Archive for April, 2009

Paralysis by analysis : Are you suffering from it?

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.

Higher Bounce Rate can be Good

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.

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
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
- - - - 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
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.

SEO Problem: Home page dominating the internal pages

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.

Pages that leak pagerank

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

About Us page
Contact us page
Feed-subscription link
Logo/Home/Header Keep maximum 1 link and nofollow everything else
Archive page Unless you want to rank for January, february modifiers
Privacy page Especially after the recent change in adsense TOS, you must have added a privacy page. Make it nofollow
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

Reasons why I blog

Blogging

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

Can Blogging be the next IT?

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.

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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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

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.
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.

7 Tips to increase your online income right now

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

Optimize your adsense blocks right now. Proper optimization of adsense blocks can increase your earnings by as much as 100%
If your site is already optimized, change the font/color of the ad blocks. Works like magic to fight off ad-blindedness
Replace that default site search feature with adsense for search. There is nothing better than google for search and it increases your earnings
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
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
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.
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.

Kuch Nahin Ho Sakta is Desh Ka

The perfect time for starting your blog

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.

My secret of getting plenty of traffic using the Long Tail of search revealed

If you have been blogging for sometime and especially if you have been reading some seo blogs, then I am sure that you have heard of the term “Long Tail”. Before I proceed with this post, I will let you on one secret. I can almost guarantee that you can take your blog to at least 1000$ per month by followin the advice listed on this one post alone. Hence even if this is the only post of mine that you are going to read, so be it. But read it very very carefully.

This is going to be a long post. I shall be discussing the following topics in it.

What gives me so much confidence that my advice can be used to easily take any blog to 1000$ pm earning
What is long tail of search
Why is it easy to succeed by targetting the long tail?
The steps to succeeding with the long tail
- Setting up the blog
- Identifying long tail keywords
- Writing a post targetted to long tail keywords
- Monetizing the long tail
- A strategy that will increase your chances of success
Improving the performance of the blog post

What gives me so much confidence that my advice can be used to easily take any blog to 1000$ pm earning

I have talked about many seo topics and monetization tricks previously. However I doubt if I have ever sounded as confident as this blog post. It is quite simple though. I am confident because I have done it myself. If you have been reading my blog for sometime, then I am sure that you must have been irritated by my posts about Ron Pratte, Intel core 2 duo and dual core, Catherine Gomez Boxxy, How to format USB drives etc. The fact all those posts as well as my recent posts about Abraham Biggs Suicide Video, Melissa Huckaby and IPL 2009 are all part of my experimentation of getting traffic by taking advantage of the long tail of search. And I have been successful at it beyond my imagination to say the least.

So what exactly is the long tail of search

Many of you must have heard of the 80-20 principle. It basically says that 20% of your customers/product bring in 80% of your sales. 80-20 is the basic rinciple that every large organization runs on. You see if I am a large book store then I need to concentrate on 20% of the titles that bring in 80% of my sales.

The concept of long tail was made popular by Chris Anderson in an article in the Wired magazine. The basic premise is quite simple. The remaining 80% will be good enough for you if your cost of production is low. I will not get into theoretical detail as this is not a post about long tail but rather about how to attract traffic to your blog using this strategy of targetting the long tail.

Why is it easy to succeed by targetting the long tail?

The basic premise of this strategy is quite simple. If I have a new blog, I will find it very difficult to compete with more established blogs for a given keyword. Think of a new blog trying to compete with Digital Inspiration on a technology related blog. It does not matter how great a post you have about twitter, Amit’s post about he forgetting his twitter password will outrank you on Google in all probability. So what do I do?

There are 2 types of blog posts that you can write to take advantage of the long tail.

