I’m a big fan of simplicity when it comes to SEO. I am not into following every latest trend or trick. I think far too much detracts from the most important part of blogging - writing.

Therefore, when I work with my bloggers, I keep it simple.

TOP 10 SEO TIPS:

1. Set out strong categories. It’s a very basic step, but often not considered effectively.
   • Keep it simple
   • Research - know your top search terms, and compare like searches
   • Emphasize your keywords, even if it requires repetitiveness (like celebrity names or show names used in various ways)
   • Organize - I have moved towards using category hierarchies on almost all our b5 blogs in order to increase the number of categories for SEO while also maximizing navigation ease for the readers
2. Name your images. This populates greater keywords into the post, and also promotes Google Image traffic
   • image-name-01.jpg where "-" is a space and numbers are used for multiple images
   • "Image Description Text" in Title / Alt Text areas
3. Use effective titles. Short, with strongest keywords first.
4. Use text effects (bold or header code) - also good for readers on longer posts
5. Use bullets and other lists, when appropriate - they tend to lean towards search friendly phrases
6. Use tags - both general tags (which lend themselves well to general searches) and specific tags. As many as appropriate.
7. Promote yourself - use services such as Digg, Reddit or Stumbleupon, as well as forum participation, to promote your posts
8. Participate on other blogs - leave useful comments on other sites. In many cases, this becomes a link back, and in best cases, will lend to those authors noticing you and linking to you in future
9. Watch your text length - don’t let images or video clips live on their own. Describe them in enough text for search engines to appropriately identify your posts.
10. Use Pages to summarize and link to important posts
    • Depending on your setup, these can be more optimally positioned for SEO as they will usually be blog-name/page-title.
    • Effective pages will give you the opportunity to highlight your most popular content - to link to many posts on your site. Examples include Top 10 lists, Popular Post excerpts, TV Spoilers, Celebrity Biographies

SEO does not have to be complicated. The best SEO tips are things you can do every day to make your site better.

At b5, I can skip past one important area (posting regularly), because of our contract & topic areas, but for many sites, this should not be overlooked.

Tags: seo, seo tips, top seo tips, top 10, search engine optimization, search engine, traffic

I noticed a new Amazon affiliate notice in my account today for AmazonUnbox Video Downloads. Basically, it’s a service like iTunes for downloading videos for a fee. As an affiliate, you can earn a percentage rate on video downloads, as well as products now.

Amazon Unbox allows you and your site visitors to purchase or rent your favorite movies and TV shows to download and watch on your PC – all in DVD quality…

Associates are eligible to earn 10%, a full 1.5% above the highest earnings tier, on all Unbox referrals (up to $1.50 per item). There is no limit to the number of items on which referral fees are earned.

The Unbox page leverages the information held in Amazon - sales, clicks, etc - to configure popularity recommendations and increased downloads. I have not tried the video quality, nor will likely, but it could conceivably be an alternative for many to the iTunes distribution model.

(aff)

Tags: amazon unbox, amazon, unbox, video downloads, amazon affiliate

YouTube has announced today that it will be enabling a revenue share system:

"Chad Hurley, co-founder of YouTube, said Saturday that the wildly successful site will start sharing revenue with its millions of users.

Hurley, who along with the site’s co-founders sold YouTube to Google for $1.65 billion in November, said one of the major innovations the site is working on is a way to allow users to be paid for content.

‘We are getting an audience large enough where we have an opportunity to support creativity, to foster creativity through sharing revenue with our users,’ Hurley said at the World Economic Forum. ‘So in the coming months, we are going to be opening that up.’ " [Source]

Does this have something to do with the YouTube deals? (Google, Warner Music, Verizon, NBC, etc) How content will be syndicated? To identify material that is copyright? Or to simply bump up the marketing hype and make YouTube even more viral than it already is.

So, my question, being in the Entertainment industry - what constitutes original content? What is the line for ‘parody’ or fair use? I know already networks take different stances on it. I’ve even been thanked by the WB for my videos, while had one from another network stripped. So, how will this change the system?

Via digg ; Tags: youtube, revshare, rev share, revenue share, revenue sharing, video, video blogging, video blog, youtube money, youtube deals, making money online

Google is expanding its video advertising testing with new ads from BMG and Warner.

