Well actually there are many reasons ‘why not’ and while WordPress is certainly useful and has its place, it is also not a replacement for a good old fashioned web design by a professional outfit and particularly for a business. Here we will look at some of the limitations of WordPress.

It’s a Blog

First of all, WordPress is designed for building blogs, not websites, and there is a significant difference here. While WordPress has grown and has a lot of new features, it is unfortunately still designed for sites that have regular posts, and that don’t need lots of

interconnected pages. All your pages will automatically have the same template and you’ll be basically quite restricted in terms of what you can do. Even with the most ambitious of templates this will still look a lot like a blog – and you won’t be able to, for instance, have separate lists of blog posts appearing on different pages, or a nice big home page that does away with all the widgets that are on the other pages.

It’s Too Well Known

Being well known is a good thing… for WordPress. For you though it communicates something very simple to your visitors and

that’s that you ‘took the easy option’ when it came to your web design. They will know that this website wasn’t made in house, and that nor was it created by a service that you paid much money for. Basically they would be able to do it themselves if they wanted which would of course make you seem a little less professional and impressive.

Note: If a web design company makes you your own template for WordPress then this requires significantly more coding skill, and the more up-to-date visitors will recognize this at least.

Security

WordPress does unfortunately come with some security issues which makes it not really suitable for sensitive information. The problem is that WordPress includes a login page where webmasters can log in and write new content/edit existing files. While this is very practical and helpful for them, it of course also means that anyone else can guess your password and then conceivably do the same. And it means that they could write scripts and bots to hack into your page as well.

Spam

Likewise the comments section on WordPress is like candy to spam, and even with some of the more advanced spam filters out there you will still get a whole load of spammy content to sort through which quite simply just takes up a lot of time.

Flexibility

WordPress is also just less flexible. Even when we’re not talking about things like layout – if you want to integrate AdSense you will probably have to use a downloadable add on which will have specific options, or  you will have to just paste the code in your blogs. Unless you can find your way around someone else’s PHP and HTML, you can’t just decide you’re going to swap the top right link for an AdSense unit and that’s just unfortunately very limiting.

Tom Koh started his journey a couple of years ago and makes his money sending online traffic to clients trying to get get high pr backlinks. He writes about making money online and internet marketing on his blog.

We’ve watched the drama unfold for weeks now, right? Maybe it’s time to switch gears.

Matt Cutts swears by the mantra, “If you build it, they will come”, but if you churn out high-quality content alongside 50 of your closest rivals, 40 will be stuck on the second page or below of search results.

There just isn’t enough room for everyone.

If Google is your site’s bread and butter, you’re always one algorithm change away from losing your shirt. Depending on a search engine for the entirety of your website traffic is an unwise business move at best and a recipe for disaster at worst. We’ve been touting the “spread the love” traffic-generation technique on Site Reference for some time now, and with good reason.

As we’ve seen from Penguin, sites that relied on a healthy mix of traffic sources weathered the storm a whole heck of a lot better than those who were solely dependent on the Big G. Traffic source diversification is the name of the game, and the social web offers up some gems that could help you expand your portfolio.

Facebook’s Upcoming Highlighted Post Feature

Facebook is hard at work testing ways to generate income in the wake of next week’s highly anticipated IPO. The good news about this for webmasters is that many of the monetization techniques that the social networking giant is trying are brand new, so they have two advantages. First, they’re bound to be noticed by users, at least for a while – which translates to greater exposure for those who utilize them.

The second reason that Facebook’s new marketing features are so advantageous for webmasters? They’re still new enough to be effective because spammers don’t have their hands on them yet. That’s why it’s important to keep an eye out for social trends as soon as they emerge.

A couple of days ago, Facebook announced that it may be rolling out a spanking new pay-to-use feature in which users can pay up to $2 to “Highlight” their status updates and bump the posts to the top of friends’ news feeds. If it becomes a regular part of the Facebook experience, the Highlight post feature would look a little something like this:

Image Credit: http://mashable.com/2012/05/11/facebook-highlighted-posts/

Crazy, right? The upcoming feature was first unearthed in a post on Stuff, a blog in New Zealand. According to the post, this Facebook feature is currently in the testing phase with a small number of users. A representative from Facebook stated that people who want to do things such as sell a car or promote an event could use the feature.

This sounds great in theory, but social media blogs around the ‘net have pointed out that this new feature would move Facebook dangerously close to Craigslist’s neighborhood. This is uncharted territory for Facebook, but given the fact that the online classified business did around $2.6 billion in revenue in 2011 alone, this may be a great way for the social network to up its game. Whether users like it will be another matter altogether.

