While I hate to give this kind of ambiguous answer, the truth is that people aren’t really sure. Google is constantly revamping the way that it looks at websites, how they appear in search results, etc. However, if I had to bet money I would say that web directories are still a viable way to artificially boost the number of high quality incoming links to your blog. Sites with more links, and links of higher authority (AKA Google Pagerank), are better placed in Google results. Sounds like something we want, eh? Let’s get to submitting!

The (“Self-Proclaimed”) KING of Web Directories

One of the most frustratingly powerful directories out there on the internet is a place called DMOZ.org, the Open Directory Project. These guys are Google’s favorite directory, and will give your website a huge Pagerank 8 link back if you can get yourself listed. They don’t take cash for positions, and professional bloggers try everything from bargaining with the site’s official editors to paying $100s to people who claim to offer successful listings in order to get into this self-proclaimed dominant directory. You don’t need to bother with that… you just need to cross your fingers and submit your blog yourself for free!

How to Submit Your Website to a Directory

There are two methods to submitting your website: do it yourself, or hire a freelance worker to do it for you. I recommend the latter, as people will typically submit your website themselves dozens of times over for just a few dollars. However, many people like to save on costs (I know I sure did when I first started out) and do this themselves.

To hire a freelancer: Check out the webmaster forums at DigitalPoint or Warrior Forums. You’ll find loads of professionals ready and willing to do this.

To do it yourself: Since we are going to be filling out a lot of forms, it might be smart to automate the process with a form filler such as Roboform. You will then want to fill in on each site you enlist to things such as: Site Name, Keywords, Description, Link.

Always remember that the higher Pagerank you see on the web directory, the more powerful it is. I really wouldn’t bother submitting to anything less than Pagerank 3, as these directories won’t add much of anything to your search engine positions. I won’t be providing a list of “suggested directories” for you to apply to, as it would be more useful for you to search through Google for a few lists on your own. If you have a few bucks, the second best directory is the Yahoo! Directory… but I would argue it is overpriced.

Try your hand at getting listed in high-PR web directories, because it will potentially give life to your Google-based traffic from the start!

-The Net Fool

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): What Is It?

A lot of people here the term “SEO” thrown around in the blogging and internet marketing world all too often… so what the heck does it mean? Search Engine Optimization refers to the methodology of getting your website “Google-Ready.” Essentially, a lot of the traffic on the internet flows through search engines like Google and Bing, so webmasters need to make sure their their sites are at the top of the results page. In order to do this, there are a few tips and tricks that give you an edge. The sites that rank higher necessarily have better traffic flow from the get go… and more traffic = more potential revenue!

The Net Fool’s Top Five SEO Essentials:

1. Structure your website urls!
When you look at a URL in my website, what do you see? Words! As a blogger, you do not want to have a structure that is “yoursite.com/02/2008/post-title” or anything with numbers at all. Then, take a look at my page titles. Notice that they are always “Post Title | The Net Fool” instead of the default? Again, this is very important for SEO purposes. These things are going to be the messy defaults you get with WordPress and almost any other system that you use, so we need to install and use the All-In-One SEO Pack WordPress plugin that I have recommended.

Let’s work a bit with All-In-One SEO! To get into the settings page after you have installed, navigate to “Settings” –> “All In One SEO” in your WordPress Admin section. From there, you should edit all of the setting to fit your structure.

• Your “Home Title” should be short and to the point, including your main keyword, and under 15 words in length (mine is “Making Money Online by Turning Time Into Cash – The Net Fool dot com”).
• Your “Home Description” is what shows up in Google most often when your website is short. Pack this with keywords and make it 160 words or less for the best results.
• Your “Home Keywords” are just that, your keyword phrases. I would just slam as many as you have in this box, though some recommend using just a few.
• Enable “Rewrite Titles” and have all the title options structured to show “%thing% | %blog_title%”

This may be a bit confusing to you so far, so what I have graciously done is taken a screenshot of all my settings. You can have a look at what I am doing for SEO by checking out this screenshot.

