All Posts Tagged With: "Yahoo"

How to Create a Blog - Part 10

January 11th, 2009 • stephenlawes • 0 comments • Related • Filed Under

My Newbie Blog is coming up on it’s first anniversary.  We have been writing articles on how to create a blog since January 26 of 2008.  The site was set up to help people walk through creating a blog step by step.  Along the way we discuss some basic SEO strategies and some of the different ways to try and make money on the Internet.  We have specifically targeted the keywords “how to create a blog” to drive traffic to this site.  Currently, we show up in position 10 or 11 on Yahoo and in position 45 on Google.  The Yahoo return generates some traffic to the site, and we also generate a fairly steady stream of traffic by encouraging people on some of our other sites to take advantage of the information provided on this site.

When this blog was started we were using version 2.2 of WordPress.  Now we are up to 2.7.  This means that some of the screen shots will be different, but the basic information is still primarily the same.  The site will still be able to asnwer your how to create a blog questions.

The site has never down well with Adsense.  I have put ads on the site at different times, but the click percentage is always bad and I have to take the ads back down.  That happens on certain sites, usually because the type of people who are visiting the site aren’t interested in the ads.

We are still hoping to get the site to become a page 1 Google return for the how to create a blog keywords.  We are page 1 for Newbie Blog on Google, but that doesn’t generate much traffic.  Most sites do better after they have been around for about a year.  We are looking forward to seeing what happens to the site in 2009.  We lalso ook forward to what the year holds and if we can help you with your blog please let us know!

SEO Takes Time Update - Part 4

June 4th, 2008 • stephenlawes • 0 comments • Related • Filed Under

I wrote on article a few days ago about how My Newbie Blog was doing for a keyword search of how to create a blog. At the time, the site was being returned by Google on page 5 in position 46. This was after weeks of slowly moving up from back in the 300’s. Two days ago, the site quit being returned by Google for that keyword. Gone! This happens from time to time and it can be very frustrating. It should come back eventually, but it is really the biggest traffic generator for this site. The upside at the moment is that I am getting a page 1 return for the keyword on Yahoo.

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This brings 5 or 10 people to to the site everyday. How does that happen? It would make sense to lose some position from time to time, especially in a competitive keyword environment. It doesn’t make sense to go from 46 to no where. It’s in the algorithm I guess! Perhaps I was working the keyword to hard, although I had been balancing it with a few other keywords, like starting a blog and starting a blog from scratch. These results have not been affected. No matter what the reason, all I can do now is wait for the keyword to come back to the site on Google. I am grateful for the Yahoo returns but it is hard to know how long it will stay on page 1. I will keep checking and let you know.

Search Engine Results | Google Sandbox

April 7th, 2008 • stephenlawes • 0 comments • Related • Filed Under

I wrote my first post for MyNewbieBlog about 10 weeks ago. If you have been reading this blog you know that it is primarily about how to create a blog. I thought we would look today at how the site is doing on the search engines and touch on the topic of the Google sandbox effect.

My Newbie Blog

When I named this site I wasn’t thinking about what people search for on the Internet. In fact, people search for the keyword “newbie blog” pretty rarely. But it does get searched for from time to time. I searched for it today on Yahoo, MSN and Google. The Google search for newbie blog returns the site at position number 32:

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MSN returns a search result of newbie blog in position 5 or 6:

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Yahoo returns a search result of about 47:

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How to Create a Blog

The how to create a blog keyword is searched for quite often. It is a fairly competitive keyword. Let’s see how it did on a search of the big three. A Google search for the keyword “how to create a blog” has the site listed at position 314, but it’s not a direct link to the site. It’s MyNewbieBlog all right, but it’s on Technorati. Google doesn’t return an actual result of my blog for the keyword search.

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Yahoo returns a result in position 111:

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MSN has been giving the keyword a good result for the last 2 weeks. It shows up in position 4 or 5:

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This result generates some traffic to the site. I think all of this raises a question. How do you get a page 1 return on MSN, a page 10 result on Yahoo, and no result on Google? The Google sandbox.

Google Sandbox

The Google sandbox effect is discussed widely on the Internet but is denied by Google. Google says that it is all about the algorithms they use to return search results. I have had three blogs I started recently go from the first page on Google search returns to nowhere. They don’t even show up on search results at all. That’s where the idea of a sandbox comes from. Google takes new sites and puts them in a sandbox where they are not allowed to play with the older sites. I actually think the process is good. It maintains the integrity of the Google search. This way someone writing a junky, spammy blog can’t get ranked better than an actual site. If this happens to your site don’t despair! Your site will come out of the sandbox eventually. It may take a few months, but when it comes out it should get right back where it belongs on search results. In the meantime, thank you MSN!