NetBusinessBlogWork from Home and Run an Online Business / Over 400+ Articles

Do you use Google AdSense to monetize your blog or website!

Did you ever thought why Google added two arrows in their AdSense banner to show more related ads?

Google is not a big fool to make and sustain such a drastic change in AdSense (their biggest source of income) without any thought or successful experimentations. And I am sure that Google knows what they are doing.

But this implementation makes one thing pretty clear to me: people click on the link - intentionally. Yes - either they click on the link even after knowing that it is an advertisement or they know nothing about it.

Why I am thinking in this line?

If you see normal AdSense code positioning by webmasters, you would find that they try to blend it with the template or other links. To put it in other words, they try to hide the advertisement and wait for the visitor to click - unknowingly. In fact, when you try to get the code of text link ads from Google AdSense, the most common choice is “blend with template”. Just take a look around and you would know what I mean. Is this time to change our common habit!

Let’s consider some points - reasons why people click on the link!

1. They want more information and the tagline of the ad serves the purpose.
2. The offer is too lucrative to ignore
3. People never knew that those are ads and thought to be some ordinary links.

In first two cases, perhaps it does not matter if it is an advertisement or just another link. And thus there is no need to hide the advertisement. But what about the third one?

Do you need to hide the ads in situation no. 3?

I read about a survey somewhere that concluded that general people don’t really know that first few links in Google SERP are ads. And they actually click on them. So, is there any need to hide the ad from them?

What are your views?

What do you do?

“If you’re thinking about hiring an SEO, the earlier the better” - guess who is saying this!!

Don’t be astonished - Google has redesigned its stance on SEO (obviously the user centric SEO and the white hat one).

And this statement actually establishes the saying that SEOs actually help Google to understand a web site in a better way. We restructure the website and rewrite the content in such a way that Google can easily understand it. We stop Google to crawl certain pages that are not worth visiting. We clear out coding errors to provide a smoother path for the bot to run. And Google has acknowledged that we help Google to offer a better result to the visitors.

I agree that sometimes we overdo it - but a white hat SEO is always the best friend a website owner may have.

Anyways, in coming months we can see some interesting changes in SEO world and in online marketing strategy.

1. Webmasters used to publish duplicate content (or something they never wanted Google to read) in Flash files. Some even syndicated their website’s content via slideshows and other flash files. As Google has started crawling flash files - the amount of such syndications would definitely go down. And more importance would be given to video and image syndication.
2. Bloggers would be in huge demand for paid reviews over blogroll links. Market may be a bit down due to recent financial setback, but web should not bother about that much. If you want to expand online business, you must pay for advertisement (includes SEO too). Web acts differently than offline market - you need a continuous presence to do business online. And smart website owners would take the advantage.
3. In case of SEO, content designing and site navigation structure would get more importance.
4. On-page java scripts would become more popular even though Google bot cannot read them properly. Google’s extensive use of java scripts and java based applications in recent days would boost its popularity.

A suggestion: think simply and think from a user’s perspective - Google would kiss you Good Morning.

Some blogs make a lot of money writing about how to earn money online. They monetize their blog in every possible way. They talk about different ways to earn money online. They have already established a niche for them. And if you want to step in, it is really very tough unless you are a genius with years of experience.

Even if you do not have enough experience or if you are not a genius, you can still be famous and earn a lot of money. In this case, you would need good financial backup and network to promote your blog.

But there a simpler way to start:

You can find hundreds of things around you to start blogging and earn money online - why should you write on “How to earn money online” to earn money!

As I always say - the success of a blog post depends the popularity of the blogger. Just try this: Ask a popular blogger to promote a new blog from scratch without using his or her existing popularity or network. Will people listen to him or her from day one in his new blog! Certainly not - he would need to reestablish a new identity, promote it and make it popular just as he or she had done for his primary blog.

And you cannot earn popularity in a single day and trust me; no one is going to leave you a foothold.

As they are well established with a huge reader base, new product marketers would talk to them about launching a new service. And a lot of bloggers that blog on how to make money online would actually re-write those news to create an illusion that they also had the news. (And this is one of the major reasons why marketers pay those popular bloggers a lot of money to promote a product).

Why do you want to be the second tier blogger!

You know how to earn money online - now move aside and start a niche blog on another subject - something where you can really add some value from your real life experience. And use those tactics to earn money from blogging.

Try it - that is where the real money is.

Who knows about your situation better than you?

Ok, I agree with you that people are often blind about the minute details of things happening around them. Often your friends know about you better than you know about yourself in certain situations.

But does a mainstream journalist know more than what you know about your situation?

I don’t think so. Say for example, there is something wrong going on in your office. Who would know about it better than you! And who would know about it, right on time to react!

And that’s where mainstream media fails. They need to pass through so many tight situations before they can get a story published.

For example,

1. There are more important stories taking place around the countries that they must cover before yours.
2. They have limited space that they must share with the news and advertisements.
3. They must answer to general public interest. That is, they must give more importance to a story that has some relevance to 51% of the target readers. And thus the story of your locality can hardly find a prominent place.
4. They must abide by their rules and regulations
5. And there are editors to cut short or eliminate the story that may interest less than 1% of their readers. They will serve the space to accommodate the tail of another story or to get another advertisement.