2. Creating A SiteMap for Your Site
A sitemap is essentially a listing of all of your pages, posts, etc. that are on your website. Because usually everything isn’t webbed together, it’s essential to have an updated sitemap so Google and other search engines can find your content easily and start getting you some reliable traffic.

We have already installed a plugin called Google XML Sitemaps, and this is really all that you need! Simply use the default settings and you will be ready to go in no time at all.

3. Submitting Your Blog to Search Engines
Now that you have a sitemap and your page structures look clean, let’s let the search engines know about your website. You can use a service for free like SubmitExpress, FreeWebSubmission or AddPro to get you indexed in hundreds of engines. However, when it comes down to it, all that really matters is Google.

To start with Google, follow this link to submit your website to their search engines.

Once that is done, we are going to open up Google’s Webmaster Tools, and create a membership if you haven’t already. Once you are logged in, go ahead an “Add Your Site” so that you can login and start ordering Google around. You are most likely going to need to upload a small file to your server so Google knows you are the real owner (”google1248012.html” or similar), and you’ll be ready to go. You can have a look around, but all we need to do here is give them the sitemap we made, and get out!

To submit your sitemap, which should be “sitemap.xml” in your main root folder, navigate in your Webmaster Tools left-hand panel to “Sitemaps” –> “Add Sitemap.” We are going to be adding a “General Web Sitemap” and it should be in “yoursite.com/sitemap.xml” or another folder if you did things correctly. Once they’ve verified it exists, just make sure they are checking it often and that the status is “OK.”

4. Setting Up a “301 Redirect” with .htaccess
One of the most overlooked things in optimizing websites is using .htaccess to control how your website’s URL appears. Most people will link to your website as either “http://yoursite.com” or “http://www.yoursite.com” which creates BIG problems for Google. Essentially, it’s seen as two different websites, so all of your recorded growth is literally cut in half! You want your rankings high, right? So let’s change things around to maximize the results from your efforts.

Open up “notepad” or any text editing program with the ability to save a file with any extension you want. In it, simply put the following:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_Host} ^YOURDOMAIN.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.YOURDOMAIN.com/$1 [L,R=301]

Make sure that this is on four separate lines in the file, and that you replace “YOURDOMAIN” with your website. If you already have an .htaccess file on your server, which is very likely at this point, just download your existing one and add these lines to the top. Here’s a sample I have made if you want to download and use it, just don’t forget to rename it to “.htaccess” when you are done.

Helpful Hint: If you downloaded the “WWW Redirect” plugin from the previous step in day 20… you can simply use this to do the job for you!

5. Link Your Blog Like a Pro!
Linking is the key to exposure, traffic and high rankings. While you should never link just for the sake of linking, feel free to spread the link love around as much as possible. This is why you see me posting “link love” every Sunday along with announcements… it can only help!

One big way you can get your website better trafficked is by installing a “related posts” plugin (as I have done) to show posts related to the current at the bottom of each article you publish. This make for solid deep links throughout your website, and will have your visitors staying longer by exploring similar content. I recommend and use the “Related Entries” plugin by WASABI.

Other than a related entries plugin, you should go around to blogs in your niche and comment on their posts (yes, this is an extra link). Also, try emailing whoever you can asking for link exchanges… which are mutually beneficial. You should never pay someone for a link, as you run the risk of almighty Google frowning upon your website (yes, they will catch you). But basically, don’t be a link nazi like many other bloggers, and you’ll soon find your efforts rewarded!

These SEO tips won’t get you those rankings you want on their own, as the best way to rank high is to put out quality content. However, this is a great starting point, and can help a mediocre blog outrank a great blog!

