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Profitable Blog Templates
by Steve
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
Which blog design tends to work best in getting people to click on ads?
It's not always an easy answer.
Most bloggers seem to be in agreement that a design that has the content on the right side, and the side column(s) on the left, tend to monetize the best.
Psychology of the Eye
Read an old article of mine, "Psychology of the Eye", which discusses what people tend to see first when they visit website for the first time.
Basically, people tend to read a webpage from the top to bottom, and from left to right. I also defined a principle called, "Contrast Focus" that says people to focus on colorful objects when placed against a dull, drab background. By using contrast focus, and the left-to-right principles, you can make someone's eye land on something.
The design of this blog, which uses two side columns, and one content column, has become the most successful design I've come up with. The AdSense unit positioned exactly where you see it now, in the second column, towards the top, tends to get the highest click-through-rate for me, than in any other area.
AdSense actually provides guidelines on where to place their creatives in the most effective places. What I'm showing you now, falls in line with the suggestions. They have other suggestions as well. You can read an older article of mine, "Best AdSense Placements", for more discussion on this.
Notice also that my blog design uses very little color. It's large pretty drab. If anything is catching your eye, it's either AdSense creative (using bright blue links), or the title of the first article, not necessarily in that order. The bright blue links contrasting against the mostly drab-white page design, are saying, "Hey look at me!"
Two Columns versus Three Columns
I've found that three column designs, set up exactly like this one, monetizes better than the two column design. For reasons that I still haven't been able to understand, the eye seems to notice the AdSense creative much more when its in a three-column design like this, as opposed to a two-column design.
I think there's something in our subconscious telling us that the middle column is likely the column containing the content. And so, our eye tends to rest on the AdSense creative. However, our rational thinking is saying, "no, the much wide column on the right is likely where the content is."
In the end, your eyes ignore the left-most column, but fights between looking at the middle column and the right column.
Pretty Blogs versus Drab Blogs
A very attractive blog is good for about 15 seconds. After that, people look for the content. If that content is weak, then all the work you did (or money you spent) was for just 15 seconds of eye candy.
A drab design, using mostly white, grey, or black colors, tend to work best. Now, I realize that many of my blogs use other colors, I don't make everything in shades of grey. Instead, use this particular blog to understand the basic concepts, and then you can explore ways to variate that.
The reason is because of "contrast focus", which I described above. By creating an otherwise boring looking design, you can use color most effectively. Banner ads become much more visible against an all grey, or all white page. AdSense creatives stand out much better. You'll get higher click-through rates because of this.
People will visit your blog because you have great content, not because you have a pretty design. So, utilize lots of the whites, greys, and blacks, to give your ads more visibility.
Use White Space Effectively
Placing a lot of white space in between objects helps people see where one ad ends, and another one starts. The more space you put between two objects, the most people will tend to see them.
It's the same "contrast focus" principle. People's eyes don't want to look at the white space. Hence, the more white space you put between two ads, the more likely they'll see both ads.
It's not always an easy answer.
Most bloggers seem to be in agreement that a design that has the content on the right side, and the side column(s) on the left, tend to monetize the best.
Psychology of the Eye
Read an old article of mine, "Psychology of the Eye", which discusses what people tend to see first when they visit website for the first time.
Basically, people tend to read a webpage from the top to bottom, and from left to right. I also defined a principle called, "Contrast Focus" that says people to focus on colorful objects when placed against a dull, drab background. By using contrast focus, and the left-to-right principles, you can make someone's eye land on something.
The design of this blog, which uses two side columns, and one content column, has become the most successful design I've come up with. The AdSense unit positioned exactly where you see it now, in the second column, towards the top, tends to get the highest click-through-rate for me, than in any other area.
AdSense actually provides guidelines on where to place their creatives in the most effective places. What I'm showing you now, falls in line with the suggestions. They have other suggestions as well. You can read an older article of mine, "Best AdSense Placements", for more discussion on this.
Notice also that my blog design uses very little color. It's large pretty drab. If anything is catching your eye, it's either AdSense creative (using bright blue links), or the title of the first article, not necessarily in that order. The bright blue links contrasting against the mostly drab-white page design, are saying, "Hey look at me!"
Two Columns versus Three Columns
I've found that three column designs, set up exactly like this one, monetizes better than the two column design. For reasons that I still haven't been able to understand, the eye seems to notice the AdSense creative much more when its in a three-column design like this, as opposed to a two-column design.
I think there's something in our subconscious telling us that the middle column is likely the column containing the content. And so, our eye tends to rest on the AdSense creative. However, our rational thinking is saying, "no, the much wide column on the right is likely where the content is."
In the end, your eyes ignore the left-most column, but fights between looking at the middle column and the right column.
Pretty Blogs versus Drab Blogs
A very attractive blog is good for about 15 seconds. After that, people look for the content. If that content is weak, then all the work you did (or money you spent) was for just 15 seconds of eye candy.
A drab design, using mostly white, grey, or black colors, tend to work best. Now, I realize that many of my blogs use other colors, I don't make everything in shades of grey. Instead, use this particular blog to understand the basic concepts, and then you can explore ways to variate that.
The reason is because of "contrast focus", which I described above. By creating an otherwise boring looking design, you can use color most effectively. Banner ads become much more visible against an all grey, or all white page. AdSense creatives stand out much better. You'll get higher click-through rates because of this.
