This post is about my Bachelor Thesis.

It has nothing to do with the main topics and content of Financial Jesus.

Internet Marketing and Search Engine Optimization

As a part of my thesis I intend to test some simple HTML elements and see how does using (or not using) them on a web page affect the search engine rankings of the pages.

The search engine that I am targeting is Google.
I will use different keywords and methods inside HTML tags on various ways to see which option is better for ranking higher in Google.

I have come up with a number of keywords that I will use in these files that when searched from Google, currently have 0 results.

After I have published this post with links to my made up files the files will get indexed by Google. After being indexed, I can use my special made up keywords to find the files.
For example if I intend to test how the <title> tag works I can make a simple HTML file that has a keyword called “asdeavasadhflweadjjjae” in it. Currently when you search for it in Google you will get 0 results but after the file gets indexed it will show up.

The things I am testing

Having links to other pages

Does having links on a HTML page benefit it SEO wise?

Here are links to the three files.

• The first file is intended to find out whether or not using external links in a file benefit the files ranking SEO wise.
• The second file is a test file without any links. This is necessary in order to compare the two other files against something.
• The third file is intended to find out whether or not using links to the same domain name benefit the search ranking.

Don’t worry if you click on the links and don’t understand what they are meant for – unfortunately I can’t go into great depth because that would make the experiment an immediate failure.

Matching the folder/file and keyword text

In this experiment I compare 3 different files.

1. A file with an unique keyword that has a random name and is in a random folder
2. A file that has the folder name and the keyword name match
3. A file that has the folder name, file name and keyword name match

Here are the links to the three files. ( in the order showed above)

This experiment is intended to figure out which of the 3 options above rank the highest in Google.

Keyword use in H1 tag

How should you use keywords in H1 tags in order to get maximum SEO benefits?

Here I compare 5 different files:

1. Keyword as the first word in H1 tag
2. Keyword not in H1 tag
3. Keyword twice in the same H1 tag
4. Keyword in the middle of H1 tag
5. Keyword as last word in H1 tag

Here are the links to the 5 files.

Using keywords as anchor text in internal links

Here I try do get an idea whether or not using keyword as anchor text in internal links offer any SEO benefits.

Here are the tehkupehku links. (The 4th word is a unique keyword made up by me – it has no meaning)

Keyword use in the title tag

In this experiment I try 5 different methods on how to use the keyword in a page title for maximum SEO benefit.

1. Keyword as first word in title
2. Keyword as first word in title + also keyword in somewhere in body
3. No keyword in title
4. Keyword in the middle of the title
5. Keyword twice in title

Here are the links to the 5 files.

Using the meta description tag

Is the meta description tag beneficial for your Google rating?

Here I compare 2 files:

• A file with meta description
• A file without meta description

Links to the files.

This is all for now!

Blogging has become increasingly popular in the last 5 years. Today it has become so mainstream that it is difficult for a new blog to establish itself simply because there are thousands of blogs on every thinkable topic.

Most Blogs Fail

It is widely known that popular blogs can generate a positive cash flow sufficient for a very nice lifestyle – this has further fueled the onslaught of new blogs.  The sad truth is that more than 95% of new blogs fail to gather a significant readership and will be abandoned soon after launch.

Today I am going to reveal the 2 most important things that you need to know to make your blog popular. These ideas are in fact so simple that almost everyone knows about them but most bloggers still fail to use these principles consistently.

The fact that I am writing a post on something that most of us already know shows how important these ideas really are.

Blogging Success Formula

Blog Popularity = Content + Marketing

The popularity of any blog is a direct result of the content the blog puts out and the marketing the blog is doing to get new readers.

Principle 1 – Produce new quality content

Content is the single and most underlying cornerstone of any blog. If there is no content there is nothing to read. If there is nothing to read no one will visit your blog.

Importance of new content

A potential reader can bookmark your blog after reading an interesting article but after several times of coming back and not finding new content the visitor will cease to return. Depending on the quality of your former blog posts it will vary how long this will take but after not finding new content the blog will sooner or later die out.

Importance of high-quality content

It is also important to make sure that the content produced is high-quality. If the articles produced are inferior to the blog posts of your competitors there are no real reasons for a reader to follow your articles.

There are probably hundreds of ways how a blog post can be low-quality – It can mean an article with a lot of spelling mistakes, a blog post that really doesn’t say anything new or a superb article that talks about something that is not interesting to your readers. Hopefully your blog doesn’t correspond to any of these categories.

What to keep in mind

Producing new content is by far the most important principle of successful blogging. One has to keep in mind however that only concentrating on producing new and quality content is the best way to fail at blogging. In order to become a successful blogger you have to be consistently producing top notch articles and at the same time excel at the second principle of successful blogging – marketing your blog.

Principle 2 – Market your blog

Having great content is not enough for success.

In order for your blog to become popular people will have to know that it exists.
If William Shakespeare had never published his books he would still be a great writer with the exception that absolutely no one would know of him – none of his stories would have been made into plays.

After writing a new blog post your goal should be to get as many people reading it as possible. If you don’t get people to read the exceptional content in your blog it can never become popular.

