4 Steps to Increase Your Blog Traffic4 Steps to Increase Your Blog Traffic

One of the most common complaints that I hear from bloggers is the fact that no matter how hard they try, they can’t grow their blogs past 100 or so daily page vies. Those early days are indeed the hardest, because you need to put hard work in without the certainty of achieving results.

If you are in that same situation, here is a simple strategy that will certainly increase your blog traffic and make you break the 1,000 daily page views mark. In fact, the strategy could be used even if your are already over that number but have reached a traffic plateau lately.

Just make sure to execute the 4 steps as planned and to spend the two hours and a half every day (obviously if you have more time available you can expand the time spent on each of the four steps proportionally).

First Step: Killer Articles (1 hour per day)

Spend one hour brainstorming, researching and writing killer articles (also called linkbaits, pillar articles and so on).

Notice that your goal is to release one killer article every week. If that is not possible aim for one every 15 days. So the one hour that you will spend every day will be dedicated to the same piece. In other words, expect killers articles to take from 5 up to 10 hours of work.

If you are not familiar with the term, a killer article is nothing more than a long and structured article that has the goal of delivering a huge amount of value to potential visitors. If you have a web design blog, for example, you could write an article with “100 Free Resources for Designers”. Here are some ideas for killer articles:

• create a giant list of resources,
• write a detailed tutorial teaching people how to do something,
• find a solution for a common problem in your niche and write about it, or
• write a deep analysis on a topic where people have only talked superficially

When visitors come across your killer article, you want them to have the following reaction: “Holy crap! This is awesome. I better bookmark it. Heck, I better even mention this on my site and on my Twitter account, to let my readers and friends know about it.”

Second Step: Networking (30 minutes per day)

Networking is essential, especially when you are just getting started. The 30 minutes that you will dedicate to it every day could be split among:

• commenting on other blogs in your niche,
• linking to the posts of bloggers in your niche, and
• interacting with the bloggers in your niche via email, IM or Twitter.

Remember that your goal is to build genuine relationships, so don’t approach people just because you think they can help to promote your blog. Approach them because you respect their work and because you think the two of you could grow together.

Third Step: Promotion (30 minutes per day)

The first activity here is the promotion of your killer articles. Whenever you publish one of them, you should push it in any way you can. Examples include:

• letting the people in your network know about it (don’t beg for a link though),
• letting bloggers and webmasters in relevant niches know about it,
• getting some friends to submit the article to social bookmarking sites,
• getting some friends to Twitter the article, and
• posting about the article in online forums and/or newsgroups.

If there is time left, spend it with search engine optimization, social media marketing and activities to promote your blog as whole. Those can range from keyword research to promoting your blog on Facebook and guest blogging.

Fourth Step: Normal Posts (30 minutes per day)

Just like a man does not live by bread alone, a blog does not live by killer articles alone. Normal posts are the ones that you will publish routinely in your blog, between the killer articles. For example, you could publish a killer article every Monday and normal posts from Tuesday through Friday. Here are some ideas for normal posts:

• a post linking to an article on another blog and containing your opinion about it
• a post informing your readers about a news in your niche
• a post asking a question to your readers and aiming to initiate a discussion
• a post highlighting a new resource or trick that you discovered and that would be useful to your readers

While killers articles are essential to promote your blog and bring new readers aboard, normal posts are the ones that will create diversity in your content and keep your readers engaged.

Source: http://www.dailyblogtips.com/increase-blog-traffic/

Simple Changes Doubled My Adsense Revenue

In this post Todd Fratzel from Home Construction Improvement and Today’s Green Construction shares how he doubled the AdSense revenue on his blog with a few simple changes.

Several simple changes in my Adsense approach and layout have almost doubled my blog’s revenue. The results were so drastic and eye opening that I convinced a friend (www.oneprojectcloser.com) to make the same changes to his blog with even better results. The changes involve two simple ideas that can be easily incorporated into any Adsense monetized website or blog.

I’ve been blogging for over two years now and growing traffic, authority and readership slow and steady. Along with the steady increase in traffic the site has continued to increase it’s Adsense revenue at a similar pace with no sudden increases regardless of all the changes and adjustments I’ve made. That was true until I took the time to study many different published Adsense approaches. As I read all of these different approaches three distinct ideas came to the forefront.

Three Important Adsense Approaches

• Less is More – This concept is really simple yet I hadn’t really given it much thought before. First off the top ad is the highest paying ad and you want that in the best possible position.

Secondly, if you’re using all three of the allotted Adsense units on a given page then there are quite a few ads all competing for attention or a click through. However, if you only use one Adsense unit then you’re limiting the number of ads served and improving the likelihood that one of those ads will get clicked. Therefore, the theory is that an advertiser will be willing to pay a higher rate for less competition.

