Why Meta Descriptions Affect Your Google Rankings Again

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Meta descriptions are the text snippets of webpages you see in search results. They used to be an important ranking factor until not too long ago both Google and Yahoo! officially announced that they would no longer use Meta descriptions in their search algorithms. But latest developments in Google's search algorithm include Meta descriptions as a ranking factor once again.

No, the folks at Google did not back out of their decision to discount Meta descriptions as a ranking factor. Still, your blog´s or website´s search snippet can now significantly affect your rankings. Here is the low-down.

Google and Personalized Search Results

Shortly after New Year Google announced that they would be tailoring everyone's search results based on their search history even when users are not signed into Google. Personalized results are far from new on Google. The search giant has been customizing peoples SERPs (search engine results pages) for quite a while, but until now this only happened when you searched while signed into your Google account. Now, signed in or not everybody gets personal results. (Big brother is watching!)

How It Works

Whether you are signed in or not, all the searches you run on Google are stored in your browser cookies. The accumulated data is referred to as your 'Web History' and Google uses it to customize your search results. If you are not signed in, your ‘Web History’ will be stored for 180 days (!), then old data is replaced with new searches. If you are signed in, then there is no time limit and you can manage you ‘Web History’. Either way, the searches you run as well as the sites you visit will affect your future search experience.

The sites you visit more frequently will be pushed higher in the search result pages on related searches. For example, if you search for 'horror movies' and visit www.bloody-disgusting.com, next time when you search for 'new movies' you may see www.bloody-disgusting.com in the Top 10 results even if it does not rank there in the general impersonalized search. You can tell that your search results have been personalized by the 'View customization' link in the upper right hand corner.

The personalized search results can differ significantly from the general SERPs. I checked it out and ran a couple of tests searching for closely related keywords and clicking the same site each time. I also checked this site's rankings with a rank checker to get a list of impersonalized rankings for comparison. In one of the tests just a few click-throughs to a site pushed it up 31 positions on a highly competitive keyword. That was from the 38th position on page 4 straight to the 7th spot on the first page in the personalized search results (and I was not even signed in!).

How Meta Descriptions Can Affect Your Google Rankings

Although Meta descriptions are no longer (officially) part of Google´s ranking algorithm they will affect your site's positions in the personalized search results. Your Meta description is a crucial factor that has a huge influence on the CTR (click-through-rate) of your site in search results. The more compelling your description is, the more searchers will click it. When they click through to your site from search results this will be recorded in their ‘Web History’. Next time they search for a product or service related to your site, it may appear high up in their personalized search results.

Since everybody now gets personalized results, the effect your Meta descriptions have on your rankings can get really huge. That is another reason why you should invest some time and effort into testing and optimizing your Meta descriptions.

Optimizing Meta Descriptions

There is more than enough advice out there on writing compelling titles and descriptions (and there is even software available to do this for you), so I won't go into detail here. Just keep in mind one thing: Google does not always show the Meta description you provide. Sometimes it just compiles a random text snippet from your page that contains the keywords used in the query. But you can easily locate the keywords where your Meta description shows up by searching for them on Google.

Conclusion

There has been a lot of criticism pouring down on Google for introducing personal search to everybody. Quite a few people are worried about privacy issues. Others do not like it because the whole concept will only help the rich get richer while keeping the smaller sites out of the game. And some SEOs are just comlaining that this makes SEO success even harder to measure.

Although it may not be the best idea the folks at Google have come up with, I recommend you embrace it and run with it. And I suggest that you take this news as a call to action. A strong motivation to actually do something to help your SEO, your sales and your business. And that something is to take a look at your Meta descriptions. Go and find out how your blog or website appears in the search results and find ways to improve it. With personalized search or without it, having a catchy compelling text in your search results snippet will get you more clicks, more traffíc, more customers, and more money.

Good luck!

 

Technorati-Tags: meta descriptions,seo,serps,click through rate,more traffic,search engine ranking

Guide to Making Money with HubPages

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Hubpages is one of the Write-and-get-paid websites where you can write about whatever you want and earn money for your efforts. This is the short explanation of the site - but there is quite a bit more to it.

You earn money when there is traffic to the articles you write and that traffic clicks on advertisements that are displayed on the page. For this reason, traffic is one of the most important elements that will help you make money online with Hubpages. On thing is certain, making money online is no easy feat - but there are quite a few ways to do it.

