PageRank Update Still Exciting To Some

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PageRank updated this weekend, according to multiple sources. Frankly, I won’t even bother confirming. All told I have 51 websites that make money. They range from small websites that earn only a few hundred dollars a year, to several large websites that make much, much more. When I add up all the revenues, I’m making enough to pay my business expenses and draw a paycheck.
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Nofollow Is Completely Misused

Nofollow was a stupid idea from the beginning, and I’m sure most webmasters would agree with that. It was intended to put a bandage on a gaping wound. Nofollow was invented in order to tell search engines “this link was probably spammed so don’t trust it.” It was meant to wipe out comment and forum spam. It hasn’t accomplished that task at all, and now he Nofollow tag has basically screwed up the flow of PageRank on the entire internet.

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On-Page Optimization

On-page optimization is an extremely productive past time. Although it’s rarely talked about in the kind of awed tones reserves for it’s cousing, off-page optimization, people in the know are doing it constantly, and to great effect. Common SEO wisdom tends to ignore on-page optimization, or deal with in a perfunctory manner, but let’s face facts: on-page optimization is one of the easiest ways to make a web page relevant to a search term, and it’s too often neglected in favor of the politically correct link building that people tend to spend most of their time on.

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Are Your Google Adsense Earnings Up?

Google is innovating again. The company is adding some new features to its’ Adsense program, that might provide a boost for publisher earnings.

# Frequency capping, which prevents users from repeatedly seeing the same ads on your pages.
# Improved attribution, to help advertisers identify the best performing sites in the network based on post-impression activity.
# Improved ads quality, as we’re able to improve ad performance within the Google content network.

For sure the frequency capping will provide a boost. People who don’t click on an ad aren’t more likely to click it because of repetition. Trying a new ad with a fresh approach is always an excellent option.

As to the “improved attrition”, I guess that’s in the eye of the beholder. But basing website compensation on performance never seems like a bad idea to me.

As to improvements in quality, I assume this means that poorly performing ads will be dumped altogether in lieu of ads that perform better.

All in all, these new changes should help push more profits to our websites.

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Google Competitors Are Dreaming If They Think They Can Beat The Big G

After seeing how much attention Cuil.com got for the launch of their basically shitty search engine, you realize just how much interest there would be in an alternative. I’m not sure what the numbers would translate into, but the target audience would be huge. People have been dealing with Google for years, and not all of them have had pleasant experiences, so they’re certainly ready to jump on the band wagon of anyone who comes along.

But frankly, Google’s success is for such a simple reason that people sometimes miss it. Google is so successful because their search engine generally finds the “right” results. Plus they do it often enough that people have become totally used to the system. Further, Google has tied all of us into so many sophisticated programs that their volume of traffic is just enormous. Could someone beat them? Theoretically, but they’ll have their work cut out for them. Besides, if Google realizes another company is making progress they’ll probably buy them out quickly.

Really, anyone who plans on beating Google has to do it by providing better results. And that’s going to be tough to do, especially when you consider that Google almost always:

1. Provides very fresh results
2. Does have most of the web indexed
3. Provides generally relevant SERPs

The real key to their success is that they do this billions of times a month and rarely “choke” on a single search. They’re the undisputed leaders in scale and sophistication and any start-up is a long way away from catching up.

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The Surest Way To Fail In The Search Engines

There are a lot of ways you can fail in getting search engine traffic, but one way stands out as a trap that many webmasters fall into. If you want to fail, just devote your time to what others are doing. Worse yet, try and copy the strategies of others instead of being original. If you do that, you’re bound to go down the drain. Let’s look at some of the reasons that imitating others is almost always a bad idea.

1. There’s already a lot of content on the internet. Duplicate content won’t excite anyone, whereas original content would stand a chance to succeed.
2. Building a readership and attracting visitors is tougher to do with a derivative website
3. Users who get a sense of “Deja Vu” won’t stick around for long.

An example is the number of cloned web directory sites you’ll see on the internet. Even though they use different “skins”, they all have the same basic category structure. If you’ve ever submitted to even five of these in a row, you’ll quickly bog down in the sheer monotony in your task.

Sure, it takes longer to be original, but it’s worth it. Of course you don’t have to be 100% original. Everyone is influenced by websites that are popular, so it’s understandable you’ll have some of the same flavor as others. But the key is offering something totally unique that gives your site a personality. If you do that, the issue of branding will be that much easier.

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Alexa Rankings Plummet For Many Former “Top Sites”

It’s been sort of interesting watching just how many websites were “faking the funk” when it comes to their Alexa numbers. I won’t name any names, but if you know what I mean, then you know who I’m speaking about. In particular, Alexa rankings have dropped significantly for websites in the “make money online”, “blogger”, “webmaster”, and “SEO” keywords. I guess it’s not really surprising these groups are well known for self-aggrandizement, and cheating.