• Size Matters – If you read enough Adsense guides you’ll find that the 336 x 280 Large Rectangle is the most effective Adsense unit. It typically offers four ads and they are likely to be very related to the topic based on the position between the post title and body.
• Position, Position, Position – Placing your Adsense unit above the fold is imperative for success. This makes sense to me for one reason. Every day my site (and I assume most sites) gets a majority of it’s traffic from search engines. This traffic is generated from people searching for something. So when they land on my page and they decide that it’s not the content they were looking for then I want them to see the Adsense unit right where they land so that becomes an “outclick” option.

How I Doubled My Adsense Revenue

In order to understand the approach I used to double my Adsense revenue I’ll use two graphics that show the same post before the changes and after the changes. First - the before shot:

And here’s the after shot:

My Old Adsense Layout Included:

1. 468 x 60 Text Only Unit located in the header area of my page.
2. 468 x 60 Text Only Unit located between the post title and the body of the post.
3. 468 x 60 Text Only Unit located at the end of the post before the comment section.

Revised Adsense Layout Includes:

1. Remove the old 468 x 60 Text Only Unit completely and replaced with an affiliate banner. The idea here is to remove some of the units in order to address concept #1 of Less is More.
2. Replace the old 468 x 60 Text Only Unit with the 336 x 280 large rectangle unit. This unit is above the fold between the post title and body which makes it a very prominent position. This change addresses both of concept #2 and #3 for Size Matters and Position.
3. Remove the old 468 x 60 Text Only Unit completely. I actually replaced this with the new Chitika Jumbo unit which is also performing quite well. Again the removal helps address the Less is More concept.

Immediate Results

If you look at the graph of my Adsense revenue over the last two months you’ll see that the increased revenue was immediate. The changes were made as indicated by the Red Circle #1. As you can see my revenue went from under $150 per week to almost $300 per week. Immediate should be taken with a grain of salt, the increase happened over several days and it’s likely to take some time for Adsense to incorporate the reduced number of ads being served on your site.

Summary Of Improved Adsense Layout

While I’d be naive to think that this will double any and all Adsense revenue for any site I think the principal is worth evaluating on all sites. The concept is really simple; make one large, well positioned ad do all the work. This will make your page look cleaner and it’s likely to improve your revenue immediately. It’s also important that you follow some of the basic suggestions of blended ads that match the color and fonts of your site. So far I’ve done this on two of my sites and a friend’s site with the same result, improved Adsense revenue.

Note from Darren: I think that the key with optimizing a blog for AdSense (or other ad networks) is to experiment. The best thing that Todd did here was to try something new and to track the results. What he’s done has worked for him but it might not work for everyone - the key is to keep trying different combinations of numbers of ads, ad sizes, ad positions, ad design (color, fonts etc) and to try different ad types until you find what works best for your blog.

Source: http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/06/20/simple-changes-doubled-my-adsense-revenue/

Three simple actions that doubled my website traffic in 30 days

The following post on how to increase website traffic was submitted by Adrian W Kingsley-Hughes.

I started the PC Doctor blog in May of 2005 and for the first few months my traffic was really low - down in the few hundreds of visitors a day. It was pretty depressing I can tell you and there were times when I thought about quitting. I knew that the site was in the Google ’sandbox’ and so I either had to keep on plugging at it until it was out or I had to give up.

Fortunately, I decided to keep on posting but in the interim I decided that I was also going to do my utmost to drive traffic to my site manually until Google kicked in. I took a look around at what some of the successful blogs were doing and came up with three tactics that helped to double my website traffic in a month.

1. First, I made the most of Technorati tags. I tagged every key word in each of my posts. Initially I did this manually but them I discovered a WordPress plugin called SimpleTags that made the job a whole lot easier. I found that by tagging my post effectively they were getting a lot more attention then their untagged counterparts, and as an added advantage I was getting focused, quality traffic to the site!
2. I leveraged my existing website. I’ve been running my business website for a few years and that was getting modest levels of traffic that was relevant to my blog - so why not try to drive some of that to my new blog! I placed a few FeedBurner headline animator blocks on some of my most popular pages and after a day or so I noticed a significant increase in traffic for 5 minutes worth of work on my part.
3. Finally, I made effective use of trackback links to popular sites. If I commented on a post on another site I would make sure that I set up the appropriate trackback for it. The results from this are varied depending on the site and post that you are linking to but since I liked to comment and interact with the wider blogosphere anyway, it was free traffic!

