Adsense Rates have Doubled

Hello All,

I hope you had a great weekend and are ready for a great week.

Well some good news. For http://Kitten-Pictures.com -- my adsense earnings have doubled. Why, because I started targeting more valuable keywords -- in particular 'Cat Allery'. This little gem has more than paid for itself.

This is classic, "see what the market wants and give it to them". I looked for a keyword related to my blog that was in demand (had a low R/S ratio -- if you don't know what that is, read some of my earlier posts) and had a higher cost-per-click (again, explained in earlier posts).

Anyway, I wrote an article about 'Cat Allergies' and put it in a category (on Word Press) called 'Cat Allery' - and here are the results (so far):

www.google.co.uk - 18
www.msn.com - 18
www.alltheweb.com - 270
www.yahoo.com - 865
www.google.de - 26
www.google.com - 45

Not bad for a puny article -- it's actually pretty good.

Now, these rankings are super-impressive, but just think if I wrote another article or two about the subject and put them under the same category. The irony about this is that I wasn't intending to rank at all for 'Cat Alergy', I was just wanting to have some more expensive ads show up on the site, so this is truly a bonus.

I've been cutting my link exchanges through Link Metro down -- I've really cleaned up my link page. I don't like the non-related links, but at this point, I don't know whether it hurts me or helps me. I'm only considering links from sites that have a PR3 or better -- or the site has be directly related to my audience's interests.

Another spot of good news is that I've moved up on MSN for 'Kitten Pictures' - I went from 18 to #6 over the weekend. In case you didn't know, I started this as a blogger blog and the transferred it to a regular domain blog later. Well, at the the time, http://kitten-pictures.blogspot.com was #1 on MSN. So I had to build up http://Kitten-Pictures.com. So, #6 is on the 1st page!

One of the problems that I've had with Kitten Pictures is that there really isn't a lot text for a search engine to grab a hold of. I put the words kitten pictures in the tags of each of the photos, but that's about it. Also, I put the word Kitten, Kitty, Cat in the Post's title - which on Word Press is an H2 tag. Anyway, I wrote a little piece about 'Kitten Pictures' -- really as a way to attract comments, but primarily for the search engines.

I did a total rework of the site using a different WordPress template called 'adsminded' -- the jury is still out on whether it's going to help my conversion ratio -- I'll keep you posted on that. I still have some more tweaking to do. I'm also looking to create a more professional banner that's nice to look at.

I could go on and on...

Have you thought about starting your own blog? Are you hesitating because you don't know what to 'talk' about? Just write about some subjects you have opinions about or topics you know something about. Most of us, me included, underestimate the power of what we know. The beauty about blogging is that it is informal -- it's not like writing a research paper. Then you do some keyword research to determine what people are wanting to know. But, you've got to get started -- take that step! Create a free blog account in blogger.com. Contact me if you need some help -- I'd love to assist.

Also, please spread the word about this blog!

Make it a great day!

Stan