SEO Moola

10 Questions to Ask a Prospective Domain Registrar

Posted by johan April 01, 2007

The Elliot Noss, the President and CEO of Tucows, have ten really good questions to ask any prospective domain registrar that you might consider using:

1. What is your primary business model?
2. Do you make transfers as easy as the rules allow?
3. Do you allow for easy locking/unlocking?
4. Do you make it easy to opt-out of auto-renewals?
5. Do you tie domains to your services?
6. Do you offer Whois privacy? What are your privacy policies in general?
7. What are your policies on compliance issues like litigation, ownership disputes and WDRP?
8. How easy is it to contact you?
9. What happens when my domain expires?
10. Are you a registrar or reseller?

By getting answers to these questions before switching registrar, you’re likely to save yourself a headache at the very least, if not some money.

The entire article is definitely worth reading.

Top 50 Blogging Resources by Pronet Advertising

Posted by johan November 14, 2006

Yesterday, Pronet Advertising published an awesome list of the top 50 blogging resources that they recommend. The list is exhaustive to say the least and is a must read for anyone blogging or considering to start blogging. Some resources like Problogger and Copyblogger are classics, but I found quite a few new gems in their list including 21 Surefire Tips for a Successful Blog Launch.

AdBrite Goes 2.0

Posted by johan November 06, 2006

TechCrunch just published an article covering Adbrite’s new advertising platform. The new platform should give us publishers even more options in ad-based income strategies. Michael Arrington of TechCrunch goes on to say,

A key feature they [Adbrite] have launched is the ability to allow publishers to stay with their current network, and change to Adbrite ads only if they’ll make more from those ads. So a publisher can show Google ads most of the time, and Adbrite will switch their own ads in only if they’ve sold inventory that pay over a publisher-set CPM level.

Couple that with the option to use text link ads, banner ads, and full-page ads (”interstitials”), and you got yourself a very nice advertising platform for publishers and advertisers alike.

If you are on the advertiser side, you can now rely on features such as highly specific demographic targeting, which appears to be on par with the MSN adCenter platform. MSN adCenter has gone to great lengths to provide fine-grained geographic and demographic targeting.

Nonetheless, the accuracy of almost any demographic targeting that suggests that it can pinpoint income levels, gender, etc. is probably rather low, especially considering that home networks and computers are often shared between parents and their children, as just one example. But, nonetheless, it is great to see that Adbrite is embracing an improvement and expansion of their offerings; it will be interesting to see how it plays out.

Top 10 Google Don’ts

Posted by johan November 04, 2006

There is a lot of SEO-related information available on what to do to optimize your organic search engine ranking. But, perhaps equally important, are the things you should refrain from doing, if you want to maintain or increase your page rank that is.

Marziah Karch at About has a nice article on some of the essential things that you want to avoid, unless your goal is to be “banned” from search engines. She focuses on Google in particular, but many of her tips are applicable to almost all search engines, including Yahoo, MSN, etc.

The top 10 things to avoid can be summarized as:

1. Cloaking
2. Duplicate Content
3. Have a Robot Write Your Web Site
4. Add Keywords that Don’t Relate to Your Content
5. Link to Bad Neighborhoods
6. Hide Text
7. Title Stacking
8. Distribute Viruses, Trojans, or Other Badware
9. Doorway Pages
10. Automated Inquiries

The bottom-line comes down to producing valuable content for your visitors. There are several recent examples of this in the blogsphere. The first being John Chow’s blog. He started his blog earlier this year, and just in the month of October, 2006, his blogging income was $1,361.64 based on Google AdSense and Vibrant Media IntelliTXT alone. [:on | smalltalk] is another site (also a blog) that demonstrates the traffic-driving power of valuable content. Within just a few months, the author has been able to gain 23167 visitors (October, 2006 statistics).

Related Posts:

• Getting on Digg’s Front Page
• 5 Tips to Make Your Blog More Popular
• Top AdSense Earners

Firefox 2.0: Fixing the Session Manager Extension

Posted by johan October 28, 2006

One of my personal favorites when it comes to Firefox extensions is the Session Manager extension. It takes care of restoring all tabs and windows that were present before you last quit Firefox–it even auto-saves in the background in case your computer or (God forbid) Firefox crashes. Unfortunately with the recent release of Firefox 2.0, the extension stopped working.