Using these three simple techniques, I took The PC Doctor blog from a few hundred hits a day into the thousands in less than 30 days. This kept my interest in the site until it came out of the Google sandbox and I started to receiver some serious traffic. However, I’m convinced that these actions I took at the early stages have helped me create a loyal and targeted readership that continues to benefit my blog today.

Source: http://www.problogger.net/archives/2005/12/30/three-simple-actions-that-doubled-my-website-traffic-in-30-days/

How to Get More Blog Traffic: BlogRush.com

BlogRush is basically a widget for your blog that shows related blog posts from the blogosphere. So what’s the benefit? BlogRush will display your new blog post links inside their widget on other related blogs. In theory this should send a surge of traffic to your blog whenever you publish a new blog post.

It seems most smaller blogs aren’t seeing as much of a surge in traffic as they would like. BlogRush launched to the public about a week ago, so this really doesn’t surprise me. This type of widget takes time to build a strong user base. I’m sure MyBlogLog faced the same scepticism when they launched, but look how mainstream they are now.

I’m going to give BlogRush some real estate on my sidebar. I’ll be sure to post a follow-up with my BlogRush stats once I have some solid numbers to share.

Easily Increase Site Traffic Using StumbleUpon.com

By StrangeWork.com: Looking for an easy way to boost site traffic? Look no further than StumbleUpon.com. StumbleUpon is a browsing tool for sharing and discovering great websites based on keywords that you find interesting.

Simply install the toolbar and click Stumble to view high-quality pages matched to your personal preferences. StumbleUpon also gives you the ability to rate websites you like or dislike. By giving a site you enjoy a thumbs up, you enter that site into the StumbleUpon directory. This allows others users who are stumbling under the same keywords as your site the chance of viewing the page you stumbled.

The amazing part is it actually works! On Wednesday my post 10 Reasons why I’m buying a 2nd Generation Zune over any Apple iPod hit StumbleUpon. Since then I have received over 2,000 unique hits to that post from StumbleUpon users. Amazing!

StumbleUpon recently made some updates to its toolbar that shows website ratings next to search results in popular search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Windows Live.

StumbleUpon.com is an amazing resource for web developers and a great way to find interesting sites.

Source: http://www.strangework.com/2007/10/26/easily-increase-site-traffic-using-stumbleuponcom/

How To Increase Blog Traffic part 1: Google Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster Tools have been around for a while now, but many bloggers do not know how to utilize these tools to increase blog traffic. I use two quick and easy techniques, Sitemaps and Robots.txt, that I will discuss in this article.

---

Add Your Blog Sitemap

---

Step 1: Find Your Blog Sitemap

A blog sitemap is an XML feed of every link available on your blog. By default most blogging platforms, including WordPress, Blogger, and Moveable Type, have an RSS feed preinstalled on your blog. An RSS feed is a feed made using XML so there is no setup, it’s already there!

Examples for popular blog platforms:

WordPress – http://www.blogname.com/rss
Blogger – http://blogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
Moveable Type – http://www.blogname.com/atom.xml
Feed Burner – http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogname

Just replace blogname with the name of your site. Use the examples above to figure out what your feed URL is. You will need it in the next step.

Step 2: Load your blog sitemap in to Google Webmaster Tools

Visit the Google Webmaster Tools Home Page and login to your Google account. If you don’t have a Google account, register one real quick.

Once logged in to the Tools dashboard you will see a textbox at the top allowing you to add your blog:

Type your site URL in and click the “Add Site” button.

Next you will need to Verify your blog to Google. Click the “Verify your site” link and follow the instructions given by Google.

Once you have verified your blog click the “Sitemaps” menu item from the left hand side and click the “Add A Sitemap” link.

Select “Add General Web Sitemap” when asked to Choose Type. You will then see a text box to enter in your RSS feed URL like this:

Enter your feed URL and click the “Add General Web Sitemap” button and your done! Once Google verifies your feed is in the proper format they will then crawl your feed daily to look for new links.

The benefit of providing Google with a sitemap is to help them improve how they crawl your blog. Over time you will start to notice an increase in search engine ranking which will result in more traffic.

---

Add Your Robots.txt File

---

Step 1: Update/create your robots.txt file

A robots.txt file is a small text file placed on your blogs web server that tells search engines what they are allowed, and not allowed, to index on your blog. Most blogs come with a robots.txt file preinstalled. Check to see if your blog has one by visiting the following URL on your blog:

http://www.blogname.com/robots.txt

Just replace blogname with the name of your site. We are going to create a new robots.txt file so it doesn’t matter if you do not currently have a robots.txt file on your blog.

