Blog Optimizing Using Chris Garrett’s Blog Critique Session
Blog Optimizing Using Chris Garrett's Blog Critique Session
I have been following Chris Garrett, a professional blogger from UK for a long time now. This summer he took over a project of reviewing or critiquing other blogs from his point of view. So far he has reviewed three blogs and after reading all those I was asking myself the following questions:
- What will be the interpretation from those critiquing sessions for anyone who reads those reviews? OR
- What should be the take away from those reading? OR
- What essential parts that a blog need to stand out from the crowd from Chris’s eyes?
So, I took some of the notes and compiled the following list what everyone blogger should look into if they want to stand out from the crowd. One thing that I wanted to add that, this is a broad and general blog optimization ideas that should be used as a guiding tool and instead of looking at as the only way, use this template to add your own thoughts and personality into your blog.
Topic Selection Optimization:
- Find an underserved topic. This way you should be able to target a niche audience rather everyone. Use google trends for your use.
- Target “specific” topic versus everything or everyone.
Blog structure optimization:
- Simplify you blog’s Layout. Cut down the mumbo jumbo and make it simple and easy to follow.
- Play with the brightness of color. Use bright colors to draw attention not for layouts.
- Use images with a link instead of using too many words. Use images for “subscribe me” and/or for “share this” etc.
Landing Page Optimization:
- Blog visitors need to know where they are. Having a “meta tag” in you title or “site description” should get you there.
- Personalize your blog as much as you can. Add an about page with details about you and your thought behind your blogs. Add a picture into your profile is possible.
- Engage the reader in a conversation by ending your blog posts with questions rather comments or statements. Start making your reading think and also use action words to push a bit into commenting and thus interacting with you and others.
- Spark conversations by asking others to engage. Use open-ended questions (Questions that don’t have any right or wrong answer) ..
Reading Experience Optimization:
- Use subheads, bullets and quotes in you blog posts
- Highlight some of the portions is needed.
- Use your real name as the author the offer a more personalized feeling to your readers.
Engaging Optimization:
- Use subscribe, social media buttons at the end of the post
- Use them on your sidebars as well.
Moneymaking channels Optimization:
- Consider Affiliate ads.
- Look into selling your won product.
- Approach advertisers who want to target your audiences.
I really want you to understand the power Chris’s reviews. Just in case you didn’t know, that any problogger will charge you somewhere $500/hr for a blog consulting over the phone and here you are getting those advices for FREE. I have also emailed this post link to Chris and I will keep you guys updated if I hear back from him. So, stay tuned for more and feel free you add your 2 cents.
SEO Ethics: White Hat SEO and Black Hat SEO
Our entire life revolves around ethics. Any one with a solid work ethic is always be the winner, some might argue that but it is what is it. I have talked a lot about SEO through my Blogging Ideas blog. To refresh your memory, search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” (”organic” or “algorithmic”) search results for targeted keywords. In general SEO techniques are classified into two broad categories:
- White Hat SEO: web promotion techniques following search engine guidelines
- Black Hat SEO: web promotion techniques not following any guidelines
First I will share my knowledge about the history for the term White Hat SEO or Black Hat SEO, and then I will get into details about them.
The terms, “White Hat” and “Black Hat” were actually talked form old school cowboy aka western movies, where good guys always wore “white hat” and bad guys wore “Black hat”. In western history, White is symbol of goodness and purity and black always has been depicted as dark, and evil. In the cyber crime, (yes, breaking the rules in a crime) the term “Black Hat” was first used for hacking. The bad hackers are called “Black Hat” who always exploited the holes in the system and “white hat” hackers always notified the authority even though they have/had the opportunity to exploits the security loop holes. And then it gradually came into the SEO department keeping “hacking” the SEO rules in mind.
White Hat SEO
White hat implies that the company uses best practice methods to achieve high search engine rankings. White hat SEO is not just about following guidelines, but is about ensuring that the content a search engine indexes and subsequently ranks is the same content a user will see. White Hat SEO requires time to research, analyze and subsequently re-write meta tags, content and may offer a slight redesign of the website and page names. As a result White hat SEO tends to produce results that last a long time and are steady and ongoing.
