How to get your blog Google AdSense approved?

If you type this question into Google search, you will find tons of posts describing you the tricks and tips on how to get this done. You have probably gone through few of them already before you reached here.

As I was trying to get mine approved by Google, even I have gone through these and have tried to follow them honestly. But eventually I learned that none of them actually matter. One and only thing matter to the Google is, your blog or website is a Genuine one and you are here to actually share your original content on the internet. That’s it.

Now how do you verify if your website can prove itself as a genuine one?

Quality Content: The utmost important condition for your blog to be considered by Google Adsense is the quality of the content. They must be “original”. There shouldn’t be any compromise in this. Remember that Google wants to be assured that your intention is to provide your visitors with useful information/contents.

Niche Specific:  All your posts must be pertaining to a single niche. Say one day you write about ‘Pet care’ in your blog and suddenly tomorrow you write on ‘How your power yoga classes have helped you shedding your weight’ and another day your write about that ‘broccoli salad’ you made. That will not do. All the post you publish must be somehow related to some basic niche and have one common 'Intention'. Google wants to know what exactly your visitor is interested in and will place the ads pertaining to the same niche and hence unless your blog can attract visitors interested in a certain niche, your blog is of no use to Google.

Content Size: You might have read on internet that the size of each article must be atleast 200 words, or 250 words or some say even 500 words for your blog to get approved of AdSense. This actually isn’t necessary. Until you are providing meaningful information and consistently providing information, it doesn’t matter what is the size.

Image Quality: A decent image adding value to your write-up is fine for the Google. You need not worry on getting a professional, high resolution photographs. One of my blogs where I mostly have photographs clicked using my average phone camera along with the write-ups has been approved by Google.

Minimum Traffic: I’ve been reading in many blogs that there should be a minimum of 50 visitors every day, only then AdSense would be approved for the blog. But, the same blog of mine which I mentioned earlier had only 20 to 25 or sometimes even less traffic when it was approved by Google. Until you have content that is useful for anyone who visits your site, it holds the chance to get approved .No matter what is the visitor count, if the count is real then it doesn’t matter. (Real Traffic is the traffic which you get through Search Engines, Social Media and other such means where people visit your site because they want to read what you have shared and not just redirected from some other sites unknowingly, which happens in some cases of fraudulent clicks )

Minimum Posts: ‘In certain countries like India and China, there is a requirement of 6 month for domain to apply for AdSense’. This is a myth. I’m an Indian and my account was approved by Google in just 3 months. There are lots of myths around the number of posts as well. Some say there should be atleast 50 posts, which is also not really true. I applied as soon as I felt that there is enough content on the blog to keep a visitor engaged atleast for few minutes.

I hope these little points will encourage you start earning from your blog through Google Ads. Happy Blogging!

Newsletter and Small Business

All you small online business owners or bloggers who are doing the marketing for your site on your own may have heard about Newsletter during your research. For all those who haven’t heard or yet to start with marketing, here’s a brief explanation. Newsletter service is a service which enables you to send updates and other emails related to your website to various lists of subscribers who have subscribed to the service in some way.  (They are different ways to add subscribers to your newsletter, will discuss this in the next segment.)

If you are still not using any newsletter service, you may be finding it hard to bring back your visitor once they leave your site. You may be using various options for driving traffic to your website. No matter what way you do it, all the effort is not really worth unless you can bring the visitor back again and again to your site.

Yes, we all know ‘Content is the King’ in terms of driving traffic and you may claim your content to be the best. But people these days do not remember their own cell phone numbers, they save it in their contact list so that they can read it to those who ask for the number, do you really think you can make your website remembered by everyone who visits your site? Okay, you may say they will bookmark your site or save it somewhere so that they can access it again later. But after all your effort marketing your site and bringing a visitor to the site, can you just sit and expect them to bookmark your site and come back again and again? No definitely not.  That’s where Newsletter comes into picture.

Not every visitor visiting your site subscribes to your newsletter. But even if 10% to 20% of the visitors do subscribe, on an average you can expect them to come back to your site atleast for 5 more times when they receive an email about the update in your website. This makes your website traffic (10 to 20) % x 5 which will be (50 to 100) % more than earlier. Without a newsletter you lose all these recurring visits. I’m trying out some newsletter for my site. I will update soon with my experience on which worked best for me. 

Google+ Vs Rest of the Social Media

When I started using social media for my business in the beginning it was Twitter which let me make connection quite easily when compared to other social medias. Making people follow you seemed comparatively easier to me.  I have even mentioned about this in my last post. But when I checked my month end analysis report, I was quite surprised to see that I was able to get only 3% of my traffic via Twitter and none of them turned to sales. But anyways that is fine right now, because I’m concentrating just on getting a good traffic for now.

One more thing in the report which surprised me was that the highest traffic from social media which was 17% was received from Google+ because making connection via G+ like we all know is tougher than the rest when you are new to the business. Also making connections here was not a very successful story. This is the time when I decided I should be concentrating on G+ more than others.

Later I did a research on why this happened and I saw that its YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn which brought highest engaging customers with lower bounce rates. Even though FaceBook and Twitter has larger traffic, engaging visitors are lesser in number.

So guys, it’s time you groom your Google+ and LinkedIn profile and start giving it little more attention to these.  Try engaging in various groups.  I’m doing it and will update with my experience soon. Please feel free to share your experience with me and lets all make a better business together ;)

Website and Mobile

In my last post, I had mentioned how important a mobile phone is for our online business. Now let’s see how exactly it affects our website traffic. 

