Happy 4th of July everyone! I hope you all have a great day. Have fun and be safe.

Something new came across my radar today and that is the concept of buying websites as a SEO strategy. For example, you can buy an established site and use its popularity in your link building efforts. That is especially possible if the website you are purchasing has a high PageRank. Say that you buy a site with a PageRank of 7. You can use this new site to boost traffic to your existing sites and you can make some money selling some outbound links. Now that sounds like a nice investment.

What if you bought a site with a tremendous amount of traffic? You can start sending some of that traffic on to your other sites. You can also monetize the traffic with AdSense, Yahoo, affiliate sales, etc. There are some real opportunities here if the price is right. Heck, many of the sites I have seen for sale already have revenue streams in place. All you have to do is step in and take over.

I hope I have got you thinking. As you can see, there are several benefits that can make the purchase of an established and popular website an intriguing possibility. Does anyone else have any ideas along this line of thinking? Anyone got any good sites for sale?

If you are anything like me, then I am sure you have considered developing an opt-in email list for your business. I am in the process of researching email list building and everything that goes along with it. Tomorrow I will offer an early release of my notes regarding this topic to readers of this blog.

Right now the notes contain information on companies providing an email list hosting service, an exhaustive list of points to consider when selecting a provider, some potential incentives for your website visitors to join your list, and some different ideas for finding people to join your list. OK, that is all for now. I will see you back here tomorrow.

Jason

I have been contemplating some different topics for inclusion into this blog, but I thought I would open it up to you readers first to see what information you want. I am considering an experiment with audio on a website. I have also considered different aspects of website rendering on mobile devices. As I mentioned in my last post, I have been experimenting with keyword misspellings and I am developing a tool in that area that some might find useful.

What types of information will help make you more successful in your SEO efforts? I have my thoughts, but I want to see what you think too.

I have recently been reminded of the goldmine that may exist in keyword misspellings. This is a good technique in driving inexpensive traffic from highly competitve keywords in an AdWords campaign. It is also an opportunity for picking up traffic from misspelled URLs that are typed directly in to the address bar in a browser.

I have taken advantage of the opportunity that misspelled keywords present in my AdWords campaigns and they have been very successful. I have been able to have my ads presented for keywords that I would not have otherwise been able to afford. I have found misspelled keywords available for $.05 where I would have had to pay over $2 for the correctly spelled keyword.

I can also report that those misspelled keywords do generate traffic. In fact, 95% of the traffic in one of my best AdWords campaigns comes from a particular misspelled keyword.

I am currently working on a web application that will help myself and others generate these keyword misspellings. I will post a blog announcing its release when it becomes available.

I don’t have a lot of time for a post tonight, but I want to mention that my PageRank has recalculated on all of my sites. I am not sure if it is a result of a continuing Bigdaddy update or maybe I have finally achieved PageRank status on some of my sites. Perhaps my days in the Google sandbox are over. Anyhow, I just wanted to mention this. Let me know if anyone else has experienced the same thing recently as well.

I have really been looking into AdSense optmization tips recently. I, like most other webmasters, would like to derive some income from the traffic to my websites. Here is what I have found so far. Let’s get a discussion going. Please leave some feedback/comments if you have any. Thanks.

1. Choose the best format. According to Google the best formats are 336×280, 300×250, and 160×600 in that order.
2. Do not use a color scheme that contrasts with the color scheme you have on your site. In fact, adjust the AdSense to blend in with your site style
3. Consider using small link units. They can be added above and beyond your 3 AdSense units.
4. Test, test, test! Use channels to monitor your tests. Try different colors, placements, AdSense units, etc.

Today is my son’s birthday and in working on today’s blog post I realized that hard work and ambition is very important, but there are times when we need to stop and smell the roses. There is a great deal to be appreciative of, but sometimes we are so set on another goal that we overlook all that we have achieved so far.

I review my web logs every day, and you should too, and I dream of more traffic. I look at what is working and what is not. I check to see which search engine crawlers have visited and when their last visit occurred. Then I set my resolve to do better; to do more. That is all fine and good and it is the way I am wired. The thing I need to keep in mind is that my sites are doing very well and the hard work has paid off. It is OK to sit back and enjoy it for a while. Keep this in mind for yourself and take some time to soak in all that you have accomplished so far. You and I both know that the work will still be there tomorrow.

Happy Birthday Son!

One of the key elements to keeping visitors and search engines happy is to keep your content fresh. I know I don’t like to go to a web page and see the same thing I saw the day before. How boring would it be if the news channel ran yesterday’s news again today? Keep that in mind with your own website.

I try my best to keep content updated on a daily basis. This takes a lot of work, but it really pays off in the long run. Visitors enjoy dropping by your site to see what is new and search engines make a point to check back more frequently because their is always fresh content that needs indexed. This is why blogs are so popular. They tend to have fresh new content daily.

One way I have found to keep updates going regularly is to set up a schedule and stick to it. I just use a simple Excel spreadsheet and list out the tasks that I want to accomplish for each of my websites over the course of a week. I leave an empty cell next to each task and include a bottom border on that cell. I then print out the sheet and work the tasks as scheduled. When a task has been completed I put a checkmark on the empty line next to the task. It is really an easy way to schedule and track your website activity.

Set an ambitious schedule and keep up with it. You will be glad you did because your hard work will pay off over time.

Domain name registration is an important step in the web development process. You must have a domain name so that you have somewhere to publish your website. You also want a domain name that is memorable and catchy so that it will stand out in the Internet crowd. I recommend you take a sufficient amount of time in coming up with the right domain name. That can be a significant determining factor in the success of your website.

From a search engine optimization perspective, your domain name should be as close to your targeted keyword(s) as possible. For example, KansasCitySEO.com is targeted for the keywords “Kansas City” and “SEO”. As I am sure you are aware, the intent of this site is to expose the Kansas City area to search engine optimization.

What is the focus of your site? Try to be as specific as possible. A site that does too many things does not mean too much to too many people. I have a website of my own to use as an example of this. InfoBriefs.com is very difficult to define. It contains so many articles on so many subjects that it is very difficult to nail down to one keyword or one keyword phrase. As a result, one of the keyword phrases I target in my search engine optimization efforts is “Informative Articles”. Again, try to be specific and narrow your site’s focus as much as possible. Then choose a name with that specifc keyword in it.

If you are interested in more specific details on the domain name registration process, then please check out my article on this topic.