Net Biz Whiz

How to Have Your Blogroll Show on Your Home Page Only

Shawn S — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 18:04:41 +0000

For those of you running WordPress with a blogroll in your sidebar, you might want to set up your blogroll to show on your home page only. Why? There are two good reasons: it’s better for you and it’s better for the sites listed in your blogroll. It’s better for you because it minimizes PageRank bleeding. Unless they carry the nofollow tag, all links pass along some of your PageRank to whatever page is being linked to. Having your blogroll appear on every page of your website only increases the number of offsite links which you are giving PageRank to. If you have five sites in your blogroll and 100 pages on your site, that makes 500 links which could be draining your PageRank. By having your blogroll show on your home page only, that number would be reduced from 500 to just five.

It’s also better for the sites listed in your blogroll. Using the previous example, each site listed in your blogroll would receive 500 inbound links from your site not counting any links you might give them in your content. This just isn’t natural and Google realizes this. What reason would there be to link to another site 500 times? None really, and this is why the search engines have begun to devalue site wide links (those that appear on every page of your site). By having your blogroll show only on the home page, each site in your blogroll will receive just one link, but it will be considered a higher quality link by the search engines and will likely be coming from the page on your website with the highest PageRank, your home page.

Placing the blogroll on your home page only is simple to do in WordPress. All you need to do is edit your sidebar code by replacing your blogroll code with the following:

EXISTING BLOGROLL CODE

Now your blogroll will only show on your home page, you will minimize your PageRank bleeding and the websites you are linking to will receive higher quality links from you.

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Is Your Meta Tag Title Driving Traffic the Other Way?

Shawn S — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 04:05:07 +0000

If your website is ranking well but you don’t seem to be getting your expected share of traffic, you might want to take a look at your meta tag titles. In case you’re wondering, the meta tag title is the text heading that appears in the title bar or tab area of your browser. The search engines use the meta title as part of their method of deciding what your page is about, but of course it’s not the only part. They also look at other factors such as the content of your page and the anchor text of inbound links. More importantly however, the meta title is the title of the listing that you see in the search results of Google, Yahoo, MSN and others. This is what the user will see before determining whether or not to click on your listing and proceed to your website. Writing an effective meta title can mean the difference between the user clicking on your website or going somewhere else.

How do you write an effective meta tag title? You have to sell the click. Often, as webmasters, we try to cram all the keywords we want to rank for inside our meta title. Sometimes people write incredibly long and spammy titles that end up looking more like a novel. Let’s look at two examples of meta tag titles for a fictitious search for “two piece golf balls”.

Golf Balls|Cheap Golf Balls|Discount Golf Balls|Two Piece Golf Balls|Tour Golf Balls

It’s easy for the search engines to see that as spam. There’s really no reason for the phrase “golf balls” to show up that many times in your title now is there? It’s just an indication of a webmaster who is trying to cover all the bases and make his page rank for multiple keyword phrases. But let’s get back to the user who has just searched for two piece golf balls. What if this next title showed up just below the previous one?

Tour Approved Two Piece Golf Balls at Discount Prices

Now I don’t know about you, but had I searched for two piece golf balls and those two results appeared at positions one and two, I would click on the second result first without a doubt. Why? Because it’s easy to read and tells me the website has exactly what I’m looking for. Notice that the second result has the main keyword phrase of golf balls but still includes the secondary keywords of tour, two piece and discount as well. Unlike the first one, however, it is much easier to read and will be much more likely to result in a clickthrough from someone looking for two piece golf balls.

Just remember that the meta tag title is an advertisment. You want the user to click on that title and come to your website. So, if you’re traffic isn’t quite up to par, examine your meta tag titles and put yourself in the user’s shoes. Are you selling the click?

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How to Use HTML Anchor Text Links

Shawn S — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 18:40:42 +0000

This may seem like a very basic webmaster concept, but many of those who are new to building websites do not know how to use html anchor text links in their content and some of those who do know do not use them properly. If you don’t know what anchor text is, it’s the text on a website that you can click on and it takes you to another page or site. It’s usually a different color than the other text and may be underlined, although not always. The actual words being used to create the link is called the anchor text. This text helps tell the search engine spiders what the page being linked to is about.