A detailed post about a very specific topic that target search terms with 3 or more keywords. So since I can not compete with existing websites on the keyword virus, usb or virus usb I write a blog post titled how to remove virus from usb and Everything you may need to know about how to fix errors in USB Flash drives and how to Format USB Flash. Those long titles are there to target search terms that are 3 or 4 words long.
A post about a topic that established websites have not already written about: Google gets to see around 30% of search terms for the first time on a given day. Many of those are search terms that have become popular only recently. Typically these are news items. However do not write about news items that are going to get coverage from big websites. Rather focus on smaller issues like Melissa Huckaby and Princess Kemeria Abajobir Abajifar that are going to have a decent amount of interest and not mch competition.

The steps to succeeding with the long tail

The idea of this blog post is not to tell you that you can succeed by focusing on the long tail. Rather I am going to reveal my secret of getting traffic and money by focusing on long tail. I strongly believe that all the steps that I list down below are essential for succeeding with the long tail strategy.

Timing is the most important aspect of success: We shall be removing competition from established websites and blogs by using this strategy. However keep in mind that you still have to compete with 1000s of other blogs for your success. That makes it quite important that you are amongst the first few guys to write about a topic, especially if you are targetting the hot words for your traffic.

Setting up the blog: When I say timing is important, it is not the time of you publishing the post. Since we shall be focusing on Google to get much of this traffic, it is actually the time when Google finally indexes your blog posts. A well designed wordpress theme with some essential plugins like sitemap plugin, all-in-seo plugin will normally do the trick. However to get the maximum benefit your theme must take care of many other issues including avoiding duplicate content issue, ensuring good internal linking etc. Do not worry if you are not too good at SEO. I am working on a wordpress theme that will take care of all these issues. But it will be available to the members of my how to make money with blogging ecourse. The course is absolutely free. So go ahead and signup with your email id alone.

Identifying long tail keywords

I think this is the single most important trick to succeeding with the long tail strategy is to find out keywords that have decent amount of traffic and not much competition. The simplest way to do this is to monitor google trends. Just go through that page and you will find 100 keywords that you can blog about. You can even target country specific google trend pages. However if you read that last line carefully, you will realize that I said Google trends is the simplest method and not the only method. Some other tricks that I use to find hot keywords includes analyzing submissions to social sites like digg, propeller, indianpad etc and Predicting what keywords will go hot on google trends in 2-3 days hence by going through event calendars like movie schedule, movie releases, valentines day, bloggers’ meet etc. Keywords identified by above methods are not targetted by many other sites. Hence you may use the above tricks to find superior result.

Another method to find long tail keywords is to use google adwords keyword tool. Let us say you want to do a post about seo. Enter the keyword in this tool and it will throw up a large number of terms related to seo. Depending on the level of competition for the keyword, you may choose a particular topic to create your blog post.

Find out low competition terms: It is not enough to identify terms that will have a lot of searches. You need to identify terms on which there is comparatively less competition to worry about. And the number of search results is not an indication of competition. Rather use the methods suggested by me to find out the level of competion for a keyword.

Writing a post targetted to long tail keywords: Ranking on Google is decided based on 2 types of factors off-page factor and on-page factor. Off-page factors include backlinks to your blog, age of your blog etc. While on-page factors include stuff that is on your page like keyword usage, formatting of your post etc. If you have a comparatively new blog you will have a disadvantage in the off-page factor. Hence it becomes extremely important that you make the most of the on-page seo factors. I have covered this topic in depth in my post titled The best way to use keywords on blog post for maximum impact.

Some exclusive tips to increase chances of success dramatically

It is difficult to get links to a blog targetting long-tail keywords. Start your blog on some other topic like make money online or technology, get good number of links and then migrate to long tail keywords.
Alternatively you may mix these posts with some other linkable topics like I do.
Read my Beginners guide to building free backlinks to get free backlinks
Hire me as a consultant to kick start your blog. On a serious note I am ready to work on other blogs on a revenue sharing basis.
Avoid the issue of duplicate content by all cost. Never user ctrl+c and ctrl+v. Read others’ posts and then rewrite them in your own english. Do not reproduce the entire post
Make use of images on your posts.

