Ninja Blog Setup » Traffic and SEO

Aweber Email List Setup

Shawn — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 02:38:10 +0000

Ok, if you’ve browsed around the web and learned anything at all about internet marketing, you’ve surely come across the phrase “the money is in the list!” I can’t even begin to count how many websites I’ve read that on or how many times I’ve heard it in some video. But guess what? It’s true!

Sure, you can make money without building a list, but take a look at just about any major website that sells something. Most of them are going to have some type of form where you can sign up to get something. It might be a coupon, an ebook, free information or maybe a free download of some kind. Why do they do this? Because they make money from that list…and if you don’t have a list, you are absolutely leaving money on the table!

Now, I’m certainly not saying you should use your list to spam people…that will make them unsubscribe in a hurry! However, if you are providing great information through your blog, you will gain the trust of many people and they will be happy to sign up for your free newsletter because they want more quality information from you. Then, when you send them quality newsletters filled with the information they are looking for, and you mix in some targeted affiliate links from time to time, you can generate some sweet affiliate income. Your chances of earning more money grows as you add more and more people to your list. The bigger your list…the bigger your paycheck!

So, if you’re going to be serious about internet marketing, YA GOTTA GET A LIST!!, and the best way to do that is with Aweber. It’s what I use and it’s probably the most popular email marketing service on the web. The best part is, they offer a 30 day money back guarantee so there’s no risk to try it out. Sign up here and start building that list!

Will User Opt-Out Be the Death of Google Analytics?

Shawn — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 13:26:22 +0000

Just a few days ago, Google announced they will soon be releasing a plugin to allow users to opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics. I don’t know about you but as a webmaster I think any website analytics program with user opt-out is completely insane. It is the webmaster, not the user, who decides what type of analtyics program to place on their website so why would Google want to alienate webmasters by taking away from them the very thing they are wanting. Won’t this discourage webmasters from using GA? Think about it…you put analytics on your website so you can find out as much as you can about where your visitors come from, how long they stay, how many pages they view, if they make a purchase, what keywords they used to find your site, etc, etc. Now Google comes along and creates a way for those very visitors to browse your site like they are invisible? The whole point of website analytics is to provide tracking information on website visitors, so why allow the visitor to decide not to be tracked? I mean it’s not like we’re getting their personal information so we can steal their identity and sell it to some street vendor in Nigeria. What’s up Google? Shouldn’t an analytics program actually, you know, track visitors?

I know the number of surfers who will actually use this feature may be a small but I imagine it will grow in popularity as time goes on. Who knows, maybe I’m making a mountain out of a mole hill but this announcement is certainly going to make me check out some alternative website statistic providers. I may stick with Google Analytics in the end, but I think this is a stupid move for Google.

Here are a couple alternatives I know of although I’ve not used either one:

StatCounter – looks a little like it’s stuck in the 90’s but seems to track everything you need.
GetClicky – this one looks really neat although it requires a fee for more than one site.

Anybody tried these or have another stat program you would recommend?

PS: If after visiting this page you start getting emails from Barrister Pablo Ariwa of the Mutual Bank of Nigeria, don’t worry…it’s a complete coincidence.

Matt Cutts on Effective Organic Link Building

Shawn — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 15:31:26 +0000

There are lots of ways out there to generate links back to your website. Some of them are spammy or blackhat/grayhat type methods such as blog comment spamming, forum spamming, blasting your links all over Twitter or maybe submitting a few hundred bookmarks to various social bookmarking sites. The list could go on and on but we’ve all heard it said time and time again that the absolute best way to get links is to create great content so that others will link back to you in a natural and organic way. Well, here’s a great video I thought I would pass along to you of Matt Cutts explaining several ways to get those elusive organic links.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Optimizing Title Tags to Increase Traffic

Shawn — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 15:51:58 +0000

If your website is ranking well for various keyword phrases but you don’t seem to be getting your expected share of traffic, you might want to take a look at your page title tags. In case you’re wondering, the title tag is not the title of your post. It is the text that appears in the title bar or tab area of your browser window. If you use the All in one SEO plugin, you can set up a default title format or you can insert a specific title when you make your post.

The search engines use the title tag as part of their method of deciding what your page is about, but of course it’s not the only part. They also look at other factors like the content of your page and the anchor text of incoming links. More importantly however, the title tag is the first line of the listing that you see in the search results of Google, Yahoo, Bing and others. This is what the user sees before determining whether or not to click on your listing and proceed to your website. Writing an effective page title can mean the difference between the user clicking on your website or going somewhere else.

How do you write an effective title tag? Just remember that you have to “sell” the click. Often, as webmasters, we try to cram all the keywords we want to rank for inside the page title. Sometimes people write incredibly long and spammy titles that end up looking more like a novel. Let’s look at two examples of possible page titles for a search for “two piece golf balls”.

Golf Balls|Cheap Golf Balls|Discount Golf Balls|Two Piece Golf Balls|Tour Golf Balls

Wow, that one looks a little spammy doesn’t it? There really is no reason for the phrase “golf balls” to show up that many times in the title now is there? It’s just an indication of a webmaster who is trying to cover all the bases and make his page rank for multiple keyword phrases. But let’s get back to the user who has just searched for two piece golf balls. What if this next title showed up just below the previous one?

Tour Approved Two Piece Golf Balls at Discount Prices

Now I don’t know about you, but if I were looking for two piece golf balls and those two results appeared at positions one and two, I would click on the second result first without a doubt. Why? Because it’s easy to read and tells me the website has exactly what I’m looking for. Notice that the second result has the main keyword phrase of golf balls but still includes the secondary keywords of tour, two piece and discount as well. But unlike the first one, it is much easier to read and will be much more likely to result in a clickthrough from someone looking for two piece golf balls.

Just remember that the page title tag is actually an advertisement. It’s like a billboard telling searchers what they will find on your site. You want them to click on that title and come to your website so they can see all your wonderful content and hopefully generate some revenue during their visit. So if your traffic isn’t quite up to par, examine your title tags and imagine yourself as the searcher. Are you selling the click, or could you be driving traffic away?