Tag:Google, Search option, search results, SEO

Google has recently introduced a new Google Search Option which gives users more control over their search results. This new search option allows users to “filter” their search results.

Users can select to view from a time frame of “anytime”, “recent results”, “the past 24 hours”, “the past week” or the “past year”. There is also an option to sort by date or relevance of the data, images from the page, more text  or just standard results.

Also available is the searches for related results in standard view or view in a more visual way called Wonder Wheel.

When a user performs a search on Google, there is a link under the search box which says “Show options”. When you click on this link, a left side navigation menu will appear which allows you to choose the options mentioned above.

With these new features, will SEO be affected? Is there another new algorithm to be looked into in order to get good ranking in the search results? Just to take some example, in order to get good ranking using video option, obviously you need to have video content in your page. To rank in forums searches, you have to have forum participation. And for reviews, you may have to get your products reviewed as often as possible by others or you may want to conduct reviews of other products on your site.

Well, these are just some strategies that may increase your chances. It is hard to know what Google is up to.

Tag:social networking, traffic, Tweet my blog, tweetmyblog, Twitter

If you are an active internet user, you most probably have heard the name Twitter. Twitter is design with the purpose of helping friends, family, colleagues to keep in touch via the exchange of simple and frequent messages and answers to one simple question “What are you doing ?” The message is limited to only 140 characters which is short and effective enough to get the message through. Twitter helps you stay connected to your friends and always know what they are doing.

Twitter has been growing by leaps and bounds lately. From business perspective,  Twitter is being used by many businesses to drive traffic to their sites or blogs. You just have to post a “tweet” whenever you have a new post on your blog and all your friends and followers will instantly be notified. When any of your followers reply to your tweet, their followers can see their reply and soon you will have a viral stream of traffic to your blog.

If you want to jump into the latest craze in the net and drives traffic to your blog, you may not want to give Twitter a miss. To make things easier, there is this plugin for Wordpress blog which enables you to tweet automatically every time you have  your blog updated. The good news is it is FREE of charge with no strings attached. You can sign up for it at Tweet My Blog. Once installed and activated, every time you post an update on your blog, Tweet My Blog plugin will automatically post a tweet with a complete full link back to your blog.  Not only that, you can activate a Tweet My Blog widget that will generate Twitter feed to your blog which will add updated content for your blog.

Tag:algorithm, Google, google search, ranking, spam

Google being the giant in the search business has kept its search ranking algorithm a well kept secret and even with that, users will try all ways to unveil the secret and cybercriminals have been using blackhat SEO techniques to manipulate the search rankings.

Initially they were marginally successful and manage to make their newly created webpage rank quite well. But as time goes by, they have become very effective. A reporter has reported in one of his article that while researching for news story, all his five top results have led to fake pages.

It looks like Google’s top secret is no more a secret. At one time, manipulators can only guess how Google algorithm works. Now it seems that there is no more guessing games.

Very clearly, if Google fails to tackle this manipulation, users will lose trust and Google may soon see the end of its grand old days. A Googler has revealed that a ranking change is pending to put an end to spam of this kind.

Google’s famous algorithm has performed better than any other at weeding out spammy webpages and malicious results. But back then, the version of the Web was more static. The live Web presents some new challenges and lets see how Google can overcome this problem.

Tag:adsense, adsense deluxe, Google Adsense, wordpress plugins

If you are monetizing your blog with Google Adsense, you may consider installing Adsense Deluxe plugin for Wordpress blogs. Adsense Deluxe is a very convenient plugin and easy to use. It allows you to insert Google Adsense in any part of your blog by just inserting a code in the place where you want Google Adsense to appear. It is useful especially where you want to play around with the ad format as it has an ad preview tool for you to preview the ad that will appear on your post. By just changing the ad code in the plugin, all your Google Adsense ad in your blog will change automatically. You can get the Adsense Deluxe here.

I have recently installed the plugin in one of my blog, Light And Easy, but unfortunately after activating, it reported “Cannot load adsense-deluxe.php” when I tried to add new ad block. If you have faced the same problem, here is how you can solve the problem. When you copy the plugin to your server, don’t copy the whole adsense-deluxe_wp_plugin_v0.8 folder to your wp-content or wp-content/plugin,  depends on which location you use. Instead copy the content of the adsense-deluxe_wp_plugin_v0.8 ie the 4 individual files “Optional_WordPress_2.0_Items” folder + adsense-deluxe.php + license.txt + ReadMe.txt files “. This will solve the problem easily.

Tag:paid blogging, paid reviews, sponsored blogging

 

Some of you may already know this - you can get paid to write your blog posts. It’s called “paid blogging” or “sponsored blogging” -  sometimes even referred to as “paid reviews” - but it all works the same way.

So how does paid blogging work? How can you get paid from Fortune 500 companies and even small businesses to write about their product, service or event?

