6 Fool-Proof Steps to Make More Money With Your Website
Every website has a bunch of web pages which get more search traffic than others. These pages are constantly visited daily by new visitors, people who have never seen the site in question before. I call these ‘money pages’ because they are a reliable source of immediate and future income.
But they’re not just ‘money’ because they bring in revenue: they are one of the easiest ways to grow your audience without much work. If you learn how to optimize these money pages (its not hard to do), you’ll really improve your website in so many ways. More revenue, more members, more influence and authority. Doesn’t that sound good?
I’ve talked very briefly about money pages in my previous post on analyzing your site visitors and decided to expand a little more on this topic because I think its often overlooked by webmasters. We’re always focused on creating new content and getting new visitors to these new pages that we forget about what’s going on in other parts of our website.
This is tailored towards content publishers and bloggers but the main strategies here apply to other site types as well, you just need to find the right tools to do it. So lets get started.
How to Optimize Your Money Pages
Image Credit: marissa cap
There are many things you can do to money pages, in order to make them better or more profitable. It’s important to decide the extent of your work according to your goals and resources. How much time do you want to spend and what’s most important to you? Do you want a bigger readership? Or are you just concerned with increasing your daily revenue?
Here are a list of things you can do for your money pages:
- Monetize. The aim here is to get more revenue out of each page. There are various ways to achieve this and they generally involve the placement of ads both around and within content. There is also an indirect future revenue from lead capturing.
- Capture Leads. The money page is optimized to encourage a visitor to subscribe to your mailing list, site feed or register for your website. The main aim is to find a way to continue to reach your visitors after they leave your money page. This helps to grow your site audience and is also a component of revenue generation.
- Improve Relevance. This involves revamping the money page in order to provide up-to-date information or better content in order to accommodate visitor needs. This provides an improved user experience for all and can result a host of benefits like more referral/citation links and greater visitor loyalty/trust. Relevance is also important when your main goal is to capture leads or increase revenue.
- Make it Rank Better. Doing on-site and off-site optmization will help specific money pages to rank better on the search engine result pages, hence driving more traffic back to your site. This increases your site reach and revenue at the same time.
Step 1: Find Your Money Pages
Image Credit: TW Collins
Open up the web analytics program you’re using for your website. There should be a section which reveals which pages have the highest unique views per month. Extract the urls for the top 10 pages and put them somewhere for easy access. Or bookmark them on your browser. If you don’t currently use an analytics tool, I recommend setting up Google Analytics.
How many pages you choose to optimize really depends on your website and preference. If you have a lot of webpages that get solid traffic, you can do more. If you don’t have many pages that get web traffic, then you have a lesser amount to work with. I like to focus on the top 10 because if its a manageable amount of work for an acceptable returns on investment.
My personal guideline is to only work on pages with a minimum of 200 unique views everyday. It’s a basic number that’s good for some decent conversions. Adjust this figure to something you can work with, if your website is new or gets less overall traffic.
The point to remember is that not every page is hot. The goal is not to optimize every single web page you have. There has to be a limit. So learn to prioritize and work only on the pages that are currently receiving the most traffic to your website.
Step 2: Improving Content Relevance
Image Credit: jesse.millan
Visitor search queries reveal what people are looking for and what they want to get from your web page. It tells you what information they expect and is a way to understand their desires or needs. Many are ready to pay for a solution or subscribe to get knowledge in their inbox.
Better relevance = better conversions. It’s that simple. By making your website as relevant as possible to search queries, you’re making visitors more likely to stick around, opt-in or buy. Users are going to click away if they find that your web page doesn’t fulfill their info needs. So the first step is closely examine your money pages in relation to search traffic terms.
My goal is to include every search query in my money page. Every question typed into search engines by visitors who access my site must be answered. One very easy and quick way to do this is to add a simple FAQ to the page to address the visitor’s specific needs. Just phrase the same exact search query as a question. Then write an answer which responds to it.
Another method for search query relevance is to create new content and insert it into the money page. It’s important to edit your pages so that it doesn’t display content that is simply outdated or useless. You’re not going to presell anyone with stuff like that. It won’t work.
Either rewrite the entire money page or include update notes specifying new information and linking to other pages on your website with newer content. Whenever new information or changes occur, go back into the money page to make necessary adjustments. This is one reason why I asked you to keep those 10 URLs bookmarked or easily accessible.
Note that by increasing your money page’s relevance and informational value, you are also increasing its linkability: People are more likely to link to it because it is a detailed and useful reference page on the topic. Whenever possible, I try to fashion my money pages on blogs after Wikipedia in terms of comprehensiveness.
Step 3: Monetizing Your Money Page
Image Credit: Gaetan Lee
While you can monetize your money page and capture leads at the same time, I find it better to optimize for one goal instead of trying to achieve both. Because when it comes to monetization, captured leads are usually a good source for long term income anyway.
