Case Study : Design from scratch – The Top Note

Crafting and developing the branding for a client from scratch is always an exciting challenge here at DotImpact.  With every project we look to ensure the client’s full brief is met and the essence of their original idea becomes central to their website’s branding and identity.
We have recently created and launched a new website as well as branding for one of our clients, The Top Note – turning a basic initial concept into a fully functioning website, recognisable branding and integrated social media.
Background
The Top Note is built on the passions of its creator, Stuart Parkinson, for all things micro and macro-economics. Forging a successful career within the financial and strategist sector he has developed a passion for consumerism.
This has been teamed with a desire to create a thought-provoking blog-style resource to help consumers become ‘more price savvy’ and this has developed further into full scale investigation of price comparisons of large brands, particularly in relation to the supermarkets sector. The Top Note is a sophisticated blog which offers original articles and blog posts covering a wide range of different financial and consumer-focused topics.
Challenges
Stuart came to us with no online presence, platform or branding. Our expert team were able to work with him to visualise and create his brand, which was then interpreted onto the website, with many in depth discussions and conceptual drafts, focusing heavily on typography.
How we helped

• Complete brand generation from scratch with regular and consistent input from the client ensuring his satisfaction with the concept.
• Aiding in the alignment of the blogging site with the client’s overall brand vision
• Full website development, design and build, with a clear focus on creating a striking platform for readers, generating brand awareness and a simple, effective user experience
• Integrated social media, specifically Twitter and LinkedIn to enable the client to build brand awareness and give the client more opportunity to engage online.

Here’s what the client said:
“DotImpact were able to take my basic idea and transform it into much more. My idea became a fully-fledged brand and my website allows me to write and blog in the way I had planned on a much more professional-looking and appealing platform. I could not be more pleased with the results and thank DotImpact for all their input and commitment, especially during the early concept stages.”

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MACROMEDIA DREAMWEAVER EDITOR'S REVIEW

Macromedia Dreamweaver is one of the most popular web-design programs in the industry. It allows you to develop professional websites and its user-friendly interface, tools and features have made it the must-have package for web designers.

Dreamweaver uses both Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) and it has good code-editing support features that will help you to write the CSS and HTML. Alongside writing the code, you can use the visual layout tools to build your sites and make them look exceptional.

You can use plug-ins to place videos, music and other media into web pages. If you want a site that is easy to update, then you can embed a live stream of content by using RSS.

Pros: Dreamweaver 8 is easy to use and has lots of great new features. It allows you to use CSS and RSS to make your sites look better than ever.

Cons: Some users have reported a problem with the file-time stamp in Dreamweaver 8, which made it difficult to know when a file was last worked on. This was fixed with the 8.0.1 update though.

Conclusion: Using Macromedia Dreamweaver to create websites is much more fun than simply writing code from start to finish. Using its many tools and features will help you to create much more sophisticated pages too. Being able to add media and RSS feeds will make your sites stand out from more ‘flat’ ones that just provide a few words and pictures.

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Beginners - Tutorial Part 2

SEO Title Tag

The first and most important part of your on-page SEO is the title tag (<title></title>). Many people who outsource or create a site in a WYSIWYG editor completely forget about the last of the meta tags that still gives some quality ranking love from search engines.
The benefits of using optimized title tags are three fold:

1. A user searching for your keyword will see your site's link highlighted in the search engines if your page's title is the same as the phrase they searched for. This drastically increases click through and can even give you more traffic than those who rank above you if their title tags are not optimized.
2. Increase your rankings on the search engines.
3. Help the engines distinguish between pages that might look similar.

Higher Clickthrough Rates

Search engine optimization isn't just about showing up number one on search engines. Rather, it's about getting the all the traffic that you deserve from the search engines. If you rank #6 for "free hats" and you and your competitors forget to include that in the page's title tag, chances are, the person doing the search won't see much difference between your site and the others.
However, if you were to change your website's title text to target your most important keyword phrase "free hats", then when someone completes the search for "free hats", they'd see your site show up in bold. This technique will greatly increase the user's desire to view your site first, as your site looks much more relevant and targeted.

Better Rankings

All too often, people believe that the title tag is a place to list the business and domain name of the website. This is wrong and is wasting one of the easiest ways you can tell the search engines what the a page is about and how they should categorize it. While humans might not notice the title tag, search engines certainly do.
Use this opportunity to choose the most important keyword that you want to go after and get the free ranking boost that so many websites are missing out on. If you still want to include your domain or name of the company, do it after your keyword, followed by a dash (e.g. "free hats - hatsemporium.com") to show that your keyword is the most important.

