Posts Tagged ‘domain name’
Blog Income Life October ‘09 Report
October was a challenging month but so well worth it. Visitors are up 27% over September. Search Engines delivering 15% is decent. Actually, I read somewhere that the ideal traffic pie would be equally divided into 33% from each source. So that is something I am going to keep an eye on. Clearly, more search engine traffic is needed. Most “exotic” visitor was from Tanzania.
No income to report for this month but some important changes and the results of those changes are chronicled below. While you may not be in the same boat, if ever you want to make “changes” to an existing blog, my experience may be helpful:
- Changed Domain Name:
Former domain name: Blog Along With Me.
New domain name: Blog Income Life.
The driving force behind this was the realization that Blog Along was not a keyword optimized domain for anything other than blog, which is extremely competitive and already well entrenched in the top 10 of Google’s list. Blog Income as the main keyword for the new domain has a fighting chance to get top positioning with Google, and by default, other search engines. - Change of Platform
Exported from Blogger to Wordpress Direct. The transfer was painless. To think that I had put it off for some time literally trembling at the thought that somehow all would get lost in transit. - Domain/URL Redirect:
http://www.blogalongwithme.com redirected to http://www.blogincomelifie.com
This was a small tactical error. While all the content of the original blog transferred to the new one, the hard fought for backlinks did not. There were over 230. For one scant moment I thought of reversing the redirects. Chose to stay. Chalked it up to experience. Fresh beginning. - Analytics
Forgot to add the analytics code to the new site until October 05. Consequence is that the above chart is for October 06 onwards. Wordpress Direct does gather similar statistics however they seem to include my own visits, so the accuracy is flawed. - Monetization
Banner for ABC’s free PDF installed right way. Half way through the month added an affiliate banner. Am still ambivalent about Adsense; still not here but have noticed that a blogger no less than Alvin Phang continues to use Adsense. Maybe I’ll add it for November and see what happens. More banner ads to be added. - Course Purchases
Have bought several new courses addressing blog improvement and affiliate marketing. Will review in good time.
This has been a useful exercise. While the transfer of the blog from one platform to another was painless it was not without its growing pains – mainly, getting familiar with Wordpress Direct, or more to the point, not all templates are created equal. More on choice of templates in the future.
Traffic Bug is now part of my blogging tool kit. It’s a great little program and has freed up a lot of my time. This little bug is my introduction to automating some of the daily tasks such as post and article submissions to search engines and directories. The escalated growth of backlinks is encouraging and I am confident that the number will soon catch up to and outpace the previous number.
Market Samurai is another valuable program in my tool kit. It is invaluable for research and keeping track of marketing campaigns. The more I use this software the more I realize its value. Cannot recommend it highly enough – everyone, in my opinion should have it. If you are just starting out and dollars are scarce, a ramen noodle diet for a week would be worth it to just be able to buy this program.
What are my goals for November?
- Increase traffic by 20%+ (I’m following Darren Rowse’s formula here)
- Get back on to earning some dollars.
- Spend less time checking my daily stats which is so addictive now that I can see the needle move, either up or down, daily. Maybe the novelty will wear off and I’ll do this just once a day, in the morning.
And speaking of the needle moving – it is amazing how volatile Google’s ranking/positioning can be. I guess until you earn your stripes you are susceptible to swings that take you up or down by several hundred. I was surprised when I checked the statistics for a competitor which had a PR of 2, and now suddenly no PR! It could be a glitch or is this the famous Google Slap?
Happy Blogging!
Valentina
Blogger for Money
… cheese servings were scarce this last month
"Tweak" along with me
For my 30 Day Challenge I am researching a new niche and as I do so I am learning things that I can apply immediately to this blog and I made such a change today.
When you first open this blog, the first thing you read is a blurb about the blog. As mentioned several times in my postings, I am fighting for the keyword phrase “blogging for money” yet this phrase
1. is not in my URL
2. is not part of my domain name
3. is not part of the title
4. is not in the header
5. was not used in the description or “blurb” of the blog.
The first four items I cannot do much about right now – or at least I choose to leave till later, but I tackled item no. 5 right away and “tweaked” the description. I changed the wording and used several keywords that are good in this niche, but which I had omitted and I made sure that “blogging for money” was front and center.
Why is this important?
These are all factors that are taken into account by Google and other search engines. When compared to other blogs in the “blogging for money” keyword phrase this blog did very well in a number of areas, those that are known as “on page”, in fact it outperformed some that were in the top 10 list, but I failed miserably in the “off page” criteria which are the 5 mentioned above.
Its a small “tweak” but it will be interesting to see what, if any, difference it will make in traffic.
So here is what you need to keep top of mind when finding a domain name and setting up your blog site:
1. keyword in the domain name
2. keyword in the URL (usually one follows the other)
3. keyword in the header
4. keyword in the Title
5. keyword in the description.
If you incorporate these five strategies you’ll be way ahead over those who don’t and have a leg up on the blogging for money game.
Happy Blogging!
Valentina
Blogger for Money
can you say cheese?
Quick Links
30 Day Challenge
Blog Ready to Launch
After considering all the options that are available to me re creating/hosting my new blog, I have made my decision based on the following:
1. Domain Name: to be announced when the blog is up & live (this coming week)
2. Niche Market: Money.
Whoa! That is not a niche market!!!! Yes, I know – this is one of those “Do as I say, not as I do” caveats. Indeed the Internet is flooded with blogs and sites on money, how to make it, how to manage it, how to invest it … and much much more. My chances of becoming the Search Engines’ Darling and be rewarded with top ranking are slim indeed. Having said that I am willing to take longer for this blog to become a money making site for me. The reasons I chose this very broad market are:
a. It is top of mind for just about everyone today.
b. The broad topic allows for many niches.
c. It is consistent with this blog, which is about making money blogging, so it builds on to an existing “product”
d. The niches lend themselves to my being able to promote some of my other existing businesses as options
e. Topic comfort – I write my own material so this will not be as time consuming as perhaps other narrower niches I was considering
3. Platform: Wordpress (paid version)
The reason I chose Wordpress is twofold:
a) Many more options available for development of blog especially as I intend to make this a signature blog. For this same reason I chose the paid version as it offers so many more features and functions that I will be growing into.
and,
b) Having taken a number of courses in Internet Marketing, I was able to capitalize on an offering by Nitro Marketing to set up my blog for free.
