Many times with a web site or weblog ( blog ), there comes a time when you will want to start generating money from all your hard work of maintaining your site. One form of monetizing is selling advertising on your site, such as in the form of selling text links on your site.

You have a few options to chose from, but by far the most popular services are Google Adsense, Adbrite, and Text Link Ads. All three services have a large following of use, and provide excellent documentation to get you started in the process of signing up, adding your code, and collecting your revenue. These are excellent choices for those of you that write niche content that people love to read, and want nothing more than a 1..2..3 approach to making some passive income from your site with no real thought to your future.

Now, don’t get me wrong.. I think all these services are great. They are run by some fantastic people, have loyal advertisers, have a great reputation, and provide an excellent service to those looking to make easy some money with their site traffic.

The real money comes from NOT using these services.. I know I will get flamed for this, but hear me out for a minute.

Just like you, these services are looking to make money. Many of these services are set up to take away a percentage of what your earning with the click-throughs you generate. These click-through happen because of YOU and your site, not because of Adsense or anyone else.. so why should you share your income with them?

Plus, do you pay attention to those ads as a reader when you visit a site? I think just about everyone has seen the many models of Google Adsense and how they are displayed. When I visit a site with Adwords, I don’t even look at them. I am almost immune to them by now. Studies with eye tracking software have shown this to be true as well on Google’s own search site. Don’t get me wrong, I think you can make money with Adsense, but you can make a lot more money with out them as well.

Simply put, if your getting 100 clicks a day on an ad or text link you set up with a service like Adsense, Adbrite, or Text Link Ads.. you could be losing up to half of your revenue for their share of the pie. Say those 100
clicks a day were making you $450 a month.. if your only getting the $450 from those clicks and are losing half to a service that brokers the links for you.. you could have actually made up to $900 ( at half ) for the same ad spot with the same clicks during that same time period.

Sure those services find the buyers for you, set up the transaction, and even keep stats for you and the buyer.. but who says you can’t do the same thing? What happens when their service goes down for XYZ reason and ads stop displaying on your site? You wanted to make money from you site, so you need to start thinking like a business… and sometimes the greater return comes to those willing to put a little effort into their ‘business’.

You spent a lot of time making/building your site, getting it perfect.. then you spent a lot of time marketing your site to get all that traffic that clicks on your site and returns daily to view your site, and you spend a lot of time writing your content or getting the content right.. you may even spend a good deal of time staying on top of your subject matter to make sure your content is good…. so why spend just 20 minutes on monetizing your site to make yourself only half the revenue you should be getting?

You could even be getting your money upfront, not waiting up to 3 months to get a check cut to you.. or meeting some minimum payment for a check to be sent out. Get your money upfront and stop waiting for a deadline or minimum payout.

You can set up an advertising kit on your site that explains you sell advertising on your site, where you sell it, what advertising you take, your traffic stats, your pricing, and other relevant information an advertiser would want to know before buying from your site. You need to be honest here, no making up false stats on your site or claiming you have several thousand visitors a day when you just have a handful. You can ask around at other sites that sell advertising like the BlogHerald and download a marketing kit to see what kind of information advertisers are looking for

For those already using Adsense, Adbrite, or Text Link Ads, you have an edge on what you could be charging as these services can give you a clue on what the relevant ads on your site would be making you. Text Link Ads even offers a free tool here on what you can expect for payment on text links in your site. The only real way to know though, would be see how many clicks you are currently generating from your ads and the revenue you make from those clicks and then double that because many services that broker your advertising are getting half before you even see your cut.

Being on your own ( not using a brokering service ) may not get you as many ‘clients’ for your advertising, but since your charging more ( which would be close to the same price advertisers would pay for the broker on their end ) you would still be coming out even if you got only half of the number of clients you had with a brokering service. Plus you get full discretion of who you actually work with, what kind of ads go on your site ( concerning what you want to do with them and how they are displayed ), full control of packaging ’specials’ on your site, not worrying about the broker’s service being down or when they will sent their check, and many of the other hassles that may come with using a broker service.

As soon as word spreads you are taking on advertising, your client list should grow each month as more and more people see that advertisers are spending money with you. Even if you reach the number of potential clients you once had with a broker service, you will be making up to double your income without having to rely on the brokering service and their rules.

If your advertising clients demand stats on their ad campaigns, don’t worry.. you can always swing a few dollars to a custom programmer to fix something up for you, or you can grab phpAdsNew and have it installed and manage your ads with that. Its free and one of the best open source ad management scripts around.

