Patience, you will get indexed and then wonder why you wanted it :)

For me it took ages, then b2 got smarter, as did Google. You will get swamped and then wonder why you wanted it in the first place :)

Swamped? By what?

mgomez wrote:

Swamped? By what?

You really want to know?! :p hehe

by bots, all kinds of bots

from
literally ALL search engine bots
- from indexing bots to
- all their other bots that suddenly knows about you but are not really for indexing your site :p

to
spam bots
- trackback spammers
- comment spammers

----
not to mention...

the HUMAN BOTs :p ie Humans-Paid-To-Spam-You-Manually-Because-Suddenly-You-Learned-How-To-Block-Automated-Spam-Bots

hehe ;)

seriously :p

But don't worry about it for now. You'll get there. The best way is to learn things step-by-step so you know how you should address it and what to do to protect yourself.

Wait for them to come. It's a whole new world, there are beneficial bots, there are those that are not. Next thing you know, it has become second-nature to you when managing websites/blogs ^_^

And yep, patience friend. Google, Yahoo, and all the search engines will find you and index you. It takes time. From 2 weeks to 6 months to 2 years. New sites takes a lot longer because you have less data still, they are still building their site profile of you.

Once you're of good standing to these search engines, your new posts gets indexed as fast as 20mins after you posted it (my experience). That's when you have to worry about SEO, because that's when you are at a level where you can compete head on with the other sites (who themselves gets indexed after every new post).

Yes to what Laibcoms said ^

Seems like it is going to take a long time then :D

Anyway, I am trying to see how to best make revenue from my blog (of course, I am also using the blog as an educational resource for people and a repository of music i have written). I am using Google Adsense and it seems to do well. One click I got earned 9 cents!

However, this is barely enough to feed my wife and I, and the child we are about to have. I cannot find a job in this country (Romania) since I am not a resident yet, and cannot become a resident until I am actually married by law, which also costs money, which I do not have, but her family has and is unwilling to help with :D

So, my only 2 options are what I am doing: building an online resume of myself to get accepted in article marketing jobs, and building a blog that will make some residual revenue.

mgomez wrote:

Seems like it is going to take a long time then :D

Anyway, I am trying to see how to best make revenue from my blog (of course, I am also using the blog as an educational resource for people and a repository of music i have written). I am using Google Adsense and it seems to do well. One click I got earned 9 cents!

However, this is barely enough to feed my wife and I, and the child we are about to have. I cannot find a job in this country (Romania) since I am not a resident yet, and cannot become a resident until I am actually married by law, which also costs money, which I do not have, but her family has and is unwilling to help with :D

So, my only 2 options are what I am doing: building an online resume of myself to get accepted in article marketing jobs, and building a blog that will make some residual revenue.

Hmm...

Hope these will help:

1. https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=17954&sourceid=aso&subid=ww-en-et-asblog_2009-07-09&medium=link

2. https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=43869

3. https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=23168

[/list:o] Use the following sizes:

• Leaderboard - this actually attracts more clicks ;)

• Full Banner - only if the Leaderboard size won't fit your layout

• Contextual ads or Text Ads - horizontal size

• 300x250 banner size - after every post - before the trackback and comments section

• 3 125x125 ADs for your sidebar, or

• 1 300x250 AD for your sidebar

• vertical ADs for your sidebar are also good, but I don't use this personally since it consumes a lot of sidebar space - also, we already a leaderboard ads, so it is redundancy and will look cluttered ;)

[/list:u] Then, content, content, content. As they say, content is king. One post per 2 weeks is the minimum in my opinion. Then marketing. You will have to promote your blog yourself.

• Tell your family and friends to read and pass it around

• Visit other blogs, read their posts, and leave comments - do not forget to put your blog URL in the "Website" field ;) - Most blogs nowadays have rel='nofollow' but this shouldn't push you away ;) Your target are that blog's readers to click and discover your blog.

• Send trackbacks. Although there are fewer blogs today that still use trackbacks, it doesn't hurt to send trackbacks to those blogs that still use it. Send trackbacks when your comment to a blog post is lengthy ;) Two birds one stone - [1] You have a new content for your blog; [2] you left a link (ie Trackback) to another blog's post which its readers know to be "comments"

[/list:u] You can start with that :D Just don't leave links to your blog without any purpose, for example, just saying "visit my blog", or leaving comments that doesn't really add to the discussion of a blog post or a forum post. This will do you more harm than good. You can also add links to your blog via Forum Signatures (like here), but do check the forum rules, there are forums that does not allow it. Finally, well, your writing skills which I believe you have an advantage more than any us ^_^ Ie, "keywords" or "attractive titles". I'm not a writer by profession so I'm not good with it. For now, your objective is to get readers. Next, if you have content and readers, then you can ask for link exchanges. Finally, once you notice that your new posts gets indexed no more than a day after posting it, then you can start doing SEO beyond what the blog platform offers (there are many areas of SEO-ing). Of course, setup your blog correctly, check the SEO settings of b2evolution ^_^ And always use keywords, search engines loves keywords, but don't overdo it, Google especially penalizes sites that use a lot of keywords, especially keywords that has nothing to do with the topic at-hand.

