Ten Things I Learned from the SEO drought

It is no secret that Pinoy Teens is flushing down the stream once again, continuously, without even a single positive sign to end the burden that I have experienced the past three months, and intensively witnessing the past month and a half, it’s no wonder, why Pinoy Teens is under this SEO drought and I think that it has its reasons, the reasons that I’ll be sharing in the realizations that I have made.

Ten Thoughts why I have this SEO Curse

At first, I can’t barely come to think why I have this blessing in disguise and how it could affect my blogging, I know I’m lazy to do a lot of stuff but I surely have to change my style

1. I need to blog hop more often to have other blogs
2. I need to use my 45,000 and growing entrecredits
3. I should start my so-called Social Media Marketing and do it more extesively
4. I should not rely on (Google) Search Engine Visitors only
5. There’s more to money than the (dominant but still #1) Adsense
6. I need to get back to the ground and do things that I have done before. which includes..
7. Just writing.
8. Writing.
9. and writing.
10. I should not worry about visitors not finding my site, but find visitors to see my site.

Search Engine Optimization does you only good when you play well (especially in Google), but if you don’t what will you do? Many people just rely on the visitors from the search engines, and it is very reasonable when you get around 4,000+ visitors on average just because of these people finding your sites through search engines, but what if; one day you’re gone, pulled out, removed or penalized by the Search Engines?

You can’t make Google your bread and butter

You can’t actually make any search engine your bread and butter! You should do what a blogger at first does, visiting other blogs, socializing with people, promoting their content on social networks and social media sites, looking for new ways to gain related back links for their website and the likes. You can’t just write, hit publish and hope for the best every time. I know that fairly well from my own experience when I had to extend my off-site optimization for the Manny Pacquiao post that has earned me 16,000 pesos in just a day and a half.

It doesn’t means your nothing

When you do not do well in search engines, it doesn’t mean that you are not interesting to people, it’s just that people can’t find you and that is why you have to reach out to them, a good start doing so would be befriending other bloggers link to their related articles and discuss them on their site, make them get hooked to your content and have them as your friends. Having a friend or two like these comment on your post always boosts your confidence because you know that there are people who are interested in reading your content, so if these people are, then why not the thousand others?

Search Engine Optimization should only be the secondary pick of yours, bloggers need to engage with the online community, just like bloggers engage in national events through their blogs, you can’t expect everyone to find you among the many competition that you have, you need to do something to stand out, and that is taking that extra mile to reach your visitors.

It’s not a big realization but it is a vital one and a good sign to get it back on track, don’t you think?

Adsense, oh dear adsense.

When you start having visitors who also blog, you cannot hope that these people will ever gonna click on any ad on your website. And you can’t do a thing about it. It just depends on you, if you’re greedy for the money or if you would like people to get informed and find your site useful; rather than clicking away on an ad which appears more interesting to them. Truly, I’d rather have strangers from search engines click an ad than people indirectly looking up your site from incoming links. It’s shameful to think, that these people were referred by other sites, and clicked to you because they believe you are interesting, only to know that they clicked away to read some advert that is more of their taste.

Learn how to Optimize Your Website

Are you curious how to optimize your website? Do you fear that you could commit a mistake that can cause irreversible trouble for you? If you feel that way, then you need to follow the Weekly Series, wherein this weeks concern is how to optimize a website.

Let me tell you more about this interesting topic for this week. Optimizing a website is very important and it can be very complex at times, especially in the eyes of the most serious ones as there are many factors to be considered, the design, the code behind the design, off-site optimization, search engine optimization and everything like that. It’s difficult to digest all at ones, so why not have a bite at the latest chunk about Optimizing Your Website by Using WordPress.

This topic talks about how to optimize your website by using the best free and open source software for blogging, which is WordPress. It provides a guide to plugins that you need to have installed on your blog that should not be missed out, and a few other important notes that you need to consider. So why not read on about site optimization now? Good luck in optimizing your website.

