(NOTE: this is part of the “Blogging tips” series)

As I’ve mentioned before, having people (in blogs and other sites) linking to your blog is a Good Thing ™. Not only does it improve your ranking in Google (and other search engines)’s search results, but people may arrive at your blog through those links. Accordingly, if something can be done to cause more people to link to you, you should do it.

There are several things you can do, of course. You can ask people to link to you, for instance – either by asking your friends for a link, or by asking total strangers to exchange links (I’ll deal with the latter in a future part of the series). You can also simply write good content, and promote your blog in terms of SEO, pinging, and such, and wait for people to link to your blog, or to particular posts. It will happen. But it’s slow, and uncontrolled.

Hence the concept of “linkbaiting“, which is the art of writing posts that have increased chances of having people link to them.

Linkbaiting methods include:

• create helpful guides. People love linking to guides: “I just found a nice guide to…”.
• create lists. People love these even more. “10 ways to make better cheese dip”, or “12 tips for improving your Windows system”, or “A checklist for new blogs”, etc… you get the idea. These ones also tend to get a lot of del.icio.us and/or Digg links.
• create self-sufficient posts. People will very rarely link to part 13 of your series, or to a post which depends on the one before, and is continued in the next one. Remember, that post should be accessible to people who don’t read your blog.
• use good, self-explanatory titles. People usually skim through the post titles, and only read more if a title grabs their interest. Obviously, a post called “8 essential apps for Series 60 phones” is much more attractive than a post whose title is “my mobile phone experiences”, even if the content is exactly the same.
• index pages for series also work well.
• if appropriate, create something. A piece of software, a WordPress plugin, a song, a Flash animation, etc.. The post in which you “release” that creation of yours will probably attract a lot of links.
• last but certainly not least, write good posts! I shouldn’t even need to say this, of course.

Note that I’m not suggesting that you do the above (except for the good titles / good posts parts, which are always a good idea) for every single one of your posts! In other words, I’m not saying that all of your posts should be self-sufficient and not refer to any other, that they should all be guides or lists, and so on. These are the linkbaits – the ones you use so that a lot of people link to them, and, therefore, to your blog – improving your PageRank, and getting you new visitors. But, in most cases, they won’t be the “meat” of your blog.

(NOTE: this is part of the “Blogging tips” series)

Sometimes, you’re in a “blogging spree” – after you finish one post, you already have an idea for another. And then another, and another. Those times are great, you feel like you can take on the world, and you keep writing brilliant article after brilliant essay after brilliant opinion piece after brilliant guide after brilliant commentary.

You could say you’re “in the zone”.

But there can be a problem if you’re writing too quickly. Ping services may refuse all pings but the first. Your blog only shows on several “updated blogs” lists once, even though there are 3 or 4 new posts. Some “posts from different blogs, in chronological order” aggregators, such as Planeta Asterisco, will put all your posts together, which may cause some people to skip them as “too much stuff from this guy”.

So, it’s better if you put some time between them. Most blog services allow you to write posts in advance, by setting the time when they are published; for instance, in WordPress, there’s a “Post Timestamp” option, which by default is the current time, but which can be set to any date or time you want.

Now, suppose you write, say, 4 posts in a row, in a particular blog. Here you have several options:

1. Split them between the whole day: 24/4=6, so make each post appear 6 hours after the previous one
2. Same as above, but considering only local daytime – say, divide them equally between 8 AM and 10 PM
3. Simply separate each by 1-2 hours.

All of these work fine, so it’s a matter of preference.

Something similar can also help on a larger scale: suppose you’re going away on holidays for a week. Writing 7 posts in advance, and making them appear on your blog, automatically, one per day, is a pretty good idea.

(NOTE: this is part of the “Blogging tips” series)

This is a point I’ve already made in several past posts (that sounds weird…), but it’s so relevant and so often ignored or even unknown, that it deserves its own part in this world-famous-any-day-now series.

As I’ve mentioned before as well, most ad clicks come from first-time visitors, as your regular readers tend to become “blind” to your ads – they filter them, unconsciously. That is mostly unavoidable – though it’s still desirable to convert newcomers into regulars, as there’s still a chance they’ll click on an ad, but, mostly important, they may link to your blog, make it more interesting with their comments, and tell other people about it.

But there’s still something you can do to reduce the “ad blindness”, and that is to change ads from time to time.

Without wanting to go into psychobabble, it’s a bit like this: it’s as if people have a mental “ad filter”, which works for ads in a position they expect, or of a type they expect. So they don’t even look at those.

The idea, then, is to go around that “filter”, and surprise people, so that they see ads where they don’t expect, or in a different format.

So, my suggestion is this: from time to time (I’d say at least monthly), change your ads. You can do one of the following, or a combination of several:

• change an ad’s size or format
• move an ad to a different position
• completely remove an ad for a while
• add a new ad somewhere (assuming you don’t already have too many, of course – you don’t want more ads than content)
• change an ad’s provider: for instance, replace an AdSense ad with a Chitika ad, or a Blogads one.
• change an ad’s colors – if it used the colors of your site, try using different, more visible colors for a while. Conversely, try changing a “blended in” ad to colors that stand out more.
• if using non-contextual ads (such as the default Chitika mode), try changing the keywords – possibly even replacing them completely with a bunch of new ones (but save the old ones somewhere, so you can compare results).

This may sound like a lot of work, but can help a lot in terms of click-through rate (CTR).

One other reason (and a very important one, too) to do this is that you’ll be able to learn a lot about which ad formats, positions, colors, ad providers, keywords, etc. work better or worse. Remember to configure channels, if available, for each type of ad, so you can track which ones give you a better CTR, and more money.

