Tips for advert placement in blog/website

Advert Placement

We all know the realtor’s mantra “location, location, location” when referring to what makes property desirable. It doesn’t matter if you have the biggest, most beautiful house on the block; no one will want to buy it if its next to the dump!

Well, guys, the same thing applies to your ads! You might have an awesome site with great traffic, but it won’t matter if your ads aren’t in the right place. Ad placement can make or break a site’s chance at earning decent ad revenue.

To better picture what we’re talking about, we have this great heat map that shows you the best spots for ads on your site:


 

The absolute best spots you can place the ads are in or as close to the content as possible. Lets say you just finished writing up a blog post and you can’t decide where to put the ad. Here are your best possible options:

1. Place the ad directly in between your blog post’s title and the actual body of the post
2. Place the ad WITHIN the content of the blog post (i.e. in between paragraphs, lists, etc)
3. Place the ad directly below the post, before the comment option

Any of these options will be a lot more successful than a sidebar or footer ad!

Also- don’t forget to have at least one ad above the page fold (the first page your site users will see without having to scroll down). The last thing you want to do is make your users work to find your ads.

Tips on Making YouTube Videos and Getting More Views

Tips on Making YouTube Videos and Getting More Views

YouTube is a wonderful platform to gain more exposure for your website and build credibility for your overall brand.

In my opinion, it is one of the most underutilized strategies when it comes to marketing your site.

The traffic potential is still pretty sweet. Just as someone could type in "golfing tips" in Google.com and find your site, they can do the same with your videos on YouTube.

How?

Because you can enter a title and keywords for every video you submit and this information helps people find your video when they do a YouTube search. The more popular your video becomes, the more likely it will rank in Google.com.

More and more people use YouTube every single day and this can funnel quite a bit of traffic to your video... especially if the video is done well.

And not only can you capitalize on targeted YouTube traffic, but you can entertain your own site's audience by embedding your video into your web pages by simply copying and pasting the provided code.

How YouTube Ranks Videos

YouTube uses a number of different criteria to decide how a video will be ranked.

1. Number of Likes

How many likes your video receives plays a big role in how your video ranks. Obviously, YouTube wants to show the most popular content, so they tend to rank videos well that have a good amount of "likes."

The dislikes don't really seem to hurt as much as long as the number of likes greatly outweigh the dislikes. So don't get too down in the dumps if your videos receive some dislikes. It comes with the territory. Just focus on quality and you will be fine.

2. Number of Shares

People can share videos on Google Plus, Twitter, and other social networks. This also plays a role.

3. Views and Comments

It probably goes without saying that if your video receives a lot of views and comments that's going to signal to YouTube that your video may be worth watching.

4. Number of Favorites Added

YouTube gives viewers the opportunity to add videos to their favorites on their accounts. Again, this is another metric that is tracked and combed into the ranking algorigthm.

Do you see a trend here? Basically the more views, likes, shares and favorites your video receives, the better. It's all about popularity.

5. Titles, Descriptions and Keywords

These three things are important, but if your video is targeting a competitive topic, then this meta information will have less of an effect on your rankings.

Try to choose titles that include phrases people search for. You can get an idea by typing something in the YouTube search box. YouTube will give you suggestions. You can also use the YouTube suggestion tool.

It may not always be best to choose the most popular phrase because it could be too saturated. Try going with a longer tail (less competitive) phrase if there aren't as many videos that seem to be targeting it.

6. Viewer Retention

The latest factor that helps determine rank is viewer retention -- in other words, how long people watch your video. You can now track this right from your account by going to Analytics >> Audience Retention. This will give you your overall retention.

However, if you want to view your retention for an individual video, you'll have to click the Analytics button while watching the video in question.

Getting Your Video on YouTube

Computers and cameras are making it easier and easier to get video on the Web. It used to be you had to buy additional software just to get your video on the right format. Today many cameras come with a direct YouTube upload feature.

