Google Lowers Rankings For A Small Blog Of Mine

A small niche blog of mine about cheap airsoft guns called Cheap-Ass Airsoft Guns has had its rankings lowered by Google!

The site used to earn a couple of dollars each day from Google Adsense, so it wasn't a major earner, but it was a nice supplemental income given I very rarely updated it. I do not know why the rankings has been lowered! It was making money for a few weeks in a row, then suddenly the rank is lost for all its referring kewords.

The lesson is don't rely on Google for all the traffic!

P.S.
My keyword experiment for ranking for Facebok was a success! Or at least it was temporarily!

Online Money Making - SERPS Madness!

I have woefully mentioned a number of times before (at least I think I wrote it out loud... ) that when I started this blog 4 months ago I had no SEO strategy. However, it may have been a blessing from Google, or just shear luck but yesterday I found myself on page 6 for the term 'online money making. OK, so Page 6 isn't great, but it's defiantly something to work with, and given the competitive nature of that keyword phrase I couldn’t resist a chance to get to page 1 on the Google SERPS (search engine results page) and suck up some juicy traffic.



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Above is the Sitening graph that shows my position on the Google SERPS for the phrase, 'online money making' over the last few weeks. Up until today I had been planning a little 'victory post' showing how I fought the battle and made it to Page 1 in Google.

All was not to be
For a totally unknown reason I disappeared without trace from position 67 for 'online money making'. Perhaps this has something to do with the Page Rank update? Or a simultaneous algorithm change?

All is not Lost
I am going to get the to bottom of this murder mystery Sherlock Holms style. ... All I need is a Sidekick! I will do a little 'experimentation' and perhaps a little more 'blog science'. Stay Tuned!

Have you found you have suddenly disappeared off of Google or maybe shot up the SERPS?.

Google Page Rank isn't Everything

Its funny to see that with the impending Google Page Rank update everyone is scurrying around sorting out link exchanges and making their blog in tip top condition. It's almost as if Google is our mother coming to check up on us. We tidy our rooms, load the dishwasher and make sure we wear clean clothes. (some of you probably do this anyway... good for you!).

It is important to remember that Google, much like our mothers are not everything. Although the state of your blog at the time of the update is important, the old ways of getting a good ranking still apply.

What a higher Page Rank Does and can you achieve those things without it:

- Moves you up the rankings in Google for your keywords, sending you more traffic.

Page Rank helps with this but is not a necessity. The normal SEO techniques are still effective on blogs with a page rank of 0. Gaining inbound links and optimising your site for Google is still what it is all about.

- Allows you to be accepted by third parties to make more money from advertising E.G. Text Link Ads.

Garry conn doubts the importance of third parties and argues that you should do it yourself. However John Chow says its all about the relationship with the third party. I think for smaller-medium sized blogs third parties are defiantly the way to go; because after all, 'bad breath is better than no breath'. However for a site like Johns it’s easy to be nice to everyone including the third party.

- Allows you to be eligible for more sponsored posts. (This is a form of third parties advertising).

I'm taking about third parties like ReviewMe. There has been a raging debate in the blogosphere about writing sponsored posts. I say they are fine, but only in moderation. I have no problem with a blog I read making a few extra bucks by having the odd sponsored post here and there. However sponsored posts are often not written 'from the heart' and are not the bloggers actual point of view. Sponsored post run the danger of making the site lose its originality, and given that having unique content is what blogging is all about it then this is very bad!




I have previously written about the importance of blogging with personality; but as long as the normal, un-sponsored content continues as usual I have no problem with sponsored posts.

- Allows you to make link exchanges with more popular sites.

Link exchanges are a good way to get your site off the ground but as your Page Rank increases and your site becomes more popular they become less and less important. If your blog has good enough content you will be able to get 'natural' links from top sites anyway by 'link baiting'. I.E. If your contents stimulates a blogger to write about a similar topic they will probably use some of your ideas and reference you with a link in their post.

- Allows your blog to be accepted by directories that have a minimum page rank requirement.

- Is a way of promoting your blog, people like reading successful blogs. A higher pagerank indicates 'the blogger knows what he is doing'.

You can show you are a professional mannered blogger by your content and layout without displaying your PageRank. Remember most people don't even know what Google Page Rank is. Displaying it is only worthwhile on sites in certain niches.

