Tag: start a blog

3 Steps To Design Mouth Watering Business Website Templates
Business website templates are more than just pretty looks for eCommerce websites. When choosing a name for your business, consider registering an LLC to protect your personal assets and give your online presence a professional touch, ensuring an appetizing first impression for those visiting your site.

When I started this website, my plans were to make this solely a niche blog and within a month or less, I knew I got to change the plan. Obviously, I have some monetization issues back in my head and I was determine to turn this into a full-fledged business website down the road.

Four long months past and my traffic was at an average of 200 visitors per day. If you call this a victory, think again. I was converting less than 10% of my visitors to become potential clients.

The truth is … blogging isn’t going to make me much money but my services will. You may benefit from this article: 5 Insights You Should Know About Make Money Blogging.

Before we go into much details, here’s a simple video on why you need a high converting template for your business website.

What are the best business website templates that REALLY convert?

WordPress makes it easy to build a website from scratch and Dynamik Website Builder makes it even easier to do so. However, building a business website with the right designs that increases conversion rate is the hardest part.

In order to build the right business website template, you need stats, figures and lots of data. In this case study, I used ClickTale to do the analytics for me.

With ClickTale analytic tool, I realized that I was driving traffic to my ‘Hire Me‘ page but honestly, I got only 3 inquiries over 4 full month of hard work.

Now think back (real hard), why only 3 inquiries? What had I done wrong?

I was determined to change everything on this website to look more professional and the first step was no other than to choose the best business website template.

Before I even think of a design, I need stats and figures to point me to the right direction. Yes, I am not talking about any website design; I need the best.

So, here are 3 simple steps which I took to design the best business website template that fit my niche.

Step 1: Using the right website analysis tools

Analytics and stats are important in order to build a great business website theme

In order to do any visible changes, I decided to analyze my blog completely. My main goals are to figure out:
- Why is the conversion rate is so low?
- How to increase my signup rate?
- What attracts my readers most?
The above three are just the main ones. I had over a dozen smaller goals but all these are just to give you a simple outlook on what you should be doing.

Analytics isn’t cheap and if you are thinking of the good old fashion Google Analytics, trust me that it is not going to bring you that far. Sorry Google but I am just being truthful.

Bear in mind that even though Google Analytics does offer you information such as click rates, heatmaps and bounce rate, you need more than that to do a complete analysis.

My first step of analyzing my website is my front page. I don’t know about others but my front page (or homepage) is capping over 35% of all my traffic. Taking an example of 200 visitors a day, I am losing about 2,100 potential clients in a month.

Imagine the ability to convert 10% of those traffic into business. Guess I would be a very happy blogger right?

The analytics tool that I use is ClickTale. For the record, ClickTale is a freemium tool. On a free account, it offers up to 5,000 recorded pageviews per month and probably a dozen more features.

ClickTale does slightly more than what other web analytics companies are offering and what really dig me in was the customer service.

Mitchell Schneider (Social Communications Manager) and Melody Frank (my product consultant) were great in ensuring that I had no issues trying to get ClickTale running on my site.

Kudos to them.

Step 2: Analyzing and fixing the loopholes

A poorly configured website theme can easily affects the sales and production of a website

ClickTale offers a huge range of services such as heatmap, clicks and web analytics. However, I basically uses ClickTale to focus on improving my visitor’s engagement.

So, why is ClickTale such an useful tool especially when you are designing a business website template?

I use ClickTale to track:
- Where my readers are clicking
- How long it takes for traffic to click on my CTA (and ‘Hire Me’ page)
- How much they like my homepage and my blog posts (engagement level)
I allowed the tool to run on my site for about 3 days (okay I couldn’t wait to see the results then) and I was given the biggest shock of my life. The results are devastating and here are a few examples:
- Navigation bar – 70% clicks on ‘Blogging’ and 30% on ‘WordPress’
- ‘Hire Me’ page – 85% traffic to homepage hit that link (bear in mind, only 2 inquiries over the months)
- 95% of readers on my blogs are skimmers
Now, tell me. Does all these sounds alarming to you?

Step 3: Drastic solutions to turn my blog into a business

Website designs often play an important role when it comes to the eCommerce industry

This is probably the last and most crucial step; designing my business website template. After being hit by Google Hummingbird and Penguin 2.1, I was determined to come back with a bang. Therefore, this design must REALLY make the kill.

In order to complete the project in a very short time period, I divided it into 3 crucial parts which are:
- Change website theme
- Provide easier navigation
- Turning skimmers into profit
I did a quick survey on 20 popular websites and I noticed that they had many things in common such as landing pages and packing too many things (or choices) on one page.

On top of that, data and stats taken from ClickTale explained on what I needed to improve on my website (specifically) if I want to completely turn my website into a ‘money generator’.

With all data and information packed in my mind, the first step was to choose a professional and business like website theme.

Choosing a website design is rather easy since I am a Genesis Pro Package user that comes with over 40 child themes to choose from. Alternatively, you can just choose a beautiful child theme using this tool or build your own WordPress theme.

After choosing the right WordPress theme for myself, it was time to customize my theme.

I decided to place a huge Call To Action before the fold and this is done for only one reasons; to increase conversion rate and getting my readers going through my ‘sales funnel’. In other words, landing potential clients to where they want to be … finding solutions to their problems.

If you are wondering how important CTA is, you need to read this: How did I build a MASSIVE mailing list?

Now, you might think that displaying all the categories on your menu bar might be the best choice … and even I do too. Sadly, that wasn’t the case. Too many navigation bars will confuse your readers. Therefore, the lesser is better. I have 9 navigation bars before this and only 4 are ever clicked.

Make any sense to you?

Lastly, it is all about skimmers (traffic). My readers are mostly skimmers and maybe that is due to the fact that most of my blogs are way above 1.5k words. So, this means that my bounce rate is rather high and I ~~probably~~ got to do something with it.

