Desty Online -- Online and Offline Businesses, Online Marketing » SEO and Link Building http://www.destyonline.com Bringing offline business practices online. Turning bloggers into Businessmen. Wed, 15 Oct 2008 21:07:53 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.3.3 en How to Really Use Keywords for Search Engine Traffic http://www.destyonline.com/how-to-really-use-keywords-for-search-engine-traffic/ http://www.destyonline.com/how-to-really-use-keywords-for-search-engine-traffic/#comments Wed, 26 Dec 2007 19:06:02 +0000 Desty http://www.destyonline.com/how-to-really-use-keywords-for-traffic/ I’d like to share an example of how Blogger Unleashed has helped me bring targeted traffic to my funny video site, the Masked Dispatcher’s Funny Video Collection.

 What Vic Said

Vic wrote an article about predicting what people will want to search about.  His example was Resurrecting the Champ, but instead of using that as his keyword, he focused on the boxer’s name, Battling Bob Satterfield and Bob Satterfield.

He knew that after watching the movie, people would want to know more about the real boxer, so that’s why he focused on the boxer’s name.

What I Did

On my funny video site, I embedded a funny video from the series Futurama.  Incase you haven’t heard, Futurama is going to be leaving the Cartoon Network.  It has been on the AdultSwim lineup for over 5 years, but the contact is ending.  The day after Christmas there will be a final Futurama marathon showing all of the episodes.

For fans of the show, I figured, they would want to know why it was going off AdultSwim, so I posted a video under the title of Futurama Leaving AdultSwim.  It’s a video showing what I consider one of the funniest clips from Futurama, which just happens to be a Christmas episode.

If you search Google using keywords such as “futurama leaving Adultswim”, “futurama leaving cartoon network”, “futurama leaving”, “futurama final marathon”, etc, you’ll see my post in the top 3 on almost all of those!  My search traffic has been 61.5% of my total traffic!  I’ve made some money off this article, now I just need to focus on converting that traffic into clicks better than I already am.

Something Else I Tried, but Nothing So Far

I tried using Bloggingzoom in a different way than I normally do with this article.  Instead of focusing on futurama leaving cartoon network on Bloggingzoom, I focused on the fact that the post was a Christmas episode, and was going after the funny Christmas video keyword.  I was trying to get some Christmas holiday traffic with that post, but so far I can’t see that I have.

I highly suggest that if you want more search traffic, you check out Blogger Unleashed and subscribe to the RSS.  Be warned, Vic has a mean sense of humor, so read everything first before you comment on anything ;)

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]]> http://www.destyonline.com/how-to-really-use-keywords-for-search-engine-traffic/feed/ Is Submitting Your Articles to Bloggingzoom a Good Idea? http://www.destyonline.com/is-submitting-your-articles-to-bloggingzoom-a-good-idea/ http://www.destyonline.com/is-submitting-your-articles-to-bloggingzoom-a-good-idea/#comments Tue, 27 Nov 2007 15:19:12 +0000 Desty http://www.destyonline.com/is-submitting-your-articles-to-bloggingzoom-a-good-idea/

Over the last two or three weeks I have been networking on the new site Bloggingzoom.  Bloggingzoom is a network of bloggers using a Digg-type format to submit article links.  The thought behind it is you can submit your own articles not only to a wider audience of bloggers, but also to help your traffic by improving your rankings for the submitted articles.

SEO Work With Currently Ranked Articles 

On what was an unrelated note, I have been doing further research into SEO and keyword selections and placement when I discovered what could be considered a very basic process.

Check your search engine traffic to see what is getting the most inbound traffic.  Go back to that article and make some slight improvements (add an additional link to a related article in the content, etc).  Also, check your keywords to see how you’re ranking.

My article going over Whateverlife.com and how it makes money by giving away free MySpace layouts has been, by far, responsible for the majority of my search engine traffic. My entrance keywords for this article are

  • whateverlife myspace
  • how does whateverlife make money
  • whateverlife owner
  • how does whateverlife.com make money?
  • myspace whateverlife
  • whateverlife business
  • how does whateverlife.com make money
  • how whateverlife started
  • layouts and whateverlife

When I originally started to get search engine traffic from Google for this article, I did a keyword search and discovered I was ranked 2nd on the 1st page behind whateverlife.com itself!