(NOTE: this is part of the “Blogging tips” series)

Please read the introduction first. Thanks.

Not all of the following tips necessarily apply to every situation. But you can almost surely use a combination of some of them in your blog.

• Avoid, as much as you can, blog entries of the “see this cool link!” kind. They are basically a way of sending people away. Unless your visitor is already a regular reader, it’s quite likely that, if he (she, etc.) is interested in the link, he’ll follow it… and, in seconds, he’ll have forgotten all about your blog, and never come back to it.
• When you do link to other blog posts or sites, write some original content as well. Don’t just write a single line “go there” post. Write your own thoughts about the link in question. Say where you agree and where you don’t. Add to it. Invite your readers to give their own opinions. If done properly, they’ll go read the other post, but then return to yours to read (and possibly discuss) what you’ve written about it.
• Although this is not always possible, try to move the external links to the end of your posts, instead of the beginning. But don’t do it in too obvious a way – it should flow naturally.
• Use internal links. For instance, instead of just writing “so and so has said (external link)”, say something in the vein of “so and so has said (external link), which you may recall I’ve already discussed in (internal link)”, or “following (internal link), so and so has written a new article (external link) on…” Again, do it nicely – don’t try to “hide” the external link, or link to your own articles even though they’re not really related at all.
• If you’re using WordPress, use the Related Entries plugin. If you use some other software, try to find an equivalent plugin or feature. Even doing it by hand shouldn’t be totally out of the question. It really helps.

(NOTE: this is part of the “Blogging tips” series)

A lot of bloggers, especially those who intend to earn some money with their blog(s), read a lot about Search Engine Optimization (SEO), to make people visit their blogs for the first time, ensuring that their results appear as high as possible in Google and other search engines when people search for subjects they blog about. Directories can also help. This is, of course, a good idea – if people don’t find out about your blog, they won’t visit it, much less click on any ads.

Regular readers, as I’ve mentioned before, tend to earn you less money in the short term, because, as they get to know your site, they tend to unconsciously “filter” any ads (this effect can be lessened by moving ads around from time to time, or changing ad types). What they do earn you is new visitors, as they mention your articles in their own blogs, or simply link to your blogs (this also improves PageRank), or tell friends about them. That’s why being a good host is so important.

All of the above is (or should be) well known. But there’s another important making-money-from-blogging tip that many people forget about, or forget to mention: *keeping* first-time visitors on your blog.

Why is this important? Two reasons:

• the more articles of yours they read, the more likely they are to become regular readers
• any pages they browse to have new ads, which increases the chances of them seeing one that interests them

Next: how to actually do it.

(NOTE: this is part of the “Blogging tips” series)

What is social bookmarking? It’s no more than a fancy name for a combination of the following:

• a place to store your browser bookmarks (what Internet Explorer calls “favorites”) online, instead of using your browser’s bookmarks feature (which saves them locally, on your hard drive) – this allows you, among other things, to access your bookmarks when away from home, no matter what browser or operating system you’re using. It also allows them to survive even if your hard drive is destroyed and you have no backups.
• bookmark sharing: while you can optionally set some bookmarks as “private”, by default they’re “public”. There’s a page (usually the social bookmark site’s front page) that shows new bookmarks as they’re added, and which a lot of people read. You can also click on any user’s name and see his/her (public) bookmarks.
• usually, there’s also some way to rank bookmarks – by seeing how many people added them to their own list – and/or rate them.

I find all of this quite useful, both to store my bookmarks and to find interesting stuff – for instance, someone who’s bookmarked something I like may also have bookmarked other stuff I’ll also like. I mostly use del.icio.us, but I’ve also found some very interesting links at Digg. If you want it, there’s a longer list of such services here.

But there’s more – you can also use these services to drive traffic to your site.

How? First, the obvious way: by adding both your site, and some individual pages from it, yourself. Don’t overdo it and add every single one of your 1738 posts to it, of course – add the front page, those you consider your best posts, and any series index pages. Remember that every addition appears in the social bookmarks site’s front page for a while.

That, by itself, can get you a few hits. But the best part is yet to come: having other people add your site, or individual pages from it, to the same social bookmarks sites. For a start, that improves your ranking – a page bookmarked by 1 lone guy attracts much less attention than one listed as being on 382 users’ bookmarks. Also, those sites usually have “popular” links highlighted, or in a very visible place in the front page. So having many people bookmarking one of your pages ensures a lot of new hits to it.

Now, how to have other people bookmarking your site or its pages? The most important thing is, of course, quality content. That, by itself, will get you some bookmarks – I, myself, usually bookmark pages I want to read more thoroughly at a later time, or sites I want to return to, later. (by the way, you can take a look at my del.icio.us bookmarks list if you want – you may find something of interest there.)

But, of course, there are other things you can do.

For instance, ever noticed the Bookmark on del.icio.us link below each of my posts? That’s a WordPress plugin, which does it automatically. It never hurts to remind people.

Or you can simply ask. Do you like my site? Are you finding this series useful? Want to thank me? What about adding it (the site, or this series, or any other article you like) to your del.icio.us bookmarks?

(NOTE: this is part of the “Blogging tips” series)

This is completely optional; however, in my opinion, it’s a great idea, with lots of advantages and no disadvantages, as far as I can see.

After part 8 – Configuring the RSS feed, you should have a feed which aggregators can read. However, instead of telling people to subscribe directly to that feed, which, among other things, can use a lot of bandwidth (assuming you have your own server – that’s not a problem if you use Blogger or something like that), you have an alternative.