For webmasters, here’s the rub: The Highlighted Post addition is just in testing, but if it’s launched, the feature would be a great inexpensive way to generate traffic to your site or blog and expand your brand. That is, if you have a large list of friends. If you don’t, you’d better get on that – you may not have much time before the new feature goes live. Remember that Facebook users become “ad blind” very quickly – so jump on this train before it leaves the station.

It’s worth noting that Facebook’s Brand Pages for businesses are designed to be indistinguishable from regular user pages. Facebook designed them like this on purpose. The site wants good content to rise to the top of news feeds regardless of its origin, which is good for those promoting websites – as long as the content on their sites is stellar enough for people to notice.

Gumroad – Products and Services and… Traffic?

Gumroad is a hot new startup that’s taking the tech world by storm. The way Gumroad works, in a nutshell: It enables members to sell digital items on social networks. This is a fantastically simple idea, but a brilliant one. If you’re a webmaster with a product – an eBook or an online course, for example – then you know just how hard it is to sell your masterpiece on your site.

You don’t have to worry about payment processors or secure delivery anymore – Gumroad handles all of that for you. Simply integrate your Twitter or Facebook account with Gumroad and share a link to your product with your network. That’s it. Gumroad does all the behind-the-scenes heavy lifting, and then the site handles payments and issues once-monthly payments to product creators. All you must do is fill out a short form with your product information in order to generate a link:

Image credit: http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/08/gumroad-gets-1-1-million-from-chris-sacca-max-levchin-and-others-to-turn-any-link-into-a-payment-system/

This concept is so simplistic, but it’s gearing up to cause quite the stir among the big players on the ‘net. It’s not just for eBooks and courses. Think laterally: You could sell a link to a private post with great information in it about your niche, a set of exclusive photographs on your site, a preview of a program you’re designing, or pretty much any other digital product you can dream up.

Why is this important for traffic? Simple – If you are selling a link to a digital product and it is good enough to be sold and shared, and you’ve branded the product with your site, you’re creating visitors. The more people share your work, the more chance you have of attracting fresh, targeted visitors to your site.

Traffic generation is primarily about great content and returning visitors, and underhanded tactics simply don’t work anymore. Above-board activities such as forum marketing, blog commenting and guest posting are starting to come under fire now, too. They’re still effective, yes, but their effectiveness is diminishing in a hurry. That’s why making a habit of consistently trying new traffic generation techniques will help you immensely in long-run.

What is exactly the function of Google Penguin Update?

Last week on the 27th of April 2012, Google launched another algorithm called ‘Penguin’ update to avoid and eliminate the increase of web spam in the search engine result. It is use for blocking the sites which are practicing Search Engine Optimization ways prohibited by the policies that Google executed. It is a step up from the ‘Panda’ update.

Methods such as keyword stuffing, hidden text, cloaking, article spinning, and buying links are the ‘no-no’ according to Google’s policies and the reasons why a website disappears in ranking.

According to one of the brains behind the change, Matt Cutts, Google Penguin Update works better at pointing-out websites which uses “aggressive web spam tactics”. These are the ones who rebels against the rules as they push their rankings on top.

How to cope up with the change?

Like how a great leader will react on any situation, the best way is to deal with it! Accept the change and instead of whining more, find the solution to the problem. Here are some advices and solutions in coping up with the effect of Penguin update:

1. Find alternatives – getting hit by this problem doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world. Keep in mind that even though Google might be an enormous website, it is not the only place to boost marketing.

1. Visit and explore other websites – it won’t hurt to throw few moments of time in other sites where one can potentially promote their business later on. Study what’s going on and learn the best way to connect with these websites.

1. Network Socializing – disappointing as it can be, most especially if Google has been the wall most businesses depends on…it’s time to open new doors. There are the social networks like Facebook and Twitter where spreading the word is like a virus waiting to be unleashed.

1. Blog posts – let the power or writing work in its precious ways. Blogging is proven to be another great tool or weapon in online marketing. The more updated blogs made the more chances in reaching out to other bloggers. It’s like a chain-reaction or a pass it forward way.

1. Expand creativity – don’t just settle for what you have right now, in marketing it’s a never ending challenge of bringing creativity on the table. Find good sources of traffic and other great possibilities in reaching to and through people. Visualizations from photos or video presentations are some of the great ways to get attention from people.

Think outside the box or lose the box!

Seeing the ranking of your website vanished by Google Penguin update is not really something you’d want to see and think of for the longest of time. And even if you keep pulling your hair off wondering about the changes, it still won’t do any good to your website. So cut loose the cord connecting to Google and jump off the box! Don’t get stuck in one phase and think that Google is just one part of a vast solutions in marketing your website/business.

Be spontaneous and put out all those ideas that have been running through your mind. There’s nothing wrong in beating the odds.