According to the article, Google announced today that it will work with these two major music labels to embed video advertisements over the next 4 week test period on a select set of websites.

"Over the past few months, we have run tests to figure out how we work with our partners and advertisers to combine high quality video content with ads and then distribute them (over) the Google AdSense network," Google said in statement.

The test with the two music labels follows an earlier public trial of Google’s video advertising system with Viacom’s MTV Networks, which provided music videos to run on a select number of Web sites running Google ads…

As a example, Warner Music has defined multiple video channels along themes like "rock music" or featuring the "Divas of Pop Music." A Web site owner can select a video channel and embed it on a section of the site dedicated to running Google AdSense ads. Visitors then can click to watch ad-supported videos within the video channel on sites running the ads.

Tags: google, bmg, warner, music labels, video, video advertising, google adsense

Text Link Ads (aff) are now available for Blogger sites (latest version of Blogger).

I have been extremely happy with TLA for the many months we’ve been with them on our Wordpress blogs, and they are likely to see quite a large increase based on the availability to Blogger blogs.

Tags: text link ads, blogger, blog advertising

There is a new pay-to-blog/pay-to-review service announced today, via Text Link Ads (aff), which promises to pay bloggers to review products. It’s called ReviewMe.

The concept is similar to the much debated Payperpost service, but seems to offer better incentives:

• Existing Text Link Ads customers can be automatically accepted into ReviewMe
• It is not limited to the US alone
• You can choose to decline a review
• Your price is predetermined by your blog’s success
• Payout is quite high per review ($20-$200)
• You earn 50% of the review price
• Your review does not need to be positive

They have started off very well. The interface is excellent, one of the best I’ve seen yet, and they’ve kicked off with a very ambitious marketing plan - a giveaway of $25,000 for reviews of their service. Plus, so you get the swing of things, the review of their service is paid at your going rate (but my review content has not been biased by that). Now, my marketing self is quite impressed with this.

So, this is my first shot at testing out their service. I don’t know yet what kind of advertisers sit behind the screen, so when I do, I will report back. It’s the first service in a while that I’ve tried that has something different to offer.

Tags: reviewme, advertising, blogs, pro blogging, blogging, pay per post

This summer I have been really focusing on the growth of my celebrity/entertainment blogs on b5media. Seeing what I could do to build up the community of readers and provide them with more value.

I’ve done some backend tweaking of templates and plugins and whatnot, and on the writing side, I’ve focused on providing faster turnaround on news, more pictures, more polls, a contest or two, and more focused writing.

The type of focus I’ve gone towards has been in how I spin the content. Leaving more up to the readers, asking questions, provoking them to comment. And I’ve watched how people comment and turned that around into better and more focused writing.

As a rule, I’m fairly stand offish on these blogs. I don’t go in much to comment. Most of the comments are fairly "teen" based, going ga ga for the latest celeb sighting. And that’s totally fine by me. However, this summer I did make a point of watching the comments, and sometimes going in to direct them to other posts or things of that nature.

As time went on, the comments did grow in number. I cannot take all the credit for it - I am fully aware that this is summer vacation and my main readers are on holidays, spending their timing browsing my sites and others. I just kind of built on that and gave them reasons to stay on my sites.

This month in particular I went crazy on post volume. And I have as a result seen a daily growth in visitors. Many thousands more. I am sure the latest search indexing was in my favor and I’m getting all that. I am on page 1 or 2 for all main celebs I cover, sometimes quite high, and that is a bonus.

I’ve actually been really happy with the progress of my Gilmore Girls blog in particular this summer. It’s in reruns so that usually means a downturn. However, I had two big things going for me that I totally milked. First, the creators left. Second, one of the main stars broke up with her boyfriend and former co-star. Couple that with the uncertainty of how long the show will last, and it’s been a blast. I actually enjoy the blog so I do interact in the comments and they are usually "higher quality" comments too. Today I had my first surprise. For no reason I can gather, I had pages more of comments over yesterday. The highest comment count I’ve ever had.

I want to take the things I have learned from this industry and apply them to other blogs in other ways. I think it’s been a great experiment!