When the blogosphere exploded in 2006/07, thousands of blogs were being created every single day, with overworked individuals hoping to cash in on the trend and be a “work-at-home blogger”. The hype was high, but the problem was that most bloggers wanted to get paid immediately.

The blogosphere responded to these needs, with companies like PayPerPost.com leading the paid-to-blog industry. Early on, blogging for the purposes of making money received a lot of criticism from big-name bloggers, but eventually people started accepting paid blogging as a viable, honest way to make a living online.

You can see this page for more information on how you too can get paid to blog:

Blog Paycheck - get paid to blog

Down the road, more paid blogging companies sprung up, which includes ReviewMe.com and also SponsoredReviews.com - taking the stand of offering “honest” and “unbiased” reviews. At the moment there are no fewer than 20 paid blogging companies you can sign-up with and make money from.

When you sign-up for a company, you’re required to submit your blog details, so make sure you have a blog up and running with at least 30 days worth of acceptable content. After you’ve submitted your details, your blog will be reviewed and approved.

Then, you can search the company’s marketplace for “opportunities”, which are basically listings create by businesses who want you to blog about their product or service. When you find a suitable opportunity, you can use the information provided (take note of the requirements too) and blog about it. When you’re done, report back to the listing and you get paid whatever amount of money the advertiser has promised.

Now of course, the companies that offer these paid blogging services also take their cut, which is anywhere from 30-50%. The rest is paid to you after you reach a certain payout limit.

So how much can you expect to make from paid blogging?

Typically, you can earn a few hundred dollars a month by writing 1-2 blog posts a day. Since these blog posts aren’t too long and all the information is already provided, it’s pretty easy to do that. Once your blog picks up more traffic, it gets re-evaluated and you can start charging more for writing the exact same content.

The leaders in the paid blogging industry make a few thousands dollars a month, enough to make a comfortable full-time income on the Internet. Plus, they are free to work whenever they want, wherever they want. This is why paid blogging is so appealing - with not much skills or technical knowledge, any ordinary person can make money from blogs right from the start.

If you’re interested to discover the secrets to paid blogging, I strongly recommend you check out Blog Paycheck by Gobala Krishnan:

Blog Paycheck - get paid to blog

Among other things, he gives you a complete step-by-step guide to paid blogging, and a list of useful resources you can use to kickstart your blogging and make more money with less time and effort.

Tag:affiliate links, affililate blogger, make money online, Super affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is a fanstastic way to make money from your blog. After all, affiliate marketing comes with zero-risk, high margin monetization model especially if you’re promoting digital goods like e-books, software or even themes and templates. There is no need for customer support emails to answer and if done correctly it can be totally hands-free, putting passive income in your pocket in the future years to come.

However, there are a few important things you need to know when trying to promote affiliate products from your blog. These things are important to make ensure you don’t burn a hole in your pocket.

(1) Which Products Do You Promote?

You’ll notice that almost all products have an affiliate program that you can participate (mostly for free), and start promoting online from your blog. Depending on the type of product, your commissions varies from 2% to 8% (physical goods) or even up to 75% for digital goods. There are many  products to choose from, but that doesn’t mean that you should go out all the way to promote all the products you can get hold on!

Not all products are the same - some are better that others. Not all affiliate opportunities are created equal either. Just because a product is excellent, it doesn’t mean that it will sell. The “conversion rate” of a product depends entirely on a few things out of your control, for example the sales copy, the overall sales process and the available market for the product.

However, learning how to recognize good products to promote is something totally in your control. When you learn to recognize a few important clues, you’ll be able to tell if an affiliate product will sell from your blog, or if it will just waste precious pages of your blog. One good guide that teaches you how to find great affiliate products is “Super Affiliate Blogger” by Gobala Krishnan:

http://www.webtrafficjuggernaut.com/vlt/links/63531

(2) Getting Traffic to Your Blog

Content is important, but traffic is even more important. Without enough traffic to be making a few affiliate sales a month, you’ll eventually give up on blogging altogether. Great content on the other hand, gets better appreciation when you learn how to get traffic to your blog.

While the normal methods work, there are a few things you can do to drive more traffic. For starters, you can easily get cheap banner advertising on other related blogs who can divert tons of traffic to you. By creating a good banner and ensuring startegic placement, you can start getting fresh and quality new traffic everyday.

Another effective but more sophisticated way of getting traffic is using PPC or Pay Per Click advertising. Google AdWords is probably the most popular PPC advertising service, but there are other alternatives as well. However, remember that when you’re paying for every click to your website, you’ll want maximize your returns by creating a “landing page” on your blog. The concept of landing pages and how to do it is also explained in Super Affiliate Blogger:

http://www.webtrafficjuggernaut.com/vlt/links/63531

(3) Tracking Your Affiliate Links

If you’re just promoting a handful of affiliate links on a few of your pages, you can easily keep track of what’s going on. However if you start to venture further and try to put your affiliate links on many pages and on different blogs, you’re looking at a lot of work when it comes to managing and tracking those links.