People will visit your blog because you have great content, not because you have a pretty design. So, utilize lots of the whites, greys, and blacks, to give your ads more visibility.
Use White Space Effectively
Placing a lot of white space in between objects helps people see where one ad ends, and another one starts. The more space you put between two objects, the most people will tend to see them.
It's the same "contrast focus" principle. People's eyes don't want to look at the white space. Hence, the more white space you put between two ads, the more likely they'll see both ads.
Labels: Blog-Design
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Credit Linking is Blogging Etiquette
by Steve
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
One thing I've noticed among the top motorcycle blogs, is that very few give credit where credit is due.
A "credit link", or "reference link", is simply a link back to the blog or website where you found the inspiration for a new article. It's part of a larger blogging phenomenon called the "meme".
A meme is like a "thread" on a message board, except it's carried out across multiple blogs. One blogger will post something really profound, funny, newsworth, or cool on their blog. A second blogger will see it, and then write about it on their blog, and include a credit link to the previous blog. Then other bloggers will see the second blogger, and then write about it on their blogs, and post credit links to the second blogger, or first blogger, or both. And then so on and so on. It starts a chain of reaction that spreads out across several blogs, sometimes thousands.
That chain reaction builds up Google PageRank value for each of the blogs linked within that chain. The first blog in that meme ends up with a bonanza of PageRank, and that's usually how people build themselves a career in blogging, by writing really good material that gets the blogosphere talking.
If you don't offer that credit link, then you're breaking the chain. You're stealing thunder, basically, for yourself.
Credit linking is very strong in the electronics and gadget blogging world, and as a result, it has built up a lot of PageRank for all of the blogs there. Because everyone gets involved in reacting to each other's articles, and linking back to them, everyone shares in the PageRank, and everyone gets a boost out of it.
I just wish I could see more of that in the motorcycle blogging community.
If you found a very interesting piece of motorcycle news on Biker News Online, and you decided to blog about the same news on yours, then give me a credit link, just to say thanks for giving you the inspiration. I'll do the same for you.
Methods of Credit Linking
Often, bloggers will just create a credit link using some words in the middle of a paragraph.
But there's also a popular way of using a postscript. For example, you might see the following at the end of an article...
The second example says, "The primary source of this news comes from KT DID, but Motorcycle Philosophy is where I found out about it."
Instead of using "via", you could also say, "source", or "thanks", or whatever you think works.
Just do all of your fellow bloggers a favor, and give credit where credit is due, and you'll find that they'll do the same for you.
A "credit link", or "reference link", is simply a link back to the blog or website where you found the inspiration for a new article. It's part of a larger blogging phenomenon called the "meme".
A meme is like a "thread" on a message board, except it's carried out across multiple blogs. One blogger will post something really profound, funny, newsworth, or cool on their blog. A second blogger will see it, and then write about it on their blog, and include a credit link to the previous blog. Then other bloggers will see the second blogger, and then write about it on their blogs, and post credit links to the second blogger, or first blogger, or both. And then so on and so on. It starts a chain of reaction that spreads out across several blogs, sometimes thousands.
That chain reaction builds up Google PageRank value for each of the blogs linked within that chain. The first blog in that meme ends up with a bonanza of PageRank, and that's usually how people build themselves a career in blogging, by writing really good material that gets the blogosphere talking.
If you don't offer that credit link, then you're breaking the chain. You're stealing thunder, basically, for yourself.
Credit linking is very strong in the electronics and gadget blogging world, and as a result, it has built up a lot of PageRank for all of the blogs there. Because everyone gets involved in reacting to each other's articles, and linking back to them, everyone shares in the PageRank, and everyone gets a boost out of it.
I just wish I could see more of that in the motorcycle blogging community.
If you found a very interesting piece of motorcycle news on Biker News Online, and you decided to blog about the same news on yours, then give me a credit link, just to say thanks for giving you the inspiration. I'll do the same for you.
Methods of Credit Linking
Often, bloggers will just create a credit link using some words in the middle of a paragraph.
But there's also a popular way of using a postscript. For example, you might see the following at the end of an article...
via Motorcycle Philosophyor
KT DID via Motorcycle PhilosophyThe first example above, simply says, "The source for my article came from Motorcycle Philosophy".
The second example says, "The primary source of this news comes from KT DID, but Motorcycle Philosophy is where I found out about it."
Instead of using "via", you could also say, "source", or "thanks", or whatever you think works.
Just do all of your fellow bloggers a favor, and give credit where credit is due, and you'll find that they'll do the same for you.
Labels: Blogging-Ethics, Linking-Strategies
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Do Blog Directories Work?
by Steve
Friday, May 02, 2008
There are probably hundreds of "blog directories", websites that contains thousands and thousands of links to blogs. They categorize them, rank them, and review them. But do you get anything out of it?
The biggest selling point is that by having your blog listed in a directory, Google will give you some additional PageRank. That is, because Google relies on links to determine popularity and authority, the directories argue that getting listed on their websites will help towards your search engine rankings.
It's largely baloney.
Google is smart enough to know what a directory looks like, and is smart enough to know that links from directories "don't count".
The reason is because Google considers a link to be a "vote of confidence" on behalf of the site being linked to, AS WELL AS, the site that's doing the linking. It means that the website publisher found a website that he/she felt to be worthy of a link. These opinions are what Google is aggregating across the entire Internet.
