SEO sExperts - The Traffic Effect of Mentioning Porn in your Blog

Have you ever wondered why so many web pages, especially blogs, mention the word 'porn' even when the site has absolutely nothing to do with porn (and my site is now one of these!)?

If you don't believe me, see for yourself, the results are truly shocking...

Here's a neat little trick for you to find pages on a given site that mention a particular word. In a Google search, simply type "site:WebSiteAddress intext:Word". For example:

site:www.seomoz.org intext:porn

In the results you'll be able to see how many pages on the site mention that word and optionally choose to filter by when the page was indexed (found) by Google. It's the volume and frequency that is shocking.



In my example above, I've used SEOmoz.org - a site which is very much about search engine optimization. So why have they got over 200 pages which mention porn?

Shocking News... SEX SELLS!!!

It remains as true today in our online, connected world as it ever has. According to Sam Niccolls (referenced below) the "porn industry pulls in close to 1 billion dollars"! That's big business. When you couple that with the facts that Alexa says 4 of the top 100 sites are porn sites and Google has 100 million porn related searches monthly (yes, monthly!), it's easy to see how appearing in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) for porn could have a significant effect on your traffic.

Now obviously someone searching for porn will not spend long on your technology site. What I'm saying is this - it is NOT a good way to get qualified traffic.

It is common for blog authors to include mildly risqué pictures, so that the post is optimised for users as well as for search engines. Often these images will not to be hyperlinked. This means that if you have advertising on your site, it is more likely those links will be clicked on. I recently started my experiment with Google AdSense, so I'll be able to report back on this soon.

And that's it really - sites that generate revenue from advertising, may well discuss topics loosely related to porn simply to make more money. This is something you could experiment with yourself, but be mindful of the following:

• you do not, under any circumstances, want to alienate your loyal readers
• the topic discussed should be useful and relevant to your loyal readers
• monitor the effects and alter your strategy accordingly
  

If you do that, you should be fine. Please do share your thoughts and experiences in the comments - I know I was hesitant to post about this on a site which is very much my business and livelihood.

This post was inspired by Sam Niccolls who wrote Why Michael Arrington Blogs about Porn on SEOmoz. His post is well worth a read as it provides all of the numbers behind the assumptions.
 

Experimenting With Google AdSense

Lots of websites display adverts on their pages. If these are well placed, they should not detract from the content. In fact, they should prove useful to visitors as they are relevant to the topic of the page being viewed.

However, these ads are a little bit 'Marmite' - people either love them or hate them.

I've decided to run my own little experiment with the Google AdSense (read more here...). There'll be a little block appearing at the end of each article - this way they won't interrupt your reading, but will let you click through to (hopefully) relevant sites. They'll also appear at the bottom of the side bar (again, out of the way).

Why display Google Ads at all?

Simple really, every time a visitor click an advert, the site owner gets paid (normally a few cents). It's another way of generating income as a site owner - though for your average blog, the income from this is negligible.

What do you think?

Though I enjoy writing these articles, the purpose of them is to provide valuable information to the reader. As one of my readers, I'd love to know your thoughts on the ads. Love them or hate them - let me know in the comments...
 

Set Up An Online Business - A 'How To' Course

I've been following Johnny B Truant now for some time, and he's quickly established himself as the guy who 'makes technology simple'. On July 15th he's launching a new course named 'Make the Internet Your Bitch'. If the title puts you off, then his course probably isn't for you - he tells it straight, and uses plenty of swearing in the process! If you're not sure, then click on the links below to watch his videos so you can decide if his style is right for you.

How to kick technology's ass in just one week...

Again, his words not mine! The course is primarily made up of videos and is broken down over 7 days. During that week you will learn everything you need to get started in order to set up an online business. This is very much a 'technology how-to' course, you won't learn how to make money online! Here is a brief outline of what will be covered (mainly in Johnny's words with a little explanation from me):

• Day 1 - Launch your website.
  This covers buying a domain, hosting and setting up a blog.
  