Black Hat SEO
Black hat SEO attempts to improve rankings in ways that are disapproved of by the search engines, and/or involve deception. Black Hat methods tend to achieve rankings quickly, but the results are not long lasting. Search engines may penalize sites they discover using black hat methods, either by reducing their rankings or eliminating their listings from their databases altogether. One infamous example was the February 2006 Google removal of both BMW Germany and Ricoh Germany for use of deceptive practices. Once caught, both companies quickly apologized and fixed the offending pages, and were restored to Google’s list. Black hats anticipate that their sites will eventually be banned once the search engines discover what they are doing.
Lets be realistic, there’s a lot of competition to be ranked high, and sometimes you the high competition may push your to think about utilizing those not so honest SEO technology choices. After all, if you cannot get ranked, you will not get traffic and all of your time and energy will be wasted. But you need to realize that while White Hat SEO may not work as quickly as you expected but following the rules and using White Hat SEO will get your site further in the long run. There is no place for short cuts in life thus DO NOT use Black Hat SEO. Think right, think smart and be a BloNgineer.
9 Google Adwords Golden Rules to Save You From Being Broke
Last 2 weeks were just crazy. Fighting with my project cost engineers to cut the cost of my projects along with the issues with wordpress 2.8 for my other websites and my family, it was fun. Last couple of posts, I have talked about Google Quality Score, and how to improve Google Quality Score. So, by now you already know behind the stories of Google Adwords and it’s time to execute. Today I will share some of my learning form my first round of beating from google adwords in 2006. I remember that it took me a quite a while and loosing a bunch of money (come one, I was a student back then and every single dollar was counted for). This a set of very basic, simple and my golden rules that works and keeps me out of trouble during my initial phase of learning about google adwords. So, lets take a look at the following 9 golden rules for google adwords.
Budget Allocation:
Determine the amount that you will spend for you Google Adwords campaign and for how long. Then in the name of God, stick to it for the allocated time. Also find out what’s the rate of return that you are looking for (ex: if I spend 200/week then I am looking to get back $400/week with $200 profit and $200 expense).
No Automation:
Never allow a Google Adwords account to run itself. Automation is good but not in this case.
Haste is Waste:
Applies with your Google Adwords account as well. Never make too many changes at a time. If you do then it will not give good enough information for you to make right decision. Allocate 5-7 days with different time setting for each group and stick with it.
It’s Your Money:
Never let Google control your budget. Google is not your personal finance advisor; she is a sales woman who will rip you off every chance she gets.
It’s Your Business:
Never let Google decide what’s best for you. It’s your business and you should make all the executive decision.
Too Quick is Too Bad:
Always allow time for changes to take effect. Keep in mind that gathering information is key to find out a trend. And those trends will help your Google Adwords campaign a success.
Set a Time and Stick with it:
Initially work in time intervals of seven days. Usually a 5-7 days window is enough for an ad to give you enough information whether you should move forward with that is not.
Control, control and control:
Always keep control. Micromanaging and being control freak by check your campaign every house and tweaking it will make you relax later.
Promptness =$$$
A neglected Adwords account is a dangerous. Don’t believe it, then go ahead and give it a shot. You will be amazed how quickly you will overspend your budget.
Now you already know the golden rules for your Google Adwords, if you dont have any account yet. Go ahead and do so. Remember, practice makes perfect.
How to Write Post Title By the Book
How to Write Post Title By the Book
Imagine you are at your job where you have to outperform everyone and you are overwhelmed with works and all of a sudden some “Billy Bob” comes to you and tells you that your working style is not the best way and you need to change it to his way. What would you do?? Seriously!! And you are right; you don’t have to listen to that person without any validation. Now relate that with your writing style, where blogosphere is the competitive workplace, and you are busy with everything in your life and on top of that your trying to write. And all of sudden you stumbled into a blog post by an unknown blogger when you goggled “How to Write headlines”. I give him/her kudos to rank well in Google but my question is “Are they reliable”?? Keep in mind that I have said “Unknown Blogger” not Problogger, or Copy Blogger or Shoemoney and/or other well known bloggers.