There are formats for each goal (monetize or lead capture) and you’ll get better results if you either choose to monetize fully or go all out to hook your visitors by making them sign up or subscribe to your website. If you put up too many well blended ads, the visitor can easily click away instead of subscribing to your newsletter, so either pick one goal or balance both.
Let’s talk about monetization first. This is easy if you’re using ad networks like Google Adsense. Go to your money page and insert an additional ad unit, blend it well with your content and make sure that its quite visible while not being too obtrusive.
A well placed Adsense unit can really increase your overall daily income. I’ve seen a jump of more than $20 a day for a site that I own when I took the time to test and optimize a few money pages. While you may have default ads already on every page of your site (sidebars, header etc), these may not be truly optimized for a money page.
Money pages need to be treated differently from the other pages on your website. They’re the ones that bring a lot of visitors (big sample size) so you can really use this opportunity to test the profitability of specific ad schemes. You can even remove the default ads specifically for this page so you have more room to experiment. That’s what I do for some sites.
Other ways to monetize include the use of commission-based affiliate programs which range from digital products to established eCommerce retailers like Amazon.com. Clickbank is a digital product marketplace you can use. Sign up, search through the marketplace for a product, grab your affiliate link, insert it on your money page.
You can also try CPA networks with relevant pay-per-lead or pay-per-sale programs. Commonly used CPA networks are Market Leverage, Max Bounty, NeverBlue, PepperJam, Copeac, Azoogle and Hydra Network, among many others. Affiliate programs can work well but remember to keep them related to your content.
Alternatively, you can promote your own products on your money page by including a short pitch for it and linking to a proper sales page. Or you can try to sell your visitors away from the money page by getting them to first subscribe to an email list. This brings us to the next step.
Step 4: Optimizing to Capture Leads
Image Credit: sindesign
The goal is to capture not just the email of the visitor but his/her permission to allow you to reach them away from your website. For some of you, you want visitors to subscribe to your RSS feed so they’ll continue to read your content or hopefully participate on your site.
Many set up email lists and auto-responders with the aim of eventually monetizing by selling their own products or recommending those of JV partners. Their aim here is to get users to opt-in to receive newsletters or special offers. The same goes for online retail stores.
Good email marketing providers are Aweber and GetResponse, both of which charge a monthly fee that you should be able to earn back easily. There are free alternatives available but you’ll often lose out in terms of features. If this doesn’t bother you, you could try starting with any of the free email software or plugins available.
To optimize a money page to capture leads, you’ll need to do some offer customization. Look at what content/product is on the page and create a specific offer that’s relevant to it. Provide an incentive for someone to sign up: perhaps a free digital product with related or more in-depth information. Or simply the promise of future discounts or special product offers.
To get into the mind of the visitor and understand what entices them, you’ll need to go back to the search queries you’re getting. If someone is interested in ‘what causes wrinkles’, you’ll know they’ll be interested in an ebook on natural anti-aging remedies. Do up a free guide and offer it to them only if they register as a member or sign up to your email list.
How about lead capture for communities and membership sites? Apart from providing incentives you can use teasers. Restrict visitor actions by only allowing them to view a limited amount of content or interact in a limited fashion. This limit will be removed when a user registers with your community. These are methods commonly practiced by paid membership sites, forums and social media sites to entice signups.
Step 5: Sending Internal Traffic to Your Money Pages
Image Credit: leeds at night
Now that you’ve optimized your money pages for maximum conversions, you can also send over visitors from other pages of your site. You’ve already done the work to make the pages incredibly relevant and usable, they shouldn’t just be seen by search engine visitors.
If your money pages are related, by sure to interlink each one so that each visitor is funneled to another optimized page. This not only improves your bounce rate but makes sure that each visitor is given two opportunities to convert if they aren’t persuaded the first time around.
Another method is to use a script to autolink specific anchor keywords or phrases on your entire site to the specific web page. This helps with SEO and is very easy way to get more eyes on your money page. If you’re using Wordpress, try the Internal Link Building plugin or the SEO Smart Links plugin. Both help to auto-link keywords on every page of your blog. There are quite a few similar plugins out there but these two work well for me.
If you’re a blogger producing content daily, endeavor to link to the money pages whenever it’s pertinent to your post because you’re driving traffic to pages that will perform well. Alternate the links to each money page so your audience won’t get sick of seeing them all the time.
There is an alternative way to highlight your money pages: Group the ones about a similar topic together and list them all in a reference page, which will funnel traffic out to different locations. Instead of linking to each individual money page, you can just link or promote the reference page, which will then direct the visitors you get to each money page simultaneously.
A simple example of this is my reference page on social media marketing, which collects both money pages and less visited pages together under a specific theme. There’s also the option of creating special banner ads or images to link to either your money page or the reference page, it doesn’t always have to be promoted in the form of a link within content.
