Google Penguin Update

J.P. Hicks:

Every time Google makes a webspam update to their search algorithm, SEO pros, web developers, and bloggers scramble to figure out what they're doing right or what they're wrong in the dominant eyes of Google.

Since Google is famously vague about what their new formula is, it usually takes a month or two for the pros to get a sense of it and make the proper adjustments. Indeed, many even attempt to figure out how to game the system to outrank their competition.

However, Google is getting very good at identifying unnatural optimization schemes.  In fact, Google's Matt Cutts openly stated that the recent Penguin algorithm update would penalize websites that were "over optimized" or "over SEO'ed".

This did not sit well with some SEO experts.  Some even suggested that Google "jumped the shark" with this update in their hunt to display the best content possible in their search results.  Others claim it's the end of SEO as we know it.


Well, Google hasn't jumped the shark and SEO is not dead, but it's become much more challenging to game the system -- which is the whole point of the update.

Thankfully, there are still proven ways to improve your website ranking after the Penguin update.  Not many of the do's and don'ts have changed, but some have.

Significantly, since Google is punishing unnatural appearances, you should avoid any unnatural mechanisms for optimization and put more emphasis on appearing organic.  Feed the Penguin diversity; content diversity, keyword diversity, and backlink diversity.

Here are some basic tips to increase your ranking on Google:

Don'ts

1. Don't use tricks on your website like hidden text loaded with keywords, or cloaked pages with redirects.
2. Don't have multiple pages on your website with significantly similar content.
3. Don't use the same anchor text for all backlinks leading to your homepage.
4. Don't buy bulk links from web spammers.
5. Don't overuse keywords in articles or throughout your website.
6. Don't only target backlinks from highly ranked websites.

Do's

1. Post as much quality original content as possible.
2. Allow syndication of your articles and write guest posts for a variety of websites with 'do-follow' links.
3. Get your bulk backlinks from social bookmarking sites instead of spam link networks.
4. Diversify the keywords used in links back to your site (See how to find good keywords).
5. Use 4-5 synonyms for your primary keywords in articles instead of repeating the same keyword phrase.
6. Target backlinks from highly relevant websites no matter their PR strength.

In conclusion, just feed Google's penguin exactly what it wants and look natural doing it.  For instance, if you have 80% of your backlinks coming from PR4's or higher, or if 80% of your backlinks use the same anchor text, or if 80% of your content is promoting the same keyword phrase; Google will likely sense something is unnatural about your website.  Diversify in these three areas and your ranking will begin to climb once again.

J.P. Hicks is an entrepreneur, pro blogger, editor of Blog Tips and author of the Secrets to Making Money with a Free Blog.  Follow @ Twitter, or like on Facebook.

J.P. Hicks:

So, you want to make money with a blog but aren't really sure where to begin.  You have a general idea of the topics you want to blog about but can't decide how big to go.

You may have visions of competing with the biggest websites in your field and running a full scale news room.  Or, you're considering zeroing in on a very specific topic, but you're not sure you can make money doing that.

Choosing the scope of your blog niche is perhaps the most important step to beginning your path to make money blogging.

There are basically two approaches; broad or narrow, each with its benefits and drawbacks.  Yet each has the potential to be profitable.

Starting a blog with a broad scope could potentially draw millions of pageviews a month, thus giving you unlimited ways to profit from it.  Whereas, a micro niche will likely attract fewer pageviews but your visitors may be much more targeted allowing for the promotion of specialty products or services.

Much of your decision depends on how competitive your overall topic is, or how quickly you want to start ranking in search engines and making money.


For instance, if you're going to create a broad blog about economics, you'll be competing with some major websites like Bloomberg, Forbes, or CNBC, not to mention thousands of other credible sources.  It will take much more time to gain strength, yet the rewards can be terrific.

If you choose the micro niche of investing in precious metals, or more precisely silver, chances are you will begin ranking much faster in search engines and immediately attract a rabid crowd of silver advocates to your blog. Profits can come quickly with a micro-niche strategy but may ultimately have a cap.

