Internet Babel

I think alot of people these days try to apply too much complex SEO and do alot of manipulative techniques assuming that it’s really that hard to get high rankings. I’ve ranked #1 for targeted keywords using nothing but basic SEO. Here are a few things to remember with websites, basic SEO that will get you to the top, if the market is not too over saturated.

1. Domain Name – Buy a domain name, which is virally sound n by that I mean. Sounds natural to humans, don’t buy one purely for SEO strategy. Get one with one or two keywords, quite short.

2. Meta Tags – People seem to think these are useless now as if search engines discard them automatically because of all the malicious ways they’ve been used. They don’t, they simply have ways of assuming which meta tags are spam. It’s simple, do your meta tags properly, search engines regard them highly alot of the time still today if they’re not abused. Use a small number of very related keywords. Write a detailed, short, natural description. That’s it.

3. Good File Names – If you are building a purely html / css site. This can do wonders for the average site. Name your html files appropriately – simple and keyword orientated. Also sites usually rank better when keywords are uncluttered and appear in order. You’ll often find if a keyword appears first in a title it ranks higher. It can be that simple.

4. Good Browser Titles – Probably the most effective way to improve rankings. Decent browser titles, spell everything correctly and do not put unneeded keywords there. Simplicity is the key, it’s one of the primitive things that lets people know what the page is about. Write for humans but include keywords appropriately.

5. Quality, Unique Content – Don’t ever be tricked into thinking scraping content endlessly and paying for content creation will get you far. You might make a quick few dollars here and there but it will not last. Search engines are constantly weeding out trash sites with ‘duped’ content and they will continue to get smarter. So as they do, you should do to and the only way to get smarter is to start creating quality, unique content NOW so that in years to come, it’ll still be there. Still earning.

You don’t need to know much more. It’s really not that complicated, people just like to make out it is to sound smart and sell you pointless products. Follow these rules wholeheartedly and take them as rule of thumb. Focus, make free, quality content, monetize traffic and you will soon see results.

Alot of people ask the question of what to do when they get traffic. In order to make money, from that traffic. The answer is simple: experiment.

Throw up some Adsense ads, I recommend starting with Google Adsense as it’s the easiest and quickest way to make money from traffic. So if you are a webmaster and do not own an account (go sign up!).

Now you have some Adsense ads in place, start split testing (A/B testing). There is a post below this about A/B testing, telling you how to do just that.

The only problem with Adsense is the ‘one click and gone effect’ which is basically the downside to Adsense. People click… and are gone from your site, usually forever. This is were a program like AuctionAds is advantageous as it allows you the option to set your ads to open in a new window. But income wont be as high with AuctionAds unless you have a high traffic site.

Also, if you’re getting good traffic, apart from affiliates and contextual advertising you can try payed advertising. Payed ad placements can usually be your highest earners. If you’re getting a good few thousand uniques a day and don’t know how to monetize your traffic, target some companies in your niche. Yes, the big ones! you may think small traffic will immediately push them away, but they have huge advertising budgets. They don’t care! it’s more brand awareness at a cheap price for them. So go contact them with an email explaining who you are, how much traffic you get and why they should advertise with you.

If you’d like to read in-depth about some of the main ways of making money online, click on the page titled… ”ways of making money online” strangely enough, in the top navigation.

I made a post previously about this. Giving a php code to use for Adsense split testing. But this
is officially an approved way by Adsense, I wasn’t sure if the other way was… which is why I didn’t use that way. But this way is approved by Adsense.

Tutorial

First, create two channels in your Adsense account. One for the name of each of the color schemes or formats you are going to run against each other. So for example, if you wanted to test a 460 by 60 pixel ad unit with a blue background against the same format with a yellow background, create a channel for each of those, with appropriate names.

Second, paste the following code into the spot you want your ads to appear…

<script type=”text/javascript”>
var random_number = Math.random();
if (random_number < .5){
//your first ad unit code goes here
} else {
//your second ad unit code goes here
}
</script>
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js”></script>

Now that’s there, time for the final phase.

Go ahead and create the two versions of your ad.

Now simply place each ad code into the spots in the code above, removing the <script> and </script> from the Adsense code. That’s it!

Now you will be able to see by each channel in your account, which ad gets the best CTR. Which ever one does, is the one you keep! and it’s simply an on-going process.

10 tips to get big on digg…

1. Catch the eye – Submit things which will catch the eye on the first, second and third time.

2. Be creative – Ask yourself if you would read/digg it? if the answer is no, that’s probably why nobody else does either.

3. Break news – Even if one person beats you to a big story… chances are they will get the diggs if the story is going to go anywhere, so find something else.

4. Be original – If you think of something you think will get lots of attention but then realise it’s been posted a million times before and each time got none. It’s not original enough.

