Alright, now that you're officially a webmaster, you're going to need some SEO tools. Buying all of the full-featured products that you will eventually need could end up costing you a ton of money, but I'm going to put together a basic toolbox of FREE SEO tools for you that will accomplish roughly the same thing. Why would someone pay money for something that you can get elsewhere for free, you ask? Simple - The expensive stuff works better. The free online tools will more or less get the job done, but somewhere along the line it WILL benefit you to break down and buy something like SEO Elite. But in the meantime we can work around the fact that you're either a beginner or a cheapskate (probably both) and put together a package of free SEO Tools that you can use to help efficiently manage your new blog.
First of all, your website is going to need something to keep track of your traffic - a stat tracker. I like Histats personally, but feel free to use whatever service you want to as they all basically do the same thing. This will allow you to keep track of how many visitors your blog gets everyday, where they came from, and lots of other details that I'm not going to go into as I don't think it's either necessary or interesting. Point is, you need a stat counter as it will be one of your most helpful allies in analyzing how well your site is doing and where improvements could be made.
Next up, we'll need what are apparently referred to as "Webmaster Tools" - the stuff that tells you all about the stuff going on behind the scenes link backlinks, indexed pages, search engine rankings, etc. Webmaster Toolkit's Webmaster Tools is really all you need - I love this site! iwebtool's Webmaster Tools are handy as well. And while signing up with Google's Webmaster Tools might seem like the thing to do, it's more or less a complete waste of time. To be completely honest most of its features are absolutely worthless and you should take its stats with a grain of salt as in most cases they're wildly inaccurate and terribly outdated. Why Google's Webmaster Tools sucks so much I'll never understand, but it does provide a few useful barebones services, and it's slightly better to have them than not have them. Just remember to not rely on them too much and only add it to the sites that you want to proudly declare yourself the owner of - Personally, I try to show Google as little as possible when it comes to what I'm doing online in regards to my websites...
Those two things combined are a good general package and will take care of the majority of your needs, but they can't do everthing. Now that we've got a basic seo tool "starter set", we need a few more things to really get a well rounded internet toolbox:
A backlink checker is invaluable. There are a few out there but I like Backlink Watch's Backlink Checker - This will allow you to see how many backlinks your site has, and scope out your competition as well. (NOTE: The Webmaster Tools package that you decide to use may also provide this, but I'm listing it anyway as it's good content for the search engines...)
Speaking of backlinks, there are free tools out there that can help you get them. I use Fast Directory Submitter everytime I create a new website to get some quick directory links. There's also a free blog commenting program known as Koopa Troopa that will make finding and commenting on relevant blogs much more proficient.
Another helpful little service is Google's own Adwords Keyword Tool. You won't be using this much but it's incredibly helpful when it comes to making money with Adsense - What it does is tell you how much advertisers are willing to pay Google for a click on one of their ads for a certain keyword. Just remember that the numbers don't represent what you as a publisher will actually earn - it's raw data and the amounts disclosed pertain to sponsored search results links only. The Adsense CPC is lower (how much lower is anyone's guess, but I'm going to estimate that it's only about 40% of the Adwords CPC, and that's not counting Google's cut). So don't get all excited if you find a keyword with an $8 CPC as you'll only see a fraction of that. Nevertheless, it's a great tool to have when researching whether targeting a specific keyword will be worth your time or not.
And finally, a PageRank checker will help with the link-building process - PR Checker will do the job fine. There's also the Google Toolbar, which is a semi-helpful tool that I DO NOT recommend that comes with a PageRank checker as well. Again, I highly recommend against installing this. Not because it doesn't work or anything, as it does, but because by installing this you're basically giving Google a front-row seat to all of your online activities. And considering that SEO is technically "gaming the system" in Google's eyes (unless you're a big corporation, of course), not showing them what you're doing is in your best interests. Anyway, I'll get into PageRank in depth later on but until then, I'll just tell you that the only PageRank you should care about is the PageRank of a site that you're using to link to your site. Simply put, PageRank = link juice. The higher the better - Outside of that, it's pretty meaningless...
Well, that's it - there are a lot more free SEO tools available on the internet (and please, feel free to do a search for alternatives if you don't like the ones I've linked to - I'm just trying to put this thing together as simply as possible and these are the services I chose to list. Just because I linked to these doesn't mean that there aren't alternatives that will do the same thing), but these are the only ones that you really need to bother with for now.
