BinaryDay

It is applicable to a situation when a person/team/organization spends too much time analyzing a problem that they are left with too little time to work on the ideas generated by the discussion. I have suffered from this disease myself in the past.

Here are some symptoms of paralysis by analysis

• You spend more time reading blogs about blogging and less time on writing posts for your blogs
• You have not changed your blog theme in the last 3 years because you have been searching for the perfect theme
• You never get time to build links for your blog because you were busy reading articles about how to get links
• You have not sent an email to another blogger asking for link/interview/review because you are not sure if he will read it

Just Do it

The easiest way to find out if a trick works is to just do it. If it works great. If not big deal. I will try out something else.

Few days back I had made a post about the larger amount of blog traffic that will be generated for search terms related to IPL 2009 and had asked my readers about how do they plan to take advantage of it. Harsh has left a comment that

Using Google trend to drive traffic is good strategy, but then if its not your niche , you will simply end up increasing your bounce rate. Is int it??

I was going to respond to him in the comments section. However I just realized that many established bloggers and webmasters seem to have accepted the theory that high bounce rate = bad quality as gospel truth. That is NOT necessarily TRUE.

I Love high bounce rate on certain pages

You read that right. I love high bounce rate. I actually brainstorm for quite sometime everyweek trying to increase the bounce rate. And trust me I have not gone mad. Not yet atleast

High Bounce rate means higher CTR for adsense

What are the normal advice you have heard/read for decreasing the bounce rate? Provide lot of interesting links to your other pages from the body of the post, at the end of your post, provide links to your most interesting posts from the sidebar etc. Now think about what those interesting links are doing to your adsense blocks. All those interesting links are competeing with the adsense blocks for the attention of the user. As you succeed in making the internal links more and more interesting, the adsense blocks continue to become less attractive. Is it any wonder that your CTR keeps going down.

Answer to some queries about high bounce rate raised in the comments

I think Nihar, Tarun and Harsh have raised some really valid points in the comments section. Instead of answering them in the comments, I will deal with them here.

1. If you are blogging solely for money, then a higher bounce rate is good: I think this statement is true for most bloggers who monetize their blogs through ppc. However if you are monetizing your blog through affiliate products or if you want to monetize your blog by selling some service/product then this does not hold good
2. If you want to convert a google reader into a regular reader then you need to give them some option: Again true. However you need to answer some questions to know if it is true for you
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         • What % of your feedreaders actually read your blog daily? It is less than 15% for most of my blogs
         • How much you would have earned by putting an adsense block at the end of your post
         • What is the worth of the feed subscriber to you
3. A High bounce rate will decrease your ranking: Fair and logical point. However I and several authority figures in SEO do not think that Google has started using bounce rate as one of the quality parameters. My experience with the post about core 2 duo vs dual core bears it out. I think this is because bounce rate as a ranking factor is quite noisy and susceptible to manipulation.

I have been working on a resume website to try out my seo skills and to put my theoretical learnings into practice. My progress on google.com has not been great though the site has started to get some fairly good results on the google.co.in domain for search terms like sample resume, fresher sample resume, java sample resume etc.

While I continue to study the reason for this sharp difference in ranking on google.com and google.co.in, I had decided to try my hand a single word keyword i.e resume. For this purpose I created a specific page about resumes with optimized title tag, meta description, h1,h2 tags and keyword usage etc. The page has been indexed by google for somedays now.

However I am facing a unique issue and on close examination I see that issue being repeated on my other domains as well.

• My initial content about sample resume was ranking at 90-100 range on Google.
• Google avoids keeping 2 pages of the same website on the SERP. For really good authority site it puts up 2 links as well
• Now google seems to be ignoring my new page. Since the original page was not optimized for resume as a keyword, it continues to linger at 90-100 position only.

Have you ever faced an issue like this? What is the solution to this issue?

I will appreciate some links to my sample cover letter page as well. It is right now at 45 position for “sample cover letter” and I shall like to see the effect of external links on the ranking.

If your homepage has a pagerank of 4 and it links out to only 1 outgoing page, then the outgoing page gets all the benefit of the pagerank of your homepage. However if the homepage is linking out to 10 pages then each page will get only 1/10 benefit of the original pagerank. The obvious step is to reduce the number of links on your homepage that are not adding to any ranking increase.

Check your homepage links to any of the following pages and nofollow all of them

1. About Us page
2. Contact us page
3. Feed-subscription link
4. Logo/Home/Header Keep maximum 1 link and nofollow everything else
5. Archive page Unless you want to rank for January, february modifiers
6. Privacy page Especially after the recent change in adsense TOS, you must have added a privacy page. Make it nofollow
7. Outgoing Links inside your post body Make intelligent use of more tag

Ajith has detailed post about pagerank leak. Do check it for a detailed discussion of the topic

* I do not mean the toolbar pagerank. I am talking about actual Google pagerank

Blogging

1. Motivates me to research about topics I care
2. Allows me to put my thoughts into perspective
3. I can control what anyone will find on Google about me
4. One task that I do not HAVE to do but rather LOVE to do
5. Make Money
6. Be friend with some really wonderful persons
7. Everyday I wake up with the same dream I have joined the A-List and Amit Agarwal has sent me a link request

The IT revolution with all its plus and minus has been a wonderful journey for India. It has created jobs, given us hope and more importantly a confidence that we can compete with the best in the world. The IT revolution seems to be slowing down due to several reasons including a backlash against outsourcing in the developing countries in the wake of the global recession.

