SEO and Blog Advertisements, Annoying or Essential?

So, I've been kind of obsessing about learning all I can about SEO (Search Engine Optimization), AdSense and web / blog advertisement companies lately. I've found some great ones and some not so great ones and I've been playing around with ad placement, size and color to see what works best for me.


(Jeremy Schoemaker of Shoemoney.com, an ultra successful SEO marketing guru and his little AdSense check back in 2005)

I know some of your may find ads annoying, but they are an essential tool for any working blogger or webmaster to have in their toolbox. They allow us to continue to provide you with great content that you can use and relate to and helps compensate us financially for the money and time we put into creating our blogs / websites in order to keep our readers up to date with new and interesting content. And that's all I'm going to say about that (before I wander too close to the Google AdSense TOS electric fence ;-)...

So, for all you webmasters, if you are not using an advertisement network on your self hosted website / blog or Blogger blog you should definitely check it out. I think the best thing that implementing an ad network does for bloggers is motivate them to pump out good content and think about keywords (writing interesting / popular articles about topics that they love).

Here are some great ad networks to start you out:

• Google AdSense / Adwords: By far the most popular and most widely used, Google pretty much started the modern ad network and is still the biggest player today. If you've got subscribers, you WILL make some money... and another bonus is the amazing integrated Google Analytics that tells you everything about your website.
  
• AdBrite: Smaller network but high payoffs so far for me. I've been seeing some encouraging numbers from AdBrite lately
• Netklix: They claim to have ads on sites like Photobucket and Drudge Report. I just started with these guys this week so we'll see how they are. I'll report back later.
• WidgetBucks / Yieldsense: This looks like a great affiliate style ad network. (I haven't tried it yet but it might be next and definitely in my new blog.)
• Infolinks: An "In-Text" linking style ad network. This is one of those double underlined mini pop up bubble style ad systems. To keep your readers on your page. Paid as CPC (Cost Per Click)
• Clicksor: Both an "in-text" and full featured text and graphical banners as well as full pages and pop-unders.

So, check those out on your own time (after you get done reading The Horse... of course!) and leave me a comment if you think these suck or you find any new ones that I might be interested in.

Next time: SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and why you should care...

Making a FavIcon, Widgets galore, Blogger hacks (Part 1)

This post is going to be a little more geeky than normal but that's what I'm all about! I promised great geek and tech tips and tricks, so here's some random stuff I've learned recently. You could call this a tutorial or a "get yo learn on".

(Note: All these hacks and customizations are so easy, a monkey's uncle could do them. They require little to no coding experience. If you can customize your MySpace page, you can add these to your blog. So don't label me an expert (yet). I'm just going to show you where I found them and the steps that I took to install them on a Blogger hosted blog. I don't know if they work with WordPress or any other blog hosting sites, but I don't see why they wouldn't...)

Here are a few cool things I have done to THE HORSE recently:

My own FavIcon!
Do a Google search for "Icons" or "Favicon" and you'll find 3 billion sites that make or host these. I personally use Chami.com's HTML-Kit FavIcon from Pics for my own hosted sites and I use IconJ for hosting for Blogger. Both do a great job of creating icons from any square image that you upload and IconJ hosts it and gives the the code right from their site!

Basically, just grab the code that IconJ gives you and the trick is to post it in your HTML or CSS template to just after the ]]></b:skin> and just before the </head> statement. Preview it and if everything looks all right, save your template. Then view your new FavIcon in a new reloaded tab! Coolness huh? I did my little old school Suction Horse logo for my FavIcon on THE HORSE (Check it out in your address bar!).

Create a Facebook Badge for your blog (or MySpace!)
This one is super easy. Just log on to your Facebook profile and go to your "Profile" page. Scroll all the way down to the bottom and look at the bottom left. There should be a link that says "Create Profile Badge" follow the instructions to customize. Then get the code and paste away! Be careful how much of your private info you want to give away to public readers though. I like it because I can update my profile pic on both Facebook and THE HORSE at the same time plus there's a link to my FB page right there!

Are there any cool blog widgets that you've discovered that I don't have? Let me know! I collect them all! The trick is to use them in good taste on your blog. I use things that help my readers and point them to interesting content and I use widgets that keep me and my readers informed about the stats of THE HORSE and my personal social media sites...

Josh

Next time: Twitter gadgets, Flickr Widgets, and a cool keyword cloud for your posts!