For a much more in-depth look at how to make money online with SEO, check out Ben K's awesome How To Make Money Online With SEO blog.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Getting Backlinks
I told you earlier that the most important ingredient in getting a site ranking high in the Google serps was getting keyword-anchored backlinks, and I wasn't lying. Now I'm going to give you a few backlinks to start with, and it will only require a small amount of work on your part.
Before I go any further I'm going to warn you that today's exercise will involve writing. Yes, I know many of you probably just groaned, but this is going to be relatively painless so suck it up and do it...
OK, now for what I want you to do exactly: I want you to go back to that first post on your blog, the one where you just wrote a basic overview of your subject. Now I want you to rewrite it, It doesn't have to be good; In fact, I'm going to ask you to shoot for crappy because you're going to be giving this article away for other sites to use - FOR FREE. Yep. The only thing you're going to get out of this is some backlinks, so there's no point in putting any effort into writing an interesting article. As long as it doesn't look like it was written by a drunk first-grader, it'll be fine. When I do this, I strive for mere competence - the articles I write are boring as hell but they work for their intended purposes. Any more effort than that will just be wasted.
Your article should be about 450 words long at least, and your main keyword should be in your first sentence - I want you to to turn this main keyword in the first sentence into a link to your site. Usually people put their links at the end of the article - don't do this. You want it in the first sentence so the people who put your article on their site will have to include your link as well.
Now that you're done writing your "new" article, I want you to go and sign up with GoArticles.com - it should be said that this isn't that great of a way to get backlinks, but it's free and will only take a minute or two. After you finish with that, submit your article into their directory. You may as well vote for it once as well (it might not help, but it certainly won't hurt either). There you go - I just gave you your first backlink, and any sucker that posts your article on their site will now be inadvertantly helping you - Hopefully. The scraper sites have been finding ways to get around this, mainly by only posting a small snippet of your article. Fine then - this is what I do to try to prevent this:
Take your article to Bad Article's excellent free article spinner and spin it using their program until it's total nonsense. Then write a short but juicy opening paragraph and stick your link in the first sentence. Submit to Goarticles. Perfect - Now the only thing the scrapers can post on their site is the part with the link. Of course, there's nothing stopping them from just removing it, but some will keep it the way it is.
Easy enough - we're more or less just going to repeat the process on Associated Content. If you haven't signed up with them already, do so now, and submit your rewritten article (not the BadArticle one). Make sure you choose to submit it as "Display Only Content" - they won't pay you upfront for it but we're not doing this to earn money from them. Your article will have to be approved before they post it but assuming it's crappy enough for Associated Content's incredibly low standards , it should be up on their site in a few days.
Now that we've got some backlinks through articles, lets change it up a bit. I now want you to make a new blog that is a derivative of the one you're working on backlinks to right now. It doesn't have to be genuis or anything - in fact, feel free to make it as crappy as you want to (take a look at the Money Making Websites blog I made while demonstrating how to create a blogger blog if you need something for reference). Who cares? Right now you just want a link from it. You can use blogspot again but for the sake of diversity it would probably be a good idea to try out a different host...
Great - that's enough for one day. And that's about all there is to it - All you have to do now is repeat the process until you rank #1 on Google. Tomorrow create a lens on squidoo.com, then make another blog on Today.com the day after that. And keep doing it.
Well, there you have it - you now know everything there is to know about getting backlinks.
Before I go any further I'm going to warn you that today's exercise will involve writing. Yes, I know many of you probably just groaned, but this is going to be relatively painless so suck it up and do it...
OK, now for what I want you to do exactly: I want you to go back to that first post on your blog, the one where you just wrote a basic overview of your subject. Now I want you to rewrite it, It doesn't have to be good; In fact, I'm going to ask you to shoot for crappy because you're going to be giving this article away for other sites to use - FOR FREE. Yep. The only thing you're going to get out of this is some backlinks, so there's no point in putting any effort into writing an interesting article. As long as it doesn't look like it was written by a drunk first-grader, it'll be fine. When I do this, I strive for mere competence - the articles I write are boring as hell but they work for their intended purposes. Any more effort than that will just be wasted.
Your article should be about 450 words long at least, and your main keyword should be in your first sentence - I want you to to turn this main keyword in the first sentence into a link to your site. Usually people put their links at the end of the article - don't do this. You want it in the first sentence so the people who put your article on their site will have to include your link as well.