Here are a few things I could do:
- Having a floating bar with the latest articles or RSS pull (such as using FooBar plugin)
- Share some eye-catching stuffs (links in this case) right before my comment form
- Pop up (not for newsletter but for related articles)
Now, I tested all of these for a period of time (very specific) and sharing related posts seems to do the trick. That’s where I uses a related post plugin and this is what I had created:

My favorite ‘related post’ plugin at the end of each posts

You can also try using images and catching titles but personally, I think colours do best and it is followed closely by images. If you have a very engaging audience which are NOT skimmers, you may use more wordings for a change.

Putting all the above into one stunning business website design

I am not sure if you can call this a step but the last part is all about using the right widgets at the right area.

My sidebar is really ‘cold’. I was only converting about 3% of my total traffic to click on my sidebar and I was given the choice to either ditch the sidebar or do something with it … fast.

I removed several ads and place only important information on the sidebar. This helps to reduce my website loading speed too.

My fiancee is a great critic and I convinced her to check on my site. Within minutes, she pointed out some changes and I did accordingly. One of the most obvious parts is using colours and images to attract readers.

Before this, I am always Genesis Extender plugin to make easier modification but this time around, I was determined to do it with CSS codes. Changes were done and perfected in the next 48 hours.

Hard work + luck + stunning business-like website design = Win

Improvements started to be visible within the first 3 days after the design changes were done to the website

Now, after reading over 1.4k words, you would be wondering what was the outcome of my ‘so-called’ business website template.
- Bounce rate reduced from 78.52% to 62.26%
- Average visit duration increased from 1.44 minutes to 2.45 minutes
- Page per visit increased from 1.47 to 1.81
- Securing two SEO huge projects which would last between 3 to 6 months each
In my 8 years of blogging, this is probably the best moment ever experienced by me. Being able to see the effects right after days of implementing was definitely a marvelous feeling.

Over to you …

I hope that with this article, I am able to share some lights on how to really build a good business-like website from scratch. It is never easy but certainly, doable!

Therefore, do you have plans to change your website theme anytime soon or you are happy with the current ones? Share with me what you think and the criteria needed to choose the perfect business template for your website using the comment form below.
January 20, 2024
Master These Organic SEO Strategies And SEO Tools To Dominate SERPs
If you thought that Google Hummingbird was the only surprise for us, you are terribly wrong. In just a short period of time, Google had released two huge updates (with Google Penguin 2.1 as the latest) which had basically shaken the whole blogging industry.

I cursed and swear at Google as I was hit not once but twice which affected me dearly. Both my affiliate revenue and traffic plunged down the ravine and it certainly felt like it’s the end of the world. Of course, I tried my best and kept the anger under wraps with this post.

Here’s a quick recap of what I think about both the updates:

Google Hummingbird – focused on small sites that are ranking rather well even though they are new

Google Penguin 2.1 – focused on longer and more specific search queries

So, how did Google updates affected my blog?

I lost 50% of my keywords ranking, 75% daily impression count and my earnings was affected so badly.

Yup, it sucks to be me right? Haha!

What do we know about Google Hummingbird?

Google Hummingbird was released from the cage for that one main reason only; Penalizing and slapping hard on sites which are relatively new but are ranking very well.

Most websites that are affected are mainly:
- Less than 1 year old
- Ranking a lot of keywords
- Moderate to low traffic
The above really smells like Google is doing some ‘cleaning up’ on micro niche sites. Frankly, a huge number of micro niche sites experienced between 30 – 70% traffic drop thanks to the Google Hummingbird update.

Why did micro niche sites get affected so badly?

The answer is easy. It is a known fact that most of these sites are ranking well thanks to focusing on keywords only and not facts. Even though no black hat tools are involved, certainly this is definitely not one of those SEO techniques recommended by Google.

Consider this as affecting the balance and ecosystem of search queries.

And it didn’t stop there! Google releases a new update called shortly after.

Read more about Google Hummingbird:
- How Did Google Hummingbird Update Affected My Blog?
- How Will Google Hummingbird Impact Links? Here Are 6 Ways
The wrath of Google Penguin 2.1

Personally, I call Google Penguin 2.1 as ‘the perfect storm’.

For those who missed out what Matt Cutts tweeted on that day, here’s the snippet of it:

Penguin 2.1 launching today. Affects ~1% of searches to a noticeable degree. More info on Penguin: http://t.co/4YSh4sfZQj

‘” Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) October 4, 2013

I read this when I was having my lunch and … I nearly choked on my food.

Google and Matt Cutts said that it was focused on improving search queries and ensure that Google is returning more quality search results. Okay, that part is correct.

However, does it has a hidden agenda behind those words?

Yes, think hard my friend.

When Hummingbird was released, do you remember seeing people’s tweet and Facebook status updates that they are not seeing much traffic lost even though they are running niche sites?

And guess what happened after Google Penguin 2.1 was released. Traffic was scaling down and so does the earning.

More read:
- The New SEO Techniques After Google Updates
- SEO in the Age of Penguin 2.0 and Hummingbird: You’re Doing It Wrong
The secret organic SEO strategies to use after Google Penguin 2.1

Do you REALLY want to know what are the organic SEO techniques after Google Penguin update?

I hate Google a lot and this not because of their frequent updates. It is because every time an update take place, I am off to my secret room down the basement and start planning my next SEO blueprint.

I realized that there are probably hundreds of do’s and dont’s on the best SEO techniques after Google Penguin and you are free to follow any of those that deem fit. However, remember that what I am sharing with you below are mostly organic SEO strategies which could have a very positive impact on your blog.

Here are simple list of my recommended organic SEO strategies to counter attack Google Penguin 2.1 and possibly, any other future updates too (if lucky).

If you are still wondering what is organic SEO, I have explained it using the video below:

1. Goodbye PageRank, Page Rank or PR

PageRank is one of the most discussed topic when it comes to SEO. Seriously speaking, we are all thinking too much about it! Yes, even I do too!

