdSense income.


The bottom line:


To increase AdSense income all you must do is increase the number of click thrus you receive.


There are two ways for you to increase your total number of click thrus. You can either increase your website traffic or you can increase your AdSense click thru rate. Now, getting more traffic would be great, but let’s be honest increasing your web site traffic is much easier said than done. So, let’s focus on increasing your AdSense click thru rate instead.


4 Tips to Increase Click Thru:


Match your AdSense to your website:


You want your AdSense ads to appear as seamless as possible. Your goal is to match every aspect of your AdSense ads to the theme of your website. What you want to do is remove the borders from your AdSense ads and match the background color of the ad to your website. Additionally, you want to match the color of the AdSense links to the rest of the links on your website plus choose an ad format that makes the ads look seamless.


For example, if your web site has a white background and the default color of your hypertext links is blue you will want to remove the border from your AdSense, make the background white, choose either a square or a rectangle as your ad format instead of a skyscraper or banner, and yep you guessed it… make the links blue.


Placement Matters:


Where you place your AdSense ads is just as important as how they look. Luckily, there are only a few concepts that you need to worry about in order to increase your click through rate.


•The more white space around your ads the better

•The closer to the top of the page the better

•The closer the left of the page the better


Follow these concepts and I can assure you that you will see an increase in your AdSense click thru rate. (It really is that simply!)


Google Search:


Now this is one that I rarely see webmasters take advantage of. The Google AdSense program gives webmasters the ability to add a Google search box to there web site.


Why should you use this function?


Well, when a website visitor chooses to use this search box from your website your AdSense ID will be imbedded in ALL of that visitors Google searches. If that person does 1 search or 50 your AdSense ID will still be imbedded throughout process.


Why is this so great?


If that visitor clicks on any of the sponsored listings while surfing from your web site guess who makes money. YOU! If they hit the back button and click on another ad guess who makes money? YOU! This is absolutely huge. Through this function you now have the ability to earn multiple click thrus from the same visitor on the site visit. Please don’t overlook how powerful this is. Besides, most of your website traffic will just be browsing anyway, so I why help them find what there looking for and make a little coin along the way?


Tracking:


Just like any other type of marketing, you won’t know what’s working the best for you on your web site unless you track the different things that you’re experimenting with. Set up a few Google AdSense channels for the different ads that you’ll be placing on your website. Then just see which channels are working the best and stick to those.


That’s it!


Follow the tips above and I can assure you that you will absolutely double your AdSense click thru rate and your AdSense income. The best part about the four tips I’ve shared here is that you can put them into action immediately and see how they will work on your website right now. Who knows… you could be making twice as much by tomorrow by just making a few simple tweaks here and there.


Good Luck!

Wednesday, 16 December 2009

How to increase website traffic

We said A-Z and we meant it. Here are 26 sure-fire ways to increase web traffic and site visitors to your website. Use some or all of them, and let us know which ones worked best for you.



  1. Optimize your site (SEO).
    Win on the search engines when people search for keyword phrases related to your products or services.
    (More about search engine optimization.)
     

  2. Get your site listed in directories.
    Submit your site to all the major web directories. This will generate traffic directly from the directories themselves and will also help to improve your link popularity. That helps you win on Google!
    (More about web directories.)
     

  3. Get listed in search engines.
    Submit your site to all the major search engines.
    (More about search engines.)
     

  4. Get links to your site.
    Get people with complimentary sites to link to yours. You offer rental kayaks on the beach. Ask the local restaurant owners to link to you, and offer to link to them. Ask the local tour guides, the real estate agents, the night clubs, and everyone else. Links lead to clicks onto your website and help to improve your search engine rankings.
     

  5. Buy links to your site.
    Buy text links on other websites. That means more spiders stopping by, more people clicking through, and better search engine rankings.
     

  6. Buy banner ads.
    Buy banner ads on other websites. It helps to build brand recognition.
     

  7. Participate in a banner exchange program.
    It won't cost you anything, and will lead to a few extra visitors. Plus, you're spreading your brand all over the place.
     