So ask yourself, what opinion is there in a blog directory? A blog directory allows any blog to be listed, even if the blog sucks. Anyone who pays money, or offers a reciprocal link, can get listed into the directory. The links in a blog directory obviously doesn't reflect an opinion on behalf of the blog directory owner.
So you're not getting any PageRank value from those links. However, those little image buttons you're placing on the side of your pages are links that do in fact give PageRank back to the directory. You're giving PageRank value to the directory, and the directory is giving you nada.
All that you can ever get back from a blog directory is some direct referrals. Take a look at your blog's statistics, and see if you've ever received traffic from a blog directory. Then wonder how much traffic and PageRank you've given to them instead.
Here's something you can do prove this to yourself.
Go to Google, and type in the following query...
link:http://www.myblog.com
Replace "www.myblog.com" with your blog's address.
This will display all the URLs that link to your blog, but only those that Google considers to be worthy. These URLs are the only URLs that Google is using to calculate your PageRank. I bet you won't find a blog directory in those URLs.
There are actually many more URLs out there with links to your blog, but Google doesn't count them either because it can't find those URLs (behind a database or login), or because those URLs are too new, or because those URLs are redundant, or because Google considers those URLs to be worthless.
Now, go to a blog directory that your blog is listed on. A really popular one is Blog Catalog. In fact, go to their motorsports section...
http://www.blogcatalog.com/directory/sports/motor_sports
Now go to Google and run a "backlink search" on that URL (click below)...
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=DKUS,DKUS:2006-44,DKUS:en&q=link:http%3a%2f%2fwww%2eblogcatalog%2ecom%2fdirectory%2fsports%2fmotor%5fsports (opens a new window)
Now tell me if you find your blog in there.
Was it there? If it was, do you feel ripped off? You gave them PageRank, but they didn't give you Jack. They're getting rich off of you.
Take my advice, get rid of all those blog directory links and buttons. You're giving away PageRank to them, and they're using it to grab a higher spot on Google's search results. Run a Google search for "motorcycle blogs" (opens a new window), and go through a few pages. Notice that many blog directories are ranking higher than actual motorcycle blogs. Those directories are grabbing traffic that you could've gotten.
Focus instead on getting links from other people's blogrolls. I've found that those are the most valuable links you could ever get. I'll explain some other time.
The biggest selling point is that by having your blog listed in a directory, Google will give you some additional PageRank. That is, because Google relies on links to determine popularity and authority, the directories argue that getting listed on their websites will help towards your search engine rankings.
It's largely baloney.
Google is smart enough to know what a directory looks like, and is smart enough to know that links from directories "don't count".
The reason is because Google considers a link to be a "vote of confidence" on behalf of the site being linked to, AS WELL AS, the site that's doing the linking. It means that the website publisher found a website that he/she felt to be worthy of a link. These opinions are what Google is aggregating across the entire Internet.
So ask yourself, what opinion is there in a blog directory? A blog directory allows any blog to be listed, even if the blog sucks. Anyone who pays money, or offers a reciprocal link, can get listed into the directory. The links in a blog directory obviously doesn't reflect an opinion on behalf of the blog directory owner.
So you're not getting any PageRank value from those links. However, those little image buttons you're placing on the side of your pages are links that do in fact give PageRank back to the directory. You're giving PageRank value to the directory, and the directory is giving you nada.
All that you can ever get back from a blog directory is some direct referrals. Take a look at your blog's statistics, and see if you've ever received traffic from a blog directory. Then wonder how much traffic and PageRank you've given to them instead.
Here's something you can do prove this to yourself.
Go to Google, and type in the following query...
link:http://www.myblog.com
Replace "www.myblog.com" with your blog's address.
This will display all the URLs that link to your blog, but only those that Google considers to be worthy. These URLs are the only URLs that Google is using to calculate your PageRank. I bet you won't find a blog directory in those URLs.
There are actually many more URLs out there with links to your blog, but Google doesn't count them either because it can't find those URLs (behind a database or login), or because those URLs are too new, or because those URLs are redundant, or because Google considers those URLs to be worthless.
Now, go to a blog directory that your blog is listed on. A really popular one is Blog Catalog. In fact, go to their motorsports section...
http://www.blogcatalog.com/directory/sports/motor_sports
Now go to Google and run a "backlink search" on that URL (click below)...
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=DKUS,DKUS:2006-44,DKUS:en&q=link:http%3a%2f%2fwww%2eblogcatalog%2ecom%2fdirectory%2fsports%2fmotor%5fsports (opens a new window)
Now tell me if you find your blog in there.
Was it there? If it was, do you feel ripped off? You gave them PageRank, but they didn't give you Jack. They're getting rich off of you.
Take my advice, get rid of all those blog directory links and buttons. You're giving away PageRank to them, and they're using it to grab a higher spot on Google's search results. Run a Google search for "motorcycle blogs" (opens a new window), and go through a few pages. Notice that many blog directories are ranking higher than actual motorcycle blogs. Those directories are grabbing traffic that you could've gotten.
Focus instead on getting links from other people's blogrolls. I've found that those are the most valuable links you could ever get. I'll explain some other time.
Labels: Linking-Strategies
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How to Make Money Online - An Overview
by Steve
Friday, May 02, 2008
When it comes to making money by publishing websites, there are passive ways, and active ways to do this. I largely focus on the passive ways. I find it easier to manage, and it offers me more time to spend with my wife, friends, and motorcycling.