Step 6: Improving Your Search Engine Ranking
This is the final step in the process and should always come after you’ve optimized your money pages for maximum results and set up a method to promote it internally on your site. After you’ve done all that, it’s time to look at boosting a major factor for earning more money: your website’s ranking on the search engine results pages (SERPs).
This is an optional step because if you’re getting a lot of visitors, you’re should already be ranking quite well. But if you’re on the second page of Google or not yet in the top 3 queries for a keyword/phrase that is sending you a good amount of traffic, why not bump it up and get even more visitors per day?
You’ve already got your list of top money pages based on search queries. Now you should find what these pages are ranking for, which is something you can easily discover through your stats trackers. If you’re already using it, Google Webmaster Central is a free tool that shows you the top 20 search queries visitors use to reach your site.
Off-Site Search Engine Optimization
SEO is a pretty big topic: its hard to cover everything that needs to be done so I’m going to simplify it into one fool proof method of improving your search engine rank for Google. This is something that is unanimously agreed upon by everyone.
All you need to do is get links from other sites, especially with the specific anchor text you are trying to rank for. But not just from anywhere. You want links from quality, relevant websites.
Let’s see what Google itself says about ranking:
Sites’ positions in our search results are determined based on a number of factors designed to provide end-users with helpful, accurate search results. In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages.
One more. From Google’s warning on link schemes:
Your site’s ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to you. The quantity, quality, and relevance of links count towards your rating. The sites that link to you can provide context about the subject matter of your site, and can indicate its quality and popularity.
It is not only the number of links you have pointing to your site that matters, but also the quality and relevance of those links. Creating good content pays off: Links are usually editorial votes given by choice, and the buzzing blogger community can be an excellent place to generate interest.
Links matter a lot because Google’s algorithm is set up to use the collective intelligence of the web to determine a page’s importance. High quality links boost the trust, relevance and authority of your web page. This is somewhat the same for search engines like Yahoo or Live.
Ideally, the best type of links you can get are from the websites that are already ranking well for the keyword or phrase you are targeting. But these links might not be easy to acquire, since you’re likely to be viewed as a competitor and a threat.
So, what I personally like to do is to do some research on the people ranking for your keyword/phrase on the first two pages. Dig into their backinks by using something like Yahoo Site Explorer and find out who is linking to them. Try to get those same links if possible and even more quality links that your competitors don’t have.
There are many ways to build links, some are blackhat and others are more compliant with search engine guidelines. As I’ve mentioned in my previous post on long term social media marketing, I favor the strategy of creating valuable services, tools and content in order to attract links from bloggers. It’s stable and works extremely well for every niche out there.
If your money page is optimized for relevance and is high on informational value, it is already a potential link magnet. So here’s something you can do immediately. Send email pitches about your money page to relevant blogs. If you contact 1,000 blogs, you might easily get 50 to 100 extra links (or more), which may be enough for you to outrank other websites. Sometimes all you need to do is to get the word out.
And there are many other ways. Article directories. Blog/web directories. Social bookmarking websites. Social news sites. Social media communities (Flickr, Youtube etc). Contests. Link exchanges. Blog comments and carnivals. Donations/sponsorships. Forums. Press Releases.
On-Site Search Engine Optimization
Image Credit: Mario de Leo
On top on link building, another aspect of ranking better is on-site search optimization, whereby you make your webpage compatible with search engine requirements and the specific search query you’re targeting. Google’s webmaster guidelines, Yahoo’s Webmaster Resources and Live Search’s Webmaster Center has a list of the most basic stuff you should be doing and ways for you to track your site in their search engines.
Basic pointers for on-site optimization involves having a good site architecture, where pages with similar themes are grouped together with a focus on great navigation and usability for visitors. On site-optimization also involves having your targeted keywords in the title tags and an appealing meta-description, which may affect SERP clickthrough rates. For the WP users out there, you might find this excellent guide to Wordpress SEO useful.
Other on-site factors include keyword density, which is the number of times a keyword appears compared to the total number of words in a page. And latent semantic indexing (LSI), which examines a page in relation to groups of associated words/terms used within it.
I wouldn’t worry too much about latent semantic indexing and perhaps even keyword density because a content heavy page is likely to include the associated terms and keywords naturally, because of its depth. The main point to note is to maintain a tight focus on your chosen topic and not divert too much from it in your content.
And then there’s the controversial topic of PageRank Sculpting: using the nofollow tag on internal site links to optimize the strength of specific pages, thereby enabling them to rank better in search engines. Perhaps a useful tactic, although one that isn’t quite necessary. Any possible success here partly depends on how knowledgeable you are with SEO.
On-site optimization isn’t a difficult process, as long as you have a good site architecture set up from the start and follow search-engine guidelines. The hard part is really the task of getting people with relevant/quality websites to link to your money pages.
