How To Boost Traffic To Your Blog: SEO for Bloggers

Let search engine index your blog and let people come to your fresh blog. Though you're in World Wide Web, nobody knows you're there. You need to pull kindly those who are potentially waiting for you but don't know where your are. This objective is related to generally known as search engine optimization (SEO). It's too broad to address all. But the most important things will I talk about. Though they're not all but more than enough will be covered. They are about...

• How to use keywords as a SEO technique


• What to consider when you choose blog templates


• How to construct your blog search engine friendly


• Ping your blog

How to use keywords as a SEO technique?


As long as SEO is concerned, the keyword comes at front line. You have to find the target keyword/keywords or niche keywords.

What to do with the keyword/keywords? Please read on.....

• Enter keywords in your blog name: If you named your blog for example, "Ryen's blog", it's not a good idea in the view of SEO. Instead name your blog something like "keyword blog". You need to substitute "keyword" with your "target keyword", for example "mountain bike blog", if your blog is about mountain bike.


• Enter keywords of your post in title tag: Actually most of bloggers don't need to concern about "title tag" because most of blog hosting applications such as blogger, typepad, wordpress, movable type, drupal, etc... care this for you. But you have to use the keyword in your title and then they will include it in the title tag for you.


• Enter keywords in meta description tag, if possible: This may be difficult for most of bloggers because most of blog hosting system don't support this. If this is your case, don't bother with this. To make it possible is almost impossible for the people like me who are not techie at all. But don't worry there is other solution: care your first sentence of the first paragraph.


• Enter keywords in the first sentence: Nowadays many SEO experts say that most of search engines don't look meta description tag. Instead they look for the few words in the first sentence. So care your first sentence to include the keywords, make it fit to describe your whole post and attractive.


• Repeat your keywords in your post: With this an English grammar teacher may not be happy. But as long as SEO is concerned, it's necessary: frankly to say, you have to. General rule says the keyword density should be about 2-3% of whole words in your post.
  
  You may complain "heck, how do I know keyword density." Well, you don't need to count it manually. There is a free tool to check the keyword density. And actually I don't even check it all the time. I just keep in mind 2-3% and check only for some posts that I think worth checking. Having this in mind, the free tool is here. Type the URL of your post, keyword and click "analyze" button. It'll return you the keyword density of your post. If the keyword density is too low, consider repeat the keyword more but don't repeat too much (more than 3%)


• Use your keyword in your blog domain: This improves the ranking of your blog and hence more traffic come to you. If your blog is about "anniversary gift", for example, include it in your domain name so that your blog domain looks like "anniversary-gift.yourhost.com"


• Use your keyword in the link title: Many blogger don't know about this!
  
  Which one do you think better, "anniversary gift" or "anniversary-gift.your host.com" as your link title? The former is better. The reason? Because search engines value more. So keep in mind that whenever you get link try to enter your keywords in the link title.


• Enter keywords in your file name: When you save your blog, use your keyword.
  
  Which one is better, "mypost98.html" or "anniversary-gift-how-to-choose.html"? This time the latter is better because it includes keywords and hence get better chance to be listed in high rank in search engine.


• Enter keyword in alt tag: If you use images in your post, don't forget to put your keyword in alt tag. A 2 cent-tip related to this is that if your Google Adsense doesn't seem to show matching ads with your content, check your alt tag. Maybe it's because you put unrelated words in alt tag.

What to consider when you choose blog templates?

Certainly there is a search engine friendly blog templates. To know whether your blog template is search engine friendly designed, go to Crawler simulation (It's free.) Enter your blog URL and then it'll show you how it looks like when a search engine spider visits your blog site. If you see a lot of html code or java scripts before you see main content, it means your blog is not well designed in the point of search engine optimization. There is a way to hide unnecessary code from spiders, using CSS or div class "hide". Try to make your title tag immediately after head tag and to show up your body content as near to head tag as possible.


How to construct your blog search engine friendly?

