Archive for category Webmaster

Quick and Easy Web 2.0 Link

In SEO many times quick and easy is a sure way to get a penalty on your site.  This isn’t always the case though.  There are a few sites out there that provide value while offering a link back to your site.

The site I am talking about right now is AboutUs.org.  It’s a directory of websites where you simply talk about your site.  You can include things such as contact info and a brief overview.

Initially you will find that your link is NoFollow.  Which is the way you tell Google you don’t trust the link.  It’s good that they do this, as you don’t want directories linking dofollow to the many spammy sites out there.  The link can be changed to dofollow with a little bit of work though.

First, you will want to edit your page and update it to contain all the info you can.  A short description, title, tags, and contact info are a great way to start.  Follow these guidelines here: http://www.aboutus.org/How_to_improve_AboutUs_pages

Once you have updated your site you can read this page: http://www.aboutus.org/DoFollow to see what steps you need to take to get the links changed to dofollow.

An example of one of my most recent sites is here: http://www.aboutus.org/ParkingGames.com.  You can see it’s just a basic overview of the site, providing some contact info and a nice little image.

Quick and easy links back to your site are few and far between.  AboutUs.org is a good start to getting the word out about your website.

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Linking secondary Google AdSense domain to Analytics

I have recently started exploring the new Google Analytics interface and realized how powerful the AdSense integration into Analytics was.  I wanted to integrate AdSense and Analytics on all my properties.

I had no problems setting up the primary domain, but noticed any secondary domain would not report the correct revenue.  It seems it a fraction of the total, but per site the actual percentage was pretty much the same.  After making a post on the Analytics support form and digging around I finally have found a solution that works.  It turns out I was only seeing the earnings for the first ad unit on the page.

This thread here fixed the issue for me.  I hesitated to even try this solution, as the post is from 2009.  After running out of options I implemented the fix they suggested and it worked great. Let me explain the issue and fix in more detail.

When you setup secondary domains in Analytics you are instructed to add this code to the top of the page:

<script type="text/javascript">
window.google_analytics_uacct = "UA-XXXXXXX-XX";
</script>

What this does is tell AdSense what your Analytics profile is in order to properly report the data. It appears that the variable window.google_analytics_uacct is only applied to the first AdSense ad unit on the page, and after that it is reset.

The fix is to modify your every AdSense ad unit code on the page by adding the window.google_analytics_uacct = “UA-XXXXXXX-XX” code at the top. Here is an example of my ad unit:

<script type="text/javascript"><!--
window.google_analytics_uacct = "UA-XXXXXXX-XX";
google_ad_client = "ca-pub-XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX";
google_ad_slot = "XXXXXXXXXX";
google_ad_width = 300;
google_ad_height = 250;
//-->
</script>
<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">
</script>

I’ve only tested this for a couple days, but everything seems to be working just fine.

I hope this helps anyone who is having issues as well.

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Another gaming site goes live

Woot, I’m starting to get real comfortable building new flash gaming sites.  Back before I got comfortable with PHP and Symfony it was always such a pain to launch a new site.  Go buy a script costing $50-$200 dollars, tweak/build/buy a template and hack the heck out of the code to get it to work how I wanted.  It always felt like such a mess, and when you finally got a site ready to go…I wouldn’t dare upgrade to a newer version of the script that ran the site.

Now, I write my own backend from the ground up.  Modular classes that I can simply access or ignore anywhere I need them.  If I build a new feature for one site, I can easily copy/paste or simply copy the file to the other project.  OOP programming is such a time saver in many cases.  The pages display exactly what I want and how I want.  It’s a magical thing to get comfortable writing your own applications.  I love it.

The latest site I’ve launched is another cooking game themed site, TastyCookingGames.com.  This site was pretty cheap and easy to build out.  Working with the platform I’ve previously built, I didn’t have much to do on the backend side of things.  Simply having my designer take a character to integrate into the logo, and used another template I had designed as the base.  I don’t know what it is about cooking games, but they’re hugely popular.  Literally one of the biggest flash gaming niches out there.  This site has minimal ads and lots of games.  New game added weekly until it starts to pick up in popularity.  Let’s hope this one really appeals to those girl gamers out there.