Blog Tip 5: Blog Better & Make Money

It’s unorthodox for me to go straight to the point, but indeed, you can blog better and make money from it, and that’s what this 5th blogging tips is all about. Let’s recap the past fours to refreshen your mind and give a little overview to the new readers about what we have discussed in the past, like for example, the fact that you need to turn your thoughts into actions, which is very vital to get anything going at all. Actions could acted out in a sense of taking care of your comments which always boosts the morale of bloggers and by simply not anoying your readers which guidelines can be seen on the third blogging tip. If incase you have still found yourself in trouble and still need a helping hand, then the pointers on how to get your blog through adversity is exactly what you need.

Now it is time to be frank with you, to talk to you about enhancing your blogging skills and make money from it. Now, how can you do it? First option that I would like to name is by being hired for writing which may pay off a lot depending on the quality of your blog. Adsense is also a way to go if you cannot find any opportunities that turn to your favor, but my favorite among all the means and ways that exceed all the expectations and experimentations is by checking out..

SEOWRIGHT.COM, the new blog of Pinoy Teens Online that will talk about SEO, WordPress, Blogging, Making Money Online and more! Join the 17 year old SEO Wright and Student Blogger (that’s me) on his quest to teach bloggers and other online entrepreneurs and start up how to deal with SEo and make money on the internet from their website. You can’t go wrong by doing just that and rest assured that you will become a better blogger, know your way around the WordPress Software, and when needed squeeze as much money out of your site as possible with his excellent strategies and ideas that you can take advantage from! See you there, once againit’s SEOWRIGHT.COM

Blog Tip 4: Getting your blog through adversity

Before I proceed feeding you with new information here, I would like to recap a few of the most recent blogging tips that I have written here for you. I started off by reminding you that you should always make your thoughts come true by acting them out, I reminded you on ways on how to keep track and take care of your comments in the second edition, while my stellar third discussed means and ways on how to increase your readership by annoying your readers the least, especially the loyal ones.

Now, if in case all of the tips that I shared still failed, and you still experience a time of adversity in terms of scarcity of visits, scarcity of comments, low income from your advertisement, or any other factors that went down, here are a few tips that should guide you through the time of adversity. I myself, is experiencing a time of adversity right now, with less than 800 visitors per day from the usual 2,000 that hit Pinoy Teens on average during the first three months of 2009.

Ask yourself these questions, and maybe you’ll come to a conclusion:

1. Did you take care of your comments?[1. from Blogigng Tip 2.] – Or did you just carelessly blogged away without visiting other sites to get something in return from a few of them? With nothing, comes nothing,unless you’re such a popular personality or such a good content writer you know, but if you would be one, I’m pretty sure you won’t be reading on this tips because you ain’t have any problems then.
2. Did you do what you wanted?[2.from Blogging Tip 1.] – Actually this is in relation to the blogging tips that I have shared with you before, where I mentioned that you need to execute your thoughts in physical means, but not only keep them mentally, it won’t help you keeping these wonderful ideas in your mind!
3. What’s your own thought about your blog? – Do you consider your blog to be one of the best? How do you consider the content of it, is your content displaying your personality or are you just forced to write? If you’re just forced to do so, I highly recommend to end your blogging career today and get back any time soon when you don’t feel that way anymore.
4. Do you have blogger friends? – Some might have less, some might have many, but after all, it’s not the quantity that matters, but the qualityof your friends, and also their blogs who would link you up. These friends are the foundation of your link building, find good friends, and also be good to them too.
5. Are you determined to step up? – Just like work in real time, blogging often asks extra time from you, dropping, if you’re an EC user, link building for those seeking higher PR and thus, SERPs. It often asks a lot of energy from you and you need to be determined and steadfast with your decision to get your blog back going again.

These are just few of the questions that you could ask yourself to figure out the mistake that you did along the way, but I won’t be leaving you behind with a clueless you, without helping you out!

