We all know how important SEO is to a blog or website. Without proper SEO, you won’t rank well in the search engines. Christoph from Wehosting Report did a recent SEO analysis of my blog. He chose my site to test because it is very similar to his site in PR, traffic and content.

Here’s an excerpt of what Christoph recommends for my site, but be sure to check out his blog post for a full review:

I would probably recommend to a) include a meta description (not meta keywords) into the site and b) to eventually start targeting specific keywords he wants to rank for and include those more in blog posting titles and the blog postings itself.

All solid points. I didn’t even realize that I’m missing a meta description. As far as placing target keywords in my blog post titles… I used to do that, but sometimes it just wouldn’t sound right? It flows much better if I just make a natural topic. But I should work on improving it if I want to rank better in search engines.

There are obviously a lot of things I should improve on my site, and Christoph pointed out quite a few of them. I appreciate him taking the time to analyze my blog’s SEO.

 

One of my newest website, a Tim Tebow fan site, has been on fire lately. I have never started a fan site that has been so successful so quickly. Tebow Zone is really only 1-2 months old and it’s seeing 200-250 uniques/day and upwards to 400 uniques on game days. I am quite pleased with it’s progress.

I’ve made several efforts over the last week or so to monetize this site. I’ve added adsense (of course it’s not doing well. only $1/day average), ringtone offers (pays $10 per lead), and most recently I added a shop where visitors can purchase Tim Tebow and Gator merchandise. If this site had any pagerank, I would submit it to TLA and probably be able to make another $30 or so a month from that.

My site has been steadily climbing the ladder for the keyword “tim tebow”. If I can reach the number 1 spot, my traffic would likely double. And to be honest, I haven’t done much promotion for it at all. I haven’t done any directory submissions. I just added links to it on a couple sites I own, and wrote about it in a few blog posts here. Other then that, it’s naturally climbing the SERPs ladder.

My original goal for this site was for it to fuel Gator Envy, another website of mine that is climbing the SERPs ladder. But now it looks like this Tebow site could turn into something more then a feeder.

If anyone has any other monetization ideas for my Tebow site, please let me know. With 200-250 uniques/day I should be able to pull in at least $100 a month, and probably more.

The following is a guest post by Jacob Cohen-Donnelly.

First and foremost, allow me to introduce myself. I’m Jacob Cohen-Donnelly, the owner of the blog, DormEarning.com. I began the blog because, if you couldn’t already tell, I am a student living in a dorm room looking to make money from the internet. I spend so much time on the computer as is due to my studies and the internet is the new today that it made perfect sense to me to enter in and try to profit from it. But, that’s where I made the first mistake and it’s what I wanted to talk about today. It’s a mistake a lot of people make and that’s the quest for money.

We’re all looking to make a dollar. But, there is no denying that it is downright difficult to make any money on a blog when you are first starting. Getting people to the site takes time, writing really compelling, interesting articles takes time. Simply put, time is necessary for your blog to take off and sometimes, we can get demoralized when we don’t see any profits coming in. That demoralization can destroy any chances we have of taking that giant leap from a small time blogger to a full strength, full powered blog such as those we find ourselves reading every single day.

So, it brings up a point that I want to stress: the importance of liking what you do. If you’ve ever had a dead-beat job such as working in the Shop Rite Deli Department (I worked there and I hated it), you’ll know that if you don’t like what you are doing, it is extremely difficult to show enthusiasm. Granted, you could be bringing in a decent pay check, but if you are not passionate about the topic you are working for, it’s going to be tough to find that drive. The drive definitely won’t be money as a blogger because in the beginning, chances are, you won’t be making a considerable sum of money. Why? Because like I said, it takes time…So, how can you still succeed even if you’re not making much?

That comes down to liking what you do. If you love science (I love science), then perhaps creating a blog about science is for you. If you love books (I love books), then perhaps creating a blog about books is for you. Because you won’t be making money for a short (or long) while on your blog, you need to have the drive to write on it frequently for other reasons. The drive of making money will be there WHEN you’re making money, but when you’re not, you need to find it some other way.

So, the real moral of the story is that you need to be passionate about what you write about. Blogging can be great fun because you are getting your voice heard. There are people that write all the time hoping to get published and here we are, without the need of a publishing company, writing about a topic and making money. But, you need to write about a topic that you are passionate about otherwise making that giant leap from a small time blogger to one that is successful will never happen because you’ll have given up. Write about something you like and I can guarantee that you will find success far better than if you just write about what you think will pay the most.

Jacob is a biology student currently aspiring to become a neurologist when he is accepted into medical school. He runs his blog about making money in college along with a few other sites about topics he finds interesting.

I hope everyone enjoy’s Ask David, even though at time the questions don’t pertain to making money online. I received a couple of questions in the past week. So here we go:

Question #1 was asked by Kyle Stephens of Kyle M. Stephens - Using the Internet to Make Money. Why are people so reluctant to ask you a question?

That’s a good question Kyle. By asking me a question, not only do you get an awesome reply, but you also get a free link on my blog, as seen above in your question. Who doesn’t want free PR5 link love, plus some extra traffic to their website? I think in time, Ask David will pick up momentum to the point where I’m getting 1 questions a week. Anything more then that, and it will take me 2 hours o write this post. 

Question #2 was asked by Nomar of Seach Engine Ranking. What is your opinion about pagerank. Are you glad it is not updating ?? Or not?? Do you think it will ever update again?? and why??

I think Pagerank will update again, but I would not be surprised if Google didn’t update it in the future. If you think about it, Pagerank is really worthless. It’s used by webmasters to buy and sell links, which Google views as something bad. It doesn’t factor in traffic or content, just how many inbound links a site has. I have several PR4 websites that suck. They don’t get any traffic and haven’t been updated in ages, but they still rank PR4 becaue they have links pointing to them. I also have a site Gator Envy that is only ranked PR3, but this site is awesome. It gets tons of traffic and tons o new content. It’s way more valuable then some of the crapp PR4 sites… but just because it has lower PR it would have a harder time selling links or being accepting into networks like TLA.

Maybe the reason this PR update is taking so long is because Google is tweaking how it works? I really don’t know. I want the PR to get here just like everyone. It’s fun to watch your sites go up (and down). I’m hoping for PR6 on this blog. I’d give it another 1-2 weeks. hopefully we’ll see something by then.

Questions #3 was asked by Webmaster of PwnEm. What do you look for when you join a forum? And which of these elements influences you the most to post there.

Great question. There are so many forums on the web, it’s hard to decide which ones you want to join. A couple factors I look at before joining a forum include it’s activity and the topic of the content. Not many people will join forums that aren’t active. That’s the biggest factor in my opinion. If you join a forum to get help, ask a question, or talk to people… you’ll want to get replies to your threads that day, not in 3-4 days. I give a lot of props to the ery first members of a forum. They join knowing that the response time may be slow.

The second factor I take in to count when joining a forum is the content. I want to join a forum that interests me. I’m not going to join a forum about Coach purses, but I may join a forum about business or video games.

It’s rare that I join a forum just for fun. Seems like every forum I belong to is because I need it for help with something. The forum needs to provide a service other then entertainment. With all that said, I think the forums activity is the most important factor though, and would make me want to post there. You can have a forum on my favorite topic, but unless there is someone else to share that interest with, then I won’t join.

That’s it for Ask David Batch #6. If you want free link love, be sure to click the Ask David link at the top of this page and send me your questions.