choosing a good domain name

Yesterday i wrote a post on How to Get Your Blog Noticed Quickly, i gave a updated rundown of techniques that are working lately to get your blog noticed. I spoke about organic search engine traffic which is always the best traffic as it is free.

Now one of the points a mentioned was about choosing a domain name, i stated that you should not stress too much about this as i have found that including your keywords in your domain has little effect on your blogs search engine ranking and you should concentrate more on layout, content and back links. This still stands however literally minutes after writing that post last night i had a very interesting conversation with a friend that has made me look at domain names in a whole new light.

A good family friend came round last night, i told him i just had to finish the post that i was writing, he asked what it was about and i explained about this blog i was writing about how to get your blog noticed and getting free traffic etc.. My friend has very little Internet knowledge and absolutely no Seo experience so i thought what a great opportunity to find out how a clueless Internet user would search for something they were looking for. He started to tell me step by step how he would search for something on the Internet so i thought i would share it with you, after reading his technique you will see why i am today writing this post about choosing a good domain name and why i have suddenly took a different view on how to choose them.

Here's how an inexperienced Internet user searches for keywords

My friend typed Google.com in the search bar and brought up a Google search bar

He then typed in what he was looking for 'buying property in Spain'

Google displayed 441,000 results for his phrase

I then asked him which one he would click on and his answer surprised me, he said the top highlighted ones (which me and you know to be Google ads) must be highlighted because they have paid to be featured and for some reason he is impelled not to click, so my friend as a newbie to the net does not click on ads.

He is then left with the first page of organic search engine results and i asked him which one he would click on, "is it the one with the catchy title?" i asked, "no" he said, he explained how he chooses which site he wants to view and it is the one with the domain name that is most rel event.

This really surprised me and i asked him why, he said that the site with a domain name that is most relevent to his search would be the most useful to him, he said is a site is purely about his search term of buying property in Spain then he would be able to get the best information from that site. He went on to tell me an example, he said take Manchester united for example, if i type in Manchester united he would click on the website Manchesterunited.com because all other sites would be imitation sites. This was really interesting, i explained to him how webmasters often struggle choosing a good domain name as most are already taken and what if he was missing out on a good site by only clicking on the ones that appear to be sole about his keyword, he said if a webmaster knew enough info about the topic then he wouldn't make his website about anything but the topic and he would ensure the domain name reflects the topic, otherwise it would just be a site about loads of topics covered briefly.

How to Choose a Domain Name

After having this conversation and hearing how a genuine internet user with no knowledge of search engines would search for keywords i have come to the conclusion that although having your keywords in your domain name wont really get you higher search engien ranking but it will increase your chances of getting more visitors.

How to Get Your Blog Noticed Quickly

Tips to Get Your Blog Noticed Quickly

It has been a while now since this blog was first started and allot has changed as regards search engine optimization and getting blogs noticed. So i thought i would have a general sum up of techniques i think can get your blog noticed quickly. You may have other methods and theories which work so i am not dampening then, i am just reporting on what i personally have found is working lately.

Using Meta Tags in your Blog

As stated above this is only my personal opinion and research but i don't think meta tags are having much of an impact as regards getting high search engine ranking with your blog. In articles and previous posts i have always emphasized that there is no harm in including meta tags but i personally have found that lately they make no impact on a blogs rank so i have dropped meta tags from my seo routine for now. If you would like to include them you can learn how to add meta tags in this article.

Choosing a Domain name for your Blog

It is always best to try and get a domain name that includes your main keyword. Don't worry that your using a free blog hosts such as blogger or word press, do a Google search for your keyword you will see that free blogger blogs for example rank in the top 10. Take make money online for example, this guy who has a blogger account does amazingly and i salute him. Don't stress too much about the domain though, if we are talking about organic search engine ranking then it is more important to include the keywords in the content than the domain.

Choosing the Layout of Your blog

This is important because you have to think like a search engine crawler, when it scans your site it reads across the top, down the left and then to the right so include all your keywords where their spiders can see them. Remember they cannot read images, flash and alot of java. It used to be that websites were laid out with menu bars to the side, now have you noticed alot of sites adding them to the right, put all your junk in the right collum as the crawler will read this last. You want the crawlers to spot your keywords as soon as they land on your pages, that way they know exactly what your blog is about and rank you accordingly.

Blog Content

This is the most important thing to concentrate on if you want to get your blog noticed. You need to watch your keywords, too many will get you penalized and too little will get you low ranked, aim for arround a 5% keyword density and you will be fine. Again as above use h1 headlines or post titles, let the search engine crawlers be able to spot your keywords.

Back links for your Blog

If you get quality one way back links to your blog then you will most definately get your blog noticed quickly. Make sure they are relevent though, no point having a dolls house website link to you if your blog is about fishing, get my drift? How to get back links to your blog

See my previous post for great tips on getting one way back links That's enough for tonight ill post again soon with some more of my findings to help get your blog noticed quickly, in the meantime if you need to brush up on how to make money blogging then heres a good read for you

How to Get Free Back links to Website or Blog

What are Back links?