You can obviously provide a service or sell a product. You can also do online copywriting or freelance writing. Butt hat is not for everyone. I have been watching HubPages for a while, and I think that if you can learn how to use the site to make money, i.e., you learn how to create so-called “hubs” that gain traffic, convert traffic to ad clicks or affiliate sales, and rise to the top of the search engine rankings, then you will know a great deal about internet marketing. (Basically, you need to do the same things you would do with your own blog or website.) And this experience will help you out a lot in whatever kind of business you get into online.

In the online environment, it is all about words. Words are where search engines can really dig in and find relevant information for people surfing the web. Because of this, online marketing or making money online more often than not depends on writing, good writing.

A lot has been published on the subject of writing for humans versus writing for search engines. In my mind, it is important to do both, meaning that you do have a focus on certain keywords, but you do not want to write in such a way that the content is unreadable for a human being. You always want to write for people first, and for search engine bots second. There is a lot of value in enticing people not only to read your content, but to come back and read it again and/or more of it.

However, that being said, there is also a lot of value in enticing visitors to your work in order to encourage a click through on AdSense and affiliate links. There is nothing wrong with doing this, but if you write really hacky articles that are filled only with keywords and nothing else your work will be weeded out by Google and sent to search results nirvana. If people cannot find your work, then you will not make any money.

HubPages is a good place to start your writing career because you immediately get a boost in rank when you publish a piece since the site is highly regarded by Google as a network that produces informative and helpful user-generated content. HubPages does a good job of policing itself in terms of eliminating crap or spam content and making sure their advertising networks run smoothly and there is no fraudulent activity going on. As a result, your content will be indexed by search engines a lot faster than if you started your own blog and wrote something. It could take you months to get a few readers to an article on your own blog or website, whereas it may just take a few hours or a day or two to get readers to your hub.

How to Make Money with Hubpages

First, you have to sign up. If you haven’t yet, sign up here. Then return to this article to read the rest – I promise it will help you.

The way you earn money on HubPages is through Google´s AdSense program, Clickbank and affiliate links through eBay and Amazon. You can also make money with an advertising network called Kontera, but do not worry about it for now because it really does not pay that well. If you are a savvy internet marketer you can also make money on HubPages with your own affiliate links to third party websites.

The revenue is spilt with HubPages 60/40 in your favor. It works like this: 6 times out of 10 your ID is used in the advertisements, which means you will earn on a click or sale made during this time. The other 4 times HubPages has the potential to earn money for an action taken. People sometimes think that the total revenue is just split 60/40, but that is not the case. Your ID is used randomly 6 times out of 10. It is a generous pay structure that allows quite a few people to make good money at HubPages.

HubPages is a good place to start writing online, and even making money online. I mentioned earlier that you will want to use keywords in your articles in order to be competitive and gain traffic to your work - because that is what you need to do if you are interested in making any money. The best way to do this is by imagining what someone would type into a search engine in order to find the information you are providing.

If you were going to write about “making money online by writing,” then you should choose that phrase as your keyword phrase and use it in your article. The next thing you need to consider is how competitive a term is. You can do this by using the Google Keyword Tool at the following URL:    https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

This tool will show you how many times your keyword has been searched in the past month and will give you a monthly average. It will also provide you with suggestions of related terms that may be better options for you to use because they are less competitive. It may sound a little confusing at first, but you will get the hang of it after you do keyword research a few times. You also want to look at the price paid per click, which will give you a good idea of how much money ads that will display will be worth. The figure shown is not the total that you will earn because Google keeps some of the money, but you can easily see which terms are “worth” more and which ones are worth less.

In my next post I shall go into more detail about choosing keywords for your internet writing. But for now, write down or copy and paste two or three sets of terms and how often they are searched and what they are worth. Now, type the keyword phrase into Google to see how many pages pop up. This is not an exact science but it will give an idea of how much content on the internet uses the term you are searching. If 100,000,000 pages come up, there are a lot of entries about what you are planning to write about, so it may be a lot more difficult to compete and get to the top of the search engines with your page. However, if only 250,000 pages come up, you have found a niche in which you can compete and that you may even be able to “own” by getting your page to the top. This, in short, is how you make good money in internet marketing with content and Google AdSense.

If you have a specialized skillset - and every single one of us has at least one - I highly recommend you start creating content based on it on the internet. For instance, I notice that I sometimes get a few visitors to this site who are looking for ways to make money while unemployed. HubPages is one such way. Start creating content about stuff you have expertise in. It does not matter if it is plumbing, roofing, gardening, or investing. If you can create content that is useful to people and valuable in one way or another, you will be able to make money.

Sign up for Hubpages and start writing and earning today.

Once you have signed up, let me know if you need some help figuring out what to write about. I’ll do my best to help you out by giving a push in the right direction in terms of keywords and ideas.

You will find a good hub on monetizing adsense here.