For example, if you have a website about shoes and you link to another page on your site using the words “funny clown shoes”, then you are telling the search engines that particular page is about funny clown shoes. However, I see all the time where people use the words “click here” in their anchor text. This is telling the search engines that your page is about “click here” which makes no sense and won’t help your page rank for funny clown shoes. By using “funny clown shoes” instead, you are telling the search engines that your page is about funny clown shoes and when they follow that link and find actual content on your page talking about clown shoes, then the chances of your page showing up somewhere in the search results for “funny clown shoes” is much higher.

How do you create html anchor text links? If you are using a WYSIWYG editor like WordPress has, you can just highlight the desired text, click on the button in the toolbar that looks like a little chain link and insert the desired page’s url into the appropriate box. However, if you don’t have a WYSIWYG editor, you can use html instead. Just insert the following code into your content making sure to replace the text and url with your specific information. Make sure you don’t leave out any characters.

your url here“>your anchor text here

So for example, this: Google
will give you this: Google

Now you know the most basic elements of using html anchor text links to help build your rankings and drive more targeted traffic to your site.

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Build a Niche Store Review

Shawn S — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 16:59:37 +0000

Back in April while researching some products on ClickBank I came across a piece of software called Build a Niche Store, often referred to as BANS. At first glance I thought it looked like another get rich quick scam but after further browsing of the site and doing some Google searches I decided to lay my money down and try it out. In a nutshell, BANS is a website builder that makes it extremely easy to set up eBay affiliate sites with the goal of earning sales commissions from the eBay Partner Network, eBay’s affiliate arm.

For those who may never have set up their own website, the process is really not all that difficult. First, you need a domain name, but be sure and choose one without any domain name trademark issues. Domain names can be purchased for less than ten bucks a year from online sites known as registrars, the most popular being GoDaddy but I recommend Namecheap as well. Second, you need a hosting account. These vary greatly in cost and features but a basic account can be purchased for less than $100 per year with some hosts offering monthly payment plans. BANS recommends HostGator for their software and it seems to work seamlessly with the BANS software. You should check out several HostGator reviews as well as other host reviews before making your final decision. After getting your domain name and hosting account set up, you are ready to install BANS. Its manual guides you step by step through the installation process and you can easily have an eBay affiliate site up and ready to make money in an hour or less.

BANS succeeds greatly in making it easy to set up an eBay affiliate site but being so easy can also be a negative thing. By making it so easy, it also makes it easy to set up a site and then do nothing. In today’s affiliate marketing environment, Google doesn’t seem to care too much for websites that are nothing more than affiliate doorways to a merchant site. You’ve got to add something valuable to your site such as unique articles, product reviews or commentary about your niche. Offering your users nothing more than links to eBay will only put you at risk of being removed from Google’s index and since being in the search results is the key to getting traffic to your niche store, it will be hard to make any money if users never find you.

My personal experience with BANS has been somewhat of a roller coaster ride. I made my money back and more in my first month. The next two months fared about the same as the first. Because of my early success, I got too confident and left the sites sitting there stupidly thinking they would continue to grow. However, the opposite happened and my fourth month brought nearly nothing. I got discouraged and took some time off then came back with a stronger strategy. Now, any sites I build are strictly content based, meaning that if you removed all the auctions and other affiliate ads on the site there would still be enough content left to have something worthy of presenting to the user. I’ve just recently launched my first site using this strategy and I’m pleased with the early results.

I think one of the greatest things bout BANS is the community forum. It’s one of the best and most active forums I’ve been on and I’ll have to say I think the forum alone has been worth the price. There are lots of great and helpful people on there. The knowledge I have gained through the forum concerning not only niche store building, but Internet marketing in general, has been immeasurable. If you decide to give BANS a try, look me up on the forum. You’ll find me there as Shawn S.

If you don’t have the time to put into maintaining a website, then affiliate marketing may not be for you, but if you are able to commit a few hours each week adding something valuable to your site then BANS is an easy way to start making money in affiliate marketing.

Do you have a BANS story?

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WordPress Sitemap Plugin by Dagon Design

Shawn S — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 15:25:39 +0000

If you’re running WordPress on any of your sites and wish to have a human readable sitemap, then take a look at the WordPress sitemap plugin by Dagon Design. Some webmasters only worry about having an XML sitemap for the search engines, but others like to have a sitemap for the user as well. This plugin makes doing that a snap. All you have to do is configure the plugin, create a page (typically named Sitemap) and insert a short piece of code in the html section of the page editor. Presto! Now you’ve got a nice sitemap for your users.

