Beginner Blogger

This morning I was thinking about SEO, google rankings/SERPs and all that jazz. One way to get higher page rankings in google is to have a lot of backlinks. Even better a whole lot of backlinks from sites in related niches. And even better backlinks from high authority sites that have high pagerank.

As a person who uses Google to search for information I like to see top quality sites ranking in the first 10 pages. Sites I can trust, sites that I know the information will be accurate, sites that aren’t misleading.

Bad Tony – A Fictional Tale

Let’s say for example I have just bought a new puppy and I want to teach and train it myself. So I do a search for ‘puppy training from home’ or something like that. I click on the first link that Google gives me and I start reading the site and applying what is said on the site. It must be accurate info right? It’s ranked number 1 on Google!

So I’m training my puppy and nothing is working. I look deeper into the site and find out the page has been created by a 15 year old kid (let’s call him Tony) who has just been regurgitating information from different places all over the web. They themselves aren’t even interested in puppies, have no experience in puppy training at all – they’re just trying to make a quick buck from their site. (or so it seems)

It would seem the way they reached to the top of the Google search rankings was by spamming a lot of forums and blog commenting section that had ‘do-follow’ implemented. This means that Google will follow the links left behind by our fictional friend (or fiend) Tony bumping up his ranking for keyword ‘puppy training from home’.

No-Follow For A Reason

There is a reason Google created the ‘no-follow’ tag. To prevent un-trustworthy sites from ranking. Just imagine if sites like Facebook and Twitter were do-follow. It would be a horrible place to be. A total spam-fest (ok, just imagine the spam you see on those sites now but 100 times worse). SEO gurus would be spamming it left right and centre getting quality backlinks to their site. By implementing no-follow on such sites it prevents people getting any benefit from Google by posting their link up there. Google will just ignore any site with the ‘no-follow’ tag attributed to it.

Is Your Blog Do-Follow? Be Responsible

If you’re a ‘do-follow’ site owner where it’s easy for others to post a link to get some Google credibility I hope that you’re monitoring all links that are left behind. We should be striving to get the best quality/most trusted sources at the top of Google. As site owners, one way to do this is to make sure all the links we have going to external pages are truly quality/trusted resources. It’s our responsibility.

It’s Our Own Fault Really

At the same time however, as consumers we should make sure we are doing background checks on the information we consume, and see what others are saying about the author/owner before we can truly trust what we’re reading will be accurate and quality information that we can apply to our lives. We shouldn’t just jump on the first site we see and take all the information in to be 100% accurate. It’s too easy to create an information site and claim it to be true. So it’s our responsibility as consumers to make sure we do our research too.

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A lot of people recommend if you’re going to have ads on your site, display them on your site from day one. This is so your readers get used to the fact that you have ads on your site. But the problem with this is that how can you really make any money from google AdSense from the start? You’ve got a brand new blog where you’re trying to gain readers trust, yet you’ve got no traffic coming in and you’ve got AdSense running around all over your site.

What is AdSense?

For those that don’t know here is what AdSense is according to wikipedia

Negative Vibes

The problem with AdSense is that you have no control over what is displayed. The ads are displayed based on the keywords on your page. For example if you have blog post about planting herbs in your garden then ads about herbs will display on that page. That ad that links to a product may not be a product you like, it may be a horrible product – but you have no control over it.

I don’t know about you but I don’t have any positive vibes flowing when I go to a blog that is displaying google AdSense ads. That’s not to say it’s a complete negative, but there aren’t any POSITIVE vibes flowing seeing advertisements on a blog.

Understandably, you probably wouldn’t say no to making some money but if your blog is brand new how can you possibly make anything significant? I had 1500 visits with adsense running and didn’t’ make a cent. So I took it down as I didn’t see any value at all in having adsense ads up anymore.

If you’re in blogging looking to make a quick buck, think again. Blogging takes time. It’s building a reputation for yourself and your blog and that just doesn’t happen overnight. Focus on creating killer content and interacting with your audience and grow your blog/readership network.

A better way to make money from a brand new blog would be to have something like a donate page. Buy me a beer is a popular and fun monetisation strategy for your blog where readers of your blog aren’t intruded by heavy AdSense ads. If people are getting great value from your blog they may feel like being generous and donating some money for the hard work you’ve done when you are expecting nothing in return.

Focus on Content and Communication

Perhaps a better way to go about it would be to NOT have ads from the start, but have great communication with your audience about ads (and anything in general about your blog, your readers are what makes your blog live and breathe).

If you plan to have advertising in the future, communicate this with your readers. If you’re putting out amazing valuable content that your readers just love and have built solid relationships and trust, then I bet they wouldn’t mind you putting up advertising to make some money for your hard work. As long as you communicate this clearly why would they be too upset then? You’ve already built up the relationships, the trust, the readership, the great content for nothing in return.

Do You Run AdSense Ads?