Be a proactive marketer

By marketing your blog you give people the chance to decide whether what they are reading is worth reading for them. If it is – you can be sure that they will let other people know as well. That means that the more you market your blog the easier it will get – people who like your content will tell their friends about it.

It is possible for a blog to grow big enough that there is no need for active marketing but this is only the case when a blog has thousands or tens of thousands of daily readers.

If you think that you have enough readers and you can stop marketing your blog you are wrong.

How to market your content

Choosing the marketing methods that work best with your blog or website depend on your niche and what exactly you want to accomplish. A good way to market could be anything from leaving comments on blogs with similar content or printing and handing out flayers in your the local mall.

What to keep in mind

Producing and marketing your content only work hand in hand. You can’t have one without the other. If you have content but don’t have marketing you will never get any visitors. If you have marketing but don’t have any content your visitors will never return.

Keeping track of progress

Producing new content and marketing it are the two most important factors for a blog’s success. Contrary to what you would expect – at some point most people stop following one or both of these principles. As a consequence they will get little traffic, feel discouraged and eventually stop blogging.

My System

In order to combat the problem of not doing what I know should be done I created 3 simple graphs that help me stay in control of my article writing and marketing activities.

Here they are:

Graph 1 – goals for my everyday activities

At first glance this graph looks rather stupid – all the lines are parallel and they don’t seem to indicate much. The idea behind the graph is simple – it shows the every day goals of my blogging activities. The blue line represents the number of articles (1) I need to write every day this month. The yellow line is the maximum amount of time I am willing to spend on my daily blogging activities (4 hours). The upper line shows the amount of comments (10) I want to leave to other relevant blogs in order to market my content.

I printed this graph out and every day after finishing my blogging activities I will draw a line representing the actual daily figures. If the hand-drawn lines fluctuate from the pre set one’s it will indicate a possible problem.

Graph 2 – totals

This graph shows the total amount of work done after every day of reaching my goals. By the end of October I will have written 31 new articles, left 310 relevant comments on other blogs and spent about 124 hours doing it.

Graph 3 – results

This graph represents the expected rise in visitors and RSS subscribers if I manage to fulfill my daily blogging goals for October. Currently I have on average about 315 daily visits and hopefully it will rise to 571 by the end of the month. The amount of average RSS readers will hopefully go from 72 to 130.

This is the only graph that represents the things that are not under my direct control. I can control how many articles I write and what I do to market it, but I can not directly control the amount of people coming to read my content – I can only make educated guesses.

Remember

Control the controllables – focus writing new articles and marketing your blog. These are the only 2 things that you have direct control over. By consistently doing these activities you can influence more people to read your content.

Never forget:
Blog Popularity = Content + Marketing

EDIT:

This is a repost of an article I wrote in October 2008. Since that time my RSS subscriber count has gone from 70 to over 350 and the average daily readership of this blog fluctuates between 600-1000 people per day!

Keep in mind that all this has been done without any money! If I can do it, you can do it as well.

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While being a door-to-door salesman I learned what could perhaps be the most valuable lesson in my entire life:

Control the controllables

Focus on what you can control

Only focus on the things you can directly influence. For us, selling books, it meant 3 things – hours, demos, attitude.

I could control how many hours of work I did. The more hours I worked the more people I could show my books to. The more people I showed them to, the more people bought them. Simple!

I could control the number of sales presentations I made every day. I knew that the amount of money I made was directly influenced by the number of sale presentations I made. In order to make more money I had to show my stuff do more people. To do that I could work longer hours or do shorter presentations. Shortening my presentation time just 1 minute meant that I could do 2 more demonstrations each day. Now keep in mind that I worked for 72 days – that means 144 more sales presentations and 15 to 20 more customers during a summer. That’s a difference of a few thousand dollars. So next time you waste a minute think about that!

The last thing I could directly control was my attitude. I could not control if people who opened the door would swear at me, call the cops on me, or try to shoot me (yes, it happens) – the only thing I could do, was to control the way I reacted to whatever happened to me. When someone gives you the F word and slams the door on you for the first time in your life, it’s easy to stay positive. When it happens 30 times in a row, its a a lot more difficult. When you knock on the door you can never know what happens next – maybe someone just lost their job or a loved one and because of that pours his entire frustration on you. You can’t control that. The only thing you can control is how you react to it when that actually happens. You can let it get your mood down or you can decide to be happy – whatever it takes. It’s difficult at first but soon enough you start to take things impersonally. „This guy wasn’t screaming at me – he was probably screaming because he had a lousy day at work”.
So, in selling you can really only control 3 things – the hours you work, the sales presentations you make and the attitude you have. You can’t control whether someone buys your product – you can only influence it with your demonstration. When you do a superb presentation there is a bigger chance that the prospect will buy, but there is always a chance that he doesn’t need what you are selling.

Same principles work in all fields of life

When Michael Johnson ran the 200 meter world record – 19.32 seconds – he could not control whether he would win the race or not. The only thing he could do was to run as fast as he could and hope that he is faster than his competitors.