I have been studying the pagerank profile, alexa rank, overall ranking and earning details of Indian bloggers with a lot of interest over the last few months. Based on these studies and my interactions with emerging bloggers like Pavan, Ajay, Abhishek, Nihar, Tarun and Harsh I am becoming more and more confident that blogging as a profession and business will create even more opportunity than what IT has done for India in the last few years.

I am aware that, it is quite a big statement to make and I do not expect you to accept my words at face value. Hence in the paragraphs that follows, I shall be putting forth my logic for coming to the consclusion above. This is going to be a rather longish post. Hope you have some time on your hand to go through it completely.

1. Large pool of english speaking population: Actually blogging requires English writing skill and we have an even larger pool of English writing population as students from Tier-II, Tier-III cities are perfectly ok writers while they struggle in the spoken english department.
2. 24 X 7 development cycle: In software development working on 24 X 7 time schedule was a choice. Companies embraced the idea to decrease the time to market. However in the online world 24 X 7 is a necessity.
3. Blogging needs zero capital investment: What was great about IT business was the low capital requirement compared to traditional manufacturing businesses. This allowed the entrepreneurial middle class professionals to set up IT companies. Blogging does not need any capital what so ever. That has allowed students and IT profeesional in India to create blogs and earn money from it.
4. Large pool of engineers ready to work for a lower salary: The recession is only going to increase that number. Aspects like Search engine optimization, analytics etc are predominntly logical tasks that can be carried out by Indian engineering students with a lot of ease.
5. Blogging will generate oppurtunity for students of other streams as well: Job creation in IT was restricted to engineers alone. Blogging by its very nature will provide a great opportunity to students of other streams like arts, designing etc.
6. Blogging is independent of cultural bias: In the early years of IT revolution, Indian companies had to fight the negeative bias of their clients about the quality standard of Indian companies. Luckily in the world of blogs, each post is judged by its own merit alone.
7. Blogging does not need no Visa: I do not need to be in the USA to blog about US. If your blog is good, no government will stop its citizens from reading your blog, clicking on your advertisement or buying products from you.

Challenges for Blogging becoming the next IT

1. Our habit of getting paid at the end of the month: We are accustomed to working in an office and getting paid at the end of every month for the work we have put in. Unfortunately blogging does not work that way. I had to put in close to 6 months of blogging before I started to make any money.
2. Our reluctance to learn marketing: Blogging is not about writing great content alone. To be a successful blogger, you need to promote those posts, convince others to link to you and convert the readers into subscribers. I see a distinct reluctance amongst Indian bloggers to take up these other aspects of blogging.

These are tips that help you increase your earning without any increase in traffic or without having to make a new post.

1. Optimize your adsense blocks right now. Proper optimization of adsense blocks can increase your earnings by as much as 100%
2. If your site is already optimized, change the font/color of the ad blocks. Works like magic to fight off ad-blindedness
3. Replace that default site search feature with adsense for search. There is nothing better than google for search and it increases your earnings
4. Make use of several advertisement products. Start using in-text advertisement, paid review etc. On Binaryday Infolinks now earns as much as adsense. I am so sad I was not using them for all these days
5. Replace the last adsense block with an affiliate link. Unlike adsense, affiliate links may not earn on a daily basis. But on the days they do, you will get a good return
6. Start selling some private advertisement on your website. The great thing about direct sales is you do not have to pay any commission to anyone else.
7. Create another blog with some high paying niche like make money online, automobiles, legal or medicine. Advertise the blog on your main blog. I have been amazed by the results. You will be amazed as well

Let me know your experience on this topic.

Just imagine what will happen to your blogging dreams if your adsense account were to be banned. Well looks like if you are not careful enough any one can do that to you. 

I was having a chat with Pavan about whether use of adsense on my sample resumes website will result in a smart pricing. That is when it just dawned on me that if that is true then I can use anyone else’s adsense publisher details on that website and get his account to be smart priced. I am not that evil but still that is a possibility. Worse still, I can setup a p*o*r*n website and put up your adsense block in it and get you banned.

You can protect your adsense account from such evil people

Google adsense has a feature that allows you to control the websites on which your adsense can be displayed. Make use of that feature right now to protect yourself against any misuse.

Simply go to “adsense setup” tab and then the “allowed websites” subtab. Under the “choose your site settings” there are 2 radio buttons. Select the 2nd radio button and list down the websites where you want to display your adsense advertisements. Take care not to include any http or www prefix before website name. So I shall enter binaryday.com and mywalkin.com into that box.

Screenshot of how to enable the feature

Now

Yes, now is the perfect time for starting your blog. The greatest problem with many wannabe bloggers is that they read too much, think too much and do nothing. I will never understand the hesitation in starting a blog. The domain name costs 8-9 dollars. You can get a decent web hosting for another 8-9 dollars. 18 dollars of investment. That is what you spend on a single night out. But when it comes to starting a blog, you hesitate.

Some people do not start a blog because of technical challenge. Well wordpress has already made it exceptionally simple to set up a blog. However if you are still not sure that you can set up a blog, drop me a line at ask[@]binaryday.com and I shall personnaly help you set up your own blog.

Exercising or blogging, the first step is the toughest one. If you can beat the inertia, you can reach the top. Many of us are guilty of providing an overdose of advice to you. Ignore us. It is perfectly ok if you have not figured out a topic to blog about. I had started blogging about entrepreneurship, moved on to technology and now giving you advice about blogging, making money and seo.

I wish my post can convince at least one person to start a blog now. If you know someone who has been thinking about starting a blog, please send across this post to him/her and ask him to start blogging now.