I'll just give you a brief overview of making money from blogging, and will publish more articles later on that go deeper in depth.
Passive Income
You'll hear the term "passive income" a lot within the website publishing circles, because it's what everyone strives to achieve. It basically works like this...
This basically allows you stop updating your website for months on end, giving you time to build more websites, or taking that cross-country motorcycle trip you've been dreaming about.
If you don't update your website ever again, it will eventually lose its traffic. I have some blogs that I haven't updated in about 5 months, and the search engines continue to send me thousands of visitors, each day, to each blog, and I continue to earn money from them. I don't know how long I can go without updating them, however.
That's why everyone wants to achieve "passive income". It's not easy to achieve, but you can get there if you work at it.
Content is King
You'll hear the phrase "content is king" many times in this business. And it's true.
If you want people to visit your website, without having to "buy traffic", then you'll need some really good content to attract them. Moreover, you need to publish new content frequently to keep them coming back.
If you can do this, then you'll also get other website publishers and bloggers to put a link to your website. Getting these links will increase your search engine rankings.
Focus is the Key
As a motorcycle blogger, think about the different kinds of content you publish: gear reviews, personal thoughts, news, cool videos, ride reports, etc., and fragment that stuff out on their own unique blogs. That way, you can focus the audience.
Other websites tend to broaden themselves by covering every aspect of motorcycling into one place. What often happens, is that they discover it's very tough to create a reputation as "general" authority on motorcycles, mainly because there are already several magazines out there that do this job better.
By focusing down to a more narrow niche, you can achieve that "authority" more quickly, and attract links more quickly. Better yet, having a focused audience makes it easier to match them up with relevant ads. If you're using Google AdSense, you'll find higher click through rates when you narrow down your niche.
Focusing also improves your search engine marketing efforts. A website that's focused only on helmet reviews, will do a better job of attracting people who are interested in buying helmets. Google tends to reward these sites with higher rankings, than the general motorcycle sites.
Having five blogs that are focused on different aspects of motorcycling does not get less traffic than one blog focused on all aspects. If anything, you'll get more. Refer back to my previous article, "Content Fragmentation" for more info.
Revenue Sources Overview
The two most popular forms of revenue are advertising networks, and affiliate programs. Both warrant several articles focused on various aspects. I'll just touch on them here.
Google AdSense is an advertising network. Interestingly, they actually have an affiliate program embedded within the advertising network, they call it, "AdSense Referrals". AdSense is probably the most popular form of revenue for website publishers, because its so huge it can provide relevant ads to just about any website.
Value Click is another advertising network that focuses on banner ads, as opposed to Google's text ads. It's the most popular banner ad network around. They have a client-base of advertisers that buy "impressions" from them. An "impression" is when an ad is displayed on a website. Each advertiser buys up millions of impressions, and Value Click spreads those impressions out across its network of website publishers. Value Click shares the money from these impressions with its publishers on a "CPM" basis. I'll explain this in a future article.
Commission Junction is an affiliate program network, and is most the popular. They have thousands of "merchants", who are companies that sell products and services. They also have millions of website publishers signed up as well. Each merchant has an affiliate program set up in Commission Junction, and each website publisher can join that program, and earn revenue from it. Commission Junction acts as a neutral third-party that monitors merchants and publishers, and figures out who owes what. Affiliate programs typically reimburse publishers based on a percentage of sale. If your website visitor buys something from a merchant, you'll earn anywhere from 1% to 50% of that sale.
I'll just give you a brief overview of making money from blogging, and will publish more articles later on that go deeper in depth.
Passive Income
You'll hear the term "passive income" a lot within the website publishing circles, because it's what everyone strives to achieve. It basically works like this...
- You build a website or blog
- You design the site to optimize well on search engines
- You spent time creating content
- Simultaneously, you also spend time building traffic
- You add some revenue generating components, like ads, affiliate links, donation boxes, etc.
- Over time, your site builds traffic from search engines. The search engine constantly feeds more traffic to you, as you increase the amount of content.
- The visitors click the ads, and you make money.
This basically allows you stop updating your website for months on end, giving you time to build more websites, or taking that cross-country motorcycle trip you've been dreaming about.
If you don't update your website ever again, it will eventually lose its traffic. I have some blogs that I haven't updated in about 5 months, and the search engines continue to send me thousands of visitors, each day, to each blog, and I continue to earn money from them. I don't know how long I can go without updating them, however.
That's why everyone wants to achieve "passive income". It's not easy to achieve, but you can get there if you work at it.
Content is King
You'll hear the phrase "content is king" many times in this business. And it's true.
If you want people to visit your website, without having to "buy traffic", then you'll need some really good content to attract them. Moreover, you need to publish new content frequently to keep them coming back.
If you can do this, then you'll also get other website publishers and bloggers to put a link to your website. Getting these links will increase your search engine rankings.
Focus is the Key
As a motorcycle blogger, think about the different kinds of content you publish: gear reviews, personal thoughts, news, cool videos, ride reports, etc., and fragment that stuff out on their own unique blogs. That way, you can focus the audience.
Other websites tend to broaden themselves by covering every aspect of motorcycling into one place. What often happens, is that they discover it's very tough to create a reputation as "general" authority on motorcycles, mainly because there are already several magazines out there that do this job better.
By focusing down to a more narrow niche, you can achieve that "authority" more quickly, and attract links more quickly. Better yet, having a focused audience makes it easier to match them up with relevant ads. If you're using Google AdSense, you'll find higher click through rates when you narrow down your niche.
