Ask the Blogger

Where’s the best place for ad placement?

Question: Where is the absolute best place for ad placement?

Answer: wherever people see it!

Ok, that’s a bit of a non-answer. The real answer to this question has been debated for years. Web site designers have employed the use of heat maps and usability studies, meticulously crawled through the web site usage stats, and have tried to find a rhyme or reason to locate the best location for their advertisements on their web site. In fact, for every person who claims they know the best location, there is at least 1 more (and usually a hundred fold) saying the opposite is true. So where do you start

Conventional wisdom tells us people scan webpages in an S pattern. Eyes start on the right, move toward the right, scan the page from left->right, and then back towards the left again making an “S” pattern from top to bottom of the web page. Banner Blindness often occurs since large ads at the top of the page are so commonplace, so that spot is usually left for a run-of-network ad or internal promotion.

Following this logic, the best place to put ads on your blog, and where you should put your highest affiliate links, will be immediately to the right of your content near the top of the page. This is where the “S” starts. You can also put ad blocks in your content, and immediately thereafter to capture the attention of the reader as they are reading or skimming your content.

Your website is unique, so your best locations may differ too. Don’t be afraid to experiment with different ad locations and keep track of clicks, earnings, or another means of figuring out where your ads better performed. Even if you find the perfect location, there may be times where a particular ad underperforms or bombs altogether – its normal.

If you look at the design here on asktheblogger.com, you will see I have used this type of placement for the small, square graphics on the right hand side. Yes, there is a banner ad at the top, but it is not the best performing ad. In addition, after each blog post’s content, there is a larger rectangle of Google-served ads immediately following the article.

Where to place ads on your site depends a lot on your site’s main design, and even the habits of your users. Start with basic ad positions such as on the right hand side and under your content, and then continually test to find the best ad position for you. That is part of what makes blogging fun – finding what works for you.

What Is a PR Rank?

By Christian

Question: What does [it] mean by blog rank PR 1/ 2 / 3 etc ?

A “PR” ranking is short for a Google Page Rank.

Simply put, the Google Page Rank is a number from 0-10 on how “popular” google considers your site. The term popular is a misnomer really, because the actual calculations google uses to compute your PageRank include links in from different sites, number of pages index, and more.

A good place to check your Google Page Rank is http://www.prchecker.info.

A more thorough explanation of the PageRank history can be found on Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank,

Sorry for the short answer, but all the information you need can really be found on wikipedia, and with formulas and a lot more information.

How Can I Maintain the Same Content On Two Blogs?

By Christian

Question: Can I have maintain same content in wordpress and blogger blog, if the answer is yes means ..how can i import the data to blogger to wordpress?

This is a tough question to answer because there are so many different tangents that can go off from examining it in detail. The intricacies of the question center around both the technical and generic reasons for wanting to maintain content in two different places.

First, what is the reason for maintaining content in two places?In the search engine world, there is a line drawn in the sand amongst those who believe in the Google duplicate content penalty and those who do not. But the bigger issue is why would you want to have the same content in two places? In my opinion, doing so will only hurt you in the long run.

First, whether you believe in it or not, the duplicate content penalty for Google is always a possibility of being real. Having the same content in two places can be a flag to the search engines that the same content is being used on two different sites. Think of it from their point of view – you are trying to get twice the search engine listings for your content using two sites. It is in their best interests to try and weed out duplicate content.

Second, whether or not the duplicate content penalty exists or not, having the same content on two sites will severely hurt your link popularity. Where you might have other websites linking to one site and increasing your link popularity and SEO, having two separate sites give visitors two different sites they may link to. Consider the following:

Site 1 links to www.domain.com
Site 2 links to www.domain.com
Site 3 links to www.domain.com
Site 4 links to www.domain.com

You now have four links to www.domain.com which will greatly help your search engine rankings and people to find your site.

Now consider:

Site 1 links to www.domain.com
Site 2 links to www.anotherdomain.com
Site 3 links to www.anotherdomain.com
Site 4 links to www.anotherdomain.com

Your site www.domain.com is now being penalized because the other sites are linking to your other domain.

Having all links going to one domain is definitely preferred.

All that being said, there are a couple things you can do. [Read more…] about How Can I Maintain the Same Content On Two Blogs?

What is a Website Silo?

By Christian

Question: What is a website silo? Is it just another word for categories?

A website silo is a type of format for websites and blogs that categorizes its contents in distinct silos, or categories, and confines each piece of content (pages, posts, etc) to those silos. In addition, each silo has its own page that links to the various topics within.

By using silos on your website, you can keep your content organized, and help your search engine ranking by offering the search engines a clean “path” to indexing the content on your website. Silos are not only physical categories on your website, they also help you organize your thoughts, pages and posts into easy-to-follow areas your site visitors can quickly navigate.

Let’s look at an example website on apples.

You might have the following main categories:

type of apples
apple recipes
growing apples
apple news

Those are your silos They are usually your main topics that are listed (sometimes as dropdowns) in your navigation menus.

Each of those silos also has its own page. That page has links to all the articles underneath it.

