Residual Bacon » getting started http://residualbacon.com Just another WordPress weblog Mon, 17 May 2010 20:17:49 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 Stupid Simple SEO – How I Made Page 1 of Google http://residualbacon.com/getting-started/stupid-simple-seo-how-i-made-page-1-of-google/ http://residualbacon.com/getting-started/stupid-simple-seo-how-i-made-page-1-of-google/#comments Wed, 30 Dec 2009 02:13:44 +0000 residubalbacon.com http://residualbacon.com/?p=201 stupidsimpleseo

In 3 weeks I have accidentally made it to the first page of google search. Of course its only when you search for ‘residual income blog’ or ‘passive income blog’. The first time I searched for ResidualBacon on the list when searching for ‘Residual Income Blog’ I scavenged 20+ pages waiting to see it. Never did. 1 Week later I was on the 8th page. 2 weeks later I was on page 2. Now I sit on the first page, and #2 on the list. Here is a Stupid Simple SEO guide.

Crawl like GoogleBot

Googlebot, the robot that crawls the web reading your website, really only has three key functions. These 3 functions are rather simple and here is there definition according to google:

  • Crawling – Crawling is the when Googlebot discovers new and updated pages that will be added to Google index.
  • Indexing – compile a massive index of all the words it sees and their location on each page & process information included in key content tags and attributes, such as Title tags and ALT attributes
  • Serving – search the index for matching pages and return the results we believe are the most relevant to the user

So what can we learn from this? Well that Google just looks at text, organizes it, then searches through it when someone searches for similar text. Simple enough, but how do i use this information to my advantage?

Understand Google Hierarchy

Title -> Description -> Keywords -> Content. I am sure you’ve read before how important your title is when doing SEO, and it is important because that is the first thing Google looks at for relevance. From there it looks at the description, then keywords and finally content. How does google know this information? Through META & ALT tags of course. META tags are placed between the <head> & </head> tags of your web document, and are specifically used to talk to robots like googlebot.

The META Big Hitters:

metapost

  • Title – This will be the title of your web page and is very important for SEO, try to use keywords in your title.
  • Description – This is a short description of your web page. Once again it doesn’t hurt to use a keyword or two in your description.
  • Keywords – Keywords are specific words that you are trying to bring users into your site with, if your could sum up your whole web page with one or two words those would be keywords. For instance, keywords for this post would be ‘Blog Tips’ and ‘SEO Tips’

As I said above these live in your web document between the <head> & </head> tags and are specially formated like this:

<title>Your Title Here</title>
<meta name="description" content="Fill This In Yourself" />
<meta name="keywords" content="keyword, more keywords, even more keywords" />

Feel free to copy and paste the code above into your own HTML docuement, if your on a blogging platform like Wordpress you can simply use the All-in-one-SEO-Pack.

My three not so secret, secrets:

1 – Use keywords in your description, and in your title if possible. Its easy to use a keyword or two in your description, but not always possible for your title. Use them sparingly though, you don’t need it repeated over and over or that may actually hurt your page rank.

2 – Use google’s keyword tool to research keywords. The google keyword tool will help you come up with keywords and will show how many queries google recieves for those queries. If your keywords are not getting searched, you may want to re-think those keywords.

3 – Update your website! Many people don’t know that if your page is updated constantly then Google will expect updates more and crawl your website more. (Comments count as updates since there is a change to your web page)

I’m no expert, I just use what works.

I am not pretending to be an SEO superstar. I know there are a handfuls of more information on SEO, like using ALT tags for each image, but to me that is a bit tedious. I have used only the information I have posted here to boost my own page rank and I know you can do the same. Just remember:

  • Crawl like a robot
  • Understand the Google hierarchy
  • Use those META tags
  • Research your keywords
  • Update your website

As usual I would love to hear your thoughts and comments. Have your own way to improve page rank? Did I miss a tip that can dramatically improve this article? I will update the bottom of this page with the best information from the comments as well as a link to the commentators website.

]]> http://residualbacon.com/getting-started/stupid-simple-seo-how-i-made-page-1-of-google/feed/ 4 Anatomy of a Great Blog Post http://residualbacon.com/articles/anatomy-of-a-great-blog-post/ http://residualbacon.com/articles/anatomy-of-a-great-blog-post/#comments Tue, 29 Dec 2009 00:25:16 +0000 residubalbacon.com http://residualbacon.com/?p=150 Anatomyofpost

Lately I have been reading many blogs and I have noticed that a few blogs have figured out the perfect way to interact with their readers through their blog. The kind of post we all want. A post that draws readers, creates subscribers, and gets a massive amount of comments & social media love. I decided to dissect a post and share my findings with my fellow readers and create a list of questions that you should ask yourself before you hit the big ‘Publish’ button.

