Blogspot Sitemap Code For Google

If you are like me and have utilized Blogger's free templates, you may have had (or be having) difficulty formatting your blogspot blogs feed into a Google friendly sitemap. There is good news, it can be done, but not to the same level that a Wordpress template can be. 

When trying to create a sitemap using Google Webmaster Tools, you can actually use your Feedburner feed, however only 25 or 26 of the pages will be indexed. I know that is a bummer, but short of moving your blog over to Wordpress it is the best option I am aware of at this time. 

In order to format your sitemap correctly, you will have to add the code "atom.xml?orderby=updated" (without the "") after the given url. You may be tempted to add "rss.xml" assuming that the entire feed will be indexed. I assure you by adding "rss.xml" the script will cause an error message every time.

Save yourself the trouble and utilize the "atom.xml?orderby=updated" code, you'll be glad that you did. 

Build Up Your Links Enhance SEO

Search Engine Optimization is still a hot button issue and many new bloggers are sacrificing time spent on quality writing for time spent networking. Granted, networking is essential for any blogger, but so is producing quality content. What good is great visibility if your message is garbled?

Anyway, there are many ways to enhance your blog or websites standing quickly and easily. If you've spent a good deal of time surfing through various blog directories, you've no doubt seen a "blogroll" and quite possibly considered listed some blogs on one of your own. Well, not so fast. It is a great idea to have a blogroll featuring your favorite blogs and websites, but it is wise not to just link everyone and everything and here is why. 

Anyone who reads your blog for content (and that is most people who stay longer than 25-30 seconds) might be interested in visiting similar blogs and seeing what they have to offer. If I'm visiting this blog for Adsense Tips, I'm not going to want to visit a greeting card building blog. Although you might be social networking buddies with that sites owner, you owe your readers more than a dud link. 

Secondly, social networking with similar blogs through comments and blogroll exchanges can create a solid flow of traffic for both sites and improve their rankings quickly. It is important to make sure a blogroll exchange is working for both parties. I can't stress how important it is to update your content and and keep in touch through comments with others to whom you link. Not only is it just good manners, it can create a stronger more viable network and lead to future successes. 

Without harping on Page Rank (which has almost gone the way of Alexa ranking), if you are looking for a quick PR boost, exchanging blogrolls with higher ranked blogs can increase your ranking overnight (it helps to use googles webmaster tools and create sitemaps etc).

Adsense; Text VS Image Links

Following the current theme of Adsense Setup tips, I'd like to offer tips on selecting image ad units versus link ad units. Setting up either unit is quite easy and can be reached via the Adsense Setup tab followed by selecting the Adsense For Content icon. 

After selecting the Content icon, you are taken to a screen where you can choose from either an ad unit or a link unit. Personally, I prefer the ad unit (image ad only). You can select either of the three options, but you must keep in mind how a text or image ad will look on your blog. If you have a tech blog, you may want to run text whereas a sports blog may be more effective to pitch image ads on. Honestly though, it all depends on your layout. 

Once again, the ad is very easy to set up, just don't overlook customization of your color palette so the ad can flow seamlessly onto your page. 

Adsense Setup

Earlier today we briefly discussed the importance of creating coordinated text advertisements that compliment your blog page. After taking a look at the Adsense Setup tab and the features therein, I though it might be beneficial to introduce readers to the Video Units feature which can be placed on your blog page and possibly earn additional revenue through a series of related videos.

Clicking on the Adsense Setup tab, you'll be given a series of additional tabs as well as 5 different options for text links and the like. At this point, we are going to develop Video Units (the fourth link from the top). 

Once you select the Video Units link, you'll see a series of boxes on the right hand side of the page that focus on the content of the videos as well as a design/skin setup menu. If you remember our chat earlier, you understand the importance of selecting a complimentary palette to supplement your blog page with. Moving on, after selecting a skin it is time to find some related content.

Lets face it, if someone who regularly reads your sports blog see an advertisement for Cooking with Emeril or info on Delta faucets all your credibility is going to fly out the window. Instead, take your time and use the filters to specify which channels are going to be placed on your blog and the content that they will contain. 