Help the Engines Distinguish your Pages

It's not easy being a search engine. They crawl the web day and night, taking the information from the web and trying to categorize it in a useful manner so that users can find what they're looking for. Make their job easier. Post clearly what the topic of each page is, using title tags, and help the search engine to distinguish one page from another.
You may have two pages that are quite similar and it may require a little thought to point out how they different. Don't make the search engines figure out for themselves because they might make a mistake. Instead, make the decision for them. Spell the differences out for them and help your rankings in the process. This is just one strategy in avoiding the duplicate content penalty, which we'll be getting into greater depth later.

SEO Header and Bold Tags

Although the internet has changed a great deal in the last ten years, one thing that has remained status quo is the way that webmasters designate topics and things of importance. Topics of a page are often set with header tags <h1> though <h6>, while important items are put in bold to make sure that the user noticed them. However, not just the user notices these attention-grabbing tags. Search engines also use these as primary indicators of what a page is about and what content its creator thought was most important.

Header Tags - <h1> through <h6>

Header tags are a great way to help boost your search engine rankings. If you're creating a page about "free hats" and would like to rank for it, there's nothing shady at all about including a nice big <h1>Free Hats</h1> at the top of the page to make sure your users and the search engines know what your page's subject is. However, as with other search engine strategies, it is important not to stuff too many keywords into these tags. A good rule of thumb is to include no more than 3 or 4 <h1> tags per page, and always have at least a paragraph or two of text between your header tags.
A page that consists entirely of header tags looks pretty spammy to search engines, and it isn't very useful to your visitors.

Bold, Italic, and Emphasis

When you've used up your quota of header tags on the page, don't stress out. There are still plenty of tools to target your keywords with. When mentioning your keywords throughout the page, it's helpful to put them into italics, bold, or emphasis (<em>) to make sure the search engines know that these words are important. 
Often people use a lot of flash animations and CSS <span> tags to format text, but search engines don't have an easy way of determining either of these. Why make the search engines work harder than they need to? Use these basic HTML tags and help yourself (and the engines) out!

SEO Keyword Use

So you've researched which keywords you want to target, but just putting the keywords in your <title> and <h1> tags is not enough. If you stop there, you're not going to be able to cover all the bases or pull in as much search traffic as you could. When doing on-page optimization for your selected keywords, there are three things to take into consideration:

1. Keywords Density - How many times is your keyword mentioned on your site? If it's too much, you'll look like a spammer; if it's too little, you won't look like a relevant match and the search engines won't consider your site.
2. Keyword Variation - Altering versions of your keywords will help you capture hidden search engine traffic.
3. Similar Keywords - These are closely related topics to your keywords that will aide the search engines in correctly categorizing your traffic.

Keyword Density

Although some SEOs will talk about aiming for an exact proportion (e.g. the number of times your keyword appears divided by the total number of words on the page), it's a little too much work for something that will take care of itself as long as you know how to write well! Use your keyword frequently on your site, but not so much that it makes the page look weird or a sentence sound awkward. If you just use the keyword once at the top of the page and then reference the keyword as "it", for the rest of the article, you'll definitely be using it too little.
If you want some numbers, you should use your keyword at least three times on the page. This does not include keyword variations.

Keyword Variations

You may have found a couple of high traffic keywords using a keyword research tool, but those estimates often group similar keywords, alternate spellings, and plurals into a single word. Valuable traffic is hidden when using those tools. This hidden traffic lies in all the subtle variations of your keyword that someone may search for.

• Plurals - The easiest way to optimize your site is to include the plural version of your keyword at least a couple of times on your page. Nearly every keyword can do this (instead of "free hat", try "free hats").
• Misspellings - Although it may make your site look a little unprofessional, including a very common misspelling of your keywrod is one of the easiest ways to rank #1 for that exact spelling and get some free traffic. This is one of the fun things to experiment with after you've optimized the rest of your site.
• Acronyms - If your keyword is an acronym like SEO, write out the words completely (Search Engine Optimization) so that you can target those people who do not know the acronym.

Similar Keywords

If you're making a page to target "big hats," consider changing up the adjective "big" to its synonyms, like "huge," "giant," "large," "humongous," or "oversized." You can also use the names of specific words that relate to "big hats," like "cowboy hat" and "sombrero." By using this tactic, you give yourself a chance to rank for those similar keywords, plus you let the search engines know more about your page and what it's about. The more a search engine knows about your page, the better off you're going to be!