Tags: blogs, comments, commenting, blog comments

I was reading this post about the over-reliance on traffic by many bloggers - and how, in many cases, this traffic-is-the-only-goal mentality has meant community falls through the cracks.

When it comes to what blogging means to both readers and writers, the numbers ultimately matter very little. I don’t go up to someone and say "hey, I found you because your traffic is increasing this month" - I’d be more likely to say "hey, that was a great article" or something. The difference is apparent - it’s not just the focus, but also the dialogue.

When bloggers get focused on increasing their traffic, they will be meme trackers - following whatever is hot enough to bring in spikes in traffic and subsequent links. But their all-over-the-place-ness can leave the readers who arrive and decide to subscribe a little confused. "Traffic whores" don’t really care about the subscribers - about inviting comments or dialogue - but more about climbing in Google.

When you shift your attention to an abstract thing called PageRank and away from actual people, you lose something. Your point becomes only money and not community. And, to me, that misses the great opportunities in blogging.

Now, you might bash me for following these lines with blogs like this or this, but I have trouble straying too far away from the importance I place on community. I’ve added new content areas when readers ask, shared emails with readers, and started up an active set of polls to keep readers having fun. So, while I may blog anything hot on the gossip pages for the money of it, the community of it is just as enriching.

In other cases, traffic is completely unimportant to me. This blog, for example, is highly skewed towards subscribers rather than search traffic. And that’s great by me. The goal of Blogging Help is really not money - nor has it ever been.

So - do you place too much reliance on traffic for your goal setting? How do you think that could bias what you write about or how?

Tags: traffic whore

Not too long ago I signed up for some new ad programs. I got into the zone and signed up for a few:

• Text Link Ads
  • Sites must be approved
  • Text ads
  • Get listed in their marketplace quickly
  • Earnings: good start
• AdBrite
  • Text ads
  • Tag your site into searches of the Marketplace
  • Earnings: nada
• BlogAds
  • invite only by limited sponsors (we’re not a sponsor)
  • good once you can get listed and into circulation for people to actually find you. Best if you can be a part of certain "groups" (yet another application)
  • Earnings: nada
• AdZaar
  • Must be PR 6 to qualify
  • Flat earnings per month, per blog
  • Text links (see below Search on the blog)
  • Earnings: very good
  • (contact me for referral)

So, these 4 new programs (well, the two that actually make money) supplement my current revenue streams with AdSense, AdGenta, and Amazon.

Tags: blog, monetize, money, advertising, ads, blogging

Do you notice any resemblance here:

My site - Lohan Groupie

Fraudulent site - http://lindsay-lohan.emmv.com/

Yep, it’s the same content. Right down to the categories, archives, tags and even Qumana footer. Simple copy paste of every bit of code I’ve ever produced. And I’m not their only target. The Desperate Housewives b5 blog is in their net too.

So, we’ve contacted their DNS with a legal notice. And I’ve emailed Technorati to stop following their tags (since they’ve stopped picking mine up and are showing theirs). And contacted Google to stop payment on ads profiting from my content.

This, indeed, is content theft at it’s worst. The person responsible has put time, thought and effort into the practice. It’s a nice looking site. Optimized for ads, in many programs. Contains photo galleries, blogroll (not including my site, of course), and a nice header. Not like most spam sites that are obvious as to their nature. This one "looks" valid and honest. Even has the audacity to put a copyright notice on the bottom of the site.

So, we’ll see how this progresses. Mean time, everything I write will instantly go there. Frustrating.

Tags: theft, blogging, content theft, copyright, spam

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Jeremy Wright is selling a big blog (estimated to be worth over $40k), and I have a contest going over on Blogaholics to guess which blog it could be.

Jeremy has kindly offered up a prize of cash or ads plus his book. It’s a good deal, so hop on over and check out the hints, then toss in your vote.

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So I’m going to make up a term here and call it a "forum post" - it’s the closest thing I can think of to describe what happens to certain posts.

What I mean by "forum post" is a post where readers treat the post as if it were a forum, engaging fully in comments with each other. In so doing, the readers begin to focus their energies in replying to comments, not to the post content.