Focusing also improves your search engine marketing efforts. A website that's focused only on helmet reviews, will do a better job of attracting people who are interested in buying helmets. Google tends to reward these sites with higher rankings, than the general motorcycle sites.
Having five blogs that are focused on different aspects of motorcycling does not get less traffic than one blog focused on all aspects. If anything, you'll get more. Refer back to my previous article, "Content Fragmentation" for more info.
Revenue Sources Overview
The two most popular forms of revenue are advertising networks, and affiliate programs. Both warrant several articles focused on various aspects. I'll just touch on them here.
Google AdSense is an advertising network. Interestingly, they actually have an affiliate program embedded within the advertising network, they call it, "AdSense Referrals". AdSense is probably the most popular form of revenue for website publishers, because its so huge it can provide relevant ads to just about any website.
Value Click is another advertising network that focuses on banner ads, as opposed to Google's text ads. It's the most popular banner ad network around. They have a client-base of advertisers that buy "impressions" from them. An "impression" is when an ad is displayed on a website. Each advertiser buys up millions of impressions, and Value Click spreads those impressions out across its network of website publishers. Value Click shares the money from these impressions with its publishers on a "CPM" basis. I'll explain this in a future article.
Commission Junction is an affiliate program network, and is most the popular. They have thousands of "merchants", who are companies that sell products and services. They also have millions of website publishers signed up as well. Each merchant has an affiliate program set up in Commission Junction, and each website publisher can join that program, and earn revenue from it. Commission Junction acts as a neutral third-party that monitors merchants and publishers, and figures out who owes what. Affiliate programs typically reimburse publishers based on a percentage of sale. If your website visitor buys something from a merchant, you'll earn anywhere from 1% to 50% of that sale.
Labels: Making-Money-Online
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Open Internet Ratings
by Steve
Friday, May 02, 2008
Open Internet Ratings refers to websites that publish traffic statistics about other people's websites.
Alexa is the most well known example.
A lot of us refer to them because we want to know how our publishing efforts stack up against others. There's certainly a vanity aspect with this, but this is also good information to know. You need to set expectations for your websites and your own success in making money from them. If you know that another website, with similar traffic, is more successul at monetizing that traffic, then you know you're not monetizing effectively.
Internet marketers also use open internet ratings to decide which websites to pursue for their own business. It's good to have a website that ranks highly, so as to earn more potential business.
Panel Data
To understand open internet ratings, you have to understand panel data.
Most of us have heard of "Neilsen Ratings", it's the rating system that's used to measure television viewership. The company distributes monitoring devices to randomly picked out households, and keeps track of what television shows they watch.
From that data, they can figure out a "guesstimate" on how many people watched a particular show.
Open internet ratings is also based on the same principle.
Each publisher of these ratings gathers that panel data in different ways. It's how they gather that data that determines the accuracy of their "guesstimates".
Believe it or not, Neilsen is actually one of the two largest sources of website panel data. They have a division called, "Neilsen NetRatings". The other largest source of panel data is Comscore Networks.
Unfortunately, these two companies don't publish their full datasets online. You have to purchase a subscription to their service, and then you can see it. The largest Internet advertising networks out there all purchase it, and use it to figure out which websites to buy advertising from. The biggest websites also purchase it to figure out how much to charge for their website space.
The rest of us rely on the open internet ratings, the free data.
Alexa
Alexa is the most widely used public metric simply because they were the first. It doesn't necessarily mean they are accurate. Quite the opposite. They're widely accepted by all publishers and marketers as being the most inaccurate. But they because they have the largest panel datasets, it's still the most popular resource.
The innaccuracies are due to how they gather panel data. It's collected from a toolbar that people install on their web browsers. Alexa doesn't pick out people and ask them to install the toolbar. It's done passively, by people visiting Alexa, and voluntarily deciding to do it. Because of this, computer geeks tend to make up the lion's share of panel data. So whatever websites computer geeks like to visit, tend to rank very high.
The other problem is that website publishers themselves were installing the toolbar and visiting their own websites frequently to boost their own ratings. The toolbar is not available for Mac computers, so websites focused on Mac computers ranked low.
Also, Alexa was developed in South Korea. Originally, it was mostly South Koreans who installed the toolbar. And for awhile, several South Korean websites ranked in the top 10. These days, they've all moved down, but South Korean websites still rank higher than they should.
However, in April 2008, Alexa tried to address its inaccuracy reputation by incorporating "outside data". They haven't explained what this outside data is. But once they did this, many websites ranked lower, while others ranked higher. The websites that now rank lower claim that it's more inaccurate, while the websites that now rank higher are much happier.
Quantcast
Quantcast is actually my favored open internet ratings site. It collects panel data from advertising networks and ISPs. Those two sources tend to reflect a broad-based panel set, from all genres of users. For that reason, several publishers consider it to be the most accurate. But even though the panel set is more broad-based, it's history of data is much smaller than Alexa's. That is, because Alexa has been around a lot longer, it can produce a guesstimate on more websites than Quantcast, even though that guesstimate is based on demographically disproportionate data.
In addition to panel data, Quantcast collects "directly measured data". They offer websites a piece of Javascript they can embed into their pages, and have Quantcast measure the traffic directly. Of course, this is much more accurate than panel data.