  
• Day 2 - Fancying up your boring site.
  Choosing a theme, adding plugins and widgets as well as adding video content.
  
  
• Day 3 - Email and some boring stuff.
  How to set up your email accounts and very importantly - how to back up your site.
  
  
• Day 4 - Start your email machine.
  Creating email lists and managing subscribers.
  
  
• Day 5 - Start selling your wares.
  Different options for setting up online shopping carts.
  
  
• Day 6 - Make $$$ (money) off the back of others.
  Becoming an affiliate and setting up your own affiliate program.
  
  
• Day 7 - Keep learning.
  A few extras such as Search Engines and Social Media.
  

In his intro video, Johnny explains that he's set this up in the style of a blog and that it will be quasi interactive. By that he means that if you have questions about the content, then you can post the questions within the course and he'll be able to respond so that everyone can see (and benefit from) the answer.

If you are thinking of setting up an online business and wanted to learn how to get the essentials done within a week, this may be the best course out there.

Check out the 'how to set up an online business course' for yourself (hint: that was the link, click it and take a look).

As always, I pride myself on conducting my business openly and honestly. The above link is an affiliate link - which means that if you sign up, I get paid. For this reason, I'd never recommend anything that I don't believe to be of good value as it would be the fastest way to lose your trust and destroy my own business (which I'm working very hard to build up)!
 

CushyCMS - Instruction Videos for Users

This post has been written specifically for users of CushyCMS, guiding them through the most common tasks such as logging in, updating text, adding images and creating links.

If you're a web designer that uses CushyCMS, you're very welcome to guide your users to this article or use the YouTube videos on your blog. All 'link love' is greatly appreciated!

How to Use CushyCMS

If you're new to CushyCMS, then I recommend that you watch all videos in order before even logging in. That way you'll have a good appreciation of what to expect before you start. If having watched the videos you have any uncertainty in your mind, then contact your web designer for help before you begin. This is perfectly reasonable as you'll be editing your live website - not something that you want to get wrong!

Once you've watched all the videos, then you can always come back for a little refresher on any specific tasks as and when you need to.

All videos are best viewed at full screen with sound turned on.

How to log in to CushyCMS and change your password...

How to make simple text changes using CushyCMS...

How to add a title or a heading in CushyCMS...

How to add an image using CushyCMS...

This video briefly mentions that images uploaded should be of an appropriate format and size. This is a huge topic which cannot be done justice in a few words here. You might like to search the internet for 'optimize images for web' or try this free web resizer.

How to create internal and external links using CushyCMS...

How to create a document to download with CushyCMS...

This video briefly mentions saving your files in PDF format so that they can easily be opened on other computers. I use CutePDF Writer (free) for this.

CushyCMS Video Tutorial Feedback

This is the first series of 'how to' videos that I have produced and so I'd be very grateful for any feedback. Do let me know how you get on.
 

Which Web Content Management System? Why I Chose CushyCMS

This article has been written for web designers, specifically those that have created static (flat) HTML websites for other people and now want to give those people the ability to maintain the content themselves.

Customers generally don't want to rely on (or pay) a web designer to make small wording changes to their site. Equally, web designers would generally rather be designing the next site than get bogged down in text amends.

I found myself in this same situation recently, and so began my search for a free flat file content management system. My criteria were simple, it had to be:

• quick to implement,
  
• easy to use (for both me and my customers), and ideally
  
• free!

After much research I decided to use CushyCMS...

CushyCMS met all of the criteria, and then some! The do have a Pro Plan, but effectively all you are paying for is the ability to brand the CMS (with your own colours, logo and domain). If you don't want to hide the fact you're using CushyCMS from your customers - free will do you just fine.

I highly recommend taking a moment (3 minutes actually) to view the intro video on their home page. If you're more of a 'reader' than a 'watcher', then the way CushyCMS works is as follows:

• Set up an administrator account
  
  From here you can add any number of websites and web pages (see next point). In order to do this, you must enter FTP details into CushyCMS. You can also add users and give them permissions to any number of web pages.
  