Make your blog site structure as simple as possible. This may not be a big issue for bloggers because unless a blogger can design her/his blog system, they have to use a default system. What I mean by this is that most of blog system make permalink be for example, "www.blogcom.com/user/archive/year/month/date/apost.html". See how far the final "apost.html" is from root. It's 5 step further. This is not so good in terms of search engine optimization. You can reduce those steps but you only can do so one or two step because database recognition is concerned behind this story. So the bottom line is that try to make your blog simple but if it's not possible, focus on writing good content. I observed many top bloggers have a bit complicated permalink system yet have lots of traffic.

But if you can make your blog structure simpler without problem, please do so because it is much better for the reader and search engine as well.


Ping your blog

Do you ping? Many pongs will come,then. :-) This may not be an issue if you're using Movable Type, WordPress, Typepad, or Drupal 4.6.0. But consider pinging to Ping-o-Matic!, if your system is not configured to do so. Because it pings to most of important blog search engines and directories in one spot. If your blog application doesn't support to ping automatically to "Ping-o-Matic!", you can do so manually by visiting Ping-o-Matic! Once you type your blog name, blog URL, check where to ping and click "submit ping" button, and don't forget to bookmark. It gives you a convenience because you don't need to type blog name, URL and check where to ping again.

By pinging you make search engine spider crawl you more frequently and make your reader notified faster.


So far you have the most important SEO techniques for your blog. Say, how to use your keywords and where to enter, search engine friendly blog template design, structure and finally ping to "Ping-o-Matic!"
But one thing is missing!

24 Tips and Strategies on How Everyone Can Blog Right andGet

Tip #1 - How and Where Should I Start?
You should begin your blog with a free blog hosting service
such as Blogger (http://www.blogger.com), or other similar
free services such as JournalHome.com, LiveJournal.com or
Blog-City.com. The learning curve for using such free
services allow you to spend more on developing your content
rather than worrying about the advanced areas of scripting,
hosting, or programming.

Tip #2 - The Things You Should Decide to Write About
Although not a required prerequisite for you in order to
write a blog, it is highly recommended to try to find a
topic to write about based on your level of interest and
knowledge. The higher your level of interest, the easier it
is for you to get your quality content posted on your blog.
Always try to choose an area which you can enthusiastically
write about on a daily basis.Try to pay attention to a niche
which suites you well. A niche is basically a targeted
product, service, or topic.

Tip #3 - Always stay on topic.
Opinions are generally accepted but the content of the items
in the blog should all relate to a general theme. The
majority of your readers will be interested in the content
that relates to a specific defined theme or loosely defined
area of interest. Define a topic and try not to run too far
away from it. This will ensure that you create a loyal
following of interested readers.

Tip #4 - Information is king, be informative.
If you are attempting to create the impression that you are
knowledgeable about a specific industry or sector, be sure
that you stay current on news. Checking your facts before
you're giving out an opinion or a product review is always a
good idea, your reputation is at stake. If by any chance
you're utilizing other people's articles for you blog
content, ensure that you follow the terms of usage defined
by the author.

Tip #5 - Old news is not news, but old information can be
recycled and made new. While blogging everyday can be
strenuous and time consuming, it is important that the
information presented is current and accurate. Information,
articles or any other archived resources can be recycled /
modified to add more substance to your content. As long as
they're relevant and informative, there's no reason why it's
not a good approach.

Tip #6 - Be disciplined and stick to a fixed posting
schedule. Realizing that blogging requires time and effort,
don't create unrealistic expectations and be unable to
deliver. If you have worked hard to develop an audience and
a community you don't want to lose them due to lack of
communication. If time is not on your side, take advantage
of tonnes of automatically updating contents which are
available for your blog. Looking at the constantly updating
nature of RSS feeds, other RSS feeds from similar topic can
be inserted within your blogging post.