Now that you're done writing your "new" article, I want you to go and sign up with GoArticles.com - it should be said that this isn't that great of a way to get backlinks, but it's free and will only take a minute or two. After you finish with that, submit your article into their directory. You may as well vote for it once as well (it might not help, but it certainly won't hurt either). There you go - I just gave you your first backlink, and any sucker that posts your article on their site will now be inadvertantly helping you - Hopefully. The scraper sites have been finding ways to get around this, mainly by only posting a small snippet of your article. Fine then - this is what I do to try to prevent this:
Take your article to Bad Article's excellent free article spinner and spin it using their program until it's total nonsense. Then write a short but juicy opening paragraph and stick your link in the first sentence. Submit to Goarticles. Perfect - Now the only thing the scrapers can post on their site is the part with the link. Of course, there's nothing stopping them from just removing it, but some will keep it the way it is.
Easy enough - we're more or less just going to repeat the process on Associated Content. If you haven't signed up with them already, do so now, and submit your rewritten article (not the BadArticle one). Make sure you choose to submit it as "Display Only Content" - they won't pay you upfront for it but we're not doing this to earn money from them. Your article will have to be approved before they post it but assuming it's crappy enough for Associated Content's incredibly low standards , it should be up on their site in a few days.
Now that we've got some backlinks through articles, lets change it up a bit. I now want you to make a new blog that is a derivative of the one you're working on backlinks to right now. It doesn't have to be genuis or anything - in fact, feel free to make it as crappy as you want to (take a look at the Money Making Websites blog I made while demonstrating how to create a blogger blog if you need something for reference). Who cares? Right now you just want a link from it. You can use blogspot again but for the sake of diversity it would probably be a good idea to try out a different host...
Great - that's enough for one day. And that's about all there is to it - All you have to do now is repeat the process until you rank #1 on Google. Tomorrow create a lens on squidoo.com, then make another blog on Today.com the day after that. And keep doing it.
Well, there you have it - you now know everything there is to know about getting backlinks.
Monday, March 2, 2009
Setting Up A Blogspot Blog
Before you can start making money with Adsense, we need to set up a Blogspot blog for you first. Don't worry - it's free and should only take about 10 minutes of your time. (If you already have a Blogspot blog, go ahead and create a new one following these steps anyway - you'll need it later on so you might as well make it now. It's going to benefit you in the long run, so just trust me on this and do it.) I'm going to set up a new blog right along with you so I can take you through the process step-by-step. Ready? OK then, let's get started.
Alright, to sign up for a Blogspot blog, we need to go to Blogger.com (Blogger.com and Blogspot are the same thing - not sure why it has two names...). Click on the big orange "Create a blog" button and fill out all of the information necessary to create a Google Account (If you already have a Google Account, just go to your Blogger dashboard and click on the "Create a blog" button from there) - I'll be here when you get back.
Done already? OK, let's move on. Now we have to name our new blog. You might be tempted to come up with some incredibly clever title, but don't - choose something simple that people would actually search for. I.e., if your blog is going to be about "dog care" then name it "Dog Care" or "All About Dog Care" or "Dog Care Facts". After choosing your title, you have to pick your blog's address (or URL). Make sure you use your main keyword in this as well. It's a good idea for your URL to be the same as your title but this isn't always possible - "dogcare.blogspot.com" is probably already taken, but "dogcareforbeginners.blogspot.com" might be available. Either way we have our main keyword in our URL so it won't make any difference. Click continue to go to the next step...
Choosing a template - this is simple enough. I'm going to recommend you use the "Minima" template, but that's just a suggestion and you can pick whichever you like. I'm going to choose Minima. Click continue and presto - your blog has now been created! Now let's start blogging!
Clicking the "start blogging" button will take you straight to the posting form. We're going to skip this for now and click on the "Settings" tab. OK? Now we want to go to the "Formatting" section. Once we're there, let's change the first setting to display only 1 post on the main page. Now we want to skip down to the "Show Link Fields" and change it to "yes". Now click the "Save settings" button.
Now lets change the "Comments" settings. First of all, I want to let anyone post a comment to my new blog (you don't have to do this if you don't want to, but if you can get a lot of comments on your blog it can help you with the search engines) Now I'm going to scroll down to the "Backlinks" and change this to "Show" - you should do this too. Save these settings and that's it - we're done setting up our blogs! I told you it wouldn't take long!
By the way, let's not put Adsense on our new sites yet... Why? Well, what's the point of putting Adsense on a blog that doesn't currently have any traffic? You won't earn any money from slapping it on your blog right away, and not doing so can help your new site avoid the dreaded Google "sandbox" (what's that, you ask? Well, as best as I can figure it, the sandbox is where new sites go to prevent them from showing up in Google's search results - basically it means that your site won't be playing with the big kids in Googleland anytime soon...)