You'll notice that I have the Quantcast button on all of my blogs. You can click on it and see my ratings.
Compete.com
Compete.com is the newest entrant into the foray of open internet ratings. They work similarly to Neilsen NetRatings, in that they've build a panel of about 2 million Internet users, and monitor their usage. From that, they come up with a guesstimate on website ratings.
In addition to ratings, they also publish a subscription service that let's you type in your website's domain name, and discover all the keywords and phrases that are used to find your website. They only show you five of those keywords for free, and you must purchase the subscription to see the whole shbang.
Because it's so new, it covers the smallest set of websites.
Technorati
Technorati is actually a blog search engine. It does keep a rating system on all blogs in its database. But it's not based on panel data.
Rather, it looks how many other blogs are linking to yours. If you have links from 5 different blogs, then you get a ranking of 5. They determine that the number of blogs linking to yours is a reflection of your blog's popularity and authority.
The number of links is not the total links of all blogs linking to yours, it's just the number of blogs that link to yours. For example, one blog might have 20 links pointing to yours. But Technorati will only count that as one link. One blog, one link.
While Technorati is the largest blog search engine, they seem to be slow in finding new blogs, as well as new blog articles. It might take weeks for them to discover one. Even if you pinged them, it still seems to take forever to get your blog to show up in their listings. Many blogs seem to never show up in Technorati. For that reason, their rating system has never emerged as a respected metric.
Google Toolbar
Google's toolbar is the most popular toolbar around. Every website publisher has it installed, mainly for one reason, the "PageRank" indicator.
The PageRank displays a value of 0-10. People tend to accept this value as a measurement of a website's authority and popularity, and is one of the most respected metrics today. The higher the number, the more respect your website commands.
PageRank is a very long subject, and I'll cover it in a later article.
Alexa is the most well known example.
A lot of us refer to them because we want to know how our publishing efforts stack up against others. There's certainly a vanity aspect with this, but this is also good information to know. You need to set expectations for your websites and your own success in making money from them. If you know that another website, with similar traffic, is more successul at monetizing that traffic, then you know you're not monetizing effectively.
Internet marketers also use open internet ratings to decide which websites to pursue for their own business. It's good to have a website that ranks highly, so as to earn more potential business.
Panel Data
To understand open internet ratings, you have to understand panel data.
Most of us have heard of "Neilsen Ratings", it's the rating system that's used to measure television viewership. The company distributes monitoring devices to randomly picked out households, and keeps track of what television shows they watch.
From that data, they can figure out a "guesstimate" on how many people watched a particular show.
Open internet ratings is also based on the same principle.
Each publisher of these ratings gathers that panel data in different ways. It's how they gather that data that determines the accuracy of their "guesstimates".
Believe it or not, Neilsen is actually one of the two largest sources of website panel data. They have a division called, "Neilsen NetRatings". The other largest source of panel data is Comscore Networks.
Unfortunately, these two companies don't publish their full datasets online. You have to purchase a subscription to their service, and then you can see it. The largest Internet advertising networks out there all purchase it, and use it to figure out which websites to buy advertising from. The biggest websites also purchase it to figure out how much to charge for their website space.
The rest of us rely on the open internet ratings, the free data.
Alexa
Alexa is the most widely used public metric simply because they were the first. It doesn't necessarily mean they are accurate. Quite the opposite. They're widely accepted by all publishers and marketers as being the most inaccurate. But they because they have the largest panel datasets, it's still the most popular resource.
The innaccuracies are due to how they gather panel data. It's collected from a toolbar that people install on their web browsers. Alexa doesn't pick out people and ask them to install the toolbar. It's done passively, by people visiting Alexa, and voluntarily deciding to do it. Because of this, computer geeks tend to make up the lion's share of panel data. So whatever websites computer geeks like to visit, tend to rank very high.
The other problem is that website publishers themselves were installing the toolbar and visiting their own websites frequently to boost their own ratings. The toolbar is not available for Mac computers, so websites focused on Mac computers ranked low.
Also, Alexa was developed in South Korea. Originally, it was mostly South Koreans who installed the toolbar. And for awhile, several South Korean websites ranked in the top 10. These days, they've all moved down, but South Korean websites still rank higher than they should.
However, in April 2008, Alexa tried to address its inaccuracy reputation by incorporating "outside data". They haven't explained what this outside data is. But once they did this, many websites ranked lower, while others ranked higher. The websites that now rank lower claim that it's more inaccurate, while the websites that now rank higher are much happier.
Quantcast
Quantcast is actually my favored open internet ratings site. It collects panel data from advertising networks and ISPs. Those two sources tend to reflect a broad-based panel set, from all genres of users. For that reason, several publishers consider it to be the most accurate. But even though the panel set is more broad-based, it's history of data is much smaller than Alexa's. That is, because Alexa has been around a lot longer, it can produce a guesstimate on more websites than Quantcast, even though that guesstimate is based on demographically disproportionate data.
In addition to panel data, Quantcast collects "directly measured data". They offer websites a piece of Javascript they can embed into their pages, and have Quantcast measure the traffic directly. Of course, this is much more accurate than panel data.
You'll notice that I have the Quantcast button on all of my blogs. You can click on it and see my ratings.
Compete.com
Compete.com is the newest entrant into the foray of open internet ratings. They work similarly to Neilsen NetRatings, in that they've build a panel of about 2 million Internet users, and monitor their usage. From that, they come up with a guesstimate on website ratings.
