But in my opinion, they have made some good changes. At least from an Affiliate Marketing standpoint. They’ve upped the minimum word count to 400 words. The old word count was 250 words. I guess they figure Google will like their articles better if they’re 400 words of How to Bake A Cookie rather than 250 words.

But the increase in the minimum word count should turn away some spammers no doubt. Especially those that were getting spun articles past the editors…and there was quite a bit of that!

Another change they’re looking into is to block articles on niches that they feel are over saturated. In a recent blog entry, they asked members how they should handle these over saturated niches.

Some of the niches they consider over saturated right now are penis enlargement, get your ex back, acai berry, reverse cell phone look up, credit card debt relief, male enhancement pill and TV to PC.

Some of the ways they expect to deal with this is a lottery system where only a select number of articles in these niches are approved, a blanket ruling where the prevent any articles covering these niches to be accepted or develop guidelines on trending topics.

I’m not 100% sure that blocking these niches is going to help EzineArticles get back in the good graces of Google, but hey, who am I? Perhaps this was  a suggestion from Google itself?

Other Editor Guideline Changes At EzineArticles

If you’re using EZA and using one Author Profile for several different niches, they’re going to be watching you real close. They’ve done said that they feel one person can not be an expert in many fields. This decision won’t affect me, as I have had Author Profiles for each of my Niches for a long time.

Tip: Since I brought this up, I’ll let you in on a little secret. The Author Profile pages are do follow. They can also achieve PR if they are backlinked properly. And all those articles listed on the Profile pages will receive some link juice from the page if you build backlinks to them. Better hurry though, no telling if EZA will stop allowing do follow links on Profile pages or not in the future!

EZA will not only make sure that the Author’s articles are all relevant, but they’ll also be checking the links in your Resource Box to make sure they are relevant to the article. So if you’re going to write an Article over how to rebuild a 350 Chevy engine and put links in the Resource Box pointing to your Acai Berry site, well friend, they’re going to start rejecting your articles. Don’t laugh, there are many so called “Guru’s” that claim you don’t need relevant links to rank pages….really….

How This May Affect EzineArticles

As I said before, I believe many of the changes at these Content sites are knee jerk at best. They’re scrambling around to try and please Google and end up shooting themselves in the foot.

I’m not sure if the folks at EZA really believe that a 400 word minimum and some relevancy for resource boxes will please G. EZA claims it’s going to give its editors more time to look over articles. They’ve warned us it may take twice as long for articles to be accepted or rejected. My last few articles after the Slap took nearly two weeks to be approved.

Will Internet Marketers stay with EzineArticles? I don’t think so. At least not in the huge numbers they have in the past. I myself stopped writing for EzineArticles for nearly a year because their Editors were getting ridiculous on what they would reject an article for. Then the for about the last year, it seemed they got better and would accept well written articles in a timely fashion.

Are you willing to wait two or more weeks for your articles to be approved or denied?

Also, if they keep adding niches that are “oversaturated” in their opinion, will you still write articles for them?

Right now, they say they’re still getting over a million views per day. That’s pretty darn good. The month previous to the Google Slap, they had approximately 57 million views.

For my money, there are other places where I can write an article and get the benefit of a backlink quicker than at EZA. Hubpages, InfoBarrel, Snipsley and others all offer quicker approvals and they can be ranked just as fast as a EZA article, sometimes faster!

So, is it worth my time to submit an article that may not be accepted for up to two weeks or more? Remember, this is an article with increased requirements. If you’re just starting out, then you may have time for all the hoops. But I can get double or even triple the amount of quality backlinks from other places in the same amount of time that it will take me to write, and hopefully get approved, an article submitted to EZA.

I’m thinking that EZA will see a huge decrease in articles submitted to them. At least article that have a good Adsense CPC.  Of course, since they already have hundreds of thousands indexed articles on high paying CPC niches, I’m sure they’re not that worried about it…yet.

I’m sure that their highest earning Adsense dollars are from pages that have a high number of Internet Marketers trying to rank for those keywords also. So if all the Affiliate Marketers leave and go to alternate sites for their links, can EZA continue to make bank with articles on how to bake cookies or 10 tips for watching your grass grow? Me thinks not. It will be interesting to watch the events unfold!

Personally, if they want to continue to attract quality writers, I think they should develop a profit sharing plan similar to Snipsley or Hubpages. But I realize they’re not going to do that while the hundreds of thousands of article they already have are making them cold hard cash!

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No one is real sure what the deal was/is with Google. Some speculation was that it was a PR update, some said that Google is changing its algorythm while some others said they were changing their inbound link filters as it apply’s to your inbound links.

I have no idea what caused it. I had many sites bouncing around a few days. The good news is that most of them have their rankings back where they were before this whole shake up started. This isn’t the first time that a big movement in the Google SERPS has happened and it likely won’t be the last.

I had a few keywords ranking on other sites that lost their rankings altogether. These weren’t major keywords that the sites were ranking for, but they did bring in a little traffic. I’m not sure why these keywords lost their rankings, so the theory about changing filters may have some legs.

Whatever the cause, don’t panic when this happens. Most of you who’ve been around a while have learned to live with it. Judging by my email, some of you new people have been freaking out about it. Just relax and the let the little ball on the Roulette Wheel come to a stop…errr…I mean…just relax and let your sites settle down in the SERPS before you go bonkers.

Either way, whether your rankings returned or if you discovered you previously high ranking keyword is not on Page 6 of Google’s SERPS, it brings me to a very important tip for all affiliate marketers. If you haven’t diversified, do it now. I know how tempting it is to keep working on a site that is making you money. But if that site is your sole source of income, you could be living on shaky ground.