• In Need of Traffic? Entrecard! – Though I cannot assure you that you get high quality traffic from them, all I know is that you’ll do get traffic. And even comments when you’re content is as good as it could be;) It’s effective for start up bloggers like most of us are.
• In Need of Money?  Sponsored Reviews! – Though it is not highly recommended but once you’ve got a foot up and standing, you might want to get independent, get your self on a paid host and get things going your own way, money plays a big factor, and Sponsored Reviews can give you a big amount depending on the quality of your content.
• In Need of a New Design? Elegant Themes! – Elegant Themes is one of the best theme clubs for WordPress that exist at present, even if WooThemes has got higher quality themes, the price for Membership at Elegant Themes is exceptionally low and irresistible for those who have collected a few dollars by following my other tip, of making use of SP to earn money. Of course, there are also free options out there, and a lot of high quality themes can be found at SimpleThemes.Net or the blog that gave us this theme in a contest, BlogOhBlog.Com. For some piece of our very own “Filipino” Community, you could use Themes from the famous Theme Designer Chiq Montes, just like her Blogwerx Theme.
• USE WORDPRESS – The biggest mistake that people nowadays could make is using something else aside of WordPress, something that I hate, and a lot of others hate as well. WordPress[3. The number 1 Open Source Blogigng Software.] is the one and only blogging software that you should take advantage of. It might appear complicated for you at first, but just like a WordPress Apprentice of mine who is up on a stellar performance recently[4. He was a former blogspot user, you know.] you might just get things going just like him. Of course, you should be using the self hosted version of WordPress to be able to place your advertisements. It’s not that I’m pointing out that the other softwares are not that good, but hey, famous blogs and famous online personalities are on WordPress, so why not you and I?
• If Google Adsense is not working, then proceed with something else, well, what is that something else? You could give adbrite a try, they pay even better than Adsense at times, and that’s a first hand experience of mine.[5. 70 US Dollar Monthly income.]

I hope that this fourth episode of the blogging tips series of mine will be of equal or if not, more help than the other tips that I had. To make sure that you are up-to-date with our articles on Pinoy Teens, like Entertainment News, or other tips for your blog and blogging work, subscribe to us via RSS (use Google Reader, if possible) or get updates delivered straight to your email via email subscription. Also don’t forget to leave comments below to share your ideas, opinions, reactions or suggestions to get a discussion going.

Blog Tip 3: Don’t Annoy Your Readers

There are a lot of means and ways that you can entertain people, a lot of possible paths to go to bring your blog to success and make you earn money, but you can also end up with the rear opposite of everything good and make people get rid of your site and click either that X beside the tab that they have opened for your website, or close their browser if it’s only your site they are viewing at that time.

I’m speaking about reasons that make people leave your website, a couple of key factors that lead to less impressions over a long span of time, and probably less income therefore. But anyways, before I will confuse, let me go deeper into detail to make you understand what I’m trying to teach you in my third blogging tip.

In the most recent tip that I have published, I talked about taking care of your comments, hence, in this one, we’ll be taking care of your visitors to make their stay on your blog as entertaining as possible which might just get them hooked to your blog, subscribe to it, leave comments, and become a loyal readers. Well, we started our blogging tips with a short reminder that you should get your ideas working and take actions rather than keeping them in your fragile mind, here are a few ideas that you can expand on, and take advantage of.