Deny all you want people but trust me, PageRank is going down soon.

Currently, PageRank isn’t dead and it is still functional because there are too many algorithms counting on it. Google updates each website’s PageRank on a daily basis (backend) but the information is not shared out to the public.

Sharing this info out will possibly bring millions of dollars in revenue to SEO agencies around the world and indirectly, messing up the whole SEO ecosystem.

Here’s my take: Google will soon remove PageRank and in return, substituting PR with Page Authority (PA) and Domain Authority (DA). Plus, I am expecting this to happen somewhere in 2014 or 2015 latest.

What do you think?

Adesanmi Adedotun wrote an interesting write up and discussion on this and you can check it out here.

2. Hello Domain Authority (DA) and Page Authority (PA)

Both of these have long been in this industry and still, it is very surprising that not many people who actually know about them.

Domain Authority is your root domain score and it is calculated based on the number of links pointing towards it. The higher the authority of that link, the more ‘points’ added to the Domain Authority.

Page Authority on the other hand is the score of your article. The score is calculated exactly like Domain Authority.

Now, do you know that both Domain Authority and Page Authority are inter-related to one another?

For example, having a higher DA score could possibly increase your PA score and vise versa.

Does this makes any sense to you?

Resources:
- What is Domain Authority (DA)?
- What is Page Authority (PA)?
3. Old school link building technique

Backlink or link building isn’t dead yet. Forget about what other SEO experts are saying.

The more links you are building for your website, the better it would be. However, there’s something seriously important when you are thinking of building links.

You need to focus on two very important factors which are:
1. Linking to your domain page (example – https://www.reginaldchan.net) [also known as Domain Authority or DA]
2. Linking to your article page (example – https://www.reginaldchan.net/social-engagement-website-traffic-seo) [also known as Page Authority or PA]
Okay, by now your mind should be telling that you NEED to start commenting the hell out of every CommentLuv website you can ever find to get backlink.

Think again guys.

Personally, I comment on every site that I like and enjoy. It doesn’t matter if they are using Disqus, Livefyre or Google+ comment system.

Leaving good comment doesn’t only increase the chance of traffic but as well as getting a indirect link back to your article.

For those who are thinking of using CommentLuv comment plugin, this article will explain to you the advantages and disadvantages of CommentLuv plugin.

Relevant guides:
- Top 8 Link Building Strategies That Work For Search Engines
- Blow Your Competitions Away With SEO Link Building Techniques
4. Confession of a guest blogger

How many of you publish a guest posting just for backlinks? Come on guys, put up your hands.

The truth is, guest posting is a great way to build backlinks. The bigger truth is you aren’t getting a backlink on your guest posting if your writing sucks.

Okay, I am know I might sound bold and straight forward here but hear me out. What’s the point of submitting for a guest posting if you know that you are NOT going to get approved?

You are not only going to waste your time but as well as the editors too.

Now, back to the topic. Guest posting is a good way to build trust and yes, backlinks if you are doing it correctly. The right way for guest posting is to ensure that you are constantly writing quality write ups and be very specific with your anchor texts.

Don’t just focus everything on ‘blogging tips’ or ‘SEO strategies’ for example. Instead, ensure that your links are given a variety of anchor texts.

Secret stash: Important checklists when it comes to guest posting.

5. Could social signal be the next new SEO?

Do you know your articles get ranked better if there are more social shares and engagements?

Reality is that I don’t have the enough data to prove that but through my short experiments done recently, I noticed those articles of mine who receive 100 or 200 social shares get ranked better on search engines compared to the rest.

There are probably tons of websites talking about social signal and the importance of social share as we speak. Personally, I don’t think this is something you should ignore.

So, how do you REALLY get more social shares?

In order to get more social shares, you need to:
- Be more active on social media
- Share more articles of other bloggers or writers
- Build more relationship with others
- This is important … please write something that is worth sharing
When it comes to social media, you do not need to spend all your time on all the social media platforms. Instead, focus on those who gives you the best ROI (return of investment).

Here are a few articles to help you get started:
- The importance of social engagement in the SEO world
- 7 of the best social media platforms for bloggers and corporate world
6. Bill Gates said that “content is king”

You probably hear this saying in nearly every blogging site you came across. The truth is very real and content is more important than ever.

Do you think that you can get better ranks, backlinks and social shares with low quality articles?

Obviously not! In today’s blogging world, you need more than just good content. You need GREAT contents and accompanied by proven facts and data. That is one of the reasons why I have a rather strict guest post requirements.

Just have a look at any of CopyBlogger’s articles. They are sardine packed with facts and proven test results. Well, it is a great tactic since humans are easily attracted to images and stats compared to the plain ol’ wall-of-text.

Writing content is an art and usually, it is called content writing. To be a good blogger, you need to know:
- What your readers are looking for
- The topics and information that could turn heads
- And probably, a killer title too
Anyone can become a great content writer. All you need are a dying passion and burning flame of enthusiasm.

Great resource: Content & Search Engine Success Factors

To recap, this is what organic SEO is all about … in slides!

Popular weapons to build more organic SEO strategies

If your blog is hit or affected by Google Penguin 2.1, it is time that you need to take your SEO to the next level. You may use Yoast SEO for your WordPress but personally, that could only help you that far.

I am talking about precise SEO … SEO tools that are easy to use and possibly, beating most competitors out there.

1. Scribe – Content Optimization Software for Online Marketing

Scribe offers out of the box content optimization that works within seconds. Basically, Scribe SEO (as what it is called) analyzes your keywords, full written article and the whole website itself.

It will then generate a Page Score and Site Score which you can use to further optimize or improve the article.

