Many people attack blogs open for comments like flies to… all for a link shared with hundreds of others on a page that will disappear from the index soon as it inevitably trips a filter.  Time could be better spent killing a flock of birds with one stone.

If you like the prospect of the easy links that comes with blog commenting then take your time and do it right.  The rewards will blow you away. The first thing you should do is forget about all of the irrelevant blogs you may have been previously attacking.  Focus purely on your niche.

Your goal should be to find popular blog posts that your target audience will be reading and start a conversation.  Use them as a perfect chance to share your knowledge of a subject and impress or intrigue fellow commentators and visitors.  People do checkout the web sites of a blog commentator if they provide something of value to the conversation.

IF you don’t agree with what a blogger has to say about a subject then get in there and tell them what your opinion is.  Back it up with the correct answer and your reputation in the niche will climb and people will start recognising who you are.

Take note of the blogs that give you the best response and become a regular contributor – in the comments.  If the blog has a regular reader-base then they will start to really pick up on your name and start to become a regular visitor of your site too, or if you don’t run a blog, they will check out your site and hopefully sign up to your email list or buy a product.

This stream of referral traffic is what sets quality blog commenting apart from the mass Scrapebox and Xrumer spam which has clouded the view for many.  Traditional blog commenting will still help your SEO and backlink build efforts.  I’d argue that it actually helps you more.

The problem with a spammed comment is that it is highly unlikely to get past moderation on a decent blog, a decent blog that will have high PageRank and the longevity to make that PR stick.  They also won’t be surrounded with a ‘bad neighbourhood’ of pharma spam and gambling backlinks.  You can usually still get away with anchor text in your username, but you will definitely be more likely to sneak in a hyperlink in your blog comment when you have a real reason for putting it there.

If you aren’t sure about the amount of referral traffic you’ll get from your comments you can still take the time to focus primarily on dofollow blogs.  The good dofollow blogs are always moderated so your extra effort will reward you.

Now there are a few different ways to find quality blogs to post on.  The easiest is by setting up Google Alerts for your niche and configuring it for Blog results only.  This will give you a stream of daily sites and articles you can comment on.  (If you need a hand setting up a Google Alert then just yell out.)

The beauty about focusing on new posts is that:

1.       it is where your audience will be; they aren’t going to be hanging around posts from 6 months ago.

2.       The conversation is going to be active and current so the blogger will be more likely to accept comments on the post.

3.       The post won’t show any PR so it won’t be in the sights of the spammers.  This doesn’t mean it is worthless though – PRwise.  It just means that you don’t know what the actual PR is yet. (The PR you see in the various tools is only updated every 6 months of so.)

Some other benefits of following new posts is that the same story is often covered on a range of blogs.  Share your thoughts with as many of them as you can and note down the ones that send you a lot of traffic.  (Use Google Analytics or similar to check referrer statistics.)  You can keep an eye out for new posts on the blog then – just subscribe to their RSS feed.

Another way to make the most of your blog commenting on new stories is by taking your opinion and the opinion of others that you just found and create your own article about the story.  This can really pay off with a quick boost of organic traffic.

Other places to look for breaking stories open to comment is aggregator sites such as iCurrent.com.  I’ll go into more detail about iCurrent and similar services in a future post but it basically allows you to make a custom feed of breaking stories based on niches and keywords.  It is very cool!

Hopefully this little article has helped you to realise the full potential of quality blog comments & gives you something to add to your backlink and traffic generation arsenal

One of the most popular methods around for building backlinks fast is piggy-backing off a domain’s authority and ‘link juice’ by creating account profiles on as many sites as possible that allow a link-back to your own page.  Apart from the arguable effect they have on your SERP position, these profile links just sit in cyberspace collecting dust – while pissing off frustrated forum owners who don’t appreciate their property being “vandalised” by people leeching off their hard work.

If Google decides to crack down on the positive effect of profile links then all that hard work could be wasted and you will be left with a site that’s only exposure to the rest of the web is on deeply hidden profile that no one ever sees.  Your business could have the Google traffic tap turned off tight overnight!

Luckily with a little more care for your business you can get the effect of profile links and then some…

Forum Marketing

Forums and discussion boards have been around for a long time and there is no better place online to find a large community of people interested in specific niches.  Forum members are often obsessed with their hobbies and spend countless hours reading and responding to thread after thread trying to stay in touch with their community and the latest events happening that might affect what they love.

Forums usually have an unspoken hierarchy of ‘guru’ members that others will just lap up what they say.  They will check blogs and articles about their chosen hobby and aren’t afraid to buy the latest and greatest gadget that will make what they love doing more interesting or exciting.

With such an enthusiastic group of like-minded people, don’t you think it is silly to look at a forum as an easy backlink rather than a great way to interact with your target market and send free traffic to your site with the added benefit of a boost to your Google SERP ranking?

An Obvious Example

If you are reading this blog then there is a good chance you have come across or might even be an active member of the Warrior Forum. The Warrior Forum (WF) is a great example of how a forum can provide free targeted traffic to a related site while also providing great backlinks that really help a site with ranking in the search engines.

