Trends Test
I must admit, I'm confused. There must be more factors at stake here that I'm not able to see, such as articles pointing toward a keyword in Google Trends. My test consisted of me picking a top 10 Google Hot Trend word and then making a post, with the keyword used as the title. Afterward, I choose another 'Spicy' key phrase and repeated said process.
How Does a Kangaroo Stay Cool?
My First search phrase netted me over 200 unique visitors in about a 20hr period. The majority of traffic came from my blog link in the Hot Trends page for the keyword. However, in less than 15 minutes my blog was ranking #2 for the same keyword phrase on normal web search.
A very small percentage of my traffic actually originated from normal web search, around 10%. This leads me to believe the only traffic I received actually looking for this term, organically, was a handful or less. The rest of the traffic was webmasters following the new Google Hot Trend train. Needless to say this traffic did not convert, at least with the few Adsense ads I have running on my site.
Iron Carbon Alloy
The second keyword phrase I used was Iron Carbon Alloy, which netted less than 20 hits. My opinion is that less people were interested in this phrase, at least webmasters interested in what Hot Trends could offer their site. All of my traffic came from my blog link on the Hot Trends Page. Although Spicy at one point, 'Iron Carbon Alloy' has already dropped off the hot trends radar.
Conclusion
More testing is definitely necessary to see what other external factors play a part in ranking. For Hot Trends blog links some sort of relevance is determined before your site is even listed. Lastly, webmasters hanging on Google's every move do not convert...at all. So how do we use this in a real world, marketing and converting environment?
AuctionAds.com Communication Problems
Could someone please point me in the direction of where to contact AuctionAds.com, because I used their contact page last week, still without a response. A few days later, without response, I headed over to ShoeMoney's Forums, to see if I could get an answer there.
Still no answer.
Frustrated, I did something I never do, post a comment off topic in their official blog, to try and solicit a response. No such luck there either, I guess they don't read the comments to their own blog posts.
With eBay ACRU tracking being corrupted, how much and how long we don't know, and no response from AuctionAds, I'm beginning to doubt my monthly PayPal dispersal. Any response would help put my mind at ease, but apparently, as a publisher, I rank right above a 'nappy headed ho'.
Ebay Affiliate Program Botched?
Yesterday evening I received a disturbing email, which got me wondering just how secure my earnings in any affiliate program really were. This email was sent through CommissionJunction.com and not directly from Ebay.
Dear Christopher ********:
The eBay US affiliate program is experiencing a tracking issue that began on Saturday April 7, and may partially affect your ACRU and RevShare performance. We expect to have this issue resolved shortly. We will update you as soon as we have more information.
Thank you for your continued support of the program.
The eBay.com affiliate team
Essentially, this means that for the past 4-5 days my referrals could either be up or down. I'm not a big player by any means, but a few hundred dollars a month is enough to make me wince when I see an communicator such as this. Also, taking this a bit further, how has this tracking issue with the ebay affiliate program affected AuctionAds.com?
There has been no word from AuctionAds end, yet I don't quite understand how this referral tracking issue could only affect me. Will Ebay Affiliate Publishers be owing money or will they be getting a fat check in the near future? My money is on the fact that any referrals lost, are just that, lost.
In the past 2 days I've served AuctionAds over 3,800 impressions, with more than 130 clicks, and earned just enough to receive payout. When the Ebay tracking issue is resolved, in any way, will AuctionAds be repsonsible for going back through Paypal and making adjustments with it's publishers? This tracking issue obviously does not effect everyone, but I'll be interested to see how it takes a toll on this new startup.
ServerPlace.net Disables MySQL Database
The title says it all and in itself should not condemn the web host in any way, shape or form. The issue stems from the type of service that was provided from the point of disabling the MySQL database to the point of my website being returned to it's once glorious self. (Ok fine, just when it was back up then. :P)
The first thorn in my side was that I was not notified of my database being disabled. I was checking my email, comments, etc, before crashing last night when I noticed that Buy-Wii.net was down. I was not greeted by the typical WP Database error screen either, rather I was asked to install wordpress from the beginning. I immediately logged on via ftp and through PHPMyAdmin to find the culprit, hoping that it would be something simple.
Scouring through the files found in the sub-domain folder everything seemed to be in place. WP-Config.php appeared to be in the right place along with all the correct info. So what gives, usually when a site is hacked there is a deletion of the config.php file...or worse the entire domain deleted. (eeek, at least this has been my experience.) With everything else appearing to be in order I needed to check my MySQL Database.
Through PHPMyAdmin it appeared that my WP database had been completely deleted of it's tables. The actual database was there, but void of any tables or data. I admit, I over reacted and posted to V7N that I needed help. (before finding this problem.) ServerPlace.net provides Live Support which I took advantage of and that's where the level of service dropped even further.
If a company is going to provide live support, you should be greeted by a live person, or at least appear to be. Instead the robot on the other side kept asking the same questions, before the actual 'person' arrived. I'm afraid my situation didn't improve after this either, mainly because of an obvious language barrier. WHY oh WHY outsource a critical aspect to a hosting providers operation?
To make my long and drawn out conversation with tech support short, I was instructed to optimize my database. Hmm, seems fair enough if it will fix the issue, but one small problem with this fix.
Sandra: yes when i enabled it suddenly load on the serve was gone high
Sandra: it was touched to 25 +
Chris: ok, so what is the fix?
Chris: again, there has been no change on my end
Sandra: you have to optimise your database
Sandra: so that it will not increse load on the serve
Sandra: server
Chris: how do I do that?
Chris: are you there?
Sandra: yes please give me moment
Chris: no problem
Sandra: for optimizing database please refer this url
Sandra: http://www.webkeydesign.com/26/optimize-your-mysql-databases/
Chris: how can I do that if you've disabled it?