SEO Internal Linking Structure

The honest fact is, if company owners knew how important that the internal linking structure of a site was to a site's performance on the search engines, they'd have multiple dedicated staff working just to make sure they had it optimized 100%. This topic is a little advanced, but it's helpful to break the inner linking structure down into three parts:

1. Page depth
2. Quantity of Internal Links
3. Quality of Internal Links

Page Depth

Page depth refers to the number of required clicks to get to a page from the homepage. Pages that are available in one click are deemed more important than those that are nearly hidden and require more than 3 clicks to reach. It might seem a little strange, but if you can visualize your website in a tree graph, you will easily notice why certain pages are performing poorly in the search engines.
By organizing your site in this format, you can see which pages are getting a lot of page depth love and which are hurting. If you have a lot of worthless pages and few important product pages, you might take this opportunity to restructure your site.

Quantity of Internal Links

This point is simple; the more internal links you have that point to a certain page, the more important search engines believe that page to be. A common page that ranks well on almost every site is the homepage. This point will continue to be true for many years because nearly every webmaster programs their site so that every page has a link back to the homepage.
So how do make your other pages benefit from this? Does that mean you should have every page on your site include a link to EVERY SINGLE PAGE in your site? No. That's an obvious red flag to search engines, and you'll be seen as a spammer if your site has a couple of paragraphs and then 500 links to every other page on your site.
A better strategy would to have a "Top Products" section that includes a link to pages you want to receive the most link love. Another strategy is to have a link for each of the major areas of your site. This will help give those areas a lot of link love, and in turn, they'll be able to get more link love to the pages contained within them.

Quality of Internal Links

Just including a bunch of internal links to an important page is not enough; they also need to be high quality links. For your most important pages, make sure the links they receive have as many of the following criterion as possible:

1. Anchor Text - If you're targeting a certain keyword(or keywords) make sure the internal links have the keyword in the anchor text. Also, bonus points for using slightly altered anchor text throughout your site.
2. Link Position - The higher a link occurs in the HTML, the better. If you link to "cowboy hats" at the top of the page, but "sombreros" towards the bottom of the page, search engines are going to view the link to "cowboy hats" as more valuable than the link to "sombreros."
3. Link Zone - The best scenario for link love is to link from one page to a highly-related page. The closer the subjects of each are in topic, the higher the amount of link love that will be transferred. For example, it is better to link form a page about "cowboy boots" to a page about "cowboy hats" than it is to link from a page about "tacos" to a page about "cowboy hats." This doesn't mean you shouldn't include links on pages that are different, but just keep in mind that the link love will not be as strong as it could be.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Beginners - Tutorial Part 1

What SEO Is

Search Engine Optimization refers to the collection of techniques and practices that allow a site to get more traffic from search engines (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft). SEO can be divided into two main areas: off-page SEO (work that takes place separate from the website) and on-page SEO (website changes to make your website rank better). This tutorial will cover both areas in detail! Remember, a website is not fully optimized for search engines unless it employs both on and off-page SEO.

What SEO Is Not

SEO is not purchasing the number #1 sponsored link through Google Adwords and proclaiming that you have a #1 ranking on Google. Purchasing paid placements on search engines is a type of Search Engine Marketing (SEM), and is not covered in this tutorial.
SEO is not ranking #1 for your company's name. If you're reading this tutorial, you probably already know that ranking for popular terms is darn near impossible, but specific terms, such as a company name, is a freebie. The search engines usually are smart enough to award you that rank by default (unless you are being penalized).

Who Uses SEO

If a website is currently ranked #10 on Google for the search phrase, "how to make egg rolls," but wants to rise to #1, this websites needs to consider SEO. Because search engines have become more and more popular on the web, nearly anyone trying to get seen on the web can benefit from a little SEO loving.

Keyword Research

Before you can start optimizing your site for the search engines, you must first know which terms you want to target. A good start would be to choose 3 or 4 keywords you would like your website to rank well for. With these keywords in your mind you can then set a goal to rank in the top 10 results on Google for each of them (we refer to Google because if you can rank well there, you'll rank well on the other search engines). These keywords can be either broad or specific, but you'll want to study our list of pros and cons of each before choosing.

Broad Keywords

A broad keyword is one that many people search for, because they may only have a vague idea of what they're looking for. Broad keywords tend to be very short and aren't very specific (e.g. "shoes" or "sports"). These keywords are difficult to rank #1 for because so many other websites might have an article or two that mention shoes. However, if you can rank well for a broad keyword, you will be receiving a great deal of traffic. 
Summary: Hard to rank for, but worth it in the long run. We recommend that beginners only choose a broad keyword if their industries are not very competitive.

Specific Keywords

A specific keyword is something that contains many adjectives or words that make the search very targeted. The people doing these types of searches know exactly what they want (e.g. "used black high heel shoes"). These keywords are much less competitive and are easier to rank for on search engines. The downside is that they receive a great deal less volume of searches per month. In terms of traffic, you will need to have several #1 rankings for specific keywords to equal one #1 ranking broad keyword.
Summary: Easier to rank for and it's highly targeted traffic. The only downside is that the number of visitors you will receive is relatively low.

