Content Is King - Get More Traffic By Giving More Information

Everyone has heard the saying, so there is little disagreement that we live in the information age. It's also a well-known fact people look for information online more than ever before. In fact, searching for information on the internet has become so common that the name "Google" has become a verb; when you want to learn about a topic you simply "google" it. Also, people have a fairly open mind about where their information comes from; they're going to be interested in reading articles, blog entries and reports from just about any source, and you can be the source they look to. This is your laser targeted Traffic that turns into sales, over and over again as you build your email list.

"But wait," you say. "I'm not trying to be an encyclopedia. I just want to sell my product."
The truth is if someone wants to buy a product, they're not likely to go surfing the web. They're going to visit Amazon, eBay or one of the other well established online retailers. Unless you have the advertising budget of a small nation, you're not likely to pull too much business from those firmly established sites. So how do you get people to buy from you? Should you throw in the towel and surrender to the big online retailers? Of course not, and this post will show you one way to overcome competition from the big boys of the net.

So if people want information, and they're willing to get it from sites just like yours, then by all means give it to them. Give the people articles, give them blog entries and give them news. Tell them everything you know and then look up something more to tell them. Remember what was said, this is the "information age" and not the "product age". Give the people all that information, and while you at it give them information about how much they need your product. Tell them about designer jeans and let them know you sell designer jeans at rock bottom prices. Tell them about planning a garden and let them know you sell an info product about planting bulbs.

Don't try to "sell" anything, but just let people know you have something to meet their needs. If they don't yet realize they have that particular need, then give them all the information to let them understand their need. If someone wanted to buy, they'd go to one of the major online retailers and look for it. But if someone wants information, they will search the web and if they happen to find you, give the customer what they want.

Search engines love content, and so do your visitors! Fresh content will keep your visitors coming back to your website at their own will and you'll naturally get higher results at search engines. As the saying goes, "Content is king" and it will your best friend when it comes to traffic  generation.

About the Blogger "Earnings" tab & Enabling AdSense on your blog

The Earnings tab in Blogger makes it easy to enable AdSense ads on your blog. Once your account has been approved, Blogger retrieves your earnings data so you don't need to visit the AdSense dashboard to access basic earnings information.

AdSense Report

Once you start generating AdSense impressions, you'll begin earning money when people click on ads that appear on your blog. The earnings report (visible when you click the Earnings tab) includes a drop-down bar with Today, Yesterday, Last 7 Days, This Month, and All time.

Selecting an option will retrieve the relevant report directly from AdSense.

All time

If you're an existing AdSense user, you'll notice that Blogger created a new channel (with the URL of your blog) in your account. If you have had AdSense ads on your blog before using Blogger’s AdSense integration to insert ads into your blog, note that All time will retrieve data only from the time you connected Blogger to your AdSense account.

This does not affect your overall AdSense reporting, available directly from AdSense.

Terminology

The AdSense report visible from the Earnings tab contains basic information about how many ads have run on your blog, how many clicks were generated, and how much revenue you've earned. Each term in the report is defined below:

• Page views: A page view is generated every time a user views a page displaying Google ads. We'll count one page view regardless of the number of ads displayed on that page. For example, if you have a page displaying three ad units and it's viewed twice, you'll generate two page views and six ad unit impressions.
• Clicks: The number of times the ads were clicked on in the given reporting period.
• Page CTR (Click-through rate): The number of ad clicks divided by the number of page views.
• CPC (Cost per click): The average amount paid by the advertisers for each ad click.
• Page RPM (Revenue per mille): This is revenue per 1,000 page views. RPM = (Page views x CTR x CPC) / 1,000

Enabling AdSense on your blog

To enable AdSense for your blog, click on the Earnings tab from the drop-down menu on your dashboard.

You’ll then see the AdSense overview page. If you haven’t signed up for AdSense yet, click Sign up for AdSense.

Here is how you can signup for Adsense -

On the next page, select whether you'd like AdSense on the Google Account you're currently signed in to, or if you'd like to create a new Google Account.

Complete the application form, review the information you've provided, and then agree to terms and conditions.

Ads will not appear on your blog until your application has been approved. Once you receive confirmation that your application was approved, you can control the ways the ads show up on your blog through the settings on the Earnings tab at anytime. It’s up to you whether or not to show ads, and where on your blog to display those ads (sidebar and posts, just sidebar, or just posts) if you’re using Traditional templates. Dynamic Views users can skip this step, as Google has already optimized ad placement for Dynamic Views templates.

How To Create Your Own Content for Your Blog

Once you have your blog set up and you have the proper content on it, you need to make sure you keep regular content flowing on the site. There are different ways for you to do this.

First, you need to know where you are getting your content from. You have basically two options: buy or hire someone to write the content or create the content yourself.

Create your own content 

The easiest and cheapest way is to create the content yourself. Blog posts are short (usually 250-500 words) and they don't typically have to be very technical & unless your blog is a technical blog. You can easily create this content for yourself if you have the time. When creating your own content, keep these points in mind:

1. Keep it short & about 250-500 words

2. Start with a catchy title and headline to get their attention

3. Get right to the point with the beginning (you only have a few seconds to catch their attention on  the web)

4. Answer the reader's question of  "What's in it for me?"


Creating your own content is a great way to save money and participate more in your blog project but you shouldn't do it if you are a poor writer or if you take so long getting it done that you are not efficient and can't keep the bog regularly updated. If you are not a writer, there are some other options for you to consider.

Use free content

 

Another option for you to consider if you don't want to write your own is to use free content. There are several different ways to acquire free content for you to use if you know where and how to look. Article directories provide a steady supply of fresh content. You can copy and paste this, or simply have an RSS feed which updates every time fresh content is added to the site. Some of the big article directories are EzineArticles.com, GoArticles.com, IdeaMarketers.com and ISnare.com. There are also many others available for you to use.

Purchase content

 

Another option for you is to purchase original content for your site. You can hire a freelance writer to write articles for you. You can find service professionals on sites such as:

Elance.com

Guru.com

Rentacoder

Etc

Each of these works in the same basic way and will help connect you to a service provider who can do your job for you and usually at a low, affordable price.

Wherever you acquire your content, always watch out for two things:

1. Plagiarism

2. Duplicate content

Plagiarism will cause obvious problems. You should already know the reasons why to not do this. Duplicate content on your own sites can cause you to pay fines or even have your sites/blogs shut down so be careful of this as well.