This blog has been predicted a PR4,5 and 6 from various different predictors. As I have tried to explain, it is possible to have a successful blog without a high Google Page Rank. As long as I get PR4 I will be happy. My other site Affiliate Programs is predicted a PR3. If I can get that up to PR4 before the update I will be over the moon.

If you don't get the Page Rank you have been hoping for do not despair!. If you are battling to raise your predicted Page Rank just ask me for a link exchange. If I like your blog enough I might just go through with it.

Google Analytics - Week 9 Overview

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As you can see, traffic this week has been a little disappointing with out any spikes or major events. Everyone has the occasional 'off week', but the question is:

What can be learnt from this uneventful week?
As usual there are a combination of factors that caused the events/'unevents'. The answer can be found in more wonderful graphs below.



All of the minuses and drops in referrals may look disheartening, but it is important to figure out why traffic has dropped, or at least not grown.

You can see that the greatest drop is from fewer people finding this site via Google using the keyword 'Wealthtoolbox'. A quick Google search of that keyword still reveals that this blog occupies the number 2 and 3 spots; so the cause is not SEO failure. The only possibility is that people have finally caught on to Wealthtoolbox being untrustworthy and so it is less popular, resulting in fewer people searching for it.

The decrease in the number of referral traffic also has a simple explanation. Last week I received a link from JohnChow.com for winning his 'Guess my february blog income' contest which gave me more referral traffic than usual. This week I have simply lost that advantage, sending referral traffic back to usual which gives a negative percentage on the charts.

I have not made any new posts about Wealthtoolbox,, Mylot
or SlashMySeach, which always send a decent amount of traffic. This is because there is simply not much more to say about any of those programs and I would rather focus on more interesting blog topics. Unfortunately it is harder to rank well for more general keywords and so this causes a further decrease in traffic; at least for a while until this blog ranks more highly for more competitive terms.

That’s all for this weeks overview. As I wrote in the Week 9 earnings reportAdSence earnings increased despite the decrease in traffic, so arguably the quality of traffic has been higher.

Google Analytics - Week 8 Overview

One week ago today I made the first Google Analytics Weekly Overview. During that week, the point of interested was SlashMySearch. This week has been busy as well, so keep reading to find out about this blog’s growth.
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Here is my traffic for the week. You can see it has increased nicely as the week went on, despite a little 'blip' in the middle. Buy what is the explanation for this relatively steady increase?



Well, this chart offers part of the explanation. The noticeable difference between this chart of referring sources and the usual one is the appearance of JohnChow.com. It has leapt onto the listings snatching third place provided 64 visits over just a couple of days. The reason for this was my winning of his 'Guess my income' contest, which got me a link from one of his blog posts.

SlashMySearch.com has provided me with 34 visits, which I acquired by posting in their forum and having this sites address in my signature. This was doubly good because I was earning real money while reading and posting in those forums. The same thing can happen for your site so join SlashMySearch here.

Just a quick word about Earners blog who are running a John Chow style 'review my blog and get a free linkback'. I though it would be worth a shot, and it was just about, with my review of Earners blog getting me 12 referrals.

I am also very thankful towards Million Dollar Journey and Making Money on the Web, which sent some traffic my way.



This chart reveals the other reason for my steady increase in traffic. It shows more impressive figures about SlashMySearch and how my two posts about it, SlashMySearch a trial run and SlayMySearch - In depth review and proof of payment have brought me significant amounts of traffic, (91 visitors). It is interesting to see that a lot of these top 10 posts are newer ones, so perhaps that indicates an increase in quality for readers and SEO of my posts.

That’s all for this week overview,

Coming up
- Brand new Cashcrate info.

so Stay tuned.

Google Alerts - A Cure for 'Blogger's block'

It was over a month ago that I last wrote about Google Alerts, but don't let this fool you, using Google alerts is a great backup for finding content and cure for 'bloggers block'. If you are unsure of what Google Alerts are then have a quick read of that post before you continue with this one.

What is bloggers block?
Bloggers block is just like a writers block, where you just cannot come up with something creative to blog about. Many people tend to get bloggers block when they just start their first blog and simply don't know where to begin. I have had a few questions from readers of this blog asking things like 'how do you find something to write about?', which I shall now endeavour to answer.