Only 5!!! You can find hundreds of them. Anyways, these are some of the very common situations in a news desk. And these are your passage towards a successful local blog.

For example,

1. If you target on your local niche - you set your own importance scale. All you need to do is to hook your local audience when the mainstream media was busy with national news.
2. You have all the space on earth in your blog.
3. Your niche is too small and more targeted - it is always tough to satisfy 1000 people than 10. Mainstream media can never satisfy 1000 people with a single story but you can easily achieve a better satisfaction percentage I your niche.
4. You set your own rules - you change your views as you grow with the situation.
5. You are the editor in chief - do whatever you wish. That 1% is simply a big enough figure for you.

So why are you afraid of mainstream media? Even though they have dedicated journalists, everyone is busy with bigger problems. They can’t touch the smaller details, pains, needs of a regular person living next door to you - they don’t know about him or her either.

Why don’t you feel up that gap!

Success isn’t too far from you as a local journalist and a local hero.

Let’s join hands and create a real network that would be beneficial for each of the members.

The idea is simple - let’s create a network of blogs (seo, web design, web development, internet marketing etc.).

What would happen here?

Each member would host a carnival every week where he or she would write a post on the carnival like SEO Carnival or Affiliate Marketing Carnival and would link to other blogs in the network that have written a good enough post on that specific topic.

The selection of posts would solely depend on the publisher of that post (this is important as he or she have their own responsibility to their readers).

On each carnival, he or she would declare the next carnival topic and date.

That’s it.

Who can participate?

1.    Blogs on SEO, web development, designing and related topics

2.    Blog’s weight - number of posts / PR / reader base or other criterions [would be decided by the participants - you - please write down your suggestions]

Why should you participate?

1.    You get fresh visitors to your blog from other blogs.

2.    You get great link love from other blogs.

3.    You get recognition in the blogosphere.

4.    You don’t pay anything for this.

[Here “you” stands for both the publisher of the carnival and the linked blogs.]

Rules:

There is only one rule: Be honest about your selection.

ROI:

Depends on you :)

Write a comment here with your views or mail me at roy.nbb [at] gmail.com.

Let’s make it happen.

People try different medium to publish their content - text, podcast, image and video. However, a lot of people publish their content in some or every medium to reach maximum number of verticals.

That’s fine - if you think from a marketing point of view, you have all the reasons to do that. But, are you really helping your visitors or readers in this way? Do your target visitors have enough resources to enjoy what you are providing!

For example, a lot of bloggers publish at least one video every week. And sometimes, they just record their posts in a video and publish it.

Why?

Do you really have something else to show in this video apart from your acting capacity or your home décor? And most importantly, are you sure that words were not powerful enough to portray what you recorded in that video!

Every medium have its own strength and needs. When you are publishing some content in a video or audio format, you assume that your visitors have a speaker attached to his computer to listen to it. Where did you get the information? And why do you expect that your visitors would take the extra responsibility to turn on his or her speakers to listen to you. Are you running a website like Ted.com?

I know what you are thinking - videos and podcasts offer a personal touch and the readers or visitors can communicate with you in a better way. Sometimes, they can even listen to you if they do not wish to read - it’s like giving them ample of choices.

That’s great - but in that case, do it like a professional. If you are posting a video, add some value to it - represent your content in a visual mode. Don’t just show your face for the sake of branding. I would recommend using a media, when other medium are not good enough to represent what you wanted to communicate.

BTW, even if you publish some content in video or audio format, do not forget to publish a text version. This would surely help a lot of your visitors. And it would also help you in on-site video or audio optimization.

Web is going local - webmasters are working hard to improve their search engine ranking around specific geographical location for better business. Especially, this is a big boon for local service providers like a lawyer or a local grocery shop. The recent hike in oil price has turned people to online shopping in bigger number :)

Here are ten tips on how to optimize your website to improve your local rankings in Google:

1. Book a country specific TLD. .com TLDs are good from user’s perspective but .fr is a better option for Google bot to understand your geo-location.
2. Host your domain in your own country. Google tracks IP location to determine the ranking of a website for local search.
3. Sign in to Google Webmaster Tool and set your preferred geo location [tools > overview > Set geographic target]. This would give a clear indication to Google Bot about what you actually want. This is more important if you are using .com or .org TLDs and want to target some other country but USA. However, I would still prefer a country specific TLD, if you are sure about targeting a specific geographical niche. But in that case, you might not get the opportunity of going global with your domain.
4. Submit your site to Google Local Business Center and also submit your site to other local directories like yelp (if you are from San Francisco). You should also look for local business listings, Google Base and others.
5. Publish your address in the contact page along with a Google map showing the exact location of your office or business center.
6. Promote your blog or site in your locality. If your local newspaper has an online publication, try to get a link from there.
7. Influence people to visit your website directly via Ads and other methods - if people from a distinct place visit a website directly in huge numbers, it would send a clear sign to search engine about the relevance.
8. Get links from websites with same TLDs. For example, if your TLD is .fr, get links from as many .fr sites as possible.
9. Use the name of your locality along with the main key phrase as anchor texts for incoming links. For example, if you are a Florida based SEO Company and if you want to optimize your website around Florida, use keywords like Florida SEO or SEO Florida. However, do not overdo it.
10. Optimize page content around your locality.