Nearly all of the traffic that views this blog either comes from the WF directly via my signature or through Google to posts that I promote via hyperlinks from nothing but the WF.  I get this free traffic by participating in discussions that I have personal knowledge or experience in and my answers are seen by the hundreds of people viewing the threads.  If these viewers like what I have to say or would like more information they just click my signature and land at my site.

The WF also has members that have others hanging on their every word.  These members have spent the time to establish themselves as an authority figure in the community and have earned the respect of their peers.  This is a powerful position to be in; not only have they got free traffic to their blogs and offers over the time they have spent building up their reputation but whenever one of these guys or girls creates a new thread the community reacts strongly and quickly.  This can give them a boost of exposure to their carefully crafted signature links and keeps the discussion in the thread active so the exposure lasts over a longer period of time.

People also start to link to these popular forum threads from their own blogs and sites which gives the thread an extra boost of link juice.  This link juice can flow right out again to the signature link, giving the SERP ranking a boost too.

Using a Forum Thread as a Landing Page

You are right in thinking that it is practically impossible to get the same amount of backlinks from forum marketing as you would from automatic forum profile building; the SEO benefit of having a large quantity of links from a wide range of sources is huge – but is it really necessary?

Profile links aren’t the most efficient links around.  They are deep links with little exposure from the rest of the web site they are situated on.  Unless you are actively posting on the forum there is probably a link from the members list, and that’s it.  They only work at all because the trickle of authority coming through this one link is enough for a search engine to recognise and credit the link to being a member of the domain.

Forum threads on the other hand are often linked to internally from all sorts of archives and tag clouds that means the link juice can often be flowing thick and fast.  This link juice makes your signature file on an active thread quite powerful, especially when compared to an orphaned profile.

This link juice has another benefit, the forum threads themselves index and rank fast and gives you another point of attack in the SERPs.  Unlike a profile page, you have almost full control of the content being posted in a forum thread.  Use your SEO knowledge to create threads that both feed the needs of the community and the wants of the search engines – a keyword rich title and contents.  Craft the posts so they provide useful information that stands by itself (no back story required).  This means that people can find your information on the forum and click through to your own blog through the signature file.

Cautious searchers can also get a feel for the way you interact with your peers as they can watch the discussion unfold in front of their very eyes.  You have social proof for non-forum members so they should be more likely to click through to your site without the need of filling your thread up with forced testimonials.

The Side Benefits of Forum Marketing

It might take some time to build up your reputation on a forum but there are sometimes other more direct benefits from all the effort.  It is fairly common for forums to have some form of market place or classified ad section that is the perfect place to sell your products as you create them.  The WF has the Warrior Special Offers (WSO) section and many marketers make a living off this section of the forum alone.  They make sales here because of the marketing they did on the rest of the forum. The same can be done in any niche you decide to pursue.
Once again you can use a combination of your signature and ranking power of the forum to get your sales threads on the forum visible in the search engines.

Where to Find the Forums

The WF is great for Internet marketing (IM) but you might be in more traditional niches or hobbies.  Forum marketing works just as well in these niches as IM and the Warrior Forum, it’s just a matter of keeping your eyes peeled for great quality forums.

I have found the easiest way to find quality forums in your niche is easiest by doing normal competition analysis and taking note of the forums that regularly pop-up in the top 10 results.  Sure, you could go and find fancy Google queries and forum ‘footprints’ but this won’t find the forums that Google already ranks high in the results.

When you find a forum in the top 10 for one of your targeted keywords, go and have a look at what it has to offer.  If the forum looks active with a lot of good discussion then it is worth joining.  Have a squiz to see if it has a marketplace or a classified section too.  These ones are gold! (Make sure it supports signatures too as it is the only way you can get them to your own site).

When you find a forum that looks the goods just register as you usually would and start interacting with the community.  Don’t hit them up with promotional material straight away, just tackle it as you would join a forum as a normal user.  Add you signature after you have established yourself and reap the rewards.  Focus on providing quality responses and don’t be afraid to start threads to ask questions or to provide free info.  When you provide free info remember to keep them SEO friendly to get the benefits of the indirect Google traffic.

It may take some time but it will pay off.  Don’t spread yourself too thin.  Only take on a number of forums that you can manage and remain active.  You don’t need a lot of posts on a forum per day to build up a reputation.  1 or 2 memorable posts will do the trick. As your post count increases the traffic from the forum will build pretty quickly too, plus the backlinks in your signature and profile will continually become more powerful.

Forum marketing won’t get your hundreds of links across hundreds of domains but it will get you an alternative method of free traffic while building up your reputation and exposure in your preferred market. If you use this exposure properly the opportunity for more links will open up.

What is BuildMyRank?

BuildMyRank is a private network of websites that let you post little snippets with hyperlinks back to your own page.  The domains are already aged and range in PageRank (PR) from PR1 to PR7.  These websites are also hosted on multiple Class A, B and C IP addresses.

The system works by creating a snippet of your page including a link for every 150 words you write; i.e. if you write a 300 word article you can include 2 links back to your page.