-The Net Fool

Tips for Difference Blogging Niches

A few months ago, I put out a post here at The Net Fool that I feel will be highly beneficial to those of you that want to add highly-targeted plugins to your website to really boost your offerings. For finance blogs, things like stock market widgets and streaming news. For photography websites, widgets that will import Flickr photos to your site. There are many specific plugins geared toward specific niches, so check out the “Top WordPress Plugins for Every Type of Blog” for more plugins.

Your Second Batch of Plugins: Aesthetics & Enhancements

Now that we have seen a few of the niche-specific plugins, here is a listing of what I feel are seven must-have add-ons to your WordPress blogs. What makes these different from those mentioned in the previous paragraph is that, like the first list we had yesterday, these plugins work well on any type of blog and will dramatically increase the amount of flexibility you have to offer.

Top Blog Plugins (That Aren’t Absolutely Essential!):

Comment Luv: Perhaps one of the best community-based plugins for your blog. This will encourage people to drop comments, and reward them in a way that won’t hurt you!

Brian’s Threaded Comments: The default commenting system in WordPress is not very efficient, allow your guests to reply to other posts in an easy embedded structure!

Comment Relish: This is the plugin that everyone asks me about… you can send follow-up emails to anyone who comments on your blog to lure them into subscribing with the power of Comment Relish

Subscribe Remind: Place a convenient and non-distracting reminder at the end of each of your blog posts to get users to subscribe to your RSS feed — an essential conversion tool to boost your RSS figures

Subscribe to Comments: Let your users keep track of discussion on a particular article — another way to have your users checking back constantly!

TinyMCE Advanced: The default WordPress post editor is decent, but you can make it even better with an upgraded WYSIWYG editor for your blog

Top Commentators: Want to boost commenting? Why not create a top-ten listing of the commentators on your blog! Give your guests a link to their own websites and a reason to talk about your work

With these plugins in your arsenal, you will have yourself a more efficient way to reach users, boost traffic, increase discussion and more! All you need to start your successful blogging career is available at the click of a button.

-The Net Fool

Adding & Installing Plugins

Let’s first discuss how to install new plugins into our WordPress blog. We’ve talked through the system of using FTP to upload files to our website. With this in mind, adding new functionality to your blog is really a matter of downloading new plugins, unzipping the files on your computer, and uploading them to the “/wp-content/plugins/” folder on your blog. Once the files are in there, WordPress will automatically recognize it, and allow you to configure your options right in your Admin panel… easy! If you need a hand, check out the guide posted on WordPress.org.

Your First Batch of Plugins: Necessary Additions

Now that we know our way around installing plugins, I am going to recommend a few to you to try out. Tomorrow, we will cover plugins that improve the looks and function of your website to your visitors. Today, we will be going over add-ons that I consider essentials for any blog or any type.

Plugins you simply need to have:

Akismet: The top-dog spam blocker for your blog… plus it’s free!

All In One SEO: My personal favorite SEO tool for WordPress. Optimize your blog for Google better than ever before (we will configure this in a few days!)

Google XML Sitemaps: Let Google pick up your website quicker than ever before to increase the amount of traffic to your blog

ShareThis / Sociable: Use one of the following plugins to add an easy link to social networking websites that can blast your traffic to the heavens

WordPress Automatic Upgrade: Download this plugin to automatically get upgrades for your plugins and WordPress installation… makes life even easier!

WP Super Cache: Allow your visitor’s browsers to save some information about your blog to have things load faster than ever before

WordPress DB Manager: Everyone needs to back up their site! Create database backups with the click of a button

WWW Redirect: Force browsers to use a “www.” at the beginning of your url, and automatically convert web addresses to this default. This dramatically increases your search engine placements, and is a must for every blog

This batch of 8 plugins should be on every blog that you ever make, as they add new functionality to your website and will increase the amount of views that you get overall. Tomorrow, we’ll get into some great plugins for adding new features to WordPress.

-The Net Fool

There are two ways to set up ads for your blog: manually or automatically. The manual process involves taking orders manually, and going out yourself and slapping in the images & text ads with links to the advertisers websites. This method is really starting to die off as ad systems increase your revenue in the long run and are cost-effective. For this reason, I recommend that you use an automated system.