From time to time Google will surely come up with something to fight any ‘rule-breaker’. It probably gets more complicated or Google might tone it down but who knows what really goes on in their minds. But whether there’s a Penguin update or not, don’t let anything get in the way of making your website reach the top. Be prepared for any changes coming along and remember that an A-Z plan always come handy on times when abrupt changes like the Google Penguin update happens.

Johan Hedin is the Managing Director of Marketing Ignite, which is a 14 years experienced SEO company in Thailand. He has set up over 200 search marketing projects over the years (at affordable prices). He also offers a step-by-step search engine optimization training course for those wanting to learn how to gain top rankings in Google. Contact him for further details on how to set-up and manage your successful SEO campaign.

But, alas, Google is still changing, tweaking, and plotting, and in an effort to continue its support of transparency it released 52 more changes and updates.

We don’t know exactly when Google implemented these changes, though, or if they coincided with Panda or Penguin. Does anyone else get sick of talking in zoo animal code?

Here are the changes we feel are important for our readers: If you want the unabridged version, click here.

Freshness Updates

Every month, Google makes changes to its Freshness update. I can’t say I am sad about it. I am not a fan of the first page of search results spitting out five-year-old articles about how reciprocal linking is a great linking strategy.

Google introduced three freshness updates involving search results and ranking signals. Breaking news topics along with other new content may see a boost as well as “fresh documents.”

We aren’t entirely sure what this means, but Google did mention it excluded websites identified as “low quality” content from the classifier it uses to promote fresh content.

No freshness boost for low-quality content. [launch codename “NoRot”, project codename “Freshness”] We have modified a classifier we use to promote fresh content to exclude fresh content identified as particularly low-quality.

Rankings

The first update discusses authoritative content:

More authoritative results. We’ve tweaked a signal we use to surface more authoritative content.

Can anyone say “ambiguous?” Every webmaster thinks their content is authoritative, so what does this really mean?

The web geeks over at SearchEngineWatch seem to think Google will improve the ranking of older domains that have strong link profiles and those that have refrained from questionable (spammy) techniques.

The next update may coincide with the Penguin update:

Keyword stuffing classifier improvement. [project codename "Spam"] We have classifiers designed to detect when a website is keyword stuffing. This change made the keyword stuffing classifier better.

Penguin centered on keyword stuffing so we may have already seen the results of this one.

How many keywords are considered stuffing? We will never know. As a rule of thumb, write your content with no thought about keywords. After it is complete, go back and take a count. If the content is focused on the keyword topic, most likely you will have used your keywords appropriately.

Tip: This is completely unscientific, so take it for what it is worth. When my mind starts to wonder if there are too many keywords, I know I have added too many.

The next update:

Improvements to how search terms are scored in ranking. [launch codename "Bi02sw41"] One of the most fundamental signals used in search is whether and how your search terms appear on the pages you’re searching. This change improves the way those terms are scored.

Matt McGee over at SearchEngineLand guesses that this along with the keyword stuffing update is related to “spun” content, although it could refer to a number of things. It definitely alludes to the misuse of keywords. Spinning content and adding keyword-specific links that have nothing to do with the content would most likely fall under that blanket. Any thoughts?

If you know what “spinning” content is, I would re-consider your linking strategies if you are doing it. If you don’t know what it is, don’t worry about it. It’s not worth the risk.

More updates include changes to how Google categorizes paginated documents so they don’t take over the pages of search results. The search engine also announced it would focus on publishing more diverse results by removing excess results from the same domain.

Local Search

Local search may get a boost even for websites that are not as optimized. Here is Google’s first update:

Improvements to local navigational searches. [launch codename "onebar-l"] For searches that include location terms, e.g. [dunston mint seattle] or [Vaso Azzurro Restaurant 94043], we are more likely to rank the local navigational homepages in the top position, even in cases where the navigational page does not mention the location.

Google is trying to improve its spider to detect a local business’ location even if the home page does not mention a specific locale. The next update followed in the same vein though it involves countries:

Country identification for webpages. [launch codename "sudoku"] Location is an important signal we use to surface content more relevant to a particular country. For a while we’ve had systems designed to detect when a website, subdomain, or directory is relevant to a set of countries. This change extends the granularity of those systems to the page level for sites that host user generated content, meaning that some pages on a particular site can be considered relevant to France, while others might be considered relevant to Spain.

Google is digging down deeper into a site to detect additional locations from user generated content since certain pages may be relevant to users in one country while other pages may focus on a different country.

Page Titles

Last year, the SEO industry was “up in arms” over Google’s announcement to change title tags in the search results as it sees fit:

The newest April update improved Google’s ability to change page titles. According to the search giant, “you’ll find more informative titles and/or more concise titles with the same information.”

Many SEOs are irate over this. What do you think?