As far as files and editing, YouTube accepts all common video formats and your computer probably already comes with free editing software. Windows comes with Windows Movie Maker and Macs come with iMovie.

Once you publish your video in the software, simply logon to YouTube to upload your file.

What I Use

I use a Mac to edit and publish my videos. My software of choice is Final Cut Express. It's a bit pricey compared to many other solutions, but it's very powerful. If you want to learn more about what camera and software I use for my videos, read this article.

More Video Production Tips

1. Have adequate lighting.

Make sure people can actually SEE you. What are you hiding anyway? ;-)

2. Don't memorize a script...

Unless you're good at delivering it where it doesn't sound like you're talking from memory. I've found if you just talk off the top of your head, it comes across much more conversational and natural.

3. Watch the time.

Your video should be as long as it needs to be, and get to the point. If you start rambling for 10 minutes about nothing, you could lose your audience before the video is finished. If your video seems long, think of ways you can summarize your points, or split it up into multiple parts.

Most of my videos used to be over 10 minutes. That's too long. I try not to go over the 6 minute mark if possible.

4. Check your backdrop.

Remember, this video is representing you and your site. If you've got a junk heap behind you, it will distract your audience. If you don't have a nice background, then just film in front of a blank wall.

5. Watch your filler words.

We don't realize how often we say "Um" and use filler words until we see ourselves on video. It's normal to need a sec to think about what to say next, so practice just being silent in those moments if you are an "Ummer." :)

Worried About Criticism?

If you're like a lot of people, you are hesitant about creating videos because you're concerned about being judged or criticized. I know the feeling. I was worried about that in the beginning too. But the more videos I made, the more comfortable I became.

The Bottom Line

No matter what method or software you use, it's definitely worth experimenting with video to help promote your site. And since YouTube is owned by Google, that can only mean good things if you make a good video and optimize the title and keywords for your audience.
Just like Google.com, YouTube can bring you a good amount of targeted visitors, and people can even subscribe to your YouTube channel so they'll be notified any time you add a new video.
And if your video is good enough, others will want to embed it into their sites. What a great, viral way to promote your site and get your name out there.
So take your time making a quality video. Once the viral effect kicks in, it can make quite an impact in your traffic levels.

How to Get Listed and be Ranked in Google, Yahoo and Bing

Getting Listed & Ranked in Google, Yahoo and Bing

Getting listed in Google and the other popular search engines is one of the most effective ways of directing free, targeted traffic to your website.

Below you'll discover what the search engines look for when determining your page rank so you can learn how to optimize your pages for best results.  This is often called SEO or search engine optimization. 

How Search Engines Determine Your Rank

Before you try to add your site to the search engines, you should understand what they look for when they decide how to rank your site. Just because you're listed doesn't mean you'll get traffic.  You have to make sure your site is search engine ready.
The general rule of thumb is that most engines use a "formula" to determine keyword relevancy. The technical term is called an "algorithm", and each search engine has its own unique algorithm that it uses to rank pages.
Generally, this magic formula consists of your page title, overall body content and the number and quality of links (backlinks) pointing back to your site, social media influence, etc.
It's important to note that every engine is different. Some may look at inbound links (number of people linking to you), others may place more emphasis on your body content.

Backlinks

Backlinks are really the foundation of ranking well with most engines. The more relevant, quality sites that link to you (one-way, not link exchange), the better you will rank overall.
That does not mean you should go around paying for links because it is against the guidelines of most search engines today. In fact, Google began penalizing services that were charging customers to build up their backlinks.
Google considers that unnatural linking because anyone can do it. It's also not a great way for them to gauge how authentically popular a site is because anyone can buy links or participate in link exchanges.
That's why many people have lost their rankings over the years. Google began devaluing certain link building practices that used to benefit websites in search.
Many websites were ranking on the first page just because they bought links or participated in link building schemes. So the sites that ranked well weren't necessarily the most popular, just the ones that bought or obtained the most links.
As a result, Google adjusted their algorithm to discount many of the linking practices people once used.
I've always been one to build up my backlinks naturally by just focusing on writing content. People link to my content voluntarily and my backlink profile grows naturally. I don't spend time chasing links or looking for ways to increase my backlinks.
Yes, it's a slower process, but I'm playing by the rules and don't have to worry about violating any SE guidelines.
Read my post about how I built up search engine traffic with no backlink building.