Quality is Paramount

One of the great things about BuildMyRank is that they are very quality focused.  They review everything before placing it on their network so you know your links are going to be in a great neighborhood.  Before you can start positing the BMR team will review your domain to make sure it doesn’t include anything that will hurt the rest of the sites on the network.  Each snippet is also reviewed to make sure it is in fluent English without spelling and grammatical errors.  They will reject poorly written posts so be aware.

One point that is different to many other networks is that each snippet is only sent to one site, so you have to write 150 words just to get 1 link.  This might seem like a lot of work but it really doesn’t take long to write a well written article once you are comfortable with the content on your site.

These aren’t low quality forum profile links either; they are links on content based sites – with age and PR.  They are also posted to relevant categories so your links are going to be surrounded by loosely relevant content – I personally think this is important for a site in the long run.

If you don’t like the idea of writing you can always outsource the creation of the 150 word posts.  You can either do this directly from BuildMyRank at $2/150 words or you can find your own workers.

BuildMyRank gives you the ability to create accounts specifically for your writers and you can then give those writers to access to only the projects you want them to work on.  It works well and I have managed to get my costs down to about $1/link.

Strength of the Network

The domains used throughout the network vary in PageRank from PR0 to PR7.  I have included a screenshot below of the breakdown for my current projects.

As you can see in the pie-chart above, the majority of the domains range in PR from 1 to 3.  The higher PR domains are a nice bonus but nowhere near as common.

IP diversity is also important.  I took a random sample of 50 articles from a project and found 34 unique IP addresses (addresses with at least a unique C-Class IP).

Many people are now obsessed with getting their backlinks indexed and spend a lot of time on the process or boosting their existing links to make them a bit more valuable.  BuildMyRank does this automatically for you by bookmarking each article to a claimed 75 social bookmarking sites and some other Web 2.0 properties.

The RSS feed from each site is also submitted to different directories and aggregators to pretty much do what a lot of the ‘backlink boosters’ do.  What this means is each of your links is indexed consistently quick; checkout the graph of their indexing rate below to see what I mean.  I manually check the links regularly to make sure they are staying indexed and I haven’t ran into any problems yet.

Sounds Good In Theory – What About the Real World?

If you do your keyword research and competition analysis properly then you will find that BuildMyRank is a great backbone for a backlinking campaign.   The links might take up to 5 minutes to create (to write the 150 words) but you always know where the next link will be coming from.  This is a huge positive.

I get keywords (that follow the criteria mentioned in my free blueprint) onto at least the first page of Google with less 10 backlinks from the BMR network.  This is why I am such a huge fan of it.  I do also submit the RSS of my sites to various aggregators and a Ping.fm account but the big links are from this network – I will be talking about this in future reports.

I created a fresh new site in the middle of October and these are some of the results I have had using just BuildMyRank and the RSS with Ping.fm combo.

This keyword is ranked #5 after 5 BMR articles:

The following keyword is ranked #7 after just 3 BMR articles:

The next keyword is ranked #9 with 2 BMR articles:

The final one I will show is ranked #6 with 4 BMR links:

I understand these aren’t tough keywords but my whole approach to creating affiliate sites is working with keywords and content I know I can get to the number 1 spot. With the consistent results I get from BMR I can focus more on content generation rather than finding ways to consistently get backlinks.

I’ll update this review over the next few weeks to keep you updated with how these move up the front page.

I have also successfully moved existing aged content up the rankings with the addition of groups of BMR links.

Conclusion – This is a Great Service

I have had consistent success with the BuildMyRank network and there is no reason you can’t too.  The interface is easy to use, the network is kept clean and full of quality sites, your links are indexed fast and the produce positive results.

What I recommend you do if you haven’t already is give the network a trial yourself for one page and one keyword and see what results you get after creating the 10 free links.  This means you have no risk and you make your own mind up.

Sign-ups do close on occasions to prevent the network from being flooded. They try very hard to make sure the network can handle the traffic by continually seeking out fresh domains. They want to make sure that each site gets no more than 5 new posts per day, many other networks get up to 50 and the links become almost worthless.

If sign-ups are currently closed when you visit the site, just subscribe to the waiting list and you’ll get an email when it is opened up again.

Click here to give BuildMyRank a trial with 10 free backlinks.

I have tried a lot of different networks and tools and this is the only one I now rely on.

Google has made it very easy these days to find out how well your site is doing in their search engine, even if you aren’t getting much traffic.  Google Webmaster Tools is improving all the time and what it gives access to now is very powerful.

There are quite a few conspiracy theorists out there who don’t like giving Google any more information than what they’ve already got, but I feel that if you can’t back your web site to pass the toughest of Google tests then you are doing it wrong already. A lot of them are running AdSense anyway…

If you haven’t verified your site with Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) and you are chasing organic traffic, do it right away.  The verification can be tied in with Analytics code now so kill two birds with one stone and set it up as well.

The section of GWT I’ll be talking about today is the Search Queries page.  Select the domain you want to examine and from the dashboard click the more link after the list of recent search queries.  This will take you through to a detailed view of all the activity your page is receiving across the different Google data servers and specific search engines.