• A simple design, is twice as good as a fancy one – A fancy design might look great and appealing to many people, but I tell you, the majority are not after how your site looks, but how your writing style and content appeals to them. Though, the site design still matters to them, and having the most simple and cleanest layout always gets the upper hand. And if coded with care and valid XHTML/CSS, you can even get a pogi point for the search engines.
• What you pay is what you get – Hosting is important, and you need quality hosting to give quality experience to your readers. What do you think are your readers thinking about the inavailability of your website every second page view? Well, I guess there’s not much to think about but the exit button speaks for itself. Get good hosting and you’ll be having a good life in the blogoshpere, as well.
• Don’t Auto-Play Music or Videos - It’s annoying, and the very least that people could do is stay for  moment or two on your website and then close it, unless they have some other purpose to visit your blog or are totally engaged into reading your articles, that’s if you have such high quality content to present them. Always disable the auto-play of audio and videos, it’s annoying, especially for me who’s browsing with both speakers turned on and suddenly hears multiple song across multiple blogs during blog hopping sessions. Get rid of it, or readers will get rid of you.
• Provide a full feed subscription to your readers – It’s annoying when you present a very short excerpt of a story to your readers and the people have to click through to reach your website and the whole content, why not present the article at a whole and use a plugin like the RSS Footer to encourage your readers to click on the title and leave a response to the article? Hawt TIp: You can also protect your content that way as you will be able to add a copyright message using the said plugin which displays to whoever wants to rip content using your RSS Feed.
• Present Minimal Adverts as possible (to loyal readers) – Get rid of all the advertisement for your loyal readers, because it’s annoying. And you won’t earn a cent from them. Loyal readers easily get ad blind and don’t care about advertisements anymore but look after your content (that’s why they are called loyal anyway). I forgot which plugin can be used for this one, but find a way to present advertisements to people who deserve to see it, first time visitors and those who are not that frequently on your website. This encourages people to explore your site more.
• Giving less, is having more. – Don’t hand over hundreds of clickables per page to your readers, have a search bar in the upper fold of your website, a few related articles to that what they are reading at the end of the content, and maybe display pages and categories as well, but don’t confuse them with so many links that they could click on as this might result into no clicks at all.
• Don’t write for money, write for passion – Sponsored Articles are fine. That’s only if you are able to present them in a interesting way to engage your readers, else those posts are a total failure. There are a lot of websites that allow you to earn money for your blogging, Sponsored Reviews, Pay Per Post, Buy Blog Reviews; just to name a few. Seek for opportunities that suit your blog and makes you feel comfortable to write about to have it presented well to your audience, don’t make them feel it’s a paid post, and don’t post such articles too often, you must be kidding me if you believe such are interesting enough to maintain the readership of a blog, huh?

I hope that with these couple of tips, your readership will increase and your engagement with your readers as well. Thank you for reading yet another blogging tip that I have written for you and don’t forget to leave a response about it below or write a response on your own blog with a link to this article to ping us about it.

Blog Tip 2: Taking care of Comments

I have told you a little tip in my recent blog tip article which emphasizes the importance of turning your ideas into actions, as valuable ideas are nothing when not pursued, now, we’ll move a step onward and take action by taking care of our blog’s comments, how can we do that? How can we build a small community and encourage people, even first time visitors to leave a comment on your blog?

Basics about Comments for a New Blog

Let’s start from the very top, where you have, let’s say, just started your blog and are looking for a couple of comments on the first few articles that you believe are worthy to receive feedback from readers and other bloggers. What would you do now?

1. Comment on other blogs -Surely, with nothing, comes nothing, or what goes around, comes around. It’s time that you explore the huge blogoshpere out there and leave comments on other blogs, blogs of your friends, blogs that are under your niche if your blog is more on a specific topic.
2. Leave relevant comments – In relation to what I said above, you should leave comments that are related to the topic, and not just say that you wish to link exchange, we’ve been doing that mistake a couple of times ago, and I bet you don’t want to be the next one to have done such mistake, it can make you loose your credibility, and if you leave nice comments, boost it. It won’t only encourage the owner of that blog to hop over to your blog, but the reader of that blog as well!

It’s easy to say something like “nice post”, “nice blog”, but that’s surely not what other people are looking for, let me ask you, are YOU looking for something like that? I bet no. Comments are there to leave feedback and eventually expand on your idea in mind contributing to the discussion.

As a starter in the blogoshpere, it’s recommended to leave let’s say ten (10) to twenty (20) comments per day on other blogs. Good feedback is a must, you don’t need to always agree with what the writer says, for as long as you can justify your point of view. The comments will come eventually, when you keep interacting in the blogoshpere like that, and let’s say that the visitors from other blogs are coming now. Are you sure that you have prepared your own blog for their comments?