I just found out from webmaster tools that Google has indeed indexed my site, but on the top domain (in other words, my URL without the "/blog" directory). That is OK because I make it redirect like this: "yourdomain.com" to "yourdomain.com/blog/" using a META redirect. However, I feel as if though Google's index is not following that redirect. I noticed also that two redirects happen if you access the domain - one to the "/blog/" directory (that is the redirect I made) and one done by b2evolution to my default blog from there. I don't know if you understand what I am trying to say, but the point is: does Google still properly index the site even with that chain of redirects?

The reason I ask this is because, although Google is indexing the site, none of its pages appear in a search using "site:blablabla.com".

OK. A little something to add. I just changed the HTML redirect to a PHP-generated "301" redirect. Would this help with conforming to good search engine practices?

Better to move your blog up a directory ;)

‼

Instead of moving my blog up a directory, I set up the virtual host on my Apache server to point my domain to the /blog/ directory, so that just writing the domain without "/blog" after it will take people to the blog right away. Thanks for the help.

I notice a healthy amount of visits ever since I edited my resourcebox on Ezine to have a link to my blog. People seem to be more interested than I thought in the articles I write (pregnancy guides for dad, parenting guides for dad, computers & technology, etc. etc.).

Yep, a 301 redirect is favorable for search engines. ^_^

Your solution is also good, especially since you have access SSH access.

Actually, I am running the site from my home computer. As I said, I am broke :D

mgomez wrote:

Actually, I am running the site from my home computer. As I said, I am broke :D

Um... if you ever turn your computer off and a search engine comes looking for your site they're gonna figure you died. I suggest stealing candy from babies then processing it into methamphetamine then selling it back to their parents to fund hosting somewhere.

lmao! Nice suggestion. I have a decent uptime on my laptop. I just bring the website down for maintenance. The computer has been on for 1 month uninterrupted. :)

The only problem is that it is a stormy season and I cannot guarantee the electricity will be on. However, the laptop runs on battery power when electricity is out, and it is not usually out for more than half an hour, in which case, once it is back, the website will also be back without problems. I guess I can raise some money for hosting once I get a real job :D

You could also look for a freehoster for the time being.

Where would I find a freehoster that allows me to use my own domain names? :P

Also, I noticed that Google 404's on a lot of pages that are not linked to in my blog. I don't know where it gets those links, but the list is tremendous... Like 230 404s. Does that affect how often Google will come around riding on its sleigh to my website? I see so far 3 pages indexed and several missing. Not one link to any of my blog posts. Sorry if I appear too nervous or anxious. I just don't want to be writing for nothing :D

How about a link to your blog?

Here is the blog: http://mercuryarticles.servehttp.com

I know it looks suspiciously like a spammy blog, with bunches of topics that sound like they are selling something, but those articles were written by me and are original content that provide free solutions that are already on one's own computer. I also write about other things such as parenting and stuff like that. Just started out and have 6 articles written with 14 more titles on my queue that I will finish tonight :)

And now you get crawled in a matter of minutes cuz search engines are all over this forum :)

Personally I think you should move the installation up one level if you've got nothing there. Redirecting to a folder means there ain't nothing there right? At the very least, ditch the redirect and put in a static html page that links to your various blogs. Ideally with a wee bit of text so both people and search engines have something to think about.

I already set up a virtual host in apache. I do not move the installation up, since it would mix my installation with other files I keep for other purposes. So... for example... I added this in httpd.conf:

<VirtualHost *>
ServerName "mercuryarticles.servehttp.com"
DocumentRoot "D:/www/htroot/blog"
</VirtualHost>

That way, the htroot folder can be accessed through another private domain I allocate for that folder, and i can access the /blog folder using the domain itself without anything added to the URL. :)

This I figured out after a few minutes browsing through the Apache manual. I used to be very good at this stuff but it has been a very long time since I was into web development and hosting. I had no internet for like 8 months and recently re-entered civilization :D

I do have another question I forgot to ask. How do I get to appear on the home page of b2evolution? There is a little sidebar there I noticed with blogs that recently updated. I was told it is a long process to get up there. However, I would like more information about that. Perhaps that would help me get a little traffic on. Also, the ping-o-matic plugin pings like 10+ different sites. What are they?

Again, sorry for the multitude of questions. I just happen to be annoyingly curious :D

List of recently updated blogs: See http://b2evolution.net/about/userblogs.php.
Ping-o-matic service: See http://pingomatic.com.

Thanks. And about your suggestion to get free hosting, I found some excellent free hosts and gave them a try until I found one with features and an interface that accomodates me. 250 GB monthly bandwidth with 5 GB disk space and a little Google adsense from the provider at the bottom of my pages is not so bad at all. I got to keep the domain I currently use. Only disadvantage is 50 MB SQL space limit. Anyone have anything better that is free? :D

Perhaps this is all I need until my adsense revenue pays for the hosting.

Or... Does anyone here know anything more profitable? I heard of this "clickbank" service that supposedly loads you with profit for promoting products via ads on your pages.

Yep, search for a free host. It is a good start nonetheless, I never thought of running a website on a laptop and keeping it on for as long as possible ^_^

I'll link to you once I'm done with the updates on my two blogs. :) [Which has been a pending sub-project of mine... link exchanges lol]