New pricing structure for referrals

Last year we asked you for your feedback on referrals, and one of the issues we heard quite frequently was that it was too difficult to generate revenue with AdSense and AdWords referrals. To address this, we've just introduced a new pricing structure for both programs, which will be as follows:

AdSense Referrals:

• When a publisher who signed up for Google AdSense through your referral earns their first $5 within 180 days of sign-up, you will be credited with $5.
  
• When that same publisher earns $100 within 180 days of sign-up and is eligible for payment, you will be credited with an additional $250.
  
• If, in any 180-day period, you refer 25 publishers who each earn more than $100 within 180 days of their respective sign-ups and are all eligible for payout, you will be awarded a $2,000 bonus (bonus payouts are limited to 1 per year).
  

AdWords Referrals:

• When an advertiser you refer spends $5 within 90 days of sign-up (in addition to the $5 sign-up fee) you will be credited with $5.
  
• When that same advertiser spends $100 within 90 days of sign-up, you will be credited with an additional $40.
  
• If, in any 180 day period, you refer 20 advertisers who each spend more than $100 within 90 days of their respective sign-ups, you will be awarded a $600 bonus (bonus payments are limited to 1 per year).
  

These rules will also apply to users that you have already referred but who have not yet reached one of the new earning/spend thresholds. For example, if you referred an AdSense publisher who has currently earned $2.00, you will be paid $5.00 if that publisher reaches the $5.00 mark. But, if you have referred an AdSense publisher who has already earned $10.00, you will not be paid $5.00 retroactively for that referral reaching the $5.00 mark. However, should that publisher eventually reach the $100.00 earnings mark within 180 days, you will be paid $250.00.

Source: http://adsense.blogspot.com

The importance of Title Tags in Search Engine Optimization

A few days ago I was moaning to a mate about the fact that despite thousands of inbound links and a page rank of 6 - ProBlogger.net is still yet to rank highly for many of it’s relevant search terms in Google - as a result I rarely get any traffic from Google on this blog. Even for a term like ‘Blog Tips’ (something I write about a lot) I only ranked around 60th on Google.

My friend asked a simple question that made me realize how blind a blogger can be when they stare at their own blog all day and lose objectivity. He asked:

‘What is in the title tags of your blog?’

As soon as he asked the question I knew how stupid I’d been. This is a question I often ask other bloggers but had not asked myself!

The title tags of my front page had been ‘ProBlogger: Helping Bloggers Earn Money’. A good descriptive term - but not including some of the key terms that I was wanting to get hits on - particularly ‘Blog Tips’.

NB: your ‘title tags‘ are what appears between < .title > and < /title> in your blog’s templates. This title comes up at the top of your browser when viewing a page and comes up in search engine results as the title of your post.

After banging myself on the head a few times for my stupidity I decided to do an experiment - I changed my title tags on my home page to ‘ProBlogger Blog Tips: Helping Bloggers Earn Money’. Just a tweak really - the inclusion of two words. I set this up and waited to see what would happen.

The graph above (provided by digital point’s keyword tracker) tells the story better than I can with words. My search ranking for Google on the term ‘Blog Tips’ went from 65th to 10th in two or three days. On MSN I went from 40th to 1st. (the red line is another of my blogs which has always ranked highly on Google for ‘Blog tips’).

Now the term ‘blog tips’ isn’t the most lucrative term in the world and doesn’t bring in hoards of readers - but it is better than what I was doing with Google and it illustrates a point - your title tags are very powerful when it comes to optimizing your blog in Google (and other search engines).

I recommend that on your home page you have a title that incorporates your blog’s name and your main keywords. On individual pages I always recommend that you make your title the title of your post - which should of course include keywords for that post. I also include my blog name on individual pages on ProBlogger as I think it could intrigue people on Search engines to come and have a look. On some of my other blogs I just use the post title without the blog title.

So on my post ‘Does Blog Design Matter?‘ my title is ‘Does Blog Design Matter?: ProBlogger Blog Tips’

I’ve still got a long way to go with Google - my individual pages are not getting very high rankings at all - I suspect that they may have sandboxed me - but making sure your title tags are optimized is another step towards getting ranked and something I’d encourage all bloggers to consider.

Update: Another side benefit of changing your title tags to include your keywords is that you’ll find other people link to your blog using your title tags in the link. Yesterday I noticed two other blogs did this - rather than linking to me as ‘ProBlogger’ they linked as ‘Problogger Blog Tips’. This is good news because search engines look at the words that people link to you with in order to work out what your page is about and how highly to rank you for those terms. This should all help my ranking for those words.

Source: http://problogger.net

10 Useful Tools for Writing Blog Content

. Usenet / GG Groups

- http://groups.google.com/The discussions that take place at Google Groups bring diverse perspectives. It also has a significant history of discussions to draw upon. You can browse through group topic relevant to your blog’s theme or you can search for a specific topic if you want to.

2. Yahoo! Answers

Like Google Groups, Yahoo! Answers is a feedbag for the content-hungry blogger.

3. Google / Yahoo! News

The news services from Google & Yahoo! provide access to tens of thousands of press releases and news articles every day. There services are indeed one of the best source of blogging ideas and search is the best way to go.

4. Keyword Tools

People type the topics, the questions they are interested to know in the search engine and these are captured by the keyword tools. So, if you are seeking a direct path to what users want to find on your blog, take advantage of using keyword tools such as Overture, MSN AdCenter, SEOBook's & Digitalpoint's. You can find a number of questions that help suggests a blog content idea.

5. Technorati

I know most of you are familiar with Technorati. It is certainly helpful for boosting blog’s traffic. But, did you know that they are also a good source for finding ideas to write about? Technorati is possibly the best for researching the most current topics or thoughts on the web. You can do basic search relative to your blog’s them. Sometimes, the posts at Technorati spark debate or disagreement, other times, they open up a whole new idea for information to be shared.

6. Del.icio.us

While Del.icio.us' popular page are not a great source for unique topics, specific tag pages, however, function much like Technorati, in that they provide timely links to pages that people have bookmarked. The site will give you ideas on what people are interested in and perhaps will bring you to blog-worthy material where your next blog content can be base upon.

7. Digg & Reddit

Both sites take user submissions and user votes, and both are best referenced using a search.

8. StumbleUponStumble

Upon can be a good source of blog content ideas although Stumblers often have a preference for humor and the absurd. Some suggested that the best way to use StumbleUpon is to follow their Buzz page and use the "tag" option in the toolbar.

9. Wikipedia

The obvious choice here is to look only at the articles, but I find that many times the discussion can be equally interesting. The search function is the best way to go, as the categorization structure isn't very user-friendly, yet.

10. Craigslist

I am not expose on using Craigslist but someone says Craigslist, like Technorati, is up-to-date, but it's a less tech-savvy and often more "average joe" crowd, which can make for an interesting dichotomy. Supplying your blog’s primary keywords in the search box will bring you relevant material.When you’re out of ideas to write something to blog about, remember the above list of tools or services. If you have some other tools you used for generating blogging ideas, please feel free to add it in the comment section.

Source: http://www.dagsensecode.com