Scribe SEO doesn’t only analyze your article but the whole website itself. Besides that, Scribe SEO also offers:
- Keyword research (competition and chances of ranking)
- Link building between articles
- Content optimizer to enrich your article by providing relevant suggestions on your post
Scribe SEO is focused to ensure that your articles and websites get a better rank on search engines and dominate the search results. And because of this, Scribe SEO comes with a pretty hefty price tag of $97 per month.

Have a look at what Scribe can do for you (plus a demo video too) or read my write up on ‘The most efficient SEO tool for website optimization‘.

2. SEOPressor – The Best SEO Plugin

I would always consider SEOPressor as a cheaper alternative for Scribe SEO. SEOPressor works in a pretty similar way compared to Scribe SEO and it really makes content optimization easier.

SEOPressor makes content optimization easier thanks to easier and straight forward user interface.

It offers:
- Keyword suggestion
- Keyword density
- Keyword decoration (using bold, italic and H1 to H3 tags)
- Over optimization warning
SEOPressor is a great choice for bloggers especially if you are looking for a SEO tool that has all-in-one package when it comes to optimization.

With the one time payment of $97, SEOPressor makes it easier for you to plan your organic SEO strategies without hassle and with the one-click function, it makes novice bloggers look great when it comes to SEO.

Check out SEOPressor here and sign up for the 14-days free trial.

Share with me your thoughts

I know how much Google Hummingbird and Penguin 2.1 had affected all of you. The biggest question is, what did you do to improve your website ranking? Did you have any organic SEO strategies that you would like to share with us all?
January 20, 2024
Google Hummingbird Update And SEO Techniques To Boost SERPs
Google Update on Small Sites or Google Hummingbird in short could possible be the biggest overhaul done by this giant search engine after Caffeine update. We all know that the latest Google Update took place on 21st August 2013 and at that time, Google didn’t break the news which left everyone wondering.

On the eve of Google’s 15th years celebration, the search engine giant decided to break the ice and basically, took the world by storm; Introducing Google Hummingbird Update.

What is Google Hummingbird?

The Hummingbird update is said to be a major update in terms of how the search engine index works and linking of search queries. Here’s a snippet from a very popular SEO site:

Hummingbird is a definite expansion of Google’s semantic capability evident at the search interface level that reveals, significantly, two things,’ said David Amerland, search engine expert and author of Google Semantic Search, ‘First, Google has increased its ability to deal with complex search queries which means that it also has got better at indexing entities in Web documents. Second, it has got a lot better at relationally linking search queries and Web documents which means that its Knowledge Graph must be considerably enriched. – Search Engine Land

And my take on Google Hummingbird update are as below:

Hummingbird update was rolled out to focus more on the meanings behind the words. For example, search queries will now concentrate more on each word in the search query instead of the keywords only. This means that Google will take account what the whole conversation, sentence or question is all about with the hopes to return more exact search results.

What do you understand from the above? Personally, I love SEO and been a huge fan of it since early 2010. This update seems to be very focused in several parts and which will affect us all dearly;
1. Choices of keywords
2. Possibility of new requirements to get blogs and articles indexed faster
3. The importance of human factor (human intent)
Behold~ Here’s my disclaimer: The above are just the icing of the cake. I will also share with you not one but three simple SEO techniques which can (and possibly) help you rank better on search engines below. So yes, expect this to be a long article. Bookmark this right now and come back for more, from time to time.

Google Hummingbird’s search queries update

How did Google Hummingbird affected user’s search queries?

As seen above, Google said that they had updated the search queries and for me, this affected a lot on micro niche sites. Before we go deeper into the topic, here’s a simple food for thought question.

How often do you type a two letter words on Google? Possibly one out of ten times maybe?

That’s the whole point!

Nowadays, we are typing nearly a complete sentence whenever we are searching for information. Google algorithm update affects how the search engine figures out what you are actually searching for. In other words, this makes Google better at solving complicated search queries.

This also means that every blog or website has a greater chance of ranking well on search engine if you are using the right keywords. And this my friends, is just one part of it.

Using the right keyword does have its advantages in terms of ranking but there are also many factors you need to consider such as keyword density, using the related keywords and most importantly, the overall SEO practices for the whole website.

Did Hummingbird update really affected the way a blog or website get indexed?

How fast can your website get indexed by Google?

Honestly speaking, I have no idea and if I would, I could possibly be working with Google right now!

I did a quick test recently and I noticed that some of my articles got indexed rather fast (faster than usual). I am not talking about weeks but in terms of days!

So, is this really the effects of Google Hummingbird? What do you think?

Personally, I think there is a strong connection here. Basically, sites who gets lots of ‘publicity’ and social signals could prove to the search engine that “Hey, people are sharing my writings and so should you (Google)”.

More social shares could help to speed up the time needed for search engine indexing.

Like what I said above, there are many factors affecting how a blog or article get showed up on search engines but it is safe to say that proper keyword usage is more important than ever.

Google understands that everyone (including you and me) are often using specific keywords to rank an article. However, the biggest question for this is how far does that particular keyword helps in enriching the article?

Just because we had used that keyword a dozen times doesn’t prove that it is related to the article at all.

Top SEO techniques to counter-attack Google Hummingbird

If you got hit by Google Hummingbird, how do you recover from the impact?

It doesn’t matter if Hummingbird affected your website but you are here because you want to rank your blog better. If you are not, please … please click on the ‘X’ button on the top right of the screen now.

Before I disappoint you, allow me to be completely honestly with you. These are not your usual SEO techniques but they work extremely well for me.

My goal is to have a balance mixture of psychology (human intent), content and authorship to boost the overall SEO ranking. Personally, I call this indirect SEO.

These SEO techniques I am about to share with you are mostly two sided blades. A wrong move could easily crumble your SEO strategies and even backfire on your blog. However if practiced correctly, you stand a good chance to skyrocket your blog traffic.