Simplicity

It seems the pro bloggers have figured out a whole new language that they write in. Its a simple and understandable way of writing that has a nice flow. This means that you should provide the information you are giving your readers in the clearest manner with as few words as possible. There is no need for useless sentences or re-interpretations, they are only truly after your information so give them just that.

Timeless

hourglasslongIs the information you are posting timeless? Will the information or advice you are sharing going to be relevant in 2 weeks, 2 months, 2 years? While dissecting the posts it seems that most of them were published months ago, yet there were comments from only a couple days ago. This will help build readers as well as build trust. So when writing a new post give your reader a nice timeless piece of information they can go back to and reference from.

Broken Down Visibly

Did you ever wonder why it was so hard to read your college text books? Seeing that wall of text is intimidating and you can’t easily pull information from it. The world is on a 5 second attention span and if your not careful with your posting you may have some killer content, but it will go unnoticed if not broken down properly. This information is nothing new, you want your post to be scan-able. Do this by breaking down your content with:

  • Use lists like this one.
  • Headers that define the following paragraphs.
  • Graphics relevant to your content.
  • Bolding the most important sentence in a paragraph.

Guide & Reward the Reader

rewardd

This last information is the most important. Does it guide the reader in anyway? You want the reader to physically or mentally make an action based off of your post, not just be done with the information and start randomly clicking in your website, or even worse, hit the X to close the browser.

You want to reward your readers. Reward them with knowledge they can share, with a good feeling they can relate to. You can even give them an actual reward, many websites have e-books that are rewards for becoming a subscriber. Other websites will reward them with links on their main page. There is a stronger bond between a blog and its readers when rewards are used.

5 questions to ask before you post.

So we’ve talked about the anatomy of a great blog post. Here is a list of questions to ask yourself before you hit that publish button:

  • Is my post simple and easily understood?
  • Can I pick out the major points and information of the article in under 5 seconds?
  • Will the information I am sharing be relevant in 3 days? Weeks? Months?
  • Does it effectively guide the reader to take action?
  • Is there a reward for reading my post?

Did I miss any key components to a great blog post? What do you think makes a great blog post? Share your thoughts in the comments.



Reader Suggestions:

Lis Sowerbutts : “I rarely post now without doing some keyword research – I like to know what my post is trying to rank for.”
Jason : “Put you’re most relevant information in the first sentence of a paragraph.”
Niall Harbison : “I find the key to get lots of “loving” on social media is…1.Really good title | 2.Easy scannable content | 3.Something that is useful to your readers”

]]> http://residualbacon.com/articles/anatomy-of-a-great-blog-post/feed/ 8 List Update #1 http://residualbacon.com/blog/list-update/ http://residualbacon.com/blog/list-update/#comments Fri, 18 Dec 2009 20:12:49 +0000 residubalbacon.com http://residualbacon.com/?p=98 Needing to give the ResidualBacon some love I have added a handful of sites to The List to help build it. I am hoping over the passing months we can get this list nice and lengthy. This list will give readers a nice place where they have an overview of different sites with a wide variety of options to earn a passive income. We all know that diversifying the passive income we earn can help a steady income from them.

The items added on the list today are mainly the most well known. I am still constantly searching and have more to put up but was hoping to review them first. The items that made this list this growth spurt are:

  • E-Junkie
  • Google Adsense
  • ClickBank
  • eHow

I also have a new idea to add. If you know of a source of residual and passive income not on The List by all means please support the RB and share the information. I will give you props in both an update post to list growth, as well as add a Submitted By (your name & website) to ‘The List’ itself. Giving you some nice link-backs as a thank you for helping me.

There are plenty of ways to earn passive incomes out there, and different people find success in certain areas. Lets help everyone out by making this list nice and large. Once the list grows enough I will break it down into sub-categories, like Micro-Stock Sites, Article Posting Sites, Advertising Sites, etc.

Hope these new list items help new comers and old comers alike. Cheers & Happy Holidays to everyone from the RB!

]]> http://residualbacon.com/blog/list-update/feed/ 2 Set Your 2010 Goals! http://residualbacon.com/blog/set-your-2010-goals/ http://residualbacon.com/blog/set-your-2010-goals/#comments Wed, 16 Dec 2009 00:32:07 +0000 residubalbacon.com http://residualbacon.com/?p=77 money goalsSo the New Year is just around the corner. It is time to stop and enjoy some time with the family, tell the wife or husband you love them as well as think about the year to come. This is a great time to reflect on last years accomplishments and set youself in the right direction for the upcoming year. Time to set some goals and stategize on how you are going to be accomplishing what you wish before next time this year, but what makes a goal a good goal?

Good, Great, GOAL!