  
• Tell CushyCMS which page elements can be edited by the users
  
  This is done by adding class="cushycms" to various entities (e.g. the P tag). If you want to make a number of elements available, you can enclose them in DIV tags (with the CushyCMS class). See their designer documentation for more details.
  
  
• Update web pages using their online WYSIWYG* editor
  
  That's it! You (and any users you've added) can use their editor to update content. This includes titles (H1, H2, etc), text and styles (bold, italic), images, links (including properties such as target frame), and much, much more.
  
  
• Publish updated pages at the click of a button
  
  A nice touch is that CushyCMS keeps a revision history for administrators making it easy to roll-back if necessary.
  

The only thing that I've really found lacking is any documentation for users (rather than administrators). It is so easy to log in and use the online editor, that arguably the documentation isn't necessary. However, if as a web designer, you're looking to hand over the management of these minor updates to your clients, the more they're able to help themselves, the better.

The good news is that I plan to address this with a series of short videos on the most common functions. I'll make them publicly available for your use too. Sign up for free updates (at the top right of this page) to make sure you don't miss them.

* In case you were wondering, WYSIWYG stands for What You See Is What You Get (i.e. it looks the same in the editor as it will when published on the live website - almost!).

UPDATE...

Since writing this post a few hours ago and tweeting about it, I gained a new follower called SurrealCMS. I had a quick look at their site and they offer something very similar to CushyCMS. In fact, at first glance it actually seems a little more comprehensive as you can use CSS within it to make the WYSISYG editor better reflect the design of the site. Users can also submit support requests to the administrator. It is also possible for users to manage page titles, descriptions, etc. Note that their free version is limited to just 3 sites whereas I believe CushyCMS is unlimited (stating on their site "unlimited free use").
 

You Can't Outsmart Google - How I Fell Foul of the Giant

I'd love to be able to tell you that I'm a internet guru and that I never make mistakes but, alas, I cannot. Sorry to shatter your illusions.

This week I made a rather silly mistake. In hindsight it was always going to go wrong, but I didn't think about that at the time - I was too caught up in the excitement.

In this post I'm going to show you how to avoid making the same mistake, and also how to fix it should you ever find yourself in a similar situation. The mistake? Falling foul of Google's quality guidelines and having a site removed from their index (almost as quickly as I got it in there in the first place)!

Earlier this week I discussed the benefits of an exact match domain name, and later reported back to declare the experiment a success. I needn't reveal the full story here, but I will so that you can learn from it.

Having a site removed from Google's index!

Today I noticed that the exact match domain I'd been experimenting with wasn't turning up in the search results any longer. I confirmed this with a sneaky little trick... If you want to find out which pages of a site are in Google's index, do a Google search for "site:yoursite.com", for example "site:onlinebusinessconsultant.co.uk". The site definitely wasn't there.

I then dived straight into the Google Webmaster Tools to try and work out what was going on. Google has published some guidelines which, if you build sites, you'd do well to read. In here I found out about something they call 'doorway pages'. I'd never heard of these before, though arguably I should have! BANG goes my guru status. Google defines doorway pages as follows:

Doorway pages are typically large sets of poor-quality pages where each page is optimized for a specific keyword or phrase. In many cases, doorway pages are written to rank for a particular phrase and then funnel users to a single destination.

Indeed - the exact match domain was definitely one of these. Shame on me. Now it's really important to point out that the problem is not with exact match domains. The problem is when they're used as described above. Google doesn't take kindly to being manipulated.

How to fix a doorway page...

So this is a little premature as I haven't actually fixed the problem yet, but essentially you need to turn the doorway page into one that that provides original content. Once this has been done, you can then request that Google reconsider your site. The request form is here.

There's nothing wrong with using exact match domain names (especially if it is for your core site). But if the point of them is to funnel traffic to your core site, then unless they provide original content, you're effectively creating doorway pages. You'll probably get away with it if you don't overdo it - and trust me, it isn't worth the hassle. Getting back in the index can take some time!
 