I would love to know what your thoughts are of AdSense ads. Here are a series of questions to think about:

• Do you run AdSense on your blog? (put a link to your blog in the comments below so we can check it out if you do)
• Have you made money from it?
• Is displaying AdSense ads worth it?
• What are your thoughts when you visit a site with AdSense ads?
• Have you ever clicked on an AdSense ad?
• Are you completely numbed by AdSense ads that your eyes just roll over them?

Feel free to add anything else!

Remember – rock on – focus on your content, your readership, build trust and communication. Endorse products you believe in. Don’t let google run the advertising show if you want to go down that avenue.

If you enjoyed this post you may also enjoy:

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Want better quality Google Analytics data? With analytics filters (or Advanced Segments they call them) you can add filters enhance the way you view data.

Personally – I view my site a lot to make sure it’s working, to check comments and generally just to make sure everything is running smoothly. When I view my analytics data – especially since I don’t get thousands of visits a day (yet )- the visits I personally make on my site can make a big difference on how I analyse the data.

Now some of you may say – well that’s easy – just create a filter to remove your IP address. Unfortunately a lot of computers these days have a dynamic IP address meaning every time you log onto the internet you will have a different IP address than you had before. So it’s not as simple as removing yourself based on IP address.

My solution is to create an analytics filter to get rid of my CITY. The only problem with this solution is that I will be removing potential real visits from my home town that I won’t be able to track if I use this filter. (Also keep in mind you can change between a filter that you’ve created and go back to the default with a click of a button, so you don’t lose anything by applying these filters)

Another problem may be that you’re getting a lot of visitors coming to your site that don’t even visit your site for 1 whole second! I’ve created an analytics filter for that as well.

Below are the two filters I use – Removing my home town/city of Brisbane, Australia and only showing visits when they’re at the site for more than 0 seconds. I’ve also added in how to combine the two.

Analytics Filter – Remove Home Town/City

1. Log into Google Analytics

2. Click to Advanced Segments and click on + Create new custom segment
3. Under Dimensions (in green) click visitors to show a drop down menu

4. Drag City into the dotted box where it says ‘dimension or metric’
5. On the Conditions drop down box select ‘Does not match exactly’ This is a very important step and can sometimes be missed. You want to see the results where people DO NOT come from your home town (i.e. yourself).

6. Type in the name of your city. In my case it is ‘Brisbane’.
7. Name your segment. I’ve named mine ‘Visits not from Brisbane’
8. Click the Create Segment button. That’s it you’re done!

You can now go back to your dashboard and in the top right position there is a drop down menu All Visits. Under the drop down you should find your newly created advanced segment. Click on this, then apply to see how many visitors you get excluding the ones from your city.

Simple, right!

Now I’ll show you how to only display quality visits when users are on your site for longer than 0 seconds.

Analytics Filter – User On Site More Than 0 Seconds

1. Log into Google Analytics
2. Click to Advanced Segments and click on + Create new custom segment
3. Under Metrics (in blue) click Site Usage to show a drop down menu

4. Drag Time on Page into the dotted box where it says ‘dimension or metric’
5. On the Conditions drop down box select ‘Greater than’ This should already be the default option.
6. Type in 0 as the Value

7. Name your segment. I’ve named mine ‘Time on site greater than 0′
8. Click the Create Segment button. That’s it you’re done!

To see if it worked properly – go back to your dashboard once again and in the top right position there is a drop down menu All Visits. Under the drop down you should find your newly created advanced segment. Click on this, then apply to see how many visitors you get excluding which are staying on your site for longer than 0 seconds.

Analytics Filter – Combine the two filters into one

1. Follow the steps above, when you get to adding the second condition click the Add “and” statement link and repeat the steps for Analytics Filter – User On Site More Than 0 Seconds in the new slot (or the Analytics Filter – Remove Home Town/City depending on which one you already have up)
2. Name your segment and click Create Segment. That’s it – you’ve just combined 2 basic filters into one more complex filter!

By placing this analytics filter I feel there is a much more accurate measure of what your users are doing on your site. You can guarantee all your own visits won’t be counted and you’ll actually get tracking data based on users that are actually using your site.

There could be many reasons why Google Analytics shows visits at 0 seconds. I’m not 100% sure but they could be search engine spiders crawling your site or bots of some other sort. Perhaps people are visiting your site when they didn’t mean to and close it before the Google Analytics code could load properly. What do you think?

I hope you’ve found this helpful and I hope you apply these analytic filters to your site to get a better measure of what your users are up to.

Edit:
Turns out you can actually share filters! Let me know if these work for you (you will have to change your city to wherever you live)

No visits from x city

Time on site greater than 0 seconds

No visits from x city and time on site greater than 0 seconds

I would urge you to try out your own filters so you’re at least getting your hands dirty a little bit. Don’t under estimate having experience! I would love to see what handy filters you have come up with. If you do – let us know in the comments below!

If you enjoyed this post you may also enjoy:

How I Set Up Google Analytics To Track My Blog Stats

How to Submit Your Site to Google

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