It is not hard to just come up with a goal. It is quite easy as a matter of fact. You can come up with them all day long, but lets pick one apart, in fact, lets pick my goal apart. “I wan’t to make $1,000 dollars of residual income each month.” So we have our goal, but is it realistic? Is it measurable? Here are a handful of key terms that come to mind when goal setting:

  • Written
  • Challenging
  • believable
  • specific
  • Measurable
  • & Have a Specific Deadline

I think these terms sum up a goal rather well, but you do not necasarilly need all of them to make a goal a good goal. Some of the terms like believable and challenging are relative terms that may differ to person to person. While I think all goals must be measureable in some aspect otherwise you will never know if you are making progress. Specific deadlines depend strongly on the goal, it may be a lifestyle enhacement goal that really has no end. A good way to look at goals is think if they have a good plan involved. One that if follwed offers a reasonably high probability of sucess.

Lets break down my goal of “Making $1,000 a month of residual income” and see it attacked by these definitions and see if we can carve a better goal plan for it:

  • Written: I have written my goal down here, as well as made a new page on the blog to remind myself what I shoot for by the end of 2010, so I have passed the first term with ease.
  • Believable: I do personally believe the goal is acheivable, I read other posts and blogs that have earned and surpassed $1,000 dollars a month of residual income. The key here is the goal setter must believe, and in this case I do!
  • Challenging:this will definitly be a challange for me. I have no long record of earning passive income and I am exploring new ways of doing so.
  • Measurable:My goal is measurable as I will be breaking down the amount of money made each month and reporting it on this blog. Money can always be measured :)
  • Specific:Now my goal could probably use a little love here. Clearly its specific in the long term, but could probably be a little more specific.
  • Deadline: My goal does have a deadline, but in reality if I don’t meet my goal’s deadline I won’t just stop trying, as well as if I meet it earlier then the deadline I won’t keep trying to improve it.

    • So after looking over my goal I think I can challange myself with taking this goal on, but I am going to need to make a good goal plan that I can follow. This is what tests the true integrity of a goal, for if your goal doesn’t have a plan for sucess then its just a pipe dream.

    Create a Goal Plan!

    Now we need to make a goal plan that we can follow to achieve our goal. We can do this by breaking down our goal into stepping stones that lead us to our big goal. It is important to make these smaller goals to help us achieve a feeling of accomplishment while we are working on our larger goals. In this goalplan we are going to identify :

    • Your Goal
    • Starting Date of Goal
    • Ending Date of Goal (if there is one)
    • Obstacle: People, events, cirumstances & anything that may hinder your progress on obtaining your goal.
    • Task: Mini-goals that hurdle obstances as well as other items that help pursuit your goal.
    • Obstacle 2
    • Task 2

    The idea here is simple. Create a formula that you can follow that will keep you on track to your goals. Identify the things that prevent your goal from happening and the taks that will hurdle the obstacles and keep you going. These little goals will help you keep motivation if your goal takes more time then expected. Here is a sample of goalplan for my goal:

    • Earn $1,000 of Residual Income
    • January 1 2010
    • December 31 2010
    • Obstacle: Making money with eHow.
    • Task: Write 3 eHow articles. (monthly)
    • Obstacle: Affiliate Marketing Income.
    • Each month research and use one product an create sale page on blog, research keywords and setup adwords campaign(monthly)
    • Obstacle: Generate income through GraphicRiver.
    • Task: Create 3 items for my GraphicRiver portfolio (monthly).
    • Obstacle: Generate More Reader for Blogs
    • Task: Create 3 quality content posts. (weekly)
    • Obstacle: Monthly Income review
    • Task: End of each month review what has been working, what has not been working, make necassary adjustements.

    Now I will be following the above formula to help obtain my goals for the 2010 year, but there might be soem hiccups and that is ok, just keep trucking and working on your goals. Remember that it is ok to make changes to your goal and goal plan, review it and fix it and go back after it!

    Go make your goals and lets work hard this upcoming year to achieve our goals!

    ]]> http://residualbacon.com/blog/set-your-2010-goals/feed/ 14 5 Blog Starting Interviews You Should Read. http://residualbacon.com/blog/5-blog-starting-interviews-you-should-read/ http://residualbacon.com/blog/5-blog-starting-interviews-you-should-read/#comments Tue, 08 Dec 2009 20:22:32 +0000 residubalbacon.com http://residualbacon.com/?p=40 buildblockSo I did some homework the past few days and I have been reading up on other bloggers who have had much success in the world of blogging. This may not be geared specifically towards residual income but for those who blog and use your sites to make money off of ads and some affiliate marketing you really need a solid blog to get a heavy following that you can then monetize and build income from. So here is a nice little list of interviews from some very successful bloggers that you can read and use the knowledge they give to help your own blog get rolling. Read the interviews and use the knowledge they give on your own blog.