Work on getting your low paying sites up to being profitable. If you only have one or two sites, get more. Make sure you have sites in different niches. Ideally, you want your income spread over several sites in case one loses its rankings.

In fact, I’d say increasing the number of sites you have or making the ones you already have more profitable, is a great project to work on if your site has nose dived in the rankings!

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To be successful in affiliate marketing, you have to find a product that many people want. Not only that, you have to find one that they are likely to purchase over the Internet. Sure, a few people will buy a car or boat online, but not many. There are some products that people want to see, touch and evaluate in person before buying. You can’t do that online! Find a popular product that you believe in and then see if they have an affiliate program and find out the terms.

Start by making a list of the things you like and are passionate about. It has always been said that you can sell something you believe in. That’s true. It’s also true that it’s very hard to sell something you know nothing about or have no experience in. This is why it’s critical in finding something that you enjoy or are passionate about.

Both Yahoo and Google have sections where you can go and look to see what the most searched terms are for the previous week, month or year. This will tell you what people are searching for online. Google also has a section called “Hot Trends” that is updated throughout the day to show you the most searched for terms. This can be a huge benefit if you follow it over time.

The other section in Google you want to do research in is Google Trends. This tool will tell you how well the product you’re interested in has been searched for in the past. Google trends is a free tool and one you should not overlook. You want to see the line on the grapch either fairly steady across the graph or rising. A downward line on the graph tells you that interest in the product is tapering off.

The section you want to look for in Yahoo is Yahoo Buzz. This section tracks the most searched for terms of the previoius week or month. It will also tell you whether or not your term is on the rise or tapering off. Personally, I prefer Google Trends for seeing if the product is on fire or cooling off. To find it, go to buzzlog.buzz.yahoo.com. Play around with it a while to really find the best niche products that are hot.

Another excellent place to find hot selling products is ebay. Ebay has a section that will show you the most popular selling products. This can also give you ideas on what to sell on ebay and on the Internet as well. The section you want to look for is called Ebay Pulse. You can also drill down to find which specfic prodcuts are hot. For example, iPods are always hot on Ebay. But which color? Use Ebay Pulse to find which color or which model is hot.

Finding a hot selling product is not hard. You just have to know where to look in order to find them. Picking an affiliate product just because it has a high payout is a sure fire way to fail. Pick something you know about and then research it to see if there is a demand for it. This way you’ll have the confidence to stay the course until you see the fruits of your labor pay off.

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Yeah, for some of you BANS owners, it’s been a pretty tough last few months.

I’m knocking on wood here. If you remember right from my initial Build A Niche Store Review, my goal was to build 100 BANS sites. Now I’m thanking my lucky stars that I have AMADD (Affiliate Marketing Attention Deficit Disorder) and only made it to 30 sites before I lost focus and went off doing something else. So far none of my sites have been touched by either Google or eBay. I’ll give you my theories on why that is on down the page.

A Few Theories Why Google Is De-Indexing BANS sites.

I’ve been following a lot of the chatter on forums about this subject as well as receiving a lot of email. This is what I’ve figured out to this point. No one has 100% concrete proof why Google is de-indexing BANS sites. There are a few theories floating around.

1. The BANS program was being used by a lot of spammers. Many of these guys/gals were throwing up huge numbers of BANS sites on .info domains. They never bothered to change anything with the programs, their only concern was to get as many BANS sites up as they could, as cheaply as they could. This left a huge footprint for Google to follow.
2. Most of these same people never bothered to put any content on their sites. They were simply ebay sites with ebay auctions on them. This would be what Google calls a “thin affiliate” site. And we know what Google does with thin affiliate sites.
3. In order for Google to get all the spammy BANS sites, it had to take some legitimate sites along with them. It’s the shotgun approach. Use a huge pattern to make sure you get all of them. Try and limit the casualties but go forward knowing some innocent victims will be in the pattern.

My Theory On Why Google Hasn’t De-Indexed All BANS Sites

Even as far back as when I bought the Build A Niche Store program, there was talk about Google finding the footprint of all the standard BANS templates and possibly penalizing them. It seems this bird has come home to roost. From the start, here is what I did to try and make my BANS sites unique from all the other cookie cutter BANS sites.

• I changed up the CSS a little bit on every site. I made sections like the header and content fields larger and smaller.
• I changed the colors on every site.
• I changed the size of the headers on every site and used graphic headers.
• I DID NOT go out and start sending hundreds of backlinks to my sites. I built them up over time using blog carnivals, article submissions, reciprocal linking and adding one way permanent links.
• I added content to nearly every page plus I used a lot of graphics.
• I never put eBay auctions on my main page. I put content on the index page to make it look as much like a informative content site as I could. Just look at how many BANS sites have nothing more than auctions on their front page.
• On many of the domains that hosted my BANS sites, I added blogs, article directories and forums to many. (mostly just blogs that supported the main domain)
• I never put more than 2 BANS sites on one hosting account plus I paid extra for all sites to have a dedicated IP’s. I’ve read stories of people hosting all their BANS sites with one hosting company. Wow, I can’t fathom that idea. I’m just too paranoid I suppose.
• I only used dot com domains. Of course, these last two items is what I do for nearly all of my affiliate sites, not just for BANS. I want to make it as hard as possible for Google or any other search engine to spy on my websites.

Now, I’m not saying if you do these things that Google will not index your site. These are the things I did to every BANS site I had. I did these things from day one and as I said above, knock on wood, my sites haven’t been touched. In fact, many are still climbing the SERPS.

