It’s taken me a long time to figure out how people can generate so much traffic from social sites like Facebook, Twitter, Digg etc.  (I hate the term social bookmarking so I call them Social “Sites”).

IT’S ALL ABOUT THE FRIENDS!  Friends, followers, watchers, whatever you want to call them, each of these social sites allows you to have people follow what you post and you can in turn follow what others are posting or writing about.   Now this may not be a revelation to some of you, but I’ve never put much stock in promoting products on any of the social “bookmarking” sites.  It’s almost always viewed as blatant attempt at spam, and generally ignored.  However now that I’ve come to my senses I’ve penned my greatest equation ever…

MySpace   Be Yourself & Have Value to Your Posts + Lots of Followers & Friends = Increased Social Popularity & Traffic to Your Sites.

It seems like a simple formula, and it really is.  If you have a good service, site, or product, the more people’s faces you put it in front of, the more likely you will have people using your service, site or product.  It’s a numbers game, plain & simple.  Get as many friends & followers as you possibly can!

Take Shoemoney for example, he’s trying to get 15,000 Twitter followers before the end of the month. Ok, he’s doing this mainly because he got called out on Twitter saying that it would be impossible for him to do so, but he also knows that with 15,000 followers, everytime he posts a Tweet, that a lot of people will be reading it, and it’s ABSOLUTELY FREE ADVERTISING.

So, go out and start adding friends to your Digg profile, Twitter settings and Facebook page.  Chances are they’ll add you back and you’ll have tons of mutual friends who will help boost you to superstardom.  Keep posting real, relevant ideas and watch your traffic go through the roof.

It’s easy to overlook the importance of choosing the right domain name for your new website, and these days it can be next to impossible to get the domain name you want without paying big bucks for it. Analyzing what you intend to do with your site and coming up with creative alternatives to the popular & already taken domain names is key to your sites future.   So what should you consider when getting ready to choose and purchase a domain name for your project?  There are two schools of thought on domain name selection, and it really depends on how you plan to market your site.

First you need to determine if you are going to “brand” your new site?  With branding you are giving your business, website, or project a name and promoting it with that name only.  When people think of search engines, Google or Yahoo is generally what comes to mind.  When you think of computer software, Microsoft is the first thing you think of.  These companies have branded their names to a specific niche or type of product.  Brand recognition is extremely important to these companies and they work hard and spend big to make sure they are the company you think of for their the products they sell.  You can do this too, if it’s the way you want to go.

How does this relate to picking a domain name?  If you decide to “brand” your site, the most important thing to remember is you want to pick a name that is memorable.  It can be a clever twist on an existing name or product, or even a two part name that rhymes is a great way for people to remember you.  The site JibJab is a perfect example of a domain name that’s creative, cute and clever, but automatically conjures images of your face on a cartoon body jumping around to song.  JibJab’s branding, while not as intimidating as Coke or Ford Motor Co. works extremely well.  Is this what you want to do with your site?

If you don’t intend to brand your website, then choosing a domain name which contains your main keywords is the other way to go.   Lots of SEO’s swear by having your domain look like this:

http://www.newbluewidgets.com/new-blue-widgets/new-blue-widgets.html

This is not necessarily the way to go.  Feel free to experiment with this idea, but I don’t necessarly think it will help your SERP’s much.

If your site sells new blue widgets, see if you can get www.newbluewidgets.com.  Chances are it’s probably taken, in which case you’ll need to find an alternate solution.  www.New-Blue-Widgets.com is another way to go, and the hyphens are actually recommended by Google as the bots have an easier time reading it in that format.  Hyphens are also preferred over underscores, by the bots, so keep that in mind.

You don’t necessarily need to have all of your keywords in the domain name.  You can always create a variation such as www.BuyBlueWidgets.com or www.BlueWidgetSpot.com and you’ll receive the SEO benefit of having the two keywords in the name.

Try to keep these ideas in mind the next time you’re choosing a domain name for your next site.  It will be much easier for people to remember who you are and what you do, and you’ll benefit in the SERPs as well.

I got to thinking back about some of the websites I’ve designed and built in the past 10 years, and I can honestly say that probably 75% of the just plain sucked.  Bad layouts & navigation, bad ideas, even worse SEO (if not non-existant SEO) and just all sorts of dumbness.  It’s funny becasue at the time I was making them, any particular site seemed like the best work I’d ever done, and it was destined to be a HUGE success.  Unfortunately, the majority were flops…but that’s the important part.

You learn so much more from the ideas that stink and never get off the ground, than you do from the ones that are successful.  By this I mean that when something just doesn’t work, it’s often much easier to figure out why it failed compared to when a project takes off and is a resounding success.  Tweak here, tweak there, research a little more, change this, and the next project that comes around will be better if nothing for the fact that you’ve probably honed your skill set and are smarter for it.   Personally, I laugh hardest at some of my attempts at graphics and art work.  My Photoshop skills were almost non-existent until a couple years ago, but I thought my headers and images kicked serious ass….boy was I wrong.

Remember, what you think is your best work ever, will probably be in the “What was I thinking” pile a few years from now.  Guess what ?  It’s because you more skilled than you once were…and that’s exactly where you want to be.