It is also very important to consider what type of parameters your blog has. After all, you don't want half of your videos un-viewable due to your margins and such. Personally, I recommend the vertical columns or small rectangular players. Currently I am using the column players in one of my blogs and am having decent success with it. Feel free to experiment and mix it up to see what works for your blog.

Utilize Your Adsense Color Palettes

Having surfed the blogosphere for ideas on Adsense placement and earnings potential, I was truly amazed to see how many bloggers who don't utilize the customizable color palettes offered by Adsense. Sometimes contrasting advertisements stand out and actually compliment the page, but sometimes they just look silly. 

For those who are unfamiliar with the color palette options, you should take this time to refresh yourself with a visit to the Adsense page and also the Adsense Setup Tab in the menu. From there, select Color Palettes and get to work. Oftentimes, when you create an advertisement, a complimentary palette will form and allow you to make edits.

DON"T ASSUME THEIR PALETTE IS ACCURATE FOR YOUR BLOG!

More often than not, their generated advertisements will not match very well and will look poorly placed. Instead, tweak the ads to match precisely. Not only will the ad look less hack, but if your readers enjoy your content they are likely to click the ad earning you additional revenue.

Get That Adsense Out of There! When is it Time to Remove Adsense?

There are times, when you will want to remove Adsense from a page or site, because you have a better converting advertisement on your site.

Say you are writing reviews about Dragon Naturally Speaking 10, the voice recognition software.  You run adsense for a while just to get a little extra money, whenever people click an adsense button to get related info or products.

But eventually, your site is performing well enough where you can convert people directly to the product via affiliate links or direct sales.  At this point adsense is taking away your more profitable sales, so you have to get rid of it and quick!

If you are using WordPress templates you can customize your pages to remove adsense on an individual page as opposed to removing it from all posts.  From my experience this is more likely to take place with products or subscriptions than it is to happen with topics like commercial collection agencies.

WordPress Templates Driving Google Search Page

I just heard a great monetization suggestion at the Birmingham WordCamp.  If you use WordPress, the software, you can establish a template (not a theme but a 'page template').  In that template you can re-code how that page looks and feels. 

In part you can re-code that to perform Google Search results on that page, keeping the results inline with your theme.  Google Search also shares some ad revenue with you for using their search and the ads that come up with them from Google.

Go do a Google search on the term orovo and you will see paid listings at the top of Google's search result.

Its a very interesting concept for using templates, a relatively new tool in WordPress that is rapidly turning WordPress into a full fledged CMS.

Adsense Tips For Better Blogging

We all know that creating great content is the key to successful blogging, but what about creating great Adsense revenue? Well, it is important to develop a plan derived from market data in order to successfully implement any campaign (especially Adsense). 

There are a number of

">bloggers and organizations who have determined different ways to enhance your revenue earnings, so this info isn't exactly the reinvention of the wheel, but if implemented correctly could mean all the difference in the world.

The first, is a basic "Heat Map", the darkest shading indicates the best place for Adsense ads versus the lighter shades which indicate the least effective.

The second image, focuses almost specifically on Blogger style blogs and sites and works on the same principle. 

My suggestion (take with a grain of salt), is not to go overly aggressive with spamming your blog with Adsense ads. Sure you can scrape up some decent revenue, but readers are not there to click on your ads, they are there for content. Always remember to write good articles, everything else should be secondary.

Adsense Tipsters

I'm pretty fascinated with all of the Adsense tippers out there who take their time to offer sound advice to both bloggers and entrepreneurs alike. Having watched several Adsense optimization videos over the course of the last couple of weeks, I can honestly say that the system works if you work it. I'm still fairly new to the system myself, but can see that hard work and dedication will be rewarded to those who earn it.

Having said that, I still find it hard to believe that some folks are raking in tens of thousands of dollars utilizing this simple free system. In fact, I've watched a number of videos at Youtube where people don't hesitate to throw out these bloated figures and wave money around like a cheesey cliched rap video. I'm really waiting to see someone with a gold chain around there neck with the Adsense or Google logo on it "all iced out".