Tip #7 - Posting Frequency
If your blog content is updated frequently, search engines
will tend to spider the pages at regular intervals. Updating
your blog daily not only keeps your blog more interesting to
readers, but it also gives your blog fresh content on a day
to day making it more appealing to search engines. To keep
your blog traffic and retain your visitors interest it is a
must to update your blog daily with multiple entries. You
should try to update your blog everyday with at least 2 - 3
or more daily entries, depending on your daily schedule.

Tip #8 - Quantity matters.
In order to attract the attention of search engines, you
will need to produce a relevant amount of content and
information. A headline or simple sentence is not going to
generate the interest of readers or help with search engine
ranking. Be sure to archive old blog posts to develop a
large portal of similarly-themed content.

Tip #9 - Clarity & simplicity / Short & Concise
Keep your posts and blog entries clear and easy to
understand. Simplicity always produce better results at the
end of the day.

Aside from the lengthy article a week for syndication and
publication your blog entries should be short & concise (if
you can help it). Should you insist on partaking on the
lengthy road, try to maintain a clean paragraphing style,
proper spacing, use different size, color and bold for your
titles as well as the subtitles. Use bullet points, go
straight to the point and never run out of topic. Insert
images to spice up things if you're an avid fan of long
posts.

Tip #10 - Utilize the

and tags
Being one of the few most underutilized blogging formatting
tags, these 2 items can help you on emphasizing certain
points, in the most efficient and striking way. Formatting
is simple and straightforward. Just

Hi
World!

and your message will apear
distinctively different from the rest of your text, thus
gets more attention which it deserves. Take note that the
formatting for these 2 tags differ from blog to blog
depending on how the owner defines the tag in the CSS
(Cascading Style Sheets).

Click the below link if you want to read more about CSS.
==>http://www.w3schools.com/css/default.asp

Tip #11 - Keyword-rich.
If the goal of your blog is to increase your visibility,
include related keywords in the title of the blog. Use the
title as a headline to attract interest. Each item post
should have a title that will attract attention but still be
relevant to the post. The title should be no longer than
10-12 words. Experiment with the titles if you must,
possibly try to avoid general and ordinary titles. Try to
include extraordinary and innovative titles to grab the
readers' attention.

Tip #12 - Spell checking and proof-reading.
It only takes a few extra moments and can save you from
having to make embarrassing explanations. The hazards of
Internet is that if you're too late to correct your mistake,
most likely it's already been crawled by the search engines
and read by many. It is extremely essential to think / proof
read carefully twice or even thrice, about what you post
before doing so. Take note of your language and grammar.

Tip #13 - RSS Feeds
RSS to a blog is like fuel to cars. Mostly every single free
blogs or bloggin software out there will have an automatic
RSS feed generating feature. Although it's most unlikely
that you'll find one without a RSS feature, simply leave it
and find a new one, if you happen to come across one without
it.

Tip #14 - The essence of the Internet - Traffic. It's no
secret. You must have traffic to realize the definition of a
blog.. There are numerous ways to build traffic. Paid and
free advertising, viral marketing, search engine marketing,
RSS/XML feeds, word-of-mouth, submitting to numerous blog
and RSS directories, etc. RSSBlogsubmit (
http://www.rssblogsubmit.com) provides a submission service
for your Blog & RSS feeds. You should always use your blog
URL address in the signature of your email, forum
discussions, message boards, or any other communication
media. Never forget to share your blog to your friends,
colleagues, and any other invidious that you know of.

Tip #15 - Track Your Blog
Tracking your blog does not have to be overly sophisticated
usually a simple free page counter like StatCounter.com,
ActiveMeter.com, Extremetracking.com or Sitemeter.com will
do the trick. Install (copy/paste) the code into the html of
your blog template and start tracking your visitors. Its
better to use a service which gives you advanced traffic
analysis, such as keyword tracking information, referral
information, and search engine information. Visitors,
returning visitors, and unique visitors should be standard
for any page counter service you choose.