1. Content do not need to be SEO rich

Over optimizing your website is not good in terms of SEO

Yup, you hear me right. If you have focus a lot on your blog or website content and positing well on search engines, you do not need to pay thousand of dollars to SEO agencies to do it for you. Plus, you can get all the basic SEO strategies using Yoast SEO plugin.

Seriously!

Gone were the days where SEO is the only factor when it comes to blog ranking. It is not debatable that SEO still plays a factor in terms of blog ranking but there are far more important factors which could affect it.

If you are about to publish a blog post, ask yourself these, “Will my readers be happy with what they read? Is this what they are looking for?”

You see, building a good and strong presence is vital when it comes to surviving in this blogging industry. This is why you need all hands on deck and making sure your content is not only able to fulfill but to satisfy your readers which leads to point #2.

If you want to score well in SEO, then you need to know the basics and you can start off by checking out these articles:
- Complete Search Engine Optimization for Dummies
- 8 Explosive Blogging Tips Other Clever Bloggers Won’t Share
2. Rich quality content is definitely needed

Content still plays an important role in terms of SEO

This is some sort of a no-brainer. Words around popular search engine forums are saying that Google is looking for more unique content than just plain articles.

Now let’s see this in the perspective of a reader, shall we?

Imagine reading through 5 different blogs and all of them are sharing the same information. The only difference between them are the titles and headings. Does this really enrich your search experience?

Definitely not!

When you are blogging, make sure that you are NOT doing what others are doing … or at least try not to. Of course, with over 60 million blogs out there, this is rather insane and impossible to accomplish but at least, you don’t copy and paste everything that you read.

Readers love to read contents which are unique and they could possibly not find any of those anywhere else (yet). Do this and you will find them coming back for more and if Google sees good traffic coming from your blog, it is a signal to send even more traffic towards your blog.

Take a moment to think about this. Does this makes all the sense to you?

If you want to read more about this, I highly recommend you to read this article, Top 6 Blogging Tips To Build Better Blog Ranks.

3. The love-hate authorship factors

Do you agree that Google Authorship plays a role in terms of blog ranking?

Let us go back memory lane for a moment. When Google+ was first announced, it was a huge hype and everyone was trying to enable Google Authorship on their blogs.

We all thought that it was a good way to boost SEO and so long live the hype until recently. A long discussion was done recently among Google+ community and it was confirmed that Google Authorship doesn’t affect SEO at all.

So, here’s the question, “What is the relationship between content authorship and Hummingbird?”

This is because content seems to be the biggest emphasis for Hummingbird update, it is very likely that authorship (which is rather useless somewhere now) will become an important factor when it comes to optimization.

We all know Google had long been trying to compete with Facebook and thus, Google Authorship could be the only thing that distinguish both the social media platforms.

With proper Google authorship settings, Google is able to attribute the content back to the author and yes, publishing a pretty face right below the URL.

And you might be thinking … you ain’t got the time to enable Facebook graph, fail to enable Twitter cards or probably, had no idea what Google Interactive Post is all about. I got it, really.

Personally, I have always wanted to enable these features with some coding but thanks to my limited knowledge on the matter, most of the time it ended up as a disaster until recently.

I came across WPSocial thanks to Ana Hoffman from Traffic Generation Cafe when she published Schema Markup. I wouldn’t even thought of bringing this up until Hummingbird update and all the hype about Google Authorship plus the open graph features.

Then it struck my mind on how important Open Graph and all these microdata is for bloggers. Thank God I was using WPSocial SEO Booster.

In short, WPSocial SEO Booster is used to make sure that proper markups are done correctly for your blogs. It may and may not have a difference when it comes to the naked eyes but this is a whole different scenario when it comes to search engines.

If you have read above, you would know that authorship is important and it is a great way to prove to search engines that you are genuine. WPSocial SEO Booster will help you in terms of:
1. Creating correct microdata for your blog
2. Enable authorship markup
3. Facebook Open Graph integration
4. Twitter cards
5. Increase site performance
6. Review features, social sharing button and Google Interactive features included
7. And a dozen more features …
The main reason for me to bring this up is because it had helped me a lot in terms of additional marking up features. Don’t get me wrong. I love Genesis Framework and the HTML5 markup is extremely useful.

However in this SEO and blogging industry, I need more than that to compete and therefore, I opt to try WPSocial which turned out to be great!

You can try WPSocial today for only $29.60 and ask for a refund if you are not happy with it. No strings attached and there’s an offer Mike (developer of WPSocial) is throwing in … a whopping 20% discount if you try it out during October 2013.

Again, don’t take my word for it as it might be biased. However, I see no reason why you shouldn’t give it at least a try since you are given a guaranteed refund and a nice discount right?

Try WPSocial today and get additional 20% discount of your total bill now!

So, what is the future that lies in Google and search engines algorithm?

The way I see it, Google is trying to make its search queries even easier to manage and control. This means that producing better search results for all of us.

And if you ask me, I dare to say Google Hummingbird have affected many sites. I noticed is that many micro niche and general blogs were hit pretty bad from this update even though I know some survived the impact.

Personally, I know a few niche bloggers who had huge drop in traffic from about a thousand visitors a day down to 250 or less.

Here’s my take on this. Google is trying to reduce the number of micro niche blogs showing up on search engine result pages and I totally understand it. Not just any micro niche blogs but those with low quality.

From Google’s perspective, it could mean that bloggers are trying to ‘influence’ the search engine rankings just to earn extra income. And trust me, it is rather easy to rank well on search engines as long as you are able to find low competition keywords.

Furthermore, how many micro niche blogging sites that are really that good in terms of quality? Most of them are living of affiliate sales or Google Adsense. So yes, go figure!

From the point of a blogger myself, running a micro niche blog doesn’t mean that we are doing any black hat SEO. We are just trying to rank well using low ranking keywords. Of course, we are sharing information that we might not know at all and practicing keyword stuffing which isn’t really right.