This screenshot shows some of the latest editions to GWT, some newer than other.  The number of impressions, clicks and CTR has been available for some time but the Change % is pretty recent.  This page can be very handy in finding out what is currently working and where you should focus your time to get fast results.

I just want to point something out that I have mentioned in the past – the importance of getting a #1 ranking.

If I sort the results by total number of clicks you can see that the 4^th result down is giving this site the same amount of traffic as the 3^rd result.  The 4^th one is only getting 880 searches/month compared to 6,600/month for the 3^rd.  The only difference is that one is ranked #2 while the larger searched keyword is ranked #7/8.

If that keyword jumped from #2 to #1, I would expect to get similar traffic to the keyword getting 8,100 searches per day, currently ranked at #6/7.

You can use these click through rates to focus on the keywords that will give the most return.  Go through the list and do a fresh competition analysis on all of the keywords and find the ones that will take the least amount of work to push up to #1 (or at least #2).

Often you will find that you are better off working with the keywords you have got rather than creating new content and starting from scratch again.  The number one rank is that lucrative.  If that 8,800 searches/month keyword managed to hit the number one rank you would get an immediate increase in traffic of roughly 130 searches/day.

GWT is also great at finding keywords that you haven’t directly targeted.  As your site builds up authority it will start to rank for long tails and even shorter more lucrative keywords.  This progress won’t be found in your stats pages though; people rarely click through on results ranked higher than the middle of the second page.

By keep an eye on the keywords appearing in the search queries you can see which of these words and sneaking up.  Once they do appear you can start sending through backlinks with appropriate anchor text to pages Google already likes.  It is a real time saver!

I like to look for results ranked higher than 15 that are getting a reasonable amount of impressions.  I then take those keywords and check the traffic numbers in the Google Keyword Tool or Market Samurai and confirm the numbers.  Do competition analysis like normal and then decide whether it is worth sending some anchor text backlinks to the page for that term.

Here is a keyword ranked #18 getting 210 searches/month.  I checked it out in Market Samurai and it has the potential for 325/day; the top 10 isn’t too though either.  If I add this to the mix of anchor text while building backlinks to the page being return, I should get some positive results pretty quickly.  This will also help the page for its better ranked keywords.

I have found many high searched phrases that I would never have dreamed of by searching through Google’s Webmaster Tools.  Give it a try as you may have a real goldmine waiting 1 or 2 pages off the front.

Another problem many marketers (and maybe even yourself) face is coming up with fresh and exciting content that matches what the market is after.  It isn’t uncommon for content writers to just get stuck not knowing what to write next.  It happens to me all the time!

Find out what your market is after and you will be ahead of the game.

Luckily, there is a great solution to both problems that will put the ideas for content right into your head, and it is exactly what the readers will be looking for!

When I first started my journey into internet marketing I was looking for quick and easy solutions to making money overnight.  I was all over the shop and wasn’t exactly setting the IM house on fire….

What I did stumble upon was a great way to get a lot of traffic, fast.  I was using celebrity scandals to generate unique content to capture the ensuing surge of traffic.  I then started keeping my eye out for big television shows and reality TV contests that were about to end and having a page up and running before it happened.

Competition wasn’t much of a problem as my page was already established with enough backlinks (but still not a lot) to keep it above fresh and up and coming pages.  I was ranking number 1 for a page that no one else was targeting before anyone was searching for it.  The page was locked and loaded for the fresh flood of traffic.

Unfortunately, the traffic for the celebrity searches was pretty poor…

But, with a bit of imagination you can use this method for nearly any niche market!

There are a couple of ways you can attack this  If your site is still pretty new and it is taking a while for Google to index your pages, you are better off trying to predict events in your niche market before they happen.  If your site has been running for a while and it only takes a day or less for a new page to be indexed, you can also follow current news and post your own unique spin – as it happens.

Predicting what will happen beforehand is pretty easy with powerful free tools like Google Trends and Insights.

If you go to Google Trends (http://www.google.com/trends) and enter in your niche or market you can get an overview of the big news stories that occurred over a set period of time.  Ideally you will see a corresponding peak in traffic but this isn’t crucial.  Just use the news articles to brainstorm for events that happen within the market each year.

You can see what gets returned for the term “fashion” in 2009 and 2010 in the examples below.

Fashion Trends 2009

Fashion Trends 2010

From these graphs you can see that there is a few annual events that might be worth looking further into; Oscar Fashion, New York Fashion Week, London Fashion Week.

Let’s look further into Oscar Fashion…

Head over to Google Insights (http://www.google.com/insights/search/) and enter in “Oscar Fashion”.  To see what was being searched for last year, change the date to 2009.  (Change the location too if you are only interested in local searches).

Fashion Oscar 2009 - Google Insights

Now you have access to the keywords used to find information for “Oscars Fashion” in 2009.  The Oscars have already occurred in 2010 so let’s see what keywords were used this year…

Fashion Oscar 2010 - Google Insights

See how similar they are?  What do you think they will be searching for in 2011?  I think you get the idea!