Tip #16 - Make use of your Blog's statistical and tracking
information. Believe it or not, your visitors' information
from your tracking scripts will provide you priceless
information on how you can attract more readers. Keep note
on the keyword terms used from search engines which bring
you traffic. You can identify relevant closely related
topics which you can venture into and add more variety into
your blog, yet staying very much in topic. Simply put, more
topic coverage and more variety = more traffic. You may
analyze your tracking information further on how you can
strategize your blog's content. You can also apply some
keyword optimization strategies here.

Tip #17 - The essence of your Blog is your Audience, listen
to them. Always interact with your readers who post comments
on your blog. Reply with a brief thank you note or just
simply attend to their questions if they have any. It's a
proven fact when there's a direct human interaction and
knowing the fact that there's a "real human" at the other
end of the blog makes most of them coming back. If your
audience provide suggestions, comments or feedbacks, take
them constructively and inform them if you have any desires
of implementing such ideas on your next update. And of
course, don't forget to thank them for their ideas. If it's
a great idea, why not throw in a free gift? Mention their
website in your blog?

Tip #18 - Create and increase the "Why Must I Return" Value
to Your Blog
Everyone knows the fact that Blogs get a huge level of
returning visitors because of its constantly updated
content. Why don't you add more interesting items to that
return value by having fixed periodical posts / offers, e.g.
Monday Top 10 Tips, Picture of the Week, Free Bonus of the
Month, Free Daily Wallpapers, etc. to give them the absolute
excuse to return to your blog. As long as you can
efficiently and appropriately increase that Return Value
constantly, it is mostly guaranteed that you'll be getting
tonnes of repeated visitors, period.

An advance notice, prelaunch announcement or anything
similar to that also can act as a short term return value
strategy. Encourage readers to comment on your such notices
/ posts. Experiment and play around with this idea.

Tip #19 - Multiple blogs
It never hurts to use multiple blogging accounts to attract
more people. You can even have multiple blogs within
Blogger.com itself, but you may also want to try different
free blogging services such as JournalHome.com,
LiveJournal.com, Blog-City.com, etc. Should you have the
urge to have multiple similar duplicates of your blog just
to gain more traffic, it is wise to avoid it as search
engines / feed directories might translate that as excessive
redundant information which simply brings you trouble, and
you're tend to get penalized, banned or even accused of
spamming.

Tip #20 - Digital Art, Creative Graphics Another proven fact
- Monotonous and continous display of text will make your
readers run away! Try to include non- advertising graphics,
pictures, photos, and art in your blog entries, but try to
keep them at a limit. Too many graphics also mean slower
loading time and messy text and graphical combination. You
don't want your blog to look messy. Most of the time,
graphics can bring your blog to life. Pictures can make
boring texts interesting no matter how long it is. Graphical
elements are by far the fastest message delivering element
available on the net today. It may deliver various messages
by a split second of a look.

Tip #21 - Maintain a Personal Blog
A blog is most successful when it is kept personal. Try to
include personal experiences which relates to the topic of
your blog entry. Stay away from the business style of
writing. Write with a more personal style and use first-
person narratives. Share product reviews and personal
endeavors, instead of trying to make it sounds like you're
selling.

Tip #22 - Credibility & Popularity
As thing progresses, things need to change in order to cope
with the flow and nature of development. If your number of
readers are reasonably huge, and still using a free blogging
service to get your messages out, you may want to consider
getting your own domain name and hosting plan to have a more
personalized Blog.

Domain names and hosting plans are pretty much
straightforward. Research is all what it takes to get the
best of all the available options. For the most highly
recommended comprehensive listing of Free Blogging software
out there, drop by at http://www.opensourcecms.com/. This is
by far the best place to drop by if you want to get your
research done about which blogging software to choose.
Reviews, ratings, public votes, demos, etc are provided. And
the best thing is, all of them are Open Source, which means
they are totally free. Try going through the server
requirements for each software before purchasing your
web hosting.

Tip 23# - Customize the look of your Blog
If you happen to be using one of the Free blogging services
out there, you might notice that most of us are using the
same template again and again for our blogs. It is well
understood that not everybody has the technical knowledge to
change the layout as how they want it to be, but if you have
the knowledge, by all means try to customize it and make it
look DIFFERENT. You can grab that extra attention, if you're
different in certain ways. Create that image for yourself.