Is the Build A Niche Store Still Worth Buying?

I’ve had a few emails asking that question. Honestly, I’d say yes it is. But only if you intend to build sites that have a lot of content and you make them unique. If you’re plan is to buy it and throw up a bunch of BANS sites without adding any value to them, I think you’d be wasting your money. Google is on to you.

Alternatives to The Build A Niche Store program

If you’ve been reading this blog for more than a week or so, you know I’m impressed with the PHPBay plugin for WordPress. As I stated in my post Advanced Build A Niche Store Strategies, I’ve been using PHPBayand WordPress to make blogs and stores with eBay auctions. It seems every week that my PHPBay/WordPress stores outproduce my Build A Niche Store sites. Hey, it’s no secret that Google is crazy in love with WordPress blogs. Why not take advantage of that? Plus, to be honest, a WordPress blog and PHPBay combination site just looks much better than 99% of the BANS sites out there, mine included. (hey, maybe Google hates ugly sites?)

Whatever the real reason that Google is de-indexing or penalizing BANS sites, owners using this program need to proceed with caution. If you continue to make sites with BANS, then do everything in your power to make them unique and stand away from the crowd.

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Every blog or website you build should have a Privacy Policy and a Terms and Conditions or a Terms of Usage page.

Why?

Because not only is it good netiquette but it will also help you out with ranking in many of the Search engines. Yahoo and MSN are sticklers for a Privacy Policy and Terms page. I thought I had already put those pages up here, but apparently I overlooked them.

It’s been my experience that new blogs and websites will be indexed quicker and have a better chance of moving up the SERPS if they have both a Privacy Policy and Terms page. Especially when dealing with Yahoo and MSN.

If you run a PPC campaign, then a Privacy Policy and Terms page will give you a better quality score with Google. I ran experiments last year with a PPC campaign. I compared landing pages and sites with Privacy Policies and Terms pages against those without these pages. I was able to get better quality scores, and keep them, with the websites that had a Privacy Policy and Terms page versus those without.

They don’t have to be elaborate. In fact you can copy mine or you can go to Google and search for “Privacy Policy Example” and get all that you need.

If your blog or website doesn’t have these, now is the time to add them!

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The Affiliate Marketers Prayer

O Lord, you know I have a website that is small
and my traffic numbers are low
I ask for a little favor because this affiliate marketing is tough.
No money am I making and I have a Web Host that is slow.

O Lord I’ve tried Overstock, Wal-Mart, JC Whitney and Bass Pro
and a host of others that didn’t pay.
They all left me disappointed and flat broke
Oh, I almost forgot, I did make some money with Ebay

O Lord, just give me an Affiliate Manager that is honest
and the network is parasite free,
Where all my clicks are counted,
and my commissions come straight to me.

I’ve got the latest custom WordPress theme
I bought some those expensive custom graphics
I didn’t spam and I didn’t cheat
I even resisted trying some Black Hat tactics

My website is SEO Optimized and I’ve built backlinks galore
I’m waiting on traffic so I can head off to the bank
So if You decide to look down on me today,
I’d sure appreciate that #1 Google Rank

O Lord, if you don’t mind me asking one more thing
I’m grateful for the chances I’ve had and I really don’t mean to complain
But if You could see fit to give me favor
Could you Bless my PPC Campaign?

Okay Lord, soon I’ll be headed for my computer
to pull up my stats with Google Analytics
I’m hoping to see big numbers that translate into orders
Oh what is this I see? I’ve sold a dozen books and two hammocks!

Okay, there you go. I was feeling a little silly this morning. You have my 8th grade English Teacher to thank for that. She used to make us write poems all the time. I hated it and as you can tell, not very good. Besides, she never like my poems very much any how!

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I’d like to take this time between writing the big articles and ask my readers what they would like to know more about concerning affiliate marketing or Internet Marketing.

So if there’s been a question you need the answer to or you need some help to get over a hump, let me know, I’ll write a blog post or reply in the comments if I can help. Chances are if you’re having a problem or have a question, someone else is having it also.

Feel free to ask about any topic as long as it pertains to affiliate programs, affiliate marketing, internet marketing, search engine optimization, blogging or Adsense.

I’m no Guru, but I bet I can help most of you if you’ve reached a dead end. Just leave a comment and I’ll get started.

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Warning: The following method of link building (link laundering) is looked upon as either a Gray or Black Hat technique by many in the Internet World. I feel it’s my duty to educate my readers about these tactics so you’re aware of them if you ever see your competition using them against you.

Have you ever ran across sites that ranked higher than your site, but felt your site was much better, so you wondered how that could happen? Some of you may have actually used tools like SEO Quake or SEO for Firefox and found that those sites had more links to them than yours did.

“How could they be getting so many links when I’m busting my ass for a few links a month?” you might ask yourself

“My content is better, my on page SEO is better, site design is off the chart, I have more RSS subscribers, my domain is older plus I’m better looking than those guys” you may think to yourself

Come my friend, let me introduce you to the underworld of link laundering.

Let’s me start by saying that link laundering usually involves a network of sites or blogs that the Webmaster owns or has access to. It can be done without a network, but link laundering is easier in many regards if you own or control a network of blogs or websites.

Link laundering is a lot like money laundering. You take low quality, crappy links and turn them into high quality, relevant, one way anchored links pointing to your main site. In reality, you’re turning these low quality “questionable” links into high quality “trusted” links.

What many of you do not realize is that many of the “White Hat” bloggers and Website owners out there use this same technique to boost their rankings.

I’ve spent hours upon hours of following their foot prints to figure this out. Some hide it better than others, but with a little determination you can find out where your competition is really getting those high quality relevant links.