That alternative is to use FeedBurner. It works this way: you tell it the address of your feed. Then FeedBurner gives you a new address, which you then tell people to use, instead of the one your blog supplies. That way, only FeedBurner accesses your real feed – everyone else in the world accesses FeedBurner’s version instead.

So far, that’s already reason enough to use it. But there’s more. (I’m trying not to make this sound like I’m doing marketing for them – I’m not, and there are no affiliate links here. I really find their services useful, though.)

• first, statistics. They give you great stats about who accesses your feed – including real people, and what software or services they use, or which sites syndicate your feed, how many subscribers are there, which bots access it, etc.
• second, they have some services that can improve your feed, such as validating it, or showing the version any software expects – be it RSS 0.92, RSS 2.0, Atom…
• another feature is making your feed include the necessary XHTML to also display in a normal browser – telling the user that it’s a feed, and what to do with it, but also allowing him/her to read the content.
• it also adds some features that I’m not using, such as Flickr integration, features for podcasters, etc..
• finally, if you subscribe to their paid service, it includes much more detailed stats, not just for each feed, but for every particular item on a feed – including clickthroughs from feed readers, which show you what links people click on.

After you’re using that service, remember to change every feed link in your blog to the FeedBurner version – it may even help if you specify separate links for the RSS feed, Atom feed, etc., but which all go to the same FeedBurner URL.

And remember to change the appropriate <link> tag, as shown in part 8 – this time, to the FeedBurner feed, instead of yours. Again, only FeedBurner itself should read your feed.

The FeedBurner site also has a “recipe” for configuring Apache to redirect accesses to your feed to the FB link, but that’s useful only if you’ve already publicized your old feed link, and have many people reading it – too many to tell to change the feed they’re subscribing to to the FB one. That way, you simply redirect them – and, in those cases, it may be useful to also change the real feed’s address to something more “hidden”, which you then tell FeedBurner about, but people can’t find.

(NOTE: this is part of the “Blogging tips” series)

There are a lot of RSS feed directories, lists, news aggregators and so on, and letting them know about your new feed can only help.

This part is, unfortunately, a bit long and boring, because, so far (this may, and hopefully will, change in the future) there’s no way to do it automatically. You have to go to each directory and add your feed manually.

I could list some directories here, but I don’t believe in reinventing the wheel, so I’ll just link to a very useful list: RSSTop55 – Best Blog Directory And RSS Submission Sites.

As I said, it’ll take some time, and be somewhat boring, but it’s a good idea. And you only have to do it once (for each blog, that is).

Note: if they ask you for an email address, be sure to use a working one, as you have to confirm some submissions by clicking on a link you’ll receive by email.

(NOTE: this is part of the “Blogging tips” series)

After you have been blogging for a while, you may begin to notice this problem for yourself: some of your best posts are “buried” deep in your blog. Unless people arrive there from search engines or external (or internal) links to them, they’ll never be seen again.

Also, think about someone who’s just arrived at your blog for the first time. They may find your blog’s subject interesting (or, even, what they’ve been looking for). However, where to start? It may well be that your recent posts, naturally, don’t “reinvent the wheel” – don’t introduce what your blog is about, as if that was the first thing a reader saw (the waste of space would be scary…) On the other hand, what will the visitor do? Use the archives to read your first post, and read on from there? It’s really doubtful that anyone will read hundreds or thousands of posts in chronological order – how long would that take? Days?

The solution, then, is a “Top Posts” page (it may be called something different, such as “best posts” or “most popular articles”.)

That works mostly as a static page (in a way, much like the index for this series), where you list your top posts, with short (1-2 lines, not longer) descriptions of what they’re about. I said mostly static because, of course, you will be adding to it from time to time.

Which articles to include in it? There’s no “hard” criteria, but I suggest the following guidelines:

• Try to keep the number of posts at about 20. If there are about 100 “top posts”, that’s almost an entire, smaller blog, and almost nobody reads that much in a sitting.
• Take your time – add an article there only after it’s been away from the front page for a while. It should have been an article that has “stood the test of time”, so to speak.
• If possible, choose an article that has some user comments.
• If possible, too, choose a post that other blogs/sites have linked to.
• Choose “timeless” articles – guides, hints and tips, original content, etc.. Conversely, avoid posts that only make sense at that time, such as news or commentary about some event that has just happened.
• Try to pick “independent” articles, instead of posts that are continuations of others – or continued in others.

By the way, here are this blog’s top posts.

(NOTE: this is part of the “Blogging tips” series)

Chitika eMiniMalls (affiliate link: I get some extra money if you subscribe using that link; that money does not come out of yours, you still receive 100% of your earnings) is a new-ish product-oriented banner ads service. At this moment, you can see it in action in the top banner, or, if you prefer, as a smaller banner on The Games of my Life, on the right sidebar.

A lot of people are reporting great results from those, typically better than AdSense earnings; I’ve just started using them, a couple of days ago, so nothing to report… as of yet. They work very well because they’re “dynamic” (move the mouse cursor over the tabs and see for yourself), and also because they have nice pics of the announced products. They draw attention without being annoying.

Note: the code they give you, by default, has contextual advertising (that is, “understanding” what your page is about, and showing relevant ads) turned off. It’s that way so that they’re compatible with AdSense ads (which disallow other contextual ads on the same page – it’s in their rules). That means you have to manually edit the code (it’s easy) and say what types of products, or products themselves, you want the ads to show. That’s very useful for some kinds of blogs, such as political ones, or blogs about blogging, because they’re not directly related to a type of products, but you can figure out that your visitors are probably interested in a particular product type. On the other hand, if you don’t have AdSense on your blog, it may be better to turn on the contextual advertising.

