YourWealth.org: Tips for Creating Your Wealth Online

Archive for the ‘Fundamentals’ Category

Building Blog Traffic: Optimizing for Google Image Search

Written by Brandon on January 4, 2008 – 5:15 am -

Here is something I noticed a year ago that completely blew me away: blogs that have lots of images get half or more of their search traffic from their images. This means if your images are not indexing on your image rich site, then you may be potentially missing an opportunity to double your search traffic. But, getting your images indexed by Google is a complete mystery even to the most seasoned webmasters as the forum chatter suggests. So, in the next few paragraphs I will help you figure out if your images are indexing on Google, and if they are not indexing then how you might get them indexed on Google, so you too can be well on your way to doubling your search traffic.

The geekiest Halloween costume ever: A Google Image Search (photo by Jacob Lodwick)

First, be aware that Google has a separate image crawler that crawls your site for images. You cannot include an image site map on your site telling Google when and where to find new images like you can for the written content. The image crawler just comes buy whenever it can which is not very often. Images are much more data intensive than text, so Google really takes its time getting around to your site. Also, if your site is slow, then the Google image crawler will skip over your site completely and not come back for a long, long time.

But before we get in too deep, let’s see if your images are indexing. It’s as simple as going to images.google.com and typing in “site:http://yoursite.com” ( replace yoursite.com with your blog’s own URL) . If no images come up then you’ve got a problem.

There are a few things you will need to do to make sure your images are indexing.

• First, you should make sure that there is no meta tag in the head of your web page that tells the web crawlers to exclude images from being indexed. If there is, then get rid of the tag.
• Next, you should make sure that there is no line in your robots.txt file telling web crawlers to exclude images from being indexed. If there is, then get rid of the line that excludes images. For more about robots.txt check out the links I’ve included.
• Then, you will need to make sure each image has a very descriptive title attribute in the <img> tag. The title want to be very descriptive in 10 words or less.

If you have done all of this, and you’ve waited a few weeks for Google’s extremely slow crawler, then you have a much more difficult problem to troubleshoot. But, there is still hope! Chances are that your site is too slow for Google to efficiently crawl. I know it may seem OK to you, but to Google it is just too slow. What you are going to have to do next is speed up the delivery of the site to Google. I’ve found that the simplest and most effective technique is to cache the web pages. Caching pages is essentially a technique where your blog software creates a temporary copy of a web page that does not change too much so that the blog does not have to go back and forth to the database. Caching can dramatically speed up your site, and if your use a Wordpress blog, a there is a great caching plugin called WP-Cache that is a must for your site. After I installed the caching plugin for Wordpress on one of my own sites I very soon got major traffic from Google Images. I also tried turning it off and on for a few days at a time and found that there was a definite correlation with caching and the Google image crawler indexing my site.

If none of this works, then it may be time to start from scratch on another blog software that will guarantee image indexing. I’m afraid I’m out of ideas.

Finally, I want to point out an interesting way using Google Image Search to find out where you stand in blog domination. I run an interior design blog which is somewhat popular but no where close to the most popular design blogs such as mocoloco.com. I decided to see how I stood up to the big guys by doing a simple test to see how many images of chairs each of us had indexed. So I put in “site:designcrack.com/v2 chairs” and “site:mocoloco.com chairs” . What I had found is that I had a total of 120 different chair images which I thought was a very respectable amount of chair posts for little old me. But, mocoloco.com had a total of nearly 13,000 chair images to choose from. This immediately said to me that I will not be playing with the big blogs unless I make a full time commitment to my blogging craft. A couple of posts per day simply cannot compare.

Tags: blogging, google image search, image crawler, mocoloco.com, robot.txt
Posted in Analysis, Blogs, Building Blog Revenue, Building Web Traffic, Fundamentals, SEO | 2 Comments »

Blog Titles and Meta Data: What Benefit’s Do You Get from Optimization?

Written by Brandon on December 30, 2007 – 5:48 pm -

Back when I started my very first blog in 2004, I was not terribly happy with the amount of traffic I was getting from Google. I had set up my sitemap and done all of the things that I thought I should do. Then one day, I realized that I had never created meta data in the head of my blog template. After I changed this data to properly describe my site, I got double the amount of traffic from Google the very next day. Recently though, I’ve wondered how much optimizing meta data really matters on a site that is already popular. The answer I’ve come up with is it does not matter one bit. But before I tell you why it doesn’t matter, let’s get back to basics.