Well, I am not saying that all micro niche bloggers are bad as I know quite a number of bloggers who are really experienced and sharing specific niche blogs to help others.

It’s just that there are many other bloggers who are trying to replicate the same success with the hopes of earning more money online and indirectly, affecting the search results one way or another.

So, Hummingbird update could be a way to control the number of micro niche sites showing up on search engines. This means that Google want those niche blogs to rank well only if they have quality contents.

For me, that’s a very good deal indeed. Okay, I know this is going to spark a lot of controversial and thus, I am going to leave it as what it is right now.

Did I miss out anything?

Let’s face it guys. Google is continuing its journey where ‘Content is King’ and understanding user search intent is the end goal. It is all about improving the search engine results and I think it is doing very well indeed.

However, this had a great impact on bloggers and the latest update from Google really says it all. SEO is ever changing and the biggest question now is, “Are you (and your blog) up for the challenge?”

What do you think about this? Agree to disagree? Hit the reply button below and let’s discuss.
January 20, 2024
Transforming Google Keyword Planner in a massive keyword scrapper
Recently, Google decided to drop the bomb and ended the famous (and trusted), Google Keyword Tool from service. It was replaced by the new version which is called Google Keyword Planner.

I would be lying to you if I say that I love Google Keyword Planner at first. In fact, I hated so much due to so many obvious reasons. When I heard that Google Keyword Tool is going ‘off’, I told myself to stick to a few SEO tools such as Scribe, Long Tail Pro and SEMRush.

Early this month, I decided to try on it and promised to sit in front of my old HP Pavilion laptop trying to learn everything about it.

Without much delay, this blog post is all about Keyword Planner and how you can really use it for your advantage when it comes to keyword research. I am not going to deny that for starters, it has slight learning curve compared to the previous version.

What is Google Keyword Planner?

It is the new replacement of Google Keyword Tool (duh!) and it is said to provide great experience for bloggers who are trying to find quality keywords.

Now, how true is this?

Google Keyword Planner is a double edge blade. It works pretty well if you know what you are looking for. If you are hoping that this keyword planner will give you some good keywords with just some clicks, then you better stick to premium SEO tools like this one.

Here are a few things I like about the almighty Google Keyword Planner:
- Chances of finding long tail keywords
- Easier keyword finding once you get used to it
- Multiple ways to search for a specific keyword or niche
- Merging Google AdWords with Keyword Planner is great for paid advertisements
Google Keyword Planner – The basic

There are four very easy but different ways you can find perform keyword research on Keyword Planner which are:
1. Searching for keywords and ad groups ideas
2. Enter or upload keywords to see how they perform
3. Get traffic estimates for a list of keywords
4. Multiply keyword lists
This is probably the place where most bloggers and keyword searchers give up!

Everything looks so complicated here and for newbie, this can be a very huge disappointment considering that Keyword Planner is said to be better than the previous keyword tool right?

Yup, that happened to me too and continue reading the below for more information.

4 different ways to use Keyword Planner for keyword research

1. Searching for keywords and ad groups ideas

Advantages: Finding long tail keywords and possible keywords to use (using ad groups)

Disadvantages: Figures are not specific and there is a possibility of having a low searched keyword in the ad groups

This is the part where you can find groups of keywords which could be very useful for you in blogging and each groups of keywords would have roughly between 5 to 12 different long tail keywords.

For example, you are searching for the keyword ‘blogging’ and Keyword Planner gives you probably a dozen or more keyword groups.

Now, let’s take the first keyword group with an average of 71,000 average monthly searches. The group is consisted of several keywords such as:
- Blogging software
- Blogging tips
- Blogging jobs
- How to blog
- What is blogging
- Paid blogging
- Blogging tools
- Blogging for dummies
- Personal blogs
- Blog maker
- Blog software
- Blogs
- Blogs about life
This means that, these are some keywords which are highly related to the term you are searching, ‘blogging’ and has a total of about 71,000 searches monthly.

Now, read the above sentence again and tell me what you had actually read.

The total number of searches on this ad group is 71,000 and it is a combination of all the above keywords. This means that there is a high chance that some keywords are actually searched more than the other.

Does this make any sense to you?

Here’s what it looks like for a clearer picture:

Step by step guide when it comes to finding keyword groups using Google Keyword Planner

2. Enter or upload keywords to see how they (keywords) perform

Advantages: Able to determine the exact number of searches and CPC for that specific keyword

Disadvantages: Slightly complicated as it highly dependable to symbols

I uses this more than the previous one. In fact, this is a great SEO tool if you want to have exact (not estimated) keyword search or CPC cost per keyword.

Here are the legends you need to know in order to use this function:

Broad match – Blogging

Phrase match – “Blogging”

Exact match – [Blogging]

In broad match, keywords found could be related and non related to blogging. This gives you a general result and honestly speaking, it doesn’t help much when it comes to finding the exact keyword.

Keywords found using phrase match are highly related to the term ‘blogging’. This means that it could have the basic word of ‘blog’ in the keyword or simple having the same meaning as ‘blog’ or ‘blogging’.

Exact match keywords is what we are looking for. For example, searching for the term [blogging] would give us 14,800 searches. This is a strip down of the whooping, 71,000 searches that we had found earlier.

When it comes to finding the best or the most profitable keyword, it is highly recommended that you uses Exact Match feature to get the best results.

Does this look similar to the old Google Keyword Tool?

3. Get traffic estimates for a list of keywords

Advantages: This feature provides bloggers with number of clicks, impressions and cost per day.

Disadvantages: It is very ‘sales oriented’ and is more focus to Google Adwords users.

I would say this is pretty clear cut. Enter a keyword or more and Google Keyword Planner will give you an estimation of traffic.

Regardless of the disadvantages, I would still consider this as a great tool especially when you are looking to invest into into Google Adwords.

