What are some of these SEO misconceptions? 

Here are some examples:

“We’ve got to get more sites to link to us so that our ranks will improve!” There are so many reasons for you to get inbound links.  But if the only reason you set out to get more links is so that Google will rank you higher, you are missing the big picture. Inbound links are access points that help people visit your site.  In other words, it increases visibility of your blog.  They can be excellent, direct sources of targeted traffic!  And we all love targeted traffic, some pay lots for targeted traffic

“Our site is doing great! We ranked #1!” Ranked #1 for what? Starting now, forget about having “We ranked #1” in your vocabulary and replace it with “We ranked #1 for the term ______”. Ranks aren’t too important unless they are tied to a meaningful target keyword. 

For example, I just did a search for Jane May and I came up at the number 1 spot for all the major search engines according to Shoemoney’s SERP tool.  That’s great, but who is really going to search for Jane May and do I really want those people finding me????  Hmmmm…Good question.

“We’re only going to promote our home page.” SEO is not about your site’s homepage, it’s about every page of your blog. Every single page in your website stands on its own and they can either sink or swim.  If you approach SEO as a page-by-page endeavor, you will be on a surer path to success.  Focus on unique and relevant titles with keywords in addition to having them in the text.

“We’ve filled in our meta keywords tag…we’re good to go!” The meta keywords tag carries very little influence with the search engines, and it’s certainly not going to do much for your ranks.  If you do want to focus on the meta aspect of SEO, then stick with the description tags, they carry more weight.

“Our site gets a ton of traffic! We’re so popular, we’re destined for top ranks.” Search engines don’t have insider information about your overall web traffic, so they don’t know exactly how popular your site is. But they can count up how many sites link to you, and this is a way to measure your site’s popularity.

This post is sponsored by: Jamie Harrop’s Young Entrepreneur Video Blog

Why The New Name?

I am a fan of personal blogs with the bloggers name as the domain. However, with the amount of posts I was writing and the quality of content I am still writing, I wanted the title of this blog to be more reflective of the material discussed. My goal is to pass on information to you with regards to making money, getting traffic, hot topics, SEO, and my personal experiences, and give you my best known secrets in the industry.

With the new name of Daily Web Ideas, I feel like it perfectly matches my goals. I hope you like it and continue reading my site at this location. My old site Jane May Blogs dot com is currently set up to 301 redirect over here since the all the same content is here. So if you ever forget the new domain, you’ll still be brought to the right location.

What Should You Do?

I am currently working with FeedBurner to see if they can transfer the RSS readers from the old domain to Daily Web Ideas.  I just spoke to Jon at Feedburner and he said:

I think all you needed to do was to change the original source feed of your existing feed to point to the new domain. 

So basically, you don’t need to re-subscribe to the new RSS Feed.  It should be taken care of.  If you don’t see Daily Web Ideas in your feed, let me know.  But incase you haven’t yet, be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss any valuable posts!

Also be sure to sign up for my newsletter on the sidebar below our advertisers so you don’t miss my special newsletter series. Thanks!

* A special thanks to Nate Whitehill for not only providing great hosting service, but technical help as well.  He’s helped out a lot on this transition.  Thanks Nate!!!

I’ve recently done some research on a few blog networks that have found multi-million dollar funding by partnering with large corporations.  Because of the popularity of blogs, you should expect many more partnerships to happen between companies that are trying to get their name out and blog networks trying to make it big.  Three companies that I would like to share with you are: 

Sugar Publishing- This 10 blog network has recently partnered with NBC Universal Digital Media.  Sugar Publishing is best known for its celebrity Pop Sugar blog that has an Alexa ranking of 3,895. 

Gawker- Gawker Media is an online media company considered to be one of the most visible and successful blog-oriented companies in the country. As of May 2007, it is the parent company for 15 different weblogs, including Gawker.com, Defamer, Fleshbot, Deadspin, Wonkette, Jezebel, Gizmodo and Kotaku.  It recently partnered with Yahoo!.

Weblogs, Inc- AOL bought the Internet’s leading blogging company and Gawker’s biggest competitor, Weblogs, for approximately $25 million.

Not a bad thing to consider doing if you ask me With the 100 million blogs out there in the blogosphere, there is a lot of potential to make a lot of noise.  The opportunity is there and you should expect to hear more about blog networks in the months and years to come.

If you are entrepreneurial and are looking to create the next million dollar site to sell to Yahoo, Microsoft or Google, it should include a web 2.0 design, have a dialogue with users, allow users to create and upload content and be specific to popular and interesting topics. Sugar Rae writes about how affiliate marketers can survive the current web transformation in good detail.

So What Topics Will Sell For Millions?

*  Networks of niche sites (think Weblogs Inc and Gawker)

*  Health and fitness related sites

*  Dating sites (start with a niche of people, then expand)

*  Forums that engage users (topics that have tons of free information about them online but don’t have a good, comprehensive web 2.0 forum site)

For all the entrepreneurs out there, now is as good a time as any to start building a real business for yourself.