Sitelinks

Google announced four changes to sitelinks and “megasitelinks,” the links that display below a website’s listing that link to deeper parts of the website. Sub-sitelinks will now replace text snippets and Google improved the ranking of megasitelinks by “providing a minimum score for the sitelink based on a score for the same URL used in general ranking.”

Additional changes:

• Indexing – Google increased the number of documents served by its main index by 15%. It also launched a new index “tier.”
• Instant preview changes
• Changes to how Google interprets the intention behind search queries by using users’ “last few searches.”
• Improved user interface for searches related to breaking news topics.
• Anchors bug fix

So, we’ve had a lot of fun trying to decipher Google’s code and as always I love to hear your opinions.

Do you have any other suggestions about the updates? Has your website been affected? Let us know in the comments.

How do you measure the impact and effectiveness of your social media efforts?

Google analytics defines your social impact as the convergence of sources, conversions, pages, and social plugins. Sources refers to how people coming from different social networking sites engage with your site. Conversions, monetary or otherwise, allows you to define what a conversion is and then track your success rates from users entering your site through shared content URLs on social sites. Pages allows you to see which of your content pages are being shared and where. The social plugins feature delivers information about how often and where your content is being shared via social buttons (i.e. “+1”, “like”).

You need to set up conversion goals in order for Google Analytics to calculate these metrics. Creating a conversion goal means giving it a name, defining what constitutes the conversion and assigning a monetary value to it. For non-ecommerce sites, this means determining a financial value for the conversion based on the specifics of your business (i.e. giving a lead generation a value equal to your average sale divided by the percentage of leads closed).

Google Analytics has introduced reports intended to analyze the impact of your social presence on your web traffic and begin to understand how it impacts your business. In the Traffic Sources menu on the left hand side of your Google Analytics interface you will see something called Social. When you expand it, you see options for Overview, Sources, Pages, Conversions, Social Plugins, Social Visitors Flow.

Social Value Overview

This report gives you an overview of the conversion value generated from your social channels compared to the overall performance on your site. These are easy to imagine with an ecommerce site, but there are plenty of conversion goals that don’t have a direct monetary value as well – downloads, email signups, viewing specific content, time on site, etc. Every site should have the intended actions of its users set up as conversion goals in Google Analytics – this is what gives you data that provides real insight.

Social Sources

The Social Sources report shows you engagement metrics (pageviews, average visit duration, pages per visit, etc.) of the traffic from your different social channels, allowing you to see which networks are delivering the highest quality traffic. This can tell you immediately where it is most valuable to invest the time you spend on social networking.

Pages

The Pages report shows you where your social traffic is coming from and the engagement metrics for each URL. You can see which pages are most popular and where, so you can identify where your content works best. Clicking on a URL in the table brings you to a new view showing the social networks where the page was shared and the metrics for each.

Conversion Reports

This is where you are able to see a breakdown of your social channels in terms of your conversions goals. This includes the total number of conversions and conversion assists coming from your social networks and financial data if you have attached a monetary value to your conversions.

Google Analytics divides social referral conversions into two categories, Last Interaction Social Conversions and Assisted Social Conversions. Last Interaction Social Conversions refer to results that are generated immediately – a user enters your site through a link on a social channel and travels the full length of the funnel on your site resulting in a conversion. An Assisted Social Conversion is when a referral does not convert on the first visit, but returns later and completes the goal. Understanding both of these metrics plays a critical role in evaluating the impact your social channels have on your business.

Social Plugins

Social Plugins have become ubiquitous on web pages – just click this button to “+1”, “like” or share this URL. This report lets you know which buttons are being clicked and for which URLs. This allows you to discover trends in what works best where and remove buttons which are not generating clicks.

Social Visitors Flow

This report is the Google Analytics flow style showing you the initial paths that visitors from your social channels took through your site. This gives you a graphic illustration of visitors interaction with your intended funnel. By hovering over one of your social channels and choosing “view only this segment”, you are chart only the traffic from that source.

Time is money. Social media impact is expensive.

You are probably using social media for some combination of marketing, lead generation, customer service, advertising, distribution of media, and communication. What social media platforms you choose to engage in and how must be determined by measurable goals and a realistic understanding of the commitment of resources each requires. Without tangible objectives and a clear, efficient method of operation, social media quickly becomes a time drain “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Unfocused, scattered use leaves you with a feeling of uncertainty about purpose and a lingering doubt about how it all serves your cause.

Social media goals need to have tangible measurements attached to them. If your strategy is not directly tied to your business objectives and quantifiable, it will be a distraction, not an integral business process. In order to evaluate a return on your investment, you must set clear goals, determine the metrics to measure whether or not you achieve them, and define how you will meet the daily workflow responsibilities. Time and attention are valuable – used intelligently, social media can be a powerful tool for your business, but contrary to popular belief, it is not “free”. Google Analytics offers you social measurement reports that allow you to calculate a real return on the investment of time and other resources you spend on your social channels.