Ok, We all know that the only real way to increase a site’s popularity is through link building.  Most of the time these links can be in the form of directory submissions, link exchange, blog commenting, or good old fashioned natural links that occur when people actually find enough value in their site to give you a link on theirs.

Obviously naturally built links the preferable method to get high quality links and traffic to your site, but let’s face it, every web idea you have isn’t going to go viral from the get go!  And most of the time you’ll have to give your site a little nudge to get things going.  If you can get some decent search engine rankings for a few keywords, that should help get the ball rolling, and hopefully, if you have a site that isn’t complete junk, and you offer your visitors a useful service, product or information, the natural link building will commence.

So the million dollar question…how many links do I need to get decent search engine rankings so I can get my site seen, and everyone will love it and we all live happily ever after?  The answer is, there is no answer.  I recommend getting links anywhere and everywhere you can at first, but MAKE SURE THEY’RE QUALITY LINKS.  Don’t go crazy with 5000 directory submissions a day, but if you build a few hundred links a week, and can keep that consistency, for a couple months, you’ll start to your SERP’s improve.

The whole idea here is to get your site out into the world, get it seen, and have people start giving you natural links so you don’t have to rely on search engine traffic.  If your site has some value to it, people will want to link to it naturally.  Strive to get traffic outside of organic search traffic and watch your traffic explode.

Let’s face it, 404 pages aren’t fun or sexy, but boy are they important.  When someone visits your site and the page they’re trying to find is no longer around, the difference between them leaving your site or sticking around can be your 404 page.  If you’re still using the stock, “Sorry This Page Cannot Be Found” message, you are giving people no option but to bail from your site and look elsewhere for the infomation.

You can solve this problem with about 5 minutes of work, and have a pretty cool 404 page as the result. First off, find out where your 404 page is so you can do some work to it.  It’s most likely in your root directory, but it may also be at your cpanel or hosting service, so go track it down.

Get rid of that stock 404 text.  Write something fun or witty that will at least make your visitor laugh, and not focus on the fact that the page they wanted doesn’t exist anymore.

Include a link back to your homepage or to your contact form, so they can make you aware that you have a problem with that page.  A cool widget you can add to your 404 pages is readily available at your Google Webmaster Tools account. Google provides you the script for a search tool that will allow your visitors who land on your 404 page to do a search of your site for more information, thus keeping them at your site.  Log into your account page and click on the “Tools” tab in the lower left.  Now click on “Enhance 404 Pages”.  Copy the script on that page and paste it into your the code of your 404 page template.

Now you’re all set.  You have a custom 404 page, with search capability, that will keep visitors on your site and hopefully help them find the information they wanted in the first place.

If I had a dollar for every time I read a forum post somewhere about “I got banned from Adsense, and I didn’t even do anything”, I’d be a rich man.  Oh wait, I am a rich man..but I digress.

People, if you got the dreaded “letter” from Google regarding your Adsense account being suspended because your sites are a “liability to Google publishers & advertisers” or because of fradulent clicks, guess what, you either have a crappy MFA (made for Adsense) site, or you clicked your own damn adds like an idiot.  You’ll get no sympathy here, especially if you did the later.  So here are the top 5 reasons you will probably get banned from Adsense if you have no Commonsense.

1.  Clicking Your Own Ads – This is a 100% way to get your account terminated…never to return.  Don’t think you can ask your friends to do it either.  Google software is much smarter than your tiny brain, and you will be discovered. Say bye-bye to your precious $1.43 a day you were making.  In fact, don’t even tell your friends or family about your Adsense.  They’ll be tempted to click your ad’s thinking it helps you, when in fact they’ll have you thrown out of the program for good.

2.  Altering the Adsense Code – Try to get cute by messing with your ad code, changing sizes, putting adsense on page load pop-up’s etc…You will be banned.  Leave the code alone.  There are enough sizes, shapes and colors to fit anyone’s site.

3.  Adsense in Close Proximity to Photos – This is a sure fire way to increase your CTR.  Put 4 nice 100×100 photos in a row above a full Adsense leader board advertisement, and it looks like each ad showing corresponds with the image above it…very tricky, and very against Google TOS.  Keep your ads and any photos or images a safe distance from each other.  They don’t play well together in the eyes of Google.  You’re asking for trouble if you don’t.

4.  Porn, Warez, Gambling…All The Things That Makes Life Worth Living – Think of Google as your local Church Minister.  He doesn’t like naked chicks, he frowns upon stealing and selling stolen goods, and he dispises pissing your money away at the poker table.  But he sure likes young boys..(Did I just say that??)  Promote any of these vices, and the Google Vice Squad will hunt you down, and drop your account like a bad habit.

5.  Improperly Mixing Google Adsense Ads With Other Ad Programs – Hey, there’s nothing wrong with diversifying your income streams.  Adsense, Adbrite, and YPN are great programs and you can earn very well from combining them on your sites…However, make sure each ad unit look different from one another.  If you make your Adsense looke like your Adbrite ads, chances are you will get the letter from Google asking you to change them or just straight out dropping you from the program.   Be mindful of the looks of your ads and you’ll stay in the good graces of Google.

These are all so common sense that I still can’t believe how many people are bitching daily about their account with Google being terminated…and they act like they don’t understand how it could happen to them.  Make sites with some good content and stay away from any of the problems above, and you’ll be earning with Adsense for a long time to come.