Finally become a member of my how to make money with blogging ecourse. The course is absolutely free. So go ahead and signup with your email id alone. Trust me I shall be revealing at least 3 more secret tips about how to find super hot long tail keywords in the ecourse.

If you found this blog post then please help me reach more people with a digg/ stumble/ twit or link from your blog

Abraham Biggs Suicide Video : A Sad example of devil nature of social media

People who have failed to understand the true essence of social media keep looking for proof of it being a devil. In one such argument amongst a number of my blogger freinds, someone used the example of the Abraham Biggs Suicide Video as an example of how social media, web 2.0 and pretty much all web technologies have made our hearts cold.

What is exactly the issue of Abraham Biggs Suicide Video?

Abraham Biggs Suicide happened around 4 months back. The guy must have his own reason to end his life. However this story attracted a lot of attention as the guy had done a live webcast of his death and it is suspected that the viewers had egged him on, instead of trying to convince Abraham Biggs, not to commit suicide. It has been 5 months since Abraham Biggs Suicide, but still distractors of social media use it as a proof that web 2.0 is pure evil.

It is stupid to blame technology for Abraham Biggs Suicide

Saying that web 2.0 was responsible for Abraham Biggs Suicide is like saying that medicine is responsible for every idiot that commits suicide by popping sleeping tablets. Moreover he committed suicide may be because of the fact that he was suffering from a bipolar disorder disease. Even if web 2.0 was not there, he would have committed suicide. So how can you blame technology for what mr Biggs did.

IPL 2009 : what is your strategy

Cricket is a religion in India. I am sure we shall see a lot of action around ipl 2009 in the days to come. Have you planned to take advantage of it.

My experiment of getting traffic from hot words on google trends seems to be working quite well with the post about Princess Kemeria Abajobir Abajifar bringing in good amount of traffic yesterday. The other post about Melissa Huckaby has not been successful at getting traffic. I intend to make several changes to rank it as well.

Melissa Huckaby arrested in the case of Sandra Cantu death | Melissa Huckaby Latest News

Melissa Huckaby, a Sunday school teacher, was arrested late Friday in connection with the death of Sandra Cantu. Surprisingly Melissa drove in to the police station on her oown. First the news about Princess Kemeria Abajobir Abajifar and now this. Looks like going to be a difficult time.

The death of Sandra Cantu

Sandra disappeared on March 27 only for farmworkers draining an irrigation pond to find her body in the suitcase. Earlier reports seem to suggest that Sandra had been murdered before she was declared missing. Looks like a very terrible plan anyways.

I intend to keep this page updated with updates on news about Melissa Huckaby. So keep checking this page for Melissa Huckaby Latest News.

princess kemeria abajobir abajifar : the other woman in the divorce of Real Housewives of New York City star LuAnn de Lesseps and Count Alex de Lesseps

Real life seems to getting more interesting than reel life in the divorce case of Real Housewives of New York City star LuAnn de Lesseps and Count Alex de Lesseps.

Who is princess kemeria abajobir abajifar

Princess Kemeria Abajobir Abajifar is the granddaughter of King Abba Jifar II. So basically she is an Ethiopian princess.

What is the claim to fame of princess kemeria abajobir abajifar

The DeLesseps separated in early 2009. Only in March Alex de Lesseps, the husband, sent a letter to LuAnn de Lesseps stating that he is having an affair with another woman. The website Ethiplanet revealed the identity of this other woman. That is how princess kemeria abajobir abajifar came to the light.

P.S: On a lighter note, if anyone figures out how to pronounce the name of the princess then do let me know. May be after such incidents our bollywood movies will look comparatively less filmi.

Best posts of Binaryday (Last 30 days)

Since I write about varied topics, it is possible that some of you might have lost out on some of the useful posts that I have made in the last 30 days.