How Can a Website With Fewer Links Outrank My Site with Hundreds or Thousands of Links?

Let me sidetrack just a little bit here to explain why this happens. First off, we’re talking about Google here just to make things clear.

In a nutshell, Google looks at the links pointed at your website and gives these links a value. If you have thousands of links coming into your site but they are all links from low PR sites, they’re passing very little link value (juice) to your site.

Let’s say your competition only has a few dozen links coming into their site. However, unlike the links coming into your site, your competitor has links from Websites that have related content and these sites have high PR.

Google looks at this and decides that your competitors site should be ranked higher because he has links from “trusted” (high PR) sites that are related to his site. Their way of thinking is these other sites are “voting” that your competitor has much more relevant information for the chosen Keyword because of all these one way links with the keyword in the anchor.

There are other factors that determine how much “value” or “juice” links pass, but this should give you some idea of how Google looks at links and determine why one link pointing at a site is more valuable than another.

Now Back to Link Laundering

Imagine if you will, a Pyramid with 3 tiers. The bottom tier has 3 blocks, the middle has 2 blocks and finally at the very top is the King block!

Now also imagine each of those “blocks” as websites.

On the bottom tier, the 3 blocks represent disposable websites. These are your crappy throw away sites. If they get banned or de-indexed, no problem link launderers will get more. Many of these websites are free Blogger or WordPress sites.

The way link laundering works is that the Webmaster will go out and get thousands of crappy, low quality links pointing at these disposable sites. These links may be questionable but certainly nearly all will be low quality. Links from places such as Guestbooks, comments, directories, trackbacks, etc. are all pointing at these sites.

It’s pretty much certain these links will be obtained by spam. Black Hatters use many tools in farming these links. Scripts and programs are designed to search out these places and leave the Mobsters links.

Now the sites at the bottom of the Pyramid have thousands of low quality links pointing to them. This will give these sites some value in Google’s eyes due to the volume of links coming in, provided they’re not de-indexed or banned first!

What the Webmaster will do now in the link laundering process is add some content to these bottom tier websites and place one way, relevant links with anchor text, pointing at a site on the 2nd tier.

The 2nd Tier of the Link Laundering Pyramid

Now the 2nd tier of the Link Laundering Pyramid are sites that have a little more trust. These are sites that generally have a PR2 to PR4. These are your intermediate sites.

They’re the Wiseguys and Lieutenants of the Internet Mobster family.

They have more value than the lowly crappy sites below, but they aren’t near as valuable as the guy above them.

These sites “wash” the links and make them legitimate.

The first tier sites may have general topics. This makes it easier to link out to the 2nd tier blogs or websites.

The 2nd tier will consist of sites that are specific. This will give their outgoing links more link juice to the top tier blog or website.

The Big Kahuna or Numero Uno Mafiaoso

This is the block at the top of the Pyramid. This is where the laundered links end up after they have been filtered through the lower sites or “washed”.

This is the Webmasters money site. It’s the site they want ranked well and it’s why they go to all the trouble to use link laundering and increase their “trust” and rankings.

Wise Webmasters will also be sure to mix the links coming from their network with those from other sources to make it look more legitimate. This makes it harder for search engines like Google to figure out the network.

The Webmaster will also have many low quality links pointing at their Main site as well, but these links will be from legitimate sources and from “white hat” sites with low PR. This is to make the links seem more natural.

Another Twist on Link Laundering

Another technique some Webmasters will use in order to launder links or to boost the rankings of existing low quality links to their site is to send a lot of these easy to get, low quality and questionable links at pages that already link to them. In many instances, they do not own these sites.

By boosting the PR of these pages, the links on them pass more juice (value). Which helps the Webmaster’s Main site.

For example, let’s say that Bob’s Blog linked to you back in 2003 from a page in his blog. You go back to see Bob’s Blog but see that Bob hasn’t posted since 2005. It’s safe to say Bob isn’t blogging any longer and is probably on a Tropical beach somewhere enjoying his Internet loot…or sleeping at the bottom of the Bay with the fishies.

Anyhow, the Webmaster will start sending a lot of low quality links out to the page on Bob’s site that is linking to his site. If something bad happens and Bob’s site gets slapped, nadda problem. The Webmaster just lost a low quality link. However, more times than not, the PR of that page increases and sends more link juice to the Webmasters site.

This 2nd technique can be used in conjunction with traditional link laundering techniques or by itself.

In Summary

The link laundering techniques above are but two examples. There are many variations and I used the Pyramid as a simple example to help you see how it works. Many times a link laundering Pyramid will have a really wide base with dozens of blogs receiving low quality links. Also, in many instances, the blog may have 4 or even 5 tiers to really “wash” the links and turn them into sparkling “White” links.

“So Boss, whadoya wanna dooz wit all dem lousy links we havz in da warehouse?”

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These illusions are quickly shattered when they see their Adsense accounts with .05 and .20 cents per click and a CTR of 1%. It doesn’t take the newbie blogger long to realize that their dream of living of off Adsense income isn’t a reality.

Is Adsense Still a Good Choice For Monetizing Blogs?

The quick and easy answer is Yes and No. In order for Adsense to be a viable option to monetize a blog, you need large amounts of traffic. And not any old traffic will work!

Many bloggers love to talk about Social Media and they spend a good amount of time writing articles and submitting them to the popular Social Networks like Digg and StumbleUpon in order to bring the masses of Social Networkers to their site. While this may increase traffic to a blog, it rarely translates into clicks on their Adsense ads.

