Stupid question, isn’t it? A few of the newbies starting out on the internet can bash me up for a stupid question like this because they are the ones who struggle the most to get their websites on the first page of search engines. The GURUS do it so easily that most of their websites where they are promoting their affiliate products rank on the first pages of search engines. Consequently they sweep the money and the newbies go empty-handed.

If you have spent a bagful of money in buying at least a couple of courses or, ebooks that claim to teach you how to optimize your websites and blogs for the search engines, you might have by now learnt that it is not an easy task at all (at least not as easy as they claim).

One of the very important aspects of managing a blog is to optimize it for the search engines. There are numerous plugins that can help you do this, if your blog is on WordPress. All-in-one SEO is one of the most popular ones. People who are already using this plugin, will know the limitations of it. This plugin no doubt is extremely useful, but only helps you to work on the title tags, description tags, and keyword tags. But the fact of the matter is that SEO is not limited to these 3 things. It is a lot beyond the tags.

So how is it that you will optimize your wordpress blogs for your selected keywords? How will you, being a complete layman, know what all should you do to optimize your posts?

Thank god that you are on WordPress. WordPress gives us the options of using plugins and there are plugins for anything and everything.

So optimizing your wordpress blog is not going to be a difficult task now with this new plugin that is making waves in the Internet marketing arena. Even newbies who have absolutely “ZERO” knowledge of SEO can optimize their blogs for search engines with the help of this new plugin called SEOPressor.

What does SEOPressor do?

SEOPressor helps you with the on-page SEO of your blogs. To explain it in simple words, there are two aspects to Search engine optimization – the on page SEO and the off page SEO. On page SEO involves the tweaks and touches that we do to our pages in order to optimize them. The off page aspect is something that does not involve tinkering with your page.

SEOPressor helps you do this on page aspect of the SEO. What all is involved in this and what is it that SEOPressor does?

• Analyses Title, H1, H2 and H3 Tags.
• Analyses Keyword Density and Content Length.
• Analyses The Exact Placement of Your Keyword.
• Analyses Images and Links.
• Intelligently Bold, Italize and Underline Your Keywords
• Intelligently Add ALT Tag to Your Images
• Capable of Testing and Rating Each Post and Page
• Calculates SEO Score To Reveal Your On-Page Optimization
• Comes With Secret Algorithm That Correlates With Google

There are many other such aspects that are taken care off without even you having to know what they are, by SEOPressor, just by the click of a button.

And most important of all this is the fact that a better optimized page means better rankings and better rankings means more traffic and more money.

Hence, SEOPressor is one plugin that any wordpress user should have if they are serious about optimizing their blogs and making money from their blogs.

I could have written an SEOPressor review but I decided otherwise because this plugin comes with a 60 day money back guarantee and there is no reason why you will be at risk if you order it. What better review that using it yourself. By the way the blog that you are reading right now is using this plugin.

You can check out more about SEOPressor here.

A few days back I published a guest post at howtomakemyblog.com authored by Marko Saric. The title of the blog was “Should you put banner ads on your blog?”

Have you seen a blog without a banner ad?

These days, it has become a standard to put a couple of 125×125 ads on your blogs irrespective of the fact that they are your own affiliate ads. You will find a few such ads here as well because I chose to go with the trend. These affiliate banners generated quite a few clicks and a good number of sales (about  as well (I would have paid an estimated $9,853.66, if I had placed my ads on Adwords for the lowest CPC).

How valuable are these ads? Do you think that these banner ads act as distractions to your visitors?

I first came across this debate when I read a post at one of the very established blogs. The post was very interesting and stimulated my mind to think, if I should really put those banners there.

The author had a point to say – he said that such banner ads never generated any clicks and that you never received any value in terms of paid advertisements either. This was where I thought I should evaluate the worthiness of the these ads. When I finally arrived at the above stats, I was surprised at the results.

A blog might not be getting too many advertisements requests and might not be earning a lot from their 125×125 banner ads, but it can surely help them market their affiliate products. If you gain enough exposure for these products without burning your pockets with PPC, then why not?

What is your opinion on this?

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Did that title hit you somewhere? If it did, let me tell you that I too felt somewhat the same when I decided on the title.

My objective is not to get into any controversy. Then what is it….?

I used to be a regular reader at John Chow’s blog. I had very high opinion of him and his blog. He was one amongst the best professor’s of blogging whose advices and suggestions were guidelines for blogging. It is not that they are no more important for me. I am still subscribed to his RSS feeds and read them regularly.