- People don’t really know about it. And why people don’t know about it?

- Because it is stuck in a lonely planet and it is yet to develop bridges to communicate with the real world (I should better write market place).

How to construct those bridges?

You know the answer - linking in and linking out - simple.

And the process normally includes things like commenting, forum signature links and other link building exercises. But, if you take a closer look - in all these processes you are actually working to get incoming links to your website. (Obviously, it is the ultimate aim!!)

And what about linking out - which is perhaps the best and easiest way to inform people that a new web page is born!

(Why should someone link to you unless you have great authority? And authority is not built in a day.)

However, at this point I would like to take two different routes - Commercial and non commercial websites. Commercial websites do not want to link out to different websites. They fear to loose hard earned visitors - and there is nothing wrong about it unless you are an affiliate marketer.

But - what about non commercial websites or blogs? Do you really have something to loose by linking out to other blogs?

Why?

1. Linking out is the best way to inform the web wide visitors about your existence. Just think from this point of view - what would you appreciate most - a comment or a trackback? The same thing happens to the blogger you are linking.
2. If you want to get links - link to blogs rather than websites or forum topics. The main reason is that there is a human being who can react to your trackback.
3. You may get some visitors from that blog via trackback.
4. Search engines get some idea on what your blog is all about.
5. Bloggers love you as you love to link out.
6. Etc.

So why not link out! As far as my experience goes, I would assign much value to a “link out” than a one way link from a general directory.

As far as commercial websites are concerned, I would recommend adding a blog to the main website to link out. In this way, you are actually linking out from a page that is deep in the directory - www.yoursite.com/blog/2008/7/24/linkout-page.html

What are your suggestions to a start up blog or website?

Now, there is yet another expansion move from Google. Perhaps Digg will change hands very soon to Google for $200 Million. While Microsoft had been busy with Yahoo, Google is capturing another crowd base.

Can you guess what would be Google’s next acquisition move?

Before coming to this point, let’s take a look at what does this deal have for us?

I don’t think - we would see some major changes in Digg, just like You Tube. Google would get involved in the development process of this website and in coming months we may see some different interfaces or developments. This is the common development scheme that Google follows with the acquisitions. Just think about the stages of development of FeedBurner and you would have the answer.

BTW, are you still roaming around Digg?

Why? There is a common saying that Digg visitors are not directly convertible into business. Could you convert them? If your answer is negative, why are you wasting your time out there? Just look around and you would surely find some websites in your niche that would serve the similar purpose. And more importantly, traffic from those websites is your target audience. And if you do not have any similar website in your niche, why don’t you start one? Yes; I mean it - getting visitors won’t be a problem. If you do not want to start one, it is better to join a forum in your niche - 100 targeted visitors are better than 5000 general visitors.

If you look at Google’s acquisition trend - you would find that Google is acquiring websites that cater to general visitors. Google would not acquire Sphinn - Digg is a better choice for the amount of members. The same is true for You Tube or FeedBurner. With every acquisition, Google is actually grabbing a big share of internet traffic. And who knows it better than Google that visitors = money.

So, what would be Google’s next acquisition move? Any idea?

In my last post “The best and lasting network for Bloggers“, I was talking about the power of guest posting to promote your blog. But, I forgot to mention one very important point out there. What if you are just a new blogger or if you want to promote your new blog that has neither PR nor good reader base! Ok, it is very tough to find bloggers who would be interested to write in your blog in such a situation.

If you think you would develop your blog on other’s expense from day one - it won’t work unless you are a big shot. You must have some posts to outline your blog’s character and must forecast the potentials of a healthy growth. And you would need to sell this to the prospective blogger. You must remember that the blogger is smart enough in this field (otherwise you wouldn’t have contacted him or her at the first place) to understand your plan.

What would you do in such a situation?

Simply write to the blogger that you would like to publish his or her interview in your blog. You may even call him or her if you can find a contact number (this works like magic). Now, prepare a set of questions and send the mail as soon as he or she agrees to an interview. For example, you can ask him to write something about himself; his blogging career, achievements, how he or she markets the blog etc. Do not forget to ask for some tips for your readers.

I would put interviews much above guest posting in the hierarchy from promotional point of view. You are almost sure to get a link from that blogger’s “About Me” page. And he would do a lot to promote your post in his or her network. Won’t you do the same if someone publishes your interview in his or her blog!

You can also give it a fancy name like “Interview Friday” or “Blogger of the Month” and publish an interview on every Friday (if you can manage so many bloggers) or every month. Trust me - these fancy names sell.

Caution:

1. Every blogger is different so make some little twigs in your questionnaire - do not pass the same template to everyone.
2. Establish a relationship with that blogger by commenting in his blog for sometime before you approach him for an interview.
3. Don’t target really big bloggers - they are often too big to reply.