How to increase interaction through optimizing your own blog

• Make it simple and quick – The usual data to be collected by leaving a comment that a user needs to input is their email address their name, and a URL if they own any website. You need nothing more. And oh, of course, their comments. Make it easy, a captcha is nice as long as it’s quick and readable for your readers, but don’t include too many steps for that. As you might know, bloggers ain’t be good readers, nor are majority of them patient enough to go through multiple steps just to leave a comment on your blog.
• Give token to your commentors – But dont do it always, else, you’ll spoil them and end up with no one leaving a comment anymore after your comment contest has ended.
• The comment form and other comments should be visible – Comments are usually seen at the bottom of each article, make them readable, user friendly and emphasize the form where the readers will type in.

It’s not only with the design of the comment area of your blog that you can start encouraging people to leave comments, but from the post itself, questionable and debatable topics usually draw the most comments, entertainment buzzers draw the attention of fans of the respective artists; you need to be creative with every post and not come along with the same tone in every article or expect the comments won’t continue flowing in.

I hope these few tips will help you along with your blogging and increase your comment rate, even if you don’t blog hop too much. But of course, giving is better than receiving, just continue blogging guys!

Blog Tip 1: Action!

In the past couple of weeks wherein I haven’t blogged much, nor even talked much about the thing that I do best, which is blogging. I’ve come to think about a lot of stuff. Including things that I should do to make my blog more popular, tasks to get the Page Rank back on track and legal ways to make the advertisement on my pages more interesting for my visitors so the CTR would increase. But I’ve got stuck somewhere at some point that until now, I haven’t done anything just yet, but I’m slowly starting to get on my feet and get going to have at least a little bit done.

If you think that it’s easy to think what to do with your blog to get it going, I believe I can make you stand corrected because it’s totally not, and it’s costly at times. Okay, you probably think that I’m totally nuts but that is just how dedicated I am to get this blog back on track and the long thought that has cost me more than a month is over, and still, I haven’t raised a finger to get something o track because I just didn’t know where to started until I reached this point, somehow.

Blogging, isn’t the easiest thing in the world. Especially if you’re blogging for a cause beyond the one that may have moved you to start blogging at first, which is to keep a journal of all things about you. At some point in your blogs life, you come to think about money, about the traffic, the comments, the page rank, and probably Alexa, Technorati and subscribers count at Feedburner. Am I right? But that’s way not it yet, you come to think about SEO, your design and many other aspects that could need some work which slowly makes your personal blog on which you blog because of your passion to share your life to others a chore.

You think about adsense, adbrite and other means to make some money, and might even start writing articles for companies or corporations in means of sponsored posts, if needed. Hosting will be an issue and the attention to better hosting increases as your popularity increases and still you’re just thinking and thinking and thinking. Well, better let’s get something going!

In my blogging tutorials, I’ll try to narrate as best as I can the steps that I have followed to make me such a blogger I am right now. Sharing tips tricks and other valuable information to you my readers in order to help you out with your own blog and to become a better blogger than you are right now.

This will be the first lesson a lesson that is plain and simple which not everyone is aware of.

You need to turn your ideas into action. Thinking won’t lead you anywhere, but entangles yourself in a sense that you cannot get anything going.

Don’t worry if your ideas might fail you at times, don’t mind the effort that is required to get your idea to work, it’s part of the game and like I said, blogging is not that usual hobby you use to do at times, and it can be though. Especially when you want to see some dollars out of it. It would be a waste if your idea would be leaked by someone else and then fulfilled into actions, don’t you think?

Thinking about what to do is nice, but don’t limit your ideas and actions within your mind and set your ideas free into the real world. If you feel you need to edit your theme and got some ideas in mind how to do it, then do them. It won’t harm you anyway, but would be a simple step onward.

Thinking and planning is a different thing, but I guess you got the idea and the relation between these two. Get your ideas going and have healthy blog with your personal touch and be proud of what you have done with it, be proud that you worked on it and not just only thought about it!