Finding these breakouts and regular events in your particular niche will require a bit of research and brainstorming.  Find an industry news website and look through the archives for ideas.  Plug them into Google Insights or Trends and work from there.  The content you create will only be good for a short timeframe but if you are a competent writer you can follow the trends all year long.

Even if you miss an upcoming trend, you can also hit them as they appear.  Browse to the latest Google Hot Trends (http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends?sa=X) and have a look at the current list.

Google Hot Trends for Niche News

If you see something related to your niche then get some content on your site about it asap!

Once again, find some industry news sites and pick out the interesting news articles and create your own spin for your site.  Even just 1 or 2 articles a day will keep traffic flowing nicely to your site.

Create a Google Alert (http://www.google.com/alerts) for you niche and track news and blog results for fresh ideas right to your email or RSS.

Niche Ideas Using Google Alerts

Twitter is becoming very handy for finding trending topics too.  If you look hard enough you can pick up content and ideas before other websites.  Use your SEO skills to keep them from over taking you.  You’ll be pleasantly surprised to see how easy it is to rank for fresh content on the web…

Twitter Search to Find Niche News

There are a lot of ways to make use of these sites and features.  An entire site can be built off the traffic.  Capture the traffic into a mailing list; mention related affiliated products;  stick to trusty AdSense…use your imagination and you will have a lot of success with your fresh new traffic source.

They are obviously going to get a whole of attention from visitors but are they so large they will become susceptible to banner blindness?

I can’t wait to play with some new layouts…

If your focus is the internet marketing niche itself, you probably already have a fair sized list and are used to promoting offers and products from other vendors weekly or even daily.  It is a powerful asset when used wisely.  I know I wish I started earlier doing it.

What I have been doing for a while now is collecting the email addresses of visitors to my niche sites…and it is now really starting to pay off.

I was pretty much forced into taking action on building my first niche mailing list.  I had a page that was getting 100+ unique views per day but for some reason they just weren’t clicking my AdSense ads…I had a great page but it was pretty much worthless.  They would read my article and then disappear.

The subject of the page wasn’t suitable to have a product listed so Amazon was out of the picture.  I couldn’t find any relevant products on Clickbank so no-point going there.  The only that I could think of was to remove the information off the site and make them opt-in to a mailing list to receive it.

I kept reading about the importance of list building on all of the internet marketing sites but never gave it a chance – it seemed too hard!

I turned my article into a series of emails to drip feed them the information over a few weeks.  I modified the page so it became a squeeze page.  I was very careful to keep the content SEO friendly without damaging the potential for converting the traffic.  With the off-site SEO up to scratch the reworking of the landing page didn’t affect my position in the SERPs.

Traffic continued to flood in and I now manage to get 25% of the visitors onto my mailing list.  (You can obviously improve on this conversion rate with more testing and better copy).

After each person has gone through the auto responder series they should now (hopefully!) trust what I have to say and look forward to the next message…this is where you can make some great money from your list.

Like many affiliate marketers, I am constantly adding new content to my sites and this usually centers on a product review or a comparison feature article.  I base what I write on my keyword research but it still takes time to get traffic from Google.  With my fancy new mailing list, I just have to send out a broadcast (or add a new follow-up to the auto responder series) and I instantly get a flow of traffic from people who already like what I say.  I write content for my list based on the medium to short term potential of organic traffic.

If you write quality honest reviews or provide regular helpful tips and insight, your mailing list will listen to what you have to say.  You should be able to make some sales write off the bat each time you create new content for your site.

Now you don’t have to rely on Google to provide the traffic…you have a loyal army of targeted followers ready to buy.

This becomes extremely handy nowadays, with Google shifting rankings around like crazy.  If you drop from the SERPs you at least have a backup in place – and the backup gets bigger and bigger every day.

If you want to give email marketing a go then I personally use Aweber.com for my mailing list manager. There are others available but I can’t vouch for how good they are as I am happy with Aweber.

Today I am going to try and make sure you don’t make the same mistake I made which left easy money on the table – that could have been fixed overnight…

After making a few small changes to my Google AdSense Ad Units I was able to double my click through rate (CTR) for a consistent and fast improvement in income.

One of first things you are taught when creating a squeeze page or sales letter is to always test different versions of copy and formatting until you get a conversion rate you are proud of.  What I, like many, didn’t realize was that this should be applied to all forms of direct response marketing – AdSense included.

Just like how every market reacts differently to sales copy, people react differently to online advertising.  Using a template that provided a high CTR on your last site won’t necessarily produce the same results on the next.  It is crucial that you realise that there is no single best AdSense layout or theme that will work for every type of site or every market.

How to Optimise Your AdSense Layout

So how do you find the most optimised AdSense layout for your current site?  Easy!  Test it just like you would a squeeze page.