Unique or Branded Keywords

These are the words that are specific to only your company. They are one of the most easiest ways to get traffic. However, some companies will release a new product, with a unique name, and then forget to optimize for that keyword on their website. Their SEO savvy competitors can then pick up the slack and take over the top rankings for these terms. If you have a popular brand or product, make sure that you have optimized for these freebie keywords.

Keyword Research Tools

Keyword research tools are 2 parts voodoo magic and 1 part hard statistic. This is partly due to Google not releasing actual numbers and partly due to overeager SEO Tool developers trying to sell their products. Because there is such a sizable uncertainty in all keyword research tools, it is best to use as many different sources as you can,. Even with multiple sources, you should only take the information you gather as a recommendation, rather than a fact.
Yahoo has been releasing their keyword search information for years, and many tools are based off of this specific data. We've collected a wide variety of helpful tools that will give you a general idea of which keywords you should target when making and optimizing your websites.

Picking a Short List

To put the optimizing tactics that we teach to good use, we recommend that you try to target no more than 2 or 3 keyword phrases per page. A common mistake by many SEO beginners is to stuff 500 different keywords on one page and wait for the #1 rankings to roll in. That might have worked 10 years ago, but the algorithms that search engines use these days are much more sophisticated and are not tricked by this. That's why it's best to start small, and be concise with the keywords that you choose. New sites in particular will find it nearly impossible to rank well for many keyword phrases upon first starting out.

What is PageRank?

PageRank is a ranking system that previously was the foundation of the infamous search engine, Google. When search engines were first developed, they ranked all websites equally and would return results based only on the content and meta tags the pages contained. At the time, however, the PageRank system would revolutionize search engine rankings by including one key factor: a site's authority.
To determine how important, or authoritative, a site was Google chose several big sites, such as cnn.com, dmoz.org, and espn.com. These sites were clear authorities, and Google figured that if these websites chose to link to another site (let's say site B), then site B would receive a piece of that site's authority. If site B were to link to another site (how about C), then site C would also receive a piece of authority, though much smaller.
Using this system of passing authority, Google would then count up how much authority a site had and give it a PageRank from 0 to 10. The PageRank system has become more complicated since then, but this is how it all started.

What's my PageRank?

If you would like to see what PageRank your site has or other sites have, install Google's Toolbar. Google has made a small green bar that starts at 0 page rank (a blank bar) all the way up to 10 (a full green bar, which is 100% authoritative). It should be noted that the PageRank shown in the toolbar is an estimate released by Google, and it is only updated every 3 months or so.

Who Uses PageRank?

When PageRank first came out, only Google was using the technology, but as other search engines have seen how much it improved Google's accuracy, nearly every search engine has added the PageRank system in to be at least part of their algorithm. In the past, while many of the search engines were still working on adding PageRank to their search algorithm, some couldn't wait to make their own and instead signed deals with Google to have them power their results (Yahoo did this for quite some time).
Apart from search engines, SEOs (Search Engine Optimization specialists), link buyers, webmasters, marketers, and anyone interested in a site's value will often look to the Google PageRank when trying to quickly determine the importance of a site.

How Important is PageRank?

When Google was in its childhood, PageRank was the single most important factor for ranking well. However, as soon as the SEO community caught on to this, there was a great deal of people who found ways to artificially boost their clients' PageRank. Those sites became more authoritative than Google thought they should be. Since then, Google and other search engines have constantly refined how important PageRank is, and its importance has definitely declined through the years.
One tactic Google uses is to update Google Toolbar PageRank values four times a year instead of every week, making it difficult for SEOs to know a site's real PageRank. Another tactic is to prevent a site that has been known to sell links from passing any of its PageRank (authority) on to sites that it links to. However, Google can't use that tactic too much because then they run the risk of preventing good sites from being ranked as they should be.
This is a battle between Google and SEOs that will not be ending anytime soon!

Where do I Get PageRank for my Site?

Now we've come to the part where you actually have to do work! It's tough, but getting a high PageRank for your site should definitely be part of your longterm SEO strategy.
The only way to get PageRank is to get a link from a site that already has PageRank. This means that getting a ton of links from PageRank 0 sites will not help your score. However, a single link from a site with a PageRank 6 can immediately boost your site to a PageRank 5 if the site is trusted by Google and is not linking to a massive amount of other sites.
The process of increasing your PageRank is directly tied to link acquisition. Link acquisition is getting links from other sites, be it via natural or through link purchasing. We cover both of these topics in greater detail, and you should read each lesson to learn more about the benefits and drawbacks of each.