Need someone to process the payment? Well, there is always Paypal and many other online merchant services like 2checkout and Worldpay that will easily walk you through taking online payments. Paypal almost does all the work for you and you can be set up in less than an hour.

If you need a way to find clients for your advertising, you can always promote yourself on your site, RSS feeds, networking with others, and good old fashion word of mouth. A lot of brokering services got their start this way and rely on search engines, word of mouth, and postings on forums, blogs, and other sites for their traffic and clients.. again why can’t you do the same?

Putting some extra time into making money with your blog can yield great results. You already put a lot of time into building a great site, put the same effort into building a revenue stream you have full control of.

Any suggestions, ideas? Feel free to comment on this article!

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Links and traffic… who wants some?

The number of excellent resources that have come out since the beginning of the year on attracting links and building traffic has really mushroomed. Plus there are some timeless classics that are still very relevant today.

I think it makes sense to compile the very best in one handy location and share it, so here’s my entire collection. If I missed your link and traffic resource let me know and I’ll take a look.

Now, it doesn’t matter if you like the term “link baiting” or not. It’s the process that one goes through to attract links that matters, not whether you prefer to think of your content as bait for links. I like to think that creating content that increases web traffic and builds links simply falls under the general social media optimization marketing buzz phrase that is gaining in popularity.

So, here’s your ultimate “how to” guide to creating content that attracts links and drives traffic in the social media environment:

101 Ways to Build Link Popularity in 2006 | SEO Book

101 Web Marketing Ideas and Tips | SEOpedia

25 Tips for Marketing Your Blog | Online Marketing Blog

10 Remarkably Effective Strategies for Driving Traffic | SEOMoz

8 Reasons Why Lists Are Good for Getting Traffic to Your Blog | Problogger

7 Ways to Get to the Top of the del.ico.us Popular Page | Problogger

3 Ways to Immediately Increase Search Engine Traffic | Performancing

How to Get Traffic For Your Blog | Seth Godin

The Art of Linkbaiting | Performancing

The Art of Blog | SEO Black Hat

What is Linkbaiting? | Modern Life is Rubbish

SEO Advice: Linkbait and Linkbaiting | Matt Cutts of Google

Problogger Link Baiting Series | Problogger

Secrets to Beating the Sandbox 2.0 Revealed | Link Building Blog

What Makes a Site Link-Worthy? | Eric Ward

Using Digg to Attract Hits | Slate

Using Digg and Netscape to Get Traffic | Pronet Advertising

Social Bookmarking for Traffic | SiteProNews

The Sandbox and Delicious | Graywolf’s SEO Blog

Unleashing the IdeaVirus | Seth Godin

Viral Copy | Copyblogger

Building Traffic to Build Your Fan Club | Copyblogger

Trust Rank and Your Domain | Link Building Blog

Generating Buzz With Link Baiting and Viral Campaigns | Search Engine Watch

Linkbaiting for Fun & Profit | Search Engine Journal

Link Building Guide | Jim Westergren

Link Baiting & Effective Link Building | Search Engine Journal

Link Baiting and Viral Search Success | Search Engine Roundtable

How Much is Link Bait Worth? | Cartoon Barry

Link Baiting (How Nick Wilson Created SEO Even Seth Godin Could Love) | Stuntdubl

Link Baiting Case Study from Search Engine Journal | Search Engine Journal

Link Bait | SEO Book

The 8 Free Things Every Site Should Do | Seth Godin at Squidoo

Building Traffic With Article Marketing | Copyblogger

Link Building Blog | Text Link Ads

Link Building Wiki | Text Link Brokers

Advanced Link Building Tactics | SEOMoz

Any suggestions, ideas? Feel free to comment on this article!

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1. Avoid hosted services that do not allow you to use your own domain name!
2. Obtain and install customizable blog software – WordPress and Moveable Type are my favorites.
3. Customize blog look and feel templates – aka design.
4. Research keywords and develop a glossary – Keyword Discovery, WordTracker, SitePoint, SEOBook Keyword Research.
5. Optimize the blog:

• Template optimization – RSS subscription options, social bookmark links, HTML code, Unique title tags, URLs, Sitemap
• Add helper plugins specific to WordPress or MT
• Create keyword rich categories (reference your keyword glossary)