Sandra: ok i will enable it.
My head still hurts after that conversation and yet this simple excerpt from the communication does it no justice. What would have more impact was if the messages were time stamped, since I was talking with Sandra at ServerPlace.net for nearly 1 hour, just to get to this point.
Moral of the story, I will most likely not be leaving ServerPlace.net. I've used a handful of other popular shared hosting providers and despite this stroke-inducing incident, they still remain the best of the worst. Eventually I need to break down, throw up the extra cash, and get a VP or Dedicated Server. Damn you internets.
Has the PR Update Begun?
I'm sure for most this morning it's old news, but it looks like Google is shaking things up again. The Q1 PR update may be incomplete, effect old domains, new domains, whatever...the rhyme and reason is unclear at this point.
Also, it looks like propagation is slow or Google is just testing the waters. What a great way to start of the New Year, than with the PR update announcement. Personally, only one of my sites have been affected, but it's still early on.
PR Update posts at DP:
And I'm sure many more will start surfacing as anxious webmasters roll out of bed. Personally, I could care less, but the ruckus is still fun to watch.
Session ID in PHP, Bad for SEO
Up until yesterday I was oblivious to the fact that SessionID's were affixing themselves to my cached pages in Google. I had noticed the odd looking url's but assumed it was old indexing before I switched to SEO friendly urls. I was wrong, very wrong and it may cost me more than I know.
Supplemental results abound and the best way to land yourself in them is through duplicate content. Google was indexing my pages and finding the standard /cat/45 url AND they were finding the /cat/45PHPSESSID.....?3424 blah blah. This told google that I had duplicate content and may have already given my directory a bad name.
So what to do? Now that I've found the issue, I need to fix the issue and there are apparently a number of ways to do this. First, I've contacted my host, as the script creator for IndexScript suggested. Next, I did some searching and found that I could probably take care of it through my .htaccess file.
RagePank.com has a great writeup on preventing these Session ID's from becoming a nuisance and provides a few workarounds. I will be awaiting a response from my host to see if I need to take any further steps and hopefully put my directory back on the right track.
Excerpt from RagePank article:
Session IDs in PHP can cause some real problems when search engines index your pages. For this reason, you should disable PHPSESSID on your sites, and keep session IDs in cookies instead. If you disable PHPSESSID in the URL, this can become a usability issue, as all visitors must have cookies enabled to make use of any code that requires sessions (such as login scripts).
Things I Wish Would Come Back
A few weeks back I made a post regarding thins on the internet that I wish would take off. That is they started, grew, stumbled, and then fell and have yet to be revived. Well, this is a take on that same concept, but some of these never really took off.
Unfortunately, these are the things that are still waiting to jump out of the nest, like it or not.
- UmDum Blog
- The-Grayline (My own fault.)
- Sig-Pig
- Juggo-Pop
- The360Index (Site I sold...expecting to flourish.)
Again, that's all for now, there just isn't enough time in the day to take care of all that needs tending to. I'm guilty of a full plate, are you?
Creating a List
I'm starting to become aggravated with the ability to create and maintain an email list. It looks like I'm going to finally have to breakdown and invest some money in a monthly subscription to manage newsletters and email addys. Garr, frustrating.
Here are a few email management services I'm considering:
I am leaning very heavily toward the Constant Contact, but I'm only hesitant because I'm not sure how successful my email marketing campaign will be. Only one way to find out I guess. Also, I most likely will not use AutoBot...because they retain the right to email anyone on my list....hell with that.
Lastly, I am currently building an email list via FeedBurner. They provide the opt-in code, the verification and the opt-out ability. The problem is that you obviously cannot directly mail anyone a newsletter from this application. It's not a waste of time though, because I can export my email list at anytime into csv format...for importing into the service I choose.
Things I Wish Would Take Off
The internet is a rapidly growing, evolving, monster that if your standing still, your over looked. 2 years ago when I first started online projects it was a snap to throw up a website and it would slowly develop itself. However, it seems that now more than ever if you stop developing, your dead and over looked.
The following sites or ideas are not dead, but perhaps remained stagnant for awhile. Each item listed I feel has great potential!
-XFL
Well, that's all I got for now, but I know for a fact there are countless others. I suppose I just had an overwhelming feeling of nostalgia earlier perusing through some old posts on an old forum.
Makes me look at some projects that I've dropped along the way in favor of more profitable ones. I wonder what others have dropped in favor of 'better' ideas?
Theme Modification
It seems I'm still trying to find a theme that fits my blogging style and mood. Today, I think I may have found it, after a little bit of modification this one just might stick. The theme being used is ChaoticSoul by Bryan Veloso and the basic installation does not fulfill my SEO needs, so bring out the tools.
I'll briefly highlight some of the minor changes I've made thus far. First and foremost I need to have my blogs name at the top and NOT ChaoticSoul. Afterward, it's important to me to have some distinction between my theme and the thousands of others being used in standard form. I've compiled a few images that embody everything I'm about on the net and used them as my left/right images in the header, I think the end product is nice.
Search engines give my blog intermittent love and usually sends visitors to a single page, possibly months back in the archives. This is great, however with that single_post template they have no idea what my blog is about. By installaing FuzzyPosts and placing a latest_posts.php in my singlepage template visitors can now see my last 10 posts in the sidebar.
What bothers me is that this theme does not include a blogroll standard, it must be added to your sidebar. You can get your blog roll up and running again by placing the code ?php get_links_list(); ?> anywhere in the ChaoticSoul sidebar where you want your links to show up.
For now, that's about as far as I've made it, although I'm far from being finished. Throughout the day I'll be modifying my AdsenseDeluxe so that my ads blend with the template. Hope others enjoy this template as much as I do.
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