Final Thoughts: PageRank

Although not nearly as important as it used to be, PageRank can still be the deciding factor that bumps your site to the top of the search engines. Not only that, but it is also a good indicator of which sites you should spend your most time trying to get links from. Sites with a PageRank 0 are either being punished by Google, or just have an authority of zero, nada, zilch, bupkis, and generally not worth your time. 

 Post Continue in Next post Part 2 Click Here To Read it.

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5 Tips On Using Google AdSense To Make You Money

 
Google AdSense can be an absolute goldmine for anyone who is willing to invest some time in learning how to use it effectively. A lot of people who start using Google AdSense tend to get turned off by it within the first couple of months because they just don’t seem to be making the money that they had expected.
Arm yourself against making the typical newbie mistakes and read our tips below so that you’ll know just how you can make some good cash off of AdSense.

1. Where Does AdSense Make Sense?

Perhaps the biggest mistake that those who use AdSense make is that they throw ads on every type of website imaginable. Don’t waste your time, effort and ads on sites that won’t be bringing in the cash.
Let’s take a tech info website for example. If you run a site that provides high level tech advice, then there’s a very low chance that anyone visiting your site will bother with your AdSense ads. Why? Because these people just don’t generally click on those types of ads. They know about AdSense, and they didn’t come to your website for anything but the information written on your site. They want answers to a problem, and then they want to get out.
Let’s say you have a website that’s more geared towards sales, however. This would be a better type of site to have ads on as people will be far more likely to click on the advertisements you put up.
It may take a bit of trial and error since some niches tend to do better than others when it comes to these types of ads, but generally speaking, if your blog or website is about selling things, then AdSense will work better for you.

2. “SmartPricing:” Anything But Smart

Whenever possible, you have to avoid Google’s “SmartPricing” scheme. With SmartPricing, Google gives advertisers a discount based on how popular or “valuable” your website is. They tend to base this on your site’s click through ratio.
So if your website has a high click through ratio, then the perceived value of your site is high so then the cost per ad click is higher. If your click through ratio is low, however, the value of your site is “low” so you get less money per click. The difference between a SmartPriced site and a non-SmartPriced site can be anywhere from a couple cents to several dollars in difference.

One way to avoid this is to post your AdSense ads only on your older posts. Why? Because anyone who regularly visits your site isn’t going to click on your ads. If you post them on your older posts however, you’ll be able to possibly keep your click through ratio pretty high. There are a lot of resources out there about how you can change the coding of your website or blog to keep your ads only on your older posts.
Another way to avoid the dreaded SmartPricing is to display your ads to those who have landed on your page through a search engine only. You can again tailor your blog using the “function” file to change where the ads are displayed.

3. Choose The Best Keywords

Google is all about keywords, so in order to make the biggest profit you need to choose the best CPC keywords out there. You can use a number of great tools out there to help identify what the high paying keywords for your niche are, and there are several lists supplied for free, such as www.rumler.com.
Keywords also determine what kind of ads are going to show up on your website or blog. Nothing’s worse than visiting a website that’s cluttered with ads that don’t even make sense. Target your keywords so that you’ll be able to “influence” what types of ads will show up on your blog or site. Make sure that these keywords are on your website or blog entry, but BE CAREFUL. If the keyword density is too high, you WILL be penalized by Google and can even be tossed out of their AdSense program.
TIP: Read Google’s terms of service. Once you’re out of the program, you’re pretty much out for good. Follow the terms of service, stay in their good graces, and write great content so you’ll continue to get visitors who’ll click on your ads.

4. Choose Big Ads

AdSense advertisements come in a variety of formats, so you can tailor the formats to see which works best with your blog. Having an advertisement that looks good on your blog or site is important, but keep this in mind: the large 336×280 rectangle sized advertisements has long proven to give the best payout. Maybe this is because the ad is right in any visitors face, or maybe it’s because that size can display video ads (which are increasing in popularity). Either way, it may be a good idea to start out with an ad around that size.

5. Monitor Your Success

No matter what you do with your blog or website, you need to keep track of how successful your ads are doing. If you don’t monitor your ads, then you will ultimately fail. You’ll be able to pin point which ads work, which don’t, and over time you may discover that certain ads work best at certain times throughout the year while others work best at other times.
One of the best things that we can suggest is that you look at your top 1/5 of pages, and then you take a look at your bottom 1/5 of pages. Why are the top 1/5 of pages making more money? What are you doing right? Try to take what seems to be working with the top 1/5 of your pages and then incorporate those ideas and methods into the bottom 1/5.
You’ll also be able to quickly see whether or not your chosen keywords are making money. If your keywords aren’t working, change them up! You should always do a top keyword run at least once a week to make sure that your site is up to date and current.