Below is my take on broad versus narrow:

Broad Niche: Personally, I like to go broad.  I don't like to have a cap on what my blogs can become.  Although I enjoy starting new projects, I want my hard work to go towards something with unlimited potential.  Additionally, I view my blogs as long-term projects which is essential when choosing to go broad.

Again, the broader your subject matter the more potential for a large diverse crowd of visitors.  However, it may take much longer to optimize and get to a point where the content is credible enough to compete with the big boys.

To have a successful broad-scope blog, you'll still have to choose your categories wisely as they essentially represent the micro-niches that you'll be targeting for SEO within your overall theme.  Before you can rank high on search engines for mega-popular broad phrases, you'll have to target the smaller ones first.

Additionally, you'll likely need outside help to be successful with a broad topic.  Aggregating content from other websites and blogs and soliciting guest writers or syndicated contributors to fill in the gaps will be essential. All of that takes time and still requires you to build up the platform first.

Since the potential with a broad topic blog is so great, the time it takes to develop may be worth the effort for those who are passionate about the overall subject.  Ultimately, you must be patient and passionate to create a successful broad-scope blog.

Pro:  The pros of choosing a broad blog topic is there's unlimited potential for traffic and income.
Con:  They take much longer to develop.

Small Niche: Making money with narrow niche blog is much easier and faster than a broad topic.  Although traffic and profit potential is less, most bloggers prefer this method over the latter as one can make several small or micro-niche sites, each making some money.

There is no hard and fast rule on how small to go, but the smaller the easier to optimize.

For example, if you're a pet lover and want to make a blog dedicated to attracting an audience of other people who love their pets, you have a decision to make about whether you target a wide variety of domestic animals or just, say, cat lovers.

And if you target cats, do you target a certain breed?  As you narrow the focus, you'll tap into an increasingly passionate audience about that niche and be able to rank very quickly for terms like "Persian cat lovers" for instance.  But, obviously, you'll limit your potential to how many people love Persian cats.

However, there may be excellent products that are tailor made for Persian cats that offer a commission.  If you successfully optimize this niche, you could realize an income quite quickly.  But you may need to make many of these individual breed niche sites to make a full-time income.

Before choosing a micro niche, it's vital to make sure that there are affiliate products with decent commission rates that you can promote. In fact, some bloggers will actually build a blog around specific products to maximize the potential of a particular niche.

Pro: Small niche blogs can rank high and make money very quickly.
Con: They have traffic/profit limitations and may require you to build several blogs if you desire a full-time income.

As a final note, it's imperative that both broad and micro niche bloggers do their keyword research and learn where to use keywords within the blog to be successful.

J.P. Hicks is a professional blogger, editor of Blog Tips, and author of the Secrets to Making Money with a Free Blog.  Follow @ Twitter, or like on Facebook.

J.P. Hicks:

We all use keywords every day while searching for something online or simply scanning headlines in our local newspaper. Keywords or more appropriately “termed key phrases” are words used by people for searching for or identifying a particular piece of information.

If you have done a search using Google, you will know that a single word will generate tons of broad results and most times irrelevant to what you’re looking for. To better target your search, you must use more descriptive phrases.

Google then checks its database and returns the results and lists the top pages that meet the keywords that you typed in. Once you determine which search phrases are most popular for your niche, you must know how Google and other search engines determine who’s ranked where on search engine results pages (SERP) for those phrases and use SEO techniques if you hope to see your blog on the first page of Google.

How to Use Keywords for Blogs

Optimally, you’ll want to implement different keyword phrases into several aspects of your blog. After you do your keyword research for your blog you must know what their location values in order to know where to place the most competitive keywords you’re going after and where to place less competitive words or phrases.

Here are the most important places to have targeted keywords in the order of their weight and value within search engines:

1. Domain Name: Keywords in your domain name carry the most weight with search engines. Generally, it’s better to have a short easy-to-remember domain name. But if most of your marketing will be done via social networks and search engines and not word-of-mouth, then a longer name with exact keywords may be more beneficial.


2. Meta Tag Line: The meta tag description that appears in the browser tab is the first keywords that describes what your blog is. After your domain name, this is the most important area to fill with exact keywords you’re targeting.