6. Enable automatic trackback and ping functionality.
7. Create Feedburner Pro account and enable feed tracking.
8. Setup Google acount for Sitemap, validate and prep for future submission.
9. Identify authoritative blogs, web sites and hubs for outbound resource links and blogroll.
10. Format archived posts, related posts.
11. Enable statistics for tracking – Performancing, Google Analytics, ClickTracks.
12. Submit RSS feed and Blog URL to prominent RSS and Blog directories / search engines.
13. Engage in an ongoing link building campaign.
14. If podcast or video content are available, submit to Podcast and Vlog directories.
15. Submit blog url to paid directories with categories for blogs – Yahoo, BOTW, bCentral, WOW, JoeAnt.
16. Optimize and distribute a press release announcing blog.
17. Request feedback or reviews of your blog in relevant forums, discussion threads. If you have a resourceful post that will help others, point to it.
18. Research and comment on relevant industry related blogs and blogs with significant centers of influence.
19. Post regularly. If it’s a news oriented blog, 3-5 times per day. If it’s an authoritative blog, 3-5 times per week, but each post must be unique and high value.
20. Monitor inbound links, traffic, comments and mentions of your blog – Google Alerts, Technorati, Blogpulse, Yahoo News, Ask Blogs and Feeds.
21. Always respond to comments on your blog and when you detect a mention of your blog on another blog, thank that blogger in the comments of the post.
22. Make contact with related bloggers on AND offline if possible.
23. When making blog posts always cite the source with a link and don’t be afraid to mention popular bloggers by name.
24. Use social networking services, forums and discussion threads to connect with other bloggers. If they like your stuff, they will link to you.
25. Remember when web sites were a new concept and the sage advice to print your web address everywhere you print your phone number? The same advice applies for your blog.

Any suggestions, ideas? Feel free to comment on this article!

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Link valuation is a difficult subject to quantify. Most SEO’s will tell you that coming up with a value of a text link is a “gut feel”, which really doesn’t help much when you are deciding to drop hundreds or thousands per month on a text link ad that doesn’t often show a completely direct correlation with your web site rankings.

“How to Valuate a Link”
Questions to ask when purchasing about the quality and value of a link

1. What is the value of the theme?
(Is it a high competition/ highly monetized industry such as pharmaceuticals, gambling, or finance?)

2. What is the power of the link?
(Is it helping any other sites to rank high?)

3. What is the linking neighborhood theme of the site linking to you?
(The Topic of the links that link to that site. – and a comparison of how close of a “linking neighborhood” is to your site’s theme.)

4. How many outbound links are on the page giving the link, and who else do they link to?
(Lower the better and quality counts – skip the site with poker plastered all over it.)

5. What is the format of the link, how many characters for anchor text and description do you get, and do you have control to change it?
(Footer Link? Sidebar link? Run of site? Body text link? Pre-sell page?)

6. Where is the link deriving it’s power?
(Does it have any .edus or .govs linking to it? How many unique domains and C class IP addresses?)

7. What is the age of the site? (older the better)

8. Will the link pass any direct click through traffic?
(Alexa is a litmus test here)

9. How many pages will the link be placed on?
(Don’t go overboard with run of site links now)

10. Will the link go to a subsection of your site or your homepage?
(Help your deep link ratio)

Any suggestions, ideas? Feel free to comment on this article!

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StumbleUpon, the web surfing social network, is hands down a long term traffic builder for blogs, online businesses, and Web 2.0 services.

For a quick overview of SU:

• Sites or users submit their URLs to StumbleUpon.
• StumbleUpon members can find these sites via random yet targeted web surfing called

“Stumbling”, clicking on the suggestions of their SU friends, or via StumbleUpon Search which matches user generated tags and search queries.

• StumbleUpon users then vote on the sites or posts they find, with a thumbs up or thumbs down.
• The more thumbs up, the more people who see the site via StumbleUpon.

I make it a point to submit what I feel are some of the more original posts here at Search Engine Journal to StumbleUpon and let their members decide on the value of the posts. Usually, such submittals to StumbleUpon result in 400-1,000 referrals.

On occasion, the referrals hit the 2,000 or 4,000 mark, over the course of a couple of days, depending upon the voting by SU members.

The slower drawn out traffic is a nice alternative to Digg, as a top story on the front page of Digg can result in server overload as sometimes up to 10,000 Digg users could click over in the course of 15 minutes.

As a StumbleUpon member myself, I don’t only submit my own properties for reader review. I also submit blog posts and new sites which I feel are of interest to me and my StumbleUpon friends.