Why is this significant? From my perspective, it does two things: it continually updates my post as they enter a new comment. I like that, it’s good for Google. It increases the content on that page without action on my part, and thereby puts it higher in the search engine for both content and update frequency.

Secondly, it keeps my readers coming back. If they are engaged, they want to come back to see the responses and again continue the dialogue.

I see this particularly with my celebrity blogs. Random posts just explode into forum posts with 60+ comments infighting about something completely irrelevant to the post. I let it happen. Encourage it. Let slip some more angry comments to entice people to respond back. It’s a game I play.

But, over time, with the high volume of content I push out onto these blogs, those posts lose their position in search and the comment frequency declines, or shifts to other posts.

So, here’s my experiment:

I am going to take one blog, Hilary Duff, and I am going to see what I can do to revive those posts and make my site more of a forum. When I use certain phrases I know to be popular search terms, for example "Hilary & Joel", I will link back to a "forum post" of some sort. Thereby forcing Google to recrawl that post, up its position, and get readers to pop over.

Will it work? We’ll see. I hope so. Creating a "forum" environment on this specific topic is profitable. The audience is the right audience. They stay, they click, and sometimes they even buy. They help my blog significantly, and even talk about it on forums. They like my blog because it’s easier to use than a forum (duh), so I think it could work.

Will keep you posted :)

Tags: blog, forum, forum post, blogging, blog promotion, post popularity, teens, money, profitable, clicking

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Here’s a funny story about how we took a piece of garbage and made something nice, and profitable, from it.

1. We took a used lightbulb, and I made it into a Christmas ornament.
2. I decided to share it on Blogaholics
3. On a whim, I submitted it to Make since they were doing some Christmas stuff
4. I got a link back from Make, Lifehacker and Treehugger - including all the accompanying traffic

That’s one easy way to turn trash into something profitable!

Christmas time is very enjoyable for me. I love my crafts, and wanted to share that. And, people were generous in return.

Tags: christmas, ornaments, linking, make, diy, links, blogging

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As I previously posted, Google has started a referral program for AdSense and Firefox. Chitika also has a referral program with pretty much the exact same banner format.

Well, I decided to try it out on Blogaholics. First, low on the sidebar, then higher up.

My results after a couple of weeks… nothing. Absolutely nothing. About 2 clicks total. But, since you make money only when someone signs up and/or uses the product, clicks are worth nothing.

Here’s the problem as I see it:

1) relevancy - they were fairly relevant on Blogaholics, but would be perhaps more on Blogging Help. Would that mean more clicks? Maybe a couple more, but I don’t expect them because….

2) format - they are not "text ads" - they are banners. Graphical banners. And, as well all know, people tune out graphic banners. Hence why AdSense does so well with text ads over image ones. Surprise surprise.

I think after one more week I’ll dump all referrals. I’ll leave up Firefox, since I love Firefox, but that’ll be it.

How have your experiences been with the referral program?

Tags: google, google referral, referral program, google adsense, adsense, firefox, chitika, banner ads, ad formats, making money with blogs

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In what I assume would be a push to Christmas, Google announces Themed Ad Units

So, I investigated, and here is the description page:

What are themed ad units?

As part of our ongoing effort to provide ad designs that will improve results for both advertisers and publishers, we now offer themed ad units - ad units that display themed colors and graphics during holidays and special events. You can view examples of themed ad units by visiting our Ad Formats page.

Whenever themed ad units are available, we’ll display them only to users in the appropriate locations, as determined by user IP address. For example, Fourth of July-themed ads would be visible only to users located in the U.S., while users throughout the world might see ads with a New Year’s Eve theme.

You can enable or disable themed ad units by following these steps:

1. Log in to your account at www.google.com/adsense.

2. Go to the My Account tab.

3. On the Account Settings page, scroll down to the ‘Ad Type Preferences’ section and click ‘Edit.’

4. Depending on your preference, check or uncheck the box next to ‘Enable themed ad units when available.’

5. Click ‘Save changes.’ Your selection will apply to all your AdSense ad units.

Well, when I took a look at ad formats available, this is what I saw. No Christmas theme? I am not really going to enable them, since it might drop my CTR at this time when it’s going up for the holiday, so I won’t know for sure. My question: is there a Christmas theme?