Why Social Traffic Isn’t Good For Adsense

If you’re one of these bloggers who’s chasing traffic from Social sites and still wondering why your Adsense account is empty, listen up, I’m fixing to let you in on a little secret.

Social traffic doesn’t convert for squat. Of course, you already knew that didn’t you!

Why?

Because people who use the Social networks are pretty ‘Net savvy and they don’t click ads. They read blogs more for entertainment purposes than they do for the informational value. Sure, they may read a post about whether or not Adsense is still a good choice for monetizing blogs, but if there’s an Ad block on how to monetize a blog with Adsense next to the post, they aren’t likely to click on it.

Another reason Adsense is a poor choice for Social blogs is because the Click Through Rate (CTR) will be in the dumps. This will cause  your Adsense ads to be Smart Priced.

This is how it works. Google Adsense works of off the principle that a targeted Internet searcher is more valuable to the advertisers than a browser just clicking around the Internet.

So when your Social Network browser comes to your site, Google does not consider this a targeted user. If the advertiser is paying $2 per click, and a Social Network user comes to your Social blog about making money on the Internet and actually does click on a Adsense ad, you’ll receive a lower per click price than if that user had went to Google and typed in “how to make money online” and came to your blog and clicked an Adsense ad about ‘how to make money online’. Google considers this targeted traffic and will pay you the most for this type of Internet users. 

Why Organic Traffic Pays Off With Adsense

Stop and think about this one for a minute.  When an Internet user is searching for some knowledge, they want it and they want it yesterday! Many of us will not stop searching the Internet until we find the useful information we need. We’ll click on this or that, we’re frantic searchers and we need that information!

Let’s say you’re bills are piling up because gas is at $4 a gallon and food prices are skyrocketing. You need some debt relief. So you go on over to Google and type in ‘debt relief’. You then click on the first result that promises you quick and painless debt relief. After you browse the site for a few minutes, you realize this site can not answer your questions and you’ll have to go elsewhere. There’s an Adsense ad block to the upper left with an add about instant debt relief. Hmmm, that’s just what you need right now, instant debt relief.

What do you do?

Click the Adsense ad promising instant debt relief or hit the back button a half dozen times to get back to the Google SERPS page?

Yeah, me too. I’ll hit the Adsense link every time if it will lead me to what I’m looking for.

And you know what?

The Webmaster or blog owner gets the maximum payout for your click because you found his site by searching for the term ‘debt relief’.

If I had gone to his site looking for ‘Ways To Make Money Online”and then clicked the same ad, chances are good he would not have received the maximum payout for that click. That’s why you’ll see some of your Adsense ads paying out .20 cents for one click and the next it gives you $2. It’s all about how the Internet user got to your site.

So What Type Of Blogs Are Best For Adsense?

It’s not really what type of blog is best for Adsense, the question should be “What type of traffic is best for Adsense?”

And that question is an easy one to answer. It’s organic search traffic. Plain and simple.

Now having said that, you’ll see that many of the so called Social media blogs do not rank well for anything of value.

Ever see John Chow or some of the other popular social bloggers rank in the top 10 for terms like “how to make money with Adsense?”No, you don’t. That’s one of the biggest reasons you don’t see Adsense on their sites. They can’t bring in the organic search traffic they need to convert browsers into ad clickers and their social traffic sure as hell won’t click the ads. So they end up with a crappy CTR and get Smart Priced. The few clicks they do get, Adsense pays out a few cents here and there. Then the Social bloggers will proclaim to the masses about how Adsense doesn’t work any longer!

Adsense Can Be a Steady Income Producer For Blogs and Websites That Pull In Organic Traffic

This is the real secret to Adsense and how to make it pay the most for every click. If you have a blog or website that ranks well for a number of keywords and your pages are optimized to bring in targeted search traffic, you’ll do well with Adsense.

Your blog doesn’t have to be a custom made WordPress blog nor does it have to be fancy. In fact, you can start with one of these Adsense optimized themes. It does have to be SEO optimized with lots of backlinks to rank well for your keywords.

Forget about the Social traffic and getting your post Dugg and Stumbled. Sure, it’s nice to see all that traffic, but why bother when you know it’s not going to convert plus it’s going to ruin your CTR. And to top it off, it will get you Smart Priced with Google Adsense.

Go after the money. And in this case, the money is in ranking well for your keywords and driving crowds of targeted organic search traffic to your blog or website.

Your blog or website should cover one subject, such as ‘debt relief’. Don’t try to make a blog or website cover everything under the sun. Each page of your website should have an article or post covering one keyword.

For example, if you had a blog over the main keyword of ‘debt relief’, then you’d probably want your interior pages targeting keywords such as ‘bankruptcy’, ‘debt consolidation’, ‘how to pay off your bills early’ or ‘debt consolidation loans’.

While you’re at it, make sure your blog or website is optimized for Adsense. Don’t cover every page in Adsense ads. The top paying ad block is normally a 350 block at the top. You might also want a Tower block in the sidebar, but that’s where I’d stop.

In the past, I put those little Adsense link blocks on my sites, but have always done poorly with them. I’d rather someone click on one of the Adsense ads in the body so I’ll make more money per click. That’s why I’ve started putting only two Adsense ads on my content sites. More ads normally dilute your per click payout.

To wrap this up, if you want to make money with Adsense, forget about those cool social blogs, go with a keyword targeted blog or website. SEO optimize it, build backlinks to make it rank well for your chosen keywords and then sit back and watch the Adsense money roll in. You can still monetize a blog with AdSense, you just have to go about it wisely.

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This post has been a long time in coming. I guess you could say that I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it no more.