Create a text file named robots.txt on your desktop. Enter the following code in to your newly created file:

User-agent: *
Disallow:
Sitemap: http://www.blogname.com/sitemap.xml

User-agent: * – indicates to all search engines they are allowed to crawl your site
Disallow: – incidates what URLs to exclude from being crawled by search engines. Since we are not entering a value to the right we are telling all search engines to crawl everything on your blog
Sitemap: http://www.blogname.com/sitemap.xml – indicates to the search engines where your sitemap is located. Use the sitemap link from the previous tip.

Save your file and upload to the root directory of your server. Google looks for a robots.txt file on your blog once a day. You can verify that Google finds your file by visiting the following Webmaster Tool section:

Dashboard > Tools > Analyze robots.txt

That’s it! Now all search engines will know where your sitemap is located from your robots.txt file. The major benefit of this is to help search engines find your new posts and links easier.

Google Webmaster Tools offer some really great statistics about how Google crawls and indexes your blog. Make sure you poke around in the other sections.

To install a true Google Sitemap be sure to check out the Google Sitemap Generator Plugin for WordPress.

Source: http://www.strangework.com/2008/01/06/how-to-increase-blog-traffic-part-1-google-webmaster-tools/

10 Free Ways To Increase Blog Traffic

1. Signup at Stumbleupon.com and make friends in your niche. You can then stumble your post and get your friends to also.

2. Go to Socialposter.com and fill in the exact url to your blog post then title,general summary text then your tags. Now submit to as many social sites as you can. If this is your first time to use these sites then you will need to signup.

3. Signup at technorati.com and add your blog then ping it when you update.

4. Get a free account at mybloglog.com and add your blog then join the communities and make friends. There is even a cool widget you can add to your blog like what you see on the right here.

5. Leave comments on blogs in your related niche. Here is a great free tool to monitor popular blogs in your niche so you can be notified and make one of the first good quality comments. Check it out at Commentsniper.com

6. Join Squidoo.com and make a lens then add a link to your blog.

7. Submit your blog to as many blog and rss directories as you can. Here is a good place to start http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/

8. Make sure and add your blog url to your forum signature on any forums you are a member. This can be a powerful way to attract visitors especially if you have quality forum posts.

9. Find one of the top bloggers in your niche then write a good review post of them. Let them know and they will probably link back to you.

10. Have an easy way for your readers to sign up for your RSS feed.

Source: http://eyeearnblog.com/2008/02/28/10-free-ways-to-increase-blog-traffic/

How to Start a Profitable Internet Business Fast

There are many ways to start an internet business and most of them will get you on your way to profits relatively fast, or at least faster than a traditional business and without little or no money in your pocket.

Indeed, creating and running an internet business can be a rather simple task, and that is why it is possible to make it a profitable one right from the start. Why do I say starting a profitable internet business can be a simple task?

Well, because with an internet business you are skipping most of the usual challenges you face within the traditional business model, such as the need for a huge amount of money as start up capital, employees, location etc.

This means that your business can be up and running with nearly zero expenses, and almost 100% of your sales will translate in profits.

Therefore, the only thing you really need to start a profitable internet business fast is know-how, time and some effort on your part. This is important, because if you have the idea that an internet business will not demand planning and some work, you are in for a big disappointment.

Know-how is the single most important part, as this will be your strategy, your plan, the very foundation of your business. No effort on your part will deliver results if you do not have a strategy or a plan in place.

As they say, if you do not have a plan you are planning to fail, so knowing in advance what is it that you have to do in order to attain a given result is essential if you really want to start a profitable internet business and any other business for that matter.

Once you know-how, all you need is time and some work to execute your plan, your strategy. If you do it in this order, planning and then executing, you will surely start a profitable internet business faster than you think.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Alex_Cadens

How To Increase The Traffic To Your Website

I get asked this all the time, whether via Alexa's forums, or after work by my friends: How do I get more traffic to my Web site? I wish there was just some simple button that I could tell people to push and that it would solve all their traffic issues. But it doesn't exist; if it did, everybody would already be using it.

But there are whole heaps of great advice, which if followed, will lead to more visitors to your site. What follows is a simple to follow list of best practices to help get you on your way.

1. On-Site Factors. Start with your site. You need to make it the best it can be. So that it will be attractive to visitors AND search engines.

• Keywords. What is your site about? Find a few key words and phrases that you think describe your site and that people may actually enter into a search box on Google. If you pick very popular keywords and phrases, you might be disappointed. Millions of people will search for those keywords and phrases, but you will be way down the search results because lots of sites are optimized for those phrases. If you pick less popular keywords and phrases, you may have a shot of actually showing up in the search results because fewer sites have optimized for those keywords and phrases.

