It used to be that nobody had any idea what Page Rank was.  Now, even my grandma knows about it.  In today’s MMO (make money online) world, PR counts for a lot.  That’s why the Google (henceforth referred to as the Big G) put into effect some changes in how they determined PR.

Now, you can’t beat the Big G.  To do so would be equivalent to suicide on the web.  The best thing you can do is to play its game, and play it well.  Here are a few things you might not know about Page Rank.

1. One way inbound links are the only relevant links.
2. Links from pages related to your website matter more than links from unrelated pages.
3. Link juice is also an important factor to consider.  If a website with 100 outbound links link to you, it’s not going to be as worth as much as a website with 10 outbound links linking to you.
4. Search engines look at webpages, not websites.  You may have different PRs for different pages in the same site.
5. Reciprocal links carry almost no weight.

So far, BlogMarc.com has a Page Rank of 2.  I’ll be trying to get it as high as possible over the next month.  Hopefully, things work out for you as well.  Good luck to us!

If you’re serious about making money by blogging, then you must be a little loopy.  It’s not your blog that makes you money.  It’s the marketing of your blog that does it for you.

I don’t have an issue with bloggers who just love to blog, and figure that they might make a few extra dollars doing it.  That’s all well and good, and a win-win situation.  But if you want to make some real money online, the way to do it is by internet marketing.  That’s where SEO comes in.

They say the oily wheel gets the grease, and that’s a pretty good metaphor for the issue of blogging v.s. internet marketing.  One thing that no one will argue with, is that for a blog or a site to be a successful money-maker, it has to be noticed.  While I agree that great content and a fancy layout will have your friends telling their friends about your fantastic blog, it simply cannot compare to the millions of people online that you can reach by employing SEO techniques.  The greatest blog in the world is of no value to advertisers if only 50 people read it, while a mediocre blog which generates hundreds and thousands of traffic hits is a gold mine.

This is a business.  There are two paths to take.  You can either make a small profit by putting in a few advertisements in your blog, OR you can slap some internet marketing on your advertisements.  It’s all about priorities, baby.

You’ll notice that I gave the blog an overhaul. My primary reason was to look more professional, which would ideally bring in more traffic, which would bring in more money. In theory: nice layout = more readers = more money.

But will that really make you more money? The Mona Lisa of blog layouts? I’m not so sure.

I think that your online income (specifically from Adsense) is directly related to how much traffic your niche blog gets. Now the question you have to ask yoursef is:

Do I want the hundreds of readers that offering a fancy looking layout with the content to match would offer? Readers you can build a community around?

OR

Do I want the hundreds of thousands of random readers that search engines will be delivering to my website, many of them game to the idea of clicking anything?

(Hint: 100 < 100,000)

To put things as bluntly as possible, if you’re serious about making money online, you’re going to need the big G’s help with generating traffic. That’s where SEO comes in. Here are some facts to consider when designing your blog layout.

Understand how the Google Bot crawls your page:

The bot will crawl your page from the top left corner, then down the left column, then top second column, and will end at the lower right corner. It’s trying to find out just specifically what your page is about.

Make it easy for the Bot to figure it out!

It’s Search Engine Optimization, not search engine confusion. Most blogs have too much fluff in them. They have their header images and their javascripts and their lengthy, fancy welcome notes.

Well the Google bot doesn’t care about that stuff! It doesn’t even recognize javascript and images (unless they have the alt tab). As for the welcome note, the bot doesn’t care how old you are, and what you do for a living or what your hobbies are. You’re just confusing the bot.

Take this as an example. Let’s say somebody wants to rank well for the niche keywords “vintage guitars”. This is what the bot will encounter on most pages:

Welcome to Marc’s Super Guitar World Blog!

I am a law student with a passion for British rock. This is going to be my blog about vintage guitars! Rock with me on my journey!

..or something like that. The bot will read guitar, blog, British rock. This isn’t so bad, because you’re still hitting your targeted keywords. But wouldn’t it be so much better if you nixed the welcome note all together and just structured your page like this:

Blog Title : Vintage Guitars

Blog Description: Gibson Les Paul | Fender Stratocaster | Telecaster | Pro-Martin | Ovation | Rebuilt Guitars | Classic Guitars

Make sure your sidebars have Vintage Guitars in them.

Use the keyword in your Post Title.

Make sure your posts have long-tail keywords (keywords related to your targeted keyword).

So how does this SEO magic work? Imagine the order the bot will crawl your page.

1. URL
2. Blog Title
3. Blog Description
4. Post Title
5. Post itself (with long-tail keywords and comments)

By the time the Google Bot gets to your comments, it should know exactly what your page is about. If it doesn’t, then you should get to work on applying all the SEO you’ve learned here today.

Now if you’re looking to attract social traffic, then by all means, disregard this post. But if you’re serious about getting serious money making online traffic from Google, then follow my advice, and SEO your blog today.

There are two aspects to making money online with your blog: CONTENT and MARKETING.

Content can be filed under marketing, but not the other way around.  This is because the CONTENT of your blog can act as a MARKETING tool in itself.  Great CONTENT encourages return readers, and HOPEFULLY, significant BACKLINKS.

MARKETING is where the real money is made, however.  No matter how great your CONTENT is, if nobody knows about it, you’re going nowhere.  Given that we know how the balance of power lies, it only makes sense to focus more on the MARKETING aspect of our blogs, right?  Right!

But wait!  What if I’m not just a greedy bastard?  What if I’m a greedy bastard who also wants to contribute some great quality content to the internet?  Well, that’s very commendable, as far as greedy bastards go.  However, unless you’re a full-time blogger, that’s pretty hard.  Marketing requires your undivided focus.  That’s where the money is.  Ever wonder why most companies have a separate division just for marketing?  That’s because marketing is DAMN hard.

There IS a way you can still offer quality content while engaged in marketing, though.  I call it the Post Vault.  The concept is pretty simple.  Take a certain amount of time, say, an hour a day.  This is your writing time.  For this one hour, all you are going to do is create content.  If you’re like me, it takes you around 30 minutes to churn out a blog post.  An hour gives you enough time to make two.  Since I post once a day, I can keep the other post I wrote in the Post Vault.  Simple, huh?

If you’re the type to post twice or more times daily, then extend your writing time to two hours, or three, depending on your need.  I think that maybe two weeks worth of posts in the post vault will work really well for most bloggers.  This way, you already have predetermined posts for your blog, leaving you free to concentrate on marketing and making sure that people actually read those posts.

I know a lot of bloggers do this.  Just thought I’d share.  This one goes in my Post Vault.

Boy, you can tell I REALLY want to make money online.