Also, read this article by someone who is alredy making a lot of money with HubPages.

Good luck!

Related article:

How to Make Money with HubPages - A Reality Check

 

Technorati-Tags: hubpages,make money,blogging for money,affiliate programs,adsense

How to Submit Your Blogger Blog to Yahoo

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One of the most important as well as efficient ways to attract traffic to your site is to make sure that your Blogger blog is properly indexed by the major search engines. These, of course, include Yahoo. If you are interested in increasing your chances of having your site quickly and properly indexed by the Yahoo search engine it pays to submit your site and your feed. In this post I´ll take you through the process of signing up with Yahoo, authenticating your site and adding your site feed to Yahoo Site Explorer.

Yahoo is notorious for being slow at indexing and will not necessarily include all crawled pages in its search results. For guaranteed inclusion you can opt for a paid service ($ 299) but if you follow the steps below you stand a fair chance of having your Blogger blog properly indexed relatively quickly and without any cost.

How to Submit Your Blogger Blog to Yahoo

1. Sign up for a free Yahoo Account if you don't already have one.

2. Sign in to Yahoo Site Explorer where you will be taken to the My Sites page.

3. Submit your Blogger blog by entering the URL of your blog and then clicking on the Add My Site button.

4. You will now see the address of your blog included in the site list. The 3 columns to the right contain information about feeds, actions, and status. You will notice that the status of your site will be set to new (represented by a more or less yellow circle). Now click on the link to your site or on the Explore button.

5. You will be taken to the results page and should get a message like the one pictured below.

6. From the menu on the left click on Authentication. (If you clicked the Explore button in Step 4 you need to go back to the previous page and click on the link to your site now.)

7. You will be presented with 2 authentication options. Choose Add a META Tag from the dropdown menu, then copy the code provided using Ctrl + C.

8. Login to your Blogger blog in a new window or tab. Keep the window of the Yahoo Site Explorer open as you will be returning.

9. Navigate to Layout --> Edit HTML in your Blogger blog.

10. Upon arriving at the Template page it is a good idea to make a backup of your blog's template as a precautionary measure. Download it your computer by clicking on the Download Full Template link. Remember, if you inadvertently overwrite a line code you may not be able to restore your template so it is worth taking an extra few moments to create a backup.

11. Once you have backed up the template of your blog locate the Head tag: <head>. It should be only a few lines of code down from the top. Now insert the copied code from Yahoo in the position suggested as shown in the picture below using the Ctrl + V command.

12. After pasting the code into the template there is one more thing to be done. You will need to add a trailing slash at the end of the new line of code to avoid getting a parse error. Once you have added the trailing slash and are certain you have placed the code in the correct position go ahead and click on the Save Template button.

13. Return to Yahoo Site Explorer, click on the “Ready to Authenticate” button. Now follow the My Sites link. You will see that the status of your site has been verified and is represented by a green checkmark.

14. Click again on your blog´s link. Then select Feeds from the menu on the left. You will be taken to the feeds page where you can go ahead and add a feed for your blog by entering the URL of the feed. The extension of the feed is either atom.xml or rss.xml. Notice in the example below I have set an extra parameter to handle redirection of the feed by services such as Feedburner: atom.xml?redirect=false or rss.xml?redirect=false

15. Once the feed has been accepted it will take around 24 hours before it is active. After this time, and provided there are no errors, Yahoo Site Explorer displays “processed” followed by a green tick (just as in step 13).

You have now done everything that is needed to have your Blogger blog crawled and indexed by Yahoo. Check back periodically to see if Yahoo has indexed your pages. This process will take some time so do not expect overnight results. However, once Yahoo recognises your feed, your pages will be regularly crawled and any updates in content indexed. The process of adding a feed and verifying your site will have gone a long way towards ensuring your site is included in Yahoo search engine results.

Good luck!

 

Technorati-Tags: yahoo site explorer,add url,serch engines,seo,blogger,submit url

How to Submit the Sitemap of Your Blogger Blog to Google

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Quite a lot of beginners are looking for advice on how to submit a sitemap of their Blogger blog to Google. Although this is surprisingly easy to do there is very little documentation available on how to go about it. That is the reason why I decided to write this post. It provides a set of simple step by step instructions to guide you through the process of adding a sitemap of your Blogger blog to Google. By following the steps lined out in the tutorial you will be able to add the sitemap of your blog to Google in about five minutes.

Why Add a Sitemap to Google?

