Performancing Metrics

Posts Tagged ‘google’

5 Reasons Advertising Usually Sucks as a Blogging Business Model

Putting up a BillboardIt’s the golden road for bloggers, it’s how every great writer is supposed to make his millions (or at least thousands) off the Web. You start up an awesome blog, write great content, build a good audience, slap up a few Adsense ads and let the money come rolling in.

While it’s a system that works great for some bloggers, for a vast majority it’s a road to nowhere. A select few get rich, a few more get some spending money and the majority never even see a check.

For most blogs, advertising is a terrible business model. For them, it doesn’t work, it can’t work and it never will work. It’s that simple.

I learned this the hard way myself years ago and I cringe as I was other bloggers go down the same path, usually falling flat on their face.

Why is advertising such a terrible business model? The reasons are painfully obvious when one takes the time to look for them, but few, blinded by the promise of easy money, see the reasons until they’re staring at their paltry earnings report.

Still, for those who want to know why this is a bitter truth, I’ve outlined five reasons below. Read More

Categories: Blogging Sense
Tags: , , , , ,

Track & Test To Improve Your Website’s Usability

Usability is one feature of a website that no designer can afford to overlook. Of course, some obvious rules apply such as underlined and highlighted links so they are easy to find and use. Also, using a sitemap for easy navigation and SEO optimization are other tools that help your website be as useable and visitor friendly as possible. It is true that these rules are not necessary for every website. However, understanding these rules so that you can choose the best ones for your website will help lead to more traffic, more return traffic, greater sales and happier visitors from the market you are trying to attract. Read More

Categories: Blog Design, Blogger Tools, Blogging Resources, Blogging Tips
Tags: , ,

Free WordPress Google+ Themes

Google+ has been very popular and the people who have signed up for the still closed Beta service, tend to like it. It is too early to say whether Google+ will stick and disrupt the social scene or even SERPs, but active designers have already released Google+ themes for WordPress.

Two free Google+ themes for WordPress have been released already.

WordPress Google+ Theme by Hacktrix

WordPress +1 Theme by Hacktrix.

WordPress Google+ Theme by Tricksdaddy

WordPress Google+ Theme by Tricksdaddy.

Both themes are very clean and reminiscent of the Google+ look.

Categories: Linking, WordPress Themes
Tags: , , , , ,

Add Your Google+ Profile to WordPress with GoogleCards Widget

GoogleCards Widget: Add Your Google+ Profile to WordPressJohn Henson of PlusDevs developed a handy widget to display your Google+ profile to your WordPress site.

The widget is as simple as WordPress widgets come and only requires you to add your Google+ ID. Sadly there is no option in the GoogleCards to add someone to your Google+ Circles without leaving the site but we hope that this will be integrated to GoogleCards once the Google+ is launched officially and the Google+ API will be released.

Visit PlusDevs to download the plugin here

Categories: Linking, WordPress Plugins
Tags: , ,

3 Things BlogSpot Fans Need To Do When Blogger Goes Down

Blogger has been down for over 24 hours (rivaling Tumblr’s outage earlier), giving the service a black eye after previously boasting a perfect uptime record.

While BlogSpot blogs are still online, users logging into Blogger are greeted with this screen below:

Google is in the process of restoring posts and comments, although instead of fretting and cussing on Twitter (as that will only stress you out even more) here are a few things you can do until Google grants you access to your Blogger Blog. Read More

Categories: Blogging News
Tags: ,

Blogging Pitfalls: Why No Blog is an Island Unto Itself

IslandOn the Internet, nothing happens in a vacuum. Your site, your traffic and your readers are being constantly impacted and affected by things that are going on elsewhere. If Google makes a change to their algorithm, for example, this can have a drastic impact on your traffic and the type of readers you get.

Likewise, what your readers are looking for and talking about will, inevitably, be affected by what other sites are discussing and what they’re seeing elsewhere.

The simple truth is that you don’t have a single reader who only views your site and nothing else on the Web. Everyone on the Web is reading other sites, emailing, IMing, using social networking and participating in the Web in countless other ways.

Because of this, you can’t try to make your site stand alone or treat it as if it’s the only place your readers need to be. Your readers’ interests are both varied and deep and, short of having the entire Library of Congress on your site, there’s no way you can be all things to them.

As such, the best thing you can do is not try and, instead, try to take advantage of this natural ebb and flow of the Web by using it as a means to both make your site more useful to your readers and, perhaps more importantly, gain even more traffic.

No site is an island unto itself and, even if it could be, it’s unlikely that you’d even want it that way. Read More

Categories: Marketing
Tags: , , , , , ,

Google: Have You Tried Our WordPress Plugin Today?

For those of you obsessed with all things SEO (at least from Google’s vantage point), the search engine giant has released a new plugin to help make it easier to verify your self hosted WordPress blog with Webmaster Tools.

For webmasters with self-hosted Wordpress [sic] blogs, there’s now a Webmaster Tools site verifcation plugin for WordPress [sic] that completely automates our verification process! [...]

With verified ownership of your site in Webmaster Tools, you can receive specific statistics and information (e.g. relevant search queries, malware notices) about your site directly from Google. (Google Webmaster Central Blog) Read More

Categories: WordPress News
Tags: , ,

Blogger.com: Embrace Google Accounts Or Perish

It looks like Google is once again getting tired of supporting legacy accounts, although this time the fight appears to be on Blogger (aka BlogSpot).

For a number of technical and operational reasons, we’ve decided to finally end our support for all legacy accounts and blogs after June 25th, 2011. So if you have a Blogger account and haven’t logged in since 2007, you will lose access to the account and associated content permanently unless you update to the Google Account system before June 25th. (Blogger Buzz)

Unless someone is totally paranoid about Google Accounts, it’s puzzling why anyone would not upgrade (especially with Blogger offering features like Layout Views and Theme Creator).

Google hasn’t indicated whether they will also delete BlogSpot blogs refusing to upgrade, although I would not be surprised if Google did take them down eventually (especially those that have remained inactive for a period of time).

For those of you still using the archaic login system, you can avoid losing access to your blog by clicking upon the legacy claimer which will associate your BlogSpot blog with a Google account.

Note: For those of you who migrated away from Blogger to another platform, you might want to claim your content (especially if you have links pointing back to yourblog.blogspot.com on your site).

Categories: Blogging News
Tags: ,

Do You Dig Blogger’s New Layout Views?

Although I have been impressed with many features from Blogger.com (ranging from Live Stats to their theme creator), Google’s latest feature appeals to the inner photo blogger within me.

Dubbed Dynamic Views, the new layout lets readers view a stunning photo summary of your site by simply adding /view at the end of the blog (example: blog.blogspot.com/view). Read More

Categories: Blogging News
Tags: ,

Disqus Embraces Google, Bumps Down Facebook

In an attempt to help broaden their appeal amongst bloggers and news organizations, Disqus has announced that they are now including the search engine giant as an ID option for commenters.

Nearly 13% of users choose to login through Twitter or Facebook when participating in Disqus communities. Today, we’re happy to introduce another recognizable choice: Google accounts. Millions upon millions of people are already logged into their Google accounts, and now they can easily use those accounts to jump into discussions all over the web. (Official Disqus Blog) Read More

Categories: Blogging News
Tags: , , ,