• Optimize Your Site. Use your keywords and phrases on your site. Put them in the title of your page, in the H1 tags, metatags and throughout your site. Use them in the text of links that point to your page. Shoot for having keyword density of about 6%.
  

• Have Good Content. You should strive to have something new on your site once per day. Don't let your site get stale... Google's algorithms will notice and so will visitors to your site. If you don't have a lot of time to create unique content every day, consider putting up a daily poll, creating a forum on your site, or leaving a comments field/Guest Book for visitors to fill out. If you use Twitter or Facebook, you can have your updates automatically appear on your site.
  

• Unique Value Proposition. Give something away on your site to your visitors to remember you by. Otherwise people may forget your site and won't come back. You can find interesting content on widgetbox.com, or you can give them a custom Alexa Toolbar. Just give them something.

• Create A Sitemap. Every time you update content on your site you should update your sitemap and submit the site map to Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask, etc.. There are lots of free sitemap tools out there. Find one and get started. It is a great way to let Google know when your site is updated.

• Return Visitors. How are you going to get people to return to your site after they have left? You may want to consider an e-mail newsletter. But don't spam... please. If people like your content let them sign up to get your newsletter. You should also allow people to subscribe to your updates via facebook or twitter. Most blogs offer easy plugins for this feature.

• Link Bait. People love lists. Make lists of things that are relevant to your site and put them on your site, like top ten fishing sites. Then let the sites in your list know you have made your list. They may take that list and put it on their site... Or give out awards like "fishing site of the week." which brings us to...

2. Off-Site Factors. Once you have a great site you need to start thinking about other factors, mostly links. If nobody links to your site you are going to have a tough time getting seen in Google's results. More links = better placement in Google. So how do you get links?

• Link Number One. The first link is easy. Alexa already has a link to your site, and Alexa's page rank is high, so the link from Alexa counts more than most. You just need to let Google know that Alexa has a link to your site. How do you do that? Install the Google Toolbar then visit Alexa. But be sure to put your Alexa Toolbar back!
  

• Get Listed In Directories. Directories that are relevant to your site are generally more important than others, so if your site is about basket weaving, find a basket weaving directory and ask them to list your site. Get listed in as many as possible. And then find other general directories like DMOZ and get listed there. Are there Wikipedia articles that should list your site as a place for more information on a topic? Get listed.

• Participate In Social Media. Find forums that are relevant to your content and participate... a lot. Update your signature footer on the forum to include a link to your site. Use Twitter, Facebook, Digg, but, in all cases, do not just post or write about your own site. Nobody cares. Write and post about things that you care about, sometimes your site, and people who like your posts may make their way over to your site.

• Have Something Newsworthy. If you have something newsworthy, don't just blog about it. First post it as a press release on your site, then update your sitemap, then post it to the newswires, then submit it to ezine articles, Article Base and/or Go Articles, then blog about it, twitter about it, etc. If you do it right you will have at least a couple of new links to your site, and if you do it really right you could have dozens of new links.

• Advertise. There are lots of great advertising solutions out there. Google AdWords is a great place to start and, if done well, can offer you a good deal on targeted traffic. Display advertising can be effective and affordable as well. The social networks are now offering do-it-yourself advertising at reasonable prices, and even Alexa allows you to advertise at inexpensive CPMs.
  

And, as always, install the Alexa Toolbar. It won't increase the traffic to your site, but it won't hurt and you will be helping Alexa to track your site and helping the entire Internet Community by contributing to Alexa's Traffic Data.

Getting more traffic to your site is a journey. Take the first steps today, and with a little hard work and some luck, you will be counting your visitors in the millions before too long.

Source: http://blog.alexa.com/2009/07/how-to-increase-traffic-to-your-website.html

Increase Alexa traffic ranking by 5 million points in 10 days - Just Stumble!

Is it possible to increase Alexa traffic ranking by 5 million points in 10 days? Yes. I did. What does that mean to me? Why I still think that Alexa traffic ranking won’t do any good to my site. Is Alexa traffic ranking too easy to be manipulated? Would you get more benefit from it, if you have high Alexa traffic ranking? Does it drive more traffic to your web site?

For the past 10 days, I was optimizing my WordPress blog to get a better page ranking for the future. I just realized that my Alexa traffic ranking jump up for about 5 million points in 10 days since June 1st, 2007. On June 1st, 2007, my Alexa traffic ranking was 5,857920. On June 2nd, 2007, I post a new blog entry Increase page ranking with diy marketing strategies. On June 8th, 2007, I check my Alexa traffic ranking and my page ranking went up 3 million spots to 2,215,547. Yesterday, I checked my Alexa page ranking again and found it jump up to 1,777,106.