(NOTE: this is part of the “Blogging tips” series)

How do people blog?

In the most basic sense, there are two kinds of blogs: personal ones (also known as “everything but the kitchen sink” blogs), and topical ones.

Most people start with a personal blog, although they may not see it as such. They call it original names like “random thoughts”, and talk about what whatever they feel like. Nothing wrong with that… but those blogs tend to have one post a week, and after a year or two, the blogger gets tired and shuts it down, or it begins to have 6-month intervals between posts.

The other possibility is when you really have something to say, or have a subject you want to write about. A lot. Computer games, politics, cheese dip… You choose. Sometimes, a blog has more than one topic: for instance, there may be a blog about computer games and comic books, or about movies and music. The possibilities are limitless, which is a phrase that always sounds deep.

But, sometimes, people change. Maybe you find that you are, half the time, writing about a different subject than whatever your blog was initially about. Or you don’t do that, because you feel guilty about changing your blog’s theme. Maybe there’s a bunch of posts you have in mind, but they don’t really fit with the theme of your blog. Or maybe your blog has a too “generic” theme, such as “philosophy” (oops…), or “technology” (double oops…).

In situations like those, maybe it’s time to start a new blog. Independent of the first, although they’ll link to each other, of course.

Why do so? Well, first, it’ll give you a new sense of freedom. Finally, you can write your 30-article series about cheese dip without feeling guilty about posting it in your sheep shearing blog.

Second, multi-subject blogs tend to have just your friends as regular readers – unless you’re a celebrity. Every visitor that arrives there because of a subject is unlikely to care about the other subject(s). And nobody reads a blog where they have to skip 2/3 of the articles.

Third, more focused blogs tend to have the best focused ads. A blog about computers has more generic ads than a blog about software, which is worse than one about games, which is worse than one about strategy games… you get the idea. Of course, if you write about using that particular tactic in that particular scenario in that particular strategy game, it may end up being too focused, and have a very small number of readers.

When not to start a new blog? If you are already spread too thin, if you don’t have the time for your current blogs. (be sure that it’s really a question of time, not of boredom!)

(NOTE: this is part of the “Blogging tips” series)

This is one where I have to give all the credit to an article on Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger. It’s all there, and I could just give you that link and be a lazy bastard.

But, basically, it’s like this: pages take some time (weeks, probably) to be indexed by search engines, right? So, suppose there are some presidential elections, and, the very minute that the results are known, you, typing faster than a speeding bullet (if, of course, bullets typed…), write a brilliant article with all the results, comments, opinions, etc..

But few people go there. Mostly, it’s your regular readers, or possibly some people coming from Technorati searches. Even though it’s a certainty that thousands of people are, at that moment, googling for “presidential election results” or some variation of that.

The thing is that you should have written that article – minus the actual results – weeks ago! The article should already have the right name, and be linked to in your main page. And that article should already mention the candidates’ names, some speculation, etc.. And it should mention things like “election results” (as in “the election results will be posted here”). Then, when the results are out, you simply edit that article, instead of posting a new one.

It’s not rocket science, although, as I said, I owe this piece of knowledge to Darren. Thanks, Darren.

(NOTE: this is part of the “Blogging tips” series)

I thought about calling this part “prevent premature promotion”, but I’m not Stan Lee. Anyway…

“Promotion”, in this case, is adding your blog to search engines and directories, asking friends and other people to link to it, linking to it yourself in your other blogs or sites (if you have any), adding it to sites like Technorati, Blogshares, etc….

And “premature”, of course, means “before the right time”. “What do you mean, right time? Shouldn’t I do everything in my power to promote my new blog, as soon as the blogging equivalent of a “Hello World” program is in there?”, you may ask.

Nope. It’s a bad idea. It’s not the end of the world, but it will harm you in the long run, and may take some time to recover from.

Premature promotion of a blog is the equivalent of newspaper ads for a new store, saying “open now!”, which, when people go there, is still under construction, with a sign saying “opening soon”. Nobody with half a brain would do that, right? (which means that only people who wear ties would do it.)

Think about it this way: anyone who goes to your blog or site and sees nothing of interest there… will probably never come back. That’s a lost visitor. Forever. Someone who could have become a regular visitor if only he or she had come there after there was something interesting to see.

So, when should you promote your site? At least, consider the following:

• The site should have a couple of articles – 5 or more, if possible, but at least a couple of them. And most of them should be actual content, not a “welcome to my blog” message.
• The site should be search-engine friendly. That means, among other things, no broken links, proper HTML, all the site’s sections in working order…
• You should be using the definitive theme, not the original one which “came with the software” (unless that’s the one you’ll be using). “Definitive” doesn’t have to mean that you’ll never change it – just that you won’t change it tomorrow.
• In general, your blog should no longer be “in testing”. If you’re still trying out plugins, enable and disabling features, testing stuff… it’s too early. Finish those tests first.

After all of that, unleash hell! Unless you’re a small child, or a Christian fundamentalist, in which case, unleash heck!

EDIT: An important exception: suppose you have just registered your domain, but the site won’t be “live” for some time; in that case, add it to Google (at least) as soon as the domain is up and you have something there – even a simple “Under construction” page. The reason for this is the Google Sandbox – it usually affects “new” sites, and if Google has known about yours for months, it won’t be seen as “new”. But do all the submitting again when your site goes “live”.