Many people get a bit anxious when it comes to performing testing on a web site but there is a way to achieve it without relying on installing complicated scripting. When testing, it is important to compare results against similar sets of data. Often people make a judgment on the effect of a change after just 1 or 2 days.  These 1 or 2 days might be different to other days though and this can skew the results.  A test on a weekend will also produce inconsistent results as the traffic on the weekend is different to the rest of the week.  It is less frequent and is usually made up of more casual surfers.  Dismissing a test on a Saturday because it produced fewer results than Friday may be misleading.

(You also have to be aware of holidays and other world or local events that may affect the traffic to your page.)

I find that across an entire week the traffic levels sit on average and the spikes cancel out any troughs.  1 week on most sites gets enough traffic and clicks to make an informed decision on the results of the test.

Note: testing a site that has low traffic may produce inconsistent results so I recommend getting at least 50-100 unique visitors to your site before doing significant testing.  A quick way to tell is if your CTR is consistent across the course of a week.

How to Test AdSense Layouts

The ideal way to test a page is to do an A-B split test.  This involves randomly sending a user to either version A of a page or version B.  Across a week the number of views of A and B will be approximately 50%.

For testing AdSense A-B testing can be difficult and time consuming to setup.  There is another approach though that will still produce accurate results…

Run an AdSense layout for an entire 7 days in format A and then another 7 days in format B.  After the 2 weeks is up compare the results and note the winner…pretty simple huh?  Just make sure you start and end on the same day each week and your traffic will be consistent enough to make the right decision.  At the end of each week make sure you document the number of impressions, click through rate, average cost per click and eCPM.

You can then repeat the process for a 3^rd, 4^th, n^th week continually trying to beat the best performer.   You will get an idea of what does and doesn’t work each time you make a drop or rise.  Once you start failing to beat the best performer you can set it up as your permanent AdSense layout for that site.  It isn’t unusual to double your CTR after just a few runs of testing.

What Layouts and Formats to Try

When you make your changes don’t be afraid to try drastic changes.  Just make sure you document the current format before you replace it – you can always go back then.

It is a common belief amongst marketers using AdSense that blended ads work best.  This isn’t always the case.  If you have ever tried Google AdWords on the Content Network you would know that image ads often get the highest CTR.  Image ads when done right can really pop out of the screen and make the user at least look at them…

Use this to your advantage and try it out on your AdSense site too.  What works for the advertiser will work for the publisher.  Image ads may have a lower cost per click than text ads but the increased CTR should make up for this.  When comparing a change, especially involving image ads, make sure you look at the eCPM as this will take into account the higher CTR and the lower CPC.

One of the biggest boosts I had to my AdWords Image campaigns was when I changed the images over to blue text with a red border around the ad unit.  You don’t have control over the image ads on your AdSense sites but this effect can be applied to text ad units too and is well worth a try.  Set the title to blue, everything else to black, and add a red border. This works because people associate blue underlined text with hyperlinks.  I have had great success with this format on some of my sites, but not all.

If you are still using the default ad unit then give blending a try.  Change the font type and size to the same as your main content and set the title colour to the same as your links; the rest of the text will be the same colour as your content; there will be no border.

Positioning can also change drastically between sites.  Some markets respond well to the large rectangle in the top left before any content; others are more interested in reading what you have to say so you need to capture their attention elsewhere.

To capture this attention put the ads inside the content.  That same rectangle placed one paragraph into the content can have an instant effect.

Read up on some of the usability sites to get an idea of how people are interacting with different styles of sites.  This article from Jakob Nielsen on Scrolling and Attention made me try adding an ad unit to the end of my content.  People are looking for the next place to go after reading an article so by getting an ad unit in their face at this time gives those options.  Remove any other useful links around the footer to improve it even further.

Sometimes removing a unit can also have a boost on your CTR.  Too many ads might be causing ad blindness on your site so by relocating or removing a skyscraper ad unit in the sidebar might keep them guessing.

Don’t be Afraid to Try

Optimising your AdSense layout has to be one of the easiest and quickest ways to boost your income so don’t be afraid to give it a go.  If you do it this way you don’t even have to touch any code – just make the changes in your AdSense account.

If you make sure you document everything carefully, the only risk is having a week of less than average income; just change it back after the 7 days if the results don’t improve.  I encourage you not to panic after one try though as the next change might be the big one…

It would be great to hear if you do give it a go and get some positive (or even negative) results.

There is no right or wrong answer but I do have my own preference that I think uses the best of both worlds…

Each type of site has its own benefits; a mini-site has a clear goal and can make use of exact domain name matches for very fast results – 1 page in a week!

The problem is that they are often created with no scope in mind.  The exact match domain name often makes branding difficult and the pages, as informative as they may be, aren’t something that would make a user want to return or tell their friends about it.  They still require maintenance to keep them ranking on the first page of the SERPs and tracking the progress.

A large authority site on the other hand can make ranking new pages easy and these new pages can be added without upsetting the flow of the site.  The authority site can build up an online presence and become a true brand.   Different monetisation methods can be used depending on the page and keyword.  You can create powerful business opportunities with custom advertising and joint ventures that wouldn’t become available from a 5 page site about 4 slice toasters or yoga mates.