    Jacob Cass interview on IncomeDiary.com

    Jacob Cass is one of the authority figures in the Logo & Branding world. He began his blog in 2007 which is Just Creative Design and uses his blog as a guide to help him obtain design work. With currently over 21,000 subscribers and counting Jacob has become quite the internet celebrity in the design world. His interview focuses on advice to new bloggers and how to get the ball rolling for your niche site. He explains not to give up:

    What advice would you give to people just starting out with an online business?

    Don’t give up. The first 3-4 months are the hardest but stick with it, it does pay off in the end. Remember the snowball effect (1 tells another, that person tells another, etc).

    If you could go back in a time machine to the time when you were just getting started, what advice would you give yourself regarding making money online?

    Do your research, learn more before going straight in, it will save you a lot of time. I recommend Problogger for blogging tips.

    Alborz Fallah – A Million Dollar Blogger

    Alborz FallahThis next interview comes in PDF form or MP3. Alborz Fallah created an automobile blog called CarAdvice.com.auand with adsense alone was making over $5,000 a month and then got some corporate ads which boosted his income to $20,000 a month. Its a rather lengthy interview (totaling 18 pages) but is a wealth of information on what he did to become a million dollar blogger. He talks about different keys to success and explains how his niche blog was able to make big money online:

    Yaro: What’s that translating to in terms of revenue at the moment?

    Alborz: It’s a bit of a different model. We started, obviously, with Adsense. It was always the best to start with and we got up to around $5000 a month U.S. dollars, but it wasn’t sufficient to pay for what we do. We have dedicated server hosting now, we have four full-time staff and two part-time staff. We managed to get ourselves signed up to an advertising agency which pretty much pays us 10 cents per unique browse that we deliver.

    On an average day, we get about 16,000 unique browses. You can put that into dollars, I suppose. It’s not too bad. It generates a fair bit of income every month. It would average out about $20 grand a month, but that’s just for the advertising. We get other sponsors and things and other stuff like that. Google is still running on the site which gives us another couple of grand a month, but we are always improving advertising. The more visitors we do, the more money we get. That’s how it works.

    Mr. Rajaie Alkorani new blogger interview

    Rajaie Alkorani is a young (under 20) blogger who has a top blog in making money online niche. In his interview he talks about SEO work and a few effective and not so effective strategies of online blogging :

    What tools can be used to select a profitable niche to blog about?

    I don’t have much experience in this area, but from what I’ve read, keyword research is probably one of the most important steps you should keep in mind when starting a niche site. SEOBook.com have a lot of awesome search engine optimization tools that will definitely help anyone starting out make a good choice. I would also recommend reading sites that give valuable information regarding keyword research, one of the most notable being the Keyword Academy.

    Any specific advice for New-web-business.com and our readers?

    Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo Da Vinci,Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.

    Expert Advice: Creating A Successful Blog

    The 4th and final interview (wait you said 5!) is an interview that went down over at GraphicDesignTwist and they did an interview with 5 top blog owners: Collis Ta’eed of FreelanceSwitch, Walter Apai of Web Designer Deopt, Chris Coyier of CSS Tricks, Brian Hoff of Design Cubicle and Christ Spooner of Spoon Graphics. So total your getting 9 interviews including the 4 above! On this set of interviews Graphic Design Twist picks the brains of these top blog owners of how they got their blogs to the top levels of the blogging world:

    Question #2 – How long did it take to start making a profit from advertising?

    Chris Spooner – A good income wasn’t received until I decided to place direct advertising in the form of 125px ad spots in the sidebar of Blog.SpoonGraphics. Beforehand I received the odd few dollars from Google Adsense and a couple of affiliates programs. Now the advertising income has reached a level where it’s higher than my wage from my previous job, which has allowed me to spend more time crafting blog posts and work on developing the blog on a daily basis.

    Chris Coyier – Maybe 9 months? I think in the really really early days I tried AdSense but I have come to despise AdSense (in a nutshell, it’s ugly, it doesn’t give enough control, and it doesn’t pay well enough). After I got rid of that, I just did nothing until eventually advertisers approached me. I sold it manually for a while, which was alright but became too much work. Now I sell through BuySellAds.

    Walter – It took about a month or so.

    Collis – Profitability took a long time, close to a year in fact. This was in large part however because we were constantly pushing new projects. In the first year we ran a survey of 3000 freelancers, subsites for calculating your rates, earning passive income and applying the 80/20 rule, launched a podcast and pursued a number of other ideas, some of which never made it out. All this was a bit expensive to do and was a constant drain on the finances. By early in 2008 we’d eased back and were focusing on just posting and the site hit profitability.

    Brian – Although there is a few ads and sponsors throughout the Design Cubicle, the money gained through Google Adsense and my sponsors goes right back into TDC and my readers. With TDC being under 4 months old, I have only recently started accepting sponsorship and advertising on my site within the past month.

    That is it for our list of interviews, be sure to read these if you are planning on starting a new blog to help make some residual income, these interviews will definitely start you off on the right foot!

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