Downloading an Ad Platform

I am going to recommend to you all what I feel is the best WordPress plugin ever created: OIO Publisher. This is an ad system that you can slap right on top of your blog and literally manage everything. It will generate custom reports for all of your customers, utilize every ad format imaginable and create an automated purchase system for advertisers to put their ads up without you having to get involved. There is no other plugin to my knowledge that does this, and it is a real time-saver. Unfortunately, there is a small price tag that goes along with it… but you can download and use OIO Publisher for $47, which I highly recommend. When you recoup your loss within a month, you will feel the same way.

Naturally, I don’t want to come off as a paid service peddler. I truly believe that OIO is miles ahead of these other platforms… but if you need a free solution there are services available! Again, I highly recommend just buying OIO now, as you will probably only be delaying your eventual purchase by saving a little cash now, but for simple ad serving and rotating you can try these three: WP Ads, PhpAdsNew and Max Blog Ads.

Promoting Your Ads

There are many ways to get advertisers, and while you can eventually just let things sit and the ads will come to you… I recommend actively going out to seek advertisers when you first start your blog. Heck, you are probably only charging $5-$10 a slot per month at this point, so a lot of people will be interested but won’t know you exist! I would set up an account immediately at DigitalPoint forums and Warrior Forum if you have not already, and you can post in the exchange sections! Check out a post I made on Bloggeries.com for a template you can use.

For a blog focused on content (and not 100% profit), you will actually make a lot more money by promoting affiliate offers than by pushing Google Adsense or a similar contextual ad system. This is not to say that you cannot mix and combine, but I feel  that Adsense looks quite tacky compared to an ad from HostGator or another niche blog that wants to see some traffic. Keep this in mind when you seek out offers.

Finally, you can create a dedicated “Advertise” page to list your rates. Most advertisers will look for an area on your blog where they can see your stats (use Google Analytics or another stat tracker to list your pageviews, etc.) and monthly ad block rates. You can view my ad page here. Remember to keep these updated when you change around your rates!

With your new ad system installed and running (very easy with OIO Publisher!), you are well on your way to pulling in lots of money by just making consistent posts on your blog and maintaining a decent reader base.

-The Net Fool

Determining Your Ad Positions

The first step to take when monetizing your blog is to figure out where you want your ads to go. Usually, if it fits in the template when you sketch it out… you can make it work in real life. Therefore, I want everyone to load up their blog and print out what they see. With the print-out in hand, take a pencil and fill in ad blocks where you think they would be best suited.

Here are some of the top-sellers that I recommend:

• Leaderboard (728×90)
• Banner (468×60)
• Button/Block (125×125)
• Skyscraper (120×600)
• Small Square (200×200)
• Square (250×250)

Naturally, the actual location is just as important as the size. Remember that your ads get more valuable the higher up on the page they appear, with the top ads appearing “above the fold” (meaning they are visible when the site loads).

Finding Out Your Ad Rates

Now that we know where things should appear, let’s price it! A lot of people ask me where I get my rates, and how they should start off. Really, it is totally subjective… and unfortunately for you (sorry!), you are going to have to work at it! However, there are a few things that you should keep in mind when first pricing your ad rates.

Start Low
I believe in cutting your clients a deal from the get go. If you are putting ads up for the first time, you definitely want to low-ball your estimates. Why? I would say that there are two reasons. The first, and perhaps most obvious, is that you will sell more. If you want to have advertising,it is important that you push through volume because your spots are appropriately priced. The second reason is that advertisers will be more willing to come back. If you want to have consistent revenue, it is important to make a good deal so that your advertisers feel like you are the right means to get the word out about their product.

Compare It!
The first time I set ad rates, I looked around the internet at some other blogs (namely those in my same niche), and found their advertising pages. With this, you can see exactly what is working… and what isn’t working. Then, try to charge less than them… and see if you can’t find a few advertisers to fill your ad positions.