Because Google owns the Blogger.com platform most blogs are automatically indexed by Google. However, you might find that the process of indexing does not always run as smoothly or as quickly as you might like. Manually adding a sitemap to Google has a number of distinct advantages:

• More likely to have timely indexing of your blog
• More likely that all URLs on your site will be accessed
• More frequent updating of your blog index in response to new posts
• Increase in site traffic as a result of all your pages being indexed

Guide to Submitting the Sitemap of Your Blogger Blog to Google

1. Sign in to Google Webmaster Tools

Once set up, this site will provide you with a detailed analysis about how Google indexes your blog. The easiest way to access the Google Webmaster tools is by clicking on My Account on the Blogger Navbar and then choosing Google Webmaster Tools from the list. Or go directly to this address: http:// www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

2. Add Your Blog to Webmaster Tools

Under the caption “Sites” you will find a button that allows you to add a site. Click once inside the box to remove the default text. Now enter the full URL of your site in the box including the prefix http:// and click on the "Continue" button. For example to add this site - "Eblogger Tricks.com" you would enter: http://www.ebloggertricks.com/

3. Verify the Ownership of Your Blogger Blog

Next, you will be asked if you want to verify your blog right away or at a later time. I recommend doing it right away. At this point you will be given 2 options: one to verify your site by uploading an HTML file and the other by inserting a meta tag into the HTML code of your blog template. As you do not have access to the server on Blogger.com you will need to choose the second option. To do this select “add a meta tag” in the dropdown menu entitled “Choose Verification Method”.

Once you make this choice you will be presented with a couple of lines of text which you will need to copy (Ctrl + C) to the clipboard of your computer.

4. Go to Blogger Layout Tab of Your Blog in a New Window

Open Blogger in a new tab or window and sign in if you are not already signed in --> Dashboard --> Layout. If you have created more than one blog make sure that you click on the appropriate title of your blog.

5. Edit the Template of Your Blog in Blogger

Layout --> Edit HTML. At this point you need to search in the code of your template for the first “head” tag. This should be somewhere between line 7 and 10 from the top. Once you have located the correct spot paste the code for the meta tag you created in Step 3 directly into the template. Take care not to overwrite any existing code! Click on Save Template to update your blog.

If you wish to err on the side of caution you might consider backing up your template before you make any changes to it however as long as you are careful this precaution is probably not necessary.

6. Return to Webmaster Tools and Verify Site

Once you have saved the changes to your template return to Webmaster Tools and click on the “Verify” button. You will then receive coonfirmation from Google that your site has been verified.

7. Navigate to Webmaster Tools Dashboard

If all went well you will now see your site in a list below the "Add Site" box. Click on your site in the list and you will be taken to your “Dashboard”. It is easy to check you are in the right place as your site name will be shown in the blue bar on top of the page.

On the Dashboard page you will find details about Google´s current indexing of your site. If Google has not as yet indexed your site you will see the message “No pages from your site are currently included in Google´s index” displayed. Alternatively, if Google has already discovered your site then you will get the following message: “Pages from your site are included in Google´s index.”

8. Navigate to Sitemaps in Webmaster Tools

Once your site is verified you can move on to adding your sitemap. To do this follow the “Submit a sitemap” link in the bottom right corner. This will take you to the “Sitemaps” page. There you will find a button labelled “Submit a Sitemap”.

On the Sitemaps page in Webmaster Tools type either atom.xml or rss.xml into the box provided to extend the displayed URL and click on the “Submit a Sitemap” button. Using the same example as before http://www.ebloggertricks.com/ becomes

either

http://www.ebloggertricks.com/atom.xml

or

http://www.ebloggertricks.com/rss.xml

All going well Google will then display a symbol indicating that your sitemap submission is pending. No need to worry, it can take some hours for your sitemap to be fully updated by Google. At that point you will be able to see the number of URLs identified by Google and the time of the last download. This is useful information as it will help you keep tabs on the pages of your Blogger.com blog site and identify any URLs that may be missing. Now that you have your sitemap in place you can look forward to increased traffic as more visitors will now be able to find your site.

 

Read the Following If Your Feed is Being Redirected

If you are redirecting your feed because you are using Feedburner for example you will need to add a query parameter to stop the redirect so that it will act as a sitemap.

Therefore instead of adding atom.xml or rss.xml you will need to add atom.xml?redirect=false to the site URL in the "Submit Sitemap" box.

Thus http://www.ebloggertricks.com/rss.xml 

becomes

http://www.ebloggertricks.com/rss.xml?redirect=false

If you have a lot of posts it would be worth your while adding the following parameter to have all your posts included: rss.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=100

In the above example Google will index your first 100 posts. If you have more than 100 posts you can create another sitemap in which case you would start your index at 101 instead of 1.