We all have set of visitors to our sites who prefer using their phones rather than any other means. Hence, if we do not have a mobile friendly website, we may lose these set of customers easily. We have to make sure that our hosting provider and website developer are both aware of this requirement. Most of the services providers do realise the importance of a mobile friendly website. But to be on safer side, its better we confirm it with them. 

Now if you have an informational website like mine, this requirement may not seem that critical. One reason for this is people usually visit these sites at their leisure time from office or home, where the alternate options to the mobile are available. The other reason is there isn’t much of difference in the mobile friendly versions and the web versions for such sites. You just need to make sure all those plugins, embedded stuffs, pop ups or any other additional features you have added to your site works without any issue with the phones.

But if you have a website which offers any kind of service or products then not having a mobile version will be critical loss for your site. One might need such service or a product anytime and anywhere, Hence visitors prefer to be able to access them from mobile phones. You must make sure you have all those feature accessible on our site via web is also accessible via a mobile phone. Make sure to check the mobile versions properly to see if the entire interface is as easier as in the original website.

United We Stand, Divided We Fall!

We all know, in business how important is it, to beat the competition. You got to be continuously working to stay ahead of the competition no matter what your business is.  

When a business is marketed, staying ahead of the competition is one of the most important aspects to consider.  But staying ahead doesn’t always mean you will have to step on them and raise yourself above them.  Marketing strategy these days has changed completely.  When I first started with my small job as a content writer for a marketing company, I was kind of not sure if this Marketing was my cup of tea. Because even though I was interested in writing, I always thought that marketing is for someone who is capable of convincing others on buying anything even though the buyer actually doesn’t need it.  But it is not true anymore. Current marketing focuses on serving the customer to their best so that they come back to them again.  Customer is happy, that means they come to you more often and also suggest you to other. This is the most prominent aspect currently in any business. 

When satisfying customer is the prominent aspect of your business, you will need to join hands with other business which plays a role of their own in your niche. For ex: If you have a local business in your place, it is very much beneficial for you to keep in touch with person who has same business in some other area or even in the same area forgetting the competition. 

·         This helps you in better understanding the customer needs and latest trends in the niche.

·         You can also get some solutions already tried and implemented by other experts in the niche, without wasting your time in experimenting for the solutions to your issues. 

·         Also follow the leaders in your niche, as to keep yourself updated about the latest news in your field.

·         Attend seminars and annual or monthly meets for your niche whenever possible. 

A successful business or even successful life isn’t a hard path if we believe ‘Live and Let live’.

Is your website accessible from mobile devices?

Is your website accessible from mobile devices? If not, then you may be losing a part of your potential customers already. Make sure to switch to a provider who can make this possible.

Though mobile phones were initially only meant for making calls and sending texts, now we all know we can do a lot more than just that. In this fast phased life everyone wants their work done at the earliest. To get your work done quickly, nothing can be a better option than doing it on your phone.

Getting your work done from home through your computers was a thing two years ago. But now just getting things done online is not enough. People want to be able to do it from anywhere.  Whether its a shopping site, entertainment related sites like gaming sites or sports and movies, government official site where you may need to make certain payment and look for information, bank accounts, etc people want everything to be on their phone. This way they can do their work from anywhere and anytime just when they manage to make themselves free for few minutes in between their busy schedules. Recently there are plenty of researches going on the increasing number of internet users accessing it from mobile. 

Hence if your site is not accessible from mobile phones, you will be losing this group of busy people from visiting your site. Make sure your hosting provider and also the theme which you use are using for your website is mobile friendly if you are using template based website builder. If you are hiring someone for the webdesign, make sure you specify this very clearly to them, so that you will not have to loose any potential customers just because this point skipped out of your mind.

Which is the best social media for your business?

FaceBook,  Google+, Twitter,  LinkedIn and Pinterest are the top social media services used commonly. We all know FaceBook and Twitter are the best ones to stay in touch with friends and to get news from all around us, if we are talking about personal profiles. But if you are to use these for your business, can you say the same? I don’t think so.

Each Social media platform acts differently for different businesses. Depending on what exactly are you intending to do on your social media profile and what exactly is your business about, each one have its own cons and pros.

Basically below are the few reasons why social media is used in business:

·         Introduce themselves to potential customers and make branding.

·         Sustain a constant relationship with the existing customers.

·         Know the customer and market needs pertaining to their business.

·         Get direct sales.

Introducing yourselves out there on the internet is probably the toughest part of all. This is what I’m actually working on right now and I feel FaceBook fall behind here. All the rest like twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google+ have worked quite well for me until now.  In fact Twitter is doing quite well. But sadly I’m not being able to do much with FB. Since, it is hard to attract followers here, unlike Twitter.

Unlike me, the big brands use their social profiles mostly to sustain a constant relationship with the existing customers and interact and know the customer and market needs pertaining to their business. Most of them also provide customer support via social networks. Its a convenient and faster ways for the clients to get the response.  This way companies get to interact much personally, knowing their issues and needs better.  Even here Twitter has brought the most uptrend.

Getting sales is ofcourse is the ultimate concern of all the companies. Providing informative links to their products, blog and other services is what most of them do for direct sales on social media. Here FB works better for me. You can follow groups and pages you are interested in and post your offers and other updates in those groups.  But chances of attracting followers for your page are hard. Only option seems to me is through your blogs.

Well this was my experience. Please reply with yours.