For instance, the apple recipes silo might have articles on apple pie, apple crumb cake, cinnamon apples, and caramel apples. The main index page would contain links to all of those other sub-topics or even individual articles. The page can be in list form in a pinch, but doing so in a narrative (paragraph) format will help boost your SEO rankings.

Each article, such as apple crumb cake, would link back to the main silo of apple recipes, using the term “apple recipes” as the linking text.

Cross-linking between silos isn’t forbidden, but usually everything underneath a particular silo will link upwards, but not across categorizes.

Using a silo format on your blog/website helps keep your posts and pages within their categories, which is said to also help search engine relevancy.

Should I Outsource My Blog Content?

By Christian

Question: I’ve read a lot of prominent bloggers outsource their blog content. Is this really a viable method of generating content and should I try it?

Ever since Tim Ferriss told the world how he practically outsourced his life in his book The Four Hour Work Week, outsourcing content and design for blogs and websites has seen an incredible explosion popularity. It sounds great – pay someone else a low fee per article and receive content to put on your website or blog at regular intervals. Even better – pay a one-time fee and receive 10 or 20 articles so they can be scheduled on your blog while you take a vacation to the Bahamas.

Sounds almost too good to be true, doesn’t it?

There are two main reasons to outsource your content. First, your blog is insanely popular and you just can’t keep up with the amount of content being requested from your readers. Your reader’s contact you constantly about writing an article on this topic or that topic, and you simply don’t have the time to keep up with all of them. You need help and you need it now. The other reason is the opposite: You just don’t have any ideas for more content and you need someone fresh to come up with new ideas.

Both of these aren’t necessarily good reasons.

A Voice Is Unique

Many people enjoy a good impression. But no impression can fully copy the original. For a blog to be successful, it needs its own voice. That voice can only come from the blog’s regular writers. You can set as many guidelines for the article as you want, but chances are it will have a feel all its own. Your readers want to hear from you – not a paid article or blog post writer. While you can outsource your posts, you can’t outsource your voice.

You Win Some, You Lose Some

Even Tim Ferriss notes in his book how every virtual assistant he used wasn’t the best. If you outsource your content, you may get back articles that are completely worthless or need a lot of revision. Worse, you may google a couple sentences and find the article was lifted word-for-word from another website, blog, or published article. Since you prepay for the writer to supply the article, there is usually no recourse or way to not-approve the article. It’s money down the drain.

For A New Blog, It Isn’t Cost Effective

For new blogs starting out, outsourcing content seems like the perfect starting place. And if you have a healthy budget it may be just the thing to get your blog started. But article writing is not necessarily cheap, and you have to weight whether or not that blog post or article will make the return on investment you made in having it written. If a blog post cost $5, will that post actually make your blog $5? For new blogs, probably not. The posts may bring in traffic, however, and that traffic can eventually and indirectly make that return on investment you paid – but it isn’t 100% trackable.

Still Want To Outsource?

If you still want to outsource your blog’s content, make sure you subscribe to this site’s feed. We are planning another post to help you through the common pitfalls of outsourcing to improve your chances of receiving quality articles and blog posts from your writers.

How Do I Jump Start My New Blog?

By Christian

Question: How do I jump start my new blog? I feel like it’s just me.

Starting a new blog is always an uphill battle. According to WordPress.com, there are tens of thousands of new blogs started every day – that is a lot of competition. The fact of the matter is, until you build up a following, you may actually be the only one reading your blog, but don’t let that get you down.

Start with your inner circle of friends and colleagues. Let them know about your blog. Whether it is a personal blog or a company blog – you need to get the word out. Put it in your email signature (careful about putting personal blogs in your company signature!), make sure you send out a tweet on twitter every time you make a post, post it on your Facebook profile – whatever you need to do. Let people know.

A great way to get more readers is to create a facebook fan page for your blog. Some bloggers use their personal facebook page as their blog “landing page” but you can create one for your blog as well. By creating a facebook fan page, you will be listed and searchable in the directory giving you access to millions of potential readers.

Another great way to get your blog out there is to do video blog entries, or at the very least a video describing your blog, and upload it to youtube.com. Remember to put a link to your blog in the description and your profile so people can click and get to your blog easily. Doing regular video blog entries and successfully using categories and tagging will drive readers from youtube to your blog and will be very targeted traffic.

Above all – write great content! The first second of someone finding your blog are crucial and can mean the difference of them coming back or leaving for good. Good content – GREAT content – is a surefire way to get people not only reading your blog but spreading your link for you.

This is an important point. You can do all the promotion you want for your blog. You can spend money on advertising, widgets for trade shows, and more. But if you don’t provide good content, it all doesn’t matter.

So don’t worry if it is “only you” when writing your blog. A successful blogger not only writes on their blog, but also is out there on the Internet promoting their blog and adding value to other people’s blogs. Being active in your niche is one of the most important things to remember. It isn’t all about your blog, its about reaching your readers no matter whose blog or website they are on. Be an active participant and people will find you.

As well as the search engines.