This post has guided you through the process of authenticating your Blogger blog at Google Webmaster Tools and adding a sitemap to ensure better crawling and indexing of your website.

Good luck!

 

Technorati-Tags: submit sitemap,webmaster tools,seo,more traffic

How to Create Search Engine Friendly Permalinks for Your Blogger Posts

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What are Permalinks?

Just as the name suggests, Permalinks are the permanent links to a post page. Blogger automatically generates a permalink based on the title of your post. Permalinks provide information to the viewers about the kind of content they are being pointed to.

Permalinks create permanent links to your Blogger posts which are indexed by search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Search engines use permalinks to categorise posts. Browsers use permalinks to help users navigate to your posts. When you hover over a permalink in your browser you can read the post name in the status bar.

The permalink for this article is:

http://www.ebloggertricks.com/2010/01/improved-permalinks-for-blogger-posts

How to Improve Permalinks in Blogger

While other blogging software (e.g. Wordpress) allows the user to edit permalinks, Blogger has no such feature. For this reason you need to be careful when creating titles for your posts as the permalink generated from the title cannot be changed later. As long as your article is still only a draft you can continue to change the title as many times as you like. However, once the permalink is assigned to the post, which happens at the point the post is published, it remains the same no matter how many times you change the title of your post.

Another issue with Blogger is that it uses only the first 35-40 characters of your title to create the permalink, which means that you can run into problems if you have chosen a longer title for your post. My suggestion: design your titles carefully if you want to avoid losing the end characters from your permalink. For instance, a long title such as the one below would result in a shortened permalink which would lose the important fact that this post is related to working with Blogger:

http://www.ebloggertricks.com/2010/01/how-to-create-search-engine-friendly-permalinks-for-your-blogger-posts

Fortunately, there is a way around this problem. You will have to publish and then republish your posts, just like I did with this one. The method involves creating a shorter title that will adequately summarise the content of your post (e.g. Improving Permalinks for Blogger Posts) and then publishing your post. Now go back and change the title to the one you prefer. In this case I changed the title to "How to Create Search Engine Friendly Permalinks for Your Blogger Posts." This time your title can be as long as you want it to be. As you can see, mine is longer than 40 characters. The permalink, however, has remained the same even though the title has changed.

You can use this trick to create eye catching and memorable titles. It will also ensure that the permalink reflects a concise title and that unnecessary details in the permalink are removed. Creating concise permalinks is an important part of Search Engine Optimisation. Read more articles about Search Engine Optimisation.

Good luck!

 

Technorati-Tags: permalinks,blogger posts,seo

Adjusting Blogger Title Tags to Improve Ranking

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In this post I´ll explain how you can easily improve the search engine rankings of your Blogger blog by optimizing your page titles for major search engines like Google,Yahoo, and Bing.

Unfortunately, by default your Blogger blog DOES NOT HAVE search engine optimized title tags. This puts your blog at a considerable disadvantage compared to other blogs and websites that have inbuilt SEO (search engine optimization), as these sites tend to rank higher on the search engine results pages.

As you may have noticed the title tags of your Blogger blog are shown in this order: name of the blog followed by the title of the post. This is not ideal for popular search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing which place more importance on the first words of the title. For instance, take a look at how the title tags of my other blogs were shown in a browser before any SEO was applied. Note the order of the title tags: Blog name/Page title.

When this blog was first indexed by Google this is what it looked like in the search engine results:

Fortunately, with just a little tweak to your Blogger template you can rectify this problem. By simply reversing the positions of the blog name and the page title a significant improvement in the search engine results can be achieved.

Just follow the step by step guide provided below to achieve higher rankings in search engine results.

How to Tweak the Title Tags of Blogger Blogs

1. Login to your Blogger blog and navigate to Layout --> Edit HTML

2. Download full template to your computer - so you have a backup in case anything should go wrong.

3. Replace the following line of code (should be about 5 to 10 lines from the top):

<title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title>

with (highlight the code, then press Ctrl + C to copy)

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == &quot;item&quot;'> <title><data:blog.pageName/> | <data:blog.title/></title> <b:else/> <title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title> </b:if>

4. Click on Save Template.

5. View Blog. Navigate to an individual post. You will see that now the title of your page appears before the name of your blog. A pipe symbol separates the two.

Below you can see an example of the change in the search engine results since the tweak was implemented for this blog. Since optimizing for search friendly page titles I have witnessed a slow but steady increase in traffic to this site. This is one simple method that definitely works. So, if you are interested in higher search engine rankings for your Blogger blog optimize your template right away.