Any experienced affiliate marketer would invest in some sort of link cloaking / tracking software that at the click of a button, will give you the “big picture” of what’s happening with your affiliate marketing campaign. This will tell you which affiliate links are being clicked on, and which ones aren’t seeing any action. How else can you determine which products aren’t selling well, and which ones are working great for your particular blog?

Although there are many affiliate tracking tools, this one is perhaps the most suited to bloggers, especially if you’re using WordPress:

http://www.webtrafficjuggernaut.com/vlt/links/63531

Affiliate marketing is easy, simple and fun. But to break the barriers and start making a five-figure monthly income from your blog, you’ll need to think and act like a “Super Affiliate” These guys aren’t any smarter than you or me; they just do the right things at the right time. For more information on affiliate marketing with blogs, I recommend you take a look at Super Affiliate Blogger by Gobala Krishnan:

http://www.webtrafficjuggernaut.com/vlt/links/63531

Tag:bloggers for hire, professional blogger

Are you a blogger and wish to become a pro and get paid for blogging? Do you know that there are companies looking to hire bloggers to write for them? What are the qualities a blogger must have to qualify for the job? What do the companies want? According to Jim Turner of One By One Media, companies looking to hire a blogger want to see someone who is (1) active in a community and (2) uses social media tools to enhance his/her message. Get more tips from Jim Turner in the WebProNews video.

Tag:Article marketing, free articles

So you have started a blog and you are excited about it and immediately you sat down to

write your articles. After a period of time, you found yourself unable to write any more articles as you have run out of ideas. You faced a mental block. You felt like giving up your blog altogether.

If you are facing the problem described above, cheer up! I have found a new service called Article Marketing Automation. Still in “Beta” it has done quite well, it has already secured 2,000 websites in its network.

By signing up for Article Marketing Automation, you can submit your articles and your articles will be published in other members’ blogs. This will create a lot of one-way links back to your blog. This will definitely give your Pagerank a boost because Google loves one-way links. This service is only available to paid members.

Alternatively, you can just sign up as a free member. To sign up as a free member, fill up the form and submit but do not pay when you are asked to. Being a free member, you can get free articles for your blog. This will save you the trouble to write your own articles. You have a choice of the topics that you want to be published in your blog. Choose only those topics that is relevant to your blog. You can have a choice whether to allow the system to automatically update your blog or personally approve the articles. You can decide how many articles you want to receive a day and also you are allowed to edit the articles as long as you don’t remove the links.

Article Marketing Automation helps you grow your blog organically and helps you grow your blog even though you have run out of ideas and mental block on what to write. But the only disadvantage is that you will have a lot of one-way links out of your blog which will affect your Pagerank. But on the bright side, it is still better than to have a stagnant blog.

Tag:make money online, wordpress adsense system

Make money online seems to catch everyone’s attention especially the new beginners who have just wandered into this competitive niche market.

After reading a few blogs on making money online, you got attracted by the amount of money they made online and thought that you might as well just join the crowd and share a piece of the cake. You may have stumbled upon Wordpress Adsense System and you got so excited about making money online blogging and you realized how simple it is to actually start your own blog with the step by step guide in the Wordpress Adsense System specially designed for beginners.

But to succeed in this competitive niche market is not easy. You will need to keep the passion going by constantly keeping your self up-to-date with the fast growing development in this niche. You should have a genuine interest in making money online and the determination to achieve the goals you have set for yourself.

“How to make money online” is the most popular niche market most new bloggers entered into without much research and no proper direction. This is because as a new blogger determined to make money online, this is the topic you explored the most and   most familiar with.

Beside “Make money online” niche, there are many other easier niches that one can explore. Find one niche that you are familiar with where your interest lies. It could be your hobby for example fishing, football or even stamps collection just to name a few. When you write about something that you love, you will find that writing is much easier and less struggle.

However, here are two links that will give you some guidelines if you have chosen “Make money online” as your niche.

How to survive in the “Make money online” niche by Andrew Pavelski
Are you blogging in the make money online niche? By Gobala Krishnan

Tag:anti spam, askimet, spam, spam filter

Spam does work! If not, there won’t be any spam reaching your email inbox or your blog comment. The amount of spam I have received tells me that spam is alive.

Nobody like being spammed but I must admit that sometimes the spam mail was so attractively titled that I fell for it and click on it. Well the world is full of curious people and some like me do actually click on the link. I do not encourage spam but it is a matter of fact that it works in one way or another.

Some email services have spam filter built to filter out most spam but sometimes normal mails were classified as spam by mistakes. There are other spam filters which claim to work better with more accuracy and ease of use and can be purchased and installed. These spam filters can be purchased online and downloaded instantly.

For blog comments spam, I use Askimet for my Wordpress blog to filter the spam and it works fine and save me a lot of time going through the comments to look for spam. So far, it has been quite accurate in filtering out the spam. Only on two occasions where real comments were mistakenly classified as spam. I am very happy with the results I got from Askimet.