(NOTE: this is part of the “Blogging tips” series)

First, a disclaimer. I’m not trying, in any way, to dictate what your blog is/will be about! If you have an idea, a vision, something you want to write about, by all means, do so! This part isn’t about nullifying your choices, but about giving you new ones.

This may be useful, though, if you haven’t decided yet what will be the theme of your new blog, and you really want it to be successful. Or maybe you already have a blog, but want to start a new one in parallel, possibly to expand your horizons, and also earn a little money.

I can’t choose the subject for you. What I can do, however, is give a few tips:

• To be successful – and profitable -, a blog will require regular posting. Not a couple of times a week. You should aim for 2-3 posts a day. They don’t have to be long ones, and they don’t have to be “works of art” – sometimes (depending on the subject) a link to a new, related article, plus a couple of paragraphs with your opinion, are more than enough. But what makes people come back is regular posting (I’ll talk more about this in part 9 – Quantity). Are you ready to commit yourself to this? Yes, this includes weekends. Unless this is fun to you, it will feel like work. Even then, it can be one of the most interesting “jobs” out there… but don’t fool yourself, it does require commitment.
• If money is one of your goals, it will require a lot of patience. While you’ll probably get your first check in less than 6 months, it will take a year of more (of regular posting – see above) before you are earning more than $50-$75 a month. To quit your job (assuming you’re not filthy rich or have other sources of money), it will take 2 years or more. Blogging can earn you a lot of money, but trust me: it is not a “get rich quick” scheme. It’s not “quick”, and it’s, in a way, hard work – though it can be a lot of fun at the same time. It will take a lot of time and effort before you can buy a house from blogging.
• Finally, the blog’s subject. You thought I forgot? First, it should really be something you care about. Don’t think something like “blogs about digital cameras make a lot of money, so I’ll create a blog about them, even though I couldn’t care less about cameras or photography”. Remember, there are already a lot of blogs about digital cameras, and most of them will be maintained by people with a passion for digital cameras. You can’t really compete with those. Your passion is a requirement. One of them.
• Be prepared to read and research a lot. No matter what your blog is about, you can’t succeed without subscribing to at least a dozen of related blogs, plus a couple of search feeds. And those are to be checked, and read, daily. If you have a job and kids, it will be very hard to find the time to do it every day.
• Your blog should have a topic, and stick to it most of the time. Don’t try to make a blog about everything and the kitchen sink – it won’t work, unless you’re already a celebrity.
• Ideally, that topic should be something with a high demand and a low supply. Such a theme is getting increasingly hard to find, but it’s still possible.
• Is there enough… well, “action” in this theme that you can write something new about it every day? For instance, a blog about some band that split up in 1986 (and remained split) may exhaust its subject in a month or two…
• Finally, think about whether you’ll still want to do it after your initial enthusiasm has worn off. A lot of bloggers post a lot at the beginning, but after a while they slow down, lose enthusiasm… and then they wonder why less and less people visit their blog.

(NOTE: this is part of the “Blogging tips” series)

At last, the long awaited (I hope) part 16!

Google AdSense offers many ad formats: big, small, horizontal, vertical, with or without images… so, which to choose for your blog?

The answer, of course, depends on several factors. And there probably isn’t a single one: it’s likely that you’ll be better served by using different ad formats in different places.

Also, if you have other sources of money on your blog, such as affilliate ads, it may affect the number and position of AdSense ads. But affiliate programs are a subject for a later part.

A few tips, then:

1. usually, you want the appropriate ad for a particular section (a vertical ad for a vertical section such as a sidebar, and a horizontal one for the rest).
2. the ad should be as big and noticeable as possible, without, however, drawing attention away from the content. Content is king. You don’t want your blog to look like an “ads blog”. People see those and close the window (or, if they’re intelligent, close the tab ).
3. a large, horizontal ad at the top of the page, either with the page’s color scheme, or with a different one, which fits nicely, tends to work well.
4. vertical ads on the sidebar aren’t as good, but can complement the top ones nicely.
5. ads at the bottom are usually ignored. In general, don’t bother.
6. avoid “Link Unit” ads (go to https://www.google.com/adsense/adformats, they’re the ones at the bottom). My experience with them has been dismal: 0 (zero) clicks in two weeks. It’s possible that in other kinds of blogs, or using them in a different way, they work… If so, I’d like to know how.
7. on individual article pages, an ad after the text can work well.
8. I haven’t used these yet, but I intend to: ads between articles in the main page (but only a few – no more than 2 in the whole page). Some people seem to use them quite successfully. These ones will probably work better either using the site’s color scheme, or a very similar one – they should be different enough so that people notice them, but not so different that people just skip them without even consciously looking.

(NOTE: this is part of the “Blogging tips” series)

I’ve already mentioned this in part 4: Making your blog search engine-friendly, but this is an important, and usually ignored part of search engine optimization, which deserves an article of its own.

First, I want to thank Darren Rowse of ProBlogger, because of whom I came to be aware of how important post titles are. It was that article that inspired me to investigate this matter, and it came as a surprise that most people — including myself, not so long ago — are completely unaware of this.

Here’s a real life example. There’s a blog, The Invisible Monster (it’s in Portuguese, never mind the fact that the name is in English), that is possibly the best personal blog I’ve ever seen. Most personal blogs are mundane, boring, and of any interest only to a small group of friends of relatives; not that one (though the author is a relative of mine). It’s funny, witty, wonderfully written, and still personal – no “selling out” by talking about non-personal subjects to attract visitors at all.