But my visits to the blog reduced gradually and even when I surfed over to the blog my stay there was for just about a few seconds. What brought about this change in my behavior?

I was driven away…

That is true! I was driven away from John Chow’s blog every time  I visited it. It was John who drove me away. Rather what drover me away was the design of the blog.

Design of the blog, I said….!

That is right. I found it hard to find valuable content out there. The design appeared to be so messed up that I was unknowingly prompted to click away from the blog.

In order to find some content I had to use a microscope because the content in the blog was confined to edges and corners. Will I want to spend so much time trying to find content, when I knew that I am working on a tight schedule and there were about 10 more things lined up, which were even more important for me?

Of course, not. John had a different design some time back. Though that too was stuffed with ads, that still appeared okay. But this one has changed my behavior.

The Problem with the Design

John has been earning well with his blog. And it will not take Einstein’s brain to figure out that the majority of his earnings will be from advertisements on his blogs. So he will not want to compromise on this aspect as his income will take a severe hit. But this is indeed the problem with his blog design.

The first thing that one will notice as you click over to his blog is a clutter of advertisements just below the navigation menu. Add to it another banner ad in the header of the blog, that too with text size equal to or, greater than the blog name. You have set up a start for disaster. As you scroll down to check posts in the blogs, you will be greeted with a series of advertisements. Content will be on the extreme left column and that is it.

The blog appears so much stuffed with advertisements and banners that you will feel as if it is cluttered. This was what drove me away from the blog.

The Use of Banner ads

Banner ads form an integral part of the monetization strategy of any blog. If your objective is earning money then, you will have to put up a few banner ads on your blog which can help you earn some money. But how many such ads is the question.

There are no norms that are there to decide on the number of ads to be set up. But there are a few things that you should  consider when you plan to put up a few banner ads.

1. Your blog attracts advertisers only if it has traffic. So it is very important that you respect your readers. Remember that your blog is firstly for your readers and then for your advertisers.
2. As far as possible put up your ads on your sidebar. Don’t mess up your content section with ads. When the veterans in blogging say, “Content is King”, it would also mean that the “Content area is the castle of the king”. Hence it is very important that present the content in a way that is acceptable for the reader.
3. Your logo and header graphic is the brand for your blog. Your would not want an advertisement to overshadow your brand image. A banner in the header should not play dominance to your logo or, blog name.
4. A navigation areas provide for a smooth navigation on your website or, blog. Keep it clear and visible for the reader.

These are some aspects that you can consider when you place ads on your blogs. The sole fact that monetization is important is the reason why I too put up ads on my blog. But when that starts to interfere with the very existence of my blog, I would want to let go off the former.

What is your opinion on placing ads on your blogs?

Photograph courtesy ssmallfry

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What is the keyword that has given your blog the highest hits so far?

At first when I started blogging, my objective was to read as much material as possible, learn from them, set up my blog and start monetizing them.

After only the first week of setting up my blog, I saw visitors coming in, spending some time at my blog, reading my posts and giving me a few hits on my adsense links. My Google Adsense account showed a few hits and a few cents. I was very happy to see them, and I decided that I should do more with my blogs so that I can make more money online. I put in more efforts and waited to see more money dropping in. But, nothing of that sort happened. I kept wondering as to what went wrong and where. It took me almost 3 months to understand where I went wrong.

My problem was that I was not tracking my statistics.

How important is it to track your statistics?

It is a commonly observed behavior in every new internet marketer, that they do not track their statistics. It is more of ignorance and lack of skill, than the willingness to do it. If you know somebody who is not tracking their website statistics because they are not willing to, then there is nothing you can do to help him, because he is sure to fail in his online business, whichever the form is – blog, affiliate marketing, websites etc.

If your objective is long-term, then tracking the statistics of your website or, blog is extremely important to understand things like -

1. Visitors – Who were the visitors who came to your website, from where did they come, what is it that they came looking for?
2. Referrers – Which were the websites that referred your visitors?
3. Keywords – What keywords did your visitors type in the search engines to come to your website?
4. Conversions – Which links in your website is converting well? What products that you are selling are the best-sellers?

There is  a load of information that you can gather if you are tracking your website statistics. Each of these information is valuable and you can use it for various purposes like improving the performance of your websites and making more money from them.