So what have been done to my blog to get this dramatic results? I have seen people post on their blog saying their Alexa traffic page ranking jump from one million to 300K in three weeks. That is a lot longer than my records. So I went back to find out what I have done and what have had happened in the past few days.

June 1st, 2007.

June 8th, 2007.

June 11th, 2007.

I have thought about what changes I have made to make this happen. First of all, my WordPress blog was not optimized. Not even now. I have a lot to do to make this blog work for the best. So there is not much to do on my blog to help my Alexa traffic page ranking to boost. So what else?

I signed MyBlogLog.com on June 1st, 2007. I also signed up BlogCatalog.com, Bumpzee.com and StumbleUpon.com. All of them are sort of social networking for blogger. Since the date I signed up BlogCatalog.com and Bumpzee.com, I don’t have many activities and don’t have any friends on my list. I spent most of time on MyBlogLog.com and StumbleUpon.com to add friends and join communities. I followed some of the blogger’s suggestion to add Alexa redirect link to my profile on MyBlogLog.com. So whenever visitors click on my page it will redirect to my terencechang.com page through Alexa redirect URL. However, I check my hit counter history for the past few days and decide to remove the redirect URL, since there is less than 1% of my traffic from MyBlogLog.com. People check out my profile, but they don’t click on my links. I, somehow, guess that people will be hesitate to click on links says Alexa Redirect. Would you click if you know there is a redirect URL?

So I have eliminate 90% of facts that might generate such traffic to increase my Alexa traffic page ranking. The only thing left for me to think about is StumbleUpon.com. So I dig into my hit counter history. I found more than 50% of my traffic in the last 10 days are from StumbleUpon.com. Well. after I post the Increase page ranking with diy marketing strategies, I stumble my own page and made a review. I tag the post to Business/marketing communities. I don’t know if this matters. I see traffic coming in an hours after my post is live.

So for the past 10 days, I got tremendous traffic to my web site from StumbleUpon and 90% of those traffic goes directly into my DIY marketing strategies post, but not to my home page. I figure Alexa update the traffic statistic every 3-4 days. So in the next few days, I should see my traffic page ranking moving up again.

So why I still don’t think Alexa traffic ranking will do anything good to my blog? I agree with few of the bloggers out there. Why Alexa sucks.
3 Reasons Why Alexa Sucks (And They Know It!)

1. I don’t run advertisement on my blog. High Alexa traffic ranking won’t help me to get revenue through ad.
2. I don’t rely on Alexa to drive traffic into my blog.
3. It seems too easy to manipulate Alexa traffic ranking with embedded Alexa redirect.
4. More people are hating Alexa redirect and refuse to click on redirect link.

At this moment, high Alexa traffic ranking means nothing to me. I, however, am surprised by the funny facts that Alexa traffic ranking drives many people nut. After reading Be A Good Stumbler post, I believe I just did one magic step to register my post to StumbleUpon.com, but I also believe that it’s enough for now. No more post my own post to StumbleUpon.com. It might give people impression as spam.

After all, I do believe that StumbUpon drive huge traffic to web site, if you can be a good friends to many people and provide good quality content. People will come to your web site. Page ranking, search engine result won’t mean anything if you can just get traffic from nowhere. So be smart and be positive to put up more quality content. That’s right. That is my next goal.

Source: http://www.terencechang.com/2007/06/11/increase-alexa-traffic-ranking-by-5-million-points-in-10-days-just-stumble/

Google AdSense Tips

Google just released a Newbie Central for their AdSense program, those ads webmasters can include on their site to earn money for every click on the ad from a visitor (if you're using the program, part of the advertiser budget will go to you, and the other part to Google). I wanted to add some tips from my own experience:

1. Ads can work well in-between other stuff. On a games site of mine, some of the games don't contain ads next to the game area; the AdSense ad will only be shown in-between game rounds. This is the time the visitor is not concentrating on performing a task but might take a small break, and be open to the option of visiting new sites.

2. Put too much emphasis on AdSense and your site may be linked to less. The more available space you dedicate to AdSense on your site, and the less you differentiate between ads and content in your design, the more money you earn with the program, right? Not quite. While pushing the AdSense may result in short-term gains, it might also convince some visitors that the site is too crowded to be worth visiting again. And some of those visitors may also be bloggers or other people who might otherwise help to promote your site with links to it. And the less your site gets linked to, the less traffic it gets, meaning AdSense revenues may go down in the long term.

3. Even if you get huge traffic, the AdSense income from the site is more dependent on the site type and audience. Google targets AdSense ads automatically to the site content. Or at least, it does so ideally – but some types of content fare better than others with this targeting. I noticed for instance that AdSense does better on a games site than on a technology blog. I also heard people say that AdSense does quite good on product oriented blogs; say, one post solely about the iPod; another post solely about Gadget XYZ, and so on.