Tip #24 - Blog and Make Money

Once your blog has gained some real momentum and your blog
traffic is increasing then it is time to start thinking
if you want to turn your traffic into profit. Some of the
recommended income generating sources are as follow :-

Google Adsense, Amazon Associate program (www.amazon.com),
Blogads.com, Crispads.com, Tagword.com, Affiliate Programs
and any advertising related text links can be your place to
start off.

Final #Tip - Conclusion.
Following these blogging tips should make your blogging
experience much more rewarding. Blogging is generally done
out of interest and enthusiasm and sometimes for income
generating purposes. The flexibility of blogging will never
cease to expand. Through time, dedication, and persistence
you will be rewarded with all the royalties of blogging.

13 Steps to Successful Blogging

Blogs can be a very marketable and very profitable tool if used correctly. Profiting from blogs is just a matter of grabbing the attention of an audience and not doing any actual salesmen selling. In this article you will learn the 13 most essential steps to successful blogging.

1) Where to start?

You should begin your blog with a free blog hosting service such as Journal Home or Blogger. Starting with a free blog hosting service allows you to begin blogging instantly without having any advance knowledge of scripts, hosting, or programming. It allows you to focus on your content and not the internal maintenance of the blog. The best benefit of starting with a free service is, in the case your blog doesn't become successful you do not lose any money or are you left holding the bill. The great thing about a blog is that they are organized in chronological order, your latest entry is displayed first. When your blog traffic grows greatly and you are ready to upgrade to your own domain then you can simply make your last blog entry the announcement of your "move". Simply add a last entry stating that your blog has "moved" and type the new blog URL address. Which directs visitors to your new blog site, keeping your following, without a major inconvenience to anyone. Upgrade as you need to...but only when you need to!

2) Niche

A niche is a targeted product, service, or topic. You should first decide on a product, service, or topic which interest you. Choose an area which you can enthusiastically write about on a daily basis. You can use keyword research services like Google Zeitgeist or Yahoo! Buzz Index to find popular searched topics. It does NOT matter if your topic is popular as long as there is a audience for your topic and the topic is precisely focused then your blog should be successful. Anything can be considered a niche as long as it has a target audience no matter how large or how small the audience is. A blog about your cat can be a niche or a blog about the species of the cat family can be a larger niche market, if there are people who are interested in hearing about your cat or the species of the cat family...you can even choose to build your audience for a market which an audience does not exist, but first you must build your blog.

3) Update Daily (nothing less)

This step is a must and not a suggestion. Updating your blog daily not only keeps your blog more interesting to readers, but it also gives your blog fresh content on a day to day making it more appealing to search engines. Not updating your blog on an occasional holiday or one day here and there is understandable to most, but missing days at a time or weeks is unacceptable and will most likely result in your blog being unsuccessful. To keep your blog traffic and retain your visitors interest it is a must to update your blog daily with multiple entries. You should try to update your blog everyday with at least 3 or more daily entries. The best way to accomplish this is to set aside 1-2 hours a day for tending to your blog and adding new entries. It may even be wise to schedule a set time which you dedicate to your blog each day. Give yourself work hours and treat your blog as a job, what happens if you don't come to work for days or weeks...you lose money or worse you get fired! Same applies here...if you don't update your blog for days or weeks you'll lose visitors.