However, it has a problem. Every post has a title like this: the very first post was called “The First”, the next one was “The Second”, the 34th one was “The Thirtieth-Fourth”, and so on.

And now, consider this: do you ever go to Google and search for “the second” or “the thirtieth-fourth”? Do you know anyone who does?

Now, that particular blog was personal in all respects — not a single ad, for instance — so it was OK. But if he wanted to get more hits, to become “popular”, those titles would be a huge problem.

Here are 2 important tips:

1. every post’s title should be related to the content.
2. every post’s title should be related to the content without requiring the reading of the article itself.

What does 2. mean? As I said in part 4, bloggers often have the temptation to be “clever” with the titles they use. Sometimes they use a couple of words (e.g. “And then…”) which lead into the article. Sometimes they have a title that only makes sense after you’ve read the whole article, but that, by itself, wouldn’t give anyone the slightest hint of whatever it was the article was about.

Avoid those. If you care about hits at all, use clear, self-explanatory titles, which mention in some way what the article is about, and which show what the article is about (those two are not necessarily the same).

(NOTE: this is part of the “Blogging tips” series)

If your blog isn’t a personal one, it’s very likely that it has one or more subjects you write about, such as software, fishing, cheese dip… And it’s likely as well that you need to stay current – that is, if your blog is about cheese dip, you want to stay informed about any cheese dip-related news, developments, and such. One way, of course, is by reading other blogs about cheese dip (assuming, of course, there are any…) – sometimes you’ll just link to their articles with a comment or two, sometimes you’ll get an idea for a brilliant new opinion piece about the current state of cheese dip in the world… you get the idea.

And, if you’re smart, you have already subscribed to some blogs about the subject. And I advise you to keep doing so.

However, there’s another way – not to replace the above, but to complement it: search feeds. Instead of subscribing to a blog, you subscribe to the results of a search query, and then, it appears in your feed aggregator as if it was another blog. But it’s not a blog, it’ll have articles from (possibly) every blog in the world. As long as they talk about cheese dip, of course.

Let’s try it now. I’ll use Google Blogsearch, although there are other ways – possibly better ones. If so, please let me know.

1. browse to http://blogsearch.google.com
2. type "cheese dip" (between quotes, to get only references to cheese dip, instead of a page which mentions “cheese” and “dip” unrelated to each other), and click on the button or press Enter
3. after you get the results, switch to “Sort by Date” by clicking on it, on the top right
4. scroll to the bottom of the page. Look, nice Atom and RSS links! Just copy one of them (probably one of the “100 results” links), paste it in your feed aggregator, and there you go. Whatever happens in the world about cheese dip, and is mentioned in any blogs, you’ll know. Life has meaning again.

(NOTE: this is part of the “Blogging tips” series)

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet.”

– from “Romeo and Juliet”, William Shakespeare

So, your new blog needs a name, right? But how to choose one?

Well, far from me to attempt to stifle your creativity. However, I have a few tips:

1. If possible, choose something that you’ll actually call your blog by. This is not a requirement, but it can be helpful. Don’t just put something in the name box, such as “random thoughts” or “my blog”, and never even look at it again.
2. Try to be original. After you’ve chosen a name, google for it. Look for it in Technorati and Google’s Blog Search. If you find blogs with that name, maybe you should think of a new one. (really, “random thoughts” isn’t actually that original… ) Using the same name as an existing blog will make your own look like a rip-off, and, if you ever get to be successful, it may even be a cause for legal action against you.
3. If your blog isn’t a personal one, try to include the subject of the blog in its title. For instance, instead of “Odin’s Temple”, call it “Odin’s Temple – Nordic mythology and folklore”. Search engines will “like” you more because of it.

(NOTE: this is part of the “Blogging tips” series)

The question in the title is quite important for any kind of site, not just a blog. I’ll talk about the importance later. But, for now, how to find out who is linking to you?

If you’be been reading the series, you already know one method: your logs’ statistics. By looking into the “referrers” section of your statistics, you can usually find where people where before clicking on a link that took them to your blog.

If you’re clever (and you probably are, since you’re reading this ), you’ll probably have noticed one slight problem with that: it only works when people actually click on such links. That is, if a site has a link to you, but nobody clicks on it, you won’t find out about it this way.

Fortunately, there are other methods.

First, search engines tend to index those links. You can go to Google or MSN Search, and search for “link:address” (ex. “link:www.thetlog.net“), or go to Yahoo! Search and search for “linkdomain:address“.

Two problems with the above, however. First, they can give you too many links (Yahoo shows about 1800 to this site, for instance). Second, they can give you no links at all. No, I haven’t gone that mad. Probably due to the Google Sandbox, this site is listed as having 0 – zero – pages linking to it, in Google. Remember that Yahoo says there are more than 1800. So, it probably takes a lot of time (this site is, as of now, about a month and a half old).

A great alternative to “normal” search engines is to use some services more oriented to blogs. Technorati, IceRocket and BlogPulse are three very good ones. They will show, very quickly and in a readable way, which blogs link to which, which articles link to each, how many blogs link to a particular one, and so on (they also have other services, but I won’t talk about them right now – but, by all means, browse through them!).

Having someone link to your articles is always nice – it brings traffic, and a sense of satisfaction because someone enjoyed your article, or found it useful. Also, you can now go to the article that linked to yours… maybe they’re talking about your article, and you may want to say something there… or maybe that’s a blog with a subject similar to yours, and which deserves to be added to your feed aggregator. Who knows…

(NOTE: this is part of the “Blogging tips” series)

If English is your native language, then it’s most likely that your blog will be written in English. If that’s the case, then you can probably skip this part.