Youtube should be taken with a grain of salt, but some of the videos are actually quite useful and can be used as excellent educational tools. I had mentioned Chris Pirillo's site as one of them in an earlier post, definitely give his site a look if you are interested in different tips and techniques to maximizing your Adsense bottom line.

High Energy Only 70 Calories

For well over ten years, Promax has been a pioneer and innovator in the nutritional supplement and energy bar industry. In addition to a number of popular powdered supplements and protein shakes, Promax has developed an amazing energy bar that combines great taste with incredible nutritional value at only 70 calories! The all natural energy bar comes in a variety of tasty flavors to satisfy all of your health conscious cravings. 

Whether you are looking for a quick pick-me-up after a workout or an in between meals snack, these high protein bars will not only energize you, but will leave you feeling satisfied. In fact, Promax's 70 calorie bars contain 5 grams of protein compared to half of that in other energy bars. In addition to being a great way to supplement your health conscious lifestyle, Promax's healthy snack bars fit nicely into a lunchbox. These high protein energy bars are just another tasty way to ensure your children are getting a healthy snack at school or during the bus ride home.

Adsense Optimization Tips

I've been running some searches on Adsense optimization and came across Chris Pirillo's site Chris.Pirillo.com. The site is a really great resource for those interested in Adsense tips, I also found this video on Youtube where Chris discusses different tips and interacts with a number of bloggers who are posing a variety of questions.

I found the video pretty interesting and also as I mentioned earlier, a great resource site for new bloggers and those trying to optimize their Adsense revenue.

Adsense Via Western Union

Google Adsense payments are now available via Western Union... in Panama. 

Cuurently, many Central and South American countries are still limited to paypal as the only method of payment. Google has been is currently devising new payment methods for the aforementioned country and looking for more solutions. Acknowledging the difficulty in maintaining compliance with local laws and tax regulation implemented by foreign governments, Google is jumping through the hoops as quickly as they can to speed up the process for "off-shore" Adsense earners. 

Google Adsense Blog maintains a forum for all those who have questions or concerns regarding payment questions and comments.

Adsense and Google Analytics

There are rumors floating around that Google Analytics may be in line to offer detailed statistics for Adsense Publishers. The detailed statistics will better explain how revenue was created as opposed to the crapshoot that is Adsense right now. Don't get me wrong, Adsense is a decent tool, but it can be incredibly and frustratingly vague at times. 

The new stats page will show how users interact with Google's Ads and how well they have performed over a fixed period. 

Source: Digital Inspirations.

BlogOxy.com

For Blogger users, here is a blog marketing service that could be very useful.  (For WordPress users, you may have some better options in plugins and coding).

BlogOxy.com provides a blog marketing service that could help you generate more traffic. 

What Does BlogOxy.com do?

1. So you write an article about on a health blog about diet pill reviews
2. You run the script for this service on your site just below your posts.
3. A reader then reads your article, comes to the end of the article and clicks a link to see similar posts.
4. This opens a new window, and takes your reader to a blog article on diet pill reviews on a different blog running this same BlogOxy.com script (from the semantic text review of your article).
5. Other readers on other blogs follow the same process and end up on your site looking at articles that relate to your own.

So basically, the service helps people find related articles to further explore topics.  WordPress users often use plugins to achieve a similar result, but typically only with articles in their own site.  That's good for keeping sites sticky, but not for bringing in fresh traffic.

There is definitely a trade off to consider with this service, but there could be some useful benefits to bringing in brand new readers and traffic.

Value of the Dollar Increasing Adsense Results

We mentioned the draught that could hit Adsense funds after the election this year in 2008.  Well there is an economic trend that might also make the Bump Up in Adsense earnings even better for people.  The value of the US dollar is increasing right now as oil prices decline and the US Federal government attempts to demonstrate security and confidence in financial markets.