Colors

For instance think about your color scheme. If you are currently just using white then this might not have much impact on their mood at all. In fact designers will often choose white websites because they are inoffensive and because most people like them. They won’t stress anyone out and they’re easy to read… but will they make much of a statement or a lasting impression? Will people remember your site after they’ve left? Perhaps not.

Instead then think about a website design and color scheme that says something. Using cool colors like blues, silvers etc can help to make a website feel modern and at the same time be relaxing and soothing in the same way that a nice cold glass of water can be soothing. That’s a great thing for someone to associate with your site.

Meanwhile a black website can feel ‘professional’ and by the same token ‘hardcore’. Don’t believe that the color can affect mood? Well a perfect example of this in effect is in fast food stores – notice how they all are orange and red in their design. That’s because these colors make people feel more anxious and want to leave – which is perfect for an industry that relies on serving lots of customers in a short amount of time (not so perfect for you if you want to keep people on your site so relaxing blues are definitely preferable here.

Music

Music is something that many web designers and gurus advise against as it can be divisive and can get in the way. However I would argue that it can have a place – for instance on a website for a hotel trying to create a feeling of relaxing the sun.

Sound effects too can be useful for setting a mood and a feeling on a website, such as a sound effect on a MouseOver.

Imagery

Think too about your imagery. Of course it needs to say what you need it to, but note that it will also be affecting your visitors’ unconscious to a degree. Lots of angry images of people fighting will get their blood pumping, where lots of relaxing images of waterfalls and people relaxing will make them feel calm. Again try to have a calming influence if you want people to spend more time on your website.

Note as well that your content and your writing will have an emotional resonance too – and it’s important that your text make people feel good if you want them to come to your website again and have good things to say about it to others.

Brad Campbell is considered the best internet marketing coach by many because he takes a holistic approach to online money making by including affiliate marketing, SEO and conversion optimization as part of his program.

To understand why this spanking new feature is so cool, it’s probably worth rewinding a bit to note what exactly was added back in March. Google Analytics souped up the social reports feature on its platform so webmasters could use it to get a peek at how much traffic social media delivered to their sites and pinpoint the social sites from which those visitors came.

Before the change, there was already a “Social” tab in the Analytics dashboard, but it only revealed three categories of data: Engagement, Action, and Pages.

The update to social reports added more categories, and the expanded data was crazy useful. Go Google! But the search engine giant upped its game a few days ago when it tacked trackbacks to the (already extensive) new Social Reports tab info.

The idea of trackbacks is nothing new; after all, platforms like Blogger and WordPress have offered them for years. For those of you who aren’t in the know, trackbacks automatically give you the URL of sites that link to yours as soon as the link is created.

This helpful tool becomes vital when applied to social sharing sites, and the expanded data will now allow webmasters to use past data to craft content with the potential to go viral in the future.

Great News, But Why Should I Care?

Bottom line: If you’re crazy about traffic, you should care because the new backlink feature will get you lots more. Think about it. If you’re like many webmasters, then you’ve likely spent hours hunting down backlinks and trying to figure out where in the world they originated from on the referring site.

Conversely, you may have an internal analytics account with your web hosting company that shows your site had four visitors from Twitter, but you have no way of tracing the tweet that referred them or what the accompanying text, if any, had to say about your content when it linked to your site.

You may even have some expensive backlink monitoring program that gives you the scoop on all referring sites, and that’s cool. However, the sweet thing about the new backlink feature on Google Analytics Social Reports is that it’s crazy in-depth – and it’s free.

You can analyze your site’s backlinks to your heart’s content, scour titles of posts that people have shared, and even read snippets of conversations that your content started on social sharing sites all in one place.

But let’s get down to the real reason this addition to Analytics is so ridiculously important. The problem with old school trackbacks is that some platforms use them and some don’t. So when you have trackbacks enabled on your site or blog, and you see occasional links to sites, you’re only getting part of the picture. There’s no way for one person to surf around the ‘net and find each and every link back to pages on their site – especially when it comes to links on social sharing sites.

Googlebot to the rescue. The new backlink feature in Social Reports includes all trackbacks to your site, and it even shows you the original post, tweet, share, conversation – you name it – in which the link appeared. Then, that efficient little bot builds all kinds of nifty graphs for you to read, all right in your Analytics dashboard.

How in the World do I Read All This Data?