The Library Card: An Early Form of Metadata 

If you don’t know what meta data is, then read this awesome article on searchenginewatch.com to get an understanding. In its simplest form, meta data is just data that quickly describes what is on a particular web page. This meta data can describe a number of things on your site, but for the purposes of this article, let’s focus on three tags found within the head of every web page: <meta name=”keywords” content=”some,keywords,here” /> , <meta name=”description” content=”some description here” />, and <title>The title of the page</title>.

What each tag does is pretty self explanitory. Good Search Engine Optimization practice tell us that:

<meta name=”keywords” content=”some,keywords,here” /> = You would write about 20 keywords that best describes your web page.

<meta name=”description” content=”some description here” /> = You would write a small paragraph describing your site’s content using multiple keywords distinct to your site.

<title>The title of the page</title> = You would write a short title that might be the blog name and a less than one sentence description.

If you have small amounts of traffic, and you have not done what I’ve subscribed above, then you will double your traffic pretty quickly once you’ve done this.

Optimizing blog titles and meta data in Wordpress, for instance, becomes more tricky. You should consider getting one of the SEO plugins for wordpress that I list at the end of the article or visiting the Wordpress.org web page on SEO. Also, check out this link on Meta Tags in Wordpress. Remember that in a wordpress blog you have 4 types of pages that you have to optimize: the homepage, the archive, the single post, and the page. Rather than going on about this, let’s just say the end goal: Every page in your site should have different meta data tailored to that page. Most sites that have been lazy about meta data use the same meta data throughout the site and only change the titles. This is not what you want. You want to use Wordpress’ flexible Template Tags to build just the right data. (If you want more specifics, you’ll have to hire me).

If you remember at the beginning of the article, though, I said meta data does not matter one bit for very popular sites. Then why did I spend so much time on this subject? We’ll most sites aren’t really popular, so I think you’ll benefit from considering meta data on your site. But, how do I know that meta data isn’t all that important for popular sites? From an experiment I conducted in my blog sector. I write a design blog, so I took ten of the most popular design blogs as defined by Alexa, and I viewed their source to see what their meta data looked like. I thought I would find some meta data oracle that would show me the way to instant popularity, but I found the exact opposite. And, here is what I found:

• None of the five blogs had any consistency with keywords or descriptions between them. They were all completely different even though the subject matter was quite similar.
• A couple of the blogs did not have meta data at all. There was nothing to speak of to describe their data, and yet they remain amazingly popular.
• Most of the blogs had no consistency between the home page meta data and the single post meta data.
• One site even did not have meta data related to their subject and it seemed that it was a placeholder that was meant to be changed.

What should all this mean to you? There are other much more major areas where you should spend your time increasing traffic for your site. At the very least, you should definitely go to all the major search engines to see what your page results look like. If they quickly describe the results well, then you’re done. If they don’t describe what the page is about then go back to the boards immediately because either your title or your meta data needs work. Now, for a list of SEO Plugins:

• SEO All In One
• Seo Title Tag
• Meta Keyword Plugin

Tags: head, metadata, optimization, SEO, tags, titles, wordpress
Posted in Blogs, Building Blog Revenue, Building Web Traffic, Fundamentals, SEO, wordpress | 1 Comment »

Blog Interviews: A Surprisingly Traditional Way to Build Massive Blog Traffic

Written by Brandon on December 22, 2007 – 10:36 pm -

Probably one of the biggest boosts that you can create for your blog is by conducting interviews with people in your field. You are probably thinking, “That’s so traditional, how could this such a successful method to build traffic?” In the next few paragraphs I hope to prove to you that interviews may potentially be the best way to build traffic. (Just as a quick example, interviews I’ve done in the past have usually grown my audience by a bump of fifty sustained visitors to the blog which adds up over the course of twenty interviews.) And after I’ve convinced you of its benefits I hope to give you a road map of how to conduct and leverage your interview into a continuous moneymaker. But now, for why this method is so powerful:

photo by laffy4k

People want to read about real world case studies because it inspires them.

I know when I hear an interview with an entrepreneur in my field that has made a successful and established business of what he or she created I am listening intently. This information is gold not only because the interview can give me new tips and ideas, but also because I learn what the interview subject went through emotionally to get where he or she got.

Your interviewee will enjoy the PR boost that they get from your interview, and in turn, let all of their friends, customers and potential customers know about.

In basic terms, doing interviews is also about trading audiences. You give the interviewee your audience, and the interview subject gives you her audience when she sends out an email to all of her contacts telling her audience to listen to or read the interview. It’s really a beautiful marriage.

An interview creates a more intimate relationship which you may be able to leverage in the future.