This post is sponsored by: Jamie Harrop’s Young Entrepreneur Video Blog

* Sam from KoolIM.com has a great product that I reviewed a few weeks ago and you can also find him on the sidebar under “Exclusive Sites”.

* Andy from the A2 Business Blog who’s site I reviewed just bought me a beer yesterday. Thanks Andy! I also noticed that he has changed his site layout to make it look much cleaner and more professional.

* Jennifer, the owner of Broke Ass Student, has an ad on the sidebar. She is a college student in NY who writes about simple ways we can all save money.

* Dave Pitlyuk just bought a bold sidebar ad today. His site has various topics of interest for entrepreneurs.

* Kevin from Blogging Tips.com offers original advice to beginner and experienced bloggers.

* Tim Schroeder ordered up a review and a link on the sidebar for his site eMonetized. He’s an experienced affiliate marketer who tests many different monetization methods and reports back using case studies.

* You might have noticed Jamie Harrop who leaves insightful comments on this site. He has ordered 3 sponsored posts in a row, so you will be seeing more of him to come.

Thanks to everyone who has an ad running on this site. It’s a pleasure working with everyone. If you’d like an ad on this site, we now have banner ads available and other options due to the new layout. July prices are currently on sale for 50% off, so if you’re interested, be sure to contact me

Advertising Special To Celebrate The New Theme!

This is the first custom theme I’ve ever had built, so it’s a big day for me To celebrate, here are the special July prices.

* Sidebar text ads are now $30 $15. (add $10 $5 for bold).

* Top banner ad (486×60) is $80 $40.

* Top right small banner (280×85) is $70 $35.

* Sponsored posts are $20 $10.

You can view May traffic data and old ad prices in the advertise section. I am also open to custom ad arrangements so contact me for those. Remember these prices are only good through July.

Since there is so much interaction among bloggers, everyone should build a network of helpful people around them. This network should include different types of people. Here are some suggestions:

1. People who maintain similar topic blogs.
2. People who specialize in designing and optimizing web sites.
3. Experts in your blog’s topic (for example: fitness blogs can communicate regularly with professional personal trainers).
4. Guest bloggers who can fill in for you while you can’t update for a few days.
5. People who can provide feedback on what they like and dislike about your blog.

If you fit this role for others, reach out to them and let them know you are accessible. Many people don’t realize that the more you give to others, the more you will get in return. Once your network is established and productive, everyone will benefit. These benefits include:

1. More traffic.
2. More money.
3. More visibility.
4. Access to help you otherwise wouldn’t have.
5. A whole lot of more fun!

This post is sponsored by: Jamie Harrop’s Young Entrepreneur Video Blog

How can someone try to game Google to rank higher on search engine results?  The answer is by using blackhat methods to SEO a website.  I will write more about this in a later post, but for now, let me leave you with some pearls of wisdom about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Google.

1. Often, factors that matter most in the search engine algorithms are good for both websites and their users.
2. You will never really know exactly how Google works
3. Text is eternally important in searches.
4. The vast majority of businesses do best when they use a holistic approach to SEO.  By holistic, I mean combining elements of organic and paid search with a healthy dose of good writing and usability.

I give you these pieces of advice because I’ve known a few people that have gotten blacklisted by Google.  Once you get blacklisted and put into Google’s sandbox, your online career is down the tube for that domain (URL).  And I don’t know if there is any turning that domain around and getting on Google’s good side at that point.  Maybe sending them some chocolates and flowers will help, but I doubt it :-) 

1. Find your most popular articles and expand on them. Go to the program you use to view your site stats and find your most viewed articles. Add more points to the same topics or expand on points you touched on. Since your readers liked the content the first time around, they will most likely want to read about something similar or in more detail.

2. Keep up with the news and write about it. News happens all day everyday. Skim through Google News and find stories that relate to your niche and summarize them to your readers.

3. Subscribe to other blog’s RSS feeds. By subscribing to other RSS feeds, you quickly find out what’s going on in the blogosphere and can get ideas for writing your own posts.

4. Ask your readers! This is an important point that most bloggers skip over. Read all the comments you get and if there is a topic that keeps coming up, be sure to address it in a blog post. This way you have content and it’s relevant to your readers’ interests.

If you have the opposite problem of having too many ideas for blog posts, just sit down and write all 5 posts at once and time stamp them for each day of the week. It will free up your week for marketing your blog and researching what you can do next. I’m curious, has anyone ever written and time stamped a whole weeks worth of posts? What did you do with the free time you had since all your content was written?

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The Benefits Of Being A Top Commentator

If a blog you read offers a top commentator section it is usually a good idea to get on their top 10 list. Assuming the blog uses the Top Commentator plugin that everyone seems to have these days, it comes with the “follow” tag which is great for your search engine rankings. It is a very good free method of SEO and gets you exposure to your blog or website. People are generally curious to see the blogs / websites of frequent commentators. I know I am