Meta Tags

You also need to know about meta tags. These are hidden descriptors that appear at the beginning of your HTML code, inside your <head> tag.  They are invisible to your visitor's eyes, but search engine spiders can read them.
They usually consist of a title, description, and keyword tag and they look something like this:
<head>
<title>Title of Your Site</title>
<meta name="description" content="Description of your site here.">
<meta name="keywords" content="keywords separated by commas">
</head>
Because of abuse, search engines now put less emphasis on certain tags when ranking pages, but you should still include them because they do use them to display information about your site.
For example, whatever is inside the <title> tag is what the search engines will use as the title of your site in the search results. You want to use keywords that describe your page and entice visitors to click.


Note: Bloggers do not need to manually insert this code as there are places to insert your title, description, etc. in the "Edit" most when you are creating your posts.
WordPress plugins like the All in One SEO Plugin allow you to specify a different title for your meta <title> than your actual page title.

Google, Bing and Yahoo

There are a handful of engines out there that bring traffic, but the reality is a very large percentage of search engine traffic comes from Google, Yahoo and Bing.
Yes, there are other engines like AOL, etc, but they pull their results from the big  

Getting Indexed

As far as getting listed goes, all search engines have spiders that roam the web and add sites to their databases as they find them. So the easiest way for Google to index/list your site is to get linked from a site already in Google's index.
The other way to let Google know about your site is to sign up with Google Webmaster Tools and create an XML sitemap (recommended). If you use Blogger, your sitemap is automatically created for you.
If you use WordPress, install the All in One SEO plugin and it will help you create more search-engine-friendly content.
No matter what blogging platform you use, you should still create an account with Google Webmaster Tools.

In order to activate your Google Webmaster Tools account you will need to upload a verification file. If you need help with uploading files to WordPress or a static site, see this tutorial.

Getting Ranked in Google

Getting into Google is not hard. The challenge is getting ranked for your target keywords -- especially if they are competitive. How well you rank largely depends on how many relevant, quality sites link to you.
And as social media matures, now the engines are beginning to use your connections to influence your rank.
For example, if you're logged into Google and do a search for something, the results that show up may be heavily influenced by who is in your social circles in the Google Plus Network. You can connect with my website on the network here.
Also, if you are logged out of Google, the results may be altogether different from when you were logged in.
Google is moving more toward personalized search, which means no two people will see the same results when they perform keyword searches.

WordPress Pages vs. Posts and SEO

Some people believe that the search engines favor posts over pages or vice versa.
I disagree.
I've found that it doesn't really matter. The engines care more about content, social media shares and links pointing to the content than they do the structure of the URL.

Google Authorship

This is something that became very popular in 2012. It allows you to claim your content and associate it with your name via a Google Plus account.Learn more about Google Authorship here.

Getting Listed and Ranked With Bing-Yahoo

Bing and Yahoo are now search alliances. In other words, Yahoo search has a Bing-powered backend. So once you setup a Webmaster Tools account and create a sitemap for Bing, you're covered for Yahoo as well.
Just like Google, Bing-Yahoo takes quality inbound links into account.
Less than 1% of my search engine traffic comes from Bing-Yahoo. I mainly focus my efforts on Google these days.

Keyword Research

One component of ranking well in the search engines is proper keyword research. It's all about finding less competitive phrases so you can optimize your search engine traffic.
See how I use Market Samurai to perform keyword research for my pages.