How to Make Money With Google Adsense | Tips On How to Get Started and Setting Up your Adsense Account

I became an Adsense publisher in April of 2005 when Google’s Adsense was just 2 years old from being launched.
Adsense is definitely one of the hottest ways to earn passive income of the century. All a person needs to do is to create an AdSense account. Build a website with unique and original contents. It is so effective that not only individuals but businesses have started using GoogleAds for passive income as well. Before we discuss tips and tricks on how you can make the most of AdSense, let’s read the answer to a very important question.
What do the terms residual income and passive income imply?
The use of the word, passive does not mean that you will have to do entirely nothing to earn regular income. Rather it means that the amount of resources you spend on an activity is very little in comparison to the revenue it generates. For example, after posting an interesting/controversial/informative article, you might continue to receive visitors on your blog for more than a year. Remember, some topics provide more passive incomes than others. For example a fashion blog will be able to generate less passive income because of the rapid changes in styles. A fashion blogger will have to continuously have to update his/her blog to keep readers abreast with the latest developments in the world of style. On the other hand, blogs and websites on relatively stable subjects such as education, health and relationships are more likely to generate more passive income because of their evergreen nature. There are many issues that people discuss again and again and information related to which remains the same. Hence, readers may continue to come on a certain blogpost related to for years.
On the other hand, the term residual income refers to the fact that AdSense is not your primary source of income. In fact, it is a fraction of the income you derive from your online activities. For example, a blog that discusses nail art and simultaneously sells nail art supplies to its readers is likely to make AdSense display advertisements related to the subject. Hence, the blogger will have to streams of income – one from the income of the nail art supplies and the other from AdSense. Since, revenue generated from AdSense will only be a fraction of the revenue from the sale of the nail art it has been termed residual income.
How to Use AdSense in an Effective Way. Let’s look at the Holistic Approach
If you are planning to use AdSense as one of the sources of income, there are a few tips you could use to make your endeavors more effective.
1. Number of Websites/Blogs and their Genres
There are two extreme ways of earning with GoogleAds. Earn $100 with 1 blog or earn $20 from 5 blogs each. When it comes to choosing between the two, we recall the old adage; don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Yes, diversification is the key to success when it comes to earning residual income through AdSense.
Following are some of the benefits of diversification.
a. Having more than one blog/website will allow you to cover a wider range of topics. If you decide to run three blogs at a time, you may cover very distant genres of entrees such as health, fashion and travel. This will help you cover three unique sets of consumer markets, news items and products.
b. Some genres are better more effective at generating passive income than others. As discussed above, it is a great idea to invest resources in at least one website/blog that is sure to generate a small but steady stream of visitors and thus passive revenue. The other blogs/websites may be on topics that require regular updates.
2. Attraction Marketing to Increase your Website Traffic and build your list!
Attactraction marketing is a technique that’s used not only by those who sell products but also who help those who sell products. This is true for blogs/websites that provide visitors with information or free online services. A few examples of such websites that cater free email services, provide news updates and make downloadable content available for free.
Regardless of the revenue from GoogleAds being residual or not, it is imperative that you increase the traffic to your websites and blogs. The more people will visit your blog/website, the higher the number of clicks will be on GoogleAds (even if the percentage remains the same).
3. Update your Contents on a regular basis!
It is true that the older articles get, the more they are shared among readers and the stronger their presence on their internet grows. And the stronger its presence is, the more people visit it and the more revenue GoogleAds placed next to it earn. However, this situation is applicable to articles that have the potential to appeal to readers over a long period of time. A few categories such as health, education and relationships are better able to retain the longevity of their articles. Others however serve readers best with fresh content.
Hence, to be able to generate lots of traffic and remain in Google’s ‘good’ books, make sure that you continuously update your blogs/websites with the latest info on the topics the platforms are about.
4. Positioning AdSense
Perhaps the most important thing to do is to place GoogleAds on your website in a highly effective way.
There are three things that you must keep in mind when configuring the settings.
a. Size
The basic rule that you must follow when placing ads on your website/blog is that of camouflage. The aim of doing so isn’t to hide the advertisement but to make it look like a part of the website itself. Although doing so entirely isn’t possible, your effort is bound to cause a positive change and make the advertisement more in sync with the rest of the website.
GoogleAds come in three different sizes:
i. Large rectangle –336×280
ii. Medium rectangle – 300×250
iii. Wide skyscraper – 160×600
Choose the size that suits your blog/website best. One good way of figuring out the right size is to consider the dimensions of other graphics/tables that are present on your site. Also keep in mind the website’s template. The greater number of columns a website has, the lesser flexibility it will have for larger advertising boxes.
b. Color
Another factor that must be used to taken into consideration when placing ads on a site is its background color. You may employ one of the three techniques mentioned below to maximize the number of clicks GoogleAds on your website generate.
i. Blend – Choosing the color of the advertisement to be exactly that of website’s background will give it a very subtle attraction. It is best for visitors who are averse to advertisements.
ii. Complement – You may also choose one of the two or more colors that your website contains. For example if your blog is primarily blue with green accents, you may choose green as the color of the advertisement. This too will make it look like a part of the website and will appeal to a wide range of audience.
iii. Contrast – A rather wild but at times effective idea is to choose a color for the advertisement which is nowhere in the website. Doing so will make it very prominent. And if the advertisement is alluring enough, even the greatest skeptics will click on it.
c. Position
Yet another important factor that affects the probability of an advertisement getting clicked on is its positive relative to other content present on the site. While many experts suggest placing advertisements right at the top of blogs/websites, the rule isn’t applicable in very case. One relatively safe option is to place advertisements on the right hand side. Other than that, it is best that the psyche of the website’s visitors be kept in mind when position ads.
If the website talks about something serious such as health, it is preferable that the advertisement be placed at the bottom or the side of the website (these are just my recommendations because I also blog on health care office management). This way the website will get a chance to first build credibility with the visitors. On the other hand, if the website is relatively frivolous in nature, it is okay to position ads even right at the top.
5. Things to Avoid when Using AdSense
AdSense comes with a set of dos and don’ts. While religiously following the dos don’t forget the don’ts are almost equally important. One wrong move and your AdSense account can be frozen. Following are some of the most basic don’ts Google does not tolerate.
a. Clicking on Your own Website’s Ads
If you have been trying to act smart by clicking on your own website’s Google Ads, you are not only wasting your time but even jeopardizing your Google Ads account. Yes, Google clearly states in the guidelines it provides to those using AdSense that clicks ‘originating from your IP addresses or computers under your control’ on the ads is a violation of the terms and agreements you consented to. Hence, the violation of the agreement may lead to the termination of your AdSense account.
b. Asking Others to Click on GoogleAds
Yet another action that is prohibited by Google is to ‘request … end users to click on Ad’. Often bloggers request their fans to click on ads on their blog by clearly explaining their motive. Even if readers do fulfill such a request, their clicks will be considered invalid.
c. Placing Ads on Restricted Sites
Google forbids users from placing GoogleAds on restricted website such as those which contain adult content. Even if the clicks on such ads are valid, they are not going to earn you any revenue.
d. Publishing Competitors’ Advertisements
GoogleAds is not the only network of advertisements. Alternatives do exist such as Yahoo Publisher Network, Bidvertiser, Clicksor, InfoLinks and Project Wonder. It may occur to you that using more than one publishing networks may result in greater total revenue given the variety of ads the two or more than two networks will display on your website. However, such an arrangement does not. Even if smaller publishing networks may be okay with being on the same page with others, GoogleAds is not.

