Jul 18th, 2008 by Administrator
An entrepreneur writes to me, “What do you think about the travel, hotel bookings, and airline tickets reservations related topics for a new website? I want to make portal to run it long term with Google AdSense ads and affiliate programs. Please also tell me any other good niche.”
I like travel — it attracts everyone. I mean, who doesn’t want to travel? The other good news is that people are always curious to know about deals and places even if they have no money to spend. For example, I might not have the budget for it right now but I am thinking of going to Brazil sometime. So if I see a travel related ad for Brazil I want to click on it to see if I can go.
The other great niche is health, because people have health problems all the time and the Internet is the first place to go.
Tags: adsense, advertising, airlines, hotels, portal, travel, website
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Jul 16th, 2008 by Administrator
I don’t know how many times I get asked about growing your traffic, specifically in Google. What many people do not realize that Google is a very smart company and there is no way you can rank higher than you should. In fact, if you try to manipulate the search rankings (that is exactly what the so-called search engine optimization firms do), you will be penalized by Google and your rankings may either tank or your website might even be blacklisted by Google.
Having said that it does not mean that you should not use standard optimization practices (Google actually encourages you to do that) so that search engines will know better what your page is about and your readers will also appreciate.
Google did an excellent post on their blog about how to rank high in organic search. Here is a summary:
Avoid any techniques that optimize your ranking very quickly or radically.
To increase your site’s popularity, check if other sites that discuss similar topics or have a similar reader base are aware your site exists. In other words, get good websites to link to yours.
Don’t participate in link schemes or buy/sell links that pass PageRank.
Your pages should have a clear hierarchy and relevant internal links. We also recommend creating a Sitemap and using Google’s Webmaster Tools. These tools are useful, user-friendly and will provide information such as where your backlinks come from or which queries visitors used to reach your site.
Use tags that are explicit and useful for the user.
For images, use ALT attributes to describe appropriately what the image is about.
Also, adding original and compelling content on a regular basis may help Google crawl your pages regularly. It can have the added benefit of attracting links to your pages too.
Finally, design your site with your users in mind, and be patient and consistent in your efforts.
Tags: backlinks, google, search engine optimization, search engine ranking, traffic
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Jul 14th, 2008 by Administrator

One of the most frequently asked questions to me is “How do I grow my traffic?” Obviously, more traffic means more income from advertising but for many of my friends who blog without advertising, more traffic to their blog is validation of their identity as a blogger and confirmation of their status as a micro-celebrity.
So one of my friends asks, “I have a website with How Tos approach but I never promoted it before. My goal is to get at least 1,000 daily visitors. Can you please provide me any tips that how should I proceed with it? I have very little time for the building links but I can write hundreds of How tos of various topics, mainly IT related. Please guide me, which approach to adopt and meet my target in the next few months.”
I wish I knew the answer to your question. There is no magic and even I struggle to take a new website and bring traffic to it, at least the kind you are talking about. I think my initial suggestions about creating compelling content and asking friends for links are still valid.
Generally I find that if that type of information is available almost everywhere, it is hard to bring traffic to it — you have to be unique. Remember that IT professionals will almost never click on an ad and they probably know about IT as much as you do. So it is a very tough market to pursue. I think a more attractive market is grandma who just bought a computer. So write articles with steps explained in a way that they make sense to a woman who has never used a computer in her life but uses it now to send email or to shop. Take a lot of screen captures and make it easy to use for normal every day problems that she might face. In other words, use your expert knowledge to help a novice.
Tags: advertising, blogging, website traffic
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Jul 10th, 2008 by Administrator
It turns out you can’t. Despite all the cuteness associated with these tld the bottom line is that you cannot transfer ownership to someone else.
I recently paid to buy a blog and the initial transaction went through GoDaddy without a hitch. The domain still shows in my dashboard as if I own it. The trouble I cannot delete the name of the previous owner and update it with my name.
I spoke to GoDaddy and according to them, it is impossible for them to do anything about the name change. In other words, it will always be in the original owner’s name. I spoke to our legal adviser and the consensus is that while we do have the paper trail demonstrating the sale and would be enough evidence in a court in our favor, were it to become a successful domain, there will always be a threat of a lawsuit from the previous owner.
We really wanted to buy this domain because we thought it had the potential to grow but looks like it would not be advisable to invest our resources into something that could be a problem in the future.
Tags: domain transfer, godaddy, nu domains, sell website
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Jul 9th, 2008 by Administrator
A fellow webmaster writes, “Is it okay to write unique articles regularly and forget about the links building? Actually, I don’t have time to build links for every page of my websites. Kindly suggest me which approach to adopt for the website’s promotion and search engine optimization?”
I think if you work in isolation and keep writing great articles you might realize that no one is linking to you because no one can find what you are writing. That will simply not bring any traffic to you. I just bought one blog with 3,000 posts and only 50 visitors a day. Not good. I need to do a lot of work in building traffic to that domain.
I think you want to be considered as an expert in your area and be known to people who also blog so that they will keep reading your articles and link to you.
You have to balance both. I don’t do it because my blog is already very popular, well linked, and people now keep linking to my collection of celebrity gossip. For a new entrant to the online publishing business, link building is important though I am not a fan of link exchanges.
Tags: blogging, link exchange, seo, traffic
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Jul 8th, 2008 by Administrator
Sorry I have to do this but due to a technical glitch, I have no choice but to request you to visit my main page and do a search there. Please continue by clicking here to free stuff on the web. The search box is right there.
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