1. By reading blogs that are in the same niche.

Positives
- A potentially infinite (well not infinite but you get the idea) number of blogs can be read, so lots of information can be gathered + 'meditated upon'.
- Visiting the blog yourself presents the opportunity of commenting and 'networking' and possibly building the foundations of a relationship with that blogger. - Kills two birds with one stone.
- Gives practice surfing the blogosphere. By using the search engines we can gain an idea as to what sort of sites have done well with SEO (search engine optimisation), which we can learn from. This is a bit of a loose point but you can't have a hope of implementing successful SEO with out being an experienced search engine user yourself! (most of us already are anyway...)

Negatives
- Time consuming.
- Can yield few poor results if you don't know where to look.

2. By using Google Alerts!

Positives
- Quick, easy and free.
- You can choose how often you want to be sent an alert, so potentially can provide infinite ideas.

Negatives
- Makes networking a bit less appealing, because you didn't find the site yourself and have not had a rummage around on it to find what you are looking for. I.e. you don't have an idea of the blogs popularity and so cannot judge how to word your comments accordingly. (Does that make sense?)
- Some alerts are a 'mismatch' and are completely off topic.
- No experienced gained for searching the blogosphere.
- Posts made using Google Alerts can seem unconnected; despite being on the same niche you will have fewer opportunities to refer to a previous post.
- Can clog up your inbox if you find yourself not using them after signing up

Conclusion
Google Alerts are a great backup, but should not be relied upon. I personally have only fallen back on them a couple of times for content, and both times I have ended up writing about Google Alerts, rather than any of the actual alerts! lol... Put into a single sentence, only use them if you don't have time to browse other blogs yourself., which should be a rare event if you are going to be a successful blogger.

Beginner Tips for SEO

This is a really useful Network Solutions video I found earlier today for those of you who are just getting started on your site and need some pointers about SEO (search engine optimisation). The first 30 seconds are just introduction so you can just skip past that onto the good stuff. The three essential points made are:

- Good Content
- Links to your site
- Title tags and meta tags

They are the basic things that all sites need, in order to get organic traffic from search engines. So have a watch of the video and learn something new! Or for those veterans out there it’s a nice refresher.

Google Analytics - Week 7 Overview

I previously promised to show you all how much traffic this site gets, and where it gets it from. I will do this every week, in the form of a Google Analytics Overview. I will do this by going through Google Analytics and picking out the most important graphs/charts and explaining them to you. The plan is, that I will become proud of these reports because they will be a way of boasting about all the traffic I get, which at the moment is not the case.... So why am I doing it so soon?

Because you love it!. I would love to see the traffic stats for the blogs I read, it would be fascinating and I am guessing you are the same. I also hope that it will catch on and I will be able to see the traffic stats of the blogs I read, not to mention that it helps me unravel things in my mind.

So lets get going!

You can click all the images to enlarge them.



This graph is of my traffic for the week. The Blue line is the number of unique visitors. You can see it hovers around the 100 mark for most of the week, starting at its lowest of 89 and moving on up to 157. I am obviously very happy with this increase, although I do not think it will last. I would say that my weakest post all week has been the one on the Text Link Ads Calculator. However that post was on Tuesday, not Wednesday, (when the traffic dropped). Perhaps it took a day to get listed by the search engines, who knows…

Wednesday had the post called Article Marketing is a Waste of Time? which I though was quite good (lol). Anyway, the internet does have its 'off days' when there is just less traffic due to chance... I may not know the reason for the decrease in traffic midweek, but I do know the cause of the increase. Read on to find out...



This is where it gets interesting. This screen shot shows the top 10 referring sources for this blog. What I first noticed when I saw this is that it is very different from usual and can be used to explain the sudden bloom in traffic over the last couple of days. Firstly, I normally only get a couple of referrals from Dotmyspot but this week I am in the featured sites list, which brought me more, so thanks Michael!

Secondly, Mylot referrals are much higher that usual, this is because I have been doing more posting there than usual to promote this blog and also SlashMySearch (as part of my experiment with it, which proved very effective, getting me 8 referrals over night :D). While messing around on the SlashMySearch forum, I did a little blog promotion, which as you can see got me 10 referrals. This leads me on nicely to the next chart...