But what if it isn’t? Then you already have a decision to make: whether to write your blog in your native tongue, or in English (I’m assuming that situations whether you write in a language which is not your native one, and isn’t English, are quite rare).

Both choices have advantages and disadvantages.

• Personal blogs should probably be in your native tongue. After all, they’re personal, and your own tongue is probably the one which comes more naturally, more spontaneously to you.
• If you talk mostly about local stuff, then it also makes sense to write in your native language.
• If you’re writing about a “general” subject, and want reach a really big audience (i.e. most of the world), you should write in English.
• However, since most people already write in English, doing so means a lot more “competition”. An example: if you’re writing a blog about computer games in Portuguese (for instance), it will compete with, let’s say, X other blogs; if it’s in English, it will be against many times (thousands, probably) as many blogs. In business terms, not writing in English would be called a “niche market”. Less “buyers”, but also less “sellers”.
• Finally, you should also consider how good your English is. If you don’t see anything wrong with saying “my hovercraft is full of eels” or “all your base are belong to us”… you’d better stick with your native tongue. Unless, of course, the appeal of your blog is how “exotic” your writings sound.

(NOTE: this is part of the “Blogging tips” series)

Your blog’s front page is its introduction. It’s what many people see first – and it will be the only thing many people see. That is unavoidable. What you can do, however, is to try to make as many people as possible see more than the front page – but that will depend on the front page. Confused yet?

Well, about the looks of the front page, there’s not a lot I can say. I’m not a designer, and while I can say “this looks nice” or “that is ugly”, I lack the necessary traits to create something that looks beautiful. If my blogs ever get to look a lot nicer than they do, it will be because someone helped me with their design.

But there’s a part in which I can help: what to put in your front page? And where?

As to “what”, the thing to remember is this: space is precious. So don’t waste it. For everything you add to the front page (header, footer, sidebar(s), etc.), you should ask yourself: “is it worth it? What will I, or the site, or the readers, gain by it?” If you can’t find a satisfactory answer, then maybe it doesn’t belong there. For instance, the calendar, which a lot of Movable Type blogs have (it’s on the default theme)… how often have you used it, clicked on it, even looked at it, when visiting other blogs? Probably never. So, what is it doing in your blog?

Concerning the “where”: I think it should be obvious (but even I had ignored it, in this very blog, until a few days ago, so don’t blame yourself ) that the most important, useful sections / links / etc. should be more accessible. That usually means “appearing first”. For instance, most blogs like this have an “Archives” section, where you can choose to see articles by month. Unlike the calendar, that one can be useful, but it’s still not used often, nor does it attract the attention of users, even if appearing at the top. So it can come up last.

The “Categories” list, however, is much more useful, as it shows, in a glance, what the site is about, what kind of articles you can find there, and allows users to quickly see all the articles about what interests them, put together. So it should be near the top.

In short:

• Don’t waste space. If it’s not useful, don’t put it there.
• More important / useful / often used sections should come first.

(NOTE: this is part of the “Blogging tips” series)

AdSense’s competitive ad filter is, as the name suggests, a way to prevent some ads from appearing in your blog/site. While it’s targeted towards companies, especially commercial sites, in order to prevent absurdities such as a Coca Cola ad in Pepsi’s web site , it can also be useful for blogs – even personal ones. There are two reasons for it: one which will apply to some people, and one which should matter to everyone.

• It’s possible that you find some ads offensive, insulting to your site or to your readers, or simply totally in opposition to what you’re trying to say in your site. For instance: an atheism site will probably include words like “religion” and “god”, and those words will attract many religious ads – for churches, faiths, and religious web sites in general. That brilliant piece you wrote denouncing astrology will probably have many ads for horoscope sites around it. A technical article about Firefox and its advantages over Internet Explorer will probably get ads for IE toolbars, IE “optimizers”, IE spyware removers, and so on. It’s likely that you simply don’t want those ads – just like you don’t tend to see “free viagra” ads in the New York Times web site. (at least, I don’t think you do – I don’t visit that site )
• Independently of the above, there’s a more pragmatic reason for preventing some ads from appearing in your site: you want ads to be clicked on! Think about it: what earns you money? It’s not showing the ads, it’s having people click on them! So, naturally, you want them to be relevant, sure, but you also want them to be of interest to your readers. Since they are your readers, it must be because they like the way you write, or because they agree with you, or because they are interested in the subject, or because they find useful information or tips in your blog. Therefore, the banners shouldn’t be in total opposition to what you write. Using an example from above: if you have a blog about atheism, your visitors aren’t likely to click on a banner for “The Holy Church of XXXX”, right? Or maybe you get ads, from time to time, that are obviously hoaxes, and that nobody with half a brain would click on. So, if you can prevent that one banner from appearing, you improve your chances of getting a “clickable” one in that place.

Now, how to use the filter? The AdSense competitive ads page has the following tips, which should be self-explanatory:

Examples:
example.com 			block all ads across all subdomains
sports.example.com 		block only ads across the 'sports' subdomain
sports.example.com/widgets 	block all ads below a specific directory
sports.example.com/index.html 	block all ads for a specific page

But one important thing about this: it’s the URLs that you should type, right? But which ones? AdSense banners tend to have URLs on them, but they may not be (and usually aren’t) the real ones, they’re just there to attract attention. For instance, an ad may say “www.free-spyware-remover.com”, but it may link to a completely different address from that. And it’s that real one that you should add to the competitive ad filter.