But we're not quite done yet - we've got a brand new Blogspot blog now, but we don't have anything on it! What I want you to do now is write a post about your topic. As our first post we just want to give a basic overview of the subject of our blog, using our main keyword as the title - for pointers look at what I did with my first post on this blog, Making Money With Adsense. It doesn't have to be as long as mine but aim for at least 450 words - if you can write more than that, great. The longer the better. And before I forget, put your blog's homepage URL in the "Link" box under your title (We want to do this on every post we make) When you're done writing, publish your post. And there you have it! We've just created our very own blog! Now let's take a break and pat ourselves on the back for taking this first step toward making money with Adsense!
Getting your site indexed with Google will take some time - usually about two weeks. However, we can expedite the process by adding an article with a backlink pointing back to our site - see the next post for more information. Doing this will get your site indexed much faster - it usually only takes two or three days using this method.
Oh yeah, here's the blog I just created: It's called Money Making Websites. If you feel like showing me yours, I'd love to see it. Either send me an e-mail with the link or post a comment here and I'll be sure to check it out and give you advice if you ask for it.
Well, that's it - I told you that setting up a Blogspot blog was easy. Next up: Getting backlinks.
Alright, to sign up for a Blogspot blog, we need to go to Blogger.com (Blogger.com and Blogspot are the same thing - not sure why it has two names...). Click on the big orange "Create a blog" button and fill out all of the information necessary to create a Google Account (If you already have a Google Account, just go to your Blogger dashboard and click on the "Create a blog" button from there) - I'll be here when you get back.
Done already? OK, let's move on. Now we have to name our new blog. You might be tempted to come up with some incredibly clever title, but don't - choose something simple that people would actually search for. I.e., if your blog is going to be about "dog care" then name it "Dog Care" or "All About Dog Care" or "Dog Care Facts". After choosing your title, you have to pick your blog's address (or URL). Make sure you use your main keyword in this as well. It's a good idea for your URL to be the same as your title but this isn't always possible - "dogcare.blogspot.com" is probably already taken, but "dogcareforbeginners.blogspot.com" might be available. Either way we have our main keyword in our URL so it won't make any difference. Click continue to go to the next step...
Choosing a template - this is simple enough. I'm going to recommend you use the "Minima" template, but that's just a suggestion and you can pick whichever you like. I'm going to choose Minima. Click continue and presto - your blog has now been created! Now let's start blogging!
Clicking the "start blogging" button will take you straight to the posting form. We're going to skip this for now and click on the "Settings" tab. OK? Now we want to go to the "Formatting" section. Once we're there, let's change the first setting to display only 1 post on the main page. Now we want to skip down to the "Show Link Fields" and change it to "yes". Now click the "Save settings" button.
Now lets change the "Comments" settings. First of all, I want to let anyone post a comment to my new blog (you don't have to do this if you don't want to, but if you can get a lot of comments on your blog it can help you with the search engines) Now I'm going to scroll down to the "Backlinks" and change this to "Show" - you should do this too. Save these settings and that's it - we're done setting up our blogs! I told you it wouldn't take long!
By the way, let's not put Adsense on our new sites yet... Why? Well, what's the point of putting Adsense on a blog that doesn't currently have any traffic? You won't earn any money from slapping it on your blog right away, and not doing so can help your new site avoid the dreaded Google "sandbox" (what's that, you ask? Well, as best as I can figure it, the sandbox is where new sites go to prevent them from showing up in Google's search results - basically it means that your site won't be playing with the big kids in Googleland anytime soon...)
But we're not quite done yet - we've got a brand new Blogspot blog now, but we don't have anything on it! What I want you to do now is write a post about your topic. As our first post we just want to give a basic overview of the subject of our blog, using our main keyword as the title - for pointers look at what I did with my first post on this blog, Making Money With Adsense. It doesn't have to be as long as mine but aim for at least 450 words - if you can write more than that, great. The longer the better. And before I forget, put your blog's homepage URL in the "Link" box under your title (We want to do this on every post we make) When you're done writing, publish your post. And there you have it! We've just created our very own blog! Now let's take a break and pat ourselves on the back for taking this first step toward making money with Adsense!
Getting your site indexed with Google will take some time - usually about two weeks. However, we can expedite the process by adding an article with a backlink pointing back to our site - see the next post for more information. Doing this will get your site indexed much faster - it usually only takes two or three days using this method.
Oh yeah, here's the blog I just created: It's called Money Making Websites. If you feel like showing me yours, I'd love to see it. Either send me an e-mail with the link or post a comment here and I'll be sure to check it out and give you advice if you ask for it.
Well, that's it - I told you that setting up a Blogspot blog was easy. Next up: Getting backlinks.
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