With the value of the dollar increasing, that means that the proceeds from Adsense earnings can purchase more.  For website owners around the world outside of the United States that can mean an important increase in spending power resulting from Adsense earnings.  For Adsense recipients in the US, that change is not going to mean more spending power to buy more gas, or food or Amazon books, but if you are a webmaster in the Philippines or China it can be important for sure.

PayPerPost Loses Pagerank the Old Fahsioned Way - Updates, Schmupdates

For months if not a year or so PayPerPost has been talking about finally migrating away from a Google Pagerank based system.  They liked the idea so much that they start a brand new division and website around the concept called SocialSpark that has more whiz bang features and feel good, do good requirements to even get Matt Cutt's blessing at Google.

PayPerPost, itself, never stopped using Pagerank.  There were just some customers that used this functionality too much and wouldn't migrate away.  I'm not passing judgment on the need for the necessity to keeping making a buck or two, just saying . . .

Anyway this week when one of PayPerPost's partners ran an update on their own ranking system, PayPerPost's ability to track and monitor pagerank went invisible.

That's probably unfortunate timing as this also happens to be the week that PayPerPost is working to kick off PostieCon or Izeafest or whatever they are calling it this year.  I went to Postiecon last year and learned a great deal about the company, its people, and where they want to go.  Most of it was very very positive.

So anyway, this is likely putting a big monkey wrench into the cash cow that is/was PayPerPost.  It will likely be fixed soon, but nonetheless, it is somewhat ironic that it took a break in the system for them to actually get away from (even if for just a short break) PageRank.

The Adsense Draught Will Hit After the Election

We've talked in the past about the opportune time for Adsense campaigns heading into the November 2008 election.  The next two months with the excellent opportunities for people to earn money through ads and advertising campaigns, but don't expect that money to last forever. Past local elections have seen major spikes in advertising online, this election is definitely following that path. That said the time period following the election is often times marked with a slowdown in Adsense conversions.

The election will take place the first week of November, and that will be followed like Christmas sales which do bring their own relative advertising Spike. Typically Adsense is not see as much of a spike during the Christmas season as you might expect with the exception of some keywords promoting the hottest new Christmas items. But once the shopping season is over sometime around the first to second week of December you can definitely expect a lull in Adsense advertising revenue. So before you go spending all of your Adsense earnings from October and November, consider banking a little bit for the slow days after the election and Christmas are over.

Once the election is over, and all the lawyers are paid off and sent home, all of those political hacks and junkies and organizers will all be trying to find new work and gainful employment. So you might consider optimizing for job boards covering different areas and especially big cities. If Barack Obama loses, I have a suspicion that there will be a lot of people looking for jobs in Chicago, and if he wins, there will probably be lots of people looking for jobs in DC...

Take Advantage of the Adsense Political Bonanza

This is a great time to ensure that you are optimizing your Adsense sites for politics. As you write your titles, your articles, or even create your pages, there is no better time to capitalize on Adsense earnings than right now when it comes to politics. In the United States, both political parties are exercising budgets larger than any campaign in the history of the country.

This campaign is likely to be the first political campaign that will cost well over $1 billion and much of that money is going into advertising. A significant amount of advertising is being spent through AdWords campaigns. That means if your site has anything to do with politics or as any tangent related to politics, you can likely benefit from some of those campaign dollars as people seek out more information, look for additional sites related to politics, and much more.

It's not too difficult, even for a person with extra thick eyeglasses to see the writing on the wall. That said, we definitely like to help bring this obvious thing into your consciousness that you can take advantage of the situation and earn a little extra money over the next couple of months. Now that the political conventions are over, we are in the home stretch when the most money will be spent overall.

Twitter Not Dead Yet

Recently, I posted about the uncertain future of the social networking website Twitter. Well, Twitter made news last week by being added to Mixx groups. Now Mixx users will now be able to import Twitter feeds into their group management page. What does all this mean, well in my eyes, it looks like Twitter might still be kicking even though it is in the final throes of death.

Personally, I think Twitter is a decent social networking tool, but it could definitely use a "refresh". As for Mixx, I'm not a member, but am interested in taking a look at features offered as well as this new feed option via Twitter.