Dude, Where’s My Search Engine Traffic?? 

Today, I did a search on those keywords again.  I had been knocked down from 2nd to 5th.  That’s ok, just need to make some adjustments.  Then I noticed that my submission for my Whateverlife.com article to Bloggingzoom was ranked 3rd!

I don’t know, but this worries me.  I have been getting traffic from Bloggingzoom, even some traffic from them for that article, but I seriously wonder if it’s actual search engine traffic.  Putting on my affiliate SEO hat, any links or exits from a site is a bad thing.  In the sidebar of the Bloggingzoom page for my article are several links to other articles.  If that reader finds something else that captures their interest, that’s traffic I missed out on.  Also, from a pure linkage standpoint, how does Google relate this link from Bloggingzoom to my article?

What Do You Think? 

I enjoy my time on Bloggingzoom, networking with other bloggers and reading excellent articles.  I’ve also learned a great deal about how to create better articles by reading Bloggingzoom.  I wonder if it’s a good thing to actually submit my articles though.

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]]> http://www.destyonline.com/is-submitting-your-articles-to-bloggingzoom-a-good-idea/feed/ Wow, I was Fooled! http://www.destyonline.com/wow-i-was-fooled/ http://www.destyonline.com/wow-i-was-fooled/#comments Mon, 12 Nov 2007 06:01:04 +0000 Desty http://www.destyonline.com/wow-i-was-fooled/ As I’ve said before, I like using BlogRush to find new blogs.  I was running around the BlogRush network and came across whizkidsecrets.com blog [nofollow added, you’ll see].  It was a good title for an article about how Shylockblogging had been sold overnight.  You’ll notice that the article I’m talking about is actually on 45n5.com’s site.

You guessed it, whizkidsecrets blog is a scraper site!  I got fooled because the site itself looks like a normal blog, with ads beyond the normal adsense you see on most scraper sites.  Heck, even the ‘about me’ page had something on it, not the normal default wordpress content.  Plus being in BlogRush kinda threw me off guard.

Someone actually took some time and set this scraper site up.  Maybe a sign of things to come.  On a Blackhat SEO blog, the author bragged on how he makes roughly $2.45 per day from his scraper site network / empire; all he has to do is setup the initial blog and scraper scripts, and then forget about them.  On average, those sites last roughly 2 months before Google catches on and cuts them off from traffic.  By that time, he’s already got his next network setup and ready to be turned on.

I delete, on average, 3-5 trackbacks from scraper sites on Desty Online.  Sad to say, I actually wouldn’t mind scrapers if they actually kept my links intact.

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]]> http://www.destyonline.com/wow-i-was-fooled/feed/ The Google Strikes Back http://www.destyonline.com/the-google-strikes-back/ http://www.destyonline.com/the-google-strikes-back/#comments Sat, 27 Oct 2007 05:06:47 +0000 Desty http://www.destyonline.com/the-google-strikes-back/ Over the months, I’ve noticed that everyone is preoccupied with Google’s Page Rank.  The focus of everyone’s SEO has been not to increase search engine traffic, but to increase Page Rank.  While I understood their reasons, I never agreed with their reasons.

What ”They” Think and What “They” Say 

The selling of links was big business.  Services such as TextLinkAds and Linkworth would broker blogs’ advertising space, not to create links to related sites, but to take advantage of a site’s Page Rank.  Selling TextLinkAds especially was a great money maker for blogs.  Approve the link, it appears in your sidebar, have the money deposited into your PayPal account on a monthly basis.

While not everyone believes this, I have seen bloggers actually disdainful of search engine traffic.  The thought was that search engine traffic brought in inferior visitors; they didn’t read many pages, didn’t stay on the blog very long , and, heaven forbid, they didn’t buy anything!