3. Page Names: Page names also provide an excellent opportunity to feature keywords and phrases. Most search engines will index them giving them nearly equal strength of a domain and meta tag line.

4. Article Titles: Make a list of the top key phrases related to your subject and create articles around them. Article titles are vital to search engine recognition. They are essentially a new URL with a secondary meta tag description. (read how to write good blog titles)

5. The Content Itself: Your article and page content should reinforce the keywords in the title and, more generally, what you want your overall site to attract. Don’t overload them as to make it an obvious SEO trick and spammy, but be conscious of including them where it’s relevant.

6. Embedded links: Reinforcing keywords from previous articles with embedded links in new articles is very beneficial for SEO purposes – especially if other websites syndicate your material. Make sure the anchor text that the link is embedded in is as close to the keyword phrase you’re targeting as possible.

7. Labels or Categories: Although labels and categories don’t carry much weight with search engines, they still can have a cumulative effect on SEO. Make sure that your most-used labels or categories target the core list of strategic keywords your blog should be known for.

8. Images: Yes, images. Make sure you name the image file you use with keywords you’re trying to target within an article. Even if it’s an image that you’re re-using from a previous post, make sure you rename it in your picture file before you upload it to reflect the new article’s subject.

If you do you homework using Google’s keyword tool as to what phrases to target and apply them effectively as per the SEO blog tips above, you will soon begin ranking for those terms. Once you gain strength with certain terms, then concentrate on researching keywords for other subtopics that also continue to feed your broader targeted terms.

J.P. Hicks is a professional blogger, editor of Blog Tips, and author of Secrets to Making Money with a Free Blog.  Follow @ Twitter, or like on Facebook.

The Top 8 Ways to Make Money Blogging:

You’re wondering, “How do the top blogging sites make money?”

Well, it’s not that hard to create and optimize a blog to earn additional money or even achieve full-time income. And, literally, anyone can do it from anywhere in the world.

Everyone has the ability to create unique content on the Internet. Wannabe writers, artists, entertainers, activists, experts in any field, journalists, photographers, filmmakers, or entrepreneurs and marketers now have no excuse to not be ‘employed’.

1. Direct Advertisers: This is where companies or marketers essentially rent ad space on your blog. You typically need either lots of traffic or a micro-niche to attract these types of ads;

2. Pay-per-click ads: These are the Google text or banner ads you see on many websites. Google pays you when visitors click on these ads. How much each click pays is basically determined by the competitiveness of your blog’s subject.


3. Affiliate programs: This is where you promote a product on your blog and you get a commission when your readers click and buy the item. Almost all products and services for sale online offer affiliate programs these days. The trick is identifying the best affiliate programs for your niche;

4. Ad networks: Some ad networks pay-per-click like Adsense and some pay-per-page impression (pageviews) without any clicks or purchases needed. These CPM (cost per thousand impressions) networks are only beneficial to blogs with high traffic;

5. Sponsored posts or product reviews: Sponsored posts or reviews are where you write an article related to a product or service and companies pay you to embed their link in the article. This is one of the best ways low-traffic blogs can make a healthy income.

6. Personal products or hosting a store: Many bloggers develop and sell their own products or host a store at their blog. In fact, hosting a store and writing in depth product reviews of each item is a simple blogging strategy that anyone can do;

7. Premium content: If you’re an expert or teacher in any field, or even if you’re just a dedicated parent, you may be able to sell your advice with paywalls or by subscription newsletters that offer content above and beyond your free blog material. You can also sell your consulting services.

8. Accept donations: Many info-activists believe it is more authentic to go ad-free. So they operate their full-time blog solely on donations. Typically, running annual or semi-annual fundraisers with a specific plea for your goal is more productive than just putting up a donate button.

These are the most common methods top blogging sites use to make money, but each one has countless aspects to understand to maximize your results. And these aren’t the only ways to use your blog to make money online.

However, not all techniques will prove to be productive for everyone. It’s best to try each of them out if you feel they’ll be a good fit for your blog. Your blog’s niche, and strategy and scope have a lot to do with what will work for you.


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