The sitemap is highly configurable with options to display pages and posts, posts only or pages only. Posts are displayed by category and can be shown with comment counts and dates if desired. You can exclude any pages or categories you don’t want displayed. Password-protected pages and future-dated pages can be excluded as well, so any scheduled posts you have won’t be displayed until actually published.

I use this plugin on several of my sites, including this one. You can check out a demo of the WordPress sitemap plugin at Dagon Design.

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Textbroker Review: Not Bad, But Not Great Either

Shawn S — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 15:07:42 +0000

If you’re a niche store builder then you know sometimes the most difficult thing is keeping your sites fresh by frequently adding good unique content, especially if you have many sites. In some cases the problem is that you have a niche that you aren’t really knowledgeable about, but often times the problem may simply be a lack of time. A solution that many webmasters use is to outsource part of their content creation. There are several content services available. Some of them are big name websites while others are lesser known and can be found on various Internet marketing related forums. One that I recently chose to use is Textbroker so I thought I would write a little review about them.

You can sign up as a member of Textbroker free of charge and there’s no monthly fee but there is a $0.15 charge for each order placed. Before placing an order you must deposit some funds into your account using either a credit card or PayPal. After funding your account you can place an order for your content. Textbroker’s authors are U.S. based and are ranked in quality from two to five stars.Prices begin at $0.010 per word for a two star author and range up to $0.067 per word for a five star author. With the processing fee, a 500 word article from a two star author will cost $5.15. You can state in your order what level of author you desire. The nice thing is that you may select two stars, but your order is viewable by any author with two stars or more so it’s possible that your content could be written by a higher quality author. If this happens, you only get charged for the price of the level you requested so there’s no additional charge to worry about. All articles must pass Copyscape before they are returned to you so duplicate content issues shouldn’t be a concern.

I deposited my funds and placed orders for six different articles trying some at each of the two, three and four star levels. Most of the articles took around three to four days to be completed. I would have to say that the level of the author seemed to have no relationship on the quality of the articles. The best ones I got were written by two star authors. None of the articles had any spelling issues and grammar issues were rare but the biggest complaint of mine was that all but one of the articles just didn’t read like they were from someone who was knowledgeable about the subject. That’s not what I needed. I could have achieved that on my own!

My verdict on Textbroker? If you’re looking for content to use for article directory submissions, Textbroker will serve that purpose fine. But, if you’re looking for unique, high quality content to place on your website without having to rewrite or edit it, then I would look elsewhere.

Have you tried Textbroker? If so, leave a comment with your own review.

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Beware of Domain Name Trademark Infringement!

Shawn S — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 17:27:57 +0000

Most webmasters have at some point in time registered a domain name that contained a trademark. Sometimes, it may be completely unintentional or it may be for legitimate use while other times it is deliberate and people just decide to roll the dice with it. Regardless of the intent, domain name trademark infringement is a serious issue that all webmasters need to be aware of.

First of all, there are completely legitimate uses for using someone else’s trademark in your domain name. A non-commercial site is protected in just about all instances, but it has to be strictly non-commercial. A site consisting of a review, critique or commentary of the trademark holder is a fair use of a trademark as long as there is no commercial intent. What makes a website commercial? Well, basically if there is anything on the site that earns revenue then the site is considered commercial and use of the trademark would be considered infringement. Even a Google AdSense block could make your site commercial because you would be earning revenue from it.

I have personal experience with domain name trademark infringement and had one of my sites taken down by Hostgator. I registered discounttoolzone.com and had a BANS site on it for a few months before I converted it to a WP Review Site. Just after relaunching the site, I received an email from Hostgator that my site had been taken down due to trademark infringement. It turned out that a small company named Tool Zone had complained to Hostgator and requested them to take action, which they promptly did. I had done a trademark search at the US Patent and Trademark Office for “discount tool zone” and got no results so I thought I was safe. I never even thought of just searching for the phrase “tool zone”. Personally, I still question whether their trademark actually covered my name too but I decided it just wasn’t worth fighting for and moved the site to a new domain which happened to be a phrase that got quite a good number of searches and had little competition. I was ranking at number three for that phrase within two weeks so I feel like I made some lemonade out of life’s lemons.

The moral of the story is to always be aware of domain name trademark issues when searching for a domain to register. Do a trademark search at the US PTO and make sure your domain name is clear of any infringement. Is it really worth putting all the hours necessary to create a valuable site only to have it removed down the road when a company’s lawyers come calling? I don’t think so.

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