If you’re super pumped and ready to try the new backlink feature for yourself, you’d better hold your horses. It’s awesome, yes, but extremely hard to find. Here’s how to navigate to the backlink data in your Google Analytics dashboard. In the main left-hand sidebar, click on “Traffic Sources”, then “social”, and finally “pages”, like so:

Once you’re there, look in the main window and select a link from the list to find out about the sharing data and backlinks. When you’ve selected your link, you’ll be taken to a screen with a graph about the sharing data related to the link. Click the “Activity Stream” tab above the graph:

Okay, we’re close, but we’re not done yet. Once you’ve hit the “Activity Stream” tab, you’ll be presented with a list of all the conversations surrounding the URL you chose. Pretty cool, but not what we’re looking for. Look above the list for the “Events” tab:

Congratulations, you found it. Now you should see a list of all the links from bookmarking sites, social networks, and trackbacks to content on your site. Needless to say, navigating to this feature is a hassle at best and a pain in the $%^& at worst, but Google will (hopefully) make some tweaks and adjustments to the navigation sometime in the near future.

Why You Should Leverage Social Backlink Data to Improve Your Site

As seasoned Google Analytics users are painfully aware, there’s a lot of data that is classified as “not provided”, and it accounts for a disturbingly high amount of information displayed on the platform. Here are some sobering stats provided in a recent post on Poynter:

The “not provided” change dealt a crushing blow to webmasters who use Google Analytics to decipher the sources of their inbound traffic, so the new backlink feature in Social Reports is a cool drink of water in a desert of partial information.

It’s better to focus on social sites for information now, anyway. The Google Panda and Penguin updates ushered in an era where social sharing has become an important component of search engine ranking power, and quality content is the only thing that will get that job done.

When you use the social backlink information in your Analytics account, you can find out what your most-linked content is and replicate your success. You can also connect with your visitors and start a conversation. Engagement is key to survival in an interactive Web, and Google now measures your social impact like so:

According to Google, your social impact is made up of four key areas:

1.       Sources

Where your traffic comes from

2.       Social Plugins

Visitors’ use of social sharing plugins on your site

3.       Pages

The areas of your site people are sharing

4.       Conversions

How much money all the social stuff is actually making you

You’ll get a real feel for how these areas converge and create your social impact value once you’re able to eyeball the graphs generated in the Social Reports tab of your Analytics account. When you combine the information with data compiled from Google’s new backlink feature, you can find out the value of traffic from certain social sources – which can add up to a whole heck of a lot if used wisely.

Direct Exposure

Directories come in the paid and unpaid variety; nothing that new there.  If we go back to the dark ages we find the inevitable expensive Yellow Pages and local free advertising, in small local rags and shop windows.  Now, as then, a combined approach works best.  If you’re paying for anything, you need to be sure of the quality of traffic you’re going to get, so some research is a good plan.  If you get yourself spotted in the right time, the right place and, more importantly, by the person holding their digital cheque book open, then you’re on to a winner.  Free directory sites are great for widening your exposure, but ones offering some quality to traffic relevant to your products or services will be more important; especially if you are paying for the entry.  They’ll be a niche directory with your name on it out there, or at least one you can get your name into.  Again, submitting to niche is the best way to gain exposure and get the best out of your traffic.  With a more general directory submission check out the history of the site, as ever, the old ones are the best.

To Rank or not to Rank

It’s obvious you need to go for the directory with the best page rank, right?  However, those who avoid the obvious solutions sometimes get further in life.  Yes, rank is important, but if you’re featuring in a directory that doesn’t get your kind of customer’s attention, there’s little point in being on page one of the search results.  This applies particularly to niche markets; your potential clients are likely to be searching for terms very specifically related to your product, which means featuring in a very specialised directory will get the results you are looking for.

Deep Links

This type of link is becoming more common today.  Deep linking is a more sophisticated and effective technique than simple old fashioned links straight to your homepage.  It can, when done well, create a better impression in the eyes of those all important search engines.  Use links from a range of sources back to different pages on your website is what deep linking is all about.  Linking to different pages using different phrases and target keywords creates a better impression as an authority site, boosting your ranking and perceived reliability.  Deep linking through directories is one approach, and more recently blog posting, or guest blog posting, has proved an effective way to build your own rank.  Done well this will create a steady, healthy stream of returning and new traffic.

Human Engine Optimisation

There has been a huge emphasis on quality content and links in the last year, as a result of some major changes by the big search engines.  This has been driven not by those robotic crawlers but simply by demand.  Google and the likes need to be trusted by internet users if their going to make any money at all out, and by returning high quality results to high quality content, they are simply protecting their own income streams.  Some SEO experts may find this challenge to produce good, relevant, readable or just plain entertaining content, beyond their abilities, while the more experienced have always understood that beyond that screen is nothing less challenging than a real, live human being.  Creating quality content is important to get you through the hoops that the search engines set up; but it’s never been a bad idea.

Manual link building strategies require the production of quality content and a range of linking strategies.  Targeting search engines alone with linking strategies will not produce the best results and remembering what’s really at the other side of the screen has always underpinned an effective SEO strategy.