4) Traffic

It's no secret. You must have traffic to profit from blogs. There are numerous ways to build traffic. Paid advertising, free advertising, viral marketing, search engine marketing, RSS/XML feeds, and word-of-mouth. You should always use your blog URL address in the signature of your email, forum discussions, message boards, or any other communication media. You should submit your blog URL address to search engines and blog directories. You should submit your RSS/XML URL feed to blog ping services like Technorati, Ping-O-Matic, and Blogdigger. You should confidently share your blog with family, friends, co-workers, associates, and business professionals when it relates. Many blogs can be considered as a collection of articles, for this purpose you should submit your blog entries (those that are valuable and lengthy articles) to content syndicators like GoArticles.com or ArticleCity.com. Once submitted your articles can be picked up and published by others. The trick is to make sure you include your Blog URL address in the "About the Author" passage. What this does is create link popularity and backlinks for your blog, when someone picks up your article from the syndication then publish the article on their website the "About the Author" passage is included with each publication and the link you included is followed, crawled, and indexed by search engines. Imagine if your article is popular enough or controversial enough to produce 10,000 publications across the web. The search engines is bound to find your site in no time with that many publications and credit you a authority on the topic, in return increasing your rank on search engines. The small effort of writing a well written article is rewarding. You should try to write at least 1 full length article every week for syndication and submit your article to at least 10 article syndicators.

5) Track Your Blog

How do you know if your blog has traffic? Just because no one is leaving comments doesn't mean your blog isn't growing. Many visitors do not leave comments but they are returning visitors. I know it sounds crazy but with blogs people are more interested in what "you" have to say! Many visitors do not comment their 1st, 2nd, or 3rd time. Some do not comment at all, but are active daily visitors.

Tracking your blog does not have to be overly sophisticated usually a simple free page counter like StatCounter.com or Active Meter will do the trick. Install (copy/paste) the code into the html of your blog template and start tracking your visitors. Its better to use a service which gives you advanced traffic analysis, such as keyword tracking information, referral information, and search engine information. Visitors, returning visitors, and unique visitors should be standard for any page counter service you choose.

6) Listen to Your Audience

When using the proper page counter you should begin to see how others are finding your blog and if through search engines then which keywords are being used to find your blog. If constantly your blog is being found by 1 or more keywords then focus your blog around those keywords to make it even more powerful. When writing entry titles and entries use the keywords as often as possible while keeping the blog legible and interesting.

7) Multiple blogs

Use multiple blogging accounts to attract more people. This means you should have a blog with JournalHome.com, Blogger.com, LiveJournal.com, Blog-City.com, tBlogs.com, etc. The more blog accounts the better. You can copy/paste from 1 blog to all others. Having different blog accounts is like having a publication in different newspapers. This enables you to attract more visitors and this also increases the chance that 1 of your blogs will be in the search engine results for your focused keywords.

8) Short & Concise

Aside from the lengthy article a week for syndication and publication your blog entries should be short & concise (if you can help it). Sometimes there are exceptions to the rule and you have no choice but to blog lengthy entries, but try to avoid this as much as possible. You do not want your blog entries to become hours of reading. Visitors like to easily find information and skim through your entries. It is good to be detailed and provide useful information, but do not include useless information or run away sentences that veer away from your topic.

9) Digital Art

Try to include non-advertising graphics, pictures, photos, and art in your blog entries. Not too much. Once a week is fine. Graphics can sometimes bring your blog to life. Of course, the content of the blog is the most important aspect and you do not want to overshadow your content with graphics, but displaying graphics can add a bit of spice to the blog. Be choosy about your graphics and make sure they fit your entry topic. You should add content with the graphic, at least a caption. Original graphics, photos, pictures, and art is recommended.

10) Keep it Personal

A blog is most successful when it is kept personal. Try to include personal experiences which relates to the topic of your blog entry. Stay away from the business style of writing. Write with a more personal style and use first-person narratives. Do not write any of your entries as sales letters, instead share product reviews and personal endeavors.

11) Interact With Your Visitors

You now have the traffic you deserve. You should begin interacting with your visitors. Create a regular theme such as: "Monday Money Tip" or "Picture of the Week" which entices your readers to look forward to each week.

Give your readers advance notice about a product, service, or topic which you are going to review and then talk about later. If the President was scheduled to give a speech then in your blog you should state that you "will discuss the speech and give your opinion after the speech airs. Comments will be appreciated".