Time for You to Do Some Work…
These are the fundamental factors involved in optimizing your money pages. After completing the first step of finding your money pages, you don’t need to work on the other steps in a sequence. As I’ve said earlier, it depends on your goals. Personally, I go through all six steps when I’m looking at money pages that receive a substantial amount of daily web traffic.
The good thing about money pages is that once you optimize them, you can just leave them alone for a while. If you’re busy every day, you might want to spend an hour during the weekend on your money pages. Or just assign them to a colleague or a member of your staff. Set aside some time to optimize them and you’ll definitely see the results.
If you found this article useful in any way, please consider linking to it or sharing it with others. I’ll love to hear your comments as well!
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The post is so long, and making money is so hard.
Another epic “money” post from DoshDosh. these are solid tips and are of great value to someone getting started in online marketing. I’m sharing this on Twitter & Stumble!
Well agree money making is hard these days.
Another comment nothing beats knowledge, high quality content and a good user friendly site.
The other road these days is content scraping and using it intelligently to generate traffic. I’m not into this business, but there sure is a lot of content you could scrape and monetize.
Damn that was good! I feel stupid now that I realize I never really thought about monetizing my top visited pages. Going to GA now to find out what these pages are and I’m gonna think about what I want to do (sell products or sign ups).
Sebastien
Thanks for breaking it down and making it look simple. Well done. I agree it’s easy to forget about your workhorse pages, like a piece of furniture that’s always there.
This has got me thinking. Time to analyze those traffic logs and see what I can do. Thanks for the great post.
Fantastic thoughts Maki – extremely useful post. I’m glad to see your back to posting more frequently again, was missing your stuff.
The article was too long, but just like in real life it takes time to earn money. Through this it made me think how to earn money from online system. Thanks for this article.
Thanks for the shout out!
Kris Jones
CEO,
Pepperjam Network
Epic post
I like this. Must… re-read… to gain full understanding ….
- Eric
Great post, looks like I have some work to do.
Wow, very impressive take on blog profit. I enjoyed your image selection.
It’s rather long. That’s neither here nor there, but some people may not read it simply because it’s long. I liked it regardless.
Good post – just optimize pages that get at least 200 pageviews – oh sure, I only have 496 like that! lol.
@Chris Pugh – don’t depend on your webserver logs, unless you are really sure you can determine which visitors are human and which are robots. All sites are different, but our site gets 5 to 6 times more robot traffic than humans, so you need to know the difference. That is why you need analytics, not log readers.
@Young – Perfect post size. Making money online is a breeze if you focus on what meaning and value you can create for people rather than what’s in it for you or how fast it will happen.
Its nice to see than you are also thinking about these pages as I am.
But however you have posted added few very valuable points here which are making them more attractive.
Let me copy it so that I can read it again and again whenever I want
Great Article , looks like I have some work to do.
The on site optimisation is one of the most important parts of your SEO, you want to decide on the keywords that people are going to use to search for your site and then distribute them to the relevant pages within your site. Like you where saying about the 2oo page views, what if you did not have a website before, you are going to have to wait a while for the search engines and people to find your website before you can get at least 200 page views. Or would it be that you are improving the relevance of your content on your money pages first and then would wait a while to get at least 200 page views on your site and then do the on site optimisation.
Key to success is planning out every step of the way, which doshdosh has certainly done and most importantly *implemented. I really feel that she has a great ability to communicate to both technical and non-technical people alike – which really is a gift as not many people have that type of temperament..Its striking the fine balance, and in my estimation thats probably the hardest thing to see clearly..
Truly this blog is so simple, but effective and informative when it comes to content! A myth of the web is “Content is King” – Yes but only when its relevant to the user.
True making money is hard these days, but what fun would it be without a fight and LOTS of hard work! One thing i would like to add is that if you do come from a third-world country (except India) masking your location would be the first step to monetizing your site or blog.
Thanks for keeping it simple doshy in an ever so complicated world!!
This is great information for ways to make money from your website. I do agree that it is a long post, but the information contained is a must read for a beginner (even an experience webmaster). Even though the Internet is ever changing, one thing that doesn’t change is to give your visitors what they want. Information. Dosh-Dosh keep the great information coming.
will need to read this again, so will be saving it. Need to apply it to my website to get it up there on the search engines and to get the traffic happening.
Thank you for sharing and caring
Lisa from ourpathtoprosperity.com
I have found step 4 to be a huge factor in my online success. However, I do know people who don’t capture any leads and make tons of money because of steps 3 and 6. Anyway, excellent advice as always.
Basically, I think you are pointing out the importance of creating quality landing pages. Currently, I am optimizing my landing pages through forum signatures and they seem to pay off.
However, I think landing pages can also be best advertised at Twitter although I have yet to prove that.
Thanks for reminding us for making money with a lesser effort.
Great post overall consistency is the game.
action>assessment>repetition
Solid post! I have gone back to my better pages and added affiliate links and such but I didn’t think to work on internal linking and other seo touches.