When Barack Obama runs for president, he can not control whether or not people vote for him. He can only control the way he gives speeches, talks to people and appears to the public. By doing these things superbly he influences people to vote for him, but he never directly controls them. He can only control himself.

Why FinancialJesus.com will be successful

When I started this blog 10 days ago I thought about the same thing I just wrote about – the things that make ordinary people failures and successes – the things that we control. I would really want this blog to succeed, have a lot of readers and eventually become my main source of income, but these are not the things I can directly control – I can only influence them through my actions.

Instead, I came up with a promise I can directly control – I will write 3 posts every workday until September 1st 2008. This is something I can truly control and it is my belief that having a lot of content is the best thing I could do for this blog in the long run!

What to remember

Whatever you do, control the controllables and you will be successful. There is no point to complain about the things you can’t change. Instead – change the things you can!

PS! Thanks to Adam Primero for a great idea to give yourself promises instead of setting goals. It feels a lot more powerful!

For daily tips and advice about how doing the right things will eventually lead to success sign up to our full feed RSS or subscribe via email.

You might already know that I started my first online internet marketing campaign today!

I’m excited!!!

But I also have some questions that I feel need to be answered. The most important is this:

It’s a tough question to answer and to tell you the truth I don’t know the answer. It depends a lot on what kind of a website you are running and how many visitors you have.

The only certain thing is that in the long run you should always focus on content. You should make sure that your blog has a lot of high quality content.

There is a saying that you can keep in mind

“If you will write it, they’ll come and read it”

Having a lot of quality content ensures you basically 2 things – search engine traffic and word-of-mouth advertising.

If your blog already has quite a following there is no point to spend a majority of your time on marketing.

But if you are just starting your blog?

Yes, what if you have a starting blog like Financial Jesus and don’t have any readers?

Well you can spend all your time on writing posts, but what’s the point when you don’t have anyone reading what you are writing? Since it is definitely better to write when someone is reading, a startup blog should spend some of it’s time marketing.

As I found out today, marketing can be difficult and take a lot of time. I spent more than 8 hours today on writing comments at www.johnchow.com hoping that by being the number one commentator I will get some traffic back to my website.
The life of a marketer is uncertain, so I don’t even know yet if what I did pays off! Crazy, I know

There is however something that I have already learned today.

Content comes first

You should always start your day by writing your content and then spend the rest of your time on marketing. This ensures that you will be able to write the number of posts each day that you have set as your goal. I promised myself that I will write a minimum of 3 posts a day on Financial Jesus. However I spent so much time on marketing today that it is already way past my bedtime – it is 4 am in where I live and I am writing this post in order to keep a promise I gave to myself.
If I had written the blog posts in the morning and after that spent my time on getting traffic and marketing I would already be asleep. Well, I guess we all learn from our mistakes!

My advice is to write the minimum amount of content that you are satisfied with and use the rest of your time getting more traffic to your blog. After achieving your daily marketing goal it’s up to you if you write more content or spend more of your time on getting more traffic. But keep in mind – when you don’t have any content you won’t have any readers so it’s usually more important to write new stuff than to try and get more readers.

If you like the common sense advice I give on writing blog posts and marketing your website be sure to subscribe to my full feed RSS or subscribe via email.

Since Financial Jesus is just starting out, we figured that we need to do something to boost the number of visitors.
The first online marketing strategy that we are going to use in order to boost this blogs popularity is basically this:

We took a bunch of successful high traffic blogs that mainly talk about the same topic as us and looked for a “TOP for commentators” section.

A good “top commentators” section shows you how many comments somebody has left and therefore you will know how many comments you need to leave before becoming the number 1 commentator.

The first time I came across this idea was when reading John Chow’s free ebook about how to make money online (which I highly recommend to anyone interested in the topic – you can sign up for it at www.johnchow.com).

Today I have been reading Johns blog and writing comments on some of his more interesting posts. Since I am totally against spamming it was my first priority to leave comments that give some extra value to his blog as well. This way it will be a win-win situation for both of us – I will get traffic from being a top commentator and build some links and John gets an active member to his blog who helps to make it even better

I don’t have any idea how many (if any) visitors I am going to get from JohnChow.com but there is something that I definitely found out

Leaving comments is hard work

I have spent 8 hours today on reading through tons of posts and writing about 25 comments – and that’s all on 1 website. After about 5 hours I felt that I’ve had enough, but then I had that feeling what you get when half-way through a difficult task – you want to stop but you won’t because of everything you stand to loose. So I kept on reading and leaving comments. Here are some of the posts I liked most:

• Get More Exposure for Your Blog with a Guest Post – This post gave me a great idea to contact other blogs about making money on the internet and how to get rich and offer to write them some guest posts.
• Blog Income Report – April 2008 – In April John Chow made a whopping $29,569.05. This post gives an overview where all this money came from.
• The Dot Com Lifestyle – This is actually a somewhat quiet video with John in a park with his daughter where he talks about the real dot com lifestyle – “I blog because I hate rushhour”

If you want to stick around to see how much traffic I will generate for being the top commentator on John and other online marketing blogs be sure to subscribe to my full feed RSS or subscribe via email.