I spent about an hour and a half this morning browsing the do-follow list and leaving comments on several blogs. So what’s the problem? Many of the comments sections on those blogs using the do-follow list still have the “nofollow” attribute.

What’s The Do-Follow List?

The do-follow list is a list of bloggers who have removed the “nofollow” attribute from their comments so that the links left by Commenters are “nofollow” and will be followed by Google.

I used the do-follow plugin briefly on this site, found that I didn’t like it and have since used the Top Commentator plugin to reward my regular commenters with a PR4 backlink.

Luckily I never submitted my blog to the do-follow list.

Bloggers Beware of The Do-Follow List

The problem with the do-follow list is that about 80% of the blogs listed on these list, and there are several, still have the nofollow attribute on their comments.

Now you can look at this several ways. Either they’re being completely dishonest by not using the do-follow plugin as they are advertising or they’re just naive.

For you bloggers who think you’re leaving all these wonderful comments and that Google is following your link back to your site, you’re dead wrong. You’re being taken advantage of by many bloggers on the do-follow list!

Most of you have no idea whether or not the bloggers on the do-follow list have actually taken the nofollow attribute off.

When I’m using the do-follow list, I use Firefox with the SEO extension. This allows me to see which links are nofollowed and which ones aren’t. On some blogs, you can also look at the source code, but trust me, the SEO extension for Firefox is quicker. Just make sure you activate it in your toolbar! It then will highlight in a redish pink color all links with the nofollow attribute. Pretty easy!

Also, if the blog you’re looking at is a Blogger blog, the comments are nofollow. You’ll find a whole bunch of Blogger blogs on the do-follow list that claim “You comment, I follow“. Either these bloggers are dishonest or they don’t understand what nofollow is. Out of the hundreds of Blogger blogs I’ve visited, I’ve only seen one or two that actually had the nofollow removed and they were custom sites with their own hosting. If Blogger is hosting the blog, the comments are nofollowed and your link will not be followed by Google. Don’t waste your time.

If these bloggers were on the up and up, they’d do several things.

1. Take down the “U Comment, I Follow” icon
2. Find all the do-follow list and have their blogs taken off. As a blog owner, it’s your responsibility to remove your blog from these list if you’re not going to follow the do-follow guidelines.
3. Or if they truly wanted commenters, they follow the guidelines for do-follow

No Keywords In The Name Field

Here’s another area that is getting me a little peeved lately. Several of these blogs have comment policies where they do not allow you to put a keyword in the Name field.

WTF difference does it matter what is in the name field? This tells me one thing. The blog owner wants the maximum benefit of my comments on his/her blog but doesn’t want me to have the maximum benefit of a followed link. Pretty damn stingy in my book!

Now having said that, let me say I do not blame them one bit if someone leaves a comment with a link back to a bad neighborhood such as drugs, porn, gambling or other bad neighborhood. You have to protect where you’re blog is linking too. I also do not object bloggers removing comments that do not add value to the blog post.

But refusing to allow a commenter to use a Keyword instead of their name is just plain selfish. The whole point of using the do-follow plugin is for bloggers and their readers to mutually benefit.

Another form of Dishonesty are the bloggers who advertise their comments are nofollowed but only a select few commenter’s links are nofollowed. These blogs may only remove the nofollow for their friends or for those who make “X” amount of comments. That’s all well and fine, but do not advertise that your comments are do-follow because they’re not!

If You’re Going To Comment, Do It Right!

Just this morning, I deleted 4 comments by someone who left comments on 4 of my blog post. His/her comments were “Thanks for sharing”.

That’s bullshit. If you’re going to leave a comment, leave one that benefits the blog. If you don’t have the time to leave a decent comment, don’t leave one or I’ll make the time to delete them on this blog and I don’t blame others for doing it.

When I comment, I try and leave at least two sentences, most of the times it’s more…a lot more if I get on a roll.

The Do-Follow Dishonest List

I’ve been seriously thinking of starting a Do-Follow Dishonest list. This list will comprise of blogs who advertise they use the do-follow plugin or otherwise have removed the nofollow attribute from their comments but who have not:

• removed the nofollow attribute from their comments
• removed their blog from Do-Follow list
• stopped displaying the “U Comment, I follow” icon or other forms of advertising that their comments are nofollowed.
• allowed all comments to be do-follow. If you advertise your comments are do-follow, then all comments should be do-followed, not just those of commenter who’ve made “X” amount of comments or those who you like. Otherwise stop advertising that your comments are do-follow. This is nothing more than scamming visitors into thinking your comments are do-follow!

Yeah, the more I think about it, the more I think this would be a good idea. What do you think?

If you use the do-follow list at all, you owe it to yourself to get Firefox and get the SEO extension so you’ll know who’s being honest and who’s not. Otherwise, you’re wasting your time if you’re posting comments for a link.

The whole point of the do-follow plugin and the do-follow list was so that Bloggers could help each other. Bloggers would use nofollow on their comments so they could attract visitors who would leave comments. The commentators would then get a link back to their website for leaving comments. Now some of these blogs have benefited due to the do-follow movement and do-follow list but refuse to play by the rules. I’m calling your guys/gals out right now.

Stop being dishonest with your visitors!

are do-follow bloggers dishonest

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Why should any of us care? Because we can learn an important lesson here!

What’s the lesson? The Lesson to be learned is; no matter what Google or any other “Authority” states, Googlebombing still works and works well!

What is Googlebombing?

Googlebombingis when a mass amount of people create links pointing to a website with a certain anchor text. In the above example, Anonymous‘s groups went around the web leaving links to the Church of Scientology. The anchor text of those links were either “dangerous cult” or “brainwashing cult”.