4. Host: Hostgator
While both Blue Host and HostGator are offer similar services and product I chose HostGator because it is the host service that Nitro recommends.
OK…. I fudged a bit here. I was going to do the Wordpress thing from scratch – although I was definitely going for the paid version. Techie type stuff is not my strong suite. It would not be the best use of my time. I had other options for a “set it & post it” wordpress blog (I have a few of those with another program I purchased), but decided to go with Nitro. My experiences with Nitro Marketing courses have been that the content is always strong on detail, complete, and delivers great support. I have not had a blog set up by this group before so in a way I will be testing a new product. Actually you can sign up for their free newsletter. They have started to host free webinars which I highly recommend. You will be advised of those webinars in the newsletters.
Lets recap to date:
1. Topic/Niche selection
2. Domain Name
3. Ten Posts written & ready to post in weekly or semi-weekly intervals
4. Platform (Blogger or Wordpress)
5. Host (needed only if paid Wordpress selected).
Happy Blogging!
Quick Links:
Wordpress
HostGator
Nitro Marketing Blueprint
Domain Name Selection
Blog domain names can be assigned to the default designation of the server of your domain or, you can buy a domain name and the servers identity will not appear.
What exactly are you talking about? … you say.
OK. Lets look at our options.
This blog is hosted by Blogger. You will note that the URL is shown as
http://www.ripalongwithme.blogspot.com
The word “blogspot” is the trade name for Blogger hosted blogs, and its inclusion in the URL shows everyone that this is a Blogger blog. As long as the title you want to give your blog has not already been taken, there is no cost for this blog or for the title. The same would apply if you chose to use Wordpress, the URL in that case would include “wordpress” or one of two other selections that Wordpress offers. Wordpress will give you up to 3 blogs for free.
Choosing the right domain, or “title” for your blog is important. It should have relevance to the topic upon which you will be blogging. Lets take this blog and another one I put up quite some time ago as examples.
The first blog is AppleSeeds Grow blog. This I put up a few years ago. The intention here was that I wanted to use the word AppleSeeds as an analogy to planting seeds of wealth, health and wisdom. The content carries some philosophical meandering, tips on good health and on growing wealth. I publish a newsletter by the same name and some of its content gets published on this blog.
The choice of AppleSeeds it turned out was poorly thought out. Originally this blog was devoid of any ads, then as I developed some Internet Marketing smarts I decided to monetize this site with Google Adsense.
While the title and word embody a powerful imagery on personal development, Google does not take to imagery too well. Even though I chose to allow Google Adsense for content, when Google went crawling through my blog, the first thing it picked up was apple and for the longest time the type of ads that were posted on this blog had to do with apple, the fruit, which of course had nothing to do with my content. Visitors who came to this blog certainly had no interest in apple seeds or apple sauce and so the ads were not being clicked, hence no income from Google. It has only been recently that the ads have turned more towards content rather than the title. Interestingly I never saw an ad that was for Apple Computers!
Rule No. 1: Keyword Blog Title should be relevant to your topic.
The second blog I want to call your attention to is this one. Once again when I put this blog up in November, its intent was somewhat different from what I have since turned it into. I and a number of my colleagues bought a program called Rip2 It. While it was promoted as a turnkey system that was as easy as ABC, many of us were having difficulties with the A B Cs and my intention was to post my progress through this program and in Internet Marketing. If you read the summary above under the title, you will understand the original direction or purpose of this blog.
Each December I review the year and make adjustments for the coming one. As I looked at this blog, I thought it could serve a better purpose, not just for a small group of people who were on the Rip2 It program, but to a larger audience who were just starting in Internet Marketing. It was then that I thought about setting out the step by step process of creating a blog. I have since decided on a different title, but will leave the current one up for a while so that readers understand what I mean.
Rule No. 2: Decide on the purpose of your blog.
An example of a good blog Domain: http://www.mercedesbenz.rip2itblogs.com There is no question about it. This is a blog on Mercedes Benz, the content supports it. But where are the ads? The purpose of this blog is to support and point traffic towards its website http://www.BuyMeAMercedesBenz.com. We’ll talk about that later.
I strongly recommend that you check and see if the title of your blog is available as a dot com domain name, that is without the word “blogspot” or “wordpress” showing up in the URL. WHY? So you have full ownership of the name.
Someone I know started a travel blog. He called it Travel Sapien. Its a Blogger hosted blog. As travel blogs go this one is somewhat unusual and over time began to draw traffic. Someone checked to see if the dot com URL was available, it was and it was bought. Here is what happened:
My friend’s blog URL published address: http://www.travelsapien.blogspot.com
Competitor bought and owned this published address: http://www.travelsapien.com
Can you see the confusion that this caused the search engines? It took some finagling but my friend now owns the dot com domain name.
There are many sellers of domain names. One of the most popular and the one I use is Go Daddy
Rule No. 3 : Buy the dot com URL name
ACTION ONE: Decide on the Title of your Blog.
ACTION TWO: Check availability of dot com URL, if availble buy, if not, search for a different title/domain for your blog.
Quick Links:
Go Daddy
AppleSeeds Grow
Mercedes Benz
Buy Me A Mercedes Benz