In case of problems

A few people have reported issues with the line <b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == &quot;item&quot;'>. If you experience the same problem try inserting the following line of code instead (which seems to work just fine on older blogs): <b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>.

In this post I have shown you how to adapt the title tags of your Blogger blog to improve search engine rankings.

P.S.: The change will become effective the next time your blog is indexed by the search engines.

Good luck!

 

Technorati-Tags: seo,pagerank,title tags,html code

How to Make Money Blogging – 12 Tips

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Every time I start to think about it I am amazed about the huge variety of opportunities available to bloggers who are interested in making money from their blogs.

The best advice I can give to bloggers seeking to make money from blogging is to spread their interests across multiple revenue streams so as not to put all their eggs in one basket.

The wonderful thing is that this has become easier and easier to do over the last couple of years because a lot of new options have been opening up. In this post I am going to take a look at some of the methods that bloggers are currently using to monetize their blogs.

Income Streams for Bloggers - How to Make Money Blogging

1. Advertising Programs

Perhaps the most obvious changes in the past couple of years have come with the addition of a variety of viable advertising options for bloggers looking to make money from their blogs. The most common way bloggers seem to earn money online is via Google´s contextual ad program - AdSense. More recent additions that many are using quite successfully are Chitika Premium (fomerly known as eMiniMalls), WidgetBucks, and Text Link Ads.

And here are even more options for you: Adbrite, Azoogle Ads, Bidvertiser, Clicksor, DoubleClick, Fastclick, Kanoodle, Pheedo, TextAds, Tribal Fusion, Vibrant In-Text Advertising and a host of others. Of course there is more to come with the likes of YPN (Yahoo Publisher Network) which is currently in Beta testing and with a variety of other advertising systems currently in development (Note: YPN is only available to US publishers).

Last but not least there is BlogAds - one of the first blog specific ad networks.

2. RSS Advertising

The last 2 or 3 years have seen some advances in RSS Advertising as well. I have not yet heard of any bloggers making big money blogging through this method till now - but as improvements are made to the ad programs exploring this I am sure it is bound to become more profitable in the future.

3. Sponsorship

In addition to the array of advertising programs that are available for publishers to join there is a growing awareness in the business of the value of advertising directly on blogs. There are more and more examples of this to be seen, and if you have a popular blog or website dedicated to a specific category of products, for example digital cameras, then this could be a lucrative option for you. I know of quite a number of blogs exploring sponsorship with advertisers at present and suspect we will see more and more of it in the future. Sponsorship is also happening on a post by post basis with some bloggers being paid by companies as well as small businesses to write on certain topics - either in a one off or a regular fashion - and they are able to make big bucks from their blogs doing so.

4. Affiliate Programs

There are a number of large affiliate programs like Amazon, Linkshare, Clickbank and Commission Junction as well as thousands of others ranging from huge to very small.

5. Digital Assets

A lot of bloggers have been developing other digital assets to support and add income streams to their blogs. By this I mean that I am coming across more and more e-books, courses and tele-seminars being run by bloggers. While this option is not as yet a huge money-maker it will definitely increase in the future – only problem, you need to be able to write a book or host seminars.

6. Blog Network Opportunities

With the rise in popularity of Blog Networks, bloggers are also being presented with more places to earn an income from their blogging activities - by writing for as well as with others. While it might be (very) difficult to get a writing gig with one of the big networks - there are more than enough who are always looking for new bloggers to join and are willing to pay for their efforts using a variety of payment models. While there are distinct advantages to blogging for yourself, blogging for an established network that will handle a lot of the set up/promotion/admin/SEO etc has its advantages as well. More and more bloggers are combining writing for themselves on their own blogs with taking on blog network blogs as additional income streams.

7. Business Blog Writing Opportunities

As blogging has become a more respectable as well as professional medium more and more businesses have found that adding a blog to their website to increase their web presence and attract more traffic is not a bad idea. Many of these companies have internal staff take on blogging duties - but an increasing number of them are hiring specialist bloggers to come in and run their blogs. Check out Bloggers for Hire if you are interested in this kind of work.

8. Non Blogging Writing Opportunities

Also becoming more common are bloggers being hired to write in non blogging mediums. Manolo with his coup of a column in the Washington Post was one of the first, but in his wake more and more prolific bloggers are being approached to write for newspapers, magazines and other non blog websites. Other bloggers are making a name for themselves as published book authors.

9. Donations

Tip jars and donation buttons have been a part of blogging for years now but the last couple of years have seen a number of bloggers go full time after fund raising drives. Perhaps the most high profile of these was Jason Kottke of kottke.org who through the generosity of his readership was able to quit his job and become a full time blogger.

