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Search Engine Optimization Tips and Tricks – Learn how to increase visibility in Search Engines – Part 10 – Evaluating and finding keywords

ashish — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 22:03:38 +0000

The previous post (Identify more Keywords) talked about how to identify the relevant keyword phrases for your site, including using some tools to identify alternate keywords.
This post will have more information on the topic of finding relevant keywords, and deciding the keywords to use. Consider the alternate keyword phrases to be synonyms, since it is true that not every user will use the same keyword while doing search, and it is very effective for your site if you are also able to rank high on synonyms. So, continuing with the camera example from earlier posts, you would like to have rankings for keywords such as ‘buy cameras’, ‘digital cameras’, but would you also consider some other keyword phrases such as ‘purchase camera’, ‘buy old camera’, ‘compact camera’, etc. These are all slightly different versions of the same keyword, and show up when you use tools to find alternate keywords.
In some cases, you should even consider using keywords that are a bit niche, in the sense that they are not searched for by a large number of users; the disadvantage is that a lesser number of people search for those, and the advantage is that your competitors will not be attacking those keywords with so much passion as they would be for ranking the more searched keywords. Having some keywords that are niche does not harm you in any way, since even with a lesser number of searchers, you can still get enough visitors to make it work your while. In fact, if a user searches for a specific keyword, it is more likely that he is actually interested and will click through to maybe even click on an ad or purchase something from your site.
What else helps you in determining which keywords to use ? Well, if you are running some sort of advertisements (such as Adsense by Google) on your page, then it is likely that you will be interested in knowing whether different keywords can result in different revenues for your ad clicks. And you should not be surprised by what your discover – different keyword do in fact have different rates assigned to them, and since you are in the business of making money, if by small changes in the keywords, you can earn substantially more money from your ad clicks, why not learn more about this ? If you use the Google Adwords tool (located at this link), you can enter your desired keywords, and then in the place where it says “Choose Columns to Display”, select ‘Estimated Average CPC’, and you will start to see which keywords are rated higher.

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Promoting your photo blog – Unique content helps, but need to put in more effort

ashish — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 08:22:08 +0000

How do you promote your photo blog ? Well, everybody will tell you that you need to have content (good, original content that interests your readers), and that is true. There is nothing to beat content. However, just having content is not enough. You need to do additional stuff if you want your blog to be seen by people, your photos admired, and if you have ads or do some affiliate work, then you need to take effort to get your photo blog make some money for you. Here are some of the tips that could help you in this regard:
1. Get good content that interests your readers. These should be photos that drive people to come again, or to forward to friends and family. Make sure your photos are technically sound, and free of major defects.
2. See whether the photos you post can meet a certain niche. For example, I was looking at a blog that was posting only macro photos of insects, another was posting photos of a technique where the camera is thrown in the air while the shutter is open (producing some very interesting photos). Explore whether your interests can form a niche.
3. Make sure that there is some text next to your photos, and the ‘alt’ tag on your photos are always filled out. Search engines cannot read a photo in terms of figuring out what the content of a photo is, and the text is what the search engines read.
4. Use Google Webmasters (link) to verify your site, and create a Sitemap (link) so that Google Search gets updated when you post a new photo. This process can be very useful for generating more traffic to your site from Google Search.
5. A warning: The Google Adsense Program policies prohibit anybody from putting ads to the left or right of a photo, since this could result in users being mislead about the ads being a explanation of the photo. Be careful to avoid this, and instead post your ads in such a manner that Google would not consider that misleading.
6. Post your Photo Blog to photo directories, major search engines such as Bing, Yahoo, Altavista, and to directories such as Dmoz. Look for Blogrings that could help in promoting your site, and sending more traffic to you.
7. Use Social Networking Plugins such as Posting to Facebook, Twitter, etc, to give your users a chance to promote your photos if they like such photos. However, be careful, since if you go overboard, users are likely to go overboard. The best way is to provide such tools right after a post, and not flood the whole page with such options.
8. Make sure your users are able to get access to feeds (RSS as well as email) so that they have the option of receiving regular updates from you.
9. Review your site traffic using your site tracking meters as well as specialist tools such as Google Analytics to analyze your traffic. For example, if you find that a major percentage of your users are finding you based on one particular search, you might want to post more in that area.
10. If you want to sell stuff from your site or have joined with Affiliate Programs, then look for relevant stuff to sell. So, if you photos are mostly travel, then put ads for travel related stuff such as holiday packages, maps, travel gears, offers, etc.