The Google Strikes Back

For months, Google was mentioning that they didn’t like paid links for PR reasons.  While there are those who argue that TextLinkAds and what not are just paid advertising, debate doesn’t matter; if Google considers TextLinkAds to be paid links for PR, that’s how they’ll treat them, pure and simple.

Over the past few months, there were a few manual PR corrections, the most famous being John Chow dot Com losing PR, and not ranking for John’s own name.  Now, a come complete update has taken place.  Problogger, Andy Beard, John Chow, and others have been smacked down.

Suddenly, everyone who had been focusing on Page Rank suddenly write that they don’t care what Page Rank they have.  Maki at Doshdosh has an excellent article that is very similar to an article I was working on about Page Rank and online business.  I agree with what he says about building your online business around your Page Rank; never have your business rely on things outside of your control.  Google controls Page Rank.  If you allow your Page Rank to determine your business, you are allowing Google to control your business.

What I Say and What I Do

From the beginning, I’ve thought of Desty Online as a meeting point.  My only and favorite feature, Desty’s Gold Starred Articles, allows me to share with readers articles I found and thought highly of.  When I find something I enjoy, I like to share it with the world.  I can go back to an older article of mine back in July about how I think about linking to other blogs.  I still feel the same; I like to share the love, as it were, and I don’t charge for my links to great articles.

Now for something I’d like to share.  It was going to be the title of this article, but I changed my mind when I came up with “The Google Strikes Back.”  As of today, Desty Online is now a Page Rank 3! :)

I did some research into trying to increase my Page Rank, there are two things that I have done on a consistent basis for months that may have had an effect on my Page Rank.

  • Nofollow From Home Plugin – This plugin adds [rel=”nofollow”] to all external links from my home page.  This allows for zero leakage from my home page.
  • Internal Links — Notice everytime I use my title Desty Online, I link to my home page.  The hope is to pass along some PR juice from individual pages to my main page.  I got this trick from Andy Beard.

Does the Page Rank increase affect Desty Online?  You bet.  It allows for an increase in revenue.  What would happen if I lost it tomorrow?  As far as I’m concerned, nothing.  I started with a Page Rank 0 and have lived months as such.  I’m used to it.

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]]> http://www.destyonline.com/the-google-strikes-back/feed/ The Next Generation of Online Marketing — TNX.net http://www.destyonline.com/the-next-generation-of-online-marketing-tnxnet/ http://www.destyonline.com/the-next-generation-of-online-marketing-tnxnet/#comments Mon, 22 Oct 2007 02:35:14 +0000 Desty http://www.destyonline.com/the-next-generation-of-online-marketing-tnxnet/ Roughly a month ago, I discovered a new advertising broker where you can sell advertising on your web site and buy links to other’s web sites.  TNX (located at TNX.net, not .com) is the next in the line of buy and sell links online advertising brokers, along the lines of Linkworth and TextLinkAds.  I signed up with Desty Online, scanned the introduction and the requirements to go live, and ran into a brick wall.  We’ll get into the brick wall later.  Anyway, I decided to move on and come back later and see what I could do with it.

A few weeks pass and I see John Chow and CashQuests writing about TNX.net.  Those two blogs are very well written, from an understanding and motivational standpoint, so I decided to go back and take a more detailed look into using TNX.  Also, TNX had started some marketing on Digital Point, where they were giving away free points to forum members who would sign up and post their TNX ID#; I’ll go into the points later, but for right now you just need to know that when you sell advertising space on your site, you’re paid in points.  It’s these same points that you use to buy links, so in essence, they were giving away 2000 points worth of money or free links.

Let me get into the Pros and Cons of TNX.net then I’ll let you know my experiences.