4. Image ads can be relevant and work for you, but they might also apall some visitors. Google's AdSense program gives you the option to choose between a couple of different ad formats. Two main groups are text ads vs text & image ads. When you choose the latter, Google will deliver what they deem works best for your content (or so one would hope, and it would be in Google's best self-interest to serve you the best possible ad, it seems).
   
   However, Google doesn't really know your layout preferences, and they don't really understand when your audience thinks ads are "too much"; and considering image ads include Flash animations (which you can't disable, once you go for image ads), Flash animations may well push some people away. One thing you can do is to only show image ads in areas where they don't disturb the content, e.g. at the end of posts. Also, you might want to listen to visitor feedback on the ads being served; I received emails before that the blinking ad on this or that site made a person want to leave the site, at which point I blocked the specific advertiser via the AdSense Setup -> Competitive Ad Filter option.

5. When it comes to context sensitive targeting, you can increase or lower the importance of certain parts of your page. To help Google find a matching ad for your content, you can use the HTML comment syntax by encapsulating more important parts with
   
   

   
   ... your important site content here ...
   .

   Or, to lower the importance of a section, use:
   
   

   
   ... your not so important site content here ...
   

   (Google notes that it may take up to 2 weeks for this change to your site will be taken into account by the AdSense.)
   
   What if your site doesn't have any good matchable content to begin with, though? Say, the page just includes an image. Well, for the reasons of search engine optimization but also ad optimization you might want to consider using at least a descriptive title, an explanatory footer containing the important keywords or keyphrases (the kind of footer that actually helps the human visitor by explaining what the page is about). In the case of image content, reasonable alt and title attribute texts should be used as well.*
   
   *Whatever you do, don't resort to "keyword-stuffing" as it doesn't help your visitors and may get your page ranked lower in search engines.

6. Be aware of risks when you change ad layouts too much. I once had a system on the server to randomly differ between various AdSense layouts on the same page. Doing so I was hoping to add some good variety to keep the ads at least somewhat interesting and notable. Shortly after I stopped doing so and simply included a rather big static area for the AdSense to "do what it wants," the AdSense revenues for that site increased. Now, I don't know if this was a coincidence of some sorts, as revenues often go down or up even when you don't do anything, but it might well have been that there was a connection between adding too much homemade randomization, and lowered revenues.
   
   At another time, during the redesign of this blog, I switched from one ad format to another for the end-of-posts AdSense ad space. This, combined with perhaps other layout changes, suddenly cut the ad revenues in half for the blog. It took me some time to realize that I had some ad channels* set up for the specific old layout size, and by changing this I must have kicked out all those advertisers who were pushing their ads through the channel.
   
   *This setting can be found at AdSense Setup -> Channels.

7. Use competing ad systems when AdSense doesn't seem to work for a site. At CoverBrowser.com, which shows galleries of comic and book covers and so on, I tried including AdSense ads in "non-annoying" places in the layout (including trying to use AdSense affiliate links via AdSense Setup -> Referrals), but this didn't seem to work at all. However I then tried "affiliating" the "buy" link below individual covers, utilizing the eBay affiliate commission system offered by AuctionAds.com*. (Disclosure: Patrick Gavin, co-owner of AuctionAds, paid me for consulting before on other projects, like Sketchcast.com.) This worked a lot better, and as it was simply connected to an existing site feature, it also didn't add clutter.
   
   A good start to find other ad programs is to search for adsense alternatives on Google... you will see a lot of lists which are dedicated to competitors. (Note that some of these competitors may be US-only.) You may also want to join an ad or blog network like The Deck, Federated Media (disclosure: I was part of Federated Media before), or 9 Rules. Before joining such a network – which might require you to show them your traffic stats and so on – check if their typical ads and campaigns fit with your site layout and your general ad type preferences.
   
   *CommissionJunction also offers an eBay affiliate system but CommissionJunction has really low usability, in my opinion; setting it up is confusing.

8. Sometimes you may get a sudden increase in traffic, hence ad clicks, but you can't locate the source of the traffic. I'm using Google Analytics to track my sites, though AdSense is also a good first indicator of traffic explosions... because it will show the combined page views of all your sites (provided you include AdSense on all of them), as opposed to Google Analytics, where you need to check site by site individually.
   