Google Adwords is easier to manage and bid with the help of Keyword Planner

4. Multiply keyword lists

Advantages: This is good for cross matching keywords

Disadvantages: Chance of wrongly matched keywords is high and this is a rather ‘advance’ feature

Basically, this particular Keyword Planner feature helps you to create multiple keywords and in some ways, this increase the chances of finding long tail keywords.

All you need to do is to place two different sets of keywords in List 1 and List 2 as seen in the image below. After that, click on the ‘Get search volume’ as below:

Multiple keywords lists are great when it comes to finding long tail keywords

This feature is great especially when you are trying to find different keywords (mix and match) and if you are lucky enough, you might land yourself a low competition keyword.

How do you find keywords using Google Keyword Planner – Video form

Did I miss out anything about Google Keyword Planner?

I hope the above explanation would be worth a little especially when it comes to keyword research. Personally, Keyword Planner is a great tool especially when it has several more features compared to the previous version.

What do you think about Google Keyword Planner? Hit the reply button below and tell me what you think.
January 20, 2024
The Truth Behind Google Panda Update On Small Sites (Hummingbird)

Some of you might not have realized this but Google Panda Update on Small Sites (Hummingbird) took placed approximately on 21st August 2013. Yes, it happened and I’m not joking.

This basically went live right after Matt Cutts gave a quick shout on Twitter as seen below:

According to my sources, this particular Google Panda Update (Hummingbird) was reported not a few but from all of the major SEO blogs in the world. However, there was no comment given by Google on the matter.

Latest update by Google on 26th September 2013 on the update as below:

Google announced the Hummingbird update. We believe this update maybe associated with what we’re calling the Panda Small Sites update.

Q: How big a change is Hummingbird? Singhal (a Google engineer) says it’s as big as the change to the last algorithm, known as Caffeine. It happened about a month ago (late August).

Q: How specifically is Hummingbird better: Singhal says it’s essentially to better answer the much more complex queries people are making. It impacts all kinds of queries, but far more effective on long, complex questions that we’re getting many more of now.

Q: Examples? Hard to be specific, but essentially, with more complex queries, the algorithm can better understand concepts vs. words as well as relationships between concepts.

Q: How is this different in nature from Caffeine? This is clearly more focused on ranking sites better for relevance, while Caffeine was more focused on better indexing and crawling of sites.

Hummingbird gave us an opportunity to rethink how we can reuse all these new services to improve search results.

Before we discuss further, I want to take the opportunity to share with all of you one of the best SEO tools I could not leave without … Fruition.

What is Fruition?

Introducing Fruition – freemium SEO / analytic tool for bloggers

Fruition is a tool used by several bloggers (including me) to check on our blogs’ analytics. Basically, this is a great tool if you are a SEO enthusiast or running an SEO agency.

For a normal blogger, you might find this tool rather useless (seriously speaking).

What Fruition does is that it offers you the ability to check on Google Updates or any penalty slapped by Google.

Fruition data or chart is pretty straight forward with accurate data and colours. It calculates the probability of a Google update towards your blog by measuring on the data (especially traffic) collected from Google Analytics.

Basically, the data collected are then compared with the ‘before and after’ stats from the date of the update.

Obviously, you could do this manually but I would rather have a SEO program or tool to that for me. Fruition doesn’t only collect data from your Google Analytics but as well as comparing the data with other big SEO websites to verify on the information.

One of Fruition’s stats sorted out by date

What I love most is the colour schemes provided by Fruition.

Green – positive impact

Yellow – no impact

Orange – high likelihood of negative impact

Red – negative impact

This means that for every news release, you are (indirectly) bound to understand how Google works if you do your ‘homework’. I will explain more on this in a moment time.

*Looking for Fruition link? Free link is given at the bottom of the page 🙂

Want to learn more about Google Analytics? I highly recommend taking some time reading Advanced Web Metrics by Brian Clifton.

My blog stats using Fruition

Fruition stats showing a huge chance of Google Update impact

As you can see above, my blog has a 99.4% chance of being affected by the ‘mini’ Google Update.

Now, let’s have a look at my Google Analytics for the stats.

Green is the date where Google update happened. Red was the impact towards my blog

Google Panda Update on small sites was said to happened somewhere close to 21st August 2013 and therefore, I will take 7 days in advance as the starting point for some blog traffic comparison.

Search engine traffic before the Google Update was around 136 hits per day on average.

Right after the update, traffic from search engines were slowly reducing and everything started to fall right after 23rd August 2013. Yup, my search engine traffic reduced closed to 50% of what I am usually getting.

So the biggest question was, “Did Google Panda Update on small sites really took place?”

Honestly, we had no idea (I wish I had though) but it certainly looks ‘happening’ to my blog.

What did I do (wrong) to get ‘hit’ by Google Panda Update?

I did thought about this and to be exact, it took me 72 hours to finish my ‘small research’.

Basically, I did nothing wrong (no black hat SEO if that’s what you are wondering at the back of your head) and of course, if I am not doing anything wrong, why would I be ‘penalized’ right?

I would blame this on my approach. Yes, my blogging approach.

When I started this blog, I was determined to rank fast using white hat SEO. I did my homework on the types of keywords to use on each article and even calculated the keyword density of specific keywords on my blog (to name a few).

By now, you can call me a SEO freak and I wouldn’t mind.

There are also a few more white hat SEO techniques I used to rank well on search engine result pages (which I can’t disclose for obvious reasons).

The results? Ranking 242 keywords to be exact on search engines and about 15 of my articles are on the first page of Google.

Important disclaimer: I am not boosting but I am just sharing my experience (plus stupidity).

Imagine 90 days blogging and ranking 242 keywords on page one of Google (SERP’s). What do you think?

…

…

…

Yup … It does look so obvious that I am using some black hat SEO technique right?!

That’s what I am talking about. I was ranking my keywords too fast on search engines using white hat SEO.

Ouch!