5. Write about Google – Google is so big… anything on them moves houses, I mean even a the title Google will probably get a few diggs. So write something interesting on them… you’ll get alot more.

6. Keep trying – If you’ve submitted for months on end and had no success. Don’t worry, it’s a rare person that gets instant success on social bookmarking sites and if they do they’re very lucky. So keep trying.

7. Be viral – Submit something that people would have to link to. Something people couldn’t just tell someone about but something everyone would want to blog. Shocking, funny, original, whatever.

8. Get your friends to digg – Like with most things, the majority of people don’t like to be the first. Unless something is so eye-catching on digg that you can’t resist clicking on it, most people will ignore things with 1 digg after a while. Because even unconsciously, they sort of think… it can’t be very interesting if nobody else has dugg it. So get your friends to!

9. Be scientific - Submit something of scientific worth which is so interesting to any human alive that they need to click it! they want to read on. News about your friends funny habits usually wont get anything because nobody knows you. But if it concerns everybody, they’ll wanna read on.

10. Post about digg – Usually people on digg are constantly trying to get big on digg. So write about digg!

I own quite a decent YouTube channel, by decent I mean… I have a fair amount of subscribers with only a small amount of quality videos. And it’s just getting increasingly fucking annoying deleting comment spams everyday.

They put shit about cam sites with big arrows as if anyone is going to go…
“WOW, I have to go there… now!”

The annoying thing is… you can’t really do much, there’s automated spam blocking systems YouTube and most comment systems obviously have in place but still manual spams are hard to avoid. Especially on YouTube. You can just leave them on YouTube though, not as if it’s your site. But I can’t stand letting spammers think they’ve had the upper hand by me keeping the comment, even though it’s almost certain they comment then leave forever so wouldn’t know anyway haha.

So on that note, it’s just become obvious… nothing can be done so this whole post was completely pointless and just… complaining. Bye!

This issue has been briefly pointed out but I thought I’d touch on it to. Basically AuctionAds went through a design update, upgrading to ‘web 2.0′. The new looks, look sleek and stylish and no doubt will increase CTR but at the moment the customization of the ads are basically non-existent. You can’t even choose from standard ad sizes, you have to go with theirs. Also you can’t customize link, description color etc yet either.

The main problem though is that impressions and clicks are not displaying properly, I think AuctionAds deemed this down to the fact they are having trouble getting data from ebay or something. Anyway, their not quick to address the problem fully.

It’s getting quite annoying now, given that the impressions and clicks are not updating… unless i’m just getting zero clicks… but i’m getting traffic and I know the regularity so I know that’s not the case. Plus the fact other people are experiencing the same thing.

I searched around a little while looking for a decent digital download service to sell… digital goods. I recently created a new product and the first site I came across when quickly googling’ the mini-dilemma was e-junkie.com I usually delve deep into the web to find my solutions as the top of the rankings isn’t always the best solution to your problem. However, e-junkie turned out to be ok.

I’m currently trying out their 7 day free trial. I set up my product in minutes, works in conjunction with PayPal, Google Checkout and many more… but PayPal is the only one of significance, I mean… who uses Google Checkout!

Anyway, after my first successful sale, it seems to have gone smoothly and I couldn’t ask for more. A simple solution to my problem. Easy to use, quick, they do what they say.

So anyone in need of a digital download service to quickly and smoothly sell… digital goods, try e-junkie. Give their free trial a go first, that’s what i’m doing, if the service continues to run smoothly then i’ll definitely use them permanently.

Episode two of Joel Comm’s new Internet reality show.

Just reading Shoe’s blog. Noticed his latest post is calling out Dmoz editors to go on his radio show live and discuss his pulling from Dmoz. This will be interesting to see just how corrupt Dmoz really are, Shoemoney’s site gets alot of hits so i’m in no doubt editors and reps of the site will see it. If no one does come out, that just says to me that they knew their editorial system was this way (that’s obvious anyway) but also did nothing to prevent it. I hope someone does agree to do his show. Will be an interesting interview.

Dmoz, you’ve been caught out and challenged! can you justify yourselves?

Alot of people lately are coming forward about DMOZ claiming it has alot of dodgey editors who try and blackmail people into paying up certain amounts just to keep their listing.

Shoemoney recently made a post about an editor supposedly wanting $5,000 or his site would get removed from DMOZ.

This is seriously corrupt, I think everyone should boycott DMOZ! in my opinion there isn’t a need for it anymore, n if the editors are so corrupt why don’t they figure out a more plausible employment system!

I think webmasters today value a listing in DMOZ too much and are prepared to go to big lengths just to get in. In my experience, it isn’t hard really at all as long as you submit a quality site. But I think DMOZ editors are seriously overrating the site they work for if they think people will pay like… $5,000 just to stay in their directory.