Try your best to find exclusive information that not many have. Do not disclose any confidential or secret information which is deemed illegal or can potentially get you into trouble, but try to get the scoop before everyone else does. Such as: If your blog was about Paris Hilton (the socialite) and you had a blog entry about "Paris Hilton Getting Married" then it would be interesting to your readers if you had a actual picture of Paris Hilton engagement ring. Give your best effort to dig and search the internet for exclusive information and you will possibly come up with something useful. Your readers will appreciate this and they show their appreciation through word-of-mouth referrals. Imagine how many readers will tell their friends, family, and others about information they only can find at your blog.

12) Make Money

Once your blog has gained some real momentum and your blog traffic is increasing then it is time to start thinking about turning your traffic into profit. You should use contextual advertising, like Google Adsense or Chitika. Contextual advertising is usually text links which use the content of your blog to publish targeted ads on your blog. The payout is usually based on a pay-per-click model, meaning for ever click an ad receives you are paid a small percentage of the profits. In addition to contextual advertising it is good to also use graphical advertising such as: BlogAds.com, Amazon.com, MammaMedia, or General Sponsored Advertising.

13) You're a Professional

You're a professional now! What are you still doing with that free blog hosting service? It is time to upgrade to a domain hosted solution. You need to get a web host and choose a domain name for your blog then check its availability. Select the blogging software you wish to use, such as: Squarespace.com, WordPress.org, MovableType.org, etc. When you have your new blog domain setup and ready for traffic then it is time for you to announce your move on all your previous blog accounts. Your last entry to the blog should be a "move" announcement. The title should be "Moved" and the blog entry should state something like "Old Blog has been moved to New Blog please follow and bookmark this link for future reference: http://www.YourNewBlogDomainName.com". This way all returning visitors and new readers should not have any problem finding your new blog domain.

At the level of a professional blogger you may want to team up with 1 or more other bloggers. This will create a more interesting and more powerful blog. The old saying "two heads is better than one", more authors mean more advertising and exposure because each author will have a vested interest in the blog. The idea of a team blog is to make it profitable and rewarding for all authors, while continuing to target the blog topic and keeping the blog interesting for visitors.

Following these blogging techniques should make your blogging experience much more rewarding. There is no guarantee that your blog will become popular or a household name, but the effort should at least put you one step closer. Making money online is not an overnight experience like many may think, but making money online is definitely a foreseeable possibility. As well, growing popularity on the web is not an overnight experience, but through time, dedication, and persistence you will be rewarded with all the royalties of blogging.

AdSense Ad variations: Link Units and themed Ad Units.

Link units and themed ad units are two variations of AdSense Ads that are meant to further increase the quality of AdSense Ads that get served on websites. Let’s take a quick look to see what ‘Link units’ and ‘themed Ad units’ actually are:

Themed ad units: As their name suggests, themed ad units are the ad units that are based on particular themes. These themes could be depicted by colors or special type of graphics that are representative of the event or occasion portrayed by the theme. The events and occasions could be things like Christmas, New Year’s Day, etc.  Of course, the themed Ads can only be displayed if they are available from the advertisers and if you have enabled the themed Ads on your AdSense account (in ‘Ad Type Preferences’). Also, since the events vary across different locations, the themed Ads are displayed based on the location of the website visitor. Besides this minor difference, themed ad units work in the same way as the normal ad units.

Link units: Link units are another useful way of advertising through AdSense program. Though the basic premise remains the same (i.e. targeted advertising), the way link units operate is slightly different. Link units are meant to provide even more meaningful advertisements to the website visitors by presenting them with a list of topics (ad keywords) to choose from. The website visitors are then presented with only those Ads that are related to the topic selected by them; hence making their website visit more meaningful. The list of topics presented to the website visitor is based on the website content. So, the topics are relevant to the context of website. However, the ‘clicks’ on the topics doesn’t make any revenue for you; it’s the clicks on the Ads for that topic that earns you revenue. As far as implementing of Link units is concerned, it’s done in the same way as other AdSense type products -- you copy and paste AdSense code in the html code of your webpage. Note that you are allowed to implement only one link unit per web page.