But why stop there?

One form of social media marketing which I’ve found to be quite useful is submitting the sites which link to blog.designcreatology.com posts and other properties to StumbleUpon.

Example:
1. TechDirt links to blog.designcreatology.com
2. I see traffic coming from TechDirt
3. I go to TechDirt post and submit it to StumbleUpon with lots of good tags and info
4. SU users find that TechDirt post
5. SU users click on the link from that TechDirt post to blog.designcreatology.com
6. More traffic to blog.designcreatology.com

It’s a form of rewarding or surprising those sites with some extra traffic, perhaps some links which will help with SEO, and the end result is more referrals to my site from the site which originally linked to me.

In such practice, by submitting sites or posts which link to your site to StumbleUpon, you are supercharging those links by adding more value to your incoming links and the sites which link to you.

Any suggestions, ideas? Feel free to comment on this article!

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Recently I received an email from someone who was having a severe problem learning CSS. I can definitely understand much of the frustration, but I don’t think it really has a lot to do with CSS. Learning anything can be difficult, confusing and frustrating. Whether you’re trying to learn how to ride a bike, swim, drive a car, code HTML or use CSS, most people will get frustrated, feel like giving up, and then give it another try.

One of the problems I see is that many people who complain about CSS being too difficult haven’t really learned how to code HTML properly. Jumping into CSS-based layouts without a solid understanding of HTML will not be easy. Going from table-based WYSIsortofWYG tag soup to structured, semantic HTML+CSS will take some time and effort. But it’s worth it. I know. Having worked with web design and development since -95 or -96 I’ve had to unlearn the table tag soup ways of coding and really learn HTML.

Another problem is that there are CSS evangelists who swear up and down that not only can CSS do everything that tables can, it does it cleaner, easier and better (quote from the post to css-discuss). Yes, there are. And no, as long as browsers like Internet Explorer don’t improve their CSS support there are a few layout tricks that are very hard to achieve with a pure CSS layout but are easy to do with tables. Don’t blame that on CSS though. Blame it on lazy browser vendors.

So, what is it that you can’t easily do with CSS that is easy with tables? Some things I can think of:

• footer that sits at the bottom of the browser window only when there’s not enough content
• side-by-side boxes that expand to the same height even when they contain different amounts of content
• vertically centered content of unknown height inside a box

Anything else? I can’t think of anything else, but there’s probably one or two other cases where pure CSS layout won’t work well, especially in Internet Explorer.

Note that there are cases where tables should be used. A common misunderstanding is that tables can’t be used for anything, but if you’re marking up a table of data, a table is what you should use.

If you feel that you absolutely must have something in your design that calls for a table, then go ahead and use a table for that specific effect! Just avoid nesting tables, make sure your markup is semantic and valid, and then style the page with CSS. You’ll still be way better off than if you do the old-school thing with five levels of nested tables, font tags, presentational, invalid HTML and no semantic markup whatsoever.

Any suggestions, ideas? Feel free to comment on this article!

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There’s something fundamentally satisfying about the power of real-time interaction. I tend to forget that from time to time and try to get my head around why I find certain products and services so appealing when, on the surface, there doesn’t appear to be other any unique value proposition. Maybe it’s a little too obvious to notice.

At first I didn’t understand why the blogosphere was clamoring for MyBlogLog. Then I realized it satisfies bloggers’ voyeuristic need to see who’s visiting your site right now. Compare this to traditional analytics services and all that in-depth referral data collected from 2 days ago seems so distant and uninteresting.

In the beginning I failed to see why everyone was talking about twitter. Then I started using the service and now I see why broadcasting what you are doing and listening in on what your contacts are doing right now can be highly addictive. The so call “lifestream” experience is far different from publishing a blog post or following one via rss reader. It feels like watching a stream of incoherent snapshots of people’s lives ticking across your eyes, but somehow you feel compelled to observe and participate because it’s happening right now.

If I look around, there are plenty of other examples — Digg Spy, EarthCam, Etsy’s cool-as-shit time machine UI, etc. They’re all interesting because they’re all happening right now. And when you take “now” out of the equation, they all stop being interesting. Immediately. Interesting…

Any suggestions, ideas? Feel free to comment on this article!

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In the world of search engine optimization building backlinks is perhaps the most important, and most difficult, part. In order to get your website to the top you need to work your way passed websites that have had years to gather soldiers in the battle for link popularity. So how do you keep up, and more importantly, how to you work towards surpassing your predecessors.