Paying for Google Traffic With AdWords

Did you know you can actually pay to be on top of the Google.com search results? It's called Google AdWords and it's based on a pay per click system.
So if you want to rank for "blue widgets" you bid on that keyword with other advertisers and your ad displays in the sponsored listings on Google.com.
This can be a great way to drive business, but make sure you read this overview of AdWords before starting

Add a Chat Room to Your Blog in 3 Easy Steps

 3 Easy Steps to Add  a Chat Room to Your Blog  

So you’ve decided to add chat functionality to your blog or website.Chat rooms are a great way to let your visitors meet each other and discuss your content. Chat creates a community feel and adds interactivity that can set your blog apart from the rest and keep your visitors coming back!

We’ve put together 3 easy-to-follow steps to embed a chat room in your blog or website using Chatroll live communities. All Chatroll live communities can be easily used as embedded chat rooms. Here’s how:

1. Create a Chatroll live community to use for your chat room.
   Go to Chatroll, enter your community’s name in the “Name YourLive Community…” box and click “Create”. Choose a name that fits with your blog, as this name will appear in the chat box title. Write an attractive and detailed description so that people can easily find your new Chatroll community (this will also help drive traffic to your blog).
2. Copy the embed code from the community’s home page. On your live community’s home page (the page that appears after your community has been created) you’ll find a text box labeled ‘embed’ under the chat window. Click the embed code and copy it.
3. Paste the embed code in your blog or web site. Paste the code where you would like the chat room to appear in your site. If you have a blog, you can either place the chat room in individual posts, or you can create a dedicated page on your blog to host the chat.

(IMPORTANT: If you are using the WordPress Visual Editor, or other visual editors, make sure to switch to HTML editor mode, otherwise WordPress will remove the embed code! This is a known issue with WordPress.)

That’s it! You should now have a fully functional chat room in your blog. Here’s what it should look like:

The Chatroll Blog – Fullscreen

You can now hang out in your new chat room by opening the page where you embedded the chat. It’s that easy! Go ahead and visitChatroll to customize your profile and learn what else you can do with your chat room, such as posting videos, photos, links, and more.

Create Your Own Dream Book

Create Your Own Dream Book

How did you make your Dream Book? I have been asked that question so many times over the past 13 years ever since I designed “My Life Goals” Book and am surprised I didn’t think to post this sooner, but as they say “better late than never”.

It is flattering that most everyone who sees it wants to have a book just like it. When I tell them how much effort was required to make it, very few are willing to put in the time to make it happen. So, with this understanding I am going to condense my process into 4 steps to help you build and designed your own Dream/Goals Book.

Warning: For those who have done this, happiness and success has followed. If you are prepared for this then please read on…. 

1) Create a Be, Do, Have List – Before you create a book you will need to determine what it is that you want. It is important to decide what you’d like to truly BE, the activities you’d most like to DO and the possessions (emotional and material) you want to HAVE. Take all the time you need as this list should be very expansive and have little regard for what is “realistic”. I mean, this is DREAM Book, right?

 Here are a couple examples:

BE -  father, basketball coach, millionaire, healthy….

DO – climb mountain, skydive, watch Sumo wrestling match, visit Egypt etc….

HAVE – Mercedes, million dollars checking acct, 3 kids, all my teeth for life…

2) Highlight Your Top Picks – Once you have this massive and unedited list created the next step is to then pick the ones that really “feel right” with you. Hopefully, if you are really diving into this you will have created such a list that it will probably take 2-3 lifetimes to complete. This is great ’cause it allows you to go over the list again and sort through the items that most resonate with you. So, simply read over what you created and start highlighting the ones that stick out the most to you, the things you could see yourself in THIS LIFETIME accomplishing and getting super excited about.

(3) Gather Images for each Dream – Now that you have your starting list it is time to find images through magazines, internet, or personal photos that represent each of the items you highlighted on your BE, DO, HAVE lists. Once you have images for each one you create a book. However you’d like to create the book is up to you, but I bound mine together in a way that it was durable so I could carry it with me wherever I’d like to go.