Sick of hearing how valuable content is the missing link, yet you are still penniless and wondering what people are doing right that you’re doing wrong? You produce regular content but your website is nowhere to be found in Google.

Web content may be “King” but if no one is reading, viewing, or listening to it, it’s no more valuable than a race car fit with a measly 120-horsepower engine.

The last few months have been like an SEO tornado around here. The web has exploded with topics such as Google algorithm changes, negative SEO, Panda, Penguin, over-optimization, questionable links, blog network takedowns—did I miss any?

But within this whirlwind of change and movement, one topic has always remained constant—CONTENT.

After all, the reason why Google is making these changes is to provide its searchers with the best content. Although some would say it is to force webmasters to use Google Adwords, but that’s another topic entirely…

Back to the real matter at hand…so here’s the magic formula…just spew out some content and Google will reward you and catapult you to the top of page 1! Right? Wrong! Why? Because while you are busy churning out your content so is everyone else. And it’s impossible for 1 million websites to take the top 24 positions in Google for a keyword. The other 999,976 websites will be out of luck.

Are you sick of being told that you can get tons of links by creating content people will WANT to link to?

I mean I’ve even spewed this line out myself dozens of times. While this is not a false statement, it still is quite ambiguous and needs more explanation. You can post the most amazing blog posts and never see a link—except maybe from your mother’s new chicken recipes blog. One link is better than none, right?

The Real Deal Behind Content Marketing

Webmasters think content marketing is a piece of cake. It’s FREE because you can do it yourself; no hardware or equipment involved.

But is it really free? Anyone who has had success with content marketing will tell you it isn’t free at all. It requires a LOT of time and effort, more than you can imagine.

So what is the secret formula? There isn’t any. Just because you create winning content doesn’t mean people will give a darn about it. Plus, if you are competing against hundreds of competitors who also know the secret about producing great content, you are also fighting this battle for exposure.

Awareness is the First Step

Know that much of your content will never be seen or heard, especially in a crowded niche. If you know this fact before you enter the market, you will stay motivated to continue. Most webmasters, after months and months of content pushing, stop producing out of despair and unmet expectations. If you arrive at this crossroad and you can manage to pick yourself back up and keep going, you will be ahead of the millions of people who gave up.

Don’t abandon your blog; don’t stop looking for guest posting opportunities; and don’t abandon that Facebook Page. It’s easy to give up when you feel like your valuable content is not getting noticed and your expectations have failed you. This is the time to step it into high gear! Use this new motivation to take a closer look at your campaign to identify where you can improve.

Here is what to focus on:

Target Less Competitive Keywords

If you thought your super-human content powers could take down Amazon and Travelocity, I can tell you right now, you won’t succeed. Focus more on the long-tail keywords in your industry. You will get a quicker return on time investment and gain more motivation to continue plugging away. Check your Analytics for the keywords people are using to find you and target those more. If something is working, even if just a little bit, focus your time and effort on making it better.

Know Your Audience

New marketers are overzealous and want to target anyone who has a wallet. But, this strategy will dilute your message over time. The more closely you understand to whom you are marketing, the higher your conversions will be, which means that every person who finds your content will  be more inclined to stay around, subscribe, share or even become a customer/client. If you haven’t created a marketing persona/s for your business, I suggest you do so.

Be Unique

The only thing that will separate your SEO consulting business from the rest of your high-performing competitors is your unique brand messaging. If you can find a way to deliver your content in a unique way, even if it has been hashed out a million times, people will respond to it.

For example, one of my services is to re-write web content. Instead of simply offering website content services, I packaged it into something that meant more to me. I love the fashion and beauty industry so I do “content makeovers”. Use your unique personality to stand out from your competition. Don’t be afraid to get a little personal in blog posts and to share stories so people can relate and connect. The more people connect with your content, the higher your rate of success will be.

There’s no magic formula here and I can’t guarantee results for anyone. But, I can tell you that effort will pay off at some point. Content marketing is a long-term endeavor and the more you give to it, the greater will be your reward.

Payoff DOES Happen

Early on in my writing business, someone once told me that if you  invest 80% of the work upfront, there comes a “tipping point” where all of that labor will start to work for you and you will only need to invest 20% of the effort you did in the beginning to receive the same level of return. I am starting to notice this tipping point in some areas of my biz even though I am still making big changes in other areas.

Your Feedback Welcomed

Do you think the age of SEO has changed marketers’ mindsets?

Before SEO, building an offline business was once a lifelong venture and one that took ample effort and resources. Online marketing, with the introduction of SEO, has been touted as the fast way to get rich and webmasters who don’t understand longevity can get caught up in the quagmire. I think we all may need to return to some old-fashioned marketing strategies that took some time but resulted in long-term viable business growth.