Building Backlinks With Time, and with Content

Perhaps the best, and yet the most looked over, method for gathering links to your website to make good content. If your website has information that people care about then that information is going to be passed on to others. In forum posts, blogs, article indexes and more. Furthermore, when you create a good piece of content your not only getting a chance to inspire others to link to you, your creating a page that will increase the girth of your website and continue to attract visitors through search engines. It has been said before, and I’ll say it again, in the world of web design content is king.

Getting Your Content Seen

One way to get your content seen by others, and at the same time increase your link popularity, is to submit your articles to article indexes like Goarticles.com. Every time you submit an article you get a backlink to your page from a large and reputable website. Search out places that you can submit your content. If you write tutorials, get your tutorials submitted to tutorial indexes such as Good-tutorials.com, Pixel2life.com, Tutorialized.com etc.

Submitting You Website To Directories

Perhaps the most tedious way to gather links, submitting your website to directories is available to anyone. Some directories, such as Dmoz.org have a good reputation, and their pages are highly valued by search engines. With a little money, you can even get your website listed in the Yahoo! web directory.
Trading Links With Other Websites

Even though direct link exchanges may have a lesser value than one-way links, link exchanges still increase your popularity, and you will always be able to get hits from the links themselves. If you have multiple websites you can try the three-way linking strategy. Site A links to Site B, site C links to Site A. Sites B and C belonging to one party, and A to the other.

Add Your Link to Your Forum Signature

If you participate in any online forum, get your links into your signature. It cant hurt, and believe it or not people are interested to see the creations of the people they are conversing with!

Link Building Strategies to Ignore

Search engines have a goal, to get the most relevant links to the top of their searches. If your use black hat seo methods, then the search engine doesn’t want your website in their results. If you try to manipulate their system and get caught, you can get removed. Try to stay away from programs that claim that they can get you thousands of backlinks instantly. Avoid link exchange programs unless you are willing to take a risk. Try to build your links at a slow and steady pace, eventually your website will start doing the work for you.

Any suggestions, ideas? Feel free to comment on this article!

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By now everyone has seen the badges, which are sometimes called seals, all over the web. There’s a really simple way to do this using Macromedia Adobe Fireworks.

For this tutorial, we’re going to replicate the badge seen on Crucial Web Hosting. We’re going to duplicate the curved text by using the Text On A Path feature, and the actual badge is nothing more than a star with a lot of points, or rays, since a typical star has about three to five points.

Alright, let’s start by opening up Fireworks. We’re going to create a new image with a width of 200 pixels, a height of 200 pixels, and a white background. Now we can create our base shape, which is the star. Now we need to select the Star Tool.

And draw a star that’s 130 pixels wide.

Select and hold the Points handle and increase it to 22 points. Now we have a star with 22 points, but they are too long to be a badge.

Select the Radius 2, or inner radius, handle, and drag it until you have a shorter, more triangular point. Now it’s starting to look like a badge!

Time to give it some color though, since it’s quite bland. Select the Fill Category and change the fill type to a Gradient that is Linear.

Our badge will look something like this, depending on what color you had originally chosen for the star.

That’s not the colors we want to use though, so click on background color and change the color on the left to #66AA00 and the color on the right to #CCDD77.

You should now have a badge that looks like this:

That’s not the direction of the badge we’re trying to duplicate though, so let’s move the lighter color to the top, and the darker one to the bottom.

Much better! If you notice on the original badge, there is a slight drop-shadow. With the badge selected, click on Filters → Shadow and Glow → Drop Shadow.

You’ll be given the option to adjust the shadow. For this badge, we’re going to give it a Distance of 2, 65% Opacity, 3 Softness, and 300° Angle.

So far, so good. Of course, now we need to add some text to this badge. We will start off with the text in the center. Select the Text Tool and change the font to Georgia, and the font size to 35. We want the color to be a little bit darker than the darkest color of the gradient on the badge, so we’re going to change the font color to #559900.

I should point out that on the original badge, the dollar sign is much smaller, but for the sake of this tutorial, we’re going to keep it the same size as the rest of the text. With the Text Tool still selected, click in the center of the badge and write $4.99. With the text still selected, hold down Shift and select the badge, so both the badge and the text are selected. We need to center this both horizontally and vertically. Click on Modify → Align → Center Vertical and then repeat that and select Modify → Align → Center Horizontal. Although, it’s much easier and faster to use the shortcuts, so just hold Ctrl + Alt + 1 and then Ctrl + Alt + 2.