In addition to ratings, they also publish a subscription service that let's you type in your website's domain name, and discover all the keywords and phrases that are used to find your website. They only show you five of those keywords for free, and you must purchase the subscription to see the whole shbang.
Because it's so new, it covers the smallest set of websites.
Technorati
Technorati is actually a blog search engine. It does keep a rating system on all blogs in its database. But it's not based on panel data.
Rather, it looks how many other blogs are linking to yours. If you have links from 5 different blogs, then you get a ranking of 5. They determine that the number of blogs linking to yours is a reflection of your blog's popularity and authority.
The number of links is not the total links of all blogs linking to yours, it's just the number of blogs that link to yours. For example, one blog might have 20 links pointing to yours. But Technorati will only count that as one link. One blog, one link.
While Technorati is the largest blog search engine, they seem to be slow in finding new blogs, as well as new blog articles. It might take weeks for them to discover one. Even if you pinged them, it still seems to take forever to get your blog to show up in their listings. Many blogs seem to never show up in Technorati. For that reason, their rating system has never emerged as a respected metric.
Google Toolbar
Google's toolbar is the most popular toolbar around. Every website publisher has it installed, mainly for one reason, the "PageRank" indicator.
The PageRank displays a value of 0-10. People tend to accept this value as a measurement of a website's authority and popularity, and is one of the most respected metrics today. The higher the number, the more respect your website commands.
PageRank is a very long subject, and I'll cover it in a later article.
Labels: Statistics
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How to Write Effective Titles
by Steve
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Since the title of each blog article is a key element in search engine optimization (SEO), it behooves a professional blogger to craft effective titles, designed to optimize primary keywords, and attract clicks from people perusing search results pages (SERPs).
Most blogging platforms (Blogger, WordPress, Moveable Type, etc) use the title as the filename (and URL) for the article. The words found in the URL are also an element towards search engine optimization.
Later on, I'll talk about how the words in the URL are also part of what determines ad relevancy on Google AdSense.
To illustrate effective titles, look at one of my recent articles, "The Harley Sucks People", on Motorcycle Philosophy...
http://www.motorcyclephilosophy.org/2008/04/harley-sucks-people.htm
I wanted to write an article about "motorcycle bashing", a popular subject on motorcycle forums, where people talk about how their favorite brand of motorcycle is so great, and how everyone else's brand is so bad.
Since I'm always thinking in terms of how to leverage the most from search engines, I put a lot of thought into crafting a good title.
A title not only must contain the most important keywords, but it must contain the most popular variety of that expression. For example, I could have also used...
So, I wanted to find out which phrase is the one most people use when searching Google.
To answer, I used the "Adwords Keyword Tool"...
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
This lets you type a word or two, and see how often it was searched on Google. It also shows you all the variations of phrase, and their search frequency.
It turns out that "harley sucks" has the highest search frequency.
Therefore, I used the title, "The Harley Sucks People".
And if you're using Blogger as your blogging platform, note that Blogger doesn't put the word "the" into the title.
Blogger actually has a character limit for the URL. If your title is longer than a certain limit (I don't know what the actual limit is), then it simply leaves off the extra words. Seems like most Blogger URLs cap out at 4-6 words.
To make sure that Blogger doesn't cut off your most important keywords, figure out a way to write a title that has those keywords at the front.
The other thing you can do with Blogger, is to write a "rough title", which is one that contains only your important keywords. Then publish the article. Now, go back to your article, and change the title to a finished title, and republish. You'll notice that Blogger keeps the original URL, but changes the title.
Increasing Clickthroughs from Google SERPs
Even if your page shows up at number one on the SERPs, doesn't guarantee that people will click on it. So, it helps to write a title that picques their curiosity, or uses words that captures their attention...
Notice that your title is also the title used in Google's SERPs. Also note that Google displays the URL with it also. Write a title that's short, but still picques someone's curiosity, to make them want to click.
Most blogging platforms (Blogger, WordPress, Moveable Type, etc) use the title as the filename (and URL) for the article. The words found in the URL are also an element towards search engine optimization.
Later on, I'll talk about how the words in the URL are also part of what determines ad relevancy on Google AdSense.
To illustrate effective titles, look at one of my recent articles, "The Harley Sucks People", on Motorcycle Philosophy...
http://www.motorcyclephilosophy.org/2008/04/harley-sucks-people.htm
I wanted to write an article about "motorcycle bashing", a popular subject on motorcycle forums, where people talk about how their favorite brand of motorcycle is so great, and how everyone else's brand is so bad.
Since I'm always thinking in terms of how to leverage the most from search engines, I put a lot of thought into crafting a good title.
A title not only must contain the most important keywords, but it must contain the most popular variety of that expression. For example, I could have also used...
- "motorcycle bashing"
- "motorcycle hate"
- "Harley bashing"
- "Harley sucks"
- "Harley hate"
- "Harley-Davidson hate"
- "Harley-Davidson sucks"
So, I wanted to find out which phrase is the one most people use when searching Google.
To answer, I used the "Adwords Keyword Tool"...
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
This lets you type a word or two, and see how often it was searched on Google. It also shows you all the variations of phrase, and their search frequency.
It turns out that "harley sucks" has the highest search frequency.
Therefore, I used the title, "The Harley Sucks People".
And if you're using Blogger as your blogging platform, note that Blogger doesn't put the word "the" into the title.