How to find it? One way is, indeed, by clicking on the ad yourself. But Google may not like you if you do it too much – especially if always from the same IP address. So, don’t abuse it.

(NOTE: this is part of the “Blogging tips” series)

“”Dot fives” weren’t enough, you had to make a “dot two”?”, you ask? Yup. Since this one fits between an integer and a “dot five”…

You know what “logs” are, right? No, not those things made of wood. They’re one or more files (text files, if the server is decent ) which have all accesses to your site (or blog, or web server… depends on the configuration). If you have your own web server (either at home, or at an ISP), you have logs.

If you use some kind of remote account (that is, the server isn’t yours, but you have an account in it, where you install your files), you may have access to log files (if you access the server by ssh (Secure Shell)). But it may be something simpler, like many ISPs make available for free: a server that you access by FTP, and then you put your files there, and the ISP takes care of the rest. You probably won’t have access to the log files in that scenario.

And, of course, you won’t have any log files if you use something like Blogger or LiveJournal.

But what you want, here, isn’t really the log files, it’s what you can do with them: statistics! And you can have those even without the log files, by using services like SiteMeter, which give you some HTML code to put in your site, and then you can access your statistics by going to their site.

If you do have access to your logs, however, I recommend AWStats. If there are better (free, open source) ones, feel free to tell me about them.

Statistics can give you lots of useful data, such as:

• where your visitors are from (country, ISP, etc.)
• which operating systems, browsers, screen resolutions, plugins, etc. they use
• which page they enter your site through (many people don’t arrive directly at your front page, but at a particular article, because that’s what was linked where they came from, or what they searched for in a search engine)
• which page was the last they browsed to in your site
• what word or phrase did they search for in a search engine, which made they come to your site
• where they came from – that is, the referrer, the page that linked to one of yours, and in which link they clicked on that link

All of those are important (and I may write about the importance of some of them later), but the most important is the last one. It tells, mainly, who is linking to you.

Why is that so important? Well, among other things:

• you get to know who finds what you write interesting, and why, and what, exactly, do people find interesting
• if it’s a blog or any other kind of community site with comments, maybe they’re talking about something you wrote… don’t you want to be a part of that talk?
• if a large number of people is coming from a particular place, that may give you some inspiration about what to write next, or where to promote your blog
• and now for the less pleasant part: it may also let you know about someone who steals your content. They usually make mistakes, such as not altering some internal links. I spotted one some time ago in this way.

(NOTE: this is part of the “Blogging tips” series)

At this point, you ought to know that you should read the previous parts first. Unless, of course, you arrived directly at this page, in which case… please read the previous parts first.

Why do people ever click on an ad? Because, for some reason, that ad is of interest to them. It follows, then, that it’s advantageous for you to make sure that the ads in a particular page are related – and, therefore, supposedly of interest – to whoever is reading that page.

Most of the time, AdSense does that automatically… or tries to. Sometimes, results aren’t that good. But there are ways to help it do it better.

You see, the technology Google uses to “figure out” what a page is about is mostly the same it uses for its popular search engine: “reading” the text. But a lot of blogs have much more text than just its content, and Google can’t easily distinguish between the two. Also, where the banner is located matters – it seems to pay more attention to whatever text is closest to wherever the banner will be.

That’s why, for instance, many bloggers who put AdSense banners at the top of their sites only see ads about blogs or blogging… even if the site is about fishing or raising snails for money. (hmm…) Why does that happen? Maybe the blog has the word “blog” in its name, like “The XXX blog”, or “XXX’s blog”. And if the banner is at the site’s top, the title is the closest thing to it… Or the site’s motto or description…

It’s because of that that many people choose carefully, or later change, their blog’s title or motto – not to be informative to readers, but to “show” Google what the blog is about.

But that’s not strictly necessary, because Google has provided us with a better way.

Just edit your blog’s HTML code or theme so that the content itself, in every page, lies between the following HTML comments:

<!– google_ad_section_start –>

<!– google_ad_section_end –>

If you want, look at this page’s source to see how I do it. Or, for more info, read AdSense’s documentation.

That way, you can make AdSense not consider things like your site’s motto, your external links, your whole sidebar, your navigational links, the comments… just the content itself.

Note that AdSense doesn’t “learn” instantly. Their docs say it may take up to two weeks to make a difference. But you should implement this right away, even if you’re just starting your blog right now.

(NOTE: this is part of the “Blogging tips” series)

Another “dot five” part. Will they ever end?

I’ve mentioned comments in part 10, but, there, I was referring to your comments in other blogs. But there’s also the reverse: other people’s comments in your blog.

And they are more important to your blog’s success than you may think.

When someone takes the time to post a comment in your blog, it’s very likely that he or she will return later, to see if you or anyone else replied to his/her comment.

That’s one return visit, already. But… do reply. And do it well. If you agree, say so; if you disagree, say so as well, but in a nice way. If that person likes your answer, he or she will probably reply once more, and then return later to check your reply… and so on. Pretty soon, he/she’ll be a regular.

Also, the exchange of comments between you two will probably impress other visitors, who’ll feel compelled to post and/or visit your blog again, as well. It’s like a “snowball effect”. Comments attract more comments, and more comments attract even more comments.

For greater effect, implement or activate some way to get “warned” of any new comments, even to very old posts/discussions. WordPress, for instance, can email you. It also allows people to subscribe to a comments RSS feed – one that doesn’t have normal posts, just every comment. You – the blogger – should always subscribe to your own comments feed.

Trust me: a reply to a comment can mean the difference between 2 visits (the first, then one to check for replies to their comment) and a regular visitor.