Build Back Links and Traffic with help from Google Reader

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I was browsing through Google Reader when I noticed that Google had introduced a new feature that could really speed up commenting. Take a look:

reader bookmark

For this little experiment, you will need a GMail account and Google Reader, and a little app that sits in your tray called BlogComment from Legal Andrew. You’ll also need some saved feeds in your Google Reader account. If you don’t have any, borrow mine ( post / RSS feeds )!

Step 1: Log into your Gmail account, go to Google Reader then in Options/Goodies, you’ll see the menu. Simply choose the right tag, and drag the link to your ToolBar.

Step 2: Download and install BlogComment from LegalAndrew. When you run it the first time, you’ll need to enter basic comments: name, email and URL.

Step 3: Launch BlogComment and it will sit in your tray.

Now you’re ready to read and comment.

Step 4: Click on the ‘Next’ link in your linkbar, read the post that loads in your browser, and go to the comment area.

Step 5: Simply type ‘bcomment’ in the first field for your details. Then these fields will be filled in a jiffy, leaving you free to write your comments. When done, fill out any captcha and hit submit.

Rinse and repeat steps 4-5. It works a charm.

Nine Tips for Getting Started with Google AdWords: Steve Sutherland’s Suggestions

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AdWords is quite a learning curve, but Google breaks it down nicely into chunks with the Starter Edition. When I wrote and told my friend, Steve from AgentsChat, he immediately offered some great advice. In his email, he wrote 9 useful tips to get me started.

I’d like to share them with you.

Nine Tips for Getting Started with AdWords

Great. I have a great book on the subject called Ultimate Guide to Google Adwords – I can lend it to you next time I see you if you want.

Things to remember –

1. Look into ‘Exact Match’ and ‘Phrase match’ options (heaps of info if your Google for ‘Adwords matching options’ etc) – you may be throwing away money on using the default ‘broad match’ if you are not careful with it.

2. Google automatically give you Pay Per click ads on their search results pages and the content network (Adsense on sites – Contextual network I think they call it now). Some people prefer to turn off the content network and just focus on the search results – you can test both. You can even target specific sites with the content network if you want.

3. Look into the ‘insert keywords’ option – you can set it so that if the user types in ‘investing’ then that word will show up in your heading or ad – when the word shows up it will be in bold and thus get more attention and more clicks – more clicks = cheaper bid prices.

4. The other factor for bid prices is ‘quality score’ (should be no problem for your home-page) – to get the best quality your keywords should be in your ad, and on your landing page.

5. Grouping keywords into tight Adgroups gives more flexibility to meet quality score – don’t just do one big Adgroup as the ads you write won’t be relevant to all the keywords.

6. Go through your Analytics account to get an idea of terms that people used to find you – you can then target these terms in your keywords.

7. Investing keywords will be expensive so you could take quite a different approach and choose other keywords that are cheap (Taiwan Blog, is one idea)

8. Your ad structure looks good – many recommend the pattern

Catchy heading (with keyword)
Stress a benefit (possibly with keyword)
Call to action (possibly with keyword)
URL

9. Run two ads together – the one with better CTR will be cheaper so go with that then test another if you have time.

Hope that helps. this turned into a rather long email – you can turn it into a blog post if you like.

Steve

Unfortunately, I’ve not had great results yet, but I’m still working on the early stages. It’s not difficult to get started. I did have one problem with an affiliate page that I wanted to market because Google Adwords TOS didn’t permit my initial efforts, so I’m still struggling with the affiliate side of the effort.

Quotation: 300-point rallies in the Dow happen in bear markets

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We’re in a very confusing atmosphere. People didn’t really know what to make of a 300-point rally in the Dow the other day, but my main message was that 300-point rallies from the Dow don’t happen in bull markets.

In fact, they never happened in the bull market from October ’02 to October ’07, but it has happened 6 times in this bear market and happened 12 times in the last bear market.

You don’t get moves like that in bull markets. As Rich Bernstein has said time and again, “This is the hallmark of a recession and a hallmark of a bear market.”

David A. Rosenberg, Conference Call Notes, published under the title “The Elusive Bottom” at InvestorInSight, August 2008.