Linking is key and more relevant than ever to sites looking to optimize and improve on their search rankings. Developing networks is a great way to begin getting links going back and forth. All this leads to the overall goal of building more traffic and getting more revenue.
Excellent post! If you are using Adsense to monetize your blog, reduce other links so people will click more on adsense links.Also, building a list will build your credibility over time and you will make more money this way.It is rare that people will buy anything the first time they visit a site.
Great tips to monetize a site, but I have one question…
What do the pictures in your post have anything to do with making money?
Thanks everyone for your comments!
@ Jacob Duchaine
Well people don’t have to read the entire article in one sitting. They can bookmark it and digest it slowly or print it out. I could break it up into shorter posts but somehow I like it all in one place. Don’t worry, not every post on doshdosh will be so long.
@ NewsBlaze
That’s exactly why I recommended that one optimize the top 10 pages. If you have a lot of pages, adjust the minimum pageview limit. This is just to make sure that you’re workking on the ones that matter.
You can’t optimize everything, that’ll be too much work.
@ Ahad
Thanks for the kind words. And you’re welcome!
I don’t think its necessary to hide your location when you’re monetizing a site. I think what matters is the source of the traffic and the value of that you offer with your money page.
@ George
Its certainly possible to skip lead capturing and make a lot of money. It depends on your goals/resources and sometimes on the site too. But as you probably know, there’s a lot of money in the list. It’s cash on tap once you have a decent reader base.
@ Rich
Yes, its about patching up holes in your website… places where traffic is coming in and leaking out. Working on those high traffic pages can really make a huge difference in income.
@ Craig
That’s true. Relationship networks can influence the flow of links around the web.
@ Ray
You’re probably new to this blog.
The pictures are there to break up the monotony of the post, which would be very difficult to read, given its length.
Some of them are actually relevant in some way. There are pictures of money, for example.
I prefer to pick some colorful or interesting pictures (even if they aren’t completely related) instead of using the generic stock images of business women or men, wads of cash or whatever cliches that are involved with the business of making money.
That’s just my style I guess.
That’s a fantastic post. It’s very useful, and it sure needs repeated reading. I’ll try to follow some of the advice here.
To good article. I vistied your blog first time and m too impressed . Nice articles and you gave me lots of tips , coz m a new blogger . Thanks for same
Excellent guide as always, I totally agree with analyzing the money pages ans optimizing those for visitors. I think that offering something to click on is essential and nothing better for an exit click than Adsense, works for me!
Thanks,
Ann
Great post! thanks.
Just one thing I would add, there needs to be regular communication with your readership. Share with them useful information and other links to related articles.
Thanks
Twitter >>@Iconic88
Excellent words of wisdom from an advanced marketer. To build on this concept a little, one of things I do to monetize is to use Clickbank.
Here’s how it works.
As this excellent article states, relevance is key. So I use Clickbank products that are exactly on topic. Let me take you through an example.
One of my blog posts gets a ton of traffic. I know this from Google Analytics. The post is about American Idol.
I then go to Clickbank’s Market Place and type in “American Idol”. There is a product that tells how people how to audition for American Idol and get the judges to say YES.
I then create a banner “inhouse” for this product using what I feel is the strongest line from the websites sales copy. I go into Wordpress and paste in the code for the banner I created directly into the American Idol blog post.
Again another engaging post for blog/web site owners to learn from – Many thanks. For my most popular blog post I have created internal links from similar posts (i.e. inter linking), and also promoted the popular post under a section titled recommended posts (i.e. grouping) in the sidebar. Good ideas as you described.
Regarding SEO techniques, I converted a small site of mine into a word document (basic Trademe auction selling tips for visitors to easily download, which includes links to the actual web site and other sites of mine) and link from my small site to the word document. I didn’t realize that the word document itself, would display in the Google search results for a popular search phrase (as determined in Google Web master tools) – sometimes ahead of the actual site itself. So perhaps having a linked document with the same title/content is a good avenue to improve search results ranking for a web site(s). I use Google’s AdWords keyword tool to help find alternative popular keywords for content, which is helpful…
Cheers
I think this is a great post, helping those that may have lost track with some good sound advice about how to gain the maximum benefit from their pages and to help them make money from home. Great advice.
Well , this is literally a solid post.I have gone back to my better pages and added affiliate links and such but I didn’t think to work on internal linking and other seo touches.
@Maki- Could you also make a blog post telling us more about CPA ?
Off to my top content right now. Great post Maki.
Even with that nicely laid out step by step process to making money with your website many people are still sitting their scratching their heads.
Great ideas! There’s a great free plugin called Psychic Search that tells you what people searched for in your blog – you can download it at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/psychic-search/ .
Enjoy, Barbara
Hi Maki,
This is a rock solid tips on how to make money with your website. There is alot to learn from here, and I will share this to all my business partners. Thanks Maki
Cheers,
Julius
Great step by step process for making money with your website.