This shows the content that has attracted the most visitors. Everything is pretty much as usual, apart from No.4. Can you guess what it is? Yes it's the SlashMySearch post! It all fits together!

So:

1. I discovered SlashMySearch and wrote a post about it, which was popular in the search engines because its a new program and there is very little competition, which brought me some traffic.
2. I promoted it in Mylot, which got me some traffic (and signups).
3. I also did more networking this week that usual. I actively commented on the blogs I read, many of the authors returned the favour or at least came for a visit.
4. The Z list has helped boost my Technorati ranking, bringing me slightly more traffic from there.
5. I am in the Dotmyspot featured blogs list, bring more traffic.
6. My earnings report was popular, people like to hear the grit and know the details.

Isn't it weird how it all fits together?

To end I will throw in this chart of my new vs. returning visitors.



This shows the balance I have. Returning visors read more and more actively participate, but first timers probably click more ads. I have happy with this ratio, the fairly large number of returning visitors shows I am not writing a load of crap, and the new ones show my SEO is going well.

I am interested to know your feedback on all this. Would you like a post like this every week? Or maybe every other week? It’s all done For you!

John Chow and Darren Rose Sitting in a Tree...

.... looking down on us and throwing us bones to keep us happy as we bark up at them.

Blinggest* def:
- Combination of biggest, most bling and blog e.g. 'I am the bliggest!'

Two of the blinggest* bloggers in the 'blogosphere', John Chow and Darren Rowse were seen passing AdWords messages. Darren (arguably the MOST blinggest of the two on the blogosphere) has hardly mentioned the subject. Perhaps he feels he doesn't need the feisty Canadian, after all he is currently ranked number 43 in Technorati, as opposed to John Chow has a 'mere' rank of 561. John seems adamant to keep the relationship open and proudly proclaimed it to be a "love fest". Google are apparently thrilled with the news and so am I. I am hoping Google with send them both a token gift, perhaps an 'extra-large' domain name where they can consummate their relationship.



I am a regular reader of both their blogs and feel they have taken on the role of 'idols' and are greatly admired by many 'wannabees'. In my humble opinion, bloggers who become idols should be made understand the power that is in their dextrous hands. If all they write about is how to be successful, we will end up with an entire generation of bloggers thinking that is the only important thing in life. Both John Chow and Darren Rose should have to satisfy the other needs of bloggers. I.E. they should learn to sing and dance (don't worry John your already halfway there!) and tell us stories about the 'olden days' of the Internet and teach us about the founding fathers of the blogosphere. After all, is that not what we demmand from 'offline' celebrities?

I just hope I’m not barking up the wrong tree.

Spicypage is 1 Month Old!

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Spicy page sent this to me, "We are proud to announce that we are officially one month and one day old". I am a huge fan of spicy page. Don't ask me why that screen shot is a bit odd (the pie chart has gonw a funny colour), but you can still see that I get 2.1% of my traffic from Spicypage. The graph on the right is the Spicypage traffic plotted on it's own. You can see it started of high, because after I joined I voted on a whole load of sites and added their Webmasters to my 'Friends' list. Many reciprocated with a vote which got me on the front page for a few days. Its pretty easy to get on the front page, you just need about 10 votes in a day but you wont get massive amounts of traffic like Digg because Spicypage is still growing.

They also made this handy addition:

"Just a reminder that our policy allows for a site to receive votes from the same people every 30 days. So, for those of you who voted for sites 30 days ago, you can vote again for the same sites.

you can send messages to multiple recipients. So, if you need others to vote for your site/blog, let them know and keep on letting them know every 30 days. Your site/blog might be inside the Most Popular section all the time!"

Unfortunately for me I joined on January 25th which isn't 30 days ago. I think Spicypage has some great potential for growth so join now and get voting!

Google AdSense / AdWords - New Referral Model

According to Stephan Google has changed their AdSense/AdWords referral model. He only received $10 for two referrals he made and sent an email to Google to investigate. This is what Google said:

“Thank you for the email. I’m happy to say that we’ve now changed the payment model for referrals so you’ll earn more from now on. You’ll, as it has happened, get $5 when a user you’ve signed up earns $5. When the user has earned $100 and complies with the general terms of service for referrals you’ll get additionally $250 on top of the $5 - total $255. This is brand new and we’re right now updating our help center with this information.”