  8. Participate in a WebRing.
    Connect your site with other sites in your niche.
     

  9. Pay for clicks to your site.
    Pay for clicks or inclusion on the search engines so that people will see your site in the sponsored links section of the search results when they search for keyword phrases related to your products or services.
    (More about pay per click.)
     

  10. Set up an affiliate marketing program.
    With affiliate marketing, you can either pay per click, pay per lead generated, pay per sale, or pay per customer acquired.
     

  11. Use smart public relations (PR).
    Get news coverage of your business and your site. Approach online and traditional media. This will often lead to others placing links pointing to your website, which leads to more clicks and also to improved search engine rankings.
     

  12. Use E-mail marketing.
    Ugly, but effective for the cost. Blast out your special offers, but be nice about it.
     

  13. Use off-line marketing.
    Promote your site. Put your url on all your license plates. Paint it on your car. Buy newspaper and yellow pages ads with your url. Put up flyers and stickers. Sponsor a little league team. Do anything and everything to spread the word about your website around your city.
     

  14. Run regular promotions.
    Stage regular giveaways and spread the word about it.
     

  15. Get published.
    Write articles for publication on other websites. The author profile will link to your site. The article will show that you're an expert.
     

  16. Publish yourself.
    Write articles for your own site regularly. This will help you to win on the search engines and gives your visitors a reason to come back over and over.
     

  17. Ask for reviews.
    Ask for reviews of your self-published articles on other webmasters' websites. Ask for reviews of your website, your products, your software, your services. These will usually include links to your articles.
     

  18. Write briefs.
    Write daily or weekly news briefs focusing in on your industry or specialty area. This keeps your site "fresh" in the eyes of the major search engines and helps you to spread a wide net when fishing for top search engine positions.
     

  19. Create a newsletter.
    Ask your visitors to sign up for your newsletter, and encourage them to send it along to people they know. Send a newsletter regularly with teasers or lead-ins to your in-depth new articles or with special offers and the latest products.
     

  20. Post in chat rooms.
    Become active in bulletin boards and chat rooms focusing on your industry. Leave inciteful comments, and people will click on your profile, then visit your site.
     

  21. Give away free stuff.
    Offer something people want at your site. Give them a reason to come back and get more. Offer free downloads and update them regularly. Offer coupons or discounts. Content content content.
     

  22. Give awards for excellent sites in your niche.
    This builds more links back to your site and establishes you as a credible reviewer, an expert in your space.
     

  23. Run a contest and promote it.
    Photo contests, essay contests, goofy contests, random drawings, anything. Example: Messiest Garage in America contest on OfftheFloor.com.
     

  24. Join your local business organizations.
    Chambers of Commerce and other organizations will often add your site to their member directory. That's an added advantage over the obvious business-building and networking opportunities.
     

  25. Create an RSS feed.
    Give people another way to interact with your content.
     

  26. Be accessible.
    Build your site so that it is accessible to all browsers and to PocketPC and Palm Pilot users. Don't forget, people with disabilities buy things too. Make your site Section 508 complaint. Your competition probably hasn't.

Sunday, 13 December 2009

What is adsense click fraud

Click Fraud is by far the most serious problem that the Internet Advertising industry is currently facing. It is next to impossible to prevent or cancel click fraud. We can not stop it from happening but we can, to some extent, control its consequences. Only through constant monitering of the click activity and being on watch constantly, can an advertiser or publisher combat the click fraud and reduce the damage caused.


Now, let's examine what Click Fraud is all about:


What Is Click Fraud?


Click fraud is an illegal activity of clicking internet ads and generating false clicks on PPC ads, that have no chance of conversion, with the intention of profiting from such clicks or to inflate advertiser costs or whatevr may be the reason. This is akin to stealing money from advertisers because they are the ones who has to pay for such clicks.


The main reasons why click fraud can occur are:



  • The intention to inflate the advertising costs of a competitor, their by hurting their business.

  • The intention to make money (though illegally) from Adsense or such Pay-Per-Click programs, or to increse their CTR and other such selfish motives.

  • Extortion - when hackers create software that perform fraudulent clicks and use it to threaten various companies in order to obtain money;

  • Jealosy - To hurt publishers (by getting them banned) who are making good money from PPC programs.