10. Flipping Blogs

Also becoming more common is the practice of “Blog Flipping” - or selling of blogs. This has happened both on an individual blog level (I can think of more than 20 blogs that sold this year on eBay alone) but also on a network level (like the sale of Weblogs Inc. to AOL).

11. Merchandising

An increasing number of bloggers are attempting to make a few extra dollars from their blogs by selling branded products (mostly T-shirts, stickers, and similar stuff) through programs like Cafepress. Quite a few larger blogs are seeing significant sales - especially blogs with a huge mainstream or cult following.

12. Consulting and Speaking

While it has been popular for established consultants to add blogs to their businesses we are also starting to see bloggers with no consulting background making money by charging readers for their time in consulting scenarios because of the profile they have built with their blogs. Blogging has the ability to establish people as experts on niche topics - and we all know the value of being perceived as an expert. Real experts can charge up to and in some cases even over $200 an hour for speaking and consulting work – often in areas of expertise they knew little about 2 years earlier - but through their blogs they have become leaders in their respective fields and minor celebrities throughout the industry.

As time goes by there are more and more ways opening up for bloggers to make money from their blogs. Feel free to suggest your own ideas and experiences in a comment below.

Good luck!

 

Technorati-Tags: blogging for money,monetizing blog,affiliate programs,advertising programs

12 Ways to Increase Link Density

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In today’s tough race to the top of the Google SERP’s (Search Engine Result Pages), there are a number of factors that can help you earn one of those coveted spots. While certain techniques may get you better results than others (based on your industry and level of competition), there is no questioning the power of links.

There are a number of methods, some common and some yet to be discovered, you can try out to help increase your link density and search rankings. In this post I have tried to outline some of the more common techniques webmasters and bloggers can use to increase their site’s popularity.

1. Reciprocal Links

Reciprocal links used to be a huge asset and played a significant role. Today, fewer and fewer sites are making use of this technique as it is thought by many to have no significant role in the eyes of Google. This is simply not true. While the overall value of reciprocal links may have declined over the years, they can and will still help your rankings - if done correctly.

The key with reciprocal links is very simple - relevance. If you trade links only with highly relevant sites, it will increase your site´s ranking. But there are some things you need to watch out for: ensure that the links returning to you (inbound links) are search engine spider friendly, that they are placed on pages with as few links as possible, that they are contextualized, meaning the content on the page - and preferably the site as a whole - is related to the content of your link and site.

When you contact a relevant site to ask for a link exchange, keep the email personal to help grab the attention of the blogger or webmaster. Most link exchange emails are spammy automated submissions and are deleted without being read. Write the subject as well as the entire email in such a way as to entice the user to read on, but keep it short. Offer to put their link up first, or even better yet, put it up before you contact them.

2. Purchasing Links

Google has been devaluing links, and in extreme cases, even penalizing sites for selling links, but there is no denying that this technique still works as many sites have climbed to the top of the SERP’s by way of buying links.

A lot of high profile sites such as major and local newspaper publications and magazines sell text links, yet nobody seems to be penalized for it as the publications rank well with high PageRank and the sites they link to rank well as a result.

If you choose to purchase links back to your site, check out how they are linking back, how relevant they are, and try to find out how their site is treated by Google as well as other major search engines. If you see other sites that appear to have purchased links from them, check their backlinks and see if the linking site appears (although it may not be displayed as Google offers very little of this information to the public these days).

It is assumed that if penalties will arise from the sale of links, that only the selling site will be penalized. Even if this is the case, Google’s policy could change at any moment, so be warned that this could potentially come back to bite you.

3. Quality Content

Believe it or not - it works. If you fill your site with original, valuable content, you will get some people linking to your site on their own. While you can not base your entire linking strategy around this concept, as it could take forever to get enough links, rest assured knowing that if you follow this strategy, some will link.

4. Start a Blog

Everyone and their dog seem to have a blog these days, and for good reason - they work. Blogs help you create a never ending stream of content, and if updated regularly (at least once a week) and written well, you will find people will link to it. Not only that, others may pick up your blog through your RSS or Atom feed - which can result in an increase in both links and site traffic. Be sure to utilize your Digg, StumbleUpon and other social media accounts within your blog to help gain a little extra attention.

5. Social Media

Promote your site as well as your blog using various social media tools. When someone "Diggs" or "Stumbles" your content you can not only get a link back to your site from the media platform, but you can also see additional traffic generated by this. The more people bookmark or recommend your article, the more traffic you can get, and the higher the value of the link.