   However, sometimes even with Google Analytics, you won't be able to locate the source of your traffic because there's no specific new popular referrer being shown (a referrer is the site linking to your site, provided people click on that link). In these cases, it may well be that your site has been discussed in a TV show or similar, as the show won't "link" to you (but audiences will be entering your domain manually into the browser when they like what the saw on TV). When you feel that there has been a traffic explosion sometimes you may get additional email feedback in regards to your site, and it makes sense for you to ask your visitor: where did you first find out about the site? Maybe the can let you know about the name of the TV show, or magazine, or other "offline" source responsible for the peak. (I sometimes sent pointers to the BBC Click show for instance, with partly enormous effect.)

9. Consider using AdSense even when the page doesn't get any traffic yet. Who knows, some day the traffic suddenly explodes, and you might not realize fast enough and thus miss out on the action (as sometimes, traffic goes as fast as it comes).
   
   On the other hand, reversely I would suggest to never do a site just to make ad money with it. That kind of motivation may lead to spammy sites that don't help anyone really. (If a project is great, it's great even if it doesn't make any money.)

10. Making money with AdSense takes time. In my experience, it may take many months to years for a site to gain enough traffic to make OK money through AdSense... if ever. I have almost never experienced any site making quick and easy money with AdSense (though you may be getting quicker results than me of course, as it depends on so many variables!).
    I think for any site getting a couple of thousands of visitors a day, you might want to start playing around with AdSense to see where it takes you (if you didn't already include AdSense anyway just to see what happens, and following up on tip #9). As you are paid in US-$, the actual benefit the ad revenue will bring depends on your local costs of living as well (you might even ponder moving or going on an extended holiday trip if your local costs of living are too high for your site revenues to cover).

Source: http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-01-02-n17.html

Ways to Drive Traffic to a Blog

As the phrase ‘make money online’ becoming more popular now days, there are a lot opportunities available on the net for public to join. Many people get caught with the phrase because they always thought it is easy as it sound but the true is not. A lot of work and effort must be done before you can get what you are looking for.

Anyway, the simple and basic strategic for every business is to bring as many customers as we can because no matter how good is our product without customer it is nothing. In this case traffics are our main objective. I am not going to talk about SEO or how to be on the first page of organic search but I am going to discuss about how to bring in traffics to your blog using tools other than the organic search. There a many ways but below are a few that I feel most popular and effective way that will generate traffics to your blog.

Pay per click
This is an Internet advertising program that applies on search engines, advertising networks, and content sites, such as blogs or website, in which advertisers pay only when their ad is clicked. With a proper keyword and budget setting, pay per click can be very useful tools to drive traffics and eventually generating money. Example of pay per click advertising program is Google Adwords.

Social networking website
No money needed but yet still manage to drive in a huge amount of traffics to your blog. I have made a quick search on one largest and most popular social networking website Facebook and have found there are more than 20 million people in United Kingdom have sign up for Facebook.

Tell a friend
Don’t forget that by sending a marketing email is also a good way to promote your blog. Tell a friend is a tool that will allow your visitors to promote your blog on your behalf. If the contents of your blog are interesting, useful and informative, people will recommend to others using tell a friend tool and your will see that your blog spreading like a wild fire. Socialtwist is a good example of tell a friend

Actually there are many more ways to generate traffics other than be on the first page of an organic search. Eager to be on the first page sometime make people forgot about other opportunities to generate traffics.

Tips to earn more via Google Adsense !

Well, people think that its really to easy via Google Adsense ! But in reality its not ! You need to work hard in order to earn good from Adsense. Its as difficult as its to get approved by Google Adsense. But if you follow these tips, I am sure you will earn much better than you used to earn.

First of all you should place your ads accordingly so that it suits your site or theme if you have a blog. If you are not getting many clicks then you need to change the placement of your ads. Try changing them and see the results that at which place you are getting maximum clicks. You can also use some plugins like “All in one Adsense” to put the google ads into your blog posts.

Colors of your ads are also a reason of your earnings via Adsense. You should always use colors of your ads matching with your site or blog. So, that people will think that the ads are just a part of your site. It will be better if you don’t use a border in your ads.

The next important thing is that use proper keywords if you really wanna earn more. If you use high paying keywords its obvious that those ads with higher price will be displayed and you will earn more for one click. One more thing you should keep in mind that adding only ads on a page doesn’t mean that you will get a click. Infact people don’t like a site or blog which is full of ads. So, use ads in such a way that it doesn’t gives any bad impression to your visitors.

And it would be better for you to use channels for each of your site, so that you would be able to track that which site is giving you more. Also, I will suggest you to use a Image ad in your site. Only 3 ad units are allowed in a page by Google. So, you can either use 2 text ads and a image ad or just a single text ad and a single image ad.

So, keep experimenting and you will know that where you were going wrong and you will start earning much better from your blog or site.