Speaking of beautiful marriage, if the interview is well received and generates business for the both of you, then you will feel like you’ve both given and received something valuable which is a great way to establish a strong relationship. This relationship may in the future lead to sponsorship of the blog or other favors.

An interview is a solid piece of data that you can incorporate and repackage into several forms.

Interviews can be used to make a podcast and a blog post, but of utmost importance is it can make multiple podcasts and blog posts. Interviews can often be extended into four or five parts with each new part gaining greater and greater anticipation by the audience. Give the audience a taste with the first podcast, and keep them wanting more by telling them what they’ll miss in the next podcast. Beyond this, interviews are great material for case studies in books or ebooks.

An interview helps create a legitimate brand.

If your brand is not established, an interview with someone whose brand is established will start to legitimize your blog. For instance, if I ran a small political blog, and I somehow landed an audio interview with Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House in the U.S., then I would surely be on my way to creating a legitimate brand, and seen as someone who has access to important people. If your niche is very narrow like sock knitting, then legitimizing your brand would include interviews with famous yarn manufacturers whose brands your audience would be familiar with.

photo by Matt Forsythe

Now you know why you’d want to do an interview, what about how to perform an interview? I’ve create a list of five short points that will get you on the road to making an interview with an eye for creating maximum traffic for your site. I don’t tell you how to improve your interview skills or how to record an interview, but at the end of the article I will list a number of resources to help improve your interviewing skills and techniques.

• First, identify your interviewee. You should speak with her at least once to evaluate her a two main criteria: authority and personality. You want to evaluate does she know what she’s talking about and can answer in an engaging manner. Now, Let’s say you’ve identified your first interview and she has agreed to the interview. What next?
• Second, prepare a list of questions. These questions should, in my opinion, be biased towards the subject, focused on the interviewee’s area of expertise, and be framed from the perspective of your audiences interests. I would start with a list of ten questions, but if you’re familiar with the interviewee then you can develop more detailed questions as well. Definitely email these questions well in advance of your interview to give the interviewee time to prepare. As well, I suggest you ask the subject to create any of her own questions that she might find pertinent to the conversation. Make sure, as well, that the subject know who your audience is and that she should frame her answers specifically for your audience.
• Third, conduct the interview. There are two styles of interviews I like and only two: The recorded interview and the email interview. I do not prefer the face to face interview where I take notes because of the amount of work and the accuracy which I can record. The recorded interview is the best type of interview because you can distribute this content in several media types, and it’s really the simplest method for the interviewee to participate in. All they have to do is show up and talk. The email interview, however, takes much more writing commitment on the part of the subject, but it is much less work for you. This is a great type of interview, though, if you just want a quick, short bit of information. I list a bunch of resources at the end of the post.
• Fourth (this is crucial), urge your interview subject to email all of her contacts to be sure that they read your interview. You may even want to craft a letter for them as a go by. Also, ask the interviewee to please do a press release announcing their interview as well as publishing it on their own company newsletter. What you are aiming for is to get maximum exposure to an audience that is completely familiar with the interview subject but may have never heard of your blog or podcast.
• Fifth, keep in contact with the interview subject. I would ask her if you could put her on your email mailing list. If you maintain the relationship then you may want even ask her to become a sponsor of the blog at some point. At this level in your relationship, the interview subject may even be a booster for your website and could be much more easily convinced to become your sponsor.

If you are able to follow these five steps, then I think you will really be able to maximize the interview to its fullest revenue potential. To recap, I’ve broadly covered why interviews are important and how to maximize interviews for your podcast or blog, the next step would be to look at some of the skills needed to create a good interview. The resources listed below should be a great start:

• General Guidelines for Conducting Interviews
  
• How To Conduct A Successful Phone Interview
• Get the great book: The Art of the Interview
• About.com’s Guide to Conducting a Podcast Interview
• Podcasting Made Simple

Tags: advice, blog, blogging, Blogs, internet, interviews, podcasting, questions, search engine marketing, sem, SEO, tips
Posted in Blogs, Building Web Traffic, Fundamentals, Podcasts, SEO | 11 Comments »

Starting a For-Profit Blog Part 1: Research Your Niche

Written by Brandon on December 14, 2007 – 3:52 pm -

As I mentioned in a previous article, there are a number of online businesses that you can build your wealth from. I’ve listed the businesses from least risky to most risky, and today I’m starting with the least risky which I will call the media company. Media Companies would be composed of such businesses as blogs, podcasts, video blogs, news agregators, and even things like how-to sites and fan sites. Their primary money making opportunities include:

• Advertising
• E-book Sales
• Premium Content
• Fan Sales
• Affiliate Sales

Let’s take the most common business as the very beginning starting point: the blog. How do you start a business? I will give you broad steps at first, and then cover specifics in later articles.