Black hat SEO … is so not my type

Did I really use black hat SEO to rank my keywords?

I know this sounds funny but that’s the fact. I really didn’t use any (yes the big word ‘ANY’) black hat SEO techniques at all. And, I didn’t manipulate the search results too.

However, the results for me to be able to rank so many articles on first page Google does sounds very illegal I would say!

At times, I would simply blame myself for being over ‘enthusiastic’ when it comes to search engine optimization.

What did I learned from this Google Panda Update on small sites (hummingbird)?

I am a strong believer that it is easy to rank on search engines as long as the plan is right. Now, rushing to rank so many keywords on first page of Google is definitely a crazy thing to do (honestly speaking).

When it comes to SEO and overcoming any Panda Update, it is best to leave it as natural as possible. You can’t really beat Google and every updates done by Google is to ‘compliment’ the previous updates.

Search engine optimization is indeed, very simple as I had previously wrote. All you need to do is to ensure that those backlinks you are getting … are coming from natural sources (no paid links etc).

Another thing I learned from this Google Update (hummingbird) is that big daddy Google is focusing on very minor and petty stuffs like blog’s domain age and the numbers of articles able to rank well on Google.

Does this article makes any sense to you?

Using the comment form below, tell me if this article makes absolutely logic to you. For me, it is a lesson well learned.

It was fun being able to rank pretty good on search engines but again, it come with a huge sacrifice too!

For those are interested to try on Fruition, here’s the link for it. All you need to do is to link up to your Google Analytics and the stats will start rolling in.

Of course, I am off to ‘lick my wounds’ but guys, tell me what you think below 🙂

January 20, 2024
All You Ever Need To Know About The NoFollow Rule And How It Affects SEO
If you are ‘involved’ in the blogging industry, you would know what is rel=”nofollow” or as I call it, the NoFollow rule.

In this article, allow me to explain to you what NoFollow is and how it works out. Most importantly, I will share with you how NoFollow rule could affect your search engine optimization (SEO) techniques and planning.

Let’s see what is NoFollow tag all about in this 3 minutes plus video.

And for the record, Darrell Cherry had also asked me this question on Google+ recently.

This question was the main reason why I decided to write this blog post

What is rel=”nofollow” or NoFollow rule?

This is what Google Webmaster Tools say about rel=”nofollow”:

“Nofollow” provides a way for webmasters to tell search engines “Don’t follow links on this page” or “Don’t follow this specific link.”

I believe there is no other explanation that could be any clearer than that.

Does the above make any sense to you?

Related article: Top 8 Link Building Techniques That Work For Search Engines

How do I activate the rel=”nofollow” or the NoFollow rule?

Basically, you can place the NoFollow code on any links or URL’s to tell Google not to crawl, transfer Page Rank (PR) or anchor text to those links.

This means that you are still linking out but are avoiding any Google penalization as you had ‘informed’ the bots not to crawl that link.

In order for you to practice the NoFollow rule, all you need to do is to add rel=”nofollow” to the URL snippet as below:

<a href=”www.www.reginaldchan.net” rel=”nofollow”>Blogging Tips For Beginners</a>

Trust me … it couldn’t be any easier than that!

If NoFollow is used properly, you are able to avoid any Google penalization

Why is rel=”nofollow” important for bloggers?

NoFollow rule works in many ways for bloggers and webmasters. With all the hype and hundreds of guest posting requests nowadays, bloggers (especially you) really need to make sure that you don’t share any unrelated links on your blog.

By using the NoFollow tag, you are able to control the types of links shared and determine only links which are worthy are getting a piece of your Page Rank ‘juice’.

In other words, you wouldn’t want to ‘promote’ a blog post or article that has no or low value which could put you in hot soup. This is to ensure that you don’t get penalized by Google for breaching its terms and conditions.

This brings us to the next part of the discussion which is …

What are Google’s policies and some specific examples of NoFollow usage?

Google policies are rather general but here are two of the very distinctive factors which you should consider using rel=”nofollow” on your blog posts:
- Untrusted content
- Paid links
Factor #1: Untrusted content

I uses NoFollow tag especially on untrusted content. For example, I know Google has no problem with my blog when I link URL’s to popular sites such as Wikipedia, Amazon or eBay.

However, what happens if I am linking out to too many ‘new blogs on the block’?

Google and other search engines might consider my site as linking out too much and my blog could easily be penalized.

Now, let’s take an instance for easier understanding.

Do you see more credibility for linking a blog site which is 1 year old or a site which is just a mere 1 month old?

Obviously, an older domain age site would be more credible compared to a brand new one.

In this case, webmasters and blog admins who accept guest postings could also use the NoFollow tag especially when they are accepting guest posts from various bloggers. Once these bloggers have proof their worth, you could easily remove the NoFollow tag and allow them to get some link back.

Moreover, sharing is caring right?

Recommended read: Master the industry secrets with this SEO Black Book.

Factor #2: Paid links

Oh c’mon … it is a no brainer to link out to paid links.

So, what are paid links?

Paid links are links which are displayed on blog posts or articles with the ‘help’ of money instead of relevancy and therefore, it is indirectly, breaching certain part of Google policies.

Basically, this means that the blog is sharing links just for the sake of getting a backlink from your site.

What I am trying to say is that you could still place paid links on your site and that’s entirely up to you. However, what you can do is to place a NoFollow tag to avoid any issues with any search engines.

Thinking back, it makes no sense to get a paid link from you right? Some food for thoughts, guys?

*If you like graphics, I had found a great infographic on Danny Sullivan’s post on Search Engine Land and great design work by Killer Infographics.

Are you using the godly but yet dangerous NoFollow rule on your blog?

I uses NoFollow on most links which don’t portray good quality articles or are too new. At times, I might be very harsh but again, it is for the good for the blog and myself.

So, how about you? Share with me your experience using the comment form below 🙂
January 20, 2024