In SEO, The Best Technique Is No Technique!

As someone of Asian-American decent, I like so many of my peers grew up idolizing Bruce Lee. I remember spending my youth watching his movies, and I actually even trained in Shaolin Kempo and Tae Kwon Do for 8 years. So what does this have to do with SEO? Well the other day as I was watching one of Bruce Lee’s old movies in my spare time, I came across a clip that for whatever reason at the time reminded me of what is being touted by Google as the best “technique for SEO”. Here is the video clip of what I was talking about, can you catch the parallels between what Bruce is saying and today’s modern day SEO landscape?
Did you get it? At about the 0:23 mark Bruce’s teacher asks “What is the highest technique you hope to achieve?” to which he responds “To have no technique”, and interestingly enough this is one way that is actually a fairly effective strategy in your quest to gain search engine traffic. Let me explain.

Remember Google doesn’t want us to actively engage in manipulating search engine results. They tell us if we want search engine traffic, then all we have to do is focus on creating great content that people will want to share, and then the Google overlords will bless us with server melting traffic to our websites! So according to Google, the best SEO technique is to have no SEO technique! Welllllllllll yes and um no.

Of course at the heart of any good website is the creation of good content. You need to have content that engages your readers, and ideally you want to have lots of it. However for the most part I live in the real world where people don’t read stuff and say “OMG that was a great article, I’m now going to jump on my high PR blog and write an article about it and link to it”. This just doesn’t happen people, or if it does it is pretty rare. So what we have to do is create this content and then go out there and promote it, but promote it in the right way.

