How can you choose the best headline — or at least the most appropriate one — for each article? I’m going to offer some suggestions that may help you make a decision next time you write a new post.
Why should I care about writing deadlines anyway?
Because each article’s headline is like an ad.
The headline is obviously the very first thing readers will see. If it doesn’t catch their attention, you’ll be in trouble. Some readers will proceed to read the article descriptions or excerpts available on search engines and social media sites, even when a headline doesn’t look particularly interesting. But many won’t do it. If your headline doesn’t make they feel compelled to read on, you’ll lose them.
Of course, the whole article must be good, not only its title. But then again, a good article without a good headline may pass unnoticed.
How is a good headline like?
While it depends on your audience — not all types of readers will react equally to the same titles — , it’s safe to say that the best headlines are the ones that let your readers know in advance what your articles are about. It’s a matter of usability: people feel more comfortable when they know what they are going to see after clicking on a link. (more…)
AdSense has always been ideal for small blogs as barrier to entry is so little. As long as you can get some traffic going, you can start making money right away, albeit probably not much in the beginning. However, there are changes in Google’s AdWords program that may tip the scales in favor of the bigger, more established websites. From Google’s Adsense blog:
“One of the main changes is the ability for advertisers to be more specific with their ad targeting through a combination of contextual targeting and placement targeting. As you may know, contextually targeted ads will appear on your pages if an advertiser’s keywords match your content, while placement-targeted ads will appear if an advertiser has specifically selected your ad placement or site. Now, advertisers can target your site or placements, but can also specify keywords for them so that their ads only appear in the most relevant pages. These ads will still need to compete with the available inventory of ads for a particular placement, and so only the highest-paying, most relevant ads will appear on your pages. At the same time, you’ll still be able to use your Competitive Ad Filter to prevent ads from specific URLs from appearing.”
Google contends that this will mean more relevant ads for your site’s visitors and increased advertiser confidence, resulting in greater ad spending. These may be true, but mostly for those sites that are already popular. It remains to be seen if this will lead to a major shift in advertiser preference (big sites vs long tail). I guess it will all depend on this new model’s effectiveness.
“In addition, while advertisers previously could only change their bids for all ads running across multiple sites, they can now adjust their bids for individual sites. This means that advertisers can spend more of their budgets on the specific AdSense sites which perform well and generate high-quality leads for the advertiser.”
With this recent development, I see scraper-type sites nearing their extinction. As for blogs, they will now have to be more competitive with their site branding to get noticed, and targeting a lucrative niche will become even more important. Google’s certainly keeping us on our toes.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll have to look for a purple cow.
The technology that propels Google and other search engines might be ahead of our time but one of the most basic principles, Information Retrieval (IR) was propounded in the middle of 20th century and is still at the core of search engine technology. At that time and for another 40 years information retrieval was used in government labs and research facilities that had retrieval systems. The scientists at that time working on developing the search function realized that the quality of a search result depended on two concepts: (more…)
At the end of my article about link shops I promised I’d show you a few more ways to monetize your sites and blogs. That’s what I’m going to do today. You’ll see that besides the 4 basic business models presented in the previous parts of this series, there are several alternatives and mixed plans that you can use to make money online.
1. Article marketing
You choose a good product to promote and select appropriate keywords. Then you write articles optimised for the search engines and publish them on article directories. People will read your articles and hopefully click on the links in your resource box, which will lead them to a sales page on your chosen product. (more…)
Not long after WordPress 2.6 came out, the talk of version 2.7 going public either in late September or early October has surfaced. For bloggers, it can be a challenge to keep up with this pace, and sometimes it just boils down to appreciation of the new features.
Here are the proposed changes for WordPress 2.7 taken from the WP Codex. Of course, we’ll have to wait for the final release to know which among these actually got in, but by just looking at this list, do you think it’s worth the trouble to upgrade? Or rather, what would it take to get you to upgrade your current WordPress installation? (more…)
Since Google gets the lion’s share of search queries, it’s about the worst nightmare to have your website taken down from Google’s search results. If it happens, try not to panic. Follow these steps to determine the cause, and with any luck, you can fix it in no time. (more…)
When I come across an interesting blog and I know I will visit it again… I like to snoop around, find out more about the author and look for tips that I can use on my own blog. Now this blog I came across today had an interesting angle to its two-column structure.
The author has done away with the Blogroll and introduced a separate page that holds all the outbound links from his site! I know how technology changes and to what extent webmasters can go in order to improve their PageRank. However, to do away with a Blogroll like it was something from the 90s appeared a little strange and at the same time indicated to a clever SEO trick to me so I had to investigate and here’s what I found out:
Will the new search engine that being discussed throughout search engine forums be able to topple the giant?
The Name
Well let me start off by saying the name alone is a loser in my eyes. Im not sure the term “Cuil It” will be replacing the more elegant souding “Google It” anytime soon. But that isn’t to say there still isn’t hope for this new competitor.
“Cuil is an old Irish word for knowledge. For knowledge, ask Cuil.” – Cuil.com
Ok so there is meaning behind the madness but people aren’t necessarily harping on meaning. People like names that are catchy and that can roll off their tongues. 1 point Google, no point Cuil.
The Design
The homepage leaves much to be asked for with a black background (cmon guys we all know that a black background will not appeal to the masses) with blue and grey text. I would have to say it looks more industrial than anything search engine related, but let’s not stop there.
Next let’s take a look at an inner page. A simple search for “php tutorials” produces the following:
Now I know change can be good but when it comes to people digging to find a solution in as little time as possible then the organization of the results must be in a highly user-friendly and familiar format. Cuil fails to achieve this with their column laid search results.
What do you think?
I have merely scratched the surface on my Cuil.com review and am now opening it up to you all to let us know your view on the different aspects of it. Feel free to pay Cuil.com a visit then share your views with us.
The good thing about social media is that it’s more than just a buzz word – it’s a useful platform and I’ve seen a lot of people make money out of it. Internet marketer Chris Brogan recently made an exhaustive list of social media marketing techniques and I found them quite enlightening. Other people picked up on it, among them Jeremiah Owyang, a senior analyst at Forrester. He reorganized the list into five categories and then some, which makes it all the more readable. Let me share the list with you. (more…)
The web is moving quickly in various directions all at once. Opportunities come and go in a snap. If you plan to make money online, you have to be able to keep up. It can be quite intimidating trying to follow every emerging trend, not to mention time-consuming. There are millions of blogs, forums, twitter feeds and the list goes on and on. However, using an RSS aggregator like the Google Reader and a few techniques, monitoring conversations in the web can be fast and easy. (more…)
