|
In
a recent lesson
on VRE I talked to you about using private label articles
to create VRE websites. Then, in the previous lesson, I've talked
to you about optimizing
your websites for AdSense using proven strategies for increasing
your ad CTR.
In today's
"special edition" I want to combine
those two areas and tell you – show you – how you can create a
VRE website and monetize it using AdSense in 7 simple steps.
All it takes
is a website, some private
label content and this tutorial. The best thing about private
label content is that you don't have to worry about doing keyword
research and finding profitable topics – the hard work is already
done for you. In addition, if you can find good quality articles
(such as with PLRPro
– the membership site I'll be talking about in this lesson), that's
an added bonus.
Remember that
you don't have to use an article pack from PLRPro
– it's just something I'm using for the purposes of this walkthrough.
You can use any private label content package – the key is to
save time on researching your niche and on writing articles, and
instead spend that time on building profitable sites.
In this lesson
I'll take you through the process of setting up a VRE site, and
then you'll learn how to optimize your AdSense, promote your website
and automate this process so that building VRE sites becomes a
snap.
|
Step 1 – Get your Article Pack
|
With private
label rights content, all the hard work is already done for you.
They pick the profitable topics, they get the articles written and
they go through all the hassle of creating article packs that are
almost plug-n-play. All you have to do is show up, pick up those
article packs and put them on your website.
Go over to
PLRPro, register (it costs
$97 per month and you get 440 fresh articles every month – yes,
that's right, 440 new articles every month)
and pick out an article pack of your choice.
A few words
on the article packs provided by PLRPro:
- You get
40 articles for each topic – that's rounds up to about 11 different
niche topics per month
- For each
set of 200 people that sign up, PLRPro
provides 440 different articles each month.
- The keyword
research is already done for you – to give you an idea of what
these search terms are paying in Overture and in AdWords
- You get
a list of top affiliate programs in each niche
- You get
custom header graphics for your site
Once you've
signed up and downloaded an article pack of your choice, we're
good to go to the next step.
To setup a VRE website, you need the following:
Domain
name and hosting
For building
VRE sites I'd recommend using a reliable, low-cost host such as
BlueHost.
An
easy-to-use CMS
For CMS I've
gone with WordPress. In addition to being very easy to use and
allowing me to change the design of the site with one click (using
WordPress themes), I can also install it from most web hosts using
the Fantastico scripts.
Any web-host
that offers the Fantastico suite of scripts will let you perform
an auto-install for WordPress that usually takes less than a minute
to complete.
Professional
site design
There are
a lot of themes freely available for WordPress. Here's a list
of hundreds
of WordPress themes for you to choose from.
With most
themes you wouldn't have much to do in order to start using them
– as long as you can customize the title tag (as I've shown below)
and add basic elements such as a graphic header and a simple menu
that links to your most important pages, you're good to go.
Since we are
using WordPress, I have also put together a list of WordPress
plugins you will need for SEO and advertising.
WordPress
Plugins
To make use
of these plugins, upload them into the wp-content/plugins folder
on your website (where your blog is) using an FTP program such
as CuteFTP. Once they are
uploaded, simply navigate to the ‘Plugins' section of your blog
admin panel and activate these plugins.
AdSense
Deluxe
Allows you
to save your AdSense code in your WordPress admin panel and then
have your ads display wherever you choose to by including a one-line
statement.
Permalink
Redirect
By default
your WordPress posts look something like http://blogname.com/?p=1.
With the Permalink Redirect plugin, you can automatically convert
all posts to have search engine friendly urls (e.g. http://blogname.com/first-post.html).
To do this,
go to Options, then from the sub-menu select ‘Permalinks' (make
sure you've activated this plugin first, using the steps I've
described above). On this page, you have the options to create
a customized permalink structure – I've used one that just puts
the post title as the url and attaches a .html to the end. To
get this to work, all you have to do is select the ‘Custom, specify
below' option and copy/paste this into the text box:
/%postname%.html
That's it.
Click on ‘Update Permalink Structure' and you're good to go.
One thing
to note – the .htaccess file your server must be writable. If
the Permalink Plugin gives you an error / asks you to update the
.htaccess file yourself then you can do one of the following things:
•
CHMOD your .htaccess file to 666 (usually this amounts to locating
the file in your root web directory (using your FTP program),
right-clicking on the file, selecting CHMOD and setting the value
in the textbox to 666).
•
If you can't find the .htaccess file, create one yourself using
this
tutorial (just create the file, don't have to follow other
steps in the tutorial) and then copy the code given on the Permalink
page into the .htaccess file (open it using Notepad or any other
text editor). Once the file is updated, you can upload it back
to your web server.
Google
Sitemaps
This plugin
generates a Google
Sitemaps compliant sitemap of your WordPress
blog. While sitemaps won't directly help you improve your rankings,
the Google sitemap can help you get indexed quickly and if you
monitor your site from the Google Sitemap interface you'll be
able to see what search terms are bringing traffic to your website
and where you are ranking for them as well.