This is great for us bloggers. It means we are practically guaranteed to make something when we get a referral and well, $250 says it all. There is nothing officially released to explain this on the AdSense homepage just yet.

This increase in payment demonstrates the gargantuan profits Google reported. It looks like they are out to get more publishers and are willing to pay for it.

Google Analytics

To make money from a blog you need traffic. I have already discussed in several previous posts about free methods of getting traffic. The next stage is understand WHERE that traffic came from and knowing WHAT you need to do to keep it coming back and what you need do to ATTRACT more traffic from other sources.

Google Analytics does just that. The image shows the fascinating diagrams and charts that greet me when I log into my Google Analytics account. There is a map of the world with the positions of my visitors plotted on. There are two pie charts that show me where my traffic has come from and how many visitors have returned which at the moment is 33% which I am quite pleased about.

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Amongst other features, there is a conversion summary and a very interesting Marketing summary. This shows the top 5 sources (URLs visitors found my sites link on), the top 5 keywords for my site (surprisingly my number 1 is 'AGLOCO scam' and the top 5 campaigns. There is also a content summary that shows which posts you folks have been reading and a unique visitor tracking section. I AM WATCHING YOU!!!

The two other main sections are the marketing and content optimisation sections which provide more tasty charts and helpful pointers as to what you need to do for your blog to progress. These sections are highly detailed; in the marketing optimisation section alone there are over 20 subsections.

There is a lot to learn on Google Analytics but you can chose to use only the simple parts if you with. However I doubt you will be able to resist advancing you knowledge in the name of success.

Google Analytics is free (and I get no reward for you signing up). You can sign up here

Google to Pay YouTubers Ad Money Share

It was announced on BBC News that Google is going to start "rewarding creativity". They will plaster ads all over Youtube and pay YouTubers a share of the money. This has been confirmed by Chad Hurley the founder of YouTube which now has over 70million users a month.

The system will not be implemented for a few months and we are assured that the ads will not ruin YouTube, a possibility is that there will be 'three second long clips'. Who knows exactly what this means but knowing Google’s uncanny ability to squeeze every last drop of money from a site and still keep people coming back I am predicting this will make Google and talented YouTubers alike ALOT of money.

Google Earth as a Virtual World

Michael Eisenberg, blogged yesterday


"Heard an interesting rumour today from an academic who heard through the PhD grapevine...Google is working on turning Google Earth into a virtual world a la SecondLife (full disclosure: Benchmark investment) . That would be an interesting development both for Google. After hearing this, I was struck by the language on the Google Earth website: "One more step to creating a life-like 3-D model of the whole planet..""


It looks like Google are going to take yet another gargantuan leap in the development of the cyberspace world. Its one small step for Google, one giant leap for everyone else.

It seems like now would be a good time for google to announce this to the real world.

Review - John Chow Dot Com

Who is John Chow?

Believe it or not (I didn't at first) John Chow is Canadian. Despite this he knows how to party. This very minute he is getting his groove on in Las Vegas. So is he a computer geek or a party animal?

Well, according to him, he is a "dot com mogul". The precise meaning of this is debateable, but terms like 'blogger whore' and 'Google whore' come to mind. Hishomepage, which, despite being jam packed with ads is very informative and clearly laid out.

It will not take much reading of Johnchow.com to realised how much there is for you to learn from the site. He gives out advice freely, with a number of very helpful posts about getting traffic to your site, as well as more recent posts on ideas to maintaining a good, novel site content. He also gives advice about AGLOCO and provides very persuasive arguments to join, which everyone can learn from.

Sometimes the site does feel like it is 'all about the money', what with the Google adsence ads, the AGLOCO updates and his monthly overview of his earnings. However, every now and then he makes a post that wins me back, e.g.Effects of drugs and alcohol on spider webs. He also has categories about his family, and the recent birth of this baby daughter, with a heart-warming photo. The donation of much of his earnings to charity, combined with this, all adds to the 'John Chow effect’, which keeps his site firmly in my bookmarks.

He recently has offered to link to anyone who writes a 200+ word review of his site, which is currently ranked 1320 on technorati. Find out more
here