What this did was make the Church of Scientology‘s website rank high for the terms “dangerous cult” and “brainwashing cult”.

When I first read about this last week, the Church ranked #1 for “dangerous cult” and #3 for “brainwashing cult.” Just before writing this post, the Church has scored a #1 spot for “brainwashing cult”.

What Blog Owners and Webmaster Should Know

It was a few years or so ago when people Googlebombed the word “miserable failure” and “waffles”. What happened was that when someone went to Google and typed in “miserable failure”, George Bush’s profile on The White House website would show up or in the case of “waffles”, John Kerry’s campaign site would show up.

Google claimedthat they tweaked the algorithm that would prevent future Googlebombs from working. For one thing, the keyword was suppose to have appeared on the page that was being Googlebombed.

However, in the case with the Church, the word “Cult” doesn’t show up on that page or any other page on the website. I’m guessing Google will be tweaking that algorithm just a little bit more….;)

What this really shows us all is how important anchor text is to the links pointed at our websites and how important Google considers anchor text when ranking a site!

You should never forget either one of those facts!

Does this mean you should forget about on site SEOand concentrate on creating backlinks with relevant anchor text pointing at your website?

Certainly not.

Optimizing your site for Google rankings, as well as ranking for other search engines, is still important. It’s just not as important as creating relevant backlinks to your website!

Googlebombing

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It’s no secret that both Microsoft and Yahoo have been lagging way behind Google in the last several years. To make matter worse, both companies have been buying up smaller companiesin an attempt to give theirself an edge over Google, but to no avail.

It was nearly a year ago that I predicted that Microsoft would have to buy a major search engine company to stay competitive with Google. Looks like Mr. Gates was listening! (now share the wealth brother!)

Microsoft’s Buyout Details

Last year, Microsoft sent out feelers to Yahoo about a possible takeover. Yahoo’s board told Microsoft that they felt like the time was not “right” for a deal. Which probably means the Yahoo board wanted more time to figure out how to make more money off of Mr. Gates.

Now a year has past and Microsoft is standing at Yahoo’s door with the Armored car out front…actually that would be more like a Armored train!

Microsoft is offering to offer Yahoo shareholders $31 per share, which is an increase over what Yahoo share’s are currently going for.

Will the Merger Really Help Either Company?

Microsoft is looking at saving at least a Billion dollars by merging the two companies.

Personally, I don’t see that both companies combined can take on Google unless their development teams start getting creative. Google is where it’s at today because they offered innovative and creative products and services to Internet users while Microsoft and Yahoo have been offering the same old thing in a different wrapper.

Yahoo has been a little more successful against Google than Microsoft in the PPC arena, but both still come up short. Most of us who use PPC simply get better results and reach more user through Adwords than we do with Yahoo or MSN.

Only time will tell whether or not Yahoo accepts this offer. They’ve recently laid off over a 1000 employees so they are certainly feeling the heat. Microsoft may be just what Yahoo needs to keep its head above the water.

However, unless both start coming out with some innovative products and services, this takeover may be just the thing that drowns both companies (as far as search and Internet services are concerned). It will be a long hard climb to the top for a merged Microsoft/Yahoo and when they get there, they’ll have to deal with King G and he’s not going to give up easy.

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So if you’re trying to get a brand new page ranked #1 for a competitive keyword or keyword phrase, good luck, these onpage optimization tips for Google will help you a little, but you’re going to have to have patience for your page to move up Google SERPS…and a lot of backlinks!

One optimization tool you’ll need is a Keyword Density checker. If I’m really wanting high Keyword Density, I’ll use a shorter article. It’s just easier to have a higher density with smaller articles, say 250 to 400 words.

I try and keep my density to around 2 to 7%. That seems to work pretty well for me in most cases. Higher doesn’t always mean better!

With all things being equal (backlinks, age, etc) an optimized page will outrank a non-optimized page. Some Webmasters still do not understand this.

Before we get started, I’m assuming that you already know which keyword you want to rank high for. If not, here is a handy keyword tool or use a free keyword finder like Wordtracker or even Google’s Keyword Tool.  Don’t think you’re going to rank high for every keyword because it’s not going to happen. Just choose a few that are relevant to your website.

Google On Page Optimization Tips

Prioritize your keywords. As I said above, you’re not going to rank #1 for all keywords, so take the time to choose only the ones that really fit your page. Also, don’t necessarily think you should try and rank for the top keywords. They don’t always bring you the best buyers. I like to target one or two keywords per page. You may find that the 2nd, 3rd or 4th keyword for your niche actually converts better.

Where to put keywords on a page? I like them above the fold. I also try and keep them fairly close together, without going overboard.

Use Title tags and use them wisely. Title tags are part of the URL pointing back to your site. Title tags contain the anchor text that describes you site to the search engines. This is probably one of the most important aspects of SEO but many people fail to take advantage of it when linking to other sites or their internal pages. Simply using your keywords as anchor text for internal links can really give some of your pages the boost they need.

Adding a title tag is an URL address is easy in WordPress and other programs. In the pop up box where you’ll be pasting the URL, at the bottom there is a field titled “Title“. Just put your keyword in that field and Shazaaam! You have a properly formatted URL with anchor text!

Optimize your page Titles.Preferably your keyword will come first in the Title of your Page. For example, let’s say you have an article about hacking the Apple iPhone. Your keyword would be “hacking Apple iphone”. Your title then should be something like “Hacking Apples iPhone in 3 easy steps.” Some people will carry this further and use the keyword twice in a Title. I’ve had varying degrees of success at this so use it at your own risk.  ”Hacking Apple’s iPhone, Secrets To Hacking Apples iPhone in 3 Easy Steps.”