So as a typical engineer, I have looked into some books which are mostly written by well know authors in their respective area. One of the books that I enjoyed was Business writing By Wilma Davidson and I will quote the following simple, short and sweet methods of writing electrifying headline that can hypnotize readers to Entice, Invite and Encourage to Read More”
- Explain:
Why to outsourcing your project - Use Numbers:
10 steps of writing blogs - Use and ‘ing’ verb :
Increasing Your Google Ad sense earnings - Create a Need:
The Need to outsource your Blogging - Use a whole sentence:
Declarative, Increasing Selective Traffic Increases Conversions
Imperative, Rank higher in Google Before your Competition Does
Interrogative, How can you Rank Higher in Google Searches Substantially - Use verbs: Follow me to the Moon and I will give you Gold
Now, these are “by the book” methods and of course you can find out more about other methods of writing effective headlines as well. Hopefully your take away from this post should be couple of things. First of you now know a very simple of writing post headline and title. And secondly, you need to make a habit of validating your sources from where you get the information from. And if you already know how to write post titles then check out my post about how to optimize your post title.
How to Optimize Your Landing Page Quality
How to Optimize Your Landing Page Quality
To optimize your PPC campaigns with major ad groups you need to monitor and test your keywords and landing pages constantly. Your ads should work together with your preferred keywords and landing pages in order for your have a lower PPC and thus giving you a higher Google Quality Score for your keywords.
Landing pages are a custom designed to convert visitors. To Google, low quality landings pages indicates a low quality site. And low quality site will have a bad site experience for Google thus Google will penalize you by charging extra for you PPC. Following are six steps that you can keep in your mind while optimizing and improving your Landing page.
Landing Page Relevancy:
Use a content rich landing page. Write landing pages that matches your keyword. Optimize your title tag, meta tag according to your keywords or vice versa.
Do more than simply display other ads or lead visitors directly to a sign up form.
Landing Page Bounce Rate:
A great way t examine your quality of landing page is to look at the bounce rate using Google Analytics. Your bounce rate you tell you how informative is
your Landing Page. Try achieving bounce for lower that 40%. Use multivariate tools to lower the bounce rate.
Landing Page Load Speed:
The faster your Landing Page open, the more you Quality Score you will receive in that category. Because faster pages offers better user experience for
visitors.
Landing Page SEO:
Use SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for your website. A good landing page has titles with keywords that focus the page on a particular theme.
Landing Page Disclaimer:
This is almost a no brainer. You should provide a privacy policy when asking for personal information unless you are just trying to push out a sell for one
time only. This should bring a psychological support to your customers as well as will keep you safe from courts.
Annoying user experience:
Avoid offering annoying user experience such as pop up ads and other intrusive elements. It also includes frequent site outages, slow page loads time etc.
If I had to design my Landing Page then I would do just like Amazon.com . Why?? Simply because they have the best layout for their products pages and how do know that? Because they have the highest conversion rate with their CPC based on their reports.
As I said it before, It’s all about trial and error and learning from it. My experience you can read all you want but the only way you can learn more will be by implementing it. So, go ahead and start tweaking your Landing Page will you achieve whatever that you want to achieve.
How To Write Google AdWords Text Ads that results high CTR
How To Write Google AdWords Text Ads that results high CTR
Last couple of posts I have talked about what is google quality score and how you can improve your Google Quality Score. Today I will show you ways that will allow you to control the most important deciding factor for your keywords quality score, which is Google Adwords Ads text. You can save a huge chunk of your Adword expense just by writing an effective Google Adword Ad applying relevant keyword to its text. Once you manage to have an effective Google Adword Ad with relevant keyword to its text, Google will display your ads more than others, which will get you the clicks that you want and will give you a higher CTR (Click through ratio) and finally will cut the cost of your keyword.
From my list of readings and references I have found the following articles are very useful and handy. I have broken down the readings into two steps and I strongly suggest reading the pre-reads first to learn some general terms knowledge and then move into the implementation part where you can start practicing .
Pre-read :
- Starter Edition text ads : Find out what Google says about writing adwords ad text.
- Write Ad Copy : Microsoft’s version of google ad text.
Implementation:
- AdWords Ads Writing Tips : 31 ways to text you learning’s before you spend you money with Google Adwords.
- How to Write PPC Ad Copy: Tom Demers has a nice easy to follow templates for writing google adwords ad campaign.
As you move forward with your Adwords account, it will always help you if you have a list of references (I call it cheat list) where you can always refer back to if you had any questions.