Well, when I clicked on my statistics page for my page views, one of my sites had “that look” while the other sites were playing nicely and didn’t even notice that I walked into the room. The site with the guiltiest look was my Tidbits and Stuff site. That’s the site that is prone to get into trouble.

Cause of the Look

I noticed in the past three days my Google earnings were off the chart. The last time they were that good, it was because Panda was about to strike. So I did a bit of snooping and found an October 5th tweet from Matt Cutts in which he advised of Panda changes over the next few weeks.

The Panda Update and Site Reaction

As I looked at my children, er, I mean sites, their response to Panda was expected. You see, Tidbits and Stuff is sometimes shunned by Google and then picked back up again. This is because I gave birth to Tidbits and Stuff before I knew anything about web parenting. I made the majority of my mistakes there.

Just like any good parent, you never give up on your kids. I kept Tidbits & Stuff but realized it would always be vulnerable to Google’s algorithm changes unless I did a total overhaul. Not wanting to do the overhaul, I use Tidbits as my online playground in which I continue to make mistakes.

Problematic Characteristics

As I analyze Tidbits and compare it to the rest of my sites, Tidbits has two characteristics that my other sites don’t:

1. The focus is not single subject. You’ll find information on cooking, health, finance, pets, writing and more when you visit Tidbits and Stuff. The rest of my sites are focused and single subject.
2. I used content from free article directories. I’d say about 50% of the content on Tidbits comes from free article directories while the rest is original. Some of the articles were from writers who requested to write a piece for the site and the rest I wrote myself.

What Am I Going to Do?

As far as Tidbits and Stuff goes, I’m not going to do a thing. I’ll write articles and place them there when the mood strikes. I’m sure Google’s algorithm will change again and Tidbits may find favor. If not, so be it. I’m used to the bumpy ride on Tidbits and Stuff. It taught and continues to teach me a lesson of what to do and what not to do.

Similarities with Other Sites

I see that Suite 101 and HubPages have also taken a hit with Panda this go around (again). The one thing I see that Tidbits, Suite and HubPages have in common is that they are not single-subject sites and they have a wide variety of authors. This is just my sitting at the kitchen counter observation.

Going Forward

Writing is an inside out sport. You learn a few rules (i.e., grammar, spelling and in the case of online writing SEO) and then do what your gut tells you. I’m going to keep on doing what I do and allow the Panda to do what it does.

After visiting Lis’ Passive Income Online blog and finding out about a free book writing tool called Scrivener, I’m motivated to get back to writing my books. Between ebooks, a few sites and Suite 101, I think I’ll be okay. Hopefully Panda was nice to you guys.

Diversify, Diversify, Diversify

You’ve heard it before and it bears repeating again. If you have all of your eggs in the content farm basket, you’re probably hurting right now. Don’t get me wrong, all of us content farm writers have felt the pinch of lower page views and earnings, but if you write exclusively for content farms, your pinch is a bit more painful than those of us who spread things around a bit.

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

The good thing about the Google change is that it is supposed to penalize spammers, content scrapers and plagiarists. No one wants them to show up high in the Google page rankings.

The bad is that quality articles placed on sites like Suite 101, HubPages and other content farms are penalized because they were placed on such sites.

The ugly is that it will directly affect earnings. If content sites were your major source of income, it could get real ugly.

Complain, Moan, Gripe or Make Changes

I recently wrote an article on Suite about Justifying vs. Changing.  Here’s your chance to make a few critical choices.  Are you going to go from blog to blog and forum to forum complaining about the changes or are you going to take steps to make yourself whole again?  The choice is yours.

In reviewing my stats the other day, the question of backlinking came to mind. You see, back in mid September, 2010 I registered 5 new domain names.  It took me from September, 2010 to December, 2010 to finally set up the WordPress template and add content to the blogs.  I didn’t add much content to the blogs because I quickly realized I bit off more than I could chew at one time.  To save my sanity I decided to put the blogs on hold until later this year or early next year.

During the time of setting them up and writing content, I wrote a total of about 15 posts distributed unevenly among the 5 blogs (one blog has only 1 post while another only has 2).  None of them have enough content to keep anyone interested for too long.

A Little History

When I first started creating websites, I read what the gurus said.  They told me to learn SEO and to backlink.  So, I learned SEO and tried to backlink.  The only problem with backlinking was that I hated doing it.

I found it to be time consuming and not something that I did not like to do.  I liked to write and I liked creating websites but I found backlinking to be a royal pain. There were so many social websites and ways to backlink that I quickly became overwhelmed.  On top of that, I was spending too much time doing something that I didn’t enjoy instead of doing what I loved to do (started to sound like a job to me).

Over time I decided to stop the social network backlinking. Don’t get me wrong, I do some backlinking from time to time, but as a general practice I don’t.  I’d rather spend my time writing quality content and let the Internet do the rest.

Back to the 5 New Blogs

Since I decided to put the blogs on hold I did not backlink. I did not submit them to directories. I did not perform any marketing for these blogs

Imagine my surprise when I started to notice a steady stream of traffic to the blogs.  It started with an occasional hit, but now it there is daily traffic and the traffic is growing. Do you know what that means?  Yep, I’ve got to spend a little time adding content to these blogs.  After all, if visitors took the time to use a search engine to find my blogs, the least I could do is provide what they’re looking for, don’t ya think?

Why are These Blogs Gaining Traffic?

The only reason these blogs are gaining traffic is because of content quality and my attempts at SEO  (I say attempts because who really knows everything there is to know about SEO?).  What else can it be?  No tricks, no formulas just plain old writing.