How to get on Page 1 of Google - The Benefits of Exact Match Domain Names

In my last post I advised to choose your domain name carefully, stating "unless you have a well-known brand ... it is highly advantageous to purchase a domain name that contains keywords people are searching for". Today, I'll show you how to take that one stage further to virtually guarantee a page 1 (top 10) spot in Google.

I should probably start by saying that this technique is likely best used as a 'complimentary' method. By that I mean you might want to buy a domain that works well for your business (either containing your brand name or keywords your customers will use in a search) as well as additional domains that will help you obtain that, often illusive, page 1 spot.

So here it is, and it is really simple...

Buy an exact match domain name!!!

Whoa there, hold on just a minute. Before you go rushing off to buy that domain, some clarification is required if this is to work...

Firstly an explanation of what is meant by 'exact match'. Google uses three terms to classify search phrases. These are:

• Broad Match. This means that the results will essentially match the words that you're searching for, but there may be some use of plurals, synonyms and misspellings (i.e. variants of your search words).
  
  
• Phrase Match. This means that the words you type will appear together (consecutively) as a phrase. An example would be "hiring an online business consultant". A search for that would ensure all search results contained that exact phrase. To try this for yourself in Google, make sure the phrase appears in quotation marks - this is how you tell Google that you want a phrase match.
  
  
• Exact Match. Really just used by Google AdWords to say that you only want to display your advert when an exact phrase is used in isolation. For example, if I specified that I wanted my advert to appear when the exact phrase "online business consultant" was searched for, it would not display if someone searched for "hiring an online business consultant" (because it contains additional words). Note that if I specified 'phrase match' then it would display.

Now we know what an 'exact match' is, you need to make sure you buy the right domain. The current wisdom is that this will only work for .com .net and .org domains - Google seems to give priority to these.

So there you have it. If you want a top 10 spot in the Google search results, buy an exact match domain name on .com .net or .org (don't waste your time or money on the others).

Final thoughts...

A couple of SEO techniques will improve your chances significantly. Be sure to include your exact phrase in the TITLE and H1 tags. Learn about HTML entities (markup and tags) here.

An update on There's No Smoke Without Fire...

I'm using the above technique myself to see just how well it can work - in all honesty, it's not something I've tried before. This post was written on 1st July 2009, the same day I first uploaded the index.html file to my exact match domain. I will post back here when is is indexed by Google, and will also let you know where it appears in the search results. This update will appear below...

*** Results of the 'exact match' domain name experiment ***

2nd July 2009: Blimey, that was quick. Last night, just 12 hours after uploading the home page, it was indexed by Google. Better still, it ranks number 8 for the exact phrase - firmly on page 1 of the search results. On that basis, I would have to declare the experiment a success. There are however, a couple of caveats (apologies, I'm going to get a little jargony):

• This technique might not be as effective if there is good quality competition. By good quality I mean well-established sites with lots of inbound links and a decent page rank.
  
  
• I don't think it will work if you set up a DNS redirect. The .com and .net domains are owned by someone else (my client bought .org), but these do not appear on page 1 for the exact match search. I believe this is because there seems to be a DNS redirect to their main site (perhaps meaning that Google doesn't have a page to put in their index). One way round this might be to use a Javascript redirect - the type of thing that says 'you will automatically be redirected to the new page in 10 seconds'. Alternatively, try and make the exact match domain pages contain something useful - my client's encourages visitors to sign up to the mailing list in return for a discount code.

You can't really control when Google will index you pages, but there are things that you can do to encourage it. For the sake of being helpful, what I did is listed below. Everything is designed to let Google know you're there to be found.

• Installed Google Analytics
• Verified the site in Google Webmaster Tools and uploaded a sitemap
• Wrote this article containing a link to the site (and used pingoat to get it noticed)
  
• Submitted the URL to Google and Bing (MSN)

So there you have it, if you want to easily make it to page 1 in Google, get yourself an exact match domain name.