If you plan your large site right you can have a web site that is a great user experience that will have them returning for more after that initial Google search.  This opens up the opportunity of people in your niche talking about your site on their blogs, Twitter, Facebook accounts etc.  This free exposure is priceless…backlinks will flood in if your site is a resource of useful information!

A large site does take work and the results aren’t as fast as a mini-site (with exact match domain).  This puts a lot of people off.  With the right planning though a large authority site will produce faster results from new content over a mini-site as Google will begin to index content almost instantly.

Mini-sites do have a place.  I like to use mini-sites as a way to fund my larger online projects and experiment with my SEO techniques.  Rather than creating an army of 100+ sites that takes all day to track and manage, create a handful at a time and use the boost in income to fund the expansion of a few larger sites that have the potential to become something great online.

The income from the mini sites makes creating the larger sites easier as there is no panic to generate fast results.  You can plan properly and execute carefully without the fear of not having money coming through the door.

If you want to try a new backlinking method or site structure or some other secret SEO technique it is best to try it on mini-sites before risking a large site with history.  The results won’t be as skewed and if it backfires you won’t lose as much work.  It is easier to recreate a mini-site than a large authority site.

Once the large site is up and running and creating a nice income itself, you can cull back some of your mini-sites by flipping them for a lump sum bonus.  Your time can now focus purely on expanding the larger site or creating a new one.  Time won’t be wasted building hundreds of backlinks to hundreds of domains for small returns and trying to follow the ups and downs many keywords face – across many domains.

After 6 months of your large site being online you should start to get massive increases in results as Google learns to trust your domain.  It will be at a stage where you get quicker results be creating a new article on the large site rather than making a new exact match domain from scratch.  This is due to the authority, trust and internal link juice flowing through your site – things wasted on a mini-site.
If you are considering taking over the web with a swarm of mini-sites, take the time to consider if there is a more efficient way to spend your time.  Diversification is great and highly recommended but instead of spreading the work over 100 domains consider a handful of large authority sites instead.

Think of each of your sites as a small business rather than a way to get a few AdSense clicks or Amazon sales here or there.

Take the time to get the niche selection right in the first place and you will save a lot of money and time down the track.

I know this is just common sense but not everyone gets it right.  Many are stubborn; others are just unaware.

I often get emails from people who are struggling to get results and this is usually due to being in a niche with little search traffic, strong competition, or limited ways to monetize.  Even after being told about the lack of scope available to improve, a lot of the people struggling refuse to adapt and are stuck working on a project with little potential – don’t be that person!

There are several elements of niche selection that you need to consider before committing to a website:

• Traffic
• Monetization
• Competition

I like to look at them in that order.  Traffic is the key but is wasted if you can’t monetize it.  Competition takes the longest time to analyse and no point wasting your time on it if the market isn’t worth it to begin with.

First things first…how to find a niche to start with?

Brainstorm!  Start getting used to writing down any idea that pops into your head.  Once you start writing things down on paper other ideas will start flowing from these base ideas.  Start your list by writing down everything you love to do in your spare time.  It is much easier to create content for a subject you genuinely enjoy.

Add to your list any problems that you may have in your life or get asked for advice on.  Other people might see you as an expert on something that you have never really considered pursuing.  If the knowledge is there to begin with it will make content and even content creation a breeze.

The ideas on your paper are a great starting point and usually from this list you can expand out to related niches very easily.

If your list is still small then grab a magazine off the shelf and start flipping through the pages.  Take note of the common subjects and questions being answered.  Look at the advertisers and try and brainstorm from what you see.  Ideas could be types of products, common problems, useful information…

Work backwards.  If you find a product or two in a niche that appears too small, take a step back and find out what niche the sub niche belongs to.  Expand from there.

Still struggling to fill up the paper?  Head over to Amazon.com and start clicking through the categories.  The Non Fiction books are a great place to browse.  Find the best sellers and brainstorm from there.  Head out of the house and make a trip to the library or favourite bookstore and look at the best selling sections there.  Sometimes it is easier to keep a clear and focused head away from the computer.

Your list should be pretty full now…let’s see which ones are worth making a site for.

Traffic

This is the big one; what point is a website if no one sees it?  Like any business, the more people walking through the doors the more money you can make.  Many people neglect this basic qualifier for creating a site.

You can get your traffic from several different places but they all require different skill sets and methods.  Organic (search engine) traffic, social media, video, and paid advertising are all valid options.  Organic is the easiest to qualify and I will go into more detail below but social media and video require a bit of thought.

Content that attracts interest from social media sites is quite a bit different to the usual stuff people write about on affiliate sites.  People on Digg or StumbleUpon aren’t going to be interested in a review of a toaster so you would need to make your content a lot more creative.  If your niche isn’t suited to creative writing techniques that attract the needed viral attention then social media isn’t really an option for getting traffic to your site.

The same goes with video.  If you aren’t equipped or prepared to create video content for a site or the videos already in your niche aren’t attracting much attention then video may not be an option.  If YouTube is loaded with related videos and backed by an active group of viewers then video marketing may be a viable traffic generating option for your site.