Image SEO : A Quick Guide : The best guide to image search optimization. period.
Blogging is a marathon and not a sprint
Why you need to know what type of backlink your blog needs : Not all blogs need the same type of link. Learn what your blog needs
Remove stop words from your title to rank better : Stop words are commonly occuring words like from,in etc. The post talks about how to find out if the searchers are using stop words and a simple trick to remove stop words from your title and rank better
Posting strategy for a super successful blog : How I mix different type of posts in my search for blogging success and how you can do it as well
http://binaryday.com/Search-Engine-Ranking-Factors.ppt A presentation about search engine ranking factors
10 social media sites that allow dofollow links on profile page
Step by step guide to making money with blog: My first attempt at an ecourse : Join the course now if you have not done so yet
Need to change perception of India in the world of SEO
Fixing com surrogate has stopped error in windows vista

Ranking with internal links

I had recently made a post about most viewed video on youtube. There is fair amount of competition for the keyword and my post was ranking at >150 on the SERP. However yesterday I linked this post from 2 existing posts and a new post with varied anchor text and today the post has moved into 11th position on SERP. I am going to link my posts about Com surrogate, dual core vs core 2 duo and free bollywood movies to see if internal links can push these posts up in the SERP.

While I am at the topic of ranking with internal links, let me make one thing clear. WordPress plugins for internal links are good for getting posts indexed. However they are not the best way to use internal links to rank for particular posts. You should always identify relevant posts to create internal links.

Free bollywood movies download and online bollywood movies website where users can watch free movies

I had recently written about most viewed video on youtube. Related research shows that there is a massive demand for free bollywood movies onine. There are many websites that allow users to download free bollywood movies. There is also no dearth of websites to watch online bollywood movies. I have been trying to figure out a feasible business model for starting a website where users can watch free movies. I am not able to find much content related to the legal aspects of the topic. If any of you happen to have any experience in the topic, then please drop me a mail.

Also do you know if working on a seo project for a website which may be illegal is legal or not. My previous posts about romantic hindi songs and romantic hindi movie may get me a project from a site about bollywood hindi movies. I am not sure if it is legal though. What should I do?

php source code for a tool to find pagerank of any website or page

There are many tools to find the pagerank of a website. Do you want to have the tool on your own domain? Well here is source code for a tool that can find pagerank of a website. Store this page as pagerank.php on your domain. Then try out http://www.yourdomain.com/pagerank.php?url=rediff.com to find the pagerank of rediff.

You should store this file on your server to take care of a number of upcoming seo tools that I am going to publish in the next 1-2 months. Online tool to find pagerank of all your internal pages is almost complete and will be published in less than 1 week time.

P.S: I will appreciate a link/stumble/digg/tweet for this page. Thanks in advance.

Need to change perception of India in the world of SEO

I have never been angrier than when reading the last paragraph of this link building article by Josh Dreller on SEL. I have seen many stupid people calling Indians as spammers. But then who cares about what stupid people have to say. When a well respected site like SEL calls Indians spammers, it is time for us to wake up and take note. In the defence of Josh, he has clarified that there are smart people in India. Thanks Josh but you are wrong to assume that we are not smart enough to understand what the client is trying to achieve.

Then I came across a post titled Here’s How India Can Be Good for Your Links and I was happy that there is at least one enlightened soul who knows that not all of us are spammers. I read through the entire post only to be insulted even more. Here is what the author had to say

“While I agree with Eric that Indians may not be in touch with the cultural and business subtleties, I have to disagree that they need to be in touch with our cultural subtleties to hit the send button. From my personal experience, they’re quite good at it.”

It is not their fault

I do not fault the authors of the above posts. Both of them normally know what they are talking about. Unfortunately they seem to have interacted with the wrong set of people from India.

The problem lies with us

While the spammers, the mindless link brokers go out and agressively pitch their service, we who understand seo in more detail and can do a really good quality work sit silent or continue to work on our own websites. Is it any wonder that people from the west seem to think that the only skill we have is to hit the send button.

I am sure we can find a solution to this problem. Looking forward to your views on how to increase awareness about quality seo work that can be done from India.

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