Creating company profile pages on platforms such as Squidoo, Facebook, MySpace, and even uploading photos and videos to YouTube and Flickr, can all count as backlinks to your site - so be sure to utilize these platforms to the fullest extent. DO NOT use these networks to spam them full of links, just to inform and entertain. Build unique relevant content and become a member of the community, and you will find your links will become much more valuable.

6. Article Syndication

When you write highly relevant articles, submit them to any known article aggregation websites in your chosen field or major general portals such as ezinearticles.com. When submitted to the right sites you can drive traffic and increase your links. Again, be sure to include a link or two within your article so you get some backlinks (if allowed).

7. Press Releases

Press releases are still doing wonders. Whenever your business hits a milestone, releases a new product, or has anything worthy of a press release, issue one through the services of PRWeb (Unfortunately, not a cheap service. Only think of doing this if you have money to spend.) You will get a link back to your site, and you may also get some targeted traffic from interested parties.

If your press release happens to qualify as significant news, you may also find bloggers and other writers referencing it and linking to it from their articles, providing even more value. Make sure that you include deep links back to your site with every press release. Links from within the bio are helpful, but those integrated into paragraphs of the release itself are worth much more.

8. Comments

I know, I am going to get a lot of flak for this one, but if used wisely, it can help. If, after reading a relevant blog entry, you have something useful, constructive, and worthwhile to say, leave a comment and include your link if the option is provided. A comment like: "Nice post" will not do, but if you have something to add or contribute that others may find interesting then go for it. These links can add up, and they do add a bit of value. Do not stuff your comment with keywords, keep it natural - and use your real name.

9. Forum Posts and Signatures

This is an area where you may be able to grab a few links, but it is also one you need to be careful about as it can backfire quite easily. Going out and wildly posting in random forums and including your link is NOT recommended.

This method can be useful if you establish yourself as a solid contributor to a particular forum directly related to your industry. Once you are established, and people know and trust your name and understand that you are not just one of the spammers, you can consider adding your link to your signature file as well as including the odd link in your forum posts. This will allow you to get the occasional relevant, inbound link. It is advised to check with the terms and conditions of the specific forum before you start. Some do not allow links of any kind.

10. Testimonials

You see them on many sites that offer products or services, and quite often they include a link back to the submitter’s blog or website. If you have used a product or service, do not be afraid to write a testimonial for the company´s website. In many cases online businesses will post your testimonial along with a link. The testimonial helps that business instill confidence in their customers and you get the valuable backlink.

11. Directory Submissions

Yes, it is still a good idea to submit your site to the major directories. While DMOZ can be very difficult to get into, but once you are there, it is like gold and will play a part in your top rankings. Yahoo directory has a very high price ($299), but can also provide you with a valuable inbound link. Consider submitting to the major directories as well as any industry specific directories. These links add up and will contribute to your site’s ranking.

12. Link Bait

Most of us have heard the prase thrown around for a while now, but the technique itself has worked long before the phrase "link bait" was coined. Why all the hype? Because it works.

Take a look at your website, your business, your industry. See if you can think of some way, any way, to attract people to link to your site. You could sponsor a contest, add an elaborate and unique tool, write a controversial article, provide something useful for free (ebooks are always a good choice) - whatever you do, do it well and promote your effort to the max, then people will naturally link to you.

 

General Rules:

Before you actively seek out a link from a specific site do some investigating to ensure that the site is not spamming or using any black hat techniques. If they are, stay away.

If the link you are seeking is merely an attempt to boost your link density, then do not forget to check out how they are linking to other third party sites.

Does the site use the ‘rel=nofollow’ attribute? Are the pages your link would appear on blocked by the one or all of the search engines, or do they use the robots Meta ‘nofollow’? Are they using other techniques that would not allow a spider to follow them (such as JavaScript, Flash, or frames)? If so you may want to move on.

A note on Google PR (Page Rank) - the PR you see on your toolbar or on a PageRank checker is outdated. While it can give you some insight, just because it says 0, does not mean it is. Also what has a PR of 0 or 1 today, could be a 4 or 5 tomorrow. Do not use the PageRank of a site as your sole means of deciding if you should obtain a link or not.

Summary

Using any or all of these linking methods will help you to increase your link density. There is power in diversification. Use variations on anchor text and descriptions, use inline text links within articles, and gain links in as many different venues as possible. By being diverse, your site will stand the best chance of being around well into the future.

Today, blogs are huge and can be a strong asset, but what would happen if tomorrow Google decided to ban blogs? Highly unlikely, but it could happen. And if it did, would your site survive? By being diverse, your site has the best chance to survive any change.

Good luck!

 

 

Technorati-Tags: links,free links,backlinks,more traffic,pagerank,seo