  • Vengeance - By enemies of the company and people who are not happy with a company like fired employees etc.


How Is It Done?



  • Manual clicks - By repetedly clicking on ads manually either because of an offered incentive or personal motive.

  • Automated methods: Software applications designed to click on paid ads. Some of these use clever algorithms to determine click behaviours, reaching the performance level of simulating genuine human visitor behavior. Because of ability to destroy all identifying referneces and rotating IPs, Geos etc, the activity from these programs is very hard to detect.


The overall awareness about Click fraud grew significantly among Webmasters and advertisers and they have also become more knowledgeable of the methods used in click fraud and have come to easily detect simple fraudulent click activity.


According to one theory, there has been no real interest from the part of the major search networks that participate in the system, for this puts them at a loss: on one hand, admitting it means making refunds to advertisers, on the other hand fighting it means significantly reducing their gains also. As fraud costs advertisers more and more, the problem has increased in acuity more and more and the big players just have to do something to defend their clients and keep them satisfied with the results they get from advertising programs, as they are the revenue source for many.


How is Google combating Click Fraud?


Google is taking active part in detecting and combating Click fraud as this is important to keep the advertisers happy. Their AdWords program is reportedly generating around 95% of its revenue, and the success of the programs rests on providing a profitable ROI for its advertisers.


The truth is that the battle is still mostly led privately. One just has to keep his eyes wide open and be the watchdog of the way his or her advertising activity performs. This constitutes an inconvenient for many advertisers as well as for publishers, who think their job would be to ensure quality content for their sites and not waste time sniffing around and keeping their eyes on the stats, thinking it's Googles job to ensure click safety.


They have taken steps in the direction of protecting advertisers, it has a quite complex monitoring system (analyzing a multitude of parameters beyond CTR) that uses both engineering systems and human analysis and they are on continuous activity of upgrading their detection mechanisms to combat fraudulent activity. Last year, they have also improved their smart pricing system, so as to charge the advertiser in accordance with the analysis of the probability of a click converting or not.


Once an invalid activity tracked this is what Google does:



  • Advertisers are not charged for clicks or impressions that were identified as fraudulent. Or refunds are made if the case.

  • Publishers are not judged starting from the assumption of innocence and are severely penalized without much debate: AdSense™ account dismantled. They give no guarantee for the possibility of account reinstatement although they state their opening for discussion, considering the possibility of sabotage.


How Publishers are affected with Click Fraud?


In is a common opinion that when Click Fraud is detected the publisher is seens as the 'bad guy' (even though this is not always the case). This is because he can directly benefit from such activity. For publisher, more clicks means more revenue. Because of this, Publisher is usually the first suspect.


When click fraud is detected, Google can potentially ban an account of the publisher. This is by far the greatest contributor of Google Adsense bans. So naturally, honest publishers as dreaded as the advertisers of the Click Fraud.

Thursday, 10 December 2009

What is SEO(Search Engine Optimization)?

This is the most frequently asked by the New internet users. So, I decided to post this topic.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results as opposed to search engine marketing (SEM) which deals with paid inclusion. Typically, the earlier (or higher) a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search and industry-specific vertical search engines. This gives a web site web presence.


As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimizing a website primarily involves editing its content and HTML and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines.


The acronym "SEO" can refer to "search engine optimizers," a term adopted by an industry of consultants who carry out optimization projects on behalf of clients, and by employees who perform SEO services in-house. Search engine optimizers may offer SEO as a stand-alone service or as a part of a broader marketing campaign. Because effective SEO may require changes to the HTML source code of a site, SEO tactics may be incorporated into web site development and design. The term "search engine friendly" may be used to describe web site designs, menus, content management systems, images, videos, shopping carts, and other elements that have been optimized for the purpose of search engine exposure.


Another class of techniques, known as black hat SEO or spamdexing, use methods such as link farms, keyword stuffing and article spinning that degrade both the relevance of search results and the user-experience of search engines. Search engines look for sites that employ these techniques in order to remove them from their indices.


But the most important things are:
Unique, quality and good articles
Back linking, i prefer white hat because it will take you longer than black hat method