AkmalRizali.Blogspot.Com

Monday, April 7, 2008

Tools to Improve Your Blog

A couple of months ago I asked readers to share which blog tools they use the most in some of the following areas. The suggestions were a nice start but I’d like to see the list expand as I’m certain there are more blog tools and services out there.

Please note that I’ve decided not to add ‘hosting packages’ to this list and am attempting to keep it to products that directly help bloggers blogs improve rather than more general organizational/business products. Lastly I’m not including actual blogging platforms - if you’re interested in these and how to choose between them you might like my Choosing a Blog Platform post.

Here’s the list of suggestions so far - what would you add to it?

Other Blog Tools

• Pingoat – pinging service
• Pingomatic – another pinging service
• AudioBlogger – audio post to your blog via phone
• BlogRolling – a service to manage your blog roll
• Creative Commons – copyright protections service
• Feedburner – RSS tool that adds a variety of features to your blog’s RSS feed
• Picasa – find, edit and share all the pictures on your PC
• Flickr – Store and share your images - good way of hosting images if you don’t have a stand alone blog on your own domain.
• Flock – A browser that enables sharing and blogging from within it
• Copyscape – allows you to track down other sites that are stealing your content
• TalkDigger – ‘find, follow and join conversations evolving on the Internet.’
• Blog Flux – Stats, Pinging and Directory

• Backpack It – A place to organise your to do lists, notes, files, reminders and more - all online
• Basecamp – Like Backpack it (same people behind it) but great for collaboration on projects.
• Ice Rocket – Blog Search
• coComment – Keep track of the comments you leave on different blogs in a central place
• co.mments – Similar name to coComment but not to be confused with it - a way of bookmarking and following comment threads via RSS
• Gabbly – Add live chat to our blog posts (like real time comments combined with IRC)
• Del.icio.us – Social Bookmarking site - good for sourcing stories but also great if you get linked to on it to get traffic
• Digg – Another major Social Bookmarking site
• Only Wire – a bookmarklet that submits posts to multiple social bookmarking sites at once
• Odeo – a tool for recording and sharing audio/podcasting
• TagCloud – produces Tag Clouds for your blog from RSS feeds
• Indie Karma – a micropayment system for bloggers
• Tiny URL – Turns long URLs into tiny manageable ones
• Swicki – a new type of search engine that harnesses the power of a web community - sort of like a search engine and wiki combined
Filmloop – photo sharing
• Stock.xchng – Free Stock Photos
• Favicon Maker – allows you to make a favicon from a photo
• YouTube – a tool for putting video on your blog
• blip.tv – another video uploading tool

source : ProBlogger

Thursday, April 3, 2008

Tips to Increase CTR for AdWords

If you have been using AdWords for very long, you know that Google rewards advertisers for high click-through rate, as well as punishes advertisers for low click-through rate. I mentioned this in the previous post.

Discovering the click-through benefits of the Google Checkout icon got me thinking of some of the other less obvious techniques that may increase CTR and save advertisers money.

These tips are targeted more toward the seasoned AdWords junkie that has mastered ad copy and call-to-action, but needs that extra edge over their competition. Using these techniques will not replace a well-written A/B split tested ad. These are merely suggestions that could increase CTRs, on a normalized scale. As with any changes, all should be tested before taken as a hard and fast rule for your specific ads.

1. Separate Ad Groups & Keyword Lists for Plurals

When I typed in the word “desk” without quotes, these commercial ads were in the top positions. It’s common knowledge that Google bolds the keyword(s) that match the search query. Many might assume Google takes into account plurals in bolding, similar to Yahoo! Search Marketing, but Google does not. As you can see in Figure 1-1, the Staples.com and Office Furniture2Go.com copywriters were in the correct line of thinking to put the keyword in the title (headline), but he/she did not take it far enough.

It can be assumed SimplySearsCollege.com made the right distinction by pairing the exact title with the exact keyword in at least two separate ads, one for “desk” and one for “desks.”

As you can see below, Yahoo! Search Marketing does not discriminate with plurals in Yahoo! Search, at least where only adding an “s” is the concern. “Desks” is bold when the search query was “desk” without quotes.

Bonus Benefit

Did you know separating plurals and singulars into separate ad groups could also lower your cost-per-click (cpc) for at least one particular keyword? Google’s broad match system will show either the singular or plural keyword when one is not present on your list, but the singular keyword may actually require a lower bid. By separating the bids, advertisers save money on clicks by not having to pay the same price for both singular and plural. Advertisers would only pay for the singular term when the search query was singular and the plural bid when the query was plural. Plural terms typically have a higher bid rate.

2. Relevant Display URLs

Google AdWords allows advertisers to display a different URL than the actual landing page URL. Most of the time this benefits the user experience, when long, messy, URLs are the landing pages. Many advertisers do not take advantage of this as much as they could. For a user looking for a specific item that may be one of 1000s of items sold by a company, finding the quickest route from A to B without a lot of clicking and searching is usually the most preferable.

Example: When searching for “green toys” (no quotes), which URL seems the most relevant and may receive a higher click through rate?

www.BlueWidgetCompany.com

www.BlueWidgetCompany.com/GreenToys

The second display URL gives the user the impression that he or she will find what they are looking for faster. Below is a real world example ad. My suggestion to this advertiser is to show the “www”on his or her diplay URL. I’ll save that tip for another entry.

Monday, April 7, 2008

Tools to Improve Your Blog

Statistics Packages and Metrics Tools

Blog Editor Tools

News Aggregators and News Sourcing Tools

Email Subscription Tools and Newsletter Services

Blog Poll Tools