The main point I think is to focus on the pages that have the potential to give you the best return in the shortest period of time. Once you get those pages right you can then start to work on some of the other pages to increase the return from them as well.
Amazing post. For me the 4th step is the most difficult one. I’ll try to apply some of these tips as soon as possible.
I know you’re not writing as much as you used to, Maki, but this is why people stay subscribed to your site. This post is a great reference point for anyone looking to monetise their site.
Thanks a lot for an in-depth and awesome article. Really enjoyed it a lot. Cheers for sharing.
Yeah! Zelda!
Great article, lot of tips and tricks down here. Since i’m a newbie for this domain world of mystery. I’ll stick around digging for more great article down here. thanks.
I’ve Stumbled this post thumbs up.
If you want to make money from your blog, it’s going to take work. Lots of work. Hard work.
Blogging for profit is a job. So, blog about something you love. LOVE.
Thanks for useful info.I like this post but there is so long.
Amazing post. Some of the comments about it being too long are missing the point… It is a difficult process. That is why some make it and most don’t. Thanks for all of the valuable information. A fantastic article. One of your best!
Good post. Like the term ‘Money Pages’
It’s truly a great article. But for most case, your index page is the strongest which you should focus more to build search engine traffic.
Wow! That was a LOT of information! Loved it! Thanks (I think) for clueing me in on the work I need to be doing to help out my site. I love the articles and look forward to more!
Like your posts, not technical but also not too global overview. So I understand better..
Thank you,,
You really have great tips here. Another great tool I think is to install a wordpress translator plug in for the pages to be indexed in different languages available to search engines. This will require a stress on the server though.
Wooh.. long post but it collect all knowledges and techniques that are required making site more conversional. I think you should make your posts shorter.. please
Maki, such a useful resource you have provided in your post. But I still have to understand true meaning of “Monetization’ . I have read this word on so many blogs but sill can’t get it.
Ali.
hello!
nice tips
but do we have to spend money in order for us to earn money?
hope to read more of your posts
Very glad,
That you are on my RSS Reader (Netvibes and Google Reader)…
Your posts are a part of my curriculum in a Master class at Hardknocks U.
Rock on Maki! (or DoshDosh)
P.S.: I LOVE long blog posts…the longer and erudite, the better
really great tips.
like your articles.
Top advice as always.
Like many of the other commenters I read this and thought, ‘long post, lot of effort’. Then I thought again. The effort relative to the gain for making the most of your well performing pages is actually much less than doing a little work on each of 5 under performing ones. The choice is yours, but ultimately it’s all about the dosh dosh isn’t it?
Thanks for the tip about adding “Frequently Asked Questions” content to pages. This is a great way to generate new content.
Thanks for all the helpful info on making money online. Indeed the insights you have presented
are workable and effective. Tried some of it myself. So maybe I should read through your post
again to fully comprehend and take the advices at heart.
great basics on why analytics are so hugely valuable and how to specifically act on them. nice.
Hi…i like your post, awesome..step by step tips.
but i have one question : what the difference dofollow and nofollow to SEO or PR? some webmaster suggest me to set rel:”dofollow” other said rel:”nofollow”.
You said : ” And then there’s the controversial topic of PageRank Sculpting: using the nofollow tag on internal site links to optimize the strength of specific pages, thereby enabling them to rank better in search engines. “
Making Money is not very easy for sure, but hard work and some determination will pay off. Thanks for your great insight!
Hi Maki, Just a suggestion : A more effective sharing button would spread the word faster
I strongly recomment Tell-a-Friend(Socialtwist) because of their email options & other versatile features
Oh well, for those who may not read it because it is too long, they are most likely the same people who won’t do anything because it takes work.
Not to worry. The one’s who do read it, and most likely, like myself, have to re-read it, will get done what needs doing.
I like the idea about the capture leads. I like the idea about adding a FAQ section onto ones site. I also like the idea about giving old viewers the ability to go to a new link, in which, they are provided the opportunity to view totally new material from a new site.
Although I have seen many reference pages on many different sites, I did not know that site viewers were specifically funneled out in such a manner – to justify what their true interests really were.
Thank you for this (mind) inspiring article.
Actually, there is more than can be learnt from reading this exceptionally looooooong post instead of what`s actually written.
For example, its long… very long but how many people would usually read ALL the way down? Not many, especially me.
Excellent, captivating pictures. Personally, I`d would have loved it if there were more cat pics but that`s just me. CatAholic. The pictures break up each point nicely which is really good for the brain to take a quick moment to relax and refresh. There are others if you dig deeper but that`s not what this post is about so I`ll stop there.
Is iot just me or at your contact page you didn’t install the captcha plugin?
Cheers
wussa
Good tips. But it is hard to earn money on the internet.
I liked the idea of “Step 2: Improving Content Relevance”. A good content attracts visitors without using SEO techniques.