Organic Traffic

If your niche isn’t suited to viral social media marketing or attracting attention through videos then the other and most common traffic generation method will be from search engines (mainly Google). The majority of marketers go this route.

Finding out the potential traffic from Google is pretty simple.  You can either use the Google External Keyword Tool or my favourite – Market Samurai, to get the number of searches happening each month (or day for MS).

I have covered this previously here (So You Want to Create a New Niche Website but Don’t Know Where to Start?) but to recap…

Take a niche idea from your notepad and create a new project for the word in Market Samurai and head to the Keyword Research Module…make sure Include Additional and Google Search Keywords is selected.  Generate Keywords and Analyze.

Sort the list of words by broad searches.

From here you can get an idea of what people are searching for – related to your search.  If the numbers are large you know there is traffic available for the niche.  Don’t worry about finding specific keywords yet as we have to make sure it can be monetized first…

Monetization

The traffic is there but what are you going to do with it?  Think of the niche you have chosen and try and think of what the demographic will be after.

Do they want a guide on how to create, succeed, complete, or learn?  Digital products are one way to make some money from information hungry customers.

You can check out sites such as Clickbank to find products created by other marketers that may be suitable to your niche.  If you can’t find a suitable product then that might be a golden opportunity for you to create your own.

Users after information are also great candidates for you to start a mailing list.  Instead of sending them straight to the offer place them on a mailing list and prime them for a sale over time…

If the information for the site is more general and not suitable to a guide or electronic product then have a look at Google AdSense.  If the market is popular amongst advertisers then the clicks you get from AdSense can be very worthwhile.  Have a search for other sites in the niche that are using AdSense on their site.  If the advertisers are related to the niche market then you should get like advertisers on your site too.  Check the sites like SpyFu to get an idea of what the advertisers are paying per click.  You will only get a portion of this on the content network but anything averaging over $2 per click is worthwhile.

If the demographic are chasing products then there are some great options available.  Amazon.com is my favourite.  You can find pretty much any product you can think of there.  Search the site and see what’s available.  If there are a lot of high selling products then Amazon is a great option – especially for niches where AdSense isn’t suitable.

There are sometimes higher paying affiliate programs for Amazon products so you do have room for choice.  Commission Junction often has high paying offers direct with the suppliers.  You can also use Google to find other affiliate programs.  A simple Google search for keyword +affiliate can return some great results.

Another option to lookout for are Cost per Action (CPA) offers.  CPA offers will give you a set amount for each lead you generate for an Affiliate Network.  These can be anything from a simple email submit form to a large survey.  Many of the larger markets pay quite well for a lead so give them some consideration when looking at your options.  You can use this search engine (Offer Vault) to see if there are any CPA offers available for your selected niche.

Sometimes a niche is suited to multiple monetization methods.  If you plan properly you can make great use of this to boost your income significantly.  The beauty market in general is a mix of people looking to solve problems and people looking to buy products…think about if you can capture the people looking for information on a mailing list and using that same mailing list to promote the product reviews you have already written to attract other searches.  You can have a continually growing group of targeted users reading every new review you write – as well as the daily traffic looking at those reviews from Google.

If you can’t find a way to monetize your niche from any of the above methods then drop it now and look at the next one on your list of ideas.

If you are happy that the niche has money in it then let’s see if you can compete for it.

Competition

It is now time to get down to the nitty-gritty.  If you have read my report on competition analysis then you already know what you should be looking for…easy keywords!

Take the list of keywords you generated when looking at the potential traffic and start drilling down into the list to find keywords you can compete for.

I generate keywords in a couple of runs.  From this initial list I look for seed keywords with a broad search of 2000+ times/day.  I go through the list and open the 2 to 3 word combos that are related to the niche into a new tab.  These words will be used to seed more similar keywords.  Make sure the seeds are unique so you don’t repeat yourself down the track (red widget = widget red).

You can now browse through the tabbed keywords and generate a fresh list of keywords – remember to change over “Include Additional Results” to “Ignore Additional Results”.  From the fresh list of keywords set the match type to Exact.  Filter out all keywords with less than 78 results.

I cover this in more detail here in the Let’s Get Some Keywords section.

With nothing but highly searched exact matched keywords remaining you can start doing the competition analysis as described in my free report.  Write down all of the ones that have weak competition into a text file.

If after analyzing all the keywords you still have enough words to make a site with decent traffic you know you have found a niche suitable for a new website.  The site will have sufficient achievable traffic to a monetized site.

If you find that the competition for the current group of keywords is generally a little too strong and the niche supports a product based monetization method – try looking for some products within the niche and repeating the keyword analysis on their names.  It is quite common that the products within the niche are less competitive than the general keywords and the searches are still high.

Still no luck?  Find the big forums in the niche and look for the common questions and terminology that you may not have thought of.  People within a niche may use a different language to those outside…

If the product names and variations are still too competitive and you can’t brainstorm another angle from the forums then give the niche a miss and head to the top and restart the process.

Just remember to be picky at the start to reap the rewards later.  An extra hour, day or even week of researching the niche will save you months of wasting time on a doomed website.