Need advice!
Added backlinks looks quite funny. How many? Five?
Seriously Habee, if you want to start making money during this life, you have to get serious about backlinks. There is no way around.
The more the merrier, especially if you are trying to rank for anything competitive.
- Nelle Hoxieposted 14 years ago
0 I am finishing a hub on this
Hopefully tomorrow
It's finally up, so no need for advanced copy. Sorry for delay
- PrettyPantherposted 14 years ago0
Absolutely ... time is the broth that helps cook the stew. A good hub needs a few months to cook. I know some of my September hubs are just starting to monetize and when they kicked in I was in awe, as I thought they would flounder forever.
Plant your tulips and wait for them to grow - and they will in time.
Also, be wary of highly competitive keywords. I use a program called Micro Niche Finder and I swear by it, as it tracks SOC (strength of competition) and everything I worth about with an SOC of four or less has always panned out cash for me on adsense. Now, we're not talking $100 a day, but someone who writes enough hubs could approach some nice pocket change.
I wrote a hub that gives an overview on the program so you can see if it will help or you could just Google it and read their info on their site.
Just hang in there Habee ... We'll get you upright in the pond, it just takes time.
Another thing to know is that (typically) a 100 page views on monetized hubs should net you something back. If not, then you need to see if the material is too brief. Regardless of what others have said in the past, 400 words isn't enough to grab someone's attention. You want around 1000.
And Misha ... if someone picks a low competition keyword phrase they only need a few backlinks. All of my hubs have a twitter link, a facebook link, and a Myspace link, and I'm rating high on all of the keywords I researched (for articles written several months ago).
Building backlinks is very good, but it's far better to fish in a pond where fifty lines aren't being cast in along with yours, negating the need for so many backlinks.
I'm not saying you're wrong about backlinks, as you most definitely are not wrong - I'm saying it's far easier to go up against less competition, negating the need for so many backlinks.
Habee, I have read many of your hubs, and the only thing I can see is that though they are original, informational, and often fun, quite a few are on the shorter side. I didn't read all 414 (WOW!), but I booed through about a quarter.
Google likes lots of words, and I can tell you from personal experience that my shorter hubs don't do nearly as well as the longer ones. I used to aim for 500 - 800 words, but of the hubs I write now, the short ones are 800, and most are at least 1200 words, or longer.
Hope this helps.
- wordscribe41posted 14 years ago0
What don't you like about MS? I have used both and prefer it to MNF. Both are very good paid tools, though, with great support. Just my own opinion...I know you were asking for yoshi's.
Market Samarai is great, provided your PC likes it. It seems not to like my computer, but I think it's more of an XP thing, as I have read it works great for Vista users, but is real slow for XP users, such as myself. Still, it's a great tool and the responses are worth waiting for.
Currently, I use Market Samarai to find good keyword phrases and then I dump those into Micro Niche Finder to determine how competitive those keyword phrases are.
I won't lie to you ... just shooting in the dark with Micro Niche Finder is a lot of work. That's why I prefer to use Market Samarai to find the keywords and then use MNF to determine their worth - and MNF has never done me wrong in that respect.
So, I suppose I recommend both, but I say (hands down) the competitional analysis (SOC) in MNF is worth its weight in gold and if I could only own one of the two products, I would definitely own MNF.
What sold me on MNFwas going back through my older hubs and seeing that all of the ones getting the payoffs were all low in SOC. And you can get the same info from Market Samarai, but it takes a bit of digging and each dig takes a horrendous amount of time on my XP system.
I also did a write up on Market Samarai, by the way, which provides some good info on that product, so people can look at them head to head.
Just remember ... the secret to a good keyword phrase are:
1) a decent amount of traffic
2) low competition
3) a decent payout from Adsense
Also, never fool yourself into believing that 300 words on a keyword phrase means *you* will get 300 words if you rank #1 on that phrase. It's just simply not true, and I have several #1s to prove it.
Also, being 7th or 8th for a word does not equate to 'no income' either. The front page is your aim, and the higher the better.
- wordscribe41posted 14 years ago0
MNF is all about a guessing game where you put in a word and hope to mine some gold. However, sometimes you put in a few words and out pop some mighty tasty nuggets.
That's why Market Samarai is great, as it looks for those nuggets to pump through MNF, but I was doing alright at finding them before I started using MS. You just need to be patient and try several variations on a phrase that could work.
Also, MNF has filters (they just added them) that help immensely! I filter out any phrase under 3 words, any ad cost under .50, and any phrase with under 300 local search count. That seems to get rid of most of the ribble, allowing me to focus on checking for the good stuff.