4) Stamp it a Success – You could certainly leave it at that, but I take it one step farther. If I have the ability I take a picture of me accomplishing the dreams/goals in my book and substitute the old image with my pictures. I then use my red stamp titled SUCCESS on each of the items I have accomplished. It is so awesome to go through the book and track all the DREAMS I am accomplishing and fill my book up with successes.

I wish you all the best as you create the life you want and strive towards your dreams. The fun is in the journey so happy travels…

Google Says Content is Most Important SEO Factor

I am not making this up. Honest!

Google has published this really nifty, absolutely free e-book called Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide. Stop spending hours trying to guess what secrets are hidden deep within the inner sanctum of the Google algorithm. This easy to read guidebook spells it all out for you.

Of course, it doesn’t hack the algorithm itself, but the way I see it Google is spelling it out for you step by step. Here is what you need to do if you want high search ranking results.

It covers all the basics like page titles, meta tags, urls, navigation in the first 10 pages. Then the next 20 pages are about…content.

That’s right. Content!!!

They lead that section off with this little hand grenade:

Interesting sites will increase their recognition on their own

Creating compelling and useful content will likely influence your website more than any of the other factors discussed here. Users know good content when they see it and will likely want to direct other users to it. This could be through blog posts, social media services, email, forums, or other means.

Organic or word-of-mouth buzz is what helps build your site’s reputation with both users and Google, and it rarely comes without quality content.

Shazam! If Google says it, it must be gospel

The publication goes on to explain how to optimize your text by properly using anchor texts, heading tags, specialized keywords, and so on. The fundamental principle, however, is that if you want to make the most of your website, your content must be useful and accurate at the very least. Unique and timely are even better. Better still, start providing fresh new content on a regular basis.

So download and start reading the Google SEO Starter Guide. Save it to your hard drive for future reference. Post it to your blog and send the link out to all your clients. It can provide a powerful resource to help you explain one of the key building blocks of any kind of integrated marketing strategy.

And of course, if you need help generating all that content…you can always outsource it. Just ask me. I know a guy…

How Does Your Blog Make Money? Please Share

There was an interesting post made on Website Babble last month from a member (jeffG) who was se eking more examples of everyday people (as opposed to blogging gurus) who are makingworthwhile money from their blogs.

His post read…

We’re all aware by now that WordPress is the easiest way to build a website, but I was wondering how many of you actually make good money? And when I say “good money” I mean enough to enhance your existing lifestyle. I’m not talking about a dollar or two from AdSense per day.

I was at a social media event in Atlanta today and I was talking to all these WordPress users. Some had impressive followings on Twitter, Facebook, even Google+.

For some reason I just assumed a lot of these people did this for a living. As the night went on, I began to learn that very few of them made a lot of money. I don’t think I met one person that was full-time online or even close. And they said it was their goal.

So I’d like to know from the bloggers here, how many of you actually make good money? Yes, WordPress is too cool for school (as the old saying goes), but if your goal is to make money from your site and you’re not making much, what do you attribute that to?

Of course, we know that people make money with blogs.  However, I also receive many e-mails from people who struggle with the monetization part of blogging.

Obviously, the number one problem is lack of traffic.  However, there are blogs that receive decent amounts of traffic, yet the owners still have trouble converting sales for numerous reasons.

I love getting feedback from you, so I want to open up a discussion with people on both sides of the fence.

If you are making money with your blog, what are your top earners (ad sales, AdSense, product sales, etc.) and what suggestions would you give to those struggling?

Let’s inspire and learn from one another!

I’ll Start…

As many of you know, most of my overall earnings come from my static website, but my blog does pretty well considering it receives much less traffic than my main site and I consciously keep selling/affiliate links to a minimum.

My top earners here are AdSense, sales of my WordPress e-Book, Niche Website Success and various affiliate programs.

My blog is not heavily monetized.  It has always been a brand-building tool that has helped build credibility and connections with my followers.

——————————–

How about you?  How does your blog earn money?  Are there any lessons that you’d like to share with others?  Any struggles or frustrations?