Now the text should be perfectly centered in the middle of the badge.

You will notice that on the original badge, it looks like the $4.99 text has an inner bevel. To create this effect, select just the text, and hit Ctrl + C to copy it, and then Ctrl + V to paste it. Don’t touch anything after you do this. Now we need to move the duplicated text up one pixel, so click ↑ on the arrow keys, then hold down Ctrl + ↓. The second step moved the duplicated text layer below the original text. With our duplicated text still selected, we’re going to change the color to #000000, and adjust the Opacity to 50.

Now we need to repeat the above process, but this time change the color to #FFFFFF, and move the layer down by one pixel by clicking ↓ on the arrow keys. You should now have three instances of the $4.99 text, one being the original green, the second black that is moved up by one pixel, and the third being white moved down one pixel.

We’re almost done, and this last part is probably the trickiest, just because you have to play around with the size of the two circles to get the text exactly where you want it. With more practice, you’ll be able to gauge this with more accuracy. Go ahead and select the Ellipse Tool.

And create the inner circle, which is going to hold the text on the top of the badge, and give it a width and height of 80 pixels. Center the circle just like we did with the text.

Now select the Text Tool and change the font to Verdana with a size of 12 and a color of #FFFFFF. Write out HOSTING FROM and position it the best you can just below the the top of the circle, vertically centered. With the text still selected, hold down Shift and select the circle, so both items are highlighted. Use the keyboard shortcuts to align the text to the top of the circle by holding down Ctrl + Alt + 4.

With both the text and circle still selected, click on Text → Attach to Path, or use the shortcut key and hold down Ctrl + Shift + Y. Now the text is attached to the circle, but we need to adjust the offset. With our new attached path selected, change the Text Offset to 15.

You should have something that looks like this:

The text on the bottom follows the same process as the text on the top, with some slight variations. Go ahead and make another circle with a width and height of 95 pixels. Using the same font face, size, and color, write out PER MONTH, but this time center it just above the very bottom of the circle, and as best as you can vertically centered. With both the text and the circle selected, hold down Ctrl + Alt + 6.

Attach the text to the circle just like we did before, but this time, before we set the text offset, we need to reverse the direction of the text by going to Text → Reverse Direction. Now set the text offset to -47.

It won’t look right yet, because we need to increase the Kerning of the font to 22.

And we end up with something like this:

You could save this as is right now, or you can adjust the text offset and kerning a little more, and move the inner and outter circles up or down. I went ahead and made the dollar sign smaller and tweaked some of the offset and kerning, and this is what we end up with:

And that’s it, we’re done! You can download the finished Fireworks PNG file to play around with if you’d like.

Any suggestions, ideas? Feel free to comment on this article!

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The following is from a post from Webmaster World. I think it’s a great article and a good read for anyone starting up a website.

I know this system works 100% of the time with Google to attain rankings across a wide range of keywords. This is what I do with clients to build a successful site and it has worked every time. The level of success will depend largely on the subject matter, its potential audience, and its level of competition on the net.

The following will build a successful site in one years time via Google alone. It can be done faster if you are a real go getter, or everyone’s favorite, a self starter.

1. Prep Work & Begin Building Content

Long before the domain name is settled on, start putting together notes to build at least a one hundred page site. That’s just for openers. That’s one
hundred pages of real content, as opposed to fluff pages like copyright information and about us pages.

2. Domain Name

Easily brandable. You want Google.com and not MyKeyword.com. Keyword domains are out—branding and name recognition are in—big time in. The value of keywords in a domain name has never been less to search engines.

Learn the lesson of Goto.com becomes Overture.com and why they did it. It’s one of the most powerful gut check calls I’ve ever seen on the internet. That took serious resolve and nerve to blow away several years of branding.

3. Site Design

The simpler the better. A general rule of thumb to follow is that text content should outweigh the HTML content. The pages should validate and be usable in everything from Lynx to leading edge browsers. Keep the HTML clean and
structurally sound, it makes it easier for spiders to eat up your content.

Stay away from heavy things like Flash, Document Object Model (DOM), Java, and JavaScript. Go external with scripting languages if you must have them—there is little reason to have them that I can see—they will rarely help a site and actually stand to hurt it greatly due to the many factors most people don’t appreciate, such as search engines’ distaste for JavaScript being just one of them.