AdSense related terms that you should know

Here is the list of AdSense related terms that you should know for sure:

Page impression: A page impression is generally the same as a page view but the number of page impressions can sometimes be different than the page views. This happens when the page is viewed by a visitor but the AdSense code is not executed for some reason (which means that the Ads are not displayed to the visitor).

Ad unit impressions: Whenever you get page impressions, you also get Ad unit impressions. However, the ad unit impressions are dependent on the number of ad units you have on your page i.e. number of ad units that get executed when the page loads on user’s browser. Note that the link unit impressions are also counted as ad unit impressions.

Click:  A click (for the purpose of AdSense) is recorded whenever a website visitor clicks on one of the AdSense Ads. Note that a click on a topic in a link unit is not considered as a click.

Click through rate, for the purpose of AdSense, is the number of clicks received by an ad unit divided by the total number of ad unit impressions for that ad unit. So, a better CTR can mean more revenue for you.

Effective CPM: It is calculated as the cost per 1000 impressions.  However, do not confuse effective CPM with your earnings. In fact, effective CPM is calculated by dividing your earnings by the number of page impressions and then multiplying the final figure by 1000. Effective CPM is generally used to compare various channels and determine which channels are more profitable for you.

An introduction to AdSense for Search

While talking about Google AdSense, we must not forget that Google is primarily known for its search engine capabilities (in fact, it is one of the most powerful search engines available today). So, how could Google leave out it search engine capabilities from its AdSense program?

‘AdSense for Search’ is how Google includes search engine bit into the Google AdSense program. ‘AdSense for Search’ can actually be termed as a sibling of Google AdSense program and is one great way of increasing website revenue for website owners. To implement ‘AdSense for search’, you just have to include the Google search box on your website. Again, Google offers the code that you need to use for including Google search box. You just have to paste the code at whatever place you deem as the most appropriate place for Google search box.

When your website visitors use Google search bar on your website, they get almost the same results as they would by using Google separately through Google.com. When these website visitors click the search results, the website owner earns revenue (CPC revenue). You can even include AdSense Ads on the search results page and earn CPM or CPC revenue from them. Also, you can customize the search results page to suit your website’s theme. So, Google AdSense for search is one great way of making money just by including the Google search bar on your website. Besides that, the visitors to your website get an additional functionality through your website i.e. the facility to search the web using one of the most powerful search engine (without leaving your website).

‘AdSense for search’ is a great way of earning revenue through your website (and, in fact, one of the easiest ways too). A number of website owner actually use both the ‘AdSense for Search’ and the regular ‘AdSense for content’ in order to maximize their revenue.

AdSense tips that you might have missed out on

Google AdSense program is one of the best online advertising programs that are in use today. AdSense program is beneficial to all the involved parties i.e. the advertisers, the website owners and the website visitors. The popularity of AdSense program seems to be the most among the second group i.e. website owners. A number of website owners today use AdSense Ads on their websites in order to earn good revenue on a regular basis. They use a number of tricks and tips in order to maximize their revenues.

Besides the regular tips, there are some other AdSense tips which a number of people miss out on unless they are very careful:

1.    Use multiple ad units: Google allows you to use up to 3 ad units and one link unit per web page. Since your revenue earnings are dependent on ad clicks and ad impressions, a higher number of ad units can potentially increase your AdSense earnings. However, do not go with the maximum allowed ad units if you don’t have enough content on your web page; this might offend the website visitors.

2.    Use wider Ad format: Though Ad formats yield different results for different websites, the wider Ad formats (like rectangles) are generally known to be more effective than their narrower counterparts (there is a scientific explanation for this, but we can leave that out since we are more concerned with the results).

3.    Limit the filters: Filters are useful for blocking the Ads that you don’t want displayed on your website e.g. Ads of competitors. However, too many filters can seriously limit your revenue earning potential from AdSense Ads. So, limit the use of filters to minimum.