Optimizing
Your Title Tag
In addition,
you would probably want to optimize your title tags so that your
post title appears in the title tag. For this, you'll have to
muck about in the header.php file – the simple way to do this
is to navigate to the current theme folder on your web server
(in the wp-content/themes/ area) and copy the header.php file
on to your PC. There, make a backup of the file (in case you need
to restore it later on), open it in a text editor or an html editor
and locate the following tags:
<title>
</title>
Once you find
that block of code, delete it and replace it with this code:
<title>
<?php
if(is_home())
{
bloginfo('title');
}
else{
wp_title('');
echo
' » ';
bloginfo('name');
}
?>
</title>
If the visitor
is on the main page, they will see your blog name in the title
tag. On the other hand, if they are on an inner page, they will
see the post title in the title tag followed by the blog name.
Simple, isn't
it? Once you've updated the header.php file just upload it back
to your site and check your posts to make sure the changes have
taken place.
There are
more plugins that you can use, if you are just starting off with
WordPress these three, along with the title tag optimization,
are absolutely necessary.
|
Step 3 – Rewrite Articles
|
Since you
are potentially sharing these articles with 200 other people (although
effectively less than 50 of them will actually get around to building
websites on these topics), you want to make sure that you don't
do anything obvious to trip off the dupe content filters in the
search engines.
The PLRPro
Guide that comes with the membership provides a detailed explanation
of why the penalties for duplicate content are more of a myth
than a real danger – however consider rewriting articles as a
‘safety precaution' –
They also
have a short guide posted on ‘ How
to Rewrite Articles' – here's a short summary:
- You can
rewrite articles in under 10 minutes if you have a set process
and prepare for it beforehand.
- Use related
keywords – not only synonyms but also keyword tangents, brand
names and terms from related niches (as well as the general
parent niche).
- Use alternate
content such as images, FAQ sections, definitions, etc to add
more to your website.
- Change
only the important bits – the article title, the introduction
and conclusion.
- If possible,
convert a central paragraph into bullet points (or vice versa).
While you
could rewrite the whole article, it becomes a matter of time and
effort when you have to rewrite 40 articles. So sticking to the
basic areas and adding alternate content will help you create
differentiated articles easily.
This step
is relatively simple – you can simply copy-paste your articles
into WordPress one-by-one, make formatting changes (such as bold/italic
text, bullet points, links, etc) and click on ‘Publish' to post
the article.
I usually
use a “delayed” posting strategy to reflect a natural posting
pattern. This means that while I would upload all the articles
to the site at one time (or in two-three shifts), the articles
themselves will be published only at a specific schedule.
For example,
I could schedule the posts to go ‘live' one by one every day –
so that the first post is published on Monday, the second on Tuesday,
the third on Wednesday, and so on.
You can do
this by setting the ‘Post Timestamp' to a specified future date
and time of your choice (make sure you select the ‘edit timestamp'
checkbox).
|
Step 5 – Optimize for AdSense
|
Note: We are only talking about AdSense as a means
of revenue here – however, you should not limit yourself to it.
Use affiliate programs, or develop your own products (or even
find a way to market your services) for your chosen topics.
As we discussed
in the recent lesson on AdSense
optimization, you need profitable, keyword-focused content
to make any serious money with AdSense. Without it, you could
apply all the strategies on increasing your ad CTR and you would
still be leaving money on the table.
Luckily, we
don't have that problem here thanks to PLR content.
After you've
setup your website, you want to make sure that your ads are fully
optimized for maximum CTR. Here's what you should be doing:
Ad
Colors
You have five
distinct ad components for which you need to set the color:
- Background
- Border
- Ad text
- Link url
- Advertiser
url
As a general
rule of thumb, blending your ads in with the colors of your website
will increase your CTR because it will cause your ads to look
less out of place and more like part of the content.
So, for the
above 5 components, you would use the following pattern:
- Background
color = content area background color
- Border
color = Background color
- Ad text
color = site text color
- Link url
= blue works best
- Advertiser
url = should not stand out – use light gray
Ad
Formats
The best ad
formats are those that match the shape of a content area the most.
High
CTR Ad Formats:
- 336 x 280
(large rectangle)
- 300 x 250
(rectangle)
- 250 x 250
(square)
Use these
formats on your website (best is the large rectangle) in the locations
described in the next section.
Ad
Positioning
You want your
ads to be above the fold, in the center and middle of the reader's
browser – to make sure that they get maximum visibility.
With WordPress
blogs your ad positioning will also depend on your theme (such
as how you want to align the ads within content to place them
in the center of the browser).
Like I discussed
in the AdSense
lesson, the best two strategies for putting ads on your site
is to either place a large rectangle ad block between the post
heading and the post content or to place rectangle ads inside
the content (aligned to the right or left) and let the content
wrap around them (scroll above and see the ads at the top of this
page to see what I'm talking about).
I personally
prefer the second option, as it allows you to put ads in a prominent
location without giving your website a spammy look, but in some
cases if it is implemented right you can pull off the first strategy
as well.
|
Step 6 – Promote Your Site
|
With any website you have two distinct periods of promotion:
- Getting
crawled and indexed
- Getting
rankings
Let's see
what you need to do in these two steps for your VRE site.
