Jan
30

Google QuickSand: US bias and other fun findings while drowning in sand

Posted by: Patrick Gavin on January 30, 2009 at 12:02 pm

It admittedly has been a while since I have tried to rank a brand new domain from scratch so fortunately the "Google Sandbox" concept hasn’t crossed my mind in a long time. Hell it’s even got its own Wikipedia entry these days. Well I can report that the sandbox effects are alive and well but there are some things that are new to me that I wanted to report on to get your thoughts on your experience. What I have noticed: There doesn’t seem to be the same filter or sandbox effects in non US Google engines. For example Google.de or Google.es rank my new domain on page one in their results but no where to be found in the top 500 on Google.com The filter can be on a page by page level and not at a domain level. I have sub pages within the site that ARE ranking to the top for terms in Google but these same DO have quality direct inbound links into them. So it seems that on a page by page level you can climb out of the sand while that doesn’t mean it will lift your entire site from the filter. The sandbox is exposed on "future" datacenter checks. Again could be late to the party here but performing a search on "future" datacenters on tools like DCcheck.com will show your sandboxed page ranking "where it should rank" without the filter. Which is encouraging and frustrating at the same time! So the big question is how does a site climb completely out of the sandbox? Here is a short list:

Build quality links. The obvious one, the more quality links you build the better shot you have at going out. The caveat being, you may need to build these quality links to a number of pages including your homepage to free it.
Time. After you build the links you may just need time for them "to bake".
Move out of the US. Got to consider this right? Less competition in the SERPS, no Sandbox.

What are you seeing and what tips would you add for folks looking to dig out?

Jan
10

Blog Advertising is BROKE. Here is guide to fix it.

Posted by: Patrick Gavin on January 10, 2009 at 9:35 am

I have done a LOT of advertising on blogs over the last few years pouring hundreds of thousands into ad campaigns with mixed results. I am the typical advertiser on your blog: I get started and I see less than expected traffic from your blog in the first week then it trickles down to next to nothing and I don’t renew in month two. In this post I am going to show you how to attract and keep advertisers coming back to advertise on your blog and show advertisers what to look for to maximize roi on your ad buy! In general most blog ad campaigns that you purchase directly from the blog owner are:

sold on a flat rate for a 30 day run. Unlike typical ad networks that sell on a CPM basis blog owners find it easiest to manage ad sales on a flat rate for a given time period.
typically the ad unit sold is a 125×125 ad unit. This has become a staple on blogs as it fits nicely into most templates. The biggest problem with the 125×125 ad that you purchase on a blog is that the visitors you are trying to reach rarely see them! They are tucked into the right margin of most blogs and mixed in with 4, 6, or 8 other advertisers vying for your attention.
no way to reach the rss readers. Most ad campaigns don’t include a way to reach the rss readers of the blog as the website based banner ads do not show in rss readers. Typically the rss readers are among the most passionate readers of the topic of the blog and it is a must for an advertiser to get in front of these enthusiasts.

The result of a standard blog advertising campaign is very little branding and even lower CRTs and visitors to your site. How to Fix Blog Advertising #1 – Blog owners need to think like advertisers! This is the overarching rule. When it comes to ad placements and ad positions/formats you have to ask yourself: if I was paying to drive traffic to my blog what would that campaign look like? #2 – The 125×125 isn’t going away but you must supplement it with "interruption sized" banner sizes and placements. My suggestion is adding in a 468×60 at the top of the site and a 300×250 at the bottom of individual post pages. Then once all three units are in place you need to ROADBLOCK the two larger ad units for the same. So for each page impression one of the advertisers would get their ad on the top of the site (468×60), an ad in the left margin (125×125) and your ad at the bottom of the post (300×250). All advertisers will get 100% exposure in the 125×125 section on the right margin. #3 – A monthly sponsor thank you post. The sponsor post serves two purposes: a. reach the rss readers who don’t see the website based and b. get the advertisers exposure in the content area of the page where readers won’t miss them. Ideally the format allows the advertiser to add a logo and then a message that could be a description of their product/services along with a coupon code special for this site. #4 – Creative creatives! The ad has to draw the visitor’s attention and entice a click. Adding a call to action like "click here" "get started", etc, can help. It is important to try a number of different ads and test CTR to see what ads perform the best for you. Even when you think you have one, it will go stale over time and ideally you are swapping out your creative monthly but this is hard to do. Our most successful ad for TLA didn’t even mention our company name it was just this ad below run on TechCrunch: The Blog Owner Cheat Sheet To Attracting and Keeping Advertisers (feel free to copy for your own blog!) Advertising on XYX.com Rates: $X per 30 day run What you get: a 125×125 that gets 100% of pageviews in the right margin. A 468×60 and 300×250 that will be shown together one out of every four page views. Also* we will be doing a monthly sponsor post that will feature your products and services within the content area of our site and will reach our RSS subscribers! What we need from you: three creatives: 125×125, 300×250, 468×60 (shown in order below) Here is how to pay: Send any questions, creatives to: — Hope this helps you as a blogger to make more money by attracting and keeping advertisers longer and helps advertisers see a better roi on their ad buys!

Nov
4

Killer Blog Based Business Model #2 – Smartphone Experts

Posted by: Patrick Gavin on November 4, 2008 at 8:25 pm

After renaming the $15M sale of Bankaholic as the "Killer Blog Based Business Model #1" I have found a network of blogs worth of that same title of Killer Blog Based Business Models and it is Smartphone Experts who operate these well known blogs: Crackberry, TreoCentral, IphoneBlog, WMexpert, and AndroidCentral. What is the Smartphone Experts network doing right? Just about everything. Here is a short list:

Great domain names. Name of the product in the domain which helps for seo and adds trust to the overall experience.
Building a community by being an authority. This can’t be stressed enough. These are great blogs with writers that are experts within each niche phone device. Covering launch dates, rumors on new phones, everything. This expertise causes other relates blogs to link to them which obviously builds up trust in the search engines which lead these sites to accumulate extremely high rankings. Not only high rankings but a very long tail of keywords due to the volume of posts per day giving them a chance to rank for all kinds of related keyword searches.
"Ads" that reinforce the brand! This is my favorite thing these guys do. If you look at these blogs you will have trouble even finding an Adsense ad. All ads are calling visitors to their own branded ecommerce stores selling accessories for the very phones the blog covers! Why send visitors off when you can own the whole cycle yourself? Brilliant. It worked on me today. I had been to Crackberry.com many times over the last couple of months checking news on the new Bold. Then today I go to search for "blackberry bold cases" on Google and a familiar site pops into the top 5, shop.crackberry.com Now all these sites will have the same products but of course I go with the site I "trust" as they have branded themselves an authority in my brain because of their great blog content.

Does this blog based business model work? Well the company did $584k in 2003 and $16M in 2006, so that is a resounding yes! So I can’t get the point above out of my head and here lies the challenge of building a great blog based business: How can you not only build a brand by creating an authority blog for your topic but not stop there… own the traffic that comes in by developing your own product or service that answers a need for that crowd and delivers that product or service yourself?