Arrange the site in a logical manner with directory names hitting the top keywords you wish to hit. You can also go the other route and just throw everything in root. This is a rather controversial method, but it has been producing good long-term results across many search engines.

Don’t clutter and don’t spam your site with frivolous links. Keep it clean and professional to the best of your ability. Learn the lesson of Google itself. Simple is retro cool. Simple is what surfers want.

Speed isn’t everything, it’s almost the only thing. Your site should respond almost instantly to a request. If you get into even three to four seconds delay until “something happens” in the browser, you are in trouble.

Those few seconds may vary for someone living in a country other than your native one. The site should respond locally within three to four seconds tops! Any longer than that, and you’ll lose ten percent of your audience for every second. That ten percent could be the difference between success and failure.

4. Page Size

The smaller the better. Keep it under 15k if you can. The smaller the better. Keep it under 12k if you can. The smaller the better. Keep it under 10k if you can. I trust you are getting the idea here. Over 5k and under 10k. Yeah, it sucks, and it’s tough to do, but it works. It works for search engines, and it works for surfers.

5. Content

Build one page of content with 250 to 500 words per day. If you aren’t sure what you need for content, start with the Overture keyword selector tool and find the core set of keywords for your topic area. Those are your subject starters.

6. Keyword Density & Position

Simple old fashioned search engine optimization from the ground up. Use the keyword once in the title, once in the description tag, once in a heading, once in the url, once in bold, once in italics, and once high on the page. Try to hit a keyword density of five to twenty percent.

Use good sentences and speel check it. Spell checking is becoming increasingly important as search engines use auto-correction during searches. There is no longer a reason to look like you can’t spell—unless, of course, you really are phonetically challenged.

7. External Links

From every page, link to one or two high-ranking sites under that particular keyword. Use your keyword in the link text, as this is ultra important.

8. Internal Links

Link to on-topic, quality content across your site. If a page is about food, then make sure it links to the fruits and veggies page.

Specifically with Google, on-topic internal linking is very important for sharing your PageRank value across your site. You do not want one “all-star” page that out performs the rest of your site. You want fifty pages that produce one referral each a day, not one page that produces fifty referrals a day.

If you do find one page that drastically out performs the rest of the site with Google, you need to balance some of that PageRank value by moving it to other pages. It’s the old share the wealth thing.

9. Put It Online

Don’t go with virtual hosting. Stick with a hosting plan that offers a static IP address. Make sure the site is “crawlable” by a spider. All pages should be linked to more than one other page on your site, and not more than two levels deep from the root. Link the topic vertically as much as possible back to the root. A menu that is present on every page should link to your site’s main “topic index” pages.

Don’t put it online before you have a quality site. It’s worse to put a “nothing” site online, than no site at all. You want it flushed out from the start.

Go for a listing in the Open Directory Project (ODP). If you have the budget, then submit to Looksmart and Yahoo. If you don’t have the budget, then try for a freebie on Yahoo—but don’t hold your breath.

10. Submit It

Submit the root to Google, Fast, AltaVista, WiseNut, DirectHit, and HotBot. Now comes the hard part: forget about submissions for the next six months. That’s right. Submit it and forget about it.

11. Logging & Tracking

Get a quality tracker that can do justice to inbound referrals based on log files. Don’t use a lame graphic counter, you need the real deal here. If your host doesn’t support referrers, then back up and get a new host. You can’t run a modern site without full referrals available all day, every day, and in real time.

12. Spiderlings

Watch for spiders from search engines. Make sure those that are crawling the full site can do so easily. If not, double check your linking system to make sure the spiders find their way through the site. Don’t fret if it takes two spiderlings to get your whole site done by Google or Fast. Other search engines are pot luck and it is doubtful that you will be added at all, if not within six months.

13. Topic Directories

Almost every keyword sector has an authority hub on its topic. Go submit within the guidelines.

14. Links

Look around your keyword sector in Google’s version of the Open Directory Project (ODP). This is best done after getting an ODP listing. Find sites that have a links page or that freely exchange links. Simply request a swap. Put a page of relevant content and links up for yourself as a collection spot.

Don’t freak out if you can’t get people to swap links. Just move on. Try to swap links with one fresh site a day. A simple personal email is enough. Stay low key about it and don’t worry if a site won’t link with you. Eventually they will.

15. Content

One page of quality content per day. Timely, topical articles are always the best. Try to stay away from to much personal, blogging type stuff, and look more for article topics that a general audience will like. Hone your writing skills and read up on the right style of “web speak” that tends to work with the fast and furious web crowd.