Making money through selling your content – www.constant-content.com

ashish — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 19:58:42 +0000

Consider the case where you have started blogging very recently, and the money you are making from Adsense or from other similar advertising programs is not very high (Ignore all those ads that say that you can make $4,000 dollars per day from the first week onwards – if people could do that, why would they be selling the secret for $50). However, you believe that you have an engaging style of writing, and this will drive more people towards your blog. Further, if there is way for you to make some money through selling articles, why not ?
Well, now is the time to meet reality. It is not until we have been tested that we realize that what we thought was excellent is only good, and what we had thought as Good is not so good. So, the question remains as to how to get your writing judged ? Well, there is a way to do so. There are sites that act as a marketplace between content providers and buyers. This is indeed way to make money through selling your articles ? You could make money through this !
Time for a reality check, you need to find somebody who can do this for you. Well, there is a site called ConstantContent (link) that acts as such a market place, and gives you the chance to make money from your writing. How do you use this as an evaluation of your writing style ? Well, the site has human editors, who will evaluate your content and then decide whether it is worthy. They would also be willing to offer feedback about what went wrong, and could be improved. On the other hand, if your writing is indeed good, you could evaluate the requests made and write articles similar to these requests.
Your content will also not be freely available on the internet.

Constant-Content is unique in that we do not allow search engines to index our articles. As a consequence, when you purchase a unique or full rights license for one of our articles you can be certain that you will be the first on the Internet to post this article and you will receive the benefits of having unique, interesting and link-worthy content.

Read more about how they accept articles (link)

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Earning money from Videos on Youtube – not so easy

ashish — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 21:27:16 +0000

You must have seen those videos on Youtube, where either the bottom section of the video shows an ad from the Adsense program and you also have Adsense advertisements appearing to the right of the video in a block, similar to the 250X250 ad block. Now consider that you have some cool videos that are getting circulated on Youtube, and would like to have your own videos making some money for you from these Ads. How can you do this ?
Well, I was also interested in trying to make a percentage of earnings from these videos (I have started getting some videos on Youtube and the views are increasing, although they have a long way to go). And the short answer on this was, Not right now. Google Adsense used to have a program about Video Units (link1, link2), but they appear to have discontinued this program now. Now, if you need to try and make some advertising money now, you need to apply to become a partner (link to page).
However, becoming a partner is not so easy. As opposed to the nature of Adsense which allows people to get in irrespective of the number of their blog visits or subscribers, Youtube has put some controls. They actually have a page that lists their requirements for becoming a partner (link to FAQ listing requirements to be a youtube Partner).

To become a YouTube Partner, you must meet these minimum requirements:
- You create original videos suitable for online streaming.
- You own or have express permission to use and monetize all audio and video content that you upload — no exceptions.
- You regularly upload videos that are viewed by thousands of YouTube users.

In addition, the FAQ page that provides more details for the Youtube partner is at this link.
If your partnership account was not approved, then some of the reasons could be derived from the reasons listed on this page (link to article).

Making money from photo-blogs – second part

ashish — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 20:28:14 +0000

In my previous post, I had talked about some of the concepts around creating a photo-blog, and making money from that (through Ads primarily). This post will talk more on the same subject, and should hopefully help you move further on that line.
1. As part of a post on WordPress optimization, I had mentioned that it puts less load on your server if content / scripts, etc, are loaded from a different server. So, wherever possible, put your photos on a different server, or on some reliable web hosting solution elsewhere. For example, you can put your photos on Amazon AWS, Photobucket, Flickr, or any other photo sharing site, and have the thumbnail on your own site. Thus, when somebody clicks on the thumbnail, you will get the actual photo on your own site.
2. Make sure that you have a system of analytics setup on your site. This will help you determine which photos are being viewed the most and are in demand. You could focus more on photos that seem more in demand, and get more visitors to your site.
3. Once you start getting people to your photo blog, explore whether you want to join the world of photo stock (where you can sell your photos, either as part of Micro-stock, or as Rights Released photos). Some of the more popular sites are: CanStockPhoto, BigStockPhoto, The3dStudio, Fotolia, Shutterstock. Learn more about stock photography at these locations.
4. There are a large number of photo directories on the net (you can find many of them on Google), so make sure that you enter your site on these site; these increase the chance of more people visiting your photo sites
5. Post your better photos on places such as your Twitter account, Facebook account, etc, and refer your photo blog location. This also attracts more people to your photo blog
6. There are many sites on the web that offer free photos. Don’t feel in the least bit hesitant about copying the photos from these locations, and putting them on your blog (as long as you don’t claim that they are your own – follow the terms of their copyright).