I would love to hear your thoughts on content marketing and what has/has not worked for you and your website. If you feel you offer valuable content please share a little about your business in the comments below so we can all benefit!

This method is called pay-per-click (PPC), and many webmasters have made money by using AdSense over the years. Some have even created quite a cushy living for themselves by building hundreds of “Made for AdSense” (MFA) websites that generate passive income every month.

The latter group is the one that Google’s latest algo changes have been targeting. More often than not, MFA sites are thin. This means most only have a handful of 400-word articles, the majority of which are either composed in broken English or stolen from other websites and hacked into oblivion with article spinning software. Since MFA websites are created en masse, they don’t get very much love. The content, link structure, header design, and other onsite elements are usually in need of a severe overhaul, but they never get it since the creator builds one or two of these sites every week.

Google tightened up to wipe these overly-optimized, under-developed spam sites from the top of the search listings, and the more stringent AdSense requirements became, the more legitimate publishers began to suffer as a result.

Google does not give clear reasons when it disables an AdSense account… but why should it? The search giant’s primary loyalty is to its advertisers, users, and shareholders. Google also prevents the publishers it bans from opening new AdSense accounts. This makes the event a devastating blow to an individual’s online income, and there are not really a clear set of steps to take in order to recover from the loss.

Google Gives Well-Known Webmasters the Boot

Internet marketer and long-time webmaster Spencer Haws, creator of the website Niche Pursuits, recently published a post announcing that his own AdSense account was banned.

According to Haws, “My income from Google AdSense has continued to be in the six figure annual range, that is until last week. My income from Google AdSense is now $0. In fact, the money I earned last month will NOT be sent to me. Google is ‘kind’ enough to return that to the advertisers.

So, what happened to my sites and where do I go from here? I got the standard message from Google, which says, ‘We’ve determined that your AdSense account poses a risk of generating invalid activity.’ These are the only details given, no specifics.”

Haws went on to point out that many other well-known marketers have recently suffered through the exact same scenario, and the list of victims includes Zac Johnson, Eric of My4hrworkweek.com, and Mark Peeters, among many others. Haws and others have posted in the past that they were keenly aware that an AdSense ban was a distinct possibility, especially given the series of dramatic algorithm changes that the Big G has successively rolled out since the Panda update last year.

So, is there any chance of Google reinstating a banned AdSense publisher? Haws says he’s not holding his breath. The best way to fight back against a potential AdSense disaster is to have a concrete contingency plan waiting in the wings should the worst come to pass.

There are other ways to earn residual income from your sites and blogs. They may not be as well-known as Google’s AdSense program, but they’ll still allow you to passively earn money from your site.

Make a Backup Plan and Diversify like Heck

If you’re making your living online, the single worst thing you can do these days is put all your eggs in one basket. The way to make it online now is to diversify as much as possible, and keep a “disaster plan” on standby in case one of your monetization methods falls through.

That’s exactly what the guys over at AdSense Flippers are doing. They make a living from building websites, monetizing them using AdSense, and selling them for a profit online. They make quite a comfortable living from the work, but they’re under no illusion that it’s a permanent gig. In fact, in light of recent events, they posted their own “disaster plan” detailing what they intend to do if the AdSense account they use to monetize all of their websites is cut off.

According to the post, the AdSense Flipper guys say, “[w]e would rank our sites highest to lowest in terms of AdSense earnings, Pageviews, and recency of creation and start going down the list. Our thought is that we would switch out the monetization from AdSense to Media Net and Infolinks for:

• The top 50% of site earners
• The top 50% of pageviews (any that weren’t included in the top earners)
• All sites less than 3 months old (any not included in the first two points)

We’d be hopeful to recover 50%+ of our earnings and relatively happy if we were able to recover 70%+ because we think it very likely that, across the board, we wouldn’t make nearly as much as we were making with AdSense directly. A silver lining might be that a changed monetization strategy might actually improve the earnings on a few individual sites, even if the average earnings across the board went down.”

If you fear that you’re using tactics that may land you in a situation where your account is banned as well, you should formulate your own disaster plan… like right now. The AdSense guys are fully aware that they would not earn as much using other monetization methods as they do with AdSense, but they plan to build upon their replacement plan as time goes on in order to achieve income similar to their current level.

Once you have decided upon alternative advertising companies, you should test each company, your ad placement, and other metrics for a period of months to determine which makes the highest level of income for your sites.

Once you’ve done that, you may want to consider different forms of monetization altogether. Write an eBook and sell it on your site. Build a targeted email list and try pushing your members affiliate offers for targeted products within your niche.

Whatever you do, you should make sure that you utilize multiple strategies for making money from your sites or blogs from this point forward. Internet marketing is remarkably similar to investing; the more you diversify your income streams, the better your chances of surviving things like algorithm changes and generating a sustainable online income for years to come.