So I think probably the easiest example would be to use this blog. When I first started this blog, I absolutely did no linkbuilding. All I did was write, write, and write some more. Remember Google tells me all I have to do is “create great content” and then search traffic will be mine! However after writing about 45 articles or so for the site, I still had zero search traffic! I outlined the results in my article here, but basically at that point I threw in the towel and began linkbuilding.

So briefly after I “threw in the towel” on relying on content alone, I started to do a little bit of linkbuilding. Nothing too heavy, just a few high PR blog posts and some forum signatures on popular internet marketing forums I regularly post on (Warrior Forum + Black Hat World). However a little while after I started linkbuilding I got really busy with client obligations and I went back to focusing on only writing for this blog (no linkbuilding). I also did begin to utilize social media, and I would tweet on Twitter and post on Facebook occasionally some of the stuff that was being produced here.

After focusing on creating content and the occasional social media promotion, I did notice that traffic from search engines started to rise. Basically I would try to post once a day about things I thought my readers would find helpful, and then maybe tweet the link or post a link on Facebook. However it seems that with each passing day the search engines started giving me more love. Coincidence? Was it true that maybe the best technique was to have no technique? Well the jury is still out on that.

Some of you may be thinking “well you did start to use social media, so maybe Google is giving you love because of that”, well this could be true, but I have found in all of my tests that social media in itself does not rank a site. If you built a website and tried to purely rank it with social media, assuming that people that you reach via social media don’t begin linking to you from their own web properties, links from Twitter and Facebook in itself as of now is not enough to rank a site (someone please prove me wrong!).

So what should you take away from all this? Well I would say if you haven’t done so already, try to create an authority site in some evergreen niche and really just focus on writing for the site. Then set-up all the social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, and a YouTube channel. Write articles, tweet tweets, post to Facebook, create a YouTube video that links back to the site. Focus on banging out great content and using these social media platforms every now and then to promote it. Then in a little bit watch the search engine traffic rise. So maybe it’s true that the best technique is no technique (no active linkbuilding, only promotion), but the only way you’ll find out is if you actually give it a try! 

How to Register a Domain Name

Hey there future site owner, 
I'm going to clue you in on some tips most people don't absorb prior to registering a domain name. 
There have been a lot of changes on the web in recent years so make sure you read this entire page so you pick the ideal name for your website.
NOTE: If you already know about domain names and don't need any extra advice, go here to register. 
A domain name is the home of your website and often ends in extensions like .com, .net, .org, .info, .us, .biz, .tv and more. Today there are numerous extensions available, but .com is still the most popular by far.
Once you have registered your name, you will select a web host (2nd step).  The web host is the guts of any website because this is where you create and publish your pages, create a blog, create email addresses, add functionality and maintain your site.

STEPS TO REGISTERING A DOMAIN

Reserving a domain name is easy, inexpensive and only takes a few moments. The big name companies like Register.com and NetworkSolutions.com charge ridiculous prices such as $30-35/year for one domain name, and you get the same service at WebsitePalace.com.
It doesn't matter where you register your domain.  Almost every registrar provides the same services.
You can save a bundle at WebsitePalace.com, and you'll have access to free domain forwarding. (Forward any domain to any site for FREE!)

KEYWORD RICH DOMAINS

For search engine optimization (SEO) purposes, many experts recommend registering a domain with keywords you want to be found for. While this was a must years ago, it's not quite the necessity it once was.

In fact, there was a very big Google update in October 2012 called EMD (Exact Match Domain update) that targeted domain names that were only ranking because the name matched the targeted phrase.
That's not to say you shouldn't register a name that has the keywords you want to target, but don't expect to rank well just because you choose a keyword-rich name. Getting ranked well in Google is a very complex task. The domain is not as big of a factor as it used to be.

GOING FOR THE BRAND NAME

Some people prefer to go for a shorter, brandable domain that's easier to remember -- especially because so many "good" domains are taken these days.
So instead of registering a keyword-rich name like HealthAndWellness101.com, you would register a made-up name like Fitzee.com. Fitzee means absolutely nothing, but it's short, catchy and easy to remember.
Plus, it would look a lot better on a shirt, mug or hat than a 4-letter domain. :-)
I still think it's a good idea to aim for the keywords you want to target. Descriptive names can have advantages. For example, it automatically tells the potential visitor what the site is about.
Having said that, don't make your domain name so long and awkard that it's hard to read and remember. It's really about finding a balance. Also, don't be shy about bouncing ideas off your friends and family before registering.
Here's another tip. Write the name down to give you an idea of what it may look like on business cards, T-shirts and other printed materials.
Remember, your domain is a big part of your brand, so take your time coming up with the right name for your site