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New Gaming Portal Launched

I just recently launched a new flash gaming site, KissingGames.org.  It’s a flash gaming site for online kissing games.  There’s a good chance you personally won’t be interested in playing these games, as they’re more targeted towards younger girls.  Online flash games have quickly exploded over the years, and new niches are popping up all the time.  Kissing games is the latest niche I’ve moved in to establish a quality online gaming site.

The kissing games genre originates from the games like Spin the Bottom which many will remember from their youth.

This is another website built on the same gaming platform I wrote for ParkingGames.org.  Working in Symfony to build build these applications has turned out to be lots of fun.  It’s so incredibly easy to add features, and essentially make the website work exactly how I want.  I feel this is a huge step up for me from running arcade scripts that you can buy. Those scripts are great, but I always find myself hacking the heck out of it in order to get it to work how I want.

I love to hear any comments or input of any kind on the new gaming site KissingGames.org.

 

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Redirect to www with htaccess

Many webmasters don’t take any steps to ensure their website is accessed with http://www.example.com and not http://example.com. One reason to do this can include the presentation of your site in Google’s search results. Another reason is when you don’t control what address is presented, Google will make the decision for you. This can lead to issues with duplicate content, splitting of page rank and other SEO benefits, along with confusion when monitoring results in tools like Google Webmaster Tools.

When a person links to your site, they may simple link to http://example.com. Another person may link to http://www.example.com. This would be like looking at money.cnn.com vs www.cnn.com. Google treats these as different websites and can be harmful to the overall rankings for your site. It is generally a good idea to decide if you want to redirect non www to www.

The solution to this is a rather easy htaccess rule. To setup a htaccess rule you would create a file called .htaccess in the root folder of your website, sometimes referred to public_html/, or htdocs/.

To enable mod_rewrite, enter this line first if it doesn’t exist already:

RewriteEngine on

Then you would put this below:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. [NC]
RewriteRule .* http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]

The first line reads the HTTP_HOST, and determines of the first 3 characters are www or not. If they are not, it continues onto the second line.

The second line takes the HTTP_HOST requested initially, and simply adds www. to it. The R=301 says that this is a HTTP code 301 permanent redirect, and the L tells the code to stop the rewriting process here and don’t apply any more rewrite rules.

To sum it up, a simple .htaccess file to redirect non www to www would be:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. [NC]
RewriteRule .* http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]

It is also possible to redirect www.example.com to example.com. The code below will do that:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.(.+)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://%1/$1 [R=301,L]

I hope this simple mod_rewrite rule will help when you decide to redirect non www urls to www, or the other way around.

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Prevent Smart Pricing

Whether you know it or not, there is a penalty in place by Google for publishers who don’t convert well for advertisers. The term used to describe this penalty is “smart pricing”. While the information Google provides on this is very sparse and generally not very helpful, some research has been conducted to get more information.

The general definition of smart pricing is when you earn a very small amount per click. Many times much lower than expected, or you previously earned. The penalty has been reported upwards of 90% loss in earnings per click. Often you can even go through your adsense earning history to find when it happened, as it’s quite apparent when you know what you are looking for.

If you are a “victim” of smart pricing it can be very frustrating trying to work your way out of it. When I put victim in quotes, I mean that many webmasters, whether they know it or not, get themselves into the situation. Although this isn’t always the case.

One industry I have experience in is the proxy industry. There are many people that do anything they can to ‘trick’ users into clicking on ads. Many times you will find that many webmasters who run proxy sites many times implement questionable tactics. In the short term this may increase your revenue, as you’re sending more clicks Google’s way. But in the long run, it will get you smart priced. Google will see that the clicks coming from your site are not converting, and are of overall low quality (bounce rate, time on site, etc).

What should you do to prevent being smart priced, or even fix it if it happens? Well it’s simple, rearrange your sites to still clearly display ads to users, but let them choose to click them. This will help you send only interested visitors to Google’s ad network. Rumor has it that smart pricing is re-evaluated near weekly.

Now, keep in mind that all this information is just what I’ve gained from experience. It is by no way dead facts, but it makes sense to me. I’d appreciate any thoughts on the matters in the comments. Now go make that money!

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