Sabra Duffiney

Author Archive

Many people who own a site are trying to build a large number of daily visitors.  For this you need to get a higher search engine placement.  Most people search for a website related to their keywords and they will click on a link if it appears on top or near the top of the search results.  The next question is how to get your site on the search engine top list?  You can play with your content, keywords, and back links.  Create high quality content for your site and a solid SEO campaign using good keywords for your niche.  After that it is all about backlinks.

Backlinks are links which are created on other websites to direct visitors back to your site.  Backlinks are also referred to as incoming links, inbound links, in links, and inward links.  Search engines use the number and quality of backlinks to your site as one of the most important factors in determining your sites page rank.  Beside that, high quality back links can also measure the importance and popularity of your site.  Backlinks are the purest form of gold in the online world … it can complete your SEO campaign.  You can check your page rank at PRChecker.info for free.  You can also check out how many backlinks your site has by using one of the many free backlink checkers.

You should definitely recognize backlinks as a part your SEO campaign.  Just include the backlinks and what words you use to anchor those links. An anchor link is the clickable portion of the words, you would use the href tag to anchor or hyper link your keywords. When your anchor links, your back link using the keywords on your website, it will give an extra boost in your site’s page rank.  Another method that will generate natural search engine traffic is social bookmarking.

Millions of people consider social bookmarking sites as a practical source of information, so when other sites bookmark your site you will be indexed by search engines instantly. Search engines can monitor the significance of your site based on its social network exposure and perception. When you have already signed up with the top social bookmarking sites, use your site URL, a description of your content and also proper tags to get good traction from that. Google treats the links from these popular sites with more weight, which helps your page rank in the search engine listing.

You can also try a Link Building program to do it for yo.  Other ways to manage your backlinks is to join the article directories, comment on other site or blogs, participating in forums, publish press releases, and manage all of them. Remember this: Too much of it can hurt your site, but too little can mean a traffic-less site.

Profitable blogs have a few things in common & they are clearly identifiable.  These things are not just part of the design but are the things that make them successful & profitable.

1. Identify Your Main Goal

Sounds simple, right? And yet when you visit some blogs it is so hard to figure out what is it they are trying to accomplish. Blogs littered with multiple banner ads, Google AdSense, multitude of dynamic widgets placed in what seems like random order.
Does the description above resembles your blog?

The fact is, too much clutter on your blog doesn’t help you achieve your goal, but actually prevents you from it! The simplest way to do a “usability” test of your blog is to ask friends or family members to visit and tell you about their experience.  If they tell you that it looks messy, they’re probably right. It’s hard to achieve a perfect balance when monetizing our blogs and this is where identification the site’s main goal comes into place.

Identify One Single Action you want your visitors to take:

• An affiliate product sale that pays great commissions and directly related to your niche
• Subscription Form to your email list
• Sale of your own product

It should be ONE single action you want your visitors to take.  One that would be most beneficial to you as blogger and rewards you for what you provide towards your niche.  Once you main goal is identified,  find a few more secondary goals. The idea here is to not overwhelm the visitor, but offer choices besides your main offer.

2. Force The Action

• Main Offer – be sure you place it where it will be visible from EVERY single page on your blog and above the fold.  This is one action you stand to benefit from the most.  You should make the main offer clearly visible and accessible.
  *TIP: Top left corner get the most clicks!  Don’t be shy about it – it is your reward for your great content!*
• Secondary Offers – they should be easily found, but still below you main offer. The sidebar is a perfect location or just below the post, integrated into template files. It helps you present your readers with choices and gives you more chances to earn while still making your main offer most prominent.

Have you heard about Entrecard’s latest news? They have decided to expand their network to allow standard websites to become a part of Entrecard. They say that this will not affect the blogger network in a negative way. This is supposed to allow members to network with more users. What do you think? Is this going to be a positive change like they say, or is this going to create an unfair advantage for these websites? If you want to learn more check out Entrecard’s Blog post: “Entrecard expanding network to include website owners”.

While browsing Entrecard sites, I have noticed something that I would like to address. There are a lot of Entrecarders out there who put their cards in a location that really makes a dropper try to find it.

Now, I get the idea that they are trying to get me to look at their ads. I’m not saying that I don’t look around these sites, I do. It just makes me feel like the ads are being forced upon me instead of being a helpful link to something. Most times they are not even relative to the content I am looking at – in any way.

In turn, I have begun to collect a list of Entrecarders who have decided to locate their cards in a great location – above the fold. Here is the list: Sabra Duffiney’s 300 Drops.

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When a friend of mine moved away, he left a few of his things here with me to use until he was able to re-attain them. My favorite of these things is a Roland JP-8000, an analog modeling synthesizer. Well, recently another friend set up his DJ gear in the studio and connected the JP-8000 to the mix through his Ableton Live setup. Without his mac and him here, I have been unable to use the JP-8000 without messing up his set-up.

Roland JP-8000

I am not a DJ as you know. I have no use for a program as complex, bulky and expensive as Ableton Live though it is a really great program. I found a way to skip Ableton Live altogether and just use my mac in place of his.

Sound Studio is a free program for Mac that can be used to bridge this gap. In the Sound Studio drop down menu at the top there is an option called “Preferences”. Select this and you will see a pop-up with a bunch of options. The one that matters most here is “Audio” > “Input”. This is where you change the source of your audio. The “Output section is where you will hear the audio being played.

Do you have some technological curiosity that you just haven’t satisfied or a question about your computer or internet browsing?  I may be able to help.  Ask me any tech question by clicking on the ‘Contact‘ tab and submit your question and website address to get featured here.  Once published here, you will continue to get exposure through social sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Digg as well.  Keep checking back, your question with links to your blog may be featured next.

If you have been sharing links on sites such as Facebook and Digg, you may not be getting all of your AdSense revenue. Most times, when a user clicks a link on Facebook or Digg, they will see a framed page. Since your website then is inside of a “window” type frame, your site is not getting the actual traffic from that click, Digg and/or Facebook are.

There is a way to stop this from happening to you, and it is so very simple. Between the <head> and </head> tags of your website, one little JavaScript call is all you need to add. The code is as follows:

<script language=”JavaScript” type=”text/javascript”>
if (top.location != self.location) top.location.replace(self.location);
</script>

This will prevent your website from being framed in the future, and will prevent any loss of traffic and or revenue from ad providers such as AdSense.