1. While logged into your Google AdWords account click on the, “My Account”, tab. Then click access.
2. Personalize an invitation for the new invitee. The person you are inviting to use AdWords must have a gmail account. Your email address and password will be your AdSense Login information. Sign up for a gmail account here.
3. Preview your invitation and send away. If the person youinvited does not have access make sure they first visit there gmail account and accept the invitation.
I was bouncing around dropping some Entrecards this morning and ran into a few things that I absolutely hate to see on the web. New designers should be taught to avoid these practices in web design 101. I know I’m not alone here so any newbie bloggers out there please take heed to these, “what I consider”, horrible design flaws.
Music On A Page That Automatically Starts
This was as annoying back in the day when people would embed wavs into their cheesy pages as it is today. This is also a problem with many Myspace pages. I don’t want to listen to your music. I don’t like your music…well that’s not fair, but I would much rather have the option to listen to your music than have it thrust onto me. See my XSPF player link to the right. I like to share with my readers to, but I’m not forcing anyone to check out my superior musical tastes…(tongue in cheek)
Video Ads That Automatically Start
I’m afraid that these are becoming more and more popular. These are the tiny video ads that start once loaded without anyone clicking on them. If you have these on your page I will not come back to your site. I don’t feel I am alone here. So if you wanted to make some extra cash with some fancy looking video ads like this I think you’re doing more harm than good.
Full Page Pop Over Ads
I don’t know who decided this would scheme would work, but unfortunately these to are showing up more and more. I’ve noticed a couple today while bouncing from my Entrecard rss feed. These are those full page ads, usually white, with a, “skip this ad”, option at the top of the page. I’m more apt to skip your web site and never come back. These didn’t work when they were pop up ads and they don’t work now.
In Summation
I’m not opposed to web site ads. My site is monetized, but is what I consider un-intrusive or at least less intrusive. These are just in my opinion horrible design practices. I will immediately hit my back button or close my browser when you push media like this into my eyes and ears.
Again I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels this way. There’s a reason why Tivo is so popular. No one wants to watch the commercials. What makes you think that I wont immediately leave your page when you try to push your commercials on me?
Here are a few ways to see how your site is doing with the major search engines. Specifically, this post will show you how to find indexed pages & backlinks in the top 3 search engines Google, Yahoo and MSN.
Indexed Pages And Backlinks in Google
Google makes this very easy. Simply pull up Google in a browser and enter the code below with the web site you want to evaluate. With Google you have the option to not only search for backlinks (links:) and pages (site:), but also web sites that are similar in content to your own (related:).
Pages Indexed in Google
site:www.natebal.com
Back Links in Google
link:www.natebal.com
Related Web Sites
related:www.natebal.com
Indexed Pages And Backlinks in Yahoo
This is a little different when using Yahoo. They have a different tracking system called SiteExplorer where you can actually set up web sites in a control panel to be followed by Yahoo. To access this data you can set up an account for tracking or replace the url in the string below with your own address.
Pages Indexed in Yahoo
Backlinks in Yahoo
Indexed Pages And Backlinks in MSN
MSN is set up like Google. I wish they were all this way, but the lines below will give you the results you’re looking for in MSN.
Browsing through Google Analytics and AWStats are 2 ways of determining what online marketing efforts are working for you. I’ve really been working on driving more traffic to my blog lately which means a lot of trial and error. Regular posting and tagging will get you so far, but an aggressive and pro-active approach to web marketing is what I’ve been after.
Below are my top 7 effective marketing efforts that generated me the most traffic for January, 2008.
#1 StumbleUpon
If you’re not doing this you really need to start. StumbleUpon is responsible for the majority of my traffic. StumbleUpon has a network of users that find content and tag it accordingly. You can then stumble keywords, users, groups, etc. It’s a great way of finding random interesting tidbits and a wonderful way to promote your website.
Google Image Search is the 2nd highest traffic generator for the month of January.
How to opt into Google Image Search
1. Sign into Google webmaster tools with your Google Account.
2. Click the URL for the site you want.
3. Click Tools, and then click Enable enhanced image search.
#3 Digg Your Posts
I’ve had a Digg account for some time now, but haven’t been using it to it’s fullest potential until very recently. Digg is a very active social network . Making it to the front page of Digg can crash your server from an overload of traffic if you’re not ready for it. This is a problem I would love to have.