Very long but usefully article. Congrats!
I have a comment for all the people who say the blog post is too long.
There is no fluff here. The article is completely filled with relevant information. If you are too lazy to read an informative tutorial post like this and put it to use, how do you expect to make money online.
I mean come on, is it really too much to put in your brain at one time? Geez
@Adam Singer –
Yeah thats the benefit of maki whenever he post … he post direct from brain and heart … I really appreciate his work.
@trademetips
Yup, documents are indexed by Google as well, which is why you see many internet marketers convert articles into PDFs, embed affiliate links in them and submit them to PDF engines like Scribd.com
@Niteesh Mehra
Hmm.. I’ll think about writing a post about CPA programs. Thanks for the suggestion!
@ Barbara Ling
Cool. Internal search queries are important too especially if your site has a lot of visitors everyday. Good for improving usability.
@ Mike – Twenty Steps
Hey, nice to see you commenting here again! I’ve been trying to write more often so hopefully that works out
@ Jeremy Eden
You’re the only one who noticed that hah.
@ VlogHog
Thanks for stumbling the post! Yeah, I agree. Blogging about something you love helps to grease the groove, much easier to work on a blog if you’re into the topic.
@ Millionaire Acts
Yeah, translator plugins can get more pages indexed and usually, more search traffic. I’ve got some sites using these plugins on shared hosting and they haven’t gotten any problems yet.
@Ali
‘Monetization’ comes from the word ‘monetize’ which means to turn something into money. It’s normally used in the context of currency and finance but when used by webmasters or in terms of internet marketing, it means to make money from a website or service.
@ struggling to earn money
No, you don’t have to spend money to optimize your money pages.
@maikeru76
Thanks! Glad you like the detailed posts.
@ Lbug
It depends on your time and what you want to get out of it. Putting up ads and improving your money pages can take 10 minutes to 4 hours (or even more).. of course, if you’re getting a ton of visitors to it, the more effort you put in improving it, the more ROI you’ll get. And considering that you don’t have to constantly edit these pages every day, there’s really nothing to lose here.
@ An GG Ar An
Using nofollow on certain parts of your website allows to control the ‘flow’ of Pagerank and distribute it to more important pages, thus improving their ability to rank better. Try clicking on the links I’ve listed in the article for ‘nofollow’ and ‘pagerank sculpting’… and do some reading from there.
@ Allen
I’ll check out Tell-a-Friend. Thanks for the suggestion!
@ Patrick
Thanks for the compliment dude. I wanted to do more cat pictures too but couldn’t find anymore kittens rolling around in cash. Normal cat pics would be a little too irrelevant (although I do have an hot air balloon,zelda and hynoptic button up there.. oops)
@ Robinana
I’ll have to agree with everything you’ve said.
@ Everyone else
Thanks for your comments!
Thats an awesome and detailed post there covering all the important parts. Way to go.
Nice Zelda picture, the monitization tips are great just wanted to see more speicifics on the lead acquisition, possibly a new post?
This post is long. However, it is very detailed. I like the step by step format with a detailed explanation. GREAT work! Thank you very much for sharing this.
I’m curious, what’s the standard bounce rate for a blog? Also, wouldn’t the bounce rate for a blog be higher, since even readers who read and enjoy an entire article are likely to leave the site once finished reading?
Wow, this was definitely a quality post! I’m probably best at #5, in that I’m pretty good at internally linking back to my content from both my blogs and my main business website. I’ll admit that I find the monetizing of some of those pages difficult because, well, like this post actually, I wouldn’t be able to conceive just what kind of item to monetize for on this particular topic. The best I could imagine would be to work on Adsense placement and style to see if that makes money. Other than that, I’d be lost; how would you handle monetizing a post like this one?
Great post. This helps a lot to those want more money on their websites…
@Ricardo @ NurtureYourWealth –
yes, you’re right, Ricardo
if your domain is hosted in yahoo, they have a feature in which you have the capability to submit your site to search engines like yahoo, google and msn but no guarantee that it will be indexed on their search engines but it takes time to be indexed on their search engines.
great post mr dosh!..however i dont agree in all aspects here lol..
Has to be one of the top overall posts on this topic anywhere. Forwarded to some blogger friends. I never really focused on going back to monetize specific pages better and always treated my site globally instead. Makes me rethink that.
I would suggest using article marketing to boost the rankings of your money pages. Write up an article on EzineArticles, Squidoo, Hubpages, and stick in a free wordpress blog on the issue. Then interlink all the sites to gain maximum strength from those links, and link them to your page. It won’t take that much time to write up, and your traffic and SERPs will shoot up.
Hi,
These are great tips especially the one about making sure you have answers to all your questions that concern your main keywords. Google wants to rank you high you just must give them the proper information and be the expert or one of them to be ranked on page 1.
Thanks for sharing!
Jeff Casmer
love the FAQ from keywords idea. keep up the great work.