Fortunately, however, a 2.0 compatible version can be found here. To avoid conflicts with the (new) built-in session manager that ships with Firefox 2.0, you may want to disable it.

The built-in session manager can be quickly disabled by typing about:config in the address bar and then modifying the key “browser.sessionstore.enabled” to “false”.

Top Money Makers - Part 1

Posted by johan October 24, 2006

These days publishers, including bloggers, have a wide variety of income generating options available. The solution that almost everyone is familiar with is Google’s AdSense program. Although it is clearly a popular solution with pretty good baseline revenue potential for publishers, there are some strong contenders that are worth considering.

In fact, in certain instances, you may be able to combine contextual advertising like that of Google AdSense with other money-making solutions. But, be sure to review each outlet’s policies on mixing contextual ads of different advertising outlets, as there may be restrictions in some cases.

The top money makers that SEO Moola recommends include primarily contextual advertising, direct ad sales, as well as affiliate and referral programs. Together these basic revenue streams can help you increase and maintain a strong and steady cash flow month after month.

This is the first part of a SEO Moola several articles that will cover key cash generating techniques for content publishers.

Continue reading ‘Top Money Makers - Part 1′

SEO Firefox Extension

Posted by johan October 06, 2006

Firefox extensions can be quite handy, and the SEO Firefox Plugin is no exception. The extension offers a wide range of highly useful features if you’re doing SEO research for your own site or someone else’s site.

After installing the extension, your Google search results will be enabled with additional SEO data such as page rank, Alexa ranking, and inbound link counts for del.icio.us, Yahoo, and dmoz among many others. The following image shows a sample result after searching on “seo moola” in Google.

But, the extension doesn’t stop there.

Continue reading ‘SEO Firefox Extension’

Getting on Digg’s Front Page

Posted by johan October 03, 2006

SEO Black Hat has put together a list of 10 interesting and funny ways to get on Digg’s front page.

In summary, he suggests that you follow the below simple steps to get the attention of digg readers:

1. Make A List or Tutorial Headline
2. Write about Digg
3. Appeal to the Apple fanboys
4. Doom and Gloom about how Global Warming will destroy us all
5. Write about how great Firefox is
6. Remember: Walmart, George Bush, and Fox News have NEVER done ANYTHING right
7. Repeat after me: “Microsoft sucks, Microsoft Sucks, Microsoft Sucks”
8. Make up outrageous statistics that you have not researched
9. Insult as many groups as you can
10. Include the world’s slowest loading Plugin

The full article is a must read : )

Announcing SEO Moola Research

Posted by johan September 29, 2006

I’m pleased to announce SEO Moola Research. It gives you direct access to the most popular keywords on the web across multiple search engines. Currently, it is offering statistics for Google and Yahoo, but more will be added shortly.

Besides the fun factor in knowing what people around the world are looking for, it can help you understand current search engine trends and thereby perhaps give ideas on what type of content you may want to blog about. In fact, to save you some time, I’ve included real-time news updates associated with each popular keyword.

Today, for example, the most popular keyword on Google is elin nordegren (Tiger Wood’s Swedish wife). Users using Yahoo, however, seem to be mostly interested in Jessica Simpson today.

I hope you find this information useful. If you have suggestions on other SEO information that you think would be beneficial to you, please write to me with your ideas. Be sure to check back for continuously updated SEO information at your finger tips, including the highest paying keywords on the web. Better yet, why not take this as an opportunity to subscribe to the SEO Moola RSS feed.

Top AdSense Earners

Posted by johan September 26, 2006

Most bloggers are familiar with AdSense and the potential to make money by placing contextual ads throughout their site. But, exactly how much are some of the top AdSense earners making? You might be surprised to learn of the enormous earning potential that AdSense offers, if you use the right techniques.

John Chow has a great article on some of these top AdSense earners, including Markus Frind of PlentyOfFish.com, who makes an amazing $300,000/month. Kevin Rose of digg.com makes $250,000/month–and the list goes on.

If you’re ready to sign up for Google AdSense and start making some moola, it’s not too late, nor will it cost you a dime. The sky is the limit.