Get
Crawled and Indexed
The easiest
way to get crawled and indexed is to make sure spiders visit your
website early and often. To do this, you have to secure high PR
links to your website (popular websites get spider visits regularly
– if spiders go through them to your site, they will hit your
site more often and thus index you quicker).
In addition,
you would want to start using Google Sitemaps. In the previous
lesson I even discussed a plugin that generates compliant Google
Sitemaps for your WordPress blog – this sitemap will help ensure
that Google indexes your site completely.
Get
Rankings
- Web
Directories
This approach will not get you high rankings, but it will establish
some link credibility for your website in MSN and Yahoo.
- Article
Submissions
With PLR article packs, you can easily use a few of them to
submit to article directories like EzineArticles,
GoArticles and ISnare
to gain one-way links back to your website.
You will still need to rewrite these articles though – use the
tips earlier in this lesson to help you rewrite the articles.
- Link
Exchange
Link exchange websites such as LinkMetro
can help you get a high volume of reciprocal links without much
effort on your part. These links will help you much more in
Yahoo and MSN than they will in Google, so it all comes down
to how you want to play things.
I'd recommend working hard on getting links through directories
and article submissions, and using link networks to help you
build reciprocal links. Considering that recips are less valuable
than one-way links, it makes sense to spend more time on the
latter.
- Getting
themed links
Asking for links isn't going to get you links – however, especially
with bloggers, when you provide another blog owner with a link
to a post that you think will be useful for their
readers, you are likely to much more successful (assuming that
the post you are promoting is actually good and matches what
your target blog is about).
When doing link building, focus on getting links to your inner
pages as well as the main site. In the same vein, get links
from inner pages instead of getting them from linked pages –
it's harder work, but those links well help you rank really
well in the search engines.
Creating
Linkable Content
This holds
true no matter what type of website you have – if you want top
rankings in a niche, at the end of the day your website must be
the best resource, bar none.
Develop your
site as the ultimate resource of your niche - if you think there
is too much competition then narrow down your niche a bit. Be
different, but valuable. In other words, be the ‘go-to' website
for your topic.
If you can
manage that, you will get lots and lots of natural links.
With PLR article
packs this is still possible if you are creative enough to add
something extra to your website such as detailed reviews on products
in your niche, a section on definitions and FAQs, a collection
of images for your topic or whatever else you can find to provide
value to your readers while being unique.
One strategy
that I'd strongly recommend is to find high ranking websites in
your niche (use SEO Elite
for it - it does a lot more as well), analyse the sort of content
their users prefer the most and see how you can produce that on
your own site. Once you've developed your website into a truly
valuable resource (you might have different sections that cater
for different types of websites), you can contact them and talk
link building.
Automating your VRE sites is quite simple – you want to eliminate
as much of the grunt work as possible from the process of building
a VRE site so that you can focus on what's important. In this
case, setting up the site is grunt work; bringing traffic to the
website (people that will click on your ads / buy the affiliate
products you are promoting) is what is most important.
Creating
a WordPress package
Put your most
used wordpress plugins and a selection of themes together in one
place on your computer so that whenever you need to setup a new
WP blog, you can use autoinstall on the web host and then upload
the plugins and themes, all from one place. When you are setting
up a new site every month, having a WordPress package makes sense
and saves you a lot of time.
In addition,
it will also help you when it comes to outsourcing parts of your
project.
Outsource
whatever you can
Outsourcing
the grunt work shouldn't be looked on as an expense – in fact,
you're doing yourself a huge favor by using your time for something
that is far more productive – that is bringing traffic to your
site.
What should
you outsource?
- Article
rewriting (can save you a couple of days of work)
- WP theme
modifications / site design (pick up a theme, think of the changes
you want on the site, write down the specs and hand them to
a designer).
So what's
left for you?
- Select
article pack
- Install
and setup WordPress blog
- Manage
outsourced work (article rewriting and theme design)
- Build traffic
Since 1, 2
(with automation) and 3 (with outsourcing) take very little time
you can focus all of your efforts on building links (and traffic).
That brings
us to the end of today's lesson. Before I sign off (and before
you go off and start building your VRE Empire), I want to make
a few points.
Firstly, remember
that are the advice given here is about building simple VRE sites
that won't require any maintenance once they've been built and
setup. You could also use these article packs to supplement already
existing websites on similar topics, or use them exclusively to
submit articles and build one way links to your site. The way
you use PLR articles is your choice – I've just shown you one
way of doing things.
Since your
goal is to build a VRE Empire – hands-off income – you would want
to automate as much of it as possible.
That's it,
and good luck with your VRE Empire.
All the best,
Brad Callen
Professional SEO
http://www.seoelite.com
Get
Your Free Copy of 7 Days To Massive Website Traffic!
by Optimization Expert, Brad Callen |
| If
you liked the lesson above and haven't yet signed up for
my SEO course, simply submit your first name and email address
in the form below to receive many more powerful lessons
from me... RIGHT NOW! (Check your email in a few
seconds) If you're already signed up, you'll automatically
receive more lessons from me without signing up again. |
|
|
Seo
Elite Keyword Elite
|