#4 Entrecard
Entrecard is a fairly new social networking program that’s been taking off quite a bit lately. I started using it a month ago when I read about it on Blog Catalog and it is already at #6 as far as my current traffic sources go. What sets Entrecard apart from other link trading programs is that ads from this program stay live on other advertisers sites for an entire day. The more credits you get the more cards you can drop. You can also purchase ad space with the credits you attain. More credits, more clicks, more traffic.
#5 Blog Catalog
Known as BC to us regulars Blog Catalog is my favorite source for blog advice. Posting on this community will not only get your blog more attention, but it is filled with industry moguls and very knowledgeable bloggers. I’ve been a member since December 2006 and have found it to be my second blogging home away from home. Great idea, great community, great all around experience.
#6 Bumpzee Submissions
Bumpzee is a lot like MyBlogLog except you can add more than 15 friends a day. While I don’t think it’s as visually appealing as MyBlogLog it has been a source of more traffic as of late. Spend some time bumping your posts. The front page real estate where they end up on Bumpzee will help you in the marketing department.
#7 Zimbio
I’ve been using Zimbio for about 4 or 5 months now and it’s really picking up steam. For starters you can syndicate your website here so that it pings the site every time you post, much like technorati. Articles can easily be submitted directly from your site and submitted to different news sources.
So once again it’s time for another Blog Sneeze. I learned about sneeze pages on Pro Blogger. It’s a way to drive traffic to your more popular posts. I used WhosAmungUs and Google Analytics to determine popularity. So without further adue here’s today’s sneeze.
With the new incarnation of NateBal.com one of my many upgrades were custom error pages that didn’t just have redirect code that spit you back to my homepage. My custom error pages are set up with links to some of my more popular posts and categories. Rather than just spitting my users back to my homepage using:
meta HTTP-EQUIV=”REFRESH” content=”0; url=http://www.yourdomain.com/index.html
Your 404 pages can be powerful traffic tools if you let them. After I deleted a post I noticed I was getting a number of errors showing up in AWStats. Realizing that my users were hitting my 404 more often got me thinking I should maybe add some links here to more popular parts of my blog.
Since the addition of these pages I’ve noticed an incline in users as well as them staying for a longer duration. It’s quick, easy and it works!
I installed a new tracking widget on the current version of NateBal.com called Who’s Amung Us. Well the web map anyways.
Who’s Amung Us is a very cool tool offering real-time stats. Below are just some of the handy features you get with this tool.
Not only can you get an over all idea where in the world your visitors are coming from, but if you mouse over any of the pin-points you get the actual country including city and state. Here you can also see how many people from that area are actually viewing which pages right now.
At the bottom of this same page is a list of pages your viewers are currently on and how long they’ve been there. Notice that all my visitors in this screenshot are viewing the same page. It’s still one of my most popular posts to date.
In heatmap view you can better see which locations are paying more attention to your site.
I just noticed this today, but if you’re on your map page when a person lands on your site an animated wave forms around the area in question. Again in real time.
This one comes from the pages of Slashdot and I found it far too cool not to share. Touchgraph is a application for exploring the connections between related websites. To use this java based app all you have to do is enter your domain or keyword to see the web through Google’s relationship database.
From here a dynamically generated relational social network cloud is created. Here you can examine web site relationships as well as see which competition is fighting for your same keyword or phrase. Pleasing on the eyes and a great tool for SEO guys and webmasters alike.
I recently had to remove some development pages from Google’s search results pages and I used Google Webmaster Tools to do so. Google Webmaster Tools doesn’t automatically stop GoogleBot from crawling your site, it does however provide options for alerting Google that you no longer want to have a page indexed for whatever reason.
1: Choose your website.
Once you logged into Google Webmaster Tools using your Google account info you’ll be asked to choose a website you have associated with your Google account.
2: Website Dashboard
Here you get a quick rundown of crawl errors Google ran into. From this page select the tools tab on the left hand bottom side.
3: URL removal tool (Requests Google Stops Crawling Pages You Assign)
Here’s where you’ll choose which page or pages you want GoogleBot to pass by on it’s next crawl.
4: Removal Tool Options
Choose an individual URL, a directory, a cached page or your entire site here.
5: Removal Request Page
Here’s where you leave the specifics. Is this a dead page or a dead image link?
6: Not What You Needed? Try Altering Your Robot.txt
Are your results still showing up? You may need to alter your robot.txt file. You can review your robot.txt from Google Webmaster Tools, but you can not alter it here. This way you can tell which pages/ directories are being left out. Get more information about Robots.txt files here.
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