Use the <strong> tag. This use to be called the <b> bold tag, but it has been changed around. The same can also be said for the italics tag <em> and underline tag. These give your keywords a little more weight than plain text. Don’t get carried away with it though. There is a such thing as “Over Optimization” and the Search Engines will penalize you for this.

<H1> and <H2> Tags.I’ve ran A/B testing on several websites before in the same niche with nearly the same keyword and with similiar content. Everytime I’ve done this, the pages with <h1> and <h2> tags outranked those that weren’t optimized. That’s good enough for me.

Filenames. This is one area I think many Webmasters do not take advantage of and one I think is very important. If you’re adding images to a page, rename to the keyword you’re trying to rank for. For example, let’s stay with “Hacking the Apple iPhone.” If you had an image on that page, rename it to “hackingappleiphone.jpg or hacking-apple-iphone.jpg.” Not only will this help you with your on page optimization, you’ll also show up in Google Images in case someone searches there.

Alt tags. Just as important as renaming your image with your keyword, making sure you have an Alt tag describing the image is as important in my opinion. Again, I use my keywords as my descriptive alt tage. Also, WordPress makes this easy when inserting images into a post. Just fill out the “description” and “title” fields when you’re uploading images.

I personally feel like Anchor Text, <H1>’s and Filename/Alt tags are the most important onpage optimzation techniques you can use. The other techniques are just a little insurance!

There you go. On page optimization is pretty easy. You need to keep in mind what your keywords are for that page and plan the layout of your article just a little bit. The more you practice this the quicker it will come second nature!

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Like it or not, there are few steps we can take to protect our content from scrapers.

I’ve spent a good amount of time fighting for my content when I find it on other sites. Many of these sites use RSS feeds to steal content. Yeah, there are a few things you can do, but is it really worth all the time and trouble it will cost you?

Here’s what you need to know.

If you post to your blog often, Mr. Googlebot will visit often. Googlebot visits my site at least once every other day. There are times it comes around every day. It loves fresh content!

Having said that, I do have a few blogs that I let slide without making post to them over a several week span. Googlebot slowed visits to these blogs, to a point where it was only visiting every other week or so.

What does this have to do with Scraped content?

You’ve probably heard about Google and the duplicate content penalty…right? Many people will tell you not to worry about stolen content because you published your article first.

Well, that may or MAY NOT be true. If you publish a blog post and it is indexed in Google first, then you generally have nothing to worry about.

However, if you do publish it first and Googlebot doesn’t visit you often and in the meantime your content is scraped and Googlebot visits the scraper site before it visits your site, guess who has the duplicate content then?

How I’m Dealing With Scraped Content

Honestly, I’m not worrying about it much.

What I am doing though is letting the scrapers help me.

What I’ve done with sites that are being scraped but not being visited often by Googlebot is that I’m putting a lot of links in the blog post.

Normally when your content is scraped, it’s being done automatically. The program sucks up all you content on the page including links and sometimes even photo’s. Now when your content is spit out on the scraper sites, there are links in the content pointing back to your site (if you put them in). There are a few scraper programs that strip out links, but from what I’m seeing, most don’t.

And…if you put your affiliate program links in your content, you now have some affiliate links on those sites as well.

But Aren’t All Scraper Sites Low Quality Sites That Don’t Make It Into Google’s Index?

Ahhh…I see you’ve been listening to Google lately. This is what Google would love for you to believe. But it’s not true.

If you Google often, how long has it been since you’ve come across a scraper site that was listed high in the rankings? I found several this morning while searching for some Sports news!

Okay, okay. So all these sites aren’t going to be PR 6 and PR 7′s listed at the top of the SERPS. That’s okay. However you will get a little link love from many of these scraper sites, especially if they’ve been around a while.

I’ve proven this technique with two sites that I knew were getting scraped.

Sure, I’d love it if we didn’t have to deal with these kinds of issues, but we do. So we might as well try and make the best of it when it happens. I don’t know about you, but I’m too busy to spend hours on end hunting down my scraped content and threatning the site owner.

As the old saying goes, shut down 1 scraper site and 10 more takes it place!

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He emailed his site to me to take a look at it for him. It only took a second looking at the source to realize this guy had hired the wrong person to do SEO on their website. A quick look at his site with my Firefox SEO extension showed no backlinks.

The on-page SEO (or lack of) was horrible  plus his Copywriting was not optimized either. It was no wonder this site didn’t rank. This site was in a small niche and it shouldn’t have been that hard to rank well, especially over a year’s time.

If you have questions about your SEO expert, here are 7 signs that you’ve hired the wrong SEO expert or company.

1. Your Real Estate Agent website ranks #1 for Viagra in your City.
2.  There are no backlinks pointing to your website, but you find that your website has 367 outgoing links to Gambling and Porn sites.
3. When you pull up your SEO’s website, it says “This Account Has Been Suspended.”
4. Your think “BlackHat SEO” is the name of your SEO Company.
5. Your SEO expert’s idea of on-page optimization includes typing your keywords across the top of your index page, over and over and over.
6. More than 95% of people with Guestbooks on their websites know your URL.
7. Matt Cutt’s knows your URL by heart.

Okay, so that was a little tongue in cheek list, but there are a lot of people/companies out there who will take your money and do little to get your website ranked. There are also those who can actually damage your website. Buyer Beware when hiring an SEO Expert or SEO Company. Here’s a post about questions you should ask your potential SEO company.

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