Lots of text breaks. Short sentences—lots of dashes—something that reads quickly.

Most web users don’t actually read, they scan. This is why it is so important to keep low key pages today. People see a huge overblown page, and a portion of them will hit the back button before even trying to decipher it. They’ve got better things to do than waste 15 seconds trying to understand your whiz bang flash menu system. Just because some big support site can run flashed out motorhead pages, that is no indication that you can. You don’t have to do what they do.

Use headers and bold text liberally on your pages as logical separators. I call them scanner stoppers, where the eye will logically come to rest on the page.

16. Gimmicks

Stay far away from “fads of the day” or anything that appears spammy, unethical, or tricky. Plant yourself firmly on the high ground in the middle of the road.

17. Link Backs

When you receive requests for links, check the site out before linking back with them. Check them through Google and their PageRank value. Look for directory listings. Don’t link back to junk just because they asked. Make sure it is a site similar to yours and on topic.

18. Rounding Out The Offerings

Use options such as email a friend, forums, and mailing lists to round out your site’s offerings. Hit the top forums in your market and read, read, read until your eyes hurt because you read so much. Stay away from “affiliate fads” that insert content on to your site.

19. Beware Of Flyer & Brochure Syndrome

If you have an e-commerce site or online version of bricks and mortar, be careful not to turn your site into a brochure. These don’t work at all. Think about what people want. They aren’t coming to your site to view “your content,” they are coming to your site looking for “their content.” Talk as little about your products and yourself as possible in articles.

20. Build One Page Of Content Per Day

Head back to the Overture keyword selector tool to get ideas for fresh pages.

21. Study Those Logs

After 30-60 days you will start to see a few referrals from places you’ve been listed. Look for the keywords people are using. See any bizarre combinations? Why are people using those to find your site? If there is something you have over looked, then build a page around that topic. Retro engineer your site to feed the search engine what it wants.

If your site is about “oranges,” but your referrals are all about “orange citrus fruit,” then you can get busy building articles around “citrus” and “fruit” instead of the generic “oranges.”

The search engines will tell you exactly what they want to be fed—listen closely, there is gold in referral logs, it’s just a matter of panning for it.

22. Timely Topics

Nothing breeds success like success. Stay abreast of developments in your keyword sector. If big site is coming out with a new product at the end of the year, then build a page and have it ready in October so that search engines get it by December, e.g. go look at all the PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii sites in Google right now. Those are sites that were on the ball last summer.

23. Friends & Family

Networking is critical to the success of a site. This is where all that time you spend in forums will pay off. Here’s the Catch-22 about forums: lurking is almost useless. The value of a forum is in the interaction with your fellow colleagues and cohorts. You learn long-term by the interaction—not by just reading.

Networking will pay off in link backs, tips, email exchanges, and it will put you “in the loop” of your keyword sector.

24. Be Social

Social bookmarking and networking sites can be used to your advantage if the content is right. Places like Digg, Delicious, Technorati, StumbleUpon, and so on, can really expose your site to those that truly are interested. Expect some great backlinks and traffic if you use this to your advantage.

25. Notes, Notes, Notes

If you build one page per day, you will find that a brainstorm like inspiration will hit you in the head at some magic point. Whether it is in the shower (dry off first), driving down the road (please pull over), or just parked at your desk, write it down! Ten minutes later and you will have forgotten all about that great idea you just had. Write it down, and get detailed about what you are thinking. When the inspirational juices are no longer flowing, come back to those content ideas. It sounds simple, but it’s a life saver when the ideas stop coming.

26. Submission Check At Six Months

Walk back through your submissions and see if you are listed in all the search engines you submitted to after six months. If not, then resubmit and forget it again. Try those freebie directories again too.

27. Build One Page Of Quality Content Per Day

Starting to see a theme here? Google loves content. Lots of quality content. Broad based over a wide range of keywords. At the end of a years time, you should have around four hundred pages of content. That will get you good placement under a wide range of keywords, generate
reciprocal links, and overall position your site to stand on its own two feet.

Do those twenty-seven things, and I guarantee you that in ones years time you will call your site a success. It will be drawing between 500 and 2000 referrals a day from search engines.

If you build a good site with an average of four to five pages per user, you should be in the ten to fifteen thousand page views per day range in one years time. What you do with that traffic is up to you, but that is more than enough to “do something” with.

Any suggestions, ideas? Feel free to comment on this article!

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