Phase One: research your niche topic

Before even starting the blog you should choose a handful of niche topics that you are interested in. Let’s say you’ve chosen bicycling. Now, you will want to start to search for bicycling in Google’s Blog Search or at Technorati to find out what bicycle blogs are popular. Next, you will want to write down a number of blogs on your topic.

I then like to go to Alexa and compare blogs in my niche to blogs in very popular niches to see how they stack up. So, for instance, here is a link to two very popular design blogs and Engadget which is arguably the most popular blog in the world. What this might start telling you after doing a bunch of searches is that tech gadgets are more popular or that Engadget has some features that could be better done in your niche. There is a lot to infer which I can help with in future posts.

Also, I highly suggest using Google Trends to start to see if your niche is a heavily searched topic compared to other topics. A simple starting point is to check the trend on “cycling” versus a random topic like maybe “jewelry” and a topic you know must be popular like “ipod”. What you find is that iPod is, in-fact, a much more popular search term, and surprisingly, jewelry is much more popular than cycling. This might give you more insight as to what topic you want to blog about based on its overall popularity. Maybe jewelry is better than cycling. This might also clue you in on topics that people often search for, but no good media outlet has developed for that topic.

Regardless of what your searches begin to tell you, do something you like. Again, this is just scratching the surface of how you might prepare for your blog, but I will cover more in the near future. AT least this gives you a simple base for how you might choose your topic.

Tags: blogging, Blogs, business, entrepreneurship
Posted in Blogs, Creating Wealth, Fundamentals, Starting a Business | No Comments »

Starting an Online Business Part One: Choosing What To Do

Written by Brandon on December 13, 2007 – 2:02 am -

In the next few weeks I will consider the five business model types that are good general categories for starting an online business. I’ve ranked them in order from least risky meaning you could, in theory, make a living without investing much money, to most risky meaning that a significant amount of capital, time, and/or coordination would need to be invested. All business models can bring in a fair income, but in general, the more capital intensive the company the more wealth you can build for yourself. I will go into great depth in the future, but for now, let me just list the five models:

• Media Company
• Sales or Affiliate Marketing
• Services
• E-Commerce
• Web Applications

Media Companies would be composed of such businesses as blogs, podcasts, video blogs, news agregators, and even things like how-to sites and fan sites. Their primary money making opportunities include:

• Advertising
• E-book Sales
• Premium Content
• Fan Sales
• Affiliate Sales

My general feeling is that small media companies are not huge wealth creation vehicles themselves, but are best suited to create large audiences for future businesses. In other words, the media business builds your voice and your future businesses build your wealth.

Sales and Affiliate Marketing Businesses are things like e-malls, niche product shops, and online incentive shops where you give back savings to the customers or offer prizes for shopping. These businesses can be much more nebulous as well where you don’t even have a website and you wealth is made simply by creating effective Google ads to attract customers to a site. I will go into great detail in the future about how this model works, though.

Services are an awesome way to make your income online especially if you can find a particular skill that you can exploit. These services can be vastly diverse. One example of a service you might provide is logo design or graphic design services. If you have a good voice, you might provide announcement services. If you speak a foreign langiuage you might do translation services. The possibilities are endless. The essential rule is that anytime you or a friend or someone in a forum says why does’t anyone do (whatever), this is something that could be exploited as a service if properly marketed to the right people.

Real E-Commerce sites are where real money begins to flow into and out of your pocket. E-commerce again can take a multiplicity of forms and I hope in the future to identify untapped niches, but I will definitely focus future articles on affective marketing, curating your stock list, and building a loyal brand follow whatever products you decide to sell.

Finally, web applications are ventures that should not be approached without some knowledge of how to write a software specification, and who to have create the software per your specifications. If you do not know what a specification is, then stop right here. I will say that you DO NOT need to know how to program to create a great web applications. You just need to surround yourself with the people that do know how to program. Web applications as an example include things like Flickr, a site where you can upload and share your photos to things as simple as a really handy financial calculator. The key here is do you have an idea that would just be so damn useful that you’d want it desperately yourself. But making something useful does not mean you’ve made it user friendly. I will spend eons on this subject in future articles. We all know the reward of making really useful things, though. Once people find it, they will come back again and again. And they will tell alltheir friends.

That is my quick introduction to the five basic business models I will discuss for starting a business. Now, on to the meat!

Posted in Fundamentals, Starting a Business | 1 Comment »