From there I set it to automatically check the SOC for each keyword and kill off the ones over four and then I check the exact phrase count for what remains and kill off any higher than 100,000. From there, it's a matter of sifting through what might be left and finding the best fruit - lowest SOC, lowest exact phrase count, highest local search count, and then highest ad cost - in that order.
From there, I find a gem about 33% of the time (1 in 3 searches), and that's without using MS first. When using MS first I up that percentage to about 80%.
For those who think MNF lacks power they either used it before they recently updated to the filters or they never understood just how useful the filters can be (an easy thing to do, as I was confused by them at first as well). Filters allow you to do in a few minutes what used to take a few hours.
I'm supposed to be sleeping, but I have a question that drives me crazy and I can't seem to find an answer.
I'm having a similar problem to habee, except I'm still playing on beginner level...
Is it correct, or is it bad, to use the phrase "how to" or "what is a ____" in a tag?
I have a decent idea of what a long tail key word is, but I'm not clear on whether to use a general phrase like that.An excellent question ...
As for an answer ... it's a bit complex. You see, sometimes others think the same way and overuse these phrases along with other words, negating them as good keyword phrases. Heck sometimes just adding or removing the letter 's' from a word can have an effect.
So, writing about 'how to fix a lawn mower' might be a dud, but fixing lawn mowers might be a winner ... though I doubt it ... didn't look that one up .. hehe
The real scoop is this ... If 'fixing lawn mowers' is a winner then adding words to the beginning or end won't truly affect your earnings either way. However, if 'help with fixing lawn mowers' is a better phrase then you won't profit as much titling your hub 'fixing lawn mowers' as you would titling it 'help with fixing lawn mowers'.
The sad reality of internet marketing is it's all based on finding a niche that hasn't been thoroughly exploited yet. The good news ... there's millions of them ... but finding them by poke and hope is probably not going to pan out.
That's why we use tools like the Google Keyword Finder, MS, and MNF to lean the playing field over in our direction. By establishing what phrases people are looking up, how much those phrases are paying, and how competitional they are, we can set ourselves up with a nice little money maker three months down the road with little more effort than writing an article with a good keyword and performing very basic backlinking - Twitter, Myspace, and Facebook - and you can link all three through Twitter so you need only share it with Twitter and then have it automatically shared with all three, allowing you more time to write - and that's a good thing.
And not all keyphrases are a sure bet ... Some will hit the front page, get lots of hits, and yet - no clicks. This is the nature of things and one you must accept. Regardless of what you do, some keywords just won't pay out. But take heart ... when you do find a keyphrase that works well, roll around it for other keyphrases, as you have found yourself a niche.
So, if you strike it good on bass fishing lures, check into trout fishing lured, catfish fishing lures, etc.
But the most important part is to research your articles to make certain you are giving our correct info. In fact, when writing my articles I verify with several sites to be certain I'm on the mark (and still miss some times). And if I find several sites in disagreement on something I research to find out the truth as having that will set your article apart from the others.
A good example is one of my pet med hubs, where I found that a common pet med could cause seizures. Well, I wanted no part in causing someone's pet to have a seizure, so I posted the dangers involved with the med and it's been a hit!
And going back to missing an important fact ... I wrote another hub on a pet med and said it was safe for cats (I even verified this). However, someone called me out on the carpet and said the med was very dangerous for cats, and so, I dug deeper and found it was a covered up fact - and so, I added that info to my hub and the hits grew bigger - as did my place on the Google ladder for that keyword.
By offering the best info available you will create a following outside of Hubpages. And while I love my fellow hubbers (with all of my heart) those outsiders pay the bills, which is why I listen very intently to what they have to say - to the point that I will totally revise a hub if they provide me new info not previously available to me.
So, a general phrase won't hurt ya, but you really need to research your core keyword phrase to see if it's a winner - or one for the throwback bin.
- wordscribe41posted 14 years ago0
I have been taking a crack at the Google AdWords: Keyword Tool.
I found a keyword about a topic that I was planning to do. It seemed like a higher paying word, with a lower amount of searches. But, the hub is not performing well enough that I can see whether I'm on the right track. I'm assuming because it is a niche area, and also I think I did my KW tagging wrong. I patched that up a little, this weekend.
My current project is to edit the hubs I wrote when I was new, to improve them for key words and ad placement.
The advice that you gave to my astronomer friend really clicked on some light bulbs for me.
I will wait for a few weeks to see what the results may be...
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