Back links are basically links to your website or blog and they are really useful because getting back links is one of the major factors of getting high search engine ranking.

How to get Back Links

You get reciprocal back links very easily but these are not as good as one way links, reciprocal back links are when you have to link back or exchange links, you really need to get one way links if you want to get good search engine ranking. You can get one way back links many ways: Social Networking sites Commenting on blogs that have similar content to yours forums free ads and classifieds submitting articles Directories

I have recently done a test as regards getting back links from article submissions this is what i did.

(1)I set up a good tracking system on my website which told me where traffic was coming from, i did this so i could see if any of my work was paying off.

(2)I submitted many articles to lots of article sites like ezine, go articles etc..

(3)I added a back link to the first and last line of the article

(4)I made sure my main keyword was in the title and in 5-6% of the article content

(5) I repeated this for all ten article directories making sure i changed the content to i did not get stung by the duplicate content rules.

Results of my article submission test

I found that over 3 days two of the articles brought in most traffic out of the ten i submitted they were

goarticles.com and dropjack.com

Free Traffic with soprano

A few moments ago i was checking by visitor stats for my Earn Money Online website and i was suprised to see a large ammount of free traffic from a source called soprano. I had not heard of this before so i went onto the site to check it out. It is a directory with a unique feature. You can get votes for you website link. Mine does not have many votes yet i still am getting over 200 unique visitors a month to my website.

Not bad considering i dont remember adding the link at all. It is a worth a try adding your blog or website url you will get some free traffic

Fix Sitemap Error in Google Webmaster tools, Invalid XML: too many tags

Today i did my routine of logging into Google Webmaster tools to check for any errors and there was a red site map warning next to one of my blogger blogs. I was baffled by it as the only problem i had encountered before with site maps was not getting one excepted at all, not come across this site map warning before.

I am not an expert on these kind of errors, i am more of a person who waits until i get a problem like this one saying Invalid XML: too many tags. I then stick with it until i find a solution.

How to fix the Error

This solution fixed my error and the warning sign was removed, i hope it is of some help to those out there having the same site map error with their blog. If you found another solution please feel free to leave it in a comment.

1. Remove site map 2. Add another site map under general site map selection 3. Add http://xxx.blogspot.com/atom.xml?redirect=false Replacing xxx with your blog name.

Good Luck

Site Map Error Update

I reported earlier today that the above site map code fixed my blogger site map error however this evening it is now showing as error state. I am going to try re-submitting the origional site map code rss.xml?max-results=500&start-index=1 I will repot back. I am please to report that readding the origional site map code to my blog has fixed the error

Duplicate Content can damage your search engine ranking

Issue with Duplicate Content

Today i want to write a post from personal experience, as you have guessed it is about Duplicate content. I have a website that regularly ranks in the top 10 positions on Google for over 20 keywords. I have noticed these past few weeks that certain pages have become sand boxed and my rankings have vanished. I have been baffled for many weeks. Last night i was reading a forum about duplicate content and i have now solved the mystery as to why i was no longer getting high search engine ranking with my particular site. It was being duplicated by a Blogger.

How to find out if your content is being copied?

I read last night on a forum about a website that analyzes your pages and tells you who is copying your content copyscape.com. Sure enough i did this immediately and i was alarmed at the results. We have all heard of changing content and making it look like your own but this blogger blatantly copied my content, my poor punctuation included, i was gobsmacked. The blogger has absolutely no idea that duplicate content will not get him anywhere, not only is it illegal but it will get him bad points with Google who regularly scan for duplicate content.

How to approach someone who has copied your content

Remain professional at all times. Email then and ask then to remove it, they may not know that it is wrong to copy your content. If they do not remove it then you can fax their host explaining how they have copied your content, use article references and dates you wrote the content, their host will launch an investigation and they have the power to shut their blog or website down.

How do i stop my content being copied?

If someone is out to copy your content then they will copy it, you can however state on your pages that you do not like your content being copied and that you will take it further. New blogger or website builders may not be aware that duplicating content is illegal.

Is there a HTML code to stop your content being copied?

Yes there is a code to disable right click but as i have enabled it on this blog you wont be able to right click and copy it, if you leave me a comment with your email address i will email you the code.

How to Send Partial Blog Post

Sending Only Part of Your Blog Post Feed Why would you only want to send part of your blog post to your reader? Well the whole point of having blog subscribers is to send them notifications when you write a new post to your blog, But what if they only read the entire post from the email and do not visit your blog! What would be the point? You don't get any traffic. If you have email subscriptions turned on with feed burner for example, then there is a way of only sending part of your blog post to readers which will encourage them to click on a link that lead them to your blog. How do i send only part of my blog post? Let us use the example of blogger: How to send a partial post with blogger 1. Go to Dashboard 2. Settings 3. Feed 4. Scroll to select short appose to full Your done! Next time you write a post then only part of your post will be sent to your reader. Make sure you write a captivating title!