Let me go on the record and say: I’m not telling you not to backlink.  Backlinking has its advantages. There are many bloggers that have successfully used backlinks and wouldn’t think of doing it any other way.

What I’m saying is that as a general rule, I don’t do it.  If I did, my sites would probably gain more traffic and faster.  Unfortunately, I’m not willing to put in the backlinking effort.  I’d rather wait until my articles/blogs are naturally backlinked.

The way I look at it is if you write quality articles and employ simple SEO, the backlinking will take care of itself.  I’m in this online writing thing for the long haul.  If it takes a little longer for my sites to get noticed, so be it.  While they’re waiting to get noticed, I’m spending my time doing what I like to do, writing (and smelling an occasional rose).

A few facts about the blog

1. It provides reviews of a particular type of product.
2. Blog was created in January of 2009
3. It currently has 43 blog posts (an average of 2.2 posts per month)
4. Its written under an assumed name
5. All comments are closed
6. Google page rank: 2
7. Alexa Page Rank: 5,049,715 (far from impressive)
8. WordPress platform using a basic Thesis theme. No bells whistles or pretty pictures.
9. Daily traffic averages between 100 and 150 pages views. On a good day I may get close to 200 views, but generally it stays between 100 and 150.
10. Monetized with Google AdSense and InfoLinks. Earlier on I applied to Text Link Ads but they turned my blog down. I guess it didn’t get enough traffic for them. Who knows, maybe I’ll try applying again in the future.

Things I Noticed

I paid a little attention to where the traffic was coming from and where it was going. I used to insert a lot of links to the product manufacturer’s website to help my readers continue researching the product. One day, like a bolt, I realized I was linking away my income.

Most of the product manufacturers use Google AdWords and their ads were displaying on my blog. My readers were clicking on my links rather than the manufacturer ad links. Once I realized that, I went back and removed all manufacturer links. Now I will refer to the manufacturer website such as manufacturer.com, but I won’t hyperlink it.

The only hyperlinks in the posts are to other posts on the blog or articles I’ve written elsewhere on the same subject. No more giving away income.

Once I stopped giving away income I noticed the blog started earning more money. I can’t say for sure whether the monthly change in income was because I stopped the outside linking or because one month I wrote 4 posts instead of two, but between May of 2010 and June of 2010 the blog’s monthly income went from $69.97 to $315.20!

The following month the income dropped a little but it still earned $273!

[smartads]

As far as blogs go, I believe it has a nice monetary return per post. Since starting the blog, the posts are averaging $31.88 each (that’s 43 posts divided by the total blog’s income of $1,371.01). The $31.88 is a bit deceiving because during the first year the average earnings per post were $15.12. This year, so far, each post is averaging $54.33. I’d say that’s an improvement.

Lessons Learned

Here are a few things I’ll carry forward when I develop my next blog.

1. The blog’s topic will be about a product or service. I find those types of blogs offer the best financial return. I’ve got blogs on topics that are dear to my heart, but those are a labor of love because they earn bupkis.
2. I won’t give away links
3. I will place ads on the blog from day one. There had been some debate as to whether its good practice to immediately place ads on a brand new blog. Well, if I’m creating a money making blog, it’s difficult to make money without ads, so I put them on immediately. The blog that I refer to above earned $4.32 in the first month. That’s hard to do without ads.
4. Slowly add content and monitor the traffic. Some folks like to add a lot of content immediately when creating a new blog. I prefer just the opposite. I’ve found that even with a few posts you can tell whether the blog is a winner or not. I’d hate to spend an untold amount of time creating a ton of posts only to find out that it’s not a money maker. I like to work smart, not hard.
5. A surprising thing that I’ve learned is that there is life on the second, third or fourth page of Google. I don’t think my blog often ranks on Google’s first page. I’m sure if I put in a lot of time and effort I can make it happen, but I’d rather not work that hard.
6. I think the biggest lesson I’ve learned is that choosing the right blog topic and time are the two most important ingredients for a successful money making blog. If you have those two ingredients, your blog will make money.

The extension is called SEO Blogger.  It’s put out by the folks at WordTracker (if you don’t know about Wordtracker, they offer a full fledged SEO tracking tool with a subscription cost in excess of $300 per year).   It only works for FireFox so if you use Internet Explorer it won’t work for you.

Free Firefox Download

It’s a free  download and quick and easy to install. Once you have it installed it places a small “W” on the lower right-hand corner of the browser window.  Click on it to invoke the SEO Blogger tool and you’re good to go.

All you have to do is enter the keyword or keyphrase that you want optimized and click “Search.”   The Wordtracker will display the most frequently searched terms in order of search frequency.  Select the terms you want to include in your article/post and click “Add.”

In the lower window, Wordtracker SEO Blogger will display your chosen keyowrds, the keyword search frequency, the number of times you used them in your post and the percent of times you used the keywords compared to other words in your article.[smartads]

Caveat

• The number of searches shown in the Wordtracker are based on US searches found in Wordtracker’s partner search engines.  Therefore, it does not give a world wide all encompassing view of the number of searches.

• This tool doesn’t replace the need for article keyword research, it just helps you to see how many times you actually use the keywords in your article.

My Take on SEO Blogger

I only downloaded it yesterday, but I think it’s a pretty cool tool.  Just for grins, I looked at one of my Suite 101 articles to see how well I utilized my keywords.  Let’s just say that I’ve got a lot of room for improvement.

I think this tool will force me to be a little more cognizant of my keywords and keyword saturation (%).