Go Find Buyers
Sometimes, the advertisers won’t necessarily come to you. With this, it is important to note that the most successful blogs have actually gone out and searched for advertisers themselves. You can try posting on webmaster forums, or simply commenting and asking on other blogs in your niche. Look at who is buying ads, and contact them! It’s not too hard, and if you shoot someone an email with a decent offer, they might just accept.

Tomorrow, we will put up the ads themselves, so get ready to earn!
-The Net Fool

There are two approaches to doing this:

• Start posting, right out of the gate, with your own content
• Put up a “Welcome!” message, really a quasi-placeholder, to start things off

I am going to run through a few examples of each, and give you guys the scoop as to which one I would recommend for your new blogs!

Your First Blog Post

When I first started theNetFool.com, I really didn’t have a handle on what blogging was all about. Heck, if I had a guide like this I would have wasted a lot less time putting up pointless time-consuming posts that got me nowhere. My first post was actually a review of a sportsbook program; that’s right, a sportsbook (for online sports betting?). This concept really had nothing to do with anything… and I figured that I could tackle the world with my website and everyone and their mother would want to read what I had to say. Think again! Blogging is much more about the relationship w/ your readers than anything else, so you want to target your content from the get-go.

Method One: One way to start out blogging is to get right into your content. For my blog, I would be putting out a way to make money online or some type of blogging tip. For another, perhaps you start in with a product review like I offered on theNetFool.com.

Method Two: The preferred method of starting a blog, now that I have tried both ways, is to put in a placeholder welcoming post. Basically, we want to outline to our readers what we are going to be writing about, who we are and why they should subscribe and come back day after day.

• Example 1: John Chow dot com
• Example 2: Winning The Web
• Example 3: Tyler Cruz

Clearly, I wholeheartedly support starting things off with a welcome post. With any new blog, it is going to be slow going from the start. Therefore, we need to insure that we retain a solid core audience by putting out a casual introduction as our starting blog. Nobody wants to be launched into a new blog to read without understanding the face behind it, so aside from our occasional passerby… we want to be informal and friendly from the start!

I recommend keeping things short on your first post regardless of which path you take. But if you stick with my recommendation, you may consider including: who you are, why you are blogging, what you will be blogging about and how readers can subscribe & leave you feedback.

Get that first post out, and join us back for the continued construction on Day 19!
-The Net Fool

First things first, on Day 15 we ran a quick contest to give away a 125×125 banner advertisement. The winner of that competition is: “Aman@BullsBattleBears“, so a big congratulations to you… and thanks for your participation.

Your Next 30-Minute Mission…

On Day 16, we explored the wonderful world of WordPress Pages… and we made our “Contact Us” page to create an easier connection between blogger and reader on our websites. Use your next 30 minutes to make an “About Us” page, much similar to this communications page.

Why “About Us”?

I believe that it is especially important to create an “About” page for any blog simply because so many readers will be looking for it. You may be thinking that people will be reading your material and moving on, but when a reader sees something they like… it is highly likely that they will be compelled to seek out who wrote it! The amount of hits to my About Us page on The Net Fool has been stunning considering that I do not promote it at all. This tells you that the demand is strong, and it is a page that you need to have.

In addition to sheer demand, About pages are nice because they create a better bridge between your readers and you! Much like the contact page, peopel the come across your blog really want to feel that they know the face behind it all. Additionally, people that choose to deal with you in partnerships, advertisements and more typically request to know a bit about you. Why not knock out a step and give them what they want here?

Things to Include on your About Us Page:
- Biography
- Pictures
- About the Blog
- Why You Started the Blog
- Topics that you Cover
- Fun Facts

With this, you should have everything that you need to get started on your “About Us” page. Set those pages up, and be sure to check back tomorrow for more from The Net Fool’s Build-A-Blog Workshop!

-The Net Fool