Blogger actually has a character limit for the URL. If your title is longer than a certain limit (I don't know what the actual limit is), then it simply leaves off the extra words. Seems like most Blogger URLs cap out at 4-6 words.
To make sure that Blogger doesn't cut off your most important keywords, figure out a way to write a title that has those keywords at the front.
The other thing you can do with Blogger, is to write a "rough title", which is one that contains only your important keywords. Then publish the article. Now, go back to your article, and change the title to a finished title, and republish. You'll notice that Blogger keeps the original URL, but changes the title.
Increasing Clickthroughs from Google SERPs
Even if your page shows up at number one on the SERPs, doesn't guarantee that people will click on it. So, it helps to write a title that picques their curiosity, or uses words that captures their attention...
Notice that your title is also the title used in Google's SERPs. Also note that Google displays the URL with it also. Write a title that's short, but still picques someone's curiosity, to make them want to click.
Labels: SEO
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Content Fragmentation
by Steve
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
The term, "content fragmentation" is something I coined to describe the strategy of publishing multiple blogs, or multiple blog articles, instead of consolidating everything into one.
It's largely a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy.
Much of my career success as a blogger lies in publishing tons of content. The more content you put out there, the greater the likelihood of attracting visitors from search engines. That is, each URL you put into Google, is another chance of getting your blog listed at the top of its search listings.
With content fragmentation, you simply break your thought into two separate articles, instead of just one. Each article is written to optimize its specific keywords and phrases. Hence, you end up with two URLs, instead of one. And therefore, you've doubled your chances of getting listed at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs)
As some of you may have noticed, I have several motorcycle blogs...
Then I decided to break out H-D logoed products into its own blog, and then broke the t-shirts into its own blog as well. Later on, I decided to break out my personal thoughts into its own blog too. And now, I created Motorcycle Blogging just for moto-blogging thoughts.
This has the same effect of stuffing more URLs into Google, but with the added effect of raising the "page rank" of each blog. Now I can link these blogs to each other, and make these blogs more popular in Google's eyes.
I can also raise some legitimate page rank too. If I can get some motorcycle bloggers to link to all of my blogs, that actually gathers more page rank than if they just linked to one.
Also note that I have two other blogs related to the subject of blogging, "In Your Web", and "Money with AdSense". By creating "Motorcycle Blogging", I can create a transition between my circle of motorcycle blogs and my circle of blogging blogs. This "transition blog" acts as a conduit between the two circles, transferring page rank.
Of course, I could have just taken my one Biker News Online, and still link to my blogging blogs (I've actually done this), but both Google and Yahoo are increasingly looking at the "contextual relevancy" of these links in calculating page rank.
"Page rank" is a term used by SEO experts to identify the "authority" level of a website. With Google, it's largely calculated by how many websites link to you, and then further adjusted by a variety of factors, including how many websites you link out to, the contextual relevancy of these links, and others. The more page rank your website gets, it generally ranks higher on SERPs.
Think of ways to fragment your content into multiple articles, and even multiple blogs. It's almost like each URL you publish is another door into your website(s). Don't shut old websites down just because you haven't updated them in a long time. They still hold "page rank", that you can leverage.
It's largely a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy.
Much of my career success as a blogger lies in publishing tons of content. The more content you put out there, the greater the likelihood of attracting visitors from search engines. That is, each URL you put into Google, is another chance of getting your blog listed at the top of its search listings.
With content fragmentation, you simply break your thought into two separate articles, instead of just one. Each article is written to optimize its specific keywords and phrases. Hence, you end up with two URLs, instead of one. And therefore, you've doubled your chances of getting listed at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs)
As some of you may have noticed, I have several motorcycle blogs...
- Biker News Online
- Motorcycle Philosophy
- Harley-Davidson Gear
- Cool Biker T-Shirts
- Motorcycle Blogging (which you're reading now)
Then I decided to break out H-D logoed products into its own blog, and then broke the t-shirts into its own blog as well. Later on, I decided to break out my personal thoughts into its own blog too. And now, I created Motorcycle Blogging just for moto-blogging thoughts.
This has the same effect of stuffing more URLs into Google, but with the added effect of raising the "page rank" of each blog. Now I can link these blogs to each other, and make these blogs more popular in Google's eyes.
I can also raise some legitimate page rank too. If I can get some motorcycle bloggers to link to all of my blogs, that actually gathers more page rank than if they just linked to one.
Also note that I have two other blogs related to the subject of blogging, "In Your Web", and "Money with AdSense". By creating "Motorcycle Blogging", I can create a transition between my circle of motorcycle blogs and my circle of blogging blogs. This "transition blog" acts as a conduit between the two circles, transferring page rank.
Of course, I could have just taken my one Biker News Online, and still link to my blogging blogs (I've actually done this), but both Google and Yahoo are increasingly looking at the "contextual relevancy" of these links in calculating page rank.
"Page rank" is a term used by SEO experts to identify the "authority" level of a website. With Google, it's largely calculated by how many websites link to you, and then further adjusted by a variety of factors, including how many websites you link out to, the contextual relevancy of these links, and others. The more page rank your website gets, it generally ranks higher on SERPs.
Think of ways to fragment your content into multiple articles, and even multiple blogs. It's almost like each URL you publish is another door into your website(s). Don't shut old websites down just because you haven't updated them in a long time. They still hold "page rank", that you can leverage.
Labels: SEO
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