Tools to monitor website statistics -

You financial situation will determine the kind of tool that you would want to use on your website to monitor its statistics. There are a variety of tools available on the internet, from free to paid tools to monitor statistics. Each of these tools have a unique feature of theirs and that is what keeps each of them unique and distinct. But the more common and important ones can be found in all of these tools. Hence it is irrespective of what tool your are choosing, if your purpose of tracking the basic statistics is solved.

Let’s see a few such tools that can track web statistics -

1. Google Analytics – This is a tool from Google and is free. This is something that I love about Google. In spite of the fact that their tools are free, they do not compromise on their features and usability. It has all the basic things that you need to know about your website and it is extremely easy to use. All that you need to do is install a javascript to your website or, blog. If you are using WordPress on your blog, there are plugins that can do this job for you. So it is a tension-free tool to use.
2. Performancing Metrics – Performancing is a paid-service. So be absolutely sure before your decide to go in for it. They also offer a free service which is also available. You can start using it and upgrade it once you feel that you are ready for the the upgrade. You can check out Performancing Metrics by clicking here.
3. Crazyegg – This is a monitoring tool that shows you the statistics of your website or, blog by showing heat maps. The areas on your website or, blog which get the most clicks is shown as the hottest spot. The heat keeps decreasing as the number of clicks keep reducing. Crazyegg is a paid website and has a few different plans, all of which are affordable. You can check their plans here.
4. Clickheat – This is a substitute for Crazyegg, but a free option. You will have to install a javascript code in your website index page and that is it.

Whichever form of tracking you do for your website, you just need to map it with your objectives. If your objective is monetization, then you should use a tracking tool that give you the information about the clicks on your website. If your objective is traffic optimization, you should use a tool that can give you the information about keywords and referring site etc.

Don’t forget to comment upon the tracking tool that you are using and how useful do you find it.

If you are blogging to promote a business or service, or to build your reputation in your chosen career field, you already know the importance of frequent postings.

How do you get those blog postings on a regular basis without running out of content? Some bloggers have used RSS feeds to fuel their blogs.

It may seem like the perfect solution. An RSS feed is a form of syndication used online. RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication,” “Rich Site Summary,” or “RDF Site Summary.” No matter what you call it, there are risks associated with RSS feeds.

One risk is that your blog will be filled with junk content. When you rely on an RSS feed for your blog, you are not offering original or meaningful content. Your readers will not benefit and might not return to your blog again.

In addition to junk content, RSS feeds also often lead to duplicate content. If you are trying to build a reputation as an expert in any particular field, you do not want to have the same content on your blog as someone else.

Meaningful content (whether you write it yourself or have a team of ghost writers blogging for you) is key to successful blogging. Duplicated content will give your readers the idea that you might not be quite the expert they once thought you were.

It may not sound like much of a risk, but if your reputation is at stake, junk content and duplicated content are huge barriers to overcome. As you build your business or promote a service, junk and duplicate content could really create trust issues between you and your readers.

When you use RSS feeds for your blog, you may also be putting your readers’ computers in danger. Hackers can insert Java script codes into RSS feeds. When your readers open your blog, it exposes their computers to the hackers.

Does it mean you have to sit for hours every day to post your own blogs if you don’t use an RSS feed?

No, of course not. Programs such as Blogomator make blogging much easier. You still retain originality. You still offer quality content. But Blogomator makes those frequent postings so much easier.

If writing is a struggle for you, work with a ghost writer or freelancer who can convey the message you need to in your blog. Give the writer several topics of interest to blog readers and ask for 300-600 word articles. Once you have approved those articles, you may set them up for distribution to your blog.

Blogomator truly emancipates bloggers, freeing up time needed to concentrate on other business aspects or to enjoy some much needed leisure time.

One of the best aspects of Blogomator is that no special software is needed. You don’t download any files to your computer. Just log onto www.Blogomator.com and simply upload blog entries into your online account. Don’t worry about formatting your articles for a blog. The program does it for you! You choose when to post and where, and your blogging is complete!

For professionals who have more than one blog, Blogomator is very liberating! You can use the program to post to any or all of your blogs!

With Blogomator, many writers choose to upload and schedule a year’s worth of postings at a time. If you want to make additions to those postings, it’s no problem. Just enter your additional articles and schedule them to post, too.

Blogomator.com eliminates the need to feed your blog with junk or duplicated content that you might get from an RSS feed. Plus, your readers’ computers will be safer since the content you upload into your blog will not be exposed to hackers.