It looks like Alexa must have finally figured out how to get rid of bots that were pretending to be human. With the change, many former “premium” websites have hit the skids.

Sure, Alexa rankings in general are junk. But in the absence of anything better, they tend to set the market for promotions on many websites. I’m sure many webmasters were making money due to their inflated numbers. Now the numbers continue to drop.

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Google Has Updated

Google has done a bit of a “Google Dance” in the last 48 hours. A few of my websites which have been basically greatly reduced in traffic made a rip-snorting comeback. I’ve also noticed a few strange errors in Google Webmaster Tools that haven’t been there before. I’ve been expecting a relatively “big” update from Google for the last few weeks.

Google doesn’t “dance” in the way it did a few years ago, but there are periods of seismic shifting that happen every now and again. This seems to be one of those times. I suspect that Google is using more and more data from their personalization arsenal to help rank sites. I can’t prove it, but it would explain some of the types of changes I’m seeing.

It seems I’m in sync with Google these days, at least for the moment. I’ve been emphasizing content production all else for quite some time, and it seems to be paying off. Google is a fast system these days. It’s not uncommon for me to have traffic at my blogs within 5 seconds of publishing! That’s the type of response time I love.

I’m pretty sure we’ll be seeing a PR update soon, as well. It seems a spike in traffic tends to precede a PR update, so we’ll see if that theory holds true.

All in all, this latest Google update seems like it’s been kind to me. How about you?

Frankly, I’d say Google is doing a nice job these days. They seem to have placed a great emphasis on fresh content, and that’s useful for most surfers, IMHO. Comprehensiveness and freshness are the main reason Google always seems to retain their crown as Search King.

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You’re Only As Good As Your Last Post

One thing about the internet arena, you don’t have much time to rest on your laurels. Since you need more traffic every single day, you can’t sit back and celebrate, even when something goes your way. If you do, you’ll end up getting complacent. This is almost always a mistake. With long tail search, your rankings tend to fluctuate daily, so looking for new rankings is often a good bet.

If you start to get accolades about your blog posting, don’t let it go to your head. It certainly is a good sign, but you have to maintain the same high quality or you can expect to fall out of people’s minds quite fast.

Yes, you’re only as good as your last post and you just don’t have time to sit around admiring what you’ve done. You still need more visitors, no matter how well your last one went. So now you’ll have to focus on your next post, or the one you’re doing right now. And when that one’s over, you have to go on to the next. This is the nature of the type of traffic generation that’s quite successful in the current blogosphere. Bloggers who update often tend to be rewarded for their persistence and consistent efforts.

Blogging almost always comes down to a debate between quantity and quality of posts. In reality, the bloggers who tend to reap the most rewards post often and post high quality posts. They keep their eyes on the prize and put their best feet forward every day.

If we follow the same plan, we’ll end up right along them in the pantheon of the greats. Or, at the very least, we’ll generate more traffic to our websites, which is the ultimate goal anyways.

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These Are Good Times For Online Advertising

2008 has been a tough year for a lot of industries and businesses, but one clear winner is the online advertising segment. Online ads have a lot of advantages over traditional offline ones. Online ads are very targeted, can be much cheaper, and are easily tracked. As companies have been spending less on traditional print, TV, and radio ads, more of the money is finding its’ way online.

The numbers predicted for online advertising are huge.

The global advertising market grew to just over US$600 billion in 2007, according to The Kelsey Group, the leading provider of research, data and strategic analysis on directional and interactive local media. The firm expects global ad revenues to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 2.7 percent and reach US$707 billion in 2012, propelled in large part by considerable growth in the interactive segment.

According to “The Kelsey Group’s Annual Forecast (2007-2012): Outlook for Directional and Interactive Advertising,” interactive advertising revenues will increase significantly from US$45 billion in 2007 to US$147 billion globally in 2012, representing a 23.4 percent CAGR.

This is truly great news for anyone who’s making money from online advertising. In essence, if you just track industry growth as an average player, you can reasonably expect growth of 23.4% annually. Of course this might not be true if your partners take a bigger cut of revenue, but with increased competition in the online ad arena, I’m not so sure they will.

If you can excel, then your chances for much bigger money grow even better. Traditional media’s loss appears to be new media’s gain. The continued downturn for offline companies represents an excellent growth opportunity for people with content websites, as long as you can provide a decent stream of eyeballs to advertisers. Well trafficked deep content websites are looking at their revenue doubling in the next 27 months alone, all things considered.

These are happy days indeed.

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