PRO

  • Affiliate Program – As all good sales programs out there, there is an incentive to get others to join up per your recommendation.  You get a flat 13.3% of the amount of points sold by your affiliates as long as they remain with the program.  Even if you yourself never actually put the advertising on your site, if you have others join up under you, can you earn free money or links, which ever you choose to spend your points on. 
  • Point System — This is a strength as well as a weakness in my humble opinion.  The Pro side of the point system is that those of us who love trading and whatnot, will start gaming the system.  Supposedly, the conversion rate from point to cash will increase at roughly 2% per month for a set amount of time; this means that you’ll want to join up as soon as possible to start earning cheap points.  I look at it as an opportunity to pay a cheap price and buy other’s points.  Yes, you heard me (er, read) right, you buy trade points between users.  Why would anyone want to buy points from TNX when they can buy them from you at a cheaper price; vise versa, why sell points back to TNX when someone else can give you more money per point than TNX is at the time.  The system has the potential to become a new economy.

CON

  • Point System — With the good comes the bad.  People are used to getting paid cash from Linkworth or TextLinkAds.  What’s with this point crap, they ask.  Also, while a new economy could be created with this point system, right now TNX is still giving away points for free.  In economics, this causes inflation, and the price of a point isn’t nearly as much as it would be if all these points weren’t floating around.
  • Getting Your Site Live — This is currently the biggest problem with TNX.  To get started, you have to put some generated code on your site.  For normal wordpress bloggers, this is a huge headache!  You have to download another plugin just to allow the code to work, otherwise you can’t even get wordpress to allow the code.  My suggestion is to get everything put into a plugin, just like TextLinkAds, where you download the plugin, and activate it.  Simple.

Where Are We at With TNX? 

Where am I on TNX?  I’m still trying to get the code to work.  I downloaded the plugin that should have allowed the code to work, but it didn’t.  To their credit, TNX had a link to BONTB where they go, step by step on how to get the code to workfor you.  I followed the instructions and wordpress finally allowed the update.  Problem was that it caused an error to appear on my actual page, so it was removed.  BONTB offered to help anyone get through their problems; I’m going to take them up on that offer, when I have the time to take another crack at this.

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]]> http://www.destyonline.com/the-next-generation-of-online-marketing-tnxnet/feed/ SEO In Progress and Other Changes http://www.destyonline.com/seo-in-progress-and-other-changes/ http://www.destyonline.com/seo-in-progress-and-other-changes/#comments Thu, 02 Aug 2007 17:43:43 +0000 Desty http://www.destyonline.com/seo-in-progress-and-other-changes/ With Google’s update of Page Rankings rumored to be taking place during the month of August, Desty Online is getting a tune-up in regards to it’s search engine optimization processes.  Here are some of the customizations we’re using to hopefully increase a possible Page Rank.  I don’t pretend to know how to use all of these to their fullest, but based off my research these plug-ins make some much needed changes to your blog in order to make it search engine friendly.

  • All in One SEO Pack–  Allows you to create a page title for single page posts separate from the title of the article itself.  This enables you to insert more targeted keywords to help direct search engine traffic to relevant articles.  Also allows keyword placement in the meta code of the article itself.
  • Google Sitemap Generator – Creates a Google compliant sitemap of your blog.  Helps Google see what there is to see on your blog.
  • Optimal Title– Mirrors the function of the wp_title() exactly, but moves the position of the ’separator’  to after the title rather than before.
  • Permalink Redirect– Ensures that pages and entries are always accessed via the permalink.  Otherwise, a 301 redirect will be issued.
  • WWW Redirect– Redirects variations of identical domain requests to a consistent URL (i.e. http://destyonline.com to http://www.destyonline.com )

These plug-ins have been in place for some weeks.  I’m also shopping for other SEO friendly plug-ins or tactics to help increase the Page Rank of Desty Online.

Final note, over the weekend, Desty Online will be getting a face lift!  We’ll be switching to a new theme, working the kinks out of the theme, bringing everything up to code, and hopefully have a cleaner, fresher display for readers.  Also on tap is a reduction of Google’s AdSense ad blocks.  There will still be some on the site, but the virtual real estate that is Desty Online has better uses for that space.  Last, but not least, Desty Online will no longer worry about its Technorati rankings or the chase of gaining links just to a higher Technorati rating or for having more links sake. 

The Desty Online Business Plan is in place!  Time to follow the road map.

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