@Young – Good comment
Making money with websites is very popular these days but not an easy task, it involves lots of trick and tips before you proceed with the brand marketing strategy. Great post!
Thank you for making the steps so clear that even a newbie could understand
it very clearly. I should probably focus on improving on nos. 2 and 4.
And thank you for pointing that out. You have accurately laid down
the essentials one by one. Amazing article.
Most every site has some good money pages that could be optimized for greater profits. There is definitely a lot of money being left on the table by website owners that aren’t thinking in this light. Good lesson!
Wow long and awesome post Maki! If we continuously creating the website by following your steps, I believe that all our websites do make money! But all of these take times, depends on how many hard works and efforts you put on these.
Regards,
Lee
Great advice!
Tq for your sharing, its do give me some ideas how to increase my daily unique views. 200 daily unique views are my target now. will come back to u once i achieve it!
Very interesting and informative content – thanks so much for sharing it with us!
Hey Maki, long and useful article! I just know SEO is the only way for people to make more money with Adsense. Between, I may want to try out some guidelines that you mentioned above and apply it in my blog to see how’s going. Thanks again for the good tips!
Regards,
Lee
Great Post. I think content relevance is the most important part. Till the time your site is not sticky you cannot expect other things to happen.
Excellent tips on monetization. It is true that not all monetization options are utilized by most of the blog-owners more so because most of them are ignorant about these. Most of the bloggers start off just because they have read somewhere that blog can help make money but they have very little knowledge of what is it that makes money.
Thanks for sharing this great information!
Woohh! that is a really long post, but quality content i have to admit. I have shared this with my friends too i think they might pick up a thing or two and improve their blogs.
Thanks for the great post.
A very comprehensive tips. But it takes time to do all the things you listed.
Maki,
I can not imagined how much opportunities we all have to make money and we are not using. Thanks for this eye-opening piece. Your thoughts are great maki. Keep it up.
Thanks for this post! I even printed it out! I think what stuck out the most was the idea of sending internal links to my money pages. I”m going to install the smart link plugin. It makes sense. One more way to ‘control’ where readers go! Thank You!
A very good article and site. I’ll definitly point my readers your way.
Sounds very interesting. “Take one step at a time and wait for getting organic results ” – advice to all people who commented it would take very long to follow these steps. I’ll try to optimize my job portal using this.
I really appreciate the idea of looking at each of our posts and monetizing those which bring in the most traffic. The traffic may be fleeting at times, so it is good to capitalize on the popularity with a call to action.
This lit a fire under me to give my site the attention that it needs in so many areas. I agree that it’s important to set aside time to get it done and stay up to date with relevant information. Thanks
This is one of those seminal Posts that is a big Wake up call for those that have built a great site, full of original content and are sitting on their butts wondering why the advertisers aren’t knocking the door down. Get to work and start reworking those older pages (talking to myself here…)
This is all solid advise and should be re-visited every few months by anyone that plans on staying in the blogging game.
Building a monetized blog isn’t that easy … Right now , i’m waiting for the 1st dollar to come out of my site .. You just need to be patient .
I love this post. This is full of incredibly great content about creating content and getting everything relevant. What could be more relevant than that?
This is a really great and a big hand of a help post to any novice in marketing their websites or any person who would want their sites or blogs to gain more traffic and revenue.
Thank you for the tips! This blog is very useful especially to entrepreneurs that use the net for business and income.
Huge thanks to Maki.
I’ve been struggling to make money online but I am glad I’ve now found Dosh Dosh – by the way the Prosense theme is easily one of the best I have found – I use it on two of my sites.
I think niches are the way to go – when I started I was tackling giants without realising it – now I’m after lots and lots of small fish!
You know a lot of stuff. Amazing. I think also easy to read websites or blogs helps. I left a lot of sites in a few seconds because either they took too long to load, or were just hard to read; bad layouts.
I love your posts. Detailed, informative and well researched. I always know that the info you provide is proven and I make sure that if I am not doing it before I read it then I am afterwards.
This is some Awesome Information as usual! It seems that many bloggers, including myself, write about topics, but you Truely Cover The Topic. You make it very easy to understand and make a novice like myself want to do better. Thank you for sharing great insight. I believe this is another way to be noticed by Search Engines, cover a topic without holding back certain secrets that you would rather your competitor not know. Cover a topic to its fullest extent, which you do on every topic. Thanks again, and keep up the Great work!
Thats was well present if you are thinking for starting your own blog i belive you must read this blog first, back in 2008 when i start my blog its was a mest but from reading i get the eng of it
i think monetisation is most important for any site….. and keywords comes next to it.
better optimisation….better leads and better income.
@Brett Borders –
Am gooing to follow Brett’s idea and post U to FaceBook and of course Stumble/Tweet
Thank U 4 sharing your knowledge=wisdom
A very useful and in depth article. This is very good and clearly explained.
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